“Well, that’s not good,” his companion noted dryly.
“Watch. He’s pure poetry,” Kamen reassured her.
The cop ran down the sidewalk toward Chatha, who immediately plopped down in the snow on his backside beside the body he’d been manhandling moments ago.
Jackson drew a bead on the two bloody figures in the snow. One of them was still as death, the other was bawling his eyes out as if someone had stolen his puppy. He saw Jackson’s gun and shied away, covering his head with both hands as if it would afford him protection.
“Don’t shoot me!”
“I’m a cop,” Jackson said quickly, taking in the bloody skin and clothes of the weeping adult male. His features were instantly identifiable, his innocence automatic and obvious. Now that Jackson had dismissed the Down syndrome male as a potential threat, his eyes darted up and down the street warily. “Was there a woman here?”
“They took her,” he answered helpfully, his whole face lighting up in a smile. “Can I be a cop? Did I help?”
“Sure,” Jackson said absently, even as panic was washing sickly through him. “Who are ‘they’?”
“Two bad men. They took the nice lady after they killed this man. They were mean bad men. I couldn’t help. They hurt me.” The frown and tears reappeared.
Jackson’s frustration knew no bounds. Something had happened to Docia, and his only witness, it appeared, was a man with what appeared to be the mental maturity of a six-year-old. But maybe he’d get lucky. A lot of Down’s adults could be very high functioning and were veritable fonts of information. Maybe once he calmed down he would be a better source of clues as to where Docia had disappeared to.
“What’s your name?” Jackson asked him.
“Andrew. Andy.”
Jackson lowered his weapon, hoping to calm Andy down a little by coming across as less threatening.
“Andy, that lady they took was my sister. I’m really worried about her. Did you see them hurt her?”
“I tried to help. They hurt me.”
Jackson sighed and reached for his phone. He tried not to let guilt and a slew of other emotions sicken him as he called the precinct. He had known better than to leave her. What the hell had he been thinking? He’d been thinking about Dr. Marissa “Hotbody” Anderson telling him that a sense of normalcy would be very important to Docia when she got home, that he wouldn’t be doing her any favors being overprotective of her. So when Docia had begged him to leave her alone for the thirty minutes it would take for him to dash to the store and acquire dinner, he’d actually gone against his better judgment and agreed.
But now he’d come home to Docia’s bloody jacket on the floor of the house and his sister nowhere to be seen. Mere steps away, this gruesome sight, a corpse dead and bloodied and a gentle overgrown child possibly hurt as well. If they’d had no compunctions about hurting this harmless man, what would they do to his sister, whom they clearly saw as enough of a threat to have tried killing once before? And who the hell were they?
Jackson fought down the surge of bile in the back of his throat. His sister was going to turn up dead, and it would be his fault. The only thing in his favor at the moment was that they had taken her away instead of killing her on the spot. But as a cop, he also knew that bringing her to a second scene was like writing a murder book. They wanted time to get cozy with her, in privacy, to do whatever it was they wanted to do with her. Extract information? Maybe. Torture?
His eyes jerked over the corpse lying in the road. He had yet to understand how the body figured into all of this. A Good Samaritan, perhaps? Had the man tried to help Docia and paid for it with his life?
“This is Sergeant Jackson Waverly, badge number 1131. I need backup at Washington and Prospect. The coroner and some detectives.” He eyed his potential source of information. If he called Social Services, they’d circle the wagons and he’d never get a decent interview out of his only witness. But he couldn’t exactly hide a witness from the detectives, either. Frustration burned along with rising agitation and seething panic inside of him. He’d never been in the position before of choosing between doing what would keep his family safe and upholding the law and its protocols. But he’d put his entire faith in the law and those he called his second family … the second family that had taken his sister in as one of their own for years now. He had to trust that they would help him do the right thing. To do everything they could to get her back.
He hung up the phone and immediately pressed a speed-dial button.
“Alvarez.”
Jackson took a deep breath, but words refused to come to his tongue. They jammed in his throat for some reason, sticking together and keeping him from speaking.
“Jacks?” Leo’s concern was immediate and cautious. “Man, did you just ass-dial me?”
“Leo,” Jackson finally managed to say. It was all he said. All he could catch breath to say. Apparently, it was all he needed to say.
“Where are you?” Leo demanded, his longtime friend knowing instantly that something was very wrong.
“Docia …” Jackson took a breath, and it seemed to be helping. “Leo, they took her. She’s gone.”
“Three minutes. No more. You hear me? I’ll be there, Jackson.” There was the sound of screeching tires over the phone and the wail of an angry horn. “¡Jodete Cabron!” Leo shouted before hanging up his phone.
The knowledge that Leo was on his way helped Jackson to draw his wits back together. God almighty, he couldn’t afford these paralyzing hits of panic. Where the hell had they come from, anyway? He wasn’t some Sissy Mary always crying every time his life hit a hiccup. He’d been trained to keep a level head … and usually he did.
“So, Andy,” Jackson said after clearing his throat. He checked the streets once more before slipping his gun back into its holster. “You want to be a cop, right?”
“Yep!"
“You know, a good cop has to remember everything they see in a split second.”
“I can do that,” Andy said brightly.
“You think you can describe the men who took the nice lady?”
“Yep!”
There was a long beat, and Jackson tried not to get impatient. “Do you think you could do that now?” he asked. Literal. Children and challenged individuals tended to be very literal, he reminded himself.
“Oh sure! One was tall and big, like a monster. The other was big, too, but yellow haired. The monster had black hair and he looked like this.” Andy scrunched up his face and body as ominously as he could manage. Jackson let his eyes wander over the boy-man, trying to figure out how he had gotten covered in so much blood.
“Was she hurt? Did they make her bleed?” He spoke through gritted teeth, fighting back the resurrection of his panic. Maybe the blood on Andy’s jacket was Docia’s. But … how had her jacket gotten back in the house? And a few smears on the outside of the jacket didn’t indicate signs of any great injury.
Yet.
“No, she was right as rain,” Andy said helpfully.
Strange. Anyone who looked at Docia wouldn’t use that sort of a descriptor for her after the hell she’d recently been through. She certainly didn’t look right as rain. But this wasn’t just anyone, he reminded himself once again. Andy saw things in his own way.
What he wouldn’t give right then for Chico. His K-9 partner would have been able to tell him more in just a few minutes than this adult witness was going to be able to do. But Chico wasn’t there, and he never would be again, so he’d have to make do. He couldn’t lose focus. Couldn’t waste time wishing for what he didn’t have.
“Andy, which way did they go?” Jackson asked, crouching down to meet the other man eye to eye. “The lady and the monsters?”
“Away,” Andy said matter-of-factly. “In a car.”
“What kind of car?” Jackson asked, trying not to let a sudden surge of hopefulness fog his need to focus. This, he acknowledged at last, was why cops weren’t allowed to work cases related to family me
mbers. He clearly couldn’t think straight. All he could do was feel the nausea of knowing his sister was out there, helpless, and in the hands of monsters. And that he had let it happen.
“A big car.”
Great.
This was going to take a while, he thought painfully.
“Amazing,” the female mused. “In a matter of minutes he has a well-trained police officer disarmed, off guard, and lowered into a position of weakness and vulnerability. So why doesn’t he attack?”
“That’s the beauty of Chatha,” Kamen explained. “He gets far more pleasure watching his prey squirm than he does in the actual attack. Whatever the cop is doing or saying is providing Chatha with more delight than killing him outright would. And as long as he continues to do so, Chatha will allow him to live.”
“I’ve been away much too long.…” She sighed, smoothing delicate fingers down the side of her face as she leaned to look into the mirror off the passenger-side door. The glass magnified her stunning blue eyes, as well as the faint scar on her temple. It had been her entry point, the wound this original had suffered that had allowed her to come out of the Ether. That had been two months ago. The Blending had come and gone, and now she was the dominant inside this mind. But as with Chatha, occasionally the less controlled original would rise to the surface and its impulses would disturb her control and focus.
“Never fear, my mistress. You’ll be the queen you deserve to be. This time will be very different from the last,” Kamen reassured her.
“Last time we came so close.” She sighed.
“There will only be success this time. I have created a plan far more complex than anything they will be suspecting.”
“Simplicity has its beauties,” she warned him. “Depend on no one, Kamen.”
“No one but you, my divinity. You are the divine, your hands around the hearts of the gods. It is you and no one else who should rule the Bodywalkers.”
“Mmm. Clearly there are those who would argue the matter with us. As they have for aeons. Sometimes I win, and sometimes I do not. I am not in the mood for failure. Time is growing short, Kamen. The god Amun is rising. I can feel it. And we must be ready to greet him when he does or all of the world will suffer for it.”
“I don’t imagine anyone is ever in the mood for failure,” Kamen mused, amusement glittering in his eyes. She clicked her tongue at him in admonishment and gave his shoulder a shove.
“Anyway, whatever your plans, you might have to alter them a little at first,” she cautioned him. “I have an idea of my own. Something equally unexpected that I wish to try first. But neither of our methods will bear fruit unless we get hold of this girl.”
“Agreed. But no doubt she is at a safe house by now.”
“No doubt. But there are ways around that, just as Chatha has proven,” she said with a smile that curled in wickedly beautiful amusement.
Ram watched her face as they drove the distance from the final gate to the house itself. It was a ways farther up the mountain, the road hard paved now to provide surety and ease of plowing for the rough mountain winters they sometimes had here. Since the long drive was a dual switchback, that surety came in handy. There were huge stone pillars lining the drive, each topped with a stone-carved gargoyle of grotesquely giant proportions. Some had wingspans stretched to full glory, others grasped at the tops of their column perches in a low crouch, their faces sinister and foreboding.
The trees obscured the house in spite of their winter bareness, just a hulking impression at first glimpsed only in parts like a gothic film flashing images of the vulnerable body parts of a woman. But there was nothing vulnerable about the Catskill Sanctuary. It was one of the smaller sanctuaries they owned throughout the world, and he had not been surprised to find one so close to where they were. These things tended to happen in this way. There were some places on Earth, resonance chambers of a sort, that drew arrivals from the Ether far more frequently than other areas. Something about the nature of a place made it so much easier to cross that stubborn veil between, more so than was found in other areas, bringing the attention of those in the Ether to this plane and the people available within it. Over time, it made sense to make certain that safe havens were awaiting them within reasonable distance of these areas when they arrived. The first weeks of a Blending were the most trying, the most vulnerable, and there were plenty of factions far worse than some two-bit human thugs out there that would go to great lengths to see to it their king and queen never made it out of the Ether. They were the same factions that had without a doubt returned them there once more, just a century ago, devastating them all.
They were the same who were just as aware as Ram’s people were that the waiting time was done and resurrection was at hand. They would do anything to see to it that these Blendings failed, that Ram failed in his duty to protect his king’s soul mate. Ram’s duty was to make certain she was here waiting for Menes when his time came to cross free of the Ether; theirs was to make certain she wasn’t. They knew that to rob the great king of his beloved wife was just as effective as hollowing him out, stuffing him with nothingness, and propping him up emptily for the people to see. Ram knew that for all he was the greatest pharaoh of all time, Menes was violently connected to his queen and had, in the past, preferred to return to the Ether in order to pass time with her there than be without her. But the people needed a ruler. Now more than ever. And they did not have the luxury of letting their king waste time in the Ether.
Ram refused to give the option life by thinking about it. He would not fail. His king had but one weakness, and Ram would see that nothing exploited it.
They drew up to the house, and her reaction was clear.
“Holy Christ. Who lives here, Bill Gates?”
Asikri was out of the car and yanking her door open before Ram had opportunity to respond. The warrior stood peevishly waiting for her to alight from the vehicle, looking for all he was worth as if he were about to tap his foot with schoolmarm impatience. Ram could swear she moved slowly to her feet out of a perverse enjoyment of making Asikri cool his heels rather than a reluctance to step into the cold.
Ram came quickly around to her side, offering her the warm shelter of his body and the inside of his own coat by unzipping it and drawing her into its fold like a mother bird tucking its nestling under a wing. Ram hurried her to the front door, Asikri’s heavy footsteps following tightly behind them. The door opened and Ram immediately recognized the portal keeper.
“Vincent,” the Sanctuary keeper greeted him with a smile. But when he took in the tower that was Asikri at his back and the battered dove he held protectively at his side, his whole demeanor changed, his face lighting up in such a way that the elder man dropped about twenty years in heartbeat. “Vincent! Wallace! Good fortune to you both and to me! You bring the greatest of treasures with you, I see. Please, come inside. The Sanctuary is yours to use as you wish, of course.”
They scuttled into the doorway, a huddling little flock for all of a second, and then Asikri broke away immediately, marching off from the so-called whining woman who had so irritated him. Then again, everything and everyone irritated him, so there was nothing of note to the moment. As he passed the portal keeper, he grumbled dangerously in his face, “Don’t call me Wallace.”
Of course, the keeper was aware of Asikri’s hatred for the name his mortal half had been born with. Everyone in their world was aware of it. That meant the sly portal keeper had done it on purpose. There was no doubt that Asikri knew it, too.
Ram reached to take hold of the small, cold hand of his king’s betrothed, drawing her quickly into the first salon with a lit fireplace. Heat emanated from it in heavy waves, and he let his own clenched body relax in the bask of it. He had lived so many lifetimes, in so many countries and in so many styles, but he had been born a man of the desert and a creature of the heat. He would never get used to these colder climes. He could tolerate and function, but he would never grow accustomed to it, nor would he w
illingly desire to dwell in it. He much preferred New Mexico, the seat of their government at present and his usual home. It was not the arid perfection of Egypt, but it would do for this lifetime.
He looked down on the top of Docia’s head as she leaned eagerly for the warmth of the fireplace. The injuries she had suffered pained him for some reason. Maybe because she was so small, or because her half-shorn head made her look like a frail waif, but no matter how much he told himself it was only a temporary state, it still grated on him. The fact that she was out of the hospital already attested to the fact that the Blending was in full swing and that she was healing far more rapidly than she would have without the influence of his queen within her.
“I thought your name was Ram,” she said after a long minute of clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.
“Ram is an old nickname. I was born Vincent.” It would do for an explanation at present. He would bombard her with truths a little bit later.
“What, were you on the football team or something?” she asked, trying to theorize how they managed to get Ram from Vincent. Ram seemed to visibly do an internal check of his memory, as if he had to work at it.
“No. No football. I was … I was twenty-eight years old when I hit a reef outside the Cape of Good Hope in 1972 and drowned.”
Docia gaped at him. It sounded exactly like what she’d just gone through.
“Wait a minute …” She narrowed her eyes on him, having no idea how exotic it made her look. Exotic and strong. Strong in a way others shouldn’t try to defy. But Docia, while having her share of no nonsense allowed behaviors, would have laughed to think anyone would ever take her that seriously. “That was forty years ago! You can’t be a day over thirty-five.”
He was lying to her and toying with her for reasons she couldn’t fathom. Was it some kind of a joke to him, to make up empathetic incidents in his life?
Forbidden Page 7