“Ah, of course Deputy Marshal. I am always ready to aid the US government. Tell me what are you looking into?” Translation: I have acknowledged that you represent an authority greater than yourself and I am amenable to providing that information to that greater authority. Provided you can demonstrate an ability to pay information that would be valuable to me.[44]
“Of course, Mr. O’Dell. We’re investigating a local homicide that occurred last night in the local area. For mere formality sake, could you please tell me where you and your wife were all night?” Something supernatural is killing people in the area. It’s at least strong enough to rival you or Cris. I don’t actually think it was you, so I’m asking for an alibi I’m sure you have.”
“I spent most of the night inside on stage. My bartender’s would verify that, though if you’d prefer there are numerous guests who would place me here the entire night,” he said before nodding at Cris. I am intrigued. I, of course, have an alibi. I even have one that has sources you can trust. Cris is not under my thumb. I am not her superior, and thus she can speak for herself.
Cris snorted before offering, “I spent most of the night bouncing the front door since Cynric had the night off. I can tell you everyone who came through that door if you really want to make something of this.” Her voice tight and restrained, with a hint of an Italian accent from her decades long past. She was harder to read than Jim, but that might just be because I had trouble cutting through the menace surrounding her. Best Translation: “I too have an alibi from relatively unbiased sources. Stop yanking our chain and get to business. I can crush you both physically and socially if you dance around too much.”
I smiled politely and continued, “Wonderful. I’ll make sure to talk to some people before I leave, but I’m sure it will all work out. A humanoid creature has fought and killed at least two individuals in the city. He has done so by crushing their body parts to restrain them as he ripped through their chest until he was able to reach in and rip out their heart. The Marshal’s office would be very grateful if you could help with any knowledge gained in your long existence about such a creature.” I don’t doubt you, but for appearance sake I must verify your alibis. Here is the information I’m offering. There is a male supernatural serial killer with superhuman strength. He has enough strength to crush human bones and gains power from eating hearts. Have you ever had to deal with something like this or is it a new supernatural thing?”
Jim pursed his lips, in a way that was just this side of theatrical. “I might have some information, but I’d hate to lead you astray. What else can you tell me so I can direct you in the right direction?” I have information that could be useful, but you haven’t paid me enough information. Give me more.”
Smile still affixed to my face I continued, “Of course. The creature is, at minimum, thirty times stronger than the average human. We also have the indication that this creature is supernaturally tough. He was able to duel and kill the former Alpha of the First-Gen werewolves in the area, Steven Hotchkiss. The corpse was confirmed by the new Alpha.” He’s stronger and faster than a werewolf and probably you. Head on combat is not advised. More importantly and interestingly to you, one of the local power groups in the area are undergoing a leadership transition which you might be able to take advantage of.
Jim’s face went from expressive to blank. There was a full three seconds, an eternity in vampire politics, passed before he continued. “I see. I can think of a few possible options, but most have either gone extinct or are rare enough I find them unlikely. However, if my reading is right, this killer has only been working here a few days, I can point you in the direction of a group that this killer probably came from.” The silence spoke volumes, so I chose to translate this as: Are you kidding me? What the fuck? This is the kind of stuff that tends to make up myths and legends to myths and legends. However, I am not going to screw you. You paid me and thus I am obligated to pay you. However, I need some assurances this won’t come back to me directly.
I let my smile fade and nodded, “That would be greatly appreciated.” Of course, I can be discrete. Now pay up.
Jim nodded, “Look into the Racine County Fairgrounds where the Moloch Menagerie Circus is performing. They’ve got a bit of a reputation for adding some realism to their exhibits. I’d suggest going tomorrow during the day. They’re the only new group in town I know of.” There’s a circus in town that has actual supernatural and metahumans in their show. There are vampires or other creatures of the night amongst their numbers, so it would be intelligent to wait until the morning. I stake my reputation as a knowledge broker that they brought your killer into town.”
I nodded, “Thank you Mr. O’Dell for your information. Thank you, Mrs. and Mr. O’Dell, for your time.” I consider this transaction complete and satisfactory. I acknowledge your excellence as being a knowledge broker and do not question your abilities. I am now requesting permission to leave.
Jim smiled civilly, “Have a good evening Deputy Marshal and good luck in your investigation. We look forward to your next visit. ”I am also satisfied with this transaction. We will gladly do business with you and your superiors in the future. Permission to leave granted.”
I stood and left, letting Miles get out the door first. Right before the door closed behind me, I heard Cris call out, “Good luck.”
I wasn’t sure how to translate that.
Chapter 7
Traveling
The O’Dells’ alibis, unsurprisingly, held up. No less than fifteen regulars confirmed they had spent last night at the bar. Cynric even confirmed he had the night off and provided us information so we could check his alibi too if necessary. I dutifully wrote it down and then left, filing it away for the unlikely event of needing to look into him. But that was a task for tomorrow. It was getting close to 2200 and Miles had to teach the next day. I pulled onto 90 heading towards Miles’ condo in the Near West Side. Miles stared out the window as we drove, clearly exhausted. I bit my lip in thought, considering the day. Later had officially come, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to open that can of worms right now. Still, I needed to know. Softly, I asked.
“Miles, you’ve been awfully quiet about your new life choices. What’s going on man?”
I saw him reluctantly pull away from the window and frown in thought. I gave him time to think as I maneuvered through the late-night drivers. We were exiting 90 before he finally spoke up.
“Shortly after the Mayan event I started getting hunches. Really good ones. At the time I thought it was simply being in the field long enough. Wasn’t until my clear rate nearly tripled the department had me looked at. Turns out I had got low enough grade psychic abilities that they were missed in the chaos that winter was. Initial results suggested it was an unconscious form of precognition.”
I couldn’t help it, I winced. Precogs had an alarmingly high tendency towards depression, psychotic episodes, and strokes.[45] He nodded knowingly but moved past the twitch.
“Turned out to be a low-grade unconscious form of psychometry.[46] My hunches were reactions to my unconscious ability to pick up on the anger or fear someone was putting out. The FBI immediately shuffled me into their EEP division, which was not fun. Close quarters, lots of supervision, and treated like second rate citizens for a few years there. I didn’t figure out why until about nine months ago. Psychics in close proximity to another create a resonating effect between the two psychics. A prevailing theory was that this resonance could either amplify psychic abilities. So, they took a group of us, manufactured a reason for us to be in close proximity by making us live in a barracks and watched.”
I slammed on the brakes and ignored the frenzied honking of the people behind me. “You mean to tell me they figured out how to make powers stronger?”
Miles shook his head slightly, “Not really. The growth is small. Over the two years I was in the program, we saw a two-percent increase over the expected growth amounts from using the powers. The ultimately couldn’t determin
e if that was from increased use or the collaboration.” He shuddered despite the August heat, “Could you drive please? The anger of the people behind us is starting to get to me.”
I shook my head to clear my thoughts and pulled back into traffic. Almost immediately, Miles calmed down. After a few moments and deep breaths, he continued. “Needless to say, people weren’t exactly happy. The research was shut down and I was released back into a task force, which was right about the time you joined up with the Marshals.” I paused, searching my memories for a few seconds. Miles did mention that he just moved into his office when I joined up with the local Marshal’s two years back. I interrupted his story for a second, “That doesn’t add up with what you’ve been like since the vampire attack. What happened there?”
Miles shook his head, “Fast forward a year and a half. One of the people I was in the program with, Carla Rose, was abducted and held ransom by a group out of rural Indiana. FBI got the call and was asked to come into help with the situation that the locals weren’t equipped to deal with. I volunteered to be the profiler helping track the sons of bitches down”
He paused, and I watched his lip tremble as he was clearly struggling with the trauma of the events. The entire car felt tinted, as if I was viewing everything through the blue cellophane of his memories. “We knew they were bad folks, but we thought it was a human trafficking ring, not vampires. And they were bastard vampires at that, force feeding people their blood out of what we later found was the hope of amassing a force large enough to take over the Vampire hierarchy of Indianapolis.”[47] This time we both shuddered, but he kept going, “When we kicked in the door, she was one of three chained down. The vampires started swinging hard. I personally got knocked through a wall and both my legs were broken. I passed out. When I came to a few days later, I found out that the raid had been successful with a very low mortality rate. It was a bit disconcerting given that my legs were in casts after being plowed through a wall.”
He sniffled twice before continuing on. I parked the car next to his condo and sat in the AC while gathered the energy to go on. ”Apparently, Carla had used her abilities to fix mortal wounds and stitch people back up. She didn’t have that ability before she got kidnapped. She could do cuts and scrapes on other people, but not broken bones and mortal wounds. The working theory was that the vampiric blood caused her abilities to kick way into overdrive. The evidence was in aftereffects of the raid. The two officers who were letting her out of the chains were fully healed from just touching her. And not just the stuff they had gotten in the raid. Old surgical scars, that kink in their back, old football injuries. All just gone. A miracle.”
Normally, when you hear that line, it’s said in a sense of wonder. His was full of anguish, foreshadowing the tragedy to come. He sniffled again, “However, the atrophy and vampiric blood withdrawal knocked her into a coma almost immediately after healing the two officers. She collapsed, giving her more damage on the way down. She hadn’t healed herself. She never could. There had been a push for that in the program, a possible place of growth, but she had never gotten there.”
He paused again, brushing aside the tears that were welling up in his eyes and loss filling the car. From the outside, I could piece together why he volunteered for the mission and why the blow out had hurt him so. He was in love with Carla. I gently laid my hand on his shoulder, offering some silent support. He patted it appreciatively and after a few moments, continued on.
“When I was cleared to use crutches and move around, the first thing I did was head over to her room. She was still in coma. Doctors couldn’t do anything for her. Prolonged exposure to the vampire blood had burned out large chunks of her nervous system and made her unresponsive to most treatments.”
He stuttered for a second, now full on crying. I opened my mouth to tell him that it was alright to stop, but he just barreled on, wanting to get the story out. “There was a theory, a hope, that I could use my psychometric powers to interface with her unconscious mind and provoke an emotional response that would induce her into healing herself so she could wake up. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t work at my current power level. But now that we had evidence that vampiric blood could give me a power boost. And wouldn’t you know it, they had some spare blood on hand.
I could have the vampire blood, but it would require me signing numerous waivers and a whole bunch of other risks that I just kind of ignored. It was a chance to save Carla. I took it. I signed the papers. They gave me the blood, right there and I drank it down just as fast. It felt so good, so phenomenal. I felt like I could take on the world. I wanted more, but first I had a job to do. I could feel the hurt in her soul, the concern of the nurses, and the satisfaction of the governments that they had got me to do what they wanted. I didn’t care. I reached out and tried to contact Carla.” He stopped, his heaving sobs making it impossible to get the words out.
I moved my hand on his shoulder, in small comforting circles, and whispered, “You don’t have to tell me now. We can wait, Miles.”
Stubbornly, Miles shook his head, and wiped his nose, tears fading away. When he spoke again, his voice was detached just like mine was when I was dealing with a corpse. He took his memory and reduced it to facts and objects so the suffering would stop. The cellophane filtering effect started to fade as his voice grew more distanced.
“It worked, but not as intended. Well, not exactly as I intended. Maybe it was the hallucinogens in the blood or maybe it was because I didn’t have enough control over my power level. Whatever it was, the reaction was painful and radiating. Almost like the feedback you get from a microphone when it gets too close to the speaker. There was a moment where it all looked good. I remember looking at Carla face to face, her eyes open and her smiling. And then I remember waking up to the fire alarm going off and fully healed. We were pulled out of the hospital and the doctors had looked us over.”
He sniffled again, voice ragged. “With the vampiric blood, we were able to achieve the positive feedback loop the suits had been trying to manufacture. The issue is that it worked too well. Once I had healed, she started trying to heal other things touching her body. The linen sheets started to grow roots as it turned back into flax. The rubber wristband on her arm started to grow leaves like it was a tree again. Annoying, but not dangerous. The issue was things that weren’t exactly organic to begin with. In particular, the metal of the bed responded negatively to the healing effect. The energy poured in just started pumping higher and higher until the metal exploded and the bed caught fire. She lived but is now in an arguably worse condition than she was previously. EEG’s show less going on than there was previously.”
Cleared of snot and tears, his face had turned into a robotic and immobile facsimile of humanity. This wasn’t Miles, at least the Miles I knew. He was expressive even in his silences. Now the silence hung like a technical drawing, illustrative but emotionally blank. His voice had an alien tone; crisp, methodical, and completely divorced from anything human. How bad was his guilt complex that this was the only way he could talk about the situation?
“I failed her. I failed to help her and now she’s worse off. So, I left the profiling department and started teaching so I had more free time to figure out how to fix what they did to her. And how to fix what I did to make it worse.”
Chapter 8
Briefings
Needless to say, I spent the night at Miles’ so I could keep an eye on him. I helped him up his condo where he almost immediately went into his bedroom and closed the door. I wasn’t too worried, so I set about tidying the couch and getting ready for bed. When I checked in on Miles twenty minutes later, he was still half dressed and curled up in bed asleep. I quietly turned off the light and made myself comfortable on the couch. It wasn’t the best couch, but it was a far cry better than the cots I had spent the weekend on, and my head barely hit the pillow before I was out cold.
I woke too many hours later to the sun streaming through his living room windows feeling rested
and relaxed. It was saying something that I slept better on Miles’ bachelor couch than the military cots. It had been so effective, that I only had tiny knots and issues instead of the single giant one. Apparently, karma worked mighty quick in these parts.
Gingerly, I let myself into the kitchen and started to make breakfast for Miles and myself. I’m not much of a chef, but I can do cheesy scrambled eggs and coffee well enough.[48] Within the next ten minutes, Miles made himself present in the dining room and I served him the eggs and coffee. He silently took both and we sat down and ate together, maintaining the comfortable silence. Nothing really needed to be said, the fact that I had stayed and was helping take care of him spoke louder than any words and we both knew it. We finished breakfast, I grabbed a spare change of clothes from the car, we got dressed, and then hit the road.
The silence persisted through the crowded streets of rush hour as I took him from his apartment to the University of Chicago on my way to the Marshal’s office. We didn’t even listen to the radio, instead enjoying the relative silence between the occasional muted car engine. When parked, I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me, face creasing slightly in a very human concern. My lips quirked in relief before I spoke, “You gonna be alright man?”
He paused, honestly considering the question before nodding, “Yeah. Thanks for listening. And crashing.” There was another pause as he looked for more words, but they wouldn’t come. Eventually, he shook his head, “I’m done with classes at 1530. If you need backup, come grab me then.”
I bit back the urge to wince at the idea I might need his help so soon, so I nodded instead. “I’ll let you know man. Have a good day.”
World Wonders Page 5