Disciples of the Serpent: A Novel of the O.C.L.T.

by Williams, Sidney

  He curled one corner of his mouth upward. “But the situation yesterday opens the door for you to serve in a special liaison capacity. Why do you think you were sent home so quickly?”

  “I saw my supervisor take the mobi call. Do I have a choice?”

  “You can do this or you can sit around here watching Red Rock until you’re given a desk assignment for the next eon. Want to get dressed and be a police officer or watch a soap about police officers?”

  “Join the creepy patrol or sit on my arse? Great options.”

  She gave her head an almost imperceptible uptick.

  “Good, plain clothes, pack your sidearm.”

  “I hope there’s coffee where we’re going.”

  “We’ll find some on the way.”

  He whisked her away from her apartment building in an unmarked car, driving with measured precision. His speed picked up once O’Donnell had a cup of hot coffee from a corner shop.

  Her career had moved into shaky territory, so she was handling it with black coffee. Wasn’t that how a man would handle it?

  That’s how her father would have liked it. Right up there with never let ’em see you cry.

  She wondered what her mother would have told her. Her mam had passed away when she was so young, memories of her were spotty, and she hadn’t had that much of an example of how women reacted to things.

  Sliding past buses and around other cars, Rees navigated narrow streets with an experienced confidence, that of a man who knew the turns and knew his vehicle and what it would do in almost any circumstance. He’d been a copper a while. He wasn’t concerned with wet pavement. Must’ve had a fall like hers if he was over the spooky squad.

  O’Donnell could respect that.

  “You might actually find this interestin’,” he said. “We’d been monitoring a potential situation, and it flared up overnight.”

  “Seafóid can grab your attention. Doesn’t mean you want to get used to the smell.”

  Not far from city center, crime-scene tape had been strung in a large rectangle, sectioning off a portion of a grassy area near the statue of the fates in St. Stephen’s Green, a grassy park not far from City Centre and major thoroughfares.

  The fates, positioned on a block of stone in the center of a small reflecting pool seemed to look on with stoic gazes. Inside the tape, white-clad technical bureau operatives worked busily while uniformed Garda officers and men in suits conferred. An older woman in a sweater stood under an umbrella, holding a dog on a leash outside the tape, talking with uniforms. Her morning routine had clearly taken a grim turn.

  Rees led O’Donnell across the grass, past officers and lifted the tape for her to duck under. At the center of the activity, a body was being zippered into a bag.

  “Hold on,” Rees said.

  The tech with a hand on the zipper paused and leaned back, giving Rees and O’Donnell at look at the purple, twisted face on a bloated body. In spite of what she’d seen minutes earlier, her throat clenched.

  O’Donnell felt a bit of coffee trying to burn its way back up her throat. One side of the face bulged like a squeezed balloon, while tissue around it faded from purple to black. At the jaw, a portion of flesh seemed to have been peeled back from red layers of muscle. At first she thought the man had been strangled by the scarf around his neck, then she decided it was something much worse.

  “What the hell?” O’Donnell gasped.

  “Time of death?”

  “About two a.m.,” said a tech.

  “Venom acted quickly?”

  “If it’s venom, quite quickly,” the tech noted, looking back at the man in black. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  “What kind of venom?” O’Donnell asked.

  “Possibly snake venom,” Rees said. “St. Patrick must have missed one.”

  Five

  “That was a thirty-eight-year-old businessman from Ballsbridge two weeks ago,” Rees said. “Now on to the next set of photos.”

  O’Donnell watched the slender visitor in the gray Savile Row suit tap notes into his computer tablet, not changing expression as lurid images of another swollen, purple body zipped into view to replace the previous victim on the large screen at the front of the conference room.

  “This one was found near St. Stephen’s Green this morning,” Rees said. “Elderly Trinity professor.”

  O’Donnell sat at the end of the table in a small meeting room. They were in an indistinct building tucked away a few blocks from Garda headquarters at Phoenix Park. Outside, the building had looked like a warehouse with no distinct markings or signage. She’d probably been past it before without noticing. That must be by design.

  Things had begun to feel a little stranger once they stepped through the front door. A glass case that looked like something out of the Natural History Museum stood as a focal point in the lobby. Inside, an antler headdress rested on a faceless mannequin bust.

  As she’d focused on that, a figure in a black robe, almost like a nun’s habit had glided past to disappear down a corridor, offering just a glimpse of a hard silver mask that seemed to fit tightly against the face.

  O’Donnell had also spotted a pair of men in what looked like hazmat suits rolling a heavy crate with air holes on a dolly through a secured doorway.

  Focused on them, she almost stepped on a scurrying form she thought to be a dog. At first. She held a foot in midair and tried to balance, as she looked down at the spherical, glowing blue-green form that scrambled across the tile on little, reptilian feet.

  What the…?

  She then almost collided with a woman in a lab coat who hurried from the mouth of a hallway, holding a small, hand-sized smart phone of some sort.

  “Bodie’s in a hurry. Gotta keep up with him.”

  Rees had steered her forward as she looked back over her shoulder at the scene. What floor of the loony bin had she stepped off on?

  Everyone here seemed to wear badges that had to be scanned for access. Everyone except her and a man in a nice suit, who also seemed to be a visitor.

  Uniformed officers had accompanied the man in--tall, distinguished looking, silver haired. Aging without seeming too old. He’d introduced himself with a crisp and deep, British accent: “Professor Geoffrey Bullfinch.” Apparently a car had picked him up at Dublin Airport while she and Rees had surveyed the crime scene.

  He had settled in quickly and seemed to be looking at small details as more pictures scrolled past, offering the St. Stephen’s Green victim from a variety of angles on the grassy patch.

  “Is this anywhere near the zoo?” someone asked. A handful of men and women in suits and business attire were scattered around the table.

  “Not far, but they weren’t missing any massive vipers from the reptile house,” Rees said.

  Some of the staffers tapped notes into laptops. A few seemed to prefer a more old-fashioned approach and scribbled on note pads. They looked more like they belonged in an accounting department than a police station.

  “I suppose whatever did that might have dined on a lion or penguin before it got to a cyclist if it had,” one man said, staring at the image.

  “Toxicology?” Bullfinch asked.

  “Reptile, but not quite matching any known variety. Acts like a neurotoxin, the nasty stuff a North American coral snake delivers.”

  “Injected?” Bullfinch asked. O’Donnell couldn’t quite make out the accent. Was it Northern? Maybe it sounded slightly less British this time. Had he spent a good deal of time in America? Something in the body language suggested that also, although O’Donnell couldn’t pin it down.

  “Syringe. Needle marks near the base of the skull in each,” Rees said.

  “Any indication the venom was synthesized?”

  “It’s hard to tell. The reports are in your data files,” Rees said. “And shared with O.C.L.T. labs.”

  O’Donnell glanced at notes air dropped to her phone. They included a couple of paragraphs. She started reading what O.C.L.T. stood for.


  “We were actually checking on that front to see if you had seen anything like it,” Rees said, directing his statement toward the professor. “Then the word came through that you were in Dublin, so your people asked that we have you over.”

  O’Donnell had never heard of the Orphic Crisis Logistical Taskforce before Rees mentioned it on the way in, but then she’d thought the Garda’s sub rosa unit for unusual crimes was legend. Modestly funded, she was learning, it was kept quiet since part of its work was to deal with unusual incidents before panic ensued. Almost informally at first it had been dubbed Aisteach, the Irish word for strange, peculiar or weird. It was said with slightly more irony than O.C.L.T.’s almost acronym mentioned in her notes: OCCULT.

  If this wasn’t a loony bin, she’d stepped into a strange corner of the world. She looked toward one exit. An odd blue fish with a pronounced knot on its forehead glided about in an aquarium beside the door. Why’d they keep that in here?

  As she looked at it, the fish made a turn in the tank and swam near the glass, one eye focusing on her as if it had sensed her notice. She turned away quickly. Then she felt strange and ridiculous. This place unsettled her.

  “So do you think this professor’s text to you was related to our strange serpent deaths, Mr. Bullfinch?” someone asked.

  “I’m not sure it is, but the urgency and overall serendipity led to my being asked to check it out. I met Professor Burke at a myth and folklore symposium a number of years ago in California.”

  “The conference referred to in the text?”

  “Exactly. He approached me about what he called a folkloric phenomenon he thought might be occurring.”

  “Did he elaborate?”

  “Not with a lot of specifics at the time except to say he was growing mildly concerned about some…ripples, possible paranoia.”

  “We don’t know more than that?” Rees asked.

  “Not really. The professor said he was initially interested in it from a scholarly viewpoint, curious, he said, about the nature of belief in phenomenal legend in a rational age.”

  “How so?”

  “Again, he didn’t go into detail, but it seemed to focus on the way myths appear to adapt, or how contemporary events or urban myth might be incorporated into belief. Faeire abductions or old hags turn to Grays or Nordic aliens who visit your bedroom at night. Things with pseudoscientific underpinnings become more palatable than supernatural beings to the modern mind.”

  “I know the link is thin,” Rees said, “but I wonder if it could have another impact on the modern mind. Do you think we could have a serial killer acting out some ancient rite? Or anything in that vein? So to speak?”

  “Given these deaths, I’d say it’s possible.”

  “Is that like a ritual from any group you’ve ever heard of?”

  “Asian, African, Greek, even Nordic, speaking of. You have a lot of snake-worshipping groups to choose from,” Bullfinch said.

  “Any of those kill people with venom?”

  “Not as a rule of thumb, though you could see how a twisted mind might get from offerings to a giant snake god to a human sacrifice with synthesized venom. The preparation of the toxin might even take on a ritualistic element, though that might be a bit off the wall for an official report.”

  “Wouldn’t synthesizing the toxin we’re seeing be a fairly sophisticated process?”

  “Somewhat. I’m told O.C.L.T. labs are still trying to break it down to figure out what it would take. Discretion is always helpful in matters like this.” Bullfinch kept tapping his screen as he spoke, zooming in on a shot of a body he’d opened. Then he turned his pad around, indicating the spot he’d enlarged. Dirt near a lifeless hand appeared displaced.

  “I was looking at this photo provided to me. It’s possible those marks were made by fingertips.”

  “It’s not much of a mark,” O’Donnell said. “Not a word. Could be just scratches in the ground. Death throes.”

  “Grass had to be pulled back to give him a canvas. Perhaps a symbol was marked there,” Bullfinch said. “Is the crime scene preserved?”

  “It’s taped off, but that won’t be covered or protected because it wasn’t noticed.”

  Bullfinch flipped through all of the photos.

  “No other shot gives a better view. Could we take a look before it rains? In case?”

  “We have to start somewhere,” Rees said. “You two up for a drive back over there?”

  His gaze focused on O’Donnell.

  “What are you thinking this might be?” O’Donnell asked.

  “Let’s look for the symbol,” Bullfinch said. “If I’m wrong, any contemplation is wasted energy.”

  20 Years Ago

  “The markings are supposed to be extensive.”

  Kaity smiled, as she watched the young man, Liam, in front of her. He’d been keying data into a computer work station. He turned from the keyboard and screen and looked at the single report page.

  “Who else has seen this?”

  “I brought it to you first when I took the call.”

  They’d both been assisting at the main offices of Kilduff-Power Archaeological Trust, and had started riding to the location together on weekday mornings when they didn’t have classes.

  “No one’s explored this site?”

  “It’s been looked over and documented, but he’s saying a wall collapsed.”

  Liam looked up at her, expression stern and earnest.

  “Let’s keep it to ourselves for the moment, have a look. Get some pictures, see if it fits into Keon’s extrapolations. Maybe it fills in some gaps.”

  Six

  Castle Cluin sat on the River Shannon’s edge in a spot once defended by Vikings. Rebuilt numerous times over the centuries, it stood as a remarkably well-preserved tower house, walls topped by jagged merlons and crenels. In its day, a defensive fortress of gray stone, now it had become a tourist destination, focal point of a re-created medieval village with actors and livestock giving a realistic though sanitized depiction of the past. Tourists didn’t care for growths on the cheek or the smell of peasant folk.

  Freya Turnbull had grown up in Ireland, but she learned the terms merlons and crenels from the tour guide as she and her companion approached the castle along a narrow path, blending with the tour group or attempting to as the gaggle strolled from a pair of buses looking anachronistic in the parking area.

  Freya had gained knowledge right alongside the tourists including Patty Dowell, Patty from Paddock Lake as some of the other tourists seemed to have dubbed her. Even on the short journey, they talked about her. In whispers. With giggles. Patty was nosey and a know-it-all it seemed.

  Merlons were the upright portions of the wall’s jagged upper border. The spots where castle defenders could shield themselves as they prepared for onslaughts. Crenels were the notches between the merlons where archers might position themselves to fire. Freya cataloged that tidbit for what it was worth.

  Patty said she’d share it with her husband when the tour returned to Dublin.

  He was in sessions all day for the economic summit in which he had been sent to participate by his bank back home, which wasn’t Paddock Lake but Minneapolis these days. She spilled a lot of details on a short walk.

  Freya said Bailieborough was her hometown. Sounded good enough and no one else was from there. She’d left the real town of her birth behind years earlier, and no one on this trip needed to know it. She just needed enough detail to keep Patty happy.

  She seemed to be as she spilled more than anyone needed to know about Douglas, her husband who she met at the University of Minnesota where he’d been studying accounting, and she’d been taking courses at the college of design, thinking she might go into fashion design of some sort.

  Freya’s companion, who croaked the name Jaager if anyone asked, listened to Patty’s prattle, as he did most things, with quiet, stoic disinterest.

  It was as if he’d left his body, fleeing while Freya had
smiled at Patty’s tales of how her husband had begun working his way through the ranks at Wells Fargo, cold-calling potential clients in the beginning, a job he hated.

  Fifteen years later and here she was, seeing the world at last as she’d dreamed of in Paddock Lake where their sons were freezing their asses off with her parents so she could be here learning about castle defenses.

  Quite a journey. Freya’s hadn’t been quite so far, but her path was going to have more of an impact on the world, soon. They’d pick up on the news of events, even in dear old Paddock Lake.

  She just had to keep blending in with the Pattys and others.

  That might be easier said than done. As they moved on, Patty kept looking at them. They stepped slowly past decorative cannons just inside the front wall, and she kept trying for a look at Jaager’s features hidden in part by large, round rose-tinted workman’s sunglasses.

  Dammit, something had tipped her despite what should have been Patty’s countervailing interest in herself and over-sharing.

  That wasn’t good. Freya looked average enough. Jaager didn’t need extra scrutiny. Certainly not the level Patty was giving him as the group inched into a great hall where a violinist in medieval attire re-created a tune that might have been played for some previous resident, though perhaps not on the same instrument. What would have been used? A mandolin?

  At least his outfit seemed authentic but neither tune nor authenticity could break Patty’s attention. In a way, Freya couldn’t blame her. Jaager was a real oddity. More than six feet, he kept the hood from the hoodie he wore under his gray overcoat draped over his head, obscuring his features. Even when he wasn’t trying, he gave off a sense of quiet menace.

  Freya believed she looked a little more average in comparison, especially now since she was keeping her scarf over her hair, striving not to leave anyone with distinctive impressions like wavy hair or ruddy cheeks to recall. She tried to appear interested in the music and patter from the tour guide, tried to just blend in.

  As the violinist completed his tune, she slipped a small map from her coat and ran a fingertip across it, tracing the castle layout. Letting her hands fall to her sides, she nudged Jaager and tilted her head toward a doorway near a tapestry and display of antlers.