She had thought a more direct approach would have yielded quicker results than trying to worm her way into the man’s mind. Besides, she had a splitting headache.
She kicked at the man and then swung him and the chair out of the way. It took all her strength and weight, and even then it shouldn’t have been possible—like much about Aza. The chair didn’t roll very well on the blood-soaked carpet, and both man and chair tipped to the floor. The wet smack of dead flesh sent a shiver of excitement up Aza, completely abolishing her previous headache. She could still smell the cologne and coffee, mixed with sweat and piss, but so too could she smell the metallic edge to the man’s blood. It more than compensated for everything else unsavory about her position.
She grabbed the computer mouse and scrolled through the search results the man had brought up moments before his surrender to the inevitable. Aza let out a victory whoop and snapped her fingers. Only one resident was listed with a first name of Jaina. Jaina Winters, unit 13c.
“Fucking jackpot,” Aza said, heading for the elevator.
Before she pushed the button to ascend, she looked back at the blood-covered desk. The man’s feet were just visible. He had died much too quickly. Far too fast for Aza’s liking. And even though he had performed the task Aza had set out for him, she couldn’t help but wonder if she could get more out of him. Something nearby, but unseen, regarded Aza in a way she couldn’t describe or even truly sense. It wanted more out of the man as well. It wanted more from Aza. Aza looked down at her bloody hands. She still had the scissors. With a smile and a bounce to her step, Aza skipped back over to the corpse.
The man had been right about one thing. It was early. She had time.
And so she set to work.
Chapter Thirteen
Saturday 6:50 a.m.
Jake woke to Jaina violently shaking him. He gasped and sat up, coughing.
“Jake!” Jaina shouted.
He caught his breath and tried to steady his racing heartbeat. The dream he’d been ripped from was fading quickly, but its effects still lingered.
“Black fog,” he said, trying to verbalize his memories, knowing he had only seconds. “No, not fog. Darkness. Everywhere. In my throat. My lungs. Like fire. It—”
“Jake!” Jaina shouted again.
With a shudder, whatever wisp of the dream he had vanished. In its place came Jaina’s face, creased and red.
“What? What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I think she’s here.”
Jake bolted upright, stumbled, and caught himself on Jaina. She steadied him. Christ, his chest hurt. Taking a full breath felt like knives carving into his flesh. “Dani?” he asked.
Jaina shook her head. “She’s fine. Watching TV. I think Aza’s here.”
“Aza? What’s happened?”
“Mrs. Bonsetti called. My next-door neighbor. Real busy-body. She said the night guy, Franklin, was killed last night or maybe early this morning. Lobby is swarming with cops. She said it was a real mess. Blood and body parts all over the place.”
“That can’t be. Monster or not, she’s a twelve-year-old girl. She couldn’t have followed us. Maybe it’s not her.”
“First off, we both know it is,” Jaina said. “And secondly, I found this in the hallway outside my door just now.”
Jaina held up a donut box.
“Is this a joke?” Jake asked. Part of his mind was still scrambling to recover the dream he’d already forgotten and the other half was trying to decide how best to protect Dani. He didn’t see how donuts fit into either goal. But, mostly, he was still scrambling to remember the nightmare he’d just woken from.
Jaina opened the lid.
“Ah, fuck,” Jake said.
Inside, nestled among wax paper, was a severed hand. It had been cut off at the wrist and had four out of five fingers removed. Only the middle one remained, prominently erect. On the underside of the lid was another smiley face drawn in blood.
“Who does this?” Jaina asked, shaking the box.
Jake took it from her before the hand could leap free, and set it on the bed. He closed the lid and turned back to Jaina. “Did you tell anyone about the hand?”
Jaina shook her head. “What are you going to do?”
“We,” Jake said. “What are we going to do? Aza knows who you are and now she knows you’re helping Dani and I. I wish that weren’t the case, really I do, but we need to stick together. As…obsessed as I’ve been with Aza’s case over the years, you worked directly with her. You know her better than I do. You’ve seen firsthand what she can do.”
“Oh, now you want to listen to me about her?” Jaina asked, punctuating the question with a push to the center of Jake’s chest.
Pain flared and he stumbled back.
“Oh come on,” Jaina said. “I didn’t push you that—Oh, shit, you’re bleeding.”
Jake looked down at the dress shirt he’d been wearing for the last two days and saw a small spot of red growing right where Jaina had hit him. Gingerly, Jake unbuttoned his shirt and opened it, revealing his white undershirt. A large swatch of it was red.
“Holy shit,” Jaina said. “Here, sit down, sit down.”
More confused than injured, Jake did as she asked, and sat on the edge of the bed, right next to the donut box. Jaina knelt on the floor in front of him and lifted up Jake’s t-shirt.
Jake hissed involuntarily. He couldn’t remember having hurt himself at any point the day before. The situation at the Barkers’ had certainly been turbulent, but there hadn’t been any violence. And he was fairly certain he hadn’t been hurt when he’d fallen asleep watching Dani.
“Oh, fuck,” Jaina said, falling away from Jake. She scrambled away from him, stood, and started quickly pacing in front of him. Then she checked the bedroom window. Jake could see her limbs shaking.
“Jae?” Jake asked.
Jaina wordlessly pointed to the large mirror over the bureau next to the door. Jake went to it and lifted his shirt up to his armpits. The pain pulsed until his eyes made sense of what he was looking at and then it became so inconsequential that it ceased to exist.
From nipple to nipple and sternum to bellybutton, a capital letter T had been shallowly carved into his flesh. The cuts had clotted, but with Jake’s moving, he must have reopened them. Fresh blood seeped from the intersection of the two cuts. Just deep enough to bleed.
“Tragedy,” Jake whispered slowly.
“How the fuck did she do that!?” Jaina shouted.
Jake stepped backwards until his legs caught the bed and he sat. He could now only see his head in the mirror. Wide eyes staring back into his, hiding a mind that was racing to come up with a possible explanation. He ran his fingers along the cuts, hoping to find them miraculously healed. As he did, the pain returned, just enough to make Jake disregard the idea that he was still dreaming.
Jake leaned forward and stared at the floor, expecting to see a gaping pit, for that was how he felt. Seated atop an inevitable fall into madness. But fuck that. He was no lunatic, despite what his most recent psychiatric evaluation had stated.
Jake jumped up and tore off both of his shirts. The pain fueled his rage and brought clarity. Wondering at the presence of things did nothing to dissuade their existence.
“Jake?” Jaina asked. “This is too impossible. Too crazy. What are we supposed to do? She wants to kill us. This,” she said, waving at Jake’s chest, “is so…fucking insane.”
Jake wiped at his chest with his shirts and then stuffed them under the bed. He pulled open the center drawer of the bureau and pulled out an old T-shirt of his. “I don’t think she wants us dead.”
“Then what? What’s the point of all this then?”
Jake shrugged. “No idea, but there’s no point in dwelling on that right now. Not the hand, not my chest. What matters is keeping Dani safe and finding Aza.”
Jaina groaned. “I say we call the cops. Shit, there’s a whole precinct downstairs as we speak. We go to them, tell them
what we know, show them the hand, your chest, point them to the Barkers’ place, and SCPC and—”
“Jae!” Jake shouted. “There was a story you told me about Aza a while back. About when they first brought her to the psych center. Obviously, I thought it was bullshit at the time, but do you remember what you told me what happened to the two orderlies that brought her in? What do you think she could do with a dozen armed cops? After this, I don’t have a goddamn clue what she’s capable of.”
Jaina pulled at her hair and looked out the window again. “It’s like a fucking parade out there,” she said.
Jake could see the reflection of flashing red and blue lights. He wasn’t sure that Aza was even the worst of his problems right now, but then he moved enough to remind himself through the pain in his chest. Impossible was putting it lightly.
“This can’t be real,” Jaina said. “Right? I mean, Aza drove her father crazy, yeah? Maybe that’s all this is. She has a way of just getting into your head in a totally non-supernatural sort of way and you just straight go insane.”
Jake got up and opened the bedroom door a crack, just enough to see Dani sitting on the couch, watching TV, just as Jaina had said. He shut the door and leaned against it. “I wish that were true, but I’m beginning to think Aza’s even more than either of us thought.” Jake was a cop—a detective—through and through, and he couldn’t ignore the mounting evidence that painted Aza as anything but a normal twelve-year-old girl.
Jaina’s cellphone rang, causing both of them to jump.
She looked at it. “Got a local area code, but I don’t know the number.”
Jake walked over and looked at the phone screen. “Christ, it’s Peter.” He snatched the phone and answered it, thumbing the speakerphone button. Jake needed Jaina to feel a part of…whatever was going on.
“How’d you get Jaina’s number?” Jake asked.
“I’m a detective. Learned from the best,” Peter said.
“Don’t be a wiseass.”
“Don’t keep me in the dark, then. What’s going on?”
Jake walked to the window and peered through the blinds. Jaina put her hand on his back. It was oddly comforting. Jaina was right; the parking lot was lit up with at least a dozen different squad cars, ambulances, and crime scene units.
“What do you mean?” Jake asked.
“For fuck’s sake,” Peter shouted. “I just left the Barkers’ place. Apparently they no longer wish to press any charges against you or Dani. In fact, they’re claiming everything was a big misunderstanding. Half their upstairs got torched, but, again they insist it was an accident. The Port Dimmock fire inspector is still looking it over, but the family is not being very cooperative.”
Jake breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s great news.”
“At best, it’s strange news,” Peter said. “And you remember my buddy, Kyle Vincent?”
“No,” Jake said.
Peter sighed. “Kyle Vincent. We practically grew up together. Whatever. He’s on Prysville’s squad. And he just called me about a shitshow of a blood bath at your girlfriend’s place. Hacked up body all over the lobby. Or didn’t you notice? I assume you ran off with her last night. With Dani.”
Jake wasn’t sure if he was put off by Peter’s aggression or proud. It was quite far outside his son’s normal operating purview.
“I have no idea—”
“How do you know where I live?” Jaina asked. “No way Jake told you.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Jake scowled at Jaina, but she only scowled back.
“Uh, I may have lifted the information from your license plate last night,” Peter said, once more sounding like his unsure self.
“Are you kidding me?” Jake and Jaina asked at once. It made both of them smile, but only at the ridiculousness of finding a shared moment in the chaos.
“You always taught me to trust no one,” Peter said. “And like you should talk, Dad. You not only ran background checks on every single one of my girlfriends in school and their families, but fully interrogated a number of my closest friends on a regular basis.”
Jaina arched her eyebrows. Jake laughed. “Oh, now I remember Kyle. Weaselly little fuck. Always hiding something.”
“It’s still an invasion of privacy,” Jaina said. “And you,” she pointed a finger at Jake, “are a bad example.”
“You’re right, and I’m sorry,” Peter said. “But, seriously, what the hell is going on? And I still want to know what you did to that diary I found at the Millers’ place. Are you mixed up in something? Either of you? You still have Dani, right?”
“Dani is…fine,” Jake said.
“Good. Listen, stay put,” Peter said. “I’m on my way to you right now. I offered my assistance to the local police. Told them I think their case may be linked to the Tragedy murders yesterday.”
“Dammit, Peter. Are you really calling it that?” Jake asked. Naming criminals and cases always irked him.
“Just to myself. Seems my only proof of Tragedy vanished. Again, we’re still going to have a discussion about that. I know what I read. I’m not crazy.”
“Whatever you say,” Jake said.
“And call Amelia. I tried to explain the situation to her, but she’s still…well, Amelia. I’m not even related to her. She’s your problem.”
Peter hung up.
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Jaina said.
“He’s not usually that wound up,” Jake said. “I might have broken him.”
Jaina smiled and then laughed. Jake did as well, but it was more from nerves than actual merriment. Hearing that the Barkers weren’t pressing charges was great news, and Jake couldn’t give a damn about the reason. Knowing Dani wasn’t in any legal trouble was all he needed to know. Himself either, though that was secondary.
“Is Amelia Dani’s mom?” Jaina asked.
Jake looked at her bewildered for a moment before he realized he had never talked to Jaina about Amelia. Or any part of his personal life, really. In the past twenty-four hours, she’d learned about more than one of the skeletons in his closet. Jake didn’t like how it made him feel. The closer people got to him, the more complicated his life became. But he did like her company. Always had.
“Yeah,” Jake said.
“And you’re not supposed to just whisk Dani off in the middle of the night without telling her?”
“Or ever.” Jake sighed and scooped up the pieces of his phone. He popped the battery back in. He’d been unreasonably paranoid the night before. He’d been a detective for two decades and a beat cop before that. He’d seen it all and come out on top.
“I’ll give you some privacy,” Jaina said. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on Dani. You just handle damage control with the mom.”
Jaina left the room, shutting the door behind her. A deep loneliness pressed in on Jake, making the room feel even smaller than it was. He stood in front of the bureau mirror, studying his own reflection. Wishing it would stop shaking.
“All right,” he said to himself. It was an old trick he used when a case had him overwhelmed. “One thing at a time. First, Amelia. Then a psychopathic kid with superpowers.”
Chapter Fourteen
Saturday 7:15 a.m.
Aza’s hands were still stained with the fat man’s blood. She’d washed up in a janitor’s closet right after finishing with him and stolen a set of almost-fitting clothes from the basement laundry room, but still her hands were red. Aza stared at them for so long that they seemed to glow and then pour forth their own blood to pool at her feet. She smiled and licked a finger, but tasted only the remnants of bleach. The taste was enough to jolt her.
She stuffed her hands into her pockets and headed for the stairs out of the basement, but the shadowy thing in the corner gave her pause. It had appeared just as Aza had begun severing the fat man’s hands with a pair of dull scissors. It had little shape, but she could tell it was watching her. It even seemed to bend over and stud
y her work as she had hacked through tendon and bone.
And now it was watching again. Not moving or making any sound. Without eyes or form, it watched Aza as she stared back at it, still dripping wet and barefoot, but wearing a new set of jeans and a baggy top. Aza cocked her head to the side. The thing did nothing. Aza showed it a pair of blood-stained middle fingers and still it did nothing.
“I know you’re there,” she said to the thing. “Did you enjoy the show upstairs? The least you could have done was help. It was bloody hard work, you know. My hands are killing me.”
The thing did nothing, said nothing, but Aza felt its pleasure. She could sense its approval. This was not the darkness she had witnessed beyond Hell, but perhaps it was a fragment of the same violent apparition that compelled Aza and who she gave credit to for her mysterious gift. The more she regarded it, the more abstract it became. But whatever it was, she knew it was not a threat to her. Maybe not an ally either, but Aza didn’t have time to consider anything that didn’t work against her. Life was short. Just ask the fat man. Or Daphne.
“Ha!” Aza shouted, remembering her first kill since escaping the hospital. Then she bowed to the thing in the corner. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have much more to do today.”
And with that, Aza briskly left the room. Her body was weary, tight, and sore, but the energy she felt in her soul—or at least the place where a soul should have existed—enlivened her steps. She didn’t think she had any power to take the life force of her kills to strengthen her own, but it always left her in a better mood. She would need to sleep again, eventually, but for now, the previous kill would satiate her until the hunger of the next began.
At the top of the stairs, through the steel door to the lobby, there was a great commotion. Aza pressed her ear to the cool metal. Dozens of voices and footsteps. Shouting and whispering both. Obviously, the police had found the fat man. Aza looked at her wrist where she wore no watch and cursed herself for taking so long to clean up. She had been in an ungodly state after the kill, wearing more of the fat man’s innards than he still retained, so skimping on the cleanup had not been an option.
Dear Tragedy: A Dark Supernatural Thriller (House of Sand Book 2) Page 9