Past Life

by C S Winchester

  “Which one is Dante?” her mother asked, her expression half-terrified and half-amused.

  “I already said, it's up to Dante if he chooses to tell you, but suffice to say that he'll probably go down in your boyfriend estimation.”

  “I wish you wouldn't talk in riddles.”

  “And I wish you wouldn't quote scripture.”

  The mention of the Bible seemingly brought back their earlier discussion about Cecilia's abortion.

  “It's guilt,” she confessed. “I thought that if I lived a righteous life, God might forgive me for what I did.”

  “I'm sure he will forgive you, because even I can tell how sorry you are but... well just because you're living right now, doesn't give you the right to sit in judgement of other people. It was Jesus who said 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' and we both know that you are not without sin.”

  “Don't say it like that,” her mother looked tearful again.

  “Don't turn on the waterworks, Mum. You did wrong, or at least you think that you did, but you know what? So does everyone from time to time. I would have thought that you would be more understanding of others' mistakes having made your own.”

  Cecilia actually looked a little shamed by her daughter's words.

  “Anyway, I have to go to work so whatever you do, don't wake Dante. He was up half the night.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “I wasn't the only one who had a rough time of things yesterday, okay? Just leave him be.”

  Though she clearly wanted more information, Cecilia nodded.

  “Do you and Dad have any plans for today?”

  “We thought we'd do a little shopping.”

  “That sounds nice,” Frankie smiled. “Anyway, I'd better get ready for work, so have a nice day.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart, we will.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Will was sitting at his desk, seething after a dressing down from the Chief Superintendent. As far as his boss was concerned, Will had simply been sitting on his hands for the past few days, and his inability to solve this case quickly was drawing more heat from the national press, not helped by the fact that the necropsy findings on the killed animals had somehow been leaked to the press.

  To make things worse, since he couldn't reveal the source of the sketch of Pietro, he had been stopped from releasing it and right now, that was his only lead.

  Added to that, Frankie seemed to have dumped him for her vampire friend, so now Will was just about ready to snap at the next person who crossed him.

  There came a knock on his door and he called for them to come in. He was surprised when he saw Frankie poke her head into his office.

  “Judging by that tone, should I come back later?” she asked, a hesitant smile on her lips.

  “No,” Will said with a sigh. “Come on in.”

  As Frankie seated herself opposite him, Will explained about his meeting with the Chief Superintendent earlier, and how he'd been stopped from releasing her sketch to the public.

  “Then I'll release it,” she offered.

  “To the press?” he sounded sceptical since MI5 weren't known for releasing pictures of suspects, lest they tip off said suspects that they were on to them.

  “No, to the police. I'll issue an all ports warning, so the details are sent to the police and airports etcetera. It's not quite as effective as the national press but it's better than nothing. Plus, being MI5, we don't have to release details of their suspected crimes.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. “It's better than nothing. How about you; how are you feeling?”

  “I'm fine, honestly.” After taking Dante's blood she felt better than fine, but she didn't think Will would appreciate knowing that, so she glossed over it.

  “And how are things with your folks?”

  “Good, I think,” she smiled tentatively. “It's early days, but Mum seems to be making a real effort.”

  “I'm glad.”

  “So, are you up for another trip out to the hospital?” she asked.

  “Because I was so much use last time?”

  “Don't worry about that,” she waved his concerns away. “He's probably long gone, but hopefully he'll have left some impressions behind that I can read.”

  Will didn't have any better ideas so he agreed with a shrug.

  “Great. Now if you'll let me borrow your computer, I'll issue that warning, then we can go.”

  The hospital looked just as deserted as it had been the day before, but now they drove in the main entrance and parked out front.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Will asked.

  “I told you, there's no one around,” Frankie assured him. She had stopped to check and as far as she could tell, there were no auras anywhere on the hospital grounds.

  They got out of the car and slowly approached the entrance.

  “How do you feel?” Frankie asked him.

  “Fine,” Will assured her, which was true until he took a further three paces, at which point a wave of dizziness passed over him.

  “Here,” Frankie said, grabbing his arm and pulling him back a few paces.

  “Looks like you're on your own again,” Will admitted, though clearly he didn't like the idea.

  Frankie ignored him and began rummaging in her bag, until she found a jewellery box. She opened it to reveal six chains.

  “Give me your wrist,” she said and began fastening a silver bracelet around it.

  She did the same with the other wrist, both ankles, placed a longer chain around his neck and a final one around his waist. While she worked she explained what they were for.

  “Josh left me these, they're silver, diamond and some other stuff, and they protect the wearer from any spells or magic. There, done,” she said, putting the box back in her bag.

  Will didn't believe her but he walked closer to the hospital again, and this time he felt nothing at all, no nausea, dizziness, sickness or pain. He turned around and smiled at Frankie, who ran up to join him.

  “Come on then,” she said, taking his arm. “Let's see what Pietro left for us to find.”

  “The spell doesn't affect you at all?” Will asked.

  “I feel a tiny bit queasy, but that's all.”

  Whilst they went through the hospital, Frankie told Will the barest bones of Dante's story, and the answer to their problem seemed simple to Will.

  “You know what the easiest solution is, right? If we killed Dante, we'd kill Pietro too.” He tried to make his tone light as he suggested it, but Frankie could see through him and shot him a sidelong glare.

  “We are not killing Dante,” she said simply.

  Will had expected as much and he wished that he could understand why she was so fond of them.

  It seemed that Pietro's base had been in the main part of the hospital, in what was once an office. He had cleared out most of his things but he had spent a long time sitting at the desk, watching Dante through a webcam and as such, he had left a lot of psychic impressions on the desk and chair.

  There were in fact years of memories stored on the desk, and it took Frankie some time to sort through them. Thankfully the desk had been unused for perhaps a year until Pietro began using it, so the older impressions were weaker and more easily distinguished from the new ones.

  Frankie didn't find out an awful lot, other than that fact that Pietro was a sadistic psychopath and to be honest, she'd already had her suspicions on that front.

  Some of the newest impressions showed that Pietro had been panicked as he turned the screens on to find Dante was no longer where he should be, and his mind began running through possibilities. He was clearly terrified, which in one way pleased her as she she enjoyed seeing the evil son of a bitch taken down a peg or two, but at the same time it made his thoughts chaotic and difficult to read.

  It seemed that his intent had been to clear out as much of his things as quickly as possible, and so his next destination had been Dante's room, where she and Wil
l headed next.

  The first thing Will noticed was the amount of blood on the bed.

  “After he poisoned Dante, he had to heal him. Pietro pipped blood into the room through tubes for Dante to drink, but he refused.”

  “Did Dante tell you that?” Will asked, finding it difficult to believe, especially after Dante had almost drained Frankie dry.

  “No, I saw it among the impressions left on the desk,” she said, distracted as she touched various objects in the room. “Pietro was enraged by his refusal to feed.”

  Will huffed, siding with Pietro on this one.

  “Where'd he get the blood?” Will asked.

  “Huh?” Frankie asked, looking up.

  “The blood, where did it come from?” He was thinking that if it had been stolen from a hospital, then there might be CCTV footage of him.

  “Oh,” she looked glum. “He killed three young women for it.”

  “Three?” Will asked, noting that the number was cropping up a lot in the investigation.

  Frankie nodded. “It looks like each animal sacrifice was part of the ritual for killing these women. After he had drained the animals and drunk their blood,” she shuddered at the idea, “he anointed the women with it and killed them. One each night.”

  “Why didn't you see this at the site of the final sacrifice?” he asked.

  “Because he wasn't thinking about it. I only see what they're thinking about and he was focused on the ritual.” She went back to her previous task of touching various objects in the room.

  “Do you know their names?” Will interrupted her again.

  “What? Oh, no, I'm not sure he even knew their names.”

  Will stepped out of the room and took out his mobile phone to call the station, getting D.C. Taylor.

  “I want you to check missing persons reports for the past two weeks,” he said. “We're looking for three young women who might have been taken.”

  “Sure thing, boss, any other details?”

  “Unfortunately no but I think I've found this creep's base though; the old Rosslynlee Hospital. There's a room with lots of blood and if I'm right, animal cruelty is the least of this guy's crimes. Get SOCO out here to collect samples; maybe we can match the DNA to a missing person. I also want as big a team as you can muster out here to search the grounds. I've had a quick look around but this place is huge.”

  “Got it. Will you be there?”

  “I don't know,” Will sighed. “But I'll keep you up to date.”

  “I'll get right on it.” Taylor hung up.

  Will went back into the room to see Frankie lying on the floor.

  “Frankie? Frankie!” He ran to her side and Frankie pushed herself up into a sitting position.

  “I'm fine,” she assured him. “I just got a particularly strong memory, that's all.”

  “Anything helpful?” he asked.

  “No, just rage, almost inhuman in its intensity. I've never felt anything like it before.”

  Will helped her to her feet.

  “You sure you're okay?”

  “Yeah, it's just... I suppose you'd call it sensory overload, but I'm fine. Did I hear you getting a search team out here?”

  “We need to search the hospital and grounds.”

  Frankie nodded her agreement but could see an obvious flaw in his plan.

  “What about the spell Pietro cast? They won't be able to get within ten feet of this place without becoming violently ill.”

  “I hadn't thought of that,” Will agreed. He was so keen to show his boss that his investigation was working that he had managed to forget that detail.

  Frankie got her phone out and called her HQ in London, asking to speak directly to Maxwell Holden, her boss. She outlined the situation, leaving out the name of the police officer who had ordered the search, and explained that unless they could get a jet to fly over and drop some of the silver iodine they had used for the siren, fairly soon the police were going to figure out that it was witchcraft making them sick.

  Holden agreed and hung up to speak with RAF Leuchars.

  “I thought that that stuff only worked if it fell as rain?” Will said.

  “That's when you're dealing with an area the size of Edinburgh. One plane, flying low and releasing it's entire load over the hospital, should be enough to wipe out any magic here. That's, of course, assuming that there is some of that dust left at the base. If it was all used, we're screwed.”

  “When will you know?” he asked.

  Before she could answer, her phone rang and she answered it. She listened for a few moments then thanked the caller and hung up.

  “There was one barrel left and a plane is being scrambled as we speak.” She smiled, pleased that they would be able to wipe out the magic before the police arrived.

  “Now what?” Will asked.

  “Just give me a few more minutes in here then...” She sighed. “If I don't find anything, I honestly don't know what our next move is.”

  “But he's done, right?” Will asked. “Dante's free, he's failed?”

  Frankie's grave expression let him know that the news wasn't good.

  “I don't like that look,” he said.

  “He's desperate, angry, psychopathic, and a very powerful witch.” Frankie said. “That makes him unstable and dangerous. I don't know what he's going to do next, but I do know that he isn't going to give up without a fight.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don't know but from the impressions I've seen, in all likelihood? A bloodbath.”

  “Then we have to find him.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Frankie sat on the hood of the car as Will spoke with his boss. The search had only taken an hour before they found three shallow graves, just inside the tree line. Since then things had become chaotic. The car park was thronged with police vehicles and dozens of officers were milling about. The entrances were barricaded, but on the other side the television and newspaper vans were piling up. It was a PR disaster, but at least the Chief Superintendent didn't seem to be blaming Will. In fact he seemed pleased by the progress Will had made and had finally agreed to go public with Frankie's sketch.

  A few moments later, Will came over to Frankie and sat beside her.

  “He's giving the sketch to the press now,” Will informed her.

  Now that he was a confirmed murderer, Frankie wasn't sure that move was very smart. If the public took against him, he could do some real damage. She had considered taking over the investigation but the truth was, she thought that people had a right to know that he was dangerous; she just hoped that they heeded the warnings not to approach him and to call the police.

  Frankie sighed.

  “You did the right thing,” Will assured her.

  “I'll believe that when he's caught and no one else is hurt.”

  “This is our best chance of finding him quickly.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you still tired?” he asked. “I'm sure I can find you something sugary.”

  “I'm fine,” she smiled but it was a pale reflection of her usual smile and quickly vanished. “I just wish there was something we could do.”

  “You never did have any patience,” he smiled.

  “Yeah? Well neither did you.”

  Her phone rang and she scrambled to find it. She had been hoping it was MI5 H.Q. but she was happy to see Dante on her called ID.

  “Hey, how are you feeling?” she asked as she answered.

  “I'm fine. Being driven slightly mad by your mother, who is filling me full of cups of tea and even though it's the afternoon, is insisting on cooking me a full English breakfast. If you don't rescue me soon I will have to use mind control. If I throw up many more times, I'll become bulimic.”

  Frankie smiled but she had no intention of rescuing him.

  “Sorry, but I'm in the middle of something; you're stuck there until sunset.”

  “You can't stop him on your own, you know,” Dante said, suddenly
turning serious.

  “And you're who he wants; I'm hardly going to offer you up on a platter to him, am I?”

  “Don't be reckless, Frankie. This is my fight, not yours.”

  “Like it or not, this is my job, Dante, and I intend to do it to the best of my ability.”

  “Which includes using all the resources you have, right? Well I'm the best resource you have.”

  Frankie couldn't help but smile at his arrogance.

  “I hate to dent your ego, Dante, but you are not the best resource I have right now.”

  “Oh really? I'd love to know which resource is stronger, faster and smarter than me?”

  “Well right now, it's the Midlothian police force.”

  “You mean Will?” he sounded offended and Frankie smiled.

  “Yes, I mean, Will.”

  “What can he do for you that I can't?”

  “Check the news, you'll see what I mean,” she said, smiling.

  “Yeah, well... I'm still better looking.”

  “Goodbye, Dante,” Frankie said, hanging up.

  Will watched the exchange with interest noting how, although she still looked tried, her smiles were more heartfelt. Will had no chance of ever having a relationship with Frankie as her gift made physical contact with other people painful, so it was churlish to be jealous of Dante. But still, couldn't she fall for something that didn't suck blood to survive?

  She was still smiling as D.C. Taylor ran over.

  “We've got a tip,” he said, breathless as he reached them. “Three calls put him in the Clermiston Road area, one saw him entering a vacant plot behind the zoo. Back-up is on the way; meet them there.”

  “Tell them to keep a low profile,” Will ordered as he ran to the driver's side of the car. “No sirens and take their own cars if possible; I don't want the press getting a hold of this and following us into the mix. And they don't make a move until I get there,” he called “Got that?”

  “Got it,” Taylor nodded and ran back to the communications van.

  Will and Frankie got into the car and headed towards the exit. Frankie kept her head bowed as they passed the TV vans so that no one could recognise her, and the officers on the gate did their best to clear the press out of their way.