Joe wouldn’t remember uncuffing himself.
He wouldn’t remember climbing in the front of the van and starting the engine.
Wouldn’t remember pulling into traffic, speeding on his way to his next target.
Soon, vengeance would be his.
10
The echoing boom of gunshots filled the indoor firing range of the uptown precinct, and the biting smell of cordite hung heavily in the air. Gingerly, Archer and I made our way toward the source of the commotion. The thick-muscled, six-foot-three figure fronting the red line had seemingly declared war against the row of silhouette targets. The report was deafening as the shooter emptied his magazine in three-shot rhythms. Two in the chest, one in the head. Over and over again. A lethal machine.
If the cursed city had more cops like Detective Lucas Ballard, the forces of darkness might have picked another city to invade.
After a final deafening barrage, the shooting paused. Ballard cracked his neck, stretched and shifted from one foot to the next. He lowered his firearm and slammed in a fresh a magazine.
Looks like someone is ready for round two.
We were almost upon him when he finally took note of our presence. Recognition flickered over his steely blue eyes, framed by safety glasses, as Ballard turned toward us. His mask of focused professionalism gave way to a warm, welcoming smile. Suddenly, the detective seemed a lot less intimidating despite the still smoking gun in his hand. He slipped off his protective goggles and engulfed Archer in a bear-hug.
“Talk about a nice surprise, Jane. How have you been?”
“Same old, same old. The psychos and scumbags are keeping me busy.”
Not to mention the creatures of the night, I thought but kept silent.
Ballard grinned, which made him look like a little kid on steroids.
“You guys downtown dealing with as much weird shit as we do up here?” Ballard’s full attention shifted to me as he offered his hand. “What’s up, Raven? Hot on the tail of the ghoul of the week?”
I managed a thin smile. As usual, my reputation preceded me. Based on the few times our paths had crossed in the past, Ballard knew all too well of the type of cases that required my involvement. Bad news followed me around like a shadow.
“Hi, Ballard. You’re looking good. Been hitting those weights?”
“Just trying to keep up with the bad guys, you know.”
As if to make a point, he cross-drew with lightning swiftness, and one of the targets grew a third eye.
“I gotta stay prepared,” Ballard exclaimed. “This city has gone to hell in a handbasket. You know that better than anyone, Raven.” He paused, frowning at me. “Come to think of it, all this freaky nastiness kicked in after you showed up on the scene.”
Here we go again.
Ballard wasn’t the first cop to draw a correlation between me and the horrors which terrorized this city. By now I should be used to the accusations—or at least thick-skinned enough to let them roll off my shoulder. But it hurts when people think you’re the cause of a problem which you spend day and night trying to fix.
It hurt even more because it was true to a degree.
Skulick and I had failed to stop the Crimson Circle three years ago from completing their terrible master plan. Even though we interrupted their spell, the ritual succeeded in weakening the barriers between worlds, and the city became the new frontline in the war between light and dark. It’s why Skulick and I had set up shop here to be in the heart of the action, where we were most needed.
“So what made you drop by today, Jane?” Ballard said, eying his old partner curiously. “If Raven is tagging along, it sure isn’t a social call.”
She hesitated before answering. “We believe someone out there might mean to harm you.”
Ballard furrowed his brows quizzically. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know if you’ve been following the news,” Archer said, slowly working her way up to the weirdness. “There’s been an incident at Blackwell…”
An electric jolt passed through my scar, and I bit back a cry. Over the years I’ve gotten used to the sharp pangs of pain signaling incoming danger. It was a small price to pay for an advance-warning system which had saved my skin on multiple occasions. That said, normally there was a build-up to the discomfort but this time around was different. It felt like someone had doused my chest with gasoline and lit it on fire. I gasped and gnashed my teeth.
We weren’t alone anymore.
Noticing my struggle to maintain a manly façade in the face of nerve-shredding agony, Archer trailed off and her hand went for her gun.
Ballard stared at us both, confused by the sudden change in our moods. “What’s going on?”
“He’s here, isn’t he?” Archer said.
Ballard shot her questioning look. “Who’s here? What’s happening?”
“Frank Engelman has returned from the grave.” Archer said, her voice a glassy whisper. Ballard was still wrapping his head around this answer when Engelman made his move. One of the bullet-riddled targets in the far back of the range warped and distended with supernatural energy as it came to surreal life. The first living target silhouette was quickly joined by others, the moving images now leaping down the range like an army of shadows come to life. Somehow Engelman was animating them—they’d become an extension of his will.
Ballard was still staring open-mouthed at the rapidly advancing horde when I drew Hellseeker. I squeezed off a few shots, striking the first of the living targets. The impact knocked the two-dimensional silhouettes down. Encouraged by my success, Archer decided to join the party, her bullets felling the other targets as effectively as Hellseeker. Paranormal energy might be animating the targets, but they weren’t supernatural creatures in their own right the way vampires, demons or ghosts were.
One of the targets popped up right in front of Ballard, light streaming through the bullet holes he’d put there moments earlier. The target’s head arced toward him like a guillotine, opening a deep gash in his arm. Blood sprayed as Ballard staggered back with a cry. Relentless, the animated target leaped at Ballard…
BLAM! The barrel of Archer’s pistol found the animated target and blew it away.
Nice work.
Archer flashed me a triumphant look, her lips curled in a wild grin, face flush with adrenaline.
Don’t get cocky, babe.
I scanned the room for Engelman. The dead serial killer was undoubtedly the invisible puppeteer pulling the strings here, but he remained invisible even to my sixth sense.
Archer’s victorious smile might have been a tad premature. The downed target silhouettes bounced back to their feet, their forms now sporting brand new bullet holes.
Not good. Not good at all. Time to make a quick exit.
“Come,” I urged Archer and Ballard. He fell almost reluctantly in step with us. His pain-filled gaze wandered from Archer to me, scarlet soaking his shirt where the target had slashed him. He looked pale, his face sunken in with terror. The faraway expression in his face was one I’d seen many times before. What was supposed to be another day at the office for the detective had turned into a waking nightmare. Working an occult case wasn’t quite the same as going head to head with a murderous ghost.
Hellseeker leveled, I knocked open the door at the end of the target range, expecting Engelman to pop up in front of me. I let out a sigh of relief when the corridor ahead appeared deserted. I took a deep breath and led the way. The plan was simple. Get Ballard and Archer out of the precinct, into my ward-protected car, and then to headquarters while I figured out what our next move should be. The detectives would be safe while Skulick and I figured out the best way to deal with Engelman. Good plan in theory, but my churning gut told me the dead serial killer might have a few more surprises in store for us.
Sometimes I really hate my job.
Two uniformed officers appeared around a bend in the hallway, both men on their way to the range. I was so on edge that
I nearly shot them, which I’m guessing would not have gone over well with the good people of the cursed city PD. They were talking animatedly to each other, unaware of the threat posed by a pissed-off ghost—or a paranoid monster hunter.
Without warning, two pairs of skeletal hands morphed from the walls next to them. The clawed limbs reached for the stunned officers, spectral energy penetrating living flesh. A heartbeat later, two entities fully peeled from the walls and stepped into the bodies of the shocked officers. As the ghosts vanished inside the cops, sickly sclera consumed both pupil and iris, turning their eyes a blank, milky white. Now under the command of the spectral body snatchers, the men immediately drew their firearms.
“Get down!” I yelled. My warning came almost too late as bullets whizzed overhead and chopped the walls of the corridor. Archer recovered first. She returned fire but made sure to target the officer’s legs. The men went down without a sound. Seconds later, I was upon them. Maybe the men could still be saved. They were innocents, merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I turned the bodies over. Staring back at me were two mummified corpses that bore zero resemblance to the two officers. Only the black police uniforms holding the shriveled remains served as a reminder who they’d been in life. The attacking ghosts had burned up their life force within seconds. White hot rage bubbled up inside of me as I spun around, seeking the cruel engineer behind this latest horror.
“Show yourself, you fucking bastard!” I yelled. My challenge was met with an eerie silence. Apparently Engelman wasn’t willing to reveal himself–at least not yet. Seeing my anger mirrored in Archer’s expression helped me regain my sense of control. I couldn’t allow emotions to rule me.
Calm down. Breathe. Stick to the plan. And get the hell out of this place. Now!
My inner mantra seemed to do the trick.
“Go!” I said.
The force in my voice snapped Archer and Ballard out of their paralysis. Seconds later, we were running down the hallway again. There were no further surprises as we reached the end of hallway, burst through another door, and entered the underground parking structure that housed the precinct’s patrol cars. Blue-and-white cruisers sat parked in rows on both sides of us. My eyes found the Equus Bass parked ten cars down, a massive, jet-black outlier.
We’d made it.
Almost.
As we navigated the gauntlet of cruisers, an engine roared to life, followed by the sound of burning rubber. For a moment, I almost expected to catch a glimpse of Engelman or one of the other inmates screaming toward us in one of the police cruisers. Instead, I saw a green van barreling toward us at full speed. I immediately recognized the vehicle. I had last encountered it parked outside of Club Link—Dr. Gould’s Mystery Machine. Behind the wheel was none other than Joe Cormac, just the man I wanted to see.
He drove like a man possessed—mostly because he was possessed. His eyes glimmered with a dark fire. Skeletal faces shimmered and flickered over his own features, X-ray like glimpses of the spirits dwelling within him. How many passengers had hitched a ride inside the medium?
The answer was way too many, if his physical state was any indicator. I got a good look at him as he drove toward us. His features wrinkled and wizened, his formerly black hair now almost snow white. The spirits were devouring his life force, draining him like a battery. The mummified corpses of the dead parapsychologists came to mind. Engelman and his spirit army had sucked them dry. The same was now happening to Joe Cormac, albeit at a far slower rate.
All these thoughts raced through my mind in mere seconds and then the van was upon me, a steel beast hell-bent on wrapping yours truly around its fender.
At this moment, I desperately wished I was a wizard of some sort and could just magically make my car come to life and whisk us away in the nick of time. But the Equus Bass remained where I had parked it earlier. We would have to fight our way to my car.
“Aim for the tires!” I screamed.
A second later, both Archer and Ballard, who had finally regained some of his cool, unleashed a hot volley of lead. Tires shredded, and the van spun out of control, barreling past us. The deafening sound of rending metal filled the parking structure as it crashed.
I kept advancing toward my car. Gun up, ready for another vehicular attack. Nothing happened.
Instead, Joe kicked the door of the van open and staggered outside. Blood caked his hair, and his eyes were wild and feral. For a beat he regarded me with a blank expression before tendrils of spectral energy shot from his wide open mouth. One by one, spectral entities materialized. It was high time to get out of here.
Moving fast, we made it to the Equus, got inside my vehicle and tore out of the garage, barely avoiding a collision with a police cruiser pulling into the structure.
I wanted to warn the poor bastard, but there was no time. The cursed city’s finest would have to clean up this mess. Right now, the most important thing was getting Archer and Ballard to safety.
And me, too, I guess. Given the number of times I’d ruined Engelman’s day, I had probably made his hit list.
“Is this, like, a normal day in your line of work?” Ballard asked in the back seat. He looked a shade paler than when I first met him.
You don’t know the half of it, buddy, I thought as I mashed the gas, the Equus’ engine howling as we tore down the street.
Welcome to my world.
11
Lightning speared the night, bathing our headquarters in a sickly glow. Ballard faced Archer, Skulick, and myself, his features locked in a haunted mask—a shadow of the former hotshot I met hours earlier in the target range.
Some people could handle the supernatural. Others fell to pieces.
My gaze flicked to Archer. This was the first time I had allowed her access to our base of operations. I knew she was studying the place, her eyes scanning the walls lined with occult tomes, mystical texts, and exotic relics. I’d imagined bringing her here before, granting her access to the inner sanctum, but Skulick and Ballard were definitely not part of the fantasy. “Nice bachelor pad, guys, but it could use a woman’s touch,” she said. “A plant or two would work wonders.”
“Very funny.”
After duking it out two months earlier with a swamp creature brought to life by an occultist dabbling in elemental magic, I could happily go through life without ever looking at anything green again, but Archer didn’t have to know that.
“I’d offer you the full tour, but…” I trailed off with a shrug.
To my surprise, Skulick wasn’t giving me too much heartache over my decision to bring her to our loft. Unlike Celeste Horne, Archer had proven herself to be a trustworthy ally over the last year. Judging by the way he kept stealing glances at the two of us, he was trying to get a sense of our relationship status. Skulick and I shared pretty much everything—he was like a father, older brother, and partner all rolled in one. I would take advice from him any day of the week, but I wanted him to stay out of my love life. Or lack thereof.
I turned my focus back to Ballard, who nervously was cracking his knuckles. The man was clearly out of his element and still deeply shaken from his paranormal experience.
“What are we doing here again?” Ballard asked.
“At this moment in time, our base of operation is the safest place in the city,” I said with as much patience as I could manage. “No ghost can get into this structure undetected.”
“That’s not quite true,” Skulick interjected. “You remember that time when the Ratcatcher breached our defenses…”
I shot Skulick a dark look, silencing him. No need dredging up past exploits. Ballard looked nervous enough as it was. “There is always an exception to the rule. Rest assured, Engelman and his merry band of criminal psycho-ghouls would have a hard time overcoming our security measures.”
Ballard shook his head and rubbed his face, almost as if he was hoping to wake from the nightmare his life had turned into. “This is nuts! How can Engelman be back from t
he dead? We fried his ass.”
“I can only imagine how hard this must be,” I said. “But you saw what happened back at the target range with your own eyes. Engelman won’t stop until he gets his revenge.”
“What about the spirits of the other inmates?” Archer asked. “Why did all their souls remain behind? And how is Engelman controlling them?”
“Excellent questions” Skulick said. “Any theories, kid?”
Sometimes I think Skulick still sees me as the sidekick in this operation, the Robin to his Batman. I responded with zero hesitation.
“The markings on the chair make it pretty clear that Engelman turned his execution into a ritual of some kind.”
“What sort of ritual?” Archer wanted to know.
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Skulick said.
Judging by the self-satisfied grin on my partner’s face, he had already put some of the pieces together and was letting us play catch up.
I eased closer to Skulick’s giant desk, which was littered with empty coffee cups. My partner had been burning the midnight oil on this one. A collection of monitors revealed the photographs I’d taken with my phone at Blackwell Penitentiary. There was a wide angle shot of the execution chamber, two creepy images of the electric chair, and a series of close-ups of the occult glyphs etched into the wood.
“So what have you been able to dig up?” I asked.
“There was a survivor that night.”
My eyebrows ticked upward.
“I managed to track down Dirk Shellback, a former prison guard,” Skulick explained. “He is currently retired on a disability pension. Our phone chat proved to be quite educational.”
Skulick tapped a button on his cellphone and replayed their conversation.
“Strange things had been happening at Blackwell ever since Engelman arrived.” The voice had a scratchy quality to it, like each word was a struggle to get out. I got the sense Shellback was old and ailing but also determined to tell his story. “What do you mean?” Skulick asked in the recording.
Shadow Detective Supernatural Action Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (Shadow Detective Boxset) Page 18