Habeas Corpus: Black Womb (Black Womb Collection Book 1)

by Matthew LeDrew

  “Over ruled,” the judge barked. “Watch yourself, Jones,” she warned.

  Jones nodded. “Nothing further.”

  Megan snapped a pencil.

  “Did he just get you to discredit our own witness?” Xander asked, leaning against the bar.

  “Not one word,” Megan hissed.

  “Your next witness?” the judge asked, politely.

  “The defense calls Adam Genblade,” Megan said, rising to make the brief statement.

  Xander’s eyes grew wide. “Here we go,” he huffed to himself.

  The bailiff moved out a side door. He wheeled in Adam Genblade, who was now strapped to a specially made wheelchair, with metal clamps securing every joint and a steel muzzle over his mouth. The swelling on his face had gone back down to normal, but was still tattered with cuts and scrapes from his encounter with Xander the day before. He was moved next to the witness box, where the bailiff swore him in. The poor man had to fight back snickering as Genblade swore to tell the truth.

  Megan turned and gave Xander a look before standing up, playing with the ends of her skirt until it was just perfect. She walked toward Genblade, getting closer than she would have liked to have as his eyes danced over her longingly. “Mr. Genblade,” she began.

  “Please, Adam,” he smiled devilishly.

  Xander rolled his eyes.

  “Adam, do you know the man seated behind me?” she asked, turning away from Genblade and glancing over her shoulder at Xander.

  “His name is Xander Drew,” Genblade stated, snarling.

  “Correct. And how do you know him?”

  “We... studied together,” Genblade smiled, glaring menacingly at Xander.

  Megan raised an eyebrow, casting a glance up to the judge. “Really? Where?”

  “At the Church of Smoke and Mirrors, of course,” he laughed, unable to lean into it as much as he wanted to because of his restraints.

  Megan forced herself to smile, cracking the calcium in one of her knuckles as she kept her eyes locked with Genblade. “But how do you know him, really?”

  Genblade leaned his head to one side, staring at her for a long moment as he rolled his tongue around the inside of his mouth. His eyes danced down over her body briefly, then travelled back up to her face. “Well, he is the Black Womb,” he whispered finally, smiling.

  Megan nodded her head. “Of course he is. And what is that exactly?”

  “A manifestation of a genetic disorder which resulted from meticulous breeding for decades by Engen’s top scientific minds.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “It covers your body in a dark, black film with red eyes and mouth,” he said bluntly.

  “Why can’t we see it?” Megan continued, turning from Genblade to face the rest of the court, and Tony, as she spoke.

  “It exists inside him until blood loss or lack of consciousness or emotional stimulation forces it out.”

  A few chuckles had started to work their way through the courtroom, the judge banging her gavel against its mount to hush them.

  Megan smiled at Tony, then turned back towards the Judge’s bench. “Your Honour, given the accused’s testimony here and the psyche reports gathered by the CBPD, I don’t know how we can lawfully continue with this trial under the assumption that it will end with the death penalty. Maine law clearly states that if the defendant is considered or found to be mentally ill, then a death sentence cannot be reached as he is partially not responsible for his own - -”

  “I’m not insane,” Genblade interrupted, drawing the attention of the entire courtroom. “Not.”

  Megan almost rolled her eyes, then restrained herself. She walked back to her desk and retrieved another photograph from her briefcase, holding it up to the court. It looked to have been blown up from a driver’s license photo, some of the sheen from the reflective material still visible in the copy. “Do you recognize this man, Adam?” she barked, holding up the picture for him to see.

  “That’s Thomas Drake.”

  Xander furrowed his brow, leaning his head to one side as he watched.

  “And how do you know him?”

  “He... is... a reporter. He’s a reporter with the local paper.”

  “Are you aware that he was killed last night?”

  Xander’s mouth twitched, and he almost stood up in his seat. Instead, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the small, dragon-handled blade he kept there, his eyes still locked on Genblade.

  “No... no, I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Were you responsible for the death of Thomas Drake, Adam?”

  Genblade paused, locking eyes with Xander before letting a large grin spread over his face. “Yes.”

  Again, the courtroom bustled with energy as everyone in the gallery turned to the person next to them.

  Megan sighed. “In my briefcase, I have screen captures from the security cameras that monitor your room from last night, one every fifteen minutes. I can personally guarantee you never left your cell last night. Care to try your answer again? If not, Your Honour, it’s reasonable to assume we can’t rely on anything this man admits - -”

  “Didn’t say I killed them,” Genblade snapped, interrupting Megan and making her jump along with half the courtroom. “I said that I was responsible for it.”

  Here we go, Xander frowned, looking down at the knife.

  Megan stopped, taking another step toward Genblade. “How are you responsible for the deaths you’re accused of, Adam?”

  Everyone in the courtroom, including Judge Pike, leaned forward on their seats. “Misdirection. I killed them with misdirection and distraction.”

  Xander twitched.

  “Didn’t learn anything about distraction, did we?” he screamed, bringing back his fist and slamming it into the Womb’s face. Its teeth grazed and cut his knuckles, but he barely even noticed. He hammered his fist down again, splashing the black tar onto the streets as he did.

  “You stated in one of your interrogations with police that you used certain sounds to distract and elicit responses from your victims, herding them to a predetermined ‘kill zone’ you’d selected. Is that what you’re referring to, Mr. Genblade?”

  “Sure,” Genblade smirked, nodding.

  Megan let out a breath, finally turning away from Genblade.

  “You know what your problem is?” Genblade started again, looking from Megan to lock eyes with Xander, and then back again. “You’ll never be able to figure it out all on your own. You’ll never be able to make that leap because you can’t think that way. You people hire good men to hunt killers... you can’t do that. Your brains can’t think the way theirs do,” he stopped, looking at Xander again. “But his can.”

  Xander squinted at him again.

  Genblade leaned in slowly, again licking those pointed teeth of his. “You still got plenty to learn, but there’s one thing you’re gonna have to learn fast... and there’s only one way I know to teach you.” Genblade drove his hand forward, shoving the Womb’s long, serrated tooth into its gut and then swiping it all the way across.

  Slowly, Xander wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the blade until he could feel the cold metal begin to piece his skin.

  “Well, we managed to catch you,” Megan piped up, her voice audibly annoyed with Genblade now.

  “It ain’t nothin to catch a killer you were looking for,” he hissed. “Try catching one you weren’t.”

  “This was absolutely pathetic,” Genblade snarled, leaning over the Womb’s broken body as the lights of Engen glared down from above. “If you’re gonna keep going with power over skill, there’s a couple of things you should be made aware of. Number one, your right side is your weak spot. It’s where your true self... the real Black Womb... resides. But you probably figured that out.”

  Xander pulled the blade down, slicing a line through his palm so deep that he could see the meat of the muscle. He sucked air through his teeth at the sudden pressure, then opened his fingers a
nd let the blood dribble down. He waited a moment, letting several drops fall to the floor. No blackness came.

  The radioactive rods in front of Xander exposed themselves, their eerie green glow filling the room. He felt his flesh start to burn as the liquid surrounding his brain boiled within his skull and his teeth rattled, trying to shake themselves free of his gums. He closed his eyes as they started to bubble and crack.

  SMACK!

  The chuck of wood that Raine had swung at Drew from the darkness came around again, this time planting itself into his jaw. He felt splinters make their way into his mouth and gums as his neck twisted and nearly snapped, the muscle tendons in his shoulders straining then breaking. “Guh,” he said simply, forcing his aching skull back around just in time to see the wood get pushed forward again, catching him head-on between the eyes. He fell backwards, but Al caught him before he could hit the ground, the boy’s limp body as heavy as a sack of potatoes in his thin arms.

  Raine chuckled softly as he looked down at Xander, coppery blood that seemed just a bit too orange (but about as far from black as a color could get) leaking from the boy’s mouth and ears, which were already starting to swell. “Hey, look’it man,” he laughed, pointing at the battered teen. “It’s that Xander Drew freak!”

  Allan careened his head around to look in the bloodied face. “Yea, so it is. Little punk,” he giggled, and he sounded more than a little nuts. He was probably just high, though. “We should make him wear his ass as a hat,” he laughed again, and that time Raine chuckled too.

  Come on, Xander thought, fighting unconsciousness as more blood dripped from the growing crack in the roof of his mouth down onto his tongue. You can do this, Drew. Just think of... of... but all he could think of was that almost metallic-tasting liquid that was pooling in all of his facial orifices. Sara! He realized suddenly, and he felt the true Womb twitch a little. Think of Sara. Concentrate on her, he thought, coaxing his ‘other side’ out of its shell. Think of her, lying there in that coffin... he continued, tears welling up from the memories and the pain.

  “Look, he’s crying,” Allan said with mock sympathy. “Poor baby.”

  Julie, lying in an alleyway across from her bedroom window, that smile ruined, trying to find enough shards of clothing to get her home without her perverted neighbors catching too much skin... still, the Womb just fizzed. It was like trying to start a cold engine in the dead of winter. In Antarctica. It just wasn’t happening, a fact that slowly grew in the back of his mind as he watched the red liquid from his nose seep into the soaking-wet plywood flooring.

  I can’t transform, he realized with horror.

  Xander stared at the little pool of blood forming on the floor between his feet. “I can’t transform,” he whispered to himself, feeling how the rip that Genblade had put in his side still ached as it healed. “The Womb burns out. Burnt out at Engen, couldn’t transform for a week to stop those rapists... burns out when Genblade stabs me...”

  Drake brought his hand up to his ear quickly, and found that it wasn’t there anymore. When he brought his hand back he couldn’t even see his own skin, it was so laden with his own blood, dark crimson in the low light.

  Genblade locked eyes with Xander for a long moment, then finally smiled the first honest smile he’d ever had in the boy’s presence, nodding graciously.

  “Is the killer in this room?” Xander yelled, jumping to his feet.

  “Order!” the judge yelled, slamming her gavel against its mount again.

  Genblade grinned.

  “Genblade, is the killer in this room, here, one of us?”

  “Order! Young man, sit down or - -”

  “Forgive the child, Your Honor,” Genblade said apologetically, his voice laden with a thick accent that wasn’t quite anything. “He just hasn’t learned how to be direct yet.”

  Xander stopped, cocking his head to one side. “What?”

  “Xander, sit down!” Megan hissed, finally stepping away from Genblade and towards the boy.

  “But don’t worry,” Genblade assured them. “We’ll teach him.”

  “Just say it!” Xander screamed, shoving away someone next to him.

  “I’m sorry, Xander, but you’re not being very... direct.”

  “Direct,” Xander repeated, and immediately his head began to cascade with thoughts that he hadn’t even realized were there. “Direct.”

  “What has The Womb ever spoken, except for the words ‘Black Womb lives’?” Xander posed, raising a finger to his friend.

  Mike opened his mouth to answer, then paused, and closed it again.

  “Any time. Ever?”

  Mike leaned forward, rubbing the sides of his nose with his thumbs. “No. No, it’s never talked before.”

  Xander brought the nail of his thumb to his lower lip, picking at it obsessively as he thought. His eyes were locked on some random spot on the wall, not looking at anything but refusing to look anywhere else all the same. “Why would it change?” he huffed, thinking back to the day that Genblade had been captured. He’d almost smiled at Xander from across the mounds of rubble and police between them, and said ‘it’s not over’. “Is this what he meant?”

  “What?” Mike moaned, looking up.

  “Nothing, just... nothing.” He ran a hand through his hair, a few strands shaking loose as he tugged on it. “This whole thing just keeps getting worse and worse.”

  “Makes you wonder, really,” Mike mumbled, almost to himself.

  “Wonder what?”

  “Humans change their behaviour. Animals don’t. Animals hunt the same way, day in and day out, until something forces them to change. Even then, not really. So if the Womb’s changed the way it does things, that’ d make it - -”

  “Human,” Xander finished, a bitter taste in his mouth.

  Xander’s mouth went dry, as he looked from Genblade to the hand that still hung bleeding at his side. “It wasn’t me,” he said finally, his voice hushed and low.

  CHAPTEN TEN:

  SEE

  Xander spun on his heels, leaping over the row of chairs behind him and heading for the courthouse doors.

  “Xander!” Megan called after him, though he didn’t even look back at her.

  “It’s all been said before...” Genblade laughed, as the bailiff came over and began to wheel him away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “... just nobody pays attention, so we’ve got to say it all over again.”

  Darkness covered Coral Beach that night. And when it came, the city closed its doors. Roadblocks were set up. Police were even borrowed from nearby towns to patrol the streets, which were like vacant lots, giving the entire town a ghostly tranquility. Everything was silent and still. The only place still open was, naturally, the Factory. Its musicians had gone home and many of its workers wouldn’t have stayed there for a million dollars, but the four owners and three of the customers still remained. Sud, Tommy and Derek.

  “You guys could come in a while if you wanted,” Derek offered. “Call your ‘rents, ask them to come and pick you up.”

  “Naw, man,” Tommy shrugged. “We’ll be fine.”

  Sud nodded in agreement.

  “You sure?” Derek pushed, taking a quick glance around the street. “It’s not safe out there, man.”

  Tommy and Sud ran into the Factory, the killer tight on their heels as they slammed the door behind them.

  Xander nearly jumped out of his skin, turning quickly. “Derek!” he shouted, laughing at his own jumpiness. He slapped his friend on the back heartily, which was returned. “It’s only you.”

  Derek nodded, smiling. “Only me.”

  Derek Smith walked out of the Library and slammed the door behind him.

  “He can have that effect on people,” came Mike’s voice from the corner. “Lemme guess, he kept pushing buttons ‘till he found one that hurt you, then he kept pushing it?”

  Derek actually laughed at that, waving a finger at Mike. “Something like that,” h
e reasoned, “Jeez, don’t you just wanna rip that guy’s head off?”

  “Sometimes,” he nodded. “Actually, all of the time. Tact isn’t his strong suit, I’m afraid. One of these days, he’s going to break his neck jumping to conclusions.”

  “Yeah,” Derek snarled. “He actually accused me of helping Al and Raine do this shit to Julie. Me! I mean, she’s probably the one person in this school that I wouldn’t take a machete to...” his voice trailed off for a second, eyeing Mike’s right side sheepishly. “... present company excluded, of course.”

  Mike laughed, an act that stretched his stitches painfully. “Think nothing of it,” he replied, trying to keep the agony out of his voice. He didn’t do a very good job of it. “But that’s not really what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Well,” Sara started, smirking to herself proudly, “I heard from Julie Peterson today that the reason Derek has been so on edge lately is because Theresa had to take the test.”

  “Yeah,” Xander nodded. “That Family Living test was bad news. I think I must have only gotten an eighty-five or something...”

  She turned and gave him a little slap on the arm, “Not that test, you half-wit. A pregnancy test.”

  Xander’s eyes went wide for a moment as he held open the front door for her, which she barely acknowledged. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would Derek be messed up over that?” he asked naively.

  She shot him a look.

  “Ah. Forget I asked.”

  “Done.”

  “Wasn’t she supposed to be with Jamie?”

  “They broke up.”

  “Why? I mean, besides the ‘she may be pregnant from another man’, thing?”