-thunk!-
His vision stopped on the door to the basement, right next to the clock. It was small and looked more like a closet than anything else. He smiled victoriously, grabbing the crystal knob and pulling it open even as he flicked on the switch hidden behind the frame of the clock and started to walk down.
Xander turned the corner from Laird Street, catching the glimmer out of the corner of his eye. He turned swiftly and saw them on the next corner, staying there for just a moment before disappearing out of sight. Fucker’s fast, he thought, taking off after them, cutting through yards and over fences.
He killed them. Not Genblade, not Spider, not Alpha... and not me. He growled, pouring on the steam as his legs thrust like pistons, churning power and propelling him forward as he turned the corner onto Main Street, the blood pumping fiercely in his veins. He still bled from his wrist, leaving a small trail of droplets every few feet behind him. They were as red as aged rose pedals, without the slightest hint of black in them again. He could see Derek and Cathy in front of him now, a good hundred metres ahead and gaining, as they turned down Xander’s street.
For that, I’ll kill him.
“Derek?” Don yelled, brushing some cobwebs aside as he walked down the whining, moaning stairs that led to the basement. “Son, are you down here?”
There was a light on near the far wall that he hadn’t noticed before, craning over a desk he used to use all the time for building swing sets or crafting Christmas ornaments. It was still covered with sawdust and loose screws from his last project, whatever it had been. His tool chest still sat firmly against the wall, glistening in the stark light. As he got closer, he saw handprints in the dust that were too small to be his.
He ducked under a low hanging beam, pushing a piece of cloth out of his way. He squinted his eyes in the light as he finally reached the table. He ran a finger along its surface, making a line in the dust before rubbing it between his fingers and frowning.
His foot connected with something hard; a metal, making him hiss and hop back a pace. He grabbed the neck of the light, turning it down to see under the table.
It was his hacksaw. And his hammer, multiple screwdrivers, a tape measure and a utility knife. All of his tools were under the desk.
He paused, standing back up straight and returning the light to its previous position. All the color drained from his cheeks as he stared at the shiny red toolbox in the middle of his desk, relatively untouched by the dust that covered everything else in the basement. He could hear his heart louder than ever now, louder than he ever had before.
Slowly, he reached out and laid his palm upon the metal box, his thumb releasing its lock. He kept it there for a moment, took a deep breath, then pulled it open.
There was nothing. The box had been filled with nails, each of their dull metal shafts diffusing the light that struck it.
Don sighed, then laughed as he turned back around to go upstairs.
His face connected immediately with the large strip of flesh that hung from the ceiling.
He screamed, stepping back in horror until the small of his back connected with the table, rocking it and showering sawdust everywhere.
It was dry and cracked, but still instantly recognizable as the peach color of flesh. It was held up by two nails that pinned it to the beam he’d just walked past, their impacts making the skin sunken and wrinkled. There was hair around the edge that had become coarse and haggard, falling off one at a time and falling to the floor.
Next to it was a large chunk of curly red hair, still matted together with blood and sludge.
A large, pink mass had been stretched out over a varnished slab of wood that had previously displayed a salmon he’d caught on a vacation in Illinois, but now was a pin cushion for thirty-one teeth, each one stuck into the flabby pink puss with its own sharp edge. It took him a moment to recognize the small pustules along the rosy surface as cysts on a human lung.
A large, pointed chunk of bone sat atop the beam, its chalky white surface stained around the edges with crimson. It had been smoothed off at the edge to near perfection, the cut that had detached it clean and precise. Below it, hanging from a nail that had been plunged lazily into the mould-covered wood, was a silver, heart-shaped pendant... just like the one in the photograph of John Tyler’s daughter.
Don balked, feeling vomit rise up in his throat. He lunged forward and threw up, the apples he’d had for lunch ripping their way back up through his esophagus and spattering onto the floor. He stared down at it for a moment, unable to look up at the room. The vomit had landed on the tattered remains of a newspaper article he’d written almost a month ago:
Coral Beach Killer: CAUGHT.
He felt his stomach churn again, grabbing a nearby bucket and throwing up inside it, groaning loudly as he did. When he opened his eyes, he saw the chunks of noodle that had been inside him a moment ago mixed with the litre of blood that had already been there. He screamed, hitting the bucket away and spilling its contents all over the floor as he scrambled to his feet and ran for the stairs.
He fell against them, closing his eyes and laying his head against the sharp wood as tears started to stream down his face. He could smell the blood now, the metallic tinge so virulent he didn’t know how he’d missed it before. It made him turn more and more green with every sobbing breath he took.
“Jesus,” he sighed, and mucus and salt water fell from the tip of his nose, making a small puddle on the stair below him. He stared at it for a moment from over the edge of the one he was laid upon, the cloudy liquid reflecting his eyes right back at him. Four fingers crept their way around the stair he was on, the blood caked on them smearing the wood.
“Christ!” he gasped, his head snapping forward and locking with another set, staring out at him from between the stairs.
“Help,” the feminine voice said, dry and weak and crackling from unshed tears and dehydration.
Don brought one quivering, shaking hand up to his lips as the girl grabbed at the sleeve of the other, tugging at it fiercely. She came into the light a little, both her eyes dark with bruises and almost swollen shut. The bottom half of her face was smattered in blood, some of it new and some of it long since dried there. There were large clumps missing from her short, black hair that still held one or two braids on the right side. She was shirtless and covered with cuts and long, red marks from her navel to her neck, which had duel handprints permanently pressed into them. Handprints that were too small to be his.
As beaten and ravaged as she was, he still recognized her immediately as he fell to the floor in shock and fear.
“Please, help me,” Jesse Newhook repeated, finally finding her voice she started to sob, letting go of Don’s shirt and letting her arm fall limp against the stair.
Don stayed curled up against the cold concrete floor for a moment. No matter how hard the girl screamed and sobbed, it could not overpower the voice in the back of his head that screamed the undeniable truth of the situation at him:
He’d broken this story wide open.
“Come on!” Derek yelled, giving Cathy’s arm another hard tug as his feet pounded against the pavement and he brought his sleeve to his face, wiping away blood and sweat.
“Ah!” she wailed, as she felt something in her arm stretch and then snap and threaten to dislocate altogether. She hissed back the pain as he pulled her forward again, and she tried to run along with him as the houses sped by in her peripheral vision.
Derek spun around, glancing quickly over Cathy’s shoulder and then spinning back. “Hurry up, you fat whore!” he bellowed, forcing her to pick up speed as he did.
Cathy turned, seeing what Derek had seen as Xander came around the corner after them. She turned back, seeing a tree along the side of the road that she’d seen many times before. It stood in between Xander and Sara’s houses, and had since long before either of them had been born. Suddenly she fell to the sidewalk, the skin on both her knees ripping against the pavement and exposing th
e meat underneath to the harsh air and rocks that found their way in almost immediately.
“Fuck!” Derek screamed, letting her arm go and bringing the knife back to point at her. Licking his lips, he calmed himself and stepped close to her. “You know, I’m beginning to think you’re more of a hindrance than an asset,” he mused, stroking her hair with the flat end of the blade. “Maybe it’s time we ended our arrangement.”
Cathy drove her head forward, pushing off the sidewalk with her heels and sending her forehead straight into Derek’s crotch.
His eyes went wide as she scrambled to her feet, running over the lawn and away from him. Hissing as he fell to his knees, he closed his eyes tightly and tried to will the pain away. “Oh, you little bitch,” he whispered. “Oh, you’re gonna pay for that.”
“Doubt it,” Xander quipped, his knee connecting with Derek’s eye just as the killer opened his eyes.
Derek’s head knocked backward, sending him onto his ass. “Fucker!” he cried out, lunging forward and grabbing Xander across the waist, forcing them both to the ground. “Can’t I ever be rid of you?”
Xander only growled in response, reaching up and grabbed Derek by the face, sticking his fingers into the boy’s eyes and mouth as he tried to pry him off. “I’ll kill you,” he snarled, one beat at a time, his pupils locked on Derek’s.
Face searing with anger, Derek brought the knife around, connecting it with Xander’s throat.
Xander’s eyes went wide as he felt his jugular rupture, sending warm, sticky fluid bathing out onto Derek’s hand. He tried to speak, but no words would come. They continued to look at each other for a long moment before Derek took out the blade, helping the blood flow more freely.
“I doubt it,” Derek whispered finally, bringing the knife down again and sticking it right through Xander’s shoulder.
He felt his right arm go numb, that tingly feeling like when your foot falls asleep crawling up and down it. Derek pulled the knife out again, bringing it down a third time near where Xander’s neck met his chest. Blood spurted up in a large gush, the impact from one blow forcing it out through all the others. His vision became dark around the corners, though not the way it did when he was transforming. It was something he’d felt once before, very briefly, during his first fight with Genblade.
He closed his eyes and Sara leaned over, kissing him gently on the lips.
-BANG!-
His eyes burst open again, watching as Derek’s shoulder erupted in a spread of flesh and blood, spraying pink and yellow and red in all directions.
Derek opened his mouth to say something to Xander, finally dropping his knife to bring his hand up to the throbbing wound that had opened up half his arm. Blood gurgled from his lips again as he tried to form a fist, then fell flat onto the concrete, mashing his nose into three pieces in the process.
Cathy dropped the still smoldering handgun that had belonged to Xander’s father, letting it fall to the grass as though it were something disgusting to touch. Her lip was still curled and contorted into hatred as she fell to her knees on his front lawn, her lip shaking but no tears coming down her face. “That’ll teach you to call me worthless,” she said to Derek’s bleeding backside, her face contorting in contempt.
Xander rose to his feet and walked over to her, lingering at her side for a moment. He reached out to touch her face, but she pulled away. He reached out again, her face jerking away. Finally, he touched her soft cheek and she immediately began to sob, grabbing his arms and forcing her head into his shoulder as he wrapped them around her.
EPILOGUE
Xander sat hunched against the large wooden bar, twirling his half-empty glass around his index finger as quickly as he could, watching it shimmer like crystal. He let it go and it continued spinning on its own for a moment before he caught it, bringing it to his lips and downing a large mouthful.
Behind the bar, the baldheaded bartender stopped pouring beer from his tap and shot a suspicious glare at Xander, raising one bushy eyebrow.
“Keep ‘em coming,” Xander nodded, taking one last glug and then waving the empty glass at him before turning it upside down on his coaster.
The man frowned, but turned back toward the cooler anyway.
“This is your idea of celebrating?” Megan remarked dryly, laying her purse on the bar as she took up the stool beside him.
“You’re late,” Xander smiled, winking at her as the bartender slid him another glass, filled to its brim with black, bubbling liquid. “If you hadn’t been, you’d know it was cola.”
She smiled, rolling her eyes at him as she leaned in and gave him a quick hug hello. “I don’t even understand how you got in here to begin with.”
“I have my ways.”
“Whatever,” she laughed, smirking at him as the bartender walked over to her. “Water, no ice. How’ve you been? Haven’t seen much of you this past week.”
“Genblade’s not getting the death penalty,” Xander shrugged, staring at the bubbles that popped and fizzed in his glass. “I did what I set out to do, no need to drag it out.”
“But how do you feel?” she pried, poking him in the chest near his heart as the bartender slid her bottled water in front of her.
He sat silent for a moment, letting out a long sigh... and then smiled. “I feel like a great weight’s been lifted off of me. I feel like I’ve found something that I thought I’d lost forever.”
“That sounds like a good thing,” she said, smiling.
“Yes, it is,” he replied, sipping his coke.
“But...” she pried.
“But, there’s still that one thing.”
“Sara.”
“Yeah.”
Megan giggled, pointing at him as she took a sip of her water. “You’re just like him. Right down to that damn guilt.”
Xander raised an eyebrow, looking her up and down.
“When I was young, I had this friend, like you... always obsessing over everything, trying to make sure everyone was happy, that he was making them happy, that he didn’t do anything wrong... right up until he died.”
Xander winced, but continued to listen.
“He used to give me all this advice. Made me promise to ‘live life with no regrets’ and ‘focus on the positive’... I never really bought into it before. Even after he died. It all just seemed like a pretty contrived way to live, I guess.”
Xander stopped, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Wow. That’s a great moral, Megan,” he nodded sarcastically.
“Not done. Anyway, I’ve been doing fine like that since...” she paused, staring off at the line of bottles behind the bartender. “...and then I met you, and kinda saw the way you lived. The way he probably would have, at least in practice. It kinda made me think... ‘No regrets’, ‘focus on the positive’... if I didn’t want to live like that, what did it say about me?”
“You’re doing okay to me.”
She held up her bare palm. “See this ring finger? It’s not empty because I’m agnostic.”
“Ag-what?”
“Never mind. The point is, seeing you fight for Genblade... made me reevaluate some things. Maybe you should, too.”
“What? You’re saying I should forget what happened? Forget... her?”
“Not forget. Forgive. Forgive yourself.” She touched his hand. “It’s not your fault.”
There was a long pause, then he squinted in thought and turned away.
“Look,” she continued, squeezing his hand. “Sara wouldn’t want you to focus on the negative of her death, but on the positive of her life. Just like my friend wouldn’t have wanted me to focus on the bad either. Realize that she’s still somewhere, and that it makes her sad to see what you’re doing to yourself. I did, and it’s how I’ve come to terms with my friend’s death.” She paused. “No regrets, alright?”
Xander smiled. “She used to say that, too.”
“Then take her advice.” she leaned in and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
>
The door to the bar opened again, and Anthony Jones stepped into the bar. He walked over and put his arm around Megan. They kissed, ever so briefly, then she turned and smiled at Xander. “I gotta go. But, I’ll see you around, okay?” she said smiling at him.
He smiled back. “Not if I see you first.”
“Remember what I’ve said. You’re a good man, Xander. And a good friend.” She kissed his cheek again, then walked out of the bar with Tony.
Xander finished his drink and got up.
“Hello, Genblade,” Xander said, sitting down in the uncomfortable plastic chair opposite Genblade.
“Hey, pal,” Genblade replied, smiling with his jagged teeth from the other side of the thick glass. “How you healing up?”
“Pretty good,” he nodded, leaning the chair back on two legs as he held the phone lazily next to his ear. “You?”
“Oh, you know me,” Genblade laughed, thrusting his head in the direction of the gash on his forehead. “Only the good die young.”
To his surprise, Xander found himself laughing as well.
“How’s the rest of the family doing? Good, I assume.”
“Mike’s on the mend. Cathy’s actually doing all right now... she doesn’t feel like she’s nothing anymore. If it wasn’t Mike and me that convinced her, then all the media attention definitely did. They’re treating her like the hero of all this.”
“Not you?” Genblade grinned. “She always was a show-stealer.”
“Nah, it’s good,” Xander smirked, dismissing the notion with a wave of his hand. “I don’t feel much like a hero right now, anyway.”
“But you beat the bad guy,” Genblade mocked happily, switching the phone from one ear to the other. “Put him away in a cell so deep and dark that not even the devil’ll come looking for him. They can hold him, can’t they?”
Habeas Corpus: Black Womb (Black Womb Collection Book 1) Page 62