Leaving the scalpel behind, he opened a vertical locker with his blood-soaked right hand and slung on a lab coat.
He exited the operating room, but not before turning off the lights.
Gates lay in the cold dark of the morgue. He fumbled weakly in his pockets, struggling to get out his cellphone before he bled out across the tile floor.
10
Smoothies
Under a dim ceiling light, Rachel and Mallory sat at the head of the dining room table. The little girl dipped her spoon into her beef, cabbage, and carrot stew and blew on it. The storm raged on outside, pelting the windows with big raindrops and causing the house to groan. Rachel’s bowl of soup was untouched. She watched Mallory intensely, feeling her heart rate rise.
Mallory put the spoon into her mouth and swallowed. Rachel adjusted her posture, eager for the child’s feedback.
“It’s… good,” Mallory said, forcing a smile.
Rachel’s heart sank.
Mallory quickly took another spoonful and swallowed it down.
“See,” she said as she chewed a tough hunk of diced meat. “Tasty.”
“All right,” Rachel said with defeat. “That’s enough. You can stop the charades.”
As quickly as the soup went into Mallory, it was out and back in the bowl. Mallory wiped her chin with the top of her blue cotton sleeve.
Rachel crossed her arms. “We’re going to need to teach you some manners.”
“You said I didn’t have to eat it,” Mallory replied, feigning innocence.
Rachel took a deep breath. This motherhood thing was going to be lot harder than she’d expected.
“You can try to make it again,” Mallory suggested politely.
Rachel thought about it. She checked the time. “Do you like Chinese food?”
Mallory nodded enthusiastically.
“Be thinking about what you want.” Rachel picked up both of their soup bowls, took them into the kitchen, and dumped the foul-tasting food into the sink.
“I want General Tso’s!” Mallory yelled from the other room while Rachel washed the dishes.
“How spicy?” Rachel called back, drying her hands on the dishcloth.
“Very,” Mallory said.
“You’re a brave little girl,” Rachel replied and grabbed her phone from beside the sink.
One missed text from Jenson Peak.
With a crinkled brow, Rachel tapped her thumb on the screen.
Malone lives. Gates in intensive care.
That was an hour ago.
Rachel’s heart skipped a beat.
Lightning flashed outside the kitchen window, illuminating Martin Malone’s drenched face on the other side. Clenching a brick, he shattered the window in a single blow. Rachel staggered back and reached for a knife in the rack, but Martin was already through the window and diving at her. The two of them slammed to the kitchen floor. The knife rack fell with them. Blades clanged. Under his soaked, bloodstained lab coat, Martin was naked. He tried to slam the brick down on Rachel’s nose. She moved her head aside and watched the jagged point punch the laminate. She pushed her knee into his groin and shoved him off of her. She crawled to the nearest knife on the floor by Martin as he dived on her back and pinned her to the ground.
“I picked up something special before I came here. I hope you don’t mind.”
Before Rachel could guess, Martin smashed a handful of wet, round, black berries against her lips. The bittersweet taste leaked into her mouth along with the taste of copper. She clenched her jaw, trying to keep from consuming the Devil’s Cherries, though she had already begun to swallow some. She reached behind her and grabbed a handful of Martin’s rich hair. He screamed as she yanked his head to the side. The wet hair tore from his scalp with excruciating pain. With his free hand, he grabbed the back of Rachel’s head and slammed it into the floor. The smashed berries sprayed into her mouth. Martin kept his hand firmly clenching her mouth and nose, keeping her from breathing. She inhaled some of the juices into her nostrils and became nauseated.
“This is the ending I had in mind, Detective,” Martin bragged. “The hero dies, and I escape. The perfect tragedy—ack!”
Martin let go of Rachel and backhanded Mallory, who was behind him. The hit put the eight-year-old on her back. He grabbed the knife hilt firmly imbedded in his lower back. He cursed as he tried to remove it.
Rachel spit out the black gunk across the floor. It covered the entire lower third of her face and the tip of her nose. She shimmied underneath him in an attempt to free herself. Martin slammed her head back down a final time before struggling to his feet. He turned to Mallory.
“I’m not scared of you!” Mallory shouted as she scooted away on her bottom.
Martin fetched one of the knives and lumbered to her. “I gave you a home, and this is how you repay me?”
Mallory’s back hit the kitchen counter. She watched the scarlet waterfall trickle down the back of Martin’s hairy legs. Tears streamed down his pain-hardened face, making him out to be the spitting image of his homicidal father. He raised the knife. Its shadow fell across Mallory’s terrified eyes.
That was when Rachel grabbed and twisted the blade in his back.
Martin howled and dropped to his knees as Rachel kept twisting. “You don’t put a hand on her.”
Martin’s scream turned to a cry. He released his weapon and landed on his palms. “No! No more!”
Anger consumed Rachel the more she heard him scream. In the corner of her eyes, she saw the dozens of individuals—mothers, fathers, children—that the monster had killed. The Orphans were watching the violence with apathetic expressions. Carolina Thurston cackled with her extra-wide mouth.
Mallory looked over the killer and at her mother. A look of determination flashed over her face, and she grabbed the knife from the floor. Without a word, she sliced it at Martin’s neck.
Rachel swiftly pulled Martin out of the way, though she couldn’t stop him from taking a small nick on his throat. He toppled to the side and went fetal.
Mallory stood up, her eyes devoid of all emotion, and raised the knife over her mother’s sobbing killer.
Rachel leapt over the man and grabbed Mallory’s wrist. They two of them locked eyes. The gathering of Orphans encircled them, waiting eagerly for either Mallory or Rachel to act.
“They want me to,” Mallory said, trying to wiggle out of Rachel’s grasp. “I have to.”
“No,” Rachel said. “This isn’t justice, Mallory. This isn’t who we are.”
“He killed my mother!” Mallory cried. “He killed my friends…” Her words were lost in sobbing.
Rachel looked down at the small naked man curled up like a baby, crying and bleeding on her kitchen floor. She let go of Mallory’s wrist and embraced the child. She rested her chin on the Mallory’s head and closed her eyes. She tasted toxic berries and blood. Her nose was dripping red.
After the child had calmed, Rachel removed the knife from her tiny fingers and put it on the countertop. She then grabbed her phone and dialed the police.
“Yeah, I got him,” Rachel said to dispatch. “Send an ambulance. I’ll need one too.”
Rachel, Mallory, Ethan, Ashton, Anastasia, Cora, Carolina, Martha, Jasmine and the other Orphans stood completely still until the ambulance and backup arrived.
Martin Malone was carted off on a stretcher, passed out from blood loss and minutes from death. As he was loaded into the back of the ambulance, the Orphans dispersed into the leafless trees encircling Rachel’s home. One by one, they vanished into the familiar inky void of night. Ashton was the last to leave. He waved Mallory a goodbye and went home.
Rachel’s mouth was washed and cleaned by an EMT while another examined Mallory’s swollen cheek.
“You may feel a little under the weather,” the EMT said. “But you didn’t consume enough to do you any real harm.”
Rachel ignored the rest of his words as she watched Mallory from across the driveway. Am I really ready for
this?
“Who stuck him with the knife?” Peak asked.
Rachel hadn’t heard him approach.
The EMT eyed Rachel curiously.
“I did,” Rachel lied.
Peak stuck his hand in his windbreaker and let the rain fall down his black umbrella. “You’ll do a good job, Harroway.”
We’ll see.
Peak gave Mallory a final look and then wandered off to his car. “Sleep well.”
The next morning, Rachel knocked on Mallory’s bedroom door.
“It’s open,” the child replied.
Rachel slipped inside. Mallory lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to show you. Come downstairs.”
Mallory’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the weathered leather-bound journal on the countertop. She touched the cover delicately and opened it to the first page.
“This was my mother’s,” Rachel explained. “She was like us.”
“Wow,” Mallory said, lost in the book’s novelty. She flipped through the old pages. “It even smells old.”
“Yeah.” Rachel cracked a smile. “But this isn’t why I brought you down here.”
Mallory eyed her curiously.
Rachel stepped over the part of the floor she bleached that morning and opened the cupboard. She removed a tin canister and a few mason jars. Inside were an assortment of toxic herbs and roots in the shape of chicken feet.
Rachel saw Mallory gawking and said, “Turn to the middle page of that book.”
Mallory did so.
“Now, put on some gloves.” Rachel gestured to a nearby drawer.
Mallory pulled out two pairs of gloves, one for Rachel and one for herself. “Why do we need these?”
“You’ll see,” Rachel said teasingly. She slid the jars across the countertop to Mallory. “Open those, and pull out the amount the journal says. Here. I’ll help.”
Together, they read off the long titles of different ingredients and dumped the proper portions into the blender. When they’d put in the final ingredients, Rachel held the top on and let Mallory push the blender’s ON button.
When the concoction was a grey-green mix, Rachel told her to stop and filled two tall glasses. “Voila.”
Mallory sipped and grimaced. “It tastes like dirt.”
Rachel gulped from her own cup. “It does, doesn’t it?”
One tall, one short, they stood side-by-side, backs to the sink, sunlight streaming through the plastic sheeting over the window.
Holding the cup in her right hand, Rachel stared at nothing in particular in the other room. Mallory glanced at her and then mimicked her exact pose.
“Make sure you drink that all up,” Rachel reminded her. “We could both use some peace and quiet.”
At the same time, they brought their smoothies to their mouths and drank up.
The End.
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The Lost Orphans Omnibus: A Riveting Mystery Page 36