by Dale Mayer
There was no way.
But when all else is wrong, what remains has to be the truth.
He stared at the answer in shock.
Someone was picking on each victim through a different body part. These victims were being chosen by the areas where Sam was feeling the burning pain.
And if that was true, how did the killer know these people had this area for him to attack? Did it need to be a weaker area? Was that what made them vulnerable to his particular form of violence?
His mind balked at the idea of a big muscular male being linked to this old woman that Sam had just connected with.
And how – if at all – did this connect to Celina? He reached for the phone. “Stefan, I think I’ve got something.”
Assured he had Stefan’s attention, he quickly explained the pattern – the fact that there was no repetition of body parts – then tossed in his hypothesis. He finished by asking if any of that fit Celina’s case.
“It might. I’ll call you later.”
And he hung up the phone. Brandt stared in shock at the phone in his hand. He couldn’t remember any time when Stefan had hung up on him.
I haven’t now, but Celina was listening in. That I can’t have. She’s sitting on the deck now waiting for dinner. Give me that information again, Stefan said again.
Brandt quietly repeated his words to the empty room knowing Stefan could hear him. He stood in front of the chart and went over a couple of the cases out loud.
Celina’s weakness is her eyes, so it makes sense that’s where we’d see the energy blockage. And it’s definitely connected to the asshole that is haunting her, but there’s no way to know if it’s the same man who’s doing all the other killings.
“It’s an avenue we have to consider.” Brandt added, “The real question is if it is the same man who killed all of these others, then why hasn’t he killed Celina? Or is she next?”
*
Eric shifted in his bed. He could hear the other kids in the big room all laughing and playing. Across from him was another little boy who had just come out of surgery. He didn’t look very good. His face was puffy, splotchy. His eyes closed, his breathing raspy. Eric didn’t know what was wrong, but he didn’t think he was going to make it. There was so much darkness around him. And that darkness would keep Eric away. He wished the other little boy had a defender. Maybe then that blackness wouldn’t come closer to Eric. He hated the color black. At least now.
He glanced back at the window, happy that he no longer thought flying out that window would be a good idea. Stefan had said lots of the thoughts in his head could be the drugs or the monsters and if the thoughts weren’t good ones, he was to throw them into the washing machine he’d left in the corner of Eric’s mind and then they’d come out clean again. He laughed at the idea, but if Stefan said it worked, then it worked. And that made him feel great. He eyed the blackness around the boy. Was it drifting his way?
It wasn’t the same as the evil man.
It was like the blackness of some of the other sick boys.
But how could he know for sure that they didn’t hear the same black man inside of them?
Eric snuck lower down under the sheets, but couldn’t tear his gaze away from the cloud of evil.
Chapter 25
Celina put her fork down and reached for her glass of wine. She pushed her chair back slightly and sighed happily. “That was delicious. Gorgeous, capable, and a wonderful cook. Why hasn’t someone snapped you up, Stefan?”
His laughter rolled out across the meadows. “Maybe I’ve been waiting for you all my life,” he said, a warm caress in his voice.
She smiled. “No dodging the question. I almost got married and you’re another what – three, four years older than me? So it’s not like there would have been a lack of opportunity.”
“Maybe not. But I do come with certain abilities that make some people uncomfortable.”
“Oh?” She took another sip and considered. “I suppose the energy work would be as equally scary to some people as it is attractive to others.”
“My art is the same. I’ve developed quite a name, but there is nothing nice or easy about my paintings. They are the outpourings of the worst in my soul, and that makes them difficult to gaze upon.” He laughed again but it was devoid of humor. “I’ve seen and have been involved with a lot of seriously deranged killers and victims. It leaves a mark on your soul.”
She thought about all he’d said and what he hadn’t. “I’m sorry. I think you must hurt with each of the victims. It’s your way.” She heard the distance in the silence then felt his hand cover hers.
“Thank you for seeing that.” He squeezed her hand once, then released it.
His chair pushed back and he said, “I’ll clear off the table and return with the rest of the wine.”
“Can I help?” She half-rose.
He pressed her back into her chair. “Relax. I have dessert to come as well.”
She must have made a hum of pleasure because he laughed, dropped a kiss on her head and left, dishes clanging in his hands.
She relaxed back and thought about the man who lived and worked on ugly cases. Who slept with nightmares of the victims and still got up the next day and did it all over again. She was no longer interested in seeing his paintings as she imagined them to be torturous for him to produce, but she was happy to know he had that outlet. Like her music, they were necessary vents for the thing they called life.
Stefan returned in minutes, placing several items on the table.
“Dessert is double mocha cheesecake and I’m going to top up your wine.”
She listened to the liquid splashing in the glass, and wondered at how much being here with him made her smile. Her mouth almost hurt because of it. She hadn’t laughed this much in years. She said as much to him.
“What was your relationship like with your fiancé?” he asked, curiosity in his voice.
“Passionate, possessive on both sides. There was just the two of us. No family for either of us, so we were completely wrapped up in each other. It never occurred to me until months just before his death that we were too close. Too dependent on each other.”
She took another sip, her mind retracing the years. “We met, and that was it for both of us. After he died I believed there’d never be anyone else for me.”
“And now?” Stefan asked, his voice as smooth as the chocolate cheesecake sliding down her throat.
“And now? I wonder if I knew what love was at all.” She couldn’t help the sad sigh. At the warm silence from him, she asked, “What are you thinking about so heavily? Weighing options?”
Still silence. She tried again. “Stefan, I can hear you thinking. What’s going on?”
“That phone call earlier was from Detective Sutherland, who is looking into a series of killings that might be related.”
“I’m sorry,” she said in gentle voice. “That must be difficult.” Then she got it. Her tone changed as she leaned forward and pushed her chair back to stand up. “Do you need to go to work? I know I’ve taken a lot of your time today.”
“No. I’m not going anywhere and neither are you.”
At the blank look on her face he said, “I think these cases are related to the predator you are dealing with.”
She sat back down with a heavy thud. “Sorry,” she said faintly. “You think this guy might be killing people? As in other people?”
“Yes, and I’m afraid he might try to kill you.”
*
Stefan almost winced at the shock, horror, and instant denial that raced across her face.
“There’s no reason for him to. He wants to see something, but that’s all. If he was capable, he could have killed me a long time ago if that had been his plan. It’s not like I have any defenses against him.”
“That’s not true. We don’t know how he’s killing these people, or why, or even how he’s picking his victims. Maybe you could tell me more about your accident, the surgery you had a
fterwards, and anything else that happened around the same time.”
She threw up her hands. “What’s to say? I was in a vehicle that was hit by a drunk driver. I don’t remember any of the details, having thankfully blocked that out. I woke up in the hospital blind and was told that I was going in for more surgery.” She shrugged. “I woke up a long time later with my eyes having been operated on, and this is what you see as the result. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Any other injuries?” Stefan probed gently, “Any broken bones? Deaths of other people in the vehicle? Did the drunk driver survive?”
“Ha, don’t they always? He lived and was barely injured, but then he was driving some monster truck.” She sighed, turning her head into the light breeze drifting across her face. “I don’t have many details, mostly because I don’t want many details. I talk to Gordon all the time, he used to manage the auditorium where we played, and he’s never mentioned requiring any kind of continuing rehab or anything.”
She winced. “Honestly, I never asked. As for my girlfriend Jillian, well, she doesn’t talk much at the best of times. Then Susan moved away after the accident. I lost touch.” She snorted with painful honesty. “That’s not true. I was so angry. So mad that they’d walked away with no injuries that I shut them all out of my life.” She lifted a trembling hand. “I’m not a nice person.”
“You are.” He reached over and grasped her hand. “You had a horrible shock. A terrible loss. It’s a natural response to want to lash out at others who appeared to have escaped unscathed.”
“Unscathed? I wonder. Do they blame themselves for my condition? I never once considered how they felt. I only let Gordon and Jillian back into my life a few months after the accident. I apologized then and we all made up. Since then I’ve just kept everyone else more or less away. Jacob being my closest friend – mostly because he refused to stay away.”
“And he’s safe because he has a male partner and is super busy so he didn’t demand any more of your time than you were willing to give.”
Stefan wondered what else he should tell her. He was hoping to take their relationship to the next level, but didn’t think she’d appreciate hearing some hard truths from him afterwards, and it would erase all the good he’d managed up to now. But to share them with her now… yeah, she might never speak to him again. Then again, as he had no intention of letting her go home tonight after what Brandt had said. She was likely to be pretty angry. Either way he was going to be sleeping alone.
“And this is why you have no friends.” She laughed. “Sorry, that just came out. It’s a phrase from my childhood. But you are right. My life is stuffed to the brim and my way of coping was to keep people away.”
“Sorry, I do tend to speak in truths.”
“No, that’s fine.” She gave him a wry smile. “I prefer the truth over the alternatives. And speaking of the truth, please tell me more about the cases and how I might be connected.”
As they needed to discuss this he willingly complied. “We don’t know for sure, but at the moment I see the same black energy around that blockage in your head as I have around a child, Eric, who’s dealing with a monster in his head, and several males in the morgue that for one reason or another are dead and managed to take out other people with them.”
“Take out – how do you mean?”
“One drove his vehicle into a crowded pub a few nights ago.”
“Chico’s!”
“And another picked up a butcher knife and started slashing and butchering a group of women waiting to cross the road.”
“Oh my God. What? You’re saying the accident at Chico’s is related to these poor women? I understand the connection from my attacker and Chico’s, but how could he have a hand in that slashing incident?”
“He somehow managed to get the driver of that vehicle to crash into the pub and if he could do that, then it wouldn’t likely be hard for him to have this other man pick up a butcher knife and starting slashing that way.”
“But why?”
Stefan shook his head. “That I don’t have an answer for.”
“How?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Those silvery eyes stared toward him. “He’d have to have a way to connect to these people. Like he does me.”
“True. That’s why I wondered about the details of your accident.”
“Are you thinking possession here? That he might have slipped into my body while I was at my weakest?”
“Or slipped into the weakest part of you at that time – your eyes.”
She reared back and swallowed hard. “That’s…very disturbing.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
“So he’d have had to have found a way to enter all these people while they were weak and then taken over when he wanted to and killed them – and in the process, killing others?”
“Quite possibly.”
She shuddered. “I’m not sure I can do this. I need sleep tonight. How can I ever sleep again if this guy could turn me into a mass killer?”
“He won’t.” Stefan’s voice was strong, adamant.
She didn’t look convinced. “But you won’t know until it happens, will you?” she said bitterly. “I could kill you in my sleep and you’d only wake up if the first blow didn’t finish the job. Oh my God.” She stared at him in horror. “Everyone around me is in danger.”
“No, they aren’t, and I’m not going to let this guy take over your body, nor am I going to let you go off under his manipulations and kill anyone.”
“I hate to say this, Stefan,” she said, her voice doubtful. “You might be God to some people, but I don’t think this guy cares.”
Stefan laughed. “He doesn’t. And that’s another weakness I’ll be able to use against him.”
She leaned forward. “This is in my head. It’s not like you can reach a hand inside and pull him out.”
“True enough, but only because I’m concerned about the kind of harm he might cause you if I were to try to do that.”
He shifted and spoke inside her mind. I’m in your mind right now. Right where he is. I can see the blockage in front of me. But force is not the answer here. Knowledge is. And he stepped back out of her mind.
She sank back into the chair, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Uh oh.” Stefan reached through her root chakra and quickly drained much of the energy churning violently and threatening to spill over.
She sat up and took a deep breath. “Thank you.” She shook her head. “I think I need to go home now. Please.”
“And that’s where the next problem comes in.” He winced. “I’m keeping you here until this is over.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the chair. A long shaky breath escaped.
“And when will that be?” she whispered. “When we’re both dead?”
*
Vanessa Coller dressed carefully for the evening. Her first formal affair since the disaster in her life so long ago. She really loved Jhett. He was perfect for her. Twirling in front of the full-length mirror, she felt like a princess.
She spread her fingers and could almost see the diamond ring on her hand. Surely he’d ask her tonight? She twirled one more time then headed for the small makeup mirror in the bathroom. Everything had to be just right for tonight. He’d love her no matter how she looked and she was content with that, but she wanted him to be proud to be escorting her now. She looked so different after all her skin grafts and the months and months of healing. Sure, there’d been the odd weird heated twinge in her back lately, more a sense of something ready to flare, but thankfully never did.
She’d come so far…surely one more step wasn’t impossible.
Tonight was that next step.
She bent over and worked on the eye shadow, her hand sure and steady. An inner calm had settled inside. She knew how to apply makeup to hide the worst of the
scars. She could do this tonight. As she worked, the calm slowly broke apart from the façade it really was. She had been through a year of hell. A year of surgery after surgery. A year of needing help and helpers, of crying in pain and feeling bad for being in pain. She hated to ask for help, and this last year had pushed the limits time and time again. Bowing her head, she considered the huge ballroom formal tonight. A work event for Jhett, and afterwards he was taking her to the small exclusive dining room on the other side of the hotel. That’s where he’d ask her to marry him.
At least she hoped.
*
Sam wandered the lakeshore, loving the way the sun twinkled on the water. She’d come to love this place. Knowing it was theirs now forever made her heart swell in delight.
She stood there for a long moment and let the feelings wash over her.
And felt joy, someone else’s joy, fill her. Or she filled someone else with joy? Quietly she let her mind shut down and her energy float as needed. She was humming. The wedding march. Sam would have laughed, but she was too full of happiness to do anything. This young woman was getting ready for an event – a special night. She splayed her fingers wide and Sam could see they were bare of rings and she understood.
But why was Sam here?
And could she get something to identify this woman and save her before her world exploded in pain?
She sank deeper into the vision. Letting her senses flow through the young woman, searching out the burning she knew would come.
She drifted down then spread out through the limbs. She couldn’t sense anything but a woman in the prime of her life getting ready to go out for a special evening.
Her back tingled. She stilled.
Here was the problem.
And the heat was just starting. Now if only she could get something to identify this woman and save her.