Behind The Veil: A Gina Harwood Novel

by Martin, Indi

  Jake shook his head. That's not how it happened, he thought to himself. It wasn't me.

  He saw his finger tapping against his sister's bedroom window, her curious expression through the pane. The spray from her slit throat that had drenched him head to toe, leaving him a monstrous red beast. Stringing the rope. Jumping into the river.

  'No,' he thought, trying to clear his head of the awful visions drilled into him by the holes where the monsters eyes should have been. 'Didn't happen.'

  And was it teeth that spilled his father's insides across the room? Or a knife to start the job, and then his own fingers to finish it, grabbing and tearing. Grabbing and tearing.

  “This place is wrong,” he said aloud, scrambling back up to his feet and approaching the nearest torch-holder. The man looked old and withered at first, but as Jake neared, he could see that he wasn't, really, a great deal older than himself. His hair was coarse and long, and he wore only the most rudimentary sash across his hips. One eyelid sagged into his skull, sunken and obviously missing the necessary organ behind it. The man smiled a wry smile, a familiar smile, and handed the torch to the intruder without comment. For a moment, Jake and the torch-holder's gaze was locked, and Jake saw a lifetime of pain in the stranger's eyes. Jake wondered what the half-dead stranger saw in his own.

  For a moment, he considered asking the torch-bearer...

  Turning away, he let the moment pass in silence. He didn't need to ask. He didn't want to know.

  There was a collective sigh among the assembly and they all huddled closer together. Jake didn't take long to ponder the action. One of the crowd, a scrawny perhaps-teenage boy with a painfully distended stomach, smiled broadly and toothlessly at Jake, then pointed at a barrel in the far corner of the room. He, too, sighed happily and burrowed into his neighbor's body, in a half-hug.

  Turning his back on the crowd, Jake held the torch high and walked over to the barrel. Unscrewing the lid, he was hit with the strong scent of gasoline. “What, this?” he asked, screwing his head back around and grinning wildly at the crowd. They grinned back. Some nodded, anxious. Jake wondered why he was smiling, and tried to stop, but his body was no longer his own. He willed himself to scream, but no sound came out, no muscle responded. Jake's legs moved with confidence, edging him around the corner of the barrel, placing himself between it and the wall. “This place is gonna burn!” he heard his own voice yell, and watched in horror as his foot kicked over the barrel with all of his might. The light, golden liquid flowed quickly across the floor and some of the men lifted one foot, and then the other, before resuming their placid stand. Unbelievably, a few of the younger ones clapped. All of them looked incredibly relieved that their tribulations were about to come to a final, fiery end.

  Jake heard a scream from somewhere outside, and tears sprung to his eyes, surprising him. He tried to run, but nothing other than his tear ducts seemed to respond to his wishes. Still grinning wildly, he watched his hand drop the torch and closed his eyes, praying that the scream hadn't been Marcus. Praying that his friend was free.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  The sun had dipped entirely below the horizon, but still the dogs' black eyes seemed to reflect some remaining pinpoints of light. Their teeth were all wrong, jagged and red, and their tongues lolled out of the side of their mouths unmoving. Marcus gasped at the pain in his leg and closed his eyes, not wanting to watch as the others descended upon him.

  Something incredibly bright lit up his eyelids, and he felt a rush of heat.

  Clamped jaws loosened, the teeth retracting from his leg with a sickening bone-against-bone scrape, sending another unreal jolt of pain up his body and forcing his eyes open. One of the beasts whimpered, and suddenly all of them bolted away. Marcus watched with incredulity as, one after the other, they leaped into the blaze that had engulfed the building.

  Marcus sat in the mud for a moment, bleeding heavily, his mind sluggish. The fire seemed unreal, some summer-action-movie effect superimposing itself on his life.

  The memory of Jake's silhouetted body walking stiltedly into the building rushed back, and he realized that his friend must still be inside.

  “JAAAAKE!” he screamed, clawing the mud to extricate himself from the bush. His voice was anguished, impossibly loud in his own ears, a supersonic bellow of loss. “JAAAKE!”

  Hands closed in under his armpits and pulled him out smoothly from the mud. Marcus looked up into the face of a woman he didn't recognize. He was dimly aware of an annoying tickle on his face from a few errant strands of her blonde hair, but he felt very suddenly very far away from everything. Even his leg had stopped hurting.

  “You wanna help here?” he heard her ask, but she wasn't looking at him. There were suddenly two blurry images of her as his vision swam. “He's going into shock.”

  “Least of our problems,” he heard a man answer from a great distance, echoing and unclear. “We're in trouble.”

  “Jake's inside, get Jake, Jake...” he muttered, commanding his arm to point to the building. It flopped limply at his side.

  Calmness enveloped him and darkness followed behind.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  Morgan noticed several things at once, his police-trained mind filing the details away for later, when he might have the time to better process them. First, he saw the Camry, both doors flung open. It had become too dark for him to tell whether anyone was still in the car. Then, he saw the source of the giant fireball that had lit the horizon a few moments prior: a huge building just beyond the car, engulfed in flames. He heard the pop and crackle of the fire, and voices; swinging his head in the direction of the latter, he saw, inexplicably, Agent Parker kneeling on the ground, hands moving quickly above a body. He snapped his gun up, instinctively, and edged forward.

  “Freeze!” he yelled, authoritatively.

  She looked up at him for a moment, but then looked back down and continued her work; he recognized the face of Marcus Owens tilted toward him, eyes closed. “Freeze!” he said again, a little more unsure.

  “He's in shock and bleeding out,” replied the woman, sounding entirely unconcerned about the gun pointed in her direction. “At least give me a moment to try to staunch the bleeding.”

  Movement over her shoulder. Morgan snapped the gun up toward the new target. Yori Hanagawa walked out of the shadows to stand a few feet beside his partner. Morgan blinked. The fed's eyes were glinting with the last of the sunlight. “Stop right there,” he commanded, but his voice was uneven. He hovered his finger over the safety, about to click it off.

  Parker sighed loudly. “Yori,” she said simply.

  And then Morgan's gun was gone.

  Morgan blinked again, hard. His hands, which had just a moment ago been cradling his handgun, were empty.

  Hanagawa, who hadn't moved from his spot as far as Morgan could tell, was holding his gun with his thumb and forefinger by the handle, a distasteful expression on his mouth. “You can have this back later,” he advised calmly, sticking it in the waistband of his trousers. “Where's the girl?”

  “Girl?” he parroted dumbly. His mind felt like molasses; it didn't know how to deal with this latest development. He replayed the scene. His gun had been in his hand... and then it wasn't. Nothing in between.

  Marcus whimpered on the ground, and the sound cleared Morgan's mind.

  “The other detective, the girl,” snapped Hanagawa, sounding more like the agent he'd overheard in the alleyway.

  “How much trouble?” asked Parker.

  “Loads,” answered Hanagawa out of the corner of his mouth, keeping his eyes on Morgan. “They were all inside.”

  “How can you be sure?” she asked, pressing hard on a bright red cloth against Marcus' leg.

  “I'm sure.”

  “Shit,” she said lowly.

  Morgan's brain finally processed what Hanagawa had been asking him, and he turned around. Harwood wasn't behind him. He concentrated. The last time he remembered seeing her was just before t
he explosion; it had blinded him momentarily and when his eyes adjusted, he'd seen Parker. “I don't know,” he answered, feeling panicked. “She was with me a moment ago.”

  When he turned back to the feds, Hanagawa was eying him with an inscrutable look. “Perhaps you should find her,” he recommended slowly, before backing up a few steps and turning his attention to Agent Parker. “C'mon, Charlie...” he hissed.

  Deflated and disliking the feeling of having lost control of the situation, not to mention the sudden absence of his firearm and the sudden presence of the two people he wanted to see least, Morgan turned on his heel and began walking toward the building. “Harwood!” he called out. “Gina!”

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  Pointing her gun at the ground, she side-walked quickly toward the blaze, ducking behind the car before shimmying around the side of the fire. She could see shadows moving inside, but even at this distance the heat was incredible. Gina cursed under her breath and kept moving around the side of the building, hoping to find some survivors that had escaped, perhaps who had thrown themselves out just before the explosion. She threw cautious glances over her shoulder every few steps; there was a collection of corrugated metal huts behind her now, with any number of places for someone to hide. It made her uneasy, but she felt more certain about her path than events warranted, so she continued forward steadily.

  The heat of the fire was intense, and the side of the building had collapsed almost entirely, or been blown out by the explosion – Gina couldn't tell which. A few of the huts had begun to burn, too, and the tall white trees behind the lot were starting to smoke. This concerned her greatly, remembering the mostly dry overgrowth surrounding the trail in. If that caught, they would be stuck in the middle of a massive wildfire. Gina whipped out her phone and was about to dial 911 to report the fire, when a smaller internal wall fell inside the building. She stopped and stared, her phone forgotten in her hand.

  A charred mass of flesh writhed on one side of the room – whether moved by the heat or of its own volition, she couldn't tell. Arms and legs stuck out haphazardly from the pile, and a few melting faces were visible, jaws hanging open and black, swollen tongues growing out of the heads like hellish fungus. She became aware of a smell like cooked pork, and her stomach lurched, doubling her over. Behind them was a wet wall, gleaming red in the firelight, though how any liquid could have evaded evaporation in that heat was beyond her. Her eyes didn't want to focus on that wall; her vision would blur and try to escape to another target. It was moving. The liquid was moving upward, toward the ceiling, and the wall itself was distending like fabric with something pressing from behind.

  Then, the fabric ripped.

  Vaguely, she heard her name being called, but her eyes were locked on the thing emerging over the bubbling mass of flesh and bones. All she could discern were tendrils coiling out from it, liquid feathers, ashen and black – and eyes, horrible and ancient eyes that were light and darkness intertwined. They had no color, except age and anger. Endless anger.

  The eyes turned on her for a split second, and Gina's world collapsed.

  18

  Morgan saw her fall to her knees in the mud, staring slack-jawed at something inside the building. Breaking into a run, he followed her gaze and saw the bodies burning, flames licking at their bones. It smelled terrible.

  He reached her and crouched in front of her, blocking the sight of the building from view. “Hey,” he said, growing more concerned. Her face was a smooth mask of terror. “HEY,” he called louder, shaking her a little.

  Staring past him, her jaw worked for a moment. “I killed them,” she whispered, horrified.

  Morgan wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly. “What?”

  Her eyes landed on his and he shuddered at their blankness. “The O'Malleys. I killed them all. I did it. I remember. I remember everything.”

  Movement grabbed his attention, and he snapped his head to the side. Hanagawa was drifting close, dividing his attention evenly between them and the building. “We are in so much shit,” he mumbled, continuing forward.

  “Hey, back up,” commanded Morgan, standing between the agent and Harwood.

  He heard a click and looked back down. Harwood had the handgun in her mouth and had just clicked off the safety. She swiveled her eyes up to him, full of tears and sadness, and pulled the trigger.

  “NO!” screamed Morgan, throwing himself at her and involuntarily squeezing his eyes shut as the deafening gunshot cracked in the air. “Gina,” he said, forcing his eyes open and cradling her body.

  She stared back up, but her gaze was not the million mile stare of a corpse. Nor was it on him, but on the man who was suddenly kneeling next to him. Her gun was in his hands, and Morgan saw a gaping hole in his chest. Hanagawa looked surprised, and met Morgan's gaze, eyes wide. “Well... fuck,” he said, and fell over.

  Pushing shock away, Morgan jumped over to the man's body, pressing his fingers against the cold neck. It was getting much darker, but he could see the blackness of the hole in the man's chest staring up at him, and now he noticed his eyes were open and staring, too. His fingers found no pulse. Frowning, Morgan turned back to Gina, his mind hitching on how quickly Hanagawa had ceased to be.

  Gina began to cry, softly, and she buried her head in his side. Morgan clapped one hand to his forehead and stared blankly at the fire, running through the facts in his mind. Gina was alive, that was good. He wasn't sure how. Hanagawa had a giant hole through his chest from a point blank gunshot wound, delivered by his partner's gun; that was bad, and what's more, he had no way of explaining - even to himself - how the hell that had happened. There had been an explosion, caused by some unknown agent, that was now spreading into a forest fire, and had cost the lives of several people inside. The supposed federal agents were here, another mystery. Marcus Owens looked alive, but he had left him with Parker. Jake O'Malley's whereabouts were unknown. Morgan dug his fingernails into his scalp, hoping the pain would clarify something. All it clarified was that fingernails hurt when they dug into his scalp.

  “Oh, that's great.”

  He turned to see Parker staring at him with a frown. “I... I don't know what happened,” he stammered.

  She walked around and kicked Hanagawa's leg. It didn't move, of course. Morgan blinked at her callousness. “That's unfortunate,” she remarked, as though she'd been planning a picnic and it had begun to rain, hardly a fitting tone for a dead partner. Morgan stared at her. Her frown intensified when she saw Harwood. “She looked at it, didn't she?”

  He continued to stare, uncomprehendingly.

  “The Old One. She looked at it? Did it see her?”

  Morgan shook his head in confusion. “At what? See what?”

  Parker knelt beside him and pulled Harwood into a sitting position. Shocked, Morgan didn't fight the movement. “Gina,” she said softly. “Gina, it's a lie. Whatever it showed you is a lie.”

  Harwood continued to sob softly.

  “We need to get her to help. Can you get him?” she jerked her head toward the body.

  Morgan nodded mutely, almost relieved to have an order he could follow. Nothing else made sense. She pulled Harwood to her feet and half-carried her back toward the clearing. He heaved the light body over his shoulder and trudged behind her.

  Floodlights swept the area from a hefty-looking SUV, a new addition to the scene. Another man was bundling Marcus' still unmoving body (Morgan hoped he was just unconscious) into the back; his leg was now tightly wrapped with a white bandage. The vehicle's engine was a barely audible growl above the crackle and occasional crashes of the building fire behind him. “We need to report this fire,” Morgan said, forcing thoughts through the mucky sieve of his lagging mind. “And get Hanagawa to a hospital.”

  Parker was half-helping, half-throwing Gina into the backseat of the SUV, and threw him a sidelong glance. “Hospital won't help.”

  “And I already reported the fire,” commented the new man. He was young, very young – M
organ guessed he was perhaps twenty. His hair was razor-cut and his asymmetrical bangs fell into his face. He wore dark jeans and a t-shirt, and was peering with interest at the newcomers. Firelight glinted off his square-rimmed glasses. “What happened to Yori?” he asked, sounding less concerned than Morgan felt he should.

  “Not now, Chaz,” Parker commanded, climbing in after Harwood. “We need help. Make some calls – retract your report. We need to keep the locals away.”

  The red-headed kid winced. “Uh, I'll try.”

  “Try hard.” Parker's gaze was stone. “They'll be slaughtered if they show up. I don't know if we can get back before they get here.”

  Morgan was having a hard time keeping up. He was still stuck on the fact that a federal agent was dead; and something was wrong with Gina. 'I shouldn't have moved the body,' he reprimanded himself reproachfully, but he'd been worried about Harwood, and hadn't questioned. Nothing had gone right.

  Parker was staring at him through the open door. “Are you coming, Snyder? Or you gonna stand there all night and try explaining all this to the cops?”

  'We ARE the cops,' he wanted to answer, but he caught a glimpse of Harwood curled over beyond the blonde, and opened the front passenger door to get in. “Our rental is just down the way,” he started. “That'll raise more questions.”

  “I saw it on the drive in,” said the kid, speeding down the thin trail, and shaking his head, one hand on the steering wheel and one holding a small black cell phone to his ear. “This is so scratching the paint,” he muttered.

  “Just drop us off there and we'll drive it back,” offered Morgan, eager to be away.

  “No,” ordered Parker from the backseat. “Chaz, take his keys and follow us back. I'll drive us there in this.”