Behind The Veil: A Gina Harwood Novel

by Martin, Indi

  Chaz nodded. Morgan sighed and handed the keys over. The SUV bumped and jumped down the trail and roared onto the paved highway, pulling over smoothly behind the rental. Chaz jumped out and ran to the car, starting it up with a much tamer meow compared to the SUV's roar. Parker took a moment to lay Gina down on the backseat carefully before sliding out of the backseat and jogging around to the front. Morgan twisted around to look at his partner; she was still wide-eyed and staring, her lips moving quickly in a wordless monologue. He winced and turned back around.

  “What the hell is going on here?” he asked, tiredly.

  Parker sped down the road, checking her rear view mirror to see Chaz following behind. “What exactly do you want to know?” she asked carefully.

  “You aren't FBI.” It wasn't exactly a question.

  “No, we aren't FBI,” she verified.

  “What organization are you with?”

  “Later,” she requested.

  Morgan considered this and decided on a different approach. “You don't seem real broken up about your partner.”

  Parker glanced at him. “You don't understand,” she said.

  “Then help me understand.”

  She waved vaguely toward his shoulder. “Didn't you just carry a body to the car? One with a point-blank gunshot wound through his chest?” she sounded genuinely curious.

  “Ye-es,” Morgan replied slowly, wondering what she was getting at.

  “Odd,” she said, looking mock-thoughtful. “Shouldn't you just be covered in blood?”

  Morgan looked down at himself, startled. Sure enough, his shirt was dry and his hands were clean. “Wha..?” he voiced through a tight voice. “What is this? Why isn't he bleeding?”

  “Well...” she stopped and frowned. “You know, that'll take too long to explain, too. If there is a later, I'll explain everything. Why don't you just concentrate on why you came and what JUST happened, huh?”

  “How did you get here so fast?”

  Frowning, she waved at him and didn't answer.

  Frustrated and feeling very out of his element, Morgan let loose a mangled mini-scream. “I don't understand!” he panted. “What's wrong with Gina?”

  Parker nodded and smiled a tiny smile. “There you go. Gina was able to see the black one. That means I was right about her. Unfortunately, I think that wasn't a positive thing in this case.” Her smile vanished and she looked sideways at Morgan again. “You didn't see it. That also means I was right about you.”

  Bristling at the implied insult, Morgan turned to look at his partner again. Her status was unchanged. “Will she be okay?”

  “I think so?” He didn't like the upturn at the end of her sentence. “I can't help her though. We can kill two birds with one stone, get her to someone who can, and find out where It went.”

  Great, he thought to himself. More cliches. “Wait, right about what?” he asked belatedly.

  She laughed, a melodious and slightly callous laugh. “Come off it, you were meant to overhear us. Who talks like that, in an alleyway? Although I still didn't think you'd come.”

  He bristled again, this time at the feeling that everything they had done had been manipulated somehow. “What is It?”

  She nodded her approval at his question. “Good, there you go. About time. That, we think, was the Unspeakable.” Parker paused for a moment to let the importance of the name sink in, but Morgan simply blinked at her; it wasn't anything he recognized. She sighed and continued. “Look, there's a lot of things going on that you aren't aware of. Not just you, but everyone like you. I mean, everyone. No one.” She sighed again and grimaced. “Yori usually handles this shit. I'm no good at it.”

  Morgan waited patiently for her to continue.

  “You know all the stories you heard as a kid? They're mostly true. Well, no, I mean, they're totally wrong, but the ideas are there. Ghosts, boogeymen, vampires, spooky things that go bump in the night, are you getting any of this? Is this making any sense?” She glared at him like his incomprehension was entirely his fault.

  “No,” he said, gruffly. “I have no idea what you're talking about. And you keep contradicting yourself.”

  She let out a blast of air and depressed the accelerator further. There were no lights on this stretch of road, only the flood-lamps and brights on the truck itself. Morgan pressed back into his chair and reached for his seat belt. “That thing is an old, old being. If you were religious, you might call it a demonic being. A black one. It's followers called it the Unspeakable. We're not certain how or why It was contained, honestly, but that was some powerful shit to contain It. Don't know that humans could have done it, don't know that we can do it again. You were supposed to stop Jake before he went in there,” she finished, glaring at him again.

  “Yeah, okay, got it, mind maybe easing up on the speed a bit?” The nighttime scenery was whizzing by, and Morgan was afraid what he'd see if he leaned over and glanced at the speedometer.

  She did as asked and let off the accelerator, just a little. “No, you don't,” she sighed, clucking her tongue against her palate.

  “What does a crazy hippie commune in the sixties have to do with why the O'Malley family was brutally murdered?”

  “Yes! Okay,” she sounded excited. Morgan eyed her warily. “I can answer that, sort of. I don't know why the commune started here. Bad luck, I guess. The whole river's bad luck. It isn't the trees that stain the water, you know.” She eyed him meaningfully, and he nodded just to keep her talking. He was starting to doubt her sanity. “Maybe the Unspeakable drew them to this place, knew It could use them to get free. But the story matches what we'd expect to see – more and more human sacrifices. Once It received a certain number, a certain quality, of human sacrifices, then all that was left was the martyrdom of the tribe itself. Every last member of the tribe would have to sacrifice themselves for It's freedom.” She smiled slightly. “It's totally textbook. I never thought I'd see it. These kind of things are a perfect storm.” Her smile vanished. “Of course, now that It's free, It could severely upset our balance, so that's unfortunate.”

  Morgan tried to keep his face carefully neutral, mentally filing away her words for his reports later. He wanted to keep her talking. “So, then, what are you going to do?”

  “What am I going to do?” Parker looked scandalized. “No, sir. What are we going to do. We. This is your problem now, too.”

  He took a deep breath and tried to begin formulating a plan to get Harwood and himself out of the company of these psychos as soon as possible.

  “You were supposed to stop Jake before he went in,” she repeated, accusingly.

  “Well, maybe if somebody hadn't just sent us off on our own and had told us what the hell was going on, we would have. Couldn't hurt now, either. You haven't told me anything useful.” Morgan was straining to keep the rising anger out of his voice, but it shone through despite his efforts.

  “Yes, well, that's probably true,” she admitted. “But you weren't supposed to be here at all, and honestly, I didn't expect we'd be so late to the party,” she said, sounding chagrined.

  Harwood whimpered in the backseat. “What exactly is wrong with her? Telling me she looked at something I couldn't see doesn't help me know what to do here,” he asked, craning his neck around to look at his partner again.

  “I don't know what It showed her, specifically. Could be anything. But this class of being is very powerful, so It might have fried her.” She shrugged. “They can only show what's plausible, but it's almost always an outright lie. Just a plausible one.”

  “She said she killed the O'Malleys,” he said, slowly. “Of course, that's impossible,” he added, quickly, with a glance at the driver.

  Parker dismissed him with a shake of her head, causing a few more strands of her hair to fly down into her face. She blew them away. “That's good information, then. No, she didn't have anything to do with it,” she confirmed. “It just showed her that she could have, if circumstances had been different.”
/>
  Morgan considered this. “It said she was a killer?” he asked, incredulously, forgetting for a moment that he didn't believe any of the ludicrous story.

  The toothy grin that Parker showed him had no humor in it. “Aren't we all?”

  He blinked. “No,” he answered simply.

  She shrugged. “Whatever you think, then.”

  Silence sat between them, a wall of non-sound that built up further and further, broken only by soft sounds from the backseat. It unnerved Morgan, and he racked his mind for coherent questions. “Where are we going? This isn't the direction of town.”

  Parker didn't answer vocally; she pointed toward a small GPS device on the dashboard. It was tracking their location towards a big green dot to the southeast.

  “What's there?”

  A small sigh. “Help.”

  Giving up the conversation, which was evidently over, Morgan tried to sit comfortably and waited for the journey to be over.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  'Help' turned out to be a small, red barn in the middle of a field well-tended by grazing cattle. Most of the cows stood still, and Morgan guessed they were asleep; a few rustling bovine mooed at them as they turned down the gravel road and bumped over the cattle-grate. He looked nervously at Parker, but she wasn't paying any attention to him whatsoever. Leaning over to look out the side mirror, he saw their rental car pull in behind them and extinguish the lights.

  “Let's go,” commanded Parker, turning off the truck and sliding out the driver's side door without so much as a glance at Morgan.

  Morgan did as ordered and stepped out of the car, jogging around to open Harwood's door. Parker was already pulling her out from the other side. “I got her,” she said disapprovingly. “You get Yori, and tell Chaz to get the leg-wound.”

  He frowned. “This. Is. A. Barn,” he observed through gritted teeth. “She needs a hospital, and so does 'leg-wound,' whose name is Marcus Owens.”

  Parker ignored him and started walking Harwood toward the barn.

  He let out a huff of annoyance and turned around to find Chaz standing behind him, scratching an ear. “She takes some getting used to,” he said, sympathetically. “I'm Chaz.” He didn't offer his hand for the greeting, but opened the back hatch and busied himself getting Marcus's still-limp body out. His leg had bled entirely through the bandages and left some puddled on the upholstery.

  “Chaz,” Morgan repeated, staring at Hanagawa's body. It still had the giant gunshot wound, charred on the edges, right through the chest. But just as Parker had pointed out, there was no blood whatsoever. He shivered, not wanting to touch the corpse.

  “Yeah, it's short for Charles, but I hate Charles.” Chaz hefted Marcus over his shoulder, and moved out of Morgan's way. “I used to go by Charlie, but well...” he looked down, scrunching his nose to reseat his glasses.

  “Already taken, huh?” Morgan grimaced and grabbed the body by the clothes, careful not to touch the skin or the wound. He wanted this over and done with, and to be as far away from these people as possible. Though Chaz seemed normal enough.

  “Yup.” Chaz turned and started walking toward the barn. “She started calling me Chaz and it caught on. I guess it's better than it could be,” he sighed.

  “You could have a hole in your chest and not bleed from it,” remarked Morgan.

  “Exactly,” said Chaz, brightening considerably and continuing forward. “It could always be worse.”

  Morgan grumbled under his breath and followed into the barn.

  Hay was everywhere, as he'd expect. There was an obviously well-fed tomcat attentively watching their entry from three-quarters up a wooden-slatted ladder that led to the loft, where more hay spilled over the edges. Some of it was baled, but most of it seemed left loose. The first thing that struck Morgan about the barn was how well-lit it was; soft white light poured from light fixtures along the ceilings and underneath every ledge. The second thing that struck him was the free-standing elevator that jutted out of the concrete ground at the far end of the barn. Parker was wrangling Harwood into it, but she was fighting it, threatening to writhe out of her grasp, trying to run. Morgan saw Parker pull his partner in with one last lunge and the doors closed.

  “Hey, wait!” he said, dropping the body – which landed with a sickening crunch - and running toward the elevator, which was descending into the floor. “Stop!”

  A slab of normal-looking concrete slid over the elevator shaft smoothly. Morgan didn't dwell on this engineering marvel; he whirled around on Chaz.

  Chaz was looking at Hanagawa's crumpled body, and let out a long, low whistle. “Man, is he gonna be pissed at you,” he said with a half-smile.

  Morgan crossed the barn in a few long strides, and Chaz backed up, wide-eyed. “WHERE DID SHE GO?” he nearly screamed, the nonsense happenings of the last hour finally catching up to him.

  Chaz yelped and tried to put his hands out, but he was still carrying Marcus and that proved difficult to do. “Whoa, guy, whoa! It'll come back up in just a sec!” He nodded over Morgan's shoulder. “Look! See? It's coming back! Christ on a cracker!”

  Morgan backed off and turned to see the concrete slab moving away again. He walked up to the elevator as it rose and got in. Chaz hurried over and wedged himself and Marcus, who was making a strange, high-pitched noise now, into the compartment. “You gonna get Yori?” he asked, warily.

  “Get me to Parker,” he snarled as an answer.

  Chaz shook his head, but shifted Marcus' weight to his right shoulder and reached out to enter a complex combination on the keypad. Apparently slowly coming around, Marcus keened again.

  “Welcome to the party,” muttered Morgan as the doors closed and the elevator descended.

  ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼

  Silver eyes were all Gina could see; they seemed to fill her vision entirely. A soft, crooning voice massaged her ears, and her mind was completely calm. Those eyes were incredibly beautiful, the man's voice was like silk whispering against her skin, and she sighed dreamily.

  'You're okay now.' His voice slid up next to her thoughts and caressed them.

  'What is this?' she thought languidly, wanting to hear the unusual tenor of his voice again.

  'Nice. You are a natural,' it said, and the silver eyes filling her vision gleamed with curiosity.

  Confusion ran through her, unexpressed in words. He seemed to understand.

  'You can read people, their feelings, maybe their thoughts,' she heard in a reassuring croon. 'With some practice, you'll be able to project them, too. But don't overdo it, especially now, at the beginning,' it warned, and images of her clapping her hands over hear ears, bleeding, screaming flashed through her head. Her eyes widened. 'You need practice first. They'll help you.'

  'How do I do it?' she formed the question in her mind, focusing on it singularly, amplifying it in her head.

  'Whoa, whoa, like that, but not so loud.' He smiled. 'Careful with that, Gina Harwood. That can do lasting damage if you're too heavy.'

  She had no answer to that.

  “Okay,” he said, aloud, and broke eye contact. “Easy.”

  Gina blinked and sat up straighter, startled. The man drew away from her in an inhumanly smooth motion, hardly seeming to move at all before he was ten feet away. He smiled vaguely at her, almost apologetically, and kept his eyes lowered. He was pale, with short, tousled brown hair, and a thin, lanky build under a white lab coat.

  Agent Parker swooped in front of her and crouched down. “Hey,” she said softly. “What's your name?”

  Confused, she tried to piece together what had happened. The last thing she remembered was hearing a scream, and then they were moving forward through the mud, at least she was, she couldn't see Snyder... then those eyes. She rubbed her temples as sharp pain spiked behind them. “Detective Gina Harwood,” she replied tiredly. “You know that.”

  “Good,” said Parker, relieved. “Who am I?”

  Gina looked around. They were in some sort of compute
r lab or something; there were monitors everywhere. Maybe a hospital? She could see someone behind Parker on a metal table, with two other lab-coated men working quickly. “Charlie Parker. Not FBI, but you say you are.”

  Parker laughed. “True.” Her smile faded. “What's the last thing you remember?”

  “Where's Snyder? We were going after the Camry, down the... Snyder was with me...”

  “Over here,” she heard him call out, gruffly. Gina swiveled around to see him standing, arms crossed, against a wall. His tone was measured, but she could tell he was seething with rage. “Still with ya.” He smiled a tight smile at her, but then stared off to his left.

  “Where are we?” Gina pushed off the ground, but faltered and fell back down to one knee. “Holy shit, my head is splitting.”

  “Yeah,” drawled Parker slowly. “Here.” She handed Gina a few tablets and some water.

  “Wait, what is that?” snapped Snyder, walking over.

  Parker looked up at him with a blank expression. “Water. Ibuprofen. She has a headache,” Parker's voice was flat. She looked back at Gina and nodded for her to take them.

  Thankful, she popped the tablets in her mouth and drained the glass.

  Snyder crossed over to her and took her elbow in one hand, helping to lift her up. “We're in a barn,” he advised.

  Squinting against the light, Gina barked a short laugh. “Doesn't look much like a barn to me.”

  “Me neither,” he replied, cryptically.

  “Who was that man, the one talking to me before?” she asked, directing the question at Parker. Snyder's hand, still on her elbow, jerked slightly.

  “You two and your questions,” sighed Parker, but she jerked her head and the silver-eyed man glided back over.

  He bowed slightly to her. “My name is Victor,” he announced, with a thick accent that Gina couldn't place. “V-rep for the Unit.” Gina saw Parker give a quick shake of her head, and Victor looked at her questioningly, but kept silent. His eyes met hers again momentarily, and Gina felt her body soften under the gaze, her mind searching through the pain for the connection that was there before. He looked away. Realizing she was breathing faster, she took a deep breath, and stared, confused, at the man.