CHAPTER 34
Dianne sat with her legs crossed on the floor of the dark cargo hold of the delivery truck. Filled with hanging garment bags of dry-cleaned clothing, the space was hot and stuffy. She wiped sweat from her brow and welcomed the moment to liberate herself. “Are you ready to get out of here?”
Conserving her heat output, Nadine’s sister responded with a peep. “Yes.”
“Here we go.” She tapped her dagger and brought her awareness into the wealthy man who’d bought her. Her view materialized within his body in the passenger seat of the truck’s cabin. As she feigned awe and fear of the man, she found his resistance nonexistent and wondered if he recognized her presence. The more likely truth, she realized, was that his fragile true inner self cowered in a corner, trembling before her power. Arrogant men were superficial, and unless they benefited from supernatural support, they were easy to invade. She grunted to assure herself of control.
The driver responded. “Everything okay, boss?”
Dianne understood the Turkish words through her puppet’s ears and answered with the wealthy man’s voice in the same language. “Pull into the next side street.”
The driver gave a hurried response. “Boss?”
“The next side street.”
“Why? Are we being followed?”
Curious how the driver would react, Dianne fished for data. “It’s probably nothing. Just me being paranoid. But let’s see what happens.”
“Should I call for help?”
That’s what she was looking for. Help required a call, implying it wasn’t automatic, which meant she could make her move. “Let’s see what happens first.”
“You’re the boss.” The driver angled the truck into a side street, which was a dead end. He stopped and parked. “I hope you’re just paranoid. There’s no room to turn around.”
Dianne felt inside the wealthy man’s blazer for his silenced pistol, withdrew it, and glanced at the side mirror. “I may have been. We’ll know in a minute.”
The driver withdrew his pistol and looked at his side mirror. “What are we looking for?”
The empath aimed the weapon at the driver’s chest and pulled the trigger twice. As the body fell limp, she returned the pistol to the blazer and forced the wealthy man to step out of the truck. She moved his feet one after the other towards the rear doors and compelled him to roll the tumbler to the proper four digits she fished from his memory that sprang open the latch.
As the fraction of her essence remaining in the stuffy cargo hold sensed fresh air, she pounced on her final kill.
She buried the fury of her being into the man’s mind and ordered him to aim the pistol to his own temple. As she curled his finger, she heard a scream, and she recognized the voice as her brother’s.
“No!”
Keeping the silencer aimed at her victim, she turned and saw Josh running from the open door of the parked Fiat 500X. Confused, she held her breath and forced her inhabited puppet-man to do the same.
“Don’t kill him!” Josh covered the distance in impressive timing and appeared in front of her.
She addressed her brother through the wealthy trafficker’s voice. “What are you doing?”
“Liam has a plan. We need him alive.”
“Take the gun.” She handed him the butt.
He grabbed the weapon and stood like a statue.
“Can you tie him up?”
Nadine appeared in the alley. “No, but I can. I found handcuffs in a backpack in the back of the car.”
Dianne offered the wealthy man’s wrists behind him and felt the Iraqi woman tighten the metal bonds. “Help him into the back of the truck.” She accepted Josh and Nadine’s balancing and lifting as she forced the man to stagger upwards into the cargo hold.
He tripped, fell, and smacked his face against the flat floor. Dianne abandoned him before impact, and the flurry of Turkish curses issued from him without an audience that understood.
Her adrenaline pumping, the empath stood and pushed through the forest of clothes, urging her teenage companion to join her. “Come on.” When she reached daylight and the wealthy man, she pressed her heel against his back to keep him on the ground.
Nadine and her sister raced to an embrace.
Having to hasten the reunion, Dianne felt terrible cutting it short as she interrupted them in Aramaic. “You two need to get some clothes and tie this guy up better. Tie his feet together and tie his feet to his handcuffs.”
Nadine nodded. “What about the man up front?”
“I’ll take care of him, at least temporarily.” She strode to the passenger seat, gulped, and grabbed the bloody corpse. Pulling its arm, she dragged the driver’s body to the floorboard and left it there, below the view of anyone looking in the window. After closing the passenger door, she returned to the cargo hold.
Nadine and her sister were looping a long evening gown around the wealthy man’s ankles.
“I thought you’d be done with that already.”
Nadine nodded at the man’s head. “I needed to shut him up first.” A tight knot behind the man’s neck held a white dress shirt deep in his mouth.
“Good work. So, what’s Liam’s new plan?”
Nadine shrugged. “They talked in English. I don’t think Nana understood it well enough to translate.”
She looked to her brother. “Josh?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Liam say why to leave him alive?”
“He said it was to get information.”
Knowing the young hunter’s mind, Dianne suspected more. “Did he say anything about a trap, too, Josh?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe he said it, or he said he’d maybe set a trap?”
“He said maybe he’d set a trap.”
“Thank you, Josh.”
With her sister, Nadine jumped from the cargo hold’s lip. “He’s not going anywhere.”
Josh seemed impatient. “We need to go. Liam gave us an address to meet him.”
Dianne did the quick math on who was driving. “If he wants this rich trafficker, I assume that means he knows I need to drive his truck.”
“Yes. Nana drives the Fiat. You drive the truck. That’s what Liam wanted.”
Wearied from the telepathic overtime, Dianne wanted the crutch of modern technology. “I need a phone.”
“You can use mine.” Josh extended it.
“You’re sure?”
“We’re all using Nana’s in the car.”
“Thanks, Josh. Can you get me a charger, too?”
He pulled the cord from his pocket. “See if there’s a USB port in the truck.”
“I’m sure there will be. You’re a lifesaver.” She hugged him and then trotted to the driver’s seat.
Within the vehicle, she tasted the coppery smell of blood as she tried to ignore the corpse on the floor. She found the truck clumsy but manageable as she backed it into the main road in front of Nana, who had created a small gap in the traffic flow with the 500X.
Charging her brother’s phone, she turned on its speaker and dialed her grandmother.
“Yes, Dianne. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, can you hear me?”
“Yes, but I just hung up on Connor.”
Dianne drove forward, following the navigation program her brother had preset in his phone. “You wait, Nana. I’ll call him and we’ll arrange a three-way conference call. So, hang up now.”
As the line went dead, Dianne found the elder hunter’s number on her brother’s phone and dialed.
“Yes, Josh?”
“No, this is Dianne.”
“Lovely to hear your voice, young lady.”
Death was becoming familiar. “I killed the driver but spared the guy who bought me.”
“Good. Liam and I wanted that. There may be value in him yet.”
“I’ve got our meeting address. I’m taking the truck there now with my buyer bound inside it. Nana’s following me. GPS says I�
�ve got about twenty-five minutes.”
“Excellent. We’ll see you soon.”
“Can you dial Nana on conference call? Things are moving fast, and we all need to get back on the same page. People are going to start dying fast in the next day or two, and I want to make sure it’s the bad guys.”
CHAPTER 35
Edric unloaded the third Iraqi woman into the tiny jail cell. With one shackle cemented into the ground, the three new captives shared the tether to their pen, making them three-times as strong as the average woman tugging against his craftsmanship. He had to remember that the next time he opened the door.
He locked the door to their cell and trotted upstairs to his solitude, his sanctuary, and his dagger.
Standing with his blade in hand, he looked through the panoramic window overlooking the warehouse. In his thoughts, he commanded the master of the dagger to give him information, but he knew better than to utter such a challenge. The dagger’s spirit, his Master, ruled him with the power of longevity.
Instead of defying his domineering lord, he posed his demands as questions. “Have I not done your bidding as you commanded, Master? Have I not earned an explanation as to why you made me purchase these extra Iraqi women?”
The spirit responded in its rapid, wordless flash, and in an instant he knew.
One of them would be his sacrifice under July’s full moon, to become the source of his next fifty years of life. But the spirit kept hidden the identity of the precise Iraqi woman of the trio.
That meant one was crucial to him and the other two were kills for sport. “Excellent, Master. In two night’s time, I shall give you your Syrian tributes, and I shall have adequate jail space for all the Iraqi women.”
He wanted to ask which woman held the source of his life, but he opted for patience. The domineering spirit was fickle, and to provoke him would be foolish.
But he could instead provoke the women.
He returned to the warehouse floor and went to his tool bench. There, he found a special toy he’d reserved for his most insolent prisoners.
Unsure his lording spirit would allow its use against a possible sacrifice, he clutched the Taser and marched to the Iraqi women’s cell. He rushed through the latch and pulled open the door, revealing all three of them seated beside each other on the solitary cot. Their eyes grew enlarged at the sight of his nonlethal weapon.
He spoke in his best Arabic. “It’s time for answers.”
They cowered as he approached. Hoping to see a red aura arise around his chosen sacrifice, he became enraged at the taunting ignorance.
Grabbing the nearest by the forearm, he lifted her from the bed and made her stand before him. “Which one of you is from Nineveh?”
She shrugged. “We all are.”
“Wrong answer.” He released her and jammed the leads into her torso.
She shuddered and collapsed.
He grabbed the next and lifted her. “Perhaps one of you has special blood? Royal blood? Huh? Magic blood?”
The second woman shook her head. “We are all from the same village. None of us is special. We’re all just commoners.”
“Wrong answer.” He abused her as the first and then looked to the last. “Perhaps you have some insight.”
Defiantly, she stood and met his gaze. “I have nothing to add.”
“Nothing? You know of nothing that separates one of you from the others?”
“I do not.”
“Then I see no reason to punish you any differently.” He zapped her, and she fell to the concrete in convulsions. As he walked from their cell, he called out over his shoulder. “I know you can all hear me. I can do this many more times until I get the answer I want. Can you?”
Alone in his chambers that night, he lamented the complexity. In the past, his Master had kept it simple, but then again, the murders had been easier to hide.
The Assyrian genocide had made his first life-giving kill trivial, but his second sacrifice had already become dangerous, even while he’d hidden it within the raids on the Israeli settlements. Perhaps now his lording spirit was forcing his caution by making him hold his target under his roof until the time of her death.
It was a lot to manage. Three Syrian tributes, each two days from death. Three Iraqi captives, one a sacrifice and two for sport, or would his Master demand a different mix before the next killings?
He needed to be flexible. He needed to be ready.
Above all, he needed to avoid those who pursued him. The hunters had revealed themselves, and a month was a long time to hide.
But the city was large, and his warehouse was quiet and stocked. He had enough rice, bread, and basics to last the remainder of his killing cycle, and he saw no reason to leave his home until he possessed his next fifty years of life.
Except, of course, he needed offer the tributes as far from his home as he could take them, to keep the hunters off his back.
Then there was the messy issue of needing to scratch the itch.
With six women under his roof, was his Master testing him? Was his lording spirit strengthening him to resist the urge to kill, or was it a form of temptation for torment? With the capricious whims of the dagger’s spirit, the wraith never knew.
He needed to drive the van out and back one more time to offer the tributes. Other than that, he would transform the warehouse into a fortress.
He darted back up the stairs to his lounge and energized the monitors to the security cameras. The building’s owner had done an admiral setting up of the video feeds, and Edric admitted he’d been lazy in watching them. That ended tonight.
A quick check showed all cameras working under his control through their full sweeps.
Next, he checked his arsenal. Dragging his chests and cases from his bedroom to the lounge’s panoramic window, he counted three shotguns, two assault rifles, two pistols, and enough ammunition to kill two hunters ten times over. He visually verified the low wall below his panorama was made of concrete block thick enough to stop bullets.
With the high ground and the ideal overview of any battle, he set out to block the entry points.
Other than the vehicle door and loading docks, the warehouse contained seven entrances designed for humans. The wraith dedicated hours to verifying each door was latched and deadbolted shut and to blocking each one with stacks of leftover supplies and construction debris.
He wrapped coils of concertina wire behind the loading dock doors, stacking three layers of helixes. The razor wire would slow any trespasser enough to become fodder for Edric’s assault rifle from above.
The last defense–the one against a ramming vehicle–would be tedious to install and remove, but he committed to it.
The broken and scavenged forklift leaning against a nearby wall retained its wheels, and he found its motor working and its gears functional in the slowest mode. With the beast’s battery dying, he drove it towards the garage exit and stopped it short of the door. He left it in neutral, steady in its place.
He illuminated the floodlights outside the warehouse and checked the exterior cameras on his phone’s security application for intruders. Seeing none, he risked opening the garage.
He jumped into the driver’s seat of the van and turned it sharply on the concrete, pointing it towards the forklift. With a gentle nudge, he pushed the broken equipment forward and into the night. Lacking his hand at the steering wheel, the decrepit machine veered off his desired course, but it stayed close enough to serve its purpose.
The wraith got out of the van, set the forklift’s transmission into park, and withdrew its key. He backed the van into the warehouse and examined the gap.
An oncoming vehicle would be unable to ram his garage door without first having to accelerate the heavy machine blocking its way. Edric could drive a tight arc to get his van out and back in again, but he’d be limited to a crawl. His protection against ramming was in place.
He trotted back up the stairs and spread his full suit of body armor acro
ss the floor. He wanted to be ready to wear it with a moment’s notice, since his barricades were good but imperfect.
Reconsidering, he put on the vest as a precaution before laying down for the evening. With his Kalashnikov AK-47 rifle and infrared vision googles by his side, he risked a night of sleep.
CHAPTER 36
Liam examined the top of the parking garage and noticed his group was alone. The Kurga, the 500X, and their former occupants stood outside the trafficker’s truck. “You’re sure we’re safe here?”
His father sounded confident. “I wouldn’t call it safe, per se, but it’s ours to use without interference by the police, yes.
“Thanks to the order?”
Connor nodded.
The rules of engagement prevented Liam and his father from asking for help from outsiders, but the young hunter understood the curt nod’s meaning. The order would prevent law enforcement’s meddling and when needed could get them access to a parking garage that was closed for maintenance. “What do we do with the body?”
“Nothing yet, and perhaps nothing at all. Let’s see how this plays out before we address that.”
“Dianne needs to get him on the phone.”
The elder hunter managed to maintain the calmness Liam found elusive. “Let’s see what Dianne knows, first.”
“I’m standing right here, guys. What do you want to know?”
Liam started with the basics. “Okay. Does the buyer know where the wraith lives?”
“No. They only meet at the bar when there’s an auction.”
“Does he have any direct way to contact him?”
“That’s not how it works.”
“Well, you’ve been in the buyer’s head. Is there anything in there to help us find the wraith’s lair?”
She reflected. “There’s nothing direct. They only see each other at the auction. There’s no networking beyond that.”
Liam shifted towards his plan. “Can secondary resale be set up between bidders?”
“I guess so. When I’m in his head, I don’t learn everything all at once, but I got the sense it’s possible.”
Prophecy of Blood: A Supernatural Psychic Thriller (WRAITH HUNTER CHRONICLES Book 2) Page 20