“I thought you said you had no intention of killing me,” I said.
Smith laughed. “That grave wasn’t intended for you. But there’s plenty of room for you to join your partner. Now turn around!”
“You son of a bitch,” I said through clenched teeth. I took a step forward. “If you’re going to execute me, you’ll have to face me when you do it.”
A blinding bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree, splitting it in two. Another flash lit up the sky with a series of thunderclaps. Then I saw them, three sets of glowing amber eyes approaching us with a steady bounce. I took a step backwards toward the basement doors. “You, uh… you might want to think about heading back inside.”
“Enough talk, asshole. It makes no difference to me where you die as long as—”
Smith swallowed his words when the large beast jumped over him and landed between us. Was I dreaming again? Was it real? If I wasn’t having another nightmare, this was the first time I had actually seen the chimera with my own eyes, and it was twice as large as what I’d seen in my dream. Its cobra-headed tail struck at the air in front of me. Then it pulled back and flattened its neck out in its signature stance, ready to strike again. The chimera spread its large scaly wings and glared at Robert Smith with its three primary heads: lion, dragon, and ram.
The thunderous roars of the lion and dragon, and the high-pitched bray of the ram, froze my body in fear. The tail hissed and struck at the air in front of me again.
“Shoot it!” I yelled. “Shoot the goddamned thing!”
The creature’s huge body blocked my view of Smith. The lion head roared. A strong gust of wind knocked me off-balance. Lightning scattered like an intricate web across the sky. The beast stood on its hind legs and roared, brayed, and hissed. Smith screamed as he fired three bullets at the chimera. It attacked him with a strong swipe of its left paw, sending him flying through the air several yards and into a muddy puddle. He struggled to get up, and slipped. The chimera pounced. Smith screamed as the beast’s claws sliced through his back, ripping part of his tunic away. The lion head bit into Smith’s left leg, triggering even more panicked screams.
With its jaws clenched over the man’s leg, the chimera slung him towards me and into a tree. Bones cracked as his body bounced off the tree and fell heavily to the ground. Smith lay on his stomach, blood trickling from his mouth. He gasped for air and reached out to me with his bullet-pierced hand. He opened his mouth but could not vocalize any words. As I inched backwards towards the basement door, the large beast turned towards me and growled. I stopped, shifted my eyes back to Robert Smith, and then searched the area for my gun.
The chimera moved towards its injured prey, the dragon head keeping its gaze on me. With its large right paw, it turned Smith over on his back, and then ripped into his face. Both the dragon and lion heads ducked down to feed. The chimera tore the man apart with razor sharp teeth. The beast growled and roared as it feasted on Robert Smith’s body, as if the separate heads were fighting for chunks of flesh.
A flash of lightning revealed the location of my gun. My brain screamed orders for me to rush towards the weapon while the monster was distracted with its meal, but the muscles in my body refused their commands. I couldn’t move. An explosion of thunder jarred me out of my suspension and I scurried towards the gun. The cobra-tail hissed, warning the chimera of my movement. The massive creature swung around and rushed towards me.
I grabbed the gun, slid backwards, and squeezed the trigger.
Click-click-click.
“Oh, crap!”
I tried to cock the gun again, but the slider had jammed and wouldn’t eject the empty casing. The chimera stood above me. Blood, drool, and pieces of torn flesh dripped onto me from the lion’s mouth. I dropped the gun as the chimera’s lion head growled, lowering its mouth to within three inches of my face.
The rain slowed to a light drizzle.
The chimera roared, brayed and hissed. It knocked me on my back and ripped into my left shoulder with its right claws. I screamed in pain and waited for the creature to sink its teeth into me and tear my body to shreds.
I closed my eyes and muttered, “God help me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Bloodline
The roars and bray of the chimera grew faint. The rolling thunder dissipated in the distance, and the rain stopped. When I opened my eyes, the creature had gone. The moon and stars filtered through the dark clouds that had floated away with the travelling storm. I grabbed my pistol and held my bleeding shoulder as I staggered towards Robert Smith’s bloody remains.
In just the short time that the chimera feasted on the man, only his mangled torso remained; it barely resembled anything human. The body had no arms, no legs, and no head. I looked in the direction that I had last seen the chimera. Why did it kill him and spare me?
I sat down in the driver’s seat of the car and disassembled my gun to find a bullet jammed in the feed ramp. I also checked how many rounds I had left. Six bullets. After clearing the jam, I reassembled the pistol and tossed it onto the passenger seat.
I then checked my surroundings. I had no idea where Smith had taken me. And where were my keys? I switched on the interior lights and checked the ignition, the visor, the center console, and the glove compartment. Nothing. No keys. One thing I did notice was that son of a bitch had busted my police radio.
I looked back at what was left of Robert Smith’s body. Maybe he had a cell phone on him. Another sharp pain in my shoulder caused me to wince. My back also throbbed from the knife wound. I needed medical attention or I was going to bleed to death.
I found the trunk release, pulled on the trigger, and then eased my way to the back of the car. I used the car for support as I stepped around to the trunk. I pulled open a yellow plastic first aid kit and rummaged through the contents. I found a banner with the words CALL POLICE printed on it and tossed it aside. I removed some gauze dressing pads, a roll of first aid tape, trauma dressing pads, fabric bandages, antiseptic pads and a small packet of ibuprofen tablets. All I needed was a cold beer to wash them down. I opened the package and tossed the pills in my mouth, gagging on one of them as it passed down my dry throat.
I winced as I removed my blood-stained shirt. I rubbed an antiseptic wipe over the knife wound on my back as well as I could, flinching and dropping the pad as soon as it made contact with the wound. Screw it. I just wrapped gauze around my chest and back, and poked it with a couple of safety pins to secure it in place. I also applied gauze and fabric bandages on both the entry and exit wounds of my right shoulder, where Satan’s little helper had shot me, and secured the dressing in place with first aid tape.
The chimera had actually spared me with the wound on my left shoulder. The claw marks weren’t as deep as I’d feared, but they still hurt like hell. I pressed the trauma dressing pad onto my shoulder to help stop the bleeding, and then secured the pad with tape. I could only imagine how ridiculous I looked with my untrained medical treatment. My wounds still ached and throbbed, but at least I’d stopped my bleeding. I just needed to find the damn car keys.
As I approached Robert Smith’s body, I stopped and then stared toward the open grave. I didn’t want to believe it, but Smith had suggested Detective Riley was dead. I alternated glances from the grave and my captor’s mangled torso and severed lower half. I needed a phone, so I avoided the grave and stepped towards Smith’s remains. He wore a pair of ripped jeans underneath the tattered bloodstained tunic. I found a phone in his left pocket, but the screen was shattered; the chimera had bitten right through it.
“Damn it!”
I threw the phone against a nearby tree, and immediately regretted it when the pain in my arm and shoulder caused me to double over. I took several quick, labored breaths, waiting for the pain to subside, and gazed at the stairwell leading down to the underground room. Once I’d recovered from my self-inflicted pain, I headed down the wet steps, entered the room and scanned the area. Four daggers lay scattered acro
ss the floor to my right, near the overturned metal table. I searched the area around the table, but didn’t find the keys.
I searched the entire room for several minutes, to no avail, and then sat on the floor for a few minutes, as the candles burned and flickered around me. The only other place I had not checked was the grave. I sighed and forced myself to leave the sacrificial chamber to check the grave.
Guilt pierced my soul as I stared down at the body of Detective Steven Riley, lying in the shallow grave. His eyes stared right through me. Smith had sliced open Riley’s neck just above the knot of his pink tie. I’d never cared much for the man, but seeing his lifeless body in that open grave angered me. He was still a cop. I glanced back at his murderer’s corpse, lowered my brow, and clenched my jaw. I regretted not having killed the bastard myself.
I pressed my lips together in despair and stared at the clear star-and-moonlit sky. With a deep breath through my nose, I bowed my head and stumbled through a short prayer. I asked for God to welcome Riley up in heaven, and then I lowered myself into the grave. I checked Riley’s clothes for keys, a phone, or anything useful, but found nothing.
After crawling out of the grave and focusing on the car, I considered trying to hotwire it, but even if I had managed to get the engine running, without the transponder on the key, the Charger’s anti-theft system would have simply shut the engine off again.
There was a grass and dirt trail leading away from the area and into the forest. Without a working vehicle, my only option was to hike out of there, but I had to do something about Riley’s body first. I didn’t want to leave it for coyotes. I glanced over at Smith’s remains, and decided I couldn’t care less about what happened to that bastard’s rotting corpse. The coyotes could do what they wanted with the chimera’s leftovers.
Pulling Riley out of the grave was a struggle, but I still managed to get him out and to slowly drag his body down the stairwell into the basement room. I laid my partner on the ground and rested his hands on his chest. Then I ran my fingers over his eyes and closed them.
“I’ll make sure you get a proper police burial, brother. I promise you that.”
†
At least an hour had passed while hiking down the makeshift dirt road through the dense woods. I listened carefully for any indication of civilization, but all I heard was my own footsteps and crickets chirping their mating calls. The road led somewhere, and I needed to get there fast, but I lacked the energy to run, and the only available light came from the moon and stars above. As long as I followed the road, I knew it would eventually lead me out of the woods. So I just kept walking, and tried to avoid thoughts of distance or time… or Saint Hedwig.
I hiked shirtless, bandaged, and tired, desperate to find a phone. Neither the chief nor Maria would believe my story, but someone had to retrieve Riley’s body, and they both needed to know about the threat against Cody.
When I finally made it out of the woods, two horses snorted and whinnied, running back and forth inside a fenced field, as if excited about my arrival. The dirt and grass trail led from the forest to a gravel road near the fence. Faint lights from a house a few hundred yards away gave me hope that I would soon get the help I needed. It took five minutes to reach the property. Then I stopped, when I realized where I was. Robert Smith’s home.
I approached the front porch with caution. I cringed when a loose board creaked as my foot made contact with it. I kept to the right of the door and knocked on it several times. After a minute without a response, I knocked harder and announced, “Police Department! Open up!”
I moved swiftly to the other side of the door, checking for movement inside. The closed blinds blocked my view of everything but the flickering of a light.
“Police!” I knocked again. “Open up!”
As I reached for the door handle, the door cracked open on its own. My heart raced as I inched myself closer to the doorway. I pushed the door open with my foot and swung my body around to the other side, my gun drawn and ready. I poked my head inside the house and saw the dim light of a television, and several candles burning in the living room.
I swallowed a gulp of anticipation and stepped into the house. The title of The Lion King looped on the television screen in the living room. Dark streaks distorted the image. As I moved further into the home, I discovered a woman sitting on the couch, and a child lying on the floor in front of the television. “Mrs. Smith?”
I reached under a lampshade on the end table next to the couch and flipped the switch. “Oh, no.”
Dana Smith sat on the couch, her head tilted back, her neck slit open. There were empty sockets where her eyes should have been. A large kitchen knife protruded from her chest. Blood covered her neck and blouse.
In front of the television, Austin lay face down in a pool of blood, a large gaping wound in the middle of his back. Popcorn painted in blood littered the floor around the boy. An orange plastic bowl rested in front of the blood-spattered television. It still had popcorn with dots of blood inside it, along with the casing of a red shotgun shell.
My jaw clenched, and blood soared through my veins. “That son of a bitch.” The deaths of Robert Smith’s wife and child infuriated me. I could have stopped the sick bastard. I knew he was… “Damn it!”
I glanced back at Austin’s body. Cody! I rushed to the kitchen, grabbed the phone on the wall next to the refrigerator, and dialed 9-1-1.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
“This is Detective Aaron Sanders, badge number seven-five-two-five-three. I need to report an officer down and a double-homicide.”
“Do you need backup or medical assistance?”
“Negative. The suspect is deceased. I’m the only one breathing here. I’m banged up a bit, but I’ll live. Just get a bus and the M.E. over here. I also need you to patch me through to Chief Hernandez.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll patch you through and dispatch assistance as soon as we disconnect.”
“Thank you.”
I waited for the operator to connect me to the chief’s cell phone. After a series of clicks and a few rings, Chief Hernandez answered the phone.
“David, this is Aaron. I’m at the Smith residence and—”
“What the hell are you doing there at three in the morning?”
“Smith’s wife and kid are dead. He killed them.” I glanced over at the bodies in the living room and waited for the chief’s ranting, but it never came. However, his heavy breathing over the phone suggested impatience. “Did you hear what I just said? Robert Smith killed his family.”
“I heard you.” More silence. And then he asked. “Where is he?”
“He’s dead,” I said and rubbed my hand through my hair.
“Let me guess. You shot him.”
I pulled a chair back from the kitchen table and sat down. “No, I didn’t kill him. That asshole followed me to my house, knocked me out. Next thing I know I’m tied up in a basement somewhere.”
“He abducted you? You okay?”
“I’m pretty banged up, but I’ll be all right.” I sighed and then revealed, “He killed Riley.”
“What?” Chief Hernandez stressed in disbelief. “Estas seguro?”
“I’m positive. I saw his body after—”
“What happened?”
I explained my confrontation with Robert Smith in the basement, but I wasn’t sure how to explain the rest without sounding like a total nut job. I left out the part about the chimera. “When we got out of the basement, we got into another altercation, but then something happened.”
“Meaning?”
“We were… um… We were attacked by a wild animal… a big one.”
“Uh-huh.” I could sense the chief’s disbelief already, but he asked, “Are we talking about the same animal that killed those kids and Cody Sumner’s parents?”
I wanted to avoid any confrontation, so I chose my words carefully. “It was dark, so I’m not exactly sure what attacked us.” I lied about what I�
�d seen, leaving out certain details. “All I know is that the animal was big and aggressive. It could have been a cougar… or even another jaguar. I just don’t know, but it made one hell of a mess out of Robert Smith. It also tore up my shoulder.”
“So, you did see it.”
“No, I already told you that—”
“Cut the bullshit, Aaron. What did you see? What attacked you?”
“I think Cody is in danger.” I quickly changed the subject. “When Smith had me in the basement, he told me that someone was going to kill Cody. The guy was all dressed up in ceremonial robes. He had candles burning all inside the basement. He believed Cody has some sort of curse and needs to die or else… well, you know, the world’s going to end or some crap like that.”
“You’re avoiding my question,” the chief said. “What—?”
“Are you not hearing me?” I raised my voice. “Riley is dead, and Cody is in imminent danger. And your reaction is to give me the third degree? I need deputies sent to Saint Hedwig to check it out. Smith was in some crazy ass satanic cult, and I believe Hadley is involved.”
“And what in hell makes you believe that?”
“Damn it, David! I don’t have time for this shit. I just need you to trust me.”
The chief’s silence told me plenty. I knew I would face a butt chewing for insubordination, suspension, or even lose my badge, but I didn’t care anymore. I knew what I needed to do. “Fine. Don’t believe me. I’ll check it out myself.”
“No, you’re going to stay put. I’ll be there in an hour. We can talk about this in person. You just wait for CSU to arrive.”
“I’m not going to sit here and—”
“I’m hanging up, Aaron. Do not leave the crime scene. And you’d better be there when I arrive. ¿Entiendes?”
Devil's Nightmare (Devil's Nightmare, Book 1) Page 30