Günn never had an appetite in spite of her stomach’s protestations to feed it. She manages to squeeze down a few bites of potato without gagging.
Agent Quatro turns to Günn. “And you, detective, anything to add? You do seem a bit distracted.”
“Yeah, sorry, this has been an exceedingly strange day.”
“Strange is the new normal,” Quatro says. Both detectives agree. Red Feather chuckles around the food in his mouth. The food is too good to lose one’s appetite, as unsavory as the topics may be.
Günn pushes her plate away and sips on her Sprite. “I get a feeling that Karma Devi is lying. Or at least holding something back,” Günn says.
“Why do you say so?” Quatro responds, cocking her head to the side.
“Just a hunch,” Günn shrugs, avoiding Quatro’s penetrating gaze.
“But her hunches are rarely wrong.” Red Feather chimes in, mouthful of beef, appetite restored by the perfectly marinated and grilled meat.
“I’m the same. So how do your hunches work? Tingles? Hives?” Quatro asks, eyes twinkling.
“Actually,” Günn looks embarrassed, “I can smell them. Lies, I mean.”
“Hmm.” Quatro doesn’t look even the slightest bit surprised. “That must be very useful. I would think in relationships also.”
“Not so much. Sometimes it’s better to not know every little thing. I can even smell white lies, but they’re a little sweeter.”
“So tell me, detective, why do you have such a problem believing in the werewolf and vampire when you yourself are a bit supernatural?”
Günn fidgets, not having known she could be even more uncomfortable.
“My nose is not admissible in court, ma’am. It’s just a guide. And if the person believes the lie, then I can’t smell it. Case in point: The DJ. He didn’t believe he stabbed her so I didn’t smell it.” Günn looks from Red Feather to Quatro. “Vampires, werewolves, the blob? That’s the stuff of bad horror movies. There’s going to be another explanation for all this.”
“And if there’s not?” Quatro persists.
“There has to be.” Günn’s blind insistence bothers her lunchmates.
Quatro smiles. “I have a gift, too.” She raises her hands, palms up. “I touch and I get stories.”
Red Feather and Günn understand her eyes-closed handshake now.
“That must be difficult,” Red Feather says, not even wanting to imagine what it would feel like. He’d never touch anyone again.
“Not when I embrace it as my power.” Quatro looks neither sad nor lonely. “All the lives I’ve saved, the criminals I’ve taken down with these two at my sides. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Quatro looks at Günn. “Maybe you’d be interested in joining my team when then is over?”
Günn is flattered. “Appreciate the offer, but I don’t really know what these next months will bring.”
Red Feather looks puzzled. Why wouldn’t she know?
“And speaking of ‘powers,’” Günn does air quotes, “Red Feather here has dreams that solved cases. Mostly cold ones.”
Interest piqued, Quatro forgets all about her lamb and looks at Red Feather with her intuitive eyes. “Tell me your favorite solve.”
Red Feather considers. “Last year I dreamed I was investigating the disappearance of four girls. Günn and I were driving along this twisty lane lined with apple trees to a run-down hotel near Victorville, ‘bout an hour from here. The last place the girls used their credit cards. In the dream Günn and I go there, the owner of the B&B is an old prostitute: gaunt, eaten up by things she’s done, terrible things done to her, all the awful she’s seen. I ask her about the girls. She tells me they came in to the restaurant bar, sexy, tipsy, wanted to sleep in the woods after a few more drinks. Two of her regulars were the other patrons. The town drunk and his deformed son. The girls are nice to the son—they’re just nice girls, you know? Daddy takes this as some sort of invitation.”
“Still the dream?” Quatro interrupts.
“Yes, ma’am. The old hooker tries to get the girls to stay in her place. She knows what that drunk and his son are capable of. She’s seen mutilated animals around. Knows it’s that mongoloid. Her words. The girls go off into the woods. Nobody sees them again. I wake up. At the time we had a caseload lull so Günn and I drove out there, she’s pissing and moaning the whole time.”
Quatro laughs, not surprised. Günn shoots him a scathing look.
“We found the B&B just as in my dream. The old prostitute. Our conversation, almost word for word. We go and find that man and his son, who local police never bothered even questioning. The word of an old whore worth about, oh, just less than less of nothing. The old man was a smug bastard. High on secrets. Desperate to confess, I could feel it. ‘We’re here to ask you about some missing girls,’ I say. He takes us to a clover field behind his house, a well in the middle. Lifts the top—the stench of blood and gore was ridiculous. Body parts. Some still bloody. By the time forensics was done they’d IDed thirty-six different donors. All young women. We don’t even know how far back he started, but carbon dating on the oldest bones dated back to the seventies. And one of the bodies was his wife, mother of the deformed son. She was probably the first.”
“Why’d he confess?”
“He had cancer. Terminal. Wanted his son in jail where he’d be cared for.”
Quatro nods, thoughtful. “How often do you dream like this?”
“Often enough. I don’t always have the liberty to follow up, but when there’s a quiet time I look into what I can. I actually dreamed about our explosion, couple weeks back. Thought it was too far-fetched to warrant a mention.” Red Feather knows there’s nothing he could have done to stop it, but feels guilty regardless.
Quatro takes a bite of lamb. “So, did you find the alien women’s statements to be trustworthy?”
Red Feather is surprised by the sudden change of topic, and a twinge of regret he’d shared something so intimate. He wonders why he too didn’t get an offer for Quatro’s team.
Günn nods, “Absolutely. Anyway, I smelled nothing. And they’ve no reason to lie. Unless my gift as you called it doesn’t work on extraterrestrials. I just don’t see why they would lie if they’re prisoners in what sounds like a torture chamber. It’s in their best interest to stay out of there and in our custody.”
“You think the LAPD will treat them better?”
“At least until you people or the Pentagon or whomever takes them to another facility like the one they escaped from. Or they free themselves.”
“Very cynical of you, detective,” Quatro smiles.
“I’ve never been inclined toward the softer side of life. That’s his job,” Günn points her thumb at Red Feather.
“Interesting. So you’re okay with aliens, but not vampires and werewolves?” Quatro looks from one detective to the other, chewing her lamb.
Günn’s shackles rise. “There’s long been empirical evidence of alien life forms.”
“But according to your interviews you have empirical evidence of vampires and werewolves upstairs along with the aliens.”
Before Günn can fire back, Quatro’s phone rings, breaking her momentum. “Special Agent Quatro here,” she says with a piece of meat still tucked in the side of her cheek.
Assistant Chief Gabriel Ortiz is on the other end. “You need to return to the station immediately. We’ve had a development.”
“What is it, Chief?”
“Charles Wallace Crane’s ex-wife is here with a letter. You want to be here when we question her.”
“I’m on my way.” Quatro hangs up. “It seems the illustrious Charles Wallace Crane had some last words for us. His ex is at the station with a letter.” Quatro folds up her napkin and places it over her plate. “This is where I
leave you. May I take the videos of the interviews you’ve already done?”
“Sure, no problem.” Günn digs into her bag and hands the carefully bagged and tagged tapes to Agent Quatro.
Quatro hands over her business card to both detectives. “Please call me right away with any new information as you finish the interviews.”
“Of course.” Red Feather pockets Quatro’s card. “Good luck. And thanks for lunch.”
Quatro nods. “I appreciate all the help and insight. I hope to chat with you two again before I’m back on the road. Dinner? Tomorrow night? Something exotic we can eat with our hands. Ethiopian food? Indian?”
The detectives agree, though Günn feels her stomach turn at the thought.
Quatro strides out of the cafeteria, the tapes banging against her side as she walks, turning several heads in the process and not because of the noise.
“She’s a trip,” Red Feather says, chuckling.
“Yeah, if she said ‘interesting’ one more time,” Günn complains.
“English isn’t her native language. It’s common behavior speaking in a foreign tongue,” Red Feather shrugs. The thought never occurred to Günn.
“And how she got us to tell her all that stuff before we even realized we were doing it,” Günn shakes her head. “She totally played us. That’s why they pay her the big bucks, I guess.”
“Good food, though,” Red Feather says.
Günn deconstructs her baked potato and pushes it around her plate. “So, why are you so okay with all this crazy shit?”
Red Feather smiles. “I guess I always believed in magic. Now I’ve got proof.”
“This isn’t magic, this is,” Günn pauses, searching for the right word, “madness.”
“Depends on how you look at it. Lakota history is filled with people coming back to life all the time. Iktomi, the trickster, is always getting hurt, losing limbs, and they come back.”
“But he’s a god. And he’s only a story.”
Red Feather’s shackles rise. “It’s not a story, it’s Lakota history. One way my people have been undermined constantly and consistently through American history is from white people saying our ancestry, our experiences, are only stories. Or worse, myths. Iktomi is real, just as those women up there are real.” Red Feather pauses. “And who knows, maybe they are gods. I never heard of a mortal who could turn someone to stone with her eyes, have you?”
“We don’t even have proof she can do that. I didn’t see it.”
“And if you did? Synthia, you have a background in forensics. You of all people should know that the evidence doesn’t lie. And all the evidence points to these things being true. And if they are true, then the world is nothing like we ever thought it was, and never will be again.”
Günn doesn’t want to live in a world where body parts grow into monsters, where ghosts bully a man into confessing his crimes, where vampires and werewolves exist.
“Why are you being so stubborn anyway?” Red Feather throws back.
Günn has no answer. Fucking pregnancy hormones! Dammit! I’m not acting like myself. Irrational thoughts flit through her mind as she works to maintain her stance of disbelief. What if. What if. What if.
“I dunno. Probably getting my period.” I wish. “Come on. Let’s hit the road. We still got eight of these bad boys to do.” Günn throws her napkin over her picked-at food.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious about who the other survivors might be or what they can do? Why they came back?”
“I just want to do my job and get the hell out of here.” Günn stands, pretending to brush crumbs from her lap just so she doesn’t have to meet his inquiring eyes.
“As you wish.” Red Feather grabs their trays and puts them on the cart. “Aho! It’s a good day for a brave new world.”
Günn scrunches her mouth, scowling and wondering when the hell—or if ever—she’s going to break it to him about their baby.
Part Three:
Further Down The Rabbit Hole
When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
—Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Sunday November 1, 2000
1:15 PM
Beverly Center
The lines outside where the LAPD’s task force collects DNA samples from family and friends of the missing aren’t getting any smaller, even after the now-quashed melee that broke out when a celebrity mother tried to jump the queue and another angry parent pulled a gun and shot her. Tensions run too high, and law enforcement is stretched thinner than it’s ever been.
All for what the lab techs know is a futile exercise in collecting DNA samples to which there is nothing left to match. A charade the government must put on to save face in a most wretched and unexpected of circumstance. Who would ever have imagined that homegrown terrorists—white ones, to boot—could hit from within the United States? And on such a massive scale as this? Nobody ever planned for the scenario they’re in now.
And so, parents, families, guardians, friends head home with no answers.
The waiting game begins.
When they see footage of the vaporized hill, they know in their hearts their sons and daughters are gone. But still that sliver of hope remains. The sense of not knowing when you don’t have a body to bury is crushing. Thousands who will never have closure, not the way they wish they could. Not the way others do. The anger starts pouring into those empty soul places. Why wasn’t mine chosen? Why wasn’t mine saved? What’s so special about the sixteen survivors who made it and my baby didn’t. If mine died, all should die. The rage burns out as fast as it arrives in a mist of sadness, dissipating, a melancholic lethargy is all that’s left behind.
You’ll leave their room as it was until it becomes too painful. You’ll become overbearing toward your remaining children. Or you’ll stop caring. You’ll find new love in your partner. Or the sight of their face will remind you too much of all you’ve lost and you’ll separate. There are no happy endings. Camelot is dead. You wonder if it ever existed at all.
The Ethereals
You have done terribly wrong. You feel it now.
You’ve woken Mother, The Ancient One.
Kaleanathi only grows stronger as she builds her army of Elementals.
And an entourage of neighboring multiverse overlords approaches to declaim your energy siphoning.
The humans have a word for this: Disaster.
The Angel Curiel has left you to watch over your human survivors below. After all this, they at least need to be kept safe. Otherwise everything has been too much in vain.
You should have known better. Why didn’t you leave well enough alone? Why didn’t you listen? Now you know it’s too late.
A reckoning will be upon you.
You hope it doesn’t spell another human word: Annihilation.
Please, you pray. Don’t let it spell that.
1:30 PM LAPD Headquarters
Natalie Crane, estranged wife of Charles Wallace Crane, wrings her hands in the waiting room. A pretty, forty-six-year-old blonde, the former Mrs. Motel Chain ages gracefully, not bothering to hide the lines around her eyes or mouth. Her hair is long and straight, in a stylish side part that makes her look ten years younger. She wears a black sleeveless beige linen suit that shows off her muscular arms and trim figure. She alternates the hand-wringing with dabbing at her eyes
.
Assistant Chief Ortiz and Special Agent Quatro emerge from the field room and approach Mrs. Crane. She stands.
“I’m Natalie Crane, thank you so much for meeting with me. I’m sure you’ve got so much going on right now…” her voice fades out.
“It’s no problem. I’m Assistant Chief Gabriel Ortiz, this is FBI Special Agent Rosario Quatro.” Agent Quatro shakes Natalie’s hand, closes her eyes and breathes deep. Natalie watches, puzzled, as does Chief Ortiz. Quatro comes off as a strange woman, indeed. When Quatro opens her eyes, Natalie has the distinct feeling that the FBI agent knows every thing she’s ever tried to hide. Unnerving to say the least.
Chief Ortiz escorts the women to his office.
“Mrs. Crane, may I offer you some water? Some tea maybe? Coffee?”
“I’ll take three fingers of whiskey if you’ve got it. Police chiefs in movies always seem to have a stash.” She lets loose a deep and shuddery sigh. Quatro raises an eyebrow. Natalie stopped drinking after her nightmare of a divorce.
“Of course. This must be a devastating day for you.”
Tears fill her bright blue eyes as she nods. “My two children were at that party. I take it they are not among the survivors?”
Chief Ortiz shakes his head no.
“I am so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Crane.”
Ortiz hands her a generous helping of whiskey. She takes a gulp and eases back into her seat. Rubs her eyes.
“As if that wasn’t bad enough, a courier dropped this off about an hour ago.” She hands Ortiz an envelope of heavy-duty paper, embossed with Charles Wallace Crane’s name and motel logo, addressed only Natalie.
“May I?” Ortiz asks. Natalie nods, and he takes out the letter.
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