Broken glass crunched underfoot as she reached down and procured one of the split chair legs. She leapt up one step to peer inside the studio. A trail of blood snaked across the floor, drawing her eyes back toward the kitchen area. Mr. Liu’s scent mingled with the Watcher’s. Wielding her makeshift staff, she crept carefully across the debris. The weapons cases were shattered. The door to the teak cabinet hung askew and items had cascaded out on to the bamboo floor.
A noise came through the kitchen wall. It sounded like a bird flopping into surfaces. Hesitating, she considered other weapon options. Attempting the use of a three-sectional-whip as a novice would amount to disaster. A knife or spear was much more promising.
She dropped the chair leg and daintily plucked a ji, a Chinese polearm, from the debris on the floor. The significant spear felt natural in her hands as she raised it. Her heartbeat was deafening in her ears.
Taking in a deep breath, she started forward, but stopped. The Watcher wore a black mask and stood across the room at the opening of the narrow hallway leading to the kitchenette. He held a gagged and bound Mr. Liu captive in a one-armed strangle hold. In his right hand, he gripped a gun.
Blood oozed from Mr. Liu’s chest. His eyes rolled back in his head. Lily could sense his attempt to focus. Does he know I’m here? She winced at the swelling that distorted his facial features. Her body trembled, aching to shift, but she didn’t know how long it would take or the outcome.
“Mmm, mmm, mmm,” Mr. Liu said through the gag.
“Shut up,” the man said in a raspy voice. His blue eyes glared at her. “Throw your weapon away from you!” When she hesitated, he turned the gun butt and bashed Mr. Liu’s temple. She flinched. Mr. Liu made no sound.
“Don’t hurt him again,” she said, gritting her teeth. Lily threw the spear to the side with a clang as she snuck one step forward. Holding her hands where the man in black could see them, she talked to Mr. Liu, “It’s going to be okay.” No response.
The crucible under her sundress pulsed, causing her sternum to throb. It was promising her something, perhaps rescue. She looked to his gun then Mr. Liu, trying to assess the situation. If she shifted, the man could shoot Mr. Liu, although he hadn’t yet. He stayed nine feet from her with the gun trained at her head.
“Dumb freak,” the man said. He dropped Mr. Liu with a sickening thud as her wings unfurled and claws extended. The first shot missed, but the second hit her shoulder. An object in motion stays in motion...she crashed into him in the narrow hall, sinking her claws into his chest. The gun popped free of his hand and skittered across the floor. Lily sat up and considered the gun as fangs filled her mouth. She straddled his body, attempting to pin him to the ground. He was strong. She went to claw at his face to remove the mask, but froze.
When she began to twist toward the new scent, a female scent, she was struck from behind. Pain blinded her as the force flung her top half against the sidewall. As she clawed at the wall and air, her opponent bucked underneath her.
She sensed more movement from the female behind her and turned to ward off another assault. The blow hit Lily’s shoulder and she fell sideways over the Watcher who yanked at her hair while scrambling to pull his legs out from under her. She dug a claw in one retreating leg. Her vision blurred from so many knocks on the head, but she heard him bellow in pain so she was confident she’d done some damage.
Unable to focus her eyes, she localized to his ragged breathing overhead. The female kicked her in the ribs. Lily felt the air whoosh from her lungs.
“I thought you were supposed to be stronger. You’re the first born.” He spoke with a gentile southern accent that clashed with his appearance and actions.
Something wet oozed down her cheek. She realized it was blood. Both of them wore masks, that much she could tell despite her dizziness.
She shut her eyes in pain and curled into a fetal position. The crucible pulsed violently. She opened one eye just as the large shadow of the metal weapon came down once more and then it was dark.
Chapter 19
Down at the Ranch
Caldwell sped up the highway toward Kennesaw. Storm clouds hunkered down on the horizon. The temperature hit the mid eighties and the pollen count broke history records for the month of May. God willing, the rain would bring some relief.
The weather change caused sinus pressure in his head. He squinted. Maybe it wasn’t the impending rain. Li Liu had called him just before his interview with Seth Moore. In a sullen voice, Liu had asked Caldwell to come by because he had information on Lily Moore. He refused to talk over the phone. With the body count surrounding Ms. Moore, Caldwell couldn’t blame him.
Lake stayed back at the office working on search warrants and going over forensics with Tiny. Caldwell felt pulled to Liu’s with an inexplicable urgency.
When traffic congestion slowed his progress, he called Barbara Miller. He needed to see if Phil Miller was coherent enough to answer questions. Seth insinuated that Miller used steroids. His hospital labs were clean, but they hadn’t tested for roids specifically. When he got her voicemail, he left a message.
Exiting the highway, he flashed his lights to get through a jam by the mall. Thunder rumbled in the distance as the first large drops of rain fell. Caldwell found the ranch no problem—hard to miss a horseshoe archway over the driveway. To his left he noticed the old red barn. Horses huddled in the light rain behind a weathered railroad-tie fence.
He thought he heard something in the back of the house, but couldn’t be sure as thunder boomed in the sky. When he went to knock, the front door swung open.
“Mr. Liu?”
A light shone in the back of the house. He stepped inside peering through a great room to the kitchen. He called again and got nothing.
Through the sounds of the thunder, he heard another noise. Outside on the front porch, he looked off to the barn. It sounded like a car engine. One step in that direction and suddenly he heard screaming off in the woods. He turned his attention away from the barn and rounded the side of the main house. Shards of glass and broken furniture littered the lawn in front of the second building.
“What the hell? Liu!”
Shots pierced the air along with screams loud enough to carry over the sound of the rain. He ran to the side of the building, gun drawn. When he turned the corner, he saw two German shepherds down on their sides.
Adrenaline pumping, he left the dogs and followed the sounds into a wall of trees. Caldwell grabbed his phone from his hip and called to request backup.
Wet from rain and sweat he frantically attempted to find the source of the gunshots, but they died off and he almost lost his way. Liu owned a significant amount of acreage. When the sirens wailed in approach, he started his return to the back building, breaking from the edge of the trees with his gun drawn. He heard cops getting out of their cars in front of the main house. He started to walk toward the dogs to check for signs of life before touching base with the Kennesaw Police. When did that back door get open? Lightning slashed through the blue-gray sky. He turned toward the flash of light above the tree line. Lily Moore?
* * *
Lily awakened to the distant sound of firecrackers. After a moment of lying on her side while her breath hitched, she heard it again, but her eyes wouldn’t stay open.
The next time she was conscious she heard a radio. She pushed up to sit, causing the room to spin. She surveyed the sea of glass across the studio floor. Her red wig lay in the middle of the floor like some kind of carcass. Pieces of her dress mixed with broken glass and splintered wood. Despite her injuries, her animal senses came back on line.
The crucible pulsed sending energy through her aching chest. The slightest turn of her head sent white dots to dance in her vision.
She heard several car doors slam. There was the radio again, sirens. She drew on the crucible’s energy to stay sitting. When she pulled to her knees, her head swam. Her shoulder protested with each movement. It hurt just to breathe.
S
he used her right hand on the wall to pull herself up to a standing position in the hall. When vertigo struck, she leaned her face against the wall’s coolness.
Police? Her head hurt so terribly that thinking only increased the throbbing tenfold. If she could just get her wits about her, she could think of what to do. What to tell them about the blood, the masked man, Mr. Liu, and why she was naked. But her brain kept short circuiting. It was too busy persuading body parts to follow orders.
She leaned her right shoulder against the wall for support and put one foot in front of the other, staggering to the back door.
Excited voices cut through the rain. How many are out there?
She pulled the back door open as she heard the crunch of shoes on shattered glass from the front. Gruff voices mingled as they coordinated their plan. Her adrenaline kicked into turbo when she stumbled over the shepherds sprawled on the back step. Pink tongues lolled out the sides of their mouths. She heard their snores as she focused on the copse of pine trees about twenty feet out. The Watcher must have drugged them. After stumbling once in the yard, she made it. White spots danced again in her periphery. She leaned her head against the rough bark of a tree while inhaling the invigorating pine scent trying to gain control over her body. More car doors slammed, but she had slipped away.
“Don’t move!” Simms’s adrenaline-charged eyes met hers as he leveled his gun. He stood just to the side of the dogs at the back corner of the building.
“Don’t,” she cried.
She sensed his confusion and fear as he studied her. “You’ve been in my head,” he said.
The comment was unexpected. Had she walked through his dreams? Speech eluded her as her mind raced.
When he turned his head ever so slightly to yell to the police, she turned and attempted to run. Pain pierced like an electric shock striking the apex of her shoulder before traveling in a current down the length of her arm as she shifted to a Shih Tzu.
She heard him yell, “Stop,” but didn’t look back. She disappeared into the maze of trees. In her smaller body, the pain dulled. Thunder and lightning crashed, announcing the deluge that washed over the ranch—a blessing from above.
Pandemonium broke out behind her. She didn’t wait.
The Honda Fireblade waited where she’d left it like a faithful steed. Lily heard screaming as she shifted to human form. She swallowed bile as she managed the spare sundress and backpack, but left the helmet.
The bike started easily and she shot through the woods. Just holding the handlebars caused a crippling pain up her left side. Each jolt traveled up to her wound, causing her to bite the inside of her cheek to ground herself.
Then all she knew was the rev of the bike, breathing, and pain before she popped out of the forest on to a country road. Cars honked at her. She had no idea how fast she was going. At one point, she pulled over on the shoulder to vomit. Up ahead she saw a familiar sign to a small gas station where they used to buy boiled peanuts. The building lay vacant now. She brought the Fireblade to a stop, skidding into the dumpster and falling on her side. She managed to get off the downed vehicle. Her head lay in a puddle, but she didn’t care. The gloom enveloped her as the rain fell in sheets.
Her thoughts were muddled. She clutched the crucible while pleading with the heavens that she just wanted to go home. Her mind flashed on Li Liu’s battered face and then suddenly she heard her father’s voice encouraging her as she climbed to the top of the slide at Piedmont Park, her small hands clutching the cool metal rails before plunging down. “You’ve got it, Lily.” She felt her stomach drop as she fell through a spinning hole in space.
Chapter 20
Seth
Seth bolted upright with a stiff neck and an awful headache. He had left the Atlanta Police building in a stupor. He had called in sick to work because he didn’t want to explain anything to anyone, not even his good friend, Reggie. He meant to just rest on his futon, but he slept for over an hour.
He took his phone off the charger and powered it on. When he saw several missed calls from Lily, he felt terrible he had let his battery die. As he retrieved the first message, he stopped in his tracks. Why the hell was she so stubborn? He had told her not to go out to Mr. Liu’s, that he would do the training. But apparently, she had set up a meeting with him. He listened to the rest of her messages. If he had known she was riding a motorcycle and Mr. Liu had “no-showed” at the park, he wouldn’t have fallen asleep.
Each time he tried her number, it rolled to voicemail. “Shit!” He felt like the walls were closing in on him. Something was wrong. He ran out of the house to gray spitting skies. Broken branches littered the path to his car. Yellow rivers of pollen flowed down the galley of the curb. Exhausted, he hadn’t even heard the storm.
Seth drove by the Ansley Park Manor. Larry stood at his mailbox with the front door ajar behind him—no Shih Tzu in sight. Seth drove past without the guy even noticing. When Lily’s phone rolled to voicemail again, Seth broke out in a cold sweat.
Driving too fast, he entered the interstate headed toward Kennesaw. His heart thumped inside his chest as if he were hooked up to an amplifier. He cursed himself as he pulled off the exit ramp. The phone rang. With a wave of relief, he picked it up to answer, but noted the number. Koko. He tossed the phone back down on the seat. The headache hit him with sharp spasms at his temples. He breathed through it as he passed Town Center Mall. Ten minutes later, he headed up Stilesboro Road. As he approached Mr. Liu’s property, he saw flashing lights. His stomach muscles knotted. Officers directed traffic around Mr. Liu’s driveway, which they had blocked off except for law enforcement personnel. Seth slowed to a stop next to the officer.
“Move along, sir.”
“Mr. Liu?” Seth asked.
“Sir, this is a crime scene, you need to move along.”
“Is the man who lives here okay?” insisted Seth.
“Move along, sir,” commanded the officer.
Chapter 21
The Storm
One minute she stood naked and bloody, the next, she had disappeared into the trees. When Caldwell viewed the blood spatter inside the studio, he tasted bile. They knew that at least two shots were fired. They found one bullet in the wall by the sliding door. The other met its mark—Lily Moore. At least it had looked like a bullet wound. The whole scenario had been chaos.
What did Li Liu know and what the hell just happened?
There were blood smears in the galley kitchen where a fight had taken place. The CSI team looked at the disarray of the kitchen and analyzed the marks in the kitchen cabinets, presumably made from a foot kicking the wood. They surmised it was Liu making tea when he was surprised from behind. The front studio had been vandalized—the property damaged by the use of an archaic Chinese halberd. There was no sign of Li Liu on the premises. However, unique feathers were all over the main studio floor and walls. They looked similar to the ones found at the Miller scene. Instead of footprints, they noted an almost human print comprised of slightly longer toes with claws according to Tiny’s analysis. He’d been learning a lot about paw and claw prints lately from the experts consulting on the case.
Caldwell now surveyed the property damage and blood while the CSI team sifted through rubble. He had never met Mr. Liu, but had seen his picture in Arthur Moore’s file. He was one of them, and that made it so much more personal. Caldwell tried to keep his rage down to a simmer. Lieutenant Lake was inside the studio, combing over the scene for the hundredth time. Lake had been uncharacteristically quiet.
The KPD’s forensics team was working on collecting blood evidence to see if there was a DNA match for Moore and Liu. Tiny showed up to consult. When he eyed the mud and puddles, he forewent his fancy stilts.
Caldwell looked off into the gray haze of the woods. The trees stood as wrinkled silent witnesses to what had transpired. He had been the only one who had gotten a visual of Lily Moore. One of the other officers claimed to have seen a dog. This was only partially comforting to Cald
well who insisted that he had seen Larry Jones’s black and white Shih Tzu dart through the trees. He never saw the bike, just heard it. If he hadn’t been preoccupied keeping the adrenaline-charged Kennesaw cops from going into the woods Rambo-style, things may have played out differently.
After he calmed everyone down, he briefed them on the young woman, conveying that she had been attacked recently and could possibly be suffering from amnesia or a head injury.
Officers took Li Liu’s dogs to the Cobb Emergency Clinic for examination. Caldwell remained at the scene while the Kennesaw Police Department’s trackers spread out in grid formation, attempting to pick up Lily Moore’s or Li Liu’s scent.
The rain had stopped now leaving behind a mess for the CSI Unit to decipher.
Officer Ernie Gates came around the corner of the studio with his two bloodhounds. Gates had been in the house and studio talking with Lieutenant Lake. Both men had worked with Li Liu. Caldwell could see they were shaken, but determined. Gates wore a permanent scowl as he encouraged his hounds to pick up a scent from a shirt found in Liu’s bedroom.
Caldwell scanned the woods as his cell phone buzzed at his hip. He ignored it. Two seconds later, it buzzed again. He pulled it out to see it was Seth Moore.
“Simms.”
“D-Detective Simms? It’s Seth Moore.”
Caldwell paced in the driveway of the Liu residence. “Seth, I’m working a crime scene. Could I call you back?”
“You’re at Mr. Liu’s?”
Caldwell paused. “Where are you?”
He heard Moore sniff like he was crying. “Tell me he’s okay.”
“Where. Are. You?” Caldwell’s eyes scanned the property including the crepe myrtle trees by the railroad-tie fence, the overturned rain barrel, shoeing stool and empty hobble by the barn door.
First Born (Lily Moore Series) Page 13