Cletus felt a burning pain, and looked down to see the arm sticking out of his chest, buried almost to the elbow.
Just as suddenly, the brown-haired man pulled both his arms free, Cletus’ heart in one hand, Pete’s in the other. The two rednecks collapsed to the floor, dead.
***
Victor gasped as he came out of the trance. The psychic impressions were so strong. So new. Not like the diner where the bodies had gone undiscovered for days, thanks to a closed sign on the door.
“Well?” Keegan demanded. “Don’t leave me hanging here, Vic.”
“It was him.”
“No shit, it was him,” Keegan said, putting her hands on her hips. “All the bodies with their hearts ripped out kind of gave that away.”
“No, I mean it was the same guy as at the diner,” Victor explained. “The same face.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Keegan replied. The shapechanger they were hunting had the ability to change form, and had for nearly every killing up to now. His changing face had kept facial recognition from locating him on surveillance cameras.
“He dragged the bodies back here,” Victor explained, pointing to Cletus and Pete, the two clerks and the potato chip man all sprawled dead on the floor by the beer cooler. “But he killed them over there.”
“So he’s hiding his crime. We knew that back at the Diner,” Keegan said. It wasn’t a breaking revelation to her.
“You’re sure it’s the same face?” Keegan asked. If the killer had found a face he liked, maybe they could find him now. “Can you sketch it for those badges?”
Victor nodded. He reached into his jacket for his sketch pad and pencil.
“Not here!” Keegan said.
“Right,” Victor said, sounding far off. He was staring at something on the far side of the store, by the front windows. A shape?
Victor pushed a very surprised Agent Keegan out of his way and walked toward the glass windows and the strange shape.
It was more than a shape. It was a silhouette. Translucent, almost clear. The outline of a person. Hovering above the floor, as if watching Victor.
The form remained in place, unmoving as Victor approached. Was it a reflection of the light?
Fingers trembling, Victor reached up for the silhouette. Just as his fingers passed through what he thought would be air, the figure moved.
With blinding speed, the figure recoiled, then shot off to Victor’s left. Flying, several feet above the ground, the figure streaked across the store, and out the open doors.
In its wake, Victor could smell incense.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Josie fell over backwards, onto her beanbag, the telepathic link between her, PJ and Daisy broken. She was sweating profusely and could feel her heart pounding in her chest.
“What the hell was that!?” PJ demanded, jumping to his feet. He brushed imaginary somethings off his person and shook his hands repeatedly. “How did you do that?”
Daisy reached across to Josie, laying a hand on the girl’s knee. “Are you okay, dear?”
“How did she do that?” PJ was nearly hysterical.
“PJ, hush!” Daisy said.
Josie’s vision cleared. She hadn’t realized it was blurry. “What was that?”
“A psychic,” Daisy said. “He touched us.”
“Why?! Why did you let him do that?!” PJ demanded. “You know that is against protocol!”
“I didn’t,” Daisy said, still watching Josie with concern. “She did.”
Josie was confused. “I did? I did what?”
“I wanted to break free,” Daisy said. “To fly away. But I couldn’t. You kept me there.”
“But I was just watching you—through PJ,” Josie said, looking at the nervous telepath. PJ was now walking in circles in the room, still upset.
“No, child,” Daisy said. “Your willpower overcame mine and PJ’s.”
“And now that freak knows something is up,” PJ said. He clapped his hands together. “I have to report this. Right now.”
PJ raced out of the room.
Daisy watched him go, then smiled to Josie. “He’ll be fine. Telepaths just aren’t used to having someone else control them.”
“How could I do that?” Josie asked. “I’m just a regular girl.”
“Are you now?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The briefing room for Detachment 1039's stone soldiers was a huge room, almost thirty feet wide and fifty feet long. Large LCD monitors hung from the walls, desks with computers and banks of phones beneath them, while a huge marble table, surrounded by a dozen chairs, sat in the middle of the room.
Josie was now sitting in one of the chairs, looking across the large table at Colonel Kenslir and Major Campbell.
“Postcognitive empath,” Colonel Kenslir was explaining as he read from a file. “His name is Victor Hornbeck. The FBI uses him to gather psychic impressions from crime scenes.”
“He can see the past?” Josie asked.
“In a sense. He sees the impression, the memories left behind by living beings under intense conditions.”
“How did he see us?”
“All psychics possess a bit of clairvoyance,” Kenslir explained. “They are able to see things regular people can’t.”
“What are we going to do about this situation, sir?” Campbell asked. “We don’t have a team ready.”
“Even if we did, we wouldn’t run out west, half-cocked again,” Kenslir said. “We need to let the FBI take the lead on this. Let them track him down this time.”
“Who?” Josie asked. She was still confused. The corpse of the shapeshifting giant Kenslir had killed nearly a month ago was in a freezer somewhere in the building. “Ketzkahtel is dead, isn’t he?”
“The source of his power was his heart,” Kenslir said, a grim look on his face. “When I ripped it out of him, I thought that would kill him. Instead his power apparently remained in that heart.”
Josie remembered now. In his dragon form, the shapeshifter had been nearly unstoppable. Until Kenslir had turned the tables on him, ripping out the monster’s heart, then throwing it far, far away. It was never recovered.
“So he regenerated a new body from his heart?” Josie asked. That was impressive.
“I think it’s more of a case of budding.”
Kenslir could tell from the look on Josie’s face she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Asexual reproduction—where an organism splits into two pieces, that each grow into duplicates of the original.”
“Like a clone?”
“Something like that,” Kenslir said. “But in this case, a clone with the memories of the original. And it may think it is Ketzkahtel.”
This was all over Josie’s head. “How can it get memories from a heart? Wouldn’t it need to eat a brain?”
“Our brain is just a means of controlling our bodies. We are more than the flesh.”
Kenslir was starting to sound biblical again, Josie thought. “I still don’t understand how he gets anything more than protein from eating hearts. Aren’t they just muscles?”
“We all have a lifeforce,” Kenslir explained. “The Chinese call it our chi. The Koreans, our ki. It flows through our entire body. Your blood flows through your body as well. It picks up the ki, like a static charge. And your blood flows through your heart, charging it with energy.”
Josie looked horrified. “He’s eating people’s souls?”
“No. Their lifeforce. It’s the energy produced by a living thing. Different from a soul, but similar. It even carries a residual impression of the memories your soul possesses.”
“Memories aren’t in our brains? Then why did you get amnesia when you lost half your brain?”
Kenslir sighed. This wasn’t the time to give Josie a lesson on the paranormal. “Feedback, I guess. If my memories were just in my brain, I wouldn’t have gotten them back at all. My body is frozen in the same form it was in 1962, remember?”
�
��So how do you kill it?” Campbell asked impatiently. Like Kenslir, he didn’t feel it was time to educate the girl.
“We’ll have to destroy the heart this time,” Kenslir said. “Maybe burn it.”
“Will it fall for that again, sir?”
“Nothing says I have to go reaching inside him this time,” Kenslir said. Josie could tell by the look on his face he was in deep thought. “We could use air support. Maybe hit him with some large, conventional munitions. Incinerate the entire body.”
Josie imagined how horrible that would be in a populated area. The last time Kenslir had fought the shapeshifter had been at a luxury resort hotel. Calling in air strikes on such a building seemed like a really bad idea.
“Could you capture it?” Josie asked.
“Capture it?” Campbell sputtered. “What would we do with it if we did?”
Josie was embarrassed by her question. She still didn’t understand why she was even in a briefing like this. She was an eighteen year old girl, with a high school diploma. This was way over her head.
“The girl has a point, Major. If we could subdue it, we could move it to a safe area, then burn it... with no collateral damage.”
“Don’t you have to find it first?” Josie asked. She couldn’t believe she had blurted that question out.
Kenslir was smiling at her now. It made her nervous. He never smiled.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Ms. Winters.”
CHAPTER NINE
The last time Josie had seen the sixth floor of Argon Tower, she had been riding an elevator with Colonel Kenslir, some guards and Jimmy—who had been in a body bag with his heart ripped out.
This time, when the elevator doors opened, Josie was ushered out, onto the fancy marble floors. The Colonel walked beside her, continuing his briefing.
And what a briefing it had been so far.
The Colonel had a simple plan for locating the shapeshifter. It involved the introduction of DNA taken from the shapeshifter’s natural form—its six-fingered, six-toed giant’s body—and implanting it in a suitable donor. A procedure called gene therapy, that would blend the DNA of the host and the shapeshifter.
That host being Josie. Because she already carried some of Ketzkahtel’s DNA.
“I don’t understand, how can I be related to that thing?”
“The Nephilim,” Kenslir explained.
There had been giants on the earth once, tribes of them. Kingdoms of them. They were the sons of Fallen Angels, who walked among men in ancient times. According to the Colonel, the Fallen could take the form of humans, and mated with women, producing humans with extraordinary powers. The Nephilim. The Old Testament talked of this in many instances, which the Colonel seemed to be able to recite verbatim from memory.
“Descendants of the Nephilim carry the same genes, but recessive, as their ancestors. Think of it like eye color. We know that blue eyes are a genetic abnormality originating from a region of Eastern Europe. Anyone descended from those first blue eyed people carry the gene for blue eyes, but don’t necessarily have blue eyes themselves. But their children can.”
“So, I’m a mutant?” Josie asked.
“We all are. Mankind is devolving. We have been ever since Adam and Eve. Every generation, new malfunctions of our DNA crop up. They aren’t improvements. Usually.”
“If Ketzkahtel had children before the Flood, wouldn’t they all have been killed in the Flood?”
“Noah took his sons and their wives aboard the Ark. If one of those women were a descendant of Ketzkahtel, then she would carry his genes in her own DNA. It would continue to be passed on, for millennia, and today there’d be a number of people with it. And there are.”
They had reached their destination. A simple door, with no markings on it. Kenslir opened the door and motioned for Josie to enter.
It was a lab—nothing all that out of the ordinary looking. Josie imagined it would look perfectly normal in any hospital. A room with tables, microscopes, racks of who knew what in vials, small refrigerators. There was more equipment than Josie could name.
“Colonel,” Dr. Crone said, standing up. Josie was glad to see a familiar face.
“Doctor,” Kenslir said, closing the door behind them.
Doctor Crone motioned for Josie to walk over to a stool. “How are you doing today, Josie?”
“I’m okay, Doctor. Nice to see you again.”
“I was just explaining a little bit about the Fell to Ms. Winters,” Kenslir said as he followed Josie across the room.
“Fell?” Josie asked, sitting on a stool beside a counter.
“People with Fallen genes,” Kenslir explained. “Easier to spell than Nephilim.”
“So, is Ketzkahtel the origin of all super powers?”
“Not all of them,” Doctor Crone said. “Roll up your sleeve.”
Josie rolled up her t-shirt sleeve, while the Doctor prepped some swabs.
“There were many different Fallen Angels that visited mankind, resulting in thousands of Nephilim,” Kenslir said. “We’ve identified numerous gene types, and we’re always finding new ones.”
Doctor Crone began cleaning Josie’s arm with alcohol. “You’re sure you want to do this dear?”
Josie looked to Colonel Kenslir. She trusted the super soldier completely. “You need me to do this, right? No one else is available?”
“We could search our databases, maybe find someone,” Kenslir said. “But you’re here, and you already know the situation.”
“That was a pretty lucky coincidence,” Josie said.
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Doctor Crone was holding a large syringe, filled with a clear liquid. “Josie, did the Colonel explain the possible side effects?”
“Side effects?” The Colonel hadn’t mentioned that. It worried Josie a little bit.
“I was getting to that,” Kenslir said to the Doctor. “All super-powers as the public calls them, come from combinations of the various Fell genes floating around out there. To get a paranormal ability, you have to inherit at least two different Fell genes from your parents. And even then, the genes could both be recessive, and maybe not even be passed on to your children.”
Josie was confused. If you needed two different genes, why was she being given the shapeshifter’s DNA if she already carried it? She asked.
“His DNA hasn’t been watered down and mutated from millennia of descendants,” Doctor Crone explained. “It’s the purest we’ve ever sampled. Combining it with your own mutation of his DNA will be similar to combining several different types of Fell genes.”
“And then I can track him, telepathically?”
“Empathically,” Kenslir corrected. “You’ll feel his presence the closer you get to him.”
“And you could develop paranormal abilities as well,” Doctor Crone said. She was very much against this, but the Colonel had been adamant.
“Really?” Josie was excited. Having the ability to read someone’s mind, or having super-human strength sounded like fun. “What kind of powers?”
“The most common is precognition,” Colonel Kenslir said. “Lots of people have a touch of precognition—seeing glimpses of the future in their dreams for example. Skeptical psychology branded it as deja vu years ago.”
“Seeing the future? That would come in handy.”
“Don’t get too excited, dear,” Doctor Crone said. “You may get nothing more than the ability to sense where this shapeshifter is. And even that might not work.”
“But I won’t grow a second head or turn green, right?”
“No, you won’t turn a different color, and the only thing you might grow is a little more hair. Waxing can take care of that.”
Josie considered. She couldn’t see any real downside to it. If it was dangerous, she was sure the Colonel wouldn’t let her go through with it.
“Let’s do this,” Josie finally said, bracing for the shot. She hated shots.
CHAPTER TE
N
Gualberto Soto desperately needed work. He and his family had only been in America a few weeks now, living in the garage of a friend’s home. Without his green card, the illegal immigrant couldn’t get a legal job. But he still needed money for his wife and child.
With no other choice, Gualberto joined a group of Hispanic men in the parking lot of a local lumber yard. There they waited for trucks to show up with contractors looking for cheap day labor. Gradually, over the course of the morning, the men were being selected.
Eventually, Gualberto’s turn came. A panel truck pulled up with a young-looking gringo behind the wheel. Brown hair, brown eyes, pale skin. The gringo was very average looking. Not average for a contractor though. Gualberto was suspicious.
The panel van’s driver stepped out and looked over the dozen day laborers remaining. “English?”
Gualberto stepped forward. “I speak English.”
The average-looking, brown-haired man frowned. “Fine. I need workers. All of you.”
“To do what?” Gualberto asked. His gut instinct was that something just wasn’t right.
The brown-haired man glared at Gualberto. “To dig. Tell them.”
Gualberto suddenly stiffened, his eyes rolling up in his head for a second. Then his body relaxed and he turned to face the other laborers. He quickly told them that the young gringo had good work for them, with great pay, and all they had to do was ride out into the desert for a few hours worth of digging.
The men all happily agreed, moving quickly to the back of the van, and climbing up inside. Gualberto followed them, moving slowly, almost robotically.
***
Josie was packed and ready for another trip out west. She had on brown hiking boots, khaki slacks, and a green polo shirt emblazoned with a Department of the Interior logo above her left breast.
Josie looked again at the badge and wallet the Colonel had given her the night before. Office of Investigations, Office of the Inspector General, Department of the Interior. She’d never even heard of them.
Brothers in Stone (Stone Soldiers #2) Page 3