Maurice Brewster, 2103 Chase Drive. Remember your promise.
Any other time, those last words would make me seriously wonder if I made a mistake.
This wasn’t any other time.
Even though I had no reason to believe her, I knew the woman gave me the name I was looking for.
Chase Drive was in a little exurb calling itself Mountain Bay, even though it was closer to the former than the latter. Even so, it wasn’t that far a walk from Neptune’s Fork.
I waved the matchstick out with one hand while picking up the knife with the other. I could almost make out my reflection in the blade. I fancied I could see the eagerness in my eyes. All this aimless looking, and now the day I was living for arrived out of the blue. Or maybe I should say ‘out of the black’.
I put the knife in my pocket and struck off another match. I put the little flame to the paper as I held both of them over the side. The smelly stuff proved to be a bit more flammable than I expected. I barely avoided singeing my fingers by dropping the paper into the water mid-burn. The water didn’t slow the flames down one bit. It burned as it sank, finally leaving nothing but fine ash in its wake.
Not wanting to think about it anymore, I pulled myself out of the boat, took a minute to get my land legs back, and walked towards Chase Drive.
It only took about ten minutes for me to get to the outskirts of my target exurb. It had a gate on the outside to complement the thick brick walls, but the bars were wide enough for me to slide through. Blue streetlights lit up the sidewalks and streets like theater spotlights. It was tricky to stay out of those, but I managed. The last thing I needed was for some insomniac or late-night jogger to spot the crazy homeless guy wandering around and looking at the street signs.
Looking back, I should have been grateful that it was past midnight. A lot of these fine folks were in bed, ready to go to whatever jobs they had in the morning that paid for these homes. That’d make getting what I needed done easier.
I only had a vague memory of the area’s layout. Mountain Bay was one of the neighborhoods Marissa and I looked at when we were house-shopping. Unfortunately for us, it proved to be out of our price range. That fact made me wonder if living here would have meant finding Brewster that much sooner…maybe even kept the hit-and-run from happening at all…
I shook my head to clear it. I couldn’t choke now, not when I was this close. Yet, more loving memories haunted me…My wedding day, the welcome home hugs at Norfolk, teaching Line how to read, enjoying some private time with Marissa after Line fell asleep for the night… Instead of pushing those aside, I used them as fuel for my fire.
I have no idea how long I wandered around. But eventually my feet found the right corner and there the sign for Chase Drive. I looked at the nearest house on my right and saw the number 2076. A quick look up the block confirmed that the numbers grew higher the further downhill you went.
I began walking up the block, and a dog barked a warning. Dammit, I do not need this, I thought, my eyes desperately scanning for a place to hide. It was slim pickings in that department, nothing but open sidewalk and yards on either side. To hell with it. I ran.
I looked back over my shoulder, hoping against hope that the lights of the house where the dog was would stay dim. But no, a light flicked on upstairs. I couldn’t be sure how long it would be before they saw me.
I was so caught up in my blind panic that I nearly missed number 2103 on my right. Thankfully, it had a low-cut set of bushes thick enough to hide behind in the front yard. I clumsily jumped over the hedges, landing hard on my knife arm. I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out and rolled onto my stomach.
“Bruiser! Hey!” a man’s voice yelled. “Knock it off! Some of us are trying to sleep!”
Bruiser barked back insistently. Oh, boy, this could make things awkward. Though I was quite a few yards down from Bruiser and his human, I didn’t dare breathe.
Just over the edge of bushes, I saw the bright white beam of a flashlight making sweeps around the area. The beam suddenly cut off and I heard a thunk that could have been a window shutting.
I waited a minute or two to be sure the coast was clear. Bruiser fell silent and there was nothing else to indicate that I still had a problem.
I stood up and looked at the front door of 2103. It was another two-story affair laid out exactly like the rest of the houses on this street. A full porch covered three-quarters of the front, while sweeping gables dominated the second floor. It was hard to say in the gloom, but the house looked off-white in the dim lighting. Soft, low, orange lights were glowing inside on both floors, and I could hear what sounded like soft music pulsing through the walls.
A glance at the paved driveway removed any remaining doubts I might have had. A matte black SUV sat there, barely visible against the nearest streetlights. The finish on it was a perfect match for the fender fragments I found at the crash site. Something deep inside me knew it was the right vehicle, the same way I knew Maurice Brewster was the right name.
I walked up to the porch. My stomach felt a little sicker with every step, and I couldn’t figure out why. Brewster deserved what I was about to give him. The second I saw him, nothing was going to stay my hand from the deed. So why did my steps get harder to take by the time I reached the bottom of the porch?
As if in response, more happy memories of my family danced in my head…Line’s first birthday party, our first weekend together when I got out of the Navy, watching Marissa and Line swim in the shallows of the ocean. These memories were all I would ever have of them now. That realization was enough for me to quicken my steps.
The music became more distinct as I drew closer to the door, enough for me to hear a woman’s voice singing with it. The song had a haunting, forlorn quality about it that sounded familiar. It was the perfect cover and accompaniment for what I was about to do.
I noted the bronze circle on the right side of the doorframe that held the doorbell. I paused to debate the merits between knocking and just pushing the buzzer, and shook my head. I was stalling, but I had no idea why. The fact that I didn’t want to know made me jam the doorbell with my left thumb. My right hand held the knife by my leg.
I kept my thumb on the button until I heard a man inside say, “God, all right already! I’m coming! Damn!” The voice had the distinctive tone of a belligerent drunk, something I had come to know from over a month of personal experience. “Can’t you guys recognize quality music anymore?”
When I heard footsteps get close enough to the door, I pulled my thumb off the bell and braced myself as I tightened my grip on the knife. Inside, the woman had stopped singing on the track, though the music itself continued.
The minute the door opened to reveal a man, I didn’t hesitate. I knocked the door out of his grip with my free hand while I stepped forward. I used that hand to grab him in a half-bear hug while my knife went straight into his ribcage. It was a move I knew well; the Navy had taught it to me time and time again.
A strangled, gasping breath soaked in alcohol escaped from Brewster’s lips as the blade pierced his right lung. I pushed us both inside as fast as I could walk. When I felt safe enough, I dumped him on the floor and went back to close the door behind us.
It all happened so fast that I didn’t even get a look at his face. I remedied that as I went back over to him. The candles around the living room area showed a man who looked a little older than me with a few grey streaks thrown in. He had three to four days of stubble on his face, with the same salt and pepper layout. His big dark eyes couldn’t stop staring at me, the same way that his hands couldn’t stop clinching the knife I just buried in his side. Even with the pressure from his fingers, the blood leaked through, soaking into the calico housecoat he was wearing. His breath went in and out in ragged bursts while he wore this look of wanting to say something he couldn’t get out.
I’d fantasized about a million thi
ngs that I wanted to say at this moment. Not one of them came out of my mouth as I watched his blood soak into the hardwood floor. All too soon, he was breathing his last, his blank eyes staring up at the ceiling. I knelt down to check for a pulse, and felt no surprise when I couldn’t find one. I couldn’t stop staring at his corpse, my eyes become as unblinking as his.
I waited, unmoving, for something to happen. But nothing did, and a hole formed inside me as the gravity of the situation sunk in.
I’d done it. I finally managed to avenge my family…and…
Nothing changed.
They were still dead, I was still alone, and my life was still ruined. Now that I accomplished the goal I spent all this time pursuing, what did I have left?
I thought I would feel better when this happened. But the emptiness was still there, stronger than ever. The sheer weight of it made my stomach threaten to expel its contents again. Sweet Jesus, what had I done?
I blinked, but I couldn’t move. I felt like I should cry, but the pain went too deep for tears. To distract myself, I took a closer look at the man’s face and felt the air sucked from my lungs as I finally recognized him: the same guy I stopped outside of the concert. That’s when I realized whose music was playing in the background.
The key word in that sentence is “was”, for I realized that the house was utterly silent now. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I sucked in a fresh breath as I felt the approach of danger. Before I could get back to my feet, a piercing scream shot through the air above me. The frequency of it was so high that it made me clasp my hands over my ears…for all the good it did my eardrums.
Looking up at the source, I saw Sidhe, wearing an open blue robe of her own over a revealing nightie. She descended the stairs, fury on her face, as she kept the scream up, pumping out more decibels than a NASCAR race. The pressure of the sound increased the closer she got to me, punching through the flimsy defense of my palms with each step.
I knew on a gut level that I needed to act quickly. My eyes latched onto the knife in Brewster’s ribcage. Dropping my hands and fighting the resulting pain, I yanked the blade out of the corpse while rising to my feet. Without a second thought, I threw the still-sticky knife at my sonic attacker. The blade landed in the center of Sidhe’s windpipe, cutting off the noise as thoroughly as she cut off her backing tape upstairs.
While my ears continued to ring, my eyes saw something that it couldn’t understand. Sidhe’s clothes and face changed before me. Her face became older, more lined with wrinkles and her hair turned silver. Meanwhile, her robe expanded to swallow up the nightie, turning into sackcloth that obscured her figure completely.
She toppled down the stairs, her head finally coming to rest at the very bottom. Her face had a stunned expression, as surprised to die as Brewster. A trace of some silvery material ran off her face and hands to mingle with the blood on the floor.
As much as I didn’t want to, I felt up her dead body to be sure I wasn’t seeing things. But no…the corpse felt every bit as real as the brand on my shoulder. The silvery stuff dissipated at my touch, disappearing off the floor like gasoline on a sunny summer day.
With the danger over, the horror of my situation fully descended upon me. I looked back and forth between the two bodies. My head struggled with what I’d just done to my first victim, and what I’d just seen with my second.
Finally, my stomach couldn’t take it anymore. What little food I’d eaten earlier came up with a sickening heave, power-puking its way all over the hardwood floor between the corpses. Then I fell to my knees with a shudder and cried like my heart would break.
Chapter seven
We Who Must Remain
I was still sitting in that same spot when dawn broke. I knew it was just a matter of time before someone found the bodies. No sense in making it hard for the cops to find me too. Really, I just didn’t care. All I could do was stare blankly at the wall and wait for the inevitable.
When I heard the front door open, I felt a rush of relief. That rush died in its tracks when I saw who was stepping through. The woman who cursed me by giving me what I asked for walked in, this time wearing skin-tight leather pants, a tissue-thin silk blouse and thigh-high boots. All of them were in basic black. They made quite the contrast to her red hair, which seemed to move around her shoulders with a mind of its own. The door snapped shut behind her with no visible means of force.
A flicker of surprise danced in her eyes as she looked at what was left of Sidhe. “And here I believed you would have to track her down.”
I glared at her with all the helpless rage I felt inside me. “Did you know?”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “About?”
“Him being connected to her,” I explained, moving my finger between the two dead people.
“Of course. How do you think I was able to tell you what you wanted to know?”
The tap of her heels echoed across the floor as she walked over to Brewster’s body, then looked at the aged pop star with disdain. “She was the task you were to undertake after you exacted your revenge. That little Unseelie should have known better than to be in the home of one of her worshippers.”
Her disdain remained as she turned her gaze upon me. “Then again, this situation is all your fault.”
A mixture of shock and disbelief crossed my face. “How?”
She stalked around the perimeter of the crime scene the same way she had me at the river. “After you kept him from her, Maurice Brewster took great pains to find out where she was staying. Somehow, he found this information within the hour. He rushed from where he met his informant to see her.”
A sickening feeling worked its way into my gut. “They met on Mount Peter Road…”
“Yes,” the woman said, slowing her pace as she neared the stair bannister. “Nothing else mattered to him. He had already fallen too far under the charms of her music. He didn’t even slow down when he struck your family’s vehicle. He arrived at the hotel shortly thereafter.”
“How come I never saw—”
She gave out a laugh at that would have been infuriating if it hadn’t been so scary. “You missed each other by mere minutes. The banshee was still restless from your rejection and decided to decamp to the restaurant on the ground floor. He found her there and she accepted his pledge of undying love on the spot.” She sneered at both corpses. “Fate rarely lacks a sense of the ironic.”
The shock fell away as I followed her gaze at the dead Brewster. “It changed nothing…killing him.”
She flicked her contemptuous eyes at me, a good match for the incredulity on her face. “And what was supposed to change?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but shut it when I realized that I had never thought that far. The only thing I thought about was the deed itself. Now that it was over…
I finally rose to my feet, my legs protesting from sitting on the hardwood for so long. “Guess we’re done, then.”
A flame of anger popped into her eyeballs. “Done?”
“Yeah, done,” I answered with irritation. “I did my job, you did yours, and that’s it.”
One second, she was glaring at me from the stairs. The next, she was lifting me by my throat and throwing me across the hallway. I flew into the living room, crashing against a framed picture on the wall. The couch beneath it broke my fall as my face landed flat on its cushions.
I had just registered the soft landing when the woman’s hand was once again squashing my windpipe. She pushed my head against the couch arm as she drilled a hateful stare into my eyeballs.
“We are not done!” she yelled at me. “What I have placed on your shoulder means that we shall never be done!”
She held up her other hand for emphasis. Glowing in the center of her palm was a dead ringer for the sign I found on Cohen when I ran across his corpse. That man, whoever he was, worked for her. My eyes widened as I
thought about the distinctive pattern I felt on my shoulder when I woke up in the boat.
She yanked me off the couch and tore off my seriously decomposed shirt. She stabbed a pointy fingernail into the brand she put there, making it flare up in pain. I’d have cried out if her fingers weren’t jammed around my throat.
“This brand makes you mine now,” she said in a quieter but more menacing tone. “When I have tasks to accomplish in this realm, you will see them done on my behalf. That is the job I have for you.”
“And if…I say no?” I croaked out, struggling to speak against her grip.
The back of my head hit the couch arm hard enough to make me black out for a second. As my head struggled to clear, I felt her grip tighten even more. Forget about talking, now I couldn’t even breathe. Blood thumped loudly in my ears as dark spots clouded my vision.
My deprived lungs burned as my heart struggled to keep going. In seconds, it went from a staccato beat to a slower rhythm, to stopping altogether. While this happened, the woman’s eyes—not just the pupils or irises, but the whole orbs—turned completely black.
My body thrummed and burned as unmoving blood turned to acid into my veins. The pain anchored me to the moment, keeping me from passing out, and I never felt so trapped in my life.
Then she let go of my throat and I took in a deep breath that kickstarted my heart. I coughed as my hands instinctively went towards my voice box, and I nearly fell off the couch as I struggled to pull myself upright. She stepped back, the disgust etched on her face like acid-washed metal.
“Your death is mine, Bellamy Vale,” she told me. “Ergo, you are mine.”
She still held the shirt she ripped off me in her other hand. She held it up with contempt just before it burst into flames. In seconds, it wasn’t even ash, just stray dust particles that vanished into the air.
Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book One) Page 6