Legacy of the Watchers Series Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Nancy Madore

  “You know, the more I think about it, the more sense the mind control angle makes to me,” said Clive. He waved away any objections with his hand, although there were none. “I know,” he said, “when you first hear it, it sounds kind of crazy. But after you roll it around in your head a while…”

  “It’s not that hard to conceive,” agreed Will. “It’s not like it hasn’t been tried before.”

  “Exactly,” said Clive. “It’s almost been done to death if you think about it. Asmodeous was dead on with that ‘worker bees’ stuff. Everybody’s following a queen.”

  “What do you mean?” As much as she hated to admit it, Nadia was trailing behind them again, as usual.

  “Think about it,” said Clive. “Religion, politics, advertising…it’s all just one continuous mind fuck.”

  Gordon nodded in agreement. “If you can manipulate people’s minds, it eliminates the need to retaliate against opposition through storms or explosions. There’d be no opposition to retaliate against.”

  “Every great power, from government to big business has done it,” said Clive. “Why not the djinn?”

  Nadia shook her head. “Even if the djinn were tempted to use this technology, I can’t believe they would trust it in the hands of our military.”

  “I agree with you about that,” said Gordon. “I don’t think they would give it up either. Not willingly.”

  “Do you think someone at HAARP—or T.D.M.R.—is taking it from them?” Nadia asked.

  No one answered.

  “We need to focus on why Asmodeous was coming here,” said Will.

  “If there are other djinn out here,” mused Gordon, unconsciously tapping Ornias’ ring on the table, “we know someone who could spot ‘em in a second.”

  Nadia stared at Gordon, wondering if she could have misunderstood him. A strange thrill shook her.

  Gordon looked stunned. It was as if he hadn’t realized what he said until it was too late. “I mean, if he wasn’t locked inside the ring, that is,” he added quickly.

  “Are you out of your damned mind?” Clive asked.

  Will’s silence was so conspicuous that they all turned to look at him. No one said a word for a moment. Will was staring at Gordon.

  “What did you say?” he asked him in a quiet voice.

  Gordon tried to shrug it off. “It just slipped out.”

  Will continued to stare at Gordon.

  “Come on,” said Gordon. “I wasn’t suggesting anything. I was just…making conversation.”

  “Yeah, it sounded like ‘just making conversation’ back at the debriefing too, when you first brought up re-questioning Ornias,” Will reminded him. “And the next thing we know your conversation has become our reality.”

  “The world according to Gordon,” chimed in Clive.

  “Yeah, but you have to admit I was right about that,” argued Gordon. “It helped us get this far.”

  Will’s expression became dangerous.

  Clive attempted to shrug the whole thing off with a joke. “Well, you have to admit,” he said, glancing around the room, “if we’re looking for a druj, we’ve come to the right place. We might even be able to get one of them to volunteer.”

  Nadia followed his gaze. The men at the next table over were now arguing over why salmon jump.

  “This isn’t a joke,” said Will in the same deadly quiet tone. Nadia’s head swung back around to look at him. His face was now red and a vein was jumping in his neck. “It ends here.”

  “Hey!” said Clive. “Come on! He might be crazy but he ain’t that crazy!”

  “Give me the ring, Gordon,” said Will.

  “Shit! Here we go,” murmured Clive, throwing up his hands. But Gordon didn’t budge.

  “Give me the goddamned ring!” yelled Will. The men at the table next to them stopped talking. Although Nadia didn’t dare drag her eyes from Will’s face she could tell that everyone in the room was watching them.

  “It’s okay,” said Clive, addressing the other people in the room. “Nothing happening here.” Under his breath, he added, “You’re drawing a crowd, you two.”

  This had the desired effect. Will closed his eyes and took a deep breath. But Nadia could see that he was still struggling with his anger.

  Will opened his eyes and looked at Gordon. “Are you gonna turn over the ring, or are we going to have to take it from you?” he asked calmly.

  “What, has he got a mouse in his pocket?” wondered Clive.

  Gordon seemed more surprised than anything else. “Look, Will, I give you my word…”

  “The ring,” demanded Will.

  Gordon’s expression turned hard. “I’m not taking this ring off my finger until I return it to the dome,” said Gordon. “I’m the one who took it, and I’m the one who’s gonna bring it back. You’ll have to turn me in to get it before that.”

  “How about I drag you outside and take it from you?” suggested Will.

  Gordon glanced at Nadia. “I sincerely hope you won’t try to do that,” he said, and Nadia couldn’t help noticing that he really did seem very sincere in that hope.

  “Will…” said Nadia, taking his arm, “let’s all calm down.” Will shook off her hand. His eyes never left Gordon’s face.

  Nadia glanced at Clive, appealing to him with her eyes to do something.

  “Come on, man,” said Clive. “Gordon’s right. The ring is his responsibility.”

  “Really?” asked Will, getting up so abruptly that he knocked over his chair. “Because it feels like my ass that’s on the line!” He turned his smoldering gaze on Nadia. “Coming here was a mistake,” he said, making her wince. “It was a severe lapse in judgment.” There was no mistaking that he blamed her for that temporary lapse in judgment.

  With that Will stormed out of the tavern.

  Nadia got up to follow him, but Clive took her arm. “Let him be for a little while,” he told her.

  And then she sat back down.

  Chapter 39

  Fort Greely, Alaska

  Amanda had never known such despair, not even when her parents were killed in that horrible accident. How was this happening? Why was she doing these things? Maybe this was what came over all people who did horrible things. Maybe some other part of them took over. Something they couldn’t stop.

  What would happen to her? Assuming she ever gained control of her body again, who would believe that it wasn’t really her who did all those terrible things? Certainly not Tommy. If he lived to tell about it, that is. She could no longer see him because her eyes seemed to be focused on something else. They were moving around the room as if they had a mind of their own. Amanda stared out dumbly through the moving windows, lost in the static. Was she crazy?

  Tommy wasn’t making a sound. Amanda had no way of knowing whether he was dead or alive.

  Suddenly she was moving toward the shelf where the hunting knife had been, just sitting there, waiting for her, and now her eyes were trained on two other objects on that same shelf. One Amanda recognized—with horror—as a scalpel. The other was some kind of plastic hook tool. Amanda’s soul seemed to shrink as she watched her hand pick up the two ominous-looking instruments, along with a tiny plastic container that was sitting beside them on the shelf. Then her body turned so that it was facing Tommy. He appeared to be staring up at nothing. There was a look of pure terror on his face. His arms were still behind his back and his pants still around his ankles. His erection, however, had fallen. In fact, his whole body seemed to have gone limp.

  “This is going to be unpleasant,” Amanda heard herself say. She had no idea if the statement was addressed to her or Tommy. As they moved in closer, Amanda searched Tommy’s countenance for signs of life. If he wasn’t dead, he was very close. He didn’t appear to be breathing. Amanda hoped that he was dead as she thought of the scalpel…

  She wanted to disappear. She tried to focus on the static—or anything else that might offer some small distraction or, better yet, some place to es
cape—but escaping didn’t appear to be something she could do at will. She tried to remember how she blocked out the hours of scanning, and it occurred to her that it wasn’t anything she did, but simply that the documents had been extremely easy to block out. They were nothing to her, so she didn’t see them. There were other times when her soul seemed to shut down altogether, but this, too, appeared to be dictated by her level of interest in what was happening around her—or lack thereof. It was almost as if her soul died a little each time her interest in the world around her waned. But at the moment, Amanda was acutely and painfully conscious of every horrific detail. Even the static seemed to grow louder as she watched her fingers wrap themselves around the dreadful little hook tool and bring it toward Tommy’s face.

  No, Amanda’s soul cried out from within. No no no no no no.

  Her hand paused, as if hesitating, and Amanda noticed that it was trembling slightly. This seemed to indicate that whatever was controlling the hand disliked the task almost as much as Amanda did. And yet they both seemed to realize that it would complete that task, regardless.

  Very gingerly, as if to avoid causing further injury, Amanda’s fingers worked the tip of the little plastic hook into the outside corner of Tommy’s eye. Once inside, the tool was gently wiggled in deeper, until about an inch of it was buried in Tommy’s eye socket. Amanda felt herself take a deep breath, after which the little hook-tool was methodically turned and then firmly and swiftly flipped upwards. Out popped Tommy’s eyeball.

  Amanda’s entire being seemed to recoil, though Tommy didn’t so much as shudder. Amanda tried to focus on the static, to become the static, but her body was too close, her eyes too intently staring. She could hardly miss a single detail as her hand now approached with the scalpel. She watched with revulsion as she skillfully severed the nerve that connected Tommy’s eyeball to his head. Then, very delicately, her fingers picked up the eyeball and slipped it into the tiny plastic box—which had been filled with some kind of liquid solution in preparation for this. The plastic box was then snapped shut and placed in the front pocket of Amanda’s skirt. She felt herself take another deep, shaky breath.

  Next, her body was turned toward Tommy’s ankles. Amanda could see his limp penis in her peripheral vision as her hands searched his pants pockets and pulled out his wallet. Flipping rapidly through the contents, the creature removed Tommy’s identification card and then replaced the wallet in his pants pocket. The card went in Amanda’s pocket, next to the plastic container that held Tommy’s eye.

  Amanda’s gaze was now settled on a large rectangular freezer sitting back against the wall. They approached the freezer and lifted the lid. It was about three quarters full of clear, plastic boxes containing specimens of some kind. Amanda couldn’t imagine what they were, and the labels were hardly enlightening. She was starting to get that dull, vacant feeling she had during the long days of tedious scanning. She could feel herself drifting, fading and perhaps, disappearing. Yet she was still vaguely aware that she had pulled a large, empty box down from one of the shelves and was filling it with the items from the freezer. When the box was full, she pushed it into a dark, empty corner of the room. Although there were still more of the plastic containers in the freezer, it had been cleared out enough to accommodate Tommy’s body.

  Amanda could only hope that Tommy was dead, as they drug his body across the floor towards the freezer. Flipping him over on his stomach, the creature knelt down and hooked Amanda’s arms through his bound ones. Then, with a loud grunt, it hauled Tommy’s body up, using all the strength in Amanda’s legs to lift him, and then moved back against the freezer so that Tommy was standing against it, facing his chilly resting place.

  The creature now began carefully disengaging Amanda’s arms from Tommy’s, mindful to keep pressing her weight against him as she did so in order to keep his upper body leaning into the open freezer. Then—in one fluid motion—it shoved Tommy’s upper body down into the freezer, catching hold of his raised legs and lifting them with all of her might. There was a loud thud as Tommy’s head hit the inside of the freezer, followed by several smaller thuds as his body followed.

  There was surprisingly little blood, but they were prepared for even this. There were several more cloths and a bottle of 409 sitting on the shelf. The creature cleaned up quickly, then threw the cloth, the 409 and the little hook tool into the freezer before slamming the top shut. To Amanda’s dismay the scalpel was carefully placed in her other front pocket, with the sharp end facing down.

  They went back to the shelf. This time the creature picked up a very strange-looking wire that branched out into four smaller wires at one end, and had some kind of metal adaptor attached to the other. Each of the four smaller wires had a little plastic clamp at the bottom of it. The wire was stuffed down Amanda’s shirt, between her breasts. At last they were moving toward the storeroom exit, though they stopped at one side of the door, lingering in the dark.

  Amanda had never been more aware of the creature than she was in that moment. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that it was a separate entity, apart from herself. Her soul recoiled at its very nearness. She could feel its presence, like a malignant growth, eating away at her from the inside.

  Tommy was in the freezer. Dead. Or dying. A horrible death. His eyeball was tucked in the front pocket of her skirt. She thought of her fingers, carefully removing it from his face and she recoiled again.

  Her hand was now reaching into another one of her pockets and pulling out her cell phone which, last she noticed, was sitting on her desk, charging. All calls had been ignored since the creature took her over. Now, her eyes were fixed on the phone, as if she was waiting for it to come to life.

  Amanda thought about how well prepared the storage room had been for her and Tommy’s little rendezvous. Someone had seen to every detail. Yet Amanda was certain she’d never been in this room before. Could the creature have brought her here during one of her ‘black-out’ periods? Or had someone else prepared the room? She thought of the man she’d pretended to smoke with the last two mornings. He, too, was harboring some kind of creature inside him. Were the two creatures working together? Though they didn’t look like each other, they appeared to speak the same language. And although Amanda wasn’t knowledgeable in foreign languages, she was pretty sure their language was more than just foreign. It was alien.

  What did any of it matter now? Her life was over. Even if she did somehow get her body back, how could she possibly explain what happened to Tommy?

  Tommy!

  Amanda’s body shuddered, startling her, and she wondered what the creature had been thinking about in that moment. Was it affected by her thoughts?

  Amanda almost wished it would talk to her—if only to tell her why all this was happening.

  They were waiting for something. That much was clear. They sat in the dark, each with their own thoughts, waiting…for what?

  Chapter 40

  Gakona, Alaska

  When Nadia returned to the tavern, the four men from the table next to theirs had moved. They were now sitting with Gordon and Clive.

  Everyone in the room had become curious after the little scene between Gordon and Will, especially the men at the next table, who began shouting over little inquiries and comments shortly after Will stormed out. They were a friendly bunch, and their comments were the sort to console and cheer, rather than to instigate. Nadia wondered how they managed to worm their way over so quickly. It had only taken her a few minutes to check on Will. They all watched as she approached.

  “He refuses to come out,” she told Clive. “He says he wants to be alone.”

  “Crybaby,” grumbled Gordon under his breath.

  Clive gave him a look. “Man, what do you expect?”

  One of the men clucked his tongue. “Clive’s right,” he said to Gordon. “You shouldn’t be carryin’ on with your friend’s woman.” He glanced at Nadia self-consciously. “Not that I blame you much.”

  Nadia rais
ed her eyebrows at Clive, who smiled sheepishly. “I hope you don’t mind me telling the guys about your little…lover’s quarrel,” he said.

  “We pretty much figured it out without him tellin’ us,” one of the men assured her.

  Nadia rolled her eyes.

  “Pretty uppity for someone who just got their hand caught in the cookie jar,” mumbled one of the men under his breath. Another one grunted in agreement.

  Nadia looked at Gordon. “How are you doing?” she asked.

  He lifted his glass in a mock toast and then swallowed the rest of his drink in one gulp.

  “Is he going to be all right?” she asked Clive.

  “He’s drinking apple juice,” said Clive, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. “The worst that can happen is he’ll be stuck in the bathroom all night with the shits.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Al, here, was just about to tell us about the ghost in room five.”

  Nadia looked in the direction that Clive was pointing and saw a man in his early forties with healthy, vibrant skin and lively eyes. He had the look of someone who spent his days outdoors. He was wearing a baseball cap with a fish on it and grinning from ear to ear. He was rather attractive, Nadia thought, in a Grizzly Adams kind of way. “That’s right,” he told her. “It went after Flapper one night.”

  “Flapper?” Nadia looked in the direction that Al was pointing and saw a stout, curly-haired man with ruddy skin and pudgy cheeks.

  “That’s his fishing name,” Al explained. “He caught a hook to the face and he’s been ‘Flapper’ ever since.” The men laughed heartily at the memory, even Flapper.

  “Son of bitch caught me right in the nose!” he confirmed proudly. He was wearing camouflage pants with a beige t-shirt that had the words, ‘the best way to a fisherman’s heart is through his fly’ stretched over his extended belly.