Lethal Influence

by Susan Bohnet

  “Mmummff,” came from the girl, her head tossing side to side as she struggled with the duct tape that held her securely in place.

  “Don’t,” Kai said, trying to keep his voice low. “Don’t struggle. You are safe now. I’m going to go back to the car and call the police. They will be here right away.”

  He saw her eyes flash white in the moonlight. She shook her head violently in negation, the muffled sound of her sobs reaching him, even as he stepped back. He slipped behind a tree and turned to race toward the vehicles.

  It took only seconds to search the Honda and find her purse, lying discarded on the floor of the car, its contents spilled out. He picked up her phone and dialed 911. When the distant, calm voice answered he provided the necessary information and, pausing to wipe off his fingerprints, dropped the phone onto the car seat. Sliding into his truck, he turned the key and raced out of the area, knowing he had only seconds to get out of there before the police arrived.

  Driving down the road he heard the sirens of several police cruisers speeding in the direction of the mall and he smiled. The Strangler would not be hurting anyone else.

  Chapter Forty-six

  “Her name is Treva Horton,” Lincoln said, tossing a picture on the long table in the information room. The photo showed a woman in her early forties with mid-length dark hair. Kai and the other rebels leaned in for a good look. Her jaw was strong and her eyes narrow. She was dressed in a pale blouse and dark suit.

  “Her office in the city is a constant stream of the filth of humanity. She embraces them and represents them in court. Very well, I’m afraid. There are more murderers, drug dealers, and rapists on the streets every month thanks to the legal skills of Treva Horton. All her clients are this kind of criminal.”

  Many of the rebels shook their heads in disgust. Kai just stared at them. Then he said, “So, she’s just the lawyer?”

  “Just the lawyer?” said Lincoln. “She squeezes them through loopholes and denies justice.”

  “But she doesn’t actually commit any crimes.” Kai felt the weight of disapproval from the Trebladores staring at him. Lincoln was revealing the next mission for Kai and he wasn’t accepting it blindly.

  “Surely you see what is happening … all the suffering … because she puts them back on the street,” said Leo. He adjusted his scarf, loosening it as though he was suddenly too warm. “She is directly responsible for all the crimes committed. She gets them off and they hurt more people.”

  Kai stepped away from the table. His heart raced. “It’s a gray area,” he said.

  “Where is the gray area with Ken Puglisi?” said Lincoln. “He’s the guy who murdered his boss and three fellow employees because the company denied him holiday pay for the day he was in jail for drug trafficking.”

  “Horton got him off,” said Harrison.

  “But she was just doing her job.”

  “She specializes in scum,” said Lincoln. “The world will be better off without her.”

  Kai turned away. Whether or not that was the case, he didn’t want to make the call. She was a lawyer, not an African warlord. She hadn’t set out to kill anyone. How did one determine who should die and who should live? And was it his right to make the decision? Kai felt a sense of disquiet settle over him. This was why the Society had Masters and Elites and then the average Trebladore worker. They were a long-established Society who had taken many years to set out the criteria for their missions. This was the problem with new groups like the rebels; they didn’t have the experience or history to give them a sense of the parameters they needed to use as guidelines.

  Just then the TV showed a picture of Lester, his greasy black hair clinging to his cheeks. Kai’s attention to the screen drew the other’s eyes as well. Harrison jingled over to the set and turned up the volume.

  A reporter off-screen told the tale of the police officers responding to a 911 call and finding a young woman tied to a tree, a young man dead on the ground beside her.

  “The girl claims that there was someone else there, someone who stopped The Strangler from breaking her legs and killing her as he had intended. This mystery man didn’t actually touch her assailant and she didn’t see a weapon of any kind, he just stood there and The Strangler dropped dead at her side. She says the stranger fell too, and at first she thought he was dead, but after a while he stood up and told her to be calm and that he was going to call the police. She never saw him again.” Now the screen showed the face of the anchorwoman behind a desk. “Police have no clues to the identity of this mysterious stranger, and it’s unclear what The Strangler died of. There were no apparent wounds on Lester Gilmore’s body. They are hoping an autopsy will give them some clues.”

  When the program went to the next story, Lincoln said, “Turn it down.” In the silence that followed all eyes were riveted on Kai. “You acted alone,” said Lincoln, his voice hard.

  Kai nodded.

  “That was reckless,” snarled Lincoln, slamming his palms on the table. “And it wasn’t part of our plan.”

  “Our plan? You wouldn’t listen to me when I wanted to talk about going after The Strangler. It wasn’t part of your plan. I know I’m part of this group, but I have the right to choose who I kill. I’m the one doing the killing!” Kai’s eyes met Lincoln’s and he felt the flush of anger flood his skin.

  “What if you killed the wrong guy?” Lincoln said, dropping his gaze and stepping back from his place at the table. “How did you know he was The Strangler?”

  “I caught him in the act! I heard him tell that woman what he was going to do to her. He was going to break her legs and then strangle her, just like his other victims. I know you wanted to let him be; that you wanted him to be a distraction, but I couldn’t let him go on killing innocent people just so we wouldn’t have to deal with suspicion from the other Trebladores.” Kai stood with both feet braced, his hands clenched at his side. His eyes flicked around the room, watching the reaction on the others’ faces.

  Lincoln stood in stony silence for several minutes, his narrowed gaze steady on Kai. Then, he lowered his head and sat at the table. “Kai,” he said, his voice dropping. “We have to be very careful. We can’t get caught. What if you hadn’t come around soon enough? What if the girl saw you? You went alone. You had no backup. Even on Influencing missions we always send at least two Trebs. It’s too dangerous to go alone, for so many different reasons. You can’t just go out and do things like that. It’s important that you target only the people we have investigated. We choose them very carefully.”

  “I’d rather use my power on someone like Lester than some white-collar lawyer with seedy clients. He was a monster!”

  “Look at the monsters Horton puts back on the streets,” said Leo grabbing the file on the lawyer. He went into a detailed chronicle of the clients Horton got off.

  The anger and anguish that was becoming a frequent part of Kai’s ‘job’ coursed through him. Moving, Kai sat at the table and took each new picture of the perpetrators and the victims involved in Treva Horton’s cases. The bodies were given no dignity; the lives were given no thought. What kind of person could go into a court of law and twist facts and look for loopholes to sway opinions and evidence in the favor of these criminals?

  “Look at the big picture,” Leo continued. “Without Horton, these guys all rot in jail where they belong. She might as well pull the trigger in every one of these murders.”

  Kai set the file on the wood-grain table. It seemed as though he were placing the evidence on a roughly finished coffin. He met the eyes of the rebels, some sitting, some standing, and he noticed that many of them quickly looked away again. He thrust his hands in his pockets, feeling the slight weight of the lighter settle into the palm of his right hand. He gripped it, resisting the urge to pull it out and flick it on and off. He could feel the tightness across his chest and he forced himself to breathe deeply. His eyes se
ttled on Lincoln who now stared steadily back at him. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Kai sat on the low wall that bordered Anderson Park, feeling the coldness of the stones seep through his jeans. He had been sitting there for hours now and he knew he had to make a move. The park was getting busy with morning visitors; mothers pushing baby carriages and leading small children to the play structure, young women jogging by, elderly men walking their dogs, whistling as they sauntered along.

  Kai saw them without seeing them, his gaze firmly turned inward. He had killed the lawyer lady, Treva. Dropped her, not without hesitation, as she stood in her doorway, answering the ring of her bell. She had been defenseless … and kind. He had walked up to her house late the night before, knocked on her door and then silently struck her dead as she stared into his eyes.

  Kai rubbed the back of his neck, pushing his head forward. When he looked into Treva’s eyes, he had not found the deserted soul he usually did. This woman was not a monster, not a human without hope. She could have been Influenced; she could have been turned if someone had taken the time with her. He had known that as soon as his eyes met hers. And yet, he had allowed the anger to rise through him, had purposely brought up in his mind the pictures of the victims of the men this woman had allowed to go free. The dead girls with their twisted bodies and ravaged faces, the young men, slain in the prime of their lives–all dead because they were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the children: the ones who were never found, their bodies missing.

  It hadn’t been hard to do. To bring to mind all those pictures he had studied at the rebel hideout. To let the anger that the sight of those pictures engendered, rise up through the soles of his feet, race through his veins and bring the tingling to his spine that signaled the death of the mind he was Influencing. It was all so easy. The anger; the killing. And it was that very easiness that brought him to this wall watching the sun rise on another day. A day that Treva Horton would never see … because of him.

  Was he playing God? What right did he have to do this to anyone? Were those who died at the hands of monsters like the ones he had killed, supposed to die? Was it their fate? Their choice? Their right? Was he playing at something he knew nothing about and would his actions change things on Earth that were not his to change?

  Questions like these had been swirling through his mind since he arrived in the wee hours of the night. He hadn’t returned to the rebel hideout after he killed Treva. They didn’t even know he had done it yet. He had allowed himself to fall to the floor of the porch just as the lawyer fell. It was fitting, wasn’t it? If she had to fall, he should fall too.

  When he came to, the door was still open and the woman lay in a heap in the foyer, her face the picture of serenity. One of the ironies of what he did. Their deaths, unlike the deaths of the people they killed, were peaceful and pain-free. They felt nothing as they died. He rose from the floor and left the door as it was. No fingerprints, nothing to let anyone know who had killed the woman. Someone passing by would find her eventually. Someone would call the police and they would get the body, do the autopsy, and wonder what had happened. It would all be so mysterious.

  Birds twittered in the park. Kai slid off the wall, landing on the balls of his feet, feeling a little unsteady. Taking in a deep breath, he allowed the thoughts he had fought against all night to come … Beth. What would she say about what he had done? Just where did he stand on the issue of taking someone’s choices away? He had refused to allow the Trebladores to do it to Beth, and yet he hadn’t hesitated to do it to those men in Africa and Afghanistan. Or Lester and Treva. What did that make him? Was he a murderer, in truth? Would Beth be able to forgive him if she knew what he was and why he did it? Would she be able to see him in the same way again? Could he see himself the same way anymore?

  It was the thought of Beth that broke him. He sat again, suddenly. The world swam before him and he raised both hands to his head, holding himself together with supreme effort. He had to stop this. It wasn’t right. He felt the tightness in his chest and thought for a moment that he was having a heart attack. Was this how it would end? Him dying in the park as mothers passed with their children? Except he knew that as a Trebladore he couldn’t have a heart attack. Their health was supernatural by human standards. They could die, killed in an accident just like his parents had been. But they did not degenerate the way humans did. That was another reason why they were not to form long-term relationships with humans. It was too hard to hide the fact that they weren’t aging at the same rate as everyone else.

  Kai straightened and looked around the park, as his hands sought the lighter in his pocket. He pulled it out, feeling the warmth of the tiny case. He fingered it upright and clicked it on, off, on. Watched as the flame danced to life and then steadied, flickering in the light breeze that rustled the leaves of the trees above his head. He stared at the flame, feeling the breath return to his lungs, feeling the steadiness that watching the flame always brought him. His eye caught the movement of a dog to his left. He released the flame and returned the lighter to his pocket.

  Kai put his hand on his chest. He looked around and saw that no one had noticed him. The sun was shining in the deep blue sky and children laughed as they raced around the play structure. He pulled back his shoulders. He would continue. He would have to live with what he had done. Regret would not save Treva now. But he had to determine what he was going to do. He knew he needed to return to the rebel stronghold and hide out … and he was going to have to admit to Lincoln that he had done it again. Had killed alone. Lincoln wouldn’t be happy about that; it was too dangerous. But, Lincoln was just going to have to get used to it.

  Kai wasn’t about to let Lincoln call all the shots.

  He walked toward the hideout. The sun was warm on his shoulders and he could feel the breeze as it cooled him. It wasn’t far. The house was at the end of the block and he could see that there was already activity going on there.

  Kai saw Harrison stride out the front door, walking swiftly across the yard toward his car. He had his head down and didn’t see the other car that drove up, stopping on the street, effectively blocking Harrison from backing his car out of the driveway. Harrison looked up in surprise, and then a look of curiosity crossed his face as he saw the men climb out of the car.

  It was Jessip and two Elites. They moved quickly. Within seconds the two Elites had Harrison held between them and Jessip reached out with a syringe, stabbing it into Harrison’s neck. Harrison sagged suddenly and the two men who held him grunted as they dragged him to the car.

  Kai had enough sense to step back behind a tree.

  The front door flew open with a bang and Leo stumbled out, only to come to a sudden halt as he spied the three men stuffing Harrison into their car. He turned and disappeared back into the house and Kai knew he would be alerting the others. Jessip stood by the car, watching the house in silence. The other Elites straightened and turned to Jessip. Kai heard them say something, but couldn’t make it out. Jessip shook his head. Kai wasn’t sure if he saw sadness or anger in the other man’s face. The three men got into their car and drove off.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Harrison had never been a close friend, but to see him abducted caused Kai’s heart to skip several beats and cold sweat to break out on his skin, making him clammy. What did the Trebladore Master want with him? Information? What else? They must have discovered that Harrison was one of the rebels. How did they know? What else did they know? And would they know more after interrogating Harrison? They must not have known this was the rebel base, though, or they wouldn’t have been content with one rebel.

  Kai swallowed and tried to slow his rapid breathing. He kept picturing the way they grabbed Harrison, how he struggled, how Jessip had so expertly jabbed his neck with a syringe, and the way they dragged him off. The shock of their conduct seemed to hit him in waves. Jessi
p was there. They used force. Harrison was powerless.

  It didn’t seem real, like a video that’s been tampered with so the lips don’t quite match the dialogue. The behavior he’d just witnessed was so diametrically opposed to what Trebladores were like. And these weren’t rebels. They were regular Trebladores. Was nothing the way it should be?

  “I said, ‘Don’t touch the stroller!’” snarled a woman approaching on the sidewalk. She didn’t look at Kai standing to the side of the walkway. “He’s almost asleep and I don’t need you jostling it around.” She was in her early thirties and dressed in a mismatched jogging suit that, judging from her round figure, hadn’t seen much jogging.

  There was a baby lying in the stroller and a little girl of four or five semi-running to keep up with her mother. The girl’s hair was a tangled nest of dirty blond curls. The girl reached out for the edge of the stroller again and the mother slapped her hand away. “I’m warning you, Holly! Once more and we’re not going to the park. Don’t be such a brat.”

  “Mom! You promised!”

  “Just shut up!” She grabbed the girl’s arm and wrenched her further from the stroller, the girl’s feet left the ground with the force. “Don’t wake up Devon,” she hissed.

  Kai clenched his teeth. Stepping out from the trees, he followed the harried mother and her two children.

  “Are we almost there?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. It’s right there.”

  Kai felt the familiar anger rise within him. Some people didn’t deserve to be parents. Why was it that if you wanted to drive a car you had to take a test but to have a baby and take on the responsibility of a person’s life, you didn’t need a single thing to qualify?