“Hey,” Scott said, letting gravity carry him, “that question my mom asked? About Murder Creek being the real target of these slayings? Why do you think the mayor reacted like he did?”
“I couldn’t get a clean impression,” Janis said, “but it definitely jolted him. Strange, huh?”
“I’d bet anything that it ties in with David, somehow. Based on the files we accessed, his relationship with the town is checkered at best. Maybe this is David’s way of getting back at them. Carrying out random crimes, frightening the citizens, making the police appear inept.”
“Maybe,” Janis said neutrally.
She understood his single-minded fixation on David. After all, David had been wearing his father’s shirt, had threatened J.R., had made those creepy, romantic overtures to her. But there was the small problem of his energy. Though chilling to the point of feeling corpse-like, it didn’t match the energy Janis had palpated at Scott’s house or over the murdered husky.
His energetic fingerprint wasn’t a match.
The only way to be certain, though, was to go to where his energy would be imprinted everywhere—inside his house. And if they couldn’t find a match there, or any physical evidence linking him to the robberies or dog-slayings, they could eliminate David and his gang from suspicion.
Where the road leveled, a street sign leaned above the undergrowth. Cemetery Road.
“This is us,” Scott said.
As Janis turned her handlebars, it felt less as though she was veering onto a side road than entering it. Live oaks crowded their passage. Janis ducked to avoid a scraggly beard of Spanish moss while cutting her front tire back and forth to dodge a minefield of fallen limbs. Beside her, Scott bounced over a section of asphalt that tree roots had undermined.
Clear of the obstacles, Janis ventured a peek around her. The woods to either side of the road were thick and water-logged, suspensions of peat showing green in places. The bog threw up a dank smell that evoked images of frog bellies and grub-infested logs.
Cockroach heaven, Janis thought, and made a face.
An occasional driveway yawned into the trees, the houses they led to reclusive and overgrown. Judging by the poor states—and in some cases, missing states—of the mailboxes, Janis guessed the houses to be abandoned. She noticed Scott’s lips moving as he counted off the street numbers.
Ahead, the road narrowed, squeezing them into a single file. Janis followed the serpentine pattern of Scott’s tires as he weaved around clumps of growth and broken-off chunks of asphalt.
“Should be coming up any minute now,” he said over his shoulder.
When Janis raised her face, she realized that they were no longer on a road, but a driveway. The trees parted and a nightmare house rose ahead of them. Janis made a grunting sound as she stood into her brakes. Her rear tire caught gravel and slewed sideways. She tipped into Scott, who had braked as well, and they both went over in a clattering pile.
When they came to a rest, their faces were inches apart. Scott held her cheek. “You all right?”
She kissed his nose. “I think you broke my fall. You?”
“I’m good. The asphalt broke mine.”
They untangled themselves from their bikes and helped each other to stand. As Scott wiped debris from his pant legs, Janis performed a scan of the dilapidated plantation house. Four large Corinthian columns lined the front. Between the columns, on the porch and balcony levels, leaden windows looked out. Two more windows stared down from steep gables that jutted from a limb-littered roof. The stately house appeared to have been white once, but the columns and bricks had molded over, taking on a dark green hue that verged on black.
Now it looked fit to host the Munsters. Or a brood of vampires.
“No one’s inside,” Janis said after a moment. “But it feels like we’re being watched.”
“I know what you mean.” Scott eyed the windows. “Let’s get the bikes out of sight.”
Janis spotted a path that slipped from the driveway to their right. They walked their bikes down it, the ground underneath the leaf litter sucking at their soles. Scott used a stick to clear thick banana-spider webs that spanned the path at face level.
The path soon opened around a gazebo in a state of partial collapse. They hid their bikes behind it. Janis summoned her telekinetic abilities to drag some fallen branches over top of them for good measure.
“Looks like if we continue that way,” Scott said, whispering now, “the path will carry us to the back of the house.”
As Janis nodded, the damp air mingled with the sweat on her brow, sending a low chill through her.
They picked their way between the trees, bits of the house visible off to their left. Eventually, the path opened onto what must have once been an elaborate garden. Janis caught a visual echo from the past: men and women in ballroom attire, paper lanterns festooned above them, flowers in spring bloom all around. But that had been another century. Now the gardens were rotting weed beds, the stone fountains that had once bubbled and babbled, packed with leaf fall.
Ahead of them, a set of curved stone steps ascended to a back door.
“We good to go?” Scott asked.
Janis checked to make sure David and the others were still at Murder World before nodding her head. “But the minute they start moving, we’re going to need to clear out. The park’s only a five minute ride away.”
“Roger that,” Scott said, climbing the steps.
He had the tension wrench and pick halfway out of his wallet before stopping. “Oh, yeah,” he said, his voice faltering with disappointment. “Did you want to do your thing?”
Janis reached past him and turned the knob. The unlocked door cracked open.
“Presto,” she said.
He laughed. “You’re good.”
As he touched the door with tented fingers, he looked into her eyes and raised his brows. No telepathic communication was required. You sure you want to do this? he was asking. When she nodded, he tightened his lips in resolve. He pushed the door all the way open.
Janis braced herself for a rotten smell. Instead, the air that brushed her cheeks carried a scent of old varnished wood and a bold spice, like black pepper, that found the back of her palate.
They stepped into a back foyer. A line of muddy boots lined one wall, toes in. Scott stooped down.
“Hey, check this out,” he said.
Janis knelt beside him. Together, they studied a pattern of dark red splotches across the toes of one of the boots.
“From the dog, maybe?” Scott asked.
Janis shifted her consciousness until she could perceive both astral and physical realms, the first overlapping the second in a network of energetic lines. The level of perception required all of her concentration, not unlike trying to maintain the paper-thin state between wakefulness and sleep. Several energetic signatures stood out, but none matched the murderer’s.
“Hard to say,” she answered. “I’m not picking up anything.”
Scott frowned in disappointment as he straightened.
From the foyer, a door opened onto a giant living room. At first glance, the room looked haphazard, a helter-skelter arrangement of consignment-store couches, leather-button and plush chairs, coffee and end tables, area rugs that clashed with one another. Posters of bands Janis had never heard of—The Fugs, Silver Apples, The Misunderstood—plastered the walls. But as she moved further into the dim room, she sensed a strange symmetry. It wasn’t until she projected her consciousness toward the high ceiling and took the living room in from above that she saw why.
The furniture had been arranged in the pattern of a pentagonal star. Janis knew little about the occult, but she understood that the star was a pagan symbol—more recently co-opted by devil worshippers.
The killings are part of a cult ritual, the police chief had said.
Janis returned to her body. She considered sharing her discovery with Scott but decided not to. It would only deepen his bias against David. She caugh
t herself feeling through her shirt for her small pendant crucifix.
They wended separate paths through the living room. Most of the seating faced a large stone fireplace. The coffee and end tables held lumpy wax candles and porcelain ashtrays. Scott picked up a goblet. Something red swilled in the bottom. He lifted the goblet to his nose and wrinkled his face.
“Blood?” Janis asked, unable to help herself.
He shook his head as he set the goblet back down. “Spoiled wine. Anything yet?”
He was referring to the energetic signatures. Janis checked the room again and shook her head. “Nothing even comes close. And if it’s not here … that settles it, as far as I’m concerned.”
Scott placed his hands on his hips and made a sputtering sound with his lips. She could see that it wasn’t the answer he had wanted. He looked around.
“If they’re keeping blood anywhere,” he said after a moment, “it would have to be in there, right?”
“The kitchen?”
Janis was about to protest but shrugged her shoulders instead. If a blood-free kitchen was the key to ending Scott’s obsession with David, the side trip would be worth it.
Though the kitchen’s fixtures were old and rust-tainted, the kitchen itself was surprisingly neat. Clean counters, pots and pans on hooks, a medley of knife handles in a wooden block. Scott pulled the lever handle on a metal refrigerator and ducked to inspect the shelves.
He made a noise. “Well, they definitely have an appetite for…”
Janis moved around the door to see inside as well.
“ … yogurt,” he finished.
The bottom shelf held several containers of plain Yoplait.
“Maybe that’s their anti-aging secret,” Janis offered.
Scott pushed aside the yogurt to expose bags of artisan bread, containers of cold cuts, a pair of sliced-into cheese wheels, jars of olives and artichoke hearts, several bottles of wine. Vegetables that appeared reasonably fresh filled the crisper. Spicy mustard and other condiments lined the door shelves.
“There has to be something,” Scott muttered.
He opened the freezer, but whatever he saw through the exhalation of frosty air wasn’t it. He clapped that door closed, too.
“No blood-sicles?” Janis asked.
He made a face between a smile and a grimace.
“Look, Scott. The guys are still in Murder World, but it would be nice to avoid a close shave for a change. Why don’t we…?”
But Scott was already disappearing through a walk-in pantry that connected the kitchen to a dining room.
“Hey, check this out!” he called.
Janis sighed and trudged after him. The dining room featured a large wooden table, the floral wallpaper on the surrounding walls curling up from the baseboards. But Scott was still moving. Janis followed his voice through the front foyer, where a staircase spiraled to the second floor, and into a library.
“This must be where David does his legal work,” Scott said.
The room was impressive, Janis had to admit. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined the walls, every inch of shelf stuffed with what appeared to be legal books. Janis pulled one out.
“‘Treatise on the Laws of Commerce and Manufactures,’” she read.
She returned the thick book to its slot and looked around. A round wooden table and antique chair occupied the center of the room, the table stacked with more law books and several yellow legal pads. A line of sharpened pencils sat beside these. Janis flipped through the pad nearest to her. Though the writing was neat, almost elegant, it was like reading Greek. All legal parlance.
“Forget a special relationship with the judge,” Janis said. “David simply knows his law.”
‘Yeah,” Scott agreed. “And just when I was starting to think the judge was the head vampire.”
“Head what?”
“You know, the one who bites the others, transforms them into undead creatures.”
“Oh, right. Him.”
If Scott detected her sarcasm, he gave no indication. He was running a hand over the book binders.
“Do you think all of these are David’s?”
Intuition rippled through Janis. “I think they were already here. The former owner was a lawyer or judge, and David took the books over when they moved in. That’s how he’s been defending himself and the others.” Janis’s eyes roamed the shelves, pausing on titles on Roman law, tomes by ancient philosophers and historians. Something told Janis David had read those, too. “He’s every bit the prodigy Detective Buckner seems to think he is.”
“Which makes him dangerous.”
“But not the killer,” Janis pointed out. “I think that’s been established.”
Scott appeared ready to relent—at last—when something snuffed along the bottom of a wooden door opposite them. He and Janis leaped back at the same time, Janis’s heart slugging in her chest.
Scott crept up beside her. “Pretty sure that door leads to the garage,” he whispered.
Janis concentrated past the door. In her fear, the energetic lines wavered in the dark. Ahead of her, something stirred. It made another noise, a question-like whine, and nosed into her astral space.
Janis gasped back into her body. “Scott, we have to get that door open. There’s something trapped inside.”
“What?”
She pictured the shaggy haunches of the dead husky and then the stains on the boots in the back foyer.
“Another dog.”
11
“Can you…?” Scott asked, miming someone turning a bolt.
“I already tried,” Janis said. “It’s not a manual lock. Both sides require a key.”
Scott nodded quickly, already pulling his wallet from his pants pocket. Janis’s cheeks had gone pallid. In his peripheral vision he could see her clasping her hands. Scott inserted the tension wrench and pick and palpated the lock’s inner workings. Beyond the door, the dog whined. Nails scratched at the wood. Judging by both sounds, the dog was decent sized.
“We’re coming, buddy,” Scott called.
The lock wasn’t complicated, fortunately. Four basic pins. He quickly trapped them along the shear line and rotated the tension wrench. The bolt clunked back into its housing.
“Scott, wait— !” Janis started to cry.
But the door was already slamming into him. Scott thudded onto his back just as something large and white squeezed out. A tearing growl sounded, and Scott’s right forearm screamed in pain.
When he looked up, icy blue eyes bore into his. For a vertiginous moment, Scott was convinced they belonged to David.
It wasn’t until the creature adjusted its bite, teeth grinding against bone now, that Scott realized he was dealing with a guard dog. Wincing, Scott wedged his other forearm against its matted throat. He was acutely aware that the redness drooling from the dog’s mouth was his own blood.
The dog growled around his arm.
A force shook the air. The hinges of the dog’s jaw released and its eyes rolled up. The animal collapsed onto its side.
In the next moment, Janis was kneeling beside Scott, cradling his wounded arm.
“Oh God, are you all right?”
Scott looked down. A gray fugue clouded the sight of bloody wells on the underside of his forearm. He looked away. His gaze landed on the fallen dog, a white German shepherd with a long snout and steep ears.
“Scott?” Janis said.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m all right,” he answered dimly. “Better than our friend here, anyway.” He forced a chuckle.
“I had to hit it with a mind blast. Just hard enough to put it out for a bit.” She helped Scott to his feet. He must have wavered because she hooked an arm around his waist. “We need to get you out of here,” she said. “Get that wound seen to. The dog could be sick or rabid.”
Scott eyed the black line of the dog’s gums. “It’s not foaming. I think it’s their guard dog.”
“What’s there to guard?” Janis asked.
&
nbsp; “Well, if they weren’t out right now, I’d say their coffins.” Janis’s impatient look prompted him to hold up his good hand. “But since they are out, I would think it’s whatever they have in the garage there.”
“Scott, no.” Her eyes fell back to his grisly forearm. The deep tissue had begun to throb. “You’re hurt.”
“It’ll just take a minute.”
“I have the power to drag you out of here, you know?”
Scott stripped off his sweatshirt and shirt and began wrapping his forearm with the second. Dark blood struck through the first layers. He struggled to tuck the shirt’s hem into the ends of the wrapping one-handed.
Janis sighed. “Here.”
“Sixty seconds.” He kissed her forehead as she finished the bandaging job. “I promise.”
Scott reached his hand through the door and patted both walls until he encountered a light switch. When he flipped it, nothing happened. Janis had suggested they bring a flashlight with them, but Scott had forgotten to pack it. He unshouldered his backpack, removed the head lamp he had retrofitted with a laser, and affixed the lamp over his brow.
Seconds later, a narrow beam pierced the darkness, its red light drawing the surrounding space into faint relief. It would have to do. Scott felt his way down a short flight of steps.
From what he could see, the space was being used for storage. At the bottom of the stairs, he stepped over a pile of shredded blankets that either served as bedding for the dog or as its chew toy. Scott peered around, his laser lighting up boards of plywood, lengths of PVC tubing, what looked like mechanical pumps in various states of disassembly…
“Hey,” Janis whispered, coming up beside him, “shine your beam over there.”
He turned his head toward the rear wall. The beam landed on a row of translucent vats filled with … something. He and Janis crossed the floor and pried plastic lids from two neighboring vats.
A coppery smell filled the back of Scott’s throat. Janis clapped a hand over her nose and mouth.
“Is the laser doing that?” Scott asked, staring into the dark red liquid. “Or is that its actual color.”
XGeneration (Book 5): Cry Little Sister Page 7