The Wraith- Welcome Home

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  THE WRAITH: welcome home

  Superhero by Night: Book Two

  Jeffery H. Haskell

  Book Title Copyright © 2019 by Jeffery H. Haskell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by www.VividCovers.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Author Name

  Visit my website at www.jefferyhhaskell.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Published: Jan 2019

  Molten Press

  I’ve written enough books now I’m not sure who to thank anymore. Everyone. If you’re reading this, then it’s for you!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Anthony Ribissi smiled as he let the leather-wrapped steering wheel of his brand-new Dodge Hellcat slide through his fingers. The muscle car handled the narrow road leading up to Raker’s mansion with ease. He resisted the urge to gun the engine, preferring to show the car off with her smooth lines and the low growl of her big engine. The Hellcat was a special edition car; seven hundred and ninety-seven horsepower, European style racing suspension, and big Goodyear tires made her look and sound mean.

  Just like Anthony himself.

  The Hellcat was his reward for his promotion. Four years as an enforcer, another five as an assistant to a bookie, then up to second lieutenant of the docks. And now… now he was in charge of the docks. Sure, working for the Outfit wasn’t the easiest job in the world—but he could’ve been like his father, slogging away as a warehouse worker for thirty years before dying of a stroke in the July heat.

  And his father never drove a Hellcat; he drove a lousy green station wagon broken tail lights.

  Anthony parked the big car next to a pair of predictably black BMW’s. His Hellcat was bright yellow with two black lines right down the middle. The rims were black, showing off the bright red brake calipers behind them. Everything about the car screamed excess.

  He hit the button to kill the engine then climbed out, leaving the windows down.. It was another long, hot November day in New Orleans. Despite the dying light to the west, the heat was enough to suffocate him. He walked past the drivers milling about outside smoking cigarettes and trading lies. There had to be twenty-five cars here: the biggest meeting of the New Orleans Outfit he’d heard of since last year. Every lieutenant was here or was represented here. It was his first meeting as a made man and he couldn’t be happier.

  It was too bad it would be his last.

  The man’s whose position he inherited had disappeared the week before, taking with him the payment intended to encourage the port authority look the other way. When a made man disappeared, the Outfit asked questions. When he disappeared with a hundred grand in cash and jewels, they knew the answer; he’d decided to strike out on his own. If they ever found him, it would be a long slow death as an example to others. Not something Anthony would ever do. No, he was in it for the long haul. He had plans.

  Raker’s mansion held a lofty position on top of a small hill. Three stories tall and spread out over twenty-thousand square feet, it used to be a plantation; now it was home to the man in charge of Anthony’s division. It was a much bigger sounding job than it was. Anthony had met the man once before and was completely underwhelmed. If not for his superpowers, Raker he would never have held any position in the Outfit.

  Anthony nodded at the tough looking security men who bracketed either side of the large double doors. He didn’t know what kind of compact SMGs they carried, but they were black, short barreled, and mean looking. He carried a silver-plated forty-five in a real Italian leather shoulder holster he’d bought that morning. It was uncomfortable as hell but he was determined to look the part.

  Inside the mansion were twenty of New Orleans’ most powerful men. The lieutenants. Each division had a lieutenant in charge, the only people above them was the Vaas, his brother Peter, and Raker. Anthony had only met the scary as hell leader of ISO-1 in the city once, and that was enough. Each lieutenant with roughly forty soldiers.

  Forty!

  Anthony swelled with pride at the thought of his new position. He’d made it. No one could take it from him.

  The brown oak double doors swung open revealing the two curved staircases on either side of the foyer. Standing in his bathrobe with a pair of bimbo’s hanging on his every word, was Raker. How the short, fat, balding man with a greasy smile and stubby fingers ever managed to snag two gorgeous model types was beyond Anthony’s imagination. Nothing about Raker spoke to any kind of worth. It had to be the money.

  Raker smiled, “Tony, welcome. As this is your first meeting, I want to advise you to keep quiet and listen. No need to embarrass yourself on your first day!” The two girls giggled as if Raker had just said the funniest thing all day. He opened his mouth to say something sharp when he found himself nodding and agreeing with Raker. Tony made his way to the large conference room and heard the man chuckling behind him, greeting the next person to arrive.

  What the hell was that all about? Tony didn’t like Raker, and now that he was ten feet from him he really wanted to go back and yell at the fat man for condescending to him like a child. Anthony wasn’t stupid, despite his chosen career. He suddenly realized Raker’s power; some form of mind control or emotional manipulation.

  Son of a gun. Got to remember to stay away from him.

  Some supers worked by pheromones; he’d read an interview with a hottie from Arizona who talked about how empathic powers worked and how a person should respond if they thought they were being controlled. Stay away was her number one advice and Anthony was going to take it. He would never get within twenty feet of the fat pervert again for as long as he lived. That was a promise.

  The meeting room was really a giant living room, re-arranged with a massive oak table, plush high back chairs, and twice as many wooden chairs behind them. The lieutenants sat in the plush chairs and the numerous soldiers they each brought with them sat behind. Anthony clenched his jaw. He was here by himself. The others had all brought four or five enforcers with them. He suddenly felt quite exposed. He pulled down on his jacket, cracked his neck, and walked directly to the seat with his name draped on the back. Or, it should have been his name, instead it was his former boss. He scowled.

  That’s the way it’s going to be then, all right. I’m gonna show these fools who they’re messing with. This will be a meeting they won’t soon forget!

  ***

  I crouched in the top branch of the old oak tree in the center of the cul de sac style driveway. The sun was almost completely down and the anticipation tickled my throat and knotted up my stomach. I double checked the two Glock 17’s that I took off the mobster who had told me where to find this meeting. He didn’t need them anymore. I carried a black, three-foot-long straight bladed sword I’d picked up from a pawn shop the day before. The nylon wrapped handle had the company logo—a timber wolf—on it. Joseph hadn’t mentioned tactical swords in our training, but I figured if the Ghost had so much use for them, then maybe I could look into them. After all, blades are quiet. And scary. That’s the best part.

  Get your mind in the game, Madi.

  I also had my backup piece, two extra knives, and four mags for each pistol. Each gun had a bullet in the chamber and the silencer attached. No SMG this time. I wanted another Sko
rpion but that would take time. “Never use the same weapon twice,” Joseph had drilled into me. It made sense; if I carried the gun I used to kill mobsters in Detroit then they would know who it was if I were ever caught with it. The goal was for them to know fear, not me.

  I smirked at that. The last month in New Orleans I had quietly struck fear in a number of hearts. By taking out key figures and disrupting shipments and other high-value targets I had orchestrated this meeting. Everything led to this. I took a deep breath and loosened my neck by cracking it from side to side. It was time to work for a living.

  Work I really enjoyed.

  The man who drove the shiny yellow muscle car walked in followed by another latecomer. After them, one of the security guards in the front turned and walked by the other who then closed the big double doors.

  As if doors could keep me out. The building had three stories and at least a hundred windows. With the sun down, half the property was cast in shadow. First, I needed to take out the external threats—slowly, quietly, without alerting anyone inside to my presence… until it was too late. I drew my sword, turned on the tree limb and spied my first target; a lone security man walking the perimeter. I reached down inside me and triggered the shadow-step.

  ***

  Anthony shook his head in disbelief at the information Raker was telling them. How had he not known any of this? Fourteen soldiers and two lieutenants missing (including his former boss) and over a million dollars of merchandise stolen, and this was the first he was hearing of it? Not dead, not run off. Simply disappeared. One minute they were there, the next they weren’t.

  It was enough to give a grown man nightmares. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. All his plans of showing the men in this room what-was-what disappeared along with his courage. Now he was more concerned about staying alive. No one was supposed to threaten ISO-1 like this. It was one of the perks of working for a mafia-style organization. Protection. They owned the cops, the feds, judges—he’d even heard a rumor the governor was in their pocket.

  And now this…

  Unconsciously he slipped his hand into his jacket and fingered his brand new forty-five. He resisted the urge to pull it out and chamber a round.

  “What are we going to do about this threat?” Kuss said from opposite Anthony. Kuss was a big man from Serbia—he still had his Slavic accent and he was in charge of the ‘exports’ of the female variety. The man had contacts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East that paid good money for young white women, and there was no shortage of those in New Orleans.

  “Before we go any farther, I need a drink. Anyone else?” Raker asked. There was a general agreement to take a breather and the men around him broke out in murmurs, speaking to one another. Raker sent his two blondes to the kitchen, presumably to bring refreshments. Now that Anthony got a better look at them, they were identical twins,

  Anthony scooted back from the table a little, steepling his hands in his lap. What could he do? The docks were untouched, maybe he could fortify—

  Glass crashed above him. Anthony jerked back as it rained down on the table, followed by a headless body a second later. It thudded lifelessly against the table, splashing blood on half a dozen people.

  Shock and confusion washed over everyone in the room. Slack-jawed wide-eyed mobsters stared in disbelief at what they were seeing. Then, as one, they broke into action. Weapons appeared and chairs were knocked over as twenty men moved for the door. All of them looking up toward the broken skylight three stories above.

  “Calm down everyone,” Raker said. His voice had a commanding quality, and despite knowing he had superpowers Anthony found himself calming down. His muscles relaxed and—

  The room was plunged into darkness with nothing but the streaming silver moonlight to see by. A burst of blue light flashed into existence behind Raker. He screamed for a half second before it turned into a sickening gurgle as his throat was cut from artery to artery, spraying blood. Anthony squealed like a girl as Raker’s body fell forward.

  Standing behind him was a woman dressed in black leather with a red scarf around her nose and mouth. Her eyes flashed a deep blue, like twin suns. She flicked the sword off to the side, sending the remnant of Raker's blood flying away. Then she disappeared. She didn’t move, she vanished. A second later someone else screamed and then all hell broke loose.

  Gunfire erupted around him as frightened thugs with firearms opened up in every direction. Kuss produced a fully automatic SMG from somewhere and started spraying where Raker had stood. He yelled over the din, trying to rally the group and pull them into a cohesive force.

  Blue light burst above him and she landed on his gun, knocking it from his hands. Kuss was a trained warrior, the tattoos on his hands and arms spoke of a hundred fights.

  Anthony pulled out his pistol and started backing away. Three men were shouldering the big double doors, but the heavy oak wasn’t budging. Something wet glinted on the floor under the doors, spreading out in a pool into the room— he had a sickening feeling it was blood.

  His attention was drawn back to he fight on the table. She said nothing, no taunting, no banter, she just fought. Kuss swung at her; his six-foot frame was easily three hundred pounds and the woman was half that, at most. She took the blow on one arm before striking out, open palmed, against his chest. The blow lifted him up and flung him against the far wall with a crunch of breaking bone and bruised tissue.

  Anthony fired. Or at least he tried too; he pulled the trigger but the safety was on and the hammer refused to budge. He swore as he looked down at the gun desperate to make the unfamiliar weapon work the way he needed it to. When he finally clicked the safety off, she was gone.

  “Oh, screw this!” he said out loud as he turned and ran, desperate to find an exit that wasn’t obvious.

  When he was a kid Anthony learned not to be afraid. His mother would drink, and when she wasn’t cheating on his father, she would beat Anthony with a tire iron for ruining her life. Anthony had conquered his fear the day he’d taken the tire iron to her.

  As the carnage continued around him, he realized he had never known real fear.

  Another scream ended in a wet gurgle behind him; he resisted the urge to look, trying to find another way out. The place was boarded up tight. There were four doors and each of them was locked.

  The windows!

  I addition to the skylight, the room had five big picture windows on two walls. He ran to the closest one, picking up and fumbling with a chair before throwing it at the glass. He wasn’t going to bother trying to open it.

  The chair bounced off the glass, leaving Anthony staring in horror. He aimed the pistol and pulled the trigger. The explosion of sound was lost among the endless gunshots behind him. The glass spiderwebbed but didn’t break. He kept pulling the trigger until the slide locked back.

  “Bulletproof glass? Are you freaking kidding me?” He threw the useless gun at the window and charged after it, kicking, punching, and pushing, trying to get the glass to give.

  He grabbed a lamp and was about to bash it against the glass when he noticed the silence behind him. He gulped and slowly turned, holding the lamp above his head, ready to strike.

  The room was empty except for the bloody, shot, stabbed, and decapitated bodies strewn about the floor and table. His heart pounded in his ears and he could barely draw breath as he formulated a plan. The wall where Kuss impacted had partially collapsed. He could maybe kick his way through the plaster and—

  Light flashed in front of him and she was there, sword pointed at his chest, eyes burning with brilliant blue light that forced him to look away.

  “Please don’t kill me!” he screamed dropping to his knees. “I’ll give you anything you want.” So many decisions in his life he regretted and every single one came back to him in that moment.

  “Your keys,” she said. Her voice reverberated with an unnatural sound that no human could make. He fumbled out his keys throwing them at her feet. He didn’t dare look up
, those eyes bored into his soul, shaking loose all the terrible things he’d done in his life. He held his hands up over his head in surrender.

  “Please don’t kill me,” he said again in a whisper.

  “Where’s the next shipment leaving from?” the voice crackled in his ears like it was next to him. He closed his eyes hard and thought. Shipment… shipment?

  “There’s an arms deal going down tomorrow at two,” he said rattling off the address for the meet. He didn’t care. He didn’t care that the Outfit would kill him for betraying them, or that he was selling his principles—all he cared about was staying alive.

  “Tell me, have you ever killed anyone?”

  He shook his head no, as visions of the three teenage girls who wouldn’t go along with the program flashed in his head. The old man who owed money. The hooker who was used up… This monster couldn’t know he was lying, right?

  She knelt down in front of him, reaching out and lifting his head for her to gaze in his eyes. “You’re a liar.” Then she rammed the sword through his throat. As he blacked out his mind screamed at him to act. The whole thing hurt a lot more than he thought it would and he died with those brilliant blue orbs gazing down at him.

  ***

  I cleaned the sword off on the last murderer’s jacket before leaning over and picking up his keys. Terrible human being, but he had good taste in cars. I twirled the keys before slipping them into my pocket and heading for the door. Reaching inside, I triggered my power, shadow stepping through the door to the shadows outside. I had bodies piled up against the two doors that weren’t locked. The only two people I hadn’t killed were the blonde’s walking around in bikinis. They were tied up and waiting for me with hoods on their heads. No need for them to see me. I don’t know if they were paid or what, but they were innocent—tonight anyway.