9th Circle

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  As fast as Darc was, Trey had never seen him move faster than at this very moment. The man was a dark blur of nonlight as he raced after Janey.

  And that did more to frighten Trey than anything else that had happened so far.

  CHAPTER 6

  Even taking the steps two at a time, Darc could not keep up with the girl. She was fast. Much faster than he had anticipated. The only logical reason for this gap in his knowledge was his lack of experience with children. He needed to factor in this new awareness of a child’s speed when motivated. He would not allow another circumstance like this to occur.

  Below, still in the front entryway of the house, from the sounds of it, Dr. Charan was yelling at the girl.

  “Janey, wait!”

  And from his partner to the doctor, “Stay behind me. We need to clear the house.”

  The girl shot past the landing without pausing and arrived on the second story, whipping herself to the right. Whatever was motivating her seemed to be a powerful driving force. The glowing lines of logic in Darc’s head pulsed and throbbed in response to her apparent need.

  The second level did not appear to be very large, so Darc pushed his limits a little bit further, wanting to catch up to the young girl before she ran into any traps that might have been set by the killer. He was only small steps away from her at this point. Her hair whipped back and forth across her back as her bare feet slapped the hardwood floor.

  Darc was close enough to grab for her shoulder when the girl took a left-hand turn into one of the rooms off the main hallway. The detective pushed his way in behind her, taking in the surroundings in less than a heartbeat. Pink walls, painted cartoonish animals cavorting across its length, enclosed what looked to be a young female’s dream palace unrealized. Frills and dolls and fluffy stuffed toys spilled out of half-unpacked boxes and draped over not-quite-placed furniture.

  The preliminary glimpse may have taken less than an instant, but the threat was not so clear. The girl had led him here. There must be a reason. This was where the next attack would be. All the symbols pointed here. The girl pointed here. Here was where it had to be. And yet…

  Darc spun in circles, looking for the glowing trails of logic that would merge with the clues already in his head. There were none. This could not be right.

  The images in his mind sparked and spun, seemingly hesitant and confused. This had to be the right place. This was not the right place. Darc shook his head sharply.

  Her motions frenetic, the girl searched the opened boxes in her room, tossing unwanted lace and gobs of pink and lavender flying about her in a cloud of young femininity. Darc focused on her efforts.

  Was it possible that the killer had left clues here, in this young girl’s room? If that were the case, this room would have to be filled with traps. Once more, Darc scanned the room, straining to see any kind of spark that would indicate the killer’s influence.

  Nothing.

  As the girl continued tossing her belongings out of the boxes, the doctor and Trey rushed into the room, their breathing deep and ragged from the sprint up the stairs. Trey made the rounds of the room, clearing the corners, as if somehow Darc was incapable of that simple task. Darc was completely capable. He just never did it. The lines of logic were more than enough for him to know if there was an attacker waiting behind some closet door.

  “Behind.” The lines in his head surged. That word meant something in this context. “Behind.”

  Trey finished his sweep and spoke, breaking Darc’s line of reasoning into a thousand glittering shards. “Rest of the house is clear.”

  The girl emerged from one of the larger boxes, gripping something hideous. Darc tensed, ready for the lines to converge on this new threat.

  And then he looked more closely. What the girl was holding in her hands was a very old, very battered…teddy bear. He had thought her earlier picture to be distorted because of childish drawing techniques. Now he realized how skillful the depiction had been.

  What had at one point almost certainly been soft and fluffy fur was now matted and pilled. The light brown color had darker patches around the bear’s neck and limbs, more than likely from where it had been gripped, dragged, and hugged over the years. One of the eyes was hanging by a thin thread, and there was at least one rip that had been repaired with what looked like bright green fishing line.

  As she gripped the toy, the girl visibly calmed. She hugged the bear to her chest, made her way over to her bed, and curled up in a ball on top of the pink duvet. Trey watched her for a moment, then rejoined Darc and the doctor in the middle of the room.

  “At least we can figure out who she is.”

  But that meant absolutely nothing to Darc. Perhaps earlier in the case, knowing the girl’s identity and that of her parents might have made some slight difference. But now that the killer was clearly moving on? Knowing her name was about as useful as the false moniker Janey.

  Darc lashed out in impotent anger, hitting his fist against the shutter of the bedroom window. A brief glimpse of the backyard halted him dead in his tracks.

  It was covered in bright, shining lines.

  Oh, and blood. Lots of blood.

  *

  Mala watched Darc as he stared out the window. His chiseled, almost gaunt features were cut by narrow stripes of light from the slats in the shutters. The backyard porch light must be on. As he peered through the partially opened blinds, his expression hardened, stiffening from some internal process that Mala couldn’t fathom. He didn’t seem to be breathing.

  And she wasn’t the only one who had noticed.

  “Get clear!” Trey barked.

  With no warning whatsoever, Darc sprinted out of the room. There was no ramping up, no getting up to speed. One moment he was still as death. The next moment he was out the door.

  And if Mala hadn’t moved, he would have bowled her over.

  For the life of her, Mala couldn’t figure out why that made her respect for the detective go up. She hadn’t thought of herself as a masochist in the past. Bad boys didn’t do much for her. She had always been smarter than that.

  But with Darc? She wasn’t sure exactly in what way.

  Her second-long reverie was shattered by Trey’s thrusting his cell phone into her hand.

  “Tell them we need backup. Mega, ultra, right-this-second backup.”

  “What did he—”

  “Whatever it is, you do not want to look out that window.” Trey’s proclamation left no room for doubt.

  Mala hugged her left hand around herself while holding the cell with her right. As she looked for the precinct number in the presets, Mala felt her gaze being drawn to the window. She was old and wise enough to not do what she wanted to do. But the instinct to know was so strong. That drive for information that practically forced you to rubberneck at the accident on the freeway.

  She shook her head and hit the number. Mala started to turn away from the window as the cell phone rang in her ear, but caught a glimpse of a tiny form approaching the window. Janey.

  “No! Stay back.”

  Mala snatched the girl away from the window, shielding her from what was outside. Unfortunately for Mala, the very act of protecting the girl left the doctor herself exposed. The landscape of nightmares lay just outside the thin, protective walls of the house. The horror that lay out back seared itself into her consciousness, and she knew instinctively that she would never be able to rid herself of it as long as she lived. She cradled the girl in her arms, rocking her back and forth.

  “Don’t look, Janey,” she begged. “Don’t look.”

  As Mala enveloped the little form she held, she began to suspect that the comfort was more for Mala herself than it was for Janey. She continued to rock from side to side anyway, stroking Janey’s hair, murmuring soft and loving words into the little girl’s ear.

  Whomever it was for, the one sure thing was that it was needed.

  *

  Trey raced down the stairs, hot on Darc’s heels. Man
. Once, just once, he would like to be the one that was speeding ahead because he had been the guy to figure it out. Yeah, it was petty. Yeah, it was small. But you didn’t become a detective so you could never be the one to figure stuff out, you know?

  Well, in Trey’s case, maybe that’s exactly why you became a detective. At least, if recent experience had anything to say about the whole thing. But now all he could do was follow along and try not to fall too far behind.

  And then they were out of the house and into the backyard. All of a sudden, Trey wasn’t so sure he wanted to be first guy on the scene anymore. The assault on his nose was immediate and just nasty. It was enough to bring him to a staggering halt.

  “Ugh! What’s that smell?”

  Darc ran right up to the edge of the pool. And then there was no doubt about where the smell was coming from.

  The swimming pool was filled with blood.

  Not just blood. Body parts were floating on the surface of the water. Dude. There wasn’t a filter on the planet that could handle what was happening in this pool. Trey felt the contents of his stomach trying to convince him that they didn’t want to stay put where they were anymore.

  It wasn’t just the smell, either. Those were body parts in there. Lots and lots of body parts. From lots and lots of people. It was pretty much making him want to empty up the contents of his stomach and never replace them with food ever, ever again.

  This was so far beyond bad that he couldn’t even see where bad was from here.

  On the far side of the pool, what looked to be an entire body floated facedown in the water, banging into the filter. Darc rushed around to the body and lifted it partially out of the bloody pool. Trey felt the blood rush out of his head and end up somewhere down around where his feet were.

  “Oh. That is just…”

  It was a man. He was dressed in what had probably been a white dress shirt at one point. A knotted tie was pulled down from the unbuttoned collar in a bizarre imitation of a guy just home from work and wanting to relax a bit. Darc reached his fingers inside the collar and felt for a pulse, then let the man’s head sink back down to the concrete. Trey shook his head.

  “Dude, there was no way we were going to get here in time.”

  “He’s still warm.” Darc’s tone was distracted, distant.

  “Well, yeah, look what he’s—”

  Trey’s answer was cut off by a woman exploding through the surface of the pool. She gasped for air, the sound of it echoing off the walls, making it sound like twenty women drowning. Trey bolted upright.

  “What the—”

  And then she was under the surface once more. Before Trey could even start to figure out what had just happened, Darc was ripping off his jacket and kicking off his shoes.

  “Darc! No!”

  But Darc was already underwater, his dive making a ripple in the icky sludge. Trey grabbed at his hair and danced back and forth at the side of the pool, unsure of what to do next. He reached for his cell phone to call it in, then realized the doctor still had it.

  “Oh, Mary, mother of god, Darc,” Trey yelled, even though he knew his partner couldn’t hear him. “Who knows what’s in there?” He did a lap around the pool. “It could be booby-trapped. It could be infected.” Trey fell to his knees, trying not to throw up. Like it could make the situation any worse, really.

  In a geyser of blood and guts, Darc resurfaced with the woman in his grasp, but he couldn’t seem to be able to keep her head above the water. She went under, then popped out for a brief second, only to go under once more. Darc yelled across the pool, his own head just barely above the atrocity of the pool.

  “She’s weighted down!”

  Okay. Trey totally got that. What he did not get was what he was supposed to do about it.

  Trey’s partner dove under once again, apparently to get a better hold on the victim. Darc managed to get her head above the surface of the liquid in which they were immersed. Trey danced around the rim of the pool, feeling helpless, more useless than a third nipple.

  “Okay. Um…okay. I’ll—”

  “Take her!” Darc yelled.

  Trey backed away. Yeah, he wanted to help, but holy cow, this was not okay. This was so far outside of what was okay, he didn’t even have a frame for his lack of a frame of reference. But then Darc dove under the surface yet again and the woman began to sink.

  Well, that did it. Trey had no choice but to race to the side of the pool and grab for her hands. He held her as high up out of the pool as he possibly could, every muscle in his body straining to keep her above the sludge that was doing its absolute best to suck her back in. He babbled words of what he hoped might be encouragement to her as he strained against the weight.

  “Hang on. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be—”

  The pressure pulling the woman down snapped like a taut wire, and Trey fell over backward with the abrupt shift in weight. A wave of nastiness washed over the edge of the pool and hit Trey full in the face. Like this whole thing hadn’t been bad enough before. That dollar burger he had snarfed down earlier was going to come back up. It was only a question of when.

  The woman flailing her arms around and whapping him in the ear took Trey’s attention off his stomach for a second. He fought to keep his arms around her.

  “Whoa there! Hang on.”

  Darc resurfaced, the strain of keeping his head up clear in his face. The glow from the porch light painted the blood and bits of flesh that clung to his face, making him look like some demon zombie creature surfacing from the depths of hell. You know, that or one of the statues of the saints—it was sometimes hard to tell the difference. Trey stifled the urge to genuflect as Darc called out to him.

  “Got it.”

  Trey’s partner made his way to the side of the pool, heaving a large cinder block up and over the edge in a splash of blood. Whoa. Seeing the hunk of concrete his partner had carried to the surface, Trey was totally impressed with how much strength it must’ve taken to get that sucker up from the bottom. Darc pulled himself out of the pool, trailing gore behind him.

  “It’s covered in symbols.”

  And with that, Darc began walking back toward the house. The woman they had rescued from the pool was coughing and choking, gagging on the blood she was hawking up from her lungs. Trey held her head up, hoping it was helping at least a little bit. He yelled after his partner.

  “Yeah, hey, Darc. How about some help?”

  Darc didn’t even twitch as he entered the back door of Janey’s home. He was making a beeline toward something, as usual, his goal just about as clear as his expression. Which, just to be clear, was not clear at all. Typical Darc move.

  “Darc! Darc!”

  But Trey’s voice just echoed back at him, the ringing as hollow as the pit in his gut.

  *

  For once, Darc ignored the beckoning striations of logic that crisscrossed his vision. Not that they were pointing at anything specific. They were a tangled web that spoke nothing but confusion to his mind. The darkness of the night around him contrasted sharply with the riot of color in his head.

  As he moved through the black, a light rain began to fall, growing in strength with every one of his steps, covering the metallic scent of blood mingled with the effluvia of rotting flesh. The puddles he left behind went from red to pink to a blissful clear.

  He walked. Time had no meaning. Distance was an illusion. There was only the steady plod of his footsteps as he put one leg in front of the other, over and over and over again.

  The weight of the brick pulled at him, but he hardly noticed it. The additional heaviness was less than the pressure of the deaths that were mounting by the day. The pictures of the victims, laid out with glowing precision in his mind in all their grotesque glory, mocked his ineffectiveness.

  The symbols on the surface of the brick swarmed around him, nipping at his consciousness as mosquitoes would at his skin. He mentally brushed them aside, only to have them return in full
force mere moments later. They buzzed about, refusing to settle into a coherent pattern, or even something that indicated where the missing data might be. They hissed and whined, their cries the cries of those murdered. Additional reminders of his repeated failures.

  Too late. He had been too late. Once more, too late. The man had already been dead when they got there. The woman would soon follow. The amount of blood she had been coughing up left little doubt as to her ultimate fate. The lines of light surrounding her were a dark violet, drifting toward darkness. Merging into the night, as Darc himself was.

  Black. Like his name. Darc. Dark. Darkness. This was his element. This was where he belonged. Where he was supposed to stay.

  But the light always called. The lines that sparked and gleamed. The glowing symbols and pictures. The visions and glimpses of light that existed only inside his head.

  The other, silver light toward which he was moving right now. The light that should be one gigantic patch of grey emotion but had always shone so bright and fierce that it almost seared him, even as it soothed his raw edges. The light that had moved out, leaving nothing but a wedding picture and bleakness behind. The one that made everything all right. The one that had made everything so wrong.

  Maggie.

  *

  Paperwork. There was nothing in Trey’s life that he hated more than paperwork. Everything else about his partner, he could handle. Heck, he didn’t even mind them. The silences. The unanswered questions. The total lack of anything approaching a normal conversation. You know. Stuff that would drive most people up the freakin’ wall.

  But not Trey. Nope. The only thing that really pissed him off was the paperwork. And here he was, doing paperwork once more. This sucked.

  Oh, and the captain was here, breathing down his neck. That too. Seriously, what had gotten his panties in such a bunch? He never spent this much time out in the field. Trey was starting to develop a complex. Well, another complex.

  At the least, Trey was getting used to being in the hospital. Sort of. Of course, part of that could be that the morgue didn’t paint its walls in primary colors. That almost made hanging out with dead people okay.