Castle of Sorrows

by Jonathan Janz

  The door creaked open.

  “Everything okay?” a timid voice asked.

  Teddy exhaled trembling breath, exchanged a weary look with Jessie.

  Chad Wayne stepped into the room.

  “The hell you been?” Teddy asked him.

  Wayne scowled at them. “I was in my room.”

  Ben said, “You figured we had it under control.”

  “I was scared.”

  “We were all scared,” Jessie said. “But that doesn’t mean we hid.”

  “Hey,” Wayne said, palms up, “I didn’t sign on for all this. No one said there’d be shooting.”

  “What kind of a bodyguard are you?” Elena asked, a hysterical edge to her voice.

  “Hey, I don’t wanna die any more than you do, so why don’t you just—” Wayne caught sight of Morton’s stomach. “Oh shit.”

  “Make yourself useful,” Jessie snapped. “Get some more clean towels.”

  Wayne’s skin had gone a sallow hue, his chin working.

  Teddy hustled into the bathroom. There was only one towel left, so Teddy grabbed it and a small stack of washcloths. When he got back to the bedroom, Morton’s legs started to spasm. Morton coughed and blood bubbled up over his teeth. He coughed again, and the blood sprayed out the sides of his mouth.

  “Holy shit,” Wayne said. He turned and puked.

  “At least use a waste basket!” Elena shouted. But Wayne remained stooped over beside the dresser, his big back heaving.

  “Everybody accounted for?” Castillo said.

  Christina shook her head. “Jorge is still missing. Peter’s gone too.”

  Jessie said, “Could someone get another towel? A big one?”

  Still bent over, Wayne glanced up at Teddy.

  Teddy glared at him. “What am I now, the towel boy? We in the antebellum South all of a sudden?”

  “Oh, for God’s sakes,” Elena muttered, and went toward the door.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Castillo cautioned.

  “You wouldn’t do anything,” she answered and stormed out of the room.

  Castillo looked up at Jessie. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  Without looking up from Morton’s wound, she said, “It means we could’ve used you earlier, Troy. Where were you?”

  “I was exploring the castle,” he said. “Jesus, is that some sort of crime?”

  “But why did it take you so long to—” Jessie broke off. Glancing down, Teddy saw why. Morton’s eyes were open and staring at Castillo.

  “What is it, Sean?” Jessie asked.

  Morton’s lips worked, but no sound issued forth. More blood trickled from the corners of his mouth.

  Jessie drew closer, her face only a few inches over Morton’s. “Say it again, Sean. I couldn’t…what?”

  Morton’s lips moved. Then, though it obviously cost him an effort, he said, “You…”

  Morton coughed, his body racked with pain. He turned his head away from Jessie, and blood drooled out in a messy string. Stuff was so red it reminded Teddy of acrylic paint.

  Jessie glanced up at Teddy. “What’s he saying, Ben? I can’t—”

  “He’s delirious,” Castillo said. “Too much blood loss. We need to get him sedated.”

  “Are you insane?” Jessie said. “Lower his heart rate any more and he’ll die.”

  Morton’s eyes riveted on Castillo. “You…son of a bitch,” Morton hissed. The words were unmistakable, but they set off another torrent of coughing. The pain on Morton’s face made Teddy’s heart hurt, the poor man obviously dying. Teddy’d only seen one other man gutshot, one of Teddy’s former LAPD buddies by the name of Dan Herbert. Dan had died only a minute or two after being shot in pursuit of a carjacker. Morton had survived longer than Herbert had, but Teddy didn’t think Morton would last another five minutes. His face had already gone pale, and if anything, the crimson blooms on the towels seemed to be spreading faster rather than slowing down.

  Jessie moved her hand aside as Ben pressed another towel atop the others. “I’ve got it,” he said quietly.

  Jessie took her hand off Morton’s hemorrhaging stomach and caressed his wan cheek. Her fingers left bloody contrails on Morton’s face, but Teddy didn’t figure the man would mind.

  “…knew…” Morton whispered to Jessie.

  Cradling his head, Jessie said, “Knew what? What are you…” She glanced pleadingly up at Ben and Teddy. “What’s he talking about?”

  Ben shook his head. Teddy had an idea but resolved to keep it to himself for now.

  “My God, that looks like it really hurts,” Christina said, glancing at Ben’s face.

  Chad Wayne glanced up at the gaping gash on Ben’s cheek and his eyes widened. Groaning, he vomited again.

  “Could someone please get him out of here?” Jessie said. Teddy could see tears in her eyes.

  “Come on, pal,” he said to Wayne. Careful not to step in puke, he put his hands on the man’s waist and steered him toward the door.

  “I don’t wanna go out there,” Wayne moaned.

  “They’re gone,” Teddy said, hoping that was true.

  “But what if they’re not?” Wayne asked in a small voice.

  “Well, then you just toss your cookies again and they won’t want to come near you.”

  “Awww man,” Wayne moaned.

  Teddy guided him out the door, and once they were out there, made the mistake of glancing at Wayne’s face. His lips were creamed with vomit, the long hair that had fallen into his eyes also sticky.

  Teddy gave Wayne an unsentimental shove toward Teddy’s room. Stumbling, Wayne advanced a few steps, stopped and began to dry heave.

  Teddy returned about the time Elena got back with a fresh stack of towels. When they got inside, Teddy knew right away what had happened.

  Jessie stared down at Sean Morton’s slack face with tears streaking her face. Ben had a hand on her shoulder. Castillo’s back was to Teddy, but when Teddy moved deeper into the room, he saw Castillo watching Morton’s motionless body with what looked like guilt.

  Or maybe that was Teddy’s imagination.

  Jessie heard Brooks saying they should make sure the castle was secure, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Morton’s bloodless face. Someone touched her arm. She looked up, realized it was Ben Shadeland.

  “We need to make sure those bastards are gone,” he said.

  Jessie regarded him a moment, then gave him a hollow nod.

  “I’ll go with you,” Teddy said.

  “Uh-uh,” Ben said, leading Jessie to her feet.

  “What do you mean ‘uh-uh’?” Teddy asked, scowling after them.

  Ben opened the door slowly, his gun at the ready. He poked his head into the dark corridor, Jessie huddling close behind him. When he appeared sure the gunmen were gone, he led her into the hallway.

  Teddy followed them. “Why should I stay here?”

  Ben spoke under his breath. “You trust Castillo?”

  “Hell no, I don’t trust him. Why you think I wanna come with you?”

  “You notice Castillo didn’t volunteer to search the castle?” Ben said.

  “I noticed,” Teddy said.

  “That strike you as odd?”

  “I’ll tell you what strikes me as odd,” Teddy said, closing the door behind them and moving them farther into the hall. “Castillo looked at Marvin like the two knew each other. Like they were old pals.”

  Ben searched Teddy’s face. “You think Castillo tipped them off? That’s how they knew we were here?”

  “I think it’s possible,” Teddy said.

  Both of them looked at Jessie, but she only frowned. “I don’t know. Castillo’s a jerk, but to do that…to set us all up…”

  “Either way,” Ben said, returning his ga
ze to Teddy, “do you think the ladies should be left alone with him?”

  Teddy shrugged. “There’s Wayne.”

  Jessie said, “He needs protection more than the women do.”

  Teddy blew out disgusted breath. “Fine, I’ll play watchdog, but you two owe me.”

  Ben and Jessie moved down the hallway, guns at their sides. Jessie peered into the arched doorway that led to the stairs but could pick out nothing but an amorphous mass of shadows.

  “How are you feeling?” Ben whispered.

  Like Morton’s death is my fault.

  “I’ve been better,” she said.

  “I know. But you couldn’t have done anything.”

  She turned to him. “Did you…”

  He shook his head. “I came up the stairs just as Morton was falling, but even then I could see you didn’t have a clear shot.”

  A lump threatened to choke her breathing. She fought to swallow it back.

  They paused at the doorway, Ben putting out an arm and making to move her behind him.

  She grasped his forearm. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “You just lost someone. I figured—”

  “I’m fine,” she said, moving past him. “I need a distraction.”

  At length, he said, “You really want to take your mind off Morton, I’ve got a story that’ll do it for you.”

  “Last summer?”

  “You won’t believe it, but there’s a beast on this island. Not a beast like Rubio or Marvin. I mean a real beast…” And as they moved slowly down the stairs, following the droplets of blood that Marvin had left behind, Ben told her the story. She could tell he was leaving out some of the details, but the way he told it made it hard to dismiss.

  “You think it’s crazy?” he finally asked.

  She considered. “I can’t believe in something like that until I see it. Though if it does exist, I doubt I’d want to see it.”

  He chuckled softly.

  “Hey,” she whispered. “I forgot to ask. What happened to you? You look like you’ve been through a cage match.”

  “I have. There was this mountain of a guy standing guard outside.”

  “Jim Bullington?” she asked.

  “I didn’t ask his name. I was too busy trying not to get killed.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “A little taller than me. Bigger and broader than me. Late forties.”

  “That’s Bullington,” she said. “Did you kill him?”

  A troubled look crept into Ben’s face. He nodded, as if he was replaying the man’s death in his mind.

  “Good,” she said. “That means there are only three of them to deal with.”

  “That we know of.”

  She shook her head. “Marvin doesn’t keep many associates. He came at us with everything. He’s down to three men now.”

  “And two of them are hurt.”

  “Two?”

  “Did you see the other guy? The one who got there last?”

  “Ray Rubio,” she said. “What about him?”

  “He was covered with blood.”

  “Doesn’t mean it was his.”

  Ben stopped. “You think it was Jorge’s?”

  “Who else could’ve fought him?”

  Ben compressed his lips. “Damn.”

  They proceeded down the spiral staircase until they reached the main story. They could’ve stopped on every floor and checked the rooms, but what was the point? The trail of blood—both the bloody sets of footprints and the droplets of blood that had likely spilled from Marvin’s wounds—kept to the stairs, and they’d examined the landings and found no blood.

  Yes, the gunmen had moved down the stairs and had hopefully fled the castle. But they had to be sure.

  Jessie led Ben through the shadowy great hall, her fingers white against her Glock. Behind her she could hear Ben’s footfalls, which were relatively light for such a big man. She had no idea if he knew how to handle a gun or not, and part of her blanched at the idea of navigating a potentially dangerous situation with a civilian. But Ben had already proven trustworthy; without his help, she might not have gotten Morton’s dying body into the bedroom.

  Who are you kidding? a taunting voice in her head spoke up. He saved your ass. You only killed Nicky Irvin because your survival instincts kicked in. Look at how you failed Morton. Or how you failed your family.

  No, she thought. She wasn’t going to go there. Not now. Not ever if she could help it.

  But as she moved around the corner of the great hall toward the kitchen, from which the bloody footprints led, the images flashed through her mind anyway, unbidden, as vivid as they’d been on the night it had all happened. The night she’d awakened, three weeks shy of her seventeenth birthday, to hear male voices echoing up the stairs of her parents’ house. There’d been three men’s voices. She’d heard them whispering as they crept up the stairs. Heard them shouting as her father confronted them. A single gunshot. The sick thump of her father collapsing.

  “Oh hell,” Ben said.

  Jessie started, realized she’d been drifting. She peered into the darkness of the kitchen, looked up at Ben, who nodded toward the far end of the center island. After a moment she spotted it, the glistening hump of what looked like a butchered cow laid out on the expensive tiled floor. The only thing she recognized of Jorge Navarro’s body was the longish black hair, the ponytail held in place with a rubber band. None of the man’s other features were discernible. Moving closer, she saw how mutilated his body was, what a state of disarray the kitchen was in.

  “Must’ve been a hell of a fight,” Ben murmured.

  Jessie silently agreed. She didn’t know a great deal about Navarro, but she knew he had a wife at home and children who’d never see their daddy again. Senseless, she thought in mute fury. Totally senseless.

  A flash of memory strobed through her mind: her father’s body.

  Another: her mother’s body.

  Again: her older sister, just home from college and expecting a summer spent with friends. Not expecting to be raped and murdered on the same bed where her mother was raped and murdered.

  While Jessie cowered in her secret place.

  While the three monsters raped and cut and laughed. Jessie heard her mother’s screams, her sister’s wails. But most of all the laughter. That monstrous, luciferian laughter.

  “Don’t look at him,” Ben said, putting an arm around her and drawing her away.

  “Get the hell away from me,” she snapped.

  He recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “Hey, I was just…” He swallowed. “Come on, let’s check where those drops of blood lead.”

  She turned and moved away. They came out of the kitchen, Jessie picking up the pats of blood right away. Marvin might live, she decided, but she’d gotten him good anyway. She had no idea how badly Rubio had been injured in his battle with Jorge, but Jessie’s group had better health and superior numbers on its side.

  Unless Castillo’s really in with Marvin, she thought. Then no one is safe.

  She stepped forward, moving parallel with the drops of blood and throwing frequent glances up at the doorway ahead. There was only the occasional ghost of a bloody shoeprint now, which made sense. Rubio had tracked Jorge’s blood up the stairs during the gunfight. By the time he’d returned down here most of it would’ve been rubbed off.

  “Careful,” Ben reminded.

  When they stepped into the foyer, she wondered briefly if the three gunmen had taken refuge in the basement. But she realized after a moment’s inspection that the droplets of blood, which had grown sparse, led to the front door.

  “Get back,” she whispered to Ben. Reaching out, she opened the door as stealthily as she could, her gun out and ready to blast the blond-haired freak who’d killed Morton.

 
The front porch was empty. Stepping out onto it, she spotted a drop of blood on the sidewalk leading away from the castle.

  “They’re out there,” Ben said, moving up next to her.

  “Where though? Would they have gone back to the mainland?”

  Ben shook his head. “Not those guys. We’ve killed two of them.”

  “I killed the boss’s son.”

  Ben nodded. “I wasn’t going to say that, but you’re right. Marvin’s not going to let that pass. They’ll be gunning for us.”

  Jessie stared out into the night, thinking of the killers that lurked somewhere in the darkness. As she thought of them, she tried not to hear the cackling voices of the three monsters who’d slaughtered her family.

  But she found that the voices would not subside.

  Part Four

  Reckoning

  Chapter One

  When Griffin got the boss situated in the cave, his hands began to tremble wildly, as if he’d been storing up all his terror until the battle was over. But it didn’t matter, Griffin realized as he knelt beside Marvin. The crime lord was in too much pain and grief to pay Griffin any mind. Rubio would have no doubt found Griffin’s jitterbugging hands hilarious had he not been so carved up. The guy looked like he’d taken on a lawnmower and had only escaped after being run over six or seven times. But the bastard deserved that and worse. And look at Griffin, not a scratch on him and feeling good.

  Yes, Griffin realized, he felt very good indeed. And not just good. Incredible. The nutty part was, he had no idea how it had all happened. One moment he had been feeling the way he’d always felt—sick, terrified, alone. He remembered quailing behind Marvin as the mob boss unleashed the automatic, looking unnervingly like Al Pacino at the end of Scarface. He had been hunched down behind Marvin, doing his best impression of a floor tile, when he’d heard Marvin grunt in pain. He’d looked up, seen Marvin lying there on the floor, and then…what?

  Griffin took off his shirt, wrapped it over Marvin’s shoulder and tried to recall how he’d felt. There’d been the grunt, the glimpse of Marvin falling and then Griffin had felt something…change. He’d heard of out-of-body experiences before, but this was different. This had been like remaining in his body while someone else drove. Yeah, that was it. He’d been hyper aware of everything around him, but instead of being unnerved by it, he’d been confident. Arrogant even. Take your best shot, he’d felt like saying as he strode toward the federal agents. Take your best shot and see where it gets you. But I warn you, I’m not afraid of your guns. I’ll rip your guts out, you stupid pigs, and—