Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  Cyn! What part in the deaths of New York and Virginia Beach was this monster’s? What does he know about the attacks? How was Zhou involved? Who in hell is he?

  Franklin had to find out. How do I get him to tell me?

  “Ting didn’t die in the fires of New York!” Franklin rasped out. “I found him right next to my niece on a rooftop! Harry — Ting — died right here! From radiation poisoning! Radiation absorbed before the bomb!”

  And then the questions came, faster than he could use them:

  Is Zhou alone in whatever he’s doing? Some form of transportation — south tip of Manhattan. The feather. The boat at the restaurant dock. A ship? This can’t be a two-time thing. More cities are coming, aren’t they? Get him talking! Chip’s phone call!

  “The plutonium, the bomb was Russian! Two cities! Are there more?”

  Zhou’s eyes expanded.

  Surprise. Find out where he’s from!

  “Where do you suppose Ting got radiated?” Franklin pressed. “It wasn’t in New York. Where did it happen? Was it on a ship?”

  Gray teeth opened wide. “Nyaaaaahhh!” A terrifying scream of agony. Purple and apoplectic with rage, the huge Korean could take no more. He charged — top of his huge head coming straight in — colliding with Franklin’s forehead.

  Flash of light.

  Tremendous pain.

  Through the sudden gray, he thought he could see the giant’s head raised to the jungle sky. “Two cities Zhou has taken! Soon Zhou’s fire will consume you all!”

  Franklin readied himself for a final blow. But instead of finishing Franklin off, Zhou’s head twisted. His grip loosened, and as Franklin slipped downward, in the trees overhead a beautiful snowy-white moon-faced owl WHOOO’D . . .

  The Eagle

  The jungle spun. Franklin’s head was agony. He felt weak. He’d lost too much blood. The light tunnelled in. Where are the Adlans? he wondered. They don’t know the danger they’re in.

  He couldn’t let them be harmed either.

  Franklin. Passed. Out.

  Zhou felt the body go limp and lowered it to the ground.

  Blood from the neck wound dripped in a wide, red, satisfying smile beneath the chin. The defiler is finished, Zhou thought as he moved his blade beneath the man’s right eye. No one may see!

  He hesitated. First . . . this one time, I will cut the head clean off.

  Gripping the long dark hair, Zhou tilted the chin back. He could see now the line where his knife had made only a deep scratch. He positioned his curved blade to the far side.

  “Hello?” a voice called from the path.

  Who is that huge man? Sally Adlan wondered. “What’s going on here?”

  She caught sight of the dark red spreading on the Reverend’s shirt. Blood all around his neck, down over his leather jacket. The knife held ready at Franklin’s throat. “What are you doing?” she yelled, thinking, Run Sally! Get Dean! Call the police! But he’s going to kill the Reverend right now!

  A woman, Zhou thought. Ignore her. Cut off the head. Then deal with her. The dark-hair man was lying! Ting cannot be dead.

  “Stop!” the woman screamed.

  A stone the size of a grapefruit bounced off Zhou’s right shoulder. Zhou shrugged it off, but it annoyed him. She is close by. A pest. A bug to be squashed.

  The golden eagle flapped its wings restlessly, still blinded by its hood. Dean put on a glove, slid his fingers under the talons and lifted the huge raptor off the cage. “Calm down, boy,” he said soothingly. The eagle flapped disquietly again.

  Dean’s head and the eagle’s turned as one. Someone, not Sally — a man, Dean thought, screamed something. A weird high-pitched voice from out in the aviary.

  Sally’s right, he thought, Voices. Another voice. That’s Sally!

  Hurrying through the back office door, the huge golden eagle on his fist, Dean pushed into the jungle.

  Thirty yards up, off the left side of the aviary’s main trail, Dean spotted his wife near the west wall. Her arm was being held by a huge Asian man. Between them there was a pile of something dark heaped on the ground. It looked like a body.

  “What are you doing?” Dean shouted, running towards her.

  Sally was hysterical. Her face, her body rigid with fright.

  “Ting! It cannot be!” the giant shouted, “You lie!” The big man put a curved knife to Sally’s throat. She screamed.

  Pulling the eagle’s hood, releasing its talon lanyards, Dean threw the eagle right at the huge Asian’s face. “Get!” Dean yelled.

  “Scree —”

  The golden eagle moved through the air like a lethal weapon. Its huge wings flapped about the big man’s head. Talons gripping into the meaty shoulder. The man released Sally and her scream cut off as if chopped by an axe. The monster tried to bat the eagle away, tried to twist from its flapping wings.

  While the man was busy with the eagle, Sally was thinking.

  It was clear what the monster had done to Reverend Reveal. What he was intending to do to them. Sally cast around desperately. A stone. Anything. She spied an old perch pole, one ornamental knobbed end leaning up in the crook of a cherry tree. Brass. Half an inch in diameter. Six feet long.

  Sally wasn’t a big woman and the rod was heavy. She lifted one end up onto her right shoulder. Pulled down, tilting the back up. Bending her knees like a baseball batter, she lined up on Zhou.

  And pulled. It. Over.

  In the first half-second the rod moved slowly. The big man gripped the eagle’s legs, and with a strangely delicate move twisted and gracefully cast the eagle off into the air. The next half-second of the rod’s arc was faster. By the time the far end was whipping downward through the air it was moving pretty damn fast.

  CRACK! it connected with the middle of the monster’s skull.

  The giant went limp. Hands dropping. Chin against his huge chest, torso falling forward to the sand.

  Sally felt a sense of elation. And strangely, dread. Have I just killed a man?

  “Hell is going on?” Dean gasped. “Who is this guy? What happened to Dr. Reveal?”

  Sally knelt next to Franklin. “I don’t know. I found this monster holding the Reverend’s hair. He looked like he was going to slice his neck wide open.”

  Franklin was still breathing — shallowly. She lifted his wrist to find a pulse. It was there. Steady.

  “The size of this guy,” Dean said. “You knocked him out with that perch pole! We better get an ambulance — and the police.”

  Franklin’s neck was bleeding steadily. “Okay, but first let’s do something temporary about these cuts.”

  “Do you have your C–A?”

  “Of course.”

  Birds often pecked at each other leaving substantial gashes. She was constantly patching them up. Sally never went anywhere in the aviary without her cyanoacrylate. She pulled the small tube and a soft cloth from her pocket and wiped the long arcing cut that ran around Franklin’s neck. Then laid down a fine bead of superglue as Dean helped pinch the skin together.

  When it held, she pulled off Franklin’s jacket. Hesitantly picked up the monster’s curved blade and used it to cut away part of Franklin’s shirt. There was another good size gash in the front of his shoulder, nearly to his armpit. This one was worse, though it didn’t look deep enough to have gone through any major arteries or veins. It was more difficult to glue together though.

  After several tries they had the bleeding mostly stopped.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Ought to hold him for a little while. Until we can get an ambulance.”

  “And the police,” Dean agreed.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Call them. I’ll keep an eye on Franklin.”

  But before Dean could take a single step, a movement behind them turned Sally’s head.

  The Mountain Rises

  The mountain rose behind them, a boulder come to life, terror rising in Sally’s throat. And above the mountain, the back of
a man’s huge dark head caked with red.

  An arm lashed out with surprising swiftness, the blow landing on Dean’s neck, knocking him to the ground. The monster’s other hand shot out, gripped Sally’s arm; her scream, louder than the call of any bird, echoed across the jungle. She tried to pull away, jerking futilely, scream taking on a kind of ripping, tearing quality.

  The big man stared down at Dean. “You have some owl here?”

  “Owl?” Dean said, not understanding.

  “Owl! Ting! From this man!” He pointed at Franklin.

  “His owl died this morning. Radiation, we think.”

  The big man’s lips framed a silent, No! “Ting!” he cried out. His jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed. “You lie.”

  “Reverend Reveal brought Harry here to find out what was wrong with him,” Sally pleaded softly. “He was so shaky. Dean’s an ornithologist,” she cried. “He sent Harry’s blood off for some tests.”

  “Harry!” the big man spat with disgust, dark eyes staring into her.

  “That’s what Franklin called him!” Dean said, struggling to find his feet. “Let go of my wife!”

  Images flooded Zhou’s brain. Their many journeys together. Dark clouds. A violent sky. Floating silently through a storm across the power-giving White Giant.

  Zhou forced away thoughts of rage, of disappointment.

  And then, a change came over the monster as though he’d thrown on a coat of calm, his true nature now hidden underneath.

  His face relaxed. His breathing deepened.

  But his eyes! thought Dean. Eyes that had been inquiring, perhaps fearful, were now hard, projecting a hatred barely controlled.

  “I am Pang Zhou,” he said. “The owl’s name is Ting,” he stated with quiet authority. “TING is mine!”

  Dean watched stunned as Zhou spun behind Sally with surprising speed. Too fast for her to realize, the blade flashed. Shnik! Her bright eyes bulged. A ring of red appeared beneath her chin, splashed her chest. Blood foamed at her lips.

  “Nooooh!” Dean shouted. “Nooooo —”

  He tried to reach for her, as in slow motion Dean watched his lifemate fall to the ground.

  He felt suddenly weak, too helpless to do anything. He looked at her realizing the damage was unrepairable. It was nothing he could fix. Nothing that could be put back — as the ring of red spread rapidly down her neck, flowed down the front of her blouse. “Why don’t you just finish me off too, YOU BASTARD!” Dean screamed.

  Zhou looked at him and smiled.

  The blade flashed again. Once. Twice. And Dean screamed like a wounded animal. Not for himself. For Sally!

  “You fucking MONST —”

  The blade flashed again, Dean’s third scream cut short, like a radio plug pulled from its socket. The blade in Zhou’s hand arced swiftly twice more.

  Zhou forced his inner calm to remain. Against the trunks of two trees, sitting upright, he leaned the man, the woman. Yet one more task, before he could return to Norse Wind. Had his old spirit guide truly left this plane? Sacrifice was always saved for the perfect moment. No — Shinto Kami warred briefly within, telling him — this, this time could not be Ting’s!

  Up Into The Trees

  “Nooooo — . . .YOU BASTARD.” Franklin heard the voice say. It sounded like Dean Adlan. “You fucking MONST —” Dean’s voice cut off suddenly.

  Franklin opened bleary eyes. He felt a pinch across his neck and looked down. It wasn’t bleeding anymore. His bloody jacket was folded underneath his head. Part of his shirt had been cut away. The gash in his shoulder didn’t appear to be bleeding either.

  Dean? Sally?

  He blinked to clear his vision. It looked like them sitting twenty feet away on the ground. Legs outstretched. Leaning back against the trunks of trees. The monster, bent over them, doing what?

  The giant moved away. Franklin wanted to scream. It was horrible.

  He had to move.

  He pulled to his knees. Staggered to his feet. He had to stop this man somehow. What can I use? He’s so big. Franklin was no match against the massive bulk. He had no weapons.

  Or do I? Only one — maybe . . .

  Zhou saw him move.

  Franklin dodged drunkenly around a crab apple tree and struggled up into its lower branches. The tree swayed, barely able to hold his weight.

  Gravity. He would turn Zhou’s bulk against itself.

  Franklin climbed.

  Zhou grabbed at Franklin’s leg. Fingertips brushing his jeans at the ankle. Missed!

  The huge Asian shoved against the small tree, wobbling it, screaming, “You, they lie! Where is Ting?”

  “Harry?” Franklin called down.

  “Ting!”

  Like a piece of earth-moving equipment the big man slammed against the tree trunk. The tree tilted. It was going over — its roots ripping from the earth.

  Franklin sprang, reached out and grabbed a thick branch of the big spotty sycamore alongside. He did a vertical pushup, sliding his pelvis until his arms were straight against the branch. Brought up a knee. The branch ran parallel to, and a foot away from, the aviary’s jungle-green camouflaged wall.

  “Your owl is dead!” Franklin yelled down. “He died of radiation poisoning!”

  The giant grimaced evilly up at him, rammed his shoulder against the sycamore. WAP! The dark thud vibrated into Franklin’s branch. WAP! Again. But the big tree was too deeply rooted. It wouldn’t go.

  Franklin had this man — this Zhou — after him. Is he really Cyn’s killer? If I could only find out what Zhou knows about New York!

  Who is he? How do I get him to tell me? If I could just find out where he’s from — Get him to react! He had to pull Zhou after him.

  “JOTT BBANEUN SEKKI!” Franklin barked out, surprising himself — Jott the strongest Korean slang for penis he knew; bbaneun meant sucking; sekki meant son-of-a-bitch. Franklin, a Congregational minister, had just called a 350-pound psychopath sumo-wrestler with a knife a cocksucking son-of-a-bitch.

  But there was no response!

  The big man stared at him, a tiny crease across his forehead. That was all.

  The huge wide head. The stronger than average Asian nose. Can’t be Chinese, can he?

  “YINJING SHŬNXĪ ÉRZI ÈDU’ DE NÜRÉN!” Franklin shouted — You cocksucking son-of-a-bitch!

  The response was immediate! “Yeeeahhh!” Surprising Franklin with sudden agility, Zhou jumped his right foot atop the half-hidden radiator and pulled his bulk swiftly up onto Franklin’s perch.

  Deftly, Franklin slid farther out, then wrenched himself upward onto a higher branch that extended off the trunk thirty degrees around from the first. He was leaking blood into his torn shirt again. His wounds were opening.

  Zhou followed. Up onto the higher branch. Must stop him. Find Ting! The branch swayed as Zhou moved after the dark-haired man. Leaving the sea had been bad enough. Now he had left the ground, again! “Not in metal bird!” Zhou said softly, forcefully, in Chinese filled with rage. “Without Ting, still so blind! Pali Kongju show Zhou none of this! This man see Zhou face. He must die!”

  The owl, Franklin wondered, is it some kind of — of what? He thought of Victoria’s words. His natural disdain for religions other than his own. Of such great importance to drive this man all the way — from where? Only one thing could mean so much. His deepest of beliefs . . .

  The limb swayed as Zhou stepped hesitantly after Franklin.

  . . . an animal, Franklin reasoned, an owl like that . . . has to be something spiritual, something mystical, doesn’t it? His dreams. Or, visions? There was a branch that ran overhead. Body bent, gently, he began to rock his knees, his hips.

  Below him, Zhou struggled for balance.

  Some still believe the right words hold magic, Franklin reflected. Well maybe they do. If he’s susceptible — maybe . . . but what do I suggest? What can break in?

  Fear! Only fear.

  But what can be so distracting, so frightening, the mo
st —

  Franklin switched. Dropped his voice into its lowest register, speaking Chinese:

  “I didn’t kill Ting — he was stung by a wasp! Can you feel it? That thick black wasp . . . landing on Ting’s back . . . can’t reach it, Its stinger, its needle! . . . the pain going into you, you giant insect, you fat locust . . . needle sliding, sliding into your spine . . .”

  Zhou edged closer, began to growl. Understanding was there. The branch swayed.

  “Numbness — spreading!” Franklin urged, sliding sideways . . . “tunneling in, Laying eggs . . . eggs of death inside your back . . .” out a step farther on the branch, a step further into Zhou’s mind. The rage in Zhou’s throat grew louder. Another step, further . . . “Paralysis . . . your dis-ease spreading . . . its young, now hatching inside you . . . eating, burrowing away inside.”

  “NYYAAAAAA!” Zhou screamed. Inside, Zhou’s spiritual vision became physical, his rage monomaniacal. Trying to balance himself mentally, to balance physically on the branch.

  “Soon Zhou will again release the FIRE!”

  “Only one way to get the eggs out!” Franklin’s words twisted Zhou, pulled at him, “expel! . . . each truth an egg of pain and fear and death and lies . . . “EXPEL!”

  “Ting! You lie!” Spittle flying from Zhou’s lips, shrieking, “Ting cannot be gone!” And forth it came, not a torrent of Chinese, but of Japanese: “All will be as it was. Many more will die! Those who stand behind Zhou are within! Always the Americans! Always the sea!”

  For Franklin, second-person-threat confirming first-person-identity. The giant’s name is Zhou! Harry — Ting was Zhou’s! Zhou released the fire in New York! Killed thousands more in Virginia! ZHOU KILLED CYN! . . . AND HE’S GOING TO KILL AGAIN! “Eggs . . . drilling . . . eating . . .” Each taunt pulling the monster closer. Crippling him psychologically, emotionally, further into higher levels of rage, farther out on the sagging branch, Zhou’s sheer weight the ultimate barrier, “eggs . . . drilling . . .” Bringing the man to new levels of pain and rage and insanity! “Eating inside . . .”