Legacy of the Defender (The Defender Series Book 1)

by Jacob Spadt

  He had dropped a bomb on me, and I sat down on the steps and pulled my knees up near my chest. I did not think they would ever find him alive, with all the resources and shadow games that the church uses. To hear he was dead was a relief, but he was right. It raised more questions. His prosecuting gaze kept trying to reach inside my head.

  “His neck was crushed, much like what would happen if you got your hands around his throat. That’s my theory.”

  “Well Sergeant, your theory is wrong. I never touched that priest.” His gaze did not waiver. In his hand was on a file of some sort. He handed it to me. There was a photo of a dead man lying on ta slid out slab. It was indeed the priest. I took a long look. Even in a post mortem condition, the features of his face stuck in my mind. The memory of his assault on me was not hard to recall and left me with slight anger rising up inside. Signs of asphyxiation were obvious, not just a broken or crushed neck, and his eyes were bloodshot to the point where there was no white left. Someone must have hated that priest.

  He wore priest robes but they seemed really old and dark brown…almost black. The material was more like a canvas, not cloth, and the crucifix seemed larger than remembered. Barely visible there seemed to be small symbols carved into it that were so small, it amazed me that they could be seen in a photo. I felt something in my mind seized slightly that must have stirred an expression because the Sergeant commented rather quickly.

  “You recognize something don’t you? You have seen something before, possibly because you were involved. Don’t lie to me, Tathlyn.”

  “Of course I recognize some things. He was in my face trying to kill me.” I turned, looked at him, and laughed. “And you are a Sergeant?”

  “Watch it boy, or I’ll…”

  “You’ll what? Hit me? You are not an authority figure Sergeant. You serve the public. I do not answer to you in any…”

  “I can have you arrested for murder.”

  “Fine, do you really want to know what I was looking at?” His stare told me yes so I divulged. “The material and color of the robes is not what he wore that day. It looks old. Secondly, his cross has symbols on it that do not look church related. In fact, I would wager they are from the occult.” How did I know that? "Granted his actions support the church’s concern about my existence, but why would he be dead now unless they are trying to leave no loose ends?”

  Being on a roll, I continued, “What was the time of death? How long ago did they find the body? Your department knows exactly when released me from the hospital so you know full well with the time of death that it could not have been me. Unless someone timed the event to occur after the hospital cleared me, which would mean someone is keeping tabs on me.”

  “You are smarter than I thought. He was clearly on ice for several weeks. All this, points back to you, especially since you have a motive.”

  That statement made me laugh.

  “Yes, he assaulted me. I technically would have a reason for revenge. If that was my desire, do you really think I would be that stupid now?”

  He yanked the file out of my hands and looked at the cross through some sort of monocle that he retrieved from his pocket. He grunted when he saw the markings. Several minutes passed as he stared and made some notes in his little book. I sat and absorbed in the sun as it was now starting to dip even further. Waiting for his conclusion, my own thoughts began to wonder why the priest would have such strange scrawling symbols on his crucifix unless there was truly some sort of tie to an occult of sorts. Perhaps it was a secret order within the church…a big surprise that would be if it ended up being true. I felt eyes on me so I opened mine and looked at him.

  “Let’s say for a second I believe you. The guy belonged to a cult. If you were tied to them and meant for something sinister, then why try to kill you?” Silence gathered for a moment while I could see the thoughts churning around in his head. Something must have fallen into place in his logic for his eyes went wide. “What if he wasn’t a priest?”

  I had to admit, the logic did make sense because I am the one who put it out there. If he was a priest, then he was more than a priest. If he was masquerading as a priest, then that would explain a lot more. “But why try to kill me?”

  He held up the last photo and I saw a familiar room – the morgue where I had woken up after being missing for weeks. The only thing missing was the room of my second awakening. Something inside me told me to tell him. For several moments, there was a wrestling match in my head over what to say, and logic kept telling me he would be a better ally then allowing this witch hunt to continue. I did not know where to begin so testing the waters a bit before telling him too much was my approach.

  “Do you believe in the unexplainable, Sergeant?” A slow nod of the head told me he did not think it too crazy of an idea. Maybe my sanity was not in question still.

  “Yes, I would have to say I believe there are dark forces in the world that are working against the good people.”

  “And you feel you are one of the good guys?” He gave me a sour look.

  “I’m a cop.”

  “You have a point. You punched an unarmed, cuffed man who had surrendered, in the face.”

  “Look at you! You are lucky that’s all I did.”

  “There’s the cop I know.”

  “Just stop….for one second. Yes, I am one of the good guys. I just lost my temper with all my troopers down. Can you blame me?” he said.

  “Actually Sergeant, yes. I had been awake for about 10 minutes.” Here goes. I focused on that day. “What I left out of your report was this: There was some sort of magic at work…Now before you interject, just give me a moment to explain. I was in a room, strapped to a bed. A mortician was there and he ran when he saw me. After tearing free of my restraints and walking out of the room, I hit my head on the exposed light bulb.” I paused long enough to look at him more closely. To my surprise, he was listening.

  “Another man was there, other than the mortician. He simply vanished in that hallway you came through to the morgue.” He nodded. “There would be no place to hide and we passed no one. That hallway runs under the road so they do not have to bring corpses through the lobby or across the main road. Then I turned around and the wall the door was in, the one you face when you enter was closing up as if it did not exist and Eryn’s arm later got stuck inside that same wall. It was like the very fabric of the material itself melted together and sticky. It had hold of her arm. She was so scared. I had to be careful when pulling her free so it did not dislocate her shoulder. The opening closed right after she was clear as if it had never existed.”

  I turned to look at him. “Do you get it now, Sergeant? Somehow someone took me when I was asleep, had signed off with the hospital that I was released on my own accord, before the start of the morning shift. Who knows, they may have even manipulated time somehow. None of this evidence exists because the room closed up to somehow to hide the truth. It had to be some sort of magic!”

  He processed my story. Any sane person capable of logic would see there was a pattern to the events, and I was hoping his rank was not honorary. The look on his face told me that he was getting it.

  “So when you awoke, did they have you drugged? Like an intravenous bag in your arm? And this had you all disorientated?” he asked.

  “Yes. Right after I cut my head, it healed. Next thing I know cops are lighting me up with taser guns.”

  “Healed? You mean it healed over time?”

  “No, healed, on the spot. It closed on its own.”

  “Now you are messing with me. That’s not possible.”

  “Do you have a knife?”

  “You are crazy if you think I am going to hand you a blade so you can cut yourself with my prints on it.”

  “I don’t hate you that much, Sergeant. Step inside.”

  I got up, unlocked the door, and stepped in. He stood on the porch for a moment shaking his head and mumbled something about him not believing what he was about to let me do, t
hen stepped inside. I hunched down a bit and moved into the kitchen where I could stand at height. Grabbing a knife, I went to the sink and held it to my hand while looking at him.

  He still had disbelief in his eyes as if he felt I was bluffing. Sure, I did not like the idea of hurting myself but it could not hurt as much as anything else already endured. He approached and stood on the other side of the island part of the kitchen where the sink was. With my right hand open, palm upwards, the knife in my left hand, I began to drag the blade slowly across my hand. The blood gushed out. After about two inches I stopped. His eyes were on the appearing wound the entire time, rather wide.

  A moment passed.

  “I don’t see any change. Feel stupid? Let’s clean you up,” he said.

  I held it closer to him and opened the skin allowing the blood to run freely. I felt a twinge looking at the crimson, but turned my focus back to him. I felt my inside get really warm like a switch was flipped.

  “So you agree I am cut, yes?

  “God yes, you are cut, a level one wound. You are crazy.” His face grimaced.

  I rinsed my hand off so we could see the wound better. The thought ran through my mind of the skin knitting back together. The itching sensation started along the cut and I felt the very ends start to pull in tighter and heat began to coarse from my chest down to that hand. Seconds passed and it increased in speed. The cut was closing faster. Blood stopped flowing out all together now and a light pink color formed in the areas that were mending. A moment later, it finished. I looked at the Sergeant.

  His jaw was on the floor.

  “I know how you feel. I could not believe it either.” He just stared at my hand with his head slowing shaking back on forth in disbelief. “The reports in the hospital said this was happening while I was in my coma. I would not have believed it was real had I not seen it myself. I was unable to find the footage documented by the church. Surprisingly, it is not available to us, even when threatened with a subpoena.”

  He looked at me. “You do realize the danger here, Tathlyn. If the wrong people get wind of this, you are going to be dissected so scientists can find ways to reproduce this effect.”

  “I had not thought of that yet.” I sat down on the floor right in the kitchen. It was easier than trying to avoid hitting my head on everything. The church thoroughly documented everything, so they know how my body reacts to injury. The scientific community had my case spread all over, but none of them had known anything past the original story. With the help of the police, the hospital had kept that quiet since the kidnapping and the attempt on my life. Perhaps I needed to stage my own death somehow.

  The Sergeant had a look on his face that told me he had just come to the same conclusion. “You stay put. We need to keep you hidden for now. I have not told anyone on the force where you are staying.”

  “Neither has Eryn.”

  “Good,” he said. “She should consider taking some time off.”

  “I guess I cannot get a job. This will not bode well with Eryn.”

  “Let me worry about that. Tell me, where did you really learn how to fight?”

  “I honestly do not know. It is almost like instinct. I just acted.”

  “You acted?” he said, looking perplexed.

  “Come on, Sergeant. I was sixteen the accident happened. You read my records; they documented all of it. Can you not accept there is no reasonable or logical answer?”

  “Point taken.”

  “So I was going to go get a bouncing job at a local club. That’s out, huh?” I said.

  “I would recommend you keeping a low profile. If your name comes across the wrong person’s desk, I won’t be able to protect you.”

  “I think I can handle myself but will heed your advice to only go out at night if I need to get some air. Perhaps until this blows over, but I will not hide.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I am confused about something, Sergeant.”

  “What is that, Tathlyn?”

  “Why are you helping me or even caring if you hate me so much for going through your officers so easily?”

  “I don’t hate you. I believe you do not know what happened to you, and something tells me whatever this is, is beyond both of us.”

  His answer took me by surprise. I have never felt he was a man of his word or could even be trusted till now. My gut told me to not be so quick to trust. Something told me I may have just won an ally. I extended my hand. “Welcome to the weirdness of my life.”

  “I am not so sure I want to be on board, but I want to know what is going on,” he said, shaking my hand.

  I simply nodded my head and smiled as he headed for the door. He stepped out and turned back towards me. The look on his face looked genuine enough, but first impressions left lasting marks. I had to admit, I was confused.

  XXXI

  Memories

  Rain fell hard outside, forming pools at low points in the back yard. Some were deeper than others were, and several turned into large puddles. Time drifted by while I sat in my bedroom on the floor observing nature for hours and passed in silence.

  The variety of birds in the back yard exploited this moment to the fullest. Drowning worms that surfaced to escape the watery grave found themselves snatched out of the earthen embrace by the beak of robins waiting patiently above. I had to laugh at the irony of the situation to think you are saving yourself only to find death itself. This opera of savagery entertained me for quite a while. Tactics that I had never paid attention to caught my attention. You can learn a lot from animals.

  Birds snuck up on their food as if they were predators in the real wilds somewhere. I had never thought of birds as true predators, but bearing witness to these events changed my impression. They would use everything from stealth to spring attacks where they exploded into action and pounced on the unsuspecting worm. I even saw a few swoop in from a low glide. I was amazed at the timing involved in that maneuver. I could not imagine how much it would hurt if they missed. I actually felt sorry for the worms. They did not have a chance.

  Suddenly an image popped in my mind of being in a cold stream unable to move. My body was injured. Something had chewed me up pretty bad. I had a foreboding memory of waking up injured hours after the attack and being vulnerable. My only fear was the return of a large monster that I knew was waiting for me in the deeper waters near the middle. I suddenly felt I would be mad at surviving the odds then denied life because something bigger was hungry and had the advantage. The detailed images played out as if I was really lying there with failing strength. Every moment counted.

  I knew that I was still sitting in my room, but something made me start coughing and sputtering, keeping me submerged in this half drowned state. Reality shifted and time began to fast forward. Darkness approached. My situation was dire. I could not call for help. There was no one to call. The image faded for a moment and the yard returned to focus.

  I paused at my comparison for a moment. Something about that situation that just came to mind seemed awfully familiar. The cold embrace of the water around me crept painfully in. The pain caused nausea and weakness. Rain fell from the sky in sheets and made me feel like a drowned rat. Yet, I had never been in such a situation. It seemed so real even as a fleeting thought that grew into a reality. I actually had a feeling of dread and fear wash over me. It was very intriguing to have an emotion suddenly come forward. It had just been an image, but my brain was somehow feeling a real reaction to the situation; I felt fear. My breath quickened and panic set in.

  This happened once before.

  I closed my eyes and began working on some breathing exercises from therapy sessions with Doctor Price. I was trying to imagine a black dot on a white wall that was slowly getting bigger until the wall was black; then a white dot appeared and repeated the process until the wall was white. I repeated this process and focused on slow breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. The feelings of dread started to slip away, replaced by peace.
I repeated the cycle several times.

  I finally opened my eyes and still felt moving water in a stream rocking my wounded body. Cascading water flowed down over rocks in front of me. The sting of the water in my open wounds spiked the pain. It was hard to see or focus on anything. Wind increased, making the rain go sideways. The only way to focus my eyes was to squint. As I looked through the torrential down poor over the river, I realized the window pane and the back yard came back into view. Images were blending…there was no rain in this dream. Reality and dream functioned as one.

  I tried to ponder what was happening, where these new sensations came from as the images began to fade. Part of me was happy to see them go, yet another part was very curious why the experience seemed like a memory. I knew for a fact that I had never been in any raging river during a storm.

  Sweat poured off my brow like water from the stream. I was shaking a bit and felt very cold. My muscles were fatigued. Heavy breathing lasted for a few minutes while I tried to clear my head. I felt unraveled for a moment; as the very fabric of reality had just split for a second and offered me a glimpse of what it felt like to be insane. In an attempt to refocus my breathing, my heart rate lowered back down after about seven breaths. My chest no longer felt like it was going to explode.

  I played the recent events over and over. The freak changes that were my life weighed heavily on my mind. The metamorphoses I had undergone were becoming more prevalent each day, yet it left me with more questions than answers. Two more tattoos had appeared – one on the small of my back in the center that looked like a compass with all eight directional points on it. The second on my neck, at the base, was something that looked like a rune. Eryn was helping me research it to see if we could find out what they all were and meant but came up with nothing. No records of such markings existed in any book Eryn found while looking at the library. That left one option… private book collections and possible occult materials.

  I shuddered at the thought of looking through tomes that contained nasty rituals. I had never been a big horror fan growing up. Sure I had seen Dracula but I hardly called that horror. I heard stories from my parents and churches that I had attended that devil worship and the occult were synonymous. It terrified me, that one of the very things that from my childhood fears was now the very place I would have to tread. Now, Eryn was trying to make contact with some of the local Wiccan chapters to see if anyone there might be willing or able to help. So far none of them responded to her inquiries. I cannot imagine that you could just leave a message for one of these groups out of the blue and expect them to be willing to open up freely to a stranger. I do not care who you are.