Grave Beginnings (The Grave Report, Book 1)

by Virdi, R. R

  I all but ran out of Marsha’s apartment, it was a brisk pace at the very least, stomping my way to the elevator. Once inside, Ortiz gave me a gentle poke in the shoulder to get my attention.

  “Who were you on the phone with?”

  I debated telling her the truth; I couldn’t tell her about Gnosis, well not his name or how to contact him at least. But then again, this was Gnosis, I’m sure he had ways to prevent people he didn’t know from contacting him. “The,” I said pausing, trying to choose my words carefully, Gnosis certainly wasn’t a man and I didn’t want to reveal anymore about him than I had to, “information broker I told you about.”

  “The one responsible for that binder,” she asked, her eyes widening and eyebrows rising in surprise.

  “The very same,” I replied.

  “Hmm,” she said through pursed lips.

  I already knew what she had in mind and was a bit curious to see the results myself, “try it,” I said with a shrug.

  She pulled her phone back and redialed the number I had entered previously, the elevator stopping as it reached the parking lot. I could hear her phone going through the series of usual rings; we stepped out of the elevator together and began walking all while waiting to hear the result of her call.

  “You sure that’s the right number?” she said befuddled.

  “Yeah why?”

  “Because it rang for a while and then I got a message informing me that the number is no longer in service.” She said, casting me a suspicious look, as if I were somehow responsible for what happened with the call going awry.

  I merely looked at her and gave a confused shrug.

  “Fine,” she resigned with a sigh.

  Gnosis was clearly living up to his reputation.

  Ortiz unlocked her car with the remote key fob as we walked towards it, I took a deep breath before opening the passenger door to her car, Marsha’s death was still flashing through my head. I couldn’t tell if it was just me or a bit of Norman’s memories and feelings towards her too, I could tell he cared for her, I could feel it. The combination of feelings was overwhelming, it was why I went to great lengths to try and stay away from people the victim knew, at times it wasn’t possible but I still tried. I didn’t want to have to sort through a myriad of emotions that stemmed from both myself and the victim, it was too much, it’s why you have to be detached in my line of work.

  I must’ve stood there thinking for a good while because Ortiz piped up, “you getting in or what Norman?”

  I shook my head clear and muttered a, “yeah,” pulling on the door handle. I was just about to sit down when I heard a dong sound; I looked over the roof of the car to see the elevator door opening.

  “Fanfuckingtastic,” I swore as I saw what was exiting the elevator. It, and I use the word it because no other word really applied, was the shape of a woman but that’s about where the difference’s ended. Her shapely feminine form was nude and wreathed in flames, this creature was responsible for burning down an entire hotel and I suspected, for cutting the hose I had used to rappel down the building with.

  She was the reason I had learned the fallacy of one Newton’s laws first hand. Graves falls from building, Graves hits pavement, pavement does not hit back with equal force but a million times the force…causing Graves serious brain damage as evident by me referring to myself in third person.

  Ortiz and I had barely escaped the first time, hell; I thought we had successfully ganked the Elemental.

  I could hear Ortiz’s breathing begin to pick up its pace, when she spoke, it was rapid and nervous like. “Na…Norman, please tell me that’s not what I think it is? I thought we killed it, we killed it right?”

  I was a blur of motion, I heard Ortiz’s question but it barely registered as I was diving into the back of her car and retrieving my items. “Move!” was the only reply I gave her, shouting it as loud and harshly as I could, hoping that it would snap her out of her fear induced reverie.

  It worked, one second Ortiz was utterly overwhelmed and distraught, and the next instant she was back in the game. I successfully retrieved my journals, the binder of info Gnosis had given me, as well as the silver fire poker Ortiz had left on the backseat. In the front of the car, I could see Ortiz stretching her body across the driver seat and over onto the passenger seat, reaching for the glove box.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted.

  She ignored me and yanked the glove box open, I had no idea what she was getting as I had already pulled myself out of her car and was keeping an eye on the Elemental. The flame-based woman had fully stepped out of the elevator and did a lazy yet graceful spin to face us. Its head swiveled in an eerily slow manner, it stared at me hard for a few moments, regarding me as if it were the first time it saw me.

  Creepy, you think she’d remember the guy she tried to burn alive and cause to face plant into the pavement…. most women would remember…I think.

  Then the Elemental let out an ear splitting wail, guess she remembered the part about us dousing her ass in foam, shooting her and then blowing up a fire extinguisher in her face.

  “Ortiz, you might wanna move, now!” I screamed just as the Elemental swung her arm in the direction of the car.

  All I heard was a “got it,” from Ortiz as she scrambled forwards through the passenger seat of the car and dove out. The very next second a row flames burst onto the hood of Ortiz’s car, quickly dancing their way across the body of her car until most of it was engulfed in fire.

  “My car!” shouted Ortiz in outrage and shock.

  “I told you something bad would happen if you parked in that spot!”

  “Not now!” she snapped back as began digging through the small purse she had retrieved from her glove box.

  “A purse?!” I shouted incredulously, “we’re in danger of being immolated and you saved your purse?!”

  Ortiz ignored me, her attention drawn to her flaming car and the Elemental that caused it, her eyes transfixed once again. I knew what was going on, she was on the edge, torn between fear and self-preservation. I had seen her lose her composure before, back in the hotel; I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

  I ran over to her and knelt besides her, we were between her car and the rusted covered Bronco now, I took her shoulders in my hands and shook her gently. “Ortiz, hey come on, I need you get a grip,” I said gently but with a hint of firmness as well. Her eyes blinked several times and then she moved with a surge of sudden speed, brushing me aside and forcing me to collide with the Bronco’s door.

  “Ow!” I yelped.

  Her hands flew out of purse and produced a diminutive gleaming silvery gun, a palm sized snub-nosed revolver and she had it pointed near the rear end of her car.

  A sharp wail drew my attention to what Ortiz was aiming at; the Elemental’s slender and fiery figure had crossed the back end of the car and now had us pinned. Both Ortiz and I were stuck in a narrow space between one car that was on fire and the other a rust bucket. You know the saying about a rock and a hard place, well in our case; it was a flaming rock and a hard place with a living flamethrower staring us down.

  Just as the Elemental raised both its arms towards us, my eardrums cried out in pain as Ortiz let loose with her little hand cannon. My hands instinctively flew up to my ears as the gun erupted and filled the air with the sounds of twin reports.

  Ortiz already wreaked havoc on my eardrums by firing off her gun right next to me in the hotel. And now, she fired off a mini cannon in between two cars, which were parked in an underground parking lot! Underground parking lots are really good at amplifying sounds; so needless to say, I think my eardrums would be pressing charges against Agent Ortiz. I mean hell; car alarms were going off!

  Atleast my eyes were still working, I could see the twin rounds enter the Elemental’s face only a fraction of an inch apart. Damn that was some good shooting. The two rounds distorted the Elemental’s female features as her face erupted into twin plums of miniature flames that str
eamed out of her head. My head was still in a tizzy as I saw the Elemental collapse to the concrete, its body began spurting little geysers of fire everywhere, maybe it was dead or dying…I could hope.

  Ortiz turned back to face me and helped me up, my hands still clamped down on my ears, I think my eardrums were doing somersaults inside my skull. Those gunshots really knocked my noggin’ around. I wasn’t focusing on her though, I was too occupied by her car and the flames that were edging there way around its body and would inevitably cause a very loud and problematic boom!

  I brushed her asides and turned quickly, bringing my fist back in what seemed to have become my signature move of late and plunged it through the Bronco’s driver side window.

  “That’s vandalism!” shouted Ortiz, although it came over much quieter due to my mangled eardrums.

  I shot a quick glance towards the Elemental, which was now pulling itself back together, and decided to speed up with breaking some more laws. “If you don’t like that,” I called to Ortiz, “you’re really not going to like this next bit,” I said as I unlocked the door and slid into the vehicle.

  Ortiz noticed what I had, that the Elemental was getting back up and she decided to unload another two rounds into the creature, this time in its back. The Elemental jolted violently before collapsing once again.

  I capitalized on the situation and proceeded to rip apart the bottom of the steering column and the plastic around the ignition. Hotwiring a car is easy, it really is, all cars have voltage coursing through them even when they are off, it’s how radios save settings and what not. What you have to do is find the appropriate wires, strip ‘em and touch ‘em together. What that does is bypass the need to use a key in order to tell the starter motor to engage and light up the spark plugs and thus starting the combustion process. On a nineties Bronco, that process is ridiculously easy.

  “Yes,” I shouted triumphantly as the engine thrummed to life, “Ortiz!” I called.

  “What?” she shouted back.

  “Get in the Bronco!” I roared as I put the thing into reverse, Ortiz ran around the other side and swung open the door. “Come on,” I implored as she began tossing an assortment of things into the vehicle. My journals sailed rather unceremoniously through the air and landed somewhere in the Bronco, prompting a scandalized, “hey!” from me. Then came the silver fire poker… something which seriously should not be thrown and it nearly missed my ankle, falling short by just a few inches. Next, the info binder Gnosis had given me, which I noticed received better treatment than my own items as it was gently tossed onto the dash.

  “Alright,” panted Ortiz, as she hopped in and jammed her seatbelt on, slamming the door closed as she did.

  I slid the Bronco out of the spot as fast as I could, the vehicle lurched to the side just a bit as I sped out and away from the ticking time bomb that was Ortiz’s car. I continued backing up the Bronco until we were literally up against the rear wall of the parking complex.

  “What are you doing Norman?” Ortiz asked, staring at me like I was insane. “We have to get out here!” she implored.

  “Just wait and watch the fireworks,” I replied with a smirk,

  She glanced at the Elemental and then back to her car, realizing what I had meant and then addressed me, “fireworks?” she asked angrily, arching a dark eyebrow. “That’s my car!”

  “Was,” I replied, “past tense.”

  “It’s still there!” she snarled, pointing a finger towards it to accentuate it her point.

  I guess I was simply running ahead of things.

  The Elemental was already striding towards us when Ortiz’s car blew and man was that something!

  You ever hear of that expression of holding on to your teeth? Well now I know what it meant because the force of that explosion shook everything, my jaw was rattling and I tasted copper, I must’ve bit my tongue or the inside of my cheek hard. Windows burst on nearby cars from the sheer force and my ears begged for mercy, my eyes got their fair of suffering as they were temporarily blinded by the sudden flare of light in the dark complex.

  Ortiz had a death grip on my right arm, her nails digging into my flesh a bit, she was mouthing words I think, maybe I had gone deaf. “Norman,” her voice coming through as a distorted whisper.

  Nope, not deaf, I thought.

  I shook my head violently, which really doesn’t help physiologically speaking; it’s more psychological then anything. It’s a message to the head that says, “get your shit together!”

  “There,” said Ortiz, I was struggling to hear her but I made that much out as she pointed to the Elemental. The explosion had sent the thing crashing into the rear end of a massive work van parked opposite Ortiz’s now flaming scrap of a car. The blast had been powerful enough to drive the Elemental into the double doors of the van’s back end, the upper half of its body somewhere inside the van’s spacious trunk. The Elemental didn’t seem to be out of commission however; its lower half was twitching and seemed to be pretty functional.

  “Norman,” Ortiz said, a hint of desperation touching her voice, she was starting to get overwhelmed and who could blame her? The Elemental just didn’t seem to go down permanently no matter what we threw at it. “Please, let’s go,” she pleaded.

  I wanted to make sure that I got this thing lest it surprise us again, I couldn’t risk it, so I waited. It was a hard thing to do, I could feel Ortiz’s nervousness and I didn’t want to put her through anything else if I could avoid it. I shut my mouth, clamping down hard, teeth upon teeth, setting my jaw in another psychological ploy to make sure I didn’t back out of doing this.

  The Elemental’s arms slid out from inside the van’s trunk and helped to push itself out of where it was firmly wedged. It descended with eerily slowness as it sunk to pavement, its head snapping in our direction; this time there was no angry wail or no warning. The monster charged towards us with a burst of speed like I had never witnessed, crossing several car lengths in an instant.

  I slammed the car into first gear and floored it, the Bronco lurching forwards like the heavy powerful monster it was. The Bronco began accelerating and the Elemental was still charging towards us, the flames on its body dancing violently.

  We collided, hard! The Elemental’s upper body thunked into the front end, its arms crashing down onto the hood but not bouncing off as I hoped they would. It dug in and began tearing at the metal; I mashed the pedal down as far as I could, the Bronco began picking up more speed. “Hold on!” I shouted to Ortiz as I slammed the brakes, we both shot forwards only to be stopped suddenly by our belts. The Elemental wasn’t so lucky, it flew forwards and smacked into the pavement, rolling viscously until it came to a stop, struggling to right itself.

  I felt a tight squeeze on my arm, Ortiz was gripping it tightly, I turned to face her, her jaw firm, eyes steel when she spoke, “get that bitch!” venom and anger dripping in her voice.

  That was all I needed, I stomped the accelerator and shifted, the Elemental wasn’t at its feet for more than half a second before the full force of the Bronco thudded into it. There was a loud thwump and the car rocked as the Elemental’s form vanished beneath the car.

  Ortiz spun back in her seat, craning her neck to look out the rear window.

  “Well?” I asked curiously, stepping on the brake to slow the monster killing Bronco down.

  “It’s down, something weird’s going on.” She replied.

  “Weird?” I asked.

  “Yeah the fires on its body are fizzing, like when you spray water on a firework or something like that,” she answered.

  I turned to look back at the sight, the Elemental was immobile, the only movement was the flickering and waning of fire struggling to remain alight. Moments later, they fizzled out and the Elemental faded from sight, all trace gone.

  Ortiz let out a sigh of relief and her arms wrapped around me, “thank God!”

  I snorted, “thank the Bronco,” and patted the dash, “built Ford tough,” I said with a chor
tle. “Too bad OJ had to ruin their rep.”

  Ortiz let out a small laugh with that last quip of mine, felt good to make her laugh, especially after what we had just been through.

  “Let’s get of here before the cops show up,” I suggested.

  “Good idea,” she replied, “you’re already are responsible for disturbing the peace, endangering the general public, arson, destruction of property and breaking and entering,” she rattled off with a smile.

  “Don’t forget grand theft auto,” I added, putting my foot back on the gas as I drove the Bronco out of the parking lot.

  She looked at me and shook her head in mock disappointment and tried to stifle a laugh, keyword being tried, she failed and her laughter soon infected me. We were both laughing for what seemed like forever, just laughing and driving, it was amazing, we had just escaped another near death scenario and here I was laughing!

  I had never been able to do that before, never had someone to laugh with, it really helped terrible things like that just fade, even if just for a few moments.

  “Ahh,” I sighed, rubbing a hand underneath my nose for no reason, it just seemed right.

  Ortiz let out a relaxed and laughter induced sigh of her own before speaking, “so,” she said pausing for a moment, “what now?”

  That question sobered me up; we were quite a bit away from Marsha’s apartment complex now so I pulled the Elemental crushing Bronco over. As the vehicle slowly lumbered over to the side of the road, I asked Ortiz to find a certain person’s file inside the info binder I had been given. Once she had found the employee in question’s info, I asked her to read a small bit from his relationships section.

  “Martial status: single,” read Ortiz, she continued listing things that only served to confirm my suspicions but the last piece I really needed was what she said last. “No next of kin, no family whatsoever.”

  My fingers curled around the steering wheel tightly, knuckles whitening from how hard I was squeezing, I could feel my heart racing, damn I was angry! “Bastard!” I cursed.