by Ross Homer
Elsa nodded.
Nissa gasped! “Then you are an Esper. Oh my God! I never thought I’d ever get to meet one of you.” She continued to stare, now in awe.
“Well, now you have. I have to deliberately let you into my mind. Like yesterday.”
Nissa returned to her coffee, plopped down on the chair, and sipped. “I’m just simply amazed! An Esper. May I ask what kind you are?”
“Sure. I’m a Third-Degree Empath.”
Nissa has beautiful gray eyes. Seriously. I thought those gray orbs were going to pop straight out of her head when Elsa said that. “I…I don’t know what to say. I guess you can make me hop about like a rabbit.”
When Elsa got angry, there was no way to misunderstand her feelings. “You of all people, should know better than that, Ms. Stanley!”
“Please forgive me. I’m only kidding, and I didn’t mean to insult you. Remember…I’m a fairy. Nobody believes that, either.” She looked over at me. “And you’re a witch. That makes three different kinds of humans in the same room.” She thought about what she’d said for a moment. “This is damned interesting if you think about it. I am a telepath. I can create a presentation, for want of a better word, of Jo’s dream. Elsa’s an empath. She can change the way we feel about the emotions involved during it. And you are a witch, Jo. You can protect us and do other witchy things. Like…could you reheat my coffee? Please?”
I nodded and her coffee was back to steaming hot.
“See what I mean? To continue…If I can do what you want, Jo, I think I can kind of project what you saw. However, we will get the unvarnished vision. No coloring or editing. What you saw, we’ll see. I’ll tell you, Elsa, what I saw yesterday was bad enough.”
Elsa nodded. She fiddled with that button again. “I gathered that from what Jo told me. And then her dream. Why don’t we go into the living room and do this before it gets much later? I think I can tamp down the emotion so that we see it as strictly visual information. Like watching a movie with the sound off.”
Interrupting her, I said, “That ain’t happening. You’ll see. You can tamp down what I felt…what Reiko felt, but you can’t do anything about the horror you’ll see. I agree, though. Let’s go sit in the living room.”
After topping off our coffees, we went into the living room. I sat in my favorite chair. Elsa sat on the armchair beside me and Nissa faced us from the couch. Elsa held my hand.
Nissa said, “I am not going to do this life-size. The entire scene will be no more than a foot or so high. That should help diminish the horror of it. Jo, close your eyes and relax. You can concentrate on the dream or not. I’m pretty sure I know what to look for.”
“Okay,” I replied. “I think I’ll look for clues around the room while you do this. Reiko was in the dark about why she was taken. Maybe, just maybe, there’ll be something I can see. The three of us need to pay attention.”
The rest of what happened was ethereal. My eyes had seen far more than my mind allowed me to comprehend. That’s how it usually went when people encounter something too shocking to understand; they want to block it out. My mind did that for me but Nissa did exactly what she said; she showed the complete scene, unedited by my mind. She changed it so that we were looking down on the first room where Reiko was. Other than that, this was like looking at an excellent if horrifying, 3-D movie. That was the only difference.
We didn’t spend much time where I first saw Reiko. We watched as she and I materialized in front of Sato’s house and then went up to the room where she died. I saw me, standing there talking to Reiko. I said, “Nissa, stop! Can you make this bigger so I can search the desk?”
“Yes.”
The scene blew up to half life-sized and Nissa froze what was happening. Both of Reiko and I were motionless. The ‘real’ me searched the room and desk. There were some papers on the desk but not a single thing that offered any clues to why she was there and, of course, where the first place had been.
I whispered, “Go ahead. I can’t find anything.”
Then the nightwalkers were there. They materialized from the wall behind Reiko. I saw me react to them and Reiko’s eyes widen in shock for only a second. Then she was dead. Before I awoke last night, screaming with Elsa holding me, my eyes saw a lot more of what happened to Reiko’s body. My mind had blocked that.
Sitting there in the safety of our living room Elsa was crushing my hand. I opened my eyes and gently pried her fingers off.
Elsa murmured, “Kill me first!”
Nissa said bluntly, “At least she died before they tore her apart like that.”
“I don’t care!” Elsa was sobbing now.
I thanked the Goddess again that Reiko died within the first seconds of their arrival. Then I made Elsa get up and come sit on my lap. It was my turn to comfort her. Nissa went for another cup of coffee.
Elsa whispered into my shoulder, “We must find those creatures and send them back to wherever or whatever hell they came from! Then we need to find out who summoned them. We must! Then we deal with him or her or them accordingly.”
“I know, Baby, I know. We will, too.”
“I agree, Jo,” Nissa said as she returned to her seat. “I also agree with Reiko when she said he might have overstepped his bounds when he tried to acquire someone else’s territory or the like. I’m a cop, assigned to the Seattle police. I came here after a troll who killed other Fae with no qualms at all. He’s no longer a problem. I, ahh, can stay too, since I am now married to an American. I have contacts in both the human and Fae communities here. I’ll go start checking with them in a bit. But we need to eat breakfast first.”
I nodded. “I concur.” I kissed Elsa unselfconsciously and helped her stand.
In the kitchen, I started thick-sliced bacon while Elsa took the eggs out of the refrigerator. When everything was going good, Elsa said, “Nissa, can you show us the nightwalkers again. Slowly, I mean. I may have been a bit of a wild child and mostly fucked off until I met Jo, but I have actually read a book or two in my life.”
I didn’t know if she was kidding or what, but I nodded.
Elsa added suddenly, “Wait! Small! Like, the size of my hand. Okay?”
“Sure,” Nissa replied and the two creatures materialized on my island in all their shocking repulsiveness.
Elsa walked slowly around the island looking at them. Thankfully, Nissa managed to keep Reiko out of the scene. She had frozen them where they came out of the wall behind her.
“You can make them disappear now,” Elsa said. They were gone in an instant. She said, “Do you suppose H.P. Lovecraft had actually seen these things when he wrote his tales about Cthulhu? Those things kinda of look like some of the original drawings that went with the stories.”
I put bacon on a couple of paper towels to drain and then said, “Shit. Do we really need another mystery to go with what we already have?”
But Nissa gave it some thought as she sipped her coffee. “To answer your question, he might have, Elsa. It’s entirely possible. Creatures like that are part of the Fae mythology and for all we know, Lovecraft might have been Fae or had run into them somehow. That I know what they are called in their original language means that someone somewhere through the ages had seen them and what they are capable of. I wonder how those people got rid of them?”
I thought about it a moment and tossed in my two cents worth. “Hell, if I know. They must have because don’t you think they’d be all over now? Wait! Let’s go back beyond Lovecraft and Stoker. Strange creatures? I think those stories go way, way back. Could they be told by people trying to explain the unexplainable? Like the gods and such? Some of the drawings and illustrations I’ve seen…makes you wonder. I’ve read where the vampire stories, for instance, go back to the ancient Mesopotamians.”
“That’s interesting,” said Nissa. “However, right now the two creatures in our realm are our concern. They must either be returned or destroyed, and whatever portal that was used to bring them here sealed.
”
After dumping the eggs in a cast iron skillet, Elsa stood there and watched them carefully.
Nissa watched her a moment and then said, “Let me make a quick call to the ME. I’d like to know who all the bodies belonged to if nothing else.”
A few minutes later, sitting at the table with eggs, bacon, and toast, Nissa came back. She looked grim as she sat and sipped hot coffee. She smiled at me for making it that way.
“I learned a couple of things,” she said. “The ME told me who the vics are. The two bodyguards and the driver all had extensive records for mostly strong-arm stuff. They’d only been working for Sato for about six months, when he first made his appearance here in Seattle. The woman on the stairs was the Sato’s housekeeper and innocent of anything except for several parking tickets. Sato’s wife, Maggie, was found in the second-floor hallway. Sato himself was in his office, like we guessed. And Reiko…we know about her.”
She sipped coffee and ate some eggs. “On the way over here, Captain, Sorcha Faroe, my boss, called and said she would like you to come view the rest of the autopsy. We can go after breakfast. Maybe she thinks you can use your abilities to gather more information? I wish I knew.” She ate a little of her eggs and then added, “That brings me to your ex, Jo. He is an amazing asshole but then, I guess you know that.”
I nodded. “I spent four years with him…from the time I was sixteen until I was twenty. Two of those years I was married to him and, yeah, thought I could ‘fix’ him. I couldn’t, of course. There’s more, isn’t there?”
“Oh yes. Captain Faroe had to threaten him with unpaid suspension to get him to back off interfering with this case. Since he’s got a wife and kids and needs the income, he has to do what she said. We’ve also managed to put this down as another mass shooting for the press. One of the bodyguards went nuts and killed everyone and then himself. It’s as good a cover up as any, I guess. It certainly happens enough in this country.”
I looked across the table at her and said, “Unfortunately, you’re right. Now what? I guess you’ll hit the street or rather, we will, since I’d like all three of us to be together until we put an end to the nightwalkers and whoever sent them here.”
She ate a slice of bacon before answering. “I may not have made myself clear about the ’walkers and us. Jo, we don’t have to worry between dawn and dusk. They never attack in daylight. All we need to be is together, under your wards, at night. We’ll be safe then.”
I was unsure about that, but she was the one who knew about all this. No matter because Elsa was sticking with me like I had her glued to my side. Yeah, maybe I was a little stifling, but I loved the little woman and wanted nothing to happen to her.
“Elsa,” I said, “I guess you get to go to the morgue with us.”
“Oh, hell no!” she responded sharply. “You two ghouls go and do the viewing. And besides, didn’t Nissa just say I’d be fine during daylight?”
I nodded because she was right. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to worry my ass off while I was at the morgue.
Now she smiled sweetly, “So…I’d just as soon pass if you don’t mind.”
“Gee, thanks, partner.” I chuckled as Nissa and I left the house. I did take a moment to kiss Elsa before we left, though.
Nissa drove and said, “I’ve only seen what you saw. I can’t imagine what we’ll see at the morgue.”
“My memory was nothing like what the real thing is. It will be gruesome. You can count on that. I lost it when I took a close look at the first guy in the driveway. I didn’t see what had happened to Sato and his wife.” I looked over at her. “Frankly, I chickened out. Seeing four of them was enough. Well…five counting Reiko.”
Nissa pulled into the garage at the morgue and parked. She pointed and said, “Captain Faroe’s already here. Let’s go get this over with.”
Dr. Brenda Hall met us in her office. To both of us, she said, “I’ve been a medical examiner for almost thirty years. I could have bailed this past December and now I wished I had. God, what a mess.”
We followed her down a couple of floors, put on surgical greens and booties, then went through the doors into the morgue. Nissa introduced me to Sorcha Faroe, her Captain. As I did when I met Nissa, I liked her immediately.
A wide white partition hanging from the ceiling faced us. There were a couple of steel tables, occupied, and nothing else other than shiny clean lab equipment.
“Only two tables?” asked Captain Faroe.
Dr. Hall replied, “Regular customers.” She pointed at the tables. “Heart attack on that table, and we think an aneurism on the other one. Autopsies will tell us what happened to them. The ones we need to see are back here. Behind curtain number one.”
We stepped around the partition into the rest of the morgue. There were ten tables!
Before we could ask, Dr. Hall said, “Seven bodies and,” she pointed at the other four tables, “ahh, parts. They’re cleaned up as well as we could but it’s still tough. We’re still trying to match limbs with bodies.”
I nodded. Oh.
As she pulled the sheets off the bodies one at a time, Dr. Hall commented, “Whoever did this was exceptionally strong to start with. You can’t just rip bodies apart. Most people can’t do it to a freshly killed chicken. A human would be damn near impossible for the average person to do this to. For these cuts? Something was used that’s sharper than a scalpel…or razor, for that matter. Obsidian blades could do it but those are usually no bigger than a regular scalpel blade.” She held her thumb and first finger about an inch apart. “To do some of this, the blade would have to be at least eight inches long.”
She pointed at the body of the woman on the stairs. I had to take a breath and I heard Nissa swallow hard.
“These are teeth marks.” She pointed at where the woman’s ribs had been, and the marks on what was left of them. “A shark? No. This took everything to her spine. We didn’t remove any of her organs because most of them were gone.”
After we stopped at each table, Dr. Hall finally asked me if I had any idea what kind of weapon was used. Before I could reply, Nissa said, “Doctor, I think you’re Fae. Am I right?”
She stared at Captain Faroe and me before replying. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“Jo and Sorcha are Fae, Doctor. It’s okay to talk.”
“Well, then. I have the same comment; I don’t have a clue what did that to these people. Do you?”
Nissa replied softly, “We think two cerna nokisas.”
The doctor’s eyes went wide in surprise. “Oh, Christ. Nightwalkers. I’ve heard of them. That would also explain these huge bites taken out of these bodies and the strength it took to literally tear the arms and legs from their sockets.” She looked at Reiko and her father’s bodies. “And rip their heads off. And here I’d always thought those things were creatures in stories our parents told us to keep us in line.”
“Nope. They are as real as us. We need to find out who brought them into this realm. I think it’s pretty bloody clear as to ‘why.’”
“I have to agree. Good luck. I don’t want to ever run afoul of them.”
I nodded. “Me either.” I looked at the remains of another woman. She was one of the two bodies on the second floor that I hadn’t seen last night. Thank the Goddess. The other was Sato and they’d had a field day with him.
Brenda nodded, “Yeah. From the bites on these people, I’ll agree that there were at least two of them. There could have been more but there were only two different bite patterns. And yes, they took their time with her, at least to start. Some of her injuries were starting to heal before the next assault was begun. There’s a certain amount of cruelty in this. At some point, though, one of the nightwalkers must have gotten hungry and went for her soft parts before they did the rest. Most scavengers will do that, too.”
One of them had torn Mrs. Sato’s right leg off at the hip and then gnawed all the meat off down to her ankle. The only way Brenda could determin
e who the leg belonged to was matching DNA. I don’t even eat drumsticks that cleanly and I may never eat another one.
She pointed at the marks on the thigh bone. “Again, these are teeth marks. See how they gouged into the bone? And here, it’s obvious from the splitting of the bone that it was going for the marrow. She was long dead before this happened, thank the Goddess.”
It was much the same for the others. Torn apart, huge bites. I felt like I was on the set of a horror movies and these parts were all just props. Except before last night, when this happened, these had been living human beings.
The men should have gone to trial at some point and they would have probably faced the death sentence except we don’t do that anymore. So…life in prison. Was this a better outcome? Yes, there was incredible fear and pain involved but it was quickly over, even in the case of Mrs. Sato. Tearing off her leg like that would have meant she’d have bled out in only a couple of minutes. But with her other terrific injuries? The others?
On the other hand, I sure as hell didn’t want to find out.
That mess at Sato’s house in no way prepared us for what was coming.
Part II
Chapter 6
Roy Bob Eugene Miller started in the fourth grade to develop into the evil monster he would become. One day a sixth grader started teasing him about his middle name: Eugene. Roy Bob took offence to it and although it took two years of some pretty intense physical therapy, the sixth grader regained the use of his legs. He remained blind in his right eye the rest of his life.
Roy Bob spent a few months in psychological therapy for his so-called anger issues. On the other hand, nobody much messed with him after that.
Shortly after he put the taunting sixth grader in the hospital, Roy Bob began taking lunch money from others. Protection, he called it. It was something he had heard on some television cop drama or other. He and his friend Carl set up a couple of guys to be targets. Carl started to pick a fight with them, and Roy Bob stepped in to ‘save’ them. They made it look as though Roy Bob beat the shit out of Carl. It was all fake, of course, but together they ran the scam on through high school and into college.