Burden of Solace: Book 1 of the Starforce Saga

by Richard L. Wright

  He started to leave, and then stopped, his head half-turned back to her. He paused for a long second.

  “What did you wear?”

  Cassie thought she had misheard the question. “Pardon?”

  “On your date, you said you dressed nice. What did you wear?”

  “Nothing special, just a black dress. You know what they say, ‘Every woman should have at least one little black dress in her closet.’”

  He nodded.

  “I bet you look good in black.”

  Don’t you DARE say a WORD, her inner voice whispered. Do NOT ruin this.

  “If you think of anything else, you’ve got my number,” he said. “You can call me any time.”

  Then he turned and left. She stood and watched as he walked down the corridor. A smile crept across her face.

  “Oh yes, I’ve definitely got your number, Nate Gorman. And now you’ve got mine.”

  CHAPTER 9

  It felt good to get out and run. Cassie seldom found the time to exercise, and when she did the weather usually sucked. The hospital had a workout room, but there was only so much time she could grind on a treadmill before losing her mind to boredom.

  She took the Beltline Trail across the tracks, then followed it west along Edgewood Avenue. When she got to the Krog Street tunnel, she’d decide whether she felt up to doing the longer leg up to the Fourth Ward skate park and back, or if she would wimp out and circle back south toward home. It was getting a little late, so smart money was on the wimp.

  She kept thinking about Nate. At some point, she had stopped thinking of him as Guardian 175, but as the awkward man she’d met back before he became an exo, before he had to hide his face. She remembered now that she had felt some hint of a spark then. She was pretty sure he had felt something as well, based on how long he had held the handshake when they were introduced. He had stared into her eyes as if he physically couldn’t look away. How could she have forgotten that?

  She reminded herself that the period that followed was crazy, with rampant gang violence, a masked vigilante, even a corrupt police chief who had tried to blow up the city. It was a month-long reign of terror that ended with the death of Ironhorse.

  So yeah, the ER had been insanely busy around that time, but she still had to wonder what it said about her that she hadn’t even thought about him in the years since. Was she so accustomed to being disappointed by men that she automatically wrote them off without a thought?

  And then there was last night’s ‘date.’ She still wasn’t sure she thought of it as such. Sure, Ballantine certainly considered it a date, but she wasn’t sure she was all that into him. Hell, the fact that she thought of him as ‘Ballantine’ might be a clue. She didn’t really understand how the whole affair had come about. She had been about to turn him down when her mouth went rogue on her. Maybe her subconscious was trying to get her to break out of her comfort zone, take some chances and put herself out there. On the other hand, if that’s what was going on with her, then she had sicced the police and a Guardian on some poor stage magician for no reason.

  As Cassie moved past Krog St. and the tunnel that served as a canvas for street art, she felt a burning in her calves. She was out of shape and wearing those heels last night probably hadn’t done her any good. The wimp won out, again. She hung a left at the next juncture and headed south. The trail circled back east, skirting the edge of the Hulsey rail yard and back to her apartment.

  She was still thinking about her love life, or lack thereof, as she veered off onto a trail segment that wasn’t as well-traveled. It was a minor shortcut built into the route to help the trail users avoid a busy intersection. Some runners avoided the segment simply because it looked more like a country road than an official running trail, but this was Cassie’s neighborhood and she felt safe in this area. The overgrown bushes and kudzu vines between the trail and the rail yard were just a change of scenery, a backdrop for her distracted thoughts.

  The first sign of danger was something striking her hard in the back. The unexpected push threw her off balance. She stumbled, her left knee hitting the rough pavement hard. The sound, if not the sensation, told her that something had broken. Her hands skid out in front of her and she landed face-down, her chin taking most of the force. The taste of blood flooded her mouth and her vision filled with flashes of light.

  “You gave birth to them! They’ll devour us all, you devil-bitch!”

  She was rolled over and felt herself being dragged off the path. She passed roughly over plants and stones, sending a fresh wave of agony through her shattered knee. Her vision cleared in time to see a hand, wrapped around a stone, arcing down toward her face. Instinct brought her right arm up. It absorbed some of the impact, but at the cost of more fragmented bones. The blow drove down into her fractured jaw. She felt loose and broken teeth.

  The woman crouching over her was wild-eyed, her long blond hair hanging down in twisted clumps like strands of a mop. Her mouth dripped spittle as she drew back to strike again.

  “I see what you are. I see what you do. I can smell his stench on you. Nobody believes me, but I know. I know.”

  The woman brought the rock down again, this time striking Cassie’s chest. Pieces of ribs stabbed down into her left lung. She couldn’t breathe. Another blow, this time to her shoulder. She could barely see through the agony. Cassie tried to move, to roll over or sit up - anything to escape the torture - but pain consumed her.

  The woman stood up and reached into a sack she had slung over her shoulder, pulling out another stone. Bizarrely, Cassie’s mind associated the shoulder sack with a paper boy on an old TV show. For a split second, the woman shifted into a freckle-faced kid pedaling his bicycle, slinging rubber-banded newspapers in black & white. The first paper was heavy like it had been left out in the rain. It hit her hip and she heard a cracking sound. She considered complaining about the kid’s poor aim, a curt letter to the editor forming in her mind. Then the next blow struck her in the solar plexus, driving out what little air she still had. Blood spewed from between her destroyed lips. The Leisure Section clipped her brow and she lost sight in that eye. From the other, her only remaining window to this world, she watched as the woman knelt beside her, lifting a large rock, heavy enough to require two hands, over her head.

  “You brought this on yourself, Louise. But I forgive you.”

  The stone came down, in slow motion, straight for Cassie’s head. Her mangled hand came up, as if it could stop the boulder from crushing her skull. Her anger rose up again. It wasn’t fair. After all she’d been through, it was going to end here - crushed, like her parents, by rocks.

  The last thing she saw was light, screaming and white. Then there was nothing.

  *

  It was quiet. Green light filled Cassie’s eyes. She felt a breeze caress her cheek, warm and soft. Mom liked to keep the windows open this time of year, having grown used to open-air living on all those trips to third-world hot spots. The morning sunlight filtered in through the leaves, giving everything a verdant, living aura. She hoped there’d be pancakes this morning, slathered with so much butter and syrup that they barely held together enough to be eaten with a fork. And chocolate milk, the kind made from syrup that you had to stir and stir, not that powdery kind.

  The green glow pulsed, ebbing and flowing as the tree limbs were tossed by the wind. She resisted opening her eyes, savoring the late summer sleep-in. School started tomorrow. She liked school, but during the summer she got to spend more time with her parents during the fleeting intervals when they weren’t saving the world. There weren’t many days left before they’d be off again, flying away. This time, they wouldn’t come back, stolen away from her by that earthquake, so she shouldn’t waste precious time lying in bed.

  Cassie opened her eyes. There was no sunshine. She saw stars. In the distance, a freight train idled with a throaty rumble. Crickets chirped their metronome rhythm. She sat up.

  She couldn’t make out much in the dark exc
ept that she was in an overgrown field or maybe an abandoned lot. The grass and plants in her immediate vicinity were dead, dried and crunchy. She could hear distant traffic noises and thin, tinny music nearby - a rap or hip hop rhythm stripped of its defining bass foundation. There were lights in most directions. She stood up and walked towards the music.

  The dried vegetation quickly gave way to living plants, weeds mostly. Then she was standing on a paved pathway, a cheerful little yellow house across from her.

  She suddenly realized she was thirsty, parched in fact. She walked toward the house. There was music coming from the yellow house, but it was softer than the more distant urban beat. Cassie heard a clarinet and drums being played with brushes. Jazz. She knocked on the door.

  “Who in the world? Jus’ a minute, jus’ a minute.”

  The woman sounded more surprised and hopeful than Cassie would have, hearing an unexpected evening knock on her door. A curtain was pulled back in the narrow window flanking the door. A short, rotund woman, indeterminate in years except to say she was well past middle age, wearing a flowered dress peered out at her. She adjusted her glasses and then her eyes flew wide.

  “Lord have mercy!”

  Cassie heard her fumble with a series of locks and at least one chain before the door flew open. Cassie was careful to stand back so as not to make the woman feel threatened.

  “Child! What has happened?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but could I get a drink of water?”

  “Water? Oh my Lord, girl.”

  The woman pushed open the squeaky screen door, reaching frantically for Cassie as if she might fall over.

  “Maybe you have a garden hose I could use? I don’t want to be any bother.”

  The older woman slipped one arm around her waist while the other held open the screen.

  “Hush now, jus’ hush. Come on in here and let me see. Lord o’ mercy, girl. What has been done to you?”

  The woman carefully ushered Cassie into her foyer, moving slowly as if afraid her guest would break in her arms. Cassie caught sight of herself in a hallway mirror and suddenly realized the reason for her host’s concern.

  Cassie was covered in blood.

  Her running clothes were caked with it, half-dried and sticky. Her hair, only half of it still in the ponytail she wore when running, was matted and plastered to her head. The knees of her stretch pants were torn in several places. Reddish brown ran down her face and neck.

  Cassie had a mental flash of a woman, lips pulled back in a savage snarl, raising a large rock over her. Her knees started to buckle, and the old woman was ready with a chair to slide under her.

  “You jus’ ease on down there. I’ll go grab the cordless and call 911.”

  “No, I’m okay. I think. It’s all just kind of fuzzy.”

  “Can you tell me your name? Do you know who did this to you, darlin’?”

  “Cassie. Cassie Whelan. There was a woman, she was acting all crazy-like. I was running and she hit me from behind, I guess.”

  “Mmm, mmm, mmm. The world is fillin’ up with crazy-ass people. But we need to find where you bleedin’ from.”

  Cassie touched her face, her shoulder, her hip and then her chest. There was no pain, none at all. She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth and all of her teeth seemed to be intact. Had she dreamed it? Some kind of hallucination?

  It came back to her in flashes. She remembered seeing this yellow house right before she was attacked. The blonde must have dragged her back and off the other side, into the overgrown area there. Her hand brushed the holster on her left bicep, where she kept her cell phone, house key and a folded twenty. They were all there. She hadn’t been robbed. But she had been injured, of that much she was certain, even though she could find no trace of any of it now.

  “I think I fell in some mud. You know, good old Georgia red clay? Maybe I could clean up a bit. Just hose me down or something.”

  “Hose you down? Girl, I think maybe you got a head wound or somethin’. You come with me now and we get you into the bathroom for a proper shower. Hose you down. Land’s sakes.”

  Cassie followed the woman down a short hallway as she muttered and exclaimed about all manner of craziness in the world and how she was “not havin’ it, no sir.” After the old woman turned on the shower and pulled out a stack of towels and an old robe, she left Cassie with instructions to leave her clothes on the floor and she would rinse them out while Cassie showered.

  She stepped into the weak spray of water and turned it up as hot as it would go. Looking down, a river of muddy red flowed off of her and swirled down the drain. She ran her hands over the places she remembered being hit, but there wasn’t so much as a bruise. She heard the bathroom door open and then close again as she let the warmth run over her head and down her back, scrubbing to loosen the dried bits clinging in her hair. When the water ran clear, she turned it off and slid back the shower curtain. After wringing the excess water out of her hair, Cassie grabbed up one of the towels and started drying herself. The towel was old and thin, which probably explained why the old woman had left her several.

  On the back of the door was a full-length mirror. It was cracked in one corner and the silvering was coming off the back in many places. Cassie used her hand to wipe away most of the fog, then let the towel fall away as she took stock of her naked form.

  It was perfect. Well, it was like it had been earlier, anyway. Her breasts were still too small for her liking and her butt was too flat. But there were no wounds, no marks and no evidence that there had ever been otherwise.

  Cassie started to wonder if she was losing her mind. But the blood had been real - the old woman had seen it too. Cassie now regretted letting the woman clean her clothes. They might have contained evidence, clues to what had happened. Then another thought came to her, even more horrifying to her than having been attacked.

  If she wasn’t injured, then whose blood had she washed away? How had it gotten on her? Her hands covered her mouth as she stared into the mirror.

  Had she killed someone?

  CHAPTER 10

  Walsh sat down at a table. This ‘Persephone Lounge’ was a lot nicer than any club he’d ever visited. From what he’d been able to learn, it was very exclusive, very discreet. It had certainly been hard to find. He suspected he couldn’t afford so much as a glass of water here. And judging by the way the man at the door had resisted letting him in before the show - even after he flashed his badge - they weren’t too worried about such mundane matters as legality.

  “Bonjour, monsieur inspector, I am Etienne Leclair. I am told you wish to speak with me?”

  The young man that approached struck Walsh as a combination of James Dean and Pepe Le Pew, except he was wearing a black Stetson with the brim folded up tight on the sides. The whole ‘mysterious foreigner’ image was totally destroyed by the ridiculous ‘cowpoke’ hat.

  “Yes, thank you for staying behind, Mister Leclair. I just have a few questions.”

  Walsh produced a stack of photos and laid them out on the table.

  “Do you recognize any of these?”

  To Walsh’s surprise, the Frenchman took an earnest look at each one. Usually, the suspects he dealt with barely glanced at anything he put in front of them before denying any knowledge of anything, anywhere, anytime. Leclair actually picked up one for a closer look, but ultimately replaced it and shook his head.

  “Non, I am sorry. I thought this one perhaps, but I think she reminds me of a baker I knew in Paris. Should I know them?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. They’re all dead, by the way.”

  “Quel dommage. Are they Americans? Living here? You see, I have only been in this city for a few days. I do not know many people here.”

  Walsh produced another photo, this one of Dr. Whelan. “How about this one?”

  Leclair’s face lit up. “La belle rousse! Yes, she attended my first show here. Such a sparkling mind.” Then his eyes flicked to the
other photos. “Is she... like the others?”

  Walsh shook his head. “No, she’s fine. But she said something strange happened here at your show last night.”

  Leclair laughed. “Strange? I should hope so. I have built a reputation for providing strange and wonderful experiences for my audience.”

  “This was a little more invasive. She felt like she was acting under a compulsion or something. Like hypnotism. Was that you? Is that part of your act?”

  Leclair’s face grew hard. “Non. But I sensed it that night. There was something. It was attached to her, hovering around her. I could not sense it directly. It was like a shadow of something invisible.”

  He shook his head. “I realize my words make no sense to you. I have trouble with them myself. But I assure you, Inspector, that I would never compel an innocent or tamper with them in that way. I have my honor.”

  “Innocent? What if someone isn’t so innocent, at least in your eyes? Would you do something like that? Force them to do something against their will?”

  Leclair stared at Walsh, all pretext of the romantic figure abandoned. His eyes hardened.

  “Ah, you think me an exohuman. I assure you, I am human, a performer of tricks, illusions. I have no such power as you describe. And, even if I did, I would never use it on one such as Cassidy Whelan.”

  “But you would use it against someone, the right someone?”

  The performer sat back, easing up on the intensity he projected.

  “Let me ask you, Inspector Walsh, do you carry a weapon? A revolver?”

  Walsh nodded. “It’s part of my job. And I’m proud to say that I have never had to fire it except on a practice range.”

  “But you would, if the situation demanded it, non? To protect someone or even yourself? So it is with me.”

  He smiled and pulled a passport from the inside pocket of his duster. He laid it on the table and pushed it toward Walsh.

  “I believe you are about to ask me not to leave the city. So, here are my papers. A gesture of good will and cooperation.”