Shadow Plague Page 4

  “Let’s rewind a bit. You strike up a conversation with Kate, you offer to buy her a drink, and then the two of you head upstairs. What happens next?”

  “What do you think happens in hotel rooms?” he said, his voice laced with sudden irritation.

  He took a steadying breath, his jaw tight and said, “I remember getting undressed, and then everything went black. The next thing I recall is being naked outside the hotel, covered in blood and surrounded by cops. I don’t know what happened. But it couldn’t have been me. You see that, right?”

  His story confirmed my worst suspicions. Davis had transformed into a nightmare beast while making love to Kate and had ravaged her in the truest sense of the word. It was a small mercy that he had blacked out. Sometimes the host wasn’t spared the full horror of a monstrous transformation. Studying Octurna’s monster manuals and books on secret lore, I had come across numerous accounts where the victim remained conscious while the beast inside them murdered friends and loved ones, reduced to helpless passengers forced to bear witness to the horror.

  I couldn’t tell Davis any of this. I was pretty sure that talk about monsters and transformations wouldn’t go over well with Detective Grover. I refused to blow my cover despite the tortured expression carved on the murder suspect’s face.

  I contemplated my next question. Something or someone had turned Davis, Joe Reno the snowboarder, and a horde of other people into monsters. Monsters such as the world had never seen before. Was it the work of a mage? And if so, why had these particular individuals been selected? What tied Davis to the snowboarder who had stalked the Montana mountains? There had to be a connection of some sort. How had these two people come in contact with the dark magic which had changed them into living nightmares?

  If we’d been dealing with a singular breed of monster, I would have guessed a previously uncatalogued were-beast had taken a bite out of one of them at some point within the last month. But all these monsters varied too much in appearance. Besides, people who had recently survived a monster attack probably wouldn’t go around snowboarding or picking up women in hotel bars as if nothing had happened. Surviving a brush with a “were” had a way of changing a person, in more ways than one.

  I studied Davis. If anyone could help me find the answer, it would be the man sitting across from me. But I had to be careful.

  “Have you experienced anything unusual in the last few weeks, Mr. Davis?”

  The suspect cocked an eyebrow, surprised by this new line of questioning. “What do you mean?”

  Octurna’s voice suddenly piped up in my head. Ask him if he’s been having strange dreams. Magic-induced transformations occur first in the mind before they manifest in reality.

  Interesting. You learn something new every day in this business.

  I watched Davis closely as I asked my next question. “Have you been suffering from any nightmares recently?”

  He gaped at me, his lower lip quivering. “How do you know about my dreams?”

  The question hung in the air. Blood roared in my ears, and my heart beat a little faster. We were getting somewhere here.

  “When did the dreams begin?” I pressed.

  “About a few weeks ago. After that business trip to New York City. It’s always the same nightmare. I wake up hungry. I go to the kitchen and start eating, but I never feel full, never feel satisfied. It’s almost like I’m a little kid again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was obese until the age of eleven — a classic eating disorder. If it had gone on like that, I would have had a heart attack by the time I reached my mid-twenties.”

  He broke off, his eyes going distant, remembering.

  “I guess I was filling an emotional void. That’s what my shrink used to say.”

  I nodded. Davis opening up like this to me was turning him into a real person. I was feeling worse for him by the minute. It was too easy to imagine him changing one vice for another, replacing food with sex as the focus of his addiction.

  “You know, in my dreams, I start eating with more than one mouth, like I have teeth all over my body. But I can’t get enough. Can’t ever get full.”

  I swallowed hard and wondered what Detective Grover was making of all of this on the other end of the one-way mirror. Would he still defend Davis’ innocence after hearing this? I somehow doubted it.

  “I had the same dream last night after I brought that woman up to my room.” He looked up at me, despair in his eyes. "It wasn’t a dream, was it?”

  My silence must have been all the answer he needed. The vein in his forehead throbbed, and his eyes bulged from their sockets. Davis might be a cheater, but he sure as hell wasn’t a killer, and I felt sorry for him.

  “Mr. Davis, you must relax. Please calm down”

  “You want me to calm down? A woman is dead, and I…I killed her!”

  His lips parted in a wail and to my shocked surprise, jagged shark teeth sprouted from his yawning mouth. A second ugly mouth parted below his Adam’s apple, revealing twin rows of piranha teeth. His skin became mottled and turned green, and I knew more mouths were materializing under the baggy gym clothes.

  A ropey pink tongue flicked between the jagged teeth and lashed toward me. I stifled a scream as it snapped around my neck and started strangling me.

  Instinctively I reached for my Glock. That’s when the second tongue exploded from the creature’s second mouth and wrapped around my wrist before I could pull out my piece.

  Fuck. This job never gets easier.

  4

  Reality swam out of focus, and dark spots danced in front of my eyes as Davis’s tentacle-like tongue crushed my windpipe.

  Luckily, dragon blood coursed through my veins, so the monster couldn’t quite kill me. But my muscles were no match for the tensile strength of the creature’s tongues. Every time I fought back against their pull, the monster barely budged. Its feet were planted to the floor as if it had set roots.

  More tongues began snaking from the monster’s other mouths. Davis was hungry.

  Fuck.

  A second tongue remained tightly wrapped around my right wrist, but fortunately, that still left me with my other hand. I reached for the Glock with my left hand and whipped the pistol out of the leather holster in one smooth motion.

  Without hesitation, I fired.

  The silver bullet hit the monster in the throat, right between two of its snapping mouths. The pressure against my Adam’s apple loosened as the nightmare creature went reeling. I gasped for breath. The attack had almost broken my neck, and I felt like could barely turn my head without crying out in agony.

  The creature, now sporting one additional yawing red mouth, tried to throw itself at me with whatever reservoirs of strength still at its disposal.

  The Glock roared again, and the monster went down with a bone-chilling shriek.

  The Glock stopped firing, empty now. Even though each silver bullet had hit its target, the monster that had been Davis wasn’t done. He lunged at me, eyes crazed, and ran right into the twin blades of my waiting gauntlet. Octurna had been nice enough to fix the weapon earlier with a simple flick of her fingers.

  Magic sure made life a lot easier. Well, when it wasn’t trying to kill you.

  Blood sprayed the one-way mirror, and the beast slipped off my knives into a bubbling puddle of blood. Its wails filled the interrogation room as the creature flopped on the floor like a beached fish and then grew still. The moment it hissed out its final, unholy breath, the thing reverted to its human form.

  John Davis’s corpse now looked up at me from a pool of crimson.

  This was not good on a number of levels.

  Truly, I had not wanted the situation to escalate. Davis was a victim too. But there was no to time to get caught up in a guilt trip. The door to the interrogation room flew open, and Detective Grover appeared. He stared at me with a mixture of shock and incomprehension. He must’ve witnessed Davis’s terrible metamorphosis, had seen a man turn in
to a nightmare and try to kill me before I was forced to use lethal force in self-defense. But now the scene had changed. The corpse sprawled across the interrogation’s room floor was human again, and the poor detective didn’t know how to respond to the FBI agent who had emptied a full mag into his suspect.

  I lowered my firearm before the detective decided to take a shot at me. I felt sorry for Grover. His day had started off pretty shitty, and it wasn’t going to get much better in the coming hours. I didn’t want to imagine the stack of paperwork he would have to file.

  Man, what a mess. At least I wouldn’t have to stick around to clear things up.

  It was time to make my exit. I drew a circle in the air and cast my teleportation spell. One moment, I was facing a dazed Detective Grover; the next, I materialized in the hallway adjacent to the interrogation room. A few uniformed officers hustled past me, guns up, galvanized into action by the sound of shots fired. They didn’t spare me a second glance.

  I wished the range of the teleportation spell wasn’t so limited. It would have been nice to project myself out of the police precinct. Maybe one day, when my magical Kung Fu was better. For now, I would have to leave the precinct the old-fashioned way.

  I started walking in the opposite direction of the cops, determined to put as much distance between myself and this debacle as possible.

  I had made it down two corridors before I encountered a new obstacle. The real Special Agent Robert Forster had arrived in the precinct! Two uniformed officers flanked him, and they were all headed right in my direction.

  Talk about godawful timing. Could he not have stopped for a burrito or something?

  I tried to avert my face, but it was too late. Going by the stunned stare he was leveling at me, the FBI agent had spotted his twin.

  I had to get my ass out of here. Now.

  I pivoted before he could cry out and alert others to our uncanny resemblance. I spun around the next corner and hurtled down a corridor. With each step, the magic of my enchanted threads responding to the situation. The black FBI suit morphed into a police uniform, my clothes sensing that this new disguise would serve me best. A glance at a glass window revealed that my face was my own again. I looked like myself, but the uniform allowed me to blend in. It would have been too risky to mimic one of the cops from the precinct. Wearing the uniform should be enough to get me out of here.

  Or so I thought.

  “Jason!”

  The sound of my name froze me in place. I slowly turned, knowing there was only one person in this precinct who could have recognized me.

  Time slowed to a crawl as my eyes landed on Keira. She regarded me with saucer eyes, as stunned to find me here as I had been earlier. Sometimes, I wondered how things would play out if we ran into each other again. Usually my fantasies ended with the two of us very naked. But now that I was face-to-face with Keira, I had no idea what to say.

  Who would talk first and break the awkward silence? Would Keira be pissed at me for pulling off a disappearing act the day after we slept together, or would she understand why I’d left? Oh hell, what if she started crying?

  “What are you doing here?” She shook her head. “What am I saying? You’re here for the same reason I am. This was no ordinary murder. I knew it!”

  “I don’t want to interrupt this lovely reunion, but perhaps it would be best to continue it somewhere more private.”

  Octurna’s words spurred me into action. I jerked my chin at the nearest exit. “Follow me. I’ll explain, but not here.”

  The reporter nodded and fell in step with me as we headed for the door. I hazarded a final glance backward. I had no idea how Agent Forster was going to handle the epic mess I’d left in the interrogation room. Maybe I’d ask Octurna to send him a magical fruit basket later to apologize.

  Keira and I wove our way through more cops, pushed through the exit and crossed the street to a nearby park. The sun was setting, and we passed a few stray joggers and people walking their dogs, a pleasant change after all the death and horror encountered at the precinct. I wished I could have enjoyed it more, but my mind was slightly distracted by the beautiful woman walking next to me.

  The beautiful, highly intelligent, and incredibly perceptive woman.

  Keira eyed me expectantly. “What happened back there?”

  A simple question. Unfortunately, I lacked a simple answer. “Things got out of hand,” I admitted.

  “The video of that creature in the hotel, it’s real, isn’t it?”

  I nodded grimly.

  “And the Shadow Cabal is behind this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it!” she said again.

  Suddenly, her enthusiasm made me angry. “Why are you chasing this story, Keira? Didn't Malibu teach you a lesson? You can’t win against the Shadow Cabal. Just… go home.”

  Her eyes narrowed and flashed with anger. Man, I sure had a talent for choosing the right words.

  “I can’t go back to writing stories about trivial bullshit when I know a secret society is trying to engineer the end of the world.”

  Touché. She made a valid point. I would have reacted in the same way if I was in her situation. Hell, I did react that way when I signed on to be Octurna’s knight.

  “I know why you left that morning. I know you wanted to protect me. I even appreciate it. But I won't stand by the sidelines while others fight a secret war.”

  “I get it, Keira,” I said heavily. “But you’re not a soldier. Damn it, I have a magical arsenal and I still almost died back there. It’s not safe.”

  Her voice trembled with emotion as she said, “I broke things off with my boyfriend because I couldn’t stand the thought that the Cabal would send somebody after me, and that Joe might get caught in the crossfire. He can continue to live his life. I can’t. My life as I knew it is over. I can’t sleep at night, Jason. I stay up listening to every noise, expecting some creature to break into my apartment at any moment and finish me. I barely eat, and I haven’t seen my friends or family in weeks. I don’t want to put anyone else at risk.”

  She bit her lip, and tears welled up in her eyes. Shit, she was going to start crying. I’d rather face another tentacle monster than see a woman cry.

  “I spend my days monitoring the newswires for any hint of Cabal activity. That’s why I’m here in Austin even though my editor tried to talk me out of it. I knew the videos were real. Something is going on here, something tied to the Cabal.”

  She leaned closer, her face haunted. I wanted to reach out, to offer her a hug and whisper in her ear that everything was going to be okay, but something held me back. She didn’t need comfort. Keira needed to be part of this, to do something to strike back at the Shadow Cabal, or she would come unglued.

  “Let me in, Jason. Tell me how I can help you. Let’s fight this war together.”

  Brave words, but Keira meant them. She had made up her mind about this. If I let her go, she’d keep digging until she got herself killed.

  I didn’t offer her my hand in an official declaration of a new partnership. That wasn’t my call to make. Instead, I filled her in on the current case that had brought us to Austin.

  “You wanted to know what's going on here? I don’t have the whole answer yet,” I said. “Something is turning people into monsters, and I will put an end to it.”

  Keira nodded and wiped away her tears. “Thank you for trusting me with the truth. I’m sure I can help you figure out what’s happening.”

  As I met her determined gaze, I realized I had made a big mistake when I shut her out. I foolishly believed she would go back to her old life even though deep down I knew that was impossible. If I was honest with myself, I had turned my back on her for a different, more selfish reason. I didn’t want to get too close with anyone again after what had happened with my team. Didn’t want to risk losing someone I cared about.

  My skin flared with heat, and it had nothing to do with how close Keira was standing. Something was triggering the m
agic of the fractal-shaped tattoos that covered my body. I looked past Keira and realized Octurna’s fortress had materialized between a coffee shop and an ice cream parlor in the red brick building across the street. The sorceress stood in the building’s entrance, invisible to everyone but me. She beckoned with one pale hand.

  The time had come to leave.

  I turned back to Keira. God, she was beautiful. In more ways than one. I truly admired her willingness to fight back against the dark forces threatening our world. Where others would have run the other way, she was willing to stand her ground. She was terrified--hey, anyone in their right mind would have been--but still, she pressed on. The woman had guts.

  “I have to go now, Keira. But I’ll be in touch. I swear.”

  “You better,” she said. “Otherwise, I will track you down.”

  I fought back the temptation to touch her and turned instead toward the red brick building. Then I made my exit from this world.

  5

  I stepped through the waiting portal, but to my surprise, I didn’t arrive in Octurna’s observation chamber. Instead, I found myself in a well-heeled suburban neighborhood. Moonlight painted the upscale gated neighborhood dominated by fat mansions and expensive luxury cars. Crickets chirped in the darkness, the only sound to break the perfect stillness. Judging by how dark it was, I must’ve switched time zones.

  I took in the rows of impressive homes and tried to get my bearings. It looked like America, but beyond that, I had no clue where I was.

  “What’s going on, Octurna? Where am I?”

  “Welcome to 2980 Park Row Drive, Amstel, Maryland.”

  “Okay, is that supposed to mean something…?”

  “The house before you looks at belongs to our Mr. Davis.”

  I processed this latest reveal. I didn’t realize I could step through the magical doorway and end up in a new geographical location without having to make a pit stop in Octurna’s fortress first. You learn something new every day, especially in my line of work.