Number of the Beast (Paladin Cycle, Book One) (23 page)

Dozens of fat black flies
darted from one rancid pile of remains to the other, gorging
themselves on the gruesome banquet.

He glanced to the
lieutenant who appeared very pale. “You alright?”

The lieutenant nodded,
unconvincingly.

Atticus silently vowed to find the
creature that could kill with such ferociousness and when he did,
he would not disappoint Elder Cai and use a gun. He would gladly
tear the monster apart with his own bare hands.

“
Three decades on the
force and this shit still shakes me up,” the lieutenant said. “Do
you want to see the children’s bedroom?”

“
Children? There were
children here as well?”

“
Yep. Triple homicide. A
real sick fuck. I been a Buckeye cop for over thirty-six years and
I ain’t ever seen anything like this. Even the Vallez farm murders
back in ‘82 don’t compare to this shit.”

Elder Cai had forewarned
Atticus that modern day authorities might use excessive foul
language.

“
You want to see it or
not, kid?”

The older detective called
him ‘kid’ but Atticus did not feel young anymore. “Show me.” He
swallowed a lump of rage and repulsion.

Lt. Chambers led the way down the
hallway. Bloody prints created a morbid track on the tile
flooring.

Tracks.
Not footprints.
A pad with four large
toe-prints. Had the Lieutenant and others overlooked this
detail?

“
These are animal tracks,”
Atticus said.

Lieutenant Chambers
shrugged. “You’re a real Sherlock Holmes aren’t you?”

“
That doesn’t seem strange
to you?”

“
Hell yeah it’s strange,
but it’s too early to jump to conclusions. It’s a biped. I suspect
the killer dressed in a costume so he didn’t leave behind real
footprints or shoe prints. It makes me think it was either a young
punk or an experienced killer. Wide net to cast, but you gotta
start somewhere. That’s what my daddy always said.”

As far as these authorities were
concerned that was a genuinely plausible explanation.

And an entirely incorrect
one.

“
This is the bedroom where
the daughter and son slept, eight and four.” Chambers waved Atticus
into the room where purple plastered one wall and blue the other. A
poster of a princess on the purple side and a poster of a large
robot covered the blue.

The beige carpeted floor was soaked in
blood, but not much of the children remained, save a head with long
brown hair lying on the pink bed and a lower torso wearing ripped
pajama bottoms halfway beneath the bed.

And more of the black
flies dotted the purple and blue walls and bed sheets.

“
Not much left,” Lt.
Chambers said nonchalantly. “I suspect the fucker might be a
cannibal and ate the remains. Or took them with him as
souvenirs.”

It would
have to be human to be cannibalism
.

A bottle of Strawberry
Shortcake shampoo lay spilled across the floor amongst the
children’s blood and viscera.

Atticus re-entered the
hallway. “Was anyone else present in the home?”

“
As far as we can tell,
no.” Chambers shook his head. “But there is a female occupant
missing, the wife and mother. We have an APB out for
her.”

A tingle crept over Atticus’ ribs and
arms.

A wife-and-mother
missing...

“
What in Jesus H. Christ
is this bologna-shit?” Chambers cried out.

A cold moistness sloughed
off Atticus’ body—the Lunar Robe illusion gone. He stood in the
hallway wearing his traditional black and green leathers and
bandanna.

“
What kind of game is this
you little punk?” Lt. Chambers barreled toward him while retrieving
his nightstick.

Atticus bolted down the hallway and
burst into the kitchen. Two officers tried to block his path with
outstretched arms. The others joined in pursuit.

“
Raging damnation,” he
muttered, escaping into the dining room where the father’s eyeless
head still gawked at him.

Atticus rushed to the
large window in the back of the room—the severed arm remained lying
against the sill. Swallowing a sour knot, holding his breath, he
carefully removed the appendage. It was cold, stiff and
surprisingly heavy for a single arm.

“
Don’t move!” Lt. Chambers
stood in the threshold.

Atticus grabbed the window, shoved
upward. It was locked.

“
You’re surrounded,” Lt.
Chambers said. “Give it up and make this easy as
possible.”

Bathed in the moonlight
that entered through the window, Atticus froze. His eyes switched
from the two locking mechanisms on the window, to the cold, dead
arm on the floor and back to Lt. Chambers and the others piled
behind him in the kitchen. Craning his neck, the Glorious Seal felt
cool against his chest. He faced the detective and stepped forward.
“I’ll comply. I am sorry I deceived you. But I have a divine
mission to complete.”

“
What are you?” Lt.
Chambers asked.

Atticus stood tall and
confident. “I am a Paladin.”

The man looked amused. “If
I find out you’re the one who murdered these people then I’m going
to personally throw the lever when they fry your ass at
Huntsville.”

Atticus hung his head. He
could not explain how he’d fool them nor how he was about to fool
them again—and though he couldn’t stomach that they thought he
might be the murderer he had neither time nor method to convince
them differently.

Lt. Chambers took a step just as the
seal turned warm against Atticus’ skin. He uttered an incantation
and turned his head.

“
Stop!” Lt. Chambers
ordered, but a wave of yellow light engulfed the room.

Lt. Chambers screamed,
“Shit! I’m blind. I can’t see. Jesus H. Christ! I can’t fucking
see!”

A gun discharged. The bullet burned
past Atticus and shattered the glass window.

“
Cease fire!” Lt. Chambers
commanded.

The room remained frozen in a blinding
yellow glaze, except for the portion of the room behind
Atticus.

Atticus unlatched the window and threw
himself out where he landed in the dead rosebush. The officer who’d
been manning the position earlier was no longer there.

Leaping to his feet, he
dashed toward his car. No one trailed him. But he didn’t slow until
he reached his vehicle.

Tires screeched, as he sped away.
Barely slowing, Atticus turned off the street, the rear of the car
sliding on the sandy concrete. A burnt smell emanated. He glanced
down. One of the four-points of the Glorious Seal pendant had
burnt. The point of the metal shriveled from silver to a midnight
black.

Atticus fumbled with the
settings on the car’s dashboard before he spoke the name of the
establishment Elder Cai had directed him to take shelter in.
“Directions to Stonehedge Western Bed and Breakfast.”

The GPS lit up. “You are
looking for Shoney’s breakfast buffet?”

Before reaching Jimmy’s
Auto Shop, Shane and Birch passed a Dollar General locked up
tighter than Fort Knox and Pete’s Donuts with a dozen cars in the
lot. The town seemed no bigger than Buckeye, but not even Buckeye
had a Dollar General.

When they arrived, Jimmy was in the
office doing paperwork, surrounded by the thick scents of coffee,
motor oil, and new tires.

“
What was wrong with the
ol’ girl?” Shane asked.

Jimmy looked up, dropped
his pen. “Clogged fuel filter, probably from cruddy
gas.”

Shane gave the man his credit card.
“Sure appreciate it.”

“
You fellows say you
headed to Buckeye, huh?”

“
That’s right. Home sweet
home.”

“
Always been hearing them
tall tales about the woods being haunted and strange animals
roaming around out there.”

Shane laughed. “Like you
said, it’s all a bunch of tall tales. It’s one of them towns that’s
so small it’s only got half a horse and half a hole in the wall.
When the locals get bored they get drunk, and when shooting out of
the lights gets old they tell wild tales around the bonfire. And
the next morning the whole town hears about the latest
boogeyman.”

“
Is that right?” Jimmy
said. “I reckon I oughta get over there someday and see what all
the hoopla is ‘bout.”

Shane got behind the
wheel, hung his arm out the window. “If you do come to Buckeye,
skip the woods and drop on by Roxy’s diner. Birch and me will buy
you a slice of pecan pie.”

Shane lowered the visor as
they rolled past a golden pasture with a herd of Brahman and
Holstein cows chewing on a big heap of hay inside a rusted metal
hay ring.

Ten minutes down the highway and the
gold field ended.

Birch readjusted himself
in the passenger bucket seat. “Called Lizzy.”

Shane jerked the wheel. A
horn blared as a SUV sped by them. “You’re married!”

“
And you’re in love, so
you shouldn’t have asked for her number in the first
place.”

Shane scoffed. He
hesitated before asking, “Well, what’d she say?”

“
It was number to Doyle’s
Funeral home. She was fucking with you, dude.”

“
Guess I deserved
it.”

“
Yup. But on the bright side Doyle’s is
having a two-for-one sale on caskets.”
Birch leaned the seat back, closed his eyes and laced his
hands on his stomach, before muttering, “Should’ve spent the extra
twenty bucks for Big Dave’s Hotel.”

“
I really am a fuck up,” Shane said.

“
Yup.”

“
Got
booted off the football team for fighting. Same goddamn thing in
the Army and I fucked us over in Pecos; got the whole damn rig shut
down.”

“
Don’t
forget about getting us thrown in a Mexican jail. Lucky we didn’t
raped by Jesus. That biker dude looked like he could do some real
damage.”

Shane took the on ramp to
I45. The sign read: Houston 402. He set the cruise control to
seventy. “I get why you want to leave the rig and I'm right there
with you. I don’t belong there. Hell, I don’t belong
anywhere.”

“
And that night in Colorado last
fall.”

“
Technically that one wasn’t my fault. I
didn’t realize that girl was a guy ‘til after I’d pinched his
ass.”

Birch
looked at him. “
You know where you belong?
With Amy, that’s where.” He closed his eyes again and turned on his
side. “So just don’t screw that up and you’ll be
fine.”

Shane smiled. “Yes, oh
wise one.”

“
The blood is thicker than
water, young grasshopper. But you must store the past under the
bridge and stock grain for the coming winter.”

Scooter was the only blood Shane had
left. He hadn’t seen his old man in years. Last he heard, his mom
was living in Topeka, with her latest boy toy. Probably passed out
right now in some rundown studio apartment.

For the last five years,
Amy had watched over Scooter right down to the parent-teacher
conferences. When Scooter was laid out for three weeks with mono,
she had pulled all-nighters patting his head with cool cloths. All
day she read to him in between serving ginger tea, chicken soup and
acetaminophen. During his freshman year, the kid received one hell
of a shiner, prompting Amy to march into the school office and
lecture the principal on developing a better zero-tolerance
policy.

Amy might not be blood but she was
family. And she’d been his sister’s friend, before Shane killed
her, that is.

Shane thought back to the day she came
back into his life, the day she agreed to move in with him and
Scooter.

Crusted blood on his nose,
his right eye black as night. He sat on the front porch of the
trailer drinking coffee with Amy. “Thanks for staying last
night.”

“
You took a bad beating. I
didn’t feel right about leaving.” She sipped her coffee. “I didn’t
want to go home anyhow.”

“
I just inherited a
trailer and custody of my kid brother yesterday,” Shane said. “What
the fuck am I supposed to do with him? My mother, the drunk bitch,
threw a hissy and walked out on him...on us.”

“
She never got over
Vicki’s death, huh?”

Shane fingered his sore
ribs, and sipped the bitter black coffee. “You still hear her
voice, don’t you?”

“
No.”

“
You’re lying,” Shane
said. “You just don’t want me to think you’re crazy.”

“
I’m not lying.” She
glared at him. “Until last night Vicki hadn’t spoken to me in over
six months. She left my head ‘cause she didn’t want me to spend the
rest of my life in a nuthouse. But she’s still watching over you
and me, and that’s why she told me you were in trouble at that bar
last night.”