Summoned Dreams Read online

  Summoned Dreams

  Hadena James

  Copyright

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are purely fictitious. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are completely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  Summoned Dreams

  Hadena James

  Copyright © Hadena James 2015

  Smashwords Edition

  Acknowledgments

  Huge thanks to Sherri for the rats in the tubes idea… still creepy and gross, but great fodder for a novel.

  Thanks to everyone that continues to shell out a couple of bucks to read more Aislinn Cain and the Unit of Misfit Marshals.

  I have to thank Covered Creatively (Angela Fristoe) for agreeing to work with the most difficult writer on the planet.

  Finally:

  Mollie, Kris, Beth, and Jason… They put up with me… A lot…

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  The Priest

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  George Gooder

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Daniel Jacobs

  Sixteen

  Blessed Hearts

  Seventeen

  Phil Marks

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Charles Deacon

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  The Church

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Plague

  Epilogue

  Also By HJ

  Prologue

  Bell studied the handwritten scribbles on the piece of paper. He had taken the time to draw everything out, just like in the pictures. He had a bucket of salt, some incense, a human liver, and the head of a goat. All were in the right spots. He had even used a compass-like thing to draw his circle and make it perfectly round.

  Despite the hours of preparation, it had failed. He was left with a circle of blood soaked salt, a hysterical woman crying in the corner of the room, and a feeling of being an idiot. If he couldn’t pull this off, it would never happen. At least, not in his lifetime and he was ready to see it happen.

  He would need to do more research. Maybe the time was wrong. Maybe the handwriting was hiding an important element. He didn’t know, he also wasn’t sure where else to look. He was sure he had scanned them all.

  Detroit was an appealing setting. There was no shortage of potential victims. He would just have to keep doing it until he got it right. After all, practice made perfect.

  As the woman continued to sob, snot running down her face, mixing with her tears to fall from her chin, Bell set about destroying the evidence. He had bought a dozen Coleman camping fuel bottles a few days ago and put these in different places around the house.

  As he came back into the area that had once been someone’s living room, he had an epiphany. The city might be right, the offerings might be right, but maybe the woman was the problem. Maybe she wasn’t appealing enough.

  She could be replaced for someone more attractive. Maybe blondes weren’t his type, maybe he preferred brunettes. It didn’t really matter. Bell could change up the women just as he could the offerings. It might even be easier to change the women.

  He removed one of the handcuffs from around the woman’s wrist, releasing her from the exposed pipe. Maybe they needed a bed. He would scout houses looking for ones with leftover furniture from now on.

  The released cuff slipped onto his wrist and he fastened it loosely. He couldn’t have her running away, but he also didn’t like to have his work impeded. The flash point of gasoline was low enough that it could be hazardous, but it was quick to ignite, burned hot and fast, and could easily get a house blazing in a few minutes.

  Despite what the movies showed, it was really hard to light gasoline without a direct flame. For this reason, Bell carried road flares. He ignited it while walking backwards, pulling his captive from the house. Once on the porch, he dropped it near an area where a gasoline rivulet was beginning to streak across the floor.

  Flames instantly sprang from the flare. The flare glowed a hellish red that streamed into the air against the background of fire that raced to fill the house.

  The nice thing about abandoned houses was that they burned quickly and no one really seemed to notice they were on fire until it was too late, especially in Detroit, a city where massive property damage was a daily thing. Citizens set their own homes on fire trying to collect on the city’s “improvement monies” and rid the houses of rodents and pests.

  Just the day before, there had been two house fires and a warehouse fire. There had been seven injured in a drive-by shooting and the body of a prostitute was found strangled in an alley. Crime was so common that no one seemed to notice anymore.

  Bell despised the suburban folks that traveled into the city for work and entertainment. They ignored the homeless, the destitute and the broken. They paid their special taxes, which created improvement funds, but didn’t actually help the city. It was worse than hypocrisy; it was blatant disinterest in their fellow man.

  The woman was less hysterical when they reached the car. They both climbed in the driver’s side. Not a soul wandered the street. It wasn’t that the neighborhood was bad, but that it was desolate. Over three-quarters of the homes were vacant. There was a flophouse at the end of the road, but the people that entered and exited were more interested in their next fix than the car with weird people in it or the house fire.

  He was almost sad that he had decided to kill her. She didn’t speak much and he appreciated that. However, great change required sacrifice. It was the way of the world.

  Bell wound his way through the streets of Detroit. Sometimes, the car glided through high trafficked areas full of bustling suburbians having a night out, and sometimes, it entered seedy neighborhoods where men with guns stood outside smoking cigarettes.

  Years earlier, he’d seen the movie Escape from New York. Detroit reminded him of that movie. Only there wasn’t a Snake Pliskin to save the girl, just Bell Schneider, and his goal was to save the city.

  Saving the city was his mission. It was a lofty goal; Detroit had been reduced to little more than a ghetto on the verge of becoming a war zone. A single spark was all it would take to turn the citizens of Detroit against the suburbanites that travelled here for work and entertainment. Accomplishing his task would unite Detroit with the suburbanites. They would have a common enemy to quell.

  If they could be united, the city could heal. The fractures that kept it separated could be repaired. The city would become prosperous again. No longer would abandoned houses become the homes of drugged riff-raff.

  “Are you hungry?” Bell asked the woman next to him. She shook her head no. Bell pulled into a drive-thru. He was hungry. He would get something for her anyway. She might change her mind once she smelled the food. She hadn’t eaten much in the last three weeks, but she was clean and sober. It was better than when he had found her.

  Bell pulled around another corner and got their food. The entire time, the woman was quiet. Bell didn’t know her name, but he didn’t need to know it. It wasn’t that t
ype of relationship. All he needed to know was that once she was cleaned up and dressed in decent clothes, she was a looker. In addition, she was not nearly as young as she had appeared when he first met her. Bell guessed she was in her mid-thirties. This made him slightly older, being a man in his mid-forties, but he could still appreciate her attractiveness. He had never understood why older men went for women so much younger than they were. He found women in their thirties and forties were gems, they understood the world around them and were willing to do more than giggle and shake their asses to get what they wanted. Young women were fine for young men, but for older men, older women were the prize.

  Of course, Bell’s experience with women was limited. Some would say it was very limited. Bell didn’t think it was that limited. He dealt with women in ways most men never would. It was this special, intimate knowledge that led him to believe that women in the prime of their lives were more interesting. If only more men could understand that.

  Hesitantly, the woman next to him pulled a taco from the take-out bag. She took a small bite, then another. Bell smiled at her, encouragingly. She needed to eat. Her life had been very rough. Bell could tell that buying her a taco or two was probably the nicest thing anyone had done for her in a long time.

  It was hard to keep himself separated enough not to get attached to this wretch. It was what he did. He helped those that needed help. This one needed help, but so did the rest of the city. It was a matter of the greater good. It was still hard though. As she carefully chewed the taco, Bell felt a little sad that he was going to kill her in a week or two. Greater good or not, she would be a good woman once she was off the drugs and on the right path.

  However, she hadn’t cried for help when they had stopped and gotten tacos. A week ago, when they had seen a car drive past as they were preparing to enter a house, she hadn’t screamed out for them to stop. Bell entertained the notion that she might be trusted. He might be able to let her go. He’d have to think about it some more. He really didn’t want to kill her and he couldn’t keep two women at his place. That would be suspicious. Making a rash decision, he turned and drove to the bus depot.

  “Is there any place you would want to start over?” He asked his female companion.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere but here.” Her answers were quiet, timid. “I’ve always wanted to see the mid-west.”

  “Okay, if I put you on a bus to Colorado Springs and give you some money to get settled, think you could start over? Lead a better life?”

  “I could try.”

  “Good,” Bell dug around in his pants pocket until he found his wallet. He had money enough. He took everything out of his wallet and handed it to her. Then he got out of the car, walked to the bus counter and bought her a ticket. She got out of the car.

  “Take the rest of the tacos. It’s a long journey.” He smiled at her. “I hope you do well in Colorado Springs.” He shook her hand. She shook his back. Bell watched as she finally lifted her head up. It was the first time since he met her. She looked at the bus, nodded once and walked towards it.

  He hoped she did well in Colorado. He really did wish her all the best.

  One

  Every village had an idiot. This village had two and they were currently talking to me about the pressures of being role models for young women. My brain had nicknamed them Ditzy and Dumb, ignoring their real names. The buxom blonde twins spoke with southern accents, despite not being in the south, now or ever.

  “Well, it’s so hard to be, um, a role model and do, you know, what you want to do in this town,” Ditzy told me.

  “Yeah, we are being ostriched from the town because of this incident. It isn’t like we did anything wrong or anything,” Dumb added to the conversation. I tried not to pull out my gun and shoot either them or me on the word “ostriched.”

  “I just need you to tell me about the guy you saw when you were swimming yesterday.” I gritted my teeth as I spoke. Gabriel was in so much trouble. He and the other men in my unit were doing more interesting things, like dragging lakes and identifying bodies. Why anyone would put me in charge of questioning witnesses was beyond me, especially these witnesses.

  “Well, he was kind of tall with a hat,” Ditzy told me.

  “No, he was kind of short with dark hair and a mustache,” Dumb corrected.

  “He didn’t have a moustache, gross!” Ditzy made a face.

  “Okay, let’s start with something, easier, I mean, earlier.” I tried not to groan. “What were you doing yesterday, exactly? Before you saw the guy who may or may not have had a moustache?”

  “Well,” Ditzy started. I was pretty sure if she started one more sentence with “well,” I was going to go to jail for assault. “We, um, you know, we went to the lake with some friends. Then we, you know,” she shot me a conspiratorial look that meant nothing to me. “We enjoyed some, um, well, some adult beverages.”

  “Meaning the two of you were drinking yesterday with some guys at a lake?” I asked, trying to clarify.

  “Well, yeah, you know, all the kids do it. We try not to do it in public, since we are, you know, important. What would the other kids think if we were caught doing things like, drinking and um, you know, smoking, and well, you know,” Ditzy said.

  “No, I don’t know,” I growled. “I need you to explain to me what you were doing yesterday. Were you smoking pot or just drinking alcohol? Were you skinny-dipping with these boys? Were you having sex? What physical state were you in when you witnessed a man dumping a body in the lake?”

  “It wasn’t a body,” Dumb corrected. “It was several bodies. He dumped, I don’t know, maybe like, seven or eight or so.”

  “Well, yeah, I thought it was more like ten, but I was trying to watch without being, you know, seen? Well, then the guy started shooting at the boat and he shot our friends. Ally and I jumped in the lake, because we are both real good swimmers, you know, she’s even captain of the swim team. And well, we swam as fast and hard as we could to, you know, get help,” Ditzy told me.

  “Which of you took the picture?” I asked.

  “Oh! Me!” Dumb raised her hand and beamed with pride. The photograph had a truck in it. The license plate wasn’t visible, but it was a good side shot with lots of identifying characteristics. There was also plastic visibly sticking up from the truck bed. I marked this down to a small amount of progress. The man was visible, but only parts of him, because he was hidden behind a tree. He didn’t appear to be wearing a hat nor did he have dark hair. Most of the time, I just automatically assumed that witness descriptions are pointless. This time wasn’t proving me wrong. If anything, it was reinforcing the idea.

  “Do you remember anything specific about what you were doing when you first noticed the man dumping bodies?” I asked.

  “Well, we were, you know, hanging out,” Ditzy told me.

  “Excuse me for a moment.” I stood up and walked out of the small police station. I lit a cigarette and called my superior. Gabriel answered on the second ring. “What the hell are you doing to me? These girls couldn’t pass a true/false test without a cheat sheet. My IQ is dropping just listening to them try to recount yesterday. Did you know that one is captain of the girls’ swim squad and the other is a role model to young women in the community, but they can’t figure out the word ‘ostracize.’ Why isn’t Fiona handling this? She doesn’t do fieldwork. She could question witnesses.” I still wasn’t fond of our newest member. She was more standoffish than I was and that was saying something. She practically made me look like a social butterfly.

  “Done?” Gabriel asked.

  “Ranting? Yes. Being unhappy? No.”

  “I will send Fiona to relieve you. We need you here anyway. We just found another body and this one is weird.”

  “Weird? Weird how?” My curiosity erased my anger. Honestly, it wouldn’t have taken much to erase it. The nice thing about being a sociopath is that we lack the ability to hold onto emotions for very long.

&nb
sp; “Weird,” Gabriel told me. “You’ll love it.” He hung up.

  March had come in like a lion. It was determined to go out like one as well. The first week, it had snowed seventeen inches in Kansas City, Missouri. Now that it was the end of March, it was raining all the time. We were far ahead on the annual average for the state and getting worse. There were jokes about building arks on the news.

  I had no idea how much it had snowed or rained in No Name, Minnesota where we were currently searching for a serial killer that liked to dump bodies in a lake. The town had a school and five hundred residents. How the hell it managed to have a swim team was beyond me. It had a diner and a very small motel. That was all, no fast food, no chain restaurants, and a single grocery store that sold cigarettes, alcohol, steak, and baked goods. In addition, being the only grocery store meant too high prices and goods nearing their expiration dates.

  I snubbed out my cigarette. The patch wasn’t working for me anymore. For Valentine’s Day, I had gotten the guys the ultra-Tasers; they had gotten me an electronic cigarette. It sucked worse than the patch. I could deal with it when I had no choice, but for the most part, I was back to the unfashionable smoking habit; the one that Xavier said was going to kill me, if I lived long enough. I felt Xavier had good intentions, but they were misguided.

  A new truck, dark blue, with some strange curly logo pulled up with screeching tires to the curb. The people inside were arguing. A very unhappy man in a uniform jumped from the cab the moment the vehicle stopped.

  “You hateful, evil, bitch!” The man shouted as the female passenger exited the vehicle. Fiona looked nothing like the Ogre Princess from the movie Shrek. She also didn’t have the winning personality of an ogre. Demons were more personable.

  Fiona was tall, dark haired and built like a guy. She had broad shoulders, almost no chest or waist, and thick legs. She was handsome in a homely masculine way. Her only feminine feature was her face. Large, pouty lips, round, intense eyes, small eyebrows and a soft jaw line made her face very attractive. Her personality pissed off everyone.