Belladonna Dreams Read online

  His face was draining of color while his ears turned crimson. It was an impressive trick, one reserved for only the direst of situations. His freckles stood out on his pasty face, looking like dark brown spots. After another moment, he threw his phone. It bounced off the concrete walk behind us, twirling in midair, as pieces flew off it. The second time it hit the concrete, it made audible noises as more pieces splintered and shattered. It hit the concrete a third time and then skidded to the end of the walk and fell down the two small steps to the street sidewalk.

  While the detective and I both watched it, Gabriel stood very still. His eyes didn’t follow the broken phone. His hands balled into fists. His jaw clenched as tightly as possible. I’d seen that look once before. It had involved his ex-wife. He’d broken a phone that day too.

  I didn’t speak. Gabriel was not a person given to fits of rage very often. When they happened, it was because the world had fallen off its axis for a moment. He would tell me in a few moments, when he had gained some composure. I knew I could wait for that moment.

  “That was the Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Gabriel growled at the end of his sentence. He didn’t speak another word for several minutes. His lips turned white as he waited to calm down. “It would appear that someone fell asleep on the job. A package was delivered to Blake this afternoon that contained a bomb. Theresa was killed. Blake is in the hospital. Green and Rhodes were also at the house at the time. Five other houses sustained damage.”

  I grabbed the railing of the porch. Malachi lived a block away from me. My house wouldn’t have been impacted, but my chest tightened anyway. Sometimes, my mother cleaned for Malachi. She could have been there at the time. Theresa was Rhodes’ wife. We’d have another funeral to attend when we returned, maybe two. The world swam a little. I sat down on the step and tried to breathe.

  “My mom,” I started and the words failed me.

  “I don’t know.” Gabriel looked at me. “They didn’t find another body, so I’m guessing she’s at home. Call her.”

  I fumbled with my phone, dropping it as I pulled it from my pocket. Gabriel helped me to get hold of it. He entered the passcode and found her name on my favorite’s list, before passing it to me. It rang, once, twice, three times, and then went to voicemail. Breathing seemed impossible. First Nyleena, now my mom. My stomach clenched while my fingers hit redial. It started ringing again.

  “Aislinn, oh, Aislinn,” my mom answered on the third ring, “did you hear?”

  “Are you alright?” I gushed out. “Were you there? Did you get hurt?”

  “I’m fine, I wasn’t there. I heard it. It broke some windows in the upstairs. I’m at the hospital, waiting. Malachi has me listed as one of his emergency contacts, did you know?”

  “No,” I answered. “Yes,” I changed it. Vaguely, I remembered him saying something about it.

  “I’ve already called his parents and they are on their way.”

  “How...” my voice broke. If my mom was sitting at the hospital, it couldn’t be good. I was supposed to be the one that killed Malachi, not some anonymous bomber. Gabriel took the phone from me. The tears began to flow and I couldn’t stop them. Few people were as important to me as Malachi. I didn’t always like him, but he existed as part of me, hiding in the darkness as if he were my shadow.

  Gabriel spoke to my mom for several moments, his short comments accented by long periods of silence. He handed me the phone back.

  “I love you,” my mother told me. “I’ll let Gabriel explain everything, but if anything changes, I’ll call you first, okay?”

  “Okay,” I squeaked out to her. “I love you too,” I said to the dead line.

  “Ace, go back to the hotel,” Gabriel sat down next to me.

  “No,” I looked at him. He wiped a tear off my cheek. I had forgotten that I was crying. “How is he?”

  “It’s bad.” Gabriel pulled me into him. “The doctors don’t know why he’s still alive. I’m guessing if he wasn’t Malachi, he wouldn’t be. But since he doesn’t feel pain like the rest of the world, he didn’t go into shock and was able to keep himself from bleeding out before they got him to the hospital.”

  I let Gabriel hold me, unsure if we were crossing some kind of line or not and pretty sure I didn’t care. My mom was fine and that was great, but Malachi wasn’t, and that was bad. The world needed him. I needed him.

  “Don’t sugar coat it,” I whispered.

  “Everyone was outside. The bomb was inside. Malachi was impaled by a piece of metal from the sliding back door through the chest. He’s in surgery, has been for a couple of hours. They are giving him transfusions and trying to save his lung and kidney on the right side, not to mention fixing the damage from the glass in the sliding door. He’s coded twice already. Both times, his heart has spontaneously restarted itself, so they aren’t sure what will happen if he codes again. He’s fighting, and that’s all I can say for sure.” Gabriel pulled me closer, wrapping me up within his arms, hiding me from the world. “Aislinn, I am so sorry. No one will fault you if you take the plane back to Missouri right now.”

  “What would I do there, Gabe? Sit in the hospital and try not to let my own insanity drive everyone else insane? I am no good to him. We aren’t even the same blood type, so I couldn’t even donate blood to help,” I whispered into his shirt collar. “We need to let the others know.”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna need to borrow a phone for that.” He kissed the top of my head, which made me cry harder. Malachi did that too, when I was really beaten and banged up. I handed him my phone. “That’s for emergencies only at this moment.” He kept his lips against my head as he spoke, his voice soft and soothing. Someone in that guard shack was going to be shot when I got back home. I didn’t know who yet, but someone.

  Nine

  The world had ceased to turn. Time was suspended. Five of us sat at a table full of food that hadn’t been touched and we said nothing.

  The US Marshals Service called us and told us to take a break, just a few hours to process everything before we continued our hunt. They didn’t want anything to happen because we were temporarily broken. They’d dealt with that before.

  Michael’s death had darkened all of us. It had stained our souls. We’d lost ourselves in the hunt for his killer. Repeating that was out of the question. We weren’t searching for the bomber. We were searching for someone else. That someone would feel the wrath of very vengeful hunters if we found him now. It was a nightmare that the US Marshals were hoping could be avoided by having us all take a timeout.

  We had all protested and we had all been threatened with jail if we didn’t return to the US Marshals’ building in downtown Sioux Falls. It was hard to protest that. The Marshals that came and got us were just following orders. We could understand that, even through the burning rage and emotional pain.

  My tears had dried up. The calm had settled over me. I had no desire for it to go away. The darkness was my only solace at the moment. It wouldn’t let me feel anymore. I needed that.

  It wasn’t just a matter of Malachi being important to me on a personal level. Our lives were much more complicated than that. Malachi was important to all of us, because he understood. He did what we did and our numbers were limited to begin with. Losing members of the VCU was no different from losing members of the SCTU.

  In addition, Caleb Green was still in surgery as well. Our FBI counterparts were in crisis. We could do little, except wait. While Malachi would affect me more deeply than Caleb, the death of either was unacceptable.

  “Ace...” Lucas started to say something.

  “No, we are not doing that. We are not going to talk about it. We are not going to share our feelings over it. We will not even be using their names until we know whether they are alive or dead.”

  The room fell silent again. Our timeout was going to last until Malachi and Caleb were both out of surgery. Pete Rhodes was already out. We didn’t know if he had been told about There
sa yet. Since he was in the intensive care unit, we doubted it. This meant all out going communications of sympathy were on hold until someone else told him his wife had died in the blast.

  Pete had lost a leg. The pension and disability would do nothing to assuage his guilt. His job had killed his wife. No amount of money would ever make up for that. Even remaining in the Federal Guard Neighborhood would be of no comfort.

  However, he would remain. Like most of us that were retired from this job, we remained in danger. The only person to survive injuries and then leave the sheltered police communities that I knew of was Alejandro Gui, but he was special in all the wrong ways.

  I stared at the bacon cheeseburger that had left a puddle of congealing grease on my plate. The onion rings looked soggy. With so much at stake, I had decided to forgo any healthy foods in favor of more comforting things. It hadn’t worked out. The thought of eating made me feel nauseated.

  Gabriel’s phone sounded deafening when it began to ring. The sound pierced the silence. Fiona, Lucas, and Gabriel all jumped. Xavier and I didn’t even blink. Since Xavier was not as mentally damaged as I was, I suddenly wondered what was going on in that head of his. He was a doctor, after all. Was it possible that he had insights that we didn’t?

  Gabriel spoke in short sentences. The silences were long. My chest began to feel tight again. I caught Xavier staring at me. Maybe he was worried that I would lose it if it were bad news.

  The phone call lasted forever. The seconds ticked away in my brain. Each one threatened to break the calm and send me spiraling out of control.

  “Thank you,” Gabriel said and hung up. He looked at me and sighed. “Caleb is out. It looks good for him. He lost a finger and has some scars, but he’ll still be the pretty boy of the bunch. Malachi is also out. Prognosis on him is less certain. They had to remove some intestine and he did lose his right kidney. They were able to save his lung though, which is good news. With Malachi’s physical fitness level, he should be able to return to active duty if he survives the next twenty-four hours. He coded once after surgery, but they said it was probably due to the amount of medications they were pushing on him, and his body restarted his heart again while they were bringing in the crash cart. Ace, your mother and Nyleena convinced them that he didn’t need the exceptionally high doses of narcotics they were forcing into him. Once they curtailed those, his heart rate stabilized. So, he owes your mother and Nyleena some serious presents, because they probably saved his life.”

  There was a loud, collective exhalation. I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath. I wasn’t sure the others had realized it either. They all looked surprised by the noise.

  “That explains a lot,” Xavier said, after several more moments of quiet.

  “Explains what?” Lucas asked.

  “I keep wondering why Ace doesn’t have any tolerance to narcotics. I think Malachi just gave us the answer. He produces so many endorphins on his own that adding narcotics is dangerous. To a lesser degree, I’d bet Ace does the same, which is why a Vicodin knocks her on her ass. They aren’t just resistant to pain because they have fewer pain receptors, they produce their own natural painkillers. It’s the only scenario that makes sense. Give either of them too many narcotics and their respiration and heart rate begins to drop. Unfortunately, that happens with everyone, but with Malachi, it took a smaller dose to make his heart stop. However, his increased metabolism and mental situation is why he was capable of restarting his own heart, much like a yogi.”

  “So, does that mean he’s going to survive the next twenty-four hours?” I asked.

  “I would love to say yes.” Xavier looked at my face. “I’ve asked for copies of all the reports from the hospital. I’ll know more when I have them. However, without them, I’d say he has a better chance than anyone else.”

  “ATF is taking charge of finding who sent the bomb. The sender decimated the VCU. The SCTU is now considered at high risk.” Gabriel looked at me. “Our friends and family are being rounded up as we speak. We have the option to continue this hunt or go home.”

  “I’m not a big fan of hiding,” Lucas said.

  “I don’t really have a family,” Fiona answered. “My friends are all,” she paused, “witches by the strictest definition of the word. Attacking them is a really good way to end up with asps in your bed in the middle of the night. I think they can handle it.”

  “They would have to find the sender,” I reminded her.

  “Ugh,” Fiona sighed, “yeah, well, one of them is a touch psychic. I wouldn’t believe it either, but sometimes, he just knows shit that he shouldn’t after touching stuff. He’s how I ended up here.”

  “You ended up in the SCTU because of a psychic?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she put her head on the table. “I was a grad student a few years ago. My friend was asked to consult on a missing person’s case. He found some stuff that he didn’t understand, sent it to me, I cracked the code, and a serial killer got caught. However, he found the email account by touching the boy’s backpack; I don’t understand it either, but the police were having trouble decrypting it and I didn’t have that problem. I was recruited to the NSA first, but I don’t really like working within those rules, so I asked for a transfer as soon as one became available. The transfer landed me with the SCTU.”

  “Xavier?” Gabriel asked.

  “I’m good here.”

  “I want bodyguards with Nyleena. She is not going to give up work because of this. She has not wavered any time someone has sent bombs to her. It just makes her more determined. Kind of admirable, I suppose, but it irritates the hell out of me. Elle and the kids can stay at my house, if they do something about the goddamn incompetency in the guard’s shack. The rest of the Clachans are sociopaths and psychopaths, I feel sorry for the idiot that tries to get to me through them. I might not be the most beloved in the family, but you can bet your ass vigilantism runs fairly deep within that bunch, and they really like their right to bear arms. If a bomb goes off and kills someone in that group, the ATF will have to work really fast to find the sender before they do.”

  “Is there anyone in your family not capable of mass murder?” Lucas asked.

  “No one immediately comes to mind,” I admitted.

  “Your mother is a wonderful woman,” Fiona scolded me.

  “Yes she is, and if you really knew her, you’d know that she was just as capable at disemboweling someone as I was. She just requires a reason and that button was hit when a bomb went off in Malachi’s house.”

  “I thought your father was the sociopath?” Lucas sounded surprised.

  “He was. My mother is not a sociopath or a psychopath, but she has deep wells of rage to pull from. It can make her just as formidable as any killer. She is not a woman you want to piss off.”

  Headlines

  The lead for the national news was a bomb that exploded inside the Federal Guard Neighborhood in Kansas City. They were reporting three FBI agents were in serious condition and one person was dead. Alejandro smiled.

  He didn’t need to see anything more than the smoke billowing above the fence to know it was Malachi Blake’s house. He was curious about who was injured and who was dead. He hoped Blake was the dead one.

  However, that was just a personal desire. He had managed to do what everyone else had failed. He’d gotten a bomb into the most elite neighborhood in the country, possibly the world. There were more security measures at the FGN than at the White House. After all, it wasn’t just home to federal agents, it was the living quarters of the VCU and SCTU. The biggest, baddest federal agents the government could find.

  He had just proven they could be injured and they could be killed. It had taken nearly two years of research and planning to design an undetectable bomb. It had been worth every moment. He hit the “enter” key on his laptop, releasing those plans to the masses. Now everyone would know how to make an undetectable bomb.

  It wasn’t a desire to see anarchy that drove it. It wa
s revenge. Revenge on everyone that had deserted him. Revenge on those that put him in this situation to begin with.

  Local news was just as interesting. One person was dead and several others hospitalized after an unknown illness in a bar. More of his handiwork. He was grabbing headlines all over the place.

  Even tomorrow morning, he’d still be grabbing headlines. It would be interesting to see how everything played out. He had big plans for tonight, very big plans.

  He showered, and then carefully began applying the makeup that covered his tanned skin and changed his appearance. It took over an hour to apply the silicon base that would become his new face. Another hour was spent applying the airbrushed makeup. After his face, ears, and neck were all done, he moved to his hands. This was time consuming. Despite claims that the makeup was dry in minutes, it actually took about a half hour to be completely set. He had to do his hands one at a time.

  The SCTU and VCU were both strange entities. They were forever trying to keep themselves from being targets of killers, yet their daily habits made them prey. Lucas and Xavier had to have their coffee. He had watched them carry in a Keurig coffee maker. Xavier had his bag full of snacks. It turned out Aislinn was no different; carrying a six-pack of Mountain Dew bottles into the hotel along with a smaller bag of snacks. Gabriel had taken in a thing of Pepsi and the new girl was loaded down with tea bags and another Keurig.

  He had watched all this, knowing they would be taking food and drink into their rooms. It was hard to live out of a suitcase. Those tiny creature comforts were all that was left. Aislinn and Gabriel had quickly revealed their rooms to anyone on the street, opening their windows as they smoked. The other three would be nearby.