Catharsis (Book 2): Catalyst (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE

            I can hear that the man in the house - I'm still assuming it must be Chadwick Morrin as he's the only person I saw enter - is not moving even after I knock.  He’s still standing in one place, but his heartbeat has just jumped a few more rpms (Do hearts have rpms?  How would I even measure the speed of a beating heart?).  I'm sure he heard me, but he isn't coming to the door.

           
Do I knock again or wait?
  Weird.  I kind of expected a different reaction.

            Shrugging, I raise my hand to knock again when I hear the person inside start moving towards the door.  I hear him drop something heavy on a hard surface (Sounds like someone putting a book down on a table.  Well, if he was reading when I arrived then that makes a lot more sense!  An exciting part of a book would cause the heart to go faster, and it would explain why he wasn't in a hurry to respond.).  A moment later I hear him approach the other side of the door.

            "It's fine," I whisper to Ren.  "I think he was just reading a book."

            A quick rush of relief tingles through my body at the thought.  Ren’s warnings had gotten me more spooked than I had wanted to admit.

            Two different locks are twisted on the other side of the door (Guy must be a bit paranoid.), and then it opens to reveal the person I've been listening to for the last few minutes.

            The bright, incandescent lights of the house are momentarily blinding to my sensitive eyes (One of the drawbacks to developing super-powered senses is not always being able to turn them off when you want to.  But that's why I invest in fashionable sunglasses.), but I instantly recognize the man's outline: Chadwick Morrin.  After following him for so many days and watching him from a distance, it's a bit disconcerting to be this close to him.  The last time I tracked and hunted a man down to his house then confronted him it didn't turn out too well...for either of us.

            "Well 'ello dahling," the tall, blond man drawls out in an unexpected accent...maybe Southern or Australian?  (He didn't speak much while I was following him, and the few times he did it was never with an accent.).  "What 'ave we here?  Ou're you?"

            The combination of being hit with an unexpected accent, the light from behind him and being so close to the smell of someone I'd only hunted from a distance makes my brain stumble for just a moment.

            "Cat," I breathe out.  "I'm Cat."

            "Well welcome to my ‘umble abode," he tells me.  "Won't you please step on inside.  I'm glad to have such a," and he pauses to look me up and down.  "Lovely young visitor," he finishes slowly with a smile.

            Gently he reaches out and places his hand on my shoulder to help guide me inside the house.  Although his fingers never close around my shoulder, the pressure they exude on me is firm and persistent.  This is not a man who is often resisted or told "no".  He's used to getting his way.

            His presence is strong.  Up close, everything about him radiates strength and confidence and charm.  He never stops smiling, and the smile is warm and inviting.  There is nothing creepy about it all, which is something you would expect from a man who has been accused of doing the awful things he has supposedly done.  Everything about his demeanor tells me he is a harmless, gregarious and friendly guy.

            And yet as I step across the door's threshold into his house, I can't help but feeling like I've just made one of the worst mistakes of my life.

CHAPTER FOUR

            Peter Parker called it a “spidey-sense”.  I’m not sure I have the same level of awareness as that web-slinging superhero, but one of the more fortuitous benefits of my new abilities is that I can “feel” the thoughts and intentions of people around me.  It’s not quite as cool as mind reading, but I’m usually able to pick up more from a person than they believe they are giving away.  And absolutely nothing about Chadwick Morrin’s intentions feel pure or magnanimous. 

            Even though his words purr out of him like a happy kitten just wanting to play, there is something dark hidden under every syllable he says.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but somehow his words make my skin itch instead of soothing me like he intends.

            I don't want to be in this house, and I really don't want to be near this man.  Something just feels off being in here.  I've never felt so dirty being in a place that looks so clean.  As soon as he shuts the door behind me, I make the decision to not go any further into the house.  Standing in his kitchen and watching him smile at me, my skin goes from simply itching to a full-on crawling.    Our conversation will happen right here.

            "So what brings you arou-" he begins before I cut him off.  I don't want to listen to his smarmy chitchat.  Even if he's innocent of the crimes, he's still guilty of being off-putting and oddly creepy.

            "Are you guilty?"  I ask him while he's still trying to talk.  I want to get straight to the point and see how he reacts when he's thrown off guard.

            "What?"  He asks and blinks at me.  "What did you say?"

            Even though I hear his words, it's his body I'm listening to.  I want to see if his breathing or heartbeat betray what he says out loud.  Flaring my nostrils, I inhale while he speaks and try to detect any micro-changes in his pheromones.  Do my questions bring about the sour bite of fear or the cloudy taste of annoyance?  Is he afraid that I know something or just bothered that his innocence is being challenged again?

            Nothing.  He doesn't react to my inquiries at all.  His heartbeat remains steady, breathing is even and his scent never wavers.  I might as well have been asking him if he noticed the flowers on his way home from work for all the reaction I get from him.

            "Flat," I say under my breath for Ren (I've learned that if I don't keep him updated he tends to worry about me.  He knows me well enough now to recognize what I'm trying to do, so he'll want to know what I learned.  That one word is enough keep him in the loop.), and in response I hear my pocket click twice (His way of giving me a simple affirmative.). 

           
Time to step it up even more
, I think and step closer to Mr. Chadwick Morrin so that barely a foot of space separates us.

            Drawing on a darkness that always lies within me ready to be released (And over the past year - ever since I willfully killed that drug kingpin, Mr. Black - that wicked well of blackness in my soul has become easier and easier to pull from.  The more often I tap into it, the quicker it rises when I call on it.), I funnel it into my voice and say, "
did you kill those girls?
"

           
Pushing every bit of my will into those words, I press into his mind how much I want him to answer them.  I need him to answer me (And I want to get out of this house.  A bad case of the willies is beginning to tickle my spine.).

            The deepness of my startles him voice (An unexpected effect of having the ability to hypnotize some people is that my voice takes on the tone of a three-pack-a-day-smoker on the tail end of a bender.  It's unpleasant for me to do and mentally taxing, but it can really save time during an interrogation.), and I watch as his eyes widen.  He then scrunches them tightly closed and shakes his head back and forth like he's trying to get his bearings after being punched (Which he has.  Mentally.  My voice is like an uppercut to the cerebellum when I'm pushing my will.  Few people can resist me when I desire a straight answer.).

            "Now why would a nice-looking girl like you ask me a question like that?"  He asks through a tight grin and barely moving lips.  I don't think he's happy with me.  Time to try again.

            "
are you responsible for their disappearance?
” I ask and then pull as much of the darkness as I can up into me and repeat my previous question, "
did you kill those girls?
"

            Pulling the darkness up so quickly is a stress on my system, and I can feel my body's hunger kicking in a desire to refuel itself.  I do my best to squash the hunger down in an attempt to prevent it from distracting me.  I need to focus right now.

            Waiting on him to answer me, I just stare into his eyes and watch his reaction (Well, it's more like staring "at" his eyes due to them being squinted shut and my wearing sunglasses, but the intent is there.).

            But there is very little of one.  His breathing increases dramatically, and his heart rate increases to the point that I start to imagine it's somewhere in the range of a three-legged squirrel on meth doing wind sprints down a hallway filled with cats.  That can't be healthy.

            Thirty seconds go by without either of us saying a word.  As I listen to his vitals slowly come back down to normal levels, he smiles wickedly at me and cracks both eyes open to slits.

           
He resisted me!
  I think in wonderment.  I came at him with nearly all my power and he just shrugged it off.  That’s certainly an ominous start to the encounter.

            "I think the problem we have," he begins saying, and I notice the accent is completely gone.  "Is that you are essentially asking me two different questions.  And those two questions have opposing answers."  He pauses for a moment to breathe - loudly - before continuing.  "And that confusion gave me a chance to fight whatever it was you were doing to me."

            He opens his eyes the rest of the way and smiles that creepily charming grin (It’s an oxymoron, I know, but this guy was a walking ball of oxymoron...or irony...or something.).  "By the way, what was that you were doing to me?  It hurt."  He stops talking again to roll out his shoulders and gently massage his temples.  "A lot.  I owe you for that."

            This isn't going well, I think.  Time to open the flood gates.

            Taking his advice, I focus on just one of the two questions I asked previously and bring it to the front of my mind.  Not holding anything back this time, I pour all of the darkness I can find into my words - knowing that I won't be able to hold back the hunger tonight because of it; I will have to feed very soon - and ask just one question, "
did you kill those girls?
"

            The exertion of controlling that much raw energy is exhausting, and it leaves me spent and panting.  Looking back on the day's events, I'm thinking that coming in here on a nearly empty stomach might have been a bad idea.  But I didn't want to have to waste time hunting down prey while it was still partly light out, plus I didn't think I'd have to work that hard with this guy.  Chadwick was supposed to be an open-and-shut case. 

            Hindsight reaches up its dirty, little hand and slaps me for that one.  Oops.

            Focusing my attention on the tall blond in front of me, I wait to see if my latest effort garners any different results.

            Luckily he seems to be doing worse than I am.  His hands are clenched at his sides, he's broken out in a slimy (and nauseatingly aromatic) full body sweat and his breathing is coming in short, rapid bursts.

            "Wow," he says weakly after a moment.  "You are certainly persistent, huh?  Let's not do that again."  He cracks open watery, bloodshot eyes (I guess the strain made him cry.  I should cherish that thought a bit.) and stares at me with open malice in his expression (I really don't think I'm making a friend here.). 

            "To answer your question," he continues in that weak voice.  "No, I did not kill those girls.  To my knowledge they are still healthy and alive."  He says the last few words through a partial snarl and glares at me.  "Happy?"

            He's telling the truth.  It pains me to hear it, but nothing in his body betrays the words he just spoke.  After what I just put him through, I doubt he could mount a strong enough mental veil to disguise a lie to me.  On top of that, his breathing and heartbeat support what he just told me.  They barely flickered while he spoke.  But if he's innocent, then that means-

            My thought trails off as two new ideas fight for space in my brain: his heart did hitch a beat when he said they were "healthy", but even more important than that is what he said earlier in response to my two questions.  He said my two questions had opposite answers, and if he's telling the truth about not killing them, then that means he is responsible for their disappearance!

            Crap!  He is guilty!

            "-are you anyway?"  I tune back into him talking and realize he's asking me questions.  "And why are you really here?"

            "No," I hiss at him and reroute what little darkness is trickling through my body into my muscles.  I will end this tonight!

            As my adrenaline surges, I can feel time slowing down to allow me to perfectly place my punches in his abdomen (Another neat ability that I'm starting to get used to: moving so fast that the world becomes slow around me.  I can't do it all the time, but it sure is thrilling when I
can
pull it off.). 

            Lashing out with my left fist, I hit him twice in his ribs and feel several of the white, finger-like bones pop beneath my knuckles (like stomping on dry tree branches after a drought).  As his body instinctively leans over to that side to protect the injury, I bring my right fist around and put my full weight behind the blow that smashes into his exposed abdomen (Something squishy deep in him ruptures, and my acute hearing picks up the satisfying sound of a water balloon bursting inside of him - I believe he is now down one internal organ.).

            As his body crumples forward in an attempt to protect his suddenly aching insides, I reach out with both hands and gently cup the back of his head to guide it downward.  As his blond mop becomes level with my hips, I drop my body into a squat and then fire myself upwards bringing my right knee into his well-tanned face.  The explosive crunch of bone shattering as the top of my patella turns his face into pulp is much more gratifying than it should be.  The impact lifts him off the ground and throws him backwards across the kitchen, and he slides a few feet coming to a rest against a lilac-colored wall (The man does have some interesting interior design choices.).

            "Where are they?" I growl at him without approaching any closer (I've used up just about all of my reserved energy, and the Dark Hunger is really trying to wrest control away from me.  I want to feed.  I need to feed, and soon.  And the blood covering his face is not making controlling my dark side any easier.  If I get any closer to him, then there is every chance I will pounce on him and give in to the delicious pull of that blood.  And with how angry I am right now - no one should ever do what he did to young girls - there is a good chance I wouldn't be able to stop myself until he was dead.  And if he's dead, then I'll never find out what happened to them!).  "What'd you do with them?"

            He doesn't answer me right away.  Or even move.  He just leans against the wall and breathes heavily while clutching his stomach.  After almost a full minute - him breathing with short, raspy breaths and staring at me sullenly, and me just trying to fight back the overwhelming desire to make a meal out of him - he awkwardly pushes himself to a standing position and says, "I'll show you.  Just don't do that again."

            He appears defeated and broken, but his heartbeat is strong and relaxed.  I have a feeling he's lying to me about something; I just don't know what it is, yet.

            He raises both his arms above his head like a kid playing Cowboys and Indians (He winces with pain and I can hear his muscles scrape against the broken ribs.), and mutters, "Look.  See.  I even surrender myself."

            As he turns to walk through the kitchen doorway and into the main room of the house, I tell him, "That's not necessary.  I'm not going to shoot you."

            He ignores me and keeps walking through the doorway with his hands held high above his head.  His fingers are high enough to scrape the top of the entry way as he passes through it.  They catch my attention as he drags them along the underside of the decorative mahogany wood archway that separates the two rooms.  The intricate design around the doorway is much like the rest of the house that I've seen so far: immaculately clean and impressive.  So I find it odd when I see his fingers catch on something as they pass along the wood.  A brown string springs out of nowhere and goes taut against his fingers as he moves forward.

            The dark string pulls away from the wood frame above him and I see that it connects to either wall through well-hidden recessed holes.  Holes that make a very distinct and metallic
chink-kink
sound as the string suddenly goes slack around his fingertips.

           
This can’t be good
, I think as I watch the man who was so recently my punching bag fall straight forward like he'd just been shot by a sniper.  Except instead of looking dead and bullet-ridden (A girl can hope, can't she?), I can see his arms coming down and his hands clamping over his ears.  He's anticipating something bad, I realize.