Ghost Guard 2: Agents of Injustice (7 page)

“You can’t stop now,” Morris prodded. “You have to tell us where your husband is…where are they keeping him?”

Ruby circled low and slow, altering her usual flight path from what closely resembled a drunken bee in randomness to the extreme placidity of a mere feather touch against Morris’s shoulder. She was sad for Morris, and for Alexandra, and told him she was sorry and that the team might not be able to do anything about it.

“We have to look,” Morris was dejected. “But Alexandra doesn’t seem to be any help.”

Abby said positively, “She knows where he is. She’s just not sure she can trust us yet.”

Morris tightened his fists at what he was about to say. He knew nobody wanted to hear it. “What we really need to do is consult someone who might know more about this case.”

“You mean—” Abby clenched up all over. Ruby abandoned her calm and cool routine and became her old, vigorously vivacious self. Brutus, already the epitome of gloom and doom, grew a shade darker. Even the normally carefree Rev felt a bout of anxiety. Nobody particularly cared for their ParaIntell contact. However, they each recognized talking to Mahoney was the best course of action.

*****

“Ghost Guard!” Mahoney’s prodigious jowls quivered. He was flabbily red-faced and throatily breathless. “Where have you been? What happened with the Alexandra Petrovic exorcism?”

“Relax, Mahoney,” Rev said dismissively. “She’s fine.”

Mahoney sat back and swallowed a deep breath. “Thank God. You people don’t know the importance of this mission.”

“We think we have a little knowledge of this case’s graveness,” Morris declared.

“Good, then you understand the next phase of the operation has to be the rescue of Emile Petrovic.”

“Wait a minute, Mahoney,” Abby wasn’t about to let him get away with this. “You guys are at your little tricks again. Keeping us in the dark, telling us just enough to dangle us on a string.”

“What are you talking about?” Mahoney feigned incredulousness. Abby saw right through it.

“Don’t give me that. You knew all along Petrovic was being held by this so-called secret society.”

“The Singulate,” Rev offered.

“You’re right,” Mahoney came right out and said it. Cat was out of the bag, anyway. “We’ve been monitoring The Singulate for some time. So what?”

“So what? So you failed to tell us about The Singulate before we went into this, that’s so what.”

“Now you know,” Mahoney crossed his arms around his chest. “Your next assignment is to locate and rescue Emile Petrovic. And I don’t think I have to mention the importance of this one.”

“Yes you do,” Rev demanded. “Why is Petrovic so important? What is it about him?”

“He’s just—” Mahoney stammered. A new one for him. “He’s important, that’s all. Ask Morris. He’ll tell you.”

“Petrovic was and still is one of the most brilliant minds ever,” Morris could only agree with Mahoney. “His genius in the wrong hands could be devastating.”

Mahoney rammed it home. “And The Singulate is the wrong hands. Get my drift?”

“Yeah, we get it,” Rev smirked. “Petrovic is our next mark. Only one problem. The only one who knows where he’s located isn’t talking.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means Alexandra Petrovic. She’s too terrified to tell us where her husband is,” Morris said. “But we’re hopeful she’ll loosen up for us.”

“You’d better get her to. Petrovic needs to be rescued, and soon.”

“What’s the big hurry?” Abby’s internal alarms were going off. “Why all this excitement about a scientist who’s been dead for almost seventy years?”

Mahoney’s only answer was to repeat what he’d said about finding Petrovic. Everyone knew the key was somehow pacifying Alexandra and getting her to trust Ghost Guard.

Chapter 7

Alexandra Petrovic remained reluctant to talk, so the crew decided to conduct a bit of research on the enigmatic group known as The Singulate. Morris devoted himself to scouring the Ghost Guard database, an extensive electronic codex of information on all things supernatural. Ruby decided to go on one of her recon missions without telling anyone much of anything. Brutus kept to himself in his hermitage at Gasworks, the clock tower perched ominously over a strangely gabled, moss-covered slate roof. The old gothic building’s exterior was kept deteriorated, shattered windows and weatherworn brick and overgrown vegetation emerging from rusted gutters. All indications were the place was a dead, abandoned, ramshackle structure, a symbol of some lost and forgotten era. Only Ghost Guard knew the real truth, that inside, on the second floor, was an ultramodern para-scientific lab and a renovated, stylish office suite.

Abby was looking forward to retreating and relaxing in that luxurious and comfortable office. But she had something else in mind, and that something itched at her. After Ruby and Brutus left the lab, and with Morris engulfed in his investigation into The Singulate, Abby concluded her best course of action was to wait for the results. She hadn’t noticed Rev had gone, and when she looked for him she was surprised, almost hurt that he’d left without as much as saying goodbye. Then a hint of guilt emerged, and she was worried maybe something she’d said had angered him. She had been a bit on edge. Who could blame her? It really looked like the Alexandra was hitting on Rev. And Abby really thought Rev was manipulating Alexandra into acting so sex-starved.

However, all Abby wanted now was to see Rev, to talk to him and tell him she forgave him, and maybe, just maybe if he was lucky and nice, she’d ask for his forgiveness.

Exasperated, she retreated to her sanctum, the teak and travertine mecca. Her office. The one place in Gasworks where she felt a sense of peace. Everywhere else it was either Ruby’s John Wayne movies or Brutus hammering a punching bag or Morris trying out another of his gadgets. The day’s events were stressful and she relished the thought of some alone time.

Still, a word, a glance, a moment with Rev would have been nice.

When she opened the door, she knew right away something was amiss. Someone was waiting in there for her. She felt a cool touch on the small of her back and spun with deft expertise, facing him. Her first instinct was to fight. But one look, just a moment’s glance into his emerald eyes, and all of her inhibitions evaporated into a sudden and bold move toward his lips.

She pounced, almost too fast and too sudden for his preternatural reflexes. Almost. He caught her in his capable arms, materializing to full physical and muscular form just as she landed.

“Perfect timing,” she purred into his ear, noticing how close she’d come to falling straight to the floor. He had her, though, safely in his grasp.

“For a change,” he kissed her neck and drove a shockwave of electrified bubbles all over her skin. His touch was more than electric. It was intoxicating. And so was his scent. Spicy and masculine and sweetly musky. All the right olfactory pleasure points at the same instant. “All day it seemed we just weren’t on the same page.”

“I know,” she lowered her gaze in a pious manner. “It was me, I—”

He put an end to their useless conversation by sealing his mouth over hers. Tenderly yet with the right amount of assertiveness. She felt herself melt into him. The coolness of his spectral flesh soothed her steamy skin. When he slid his hand down her hips and, like a thief, slid them up inside her blouse, she tensed up with tingles, then eased into a relaxed and comfortable groove as he caressed her firm breasts.

His touch was now warmer, and she responded to his fervor with a languid, loud moan. All of these things drove both Rev and Abby to the height of passion, of deliverance from their existences as solitary beings into the quantum level, where entanglement is real, where two objects can occupy one point in space at the same time.

Rev whisked her to the door at the end of a small hallway. With no hands, and before they reached it, the door swung open, revealing a decadent scene.

The room was resplendent with light and sound and scents. In waves of freshness, the sweet smell of the actual flowers wafted toward her. Lavender and sunflowers and violets and roses. Tons of roses. In vases, on the floor, countless pedals floating in the bathtub. Water, steamy and bubbling, ran from the faucet, and when she saw that, she knew what he had done.

“A bath?” she raised an eyebrow. “You read my mind?”

“I didn’t need to.”

She saw through the lie. But she let him get away with it, just because it was all so delicious. He lowered her to the floor and commenced undressing her one article of clothing at a time.

She felt the warmth of his passion, a strange phenomenon since, usually, ghosts cause a chill. Rev’s heat was a clear indication of his feelings, his desire for Abby. Abby felt it in other ways as well. She felt him in every cell in her body, inside of her and outside of her and in ways inconceivable to the human mind. Unconscionable ecstasy and boundless energy. Rev seemed as if he could go forever. But Abby knew better.

And then, just as before, when they were on the very same precipice of pleasure two days earlier, Abby squelched it all with one single word.

“Wait!” she stumbled backward, sitting on the side of the tub.

“What?” he was steaming. Literally. Overheating caused by their lovemaking. “You can’t be serious!”

Rev looked around for something to slam his fists into. He chose the mirror above the sink, and it shattered violently. Abby snatched her clothes, hopping back into her underwear, a black thong and matching bra, then her jeans and sweater. All in record time.

“Oh, come on!” he soured at every item of clothing she put on. “You don’t have to do that. Not after all the work I put into taking them off.”

“Rev, look at you. You’re like a chimney.”

“I told you. I can handle it.”

She shook her head indignantly. “Yeah, but I can’t. Don’t you understand? If
I
were to lose you it would be awful. But if
Ghost Guard
loses you, it’d be devastating. We’d never be able to exist without you. And if we don’t exist, things get a whole lot worse out there for ghosts.”

She moved close to Rev as his clothing materialized. A different outfit, but no less ritzy. He was hovering, his legs nonexistent below the knees, near her large bay window with a view of St. Johns Bridge over the Willamette.

“I’d be devastated if you were extinguished. But I’d never be able to live with myself if it was me who extinguished you.”

Rev didn’t look at her. His sights remained fixed on the river, its waves a little choppy today. A freighter, loaded with metal containers, chugged through the whitecaps on its journey downstream to Astoria.

“Abby, how many times do I have to tell you? I’m a big boy. I know how to handle myself. And I know my limitations, trust me.”

“But what about Alexandra?” she countered. “And The Singulate? What if something was to happen unexpectedly and you, already drained of energy because of me, become a sitting duck?”

“That’s not going to happen,” he took advantage of her close proximity and wrapped her in his embrace.

“But what if it does?”

He kissed her on the neck. Here came the tingles on cue. He had an irresistible allure.

“It won’t. Just relax.”

He flashed those green eyes and smiled. She smiled back, and they leaned together for a glorious caress. Just before their lips met...

“Abby! Rev!” it was Morris, and his tone signaled something was wrong. Terribly wrong. He never would have interrupted if it hadn’t been drastically pressing. “Come quick!”

*****

Morris had his entire video surveillance array running at full power, monitoring the flight of his nano drone swarm, displaying the exterior of Gasworks from the highway to the oil and chemical tanks that dotted the industrial zone surrounding the compound.

“Look there!” he was as animated as anyone on the team had ever seen him.

Shapes in the darkness. People walking in single file quickly and furtively across the fenced perimeter of the Gasworks grounds.

“What the hell!” Abby was justifiably alarmed.

The number of dark figures must have been in the dozens. The compound was as big as a city block, with a sturdy, cement-driven, ten foot razor wire-tipped chain link fence keeping out the unwanted. The mysterious men gathered in perfect unison, spaced at arm’s length. It was dark, but the images showed clearly they had their hands in front of their chests, fingers joined together to form some sort of cryptic symbol.

“What are they saying?” Morris wondered aloud, and when Abby turned up the volume on the external mics, it became frighteningly clear.

Mortem venientem de potestate. De uoluntate mors.

The arcane words were redolent of a demonic chorus. The timbre. The tone. The accursedly obscene subtext. Ruby, feeling a shiver of horror, squeaked and twirled in the air, shoving her fingers in her nonexistent ears, desperate to keep the obscenities out of her delicate mind.

Brutus stared at Morris, then at the video screens, then at Morris again as the chanting grew in vehemence, all kinds of voices, a sinister and squawking refrain.

“Wait, Brutus,” Morris held a hand up. He was more afraid of what might happen to his friend than anything else. “Maybe they’re just trying to scare us.”

“I want to scare
them
,” Brutus said in his gravelly, pumice-scratched voice.

“This is crazy,” Rev snapped his fingers and his clothes changed to a black tactical jumpsuit. “We have to do something about these jokers. Come on, Brutus.”

Before he could dissipate and divert his ghostly essence, Abby yanked him back.

“Rev, no! Morris is right. We need to know what we’re up against.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Rev asked. Morris already had his nose in the computer, scrolling, reading, scanning. He fed the voices and video into the search algorithm. The hunt for answers was on. “Morris?”

“The database isn’t telling me anything,” Morris groaned.

“What good is that damn database!”

“Look!” Abby had her sights on the monitors. What she saw, and what everyone else saw, was nothing less than bone chilling. Thin, hinged projections, black and long and slender, emanated from the shadows. Projections that elongated and curled into legs. The moment the spiderlike appendages twisted through the metal mesh of the boundary fence, a severe reaction took place, but not from Ruby.

“Oh my god! They’re here!” Alexandra Petrovic watched with wide, terrified eyes. “They found me!”

Brutus used his considerable energy field to keep Alexandra from leaving Gasworks in a panic while the others kept their eyes on the outside activity, which was becoming more troublesome by the second. The dark projections undulated violently. In one terrifyingly impressive growth spurt, it shot up and took on the shape of a man. All clothing—a finely tailored suit—was completely and utterly black. The most distinguishing characteristic of all was a hat, but not one of any modern times.

“Who is that?” Abby asked no one in particular, though Morris took it as a demand on his expertise.

“It’s…Hatman,” he said. “That’s impossible. He’s supposed to be extinct.”

“Well he’s not extinct, Morris. He’s right here!” Rev spoke the obvious.

“It’s him!” Alexandra shouted. Outside, Hatman stood tall with an accursedly sinister mist curling about him as if he commanded the very elements. They all huddled over the screen and watched Hatman vanish into the mist. “He’s coming to get me! He’s coming and there’s no way you can stop him!”

Rev looked at Abby, who returned the silent gesture. Morris stared at them both. Even Ruby was stunned into silence, hovering humbly nearby. The only one who wasn’t worried was Brutus.

“Let him come,” the gigantic, smoldering ghost boasted. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

As if the cosmos sent an abrupt answer to Brutus’ challenge, the walls shook with preternatural tremors. It was purely an unnatural phenomenon, and it caused the very plaster in the walls to melt. Out of the melted plaster came a bizarrely disgusting red ooze. Filthy and ugly and nauseating. Like blood, horribly shining with the ruddy color of gory murder, the terrible substance dripped from the seams in the walls, countless streams of it.

Abby snatched her statmag emitters, one in each hand like an Old West gunslinger. But it was too late.

“REV!” By involuntary action she dropped her emitters when she suddenly felt hands on her neck. She was immobilized somehow, otherwise she would have fought back against what was certainly a man, standing behind her, whispering her name so lightly it seemed like he was in her head. “REV! HELP!”

The man seized Abby and swept her out the door, down the hall, to the giant mosaic stained glass window at the end of the corridor. She would have gone straight through the window to her own demise but for the fact that a highly charged supernatural force stood in their way. Suddenly and silently the powerful being made his presence known with a brilliant flash of blinding light. It was Rev, exuding his energy field like a wall of ethereal electricity, snatching Abby before the glass shattered and Hatman disappeared into the night.