Society Rules (53 page)

“What can’t?” Shawn was startled by the man’s swift change of mood. Jackson stood and dragged Shawn along with him, to get closer to the cemetery.

“Hey, man, you don’t have to drag me around. Can’t you read my mind? I’m not going anywhere!” Jackson pulled him back down into the cover of grass. “I have to see them. I have to get closer. Are you
sure?”

“What are you talking about? Am I sure about
what
? I don’t know that I’ve been participating in this whole conversation!”

Jackson stared back at him before answering. “Forgive me, but I forget.” He swallowed hard, and spoke slowly.

“You think Indie’s children are Society Members, too? Both of them?”

“Well, yeah, I’m sure. Especially now. They are twins, so they must both be, right?, And maybe that’s why they are a set, because of . . .”

“
NO!”
Jackson cut him off again. “It does
not
work like that. I mean, they would
both
have to seek their
Equals
. They would . . .” His voice faded away to an even softer whisper.

“They are brother and sister . . . they can’t . . .” He stopped again as he began to comprehend.

“Something
so
precious
that
it
had
to
be
protected
at
all
cost!”

Jackson’s jaw actually dropped. He floundered for a moment, seeking strength, seeking a plan . . . seeking
anything
that would help him succeed in this mission that had just tripled in magnitude.

Oh,
I
must
not
fail!
The responsibility was all but suffocating.

Baker was incredulous. “You didn’t
know
? What is going
on
with all of you people? Why am I always the first to see it?”

“I’ve never seen the children,” Jackson responded, a little desperately. “If I had,
I
would have known.” He shook his head, and looked at Baker.

“Look, this is monumental. Those kids
must
be rescued unharmed. I cannot impress upon you the imperative nature of this fact. It simply must be! The impact of these children coming to harm at the hands of that . . . that
woman,
would be unthinkable.

“I’m not sure, but somehow I believe that this might be more than the Creator will tolerate. The negative energy would be immeasurable!”

Baker struggled to remove a sharp stick that was stabbing him painfully in the back, mirroring the one at his throat, and tried to comprehend what Jackson was telling him.

What did he mean,
“the
Creator”
would not
“tolerate”
it? He knew that hurting the kids, or subjecting them to harm was wrong, but what was he saying about negative energy, and the impact?

Before he could voice these questions, Jackson suddenly tossed away the pseudo-knife, and scooped Shawn up onto his knees, lifting him with ease and gripped his arms with iron strength.

“They are the children of the
Seraphim
, Mr. Baker.”

This meant nothing to Shawn, not having much of a background in religion. Jackson sighed in exasperation. He was about to seriously break some rules, but he had to explain, to make him understand. He drew a deep breath, and pulled Shawn very close.

“You’ve heard of angels, I presume?” Jackson continued without waiting for a response. “The Seraphim are the highest order, those closest to the Creator. In the realm of ancient history, the Creator sent a number of his angels to mingle with man, for a quick explanation. They were to breed with mortals, and perfect the race. However, the Creator sent one of his highest order, who spread his genetics to only a handful of females, in a pure and sexless union. The descendents of this one, the Seraphim, is the rarest, most pure and powerful of us all.

“But these are young and unschooled members. They cannot even
begin
to know of their powers. In addition, they
can
be
Equals
; brother and sister, because theirs is a loyal and innocent, pure partnership. The destruction or harming of beings so good and so pure is the foulest of evil, and will create enough negative energy to . . . to bring about . . .
great
destruction!
And possibly irreparable damage to the planet!”

Now Shawn’s face was slack with horror.

The simple fact was, that it was well within the realm of possibility for him to believe this. In his line of work, he had learned to accept the existence of all manner of impossibilities.

“Look at the sun, man!” Jackson shook him, pointing up at the furious ball of fire in the sky. “The negative energy creates this turmoil . . . draws it
closer
. Can you not see it?” Baker nodded mutely, staring up at the awful sight.

A shrill scream cut through the moment. Shawn recognized his name in the middle of the harsh sound. Cassandra had obviously noticed his absence.

“Shawn, where the hell are you?” she shrieked again.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked Jackson, who was now deep in thought. Jackson had thrown out a desperate call to Indie, only to receive no response. He remembered that she was now cloaked in her protective world, apparently preoccupied with something, or she might still have heard him. He would have to go to her.

“Indie must be told. It is her children whose lives are on the line. I need her input and now! Keep down and keep quiet. It will offer a distraction if the woman either feels you’ve abandoned her, or if you have just inexplicably disappeared. Just please stay here. I
can
trust you, right?”

“What do
you
think?” Shawn answered, staring up at the sky.

Jackson placed his hand on Shawn’s chest, the heat shocking the other man, even through his shirt. “Be careful, brother, and . . . I am glad for what . . . Jackson’s face was intense, serious, as he faltered; “ . . . for what you will achieve here today.”

Then he was gone. Shawn began gasping for breath. The urge to begin hyperventilating had been with him for the last five minutes. He could hold back no longer.

There was no time to ponder Jackson’s words to him. The echo of Cassandra screeching his name was rebounding around the valley, growing more desperate or angry; he wasn’t sure which, by the second.

He crept carefully up to a large boulder, and peered around. The children and Cassandra were in plain view. An obvious solution made itself known to him immediately.

Jackson, as a Society Member, might be required to use only weapons found in nature, but
he
was under no such obligation, was he? It was a clear shot. Simple. Shawn knew exactly what he needed to do.

He slowly moved to draw his weapon, and then froze. He looked down at the empty holster.

What. The.
Fuck
?

Where
could
it
have
gone?
he wondered in a panic.

Christ. When he had shot out the tires, he had quickly shoved the weapon into his holster. He had not snapped it into place. That fact, coupled with the extra bulk of the silencer, had allowed the gun to fall out at some point. It could be lying anywhere on the leafy, debris-strewn ground.

He felt positively naked without it. Shawn clenched his fists and silently cursed his carelessness. What a colossal blunder.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” he sighed, deflated. Sending some lead into Lockhart’s fucked-up little head would have brought this whole nightmare to a swift and easy end.

“I guess all I
can
do now is sit here and wait.” Looking up briefly at the solar light show hovering uncomfortably close above his head, Shawn positioned himself to better see into the clearing, and watched as Cassandra ran around in circles, calling his name.

Could this really be it, he wondered? What a bizarre kind of fame he could enjoy in whatever afterlife awaited him. He could brag to all of the other bastards in Hell that he, Shawn Baker, had put into place the situation that ended the world.

Yay,
me.

Wouldn’t they all be impressed? And how could this be, anyway?
Negative
energy
? Of all the ways he’d ever guessed that Man would finally jerk the plug out of the wall on life here, this was so not on his radar screen. It was too . . . simple.

It seemed that someone had been very tolerant of all the crap taking place on Earth for a very long time, and now, He’d seen just about enough.

Not that Shawn could blame that Someone, but this was
NOT
going to happen because of him . . .
was
it?

Surely
not.

Definitely. Not.

Chapter 34

Nick slowed his patrol car as he came upon the two-mile mark, according to his odometer. He was looking for a black, “new-fangled” car, in a ditch.

He didn’t know which side it was on, or how far exactly in the ditch it was, so this slowed him down considerably.

As he crept along, he reached down to snap on the air conditioning. He hoped it worked, never having had to use it before. Not even on the hottest August day had he indulged, simply soaking up the heat to store it for the winter.

This was different. It seemed an ominous, oppressive kind of heat that might suddenly flare outward and singe the hair on your head.

Nick was relieved when the unit kicked on, and, after a few seconds of expelling stale, hot air, it began sending out nice icy streams of an artificially cooled breeze. He wrinkled his nose at the plastic-y, moldy smell that blew out with it.

“I guess I’ve gotta take the bad with the good,” he sighed as he continued his search.

He made his way north approximately another mile before he saw something reflecting light on the right side of the road. The back end of the PT Cruiser was glaring with the reflection of the late morning sun, its front end so deeply into the ditch that the rear was nearly parallel to the ground. It might have been easily missed, were it not for the bright sun creating a beacon of sorts.

Thank God for small miracles.

Nick grimaced as he pulled up behind the car, and silently asked for another miracle; that no one was hurt or trapped inside. He picked up his radio handset.

“This is Captain Brocatto, I’m conducting a ten-sixty-h, on US two, over.”

“Uh, sorry Captain . . .
what
?” came the sheepish reply.

Nick banged the handset on the dashboard. He would never get used to Vermont State Police’s disregard for using or even wanting ten codes. The New York PD ten codes were welded to his brain, and he still used them every single time.

Jesus, you’d think they would pick up some of them just because of him; like inadvertently learning bits of a foreign language to which you were continuously exposed.

Not these people.

“I’m checking out a disabled vehicle, okay! Doin’ a little research. And after that, I will be ten sixty-three. Can you guess what that one is?”

“Er . . . ah . . . lunch?” answered the crackling voice, hopefully.

“Hey, you
have
learned somethin’ huh? I’m out!” He threw the handset down into the seat with a snort of disapproval.

He felt that the professionalism of his chosen field was beginning to dry up, and he didn’t like it. Ten codes were a police tradition, and kept most nosey eavesdropping people in the dark as to exactly what was taking place.

If those people needed to know something, he would tell them! Your average Joe citizen did not need to hear that there was a domestic dispute at any certain address. Around here, they probably knew the people, and this was a shameful lack of privacy for individuals.

Bringing himself back to the now, he stepped down from his mental soapbox for the moment. Nick climbed out of the cruiser, and blinked at the brightness, allowing his eyes to adjust.

The ground was slippery and muddy as he began to descend in to the ditch. He could see that the airbag had not deployed, which surprised him. The impact had to have caused quite a jolt to the occupants, and he could see even from where he stood, that no one was opening either of the front doors. They would have had to exit the back.

Nick was relieved that so far, it appeared that the car was unoccupied, although he would have to get all the way down there to know for sure.

He concentrated on making his way to the bottom without falling on his ass. It was a little tricky as he tried to work toward the side of the car, having to leave the convenient path that the vehicle had carved for him. With a sudden slip, his footing gave away.

Nick caught himself as he was thrown against the passenger door of the car.

Yeah, this is what they pay us for! Nick thought, cranky now at the mud covering his boots, and the thought of the climb back up. He peered through the window.

It was empty.

Both relieved and annoyed by this, Nick was attempting to find a better way up when he heard a horrible shrieking.

It was a woman’s voice, and she was calling out a name hysterically.

Did someone lose their kid? he wondered.

The sound made him remember a time years ago, when during the holiday season, a woman had run up and down forty-second street, screaming in a similar fashion. She had lost sight of her five year old son, and was understandably in a state of panic.

Luckily, it had a happy conclusion. The child was found in a small toyshop, lured by the brightly colored treasures.

Nick had never forgotten the sound of the woman’s voice as she shouted so desperately, and the screaming he was hearing now sounded pretty urgent. He now struggled in earnest to gain a foothold in the slimy hole that he had just plunged down.

It was a heck of a lot easier getting down here, than it seemed to be getting back out. He wondered as he struggled, who could possibly be out here looking for a child. There was nothing around here but woods.

Campers, maybe?

One of the occupants of the car he was now trapped with?

Whatever it was, the cop in him was becoming very distressed with every second that ticked by that he was not helping this person.

At this point, what he was accomplishing mostly was covering himself head to toe with green-tinged mud, too slippery to allow him a foothold on either the ground, or to climb onto the car for leverage.

He looked at the radio on its shoulder clip and thought about calling for help, but then decided that he would exhaust every option in the universe first, before calling for help out of a mud hole.

Oh, he would never hear the end of that!

“Helloooo? Is someone down there?”

Nick looked up and could see nothing at first, due to the stream of sunlight clawing at his face. As he made a visor with his hand, he saw the silhouette of a person standing at the top of the ditch that had imprisoned him.

His eyes quickly adjusted, and Nick saw that an elderly man was looking down at him with obvious amusement. He had the look of the older Vermont woodsmen, and was holding a very long, thick stick, on which he leaned heavily at this moment.

“Hey . . . uh, yeah.” Nick was embarrassed. He was still a city boy after all, he had to admit.

“I’m kinda stuck!”

“I see.” came the man’s mirthful reply. “Would you like a hand?”

“Um . . . .” Nick hesitated. The man looked to be at least in his sixty’s, and was just under average height. Nick knew he was a big man, and even heavier than most people guessed, due to his high muscle mass. How could this man pull him up?

But
the
screams
he
had
heard.
He had to get out here, although, he noted that the screaming woman was now silent.

“ . . . or perhaps you are enjoying yourself down there?” The man asked, kindly. There was nothing sarcastic or offensive about the older man’s words or voice.

Just a sort of gentle teasing beneath his words.

“No! I mean, yes, I would like a hand, but do you think you can pull me up? I’m a pretty heavy guy, yeah?”

“Well, let us find out, shall we?” The old man stepped down on to the flat back end of the car, and extended the long stick that he carried toward Nick.

He did not move with the natural caution of the elderly; his step was firm and sure, Nick noticed. “Hold fast to the stick, son,” he spoke with confidence.

Nick paused, and took a deep breath. He seized the end of the thick stick and gingerly pulled. The man did not waver, so Nick grasped the lifeline more firmly now, and hauled himself out of the hole, slipping and sliding along the way.

And then he was out!

Nick’s feet were heavy with the sticky mud caked on his boots, and his uniform would probably never recover, but he was relieved to be free of his trap.

“Hey, thanks a lot, sir. I really appreciate the help. I would have hated to have to call for back up to get out of there!”

“Yes, well, it’s fortunate that I happened along, then.” He hesitated, and then asked, “Did you hear a woman’s voice a moment ago?”

“Voice? She was screaming like a banshee!”

“Ah. So you did hear it.” The old man sighed, as if this was not the answer he wished to hear, and then spoke again.

“Well then, it is obvious that you are meant to be involved, wouldn’t you say?”

Nick didn’t know exactly what to say to this odd statement. Meant to be involved? He shrugged it off.

Vermont old timers sometimes had a unique way of expressing themselves, he had found, although, the cop in him noted automatically that the man had no classic Vermont accent. He actually had no discernable accent whatsoever.

Weird.

“Yeah, I heard it while I was down in there, and I was planning to check it out. I don’t hear it anymore, though.”

“It seemed to come from across the street . . . in the cemetery.” The old gentleman offered helpfully. Nick shuddered.

Screams from an old cemetery.

Great.
Yeah, that was exactly where he wanted to go right now.

He looked back at the old man, who had inadvertently become his savior.

The man was dressed in grey pants made of a soft material, and a long-sleeved shirt of exactly the same color and cloth. Nick’s keen senses took this in, thinking it strange, somehow. Clothing items didn’t tend to fade so uniformly.

His walking boots were obviously very old, and had buttons on them, rather than laces. As he looked more closely at the man’s face, he was startled for a moment at the man’s brilliant blue eyes, which stood out fiercely against the steel gray hair and his neatly trimmed bead.

His face was open and friendly, and Nick somehow felt . . .
small
in his presence. It made no sense, as he physically towered over the man, who could have been no more than five feet seven inches tall. As he met the eyes of the older man once more, he took in his expression of calm amusement as he waited for Nick’s response.

Nick coughed nervously, irritated with himself for having such a vivid imagination. He tossed aside his visual interrogation and began backing toward the road. But he’d also noted the absence of any traffic whatsoever during his ordeal, and felt the sense of unease that had touched him earlier, return with a hair raising creep.

“Thanks. I appreciate your help, mister,” he called over his shoulder as he moved across the road toward the thick wooded area that encircled the clearing that was the old cemetery. The officer barked a sharp expletive as he suddenly found the old man walking next to him. He hadn’t seen him cross the road at all.

Nick recovered, and spoke in the most official voice he could muster.

“Sir, you should just go on about whatever you were doing before, if you don’t mind. I can take it from here.”

“Oh I am doing just exactly what I was doing before.” The gentleman smiled absently. “I was in on my way to this very resting place for the departed.”

The older man studied Nick’s skeptical expression. “Does this surprise you?”

Nick once again found himself with little to say. The man’s arrangement of words was very strange to him, as were the things he was saying.

“I . . . guess not,” he began uncertainly. He had no real reason to keep the man away.

“I just would have liked to check this area first, to make sure that everything’s safe before y’ head in there, y’ know?”

“Yes, but
‘Quis
custodiet
ipsos
custodies?’
” laughed the old man, softly.

“What does that mean?”

“‘Tis Latin, son. It means but ‘who will guard the guards.’ “It also means that we shall check it together, Officer Brocatto,” the man’s amused tone returned. “For surely, no harm can come to me as long as I am with you!”

Nick stared at the man, unable to decide if he should be annoyed or flattered. And then he shrugged. “Sure, then. Come on!” He gave the man the famous Brocatto grin. “I’ll protect you!”

He stopped short. The old man had called him by name. Then he relaxed immediately. Of course, he had seen his nametag.

He really needed to get a grip.

As Nick crossed the road, he spotted the back of a car several yards ahead, the top of the trunk area reflecting the sunlight with a brownish metallic gleam.

It was a Mercedes.

He stopped again, as a thought tried desperately to make itself known to him.

Something about this car.

He had seen it before, hadn’t he? As he moved toward the vehicle, he experienced a vague clouding of his mind, which jolted his memory. Yes! He was going to stop this car earlier, for speeding. But, something had stopped him . . . or distracted him in some way. He wasn’t sure now.