Stirred (32 page)

I
rushed through the overgrown weeds in the front yard and up onto the porch. This house, like all the others, was barely standing upright, its entire frame listing to the left. Through the door came the cries of a woman.

A woman. I blew out the breath I’d been holding, ashamed to be grateful that it was no one I knew.

She screamed again.

I had to help her, but I hesitated. Without a weapon, bursting inside wasn’t exactly a safe proposition.

I turned the handle anyway and eased the door open.

In the lowlight, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I spotted a sofa on the far side of the living room, the upholstery rotted away, now nothing but a wooden frame and rusty springs. Nature had found its way inside, dirt and leaves and animal droppings and puddles of stagnant water. A coffee table lay smashed on the floor beneath a light fixture that dangled from the ceiling by its wiring, the plasterboard around it bowing down.

I called out, “Hello?”

“Back here!” a woman cried.

The floorboards creaked under my weight as I made my way through the living room, dodging gaping holes where the wood had deteriorated.

I stopped, listening.

I stood in a dark, narrow hallway, rain falling through a hole in the ceiling above me. There was a door at the end of the hall, its frame outlined with threads of light. From behind the door rose a chorus of screams—numerous voices—that soon devolved into groans.

I moved forward.

A floorboard snapped.

My leg punched through into the crawlspace under the house, my right foot sinking down into cold mud.

I fought my way out, the tendons around my elbows straining as I heaved myself back up onto the floor, pushing away from the hole and gasping for breath, sweat popping out in beads all over my face.

People were still screaming behind the door, but I couldn’t move just yet, the exertion of hauling myself out of the crawlspace having sapped what little energy I’d had. I was dizzy, achy, exhaustion already tugging at my body even though I’d only awoken a few minutes earlier.

I barely made it onto my feet.

Staggered the last few steps to the door.

Pushed it open and stood in the threshold gasping for breath, the black stars in my field of vision threatening to sweep my consciousness out from under me.

Oh…oh dear God.

It had once been a small bedroom with a window looking out into a backyard at a child’s swing set and the factories beyond.

Now the flooring had been stripped down to the plywood. In places, the drywall had been ripped out, leaving the studs exposed. The leg irons and wrist irons and neck collars had been anchored deep in the studs, and four people, one on each wall, stood in chains. A smell not dissimilar to barbecue hung in the air, and I noticed smoke rising from the shoulders of an old man across the room, his corduroy jacket dotted with charred holes, some of which were still ringed with smoldering ash.

His head hung down and he wasn’t moving.

He stood on a metal grate, blackened from flames.

A blonde, several years my senior, called my name from across the room.

We locked eyes.

Hers were filled with terror.

I could guess mine were, too.

H
e screams into the microphone, “Say it! Say it! This is the start! You mess this up, I’ll teach you what pain really is! Say it!”

T
ears streaked down the woman’s face, her entire body shaking.

She said in an otherworldly voice, “Welcome to hell, Jack.”

“Is Luther here?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to help you,” I said. “I’m going to get you all out of here.”

The woman’s face screwed up in a wreck of fear as she shook her head. “You can’t help us.”

I took a step into the room, looking at the grating on the floor, spying the dancing flames beneath it.

Luther had turned the room into an oven.

I was unable to comprehend how much time, how much money, it would take to build something like this. And why? What was the point of being this elaborate?

Up in one corner, hanging from the ceiling where two walls met, I spotted a surveillance camera. Underneath it, a brass plaque, twelve inches long and three inches wide.

The words “CIRCLE 1: LIMBO” had been engraved into the metal, followed by three numbers:

666

I crossed over to the smoking man, checked for a pulse, knowing there wouldn’t be one but trying anyway. Then I walked over to the woman who’d spoken to me and tested the chains.

Heavy-grade iron. Nothing I could do to free them without help or tools. I glanced at the two other shackled men—both twitching as if in the throes of debilitating palsy, their eyes gone wide, vacant.

“I’m coming back,” I said.

She mouthed, “Don’t leave me.”

“I have to find something to break these chains.”

“Please,” she begged, reaching out for me.

I took one of her hands in mine and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She took a moment to answer, as if she couldn’t remember. “Andrea.”

“Andrea, I’m Jack Daniels, and I will be back here as soon as I possibly can. I promise you that.”

I hurried out of the room, stepping carefully around the collapsed section of flooring in the hallway. Spent a moment in the kitchen ransacking the cabinets and drawers, searching for anything that might help me to get through the chains or the studs they’d been anchored to, but there was nothing of use.

I worked my way through the living room and down the front porch steps into the yard, didn’t stop until I’d walked out into the middle of the street.

Luther was behind this, no question, but my head was still spinning.

I didn’t understand how—

Something knocked me to my knees, and my ears popped with the sudden change of pressure, a blast of furnace-like heat encompassing me.

For what seemed an endless moment, I couldn’t hear anything.

Molten ash drifted down like snowflakes from hell.

Shingles and two-by-fours and strips of siding lay burning in the road all around me.

I looked back over my shoulder, saw the house I’d been inside not fifteen seconds ago, now roiling in flames and coughing up clouds of pitch-black smoke. The overhanging trees, which had also caught fire, scratched the gray, afternoon sky with blazing orange fingers.

My hands—my whole body—wouldn’t stop shaking.

The last five minutes had been possibly the most surreal of my life, and that was saying a helluva lot. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure any of this was real, and had begun to doubt my sanity when I heard Luther’s voice, inexplicably, inside my head.

“Better keep moving, Jack.”

I reached up and touched my right ear, felt an earpiece.

When I tried to tug it out, it wouldn’t budge.

“It’s not coming off,” Luther said. “Super glue.”

I pulled harder, felt a streak of tearing pain, skin ripping.

Everything came rushing back.

Rosehill. The semi-trailer. The gas.

It all felt like so long ago.

How many hours had I lost?

And then: Phin. Harry. Herb.

My boys. My caring, supportive, heroic boys.

Where were they?

Pain threatened to hobble me. Pain and guilt and anger at this crazy situation that I should have seen coming.

If he’d touched them…

“Where’s Phin?” I asked, trying to keep my voice clear of emotion, but it sounded strange—muffled and crowded out by the ringing in my ears.

“Phin’s with me, Jack. So is Harry. So is Herb. Everyone’s been invited to the party.”

I struggled up onto my feet.

The blast had rocked my inner ear, and I stumbled sideways, catching myself from falling by latching onto a mailbox post.

“You see that warehouse in the distance?” Luther asked.

“Which one?”

“The freestanding brick one.”

It was big, in similar disrepair to the other buildings in the area. “Yeah, I see it.”

“Start walking toward it.”

“What do you want, Luther?” My balance was returning and the noise in my ears beginning to subside. I straightened up and started down the middle of the road.

That brick, windowless warehouse stood several hundred yards ahead on the far side of an empty parking lot, and even from this distance, a strange noise seemed to emanate from inside—a soft, machine-like hum.

“I’ve been watching you for close to a year, Jack. You’ve lost your way, haven’t you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You used to be a cop. The best of the best. But now you’re a nobody. And you feel like a nobody, don’t you, Jack? Are you even happy to be bringing this child into the world?”

His question unnerved me, and not only because this nut job was psychoanalyzing me.

But he might actually be right.

I thought quitting the force would make me happy, that I could slip into a domestic life like I slipped into a new pair of Ferragamos. But it had been harder than I’d expected. Even if I hadn’t been constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for Luther to show up, tripping over my 24/7 protectors, I was still unsure this was what I really wanted out of life.

But I was sure of one thing. I was damn sick of Luther Kite.

“Feel free to answer every question I throw your way,” he said.

“Go to hell.”

The side mirror of a long-abandoned car, missing an engine and sitting on concrete blocks, exploded three feet away from me, and I jumped back as the gunshot echoed between the houses.

It had come from a few hundred meters away.

High-velocity sniper round.

I ducked, covering my head, fear coursing through me like electricity.

Nothing,
nothing
, was scarier than being shot at.

“There’s a blast from the past, eh, Jack? Pinned down by snipers. I’ve gone through great lengths to learn from those you’ve encountered before.”

“What the hell do you want?” I managed, teeth chattering, my whole body a knotted cramp.

“Any time I feel like it, I can end you. Any time I feel like it, I can end Harry or Herb or Phin. Or just hurt them and make you listen. Do you understand me?”

I ground my molars.

“Answer me.”

I had no choice. “Yes, I understand.”

“Are you even happy to be bringing your child into the world?”

“Under the present circumstances—”

“No, period. Before all this started. Before the first murder.”

“I’m…conflicted,” I said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” It was an honest answer, and it nearly brought me to tears.

“Are you afraid of being a mother? Or afraid of losing who you think you are? What if I told you who you are, Jack? What if I showed you how to be the person you were always meant to be?”

“What do you want from me, Luther?”

“I want you to appreciate every moment of this, Jack. Most works of art are intended for the masses. For the widest possible audience. But imagine if Picasso had painted something only for the benefit of a single human being. What if Hemingway had written a book only to be read by one person? I’ve created something just for you, Jack.”

I’d heard too many psychos spout off their insane reasons for doing the horrible things they’d done, though admittedly none had put this much effort into it. Luther must have been working on this project for years. It told me something about the scope of his deranged fantasies, and the depth of his depravity.

It also told me that I probably wouldn’t get out of there alive.

“Why me?” I asked.

The noise of whatever was inside that brick warehouse in the distance was growing louder.

“Because you’re worthy of it,” Luther said. “I’ve followed your career. I know what you’ve witnessed, the killers you’ve chased. There’s never been anyone like you. There’s never been anyone like me. We’re like two sides of the same coin.”

I found my spine, managed to stand up straight, even though I could feel a dozen bull’s-eyes all over my body. I stared in the direction the shot had come from.

“There’s nothing special about you at all, Luther. You’re scum, just like all the rest of the assholes I’ve gone after. Just another broken human being, getting your rocks off hurting others.”