Supernatural--Cold Fire (29 page)

Gary Atherton stood in the hallway outside the nursery as Denise lowered Gabriel, freshly fed, changed, and finally asleep, into his crib. A low-level headache, sign of his own lack of sleep lately, throbbed behind his brow. When he dozed, he dreamt of freshly brewed coffee. Never decaff. Sometimes he felt as if caffeine was the only thing that kept him going.

Denise and he had tried to have a child through their late twenties and thirties but it never happened for them. And they decided to let nature take its course—or not. If it wasn’t meant to be, they wouldn’t force the issue with tests and interventions. Once Denise turned forty, they assumed fate had decided for them: childless couple. Three years later, long after they’d given up on the idea of shepherding a new Atherton generation through the trials and tribulations of life, Denise became pregnant. Just having that news confirmed was quite a mental adjustment for both of them. Suddenly the life together they had come to accept demanded a complete revision with a nine-month deadline. Rather, eight months, counting from the time the news finally sunk in. And while the mind was more than willing, the body was not always able.

Gary tried not to think too far ahead. Knowing he would be in his mid-sixties when his son graduated from high school in no way prepared him for changing diapers at 3
AM
today. Of course, Denise was more sanguine about the whole affair, insisting they take things one day a time, and that having a young child in their lives would keep them young at heart. But then, Denise was always a glass-half-full person, which was one of the things he loved about her. Gary would admit the glass was half full, but understood that water evaporated and glass itself was fragile. Almost four years Denise’s senior, Gary felt that extra mileage entitled him to a bit of skepticism. Nevertheless, he loved Denise and he loved little Gabriel. So what could go wrong?

Denise backed out of the room and closed the door so softly he never heard it click shut. Gabriel continued to sleep. Gary debated a nap versus a ginormous mug of coffee. If he could take a power nap while absorbing coffee intravenously, that would be ideal, but neither he nor Denise had the medical chops to rig a DIY IV java drip.

Denise turned toward him, smiling. She whispered, “Rocking chair worked like a charm.”

“We shall have one in every room of the house,” Gary declared sotto voce as they walked toward the staircase.

He started down the stairs ahead of her, paused to look back and said, “You know what else—?”

Denise stood above him, her eyelids fluttering as her eyes rolled upward, showing nearly all whites.

“Denise, are you—?”

She gritted her teeth and spoke angrily, “You bastard!”

“What—?”

She shoved him hard.

Flung backward, he reached for the hand rail, missed, wrenching his arm as it slipped between two balusters before popping free, and tumbled down the stairs. Fortunately, the stairs were carpeted, a deep pile that cushioned each impact as he rolled down to the landing.

“Denise! What the hell—?”

She stormed down the stairs after him, her face contorted in rage.

He scrambled to his feet and stood there dumbfounded as she charged him. When she struck him with her fists, he tried to catch her wrists and missed. Then she tried to claw out his eyes with her fingernails, spittle flying from her mouth. It was as if someone had flipped a switch in her brain to turn her into a raving lunatic. With his forearm he shielded his eyes and backed away from the continuing assault. Everything happened so fast, he couldn’t process the information and think of an appropriate course of action, other than defending himself.

Finally, he shoved her sideways, onto the sofa. But she rebounded off the cushions and jumped onto the glass coffee table to launch herself at him. As she pushed off, the inset glass panel cracked and collapsed. Her slipper-covered foot dropped through the break and she fell face first on the other side of the table, struggling to get up.

“Son of a bitch!” she raged. “I’ll never forgive you!”

“What the hell, Denise?” Gary asked. “Have you gone completely insane?”

As she pulled her trapped foot free, a wicked smile appeared on her face. She lunged backward and grabbed a wedge-shaped piece of broken glass, holding it like a dagger, but so tightly her palm bled around the edges.

“Worthless piece of crap,” she hissed. “I’ll cut your throat!”

“Jesus!” Gary said, backing away, hands raised. “What’s wrong with you?”

“You’re what’s wrong with me, Ronnie!”

“Ronnie?”

“Coward! Rotten piece of filth!”

She lunged, swinging the broken glass at his throat, as promised. Expecting the attack, Gary managed to block it with his hand, but the sharp edge sliced his left palm from the base of his little finger to his wrist. “Christ, Denise! That hurts!”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Nothing hurts when you’re dead!”

At the last word, she lunged again, this time stabbing the glass at his abdomen. The pointed tip of the glass struck his metal belt buckle and snapped off. Denise stumbled and fell into his arms, and this time he managed to catch her wrist and hold it clear of his body. But she struggled fiercely, as if her life depended on freeing herself and killing him.

With a frustrated roar, she lunged forward and sank her teeth into his shoulder, biting through the cloth of his flannel shirt and undershirt into his flesh. At first he felt pressure but as she continued to bear down her teeth punctured his flesh. Grunting in pain, he redoubled his effort to keep her right hand away from him but felt his grip slipping as he lost more blood through the lacerated palm.

“Denise—stop!”

And again, like a switch flipped in her brain, all the ferocity in her tensed body vanished. He looked at her face and her eyes appeared normal, if confused. She looked back and forth, seemed to register that he had both her wrists pinned and frowned at him. “Gary? What’s going on? Are you bleed—?”

Her body went limp.

She collapsed in his arms, as if she’d fainted. He’d never witnessed anyone faint before, but he didn’t think she was faking it. Sweeping her up in his arms, he laid her on the couch, then grabbed a kitchen towel to wrap his bleeding palm until he could bandage it properly. For a minute, he sat staring at her, unconscious—sleeping?—on the sofa, looking so peaceful and relaxed. If not for the shattered coffee table and his bloody hand, he might almost believe he’d imagined her vicious attack.

He’d read all the baby books for new mothers and fathers along with Denise, but he couldn’t recall reading a chapter in any of them about one of the parents turning into a homicidal maniac. He’d thought nothing could prepare you—truly prepare you—for becoming a parent, other than becoming one. And, slowly, he was adapting to a new worldview with a helpless infant at the center of it. But what had just happened to him was something he would never understand because there could be no rational explanation.

Had Denise experienced some kind of psychotic break? She had no history of psychosis or any mental problems.

Or was there a dire medical reason for the violent episode? Could a brain tumor turn a normal forty-something woman into a murderer?

Answers were beyond him, so he picked up the phone and called 911.

As soon as he hung up, Denise awoke, pushed herself up and looked at the broken coffee table before focusing on him. “I had the weirdest dream… did I have an accident?”

“What do you remember?”

“Putting Gabriel to sleep—oh, no! I hear him crying.”

Lost in thought, the sound hadn’t registered with Gary. But it was Gabriel’s displeased cry, not his five-alarm-fire come-get-me-now hysterical shrieking, so Gary had to cut himself some slack. He stared at Denise. “You don’t remember shoving me down the stairs?”

“What!?”

“Or cutting my hand with broken glass?” he asked, raising the bloody towel wrapped around his hand as evidence.

“No!” Denise stood up, looked at her own hands, the trickles of blood on her own palm from gripping the glass tightly as she fought him. “How did I—? Gary, what’s going on?”

She hurried to the downstairs bathroom and grabbed the first aid kit.

“You had some kind of… episode,” he said. “Like a seizure, but violent.”

She wrapped gauze around her own hand after applying antibacterial ointment, then she looked at his more severe wound, grimaced in sympathetic pain, and began to apply ointment and gauze.

When she was done, she stood and glanced toward the stairs. “I should get Gabriel,” she said. “Might need to be changed again.”

“No!” Gary said abruptly. The thought of her flipping into her Mrs. Hyde persona while caring for their child terrified him. “I’ll take care of him.”

“I’m perfectly capable of—”

The doorbell rang. “Emergency services!”

“It’s okay, I called them…” Gary’s voice trailed off as he saw Denise’s eyelids fluttering, nothing but the whites of her eyes showing. “Come in!” he called frantically. “It’s happening again!”

* * *

Several miles away, Alan Crane, Melissa Barrows’ father, opened the door to her house and urged Assistant Chief Cordero to come inside. The older man had a knot on his forehead and a split lip. “I really don’t know what’s gotten into her,” Alan said. “She’s never been violent a day in her life.”

“She attacked your wife?”

“Both of us,” Alan said. “We were sitting at the kitchen table, talking about arrangements for Kevin’s funeral. Not a pleasant topic, to be sure, but then she stood up so abruptly she knocked over her chair. She grabbed a ceramic cookie jar off the table and… and smashed it against Barbara’s head.” He pointed to the lump on his forehead. “Got this when she chucked a drinking glass at me. I was too stunned to duck.”

“Where is Barbara—Melissa’s mother—now?”

“On the sofa. She was dazed. I put a cold compress on her head. Worried she might have a concussion.”

“Melissa?”

“On the floor,” Alan said, chagrined. “She passed out. I made her comfortable. Put a pillow under her head. But she’s had two of these episodes. I don’t know what to do. Fortunately, Noelle—the baby—is upstairs, out of harm’s way. For now.”

They walked into the living room.

Mrs. Crane waved at Cordero. “Pardon me for not getting up,” she said. “Still feel a bit woozy.”

“That’s fine, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll call an ambulance. You’ll need an X-ray, possibly a CT scan.”

As expected, Melissa Barrows was unconscious on the floor, but she had begun to stir. In a moment, she would be fully awake. Instinctively, Cordero’s palm fell to the butt of his gun. Frowning, he moved his hand away. He was not about to shoot a recent widow with a newborn child in her care. Instead, he unsnapped the leather pouch on his belt that secured his handcuffs.

“If it’s like last time, she’ll be normal for a couple minutes,” Alan said. “Then something happens to her eyes and they roll back. First time, I thought she was about to faint, but then she attacked.”

“No warning otherwise?”

“Just screaming and cursing at us,” Alan said. “Weird thing is… well, it’s all been weird, but when she threw that glass at me, she called me Ronnie.”

“Who’s Ronnie?” Cordero asked.

“I have no idea.”

* * *

When Castiel arrived at the Green residence, he raised his fist to knock on the front door but heard a baby crying, a man and woman yelling and the sound of glass and ceramic shattering. He tried the doorknob, but the door was locked. Though it was within the powers of his remaining Grace to blast the door off its hinges, he couldn’t risk injuring Brianna, Malik and baby Kiara. Instead, he thrust his elbow through the windowpane closest to the deadbolt, unlocked the door and entered the house.

“Malik,” he called, “Agent Collins, FBI.”

“In here!”

The angel followed the sound of his voice, crossing through the dining room and edging through the archway to peer into the living room.

Malik crouched behind the sofa, which faced the open kitchen, huddled over his crying niece, who was bordered by a ring of throw pillows and mostly covered by a baby blanket with a rainbow design.

Brianna stood behind an island counter in the kitchen, grabbing ceramic plates from an open cabinet and hurling them at her brother. Most of the plates had smashed into the wall behind him, but one had hit its mark, judging by the cut on his cheek. “Son of a bitch!” she yelled and flung a ceramic teacup at him. He dipped his head to the left and the cup struck the wall and broke on the hardwood floor.

“What happened?”

“Agent Banks said tie her up next time she passed out,” Malik said, unable to look away from his sister lest she hit her target when he was distracted. “Found clothesline in the garage and tied her hands. Kiki finally woke up while Bree was out cold and started screaming, so I got her. Bree woke up and went berserk sooner than before, found a knife and cut herself loose before I came down.”

“Bastard!”

A saucer shattered above his head.

Face twisted in rage, Brianna’s eyes had rolled back in her head, showing only the whites, no pupils. In that state, she couldn’t see anything. Something or someone else guided her hands—with dangerous precision.

“I had the baby with me, man,” he said. “Ducked behind here to wait for help.”

Brianna noticed Castiel peering into the living room and swiveled, hurling a full-sized plate at him. Her aim was true. If Castiel hadn’t whipped his head back at the last instant, the plate would have shattered on his skull rather than the side of the archway.

“One of your stupid friends, Ronnie?” she yelled.

Castiel looked at Malik. “Her behavior is irrational.”

“Was that your first clue?” Malik said, eyebrow arched. “We gotta get this situation under control before she hurts Kiki. She’d never forgive herself.”

“How long do these episodes last?”

“Never this long,” Malik said. “She’s getting worse.”

Having run out of plates, saucers, glasses and cups, Brianna grabbed a blender off the countertop, yanked the power plug from the wall and raised it over her head with both hands. Before she took aim at her brother, Castiel noticed her nose had started to bleed.