Catharsis (Book 2): Catalyst (9 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

            "Thanks, Ren.  Let me know if anything pops with our friends in the Escalade.  Three of them won't have much to say, but the fourth could very well sing like the proverbial canary.  I don't know if it will be to the police, but I doubt it.  I think we have some time before he gets back and talks to someone high enough to make actual decisions."

            "But for now I'm headed back to Chadwick's place so we can continue our conversation from earlier.  I believe he is going to have some more information to tell me."  I pause for a moment as I swing the bike around a slow-moving truck in the fast lane and accelerate through a yellow light.  "Whether he likes it or not.

            "And if things go the way I want tonight," I say as I come to a stop at a red light (no point bringing more attention to myself than necessary just yet).  "Then it won't be in the 'things he likes' category."

            "Be smart Cat,” Ren tells me as I wait out the light on the quietly humming bike.  "He's smart and he's scary.  I know you're juiced right now and looking for a reason to burn off that extra energy, but I think this guy has earned a little of our respect."

            I'm astounded by his words, and I let him know it.  "Uhm.  What was that Ren?  You
respect
this guy?"

            "Don't misunderstand me, Cat.  He's earned my respect as an opponent,
not
for what he's done.  He's still a horrible person.  But he's also a horribly
brilliant
person.  He's remained untouched by the police, and he ran into you and lived."  He pauses before continuing.  "And, technically, he also beat you. 
You
had to run from that last encounter.  Not him.  Remember that, Catarina.  There's a difference between liking a person and respecting them."

            "I was weak and unprepared for him last time.  I wasn't at full strength.  He got lucky."  The excuses pour out of me before I can throttle them back.  Breathing in, I pause and then continue, "It's not going to happen again.  He's not going to beat me twice, Ren.  I'll guarantee that."

            "That's fine, kiddo.  But remember to go into this with your eyes open.  He's formidable."

           
Kiddo?
  The thought of him calling me something like that makes me want to start giggling again.

            The light turns green, and I floor the bike through the intersection and off towards Chadwick's neighborhood.  But I can't let that comment go.

            "Kiddo?"  I ask as the houses fly past me.  "You called me 'kiddo'?"

            "Yes, I did Catarina," and I can hear the smile in his voice.  "It's not pleasant when someone belittles you, is it?”

            Chuckling, I say, "Actually, it just made me laugh.  But I understand your point.

            "Anyway, any updates on surfer boy in the last few hours since I left?  Is there still a police presence?"

            "Glad you asked," he tells me and I can hear his fingers gently clacking on a keyboard somewhere back at the warehouse.  "The officers
are
still at his house, and they haven't filed anything new since the incident after you left.  Apparently he is keeping his head down and quiet for now."

            “So nothing came from the explosion?  They just accepted his story and walked away?  What kind of police work is that?”

            “They have respect for him, too, Cat,” he says in that same baritone voice.  “Remember, this isn’t their first time dealing with him.  Or his craftiness.  They have to be cautious.  And careful.

            "He's smart, Cat, and the cops know it.  If they make a poor case for going in and then actually find something, he'd find a way to get it thrown out of court.  He's done it before.  They'd lose a good shot at evidence.  It's not worth the risk.  Their hands are tied here."

            "But mine aren't," I growl.  "I don't need to be careful or worry about probable cause.  And I
know
he's guilty.  I heard it in his voice.  I smelled it on him.  I don't need anything more than that."

            "I'll disagree with you on the 'careful' part, but the rest of that is spot on.  That's why I brought him to your attention in the first place."

            "So he's at home and waiting for me, right now?"

            "I don't know about the 'waiting for you' part, but he hasn't left.  At least not according to the guys in the car parked in front of his house."

            "Oh, he's waiting on me, Ren.  I know it.  He thinks he can beat me," I say and smile as I slow the bike and turn onto the street that goes behind his house.  "But he's wrong.  He won't win this time."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

            Parking my bike in front of a house that looks deserted for the night, I dismount and do my best to get my bearings.  My best plan would be to wait and watch and get an idea about this guy before proceeding, but I'm too hyped up with energy to do that.  I don't want to wait and let this fuel be wasted sitting around my warehouse.  I want to put it to good use.  And I really want that use to be focused on making Chadwick Morrin pay for what he's done to those girls.  I
want
to attack him and hurt him and unleash the pent-up fury of the last couple of hours upon him.

            I'm pretty sure this is the road that I used as my escape path earlier, but since I was blind when I stumbled away I can't tell for sure.  And when I'd been watching him previously, I'd been across from his house on the other side of the street.  After taking off my helmet and hanging it on the handlebar of my bike (Once again I know the protection would be useful, but I prefer to have full access to my senses in a fight like this.), I use the outlines of the houses around me and check them against my memory to orient myself.  Once I've figured out which one is Chadwick's, I let Ren know and take off at a slow jog between two of the houses.

            "So what's your plan once you get there?"  He asks me as I approach the backyard's white fence.

            "Don't have one yet," I tell him simply.

            "How are you planning on getting in to see him without him knowing you're coming then?" 

            "No idea," I continue and drop my voice to an absolute whisper.  "But something will come to me.  I have faith."

            "Uh huh," he mutters in a low breath, but at least he stops chattering at me.

            Crouching down in the slight shadows cast by the fence, I study the house and let my mind analyze what I'm seeing.  There are lights on in the house all over the place and all the blinds are pulled, so I can't tell what room he's currently in.  Watching the lights in the house for a few minutes I see no changes so he either left them all on on purpose or he just really wants to commit to his wanton waste of electricity.

            Normally even from this great a distance my ears would only be minimally useful, but tonight it is even worse.  Chadwick has left music playing in the house at a decibel level that even a normal person could pick out easily from across the yard.  With my enhanced senses, the volume is nearly unbearable.  I'm guessing the music is only being played at a "house party" level, but to me it might as well be front-row-of-a-stadium-concert level (And it sounds like some kind of poppy boy band - what else would a predator have on his stereo?).  It's just loud enough to be annoying to people and make conversation almost impossible, but not quite enough to warrant a noise complaint from neighbors.

            With both my senses of sight and hearing nullified, I attempt to tap into my last available useful sense.  Before I even attempt to suck in a lungful of air and taste it for hints of what may await me, I get a wisp of something coming from the brightly lit carnival of lights in front of me: a smorgasbord of scents.  An overwhelming nasal cacophony of different (frighteningly competitive) odors begins to slap at my nostrils as soon as I start paying attention to them.  Apparently my brain had been so focused on what I could see and hear that I was subconsciously tuning out my third sense.  But as soon as I allow myself to focus on them, I immediately want to stop.  The smells are myriad and strong.  The image of a candle factory delivery truck crashing into a grocery store and the whole thing burning down comes to mind.  I'm not even sure how one building can generate so many different (and potent) smells.

            So essentially I have no way of knowing where he is in the house or what he is up to or what is going on on the other side of those brick walls.

            "Hey Renny," I whisper in my sweetest voice.  "Bad news.  Either we have one heck of a coincidence occurring here, or this guy is prepared for me somehow.  You may be right about that 'caution' thing."

            "What do you mean?"

            "Well," I continue slowly thinking about the situation as I relay it in case I can see any obvious chinks in this psycho's prepared defenses.  "All the lights are on in the place so I can't tell where he's holed up.  Plus there's music blaring over a stereo so I can't hear a thing going on inside.  Those are both a pain, but they're not the biggest issue."

            "And what issue would that be?"

            "There's smells everywhere out here.  More smells than there should be.  Normally I'd just be picking up the faint scent of people, grass, animal poo and other assorted neighborhood scents that are easy to ignore and categorize."

            "And now?"

            "Now I can pick out vanilla and cinnamon and peaches and onions and peppers and bacon and coffee and another dozen or so I'm still trying to filter out.  And they're all strong.  And they're all concentrated within his house.  My sense of smell is all but useless," I continue and squat back down behind the fence and do my best to exhale out of my lungs all the pollutants I had just snorted into them.

            With my sense of smell not only negated, but actually a hindrance to me right now (the smells are both distracting and irritating), I do my best to focus on breathing through my mouth and tuning out everything else.

            "I don't like it, Cat," he says with a whisper over the microphone.  "I don't see how he could know about your abilities, but at the same time I can't believe this is a coincidence.  Maybe if it was just one of those things.  But all three?  He knows you're coming.  And he's prepared his house for it."

            "Yah, that's what I was starting to suspect also," I tell him and stare glumly at the brightly lit house sitting several dozen feet away from me across the backyard.  I know this man is evil.  I can feel it.  And he thinks he's better than me.  And smarter than me.  And he's laughing at me.  Wherever he is, I can feel his laughter crashing against me in the dark night.  I can feel it, and it infuriates me.

            "I don't care, Ren," I say suddenly and stand up so that I can good a look at the house that is guarding me from my prey.  "I'm faster than him, stronger than him and I may not be smarter than him, but I am a better person.  And that has to count for something."  I nod my head in the dark even though Renny can't see me, and I start examining the houses on either side of Chadwick's.  They're taller than his, and that's all I need for the plan that starts forming in my mind.

            "He doesn't win tonight.  He can't win.  I'm going in that house and heaven help anything that tries to stop me."  I turn and begin slowly jogging towards the house that is to the east of his.  It's the larger of his neighbor's houses and fortunately also the one that doesn't have any lights on in it.  It'll work perfectly for my plan.

            "Only one of us is coming out of that house tonight, Ren," I say and increase my speed as I sprint across the adjoining backyard and leap up into the air and onto the brickwork of the house's second story.

CHAPTER TWENTY

            My impromptu plan is to get on to the roof of Chadwick's house by jumping from the higher roof of the one next door.  My goal is to land on his roof as silently as possible and that by having not entered his yard I will not have alerted him to my presence.  Once I'm on top of his abode, then I can sneak in, locate him without him being aware of my presence and force a confession out of him.  And then I can see about turning him over to the authorities.

            It seems solid to me, so I relate it to Ren while I finish searching the neighbor's roof for a good launching spot.

            "The plan's fine, Cat, but I still don't like it," he tells me after listening to what I have to tell him.  "I just don't like you being in the same house as him.  Especially if he's ready for you.  I don't care how strong and fast you are; his brains might still trump your brawn.  I don't want to see you get hurt."

            "Ren!" I interject before he can continue.  "I've got superhuman strength and..."

            But he cuts me off before I can get any further.  "I know, I know.  I can't stop you from going in there, I'm aware of that.  I'm just giving you a hint of caution.  Remember the immortal words of Han Solo, 'Don't get cocky, kid.'  And he was speaking to a future Jedi!"

            His reference makes me smile and relaxes me a bit (he doesn't tap into pop culture very often, so his few attempts stand out).  "Thanks Ren.  I'll keep my mic on while I'm there.  Radio those cops down there if anything goes south."

            "Copy," he says and before giving me three clicks and going silent on his end. 

            Eyeing the distance between the houses, I determine how much speed and energy will be needed to both carry me across the gap
and
get me to land safely without sounding like a dead reindeer plummeting from the sky.  With my increased power and hyped-up senses from my previous run-in with the thugs in the Caddy, the actual jump across the couple dozen yards isn't what worries me (And that fact still doesn't cease to amaze me!).  It's the immediate need to disperse that momentum upon landing without thumping down.  I'm going to need to be agile as well as fast and strong.

            Closing my eyes, I envision what I'm about to do and will myself to be successful.  This
will
work.  It
has
to.  I have righteousness on my side.

            Dropping into a sprinter's stance, I push my energy into my legs and jettison away towards the edge of the building.  Half a dozen feet from the end of my makeshift runway I do a small leap into the air and land on both feet and bend my knees so that they can act like a spring.  Straightening them as quickly as possible, with an almost audible
pop
, I fire myself up and out and over the chasm between the two buildings rotating myself into a flip as I sail through the air.  Landing on my shoulders and upturned hands, I begin a roll across his sloped roof that quickly depletes my built up speed while still causing a minimum of sound.  To anyone in the attic of the house (and I'm hoping that would be nobody), it would sound like a squirrel or a raccoon scurrying across the shingles in the night.  Anyone lower in the house shouldn't be able to hear anything at all.  Especially with the music as loud as it is.  But better to be safe than sorry. 

            I come up out of my roll near the corner of the house and stand up to knock off any asphalt flakes from myself that I might have collected from the shingles.

            "Landed safely," I whisper.  "Looking for an entry point."

            A scan of the roof gives me a number of options (a chimney, a bathroom fan vent), but only one I deem as actually feasible (a one-foot square grill opening built into the side of the house to vent pent-up attic heat).  Leaning over the side of the house, I grab the slats of the grill with both hands and yank outwards.  It pops off with little effort, and I set it next to me on the slanted roof (My first instinct had been to just rip it off and toss it out into the yard and not worry about it, but then I realized Ren would chastise me about being foolish and possibly alerting Chadwick if he happened to see it fall past a window.  Sometimes I have to choose discretion over visceral joy.  Stupid maturity.).

            Sliding my hands into the narrow opening, I push against the inside wall and use it to brace myself as I pull my way into the hole.  It's a tight fit, but sometimes being petite pays off (or "fun-sized" as my non-height-challenged sister calls it).

            "I'm in," I say and turn my body around so that my feet hit the attic's wooden crossbeams first.  "Just the attic, though.  Going to find a way onto his upper floor."

            The pink cotton candy of the house's insulation does a decent job of muffling both the sounds being played over speakers a few floors below me (It now sounds like a guitar-heavy, screechy hairband or some other annoying old music my dad would listen to.) and the smells emanating from the lower levels.  It's a nice reprieve from the constant onslaught my senses have undergone the last several minutes.

            But with the release from the stimulus overload of the sounds and smells comes a flood of memories to fill the void.  I remember the last time I snuck in through a house's attic in the middle of the night in order to right a wrong against a man I felt was truly evil.  It was the first night I willingly used my powers to kill another human being, and it was something I swore I would never do again.

            "But this is different," I hiss out loud not caring about my microphone and what it might pick up.  "I'm not
planning
on killing Chadwick this time.  And I
know
he is both guilty and evil.  It's not the same thing."

            Shaking my head to clear away the images of that bedroom from nearly a year ago, I reply to Ren's questioning clicks over my speaker even before he's even finished sending them.

            "Just a personal conversation with myself, Renny.  Don't worry about it.  I'm fine."

            Gently working my way across the large empty space, I look for some kind of hatch down into the rest of the house.  The attic is unfinished and there's nothing around me but tufts of the fluffy pink insulation and spider webs, but it still takes me several minutes to find the indentation in the ground covering that gives away where a hatch is located.  All my movements have made small squeaking sounds in the wood as it settles beneath my weight, but I doubt it would sound like anything more than the house settling.  And that's even if I could be heard over the rumble of sound coming from below me.

            My entryway into the house presents another problem:  how do I get through it without alerting someone on the other side?  I could lift it up slowly and peek around and hope that it doesn't open into an area where he might be sitting.  But I run the risk of him noticing my slow arrival and retaliating. 

            Or do I jump and plunge through so that I arrive in a shower of splintered wood and torn pink clouds but maintain the advantage of surprise? 

            Tough choice.

            Ren would advise me to go slowly and cautiously, and he's been right so far.  Even if that particular approach goes against my current desire to release energy and get this showdown started, I'd also rather not risk being shot at.  Plus, on the bright side, if I choose his way and it goes wrong then I can lord it over him and feel superior.  Not the option I’d prefer, but it is one I’d be willing to settle for.

            "Going in slowly through the hatch to look around, so keep your ears open."

            I try to take a deep breath before proceeding but between the smells trickling up through the floorboards beneath me and the irritating shards of fiberglass already swirling around the air from my walk through the gum-colored clouds, taking air
into
my lungs is almost too painful.  Time to breathe shallowly and try to tune out as much stimulus from there as I can (It's like 'radio silence' for my breathing passage.).

            With only a little effort, the square hatch pulls free from its nest, and I set it gently aside on top of the nearest crossbeam.  The area below me is darker than I expected, and I'm immediately suspicious after seeing how much of the house was lit up from outside.

           
Did he hear me up here?  Did he just kill the lights in an attempt to ambush me?  But if so, then why is the music still blaring?  And if he seems to know me so well, then doesn't he know I can see in the dark better than him?
  The questions tear through my mind as I stare at the empty black hole into the house below me.        

            And then as my eyes adjust to a darkness I hadn't been expecting, I realize what I'm looking at and I almost giggle.

            "It's a closet," I say for Ren's benefit.  "It opens into an empty closet."

            Leaning over and poking my head down through the hole, I can see that it's a large walk-in closet completely devoid of any clothes or storage items.  Flipping around and lowering myself down past the shelves and clothing racks that had originally obscured part of my view, I land on the soft carpet and turn around until I'm facing the door (It's easy to locate in the gloom since a shadow of light is leaking in around its edges silhouetting the large rectangle.).

            "Going to the door," I say and try to ignore the fact that "Ren's cautious approach" was the better choice in this case.  Crashing through the ceiling here would
not
have helped me at all.  I decide I can tell him later how smart he is.  There’s no need to rush and give him extra time to revel in that particular glory.

            Normally I'd like to listen at the door for sounds of someone on the other side, or at least sniff the doorjambs and hope to glean some information from that.  But both of those options have currently been removed so that means I'm going through this door blind.  There could either be a room full of people on the other side throwing a wild party and I'm about to burst into the middle of it, or it could be completely empty.

            It wasn't until losing the advantage of my senses that I realized just how much I had come to rely on them for what I do.  I understand this must be what a completely normal person would feel like in this situation, and I don't like it.  I don't think I want to be completely normal anymore.  I like being able to do what I do.  Or at least what I
did
before this guy came along and made it all more difficult.

            "I have no idea what's on the other side of this door.  Opening and going slowly."

            I figure the slow approach worked with the ceiling, so I might as well stick with it a little bit longer.  Twisting the door handle and cracking it just the slightest bit I push my eye against the slit that forms and look out into the room trying to brace myself for whatever I might see.

            But it's empty.  Completely empty.  Just a single light fixture on the ceiling throwing off a hundred or more watts of light into what I suspect was designed to be a large, cavernous bedroom.  Weird.  Not only that he would leave the lights on like this, but that the room would be so devoid of any decoration or furniture.  Maybe he just never got around to using this room?

            "Clear.  Moving to the outer door."

            Pulling the closet door shut behind me and padding across the thick, expensive carpet, I make it to the open hallway door without incident (not that there's much in the room to cause me any problems).  The hall just outside the room is also brightly lit, and after a quick peek in both directions I discover it, like my current room, is also empty.

            "Clear.  Moving to the hallway."

            But which direction do I go?  To the right and towards the opening that leads to the downstairs, or to the left so that I can check the other rooms in the house.  I have a pretty strong sense that he is downstairs (or at least
something
is drawing me in that direction), and I want to confront him as soon as possible.  But, at the same time, following Ren's mental advice of taking it cautiously has paid off so far.  And it's probably better to clear the upstairs rooms to make sure nobody can sneak up behind me when I do finally make it down.

            "Checking the rooms.  I see five doors."

            Here in the actual house without any insulation to deaden it, the smells and sounds from before are nearly maddeningly powerful.  It's all I can do to turn off those senses and focus all my energy into more productive directions.  My nose in particular is hit with so many competing scents at once that it almost locks my brain in place.  Plugging my nostrils with two fingers and breathing through my mouth, I redouble my efforts to block out every stimuli that I can.  It goes against every precaution that I can think of, but it's a necessary one in order to allow me to keep a handle on my sanity.

            The exploration of the upper level is a quick affair as two of the doors lead to empty bedrooms and one leads to an empty hallway closet.  The fourth door is a bathroom that appears to have never been used (not even toilet paper in the decorative roll holder), and the final door leads to the master bedroom.

            The master bedroom shows the first signs of having had anyone living in it in any period of time, but even that bit of evidence is sparse.  There is a neatly made queen-sized bed pushed against the far wall (No headboard, no nightstands, and the sheets, pillows and blanket are all a stark white.  I'm not sure anyone has ever actually slept in the thing, but at least it's furniture.), and a spartan collection of clothes in the one large closet (four plain t-shirts, three pairs of jeans, a half dozen socks and two folded pair of boxers).  I check the adjoining bathroom not expecting to find much, and I'm rewarded with exactly what I was suspecting: one towel, one small bottle of shampoo, one toothbrush and one small travel-sized tube of toothpaste.  Everything is arranged neatly and carefully laid out in a way that makes it look as if nothing had ever been used.  As far as I can tell, he just purchased these items, placed them in the room in locations where he figured normal people would leave them and walked away without ever touching them again.  It's spooky.