Divine Vices (28 page)

“You’ve
got to be kidding me?!” I screamed, pounding my fists into the glass sheet at
the sight of a tire iron shoved through the door’s handle from the outside.

“What
are you waiting for?!” barked Jack.

“The
door’s been wedged shut!”

The
figure relentlessly pounced back up, and Jack snatched a pivot knife from the
cutting board on the countertop, wielding it hammer style.

The
attacker parried Jack’s next attempted strike, and with lightning reflexes,
disarmed him of the blade by driving Jack hard into the wall beside the bar
counter. Just as the assailant threw his elbow up, Jack averted the blow
directed at his face by ducking down. Once he had his chance, he smacked his
hands against the figure’s ear drums, causing the attacker to retract.

Grabbing
the mail holder on the table in the foyer, I smashed the small side window next
to the front door and stuck my hand outside to pry the iron out of the handle. Ripping
it free, I went to pull the storm door open when I heard a loud snap from
behind.

“Cassie,
move!” cried out Jack as footsteps began trampling down the hallway towards me.

Without
even turning, I leapt sideways, crashing into the living room carpet to see the
attacker rushing at the door. He started to change his course of direction en
route for me when Jack came bolting in from the kitchen, hooking his arms
around the assailant with rocketing momentum before taking them both straight
into the glass door in one swift motion.

They
disappeared from sight, the sound of the impact blasting like a gunshot. I
scrambled to my feet and charged into the doorway, seeing Jack exhaustedly
pulling himself off the edge of the glass covered porch and running down to the
street.

He
looked around despondently, hunched over as he tried to catch his breath. “Damn
it!”

“Where
is he?!” I called out.

“Gone.
Get back inside!” he demanded, heading back up to the house.

I
closed and locked the main door immediately behind him.

“You
okay?” he asked, looking me over.

“I’m
okay, I’m okay,” I said, scrambling for the phone to call the police. “Hi, yes,
my name’s Cassandra Foster. I live at 427 Avery Lane, and we just had a
break-in. Someone just tried to attack my friend and me... We need paramedics.”

Jack
looked back at me in alarm as I clicked the phone back on the hook switch.

“You
said you were okay.”

“I
am,” I said, grimly looking down at his left side.

“Oh...”
he murmured weakly, seeing a considerable slice of glass protruding from his
arm just a few inches down from his elbow.

“Don’t
touch it,” I ordered. “You don’t know what that may have hit.”

“It’s
okay. It really doesn’t hurt all that much. I’m fine,” he said with a feeble
smile. “Apparently glass and I don’t mix well.”

I
barely managed to chuckle, but as I did, tears began pouring down my cheeks.

“Hey,
hey,” he said, wrapping his good arm around me. “It’s okay. We’re gonna be
fine.”

The
street was ablaze with flashes of red and blue lights from the swarm of squad
cars parked out front. Just as Benson began questioning me, my dad came running
up to the driveway in hysterics.

“That’s
my daughter!” he exclaimed to a cop who was refusing him passage.

“Let
him through,” Officer Benson said, waving his hand forward.

“Jesus,”
my dad cried, wrapping his arms around me so tight that it actually impaired my
breathing. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?!”

“She’s
perfectly fine,” assured Benson, “just as I said to you on the phone.”

“I’m
fine,” I affirmed.

“The
kid took a good beating though,” the officer said, pointing to the ambulance
parked at the end of the driveway. “Be thankful he was here.”

“You’re
gonna need stitches,” confirmed the paramedic to Jack as the three of us headed
over to the ambulance.

“I
can’t begin to thank you,” said my dad, shaking Jack’s hand.

“We’re
gonna need to ask you both some more questions,” addressed another officer.

“Can
you do it at the hospital? He needs to get patched up,” said the paramedic.

“Sure.”

My
dad and Benson stepped away from the ambulance as I gave Jack a gentle hug.

“If
it’s okay, can I stop by later to check in on you?” he said softly.

“Yeah,
I’m probably gonna be at the bar though. I doubt that my dad’s gonna want to
stay here tonight,” I replied.

“I’ll
be there.”

“Ready
to go?” called out the driver.

“Yep.”

“Miss!
Miss! You can’t go in there without authorization!” shouted the two police
officers stationed outside the Rockhouse.

“It’s
okay,” confirmed my dad.

Gwen
immediately burst into the bar and tackled me with a bear hug. “I just got your
message! Oh my god! I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner! What the hell
happened?”

Clearly
given the hour and my dad’s plummeting energy level from his rattled nerves, I
knew that this conversation would be best served in the backroom, away from his
office.

“Babe...”
she whispered, seeing me still shaking as I closed the door behind us.

“I
don’t know,” I spat out. “I don’t know... You hear anything from Ian?”

“No,
I’ve been trying to reach him, but he hasn’t returned any of my messages.”

I
wearily fell back into the couch, still shaking like a leaf. “Well, one thing’s
for certain. We can remove Jack from the list of suspects.”

“What
if this was about someone trying to get to him?” she asked, just as confusedly.

I
shook my head.

“You
sure? I mean, he is the kind of guy who attracts trouble. Look what happened
with your car. Was it really just a coincidence that it took place when he was
with you?”

“No,
they were there for me. I’m certain of that. This guy had a number of
opportunities to go out the side door when he was fighting Jack. He was
determined to get to me.”

She
sat down beside me and hugged me once more.

“This
still makes no sense,” I said, pouncing up from the sofa. “Jack and I were
there at the house talking. Whoever broke in knew someone else was home with
me, and I know for a fact they snuck upstairs after we got home.”

“How?”

“I
don’t know, but they wedged all the entrances shut with tools. They were
determined to kill me and nothing was going to get in their way.”

“You
notice anything about this guy that stood out? Tattoos? Piercings? Clothes?”

“I
already went over this with the detectives. I couldn’t see his face. He had a
hood on, and I’m pretty sure a ski mask of some sort. He was also wearing
large, shapeless clothes, so I couldn’t even say what kind of build he had. And
the harder I try to grasp at any fragment of memory I have, the more it seems
to slip away from me.”

Gwen
sat fidgetingly on the couch, fiddling with a DVD case in her hands.

“What?”
I asked, seeing her look up at me nervously.

“Nothing,”
she blurted. “It’s nothing, really. It can wait till tomorrow.”

“Gwen,
whatever it is, I’m eager to hear it. I need answers.”

“That’s
why tomorrow’s better,” she affirmed, “because the only thing this will do is
raise more questions.”

Before
she could react, I snatched the recording from her and ran it over to the
television. Ejecting the door on the player, I dropped the disc onto the tray
and quickly pushed it closed.

“Seriously,
you don’t have to watch that,” insisted Meyer.

“When
have you ever been hesitant in disclosing information to me?”

“Fine,”
she said, “toss me the remote.”

I
lobbed the clicker over to her and parked a seat beside her.

She
pressed PLAY. “Alright, I picked up some surveillance footage from the bar that
Brian Hanover was at the night his girlfriend disappeared. I know, I know. I
obtained it through less than reputable resources, but I needed to know what we
were dealing with here.”

“I’m
too concerned with the crazed lunatic after me to care about your indiscretions
at the moment, so please continue.”

She
looked at me a bit more agreeably as she fast-forwarded through the recording.
“Okay then... If you pay attention here, you can see Brian heading to the
washroom at about one o’clock.” Gwen pointed to a bumbling drunkard who
couldn’t walk upright without using support of the wall beside him as he headed
down the corridor. “Seems normal given how much alcohol was in his system, but
now...” She sped through the footage to a few minutes later when Brian returned
from the bathroom. “Look at him.”

He
walked down the hall without difficulty, appearing to be perfectly alert and
sober.

“Tell
me, what’s wrong with this picture?”

“He’s
somehow lying about how much he had to drink, obviously,” I said.

“Or...
something a bit sinister is at work.”

“Something?”

“Look
closer,” she said, zooming in on the footage. “You see his eyes? The entire
sockets are black.”

“Camera
glare?” I speculated.

“That’s
what I thought, at first. That brings us to the second part of my
presentation,” she said, skipping to the next chapter. The image was that of
the inside of a gas station. “I estimated the time line and tried to find all
the security footage that could track Justin Tither’s position on the night
that his girlfriend went missing as well. Look at the window right by the
counter.”

Sure
enough, Justin walked past the glass. Gwen rewound the footage and played it in
slow motion, pointing out the same peculiar eye effect.

“I
also had my guy run a thorough inspection of all other footage taken in the
area of the nights that both cases took place. Surprise, surprise. He stumbled
across a picture posted to Facebook by a local teenager of her and her friends
on the night of Brian Hanover’s case.” She pulled up the photo of a group of
girls huddled close together making goofy faces at the camera on a street
corner. “Notice who’s at the light?” Gwen pulled up a closer version of the
image, zoomed in on a particular driver stopped at the red light.

“Brian
Hanover,” I muttered, seeing clearly the exact same eerie effect in his eyes
once more. “What the hell...?”

“I
know, right? What do you think we’re dealing with here?” said Gwen. “Clearly neither
of these guys was in any state to do anything but be unconscious, so whoever
this is has to be an imposter.”

“Yeah,
but Brian and Justin look nothing alike. Bone structure, body type, height,
hair, everything.”

“Shape-shifter,”
declared Gwen.

“You
did not just say that.”

“What?
You have a better notion?”

“Better
than some fairytale folklore? Yeah, it was Bigfoot. Or Elvis.”

“Come
on! After everything that happened that night in the library, are you seriously
going to discredit that some sort of supernatural powers are at work in this
world?” sneered Gwen under a whisper.

“Fine,
but that doesn’t mean I’m about to start accrediting the possibility of
vampires, zombies, and werewolves too.”

She
gave me a hard shove. “I’m being serious here. Shape-shifter, trickster,
government experiment gone wrong. Call it whatever you want, but it’s still out
there walking around.”

A
knock registered on the door and we both jumped, only to see my dad poke his
head inside. Gwen fumbled with the remote, trying to turn off the video. The
disc ejected.

“Everything
okay in here?” he asked.

“Um,
yeah. Why-Why wouldn’t it be?” stammered Gwen.

“Oookay,
then... yeah.” My dad’s bewildered expression stayed with him as he closed the
door again. 

“You
really should get going,” I said to Gwen. “Go home. Get some sleep. One of us
needs it if we’re gonna figure this out.”

“You
sure you don’t want some company?” she asked.

“I’ll
be fine. I promise. I know your parents want you home, and I don’t blame them.
Besides, I think your suspicious behavior is only going to send up red flags
around here. Remember, there’s a slew of cops just outside.”

We
collected her things, including the disc, and I walked her to the front door as
my dad headed from the bar with a bottle of water in his hands.

“Good
night, Mr. Foster,” said Gwen.

“Night,”
he replied, still baffled.

“Call
me when you get home, okay? I want to know you made it there safely,” I said.

“Sure
thing.”

Gwen
turned and walked out the door as my dad closed his office door behind him.
Just as I was about to lock up, I noticed the Impala’s headlights flash from a
distance. Then my phone buzzed with a text from Gwen.

“LOOKS
LIKE YOUR DARK KNIGHT JUST ARRIVED.”

Gwen
waved as she pulled away, seeing Jack coming up to the front door. I waved to the
officers to confirm he could approach.

“Hey,
looks like they managed to save the whole arm,” I said, taking notice to his
bandages as I pulled the door open again.

“Yeah,”
he chuckled. “I just wanted to stop by, make sure you were okay.”

I
nodded. “I should ask you the same.”

“I’ve
had worse,” he said, pointing to his head.

“You
wanna come in?”

“I
really shouldn’t.”

“Please,”
I mouthed.

He
nodded.

I
placed my pointer finger over my lips and motioned to the backroom.