Son of Cerberus (The Unusual Operations Division Book 2) (18 page)

“Yay,” Julie clapped. “I’m so excited I get to see you in person. You know, you’re sort of like a rock star; always on the road while he runs across the globe doing a bunch of exciting stuff.”

“Shut it,” Marcus said, stifling a yawn. “Do I get to see you tonight or no?”

“It’s pretty obvious, Marcus. I’ll be at your house making dinner for you. Shall I draw up a bath, too?”

“Only as long as it’s big enough for the two of us,” Marcus said seriously. “I’ll see you later sweety. I am going to fall asleep here any second.”

“Okay. Love you,” she said, kissing the screen and leaving a red tint where she had been before. “Bye.”

“Love you, too,” Marcus said before flipping the tablet off onto the chair beside him. He had been doing his best to keep his eyes open, but he felt them getting heavier and heavier. Soon, he realized he was dreaming something nice and forgot all about the mission they had just endured.

Amy had never been more confused in her life. She could hardly remember the last few days and still had no recollection of her past life. Instead, she felt as if she had been drugged by someone attempting to get her to remember something she had long forgotten. Things that should have been very easy for her to remember were all but gone.

For instance, Amy was having a very hard time looking at herself in the mirror. She remembered, for some reason, having short brown hair. Now, she had a pixie-style cut that was pure black. Her eyes she remembered being a deep blue, yet now they were brown. Her olive complexion had once been white, she was sure of that. She felt as if a book she had read was slowly taking over her mind, leaving behind false memories in place of her reality.

“How are you feeling?” the woman—she couldn’t remember her name—asked. “Are you okay, my dear?”

“Fine,” she answered coolly. Her voice was soft and sweet, much different than what she had anticipated. “I feel fine.”

They had retreated back to the apartment in New York that she had remembered. The place was turning into somewhat of a home base for them, since they did more traveling than sitting. She spent ample amounts of time in her room, alone, unless Gelda came in. She had been thoroughly enjoyable since her latest ‘treatment’ and Amy was starting to feel a strange affinity toward her.

“Do you remember me, at all?” Gelda asked.

Amy looked at her. She sat in her bed wrapped in the soft fleece of a throw blanket. Her long legs were covered in nothing and the short shirt she wore hardly covered her panties, yet she felt no shame. Comfort was her primary concern, and it felt better to let her legs breathe and wrap soft blankets around them when she was cold.

Something about Gelda had changed since they had visited the abandoned lumber mill. She was not just another woman now. Instead, the long hook nose and too-red lips, the mess of hair and way she smoked her cigarettes constantly; all of it felt as if she had seen the woman do the same things a thousand times before. They were, for lack of a better word, alluring to Amy. She felt a strange attraction, much more than just curiosity, for Gelda.

Even the more attractive men who had helped Amy didn’t have this effect on her. Edwardo, the man who had been with her since the start, was a gorgeous specimen. His strong jawbone and muscles stuck out at angles that Amy hadn’t seen on regular men. But when she looked at Gelda, it stirred something inside, even if she was another woman. The same could not be said for Edwardo.

“Do you remember anything about me at all?” Gelda asked again.

“I remember the way you smell,” Amy said, standing suddenly. Something was compelling her to approach Gelda and she didn’t fight it. Instead, she simply embraced the feeling of something familiar. “I remember the way your hands feel cold after you smoke your cigarette.”

Amy took Gelda’s slightly trembling hand. It felt cold and bony, just the way Amy had anticipated it would.

“I don’t remember your name, or where you come from.” Amy moved around the back of Gelda like a predator, slowly trailing her hand around her waist. “I can’t remember how old you are. I don’t remember exactly where we met, but I know it was a long time ago. It was somewhere near the water. That was the first time I smelled you.”

Amy couldn’t resist the feeling. She plunged her nose into Gelda’s hair, breathing the smell of conditioner, sweat, and cigarettes deep into her lungs. “I remember how you can’t stop giggling when I blow into your ear.”

Gelda giggled, a deep, gravelly sound. She was obviously uncomfortable, yet somehow enjoyed this experience nonetheless.

“Gelda,” Amy recalled her name at last. “You were mine.”

Gelda stepped away from Amy’s embrace and turned to face her. Her eyes were deep with emotion. Tears welled beneath the deep colors that took Amy in. Her smile was something Amy could not describe. If it were a portrait, it would have been the Mona Lisa. It embodied all things good, everything Amy could remember enjoying in her life.

“You’re starting to feel better.” Gelda sounded suddenly professional as she smoothed her shirt nervously. “You’re going to need rest, my darling. Please lie down and take a nap. It’s getting late, anyway.”

“Not without you,” Amy said, but suddenly she felt weak and swayed on her feet. Gelda rushed forward to grab her and walked her gingerly to the bed. The woman genuinely cared for Amy and she had been so stupid to have treated her as if she were a stranger. She wished that she could go back in time to when they were first reunited and kiss her on her lips.

Amy sat on the bed. With guidance from Gelda, she put her head on the pillow and wrapped herself in the soft fleece blankets. Her friend then climbed gingerly over her and wrapped her arms around Amy, comforting her with her smell and her embrace. She couldn’t understand just yet why Gelda meant so much to her, but she was certain already she loved that woman. For some reason, she loved her with all of her heart.

“Don’t leave me,” Amy said quietly. “Please don’t go.”

“I won’t,” Gelda answered, pulling her tighter into her embrace. Amy forced herself to move again, to twist in Gelda’s embrace. She pushed her face into Gelda’s, to smell her breath and see her eyes once more. A single tear had spilled out over her nose, leaving a drop on the pillow beneath her.

“Don’t cry,” Amy said quietly, then kissed her on the lips. Gelda replied with something more passionate than Amy had anticipated, yet she enjoyed it. A flood of memories spilled into her brain, letting her know she had done this many times before. Any and all shame left her, knowing that Gelda was truly someone important to Amy. She tried to continue, but wave after wave of fatigue washed over her until she could keep her body turned on no longer.

“Someone is trying to get us, aren’t they?” Amy said, acting off of a suspicion she felt. She had no idea whether or not people were following them, yet somehow she could feel an apprehension coming from Gelda.

“Don’t worry about them,” Gelda answered. “They will be dealt with in due time.”

She relaxed—warm and comfortable in her lover’s embrace. After just a few moments, she was asleep. In the darkness behind her eyes there was no mask waiting for her. There were no specters waiting to greet her with kind, smiling eyes. Instead, she saw a little girl. The girl, more legs than torso, sat with her knees pulled tightly to her chest. She looked as if she were expecting something, something bad.

Brenda left before Marcus and the rest of the team had arrived. She had a short helicopter ride to an airport near the New York city holding the man who had been accused of killing his friend. She then took another forty minute cab ride to the county jail. It wasn’t a downtown precinct, to be sure. Instead, Brenda had the sneaking suspicion that she was somewhere in the boondocks.

Walking in with her attire, NSA badge, and briefcase full of paperwork made Brenda look far more important than she really was. In fact, without the help of Gregory Scott, her boss, she wouldn’t have made it past the front door. As it stood, she was already on her way back to see the alleged ‘killer’.

He was a good looking white man in his mid-forties. His thick beard was brown with small streaks of gray and his eyes were the color of mud. He didn’t smile, didn’t flinch, and didn’t raise his eyes as Brenda walked into the interrogation room. Instead, he simply wrung his hands and then took a cup of water between his cuffed hands. His legs were both wrapped in huge bandages with ice packs down the front.

“Derek, is it?” she asked, kindly. “I heard you recently ran into some form of trouble.”

“You could say that,” he answered. His voice was soft with worry. “Apparently I killed my best friend.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Brenda muttered, putting herself into one of the straight backed chairs. “My name is Brenda Vaughn. I’m here to cross-examine you as a possible witness to something related to your case. I hear you had some delusions before you stabbed your buddy?”

“You could say that,” Derek answered. “But you could also say I killed him in cold blood, just like the cops are speculating.”

“Nonsense,” Brenda pressed on. She pushed the top of a pen down, starting the miniature recording device hidden in her lapel. Everything he said was on video, yet he would never know. “I have reason to believe what you were telling the police is true. Before I rule out the possibility of you being a cold blooded murderer, though, could you please describe what happened?”

“Sure,” Derek answered. “We’re getting…
were
getting ready for a big hike through the Appalachian Trail. We have hiked this same route like fifteen or twenty times in preparation for it. It’s long and it runs up through the hills—just the right topology to get us ready for something more rugged. You don’t train on the bunny trail before hitting the extreme slopes.

“So on our way, we didn’t smoke anything crazy. I’ve had some weed in the past, even shrooms, but nothing has ever done anything to me like what happened out there.”

“Can you describe it?”

“Sure, I have a few times already, but I don’t mind living the nightmare again. We sat down for lunch and I was eating when we heard some girl screaming. It was coming from this old abandoned sawmill we know about. Brian and I ran to see what was going on, but we ended up hitting something like a brick wall of…crazy.”

“Can you explain what you mean please?” Brenda pressed. “I’m not familiar with what a brick wall of crazy feels like.”

Derek smiled a sinister smile. He obviously felt slighted.

“I felt like I was going to vomit. The world started tilting in all directions at once, and there were flames on the ground where there had not been any before. I hit the ground, on my hands and knees, to try and steady myself. I can’t remember hearing anything, exactly, but I do remember looking down at my own hands. They were bloody, all cut up like they had been put through a meat grinder.

“All I could manage to do was sit there, holding myself steady on the ground as my entire body looked like it was on fire.”

“What do you mean by that?” Brenda asked, writing a few notes on a piece of paper.

“I couldn’t feel anything hurting me,” he said. “I couldn’t feel the flames melting my skin off, like they should have been doing. All I remember is that I could see everything. Because I could see it and because I had been thrown off all unsteady like I had been, I knew it was real. I saw children in the fire. They were dying—screaming my name and dying.”

Brenda breathed long sigh. She could already tell the effects this man had felt were the same that had been reported before. The entire story lined up perfectly.

“When I looked up, there was some goddamn creature looking down at me.” Derek started to tremble. His hands shook and tears welled up in his eyes. “It had wings, like torn skin, and fangs and blood and it was covered in hornets or spiders or wasps…”

Brenda could see the man was being genuine. One of her unique talents, one of the very reasons she worked for the UOD, was that she could read people. She had been recruited to the intelligence field at a very young age and since then she had been utilized to analyze every kind of data ever created. That included confessions.

This man believed what he was saying.

“Anyway,” he continued. “I reacted out of instinct. I had never even imagined something so horrible. For a few minutes, I thought I had been sent to hell. I ended up shoving my knife up into the belly of whatever that creature was.  I didn’t stop to see what it was; I ran away. I ran as far as I could as fast as I could and then I ran some more. I didn’t stop until I got back to my car. My shoes came untied and I kept running. I have stress fractures in both of my shins, but I just kept running through them. I vomited twice, but I never stopped. I thought the creature had got my friend, but I couldn’t force myself to let up.

“That’s when I called the police. They came up and investigated the area, then put me in cuffs and took me away.”

Brenda sighed heavily. She couldn’t just tell the local police officers they were wrong. This was going to take some serious paperwork, but she believed him.

“You’re going to be hearing from us again very soon, Derek. I believe what you have said and I believe you’re going to need to join some sort of protection program until this case is solved. You’re going to be under quarantine here, too. No one is going to talk to you, not even a lawyer, for the next few days. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Not really, no,” Derek answered honestly.

“I mean that you’re going to be hearing from me again very soon, but until then you are not to speak with anyone about your experiences. Even your lawyers will be notified that they are to leave you alone until we contact them. Also, I believe the safest place you can be right now is in this jail.”

“So you’re leaving me here and stripping me of my constitutional rights?”

“You can think of it that way,” she said coldly. “Or you can thank me for getting you out of a lifelong prison sentence which just might end with you on the wrong end of a lethal injection.”

He swallowed the information he had just been given. He didn’t have many options, it seemed, but Brenda seemed serious. Somehow he had made a powerful friend in the NSA by killing his best friend. Though it didn’t make him feel any better, at least he had hope that he would see his family again.