It all finally ended with a dull pulse of white light, and then there was nothing. Everything was gone.
Angela knew that she had just been inside a human mind as its thoughts died away, as the spark of life left the cells and synapses, as brain tissue transformed into dead, meaningless matter.
She had just felt a soul pass out of existence.
She was amazed at how long those threads of thought and memory had persisted after the body was clearly dead.
Angela sat there in the moonlight for a long time, the dead brain in her hands, reliving over and over those frantic streams of visions. They were not visions of him killing anyone. These visions were completely different. It was like seeing the world through his eyes, through his thoughts, in little snippets of fading memories of recent events.
It left her stunned and wondering at what kind of freak of nature she must be to be able to do such a thing.
It was the craziest, creepiest thing she had ever experienced. And, it was positively exhilarating. She reveled in having killed this man with her bare hands and of the experience of seeing his last, desperate, dying thoughts, knowing she was the one who had brought them to an end.
The monster was dead. She was alive.
After sitting on his dead body for a time, savoring the realization that she had carried out her promise to herself to kill the man who had murdered her grandparents, after she had cried for a time in grief, rage, and relief, her chest no longer heaving with the emotion of it, she finally got up. She was drenched in blood. The blood of the man who had killed Vito and Gabriella.
She was drenched in victory, in glory.
Angela opened her arms, blood dripping from her fingers, as she leaned back to look up at the full moon and howl in triumph.
Angela finally hiked back home and got dressed in some old clothes even though she was still covered in blood.
Then, she put on the boots her grandfather had bought her that day in the thrift store. They were too tight to wear comfortably, but she could wear them. For this, she could wear them.
She retrieved her knife from her boot in the bedroom and collected a bunch of heavy-duty black plastic garbage bags from the kitchen. She picked up a small hatchet her grandfather had used to split kindling. With everything she needed in hand, she went back to the site where Cassiel lay dead.
The monster was far too big and heavy for her to carry him back to the hell hole. So, Angela worked to cut off his arms and legs by disjointing them at his shoulders and hips with her knife. She used the hatchet to chop through tough sinew. She cut the legs into two sections to make them short enough to fit in a plastic bag.
She carried the limbs inside black plastic bags back to her house. The arms were surprisingly heavy, but she found she could carry both in one bag. She unceremoniously tossed it down through the open hatch into the hell hole.
The legs were heavier. She had to take the legs one at a time, each in two pieces to fit in a plastic bag, and threw them down the abyss. The bags contained the blood and kept it from dripping all over her house until she could throw them down the hell hole.
The torso was too heavy to carry, so she gutted it like a deer. Once she had scooped out his intestines and dumped them to the side, she reached in and tore all the organs out of his chest cavity. The guts and organs would be gone within a day, carried away in the stomachs of coyotes and scavenger birds. Bugs would consume any scraps.
She cut off what was left of his head and put it in one black plastic bag, then put the torso in another. She found that she could sling the bag with the torso over her shoulder. It wasn’t easy, but it was satisfying work carrying it back.
The most satisfying part, though, was looking at his crushed face as she stood over the hell hole. The jaw was only attached at one side. Everything was largely unrecognizable, except to her, of course, because she knew what she was looking at.
She gripped the remainder of the head by the hair. She held it out over the hell hole for a long, satisfying moment and then let it drop. The black plastic bag she’d carried it in had a couple of large fragments of the skull and various other unrecognizable, gooey bits. She tossed the whole thing down the hole.
After she was finished, she threw every stitch of her clothes down the hole.
It felt like closure to toss in the beloved boots her grandparents had bought her. It seemed only fitting. She had used them to avenge their murder. They were covered in Cassiel’s blood.
Once finished, she hosed down the basement and herself, then went upstairs and took a shower.
When she had finished, she got dressed, then called Jack.
Then she sat down on the living room floor to wait.
SIXTY-ONE
The cable was still hooked across the driveway up to Angela’s house. Jack had helped her put it up only a few hours earlier. Since it was locked on, he simply parked by the side of the road and got out to walk.
He didn’t know why she had called him. All she’d said was “Can you come over to my place?” He had only been asleep himself for a few hours. “Now?” he’d asked. She said, “Yes.” Something in her voice made the hairs on his arms stand on end.
While he didn’t know what was going on, he realized that there had to be some kind of trouble. The trouble should be over. They had found the nuke, called in help, and prevented the terrorists from detonating it. Angela had been taken into custody by people wanting to use her for their own political ends, but he had put a stop to that.
Everything seemed to be in order. Now, for some reason, it wasn’t.
The walk up the road to her house crossed a beautiful meadow. Up ahead, lit by the light of the full moon high overhead, he could see twin mountains. He hadn’t seen it before, but he knew that Angela’s house was somewhere in the woods at the base of those mountains. They weren’t enormous mountains, like out West. Rather, they were the typical, smaller, rounded mountains of the Northeast.
As he left the meadow, he entered a forest of virgin wood. The pine, spruce, and balsams smelled wonderful. He could also see the leaves of maples and an enormous oak gently moving in the light breeze as if welcoming him into an inner sanctum. Those leaves would soon be turning color. He imagined fall would be beautiful in these mountains.
Jack found Angela’s house nestled among towering fir trees, right at the base of those twin mountains. It was as idyllic a setting as he could imagine.
He stepped up on the porch of the brick home and knocked on the door. Angela called out for him to come in.
The living room wasn’t big, but it looked cozy and inviting. One light in the hall to the left was on but the living room was mostly lit by scented candles.
Despite the comfortable-looking couch and chairs, Angela was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor. She had on shorts and was barefooted. Her nails and makeup were freshly done. Her hair was perfect. Her lipstick looked like she was ready for a night on the town.
Jack didn’t know what was going on, but she looked to be in an eerie mood. Rather than question, he simply sat on the floor in front of her and crossed his legs.
After a moment of staring into her own thoughts, she finally looked him in the eye, as if finally noting his arrival.
“Cassiel Aykhan Corekan came here a while ago—while I was asleep.”
Jack was instantly on high alert. He wanted to pull out a knife, but she didn’t act like there was any imminent danger.
“My god, Angela, what happened?”
“I killed him.”
Jack blinked at her. “You killed him?”
She nodded. “He was standing in my bedroom while I was asleep. He was watching me. I woke up. My gun was gone off the nightstand, so I ran.”
“Ran where?”
She flicked a hand back over her left shoulder. “Up Grandfather Mountain.”
Jack instinctively glanced in that direction even though there were no windows to see the mountain.
“And he followed you?”
&
nbsp; “Yes. So I killed him.”
“Are you sure he’s dead? I mean, are you positive?”
She turned around, leaned back, lifted one of those disposable, milky, semitransparent plastic bowls that were used for leftover casseroles and such, and set it down between them.
“This is his brain.”
Jack was momentarily stupefied. The smell told him why she had lit scented candles. The brain was lopsided, as if it had been partially crushed.
“Why in the world do you have his brain?”
She looked genuinely puzzled by the question. “I thought that maybe you would want to run DNA tests or something. He’s an international serial killer. I thought that a lot of people in other countries would want confirmation that it was him and that he was dead. I thought relatives would want the closure of knowing that the man who killed their family members was dead. I figured that if I only saved some blood, people could worry that he was still alive. So, I saved his brain for you, for proof.”
Jack’s jaw was hanging. Her cold, calm logic left him stunned. He stared down at the bloody brain in the plastic bowl. He finally found his voice.
“What happened? How did he die?”
“I bashed in his skull with a rock.”
“Oh. Well, that would do it.”
All kinds of questions were flying around in his head. But in the uncomfortable silence he wanted most to comfort her after such a violent ordeal. “I suppose you know that Angela means ‘angel’ in Italian.” She nodded. “Well, ‘angel’ means ‘messenger from God.’ So, I guess you were God’s messenger with Cassiel.”
“Not exactly. It may mean ‘messenger of God’ ordinarily, but it means something different in my case.”
Jack squinted a bit. “What does it mean in your case?”
“ ‘Wrath of God.’ ”
He could only stare at her. From everything he knew about her, and the things he suspected, he thought that maybe she had it right.
“If you don’t want his brain,” she said, “I’d be happy to get rid of it.”
Jack was dying of curiosity as to where the rest of him was, and how she had come to have only his brain, but he could tell that she had not called him to discuss the disposal of bodies.
“Did something else happen, Angela?”
She nodded. “Something really creepy.”
“Really creepy.” He tried to imagine something more creepy than having the man’s brain in a plastic bowl, but couldn’t, so he asked. “Like what?”
“Well, you know the way I could tell you all sorts of things about Cassiel when you showed me that photo?”
“Yes. I believe it’s because of your genetic makeup. Because of that, you somehow had visions of the things he did.”
“That happens with any killer,” she said. “You think it’s genetic, but I know I’m not normal. I know I’m a freak. But now I think that I may be an even bigger freak than I ever thought.”
“You’re not a freak, Angela,” he insisted, softly.
“I think maybe I have those visions because I’m meant to be here for something bigger than me. You know? I think that, in a way, I’m here to be the wrath of God.”
Jack didn’t want her to think of herself as a freak. He knew she wasn’t. She was something quite extraordinary.
“If it’s any comfort, I know other people with some of your ability, and I know of another woman, Kate, who could do things similar to what you can do. She can tell things from looking into a killer’s eyes, too.”
“Really?” She sounded hopeful.
“Yes, but nothing like you can,” he admitted.
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Well, anyway, after I split Cassiel’s skull open with a rock, I tore his brain away from the spinal cord and held it in my hands.”
Jack wondered why on earth she would do that, but he didn’t ask. “Go on.”
“As I was holding his brain in my hands, his memories were still firing. There was still some kind of electrical activity, or something, still functioning. I saw all kinds of things in my own mind that he’d seen recently. They were his memories.”
“Angela, I don’t think that’s possible. I mean, he was dead. You just said you’d split his skull open with a rock.”
“That’s just what I thought. But when I was holding his brain, still warm in my hands, I could see his thoughts. I don’t know how I could, but I could. Without a blood supply, his brain was rapidly dying—I could feel it happening—but it was still viable enough to have some rudimentary, primitive function.
“His brain was racing through recent memories. I could see them.”
Jack decided that rather than express doubt or offer alternate explanations he would keep it simple and let her explain her experience. He thought that after she had killed the man in such a horrific fashion it would be cathartic for her if he just listened and let her talk.
“Like what? What did you see?”
“I saw where he parked the car he stole to get here. It’s about a mile away. I could take you to it. It’s blue. I could see his memories of walking through the fields and then the woods to get to my house. I saw the memory of him using his knife to get in the back door. I saw his memory of using a little flashlight to look down at me in bed while I was asleep. I only had on panties. I saw his memory of getting an erection as he considered the things he was going to do to me.”
“How long did this go on—these memories?”
“Not long at all. They were going past a mile a minute—thousands upon thousands of them in little snippets. In my mind I could see them all, as if they were my own memories, my own thoughts, the way you can remember an entire event—sights, sounds, smells, people, conversations—all together in an instant. That’s what this was like. They were also fading away.
“I saw his brain die and his soul wink out of existence.”
“Okay,” Jack said as he let out a deep breath, “that is pretty creepy.”
Jack still didn’t know if what she described had really happened, or if it was merely her own mind dealing with the disorienting mix of rage, grief, and the enormity of killing a man with her bare hands. He also didn’t know why she needed to tell him this at five in the morning, before the sun was up.
“Angela, is there something about those memories that was particularly disturbing? Something you needed to tell me?”
A sudden tear ran down her cheek. She wiped it away.
“Yes. Later today—this afternoon—a lot of people are going to die. A lot of awful people.”
“What are you talking about? What people?”
Angela stared down at the brain.
“That growing nest of people in the powerful and corrupt ruling class. The arrogant people in the ivory towers who think they’re better than all the rest of us.” Her voice sounded bitter. “The people who make the laws to rule over everyone else, to control everyone else, but don’t have to follow those laws themselves because they’re above the law.
“I think the world would be better off without them.
“For a time, I thought about how fitting that would be—letting all those greedy, corrupt, lying, cruel, crooked, evil people wink out of existence. I thought it would be so good to let that happen.”
She looked up at him, her eyes beginning to well up. Tears overflowed to run down her cheeks. He didn’t know what she was talking about, but decided to let her explain it her way.
“I can imagine it happening, kind of like I can see killers murdering people. I can see the totality of it. It’s spellbinding, like watching a car sliding into a train, and knowing that the people you can see in that car are about to die…. and not caring.
“But then, as I got past the satisfaction over the thought of that overbearing elite class being gone, I started thinking about all the others.
“There are so many people who aren’t like that. You know? People who work hard to provide for their family. Despite all the bad people and all the evil that goes on day in and
day out, there are those other people who aren’t part of that. Simple people. Innocent people. People who only want to live their lives and enjoy those they love.”
Jack leaned in. “Angela, what are you talking about? Who is it that you think is going to die?”
“Lots of terrible people the world would be better off without, but also lots of innocent people who don’t deserve to die. People who fight every day to keep us all safe. People who work every day to keep their own families safe.
“Those people deserve to live their lives, kind of like the way innocent people get to live now that I killed Cassiel. He won’t be able to go on to slaughter any more innocent people. Those people will never ever know that they will get to live their lives because tonight I killed the monster who otherwise would have murdered them.
“But they don’t need to know that what I did saved them. I know. That’s all that matters.”
Jack listened to the candles sputtering for a moment. “I understand how lonely that can be, Angela. I work to eliminate that kind of person, too.”
“I know. I can see the things you’ve done in your eyes, the people you’ve killed, and why you do it. I can see you saving a woman named Kate. A woman you love.”
Jack swallowed. He tried to push those painful memories aside and instead focus on the problem at hand.
“So, as I thought about it,” she said, “even though it was momentarily satisfying to think of the justice of those people dying, I realized I couldn’t do it. There are far too many innocent lives at stake. I’m not a monster like the monsters you and I hunt. I’m not a murderer like the ones I kill.”
“That’s why I do what I can to help people like you, Angela.”
“Well, I could use your help, now.”
Jack shrugged. “Okay. What’s up?”
“There’s a second nuke.”
SIXTY-TWO
The hair on the back of Jack’s neck lifted and stood stiffly on end.
“What?”