John finished his coffee and held up his cup. “May I?”
“But of course,” Elijah said.
“Would you like some more?” John asked, reaching for the man’s cup.
“Thank you,” he answered. “That’s very kind.”
John took Elijah’s cup, along with his own, and brought it to the urn.
“I’m not sure if you’ll recall, but when we spoke in the hotel lobby, you talked to me about containers and the things that were inside them,” John said as he pulled the spigot down and filled Elijah’s cup. “I had a strange sense then that you weren’t talking about coffee urns.”
“And that sense was correct,” Elijah said, taking the refilled cup from John. “Thank you again.”
“You were talking about the jar.” John filled his own cup. “The container we found in the basement of the home we investigated for our Halloween show, weren’t you?” He returned to his seat.
Elijah slowly nodded. “The jar was left there specifically for you and your wife to find,” he said. “The Coalition has followed through with some research on that home’s history, and found that much of the information that you received in order to consider the property for investigation had been tampered with, much of the research fabricated, the actual history far darker.”
Elijah placed his cup down upon his own coaster.
“I don’t believe that any of you were supposed to survive that Halloween night. You and yours were to die horribly, and the great evils contained within the jar released out into the world.”
“My wife,” John started, imagining her lying in her hospital bed.
“Your wife saved you, and quite possibly many other innocent lives, by taking those demonic spirits into herself.”
Elijah rose from his seat.
“The world has changed far more since that fateful All Hallows’ Eve night than you could possibly imagine, John,” Elijah said, coming around the desk. “Walk with me, won’t you?”
John set his cup down and did what was asked of him.
“It’s as if the jar was some sort of trigger,” Elijah explained as they walked down the long corridor to a set of stairs. “The first shot fired in a new war against the forces of light.”
They descended the steps to a first-floor level filled with multiple desks, computers, and office equipment, clashing with the walls, which were painted with old, and quite gruesome, representations of the Stations of the Cross, depicting Jesus’ torment and crucifixion.
“Interesting decorating choice,” John said, eyeing the art.
“Left over from the previous tenants, the Blessed Sisters of Christ,” Elijah explained. “The last sister of the order made me promise on her deathbed not to paint over it. As you can see, I keep my promises.”
There were people working busily at their stations, not even noticing that they were there.
“This is where we do our research,” Elijah explained. “Gathering information to determine whether or not we are to be involved. As you can see, we’re quite busy.”
A door at the far end opened and a thin man with a bald head entered the room, travel bag slung over his shoulder.
“Ah,” Elijah said in response. “Just the man I wanted you to meet.”
The man approached. He had dark circles beneath his eyes and moved like somebody who was exhausted.
“John Fogg, Griffin Royce—the man who kept your wife from harm.”
John gripped the man’s hand firmly and gave it a shake. “Thank you so very much.”
Griffin nodded, squeezing back. “She really didn’t need my help,” he said, and the expression on his face told John that something more had occurred, but before he could ask— “I was just explaining to John about the Coalition,” Elijah began.
Griffin studied him for a moment. “Think you’d fit right in,” he said. “Scarred just like the rest of us.”
“Scarred?” John asked, confused.
“Griffin is making reference to the fact that most of our members have been . . . damaged in some way by our encounters with the supernatural.”
John could still feel the burning sensation of his wife’s kiss upon his cheek.
“Don’t tell me you’re not sporting some scar tissue, John,” Griffin said. “I’ve read quite a bit about you, and your past—and remember I’ve spent some quality time visiting your wife.”
Suddenly John didn’t care much for this Griffin. “And what about you, Mr. Royce?” he asked coldly. “What scars do you carry.”
“A dead wife and an eight-year-old daughter who misses her mother something terrible are the thickest right now,” he said, his stare intense. “But as long as I’m with the Coalition, there will be more.”
The sudden friction between him and Griffin was almost palpable, and Elijah, obviously sensing that things could take a turn for the worse, stepped in.
“Why don’t you go and get some rest?” Elijah said, reaching out to take Griffin by the arm.
Griffin allowed himself to be moved along, but he kept his eyes on John.
“Yeah, I’m pretty exhausted,” he said. “Want to see Cassie, too.”
“Go on, then,” Elijah said. “I think she was in the garden waiting for you to return.”
“Nice meeting you, John Fogg,” Griffin said. “Maybe we’ll see each other again sometime.”
John said nothing as the man slowly turned and strolled through the office toward the stairs, the staff acknowledging him with nods or smiles as he passed.
“He’s rather—intense,” John said.
“That would be an accurate description,” Elijah said. “He lost his wife in a house fire when his daughter was just an infant.”
“Very sad,” John said. “You said that most members of the Coalition had been affected somehow by the supernatural. Was the paranormal involved with that?”
Elijah looked at him gravely. “His daughter, she caused the fire.”
“But she was just a baby. How . . .?”
“Pyrokinetic,” Elijah said. “She was upset, as babies can sometimes be, when her unique ability manifested.”
“She killed her mother,” John said, horrified.
“She doesn’t remember, and Griffin will never tell her,” Elijah said. “But Griffin remembers . . . he remembers everything.”
The room was silent then except for the clicking of computer keyboards as data were collected, as research was done.
“Why am I here, Elijah?”
“I would think it obvious,” Elijah said. “I want you to join us . . . I want for you to be part of the Coalition.”
John looked around the space, at the people as they scrutinized their computer screens searching for signs of something preternaturally amiss. He wondered about them, how the supernatural had touched each and every one of their lives.
“The world, and the many lives that live within, unbeknownst to most, are at constant war with the forces of the unnatural,” Elijah explained. “Since man emerged from the shadows into the light, we have been there to fight this war. Call us what you will—Demonists, the Coalition—some form of our brotherhood has existed to battle the forces of evil.”
“I’m sorry, Elijah. It’s good that something like that exists, but . . .”
“Even more so now—since that fateful Halloween night,” Elijah said. “The war has amped up, the attacks upon decency more pronounced. There appears to be a demonic incursion into the world since that night.”
“So you’re blaming me for the world quite literally going to Hell?”
“Of course not,” Elijah scoffed. “You and your team were targets. Whoever was responsible wanted you out of the way. Removed from the world so that you could not intervene in what’s to come.”
Elijah paused, hoping that his words were sinking in, that he might be swayed.
“Elijah, I can’t,” John said with a sad shake of his head. “My focus needs to be on my wife, curing her of her affliction if I can.”
The ol
d man sighed, obviously disappointed. “Of course,” Elijah said, “but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“I can’t give up before I try,” John said. “I’m not going to give up on her.”
“Of course you’re not,” Elijah said. He reached out and placed a hand on John’s shoulder. “But evil of this magnitude is quite corruptive and your time is limited. I fear that you might already be too late.”
“Which makes having access to the Demonists’ library all the more important.”
“Certainly,” Elijah agreed. “Everything will be at your disposal.”
“Thank you,” John said.
They left the control center and returned upstairs in silence. At Elijah’s office door they stopped.
“I’ll have a driver take you back to your hotel to retrieve your belongings and then drive you to the airport,” Eljah said.
“I appreciate it.”
“The pertinent materials to be found in the Demonists’ library will follow.”
“Again, I can’t thank you enough.”
Elijah smiled, the twisted side of his face becoming even more grotesque with the attempt.
“I wish you the best of luck,” he said, shaking John’s hand. “But if you should fail in your endeavors . . .”
“I can’t fail,” John said. “I refuse to accept that as an option.”
“Excellent,” Elijah said, stepping into his office. He took something from his desk. “But if things turn grim, and you start to lose hope.”
John took the business card with only a phone number printed on it.
“Call us,” Elijah said. “Perhaps there is something that might still be done.”
Elijah sat in his office reading through an extensive file on an ongoing FBI missing children investigation. There were some aspects in the report that made his facial injuries start to itch.
Always a bad sign.
A familiar knock landed upon the door.
“Come in, Griffin,” he said.
The Coalition agent stepped into the office, and Elijah noticed that he’d changed his clothes, and smelled freshly showered. “I thought you were going to sleep,” Elijah said, closing the file and setting it down upon an ever-growing stack of files that would eventually need his attention.
“I’ll grab a nap later,” the man said, stepping forward to lean upon the front of the desk. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What did he say? What was his answer?”
“It was what I expected at this time in John Fogg’s life,” Elijah said. “He needs to take care of his wife.”
“I think it’s too late for that,” Griffin said grimly.
“But I’m not going to be the one to tell him,” Elijah responded.
“He’ll have to determine that on his own.”
“No loss, really,” Griffin said, dropping down into one of the chairs.
“Guy seemed like a jerk.”
“Yes,” Elijah said. “Not everybody can be as pleasant as yourself.”
“What? I was good.”
Elijah scowled, used to Griffin’s somewhat abrasive style. “We’ll just need to be patient is all.”
“Do we have time for patience?” Griffin asked. “Looking at the number of reports coming in . . . it’s getting bad out there.”
“What choice do we have? We will keep doing what we’re doing, fighting this war, and hope that John Fogg contacts us.”
“I still don’t understand your fascination with the guy,” Griffin said. “Sure, he’s smart, well versed in the paranormal, but I’m sure there are plenty of guys out there with the same amount of experience. What makes Fogg so special?”
Elijah reclined in his chair, folding his hands across his stomach as he fixed Griffin in his stare.
“The fact that someone tried to murder him, killing his team, tells me that he is important,” Elijah said. “And I believe that importance will be quite beneficial to us in the dark days ahead.”
“You think it’ll be bad?” Griffin asked.
“I don’t think,” Elijah said. “I know.”
CHAPTER TEN
It was Brenna Isabel’s first night home in . . .
How long was it? Two days? Or three?
It really didn’t matter a helluva lot to her; this was as much home as the staff lounge, or her desk at the bureau.
Just a place to slow down for a bit and collect her thoughts, before starting all over again. She hadn’t had a real place to call home since . . .
Her thoughts began to drift back to a time that seemed so very long ago, but in reality hadn’t been that long at all.
She slammed the door as she entered the furnished rental, the noise loud enough to pull her from the painful recollections. It was so easy to get sucked into the past, to see over and over what had been lost—what had been taken from her.
Placing the plastic bag of Chinese takeout on the island countertop, she moved around into the small living area and placed her satchel of files and laptop on the couch, where she would work until she eventually passed out, waking up at the crack of dawn to start the process all over again.
This was her life, she thought, going back to the kitchen to eat. This was what was left after . . .
There it was again, that painful reminder of what had been.
Her eyes drifted to the bookcase in the living room. She knew it was there—she knew exactly where it was.
She always did, both hating the idea that something so horribly painful was in her living space (it would never be a home) and overjoyed that a frozen piece of that wonderful past—no matter how painful it was—still survived.
Brenna felt herself pulled to it, but denied her desire. It wasn’t time for that now; she needed to eat and then review her case files, and if she managed to get everything done, maybe . . .
Maybe.
She tried to forget it was there, distracting herself with General Gau’s chicken, house-fried rice, and a side order of fried wontons. Sitting on a stool at the island, she started off slowly, taking only a little bit from the various take-out containers, but quickly found that she was ravenous, finishing the chicken and eating nearly all the rice. She ate the wontons for dessert and then allowed herself two fortune cookies from the bottom of the bag.
Putting what was left of the rice in the refrigerator, she was reminded of how little was there, a bottle of spring water and a box of baking soda the only other things inside the fridge.
Maybe she should go shopping.
Maybe she shouldn’t open the refrigerator. . . . The latter sounded the most appealing to her at the moment.
She left the kitchen, heading into the tiny bedroom, where she stripped off her work clothes and donned a pair of sweatpants and a Quantico T-shirt. Her every intention was to sit down on the couch and get to work, but her eyes wandered immediately to the bookcase as she stepped from the bedroom.
Not now, she scolded herself, grabbing the laptop from her bag and turning it on. She took the files from the bag and set them on the couch beside her. There was a part of her that knew that the likelihood of finding anything new in the files was a long shot. She’d nearly memorized every detail already, but no matter how minute the opportunity, she still felt compelled to try.
She opened the secure file on her computer, eye drifting over the familiar words—the familiar faces. Eight children missing from different parts of the country, no one even recognizing that they were connected until the symbols were discovered: drawings of the same strange symbol found at all the scenes. On the inside wall of a closet in colored chalk, on a crumpled piece of construction paper on the floor of a room, on the sidewalk in front of a home: wherever the abductions took place, the symbol—whatever it was—was there.
And there wasn’t a single clue as to who had left it or what it meant.
They’d brought it to anyone who might have had even a remote chance of knowing what it was: scientists, anthropologists, priests, and even experts in the super
natural.
She thought of the guy from that TV show, John Fogg, and how he’d never returned her call. He had said that he would be in touch once he got back from a business trip. Right. She made a mental note to call him again.
Her eyes eventually began to burn, signifying too much time on the laptop, so she switched the hard-copy files. She flipped through the pages, spending a little bit of extra time on the pictures of the kids, silently promising them that she would do everything in her power to bring them home safely, and if that wasn’t possible, to see whoever was responsible punished.
The last photo was of the only parent murdered—from the scene of the last abduction in Chicago.
Joseph Waugh, father of Christopher Waugh—now missing.
She stared at the photo, internalizing the violence depicted there. The ME had said that the father had been crushed by someone with incredible strength, that his bones were not only broken but pulverized. There had been blood at this scene—a lot of blood—believed to be from the perpetrator, but there hadn’t been any match in their database.
Her mind started racing again. Was the one they were looking for badly hurt now? She had no idea. There hadn’t been any further abductions, but there had been that delivery to the family of one of the little girls taken.
The teeth.
There were pictures of the teeth, and she stared at them again, feeling herself begin to sink into despair, into that dark place where she had been before and thought that she would never break free of.
But she’d surprised herself.
Brenna realized that she was no longer looking at work, but was back to gazing at the bookcase, eyes finding the item that still had such a hold on her.
Maybe this was what she needed now, to remind herself of the beautiful things in the world, even though the beauty had been stolen from her. Maybe it would lift her up, or maybe it wouldn’t. She never knew how it would affect her.
She hesitated, continuing to stare at the spot on the shelf. Maybe if she went to bed . . .
It wouldn’t work; she was sure of it. Every time she had denied herself, it came back to bite her on the ass. Brenna tried to recall the last time she’d looked, and suddenly remembered how hard she had cried.