“Surprise!”
Before Mallory could reply, Adam Brant—Becky’s boyfriend—and two of their other friends, Elsa Williams and Lisa Nolan joined her, accompanied by two other boys she didn’t recognize. Then Derrick Nolan stepped forward, snaring her attention like a net.
“Is this a surprise, or is this a
Mallory nodded, speechless.
“Hey, Mallory,” Lisa said.
Adam waved.
She smiled back at each of them, but kept her eyes on Derrick, asking, “Where’d you all come from?”
Becky licked her lips and slid onto the bench beside her. “Don’t you remember me saying how bad I wanted to come out here tonight when we were at the mall?” she asked, sounding utterly bewildered. “You had plans, so I asked Elsa to go, and she invited Lisa. It almost didn’t happen, though, because Adam’s crappy car is in the shop. Derrick and his pals were headed in this direction, anyway, to go to some party, and they were nice enough to give us a ride.” She twitched her eyebrows. “They still had some time to kill, so I talked them into joining us for a while. I knew you’d show up at the funnel-cake stands sooner or later, so we’ve been hanging out here waiting for you.”
Mallory grinned.
“You owe me one,” Becky whispered.
CHAPTER 21
Frank recalled the raid on Kale Kane’s farmhouse for Detective Humble, remembering every detail of the grotesque place with frightening clarity.
The fetid air of decay.
The confusion.
The pain.
Choking on the unsavory taste of spent gunpowder after his shootout with the killer, Frank stood at the threshold of Kale Kane’s root cellar looking at the bodies of the dead. The only illumination came from half a dozen stout candles burning at various points around the room, but even their meager light revealed the stain of death everywhere.
He lowered his weapon.
“Good Lord,” he whispered.
Kane’s victims hung from the ceiling, suspended by thin wires anchored in their flesh with huge steel hooks. Each corpse had been taken apart and reassembled with additional body parts. Thick stitches bound the flesh of both humans and animals, creating a small army of half-rotten, darkly-hided, multi-limbed nightmares.
The eyes of one of the closest constructions still shined with false life, drawing Frank’s attention. Their positioning in the reshaped sockets of a worm-infested pig’s skull seemed to communicate the level of terror experienced by their former owner at their time of death, as if the very emotion had been fused into the corneas.
Frank looked at the floor to escape the thing’s gaze.
Further emphasizing the pure wickedness the hecatomb reeked of, he found a wide pool of blood the killer had gathered in a shallow pit at the center of the room. It gleamed in the candlelight, encircling a large column of stone. A host of cryptic symbols decorated the towering obelisk, strange characters chiseled in a three-dimensional pattern that caused Frank’s head to throb when he stared at them.
He swayed on his feet, then flinched when another officer reached out to steady him. He couldn’t fathom what sort of diabolic compulsion could’ve driven a person to commit such vile acts, what level of mental imbalance—
“He’s still alive,” a medic roared.
Frank turned to see Kane’s eyes snap open and almost fell down the steps leading into the cellar when he flinched back in shock. It wasn’t possible for the man to still be conscious, not after the amount of damage he’d received. Yet the killer struck out with the speed of a springing viper, teeth bared and hissing.
Kane reached up and grabbed the medic by the neck, ripping out his throat in a single vicious action. The man dropped to the floor, hitting the ground as Kane arose from a lake of his own blood.
His eyes shimmered.
Shiny filaments of spittle stitched together the space between his open jaws.
Blood rained from his wounds.
Frank and the surrounding policemen trained their weapons on the killer in a uniform motion, but Kane lunged at the closest officer before anyone fired a shot.
“Shit,” Frank growled, snapping up his weapon.
Several members of the tactical squad broke formation and rushed forward, reaching for their teammate. Kane met their charge with an animalistic battle cry, snapping the neck of his captive in one effortless action.
The man’s death set off a chain reaction of rage, and the other officers charged.
Kane struck the first man to reach him with an uppercut to the mouth, knocking a shard of jawbone through his cheek. He jabbed at another, gouging out an eye.
Blood sailed from Kane’s wounds with each move, yet he twisted and flexed without the slightest sign of impairment. He met the onslaught of officers with a smile, hammering his adversaries straight through their body armor and Kevlar helmets with bare fists. He punched, flipped, kicked, backhanded, and head-butted opponents before any of them got close enough to help or do damage, then heaved them aside as though they weighed less than the clothing they wore.
The crowd shifted with each new assault, blocking Frank’s attempts to move forward and help.
Gunfire cracked from various points around the room as other officers took aimed shots at the killer, carefully placing each round so not to hit one of their own. Fresh wounds peppered Kane’s flesh. Yet the madman continued to attack, advancing on the crowd as they tried to fall back.
Kane snatched a man’s arm and broke it in two. The bone sprung through the officer’s shirt sleeve like a spring-loaded blade, and Kane rammed it into the throat of another man he’d seized by the neckline of his tactical vest.
Sergeant Rice plunged into the battle and thrust his sidearm into Kane’s face, firing a round directly into the killer’s left eye. Kane’s head rocked back with the shot, then snapped forward again as if recovering from no more than a hard slap. He bellowed at Rice, spraying blood and saliva across the officer’s face. In a blur, Kane punched through the man’s teeth, burying his fist in Rice’s mouth up to the wrist.
Frank flinched.
Kane yanked his hand free, taking Rice’s tongue with it, then hurled him at the other officers, grabbing the strap of his sub-machinegun in the process.
“Oh, shit,” Frank hissed.
Kane opened fire the second Rice left his grasp, painting the cracked walls with lightning-quick pulses of light and filling the air with the repetitive thunder of gunfire. He panned Rice’s MP-5 left and right, emptying the weapon’s thirty-round magazine into the crowd.
Pivoting away, Frank ducked through the cellar doorway the same instant huge holes exploded out of its frame. Clouds of splinters and mortar dust sprayed through the air. From his new position, he had a clear view of the space across the landing and up the main staircase, where he spotted reinforcements frozen on the steps.
“Get down here,
The first floor door swung shut without warning, slamming into its frame with such force the candlelight at Frank’s back flickered with the sudden change in air pressure. With the door closed, only two cops remained on the steps, cut off from above like him and all the others.
Before he could dwell on the door’s abrupt closure, the hail of gunfire ceased, replaced by the faint, bell-like sounds of spent 9mm casings bouncing off the concrete floor. Then nothing.
