Chapter 09

Noah woke up early and took the car out to Jonathan’s store. He was a little worried about showing up before ten a.m., but he really wanted to correct his earlier mistake. When he’d first heard Jonathan mention the bodies, he’d been too stunned to press him on the details. He hadn’t been a cop for long and the town he’d worked in had been only slightly bigger than Doumont, but he should have known better. Luckily none of the others seemed to view this as a serious slip up, but Noah did. The sooner he got this done the better. He’d just have to risk pissing the strange guy off. Better that than wait too long.

As Noah pulled up to the Dollar General and the adjacent auto shop, he realized neither was open and that to park in either of their empty lots might attract unwanted attention. Checking to make sure the road was clear, he drove carefully onto the narrow dirt path between the two closed businesses and directly up to the familiar white house. The place was dark, not a good sign, but something else caught Noah’s eye as he put the car in park.

A kid, young, maybe eleven or twelve, was poking around the house in a way that set off even Noah’s severely underdeveloped radar for law breaking. Stepping out of his car, Noah tried to sound authoritative as he said, “How’s it going there buddy?”

The kid stopped short as he went to peer into one of the candle-filled windows. He turned to face Noah and immediately Noah was on edge. For starters, the kid was way too calm. At his age, the idea that an adult had just caught him peeping, at the very least, should have had him all sorts of nervous and excitable. Instead, this kid stared at him steadily with a look of indifference plain on his young face. Noah would have thought he was high had the boy’s age not made the thought seem so far fetched. Still, something was up with the kid even if Noah couldn’t put his finger on it now. “Going just fine, sir,” the kid responded. His voice was as calm as his demeanor though it had an odd edge to it and was a far cry from what he had expected out of such a young kid.

“You know Jonathan? The guy that owns this place,” Noah asked.

“I know him,” the kid said. “He isn’t here right now. Left about an hour back in his truck.”

“You been watching him?” Noah asked.

“I was here,” the kid shrugged. He was being deferential enough, but he seemed dangerous somehow, like a dog readying itself to bite if you got any closer. Despite this, Noah still saw a kid standing there, and the state of him was beginning to concern Noah. The boy was filthy, his clothes seemed on the verge of falling off his gaunt figure and he wore shoes that were at this point more duct tape than anything else.

“Would Jonathan want you poking around his house like this?” Noah asked. “Are you his son?”

“I’m not his son,” the kid said before adding, “and I doubt he’d like it very much at all.”

Noah was shocked as an impulse to draw the pistol strapped to his lower leg came over him. “I think you need to leave son,” Noah said, keeping his hands firmly at his sides. No matter what happened here, he was not shooting some kid.

“No,” the kid said. “You do.”

“Is that a threat?” Noah said, taking two steps forward and narrowing the distance between them to less than ten feet.

“Good advice if you’re smart enough to take it,” the kid said and suddenly he looked a little scared, his age showing through the dirt and misty eyes. “Doumont is lost. Best run while you can.”

“Something is out there, isn’t it?” Noah said, trying to let his voice drop into a more soothing tone as he crouched down to meet the kid’s eyes. “Something that isn’t like you or I?”

“Get out,” the kid said, all fear and youth falling from his face as he said it. The change was positively alarming. “Take your people with you. This is the last warning you’re likely to get.” With that the kid took off. The movement was so sudden that Noah jumped a little, rocking back on his heels to keep his balance in Jonathan’s dirt driveway. Before Noah could even consider going after the kid, he was gone.

“If you need help,” Noah called after him in a loud voice, “come find me!” He doubted it would do any good, but the thought of that kid alone out there with God knew who or what didn’t sit well with him at all.

Getting back in the car, he figured he’d drive into town. He had no clue where Jonathan might have gone, but he didn’t want to pass up speaking to the man if he’d just run to grab breakfast or hit the bait shop. Pulling off what ended up being an ugly four point turn in the cramped space in front of Jonathan’s house, he set off towards Doumont, the strange boy’s face and warnings rattling around in his head the whole way.

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Jomo wasn’t sad to see Kevin Hughes go, but he also wasn’t thrilled about having to share the already cramped hide with three people instead of two. He’d gotten Margaret’s message about Allen and he splitting leadership of the field team between them and understood it in theory, but honestly thought this was a huge waste of everyone’s time. Whatever was coming through this gate was coming soon, he could feel it, and all of this unnecessary movement was hurting their readiness to react to other threats. He hoped this would be the end of this kind of thing for the time being.

The reality of leading the Order troops was not an unappealing one. Allen and his men were good at what they did, but they also operated as a unit both in the field and out. Jomo, Benoit and Sophia would always be outsiders to them. Auxiliary troops. Not a role he or the others would enjoy or appreciate. After some brief introductions, Jomo started getting to know his new companions.

Absalon Benoit had joined the team before Margaret had gotten involved, though he didn’t act like it. From what Jomo understood, the man had arrived with a companion, Sebastian Unger, and had been locked outside, helpless, while his friend was brutally murdered by the A’Sin creature the original team had run afoul of in Appalachia. The old fellow didn’t say much, but he’d told them his story in brief when Jomo had asked.

Benoit had volunteered to serve in the French Foreign Legion as a young man, spending much of his time in Africa during the nineties, but also seeing action in the Balkans and the Middle East. He’d risen to a respectable middle rank, never leaving the field or combat behind the entire time he was enlisted. After nine eleven, ethics got a little too murky for his Catholic sensibilities and he retired at 33 in December of 2001. What he’d told them next had been mildly shocking considering the grizzled man that sat before them.

Benoit had apparently gone into the seminary in early 2002 and had had every intention of becoming a Catholic priest. Yet, by the tail end of 2003 he had realized that his initial impulse to take the cloth had faded. He had turned in his resignation and left the seminary in November of that year and by December a man named Monsignor Kirchmann had requested a meeting and recruited him as a soldier of God and a Knight of the Order of St. George. He hadn’t seen much from the Order other than a steady paycheck between then and around a month ago when he’d been called on to fulfill his contract. Currently in his early fifties, Benoit told them Kirchmann had offered to amend his contract and have him help solely with recruitment, but he had declined.

“Why?” Jomo asked. He liked to know what made his men tick.

“I don’t know,” Benoit responded in heavily accented English, “I signed up to fight the Devil’s servants. It seemed so unreal when they first told me, but I wanted to see with my own eyes that my faith had not been misplaced.”

“And?” Sophia asked.

“I’m still looking,” was all the older man said in response.

Sophia had a similar story, if only in that she had also lived the wayward life of a soldier. Sophia had been relocated to Israel from Spain by her parents as a young child and had served her compulsory time in the military at age 18, as was expected of her by Israeli law. Most women were only required to serve one and a half years, as opposed to their male counterparts who served three, but Sophia had balked at the idea and insisted on serving a full three years on principle. She began her service in 2006 and finally left the Israeli Armed Forces in 2014. She had done a lot of good work during that time, she said, but as tensions rose between the military and the Palestinians, she found herself not wanting to be involved any longer.

“I can see many sides of that particular argument,” she said, “but in the army you have orders and that is that. I foresaw that becoming a problem for me in the immediate future and opted out.”

When she’d left the military in 2014 she had also left her adopted homeland to travel Europe. Despite being in such close geographic proximity, she had never explored the land of her father’s birth and had made Spain her first stop. From there she’d gone to France, the UK, Germany, Switzerland and then down into Italy. Despite being, in her words, a lapsed Jew, she had found herself enamored with the Vatican and visited the small country-within-a-country daily the entire time she’d been in Italy. Towards the end of her stay, she’d met a man named Matthias Norton. He had been brash and aggressive, but upon learning of her skill set and lack of current employment, he had made her a very strange offer.

“So you bought into the whole heaven and hell bit?” Jomo asked, shooting Benoit an apologetic look the man seemed to accept.

“Not really,” she laughed. “Just had to see what might come of it I suppose. Kept me traveling for a bit, the paycheck I mean, and then when they called, I answered.”

Jomo had given them a highly sanitized version of his life story. Over time he might tell them more, but it was not something he enjoyed dwelling on. He did enjoy the conversation though. Working for Margaret these last few years had gotten him somewhat in-tune with American sensibilities, but he appreciated talking to non-Americans when he got the chance. It was like finding someone on your wavelength in a sea of static.

They spent most of the morning talking like this, but eventually they fell into silence and the waiting began anew. Without anything to distract him, Jomo’s mind wandered to Margaret. She was the smartest person he knew, no one else even coming close, but he worried about her. She carried a lot of pain and sadness with her and she kept too much of it to herself. Jomo attributed her outbursts and more pig-headed moments to these poor habits. If he had known how to bring these things up with her without getting himself into choppy waters with his boss, he would have. He loved Margaret in his own way and only wanted the best for her.

Looking out over the lake, he said a quick prayer. He was not an overly religious man, but he believed in a higher power, and right now Margaret could use all the help and guidance she could get. He just hoped that, if it was granted, she would have the wisdom to listen.

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The Moon Eyed Prince was ahead of schedule.

Using magic was completely natural for him, but bending magic so that it could work for beings like his new companions took some finessing. First, he’d needed to find something from the physical world to bind his wards to, and not just anything would do. Crystals seemed to have a complex enough material structure to give his magic places to bind and caught the human's attention so that they would not be lost or tossed aside as easily as most things their kind came in contact with. He was planning on weaving multiple wards into each crystal, so he’d had to find crystals both large enough to support his magic and small enough that the humans could carry them on their person without issue. The gathering of specimens that met his criteria had not been as simple as he’d thought, though he’d managed it in only a few days.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Now he needed somewhere to do his real work.

He did not see the world through sensory organs like the humans did, but that did not mean he was blind. He saw reality as it was, every fabric of the underlying currents that held the world together, be it the First World or this one, without interruption. This was a massive amount of information to absorb while trying to do something as complex as he currently was. Had he been back in the Kingdom, he could have worked in the total emptiness the place allowed him to experience, but that wasn’t possible now.

The Prince could travel from place to place freely and he’d flitted around the world trying to find a suitable place to work for no more than an hour or so before he found the perfect spot. Most places had simply been too crowded with life and movement, the variety of which kept him from focusing like he needed to on the task at hand. He had not grown frustrated by his early search, but he had been concerned about wasting time and leaving those he had vowed to protect exposed any longer than they needed to be. He had not wanted to shame his father or his people by failing in his self imposed duties.

His worries had been misplaced however; his final destination had been well worth his earlier failures. Ice covered every inch of land for hundreds of miles in every direction. No living things besmirched this desolate landscape, though the wind was vicious as it whipped up an endless spray of ice and snow around him. Creating a shield around himself to protect his material form from harm, he laid the twenty crystals out before him. The movement of the wind and ice all around him remained constant, but uncontested by other stimuli, it faded into static as he got to work.

Allowing some of the magic that resided within him to seep into the nearest crystal, he began attaching the first of the six spells he’d chosen to it. Allowing himself to be lost in his work, the Moon Eyed Prince settled into a rhythm.

This should only take a couple of days.

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Hayden woke late to find Noah and the car gone. “Kid skip out on us?” Hayden yawned at Olivia as he lay back down on the bed.

“Went to go see the voodoo guy,” she answered back, book in hand.

“Alone?”

“Atticus figured it was better that way,” she responded, not looking up from her book.

“Shouldn’t he be back by now,” Hayden said, suppressing an even louder yawn. This town was not stimulating enough for him apparently.

“Called a little while ago and said the guy wasn’t home and that he wanted to check town out before he gave up,” she said. “Said some kid was there though. Apparently he was acting weird and mentioned some similar stuff to what the voodoo guy told Noah originally.”

“So voodoo guy and a child?” Hayden snorted. “Excellent case he’s building here. Hard to imagine how the Bureau missed him.”

“Hey,” she said, finally looking over the top of her book at him, “you need to lay off Benjamin. He’s trying to figure things out, the same as us. Guy in his shoes could be way more of a pain than he is. Help him or give him advice if you think you need to, but remember he got pulled into this when one of these things killed his godfather. He didn’t join up for fun or to come through on a favor; he’s got real skin in the game. I’d think even you could respect that at least.”

“I just want to make sure someone is injecting a solid dose of reality into our investigation, if that’s what we’re calling sitting around in this motel room and talking to swampbillies,” Hayden responded, throwing his hands up in the air. “The kid is just seeing things that aren’t there yet. Last time got in his head.”

“Understandable,” Olivia said. “And also just your opinion at this point. Erring on the side of caution is exactly what we should be doing. Give the kid a break and try to relax.”

“Yeah, I hear you, but none of this is helpful in the long run if there isn’t anything going on here. If we’d heard what his new buddy had said all over town, about the bodies and some war I mean, I’d be right there with you, but we didn’t. The town is dying, the cops are shady, the bayou is just a shitshow in general; any of those things could explain what we’re hearing. All I’m trying to do is avoid getting wrapped up in a bunch of small town bullshit for no reason. Especially not solely on intel we got from Benjamin. He’s a nice guy and all, but green doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“I can see what you’re saying,” Olivia said, marking her page and laying the closed book in her lap, “but Benjamin did good work in North Carolina. Trust him a little and treat him like a teammate instead of an underling. You seem to have forgotten that he was a step ahead of you last time.”

“A step ahead of us, Olivia. Us. And I can do that, the teamwork thing. I’m just not going to see what I don’t is all,” he tried to explain. He didn’t mind Olivia finding him a little annoying, she was cute when she got all riled, but he didn’t want her to think he was an awful person. That wouldn’t take things where he hoped they might go.

“You want to make up for it,” she said, fishing some cash out of her small canvas bag she kept in lieu of a purse, “run across the street for some lunch. I’m starving and Benjamin took the car.”

“Not in the mood for a walk?” Hayden asked, rising from his bed and taking the cash from her.

“Not around here,” she said, picking her book back up. “Leering comes with being a woman in this world, but down here...no thank you. I’ll have my gas station food delivered please.”

Hayden could see her point; he’d caught the gas station clerks ogling her a few times himself. It was bad form to be sure, but he understood it. It wasn’t just that she was a beautiful woman; there was something about how she carried herself that sent Hayden over the edge a little. He’d thought her and Benjamin had hit it off in North Carolina, and they had, but not in the way he’d feared. He’d made an ass of himself over it, but he was doing the legwork to make up for that. He couldn’t blame anyone else for having a similar reaction any more than he could blame Liv for avoiding it.

Leaving Olivia to her reading, Hayden left the motel room and its overbearing mildew smell and headed across the road. The little gas station across the way was a far cry from the larger station they’d dropped Noah at the other day. Two pumps that looked unfit for fuel dispensing sat in front of a squat brick building that barely had enough room for three people to stand in. Still, they made do in there. Microwavable sandwiches, hotdogs, coffee, candy and sodium rich bagged snacks were all available, though nothing fresh seemed to have entered this place in decades. He knew it was driving Olivia nuts, but he was managing just fine.

Unsure of whether or not Noah would want food, Hayden grabbed a wide range of technically edible items from the metal racks that served as shelving. Once he’d put together a pile that was sure to make Olivia’s eyes roll right out of her pretty head, he paid the man at the register and made his way back across the road.

As he scanned the parking lot for any sign that Benjamin had returned with the car, he saw something that made his heart sink. A squad car had pulled up in front of the motel’s front desk and two less than friendly looking officers were now stepping out of it. Hayden had held on to the hope that they might not be here for them for about half a second before they made a b-line for him. Readying himself for what was sure to be an unpleasant interaction, Hayden decided to meet them in the middle. Best to keep them away from the motel room and Olivia if he could.

Hayden realized his mistake far too late. As he came within a few feet of the men he recognized their disheveled appearances, if not their faces, and sensed he had made a serious error in approaching these two willingly. Without any time to defend himself or react, he took the first punch to his face head on, dropping his load of snacks to the ground. Follow up punches to his neck, stomach and ribs drove him to the black asphalt where the barrage continued. Hayden had taken a beating, many in fact, before now, but this was a bad one. The hard toed boots, totally unnecessary for their implied line of work, battered him for what felt like hours. Hayden tried to protect his hands and face, though his groin was punished by two brutal kicks from one of the men.

As he lay in a haze of pain and confusion, Hayden felt warm breath next to his face as the smell of tobacco spit and liquor wafted into his nostrils. Even as he tried to avoid breathing in the disgusting air, a voice said, “Now listen here boy, you done in Doumont. Don’t know why you been poking around, but you and your bitch need to leave. We see either of you in town again we’ll finish you off and take her for a ride. You hear me boy? Get outta here by morning or we gonna be seeing you and your little miss again.” The warning was followed by two more heavy kicks to his already battered ribs, and then the men were gone. Hayden listened to them cross the lot, followed by the sound of the squad car’s engine bursting to life and the crunching of asphalt as it drove away.

“Oh my lord!” he heard a familiar voice say. Uncovering his face, he saw the middle aged black woman who ran the front desk sometimes running towards him. “Are you alright sir. Oh my lord I ain’t never seen them work over a white man like that. Oh my lord, you’re bleeding. Do you need me to call an ambulance? They’re not anywhere close to here, but they’ll come for this. My God, my God. Jesus.”

“No ma’am, I’m fine,” Hayden groaned, shifting himself into a seated position and trying to figure out just how badly he was hurt. “Call the ambulance and those two will just come back. You know them?”

“I didn’t look at their faces,” the woman said, “but I ain’t ever seen one of the Sheriff’s men do something like that. When he hears about this there’s gonna be hell to pay, I can promise you. The Sheriff can be a little much, but he’s a God fearing family man and he won’t let this stand.” The woman had started dabbing at the blood on his face as she said this with what felt like some sort of napkin and Hayden struggled to politely push her away.

“Thank you for your help ma’am, but I’m here to look into the Sheriff and his men. That’s probably why they didn’t take too kindly to me. Best you go back inside now and forget what you saw here. No sense getting yourself mixed up in something like this over a few cuts and bruises.” It wasn’t his best cover story, but it should keep the woman from calling the police or pursuing this any further than this single interaction.

“You’re looking into...No...I don’t wanna know,” she said, waving her hands in the air as if warding off this unwanted knowledge. “You need help back to your room, mister? Least I could do,” she asked, but she was already backing away from him like he’d just told her he was visiting from a leper colony.

“I’ll be ok,” Hayden said, pushing himself up to his feet as pain exploded in his sides. He had at least a few cracked ribs, if not a fully broken one and the rest of him felt equally pummeled. He waddled his way back to the motel room, only vaguely aware that the woman behind him was still watching him go. She was nervous about the police, and should be based on how Hayden’s body was feeling at the moment, but she still didn’t want him to not make it to his room safely. A good woman. If things with Olivia didn’t work out he might just pop back down here and look her up. Barely able to slide his room key through the lock, he entered just as his legs buckled beneath him.

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Noah arrived back at the motel room feeling defeated. He’d checked town for Jonathan to no avail and had almost run into some local cops when he’d tried visiting the man’s house a second time on his way back to the motel. He’d managed to duck them, but the man hadn’t been back home then either, so he’d called it a day.

He swiped his key to open the door, but the deadbolt had been activated and he was unable to enter. “Guys?” he asked through the slim crack his keycard had allowed him to create between the door and its frame.

The deadbolt was released in an instant and Olivia pulled him into the motel room, slamming the door behind them. To his horror, Noah saw Hayden lying on the nearest bed, shirt off, his body covered in blossoming welts and bruises. His face was cut and swollen, one eye totally shut. “What the hell happened?” Noah asked, but Olivia was now pulling him away from the door and into the bathroom.

“Sorry,” she said as she closed the door behind them, “I gave him some pills for the pain and he’s totally zonked. Don’t need him interjecting his opinion for a few minutes at least.”

“What happened?” Noah asked again, trying to be calmer this time. “Did one of those things show up here?”

“Worse,” Olivia said, “the cops jumped Hayden in broad daylight, right outside the main office. Front desk lady saw it and everything. They told him to be gone by morning or they’d be back for him and I. Seems like they noticed us poking around. Not you though, which is helpful.”

“Have you called back to headquarters?” Noah asked.

“I will, but I need to hear what you saw today first. The minute the police are mentioned Wynters is going to want to pull back and reassess things. Hayden’s more convinced than ever that he’s right about the cops just being corrupt down here, so we need to have all the information we can before we let them know what happened. Something is wrong down here, I can feel it. We just need proof.”

“You sound like Jonathan,” Noah said, but he agreed. He felt it too.

“Did you find him?”

“No, but I met that kid who was poking around his house. Something was wrong with him. He seemed drugged or drunk or something, but he told me to run while I could. That war was brewing. Pretty much the same spiel as Jonathan except…”

“Except what?” she prodded.

“It was like he was coming in and out of some sort of trance. Half the time he didn’t even seem like a kid, though I’d doubt he was older than thirteen. The other half it was like he was fighting through it to warn me, not threaten me. He took off first chance he got.”

“You think he was one of these things we’re after? Or is he just near one or working with one, if that’s even possible?” she asked.

“Just a kid,” Noah shrugged. “Just a scared, weird little kid. Could be that these things are behind how he was acting or maybe he’s just seen enough fucked up shit out in the swamp to warp him a little.”

“I’m going to call Atticus,” Olivia said once she’d realized this was all he had. “Hang tight, don’t let anyone in.”

“What if it’s the cops?” he asked her as she ushered him out of the bathroom so she could make her phone call.

“Then things are going to get real fucked, real fast,” she said and she shut the door in his face.