The Blood Dahlia (The Dark Angel Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  “Stand in front of me,” he said to Gina.

  “Why? Are you going to do something freaky back there?” There was a little giggle at the end of her question.

  “Yep.”

  “You can’t wait until we get home?”

  “Knock it off.”

  “Seriously. You need to do that here? You haven’t seen enough ghosts lately?” This time her tone was serious.

  “That’s a bad misconception. Ghosts don’t hang around gravesites. Why would they? Now stand here.” Lynch’s hands guided her hips where he wanted her to be, and Gina stood there.

  Lynch let his mind drift and slipped in between the fabric of time and place easier than he thought he might. He could hear the start of the graveside service and allowed his attention to follow that. He saw the assembled group sitting there. A mixture of black, grey, and white. He couldn’t decide if the percentage of non-white presences shocked him. Considering who Devon was, it was safe to assume their friends would be the who’s who of the rich and powerful, and you rarely became both without being a questionable character. He continued to look and then caught himself chuckling when he saw one individual as a light grey. “Father Kelly must cheat at bingo.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” Lynch said and pulled himself back out. “Well, kind of what I expected. Do you have your Scroll on you?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I want you to take a picture. I need to know who these people are. Some of their associates are rather questionable.”

  “They appeared dark to you?”

  “Some more than others.”

  Instead of fishing in her purse, Gina’s right hand went down the front of her blouse and fished around inside there before coming out empty. Her left hand then repeated the search on the other side.

  At that moment, Lynch was thankful for the secluded nature of the spot he’d picked.

  Gina’s search ended with a heavy sigh, “Must have left it at home. You have yours?”

  Lynch reached inside his black sports coat and pulled his out and handed it to her. “Here. You take it. I suck at taking pictures.”

  “Oh, come on. A toddler can take pictures with these things.”

  “That’s the problem. I am too old. Now take it.”

  Lynch continued to watch the proceedings. The gathering was more somber now than they were just minutes ago. Seeing the casket there, and hearing the prayers, had a way of doing that to people, whether or not they were grieving. From here, he could see who was. Christine was. Several of the other wives were too. Each looked oddly familiar. The others that appeared emotional were mostly women, that if he had to guess, were Cheryl’s age. Friends, he would assume. In contrast, the men were each stoic statues of fortitude that didn’t even offer a grimace as their partner let out a painful wail.

  “Got it?” Lynch extended his hand for his Scroll, but it hung in the air, empty, for a few seconds. “Gina?”

  “Hang on.”

  Lynch glanced to his left and saw Gina scrolling through the contents of his Scroll instead of trying to take a picture. He reached and attempted to grab it, but she moved just in time. Her fingers moved quickly as she turned away from him. “Found it,” she whispered.

  “Found what?” Lynch asked, both gruff and annoyed. He had stepped toward her to reach over her shoulder to take it back.

  “The files Lucas sent you.” When she turned back to him, she had arranged the pictures of the parents of the missing girls in side-by-side order, which happened to be how they were seated in the front row.

  “Well, I’ll be.” Lynch took the Scroll back and held it up over the scene.

  “I had a feeling there might be a few, richies move in packs, but not ALL of them.”

  Gina had an excellent point. Other than being in the top crust of New Metro, they were all in different industries and didn’t really have overlapping connections. It was possible he’d overlooked some protect the Koalas charity they are all part of. He rolled the Scroll up and put it back in his pocket. In his mind, going over the position of each of the parents and where they sat so he could remember. “One more time.”

  “What?”

  Before he could answer Gina, he had drifted between the here and now. His perspective pointed right in the direction he wanted. There they all were. Lynch had a problem. He was right too often. Something others around him loathed, and he celebrated. It was like a checkerboard. Where each of the fathers were dark gray or almost black. Their wives, which were the mothers of, in some cases the trophy step-mothers, the missing girls, all pure white. His years of being a detective had created two voices that speak to him. The first one constantly reminded him to not be blinded by something obvious. Just because these guys had an evil tint to their person didn’t mean they were involved in the disappearance of their own daughters in any way. The second voice always told him to call a spade a spade. That one always spoke louder, thanks to his unique perspective.

  The father’s shapes were not clear, which was odd. They were human, physically at least. He had spent a lot of time observing Devon, and never seen this, or had he? Lynch felt a cold chill shoot down his spine as he realized what he saw. It was IT, or her, behind them all. Their wives shone brightly in front of the dark abyss of her shape. Her shape still mostly a blur, but had feminine curves and scarlet hair that flowed around behind her.

  She, IT, walked through the crowd toward Lynch. He felt the cold gaze of her attention, even though he didn’t know if or where there were eyes. Each movement was a jerk forward, feet at a time. Through the crowd. Through the casket. Lynch attempted to leave, which was always as simple as returning his focus to the world he was familiar with, but he went nowhere. He was stuck and held in that place. The closer she, IT, came, the colder and odder the area around him felt. He tried to leave again, but to no avail.

  For the second time in two days, he found himself face-to-something with this creature. The blurred darkness wrapped itself around him like a cocoon of death. It suffocated everything about him, and he felt himself fading into the nothingness. It hissed and made sounds that he assumed it was speaking, but he didn’t understand a word of it. He strained his arms against its embrace, but couldn’t get free. Instead, it tightened on him. The pain forced his hands to pop open. The fingers of both hands reached for freedom, but then curled back into a fist. A tight fist that had something enclosed in them. He had something, a bit of it, and when he squeezed, it let go, and recoiled backwards.

  Tails of the large black void extended out toward him and into the palm of his hands. Lynch had a hold of it, but what could he do with it? He squeezed harder, and it tried to pull back away, at the same time he realized his mistake. The pulsing pain began behind his eyes as time ran backwards. At first slow, and then faster and faster until it was just a blur. The presence of the canopy of trees that were over where he stood faded as the trees returned to just saplings. Hundreds, if not thousands of people came and went, each to mourn the passing of someone. Lynch felt the pain and suffering of each one as they passed through.

  Before him, the black mass grew and contracted as time flew around them. Then he saw a startling sight that was there just for a flash before the black void was back. He opened his hand to stop time and then moved it to send it back forward, but slowly, to return to that moment.

  Many times, the eyes are able to deceive the brain. What was happening before him, deceived it all. The void slowly took the form of a striking and voluptuous woman, with dark auburn hair and ruby red lips. Her eyes were emerald gems that swam in the sea of ivory white skin that surrounded them. Her form was one most men would call pleasing to the eye. Lynch wouldn’t deny it was pleasing to him. When the transition was complete, he felt the softness of ice-cold fingers in the palms of his hands. When he looked down, the long tentacles of darkness he had grasped were now arms, slender arms, that ended with long delicate fingers.

  Before he could stop the progression of time,
she faded away part by part into a dark void. Just before her head faded, she looked in the direction of where Gina stood. The chill of her gaze drove icicles straight through Lynch. A sense of doom crashed into him and drove them deeper as she completely faded away. Her hands and arms were no more, just nothingness in his grasp. His attention had waned by what he saw, something they covered the first day on the force. Never let your guard down, or you could die. He had, and didn’t see the large black tentacle reach out and slap him, knocking him square in the chest. His essence separated from its vessel and stretched out of this place and into the real world. From there he could see everything. The world he knew, the places only he knew and his body still standing there holding on to the black blur. Then, like the reactionary force of a released rubber band, his body sprung toward him. The collision sent Lynch, body and soul, tumbling to the ground in a heap where they became one. He stood up, knees buckling, and looked around at a world he didn’t recognize. It was his world, but at a completely different time.

  The headache raged in his head, while the sun beat down on him. Around him, there were no trees, no grave sites. Just tractors and machines that were clearing the area. Others grated the roadway in, and in the distance hammers banged nails into rafters on the main office. Each hit drove his headache and concern deeper.

  24

  “This is the last time,” Gina exclaimed through the opened passenger door.

  Lynch collapsed into the passenger seat, dripping wet from the downpour that had driven Gina to take shelter in the car several hours ago. The cloud unloaded long after the mourners dispersed, and just before the sun dropped below the treetops, casting long shadows across the eerie landscape before being replaced by the bright white light of a full moon. A second storm, with a few rumbles of thunder, added to the scene, while Lynch stood frozen under the tree. When he finally returned, he heard the rumbles of thunder and felt them right behind his eyes.

  He had to put himself under again, to return back to this place, and more importantly, this time. As far as he could tell, he was shoved out about sixty years before that moment. The tree they stood under hadn’t even been planted yet. The road in and out was just a scraped area in the landscape, outlined by wooden stakes with orange flags. No one had been buried there yet. It appeared the plots had only been cleared in the last few weeks. This was yet another reminder of how little he knew of all this. How was she, IT, able to do that?

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  Lynch rubbed his temples as he slumped in the seat. “Head to Stiffies.”

  “What?” Gina asked with a huff. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  He didn’t have a clue, all he knew is it was dark outside, and his brain was trying to squeeze out through his eyes. With the jack-hammer throbbing slowing every movement, he turned his head to look at the display in the car.

  “It’s just after 3 a.m.. Your beloved Stiffies has been closed for over an hour.”

  If only she had told him that earlier, it would have saved him the pain of looking himself. He closed his eyes and moaned, “Then home.”

  Lynch felt the car lurch forward, and then felt every bump, turn, stop, and acceleration the whole way home. Gina asked him every few minutes if he was okay. He most definitely was not, but never responded. He just sat there, with his eyes closed, trying to avoid thinking beyond the subconscious thoughts that kept his lungs breathing and his heart beating. Anything else stabbed a sharp hot poker between his eyes, through the frontal lobe of his brain, blocking any attempt to speak or move, not that he wanted to. It would then pierce through the parietal lobe, impacting his ability to understand language. Good thing the pain in the frontal lobe already shot his ability to speak all to hell. If he tried, he wouldn’t say anything intelligible. The pain he felt when he cracked open his eyelids told him the occipital lobe was at least nicked.

  The car came to a halt, which he could tell by the ear-piercing squeal of the brakes just before the rumble of the engine stopped. He had meant to get the brakes looked at for the better part of three years. At this point it was probably nothing more than metal on metal, but they still managed to stop.

  Lynch must have really been out of it. It wasn’t until his right foot hit the fourth step on his staircase before he felt the hard metal body of Totter under his left arm, and Gina under his right. They plopped him down on the bed with a thud. He fell like a sack of rotten potatoes, slowly slumping down, and then staying in the spot he fell.

  On instinct he mumbled, “Scotch.”

  The request was met with a less than amused laugh.

  Gina’s hands worked to get him out of the damp suit and with Totter’s help, moved Lynch up on the pillow in his bed before pulling the covers up over him. Lynch heard Totter mention something about a temperature, then Gina agreed, “He shivered all the way home.” A hand pressed on his forehead, it felt warm, almost hot.

  “Yeah, you’re right. His temperature is low, really low. This isn’t a cold.” Then with a tone of worry that cut through the fog that surrounded Lynch, “I don’t know what this is.” Another thick blanket joined the others on top of him, then everything else faded away.

  To call the next several hours sleep was a stretch in every sense of the word. Lynch went out to the normal chorus of screams, but soon woke up on a barren plain. Every muscle, tendon, and bone in his body ached, and he leaked. It wasn’t blood that ran down each leg and pooled around each footstep. It was something else. Something clear and thick. It glistened in the bright sun and darkened the cracked red clay ground around his feet. With as hot as it was, Lynch would still doubt it was sweat. The suffocating heat reminded him of the days in the service, riding around in the back of armored carriers in the deserts. Buns in the oven is what they used to call themselves. Just like with bread, something rose while they were in there. Their tempers, along with a wretched smell.

  Well, this is new, thought Lynch. His dreams, nightmares, had always been the replay of one of life’s horrors he’d had the unfortunate privilege of experiencing firsthand. Never was it something made up like a normal person’s dream. Maybe this was his first chance at being normal.

  “Nah, it’s not new. You have been here before.” The voice boomed and raced across the ground, causing the dust to rise and ripple in its wake.

  “Who’s there?” Lynch exclaimed.

  In the distance, amidst the desert mirages and dirt devils, a figure approached.

  “I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You were almost dead the last time you were here. You aren’t far from it this time. Spiritually speaking, of course.”

  Lynch placed a hand above his eyes to block the sun. He found he needed to put one below his eyes, too. With the glare blocked, the figure took a shape. A man with dark flowing hair, in blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. “What kind of idiot would be wearing sleeves in this god forbidden place,” he mumbled.

  “Oh, that’s nothing. What kind of moron would be wearing a full suit?” responded the voice, which was a little of a shock to Lynch. “Of course, you were never that bright. I was the brains of the unit.”

  “Paul?” The question that exited his mouth was no longer one in his head. Features of the shadowed figure came into view, and he recognized every last one of them.

  “You look like hell,” Paul said as he extended his hand for a shake. His bleached white teeth, something he was chided on often in the corp. He even inherited it as a nickname for a bit. It didn’t stick long, and was soon replaced by the default for him, Chief. Partially because of his heritage, which might offend some, but those kinds of social thoughts didn’t exist in that crowd. The real reason behind the nickname, Paul could give as good as he got, and he was smart. Smart with his wit. Smart with his craft. Smart with how he worked with others in the unit to make everyone better.

  Lynch took his hand and shook it. Paul’s flesh was cool to the touch. Cool, in this version of hell on earth, where Lynch could feel his blood just be
low its boiling point. “Yeah, I have been hearing that a lot. You don’t look too bad. Expected you to be full of holes.”

  “Oh, man, is that how you greet an old friend?”

  “My dream, my rules.”

  “This is no dream my friend, and as I said, you have been here before. Do you remember?”

  Lynch looked around for a flashing sign that would tell him what this place was, and when he was last here. There was nothing but cracked dry clay for as far as the eye could see. Then he looked up in the air, right into the scorching sun. His eyelids shut as a result of the stimulus, a natural action. Even closed, he saw the spots of the sun reflected off the back of his iris’. The red and blue vessels that ran through the tissue of his eyelids looked like the streets on a map, with the floaters in his eye following the routes. “Nah, never been here. This is a dream. Why can’t I be a normal guy and have a buxom redhead in my dream? Instead, I have this long-haired Native American man I used to know. You don’t have a sister, do you? Maybe you could send her over.”

  “Same old Lynch. You have been here.” Paul raised his hand and pointed around the landscape with his right arm. As he did, a black hawk swooped down from nowhere and landed on his arm. The single flap of his wings to slow it before it landed was a thunderous pop. It was either that, or bones and ligaments popping as the sudden appearance of the large black bird sent Lynch stumbling backwards over his ass.

  “Nah. No way. This can’t be. You said I would live forever now.”

  “Oh, now you remember.”

  “I remember that beast circling over and over me, while you, and, “ Lynch had to pause as visions and memories he had never thought about before came flooding in. “others, a lot of others walked past and around me, doing some chant.”

  “Those were my ancestors, back to the beginning of our line. Each generation completing the circle and giving you this gift to bring you back. It was the least I could do since you saved me, and before you say another word, I know I didn’t do much with my second chance. I can say the same for you. You haven’t done much with your second chance and the gift we gave you.”