Chapter 29
“So, do you like it here, Honey?” Adam looked up from the television and at Virginia.
“Yeah. You have a really cool place here. And you have some awesome dogs.” He stopped and frowned. “We don’t have any dogs at home. My Mom’s afraid of them.”
“That’s a shame. Dogs make for the most awesome people.” Adam nodded in agreement. “Sweetie, I need you to tell me what you see, what exactly happened to you after you woke up from your coma.”
“Your brother told you?”
“Of course. He told me everything. After all, there was a reason why he brought you to me.”
“And what’s that?”
“I have… certain abilities, too. Whereas most people with abilities can do just one thing or the other, I have several abilities.”
“Like what?”
“Like seeing auras, feeling the presence of paranormal entities, foretelling the future, even mentally communicating with them. You have to understand, Adam,” Virginia said as she steepled her fingers, “my brother Eddie was never a big believer in people with psychic abilities. At least, not until after Chaz passed away. So for him to turn around in the Carolinas and to bring you here to me took a huge leap of faith for him. So I need to know every detail of what’s going on in your life because…”
“Because what?”
“I’m sensing that you and my brother didn’t arrive here alone.”
“You’re right about that.” Still, the teenager looked at her skeptically. “What are you sensing?”
“A… an imposter. Someone pretending to be what they’re not. But I can’t tell more until I channel your energy through me.” She took his hands in hers and relished how they felt even as she closed her eyes and concentrated. They were warm and softer than kid leather. Even though he wasn’t instructed to, Adam closed his eyes, too.
“I sense at least three others are with you but they’re not aware of each other. One’s pretending to be someone who was dear to you.”
“Not was. Is. She was my girlfriend. She died on Halloween night.”
“I feel your sadness over that loss, your pain. But this… this Other. Not only is she not your loved one, she’s not even a paranormal entity.”
“What?” Adam said as his big green eyes flew open. “Are you serious? She’s not even a ghost?”
“No. The other two are. But not this imposter. But she now knows you’re on to her. We need to tell her in no uncertain terms that we know who she is and what she’s up to.”
“What is her name?”
“She’s a psychic named Matilda or something like that. And she’s close by. In fact, she may even know exactly where you are right now.”
Mathilda abruptly broke from the connection and quickly put her back against the wall of her dorm room. It wasn’t the optimal way to sever a connection and to reenter her body any more than merely hitting the power button is the best way to shut down a computer. But they were on to her, Adam and the old lady were, and she had to get out. “Fuck me,” she said in her Australian accent.
When she was picking the kid’s brain, she came across the perfect person over whom to superimpose her out-of-body presence. This Adam Moss kid had just lost someone near and dear to him and it didn’t take Mathilda long to find out about this Clarissa including every detail of her face and body that she’d downloaded from the kid’s mind.
They called her a “wet hacker”, a name she hated. Projecting an astral image and getting deeply into someone’s mind while in an out-of-body state was her specialty. Needing only a picture of her subject and an approximate location, she was more reliable than any bloodhound. A.D.E.P.T. had actively recruited her back when she was still a gangly girl of 10 but Oliver Blood and the American government had helped her focus, refine and strengthen her paranormal abilities to the point where she was a trusted covert field agent. The agency employed five other adepts like her but as far as she or anyone else knew, she was the only one of her kind.
She was angry with Adam for distrusting her but Mathilda knew she only had herself to blame. Rushed into service, she didn’t have much time to delve deeply enough into his mind to get a sense of this Clarissa’s personality to be able to mimic more than just her looks. And she sensed that Adam must’ve picked up on the lascivious looks she was directing at him. But she couldn’t help it. He was a looker and his libido was at least the equal of her own and that was saying a lot considering that Mathilda Hogan spent at least 10 hours a day thinking about sex.
But even if the kid and the old lady now were on to her, at least she got to hang around long enough to get an approximate fix on his location. She reached for her cell phone and thumbed in a number.
“Ollie? I got him. Coffey’s stashed him somewhere in Vienna, Virginia. And he has another adept helping him out.”
“Meet us at headquarters and call the other adepts. We’re gonna need all hands on deck for this one.” Blood put his cell phone back in his pocket. “The girl’s a horny little pain in the ass but I gotta admit, she’s good.”
“Was that Mathilda?”
“Yeah, and she backed up what this little doohickey here’s tellin’ us.” And Blood held up the tracking device giving them the location of the transponder that Elle had put under her brother’s skateboard. “They’re in Vienna, Virginia. They’re onto us and they have help.”
They were already on their way there and were about two hours out.
“Checkmate,” Jodl told Hans Dietrich in their native language. The living German looked again at the chessboard and realized the dead German was right. Dietrich knocked over his pieces.
He wondered if Jodl had yet seen the irony. As an officer in a concentration camp, he must have used the services of imprisoned Jews who were given free run of the compound, those who had special gifts or abilities and were used in much the same way as certain modern-day prisoners are given trustee status.
Jodl was the only trustee of his kind in the whole world. He was a captured spirit who had long since proven his trustworthiness because he had proven loyal to Dietrich’s cause. Whereas the other entities were kept in the Hole and on a leash of energy that prevented them from slipping away, Dietrich had grown to trust Jodl so much he knew he could send him out like a murderous homing pigeon and that he’d come back to roost every time.
So it was on Halloween night and again after the bloodbath at the Christianson house. Jodl was one of the very few multigifted entities in Dietrich’s ghostly army. He could summon at will razor-sharp weapons, fly, materialize through solid objects, interact with the physical world and find whomever he wanted anywhere in the world. Dietrich wondered if the sick fuck even knew how to teleport, he was so fast.
“Something has to be done about the Moss boy. The Christiansons were supposed to be a warning. Apparently, it did not work since the boy is in ADEPT’s custody.”
“Are you suggesting what I think you are, Herr Dietrich?” He smiled literally from ear to ear, another creepy gift of his. He had the ability to warp, deform or change his appearance at will while still often giving the uninitiated the appearance of being a living, solid human being.
“I am afraid so. It’s a shame. He could have been of so much help to us and I wouldn’t have to deal with that fat fuck in there,” he said, motioning to the Hole.
Jodl nodded. He knew Dietrich was talking about Dragović. Perhaps it was best that Jodl was trusted enough to live outside the Hole. The old Nazi was sure he would’ve eviscerated the old Communist the same way he did those twin girls back in Massachusetts. It wouldn’t have killed him any more than it would’ve killed the twins (there’s only one way to kill a ghost and mutilation is certainly not the way). But he would’ve given him more exquisite agony than even the energy field disruptor that Dietrich loved to use on the cantankerous.
“When do you want it done, Herr Dietrich?”
“Tonight. I want it to be over with. We cannot take a chance of him developing into what I suspect.”
“And that is?”
“Our worst nightmare. Go.”
The room containing the Hole immediately got warmer when Jodl disappeared through the steel door and Dietrich unzipped his leather trench coat. He looked at the Hole’s round window and wondered how Dragović was faring in his massive recruitment drive. Dietrich had done his part. Now it was up to Dragović to do his.
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