Chapter 3
"Owen!"
I blinked my bleary eyes as they tried to adjust to the lighted interior of the Suburban. Suddenly I was squished against the door as someone hugged me tight.
"Julie?" She was as beautiful as ever. I hadn't been exaggerating when I had described her to my poor dead cellmate. Tall, brunette, gorgeous, way smarter than I am, talented, and tough as nails. Julie is the spitting image of her mother, only alive and not filled with soul-crushing evil. "Oh, man! I'm sure glad to see you." I hugged her and ran a filthy hand across her cheek. Being a tough guy, I tried not to cry like a sissy in front of the federal agents. She held me tight. She must have thought that she had lost me. I sure did hate that feeling.
She tilted her head back and kissed me. Man, I'm glad to be out of jail. Finally she broke away, removed her glasses and wiped a tiny bit of moisture from her eyes. "You taste like chemicals."
"Lice powder. What's going on?"
"I should ask you that. What happened at the resort? There were zombies, and then you disappeared, and then the Feds showed up looking for you."
"It's complicated, I'll try to explain, but is the team okay? And what are you doing with these guys?"
"Everybody's fine. I made Myers bring me when I found out he was looking for you. Oh, Owen, I'm just glad you're safe."
The driver's side door opened and Agent Franks squeezed his bulk behind the wheel. Myers slid into the passenger side. The interior light died when he closed the door. Myers turned to face us over the seat.
"You didn't make me do anything. I let you come," he snapped.
"I hoped we could use her to ID your body," Franks said emotionlessly. That made two complete sentences in one night, which was pretty good for Franks. Sadly, both of them had something to do with wishing for my death. I suppose I just have that effect on some people. Franks slammed the big vehicle into gear and gunned it out through the gate in a spray of gravel. Prisoners caught in the headlights had to jump out of the way to avoid being run down. Myers turned back around and spoke into his radio, ordering the other two vehicles to watch for an ambush. The gates of Tijira Prison faded into the background.
"And the zombie outbreak? Did we get it contained in time?" I had to know. It was stupid, but I felt like it was my fault.
"There were only a few more casualties after you were arrested. A Girls Gone Wild video crew had their brains eaten . . . so no significant losses," Myers stated.
"What happened? How did you end up here?" Julie asked. "And what happened to your head? That lump is huge."
"Shotgun butt." I dismissed it with a wave. Unfortunately for me, traumatic brain injuries were a relatively common occurrence. "I'll explain later. I saw your mom and dad."
"What?" Julie's voice rose an octave. "Here? Now?" She turned and watched out the window. "Not again . . ." Normally Julie's Alabama accent was very faint, except for when she got excited, or in this case, scared. Susan and Ray would be a dark spot in our life until they finally got staked and chopped.
"I think they're gone for now." I put my arm over her shoulder and pulled her close and whispered in her ear. "I'll fill you in on what they said, but I don't want these pricks to hear." She nodded and her hand moved to the black mark on the side of her neck, an unconscious habit that she had picked up when she was under a great deal of stress. To most people, the mark looked like a thick, black, line tattoo. In actuality it was something entirely different. Susan's parting words had been about how the mark that had saved Julie was going to eventually kill her. Not if I can help it.
"Pitt, at the resort, did you see him?" Myers queried, back to business.
"Him who?" I decided to play stupid. I knew that the Feds had not rescued me out of the goodness of their hearts and I wanted to know why.
"The leader of the Condition. The necromancer."
"English guy, turns into a giant shadow when the lights go out, throws toilets at people, that one?"
Myers got excited. "Did you see his face?"
"A little, but it was dark."
"I'll have you talk to a sketch artist on the flight home. You're now the only person we know of who has seen him in person."
"What's the Condition?" Julie asked.
"The Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition. They're a death cult. A real bunch of nut-job whackos. They've been around forever, but only over the last year have they really shown up on our radar. The man who attacked you, he's their leader."
"A church? Why don't you just go burn their compound down? You guys are Feds after all."
Myers either didn't get the jab, or he chose to ignore it. "We would if we could. But the Condition is good. They work in cells. Their higher-level operatives are known as the Exalted Order of the Shadows. We can't isolate their leaders, or even most of their ranking members. As far as we can tell they're dabbling in some real hard-core black magic. And they're connected . . . businessmen, politicians, the media, even movie stars. This cult is now our number one priority."
"Let me guess. They worship the Old Ones?"
"Yes. And they're out to get you specifically," he said, pausing briefly in thought. "How did you know that they were connected to those things?"
I didn't say anything.
Myers turned around and glared at me. "Look, Pitt, if you have information, you need to share it. These guys are bad news, their leader is secret enemy number one, and right now I'm your best chance to survive them." He tried to look friendly, and mostly failed. "I know that we've gotten off on the wrong foot, but I'm trying to help you here."
"Why?"
"That's our job. We're supposed to protect and defend the taxpayers." He smiled, and in the dark I wasn't sure if the government man or Susan had been more intimidating, but for totally different reasons. One because it represented a soulless entity with the power to suck the very blood from the innocent, and the other because it was a vampire. The Suburban continued to accelerate down the rutted road.
"Bullshit."
Myers shrugged. He was smart enough not to waste his time. "All right, let me level with you. You are currently our only in against this cult. Just about everybody we've tried to infiltrate has ended up zombified or worse. I've finally got a man inside, but he's low on their totem pole and they won't reveal anything to him. We can't get any of the known members to turn snitch, and if they seem to think about it, they're never seen again. But the Condition's fixated on you, and through you, it gives us a way to capture some of them for questioning."
I put my face in my palm. "Oh, come on. Why does everything seem to have it in for me personally?" I figured I knew why I was the target of the Old Ones. I had been responsible for thwarting their invasion, but the Feds did not know that. I was sure of that much, because if the Feds knew what I had pulled off, up to and including time travel, then I had no doubt that my brain would be sitting in a glass jar in some government lab being poked with electrodes to see how it worked.
"About that . . ." Myers looked away, a little sheepish. "Sorry."