Dark Destiny (27 page)

Charlotte placed her hand on top of Sara’s arm, snapping her from her frightful reverie. Immediately, in Sara’s mind, an image flashed of a kind-looking, older man with snow-colored hair.

“That would have been Morose, the Master,” Charlotte said, taking her hand away, and the image of the kind-looking man with it.

What was that all about?

Charlotte continued, “The Master can affect all of us. His gift is some sort of Soul mind control. The only way we are safe is in our haunts. Here, we are beyond his control.”

With the thought of Morose returning to Sara’s mind, the image of the old man was forgotten. Instead, shivers ran down her spine. Her skin crawled. Unsure of what else to do, she stood abruptly and gathered her plate to clean up.

“You don’t have to do that,” Charlotte said.

“I insist. So far you’ve been a gracious host. The least I can do is help you clean up.”

Charlotte beamed. “Thank you.”

Sara walked around Charlotte into the kitchen area and placed her dish in the sink. She turned on the faucet and ran warm water. It came out crystal clear. Where was the water coming from? Any infrastructure outside appeared dead and abandoned. Then again, why should this make sense if nothing else did?

“How long have you been here?” Sara asked over the noise of the water faucet.

“I’m not sure, honestly. A couple of years, maybe.”

A couple of years? Hmm.
Sebastian asked her to help get this lady into the Light. So far, Charlotte had been sweet, honest and up front. Why wasn’t she already in the Light? There had to be more to this story. “Anything you’d like to talk about?”

“Anything?”

“Anything,” Sara responded.

Charlotte sighed. “Noah.”

Sara turned off the water. “Who’s Noah?”

Charlotte beamed. “Noah is . . . Noah. He is quite possibly the sweetest man in the world. A vision of lovely I can’t even describe.” She paused. “It only took me forever to notice it. I’d known him my whole life and always knew he had a crush on me. It seemed every day he would ask me out and I would politely decline. One day, I got frustrated and asked him when he was going to stop. He smiled and walked away.”

“The next day, he came to me with a bouquet of roses. He told me, ‘I’m going to stop trying when the last rose dies.’ Then he walked away.”

“Really?” Sara asked, her eyes wide. She dried her hands on a towel and sat at the table. “Were you . . .” Sara started, leaning towards Charlotte, “a little disappointed?”

Charlotte smiled and rested her elbows on the table. “I was,” she admitted. “It took me a while to notice, but buried in the dozen roses was an artificial one.”

Sara’s face broke out into a smile. “Aw, that’s sweet.”

“I thought so,” said Charlotte. “And a little stalkerish too, right?”

“Yes!” replied Sara as they both began giggling. “But in a good way.”

Once their laughter subsided, Charlotte sighed. “Ah, Noah. That was so long ago. After we got married, I went to college and he joined the Marines. God, he made me so happy.”

Wednesday, 1:58 am (Purgatorium)

Sara smiled as Charlotte spoke, allowing the story to fill her mind with wonderful images. Charlotte offered more details of her life with Noah. From their wedding to the endless letters they wrote when he was in the Vietnam War. It sounded so wonderful. So perfect. After he returned from the war, they moved to the mountains and bought a couple of acres of farmland.

Once Charlotte was done speaking, Sara asked, “So, what happened?”

“As in, how did I end up here?”

Sara nodded slightly.

Dread crept over Charlotte’s face. Sara wondered if she had said something wrong.

“I’ll show you if you wish,” Charlotte said.

Somehow, the room’s ambiance shifted. The shadows grew darker, slithering in all directions. For a moment, Sara thought she heard them sliding. Charlotte didn’t react to the change, only gazed at her, worry on her face.

“Show me? How?” Sara asked carefully.

“You’ll see. Just remember, whatever you see, I need you to understand it isn’t happening right now. Nothing bad can happen, not anymore. Just stay at this table, okay?”

“Okay,” Sara said warily.

Charlotte took a deep breath, motioning toward the living room. “This is my daughter’s apartment. It’s not really my style, but we agreed to house-sit while she was out of town.”

A soft clicking sound coming from the front door caught Sara’s attention. The lighting around them dimmed, as if they were in a theatre, while the light in the living room grew brighter, like it was the stage. The knob twisted slowly and the door opened, revealing two young men dressed in black. Silently, they crept into the apartment. They had almost identical features: long, thin faces with pointed noses and chins, and shaggy black hair. One wore a beanie pulled low on his forehead. They wore matching hostile expressions.

Twins.

Sara’s body went stiff, glued to her chair, heart racing.

Fiddling nervously with her hands, Charlotte said, “Clearly they were expecting the place to be empty.”

The two young men came farther into the living room. Sara noticed the one in front had an eyebrow piercing. He put his finger to his lips, signaling the other not to make any noise. Frowning, he pointed to a closed door to the left of the living area.

“That’s the bedroom he’s pointing to. When Scarlett, my daughter, was gone, she always left all the doors open. She never like closed doors, even as a child. Noah and I often wondered if that was due to all the horror movies we let her watch. Connor, the one with that horrid thing through his eyebrow, knows that. He’s my daughter’s ex,” Charlotte explained.

“Why are they breaking in?”

“That, my dear, is a question I have asked myself dozens of times.”

The bedroom door opened as an elderly man stepped out wearing a white t-shirt and light blue boxers. Though old and half asleep, he had a layer of muscle that came with a lifetime of training and conditioning. A bulldog tattoo on his upper right arm had USMC written beneath it. His hair was the color of snow. This was the person she had seen in her vision.

“Noah often got up to get a drink of water in the night. You know, it gets very dry, especially in the winter.”

Noah’s eyes went wide as he caught the intruders. He went from half asleep to fully awake to red with fury in a matter of seconds. The intruders gawked at him, frozen in shock.

At least ten seconds passed before anyone did or said anything. To Sara, it felt like an eternity.

“Noah was never one to be bullied,” Charlotte continued. “Did I mention he won many commendations in the Vietnam War?”

At that same moment, Noah let out a battle cry and charged Connor.

Connor screamed, “No, wait! Sir! I’m leav
—
”

Noah’s fist smashed into his jaw.

Sara heard a crack.

Then Noah went low, tackled Connor, lifting him up onto his shoulder and charged forward. Connor’s back collided with a column behind him in a sickening thud. He cried out in pain.

“I heard the commotion,” said Charlotte. “I came out to see what was going on.”

Another version of Charlotte, wearing the same nightgown, minus the apron, came out of the bedroom. “Honey, what’s going on?”

Noah yelled, “Get back in the room and call the cops!”

Connor’s brother stood frozen, hand covering his mouth. Swallowing hard, he forced himself to react. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small pistol.

“Everybody! Just stop!”

But Connor either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He had become a mad man, charging at Noah and slamming his back into the end table.

“Noah!” screamed Charlotte, her back pressed to the bedroom door, her face a mask of horror. She rushed over, grabbed a purple porcelain vase filled with flowers and smashed it over Connor’s head. It shattered, bits trickling everywhere. Blood poured from the gash on his head, pooling onto the hardwood floor.

“Connor!” the brother yelled.

He raised his gun and pointed it at Charlotte. She stared at him, her eyes darting back and forth between the brother and her husband, who struggled to stand. Then the gun went off. The blast echoed off the walls and the ceiling like a sonic boom in the stratosphere.

Charlotte blinked, as though she had no idea what had made that thunderous bang.

“No!” Noah yelled, charging at Connor’s brother. They fought with the gun as Charlotte glanced down at her chest. Blood spread out across her nightgown like a fast-growing rose. With disbelieving eyes, she slumped down onto the carpet, a shaky hand over her wound. The hot red liquid seeped between her fingers, as her solid form wavered.

Then Noah’s image flickered as well, along with Connor and his brother and the gun. Their images faded for a moment in ghostly reflections, and Sara understood that the memory had ended. Just before the images faded completely, she heard a final gunshot.

Several seconds of silence passed. Sara didn’t move. She didn’t breathe.

“My God. That was horrible,” she managed.

Charlotte shrugged. “As life sometimes is, my dear. Or, in my case, death.”

Sara reached over and placed a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder.

“What did it feel like for you?” she asked softly.

“The moment of my passing?”

“Yes.”

Charlotte’s eyes went distant. “At first, it was darkness, but I felt like I was there. I’m not sure how to explain it. Let me see, I remember sleeping. Somehow, I was moved to my bed. Then, I heard a knocking. It was soft.

“I woke to the smell of fresh flowers. Roses. I got up and saw a brilliant light,” said Charlotte, pointing to the front door.

“That’s where it came from?”

“Yes. And any fear I had was gone. It was warm, like standing in the sunlight on a clear summer day.”

Sara gave Charlotte a warm smile.

“It called out to me, you know,” Charlotte said, “but I couldn’t go. Not until I knew.”

“Knew what?” asked Sara.

“What happened to Noah.”

Wednesday, 2:15 am (Purgatorium)

Heavy footsteps reverberated throughout the room, echoing in every direction. As Sebastian stared at the floor, the steps grew louder.

The Reaper’s legs were numb. It took a tremendous amount of effort to get his palm flat against the cold marble floor and do a rather strained push up. Before he could get to his feet, a firm hand grabbed the top of his robes and yanked him upright.

“Aw,
crap
,” the Reaper whined.

Gabriel had picked him up like he was a defenseless kitten. With one hard grab, he took hold of the front of the Reaper’s robes and ripped them off, tossing them onto the derelict floor. Black and purple mist wrapped around the robes as they dissolved. The Angel stared at Sebastian, impassively, devoid of any emotion. Sebastian managed to open one eye to peer at the powerful Angel.

Gazing through half-blurred vision, they seemed to be in some sort of abandoned bank. A row of teller booths they’d crashed through on their way into the building lay destroyed behind them. On the other side, a circular, heavy metal, vault door stood ajar. Light fixtures hung from the ceiling. One of them flickered annoyingly, bathing portions of the room in darkness.

More stupid flickering. The last thing he wanted to do was go into a seizure.

“I’m going to take you to the haunt,” said Gabriel slowly, his tone eerily calm. “You’re going to open it. Or else I’m going to
break
you.”

Sebastian tried thinking of a snappy comeback, but his exhausted mind wasn’t functioning correctly. “Your . . . breath . . . smells . . . like honeycombs,” Sebastian muttered.

It wasn’t exactly what he’d wanted to say. His eyelids were heavy and they closed, but he forced them open. Gabriel blurred before him, and he knew he was seconds away from passing out.

Then, Sebastian saw a figure just beyond Gabriel. A young man. Sebastian’s eyes opened wider when he realized who it was. His deadly twin was back, standing behind Gabriel, angry, his mouth opening and closing, yelling something. No sounds came out.

“Wh—what?” Sebastian strained his ears to hear.

Seeing that the Reaper’s gaze was fixed beyond him, Gabriel turned around to investigate, but seeing nothing, he once again faced the panting Reaper, staring down at him with pity.

“I had thought better of you,” Gabriel said, his tone filled with sadness. “That you would have given me a worthy challenge, pushed me to the brink of my power.” He paused. “I guess I was mistaken.”

The twin’s angry voice cut in and out, as if through a fraying telephone line. “I said, . . . you pick . . . up and kick his . . .”

“Too spent,” Sebastian replied weakly.

Gabriel still stood over Sebastian, obviously confused by the Reaper’s muttering.

Sebastian’s twin continued to shout, his voice fading in and out, “. . . outrank him! . . . Are . . . Horseman of . . .”

Shrugging dismissively, Gabriel rolled his eyes.

Sebastian allowed his eyelids to close. On his face, he felt the Angel’s hot breath and he sensed the Angel’s annoyance.