“Get to the point, will you? I’ve got work to do.”
“Okay, okay. Guy’s name was Chung. Did a lot of heavy dealing in opium and heroin. One of these jungle warlords straight off the Golden Triangle. Started out as some type of freedom fighter and gave it up when he saw how lucrative drugs could be. Rumor is he slaughtered something on the order of thousands in his rise to power. Including women and children.” Krause took another long drag on his cigarette and Curran did the same.
But somehow the cigarette didn’t taste that good.
“One of Uncle Sam’s DEA boys filed a field report that said this guy used to bury his enemies in the ground up to their neck and then pour honey all over their heads.” He glanced at Curran. “You know what honey attracts over in Cambodia?”
Curran sighed. “I don’t know, Krause. Ants?”
“Yeah, but not your ordinary picnic-disrupters. Soldier ants. Ever hear of them?”
“Vaguely.”
“Chung used to get his rocks off watching the ants crawl all over his victims — into their mouths, noses, and ears — and start eating their way from the inside out. You imagine going like that? I’d pull the trigger myself before I let that happen to me. I hear it takes almost two days to die like that. Eaten alive from the inside out. Thousands of those ants swarming all over you. Biting. Ripping. Bleeding. Screaming. Jesus freaking Christ.” He shook his head. “Sick crap.”
Curran sighed. “Anything else?”
“Had another hobby this guy. He used to kidnap and impregnate poor teen-age girls. Five months into the pregnancy, he’d cut out the fetuses with a rusty hand scythe and throw the bodies of both the girl and her unborn child to a pack of ravenous dogs. By last count, he’d done it almost two dozen times.”
Curran’s stomach churned. His ground the cigarette out against the mildewed tile wall and faced Krause again. “What in God’s name is this putrid freak doing in Boston?”
Krause grinned. “Ain’t that just like our good ol’ gov’mint? Making friends with the very people we ought to be killing. But that’s what we did. CIA took him in under their wing. In exchange for information on Soviet activities in the eighties, we shielded him. And then, wouldn’t you know it, this piece of crap decided he wants to get into politics. Fixed some local elections and winds up in a cabinet position. Works his way into an ambassadorship. That’s where State comes in.”
“Still doesn’t answer what he was doing here.”
“Well, old habits, you know, they die hard. Chung still had both hands in the drug trade. Guess you can’t make much of a living doing civil service work over in Asia, neither. Go figure.”
“He was here to deal drugs?”
“Way we figure, he had some contacts with the VC boys here in town. Maybe a new deal going down. I don’t know.” He grinned. “Don’t make much difference now, does it? He just ended up dying. Makes my job a helluva lot easier, I’ll tell you that.”
“Glad to hear it’s worked out so well for you.”
Krause grinned. “You’re gonna get stuck with this case?”
“ME thinks it’s a heart attack. Who am I to argue?”
“They call you down here for a potential heart attack?”
“Precaution.”
Krause smiled. “My ass. Someone thinks this is a homicide. Better hope that fancy pants doc can make it look natural. Save you an awful lot of heartache trying to figure out who did it.”
I already know, thought Curran. And even still, it wouldn’t make things any easier.
He glanced down at Chung. Soldier ants, knocking up little girls, and killing the unborn — that just about made Chung the most evil thing Curran had ever come across.
No wonder Darius wanted him.
And in that instant, his stomach dropped with sudden revelation.
There’d be no more bodies like this.
Chung was the last. The most evil. With his soul, Darius — the Soul Eater — would have the last of what he needed.
And the resurrection would begin.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Darkness surrounded her.
Her eyes, now fully open, could make out nothing of the room she lay in. She tried flexing her arms again. They were bound fast. The same with her legs. Even turning her head produced pain from the edges of whatever she lay within.
Darius.
The demon.
She could hear his voice as he had touched her.
“You cannot stop me. You have not the power to do so. And now your time has come; your hour of service is at hand.”
In the periphery of her vision, her eyes had seen the two feet of the real Sister McDewey. Lauren cursed herself silently feeling like some naive Little Red Riding Hood who’d shown up too late at Grandma’s house.
She’d seen Darius’ hands then. At first glance they appeared normal but as he drew down the distance between them, she could see the skin changing. Thick scales broke out along the surface while underneath thick tendons and ligaments flexed and undulated like giant unseen tidal fluxes.
Her stomach had lurched — ready to retch — as his hands came closer.
She tried to back up but could go no further. And then they touched her, the cold seeping into her skin. Into her mind. Into her soul.
And blackness had swallowed her.
Lauren had thought she was dead. She’d thought this would be it.
But she didn’t feel dead. Just lost.
And scared.
The room she was in was cold. She could tell her clothes were gone and yet something else covered her body. A simple one-piece robe of sorts perhaps. Nothing too substantial since she could feel a cold draft wafting throughout the room that penetrated the robe as easily as if she was naked.
What did he want with her? She wasn’t evil. How could she figure into his plan? Did he need her soul for some depraved part of his resurrection plan? Perhaps he intended to eat her.
She shivered, suddenly realizing the weight of her own thoughts as they tumbled over her in rapid succession, a veritable avalanche of doom.
Where was Steve?
Chinatown.
She sighed and tried to flex again. Useless. Whatever type of restraints held her, they were solid and unyielding.
There’d be no way for her to escape.
Unless she had help.
She thought back to seeing Darius when she’d been asleep. But she hadn’t been asleep at all. She’d traveled out of her body.
That had been an unconscious move on her part. She hadn’t set out to do it. She wondered if it was possible to do the same thing again.
Another draft swept over her, a rising tide of imminence. Time grew short. Either she got help or she’d die here.
Or worse.
She closed her eyes and tried to reach out with her mind.
Steve.
In her mind’s eye she saw him as a sketchy figure. She concentrated on making him as fully realized as she could. She mentally added in details after details, down to the smallest item she could recall.
Making love with him had helped emblazon his physical details in her mind. She drew on those memories now to help flesh him out as best she possibly could. Gradually, he started becoming whole within her mind. Two-dimensional at first, she made sure she turned him over and over until he was almost real
Almost as if he’d actually been there.
I need you, Steve.
I need you now!
Curran shivered again as another cold breeze washed over him. He cranked the heater and frowned. The cold had been more than just a temperature in the course of this case. When this is over, he thought, I’m moving to the equator.
Maybe he could take Lauren with him.
He grabbed his cell phone and punched in the number to Father Jim’s house. The phone rang.
And rang.
He checked his watch.
She ought to be home by now.
“I should be there by noon.”
Her words.