The Broken Ones (Book 1) Read online

  Then red scaled hands clutched him around the throat as the boy began choking him, lifting him off the ground as he did so. The head straightened, the face lining up with Lanton's. "Stop," Lanton tried to choke out, but all that came from his lips was a hoarse choke that sounded like no human language.

  The boy opened his blackened lips, a sliver of a forked tongue streaking out to slide over the top lip. "It's beginning,” the boy said, a deep rumble in his voice. The voice that escaped that boy did not sound like anything that should belong to a boy. It sounded like the megaphone speaker version of some demonic voice played through haunted houses. "Soon," it promised with a rumbling cackle.

  Then it snapped Lanton's neck.

  Lanton jerked awake, hands instinctively going to his neck. He was back in the hospital room with Chris. Overhead on the far wall the television showed another news clipping of the man who had flown in to defeat the fire throwing woman and the monster that looked like a bad CGI version of a dirt man. The scrawl at the bottom announced that The Cherub was still being sought for questioning in the incident and that the government’s various agencies had closed down the mall to conduct research on the area where the dirt thing had fallen. He found it amusing that the news was quick to call the flying fat man an angelic name, but no one was comfortable with referring to the dirt thing as some form of demon.

  "Bad dreams?" Chris was reclined in the bed, the upper part raised to be more comfortable for his damaged windpipe. Even now the bruising around his neck was a deep black and purple. It would be months before the skin returned to normal, if at all.

  "Yeah," Lanton admitted.

  Chris tilted his head and winced at the motion. "Visions of the future?"

  Lanton shook his head as much to answer as to dispel the memory. "Distortions of the past. Did I tell you that the night you did..." he stopped.

  "The night I hit bottom?" Chris chuckled, and winced at that.

  "Yeah. Did I tell you about the calls I was out on?"

  "If you did, the painkillers stole them." A sly smile, and a refrain from a chuckle this time.

  "It was a rash of suicides. Whole city’s been swamped with them lately. Suicides and young people dying of old people problems. One died of a heart attack and was about twenty, healthy as they come. Anyway, the last run was on this kid who had hung himself in his bedroom. Not really a new tale, but this one, the kid had somehow transformed into what I guess was a demon, devil or something. Horns, hooves, red scaled, black eyes, he looked fresh off a Slayer album cover."

  "Isn't that the night that happened?” Chris gestured at the news talking about the implications of someone flying and having a shield like the one the Cherub had.

  "Yeah."

  "Angels, demons, devils and visions, all in one night. I didn't used to believe, but I am starting to now." Chris rested his head on his pillow, looking tired.

  "Visions?" Lanton asked, leaning back in his chair too.

  "It's nothing. Just another failure on my part. Another set of dead bodies laid at my feet."

  "That's seriously ominous, buddy. You sure you don't want to talk about it?" Lanton wasn't sure now was a good time. He suspected that whatever Chris referred to, it was tied into what he had tried to do.

  "Not tonight. Think it's time to get some sleep of my own." Chris closed his eyes and began to hum some tune Lanton couldn't place.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Lanton saw one of the nurses gesturing for his attention. Lanton rose, careful of the sound it might make and moved into the hallway to meet her.

  This one was a tall brunette with powerful shoulders and a smile that seemed forced. She had smiled at him well enough, but she did not have any of the banter that some of the other nurses had shared with him. This one seemed all about the business and Lanton was alright with that. "I just wanted to give you a heads up. Tomorrow Chris goes back on suicide watch."

  Lanton flinched at the word. "He seems okay now."

  She nodded, her nametag claiming she was called Frea. "Right now he is on a very heavy mixture of sedatives and painkillers. This was done so he could heal first, before we start the detox process. As a heavy user, he is going to start to feel the effects of withdrawal once we change over his meds. It's going to be a hard time for him, and that is when he will be most likely to relapse."

  "So why not keep him on the good stuff until he is fully healed?"

  "Because fighting addiction by introducing him to something just as addictive isn't helping him. If we keep him on this stuff too much longer, he will get a serious addiction to it, and then he has even one more hurdle to deal with before he can get back to a reasonable life,” she placed a hand on his shoulder. As close to a bedside manner as this one came, but he was still alright with it.

  "Alright, Nurse Frea,” he said with a weak smile. "Whatever it takes to get him back to good. Anything I can do to help?"

  She looked at him for a while, biting her lip.

  "I am a police officer in homicide. I can handle the unvarnished truth. Hit me with both barrels."

  She smiled just as weakly as him. "During this time, our biggest struggle is with the family and friends of the patient. They get more demanding of us, begging us to switch the medicine. No, one likes to see their friend or family member in pain. It is a heart breaking thing to watch someone go through. Some people even try to sneak in stuff to ease the person's pain, thinking they can help them come down more slowly. It doesn't work like that, and additional chemicals in his body we don't know about could kill him."

  Lanton nodded. "I follow. He's got one hell of a hard road ahead of him, and you don't need me gumming up the works. I need to stay out of the way and let the professionals do their job."

  Her smile was genuine now. "I can see why she likes you." She patted him again on the shoulder.

  "Well, we run into some of the same problems out on the streets. People looking out for family and not seeing that we are here to help. We don't like locking people up any more than you like having people in pain. Sometimes, it just comes with the territory."

  "Exactly,” Nurse Frea began to move away.

  "Nurse?" He thought of something else. "Who likes me?"

  Nurse Frea gave a soft laugh and shook her head. "Oh, no, I'm not narcing on her."

  Lanton laughed and slipped back into Chris's room.

  Chris was awake, smiling at him. "Was it the ‘don’t you dare give Chris crack’ speech?"

  Lanton laughed and sat down in the chair. "Pretty much. That, and don't give you anything sharp to play with."

  Chris smiled and nodded, wincing again. "Don't worry. I won't go down that path again."

  Lanton didn't think to ask which path he referred to. Later he would discover that he would wish he had.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tonight was the night. Stephen knew it, and while the rest of the world remained unaware, they would soon discover it. He smiled at himself in the reflection of the two-way mirror, knowing that just behind that bulletproof glass, half a dozen police officers and one high strung prison warden glared back at him. The thought of that alone made his smile creep wider. Stephen had no respect for authority. But, it did not stop there. Stephen had no respect for anything. Nothing was off limits to him. In fact as a reporter, every time he interviewed the friend of some person who went off and did something stupid, he cringed to hear the line “I didn’t think he was capable of it,” It insulted Stephen with every syllable of the words. Stephen prided himself on being capable of anything. The difference, he told himself, was that he chose not to. Sure, some of it was the repercussions of his actions, but even then, that was the reason he chose not to do something. He always looked for the greater damage, and not just the piss-ant prizes that life offered as consolation prizes to the weak of mind. No, he saved his sweet capability for something grandiose. Something momentous that would rock whomever it affected, and even those who happened to stumble upon it.

  That was why tonight was the night.
He had cashed in every favor he had garnered over a ten year span as a reporter. Called in every tip he had ever been given, every blind eye he had lent for this one chance. Tonight, he planned to interview the now infamous Sarah Givens. He intended to interview who the papers and news media began to call the cop killing Flamethrower. By his last count, seven men and women of law enforcement had lost their life to this woman, and the strange creature she had with her. The world's love with their own hatred of this woman was venomous. In all his years as a reporter, there had always been some loony who would raise a voice to be on the side of whatever monster reared its head, no matter how heinous the crimes. Hell, even now, skinheads raised palms to one of the world’s greatest monsters in the world. Yet this unassuming, beautiful school teacher had galvanized an entire world with hatred. No, one spoke in her defense, and the only defense she got was so certain people could have their chance to kill her. Homeland Security wanted her, having labeled her as a threat to national security. The FBI wanted her, though their reasoning lacked any real backbone. State and local police wanted to bring back hangings, just so they could string her up in the town center. No, one looked to give her the slightest break.

  Stephen planned to change that. He intended to take an entire world hardened with hate for this spree killing psychopath and he planned to make them first have pity, and then he intended to make them start to love her. He wasn’t going to do this because he believed it. He had spoken with her for ten minutes max the day before, and he knew without a shadow of doubt that this beautiful little fruitcake was as rotten to the core as they came. Now, that didn’t stop him from wanting to do unspeakable things to her, and she had promised him things he doubted were physically possible if he was able to pull off what he had planned. None of that. Not her, the flexible sex or some sense of justice drove him. No, he just wanted to do it to prove he could. To prove that he could sway so many minds with just a tantalizing taste of the skills he had. To take a dark twisted evil soul and turn them into the victim instead of the predator. The sheer thought of him turning the world on its ear with this woman had him so physically turned on that he had to take a moment to collect himself.

  He stared at the reflection of himself, grinning like a fool now, imagining the seething hatred of the people behind the glass. He ran a slender hand through his short cut blonde hair, staring into his own piercing blue eyes, and smiled so the dimple in his cheek and chin showed for all the world to see. Tonight was going to be the night, he just knew it.

  He straightened his blue tie, adjusted the mini microphone that was attached to it and whispered into it. “So, Superman is flying along when he sees Wonder Woman bathing nude on top of the Justice League. He thinks to himself, I could swoop down, have my way with her and be gone before she knew what happened. Liking the idea, he dropped down in a flash and did his deed. Then off he flew. Wonder Woman exclaims, what was that? The Invisible man says, I don't know, but my asshole hurts.”

  In his earpiece, someone chuckled. That would be Matt, always the one for crude humor. Someone in the room with Matt growled. Stephen would bet it was some woman who had decided to take offense to his jokes. They tended to do that.

  “Is my sound five by five?” Stephen asked.

  “Sounding good. You ready for this?” Matt replied back in his ear, sounding just as much amped by the prospect as anyone else. He liked Matt, thinking the man might be a kindred spirit in mayhem.

  “Hard for it,” Stephen admitted with a smirk, to which he was rewarded with another chuckle in his ear.

  He turned, facing the rest of the room. It was a large room by most standards, twice the size of those interrogation rooms you often saw on those law dramas on television. Much like the cliché, it only had the one stainless steel table that appeared to be standard issue for prisons. Usually there would be three chairs in the room. Two for the police to sit and one for the suspect, though when you made it here, you were already done with the trials. But, much like the beauty that sat before him, there were some hard cases that they had to keep here while awaiting trial or in this case, gathered up by some federal authority.

  Now she sat before him in a metal wheelchair, her arms strapped to the arms of the chair. Over her head sat a sort of helmet that was tight down around her eyes, but stopped just above the crest of her nose. From the tip of her nose down, her face was free from restraints. They had, however, fastened a harness around her neck, making it so she was unable to move her head. This was explained that they wanted to make sure she was not able to move her head enough to allow one of her eyes to peek out from under the hood. Stephen understood why and for the moment, all he needed was her mouth. He chuckled at the thought but moved on to the show. He was sure he could return to that train of thought after the show. No, he was glad that they had bound her neck, and he hadn’t even argued against it. It would look splendid on the television, when the world turned in to see her bound, and then got to hear her tale from those pale lips. He chuckled to himself at the thought of the story he knew they were going to hear. He had done his homework enough to know enough of her background to touch on the important parts of her past. He had come to her with the hopes of coaching her on how exactly to pitch the information, but as soon as he had given her his plan, he had found not only was she on board, but that she had a surprising talent for knowing what needed to be said and how. To say he had coached her on it would have been nothing short of a lie. He had rehearsed, and that was all that was needed.

  “Sarah, it’s me, Stephen,” he said, slipping into the only available chair in the room.

  “I know,” she said simply. “I recognized the smell,” she said with a sharp grin.

  In his ear, Matt chuckled. Well, at least they didn’t need another mic check. He smiled. “I am surprised you could smell my cologne over the smell of piss and bleach in this room.” Behind him he was rewarded with a pounding on the two-way mirror. Someone had taken offense. He suspected the warden. It made him smile all the more.

  “I am not sure anything could outdo the smell of arrogance you give off,” Sarah said.

  “True,” Stephen replied. “Alright, so let us walk you through the layout.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the metallic surface of the table. “To your left is the main camera. When you answer, play to that one. The other one is over your left shoulder, and will only be used to accentuate my responses to your comments. You with me?”

  Before Sarah could respond, Matt spoke in his ear. “Um, Stephen. The warden requests that you refrain from sharing any more of her surroundings for safety issues or he is calling the interview off.”

  Inwardly Stephen laughed. The warden just needed a reason. “Understood,” he said into the mike.

  Sarah answered then, “I understand.” She didn’t ask more, and Stephen was thankful for it.

  Matt spoke up again, “We go live in five, Stephen.”

  “Roger roger,” Stephen replied. “We are about to start Sarah.” He refrained from adding that she should get her game face on, well half of it anyway. But she was already ready.

  She tried to nod, but the restraints held her firm. The only way you could tell she tried anything was that the lines in her neck tightened just above the collar brace.

  He half expected her to remind him of their deal or to say something else that would ruin the mood, and he was prepared for it. He was happily rewarded with nothing. She merely sat there in silence, playing the role of the subdued prisoner with Oscar worthy skill. He had every intention of enjoying the hell out this.

  Matt counted down in his ear, and at two went silent.

  “Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Stephen said, addressing the camera that he had earlier dubbed as the main camera. “Tonight, we have a special report for you. A once in a lifetime chance to interview the now infamous Flamethrower, Sarah Givens. I know that many of you out there are familiar with her tale, but for those of you new to the story, let me give you a brief recap.” He launched into a
recap that was close to five minutes in length, hoping that Matt was on it enough to keep Sarah in the shot for most of the time. Finally, after he had laid the grisly facts bare for the world, he turned to face Sarah.

  Years ago, in a class on journalism, he was taught by a wise professor that the trick to hosting an interview that enthralled the watcher was to yourself get lost in the conversation. Mr. Wilson, his professor, had explained that you needed to forget there were cameras there at all. The knowledge of them would just trip you up. What you needed to do was to get lost in the moment. Caught up in the reveal of the exchange.

  Stephen excelled at doing that. Tonight, he lost himself in the discussion that he himself had attempted to map out just hours before broadcast. “Sarah,” he began, leaning forward. “First, we want to know. Did you do those things?”

  It was a fool’s question. Had she answered no here, all would have been lost. The world knew she had torched close to a dozen police officers and that she had done so with little hesitation. A no would have been insulting, but, it was a gateway question.

  “Yes, I did all those terrible things,” Sarah admitted.

  Sarah wasn’t going to try and plead not guilty at trial anyway. Odds are, she wouldn’t even make trial. Odds are there was a lab somewhere with her name on it, and scientists aplenty priming their machines and probes.

  “You say terrible things,” Stephen began, “But I find it hard to believe you truly believe they were terrible,” he played the part of the public. Right now, if he had come out with anything but disgust and hatred, the viewers would have written him off long before he could pull the rug out from under them. What they were looking forward to was someone to get in there and say all the hateful things they wanted to say to her. To verbally abuse her in front of millions.

  “I know the videos show what I did,” Sarah defended, “and I don’t expect anyone to believe I did any of it without malice. But I didn’t. I panicked. I just wanted to get away, and I just started throwing fire. Soon it was like I was just watching in horror behind my eyes at the horrible things this other me was doing.”