Jess opened her eyes to a scream like thunder.
It ripped through the room, ear-splitting enough to border on spectacle.
No clue where she was, how long she’d been passed out, or how she’d gotten here.
Jess knew only that she was in a strange room … clearly a motel … and that the woman still howling her lungs raw was a member of the cleaning staff.
“It’s okay,” Jess tried to assure the woman — a ridiculous statement, considering what was lying in the bed right beside her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Time seemed to freeze as she surveyed her surroundings.
A room that looked like it might offer an hourly rate.
The member of the cleaning staff in the doorway, keycard in hand, her face already haunted.
A still-smoking, charred corpse in bed beside her.
Jess closed her eyes and—
Big mistake.
She remembered too much, too fast.
Memories smashed the back of her skull with an unforgiving wallop from a mallet of raw emotion.
But nothing she could use …
Only her regular horde of tormentors coming to laugh at her like they always did, mocking Jess and her insanity, again turning her world into an unrelenting horror show.
“What happened?” Jess asked, hoping that at least one of the specters might tell her.
Several of the gallery were present, but instead of answering, all but one disappeared, leaving only Pavel behind.
“Looks like you done fucked up, kid,” Pavel said, his Cheshire grin like a knife.
Xavier Pavel, at the time of his death, had been in his early twenties, and a man whose face had as much potential to charm as his wit, if not for the endless hours hunched over a computer that had broken his posture and turned his skin pale. Even now, after all he’d suffered, Pavel still had a sliver of quirky charm in his smile. He was knowledgeable, and when he wanted to be, helpful. He’d taken care of Jess at a time when she had no one else in the world.
“I wasn’t talking to you.” She shook her head. “Go away.”
Pavel grinned at her, same as he always did. “I thought you wanted to know what happened …”
“Not from you.” Then again, “Go away.”
“Aw, come on. You don’t mean that.”
The poor cleaning lady finally stopped screaming and started to whimper and grimace instead.
Jess made the mistake of looking back at the body on the bed. A charred lump in the shape of a human, outlined in a halo of ashes on what remained of the bedspread. Another life taken, without warning. Another soul whose pain she’d have to carry for the rest of her life.
She felt like the marrow had been scooped from her bones as she clutched her stomach and vomited into the carpet.
And Pavel — zero surprise — started laughing.
He stroked his goatee in appreciation of the scene and offered her a dramatic little bow.
“It’s okay … I’m not going to hurt you,” Jess tried to soothe the woman.
But she didn’t actually know if that was true.
Because Jess remembered very little of how she’d gotten here or whose body was charred. The only thing still identifiable was the man’s scorched suit, and a tattered, smoldering peacoat.
Jess was certain of only two things:
Her body itself was a weapon, which meant she was an ever-present danger to everyone. And Pavel was neither real nor her friend. The same held true for every one of the phantoms in her head.
“You should run. This one is about two minutes from calling the cops. You don’t want to end up in jail now, do you?”
But Jess couldn’t move. She could barely breathe. She wanted vomit again, but she couldn’t barf up the part of herself that made her life a constant hell. Her unrelenting curse.
Pavel’s face changed, to the other version. The one that terrified Jess to her core.
“If you take us to jail, little girl, I will make your life a living Hell. You think talking to me is bad? Imagine living every single day inside of Eddie’s memories.”
Jess was already up from the bed and bolting from the room.
Careful not to touch the still-shrieking woman on her way out the door, struggling to keep her brain from vomiting up the memories of all her past victims.
In some ways it began five years ago on her thirteenth birthday …
But really, this all started—
Six Months Ago …
Dean hated that he had to walk the final few blocks to his job on cold, gray mornings like this. But he could never be too careful. Not in his line of work.
At least the two cups of coffee in his hands warmed him a skosh as he made his way along the unusually quiet downtown boulevard. There were so few cars on the road that traffic was actually flowing. Even fewer pedestrians — it was a rare day when he didn’t have to worry about being jostled and spilling his drink.
He was nearly two blocks away from his destination when thunder rumbled overhead and the first drops of rain cooled his cheeks.
Dean walked faster, his eyes on the windows lining both sides of the busy city street, searching for reflections of anybody that might be tailing him.
Once satisfied that he was alone, Dean crossed the street to his destination, Sun’s Used Books, a two-story shop sitting snug between a commercial real estate office and a bakery.
As he entered the shop, the clang of the bell on the door signaled his arrival.
He made a beeline toward the front desk where Sun, an elderly Chinese woman with reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, clutched the phone while speaking in Cantonese.
Dean placed one of the coffees on the desk in front of her.
She nodded with a big smile and mouthed, Thank you.
He returned her nod and made his way to the rear of the shop. He passed through a door into a stockroom, past shelves overflowing with books, stepping through a cramped corridor teeming with boxes stacked precariously high, and came to the door to the basement where Shuck stood.
The beefy black dog looked up at Dean with his glowing red eyes and sniffed. A shapeshifter could take Dean’s form to infiltrate The Order, but good luck replicating his exact scent. Shuck’s fur was soft, but his thick muscles rippled beneath it. His breathing was deep and raspy, tinged with the aroma of marrow and bones, his growls gutter and hostile.
“Whoa,” said Dean with a nod, realizing what he was doing to upset Shuck. He turned to set his cup far away enough from the dog, so he could separate the coffee’s aroma from Dean’s.
He rolled his eyes at the rookie error — coffee was strong enough a scent for an intruder to mask himself — and waited for Shuck to offer him a nod.
Once he did, Dean picked up his coffee and stepped through the door.
He followed the stairs down into the dark basement, which was illuminated only by a series of increasingly dimmer red lights nestled into the ceiling.
The basement, part of the city’s massive network of underground tunnels once used to traffic alcohol during the criminally vibrant years of Prohibition, would seem empty to anyone who didn’t know what to look for.
Dean reached into his pocket and grabbed the red chalk as he approached the farthest wall. He found the chalk circles. There was a large one drawn into the wall, surrounded by arcane sigils, also written in chalk.
In the center of the larger circle, a smaller half-circle was chalked on the wall.
He reached out with his chalk and finished the circle.
The circles shimmered red with the sigils.
For only one second, and then it was gone.
Dean stepped through the circle and was in another basement across the city housing offices for Division8.
He looked back at the wall and watched as the smaller circle was erasing half of itself, the wall solidifying as the portal closed.
He walked down a narrow hall, opened a door to the tip of a triangular-shaped room with black walls, a red door at the far end, and a matching red floor. He made his way around the center of the triangle, careful not to step into the circle or near the glowing crimson sigils inscribed in it.
No matter how many times he crossed through this ancient room with its powerful stone artifacts embedded in the floor, Dean could never get past the unease of feeling the sigils’ vibrations running through him, reading him, judging him and whether or not he was worthy of passage.
He could feel their vibrations in his body as he quickly crossed the room on his way to a red door.
He stepped through, and it was as if he had been transported from antiquity into the modern world, a regular old office building with bland off-white walls, and white overhead lights running the full length of a long hallway.
As Dean made his way to his office at the end, he noticed a purity of quiet.
Peering through the glass panes in each of the doors, he saw the vacant offices. It wasn’t unusual to be alone, as most agents worked in the field, coming in only for meetings or research requiring actual face time.
Research was his area of expertise, getting lost for hours in his cases, memorizing as many details as necessary before going into the field, enjoying the solitude of work without all of that unnecessary small talk.
There were six offices on each side of the hallway, plus Chief Burke’s at the very far end of the hall, the thirteenth.
As Dean neared the end of the hall, his hopes for a completely empty office disappeared with the sound of Burke’s laughter. Dean’s boss had the only office without a glass pane, so he wasn’t sure if Burke was on the phone or if there was somebody else in there with him.
Dean entered his own office in a whisper, hoping not to alert Burke to his presence. He closed his door and sat at the desk, finally taking a sip of his coffee now that it had finally cooled off enough.
He turned on his computer, checking over Adrianna’s notes on the agents she’d been tailing in New York.
Two weeks in and nothing out of the ordinary. They’ve registered all Others. No weird stuff.
He messaged her back.
Okay, close the case and move on to the next one.
Dean’s job as head analyst was to oversee the investigations into Division8’s agents, ensure they weren’t breaking the laws of the agreement that allowed the FBI’s classified Division8 program to operate in the dark, pacifying the populace and keeping them calm.
Burke’s office was a smaller section of Division8, a kind of policing office which only handled the FBI’s top secret program. When the new division formed several years ago, Gordon Niles and Anthony Burke were assigned as co-directors. Niles to run the external investigations, hunt down Others that were breaking the rules, and keep Harbinger, the order of ancient Others that wanted to bring back the old ways, at bay. And Burke to run the internal affairs, ensuring that agents weren’t abusing power and following up on complaints about Division8 agents.
And because so few complaints were actually made about Division’s work, Burke’s agents were essentially spies on a safari for something to investigate.
Dean opened up another file on his computer, notes from Agent Campbell in Miami, along with attached photos and videos.
The note read: Nothing yet. These two agents are more boring than the retirees down here. If I don’t see something soon, I’m heading back.
Dean was about to respond when Burke burst into his office, no warning, no knock. What could be so urgent that his boss didn’t have time to rap his knuckles on the door?
Burke took a seat across from him. He was holding a folder, but he didn’t toss it onto Dean’s desk like he usually would. Since when did Burke want to hang onto a case?
“Nothing new to report. I told Adrianna to close her investigation in New York.”
“And Miami?”
“Nothing yet.”
“Hmm, are you sure Campbell is doing his job, not just down there soaking up the sun and the sin?”
“He appears to have done the legwork.” Dean didn’t much care for Campbell, a loudmouth, but he wouldn’t assume the worst without evidence.
“You’re a very trusting man, Dean.”
That might not be a compliment. You never could be certain with Burke. The boss had a way of always keeping everyone on edge. Management style or personality flaw, Dean didn’t know. Probably both. “Thank you?”
“You shouldn’t.” Burke cleared his throat. He made no move to hand over the file. “Pass everything you have on Campbell to me.”
“Um, sure,” Dean said, surprised that Burke was doubting his work. “I’d be happy to go through the cases again if you like. To look for irregularities.”
“I assume you were thorough the first time, correct? That is why I brought you on here, your attention to detail.”
Every conversation with Burke felt like a test, and Dean was unprepared yet again. “Yes, sir. I was thorough.”
“Then no need to go over them again. Just send them to me. Besides, I need you on something else. In the field.”
“The field? With who?”
Burke tossed the folder onto his desk. “This one’s a solo mission. The target doesn’t know who you are, and you’re young enough to blend in.”
“Blend in where?” Dean opened the file to a familiar name and face — former Division8 Special Agent in Charge William Barnhard. One of Division’s most decorated agents. Newly retired and out of the game.
“Need you to go to Edgewater University, where he lectures once a week. Get close enough to neuter him.”
“Neuter?”
Burke pulled a vivid blue vial out of his pocket, then placed it carefully on the desk in front of Dean.
Dean had an almost visceral reaction to the vial, same as any agent would.
The powder was the only compound on earth that could shut down the powers of an Other. Instead of stopping a person’s powers immediately, the powder reportedly slowly drained them away instead, rendering the Other more and more “normal” with each passing day.
Dean had heard all kinds of speculations about the origin of Blue Mistress. Most of it sounded like bullshit, especially the most frequently trafficked legend among them: That the drug got its name from an ancient Other who accidentally ingested the wrong magic powder and had her powers leached away. An element was mined from her ashes, then engineered into a cocktail was now a pure poison called Blue Mistress.
Bottom line was, to an Other, meaning every Division8 agent in the world, being neutered meant living a waking nightmare. Trapped as a shadow of your former self with no hope of escape.
Why would Burke want to render one of the best retired memory extractors in Division8 completely useless? Dean pocketed the vial. And how the hell am I supposed to get past one of the best agents in the field to deliver it?
“Sir, I don’t understand—”
“Barnhard’s been working with Harbinger. The longer he’s out there, the more damage he does.” He stood. “I want him neutralized immediately.”
With that, Burke strode out of Dean’s office, leaving him to rifle through Barnhard’s file — but nothing inside explained Burke’s urgency.
Dean left the office to execute the impossible.
And ruin William Barnhard’s life on his way.