I can manage to save you a plate,” Kathy quipped.
Kathy was an excellent cook. They had met during Mitchell’s residency at Albert Einstein in Philadelphia. Kathy was tall at five feet nine inches, and she had won a full track scholarship to the University of Southern California. As a matter of fact, she was the captain of the women’s track team as well as a starting guard for the basketball team. She was strikingly beautiful and had a laugh that won Mitchell’s heart.
“I’ll try to be back before too long.”
“Okay, sweetheart...I’ll be home soon.”
Mitchell hung the phone up and headed back toward his meditation room. He walked toward the far wall and paused for a moment. He removed a large bronze medallion that hung on a thick, black leather cord. The medallion was covered in a series of raised arcane letters that seemed to pulse with power. He held the medallion in his hands briefly and whispered a Word of Power over it as he gently rubbed the letters. The medallion began to sparkle with a shimmering blue light. The glow quickly subsided and Mitchell placed the medallion cord around his neck and hid the object under his shirt. He walked out of the meditation room, grabbed his jacket, quickly scribbled the address that Gerald had given him on a scrap of paper, and headed toward the garage.
Chapter Two
Thomas
Thomas Morton was a wealthy man by any standard. Tax law was a lucrative business and in his profession, he was considered the best. His wife, Patricia, was a former beauty queen who had been a finalist in the Miss Argentina pageant. His two sons were both star athletes and honor students. They lived in a 65,000-square-foot mansion overlooking a 200-acre estate in the outer regions of Guilford County. Thomas was one of the founding partners of his law firm and if he had to imagine his life being any better, he probably couldn’t do it. He couldn’t understand why he had just shot his two sons to death with the model 1908 Mannlicher Schoenauer Carbine sniper rifle that his grandfather had given him two years before.
The boys never knew what hit them. Both boys had died instantly—one shot each, right through the temple. Thomas was ranked Marksman First Class at the local shooting clubs. He had taught the boys how to handle firearms as well. He watched the boys playing in the yard for more than an hour before the thought hit him. He wasn’t angry. He hadn’t been drinking. The thought of killing them had come spontaneously and it was just that—a plain, simple, ordinary thought.
He knew that Patricia wouldn’t understand. He knew that she was probably aware of his dalliances with his new junior associate. She was a smart woman. She allowed him the luxury of an occasional affair in exchange for the life that he had given her. At least, that was the way that he saw it. Not that the affair had anything to do with what he had just done.
Thomas walked over to the bodies and calmly fired two rounds into the chest cavity of each boy. He then reached down and tenderly kissed each of his sons on the forehead. Their skin was still warm and the ruddy color had not yet left their cheeks.
Thomas placed the Mannlicher onto the ground next to the boys. He then pulled a Ruger GP100 .38-caliber revolver from his coat pocket. He checked the chamber and placed three rounds into the gun. He placed the pistol against his temple, pulled the trigger, and slumped to the ground.
High overhead, a gray misty form glowed red for a moment, descended over the forms of the three dead humans, and gradually disappeared into the corpses. After a few moments, it reemerged. Its color had now become a bright crimson red. The crimson entity rapidly ascended into the afternoon sky and vanished over the horizon.
Chapter Three
The Journey
Melvina didn’t remember a forest beyond the coliseum. She hadn’t been given much opportunity to see her surroundings from the floor of the cart on which she and her sister had ridden in. She could clearly remember the cries of the youngest children. They would be useless on the open market and even the most brazen magistrates saw no sport in placing them in the arena. Most of them were probably sold into harems. The unlucky ones went to the southern Carib tribes. She remembered her parents telling stories about the elaborate feast the Carib people prepared that featured heaping mounds of cured human flesh, vegetables, and fruit. They preferred the flesh of young children, so she heard.
She now had much larger problems to occupy her mind. She was very sure that she was dead. She had personally slit Salva’s throat and had been splattered with bright spurts of her blood in the process. She was certain that her blow to Salva’s throat had been fatal; but some unsettling questions remained unanswered. She felt very much alive. Salva hadn’t stopped whimpering for more than an hour. Melvina reasoned, can a dead girl whimper? Why would she? What would be the point?
Salva looked down at her feet as they walked on a pebble-strewn trail through the forest. She didn’t mind the walk so much as she did the hunger that raged through her body. She didn’t care if she was dead. She was still hungry and, for the most part, that was the most important thought in her mind.
Salva’s eyes had turned red from hours of crying. She looked at her sister and shouted, “I’m hungry!”
“What do you want me to do about it? I’m hungry too!” Melvina replied.
“Where are we going? I’m tired. Can we stop for a while?” Salva complained.
“I don’t know where we’re going. I just want to get as far away from that place as possible.”
Salva stopped abruptly and sat cross-legged on the ground. She threw her head back and let out a loud shriek.
“If we’re dead, why do my feet hurt so much? Why am I so hungry? None of this makes any sense!”
“I don’t have any answers for you, sister. I just know that crying and complaining aren’t going to help. We’re dead. I killed you. Those bastards killed me back at that horrible place. I don’t understand why we’re here now. I thought we were supposed to be with the gods.”
Melvina’s questions were not meant so much to answer Salva’s concerns as to help her sort out their situation.
“Where are our parents?” Salva asked.
“You assume that they have died,” Melvina replied.
“What else would the soldiers have done to them?” asked Salva.
“We have rested long enough. Let’s find somewhere to sleep and then we can find someone to help us,” Melvina said sharply.
Shaking her head as if trying to make Salva’s questions go away, Melvina struggled to sound as reassuring as she possibly could. She had no idea if anyone else existed within a day’s walk of where they were.
Salva grudgingly rose to her feet and walked toward her sister. After giving each other a halfhearted hug, they both began to walk back toward the pebble-strewn trail.
They walked for what seemed like hours without saying much of anything. Salva complained about the cold. Melvina reminded her that dead girls don’t feel cold. Salva showed her the goosebumps on her arms.
Melvina spotted a fire in a clearing just a short distance down the road. Salva saw it too. They both looked at each other with a sigh of relief.
“What do you think, sister?” Salva asked.
“What do we have to lose?” Melvina replied.
The two girls quickened their pace and soon reached the source of the fire. In a small clearing set a small distance from the path they saw a simple thatch hut. The hut was surrounded by six large dogs. The animals appeared to be asleep and did not stir as the girls approached.
The animals had shiny black manes spotted with bits of blood and tissue from some unnamed prey. Their glistening fangs hung from their mouths, rising and falling with the rhythm of their slumber. Their sleepy growls seemed to add an ominous tone to the air.
Just in front of the hut, the two