Disclaimer: The following is a work of fiction, which will include t/t and m/m relationships, and probably some sex too. If it is illegal in your area to read this, or if you are not old enough to read this (you know who you are), stop here. Otherwise, please enjoy.
The Devil's Gambit, Chapter 15
"Critical"
NOTE: I am now posting my stories to my new website, jaygordonstories.com. Devil's Gambit is now available up to Chapter 21! I'm putting them up there a little in advance so I can make final edits before submitting to Nifty, so if you are interested, you can check it out. It's closed membership to avoid spam and flames, so just let me know!
As Tom sat in the back of the car, his mind was full and buzzing, like a hive of bees. 'This is all my fault,' he thought to himself. `I should never have exposed him to this danger!'
`He was shot,' he argued with himself.
"`...Get in my way and lose another,' his mind conjured the demon's warning, and he swore he could hear a laugh in his mind.
"Tom," David whispered, shivering. "He's going to be fine!" Tom snapped out of it a little and wrapped his arm around the big boy, drawing him close.
"God I hope so," Tom whispered back. Then he closed his eyes and said in his heart, 'Jamie, you came to me once. If you're still around, go to Aiden, please? Help him however you can, even if that means helping him home." After he opened his eyes, he felt a little bit of peace.
When the car pulled up at the hospital, Chief Pryce met it at the Emergency entrance and led Tom and the boys to the intensive care waiting area, where the room fell silent at his arrival. Peter got up and hugged him immediately and was soon joined by friends all around. When people backed off, he asked, "How is he?"
"They're working around his heart, repairing some damage and trying to remove the bullet," Jim said. "Then there's the third bullet to deal with."
"Have you called his parents?" Tom asked.
"They're flying in at six and I've got an officer there to get them down here," Lincoln answered.
"And what about the man that did this?" Tom asked.
"He was waiting at the scene and called Aiden by name as we were talking," Pryce said. "Before we knew it, he was shooting."
"What happened to the shooter?" Tom asked, and the men looked at him, surprised. Then they remembered he wasn't a cop.
"Chief dropped him cold," Jim said.
"Good," Tom said, surprising some of the civilians. "I'd have killed him with my bare hands given the chance," he growled. "And if I ever find the man who killed Jamie," he added, but let the sentiment trail off. "You get the gist."
"Vengeance is a cold comfort," Walt whispered to him.
In the hall nearby there was a bit of a bustle, as a loud voice was heard to say, "Hand's off, constable! Where's Tom?"
"He's a friend," Tom called to the officers preventing Alasdair from entering. The man hurried to him, Rachael hot on his heels, and they both gave him big hugs.
"Have you seen him yet?" Alasdair asked. "Is there anything WE should be doing?"
"I haven't been back. The surgeons are still doing their thing, but if there is anything," Tom said with a deep, tired sigh, "I'm glad you're here."
"Of course," Alasdair said.
Together they all played the waiting game for a while longer, with no new updates. The tenseness of the room was interrupted by the last important arrivals, Aiden's parents.
"How's my boy?" Micky O'Connel asked, zeroing in on Pryce, who wore the highest rank.
"I'm sorry, Sergeant O'Connel, but there's no new word. He's in surgery to remove bullets from his gut and near his heart and repair any damage," Pryce said.
"But he's holding on," Jim asserted, stepping in by the chief.
"Jim," Micky said, shaking the man's hand. "What happened?"
Jim looked at Pryce who shook his head at first, but at last relented. "We've had these weird cases, and me and Aiden caught a few of them. Then Aiden and Tom broke that case with the devil sacrifice people, and the chief asked Tom to help us with our cases," Jim hurriedly explained, nervous. "So this morning we find a cemetery desecrated, with Tom's name painted in blood on the wall, so we call Aiden down for him to see it, and there's a guy there waiting, probably for Tom, with a gun, and...."
"So it's my fault?" Tom asked from his seat where he had gone unnoticed. "It should have been me...."
"Tom," Jim said.
"NO! They wanted me and when they didn't get me they went after the person I love most! GOD DAMN IT!" he roared and stormed out. At first, no one followed, but then David slipped away.
"That was him?" Aiden's mother Doreen asked, prompting Jim to nod. The woman smiled sadly and said, "We never got to meet him.... Are you his parents?" the woman asked Walt and Martha.
Martha smiled tensely and nodded, her eyes tearing up, even as Walt shook his head, 'no.' "It's complicated," Walt explained. But the woman looked at him as if she expected to hear the rest, so he continued. "Tom and our son were partners, the most madly in love people you'd ever meet. It nearly tore Tom to pieces when Jamie ... died last year."
Doreen raised a hand to her mouth and lowered her eyes to the ground and whispered, "Good Lord...." Then she too left the group and started down the hall after the man.
When his wife was gone, Micky asked, "The shooter?"
"Downstairs," Jim said, "courtesy of the chief...."
"Good," the man said before collapsing into his seat. He'd have to call his sons and daughters soon to give them an update. But first he needed an update.
Doreen turned a corner and saw a chapel. She looked in the window and saw David hugging Tom, who stood limp in his arms. She waited a moment before entering, clearing her throat to announce herself. Tom saw her and whispered something to David. The boy looked concerned but walked out, past the woman.
"One of the boys you saved?" she asked softly.
"David," Tom said with a nod. "He was the one still at home with the ... with his parents."
Doreen sat down in the pew behind the one Tom stood in, and Tom sat down too, turning a little so he could see her. "Aiden said you weren't old, but I guess I still wasn't prepared for how young you are. The whole professor thing, I guess," she added with a soft laugh. "And you've lost so much."
"I guess," he said. "My parents, my grandparents, Jamie...." The woman closed her eyes. She hadn't even realized the depth of the young man's loss. After a long pause, he sighed and said, "When they asked me to help, I never guessed ... it would come to this."
"Aiden's a cop, Tom. You don't have to like it, but this kind of thing does happen," she said uneasily. "I can't tell you how many times I've sat by the door after seeing a news report about a police officer injured on duty...."
"It's me," Tom whispered, shaking his head. "People who get close to me get hurt!"
The woman shook her head and sighed, squeezing his shoulders. "Have a little faith, Tom. Things are going to be okay," she replied before returning to her husband, leaving Tom alone.
Tom was restless and didn't relish the thought of being comforted further -- he didn't want comfort, he wanted to wallow in his guilt -- so he slipped out of the chapel and down to the elevators. He checked the guide on the wall and hit the 'B' button. When the door opened, he felt underground. The air was cooler, felt a little damper, and the light was entirely unnatural. An arrow pointed his way.
'MORGUE' the institutional sign, black letters on silver plate, read next to the swinging double doors. He stepped inside and the air cooled further. "Can I help you?" a tall, wiry man in a white coat, holding a clip-board asked.
"I'd like to see the body that came in this afternoon. Gunshot?"
"The body hasn't been processed," the man said darkly. "Dr. Spector, County Medical Examiner," he added, introducing himself. Except for being tall and long-limbed, he didn't fit the creepy image, and seemed personable enough beneath his official aura.
"Dr. Tom Corman," he introduced himself, showing his official police consultant's ID. "I just need to see the body. I won't touch anything."
The man sighed and put the clip-board down, before leading Tom to a gurney. They hadn't even applied the toe-tag. "What are you looking for?"
"I just need to see him. Eyes," Tom answered.
The man looked at him skeptically. "You aren't a psychic, are you?" implying with his that if Tom said yes, he'd call security.
"No, I'm a professor at the University. I'm an expert on occult practices," he said, putting the man at ease, if slightly.
The medical examiner pulled back the sheet to reveal an unremarkable man with an unremarkable face. "Doesn't look the sort," Dr. Spector mused as he pulled on his gloves and reached for the man's eyes to pull back his eyelids.
He was surprised when Tom grabbed his wrist and said, "Dr. Spector, be prepared...."
"For what?" the man asked warily.
"Pretty much anything," Tom replied grimly, and noticed that the man's hand was trembling a little as he reached his arm out again.
Dr. Spector began to lift the eyelids, which snapped open, leaving the corpse with a startled looking expression. "You never get used to shit like that," Spector exclaimed after he jumped.
"That was no death rattle doctor," Tom said. "Look at the eyes...."
Sure enough the eyes were black -- no whites, no color in the irises at all. "That's ... what is that?" Spector asked. "That what you were expecting?"
"Yeah. I've seen that before, a few times. Usually in living people -- they usually escape before the body dies," Tom mused, mostly to himself.
"They? Escape? What the hell is going on here?" Spector asked Tom as he headed for the door.
Before he pushed his way through the doors, Tom looked over his shoulder, looking how he felt, and asked, "Do you really want to know?"
The man met his eyes and shook his head. "I'll pass."
When Tom entered the waiting room, Peter asked, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Tom answered. "I just needed to clear my head," he lied. "Any news?"
"He's out of surgery," Peter said. "They said the next twenty-four hours will be critical. They're still worried about internal bleeding."
"Are his parents with him now?" Tom asked, and Peter nodded.
"Will you go back when they're through?" Peter asked.
"They'll probably say family only, and Aiden never got his paperwork done," Tom said, sadly. "I guess he didn't think that anything like this was coming soon...."
Shortly, however, a pudgy nurse entered the room and said, "Tom?" A path opened and Tom approached the woman. "Your mom asked me to bring you back to see your brother," she said, barely looking up.
When he stood at the door, Doreen smiled weakly up at him and beckoned him inside. Micky, who'd not yet spoken to him, nodded and silently took his leave. Doreen, close behind, shut the door in her wake. Tom grabbed the man's hand and put his forehead on the bed, weeping openly. "Can you hear me? You can't leave me, Aiden," he groaned.
"Oh, Tom," he heard, making him jump.
"How did you get back here, Alasdair?" he asked without looking up.
"Easy! No one can see me!" The man said as he stepped up beside Tom and put a hand on his shoulder. "Now move aside."
Tom moved over and let Alasdair put his hands on Aiden's shoulders near his neck. The man closed his eye and said, "He has a strong spirit, Tom, and he has strong connections to this plane. He has no intention of leaving you. If they can keep his body together his soul will do the rest."
"I could do the...."
"That's foolishness, Tom, and you know it! It could kill you both; if Peter wasn't dying, it would have killed him and probably you too.... Aiden isn't dying. At least he isn't dying right now."
"Well, can you at least do a rudimentary healing spell?" Tom asked impatiently, knowing it was one of the things the man could do far better than he. Alasdair nodded and fell silent as a soft glow emanated from beneath his hands, which migrated up and down Aiden's body. "You don't have to be quite that thorough," Tom laughed softly as Alasdair's hand migrated below the proverbial belt.
"You can't fault a fellow for curiosity," Alasdair smiled without opening his eyes. "That's about all for now. I'll do a little every day to help keep the healing on track. Be sure he has the best doctors."
"Of course," Tom said. "Alasdair, the man who shot him was possessed."
"Are you quite sure?" Tom's old friend asked, sitting back.
"Positive. I went down to the morgue, and his eyes are as black as night," Tom answered.
"Do you think the trap was for you, or just to get at you through your loved ones?" Alasdair asked.
"I think it was after Aiden, but I don't know," Tom said. "Maybe it was hoping it could drive me back inside again?"
"If that's the case, I think that was a mistake," Alasdair observed. "What are you going to do now?"
"I'm going to visit Peter's mother in jail and find a few of these cultists. And they're going to tell me what the plan is," Tom said flatly.
"And then?" Alasdair asked.
Tom looked at him pointedly and said, "Some people are going to pay. And some demons are getting their tickets back to hell."
"Need some help?" Alasdair asked.
"It's best you don't get involved. You've got a baby on the way, Alasdair."
"I know, but," Alasdair began.
"No! No, you need to look out for your family," Tom said, a note of finality in his voice.
"When will you go see her?" Alasdair asked.
"Tonight. Can you stay here?" Tom asked.
Alasdair nodded. "I'll send Rachael home later."
"Thanks," Tom said, and Alasdair silently took his leave, giving Tom some privacy.
About half an hour later, Tom followed, returning to the waiting room
"Thank you," he said, giving Doreen a hesitant hug. Then he shook Micky's hand and said, "Sorry we had to meet like this." The man grunted and nodded. "Chief Pryce, the guy ... he is related to those cases I've been working on."
"How do you know that?" Lincoln asked.
"I went down to the morgue and had a look. He's one of the cultists. We need someone going over his house with a fine-toothed comb," Tom said.
"If they get wind that this shooting is related to a string of cult crimes, the FBI's going to want to take this thing over," Pryce said.
"Then don't let them find out," Tom said. "Right now we're just searching a shooters house. But we know what we're looking for."
"Right," Pryce said, pulling out his phone and calling the crime lab boys and ordering them over to the man's home.
Then Tom sat down by himself and away from the crowd. Moments later, David sat next to him, and Sebastien, who had remained out of sight until then, came and gave Tom a big hug before sitting on his leg.
Tom laughed a little and smiled at the boy. "Make yourself at home," he kidded, and Sebastien laughed and laid his head on Tom's shoulder. "Did you call your parents?"
"No answer. Cell phones are out of service up at the resort," he said. "They'll be on their way tomorrow afternoon, and they'll get my messages."
Tom nodded. "I don't want you boys to stay at the house alone tonight," he said.
"Peter will be there, and Billy probably," David said.
"Still, I'd prefer," he began, but he realized, with both he and Alasdair at the hospital, his house was probably the safest place in the city for the boys. Looking David square in the eyes to make himself clear, he said, "Lock the doors and, no matter what, stay inside. Understand?" The boys nodded. "Call me if you need anything." Again they nodded.
He motioned for Peter and Billy to come over. "Could you take these guys home and feed them and keep them out of trouble?"
Peter nodded, and the four boys all hugged him and said their goodnights. Then Tom encouraged Walt and Martha to head home.
"We should stay, dear," Martha said, full of anxiety.
"Alasdair's staying, and a bunch of the guys, so I won't be alone," he tried to assure her. She nodded and cried as she hugged him. After she walked away, Walt also hugged him and said, "Don't do anything stupid...." Tom nodded and the man pursed his lips unhappily before following his wife.
Tom jumped at Rachael's voice as she observed from about a foot behind him, "You've gotten rid of just about all of us."
"There's just you," he added with a smile.
"I'll second Walt's request then."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Rachael," he said.
"You asked my husband to stay here for a reason, Tom. It's because you need to leave. What are you doing?" she asked earnestly.
"Getting information," he said.
"How?" she asked.
"Best you don't know, my dear," he said, hugging her. "Watch out for this one?" he added, patting her belly. She grumbled at him but at last, she did leave.
"I guess it's about that time," he said to Alasdair then. "Don't leave his side until I get back?"
"Not for a moment."
Approaching Doreen and Micky, he said, "I need to get out of here for a bit. Can I get you anything?"
"No, thank you dear," Doreen said, and Micky shook his head.
Tom was half-way to the exit before he heard the heavy footfalls quickly approaching from the rear. "Hold up, boy!" Micky called. "You got something on your mind?"
"I've got a thought about someone who might be able to tell me who did this," Tom answered.
"That man in cold storage did this," Micky said, his eyes narrow as he appraised Tom.
"That man is irrelevant," Tom said. "Someone else, someone bigger, is behind this. That's who I want! Him and anyone else who helped put this thing together."
"You're not going to break any laws are you?" Micky asked, rocking on his heels.
"Would you?" Tom asked and turned his back on the man.
"Don't get caught," Micky called after him.
"Nobody'll see me coming or going," Tom said.
"Good. Then you never left," Micky replied, and the men nodded, understanding each other perfectly. When he rejoined his wife, Micky patted her on the leg as he settled into a seat. "I like that fellow."
"He's a nice young man," she agreed. "Where's he going?"
"He decided to stay. Getting coffee in the cafeteria then back to the chapel. Sort of religious, I guess," the man said, picking up his book.
Half an hour later, Tom walked through the front door of the jail, having cloaked himself beneath a powerful glamour. He carefully slipped between the few people who stood in his way. When the night guard went on his rounds through the jail to check on the prisoners, Tom slipped in behind him. He found the woman he was looking for in a private cell. "Hello, Mary," he said, causing the woman to jump in her bed. "Orange pajamas really do become you," he laughed.
She glared at him and said, "Who let YOU in here?"
"Oh, don't worry about that," Tom said. "You're the only one who knows I'm here."
Mary looked into the cell across the way and saw the women looking at her crossly as if she'd gone crazy. "I see. I suppose you want some information. I'm not talking."
"I rather hoped you'd say that," he said as he slipped through the bars into the cell. "I know I probably don't look like much in a sport coat, but I haven't kept myself in shape just for looking at."
"You wouldn't," she sneered. "You do-gooders are all the same. My husband might have bought the tough-guy act, but...." Her rant was cut short by a sharp crack as Tom slapped her hard enough to snap her head to the side.
He leaned down and said, "One of your friends tried to kill my partner today. That might have crippled me but a year ago someone did kill my lover. I know pain, so I can still function. So I'm here to offer you a choice. Demons don't have families so I can't exactly return evil for evil, but you're about as close as it gets to family. So you can tell me who else is in your little group, or I can kill you right here in jail tonight and no one will ever know. How's that for a villain's spiel? I've never made one before."
She looked like she was about to spit out another wise retort, so he hit her again, this time not with an open hand but with his fist. "Do the rules about hitting girls apply to gays and murderers?" he asked the shocked woman. "Oh, Mary, THIS IS GOING TO HURT YOU MORE THAN IT IS ME!" he added as he put out his hands and looked to the sky, "Darkest night and bitter seas, rancid stench and rotting flesh," he said, invoking the most putrid metaphoric opposites he could imagine for the magickal elements, "I call upon you this hour! Rise up, rise up, rise up and devour!"
"Wait," she cried as the pain hit her in an instant as her body literally began to experience a kind of gangrenous living rot. "Wait!"
"No begging, just names, Mary," he said, sitting down.
To her credit, she did scream a bit, but at last, she gave him a list of six names. "Roger Marx, Dick Fletcher, Bill Stevens, Hal Fuller, Kim Richards, and Helen Demopoulos! That's all I know. There are others, but they're the ones I met. My husband could probably tell you others, but...."
"But what?" Tom asked impatiently.
"You hadn't heard? Jim died in prison last night," she said. "Demon got him, I figure. That or one of the prisoners decided we were involved in the sex stuff."
"Sex stuff?" Tom growled. "You let your sons get molested under your roof, raped hundreds of times!"
"Who cares if I let my son get fucked? Little faggot liked it. David was too big a wimp to stand up for himself. It started when he was a teenager, for crying out loud. He should have stopped it himself if he had a problem with it!"
Tom held out a hand and ended his spell, leaving the woman in her cell quite healthy. As he slipped out of the bars, he waved his invisible hand in all directions, getting a feeling for the tenor of the feelings in the little jail. "Mary, apparently these ladies don't share your child-rearing philosophies. These two gals especially," he said, pointing to the women across the hall. "Good luck with that," he added as he disappeared down the hall and out into the night.
He had to figure out a way to run these names without the police finding out. He didn't want them to know who they were just yet. They were the tip of the iceberg, he feared, and if the police pulled them in, the rest would run. And what would they even pull them in for? Tom went over the list in his head, and none of the names was familiar.
He pulled out his smart-phone and did searches for all of them. The only small connection he had to any of them was that Kim Richards turned out to be a reference librarian at the university library. "THAT is a place to start," he said to himself as he entered the hospital.
"Feeling better," Doreen asked as she looked up from her book.
"A bit," he said, and Micky nodded at him.
"Would you mind getting you and me some coffee, babe?" Micky asked. "I'd go but my hip is starting to bother me."
"One more reason you should go," she said with a smile and got up.
When she was gone, he said, "She's right." Looking at Tom, he said, "You got some names?"
"Yep. Problem is, I need to find out all I can about them, but I can't give the list to Pryce. What would I tell him? I snuck into a jail and illegally interrogated a prisoner?"
Micky looked over at Tom with interest now. "I see. You could hire a PI, I guess. They can get the info, and the police wouldn't know why he was looking. Maybe best to get someone out-of-town."
"If one were to visit a town like Memphis and need the service of a discreet and trustworthy PI, maybe an ex-cop, is there somebody that person might go to?"
"Maybe," Micky replied, shrugging his shoulders. "If it were me, I'd probably call up Roy Collins, but that's because he and I are old friends. A person might want to mention that they knew me." Tom nodded.
Doreen returned with the coffee for her husband and a tea for herself. "How's Aiden? Any news?"
"Stable," Doreen said. "They did add that his vitals were strong last time, if that means anything?"
Tom nodded and smiled. "It means they're not trying to prepare us for him dying anymore, which is nice."
Doreen exhaled sharply, visibly relaxing, and Micky added, testily, "THAT'S WHAT I SAID!"
"Well," the woman huffed, "it's nice to have independent confirmation!"
"Who are you, Galileo? Independent confirmation! She watches too many Discovery Channel science programs!"
Tom smiled, finally getting to see their personalities emerge from behind their fearful, tense masks. "I'm going back to see him for a minute," Tom said.
"They said visiting hours were over," Doreen said.
Tom looked over his shoulder and said, "They can try to stop me," as he clipped his university ID to his belt like the doctors did.
In fact, no one even said anything to him. "Mission accomplished. Go home to your wife!"
Alasdair barely stirred, having fallen asleep by the bed. Tom shook his shoulder and the man woke, groggy. "All done?" he asked.
"Yeah. Now go home!"
"I can stay," Alasdair protested. "I just need coffee!"
"Get some of that, and use it to get you home to bed. Come see me tomorrow. I may need to call in some of our friends on this one. I think there is a big cult here, and they're working some serious bad juju." Tom briefly brought Alasdair up-to-date on the fact that there was even a string of crimes meant to occlude the pattern in the legitimate rituals.
"Have you been to see the rabbi? I know the Jewish stuff is your bailiwick," Alasdair said.
"No. I've never met the guy. What would a rabbi in the South know about demons and mysticism?" Tom asked.
"You never know!" Alasdair said. "What would a philosophy professor at a local university know about it?"
"True enough," Tom admitted. "In the meantime, I am calling Avram."
"Hmph," Alasdair grunted. Avram Ben-Ami was the leader of a mystic circle in Paris and had become Tom's mentor and friend. Alasdair always thought Avram wanted more from Tom and felt like the man was undermining him for that reason. Of course, the man might simply have been trying to help Tom focus less on the unavailable Alasdair and more on the mystic forces he was trying to wield. "Who do you think he'll send?"
"I hope he'll come himself," Tom said.
"Won't that be a party," Alasdair groaned as he left Tom with Aiden. He sat down on the edge of the bed and held the man's hand until dawn.
More to come soon. If you enjoyed this story, you might consider my other on-going stories at Nifty, Fantasy/SciFi, Things that Go Bump and A Light in the Darkness.
Or, better, send me a note and join my website, jaygordonstories.com! Registration is free.
jaygordon_1981@hotmail.com