Federal Discipline (11 page)

“Every night we dream and it seems real. That's all it was, Jamie, just a bad dream.”

She wanted to believe him, so she did. And then she wanted to feel him inside her, so she did that too.

Their lovemaking was more intense, but more gentle than it had ever been before. Jack's concern had still not abated and he was careful with her as they made love, moving in and out of her with a slow rhythm that left Jamie feeling as if she were on the edge of climax almost the entire time he was inside her. He was a very strong man, which could be evidenced with powerful thrusting and easy manhandling, but which was equally evident in the way he controlled the rocking flow of his hips, pressing his cock in and out of her slick pussy until she could stand it no longer and cried out, her inner walls gripping his hardness with all their strength.

With Jack deep inside her, Jamie touched heaven. All earthly concerns, including those with daemons romping about demanding blood sacrifices, seemed petty, small, and far away. This connection she shared with Jack, with something greater than them both, that was real. That was all that mattered.

“I love you,” she whispered as she clung to him. “I'm sorry, but I love you.”

“Don't ever apologize for that, Jamie,” he said, pressing kiss after kiss to her face. “I love you too.”

“That's way off protocol,” she said, smiling up into his handsome face.

“I'm not sure we've followed protocol since we met,” Jack replied, holding her close and surging inside her a few more times. He was not done. He was still hard and ready for more. Wrapped so closely around him she could feel every twitch and movement of his cock, Jamie was soon ready to ascend the peak again too.

This time, it was a little more passionate. This time he held her tight atop him and thrust inside her over and over again, clamping her cheeks wide so she could feel the cool air of the room not just against her pussy, but against the tight bud of her anus. As the second climax approached, as he surged inside her with an almost frantic speed, he also pressed his fingers to that tender spot. His touch there where no man had ever been, threw Jamie's orgasmic response into overdrive. Her pussy contracted hard just as Jack started to cum, milking him for all he had.

And then they were both done, empty of all tension and all fear, basking in love shared and acknowledged. No further words were spoken. None were needed as they wrapped their arms about one another and fell asleep.

*****

The next day started with coffee and kisses and went on to a meeting with Dr
. Saunders, who had taken a personal interest in the case and in the analysis of the material. Jamie strongly suspected the doctor was annoyed by not knowing what had been in the systems of those she had autopsied. Dr. Saunders was the sort of person who liked to know.

“It's a synthetic,” she said, clutching the paper. “I knew it had to be something like that.”

“Synthetic what?” Jamie didn't understand the chemical jargon on the paper, and she knew Dr. Saunders would enjoy explaining anyway.

“Vaguely analogous to cocaine, but with
tryptamine influences.”

“You lost me.”

“Put simply, it's like a cross between an amphetamine and LSD. It is on par with methamphetamine in terms of efficacy, but with far nastier side effects.”

“Including?”

“As you already know, hallucinations, paranoia. Some users evidently report a sort of daemon possession. It seems to trip the same circuits in the mind as religious experiences do. It's powerful physiologically and psychologically.”

“So is this just a drug that makes people go out of their heads? Or is it a chemical pathway to the world of daemons?”

“That's a philosophical question and out of my wheelhouse of expertise,” Dr. Saunders said. “Personally, I'm just glad that production is taking place on a limited scale. You shut down the fabricator, you kill the source. And I understand you have a lead on that now, too.”

“We do?” Jamie looked at Jack. “Tell me I get to be there when we get this guy.”

“Oh, you get to be there,” Jack said. “Come on, agent. We have an arrest to make.”

Dr
. Saunders smiled indulgently as Jamie did everything bar actually jump up and down and clap her hands together.

“Really? We found the guy.”

“We found the guy,” Jack confirmed. “Let's go get him.”

They left Dr
. Saunders' office and Jack briefed her in the car. There was a small cavalcade of cops behind them, traveling as backup. Everyone was keen to see the scumbag go down.

“His name is Ivan Ives. He's a pharmacist,” Jack said. “Someone with access to drugs, someone who understands the mechanisms of their actions. Someone with a background in chemistry, but less than stellar performance in his personal and professional life.”

They drew up beside a row of shops and stopped the car. Behind them, the police had pulled in further down the block, allowing Jack and Jamie to approach the target more or less on their own. If there was trouble, there would certainly be enough backup to take down a small army, but the federal agents stepped over the threshold of the pharmacy alone.

It was brightly lit and playing a jingle out of season. Bars on the windows and bulletproof glass around the prescription stand spoke to the dangers of its location.

“We'd like to speak to Mr. Ives,” Jack said as he approached the counter.

A sallow-
faced assistant shrugged at them as if to say,
not my problem.
“Sorry, Mr. Ives isn't in today.”

Jack flashed his badge. “We're FBI and we're here to investigate a crime. We will be undertaking a full inspection of this property. You can inform Mr
. Ives if you like.”

The girl behind the counter stammered something that was hard to catch, but offered no resistance as Jamie and Jack swept around the back and into the room where rows upon rows of medications stood in white plastic cylinders and tidy cardboard boxes, awaiting distribution to the public.

“Nothing here,” Jamie said, shrugging. “Where is he?”

“There's something here,” Jack disagreed. “I can feel it.”

He was looking around, his keen gaze settling on every surface, every item. No detail was too small to escape his notice. Jamie waited silently for him to come to some conclusion. As far as she could see, it was just an ordinary room with ordinary contents. Sure, it was a little dilapidated, but they weren't in the best neighborhood.

Whilst Jamie puzzled, Jack nudged at the rubber mat with his toe, then reached down and peeled it back to reveal a manhole in the floor.

“There,” he said, crouching next to the square cut linoleum.

“A secret lair?”

“All the best evil geniuses have one,” Jack deadpanned. He lifted up the hatch and revealed a dark space below with a few faint lights glowing in the beyond.

“Are we going to investigate?”

“Oh I think we have to,” Jack said. “Just be ready.”

Down below, candlelight burned unsteadily in what was undoubtedly a laboratory. The flickering flames cast eerie shadows over rows of boiling flasks and evaporation dishes. Here and there, a burning Bunsen flame heated a roiling broth of heart red liquid.

Jamie would have liked to draw her weapon, but the only way down was a ladder and ladders and guns didn't really mix. They were forced to descend single file and more or less unarmed, curiosity drawing them down into the depths.

It was, of course, a mistake. There was more than paraphernalia down there. There was
a someone. A someone with a weapon. No sooner had Jamie and Jack's feet touched the ground than they heard the cocking of a gun in the bubbling silence. 

“Agents,” a voice spoke from the darkness. “So nice of you to come to my place of worship.”

Jamie and Jack turned to face a rather non-descript looking man in his mid-sixties or so, his face illuminated by the flame of a flickering red candle. He could have been someone's soccer coach, or grandfather. His skin was paunched and sagged with the typical wrinkling that came with age. It gave him a kindly look that was very much at odds with the fact that he was pointing a steak knife at them.

“You're Ivan Ives?” Jack asked the question, ignoring the knife.

“I am,” Ivan said. “At least, that is how my fellow man knows me.”

“How else are you known?”

“Elethor, humble servant to the daemon Beelzebub.” The man said the words as casually as he said his real name.

Jack and Jamie exchanged looks. “Excuse me?”

“I serve a master who will liberate me from this mortal plane,” the fellow said. “I have studied the alchemists of old and I have discovered how one opens portals from this world to the next. I have stepped through and taken tea with angels. I have danced in the shadows of eternity... I have become more than man, more than chemist. I am a shaman. I am a high priest of the great lord Beelzebub!”

Jamie turned to Jack. “Does that count as a confession?”

“I'd say so,” Jack replied.

“You are his servants too,” Ivan continued. “The warrior and the golden virgin. The strong man brings the beautiful woman to her final place of rest. For you, silken haired beauty, there will be no bloodshed. You will drink of the tincture of the night and then sleep forever more. My lord will make his progeny with you when your heart has stopped.

“Is that what happened to the woman in my apartment? The dead woman?”

“My lord has many brides,” Ivan said. “I had my minions place her in your dwelling so you could get to know her.” He smiled a broken, but triumphant smile. “She will be your sister in the hereafter.”

“Will she?” Jamie pretended to be interested. Ivan did not seem to care that he was spilling his deepest, darkest secrets to federal agents. In fact, he seemed more than pleased to do so. Boastful, even.

“This is all a matter of prophecy,” he explained. “If one serves the lord well, one is rewarded with insight.”

“You no doubt saw us in the course of investigating the deaths of Lee Brampton and Mrs. Brampton,” Jack interjected.

“I recognize the brides of my lord when I see them,” Ivan cackled. “I had to dispatch Mrs
. Brampton of course, to be with her husband in the afterlife. Two by two they march into the yawning grave. And you two,” he said with glittering mad eyes, “are... perfect.”

“Well,
unfortunately for you and your lord, I'm not a virgin,” Jamie said, “so you can strike me off the sacrifice list.”

The corners of Ivan's mouth drooped like melting
plasticine, wrinkles taking old skin down to an expression of deep despair. “That is unfortunate. You did not strike me as a whore.”

“Well that's just rude,” Jamie objected. “And if I'm a whore, then Beelzebub is an asshole. I know. I've met him. Why would you want to be his high priest?”

“Blood,” Ivan Ives said simply. “I revel in the spilling of blood. It's beautiful, you know. Few appreciate it these days, but history is full of it. The magic of the blood. The Aztecs knew of it. They would shed blood for days. Thousands of victims and their essence would flow down the pyramids in great waves! My lord was well fed then, and I am certain to feed him well now.”

“Obviously we cannot condone that sort of thing,” Jack said mildly.

“Obviously,” Ivan Ives said. “You are the enemies of my lord. I will put you down and feed your blood to him, two more soul sacrifices for the lord of the night.”

“Obviously, we're not going to allow that,” Jack said, still in that very calm, very conversational tone.

“I have a knife,” Ivan Ives pointed out.  Apparently they hadn’t heard a gun being cocked, or else he had forgotten about it.

“You do,” Jack acknowledged. “But I'm not going to let you stab either one of us.”

“True,” Ivan Ives admitted. “I will tell you what I'll do, I'll throw you both a knife and you can stab each other.”

“Very generous,” Jack replied, “but I don't think that will work either. How about instead of anybody getting stabbed, you put the knife down and we take you into custody?”

“Custody? Oh no, I wouldn't like that. I wouldn't like that at all.”

The realization dawned on Jamie that they weren't just playing out some pretend p
olite conversation. Ivan Ives, the man who had created that infernal chemical was completely and utterly mad. How many times must he have taken the powder himself? How many interviews must he have had with that internal, infernal daemon?

“I know!” Ivan Ives said with a jovial grin. “As I have been caught and will no doubt be incarcerated on this plane for longer than I care to live, I think it is time to join my lord and master in his.” He turned the knife upon himself and made to drive it into his own neck. Jamie closed her eyes against the impending sight of spurting arterial blood. Fortunately, Jack was more proactive in his response.

There was a thudding and a high-pitched cry. Jamie opened her eyes to see Ivan firmly in Jack's custody, his hands zip tied behind his back.

“Leave me to my lord!” Ivan Ives demanded.

“We'll leave you to a judge, and jury of your peers,” Jack said firmly. “This nonsense is over.”