Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage (6 page)

“We stopped them, Dean,” Sam said. “There won’t be another vic.”

“Wrong, Sam,” Dean said grimly. “There’s always another one. No matter what we do…”

Four

On foot again, miles from the multi-car pile-up, Tora strolled along Parry Lane, a suburban street in Laurel Hill. As he walked along the tree-shaded lane, his iron-tipped cane tapped a steady rhythm on the sidewalk, interrupted only when he sensed a human presence inside a house. By opening his third eye, he could see into those homes, like peering through a floating keyhole. Extending his awareness and influence, he sought any opportunity to wield his power. For in exercising his ability, he honed it, made it more responsive to his whims.

Pausing in front of a two-story Tudor-style home, he stretched his brow, opened his third eyelid the merest slit, and peeked inside.

The images came to him in short bursts, like excited breaths.

A harried housewife filled a canvas hamper with clothes for laundering. Instead of making two sensible trips to the washing machine, she piled up soiled clothing from several bedrooms until the hamper overflowed. She carried her burden along the upstairs hallway, her view obstructed by the mound of clothes. Her sneakered foot missed the action figures stacked near the doorway of a child’s bedroom. A sock fell from the pile, unnoticed, and her feet fell on either side of it. Then she turned to the stairwell and failed to notice the cat lying on the second step from the top. The domesticated beast assumed its owner saw him and continued to sprawl on the step.

The woman’s foot came down on the cat’s tail.

The cat yowled in pain and bolted.

Startled, the woman cursed and jerked her foot away. She missed the step and pitched forward. The burden in her arms prevented her from reflexively grabbing the nearest railing. By the time the hamper flew from her hands, her head struck a riser, her face smashed into a baluster and her neck, twisted at an awkward angle by the jarring impact, snapped before she came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, a soft landing atop the scattered mound of soiled clothing.

Moments later, the cat crept out of his refuge under an end table and sat beside the woman, licking her outstretched hand several times, no doubt expecting a show of contrition or affection on her part.

All things considered, the cat was fortunate to have survived, though Tora had no direct influence over animals. Large disasters, such as the multi-car pile-up, could easily
doom them, but that was a matter of happenstance. He put the cat out of his mind and contented himself with the arranged death of the woman.

With a sigh, he continued along Parry Lane.

Three doors down, he sensed another lone presence in a house and eased open the folds in his forehead to peer inside.

An older man was finishing a shower, a ring of white hair plastered to his scalp as he rinsed out shampoo suds. Warm water splashed off his bowed head and bent elbows, striking the shower door and passing through the narrow gap to gather in small puddles on the tile floor of the bathroom.

Outside the house, Tora raised one hand from the cane’s iron handle to massage his temple with his index and middle fingers, reaching out further, extending his awareness into the man’s life.

Hal Norville … a medical professional, put others to sleep. An anesthesiologist. He had taken the day off… for a round of golf with colleagues.

He opened the shower door and reached for a towel to pat water from his head and face. As he stepped out of the shower, the ball of his bare foot came down on one of the soapy puddles and shot out from under him. His free arm darted out to catch the towel rack, and missed by half an inch. The back of his head slammed into the shower door track, which cut deep. His blood flowed freely down the drain, tinting the last of the shampoo bubbles crimson.

At the end of the block, a retired woman had already put a load of wet laundry in her clothes dryer. Tora stopped in front of her house as she slipped into her afternoon
nap. For a while, she remained safe from any physical mishap. But a bit of probing revealed that her dryer’s lint trap hadn’t been cleaned in a while and its exhaust vent was clogged. Assuming the dryer was failing, and without the means to replace it, the woman ran every load on the hottest setting. One convenient spark ignited an impressive fire. Unfortunately for the woman, she hadn’t replaced the batteries in her smoke detectors in a long time. Humans were so forgetful at that age.

Soon flames were engulfing the first floor of the house, the woman had died from smoke inhalation, and he was several blocks away, seeking other opportunities. But he continued walking without bothering to peer into any other homes until the fire engine sirens had faded into the distance.

With his cane tapping as regularly as a metronome, his long strides consumed two miles before he slowed again, intrigued by something in the sky.

Two broad, colorful rectangles slowly descended.

Parachute canopies.

Looking up, Tora pushed the brim of his bowler out of the way to watch the skydivers. Above the parachutes, a red and white plane looped around. Excited, he walked faster, holding his cane parallel to the ground.

Soon the cluster of houses thinned and he saw the small airfield, its perimeter secured by a ten-foot tall chain-link fence topped with concertina coils. By this time, the two skydivers had landed and gathered their parachutes, before returning to a hangar with Skydive Launchers painted in broad letters on its side.

As he hurried along the border of the airfield, following the line of the fence, the red and white airplane dropped to the runway with a slight shudder and proceeded to taxi toward the hangar. By the time he was close enough to distinguish individual voices, another plane was preparing to leave with more skydivers.

He paused, hoping he appeared to be nothing more than a curious onlooker, and massaged his temple, probing. The three new skydivers had already packed their chutes and walked to the second plane, otherwise he could have interfered with the chutes in packing, but that opportunity had passed. With his third eye, he peered into the backpack container, the pilot chute, main parachute, reserve chute, lines and risers and, finally, the AAD or automatic activation device, a sliver of metal with an onboard computer chip that deployed the reserve chute at 750 feet if the skydiver could not or became distracted during freefall. Switched on in preflight, the AAD measured air pressure to determine altitude and recalibrated every thirty seconds to account for changes in atmospheric pressure. But if all proceeded according to plan and preparation, the AADs wouldn’t need to perform their lifesaving function. It would be a simple matter for him to cause a malfunction in the device. Now that he knew what to look for, he disabled all three AADs.

Anticipating an exciting challenge, he stood with both hands resting on the handle of his cane and watched as the red and white plane, a Cessna 182, with the pilot and three jumpers aboard, taxied onto the runway.

While the plane climbed steadily to 13,000 feet, which
would give the skydivers about sixty seconds of freefall, he extended his awareness to follow them up into the thin air and buffeting winds. Briefly, the link became tenuous, but he concentrated and kept his third eye on them. Even at two and a half miles elevation, they could not escape his attention and manipulation.

He skimmed the surface of their minds, touching on each of the three jumpers, plucking their names out. Dave Jackson, Art Polan and Robert … McGlaughlin, although the others thought of him as “Mac.” Since a plane crash was less of a challenge, he ignored the woman pilot and the condition of the plane itself. Crashing the plane would kill the skydivers, but the accident wouldn’t test him, wouldn’t improve his abilities the same way tackling three targets individually at that distance would. Plus, he had a ticking clock challenge. Once the skydivers jumped, he would have to work fast.

As they waited excitedly for the pilot to give them the signal that they were over the jump zone, the three skydivers compared notes about their jump count. They had jumped together since their senior year at Rowan University, for Mac’s twenty-first birthday. Since then, Dave had missed a jump due to a family emergency—a child’s burst appendix— and Art had missed a jump while attending his grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. That made Mac senior man.

“I’ll jump after you clowns,” he shouted over the noise of the plane.

Moments later, the pilot gave them the thumbs up.

Dave stepped through the doorway first, falling away
from the plane, closely followed by Art. With those two out of the way, Mac placed one booted foot down on the footrest outside the plane. As he was about to push off, the plane was jostled by a bit of turbulence and Mac’s foot slipped sideways off the rest and, instead of falling forward, he fell back. His helmeted head bounced off the footrest, dazing him, and he flipped end over end all the way down.

Normally, at 750 feet, the AAD would release the reserve chute and the unresponsive skydiver would owe his life to the failsafe device. Tora thought it appropriate that Mac, the senior man, hit the ground first.

Initially, Dave and Art failed to notice Mac’s plight. They enjoyed almost a full minute of freefall before they attempted to open their chutes. Dave, who jumped first, looked around and finally noticed Mac spinning out of control. He pointed toward the tumbling figure behind Art, to direct his attention. Art mistook the gesture as a sign to throw out his pilot chute.

On the ground, gazing up at the three men, Tora smiled.

Though pulled out as expected by the pilot chute, Art’s main canopy failed to deploy properly. With the canopy partially open, he spun out of control and quickly became disoriented. Tugging on the toggles, he attempted to help the ram-air canopy open, but soon gave up and pulled the handle on the three-ring release. That freed the lines on both risers and the main parachute. Art was in freefall again. When he pulled the reserve chute handle, nothing happened. Stunned, he waited for the AAD to fire and automatically deploy the reserve chute at 750 feet.

He waited for the rest of his life.

Dave threw out his pilot chute a few seconds after Art. But something went wrong. The canopy opened instantly, pulling Dave up so hard he grimaced in pain. Glancing up, he saw the nylon slider that held the lines together had ripped apart as if rotten. The force of the opening tore several cells of the ram-air canopy. He watched in horror as the tears spread, crippling the canopy’s integrity, which offered less wind resistance with each passing second. Worse, the lines began to snap, one after the other. The chute was a lost cause.

On the ground, Tora looked up intently, squeezing the ironbound handle of his cane. Precision work demanded his full concentration, but it was progressing smoothly. One dazed and helpless, while a second waited in vain for a reserve chute to open, and now the third man had more than he could handle.

Dave released his main canopy, too preoccupied at this point to notice that Art had already attempted the same strategy. With a silent prayer, he pulled the handle to deploy his reserve chute and sighed with relief as it popped open above him. But his relief was momentary. He felt rather than heard the rugged straps around his shoulders and thighs begin to tear. Once snug, now they pulled away from him. He clapped a hand over a shoulder strap, felt it separating at the seam. As precious moments ticked by, the nylon crumbled in his hand. The whole harness tore away from his body, dangling from the deployed reserve chute while he plummeted toward the ground, quickly approaching terminal velocity.

Fifty feet from the perimeter fence, Mac slammed into the ground, dying instantly. Less than ten seconds later, Art and Dave followed, like echoes. All three broke most of the bones in their bodies, rupturing internal organs and crushing their skulls. Dave struck the ground a hundred yards away from Mac, while Art’s remains splattered across an asphalt runway and would delay flights for the rest of the day.

Tilting the brim of his bowler down to block the bright sunlight, Tora chuckled in delight and turned away from the airfield’s imposing perimeter fence. Though he had enjoyed the unique challenge of the skydivers—and the prospect of another three-for-one had almost seemed poetic—he had larger plans to set in motion.

Returning to the rows of suburban homes, he heard the laughter of a group of small children. Curious, he followed the sound to a long, one-story stucco building with a rainbow painted on one wall near a wooden sign that read First Step Forward Preschool. A chain-link fence surrounded the property, which included a busy playground. Unlike the airfield fence, this one was not topped by razor wire. Of course, the airfield fence was designed to keep intruders out, while the daycare fence kept children, none more than six years old, within its borders.

Some boys tossed beanbags at a plastic game on the ground, while a row of girls monopolized the swings. A group of boys played a game of tag, running in circles around annoyed girls who were chatting with dolls while others attempted to jump rope.