Fortified Dreams: Dreams and Reality, #12

Beginnings

It was hard to be a criminal mastermind. There were so many things to take into account, not to mention all the planning. If he had been lazy, none of this would be coming together. As it was, he still had some doubts. Sure, he’d gotten confirmation from several interested parties, but people were unreliable, unpredictable, and if they thought too hard on something, they could talk themselves out of it.

This last made them vulnerable. It only worked if they were a unit with one goal and great leadership. The leadership was there. The rest of it made him a little nervous.

It didn’t help that he was dealing with sociopaths, psychopaths, and whackos. None of them were reliable. If they were caught, they all faced very harsh sentences.

Spending the rest of his life in the Fortress didn’t bother him, not really. It was just another place. It was the contents of the Fortress. The guards were all US Marshals. The inmates had formed fan clubs for the SCTU and VCU; fucking fan clubs of all things. They dealt with things in their own manner.

Then there was the problem of Eric and Patterson Clachan. They would need to be dealt with. He only had a couple of months to finalize everything. Eric and Patterson Clachan were actually his biggest obstacles. Some of the interested parties were not interested in dealing with the Clachans should they end up behind bars.

That was why he was sitting across from a hired killer named Yuri Kozlov. Kozlov had been a contract killer in a previous life and while most contract killers didn’t get a thrill from it, he did.

Let me get this straight, you want me to arrange for Eric and Patterson Clachan to be killed? Yuri said to him.

Yes.

Are you insane?

Yes.

That explains a lot. Yuri leaned forward as much as possible. You realize that everyone is scared shitless of the Clachans? They don’t just kill, they kill serial killers and they aren’t above killing their own family members.

I know, but it will be very lucrative. I’ll wire money to your family, and they will live more comfortably than they ever imagined.

You have that kind of money?

Yes.

Am I just supposed to take your word for it?

Yes; however, should you demand proof, I will send a partial payment to your wife today.

I don’t know. Yuri shook his head.

Why the hesitation?

If we kill both of them, Aislinn Cain can do a rotation here as a guard. She’s great from a distance, but up close and personal, that’s a different story. She’ll be out for blood and the Marshals are sure to send her.

I will worry about Aislinn Cain.

You think you’re special enough to get that close to her? Yuri smirked. You are delusional, even for a psycho. She’ll punch your ticket just as soon as you walk through her front door.

I have a fool proof plan to rid the world of Aislinn Cain, Xavier Reece, Gabriel Henders, Caleb Green, Fiona Stewart, and Malachi Blake, yet, you have qualms over a few killings inside a prison where you are serving a life prison sentence anyway?

Yes, because if I succeed and you fail, that battle axe comes after me.

She is human.

She’s part devil. I’ve had a conversation with her. She gives crazy a run for its money. I don’t believe you have the capabilities of stopping her.

I do.

I need some kind of proof. Yuri sighed. Because if you don’t and she walks into this prison with blood lust on her brain, there isn’t anywhere we can hide. And that’s if we manage to kill both Clachans without upsetting her fan club. Brent Timmons isn’t a slouch. None of the guys in her fan club are. We are talking cream of the crop serial killers making fucking scrap books of her.

Did I mention she is human?

Yes, but I don’t believe you. Most of the people in this prison would disagree with that assessment. Most think she’s the goddamn boogeyman or worse. The other issue is Malachi Blake. We don’t want him in here either. If he finds out we staged some sort of distraction so that Aislinn Cain can be killed, there’s no telling what he will do. His hinges aren’t exactly on right. I want guarantees that both can be dealt with. Once I have that, I will consider your proposition.

This is a take it or leave it deal.

Then I’ll pass. Even Apex wouldn’t take a job like this.

Fine, the other man stood up from the table. He adjusted his jacket and paused. You will not speak of this, do you understand?

Sure, whatever. Yuri wanted the man with no name gone. His proposition was insane even among the insane.

Good. the man extended his hand. Yuri shook it as best he could. I’m sorry I couldn’t convince you.

Yuri watched his visitor walk away. Something bad was about to happen. He could feel it in his gut. The man with no name was bad news. He didn’t know how he had gotten in to the Fortress or onto his visitor’s list. It was something to consider. This wasn’t exactly Club Fed. He looked at the Marshal nearby, the new one.

You need to deliver a message to Gabriel Henders and Malachi Blake, Yuri told him. Both of their units are in danger.

Whatever, time to go back to your cell, the new man, Blythe, told him. They can take care of themselves.

Yuri looked at him, shocked. He’d never met a Marshal that didn’t care about the safety of other Marshals. It was part of their job. Fine, he’d go back to his cell and write a note to Patterson. Patterson would take him seriously.

The problem was that they were only allowed writing instruments for a few minutes a day and they were supervised. His newest cellblock guard was kind of an asshole, even by the standards of Marshals running a prison. His other option was at lunch. He could do it then and it was almost lunchtime.

Yuri entered his cell, let the guard uncuff him, and sat down on his bed to watch the clock. Nothing else interested him. This wasn’t a mob play or Slavi wouldn’t have sent Marshal Cain to talk to him. What it was, well, that was still a mystery to him and they wouldn’t see it coming, not unless something could be done about it. The seconds ticked by impossibly slow. When the ten minutes was up, he stood up, and he was waiting to be handcuffed when the Marshals came around.

Eric and Patterson Clachan sat alone at a table, as they always did. Sometimes, others sat with them, but it was rare. Yuri took a seat across from Patterson.

A strange man came to see me today. Yuri decided against introductions and chitchat. He wanted to hire me to kill both of you. I think Aislinn Cain is in trouble. I think the SCTU and VCU are in trouble. I don’t know what is being planned, but if they want you two dead, it must have something to do with her and Blake.

How did a strange man come to see you? Eric asked.

I don’t know, which is why I said strange. He isn’t on my visitor’s list, but we met in the visitor’s area and not in one of the interrogation rooms, Yuri said. His stomach felt queasy. That new Marshal escorted me. Pain started in his gut. He closed his eyes. What was wrong with him? He was going to throw up. He turned away from Eric and Patterson and disgorged the contents of his stomach. Copious amounts of blood coated the floor.

Eric and Patterson exchanged looks. There was movement behind them, not the guards, but someone else. Eric spun to get out of the bench table that had him trapped in time to be dealt a blow to his kidney. He stared into the eyes of Alejandro Gui. The bigger man smiled at him. Eric smiled back. His hands moved, and within a moment, Alejandro was down on the ground. Eric’s hand was coated in blood.

Eric’s knees gave as Patterson shouted something to him. It sounded like good-bye, but that was implausible. Even if Eric had just been killed, Patterson wouldn’t have said good-bye.

Full out war, he heard someone else say. The Marshal loomed over him suddenly. His eyes were frantic. Sounds of fighting were all around him. Marshal Graves grabbed Eric and pulled him under the table. Alejandro Gui was still writhing on the floor, a thick pool of black ooze spreading around the tall man.

Yuri was right. Aislinn and Malachi were in trouble. Eric was sure that he was going to die, hiding under a table, cradled in the arms of a US Marshal, with no way to help his sister. His back didn’t hurt. He wasn’t sure if he was in shock or under the influence of the darkness that lurked within. Neither felt right. It was a wound, sure, but that wouldn’t have sent him into shock, unless he was close to bleeding out. He didn’t feel calm either, or rageful. He felt frantic. He needed to get a message to Aislinn, only he didn’t know what to say or whether it would be delivered. The strange man, the new guards, something was off. It was as if the US Marshals were in the middle of a civil war and the Fortress was the first battle. Did that make Marshal Lazar friend or foe? Eric didn’t struggle to be released. He felt the Marshal’s hand searching his back, applying pressure.

The cafeteria was in full riot mode. The Marshals were outnumbered three to one and even if they hadn’t been, they wouldn’t have stood a chance against a prison full of sociopaths and psychopaths. Eric watched all this from the relative safety provided by the table. He had to help. He pulled away, forcing his body to move. Marshal Lazar called to him, but he ignored his orders. If the killers took the prison, it would be very bad, probably for his sister and Malachi. Maybe that was the situation.

Brent Timmons came up to him.

You’re bleeding, bad, Brent told him.

We have to take control and hand it back over to the Marshals, Eric told him. Timmons looked at him for a moment, blinking rapidly three times as he did.

Why? Timmons finally asked.

Because this has something to do with Aislinn. Eric turned his dark brown eyes on Timmons. Timmons visibly stepped back. He was the current president of the Aislinn Cain fan club. There were approximately thirty members within the prison. This gave both Eric and Patterson some power with the group.

Man, that’s crazy, Timmons finally said.

Really? They just tried to kill Patterson and me. Why would they come after us if they weren’t after Aislinn? Eric asked him. Timmons was smart, smart enough to connect the dots. He swung a food tray, catching another inmate in the throat with the hard plastic edge. The inmate dropped to the ground, gurgling and twitching.

Shit, shit, shit, Timmons swore loudly. Okay, we take control and hand it back to the Marshals.

One

My mother had Badger at the vet, getting something checked on him that involved the word anal. Since I had no desire to know about dog anatomy, I hadn’t listened past that word or asked any questions. It was the first week in October and the serial killers in the US had suddenly gone very quiet. We had only dealt with two serial killers since we returned from Louisiana. Neither had made much of an impression on me.

Lucas and Trevor’s house was eerily vacant as it sat across the street from mine. Xavier went in there almost every day. Lucas’s absence was tearing a hole in all of us, but none as much as Xavier. His appearance had become even more haggard. He was becoming reclusive. Green thought he was in mourning, despite the fact that Lucas was alive. I could understand that, so I left him to his visits.

Malachi had come home in early September. He wasn’t back to normal, but he was improving with each passing day. His physical strength was returning. His mental state was correcting itself, recreating the psychopath I was used to dealing with. The Malachi who had come home from the hospital had not been the Malachi I had grown up with. He had been weak, fragile, and exceptionally human. This Malachi was not one that I had ever seen. He had even apologized to me for several things in our past that I had not thought of in years.

I did not like that Malachi. While I had reservations about the psychopathic version of him, the human version was appalling. He was constantly asking how I felt and if I was okay. There was no easy answer to those questions. I was not fine, but I wasn’t feeling anything. I had not been feeling anything for a long time now.

After the leaked video of me sleeping nude next to Fiona, I had entered a calm and it was all I had felt for two months. I was living in the darkness that should not have living beings dwell in it. Nothing had worked to bring me out of it. Not even subjecting myself to torture had released me.

Then there was Christian Hunter, our newest Serial Crimes Tracking Unit member. I had not liked him much before I had entered the calm. Now that I lived there, I despised him. I took delight in mentally tormenting him. I had been warned to stop, mostly by Malachi, but it was about the only thing I had left that I enjoyed. I was not about to give that up. If he quit, he quit. We still had Green, and at the moment, no serial killers.

The sudden drop in work for us had not gone unnoticed. The question was raised of whether we were still necessary. We were a burden on the public purse. Different specialists had come up with different reasons for the sudden decline in serial killers and mass murderers. They were all wrong. The SCTU and VCU both knew it. We could feel it coming back, building like a fire in the walls. It was just waiting to explode out and eat everything in its way. If we were dismantled, it would eat the public faster than they could reassemble our units.

Serial killers are smart. They are logical. They are calculating. We know they are waiting. We had done a great deal of damage in the last year. It had not started in Detroit. That had just highlighted our capabilities. It began with an article published after I had taken on a jaguar in Columbia, Missouri. The title had screamed, Meet the Boogeyman. My picture had been under it along with a lengthy article related to the work that the SCTU did, and specifically, about what I did. At the time, I had not known where they had gotten that stupid headline or the information inside it. Only in the last few weeks had I worked out that it had been Patterson.

Patterson was a master at being a psychopath. Of course, he had been at it for seventy plus years. He had even been great at it for all those years, managing to hide in plain sight while stalking me as the Butcher, managing to remain a killing machine for all those years and honing his predatory instincts and skills with practice. Just how many bodies were on Patterson’s hands was anyone’s guess. I had a good idea that it was well over two hundred. There had been too many letters with too many descriptions over the years for there not to have been that many bodies.

He had waived a trial, admitting guilt under the Serial Killer and Mass Murder laws and gone straight to the Fortress. No passing go, no collecting $200, just went straight to jail, just as he had wanted to do. He had spent his days bonding with his grandson, my brother, inside that prison. The Marshal who ran the Fortress had allowed it, not because he was nice, but because he ran a prison full of psychopaths and trusted Eric.

Eric was inside the Fortress because he had climbed to the top of a building to kill a cop killer, our father’s killer to be exact. Unfortunately, once the shooting started, he had not stopped with just one cop killer. He had aimed his rifle and started taking out all those that he thought were probably psychopaths. His aim had been true. He had not hit a single non-violent offender. He was like me. He knew his own kind, even down the scope of a rifle.

Unlike most killers, Eric did not brag about his kills. He did not flaunt his kills to impress people. He did not have an appreciation for the other killers within the walls of the Fortress and if he were ever to get his hands on a gun, he would start taking down his fellow prisoners. Whereas most serial killers hated pedophiles and others who were lower than they were on the food chain, Eric hated serial killers. The irony of his imprisonment was not lost on anyone, even the US Marshals.

As a result, he was treated well among the US Marshals within the prison. They felt a weird kinship to him. He had rectified a wrong, an injustice done against one of their fallen brethren and they respected him for that. Allowing him and Patterson to bond had been strategic. Patterson would agree to follow Eric. As such, two of the most feared killers inside the Fortress were allies of the US Marshals Service. The fact that I was a Marshal was either a perk, a bonus, or a strategic decision by the US Marshals. Recruiting me had ensured that Eric would feel a loyalty not just to law enforcement, but also specifically to the US Marshals. I could live with it.

Patterson was along for the ride now. He had reunited with his grandson, two of his granddaughters, and had rights afforded to him that he had never had while pretending to be someone else. He was still manipulative and conniving, but he would do whatever the three of us requested of him.

My phone rang. Nyleena’s name flashed on the caller ID. It was the middle of the day, so she would be working and it was not her lunchtime.

What is wrong? I asked.

Oh shit, she said. I thought you were being paranoid.

I have no idea what you are talking about, I pointed out to her.

You were right. It’s bad. The line went dead. I jumped from my chair, letting it slam against the floor. I dialed her cell number again and got no answer. I dialed her office number with no results either. Nyleena worked for the federal prosecuting attorney, specifically, she was usually the head counsel for the government against serial killers and mass murderers. Serial killers and mass murderers ran in our family, so it made sense that we would all be on one side or the other of the law.

A strange siren began to sound. The high-pitched screech was not the tornado siren. I had never heard it before. It hurt my ears. I went to the sliding glass door. Gabriel was already running towards my house. He was pulling on a Kevlar vest, as I opened the door.

Suit up, they’ve hit the federal buildings downtown.

What federal buildings? I asked, thinking of Nyleena.

All of them. Gabriel was trying to finish putting on his vest while digging around in a duffle bag that swung at his side. I recognized it. He carried all his weapons in it. I left him struggling and went to get my own. My vest sat on top of it. I pulled it on, slapping the straps to make sure they were secure. All my guns and knives went into their special holsters and then onto their specific locations on my body. I looked inside the bag, frowned, and went to the basement.

All the houses in the Federal Guard Neighborhood had panic rooms in the basement. They were steel reinforced rooms that could not be tampered with in the event of something awful happening. Mine didn’t sit under my kitchen like most. It was totally encased in the ground, sharing only a wall. It meant my basement and first floor were not the same shape. I punched in the code and watched as the door opened. I filled the duffle bag with canisters of tear gas, stun grenades, smoke grenades, extra Taser cartridges, and extra ammunition clips. I felt like the Terminator as the door closed and I marched back upstairs.

The siren continued to warble out its terrible sound. I exited through the front door. On my lawn stood Xavier, Gabriel, Fiona, Christian Hunter, Malachi, and Caleb Green stood. Malachi looked like he was ready for World War III. He even had a machete strapped to his leg. I said nothing about it. Doors around us were opening. Cops and federal agents were pouring out of their houses, filling their yards, all of them in full tactical gear. They all turned to look at us. Malachi and Gabriel both nodded.

We’re going to need groups! Gabriel shouted over the sirens. They hit seven federal buildings, including FBI headquarters, the Federal Law Offices of the Attorney General’s Special Counsel, and the Federal Guard Apartment building. We know there have been fatalities, but we don’t know how many, and we don’t know who is responsible for the attack. Everyone will report to a member of the VCU or SCTU. Homeland Security believes this to be domestic terrorism of an unknown origin. The siren suddenly died.

Two

I was dispatched to the Federal Law Offices of the Attorney General’s Special Counsel with a force of twenty-seven officers. I was in charge. This was a terrible idea. Not only was I not leadership material, but I had a vested interest in finding anyone responsible and punishing them. This punishment would be exceptionally brutal if I found Nyleena’s dead body somewhere within the building.

On the street, several cars were burning. Smoke poured from the secure garage that attached to the building. Several windows had been busted. Gunshots could be heard from within. Screams pierced the sounds of chaos on the street around us. People ran around us like headless chickens. A few just stood still and stared, while a few others moved like zombies, being too traumatized to react.

Clear the street, I barked. A group of five officers peeled away from us. They began trying to move the civilians away. One group will go into the garage and the other with me. We will meet in the lobby and work our way up. Kill only when necessary. We need survivors.

I was used to being the first one in. I was used to being the one to kick down the door. In this instance, someone had kicked the door down for me, and given the chance, I was probably going to put a bullet in their head. While we did need survivors, we did not need many, because I could be very persuasive. We used hand signals to communicate.

The lobby looked as if a bomb had gone off. Blood was still pooling up in places on the floor. Glass, metal, and plaster coated the ground, creating obstacles for the blood to flow past. There were no groans or moans from the bodies on the floor. It was apparent that the US Marshals in charge of protecting the building had gone down in a firefight. Several men with masks were among those in suits and uniforms. A few of the officers with me began checking for vital signs. I scanned the room, expecting a sentry to start firing on us, but none did.

This situation did not make sense. Anyone who entered this building must have known it was going to be a one-way trip. I hated zealots. They were irrational, illogical, and unpredictable. I heard more gunshots above us, causing my muscles to tighten. I wanted to run up the stairs, find whoever was shooting and make them stop. No one in this building deserved to die.

The other team joined us. They shook their heads. I nodded once, and we headed for the only two staircases in the building. The law office was built to be tall and narrow. It was a safety measure. If it were tall and narrow, anyone trying