Jo Robertson - The Avenger

The animals finished with the meat of the cow. And then turned to the meat of the young woman.

"You stupid bitch," Diego Vargas snarled.

He lifted his arm and swung backhanded at the young hooker standing by the motel’s circular bed. The edge of his heavy emerald ring cut into her lip.

"Mister, I didn’t mean nothing by it," she said, pressing her hand to her mouth to stem the trickle of blood. "I was just wondering why, that’s all."

She anchored her legs on the carpet, bracing herself for the second blow, and when it came, the force of it toppled her backwards onto the mattress. "Please don’t hurt me," she moaned, blood gushing from her nose.

The blood always excited Vargas.

Santos observed from the doorway as his boss pounced on the girl, pinning her beneath his bulky body. The bodyguard stepped outside the room. At the sounds coming from inside the motel room, he curled his lip in distaste. Pinche cabron! Knowing the girl was barely eighteen, he thought of his little sister Corazón in Mexico, and knew what he’d do if un hermano did such a thing to her. Such a man would no longer have the equipment to hurt young women.

Santos sighed heavily. Diego Vargas paid him well, so what business was it of his? Still, what a pig! Cerdo de mierda!

Muffled sobs echoed softly from behind the door. Eventually, when Diego grew tired of the excitement caused by the girl’s fear, they would subside. Next, Santos would hear the distinctive snoring of his boss. And then, when sufficient time had passed, he would enter and see if the girl was alive. This time there would be a mess.

Sometimes Diego did not control himself sufficiently and the cleanup was complicated. Santos thought of Vargas' wife, the beautiful Magdalena. Better that his boss take out his lusts on the hooker than on her.

Dios, what a pig!

Still, the man paid him very well.

Jack had recruited Olivia, met with the county sheriff and Charles Barrington, and by sheer will he'd brought the beast under control again. Almost.

Barbed shreds of it still flicked over his flesh like slivers of glass as he stripped and stepped into the shower. The hot water sluiced over his worn flesh and the steam clouded the under-sized bathroom. He shaved – yet again – and brushed his teeth before reaching for the bottle of blue tablets, giant pills the color of the sky on a spring day.

He popped one instead of the usual dosage into his mouth, hoping if a vision came on, he'd be ready. He pulled back the spread and fell naked onto the clean sheets of the motel bed, his muscles nearly boneless beneath the remaining pricks of the beast.

He's back in the African jungle. Running, but this time, he's the quarry, and his pursuer a ferocious monster, swifter and more relentless than any enemy he's ever faced. Heat thunders in his head like ancient tribal drums as he zigzags through the undergrowth. The stinging nettles are miniature shards of glass on his feet and legs. Within seconds tiny cuts open into chasms and he looks downward at the torrent of blood gushing from his body. Twin wounds surface on his wrists and feet in catholic retribution.

Jack glances over his shoulder, a rookie mistake, for in that moment a gnarled scrub oak with its toothed leaves rises up to thwart his escape. He tumbles and rolls in one quick movement, grabbing vainly for the knife at his waist. Gone, he realizes at the same moment that he takes in the sight of his naked body, slick with sweat and blood. He blinks moisture from his eyes as he tumbles toward the sudden precipice. Seconds later he's falling, twisting in the air, trying to turn his body into a half-assed dive so he won't break his goddamn neck.

In the irrelevance of dreams, he wonders where he's summoned the temerity to swear so close to entering the presence of the God he doesn't believe in any more. Right before his plummeting makes contact with the torrent of water, he glimpses diaphanous, but distinctly female features and a hand reaching toward him from the edge of the cliff above.

Jack woke up to sheets drenched with the acrid stench of his own sweat. His mouth tasted like cardboard and coffee grounds, and his body ached from the lumpy mattress. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, staring gloomily at the inadequate length. Even angled sideways, his long body didn't fit. He definitely needed to make other sleeping arrangements.

The sun's dull glare peeked through the motel's nondescript drapes, casting dust motes that danced through the stuffy air. Another motel room, but essentially the same furnishings. He reached for the medication vials on the nightstand, tapped out another blue tablet – half the dosage again – and washed it down with water.

Swiping his hand over his rough beard, he stumbled again to the shower, waiting for the blue tab to fire up the brain synapses so he could make connections from the abstract symbols in the dream-vision. The blue pills were another delightful concoction made especially for the Wonder Boy by Dr. Davis. Trouble was, they sometimes caused anterograde amnesia.

Not that he was so hot to create memories, considering his line of work, but any kind of forgetfulness was troubling. As the water pounded over his sweat-slicked body, he began to deconstruct the dream. The Judge wouldn't approve but Jack was determined to wean himself from the blue meds, so the details of the dream remained fuzzy.

When the dreams first began shortly before his eighteenth birthday, he'd ignored them. During the nights before his high school graduation, he'd experienced a recurring dream that ended in an act of violence. The events on grad night showed him the dreams actually meant something because that particular night culminated in fear and death.

After putting on a clean pair of shorts, he lay down and continued the deconstruction process. First, the jungle. Easy enough. He'd just come off assignment in Africa. Mere thought proximity, having just returned from there. Okay, that could work, but what about the barbs? Thorns, spiny nettles, shard-like leaves – all things that pricked, cut, or tore. He assumed the dream related to the current case, but didn't see a connection. The killer had never used a knife as a weapon. For a few minutes he let his mind wander at will in free association. Nothing.

He moved on to the second point. In a strange paradox, in the dream he was the prey, not the hunter. He scanned his memory for prior assignments. Again, nothing. Could this dream foreshadow a twist of the hunter-quarry theme? Would the DLK hunt Jack? Or would the killer target someone Jack cared about? He had no family, no friends outside of colleagues. Not the Judge, even though Jack was a favored tool of Invictus. In his mind he saw Olivia's face, the dark brows and high cheekbones. She was a possibility. Since he'd been near her, he'd felt his powers increasing at an alarmingly rate as if she were a trigger. Maybe. Everything seemed to come back to Olivia.

The final point in the dream – a woman stretching her hand to save him. The filmy tenor of the vision was too indistinct for him to be sure, but presumably it was Olivia. Yeah, he thought, Olivia would reach out to him before he plummeted to his death. Even now, after the distance of years and the stench of betrayal, she'd try to save him. But what the hell did any of it have to do with the case? Something he couldn't see? Nothing?

He forcibly voided his mind of the dream and thought about the team he'd have to pull together for the investigation. Olivia, helping because she'd given her word. A reluctant Slater and what deputies he could spare because the D.A. forced him to. He'd see if Slater would release Waylon Harris, the deputy who'd found the latest body. The Judge boasted a vast budget and unlimited supply of idealistic young men eager to serve their country, but Jack knew he was on his own for this mission.