Jo Robertson - The Avenger

She flipped open her copy of the DLK file. Four murders, all bizarre methods of death. Riffling through the book's index, she found the usual topics. Christian martyrs, Nero's excesses, gladiators, vestal virgins. Vestal virgins. She searched her memory before finding the chapter about these ancient women who took vows of chastity for life. At the end she found what she was looking for.

Their punishment for breaking their vows of chastity was being buried alive.

Unlike the DLK's victims, the vestals were encased in a crypt and given bread and water, but eventually died of starvation. In the killer's mind were the victims who were buried alive similar to these ancient vestals? She had to take this information to the team. Tomorrow, she thought, feeling a headache coming on.

Relaxing with a glass of cabernet, she leaned against the desk, her mind whirling with ideas. Without warning, a noise at the back of the house roused her from her reverie. The sharp rapping on the glassed window of the back door. Jack! In her hurry she attempted to set the wine glass on the desk, but knocked it off, watching sightlessly for a second as the red stain beaded up in tiny bubbles on the carpet. Ignoring the spill, she hurried to the kitchen. Eagerly, she flung open the back door without thinking.

Her brain had less than a split second to register that it wasn't Jack who stood there waiting for her. A bright light and the shadowy form of a stocky figure that loomed on her back porch steps froze her to the spot. Before she could react, an unexpected blow landed to the side of her head. And then her brain shut down.

When the lysergic cocktail of the red pills kicked in and Jack's sensory perceptions heightened, the vision he'd waited for burst from his mind's quiet like a hurricane. The storm in his head belched gales of images that whipped through his brain like fallen power lines.

He tossed restlessly in his bedroll, his body slick and sour with a rank sweat. As he slinked through the enemy's mind, invading his thoughts, Jack saw the sudden jerking of a head as if the prey sensed his thoughts had been invaded. That someone else shared his dark desires.

With a harsh gasp and a sharp stab behind his eyes, Jack wrenched back into consciousness. Except for the heavy rasp of his breathing, the night air was hushed. The cold ashes of his fire told him several hours had passed. He listened intently for the sounds of animal and insect life. The quiet chatter of noises undetectable by human ears broke the night's tranquility.

Shoving aside the bedroll, he walked naked to the stream, hunkered down, and drank deeply from the cold water. He stood and gazed at the opposite bank for several moments and then turned to make his way up to the top of a ledge some fifty yards away from his camp.

The moon dangled a sliced pumpkin's smile above him. The dark, clear sky reflected in the water's sparkle below him. Plunging into the lake with a clean, smooth dive, Jack ate the water with his hands for several minutes before he made his way to the surface. This high up the lake was an arctic bath and his teeth clacked and chattered uncontrollably. He climbed from the lake, shook himself dry like a wet dog, and crawled back into the sleeping bag.

A kaleidoscope of images whirled in his thoughts, but nothing made sense yet. His human-mind wasn't prepared to dissect the dream. His animal-mind couldn't. He couldn't tell yet whose sight he was about to invade. The killer? His victim? A third party?

Jack downed more red pills, sprawled on his back, and stared at the stars until his eyelids drooped once again. This time he smelled the enemy before he heard or saw him. His nostrils filled with rotting decay and he exhaled sharply like a dog wheezing out a bad scent. Then he heard a bestial growl as he sniffed out the trail.

Himself or his prey?

He felt the hideous intent of the killer. Tasted the thick desire that spurred him on. Smelled the lust that propelled his dark needs. Then he saw a man peer through a peephole, light candles, adjust a camera lens. He glimpsed the border of a red ripple of cloth. Through the man's eyes, he descended concrete steps in a fast gallop, opened a car door. Saw a pretty redhead with pale, freckled skin that glowed in the evening light. Heard a muffled word. "Baby?"

And saw the front of a house, the lighted number clearly visible – 2776.

But what street? Turn, damn it, Jack mouthed silently to the man whose mind he now inhabited. Pass a mirror. Cast a reflection. Let me see your face.

But the man rushed into the house carrying the pale-skinned girl, her fiery curls dangling down his back. Jack could feel the slight weight of her, how easily she flopped over his shoulder, how supple and pliant her body was. As he passed the entryway, he glanced down, saw the envelopes lying on the wooden surface of a half-circle table. Yes, there!

Occupant, 2776 Mitchell Avenue .

Now he passed the table and climbed the stairs, entered a bedroom and deposited the girl on sheets the color of spilled wine.

Spilled wine. He jerked out of the vision. Something else, he thought, not the red-headed girl. Why did the image of spilled wine strike such terror in him? He saw deep-piled carpet, a dark red stain. Momentarily the image vanished and Olivia stood at an open door, her perfect mouth a round oval of surprise. He sensed her surprised gladness and then… darkness.

A threat to Olivia? But he could see nothing else through the black-out curtain of his mind. The image remained stubbornly hidden.

Instead, the original vision returned and he felt eager carnality as he stared down at the helpless redhead. The man's lechery rippled through Jack. A white, hot flame erupted in his head, pierced his right eye with a jolt that roused him awake. He clutched the side of his temple, dug the heels of his hand into the eye socket, and writhed on his bed roll until the pain eased.

He jerked upright, his body clammy with sweat even though the night temperature had fallen again. Shivering, he pulled a jacket over his shoulders. When he was half-way warm, he crouched again at the water's edge and drank his fill, then returned to camp and climbed into his bedroll, hoping for another vision.

Nothing happened. In the morning he packed up his gear and set off on the long walk back to the clearing at the base of the mountain where he'd parked the Blazer.

Someone was in danger. But he had no way of knowing who, how, or even when .

As he hiked down the mountain, he had plenty of time to think about how he'd gotten himself into the mess of Invictus life.

Graduation night nearly twenty years ago. The sheer shock of returning to the Morse house only to find Roger's body had gone. The broken beer bottle gone, not even a shard left on the steps. The puddle of blood from his laceration gone, not even a stain on the cement sidewalk.

His seventeen-year old self had stood dazed and wide-eyed at the spot where a half hour before the broken body had lain. Jack remembered thinking that he must've been wrong. That he hadn't heard the loud snap of the neck, that he hadn't been strong enough to kill a man nearly twice his size, and that in a drunken stupor, Roger had stumbled back into the house.

Cautiously, Jack had pushed open the door and crept inside.

He counted at least five of them.

Burly figures dressed in black gear with masked faces and armed with some bad ass kind of guns that Jack couldn't identify but knew instinctively were deadly enough to blow a giant hole in him. Instinct made him turn and run, but two of them blocked his escape. He felt a sharp prick at his neck and then… nothing.

That was the beginning, Jack thought, of a long descent into the murky realm of Invictus.