Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Forenzi

Dr. Emil Forenzi was extremely agitated, and more than a little frightened.

This was bad. Really bad. Once an experiment of this magnitude began to spiral out of control, it was time to pull the plug.

But he didn’t know if he could stop this, even if he wanted to. So many unexpected variables had been introduced that stopping now could be catastrophic.

He sped through the steel doors of the clinic and peered into Gunter’s habitat. But the monkey wasn’t in his usual spot, hanging upside down from the tree. Forenzi moved closer to see if Gunter was hiding in the fake bushes.

He wasn’t. The primate had either turned invisible, or someone let him out of his cage.

Or…

Forenzi checked the habitat’s door latch, saw something thin and blood-stained sticking in the spring mechanism.

A bone. Probably from one of Gunter’s unfortunate cellmates.

The Panamanian Night Monkey had learned to open his own lock.

Forenzi took a quick look around the lab, suddenly paranoid. While small, Gunter was a strong little animal, and he had a well-documented history of violence. He could also apparently utilize tools. If he got hold of a scalpel, it could become a very dangerous situation.

Trying to act nonchalant in case he was being watched, and he went to the closet where he kept the elbow-length Kevlar gloves, which would protect him from animal bites. He didn’t like to handle Gunter without them, especially when the animal wasn’t sedated. He was just about to put them on when the phone rang, making Forenzi jump.

“What is it?” he demanded, checking the ceiling to make sure Gunter wasn’t hanging there, ready to drop on him.

“We have a problem. He figured it out.”

Forenzi digested the words. It was, indeed, a problem. And the problems were piling up. How many set-backs could this project absorb before it imploded?

“Seal the perimeter,” he said, setting the animal gloves down on a countertop. “I’ll be right there.”

Forenzi was halfway to the door when he stopped, turned, and went back for them.

Just in case Gunter was prowling the tunnels and in a bad mood.

Sara

The sharp stench of ammonia woke Sara up.

She was sitting down, immobile, legs, arms, neck, and chest all strapped down tight. The device was known as a restraint chair, and during her years working with troubled teens she’d seen them while visiting prisons and mental institutions. Supposedly a humane way to immobilize dangerous or violent inmates who posed a threat to themselves or others, Sara knew how often it was used for cruel and unusual punishment.

Sara looked around, saw she was in some sort of laboratory. White walls, bright lights, shiny tile floors, counters topped with medical equipment; beakers, Bunsen burners, glass bottles, scales, microscopes, storage racks. A far cry from the poorly lit, filthy underground tunnels she’d been chased through.

She also noticed that she had IVs in each arm, the tubes red with her blood and connected to a machine.

Could this be a hospital? Had she somehow been rescued, and they’d restrained her to make sure she was okay?

Another whiff of ammonia, and Sara gagged. Her forehead was strapped to a headboard, but she lowered her eyes and saw a male hand holding some smelling salts.

Someone was behind her.

“Who’s there?”

The figure didn’t reply. But the hand brushed up against her neck, and a finger drew itself across Sara’s lips. Then it moved down her neck and squeezed her right breast.

This wasn’t a hospital.

She hadn’t been rescued.

Sara set her jaw, fighting not to cry out. She endured the groping, and then felt hot breath on her ear.

The horror she’d experienced on Rock Island had never gone away. Part of her had died that day, and she’d been coping with that loss ever since.

Meeting Frank, and daring to dream of a future that wasn’t haunted by the past, had given her a small measure of hope that things might change.

But now, being molested in a restraint chair, Sara knew that life had no happy endings. It was failure and misery and torture and nightmares and cruelty. And the only escape from it was death.

Her tormenter walked around the chair to face her. Blackjack Reedy, his eye patch as black as his uncovered eye. Ghost? Demon? Psycho? It didn’t matter, and Sara didn’t care. She was frightened, but more than that, she was sick of living. Jack had been taken away, Frank was no doubt in a similar situation to hers, and now she was once again evil’s plaything, suffering and dying for no reason at all.

She hocked up a good one and spat at the figure. “Do your worst, asshole.”

He walked over to the counter, where, among all of the medical devices, was a common kitchen toaster. Next to it was a loaf of bread, the kind that came in a colorful plastic bag. He removed two slices, placed them in the toaster, and depressed the plunger.

“Where’s Frank?” Sara said.

He didn’t answer. Sara tested the restraints on her arms, legs, chest, flexing and stretching to see if there was any way to escape.

The toaster dinged.

Blackjack Reedy took the slices of toast, and knelt next to Sara’s chair. He held them out to her. Sara began to wonder if he was mentally deficient. Like Lenny from Of Mice and Men.

“I don’t want your toast. Let me go.”

Blackjack held a piece out to her bound hand. Sara changed tactics. Forcing a smile, she said, “Thank you, I’d love some toast. Can you unstrap my hand so I can hold it?”

Blackjack pushed the toast under her palm. Quick as a mousetrap, he slapped the other piece on top of her fingers.

Then he smiled, and Sara saw that his teeth had been filed to points.

She screamed loud enough to wake the dead as Blackjack opened his terrible mouth and bent down to eat his sandwich.

Frank

Frank Belgium stared up at the ghost of Jebediah Butler, whose entire body was covered with blood, and said, “Need a Band-Aid?”

Belgium was strapped to a stainless steel gurney. It had gutters around the edges, which made Frank think it was a mortician’s table.

The implications didn’t bother Frank. At that moment, nothing at all bothered Frank. He decided, if he made it through the night, to pursue the glamorous and rewarding life of a heroin addict.

But living through the night was beginning to seem like a long shot.

Jebediah pushed a metal cart up to Frank, filled with all sorts of horrible-looking medical tools. Hammers and saws and blades and drills. Frank stared at a particularly rusty chisel and giggled.

“Can you sanitize those tools before you dissect me? I don’t don’t don’t want to get an infection.”

Jebediah loomed over Frank, squinting at him with his soulless black eyes.

“Aren’t… you… afraid?”

“Friend, as far as scary things I’ve seen, you aren’t even in the top five. Where’s that Ol’ Japser fellow? He’s certainly handy.” The pun delighted Frank, and he giggled again. “I also could have gone with he’s well-armed.”

Jebediah picked up some sort of crusty mallet and brought it down on Frank’s broken elbow. It stung, but the drug dulled most of the pain.

The ghost looked confused.

“You seem like a reasonable sort, Jebediah. So I’m going to offer you some advice. And I I I really think you should take it for what it’s worth. Are you ready?”

Jebediah Butler gaped.

“I’m not going to say it unless you want to hear it.”

“Tell… me…”

Dr. Frank Belgium looked the monster dead in the eyes and said, “Go fuck fuck fuck yourself.”

Tom

Tom wiggled his fingers to keep the circulation going, but his hands and arms were becoming very numb due to being hung by them. He felt he’d bought himself a little bit of time, but had no idea how to get out of this situation. His hopelessness spiked every time he looked at the corner of the room, to the branding iron heating up in the wood burning stove, which the blackened figure of Sturgis kept fussing with.

When Dr. Forenzi finally entered the room, Tom was grateful for something else to focus on.

“Where’s Roy Lewis?”

Forenzi clucked his tongue. “Out of all the things you can ask me, that’s your first question? Where your partner is? He gave all he had to give. Like you soon will. How did you figure it out?”

Tom stretched on his tip toes to take some weight off his cramped arms. “Let me down and I’ll tell you.”

“I can assure you, Detective, you’ll tell me anyway.”

Forenzi went to the corner of the room and took a black covering off of a piece of medical equipment. It looked like a dialysis machine.

“It was Torble,” Tom said, glancing at Sturgis Butler. “He said I see your fear. He said that same thing earlier today, at the prison.”

Forenzi made a face and wagged a finger at Sturgis, née convicted serial killer Augustus Torble. “I didn’t go through all the trouble of bringing you here to screw things up like that.”

“And I don’t get my kicks dressing up in a goddamn Halloween costume, spraying myself with liquid smoke to smell like a barbecue. Plus these goddamn contacts are killing me.”

To drive home the point, Torble stuck his finger in his eye and pinched out the black lens.

“So everything was fake?” Tom asked. His curiosity was real, but he was more interested in keeping the doctor talking, hoping for a situation to save himself.

Forenzi nodded. The machine he’d uncovered was on a cart, and he was pushing it over to Tom. “Of course. The house is fully rigged. Trapped doors so people appear and disappear. Electromagnets to make chairs move or pictures fall.” He reached for Torble’s neck and tore off a flap of latex make-up, holding it to his own throat. “Voice… synthesizer. Hear… how… scary… I… sound…”

“How about the painting of the house with all of our pictures on it?”

“Just painted yesterday. One of my men has some artistic talent. I doubt it has even dried yet.”

“And the guns?” Tom asked. “Bullet proof vests?”

Forenzi took Tom’s Sig from his holster and aimed at his chest. Just as Tom tried to twist away and began to yell, Forenzi fired twice.

It stung a bit, but Tom remained free of holes.

Forenzi tucked Tom’s gun into his waistband. “When your luggage was brought in, your ammo was replaced. Soft wax bullets. There’s an indistinguishable recoil, but they disintegrate before hitting the target.”

Shit. Why hadn’t Tom thought to check his ammo?

“What if I had the gun on me?” he asked. “How would you have switched?”

“The front doors to Butler House have an X-ray machine in them. You were scanned for weapons when you entered. If you were carrying a gun, you would have been the first one targeted, and your gun taken. My men are very good at what they do.”

Forenzi had damn near thought of everything. A perfect ruse that fooled everyone, Tom included. “And Aabir?”

“One of us. Like Pang. They’ve played those parts before. Unlike the live roaches put into your mouth, theirs were rubber.

“What about Deb? In the exam room?”

“Franklin is real. I was able to secure his release from prison, as I did with our friend Torble here. In Deb’s and Mal’s case, we thought that touch of authenticity would help raise their metusamine levels. Franklin sprayed a chemical in Deb’s throat—I call it traumesterone. It inflames the vocal chords so a person can’t speak. Or scream for help, as the case may be.”

It all made sense to Tom, except for the most important part.

“Why?” he asked.

Dr. Forenzi sucked in a breath, then let out a big, dramatic sigh. “I explained this at dinner. I need to frighten you to harvest the metusamine in your blood. The more you’re frightened, the more you produce. And because you and the others have experienced high levels of fear in the past, it has altered your brain chemistry so your blood contains higher levels of metusamine than the general population. Much higher, in fact. And I require that neurotransmitter. In order to make anti-venom, you need real venom. The same applies to Serum 3, my anti-fear drug.”

“So why kill Wellington? Or was that fake, too?”

“That was… unfortunate. I would have preferred terrifying him, then milking him for metusamine like you and the others. But that’s the other half of the experiment. You’re obviously aware of who is funding this research.”

Tom thought back to the Butler House website, and who owned the property now. Unified Systems Association.

U.S.A.

“The government,” Tom said. “The feds?”

Forenzi shook his head. “No. My men impersonated the FBI when they approach you and the others. This is a military operation. There have been two previous attempts to create the perfect soldier. I’ve studied the research of my contemporaries, Dr. Stubin in Wisconsin and Dr. Plincer in Michigan, and I’ve learned from their errors. Serum 3, my metusamine blocker, when given to soldiers, renders them fearless. It also has an unusual side-effect that the army has a keen interest in.”

“It makes them homicidal,” Tom guessed.

“How is it said in software parlance? It isn’t a glitch. It’s a feature. Besides making killing easier, it also gives them a much higher tolerance for pain, sharper instincts, and even boosts their stamina and strength, as Mr. Torble demonstrated for you in the prison visitation room. Wellington was an example of my drug working a bit too well, I’m afraid. But it is good practice for the soldiers. Many of them have adjusted quite well to the program. I daresay they’ve begun to enjoy it. Hunting humans in an old, dark house is good real-world practice.”

Tom had previously dealt with megalomaniacs using science for evil, and Forenzi fit the bill. It never ended well.

“So why don’t you just scare people, get what you need from their blood, and let them go?”

Another sigh. “We tried. That area of Butler House where you were caught, with the fake body bags and rubber props, it was set up to frighten people without harming them. But that didn’t produce the levels of metusamine needed for my experiments. To get the higher concentrations, I had to induce real terror in my subjects. And after much trial and error, the type of fear that produced the best results was fear of the unknown. The stuff of childhood nightmares. Ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night.”

“But now I know this house isn’t really haunted,” Tom said. “So you can let me go.”

Forenzi shook his head. “I still need to milk you. And I’ve discovered another way to induce fear. Sadly, it isn’t as effective as ghosts, but it is more sustainable over a long period of time. The fear of pain. I’ll be able to extract quite a bit of metusamine from you as Mr. Torble tortures you to death.”

Torble was at the wood burning stove again, checking how the branding iron was heating up. And, as Forenzi predicted, Tom experienced a spike of pure, adrenaline-fueled fear.

“People know I’m here,” Tom said.

“No, they don’t. We’ve done this many times, Detective. My men are very good at tidying up loose ends. You were a loose end, searching for your missing partner. It is doubtful anyone will come looking for you with the same fervor. But if they do—your old boss Lieutenant Daniels, perhaps, or your girlfriend, Joan DeVilliers, in Hollywood—they’ll be handled in the same way you’ve been.”

“You do know you’re insane, right?”

Forenzi laughed. “My dear Detective, I’m going to cure humanity of fear. Making any omelet requires breaking a few eggs. Take some comfort in the fact that your suffering will one day benefit all of mankind. But don’t take too much comfort in it. I need you to be good and terrified for the little time you have left.”

Forenzi pulled a length of tubing out of the machine, exposing the IV needle on the end.

“This machine is going to extract the metusamine from your blood, and then return it to you. I need to put these into your veins. If you fight me, I’m going to ask Mr. Torble to break both of your kneecaps.”

“Isn’t he going to do that anyway?”

“He might. But would you prefer that to happen immediately, or sometime later on?”

Tom could probably lash out and kick Forenzi, but that wouldn’t help the situation. And if he were going to try that trick, it would be with Torble when the psycho came at him with the branding iron. So Tom nodded, letting Forenzi insert needles into each of his triceps. The machine clicked on with a mechanical whir, and Tom watched his blood travel out of his left arm, through the tube, through the metusamine extractor, and back into his right arm.

Forenzi regarded him. “I must say, Detective, I expected a bit more out of you. Your partner, Roy, fought with all he had. You seem to have given up rather quickly.”

Tom stared the man down. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

The doctor’s brow wrinkled. “Who said that?”

“I did.” Tom’s lips twisted into a grin. “And I’ll be coming for you, Forenzi.”

“And my little dog, Toto, too?”

“No,” Tom said. “Just you.”

“Save your strength for Mr. Torble, Detective. He’s been in prison for a long time, and has a lot of bottled up aggression he needs to let out.”

“Lots of aggression,” Torble said, smiling. He took the branding iron out of the fire, its end glowing orange, and Tom’s metusamine production kicked into overdrive.

Mal

He’d managed to outrun Blackjack Reedy, but then Mal got lost in the labyrinth. One tunnel looked like the next, and Mal couldn’t tell if he’d been going in circles, or was kilometers away from where he began.

Mal stopped jogging, sweaty, aching, terrified for his wife, and then he heard a sharp crack that he thought was Blackjack’s whip. But it was quieter, and different somehow. Instead of running from it, he tried to follow the sound. Maybe it would lead him in some direction other than—

He turned the corner and froze, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

It was Franklin. Just as Deb had insisted. Older, thinner, but undeniably the man who’d caused them both so much pain.

He was poking a long stick at someone Mal couldn’t see, cackling as he did so, the stick making bright sparks to coincide with the cracking sound.

And then Mal heard a yelp. Soft. Hoarse.

But recognizable.

Deb.

He rounded the corner, and realized that Franklin was poking his wife with some sort of electric prod. Deb was crying, hysterical, feebly trying to slap the prod away with her back against the tunnel wall.

Mal froze.

It all came back to him. The helplessness. The fear. The feeling that all hope was gone, and there was nothing he could do to regain it.

That was the Rushmore Inn’s legacy. It had rendered Mal useless. Forever weak. Forever afraid.

What a pale shadow of his former self he had become.

“Hey! Asshole!”

Mal wasn’t sure who had spoken. He was about to turn around and look when a startling realization seized him.

That was me. I said that.

Franklin stopped tormenting Deb long enough to leer at Mal. “Well, lookee who came by. It’s the coward who—”

Mal was on him in three steps, hitting him in the jaw so hard that Franklin spun around, the cattle prod flying. Then he had his fingers wrapped in the man’s hair and Mal introduced the bastard to his knee, Franklin’s nose exploding with all the juice of a squashed tomato.

Franklin howled, and Mal got behind him, still holding his hair, and bent his head back to expose his neck.

“Deb! Now!”

His wife didn’t hesitate. Like a deadly ballet, she pivoted her hips, swinging her right prosthesis around in a reverse hook kick, connecting solidly with Franklin’s adam’s apple.

Mal released him and he slumped to his knees. He was no longer a threat. They’d all heard the man’s windpipe crack.

Then Deb was in his arms, pressing her lips to his, her tear-soaked cheeks rubbing against his face.

“Don’t you ever leave me again,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“We’re a team.”

“The best team ever.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“We’re going to get out of this, Mal.”

“Goddamn right we are.”

Another kiss, and then Deb squatted down and picked up the prod.

Franklin was turning an unnatural shade of blue, clawing at his neck in a futile effort to suck in air.

“You’re suffocating,” Deb told the dying man. “Point us to the exit, and I’ll help you.”

Mal was impressed by his wife’s compassion. Apparently, so was Franklin, because he quickly pointed down the tunnel.

“Thanks,” Deb said. Then she took off in that direction at a quick jog.

Mal ran after her. “What about helping him?”

“I did,” Deb said between breaths. “I helped him get to hell faster. Besides, do you want him and six of his brothers to show up at our doorstep a year from now?”

She had a point.

Incredibly, after following the tunnel a hundred meters, they were back to the concrete stairs. Mal had taken so many twists and turns down there that it hadn’t occurred to him to try a straight course.

Deb stormed the stairs like a champ, and then they were jogging down the hall and heading for the front door.

“Keep your eyes straight ahead,” Mal warned her, wary of Wellington’s headless corpse/cattail vase. “Focus on the door.”

Mal positioned himself between Deb and the circle of chairs, and when they reached the front doors he paused. The last time he opened them, Mal had run into that giggling freak in the gas mask.

“Floor is slippery with blood,” Deb said, placing a hand on Mal’s shoulder.

“I’m opening the door. Get ready to run. Either outside, or back into the house if something bad is out there.”

“Got it. What about the others?”

“Once we find the car, we’ll drive until we get a cell phone signal, then call the police. We’ll make them send the entire National Guard.”

“Mal?”

Mal had his hand on the door knob, but he paused. “Yeah, babe?”

“Coming here… you were right. This wasn’t my best idea.”

He smiled. “Are you serious? I’m thinking we do this every weekend. We rent a car, you send some psycho to hell… it sure beats the hell out of therapy.”

And the crazy thing was, it really did. There were no guarantees they’d live through the night, but Mal felt better than he had in months.

So it was quite a nasty shock when he opened the doors and found himself face-to-face with two people holding machineguns.

Moni

This guy was definitely not Luther Kite.

Kite had enjoyed making Moni suffer. It had been a turn-on for him. More than that, he’d considered it an intimate act, drawing it out while asking her mundane questions about her life. When he had finally broken her, he hadn’t bothered to finish the job and kill her, leaving Moni in a state of shock so deep it took her weeks before she could speak again. It was almost as if allowing Moni to live had been a testament to his art.

This guy, with the black eyes, was going through the motions. And what he was doing hurt Moni, no doubt about it. Getting pierced with an antique medical device was fucking awful. But after a dozen lacerations his heart just didn’t seem to be into it.

And surprisingly, Moni wasn’t terrified. She was actually more angry than she was frightened. Like this was a bad BDSM session that wasn’t working out.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the less she feared for her life and the more she got pissed off. This jackass didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

And she was just the person to tell him that.

“You’re pathetic,” she said, using her dominatrix voice.

The wannabe Luther Kite stopped poking with the artificial leech and stared at her.

“You’re a pathetic, worthless, sissy boy. Take off your pants right now.”

He remained still, his expression confused.

“I told you to take off your pants!” she ordered.

As dommes went, Moni was good at her job. She had a deep, commanding voice that scared the crap out of guys, and she knew what the little perverts wanted. In a sick sort of way, Luther Kite had saved her life. After her ordeal with him she’d kicked heroin and stopped being a victim. No more street tricks. No more pimps. She took control of her life, and her clients paid her well to be a dominant man-hater.

“Take off your pants, and show Mistress Moni what you’ve got. Now!”

Incredibly, the freak began to unbutton his pants.

Just as Moni had suspected. He wasn’t a top. He was a bottom.

“Show it to me.”

He did. And with his dick out, he was a lot less frightening. Even though she was tied up, Moni felt the balance of power shifting from him to her.

“Get over here and put it in my mouth,” she ordered.

Naturally, he complied. What guy wouldn’t? And this was most certainly a guy, not a ghost. Not a demon. Not even a serial killer. Just a worthless little worm who wanted to hurt her, like so many men had before him.

But Moni had other plans.

As she worked her lips and tongue, she gave him just enough to make him want more.

“I can make it better,” she said, deep and breathy. “But I need my hands free.”

Without hesitating he undid the buckle on her right hand. Then Moni did something she’d been fantasizing about ever since she turned her first trick at sixteen years old.

She bit down, hard as she could.

It didn’t come off as easy as she’d thought. Sort of like chewing through a tough steak. A tough, bloody steak, with lots of gristle. But she used her incisors, grinding and tearing, protecting her head with her hand as he screamed and beat at her with both fists.

And then her teeth met, and he fell away from her.

Moni spat his cock on the floor as he sprayed blood like fire hose. While he knelt down with his hands between his legs, wailing and trying to stop the hemorrhaging, Moni undid the other buckles holding her to the rack, pulled out the hefty metal bar used as a crank, and hit the son of a bitch hard enough on the back of the head to see brains come out the split.

They sort of looked like grits.

Wiping off her mouth and spitting several times, Moni got her shit together. She was free. For the moment she was safe. Now she needed to get the hell out of there.

Moni left the torture chamber, metal bar still in hand, and found herself in some sort of mine shaft. The floor was dirt. The walls braced with logs. Lights were bare bulbs, hanging from old rafters.

She spat again, hurrying down the tunnel, stopping when she heard talking.

“You, Jebediah Butler, are are are a jerktapus. That’s a jerk multiplied by eight.”

It sounded like Dr. Belgium. Moni snuck up to an open door, saw the doc was bound to a table. Some guy was standing next to him with a mallet. The mallet guy was covered, head to toe, with blood, but he didn’t seem injured at all.

Another fake ass ghost.

The bloody guy hit Frank with the mallet, right on his arm, which was all twisted and swollen up to twice its normal size.

That son of a…

Moni rushed up to him, angry and pumped, and brained the bastard with the metal bar. He went down, and she kept hitting him, over and over.

“Looks like you invited the wrong goddamn dominatrix to your little party, bitch!”

His head was harder to crack open than the Luther Kite wannabe, but she kept at it until she got the desired results.

“Moni!” Frank said, smiling at her. “Your mouth is bleeding.”

“I bit a guy’s dick off.”

“Great! That’s great!”

She undid Frank’s straps, wincing when she saw his arm. “Jesus, Doc. Doesn’t that hurt?”

“I’m medicated,” he slurred. “Tell me something… how hard is it to buy heroin?”

“It’s all about who you know.”

“Great great great!”

“Is that what you’re on? Heroin?”

“Yes. I believe it’s your stash. It’s awesome.”

He’d be singing a different tune when withdrawal kicked in, but Moni saw no reason to bring that up.

“I have to go and save Sara,” Belgium said. “Want to come with?”

“Sure.”

Frank picked up the mallet in his good hand, and then they were back to prowling the tunnels.

“Doc?” she asked.

“Yes yes yes?”

“We’re not going to get our million bucks each, are we?”

“It’s not looking too promising, Moni.”

Moni frowned. The dozen or so lacerations on her body hurt like crazy, but the fact that she’d been played for a fool felt even worse.

“Doc?”

“Yes?”

“When we find everybody, let’s burn this fucking place to the ground.”

Josh

Fran had been on edge since they landed in Charlotte. While he and Duncan had slept most of the trip, his wife had trouble relaxing on planes. A twenty-two hour flight in coach was stressful enough to make even Gandhi want to shoot someone.

But unlike Gandhi, Fran already had done so. A perimeter guard, when they’d driven up to the Butler House gate, had drawn his sidearm and fired at them as they drove up. No warning. No provocation. While Josh was driving the rental van, Fran had used her night scope to put a tight grouping of three into the guard’s chest from thirty meters.

Josh had expected an unwelcome reception, but nothing so blatant and aggressive. It only confirmed what he and Fran had suspected when they’d received the invitation; Butler House was a front for something very bad.

They pulled up to the house and parked in front, the element of surprise gone. Fran and Josh wore full body armor with chest trauma plates, and tactical ballistic helmets, as did Duncan. Woof had on a custom-made bulletproof dog sweater, which boasted a small saddle for Mathison. The capuchin didn’t like to wear body armor because it restricted his movement, but he did don a plastic army helmet that belonged to an old GI Joe action figure, simply because he didn’t like his family all dressing up without him.

“You got the wheel, son,” Josh told Duncan, climbing out of the driver seat and holding the door open for him. “If we come out in a hurry with wounded, can you handle it?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

Josh still beamed with pride every time his adopted son called him Dad.

“Keep the windows open. Listen to your surroundings.” He placed a loaded 9mm on the seat next to him, and turned on Duncan’s walkie-talkie. “Radio silence unless an emergency, but send two clicks every five minutes as the all clear signal.”

Fran leaned into the driver side window and kissed her son on the helmet. “Aim for the center mass, Duncan. Shoot to kill. This isn’t an exercise. It’s the real deal.”

“I know, Mom.”

“Love you. We’ll be back soon.”

“Love you, too.”

Josh did another check of his gear, then slung the AR-15 over his shoulder. He covered his wife as she rushed the front doors to Butler House and positioned herself on the right side of them. Then she covered him as he came up and took the left. Woof, with Mathison riding on his back like a jockey, heeled next to Josh.

Fran made the hand signal for “Ready?”

In a way, Josh had been ready for this moment since they’d survived the massacre at Safe Haven and had been forced to move out of the lower forty-eight. They’d been waiting, and training, for the day the bad guys finally came calling. After the phony FBI agents had shown up with their obvious bullshit invitation, the VanCamps had called a family meeting and voted. They could do nothing at all and wait for further developments. Or they could alert the media and spill everything, waiting for the inevitable repercussions. Or they could take the offensive.

In a unanimous vote, they decided to come to Butler House. If, as they suspected, another rogue military experiment was in progress, there would be innocent people in danger. Safe Haven had been a training exercise for psychotic killers, and Butler House smelled similar. The guard shooting at them when they arrived confirmed Josh’s suspicion.

Bad shit was going down.

And the only way for bad shit to triumph was for good people to do nothing.

The VanCamps weren’t the do nothing type. And Josh knew Duncan and Fran were just as sick of hiding from the past as he was. For years, they’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. To end what a top secret, imminently evil branch of the military had begun.

So there they were, taking the fight to the enemy, ready to finish this once and for all.

Josh nodded to his wife, and they moved into position to open the front doors to Butler House.

But the front doors opened for them.

Weapons at the ready, fingers on their triggers, Josh and Fran covered the two people who had been trying to leave. One, a man missing his right hand, who had bloody tears in his filthy clothing and a gash on his neck. The other, a woman with artificial legs. They shared the same terrified expression.

“Don’t move!” Fran barked.

They both froze, but the guy looked like he was about to try something.

“We’re the good guys,” Josh said, quickly trying to diffuse the situation. He had a feeling these people were victims, not the enemy.

“How do we know?” the man asked.

“We have a monkey and a dog,” Josh said. “Woof, speak.”

Woof barked and wagged his tail. Mathison waved.

“I was attacked by a monkey,” the man said. “Under a bed.”

“Not this monkey,” Josh replied. “We just showed up. Right, Mathison?”

Mathison nodded, then crossed his heart.

There were a few seconds of uncertainty. Josh decided, if he had to act, he’d try to use non-lethal force.

Then the woman with the prosthetics said, “I’m Deb. This is my husband Mal.” Her voice was raspy.

“You both got those invitations?” Fran asked.

Deb nodded.

“I’m Fran, and my husband Josh. Our son Duncan is in the car. We were invited, too.”

The tension seemed to dissipate. Josh sensed that like was recognizing like. Deb and Mal had that look Josh knew all too well. That I survived something awful look.

“Things went bad,” Mal said. “You have no idea what kind of hell is going on here.”

“Actually,” Fran said. “We do. And we’re ready for it. How many people inside?”

“Two are dead,” Mal told them. “One of us and one of them. Inside is a cop named Tom, a dancer named Moni, a psychic named Aabir, a biologist named Frank, a woman named Sara, and a ghost hunter named Pang.”

Deb shook her head. “Pang is possessed.”

“Possessed?” Josh asked.

“His eyes turned black and he freaked out.”

“Chemical agent?”

“Spirits,” Mal said. “There are at least five. A slave with four arms. A bleeding guy. A guy in a lab coat. A guy in a gas mask. And a guy with an eye patch and a whip. They’re ghosts or demons or something. Guns don’t work on them.”

Josh let that go for the moment. He’d seen some crazy shit himself and would never automatically reject the unusual. “Anyone else inside?”

Mal nodded. “Two doctors, Forenzi and Madison. Don’t know what side they’re on. And some guards in gray suits. At least four.”

“Some people may be down in the tunnels under the house,” Deb said. “It’s a maze down there.”

“Woof can find them once he gets their scent,” Fran said. “We couldn’t find any blueprints of the house online, so we don’t know the layout. We could use a tour, but if you two want to wait in the van with our son, we understand.”

Deb and Mal exchanged a look.

“Cops would take at least an hour to get here,” Deb said to her husband. “If we could even convince them to come.”

“I’m in if you are. I’m done with running.”

“Me too.”

“We’ll do it,” Mal said. “But we want lights and weapons.”

“Can you handle a firearm?” Josh asked.

“Guns don’t work on these things. What else you got?”

He gave Mal his tactical flashlight and his asp; a steep baton that extended when you snapped your wrist out. Fran did the same with Deb, and also gave her a can of pepper spray.

“Lead the way,” Josh said.

He sensed their reluctance to go back inside, but they did, which Josh admired.

“First guy died here.” Mal pointed to the large amount of blood on the floor.

Fran crouched down, picked up something. “Rubber bug. Looks like a roach.”

“Rubber?” Mal asked.

Fran leaned forward and found something else. Something shiny. She held it up. “Bullet casing. You said guns don’t work?”

“The cop emptied his gun into the one with the four arms. Thing didn’t even flinch.”

Josh unclipped his spare Maglite and played the beam along the floor, following it up the wall. He walked over, running his fingernail along it, then holding his hand to his nose.

“Wax. Could the cop be in on this? Using wax bullets instead of real ones?”

“You mean he’s been bullshitting us?” Mal asked. “He seemed legit, but I don’t know for sure. We just met him.”

“What’s that?” Fran asked, sweeping her light over to the chairs in the center of the great room.

Mal made a face. “That’s Wellington. Hon, don’t look.”

Mal put his arm around Deb, turning her away, while Josh and Fran went to investigate.

It was pretty awful.

“Looks like our hunch was right,” Fran said.

Josh nodded. They’d both seen similar things in Safe Haven.

“We were too late for this one,” he said. “Hopefully we won’t be too late for the others.”

Josh looked around the rest of the room. They’d spent several hours reading about Butler House, and Josh had prepared as much as possible. But now that he was inside, he couldn’t get over how creepy it felt. If ghosts really did exist, this is where they’d hang out.

His radio clicked twice—Duncan’s all clear signal. Woof got on the scent of something and then stood stock-still, growling low in his throat.

Everyone shined their lights—

—on a black man with four arms, dragging a machete.

“That’s who killed Wellington!” Mal said, stepping in front of Deb and raising his asp.

“Freeze!” Fran ordered, raising her weapon.

The four-armed man kept advancing, heading for Deb and Mal.

Josh fired a warning shot, putting three rounds into the floor in front of the man’s feet.

The supposed ghost stopped, dropped his machete, and then fell to one knee, pulling out a pistol from the back of his ratty pants.

Fran and Josh let loose. Their AR-15 rifles were loaded with 5.56 NATO cartridges and fired as quickly as they could pull the trigger.

The target took ten shots in the chest and didn’t drop. Josh adjusted for the head shot, but Fran beat him to it, taking off the back of the ghost’s head, dropping it where it stood.

“I guess bullets work,” Mal said.

Josh approached first, sensing his wife flanking him. He kicked away the enemy’s dropped weapon—a Colt 1911—and knelt next to him.

No pulse, obviously, but definitely made of flesh and blood and not ectoplasm. He touched one of the extra arms and it pulled off without too much effort.

Fake. Rubber and latex, glued on with spirit gum.

But he wasn’t wearing body armor. The fact that he took ten hits and didn’t go down scared the shit out of Josh. It was familiar, in a very bad way.

“He might have been enhanced somehow,” Josh told Fran.

“Red-Ops?” He heard fear in his wife’s voice.

“I don’t know.” Josh frowned, and his stomach clenched like a fist. “But if there are others, they’re going to be damn hard to kill.”

Sara

Sara stopped screaming.

The pain was beyond anything she could have ever imagined. Sara hadn’t looked, but she guessed her little finger had been chewed down to the bone. It was so intense, so unremitting, that it almost drowned out every other thought in her head.

Almost.

Because part of her brain was still able to think clearly, to focus. This was the worst thing Sara had ever endured, but in the middle of it all a bit of clarity broke through the misery and Sara latched onto it.

I’m a survivor.

Sara had lost so much on Rock Island. So much of who she was. She’d been so devastated, so diminished, by the experience, it had resulted in her losing even more. Her son. The one thing she had left. Taken from her.

And she finally understood why.

All along, Sara had been drowning in self-pity. Wondering how all of these terrible things could have happened to her. Blaming the universe, and trying to numb the pain rather than deal with it.

Child services had been right to take Jack. She had been unfit. But even when that happened…

I’m a survivor.

She’d taken the hits, and she was still here.

She’d lost everything, and she was still here.

She’d tried to kill herself with booze, and she was still here.

And if this psychotic Lester Paks/Blackjack Reedy ghost demon bastard chewed her entire arm off, Sara knew she would still be here.

I’m a survivor.

I’ll survive to straighten my life out.

I’ll survive to get my son back.

I will survive.

In a sea of agony, Sara latched on to that little Zen lifeboat. All she had to do was get through this one more ordeal.

As he started on the second finger, Sara closed her eyes imagined the life she once had, and could have again. Her son. A house. A job. Maybe even Frank, because as gentle and funny as he was, Sara knew he was survivor too, and suffering be damned they’d both get through this and—

“Hey! Ugly pirate guy! I’ll give you something something something to chew on!”

Frank!

Sara watched as Dr. Frank Belgium, his broken arm flopping uselessly at his side, ran into the room brandishing a gigantic wooden mallet and smashing a surprised Blackjack Reedy right in his face.

Blood and sharp teeth went flying. Blackjack went down. And then Moni was on top of him, hitting him over and over again with an iron bar until the monster stopped moving.

“Oh dear dear dear.” Frank fumbled with the straps on her restraint chair, setting her free and then trying to examine the damage to her fingers.

Sara didn’t care about her fingers. She threw her arms around Frank’s neck, so overwhelmed with absolute joy that she started bawling.

“If you need need need some painkiller,” he said, “heroin gets my highest endorsement.”

“I don’t need anything.” Sara had never spoken truer words. “Except you.”

“Well… that’s… that’s pretty terrific.”

“You saved the girl, Doc.” Moni said. “Kiss her already.”

Sara offered her tilted chin, and Frank kissed her. There was a lot more heat this time, and for a brief, glorious moment, all the pain Sara felt just melted away until the only thing in the whole world was Frank’s lips on hers.

“Okay,” Moni said, interrupting the moment. “You guys gonna fuck, or are we getting the hell out of here?”

Frank pulled back enough to look at her, and he had a twinkle in his eye that told Sara he was weighing his options.

“We’re going,” Sara said, and she noted it was said with some reluctance.

“Okay. And you might want to put a bandage or something on your hand. It’s gross.”

Sara finally looked at the damage that had been done, and wondered why she was holding some raw hamburger.

That’s not raw hamburger. That’s my hand.

And she promptly passed out.