Disclaimer: You know the drill everybody and everything belongs to someone else, except me of course. No money is being made of the story. It's just for your enjoyment only.
Warning: Bad language, violence, and sexual content.
Chapter 12
Jason held me in his arms while I cried. Burrowing my face into his shirt, I sobbed until there was nothing left. Anita stormed through the curtains and stopped in her tracks. I pulled away from Jason and he let me go. Wiping my hand across my nose like a lost child I asked her, "So what now?"
She looked at me and replied, "You are coming to my room and we're going to discuss the murder case."
She walked passed me and I followed. Jason stayed behind not knowing if his presence was wanted or not. We stopped at a door midway down the hall on the right. It was two doors up from fang face's room. I walked in behind her and discovered her room to be more modern. A regular king size bed sat along the far right wall. A dresser sat beside the door on the left. The wood of the furniture was a dark oak. The carpet was blue and the comforter on the bed matched it. There were also four doors in this room. Curious at where they went to, I asked Anita, "If you don't mind me asking where do the four doors go to?"
She sat down on the bed and answered, " The one on the back wall goes to the public bath. The three on the far wall goes to a small kitchen, a closet, and my personal bathroom."
"Oh," I said.
I walked over and sat down beside her on the bed. She looked at me and asked, "Are you going to be all right?"
I gave her a weak smile and answered, "Not really, but I'll live."
We sat there in silence for some time before she said, "Dolph was not happy that you didn't come with me tonight, but after I showed him the government files your father gave me, he stopped yelling."
"Is he going to release Richard then?" I asked.
"Not until he talks to you. We have an appointment to see him first thing in the morning," She replied.
"You mean to tell me after giving him the files, he still doesn't believe that Richard is innocent?," I nearly yelled.
"I'm afraid so. He said something about making sure the files were real and not made up just to get Richard off the hook," she said sadly.
I got up and walked around the room. I had to get the nights events out of my head so I could concentrate on work. I turned back toward the bed, where Anita was watching me with curiosity. I just stood there not knowing were to begin. Finally I sat back down and said, "How bad was tonight's crime scene?"
"It was pretty bad. In fact it was worse than the other three," she answered.
"How much worse?," I asked.
"The victims were a couple out camping for the weekend. They were found by the lake, nailed to man-made crosses. It was like seeing Christ being executed by The Roman's all over again. Except for three differences. The nails were made of silver instead of iron, the couple were both lycanthropes. There were only two bodies instead of three and from the throat down, to the private areas there was nothing left but bone." She replied trying to keep her voice neutral.
I glanced over at her and saw the horror on her face. I was even horrified just listening to the description of the scene. "That means Dorkson and his friends are losing more of their control over the artifacts. If we don't find them and stop them, there could be a slaughter on our hands," I said more to myself than to her.
She heard me and asked, "What do you mean a slaughter on our hands?"
I glanced over at her and thought how to answer that question. Finally I just came right out and told her, "The artifact are made of powerful magic. It could be either good or bad. If it falls into someone hands who is not magically incline, the artifact could take over and make their bearer go insane. However, it is different with the artifacts that Dorkson possess. They can cause a person to stay in animal form never to return to human. If this happens their sense of killing will get worse and they will attack anything and everything. The only way to stop them would be to kill them."
Anita just sat there taking in everything I said. She looked kind of spooked by all this and I couldn't blame her. We sat there waiting for the other to speak. I realized she never told me much about the murder scenes and I had given her all my information before hand. So I was the first to break the silence. "You never gave me the information I asked for about your cases. I need to find out if there's a pattern."
She glanced over at me and said, "What makes you think there's a pattern?"
"If there's a pattern, we would be able to find them easily without me having to scry for them," I replied.
She just looked at me with raised eyebrows. I knew she didn't have a clue what I was talking about.
I just rolled my eyes and said, "It's a type of spell that you use to find a location for someone."
"Oh," she said.
She began telling me about the locations of the scenes. They were done about five miles between each other and heading towards the lupanar. I stopped her and told her, "This was a pattern. They weren't staying in one place and they were moving up toward the mountains."
"Are you trying to tell me they are near the lupanar and soon will be hiding in the mountains?" she asked with wide eyes.
"Yes," I replied.
She just looked at me startled that I could be so calm about all this. I wanted to say what's the point of getting all upset. It won't get you anywhere. She told me about the bodies and how they were found. I confirmed they were exactly similar to the London crimes. Even the paw prints where an identical match. We sat in her room for over an hour discussing the cases, trying to figure out where they were going to strike next. We even tried to find a map but couldn't find one. Finally she said, "We're going to my house. I have one there and I don't want you to stay here tonight or at your father's."
"That's fine with me. I wasn't going to go home anyway and if you leave me here I'll probably kill Jean-Claude," I replied.
We left her room and went up the hall through the curtains. Jean-Claude and my father were still sitting by the fire. They were talking in French as we entered the living room. They looked up as we entered the living room. I didn't even give them a second glance, but kept on walking towards the door. I vanished through the door without opening it. Anita was not far behind me when I reached the top of the stairs. She grabbed me by the arm before I had a chance to go through the door.
"Oh no you don't. You've already given me a heart-attack by walking through the door. We don't need a helpless human dying from shock on our hands," She said opening the door the right way. I just stood there trying to be innocent, but we both knew I wasn't or I wouldn't have tried to scare someone. I went through a terrible ordeal tonight and I was trying to make myself feel better, however Anita wasn't going to let me do it at someone else's expense. We left Circus of the Damned three hours before sunset. It seemed time was being awfully slow tonight, but then again it always is when something bad is happening to you.