Disclaimer: The Sentinel belongs to UPN/Paramount and The Scifi Channel. The Valdemar Series belongs to Mercedes Lackey and DAW books. No copyright infringement is intended and no money has changed hands.
Author's note: This is the result of yet another weird dream. I hope it's worth the cyberspace it's taking up. I'm not sure. What's really weird is that I found a way to make it work by playing with the physics of Velgrath just a little bit. And there will be a few things at the beginning that anyone who hasn't read the series won't understand, but don't worry. I have to explain things to Jim and Blair, so there will be details later on. Feedback on this one would be greatly appreciated, even in the WIP stage. I'm really out on a limb here.
WARNING: This story is rated R for language, violence and sexuality. Some scenes are graphic in nature. Reader discretion is advised. That said, I will not be posting this story at the Cascade Library. Those who know of Mercedes Lackey's work know that she is not afraid of depicting homosexual relationships, and in order to do her work justice, I will not shy away from them in this story.
The new crime lord, called Lord Nikate, was the newest man on top of the Cascade Police Department's most wanted list. He was a very dangerous man, not just because of his tendency to kill through torture, but because of the strange appearances of the bodies. All were incredibly gruesome, with wounds that no one could figure out how they had been made, like organs exploded inside the body with no other trauma in the area. No one could understand how this was possible. The feds weren't touching the case, afraid of X-Files-like publicity, and no one local had ever seen anything like it.
The whole department was on edge, but given the nature of the crimes, not only the executions but the rest of what the man was involved in, from drugs and prostitution to robbery and racketeering, he and his organization had been dropped in the collective laps of the Major Crimes Division. Every single one of Simon Banks' detectives was working on this one, from the newest rookie, just out of his uniform blues, to his top team, James Ellison and Blair Sandburg.
Sentinel and Shaman had both been bothered by this case, even more than the rest of the department. Both men were picking up unusual sensations from both the scenes and the bodies. Jim had encountered those feelings before, but he had yet to determine where. It was Blair's first encounter with something this dark, but he recognized the type of feeling as the same which he'd encountered with the two Shamen he'd met since becoming one himself, as well as when he'd met Oshun in Corinna Santiago's body. The difference was the presence behind the energy. The evil that emanated from the crime scenes gave him goose bumps every time he went near one.
Jim and Blair had just arrived at the scene where yet another body had been found. Simon was already there. They spotted him coming out of the warehouse, and then they watched over him while the man who had been in the department longer than anyone else and seen more than any of them but Jim lost his lunch in the alley. All Blair could think was that this one must be really bad for Simon to loose control like that.
Once Simon could stand again, he said, "You two don't go in there until the coroner is done. He was skinned and eviscerated."
Jim started, "Simon..."
Blair interrupted him. "No, Jim, he's right. If it's that bad, let's deal with the scene and the body separately. That way you don't overload."
Looking at his partner, Jim could tell that the younger man was worried about freaking out himself. He sighed, then nodded reluctantly.
When the door opened to allow the exit of the coroner and the gurney that held the body bag, Jim was glad he'd listened. The stench that wafted through the doors was horrific, comprised of blood and decomposition. This guy had been there for some time. Blair's voice came to him softly. "Dial it down." He nodded, and obeyed the whispered instructions.
Once the body was clear, the detectives went inside the building. Again the feelings assaulted them, that sensation of degradation that showed itself at every one of Nikate's execution sites. Blair's awareness had only been turned on a few years before. It was still new and tender, and whatever this man was doing to his victims, or rather how he was doing it, was tripping his alarm wires to the point of rawness. Today was even worse. Blair knew that at the end of the day, what he'd begun to call a reaction headache was going to hit him with a vengeance.
Aside from the unusual cause of death, these scenes all had one thing in common; the ritualistic alter that the bodies were laid on. Things written in a language that Blair hadn't been able to find were spelled out in blood across its surface. It was always the blood of the victim. This time, though, it was different. It was written in English. Now it is done. I have enough power to take this little corner of your world for my own. I expect you will try to stop me, and that is as it should be, but a word of advice in your pursuit. I don't take betrayal lightly. Do not attempt to place spies among my men. They will survive, and I promise you they will wish it otherwise.
They found nothing different about the crime scene from any of Nikate's others, so they went back to the station. There was a strategy session scheduled for later that afternoon, and they both needed to be in on it. Unfortunately, Blair's reaction headache was starting up already, and what was beginning as just an annoyance behind his eyes would grow into a debilitating migraine by the end of that meeting, and he knew it. Jim knew it, as well, so he stopped at the drug store and picked up a bottle of Excedrin, which was the only thing that seemed to put even a dent in it.
The conference room was tense. There was a very real fear that this maniac was going to take over Cascade, and not just it's criminal enterprises. No one could get near his stronghold. They knew where it was, but it was booby-trapped so much as to be impenetrable. Three different officers had attempted to sneak onto the lawn surrounding the old warehouse, and all three had died, apparently due to mines, though when Jim had examined the bodies, he hadn't been able to smell explosives. He just got that weird feeling again.
It irked the Sentinel that he couldn't recall whatever made that feeling so familiar. Blair had tried to help him the same way he always did, but the memory just refused to surface.
Simon came into the room and all conversation ceased. He stayed at the front of the room, a commanding presence that his men needed. "All right, people, listen up. I want everything that anyone has been able to get on this creep, no matter how trivial. Sandburg, get up here and help me organize this." They pulled the white board forward, and Blair stood with a black marker waiting to write down anything that came up.
Jim said, "There's no mention of anyone called Nikate anywhere in the country until two and a half years ago, and that was right here in Cascade. The first time his name shows up is in connection with a trauma victim at Cascade General, a twenty-five to thirty-year-old white female named Karen Treva. According to her statement, she caught him by surprise with a broken chair leg and managed to get away before he woke up."
While writing that information on the board, Blair said, "Where is she now?"
Jim flipped that page over briefly, then sighed with disappointment. "Dunley Psychiatric."
"Damn." Dunley was a lower security facility than Conover, for those who weren't a danger to others, but who still needed protection from themselves or twenty-four hour care.
Simon, however, wasn't going to be put off by that. "Ellison, you and Sandburg check her out tomorrow."
Jim nodded. "Six months later, he shows up connected with a local drug lord and pimp, Damon Jackson. He started out as an enforcer, making sure the lower-level pimps and dealers paid their tithe to Jackson. He was never arrested or questioned, only mentioned by those who were. Three months after that mention, Jackson and three of his lieutenants showed up in an alley, gutted with their throats slit."
Henri Brown spoke up. "Then the weird bodies start showing up. Nikate takes over Jackson's opperation, and any opposition gets tortured to death. Every pimp is suddenly required to give up one of his girls. We've never seen those girls again, dead or alive."
Next was Smithy, from Vice. "Every hooker from Breaker Street to Line and 82nd to 65th either belongs to him directly or her pimp does. Every dealer in the same area answers to him."
Gilbert from Robbery said, "He's got a team of thieves that have hit a lot of the jewelry stores in town. He's after very specific things. He looks for large stones, particularly clear quartz and emerald, and he wants perfection in the stones. The settings he wants in silver, but that isn't as big a priority with him. The biggest hit was three weeks ago, the big exhibition at Rainier. One of the stones there was an uncut emerald the size of a golf ball. There were no flaws in the stone, and there haven't been any hits since. Fences have been getting everything else that was taken ever since then. Whatever he was after, he found it in that emerald."
Earl Gaines put in his bit. "None of the gangs will go anywhere near this guy's territory, not even the Deuces or the 357s. Neither will any of the other criminal organizations. The Yakuza, the mafia, the Chinese tongs; none of them want to mess with this guy. Leron Maxwell told me at the last meeting that anyone goin' in there who belongs to someone else don't come back out alive. If they stay, they're his. If they leave, it's in a body bag."
"Because of that," said Sergent Miller, who spoke for the uniformed cops, "no one can get any information out of that area. The uniforms might as well not exist in there. No one does anything in front of them to give them an excuse to pull them over, 'cause no one wants to be seen talking to them."
Jim spoke again. "And because of that note he left for us at the last scene, I'm willing to bet that he's getting ready to expand. That eight-eight and a half block radius isn't enough for him any more."
Simon nodded, then turned to Blair. "Any idea of a profile for this guy?"
He shook his head. "Not a full one. He's ambitious, for sure, and he's extremely determined. He's been betrayed in the past, most likely, and he knows cops well enough to know that we might try to put someone in undercover. Hense the warning. Aside from how he's doing it, which we don't know, the pattern in his executions is very ritualistic, while still having some flexibility. He doesn't just pick one organ to destroy or one place to kill. He likes to experiment, and he enjoys himself, but some things have to remain the same for him. He always puts his hands in the blood. He always keeps them for at least a week before he kills them. He likes emeralds, either for luck or for power, depending on his belief system. He doesn't care much about money, or he wouldn't have been so discriminating in what he ordered stolen. He doesn't care about respectability or society or the law, one way or the other. Pain and death have power for him. He's also not one to hide behind lies. He's not afraid of anyone, so he has no need to lie to them. He's fair, as far as it goes. He doesn't discriminate, either in his employees or his victims. They've been from all over the ethnic map."
Blair paused in his profile. There was something... "He may have been trained as a Shaman at some point in his life. While he doesn't follow the tenets of Shamanism, such as 'do no harm', he's using some of the same methodology, like gemology and bloodletting. I wouldn't be surprised if he has a workroom somewhere with a lot of magical accoutrements."
Jim looked at him skeptically. "Magic, Chief?"
Blair sighed at his disbelieving partner. Even after all the man had seen, he still balked when it came to the supernatural. "Yes, Jim. Magic. Just because you don't believe it doesn't mean that he doesn't." Or me, he added silently.
Jim conceded the point, though the look on Blair's face said that the conversation was not over.
Simon interrupted them. "You're saying this guy thinks he's some kind of witch-doctor?"
Snorting softly at the description, Blair shook his head. "No, I'm saying he has the training to be a Shaman, but somewhere along the line, he switched sides. See, in most forms of Shamanism there are three major requirements to become a Shaman; talent, being chosen by the Spirits and training. First a Shaman must recognize the talent in you, and then you must be chosen by the Spirits in a cerimony that will awaken those gifts. The abilities themselves are pretty varied in form, as are the awakening cerimonies, but all allow consistent contact with the Spirit world. After all, anyone can have a vision if the Spirits need to contact them badly enough, but a Shaman is the direct focus for their will, and that requires a little something extra. Once your gifts have been awakened, the older Shaman would train the younger one.
"Now, if a Shaman does something that the Spirits don't like, they can cut off their access to what is usually referred to as the 'blood of the earth'. This is the natural flow of life energy from the Spirit world to this one."
Rafe had actually understood much of that explanation. "So if this guy is cut off, assuming this were all real, how is he still opperating?"
A shiver passed through Blair as he answered. "By grabbing the energy as it is released and before it can rejoin the flow. Pain, sex and death all release great amounts of energy. The longer he can make his victims last, the more energy he'll get out of them. Nikate puts his hands in the blood to snag the energy as efficiently as possible. Physical contact lessens the chances that the energy will escape."
"What about the emerald?"
"Certain gems can focus energy for a Shaman, and it's very specific to the individual. He wanted silver settings because silver resonates when touched by the power, occasionally giving a euphoric effect, but it doesn't actualy enhance the stone, which was why he wasn't worried about that."
Jim stared at his friend, knowing he had researched a great deal about Shamanism after Incacha had passed the Way to him, but he had never told him any of this. "What would this guy gain here? If it's easier when he's in the good graces of the Spirits, why not stay there?"
Blair shrugged, "Like I said, he switched sides. He's power hungry, something that would definitely have set off some spiritual alarms. They cut him off, but he had no intention of allowing things to stay that way. His initial job as a leg breaker gave him the opportunity to gain power. He got enough, and then he took out Damon Jackson, along with any opposition to his rise to power. I'd bet anything that he doesn't intend to stay at street level, either. He has his neighborhood. He wants the city, and everyone in it, and he's fairly certain that he can get it."
Simon said, "Where is all this information coming from?"
"I was told a story of this happening in a little village in Tanzania. The entire village was destroyed by this madman, all but the able-bodied men. Then he began a march on the next village. The men were held captive by his abilities, even as they fed them, and he had an army of men completely under his control. He was directly in their minds, so he had better communications than any modern force, and he didn't have to worry about someone growing a concience on him.
"Fortunately, the Shaman in the next village was far more powerful, and he was legitimate, so he had the backing of the Spirit world. Once the dark one was destroyed, his army were freed from his influence, but a lot of damage had been done."
Suddenly, Jim remembered why the crime scenes were resonating with him. "Inore."
Blair left the white board to stand next to his partner. "Jim?"
Startled, the Sentinel looked up. He had been lost in the horrible memories of the demon wizard, Inore, and he had not seen Blair come to him. "When I was in Peru, I was out hunting with several men, including Incacha. We crossed the path of what he called a "demon wizard". His name was Inore. As I watched, he grabbed every warrior with us. For some reason he didn't take me, and he couldn't even touch Incacha. Inore was strong, but Incacha was stronger. They fought, and it was wild. I can't believe I forgot all this!
"Anyway, we were forced to kill our own men because he had control over them, but we finally beat him, luckily before he could blow himself up. Incacha told me later that ones like him could choose to destroy themselves in a way that would take their enemies with them, but Incacha killed him before he could get it together and do that." Jim swallowed hard, remembering what had happened next. "We followed his tracks to the village he'd just left. There was nothing left but bodies and this sense of an evil so great that nothing could match it." Jim sighed. This was what he had been sensing, that feeling of evil.
"Damn, Jim." That was Simon. "Are you telling me that this is for real? This guy is one of those demon wizards?"
"That's what it looks like. God damn it! He's already so strong!" And what he left unsaid was, it would take a good Shaman of equal or greater strength to stop him, and while Blair was probably strong enough, he had not been trained in his Gift. Nikate would wipe the floor with him, and they both knew it.
It would have been amazing in any other precinct in the world, but none of the detectives present took anything amis in this whole story turning out to be the truth. There wasn't even one man among them that hadn't seen something strange about the two top officers in the Department, and they knew better than to distrust them.
Brown broke the silence. "So now that we know what we're dealing with, what do we do about it?"
Jim shook his head. "I don't know." He looked at his guide for permission, then said, "Blair is a Shaman, but while I think he would probably have the strength to defeat Nikate, his Gift hasn't been trained. Fighting him at this point would be suicide."
Simon said, "Okay, on the outside nothing changes. We don't send in anyone undercover. That threat was an honest one, I think. No one goes in there out of uniform. We'll be just as honest with him, for our own safety. Sandburg, if you know any genuine Shamans, now is the time to contact them. Ask for their help. You and Ellison still need to talk to the Treva woman. For all we know, she could have been comitted because she told the truth about Nikate."
As the meeting broke up, only Jim and Blair stayed behind with Simon. "Just how much does the Sentinel thing have to do with this?"
"Not much. Inore couldn't get his claws into my head, but he wasn't as strong as this guy. Inore could barely handle just a handful of men. Nikate has an area that's seventeen by ten city blocks. He has an army."
And they all feared that he was getting ready to use that army. He had everything he needed. He would be at a slight technological advantage, but what good would that do when compared to magic?
The atmosphere in the cab of the truck the next morning was tense. Blair had gotten ahold of Corinna Santiago, but Oshun had already told her that her Gifts were of the wrong sort to deal with this madman. She had advised all of her flock to leave Cascade until the situation was resolved, though Corinna herself had elected to remain with the Mayor. Oshun had taken her voice briefly and warned him that he needed a teacher, and soon, or he would fall into the clutches of the beast.
They went into the building, noting that it was one of the better kept facilities, one that allowed the patients as much freedom as it could. As they approached the receptionist, they noticed that one of them was watching with interest. Blair stiffened as he felt her push at his mind. She didn't do anything, merely let him know that she could. She didn't seem threatening, so when she withdrew, he let it go.
Meanwhile, Jim was dealing with the receptionist. "Detectives Ellison and Sandburg. We need to meet with the director of this facility regarding one of your patients."
The portly woman nodded. "Of course, Detectives. You've been expected. His is the third door on your left down that coridoor." She pointed at the hallway, not catching his raised eyebrow. How had they known to expect them? Well, maybe Simon or Rhonda called them.
The woman who had been watching them just laughed and shook her head, turning to reenter the common room with the other patients. "Not hardly."
Blair and Jim looked at each other and shrugged. Though Blair thought she might have been responding to the thoughts of one of them. It didn't make sense from his end, so it would have been Jim.
The director of Dunley's was a tall, spindly man named Dr. Robert Webster. He had thinning gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses that hung nearly off the tip of his nose. He said, "Well, it seems, gentlemen, that I owe my head nurse a new hat." Jim looked at him strangely. "I bet against her as to weather or not Karyn's prediction would come true. I'm going to have to totally reevaluate her condition."
Shaking his head, wondering what the hell was going on, Jim said, "Sir, we're here to talk to you about a patient of yours, Karen Treva."
The doctor nodded. "Yes. She even told me that you would mispronounce her name. Apparently she was still very garbled when she told it to the paramedics. Her name is Karyn k'Treva (A/N: pronounced karEEn k TREYva)."
Blair started. "So what caused her to be sent here after she escaped Nikate?"
"Two and a half years ago, Karyn was brought to Cascade General with so many injuries that the paramedics were amazed she was still conscious. She had a lot of injuries, and it looked like they had been inflicted over a period of months. She had broken ribs, a broken collar bone and a broken wrist, along with numerous lacerations and contusions. She had also been raped repeatedly. That's most likely in your file, along with the fact that she said Lord Nikate had been her rapist. At first, she was admitted here for the rape trauma. At the time I was still a therapist here, and she has been my patient since her admittance."
Dr. Webster paused for a moment, removing his glasses to polish them with a handkerchief from his pocket. "At first, Karyn didn't say much of anything, but that only lasted as long as it took her to physically recover from her trauma. She talked to me, seeming to know that it was the only way for her to heal. I can faithfully tell you that the rape itself is no longer an issue. She's healed from that. But her dilusions seem to have existed before that time, and she merely incorporated her rape into them."
Jim asked, "What kind of dilusions?"
"Karyn has developed an incredibly detailed world, one that is entirely separate from reality. She speaks of it like it's a different planet. There are eight different cultures that she's familliar with, though she mentions others in passing. The two she's most familliar with are the ones she calls home. The first is called Valdemar, her mother's native country. The second is the Pelagir forest, which is the home of the Tayledras and her father's native home. The