Rite of Passage Read online

  At the same time, the foam coffee cup on the dashboard of the sweet-toothed caffeine addict tipped over, spilling the piping hot beverage on the man’s lap. Yelping in pain, he involuntarily jerked the steering wheel and cut off the pickup truck loaded with propane tanks. The truck driver swerved and slammed broadside into a blue Mini Cooper. Several propane tanks became airborne, bouncing around the highway like metal beach balls. One was sandwiched between two colliding cars, resulting in another explosion near the intersection.

  Some drivers climbed out of crushed and damaged cars, while others screamed in pain, trapped in what became metal coffins. Most of those who did escape their cars suffered death by shrapnel from the explosions or were squashed between tons of flying and skidding metal. Few escaped the carnage, none without significant injuries.

  A truly satisfying symphony of death and destruction.

  None of the out-of-control cars, roaring flames, concussive explosions or flying shrapnel touched Tora where he stood next to the traffic light pole. With a broad smile, he enjoyed the sounds of agony and grief, the smell of fresh blood and burning flesh. Unmoving, he stood by the pole as if in a trance, joyfully soaking in every moment. Until the arrival of emergency vehicles. They brought order and succor, diminishing pain, delaying or preventing death and, therefore, sapping his pleasure in what he had wrought. But even as the rush of euphoria waned, he sensed the power building within him. He would need all that power and more to reach across the town to finish what he had started.

  The morning’s exercise was only the beginning.

  Soon, they would hear his call and come to him.

  Three

  Dean thought he might have to twist Sam’s arm to get him into the Greasy Griddle diner on I-87, but it was the first eatery they passed after their night in Harpy Valley, and coffee had risen from a priority to a necessity. Fortunately, in addition to high-octane java, the busy truck stop offered a selection of bran muffins and a fruit cup, so Sam was set. Bobby had a poached egg and grapefruit. Dean ordered the Double Triple, which featured three eggs any style and three breakfast meats. Not wishing to complicate his order, Dean ordered everything fried.

  From the stiff way Sam and Bobby had walked across the parking lot of the diner and then eased themselves into the booth, Dean assumed they were as sore as he was from the harpy battle. Bobby seemed crankier than normal, Sam quieter. Dean’s sleep, what little he managed during the short night, had been fitful. Chugging aspirin and whiskey hadn’t helped as much as he’d hoped. Coffee throughout breakfast, however, smoothed out the kinks.

  Lately, relaxation came in small doses, especially in public. Ever since the Leviathan created dark-side doppelgangers of the Winchesters for a cross-country killing spree, Sam and Dean had to continually look over their shoulders in case somebody made them as the infamous serial killers. Because the doppelgangers purposely drove a black ’67 Chevy Impala during their crime spree, the Winchesters had to abandon Dean’s baby for a series of stolen beaters, none of which would be missed before they switched to the next. As the Leviathan now hunted the hunters, the Winchesters also had to abandon their old fake IDs and credit cards, switch to burner cell phones and avoid leaving behind an electronic trail. In addition, the brothers had to develop a strong aversion to security cameras. Hell of a way to live. But sound advice, nevertheless, from Bobby’s bipolar and extremely paranoid acquaintance—friend was too strong a word—Frank Devereaux.

  The Greasy Griddle was just what the paranoiac ordered: a high-traffic truck stop frequented by a series of anonymous faces and not a security camera in sight. They would pay for their meal in cash and have no need to give a name or flash a fake ID.

  After their waitress, a middle-aged bottle blonde with a plastic smile who looked like she’d seen it all more than once and stopped registering the details long ago, cleared their plates, Bobby left the booth to settle their check at the register. With his stomach full and his cup topped off, Dean felt about as content as he ever did between hunting jobs these days. Sam, on the other hand, had already turned his attention to his shiny new laptop—courtesy of Frank Devereaux’s Paranoia Emporium—and flipped through some paper printouts he’d assembled earlier, a clear threat to Dean’s admittedly brief “between jobs” contentment.

  “Dude, did you sleepwalk to a Kinko’s?”

  “Might be onto something …”

  At that moment, Bobby returned from the cashier’s counter with a late edition of the county paper and dropped it on the table in front of them. “Above the fold,” he said. “‘Cannibal Woodsman?’”

  Dean reached for the paper and spun it around, skimming the text for details. “‘Anonymous call leads police to grisly killing grounds … half-eaten … stripped bones… shallow graves… no suspects.’” He pushed the paper back to Bobby and spoke softly. “Got the ‘grisly’ right. But they’ll waste months looking for Jeremiah Johnson with a dog-eared copy of To Serve Man.”

  “You want ’em to find super-sized bird nests?” Bobby asked after checking for any potential eavesdroppers. “Hell, the victims’ families will get closure. Least as much as they’ll ever get.”

  “You’re right. Nobody needs to know Uncle Ed or Cousin Jimmy was a Harpy Happy Meal.”

  “Guys,” Sam said. “I think I have something here.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” Bobby commented.

  “Laurel Hill, New Jersey,” Sam said, looking at the printouts. “Three roofers fell off the second story of a house yesterday, one after the other. Two broken necks. The third split his skull open. Also broke his neck. The homeowner says they all fell within minutes of one another.”

  “Weird,” Bobby said, frowning, “but not outside the neighborhood of weird coincidence. Laurel Hill?”

  “Why?” Dean asked. “You got something?”

  “It’ll keep,” Bobby said. Then to Sam, “Go on, son.”

  “Few blocks away, couple minutes later, guy on a ladder trimming a tree with a chainsaw falls, slices open his femoral artery and dies on his lawn.”

  “Weird enough for you?” Dean asked Bobby.

  “It gets weirder,” Sam continued, turning his attention from the printouts to the screen. “This morning a mass transit bus driver has a heart attack and drives his bus right through the front window of a fitness center. Guy on a treadmill and a woman on the elliptical machine next to him were killed instantly—”

  Dean leveled an index finger at his brother. “Sammy, don’t ever mock my health choices again.”

  On a roll, Sam let that pass. “Few minutes later, less than a mile away, seventeen car pile-up. Multiple explosions and fatalities.”

  Bobby shook his head. “Sounds like the bad luck fairy ripped Laurel Hill a new one.”

  “I’m game,” Dean said. “Bobby, you in? Or you wanna head back?”

  Bobby scratched his beard at the jaw line, his gaze thoughtful under his trucker’s cap.

  “Something about Laurel Hill?” Sam prompted.

  “Know somebody there might help,” Bobby said. “Emphasis on the ‘might.’”

  “A hunter?” Dean asked.

  “Yes and no.”

  “I’m not even sure I know what that means,” Dean said.

  “Problem in a nutshell,” Bobby said. “I’ll call. He agrees not to slam the door in our faces, we’ll have a basecamp.”

  “If not?”

  Bobby shrugged. “Fleabag or abandoned rat-trap. Pick your poison.”

  Sam drove the Plymouth south on I-87. Bobby followed in his Chevelle, on the phone again with his Laurel Hill contact. The first call, in the diner’s parking lot, had been short, ending with an emphatic hang-up on the other end. But Bobby wasn’t giving up … yet.

  After about fifty miles of silence, Sam glanced at Dean sprawled in the passenger seat, ostensibly relaxed but definitely scowling. He had taken one pull from his flask before settling in for the long ride.

  Finally, Sam asked, “Wanna talk about it?”
/>   “No.”

  “About last night. The harpies.”

  “Still no.”

  “If something’s bothering you …”

  “It’s a job, alright,” Dean said. “Do the job. Get out. Don’t need to sit around toasting marshmallows and singing ‘Kumbaya.’”

  “No. I get it, Dean.”

  Dean was right. It wasn’t like they celebrated a monster kill. Mostly it was a relief. Do the job, because it’s what they did as hunters. No glory, no after-parties. But Sam couldn’t shake the sense that something deeper was troubling his brother. He decided to let it rest.

  Then Dean surprised him.

  “I’m not like you,” he said. “Not anymore.”

  Sam considered that statement before responding. “How so?”

  “Even with a bat in your belfry, you’re okay with everything,” Dean said. “Wrap up one job, turn the page, move on to the next.”

  “Look, Dean,” Sam said, “I know there’s a cost. I give a damn, okay? It’s just … This is what I have. Here. Now. This keeps me … focused.”

  “Right.”

  Sam glanced at his brother again. “Dean, we’re hiding from the Leviathan. We have no idea what their game plan is, no clue how to kill them, but we know they want us off the board. They killed all those people while wearing our faces to neutralize us.”

  “You think maybe I forgot?”

  “So, what? You want to quit?”

  Dean heaved a sigh. “No,” he said softly. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Then what?”

  “That guy on the tree branch,” Dean said. “Broken back, guts ripped out, bleeding.” He shook his head bitterly. “The poor son of a bitch never had a chance, Sam.”

  “No.”

  “If we’d got there an hour sooner,” Dean said, slapping his palm down on his knee angrily, “half hour, maybe…”

  They’d had this discussion before. The cruel facts of hunter life: you couldn’t save everyone, you didn’t always arrive in the nick of time, but you took solace in the lives you had saved.

  “We stopped them, Dean,” Sam said. “There won’t be another vic.”

  “Wrong, Sam,” Dean said grimly. “There’s always another one. No matter what we do…”

  Four

  On foot again, miles from the multi-car pile-up, Tora strolled along Parry Lane, a suburban street in Laurel Hill. As he walked along the tree-shaded lane, his iron-tipped cane tapped a steady rhythm on the sidewalk, interrupted only when he sensed a human presence inside a house. By opening his third eye, he could see into those homes, like peering through a floating keyhole. Extending his awareness and influence, he sought any opportunity to wield his power. For in exercising his ability, he honed it, made it more responsive to his whims.

  Pausing in front of a two-story Tudor-style home, he stretched his brow, opened his third eyelid the merest slit, and peeked inside.

  The images came to him in short bursts, like excited breaths.

  A harried housewife filled a canvas hamper with clothes for laundering. Instead of making two sensible trips to the washing machine, she piled up soiled clothing from several bedrooms until the hamper overflowed. She carried her burden along the upstairs hallway, her view obstructed by the mound of clothes. Her sneakered foot missed the action figures stacked near the doorway of a child’s bedroom. A sock fell from the pile, unnoticed, and her feet fell on either side of it. Then she turned to the stairwell and failed to notice the cat lying on the second step from the top. The domesticated beast assumed its owner saw him and continued to sprawl on the step.

  The woman’s foot came down on the cat’s tail.

  The cat yowled in pain and bolted.

  Startled, the woman cursed and jerked her foot away. She missed the step and pitched forward. The burden in her arms prevented her from reflexively grabbing the nearest railing. By the time the hamper flew from her hands, her head struck a riser, her face smashed into a baluster and her neck, twisted at an awkward angle by the jarring impact, snapped before she came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, a soft landing atop the scattered mound of soiled clothing.

  Moments later, the cat crept out of his refuge under an end table and sat beside the woman, licking her outstretched hand several times, no doubt expecting a show of contrition or affection on her part.

  All things considered, the cat was fortunate to have survived, though Tora had no direct influence over animals. Large disasters, such as the multi-car pile-up, could easily doom them, but that was a matter of happenstance. He put the cat out of his mind and contented himself with the arranged death of the woman.

  With a sigh, he continued along Parry Lane.

  Three doors down, he sensed another lone presence in a house and eased open the folds in his forehead to peer inside.

  An older man was finishing a shower, a ring of white hair plastered to his scalp as he rinsed out shampoo suds. Warm water splashed off his bowed head and bent elbows, striking the shower door and passing through the narrow gap to gather in small puddles on the tile floor of the bathroom.

  Outside the house, Tora raised one hand from the cane’s iron handle to massage his temple with his index and middle fingers, reaching out further, extending his awareness into the man’s life.

  Hal Norville … a medical professional, put others to sleep. An anesthesiologist. He had taken the day off… for a round of golf with colleagues.

  He opened the shower door and reached for a towel to pat water from his head and face. As he stepped out of the shower, the ball of his bare foot came down on one of the soapy puddles and shot out from under him. His free arm darted out to catch the towel rack, and missed by half an inch. The back of his head slammed into the shower door track, which cut deep. His blood flowed freely down the drain, tinting the last of the shampoo bubbles crimson.

  At the end of the block, a retired woman had already put a load of wet laundry in her clothes dryer. Tora stopped in front of her house as she slipped into her afternoon nap. For a while, she remained safe from any physical mishap. But a bit of probing revealed that her dryer’s lint trap hadn’t been cleaned in a while and its exhaust vent was clogged. Assuming the dryer was failing, and without the means to replace it, the woman ran every load on the hottest setting. One convenient spark ignited an impressive fire. Unfortunately for the woman, she hadn’t replaced the batteries in her smoke detectors in a long time. Humans were so forgetful at that age.

  Soon flames were engulfing the first floor of the house, the woman had died from smoke inhalation, and he was several blocks away, seeking other opportunities. But he continued walking without bothering to peer into any other homes until the fire engine sirens had faded into the distance.

  With his cane tapping as regularly as a metronome, his long strides consumed two miles before he slowed again, intrigued by something in the sky.

  Two broad, colorful rectangles slowly descended.

  Parachute canopies.

  Looking up, Tora pushed the brim of his bowler out of the way to watch the skydivers. Above the parachutes, a red and white plane looped around. Excited, he walked faster, holding his cane parallel to the ground.

  Soon the cluster of houses thinned and he saw the small airfield, its perimeter secured by a ten-foot tall chain-link fence topped with concertina coils. By this time, the two skydivers had landed and gathered their parachutes, before returning to a hangar with Skydive Launchers painted in broad letters on its side.

  As he hurried along the border of the airfield, following the line of the fence, the red and white airplane dropped to the runway with a slight shudder and proceeded to taxi toward the hangar. By the time he was close enough to distinguish individual voices, another plane was preparing to leave with more skydivers.

  He paused, hoping he appeared to be nothing more than a curious onlooker, and massaged his temple, probing. The three new skydivers had already packed their chutes and walked to the second plane, otherwise he could have
interfered with the chutes in packing, but that opportunity had passed. With his third eye, he peered into the backpack container, the pilot chute, main parachute, reserve chute, lines and risers and, finally, the AAD or automatic activation device, a sliver of metal with an onboard computer chip that deployed the reserve chute at 750 feet if the skydiver could not or became distracted during freefall. Switched on in preflight, the AAD measured air pressure to determine altitude and recalibrated every thirty seconds to account for changes in atmospheric pressure. But if all proceeded according to plan and preparation, the AADs wouldn’t need to perform their lifesaving function. It would be a simple matter for him to cause a malfunction in the device. Now that he knew what to look for, he disabled all three AADs.

  Anticipating an exciting challenge, he stood with both hands resting on the handle of his cane and watched as the red and white plane, a Cessna 182, with the pilot and three jumpers aboard, taxied onto the runway.

  While the plane climbed steadily to 13,000 feet, which would give the skydivers about sixty seconds of freefall, he extended his awareness to follow them up into the thin air and buffeting winds. Briefly, the link became tenuous, but he concentrated and kept his third eye on them. Even at two and a half miles elevation, they could not escape his attention and manipulation.

  He skimmed the surface of their minds, touching on each of the three jumpers, plucking their names out. Dave Jackson, Art Polan and Robert … McGlaughlin, although the others thought of him as “Mac.” Since a plane crash was less of a challenge, he ignored the woman pilot and the condition of the plane itself. Crashing the plane would kill the skydivers, but the accident wouldn’t test him, wouldn’t improve his abilities the same way tackling three targets individually at that distance would. Plus, he had a ticking clock challenge. Once the skydivers jumped, he would have to work fast.

  As they waited excitedly for the pilot to give them the signal that they were over the jump zone, the three skydivers compared notes about their jump count. They had jumped together since their senior year at Rowan University, for Mac’s twenty-first birthday. Since then, Dave had missed a jump due to a family emergency—a child’s burst appendix— and Art had missed a jump while attending his grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. That made Mac senior man.