Chapter 3
There weren’t many worse ideas that I’d ever had if I was being honest, in a time where good ideas were the key to winning this certainly couldn’t be considered one of the good ones. In fact, if I was to wager I would say that the odds of something like this blowing up in my face were actually astronomically high, especially since I had told Damon and Vincent to stay home while I went out and did it.
Because honestly, when your boss, the head of the forensic investigation department of the police force for the entire city, a point that I’ve stated before but feel warrants stating again, in what universe would it be a good idea to confront him, alone, at night, at the police station when the rest of the staff had gone home? Only an idiot would come up with a plan like this, and I was feeling pretty fucking stupid lately.
“This is so dumb,” I said, shutting the door to my car and stepping away. I hadn’t pulled up in front of the station at least, if things went really south I wanted to be sure that I could sprint around the block and not get shot as soon as I got back in my car. At least hidden in an alleyway between two garages no one would immediately be looking out for my car, and if someone happened to be passing by they would just think it was any old car.
“Stop delaying, just get in there and get to it.”
The walk up those steps had never felt so long before, my footsteps echoing off the stone columns so loudly you would think that I was marching down the green mile. If things went bad here I wouldn’t have anyone else to fall back on, for some stupid reason I had told Damon and Vincent to make sure that Cara and Tariq were safe and not to worry about me, I hadn’t even informed Joseph of what I was doing but no doubt he would find out soon enough. I wasn’t looking forward to his anger when I met up with him eventually, but that was something to worry about for the future, not now. Right now I had to worry about not getting shot opening any of the doors of the building where my now homicidal boss was still sitting and sorting through files.
I made it through the lobby, which was always creepy to walk through when there was no receptionist there but given my previous record with the people that sat in that chair I wasn’t exactly complaining, at least no one was going to be dying in a bathroom in front of me tonight.
I hoped.
It was when I was halfway through the bullpen that I saw the lights weren’t on his office, rather they were shining down the hallway leading towards the lab. I couldn’t really be blamed for walking down the hallway towards the source of the lights, I’d come here for a confrontation after all and the surest way to find one was to go towards the obvious signs of life. Even still, to walk through the door and see Rick just sitting at one of the examinations tables, no grand gestures, no gun pointed at the door just… sitting there, it really threw me for a loop.
“Uhh, hi Rick. What are you doing in here?”
“I figured that you’d be coming around here sooner or later, figured it would be best to hash this out in the place you spent most of your time,” He grunted, not bothering to look up at me while he inspected the surface of the table, “We really spent a good few years working ourselves to the bone here, huh?”
“Rick, I don’t…”
Finally he looked up at me, the lines on his face so much more pronounced than they had ever been before, he looked so much less like the man who had taken me in and molded me into the investigator and more like… a living corpse, like the only thing keeping him going was sheer will and stubbornness, and those were rapidly running out. When he spoke it wasn’t with the usual warmth and barely the brevity that I’d gotten used to poring over cases, it was with the harsh growl of someone who had taken up smoking to have something to fill up how empty they had suddenly gotten, a sound like the only things remaining in his body were smoke and anger.
“Cut the bullshit Amy, I know why you’re here. I couldn’t hide for very long, could I?”
“I… what? How did you?”
“I’m the head of the entire department that you’re basically the queen of, I didn’t get here by not being a good investigator, give me some credit at least. It’ll save us a lot of time and dignity if you just say what you came here to say.”
There wasn’t any point in not doing exactly that, but I was still somewhat taken aback even as I pulled out a stool opposite him and took a seat. Both his hands were on the tabletop so that was a good time, but I had no idea if he was actually armed or not underneath, and I wasn’t exactly eager to find out either, considering I only had the silver knife that I always carried tucked against my calf. Statistically you had a better chance of coming out on top with a knife if someone else had a gun this close, but that only really applies if you have it out to begin with. Otherwise I’m just going to end up slamming my head into the counter trying to pull a knife out and then getting a bullet in my brain to top it all off.
“I’m not going to shoot you Amy,” He said, almost reading my mind, “If I was going to do that I wouldn’t have bothered turning the light on. Let’s just get this over with already.”
“You’re a real people person, have I ever told you that?” I smiled, trying and failing to ease the tension. Screw it, I was angry enough over everything that had happened lately and I still tried to start this off nicely, but if he wanted to blow me off then I was more than willing to go from there.
“So Rick, why the fuck are you trying to kill me?”
“I’m not trying to kill you Amy…” He stopped himself, shaking his head and taking a sip from a flask that I hadn’t even seen in his palm. “Not you specifically, it’s the rest of them that I want gone. That shirtless freak from that night, that thing you brought back, that monster who could shoot fire from his hands just as easily as I can breath air… none of them were ever supposed to exist, not in this civilized world that we live in now.”
“So you don’t want to kill me specifically, you just want to kill all of my friends and everyone that I love, while also not really doing that much to prevent people from coming after me. Yeah, excuse me if I think that’s one big crock of shit.” I leaned in, pulling the flask from his hand and taking one big swig for myself. “You’re supposed to be someone who stands up for justice, who solves and prevents crimes, not fucking commits them! Jesus, two innocent people are dead because of what you did!”
He scoffed, “Innocent…”
“Yes Rick, innocent! They were basically children, you gave a psychopathic butcher free reign to eviscerate two completely innocent teenagers, in pursuit of what? Your idea of a greater good? Some peaceful ethno-state where the only thing that lives there are humans once you’ve wiped out all the paranormals?” I tossed the flask back towards him, the clatter of metal on metal echoing off the walls. “You’re a coward, and disgusting, I can’t believe that I ever actually looked up to you. How can you look at yourself in the mirror and think that you deserve to call yourself a cop?”
“Have you seen the rest of this precinct? I’d say I’m far from the first person to stumble a little, but unlike them I’ve managed to right myself.” He sat up straighter, and I liked this sight even less than his downtrodden, world weary performance of before. “Four innocent men were almost thrown in jail because of the actions of a madman, and we had no evidence saying otherwise that they were the ones who did it. The only one who gave half a shit about them was you, and you finally led me to him eventually.”
“And you covered for us when we were finished with him, you told everyone that he killed himself and that the case was closed. Those four men went free because we worked together, how could you think differently?”
“Because there never would have been a need for it if that thing didn’t exist in the first place. Because it was only due to the machinations of an insane paranormal that four innocent human beings were placed in the firing line for something that they never would have done in their right minds, but they were forced to anyway. If I could solve that problem at the source… then nothing like that would ever happen again.”
This was getting more ridiculous by the second, I was having a very hard time keeping my cool and not reaching across the table and smacking him. “You decided that you wanted to prevent future-crime? Have you never seen Minority Report? It doesn’t exactly work out super well there.”
“Don’t pretend like you haven’t seen some of the horrible things that witches have done, with a front row ticket I imagine that you have more than a few stories of maimings and debauchery that you could share. How is it trying to train them? Hauling them around like a group of trained monkeys barking commands at them that they sometimes obey?”
This time I did reach across the table, my hand cracking across his cheek and snapping in the cold air. There were a lot of things that I was willing to accept tonight, but an insult against the very people that I have seen on multiple occasions fight and even die for the results that they so desired, all of us wanting to work towards a future where we could truly live in solidarity. No doubt that was one of the things that Tristian had told him about, and no doubt it was one of the things that he had lied about, filling his head with so many fabrications and disgusting thoughts that I could never hope to punch through the thick cloud. Not that I couldn’t at least try, once I looked at the red handprint on his cheek and looked him sharply in the eye.
“That is the last time that you talk about them that way alright? You might not like them, you might loathe them and want them to all die, but when I’m here in front of you would it kill you to have some fucking manners?”
He rubbed at his cheek, for the first time having something really spark behind his eyes before it was swallowed up by that gray nothingness that I’d felt since I sat down. “For the record Amy, I think that you’re different to the rest of them.”
“Oh? And how is that?”
“You give a crap. You’re not worried about surviving for yourself, you spend every waking minute of every day that you’re alive trying to find ways to help other people. That’s something that not only do they not do, pretty much everyone in this entire precinct doesn’t do that, this is just a job to all of them.” He smiled, and to my surprise there was actual, genuine pride behind it. “You’re what a cop should be, it’s just such a shame that you’re so set on throwing it all away for nothing.”
“And what are you doing? You’re fighting for the same bullshit that monsters have been trying to do throughout history, every time there’s something even vaguely different to what you want to be the norm you throw a fucking hissyfit and assume that it’s coming to kill you. I’m sure that a hundred years ago you probably would have been on the front line fighting against electricity, because back then that would have been considered just as much witchcraft as what I can do.”
“It’s not the same…”
“How would you know? You haven’t even made any effort to understand why we are the way we are, who we are, what we want to do… you’ve just jumped to killing all of us!” I clenched my fist, my throat tightening up as my voice lowered in anger, “Why… why did it have to be the two of them first? They were just kids Rick, why did you have to do that to them?”
He at least had the decency to look ashamed, there was a small glimpse of the Rick that I’d known when I chastised him for trying to send four innocent men to jail, back when he cared about law and order instead of this petty vengeance. But all sight of that man vanished when his gaze hardened, tone turning to ice and his features to stone.
“Because we needed to start somewhere.”
That was it. That was the entire reason that those two young men had been killed in such horrifying ways, the reason why there were parents without sons and siblings without brothers, why I hadn’t been able to sleep properly without seeing the vacant look in their eyes or the cuts in their bodies. Because it was just bad luck for them.
I felt like strangling him, grabbing him by his ears and slamming his face first into the table until he finally got it through his head to apologize for all that he’d done, to beg not just me but the families of those that had been killed for forgiveness. But when I was just about to start I noticed that he wasn’t looking at me anymore, nor did he have that same hardened look on his face. Instead he just looked… surprised, and when I turned around I couldn’t really help but react the exact same way.
We’d been hiring interns lately, through the same program that had hired me eventually, though in recent years they’d gotten a lot stricter with who they let in. I wasn’t going to say that I was the only reason for that, but I was definitely part of the reasons for that. One of these new interns was Bruce, a quiet little Oklahoma boy who just wanted to move out here and help people as best he could, so he could be like the detectives he grew up watching on tv who always get the bad guy and make sure that everyone lives happily ever after.
The same Bruce who was standing in the doorway of the lab, mouth open and eyes wide, clearly having heard what we’d been talking about to a truly dangerous degree.
“Hi Bruce,” Rick said, waving lightly and placing his hand near his knee. “Been standing there long?”
“I… uh… yes sir, since um… since the bit about witchcraft,” He stumbled over his words, clearly fighting to make sense of it as he was saying it. I had to sympathize, when you’ve just been introduced to it there’s absolutely no way of being able to do that even if you have a relatively open mind, if you’re a farm boy from Oklahoma then all bets were off. “Sir… is she telling the truth? Did you kill two people?”
Rick let out a short laugh, shaking his head and wiping at his eye. “You make it sound so mundane, like it’s easy to kill two people. But yes Bruce, I did. Which is why I’m sorry.”
Before either of us could react Rick brought his hand from under the table, my eyes only processing the gun in his hand right before he shoved his chair backwards and stood, taking aim and squeezing the trigger twice. The boom of the gunshots was absolutely deafening, matched only by the yelp of agony that pushed through Bruce’s lips when the heavy slugs sank into his chest and exploded out his back, painting the wall behind him a vivid red and leaving him sprawled on the floor, feebly breathing his last and trying to reach towards us for help.
I couldn’t do anything to help before Rick planted another slug right between his eyes, taking aim at me before I could even hope to do anything in return. “Don’t,” He said, “You might be fast with that knife, you might be fast with magic, but you’re not going to be faster than a bullet. Don’t test the theory.”
“Fuck you!”
I yelled, pointing roughly between him and Bruce’s body. “You just killed an employee with your service weapon, do you not see how that might mean that you’re screwed now?”
“It’s not my service weapon, this is just some saturday night special that I picked out of evidence, could just as easily have come from your purse considering all it’s evidence data was erased.”
So that was his plan, frame me for shooting Bruce and then just watch the rest of the pieces converge on me, not very elegant but… cops are usually pretty rabid when it comes to going after cop killers, and given that Bruce worked here… yeah, things wouldn’t look good for me.
“Why though?” I asked, “Why not just shoot me and get rid of the evidence? It wouldn’t even be that hard to do.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” He sighed, “I guess… I’m just fond of you. I want to give you a fighting chance, which is why you have about thirty seconds to run before the overnight cops from next door burst through those front doors ready for action.”
“I…” Yeah, it was absolutely clear now, I guess it had been for a while now. “You’ve absolutely lost your mind. I don’t know what it was but… something broke inside you.”
“Maybe it did, yeah…” He shook his head, placing the barrel of the gun against his bicep and sighing, “I guess it did.”
“Wait!” I shouted, taking a step forward before jumping back in shock, the gun flying from his grip as he collapsed to the ground in a screaming mound of pain. I’d seen enough movies to see what he was doing and it was clear that he was far beyond me being able to help him, I’d wasted enough time waiting around trying to reason with him. Turning on my heel I was out the door before I could even blink, the sounds of his screams and yells that I was getting away already fading behind me.
However, the guards had radios, which I found out when I heard the telltale static crackle behind me as one rounded the corner, not even bothering to yell out a warning before a bullet snapped over my head and buried itself in the wall next to me. If I hadn’t been at the end of the hallway and able to throw myself through the door to the outside I wouldn’t have had anywhere to go, and I almost certainly would have been gunned down without another word. I had no idea that was how trigger happy we were going to be tonight, but given that I’d just watched my boss gun down an innocent intern just to frame me of a crime, I can’t say that I’m wholly surprised.
Hell, that’s not even the first illegal thing that I’ve seen happen in that lab, though it’s going to be a bit harder to convince everyone that our boss is now a murderer compared to one of the techs being paid off to sabotage evidence.
I’d gladly take a thousand incompetent lab techs over what I’d just gotten.
“She ran out here! Spread out and find her, and call a goddamn ambulance!”
Yep, if they knew to call for an ambulance then there was no doubt that they’d seen both the bodies, which was very bad news for me if they found me now. While I was never really one to care what any of the assholes here thought of me, if they suddenly started spreading around that I was a cop killer then that was going to be reason to care a lot, given that my survival prospects for the next week would rapidly diminish to damn near nothing.
That was one thing that cop movies never really exaggerated all that much, if a cop died the others became damn near rabid, hell, some of them actually started taking their jobs seriously around here! And if there was one thing that you did not want if you were on the run it was a sudden surge of competence which unfortunately came with a heavy number of itchy trigger fingers. Also not good.
Two more shots smacked into the concrete pathing next to me, shards flying up and scratching against my skin as I passed by. This was going to be a lot of paperwork that none of them were going to bother to file, and that almost made me more mad than the fact that they were still trying to kill me! They weren’t even doing a good job at it, which was reason to celebrate but jesus, just what are we paying these people for?
I jumped over the hedge, almost rolling my ankle on the landing and collapsing to the ground just in time for at least two more of them to unload on where I had just been, bullets ripping through the hedge and passing through where I would have been standing if I hadn’t fallen. There was no time to focus on my near death experience however, not when I’d finally broken their sight line and had a pathway out of here.
Crouched down low, I slipped along the edge of the concrete planter, not even daring to breathe too loudly lest one of them heard me and decided to be a little more liberal with his bullets. My car was in the alleyway in the cluster of buildings across the way, if I could just get there without being shot… I hated that I had to say that, but there weren’t many other options available to me aside from risking it.
“Fuck, fuck fuck fuck!” I grunted to myself, taking a series of quick breaths before pushing off in a hurry, ready to duck and weave the second that I heard anything remotely like gunfire. When they started shouting and screaming behind me it was obvious that they’d seen me, I hadn’t exactly made it difficult but now it was pretty important that I made killing me difficult.
“She’s over there!” They yelled, seemingly adamant about punctuating every word with another gunshot, sending the dirt and concrete around me sailing into the air like the world’s most brutalist inspired fountain. I ducked and stepped in time with each gunshot, some of them passing by me so close I could feel the air against my skin as they went by, but if something went right today I was determined that it was this.
So it should have honestly come as no surprise to me when one of the shots passed by too closely to my leg, scoring through the leg of my pants and tearing a jagged hole along the outside of my calf, the sheer amount of adrenaline coursing through my system the only thing stopping me from collapsing to the ground and screaming out in pain. It didn’t stop me from stumbling though, thankfully reaching the first building before falling to the side into a small dip in the alley. I’d been hoping to be able to lose them in the bends, but with the drops of blood I was leaving behind it wasn’t going to take a very experienced hunter to tell where I was heading. Guess that means that my only option was to keep going and hope that I could reach my car before they could reach me, no small order.
Though I guess if they couldn’t see me it wouldn’t hurt to throw some obstacles their way.
Dipping my finger into the blood dripping down my leg, I reached up and drew a series of symbols on the wall, hoping against everything that my lessons had all paid off. If not I was really going to look like an idiot when they blew my head off. With each symbol finally drawn up I uttered an incantation and smacked my palm against the middle, watching it light up and start to crack the concrete wall, turning away and dragging myself off as the wall finally splintered and fell to the ground behind me. It wasn’t a perfect barricade by any means, but if I was lucky the sheer sight of a building being partially collapsed would give them enough pause to let me get to my car, all I really needed was one small moment of confusion and then I was away.
“She ran in through here! She- what the fuck?”
Well, they’d definitely found the wall, their voices faded off the further I went but last I heard they were arguing about whether I’d crawled into the ruined building or not, the rubble and new darkness doing a decent job of covering up the blood trail I was leaving on the ground.
Not completely though, with the loud footsteps I could hear echoing through the alleys towards me, but by the time they got close enough for me to actually start worrying I was in the driver's seat with my engine roaring triumphantly. I pulled out immediately, one of my pursuers swinging around the corner and immediately diving to get out of the path of my car, but the bump of the car as I passed him told me that I must have run over his foot.
Given that I myself had been shot in the leg not five minutes ago, I found my sympathy levels astonishingly low.
“Fuck you Rick, fuck this station…” I growled, turning roughly out of the alleyway and smashing a trash can with the back end of the car, “Fuck this city, fuck my leg. This whole sequence of events is fucking bullshit. Fuck this!”
Today has… not been my day, and honestly I have no idea if it’s going to get any better. By now I know not to ask for it to be better, because whenever I do that the exact opposite happens like some weird malevolent god has just decided to zoom into my wishes and replace them with a boot straight up my ass. So no, all I’m going to focus on right now is getting at least fifteen minutes away from the station then pulling into somewhere very dark where I can make maybe the worst phone call in my recent history, and boy is it in some really good company as of late.
I need an actual goddamn vacation.
Twenty minutes later I was in a parking garage still staring at my phone screen, an old shirt wrapped around the gouge in my leg and already soaked through with blood, but at least it was doing something to slow it. I was still going to need someone with either medical experience or some sort of healing magic, but I’d bought myself some amount of time at least.
God I was going to sue the shit out of this city once this was all over.
“Come on Amy just… dial the number already. It’s going to be worse if they have to hear it from someone else, and they’ll probably be in the line of fire as well from this.” I pressed the call button, placing the phone to my ear while sighing heavily, “It’s really impossible to have a normal life around me isn’t it?”
It was only a few rings before Damon picked up, he’d almost certainly been waiting by the phone for me to call him and let him know just where the hell I’d run off to. I didn’t know if he was going to be worried with me or absolutely furious with me, and honestly I was kind of expecting both. I’d acted like a massive idiot tonight and ended up getting shot for it, that’s kind of a license to get pissed at me.
“Hello?” He asked, “Amy what’s going on? Where are you?”
“I… went to talk to Rick,” I said, already wincing at how weak it sounded, “I thought that maybe I could get some answers or convince him… fuck, I don’t know what I expected, but it didn’t end up happening.”
“You went to see him alone? Amy what happened?”
“I need you to not panic ok? I don’t have much time to explain this so I need you to stay calm and listen to everything that I say, can you do that for me Damon?”
The quick breath of air that brushed against the receiver told me that he was about to immediately answer yes, but the pause afterwards made it clear that he was taking a second to clear his mind. Wise choice, considering what I was about to tell him. “I’m calm, please, tell me what happened.”
“I… Rick murdered one of the lab techs while I was speaking with him, then shot himself in the arm to make it look like I was the shooter. I ran out to get away and I got grazed on the leg, I’m not bleeding to death or anything but it hurts like hell.”
A quick gasp was his only answer at first, but after a moment to gather himself his tone was deathly calm, the quick clips at the end of his sentences the only tell that he had revealing that he was murderously angry. “Rick shot you?”
“No, not him. One of the overnight guards saw me running and just opened fire, didn’t even yell a warning they just started shooting.” I huffed an irritated breath out through my nose, reaching over to the glovebox for an aspirin. “I thought I was worth more than that, but I guess not, they’ve always hated me there.”
“Where are you now? Just give us the word, me and Vincent can be there before you know it, we can get you somewhere safe…”
“No, no don’t do that. Soon as they get themselves gathered they’ll just swarm the apartment, what you two should focus on doing right now is getting the hell out and telling everyone what happened. We can meet up afterwards when we’ve both done what we needed to.”
By now he knew that there was no arguing with me when my mind was made up, the best that he could hope to do was go along with whatever it was that I had planned. At least this time I had something approaching a plan, I wasn’t quite certain how it was all going to work out but I knew that I had somewhere to go after this, most people who get framed and shot by the police do not tend to get that far.
“Where should we meet?” He asked, “It can’t be anywhere in the city if you’re going to be hunted by the police, they’ll be crawling through every block looking for a cop killer.”
“I know, that’s what’s so dangerous about all of this.” I rubbed at my temples, feeling the aspirin starting to dull the edges of the headache I’d had ever since I’d gotten in the car. “Do you know any safe places? Anywhere that no one would look, not even other hunters?”
“I know a few places, we were always encouraged to find our own spaces where we could go underground if we needed to, but most of them are in the city…” He snapped his fingers, the sudden clarity of his voice telling me that he was smiling in triumph, “I remember a place! It’s an old abandoned house on the outskirts of the city, no one goes out there because there’s supposed to be chemicals that leached into the soil, so it’s completely abandoned for miles out. There’s no reason anyone should be out there looking for us.”
I nodded, this night was already weird enough, may as well go out and hide in the old chemical dumping grounds, that’s a metaphor for my current life if I’ve ever heard one. He was right though, who in their right mind would go and hide out in a place thought to be a complete biohazard? If your goal was to kill whoever it was that ran in there you could probably just kick back and wait anyway, they would either come crawling back to safety or die out there, either way your job would be done. Though I had no doubt that Damon had picked a place that wasn’t too contaminated, if it was he wouldn’t have even considered sending me there.
“Alright,” I said, “You and Vincent let everyone know what’s going on with Rick, then you get over to the house to meet me. I shouldn’t be more than an hour or two, but first I need to go and see someone.”
“See someone? Do you have another friend or something that you haven’t told me about?”
“I wouldn’t say friend,” I sighed, “But she needs to be let in on what’s happening. If they’re coming after me they’ll probably be coming after her, much as we don’t get along she doesn’t need that on top of everything else that’s happened over the last few months.”
“Her? Who- oh...” I could hear the wince in his tone, “Good luck with that then, I don’t imagine that this is going to be a pleasant conversation for either of you.”
“No, no it’s not. But I’ve got to go do what I’ve got to do, and you do too.” I hesitated, biting my lip before just saying it out right, “I love you. Both of you, so much. I’ll see you soon ok?”
“We love you too Amy, be careful.” I disconnected the call before I could start talking again, if I started telling him how much I cared about the two of them I wouldn’t stop, and I’d already risked talking on my number enough as it was. Flipping the phone over in my palm and smacking it against my palm, I popped the battery out and pulled the sim card free, reaching out my window and dropping both behind one of the support columns shrouded in darkness. I know that the typical movie thing to do would be to toss them both as far as I could, but phones are expensive and I’m not made of money, plus I really liked my phone.
Once all this blew over I could come back and hope that they hadn’t been snatched up by some lucky janitor and shipped off to China, but the chances of that happening were honestly pretty low.
I let my forehead bounce off the edge of the steering wheel, taking a deep breath and focusing for a moment on the throbbing pain in my leg. The bleeding had slowed, possibly even stopped completely, but I still needed help making sure that I didn’t get an infection, plus if I moved wrong it would just split open again, it was still an open wound after all. Time was of the essence when it came to dealing with something like this but… god, it’s not too late to change my mind right?
“Oh just sack up and do it already,” I said to myself, punching the horn in frustration and opening my eyes wide, “Time to go and face the music.”
I turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine, taking a few seconds to wake myself up fully before speeding out of the garage, deciding that the faster that this was dealt with the better.
Onward to Alexis’ club.