Blood Web: Caitlin Diggs Series #1 Read online

  BLOOD WEB

  By Gary Starta

  Gary Starta

  39 Bennett Ct

  East Brunswick, NJ 08816

  Tel: 908-705-2241

  Email: [email protected]

  Word Count: 109,600

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  You can have anything you want

  But you better not take it from me—

  “Welcome to the Jungle”—Guns N’ Roses

  Cripple Creek, Colorado

  December 8, 1864

  The red-bearded cavalryman plunged the saber into his fallen victim.

  “Die, heathen, die.”

  Another military man on horseback implored Red Beard to end the assault. Red Beard did not hear the soldier because he now walked the dark side, convinced the Cheyenne man he had stabbed three times was the devil. A third man feared speaking, afraid Red Beard would turn his wrath on him.

  Blood flowed freely from the injured man known as Chief Circling Hawk. The chief had been the lone witness to the Sand Creek Massacre a week ago. Returning home from a hunting expedition, the chief watched in his horror as the last of his people fell victim to the butchering hands of U.S. Militia troops. He fled into the woods.

  While resting in a cave, he discovered a mysterious crystal. He continued his journey away from Colorado wearing the arrowhead-shaped pendant around his neck. But rough terrain and extreme weather conspired to hinder the chief’s travel, allowing the three cavalry men to eventually catch him. The chief did not confront them—he decided to let fate and the Great Spirit lay judgment on whether he would still be capable of bringing his journey to fruition after taking three stab wounds to the chest. The crystal, bathed in blood and still hanging about the chief’s neck, concealed a faint pink glow of light.

  Despite the protests of his fellow soldiers, Red Beard continued the assault. He was convinced the chief possessed demonic powers as evidenced by the crystal’s pulsating light.

  Red Beard retracted his weapon to plunge his saber into Chief Circling Hawk for a fourth time. At that instant, the chief shape shifted into a woman who Red Beard recognized as his wife.

  Spittle flew freely from the woman’s mouth. She accused the soldier of joining the militia for the express purpose of bedding painted ladies. Chief Circling Hawk found himself in another place while the wife took his place in the woods. Strangers quickly worked to heal his wounds. He could not see their faces; they were concealed in brilliant white light. The chief was healed and returned to the woods. The apparition of the soldier’s wife began to shimmer and fade, but her taunts and accusations still rang in the attacker’s head.

  Flabbergasted, Red Beard dropped his sword and backed away. Chief Circling Hawk’s body resumed his place on the ground before his attacker. Aware Red Beard had succumbed to lunacy, the two cavalrymen tugged on the reigns of their horses, planning a retreat. However, the horses were incapable of obeying, they were frozen in place. The chief began to rise as if carried on strings. A light glowed around the Cheyenne man, illuminating him in pink. He now stood on his feet perfectly healed. Red Beard seemed to feed off the resurrection, using it to fuel his rage.

  “I told you the heathen found a way to cheat death,” cried Red Beard. He scrabbled on his knees to retrieve his saber, determined to complete the genocide. But before he could, five bobcats appeared out of nowhere. They circled the three men, fangs bared, hissing. Red Beard dropped his weapon. The cats’ translucent bodies suggested they were not of this earth. The men could see right through them, except for a vague splash of color, which defined their form. They were bobcats, yet at the same time, they were rainbows.

  The bobcats continued circling until they were assured the three men posed no further danger to Chief Circling Hawk. Minutes later they vanished out of existence, departing in a brilliant blaze of color, yet the three men continued to hear the echoes of their growls hours afterward.

  The men in blue fled, never speaking a word about their experience to anyone. A crimson sky haunted their journey home.

  The mysterious crystal refocused its efforts on Chief Circling Hawk. For some reason, the crystal believed the chief must survive to right the unwarranted murder of his people.

  The chief resumed his journey to Oklahoma where he would make a child to preserve his race. Days later, he walked into a hilly field and abandoned the crystal near a cave. It released an array of rainbow colors against the cave’s dark backdrop. The chief, now disconnected from the mysterious crystal, used his last strength to stagger away from the cave toward a sloping meadow. He fell down and welcomed death, knowing his race would continue.

  ***

  Route 66 – Elk City, Oklahoma

  Present Day

  Golf balls. It was raining and the hail was coming down in the size of Titleists.

  A drifter who sometimes went by the name of “Shenk” ran for cover. He had lost his immigrant parents to a car accident when he was twelve, and just a few weeks ago, he lost his home at the Wayward Center for Teens due to Hurricane Omega. And now it was hailing golf balls.

  Running with both hands on top of his head, Shenk took several hopeful glances behind him. To his dismay, he found there were no cars traveling on this deserted stretch of highway known as Route 66. So far, he had been able to travel from Texas into Oklahoma by hitchhiking. People were only too glad to help at the time of crisis. During the evacuation, everybody was your friend. An entire family shared their minivan with Shenk, along with their rations of food and water. But when the crisis ended, so did the hospitality.

  Right now, there were no cars passing by to provide shelter from the storm. He left the path of the freeway and started through a meadow, his field of vision distorted, his body reeking. Shenk was anything but fresh as he ran from the icy round pellets.

  The mud had no mercy. It surged up from the ground like pancake batter, oozing into his Converse All-Stars. His pants and shirt were soaked. His eyes stung from the rain that cascaded down his forehead. Still, Shenk had nowhere to go but onward. The meadow descended into a gully, and a hundred yards ahead of that was a cave.

  Jumping into the pitch dark of the cave, Shenk escaped the downpour. He fell to his knees and closed his eyes to clear his vision. He hoped the cave was empty. But it wasn’t. When he opened his eyes, he saw something shimmering. Shenk reached out into the darkness, but his hand landed just beyond the object. Without thinking of consequence, the young man employed persistence to retrieve the mysterious treasure.

  Shenk palmed the object in his hand until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was a glittery, V-shaped transparent rock attac
hed to a string of beads. Shenk marveled at its beauty before placing it around his neck. A strange desire urged him to hold the arrowhead pendant against his chest and let its radiance warm his body. He obeyed this desire and fell asleep in the cave.

  Chapter 1

  Was it hours since the hailstorm subsided? Or days? Shenk had lost all track of time. When had he last eaten? When had he slept more than a few hours at a stretch? He should have felt wiped out from the self-inflicted abuse, but he felt invigorated and could not explain why.

  He had walked over the Texas state line and into the Heartland of America, shedding all physical links to his past. The hurricane that destroyed his home had also erased any tangible records of his existence. The rising water had flushed paper records from the home into neighboring streets. Among this ticker tape were Shenk’s birth certificate and social security records. Also expunged from existence were any electronic files concerning Shenk. These records were contained on the hard drive of a computer that floated away down Baker Street.

  A new beginning beckoned Shenk. He left his past and walked into the future. He continued his quest with no map, no direction, and no plan.

  Shenk felt silly thinking the pendant hanging from his neck was his guide, yet he trusted it. It had given him confidence. Shenk would have been hard pressed to remember the last time he had ever felt this way. Doubt and depression had been his two closest friends.

  Alice, a social worker at the center, had once warned Shenk that this is a vicious circle. Alice wore large, rimmed glasses, and her red hair was always tied back into a bun. Shenk usually could not remember what he had for lunch, but he very distinctly remembered Alice and what she had told him. Maybe it was because she spoke like a robot. In particular, he recalled this quote: “Most ailments of the mind have been brought on by a society that no longer has any connection to nature. Society then tries to make amends by throwing some inorganic concoction down the victim’s throat.”

  She rattled it off to him as if she was an actor in a public service message. He could still picture Alice, sitting in front of a sterile, white desk, totally focused on her speech. She sat completely still, never once distracted by the popping and hissing of the deteriorating celluloid of Shenk’s wasted mind. The humming noises prompted Shenk to wonder if Alice was ever physically in a room with him. Maybe she was really the narrator of a movie that advised teens to “Just say no”?

  Shenk had been off the pills ever since he walked away from the center. He calculated about three weeks had passed since then. He could not recall ever feeling so in touch with himself. A wonderful, lucid notion now arose within him, telling him he was needed. It felt good to be needed, even by an inanimate object. The transient hummed a James Brown lyric in his head as he walked. “I feeeel goood.” Although Shenk had never sung a note before in his life, he did not find the act peculiar in the least.

  A honking horn interrupted his focus. An eighteen-wheeler crept up from behind. While lost in thought, Shenk had unconsciously veered off the brown sand of the highway’s shoulder and onto the blacktop.

  Bleeeeeeaaar! The horn wailed. The drifter turned on his heels to face the vehicle. It was no more than ten yards away from him! The arrowhead swung back and forth from the oncoming rush of air and dust. A ray of light from the crystal blinded the trucker, and he swerved to avoid Shenk. The freighter’s cab shot left, but its payload swung right. For a moment, it appeared the mean green machine might tip over. Shenk’s eyes grew wide with wonder. He really did not want this to happen—and so it didn’t. The driver miraculously righted his vehicle, and both cab and trailer resumed their course in tandem. Its cargo of chemically preserved frozen chickens would not escape human consumption after all.

  Shenk pushed his matted, blond hair away from his face, snickered as if he had just read the Sunday comics, and continued his journey.

  ***

  Either the owners were not home or else they were quiet as a mouse. Shenk was on a stake out. His stomach could care less how good his head felt from the pendant’s vibe. His stomach demanded sustenance—chop, chop. Camped out in front of a cinnamon-colored ranch, the teen tried valiantly to ignore the gurgling, growling sounds emanating from his gut. “Just hang on and be patient,” he told his stomach. Shenk would have to resort to theft if he planned on eating anything other than Route 66 road kill. He only had a few coins in his pocket—eighty-seven cents to be exact. He couldn’t even buy the vilest fast food.

  The stake out continued for a few more hours while Shenk summoned more courage. Only one name adorned the roadside mailbox. This provided some comfort. “Maybe the owner is away on business,” he preached to his unforgiving stomach.

  Shenk finally deduced that the dwelling was vacant. Even if the homeowner preferred to live in the dark, he or she probably owned a TV. This assured Shenk the house might be empty as no discernible glow emanated from any room.

  Treading as softly as he could, the criminal-to-be approached the backside of the house. A bathroom window would grant him access. It had been left partially open.

  Shenk slid the window up and braced his hands on the sill, sliding one leg over as if he was mounting a horse. Pausing to confirm that the room was vacant, Shenk wiggled the remainder of his body through the window.

  He found himself standing in front of a sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror. Shenk certainly did not look as good as he felt. His face was covered by varying lengths of stubble. His eyes were more red than blue. The enclosed space reminded him how much he stank.

  The teen’s stomach demanded he proceed immediately to the kitchen, but his head told him to make sure all the rooms were vacant. His empty gut continued to protest.

  “Shut up!” he cursed silently. “You’re going to get me caught.”

  Shenk took a left out of the bathroom and fumbled in the dark until he saw the faint outline of a doorframe. The sun was going down. He would have only a few more minutes to scan the house until he would need the aid of artificial light. Taking a deep breath, Shenk entered what appeared to be a parlor. A picture frame balancing on the mantelpiece caught his eye. A brown-haired girl looked back at him from the picture. She didn’t look particularly happy. About his age, she wore a lime green sweater. Maybe a single parent lived here, Shenk theorized. The girl absorbed his attention span longer than she should have.

  Out of the darkness, a confused voice asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Shenk attempted to spin on his heels and bolt. But the surprised occupant was too quick, and his massive hand grabbed one of Shenk’s mud-stained sneakers.

  The sneaker came off in the man’s hand. He rolled toward Shenk and threw the shoe.

  Thwunk! The shoe caught Shenk squarely in the back of the head. He dropped to his knees as if he was in a confessional box. The six-foot-three bearded man positioned himself behind five-foot-eight Shenk. He wrapped both of his burly arms around Shenk’s neck, eager to know all Shenk’s sins.

  “Tell me who you are, you bastard.”

  The man tightened his chokehold, eliciting only a grunt from the uninvited houseguest.

  Referring to himself in the third person, the man began to threaten Shenk. “Charlie Jones is going to kick your butt.”

  Still standing behind Shenk, Jones pulled the teen to his feet without effort. Shenk’s lack of resistance reminded Jones of a J.C. Penney mannequin.

  Without further warning, the man spun Shenk about face.

  Shenk was introduced to Jones’ meaty right hand. The punch knocked him off his feet and onto the floor. Jones scurried away momentarily to illuminate the room. “So let’s see what the cat dragged in.” Jones spoke in an emotionless tone. It sounded as though he had been through similar ordeals of this kind.

  Shenk’s eyes glazed over. Dazed and confused, the room spun in a kaleidoscopic circle of light and shadow. He swore he saw a bobcat running in a meadow. But the sound of Jones’ voice confirmed Shenk was unfortunately still inside the house.
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  Charlie bent down to get a better look at the intruder. Shenk squinted from the sudden onslaught of light. He focused on a picture hanging on the wall. It looked like Jones had been in the military. The picture revealed a man in a uniform who looked like Jones when he was about fifty pounds lighter and twenty years younger. Shenk’s eyes continued to scan the room for details. He should have feared for his life and begged this man for mercy, but an eerie wave of calm washed over him like an ocean wave. As Jones went to his fireplace, Shenk noticed a half dozen empty bottles of beer scattered over a coffee table, light stand, and bookcase.

  Jones returned with a red hot fireplace poker. The poker had been lying in a dying fire. In a few more minutes, the last of its embers would have been extinguished. But luck was a game of inches, and there was still enough of a flicker to heat the implement. About seven hours earlier Jones had lit the fire—as well as himself with the aid of malt liquor, but his buzz had faded. And now he was nearly sober enough to realize he had a splitting headache, a dried out throat, and an intruder in his ranks.

  “On your feet, boy,” Jones commanded.

  Shenk slowly rose to his feet without protest.

  Jones ordered him to lift up his shirt.

  Shenk again obeyed. The teen could see the man was very annoyed by his docile compliance. Jones grumbled an inaudible sentence that ended in the word pansy.

  Still in a slack state, the teen did not flinch as Jones prepared to thrust the hot poker into Shenk’s abdomen. It seemed Shenk was about to get his ass kicked on Route 66.

  In a flash, the homemade weapon penetrated the teen’s flesh as easily as warm butter. The searing flesh set off a foul smell. Jones seemed to enjoy this show despite the grimace on his face. His green eyes sparkled with sick delight. If you could win medals for perverse pleasures, Jones would have been decorated like an admiral.

  Jones was clamoring for more. He pulled the poker out so he could launch another assault, and as soon as he did, Shenk’s flesh began to seal around the hole in his gut.

  Jones had inflicted no more damage than a mosquito bite. Both men could only look at the poker in wonder. Each of their faces seemed to state the obvious—what the hell just happened here?