Chapter Text
The flashes of memory mix with dreams toward the end of sleep. Happy ones, sad ones, some that may or may not even be yours intertwine into the dream state. Marcus Kale’s dreams were getting more of these interludes as he grew older, and more often good peaceful scenes morphing into dark ones, as if reflecting his life. Young Marcus being tossed into the air by his father, as his mother looked on in the distance, morphed into a large explosion rocking a city street. The kiss of a raven haired beauty while on a picnic transformed into a bloody pool where she once was. A ghostly ancient face apparating over his own as he passes a mirror. A small taste of the ever shifting dream that locked Marcus into his sleep. As the dreamy montage neared its end, a voice rang out as if splitting the scenes, “the battle is about to begin. Take up your sword and fight, warrior.”
Marcus shot awake as his doorbell rang out. Both the voice and the bell ringing in his head. He found himself looking at his reflection in a drinking glass. He had a fighter’s build, showing it off in his short sleeved white shirt. He took note of his need for a shave and a haircut, but not wanting to stop his manic work rate. His normally short copper colored hair was about to reach his shoulders and his beard was shaggy and unkempt. His icy blue eyes looked tired. The doorbell sounded again, shaking him out of his haze. He looked at his surroundings.
He found himself in the study of the manor house he called home, leaning back in an antique purple chair. The nice mahogany trimmed room with gray carpet held a computer desk and a series of books and papers littering the room. He shook his head.
“I fell asleep in the chair again,” he said to himself as he got up. He looked again at the glass with a tiny bit of bourbon at the bottom and added, “with a drink.”
He danced around the minefield of books, papers and a random bottle on the floor to get out and to the front door. He strolled past the library as the door opened slightly and a yellow/orange cat stretched into view from the room. The slightly opened door revealed the paintings of his ancestors. Marcus hurried past the discerning glares of the seven generations that preceded him.
“Good morning Piper,” he said absently to the cat as it jumped to a table to get patted on the head. “It’s past noon,” he heard in his head.
He pushed past a sewing desk with the picture of an elderly gray haired gentleman on it and a mounted suit of knight’s armor that needed to be moved. The red mahogany wood remained prevalent throughout the house, but gray carpet grew brighter and more white as he went through the hall. The bearded man got to the house’s main entrance way, coming out of a hall that was framed by two curving staircases. The doorbell rang out again as he reached the bottom of the staircase.
“Hey. This is a big house and I don’t have a butler or anything,” exclaimed Marcus.
Out of habit and caution he checked the secret holster beside the door and peered out a side window. He saw a dark sedan with tinted windows in his circle driveway. He looked to the porch and saw a slender sandy blonde lady in a professional looking dark suit standing patiently, if not a little fidgety, at his door. He smiled. It had been awhile since he worked with this FBI agent.
He opened the door and said, “Agent Blaze, what a lovely surprise?”
Alexandria Blaze stood stoic as she spoke, “I’m well. You can call me Alex if you want.”
Marcus looked down to see a brown file folder in her folded arms.
“Is this a business call? I was thinking it might be a social visit,” remarked Marcus.
She remained stoic, but the slight eyebrow raise gave away her small chuckle. She moved past him into the house and under her breath said, “in your dreams, Marcus.”
After he let her pass and was shutting the door, he whispered to himself, “I’m sure it’d be a better one than I have now.”
She stood waiting in the entrance as Marcus shut the door. She took in the scope of the house from the inside. The outside was pretty large on a big lot of grass and forest in the back. The grandeur of the space was something to behold. She looked around at the mix of old time construction with more modern design and technology. She noted the security system was advanced. If Marcus didn’t look like he’d been asleep, she might think he knew the moment she had arrived.
“You have an amazing house. You should think about getting a butler or something.”
Marcus chuckled to himself as he escorted her through the house to the sitting area. “My parents left it to me,” he said as they started through the hall.
“You said they died when you were a child,” queried the investigator.
Marcus nodded as Piper jumped onto the sewing desk beside Alex as if studying her. “This is my cat Piper,” stated Marcus as she did so. Alex petted her and Piper let her go.
Marcus came to the door of one of the main sitting rooms and waited for her to catch up. Alex spied a picture of Marcus and a woman with long black hair in a loving embrace on the table to the right of the door. She was about to ask something, but saw something in his eyes that told her not to pry. She changed to small talk as she walked up.
“Lots of portraits and old pictures. How long has your family lived near Kansas City?” she asked.
“Civil war times I think,” he answered, rubbing his eyes.
“Sleeping till noon,” she teased slightly, “nothing to do today?”
“I do most of my work at night, darling,” he retorted.
The term of endearment used to bother her but she got used to it. He just started using it during the last case they worked. It was a slip of the tongue that just continued. She looked down at a discarded wine bottle and asked with concern, “are you okay, Marcus?”
“I’m fine. Just a bad couple of months,” responded Marcus, earnestly.
Out of habit Alex clocked all of the rooms in the house: study, full library, two bathrooms, ballroom, kitchen, dining room, game room and the living room they were entering. She deduced about ten more rooms on the second floor from the outside layout.
The reddish wood panels framed the circular inside room with gray carpeting. The room had a couch, loveseat and two recliners with a flat screen television and a game station. Alex sat on the loveseat. Marcus joined her and asked, “what can I do for my favorite federal agent today?”
Not able to resist the banter she responded with, “I’m sure you say that to all federal agents” She handed him the file.
Marcus opened the folder and read through it as Alex spoke.
“I’m working on a kidnapping case with possible murders involving children. It’s happening all over the tristate area: Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. I keep coming back to some of the things you said during the last case we worked together. ‘You can’t see some things because they defy your own logic.’ ‘People aren’t always as we see them.’ The same feeling as the leaping ghost murders keeps hitting me during this one. My profile had similarities with the man we arrested, but you had insights I didn’t.”
Marcus read about the kidnappings as he kept an ear open for her speaking. There were seven kidnappings so far with other ones in the area being loosely connected. They found one of the children that was missing. “Sounds familiar,” whispered Marcus, mainly to himself. The child said she didn’t remember much. A cold room, iron bars, other kids, but little else. When one of the investigators pressed for more information, they started screaming incoherently about monsters. As Alex finished speaking he came across pictures of a strange brand like mark on the child’s back. It was a distorted jackal head with tentacle-like appendages.
When he saw the mark the twinge of familiarity he felt became a phantom knowing. The type of feeling where you know something but see through it at the same time. The jackal head was close to an Egyptian sect he knew about, but was off. Where did he remember that mark? He heard his own voice, but when he was a small child say, “where are you going, mommy?” He let his thoughts go back to the time, to that feeling.
He saw himself in the dining room, working on a report about demonology. Again he asked, “where are you going, mom?”
“We are going to rescue some expectant mothers that were taken by some very bad people, Markie,” answered his mother. He hadn’t thought of her in a long time. Good to see her red hair and bright blue eyes again. He got up to hug her goodbye and saw an artist’s rendering of the brand on the bag she was packing. He felt his body tense and Alex asked if he was alright.
“Got to go back further,” he said to himself mentally. As he stayed in the moment he heard a door open. His father, a tall slender man with black hair walked into the room carrying a book that read, “Marks of the Mad Ones” on the spine and said to Marcus, “behave yourself for Jacob, son.” He showed something in the book to mother and they left as a hand touched his shoulder.
Marcus shot up as Alex had touched his shoulder. It also startled Piper on the back on the loveseat, who screeched loudly. He rushed in a manic fury to the library with Alex and Piper in tow.
“What is it, Marcus?” he heard Alex say.
“Scared me,” he heard in his mind.
“That mark,” he said pointing to it in the folder as he put it down on one of the tables in the library. “I remember that mark from a book. Could mean a couple things but I swear it was either in the book or had a reference to it in a book.”
Alex watched as the mad man poured over the books in his library. “Nope,” he said eventually, “not here. Haven’t seen it anywhere else. Where is it?”
He put the image in his mind and let out a thought. He heard a voice respond, “I think Jacob might have it. Are you sure you want to get involved? What about the innocent, she obviously can’t see it?”
Marcus raised an eyebrow and stared at Piper. Alex had to follow his gaze confused and looked back at Marcus. He leaned down and pet Piper.
“I’m sorry for scaring you, Piper.” He looked at Alex and continued, “you too."
“There are several Egyptian sects in the world whose iconography matches the mark. I admit not entirely. There is a group in Kansas City called the Aruma Tat. I don’t have much on them.”
Marcus looked over the report again before handing back the folder. He paused for a moment on a detail he missed on his initial read. The location of the kidnappings seems to have a ritualistic pattern that occult types might be able to gleam from. Two leads that put him in a similar area in Kansas City. He looked at Alex as he handed back the folder and before picking up a book on occult patterns and significance handed that to her as well.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“The locations have occult significance,” he replied.
“I know some people believe in that stuff around here,” she responded.
To which he responded, “I can help you darling, but I need to do more research. Care to take a sinner to church?”