She slowly approached the scorched shell of a building, its half-caved steeple thrusting up towards the full moon that illuminated the burn marks across brick walls and once white columns. It was set back from the road in the shelter of a copse of trees, both old and young.
Definitely something spooky about it, she thought, pulling her car into the cracked parking lot of a deserted factory across the street. The recent warm weather had encouraged the weeds pushing up through the pavement. They’d already overtaken the broken steps and grounds of the church across the street. Vines, some starting to sprout greenery, sprawled across the burned, blackened walls like nature’s attempt at sticking a Band-Aid over an open wound. Candace didn’t blame locals for being wary of the place. Not only would it be dangerous to enter the unstable structure, but she could see how anybody with an ounce of imagination could be led to think it was haunted.
Maybe it was the religious aspect of the edifice; maybe the terrible stories of the fire and deaths. Whatever it was, as she gazed at the hollowed-out structure Candace could readily agree it simply needed to be torn down.
She sat there in the darkest corner of the parking lot, which was, itself, overhung with sprouting trees, both her engine and her headlights off, arms folded over the steering wheel and chin resting on her arms, considering.
Yep. If I were Elia, and I was looking for a local spot to film a video for a song like Holy Ground, this would be perfect. Her crew could set up here in this parking lot across the street. Plenty of room. Permits to shut off the street would probably be easy to get. Not like there’s much traffic here. This place would make a statement, for sure.
The detective’s line of trailing thoughts was interrupted by seeing a car pull into the same parking lot where she sat, albeit at the opposite end, also in a darkened corner. She might not have thought very much about it, except the car didn’t pull in at a crawl like she’d done, or even at a normal pace, like a potential drug deal—which wouldn’t be out of place in this neighborhood, at this time of night—but it spun into the parking lot with a squeal of brakes and tires. The vehicles’ headlights bounced off another car Candace hadn’t even noticed until now, parked as it was in the darkness with the headlights off. Whoever the newcomer was, the driver slid to a stop right next to the hidden car, slammed his into park, then jumped out. He—Candace thought the driver was male—didn’t appear to notice her there as he took off at a sprint across the street.
Curious, Candace climbed out of her own vehicle, moving quickly, checking that her Glock was in place and her phone was in her pocket, albeit silenced. Locking her car and shoving her keys in her pocket, she followed the newcomer, curious about his actions, about the vehicles in the parking lot, and why the man was running directly towards the church this late at night.
As he crossed the street, the stranger briefly passed into the orange glow of the streetlight shining down from the corner. In this low-income neighborhood, maintaining streetlights wasn’t a priority to the city, so up and down the street were huge patches of darkness interspersed with random lights, like this one. Maybe this light was kept on to illuminate the dangers of trespassing in an old, charred church building. Whatever the case, the light offered the detective a glimpse of the man sprinting for the former house of worship. She squinted, then bit her lower lip to restrain a gasp or curse.
That guy looks familiar.
Impossible to say for sure, but he bore a striking resemblance to Carter Ballis, head of security for Sean Costas, and the man she’d tied to the original case she was trying to build against the Costas Empire, back last fall. The case that had started with the mysterious blood and burned spots in the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. The man she’d witnessed being t-boned in front of the law offices of Rodriguez, Stanton, and Vern. The man she’d seen with her own eyes shapeshift into some sort of half-human, half-bronze creature. Since being unofficially ordered to drop the case she’d grudgingly given up keeping tabs on the man, but clearly he’d survived.
If that’s even him.
Chills snaked down her spine. All these years on the force. Candace wasn’t rattled easily, but this was downright creepy. A full moon. Almost midnight. The man whose auto accident had awakened her to a daunting world of humans with supernatural abilities. A man high up in the organization of the crime boss she wanted to take down. Running towards—make that running into—an allegedly haunted church.
What is going on here?
It was almost as if she could feel a blanket of danger or evil settling over the scene. Automatically, Candace reached for her phone to call for backup, then stopped. By this point, she’d crossed the street herself and was currently squatting in some out-of-control hedges lining the cracked, splintered sidewalk. She was confident the shadows, not to mention her dark suit, would keep her hidden for a few moments while she decided what to do.
What would she say if she did call for backup? No crime had been committed, unless it was Ballis, a potential suspect in an officially dead case, trespassing. That wasn’t something the cops in this area would likely care about. They had bigger issues to deal with. So the idiot wanted to risk his life playing around in a haunted church. Let him!
I could call Gary.
Gary had warned her more than once to stay away from these people. To leave Sean Costas and his shapeshifters alone. He’d tell her to get the heck out and stay out.
Honestly, she had two choices. Go in alone, or leave.
Candace felt that bulldog feeling rising up in her chest, stiffening her backbone. She’d never been a quitter. If she was, she wouldn’t be where she was today.
Guess I’m going in then.
Decision made, she dried her sweaty palms on her slacks before retrieving her Glock. She wasn’t going in unarmed. Maybe nothing dangerous was going on, but her instincts told her the exact opposite. Whatever was happening inside old Westside Baptist, she wouldn’t face it helpless.
Rising to a crouch, she slunk through the bushes, pushing limbs out of the way, hoping she wouldn’t step on a board with a nail and have to go get a tetanus booster. Reaching the same spot where Ballis—if that’s actually who it had been—had disappeared, she glimpsed an opening in the side of the church which had been boarded off. Several wooden planks, the nails sticking out, had been pulled off and tossed on the ground. From the road, nobody would be able to see, especially in the dark, but there was a hole big enough for an adult to crawl through.
Once she entered the space, any remnants of illumination from the streetlight would be gone. Candace pulled a penlight from her pocket, gripping it in one hand and the gun in the other as she stooped to pass through the hole and into the church. The penlight did little to push back the encroaching darkness, but it made her feel a bit safer as she swept it around, trying to get a bearing for where she was. Safer, until it landed on the sprawled body a few feet away. She hadn’t been expecting that, and Candace smothered a gasp. For an instant she froze, then her cop reflexes kicked in and she slowly approached.
Even from a distance, she could tell the man was dead. Judging from the strange angle of the head, his neck had been broken. She crouched next to the corpse, careful not to touch anything, playing her penlight over the victim.
The corpse wasn’t a slightly built man. Neither was Ballis. There were signs of a struggle, but if Ballis had killed this guy the struggle had been brief. She’d been right on his heels, after all. A cold shiver made her twitch as a memory flashed of the half-bronze creature she’d seen in the driver’s seat of Ballis’ car.