Finding the crime scene wasn’t difficult. We could see the police cars, lights flashing, a mile before we arrived. It was an indoor shopping mall in Norfolk, a very public place, indeed. Several police cars, both marked and unmarked, crowded the entrance to the mall and Bill instructed Eli to follow their lead. Eli pulled into a parking space, ignoring the painted stripes. We all four exited the SUV at the same time.

Uniformed policemen hovered near the mall entrance and one nodded to Bill as he approached. “Detective Townsend, I can’t let these people in.” The officer waved in our general direction and held up a restraining hand. He was young. Probably a rookie.

“They are with me. Special consultants,” Bill said, and waited for the young uniform to make his decision.

“All right, but you are taking responsibility for this,” the rookie said. “Cap said on the radio no one gets in but you. No one else has arrived.” I knew he was talking about other people who could take charge.

“Don’t worry, kid. As soon as I walk through that door, I’m in charge,” Bill told the rookie, and the boy relaxed and smiled. He didn’t try to stop us as we four filed through the glass doors. Bill turned toward us and said, “This will make things easy.”

This crime scene was in a very crowded mall in the middle of the day on a Saturday. A hundred people milled around, taking pictures with their cell phones, obscuring the body or bodies from our view. Bill’s voice boomed. “Who is in charge?”

A uniformed police officer approached Bill and before he was within twenty feet, Bill said, “Sergeant, get these people out of here, right now. This isn’t Disneyland. Get the mall manager down here. I want this whole mall shut down.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. The sergeant grabbed three other uniforms and they started herding people away from the scene.

A lady started yelling that she had rights and the cops couldn’t make her leave. Bill walked up to her and she had to strain her neck to look up at him. “Lady, you got rights, sure, but so do I. Right now, I have the right to tell you to shut the hell up and get your fat ass out of here. This is a freaking crime scene and not a tourist attraction. You yell one more time and you will find yourself thrown into the back of a patrol car and on your way downtown.” He looked toward all the people who had gathered around. “Put the freaking cell phones away or I will start confiscating them, right now. You don’t get a move on, you will be arrested.”

The first lady started, again. “You can’t do this,” she said.

“Actually, yes I can. Sergeant, arrest her for obstruction. Make sure you explain those rights she is so interested in,” Bill told the uniformed cop closest to him at that moment. Bill turned away from the crowd that was rapidly dissipating and the sergeant handcuffed the lady who had been yelling. She started screaming about police brutality when actually the sergeant was being very nice to her. She collapsed onto the polished marble floor of the mall and the sergeant and two other uniforms lifted her up to carry her out of the mall.

“People like that give me a swift pain,” Bill said. “They think if they yell loud enough they can get their way. You see it everywhere. The same ones who yell at cashiers and waitresses. People totally without any kind of class or upbringing.” I tended to agree with him. And I understood what he was going on. Bill was delaying the inevitable, simply because he was facing a very unpleasant task.

A middle-aged man in a nicely tailored three-piece suit approached Bill and asked, “Are you in charge of this?” He gave the circle of policemen a disparaging look.

“Yes, I am. Detective Bill Townsend of the Virginia Criminal Investigations Department, and who are you?”

“I am Sheldon Richards and I am the manager of this facility. You cannot close it down. I have a responsibility to the merchants who depend on this facility for their livelihood. A couple of bodies on the floor should be cleaned up fairly rapidly, and then you and your cohorts can leave. The spectacle is distracting for the shoppers. But, I will not shut down this mall.”

Bill looked at him for about half a second and then said, “Sheldon, come with me.” He grabbed Sheldon Richards, a man who was shorter than me by three inches, by the upper arm and escorted him to the scene that none of us really wanted to see.

The circle of cops separated and we were finally able to see what happened. There weren't one or two bodies. There were ten or more. I stared, trying to get a sense of what I was seeing. It took me a few minutes to get my brain around the sight before me. It looked as if the bodies were blown apart from the inside. Blood and thicker things spread across the floor and up the walls of the theater entrance.

Bill still held onto Sheldon’s upper arm. “Now, Sheldon, do you want your patrons and merchants to see this? Do you want them tracking blood all over your nice pretty mall here?”

Somewhere behind me, a cop said, “He’s gonna blow,” and Sheldon gagged. Bill pushed him away from the crime scene and Sheldon’s lunch splattered across the mall floor, adding to the mess that was already there. “That’s what I thought,” Bill replied and left the poor manager to deal with his embarrassment. Bill added, “You barfed on your shoe, there, Sheldon. And on your pants leg. The cleaners will have a terrible time getting that out.” Bill knew he wouldn’t receive any further objections from the man.

Already, stores closest to the scene were closing. Their metal grates were being pulled down and the lights were going out inside the stores. One by one the uniformed cops told store managers to close the store and escort their remaining customers out of their back doors.

Bill turned to us, the other three people in his power base. “Don’t get any closer because you don’t have any of those booties for your shoes and don’t touch anything without gloves on your hands. Although it looks like half of Norfolk has already paraded through this mess. But, tell me, have you seen this before, anywhere?”

I felt a tug of familiarity from Aaron. I didn’t want to get closer, but I did. I took those few steps that would put me close enough to vomit on the crime scene, too. I tasted the blood again, that sweet coppery taste on the back of my tongue as if I was sucking on new pennies. The chunks— there was no other word to describe it— of human flesh disturbed me enough to make me shudder. Blood still ran along the floor as if someone spilled a paint bucket of that hideous red color. I glanced at Aaron.

Aaron squatted down, his chin in his hand and his elbow on his thigh. “Enyo would do this to someone before a battle so she could pick through the fleshy parts to find things to decorate her body. She really liked brains and intestines. She would use the intestines like a snake and wrap them around herself. She always shared it with Eris.”

“And you didn’t find that particularly disgusting?” Bill asked from behind me.

“Well, yes, I did, but she was an excellent soldier, so I didn’t argue about it,” Aaron said. “And in the Golden Age, I think all of us inviolate Olympians were capricious about human life.”

“So this is a metaphysical thing. Blowing a body apart from the inside,” Bill asked, quietly.

“Yes,” Aaron said, as he rose to his full height. “But, Bill, I have never seen her do more than one at a time. Are there any witnesses? Did this all happen at the same time or did they fall one after the other?”

“Dunno,” Bill said and he walked toward a small group of three men in equally bad-fitting suits. “Hey, Paul, were there any witnesses?”

“Yeah,” the one named Paul answered. “The two girls selling tickets at the box office and the guy inside who was taking tickets. They are in the theater manager’s office. Hey Bill, who are your friends? More of those physic weirdos?”

“Consultants, Paul, consultants,” Bill said.

“You been consulting with her the past two days?” Paul asked. “You know you aren’t supposed to bring your girlfriend to a crime scene.”

I felt my anger flare and Eli put a restraining hand on my shoulder. The anger I felt wasn’t all mine. Most of it was Bill and Aaron.

Bill asked the rude detective, “What’s up with you? You got emotional problems, today?”

“I just want to know who is at my crime scene and I don’t know any of the three of them,” Paul continued.

“I told you, they are special consultants. And by the way, Paul, this is my crime scene, not yours,” Bill countered. “How about you show me where the witnesses are and then you and your girlfriends, there, start collecting evidence. You may want to count how many bodies are actually there.” He turned to us and said, “We can’t get inside the theater without contaminating the crime scene more than it already has been. We’ll have to go around to the back door.”

“Towny, I was first on the scene, so I am in charge,” Paul persisted. “Go back to Newport News and the rest of those Virginia Criminal Investigations Department degenerates.”

Bill whirled on the other detective and attacked. “If you’re in charge, then why did you let a hundred people take pictures of this mess with their cell phones? Why didn’t you close the mall, immediately? Why did you let everyone and his dog walk through the scene? You are doing a piss poor job of being in charge. Now, don’t give me any more of this juris-my-dick-tion crap.” Bill pulled his cell phone from his pocket and speed-dialed a number. Without saying hello, Bill said, “Paul Sweeney is trying to pull rank.” Then, he pressed the speaker button. The tinny voice filled the area with, “You tell that rat bastard to back off or I’ll have him cleaning the head at the Norfolk station for the next month. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Bill closed the phone and said to Paul, “You heard the man. Now, the crime scene guys are just now walking in the door. Maybe you can point them in the right direction and maybe between you, you can figure out how many dead guys we got here. Maybe start by counting skulls or jaw bones or you can make it easy on yourself and count the pairs of jeans with squishy stuff inside.” Bill took three long strides toward the man and said, “And, you can call me Bill or you can call me Detective Townsend. You can not call me Towny. Now, get to work.”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

One of the other detectives said, “It’ll take a month to put this puzzle back together.”

“Then, I suggest you get started, Mike. Sheldon, here, won’t want his mall closed any longer than necessary. I’m going to talk to the witnesses. Tell Cap where I am when he gets here.”

Bill didn’t have to tell us to follow him. We just did. He was angry and his stride reflected that. I had to practically run to keep up with him.

Outside the mall, Bill asked the rookie at the door where the back door to the theater was and the kid, eager to please, pointed to an unremarkable door that was painted the same color as the outside wall of the mall. Bill tried the handle and it was locked, so he pounded on the door with his fist. After a few seconds, the door remained closed. Bill shouted toward the rookie, “Call those guys inside and tell them to open the freaking door.” He punctuated the word ‘door’ by pounding a fist against it, again. The rookie immediately lifted his radio to his mouth and began talking. I couldn’t hear what he said but within ten seconds, the door swung open.

Bill let me enter first and he, Aaron, and Eli followed. “Sorry guys. I get really grumpy when I see dead bodies,” Bill said to us. I knew that. I felt it. Bill was angry with Phobos and his gang, already, and this crime scene fueled that anger to higher levels. He was angry that he could not stop it from happening. He was angry with the whole world that would allow anything like this to continue. He was angry with us for not stopping Phobos a hundred years before, or a thousand. Bill Townsend was not friends with the angel of death.

He asked the uniformed policeman who opened the door where the manager’s office was and the older man told him. Then, “Cap is on his way, so if you hear someone knocking, give him the benefit of the doubt and open the freaking door. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” the older man said.

Inside, there was a hum of activity as every policeman in Norfolk was apparently on the scene. They were talking to theater employees and each other. The carpet, which was once deep blue, was stained dark purple from the hundreds of bloody footprints left behind by police personnel. By the time we arrived obviously, every one of the policemen milling around inside the lobby had walked through the blood to get inside. I vaguely wondered why none of them used the side door. “Look at this mess,” Bill muttered. “Not one of them knows what to do at a crime scene. A real crime scene.”

Bill walked past all of them. The carpet ended and a white tile floor began. Here, the bloody feet were even more apparent, standing out in sharp contrast to the gleaming white floor. We didn’t need directions to the manager’s office. The bloody trail had been blazed for us. Bill stopped in front of the door that said, helpfully, Manager. He knocked and a female uniformed police officer opened it. “Hey, Darlene, are these the witnesses?”

She nodded her answer and then said, “The other four are in the lady’s room.”

“In the lady’s room? You gotta be kidding me,” Bill said. “What are they doing in the ladies’ room?”

Darlene glanced at the theater manager and then said, “They were covered in blood. They wanted to clean it off.” It was easy to tell where the witnesses went because they left bloody footprints from the manager’s office to the bathroom. I also know that it was the manager who insisted the girls get cleaned up because he didn’t want blood in his office. I instantly didn’t like the man.

And neither did Bill. “Holy Hannah. They were covered in evidence, Darlene. Evidence.” Bill said. Then, to me, “Athena, can you go in there and stop them from washing everything down the drain? Darlene, go with her. And don’t freaking touch anything. Neither one of you have gloves.”

I glanced at Eli and he followed us. I pushed the door open and the four teens couldn’t have been in the bathroom very long because they were still covered in blood and more solid objects. The four girls looked as alike as Barbie dolls, all with long blonde hair and skinny jeans. They were looking in the mirrors and at each other. The tension in the room was electric and any second, they were going to lose their composure. The four were in shock which would quickly wear away to hysteria. It started when one said, “Get it off me. Get it off!” She screamed and tried to brush away something that looked like liver from her pants leg.

I rushed to her and put my arms around her shoulders. “It’s alright. Just wait a few minutes and we’ll get you cleaned up. The crime scene guys will be here to collect evidence.”

“This isn’t evidence,” the girl screamed shrilly. “This is blood. It is blood. Where’d it come from?”

“Are any of you hurt?” Darlene asked.

“It’s not my blood,” the one girl who was most detached said.

“Darlene,” I said. “Let’s get them out of the bathroom.” And right on cue, the girl with the liver on her pants ran to a stall and wretched loudly. A chain reaction started and two more of them found stalls. The detached girl stared at something beyond the wall of the bathroom. She was the one who was in the most trouble. I walked to her and reached a hand toward her. “Come out of here and sit down.” Eli waited just inside the bathroom door. “Eli, she needs something to drink. Get it from the concession.” The girl took my hand and walked with me like she was drugged. “Darlene, I am going to send in some help. Don’t let them clean this stuff off. Just wash their hands and rinse their mouths when they finish vomiting.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. Darlene simply accepted my presence. I saw in her head that she thought I was a special detective, so she followed my instructions without question. Darlene was glad to have help in the bathroom. She was small with hair as blonde as any of the Barbies. But, inside, Darlene was tough and strong. She was a good cop. She decided to let the girls go to the bathroom when the whiny manager yelled at her to get the “bloody bitches,” out of his office. Darlene was trying to maintain order and keep the whole scene from exploding. Regardless of what Bill said, I felt Darlene did the right thing.

I stepped outside with the dazed girl and motioned to another female uniform standing in the hallway. Her gold name tag said, Gomez. Without hesitating, I said, “Gomez, Darlene could use some help in there. Grab one or two others.” Gomez nodded and stepped into the lobby to find some reinforcements. She was very glad to have something to do because she felt like furniture.

Eli came back with a chair in one hand and a drink in a cup in the other. He put the chair outside the bathroom door and I helped the girl sit. I took the soft drink from Eli and then smoothed blood-sticky hair from her cheek. “Take a sip,” I instructed and the girl did. “Another one,” I said and she did. Bill walked up to me and handed me a pair of latex gloves and I placed the cup on the floor before pulling on the gloves. All this, I did, without taking my eyes off the girl in front of me. I was seriously worried about her. I knelt in front of her and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Jessica.” It always is.

“Jessica, you’re alright. It’s all over. We just need to gather some evidence,” I said.

“I want my mom,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

“Holy Hannah,” Bill said. “These kids are minors. We can’t do anything until we contact their parents.” He walked to the door of the bathroom and shouted,

“Darlene, find out where these girls live.” Bill stood aside when he saw the women officers approaching. Gomez returned to the bathroom door with two other women and Bill stopped her. “You, Gomez, go tell the guys outside that the parents are coming up here and to let them in the side door. Don’t let the parents see the scene.” Gomez nodded and Bill stood aside so the other two females could enter the bathroom. I could hear crying from inside and I knew the girls there were not yet recovered but were pretty well on their way.

Darlene stepped into the hallway and said, “We got twins, Megan and Regan Fairchild, and a cousin, Autumn Summers. I got the addresses.”

“Ok,” Bill said. “We’ll send a cruiser over to pick up the parents. They’ll get here safer that way. Athena, see if you can get her address.” Bill pointed toward Jessica.

I nodded and then asked Jessica, “Where do you live?”

She didn’t answer me.

“Do you have a cell phone?”

Again, she didn’t answer me. I pulled the shoulder bag from her shoulder and opened it. Her cell phone was inside on the top. I left the cell phone alone and removed her wallet, instead. Her driver’s license was inside. I handed it up to Bill so he could give the address to the dispatcher. “Bill, tell them to hurry.” He nodded and spoke again to the dispatcher.

Jessica started to softly sing a song I didn’t recognize, but it sounded like a lullaby. She flopped over, so she was leaning on her thighs and her hands hung down to the floor.

Bill felt my worry and went into the lobby. His voice boomed across the room when he asked, “Anybody from Juvenile in here?”

Within thirty seconds, a man knelt beside me and said, “Jake Harrison.” He held an ungloved hand toward me and then shrugged, but didn’t offer to shake my blood-covered gloved one.

“I’m Athena Weaver and she is Jessica Carpenter.”

“How are you feeling Jessica?” Jake asked. She didn’t answer and Jake glanced at me. “Your mom will be here soon, Jessica.” Then, to me. “We need to call an ambulance. She needs a hospital.”

Another man squatted in front of the girl and said, “We need to gather the evidence from her.”

Bill intervened, “She is a minor, and nothing gets gathered until her mom or dad gets here and she is going to a hospital, pronto.”

The man stood up, “Sorry, Jersey. There is total confusion in front of this theater. Nobody told me anything.”

“S’okay, Pal,” Bill said. “And it’s Brooklyn, not Jersey.” Then, Bill looked at me and said, “We got this for a couple of minutes. See if you can get anything from the other witnesses.” I nodded and crossed the hallway to the manager’s office. Bill wanted my telepathic abilities to fill in the blanks the witnesses had in their stories.

This, I could do. Bill handed me another pair of gloves as I walked past him and I pulled them on over the gloves that were bloody from Jessica’s clothes.

Inside, two young black girls in theater uniforms held onto each other while they cried. One of the girls had an elaborate wig that was slightly askew and the other one’s makeup had run down her face. There was a young boy sitting in a chair, staring at the floor as if the weave in the carpet was the most important thing on the earth.

A man, presumably the manager, looked irritated probably because his subordinates were in his office. He leaned against the wall and glared at me when I entered. Another intruder in the manager’s personal space.

Bill asked Darlene, “What’s the story?” The two of them were just outside the door and didn’t try to enter because the office wasn’t big enough for anyone else.

“They have been crying and screaming. I haven’t been able to get much out of them.” He nodded to her and gestured with his chin for me to approach them. Just a glance in my direction and I nodded, knowing what he wanted. I approached the two girls who took up one side of a plush, comfy sofa. I sat beside them and put my hand on the nearest shoulder. “Tell me what you saw.

The two exchanged looks and the one I touched, the one with the poorly fitting wig, began speaking. “I was selling tickets and that group walked up to the window.

They were all friends, you could tell. The one I started talking to was really cute. Then, the electricity went off in this part of the mall. But, the lights were still on over by Dillards. I could see them. Then, it was like a bomb went off or something. And this red stuff started flying everywhere.”

“Wait. A bomb?” Bill asked from the doorway. “Did you hear a bomb go off?”

“No. I didn’t hear anything, but my ears kinda hurt, like I was going up a high mountain.”

Bill nodded and the manager said, under his breath, “That doesn’t make sense.” It made perfect sense to me, having recently been in a whirlwind of psychic power.

“What happened next?” I asked her.

“That’s it. One second, they were laughing and arguing about who was gonna get their tickets first, and then red stuff was flying everywhere.”

“How many were there?” I asked her. She said, “Eight” and the other girl said, “More like eighteen.” They were both wrong. I saw the group in her head. There were eleven of them, plus the four girls who didn’t die. The victims were a soccer team from a nearby high school if their matching shirts were any indication. Eleven teenage boys were going to grab a lot of media attention. What was Phobos playing at? Was he really sending out a calling card, hoping to gather more of us to him? If that were the case, this place would be crawling with Olympians in a very short time.

“What’s your name?” I asked the crooked wig.

“I’m Gwen and this is Tia.”

“Thank you, Gwen and Tia.” I turned to the boy. “What about you? What did you see?”

He answered, but he didn’t look at me. “It was like a car wash. Yeah, that’s it. Like being in a car wash only instead of them using water, they used blood. The lights went off for a second then the blood hit the door. Weird. It hit the door. I saw it coming for just a second and it hit the door. It sounded like someone ran into the door. A thump. The whole building shook. Mr. Griffin thought I did something because he was like, ‘What the hell did you do?’ I was like, nothing, man. I didn’t do nothing. I was just standing there and he thinks I did something. I am so fired over this.”

“No, it’s not your fault, Brian,” I told him as I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

He finally looked up at me and asked, “How did you know my name?”

I replied, “I read your name tag.” As an afterthought, I said, “And you won’t be fired for this. None of you will. You’ll get the rest of the day off, with pay. Right, Mr. Griffin?”

Mr. Griffin, the manager, frowned and glared at me, again. In spite of what he was feeling, he said, “Yeah.” He had been badly frightened and didn’t want anyone to know. He was a fat, middle-aged man with a ton of insecurities. Mentally, I dismissed him.

I looked at Bill. “Anything else you need from these people?”

“Nope,” Bill said. “We got enough.” I knew he saw in my mind what I grabbed from the two girl’s minds. Just like they said, one second alive and laughing and the next second the boys were all dead. Rehashing it with witnesses wasn’t going to change anything.

The most disturbing part of this is apparently, my blood relations had learned to share their powers with each other.