Ch. 6 / Pt. 3 : When They Wear the Mask

Police sirens blared. Deirdre felt the headlights on her back before she saw them cast her shadow.

“Drop the weapon!” a loudspeaker blared.

Two vehicles angled themselves toward her. She dropped her gun and stopped sprinting, hands already in the air.

“She’s with me!” Paul yelled uselessly, catching up. He waved a badge in the air. As a consultant to the local PD, he carried an emblem identifying him as such. It had helped him get out of a drunk and disorderly charge, once, but didn’t seem likely to apply here. Still, “She’s with me!”

“Stop moving!” the loudspeaker demanded. “Put your hands up!”

“She’s with me!”

Car doors popped open. Cops drew standard issues. Deirdre couldn’t see anything anymore. She went blind. The pounding panic of her pulse in her temples drummed over all other sound. She dropped to her knees.

“Who the fuck are you!?” someone yelled at Paul. “Let me see that — hey, hands up! — let me see that.”

Unless Paul planned to get arrested for impersonating an officer as a distraction…

and then what?

“What the fuck case are you consulting on, old man? Huh? Hands up! Answer the fucking question!”

“Get on your knees!” someone shouted at Deirdre, though she already was. “Hands behind your head!”

Gunshots sounded from inside the house.

“What the…” the cop screaming at Paul stopped screaming.

A home alarm system blared.

“What the fuck?”

Deirdre’s sight returned as harsh shadows, bright light. She blinked, searching for focus. She couldn’t find it on the ground.

Another gunshot. The officers still in their cars crackled radio communique back to the precinct.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“I—I don’t know,” Paul replied.

“Get—get on the ground. Put your hands…” the younger man trailed off.

Deirdre turned her face toward the sky. Luna eyed the goings-on with narrowed suspicion.

Focus returned to the world first as a window, then as the monster behind it.

She saw him through the glass. She saw the Mask. When it peered back down at her, her body seized. Every muscle twisted and tightened at once. It felt like a powerful ritual triggering through her, like a final exhaustive sprint at the end of a race. Their gazes crossed briefly and Deirdre’s consciousness vanished beneath a single thought.

YOU.

“Face down on the ground,” the officer repeated, closer to her, now, and scared in a way that scared her. “Now. Face down. Now.”

She couldn’t shake the sixth sense rush of it all. She had such a weak sixth sense she’d rarely felt anything like it. The muscles binding her shoulder blades shivered and ached. Her lower back froze.

“Now!”

She hinged forward, joints groaning.

Overhead, the window shattered. Glass cascaded to the street in fractured daggers. Deirdre didn’t see what happened, but she heard the soft-tissue thud, bone-snapping crunch of a body hitting the pavement. She heard the fleshy tumble of its mass lose velocity against asphalt.

“Jesus Christ!” the one behind her recoiled.

Lying down, she closed her eyes and felt it. She felt It. The way Paul had. The way his sixth sense had echoed in hers after Rehani had linked them on a psychic network, she felt It. It was a thing lurking in the periphery, waiting for Its chance. The man was more than a man. She clenched her jaw against the sixth sense overwhelm.

“Someone needs to go in there,” the one behind her muttered. “Someone needs to…”

“We have to wait for backup,” the other replied.

“Oh, my God…”

“We have to wait. We should, uh…we need to get these in the back of a car.”

“What?”

“These two, in the back of a car.”

“On what charges?” Paul foolishly asked.

“Impersonating an officer, you. Her, uh, I don’t know. Possession of an unlicensed firearm.”

She had a license but said nothing. The weapon didn’t have a registration.

“I—someone should—I…” the one behind her cleared his throat. “Right. Right. Okay.” She felt him move closer to her. “You are under arrest for criminal possession of a firearm. You have the right—the right to remain silent…”

As the police arrested Deirdre and Paul, minutes passed.

A third car arrived and three men went inside too late. Minutes had passed and the man and the Mask had escaped out the back door and across a series of abutting lawns into the woods.

More cars showed up after that. A lot more.

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