Cosmic Forces: Book Three in The Jake Helman Files Series Read online

  Spinning around, Jake saw a figure standing eight feet away. He could not tell if it was male or female, only that it wore a brown robe with a cowl that masked its features. It stood maybe five and a half feet tall, with stooped shoulders.

  Jake’s mind raced. No human being had made the shrill sound he had just heard.

  The thing shuffled forward, its feet hidden by the robe. The canvas fabric undulated from the waist down, as though the thing moved on legs that lacked a skeletal structure.

  Shoving his camera into his pocket, Jake reached for his Glock, holstered beneath his left arm. Before his hand closed around the gun’s grip, the thing emitted a loud gurgling sound that chilled his blood, and something shot out at him from beneath the cowl. He ducked to his left, and the protrusion darted onto the space where he had just stood, then retracted into the darkness within the cowl like a tape measure. It must have been four feet long.

  That’s a tongue!

  With his heart hammering, Jake pulled the Glock free, thumbed the safety off, and aimed at the approaching thing. The tongue, as thick as a snake, lanced out again, and he cocked his arm, aiming the Glock at the sky. The tongue wrapped around his forearm several times, its tip shaking in the air inches from his face. A vertical slit opened in the grayish-pink flesh, and Jake jerked his arm away as a stream of yellowish-green fluid sprayed out of the orifice.

  Venom!

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated with love to my daughter, Kaelin, who won’t be allowed to read this for another decade . . . or two.

  Published 2011 by Medallion Press, Inc.

  The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.

  Copyright © 2011 by Gregory Lamberson

  Cover design by Arturo Delgado

  Edited by Lorie Popp

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

  ISBN: 9781605424088

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As is often the case, I wish to thank Chris “the cop” Aiello for his advice on matters NYPD, specifically about the mayor’s security detail. Thank you also to my wife, Tamar, who served as my advance reader and convinced me to make changes to the narrative. And thank you to author Jeff Strand, the other person I count on to steer me straight when I’ve gone too far.

  As always, thank you to the team at Medallion Media Group (both Medallion Press and Medallion Movies), especially Helen A Rosburg, Adam Mock, Heather Musick, Emily Steele, Ali DeGray, Paul Ohlson, James Tampa, Arturo Delgado, and my editor, Lorie Popp, who now knows the Jake Helman timeline better than I do.

  Finally, thank you.

  TABLE OF

  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

  The Patch Adamczak Files

  PROLOGUE

  The man and woman scrambled out of the forest and over the rocky crest overlooking the cliff, their gait disjointed because her left hip had been fused to his right side. They had broken all of their limbs after leaping to the bottom of a canyon months earlier. They had survived, as always, and their unattended bones healed in such a manner that they now resembled some strange hybrid of a spider and a praying mantis more than a pair of human beings.

  The tanned animal hides they wore for clothing had become stuck to their open wounds and had become part of them, and flies and other insects nested in the wounds that remained exposed. Scabs and blisters covered them from head to toe, blood just one of several fluids that seeped from their cracked skin. The man had lost an eye in the fall, the woman most of her teeth. To make matters worse, the woman carried a child in her belly, for despite their misery and self-mutilation, they still found each other desirable.

  They had been together for more years than either of them could count, their love surviving famine and flood, winter and warfare, pestilence and punishment. But this last year on God’s green earth had been the worst. Even before their self-inflicted injuries, hunting for food had become all but impossible, requiring them to subsist on fruits and vegetables and, during their time on the ice, fish. On occasion they had stumbled upon fresh kills abandoned by other people and animals, and they had torn into the carrion with wild abandon, all the while becoming even more dependent upon each other to achieve even the simplest tasks. Things had changed so much since the days when they had been young and beautiful.

  Now they crawled and kicked and stumbled along the shale cliff in the odd rhythm that had become normal for them, the mist from the waterfall cooling their tortured flesh in the afternoon sun. A stream of obscenities poured from their mouths, hers more guttural than his; that too had become part of their rhythm. Spasms of pain ripped through their ankles and shins and the bloody fingers they used to stab the ground for balance. Salty tears burned the sores on their cheeks, causing whimpers and drool to slide off their tongues in unison.

  At last they reached the cliff’s edge, where they stood as erect as possible, man and woman, husband and wife, and gazed across the great lake. The clear blue sky permitted them to discern the hazy shore on the opposite side, some sixty miles away. The man’s right hand found the woman’s left hand, their fingers interlocking. The lake appeared beautiful, natural, and serene. Seagulls swooped above the choppy waves.

  The man turned his head so his good eye focused on his woman. I love you, he thought.

  And I you, he heard her think.

  They each mustered a hopeful smile. Then they stepped off the cliff.

  Maybe we’ll die even before we strike the water, he hoped. But he knew better and so did she.

  They plummeted, their stomachs rising up their throats. The velocity pulled at their flesh and blurred their vision as the water grew closer, the sun’s silver reflection on its surface brighter.

  Impact.

  The water shattered their bodies. The man prayed they would lose consciousness, for it would be impossible to swim to shore in their fleshy sacks of broken bones. But water filled his nostrils and mouth, and he found himself choking and alert.

  Husband, his wife cried into his brain, still gripping his hand.

  They did not drown.

  They did not die.

  Sinking deep into the water, they changed.

  CHAPTER

  1

  On a chilly April morning, Jake Helman sat on a dark green wooden bench bolted to the ground in the Tower’s shadow, eating a hot dog that bled ketchup and mustard. The narrow stretch of trees, divided
by a single asphalt path, was all that remained of the park which had once existed where the modern skyscraper now stood like a corporate monolith. Jake had worked for Nicholas Tower, the reclusive billionaire who had owned Tower International until the man’s violent death in his penthouse a year and a half earlier. In fact, Jake had caused Old Nick’s death, which hadn’t exactly been in his job description.

  A lot had changed since then: Jake had set up shop as a private investigator just a block away on East Twenty-third Street, the better to observe the Tower and any suspicious goings-on there. Tower had monopolized the genetics industry and had engaged in secret and illegal genetic experiments. The old man had also hired a serial killer, the Cipher, to steal souls for him. Tower had imprisoned the souls in his Soul Chamber, and after Jake uncovered Tower’s plan to strike a Faustian bargain with the demon Cain in exchange for an extra lifetime, the old man ordered the Cipher to kill Jake’s estranged wife, Sheryl. In return, Jake killed the Cipher. He had also killed Kira Thorn, Tower’s executive assistant, but that had been in self-defense.

  Jake often had trouble believing those horrible events had transpired. He had already quit doing drugs shortly before Sheryl’s murder, and since then he had stopped drinking and smoking. Exercise had become part of his daily routine, and except for the dark void Sheryl’s death had left in his soul and the mind-bending knowledge that supernatural forces existed, he felt physically better than he had in years. He enjoyed working as a private investigator far more than he had as an NYPD homicide detective. One vice he hadn’t given up was hot dogs, which he found convenient to eat during his daily vigil outside the Tower. Years earlier, he had watched squirrels race around the park that had been here before the Tower’s construction. Now he wondered if Old Nick’s man-made park remained in the Tower’s penthouse.

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he checked the display screen: unavailable. He waited for the call to end and listened to his voice mail. He didn’t like surprises.

  “This message is for Jake Helman,” a distraught-sounding female voice said.

  In her forties, Jake estimated.

  “I’d rather not give you my real name. Just call me Mrs. White. I’d like to engage your services. Please call me back so we can arrange a meeting.”

  Duty calls. Jake finished his dog and returned the call.

  Sitting in his fourth-floor office, Jake gazed out the sooty window at the Tower with his remaining eye. Dark clouds crept across the sky above the building. A former informant, addicted to a street narcotic called Black Magic, had destroyed Jake’s left eye with a knife in an assassination attempt in this very office. In retaliation, Jake had buried a stone replica of the Maltese Falcon in the man’s skull. He had worn an eye patch for a while and then switched to a glass eye identical in color to the one he had lost.

  One doctor had urged him to file an application to have an experimental new eye grown, but Jake refused to have anything to do with therapeutic cloning, one of the businesses Tower International had monopolized before the government had intervened with an antitrust suit in the wake of Old Nick’s death. Jake’s right eye had adapted to the change in its depth of field, and Jake had grown accustomed to cleaning his glass eye on a daily basis.

  Jake knew he had become obsessed with the Tower, but who could blame him? He had made bringing Tower International down his goal in life. He’d come close, and as a result, the global economy had gone into a tailspin. At least things were starting to rebound on that front; certainly his business prospects had shown improvement. But that didn’t let Tower International off the hook.

  A man’s got to have something to live for, he thought.

  Edgar lighted on his desk. Jake had erected a cage wall that ran the length of the office, providing the raven with space to move about, but he seldom secured the door, instead giving Edgar the run of the place. The windows remained closed at all times. Staring at the shiny black feathers of the two-foot raven, Jake found it almost impossible to believe that the bird had once been a human being: Edgar Hopkins, his former partner in the Special Homicide Task Force. Edgar had dated the wrong woman, a voodoo bokor who had transmogrified him into his current state. As a raven, Edgar had sent the woman plummeting to her death at a construction site, extending his feathered state to a life sentence. Not for the first time, Jake wondered how many of Edgar’s memories or humanity the raven retained.

  As if in answer, the black bird blinked at him.

  “You love that bird, don’t you?” Carrie stood in the open doorway, all four and a half feet of her. Razor-sharp dark hair, body piercings, tattoos.

  Jake held one hand out to Edgar, who pecked at his fingers. “Yes, I do.”

  Carrie smiled. “That’s so sweet. Big, tough private eye with a sentimental streak. I bet you couldn’t hurt a fly. Need me to stick around, boss?”

  Carrie had cut her grad school schedule in half, so Jake had increased her hours at the office. He allowed her to manage his business, which needed managing since he procrastinated when it came to filling out reports and maintaining records.

  “No, take off. I have to meet a client soon, and she wants to keep a low profile.”

  “Ooooooh . . .”

  Now Jake smiled. “Get out of here before Ripper gets suspicious.” Carrie had been dating Ripper for as long as Jake had known her. She claimed he was a real badass, but Jake had never met him.

  “Okay. See you tomorrow. Good night, Edgar.”

  The raven watched Carrie leave.

  Good kid, Jake thought as he heard Carrie walk through the railroad-style suite and close the front door. Genetics research had all but eliminated dwarfism, so Carrie belonged to the last generation of her kind. Progress.

  Ten minutes later, he heard the buzzer for the downstairs door. On one of the security monitors recessed into one wall he saw a woman standing in the vestibule. She wore sunglasses and a hat, an obvious attempt at going incognito. Without bothering to ascertain her identity, he buzzed her into the building, then crossed the suite and stood waiting with the office door open.

  The woman exited the elevator and approached him, her high heels clacking in the empty hallway, both hands inside the pockets of her belted raincoat. The sunlight shining through the window at the far end of the hall made the tiled floor gleam. Not so long ago, Jake had put a bullet through that window when a hit squad had invaded the building to take him out.

  The assassins had failed. More bodies.

  The woman walked with the poise and confidence of a movie star. She had removed her sunglasses in the elevator, and now she removed her hat, allowing Jake to discern her sophisticated features. She wore her dark hair pulled back as tight as Botox had left her porcelain skin.

  She dyes her hair, Jake thought.

  “Mr. Helman?” She enunciated each syllable like someone who had aced charm school. And yet Jake detected an edge in her voice, as if her insides were wrapped as tightly as her face. Her light brown eyes, which reflected light back at Jake, studied the walls behind him.

  “Jake.” He stepped away from the door. “Please come in.” As she passed him, he caught a whin0 of her perfume, subtle and expensive. In heels, she stood four inches lower than him. As her shoulder brushed against him, he felt an involuntary tingle of excitement. A year and a half after Sheryl’s murder, he had yet to sleep with another woman. His body longed to be touched again even if his soul did not. So far, he had been too busy building his business to act on such impulses.

  The woman turned to face him after he closed the door. “Would you mind locking that?”

  “I’d planned to.” He twisted the three locks on the door.

  She scanned the reception area. “Are we alone?”

  “As you requested.” He gestured toward the open office door beyond the kitchen. “This way.”

  She walked forward and stopped within the office doorframe. When she removed her hands from her pockets, Jake noted her white gloves. “Would you mind closing those b
linds?”

  Classy but paranoid, Jake thought. Or just cautious?

  Moving behind his desk, he closed the blinds, which elicited a mild croak from Edgar. Turning, he saw the woman’s gaze settle on his office companion.

  The color drained from her face. “Is that a crow?”

  “Raven,” Jake said in a soft voice, feeling compelled to put her at ease. “Though it’s part of the crow family. Go to your room, Edgar.”

  Fluttering his wings, Edgar hopped into the caged area. He landed on the front page of the New York Times. Jake always left the paper on the floor for him, even though he had no idea if the raven could read. Jake closed the cage door, which was the size of a standard bedroom door.

  “What an unusual pet,” the woman said, sitting opposite the desk. She seemed groggy to Jake, who eased into his chair, the slab of mahogany between them.

  “You look familiar, Mrs. White.”

  Glancing over her shoulder at Edgar, she crossed her legs. “I used to be a local TV reporter. Before that, I was Miss New York.”

  Jake resisted the urge to snap his fingers. As a uniformed cop, he had seen her on TV and in person. He had also seen her in the media many times since then. “And now you’re married to the mayor.”