Chapter 30

Dad's first question in the planning session wasn't related to our upcoming campaign except on a peripheral level.

"How did Melville discover the location of the safe house?" he asked Jerome pointedly.

"The sniper Katy captured answered my questions completely, even adding additional information without being prompted. I didn't use drugs on him. No need. One of the questions I asked was the question you just asked of me. Before his death, Peter Stone turned a low-level employee in the P.I. firm. She gave away the location. I questioned her. She was terrified and as forthcoming as the sniper. Fortunately, the location of the safe house was the only information she turned over to Melville's security team, which by the way is down to three individuals. I have their names and addresses. If we're successful with the upcoming campaign, they'll probably be the men who will take Melville down. That being the case, the police will be interested in their names and addresses."

Dad chuckled. "No doubt," he said and let his thoughts form with words so I could hear them.

I'm relieved, cupcake. I feared you'd been recognized during one or more of your contacts with coven members over the past couple of days, resulting in the assault on the safe house. That being the case, I'd have disallowed your participation in the upcoming skirmish with Melville and sent you away to parts unknown.

"In your dreams," I muttered out loud.

He chuckled again and said, "Probably."

I looked around the room. Except for Jason, our merry band was intact and loaded for bear, a two-legged bear named Gary Melville, aka, the destroyer.

Dad didn't return to Denver alone. Sara came with him. She wasn't about to let the love of her life put himself in harm's way without being by his side. She left little Donna with her family. Dad also brought Ed and Susan with him.

About mid-morning, Nora had been released from the hospital. She'd be all right. She was well enough to fuck Jerome's brains out not long after she arrived at the safe house from the hospital, so I knew she'd be up to the challenge presented by our final confrontation with the Destroyer.

The planning session was surprisingly short. Dad had worked on his plan during the flight to Denver from Las Vegas, but each of us supplied input or suggestions, mostly me, because I'd developed most of the intelligence through my invasive gifts.

I liked Dad's plan. It was clever, but not too clever, relying on character flaws in each of the coven members, mostly dark secrets each held deep inside them that I'd discovered while listening to their thoughts. What I liked most about the plan was its non-violent nature - well, almost non-violent. Melville would die, but none of us would do the actual killing.

We decided to start our campaign after the planning session instead of waiting for morning.

Helen Deaver was the first contact on our list. She was scheduled to be at a certain restaurant that evening. I'd volunteered to make the contact, using the ladies room in the restaurant for the rendezvous. Dad wasn't happy with the decision, but finally bent to my skewed logic. I'd be armed - Jerome had replaced my.45 with one just like the.45 the police had confiscated - and Nora would accompany me to the restroom. Also, Twigs did his magic on each of us before we ventured out to rub shoulders with evil, so none of us would be recognized.

Helen Deaver was married to Melville's business attorney, Jake. Jake was a large man, rough and ready, and powerful within the legal community, but Helen ruled the marriage like a drill sergeant. Jake asked how high when Helen told him to jump. Although dominant with her husband, she played the submissive with Melville. The destroyer allowed no one to dominate him, which sometimes rubbed Helen's fur the wrong way. She believed her husband should lead the coven, through her, of course. We planned to nudge her to take the steps necessary to realize her dream.

Nora and I followed her into the ladies room. I stood on a john next to the stall she occupied, and looking down at her, I said, "Melville isn't a believer. He's merely using you and others in the coven to accomplish his own purposes."

She shrieked and started to pull up her panties.

"Wipe first," I said as Nora pushed open the stall door - she'd assured me she knew how to jimmy a locked bathroom stall door - and shoved a gun in Helen's face.

"Should we let her live?" Nora asked calmly.

"Depends. Will you be quiet and listen, Helen?" I asked.

She gulped and nodded.

I chuckled when I heard urine tinkle into the bowl. Good thing we didn't let her pull up her panties or they'd be wet, I thought.

"Melville is a piece of shit, and he thinks all the members of the coven are a bunch of suckers," I said, starting my spiel. "He's an atheist for Christ's sake. An atheist doesn't believe in a Supreme Being, whether the Supreme Being is good or evil. You're better than he is, Helen. You're stronger, and you are a true believer. You should run the coven, not Melville, and you can run it through your husband, Jake."

I took a deep breath and hoped we had another minute or two before we were interrupted. The "Out of Order" sign we'd placed on the door when we entered might attract management's attention.

"Okay, here's the deal," I stated. "You and other members of the coven must kill Melville, or we'll start eliminating you one by one. If Melville isn't dead by the end of the week, here's the list of the of the coven members we'll eliminate one at a time until Melville finally faces the master you worship in Hell. Note that your name tops the list, Helen. But you won't be first. Your husband, Jake, will be first. If Melville remains alive after your husband's death, you'll be next."

I paused. It was time to close the deal. "Remember, you can run but you can't hide. We know things about you no one knows. For example, we know when you were twelve years old that you played with your German Sheppard's doggy cock. You jerked the dog off. The scruffy animal liked it, but not as much as you liked his large, slobbering tongue licking your nasty snatch. Finally, you let the dog fuck you until he squirted his spunk inside you. Do your remember Duke? I'm sure you do. After Duke fucked you, you were stuck to him for the better part of an hour. Remember? Yeah, you do. How could you forget? Your father found his doggy cock stuck in your little-girl cunt and damned near beat you to death. He did beat the dog to death, murdered your first lover while you watched. We know Jake doesn't know about Duke, so before we eliminate him, we'll make sure Jake knows why you prefer the doggy position when you fuck."

I dropped the list on her lap; it slid off her onto the tiled floor. "Kill Melville, Helen. Kill the motherfucker, or we'll kill you. One more thing. For Christ's sake, wipe your lice-infested cunt before you pull up your skanky panties."

I stepped down. Nora followed me out the door, removing the "Out of Order" sign as we left.

"How'd I do?" I asked Nora as we walked out of the restaurant.

"Perfect. You're certainly not the shrinking violet I thought you were."

"Ah, Nora, that wasn't me in the ladies room. That was a persona I took on to get our point across."

Nora huffed a laugh. "Well, if the skanky cunt didn't get the point, she's too dense for us to deal with. Is skanky a word? If it isn't, it oughta be. By the way, you should consider acting as a career."

We hopped into a sedan, and Nora cranked up the engine.

"Uh-uh," I said. "I'm into painting. I want to be an artist."

"Really!"

I explained my approach to my art, listing my two small successes.

She shook her head. She didn't say the word she thought. Amazing.

As she skillfully drove the sedan out of the parking lot, she said, "Follow your dream, kiddo."

"I will. We've become friends, haven't we?"

"Yeah, good friends."

"What some advice from a friend?"

"Sure."

"Don't share Jerome."

She laughed. "Yep, we're good friends. We think alike. I made the same decision a few days ago."

Dad and Jerome made the same point later that night when they interrupted Jake fucking his secretary on the conference table in his office. According to Dad and Jerome's report, Jake wasn't playing a submissive role with his secretary, just the opposite. The woman liked it rough. Being submissive, she happily gathered up her clothes and hustled out of the room as ordered. A gun in her face hastened her compliance.

Dad didn't use Jake's secretary as a lever. Helen knew about the woman and didn't give a damn. Dad used another tidbit of information I'd gleaned from a brief meeting with Jake - homosexual incidents with an uncle when he was a boy, experiences that surprisingly shamed the Satanist.

"Listen to your wife," Dad told Jake. "She's strong. You're weak, but you can lead. You can lead the coven with her behind you, guiding you. Melville doesn't have supernatural powers. He's just a man, just like you. Kill him! Kill him before the week ends, or you'll die in his place." Or words to that effect.

Ed and Susan crashed Fitzgerald's psychiatric offices the next morning, once again making our point. Fitzgerald had so many dark secrets in his past we had a difficult time picking one to demonstrate our unusual ability to ferret out facts unknown to anyone but the individual we accosted. We settled on his propensity to hypnotize his patients, both male and female, and jerk off while the patients told him about their sex lives in graphic detail.

When Sara heard about Fitzgerald's secret, she gasped and exclaimed, "He hypnotized me a few times!"

"I know, Sara," I said with compassion. "Sorry."

Sara successfully resolved the issue by thinking: At least he didn't touch me or fuck me.

I decided to leave well enough alone. Fitzgerald didn't fuck her. He feared Melville's wrath too much to go that far, but he couldn't resist fondling her, a fact I'd take with me to my grave.

Ed advised the psychiatrist to follow Jake Deaver's lead, or die. Fitzgerald also pissed his pants when Ed shoved a gun in his face, Susan happily reported.

We switched partners and made our point with other members of the coven, and then switched partners again, making sure every member capable of a power position in the coven knew what was needed for them to remain alive. Two days later, we felt we'd covered all the bases. Just to be safe, we moved to a new safe house and waited.

The Destroyer remained alive and well, which didn't surprise us. We figured we'd need to take Jake to make believers out of them. Of course, we didn't intend to kill him, merely use his temporary disappearance as leverage to force the others to comply with our wishes.

But Helen and Jake Deaver and their malevolent gang surprised us. Melville met the Evil One he didn't believe in on Friday morning when he and a bodyguard were gunned down in the street as he was leaving the Brown Palace Hotel.

Our merry band huddled around the big-screen TV in the great room of the safe house, listening to and watching the various media reports about Melville's murder. "Over a dozen bullets struck his body," one commentator announced, trying to look and sound shocked. She failed. I figured behind her cutesy face resided a cold-hearted bitch.

"To plagiarize the leader of the A Team on television, I love it when a good plan comes together," Dad quipped.

"The Destroyers death seems almost anticlimactic," I stated.

"It is," Dad said. "We need to clean up quite a few loose ends, like having the arrest warrants for Jason and Sara revoked, like making sure the judge grants Sara custody of little Donna, and we'll need to inform the police who killed Melville and expose the coven for what it is, or the police will come after Sara for the crime."

He grinned his boyish grin and patted Sara's knee. "Can't let that happen, now can we?"

Sara hugged his arm, pressing her lush breasts to his side, and flashed her patented deep-dimpled smile that lit up the room.

Dad continued, "The Deavers and the others in their sick organization won't be much happier with what we do to them than Melville is saying howdy to the Devil right now. Of course, there's the small matter of Sara's one million dollars, and we'll probably need to file suit against Melville's estate on little Donna's behalf. Details."

I left the details to Dad and the professionals he'd use to tie up the loose ends and flew home to Phoenix that afternoon.

"I'm back!" I sang into the phone when Barbie answered my call.

"Katy! Where have you been? I've been worried sick about you. Why didn't you call? I'm really angry with you."

"Whoa! One question at a time. Dad and I have been helping Jason and his sister, Sara, with a problem. I couldn't call, Barbie. Our lives were at risk, so we've been hiding out. All's well now, though. Dad's still in Denver tying up loose ends. I'm home alone so come on over, and I'll tell you all about it." Some of it, anyway, I thought, remembering Barbie couldn't keep a secret.

Barbie hadn't changed; at least, her deliciously naughty mind was the same. I spent a half-hour telling her an abbreviated version of my adventure.

When I finished, she said, "Come on, Katy. Surely, you don't expect me to believe that you and your Dad kidnapped a little girl, and then took on a group of evil Satanists. I almost believed you until you told me about the gunfights. They went way over the top. Jeez! I'm not smart like you, but I'm no dummy. Come on, tell me what really happened."

I shrugged. "Think what you like, Barbie, but you'll meet Sara and little Donna soon. Dad and Sara are engaged."

For some reason she bought into Dad falling in love. "That's really cool, Katy. Wow, Jason's sister and your dad." She laughed. "After they get married, your college-boy lover will be your uncle, sort of."

"My college boy isn't my lover anymore. We split up."

"Really?"

Her x-rated mind started to go a mile a minute, and I starred in all her fantasies. I'd invited her over because Barbie was my best girlfriend, and I was back and I'd missed her, but I was also ready to find out if I enjoyed women as well as men. Shortly after she arrived, I changed my mind. I'd always believed if I ever had sex with a woman that Barbie would be the woman, but over the last few weeks, I'd changed. Dad was right. All the girl in me had flown the coop. I was a woman now, and Barbie was still a girl.

"Yeah, a couple of days ago," I said. "So I'm still bummed out over the breakup."

"Bummer. What happened? Did he dump you for another girl?"

"No." Maxie came to mind. "Maybe. The breakup was mutual."

"I'm really sorry, Katy. I know you loved him. Men! Sometimes they can be such shits."

I laughed. "True. How about you? Have you found the love of your life?"

Her thoughts stunned me. She was in love, but not with a guy. She and Claudia had rekindled their affair since I left. Go figure.