Chapter 1

Murder in Bangkok

Ben Carter sat at his desk in his office, enjoying some downtime, though as head doctor of the Peachtree Asylum for the Criminally Insane, times like this was rare. He picked up the daily newspaper. In three-inch-letters on the front page was the headline “BANGKOK CULT KILLING”. Hmm, interesting, this I have to read. His glance darted to the article. Now what was the victim’s name again? He scanned the article, remembering that they released the name of the deceased. Ryan Caldwell? The very name made his blood freeze in his veins. He’s dead? Why would a crazed cult murder him? Ben’s mind flickered to the last time he saw Ryan alive.

Ryan Caldwell stood in the airport, smiling happily, bags in hand. “Well, doc, thanks for getting me back to my senses,” he told Ben. “I’m off on vacation! And also Mr. Arkham asked me to do research on something for his next project.”

“But be careful,” Ben warned him, arms crossed. “I sense something odd.”

“Relax,” Ryan said, walking away. “I’ll be back.” Ryan was a skinny young man with unkempt dark hair and brown eyes. He was extremely pale and often wore jeans and sweaters, even in hot weather. Ben sighed, knowing that one of his former patients wanted to take this vacation.

Now he’s dead. Ben thought. They killed him and gutted him like a trout as a sacrifice to… which god did they worship again? Pretty sure they weren’t Buddhists. He scanned the article a third time. Messenger? Their god’s the Messenger? What kind of name is that? I expected something unpronounceable. He put the paper down on his oak desk and looked at the digital clock. Damn! In five minutes Mary Worth is coming down for her weekly psychiatric evaluation. There was a knock at the door. “Come in, Mary.”

A skinny redhead in a faded blue dress staggered into Ben’s office. She had huge green eyes and a freckled face. She made her way to a chair in front of his desk. “Yes?” She asked.

“Let’s begin, shall we?” Ben replied, cracking his knuckles. Another day of work. And Ryan is dead. What possessed those cultists to kill him?

Meanwhile, a young woman knelt before a makeshift altar that she had made out of pieces of cardboard. The altar stood in an unused room of her apartment in downtown Sunnyvale. She wore a black cloak and had wavy dark brown hair and huge blue eyes. “Messenger, my lord and master, are you pleased with that sacrifice that my brothers and sisters in Thailand made?”

The girl heard a whispering voice reply. “Why, yes, dear girl. I am very happy. All that bloodshed really satisfies me.” The voice chuckled. “They did an excellent job.”

The girl lifted her head and smiled, her red-painted lips curled up in a wicked sneer. She cleaned off a pocketknife. “Are you disappointed that I didn’t kill another virgin?”

“Dear girl,” the voice replied. “Do I even sound like my ex-lover, Perverse? Perverse likes human men and women. He/she finds them indescribably attractive. And why would you only give me virgins? I’m not that kind of god. But I think my good friend…” he paused, as if to indicate he wasn’t exactly telling the truth, “the Priest would like a nice fresh virgin. Maybe a small child.”

The girl thought of a solution. “My cousin and roommate, Vicki, is priestess of your friend’s cult. I’ll ask her to offer him a virgin.” She got up off the wooden floor and walked out of the room after adding, “I didn’t know you and Perverse were ex-lovers.”

“Indeed we were,” Messenger replied before ceasing contact with his priestess.

Thaddeus Arkham sat at his computer in the safety of his study. A shelf of ancient books lay behind him. Evangeline. My dear Evangeline. Taken by the Council. It was their youngest’s fault that she died. He iced the road. Or at least that’s what the cultists tell me, but you can never trust a cultist anyway.