Page 70 of No Surrender
He’s here.Vic met Ross’s gaze and nodded.
“Bert Judd. Come out and talk. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” Vic called out.
In the silence, Vic swore he could hear his own adrenaline-fueled heartbeat. Judd was somewhere in the building, with the advantage of knowing the territory.
He shone his flashlight up, only to see stained popcorn finish sprayed on a slab ceiling.Well, that eliminates him crawling through the ductwork.
Vic heard mumbling from the small office. Just as he swung his gun in that direction, crippling pain exploded in his gut, driving him to his knees. Seconds later, Ross fell, writhing and moaning.
A shadowy figure stood half-hidden in the office cubicle. “You shouldn’t have come here.” Bert Judd stepped into the main room. Vic struggled to raise his gun, but another wave of pain hit, worse than the first, making it impossible for him to keep his gun steady enough to aim.
“None of that.” Judd strode up and kicked Vic’s gun out of his hand, breaking fingers in the process. He did the same to Ross and collected the weapons.
“I know who you are.” Judd stood over Vic, just out of reach, even if Vic could have forced his body to move. “You’re the cop who ruined everything. You and that fraud psychic.” Contempt thickened Judd’s tone.
“Why aren’t you vomiting blood?” Judd stared at Vic and Ross. “That spell should have you bleeding.”
Vic figured that the hex bag and protective amulets were blunting the worst of Judd’s magic. The pain was bad, but Judd obviously intended much worse.
“The notes and gifts I sent were just a warning,” Judd continued. “I hoped everyone would get the message and drop the trial. But you didn’t—so now I have to play rough.”
Vic felt like he was being turned inside-out. The intensity of the pain left him panting and covered with a faint sheen of sweat. “Why?” he managed to say in a strangled voice.
“When Eliot died, I couldn’t save him,” Judd answered, and Vic knew he meant Thompson, his first mentor in murder. “I was weak and scared. Then I saw William Fischer—a true artist. I knew I couldn’t fail like I did before. So I have to save him by stopping the trial. He’ll never get a fair day in court. But I can end it—make them stop, set him free.”
Vic heard the madness in Judd’s voice.If I can just keep him talking, maybe we’ll figure a way out of this.
“How?” Vic asked through gritted teeth. He heard Ross moaning in pain and wondered if they had been hit by different curses—or whether his additional amulets blunted more of the malicious magic.
“I have special spells hand-picked to punish the people who are trying to hurt William,” Judd replied. “This is just one of them. The book had all kinds of ideas.”
“Book?”Keep him monologuing. If he’s talking, he’s not doing something worse—like killing us.
“I watched the rituals Eliot performed when he thought no one was around. They were beautiful. I wanted to know what that kind of power felt like,” Judd replied, sounding enraptured by the memory. “I found an old book at an antique store about magic, and it had rituals like those. But I didn’t use them until you tried to take William from me.”
As far as we can tell, Fischer never met this guy before he went to jail. Judd is living in his own private fairy tale.
“Since you’re here, you can be my test subjects. My ‘gut wrencher’ spell seems to work. Let’s see how ‘skin on fire’ does.”
Judd mumbled words Vic couldn’t quite catch. Abruptly, the pain in his abdomen stopped, only to be replaced by the heat of a bad sunburn, one that was sure to blister. Ross cried out in pain, and once again, Vic wondered if his extra protections made the difference between tolerable and excruciating.
“Ohh…that’s a good one,” Judd said with a chuckle, but his expression darkened as he looked at Vic. “Why aren’t you screaming?”
“Screw you,” Vic managed. That earned him a kick in the ribs, and he folded in on himself.
“How will I decide who gets which spell? What for the judge, and what for the jury? Can’t leave out the lawyers and witnesses. And no one will know I’m the one making it happen—no one but William. He’ll know I came to save him.”
“I’ll know.” Vic barely had breath to speak.
“Neither of you will be leaving alive.” Judd’s voice turned cold and mocking. “I told you—it was a mistake for you to come here.”
Vic heard Judd’s footsteps and lifted his head enough to see their captor pace. “I’ve got a couple more spells up my sleeve. This one’s very showy—makes quite a statement. It’ll be all over the evening news.”
Once again he muttered, and Vic’s burning skin cooled. Between one breath and the next, Vic felt like someone had stabbed an ice pick through his skull. He bit back a moan. Ross cried out, and Vic turned to see blood leaking from Ross’s nose, eyes, and ears.
“Fancy, isn’t it?” Judd gloated. “I’m so glad to get a chance to see how it works before the big day. The news channels will love it. So…visual.”
“And then what?” It took all of Vic’s willpower to form words when pain made it hard to think.
