Death's Prisoner: A Shadow Kingdom Story: Shadow Kingdom Expanded Mythology

By Samuel Morningstar

The time for dramatic secret wars between good and evil is over…

 

Transgender Police Detective Gerald Soma has a dark past that is finally catching up with him. Mr. Faunt, a deranged killer Soma thought dead decades ago has resurfaced with a mind bent on revenge. Once there existed an entire Order dedicated to fighting this madman, but now barely a handful remain.

But it turns out revenge isn't the only thing Faunt is after.

 

Death's Prisoner is another chapter in the Shadow Kingdom Expanded Universe series. It also acts as a prequel to Dirk Garrick #6 Sins of the Flesh

• Language: English
• Publisher: Samuel Morningstar
• Release date: May 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224988990

Samuel Morningstar

SAMUEL MORNINGSTAR is an occasional rock singer / guitarist, has more black belt certificates than he has wall space to hang them on, and likes to scare neighborhood children by dressing in black and swinging swords in the front yard. He has a Master's Degree in Psychology, but has never worked a day in that field. He occasionally refers to himself as a mystic, as he believes that makes it more socially acceptable to wear a black cape in public. He lives in Kansas City, Kansas.

Book preview

Author’s Note

Part One of this story takes place one year before the events of

DIRK GARRICK OCCULT DETECTIVE #6:

SINS OF THE FLESH.

Part Two takes place one year after.

It is also a part of the larger Shadow Kingdom Expanded Mythology, but you don’t need to have read any other books to enjoy this one. I mean, you can read the other books if you want - you do you - but if you aren’t inclined, you probably won’t be confused if you just read this one. Unless, of course, you’re the kind of person, like me, who is confused in general, but there’s not much I can do about that.

She’s dead, Jerry.

Detective Gerald Soma glanced at his partner. The older man was enthusiastically munching on a convenience store breakfast burrito, seeming oblivious to the fact he was at a murder scene. Soma wasn’t sure what smelled worse: the overcooked burrito, the refuse strewn around the alley, or the body itself. Detective Danny Monk was as old-school as you could get without visiting a run-down retirement home. Monk had the reddish-pale skin of an Irishman but occasionally talked with an Italian accent because he thought it made him sound tough. The universal opinion stated he was wrong. He’d been trying to guess Soma’s nationality for quite some time with little success. Gerald Soma looked like every white kid fresh out of college and ready to tackle all of life’s challenges, provided Daddy’s money could buy him out of any trouble. He was attractive, but not in a way that called attention to itself. He dressed in understated, well-tailored, three-piece suits. He was quiet and unassuming, a trait he’d come to find, that compelled others to talk and fill the space, often resulting in them saying something incriminating.

Of course, the main reason Soma couldn’t specify his heritage is that he didn’t know. He’d grown up in an orphanage that considered record-keeping merely a suggestion. That was a very long time ago when people weren’t quite so uptight about ensuring children were where they were supposed to be.

Monk knew Soma hated being called Jerry, so naturally, that became Soma’s new nickname. For some reason, Monk liked to impersonate the intrepid doctor from the original Star Trek, Bones McCoy. Monk claimed it was because Soma’s stoic countenance reminded Monk of Mr. Spock. The joke wore thin before the end of their first shift together.

Soma decided the wisest course of action was to ignore Monk’s bullshit and wait for the inevitable heart attack to take the man out. Given Monk’s dietary habits, he should have been dead already, but God, it seemed, looked out for bigots with crumbs in their beards.

The corpse was sprawled next to a beat-up dumpster that might have been green in a past life, but it was now so scratched with rust it was hard to tell. Both were in an alley barely large enough to accommodate them simultaneously. Soma felt he could extend both arms and touch the cold maroon bricks on either side. There was a bakery to his right. The usually delightful smell of deep-fried dough from its kitchen was mixing with the nastiness of the alley, making Soma want to gag.

The Medical Examiner pushed her black ponytail behind her and bent down, carefully poking at the body like a small child investigating a squishy lump of mud. The victim was young, possibly still a teenager. The parts of her hair that weren’t caked with filth were different shades of the rainbow. Her body was naked and firm, like a swimmer or gymnast. She’d been laid flat, arms at her sides. A garbage bag had been placed over her hips in a bizarre display of modesty. Someone had taken a very sharp knife and engraved her body with strange patterns. Given the complexity of the designs, they’d taken a great deal of time and care. There was no blood, but the sigils stood out in enflamed red lines across her tanned skin.

Looks like those stupid tribal tattoos white kids are always getting to prove they’re woke liberals, Monk said, talking while chewing.

Soma said nothing.

Hey Doc, check under the bag and see if the kid’s a tranny. We probably got some sicko who likes carving up freaks.

The ME, Dr. Bien Nguyen, frowned up at him. She’d already had to tell Monk that despite her Vietnamese ancestry, she was not a damned foreigner. She’d been born in Pennsylvania and attended Yale. She’d gone on to inform him that she had access to a dozen untraceable, lethal chemicals, at least one of which could make him die a horrible, albeit funny, death through unstoppable diarrhea. Monk had wisely backed away from any further racist commentary, preferring to annoy her with his general bigoted view of people. I’ll examine her back at the lab, thanks. Any chance you could stroke out from all that junk you eat before I give my report?

No such luck, sweet cheeks. I’m as healthy as a horse.

Really? That’s not the farm animal you bring to mind.

Glad you noticed I’m as graceful as a swan.

Dr. Nguyen shook her head and focused her attention on Soma. What about you, Detective? Any last thoughts before I move the VIC?

Soma stared at the body for a few seconds before responding. The cold January sun was grudgingly starting to peek above the horizon, but New York City was already in full swing. The nearby streets and sidewalks gained more and more traffic with each passing second. The background noise was rising, slowly but inexorably, towards the usual dull roar associated with the Big Apple. A girl had been tortured and murdered, and no one even glanced down the dirty alley she’d been dumped in. The media would probably report this as a stabbing. People were too busy to pay attention to the horrors around them. Death was Somebody Else’s Problem. Unfortunately, that somebody else was Detective Soma.

The alley wasn’t the killing floor; that was clear enough. No blood. There was no obvious meaning in the way the body had been dumped. She’d been tossed like garbage, unimportant. Why? The carvings would indicate a killer desperate for attention, someone seeking to make a statement. Yet, he’d hidden the body instead of displaying it for all the world to see, even covering up her genitals. Had he made a mistake? Was this poor girl a rough first draft tossed out by a disgusted artist? Soma had seen these markings before, but never on a corpse resembling a human being. But, the madman who’d previously marked his victims in this fashion was long gone.

Wasn’t he?

Detective? Dr. Nguyen said.

Soma shook his head.

Dr. Nguyen motioned for her assistants to move in, clutching her wool coat tightly around her. "It looks like she was alive for this. How could anyone withstand that much pain? I’m going to order a full toxicology workup and also look for a spinal blocker."

Why? Monk asked, bits of burrito creating a disgusting morning shower as he spoke.

Look closer, Dr. Nguyen said. The carvings are too perfect. The killer wasn’t working with a moving surface. She wasn’t struggling, which means she had to have been sedated or numbed.

The good doctor would find no chemicals in the victim's blood, but Soma kept his counsel. Actual cause of death?

I’m not sure. The carvings don’t look deep enough to make her bleed out, but there’s no other obvious trauma. It’s possible she was so terrified her heart gave out.

Thank you, Doctor. Keep us appraised.

Soma turned and walked away. Monk huffed to keep up with him. What’s got you spooked? We see fucked up kills at least once a week and twice on Sundays.

Nothing.

Nothing, my pregnant ass. You see something like this before?

No. She was just so young. It got to me.

You need to toughen up, old boy, Monk said as if buying into Soma’s lie. Monk may have been crass, rude, and a horrible bigot, but he was no fool. He was a year away from retirement and had seen it all, as he was fond of telling Soma. Lots of people said that, and it was usually a lie. He had actually Seen Just Enough To Confirm His Rotten View Of Things and stopped at that. Most people did. Seeing it all took a great deal of effort, and really, why bother when the result was the same nihilistic view you could achieve by watching the nightly news?

Soma’s gold shield was so new it still sparkled in the sunlight. He did not, as scuttlebutt had it, polish his shield every morning before work. He did that at night after pressing his suit and shining his shoes.

He was supposed to be the green young detective tailing a more experienced officer and learning the beat, but the roles had reversed. Monk liked playing the buffoon. Soma impressed everyone as being an old soul, which is a polite way of saying Got Sick of Everyone’s Shit Early On.

I’m going to head back to the station, get a damned intern to research those symbols. They look Muslim to me.

Soma didn’t respond to that. Whatever hapless intern Monk bullied into the job would find no matches unless they expanded the search to include the dreams of the insane.

Think we got a serial killer on our hands? Monk asked.

I don’t know, Soma replied, watching the indifferent flow of nearby human traffic. The killer could be walking by now, slyly glancing their way to admire his handiwork, and the police would never know it. I don’t know.

Another one dead.

Marisa Fox flopped back into her desk chair like an angry toddler, eyes red, hair coming out of her ponytail in wild strands. Her bank of four wide-screen computer monitors provided the room’s only illumination, casting shadows on every line in her youngish face. She frowned a lot these days. She was too stoic to cry. Her job required a certain ability to view the world dispassionately and to make decisions based on cold logic rather than emotion.

That position was getting harder and harder to maintain.

How many dead did that make in the past two years? A dozen? Two? She’d lost track. She rubbed her eyes and popped her neck.

There was no denying it now.

He was back. And he wasn’t even trying to hide it.

Marisa’d first noticed it three years ago. After the war, she’d taken it upon herself to keep track of the scattered remnants of the Order, mostly because she had nothing better to do. Unlike the others, she’d never left the Monastery, never felt the desire to try and create a life in the outside world. She’d watched the others try to fit in, pretend to be normal. The only people Marisa ever felt comfortable around were the old veterans she sometimes played chess with in Central Park on the rare occasion when she ventured away from the island’s safety. She couldn’t join in their banter, of course, their all too clear recollections of the horrors experienced in war. They enjoyed the company of what they thought was a young woman, and she took some small comfort in the fact that, in time, it was possible to live without waking up in a cold sweat every night.

Roger Daltry’s scream on Won't Get Fooled Again interrupted her thoughts, the music emanating from the speakers attached to her vinyl record player. Having been denied a rebellious teenage phase, Marisa had become moderately obsessed with the accruements she might have acquired during those lost years. Her room was a testament to the youth of yesteryear, going from Elvis, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper to the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who, through to Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and KISS. It was her way of dealing with a life that should have rightly left her a quivering mass of anxiety.

The challenge proved too great for some. Suicide ran high among the remnant of the Order. How do you slide into the masses of humanity when you have none of the experiences that usually bond people? Simple questions required elaborate lies. Earning a living meant fake identification and a fictitious past. Lies had a way of weighing on the soul, giving rise to a desire to confess. That, of course, was dangerous. Some had created small circles of protective confidants. Others, fearing betrayal, simply lived alone. This was typically accomplished in large cities, where people were so busy and distracted that they didn’t care about a stranger’s disjointed past.

Marisa kept track of them all as best she could. Morpheus, the Monastery’s caretaker and the only other full-time occupant, had understood. Whether he believed as she did that a threat still existed was moot. Keeping track gave her a sense of connection, and he wouldn’t have ever taken that away from her. That was, after all, the entire basis of his training, to rely on her brothers and sisters who fought and sometimes died by her side.

Marisa rubbed her eyes. Days just seemed to