It occurred to me that some of y'all might not know this. Shelly Martinez was a manager in WWE and TNA wrestling for a few years. She was known as Ariel in WWE and Salinas in TNA. So she isn't an OC, as one DM asked.

Chapter 12: What is Past is Prologue…..

The very last thing Tyler Breeze was expecting on his day off was for his pager to cut through his deep, restful slumber, disturbing what was essentially the first real rest he'd gotten in days. He'd drank way too much. That much was abundantly clear. Shelly Martinez was a raging cyclone of chaos wrapped in one of the most gorgeous packages Tyler had ever seen, and he felt completely wrapped up in her web of insanity from the moment she strode through the door of Windham's.

"Mmmmm," came the moan of disbelief from next to Breeze. Tyler didn't really remember inviting Shelly Martinez back to his small apartment, but waking up next to an attractive female, particularly one without a single stitch of clothing left on her body, was not the sort of thing the young man was used to complaining about.

"You're telling me," Breeze replied, his head pounding with the effects of the copious amounts of alcohol from the night before. Reaching over, he ran a flirtatious hand over the feminine form laying next to him, which prompted another moan of contentment from the girl.

"Why are we getting up so early?" Shelly lamented as she sat up in Breeze's bed. Like Tyler, she wasn't a hundred percent sure she remembered leaving Windham's Bar with her date, but she did have some very distinct notions of what had taken place the night before.

"It's two in the afternoon," Tyler snickered as he glanced over at his clock. Now standing, Breeze pulled his jeans up to his waist, fastening his belt and picking up his cell phone.

"Seventeen missed calls? Jesus," he muttered to himself. Shelly, having rolled over and noticed that Breeze acted as though he was ready to begin his day, gave a sigh of disappointment.

"We can't stay in bed all afternoon?" She cooed seductively, reaching across the bed to run his fingernails along the front of Tyler's pants.

"I wish I could," Tyler deflected, mentally putting together his exit strategy. Holding his phone to his ear as his voicemails began playing, his eyes grew wide in shock as he felt Shelly's hands unfasten the belt he'd just pulled to a stop.

Concentration was hard enough for Tyler Breeze on a normal day. Today, as he did his best to decipher the recorded messages, the addition of an insanely attractive woman attempting to unsheath what he'd just managed to put away was very nearly too much to handle.

"Baby," Shelly cooed seductively, fighting playfully with Tyler's hand attempting to impede her progress.

The first two voicemails were inconsequential. One was from an insurance agency trying to double check some information on his parent's death before paying out their claim. The second was from some credit card company looking for some guy Tyler had no connection to. The third one, however, was the one that interested Breeze the most.

"Hey Tyler, it's Deputy McCool. Cena's out of town so I'm running the show for the day. Zack Ryder and Dana Brooke turned up. Alive, thank God. They're both at Northside Lakeview. I'm going in to try to interview Dana now. The quicker you can get here, the quicker we can figure out what happened out there. See you soon, hopefully."

The platinum blonde young man's eyebrows raised with newfound curiosity at this latest development. He'd almost convinced himself the pair of high schoolers was as dead as Natalya Neidhart and Tyson Kidd, only their bodies had found their way to lake bottom. Before he could carry his train of thought to its natural conclusion, however, his consciousness was invaded by the intensely pleasurable feeling of Shelly's beestung lips on his most precious organ.

"Shelly, I really gott-oh, okay…" Breeze finally acquiesced, finding the young woman's exercise as soothing as it was physically fulfilling. He knew he'd have to leave for the hospital soon, but if Martinez was so determined to make him feel good, who was he to refuse her?

….

By the time John Cena's flight had touched down in Dayton Ohio, just a few miles from his eventual destination, his phone was also brimming with voicemails, the most prevalent being the one from his wife that told him ostensibly the same information that Michelle McCool's had told Tyler Breeze. As inwardly as Cena was to have heard that the kids were safe, however, his own consciousness was occupied with locating his ride and getting out to his wife's sister's former domicile.

Nothing that John Cena had experienced during his law enforcement career could've prepared him for what awaited him at the bottom of the "arrivals" escalator. On the landing platform of said escalator, in oversized glasses and black track suit, stood a chubby man in his mid forties with a sign that said "Deputy Cena."

Giving the man a confused look, John snickered and made his way over.

"Jim Cornette," the man began, extending his hand to signify his happiness to meet the road-weary Deputy.

"John Cena," the larger of the two men returned.

"Goddamn, you're the size of one of those stackable washer and dryers. Mickie told me you were a big guy but I didn't think it'd be like this."

The pair turned toward the exit in almost perfect sync, with Cena gesturing nonverbally to signify that he hadn't checked a bag.

"You know Mickie?" Cena inquired, hoping his tone didn't come off as standoffish.

"Hell yeah I do," Cornette fired back, his rapid-fire Kentucky drawl leaking out in full force now. "I've known the James family for thirty years. I was closest with the oldest sister, Melissa, but I knew Monica and Mickie from high school."

Cena nodded. "She told me you'd known her parents a while."

Cornette snickered. "Yeah, I guess after Melissa and I broke up junior year it was probably the family line to say the parents knew me but the kids didn't." As the older man spoke, he led Deputy Cena though the automatic sliding doors and out into the chilly mid-morning Ohio air.

"Les is circling the airport so we don't have to pay for parking. He should be back around any minute."

The Deputy nodded again. "And he's the P.I. you guys used after the fire?"

Cornette gave a barely comprehensible grunt of agreement. "Yeah. I guess David (Alexa's dad) used him for some other stuff years back, but he worked for my firm making sure Alexa got her full insurance payout."

"Cool. So the family trusted him?"

Cornette nodded, before waving out a vehicle as-yet unknown to Cena. "Implicitly. Between he and I, we have all of the Bliss family vital records and important documents, from David and Monica's will to the kids' birth certificates."

Before John could respond, a well-worn but clearly taken care of Oldsmobile Eighty Eight pulled into a vacant spot adjacent to the curb. Gesturing animatedly, Jim motioned for John to follow his lead, with Cena being allowed the front passenger seat and Cornette spreading out on the back. As the sedan sped away from the airport, John wondered if any of this effort would end up being worth it, or if he'd wasted his time and effort coming to Ohio…

The lobby of Northside Hospital's Lakeview campus's emergency room looked like a Blue River High student council meeting. Dean Ambrose, Alexa Bliss, and Bayley Martinez were just outside the building, having been in the middle of their acoustic rehearsal when they'd received the call from Enzo Amore that Zack and Dana had been found and rescued by an older couple. Roman Reigns, Zelina Vega, and the Usos opted for air conditioning, with this weekend having been of the "Indian Summer" variety.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Dana Brooke's dad tread slowly from his daughter's room out to the common area where at least two dozen of Dana's classmates had gathered. Nia Jax, who'd known the recently returned blonde beauty as long as anyone in the room who wasn't Dean, stood in anticipation of the latest news regarding her friend.

"She's fine," Tom Brooke informed the interested crowd. "She can't talk very loud because she inhaled a lot of smoke and her lungs are tender. Zack's having the same problem."

"Are Zack's parents here?" Zelina asked, hoping there was someone back sitting with her longtime friend.

Tom Brooke nodded. "They met the ambulance here. I was at work."

"Is there any chance of me getting a statement from Dana today?" Michelle McCool inquired, having emerged from the corner of the room where she'd been waiting previously.

Tom pondered this a moment before shaking his head in the negative. "Give her a day or two to get her voice back."

McCool strode toward the elder Mr. Brooke, her impatience now seeping through into her expression. "Sir, I'm sure you understand why getting information now is so important. We have an active serial killer here in Blue River and Dana might very well have been one of his intended victims. Any identifying qualities she could alert us to would go a long way."

Tom nodded. "I understand. If you can ask yes or no questions, or questions she can answer nonverbally, you can talk to her. But she cannot talk right now. You understand?"

McCool nodded, then motioned for Tom to lead the way.

The first stop on John Cena's whirlwind tour of Southern Ohio was a visit to Skyline Chili. The iconic eatery was a favorite of Mickie's, who'd passed her love of the grossly unhealthy cuisine on to her husband, who hadn't been able to avoid patronizing the eatery any time he was in the area.

After more Cheese Coney's were consumed than most local jurisdictions would allow, the trio of Jim Cornette, Les Thatcher, and the aforementioned Cena drove the twenty or so miles from the Dayton airport to Kettering proper, then the additional ten to fifteen minutes to the East where the former Bliss home sat.

To call what remained on that plot of land a "home" was almost completely inaccurate. What remained of the structure was completely uninhabitable, and Deputy Cena wasn't exactly sure why there had been no attempt made to demolish the charred lumber and drywall that remained. As he looked over at Thatcher, it occurred to the fatigued deputy that there was no yellow crime scene tape or other telltale signs of law enforcement presence.

"Hey, Les," Cena called aloud, "what happened to all the yellow 'caution' tape? Didn't the police department come out here and comb through all this shit?"

Thatcher shook his head sadly. "I mean, they half-assed for a day or two, but they didn't take it seriously. They formed their 'home invasion' theory about nine minutes after they got here and didn't even consider that there might've been people involved in the planning that didn't die in the actual fire."

Cena nodded. "Sounds about right." Kneeling down to further examine a pile of rubble, John sifted through the creosote with his bare hands, muttering to himself as he visually scanned the surrounding area. Jim Cornetter and Les Thatcher stood by idly, having not been explicitly invited to join in his examination. Instead, they stood in awkward stillness, waiting for any sort of cue from the out of town Deputy.

After another moment, all three men were rattled to attention by the sound of breaking twigs some thirty yards from where they currently stood.

"Did you guys hear that?" Cena inquired, his voice low and full of tension.

"Yep," Thatcher drawled, pulling his sidearm from a holster on his hip. Nodding softly, Cena pulled his own service weapon and began slowly walking toward the area he believed the noise came from.

Motioning with his head for Thatcher to follow, Cena half-raised his pistol, bringing his left arm under his right into a subliminal "ready" position. From the treeline, Cena saw the vague form of a human being run away frantically into the woods. Picking up his pace, Cena tiptoed quickly, his teeth clenched together, reflecting the tension of the situation.

After what felt like hours, but was probably only a few seconds, John and his companions reached the edge of the former Bliss yard, where the thick deciduous woods began. Cautiously, the hulking deputy found himself at a small, vaguely cylindrical clearing, near enough to the yard and house itself to see almost the entire property, but with enough cleverly placed trees to conceal the location from anyone inside the home.

"This is...weird, right?" Cena asked no one in particular.

"Sure is," Thatcher agreed, holstering his weapon instinctively.

Cena's heart continued to hammer in his chest as his eyes continued to scan, noticing that there appeared to be some sort of rough walkway through the thick underbrush out into the deep woods. Turning, Cena noticed two things that made the jackhammer rhythm of his excited pulse stop altogether for a split second. One, carved into one of the trees, aged but still visible, was the same symbol from the photos and the back windshield of James Ellsworth's car. And two, that from standing in nearly exactly the spot he was in, the vantage point of this clearing would've been exactly where the photo found at the Ambrose's dock would've been taken.

"Holy shit," Cena muttered. Crouching, he began scouring the ground for additional clues, before remembering that he wasn't alone.

"Les, do you mind following that foot path out into the woods and seeing where it goes? If it gets too deep and doesn't look like it's headed anywhere, come back."

Thatcher nodded, before shoving his glasses back into place on his nose with his meaty index finger. Pulling his pistol again, he set off through the forest, not wanting to disturb any other potential evidence.

"Jim, you got your camera with you?"

"Of course I do!" Cornette exclaimed in his staccato tenor delivery, breaking the serene silence around them.

"Get pictures of all this shit, will ya?" John responded, his pulse finally returning to normal. "Stand here," Cena continued, pointing toward exactly where he'd figured a person would have to be standing to have gotten the exact photo that had been left at the scene of the Ambrose fire.

"You got it, John," Cornette returned, lifting a heavy black camera from the nylon lanyard and snapping away as quickly as he could, swinging the apparatus back and forth and snapping away as Cena had instructed. After a few minutes of this, both Cena and Cornette were jarred by the voice of Les Thatcher, who'd apparently managed to catch his quarry out in the forest.

"Jim! John! Y'all get over here! I got him!"

"Holy shit!" Cornette exclaimed in his piccolo vocal tone, his Kentucky drawl betraying his roots.

Cena smiled, a genuine, relieved half snicker that signalled to his new acquaintance that Cena was almost happy to have found this trespasser, even though their lives might have been in danger.

"What are we waiting for?" Cena half muttered, though it was easily loud enough for Cornette to hear. This is what John had taken the time away from his family for; any insight into what happened in Ohio that would've followed Alexa to Georgia. And a mysterious observer on location almost a year after the tragic event was certainly enough cause for Cena to pursue wholeheartedly.

"Is he gonna be okay?" The question rang out in the air, and though Nia Jax was the one who asked out loud, every student in Zack Ryder's recovery room had that same inquiry running through their mind.

Smiling, one of the nurses they'd seen file in and out of their friend's room the last few hours nodded brightly. "Yeah. He'll need a few more days before he can talk, and the high ankle sprain probably means his football season is probably over, but he'll be fine. Excuse me," she added, sliding between Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose on her way out of the room.

Exhaling deeply, Alexa Bliss let out a small, genuine smile. With everything happening how it had the last few weeks, it was beginning to feel like all of these attacks were somehow her fault.

"That's good news," Rollins blurted, doing his best not to talk too loudly.

Dana Brooke nodded, before resting her head on Zack's shoulder. With all the occupants of the room taking up most of the available flat surface to sit or lean, Dana had perched herself next to her new boyfriend on his hospital bed. Zack's mom hadn't been too eager to leave her precious baby boy alone with a roomful of teenagers, including his extremely affectionate love interest, but Mr. Ryder had intervened, taking his harried wife to the cafeteria for a bit of dinner so Zack could be around his friends.

"I saw McCool was in here grilling you," Dean blurted toward Dana, trying to move the conversation to a topic that didn't involve how close his friends had been to dying.

Dana nodded, not wanting to speak unless she absolutely had to.

"She ask you anything weird or anything?"

Brooke sat up slightly, patting Zack on his knee and smiling. She shook her head in the negative, then pondered the question again before making a gesture with her hand that conveyed the idea that maybe there had been one or two inquiries that weren't completely normal.

Holding up one finger, meaning that Dean should wait just a moment, Dana reached for a notepad on the small bedside table and scratched out a couple of sentences. Squinting toward the paper, Dean read the contents aloud.

"She asked if we saw the attacker. I said, 'no, but I heard them.'" Dean paused, waiting to begin the next sentence, before a thought occurred to them.

"Did you mean 'them' as in you don't know what gender they are, or in that you thought there might be more than one?"

Dana pointed at her friend with excitement as he offered the second idea. Scratching hastily with the pen, Dana crafted an answer to offer her friend. She tossed Dean the notepad, her eyes burning with intensity.

Sighing, Dean read aloud again, glancing around the room.

"At least two people on boat. Z and I both heard footsteps directly abound our heads."

Alexa raised her eyebrows curiously. "Holy shit, seriously?"

Dana nodded again, her verbal handicap making her growl in frustration. Taking her index finger, she made an "x" over her chest, meaning that she "crossed her heart."

"Damn," Ambrose muttered, almost to himself. Alexa, still perched on Dean's thigh, began squirming slightly, the ramifications of what was being discussed finally beginning to dawn on her. If there was more than one attacker leaving pictures of her at seemingly random attacks, that meant it wasn't just some insane person. More probably, it was a conspiracy of some kind, and the thought of a group of people with a grudge against the tiny girl made her skin crawl.

…..

By the time John reached Les Thatcher and the as yet unidentified intruder, he was more out of breath than he cared to admit.

"I gotta get my cardio back," he mused inwardly, though he wasn't really worried about his physical condition at the moment. Behind him, he could hear Jim Cornette, stumbling and swearing as he made his way through the thick brush and dense trees.

"Goddamn!" Cornette let loose, clearly flustered at this most recent turn of events. Both Cena and Cornette took a long gaze down at what was happening; Les Thatcher, a fifty-something year old man with a pack a day smoking habit, had one knee pinned to the back of a much younger guy with stringy hair and some very expensive looking camera equipment strewn about. He cursed and kicked his legs as Thatcher smirked, his .38 special revolver pressed oppressively into his back.

"What are you doing here?" Cena began, as evenly toned as he could manage.

"Fuck you," was the curt reply.

"That's not an answer," Cena blurted, before taking his own service weapon in his hand and smashing the gun's handle down on a camera lens that John was just assuming belonged to the young man on the ground.

"What the fuck, man?" Came the despondent cry from their prey. "That's a three hundred dollar lens!"

"You better start talking, then," Cena shot back glibly. "'Cause there's a lot of real expensive looking shit lying all around out here, and it'd be a real shame if anything else got mangled beyond repair by unseen forces of nature."

"I'll file a complaint!" The kid shot back.

Cena smirked, before making sure the young man got a good look at the outline of the State of Georgia on the badge hanging from a small chain around his neck. "Not my jurisdiction, shitnuts. Out here we're just guys looking at a house where five fucking people died. Now unless you want to go see the local cops and start answering uncomfortable questions about why you're out here filming… whatever, I recommend you talk to us. Okay?"

One of John Cena's greatest strengths as a law enforcement officer was his ability to sound reasonable and threatening all at the same time. Glancing over at Les Thatcher, he motioned for the man to let the boy up.

"What's your name?" Cena began, doing his best to look the kid in the eye.

"Rory Fox," the boy responded, sighing deeply. "I don't want trouble."

Cena snickered and looked over at Cornette. "Everyone says they don't want trouble after they run."

Cornette and Thatcher laughed heartily.

"Okay, Rory," Cena continued, "what the hell are you doing out here at the scene of an ongoing investigation?"

Fox had a brief laugh. "Doesn't look 'ongoing' to me." The young man gestured toward what was left of the house, noting that there was no hint of police presence.

Cena rolled his eyes. "That doesn't answer my question."

Rory Fox gave a deep exhale, buzzing his lips. "I'm a writer. I knew Adam Bliss. We would've graduated together."

John looked over at Jim and Les. "My nephew. Alexa's brother." The huge men reset his gaze on Rory Fox. "Continue."

Fox breathed in again, excited to get into his spiel. "This fire never set right with me. A random home invasion? Are you fucking kidding me? So I started going through some old records and I found something."

Cena furrowed his brow, glancing over at Jim Cornette. Cornette simply shrugged, as if to say "I have no idea what the fuck this dude is on about."

"What'd you find?" Les Thatcher inquired, doing his best to play "good cop."

"How familiar are you all with cults?" Fox deposited back, answering a question with one of his own.

Cena shrugged, growing mildly agitated at the young man's seeming unwillingness to answer him squarely. "Not as familiar as when you spill whatever beans you're holding, I'll bet."

Fox chuckled again."So I guess a little over twenty years ago, back when cults were still pretty commonplace, there was a very interesting little congregation in Southern Indiana. A guy named Dan Spivey was leading about two hundred devoted members out in some national park. Called themselves the 'Seeds of Nephilim.'"

"That sounds… horrifying." Cornette blurted out.

"What's a 'Nephilim?'" Cena asked, almost at the exact same time Cornette was speaking.

Fox nodded, as though he understood what the men were asking. "I know it has something to do with the Bible. I'm not sure what, but it's Scriptural."

Mentally, Cena made a note to check in with Pastor Shawn Michaels when he returned to Blue River. He was hoping that the theological education Michaels had received would enable him to shed some light on whatever it was Rory Fox was saying. If Fox weren't just making shit up, the idea that some organization might have Alexa in their crosshairs, for whatever reason, sent a chill up Cena's spine.

"What else have you found out?" Thatcher asked calmly but firmly, redirecting the line of questioning.

Fox nodded again, regaining his train of thought. "You guys are old enough to remember this, I'm sure, but religious cults were a very common occurrence in the seventies and eighties. Particularly in the Midwest and Southwest, where there's less developed land and these cult leaders, conmen, really, can set up shop and prey on the weak-willed."

Cornette snickered, the young man's words echoing how the portly lawyer felt about that type of organized religion.

"My thoughts exactly," Fox sneered, confirming Cornette's sentiment. "These 'Seeds of Nephilim' were no different. They congregated on a farm somewhere in Southern Indiana. A town called Jasper."

Cena nodded his recognition. "We drove through there once with Mickie's aunt and uncle."

"So then you know there isn't fuck-all there except farmland and forest, right?" Fox quipped, enjoying the rapor he was building with the three older men. Cena nodded, a half-smile of his own betraying his disdain for the place.

"Yeah, they were there almost twenty years, folks coming in and laying down roots. It started as like, some commune I guess, but it turned religious fanatic somewhere in the early seventies."

John pondered this to himself. "That'd be right around when David and Monica met," he mused to Jim Cornette, who seemed fascinated by this tale.

"Sure is," the rotund attorney confirmed.

"I can't find out all the details," Fox pressed on, "because there have been a lot of newspaper clippings from that time turn up missing from the library and the town records. It's like Jasper wants to pretend they were never there."

"I could understand that," Thatcher chimed in. "Seems like a lot of the time small town leadership is afraid of these cult leaders."

"You went all the way out to southern Indiana from here just to get information on a murder that might not even be a cult thing?" Cena asked, somewhat incredulously.

Fox nodded. "Only because of some other similar fires that happened in 1988 and 1989. Right after these cult leaders got indicted for a whole… just… a whole lot of nasty shit," the young man spat, truly grossed out by what these men had done.

"Sorta like those folks in Waco, eh?" Cornette bemused.

Rory nodded again. "More than you'd think. But, from what I gather, somewhere around 1990 there was an incident. A big event that caused a mass exodus. Loyal followers doing their dead level best to escape a bad situation. There's just not a single thing out there on any of the archives I've checked that tells me how they died."

"I might know someone," Thatcher volunteered, suddenly riveted by this story and what it meant for him personally.

"Really?" Fox asked aloud, even as Cena and Cornette were thinking the same thing.

"Yeah," the P.I. gravelled. He tipped his mirrored sunglasses over his eyes and scratched his thinning hair, "if he's sober."

"Huh?" Cena and Fox let out, almost simultaneously.

Thatcher snickered. "He's an old buddy of mine. Known his family a long time. His brother passed on some time ago and he's been living off his inheritance in the woods, drinking and blowing shit up."

"And he can help us with this?" Cena asked incredulously.

"His family had relatives that were part of these 'Seeds of Nephilim.' He may not be able to tell us what happened to everyone involved, or if David and Monica were members, but he'll give us some more background at least."

With that, Les Thatcher let go of Rory Fox, on the condition that the young man accompany them to their next destination. Inwardly, John Cena felt a wave of dread wash over him, wary of how complicated this situation seemed…