LET SLEEPING BLOOD LIE

CHAPTER 36 - Vengeance

It was paradise. It was how it was almost meant to be, should have been...
and then, just when it was perfect, it was ripped away from them...

Jane got a phone call the next afternoon, on a phone Maura didn't recognize, not that she had taken the time to pay much attention. She had mostly been thrilled that a whole week together was uninterrupted. That Jane was looking healthier, happier, more rested that she had seen her in the last ten weeks. No cuts or bruises. And Jane was happy too. Really happy.

But now there was an interruption that she knew would come eventually. She had overheard the end of the conversation between Jane and Shannon, she had just willed it would never come to fruition. Jane wasn't back to before but it was the happiest they had both been. At least Jane's guilt was lifted from what she could tell. The talk of vengeance she overheard had worried her and she had done everything within her power over the past week to distract Jane from thinking about it, hoping to replace herself with that desire. And now it appeared it had not worked. Jane was suddenly distant, disturbingly so.

And when Jane woke in the middle of the night that night, and instead of wandering Maura's backyard watching the stars and wondering how she had been so lucky, she was sitting in Maura's lounge, holding a document that linked her suffering to a name, and she was unsure what to do. Wondering if maybe she should run.

She was angry, her dreams had mixed with past memories. She had woken with Maura beside her, sweet Maura, gentle and untouched. Then the fear had threatened to steal her away, new fear, old fear...just fear. And now she was angry at the fear. So angry. And no amount of suffering she could inflict on her attackers would satisfy this fresh yet old anger right now. It was more than anger...It had flared up unexpectedly and it sought out the deepest recesses of her heart, the places where the love in her life had barely touched before. And yet she took relief in it, like an old friend she had lost. It was raw and sore and made her harder with pain, the pain became anger, anger became vengeance...I would try to take over and she would push it away briefly. But then the anger, once ignored, grew into rage...an incurable rage deep inside of her that cut at her like it was trying to find a way out of her body, it followed her blood around her body heating her from the inside, it raced around her organs making them tighten and it trickled around her nerves and she tingled, her nostrils flared, her lips curled and her brows clenched.

Anger is like drinking poison and hoping your enemy dies

A famous saying by someone who never fought the evil of the world of her lifetime, words spoken in peaceful times by people unharmed and unafraid. If she would die and it would kill them with her then she would gladly swallow any poison. She didn't care about herself, she couldn't care. The bitterness had sat too long. Too long and too much and it was overflowing, too quickly it was drowning her.

Tears burned in her eyes but never escaped and her jaw hurt from clenching it so tightly. But it was the pain in her chest that kept her holding onto it, a pain that stopped her dying but made it hard to breath, like a claw had clenched around her heart, squeezing just enough to remind her it was there without crushing it completely. It hurt.

And suddenly she wanted his heart in her hand. She wanted to squeeze it and watch him squirm in agony, his eyes wide in fear while his heart beats in her palm slowly dying. She wanted him to suffer more than she had, she wanted him to feel her pain for those four days plus the months of torment and fear he had caused her since. She wanted his freewill and his freedom snuffed out like a fuel-less flame.
She wanted him to die, slowly and painfully...or fast and brutal...she didn't care as long as he died.
The back of her throat hurt as if she had screamed bloody murder in his face for hours, screamed at him ever moment of hurt and pain, every second of fear, every tear that had fallen from her eyes, every breath she had taken in fear and every silent moment her mind had been unable to reassure her...All because of him.

All because of him

She slumped her head forward so her chin rested on her chest, her forehead resting against the wall. In that moment, a single tear managed to escape and trickled down the ridge of her cheek and onto her nose, leaving a wet glistening path, it travelled across the nasal bridge and suspended itself on the very tip of her nose. It stayed right there, it held it's own, until another tear followed it's path and she watched as the two conspired together becoming one large glistening ball and the weight causing it to loose it's grip, rolling forward and free-falling through the air in slow motion, loosing it's perfect shape as it morphed through the air, finally exploding in the middle of the paper in her hand causing the page itself to ripple from the centre outwards. I
t didn't land as a perfect round ball, and more like a deformed snowflake, a wet splodge on the surface of the page until it shrank, the paper greedily sucking it into its fibers, glistening at her and then dulling into only a darkened deformed spot.
She quickly rubbed her eye to prevent a third following the path of the other two escapees. She tried in vain to physically sniff away the internal self pity. Only it wasn't self pity, not really, she had endured hardship, deprivation and oppression and it had left a bleeding wound that could not be covered for long before the bandages themselves became soaked as well. She was only behaving justifiably righteously indignant.

It wasn't right, it wasn't just, it wasn't fair.

She gritted her teeth as another wave of anger passed.

The damp spot stared up at her from the page, a page she had stared at for almost two hours now. A page with a name on it. The name of the person she wanted to scream at until she couldn't, punch until she was too weak, put her hands around his throat until his voice stopped in her mind.

How can injustice prevail.

It was a quiet and low growl that escaped her tight lips and her knuckles turned white as the clenching restricted the blood flow slightly. She could feel the pounding of her heart through her entire body. And her throat tightened again painfully like she had sipped acid.
Her heart felt even more constricted and her chest hurt like her ribs were being crushed, another few tears managed to escape and she caught them this time, they had tried to follow the same wet path but she killed their plan as the palm of her hand crossed her cheek and over the bridge of her nose. She pulled it away and stared at her palm, now moist and glistening in the moonlight. She wanted to curse those tears, how they could run away so easily, so free, without a care in the world. How could they leave her like it didn't matter. How could they be so un-loyal.

I am just too angry to cry right now.

And as suddenly as the thought passed her mind she stopped crying. And her throat hurt a little less. And the clenching on her heart eased a little. She felt somehow calmer. The rage had gone, the anger had become manageable.

She swallowed painfully and relaxed her body.

She looked at the page again, the spot still there but disassociated from her. It had been the first cathartic release in weeks, and she hated it. She buried it, it was not hers. She almost felt better and she hated that too. She hated having no control over her emotions, how her body, her chest and tear-ducts, had a mind of their own.

She wiped her hand along her thigh to dry it and looked at it again

I could kill him with these hands. I should kill him with these hands. Hands that are already scared by injustice. What difference would it make. What would I gain. What would I loose

This time the memories of her past didn't constrict her heart, maybe she was getting stronger, or getting better, or just getting harder

She clenched her jaw again

The world would be better off without him

Shannon's last words bounced around in her head, 'Killing him won't change anything that happens in the world, Jay, it won't stop any wars, any suffering, any pain. It might not even make your pain any less, or any less terrifying. Sure he will be missed, sure someone else won't suffer at his hand...but that doesn't mean they will suffer any less at the next persons hand. Somebody else will take his place, his title, his job description. The tangled web is bigger than one strand between two connecting points...it is a thousand strands between a hundred points. If you do this it is entirely about you and it will be your mess to clean up, you alone will have to live with the consequences. Be sure this is what you really want before you do anything."

She hated how Shannon could take something so perfect, so decided, so righteous and justified...and cast doubt on it.

Sweet justice so easily undermined, ruined.

She had searched for this man, this Smith, for weeks, she had found him, she could kill him...and now she was doubting her options. She was hard, she wanted to be hard, she needed to be hard to survive this.

Could she be with Maura and still be this self-poisoned person.

Her imagination had already spent hours torturing her enemies. She had discovered doors within her mind that she had not opened before, doors that once opened could never close again. And she had already walked through them.
From imagining his suffering to causing it was such a small step she couldn't see how it would even made a difference.
He was in her grasp, now was the time.

And that's precisely when Maura found her, walking into her lounge in the middle of the night to find Jane hunched against the wall. Walking into the middle of an invisible battlefield that had just been conquered by one side. It was bad timing to say the least, the worst timing really...

"I don't want to loose you Jane." Maura blurted out to the hunched over Jane on the floor

The voice surprised her and she reacted with the disappearing emotions still lingering nearby, "Maura sheesh, If you lost me it was the day they took me. And if that's the case, well then I'm gone for good...alright?" Jane had never snapped at Maura quite like this and it almost confirmed Maura's fears. Jane pushed herself off the ground and stood at her full height, she was defiant, arms crossed and anger lingered in her eyes.

Maura shuddered at the sight, and then she got angry too, "If I lost you, Jane, it's because I never had you. And I loose you every night in my dreams. I dream you are gone and I am drenched in your blood. A reoccurring nightmare for days now. I thought they would take you again and I would loose you, I thought that's what the dreams meant. But they don't do they. They aren't about them taking you away from me." her tone was fierce, low and frustrated.

Jane's eyes are wide in surprise, her own anger taking a back foot as a hint of concern flushes her face

"No Jane," Maura practically spits at her not giving her the chance to respond, "It's really about you destroying yourself. Losing yourself to this infatuation, this mission you've given yourself. And to what end? What's your end game? Or are you really believing after he is dead you will just go back to the way things were before?"
Her arms cross on her chest mimicking Jane, waiting for a response.

Jane's arms drop meekly at her side and her shoulders slump slightly like a child who has just been punished. She forces her anger away, she does not want direct at Maura what she just got control of...she won't.

"What Jane? What comes next?" Maura pushes unrelentingly. It was all she could do. She had asked Shannon to talk some sense into Jane or to stop her that day before Jane took her home, She begged him to push Jane away, deter her, but he indicated Jane wouldn't listen to him and that it wasn't his place to tell her how to live, how to deal with what she went through.
But once upon a time Jane had listened to Maura, sometimes only Maura and no-one else, so she had to try everything she could.

"The 'next' never mattered before." Jane finally replies hanging her head and staring only at the floor, "I don't know how I will feel when it is done."

"This will be killing in cold blood Jane. This isn't some murderer you have to catch, it isn't going to be in self defense. This will be pre-meditated murder Jane."

"I know that." She replies to the floor frustration in her voice, realizing only now how much Maura really knew and kept to herself.

"This will change you." Maura pushes trying to hold back her own tears

Jane looks up, a glint of hurt is in her eyes, or anger, and she glares at Maura, and she snaps "Well maybe I want to be changed" her tone is bitter and Maura steps back in surprise

Being changed might hurt less

All Maura can think to say, to stop Jane, is "I don't want you too change Jane."

And Jane huffs and turns to leave, "I already did" she growls under her breath as she walks away.

"Jane wait, please." Maura begs, her voice breaking

Jane pauses and turns slowly, it's the least she can do. She looks at Maura, eyes wet with unshed tears, face saddened in defeat.
She is sorry, but she does not feel guilty.

"One last kiss, please." Maura whispers, and her bottom lip quivers as she wrings her hands in front of her

Jane frowns, trying to understand Maura, herself, everything.

She walks to Maura, leans in closely brushing the side of her face gently with her fingers. Then she cups Maura's chin and takes the quivering lips carefully between her own, she is gentle, she wishes she could make both of their pain go away.

Maura moans softly and her hands automatically slide up Jane's back

The kiss is intense and deep and Maura almost forgets where she is and what she might be about to loose

"I love you" Jane breathes onto her jaw as the kiss breaks, her voice hoarse with desperation.

"I love you too" Maura replies without hesitation.

She pulls away from Jane, "I really love you", she repeats just to be clear.

Jane smiles slightly, a mixture of emotions still emanating from her but her eyes are softer

"Stay, please stay", Maura whispers holding Jane tighter in an embrace

"I'm here"

He was gruesome, his features were ugly because his heart was evil. His lips curled in a cruel mocking grin. His eyes danced with victory.
He laughed at Jane, his vocal chords vibrating in his throat.

Jane took the safety off her gun and raised her aim up from his chest to his head.

"I am Smith to you" he mocked her, taunted her

Jane shuddered at the sound of his voice, the memories surging through her mind and her body fighting to not react, not throw up, and especially not to cry. His voice she had managed to disassociate until this moment and the sick feeling in her stomach makes her mind feel hazy.
She had finally found him, after months of searching. She could now see his face instead of being blinded by a light. She wasn't tied to a chair anymore. She hadn't lost her power, he had. The roles were reversed.

"You cannot destroy me Jane, another will replace me and you will have achieved nothing" his voice has a hint of amusement to it and Jane want's him to hurt for it, "The cabal is more powerful than you or even the entire population of sheeple, there's nothing you can do anything about anything. We are centuries in the making, planning a one world government since before the beginning of the founding of America. You cannot stop it. It is funded beyond comprehension, endorsed by those you vote to run the country."
His laugh is painful to every fibre of her being
"You know how funny it is. You are all slaves and you don't even know it. People work from 9 to 5 every day, in boring and depressing environments, not stimulated by anything creative or constructive, the sole motivation is the next paycheck. And no matter how hard they work they will never have enough money. You are all slaves and we decide for you...everyday. You are just sheep that follow our leading."

Jane grips her gun so tight in rage she fears it might go off before she is ready. She want's him to shut up but his rambling makes her feel good. It tells her something, something that makes her feel good, make's her feel whole...He is afraid.

"Most of the major wars, political upheavals, and economic depression and recessions of the past 100 years were carefully planned and instigated by us. The Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II, The Great Depression, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Rise of Nazi Germany, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the fall of Soviet Communism, the 1991 Gulf War, the War in Kosovo and the two Iraq wars. Even the French Revolution was orchestrated into existence by elements of the new world order."

She wonders if he knows she is recording this, or cares, or if it will even do anything. No one would believe the confession of a man about to die like this wasn't staged.
She wonder's if anyone who listens to it later will hear the pride in his voice, like he has won. She wonders if anyone listening would think he had the loaded gun on her and was a confession before killing her instead of the other way around. She wonders why he is telling her this. She wonders when he will shut up.
She checks over her shoulder, maybe he still has the upper hand and she just isn't seeing the game yet. But there's no one there. They seem to still be alone. Except Shannon who is somewhere nearby in the otherwise abandoned building hopefully finding some more hidden documents to help him in his cause.

"The CIA was created to hide the amassed gold from World War two. Amassing fortunes began in the 12th Century when only a core group of nine members of the Knights Templar, kicked off the The Crusades that lasted for over a century and a half. The acquisition and consolidation of ever greater wealth, natural resources, total political power, and control over others are the motivating forces which drive the decisions of the leaders. The toll in human suffering and the loss of innocent lives are non issues for us."

He shows his teeth in a snide grin that makes her want to punch him in the face till he is toothless and stops breathing. She holds her breath and counts down from 10.

"We are many and you are nothing. Knowledge isn't power. People are power...and we collect people."

She stares at him now wondering if he can feel her hate, "I found you...I am not interested in anyone else." She speaks slowly her voice unwavering.

"Kill me and another will rise up in my place and you will have achieved NOTHING!"

Nothing

Jane knows he is right but she doesn't care, after months of searching she has him and she cannot just walk away defeated. He must and will pay.

"Well I will just have to buy more bullets then won't I. Because after I kill you I will kill the next guy after that and the one after that."

"It doesn't matter, Jane. We control it all. We are interested solely in power. Not wealth or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. And you have no power."

She knows he is trying to get her to bite, to react. It would be his dying wish that she hurts again.

"I will protect the people I care about, You will pay." Jane's voice is shaky, it infuriates her that she sounds as weak as she suddenly feels. That he is getting to her, that his words terrify her as much as his voice.

"It will destroy you." He laughs contentedly

The air is tense and still and Jane ponders her response

While seeking revenge dig two graves...one for them and one for yourself.

"I am already destroyed," Jane finally says confidently staring him in the eye, her fear has vanished, and she has let go. Whatever this does to her she is willing to accept it, whatever changes, whatever she has to loose. Now all that remains is righteous anger.

The smile in his eyes disappears slowly and realization dawns on him that she doesn't care now, they took too much from her and there is nothing left for her to live for, nothing left to lose. Taking away a persons hope is a dangerous thing, right now it is dangerous for him.

"And I will keep on taking out as many of you as I can, I will dedicate my life to it if I have too. I may not be able to stop or even slow your plan but I will be a nuisance to your 'cabal' as long as I breathe"
She smiles at him, sweetly, sympathetically, "Evil will not prevail while I can do something about it." her eyes look fierce, like they burn, she has her spark back, her vitality.

"Then do it already" he mocks, defeated he knows but enjoying tormenting her still, "A bullet travels 4000 feet per second, four times faster than the speed of light. I won't feel anything."

She stares at him, waiting for...something...she isn't sure but surely a corrupt and evil man maybe shouldn't get away with everything he has done so lightly. To leave the world quickly and painlessly. If she has him arrested he will be free tomorrow and she will be dead.

I want his heart in my hand. I want to squeeze it and watch him squirm in agony, his eyes wide in fear while his heart beats in my palm slowly dying. I want him to suffer more than I did, I want him to feel my pain for those four days plus the months of torment and fear he had caused me since.

Smith watches her intently, glee over his face. He knows either way he will haunt her dreams forever, "I tortured you for hours, I laughed in you face, I watched you plead like a child. Laughed when you passed out and waited to do it all over again."

She feels the hairs bristle on the back of her neck.

I want him to die, slowly and painfully...or fast and brutal...I don't care as long as he dies.

"Then we weakened you and played with your head. And your plan is just to shoot me? kill me with a bullet." He scoffs, "You are as pathetic now as you were when you were gasping for air and promising me anything to stop. Pathetic and weak. The least you can do -"

Her subtle smile is the last thing he see's before the tiny piece of metal enters his head, forcing its way through bone and soft tissue and lodging itself in the hard skull on the other side of his body.

His apparent shock is the last thing Jane sees, however briefly, before his skull is shattered and he collapses to the ground and never willingly moves again.

Turning away she mumbles to herself, "The least I can do is not become like you."

It had begun over blood, she had been told to let it be...to let sleeping dogs lie...and she had refused. Now it ended over blood and the dogs would not sleep again for some time.
It ended like it had begun. She did feel better, if only slightly. But his rant had given her something...it had given her purpose, purpose like Shannon had, Like Incognito had. Like so many others she had heard of had, others she world never meet, some she might. Purpose to make a difference.

And when Shannon blew the building up behind them, It was like thunderclaps, brilliant flashes of lights and explosions erupting all around then. Sounds like gunfire fractured the air and hisses and pops of shrapnel flying out in every direction. The booms making their hearts pound. The array so loud and instantaneous her hearing blurred into a murmur, hot and damp like cotton balls in her ears, she hoped it wasn't blood.

"Run" she heard beside her, Shannon was screaming at the top of his lungs, but it sounded like a whisper, she ran after him. They ran as fast as they possibly could. The heat was right on her heels like a wolf on rabbit. She hadn't worried until the warmth struck her elbows and shins, a tiny reminder how fragile life was, where she had come form and where she was going. And as he sped around the nearest corner she was right behind him, amazed nothing had hit either of them.

And when they rolled to a shop sheltered from the blaze and the explosions they were both laughing. It was exhilarating. Death had nibbled their heels and they lived to tell the tale. And they laughed until they cried, holding their sides, stopping only when it hurt to laugh anymore.

"Too early and too much" Shannon yelled mostly because he was deaf himself and Jane nodded.

"Awesome. We have to do that again... right?" He is a kid at heart, and Jane's smirk is as large as his.

She has black smudges over her face and clean streaks from her cheeks to her chin where she had cried laughing so hard. "Have you ever done that before?"

He shakes his heard and chuckles, "No, I probably should have done a test run. Incognito said there would be more than enough C4 on 5 minute timers. I guess more than enough really meant more than enough." Jane gives him a wary look. It had been close, too close. If they did it again they would definitely have to be more careful.

"I know, I know." he says but the smile never leaves him.

"It sure was a hollywood ending..." Jane leans back against a crate watching the burning flames reflecting on the water in the harbour, "...If we weren't running and screaming and falling it would have been rather cinematic I think. Our silhouettes against that display you put on."

They chuckle

"We got em good Jay. And these now...slightly burned documents...have uncovered some deeper links to pedophile rings." He smiles, his eye's are still glassy, probably from the smoke. Or maybe adrenaline.

She can still hardly hear him but she hears enough and nods

"They were about to take someone else, Jay. Did you recognize the building?"

She hadn't, she hadn't really looked. She had been so focused on the task at hand.

"It was empty but I think it is where they held you."

She gulps and sits up straighter trying to recall. The fluorescent lit corridors, concrete floors, metal doors. Rooms empty of everything. She had seen it briefly as they had raced the basement corridors to the upper levels. It might have been the same place, or another similar place. How many secret locations they had was anyones guess.

"Maybe" She whispered

Lou's car drove up beside them a few minutes later and they climbed in, still high on adrenaline. Lou was saying something quietly as they headed back towards town, but neither could hear him.

"Mission accomplished" Jane yelled at them both raising her hand for a high five.

She was changed for sure, she knew it now, she was a new person, a person with a purpose that wasn't revenge, and wasn't walking fury and fear anymore.

And now she was going home...

If the New World Order types had some kindness, some humanity, some morality, perhaps One World Government is what we need. But mainly these are nasty people with a lust for money and a ruthless disregard for human suffering. Sadly this is all made possible by a mainstream media that is owned and controlled by these very forces. Because the people who own media choose wherever it is that the light is to be shone. So the same stories and the same sound bites across six media conglomerates constitutes what the public is to learn about their world and their country."

Chris Pratt from his movie "Deception"

...to be continued...

One more chapter to go peeps. If you don't like it...too bad, you should have said something earlier. I'm going on sheer determination to complete this since there aren't many comments pushing me on. Your comment's are my fuel dang it... say something. lol. To those who have commented I have definitely directed the ending that way...so thank you and hope you love it.