--Omar Khayyam, The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam
(transl. by Edward Fitzgerald)
What ended the mysterious disappearances that plagued Madison in 1992 and 1993? What stopped The Coed?
Nobody knows. Perhaps she was killed, or perhaps she feared being unmasked. Perhaps she simply tired of killing and simply walked away. What made her stop is as maddeningly unknown as what made her start in the first place. Like Zodiac before her, she burst onto the scene in a fit of mayhem, only to vanish like the wind at the peak of her powers.
The mysteries of The Coed will be solved someday. Someone will find the place she disposed of her victims; someone will stumble across heretofore unseen physical evidence in the effects of the deceased. And the killer will be unmasked for all the world to see.
Until that day comes, though, we who tracked The Coed will always wonder: What happened to The Coed? And will she ever strike again?
--Det. Marcus T. Rimbauer (Ret.), Gone: The Mystery of The Coed (Doubleday, 2001)
SIX WEEKS LATER....
Scott closed the book and sighed. He felt sorry for Detective Rimbauer; the Madison police department was ill-equipped to deal with a foe with supernatural powers. Perhaps, if Agents Scully and Mulder had dropped in from a parallel universe, they would've had a chance.
But real-life cops? No chance.
Only someone like D.X. could stop someone like Liz. Or Sarah.
Or himself.
"SO, WAS THE BOOK GOOD?"
The booming whisper came floating down from above, where Scott's wife was speaking sotto voce.
There wasn't much time before Sarah had to take finals, and she was reading her Professional Responsibility text and highlighting passages furiously while sitting in a study carol at the Waren E. Burger law library at William Mitchell College of Law. Scott was shrunk to three inches tall, laying back on a hammock that she had set on the desktop.
He smiled, and gave her a thumbs-up. He had asked to come along because he was missing her lately. It wasn't her fault. Law school is a bitch, and Sarah was a good, conscientious student with a legitimate shot at graduating cum laude. She needed to study, and he usually left her alone. Indeed, that was basically what he was doing now--just reading while he watched his enormous wife study, enjoying being in her presence.
"ALMOST DONE FOR THE NIGHT," she whispered, and smiled.
* * *
"Almost done, honey?"
"Yeah, Teri. Just have to check one more thing, then I'll have business wrapped up for the night."
Jake checked through the reports, humming idly to himself.
There had been no dreams since March 15. Not one. He didn't know what that meant, and frankly, he didn't care. Ten years is a long time to hold on to a memory--too long. It can destroy you if you don't let it go.
Maybe he'd finally laid Liz to rest. Maybe he'd finally come to terms with her death.
Or maybe, just maybe, the piece of her trapped in this real world by his spell was finally free to go on to the next place.
Whatever it was, he was more relaxed than he'd been in--well, he didn't know how long. It was so far in his past he couldn't remember.
He knew only that he was finally happy.
The listening network reports were pretty standard. Slightly elevated readings in San Francisco were to be expected, what with half the Society already there for next week's plenary meeting. That reminded him, he needed to verify his flight information--Scott and Sarah had offered to transport him, but he really just wanted to take a normal flight. Besides, the Wonder Twins could do a lot, but it was pushing them to transport him, Teri, Scott, Sarah, and Anon all the way to the coast.
He signed on to Orbitz, and switched back to the listening network to shut the program down. He clicked on the box to shutter it. As the program stopped, he noticed a blip.
It was a white dot, which caught his eye. White indicated the highest level of GTS activity. He opened the listening program, and looked at the map of the US again. Nothing unusual.
He was going to shut the program down again, but just for his edification, he scrolled back a minute in time.
Nothing, nothing, nothing....
Enormous white dot covering the upper midwest....
Nothing.
He was dialing his cell phone three seconds later. * * *
The woman strolled down Langdon, looking at the street as if she'd never seen it before.
She was aware of the world on a strange and different level than she ever had been before. It was as if she could sense every perturbation in the atmosphere, every stray thought and emotion flowed through her. She could taste the air, smell pheremones on the wind.
She was a predator. And she was searching for prey.
She walked through the doors of the fraternity, listening, feeling the pumping music as it rolled through her. She didn't know the song, which didn't surprise her. She knew the room though. She had been here before.
Upstairs! came the thought, unbidden, and she knew it immediately to be the case. Showing no sign of concern, she slipped out of the room and trod up the stairs. Third door on the right, she knew.
She turned the knob, and pushed the door open easily. The girl was still sprawled backwards on the bed, rubbing her jaw from the punch her boyfriend had landed. The two turned to see the visitor standing in the doorway.
"Hello there," said the woman. "Bad timing, that."
And with that, she struck. * * *
"I don't know what it is, but we saw it too," said Ronnie Ceres, rubbing her temples. "An enormous flash of power and then--poof!"
"It was near-adept levels, Ronnie. Power like that doesn't just go 'poof.'" D.X. was searching the records for similar anomalous readings, and getting nothing. "Can we localize it at all?" "We're trying. God damn it, get me those numbers!" The second sentence was barked at Henry Bigg, who was grabbing data as fast as he can.
"Well, centerpoint is about 43 degrees north by 90 degrees west. That's the best we can do right now," Bigg called out.
"43 north by 90 west, approximately," relayed Ceres.
D.X. was silent for a moment. "Ronnie--that's awfully close."
"Close to where--oh!" she gasped, as she realized exactly where. "But--Jake, it wasn't her."
"Pretty coincidental. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe we weren't seing Liz' rebirth. Maybe it was something else. But this is a massive outlay of power."
Ronnie knew he was right. "Okay, Jake, take Scott and go back to Madison. See what you can turn up. We're not upgrading our threat level based on this. Not yet."
"Acknowledged," said D.X., hanging up. He had another call to make.
* * *
The woman advanced on the now-tiny men, eyes gleaming. It had been too long.
"Now," she grinned, "what am I going to do with you?"
The man was stumbling backwards, his inch-tall frame staggering at the sight of the she-demon. "Please," he cried, "I'm sorry, I swear...."
"Sorry, are you? Yes, you're sorry all right. I'm a bit hungry little boy. You can satisfy that hunger."
She plucked the little man off of the ground and, opening her gullet wide, tossed him down.
He fell into the empty cavern of her stomach and immediately howled in pain from the acid. He thrashed desperately, trying to stay alive somehow, but slowly, the pain became too much. He died, choking on bile, a few hours later.
As for the woman, she simply turned to the girl, who was staring wild-eyed, and said, "Tell your friends not to worry anymore. I'm back."
And with that, she turned and strode out of the room, out of the party, and back out onto Langdon.
* * *
Scott's cell phone was ringing as they got into the car. "Yello," he answered, smiling at Sarah.
"Oberon, this is D.X. Machina."
Scott sobered immediately, and gave the verification code. "The handsomest among these Maids of Honour...."
"...a pleasant frolicksome Girl of Sixteen," completed D.X. "We have a situation."
* * *
The next morning, Professor Angela McMartin was up bright and early. She had just celebrated her thirtieth birthday with the news from her department head that she probably would not get tenure. Not that she was surprised; it was hard to break into any college, not to mention her alma mater of Madison. And it was nice of Janis to let her know in advance. It would give her the opportunity to investigate the women's studies departments at some other schools.
She turned on the radio to bland pop, and jumped into the shower. It was a couple minutes in that she paused.
"Madison police are investigating the disappearance of a University of Wisconsin student. Bradley Michaels was last seen at a party at a local fraternity. Michaels, a twenty-year-old from Sun Prairie, was wearing...."
She stepped out of the shower and toweled off. Strange. She had an odd feeling about this.
Suddenly, her mind flashed back to ten years ago, the stranger with the knife, the woman who had saved her.
It was just a flicker. Odd, that her memory of almost-rape should reappear now.
She listened to the story continue, and wondered how odd it was.
* * *
"So do we have any clue what's going on here?" asked Scott, over breakfast.
"None. But this kind of power...it's beyond comprehension. We can't take a chance."
"It can't be her, can it?" asked Teri.
"Of course not. But it's someone." D.X. poked at his eggs, and silently stewed. Whomever--whatever--it was, it was dangerous. Damn dangerous.