Blood Games

Kidnapped?

Father McCabe phoned and said, "I need your help, Father Serrano had gone missing."

Father Searrano was his 90 year old mentor who had moved to a monastery in Italy almost a year ago. I hoped McCabe wasn't going to ask me to travel to Italy to investigate. We had enough trouble of our own at the moment.

"What do you mean? He left the monastery without telling anyone?" I asked.

"He was supposed to fly in this morning to attend the christening of his favorite great-niece's son. I went to pick him up at the airport and he never showed up. I was thinking you could get your FBI contact to let you into the airport terminal. Maybe there's a ghost there who saw what happened to him."

I didn't want to say Agent Harding was busy trying to track down the current whereabouts of a killer Blood Mage before he struck. I wasn't sure that trying to find a ghost Seatac Airport would be helpful. Ghosts don't make the best witness unless it's about something that has to do with their own life or death. Then it hit me. These two cases could be related. Father Serrano was an empath, one of the rarest types of supernatural gifts. If Dubois had found out about him, he might think he could get a bunch of power out of the Father's death. Serrano claimed to be a weak Empath, but considering what he'd done with his life and all the people he'd helped, I wasn't sure I believed it.

"How many people know that Father Serrano is an Empath?" I asked.

"As far as I know, you, me and your friend Victoria. He didn't go around advertising it. The church is not big on priests with supernatural abilities. It's the old don't ask don't tell," McCabe said. "Why do you think someone might have gone after him because of his powers?"

"It's possible. I need you to come to my house. Matthew's here and a couple more people you need to meet. There's a lot going on in my life right now, and this disappearance might be related."

We had decided to wait to call the Father until we actually found Dubois, but if Dubois had found Serrano, things were worse than I'd thought. He might have decided that Matthew and I were too difficult of targets. Or maybe he knew that we were hunting him and he went after the low-lying fruit firsts. It was a whole lot easier to kidnap a 90-year-old priest who didn't know you're after him.

"I'll be there within the hour," McCabe said and hung up.

"Who was that?" asked Nick.

"That was our friend the exorcist. Father Serrano has gone missing," I said.

"What? I thought he was at the monastery in Italy," Matthew said.

"He was supposed to be at the airport, coming back to attend a christening, but he never showed up at the exit. Father McCabe was going to pick him up. Did you know that he's an Empath?"

Matthew blinked. "I suspected it."

Nick said, "You're kidding me. You can count on your fingers the number of Empath's we know about. It's got to be him. He snatched the priest."