Krewe of Hunters, Volume 1: Phantom Evil ; Heart of Evil ; Sacred Evil ; The Evil Inside

by Heather Graham

  “I keep wishing we would see Regina. If she was murdered, she might well—linger,” Angela said.

  “If this group is really able to communicate with those who have gone, you’d think someone would have seen her,” Jackson said.

  “I’ve thought about that, too,” Angela said. “She might be here—unless she did commit suicide and doesn’t feel wronged anymore. But I don’t think that’s it—with Regina, I think that maybe she knew her son was in the world she had entered. She wanted to be with him.”

  “Maybe,” Jackson said quietly. “Maybe.”

  “Anyway it wasn’t Regina,” she said. “It was someone much younger. A girl—a girl about Gabby Taylor’s age.”

  “Then see what you can find in the book,” he suggested.

  He turned away again.

  “Jackson,” she said.

  He stopped. She walked straight to him and set a hand on his chest. “I don’t like it rough. Oh, I’m into energy and passion, but not pain. I don’t think I’m particularly strange, but I do like to think that I’m exciting.”

  He looked down at her, and after a moment, smiled slowly. He tossed the Glock 22 on the bed and slipped his arms around her, tearing away the towel between them. He lifted her chin and kissed her lips long and with a lingering pleasure. Then he broke away. “Well, you know, you did take me to that club because you needed to get me riled up. So impotent, you know. But guess what? You’re far more tempting in a towel than anyone I’ve ever seen on a pole.”

  “Is this allowed?” she asked, wondering that it could be so easy to stand here with him, wanting him, when it had seemed that desire had died along with the man she had once loved. He was nothing like Griffin. He was himself. But he might have in every quality something of what made him what he was that was something she subconsciously searched for in a man. Something in his inner strength, and more, his ability to deal with all that was horrible and cruel in the world, and to maintain honor, compassion and humanity.

  And it might have been the way he wore his pajama bottoms. Or his naked chest. She wasn’t sure right now. It certainly had to do with the way she felt, crushed against him.

  “Not this room,” he said softly. He released her to retrieve his gun. Catching her hand, he led her through to his room. The towel remained behind on the floor.

  He slid the Glock into the drawer of the bedside table and turned back to her.

  There was a moment when he looked at her, and Jackson looking at her was more seductive than the touch of any other. He seemed to drink her in, and as he did, she came alive before ever stepping back into his embrace and savoring the power of his arms as they came around her. Their lips locked passionately again, and she became instantly and desperately immersed in him, in every sensation that his touch brought.

  She was never sure how they stumbled down upon the bed, but once there, they became a tangle of limbs, arms and legs, so eager to brush and touch one another that they seemed a stream of fluid motion. He was a practiced and courteous lover, natural and easy in all his movements, and with every caress. His fingers moved eloquently along her spine, cradling her buttocks to bring them flush to one another, and he was unhurried, careless of his own arousal as he kissed her shoulders, explored the line of her back and cupped, cradled, teased her breasts, bathing them with the wash of his tongue, edge of his teeth, and searing liquid caress. She moved against him as well, in wonder at the wall of his chest, at the feel of him, so responsive to the lightest pressure of her fingers, to a subtle kiss pressed here, there and everywhere upon him. Eventually she curled back into his arms, and he was inside her, and for moments then, she just felt riveted by the pleasure of him a part of her, so intimate and sexual. Such sweetness could not last too long, for the urge to move was strong, the urge to increase the friction and the madness rising within her.

  And he knew how to move.

  If there were ghosts in the house then, they were silent and discreet.

  If there was a world beyond the bed, Angela didn’t really care.

  For infinitely miraculous minutes, there was nothing in the world but being with him, feeling the sleek slide of his body against hers, the remarkable intensity of his sex and the very simple wonder of being so excruciatingly intimate together. Rising and falling, arcing and writhing, rolling and even laughing breathlessly, and finding the rhythm again. He held her above him, and his eyes caught hers, and his hands slid along her breasts and torso, and then they moved again, and she lay beneath him, and everything seemed to spin and turn in the sweetness of the shadows of the night. He caught her to him in a wild deep thrust and the shadows were illuminated in a burst of light as she climaxed, and felt the shuddering spasms of his body against hers before they collapsed together on the sheets, sleek with sweat, desperate for air, their hearts pounding a staccato beat in the night.

  She lay against him then, feeling the air cool.

  “Do you think this is…well, I’m not sure if it’s good business,” she said softly.

  He rose on an elbow, amused as he looked at her.

  “This isn’t business,” he said.

  She laughed softly, amazed by the deep, deep blue of his eyes. “I’m not going to the strip club every night, you know.”

  “Aw, come on.”

  “Well, it was worth it. But the team—”

  “It’s my team. It’s a new kind of team. We report to Adam before anyone else. Adam didn’t give me any rules.”

  “Yes, but in other units—”

  “This isn’t another unit. It’s my team. And I say it’s all right.”

  She smiled. His fingers stroked her cheek in a long and hypnotic movement.

  He kissed her lips and drew her against him. “Have to prove myself,” he said. “I mean, if you’re up to it, wildcat.”

  If she hadn’t been, the way that he could touch and kiss, he would have easily persuaded her.

  * * *

  Angela was still sleeping when Jackson woke. He eased out of bed, looking down at her, and it seemed impossible that the passionate creature who had ruled his senses, his libido, and the entire night could appear so pure and innocent by the light of day. With sun shining in on her, the line of her back against the cool beige of the sheets curved like alabaster, the kind of beauty sculptors longed to capture.

  He headed into the bathroom, closing the door quietly. While he shaved, showered and dressed, he came to terms with a number of things in his mind. He had seen the children; he had seen the little boy and the little girl in the room just as they had lost their ghostly nerve and faded into dust motes. He knew that Angela had something that was far more acute than whatever power he possessed himself, and he worried about her.

  Now, by the light of a brand-new day, there was the earthly—and the unearthly—that must be tackled and solved. Odd. Now he had to question himself. He still wanted to fight the belief that ghosts existed—and that they could manipulate the living.

  Somehow, he thought, the key now was to get to know the girl Angela had befriended last night, Gabby Taylor.

  She was still sleeping when he emerged, and he decided not to wake her yet.

  He called Andy Devereaux as he headed out of the room and down the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Devereaux. That you, Crow?”

  “Yes, morning, Andy.”

  “Morning. I’ve had a car keeping an eye on the girl’s house through the night. You want to come down to the station and I’ll give you anything I can. I’ll tell you, we have the United States Constitution, and the Church of Christ Arisen has a lawyer who seems to have memorized the thing and every damn law that has to do with the country, religious freedoms, personal freedoms, you name it. If we ever get what we need to shut the place down, it’s got to be legal. In other words, I can’t break into that church and arrest anyone without a warrant and a reason.”

  “I know that, Andy,” Jackson assured him. “Yes, I’ll come down to the station. But the girl and her family are all right
—no one bothered them during the night?”

  “Nothing happened at all,” Andy assured him.

  “And your officers were careful?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “All right, thanks, Andy. I’ll be there in a bit.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  In the kitchen, Jackson discovered that Jenna was awake and sipping coffee while reading the daily paper.

  “Are we getting that delivered?” he asked casually.

  “Jake said that you mentioned we should get the paper to keep abreast of things happening in the city.”

  He nodded and joined her. She set the paper down and looked at him. “Jackson, what do you think can possibly make people—so bad?”

  “They’re not all bad, Jenna. Most people are basically good.”

  “But some are purely evil.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “I was watching those people speak at that Aryans thing last night, and I was just horrified.”

  “They have freedom of speech, Jenna. Freedom to think whatever they want, and to try to persuade others to their way of thinking. Yes, for most of us, it’s hard to fathom.”

  “It’s evil.”

  “Sadly, while I do believe in the basic goodness of humanity, there are, and always have been, those among us who might be described as evil,” Jackson agreed. She was thoughtful and, apparently, still distraught over the meeting.

  “Martin DuPre doesn’t look it at first. He just looks like a man. But he’s evil,” Jenna said.

  “Evil, good, godly—that’s for another world to judge, so it seems,” Jackson told her. “In this world, we have to catch what is illegal.”

  “I understand that.” She hesitated. “Jackson, all of us know that there is something more.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking at her gravely.

  “Well, it scares me. I think that we are in our spirit form—our souls, or whatever—what we were in life. Good or evil. Okay, yes, there are shades of gray. But there is also evil that’s almost pure.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Something evil is in this house,” she told him. “Well, we all saw the massive shadow thing in the basement. It scared the hell out of me, seeing how close it was coming to Angela. I don’t know what to think about the whole thing. But it worries me.”

  He stood and walked over to her, patting her shoulder. “That’s why we stick together in one way or another, always, Jenna. No one in this house alone. I’m heading down to the police station. Call me if anyone needs anything before I get back.”

  “Do all we all stick here for now?” she asked.

  “For now. I’ll have our next plan of action when I get back,” he assured her.

  At the kitchen door, he hesitated. “When Angela wakes up, ask her to start reading her book again, see what she can find in there.”

  “Will do, boss,” she said.

  “Are you the only one up?”

  “No, Whitney went for a jog. She’ll be right back. And Will is on his way down to cook breakfast. Sure you don’t want to wait for that?”

  “Save me something.” He hesitated again.

  Jenna looked at him and smiled. “I’ll watch out for Angela,” she said. “She’s the most perceptive of us all, so don’t you be worrying. I’ll look out for her.”

  “And yourself,” he said.

  She smiled. “Of course. But I’m doing all right here, though I do feel that we need to be together, as a team. Angela has a real gift, Jake is amazing—”

  “You all have something special,” he said.

  “But you bring out the best in all of us, Jackson. I believe you have far greater talents than you want to let us know about, but one that you have that is especially great is your ability to create a team. I feel like part of a team. Anyway, get going!”

  He smiled, walked over to her and planted a fatherly kiss on the top of her head. “Thanks,” he said, and left her, heading out. He hesitated at the door, and then took the keys to Jake’s car. Out back, he used the remote to open the gate, and brought Jake’s little Honda out to drive to the station.

  Where Andy Devereaux waited.

  “I’m sorry. I know how busy you are,” Jackson told him.

  “Well, it is New Orleans, but you might inadvertently be doing me a big favor. The two main groups that seem to be against the senator are the Aryans and the Church of Christ Arisen, and both of these organizations are bones in our throats, you know?” Andy said to him.

  “I sent Jake and Jenna to a meeting of the Aryans last night,” Jackson told him.

  “Yeah?”

  Jackson grinned. “According to Jake, our Irish girl almost got them lynched—but what’s interesting is that Blake Conroy was there as well. He came up to them after the speeches, and said that he was there to look after the interests of the senator. Know what was going on, I guess.”

  Devereaux looked at him a moment and shrugged. “There are folks out there who are politically correct sometimes because it’s what the world expects them to be—doesn’t mean they don’t have deep prejudice inside. And then, maybe he was telling the truth. Who knows?”

  “At the moment, I agree. Here’s what’s more serious,” Jackson said, and he described what had gone on when Angela and he had followed Martin DuPre.

  “That’s all crazy,” Devereaux said. “How could DuPre work for the senator, and be part of the group ripping him to ribbons?”

  “Either he’s in the Church of Christ Arisen to spy for the senator, or he spies on the senator for the Church of Christ Arisen. I couldn’t hear everything last night, but it sounded like he was making some under-the-table compromises with the oilmen,” Jackson said. “So—there’s that. And then there’s the girl. She was terrified—of something or someone—according to Angela. And Angela wouldn’t have said that if it weren’t entirely true. And that concerns me. Have you heard about anything—anything at all—that had to do with suspicious disappearances and the Church of Christ Arisen?”

  Andy groaned. “I know your girl—Gabby’s—folks. They came to us. We had a car escort them to the place, but here’s the thing. Constitution. That place has all the right paperwork. And the girl, Gabby, is eighteen. So when she said that she wanted to stay with the church and be left alone—she had given herself to God, and DuPre, apparently—there was nothing that we could do for them.”

  “Is there anything you can do if the girl talks about the church—and DuPre?”

  “We can get a search warrant. But, come on, Jackson, you’ve been in the law-enforcement game long enough, and on a federal level. What can I arrest one of those elders or priests or ministers or whatever for? Having consensual sex?”

  “It’s statutory rape if the girls aren’t old enough,” Jackson said.

  “Yes, but you know that we can’t just burst in and demand to know the ages of everyone living at the church or working there,” Andy said.

  “If I get the girl to talk—that should allow for a warrant,” Jackson said.

  “Yes, possibly, but it’s interesting that you’re saying that, since you don’t even want the girl to know that we’re trying to watch over her and her family,” Andy reminded him.

  “Well, obviously, since she’s terrified, we’re going to have to take it slow.”

  “You don’t want to warn the senator about the bastard right away?” Devereaux demanded.

  “No,” he said, and hesitated. Everyone—except for Whitney’s great-grandmother—seemed to think that David Holloway walked on water. Now, Jackson wasn’t so sure. But he didn’t know how Devereaux would feel if he cast aspersions on Holloway.

  “I want to explore a few possibilities before we report anything to Holloway.”

  Andy studied his face and nodded. “All right. I’ll play this your way. But this is my city. I’ll bend over backward for you, Crow, but don’t mess with me. This is my city.”

  “Not a chance I’d mess with you Andy—I need your help.”

  �
��All right.”

  “I need to know if anything bad ever happened to any of the young women there. Have you had a chance to put together that list of missing women I asked you for? I’d like to see it and learn the particulars. I need to know why Gabby Taylor is so terrified.”

  “I’ll get a clerk on it right away. We’ll find plenty of missing women, you know. Notifications about missing women from across the country come just like popcorn. Filtering them is going to be the problem.”

  “I’d say you’re looking for young women between the ages of thirteen and twenty-five, maybe as old as thirty, but I’d say younger,” Jackson told him. “Often, the younger, the more easily influenced, maybe unhappy with some aspect of their home life. Cult leaders can usually speak extremely well and they can sway those who are unhappy with themselves for one reason or another. A girl who feels she’s been rejected, that her family doesn’t understand her, or, perhaps, someone who has been floundering—maybe failed out of school, that type of thing. Do some cross-referencing—and see if you can find cases in particular where the parents felt they were losing the children; if they felt their daughters were girls who might have felt lost, alone, misunderstood. They might have been on drugs, though I don’t think the victims targeted would have been thieves or dealers.”

  “All right. I’ll get the word out to all our precincts. This is different, I usually have a crime to solve. Now, I’m looking for a crime that might have happened and a phantom girl out there somewhere. Hell, Jackson, you don’t think we don’t have enough crime in NOLA, we have to go looking for it?”

  “Thanks, Andy. I’ll get on the federal info systems as well, but I’m looking for just about anything, and just about anything won’t show up on the ViCAP system.”

  “You think they murdered someone at that church?” Andy asked him. “Aren’t we stretching it a bit?”

  “What else, except the fear of a brutal death, would make a young woman so terrified in life? One more thing, Andy. Did anyone ever corroborate the whereabouts of Senator Holloway and his staff at the time of Regina’s death?”