Hunter of the Damned

by Jennifer Martucci

  The woman, just a few steps behind him, inhales sharply at sight of Agares’s prisoners. “Who did this to you? Where are John and Carroll?” Though it is little more than a whisper, her voice borders on hysterical and is filled with fright.

  “Please, get us out of here and be careful! He might still be here!” the older Callahan woman warns. She jerks her bound wrists against the pipe for emphasis, her eyes wide and wild. The sound is a loud clatter that echoes through the house and causes Arnie and his female companion to jump.

  Shaking his head as if he may have head incorrectly, Arnie bends at the waist slightly and addresses her, his tone ripe with alarm. “Who? Who might still be here?”

  “The man who brought us here!” the younger Callahan woman says. “Please hurry! He’s a monster! He’s not human!”

  Agares rears his head slightly at her words. Bordering on being impressed by her perception, he wonders whether she simply senses it as any inferior creature senses its natural predator or whether she truly feels it deep in her core that he is another species entirely.

  “Not human?” the woman who accompanied Arnie asks, screwing up her features in disbelief and making her face even uglier than before, a feat he didn’t think possible.

  “Alright, ma’am,” Arnie says soothingly. “You’ve been through a traumatic event. Everything is going to be fine.” To the female he’s with, he mumbles out of the side of his mouth, “Susan, this is bad. I think they’ve been drugged.”

  “No, please, you have to believe us! Just get us out of here!” the older Callahan woman says.

  “Ok, ok, calm down.” Arnie tries to calm them. He glances furtively at Susan beside him. “What’re your names?”

  “I’m K-Kathy. Kathy Callahan,” the older woman says. “And this is Kiera, my daughter,” she gestures to the younger woman.

  “Ok Kathy and Kiera. We’re going to get you out of here.” Arnie slides Susan a look that’s filled with fear and doubt. He quickly glances at the pipe and how they’re fixed to it. As he does so, Susan asks, “Did you see a man and woman, around your age?” she addresses Kathy. “When he brought you back here, was anyone here?”

  “No, there wasn’t,” Kathy replies. “Please just get us out of her before he comes back!”

  Feeling that the farce has dragged on long enough, Agares decides it’s time to end it. A smug and satisfied smile spreads across his face, mirthless and sinister, as he slowly descends the staircase. Kiera catches sight of him first. She doesn’t utter a word, not a single sound. Her eyes widen and her mouth parts on a silent scream. Kathy glimpses her daughter’s expression then follows the trajectory of her gaze. Her eyes lock on him, only she isn’t scared to silence as her daughter is. “He’s here! Oh my gosh! He’s here!”

  Her words cause Arnie and Susan to whip around, their eyes landing on him. Raising his hands to chest height palm facing out in a pathetically submissive gesture, Arnie begins rambling in a voice that trembles with fear. “Look buddy, we don’t want any trouble. We were just looking for our friends. Just let these two go and we’ll be on our way. No one needs to know what happened here.”

  Agares tilts his head to one side, studying Arnie and Susan with his brows drawn together and his lips pursed, much like a scientist would study experimental subjects. “Hmm,” is all he says. His brain berates the pair of sloppy, useless humans, scolding them for being dumb enough to believe he’d just hand over the Callahan women to them simply because they stumbled upon them. And that he’d believe them when they say they won’t tell. Their stupidity is not only annoying to the point of madness, it’s also insulting. “You don’t want any trouble, is that right?”

  “No, sir. We don’t,” Arnie replies.

  “Well, that’s too bad.” Agares’s smile widens so that his pointed incisors are bared. “Because you have found it.” He advances two steps when Arnie reaches to his hip and unsheathes an impressive blade.

  “Don’t take another step!” he warns.

  Agares’s smile capsizes, a nasty snarl replacing it. “Or what?” He takes another step, taunting Arnie, daring him. “I-I’ll use this! I swear I will!”

  He seems unconvinced, so Agares takes another step.

  “I’m warning you, stay right there!” Tears well in Arnie’s eyes.

  Agares takes two swift steps, forcing Arnie to act. And he does. He raises the blade then plunges it into Agares’s chest, driving it down with all his might.

  Eyes wide and mouth agape, Arnie’s head jerks backward. He stares in disbelief. The blade barely broke Agare’s skin and little more than a small drop of blood stains his shirt. Agares looks down at the knife and makes a tsking sound. He shakes his head and smirks. Arnie’s breathing is a ragged wheeze. Crying so that tears stream down his face and mingle with snot, his reddened face is repulsive as he still clings to the handle of his blade. Agares reaches out and grips his hand, squeezing it until every bone shatters. Arnie howls out in pain, and as he does, Agares withdraws the blade from his chest and rams it up under his chin. Arnie’s screams are quieted immediately. Agares yanks the knife free and watches as Arnie collapses to the floor, his skull hitting the cement floor and ricocheting with a loud thud.

  Three female shrieks ring out, so loud and shrill Agares considers covering his ears for a moment. But instead of doing that, he grabs a handful of Susan’s head and, using Arnie’s blade, slices her throat while Kathy and Kiera look on in horror. “This is exactly what’s going to happen to your precious Daniel when he comes to rescue you.”

  “No! No! No!” Kiera cries out, her body beset by powerful tremors.

  “Why? Why do you want Daniel?” his mother keens. “He’d never hurt anyone.”

  Feeling his temper bubble over, Agares shouts, “No! You’re wrong! He is a murderer and he is going to die!”

  “He didn’t hurt that girl!” Kathy shouts.

  Cocking a brow and thinning his lips over his teeth, Agares leans in and roars, “I don’t give a damn about that insignificant girl! I saw him murder one of my most trusted servants! He would kill us all if given the chance, but he will never get the chance. I’ll personally see to it!”

  “You have the wrong person!” Kathy argues, but her words fall on deaf ears. Distraught beyond reason and with makeup smeared about her face, the woman looks like a maniacal clown, one he’d prefer not to look at. He turns from her, leaving the bodies of Arnie and Susan in expanding puddles of garnet, and begins climbing the steps.

  Anticipation simmers inside of him. The need to settle his long-standing score with Gideon burgeons along with the need to transform the world to what it is meant to be. As he reaches the top of the stairs, he closes his eyes and smiles to himself. Before long, mankind’s reign on earth will end. He and other dwellers of the underworld with rule. Gideon, along with every other Hunter roaming the planet, will bow to him before being annihilated.

  Chapter 15

  ̴ Daniel ̴

  Thrust from a blaze of brilliant colors that rushed by me at the speed of thought, I stumble briefly and find myself standing before the house I lived in in Patterson. Night has fallen and the sky is a jewel-crusted swath of navy velvet. The dizzying kaleidoscope of colors that ended finally with white light so bright it surpassed the sun leaves me feeling off balance and with my eyes adjusting, but not nearly as much as ending up in Patterson. While I didn’t live here long, I did spend some time in the structure before me. It was home. Anywhere could’ve been home really, as long as my mother and sister were with me. As always, when my mind reverts to thoughts of them, my heart sinks like a stone. In the last year, I’ve felt empty and rootless in their absence. My family was missing. Sarah too. I can’t bring her back. My brain knows that. It’s my heart that rages at her loss. Leaving my family evoked a similar response for the last twelve months and still does, causing a tightening in the left side of my chest so pronounced I place my hand there and suppress a whimper. I close my eyes briefly and allow all that and the fact that I
was halfway across the country approximately two minutes ago and am now standing in Patterson to process. “What the? Did we just?” I mumble the words aloud. My sentences are fragmented along with my thoughts. My head swims. Did we just travel through time? It can’t be possible! That’s the stuff of science fiction novels, not reality. But then again, my understanding of reality and the events in my life that conform with normal flew out the window like a drunk bird the day I returned from the dead, charged with the task of snuffing out evil wherever and whenever I find it.

  Watching me with a keen gaze, Lillian shares a small smile. “It’s one of the many gifts I have, a gift you will have as well once you realize your full potential.” Her words are fingertips that slowly trail up the back of my neck and cause every fine hair on my body to rise and quiver. Piercing eyes the color of molten silver hold mine, searching them for answers. But whatever it is she seeks from me eludes me completely. All I can think about is my mom and sister.

  “Let’s go,” I say, my voice fraught with panic. My eyes volley from Lillian to Scarlett to Luke before I turn from them and move with purpose up the long driveway, pausing just once and looking over my shoulder, warning whispering through me like a sigh. And when I do, I see movement. In the house across the street, the curtains of the front, first-story window fall closed. The soft swoop of the curtain falling shut went unnoticed by Lillian, Scarlett and Luke. But to me, it might as well have had a giant neon arrow flashing and pointing to it. The sense that we’re being watched is my initial and immediate concern. After all, the sun has set already and night has claimed day. We are standing in the driveway, midway between a lamppost near the street and the front porch, where a fixture is bathing us in light. We are in full view of anyone who chooses to look out their window. I look over my shoulder and find Scarlett to my right. “There was movement in the lower window of the house across the street. The curtains closed.”

  “Ok.” She studies me, leaning in forward as if waiting to hear the rest of what I have to say. When she realizes I have nothing further to offer, a small crease appears between her brows.

  “Do you think whoever was behind those curtains saw us just appear from thin air?” I ask.

  “I doubt it,” Luke says, overhearing what I’ve said.

  “Why would anyone be staring out their window at nothing, waiting for us to appear?” Scarlett offers.

  “Exactly my point. What if it wasn’t a random person? What if it’s someone else, or something else?” I ask.

  Lillian chimes in, her voice a chill breeze that settles over us. “I don’t sense anything off,” she says with finality. Clearly accustomed to neither her words nor her assessment of things being questioned, she simply stares ahead toward the front door, her face serene and unreadable. Though a small part of me would like to pursue the question further, I don’t. My mother and my sister’s lives might be at stake, and any time spent debating the intention of the person across the street who may or may not have seen us is wasted time. “Open the door please,” she instructs.”

  I pat my pockets out of habit, searching for the key I save as a precious memento in a box on my nightstand back at the farm. “I don’t have a key anymore,” I say. Then I crane my neck and look to my right where two cars are parked. “My mom’s car is here.” I point to a black Honda Pilot.

  “Whose car is that?” Luke clips his chin toward a red Civic.

  “I’m not positive but I’d have to assume it belongs to my sister, Kiera. Guess she finally passed her road test and got her license.” I smile at the memory of our last encounter regarding her license. She and my mom argued about her failing her road test three times and refusing to practice. I was the catalyst. My mother’s decision to give me her CRV was the reason for her upset. If I’d have known that was one of the last times I’d see her, I’d have given her the car, helped her pass her road test and offered up gas money whenever I could. Life is funny that way. We don’t appreciate relationships in our lives, all the magnificent idiosyncrasies of those closest to us, until we lose them. My smile sags at the corners, the memory bittersweet. I’d give anything to see my sister glaring at me this moment. I know that sounds crazy but any expression would be welcome. I’ve started to forget the exact details of her face. Her memory is becoming muddled. The year has been long. Awareness that her features are no longer distinct to me causes me to rush to the front door where I immediately see that it is partially ajar, the lock broken. My heart rockets to my throat, lodging there along with a lump of dread. “This isn’t good.” The words tremble from my lips, my mind envisioning every worst-case scenario.

  Nerves shot and with every cell in my body vibrating with panic, I step over the threshold that down the hallway that passes the kitchen and leads to the living room. At any given moment, I expect to find the ruined bodies of my mother and my sister, a prospect that makes my knees buckle with every step and tears blur my vision. I won’t be able to withstand their loss. Living without them has been hard enough. The only form of comfort I felt was meager but existed in the knowledge that they were alive, that my absence spared their lives. Losing them would kill me, perhaps not physically, but in every other way I’d be dead.

  Breathing short and shallow and with lightheadedness claiming me, I barely hear Luke when he says, “There doesn’t appear to be any signs of struggle.”

  Whirling toward the sound of his voice, I nearly collapse. “The lock on the front door has been broken, so something happened here.” Consumed by anxiety, I follow the hallway to the end and immediately see that the television is still on. “Mom! Kiera!” I call out. My voice is answered with unfaltering silence. Soon that silence becomes thick, smothering. The energy in the room shifts, darkening like storm clouds that eclipse a clear day. And an image appears before my eyes. Tall and fit and with dark hair, a man fills my field of vision. Though his form is human, he possesses not a shred of any humanity whatsoever. Pure evil from soles to crown, his eyes are deepest ebony, twin vortexes of evil that spiral to the depths of hell. “Agares.” The single word slips from me as an image takes shape. I articulate what I’m seeing. “I see him. I see Agares. He’s was here.”

  “I feel him too,” Lillian adds.

  I close my eyes and see my mother and my sister, see their frightened faces as he grabs them and disappears. As if of their own volition, my legs spring to life, walking me to the exact spot where he took them. Soon, however, the living room vanishes and is replaced by the image of a farm. Rolling fields of green surround a sprawling structure. As idyllic as the vision would seem on the surface, the feeling that Servants of the Underworld inhabit and encompass it overwhelms it, staining it. “The farm. He’s there and he has my mom and Kiera.” My breathing becomes so ragged the words are labored. “He’s has a lot of his kind with him and he wants me there. He wants me to come.” I open my eyes and grind my molars hard. “We have to go! Can you see it too?”

  “We can’t just go alone. It’s what he wants,” Lillian says.

  “I don’t care!” I erupt. “I’m not leaving them there!” As soon as my last sentence leaves me, footsteps echo through the house. All of us freeze, vigilant and waiting to see whose inside. In the space of a breath, Scarlett unsheathes her sword, gripping it out in front of her with two hands and looking every bit as lethal and beautiful as she is. Luke snaps both daggers from his waist, his stance lowered and ready. Lillian is unarmed, but I sense that she doesn’t need a blade or bullet to defend herself. Power rolls off her in waves.

  My vision is distracted from her to two shapes that burst into the room in my periphery. “Freeze!” one commands, his voice leaving no room for argument. I immediately recognize the shapes as police officers with their guns trained on us. And apparently, they recognize me as well.

  “Oh crap, it is him,” one says, taller than the other and with brown eyes as emotionless as plywood. “The caller was right.” His gaze is fixed on me.

  “We’ve been looking for you for a long time,”
the other says. “Lucky for us, your neighbor saw you and put in a call.”

  The neighbor. I was right. We were being watched, only not by otherworldly beings, just a nosy neighbor who’d perused the wanted posters in the local post office.

  “Get on the ground with your hands behind your head, now!” the taller of the two barks.

  I whip my head toward Lillian. “Get us out of here,” I whisper through clenched teeth.

  “I can’t teleport us in front of people. They can’t see or know what we are.” Her voice reaches me clearly yet I barely see her lips move.

  “I said on the ground now!” the tall officer warns a final time.

  I lower slowly, dropping to my knees when the shorter, stouter of the two addresses Scarlett who is close by at my side. “Step away, ma’am. There’s a warrant for this man’s arrest.”

  “Why would there be a warrant for his arrest?” she questions, her voice mellifluous as she attempts to buy time.

  “That’s not your concern,” the tall officer snaps. Then to me, he says, “I said on the ground, cheek to the floor!”

  I glance sidelong at Lillian who nods her head at me. I lay flat, frustrated and terrified by what’s happening. My mother and sister are in trouble. They could be dead for all I know. Yet, I am here, with two uniformed men who believe they have any power over humanity, clueless over what’s to come. For a fleeting moment, I consider attacking them. Though I have no desire to ever harm innocent people, my need to save my family comes dangerously close to superseding my principles. Regardless, I’d be shot immediately by one or both of them. While I’m unsure of whether their bullets could even kill me, I’m not willing to take that chance. My mother and Kiera need me.