The others were looking in my direction now as the spectre above me roared out a challenge. Rivera yelled something in reply, but I couldn’t understand what he said, lost as it was in the echo of the spectre’s cry.
I frantically dug out my harmonica and prepared to do battle.
There is a theory in certain circles that ghosts feed off the emotions of the living, that by doing so they can regain, at least for a little while, some of what they have left behind. I don’t know if that’s true or not. What I do know is that they react to my music like it’s a drug of some kind, a balm to the soul that helps them ease the pain they’re feeling at being stranded between this world and the next. It’s commonly recognized that music can tame even the most wild of beasts, but it is less widely known that it also has the same power over ghosts. Find the right tune and, like the Pied Piper with the children of Hamlin, you can lead a ghost anywhere. Like a junkie that refuses to give up his fix, some ghosts will sit there for hours listening to me play, until they have exhausted all of the energy it takes for them to manifest and they fade away into nothingness.
I didn’t think I could do that with a spectre as powerful as this one, but at least I might be able to hold it still long enough for the others to take some action against it.
I would normally spend a few moments listening to the sounds of the world around me, trying to get a feel for the place, to sink into the moment in such a way that the music just seemed to flow from it all. That was one of the tricks Denise Clearwater had taught me, and when I used it I always found it much easier to do what needed to be done.
This time around, I didn’t have time for any of that. As the spectre swooped down toward me, I jammed my harp into my mouth and blew.
10
The spectre let out a bloodthirsty shriek of outrage and dove toward me, its body morphing as it came. Its hands grew larger and more elongated, its fingers turning into nasty-looking claws designed to rend and tear, eager for my flesh, while its mouth filled with multiple rows of teeth that looked razor sharp. The front half of its body began to grow more solid as it concentrated its energy there, leaving the rear half to trail off into thin wisps of ectoplasmic material that flickered behind it like a roaring flame.
I cut loose with an old blues riff on my harp—an odd, syncopated little bit designed to disrupt and distract the spectre, to snare it in a web of unexpected notes and rhythms—but I might as well have been whistling Dixie for all the good it did me.
The spectre closed a third of the distance between us in an eye blink, flickering and reappearing like images from a stop-motion film flashed upon a screen, moving closer with each new appearance.
It looked at me, its eyes burning with unholy rage, and shrieked in fury before vanishing again.
I slid from the blues to a folk tune I’d heard in my youth, a gay little affair that skipped along with its own unique beat, but that had no effect on the creature either. By now it had closed two thirds of the distance between us and I had one last shot to get it right …
I closed my eyes, reached for the song in my heart … and wailed out something that sounded to me like a cat being strangled inside a set of bagpipes.
The spectre flashed into view, right on top of me, and opened its mouth wide, displaying all those rows of glistening sharp teeth.
But this time I’d hit the mark and the spectre was a split second too late. My music had it and wouldn’t let go.
The spectre hung there, its face inches from my own, its body flaring out behind it as if blown by a great wind. It shrieked repeatedly at me, trying to break my concentration, for doing so would leave it free to gnaw my face off.
I, understandably, was doing my best not to let that happen.
The music flowed out of me, the notes binding the spectre in midair as effectively as leg irons and chains once bound prisoners. As long as I continued to play, the spectre was forced to listen and, in listening, was trapped by the flow of the music around it.
I could hear the others moving about, but I couldn’t see what they were doing and didn’t dare turn around to find out. I could feel the spectre pushing back against the hold my music had upon it and I knew that it wouldn’t take much for it to tear itself free should I falter on even the slightest note. This close, there was no way I’d be able to regain the proper melody before it would be upon me, and once that happened it was all over but the dying.
Someone stepped in close behind me. The way my skin pimpled in gooseflesh at the other’s proximity made me think it was Ilyana.
I kept playing, trying not to think about how I was now sandwiched between two creatures that would just as soon devour me as give me the time of day, and was shifting into a new refrain when a set of long-nailed fingers began playing with the hair at the nape of my neck.
What the hell?
I tried to shake her off by hunching my shoulders and moving my head slightly, but without success. I wouldn’t have minded freeing the spectre to dine on the others, but the fact that I’d be the first snack on the menu kept me from indulging my more ruthless daydreams.
The spectre seemed to inch forward slightly—or was that my imagination? I wasn’t certain. I tried to banish Ilyana from my mind and concentrate.
Why weren’t the rest of them doing something?
Ilyana dragged a single fingernail down the back of my neck and then took her hand away.
Finally! Maybe now I’ll …
A hand reached out and grabbed my ass.
That did it. The harp came away from my lips in startled surprise, the song faltered, and the spectre surged forward past the invisible bonds of my rapidly fading music with a triumphant shriek.
I was done for; I knew it as surely as I knew my own name.
But at the last second I was shoved aside, clearing the way for Ilyana to step into the space I’d been standing in a microsecond before.
I hit the ground hard, the wind knocked briefly out of me, but my instincts for self-preservation were so finely honed that I was turning to look back where I’d been standing in an effort to keep my eyes on the spectre. I was just in time to watch Ilyana’s jaw come unhinged somehow and her face stretch impossibly wide as she sucked that spectre right into her mouth and down her throat.
Her neck bulged and her eyes flared red as the spectre seemed to get stuck about halfway down her throat, but she gulped a couple of times, working her throat muscles in conjunction with some help from her fingers, and the last little bits of spectral energy disappeared in a flash.
For a moment she stood there, her head tipped back, an expression on her face so close to sexual satisfaction that I would have sworn that’s what it was if I hadn’t just seen her swallow a spectre whole, and then she looked over at me with heavily lidded eyes and licked her lips.
“Ummmm,” she said. “Tasty.”
Behind me, Rivera laughed.
I was so going to kill all of them as soon as I got the chance.
With the spectre defeated, I expected the others to resume their search, but apparently there was no longer any need. Rivera and Grady moved directly to the sarcophagus from which the spectre had erupted, indicating by default that it had been the one they’d been searching for all along.
Grady took a pair of pry bars out of the canvas duffel he was carrying and handed one to Rivera. They positioned themselves along the same side of the sarcophagus, one at either end, and then wedged the tips of their pry bars into the crack where the lid met the side of the stone coffin. Each squatted down to get one shoulder under his pry bar, and then on the count of three they stood up straight, forcing the bars up with them as they went. There was a sharp crack as the seal holding the lid in place was broken and the heavy stone slab slid a few inches in the opposite direction. They repositioned the pry bars, this time using the edge of the sarcophagus as a brace, and repeated the process. The lid slid over to the edge with a grinding sound and tipped over the other side, slamming to the ground with a loud crash.
/> Wordlessly, the rest of us gathered round and looked inside.
The physical world appeared faint through the lens of my ghostsight, but it was enough. The body in the coffin had clearly been there for a long time. The desiccated flesh was stretched tight over bones clad in linen burial robes of a type I’d never seen before. If it hadn’t been for the wide shoulders and substantial pelvic area of the skeleton, I might have assumed it was a woman buried there, given the robes.
The corpse’s hands were crossed over the hilt of a sword that rested on its chest, the blade extending downward toward his feet. I was certainly no expert on edged weaponry, but it looked like an English long sword to me, given the length and narrowness of the blade. There was a word inscribed on the blade, but there was too much dust for me to read it.
“Get rid of that,” Rivera said and Grady reached in, grabbed the front of the corpse’s burial garment, and heaved the corpse out of the coffin, dumping it unceremoniously to the side. The sword popped free and clattered across the stone floor.
I bent to retrieve it, but caught the look Rivera flashed in my direction and decided perhaps that wouldn’t be the best idea after all. I stood up slowly, holding my hands up to show I hadn’t meant to try any funny business.
Perhaps recognizing that I needed something to do, Rivera said, “You’re on overwatch. Make sure nothing else, human or otherwise, tries to sneak up on us while we’re doing this.”
“Doing what?” I wanted to ask, but I let it go, knowing they weren’t going to give me an answer. I’d learn more just by watching.
Ilyana reached into the coffin and picked something up. I didn’t realize what it was until she started tossing it back and forth from one hand to the other. The eye sockets seemed to stare at me in silent accusation as the skull bounced from palm to palm.
I looked up, caught her watching me with that sly little gaze of hers, and in my mind’s eye I watched again as her jaw came unhinged and she swallowed a rampaging spectre like it was a piece of Halloween candy. I shuddered and turned away, doing my best to ignore Ilyana’s little bark of amusement as I did so.
My ghostsight let me see that we were truly alone for the first time since we’d arrived; the horde of ghosts that had been watching us appeared to have fled. For once I wasn’t afraid to keep my ghostsight activated; anything that came looking for trouble would find Ilyana waiting instead. Given what she’d done with the spectre, I didn’t think she’d have much difficulty handling anything short of a major demon or two.
Even then, I might have bet on her.
The ghosts that had been watching us prior to the spectre’s arrival had vanished and there didn’t seem to be anything else down here with us, supernatural or otherwise, leaving me with little to watch on “overwatch” other than my companions.
After removing the body and dumping it to one side, Rivera and Grady began methodically going over the interior of the stone coffin, inch by inch. They ran their hands across the stone, knocked on it with their knuckles, tried to push and pull in various place, all without success. Whatever they were looking for, it just didn’t seem to be there.
At last, frustrated, Rivera called Perkins over.
“Where is it?” the mage asked, his accent more prominent when he was irritated.
Perkins smiled and held out a hand, palm up.
“Twenty bucks, wasn’t it?”
Rivera didn’t say anything, and after a moment or two of continued silence, Perkins’s smile slowly faded and his hand fell back to his side. Without even bothering to look in that direction, Perkins pointed over his shoulder at the body dumped so carelessly on the floor just a few moments before.
“The sword.”
Grady frowned. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Perkins asked.
“Yes,” Grady snapped back, as he walked over to the remains of the coffin’s former tenant. “You always look like you’re kidding, which is why I’m always calling you a big joke. See how that works?”
Perkins gave him the finger but didn’t say anything.
One thing was for sure: there certainly wasn’t any love lost between any of my companions. I filed that little fact away with the others I’d picked up over the last day or two. Who knew when something I’d picked up along the way might come in handy?
Grady kicked the bones out of the way, picked up the sword, and carried it back to the others. Perkins reached for it, but Rivera took it from Grady instead.
With Ilyana and me looking on from a distance, Rivera carefully examined the sword. His attention quickly settled on the hilt of the weapon and, more specifically, on the crossguard itself.
As he focused on it, so did I. When seen through the unique filter of my ghostsight, it was less a piece of metal and more a twisting, turning length of living darkness.
I was utterly unsurprised to see the vulpine smile that crossed his face when he gave the crossguard a quick yank and it came free in his hands.
11
The next couple of days passed without incident. Fuentes was so completely confident that his threat against my friends would keep me docile and obedient that I was free to come and go at will as long as I left word where I would be and a cell number at which I could be reached. When I admitted to Fuentes that I didn’t even own a cell phone, he had one of his men get me one.
The thing was, I didn’t really have anywhere to go. The few items I considered my possessions had been picked up from the motel and delivered to Fuentes’s compound while we had been at the church. I returned from our “mission” to find my things in a brown paper bag in the middle of my bed. A note inside the bag informed me that the bill at the motel had been settled.
With the motel bill taken care of, I lost just about my only excuse to be out anyway. Living as a fugitive with the FBI on my trail made me naturally wary of being seen in public. The average person on the street might go unnoticed, but a blind guy with a cane always draws someone’s attention. The quirks of my condition make it easier for me to slip out at night, but even that was problematic; people tend to remember the guy wearing sunglasses after dark.
In the end, though, the thing that kept me hanging around with little to do was the simple fact that Fuentes was right. I wouldn’t do anything to put my friends in danger. I might be a total jerk to most people—I’m well aware that I’m generally what those with sunnier dispositions like to call abrasive—but I will literally go to hell and back to help those who have earned my trust and compassion. Fuentes’s threat against my friends might not be real, but I couldn’t take the chance that it wasn’t. Which, when considered dispassionately, was the real beauty of the trap Fuentes had sprung. My conscience would keep me in line far more effectively than anything Fuentes’s people, including Rivera, might do.
I spent the time hanging around the estate, getting to know some of the staff and trying to learn more about Grady, Perkins, and the others. The latter was difficult; while the staff was more than happy to talk about themselves, they were far more reluctant to talk about those they considered to be “Señor Fuentes’s friends,” and they clammed up tight if I pressed them for more information. I knew I should be thankful—as one of those so-called “friends” myself, their code of silence kept my identity and location secret from anyone who might come asking after me as well—but it was frustrating just the same. I had pretty much given up hope of discovering anything when an unexpected source all but dropped into my lap.
I was in the basement pool room, shooting a game of nine-ball by myself in the dark, when the door opened suddenly behind me, spilling light into the room and chasing my sight away with it.
I stood up from over the table and turned toward the door. I could sense someone there, even if I couldn’t see them. “Hello?”
“I’m sorry,” said a voice that I recognized as Perkins’s. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
I shrugged. “No problem.”
I could practic
ally hear the gears turning in his head as he took in the pool cue in my hand and the balls scattered around the tabletop.
“You’re … playing pool?” he finally asked.
“No, tiddly-winks,” I almost said, but managed to bite my tongue just before the words left my mouth. Compared to the way the rest of those in our little group treated me, Perkins was being downright friendly. If I was going to survive this mess, I needed a lot more information about what was going on than I had right now and the only way I was going to get it was to get someone to talk to me. Perkins seemed genuinely curious about my condition and it made sense to play along, to see what he might give in return. So instead of giving him grief with a smart-ass remark and driving him off, I answered with a simple yes instead.
“But … I thought you were blind.”
“I am.”
“So how…”
I held a finger over my lips and whispered, “Shhh. Ancient Chinese secret.”
The silence that followed told me he’d missed the joke entirely.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Perkins, lighten up. It’s no secret, I was just kidding. Come in and sit down. I’ll tell you if you really want to know.”
I didn’t think he was going to do it, but his curiosity must have gotten the better of him for he hesitated only a moment before doing as I’d asked. He closed the door behind him, and my eyesight returned at the same moment the darkness did.
I glanced at the table, called out a combo, and sank the shot without much effort. College had been expensive, and I’d hustled a lot of pool in my younger days to help pay the bills. Once learned, some skills just don’t ever leave you. I could throw a mean game of darts too.
My prowess at nine-ball was lost on my audience though; I might be able to see in the dark, but that didn’t mean he could. With a sigh I put the cue down on the table and said, “Light switch is there by your left hand…”
It took a moment of fumbling for him to find it and by then I had my sunglasses on, covering my eyes. The glasses weren’t strong enough to preserve my vision once the lights came back on, but they weren’t for me anyway. I’d learned long ago that the milky whiteness of my eyeballs and the scar tissue that surrounded them made a lot of people uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to chase Perkins away before we had the chance to talk.
Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) Page 6
