Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle)

by Nassise, Joseph

  The safe move would have been to pretend I hadn’t heard anything, turn away, and continue on my way to the kitchen but I’ve never been known to play it safe anyway. As quietly as I could, I crept down the darkened hallway toward the partially open door.

  The voices grew clear and I could hear fairly well by the time I settled into a crouch less than a yard away from the entrance, my back to one wall.

  “Well?” a voice I recognized as Fuentes’s asked. “Do you have it?”

  There was a clank, as if a piece of metal had been tossed onto the desk lightly. “You were right; Wagner was using the place as his new lair.”

  Fuentes laughed. “What did I tell you? Nosferatu are always so predictable.”

  Nosferatu? I’d heard the word before—it was the name of the creature in the very first vampire film by F. W. Murnau, never mind the name of the film itself. But I never imagined the things were real. How much did Murnau really know? I wondered.

  “… any more. I let Verikoff sate her needs on him when he refused to cooperate.”

  I’d missed Rivera’s opening, but it wasn’t hard to put two and two together to know they were still talking about Wagner.

  “And good riddance, too,” Fuentes replied. “Any other trouble?”

  “None. Though I have to admit that I’m surprised by some of Hunt’s abilities. He knew where Wagner was hiding before the rest of us did, for instance.”

  “Don’t underestimate him, Rivera. He’s like a rat; he’ll fight if you back him into a corner.”

  Rivera said something that I didn’t catch and both men laughed heartily.

  Laugh away, assholes, I thought. We’ll see who laughs last.

  I wasn’t sure what Fuentes was up to or why he wanted this key he was looking for, but one thing was certain. I was going to rain on their parade as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Once I knew that my friends were safe, I was determined to fuck up Fuentes’s world so badly that he and Rivera were going to wish that they’d left me alone in that crappy little motel room to mind my own business.

  “And the third piece?” Rivera asked.

  “Either Durante gave it to that pissy little sycophant of his or else it is hidden somewhere in the house in the canyon. I want you to go to the house with the entire crew tomorrow night and see what you can find. If it’s not there, I want you to find that whiny bastard.”

  Noise from the other end of the hallway told me someone was on their way. As quietly as I could I stood up, crossed the hall, and slipped inside the bathroom I knew was there. I left the door open the barest crack so that I could hear what was going on in the hallway, and stood with my back to it. If I had to, I could always lock the door, pretend to use the bathroom, and then try to bluff my way through with some story about needing to speak to Mr. Fuentes if someone was waiting for me when I emerged.

  Lights went on in the hallway outside the door and I froze, squeezing my eyes shut against the light. I hadn’t thought I’d need them, so I left the sunglasses Grady had given me back in my room; they would have proved rather helpful right about now, I knew. Holding my breath, I waited for whoever it was to go away.

  Footsteps approached.

  I tensed, one hand curling into a fist.

  Even Rivera and Fuentes had fallen silent.

  Any second now …

  The door directly to the left of the bathroom opened and someone began muttering beneath their breath in Spanish. I almost gasped in relief; it was just the maid, returning laundry to the linen closet next door. From the sound of it she was none too happy about the way the day shift had stacked the sheets, either.

  I stood there, listening as she closed the closet and walked off down the hall, still talking to herself. It was only when the lights went off that I let go of the breath I’d been holding and relaxed.

  I gave it another minute or two, then cautiously opened the door and looked out.

  The hallway was empty.

  I found I could hear Fuentes and Rivera just fine from the bathroom where I was standing, however, so I decided to stay where I was in order to decrease the chance of being discovered while I continued my clandestine activities.

  The two men had moved on to a different topic, it seemed. It sounded like they were discussing … a war in L.A.?

  “Once we have downtown, Metro South and Southwest should fall fairly easily. We can form a staging area in Inglewood and use that to take control of Westchester, Marina del Rey, and Venice.”

  “What about Papa Toulese?”

  Fuentes laughed. “He won’t even know what hit him. The forces we’ll have at our disposal will easily defeat the Loa supporting him. Without them, his riders will be nothing more than tired horses. We’ll eat them for breakfast!”

  Rivera asked a question, but it was too low for me to hear.

  Fuentes’s answer, on the other hand, came through loud and clear. “We’ll use the Key to open another gate in Malibu. From there, we can close on Drake and his people from two sides, with you leading the main force moving north through Santa Monica and I’ll put Verikoff in charge of the greener troops coming through the gate. She can march down through Topanga and catch Drake between your two forces.”

  “Flank him. Catch him in a pincher movement. Hell, charge him head on. Drake is not likely to surrender no matter what,” Rivera said.

  “Fine,” was Fuentes’s immediate answer. “Let him fall with his troops, then. I don’t care; I’m going to have to execute him anyway if he lives. We can’t have two claims for the throne, after all.

  Flanking maneuvers? Pinching movements? Battalions of troops?

  I had no idea what they were talking about, but one thing was for certain; it didn’t sound good for L.A. one way or another.

  And all of it, apparently, revolved around this Key Fuentes was searching for.

  Find that, I thought, and you’ll have the upper hand. It might be the one thing that can get Fuentes off of Denise’s and Dmitri’s backs.

  The two of them were still talking, but I was getting the sense that I was pushing my luck and decided to get while the getting was good. I’d learned a lot, even if I couldn’t make sense of it all yet. That would come with time, I knew. Right now, all I needed was a direction to work in and that I’d found.

  Find the Key, I told myself, as I slipped down the hallway and headed back to my bungalow.

  Find the Key and control the game.

  15

  The next day Fuentes put me to work on one of his crews, hauling construction supplies from one job site to the next. For hours I hefted bags of concrete and stacks of lumber, loading them onto trucks at one location and then unloading them all over again at the next. It was grunt work and didn’t require much thought, but it had been a long time since I had worked that hard and it took it out of me.

  By the time we returned to the estate in the late afternoon, I was exhausted. Once in my bungalow, I quickly showered to rid myself of all the concrete dust that had accumulated during the day and then dried off. I was going to slip into my spare clothes but found that they were still drying from being washed the night before. Deciding that sleep took precedence over getting my clothing dried, I slipped into bed naked and was asleep in seconds.

  Ilyana woke me a short time later with several quick little slaps on the cheek.

  “Ow!” I said, as I was startled into wakefulness to find her sitting on the edge of my bed in the dark. “What are you doing? That hurt!”

  For a moment her eyes flashed red with anger and then she relaxed and her expression became decidedly more … hungry. She reached out and gently placed her hand against my still stinging cheek, matching it against the red mark that was no doubt emblazoned there.

  “Awwww, do you want me to kiss it and make it better?” she asked, in a voice that might have been meant to be seductive but was far from it.

  In fact, upon hearing it, my testicles retreated in much the same way they would if I decided to go skinny-dipping in a g
lacial lake in mid-February.

  In Norway.

  Conscious of her nearness and my nakedness, I quickly changed the subject.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked, pulling the sheets up closer to my neck.

  “You invited me,” came the reply. “I couldn’t have come in otherwise.”

  No, I didn’t. I distinctly would have remembered that. I was equally certain that she wasn’t telling the truth about needing to be invited, either. I wasn’t an expert on preternaturals, by any stretch of the imagination, and my lessons with Denise had been cut off far more abruptly than I had hoped, but I had the feeling that Ilyana could go anywhere and everywhere she wanted to, regardless of whether she’d been invited or not. Granted, the supernatural elements of the world often acted in less than logical ways, but I didn’t think this was one of those times. She’d entered Wagner’s former home without difficulty, hadn’t she?

  Sitting in the dark, naked, with a half-breed demon nearby who seemed to have an unhealthy interest in me, sexually or otherwise, just didn’t seem to be the right time to argue, however. So instead, I asked another question.

  “Why are you here?”

  I almost said, “What do you want?” but decided at the last second that the answer to that question might get me into more trouble than it was worth.

  “Why am I here?” she repeated. “Perhaps I just wanted to see you.”

  Right. Like the lion playing with the gazelle before it eats it for lunch.

  I shook my head, wondered if she could see it in the darkness, and then decided that yeah, she probably could.

  “Seriously, why are you here?”

  Ilyana got up from the bed so abruptly that I thought she was going to lose it, but all she did was toss my clothes at me from the small dresser.

  “We’ve got another job to do, let’s go.”

  I caught my clothes, reached for the blankets, and stopped.

  “Um … would you mind?” I asked.

  Ilyana looked at me.

  “Mind what?” she asked.

  “Turning around so I can get dressed.”

  “Why?”

  I stared at her. “Why what?”

  “Why do you want me to turn around?”

  This was getting ridiculous. I didn’t know if she truly didn’t understand a concept like common courtesy or the need to not embarrass ourselves or if she was just playing with me.

  Deciding that I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of making me uncomfortable, I threw off the sheets, got out of bed, and proceeded to get dressed right there in front of her. Her gaze roamed over my body as I did so, taking in the tattoos and the scars, but she didn’t say anything about either while she waited for me to finish.

  It was only when I was completely dressed and headed out the door that she said, “I think I like you better the other way.”

  I pretended not to hear her. The last thing I needed was a sexual relationship with a half-human, half-demon hybrid that ate spectres for breakfast and tossed the heads of vampires around like baseballs.

  Rivera was waiting for us by the car when we came out the front door. Seconds later Perkins and Grady joined us as well.

  “Hail, hail the gang’s all here,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, but no one laughed.

  I could tell this was going to be another fun outing.

  We all piled into the car and got on our way.

  * * *

  The house was high in the Hollywood Hills and sat behind an eight-foot security wall of brick and stone. At first I thought we’d have to scale the walls, but I was thinking far too literally. The entrance had one of those keypads on a little stand near the gate; those with the right access key could flash the card in front of the pad and, when it was properly read and authorized, simply wait for the gate to be opened automatically. Rivera drove up, rolled down the window, and placed his hand flat against the pad.

  There was a bright flash, a smell like scorched ozone, and then the gate began to roll slowly open.

  As we drove through, I glanced back at the keypad. There wasn’t much left of it beyond a smoking, twisted hunk of metal.

  The house sat at the end of the long, sloping drive. There was a garage to the right whose door must have been linked to the gate, for it was almost finished rising as we pulled into view. Rivera ignored the garage, however, choosing to park out in front of the main entrance.

  We’d been on two of these little excursions so far and each time we’d encountered something that wasn’t all that happy with our general presence, from the spectre in the church crypt to the presence of the Nosferatu in the basement of the murder house. All of us, except perhaps Ilyana, were a bit tense as a result as we got out of the car and headed for the front door.

  Grady tried the handle and found the door locked. Without a word he pulled a set of lock picks out of his inner coat pocket and got to work. It took him less than a minute to breach the door and another ninety seconds to bypass the alarm system from the control pad just inside the entryway.

  A minute and a half to defeat a state-of-the-art security system? The owner, this Durante guy Fuentes was talking about the other night I suspected, should have saved his money and just bought a dog.

  We all knew the drill by now so Rivera didn’t even have to say anything once we were inside. Perkins stepped to the middle of the foyer as we all gave him room to work. He bent to the task with the attention and energy he’d used the time before, but after several minutes of him turning in place and staring blankly at the walls, it was clear something was wrong.

  “Today would be nice, Perkins,” Grady said.

  Perkins frowned without opening his eyes and tried again.

  After a few minutes of us standing around in silence, he said, “There’s something blocking…”

  Rivera didn’t hesitate. “Take a look, Hunt.”

  Right.

  I slipped my sunglasses off my face and triggered my ghostsight.

  Technically speaking, I could have left the sunglasses on; they don’t really interfere with my view when I am looking at the world in this particular fashion. Sometimes, though, you need to act in ways that make sense to you rather than in ways that make you question the whole basis of your reality. It made sense to me to take off my sunglasses so that’s what I did.

  There were no ghosts here, or, at least, none that I could see at that moment, but there was definitely some magick being utilized. The walls of the room were covered in a shimmering silver glow and everywhere I looked I saw the same thing.

  “Try it again,” I told Perkins and this time I watched as he did so. Just as he had in the murder house, he called forth these twisting, turning tendrils of energy and sent them out questing for the object he was looking for. I wondered if he even knew this was how his power worked, then I decided that it didn’t matter. One way or another he managed to find what he was looking for and that was the important thing.

  Except here, every time the tendrils tried to reach beyond this room into the next, the silver glow pushed them back and didn’t allow them any further activity. It was like seeing a bolt of electricity grounded, its energy stolen.

  “He’s right,” I said to Rivera. “There some kind of mystical energy field surrounding the entire room and keeping Perkins from finding whatever it is he’s looking for.”

  “So let’s try the next room,” Grady said and began moving in that direction, but I stopped him.

  “I’m afraid it’s there as well. As far as I can tell, it’s in every room. Maybe even covering the entire building.”

  Rivera closed his eyes, extended his hands on either side of him. He must have discovered the same thing I did, for he cursed several times under his breath as he examined this room and the next.

  When he came back he said, “All right, we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. The entire building seems to have been warded, so we’re going to have to split up and search the place manually. If you find anything unus
ual, let either Verikoff or myself know. Questions?”

  He looked at me as he said it, but I didn’t respond. They had yet to answer any of the questions I needed answered, so I didn’t see any point in asking any more. I knew we were looking for another piece of the “Key,” whatever that might actually be, and guessed that it probably resembled the other two we had already collected. I’d wander around, preferably away from the others, and look for it even as I was doing my best to learn as much about the individual who owned the place as possible.

  Both Fuentes and Rivera had mentioned someone by the name of Durante, and I was willing to bet that this had been his home. If that was the case, then perhaps some incriminating information about Durante’s rivals, namely Fuentes, might be stashed somewhere on the premises. If I could find that, I’d be in a much better position to demand my release and an end to any pending threats against my friends.

  We split up, each of us going in a different direction. The house was more a mansion than a home, with three floors and multiple wings, so there was plenty of space for each of us to individually investigate.

  Rivera sent me up to the second level, near the back of the house, where I found a variety of bedrooms. Probably figured I’d get in the least amount of trouble back there. I refrained from turning on any lights and left the curtains drawn where I found them that way, wanting to protect my ability to see. If I found a room where the curtains were open, I pulled them shut. After coming across a couple of similar-looking rooms it became clear that these were, in all likelihood, guest rooms. Some looked recently cleaned, others not to have even been opened in the last several months.

  One in particular, however, turned out to be fairly interesting.

  Unlike the others, this one looked to have been used more recently. In fact, it appeared to be used on a regular basis, if the men’s clothing in the closet and dresser was any indication. The styles were all recent and there was even a dry cleaning tag from two weeks ago sitting atop the dresser.