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

by Nassise, Joseph

  “So they were rivals?”

  Bergman shook his head. “It was much worse than that. Calling them archenemies might be closer to the mark.”

  “Why? What did they have between them?”

  “Fuentes was everything that Durante hated: arrogant, self-absorbed, entirely focused on his own wants and needs.”

  “So what? There are a thousand people like that within spitting distance of any corner in downtown L.A.,” I said. “What caused the animosity between the two of them?”

  Bergman shrugged. “Why do any two people hate each other? They just did, that’s all.”

  I could see this was going to get me nowhere fast. It was time to get to the point.

  “So it had nothing to do with Durante being a practitioner of the Art.”

  It was a reasonable guess and I knew I was on target when Bergman tensed.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  I didn’t have time to screw around. The sun would be up soon, and I didn’t want to get caught in the light. Driving back would be difficult if that happened, even with my two pairs of shades. If I got stuck, my options would be severely limited. Calling for help would no doubt endanger Bergman. Even if I made up some reasonably plausible explanation, word would eventually get back to Fuentes that I had to be “rescued” and he’d start to wonder just what I was doing at a rundown motel like this and he’d send somebody, most likely Rivera, to investigate. Bergman would be a sitting duck. Besides, who would I call anyway? With Perkins dead, I didn’t know who I could trust.

  My other option would be to call a cab, which would get me back to Fuentes without difficulty but would cause problems of a different sort. I’d have to explain where the car had gone, which in turn would generate questions about what I was doing here, and I’d be right back to where I started.

  Neither one would do. I had to get to the point and do it quickly if I hoped to get anything useful out of Bergman.

  So instead of arguing with him, I said, “Okay then, let me show you what I mean,” and snatched his sight away from him.

  The typical few minutes of fear and panic followed until I told him, in a loud and annoyed voice, to be quiet and gave his sight back to him.

  A headache came roaring in to replace what I’d just given back, but I figured it was a small price to pay if my little demonstration got Bergman to open up.

  Thankfully, my gamble paid off.

  “You’re one of them,” Bergman said, with more than a little hint of wonder in his tone.

  I wasn’t certain who he meant by “them” but I ran with it anyway.

  “Yes, I’m one of ‘them’ as you so quaintly put it, so how about we drop this dancing about?” A line from an old movie popped into my head and I just went with it. “Help me help you, Bergman. Help me help you and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  The guy must have been a Tom Cruise fan for, to my surprise, it actually worked.

  “All right, fine. Yes, the feud between them probably had more to do with Michael’s position as magister than anything else.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It started a few weeks after Michael had announced his run for mayor,” he began. “We were at a private function at the 44 when Fuentes and that pet sorcerer of his barged in.”

  I didn’t know what the 44 was, probably a restaurant or nightclub, but it didn’t take much thought to determine who Bergman was talking about with his pet sorcerer reference.

  “Words were exchanged. I don’t remember them exactly, but there were a lot of accusations on Fuentes’s part that Michael wasn’t fit to be mayor, never mind magister, and that he should simply step down before things got ugly.”

  “That must have endeared Fuentes to Durante.”

  Bergman shrugged. “Michael was a good man: calm, reasoned. He tried to talk to Fuentes, but every time he opened his mouth the other man would start ranting and raving again. It was embarrassing, to be blunt. Eventually, Michael had no choice but to toss him out.”

  I couldn’t imagine a purely mundane security team escorting both Fuentes and Rivera from the premises, so there must have been a bit more to those bodyguards than Bergman was letting on, but that was fine. I could read between the lines well enough.

  “After that, things quickly deteriorated. Fuentes began actively campaigning against Michael’s run for mayor. As a ‘leading figure in the Latino community,’ Fuentes made public statements against Michael’s candidacy, but the real war was going on behind the scenes. Rumors were spread to various tabloid papers. Events picketed and disrupted. Allies were threatened or bought off. By the end, the two of them were ready to tear each other’s throats out.”

  Something just wasn’t making sense.

  “I thought magisters had the power to determine who takes up the mantle after them,” I said. “If Durante hated Fuentes so much, why on earth did he choose him as his successor?”

  “That’s just it; he didn’t!” Bergman said heatedly. “He chose Marcus Worthington! I was there when he did it and even recorded the choice in his personal journal.”

  I had no idea who Marcus Worthington was, but I wasn’t about to let on just how green I was, so I didn’t say anything. The fact that Durante had made a written record of his choice was interesting, though. “Do you have that journal with you?”

  “It was taken from the house the same night that Michael died.”

  Of course.

  “Marcus had the experience, the vision, and most important to Durante, the moral temperament to fill his shoes as Magister.”

  “And Fuentes didn’t.”

  “Damn right he didn’t! The man’s nothing more than a thug.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “So what happened?”

  Bergman was quiet for a moment and then, “I can’t prove it, but I think Fuentes had Durante killed.”

  No shit, Sherlock, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue and waited to hear the rest.

  “Michael was tied down, tortured with a knife,” Bergman said. “The authorities didn’t let me in to see him, not even for identification purposes at the morgue, but I had a friend in the medical examiner’s office get me enough of the details. Whoever killed him had been looking for information and the only person I know with that kind of interest in Michael was Fuentes.

  “When a magister dies without naming a successor, the decision as to who will fill the position is determined by a vote taken by a council of the seniormost practitioners in the region. Fuentes had been working behind the scenes for months apparently, caging favors and storing them up for when the time was right. By the time Michael was found murdered, Fuentes had either obligated or bought off most of the members of that council so that he was the one and only candidate considered.”

  That sounded like the Fuentes I knew. Wait until the time is right and then bend circumstances to best fit your needs and desires.

  “So what’s with this Key that Fuentes is after? Why does he want it so badly?”

  Bergman shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  I stared at him, not saying anything.

  Most people can’t stand silence and Bergman was no different. “Really, I don’t,” he said after only a moment or so.

  “Come on, Bergman!” I said sharply. “Do I look stupid? You were Durante’s right hand man for how many years? And you don’t know anything about the very thing that more than likely got your boss killed?”

  My reluctant companion sighed, hesitated, and then said, “Michael only mentioned this ‘Key’ once and that was on the night he died.”

  He was quiet for so long after that that I thought he wasn’t going to say anything more. When he did, it was in a subdued tone, as if the very memory was painful, and I had no doubt that it was.

  “I was at Michael’s, waiting for him to return from a meeting with some of his department heads. We were going to go to go out on the boat the next day; we’d both been looking forward to
it.

  “But he stormed in that night, visibly upset. He told me there was trouble brewing and that it was best that I got out of town for a few days. I didn’t want to leave him, especially if something was happening, but he told me it was related to things ‘beyond the normal’ as he liked to call them and it was best if his enemies couldn’t use me as a target.

  “When I still refused, he had his bodyguards forcibly remove me from the house and take me to a hotel in Palm Springs for the night.”

  I could see where this was going. Without his bodyguards present, Durante had been much more vulnerable than he might otherwise have been. His enemies had gotten to him because he’d been more concerned about Bergman’s life than his own.

  I could practically taste Bergman’s regret. I’d been there, done that, and knew the special kind of hell such regret truly was.

  “Before I left, I heard Michael on the phone with someone, ranting that he’d rather burn in hell for eternity than give the Key to Fuentes. That letting him take control of the Key would be a nightmare on earth.

  “That was the last time I saw him alive. And the only time I heard him mention a Key. I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” I replied, surprising myself. And I genuinely was. The more I heard about Fuentes, the less I liked. I still didn’t know what the Key was or exactly what it did, but it was quickly becoming apparent that it must be an artifact of considerable power if Fuentes was putting this much effort into recovering it.

  If that was indeed the case, I had no doubt that Durante had been right—letting Fuentes get his hands on the Key would, indeed, be a nightmare.

  “Any idea who he was talking to that evening?” I asked, as gently as I could.

  “None. I’ve been trying to figure that out for weeks now.”

  And just like that my great lead came to a stuttering halt. If Bergman didn’t know what the Key was or where Durante might have hidden it, I was pretty much out of luck.

  “So now what?”

  “Now I suggest you find a different hiding place. If I was able to track you down, I’m sure those less pleasant than I can do the same.”

  “But I don’t know anything.”

  I felt bad for the guy. “I know that,” I told him, “and you know that, but Fuentes’s thugs don’t. If I were you I wouldn’t take the chance.”

  I thanked him for his time and headed for the door. Just before I reached it, I turned back to face him.

  “One last thing,” I said. “Where the hell are we anyway?”

  22

  Dawn was edging its way over the horizon when I stepped back inside my bungalow. I was exhausted, mentally and physically. Apparently sleepwalking—and sleep-driving—required more than a fair bit of energy. Combine that with the heightened level of tension that seemed to be the norm here at Casa Fuentes and you ended up feeling the way I did now: like I’d been hit by a truck, only to have it back up and run over me a second time.

  I walked into the bedroom and collapsed on the bed, still fully clothed.

  Sleep must have come instantly, for the next thing I knew Grady was standing over me some indeterminate time later, poking me with the tip of my cane.

  “Wake up, Princess. We’ve got work to do.”

  I mumbled something about shoving that cane somewhere uncomfortable if he touched me with it again, but apparently my threat wasn’t all that convincing for he went right back to jabbing me with it.

  “Come on, Hunt.” Poke. “Get your ass out of bed.” Poke. “Rivera’s waiting.”

  It was the mention of Rivera that got me moving. Even in the short time I’d been here, I’d learned that it was best not to irritate the fiery Latino sorcerer if you could avoid it.

  I sat up and looked around. It was dark enough that I could see Grady standing there in the shadows, but he must have left the front door open because I could see a little bit of light leaking in through the doorway behind him.

  Shaking my head to clear it, I asked, “What does he want?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  Grady folded my cane up and tossed it on the bed beside me. “Get up and ask him yourself,” he said, as he turned and left the room.

  Always the pleasant one, that was Grady all right.

  I took a few minutes to change my clothes and splash some water on my face before making my way outside and over to the main house to look for Rivera.

  I found him waiting for me in the foyer, along with Ilyana and Grady. Tension was in the air and I had a hunch I wasn’t going to like whatever came next.

  Turns out I was right.

  We left the house and piled into the Charger. It felt odd to have so much room, and I wondered if anyone else in the car was thinking of Perkins’s absence. Not a single word had been spoken about him since Grady had carried off his corpse two nights before. I wondered what had happened to it and then decided that I really didn’t want to know. There were just too many things that fed upon the dead; pretending that he’d been given a decent burial or cremation was much better. Who knew? Perhaps he had.

  The sky was clear, the sun was shining brightly, and I couldn’t see a damn thing, even with both pairs of shades. So instead I sat back and waited to hear what we were up to.

  When, after ten minutes, no one volunteered any information to that effect, I leaned forward and said, “So where are we going anyway?”

  “To talk to some people,” Rivera replied from the front passenger seat. “Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. We’ll do the rest.”

  I refrained from commenting on the wisdom inherent in telling a blind man to keep his eyes open—Rivera wouldn’t appreciate the irony, I knew—and instead concentrated on the implications of what Rivera had just revealed.

  Fuentes had obviously expected to find the third and final piece of the Key at Durante’s, and our inability to do so—along with what seemed thus far his inability to find Bergman—must have left him scrambling for new options. He was no doubt betting that someone in L.A.’s supernatural community knew where it was and was sending us to shake a few trees and see what fell out. It was a scattershot strategy, at best, and told me what I needed to know about how close Fuentes was to finding the remaining portion of the Key, which was not close at all.

  That gave me a little breathing room, it seemed.

  Unless, of course, something actually fell out of one of the trees we were being sent to shake.

  We got on the highway for a short distance and then left that behind for a variety of back streets, as evidenced by the constant starts and stops we made along the way. Eventually, maybe twenty minutes or so after we’d left Fuentes’s, we pulled over and stopped.

  “Remember what I said, Hunt,” Rivera said, as we got out of the car. “Keep your eyes open for anything like that thing we faced the other night but otherwise let us handle things.”

  Right.

  The scent of beer and stale sweat that met my nostrils the minute we stepped through the door told me we were in a bar. The sudden explosion of movement and a shouted “Get him!,” followed by the crash of furniture and several grunts of pain, told me someone, most likely the bartender, had made a bid for freedom and failed.

  I didn’t think that was going to sit well with Rivera and I was right.

  “Just where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Rivera asked.

  The reply was too mumbled for me to understand, but the voice was clearly male.

  “I don’t give a damn what you thought; I’ve got some questions and you’re going to answer them. If you don’t, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born, understand?”

  Another mumbled reply.

  There was too much light in the bar for me to see anything. I didn’t dare borrow the sight of any of my companions—I’d pushed my luck far enough in that area already—so I cast about looking for a ghost I might entice with my music.

  No luck.

  The bar was empty of apparitions, though whether that was because it
was normally that way or because the ghosts had fled at the first sign of our arrival, I didn’t know. Either way the result was the same; I was still unable to see.

  “Have you seen this man?” Rivera asked.

  “No.”

  The squeal of pain that erupted thirty seconds later told me that Rivera didn’t believe the man’s answer.

  Perhaps it was better that I couldn’t see after all.

  “Look again. Are you sure you don’t recognize him?”

  The response this time was quick and clear. “It’s Durante’s gopher. That Bergman guy.”

  I nearly froze at the mention of Bergman’s name, and it was only my heightened sense of self-preservation that kept me from doing so. If they knew I’d been out doing research on my own there’d be hell to pay, of that I was certain. I kept a bored look on my face and pretended not to know what was going on around me, all the while listening closely.

  “Word is he used to drink here pretty regularly?”

  “Yeah. Every Wednesday, like clockwork.”

  There was no attempt to hold back information now. Whatever Rivera had done to the guy, it had certainly impressed on him the need to cooperate.

  “Was he here this week?”

  “No.”

  Another scream, longer this time.

  “Whadd’ya do that for?” the man said, after he’d stopped screaming and regained his breath.

  “To remind you that I’m not fucking around. I want to know where this guy is.”

  “I don’t know. I swear to you; I don’t know.”

  “Verikoff?”

  Ilyana spoke up for the first time since entering the building. “He’s telling the truth, I think.”

  What? She was some kind of human-demon lie detector now? I made a mental note to remind myself to watch what I said in her presence.

  “Who’d he come in here with?” Rivera wanted to know.

  “Nobody.”

  “No one? Ever?”

  I could hear the frown in Rivera’s tone.

  Apparently, so could the man he was addressing, for he began pleading with him. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m telling you the truth. He always came in alone. I swear, man, I swear. Don’t touch me again. Please!”