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

by Nassise, Joseph

  What the hell was going on?

  In the back of my head I realized that being able to see was going to be a huge tactical advantage in the days ahead if I was going to wrest the Key from Fuentes’s control, so I did everything I could to remain outwardly calm.

  Two nights ago I’d somehow managed to find the hiding place of Durante’s right-hand man while sleepwalking—a particularly impressive feat given it had required me driving in the dark with no recollection of having done so. Last night I ended up having wild sex with Ilyana and didn’t remember even a single minute of it. Now I was able to see in the light as well as, if not better than, I could see in the dark, something that hadn’t been a reality for me for years.

  I felt like I was standing on the edge of a deep abyss and was afraid to look down for fear it would tip me over the edge.

  Rivera said something to me, dragging me back to the present.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  His look was full of daggers as he said, “Get your clothes on and be out front in five minutes. We have work to do.”

  With another annoyed glance at Ilyana, he strode out the door and yanked it shut in his wake.

  Ilyana sighed and then slipped out of bed. She padded naked on silent feet to the door of the bathroom, glancing back at me coyly from the entrance.

  “Want to share the shower?” she asked.

  One side of me was saying, “Oh yes” while the other was screaming like the knights in that Monty Python clip, “Run away! Run away!”

  I chose the safer alternative.

  I looked down beside the bed, searching for my clothes. When I didn’t see them anywhere, I asked Ilyana.

  “What clothes?” she replied.

  “The ones I was wearing when I came here last night.”

  She laughed and it was a surprisingly engaging sound. Gone was the hint of cruelty that so often characterized her reaction to the world around her; this was just pure amusement.

  I liked it.

  I didn’t, however, like her reply.

  “You weren’t wearing any.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She stood in the doorway, making no move to cover up her more than attractive form and said with no little amusement, “You weren’t wearing any. You showed up at my door wrapped in a sheet with nothing on underneath it.”

  I felt my mouth drop open in shock.

  I’d wandered over here, naked, wrapped in a sheet?

  She laughed again and then stepped into the bathroom. From around the corner I heard her say, “You’d better go put on some clothes. You don’t want to keep Rivera waiting.”

  I found the sheet she was talking about, wrapped it around myself, and headed back to my bungalow, ignoring the knowing looks from the gaggle of housekeepers I passed on the walkway in the process.

  If I hadn’t been so worried that I was losing my mind, I might have even found the situation comical.

  * * *

  “Where to?” Grady asked, from behind the wheel of the Charger ten minutes later.

  Rivera handed him a slip of paper, but didn’t say anything more. He sat in the front passenger seat, brooding, and I wondered how much of that was in response to his discovery of Ilyana and me together in her bungalow.

  After Rivera had intruded on us, I’d gone back to my own bungalow and quickly showered and dressed. Knowing I was going to be out in the sun, and needing to keep up appearances, I looked for my sunglasses. I thought I’d placed both pairs—my own and the dark-tinted pair Grady had gotten for me with the side pieces—on the nightstand by the bed, but I found only the latter. I didn’t have time to do a broader search, so I just grabbed the pair that was there and hustled out to the car.

  It was still midmorning, so the sun was high and bright, even from behind the glasses, and I kept waiting for my vision to fail, for the curtain of white that I’d lived with for so many years now to descend over everything around me, but that didn’t happen and eventually I stopped worrying about it and just went with the flow. We kept to the highway for about half an hour and then left that behind, making our way down a variety of side streets that looked vaguely familiar.

  Thirty-five minutes after leaving Fuentes’s property we pulled into the parking lot of a very familiar-looking motel and I started to get nervous.

  Grady parked directly in front of the office. Rivera and Ilyana went in to speak to the manager while Grady and I waited outside the car. I kept my head down, not wanting to give away the fact that I’d been here before, but inside I was screaming. I hoped like hell that Bergman had taken my advice and gotten out of there or things were going to get ugly very quickly.

  If Bergman was captured, I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  Rivera came out of the manager’s office just a few moments later, Ilyana in his wake. He pointed to the second floor, said, “Room 239,” and then strode in that direction.

  Taking the same stairs that I used less than forty-eight hours before, we climbed to the second floor and approached the door. As Rivera moved forward, he made a complicated gesture with his hand and then flicked it in the direction of the door, which blew it inward. Without hesitation he stepped in after it.

  We followed.

  I knew the minute we stepped inside that the room was empty and I breathed a quick sigh of relief. Finding Bergman here would have been a bit awkward, to say the least.

  There was a duffel bag on the bed with some clothing piled beside it. It looked as if he’d been interrupted while packing his things and had left in a hurry as a result, which might mean he wasn’t all that far ahead of us.

  Rivera must have come to the same conclusion. As he stepped over to examine the items in the duffel, he sent Grady to do a quick perimeter check, just in case Bergman was still in sight.

  Bergman didn’t seem the type to leave his things behind and that had me a little concerned. I glanced around, looking for some clue as to where he might have gone.

  The place didn’t look any different than it had when I’d been here last, with the exception of the pizza box on the table across from the bed.

  Next to the pizza box was a pair of sunglasses.

  My sunglasses.

  My heart nearly stopped.

  If Rivera recognized them I was up shit’s creek without a boat, never mind a paddle.

  I had to get those glasses.

  The question was how?

  The motel room was so small that any motion I made in the direction of the table would easily have been seen and would no doubt draw Rivera’s attention. All he’d have to do would be to look past me to see the sunglasses. They weren’t all that unusual a pair, not like the ones I was currently wearing, but he was a pretty astute guy and might put two and two together anyway. Especially if he asked me to produce my own for comparison.

  All this went through my mind in the few seconds it took for him to poke through the clothes surrounding Bergman’s duffel. He threw the shirt he had in his hands down in disgust and turned toward the table …

  “Did you check the bathroom window?” I asked suddenly, stepping forward so as to block his view of the items on the tabletop. “That’s how I got away from you, if you remember…”

  Whatever Rivera was about to say was lost when Grady burst through the door. “South side,” he gasped out, pointing. “Black SUV. Two others with him.”

  Rivera took off like a shot, Ilyana at his heels. Grady caught his breath for a second, then joined them.

  I made to follow, glancing over at the table as I did.

  The sunglasses were gone.

  The only other person who’d been in the room was Ilyana, which meant she must have noticed my interest in them and scooped them up when I wasn’t looking. I’d been so busy watching Rivera that I hadn’t realized I was being watched in turn.

  I didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried even more than I was before.

  Because I was blind, no one expected me to be able to keep up when they went chargi
ng off like that, so I used that to my advantage, stepping out of the room and following the walkway around to the south side of the building where I would have a good view of what was happening.

  I was just in time to see the others dash into the street as a black SUV roared around the corner at the far end. There had to be a hundred yards between them, but that didn’t stop Rivera from giving it his best shot, sending an honest-to-goodness fireball streaking down the street after them.

  For a second I thought he might actually get lucky and clip the rear end of the vehicle, but just as it seemed like the ball was going to slam into the rear half of the vehicle, blue green lightning arced out of the SUV and intercepted the fireball, forcing it to detonate in a blinding flash of light.

  Unharmed, the SUV roared out of sight.

  I stared after it.

  Not only had that lightning flash been familiar, but just before the SUV pulled out of sight, I thought I’d seen Dmitri’s face staring back at me from out of the passenger’s seat.

  Things were getting stranger by the minute.

  26

  I pretended to feel my way downstairs and reached the car in time to witness the end of an argument between Rivera and Grady. Rivera was furious, blaming Grady for not having engaged those who’d spirited Bergman away the minute he’d first laid eyes on them. Grady, in turn, argued that there was nothing he could have done; he was, after all, just a human thief, as Rivera was always fond of reminding him. Ilyana had to step between them to keep them from coming to blows. I was thankful for the disruption, knowing that it would distract Rivera from thoughts of the sunglasses, if he’d seen them at all.

  Ilyana took over the driving duties, leaving Grady to ride in back with me and be available to answer Rivera’s questions. Most of them revolved around the two individuals who’d accompanied Bergman. Grady claimed not to have gotten the best look at them and could only describe them as being a “large man” and a “dark-haired woman,” neither of whom he recognized. After pressing him on the topic for several minutes and not getting any more detailed answers, Rivera gave up in frustration.

  It seemed clear that Rivera thought Grady was lying, but then again, maybe I was seeing it that way because I was convinced he was lying too. Grady had been much closer than I had been; if I’d managed to get a decent look at the face of the man in the passenger seat of the truck, he should have been able to as well. All of which raised an interesting question—what did Grady have to gain by lying to Rivera?

  I didn’t have a clue.

  After playing mental tug-of-war with that one for a while, my thoughts turned to questioning whether it had actually been Dmitri I had seen or if it was just wishful thinking on my part. Denise and Dmitri were my closest friends. Hell, they were my only friends. They had stuck with me through thick and thin in Boston. I had done the same in return when Denise’s obligations drew us to New Orleans. That was what friends did for one another; they watched each other’s backs.

  If the two of them were here, that meant that they couldn’t still be under the thumb of Fuentes’s man in the Big Easy, and I could breathe a sigh of relief that my actions wouldn’t get them hurt. My choices would be back to being my own, which was how I certainly preferred them to be. No more indentured servitude, no more questionable ethics or blatant law-breaking. Never mind that I’d be free to get the hell out of Dodge and leave Fuentes and his cronies in the dust behind me.

  I’d still have to deal with the Preacher, sure, but that was a risk that, right about now, I’d be willing to take.

  If only it were that easy, I thought. No matter how many times I went back over what I’d seen earlier, I still couldn’t quite convince myself that I was right, that it had been Dmitri I’d seen. And without that certainty, I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Fuentes was out when we returned, so we were spared the ass-chewing I was certain we would receive for failing to grab Bergman when we had the chance. Rivera sent Ilyana and Grady off on separate errands, leaving me to fend for myself for the afternoon. I headed into the kitchen, had one of the housekeepers whip me up a couple of sandwiches and get me a bottle of beer, and then retired to my bungalow to do some thinking.

  As evening drew near I began to grow uncomfortable. The events of the last two nights had been unusual, even for me, and I was searching for explanations that made sense, any kind of sense. I supposed it was possible that my subconscious mind might have added up several separate and seemingly unrelated pieces of information and then parsed that combination of data into a logical guess for where Bergman was hiding, but it seemed unlikely as I didn’t know the city very well and certainly wasn’t familiar enough with it to pick that hotel out of hundreds of others. And I suppose it was possible for me to have driven most of the way there just fine, but then gotten distracted at the end of the trip and forgotten how I’d arrived there.

  Possible, but highly unlikely.

  The same was true for my dalliance with Ilyana. Yes, she was beautiful, with a body that would make even the most jaded player sit up and take notice, but I also had a rather healthy fear of the inhuman side of her heritage and couldn’t imagine making a pass at her, never mind showing up at her door naked beneath a bedsheet. I didn’t have that much to drink!

  Maybe it was stress, I thought. Stress can do crazy things to a person.

  No, there was something stranger going on here, and it was my inability to put my finger on it that was making me uneasy. I’d spent considerable time that afternoon thinking it all through and the only common denominator that I could come up with was that both incidents had begun when I’d been asleep.

  Ergo, as evening drew closer, I decided that I wasn’t going to do so.

  Sleep, that is.

  At about five o’clock I went over to the main house and raided the kitchen, bringing back a dozen Red Bulls and a jar of instant coffee to use in the coffeemaker back in the bungalow. I hadn’t heard from nor seen any of the others since the events of that afternoon, which was just fine with me. I planned to watch movies and drink caffeine all night long, hoping that by breaking the pattern I wouldn’t have to deal with these crazy nighttime activities again that evening.

  Sometimes my naïveté surprises even me.

  By ten o’clock I’d polished off four of the Red Bulls and half a dozen cups of coffee. I was so hopped up on caffeine that my stomach churned incessantly and I was having a hard time sitting still. After rewinding the movie I was watching three different times because I couldn’t focus long enough to know what was going on, I decided that maybe a change of scenery might be in order.

  Ten minutes later I was behind the wheel of the Charger, cruising through the Hollywood Hills with the windows down, enjoying the crisp, cool air blowing in my face.

  I drove through the Hills, cruised down to Universal City and out to Toluca Lake, then back around Griffith Park by way of the I-5 freeway. I cut back west via Los Feliz Boulevard, headed for the 101.

  That’s when I felt it.

  The faint stirring of something other in the back of my mind.

  At first I ignored it, thinking it was just fatigue playing tricks on me or maybe the beginnings of a headache. But the feeling began to grow stronger and I started having a hard time focusing on what I was doing. My thoughts were scattered, and entwined within them were fleeting images of things that I was certain I’d never seen before. People and places and things that just shouldn’t be, things that made me shudder and shake in my boots.

  I shook my head, trying to clear it, and nearly ran off the road as my hands jerked the wheel to the right.

  That’s when I knew I was in serious trouble.

  I hadn’t turned the wheel.

  I was dead certain of it.

  An ice pick began poking about in my brain, sending spikes of blinding pain jabbing through my system and making me jerk about like a puppet on a string.

  I’m not alone in here, I thought.

  That’s when the attack intensified. Whateve
r it was inside my head with me began to force its will upon me, trying to take control. I watched as one of my hands let go of the wheel, seemingly of its own accord, and jabbed the button on the radio. Loud, blaring music filled the car as my hand turned up the volume even as I struggled to force it back to the steering wheel. The spikes of pain in my head grew more frequent, the music blared in my ears, and my hands began jerking about as my control of the situation slipped away.

  Darkness began to pool at the edges of my vision as I felt my personality forced into the back of my mind and glimpsed another, stronger entity settle into its place.

  I remember thinking, Damn, he’s pissed! as my consciousness seemed to fray like an old sheet flapping in hurricane-force winds, and I slipped down into darkness, screaming in vain against the power that had taken control of my body.

  27

  … I surged up from a prone position with the remains of a scream fading from my lips. It was like turning on a light: one minute I was lost and drifting, the next fully aware and in control of my body again.

  I had no idea how much time had passed.

  Or where I even was.

  All I knew was that something other had taken control of me, had made me dance and sing and prance about like a puppet on a string, all while I was trapped unaware in the back of my mind.

  It was absolutely terrifying.

  Adrenaline flooded my system, a belated response to the threat my mind was just now beginning to understand. My instincts were telling me that I had two choices—fight or flight—but neither was really possible. I couldn’t fight something I couldn’t see. And I couldn’t run away from something that I was carrying around in my own head. The paradox threatened to overload my synapses and panic loomed, a dark wave rising high above my head, ready to drown me in its depths.

  As I fought to keep control, I glanced down at myself, only to discover that my hands, arms, and chest were covered in drying blood!

  I scrambled to my feet, frantically patting myself down, convinced the blood would turn out to be mine despite the fact that I wasn’t feeling any pain.