Jay’s blood turned to ice at the mention of his son. For one chilling moment, he forgot about the gun fixed on his forehead.
The hitman chuckled. “Oh, you hadn’t checked Todd’s room yet. Rest assured, it was quick and painless. The kid was fast asleep when I shot him. I guess he won’t be getting up early this morning to finish his homework, huh?”
Something cracked inside of Jay. Despair swept away his rage. The tears came hot and heavy.
“Oh my God, oh my God…” he blubbered, only vaguely aware that the man was recording his misery with his cell phone cam. “Why didn’t you just kill me earlier?”
“My employer wanted you to die knowing that you couldn’t even protect your wife and son. How does a man expect to defend a city when he can’t even keep his loved ones safe?”
Jay howled with anguish and grief and rocked back and forth as if invisible punches were pummeling him. His insides had become raw and numb, and his soul was shattering. He could feel the pieces of it, like shards of glass in his chest.
The man cocked his pistol.
“You can take comfort knowing they’ve moved on to the next world. You, Detective, won’t be so lucky.”
“You motherfuck—”
The professional killer pulled the trigger and cut off Jay in mid-insult as the back of the detective’s head blew out in a red spray.
There was an explosive flash of light, and the room spun one hundred and eighty degrees.
One instant Jay was sitting in the chair, looking up the barrel of a gun, and the next he found himself on the other side of the room.
He pivoted toward the hitman, who was methodically unscrewing the silencer. Rage detonated inside him, and he flung himself at the killer… only to pass ghostlike through the bald man’s body.
Jay whirled, confused and disoriented, fury pulsing through every fiber of his being.
He made another attempt to close his hands around the bastard’s neck, and once again, his hands slipped through as if the assassin was a hologram.
“Are you done yet?”
Jay froze and faced the hitman, who seemed unconcerned that his mark was free from his cuffs. The killer holstered his pistol. The detective was about to attempt a third attack when the killer at last looked up and fixed his icy gaze on him.
“That’s enough,” he said. “Stop trying to fight it.”
Jay tried to fling himself at the bastard but found that he couldn’t move at all.
“What the hell going on?” Jay barked.
The man rolled his eyes. “Isn’t it pretty fucking obvious? I just shot you in the head.”
“Then how am I still alive?”
“Who said you were?”
Jay shook his head. “This isn’t happening.”
The hitman grinned.
“You can keep trying to tell yourself that, but it won’t change the facts of the situation.”
“What facts?” Jay asked in a glassy voice.
“You’re dead, and your ass now belongs to me.”
The hitman broke into ugly laughter. Jay made himself look at the chair and saw the back of a cratered head, dripping blood and brain matter.
As the body in the chair slumped to the side, Jay realized that he was looking down at his corpse.
Jay felt his mind shut down, his brain unwilling to accept any of this.
“You’ll come around, Detective.”
No, this wasn’t happening. None of it was real.
Dead folks couldn’t have thoughts.
Dead folks didn’t feel pain.
Jay’s reality grew cloudy and turned dark. As he sank into the depths of oblivion, the bald man’s words haunted him into unconsciousness.
“Don’t check out on me now, Jay. The party is just getting started.”
Chapter Three
Weylock woke to the sound of ringing church bells.
They tolled every morning at 4:30 AM sharp, stirring the monks from their slumber. The men and women at the monastery would greet the day with prayers followed by their chores. Some tended to the gardens, while others prepared the meals or engaged in various cleaning duties or other projects needed for the smooth operation of the place.
Only a select few would venture to the lower levels—known as the catacombs—where the unfortunate wards of the remote monastery languished. The holding cells that lined these lower levels contained victims of demonic possession: priests and nuns, exorcists, and fighters against the occult who’d succumbed to the very creatures of darkness they battled.
This was the actual purpose of the monastery of the Holy Knight. The ancient stone walls served as an asylum or a prison, depending on how you looked at it, for the cursed souls touched by infernal forces.
For two long years, Weylock had been one of those cursed inmates, until he conquered and mastered the demon who’d taken root in his soul. In his moment of victory, Weylock became the Hexecutioner. There was a single man or woman in every generation who learned to control the hellish forces and turn the dark magic into a force for good.
Weylock often wondered why he, of all people, had inherited the mantle of the Hexecutioner. It was both an honor and curse. He’d become a knight in a holy war, but it was a lonely path.
A Hexecutioner walked alone—but at least within the monastery walls it didn’t feel that way. The monks knew his story, had witnessed his transformation from a possessed FBI profiler to the Hexecutioner firsthand. They had showed him how to channel the beast’s terrifying abilities, but more than that, they’d cared for him and given him shelter.
No wonder the monastery nowadays felt like home.
But even here, some of the monks had started offering him wary looks. They could sense the restlessness of the dark creature that still squatted in Weylock’s soul. The demon inside of him was going stir crazy, craving action.
Perhaps he was overstaying his welcome. Two weeks had passed since he’d faced the Headhunter in California.
Weylock rose from the small bunk in the tiny cell which had become his retreat from the outside world. When he wasn’t doling out supernatural vengeance and hunting down nightmares, he sought refuge in the monastery. Everyone needed a place they could call home, even men who wielded the power of demons—maybe especially men like that. But the longer he went without a case, the more the walls seemed to close in.
Yawning, he shuffled toward the lavatory and splashed some water into his haggard face, hoping the cold liquid would shake off the cobwebs, at least long enough to find the strength and energy to seek a pot of coffee.
As Weylock looked up from the washbasin and caught his reflection in the mirror, he saw a man lurking behind him. The intimidating figure was bald with an ugly scar running down one side of his head. His face sported a savage snarl, and death gleamed in his gaze.
Gloved hands pulled a wire tight and slipped the loop around the Hexecutioner’s neck.
Instinctively, Weylock brought up his hand, the wire biting into his palm.
The bald assassin tightened his muscles to make the garotte cut quick and deep.
Weylock grunted and unleashed the power of the demon. The cell erupted in a blinding, hellish light, and the pressure against his neck stopped. The pulsing agony shooting through his hand where the wire had slashed his skin ceased.
A glance confirmed his suspicions. The wound had completely disappeared.
Weylock turned around in his small, monastic cell. He was alone. No sign of the assassin remained. The attack had been a psychic message.
For the second time that month, a vision had spilled from the pages of the Necrodex and into the real world. First the screaming Technicolor heads that had plagued him everywhere he went, and now a vision that could cause physical pain. What did it mean?
This thought was still going through his mind when a choking sound ripped through his cell.
He looked around and spotted an overweight Asian man gasping for air on the stone floor. The man’s eyes bulged from their sockets
, his dead features pale and bloodless from lack of oxygen. His arm reached out for Weylock in a desperate plea for help. Blood ran down his forearm from a cut of some sort. Someone had carved a circular design into the man’s flesh, presumably the work of his killer. The blood forked along the outstretched arm that seemed to be trying to hold on to life itself.
A moment later, the Asian man let out a final chilling gurgling sound before evaporating into thin air.
Weylock stood in his cell, casting a long shadow in the early morning rays of sunlight slicing through the rectangular window.
The dead had broken their silence.
Time for the Hexecutioner to go back to work.
Chapter Four
“Wakey, wakey, Detective.”
The mocking voice broke through a curtain of blissful darkness. Seconds later, pale moonlight flooded Jay’s world, and with it came the brutal return to consciousness.
He found himself in a cemetery. Tombstones and mausoleums stretched as far as the eye could see. The moon imbued the necropolis with a gothic beauty. The sight of it stirred emotions of loss and melancholy deep within him. He thought of all the folks he’d lost over the years.
His parents, who died when he was in his twenties. His second partner, Nathan, ambushed while answering a 911 call.
Anne.
Todd.
No!
The memories came crashing down on him. The people he cared about the most in the world were gone. The bastard taunting him right now had murdered them.
Jay spun around and located the bald assassin among a row of tombstones. For a split second, as the moonlight engulfed his bald head, the killer looked like a pumped-up version of a Nosferatu freshly risen from the grave.
“You’ve been out for a few days, my friend,” the hitman said.
Jay wanted to launch himself at the grinning sociopath, but his feet remained rooted in place.
“What is happening? Where are we?”
“Don’t you recognize this place?”
Jay considered the killer’s question. Now that he thought of it, there was something strangely familiar about place…
And then it hit him.
This cemetery was his parents’ final resting place. He hadn’t recognized their gravesite in the moonlit darkness, as he usually visited during the daytime hours. And to be honest, he hadn’t been here in years. Some people needed a special place to commune with dead loved ones, but Jay wasn’t one of them. His parents were always with him.
“Why have you brought me here?” Jay demanded.
“Doesn’t it feel like home?”
What was the bastard talking about now? When Jay didn’t respond, the man continued, “Turn around and take a closer look, Detective.”
Jay did as told, and his soul went cold.
Several new tombstones had joined those of his parents.
The names chiseled in the three stone grave markers were intimately familiar to him.
He was standing in front of the graves of his family. His own grave.
Impossible.
“What kind of sick shit is this?”
The hitman sidled up to him, displaying a fake intimacy between them that drove Jay nuts. It was like the guy thought this was a sitcom instead of a horror movie.
“It’s a hard lesson in reality, Detective. You should be grateful that I’m doing this for you. Many spirits that linger in our world have a hard time accepting that they’re dead. They can’t wrap their minds around it.”
Jay stared at the bald killer with the lightning scar. He wanted to lash out at the hitman and tear that fucking grin off his ugly mug, but his body refused to obey his thoughts.
“You’re dead, Detective Hollow. And so is your family. But you’re here with me while they’ve moved on to hopefully greener pastures.”
Jay glowered at the killer, unable to move.
“I know you want to hurt me. I know it’s eating you up that you can’t do it. Want to know why? It’s simple. I’ve marked you. You belong to me now.”
Jay trembled, rage turning to fear. “You’re lying. You drugged me, or…”
The hitman’s response was to draw his pistol. “Does this ring any bells?”
Jay stared at the gun. He remembered the killer pointing the bore of that pistol at his face. Recalled the explosive flash of the muzzle, he felt his forehead disintegrating in a red geyser…
Jay clenched his fists but felt nothing, all his nerves having disconnected from his brain.
God, what was happening to him?
“Maybe you need me to jog your memory a little. Are you ready to stare death right in the face and see who blinks first? You’re a rational guy. Once you see what’s rotting in a box right below our feet, I trust that you’ll get with the program. You ready?”
Jay was still struggling to process the man’s words when the ground gave way beneath him, the soil turning into hungry quicksand. His chest throbbed with agony, and the pentagram the killer had carved into it while he was still alive lit up with pulsing energy.
Help…
The ground under his feet trembled and heaved and swallowed Jay whole, his flailing arms grasping for purchase as an invisible force pulled his body into the wet earth. His head disappeared last, soil enveloping him. And then his feet struck something hard below him.
A coffin, he realized with horror.
A second later, his body phased into the wooden box, and he was face to face with his own embalmed body.
Staring at his dead features triggered another memory. He was back in his bedroom looking down at his lifeless form, his forehead sporting a cyclopean third eye where the bullet had sheared off the top of his skull.
The bastard had put a bullet in his brain.
Jay felt his sanity fraying.
The same force which had pulled him underground took hold of him again and pulled his body out of the coffin and up through the muddy soil. He hurtled into the air, a plaything of a higher force, as if a tornado had scooped him up and was now tossing him around like a toy.
The phantom force flung Jay onto his freshly dug grave. He lay there, staring up at the night sky, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he was dead.
The bald assassin flashed him a knowing grin.
“I see it’s all coming back. Good. I was trying to go easy on you for a few days, let it all sink in. Give you a little time to rest in peace, ya know? But there’s no rest for the weary now. We’ve got work to do.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Jay snarled.
“I don’t think I like your tone.”
Agony shot through Jay’s body.
“You’re dead, but you’re not beyond pain and suffering, Detective. I control you. This can be the beginning of a beautiful partnership. Or it can be your first taste of Hell. It’s your call. But in the end, you’ll come around just like all the others.”
Jay stared at the hitman. What did this asshole mean when he said ‘others?’
“Time to meet your new family,” the assassin said, his gray eyes dead marbles in the pale light.
On cue, shadowy figures peeled from the darkness.
Emaciated, translucent visions of death with haunted albino faces, both male and female, old and young. He noticed a heavyset Asian man with a red line around his neck as if he’d survived a half-hearted decapitation attempt. People who sported traumatic wounds in their chests or foreheads, blood seeping from the attacks that had claimed their lives.
The procession of the dead regarded him with unseeing eyes. It was a scene from a nightmare, one of those horror video games that Todd loved to play.
What connected these lost souls was the mark they all shared. A red-glowing pentagram carved on their chests, necks or arms.
This is how the freak can control us, Jay thought.
The detective wanted nothing more in the world than to avert his terror-stricken gaze and pretend that this was some horrible dream, but a will that wasn’t his own froze him in place.
The hitman controlled his every move.
The bald bastard had taken his life, and now he owned his soul.
Chapter Five
Weylock observed Brother Ignatius as he delivered an account of his vision. The head monk had joined him in his cell so they could discuss his latest message from the world of the dead.
Ignatius’ impassive face gave no clue what was going through his mind as Weylock wrapped up his report. He suspected the head monk would have made a damn fine poker player.
“So what do you think? Why did the visions spill out of the pages of the book again?”
Weylock tapped the Necrodex for emphasis. The Book of the Dead was the medium through which the victims of supernatural evil had reached out to Hexecutioners for millennia and assigned them their dark missions of otherworldly vengeance.
Sometimes it boggled Weylock’s mind that he was following in the footsteps of a hallowed tradition that spanned millennia. It reminded him of the awe he’d felt at FBI Headquarters when he first faced the Wall of Heroes, which memorialized the agents who’d given their lives in the line of duty. How many Hexecutioners had walked this path before him, and how many had perished while carrying out their sacred duties. And how many more would walk this path as humanity’s history rolled onward into the future?
Ignatius’ words thrust Weylock out of his musings.
“Last time, your visions manifested outside the pages of the book because the victims still had one foot in our world. Perhaps by doing so, they amplified the link between the Necrodex and the realm of the dead.”
Weylock gave his mentor a skeptical look. “Are you saying the Book of the Dead is now running on a 5G network?”
The monk’s eyes made a disapproving face, and his bushy eyebrows scrunched together.
“Typical of your generation, Weylock, to turn everything into a computer analogy. But if it allows you to wrap your head around all of this more easily, sure, why not? I believe your connection to the Necrodex has grown stronger since you faced the Headhunter.”
The Death Whisperer Page 2
