We Hunt the Night: (Tales from the Supernatural Frontline) (Imperium Book 1)

by Richard Langridge

  And so Jake had gone, somewhat dazed-like, following the man further into the back of the restaurant, past tables boasting pristine white tablecloths and gleaming silver cutlery. Men in dinner suits with receding hairlines sipped from glasses as the women seated opposite them—what he presumed to be their wives—picked at their food in silence.

  When they were seated, Faraday offered a small smile. ‘Again, I would just like to say how terribly sorry I am for your loss. Over the years I was fortunate enough to spend much time with Miss Meunier. She was a formidable woman, but kind. She will be sorely missed.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jake. He looked around as a maitre d’ dressed all in black waltzed suddenly past, a bottle of what Jake presumed to be very expensive champagne cradled in his arms like a newborn.

  He turned back. ‘So… how did she die, exactly?’ This was something he’d thought about a lot during the journey over there. Old people were always finding new and exotic ways to kill themselves—falling up stairs, the cold, dropping down dead into a bed of flowers while weeding. He just hoped, if not painless, her passing had at least been brief.

  Faraday nodded solemnly. ‘Brain hemorrhage, I’m afraid. They’re still unsure exactly what caused it. There’s talk she may have had some underlying medical condition that went undiagnosed, but that may have contributed to her death.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Faraday continued. ‘As well as being the person charged with overseeing care of your grandmother’s estate, I am also acting executor of her will.’ He clasped his hands out in front of him before raising an eyebrow. ‘So, then—shall we get started?’

  And so began the longest dinner of Jake’s life.

  Jake sat in almost total silence as the crispy golden gym-goer—when not being terribly sorry for Jake’s loss—carefully went about relaying to him the fine details of his late grandmother’s last will and testament. Supposedly, as the only surviving member of their lineage, Jake was to be the sole beneficiary of her estate—whatever that meant. In fact, he only understood half of what the guy had said, and even then only vaguely. He supposed a lot of it was no doubt down to the shock of having just discovered his only surviving relative had gone and bit the dust. That kind of thing almost always leaves an impression.

  Then finally, once the paperwork was all done, he had returned home to the apartment, and it was in his apartment that he had since remained, doing little of anything while simultaneously trying to figure out exactly what a person was supposed to do whenever they found themselves charged with organizing an estranged family member’s funeral.

  Because they had been estranged, hadn’t they? Very much so. Ever since his own parents’ funeral, in fact, which had been—what, fifteen years ago, now? Holy crap. Hell, he couldn’t even remember what the old gal had looked like. And yet here she was, posthumously dumping all her responsibilities on him like he was some sort of… responsibility-machine, or whatever. It was just so unfair.

  But it wasn’t this alone that had gotten him into such a mental fugue. With Grandma Stella now gone, Jake was—so far as he knew—the last surviving member of the Fisher-Meunier clan. He was it. Just him. Little ol’ Jakey, alone in the world as always, only this time literally. And the knowledge of this was like peanut butter in his brain, jamming the gears, allowing only the most basic of functions to process.

  Days passed. He grew more and more depressed.

  Then, just like that, it was Sunday.

  Jake lay in his bed, his hands folded behind his head and his eyes fixed on some point on the ceiling as he tried for the millionth time to make sense of his new situation. Around him on the bed and carpet lay the remnants of the many different takeouts he’d ordered in the days following his meeting with the very apologetic and efficient Mr. Faraday—none of which, needless to say, were from Pete’s, because when you’ve already dodged work for the better part of a week, calling in for free pizza just wasn’t cool. And lord knew there was no shortage of places to find pizza in Manhattan.

  Sighing, he tilted his head in the direction of the TV. He’d lost the remote months ago—possibly due to those pesky jeans-thieves again—meaning that whenever he wanted to watch anything he had to physically get up and drag himself over there to switch it on by hand—something Jake hated, because it felt a little too much like reverse-evolution. Modern man was not meant to turn a TV on by hand. Heck, what was next—hand-washing clothes? He couldn’t even figure out the washing machine.

  He continued to lie there, staring at the TV, weighing the pros and cons of his predicament, wondering what it would say about him as a person if he relented and pushed himself up to—

  There was a sound from somewhere in the other room.

  Jake suddenly went very still. He strained his ears, just like you were supposed to do in these situations.

  Nothing.

  He frowned. Funny; he could have sworn he had heard something…

  Probably just cats on the fire escape again.

  Shrugging, he let out a breath, rolled over—

  There—again. That sound.

  Jake’s blood froze.

  It would not be the first time somebody had attempted to force their way into his apartment. It was Manhattan, after all. And not the good side, where people who could afford home security systems lived. Junkies. Thieves. You name it. All had tried. But it had been a long time since anybody had last attempted it, and on not one of those occasions had he been home to witness said attempt—or, as was more likely, get himself accidentally murdered to death in a bungled burglary effort, which would’ve been his own fault, really, because he had been home. Why did he have to be home?

  Summoning all of the courage at his disposal, he slowly pushed himself up from the bed. Then, on legs that felt suddenly all pumped full of adrenaline, he crept over to the door and peaked around the frame.

  All clear.

  He frowned again.

  The kitchen, then? Had to be. There was nowhere else to go. Unless the guy was in the bathroom, that was, in which case just go piss up a door somewhere or something like any other self-respecting junkie. Don’t break into a stranger’s home just to use the facilities, goddamnit.

  He began to tiptoe up the hall, berating himself for not having up and called the cops already, like he was always yelling at people for not doing in movies. But then, he didn’t know if he truly had a stranger in his home or not yet, did he? If he were to call them, and there was nobody here, he would look like a fool—but more importantly, a coward. And if there was one thing Jake hated more than anything, it was looking like a coward. Because it was true. And you had to hide these things.

  He reached the kitchen.

  All right. Now or never. Remember—shock and awe, like those swat guys use.

  Not giving himself any more time to reconsider, he leapt out from behind the corner, arms over his head as he tried to make himself as big as possible, momentarily forgetting he wasn’t dealing with a bear—

  He froze.

  Once, back when Jake was little and his parents were both still alive, he had awoken to discover a possum in their garage. Apparently it had managed to squeeze itself through a gap under the garage door, and had promptly set about destroying everything in sight, for reasons nobody had ever been able to explain—then, or since.

  Stumbling upon that creature in the dark, with nothing to protect himself but his beloved Mighty Max pajamas, had been one of the most terrifying experiences of Jake’s life, and it was this memory his mind was instantly drawn to now as his eyes settled on the thing standing hunched in the center of his kitchen, apparently rummaging through his cutlery draw—though, needless to say, this was no possum.

  The creature and Jake met gazes.

  It was some tall thing, Jake saw, standing on two legs like a man, but that Jake knew in that instinctive way of potential prey was not. Its disproportionately long arms hung all the way to the kitchen’s dirty, tiled floor, at the end of which lay hands—what he supposed were
hands—boasting thick claws like something out of Jurassic Park. Its head was misshapen and awful, with teeth coming out of seemingly every orifice, thick drool running from its mouth in slimy tendrils. And its eyes—Jesus, its eyes; all big and black, like a Great White’s.

  There was a moment where Jake’s mind went completely blank as it fought to process what it was he was seeing.

  Then the creature moved, and all of a sudden Jake wasn’t standing still anymore, but sprinting, back into the bedroom from whence he had come, where he fully intended to lock the door and stay for the rest of his life—

  The hunched-thing was there.

  Jake recoiled, startled; it didn’t make sense. No way that thing should have been able to make the distance in time to block him from leaving the kitchen. Nothing was that fast. It was impossible—almost as impossible as finding a Slender-orc in your kitchen, true. But still.

  Jake gave a squeal, arms pin-wheeling backwards in an attempt to halt his surging momentum, barely managing to avoid the Slender-orc’s reaching dinosaur-hands. Then he was throwing himself behind the kitchen table, hopping left and right like a boxer, frantically trying to keep something between him and that thing on the other side with the eyes and the claws and the hungry look on its face.

  Slender-orc moved right, so did Jake. The creature made to come around the left side—ditto. It was like some awful game, where the winner got to live, and the loser got gobbled up like candy on Halloween, only he wasn’t sure exactly who would want to play such a terrible game. Maybe the Russians.

  ‘Stop that!’ he cried, as the creature darted suddenly right, thick drool flying high into the air. It swept a gangly arm across the table at him, claws cutting through the air mere inches from Jake’s face. Good thing it hadn’t realized it could just tip the table and have at him. Thank God for small miracles.

  The creature looked down at the table, almost as if reading his mind.

  Uh-oh.

  Jake lunged to the side as the table came crashing up against the wall, week-old plates of food and takeout boxes scattering across the floor with it. ‘Ah!’

  He made for the door—

  The breakfast bar ran into him. He tumbled over it, spilling across the countertop in a graceless cartwheel, momentum carrying him over.

  Then suddenly he was on his back, staring up into the gangly monster’s bulbous black eyes and seeing his own terrified face reflected back in them.

  Slender-orc loomed over him, a fountain of saliva running from its mouth.

  Jake raised his hands. ‘Wait!’

  BOOM.

  The gunshot punched through the pre-murder silence like a fist through a wet paper bag.

  There was an ungodly shriek—a sound like grinding metal, glass breaking, babies crying.

  Jake opened his eyes.

  The creature was leaning up against the far wall, claw-hands fumbling at the large, gaping hole that had suddenly appeared in its side. It stared at over at Jake with a look of black hatred.

  Umm… what?

  ‘MOVE!’ cried a woman’s voice from behind him.

  Jake glanced up, spotting a woman in a two-piece business suit now standing over him. Petite girl. Dark, raven-black hair, strangled behind her head in a tight ponytail. In her hands was a pistol—though not like any pistol he had ever seen before, the barrel alone big enough to fit his entire fist into.

  The creature charged them.

  There was another deafening boom as the woman let rip with the “pistol” again, this time hitting only wall as the creature suddenly veered right and, not pausing, launched itself through Jake’s kitchen window.

  The woman rushed to the window after it, unloading the rest of her bullets as she ran—though to no avail.

  This, though, Jake paid no mind.

  The thing was gone.

  The woman snapped her gun in half, not looking at him as she began frantically thumbing giant-looking rounds into it.

  Jake pushed himself to his feet.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said. His words came out in a breathless rush. He felt exhausted. And, strangely, elated—probably because of all that death he’d just avoided. He wondered if this was what all people who have just narrowly side-stepped a grizzly end feel like. ‘That was… I can’t believe… but then you appeared, and—’ He blinked. ‘God, thank you! You saved my life.’

  He was going to marry this girl, he decided. He would write to the media about what he had just seen, who would then bicker among themselves over who got exclusive rights to his story before up and paying him a shed-load of cash. The two of them would use the money to supplement their income, and she would buy more guns, and together they would live happy ever after and never have to worry about monsters again. Maybe they could even get a dog.

  The woman turned back to him. She bit her lip. ‘Yeah. About that…’

  ‘What—?’

  The woman brought the butt of the gun down on his head with a grunt.

  Darkness followed.

  FOUR DAYS LATER. AGAIN

  ‘And it was just standing there? In the kitchen?’ said Big Hands.

  Jake looked up, wincing at the harsh light. His head was throbbing, and there was a line of sweat tickling its way down the length of his back. His mind no longer felt all floaty and loose, only sore, like it had been pushed to the very edges of its limits recently, and now needed time to rest and regroup itself, lest irreparable brain damage occur. ‘Uh-huh. I, uh… I think it was looking for something.’

  Big Hands shot a look back over his shoulder at Whiny Voice—some old guy in spectacles and a lab coat, an ID badge hanging from his breast pocket on a length of thin plastic.

  Whiny Voice stared back.

  Jake sensed something passing between them.

  He opened his mouth to ask exactly what it was that had gotten them both so spooked—

  The door at the back of the room suddenly flew open.

  It was the girl from before, the one who had saved his life back at the apartment before up and pistol-whipping him into unconsciousness. She had changed since last he’d seen her, her dark, two-piece business suit from earlier having now been replaced with another suit, this one marginally lighter in shade. He wondered how long he’d been stuck here in this room—wherever here was.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  The girl stepped fully into the room. She saw Jake glowering at her and smiled. ‘Oh—you’re awake! How are you feeling?’

  ‘You pistol-whipped me…’

  ‘Oh—right! Sorry about that. Procedures, and all.’ She looked over at Big Hands, one eyebrow raised high. ‘Anything?’

  Big Hands shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. He’s just some dumb kid.’

  She put her hands on her hips and sighed. ‘Christ, what a mess.’

  Jake stared back and forth between them.

  Now that he wasn’t being shot or eaten to death, he could feel the anger rising inside of him, filling him up from the inside like a balloon. A short while ago, he’d been lying in bed, his only real concern that of deciding which restaurant to order takeout from later. Now monsters were trying to eat him, and strange people in fancy clothes—when not bashing his head with blunt objects—were tying him to chairs and shoving guns in his face. Jake didn’t know much about the legal system, but he had rights. They couldn’t just… just manhandle him like this. It was unconstitutional, damnit.

  ‘Umm, excuse me,’ he said, ‘but would somebody please like to tell me exactly what the hell is going on here? Why am I tied to this chair? And what was that… that thing.’

  The girl looked around at Big Hands, frowning. ‘You haven’t told him?’

  Big Hands shrugged. ‘What am I, a tour guide? Besides, we still haven’t decided what we’re going to do about him yet.’

  Jake suddenly went very still. ‘Uh, I’m sorry—“do”?’

  ‘He’s seen too much,’ Big Hands went on. ‘He’s a security risk. You should never have brought him here, Eliza.’


  ‘Hey, don’t put that on me! That was all Vogel’s idea,’ she said. ‘Besides, you really think it’s a coincidence a Breacher should show up—’ she snatched a glance over at Jake, ‘—there? Of all places? Tell me that’s a coincidence.’

  Jake tried very hard to keep from screaming. ‘Guys. Seriously—what does “do” mean?’

  He gasped.

  They were going to kill him. They were going to shoot him in the face and dump his body off the side of the Brooklyn Bridge under cover of darkness. Decades from now, future people in strange clothing would stumble across what remained of his corpse, whereupon an investigation would then begin in an attempt to determine his identity, only it would prove fruitless. And nobody would ever know what happened to him. He would become a legend, like in one of those YouTube videos the teenagers are always obsessing over—“Top Five Mysterious Disappearances”. Oh Jesus God no.

  He opened his mouth to plead—

  The door at the far end of the room flew open once again.

  It was a man this time, dressed in a dark business suit, not unlike the one Big Hands and Petite Girl were wearing. Probably in his fifties—sixties at most. He had brilliant blue eyes, the kind you just wanted to stare into all day. Like Big Hands, he was also super well-groomed, his mouse-brown hair combed neatly over into a side-parting. Jake wondered why it seemed everybody here was a supermodel but him.

  Handsome Dude stepped into the room, his brow creasing furiously. ‘Just what the hell is going on here?’ His voice sounded vaguely British.

  ‘What does it look like? We’re interrogating him,’ said Big Hands.

  ‘Interrogating—oh, for heaven’s sake! I sent you there to collect him, not abduct him!’ He stormed over to where Jake sat bound, arms swinging wildly by his sides, propelled by the strength of his indignation. He met Jake’s gaze with his own. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Well, actually I—’

  ‘Never mind. Of course you are. Don’t worry—we’ll get you seen to shortly.’ He pulled a little pocket knife-type thing from somewhere inside his suit jacket and, to Jake’s complete surprise and relief, began sawing at the ties around his wrists.