‘Hmm?’ said Eliza, her tone casual, even as the grip on his forearm tightened to almost unbearable.
‘What’s going on? Why is Jim—?’
‘Oh, this?’ she said. ‘Yeah, he’s fine. Just had a little accident in the lab, is all. Exploding thermos, I believe. I’m taking him to medical now.’
‘Oh. I see. How unfortunate.’
‘Yeah. He’s pretty messed up.’ A moment’s pause, then, ‘Well—be seeing you!’
They began to move again, Jake’s too-big shoes catching on the carpet, his over-sized lab coat hanging off him like a bedsheet—
‘Eliza?’
That tightening on his arm again. He fought back a scream. Jesus, what was she, bionic?
‘Ye-es?’
‘Medical is that way…’
There was another moment’s weighty pause.
Eliza let out a strangled laugh. ‘Ha—right! Silly me. Off we go, then.’
They made a hard-right, Jake feeling disorientation setting in as she hurried him down corridor after corridor.
When he was sure they were safe, he asked, ‘Is he gone?’ Even though he liked Vogel, he didn’t want to have to explain why he was dressed in another man’s clothes with a towel on his head.
‘Yes. Now stop talking. We’re still not out of the woods.’
After some miracle or another, they eventually found their way to the elevator, Eliza making Jake keep the towel on all the way to the surface, even though it was borderline suffocating him to death.
Then, just like that, they were outside, standing on a sidewalk bustling with people, surrounded by tourists and commuters bound for home.
He let out a huge breath. ‘Holy crap. I can’t believe that actually worked!’ He unwrapped the last of the towel from his head, unsurprised to find it dripping with sweat. It had stopped raining by this point, the evening sky for the most part clear. In its place was a world now covered in glare, everything all shiny and gleaming with wetness. Maybe it was because of how little of the outside he’d seen recently, or his elation at having escaped unscathed, but he thought it was kind of beautiful. ‘So now what?’
She nodded. ‘This way.’
He followed her as she suddenly hurried across the street, pulling her jacket over her head to protect from the residual drizzle. They took a corner, then another. Then, after only a few short minutes, they were walking through what appeared to be a multi-story parking garage.
Jake’s awkward walking created terrible echoes as he struggled with the burden that were Avery’s oversized shoes, having to move his legs in a less than flattering fashion to keep from tripping all over himself. He looked around as he walked. Concrete struts filled the space every dozen feet or so, spray-painted with so much graffiti it was almost art. The odd car or two lay around them, the parking garage unusually sparse for this time of day.
He followed Eliza to a nearby waiting SUV the color of night and quickly clambered inside.
‘Wait, this is your car?’ he said, settling in to the passenger seat.
It was some big, boxy thing, with oversized tires and gleaming rims. He wasn’t sure what car he’d been expecting her to have—if he’d been expecting anything at all, in fact—but for whatever reason this surprised him. It was just so… masculine. Hell, except for the lack of fluffy dice, it could’ve been a rapper’s car.
She blinked. ‘Yeah—so? You don’t like my car?’
‘No, it’s fine, I just… wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.’
She made a face like she was going to comment on this, then reached into the glovebox and pulled out a set of binoculars instead. She raised them to her face. ‘Hmm. Nothing yet.’
Jake briefly considered asking her exactly why it was she had a pair of binoculars in her glovebox. He hadn’t pegged her for a voyeur. But then, he guessed that was probably true for most peeping toms. He held out his hand instead. ‘Let me see.’
She handed them to him, Jake immediately turning his gaze toward Tainted Goose’s front entrance.
No sign of Coleman.
He grunted.
Probably busy off stabbing people in the back somewhere…
He let out a long sigh.
It looked like they were going to be there for a while.
‘So—this “Filius” guy,’ he said, leaning back into the seat again. ‘He’s kind of like you guys’ Guy Fawkes, that right?’
She spun her head around to look at him. ‘Who told you about that?’
‘Vogel did. Said the guy went mad and tried to open the door to the Below and let all the bad guys through. That true?’
She groaned. ‘Damnit, Vogel. Always beating that drum. You just can’t leave it alone, can you?’
Jake blinked. ‘Jeez, relax, Eliza—besides, I didn’t realize it was some “big secret”.’
‘You don’t understand. There’s a reason nobody at the HDL talks about him. Within our organization there are people—very stupid people, I might add—who believe that Fawn was onto something, that he was indeed hearing voices whispering to him from the Below.’ She hesitated. ‘There was… an incident.’
‘An “incident”?’ That didn’t sound good.
She nodded. ‘That’s right. Few years back. A group of them got together, started plotting how to carry on Filius’s legacy. HDL’s very own little cult. Had their own handshake and everything. They called themselves “the Believers”.’
‘Genius.’
She snorted. ‘Right? Anyway, the Board eventually caught wind of it, managed to nip it in the bud before it could escalate any further and become a thing. All involved were either fired or incarcerated, depending on the depth of their involvement—although, knowing the Board, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all dead by now. As it turns out, when it comes to matters of national security, management do not mess around.’
‘You’re not kidding.’ He thought it over a moment. ‘So then, the reason you don’t talk about him, is…’
She nodded. ‘Right. If nobody knows about him, they can’t get all fanatical over him again and attempt to stage a mutiny—something the more rational of us would very much like to avoid.’ She thought about it. ‘Unless your name’s Vogel, that is.’
Jake returned his attention to the windshield.
Demons. Cults. Secret organizations. As far as weeks go, this has got to be some sort of record.
‘But what if—’
He fell silent as Eliza suddenly shot forward in her seat, eyes wide. ‘Wait—here he comes! See him?’
Jake angled the binoculars up again.
And there he was. Coleman—or as Jake had recently come to think of him, Sneaky-McBackStabbers.
He strolled out through the Tainted Goose’s ornate-style doors, clad in a sleek black rain jacket. He cast several furtive glances around him—it was like he wasn’t even trying to look innocent. That jerk.
He waited there on the sidewalk a moment, sucking on a cigarette that, by the look on his face, he wasn’t overly enjoying.
Jake frowned. ‘What’s he doing? He’s just standing there.’
Just as he said it, however, a car pulled up on the sidewalk before him. Some fancy, silver-thing—what Jake thought might have been a Mercedes. Or maybe not; Jake didn’t know his cars. He watched as the door opened and a man stepped out, dressed in the same kind of business suit as all the other field agents. He handed something to Coleman—what Jake intuited to be keys—before turning and strolling back up the street and out of sight, Coleman immediately climbing into the Mercedes in his place.
‘He’s leaving!’ said Jake. ‘Quick—after him!’
Eliza threw the SUV into reverse, tires squealing as they fought for traction on the wet concrete.
As they pulled away, Jake swallowed.
Here we go…
*
They followed the Mercedes down through Hell’s Kitchen at a speed a little above a fast jog. The traffic was heavy, the SUV stop-starting every couple minutes or
so in infuriating fashion as late-night commuters attempted to make their way home. They kept close, but not too close, not wanting to give away their position.
Jake sat poised on the passenger seat, more excited than at any other time in his life—though not in that good, fun way. It was a kind of terrible excitement, your body informing you through the magic of biochemistry of the overwhelming likelihood you were about to die.
They headed west, the SUV smoothly gliding them toward the Lincoln Tunnel, where, after a couple minutes’ pushing and shoving with likewise-minded cars, they eventually made their way inside.
Jake kept a steady eye on the Mercedes up ahead, illuminated under the tunnel’s sodium lightbulbs; evidently, wherever Coleman was headed, it was out of the borough.
Then, after only a short drive, they were emerging back out into the night, the two of them squinting against what felt like an endless procession of flaring brake-lights.
‘Jesus, where’s the guy going? On vacation?’ said Jake. He couldn’t think of any reason why Coleman would be driving out here at this time of night—not that he knew the guy that well, or anything. But still, it was curious.
They continued in pursuit, the SUV continuing along, brake lights stabbing at their eyes—
The Mercedes suddenly banked hard-right, heading off the interstate.
The two of them looked at each other.
‘Do you think he saw us?’ said Jake.
‘How? We never got more than forty feet from him. There’s no way.’
They followed the Mercedes onto the turn-off, down into some seedy-looking neighborhood boasting a notable lack of functioning streetlights. Cars stood on jacks all along the roadside, their tires missing—and in some cases even their doors, too. Jake wondered what kind of business a man like Coleman could possibly have in a place so blatantly bustling with criminal activity. He prayed he wasn’t about to find out.
They followed the car down a narrow side-alley, between what may or may not have once been a grocer’s, its windows all boarded up—
‘Uh… Eliza?’
The Mercedes had stopped.
It was too dark to see inside the Mercedes, the inside, from what he could see, a deathly black. But no doors opened, and nobody tried to climb out—something that, strangely, was even more terrifying.
Jake went very still. If Coleman hadn’t caught onto them already, he sure had now. ‘What do we do?’
Eliza was silent a moment before letting out a long sigh. ‘Okay. Wait here—I’ll go check it out.’ She reached into her coat, pulled out that ridiculous gun again—
They both let out a little yelp as the rear driver’s-side door suddenly clunked open, and Coleman appeared, sliding onto the backseat like he’d been expecting them this whole time.
He nodded a greeting. ‘Jake. Agent Danvers. Fancy seeing you two here.’
There was a pistol in his hand—the same type of pistol as the other agents had. It wasn’t pointed at them, the barrel pointing vaguely toward the space between where they sat. Jake knew what its presence there was meant to convey, however.
Before either of them could reply, Coleman leaned forward and, with his free hand, seamlessly plucked the demon-pistol from Eliza’s fingers. ‘I think I’ll take that. Wouldn’t want anybody getting accidentally shot now, would we?’
‘Nor purposely, either…’ added Jake.
From the driver’s seat, Eliza’s eyes were daggers. ‘Why?’ she spat. Her voice shook as she spoke. ‘Why do this? What’s in it for you?’
Coleman didn’t answer. He leaned back in his seat. ‘Don’t worry, Agent Danvers—all will soon become clear.’ He gestured at the steering wheel. ‘Now drive.’
Eliza blinked. ‘Drive—where?’
‘Don’t you worry about that. I’ll direct you. Now—go. We don’t have a lot of time.’
Eliza cast Jake an uncertain glance.
Jake nodded—what other choice did they have?
NOTHING AS IT SEEMS
They drove in complete silence, the only sound that of passing cars as they whizzed by them on the interstate.
Jake sat tensed in the SUV’s passenger seat, staring out into a sky so dark as to be almost supernatural. At some point it occurred to him these were probably to be his final moments. The realization made him sad. He’d always assumed that, if and when he did die, it would be in bed somewhere—preferably many years from now—surrounded by beautiful, Nordic-looking women dressed in varying degrees of nudity. They’d all be sad, their faces wet and glistening with tears. And they would feed him cheeseburger after cheeseburger as he slowly slipped off the edge of this mortal coil, whereupon he’d be swept into God’s loving arms—or at the very least Jesus’s. Now it seemed that wasn’t going to be the case, after all. Jake thought that was a shame.
They continued west on I-78, Jake wanting to puke but not daring. They passed through some suburban neighborhood boasting houses with long driveways and dainty picket fences.
After about twenty minutes, Coleman leaned forward. He gestured at an approaching turn-off with a wave of his gun. ‘Turn here.’
Jake stared through the windshield, his mouth dry. It was a narrow country lane, barren except for the occasional tree or telephone pole—exactly the sort of place you’d take someone if you were planning on murdering them without fear of being interrupted, in other words. ‘Where are you taking us?’ he said.
Coleman didn’t answer, just continued to aim vaguely with the pistol. Jake wondered if he could snatch that gun out of his hand before getting shot repeatedly into a fine pulp. He was quick, after all. It could be done. But of course, Coleman was a trained soldier, with what were—judging by the heavy crow’s feet around his eyes—probably decades of experience. Jake sat quietly in the front seat instead.
The SUV continued to amble along, tires crunching over loose earth—
They saw it at the same time, the front porch materializing out of the darkness before them like an apparition.
It was some ranch-style house. Quaint. Tan walls, with what looked to be stacks of wood all lined up against it. A rickety old porch stood just in front of it, beneath which a lone rocker sat, rocking gently in time with the wind.
Jake blinked.
The lights were on.
Huh. Looks like somebody’s home…
Jake stared through the windshield at it a moment, frowning. He had been expecting some dark country lane somewhere; some out-of-the-way spot, whereupon they would be promptly led off into the woods and made to dig graves before being shot execution-style and tossed in. And while there was still plenty of woods around them to necessitate that course of action, Jake got the sneaking suspicion that wasn’t to be the case—not that that made things any less terrifying, of course. But it was strange.
Eliza pulled the SUV to a stop and then simply sat there a moment, staring straight ahead, her hands fixed on the wheel. ‘Okay—so now what?’
Coleman nodded at the house. ‘Out.’
They climbed out of the car—slowly—Jake and Eliza in the lead, Coleman just behind. They made their way over to the house, their shoes kicking up loose dirt as they walked. Somewhere close-by Jake heard what he thought was an owl, though probably wasn’t. Wind blew gusts of dead leaves across their path, as if even nature itself understood how perilous their current situation was, and wanted to help set the tone a little.
At the door, Coleman handed them a key—a long, brass type. He nodded. ‘Open it.’
Inside was almost exactly the style and layout as you’d expect for a house of that size.
Stepping through the front door they were met by what looked to be a large den area. The floors were all hardwood, reflecting the light from the fire that raged in the fireplace just across the room to the left of them—the light they’d seen upon first arriving. In the middle of the room was a rug made up of what looked to be mostly warm-tones, and behind it against the wall stood a bar lined with bottles upon bottles of expensive-looking
liquor. It was like James Bond’s vacation home. Jake had never been more confused in his entire life.
Coleman led them further into the room, the gun trained fixedly on their backs. ‘You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?’ he said, his voice flat, emotionless. ‘You just had to keep pushing.’
Jake raised his hands. ‘Look,’ he said, fighting desperately to keep his voice from shaking. ‘You don’t have to do this. We—we’ll go away! Somewhere far. You’ll never hear from us again!’ He looked around at Eliza for support, but she just shook her head.
‘Don’t bother, Jake. He’s not going to let us go.’
‘He might—right, Coleman? Right, old buddy?’ He tried to turn around, but Coleman nudged the gun into his back.
‘Ah-ah. Eyes forward.’
He led them over to the couch and gestured for them to sit.
When they were all seated, Eliza turned to him. ‘So—now what? You going to murder us, Coleman, hmm? You traitorous sonofabitch.’
Jake had been wondering that very thing himself. If the objective here was to kill them, he’d had plenty of opportunities. But instead he’d driven them all this way, to some totally out-of-the way ranch house, even though that was probably really inconvenient for him—hell, for all of them. What was more, he hadn’t even tried to kill them yet—something that, while Jake was eternally grateful, only added to his confusion.
Instead of answering them, Coleman turned and looked over his shoulder. ‘It’s okay—you can come out now.’
Jake felt himself frown.
Wait, what…?
There was a moment’s silence, a shuffling sound—
‘No…’ said Jake. ‘No, that’s not—but that’s impossible! You’re—’
She shuffled into the room, one hand pressed against the robe around her waist, the other clutching a strange-looking pistol, not unlike Eliza’s.
From the doorway, Grandma Stella smiled. ‘Hello, Jake.’
*
Time stopped. All of a sudden, everything felt all surreal, the world having taken on a liquidy quality. Jake wondered if he was having a stroke. That would be all he needed.
We Hunt the Night: (Tales from the Supernatural Frontline) (Imperium Book 1) Page 8
