The Order of Brigid's Cross - The Wild Hunt (Book 1): The Wild Hunt

by Terri Reid

  The Order of Brigid’s Cross

  The Wild Hunt

  (Book One)

  by

  Terri Reid

  Come cuddle close in daddy's coat

  Beside the fire so bright,

  And hear about the fairy folk

  That wander in the night.

  Robert Montgomery Bird

  THE ORDER OF BRIGID’S CROSS – THE WILD HUNT (Book One)

  by

  Terri Reid

  Copyright © 2015 by Terri Reid

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/ use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  The author would like to thank all those who have contributed to the creation of this book: Richard Reid, Sarah Powers, Virginia Onines, Denise Carpenter, Juliette Wilson, Jennifer Bates, Lori Langham and the amazing Hillary Gadd.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Prologue

  The air was cold and damp and smelled of mold and rotting garbage with an underlying hint of urine. Despite that, Detective Sean O’Reilly had always liked the feeling of the Grant Park Underground Garage. It was like an ancient castle, solid and unyielding. A place like what he was sure his Irish ancestors had inhabited, although the family joke was that they’d have been in the kitchens doing the grunt work rather than in the throne room being served.

  There were only a few cars down at the lowest level when he got off work, usually no earlier than nine o’clock. Most of the daytime residents of downtown Chicago had already been home for several hours and were watching their favorite televisions shows. But Sean stayed late, knowing his cat, Tiny, would understand. He’d complain, loudly, Sean smiled as he thought about it, but he’d understand.

  The rubberized soles of his shoes didn’t echo on the concrete garage floor, but Sean thought they ought to. Echo off the floor and bounce off the walls, like a scene from an old film noire movie, everything dark shadows and ominous sounds.

  Sean liked being down in the bowels of the city. He thought it was an appropriate place for a cop to park. Kind of like his own personal Bat Cave.

  Walking down the center of the garage, he passed from one section to the next. The thick concrete walls and faded black numbers on the floor were the only things that distinguished one area from another. But as he moved farther away from the staircase and into the farthest reaches of the garage, he began to notice vapor hovering above the garage floor, like a thin, barely perceptible mist that was moving towards him from the far end of the garage. Must have something to do with all this moisture, he thought absently.

  The concrete wall in the next section was surrounded by a dark puddle. The dark liquid pooled around the side he could see and looked like it continued to the other side. He glanced up to the low ceiling to see signs of leakage. Must have been a pretty heavy rain, he thought, to reach all the way down here.

  He started to bypass it when the scent caught his attention. The copper taste in his mouth turned his stomach. It wasn’t a puddle of rain water. It was blood.

  His mind immediately flashed back to the images of the victims, eight of them, who had been massacred on the streets of Chicago in the past few weeks. What little remained of the victims had to be identified by either dental records or, in two even more disturbing cases, DNA. This guy was an animal, and the sooner they caught him and tossed him in some dark, lonely place for the rest of his life the better, as far as Sean was concerned.

  Pulling out his radio, he swore softly when he realized there was no signal this far down in the garage. Now he had to make a choice: turn around and get backup or continue on and finally get a chance to catch the bastard. The choice was easy.

  Sean slapped the radio back into its holster and pulled out his gun. He was going to catch the killer.

  He slipped past the wall, and his stomach turned as he spied the remains of the latest victim. There was a sparkling gold, high heel shoe in the middle of puddle. The victim had been a woman. He looked at the disemboweled remains. There was nothing he could do for her now, but her blood was still putting off steam in the cold spring air. So she hadn’t been dead for lo
ng. And Sean knew that meant the killer couldn’t be too far away.

  At the edge of the puddle was another, smaller, mark on the ground. He hurried over to examine what looked like a partial footprint saved in blood. The track, diminishing in size as it moved away from the crime scene, led farther into the garage. He flicked off the safety of his gun. He was going hunting.

  He noiselessly jogged in the direction the killer’s path led. Moving through each new section, he stayed close to the few remaining vehicles for cover, listening for any noise that might convey the killer’s whereabouts.

  Finally, as he moved to the last section, he heard the slow, shuffling footsteps of the killer. He must have been wounded, Sean thought, to be moving so slowly. He crouched low, his gun drawn, and darted alongside a panel van parked in the far corner of the garage. He inched his way alongside and peered through the driver’s window into the shadowed section ahead. He saw a shadow. The guy was a freaking hulk!

  That’s okay, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

  He sprinted forward. “Police! Freeze!” he shouted, his voice echoing throughout the garage.

  Then he saw it, and his blood ran cold. There it was. The creature from his nightmares. The bear-like monster with long claws and fanged teeth had haunted his dreams since he’d seen it in a forest in Ireland when he was a boy. The scars the beast had inflicted on his arm started to burn and, for a moment, he was twelve again and terrified he was going to die.

  The creature turned and looked at him, blood, still fresh, dripping from its teeth. The victim’s blood. That was all it took to bring him back to reality. Tonight an innocent woman had been killed by this creature, and others had died the same way. This wasn’t Ireland, and this wasn’t some damn enchanted forest. This was Chicago. This was his city. And he wasn’t going to let some oversized beast get away with murder.

  “Hey, Magilla, I’m not twelve anymore,” Sean growled through gritted teeth. “I said it once, and I’m only going to say it one more time. Police! Freeze!”

  The creature started to lunge, and Sean lifted his gun and shot it in the heart. The impact knocked it back a few feet, but it regained its footing and came at him again.

  Sean shot again, and again, and again. He emptied the entire magazine into the beast, but it only slowed it down. He was out of ammunition, so he pulled out his taser. He set it at the highest possible setting, aimed and shot. The probes attached themselves to the creature’s chest, and Sean shot 50,000 volts of electricity into its body.

  The creature roared, grabbed the lines and ripped them from his chest, pulling the taser out of Sean’s hands. The gun clattered uselessly to the ground.

  Sean reached back and pulled out the final weapon in his arsenal, his wooden nightstick. He moved into a hand-to-hand combat position, his stick in his right hand, and faced the creature. He knew he needed to stay away from its poisonous talons; he’d already seen what those could do. He prayed he could find some spot of weakness before he became victim number nine.

  The beast approached him slowly, its black tongue darting in and out along its elongated jawline, its yellow, reptilian eyes never blinking, staring coldly into Sean’s soul. He remembered those eyes. He remembered the last time he faced the beast clearly now. He remembered thinking he was going to die.

  He lifted his right arm up and waited. He needed it to be close enough to get around it and attack it from the rear. It moved closer. Sean feinted to the left and dashed to the right, but the creature quickly mirrored his movement. He tried moving to the left, but the creature moved just as fast, blocking him and forcing him past the section wall and towards the corner of the garage.

  Sean knew the only way out was through the beast. And he knew he was out of options. He screamed at the top of his lungs and ran towards the creature, his right arm and nightstick raised defensively. The creature bellowed back and raised its arm, talons clicking into place, to attack.

  A glimmer of light. Sean heard the soft sound of air being pushed, and the beast suddenly froze in its tracks. Coldblooded eyes widened in shock and the creature bobbled forward. Sean jumped back and watched as, instead of moving, only the monster’s head tottered forward, leaving the stump of its neck exposed as it fell with a crash to the ground. The skull split in half, green ooze spilling out, but a moment later, both the creature and its remains crumbled to dust.

  Sean looked up from the dust on the cement floor and saw her. Once again she was wiping the green ooze from the blade of her broadsword. But, she was no longer the little girl who had saved him in Ireland. She was a woman. A tall, strikingly beautiful woman.

  “You,” he stuttered.

  “Aye, and here you are trying to fight off a Heldeofol with naught but a stick again,” she said, shaking her head. “Did you learn nothing from your last experience?”

  “Aren’t you a hallucination?” he asked.

  She smiled brightly at him. “Aye, Sean the Brave, I’m only a dream.”

  And then she disappeared.

  Chapter One

  The basketball thumped rhythmically against the cracked concrete that had once been a smooth playing court. The stripes of black paint outlining the boundaries had long since worn off leaving only a gray shadow and an occasional chip of darker paint left in its place. Weeds had grown through the crumbled pavement, and litter was strewn everywhere. But the neighborhood teams had learned to maneuver around them so the ball wouldn't take a bad bounce when they were working their way forward for a lay-up.

  Once bright orange, the thick, metal, support poles and baskets were now rusted with shards of peeling paint, and where the white fabric of the basket webbing had hung, now only a few dirty strands of thread blew in the wind.

  On the border of the basketball court, the tall, chain-link fence had been broken and lay on its side next to empty liquor bottles, beer cans and used needles. It was a harsh contrast to the few pieces of playground equipment left in the nearby play yard.

  But even decrepit and nearly obliterated, this place was still magical; it was a place where a boy from the inner city of Chicago could pretend he was Michael Jordan or Derrick Rose. He could dash down the court on a lay-up and then jump into the air with a slam dunk. His worn Salvation Army gym shoes could turn into the latest high-end athletic footwear, giving him the ability to float in the air towards the goal. His skinny arms could be ripped with muscles and tattoos. And he could even hear the crowds at the United Center scream his name. “Jamal. Jamal. Jamal.”

  “Jamal! You stop your daydreaming and get up to the apartment, now!” his grandmother screamed from the fourth floor apartment window. “What are you thinking, child? Making me wait on you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered, as the crowds were silenced and the magic slipped away into the shadows. Tucking the old basketball under his arm, Jamal made his way across the courtyard to the lobby of the housing project where he resided.

  “Hey, Jamal,” Devonte stepped out from the shadows underneath the metal and concrete staircase, pulling his long shirt down over the front of his pants.

  Jamal could hear the girlish giggles from the corner and bit back a smile. Yeah, Devonte was at it again. He already had two baby mamas, but it sounded like he was working on number three. But at twelve, nearly thirteen years old, Jamal couldn’t let Devonte know he was close to grinning in embarrassment. He had to be cool.

  “Hey, Devonte,” he replied, walking towards the stairs.

  “You think ‘bout what I ask you?”

  Jamal shrugged. “Yeah, but I can’t. My grandma, she won’t let me join no gang,” he said.

  Devonte grabbed Jamal’s shirt and yanked him close. “Who you think gonna watch out for you when you Grandma is gone?” he snarled. Then he nodded slowly, released Jamal’s shirt and smiled. A smile that reminded Jamal of the alligator he'd seen at the zoo. “And how you gonna protect your grandma if you ain’t one of the boys? We boys, we take care of our peoples. Don’t wanna see your grandma get sliced
.”

  Jamal wasn’t stupid, he knew how things worked. He’d been chosen and he didn’t have a choice. If he didn’t join Devonte’s gang, his grandmother would be marked and there was nothing he could do to protect her. “Whatcha want me to do, Devonte?” he asked, his voice showing no emotion.

  “Hey, homie, you’re putting too much on it,” Devonte said. “No big deal. You just show up tonight in the park. We havin’ a thrown down.”

  “I ain’t got no hammer,” Jamal said.

  Devonte nodded again, reached behind and pulled a pistol out of the back waistband of his low riders. “I got you covered, man,” he said. “You meet us at the park at nine and we show you what it means to be a homie, you got me?”

  Jamal took the gun and stuffed it under his shirt and nodded. “Yeah, man, I got you.”

  He turned away and hurried up the steps, taking them two at a time. He knew he was going to get in trouble. His grandmother didn’t like when he was late for dinner. When he finally pushed through the apartment door, his grandmother was standing in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips, waiting for him.

  “Boy! What took you so long?” she demanded. “Don’t tell me you stopped to talk to one of those worthless pieces of humanity that hang out in the lobby.”

  “Grandma, you know I have to be nice to them,” he said, backing towards his bedroom. “It would cause us a lot of trouble if I acted like I thought I was all that.”

  “Well, you are all that compared to them,” she insisted. “You go to school, you get good grades, and you go to church. What do they do? They get their food stamps and their welfare checks, they sell their drugs, they fight their wars, and they have sex like cats in heat.”

  “Grandma, we living on their turf right now,” he said. “And if we want to be safe, we got to play by their rules.”

  “This is God’s turf,” she argued. “We ain’t got to play by nobody’s rules but God.”

  “Well, I ain’t quite ready to meet God yet,” he said. “And I ain’t ready for you to meet God either. So, for now, we just play their game. Okay?”

  Her hands slipped from her hips and she stared at him. “Boy, you ain’t gone and done something stupid have you?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly. “You ain’t joined up with them and their gang?”