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

by Terri Reid

  “And how did they feel when a brilliant researcher was able to see through their cover-up?” Ian asked Gillian.

  She smiled. “At first they were a little shocked,” she admitted. “And then they brought me into the Order.”

  “You’re a nun?” Sean exclaimed.

  Chuckling, Gillian shook her head. “No, the Order of Brigid’s Cross is made up of all kinds of different people, from necessity. The risk is too great for the secret to come out.”

  “What risk?” Sean asked. “People are sophisticated enough to realize that there are all kinds of things out there that we don’t understand. My sister, Mary, with her gift to see ghosts has been accepted, for the most part.”

  Father Jack sat up in his chair and faced Sean. “And what would happen if a terrorist organization somehow found the document and was able to control the power behind the captive Tuatha da Danaan? How would our troops stand against brutal, immortal magic?”

  “The Wild Hunt?” Sean whispered. “That’s what this is all about. Someone has figured it out.”

  “We’re not sure,” Gillian said. “Em’s been following up on leads, but they’ve all led to dead ends.”

  “Em?” Sean said, turning in his seat. “And how do you fit in to all this? Are you one of the aristocracy that was allowed freedom?”

  She murmured an angry word that was not in a language Sean understood, but the tone and inflection made it clear it was not complementary. “What the pact did not do was protect the inhabitants of Ireland from the aristocracy the Church so blithely allowed above ground. So, you had the lusty, immoral Sidhe hunting for virgins to seduce and despoil as part of their sport,” she spat. “And then, unfortunately, the Church had to get into the damage control business, with all of the little half-human bastards being born throughout the countryside.”

  “Damage control?” Ian asked.

  “Aye, because once a human has lain with a faerie they have a longing for the faerie that can never be broken,” she said. “Like a drug addict and their first high, they crave more. But there isn’t more, so they waste away, longing for something they will never obtain.”

  She shrugged. “The mothers of these children were unfit to raise their children,” she said bitterly, “if they even remembered they gave birth to them. The female children were taken into St. Brigid’s Orphanage because we could be taught and trained.”

  “The boys?” Sean asked.

  “The boys had too much of their fathers in them,” she replied. “They were looked after, as much as possible, but most became mercenaries looking for a good fight to quell the anger in their hearts.”

  “So what does that make you?” Sean asked.

  She met his eyes, and he saw both anger and pain. “A bastard,” she said finally. “That’s all I am.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sean drove down the streets on the outskirts of downtown without really paying attention to the scenery; he had too much on his mind. Faeries. Really? He was a grown man. How in the world could he believe in faery? In the Tuatha da Danaan? In Tír na nÓg? In Seelies and Unseelies?

  Then his thoughts went back to Em and their first encounter in Ireland, which he had finally come to accept was real. He thought back to the stand-off in the Grant Park underground garage and the creature he faced there as well. And finally, he recalled Jamal’s frightened testimony of creatures that seemed to have stepped out from the pages of a book, a book of faery tales.

  How could he not at least consider the chance that these things were possible?

  Turning into the parking lot of Cook County Hospital, he parked in the area reserved for the police and hurried through the ER doorway to the receptionist. “I’m here to see Jamal Gage, the young man who was brought in last night,” Sean said, showing the woman behind the bullet-proof glass his badge.

  She turned and typed on her keyboard, watching the monitor in front of her, and then looked back up at Sean. “Sorry, he was released this morning,” she said.

  “What? He wasn’t supposed to be released until I gave the okay,” Sean replied. “Who gave the release order?”

  She looked back down to the monitor. “Says we got a call from the First District, and they gave us the go ahead.”

  “Who picked him up?” Sean asked.

  She shook her head. “Told us to give him bus fare and send him on his way.”

  “What?” Sean exclaimed. “You sent a kid who had just survived a major gang fight home on a CTA bus?”

  “Hey, I thought it was pretty raw, too,” she said, “but you guys get to call the shots.”

  “Who called it in?” he demanded. “I need a name.”

  She pushed a few other buttons and shook her head. “We didn’t get a name,” she said. “Sorry.”

  He took a deep breath. It didn’t do any good to get mad at the receptionist. She was exactly right. She was just following directions. But when he found the idiot who had initiated the instructions, he would get mad. Oh, yeah, he would get good and mad.

  “You got an address?” he finally asked.

  She wrote it down and handed him a slip of paper with the location of a well-known housing project not too far from his location. “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

  “Hey, sure,” she replied, and as he turned away, she stopped him. “And Detective?”

  He turned. “Yes?”

  “Thanks for restoring my faith in the police department,” she said with a slight smile. “I pretty much wrote you all off this morning when I sent that little boy on his way.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, you’re welcome.”

  As he walked out of the hospital, he pulled out his cell phone and called Ian. “You still there with Gillian?” he asked when Ian answered.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Is there any reason I should be suspicious when the kid from last night is released without authorization and pretty much set up to be taken out?” he asked.

  He heard Ian relating the information to the group.

  “Sean, this is Father Jack,” the priest’s voice boomed through the phone. “You need to be very careful. The Order has been around for a long time, and we have people located throughout the city in various positions of power. But just as in everything in this world, there is always opposition. There are those who would have the contract voided and the Unseelies released. Not just fae, but mortals with the idea of using their powers for gain. The other side has more money, more power and they don’t follow the same rules we follow. The fae are amoral. But the humans who work with them are evil. There is no right or wrong. There is only what’s best for them.”

  Sean nodded. “Okay, so I should be suspicious.”

  “No,” Father Jack replied. “You should be paranoid.”

  In a few moments, he was back on the streets driving towards Jamal’s apartment. The next call he made was to the cell phone of his old partner from the night before. “Hey, Adrian, it’s Sean,” he said, once the detective had answered the phone. “I had to swing by Cook County and I thought I’d check on our boy. I was surprised he was released. Did you get any updates on this?”

  “Hey, Sean,” Adrian replied, his voice filled with concern. “What? He was released…”

  The conversation stopped and Sean could hear a murmur of voices on the other end. Adrian spoke a moment later. “Give me a minute, okay?” he asked. “I need to go somewhere a little quieter.”

  Sean could hear Adrian moving and then he heard a door close. “Sorry, this is better,” he said. “I’m going to put you on speaker phone.”

  Before Sean could protest, he could hear the phone being placed on a desk and the echoing audio of the speaker. “So, Sean,” Adrian began, and Sean noticed that the tenor in Adrian’s voice was slightly altered. “You were saying you went to see the boy this morning?”

  Not knowing who might be in the room with Adrian, Sean decided to play it safe. “No, man, I had to go by on another case I’m working on,” he replied e
asily. “I thought I’d swing in and see how the kid was doing and found out he was released. Just wanted to be sure you got all you needed.”

  “Yeah, I did,” Adrian replied slowly. “But I thought you gave the hospital orders not to release the kid.”

  “Really?” Sean asked, knowing that he had, indeed, given the orders. “I thought that you did that. But, no harm no foul, sounds like the kid is doing fine.”

  He could hear muffled sounds, like a pencil being scratched against a pad of paper.

  “Oh, yeah,” Adrian finally said. “I was looking for your report this morning and I couldn’t find it.”

  Sean recalled the unfinished report still sitting on his laptop and silently breathed a quick sigh of relief. Now that he had this new information, he was glad he hadn’t uploaded his findings.

  “I uploaded it early, like eight,” Sean replied. “Check again, and if you can’t find it, let me know. Sometimes the wireless in my building goes haywire.”

  Sean rolled his eyes when he heard even more scratching. Do these people think I was born yesterday?

  “So, did the kid tell you anything interesting last night?” Adrian asked.

  “No, not really,” Sean lied. “He was scared shitless, that’s for sure. Then he started out with these weird stories, but once I calmed him down, he admitted he’d been cowering in a corner pretty much the whole time it went down. He’s not going to be able to ID any perp.”

  “You sure?” Adrian asked.

  “Yeah, sorry, dude,” Sean replied. “We’re barking up the wrong tree with this one.”

  Adrian didn’t speak for a moment, and Sean could swear someone pushed the mute button on the phone. “Hey, Sean, thanks for your help,” Adrian said. “If I find out anything else, I’ll call you.”

  “That’s okay man,” Sean said. “It looks like this one is just gang related, and I’ve got enough on my desk. I don’t need to be looking into cases that are definitely your jurisdiction.”

  “Okay, then, well thanks for the help last night,” Adrian said.

  “No problem, call me anytime,” Sean replied easily. “But, you know, try to avoid the middle of the night.”

  Adrian laughed, but Sean could hear a strain in his voice. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Adrian pressed the button on his cell phone and disconnected the conversation. “Sean’s a great guy,” he said to the man sitting at the desk in the private interrogation room.

  “Do you believe him?” the man asked, leaning back in the chair and propping his Italian leather shoe-clad feet on the corner of the desk.

  “Oh, yeah, I believe him,” Adrian said, straddling the chair on the other side of the desk. “If there’s anything wrong with the O’Reillys it’s that they’re too damn honest. Not a bad cop between them.”

  “And how about smart?” he asked, looking into the detective’s eyes. “How smart is he?”

  “Well, you know, he graduated college at the top of his class. He’s moved up the food chain here at the department pretty quickly,” he replied. “So, yeah, I’d say he’s smart.”

  The man shook his head impatiently. “Not that kind of smart,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “The other kind…what do you call it…the internal smart.”

  “Oh, you mean like gut feelings? Intuition? Right?” Adrian asked.

  “Yes, exactly,” the man replied. “How are his guts?”

  Adrian pondered the question for a moment. “You know, he’s one of those guys who’s kind of spooky,” he admitted. “It’s like he knows something’s going to happen before it does. I don’t know how he does that.”

  Slipping his feet off the table and standing up in one nimble movement, the man placed his fists on the edge of the table and leaned towards Adrian. “This does not bode well for us,” he said. “We don’t want someone like Sean O’Reilly getting wind of our plan.”

  “Right,” Adrian replied, nodding his head. “Right. But Sean would understand. He’s been out there. His own sister was shot by a gang member. He’d get what we’re doing.”

  The man lifted one delicate eyebrow and stared at Adrian. “I hasten to remind you,” he said angrily. “This is something you are doing. I really have no part in it at all. You do remember that, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah, I just forgot,” he said. “This is me. This is all me.”

  “Good,” the man replied, the tension leaving his voice. “Now, go ahead back to your desk. You have a few things to take care of before tonight’s event. Did you destroy the notes from last night’s event?”

  “Yeah, I burned them,” he said, “just as you instructed.”

  “Excellent,” the man replied. “You may go.”

  Adrian immediately stood, picked up his phone and walked to the door. He grasped the door handle and was about to turn it when the man stopped him. “Oh, Adrian,” the man said softly.

  Adrian looked over his shoulder. “Yes?”

  “You won’t remember any of this. You won’t remember speaking with Sean. You won’t remember coming into this room. And you won’t remember me.”

  Adrian nodded slowly, opened the door and returned to his desk. He tossed his phone on the paperwork piled up on the corner of his desk, sat down, and immediately began typing on his keyboard. A few minutes later he looked up, grabbed his phone and dialed Sean’s number, but it went straight to voicemail.

  “Damn,” he muttered. “Where’s your report, O’Reilly?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Turning right on a street corner near Jamal’s place, Sean placed another call to the District Office. “Hey, this is O’Reilly,” he said when the station house operator answered. “I need to talk to Sarah Powers.”

  “Just a minute, Detective, I’ll patch you upstairs.”

  Sean waited for a few moments listening to the public service announcements. The CPD had hired a big-name marketing company to produce them. He really hated the trite, candy-covered non-warnings that appeased both the Tourism Bureau and the Mayor’s Office. If he were to produce radio warnings, instead of softball catch-phrases like “Be Aware” or “Don’t Let Crime Ruin Your Day,” he would use phrases that would catch the public’s attention. “People Are Trying to Kill You. Don’t Be an Idiot.” or “They Don’t Give a Shit about You. Protect Yourself.” He nodded to himself, “Yeah, those would work.”

  Finally, he heard a click of a connection. “Hey, O’Reilly?”

  “Yeah, I need to find out who released Jamal Gage from Cook County Hospital this morning,” he said. “But I need to keep this between you and me.”

  “Okay, give me a second,” she replied immediately, putting him back on hold.

  Sarah Powers was a new recruit who was quickly working her way up to detective. She was smart, brave and feisty. Sean smiled. He especially appreciated the feisty. But, because she was the new recruit, she also got all the crap work—like checking back on phone records.

  “I got nothing,” she said. “No one from our office called it in.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Sarah began to respond but paused, and Sean nearly smiled, knowing Sarah was counting to ten before she opened her mouth with a smart-ass retort. “Yes, Detective,” she replied calmly. “I’ve checked the phone records twice, and I even went through all the phones in the department and checked their memories to see if someone called but didn’t log it in.”

  “Thanks, Sarah,” he said. “I should have known you’d be thorough.”

  “Yeah, you should have,” she replied with a smile in her voice. “Is the kid going to be okay?”

  “I hope so, Sarah,” he said. “I really hope so.”

  Fifteen minutes later Sean pulled his unmarked car up to the front door of the projects. He’d had enough experience to know that parking in the lot or on the street and walking to the door just made you a target for snipers.

  He jogged to the front lobby and paused. There was a stillness in the building that he had
never experienced before when coming to one of the projects in the middle of the day. The lobby was clear. The staircase was empty. And, he noted when he glanced through the bullet-proof glass to the parking lot, even the grounds were empty. People were scared.

  He made his way up to the fourth floor and knocked on the apartment number the receptionist had given him.

  “Don’t you answer that door,” a high-pitched and elderly voice called from inside the apartment. “You ain’t gonna go with those no-good, trouble-making, worthless pieces of trash. So you can just halt in your tracks, young man.”

  Sean bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. He knocked again. “Chicago Police Department,” he said. “I’m Detective O’Reilly looking for Jamal Gage.”

  “What’s taking you so long, boy?” Sean heard the same voice reply in an urgent tone. “You go answer that door. Don’t leave no policeman waiting.”

  A few minutes later, sitting on a small, lumpy couch whose cushions sunk down several inches when he sat on them, Sean found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to look up at Jamal and his grandmother seated in tall wooden chairs.

  “Are you here to arrest my grandson?” the older woman snapped, ready to do battle against whoever threatened one of her own.

  “No, ma’am,” Sean replied. “I’m actually here for two reasons, to ask him some more questions and to protect him.”

  He saw a moment of relief pass across the old woman’s face, but then her features stiffened as she gazed down at him.

  “Protect him?” she huffed. “Ain’t no one thinking about protection when they sent him home on the bus through these neighborhoods. Boys get stabbed on buses every day around here.”

  Sean nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I agree with you, and I apologize on behalf of the department. There was some kind of miscommunication.”

  “That miscommunication could have cost my boy his life,” she replied sternly.