King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle)

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King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) Page 23

by Joseph Nassise


  Cautiously opening my eyes, I found myself lying in a bed in a room that I didn’t recognize. The blinds were drawn, but the lack of any light bleeding through them let me know that it was some time after dark.

  Just how late, I didn’t know.

  I was dressed in a loose pair of sweatpants—whose, I didn’t know—sans top. I turned my head and found Denise sleeping in a chair next to my bed. She’d looked better: her hair was a tangled mess and lines of exhaustion crisscrossed her face, but it was good to see that she’d made it back from Chicago alive.

  Chicago …

  It all came back to me at that moment, everything that had happened since Denise left with Dmitri to try and retrieve the soul knives. The Sorrows’ attack. My encounter with Robertson. Getting shot by the son of a bitch. And perhaps most important of all, what my daughter’s ghost had shown me while I lay in that drainpipe slowly dying.

  I needed to talk to Gallagher.

  I threw back the covers and swung my legs out of the bed without thinking, only realizing after doing so that my body should have been shrieking in agony and wasn’t. Glancing down I found a wad of bloodstained bandages wrapped around me.

  It hurt, sure, but no more than if I’d been kicked by a good-sized horse. It should have been a lot worse; even a healing spell couldn’t repair that kind of damage.

  What the hell was going on here?

  My need to talk to Gallagher now all but forgotten, I reached up with a shaking hand and gently peeled the top of the bandage away from my skin.

  Last week, if you’d asked me if I ever wanted to know what a bullet wound in my upper chest looked like, I would have told you no. Now, however, I was almost hoping to see it. At least then some of this craziness would make sense.

  But instead of a bullet wound, the yellowish purple of an already healing wound stared back at me.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  I knew I’d been shot; the memory of hot blood spilling over me was still vivid in my mind, as was the time I’d spent huddled in that pipe with only my fear and pain for company. And yet it looked like I’d been healing for months.

  “How are you doing?”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of her voice. My concentration had been total; I hadn’t realized she was awake.

  “Not bad,” I managed to croak out, as my heart rate settled back down to normal. “Considering.”

  I could see her nod in the darkness. “It was a bit close, I’ll give you that.”

  There was a certain sense of satisfaction in her voice, though I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d managed to remain among the living or because she’d obviously had a considerable part in my doing so.

  I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

  “Did you do this?”

  She rolled her head around, getting the kinks out, and then looked off into the distance. Given the room was almost completely dark, I wondered what she was seeing.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “And I’m sorry. There wasn’t any other way.”

  I laughed. “Sorry? Don’t be; I’d probably be dead right now if you hadn’t.”

  She turned to face the sound of my voice, and I watched as her eyes moved slightly back and forth, trying to find something to focus on in the darkness.

  “No, you would be dead. No probably about it. Which is why I did what I did.”

  An ugly little chill formed at the base of my spine and wormed its way up my back. Something in her tone …

  “What’d you do? Sell my soul to the devil?”

  Denise shook her head. “No, I gave you a piece of mine.”

  That chill crested and broke over the rest of my body. What the hell was she talking about?

  “You did what?”

  Just like that, she was wringing her hands and tears were flowing down her cheeks.

  “Hey, hey,” I said, reaching out and taking her hands in mine. “It’s okay.”

  Her words flowed out a mile a minute. “I couldn’t watch you die, Jeremiah. I had to do something. I didn’t even know if the spell would work, but I had to try, and…”

  “Sshh,” I told her, “take it easy. Just tell me.”

  She got a hold of herself and, when she was ready, she told me.

  The spell was ancient, she said. No one really knew where it had come from or whether it would even work, but she’d been desperate and desperate people do desperate things.

  That, I understood. I was the poster child for desperation.

  When it looked like I was on my way out, she’d cast the spell, grafting a small piece of her soul to mine. Doing so had kept my soul anchored in my body and had drastically accelerated the healing process.

  “Sounds like a bargain to me,” I said gently, but she shook her head.

  “You don’t understand,” she told me, wiping her tears away as she got herself back under control. “It’s permanent.”

  “So?”

  Denise was probably one of the most decent people I knew. It wouldn’t be so bad carrying a little bit of her around with me wherever I went.

  “So now there’s no going back. We are, quite literally, stuck with each other. If one of us tries to leave, the other will feel such a deep longing that they’ll be forced to track the other down. The soul longs to be whole and the only way for that to happen, for either of us, is if we stay together.”

  She was starting to freak out, so I gave her my best smile and said, “I bet Gallagher’s pissed, huh?”

  She snorted, then laughed as she tried to cover it up. “Oh, yeah!” she said. “He’s pissed all right. He keeps lecturing me like I’m a first-year novice. I’d like to see him pull it off.”

  No thanks. Carrying a piece of Gallagher around inside my soul was not something I was particularly interested in. But it did remind me of why I sat up in the first place.

  “Speaking of the devil, I need to see him right away. Get Dmitri too. I think I know what the Angeu is up to.”

  Anything else and she might have told me to get back in bed and rest, but with innocent lives at stake, she knew it couldn’t wait. Coaxing me back into bed, at least for the time being, she went to find Gallagher and Dmitri.

  No more than ten minutes later she returned with both men in tow. Ever the considerate host, I let them turn on the lights and retreated behind my wall of white; I was going to be doing all the talking, at least at first, and I didn’t need to see in order to do so.

  I filled them in on what I had seen in my vision, realizing even as I did that Denise had been right that night back at the hotel in Tennessee.

  Death was coming for us.

  And he was bringing all his friends with him.

  “What about the Sorrows?” Dmitri asked, when I finished telling them about the army of ghosts the Angeu had been commanding, an army that would be headed in our direction before long.

  I shook my head. “The Sorrows have served their purpose, I suspect. I don’t think we’ll face them again.” It all even made a warped kind of sense, when you looked at it from the Angeu’s view. Use the Sorrows to harvest the souls of the dead, particularly those of the Gifted, who would have considerably more power, and then press those very same souls into service to carry out your black-hearted plans. And where was it that every lost soul wanted to go before anywhere else?

  Home.

  Right back to the Big Easy.

  My story had at least gotten Gallagher to stop shooting mental daggers in Denise’s direction, and as I finished explaining, he started in with the questions.

  “You’re certain it was a full moon?”

  I nodded. “Absolutely.”

  Dmitri’s voice sounded frustrated. “Well then we’re really up shit’s creek. The full moon’s only two days away. How the hell are we going to be ready?”

  But I was barely listening to him. I felt the sudden tension when Dmitri said “two days” and knew that the others had just realized some
thing important.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Denise’s voice trembled as she said, “The winter solstice is in two days.”

  I didn’t see the relevance.

  But Gallagher obviously did. “Sweet Gaia!” he said. “The Curtain!”

  I still didn’t have any idea what they were talking about.

  Denise explained. “The Curtain is the mystical barrier that separates this realm from any other, the shimmering mist that you saw in your vision. On certain nights of the year our world passes closer to the spirit world and on those nights, the Curtain is weaker. If the Angeu intends to bring an army across, he’d do it on one of those nights.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The solstice is one of those nights.”

  She smiled weakly, telling me I’d got it in one.

  While she was explaining, Gallagher was thinking about my vision. “Would you recognize it again? The place where the Angeu plans to cross over?” he asked.

  I gave it a little thought and then nodded. “If I was standing there, looking out as I was during the vision, yeah, I think I could.”

  Denise frowned. “There have to be a million different places he could have been standing, Simon,” she said. “How do you think you’re going to narrow them all down?”

  I was wondering the same thing. Turned out we were both way off base.

  “He doesn’t have to,” Gallagher said, with a feral grin. “I think I already know where it is.”

  47

  ROBERTSON

  Without a body, Robertson was reluctant to believe that Hunt was dead, even with all the circumstantial evidence that suggested otherwise. He’d seen too many other agents make fools of themselves by declaring a case closed only to be forced to open it again when the killer resurfaced somewhere else a few weeks or months or even years later. He had no intention of making the same mistake.

  The blood trail he’d followed to the canal had been proof that he’d struck Hunt with at least one of his shots. That was the good news. The amount of blood on the ground suggested that he’d hit something vital. But somehow Hunt had still managed to escape.

  After searching the general area for two hours after Hunt disappeared from view, Robertson had been forced to call it a night. As he’d climbed back into his vehicle, his cell phone rang with a call from Doherty.

  “This had better be good news,” he said sourly, after answering it.

  Unfortunately, it was not. By time Doherty finished explaining how Clearwater and Alexandrov had overpowered him and managed to make off with two priceless artifacts stolen from the Field Museum’s collection, Robertson felt like shooting someone. Instead, he took several very deep breaths and forced himself to remain in control. He would not let Hunt get the better of him. Robertson ordered Doherty to return to New Orleans and instructed his driver to take them back to the office.

  At first light the next morning, he and the cadre of men he’d brought with him, including a newly returned Agent Doherty, were back, combing the area for any trace of evidence as to where the fugitive might have gone. Help from the locals was practically nonexistent; they had their hands full dealing with the current health crisis. Not that Robertson minded. With the locals out of the way, he was free to run the investigation any way he wanted.

  One way or another, he was going to put an end to the bullshit.

  He was working the phone, trying to scare up a boat with which to dredge the canal, when Doherty, face flushed with excitement despite the bandage covering the wound he’d received from Alexandrov, knocked on the door of the office Robertson had commandeered.

  “We’ve caught a break, sir!”

  Robertson didn’t say anything, just looked at him and waited.

  “There’s a CI downstairs who claims he can tell us where Hunt is. He’ll only talk directly to you, he says.”

  “He asked for me by name?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Now that’s interesting, Robertson thought. Very few people knew he was in New Orleans. How had the confidential informant known to ask for him by name?

  Only one way to find out, he supposed.

  “Bring him in, Doherty. Let’s hear what the man has to say.”

  Robertson sat back in his chair and took a moment to straighten his tie; image was important. He toyed with and ultimately discarded several ways of dealing with the situation before deciding to play it a bit nonchalant until he knew the other man wasn’t simply after the reward money. No sense in getting too excited.

  Their CI turned out to be a hard-looking man in his late thirties, with dark hair and a two-day beard. He came in, glanced nervously around, and then took a seat in front of Robertson’s desk when asked to do so.

  The senior FBI agent studied him for a few moments, letting the other man grow a bit uncomfortable, before leaning forward and getting to the point.

  “Your name?”

  “Bruce,” he said quickly, and then, when Robertson waved a hand in a “come on” gesture, he said, “Bruce Myers.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Myers?”

  He smiled as he said it, knowing the kind of effect his smile had on people.

  Myers stammered a bit but finally found his voice and said, “I’m here about the reward.”

  Robertson cocked his head to one side, but didn’t say anything. If this son of a bitch is wasting my time …

  “I know where that guy Hunt is, and I’ll tell you, but I want to be sure that the reward is legit, first. Ya follow me?”

  Oh, he followed him all right. And if it turned out he didn’t know squat about where Hunt actually was, there was going to be hell to pay. But he didn’t show any of that; he simply kept smiling as he said, “The reward is genuine, Mr. Myers. Five thousand dollars for information leading to the whereabouts and arrest of Jeremiah Hunt, also known as the Reaper.”

  It was, too; the FBI had instituted the reward several years ago and had never bothered to rescind it when the Reaper’s identity had become common knowledge. Robertson had at first taken it as a personal affront, a sign the Bureau didn’t have faith in his abilities to catch the son of a bitch, but he was over it now. A tool was a tool; whether it was worth anything all depended on how you used it.

  “When do I get it?”

  Robertson’s eyes narrowed at the man’s bluntness, but he held his temper. See what he’s got first, he told himself.

  “You’ll get your money as soon as I know you actually have information that’s worth something to me.”

  Myers nodded then reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He played with the buttons for a moment and then passed it across the desk to Robertson.

  On the small screen was a photograph. It was time-stamped from the night before and showed Hunt sitting shirtless in a bed, talking to someone offscreen. He had a few bruises on his face, but he certainly wasn’t the corpse Robertson had been expecting.

  Passing the phone back to his informant, Robertson said, “Talk to me.”

  48

  HUNT

  Denise had once told me that magick runs through the earth in long lines known to the practitioners of the Art as leys. The place where several ley lines meet is called a nexus and a nexus provides a wellspring of power for those who know how to access it.

  As fate would have it, one of the largest nexuses in Louisiana lies on the other side of the Mississippi River, overlooking the city of New Orleans.

  That it happened to be smack dab in the middle of the Fountainoute Cemetery was just icing on the Angeu’s cake, for I had little doubt that he fell into the category of those who knew how to make use of such things.

  Lucky for us, Gallagher knew where that nexus was and suspected that it was the location I’d seen in my vision. Two cups of coffee and a few painkillers later, I was climbing out of Denise’s Charger and walking toward the tall, cast-iron gates that guarded the entrance to Fountainoute. With only two days before the solstice, we didn’t have any time to waste.
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  The cemetery was tucked onto a gentle spit of land that looked out across the water at the Big Easy. In the old days, when the waist-high fence that surrounded the property was first erected, this area probably wouldn’t have been on any developer’s must-have list. All the action was across the river; why build anything this far away? But given the view that greeted me as I looked back over my shoulder at the city skyline, I knew there were plenty of people who would sell their souls to the devil to build on this spot.

  Of course some people are just plain dumb, too.

  I stared at the fence in front of us with more than a bit of trepidation. Fences are funny things. Most people think of them as a means to keep the unwanted out. Very few ever consider the fact that more often than not, they’re really there to keep the unwanted in.

  Like now.

  Normally I wouldn’t have dreamed of approaching a place like Fountainoute Cemetery at this hour of the night. There are places on earth where the dead, rather than the living, hold sway, and cemeteries like this one are definitely high on the list. There were a lot of things that could take up residence among the dead besides ghosts, and more often than not, they didn’t like being disturbed.

  Never mind that they were always hungry.

  Tonight things felt different. As I waited for Gallagher to open the thick lock and iron chains that sealed off the entrance, I didn’t get the usual sense of hungry expectation from the things that lived on the other side the way I normally would. In fact, I didn’t get a sense of anything at all.

  A quick look with my ghostsight confirmed my suspicions.

  Even here, where they should have been packed in shoulder to shoulder, standing-room only, the ghosts were absent.

  Nothing but silence greeted us as we stepped onto the grounds.

  Flashlight in hand, Gallagher led the way, winding in and out among the crypts and mausoleums with the sure sense of someone who had been here before and knew exactly where he was going. It was a good thing that one of us did; I was lost after the first hundred yards, the avenues and alleys between the miniature mansions of the dead all looking the same to me.

 

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