GHOST GAL: The Wild Hunt (13 page)

“The Slaugh were… are… soul hunters, eaters of sin,” Samuel said.

“I beg your pardon?” Joshua interjected.

If Samuel even heard him, he chose to ignore the young lawyer’s comment. “If you believe old Irish folklore tales, the Sluagh are dead sinners that have come back as malicious spirits. They called themselves The Wild Hunt. According to legend, they come out of the west, flying in tight groupings not unlike those of a flock of birds. When they find a dying sinner, they try to enter a house and take away that person’s soul. The old stories claim that the Slaugh eat the dying man’s sin.”

“What if they aren’t sinners?” Joshua asked.

“Everyone sins,” Jacob said evenly.

“Try to get in?”

“Yes, Alexandra. Try. Most Irish families would keep the west-facing windows of the home shut at all times to keep the Sluagh out.”

“If all it took was closing a window to keep these guys out, how
dangerous can they be?” Joshua asked.

“Dangerous enough,” Samuel said. “There were also certain local barriers that could block their entrance to a home. When added to the construction materials, the Slaugh were barred entry.”

“At least at first,” Jacob added.

Samuel shot him a disapproving look. “Yes. Eventually, the Slaugh learned how to overcome these obstacles.”

“Aren’t you going to tell them how?” Jacob asked. When he realized that Samuel was trying to soften the details, he chimed in. “At first they simply set the homes on fire, which was rather ingenious on the face of it. Once the barrier was gone, they could swoop in and collect their bounty.”

“You sound like you admire them,” Alexandra said.

“No,” Jacob replied. “I do admire their resourcefulness, though. They never gave up.”

“Charming,” Joshua said.

Samuel steered the conversation back on track. “It wasn’t until some hundred years later when a coven divined a method of holding a Slaugh at bay, eventually trapping it, at least according to folklore.”

“How much stock can we put in an old fairy tale?” Joshua said.

“You’d be surprised,” Samuel said.

“And do we have access to that same method?” Alexandra asked.

“No.”

“What a surprise,” Joshua said, throwing up his hands in frustration.

“The minerals used to construct the prison that held The Wild Hunt are extremely rare in the old country. In the United States, it is all but non-existent.”

“Then how are we holding this guy?” she asked. “He’s tied up with a couple of silk ties we took off of some lawyers at Jacob’s office. What’s keeping him from breaking free?”

“Fear,” Jacob said plainly.

“Fear of what?” Joshua asked.

“Me.”

Jacob’s features remained neutral and hard to read, but she took him at his word. Jacob was intimidating on normal days, but she knew that he could be a scary guy when he needed to be. She had seen only a hint of it before. She hoped to never see him really cut loose.

“If this guy was possessed by the spirit of this Slaugh creature, can it be removed?” Alexandra asked instead of worrying about Jacob’s scary demeanor. “Is there any way to save the host?”

“Maybe,” Samuel said. “Possession, as you well know, is a tricky beast. We have to move carefully lest we do more harm than good.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question,” she told him.

“Being inside the host body opens them to human frailties. They can be hit or stabbed, for example. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything about the Slaugh itself while it’s inside the body. It will have to be removed from the host before we could send it across.”

“How do we separate them?”

“I have a team ready to go back at my office,” Jacob said. “They are very good at dealing with stubborn spirits.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Samuel deadpanned.

“So, what’s our next play?” Alexandra asked. “Is this guy alone or has the entire Wild Hunt returned? And why were they following me?”

“Those are very good questions,” Samuel said. “I wish we had some good answers.”

“I know somebody who might be able to help,” Joshua said, pointing toward the man hog-tied in the back of the van. “Why don’t we ask that guy?”

Jacob smirked. “I’m starting to like this guy,” he told Alexandra.

“Told you,” she said.

Jacob reached into the van and pulled the bound man toward him by the scruff of his shirt. He pulled the gag free from his mouth. “What about it, pal? You ready to talk?”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you!” he spat. “Or your friends!”

“You’re a real charmer, aren’t you?” Alexandra said. With a hand lightly brushing against Jacob’s arm, she told him to let him go.

The Slaugh unceremoniously slumped back to the seated position, but somehow kept from falling over.

Alexandra stepped closer, her voice soft and playful, as if talking to a wayward five-year-old who refused to take his nap. If Jacob was the bad cop, she was the good one. “Look, whatever you’re up to or think you’re up to, or whatever you had planned, it’s over. You’re done. Caught.” She chucked a thumb over her shoulder toward where her friends stood. “These guys are not going to let you just walk out of here. You have to know that, right?”

The Slaugh nodded.

“Good. What’s your name?”

He shook his head. He had no intention of answering the question.

“Okay, maybe something a little easier. Why were you following me?”

The boy’s face tightened. He wasn’t talking.

“Okay, how about what you want?”

He laughed.

Undaunted, Alexandra pushed onward. “Let’s try a different approach. My name is Alexandra Holzer. You can call me Alex if you like. And you are…?”

He stopped laughing and gave her a long, hard look. “Holzer?”

“Yes. That’s my name,” she said, suddenly nervous. “Do you know me?”

“I’ve heard the name. The leader of the hunt has said it before.”

“Who is he?” Alexandra asked.

“He’s the one who freed us from the blackness of purgatory where those witches left us!” His voice started to rise with each word. “We were supposed to only stay there a short time while the coven was dealt with, but the leader was trapped.”

“In the castle?”

“Yes. Then, he was freed, but a man stopped him. A man named Holzer.” He smiled and Alexandra felt a chill crawl up her spine. “Now, we are free to hunt again. Once we’ve eliminated the threat posed to us by the one called Holzer, The Wild Hunt shall ride again.”

“Is that why you were following me? Did your hunt leader send you after me?”

He started to laugh, which only made her anger grow.

“Are they going after my father?”

The laughter increased.

Alexandra grabbed the boy by the shirt and yanked him forward, all traces of civility washed away by his cackling. “Answer me, dammit!”

“Oh, child,” the Slaugh said around guffaws. “They aren’t going after your father. They already have. He’s probably already dead.”

Although she wasn’t generally prone to angry outbursts or fits of violence, Alexandra Holzer did not take kindly to threats against her family. Before she even realized she had done it, she punched the
Slaugh in the face. He fell backward into the van, still laughing as blood spurt from his newly split lip.

Alexandra shook her fist. “Ow!”

“Feel better?” Jacob asked.

“No. That hurt,” she said, rubbing a sore knuckle.

“It takes practice,” Jacob told her.

“I thought you said this guy was a ghost?” Joshua said.

“He is.”

Joshua pointed at the van then tapped his own lip. “Then why is he bleeding? Last time I checked, ghosts were dead. No blood.”

“He’s right,” Alexandra said, rubbing her sore knuckles. “He’s pretty solid.”

“In this form, yes,” Jacob said.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s simple, Miss Holzer,” Jacob said. “The ghost has possessed this man. The outer body is just a shell, a human shell.”

“So it can be hurt?” she guessed.

“After a fashion.” Jacob scratched the back of his neck as if deliberating on whether or not to reveal more. “The spirit and the host are connected. If you hurt the host, the spirit will register the pain.”

“So, if we hurt them, we can stop them, right?”

“It will be difficult. There is nothing to stop them from vacating the host.”

She smiled. “But then they’re back to being spirits and that’s something we know how to handle, right?”

Jacob smiled. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

“We have to get to my father,” Alexandra said. “It’ll take too long to drive or take the train. I need options!” She had to shout over the rising thrum until she realized what was causing the noise.

She looked up; they all did, just in time to see a black helicopter hover over the alley before settling onto the roof of the building that housed the OAGI.

“I know,” Jacob said over the noise of whirring blades. “I took the liberty of arranging transportation for us.”

“Us?” Joshua asked.

“Yes,” Jacob said. “I’m going with you.”

“Then so am I,” Samuel said.

“Me too,” Joshua added.

“Sounds like a party,” Jacob teased. He motioned toward the
nearest entrance to the building. “Shall we?”

Alexandra was the first one up the stairs, the others hot on her heels.

Minutes later, the helicopter lifted into the air and angled away from the building that housed the Office of Angel Guides on a straight shot toward Holzer House.

As she watched the city pass by beneath her, Alexandra hoped they were fast enough.

H
ans Holzer awoke at his desk.

He pushed his face off of the book that lay open on his desk. He had been deep into studying history books for any mention of vessels such as the one his daughter had brought him to study. Aside from small breaks for food, sleep, and a few brief moments of quality time with Catherine, he had been locked away in his office. It was not unusual for Hans to lose himself in a case like this. When he sunk his teeth into something, he held on with a tenacious ferocity not unlike a territorial canine with an old gnarled bone.

He had earned the nickname “Professor” years earlier, which seemed apt as he was often called upon to give lectures and training sessions. He loved public speaking, especially when he found a receptive audience with open minds and closed mouths. Sadly, these days he seemed to run across those who had that backward and preferred closed minds and open mouths.

After checking the pages to make sure he hadn’t drooled on them during his catnap, Hans stretched and wondered when he had stopped being able to stay up for days at a time without sleep. It didn’t seem like so long ago when he tackled investigations with gusto, often losing days at a time while lost in the fog of research. He would never admit it to his loving wife, but there were times when he missed those days.

Despite the dark gray of winter outside his window, his pocket watch told him that it was late in the afternoon. The thick cloud cover that blocked out the Sun’s warm glow threatened to dump more snow on them as evening turned to night.

Pushing away from the cluttered desk, Hans stood and stretched out the kinks that came from sleeping at his desk. More than once he had promised Catherine that he would stop working and come to bed when he felt fatigued, but somehow he always ignored the warning signs in his attempt to get “just a little more work done” before calling it a night. Then, he would wake up with an ache in his back and a kink in his neck. His wife joked that those aches and pains were his body’s way of reminding him that he wasn’t as young as he once was. She was right, of course, she usually was, but it was a bitter pill to swallow.

Alexandra, bless her, was becoming a lot like her mother. Hans knew his daughter’s pestering him about his work habits came from a place of love. That didn’t make it any less annoying. He was a grown man and had been taking care of himself for years before the women in his life came along. He wondered why they treated him like a helpless old man these days. He made a mental note to have a long talk with them about it the next time Alexandra came by for a visit.

Without sunlight streaming through the windows, he reached out for the freestanding light stand nearby and pulled the cord. The lamp clicked, but the light did not come on.

He tried it again, but achieved the same result.

Hans walked over to the room’s overheard light switch and tried it.

Nothing.

“I know there’s a torch in here somewhere,” he mumbled as he searched through the shelves of one of the cabinets that lined the walls of one side of the office, each one filled to overflowing with trinkets. He was a bit of a pack rat, not an unfamiliar trait for those in his profession. His office held trinkets from multiple hunts, research trips, archaeological digs, and other assorted odds and ends he had picked up on his travels.

Catherine had offered to help him clean the office a few times early in their marriage, but eventually stopped asking when she realized how particular he was with regards to his office. It was the one room of the house that the Countess did not rearrange from time to time. His office was one hundred percent Hans Holzer and he liked it that way.