The Demon Hunters (34 page)

“
I can’t be tall, dark and
mysterious?”

I squeezed his neck with my fingers.
“Tell me. Everything.”

“
Do I get a reward?” he
asked, his nose in my hair.

His breath bathed my neck, and
sticking to my guns was not easy. But I fixed my fingers in his
hair and tugged. “Royal,” I warned. “Do not mess with a woman woken
at three in the morning by a bitch cackling in her
kitchen.”

He caught my fingers. “All right. You
win. She told me why Vance hunted us.” His squinted, trying to look
enigmatic. “Think tall, eerie, long teeth and an aversion to
sunlight.”

My eyebrows tried to meet my hairline.
”Honestly?”

He nodded. “A regular Van
Helsing.”

“
Gia got that out his
mind?”

Maybe Gia laughed at the irony of
cultivating the persona of the very creature Vance
hunted.

Royal nodded again. “We don’t know how
long he was on his mad quest, if he killed innocent people before
he met up with Maud - perhaps she learned of his obsession and saw
an opportunity to avenge her father - he said she approached him.
She revealed her true appearance, by which we assume she put
glamour on him to make him see her as one of the evil creatures he
hunted, and told him she would identify her own people.”

“
You mean
misidentify.”

“
Yes. But Vance was never
happy with the arrangement. He had only her word to go on, and
although he cared not at all whether he could be killing innocents,
he did care he could be failing in his duty to rid the world of
evil.

“
Then he met Stadelmann at
a function in the States and they became friends. Which could be
one of the reasons Vance did not kill the old man when he took
Jacob from him. Stadelmann didn’t mention it, but his bargain with
the natives included possessions stolen from the expedition and
preserved for all those years. He found another treasure in
Myanmar: Elizabeth’s journal. He showed it to Vance.”

“
The etchings on Nagka’s
walls. . . .”

He nodded. “He thought Elizabeth’s
tale and her description of the etchings proved the existence of
vampires, and when Vance’s genuine interest in Nagka led Stadelmann
to introduce him to his protégé, Vance didn’t need much to convince
himself he had a real live vampire. He wanted to kill Jacob, then
decided he could use the boy, so he took him from Stadelmann along
with the journal. He knew Stadelmann smuggled Jacob into the
country and kept him hidden, so would not run to the
police.

“
Jacob led him to Dark
Cousins and Vance felt sure of Jacob. When he observed his victims,
before he killed them, he saw those Maud identified as normal,
human people, but Jacob pointed him at pale-skinned, secretive
persons, who seemed to have mysterious pasts lacking in history.
Why, they even avoided direct sunlight. Vance saw what he wanted
to.”

“
So they do stay out of the
sun on purpose? I thought it was Gia trying to make folk wonder,
adding mystique to her profile.” Because that’s what she created
when she reinvented herself: a mysterious woman who appeared out of
nowhere, with no past. An author who fans hoped wrote from
experience, not who concocted fantasy.

“
They are sensitive to
harsh sunlight.” Royal
huffed
through his nose. “They will not burst into
flames, but they could get an uncomfortable sunburn.” He frowned
and I wondered if he gave me information he didn’t mean
to.

He hurried on: “Then Vance didn’t need
Maud anymore. And she was unstable, a liability. So he tried to get
rid of her.”

Poor Maud. She asked for forgiveness
on her deathbed, but did she repent beforehand? Is that why she
tried to point us in the right direction? Or did she think Jacob
would give the game away by telling Vance she’d marked the wrong
people for death? Whatever her motives, she did bring the
Charbroiler down.

His arms tightened around my waist.
“Maud stole Elizabeth’s journal from Vance. She knew he had Rio,
and somehow, that Gia and Daven came to me for help finding the
Charbroiler.”

Although I saw nothing significant in
Elizabeth’s narration, Royal and the Dark Cousins did, and I have a
gut feeling it was more, much more, than the etchings on Nagka’s
walls. Maud knew when Royal read the journal he would guess the
identity of the ancients of Nagka and show the book to the Dark
Cousins. She knew they would go to Nagka and learn of the boy who
survived and of the elderly, white-haired European who took the
villagers’ prize from them. After that, it would be only a matter
time until they talked to Stadelmann and tracked down Vance. I’d
wished for a nice, explanatory letter, but Maud knew what she was
doing when she sent the journal. Royal would see the clues in those
pages, but if it fell into anyone else’s hands they would be none
the wiser. Unfortunately it did fall into someone else’s hands.
Mine.

“
If I’d gave you the
journal in the first place. . . ,” I began, but didn’t finish the
sentence. Not that I felt like a fool - how was I supposed to know
I held an important clue in my hands? But I did regret the time
wasted and the tortuous path we followed to find Jacob and put
Vance where he belonged.

Royal didn’t reply, bless him. But
when I looked back, he was whistling softly between his teeth,
trying to look angelic.

I tried not to laugh. Had
to.

“
What about Jacob? Why did
he lead Vance to Dark Cousins?” I asked.

“
He thought he searched for
his people, and found them, but he never got to meet them. Each
time Jacob sensed others of his kind, Vance told the boy he would
contact them. He said the modern world was too dangerous a place
for Jacob, but he, Vance, would find Jacob’s people and reunite
them. Jacob was beginning to wonder why, when Vance arrived at the
location, his people mysteriously disappeared, but he did not
suspect Vance had them killed.”

So Jacob
was
a Dark Cousin. “I
can’t imagine how he feels.”

“
Jacob does not know he
betrayed his family. Gia did not tell him.”

I guess that means even something like
her can be merciful.

I kept my tone casual. “I feel sorry
for him. Poor kid, there alone for all this time after Elizabeth
and his people were killed.”

“
I think the villagers
cared for him well. He was something of a prize for them.
Stadelmann must have paid them a fortune, and I am sure Jacob
allowed them to sell him because he wanted to be with the
professor.”

I put my head on his shoulder and
indulged in a smug smile, wondering when he’d realize he had
confirmed what I’d suspected since I saw Jacob in the house on East
Monroe. I may not be the smartest pup in the litter, but knowing
what I know, having seen what I have seen, I don’t always dismiss
what should be impossible. Demons lie by omission, and so do Dark
Cousins. That’s what Gia did. When she told us about Daven’s e-mail
and the slaughtered colony, she neglected to mention it happened in
1887. Whatever they are, the Dark Cousins live a long, long time,
and the lone survivor of the massacre, the boy who betrayed his
people, was over a century old.

Jacob, whose given name was
Teo-Papek.

Epilogue

So now I know more about the Dark
Cousins and our last case, but I’m left with as many questions as I
started with.

How did Rio Borrego, who is neither
Gelpha nor Dark Cousin, bounce back from near death in a matter of
days? Did he have help from someplace, or someone, other than
Clarion General?

I understand why Gia appeared out of
nowhere: when you live that long, you have to reinvent yourself
every now and then. But why is Jacob, an ancient entity, still a
child? Did he somehow freeze that way, or can Dark Cousins alter
their appearance, like Gelpha can, only in a spectacular way? He
was an adolescent when he went to the native villagers after the
expedition’s bearers killed his people - did he remain so for all
those long years, until he chose to leave there with Hans
Stadelmann? Although the Boys from Rangoon feared the demons, from
their reaction to Daven, I think the local population revered them;
perhaps they held him in awe and felt blessed to host an ageless
entity.

If Jacob survived, did others escape
doomed Nagka? Did Elizabeth’s heathen king truly perish in the
ashes of the temple? If Dark Cousins can bring a man back from the
brink of death, did Elizabeth really die in the lost city, or did
she live out her natural lifespan with her demon prince?

What are Dark Cousins? I
don’t think that can be answered by trying to fit them into an
existing mould, as we do the unfathomable. Those creatures we like
to parallel are the creations of our imagination, fairy tales or
mythology. I think both Dark Cousins and Gelpha are something
outside our comprehension. On the other hand, did a spark ignite
our imagination?
We change with the
times
, Gia said when I pointed out Dark
Cousins don’t look like the figures etched on Nagka’s walls, which
could mean they once did. If the ancient Celts spoke of The Land
Beneath the Waves, which Royal says is another name for Bel-Athaer,
maybe they saw the inhabitants. Perhaps, over the centuries, people
all over the world have seen the Gelpha and Dark Cousins, looked at
those pointed teeth and came up with a nasty reason for them. Dark
Cousins and Gelpha could be the myth from which we spin our
fantasies.

“
Rumors in the Gelpha
community: the Dark Cousins went back to Myanmar with Jacob,” Royal
told me.

Good
, I thought.
I don’t want things like
them in my town.
I am sure of one thing: I
never want to meet them again. Since Mac has been with me, Gia
Sabato is the only thing to put fear into the heart of my dog. Dogs
are smarter than us, they recognize evil.

About
the Author

Linda Welch was born in Hampshire,
England. She lived in Idaho, California and New Mexico before
settling in Utah. She now lives in a mountain valley, more or less
halfway up the mountainside, with her husband and Scottish terrier
Duncan. She is not tall and silver-haired and she does not see dead
people. What she does see are moose, deer, fox, raccoon, skunk,
wild turkey, a huge bird population and a ridiculous amount of
snow. When not writing and depending on the season, she is usually
walking Duncan, filling the bird feeders, futilely attacking the
weeds in her garden or shoveling out after a snowstorm. The Demon
Hunters is the second book of her Whisperings series.

Linda is hard at work on Whisperings
book three: Dead Demon Walking.