Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (11 page)

The would-be fugitive screamed in agony, but he didn’t let the flames or his own pain slow him down. He crashed into and then through the ceiling above our heads, sending pieces of wood, insulation, and floor tile from the room above raining down toward us as he disappeared from view.

I was still staring at the hole in the ceiling that Wagner had disappeared through, amazed that he hadn’t been burnt to a cinder, when Rivera ordered Ilyana to go after him.

“And when I catch him?” she asked.

Not if, when.

“He’s all yours,” Rivera replied.

Ilyana took off in pursuit.

Rivera watched her go and then turned to where Grady, Perkins, and I stood waiting.

“The Key is here somewhere,” he told us. “Find it.”

14

In the end, it really didn’t take us very long to do as he’d asked. Perkins’s gift told us that what we were looking for was at the bottom of the hole from which Wagner had emerged, and once we knew that it didn’t take us very long to find the safe that was buried there. Rivera used his sorcery to lift the safe out of the hole and set it down on the floor, after which Grady went to work with his own unique set of skills.

He had the safe open inside of ten minutes.

Along with a fair amount of cash, the safe also contained several unmarked DVDs and a small velvet bag.

Inside the bag was another piece of metal similar to the one we’d removed from the crypt beneath the church several days before.

Grady tossed the bag to Rivera and then began taking stacks of money wrapped in rubber bands out of the safe and stuffing them into his pockets.

Seeing me watching him, he grabbed a stack and tossed it in my direction, saying, “You want it, you can have it. I doubt Wagner’s going to need it anymore.”

But I didn’t want it; didn’t want anything to do with it, in fact, and I let it fall to the floor in front of me without making any attempt to catch it.

“Suit yourself,” Grady said.

He took several stacks for himself and handed roughly the same amount to Perkins, who shot me a guilty look as he took it but stuffed it in his pockets just the same.

The light above our heads started to dim and Rivera hurried us along. I glanced upward, past the drifting ball of arcane energy to the hole through which Ilyana and Wagner had disappeared.

“What about Ilyana?” I asked.

“What about her?”

Rivera’s reply was said over his shoulder as he headed for the stairs back to the ground floor. Perkins and Grady were already ahead of him, so I hustled to catch up.

“She’s not back yet. Should we be worried?”

“About what?”

I could hear how ridiculous my question sounded and decided I’d quit while I was ahead. No sense making them think I was an even bigger fool than they already did.

She was a half-breed demon. What was there to be worried about?

What indeed.

We walked through the house and then back outside to the car. I was reaching for the door handle when something about the size of a bowling ball bounced off the door beside me, startling me. I think I let out a little yelp of surprise.

When I looked down and saw the severed head of Glenn Wagner staring back at me from the dirt at my feet, I reacted without thinking, kicking it away from me like a soccer ball. I may have let out another yelp, this one much louder.

Ilyana thought this was hysterical. She came walking out of the darkness surrounding us, wiping her bloody hands on an orange scrap of cloth and laughing long and hard at my reaction.

“You should have seen your face,” she said, amidst gales of laughter.

And to think I’d been worried about her safety.

I did my best to ignore the laughter of the others around me as I slipped my sunglasses back over my eyes and climbed into the car for the drive back to the estate.

*   *   *

There are distinct advantages to being able to walk about in the dark and still be able to see. For one thing, you don’t have to turn on any lights when you get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom. For another, you can spy fairly effectively on anyone you want, say, your boss, without them realizing that you are there. As I was doing now.

The fear and resulting adrenaline rush I’d experienced earlier had turned into hunger pangs hours later, and I’d come into the main house to grab something from the refrigerator to eat as a late night snack. In doing so I noticed a light coming from a room at the end of the hall, a room I knew to be Fuentes’s study. The light was spilling through the partially open door and I could hear two voices coming out of it as well, but I was too far away to hear what was being said or who it was that was doing the talking.

The safe move would have been to pretend I hadn’t heard anything, turn away, and continue on my way to the kitchen but I’ve never been known to play it safe anyway. As quietly as I could, I crept down the darkened hallway toward the partially open door.

The voices grew clear and I could hear fairly well by the time I settled into a crouch less than a yard away from the entrance, my back to one wall.

“Well?” a voice I recognized as Fuentes’s asked. “Do you have it?”

There was a clank, as if a piece of metal had been tossed onto the desk lightly. “You were right; Wagner was using the place as his new lair.”

Fuentes laughed. “What did I tell you? Nosferatu are always so predictable.”

Nosferatu?
I’d heard the word before—it was the name of the creature in the very first vampire film by F. W. Murnau, never mind the name of the film itself. But I never imagined the things were real.
How much did Murnau really know?
I wondered.

“… any more. I let Verikoff sate her needs on him when he refused to cooperate.”

I’d missed Rivera’s opening, but it wasn’t hard to put two and two together to know they were still talking about Wagner.

“And good riddance, too,” Fuentes replied. “Any other trouble?”

“None. Though I have to admit that I’m surprised by some of Hunt’s abilities. He knew where Wagner was hiding before the rest of us did, for instance.”

“Don’t underestimate him, Rivera. He’s like a rat; he’ll fight if you back him into a corner.”

Rivera said something that I didn’t catch and both men laughed heartily.

Laugh away, assholes
, I thought.
We’ll see who laughs last.

I wasn’t sure what Fuentes was up to or why he wanted this key he was looking for, but one thing was certain. I was going to rain on their parade as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Once I knew that my friends were safe, I was determined to fuck up Fuentes’s world so badly that he and Rivera were going to wish that they’d left me alone in that crappy little motel room to mind my own business.

“And the third piece?” Rivera asked.

“Either Durante gave it to that pissy little sycophant of his or else it is hidden somewhere in the house in the canyon. I want you to go to the house with the entire crew tomorrow night and see what you can find. If it’s not there, I want you to find that whiny bastard.”

Noise from the other end of the hallway told me someone was on their way. As quietly as I could I stood up, crossed the hall, and slipped inside the bathroom I knew was there. I left the door open the barest crack so that I could hear what was going on in the hallway, and stood with my back to it. If I had to, I could always lock the door, pretend to use the bathroom, and then try to bluff my way through with some story about needing to speak to Mr. Fuentes if someone was waiting for me when I emerged.

Lights went on in the hallway outside the door and I froze, squeezing my eyes shut against the light. I hadn’t thought I’d need them, so I left the sunglasses Grady had given me back in my room; they would have proved rather helpful right about now, I knew. Holding my breath, I waited for whoever it was to go away.

Footsteps approached.

I tensed, one hand curling into a fist.

Even Rivera and Fuentes had fallen silent.

Any second now …

The door directly to the left of the bathroom opened and someone began muttering beneath their breath in Spanish. I almost gasped in relief; it was just the maid, returning laundry to the linen closet next door. From the sound of it she was none too happy about the way the day shift had stacked the sheets, either.

I stood there, listening as she closed the closet and walked off down the hall, still talking to herself. It was only when the lights went off that I let go of the breath I’d been holding and relaxed.

I gave it another minute or two, then cautiously opened the door and looked out.

The hallway was empty.

I found I could hear Fuentes and Rivera just fine from the bathroom where I was standing, however, so I decided to stay where I was in order to decrease the chance of being discovered while I continued my clandestine activities.

The two men had moved on to a different topic, it seemed. It sounded like they were discussing … a war in L.A.?

“Once we have downtown, Metro South and Southwest should fall fairly easily. We can form a staging area in Inglewood and use that to take control of Westchester, Marina del Rey, and Venice.”

“What about Papa Toulese?”

Fuentes laughed. “He won’t even know what hit him. The forces we’ll have at our disposal will easily defeat the Loa supporting him. Without them, his riders will be nothing more than tired horses. We’ll eat them for breakfast!”

Rivera asked a question, but it was too low for me to hear.

Fuentes’s answer, on the other hand, came through loud and clear. “We’ll use the Key to open another gate in Malibu. From there, we can close on Drake and his people from two sides, with you leading the main force moving north through Santa Monica and I’ll put Verikoff in charge of the greener troops coming through the gate. She can march down through Topanga and catch Drake between your two forces.”

“Flank him. Catch him in a pincher movement. Hell, charge him head on. Drake is not likely to surrender no matter what,” Rivera said.

“Fine,” was Fuentes’s immediate answer. “Let him fall with his troops, then. I don’t care; I’m going to have to execute him anyway if he lives. We can’t have two claims for the throne, after all.

Flanking maneuvers? Pinching movements? Battalions of troops?

I had no idea what they were talking about, but one thing was for certain; it didn’t sound good for L.A. one way or another.

And all of it, apparently, revolved around this Key Fuentes was searching for.

Find that
, I thought,
and you’ll have the upper hand. It might be the one thing that can get Fuentes off of Denise’s and Dmitri’s backs.

The two of them were still talking, but I was getting the sense that I was pushing my luck and decided to get while the getting was good. I’d learned a lot, even if I couldn’t make sense of it all yet. That would come with time, I knew. Right now, all I needed was a direction to work in and that I’d found.

Find the Key
, I told myself, as I slipped down the hallway and headed back to my bungalow.

Find the Key and control the game.

15

The next day Fuentes put me to work on one of his crews, hauling construction supplies from one job site to the next. For hours I hefted bags of concrete and stacks of lumber, loading them onto trucks at one location and then unloading them all over again at the next. It was grunt work and didn’t require much thought, but it had been a long time since I had worked that hard and it took it out of me.

By the time we returned to the estate in the late afternoon, I was exhausted. Once in my bungalow, I quickly showered to rid myself of all the concrete dust that had accumulated during the day and then dried off. I was going to slip into my spare clothes but found that they were still drying from being washed the night before. Deciding that sleep took precedence over getting my clothing dried, I slipped into bed naked and was asleep in seconds.

Ilyana woke me a short time later with several quick little slaps on the cheek.

“Ow!” I said, as I was startled into wakefulness to find her sitting on the edge of my bed in the dark. “What are you doing? That hurt!”

For a moment her eyes flashed red with anger and then she relaxed and her expression became decidedly more … hungry. She reached out and gently placed her hand against my still stinging cheek, matching it against the red mark that was no doubt emblazoned there.

“Awwww, do you want me to kiss it and make it better?” she asked, in a voice that might have been meant to be seductive but was far from it.

In fact, upon hearing it, my testicles retreated in much the same way they would if I decided to go skinny-dipping in a glacial lake in mid-February.

In Norway.

Conscious of her nearness and my nakedness, I quickly changed the subject.

“How did you get in here?” I asked, pulling the sheets up closer to my neck.

“You invited me,” came the reply. “I couldn’t have come in otherwise.”

No, I didn’t. I distinctly would have remembered that. I was equally certain that she wasn’t telling the truth about needing to be invited, either. I wasn’t an expert on preternaturals, by any stretch of the imagination, and my lessons with Denise had been cut off far more abruptly than I had hoped, but I had the feeling that Ilyana could go anywhere and everywhere she wanted to, regardless of whether she’d been invited or not. Granted, the supernatural elements of the world often acted in less than logical ways, but I didn’t think this was one of those times. She’d entered Wagner’s former home without difficulty, hadn’t she?

Sitting in the dark, naked, with a half-breed demon nearby who seemed to have an unhealthy interest in me, sexually or otherwise, just didn’t seem to be the right time to argue, however. So instead, I asked another question.

“Why are you here?”

I almost said, “What do you want?” but decided at the last second that the answer to that question might get me into more trouble than it was worth.