Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (29 page)

Almost.

“Hey, wake up,” I told her, leaning over the back of the front seat and gently shaking her shoulder.

She came awake with a start, her hands out in a defensive posture, and it took a few seconds of soothing talk for her to calm down enough to recognize me. I wondered what she’d been dreaming about.

“We’re here,” I told her, when she was coherent enough to follow what I was saying.

While I’d been concentrating on getting Denise up, Dmitri had driven through the maze of half-ruined buildings and come out at the edge of a short runway. He parked in the shade of a nearby hangar and turned off the ignition.

“What is this place?” I asked, looking around into the darkness as the three of us got out of the car.

Dmitri sounded amused as he said, “Old smugglers’ strip. Used to provide a quick, easy way to take product across the border into Mexico.”

“What kind of product?”

He shrugged. “You name it. Drugs. Money. Talking Elmos. Whatever was in demand.”

Talking Elmos? I let that one go without asking any further. Something told me I really didn’t want to know.

“What happened to it?”

“DEA sold half a dozen armed surveillance drones to the Mexican government. Two of the Cessnas the smugglers used were shot down, all hands lost, and that pretty much took the heart out of the entire group.”

“And you know this how?”

Dmitri smiled. “Oh, you know, word gets around. A person hears things, if they know how to listen.”

Right.

Dmitri’s past was still a big mystery to me, at least the part before I’d met him as the owner-bartender of my favorite drinking hole in Boston, Murphy’s, and local fixer. If you needed something and couldn’t get it through normal channels, Dmitri could often get it for you, for the right price.

I was just about to deliver a scathing reply when Denise said, “Shhh,” and cocked her head as if she was listening to something.

It took me a minute, but eventually I heard it too: a faint sound breaking the stillness of the early morning. Gradually it grew louder as it grew closer, until the sound resolved itself into the
whomp
-
whomp
-
whomp
of a helicopter’s rotors.

The sun was just peeking over the horizon and soon I wouldn’t be able to see anything again, lost once more to the ocean of white that was my everyday existence; I just hoped we’d be able to conclude our business and be on our way before that happened. I slipped my shades on my face, hoping to buy a few extra minutes when the time came.

As the sound grew louder, we stepped out into the open and started looking around. It was Denise who saw it first, a dark splotch against an even darker near-morning sky, angling in our direction. Eventually we could see the shape of the helicopter, and I was surprised to see that it was a military, rather than civilian, model. A Blackhawk or Apache, one of those kinds of birds. The cargo bay door was open and even from where I stood I could see the soldier manning the mini-gun, keeping it trained off to one side of our little party but ready at a moment’s notice.

The chopper circled once, checking the area out, and then set down in the middle of the old runway. As we watched, a tall black man in a military-looking gray jumpsuit and combat boots stepped out of the open door, automatic rifle in hand. Even through the jumpsuit it was clear he was in excellent shape. If I had to guess I would say he was a few inches over six feet. His head was shaved and he wore a neat-looking goatee. He took up a position beside the helicopter, his weapon pointed at the ground and not at us, but ready at a moment’s notice.

He glanced around and then nodded.

At his signal, a second man emerged from the helicopter behind him.

The newcomer was white and was dressed the same as his companion, but he had a sword strapped to his back instead of an automatic rifle in his hands. He looked just as fit as his companion did, with hair that was long in back and a pirate-style eye patch covering one eye.

He strode toward us without hesitation.

Denise stepped out to greet him.

I didn’t like the idea of Denise meeting with this guy alone, so I moved to join her. Quick as a snake Dmitri reached out and grabbed my arm, stopping me.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“You’ve got the Preacher’s taint about you and the Templars won’t take kindly to it. No need to provoke them. They’ve been hunting our kind down for centuries. Little thing known as the Inquisition.”

“All the more reason not to leave Denise out there alone.”

Dmitri shook his head and that was when I realized he still hadn’t taken his gaze off the knight standing beside the helicopter. Not once.

“She’s not in any danger. Not from him, at least. She helped him out in the past; something to do with his wife, if I remember correctly. Now it’s his turn to pony up and help us.”

Sounded fair to me, but I kept my eyes on Denise just the same. I trusted Dmitri’s assessment, but there was something to be said for remaining diligent just the same.

The two spoke for a few more moments and then Denise handed over the case to the other man. After accepting it, the two quickly embraced and then turned in opposite directions, with Denise coming toward us and the Templar headed back to the chopper.

“Everything all right?” Dmitri asked as Denise rejoined us.

“Cade intends to bury it deep among the artifacts kept locked away inside the vaults of the Templar reliquary. It should be safe there.”

The news was reassuring, in an odd way. The Key had been fashioned by a senior member of the church, and it made an odd kind of sense that the church would take responsibility for its creation and lock it away where it couldn’t be used to stir up the denizens of the netherworld against them and the rest of humanity.

The chopper started up, the growling of the rotors making it impossible for us to talk for a few minutes, and then it took to the sky, forcing us to shield our eyes from the dust and rocks and debris that the rotors kicked up on lift-off.

We watched it head off toward the horizon until it was out of sight.

I couldn’t hold back my annoyance any longer.

“So that’s it? That’s the great plan, Denise? We hand the Key over to some eye-patch-wearing dude in a jumpsuit and hope for the best?”

I didn’t know what was making me so obstinate. Lack of sleep? The fact that I’d just consigned the Preacher, a seriously creepy dude if there ever was one, to spending an unspecified amount of time trapped in a hell that was most definitely not of his own making? Maybe crankiness was a side effect of being possessed for longer than three days?

Denise, it seemed, wasn’t going to take offense.

“That ‘eye-patch-wearing dude’ as you so quaintly put it,” she said with wry amusement, “is a senior Templar commander, which is why I called him in the first place. The Templar Order has been safeguarding such artifacts for centuries now, and I have complete confidence in their ability to keep the Key out of the wrong hands well into the not-so-foreseeable future.”

Okay, fine. I guess I could live with that. After all, Fuentes was dead and the Key was now in safe hands, but there were still a lot of questions for which I didn’t have any answers and that made me uneasy.

Ilyana was out there, somewhere, and apparently so was Rivera, unless she’d caught up to him and dealt with that problem. Would I see her again? I wondered. Did I even want to? I didn’t know. I did know that I’d be perfectly happy if I never saw Rivera’s face again, but something told me I wasn’t going to be that lucky. I’d not only made him look like a fool, but I’d managed to get the person who was the closest thing to a father that he’d ever had torn to pieces from the inside out.

I didn’t think forgiveness was an inherent part of Rivera’s nature.

And, of course, there was the larger question of the Preacher. Who the hell was he? What did he want with me? Why did he keep popping up in my life? He was clearly maneuvering me toward something, but what?

I didn’t have any answers.

Thoughts of the Preacher made me wonder just what had happened to him when I’d pulled the plug, so to speak, and sent the gate, plus those on the other side of it, on an all-expense-paid trip right back to whatever backwater section of the netherworld Fuentes had dragged them up from. Would the Preacher be looking for revenge now too?

When you added in the Boston Police Department, the New Orleans Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it was pretty daunting thinking of all the people who were hunting me for one reason or another.

In fact, it was downright depressing.

Which was precisely why I refused to dwell on it. I wasn’t going to let my circumstances bring me down, not today. My friends and I had just kept a murderous psychopath from taking command of hell’s legions and I thought that was a damned fine accomplishment. It was time to celebrate.

As we turned and walked back to where I’d left Denise’s car, there was only one question that I needed an answer to right then and there.

“Anyone mind if I drive?”

TOR BOOKS BY JOSEPH NASSISE

T
HE
J
EREMIAH
H
UNT
C
HRONICLE

Eyes to See

King of the Dead

Watcher of the Dark

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joseph Nassise
is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the internationally bestselling Templar Chronicles, and, more recently,
Eyes to See
and
King of the Dead,
the first two books of the Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle. He is a former president of the Horror Writers Association, a two-time Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominee, and a life and creativity coach who likes working with people to help them realize their full potential in life.

Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, he attended Fordham University. He lives with his wife, four children, six dogs, four cats, and a pair of guinea pigs in Phoenix, Arizona.

Find out more at
www.josephnassise.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

WATCHER OF THE DARK

Copyright © 2013 by Joseph Nassise

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Cliff Nielsen

Edited by James Frenkel

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-7653-2720-8 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-4565-3 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781429945653

First Edition: November 2013