King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (2 page)

Whatever it was that he expected to see there, I’m pretty sure that a ten-foot-tall polar bear wasn’t it.

In the aftermath of my daughter Elizabeth’s disappearance I’d tried everything I could think of to discover what had happened to her. When, after a few years, I’d exhausted the usual methods, I’d delved into more esoteric ones. Things like divination, witchcraft, and black magic. It was in the course of those “investigations” that I’d encountered the Preacher.

To this day I’m still not sure who or what he actually was or why he appeared to me, but it was through his help that I located a ritual that would let me see that which was unseen, and I’d used it in an effort to locate Elizabeth.

As is typical of dark magick, the ritual did exactly what it promised to do but not in the way I’d expected. Rather than helping me locate what was missing, it stole my natural sight and replaced it with something else, something I’ve come to call my ghostsight. Among other things, it lets me see the supernatural denizens of the world around me. It doesn’t matter what they were, I can see them all: the good, the bad, and the scares-me-shitless.

I’m not completely blind. I can actually see better in complete darkness than most people can in broad daylight. I can no longer see colors—everything comes out in a thousand shades of gray—but at least I can see. The minute you put me in the light, however, everything goes dark. Direct sunlight is the equivalent of a complete whiteout for me; I can’t even see the outline of my hand if I hold it directly in front of my face. All I see is white. Endless vistas of white. Electrical lights are almost as bad, though if I use a pair of strong UV sunglasses I can see the vague shapes and outlines of things around me.

Which was why I was standing in a dark alley at night wearing the darkest sunglasses I could find.

Thanks to my sight I’d known that Dmitri wasn’t just a simple bartender, but I hadn’t been able to pierce the glamour around him to know exactly
what
he was. It was when I was hunting for the fetch earlier that fall that I’d discovered that he was a berserker.

First mentioned in the Norse saga Vatnsdoela, the berserkers were described as elite warriors that wore animal pelts on their heads and charged into battle in a ravaging frenzy, fighting so hard that they were nearly unstoppable. Of course, the bards hadn’t quite gotten it right, never realizing that the berserkers were actually warriors that were so in touch with the totem spirits of certain animals that they could assume the physical properties of those beasts in battle, borrowing their strength, cunning, and senses to accomplish things they never could have done as mere humans.

Dmitri and I decided to play it safe for tonight’s rendezvous, arriving early and having only one of us meet our intended contact. While I did that, Dmitri would remain out of sight, ready to come to my assistance if necessary.

Now we were glad that we’d taken the extra precaution.

Dmitri reared up on his hind legs, towering over Carlos. He opened his mouth and let loose another ground-shaking roar of challenge. That close, his teeth seemed bigger than my clenched fist.

To his credit, Carlos stood his ground and tried to bring his gun to bear, though what he thought a pistol was going to do against a brute like Dmitri was beyond me.

He needn’t have bothered. Before he’d even managed to move his arm a few inches it was intercepted by the swipe of a massive fur-covered paw. The impact sent Carlos spinning to the ground and the gun went flying off into the darkness. Dmitri lumbered forward, straddled Carlos’s body and clamped his teeth firmly onto the back of the gangbanger’s neck.

A few more ounces of pressure and bye-bye Carlos.

For the first time all night, our would-be thief did the smart thing.

He froze.

Smiling now, I put one hand on Dmitri’s broad back and squatted down next to Carlos so that he could see me without having to move his head. This close I could smell the stink of urine and feces that was coming off of him in waves. From the smell I knew he’d be a bit more receptive to our needs now that we’d gotten the preliminaries out of the way.

Good thing, too, since I was done dicking around.

“One word from me and my friend here will crush your head like an eggshell.
Comprende
, amigo?”

He opened his mouth, only to find that his fear had stolen his voice. He gaped like a fish a few times, vainly trying to get something out.

I took that as a yes.

“Where are the IDs?”

This time he managed to find his voice.

“Glove box,” he gasped out.

I patted Dmitri on the back, rose to my feet, and walked over to the lowrider. I slid into the front seat, leaned over to the other side, and opened the glove box. Inside I found another pistol and a manila envelope containing the driver’s licenses and passports that Carlos’s organization had agreed to provide. I put the new IDs back in the envelope and then tucked that and the pistol into the pocket of my jacket.

Carlos had left the keys in the ignition, perhaps in anticipation of a quick getaway after screwing us over. I took them with me as I got out of the car and threw them into the darkness as far as I could.

Once I had, I signaled for Dmitri to let Carlos up.

Dmitri growled low in his chest, expressing his annoyance at the idea and eliciting another whimper of fear from Carlos, but with a little encouragement Dmitri eventually backed off, moving to sit on his haunches at my side. Even seated, he towered over me.

“Not a particularly bright play, Carlos,” I said, packing all the disdain for his intelligence that I could into the words. “But today must be your lucky day, for I’ve decided to let you go. Now get the hell out of here and don’t even try to come back for your car.”

Carlos didn’t need to be told twice. He scrambled to his feet and ran off, never once looking back.

Dmitri turned his shovel-shaped head in my direction and grunted something.

Having no idea what he’d just said, one roar sounding pretty much like the next, I just stared at him blankly.

Another growl, a quick sensation of movement, and before I had time to look away, Dmitri was back in human form, standing in front of me completely naked and seemingly not bothered by it at all.

Catching a glimpse of what he was carrying around with him, I could understand why.

Some guys just get all the luck.

He walked over to Denise’s car, a black Dodge Charger we’d borrowed for the evening’s activities, and pulled on the extra set of clothes that he’d brought along for that purpose. I got in the passenger side, he slid in behind the wheel, and we took off in a spray of dirt and gravel.

Dmitri drove for a few blocks and then pulled into the parking lot of an all-night diner, finding a spot beneath one of the few streetlamps illuminating the lot.

“Give ’em here,” he said.

I passed him the envelope containing the fake IDs.

Besides limiting my vision, the Preacher’s ritual had also robbed me of my ability to see photographs or paintings of any kind. I could see the spot on the IDs where the images were supposed to be, but the images themselves were just flat black squares, making it impossible for me to judge how well the passports and driver’s licenses had turned out.

Dmitri looked them over for a few minutes, even going so far as to hold them up to the light one at a time and turn them this way and that, before dropping them back into the envelope.

“Good enough, I think,” he said, passing the envelope back to me, and I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. If we’d gone through all this trouble only to end up with useless junk …

But we hadn’t and that was good. Really good. Having the IDs would at least provide us some small measure of protection, allow us to do simple things that other people took for granted, like cashing a paycheck or signing a long-term lease on a piece of property. Even opening up a bank account or getting a line of credit was now possible, though I didn’t think I’d want to put our IDs up to that level of scrutiny unless it was absolutely necessary.

Dmitri started the car and pulled out into traffic, while I took out one of the prepaid cell phones we’d been using to communicate with one another and called to let Clearwater know we were on our way home.

If I’d known what she was going to drag us into less than seventy-two hours later, I might have tossed the phone out the window and told Dmitri to head south at the fastest possible speed, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

Unfortunately, I didn’t.

2

CLEARWATER

Around her, the city burned.

She ran through the streets, the buildings on either side engulfed in writhing sheets of flame, tongues of green and blue danced with those of red and yellow, evidence of the eldritch energies mixing with the natural ones. The heat pouring off of the fire was intense; even from the middle of the street she could feel it beating against her flesh, sending rivulets of sweat running down her face. Smoke and soot and ash filled the air, limiting her ability to see as she ran, searching for something, though she couldn’t remember who or what it was that she sought. Behind her, lost in the smoke and ash, something searched for her in turn.

She stumbled forward, looking for a street sign or some other landmark that would give her a better sense of her location, but all such markings seemed to have been removed, if they’d ever existed at all.

The thing behind her drew closer. She didn’t know how she knew; she just did. The first twinges of panic rose to the surface of her mind, but she fought them back down. Giving in was not an option; the thing behind her would catch her and that would be the end.

Of everything.

She couldn’t let that happen!

The smoke grew thicker, darker, and she was forced to hold her arm over her mouth as she stumbled forward. Her breath was coming in short, sharp gasps as she struggled to draw enough oxygen from the polluted air, but she bravely fought forward.

Something moved in the ruins to her left and she turned in that direction, eyes straining to make out what it was in the glare of the flames, but it was gone as swiftly as it had come.

A wailing cry sounded from close behind, just beyond the nearest curtain of smoke, and her heart pounded to hear it.

Faster! You have to run faster!
a voice shouted at her from deep inside her mind.

She pushed herself, drawing on the last of her reserves. Sweat poured down her face and plastered her hair against her scalp, while her clothing seemed weighted down with falling ash. She dodged wrecked cars and the shattered remains of crumbled homes, racing deeper into the darkness, searching for a way out.

She didn’t see the jagged crack in the pavement until it was too late. Her foot caught on the edge and she fell, her hands coming up to protect her face as she slid across the harsh surface, leaving flesh and blood in her wake.

Already an inner voice was shouting at her,
Get up! Get Up! Get Up!

She tried, really tried, but her right leg wouldn’t support her and she fell back to the pavement, crying and screaming in pain and fear. She must have broken her ankle in the fall.

Unwilling to give in, she used her arms to pull herself forward, dragging her wounded leg behind her.

That wailing cry sounded again, this time from immediately behind her, and she knew she’d been found. She rolled over, bringing her hands up before her in defense, as she caught a glimpse of something monstrous looming against the darkness of the smoke surrounding them.

She screamed as the thing descended …

*   *   *

The vision departed as swiftly and as unexpectedly as it had come. In its aftermath, Denise found herself standing before the big bay window in the living room. She was clad in the loose-fitting pajamas she’d pulled on when she went to bed earlier that evening, and she shivered in the cold air. A portion of the window had been fogged over, as if someone had just breathed on it, and the outline of two words were clearly visible on its surface.

NEW ORLEANS
.

Just seeing the words there made her nervous and so she reached up, intending to wipe them away.
Out of sight, out of mind
, she thought, rubbing her fingers across the glass, only to recoil in fear when the words did not disappear.

They couldn’t.

They were written on the
outside
of the glass.

A shiver of arctic cold ran up her spine, and she took a few steps back, unable to tear her gaze away from the letters as they slowly faded from view, seeming to mock her as they did so. Her thoughts raced through all the ways those words could have ended up on the window in front of her, each one more dangerous than the last …

“Are you okay, Denise?”

She screamed.

She couldn’t help it. So great had been her concentration that she hadn’t heard Hunt enter the room behind her. His sudden voice in the silence of the room shocked her almost as much as seeing the words on the window.

Almost.

She knew he’d react to her fear and so she quickly turned, waving her hand and intentionally laughing to keep him from learning how upset she actually was.

“Gaia, Hunt, you startled me!”

Moonlight spilled in through the windows, letting her see his face. His white eyes seemed to gleam of their own accord in the partial darkness and she wondered, not for the first time, exactly what the ritual he’d undergone had done to him.

“You looked like something scared you,” he said. “Well, before I did, I mean.”

She shook her head. “It was nothing—a bad dream, nothing more. I’ll be fine. Your voice just surprised me, that’s all. I didn’t hear you come into the room.”

He glanced past her to the window but apparently didn’t find anything there to make him suspicious since he turned his attention back to her.