Hunter's Legacy

by N. P. Martin

  Frank drove for about twenty minutes, during which time he kept asking me how I was doing, as if he was afraid I was going to die on the back seat of his car. Physically speaking, it felt like my chest was on fire, and that things were not working right. My heart felt like it was struggling to pump enough blood around my body, and my lungs felt deflated. I could feel my grace, however, as it directed itself to the source of pain in my chest. Not that I cared much about healing. At that point, I considered death an easy way out if it meant I didn’t have to carry the massive burden of guilt that was eating at my conscience like a giant, soul-sucking parasite.

  There you go again, a harsh voice in my head said. Always about you, isn’t it, Leia? It was your selfishness that caused Kasey’s death. If you’d been a better friend to her, she wouldn’t be dead right now. You’re to blame, Leia, you’re to blame for all of it…

  Tears dripped from my eyes onto the leather seats, pooling around my face; tears that tasted more bitter than salty, quite rightly so.

  "All right," Frank said, suddenly leaning into the back of the car. "We’re here."

  I hadn’t even noticed we’d stopped. "Just leave me here," I told him.

  "You know I can’t do that. You need medical attention."

  "I feel fine."

  "You were stabbed in the chest. I doubt that." He paused, then added, "You won’t be much good to Josh if you’re dead."

  I hated him for saying that. Why did he have to say that?

  Sitting up, I hesitated before taking his outstretched hand, then I groaned in pain as I struggled to get out of the car. I barely looked around as I stood there waiting on him for a second. We were in some street I didn’t recognize, that’s all I knew. Then Frank took me up to a brownstone house and knocked on the door. A few seconds later, a woman answered, her lack of surprise indicating she had been expecting us. She looked about the same age as Frank, with long dark hair about the same length as my own. Her green eyes were huge, and hard to look away from. Whatever she saw in my eyes softened her previously guarded demeanor, and for a short moment, she almost looked like she had just seen a ghost. "You must be Leia," she said smiling, glancing briefly at Frank to communicate something I didn’t quite catch. "Please, come in. My name is Eva, by the way."

  I just nodded as I trudged into the hallway and waited there, like someone who didn’t particularly care where they ended up. There was a strange odor inside, like herbs or spices, although none that I recognized. I wondered if the woman was some sort of witch, until some deeper instinct told me she was a Nephilim. She still came across a witch to me, though, if only for no other reason than the black lace dress she was wearing, and the weird looking pendants hanging around her neck. I also noticed the scars on her bare arms, which were very similar to the ones my mother had on her arms.

  "This way," Eva said, gently directing me down the hallway, then through a door and down some steps into a large basement, and not a minute too soon, for I was starting to feel like my world was blackening again. The room was like a replica of my mother’s storage unit, only bigger, and with many more shelves which overflowed with jars, bottles and vials of various sizes, filled with stuff I couldn’t even begin to recognize. I also noticed a few different gun lockers in the room, and an array of bladed weapons displayed on one of the walls. Under different circumstances, I probably would’ve taken a keen interest in all that stuff, but as it was, I just didn’t care.

  As Eva seemed to sort through some of her many jars and bottles, she asked me to take my jacket and top off. I stared at her for a moment, then nodded absently, before proceeding to take my jacket off and drop it onto the floor. As I looked down at myself for the first time, I was surprised to see that I was covered in blood. The shock of seeing all that ruby red soon began to penetrate the numbness that permeated throughout my whole sense of being, physiologically and psychologically speaking. Not long after, I began to get the shakes, despite the humid temperature in the room.

  My top was stuck to my skin with dried blood as I painfully peeled it off with now trembling hands. Looking down, I saw an ugly wound in my chest about three inches across, located right next to my left breast. The wound was half open, and still oozed blood.

  "Frank did his best to heal you," Eva said as she came to examine me. "Grace transfers are tricky. Sometimes they don’t take, or in your case, incompletely." With a gloved hand, she pressed gently around the wound, causing me to wince each time. Then she directed me to lie on top of a thinly cushioned steel gurney.

  "Are you a doctor or something?" I asked her.

  Eva walked away for a moment, then arrived back with several different sized bottles and jars, which she placed on a metal table that was next to the gurney. "Sort of," she said as she proceeded to clean around my wound with cotton wool dipped in alcohol. "I’m more of a scientist, sometimes an alchemist. You pick things up over the years. It’s not like we can go to hospitals, is it?"

  She smiled as she looked into my face for an extended moment, as if taking me in for the first time.

  "It’s okay," I said. "You can say it."

  Eva went back to cleaning the wound. "Say what?"

  "That I look like her."

  Her eyes glanced briefly up. "You do."

  "You knew my mother then?"

  Eva nodded as she went about mixing up a concoction from the liquid in some of the bottles. "Yes, of course. We were friends. Best friends, actually," she said, the depth of warmth in her voice causing my breath to catch in my throat.

  "I see." It was a little weird to meet someone who was once best friends with my mother. Looking back, I don’t recall my mother having any friends, at least not to the house. Did my father ban all Watchers from the house, not just Frank? It was the only thing that made any sense, and which explained why I’d never seen Eva before now.

  "All this must be a shock to you."

  "Getting stabbed, or the whole 'I’m a Nephilim' thing?"

  "Both, I’d imagine."

  "Did you know what you were when you were growing up?" I asked her, curious to know.

  She nodded. "I found out quite young, yes. Most of us do."

  I tried to sigh, but it caused me too much pain. "I wish I’d known."

  "You think it would’ve made things easier if you did?"

  "Probably, yeah. Easier than having it all dumped on you at once when you’re not a kid anymore, and you think life is something completely fucking different from what it actually is."

  Eva filled a dropper with the liquid concoction she had made. "Trust me, Leia, life is still the same, even when the curtain has been pulled back. It just gets more complicated, that’s all."

  "And dangerous."

  "Yes, I’m afraid so."

  "As my friend just found out to her detriment." I swallowed and closed my eyes for a moment. The pain of losing Kasey was nearly greater than the pain in my chest. At least the physical pain would pass. The other pain…I didn’t see that going anywhere anytime soon.

  As if reading my mind, Eva said, "It will get easier."

  I opened my eyes. "What will?"

  "All the death. You become numb to it after a while."

  "I’m not sure if that’s a good thing."

  "Good or bad, death is a part of who we are." She came closer, her huge eyes now looking into mine. "You’re a warrior now, Leia, and warriors must embrace death."

  "Oh, really?" I said, an angry edge to my voice. "Does that include "embracing" the death of your best friend, whose death you’re responsible for? Did you "embrace" my mother’s death when it happened?"

  "Your mother isn’t…" She trailed off and shook her head, as if she didn’t want to talk about it.

  "What? She isn’t really dead because she’s in Hell?" I shook my head. "She might as well be."

  I turned my head away at that point, having no wish to carry on the conversation. All I really wanted was to be alone. Once Eva had finished, I planned on getting Frank to drive me back to the ca
bin. At least there I would find solitude.

  Obviously, Eva took the hint. She worked away in silence for the next five minutes or so, using the dropper to drip her strange concoction into my wound. Then she rubbed two different ointments around the wound, both of which had a deeply unpleasant smell to them. Finally, she placed a large piece of gauze over the whole wound and taped it to my skin.

  "Are we done?" I said as I sat up, hardly looking at her. In truth, I felt bad for being so thorny with her, because she seemed like a nice enough person.

  "For now," she said. "Depending on the potency of your grace, you should fully heal within forty-eight hours or so. It might be wise if you stayed here for a day, just so I can monitor you. The knife did a lot of internal damage."

  I shook my head, and then got down off the gurney, wincing at the pain in my chest as I did so. "I appreciate what you’ve done here, but I need to go. Is Frank still here?"

  "I think he’s gone to retrieve your friend’s body."

  "Oh." I stood awkwardly for a moment, unsure of what to do now.

  "Listen, Leia," Eva said in a soft voice as she gently laid a warm hand on my shoulder. "You’ve been through a lot today. Why don’t you take one of the beds upstairs and try to get some rest for a while? I can even give you something to help you sleep."

  I had to admit, it was a tempting offer. I’d already been thinking about scoring some Oxy from somewhere. Whatever Eva had to offer would do, though. "All right, fine."

  Eva smiled. "You’re safe here, Leia. Don’t worry."

  Safe? I thought. I don’t think I deserve to be safe ever again.

  23

  Whatever sweet liquid Eva gave me to help me sleep did the trick. Barely five minutes after taking it, I fell into a deep sleep, and didn’t come out of it until the next morning. No dreams either, which made me wonder if that was Eva’s doing as well. If so, I was grateful to her. When I sat up in bed, I actually felt refreshed. No pain in my chest either, I noticed. When I took the bandage off to check my knife wound, it seemed to be completely healed, with only the faintest scar left as a permanent future reminder—a tattoo of sorts, one marking the mission that'd resulted in my best friend's death. I was okay with that, though; it was only right that I never forget what happened.

  I sat in the bed for quite a long time, feeling lost and alone as I struggled to come to terms with everything that had happened. Of course, I knew that technically I wasn’t responsible for what befell Kasey. She followed me of her own volition, and didn’t leave when I told her to, even though she must’ve known bad shit was going down. Plus, who could’ve predicted the demon would possess her?

  Despite the evidence to the contrary, I still felt responsible for her untimely death, and there was nothing that could make me feel otherwise.

  The only question now was: Would I be able to live with the weight of that responsibility? That culpability?

  "Where’s Frank?" I asked Eva when I came downstairs wearing the black T-shirt she had left out for me. Eva was busy making breakfast, just for me it seemed, because it was almost two in the afternoon. As a passing thought, I reminded myself to ask Eva sometime how she was able to time breakfast so perfectly, though I already suspected what her answer would be, and it would likely involve her grace.

  "Frank had some business to take care of," Eva said as she scraped eggs from a frying pan onto a plate. "He said he would be back to pick you up."

  "When?"

  "Not long." She put two slices of bacon next to the eggs and placed the plate on the table. "How do you like your coffee?"

  It was a little disconcerting to see such a display of normalcy, considering that I felt as if nothing was normal anymore, and that nor had I particularly earned the kindness she was showing me. But maybe that was the point, as far as Eva was concerned. Maybe she thought I needed normalcy. As I sat down at the table, I thought she might be right. "Milk, two sugars...please."

  Eva smiled as she went about pouring the coffee. She was dressed more casually today in jeans and a Black Sabbath T-shirt that seemed too big on her.

  Maybe it’s Frank’s.

  I don’t know where the thought came from. I guess it wasn’t a big stretch to think that the T-shirt belonged to Frank. Eva didn’t strike me as the classic rock type. She looked more of the classical type to me. Vivaldi rather than Black Sabbath. Whatever the case, it wasn’t really any of my business if Frank and Eva were sleeping together. I hardly knew the woman. Hell, I hardly knew Frank.

  "Did you sleep well?" Eva asked as she placed a coffee mug in front of me, holding another in her hand for herself.

  I nodded as I tasted the eggs, surprised that I had any appetite at all. "Yes, thanks. Whatever you gave me knocked me right out."

  "Any dreams?"

  I looked up at her. "No. I take it the potion blocked those?"

  "Yes, your mind needed to rest."

  "You must give me the formula some time," I said, casually looking up at her.

  Eva narrowed her eyes at me slightly for a second, then nodded. "I’ll think it over. It isn’t something for regular use."

  I nodded and went back to my food, eating in silence for a few moments, washing it down with coffee that wasn’t instant for a change. Eva sat perfectly comfortable in her chair, occasionally glancing at me, seemingly pleased that I was eating the food she had made me.

  I was getting a slightly different impression of her now, different from last night anyway. I’d been quite distressed then, and Eva had come across as somewhat patronizing. She didn’t seem that way now, though, coming across as more friendly than anything else. I could also see a definite inner light that came through mostly in her dark green eyes, which as she sat perfectly composed in her chair, seemed to take in my every micro movement without being too invasive about it. Physically speaking, she was a few inches shorter than me, but she seemed to be lithe, even cat-like in her movements. Her arms were thin but muscular, as if she had been training in some capacity all her life. It wasn’t a stretch for my imagination to picture her fighting demons, running rings around them as she used maybe a knife or sword to kill them with style and grace.

  "You are unsure about me," she said when I’d finished my food and sat drinking the rest of my coffee.

  I smiled slightly. "Maybe."

  She smiled back. "That’s good. You shouldn’t trust people you’ve just met. Trust must be earned, don’t you think?"

  I assumed that went for me too. "I agree."

  "Would you like a refill?"

  Nodding, I handed her my cup, and she refilled it, along with her own. "So, how long have you known Frank?" I asked her when she had sat back down.

  "A long time," she said. "We came through training together, along with your mother and father."

  "You all knew one another?"

  Eva looked away for a second. "Yes, we were all…close."

  I nodded, trying to remember if I’d ever seen Eva when I was younger. "Did you ever come around the house when I was a kid?"

  "Sometimes, yes." She smiled. "You wouldn’t remember, you were very young."

  "Why did you stop coming around?"

  Eva took a deep breath and sighed. "Your father."

  "My father? What do you mean?"

  "Well, he insisted there was to be no Watcher activity at the house, and that included any Watcher’s as well."

  I frowned. "But my father was a Watcher too, why would he…" I trailed off, suddenly understanding. "Unless it was something deeper, brought about by…the affair."

  "The affair?" She seemed surprised to hear me say that.

  "I know about Frank and my mother."

  She nodded. "I see. Frank told you?"

  "Yes. It wasn’t that hard to figure out on my own anyway."

  "How do you feel about what happened?"

  I snorted slightly as I shook my head. "I dunno, pissed off, I suppose? I feel bad for my dad."

  "Your father was a good man," she said. "He didn’t deserve
what happened to him, being killed in his own home by a demon. Your mother didn’t deserve her fate either."

  Or Kasey for that matter.

  "There seems to be a lot of pain and loss involved in being a Watcher," I said. "Is it worth it?"

  Eva stared at me for a long moment, as if she didn’t know what answer to give me. "That’s up to you to decide."

  "I lost my best friend last night. My brother is being held by demons. I was orphaned by demons." If I didn’t feel so damn sad, I might’ve laughed. "At this point in time, none of it seems worth it."

  "I understand. I’ve lost people over the years as well."

  "How did you deal with it?" Only in asking it, did I come to realize how much I wanted an answer to it.

  Eva held my gaze as she replied, "I made sure their death’s were not in vain, and that their sacrifice meant something."

  "Meant something?" I shook my head. "What happened to my friend last night seems pretty fucking meaningless to me right now."

  We lapsed into silence for a few moments, as if neither of us knew what to say next on the matter. There was really nothing to say anyway. Kasey was dead, and she wasn’t coming back. That’s all there was to it.

  "Come with me a moment," Eva said eventually as she stood up.

  "Where?" I asked, not really in the mood for going anywhere.

  "I’d like to show you something, that’s all. It will only take a moment."

  She led me upstairs to a large attic room, one half of which was filled with hundreds of books. Next to a big oak desk, there was a huge shelving unit entirely filled with manilla folders.

  "Is this your library or something?" I asked her as I gazed at all the books, most of which were organized neatly on shelves, the rest stacked on the wood floor.

  "Mostly, yes." She beckoned for me to come over to where she was standing near the shelves. "You see all these?"

  I nodded. "What are they?"

  "Case reports." She randomly selected one of the folders, took it out and handed it to me. Inside the folder there appeared to be a typed report of a case that she had worked on in December of ’94. I only briefly scanned the report, but it detailed an account of how Eva had tracked down a demon that was invading the homes of families and getting them to turn against each other…with murderous results. "That demon was responsible for the deaths of seventy-two people, and would’ve claimed more lives had I not stopped it."