Krewe of Hunters, Volume 1: Phantom Evil ; Heart of Evil ; Sacred Evil ; The Evil Inside

by Heather Graham

  There were times, even now, when he looked back and wondered. He’d been a boy when he’d been in Scotland, riding with his friends. Racing. All these years later, he could still remember falling from his horse—and lying on the ground in the middle of the woods, thinking that his friends had gone on, assuming he was way ahead of him. And then the man had come to find him, help him, bring him home and leave him on his doorstep. Then, later, he had wandered his mother’s ancestral home, and he had seen the man in a painting. A painting he had seen before, but hadn’t connected with the man who had saved his life. But it was him. Or someone who just looked like him. He had always clung to that explanation. Yet there was always that question at the back of his mind.

  He knew that he could do what Angela did; stop, clear his mind, concentrate. And the possibilities of what might be were out there.

  She laughed suddenly. “You’ve seen a ghost,” she told him.

  “You’ve seen ghosts,” he accused her.

  She was still smiling. “I don’t know what I’ve seen, really. I believe that there’s more to life than what we see. All right—I’ve been places when a parent senses that a child is in danger.”

  He stared at her, a bit annoyed; she seemed completely comfortable with her own beliefs, and confident in herself. She didn’t run around broadcasting her talents, she just accepted them.

  He smiled suddenly. “Some things, we’ll just figure out as we go. This is new to all of us—I think we’re an experiment Adam has wanted to orchestrate for a long time.”

  She grinned, and he thought that she moved just a step closer, maybe even beginning to like him. “Yes, and it’s actually really intriguing to be a part of it. It’s a good group. I like the others.”

  “Where are those kids?” he asked. “They should be back from the store by now.”

  “I’m assuming they’ll be back soon,” Angela said. She frowned, and he realized that she was still standing with her back to the railing, leaned slightly back. He visualized the body falling from her position, and knew that with a bit of impetus—a push or a shove—she would land on the courtyard, just as Regina Holloway had landed.

  Despite himself, he reached out and pulled her closer to him, and away from the balcony.

  “Sorry,” he said huskily.

  “I’m not going over,” she told him, looking up into his eyes. She wasn’t angry, and she didn’t move away from him. For a moment, chemistry—animal magnetism—coursed through him. Maybe her parents had known when they’d named her that she was destined to grow into such a golden and elegant young woman.

  He just wanted to stay close to her; to protect her, from herself, if need be.

  She didn’t seem to mind being close. She did seem a bit amused. “I’m actually quite competent at defending myself, you know?”

  “I’ve seen a lot of competent people go down—I’ve seen cops go down, I’ve seen the most brilliantly trained men I knew go down,” he said, an edge that he hadn’t intended in his tone.

  She touched his cheek with the pads of her fingers; it was a nice gesture, one a friend might make. “I know,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  He caught her hand, thinking that he might say more, thinking it was a surprisingly intimate moment. He’d known her a day now. Maybe the intensity of the situation made it seem they had known each other much longer.

  Maybe animal magnetism was just that—he would have been attracted to her no matter where or when or how they had met.

  He found himself caught in her gaze, wanting to know more about her. “Are you ever totally honest?” he asked her gently.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I know about your work with the police—before and after you became an officer. But what happened before then? What’s the real story on the plane crash?”

  She stared back at him. He thought that she would brush him off with a casual remark. But she hesitated. “You already think I’m crazy.”

  “I know that the mind—that the human brain—is a frontier. Many things may be possible. Or the illusions that we create in our mind may seem very real. I’m serious. Please. Tell me. What happened with the plane crash?”

  She took a deep breath and looked away from him. He knew that the memory was painful, but she had apparently decided to share it.

  “The weather was bad throughout the flight, but our flight attendant kept assuring us that it was like bumping over the waves in the ocean. I was only twelve then, but even I knew when it went straight to hell. The flight attendant went rushing by us, white as a sheet, crossing herself. The plane began to heave and twist, and when it went to the side, I knew that something was really, really wrong. I was sitting next to my mom, and she threw her arms around me, as if she could protect me. The passengers started screaming. I can still hear the sound in my mind sometimes…”

  “I’m sorry,” Jackson said quietly.

  “Some were pulling out their cell phones, trying to say goodbye to loved ones. Most were just screaming. Then it happened fast. The pilots struggled, I’m sure—but they were attempting to land against a terrible wind shear—I learned that later. The plane broke up as it hit the ground. Luggage flew, no matter how it had been stowed. A wing broke off. The plane spun around. The next thing I knew, I was sideways down on the tarmac, and fire was bursting all over in spurts along with the remnants of the plane. I managed to undo my seat belt and fall face-first to the ground. I shouted for my mother and father. I tried to crawl through the wreckage.”

  She stopped speaking. Jackson urged her on. “And what then?” He almost whispered the words.

  “Games in my head? In my heart?” She looked at him. “I saw them. My fellow passengers. They had turned into yellow light, and they rose from the ground, heading for a greater source of light, and I wanted to get up and follow them. I saw my mother, and I shouted for her, but she was ahead with my father. They had found one another, and my father was looking at my mother with a pained expression that still held hope and love. I cried out for them both to wait. They didn’t seem to hear me, but there was someone next to me. A man in some kind of white shift, so it seemed, and he hovered down by me. He smoothed back my hair and he said gently, ‘No, little one, they have to go, and you have to stay. It’s all right. If you look, you’ll see all the light and the splendor, and you can know in your heart that you’re always safe, for the light shines down upon you.’ He touched my face, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the sound of sirens blaring was all around me, and I was in excruciating pain. Luckily, I blacked out again. I spent weeks in the hospital. But Eamon was there for me, my brother. He hadn’t been on the plane with us because he’s three years older than me, and he was away at football camp.”

  “And so you made it,” Jackson said. “And you believe that…you saw your parents walk toward the light—heaven?—and that you were told by an entity of good that you had to stay behind?”

  She shrugged. “Yes, that’s more or less the gist of it. And, so now, you think I’m crazier still, but maybe I have a right to be crazy?”

  “You survived,” he said.

  “Yes, I survived. My broken bones mended, and my burned flesh peeled away, and thankfully, I don’t even bear a scar.”

  “I don’t quite believe that, but you went into law enforcement, and you’ve helped in many cases,” he said. “Any connection?”

  She smiled ruefully. “Not really. I fell in love, lost the man I loved to cancer, and knew that I had to use whatever I possessed to try to help others. I am not a particularly good soul or anything of the like—it was what was left for me to do that seemed important.”

  “Actually, I do think that you are a good soul,” he told her.

  He didn’t want to. He liked her. Very much.

  Despite the way he had met her. Pickax in hand.

  They were caught there, in that intimate moment, not just physically intimate, but somehow, as a meeting of something that might be of the souls, thoug
h that sounded somewhat ridiculous.

  “So what about you?” she asked quietly. “None of us got to see your file, if you’ll recall.”

  He was saved from having to answer her when they heard the doorbell ring, and shouts arise from the front, the sound carrying easily to them where they stood outside on the balcony.

  “Hey, please! Carrying a heavy load out here, you know!”

  That came from Whitney.

  The doorbell rang again, insistently.

  Jackson stepped back.

  “Ah, gee, honey,” he said lightly. “I guess the kids are home.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In the next few hours, bags of groceries were put away, and Whitney and Jake settled in.

  Angela spent the time in her room—Regina Holloway’s room—arranging her own clothing in drawers and closets, and pausing now and then to see if she could get a sense of the children again, and she wondered if finding them would really help the team in their quest to discover the truth. But she didn’t see or feel anything; the room was just a room at that moment, a beautiful one. She kept the balcony doors open because the city had yet to grow hot and humid; spring was still in the air, the humidity was not at the eighty or ninety percent it could be and the breeze that came in was just beautiful.

  She found herself wondering more about Jackson Crow. He had become human to her; she still couldn’t believe that she had told him about the plane crash—and the man who had spoken to her, telling her that it wasn’t time for her to go to the “light.”

  A tap at her open door interrupted her thoughts.

  Jackson leaned against the door frame, his stillness so familiar despite their short acquaintance. Adam wouldn’t have him heading up this unit if there wasn’t a core of belief in life after death. She knew he had to be shaken up about his last experience in the field; people had died. Friends had died.

  And despite the fact that two of the kids had only just arrived, making her the more senior team member, she could barely imagine what he had felt. She was certain that Adam had taken great care when putting their team together. They were people who were very different, but who had the talents and personalities that would complement one another.

  “Are you busy?” he asked her.

  She nodded at the open drawers. “Just finishing in here.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d sensed more bones in the wall. I wanted to be able to duck quickly,” he said.

  “No, the pickax is in the basement,” she told him, able to smile. He was actually joking. “You’re safe.”

  He nodded and walked in. “Do you have a hang-up about people sitting on the end of your bed?” he asked. “Nope.”

  He sat. “So, what was your take on the senator?”

  “Well, you heard him—I think he really wanted ghost hunters.”

  “But what did you feel about him? About his emotions?”

  “He’s really devastated by his wife’s death,” she said. “And he is the one who found her. What did you discover in regards to his companions?”

  “Every one of them is a possible suspect. The day she died, they were all in New Orleans. Senator Holloway was working. Blake Conroy was at his home gym, so he says, and Grable Haines was gambling.”

  “What about Martin DuPre?”

  “He was at the office with the senator, but I doubt they were in clear view of one another all the time. You can walk here from the Central Business District. I’d say it would take someone twenty to thirty minutes, walking briskly. A cab would take a few minutes, depending on traffic. Perhaps he has his own car. I didn’t want them all together when I got into specifics.”

  “Where do you want to go from here?” she asked.

  “Tonight? We’re heading toward dusk, you know. I thought we should lie low, help set up the cameras and get started taking video or film or whatever they work with, and see if we have any surprises showing up on the screens.”

  “And are you expecting anything?” she asked him.

  He shrugged. “I never say never.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost seven, it’s been a long day—I’m heading down for a beer. Oh, Jake Mallory is a sushi freak—and an expert sushi chef, so he claims. Do you eat sushi? He’s doing up some noodles and stir-fry, too.”

  “I’m pretty safe on almost anything,” she told him. “Well, I don’t want to try monkey brains, or anything, but otherwise…”

  He grinned, rising. “You coming down?” he asked her.

  It was twilight. Part of her wanted to just go with him; a beer did sound appealing at the moment. But this was near when Regina Holloway had died, and if there were things that might be seen in the room, this was the time. She should be open to allowing the past to talk to her now, whether that meant ghosts, or just something that she did with her mind.

  She remembered talking to Jake, though, and Jake telling her ardently that he knew people who saw ghosts.

  Jake and his friends were crazy. That was all she’d allow.

  “I’ll be down in just a few minutes,” she said.

  “I’ll keep your beer on ice,” he said, leaving.

  Sensations could indeed be strange. The room seemed empty when he left; drained of life. She tried to dismiss the thought, reminding herself that she had only known him one day. Last night, he’d put her on the defensive. But maybe that was what he had felt he needed to do as the head of the team. Today, she felt as if she had seen behind his facade. He was vulnerable, too. He knew that he hadn’t caused the deaths that had befallen his last team. Yet, he still blamed himself.

  And, it was possible that he still believed that he’d been assigned to some kind of slightly crazy unit, a babysitting unit—a unit not actually meant for the hundreds of serial killers active in the country at any given time.

  Regina Holloway was dead. There was no saving her now.

  Angela lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. She tried to imagine the children as she had seen them before, on the floor, playing jacks. It was horrible to think how the children had died, and she wondered how Newton had managed such horrendous murders without being heard. She was pretty sure many of his torture-killings had taken place in the basement, but she thought that the children might have been killed in this room. She thought about Percy, trying to be an older brother, trying to reassure his little sister.

  It hurt to imagine the fear that must have seized them both when the man who was supposedly trying to help their father had come after them with an ax.

  She found herself praying, so many years later, that somehow, they had died quickly, and that the pain hadn’t gone on too long. And still…had Percy watched Madden C. Newton chop up his sister? Or had the older brother been the first to die?

  Darkness was settling over the room. She hadn’t opened her eyes, but she could feel it, just as she could feel the breeze that wafted in, and the way that it lifted the curtains by the French doors.

  She opened her eyes slowly.

  The little boy was there. He was watching her sorrowfully.

  She didn’t move; she was afraid to blink. His face was old for his years, and his eyes seemed to carry the wisdom of the ages.

  “Be careful, please, be careful,” he told her.

  Was she dreaming?

  “Percy?” she asked softly.

  But as if the breeze could dissipate illusion, he was suddenly gone.

  She waited. She felt frozen. She realized that she was afraid, and yet she wasn’t afraid of the little boy who had to be Percy.

  She was terrified, she realized, because it hadn’t been a dream. It had been real; she had thought about him, and he had appeared.

  The mind; a scientist would say that she could do such things only through imagination.

  Anticipation and dread rushed through her body and she closed her eyes. Fear followed hope. She opened her eyes, but there was no one, nothing there.

  She sat up, and felt the darkness
in the room, alleviated by lamps that had come on in the courtyard, and from the light in the hallway. The room was drenched in shadow. The closet door was slightly ajar, as was that to the bathroom. For a moment, she had a child’s ridiculous fear that a monster would suddenly rush out of the closet and attack her.

  She waited, determined she would not be frightened out of the room. She did believe that something evil—ill will? Something more tangible?—resided in the house. But, whatever evil might lurk in the minds of men had nothing to do with the appearance of the child. She wanted to see the little boy again, the little boy she was certain had to be Percy.

  But laughter drifted up to her from the kitchen, and she heard the sound of a guitar being strummed.

  Jake, the musician, and computer and sound expert.

  It was time for that beer Jackson had promised to keep cold for her.

  * * *

  Jackson read the newspaper article on the discovery in the house, surprised to find himself comfortable on a stool near the counter pass-over to the courtyard. Jake was strumming his guitar while calling out orders to Whitney to do his prep work—insisting it would come out to be a feast.

  He was adept on the guitar. The instrument he had brought with him was acoustic, and he kept his tunes low and mellow—but ridiculously bawdy at times—causing Whitney to stop in the midst of her tasks that he had assigned to her and giggle. He had to admit, Jake made him laugh now and then, and it seemed like a good thing that, so far, they all seemed so easy and ready to get along with one another. But then, Whitney staged a revolt, laughing and telling Jake that she’d set the table, fixed his flipping rice balls, and it was time for him to get back in the act.

  Jake sighed, set down his guitar and started to work, thanking Whitney for all her excellent preparation. Jackson looked at the newspaper again.

  The article contained little more than the facts, but with, of course, the questions about the house being haunted being raised again, and the tragedy of Regina Holloway’s death coming to the fore once again. He liked the spin in the article, though—the reporter had quoted Andy Devereaux’s police spokesman as saying, “The investigation team that discovered the bones will be continuing to study the history of the house, and seek out any more such surprises, before Senator Holloway puts the house back up on the market. With its infamous past, it doesn’t seem at all impossible that there may be more skeletons—literally—hanging in a few of the closets.”