The footsteps, no longer mere echoes, followed him. Or paced him. Alongside? Ahead? He saw nothing, not even the things that never hid from his eyes. No sign of movement except trees in the wind, litter on the streets, normal living people in the parking lot or at the pizza place. Nothing else. No one. Nada.
He didn’t like it.
Jack couldn’t shake the sensation of eyes. In the leaves, the bricks, the clouds, the street. Watching. Spying. The ghost had been right: he’d changed. How? Did the whole world feel this different because he’d found hope?
The footsteps were human enough, not that clattering beast from Lisa’s apartment. Solid, so not a ghost—at least, no phantom he’d ever seen. Vampires were generally stealthier. Werewolves shouldn’t be out yet; the moon wasn’t quite full, and they certainly didn’t walk like normal men. That still left endless possibilities. Jack didn’t like any of them.
Most likely, it was an echo, his imagination, the weird acoustics of a city too warm for October. A low pressure system moving in, planning to drop rain. The strange configuration of satellites in the sky, the position of Venus, something in retrograde. The last vestiges of Jack’s sanity.
None of those choices appealed to him, either.
5.
After hours of fruitless searching, Nick Hunter gave up. He returned to the apartment building where he first saw the creature.
The hand was gone, but bloodstains remained.
He didn’t quite know what to do. Expand his hunt? Forget it and move on? Wait for someone or something to return with answers?
Ultimately, by default, he decided to wait. Easier than continuing the vain pursuit. Less final than surrendering.
Nothing moved in the shadows, watching or stalking. As the night progressed, the wind strengthened, making finding a scent more difficult. If it rained—there were enough clouds up there—he’d lose all traces of its putrid scent. He had no such traces to lose.
Nothing skulked around the lake. He scanned the entire length of the path. Watched the park. Studied the veranda. Even the water’s surface, just in case.
Eventually, Nick noticed movement. It wasn’t anything to worry about, specifically, as many things moved through the night. But the things he saw—an owl, a cat, even the wind—all moved in a single direction. Toward downtown.
Once he noticed it, he couldn’t avoid it. Shadows, a stray dog, a homeless man in camouflage, a pretty teenage girl . . . all flowed in a singular direction.
Nick tried to accept it as coincidence. Couldn’t.
6.
Jack reached his car without incident. The footsteps stopped when he unlocked the Mustang. He opened the door, reached under the seat. He didn’t plan to search his database here, in the open. Too many eyes; too many that he couldn’t see. He didn’t trust it. The dark had turned. Every breath came uncomfortably. Goosebumps ran up his spine and down his arms.
He locked the Mustang. Scrutinized everything around him: every tree, every lamppost, every scrap of paper in the street. Listened to each sound until he knew its exact origin. Night had never before held secrets from Jack Harlow.
To others, invisible threats filled the night, unseen monsters and unimagined dreads. Jack knew these things; they were plainly visible to him. Tonight, they hid.
He hurried back toward the apartment.
He avoided the ghost in the club by taking a different street. Echoing footsteps followed again, two pairs now. Right and left. Forward and above.
Around the corner from a shoe store, a cat sat on a newspaper vending machine. It was perfect black. Its wide green eyes followed Jack as he approached and passed. It flicked its tail once, then jumped down to the sidewalk after Jack passed.
With the footsteps, he heard whispering—nothing definitive, nothing he could quite grasp. A single voice. Slow, drawn out words. Something between awe, fear, and hatred. Dangerous.
He listened carefully. The footsteps had ceased, but not the whispers.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1.
Without a sound, Jack Harlow turned. He scanned all he saw, but noticed nothing. The whispering quieted. He said, “Come on out.”
No response.
“I can see you. And hear you,” Jack said. “You can’t play your games with me.”
Whispers—whispers that may have been just the wind. Faces in the windows—or simply shadows, reconfigured by his imaginings. Footsteps. Laughing. Down the street, a couple, arm in arm, stumbled in his direction. Regular people, drunk and happy, passing the cat which continued to stare.
Jack walked on.
Bats overhead. He was near the eastern shore of Lake Eola. Eyes became more visible now that there were fewer people, little rat eyes in the alleys, the eyes of roaches and palmetto bugs.
Laughter again—the couple had crossed the street and stepped into a parking garage. Their sound died suddenly. Unnaturally.
He stopped at a red light. Cars streaked by. Drivers slowed to look at him—or to turn, or find a parking spot on the side of the road.
When the cars cleared, he crossed the street. A path led straight toward the lake; he followed it. A lonely howl sounded in the distance, the call of a wolf—even in the city.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, brushstrokes against Jack’s ears. A chill rose around him. He recognized the voice: the blind ghost from the hotel. But ghosts were usually restricted to a particular place.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked.
“The voices,” she said. “The feet. I hear many things. Many.”
He looked around, but the whispering had died down. The footsteps had ceased. “Weren’t you going into the light?”
“Can’t see light,” she said. “You said I could go to the warmth. You’re warm.” She paused. “What else can I do?”
He didn’t see her—or anyone else. This section of the lake appeared empty. He didn’t stop walking. “I didn’t mean for you to follow me. Isn’t there a next step for you, something beyond being stuck here?”
“I don’t feel stuck,” she said. “Not anymore.”
“Have you been with me all this time?”
It was another voice that answered. “Not all this time, no.” The knifeman, holding a gun now, stepped out of the shadows. Not as tall as Jack, close cut blond hair, eyes masked by shadow, he looked older than he was.
The ghost said nothing. If the chill was any indication, she swung behind Jack even as he turned to face the hunter.
“I didn’t think you’d seen me,” the hunter said. He held the pistol loosely, aimed toward, but not at, Jack. “I followed the wind.”
“The wind?”
“Strange, huh? That’s what I thought.”
They were bathed by moonbeams; no streetlights near them seemed to be lit. Jack had seen hunters before. Usually, they never noticed him.
A vampire hunter, Jack decided. Most had little imagination, no inkling of what else existed. Silence fell between them. Neither seemed to know what to say or do. Their situation was unique; Jack was no vampire, nothing to be hunted, neither threat nor ally. There should’ve been more space between them.
“Not just the wind,” the hunter said.
Jack felt it, too, how the wind came at him from all directions. It wasn’t strong. Surely just an illusion.
“Cats, rats, birds,” the hunter said.
The chill behind Jack—the ghost—tensed. Pressed tight against him, like feathers, imperceptible except to someone like Jack.
“Even them,” Nick said, nodding toward a homeless man a hundred yards up the path. He stood there, head tilted, between lampposts. Flexing the fingers of one hand open then shut, open then shut.
Jack Harlow had seen hunters in action twice. The first time, in the backroom of a club near Atlanta, a vampire attacked his prey, sunk his teeth into the man’s neck—not the sexual game the victim seemed to expect. This vampire was messy, spilling as much blood as he drank. The hunter came from the other end of the hall, stake in o
ne hand, sword in the other. He buried the stake into the vampire’s back before he knew the hunter existed. Shoved it in deep. Blood spurt out. The victim dropped to floor, exhausted and hurt but not dead. The hunter took the vampire’s head with one clean slice. Then the victim’s. Jack had retreated deeper into the shadows, unseen as the hunter dragged the bodies, one at a time, through the back door and into the alley, and then set fire to both. The vampire flashed. He burned so quickly, it seemed like he’d been made of paper with pre-burnt insides, and even the ash dissipated in the air. The victim—whom the hunter expected would become a vampire—burned more slowly, less cleanly and completely. Still, the hunter was satisfied.
The second time, it was a team of two women, one acting as bait. She strolled along the dark pier, fully aware of the eyes upon her. Three vampires descended on her. These were the misshapen, pale-faced, hairless creatures a la Nosferatu. Mindless, too. While she defended herself (and well) with a long, wooden spike, her partner shot the creatures with a crossbow. The bolts lodged deep into their backs. The “bait” slit their throats with a machete.
It was never pretty, the business of hunting. Jack stared at the hunter who had found him and wondered if he suspected Jack was a vampire. No, the stake would’ve already found its mark.
“Don’t trust him,” the ghost’s voice said in Jack’s ear. “He’s warm, too, but he’s cold. So very cold.”
“So,” the hunter finally said. “What was that thing?”
Jack hesitated. He didn’t know how to answer. He went with the truth. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I have,” the hunter said. “But not exactly like it. This was different.”
“Very.”
The vagrant in the path had come closer. Jack had not seen him approach.
Three or four layers of clothes, despite the relative warmth. Holes in his shoes. Switchblade in the unmoving hand, unextended. A mad, vacant stare in his eyes.
“And what about that?” the hunter asked, nodding toward the vagrant. “Not what it appears?”
Slowly, Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
2.
Nick Hunter watched the homeless man carefully. The man walked slowly, leaning slightly to the left. His face was sandpaper, unshaven for days, but not an uncontrolled beard, his eyes wild and unfocused. The switchblade hung uneasily between gloved fingers. His clothes were tattered and layered, making him appear twice as large as he probably was.
He didn’t seem to notice Nick at all.
His eyes, focused on the man Nick had found, the destination of the wind—of everything—the man who seemed almost calm. Only almost, because something was askew.
These were not vampires, neither of them. The wind’s destination, in fact, appeared entirely human. The vagrant, however, was something else. The unwashed odor, the dirt and grime, the vacant looks—they hid something.
“What are you?” Nick asked. He didn’t take his eyes off the vagrant, but wasn’t speaking to him.
“Me? Just Jack. That’s all I am.”
“Just Jack, eh?”
The vagrant lunged forward, suddenly agile and fast, the blade springing out. He swung it upwards, like pitching a softball, and grabbed for Jack’s shoulder with the other hand.
Jack jumped back and to the side, putting the bum between him and Nick, the lake immediately behind him.
“You,” the bum said, pointing at Jack with the blade. “You!”
“Me, what?” Jack asked.
The bum shook his head—as if trying to shake a cat loose—and jabbed the knife in the air again. “You!”
Nick aimed his gun at the back of the bum’s head. “I think that’s enough,” he said. Jack, whoever and whatever he was, had answers he wanted.
The bum didn’t acknowledge Nick. “You,” he whispered.
“He’s accusing you,” Nick said. In a fraction of a moment, he could adjust his aim and put the bullet between Jack’s eyes.
“I’ve done nothing.”
The bum raised the knife to swing down. One step. Two.
Nick shot him. The bullet cleanly struck the back of the head. Out the other side and into the lake somewhere. The bum’s forward motion continued. He swung the knife down at Jack.
Jack fell sideways, the weight of the bum throwing him but the knife missing its mark. The bum laughed and raised the knife again.
Nick stepped forward and, from behind, pressed his own blade against the bum’s throat. Purplish blood welled up at the neck; more oozed from the gunshot wound. “I don’t know what you are,” Nick said, “but I’m willing to bet you need your head, so you’d better give me one damned good reason not to cut it off.”
Jack pulled himself off the ground as the bum rose slowly to his feet, letting Nick keep his long knife right where it was. Dropped the switchblade and held both hands, open, palms up, to the sides.
So close, however, Nick got a good whiff of the bum. Whiskey. Cigarettes. Mold. Rotten eggs. Shit. Death. The bum was dead . . . had been when Nick shot him.
“He can’t answer you,” Jack said. “I . . . I don’t think his type have much by way of intelligence.”
“Meat,” it said, spinning suddenly and grabbing for Nick’s head. Nick forced his knife through the thing’s throat and, with a good side kick to the dead man’s ribs, sent it and its head into the lake.
“I didn’t recognize it,” Jack said. “I mean, I don’t always. I knew it was something. But when it got close enough, when I smelled it . . .”
“Rank,” Nick said.
“But normally,” Jack said, “they ignore me.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. There was only one proper response to such a comment. “What?”
“You’re a hunter,” Jack said. “You hunt . . . vampires, I imagine.” Nick said nothing, but tightened the grip on both his weapons. “I can’t hunt. I tried. Thought I could do something, but I can’t. I can only watch.”
“You’re telling me this . . . why?” Nick asked.
“Because tonight, I hit one of them,” Jack said. “The thing at the apartment. And now this.” He glanced over the edge of the lake, and then picked up his laptop computer. “Zombie, I think. Well, a variation.”
He opened up his computer and turned it on. “Give me a moment, I’ll check. I know I’ve seen his type before.”
“You’ll check?” Curious, Nick stepped around to see the computer screen.
Jack called up a database, hit a few keys, scrolled down a few screens. Finally, he stopped, pointed at the screen, and said, “There. Last September. Three of them. Errant Zombies. They didn’t know they were dead, they thought they were . . . tramps, apparently. One had dried blood on the side of his head. They didn’t say much, didn’t do much, just sat in an alley. It was 60 degrees that night, cloudy, no rain. One caught a rat running too close, bit its head off and tossed the body aside. But most of the rats gave them plenty of room. Even the roaches ignored them.” He scrolled down the screen to keep reading, summarizing what he found. “A teenager turned down that alley. Drunk. Stupid. A bad ass, too, wanting to start trouble.” He paused a moment. “After bashing his head in, they scooped the brains from his head and feasted until they were done.” Done, he looked at Nick, his eyebrows furrowed. “Didn’t acknowledge me in the least.”
“You . . . watched this?” Nick asked. His stomach churned. “And recorded it?”
“That’s what I do, apparently,” Jack said. “You’re a hunter. I’m a watcher. It’s not by choice.”
Nick stepped back, disturbed, bewildered, unsure of what to make of this. He could kill Jack here, now. He’d heard of voyeurism, but . . . this was sick.
Jack shut the computer down. “That thing earlier, that I stopped at the apartment,” Jack said. “Did you kill it?”
“Didn’t find it again,” Nick said. “What was it?”
“I have no idea.”
3.
Jack stared a moment at the hunter. He’d said a lot, m
aybe more than he’d ever said at one time. A hunter was one of the few people who might listen to Jack and not suspect he’d escaped an asylum. Still, Jack didn’t know what would happen next. Wouldn’t take much effort for the hunter to put that knife through Jack’s throat and kick his headless body into the lake.
“I’m Jack Harlow,” he finally said, though he didn’t step forward or offer a hand.
“Nick Hunter,” the other said. “You have a file on hunters in there?”
“Some,” Jack said. “Not you.”
“You’ll add me after this, though, won’t you?”
Jack shrugged. “That’s what I do. Like the ghost said, it’s my role.”
“Ghost?”
“There’s more to the dark than vampires,” Jack said. He motioned toward the lake, where the errant zombie’s body floated like any other dead man on the water.
“You watch,” Nick said, wiping his blade clean on the grass. “You never get involved, is that right?”
“Basically,” Jack said.
“Then why tonight?” Nick asked. “I saw you bash that thing’s head pretty good before it ran off. Didn’t look much like watching to me.”
Jack didn’t have an answer. He knew perfectly well why he’d protected Lisa.
“I know,” the blind ghost whispered—for Jack’s ears only.
Nick sheathed his knife. He kept it inside his jacket, out of sight but easily within range. He’d already hidden his gun away. “I think I get it,” Nick said. “I mean, I understand. I’d have done the same thing. Maybe. What’s her name?”
“Lisa.”
“Pretty name,” Nick said. “Good luck.” He turned to go, stopped, and said, “Doesn’t explain you, though.”
“Doesn’t explain what?” Jack asked.
“Look around,” Nick said. “You tell me.”
In the trees, Jack saw eyes, yellow and green: owls, three of them, perched precariously on the farthest, thinnest limbs; a cat beneath one of the trees; another on the paved path. Shadows swam within themselves. A snake, wound around a branch of the tree, lifted its head to meet Jack’s gaze.
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