Mentally reaching into the front seat from where I was sitting was a piece of cake.
As usual, there was that moment of discomfort and then the whiteout in front of my eyes receded and I could see again.
The driver, of course, could not.
He rubbed frantically at his eyes for a moment and when that didn’t restore his sight, he panicked.
“I can’t see! I can’t fucking see!”
Pretty much what I expected.
Jersey’s sudden outburst stunned the others into immobility as they tried to figure out just what was happening to him. In the backseat, I secretly watched it all, nearly laughing aloud at the expression on Rivera’s face as he tried to puzzle out Jersey’s antics.
In his panic, Jersey inadvertently turned the wheel a few degrees to the left. That put us squarely into the other lane of traffic. For a few seconds I was treated to the sight of oncoming headlights flaring in my eyes and then Rivera overcame his paralysis, reached over, and yanked the wheel to the right, shouting in Spanish as he did.
Horns were blaring, Rivera was cursing, and, beside me, Grady added his own voice to the din.
“What the fuck are you doing, Perkins?”
Perkins? The poor bastard.
Unable to see and therefore unaware that Rivera had just saved all of our lives by putting us back in the right lane, Perkins jerked the wheel back in the other direction. The car careened into the other lane again, narrowly missing a family of four in a Honda Civic. I watched their faces flash past through the side window, their mouths open in a silent “Oh” of surprise. Maybe this hadn’t been such a bright idea after all.
“What did you do?”
I shifted my gaze at the sound of her voice and found Demon Lady staring at me. Watching her expression change as she realized that I was watching her in return—and not just blindly looking in her direction—was even more amusing than all the chaos going on around me, and I couldn’t hold back a little chuckle of my own.
Another long horn blast, a thundering crunch as we clipped the car next to us, and then Rivera was shouting for someone to “Get Perkins’s fucking hands off the wheel!” and the woman had no choice but to respond.
As the two men in front continued to jerk the wheel back and forth in a furious tug of war, Demon Lady leaned forward over the front seat, grabbed Perkins by each wrist, and yanked his hands upward until he sat there looking like someone holding their hands up in the middle of a robbery.
With Demon Lady and Rivera, the two most powerful individuals in the car, otherwise occupied, I made my move.
Demon Lady’s comment to me must have just registered in Grady’s mind for he was turning toward me with a look of surprised concern on his face as I brought my arm up across my chest and then violently reversed it, driving the point of my elbow right into his solar plexus in a bid for payback that had me grinning like a lunatic.
My strike hit home like a sledgehammer, driving the air out of his lungs, and leaving him gasping like a fish out of water.
As he struggled to take in a breath, I leaned in close to be sure that he would hear me over all the shouting.
“Fuck you, Princess,” I said.
Then I reached for the door handle.
I’m not really sure what I thought I was going to do at that point, to be honest. In his panic Perkins had mashed the pedal to the floor and the car was barreling along like a bat out of hell. It had stopped swerving violently back and forth now that Rivera had sole control over the wheel, but diving out at that speed definitely wouldn’t have been good for my overall health, not to mention my tender flesh.
Maybe I had some vague idea of pushing Grady out the open door and following him out afterward, hoping he might cushion my fall, but as it turned out I never got the chance to make good on my move. Rivera must have finally understood that I was the source of all the commotion, for as my hand found the door handle he let go of the steering wheel, reached over the seat, and grabbed my shoulder. His fingers found the nerve cluster just beneath my collar bone and dug in, hard.
The pain was so excruciatingly intense that it was more than my weary body could handle.
Out I went.
* * *
A splash of cold water dashed across my face brought me back to the world sometime later. Still foggy, I lifted my hands, intending to wipe the water from my face, only to hear the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked just behind my head. I froze, hands in the air, as my memory came flooding back to me.
Whisper’s warning.
Rivera and his crew.
The fall from the walkway and the subsequent car ride.
Trouble with a capital T.
“Put the gun away, Angel. We’re all friends here. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hunt?”
The voice was suave, cultured, with only the barest trace of an accent that the speaker had no doubt worked hard to lose. I would have bet that a sighted individual never would have heard it at all. I did, though, and filed the information away just in case it ever became relevant.
This man was not a native.
“Come, come, Hunt. I asked you a question.”
Cultured and impatient, it seemed.
At this point I didn’t have too much to lose, so I ran with the first thing that popped into my head. “If you make a regular habit of kidnapping your friends, then I guess that’s what we are. And my name’s not Hunt.”
Silence fell.
Did I mention yet that my mouth has a tendency to get me into trouble? I mentally reminded myself that I wouldn’t feel a thing if Rivera pulled that trigger, but then the silence was broken by a man’s hearty laughter and I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, hopeful that I might live to see what the next five minutes would bring after all.
“Word on the street is that you have a bit of an acerbic tongue, but I see already that they aren’t doing you justice. I think I’m going to like you, Mr. Hunt.”
Acerbic? Who was this guy?
“I’m telling you, I’m not Hunt. I don’t know who that is. My name is Steve Chambers.”
That was the name on the fake driver’s license I’d commissioned back in New Jersey, before Dmitri, Denise, and I made our fateful trip to New Orleans.
“Steve Chambers? I don’t think so.” There was definitely a trace of amusement in his tone as he said, “Jeremiah Hunt. Former professor of languages at Harvard University. Previously married to Anne Cummings, now divorced. One child, Elizabeth, now deceased. Any of this ringing a bell?”
I shook my head. “You got the wrong guy.”
My host went on as if he hadn’t heard me.
“Arrested by the Boston PD on murder charges. Subsequently escaped custody and murdered a police detective by the name of Stanton. Fled Boston for New Orleans, where you were involved in another shoot-out, this time with the FBI. You are currently also wanted for stabbing a woman in the chest with a knife stolen from the Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Am I missing anything, Mr. Hunt?”
I hadn’t killed Stanton, the FBI had been shooting at me, not the other way around, and I’d stabbed Denise in the heart in order to save her life, but, aside from those few minor quibbles, he had it all dead to rights. What I didn’t understand was how he knew so much.
Still, I wasn’t going to cop to being Hunt. Not yet at least.
I leaned forward in my chair and put as much earnestness into my voice as I could.
“Look, I told you, I’m not Hunt. Check my driver’s license, you’ll see. Your guys made a mistake. Happens to the best of us. I get it, fine. No harm, no foul. Since I’m blind there’s no way for me to identify you, so how about you just let me go and we can forget this ever happened, all right?”
Another moment of silence in which I could feel my host studying me, but I didn’t have a clue what he was thinking. I got my answer a moment later when the sound of a dial tone filled the room.
Speaker phone, I thought.
A number was dialed a
nd the line was picked up on the other end after just the first ring.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation,” said a spry, female voice.
Uh oh.
“I’d like to speak to Agent Doherty,” my host said.
“Just a moment, please.”
The receptionist put the call on hold, filling the line with classical music.
I knew Doherty; knew him far too well. He’d been the one to push for my arrest back in Boston, believing I was the killer the press had dubbed the Reaper, guilty of murders in multiple states going back a decade and more. When I’d escaped in the wake of Detective Stanton’s death, Doherty tracked me to New Orleans, where our next confrontation ended with him shooting me in the back. I’d escaped only by falling into the nearest canal and finding a drainage pipe to hide in. Even then it had been a close thing, for the blood loss and resulting infection had nearly done the job that the bullet hadn’t. If Dmitri hadn’t found me when he had, if Denise hadn’t been willing to risk her life, her very soul, to save me, I wouldn’t be here today.
Doherty was as tenacious as a bloodhound. If he learned I was in L.A., my life would become infinitely more difficult. It seemed it was time to give up the ghost, no pun intended.
I sighed and said, “Fine. I’m Hunt. What do you want?”
The hold music continued for a moment, no doubt to prove just who was in charge around here, and then it was cut off with a click as the call was ended.
“Good of you to come to your senses, Mr. Hunt. I would hate to have to involve the authorities in our business.”
Our business? I was liking all this less by the minute.
“You mind telling me who you are and what this is all about?”
He chuckled. “Not at all. My name is Carlos Fuentes.”
He paused, as if expecting me to recognize him, but I still didn’t have a clue as to who he was. The name was drawing a big fat goose egg for me.
“I am the Magister of Los Angeles.”
Ah. Now things were starting to make a little more sense.
If Fuentes was telling the truth, then that meant that I’d come to the attention of just the kind of people I’d been trying to avoid.
Denise taught me that the supernatural community in any given area is ruled by a kind of supernatural lord, or regent, if you will, known as a magister. The magister not only sets the laws within their territory but enforces them as well. Magisters do not have to be human, as I understood things, but those that were human were, more often than not, also highly skilled practitioners of the Art. That was one of the ways that they were able to keep the peace within the bounds of their territories. Imagine Gandalf with all his mystical power as a Mafia don with an army of foot soldiers to do his bidding and you’d have a pretty close approximation of what a human magister is capable of.
Some, like the magister who rules the Boston metropolitan area from his home north of the city in Marblehead, are relatively benign. Denise introduced me to him during my search for Elizabeth, and, while he is incredibly powerful, and quite possibly inhuman to boot, I still felt comfortable in his presence.
Not so with Fuentes. For all his civilized culture and veneer, he definitely gave me the creeps.
Unfortunately for me, when I get nervous, I tend to mouth off.
“Well, bully for you,” I said to him then. “Must be nice to be at the top, but what’s that got to do with me?”
Fuentes ignored me, which was probably for the best but wasn’t a good sign of what was to come. He continued on as if he hadn’t heard me.
“For weeks now all anyone can talk about is the blind street exorcist who fought Death to a standstill in what’s left of the Big Easy. Who used his trusty little harmonica to send the Grim Reaper’s ghostly army back across the Veil to the Other Side like the Pied Piper himself. Everywhere I go the name on everyone’s lips is that of Jeremiah Hunt.
“Why is that? I wondered. After all, this is my city, is it not? Shouldn’t the only name on everyone’s lips be that of Carlos Fuentes?”
His comments were growing decidedly more ominous, so I thought it best that I keep my mouth shut and wait for him to finish.
That didn’t mean I had to just sit there and be idle, however.
I was at a distinct disadvantage in not knowing where I was, who I was talking to, or even how many other people might be in the room with us, so I decided to rectify that situation. The easiest way for me to do so was to borrow the eyes of a willing ghost so that I could see my surroundings, including whoever else might be in the room with us, but when I cast about with my senses I didn’t discover any ghosts conveniently lingering about.
Disappointing, but not surprising given that the crew he’d sent to pick me up had included a very talented human sorcerer, never mind a demon half-breed. I had no doubt that Fuentes could rid himself of any haunts that might be lingering about if he so desired and he apparently had.
Calling my two favorite ghosts, Whisper and Scream, to help me out was another option, but I shot that one down almost before the thought had fully formed in my head. I needed to speak in order to summon Whisper and I doubted my host would take kindly to my interrupting him so rudely. On top of that, something told me I didn’t want Whisper, ghost or not, anywhere near a man like Fuentes.
With my two preferred methods now out of the running, I could either steal the sight from one of the two men I was certain were in the room with me—Fuentes and Rivera—or I could go for what was behind door number three and use my ghostsight.
Not being the suicidal sort, I opted for the latter.
Most people don’t realize it, but the world we live in is made up of two distinct layers, or realms, if you will. First there’s the physical realm, that layer of reality that we experience every minute of every day, where everything we see and feel and touch takes place. Superimposed on that, like a double-exposed photograph, is the spiritual realm, which has just as much impact on our lives as the physical one, though most people don’t realize it.
Normal human beings, Mundanes as we call them, exist primarily in the physical realm. Supernatural creatures on the other hand, like the Sorrows I’d fought in New Orleans or the ghosts that I interacted with daily, exist primarily in the spiritual realm. The Gifted—those humans who have abilities above and beyond the average person, like Dmitri’s shape-shifting or Denise’s facility with the Art—can often walk through both worlds at the same time.
When I use my ghostsight, I can still see the real world and everything in it, but it is reduced to a faint gray haze that hangs in the background. Ghosts, demons, and other supernatural creatures that haunt the spiritual realm show up as clear as day, however, and the glimmering luminescent sheen that surrounds them makes them almost impossible to miss.
For all its benefits, I don’t utilize my ghostsight all that often. Or at least I try not to, for it has a distinct disadvantage, namely that using it was the equivalent of shouting “Dinner’s out—come and get it!” into a room full of starving people. Ghosts and other assorted Preternaturals in the immediate vicinity would become aware of my presence. More than a few of the creatures out there saw any unprotected human wandering the spiritual realm as the equivalent of a midnight snack. I’d learned to take quick little looks beyond the Veil and be content with that.
As Fuentes kept talking, I tripped that mental switch and looked out at the world through eyes that were no longer entirely blind.
The first thing I saw was Fuentes himself. He was standing in front of me, watching me as he talked, and from the subtle change in the expression on his face I was almost certain he knew that I was watching.
The fact that I could see him as clearly as I could told me a lot in and of itself. He wasn’t as visible as a ghost or some other supernatural entity might be, but he glowed with power just the same and confirmed my suspicions that he was a practitioner of no little skill. Just as I would suspect a magister to be.
My best guess put him in his midfifties.
He had a hard, weather-beaten face that reminded me of Al Pacino, or maybe Ian McShane, and a full head of wavy hair that was swept over his skull and worn long in back. A well-trimmed beard completed the look. Fuentes was dressed casually in a loose-fitting sports coat tossed over a jersey and jeans, and he wore an ankh on a chain about his neck.
I’d expected the room around us to appear faint and insubstantial, as much of the physical world appears when viewed through the prism of my special sight, but the walls were far more “present” than I anticipated. That told me that we weren’t chatting in an ordinary room, and when I looked over Fuentes’s shoulder and focused my attention on the wall behind him, I could see the sigils and markings glowing faintly deep within.
Denise taught me about protection wards too, and now I understood why there weren’t any ghosts nearby: the room had been effectively walled off from everything but the most powerful sorcerers and demons.
Perhaps even those as well.
As Fuentes continued, I dropped my sight, not wanting to chance attracting anything unsavory even with the wards in place. I had enough unsavory things with me already.
“Then come the reports that the man of the hour himself has been seen right here in the city of Los Angeles,” Fuentes said. “Walking L.A.’s fair streets, breathing her storied air. A thousand cities in America and you, Mr. Hunt, chose mine.”
I was tempted to tell him that it was a decision that I was beginning to deeply regret, but I bit my tongue to keep quiet.
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” he told me. “Your presence here is more than simple serendipity, and I’d be a fool not to recognize it as such. And let me tell you, I am not a fool.”
Of course not. And if I had a nickel for every time a fool … Oh, never mind.
“Let me guess,” I said to him, taking a wild stab in the dark. “You’ve got a ghost that you want me to handle.”
Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) Page 3