The Overseer

by Conlan Brown

  Most STRANG COMMUNICATIONS BOOK GROUP products are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. For details, write Strang Communications Book Group, 600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, Florida 32746, or telephone (407) 333-0600.

  THE OVERSEER by Conlan Brown

  Published by Realms

  A Strang Company

  600 Rinehart Road

  Lake Mary, Florida 32746

  www.strangbookgroup.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  Cover design by Justin Evans

  Design Director: Bill Johnson

  Copyright © 2010 by Conlan Brown

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  Brown, Conlan, 1984-

  The overseer / by Conlan Brown. -- 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-59979-955-1

  1. Supernatural--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.R689O94 2010

  813’.6--dc22

  2010002171

  First Edition

  10 11 12 13 14 — 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Mom and Dad:

  I am truly blessed

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  SCREAMS RANG OUT from the rain-soaked street.

  Feeling the horror rise, Hannah fell to her knees in the pounding deluge, hands touching the ragged edges of the craterlike pothole.

  The impact of the car splashing into the pothole.

  Thunder. Lightning. Rain.

  A trunk opening.

  Three teens. Terrified, screaming, kicking.

  Eyes begging for help.

  Hands slapping, punching bloodied mouths.

  Frightened girls torn from the car—thrown to the wet street.

  A needle—

  Bodies going limp.

  Thrown into another car.

  Tires shrieking into the stormy night.

  One man remaining in the street.

  The tattoo—a dragon.

  Thunder cracked as the images disappeared with the flash. Lifting her head, she looked around, the thick spring storm churning around her.

  The screams.

  Already gone from the world—but the street remembered— and Hannah could still hear them calling out from the past. She was their only hope now—the one person who realized that these girls had been conned and taken. The only person who could follow a trail snaking backward through the past— a trail that had gone cold to the negligent, rain-drenched world.

  Hannah Rice looked to her right and saw the liquor store. That was where he had gone—the man with the dragon tattoo. Just through those doors. Hannah breathed in with resolve and walked toward the lights of the liquor store—

  —toward the dragon.

  Hannah pushed the soaked hood of her sweatshirt off her head and looked around.

  She had never been in a liquor store before. The floor was white like a supermarket—but none of the same sweet, homey smells were here. No bread or fruit. Simply rows of metal racks, stocked with a forest of bottles. The sounds of clinking glass and cooler doors opening and closing filled her ears. An older man in a plaid shirt and a wiry blond beard approached the door, looking her up and down out of the corner of his eye.

  For being in a seedy part of New Jersey, the store was big and fairly clean. Hannah looked around, waiting for someone to realize that she was only twenty and have her sent from the premises in handcuffs and a swirl of red and blue lights. The only looks she received were lecherous at best. She pulled her jean jacket close, pressing the metal buttons into place with little pops that seemed to echo through the cavernous room.

  “Can I help you find something?” a jockish-looking guy in his midtwenties asked from behind the counter.

  She shook her head, embarrassed. “No, thank you.” She moved to the far end of the store, looking down the aisles as she walked.

  No one realized she was too young to be here, or else no one cared. She watched the aisles change as she moved along, shifting from colorful bottles of flavored rum with shirtless cabana boys adorning their labels to the dark glass of the wines.

  Hannah wasn’t unfamiliar with alcohol. Half the reason she’d left college was because of her roommate’s drunken binges in which she had brought so many of her friends over to party. It reminded Hannah of all the nights she had spent in the dorm lounge, studying subjects she didn’t understand, sleeping on couches she resented being on. It was the next day’s cleanup, inevitably left to Hannah, that had taught her to recognize various forms of alcohol bottles and the hazards of a hungover roommate.

  Her grandfather had left her enough money to get whatever degree she wanted, wherever she wanted it, but she had chosen a medium-sized state college to start out. The idea had been simple: get her core classes out of the way, and buy herself some time to figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up. After she gave up on college, she moved to New Jersey to be near the Firstborn and enrolled in an online program. Distance learning at her own pace better suited the lifestyle she had grown to accept: following dark trails through back alleys. The ongoing searches for—

  —the dragon.

  It was always jarring to see her visions in the flesh. She was a Prima—gifted with hindsight, the ability to see the past. And the past tended to have the good sense to stay in the past and fade away to the naked eye and the observing world. But there he stood in the middle of the aisle—fifteen feet away—comparing labels on vodka bottles. His arms bare, short black hair wet. A blue short-sleeved T-shirt and green cargo pants. The tattoo curled up his arm, its tail resting against the back of his hand, its scaly body coiling around the man’s arm like an anaconda, the dragon’s head poised to strike like a hooded cobra, a forked tongue lashing out from beneath a spray of flame.

  The man looked up from the bottles, turning his head— toward her…

  Hannah dropped back around the corner. A sting of panic nipped at her heart. She waited a moment—her pulse and breath slowing as she pulled herself together. She looked back.

  Gone.

  She moved down the aisle to where the man had been and passed, heading to the end of the aisle. She stopped and turned her head, looking for him.

  Nowhere.

  Hannah moved fast, looking down the aisles once again, coming to the end of the rows. She must have lost him somewhere in the—

  She saw him at the front of the store, at the cash register, the boy behind the counter stuffing a bottle of vodka into a perfectly sized brown paper sack. The man with the tattoo reached into his pocket, pulled out a thick roll of bills, and slid one from beneath the tight hold of the rubber band that encircled them. The boy hit a button on the cash register, and the man with the tattoo turned, walking toward the door.

>   “Hey, Dominik,” the boy called after him, “do you want your change?”

  Dominik simply waved a dismissive hand and pushed through the front door, back into the rain.

  Pushing the glass door open, Hannah followed, plunging into the downpour. Her eyes scanned the cars in front of her parked diagonally to the storefront. A set of lights flashed on toward the far right end of the row—a black luxury sedan—the engine humming, the wipers swishing away a wide swath of pooling water as the man in the driver’s seat lifted his eyes—

  Dominik.

  His dragon-clad shoulder moved, putting the car into drive. The vehicle slid backward out of its space, through the veil of rain, past the unnatural glow of the liquor store’s neon lights, and then slipped into darkness.

  Her one lead.

  The one trail.

  The only chance to find the girls.

  And he was getting away.

  For a split second Hannah did none of her own thinking. Her feet took off, rushing into the night, as the car pulled parallel to the street. The brake lights lit up. The backup lights dimmed. The car began to drive away.

  Her first thought was to chase after, screaming, shouting, demanding he stop. Her next thought was to memorize his license plate number. Hannah’s eyes squinted into the darkness, but the lights surrounding the license plate were all burnt out. Nothing to see but darkness.

  The red taillights, glowing like the eyes of the dragon on Dominik’s arm, glared at her through the onslaught of falling droplets. Turning the corner, leaving her in the street—alone.

  “Lord,” she stammered to herself. She could feel her panic rise at not knowing what to do. But now was not the time to focus on problems or obstacles. Now was not the time to feel or do. Now was the time to clear her mind. To be. To be what she had been called to—

  Hannah turned her attention to the end of the block, where she had parked her car. That was where she needed to get. To think past the problem and to move effortlessly with the solution.

  Wet and cold, she thrust her hand into her pocket, reaching for her car keys. Suddenly she was at the car door, her hand holding the key, the key in the door. The old door to the station wagon groaned as she pulled it open and climbed in. She turned the key, and the engine sputtered.

  “Not now,” she whimpered, pushing down on the pedal, feeding the engine gas. A moment of whirring, then—

  Click.

  The engine went dead. She’d flooded it. The old jalopy did it all the time, but this was the worst possible—

  Hannah stopped. Gathered herself. She had to get past the moment. She had to find her strength—a strength that could only come from God.

  She took a long, deliberate draw of air, letting it fill her lungs in a cool cloud that expanded inside her chest. Somewhere in the distant reaches of her mind she felt her body act, working with the world around her—neither rushed nor distracted—to bring the car to life.

  She turned the key again. The engine growling, she fed it gas.

  Hannah’s foot came down in a steady push, feeding the car, and she took off into the night—

  —chasing after him.

  Her car sped to the end of the block—a stop sign ahead.

  Her attention snapped to the right—the direction Dominik had gone.

  Nothing.

  Hannah rolled into the street, peering through the rain—and then she felt where he had been. She was on the trail again.

  The wipers sloshed, thumping beads of water away from the glass.

  Dominik yawned. It was getting late, and he was getting tired of work. He’d stayed sober as long as the new girls were at the storage house, but now that they were being moved, he was ready to drink again.

  He eyed the jostling bottle of vodka in the passenger seat, ready for the familiar burn of alcohol in his chest. Dominik missed Russian vodka—the stuff that had been cheaper than water during the cold war. He was hardly a connoisseur, but he knew that American vodka tasted different to him. He was told that good vodka had neither taste nor smell. But who cared? Just so long as it kept him warm—a lesson he had learned in prison twenty years ago.

  He thought about the girls and how much money they would bring. Altogether, maybe three thousand dollars in Ukraine. Here? More. But it wasn’t enough. Dominik wanted a line of cocaine—the stuff he’d gotten used to as a teenager when the iron curtain fell. But for now, vodka would have to do.

  Dominik reached out, steering with his forearm. He held the neck of the bottle in one hand and twisted the cap with the other.

  He took a slug. The same amount would have sent most Americans into a hacking fit. Dominik didn’t flinch as the stinging liquid seared his throat, filling him with a glowing sense of well-being. He felt good. Safe. But not overly safe. He looked in the rearview mirror, double-checking for cops.

  A single set of lights behind him, moving in quickly. Much too quickly. He screwed the cap back on the bottle, stuffing it in the armrest.

  Thoughts of a cop watching him throw back a mouthful of hard liquor as he passed by filled Dominik’s head. Was he being followed?

  There was an alley ahead. He signaled left. The car behind him signaled a left-hand turn as well. Dominik cranked the wheel hard right, and a spray of filthy water splashed up against the windows of his car as he hit the accelerator and raced down an alleyway. His eyes shot upward, toward the rearview mirror. The car behind him screeched past the turn, then slammed its brakes, laying rubber and a wake of erupting rainwater. The car pulled into reverse, pulling perpendicular to the alley for a moment, its silhouette fully revealed.

  A beige station wagon?

  The following car’s front end nosed toward the alley. The headlights, which had been shrinking with distance, stabilized in size, then began to grow.

  Dominik didn’t signal; he simply grabbed the wheel and yanked to the left. Water crashed against the passenger window as the car fishtailed, his foot pressing hard into the gas—jetting down a dark street.

  He nearly spun in his seat to look back. This was insane. His heart was racing. His face red and sweaty. Who was this person following him? In a station wagon? Not the police. Someone trying to steal their latest shipment? It simply didn’t make sense. But whoever they were, they weren’t trained in following people with subtlety. And in the rain, he’d lost them for sure.

  Dominik took another turn, just to be safe. Then another.

  He took a deep breath and relaxed, pulling onto a familiar street. Whoever they were, he’d lost them.

  His eyes lifted again, just out of paranoia, certain he wouldn’t see anything except…

  A beige station wagon?

  This had to be dealt with.

  Hannah watched Dominik’s car through the swishing of wiper blades as his sedan took a slow, ambling turn to the right, pulling into another alleyway. She followed him into the darkness of the alley. The front end of her car slammed down hard then rebounded from the chasm-like pothole her front tire had dropped into.

  She couldn’t see a thing in this darkness except the red taillights up ahead and—

  Brake lights.

  Dominik’s car stopped suddenly fifty yards ahead. The driver’s side door flew open, and a burly figure dashed away from the car—the door hanging open. Hannah stopped her car, leaving the distance unfilled.

  What was he doing? She sat in her car. Waiting.

  It was like the stories of road rage she heard, where one driver would get out to confront another—only to have someone get shot in the middle of the street.

  Hannah peered into the darkness, gripping her steering wheel. She closed her eyes, trying to reach out—

  There was nothing to feel. Not here anyway.

  She bit her lip, considered for a moment, then turned off her car, taking her keys. She wanted her keys—that was certain.

  Fear would have been the natural response, but envy filled her mind. Envy for the Domani and the Ora, people like Devin Bathurst and John Temple, who cou
ld see the present and the future. Others had told her not to envy the other orders and their gifts, that she had been given exactly what she was meant to have and that she had to make the best of it. But she missed the proactive way that John and Devin could use to approach the uncertainty of the world. The Prima were a stabilizing force—a means of keeping everyone grounded and remembering the truths that proactive working so often forgot. But none of that changed the fact that she was in the moment now, groping in the blind spots of her gift.

  Hannah opened the car door and stepped into the rain, looking around. He wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Hannah walked toward the car ahead, the interior lights illuminating the leather interior.

  She stopped, listening for any sound she could hear—only the thumping rain. Another set of steps closer. She stared into the vacant interior, looking for a person who simply wasn’t there, and her eyes wandered to the center partition, hanging slightly ajar. It had been where he’d stored his—

  Vodka.

  A thick, heavy bottle, pulled from its cubby.

  Gripped by the neck like a club.

  Dominik, slipping into the darkness, waiting for his moment to…

  Hannah spun as Dominik ejected himself from his hiding place in the dark, bottle in hand, raised over his head.

  She thought fast, throwing herself into the car’s open door. The bottle came down on the roof of the car and blasted apart in a shower of shards and cascading liquor. She threw herself at the passenger’s door, scrambling for the handle. She looked back.

  He was behind her, hurling his body through the same open door she had come through, grasping the steering wheel with his left hand for support, clutching the razor-sharp remains of a pungent vodka bottle in his right.

  The survival instinct kicked in; the self-defense classes triggered her response.

  She lashed out with her leg like a battering ram, her heel smashing into Dominik’s clavicle, just below the throat. He made a pinched hacking sound as his body hurled to the side, slamming into the dashboard. A hiking boot would have been ideal, but a kick of any kind could be fatal, even in her tennis shoes, if she meant it, held nothing back, and lashed out with the vicious intention to cause serious trauma.