Dead of Night (Hunters of the Dark #4)

by Dave Ferraro

Chapter Sixteen

  One year ago…

  “Krystal, wake up. Krystal!”

  Krystal sat up in bed and stared at her mother, her wild eyes and disheveled appearance. She glanced over at the clock on her nightstand. “Mom? It’s midnight. What…?”

  “It’s Donald,” her mother gasped. “Honey, it’s…happening again. Donald’s missing.”

  Krystal’s eyes widened. “What do you mean he’s missing?”

  “Just like last year,” her mother said, shaking her head. “My poor sister. They went to check in on him and his window was open. He was just gone.”

  Krystal put a hand to her mouth in horror. “No.”

  Her mother nodded, and looked at her with a serious expression. “You have to help them, Honey.”

  Swallowing hard, Krystal shook her head slowly. “Mom, I tried…”

  “Krystal. They can’t lose their only other child.”

  Krystal met her gaze and found that she couldn’t refuse. She nodded. “Okay. I’ll try.”

  Twenty minutes later, Krystal was behind the Redfords’ home. Mr. and Mrs. Redford were panicked. The sheriff and three policemen were there also, with flashlights, and he was instructing them in how to perform an orderly, detailed search for the missing boy.

  “Krystal,” Mrs. Redford’s nails sunk into her arm as the sheriff barked out orders. “Please.”

  Krystal bit her lip and nodded, looking into the dark forest. It was pitch black out there. And with the swamps, she just couldn’t believe that Donald would survive for long. The crocodiles alone were bound to cross paths with him, and take away any evidence that he’d ever existed, like they’d probably done with Tommy. She closed her eyes and shook her head, forcing such morbid thoughts from her mind. She had to do this. She had to concentrate and find him. Recalling Donald’s innocent face on Christmas, asking when Tommy was coming home, motivated her. She would bring him home safely if she had to trudge through the swamps herself for three days straight.

  Rolling up her sleeves, she started toward the forest, hesitating when she saw a light deep in the trees. She squinted. “What’s that?” she asked.

  Mrs. Redford, who was at her side, gazed in the direction she indicated. “I don’t see nothin’. What do you see?”

  Krystal frowned. “A light. A ball of light.”

  Mr. Redford, beside her, sucked in a breath. “That’d be the will-o-wisps. People see ‘em from time to time. Special people, mind you. People like ya’ll.”

  “They lead people into the woods so they get lost,” Mrs. Redford agreed.

  “So they get…” Krystal let the darkness swallow her words as she watched the light move deeper into the forest. She set off after it, the Redfords at her heels. She couldn’t let it out of her sight. If this was what had lured Donald away from home, and maybe Tommy as well…she couldn’t let it do that again.

  “What do you think a soul looks like?”

  Krystal let out a breath. “Well, I can’t rightly say. I haven’t seen one myself.”

  “Gramma says it’s like a light that leaves you, like a ball of light.”

  The will-o-wisp certainly looked like a ball of light, Krystal realized as the light grew brighter. She drove herself harder, navigating treacherous tree roots, then shallow waters as the solid ground gave way to swampland.

  The light seemed stationary now, so they gained on it quickly. When she reached it, breathing heavily, sweat dripping down her forehead, it was like the light paused in the air for a moment. Then it winked out, as if realizing it had been caught.

  Krystal frowned at the spot where it had been a moment ago.

  “What are you stopping for?” Mrs. Redford asked.

  Krystal closed her eyes as she took deep breaths to slow her breathing. She felt her power slowly reach out from her, like an inky darkness tentatively exploring the land, probing it. And it very quickly registered something long dead. And large.

  Swallowing hard, Krystal stepped forward a few feet, out of the waters and back onto dry land, thick with weeds. “Donald? Donald, can you hear me?”

  “Hello?” a small voice returned.

  Mrs. Redford gasped and Krystal turned to see shock written over her face. She stared at Krystal. “You did it.”

  “Donald?” Mr. Redford called behind her. “That you, son?”

  “Daddy! It’s me!”

  Mr. Redford rushed over to a shallow pit, the muddy sides caving in as he approached. “I’m here, son!”

  “Thank you!” Mrs. Redford sobbed and threw herself at Krystal, embracing her tightly as her body was wracked with sobs. “Thank you for saving my boy.”

  Krystal patted her back awkwardly before pulling away to see Mr. Redford trudging through the slippery terrain, Donald in his arms, covered from head to toe in mud.

  “Donald, honey!” Mrs. Redford ran to them and hugged him tight. “Donald, what were you doing out here?”

  “I was following Tommy. I saw his soul, Mom. I saw it.”

  Mr. Redford looked at Krystal. “Did you see his soul too?”

  Krystal licked her lips. “No, but I think you’ll find Donald in that same spot.”

  Mr. Redford’s eyes widened, then he nodded, clasping her hand in his. “We’ll never forget this kindness. Never.”

  Krystal smiled back at him awkwardly, not realizing that the whole town would hear of it by the next morning, and word would spread like wildfire from there. And less than a year later, someone would come for her, just when she couldn’t bear these “gifts” anymore. Someone who promised to help her nurture her powers, control them. Someone who would take her away from a world where she was a “freak” and a “savior.” Where she could just be Krystal again.

  Now…

  “I don’t like being left behind,” Krystal said, pacing. She looked up at Jade, who was calmly reading. “All this waiting…I mean, what if they need our help?”

  Jade licked a finger and turned the page of her book, not even bothering to look up. “Don’t get so worked up. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “It’s my friend out there,” Krystal continued. “I should be there for him.”

  Hunter entered the room, frowning down at a page in an open book he was holding.

  “And why is everybody reading?” Krystal demanded.

  “What?” Hunter looked up, his eyes slowly focusing on Krystal. “Yes, I’m just finishing this text.”

  Rolling her eyes, Krystal crossed her arms. “I think we should go help.”

  “I would think that’s the worst thing we can do,” Hunter said. “We could blow their cover. It’s best to wait here. We can’t all go stomping around out there, causing a ruckus, now can we?”

  “Ruckus?” Krystal wrinkled her nose. “Who uses that word anymore?”

  “I rather like it,” Jade commented, looking up from her book. “It’s charming and…quaint.”

  “Thank you, Jade.”

  “No problem, Hunter. But if you don’t get your student out of this room soon, she’s going to drive me crazy.”

  Krystal glared at her.

  “Yes, Krystal,” Hunter frowned. “Why don’t you try raising those bodies out of the well?”

  She paused and cocked her head. “Really?”

  He smiled. “I don’t see what harm that could do. And you should be practicing to use your powers.”

  “I should,” she agreed, slipping out of the room before he could change his mind. Grabbing a lantern, she retraced her steps back to the room in the basement. She paused when she reached the wall with the hole torn through it, staring at the hole, imagining the terror the victims must have felt in that well, waiting to die.

  A figure suddenly appeared in the door and Krystal jumped, letting out a shriek.

  Rachel laughed. “Oh, my god. That was priceless.” She doubled over, laughing harder and trying to catch her breath at the same time as Krystal
swept by her with her head high. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t even know you were standing there!”

  Krystal ignored her, stomping up to the well and staring down into the darkness below, where she could feel the corpses calling out for her, out of sight.

  Rachel was still trying to stifle her laughter behind her, and Krystal would have liked nothing more than to wipe the smile from her face, so she set the lantern down and with determination, let her power flood the chamber, tendrils of necromancy thick and alive in the air as they swept over the floor and into the inky darkness of the well. She gently prodded the corpses with her power, then felt herself bring them to life, like marionettes on strings. Six bodies lifted from the bottom of the well at once on glistening bone, held together by the force of her will. She felt powerful as she called them to her, and they eagerly returned her call with the sound of bone on stone, scrambling up the walls quickly, like spiders, more efficiently than they should have been able to. She felt their need for her, and her life, in return, filling them, giving them purpose.

  She smiled as they spilled over the well and into the room, skinless faces grinning, standing at attention, waiting for her command. Clothes hung on them in tattered remains, aside from the one on the far left, the newest casualty, who wore a moldy red cotton blouse and a denim skirt. Their empty eye sockets stared into hers hungrily, and she returned their looks with a gracious smile.

  Sending a glance over her shoulder at Rachel, Krystal sent her a smug smile of satisfaction, a smile that dropped from her face when she saw how white Rachel had gone. The hunter’s eyes were wide with horror.

  Krystal swallowed hard and immediately released her hold on the skeletons, and they all dropped to the floor unceremoniously, most of them falling apart with nothing left to hold them together. But it hardly mattered, as she could easily reconstruct them.

  “I forgot what it was like,” Rachel said, her voice sounding far away. “In Greece, the army of dead…it was just like that.”

  Krystal didn’t like the way she was looking at her, and turned away, instead focusing on the bodies. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I got carried away.”

  Rachel didn’t reply, so Krystal stepped over the bodies, looking them over like a mother hen. When they’d been animated, she had felt like she’d known them, but now, they were just piles of bone. She knew when she filled them with her power again, she would recollect them, but it kind of unnerved her how much of herself she put into them, and how much the power she wielded changed them. She had no idea where her powers came from, or what the power was. Did it come from her soul? Did she tap into something? She only knew that she could send this darkness from her and that she could accomplish things with it. It was scary not knowing where a part of her came from, especially something that was so powerful, but she knew that she could manipulate it to do what she wanted. And she had no reason to be frightened of it. It opened up her eyes to new things, allowed her to see the beauty in death. Something that had a positive effect couldn’t be all bad, could it?

  She focused on the bones before her. Mandibles, clavicles, tibia, femurs…she could name them all, and she could see them moving clearly in her head. If she gave power to those bones again, she could make them move in exactly that way. Considering the bones for a moment, Krystal tilted her head. She wondered what their last natural movements had been. “Who do you think did this to them, and why?”

  “We may never know,” Rachel shrugged. “Another mystery.”

  Krystal nodded absently, then looked up sharply at the hunter, noting Rachel flinch. She was scared of her. Thought of Krystal as a monster.

  Why had she shown off like that? What had she been trying to prove? That she was powerful? That she was a monster? Krystal turned away from the corpses, suddenly disgusted by them, by what she was. And wondering if Rachel was right to be frightened of her.