by N. P. Martin
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Bad Grace
(Watcher Chronicles Book 1)
By
N.P. Martin
Copyright © 2015 by N.P. Martin
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 1
2004
Frank Swanson was sitting in the living room of his mountain cabin, in an armchair by a slowly dying fire, a fully loaded 9mm Beretta in one hand, a crumpled photograph in the other, when his cell phone rang in the kitchen next to the near empty bottle of Jack Daniels he’d been drinking from all night.
He hardly flinched when the phone rang, even though it was loud and intrusive in the quiet of the small cabin. His attention was fixed on the photograph he gripped tightly in one hand, or rather the woman who was in the photograph.
The phone kept ringing.
Frank ignored it. Pretended it wasn’t there at all. Kept staring at the dark haired woman with the hungry eyes in the photograph.
I’m so sorry, Rachel, he thought.
The phone continued to ring.
Frank gripped the gun in his hand, squeezed the grip. Dug the butt into his leg.
The phone stopped ringing.
With the same hand he held the photograph in, Frank grabbed the glass of whiskey on the arm of the chair he was sitting in. Downed what was left in the glass, which wasn’t much. He sat the glass back on the arm of the chair. Sat back in his seat. Rubbed at his temple with the gun still in his hand.
The woman in the photograph stared back at him. Long dark hair. Deep brown almond shaped eyes full of strength and confidence. He never got tired of looking into those eyes when Rachel was alive. It was the only time he felt like anyone really seen him for who he was. There was no hiding from those eyes.
They saw all and yet they still looked.
That’s what he loved the most about Rachel. When they looked at each other it was like looking in a mirror. Two souls exactly alike, both with the same purpose in life. A level of mutual understanding and acceptance that he would never find again.
Especially now that she was gone.
And it was all his fault.
The phone started ringing again. Louder. More insistent. Or at least that’s how it seemed to him.
Still, he ignored it.
The photograph was torn in half. That’s because Frank had ripped it in half. He used to be in the picture along with Rachel. It was taken in a mutual friend's house, at a small get together. Frank and Rachel both worked the same job, if you could call it that. It was high pressure work, to say the least, the reason they both loved it so much, one reason anyway. Occasionally they would get together with a few others, get drunk, smoke some weed, let off some steam. The photograph was taken when they were both drunk, arms around each other, as relaxed as they ever got. Rachel still had that look in her eyes though. The look of a Jaguar about to go on the hunt. Steady. Focused. Sexy as hell.
The phone kept ringing in the kitchen.
Frank gritted his teeth, looked to the side towards the kitchen. Thought about shooting the damn phone.
It stopped ringing.
He slumped back into his chair.
Rachel was still looking back at him. In his many nights of staring at that photograph, Frank had imagined Rachel saying many things to him. Some nights she spoke reassuringly, told him everything was going to be alright, that it really wasn’t his fault she was dead. Other nights, she blamed him for everything. Blamed him for not being able to stay away, for not allowing her to move on with her life, the life she had with his brother, Dean and their two kids, Leia and Josh. She would hate Frank in their imaginary conversations, tell him that she wished they’d never met. Not ever.
Just like she was saying now.
“I tried...” Frank’s face was scrunched up, like he was in pain. His brown eyes were wet.
You tried, Frank? Is that supposed to make me feel better? You didn’t fucking try hard enough, did you? If you did, I would still be around to see my kids grow up.
The phone started again.
Frank tightened his grip on the Beretta, wanted so badly to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger because he couldn’t bear hearing Rachel talk to him like that.
“What we had...it was—”
A mistake, Frank. We never should have been together. The only thing we were good at was killing. We killed everything. We killed you. We killed me. Only, you got to come back. I didn’t.
“No...”
The phone didn’t stop ringing, just wouldn’t goddamn stop.
Kill yourself, Frank. It’s all that’s left for you...
The gun was at his head, held there by his own trembling hand.
Do it, Frank. Just do it!
Fucking phone!
Do it do it do it...
“FUCK!”
He lowered the gun, started banging his head against the back of the armchair. In the kitchen, the phone stopped ringing. Then started again a second later.
Frank stopped banging his head against the seat. “I swear to fucking god...”
He stood up on shaky legs, shoved the photograph of Rachel into the back pocket of his jeans. Pushed the Beretta into the front of his waistband. Stomped the few steps into the tiny kitchen and looked at the still ringing cell phone on the bench beside the sink. He picked up the phone and the bottle of Jack Daniels at the same time, one in each hand. Took a swig from the bottle while looking at the phone. Blocked number.
If this is a sales call I’m going to hunt the bastards down, he thought.
He hit accept on the phone. “Whoever this is, it better be fucking good to ring me four times in a row.”
“Frank Swanson?” asked a male voice on the other end of the phone.
It wasn’t a voice that Frank recognized. “Who wants to know?”
“You’re a hard man to track down, Frank.”
“Who is this?”
“Someone in need of your particular skill set.”
“Oh yeah? What skill set would that be then?”
Not fucking suicide anyway, he thought.
“I have a bit of demon problem. I’m told you’re the best man to sort that out.”
Frank snorted and took another swig from the whiskey bottle, looked around for his cigarettes but couldn’t see them anywhere.
�
�You still there, Frank?” the voice on the phone said.
Fuck it, he thought. Might as well work if I can’t kill myself.
“Tell me where to meet you.”
CHAPTER 2
It took Frank about half an hour to drive from the cabin in the mountains to the darkly seductive cesspool of evil that was Mercy City, Pennsylvania. Not that most of the residents of the city saw it like that. A cesspit maybe. Sometimes evil even. But the vast majority of Mercy City’s residents remained dangerously unaware of the network of malevolence that permeated through every block in the city like the worst kind of cancer imaginable. Probably just as well. If the people of the city really knew what lived among them, they would run far away and never look back, except in fear that what lived in the city would hunt them down. Then Mercy City would be its very own Hell, housing every monster, demon and supernatural being you could think of. And people like Frank, of course. Not that Frank thought of himself as a person. Not anymore anyway, if indeed he ever did.
He was a few glasses of Jack away from breaking a breathalyzer as he drove his black ‘67 Chevrolet through the packed streets of downtown. The passenger side window was halfway down to let out the smoke from the cigarette that dangled from his lips. Loud music from the only radio station he ever listened to belted out of the speakers—a Seventies classic rock station currently playing “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” by Black Sabbath. He liked the music loud so it drowned out most of the noise outside the car and also the noise inside his own head, which was always more incessant and far more unsettling.
Sunday night. Past eleven o’clock. You’d think most people in the city would be at home, trying to relax, but unsettled by the fact that they had to start a whole new week with work or whatever it was they did. But no. By the looks of the streets, the crowds hanging around bars and clubs, the people gathered on every street corner, it looked like most of the city was out in force. A too large proportion of those people weren’t even people. They may have looked human, but they weren’t. They were something else entirely and they ran the city like they did most cities around the world.
Like they ran the world, in fact.
Frank caught glimpses of them as he drove—the demons, as they were all demons to him. Faces mostly. That was all he needed to see to know they were monsters. Demons. It was all in the eyes, the cold malevolence. Despite their sometimes monstrous faces, the burning eyes still gave them away the most.
If people could see, he often thought. But they didn’t. Only he could. Him and a too small network of others. Oftentimes he wished he couldn’t see. It’s not like he chose to have his eyes open. Destiny had done that for him. He just had to live with it, like he was doing now, driving towards the Sex Quarter to meet some guy who says he has a demon problem. Frank had told him on the phone that he had demon problems all the time, but he didn’t phone strangers for help. Sometimes Frank got abrasive, especially on the phone. Cell phones especially annoyed him. The guy with the demon problem had laughed like Frank had told him a joke, then said that he knew he had made the right choice in Watcher. Frank congratulated him on that and then bluntly said he would be with the guy in an hour before hanging up the phone.
Now here he was, driving through the Sex Quarter, a part of the city that encompassed about a square mile of sex clubs, porn shops, brothels and every filthy, depraved, despicable, not to mention unholy form of behavior you could possibly think of. The streets here were even more packed than in the rest of the city. The Sex Quarter was like the G-spot of the city, always stimulated, always hungry for more. The place never stopped, even in the daytime, although it wasn’t quite as alive in the day as it was at night. The demons loved the place. Full of easy prey and a chance to indulge afterwards with whatever tickled their fancy, which was usually another unsuspecting victim to kill, possess, con, use or generally abuse in some way. It was the mission of the demons to tarnish everything that they touched with their blackened souls.
Most of them anyway. Some were less bad in their evil ways. The mood Frank was in as he pulled up outside a strip club called Demon Ecstasy, they were all bad news.
Every last one of them.
CHAPTER 3
The only good thing about having to meet someone in a strip joint, Frank thought, was the fact that he could get a drink finally. The drive here—the manic activity of the city itself—had all but sobered him up. Sober wasn’t a state he liked to spend too long in these days.
The club he was in was fairly typical of the many other strip joints condensed into the Sex Quarter. Dark. Loud music playing. Annoying drunks yelling at the naked girls dancing on the stages. At least they were playing rock music, even if it was eighties cock rock.
Frank sat at the bar next to a couple of older guys in suits who were eying up the half-naked waitresses walking around serving drinks to people at the tables and in the more private booths. He didn’t have to look at them to know they were financial guys from uptown. Filth attracted filth after all.
The barman was a young guy with one of those long hipster beards and impeccably greased hair. Everything about him was impeccable in fact, almost the opposite of Frank. The barman’s muscles bulged from his black T-shirt. “What can I get you, man?” he asked.
Frank was about to ask for a double Jack when the barman’s eyes changed from brown to yellow. The guy’s a werewolf, he thought.
Frank didn’t have to say anything. The look of recognition in his eyes was enough for the barman to go from laid back and relaxed to looking suddenly nervous, fearful even. Maybe a touch of instinctive aggression in there too.
“Relax kid, will you?” Frank said. “I only want a drink. Double Jack. Neat.”
The barman nodded slowly as he began to relax again, went to get Frank his drink.
Beside Frank, the two suits got his attention when he heard one of them talk about “the bum next to us at the bar”, ending with the question, “Why do they even let scumbags like that in here anyways? Isn’t there a policy against letting bums into strip joints?”
Frank set his jaw as he waited for the barman to bring him his drink. He tried to ignore the fact that he could feel himself being gawked at. Frank didn’t like being the center of attention, especially when that attention was from a couple of arrogant crooks in suits.
“On the house,” the barman said as he placed a double Jack in front of Frank.
“Thanks,” Frank said as he picked up the glass and downed the contents in one. He slammed the glass down on the bar, maybe a little too hard. The barman thought Frank was pissed at him. He saw the rising violence in Frank’s eyes, visibly shrank back from it. “I’ll have the same again.”
Frank stood, took a long weary breath and turned to face the dicks in suits to his left. The one nearest Frank was a guy in his late thirties, tanned like he was just back from the Bahamas or somewhere, wearing a suit that looked like it cost more than Frank’s whole wardrobe. He smirked at Frank for a second before saying, “What’s the problem buddy? You lost or something?” He raised his smooth chin towards Frank. “The dumpster’s out the back.”
The other suit burst out laughing, looked like he was about to fall off his stool. The suit who spoke to Frank in the first place wasn’t laughing. He was staring at Frank, trying to assert his dominance, challenging Frank to make a comeback.
Frank was never one to back away from a challenge. Fucking arrogant prick, he thought.
You’d never know to look at Frank in that moment that he was even angered by the suits bad manners and thinly veiled aggression. The art of stoicism was one Frank had long since mastered. He was a blank mask. Unreadable.
On the inside though, he was bursting at the seams. Every emotion that had built up in him that day suddenly wanted out. None of that emotion was good. It was all bad and it would be even worse for the two suits in front of him. He knew what he was about to do was morally questionable, but he wasn’t in a very moral kind of mood. These twats had poked a sleeping viper and they d
idn’t even know it.
The suit nearest Frank didn’t even have time to react to Frank’s punch. One minute he was sitting on his stool, the next Frank’s fist was slamming into his perfectly shaved jaw, sending him flying off the stool, unconscious before he even crashed down onto the floor.
The other suit had stopped laughing and was staring down in shock at his unconscious friend on the floor. He snapped his head round when he sensed Frank moving towards him, almost toppled back of his stool. Frank caught the guy by his tie before the guy fell off his stool. Then Frank pulled hard on the tie and head butted the guy at the same time, pulverizing the suits nose, knocking him out. He let the guy go and the suit crashed to the floor like he was dead.
Frank sat back down on his stool, picked up his drink, which was waiting for him at the bar. Swallowed half the whiskey inside. Behind him, half naked girls were gasping in shock at the two unconscious punters on the floor.
Frank felt slightly better.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go asshole!”
He knew it was the bouncers before he even turned around. He was about to cathartically release some more of his bad emotions when he heard a familiar sounding voice say, “It's okay guys, I got this.”
A man appeared beside Frank. Tall, brown skinned, mid to late twenties, wearing a shiny dark gray suit and a laconic smile on his face. All that was just window dressing, however. Underneath it all, he was a demon. Frank didn’t need to see his real demon face to know that. He just sensed it. “When we spoke on the phone you didn’t mention knocking out my customers,” the demon said.
Frank signaled to the barman, handed the barman his glass. Then he glanced at the demon beside him. “You didn’t mention you were a demon either. I don’t work for demons.” The barman sets another Jack down for Frank, who was starting to feel normal now, which is to say drunk.
“Work?” the demon said, leaning on the bar with one elbow. “You’re a Watcher Frank, a protector. That’s a calling, not a job.”
“It’s a job to me and I don’t work for demons.” Frank downed the rest of the drink and got off the stool he was sitting on. “Thanks for the drinks.” He nodded at the trash on the floor. “In the future, watch who you let in here.”