Contents
Title
Chapter 1: October 27
Chapter 2: October 29
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7: October 30
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10: Halloween
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16: All Saints' Day
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20: All Souls' Day
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Thank you
Other Books
Copyright
All Souls
A Gatehouse Thriller
Karin Kaufman
Chapter 1
October 27
Edward Burris, a salesman from Parma, Ohio, could clearly see the wreckage fifty feet from the road. He’d had his eyes open for landmarks and his mind on his hotel room in Taos. His hotel room, because at nine o’clock it was past bedtime in his own time zone. Landmarks, so he could tell his wife that, yes, he’d driven the High Road to Taos as she had suggested, and yes, it was a thing of beauty.
The hillsides outside Chimayo had been more to his liking, more like the dry, sagebrush-dotted land he’d imagined before landing in New Mexico. But here, two miles north of Truchas, there were pine trees on both sides of the road. Except for a dusting of snow reflecting the light of a full moon, he might not have seen the wreck. It was in a break in the trees, off to his left as the highway bent right, as though the driver had continued north in spite of the road.
Edward pulled to the right, parked on the narrow dirt shoulder, and switched on his hazard lights. Though he hadn’t seen a single vehicle since leaving Chimayo, he checked both directions before darting across the road. Twenty feet from the wreck, he smelled something like burning oil and came to a halt.
Off to the right, something low and black moved.
Edward’s first thought was a bear, and he shouted at the black form before his eyes fully registered its shape. But it was too small, too crablike for a bear. And it moaned. The driver.
Edward ran toward the shape, calling out that he was coming, help was coming.
The man’s injuries were appalling. His nose, crushed or altogether gone—Edward couldn’t tell—was level with his cheekbones, and his mouth floated in blood. Moving on his back, propelling himself with thrusts of his legs, the man continued to move away from the clearing and toward the pine trees. Edward crouched and touched the man’s left shoulder. The bones there gave way and he drew back his hand.
“Stop moving, please stop moving,” Edward pleaded. The man lay still. Bubbles came from his mouth. Edward couldn’t remember what that meant exactly, but he knew it was bad. He pulled his cell from his jacket pocket and dialed 911. He told the operator about the man’s injuries then told the man he would stay with him until the ambulance arrived.
“Can you tell me your name?”
It sounded like Steven. The man had tried to say his name without moving his lips.
“Don’t move. The ambulance will be here soon.”
“No.”
Edward heard that clearly. “Yes, it will. I promise.” He wondered silently if the ambulance would arrive in time. The man, Steven, was dying in front of his eyes. Edward sat on the ground beside him and took his hand. No one should die alone.
A light flickered in the distance to Edward’s left. Headlights, he thought, traveling up the High Road as it curved and switched back. It was too soon for an ambulance, but the driver of the car heading his way might be able to help. Steven grunted, his eyes wide. He had seen the lights.
“I’m going to leave you for just a second and flag down that car.”
“No.” Steven let go of Edward’s hand.
“But they might be able to help.”
Steven moved his jaw and began to flex his lips slowly, guppy like. More bubbles came from his mouth. With great effort, he raised the hand Edward had held and pointed in the direction of the headlights, now brighter, nearer. Edward bent low.
“Go.”
That was what Steven had been saying. Go, not no.
“I’m not leaving you.”
Steven raised his upper lip in a sneer, peeling it back to where his nose had been, whimpering in pain. In the bloody hole Edward saw two white spikes where front teeth should be. Then Steven hissed.
Edward sprang to his feet and ran for his car. He tumbled when his shoes hit the pavement, breaking his fall with the palms of his hands, clawing at the asphalt as he rose. He yanked open his car door and leapt to the driver’s seat, drawing his left knee inward and away from the door, slamming it quickly. Only then did he look back to Steven. The man’s left hand, the one that had pointed at the approaching headlights, moved again and Edward turned the key in the ignition.
The rental car’s headlights illuminated the road ahead. Edward switched them off and pulled from the shoulder. He crept forward in the moonlight, watching his rearview mirror. At a westward bend in the road he came to a stop and looked over his shoulder. The headlights behind him were no longer in motion. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to him that they had stopped near Steven. A moment later they went out.
Edward saw a figure cross the road and move toward the trees, toward Steven, he was almost certain. The figure stopped. In rapid succession, the figure squatted, stood, then squatted again, repeatedly. Edward heard himself groan. He turned back to the wheel, hit the gas pedal, and took off down the road, his headlights still off.
Half a mile north, he turned on his lights and began to search for hotels, houses, or restaurants—anything. Anyplace where there were people or cars. He slowed at a tin-roofed shack then moved on when he discovered it was deserted. On a long, northerly stretch of road he glanced in his rearview mirror and saw two pinpricks of light. It didn’t have to be the same lights, he told himself. This was the High Road to Taos, and he wasn’t the only businessman behind a wheel tonight.
Farther north, the highway opened up. Edward could see snow-capped mountains ahead and pine-dotted hills to his right. A motorcycle sped by, heading south, and Edward exhaled in relief. He really wasn’t the only one on the road tonight. He passed a small green highway sign that bore the name “Las Trampas,” then two small blue signs on a single post—the kind of blue that meant traveler services or information. Civilization.
Slowing as he entered Trampas, his eyes shot left to right as he looked for lights and life in and around the handful of houses lining the road. When he braked to pull into the driveway of a darkened house, he caught sight of a large adobe church straight ahead, its massive western wall fronting the High Road. He accelerated, made a quick right onto a wide dirt road, then parked his car, hiding it from the road behind an old passenger truck.
He dashed through the adobe entryway of the church’s walled courtyard and up to its wooden front doors. He put his hand to the knob on the right-hand door and yanked. Nothing. A padlock held the doors firm. He slammed his hand against the door then swiftly pulled it back, making a fist and wincing in pain. “Shit,” he said, looking at his own bloody palm print on the door. He must have scraped the hell out of his hand when he tripped on the asphalt.
When he looked back to the High Road he saw the headlights. They didn’t have to be the same headlights, he told himself. This was Trampas and his wasn’t the only vehicle on the road. He headed to his right, following the outlines of the church until he reached the eastern courtyard, where he stopped and pr
essed his back to the adobe. He reached into his jacket pocket for his cell then remembered he’d left it behind. He had laid it down when he reached for Steven’s hand.
Hearing the soft crunch of car wheels on pebbles and dirt, he peered around the side of the church as headlight beams raked a small building across the road. This is insane, he thought. Who was following him? Was it that figure, that thing on the road? How would it know he was here? My blood on the front door, that’s how.
Edward put his hands to his mouth, stifling a moan. Honey, honey, I’m seeing the High Road. Just like I promised.
“Hello?” The man’s voice was sweet and soft, like buttered candy. “Hello-oo there.”
Edward saw the man’s shadow move over the courtyard. In moments it found him. Edward raised his head and beheld the face of the figure, the man. The man smiled. Edward hoped.
“Your car hood’s still warm,” the man said. “Silly willy.”
Edward abandoned hope. He cast his eyes about the courtyard, over the headstones, some of them surrounded by low fences of some kind, and beyond, looking for other people, for lights, for a way of escape.
The man moved closer. “What are you looking for, silly willy?”
“What do you want?” Edward’s voice wavered. He hated the weakness in it. It wasn’t going to get him out of this mess.
“You.”
“I’m just a tourist. I just want to go home.” It was a pitiful plea, but it was all Edward could muster.
“I am Manifest Manifest.”
Edward stared. “What?”
The man pulled a handgun from beneath his jacket and pointed it at Edward. “And I am Resolute.”
“My wife, please.”
The man shot.
“Jesus, Jesus,” Edward said. He looked down and saw a hole in his chest pumping blood. To the left of his heart, missing it or just nicking it, but he knew the blood loss was about to kill him.
Still focused on the hole, Edward dropped to his knees. He tried to reach the hole, to plug it with his fingers, but his arms no longer moved to his will. He fell forward, his right cheekbone striking the earth.
Chapter 2
October 29
My first solo kill was a Sack named Septimania. I’d just turned twenty-nine. I was at least a year younger than I should have been, because as my porter, Nathan Tennant, once said, “You don’t even begin to wise up until you hit thirty.” Anyway, that was the rule. No one hunts, solo or otherwise, until they’re thirty. I did my first group hunt when I was twenty-eight.
I reflected on this—this early start—as I leaned back in my chair at Santa Fe’s Hotel St. Michael and felt the autumn sun on my face. I liked meeting Nathan here, in this quiet corner off the hotel’s lobby, where they served proper afternoon tea. The kind with real leaves and strainers, not bags of tea dust on a string.
I’d turned thirty earlier in the week, and a hunt was not on my list of birthday things to do, but Nathan knew I’d be in New Mexico and he called me, asking if we could meet. A Sack—short for Sack of Shit, a term Nathan hated but all hunters used—must have caused trouble.
Nathan had always been my porter. He used to be a member of Gatehouse, the organization that tracked Sacks and sanctioned their deaths, but two years ago, on his forty-fourth birthday, he’d left to be a mere porter, the contact between Gatehouse and its hunters. On my first group kill I got a call to meet a Mr. Porter at a Santa Fe steak house. On my first solo kill, I was told I should try a port wine at a restaurant in Tesuque. “Porter” is an easy word to fiddle, and it serves double duty as a personal name. Not that we have to be that careful.
The hotel’s front doors opened and Nathan breezed through. He knew I always sat facing a door, so he saw me immediately, sipping my tea in my little corner by the windows.
“Jane, thank you,” he said, taking the seat opposite me. He undid the buttons on his knee-length gray wool coat but left the coat on. It was cold for late October. Snow had already fallen, though the cottonwoods still clung to half their yellow-gold leaves.
“I was surprised to hear from you,” I said, sliding my cup and saucer out of the way and crossing my arms on the table.
“I knew you’d be in town.”
“Always.” I visited northern New Mexico twice a year, driving down from Loveland, Colorado, in late October and April, when the weather was fine and the tourists scarce.
Nathan exhaled, his cheeks puffing, and glanced out the window before turning back to me. Something was worrying him. Something more than the usual burden of being a porter and giving orders for a kill, or a “return,” as we were told to say. I noticed that his dark hair, normally immaculately combed and styled, a banker’s or lawyer’s hair, was slightly disheveled. For Nathan, that meant something.
“I have a target for you,” he said, removing a small photo from his inside coat pocket. He placed it face down on the table and slid it toward me. “A woman who calls herself Banishment.”
“Lovely name. I know about her.” Without looking at the photo I slipped it into my purse. We were never to look at the photos in public. And we never received a Sack’s real name. It was better that way. They were human beings, after all.
“I thought you might know her. Good. She’s been on Gatehouse’s radar for six months, but she’s been quiet until now, so they left her alone. The address and her license plate number are on the back of the photo. She gets home around seven o’clock.”
“She’s a Desire, right?”
“You’ll be handling a higher level one day, Jane. All you need is a little more experience.”
“I’m not complaining.” Desires were the lowest level of Sack, the easiest kills. Some of them were smart, but none were extraordinary, which suited me fine. After the Desires came the Alarms, the next highest level, then the Resolutes and, a step up from them, the Festals—all mortal, though clever as hell, each level more skilled than the last. Then came the Elations, who were said to be more than clever, beyond talented. At the top were the Embodiments. There were only a hundred of them around the world. I’d never met one, and Nathan never talked about them. He focused on Festals and Elations when he scheduled more experienced hunters. Get them, he said, and you break the spirit of the lower levels. The pyramid crumbles at the foundation.
Nathan took hold of the small menu on the table and gave it a cursory look. “Still no beer, I see.” He had opened a microbrew pub in Santa Fe, the El Tirador Brewing Company, the same month he left Gatehouse. Beer was his passion. So much so that I sometimes wondered why he stayed a porter, and if his connection to Gatehouse was stronger than he let on.
A waitress approached our table, but Nathan declined her offer of tea and a St. Michael scone. I waited until the woman was out of earshot before speaking. “What did Banishment do, come out of her ditch for a nibble?”
“She killed a woman on her honeymoon. Shoved her over the railing of her hotel balcony.”
“My God.”
“The woman had been drinking, and her husband was in the lobby at the time, fortunately for him, so it was ruled an accident. She was twenty-six.”
Sacks. They were without exception evil. In my short time working for Gatehouse, I’d seen what they were capable of, starting with my own sister. That’s how Gatehouse had found me, four years after an Alarm whose name I was never told ran us off Highway 68 ten miles south of Taos. I was injured. My sister died, but not right away. Gatehouse heard about the accident through a porter in the area, recruited me, and I signed on. I wasn’t alone in that. Almost every hunter had lost someone to a Sack. Kath Norwocki, my closest friend, had lost her one-year-old daughter to a Sack “accident.” Five months after the accident she left her husband, and two months after that she signed on to be a hunter.
“Calling Jane Piper.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I grinned and took a sip of tea. Nathan leaned back in his seat and undid his suit jacket button. He was a handsome man with a strong, straight nose and brown eyes, and he a
lways wore a suit and tie, even while working at his own brewery pub. It was an endearing habit, if a strange one—at least to my mind. I lived in jeans all year long, hunting or not.
“Can you hang around Santa Fe for a while? There might be another return in a day or two.”
“That soon?” In two years of group and solo hunts I’d only killed nine Sacks. Now Nathan was telling me there would be two kills in one week. “What’s going on?”
Nathan watched me, and I could tell he was debating the wisdom of telling me more. Having been a member of Gatehouse, he was reluctant to tell a hunter much of anything, but as a porter Nathan believed hunters should be informed, and he usually erred on the side of too much information.
“Have you ever heard the name Steven Lake?” he asked.
“No.”
“He lived in northern New Mexico and was a member of Gatehouse. He was Eight, and he was murdered two days ago.”
“By a Sack?”
Nathan nodded. “A Resolute named Manifest Manifest. He killed a tourist named Edward Burris at the same time. Shot him in the courtyard of San José de Gracia Church in Trampas.”
“How do you know the Sack’s name? Were there witnesses?”
“He wrote his name and level on the adobe. Church officials were told it was graffiti.”
I didn’t have to ask how or with what the Sack wrote his name. It was a particularly foul Sack habit, writing their names using their victims’ blood. Sacks loved the look and sound of their own name and level, the name given to them by a Festal on the day they turned. They even paused, sometimes at great risk to themselves, to announce their name and level before they killed—or before hunters took their lives.
“What Lake was doing on the High Road that time of night I don’t know,” Nathan said, turning his face to the window. “The Resolute toyed with him first. Someplace else, probably. Drilled his front teeth down to toothpicks.”
“My God,” I said, my eyes squeezing shut, my hand rising involuntarily to my mouth before I lowered it. My training had taught me to be aware at all times that someone might be watching. “You knew him?”
All Souls: A Gatehouse Thriller Page 1