Krewe of Hunters, Volume 2: The Unseen ; The Unholy ; The Unspoken ; The Uninvited

by Heather Graham

  She turned away; Bernie had taken a seat on the other side of her.

  “So, are we going to make it through this?” he asked. “I don’t believe in curses. Okay, so I say I don’t believe in curses. But this is starting to look more like the ‘Tut’ curse every day. A young diver—dead. An old Egyptologist who encouraged the search for the ship—dead.”

  “There’s no curse, Bernie,” Will said. “Bad things happen sometimes. But no man has the power to invoke a curse, unless others let him do it. Unless they give him the power. Remember that, Bernie.”

  “I’m remembering,” Bernie said. “I just hope we get through this,” he repeated.

  “You know we will, Bernie,” Kat told him.

  “If not, I’m looking for another line of work!” Bernie muttered. He got to his feet, calling out to Earl. “Hey, we’re coming up on the spot. Get some footage of the research vessel coming in.”

  Once again, they suited up. The usual care was taken in descending. Jimmy Green watched over them like a watchdog while the security boat team and Captain Bob were on the lookout from above.

  This time when she went down, Kat was determined to hover by the grand salon. She felt able to do so, knowing that Will would stay with her and that he believed in her—more than she believed in herself.

  And so, while the others dove the next seven or eight feet downward and toward the aft, Kat held her ground, staring into the grand salon.

  She began to see it all again.

  She could almost hear the music.

  And then it seemed that she was there. She was standing on the deck looking out at the beauty of the night, but she was watching it anxiously. One of the crew members had been talking about the feel of the air, saying that the wind didn’t seem to bode well. Someone else said they were nearly home, nearly at Chicago. She listened to the people as they walked past her. One man told the woman who clung to his arm that they were perfectly safe. He laughed at the idea of a curse.

  “Could one person possibly reach out from the grave to hurt another?” the woman asked.

  “Don’t be silly. Only the living hurt the living.”

  Kat wanted to turn to the woman and tell her that the dead could come back, but they had no greater power than anyone alive—all they had was the strength to influence, to insinuate horror into the human mind, something done just as easily by the living. But although she seemed to be part of it all, she wasn’t. She couldn’t say anything. She was there—and yet she wasn’t.

  She wanted to scream; she wanted to warn them to man the lifeboats, to get out while they could before the danger struck.

  They didn’t understand that the danger wasn’t going to be the storm.

  She turned to the water again, and it was coming. The dark shape that seemed to accompany the icy wind. She lifted her arms, as if she could push it back, as if she could somehow stop it. But the massive dark shadow was bearing down on the ship.

  It was coming closer and closer….

  A wall of water was washing over her and she was breathing it in. She began to choke.

  She realized the frigid water was engulfing her.

  She was drowning in it.

  8

  Kat was suddenly jolted. She felt someone shove something at her face, and her instinct was to fight back. But she realized the thing pushed into her mouth was her regulator. Will was forcing her to take it back; she’d evidently spit it out, forgotten to breathe. She tasted the cold water, felt it on her teeth. She coughed, choked, coughed up water, and then she was able to take in a sweet breath of air. She saw him looking at her, his dark eyes intense and huge behind his mask, and she felt his hands on her while he watched her, watched her breathe.

  It seemed that aeons had passed, that the others must have seen her strange behavior. Seemed that it must be time to go back up.

  It wasn’t. She saw that the others were busy down in the hold, looking at the doors that were ajar, those that were open and those that were sealed.

  She inhaled deeply, and Will used his thumb to indicate that they should go back up; he was worried about her.

  She shook her head, trying to smile. He frowned.

  She shook her head more firmly and gave him an A-OK sign. She spoke around her mouthpiece, knowing the sound would be distorted. “I’m fine, really. Let’s finish.”

  He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t stop her when she released more air from her BCV and continued downward to the hold. Earl Candy turned the camera on her and Will, and she went all the way to the bottom, determined to find more of the spilled treasure that was covered in zebra mussels and lake bed silt.

  She was able to retrieve a few encrusted objects before Jimmy Green gestured that their time was up. As they moved toward the anchor line, she knew that Will was almost on top of her. He was still worried. She couldn’t protest. She might have drowned with seven people surrounding her if Will hadn’t been there to snap her from the past to the present.

  Back on board, Kat was stunned that no one else had been aware of whatever had happened. With the camera going and Amanda taking center stage, demanding the ancient trinkets others had found to display before the camera, Kat couldn’t say anything to Will. He behaved as the others were behaving—happy about a productive dive that had allowed them to better chart and understand the condition and position of the ship, and the treasure that remained within. When everything had been shown, the real treasure of the day seemed to be a necklace. The true beauty of it would be hard to see until it was cleaned, but it was gold chain, Amanda said, with a golden sculpture of the god Horus attached. At last she finished with the camera and walked over to Alan. “That’s it. That’s all we brought up this time. He can turn the camera off.”

  Alan stood. “Dr. Channel, we’re documenting everything that happens.”

  Bernie stood next to him. “I tell my man when to turn off his camera.”

  Amanda pursed her lips and stalked away.

  Will was checking the tanks for the second dive. He glanced up as Kat approached him. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine, and, um, thank you.”

  He shrugged. “It’s what we do.”

  That seemed to be his mantra, she thought.

  “You have more belief in whatever it is I’m seeing than I do,” she said, speaking in a low voice.

  He looked around to assure himself that they weren’t being watched. She took a step back. He’d stripped off the arms and chest of his suit because the sun was hot. He was bronzed and lean and she wanted to touch him.

  “There’s something at the end of this…vision that’s so horrible you don’t want to see it and I’m afraid for you to see it—especially in seventy-five or eighty feet of water. Do you think you should go down again?”

  “I’m fine, I swear. And if you’re next to me…”

  He laughed. “You pack quite a wallop for a little girl,” he said.

  “I’m not a girl.”

  “Okay, you pack quite a wallop for a highly educated and brilliant but tiny agent—how’s that?” he asked her.

  “Better.” She paused. “Did I really hit you?”

  “You tried. Last night and today. But I’m fairly bright and well-trained myself.”

  Kat noticed that Earl and Bernie were speaking somewhere near them. It was a private conversation, and she didn’t mean to listen, but even on the decent-size boat, they were close.

  “Alan should just pull the plug on that bitch!” Earl said.

  Jon Hunt heard them and came over.

  “No, no, please. I’ll speak with Amanda. She’s just intense. You have to understand that while you make documentaries on many things, we live ancient history. Please, try to understand her, and I promise, I’ll talk to her,” Jon said.

  “She doesn’t seem to care that a good friend of yours died on this expedition! All she cares about is her own agenda. She wants the big stuff done immediately, and she wants to call all the shots,” Bernie said, f
olding his arms. “We’re here because the center is considered the best of its kind and isn’t trying to stow away anything that legally belongs to the State of Illinois. She’s pushing the boundaries, and if she isn’t careful, she’ll bring the curse of politicians and lawyers down on us!”

  “I’ll talk to her!” Jon said again.

  Kat excused herself to go to the hold to get a bottle of water. She wasn’t part of this argument.

  But as she started down to the galley she paused. Amanda was on the phone; she’d gone there for privacy.

  Kat would have left.

  But she was here to investigate, to learn what she could.

  And even if she hadn’t been, she couldn’t have left fast enough to avoid hearing Amanda’s frantic whisper. “I’ll find it! I’m telling you, I’ll find it!”

  She snapped her phone shut and turned and saw Kat. Her face went red, but she quickly rallied. “Hey, sorry. That was a friend of mine. I lost her Adele CD and I told her that if I couldn’t find it I’d buy her another one. I can’t believe she called me in the middle of all this about a CD!”

  “Well, people do love their music,” Kat said mildly.

  “I guess. But…” With a shrug, Amanda stepped toward the galley’s counter. “I’m putting together sandwiches. We’ll take another thirty minutes before our next dive.”

  Just then Jimmy came down the galley steps. “Ready for… Oh! Amanda. You’re getting started on lunch. Great. Thanks!”

  “Sure. No problem. We all have to eat, right?”

  She was extremely pleasant. Kat grabbed her water, and moved to Jimmy’s other side. With their assembly line, they had a stack of sandwiches prepared in a matter of minutes.

  Topside, she saw Will in conversation with Bernie and Alan. Earl was filming sailboats that passed in the distance.

  She didn’t get a chance to talk to Will before they went for their second dive, but she intended to keep a close watch on Amanda—and to make sure that what she put in her bag came out of her bag when they reached the surface.

  I’ll find it. I’m telling you, I’ll find it!

  The words flashed through Kat’s mind as they descended. When she got to the ship’s grand salon, she felt compelled to stop again.

  She turned.

  Will was there. He touched her arm, and she looked at him and knew he’d be there for her, a safety net.

  She looked into the salon—and it began.

  At first, the characters were ghostly. She heard her own breathing through the respirator; she felt Will close at her side.

  Then the characters became real, and the water seemed to disappear. Once again she was alone on the ship’s deck. She heard the laughter, the music. The people talking, the warnings about the curse…

  It was coming, and she knew it. The wind that became icy cold. The blue sky turning dark. And then the thing, the shadowy, shapeless thing, massive in the night. It was coming toward them and then she could see it…

  Huge, tall. It was a man. A man with incredibly large dark eyes, his arms crossed over his chest. He wore a tall, turbanlike hat or cap, and jewels adorned his neck. The eyes looked at her, stygian, blank, as if sightless, and yet all-seeing….

  It—he—came closer and as he was nearly upon her, she felt pure terror.

  Then…

  She heard a garbled voice. “Breathe!”

  She was being shaken. She blinked and saw Will. She was trembling in the water, freezing, as if she’d been through an ice storm.

  But she was breathing….

  She didn’t choke.

  And as she saw him, she felt safe. She was strong; she had faith in herself. But his faith was even greater, and he would stop whatever demons came for her, stop them before they could reach her.

  Yes, Will seemed to have faith in her, and he seemed to know her.

  He didn’t try to get her to go back up before the others, although he realized she’d seen something more. She wanted to watch Amanda, and although she wasn’t sure how to convey that to him, he didn’t protest any of her movements.

  They joined the rest of the group. It always seemed impossible that no one had noticed their later arrival. What felt like aeons when she was staring into the salon must have been just a minute or two.

  She and Will went to work. Amanda and Jon were looking over a crate packed in a tarp, trying to determine size and weight and, no doubt, whether or not they could bring it to the surface.

  Jimmy Green noted that their dive time was up, and they made the ascent.

  There were more treasures, of course. As usual, Amanda commanded the time before the camera, while Jon did as he was told. Will hung in the background with Kat, and it wasn’t until the dive trip had ended and they were in the car, headed to the hotel to shower and change, that he was able to ask her what she’d seen.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I was expecting a mummy to suddenly appear in the darkness. But it wasn’t. It was a… I don’t know what it was. A giant Egyptian, maybe. I saw a man, with slicked-back hair, wearing some kind of headpiece. He had deep, dark eyes. The eyes didn’t seem to see, and yet the thing was coming at the ship. It was the great dark shadow that threatened the ship.”

  “Interesting,” Will said. “Maybe once we’ve gone through some of the journals at Austin’s house, we’ll figure it out. A giant Egyptian,” he murmured.

  Kat was thoughtful. “He seemed like a young man, say early twenties, with dark skin and exceptionally fine features. I’m not familiar with Egyptology the way you are, but I’ve seen pictures of pharaohs that were similar.”

  “Maybe it was Amun Mopat. We don’t actually know what he looked like,” Will said.

  Kat made a sound of distaste.

  “It wasn’t really Amun Mopat,” Will said. “We know he wasn’t a giant, and I still don’t believe he came back from the dead to sink a ship. However, that might be who or what you saw in your mind’s eye. Which could mean many things.”

  Kat sighed. “Will, when I went down to the galley before the second dive, I found Amanda talking on her cell phone. She said—and I quote—‘I’ll find it. I’m telling you, I’ll find it.’”

  “Did she know you heard her?”

  Kat nodded. “She said she’d lost a friend’s CD. And then she started making sandwiches.”

  “She could have lost a CD—or she could be looking for something special associated with the ship. But…that’s a long shot. The ship’s been at the bottom of that lake for over a hundred years. And it’s not like Amanda’s ever down there alone.”

  “No, but we’ve all been bringing up pieces of pottery and stone statues—and the dagger and the box. There could be something special down there,” Kat said.

  “We have copies of the ship’s manifest. I’ve looked through it, but I’ll read it more thoroughly and try to discern if there was one special thing among the treasures.” He glanced at her. “Tutankhamun’s gold death mask was considered the major find in his tomb. Maybe I missed something like that.”

  Kat grinned. “His death mask is big. Amanda couldn’t have slipped anything of that size out of the water!”

  At the hotel, they went to their separate rooms. Kat couldn’t help remembering that the doors separating the rooms were ajar, allowing Bastet to come and go between them. She felt much safer than she had the first night; they’d all learned that everyone was in a better position with good backup.

  She should have been concentrating on her vision, trying to analyze it and determine what she’d seen with her sixth sense, but…she was human. And she was thinking about Will Chan, about his lean and muscular body and the beautiful warm color of his skin. Even though she was all alone, she blushed. She realized she didn’t have to; she was an adult and it was okay to be attracted to a man. It was just that this man was a colleague.

  It was a while since she’d been in a relationship. Many men had been turned off by the mere fact of her profession.

  Some were too turned o
n by it, and they scared the hell out of her.

  But her last relationship had ended not because of what she did, since she’d been seriously involved with another pathologist.

  He’d happened to come in when she was talking to a corpse.

  She knew he’d been bothered. The relationship wasn’t instantly over. It had ended one morning when she’d awakened to find him staring at the ceiling. He had seemed so anguished, and then he’d told her—he believed she had some strange power, and he’d tried, but he couldn’t make the relationship work. He couldn’t forget that she talked to corpses. And he was terrified that one day he’d see them talking back.

  The breakup had hurt. She’d cared about him, and she knew he’d cared about her, as well.

  And she’d wondered if she should keep her affairs few and far between and very casual.

  There could be nothing casual about a relationship with Will. But while she found herself fantasizing about him in a sexual way, she was also gratified to realize that he was just like her. He wasn’t turned off by her science or what lay beyond science.

  But…

  That didn’t mean he was fantasizing about her!

  After she’d dried and dressed, she gave the cat some attention. “Poor baby. Your master is gone,” she said. Bastet purred, looking at her with beautiful cat eyes. She seemed to know.

  Animals did know many things people couldn’t understand.

  “I’ve got to meet Will and we have to get moving, Bastet. The day is almost gone.”

  The animal meowed pitifully when Kat was about to leave. Stroking Bastet, she placed her on the bed. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “But you have to stay here.”

  She met Will in the hall.

  “I reported in to Logan,” he said. “Tyler is at Austin Miller’s. He’s keeping an eye on things, plus he did a cursory search of the house and yard. I told Logan about the image you ‘saw’ at the ship and he’s going to send Jane out to the house so she can sketch it for you.”

  “Good idea,” Kat agreed.

  She looked around as they drove. Chicago was truly one of the great American cities. The lake, a constant presence, glittered in the bright sun. Heading along South Lake Shore Drive, she could see Grant Park and the Buckingham Fountain, the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum ahead of them in the distance.