The Demon Hunter:
The Dark One
(Book 2)
By Jennifer and Christopher Martucci
THE DEMON HUNTER: THE DARK ONE (BOOK 2)
Published by Jennifer and Christopher Martucci
Copyright © 2014
All rights reserved.
First edition: December 2014
Cover design by Indie Designz
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Throughout much of my life, I’ve felt as if I’ve been bobbing around, sort of wandering aimlessly, without a real purpose. I’m sure I’m not the only sixteen year old who’s ever felt that way. In fact, I’d venture a guess that most feel exactly that way. Not yet adults and able to enjoy the privileges associated with adulthood and no longer children young enough to reap the rewards of childhood and littleness, kids in my age group hover in an in-between phase, a kind of developmental gray area. At least that’s how I’ve always viewed my existence. Until now, that is.
Riding in the backseat of my mother’s CRV and headed to our new residence in Patterson, I experience a strange phenomenon. I’m not sure how to precisely articulate what I’m feeling, all I know is that I’m struck by a sense of connectedness to the town we’re destined for. The closer we get, the stronger the feeling grows. It rewards me with a kind of calm and quiet happiness, a sense of belonging that grows so potent, I know I’m in the exact place with the exact people I should be with at this exact point in my life. My mother and my sister have always been my anchors, the people who secured me to a sense of being where I should be. I always figured that wherever they were would be home, even if it were a tent in the middle of a desert. But as I ride in the back seat of my mother’s CRV and head toward our new house, that comfort they’ve provided through the years is replaced.
Peering out the rear window, I watch as an endless sea of trees rolls past. Their leaves are a vibrant array of greens that pop against the cobalt sky unfurling endlessly with little more than a few wispy clouds marring it. All that I see is a far cry from the never-ending stretch of asphalt I’m used to. And for the first time in my life, I am coming home. Not to a home that is familiar to me, and not to any home I’ve ever known, not physically at least. I’m going where I belong. I almost feel as if I’m answering a calling. Where I’m called from and who or what beckons me remains to be seen. All I know is that I’m moving toward the place I need to be, the place I’m needed.
“Ugh! Could this be more of a hayseed, country town?” My sister’s exasperated tone, dripping with acid and complete with a drawn-out huff, interrupts my reflective mood. “I can’t believe this is where we’re going to live now,” she continues grumpily and gestures to the passenger side window, beyond which the scenery is lush and verdant.
“Oh come on, Kiera.” My mom reaches across the center console and pats my sister’s leg. “It’s a nice town, a safe town.”
“Yeah, plus we’re going to live in an actual house,” I chime in to try to help.
Living in a house is something we haven’t done in as long as I can remember. All I’ve ever known is an apartment building, elevators and concrete playgrounds. The house we’re renting now is small, not much larger than our apartment really when the basement isn’t factored into the square footage, but it sits on slightly less that two acres of land. When we looked at it with the real estate agent, we fell in love with it. At the time, even Kiera had cracked a smile. Now that the reality of leaving and not returning to the place we called home for so many years has kicked in she’s lashing out. I, on the other hand, am actually excited at the prospect of a new beginning. Not popular by any means, I was virtually invisible in school. With a student population that exceeded four thousand and a principal and vice principal per grade level trying to police such an enormous crowd, school was never a place I felt comfortable in the least. To the contrary, I felt perpetually lost. I wasn’t a small fish in a big pond. I was a fleck of sand in a vast sea, never noticed. Never relevant or important to anyone. Sure, I had one or two guys I played basketball with at the court two blocks from the apartment, but they were little more than acquaintances. I never even felt the need to say goodbye to them. Kiera, on the other hand, was enjoying an entirely different experience in high school. Popular with everyone from the athletes to the debate team to the stoners, she was universally accepted and adored. It’s hard to believe anyone could tolerate her for more than ten minutes and not strangle her. At best she’s unpleasant. At worst she insufferable. It’s a mystery to me that she was as well-liked as she was. But I’m sure the side of her my mom and I see differs dramatically from what she shows others. Which one is the real Kiera? Well, I suppose the jury is still out on that one, though I suspect she’s neither. Regardless, I fully understand why she’d resist moving. She actually has a life she’s leaving behind. For me it’s a fresh start, a hope that all the madness that’s accompanied me after the shooting, will dissipate, that I will be me again, or better. I don’t want to feel the strange pull again. I don’t want to find myself wandering in strange neighborhoods by car or on foot. I want a normal life, want a chance at enjoying the latter part of my teenage years. I can only hope that’s why I was drawn to this location, that instinctively, a part of me knows I can have a normal life here. I hope that was the draw, at least.
After driving a few more miles, we find ourselves in the heart of Patterson. Quaint shops line either side of the road and iron lampposts painted black and with large frosted glass bulbs are interspersed at regular intervals. It’s beautiful, peaceful. The town looks likes it’s been pulled from the pages of a greeting card.
“Wow, isn’t this the cutest town?” My mother slows the car so that we’re doing little more than rolling at this point. She gawks out her window at a scene so idyllic it could’ve been a set from a 1960s television show.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s fabulous.” My sister’s tone drips with sarcasm. She twists in her seat and looks at the few people milling about. She points to a couple. “Oh my gosh, you’ve got to be kidding me! He’s wearing overalls and she’s wearing a scrunchie. And they have like four teeth between them,” she exclaims before she repositions herself and faces forward. Scowling, she continues like a crabby four-year-old. “I can’t believe it. What is school going to be like?” she asks rhetorically, as if fashion is somehow an indicator of a person’s worth.
“Knock it off, Kiera!” My mom’s head whips around. She glares at my sister, pale eyes boring into her in warning. “The school will be filled with normal people just like you.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to remind my mother that neither Kiera nor I are normal in the least. But given the death stare my mother is launching my sister’s way, I hold my tongue.
“We aren’t in the country, for goodness’ sake. This is the suburbs.”
My sister rolls her eyes exaggeratedly while my mom drives to the end of the street. Nearby and taking up a small section of sidewalk as she stands not far from a traffic light, an old woman with lengths of bedraggled gray hair, ashen skin and gnarled fingers stands. She wears what looks like a sandwich board on her chest and appears to be screaming something, though what she’s screaming is inaudible with the windows up and the air conditioning on. Still her face is contorted, her brow low and her eyes narrowed to angry slashes. Ropey veins in her neck bulge from strain and spittle sprays from her lips. The sight of her, the vehemence with which she expresses herself, sends a chill trailing down my spine.
Gaze vacill
ating between the roadway and the woman, my mother studies both with keen interest. “Her behavior seems out of place, don’t you think?”
I’m tempted to say, “That’s an understatement!” but I don’t for fear of sounding exactly like my sister. Instead I mumble, “uh-huh” and bob my head like a moron, my utterance interrupted by Kiera’s sharp comment.
“Out of place! Really? Ya think?” Derision oozes from her like pus from a festering wound. My mother’s head whips around, her eyes flashing with warning. Kiera rears her head slightly, backing off, but still says, “Sorry, but this place just keeps getting better and better.” She throws her hands in the air and allows them to slap against her lap when they land to punctuate her point.
My mother purses her lips and shakes her head slowly as we roll past the woman shouting, and as we do I’m able to read the words scrawled on the boards. It reads: They walk among us. They are here. Your children aren’t safe. They are being murdered. The last word is larger and written in all capital letters. All of them are scribbled in a deep rusty red that resembles blood. I shudder, the words corkscrewing into a profound part of me I cannot name, have yet to identify. When my gaze lifts from the woman’s board to her face, I am met with piercing eyes the color of rich soil. They are trained on us, on me. Entranced, I cannot look away. I try, try to look past her, beside her, look to the sky, to the ground, anywhere but at her, but I can’t. The only interruption comes in the form of my sister huffing exaggeratedly.
“Look at this nutbag,” Kiera says and lowers her window.
The car is immediately filled with the rasp of a voice that lashes like a whip, stinging and burning in its tone. “They walk among us!”
“Roll up the window, now, Kiera!” my mother shouts. The traffic light overhead and in the distance turns yellow. My mother stomps down on the gas pedal in hopes of beating the light. Kiera jumps, her head snapping back at the rapid acceleration, but her finger flies to the button to raise the window. I’ve never seen my sister so rattled, or my mother for that matter, not since I died.
Forced to stop at a traffic light that turns red, my mother begrudgingly brakes, tires screeching in protest. The old woman descends on the car, moving with speed and agility that betrays her fragile appearance. Frail fists begin pounding the car and suddenly, the woman’s horrid face fills the frame of the rear window. Eyes wild and darting and face twisted in rage, her breath fogs the glass. I instinctively jerk backward, away from her. She looks crazed, like a witch from my worst childhood nightmares. “It isn’t safe in this town! You shouldn’t have come here!” she screams. She eyes the luggage strapped to the roof and knows we’re moving here. “They’re killing our children! They walk among us! Go back, you aren’t safe!” She screams so loud, a lightning bolt shaped vein protrudes from the center of her forehead. Her panic, her dread, is palpable. It explodes from her, detonating like a shrapnel throwing bomb, releasing fragments that burrow into my skin and enter my bloodstream like shards of glass.
“She’s crazy!” My mother’s voice is shrill and unlike I’ve ever heard it. The light turns green and she guns the engine, kicking up and spraying small bits of gravel. We speed away, leaving the screaming woman behind. As soon as we’re a safe distance from her, my sister turns in her chair and faces me. “What the heck was that?” she asks. Worry etches her features and her tone has lost its usual edge. Her gaze flickers between the woman in the road still shouting and carrying on and my mom and I.
“I have no idea but that was . . . creepy. Crazy.” My mother’s voice sounds distant and disturbed. It does little to quiet the storm clouds swirling and brewing within my brain.
“She was crazy,” I say absently to support my mother. But in the cavernous hollows of my being, I sense that there was more to what the woman was spouting, that she wasn’t insane, and that her words were driven by something far more insightful. I get the feeling that life in Patterson will be anything but normal.
Chapter 2
Waking with a start with a fine sheen of sweat coating my skin, I sit bolt upright. My eyes darting from left to right, sweeping the room and searching every corner of it. Far bigger than my old one, my new room is barely filled by small furniture that once dwarfed everything around it. The apartment was cramped, tiny really, especially given that there were three of us living there. This new house we’ve rented is anything but cramped. To the contrary, it’s spacious in every way. Open space dominates, both inside and out. I’m unaccustomed to so much room, in all honesty. Devoid of neighbors surrounding me on all sides, I feel strange, oddly vulnerable even. All my life, I’ve lived with neighbors on either sides, above me and below me. And I’ve never had a yard, big or small. Here, we have a patio and grass as far as I can see beyond it. Culture shock doesn’t scratch the surface of what I’m experiencing, particularly when I lay in bed last night. Used to the wail of sirens and the incessant honk of horns, the buzz of crickets over the layer of thick silence was almost more that I could bear. Between that and the fact that I was anxious about my first day in a new school today, I was barely able to fall asleep, and when I did, naturally I was plagued by nightmares. Nothing new there. That’s my new normal.
Setting nightmares aside for the moment, I swing my legs over and climb out of bed. I quickly shower, brush my teeth and dress then head to the kitchen. As soon as I step out of the bathroom, the steamy scent of soap and toothpaste is replaced by the smell of bacon and eggs frying. Following the hallway to a flight of steps, I trot down them and round a corner into the kitchen.
“Oh perfect, sweetie!” My mom is standing in front of the stove, hovering over a frying pan. The hiss and sizzle of bacon grease is a comforting sound.
“Morning, Mom,” I say and take a few steps toward her. “What’s going on over here?” I point to the bacon and eggs.
Tilting her head to one side, she says, “I wanted to make sure you had a good breakfast before your first day at a new school.”
“Yeah, you’ll need all the energy you can get for your sad attempt to make friends.” I hear Kiera before I see her. She sits at a small rectangular table tucked in an alcove of the kitchen just behind my mother.
“Good morning to you, too, Sis. What’s the matter, you woke up on the wrong side of your coffin this morning?” I walk past my mom and snag a piece of bacon from a paper towel lined plate. “Don’t worry, with any luck, Mom will run over a squirrel on the way to school and you’ll be feeling better again.
Kiera erects her middle finger at me.
“I see that Kiera,” my mother says. “That’s really ladylike.”
“How can you, how did you?” I stammer.
“Spit is out, genius.” My sister rolls her eyes. “Use your big boy words. Sounds like . . .” she rolls her hand forward. Her words, tone and gesture all drip with condescension. I shoot her a nasty look and she throws her head back and laughs. “Ooh, that’s intimidating,” she mocks.
I ignore her, a feat that’s nearly impossible, then turn to my mother. “How’d you see her flip me the bird? Your back was to us.”
“Hmm, I guess it’s just mommy magic,” she replies cryptically. “Mommy magic,” a term she coined when my sister and I were little, led us to believe she could hear all, see all, and occasionally make chocolate kisses appear from thin air onto the kitchen counter top after we took a lap around the living room and dining room. She looks over her shoulder and winks at us.
I smile and my sister scoffs at me. “Idiot,” she mumbles.
My mother spins and glares at Kiera. “Enough.” Though she’s only spoken a single word, that one word shivers with warning. Her gaze meets my sister’s and my sister immediately drops her eyes to her lap. My mother doesn’t look away immediately. She allows the weight of her stare to linger for a few beats before she returns her attention to cooking. Using her spatula, she flips an egg then removes it and places it on a plate. “So I was watching the local news this morning and I think I know what that crazy, screaming lady wea
ring the signs around her neck was so worked up about.”
I wait for her to elaborate. When she doesn’t right away, I say, “Oh yeah, what was she worked up about?”
“Well, it’s probably the same reason this town jumped out at you.” My mother’s words land like a slap to my cheek. How does she know I was drawn to this town? How does she know it fairly jumped off the map at me?
I pause, lips parted and mouth suddenly dry. I shake my head after several seconds, snapping out of the stunned trance I fell into. Feeling eyes on me, I slide a sidelong glance Kiera’s way. Her upper lip is curled and she looks as though she’s smelled an offensive odor. “You’re so weird,” she snarls.
Still resembling a deer caught in oncoming headlights I’m sure, I look away from her and turn to my mother. “What? Why do you think that?” I fumble.
“Keep trying to use those words, boy wonder,” Kiera continues.
Spinning with her hands on her hips, my mother whirls on her, anger flashing in her eyes. “Shut up now, Kiera!”
Shocked that my mother has not only raised her voice but also came dangerously close to swearing, Kiera’s eyes widen and her mouth snaps shut. Part of me wants nothing more than to toss my head back and laugh my behind off, but I don’t. What would be the point? All it would do is worsen an already bad situation. It would incite my sister and guaranteed me a heap of insults and aggravation later.
Composed once again, my mother faces me. “This town likely struck you because it’s been all over the news. There have been six suicides here in the last four months. All girls.” She pauses and makes a clucking sound with her tongue. “It’s terrible, so sad and just terrible.” She shakes her head. “I’m sure a lot of the kids in your new school are still going to be very upset.”
Allowing all that she’s said to process, I study the fleur-de-lis pattern in the linoleum flooring. I vaguely remember hearing about suicides in a small upstate town. Perhaps that is why it leaped off the page at me. Perhaps it wasn’t the manifestation of a new sixth sense of sorts. “Now that you mention it, I did see something about it on the news when it first happened. I didn’t realize it was Patterson, though.”
The Dark One Page 1