Face the Dark (Hunters of the Dark #3)

by Dave Ferraro

  ***

  “Well, that was a bit messy,” Hunter said, walking out of the warehouse beside Amelia. “Forty-three bodies.”

  “And one survivor,” Amelia reminded him. “That’s something at least.” She shook her head. “It’s just too bad so many of them got away. What they did to some of those people…it was like they had no remorse.”

  Hunter sent her a sideways glance. “I understand that you’re usually the first to leap to the monsters’ defense. Sometimes they really are just monsters, though.”

  “I know.”

  “And just think - we probably gave them a good scare at the very least. They’ll think twice before pulling something of this magnitude again. Just by doing this and capturing the eleven perpetrators we did will send a clear message that we won’t tolerate this sort of behavior, that we will find them when they indulge in these…horrid activities.”

  Amelia nodded. “I guess so. It just doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “After seeing things like this, it never seems like enough,” he told her softly.

  “Amelia!”

  Amelia turned around to see Cameron jogging up to her. “Hey, Cameron.”

  He smiled as he drew up to them. “Amelia, I was wondering if you wanted a ride back to the mansion with me. Shanna went with some scholars to see about the survivor.”

  “Oh, thanks for offering, but I have a ride with Hunter.”

  Scratching his head, Cameron looked at her sheepishly. “I was, ah, sort of hoping to talk to you about something.”

  Amelia blinked, then glanced at Hunter.

  “It’s alright, go ahead,” Hunter told her. “I have some music to keep me company that I’m sure you wouldn’t appreciate, let alone tolerate.”

  Scoffing, Amelia smiled. “Alright, see you back home.” He sent her a little wave as he walked away.

  “Thanks, Hunter!” Cameron called after him. He turned to Amelia. “And thank you. You’re saving my life here.”

  Amelia raised an eyebrow as she followed him to his car and slid into the passenger seat. “Sounds serious.”

  “It’s very serious,” he said slowly, watching her for a moment. He took a deep breath, his hands on the wheel in front of him.

  Amelia noticed his hands shaking and put a hand over one of them. “Cameron? What’s going on?”

  He blinked, and Amelia noted that there were tears in his eyes. She looked back to see the scholars’ vans pull out of the parking lot, leaving them alone. “Do you want me to drive?” she asked softly.

  Cameron shook his head.

  “Is it about Shanna? Did something happen between the two of you?”

  Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Cameron turned to face her. “No, it’s not about Shanna. It’s about me. Shanna’s the only one who knows. It’s…hard to talk about this. I don’t have too many people I…” He let his voice trail off and he laughed lightly after a moment. “Sorry this is so intense.”

  “Don’t apologize,” she ordered him. “We’re friends, and I want to know what’s upsetting my friend so much.”

  He met her eyes and nodded. “Remember how I set off the magick detector and caused the whole mix up with the shape shifter?”

  “Of course,” Amelia said. Her eyes narrowed. “We never did find out what that was about.”

  “It’s because I have magick on me. A lot of it.”

  Amelia looked him up and down. “Why do you need magick? You hunt shape shifters.”

  “I don’t use magick except for…a glamour.”

  “A glamour.”

  He smiled lightly through his discomfort. “I was disfigured by a shape shifter. That’s how I got into this business in the first place. A sorceress found me, used magick to heal me, and a glamour to cover up the scars it left behind. They’re…” He looked away. “They’re pretty massive scars.”

  “Where are they?” she asked softly.

  He gestured to his right cheek and ran his finger from his ear to his mouth.

  “Can you take it down?”

  With a deep sigh, he nodded. Murmuring foreign words softly to himself, he looked up at her with a new face.

  The thick red ridges looked painful and angry, but Amelia had been expecting that. What she hadn’t been expecting was the hole in his cheek, allowing her a glimpse of his teeth beyond. She had to swallow hard to keep from gasping. “Cameron…”

  “I know,” he said, turning so that she couldn’t see his scarred side. “It’s bad.”

  “It’s not…that bad.”

  He chuckled. “You’re good at many things, but you are not a very good liar, Amelia. I saw the shock in your face. It’s disgusting. My face was completely…obliterated by that fucking beast.”

  Amelia watched his hands, white-knuckled on the steering wheel. After a moment, he whispered the spell to put the glamour back in place.

  “Well, I’m glad that you told me,” Amelia said. “That must have been a terrible burden.”

  Smiling, he shook his head. “I didn’t confess my deep dark secret to feel better about it.” He turned to face her again. “I need your help.”

  “My help?”

  “It’s been flickering in and out. Just for a few seconds here and there, but…I’m worried that it won’t hold, that it’s going to disappear. And, well, you saw. I can’t…live like that.”

  Amelia considered. “Let me take a look at the glamour.”

  He turned the scarred side of his face toward her and closed his eyes. She touched his scar, and he tried not to wince. Not from pain, but from embarrassment. Every instinct told him to move away from her, to keep her away from that nauseating scar. But he held firm. He tried not to think about it as she murmured spells and traced shapes over his skin. He could all but feel her staring at his cheek, the one area where he wanted the least attention from everybody. For years, he’d had to keep people away from it. Family, girls…he couldn’t let them touch it. Not ever. He’d hurt plenty of feelings in his quest to keep it hidden, pushed plenty of people away, but the glamour only did so much. It hid it from sight, not from touch. And if it didn’t even do that anymore…

  Amelia finished with a sigh, Cameron’s eyes turning to her questioningly. “So?’ he prodded. “What’s the diagnosis?”

  “You’re not going to like it,” she said, staring straight ahead.

  “Just…tell me.”

  She nodded. “Something disrupted it. If I were to take an educated guess, I would say that it was our time in Greece, when we were out of phase with this reality. The level of raw power that it took to shift us like that…it can cause a lot of issues when different sorts of magick are factored into the equation.”

  “Okay. So, how do we fix it?”

  “I don’t think we can.”

  He stared at her, his heart skipping a beat. “What do you mean?”

  Turning to face him, she covered one of his hands with one of hers again. “Look, Cameron, that glamour that was placed on you was massive. Whoever put it there had some impressive skills, and I’m not nearly advanced enough to restore something of that magnitude, even if it were possible.” She paused. “Glamours aren’t meant to be used long-term. Certainly not indefinitely. It’s almost unheard of. It looks like someone was able to do just that for you, but…these things have prices, Cameron. Magick doesn’t come from nowhere. It has consequences when misused. If I were to put another glamour up or attempt to patch the one that’s breaking down now…it would kill you. Your body wouldn’t be able to take that much more exposure to magick. I have to ground myself every day to keep from-” She gasped as he shoved her hand away from him.

  “Alright!” he said. “I get it. You won’t help me.”

  She looked at him, shocked for a moment. But she realized quickly that this was pretty traumatic news she was relaying to him. Of course he wasn’t going to take it well. Who wants to hear that they’re goin
g to be disfigured for the rest of their lives?

  “Cameron,” she said softly. “It doesn’t matter. There are cosmetic-”

  “No, not for this,” he interrupted her with a short laugh. “Even if it gets better, it’ll never be like before. I’ll be ugly. A freak.”

  “No, you won’t. You have friends. You have Shanna. She saw it and she’s still with you, isn’t she?”

  “How long do I have?”

  Amelia watched him. He wouldn’t even look at her. He stared out of the windshield, seething. She was a little frightened of him, if she was honest with herself. “It’s very unstable. I’m honestly surprised it’s still functioning at all.”

  “Great,” he said. “Just…great.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes before Cameron turned the key in the ignition.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” she asked.

  He glared at her before peeling out of the parking lot.