Banshee Hunt

by Curtis, Greg

  “My ex-wife sold my daughter to these child slavers. Francis made her do it,” James answered him woodenly. He really didn't know what to think, except that he wanted to be with his daughter.

  “A rogue fascinator.” The cowboy shook his head slowly. “Always a nightmare. And no one knew.”

  “Oh and one more thing you should know. There's magic in the world. And you can't tell anyone.”

  James would have said something. But he simply didn't know what to say. Or what to think. Especially when the woman returned and brought more people with her. People who started rounding up the other children. And another paramedic to check the injured out. None of whom he noticed seemed to be having problems with the remaining tear gas.

  “You need help Mr. Henderson. Help to keep yourself out of jail. Your family needs care. They’ll need a lot of counselling for a long time to come. Your brother needs to be locked up somewhere that he can never escape from. And after the doctors have treated her, your daughter will need a stable environment and an education suited for someone with a gift. She's a special child.”

  “We can do all of that. But our services don't come free.”

  “I'll pay.” Finally James had something he could say. Something that he wasn't confused about at all. He would pay anything. He wasn't rich by any means – not since the divorce – but he would pay anything.

  “I know. But we don't want your money. We want your services.”

  “Services?” James didn't understand. But he did understand that he would give them whatever they asked for.

  “I'm here to offer you a job. You're a fully trained and experienced detective. You seem to have some sort of immunity to at least mind affecting magic. And you know our secret. You'll make a great hunter.”

  “Hunter?” James had no idea what a hunter was. A bounty hunter maybe. But then he realised he didn't care. “I'll do it. Anything. Just save Matti!”

  “I thought you might.” The cowboy smiled and stepped towards him. Then he thrust out a hand for James to take.

  “Welcome to the Illuminati.”

  ◄►

  “You want to make him a hunter?” Corinth stared at her boss with something akin to disbelief. “After this?” She indicated the bodies lying all around, most of them with gunshot wounds to their groins. As for the man himself, he was gone. Taken to the hospital to watch over his daughter.

  “Especially after this.” The cowboy nodded at her.

  “He's a thug! He'll be hunting rogues down and killing them! We aren't in the business of murder. And when the rest of the gifted find out we've hired someone like that we'll have a riot.”

  “And who's dead?” The cowboy indicated the now largely empty basement. The children had been removed. They were currently upstairs and being cared for. Emergency services were on their way. All that were left were a few unconscious men. All of them badly injured but alive. “He could have killed them, but he didn't. Not even when they had his daughter.”

  “He's been shooting their nuts off!”

  “Considering that they're child slavers?” He let a pregnant silence hang for a bit. “This is a man who will walk into hell for his family. We need that.”

  “Besides –,” he smiled, “– the others could use a little kicking now and then. We've been lax. Letting them get away with too much. There've been too many accidents. Too many rogues thinking they can do whatever the hell they want. Too many gifted refusing to register. In fact this entire mess started because a couple of our people didn't register their gifts. If they had – if we'd known about the children – none of this would have happened. We are the closest thing to law our people have and the gifted don't respect us as they should.”

  Corinth stared at him, agreeing a little with what he said, but still not liking it. Especially since her last view of the man as he'd been led away was of a man who looked as though he'd been hit in the head with a shovel once too often. He was holding it together for the moment. But only just. And she wasn't sure he'd continue holding it together forever.

  “I'm glad he's your problem and not mine.”

  Chapter One

  New York – Present Day

  It was a nice house James thought, as he wandered up the path to the front door. But then this was a good subdivision, full of nice houses and of course the beautiful people who lived in them. The lawns were manicured, the hedges trimmed neatly, and those few cars that were parked on the street were all upmarket models that had been cleaned and polished. Not a single home here he thought was under a million bucks. The witch's house was probably worth a lot more.

  He might not know much about architecture but he was sure fluted Roman columns supporting an entire section of the roof over the extensive front porch didn't come cheap. Nor did the massive panoramic windows the front of the house seemed to be made of. He was also sure that this wasn't the sort of neighbourhood that cops and bounty hunters lived in. Which was one reason he felt the need to hurry a little to get to the front door. And when he got there he didn't waste any time knocking. He simply ran his glove over the lock, letting the enchantment of the universal key unlock it, and then turned the handle. The door opened without a problem.

  There was an alarm on the inside, and while the other glove had an enchantment that would take care of that, he found he didn't need to. The alarm was off suggesting that the witch was home. And if he was right, her latest victim was still here too.

  The house was modern and stylishly decorated by someone with an eye for the softer colours. The carpet was thick and soft underfoot, the paint on the walls and ceiling fresh and clean. Obviously someone had put some thought into designing the house, and then some effort into keeping it clean, presumably so that it looked perfectly in keeping with the rest of the houses in the upmarket neighbourhood. It was the sort of house he would have liked to live in. And the sort of neighbourhood.

  Neither the witch nor her likely victim came running to see who had entered the house. He was surprised by that. Even though he hadn't made much noise, he would have expected someone to have heard him. If they were in the main part of the house that was.

  A quick peek around the corner told him however that they weren't in the main part of the house. The lounge with its expensive looking couches and coffee tables was empty. The tv was off. And when he checked the dining room and kitchen he saw that they too were empty.

  Still, he knew that the witch had to be here somewhere. He'd followed her home, and watched her drive her expensive sports car into the drive and then park it in the garage. That had been barely an hour ago. And the victim – he was almost certain now that the girl was her victim – whoever she was, had been with her. Slumped over in the passenger seat, but still with her. So they were here. He just had to find them.

  James pulled the gloves off and stashed them away in his pockets. They might look like driving gloves and they might have useful enchantments on them for breaking and entering and the like, but they were just going to be in the way from here on. Besides, he didn't like wearing gloves for the same reason he didn't like wearing hats or scarves – they irritated him. Most things magical did as well.

  Carefully and very quietly James started searching the rest of the house. There was a lot to search. More than he'd expected. Five bedrooms and five bathrooms. A study and a games room, and behind them a huge glassed in arboretum. But even as James passed by the arboretum he spied even more rooms ahead. It was as though everywhere he went there was more house to discover. More doors to peer through. And on the other side of one of those doors a rogue witch, with who knew what abilities.

  She would use them. It was the string of missing children that had put him on the witch's tail. Four in the last two years. That was too many children to disappear inexplicably from this sort of up market neighbourhood. And when they were all teenage girls, that just made things all the more suspicious. These weren't runaways.

  But the fact that they had been teenage girls had also given him an idea
of where to look for clues. The local mall seemed to have featured high on all their itineraries. He had followed the breadcrumbs and it had led him to the witch who ran a small perfumery there. Teenage girls and free perfume samples – it was a match made in heaven.

  Or hell.

  Finding the witch had been mostly routine police work. He had simply tracked the movements of the girls by their credit cards – they all had credit cards naturally – and that had given him the hunting ground. From there he had spoken with friends of the missing girls and that had narrowed the location to only a few stores. And after hours spent working his way through the mall's security camera records he had determined the actual store. Working out what the witch was doing with the girls however, would take more time. But he had a theory for how she was taking the girls. It had become obvious the instant he had seen video of the witch “helping” a girl – a fifth victim he assumed – out of her store and into her car. Her perfumes, some of them at least, were probably enchanted.

  James had seen it on the mall security cameras. The one that looked out onto the perfumery and into its front window. One spray of the “perfume” and the girl had become pliable. Weak. She'd even needed help to stand up. And the witch had been only too willing to provide that help, closing the shop and walking her out to the car park. The girl could have been simply feeling sick as people assumed, but James didn't think so. He suspected he had another kidnap victim. And so suddenly what had been a simple hunt for a witch had become an urgent rescue mission – save that that was not his job any more. He wasn't a cop.

  Now both witch and victim were inside here somewhere, and he had a horrible feeling that he'd wasted too much time scouting the neighbourhood and getting details. But he'd had to be sure who the woman was. What she was. What he would face in there. An angry husband, a boyfriend, dogs or an innocent woman completely stunned by a strange man breaking into her house when she was caring for a sick teenage girl. It could have all been coincidence after all. Now though, he was almost sure. When none of the neighbours had ever been inside the witch's house or knew any more about her than her name, and when several – women mostly – kept telling him that they couldn't get a handle on the woman's age – that said witch. Women were good at finding out details about people – especially other women. If they didn't know their neighbour of many years, it suggested to him that there was something wrong. It might be sexist, but it was mostly true.

  It was taking too long checking though the house. The girl could already be dead, assuming that was what the witch was doing with them. Certainly the witch hadn't abducted her just so they could chat. But he couldn't find them. Not inside the house. And although the sky was darkening he could see out across the back yard and there was no other structure out there where they might be. Similarly there was none in the front yard either. And it was a single story house which he'd been right through. Yet the garage when he checked it had her dark red convertible parked in it. So they had to be here somewhere.

  Logic and experience told him that there were only two directions left to check. Up and down. They were either in an attic or a basement. And really it could only be a basement. James was pretty sure he would have heard it if someone was moving around overhead. So somewhere in the floor there had to be a hatch leading down to the basement. Unless of course she had a portal somewhere or the magic of dimension.

  Doing what every good police officer did when he couldn't find an answer, he went back to the start and retraced his steps. Every room had to be searched again. Somewhere there had to be a way down. But it took time to find. A lot of time because he kept checking and rechecking the rooms, walking over every inch of the carpet listening for any creaking sounds. There were none. Unfortunately for the longest time he didn't think about the hallway. In fact he must have walked over the hatch a dozen times before he noticed that the mat was askew. It should have been straight like everything else in this immaculately cleaned house. But the moment he realised that the dark blue runner that ran over the thick pile carpet was askew he knew why. It was askew because it was placed directly over the hatch. It seemed that when the hatch had lifted up the mat had moved.

  Hurriedly he picked up the mat and tossed it away to reveal what he'd expected to see. A trap door leading down into the basement. It was well concealed, the thick carpet almost completely hiding the edges of the hatch. But if he looked closely he could still see the outline of the hatch where the carpet had been cut.

  Opening it was even more difficult than finding the hatch. Undoubtedly there was some sort of mechanism that raised it, but he had no idea where the switch or lever was. So he had to lift it simply by grabbing on to the carpet with his fingers and pulling. Still, it came up with a bit of effort and a few torn finger nails and once it was up he could see the steps leading down. Down to the dungeon. Because that was what it had to be. Proper basements didn't have concealed hatches.

  In some strange fit of interior design madness the witch had extended the modern soft pastel theme of the house to the steps leading down. So it was carpeted with the same thick shag, and the walls were painted in the same colours. There were even a couple of paintings on the walls by the stairs. It could almost have been just a normal staircase leading down to a bottom story. Save that there was a concealed hatch at the top and a heavy door at the bottom of the stairs. And that the house had no bottom story.

  But it did have traps.

  James avoided them. Thanks to the enchantments he’d had tattooed into his skin, he could see them. Though even without them James knew he would have sensed the traps. He might have no magic of his own, but he was naturally immune to anything that twisted thoughts. So he saw the weakened floor board the fourth step down that would creak and move just enough to activate a nasty spell of some sort. A spell of mental dominance he guessed from the feel of it. Just the thing an owner might want to have in case of an unwelcome visitor – like him. Fortunately it was easy to avoid that step as he continued on down. It was also easy to avoid skin contact with the door handle at the bottom by wrapping his hand in a handkerchief. Bare flesh on that handle would have been a mistake as it was coated with some sort of neurotoxin. He could smell it.

  They were only simple traps. They might have been good for catching the unwary, but he was never that foolish. And in a way he actually welcomed finding the traps. They were the first concrete proof he had that he was dealing with a witch. But as the door to the dungeon swung open and his heart raced a little he knew that the real danger still lay ahead. He spotted the witch before the door had completely opened.

  In a heartbeat he recognised her just as he realised what she was doing. The girl had been tied down to a bed like a sacrifice and he could see that one arm was dripping blood from a cut wrist. The witch was using the girl’s blood to undertake some extremely dark magic. Blood magic. She was draining her.

  As for the witch she looked much like any middle aged housewife from an upmarket background. There was no pointed hat, no broomstick and probably no black cat. Not that many witches matched that anachronism. But the image she presented of a middle aged suburban housewife was a lie. She was nobody's wife because she would never have let another share her life. And she was probably far older than she appeared, using her crimes to keep her young. But really, all he saw when he looked at her was the monster she truly was. She was a woman without any understanding of human compassion. But then considering her crimes, how could she know such a thing? She would categorise other people as being either nuisances, servants or “human resources”. She was a sociopath, pure and simple.

  Unfortunately as he saw her the witch saw him.

  “Who are you?”

  The witch hurled the question at him the moment she saw him standing there in the doorway, obviously both surprised and angry to see him. Clearly she'd thought that her precautions were enough to protect her. They weren't. All her wards designed to twist thoughts and make people think everything was normal were useless against him.
They had been even before the Illuminati had placed their protections on him. He was immune. His thoughts could not be bent. And while she undoubtedly had greater vitality, speed and strength than a woman her age should, he was sure he could handle her in a fight.

  But James was less concerned with her and what she could do and more concerned with her captive. A girl who couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen lay cruelly stretched out on what looked like a leather covered massage table. It looked like the sort of thing a physio would use when he treated strained muscles. But the witch was no healer, and the girl wasn't being treated for any injury. Instead she was stretched out on her back on the table, cruelly bound by her wrists and ankles, and with her wrist draped over a stainless steel bucket. It was there to catch the blood as it dripped from a ragged gash in her wrist.

  In time he knew, when the last of her blood had been lost and the girl was dead, the witch would take that blood, condense it and turn it into potions of her vital essence. Then she would use those potions to return her youth and vitality to her as well as to boost her own magic. It was a shocking crime, the magical equivalent of cannibalism. But unfortunately he had seen it before in his five years as a hunter for the Illuminati. He had seen even worse. And he knew the girl wasn't the witch's first victim. Nor, unless he stopped her, would she be the last.