by Jamie Davis
“Because the Erringtons are one of the great Hunter Clans,” Gibbie replied. “They are known primarily as demon hunters, but they are just as happy to kill off any Unusuals they encounter who are not playing nice with humans.”
“Yeah, Dean,” Kristof said. “In the home back there, someone like Jaz Errington would have found another, more permanent solution to the problem of uncontrolled Djinn magic. She would have killed me to cut off the magical flow.”
“You’re kidding,” Dean said. “It wasn’t your fault. You warned the guy against invoking it and he did it anyway.”
“I’m afraid the Erringtons do not see things that way,” Kristof replied. “They are not as bad some of the other Hunter Clans out there. I mean, they don’t kill indiscriminately, but they have their own code and they live by it in everything they do. If one of the Erringtons think you are an Unusual who is a risk to humans, they’ll take action.”
Barry asked, “But what are they doing here? She told us all in the class that they had just got back from a bodyguard mission in Syria.”
Kristof nodded, “It would make sense that the Erringtons would want to be involved there. The various terrorists are destroying ancient ruins there because they represent Gods that are not their own. A lot of those ancient holy places were built in their locations because of a nexus with the netherworld. If they break the seals on the gateways during the destruction of the temples, they could cause an opening that demons would use to infiltrate the world. It could cause havoc if left unchecked.”
“That’s true,” Gibbie said aloud. “We Unusuals are all scared of the Erringtons, but demons are terrified of them. They have become very proficient demon hunters over the centuries. Rumor has it that Jaz Errington is the best to come along in the last one hundred years. I’d bet that if she is here, she is following a demon of some sort.
Dean took in all they were saying, listening and filing all of it away for future reference. The thing that had him thinking the most was that nagging feeling of deja vu he had since he had first seen Jaswinder Errington in class that morning. It was the feeling he had seen her somewhere before. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to him that the two recent events could be related, but in light of what Gibbie and Kristof were saying, he could not ignore it. There had been a series of demon attacks in town recently. He and Barry had responded to one a few days earlier. Dean could still see the image of the woman with the sword standing behind the ambulance as he drove away. Now he was sure he knew who it was. Jaz Errington had been there that night.
Barry clapped him on the shoulder to get his attention and it brought him back to the present discussion. He looked around and saw the three others just staring at him.
“You alright, Dean?” Barry asked.
“Yeah, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Gibbie said.
“I don’t think it was a ghost, but I might have seen our Ms. Errington before,” Dean replied. “Barry, remember the animal or demon attack our last night shift rotation?”
Barry nodded. “Yeah. That Hakutaku couple claimed that they were attacked by some sort of Japanese demon called an … Oni, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I didn’t tell anyone, but as we were driving away, I thought I saw a woman, dressed all in black, holding a sword,” Dean said. “I saw her when I looked in the rearview mirror as I pulled away from in front of the house. I looked away for a second, and when I looked back, she was gone. I chalked it up to seeing things after a few long night shifts. Now I have to wonder if she is the reason the Oni demon didn’t come back and kill the couple. It would make sense if she was there and killed it before it could return.”
“If she was there, Dean, then she has been in town for a little while,” Kristof said. “There have been rumors of netherworlders, or what you would call demons, floating around the Unusual community for almost a month. Folks have claimed sightings all over the region. That might be what drew the Erringtons here. If they heard rumors of demons roaming around Elk City, they’d come running to find the source and stop it.”
“Whatever the reason she and her family are here in Elk City, it spells trouble for those of us who they might like to hunt,” Gibbie said. “I’m going to spread the word of their arrival, and then I’m going to ground for a while. I am not getting staked or beheaded by one of those maniacs.” The middle-aged vampire started up the van to punctuate his statement. “Kristof, I’ll drop you off at your place downtown, then I’m disappearing for a while.”
“It’s not fair that you feel like you have to run and hide, Gibbie,” Dean said. “Let me talk to James. There has to be some way to reach out to them and see what is going on locally that has brought them to town.”
“You can try, Dean,” Kristof said. “The Erringtons don’t always play well with the Unusual leadership in a town. I doubt that James is going to be able to do anything. Remember, they’d just as soon stake him as talk to him. The only type beings they will not kill, according to their code, are humans and the Eldara. At least that is what the legends about them say.”
“Well, if that is the case I guess I’ll have to deal with them myself,” Dean said. He was getting angry about these groups of interlopers coming into his town and threatening his friends. First it was The Cause, now it was these hunters. “I will have to set up a little meeting with her. I need to have a few words with Ms. Jaz Errington about what she is doing here.”
“Yeah,” Barry said with a snort of laughter. “Because you made such a good impression on her at the training class this morning. She is definitely primed to listen to you now.”
“I don’t care, Barry,” Dean replied. “Let’s load up and get back to the station. I need to figure out how to contact her and set up a meeting. We need to find out what she is doing here before we she goes and kills one of our patients in her zeal to follow her family’s calling.”
Dean and Barry climbed into the ambulance’s cab and waved to Gibbie and Kristof as they pulled the ambulance away from the van at the hospital. Dean was thinking about the connection between the hunter woman and his own situation. James and Brynne had both suggested that there might be a hunter clan connection to him in his quest to free Ashley from her abductors. Was Jaz Errington’s presence here in Elk City a coincidence? He doubted it. If Ashley had taught him nothing else, she had impressed upon him how the Gods liked to use little connections and coincidences to influence events on earth indirectly. They were forbidden to act directly by some agreement with the forces of darkness long ago, instead relying on the free will decisions of the people and Unusuals populating the earth. They could put situations in front of people to influence a decision, or even force a decision to be made, even if they weren’t sure of the outcome of the decision to be made. Dean wondered if that was what was happening here.
He didn’t like feeling manipulated, especially if it was going to force him to work with this Hunter. She stood for everything he was against. She was a killer. He was a healer. She believed in one group of the city’s occupants being inherently better than the other, while he believed in equal opportunity and treatment for everyone, human and Unusual alike. Dean didn’t know how he was supposed to find the common ground to work with her. He was going to meet her and find a way, though. Ashley was depending on him and owed it to her to try.
9
Jaz wanted to stomp her foot but she forced herself to stand still and tried her best to appear calm. Her father had told her after their meeting with the Fire Chief that she was to come back and meet him here at their corporate offices downtown. Now she was here in front of him, feeling like a little girl all over again, caught sneaking out to the gun range after lights-out.
“… I said, ‘are you paying attention to me’, young lady?” Earnest Errington asked his daughter.
Her eyes darted up to meet his too late and she knew he had gotten his answer. His lips pressed together, forming a thin line under his salt-and-pepper mustache.
“Father, I have met the man in que
stion. I tell you honestly, I don’t believe he will be much help to us in solving our particular dilemma,” Jaz said, keeping her voice level and professional. The fact that did not feel professional was hidden under the surface of her demeanor, barely. Ugh! Why did her father always make her feel this way?
“Jaswinder, I do not recall asking your opinion of the man,” her father stated. “In fact, I don’t believe I asked for your opinion about any of this. This is your assignment and I’ll ask you to fulfill it as you would any other task I assign to you. Is that understood?”
“But Daddy, he is so infuriating, and I’ve only met him one time,” she pleaded with her father. “Imagine what a colossal douchebag he’ll be after spending a few days or weeks with him.” She snapped her mouth shut, knowing she had gone too far.
“Don’t ‘but Daddy’ me,” her father said. “I heard about the way you dressed him down for his unprofessional demeanor during the class. You told both me and the Fire Chief in our meeting after the class. You also heard the way he responded. Dean Flynn is what he called ‘one of the most valuable members of our Station U paramedic team.’ He went on to call him a natural and intuitive medical professional who knows his job and responsibilities. Perhaps your single meeting was more a matter of your impression on him, and not the other way around?”
“I don’t see how that could be the case,” Jaz said in defense of herself. “I was putting a late arrival in his place for tardiness when Mr. Flynn stepped in and interrupted me, defending him.”
“Who was the man in question in relation to Mr. Flynn?”
“It was his probationary medic, apparently,” Jaz replied. “He took issue with me berating his guy.”
“So he came to the defense of his direct subordinate?” Earnest asked. “And this makes him a ‘douchebag’ because?”
She hated when he turned things around with logic. She knew where he was headed with this, and it was making her even more angry. “Look, Father. I know you are going to tell me that I would have done the same thing if someone had laid into one of my subordinates. In fact, you’ve seen me do it. That makes no difference here. I’m sorry, he just rubs me the wrong way.”
“Well get over it,” Earnest said, standing up from behind the desk to walk around it in the well-appointed office. “This is not just me saying it. This is not just another assignment. This is for the honor of the whole clan. The clan oracle herself decreed that it must be you to fulfill this responsibility.”
“I still don’t understand why this is our problem anyway,” Jaz complained. “Some angel gets herself abducted and we are honor bound to help because …?”
Jaz’s father sighed. “Jaz, you know the legends. A long time ago, this particular Eldara assisted the Clan by keeping us from being duped by one of our adversaries into doing their bidding. Your great-great-great-grandfather made an arrangement with her that we would watch over her when she required our assistance. This happened just before our clan followed that adversary to the United States in the late 1850s. It is a centuries-old obligation and we will not be the generation to sully the honor of the clan because you don’t like one of those who must be enlisted to help. Not under my watch.”
“Father, the Oracle said that a hunter, a healer, and a hexen must take up the quest for the missing Eldara,” Jaz said. “What makes the Oracle so sure this one is the healer we must use?”
Her father’s answer was a burst of laughter that continued until he nearly had tears in his eyes. She was not amused by her father’s jocularity. Finally, he composed himself. “Daughter, you have always had a stubborn streak, but I never thought even you would question the veracity of something proclaimed by the clan’s Oracle herself.”
Jaz started to say something but her father held up his hand to stop her.
“She has spoken and names the one called Flynn as the healer, just as she named you as the hunter,” he continued as she listened.
The younger Errington hunter felt herself deflate a little. She knew better than to fight this, but she kept pushing anyway. It stemmed from her need to be the one in charge, and years of having to put men in their place. It was something she was unable to do with her father. Must it always come down to some sort of Daddy issue?
“Okay, so the hunter is me and the healer is this Flynn guy,” Jaz asked. “Who is the hexen? How do we discover the identity of this witch we need to join up with? Has the Oracle been of any help with that?”
“The only variable left is the witch. The Oracle was unable to pierce the veil of the hexen’s identity, only that she, the witch, was involved or connected to this matter in some way. It is as if she does not exist in this world. The Oracle suggested that you and Mr. Flynn would have to work together to figure out who this unknown witch is.”
“So I have to work with him, I get it,” Jaz said. “I dressed him down in front of his peers while he openly challenged my authority, and now we have to find a way to make nice and get along for the honor of the clan.” Jaz sighed. Her temper and need to outdo everything the guys around her could do had gotten her into trouble before. This was one of those things she had learned to deal with. For some reason, though, this time it seemed to bother her more than the others.
“See, I knew you would figure it out,” her father said, a broad grin on his face. His phone chirped on the desk and he picked it up to see the message. His grin widened. “It seems that you will have the opportunity to set forth on your task sooner than you think. Mr. Flynn used our company website to request your contact information. He wants to meet up with you.”
“Oh, joy,” Jaz said, rolling her eyes.
“I will forward you the contact request and you can respond directly to his request. May I suggest you take a different tone with him this time?”
Jaz turned and left the office to the sound of her father’s laughter ringing in her ears.
Four hours later, she rolled into the parking lot at the nondescript diner. The neon sign on the top of the classic diner-car restaurant was supposed to read “Hank’s Place” but instead read “ank’ lace.” Jaz was early. She always liked to arrive at meetings early. It gave her a chance to get the lay of the land and establish an advantage over her opponents.
Jaz did a visual sweep of the parking lot and then sat back in the driver’s seat as she parked the black Ford Expedition SUV. Old habits died hard and she never let her guard down, at least not all the way. The fact that she had just been in Syria hunting a particularly nasty group of demons freed by terrorist radicals there, caused her to be a bit more on edge. That, and the fact that she didn’t look forward to this meeting with the paramedic.
Her father drove her nuts, not just because he was the clan’s leader and she had to obey him. It was also a matter of his being right every time he ordered her to do something she didn’t want to. She knew that this paramedic, Dean Flynn, should not be able to get under her skin so easily. That she had allowed him to do so was a problem. She knew that. The fact she had allowed it to surface in an argument with her father was infuriating.
She settled back and did some deep breathing exercises to calm herself. It would do no good to go into this meeting with her dander up. Her temper was legendary in her family. She chalked it up to being the only girl, besides her mother, in a family of men. Her brothers had all teased her as the youngest of the brood. They told her she could never be the top hunter in the clan. They told her it was a man’s job. She had eventually proved them all wrong, but not without cost. She was the best hunter in the Errington clan, a fact she had proven with both individual kills and the successful team raids she had led. But the victory was bittersweet. To be honest, Jaz had never wanted it, never wanted to be a hunter in the field, but fate had a way of twisting everyone’s desires to its own pattern. Each of her four brothers had died on missions before she had reached the pinnacle of her abilities. Now, as badly as she wanted to show them what she could do, what she had done, that could never be. It was too late.
He
r last remaining brother, Anton, had died in a raid on a demon lair in Siberia six years ago. He had been the eldest, the heir apparent; the golden boy. Now he was gone, gutted by a hidden Scara demon before he even knew what hit him. She had become the Errington clan’s heir at that moment, and with it came the powers that went with the title. That was the moment she entered into her own realization of her abilities. She had always been looking forward to going to college and having a somewhat normal life, at least as normal as could be for the member of a hunter clan. Once she became the heir; that had all changed.
Her father changed the direction of her education as soon as word came back of her brother’s death. Jaz didn’t even have time to grieve. Everything she did became more urgent and everyone told her she needed to work harder. She had always trained with weapons and learned the lore, but it all became more intensive and more real then. She started going on trips with other hunters, shadowing them and learning from them. She went to college, but it was through an online program that focused on criminal justice and military history, not the art history major to which she had previously aspired.
None of that changed the here and now, she knew. Jaz had worked hard to embrace her new role and live up to what she saw as the expectations of her father, mother, and her lost brothers. Now she was here, in this small, boring city in Maryland, fulfilling a quest started by some ancestor in exchange for a debt with which she was not involved. To top it off, she was forced to do it without her usual team, the team of hunters with whom she had defeated some of the worst demons to break through the wards and walk the earth. No, Jaz was forced to do it essentially alone, with an obstinate paramedic who was dedicated to saving the monsters living among the human population. Then, the two unlikely allies were supposed to team up with a witch of all people. The combination was an affront to everything she stood for as a member of those sworn to protect the human race from the things that no one even believed in anymore.