King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (24 page)

“What is that?” her look said when she turned to face me, but I didn’t know and could only shrug my shoulders in reply.

I waved my hand into the darkness behind us, the signal for Gallagher to move up, and a few seconds later he emerged from the shadows to crouch at my other side.

I cocked my head in the direction of the railing and he slowly drew himself up a few inches to peer over it as we had done.

“Go mbeire an diabhal leis thú!” he swore and quickly dropped back down behind the edge of the railing.

I stared at him in shock.

The language he’d just spoken in was damned similar to the one used by that thing below us!

He pulled me and Denise close and said, in English this time, “We need to get out of here. Right now!”

The look on his face said it all. He was absolutely terrified!

Gallagher turned to head back the way we had come, Denise at his heels, but I couldn’t resist one more look over the railing.

The figure had stopped its chanting and now stood stock still, its head cocked slightly to one side as if listening. The Sorrows at its feet were still as well, their heads raised out of the mass of bodies in an eerie replica of the pose held by their master.

It must have heard Gallagher’s outburst, for even as I watched, it turned its head to look in my direction.

I don’t know what scared me more, the strange visage that stared up at me from the deck below or the fact that it had turned its head around one hundred and eighty degrees without turning its body. Its skin was stretched as tight as a drum over the bones of its face, and its eyes stared out at me like gleaming pools of malevolence. I was frozen in place, unable to move a muscle. My mind was screaming at me to run and all I could do was stand there and stare dumbly back at the dark eyes that stared at me.

If I’d been alone, it would have ended right then and there.

Thankfully, I wasn’t. Realizing I wasn’t with them, Gallagher came back to find me. He must have recognized something was wrong, for the next thing I knew he slammed me bodily to the floor, breaking the strange connection between me and the grim reaper below us. The instant my gaze fell below the level of the railing I could move again, as if I’d been released from some kind of spell.

For all I knew, that was exactly what did happen.

A howling cry rose up from the deck below us, and I didn’t need to look to know that the Sorrows had just been released to pursue of us.

Gallagher hauled me to my feet and sent me stumbling down the corridor after Denise, who was already a dozen or so yards ahead.

“Go, go, go!” Gallagher screamed behind me, and, trust me, I went.

We raced back through the ship at a dead run, plowing through any obstacles that got in our way because we didn’t have time to go around. Twice Gallagher was forced to discourage the Sorrows from getting too close by tossing a humming, spitting ball of energy back the way we’d come, knocking those in the front ranks to the ground and slowing those coming up from behind.

While it didn’t stop them, it did give us a chance to widen our lead slightly and that was good thing.

We burst out of the hole we’d used to gain entrance, scrambled down the debris pile, and ran like hell for the car parked on the other side of the building just as the Sorrows emerged from the wreck behind us.

Ahead of me, Denise skidded to a stop, turned to face back the way we had come, and raised both hands above her head.

“Gravitas!” she cried, flinging her hands forward as she did so.

Something invisible shot past my ear, and I glanced back just in time to see the pile of debris holding the ship up explode upward as if someone had set off fifty pounds of TNT in its midst. Dirt, trees, and Sorrows went flying in all directions.

Even with the slight delay she’d taken to blast the Sorrows, Denise still beat us to the car. By the time I slid into the backseat, just a second or so behind Gallagher’s arrival, she had the car started and was smoking the tires as she spun it around in preparation for getting the hell out of there.

The Sorrows might be fast, but there was no way they were going to outrun a car powered by a 6.1-liter Hemi V-8 engine and driven by a woman who loved speed more than your average NASCAR fan.

By the time we roared out of the industrial park, we’d left the Sorrows eating our dust and unable to follow.

38

ROBERTSON

Robertson sent Doherty and another agent to stake out the location Lafitte had given to them while he put the necessary elements in place.

Clearwater was apparently staying with a man named Simon Gallagher, a well-respected local resident who ran a halfway house and clinic for the less fortunate, which, in Robertson’s view, meant roughly half the city. Busting into the place could have unexpected consequences if the press got wind of it. He could imagine the headlines already, some garbage about police brutality and government displeasure with social programs—all of it shouted from the rooftops.

Never mind the fact that he’d need to get a local judge to issue the search warrant on nothing more than the comments made by Lafitte, which probably wouldn’t happen. Even if it did, it would likely take three or four days; nothing in the Big Easy happened at the pace he was used to back in Washington.

No, he needed to come at this from a different direction.

That’s when the idea to stage a phony health inspection came to him. All he needed was a cop or two and a couple of city vans. The rest he could handle himself.

It took the rest of the afternoon and early evening to coordinate the raid, but he decided that would actually be to his benefit. The health department was normally a nine-to-five operation, so there wouldn’t be anyone there if Gallagher chose to call it in and confirm his credentials.

Shortly after eight, Robertson pulled over to the curb two blocks from the clinic. Doherty opened the door and slipped inside.

“Anything?”

Doherty shook his head. “No sign of Hunt, Clearwater, or Alexandrov. There was a shift change about two hours ago, but that was all.”

Robertson considered the situation. If he went in and Hunt wasn’t there, he’d be taking the risk of alerting Hunt to his presence. On the other hand, if he could deprive Hunt of a location that he felt was safe, that might push him into making an error.

And errors, as Robertson knew, were the bane of a fugitive’s existence.

The chance to catch Hunt unaware overrode his caution. They were going in.

He gave the signal to the officer waiting patiently in the squad car behind him. Blue and red lights lit the night as the officer pulled around him and led the small caravan the rest of the way to the clinic parking lot.

Robertson sent Doherty to handle anyone who might be in the three-story house next door and then walked toward the clinic. By the time he reached the door, the officer, Lewis was his name, was waiting for him and the rest of his men, six in all, who were coming up behind them.

With a nod from Robertson, Lewis went into action.

He pounded on the door with the butt of his flashlight. “Police!” he shouted. “Open up!”

Moments later the door was opened by a tall Hispanic man dressed in doctor’s scrubs.

“Can I help you?”

Robertson flashed his badge, knowing in the dim light that the other man wouldn’t be able to see it clearly, and said, “Health inspection. Step out of the way, please.”

Without waiting for a response, he pushed past the other man and entered the building.

He gestured to the others, telling them to spread out and search the place. The facility wasn’t all that big and it didn’t take long for them to relay the fact that none of the people they were looking for were present.

Which meant he had to turn to option B. Put Hunt back on the street to throw him off balance.

The man who’d opened the door finally broke away from the cop who’d been instructed to detain him as long as possible and he marched over to Robertson.

“What the hell is going on here? And who are you? A health inspector you said?”

Rather than answer the man’s questions, Robertson went on the offensive.

“I’m going to need to see your permits and all of your hazardous-waste paperwork. Then I’m going to need to examine randomly selected patient records, to ensure that proper HIPAA procedures are being followed.”

“Permits? Waste paperwork? What the hell are you talking about?”

Robertson whirled on the man.

“Your name?”

“Ferrara. Charles Ferrara.”

“Well, Charles, say hello to your worst nightmare. You thought the IRS was a pain in the ass?” Robertson laughed. “Not even close!”

He pointed at the double doors in front of him. “Is this the clinic itself?” he asked, and then, without waiting for an answer, stepped inside.

The room was full of makeshift hospital beds; there had to be twenty, maybe thirty, in all, and every single one of them held a patient.

But what brought him to an abrupt halt three or four steps inside the room was the fact that none of the patients was moving. They lay on their backs, with their arms at their sides and their eyes staring upward. It was like they were mannequins rather than living, breathing people.

“What’s wrong with them?” he asked softly, suddenly afraid to wake any of them up.

Ferrara answered dismissively. “It’s complicated; you wouldn’t understand.”

Just like that, Robertson knew he was lying. He had heard enough liars in his day to know when someone was being untruthful, especially about something as major as this.

They don’t know what it is.

The thought leapt into his mind from out of nowhere, but the minute it had he knew it was true.

They had a room full of people who looked like they were in some kind of a coma and didn’t know how it had happened or what was going to happen next …

It was a frightening thought.

These people belonged in a hospital, preferably one with a containment unit, rather than in some street-side clinic. Just keeping them here was not only endangering their lives, but endangering the lives of others in the city. If this thing was infectious in any way, they could have a full-scale disaster on their hands.

It might even be too late.

Despite his growing concern, Robertson wanted to jump for joy at the opportunity in front of him. He no longer needed to manufacture a reason to shut the place down, even if only temporarily; one had just been handed to him on a silver platter.

With Ferrara already forgotten behind him, Robertson pulled out his cell phone and made the first of a series of calls. By the time he finished some twenty minutes later, the first of the units dispatched to transfer the patients to a full-scale medical facility was already arriving.

If that didn’t bring Gallagher running, nothing would.

And once he had Gallagher, Robertson was sure he could track down Hunt.

39

HUNT

As we raced down the street, Gallagher’s phone rang. He answered it, listened for a few minutes, and then said, “Okay, gather whoever you can and meet me at the house on Nineteenth.”

Hanging up, he turned to the two of us and said, “Local authorities just ordered our people to shut down the clinic. They want the sick to be transferred to the nearest hospital, and they hauled in some of my people for questioning. We’ve got another house we maintain for emergencies, so we’re going to have to operate from there for now.”

After that, he refused to talk while in the car about what we’d seen, insisting that we wait until we were all safely ensconced behind the protective wards surrounding our new location.

I held on to my temper and waited.

Our new location was a three-story, multifamily home in a fringy neighborhood. Gallagher pulled around to the extended drive in back, preventing the Charger from being seen from the street, and then led us inside.

Once there, I didn’t waste any time confronting him for some answers.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked. “You knew that thing back there?”

It was more an accusation than a question.

“I recognized it, yes,” he said, his tone grimmer than usual.

“Want to fill us in?” Denise asked. She hadn’t gotten as good a look as I had, but I could tell by the sarcasm in her voice that she too was wondering what was up.

We were seated in the kitchen with the lights on, which meant I was back to being blind again. For once, that was actually fine with me, as I wanted to listen for what Gallagher wasn’t saying, more than what he was, and I didn’t want any visual distractions. Dmitri had been right: Gallagher had led us into danger, more interested in the end result than what could happen if we encountered trouble, and we’d almost paid the price for it.

I wondered what he knew that he wasn’t sharing with us.

“In Wales, he’s the Angeu, the King of the Dead,” Gallagher began. “Other cultures have other names—the Bretons of southern France call him Ankou. To most of us here in North America, he’s the Grim Reaper. Different names, same being.”

You have got to be shitting me …

“Death? Are you telling me that thing we just saw was Death himself?”

I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice. Having just run away from Death was a bit too weird even for me, regardless of how strange things had gotten over the last few years. Mages, doppelgangers, and berserkers, okay. Heck, I could even deal with fairies. But Death himself?

Give me a freakin’ break.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Gallagher was telling us.

“Not Death per se, or at least not as you are suggesting, but a personification of him just the same. Some say the Angeu was the first child of Adam and Eve, cursed when his parents abandoned him in the Garden. Others claim he is the last to die in any given year, forced to collect the souls of the dead until his replacement arrives. I don’t really know; all I do know is that once the Angeu sets his sights on you, it’s as good as over. He’s got the power of any number of Old World demigods put together.”