King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (30 page)

Robertson didn’t say anything, just looked at him and waited.

“There’s a CI downstairs who claims he can tell us where Hunt is. He’ll only talk directly to you, he says.”

“He asked for me by name?”

“Yes, sir.”

Now that’s interesting
, Robertson thought. Very few people knew he was in New Orleans. How had the confidential informant known to ask for him by name?

Only one way to find out, he supposed.

“Bring him in, Doherty. Let’s hear what the man has to say.”

Robertson sat back in his chair and took a moment to straighten his tie; image was important. He toyed with and ultimately discarded several ways of dealing with the situation before deciding to play it a bit nonchalant until he knew the other man wasn’t simply after the reward money. No sense in getting too excited.

Their CI turned out to be a hard-looking man in his late thirties, with dark hair and a two-day beard. He came in, glanced nervously around, and then took a seat in front of Robertson’s desk when asked to do so.

The senior FBI agent studied him for a few moments, letting the other man grow a bit uncomfortable, before leaning forward and getting to the point.

“Your name?”

“Bruce,” he said quickly, and then, when Robertson waved a hand in a “come on” gesture, he said, “Bruce Myers.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Myers?”

He smiled as he said it, knowing the kind of effect his smile had on people.

Myers stammered a bit but finally found his voice and said, “I’m here about the reward.”

Robertson cocked his head to one side, but didn’t say anything.
If this son of a bitch is wasting my time …

“I know where that guy Hunt is, and I’ll tell you, but I want to be sure that the reward is legit, first. Ya follow me?”

Oh, he followed him all right. And if it turned out he didn’t know squat about where Hunt actually was, there was going to be hell to pay.
But he didn’t show any of that; he simply kept smiling as he said, “The reward is genuine, Mr. Myers. Five thousand dollars for information leading to the whereabouts and arrest of Jeremiah Hunt, also known as the Reaper.”

It was, too; the FBI had instituted the reward several years ago and had never bothered to rescind it when the Reaper’s identity had become common knowledge. Robertson had at first taken it as a personal affront, a sign the Bureau didn’t have faith in his abilities to catch the son of a bitch, but he was over it now. A tool was a tool; whether it was worth anything all depended on how you used it.

“When do I get it?”

Robertson’s eyes narrowed at the man’s bluntness, but he held his temper.
See what he’s got first
, he told himself.

“You’ll get your money as soon as I know you actually have information that’s worth something to me.”

Myers nodded then reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He played with the buttons for a moment and then passed it across the desk to Robertson.

On the small screen was a photograph. It was time-stamped from the night before and showed Hunt sitting shirtless in a bed, talking to someone offscreen. He had a few bruises on his face, but he certainly wasn’t the corpse Robertson had been expecting.

Passing the phone back to his informant, Robertson said, “Talk to me.”

48

HUNT

Denise had once told me that magick runs through the earth in long lines known to the practitioners of the Art as leys. The place where several ley lines meet is called a nexus and a nexus provides a wellspring of power for those who know how to access it.

As fate would have it, one of the largest nexuses in Louisiana lies on the other side of the Mississippi River, overlooking the city of New Orleans.

That it happened to be smack dab in the middle of the Fountainoute Cemetery was just icing on the Angeu’s cake, for I had little doubt that he fell into the category of those who knew how to make use of such things.

Lucky for us, Gallagher knew where that nexus was and suspected that it was the location I’d seen in my vision. Two cups of coffee and a few painkillers later, I was climbing out of Denise’s Charger and walking toward the tall, cast-iron gates that guarded the entrance to Fountainoute. With only two days before the solstice, we didn’t have any time to waste.

The cemetery was tucked onto a gentle spit of land that looked out across the water at the Big Easy. In the old days, when the waist-high fence that surrounded the property was first erected, this area probably wouldn’t have been on any developer’s must-have list. All the action was across the river; why build anything this far away? But given the view that greeted me as I looked back over my shoulder at the city skyline, I knew there were plenty of people who would sell their souls to the devil to build on this spot.

Of course some people are just plain dumb, too.

I stared at the fence in front of us with more than a bit of trepidation. Fences are funny things. Most people think of them as a means to keep the unwanted out. Very few ever consider the fact that more often than not, they’re really there to keep the unwanted
in.

Like now.

Normally I wouldn’t have dreamed of approaching a place like Fountainoute Cemetery at this hour of the night. There are places on earth where the dead, rather than the living, hold sway, and cemeteries like this one are definitely high on the list. There were a lot of things that could take up residence among the dead besides ghosts, and more often than not, they didn’t like being disturbed.

Never mind that they were always hungry.

Tonight things felt different. As I waited for Gallagher to open the thick lock and iron chains that sealed off the entrance, I didn’t get the usual sense of hungry expectation from the things that lived on the other side the way I normally would. In fact, I didn’t get a sense of anything at all.

A quick look with my ghostsight confirmed my suspicions.

Even here, where they should have been packed in shoulder to shoulder, standing-room only, the ghosts were absent.

Nothing but silence greeted us as we stepped onto the grounds.

Flashlight in hand, Gallagher led the way, winding in and out among the crypts and mausoleums with the sure sense of someone who had been here before and knew exactly where he was going. It was a good thing that one of us did; I was lost after the first hundred yards, the avenues and alleys between the miniature mansions of the dead all looking the same to me.

A few yards farther and Gallagher brought us up short. We stood in an undeveloped section of the cemetery; a wide grassy lawn, empty of mausoleums, stretched ahead of us for a couple dozen yards before it sloped gently down to the banks of the Mississippi. Across the dark waters, the city of New Orleans loomed, glittering like a jewel in the night.

“Well?” Gallagher asked, a bit impatiently, but I tuned his annoyance out and took a long hard look around. I couldn’t afford to be wrong. If I was, one helluva lot of people were going to die.

But no pressure, right?

I walked around a bit, moving from left to right so as to parallel the river, and then getting closer to the water’s edge before backing off farther than where I’d originally started.

Eventually, the pieces of the puzzle—the view of the waterline, the location of the city against the horizon, the rounded bubble of the Superdome, even the moon, now almost full, hanging off to one side at just the right distance—all came together.

This was the spot.

I was certain of it.

“Here,” I said, and as I did so I felt the nexus deep beneath my feet surge with power. The hair on my arms stood at attention and my blood seemed to race more quickly through my veins as I felt the flow of potential fill the air around me.

Gallagher nodded, his expression grim.

“Time to get to work, then.”

*   *   *

On the night of the solstice, we returned to the cemetery shortly before midnight.

Over the past day and a half we’d done everything we could to prepare us for the confrontation that was coming, and now we moved with purpose, intent on the job before us.

Given Gallagher’s combat prowess and my affinity for the dead, we were the logical choices to lead the attack on the Angeu. Assisting us were the surviving wardens and a small group of Sidhe. While we kept the Angeu distracted, Dmitri would carve a path forward to the Angeu’s side where Denise would use the soul knives to send the bastard and his ghostly army back to where they belonged.

It sounded good in theory, but I had a feeling that things were not going to be anywhere near as easy when reality showed its ugly face.

We’d marked the location of the nexus with a brightly colored stake and had placed another marker twenty feet in front of that. As the others took up position among the crypts at my back, I walked out to that second marker and took up my position.

Because of my ability to see into both realms, I’d been assigned to act as point man.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in all my life.

My heart pounded, my throat felt three sizes too small, and as I felt my hands start to shake, one thought kept repeating itself over and over again in my mind.

I can’t do this.

It was insane. Absolutely insane. We never should have come here. We should have simply packed up and headed south, away from Gallagher and the trouble surrounding him, and screw the compulsion Denise had been feeling. We would have found a way to break it …

I was on the verge of losing it, of turning tail and running for the hills as fast as my legs would carry me, when I felt a child’s hand slide into each of my own.

They were soft, ethereal hands, and it was difficult to hold them, but I clung to them, even if only figuratively, with all of my strength.

Glancing down, I found the ghosts of my daughter, Elizabeth, and her friend Abigail, the girl I had once called Whisper, standing on either side of me, their hands in mine. They looked up at me and I found courage in their support. I was here, doing the right thing, and if I died in this life tonight, at least I knew I would not be alone in the next.

Raising my head, I found Abigail’s father, Matthew, the ghost I’d called Scream, standing off to one side, as protective of his daughter in death as he had been in life. We understood each other, Scream and me, having chased our daughters’ killers to the ends of the earth, and when he silently nodded at me, one long solemn nod, I felt the last of my fear vanish.

As the ghosts slowly faded away, I felt the night around me move.

The air grew heavy with a sense of anticipation, like the feeling of a summer night with a thunderstorm looming on the horizon. The sensation slowly built, growing stronger, until the air was practically vibrating around me with all that raw power running through it.

I reached into my pocket and withdrew the two items I carried there: my harmonica and a roadside emergency flare. I was going to need both of them very soon.

There was an audible crack and then the sky before me was lit with a flash of light so bright that I was forced to look away, tears streaming down my face from the sudden pain.

When I looked up again, the world had dissolved into a sea of white.

I couldn’t see a thing.

Panic threatened, but I beat it back down with the sheer force of my will. I’d known this was coming and had planned for it; there was nothing to worry about, I told myself.

I reached inside my mind and the world in front of me sprang into view, lit with the pale silver blue light of my ghostsight.

The rift was directly in front of me, a shimmering curtain of power that hung down from the heavens in exactly the spot we’d predicted it would be.

Harmonica in hand, I stood there and waited for Death to come to me.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long.

The sound of horses’ hooves reached me first.

Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.

It was a slow, steady pace, one without any sense of urgency, but it carried with it a chilly kind of inevitability, Death’s steady march come to claim us all.

As the sound drew closer, I began to see a hazy figure through the glistening curtain.

Clip-clop, clip-clop.

The figure grew more distinct as it got closer to the other side of the curtain, until it resolved itself into a pair of horses pulling a cart of some kind.

Clip-clop.

Even as I watched, the curtain parted and the horses stepped into our world, dragging their cargo along behind them. One of the horses was the picture of good health, its coat gleaming, its eyes full of spark and fire, while the other looked to be at the end of its journey, all skin and bones and eyes gone filmy with age or disease.

The driver sat hunched in his seat, dressed in the same wide-brimmed hat and shimmering cloak he’d been wearing the first time we’d encountered him. In the light of the rift, though, I could see that the cloak was not the rich fabric I’d originally assumed it to be but was crafted from the very souls of his victims! Faces swarmed about its surface, eyes blinking here and there, mouths opening and closing in silent screams.

The Angeu lifted one skeletal hand and cracked a whip fashioned from human hair, urging his steeds forward, out of the way of the gate behind them so as to allow the army of ghosts to begin making its way across.

I waited, watching the cart’s forward motion, trying to gauge it just right. When it reached a point halfway between the rift and the spot where I stood, I knelt and slammed the butt of the flare against the ground, activating it. As it sparked into life, I tossed it at a point in the grass a few feet in front of me.

The flare hit the ground, igniting the oil we’d poured in an intricate pattern across the lawn that afternoon. Within seconds the flames ignited the entire design, surrounding the cart.

Gallagher and his people started chanting the minute the flare left my hands, and now their voices filled the night air, rising and falling in a complicated rhythm that activated the circle’s power, sealing the cart and its driver inside its confines.