King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (35 page)

Denise lay on her back in the hospital bed, unmoving.

Maybe she was asleep.

I crossed to her side and put my hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her.

She didn’t respond.

I touched her face, only to find her skin cold and clammy.

Nothing had changed.

I should have been angry, should have been filled with rage at having been duped by that empty-eyed devil, but I couldn’t find anything but despair in my heart. Again, I’d failed to save someone I loved, despite my best efforts.

My best wasn’t nearly good enough, it seemed.

“Why the long face?”

I lifted my head.

The Preacher stood on the other side of the bed, watching me closely.

“Go away, you bastard,” I said, but there wasn’t any heart in it. I felt completely drained, empty of every last scrap of emotion, as if I’d left my own soul behind in Annwyfn along with Clearwater’s. I turned away, unable to face him or my failure.

But the Preacher’s next words ignited a fire in my blood.

“You’re not done yet, Hunt.”

Like a puppet on a string, I slowly turned around.

“Not done?”

He frowned, like a teacher disappointed by a student’s performance. “Does it look like you are finished?” he said, indicating Denise’s still form with one hand.

“You’ve freed her soul from the Angeu’s stronghold, but you haven’t returned it to its proper place. Until you do, she will remain like this, trapped between worlds, neither living nor dead. We don’t want that now, do we?”

I ground my teeth together in an effort to contain myself.

“What do I need to do?”

He reached inside his frock coat and removed a long-bladed knife. I recognized it immediately: it was a twin to the soul knives that Denise had used against the Angeu, but this time the blade was black rather than silver. The Preacher spun the weapon around in his hand and extended it to me, hilt first.

“It’s nothing, really,” he said. “All you have to do is pick up the knife and stab her in the heart.”

I stared at him.

“What?” I asked, when I could find my voice again. It came out as little more than a whisper.

He smiled, revealing a mouth full of decayed teeth. “Surely you remember what you learned about knives such as these, Hunt?”

At first I didn’t have any idea of what he was talking about and then, like a diver coming up for mouthful of air, a memory surfaced in the back of my mind: Gallagher explaining why we needed the weapons in order to confront the Angeu. “… When properly charged, they have the power to return a soul to its rightful place,” he’d said.

My gaze was drawn back down to the knife, the blade reflecting the green and red lights from the life-support monitors beside the bed.

To return a soul …

It couldn’t be that easy, could it?
I wondered. That thought was quickly followed by another.

Dare I trust him?

I’d done so twice before, with mixed results. Each time he’d told me the truth, but he’d also left out some additional information that would certainly have influenced my choices. Like the fact that I would lose my normal sight by accepting the unusual abilities I’d gained. And this choice facing me now.

This time, the trap was fairly obvious. If I did as he instructed and stabbed her in the chest, I’d be causing a mortal injury. I might return her soul to her body, but that would do little good if I caused her bodily death in the process.

On the other hand, as crazy as it sounded, if I had to stab her in order to save her life, she was in the best possible place for me to do so, short of the intensive care unit itself.

Which raised another question.

Could I even do it?

I looked down at Denise’s still face and thought about what it would be like to drive a six-inch blade deep into her unprotected chest, to stab her in her tender heart, all in the name of saving her life. Did I have the sheer backbone it would take to do such a thing?

Yes.

I reached for the knife, only to have the Preacher close his fist around it.

“Do you remember our agreement?”

I nodded.

“Say it.”

“In exchange for your help, I will carry out a task for you at a later time and place of your choosing.”

I know, call me crazy. But when he’d offered to send me to Annwyfn in order to rescue Denise’s soul, I’d been ready to make a deal with the devil himself.

And apparently, I had.

Satisfied with my response, he opened his hand.

I picked up the knife.

It was heavy, much heavier than I expected, though that might have been my imagination. It also felt unusually warm to the touch. As soon as I picked it up my arm began to vibrate slightly, as if the knife was giving off an electrical current of some kind that was running up one side of my arm and back down the other, bringing to mind Gallagher’s comment about the weapons needing to be “properly charged.”

Was it reacting to me or the scattered remnants of Denise’s soul that resided inside me? I wondered. At this point, was there any difference?

I didn’t know, didn’t care. All I knew was that I had to get this over with before I lost my nerve.

I’d get only one chance.

I needed to get this right the first time.

The Preacher stepped away from the bed, leaving me alone at Denise’s side. I could see her chest rising slowly, ever so slowly, beneath the sheets and was suddenly overcome with my feelings for this woman. I didn’t know where it had started or exactly how it had come about, but somewhere along the way I had fallen for her in a big way. I needed to hear her laugh again, to see her smile, to take her in my arms and tell her how I felt.

If this was what I had to do in order to have that chance, then it was a price I would willingly pay.

Voices came down the hall, loud angry voices, and, as I did my best to steady myself for what was to come, I could hear them getting closer, the words becoming more audible as they came down the hall.

I took hold of the dagger in two hands and raised it above Denise’s chest, the point of the blade centered directly over her heart.

“You cannot do this, Doctor! I forbid it!”

That was Gallagher; his brogue got a bit thicker when he was upset, I’d noticed, and right now it was out in full force.

“Mr. Gallagher, if you do not step aside right this instant, I will have security remove you from the premises. Ms. Clearwater is beyond our help, and it is time that you acknowledged that fact and allowed someone who needs that bed to make use of it. We have a medical emergency on our hands, if you hadn’t noticed.”

They were right outside the door; I had a moment, maybe two, and no more than that.

It was now or never.

I focused my attention on her still face, cast a prayer heavenward, and brought the knife plunging down with all my strength.

As the blade fell toward her unprotected chest, the door beside me opened.

58

HUNT

Chaos erupted.

The air was full of sound: shouts of alarm from Gallagher, Dmitri, and several other voices I didn’t recognize; the Preacher’s insane laughter; and the beating of my heart so loud that it threatened to drown out everything else. I could sense people pushing into the room through the open door, but I ignored them, my attention solely on the task at hand.

With an animalistic shout of my own, I stabbed Denise deep in the heart.

Blood spurted from the wound to coat my hands where they gripped the hilt of the knife, and the air was suddenly full of its crisp, coppery scent. Power erupted from somewhere deep within the blade itself, exploding down its length and into Denise’s body, slamming her against the hospital bed as if I’d shocked her with a defibrillator. For a moment I thought it had all been for naught, for there was no change in her condition, and then she gave a sudden gasp and sucked in a lungful of air.

Her eyes popped open and the first thing she saw was me standing there beside the bed, my hands wrapped around the handle of the blade that was now embedded deep in her chest.

I saw the fear and pain and disbelief cross her face at the sight of me and I desperately longed for the chance to explain, to tell her what we’d gone through to bring her back again, but time was a luxury I did not have. Hands grabbed me, pulling me away from the bed, just as someone hit the lights, stealing my sight from me as swiftly as the darkness faded.

My legs were kicked out from under me and I found myself face down on the floor with something cold and metallic shoved against the back of my head.

“Don’t fuckin’ move, asshole, or I’ll blow your damned head off. Understand?”

I didn’t recognize the voice, but I could tell from its tone that whoever it was, they were just looking for an excuse to pull that trigger. I made damn sure not to give them one.

A knee was slammed into my back without warning, shoving me harder against the floor, but I kept my mouth shut and didn’t complain as I was pressed into the cold linoleum floor.

The medical equipment monitoring Denise’s condition was shrieking wildly, and as I lay there I heard a doctor begin giving orders, stat this and hurry up with that. It went on for a minute, maybe two, and then the command was given to get Denise to surgery. They must have wheeled her out of the room, for it got very quiet.

Hands grabbed me, pulling me to my feet, and Gallagher was suddenly there, whispering in my ear in a voice full of murder and mayhem.

“I don’t know where you’ve been for the last three days or what the fuck you think you were doing, but you’d better hope she lives through this,” he said, “or I’ll gut you like a pig and feed you to the gators piece by piece.”

He turned away and said to the men holding me, “He’s all yours, Officers. Get him out of here.”

I knew arguing with him would be useless, so I didn’t bother. Besides, I didn’t care what happened to me as long as Denise pulled through. I just prayed that the doctors would be able to stabilize her long enough for Gallagher to use his powers to save her life.

My arms were grabbed by a cop on either side of me and I was hustled out of the room and down the hall to the elevator. When it arrived, they hauled me inside and waited for the doors to close behind us.

No sooner had they done so than one of them laid into me, slamming his fist into my stomach until I doubled over and then ramming his knee into my face when I had. I collapsed to the floor, blood pouring out of my nose.

“We don’t take kindly to murdering sons of bitches in our town,” one of them said, and then both proceeded to stomp and kick the shit out of me with their thick-soled boots. Unable to see the blows coming, I had no way to defend myself other than to curl up in a ball and wait for it to stop.

The ride down from the sixth floor seemed to take years rather than minutes, and by the time the bell dinged, indicating we’d reached our destination, I was on the verge of passing out.

The bestial roar that filled the elevator car the minute the door opened shocked me back into alertness, however. I felt the guards on either side going for their weapons and decided the floor was the safest place for a blind man at that moment. There was a short but violent struggle and then Dmitri was human again and helping me to my feet.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Depends on where we’re going,” I mumbled around swollen lips and at least one cracked tooth.

He draped my arm over his shoulders and helped me out of the elevator. As the doors closed behind us, shutting out most of the light, my sight partially returned and I could see that we weren’t on the first floor, as I’d expected, but were in the dimly lit parking garage instead.

Dmitri headed for a dark-colored car parked in the last row, talking as he helped me along.

“I’ve known you long enough to believe that you wouldn’t do anything to hurt Denise,” he said, “Which means what you did up there you did for a reason.”

Score one for the good guys
, I thought.

“They were about to pull her off life support, so you returned just in the nick of time. Whatever you did must have worked, too, for she was conscious when they rolled her into surgery a few minutes ago.”

Thank you, God.

As we got closer to the car I recognized it as Denise’s Charger and wasn’t surprised when Dmitri used the keys in his hand to deactivate the alarm. The chirp sounded overly loud to my pounding head and I was sure it was going to bring others running, but thankfully that didn’t happen. We were still alone for the time being.

Dmitri opened the door and eased me into the driver’s seat.

“It’s still an hour or two before dawn. Can you drive?”

I felt like a herd of elephants had used me as a dance floor, but there was no way I was waiting around to see what Gallagher had in store for me. Not after the way his people treated me back there. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge as fast as possible. I could always reconnect with Denise later.

“Yeah,” I said. “I can drive.”

“Good. Take these.” He thrust a small roll of bills, a cell phone, and the keys to the car into my hands. “If you hurry, you should be able to get out of the city and a good jump down the road before it gets too light for you to see. Find somewhere to hole up for the day, and I’ll call you when Denise is out of surgery.”

I nodded, then instantly regretted it as the pounding in my head intensified. “Don’t let anything happen to her, Dmitri. And tell her I’m sorry.”

He shook the suggestion off.

“You’ll see her again, so tell her yourself. And in the meantime don’t worry, I’ll be right there with her. Nothing else is going to happen to her, not on my watch.”

After that, there wasn’t much else to say. He clapped me on the shoulder and then backed away from the car as the engine started with a throaty roar.

I hoped like hell that he was right, that Denise would be all right and that I’d get the chance to see her again, but right now I needed to get the hell out of there before the cops started wondering what happened to their buddies and came looking for me.