The Hunt: A Custodes Noctis Book (2 page)

“No.”

“What did he want in here?”

“He was over looking at the charms, I tried to tell which one he was after, but he picked up several.”

“Were they all for the same thing?” Galen asked hopefully.

“No, one for protection, one for summoning, one for love, and others. It was… Hmm…”

“Rob?”

“Maybe he was going through them looking for one with a more archaic use?” Rob got up and walked over to the shelves with charms on them. “This one.” He picked up a small box and carried it back to Galen. “I think.”

Galen took it, he closed his eyes and reached out with the Gift trying to get a sense of what the man had been and what he’d wanted. Rob was right, whatever it was was dark, very dark, but it was only a small part of a larger darkness. “I don’t know, either,” he said, opening his eyes. Rob was frowning at him. “What do you see?”

“Nothing.” The word was out of Rob’s mouth almost before Galen finished his question.

The door to the shop opened before he could respond. Rob started straightening items on the shelves while Galen went to help their customer. It was a busy morning, at noon, one of Galen’s regular clients came in, looking desperate, begging Galen to use the Gift to heal him.

“It’s fading,” the man snapped as Galen pulled the curtain closed on the small treatment room in the back of the shop. Galen sighed, in the last year he had been helping Marc Nelson deal with his “illness.” He’d been attacked by a werewolf several years before, and finally came to Galen in a last ditch effort to control it. As the full moon neared, his temper tended to get short.

“It’s not fading,” Galen said, rubbing his hands together. “The full moon is coming up, and the Solstice moon has a greater pull, you know that.”

“No, Galen, you don’t understand,” Marc said, putting his hand on Galen’s arm. The fear and blind, heart-stopping panic that flowed through the touch was enough to make Galen dizzy, a flash of darkness blazed through his body. He pulled away from the contact and stood looking at Marc in horror. “See?” Marc’s voice was soft, desperate. “Something happened last night, I was dreaming, but I felt something in the dream, and… My god, Galen, I almost turned.”

“What?”

“I stopped it, the way you showed me. I almost called you then, but it was finally under control again. Can a dream do that?”

“It shouldn’t, no, especially not before the full moon.”

Marc sank onto the couch, his head in his hands. “What will I do if I can’t control it?”

“We can, Marc, we have for a year, this was a fluke,” Galen said gently. Marc met his eyes for a moment, then stretched out on the couch. Galen laid his hands on Marc’s forehead and chest, letting the light flow. Marc had been right, the healing had faded more than it should have over the course of a week. When the call of the pack started to howl through his head, Galen pulled his hands away, trembling.

“Sorry,” Marc said, sitting up, “but it scared me shitless.”

“I understand.” Galen walked to the small refrigerator and opened it, getting out a couple of bottles of sparkling water. The darkness that had affected the werewolf was still tingling along his hands when he sank down in the chair opposite Marc.

“I heard a rumor the other day,” Marc said after taking a sip of the water.

“Oh?”

“Something has been hunting out by the old hospital.”

“Hunting?”

“Yeah, it’s weird, only one person’s gone missing, but there are ripples in the community.”

“What do you mean?”

Marc shrugged. “Just ripples, you know.”

“What kind of ripples?”

“Weird things happening, rumors about something new in town, and then whatever is
 
hunting by the old hospital. A friend was out there the other night, and it scared him off.”

“Did he get a look at it?”

“He said at first he thought it was a man.”

“A man?” Galen asked. “Wait, I want Rob to hear this.”

“Why?”

“We had someone in here this morning.” They walked into the shop, Rob looked up from the shelf he was arranging. “Now, tell us both,” Galen said.

“What’s up?” Rob came over to the counter and stood beside him.

“Something’s hunting out at the old hospital, Marc’s friend thought he saw it.”

“What was it?” Rob asked.

“He thought it was a man…”

“Small? Dark? About thirty?” Rob frowned at Marc.

“How’d you know?”

“He was here earlier, I think. He took off when he got a good look at me,” Rob said.

“My friend was planning on going jogging, he works at night and it’s safe down by the lake—or it was,” Marc cleared his throat, “but when he got a good look at the guy, he thought better of it.”

“What do you mean?” Galen asked.

“He, my friend, said he thought the man growled at him, but then he saw something out of the corner of his eye, something big, dark, the kind of dark that chills you right to the bone.”

“Huh,” Rob said, frowning. He wandered out of the shop, a moment later they heard him going up the stairs.

“Sorry about that.” Galen smiled at Marc.

“I’m used to it now,” Marc said. “Thank you.”

“Let me know if you hear anything else, okay?”

“You’ll be the first one I call.” Marc headed out of the shop.

“Rob!” Galen roared up the steps as soon and Marc was gone. When he didn’t get an answer, he set the electronic bell on the shop and went up to the apartment. Rob was standing in front of the bookcase that took up one whole wall of the apartment. “Rob?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?” Galen asked. “You ever feel like you’ve walked into a conversation halfway through, Brat?”

“Huh?” Rob turned to him.

“You don’t know what?”

“Oh, sorry.” Rob grinned. “I was thinking out loud, I guess.” He pulled a book off the shelf and flipped through heavy vellum pages. “Have you ever heard a song, know you know it, but can’t place it?”

“Yeah, usually with elevator music, why?”

“Did I ever tell you about the time I heard the elevator rendition of…”

“Rob?”

“Oh, yeah. I have a little piece of some Saga playing in my head, but I can’t place where it comes from,” Rob said, frowning at the book before snapping it closed and getting another down from the shelf. “First they come, those with men’s bodies.” Rob spoke the words with a musical lilt. “I know I learned it, I can’t remember what it’s from. If I knew what language it was, it would be easier.” He sighed and put the book back.

“Language?”

“Of the original Saga, it would help me figure out where it was from. Sometimes I really hate learning translations.”

“Only you would complain about that.” Galen chuckled, his brother’s ability with languages amazed him. As near as he could tell, Rob could read—and often speak—most of the languages of ancient and medieval Europe with the same ease other people read a newspaper. He sometimes wondered if it was somehow tied to Rob’s Gift. Galen watched as he went through several other books, aware of Rob’s growing frustration. “Rob?”

“Yeah?” Rob was rifling through the seventh book he’d pulled down.

“When Marc was here for his healing…” Galen paused, he didn’t discuss clients, but his instincts told him Rob needed to know.

“What?” He focused his attention on Galen, the book open, but ignored.

“He nearly turned last night.”

“Moon is wrong,” Rob mused.

“I know, and he was a lot closer than I think he realizes, I sensed it when I was healing him.”

“And?”

“And I sensed something else. There wasn’t much of it, just a hint of something, pushing him.”

“To turn?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” Rob handed the volume he was holding to Galen walked to the end of the bookshelf and pulled down a book. “Huh.” Another heavy book was chosen and Rob carried them over to the table. He put those down and went back to stare at the shelf.

“When you surface for air, come downstairs,” Galen said, amused. Once his brother was on a scent, it was hard to distract him.

“Hmm,” Rob muttered, carrying more books to the table.

Galen laughed as he headed to the shop. He loved research, loved the scent, the tangible experience of books. When he’d been finishing his dissertation, he’d spent days head down in volume after volume written in Latin on the medical traditions of Europe, but as much as he loved and enjoyed it, he knew it was different for Rob. It was nearly obsessive once Rob was researching—something for their work as
Custodes Noctis,
for his degrees, or once to find out when the jelly bean had been invented—whatever it was Rob went at it like a piranha after prey. Galen wondered about that, and his brother’s tendency to not sleep. Sometimes he had a guilty feeling that it had something to do with those years he’d been dead and Rob was alone.

Galen sighed. They needed to investigate what was going on, he had the feeling that something big was coming. It was one of the things they did as
Custodes Noctis
, keeping the night against those things that even the dark feared. He smiled at the wording, it was funny how the lessons learned in childhood could stick with you.

“We need to go out there.” Rob’s voice broke into his musings.

“I wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me,” Galen said irritably.

“You’re the one who taught me.” Rob grinned. “A Keeper walks on silent feet.”

“And yours were as far from silent as I’ve ever seen.” Galen chuckled. “You want to go out there tonight?”

“Yeah. Pete canceled the gig right?”

“Rat canceled the gig,” Galen said wryly. “The band they had three days ago trashed the place.”

“Teach Rat to not pay.” Rob laughed.

“What is it?” Galen could sense the tension in his brother.

“I’m not sure, I didn’t find much, although I located that passage I wanted for my paper. I just have a bad feeling about all this.”

“Do we go alone?” Galen asked. They usually did, they could handle most things just the two of them.

“Yeah,” Rob paused, obviously turning it over. “No, let’s call Rhiannon and Greg.”

“That bad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Right,” Galen said, then picked up the phone to make the call.

The afternoon was busy, people coming into the shop almost non-stop. Galen didn’t have time to talk with Rob about what was going on, the fact his brother wanted company that night worried him. Since his return, Rob tended to want to hunt alone—just the two of them—saying he’d spent too many years hunting with other people before he came home. Galen usually agreed, it was good to work together as
Custodes Noctis
, but he enjoyed the “parties” with Rhiannon Ross and Greg Alexander, too.

He’d first met Rhiannon eleven years before, she’d lost her daughter to the dark and since then become a killer. She specialized in things that hurt children, but she was always willing to join a “party.” Rhiannon had met Greg while working on what she termed “party planning.” They really knew very little of Greg’s past, he was adept with weapons and took the evil things they went after in stride, never surprised, never pausing, no matter what they faced. The fact he knew about the
Custodes Noctis
had come as a surprise, and in the years before Rob came home, Greg’s reverence of his position had occasionally bothered Galen, and now he treated them both with a respect he didn’t extend to anyone else.

Rhiannon and Greg had heard about the attacks, and added a little more information into the equation. Sightings of dark creatures were becoming more frequent. Three nights before, they’d dealt with a ghoul that was preying on the homeless in a busy city park, and last night they’d been following what they thought might be a werewolf, even though the moon wasn’t full. It worried Galen—something was moving, something big.

It was exhilarating, too. As Keepers they were trained to go after the big things—the “things the night itself fears,” as the Sagas put it.
Custodes Noctis
hunted smaller prey sometimes, but they mainly went after the big things, the things others couldn’t deal with. Galen often wondered if the big things were becoming less common. When the First Emrys founded the Keepers, he had been facing an Old One—the dark force that Galen and Rob had fought the year before—and Emrys had gone on to find other families that were willing to serve as Keepers. At one time, the
Custodes Noctis
had led armies—a pair of Keepers and their vassals, the knights, their retainers and their families pledged to serve the
Custodes Noctis
. Now, the need for armies to fight evil seemed less pressing—although Galen knew there were still forces out there that meant the world still needed Keepers, still needed the power they wielded to keep it safe.
 
Since their encounter with the Old One, that darkness was always part of his awareness, humming under his feet, pulsing in the scar on his chest and calling to him sometimes in his dreams.

Until the other dream had returned.
He’d hoped that getting back together with Rob would end the call, end the pull towards oblivion that began seven years before. And now in quiet moments mists would begin to wrap around him, tugging at him.

“Hey,” Rob said. Galen looked up, his brother was standing in front of a shelf, a small box in his hands. “Where did this come from?” He carried it over and dropped it onto the counter.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I’d swear it wasn’t here yesterday.”

“You would’ve noticed it in the alphabetizing of the shelves?”

“Yeah, I just did that side of the store… Oh.” Rob frowned. “Sorry about that, I hope you don’t…”

“I don’t mind, it’s easier to find stuff, even if it’s just a little OCD.” Galen grinned at his brother. “So it wasn’t there?” He opened the box, and smiled. “How did this get down here?”

Rob was staring at the small silver trinket in the box. “What is it?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Of course I do, I just asked you to see if you remembered.”

“Right. It’s the last one of a bunch of amulets we helped Dad make the last summer you were here, before,” Galen paused for just a moment, “it all happened.”

“It is?”

“Yeah, don’t you remember?”

“I remember making them, but…” Rob picked it up. “It didn’t look like this when we made it.”

“I didn’t change anything.”

A soft chuckle was his answer, his brother was looking at him with that annoyed, amused, sardonic look he got at times. “Right.”

“Rob?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Rob put the pendant carefully back in the box and closed the lid. “Where does it go?”

“Upstairs, I’m not sure how it got down here.”

“Huh, weird, ” Rob said, wandering over to the shelf again. “We need to order more cord, we’re almost out.”

“Okay.” Galen pulled the order list out from under the cash register and added the item. “Anything else?”

“Not from that company. Here comes Flash, he has coffee.”
 
Rob grinned

“I didn’t call him,” Galen said. Alvin “Flash” Lynch played bass for The Urban Werwolves, a band he’d founded with Galen several years before. The two formed a close friendship, and last year Flash had been with them during the battle with the Old One, nearly losing his life in the process. Since then, he expected Galen or Rob to call him and let him know “when they were heading out,” as he put it. To his credit, he was good in a fight—as more than one bar brawl had proven over the years—and more importantly, he knew when to get out of the way and let Galen and Rob take over the battle. He also seemed to have an uncanny knack of knowing when they’d neglected to call him.

“Becci said you’ve only had two coffees today, Galen, are you okay?” Flash said as he kicked the door closed. “And she would only sell me a double for Rob.”

“Good enough.” Rob took a coffee from him with a happy sigh.

“He had a few before I got up. Thanks,” Galen said, taking the cup Flash held out.

“Yep. Sarah was starting her shift.”

“So it had nothing to do with bringing us coffee, and everything to do with Sarah?”

“No, of course not.” Flash grinned. “I get free coffee if I get a cup for you.”

“There had to be an ulterior motive.” Rob came over and leaned against the counter.

“Rhiannon called me,” Flash blurted out.

“What?”

“Yeah, she said you two were going out after something tonight and had called her and Greg to go along.” He frowned. “You forgot to call me, so I thought I’d save you the minutes and come by.”

“Flash…”

“No, Galen, I know how you two work, and you wouldn’t call Rhiannon unless something big was going on.”

“I’m not sure it’s something big,” Rob offered. “I just have a funny feeling.”

“A funny feeling? Like last June?” Flash asked in horror.

“Not exactly.”

“Well, fuck me, I’m glad I showed up. Shut up,” Flash said, frowning at Galen when he opened his mouth. “Don’t even try. We don’t have a gig, we don’t have practice, I’m going.” He grinned. “Got a new toy to try out.”

“A new toy?” Galen raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, I was thinking about what Rob said last time, about how I’m not good enough with a sword to really use it safely during a fight. And so, for those nights, I got a new toy.”

“What kind of toy?”

“A war hammer.”

“A war hammer?”

“Yeah, I was thinking about a bar mace, but this had a sharp end, and I can still use it like a club. It’s heavy and I like the weight of it.”

“Not a bad choice,” Rob said thoughtfully. “Not a lot of skill needed to use it, but deadly in the right hands.”

“And these are the right hands.” Flash wiggled his fingers. “I knew
you’d
approve.”

“What does that mean?” Galen growled.

“He doesn’t seem to mind if I tag along. Okay, fine,” Flash added when Rob groaned. “You do mind, but grudgingly accept it. And I think I earned my place.”

“Yeah,” Galen said softly. Flash had earned the right to be there, the dark scars on his face and neck visible reminders of it. The Old One’s minions had very nearly killed Flash, if Galen hadn’t risked healing him, Flash would have died.

“Yeah,” Rob echoed. “We leave in a couple of hours.”

“What are we after?”

“I don’t know. Rumors, mostly.” Rob ran a hand through his hair, Galen caught the wave of uncertainty from his brother.

“We’re after rumors? Can I whack them with my hammer?”

“Sure, if you can catch them.” Galen sighed.

“Did I get here in time to mooch dinner?” Flashed grinned.

“If you go get it,” Rob said, pulling out his wallet. “I want Thai.”

“The usual?” Flash said, taking the money Rob handed him. “Okay, be right back.”

Galen watched him go. “We should close up so we can eat before we take off,” he said, pushing down his growing sense of foreboding.

“Sounds like a plan.” Rob walked over, turned off the “open” sign and locked the door.

Two hours later, Galen was pulling into a parking spot at the park. It was dark, the only light cast by a single streetlamp over the gravel. The park was one of the largest in the area, there was a lake ringed by a path and several acres of field and woods. On the top of a hill overlooking the lake were the remains of mental hospital, abandoned in the 1950s. He turned off the car and opened the door, listening to the night, waiting for Rhiannon and Greg to arrive. A dog barked from somewhere in the field to his left, the call of a night bird echoed through the air.

“It’s dark out there,” Rob said reflectively.

“No shit, Sherlock, it’s night,” Flash grumbled from the back seat.

“Not what I meant.” Rob got out of the Jeep and walked to the back, opening it up to grab their weapons.

“I know that.” Despite the irritation in Flash’s voice, there was an undercurrent of fear in their friend’s voice that was always there when they were out hunting. Galen admired him, because even with the ever-present fear Flash was there beside them.

“I know you do,” Galen said, getting out and walking around the Jeep as the headlights from Rhiannon’s truck swept over the parking lot.

“Here,” Rob said, handing Galen his bag of first aid supplies—magical as well as medicinal.

“Thanks.” Galen adjusted the satchel over his shoulder and reached for his sword. It was a falcata, based on the Iberian Celtic design, although he’d had it custom made, so it was a little longer and forged from steel he could keep razor sharp. Rob was buckling on his baldric. He carried his large blade—a bastard sword—on his back. It was a heavyweight weapon, but Rob was graceful with it—despite it’s nearly four foot length.
 

They both carried the Emrys Swords, the hereditary blades of the
Custodes Noctis
, forged in antiquity and strengthened over the centuries with spells and protective magic. The swords were covered with Ogham, Runes and words that bound magic to the blades and the blades to the family. Since they had performed the Ritual of Swords, they officially became theirs, the sword bonded to them until they passed them on.