Banshee Hunt (22 page)

Soo Chi's response was an incoherent scream of rage. It might have been meant to be an insult. He didn't know. But what James did know was that her eyes were focussed completely on his. And also that the gun in her hand was rising. She was going to kill him. It was time to act.

“Abadon!” James cried out the word and instantly everything went to hell. There was a blinding flash of light that turned the entire wing of the holding cells into a giant flash bulb. One that his would-be killer got straight in the eyes.

Soo Chi screamed and instantly reacted, trying to cover her eyes with her arms, forgetting in a heartbeat that she was holding a weapon. Naturally the gun went off, the sound unbelievably loud in the enclosed space.

The bullet missed James, though it took him a second or two to realise that. It took him another second to realise that all those other bangs he'd heard were ricochets. You should never shoot a weapon into a concrete cell. Bullets bounced. But that didn't matter to him. What mattered was that his enemy was standing there, rubbing at her eyes, gun in hand and screaming. She was completely blind – at least for the moment. His plan had worked.

He knew the pain she was feeling. The one instruction he had been given when he'd been warded with the enchantment years before, was to never release the spell while looking into a mirror. Naturally he hadn’t listened, and the blindness had lasted for a good five minutes, followed by another half hour of seeing thousands of shades of red and green everywhere he looked. The flash was one of the most intense things he'd ever seen and for the longest time he'd stood there thinking he would never see again. He guessed that that was exactly what Soo Chi was thinking just then as she rubbed at her eyes and wailed in fear.

Then the sirens went off and confusion turned to complete chaos. It was a beautiful sound. Obviously someone outside the wing had heard the gunshot. Then they'd probably checked the security cameras and hit the alarms. The banshee had worked her magic on a squad of police, but even she had limits. It took time for her spell to be woven on people, and she hadn't had a chance to catch everyone. Which was why he could soon hear the sound of feet running in the distance.

Soo Chi could hear them too and her first reaction was to aim the gun in the general direction of the sound. She was panicking. She knew she was in trouble. She had to get away. But she couldn't do that when she was completely blind. She didn't even know which way to run. Her immediate reaction was to fire twice more in the direction of the feet and stop them coming.

It stopped the feet running, though whether she hit anyone James didn't know. But of course firing at officers in a station was always a mistake. The people stopped running but they started shouting instead as they called for backup. And then someone started firing back down the corridor. She was blind and under attack. Soo Chi's problems had just become a thousand times worse. The minute or two she might have bought herself by shooting at the officers had potentially just cost her, her life. Meanwhile James was forgotten.

She couldn't see him. She couldn't see anything. And by the looks of things she'd got turned around in the confusion. She didn't even know where his cell was let alone him. She was panicking. Her only hope was to shoot back in the general direction where the shots had come from, and the moment they stopped, turn and run blindly away from them, hoping that she didn't crash into anything. So that was exactly what she did. Shooting the gun blindly she ran, screaming in terror.

Inevitably she hit something. James couldn't see her by then – she was too far down the corridor and he was locked in his cell unable to stick his head out through the bars to look. But he heard her hit something followed by the sound of the gun going off again. And that was followed by her screaming some more. His dearest hope was that she'd shot herself by accident. Or that the police would shoot her. The woman could do with being shot.

After that there was the sound of more people running. And finally police officers in blue instead of black came into view, all with their weapons drawn as they sprinted past him. There was more gun fire. And more screaming from the banshee. Obviously things weren't going well. But the one thing he knew as he stood there in pain was that he was safe. Soo Chi was nowhere in sight. In fact judging by the sound of the gunfire which was growing more distant, she was making her escape.

But that was alright James told himself. She could run for now. He was hurting; badly. He was bleeding too and he needed a doctor. But he was alive. He had to cling to that. As he could to the fact that despite being beaten, hand cuffed, thrown in a cell and left as a sitting duck for the banshee, he'd still beaten her.

In time though he decided that standing was a mistake and he collapsed onto the bunk and waited for someone to attend to him. It was only a matter of time. Because the moment the assailant was either taken into custody, shot or got away, the officers would do a check on everyone who had been nearby. It was procedure. And this time it wouldn't be her brain washed officers. He guessed that when they saw him sitting there on the bunk bleeding, questions would be asked. When they watched the video and realised she'd come to kill him, more questions would be asked. And then when they realised he'd been kidnapped by their officers but never charged with anything, all hell would break loose. Once the video hit the net he couldn't even begin to guess how bad things would get.

But he might at least get to see a doctor. That was something to look forward to.

Chapter Sixteen

The hospital emergency room was not a place James liked being. Especially not when he was there as a patient covered from head to foot in stitches, bandages and disinfectant. And even more so when he felt as sore as he did. But what made it especially unpleasant just then was the doctor busy lecturing him. And he was lecturing him, if not berating him for what he considered his stupidity.

And all James had said was that he wanted to leave! He was beginning to dislike doctors.

“Three cracked ribs! A minor shoulder fracture and a broken nose. A hundred and eighty stitches! Contusions over eighty percent of your body! Possibly a hairline fracture of your pelvis. Bone bruising and muscle tears. Swelling everywhere. Multiple taser burns. Mr. Henderson you are lucky to be alive. This was a serious assault. To even think of getting up and leaving the hospital is sheer lunacy! You need bed rest. At least a week of it. And you need to be observed in case there are internal injuries.” The doctor sounded deadly serious. “You could still die!”

“I feel fine Doc.” Which was bullshit of course but he wanted out. So what if he felt as though he'd been run over by a truck several times? Or that it was taking all the strength he had just to sit up straight and that all the stitches that had just been put in him felt as though they were bursting. Maybe that was why they were covered with bandages – to stop them tearing. But James had no intention of staying in the hospital a second longer than he had to. He wanted out of here. And he wanted to start hunting. The woman was going down! “Just tape me up and give me a few aspirin.”

“Aspirin! We're way beyond aspirin Mr. Henderson. There could be kidney damage.”

There quite possibly was James thought. His right kidney felt like a lump of burning coal from having been kicked. But it didn't change his mind. Now that the police had dropped all charges – not that any had ever been any laid – he wanted to be gone. Gone before the press arrived. He had no doubt that they weren’t far away.

Video of his so-called arrest had already hit the net and it was barely ten in the morning. But then what else could you expect in an age when everybody had a cell phone with a camera? Most of it had been captured. From what he'd heard from the officers who'd delivered him to the waiting ambulance, the police captain was being hounded by them even as he tried to work out why a dozen of his men had gone rogue. It was a public relations disaster. The only way it could be any worse was if James had been an elderly grandmother. But really, when there was apparently video of him cuffed and being thrown down several flights of stairs by laughing black clad officers, even that couldn't have made things that much worse. And when the rest came to light, things would only get worse again.

No warrant, no charges laid, no probable cause and not even a crime having been committed. In fact the only thing the officers involved could say was that the FBI had been in charge – something the FBI would soon be denying. They probably already were since after speaking with him the captain had been intending to call them. Or so he said.

But that was the least of his troubles. A dozen officers going rogue was actually minor in his world. James had heard – overheard actually as the paramedics had been treating him before loading him into an ambulance – that those same dozen officers had then gone completely off the reservation. They'd turned on other police, and there had been a major gunfight inside and outside the station. He knew why. The banshee had wailed and they had leapt to her defence – against their own brothers in blue.

No one yet had a feel for the numbers who had been killed or injured. The paramedics had speculated that it could be anywhere from a handful to dozens. But whichever it was, it was a disaster. Probably the biggest disaster in the history of the station. The police turning on each other? Having an open gunfight in the street? That would have to be the lead item on every news bulletin across the world.

No doubt the banshee had wailed when she saw her freedom about to come to an end and had used the officers to cover her escape. It seemed to be her modus operandi. And now James guessed everything was up in the air. For the gifted and for the Illuminati. This incident risked exposure of magic to the world.

But first on the chopping block he guessed, was the captain. Because this had all started in his station. He was the man in charge. And this would be laid at his feet.

There was a reason that the captain had looked so drawn when James had spoken to him. This was a rapidly evolving tidal wave of ruin for him. First a dozen of his officers would lose their jobs – through no fault of their own. They might be charged as well. For false arrest and imprisonment. For using excessive force. And for violent assault on a civilian. When word got out that he was an ex policeman himself the speculation would fly.

Then the captain had to deal with the fallout from a police shoot out in his own station. Some officers had ended up in hospital, some in the morgue. And none of them could give any explanation for what had happened. There would be charges laid for that. Prison sentences too in time. Lengthy ones. Possibly murder charges.

What would really destroy him though was when the video of the cells and of Soo Chi simply walking into the holding area and trying to murder him got out. Civilians simply using the police as their own private goons?! The other disasters would pale in comparison to that. And it would get out. Everything these days got out. Within a day there would be a hundred different official information requests for it. And the officers would immediately identify Soo Chi as the FBI agent who'd been in charge. Who had directed them to arrest him. Or they would once her spell wore off. And when they did the FBI would immediately disavow any knowledge of her. She wasn't theirs. After that there would be an official enquiry. Possibly a grand jury hearing.

But he couldn't think about that just then. And there was nothing he could do about it anyway. His job was to go to ground. To not be caught out in the open by the media. They might have his name, address and face, but he couldn’t let them have a statement. Not even a “no comment”. His value as a hunter would be immediately compromised if that happened. And an investigation into how a middle aged Asian woman could somehow not only pretend to be an FBI agent but also convince a dozen police officers to break their oaths and violate the very laws they were supposed to uphold before opening fire on their brother and sister officers, could lead to some questions being asked that the Illuminati really did not want answered. Questions that would be laid at his door. After all, even the slowest would wonder why he had been targeted.

Which was why he had to get out of the hospital. Now.

He'd called Will once he'd been released from the prison and just before they'd carted him into the ambulance, but thus far the cowboy hadn't shown up. Doubtless he had a lot of other things to do. Things like burying evidence. This was a major crisis for the Illuminati. Somehow James didn't think that West was going to be able to do this job on his own. There were just too many players involved. Too much evidence. Too much public interest. James wanted to be gone before it came back to bite him.

“Mr. Henderson.” The doctor did his best to plead with James.

“Just let me out Doc. I want to be gone from here before the press show up.”

“Press?” The doctor sounded surprised. He probably knew that the police were involved but obviously he hadn't heard all the details of the assault.

“This will be the lead item on the news tonight. It's already out on the net. I want to be gone before everything hits the fan.” James didn't feel like explaining the details of the assault to the doctor. He wasn't even sure he wanted to think about them.

“Fine.” The doctor started doing as he was asked. Most of which consisted of covering the rest of him with support bandages. Bandages on top of bandages. The ones around his ribs at least made it a little easier to breathe. He also injected James with some anti-inflammatories and antibiotics and any number of other concoctions James didn't want to know about. He already had an endless number of local painkillers pumped under his skin around each newly stitched wound.  Lastly the doctor gave him a script to take to the drug store.

That done the doctor then spent time lecturing him about what he considered to be James’ foolish life. By that of course he was referring to all the scars he could see on him. Mixed martial arts was a tough game and injuries were a part of life for a fighter. But he didn't tell the doctor that. Nor how he'd got the more recent injuries. He just told him to keep working. The clock was ticking.

“Bloody hell!”

James looked up when he heard Daniels, and he guessed he could understand his surprise. No doubt he looked a mess. But he could still have lived a little more happily without seeing the look of horror on the young man's face.

“Daniels?”

“Will sent me.”

“Good. Once I'm done here I need to go back to my apartment and get some clothes. Then I need to find somewhere else to stay for a bit. The press are going to be all over my place. And everyone else needs to take precautions. If the bitch came after me like this, the chances are she's not done. She's declared war.”

“She's running.”

Daniels said what he thought was reasonable. He thought that the banshee was reasonable. That she'd do what was logical. And what seemed logical was to run. Anyone would think the same.

James knew better though. He understood her.

“She's not running. Not far anyway. Despite what they say there's an even more dangerous animal than the one that's trapped or cornered. It's the one that's being hunted. They're unpredictable and deadly. At some point they always turn around and strike at their hunters. At least with a cornered animal you have a reasonable idea that it's going to attack. With a hunted one you never know if or when. It's instinct. It’s not really about survival either. It’s more about rage and terror. And that's what her cry was all about.”

“Her operation's been compromised and she's been exposed. Her family's disowned her. They won't shelter her. Soon she'll be a wanted criminal with her face all over the tv. There's no place left for her to run to. No place to hide. And if what the police said is right, she's wounded. She's more than just desperate. She's angry. Her life is falling apart. For the moment she'll run. But when she's out of options? No.”

“Soon she'll know she has no hope of escaping. At that point she'll turn on her hunters in an instinctive need to destroy them. She will want to destroy everyone else she thinks has wronged her too. She will strike back hard and with everything she has, thinking she has nothing to lose. And given her abilities she'll be dangerous. This woman is organised crime. She'll use her allies. We have to be ready.”

James knew he was right. Daniels didn't seem quite so certain though. But he wasn't a hunter and he didn't understand his quarry. He'd never seen a gazelle charge a lion in desperation. He'd never seen a lion run with blood dripping down its side from being gored either. Nor had he ever seen a cornered criminal knowing there was no way out, charge an officer with a gun trained on him. It wasn't logical. But it happened.

“So?” Daniels asked.

“So everybody travels in pairs. Everybody watches everyone else's back. Doors are locked. Alarms are set. The office is emptied and we communicate by phone only. Full security. And that starts right now.”

He would have liked to have had more time, but he didn't. He couldn't make the call when he was in the station with the police listening to everything. That would have just got him stuck in an interrogation room. And while he doubted that the banshee could have yet struck, he knew she was desperate. And despite the reports saying that nothing had been found, he was still sure they had a mole in the office. It was just that this mole was particularly clever at covering his or her tracks. And if they did have a mole, then that meant the banshee had more on them than they knew. Things like his home address for a start. Something the police shouldn't have had since he was unlisted.

Of course James was aware as he spoke that the doctor was there with them, an outsider listening in on every word. James would have sent him away but the doctor wasn't going to be sent out of his own rooms. And James knew he had at least another hour here while they waited for the radiologist to go through his scans. Thus far the doctor had only seen the x-rays.

Perhaps what he was saying wasn't wise to say out in the open. But he had also been keeping his mouth carefully shut about all things magical. And the stuff he was saying had to be said and soon. It had to be heard. The sooner people understood what they were facing, the sooner they could prepare for it.