Dark Hunger (23 page)

He snorted. “Try naming me as a source, and I’ll tell everyone you’re crazy.”

“I have a picture of you moving that beam.”

“I can always say you rigged the photo.”

She glared at him, then crossed her arms, resigned. They’d finish this, then she’d decide what to do with whatever she learned.

“The VA hospital was demolished in Katrina, wasn’t it?” Annabelle asked.

He steered the car onto a side street. “Yes. There’s plans for a new one, but right now there’s no facility.”

“So there’s no way to find out if a local veteran might be involved.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Let’s stop by the largest homeless shelters, question the social workers, and see if Reverend Narius has visited. Then let’s talk to the good preacher. Maybe you can feel out the crowd at the Swamp Festival. See if you sense a demon there.”

He didn’t comment, confirming her thoughts.

And intensifying her fears. The authorities would eventually find the mastermind behind these bombings—if he was human.

But if a demon was involved, how would they identify him?

Only another demon could.

One more reason she needed to fear Quinton and keep her distance.

The screams of the dead and dying reverberated through the cavernous walls. Music to the Death Angel’s ears.

They belonged to him now.

His to do with as he pleased. Their pitiful lives as mortals were extinguished as they turned themselves over to him. Their souls would be in limbo until they completed his mission.

One touch, and he had easily put their feeble minds to bed for eternity. Then their bodies had fried from the inside out.

He had offered them redemption and a chance to walk the earth one more time in exchange for immortality.

Tonight at midnight he would watch another kill in the name of his glory. And this time the Armstrong woman would lie in the rubble.

More bones to clean. More flesh to feed on.

The screech of his fellow vultures echoed to him, the anticipation of the feast to come stirring the air with the scents of death and blood—and soon, the end of humanity, as chaos and evil reigned.

The knowledge of the daunting task they faced today gnawed at Quinton as he drove to the Loving Arms shelter. He’d almost stopped the bomber in Charleston but failed.

He hated failure.

He parked in front of the concrete facility, a former office building that had been flooded during Katrina. Thanks to donations and government funding, the much-needed shelter now occupied the space.

As they climbed out, Quinton scanned the perimeter for a possible suspect. The area was on the outskirts of town, not in the best section of New Orleans, with other dilapidated and deserted buildings nearby.

A half dozen patrons loitered outside, huddling together to battle the heavy fall winds that threatened rain and brought the stench of the bayou and garbage swirling around them. Two women wearing worn housedresses glanced up at them suspiciously, while a white-haired man with a shaggy beard grinned, revealing a lack of teeth. Annabelle smiled and spoke to each of them, then rushed inside.

Quinton followed her silently, his senses honed, hunting for the smell he’d detected in Savannah, for the glassy eyes of a lost soul, the vacant mind of someone who’d been possessed by the demon.

Inside, a tall, exotically beautiful black woman with waist-length hair greeted them. “I’m Shayla Larue. How can I help you?”

Quinton introduced them both, then explained the reason for their visit.

Shayla’s gold tooth glittered as she smiled. “Yes. I’ve been expecting you.”

Quinton frowned. “You have?”

She gestured for them to follow her into her office, a cubicle off to the side of a large kitchen, where a plate of beignets sat the counter. “I have bad feeling. Especially when the vultures arrive,” she said, her Cajun accent heavy.

“Have you noticed anything strange lately?” Quinton asked.

Annabelle cleared her throat. “Anyone who seems suicidal? Maybe someone who talked of death or heaven or hell?”

Shayla smiled. “It not unusual for our visitors to speak of death and the future. Many are depressed or have failing health. As we age, we look at life differently.”

“How about veterans?” Quinton asked.

She pursed her mouth in thought. “Yesterday a man came through who seemed disoriented and lost. But again, that not normal.”

Quinton folded his arms. “Has a doctor named Gryphon visited the center?”

Shayla nodded “He come by early this morning. He say he trying to help. He talk about his experiments with memory problems and PTS. He say he get results with subjects.”

“He’s been honored for his work in helping the homeless and indigent,” Annabelle said.

“So nice, he was,” Shayla said, “when so many others trying to take advantage of these people.”

“Did he talk to anyone here?” Annabelle asked.

She frowned. “He do routine health checks. Then say he be back.”

Quinton cleared his throat. “What about Reverend Narius? Has he visited?”

“No, not yet. But he supposed to stop by sometime.” She paused, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “I worry that he be too late.”

Her words made the hair on the nape of Quinton’s neck rise, and he studied her. Did she have some kind of power or second sense?

“My grandmother a voodoo priestess,” she said, as if she’d read his thoughts.

An unnerving idea. “I have her gift of the visions,” she said quietly.

“So what have you seen?” Quinton asked.

“Death. Satan. That you here to find the demon come to N’awlins. I try to put protective spell around the city.”

He searched her face. “What do you mean, you know who I am?”

“Those in the magic community know of your father’s power. That you and your brothers are Dark Lords.”

He tried to telepath for her to be quiet, that Annabelle didn’t know his story. But she gave him a sad look, and he read her silent message. She thought Annabelle deserved to know the truth, that she could handle it. That she could even help him.

“You believe in demons?” Annabelle asked.

“I am born of a family of voodoo priestess,” she said, her odd-colored eyes flickering with shadows. “A demon-slayer as well.”

“Then tell me how to recognize a demon,” Quinton said.

“Utilize your sense of smell,” Shayla murmured. “And your other senses. When you begin to use them more, your powers will grow. Although some demons are better at covering their odor than others.”

For a brief moment, Quinton frowned. He already knew this but had hoped for more and glimpsed into Shayla Larue’s mind. He saw her creating magic potions and spells, battling evil ones and walking through the cemetery with the dead.

“You must protect the woman,” she said, a low, ominous hint to her voice as she gestured toward Annabelle. “She is in great danger. They will use her to get to you.”

Annabelle bit down on her lip but refrained from commenting.

“The ancients say the Death Angel turn people into the Walking Dead,” Shayla continued. “They die but they come back from grave. They gots a gray color and carry the smell of death on they skin. They be brought back by the devil to do harm.”

A dark aura engulfed her, her eyes glowing in the dim lights of the shelter. “Who’s doing this?” he asked.

Her dreads swung as she shook her head. “I can’t say who the bomber is, but the Death Angel has possessed him. There are many demons among us now, walking in the shadows. I met two vampires just last week, and a shape-shifter with the power to change into human form at will. This demon is for you to find. The vultures mean death, and they here to stay.”

Annabelle shivered as she fought the wind on her way back to the car, Shayla’s warning echoing in her head.

She is in great danger. They will use her to get to you
.

Quinton climbed into the driver’s seat, his face a wall of granite, then steered the vehicle onto the highway toward the Audubon Zoo, where the Swamp Festival was to be held. Annabelle folded her arms, the gray cast to the sky adding to her dismal mood. A thick fog blanketed the bayou, the gnarled and twisted branches of the giant live oaks sweeping the ground with their spidery gray moss, the crocodiles and snakes slithering through the muddy Mississippi, their beady eyes piercing the darkness like silent stalkers ready to pounce.

The vultures normally didn’t like woods, but they hovered there now, ready to feed off the smaller animals seeking refuge inside.

The air felt oppressive, the stench of death and blood wafting from the depths of the backwoods, the local legends and folklore of the gators, of voodoo, and of satanic rituals rolling through her head.

Annabelle had seen the book
Deadly Demons
, had even witnessed Quinton use his power. But to have this woman confirm what she suspected and speak of the demons’ being after her made her stomach cramp.

What other demons were walking the earth? Shayla had said there were shape-shifters and vampires…

She’d read about them in books, but were they real?

And what if they couldn’t stop this demon? What if he continued to wreak death and destruction?

*   *   *

Vincent Valtrez plugged into the FBI databases to search other possibilities for the bomber while he waited for Agent Blackwell to join him at the local office near Blood-Core to discuss the stolen blood vials.

He searched for connections between the bombings, along with the homeless shelters, looking for anyone who might have donated to all the shelters. Insurance agents, charities, politicians… the list was endless. He also plugged in the names of social workers, medical personnel, neighboring hospitals, then police and investigators who might have worked more than one scene.

McLaughlin had been assigned to the Charleston case, while another agent, Davis, was sent to Savannah. Reverend Narius’s name popped up, along with various charities and churches he was affiliated with.

Then Dr. Sam Wynn’s name—the Bureau’s resident specialist in forensics and identifying bones. He was working all the bombings.

Vincent scratched his forehead in thought. Was it possible?

Agent Blackwell rapped on the door then poked his head inside the room. “Valtrez?”

“Yeah. Any news?”

Blackwell shook his head. “No concrete terrorist cells. We’re watching a couple of small cells, but we haven’t found any conclusive evidence that connects them to the bombers.”

Vincent gritted his teeth. He wished to hell they had, that he was wrong and it wasn’t demonic. “What about the missing blood vials?”

“Other than the lab techs and doctor, the only finger-print we found in the research facility belongs to a dead man.” Agent Blackwell massaged the back of his neck with one hand.

Vincent’s mind spun with questions. “Who did the print belong to?”

“A man named Jerome Huntington. He was a sadistic man who drank blood from his victims.”

“Jesus. Where is he now?”

“He was given a lethal injection on death row last year.”