Demon Hunters (24 page)

“Warlock.”

“What?”

“A male witch is a warlock.”

“I don’t care! The fact is all of that is
fantasy but the reality is we have a dead body with your prints all
over it. You knew the victim and were at the scene of the crime
before and after it had occurred. If you were me, what would you
do?” I hated trick questions.

“Let me go?”

“Close. I will be sending you to a holding
cell until a trained psychiatrist can meet with you and then I
assume you will then be sent to the nearest mental health facility
for a very long time.” Samantha then pushed herself up out of the
chair and turned toward the door.

“What about Jackal? He was released from
Kennison Asylum! You may not believe he’s a warlock, but you know
he’s seriously screwed up! He’s dangerous and now he’s out there!
Doesn’t all this sound more like things he would do?”

“Mr. Bledsoe was released legally and into
the custody of a licensed therapist and since his release there
have been no reports of any illegal activity on his part.”

“Who released him?” Samantha looked back in
that little file of hers.

“Dr. Hobart Zucker. Here.” She slid the form
over to me. I looked down at the signed release form.

“You’ve checked this guy out?”

“He’s clean across the board.”

“Jackal told me The Reborn sprung him.”

“Maybe he lied to you.”

“He’d never pass up the chance to taunt me.
He hates me much more than he hates you.”

“I’ll be sending someone in to take you to
your cell.” She walked out. I fell back into my seat. I could hear
some footsteps outside the door echoing through the endless halls.
I was helpless.

It was a fact of my life I had come to terms
with years ago. To the outside observer, so much of my life seemed
to make no sense and for it to make sense, said observer would need
to believe certain things that the general public had been trained
not to believe. From my point of view, I’ve been trying to stop the
return of a horrible evil, to others; I’ve just been running around
making a lot of noise and leaving bodies in my wake. Jackal had
been released in a supposedly legal fashion and was free to make
all the chaos he saw fit and I was about to be trussed up into a
straightjacket for the rest of my living days.

The door opened and a uniformed officer
walked in. He walked up to me and held out his cuffs.

“Up.” I complied and he quickly slapped the
cuffs on. He pushed me out the door and led me down the hall. I
heard the noise around me but it seemed like we were held in our
own little bubble and nothing else seemed to get through. I really
wasn’t sure why I was so upset. I began to think of Gwen.

The officer took me below to the holding
cells. We stopped at a small office where they checked inmates in.
They put me through the paces. Mug shots. Fingerprints and then
they assigned me a cage. The officer led me down a long corridor
flanked by cells on either side of us. A few catcalls and whistles
escaped from behind the bars. It was too dark to tell where they
were coming from for sure. We finally stopped at my cell. It was
small, of course. Dirty, naturally. The officer released the cuffs
and then pushed the cell key into the lock and the door slid open.
I walked in and as he was about to shut the cell he stopped.

He was stuck in mid motion. His hand was on
one of the bars firmly and it looked as though the cell door was
already in moving. I stepped out quickly and there was no response.
He just stood there like an ice sculpture. I headed back down the
hall. I walked by the small office in front and the guy in there
was just stuck staring up into space.

When I made it back to the front lobby, I
saw the occurrence wasn’t limited to below. Every single person was
stuck doing whatever they had been doing a few minutes earlier.
There was a fist fight just about to break out and the two fighters
seemed to be stuck in some kind of freeze frame shot just before
they were about to both land a punch on their opponents’ faces. An
old man sitting on a bench was hunched over with a wad of spittle
hanging in midair just in front of him, clearly intended to land on
the shoe of his arresting officer who was standing right in front
of him. I saw Ivar standing at the door to the building. He had his
hands pressed to his temples and his eyes squeezed shut.

“Ivar?”

“Don’t talk! Just go!” He nudged me toward
the door and I could see Gwen sitting in the car just outside. I
looked back up at Ivar, his face was straining and pearls of sweat
were trickling down his face.

“Thanks.”

“GO!” I bolted through the door and leapt
into the car. Gwen pushed down on the pedal and we screeched out
onto the street.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know. We were waiting to be
processed when Ivar said he knew this trick. He told me that when
he put his hands to his head, I was to get out and find the car and
to just wait outside with the motor running.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have no idea. I thought you’d know.”

“Stop the car.”

“What?”

“Stop the car,” Gwen slid the car to a stop
along a quiet street. I sprung from my seat, dashed around and
shoved her out from behind the wheel. “We’ll probably get around
faster if someone who knows where they’re going is driving.”

“Okay then. Where are we going?”

“First General.”

“Are you nuts? They took Demonica there.
There are cops all over the place!”

“I need to talk to her!” Gwen turned to me
and her eyes were wild but still seemed to be curious and
desperate.

“This is crazy.” I smiled.

“I am absolutely aware.”

I pulled into the parking lot of First
General Hospital and it seemed calm. We found a space far from the
entrance in a dark corner of the lot.

We got into the hospital and it seemed
normal. I hadn’t been in many hospitals, but as long as there
weren’t people running around with blood pouring out of their veins
or dead bodies being wheeled around, things were normal.

The waiting area was practically abandoned
except for a little old lady knitting what appeared to be a scarf
and a homeless guy stretched across three chairs.

“Now what?” Gwen asked.

“We find Demonica.”

“I’ll get her room number. You just wait
here and keep out of sight.” Gwen went over to the nurse’s desk. I
was about to sit down one seat from the old lady but she just shot
me some crazy look. Her eyes were bulged out and with her thin,
frail head, they seemed even larger.

“Herbert sits there.” She said while holding
her knitting needles in a threatening manner. I stepped back and
turned to the homeless guy. I wasn’t sure if I wanted the seat next
to his head or his feet. He was bald so I figured there was less
chance of there being any parasites there so I sat there. The smell
wasn’t as strong as I thought it would have been, but I soon felt a
strange itching sensation come over me. I looked down and I could
literally see the bugs traveling across the armrest from him to me.
I leapt up and brushed my body up and down as quickly as I could.
Gwen came up to me just then.

“She’s in room two ten.”

“Fine. Let’s go.” We then headed for the
elevators.

We stepped out of the elevator at the second
floor and I spotted room two ten right away.

“Keep watch.” I said as I went in. The only
light available was the small light that was fixed above Demonica’s
bed. She was curled up under the sheets. I heard the rhythmic beep
of the monitoring equipment.

“About time.” She then turned over to face
me. Her face was pale, more so than usual. Her eyes looked heavy
and swollen.

“Sorry. I had some paperwork to deal with.”
I pulled a chair up to her bed.

“That’s fine. You’re here now.”

“Okay, I don’t have a lot of time. What were
you trying to tell me back at the house?”

“Jackal. He betrayed The Reborn. I guess in
his research, he discovered another sacred rite. A way to transfer
Morgan’s powers to him without reviving her.”

“So he killed them all?”

“Yes. He found a way to destroy them
permanently. He wasn’t going to let them keep running around wild
like that. He couldn’t risk it.”

“Why didn’t he kill you?”

“It’s not like he didn’t try. I had gotten
wise to his little plan and I would be dead if one of those zombies
hadn’t wandered up and distracted him. I heard it all from upstairs
though. It was horrible.” Demonica said with a slight shiver.

“You know what he’s doing?”

“Of course. I’ve known about this little
incantation for some time and I know exactly what he needs to
accomplish it. He has Morgan’s body and the dagger. The only things
he needs now are four sacrifices of blood and a place to perform
the ritual. It must be done someplace that is strongly tied to the
one casting the spell. A place with deep emotional meaning.” I
thought about it quickly and a thought popped into my head.

“What about the dagger? Did you find out how
it can be destroyed?” Demonica’s face fell slightly.

“I was only able to find a very odd verse
about this subject.” Demonica reached for the drawer in the
nightstand. She pulled it open and plucked out a small slip of
paper.

“The dagger can only be vanquished when
surrounded by the place where all life began.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. That’s all I was able to
find. If I had more time...”

“But you don’t. I have to go.” I got up and
headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Better you don’t know. I’ll see you
later.”

When we returned to the car, I got in behind
the wheel while Gwen belted herself into the passenger seat.

“Well? What did she say?”

“She told me that Jackal betrayed The Reborn
and plans on transferring all of Morgan’s power into himself.”

“Why do you sound so happy? This is bad,
isn’t it? We still don’t know where Jackal is.”

“Oh, yes we do.”

“We do?” I turned to her and did my best to
muster up my most charming smile.

“Keep your friends close, and your enemies
even closer.”

“What the Hell is that supposed to
mean?”

“You’ll find out. Get comfy.”

Slater

We had been driving on the interstate for
two hours straight. There were a few stories on the radio about how
I had escaped police custody, but we were so far past the city, no
one would be looking anymore and the car we were driving wasn’t
even on their radar. I held to the speed limit as best I could and
at about eleven, I finally got off the freeway and took some back
roads to get to where we were headed.

Gwen was fast asleep in the passenger seat.
She didn’t even wake up as we hit all the bumps and rises on the
dirt road. I managed to find a rather large pothole along the path
and that rattled her at last.

“What? Where are we?”

“We’re on the road to where we’re
going.”

“Which is? Where are you taking me?”

“We’re going to Slater.”

“Slater?”

“A small town. It’s where Jackal grew
up.”

“You think he’s going back to his hometown?”
Just then, we drove around a large bend and I could see the humble
town of Slater up ahead. We cruised by a rather intricately built
wooden sign by the side of the road that was meant to welcome
visitors to Slater. The name of the town was carved into the wood
in big letters and there were little flowers and butterflies
painted lovingly around the letters. It had seen better days as the
paint was terribly faded and the wood had clear signs of rot. It
was looking more like a warning sign than of welcome.

Slater was a town that boasted a population
of five hundred at its most dense. It had been a dairy town back in
the day and it survived solely on the profits of its cash crop,
milk and dairy products. Over time, though, competition and
industrialization proved to be Slater’s downfall. Profits began to
slip and then dropped off altogether. The cows were sold, the
fields died which caused all the family owned farms to fold and the
town of Slater fell into a financial slump it would never recover
from. It became a ghost town in the truest sense of the term. The
buildings were just empty husks that stood as painful reminders of
the past. Its current population was a little more than a hundred
and that was true only if you counted the homeless dregs that
insisted on hanging on.

We drove through the heart of the town.
Small streets lined with decrepit and rusted out stores and
buildings. Abandoned cars were parked along the neglected roads and
street lamps that once burned brightly stood dead and cold. The
most activity I could see was down one alley. There seemed to be a
group of homeless huddled around a burning oilcan.

“This is depressing.”

“This place has seen better days.”

“No wonder Jackal grew up to be so twisted.
This looks like the kind of place that just churns out serial
killers by the busload.”

“Oh. This is nothing. Wait ‘til you see
where we’re stopping.”

“We’re stopping? You’re actually stopping
the car here?”

We drove past the main drag of Slater and up
a large hill. We came up on Sunnyridge Orphanage. It was the most
prime piece of real estate in Slater as it had the best view of the
entire town and it was the largest parcel of land available in the
county. I brought the car to a stop just in front of the main gate
leading up to the house. A twisted oak tree sat in the middle of a
small field nearby. Its branches were bare and listless. I got out
of the car but Gwen seemed resistant. I ran over and pulled her
door open.

“We’re here.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. This is like
something out of some cheap slasher movie. Why are we here?”