King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (17 page)

A sense of inevitability had crept into the room when I wasn’t paying attention and now it hung in the air around us. My gut ached in that way it does when you know something terrible is about to happen, even if you don’t know exactly what. I was struck with the sudden urge to tell Denise to shut up before it was too late, before the other shoe dropped.

I wasn’t quick enough.

Gallagher waited patiently until Denise finished her little tirade and now, in a softer voice than I would have expected, said, “We can’t go to the Council, Denise.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re dead.”

The thud I heard was the proverbial other shoe dropping.

“What happened?” I asked, when I realized that Denise had been shocked into silence.

Gallagher sighed. “What did you expect? They got sick and died, just like everybody else. Or that’s what we thought, at least. Did you think I’d been elected to this post?”

“Um, actually, yeah, I did.”

He laughed, but it was a hollow, bitter laugh, full of pain and darkness. “Four weeks ago I was just one of the Marshal’s lieutenants. Then people start getting ill, dying, and suddenly everyone is looking to me to take charge because I was the most senior staff member still alive. Trust me, being Lord Marshal was the last thing I wanted.”

“So you’re saying we’re on our own?”

“Pretty much. There are a few major players left in town who didn’t take off after the news of the High Council’s death got out, but not many. I’ve been in touch with each of them, trying to coordinate a response to all of this, but it hasn’t been easy. Until now, we didn’t know what we were facing.”

We still don’t
, I thought.

I had to give the guy credit. Whether he’d wanted to be Lord Marshal or not, he’d stepped up when necessary and done what he could to help people. My own initial reaction, by comparison, was downright embarrassing.

“So my question still stands. Now what?”

The attacks this morning clearly showed there were at least two of the creatures still out there, but beyond that we really didn’t have any idea what we were facing. The whole city might be infested for all we knew.

I thought about the nun I’d seen in the church the night before. It was clear to me now that it hadn’t been a nun at all, but rather one of these creatures. I’d thought the “nun” had been praying with the patient, when, in fact, the creature had probably been feeding on the poor person’s soul while I was right there in the room.

I physically shivered when I realized how much danger I’d been in without even knowing it.

If I’d caught up to it there at the end …

I hadn’t, though, and that was all that mattered.

That and stopping these things before the situation grew any worse.

“We need to figure out what these things are if we’re to have any hope of stopping them,” Gallagher said. “The Council would have been our best resource, but they certainly aren’t the only one.”

Denise laughed, but it was a bitter, tired laugh. “The Council was the best and brightest of us, Simon. That’s why they
were
the Council, for Gaia’s sake. Without them, we’ve got nothing.”

I’d never heard her sound so defeated.

But Gallagher didn’t agree.

“We can ask Blackburn,” he said.

From the shouting that erupted after Gallagher made his suggestion, I got the sense that consulting this Blackburn character was the last thing on earth Denise and Dmitri wanted to do.

Trouble was, I was starting to get the feeling that it didn’t matter what we wanted. Things were moving too fast for that.

24

HUNT

Six hours later, just before midnight, I found myself sitting against the gunwale of a decrepit old skiff as it made its way slowly through the bayou toward Blackburn’s, its puttering engine sounding like it was going to give out at any minute and leave us stranded in alligator country. Gallagher didn’t seem concerned, though, so I tried to keep my nerves to myself and hoped that he knew what he was doing.

It wasn’t easy. It was made more difficult by the fact that both Denise and Dmitri had flatly refused to accompany us.

After the initial argument in Gallagher’s office had died down, we’d decided that before going to Blackburn we would first see if we could find any information in the High Council’s library about the creatures.

That seemed like a good idea to me. At least until we’d set foot in the place.

Despite the fact that I couldn’t see anything, it was clear just from the way our voices were echoing that the room we were standing in inside the Chief Councilor’s mansion was enormous. It was supposed to hold all the knowledge that the seven mages who made up the Senior Council had accumulated during their long years as practitioners of the Arts. With their deaths, control of the place had passed to Gallagher.

We were armed with photographs of the creature and a determination to search the library for any hint of what we were facing.

How the hell we were going to do that given the size of the place, I had no idea.

As it turned out, neither did the others.

They guided me to a chair and left me there as they began to search the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, looking for anything that might prove helpful. They brought stack after stack of books and parchments back to the study area in the center of the room and spent hours paging through them, to no avail. Conversation went from hopeful and enthusiastic to practically nonexistent as the scope of the task became evident. We could spend days in there without knowing if we were even getting close.

Hell, for all we knew, they’d already skipped past what we were looking for without even knowing it.

Finally, after hours of hunting for what was the equivalent of a needle in an entire county of haystacks, Gallagher again brought up the idea of consulting Blackburn.

Another argument ensued, but this time Gallagher had his mind made up.

“Ignoring a resource as powerful as Blackburn is stupid!” he finally shouted, silencing the others. “You can stay here if you want, but I’m going.”

“Then go!” Denise snarled in return. “But you’ll be going alone. There’s no way in hell I’m getting near that thing!”

Dmitri hadn’t said anything himself, but given the animosity that was pouring off him in waves, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he supported Denise’s decision.

The fact that Denise used the word “thing” to describe Blackburn didn’t escape me.

Which made what I did next surprising, even to myself. I’m still not sure what perverse need for self-inflicted suffering made me speak up at that moment.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

Which was how I now found myself being ferried through the bayou in the dead of night with only Gallagher and an old Creole fisherman for company.

The cypress trees, their branches hanging down almost to the water’s edge like mourners with their heads bowed, cast odd shadows across the water in the bright moonlight. Our guide steered us along without trouble, as if he’d been doing this very thing for untold years.

For all I knew, he had.

To my surprise, the swamp was alive with sound, even at this hour of the night. The frogs had a chorus all their own, from the guttural belching of the bulls to the chirps of the smaller tree frogs. They were joined by the incessant buzz of the insects that swarmed around us and the occasional hoot of a far-off owl.

From time to time a loud splash could be heard, and each time it happened, I tensed. I watched the water, wary of gators, but other than an occasional glimpse of something moving off in the distance, I didn’t see anything.

“So you think this Blackburn guy will help us?” I asked, if for no other reason than to keep my mind off the alligators I knew had to be out there in the swamp watching us and thinking about their next meal.

He took his time answering. “He might.”

My, that was reassuring. “What do you mean, might? I thought that’s why we came out here in the first place.”

“It’s not that easy, Hunt. Blackburn can be … difficult.”

I wasn’t going to let him off that easily. “How so?” I asked.

His silence was longer this time, and I found myself wondering what he was afraid of. Blackburn couldn’t be that bad.

“A long time ago, Blackburn was one of our best and brightest. They say that he could have risen to head the High Council, if he’d wanted. But somewhere along the way he fell off the path, so to speak, and something happened to him.”

Around us, the night fell quiet, as if even the denizens of the swamp waited to hear what Gallagher had to say.

“Blackburn encountered something out there, in the darkness where man was not meant to go, and it changed him. Made him … different. Both more and less human, if that makes any sense.”

Oddly enough, it did. I’d once encountered a being like that myself and the experience had changed me as well. I knew more than one person who would say it wasn’t for the better, either.

Gallagher went on. “Blackburn bought himself an old estate on the edge of the bayou and retreated there over a decade ago, cutting himself off from the rest of the practitioners in the city, unable or maybe just unwilling to interact with them any longer. Frankly, I’m not sure he’s even still alive.”

I wasn’t sure who was the bigger fool, him for thinking Blackburn would have any interest in helping us or me for blindly following along.

Gallagher fell silent at that point and wouldn’t say anything further. I sat there, staring out into the swamp around us, and wondered what would possess a man to retreat into a place like this. And what might make another man seek him out knowing what he already knew. It revealed a side to Gallagher that I hadn’t suspected and I wondered if it had anything to do with Denise’s departure from both the Circle and the city.

Eventually our guide said something in a language I didn’t understand and Gallagher answered him in the same tongue. A few moments later he pointed out across the water.

“There. Pointe du Lac in all its glory.”

I stared at the decaying structure and wondered just what the hell I was doing here.

Once, long ago, the mansion might been the height of southern elegance, but those days were long gone. Now it was a crumbling hulk, half smothered beneath vegetation. Rot showed through where the paint had been worn away by the passage of time and the moisture of the swamp, and I had a sudden image of the whole place falling down around our ears the minute we stepped inside.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

Gallagher said nothing.

The boatman guided our craft over to a dock hidden beneath the draping branches of a cypress grove. Unlike the house, the dock was well kept and probably no older than a few years. It told me right away that there was more here than met the eye.

After tying up at the dock, Gallagher and I disembarked and made our way across the overgrown lawn to the house proper, picking our way across the rotting porch to the front door.

Gallagher reached for the door handle, but I stopped him before he could open it.

“Don’t you think we should knock or something?”

“What for?” Gallagher asked. “He already knows we’re here.”

I was still trying to digest the implications of that statement when he pushed the door open and strode inside. With nothing else to do, and nowhere else to go, I followed.

25

HUNT

Gallagher led me through a series of darkened rooms full of cloth-covered furniture and the occasional lighted candle. Despite the dim light, he moved with purpose. It was immediately clear that he was familiar with the layout of the house.

I wondered if that was because he had been here recently or because nothing about the place ever changed.

We emerged from a long hallway to find ourselves in what must once have been a drawing room. An old crumbling piano stood to the left, the dust and cobwebs that covered it clear evidence that it had been a long time since music had filled this room. More cloth-covered furniture was scattered here and there about the place, with no real rhyme or reason to the layout that I could see. Directly across the room was a large fireplace and a few red coals still burned in its grate.

Clearly, someone had been in the room, and not too long ago, either.

To the right of the fireplace was a set of French doors. Both of them were open to the night just beyond.

Gallagher held up a hand, indicating we should stop where we were. From inside his coat he removed the photographs of the creature’s corpse that he had brought with him to show to our host.

As we stood there, I became aware of a thick stench that was slowly seeping into the air. It was like the smell of carrion on the highway under the hot summer sun mixed with the smell of rotting vegetables and the taste of sour milk on the tongue.

I wanted to gag, to force the smell out of my system, but I held back when I noticed movement near the open French doors.

Our host kept to the shadows just beyond the doors, a tactic that I assumed was designed to keep us from seeing him too clearly, from seeing what he had become. But darkness hides no secrets from me, and I had a moment to see just what it was we were dealing with. After getting a good look, I can honestly say that I wish I hadn’t.

Nothing living should ever look like that.

Blackburn appeared as if he’d begun to rot from the inside out. His skin was deathly pale, with that waxy look common to a corpse two days past its prime, and his veins showed through it as a twisting lattice of black lines that pulsed at odd intervals.

Long stringy hair framed a narrow face that was terrible to behold. His eyes were oversized and red, and his ears had lengthened and came to a point at the tips. When he turned his head to look in my direction, I could see that his nose was nothing but a seeping hole in the center of his face.

His voice, when he spoke, was like the drone of a thousand hungry insects. My skin crawled at the sound of it.

“You know my price?” he asked.

Gallagher nodded. “I do and I accept it fully.”