Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities Book 2) (31 page)

Before I could say anything else, I saw two men heading for our table. “Cassidy! Teag! Mind if we join you?” Kell Winston said. He was with Ryan Alexander, who grinned and slid into a chair on Teag’s side of the table while Kell sat down next to me.

Ryan is friend of Teag’s and an urban explorer, someone who enjoys going into modern ruins, abandoned buildings, and forgotten places to see what he can see.

“Not at all,” Teag said. We wouldn’t be able to talk about business, but I think we were both a little relieved. I needed a break.

“What’s new?” Kell asked.

“We got mobbed by a busload of Canadians,” Teag replied.

“Were they lost?” Ryan is taller than Kell, with chestnut hair and dark brown eyes. They’re both close in age to Teag and me, late twenties, and the nature of what we do means we cross paths a lot and work together when we can.

“No, just in need of some vintage jewelry,” I replied, taking a sip of my wine. “Has your team recovered from the Blake house?” I asked Kell.

He nodded. “Pretty much. We lost some equipment, but it could have been a lot worse.”

We chatted for a while, and Kell and Ryan ordered something to eat. Ryan regaled us with tales of his urban explorer group’s most recent adventures, including exploring the old drainage tunnels around the Charleston City Market, and an old cotton warehouse out on the edge of town that was slated for demolition.

“Everyone’s in such a big hurry to build new things,” Ryan said with a sigh. “But there are so many amazing buildings that could be one-of-a-kind fantastic if someone would just give them a little love.”

Considering that preservation and restoration are big business in Charleston and it seems like every other house has a historic plaque, I was amazed anything had been overlooked. But that’s what UrbEx’ers do – they go looking for the beauty in ruins, finding the hidden gems in places others never notice.

“If I spend enough time with Ryan, I feel like I’m in one of those commercials to adopt a shelter dog – only he wants everyone to adopt an old building,” Kell quipped. “Seriously, though, since we teamed up, it’s been amazing. Our group can document hauntings and paranormal activity in places no one else has been – except for graffiti artists – in years. And Ryan’s team helps us navigate safely in places that aren’t exactly, shall we say, up to code?”

“Found anything really interesting recently?” I asked.

Ryan leaned forward. “Actually, yes. Which is one of the reasons I’m glad we ran into you two tonight. We’ve been out at your favorite place – the old Navy Yard.”

I shivered. Ryan and Kell both know I’ve had bad experiences out there. “I’m telling you, there’s a lot of bad mojo there.”

“Believe me, we know,” Kell said. “But even after what happened at the Blake house, these buildings are too good to pass up. Ryan wants to get in and explore before all the good old places get rehabbed and sold to businesses.” The old Navy Yard had been getting a slow make-over for years, with the hope to convert the land someday into a profitable business park. Unfortunately, the area’s bloody past and bad luck – pirates, epidemic victims, military casualties – wasn’t easily erased.

“Have you ever seen the old power generation plant?” Ryan asked. “It’s a prime spot for exploring. The first two times we went out to the plant, it was pretty clear that no one had been there for a long time. But when we went back last week, we found a large burned circle on the concrete at the bottom of a flight of steps.” Ryan looked to Teag and me for a response. “I mean, that sort of thing doesn’t happen spontaneously. No blood. No suggestion of foul play, but there was a perfect circle there in a room where it hadn’t been before – and a bunch of salt all over the place.”

Ryan pulled out a photo and showed it to us. The basement room was mildewed and badly lit. Paint peeled from the walls in sheets and from the ceiling, wires and old pipe insulation dangled like industrial Spanish moss. A large, scorched circle was clear in the middle of the floor. Just like something someone with a lot of magic power might use to summon a creature from beyond.

“You’re sure what you found was salt?” I asked.

Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Why?”

“People who believe in magic think that salt is protective,” Teag replied.

“You think someone did some kind of ritual in there?” Ryan asked, raising an eyebrow.

Teag shrugged. “Who knows?”

I glanced at Kell. “Kinda reminds you of what we saw at the Blake house, doesn’t it?”

Kell leaned forward and studied the photo. “That’s weird. You think there’s some Satanist cult in town?” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the real answer was worse.

“Did you find anything else unusual at the old power plant?” I asked.

“We aren’t the only ones to have been there recently,” Ryan said. “There were at least two different sets of footprints in the mud near the back door. We saw the same footprints in some of the dust inside. But here’s the weird part – it looked like there was a third set of prints near that circle in the basement – and whoever made them was barefoot.”

“Trust me,” Kell broke in, “that is not the place any sane person would take off his shoes.”

Teag and I exchanged a glance.
A supernatural creature like a Watcher wouldn’t care.

I looked over at Kell. “What did your folks find out?” I asked.

“People have said the place was haunted ever since a technician got electrocuted back in the nineties.” I’d heard the rumors. The power plant sat outside the city limits, a hulking concrete box of a building, but so far, no one had bothered to tear it down, even though a new generation plant had taken over its job a long time ago.

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard,” I replied. Teag nodded and started typing on his phone, so I figured he was either looking up intel on the power plant, or hacking into a satellite that could give us a visual if Google didn’t do the trick.

“What happened?”

“Since other sites have been pegging lately, we figured we’d go back and see if the power plant was juiced up – supernaturally speaking,” Kell said.

I sighed. Of course he did. Charleston might be on the verge of a supernatural smackdown, but for Kell and his people, it would be like a neon sign offering free ice cream. Unfortunately, I couldn’t warn them off without having to explain what I knew, and their eagerness to explore could put the ghost hunters right in the middle of the danger. If we couldn’t keep them away, they might be safest if we went with them.

“Harry clued us in to things being weirder than usual out there,” Kell continued. “You know him? The homeless guy who’s usually caging coins in the median by the traffic light out that way?” I could picture Harry, a short, grizzled-looking guy who held a cardboard sign claiming to be a disabled vet.

“Yeah, he’s a decent sort.”

“He helps us keep an eye out for the cops, and we try to help him out with whatever he needs,” Kell said. “So anyhow, Harry told me spooky stuff was going down, so I got the crew together and we went out to have a look.”

He paused to take a bite of his food. “Our meters started going bonkers as soon as we went inside,” Kell said. “EMF, audio, orbs – you name it. Melissa, the psychic who comes along sometimes, was freaking out because she said she could hear ghosts screaming.” He had our full attention. “Harry said he wanted to show us something really weird down in the basement. We let him lead us, since he knows the place better than anyone. He started down to the basement with a flashlight. I was right behind him, a few steps back. All of a sudden, his flashlight goes dark, and I hear Harry yell. I thought maybe he was playing a trick, or the flashlight failed, you know?” Kell paused. “So after a moment, we went on down. We looked all around. No Harry. We called his name, but he didn’t answer. Not only that, but there weren’t any fresh footprints in the dust at the bottom of the stairs. He just vanished.”

“What happened then?” I was afraid I knew what happened to Harry, and I bet that if Teag ran a search on him, we’d find that somewhere in Harry’s past, he had been charged and acquitted of a crime, just like the other men who disappeared.

“We got out of there fast,” Kell replied, sounding embarrassed. “Weird, huh?”

I exchanged a glance with Teag. I was sure he was thinking what I was thinking. We needed to make our own trip out to the old power plant and see for ourselves what was going on.
Two big circles for major magic – two Watchers brought over from Beyond. Three more, and it all goes ‘boom’.

Kell sipped his beer. “The poltergeist activity is getting worse. We kept getting hit with pebbles and little chunks of plaster that were definitely thrown – they didn’t just fall off the ceiling. Doors slammed and opened on their own. We heard engines humming, but nothing was turned on.”

“What about the room with the burned circle?” I asked.

Kell met my gaze. “That was pretty strange. All through the building, there was so much EMF activity I actually thought someone was playing with us, faking it. The ghosts were more aggressive than ever. But the closer we got to the room with the circle, the quieter it got, until the last length of hallway and the room itself – nothing. Total null.”

That didn’t surprise me, if Reapers liked taking a bite out of ghosts to stoke up their energy, heck, maybe they liked a snack or two between plagues and disasters. I imagine hell spawn get peckish, too.

“You guys really know how to get around,” Teag remarked, finishing off his ale. “What about that old motel you said was out near the Navy Yard?”

Kell nodded. “We’ve been there. There was plenty of graffiti, doors ripped off, lots of damage, so we’re certainly not the first to go there. But we had heard a story about a young man who killed himself there in one of the rooms. Another guy hanged himself in one of the bathrooms when he found out his girl married someone else.” In other words, good ghost-hunting.

“This was our second time at the motel,” Kell went on. “The first time, we didn’t get anything except a couple of blurry orbs.” Orbs were balls of light caught on camera, and many ghost hunters believe they are spectral images.

“This time, orbs were popping up all over the place. Cold spots. Poltergeist stuff – doors and windows slamming, flying pebbles, objects falling. And the same feeling that we had at the power plant, that the ghosts really wanted us to leave.”

I looked to Ryan. “Any evidence that people had been in the building lately?”

He frowned. “Yeah. And if we hadn’t been trespassing ourselves, I might have called the cops. The only thing is, I’m still not sure whether what we saw was human, or just some big animals. The prints were strange.”

“Oh?” I asked.

Ryan nodded. “We saw several hoof prints. Gouges in the walls and rips in the carpet that looked like a bear had gotten loose in there.” He had photos, too. I was grateful, because it saved Teag and me a trip that was not likely to be in our best interests.

He paused. “The other difference was the smell. Some of the rooms at the old motel stank like nothing I’ve ever smelled before.”

There’s a reason people say something ‘stinks like the pit of Hell’. Supernatural creatures, especially those from the less enlightened realms, tend not to adhere to mortal notions of hygiene.

“What I really want to know,” Kell said, “is what’s causing this big surge in supernatural activity? From what I’m seeing on the ghost hunter forums online, lots of other people are asking the same question.”

I was pretty sure I knew, but it wasn’t an answer I could share. You can’t un-know something, just like you can’t un-see it. And for all that ghost hunters and paranormal investigators believe the truth is ‘out there’, very few people really want to have their nice, normal mental framework of how the world functions totally turned on end.

“Would you two mind sending me copies of those photos?” I asked. “I promise not to reveal my sources,” I said with a smile. “But I have some friends who might be able to figure out what caused the things you saw.”

“I was hoping you’d ask,” Ryan replied, grinning. He pulled a flash drive from his pocket. “Here. Kell and I put the best photos on this. Don’t worry – we know how to scrub the digital images so that they can’t be traced. But if you give it to someone in law enforcement, do me a favor and wipe it for prints, okay?”

He wasn’t joking. Ryan’s group of explorers is very careful not to damage property or steal left-behind items, but they still trespass, break, and enter. Teag and I did a lot of the same in service to the Alliance. The police were likely to take a dim view of such things. That made it awkward to do your civic duty when, in the process of committing a misdemeanor, you happen upon someone committing a felony.

“It’s probably something new with college students,” Kell said. “You know, some kind of hazing or role playing game. I certainly don’t want to kick off another one of those ‘Satanic panic’ mass hysteria things. But I do think it bears looking into.” He shrugged. “Something about the whole thing felt… wrong.”

“Since we don’t know if the people behind this are dangerous, you might not want to go back, at least until things calm down a little,” I suggested, hoping they would take the hint. I liked both Kell and Ryan, and the people I had met from their groups seemed like nice folks. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, and I sure didn’t want anyone in the way when the time came for us to take down the ghost-chompers.