Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (6 page)

There was only one way to find out, I supposed.

“Hello, Thomas,” I said.

Scream didn’t reply, just stared at me with his usual dour expression.

I’ll admit it, I was disappointed. Discovering Whisper could talk had gotten me hopeful that maybe Scream could do the same. In a way, he and I have far more in common than Whisper and I do. If there was ghost out there that I should understand and have an affinity for, it was Scream. We’d both lost our daughters to the machinations of the same evil sorcerer and its murderous imp. We’d both pursued them to the ends of the earth—and in Scream’s case, beyond into death—in order to seek justice for our loved ones. We’d both faced our failures, each in our own ways due to our unique circumstances, and striven to go on despite them.

“Not going to talk to me, huh?” I asked gently, not really expecting a reply, just talking to hear myself at that point.

Scream didn’t say anything, but he did point solemnly over my shoulder.

I turned to face the door just in time to hear a key slide into the lock outside. I managed to look away and cover my eyes just in time.

The door opened, flooding the room with light from the hallway outside.

“What are you doing in the dark?” Grady asked, and then, right on the heels of that, “Are you alone?”

I tried to look innocent, not an easy feat I know, as I said, “Am I alone? Are you kidding me? Of course I’m alone.”

“Then who the hell were you talking to just now?”

I shrugged, studiously ignoring Scream though I could still feel him standing there watching us.

I was waiting for Scream to start doing his thing, waiting for Grady to start feeling uncomfortable, but after a few minutes it was obvious that, like me, Grady didn’t seem affected by his presence at all.

I was still pondering just why that was when Grady walked over and said, “Here.” I felt him push a paper bag into my hands. The smell of food wafted out of it, and I realized that it had been some time since I’d eaten anything.

“Nothing special, a burger and fries, but I thought you might be hungry,” he said.

I honestly didn’t know what to say. Was this the same asshole who’d knocked me on my ass earlier?

Apparently, he wasn’t finished.

“Rivera says that we’re going to be working together for a time, so I figured it might be best if we called a truce.”

I gave it a moment’s consideration and then stuck out my hand.

“Sure. Truce.”

We shook on it.

He turned and head for the door. “We have to hurry or we’ll be late.”

“Late for what?”

“Your first briefing as part of the crew.”

I pulled my sunglasses out of my pocket and slipped them on my face. I moved cautiously because I didn’t know the area yet, but it seemed to me that we retraced our steps and returned to the main building through the same door we’d exited from earlier. Instead of going to Fuentes’s study, however, Grady explained that we would be meeting in a conference room on the second floor instead.

A glance behind and a quick switch to my ghostsight showed me that Scream was still with us; he’d dropped his corporeal form and was drifting along behind us on the other side of the Veil, there if I needed him but much less likely to be seen by any of Fuentes’s human retainers this way. It was nice to know that I wasn’t completely alone.

As we walked, Grady explained that the mansion we were in had once belonged to a famous silent movie director who had committed suicide when his star had decided to make the move to doing talkies in the late 1920s. Subsequent owners had continued to add to the initial structure, until they had the sprawling edifice Fuentes called home.

The place was enormous; I counted fifteen rooms alone between the front door and the conference room and that was just on this floor alone. Fuentes could have housed a small army here, and I wondered if he wasn’t doing that very thing. It would have been interesting to wander around for a while and see what I could see, especially when those who saw me would think I was blind, but there would be time enough for that later, I guessed. Right now I wanted to understand just what the hell it was that Fuentes expected me to do for him.

We arrived at the conference room to find it deserted, which gave us a chance to dim the lights a bit to accommodate me and to take our seats at the far end of the table where I could watch the door as the others came in.

It didn’t take them long.

Demon Lady was first.

“Ilyana Verikoff,” Grady told me in a low voice, providing the final name I’d been missing. To the unaided eye, Ilyana looked like a beautiful human woman in her mid to late twenties, but I knew demon blood ran through her veins and suspected that she was considerably older than she looked.

Like a few hundred years older.

She paused as she came in the door, her gaze falling first directly on me and then on something just over my shoulder. I knew Scream was standing there—I could feel his presence—but I didn’t give any indication that I was aware of him in any way. When I didn’t acknowledge her scrutiny of Scream or of myself, she let the matter drop without saying anything.

Score one for the good guys.

Perkins came in after Ilyana. Thanks to Grady I learned that his full name was Maximillian but that he preferred to be called Perkins or Max. I thought him to be a bit younger than Rivera and Grady when they surprised me at the hotel, but now he looked to be easily older than both.

“Perkins is a human dowsing rod,” Grady explained.

“A dowsing rod?”

Perkins overheard us and nodded that mop of red hair in our direction. “If you want something found, I’m your guy. That’s how we found you, after all.” He cackled and I had the distinct impression as he did so that somewhere along the way Perkins had gotten a few of his wires crossed. Maybe it was a result of his unique ability or maybe his ability was a result of his crossed wires, it was hard to tell and frankly, not all that important.

Interestingly, Perkins didn’t seem to notice Scream in the way that Ilyana had, but of the three of them he was the one who seemed the most affected. He kept glancing over his shoulder as if afraid that someone was stalking him, and his twitches seemed to be more pronounced than earlier. Twice he stood to leave the room, as if under some kind of unspoken compulsion to get away from the place, only to sit back down again not quite understanding what had happened.

If those around me hadn’t been so damned dangerous, I might have found it amusing.

So, demon, dowsing rod, ghost whisperer, and thief. An interesting combination, if I must say so myself. When you added Rivera’s sorcery, you had a potent little group and one ripe for causing any manner of mischief.

“So did you do it?”

I turned to find Ilyana watching me, a look of challenge on her face.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Why, kill all those people, of course.”

Her English was excellent, even with the slight accent.

Before I had a chance to answer, Rivera stuck his head in the room and said, “Come on. Time to go.”

No one seemed surprised by the fact that we were already leaving before the meeting had even officially begun. No one except me, that is.

We quickly moved through the house, passing other groups of people engaged in other tasks, each of which gave us a wide berth the moment they caught sight of either Ilyana or Rivera. By the time we reached the ground floor there was a medium-sized cargo van waiting for us in front of the building.

It was only then that I realized the day had literally disappeared; the sun seemed to have set over an hour ago. I had either been unconscious for longer than I thought or I spent more time in that room alone than I realized.

Rivera climbed behind the wheel, Ilyana took shotgun and the rest of us climbed into the back. Within minutes we were driving away from the complex and headed into the heart of Los Angeles.

8

Of all the places I might have considered as a possible destination for our little outing, a church was not one of them.

Nor was it just any old church, for that matter. No, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels was the largest Roman Catholic church in the entire city, as well as the official seat of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. It had been designed to serve as both an emotional and physical representation of the might and power of the Vatican.

And we were here to break in.

At least, that was my guess. I couldn’t imagine any other reason that a group like this would be visiting a church in the dead of night.

Rivera pulled to the curb while we were still a few hundred yards away, but even I could see the outline of the twelve-story structure looming out of the night in the distance.

“Talk to me, Max,” Rivera said.

The red-haired man leaned forward between the seats, gazing out at the building ahead of us. I could no longer see his face from where I sat, but I could imagine him licking his lips in anticipation of the challenge ahead of us.

“The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels,” he said, with just the slightest hint of admiration in his tone. “Built in the late nineties. Meant to replace the Cathedral of Saint Vibiana as the older church had suffered extensive damage in the Northridge earthquake. The cathedral itself can hold three thousand people in a single seating. It is three hundred and thirty-three feet long, which is exactly one foot longer than St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, and cost roughly $190 million by the time construction was finished in 2002.”

I noticed Rivera shifting impatiently in the front seat. Max must have noticed as well, for he suddenly dropped the tour guide presentation and got right to the point.

“The relics of St. Vibiana were moved from the glass case above the altar in the old cathedral and reinterred in a marble casket in the mausoleum beneath the new building.”

Rivera glanced back at him. “And you’re certain what we are looking for is in there?”

Max nodded. “As best I can be, from this distance. Get me closer and I’ll be able to take a better reading.”

It wasn’t the definitive response Rivera had been looking for, and he glared at the older man for a long moment as if that might change the answer. Max, however, stood his ground and gazed right back at him, seemingly unruffled by Rivera’s unspoken threats. My respect for him went up a notch; Rivera was one scary dude and probably wouldn’t take kindly to being led in the wrong direction, but what was Max going to do? Lie to him?

Not bloody likely. Not if he wanted to live afterward.

In the end, though, it was Rivera who looked away first.

After watching the building again for a few more minutes in silence, he asked, “Security?”

“Private firm paid for by the Vatican. Most nights it’s just six men on a rotating foot patrol, ex-cops and former military personnel for the most part, but occasionally they’re bolstered by a squad of Templars out of the local commandery.”

Templars? As in Knights Templar?

I glanced over at Ilyana and mouthed the word
Templars
in her direction, but she just grinned that stupid “Wouldn’t you like to know?” grin back at me and refused to say a word.

Bitch.

As Rivera pulled away from the curb, Max sat back in his seat. I tugged on his sleeve.

“Who the hell is St. Vibiana?” I whispered. I’ll be the first to admit that I’d let my Catholic faith lapse years ago, but I didn’t remember hearing that name in any of my catechism classes as a youth.

I felt him lean in close.

“Patron saint of Nobodies,” he said.

I had the distinct sense he wasn’t joking.

Leave it to the Catholic Church to cover all the bases.

Rivera drove past the building and around the corner to a maze of side streets. He made several turns and then pulled the van over at the edge of a local park.

“Everybody out.”

Grady and Max produced small penlights and flipped them on. Rivera then led us through the park and into a small copse of trees. It was even darker beneath the boughs, making it easier for me to see than it was for the others, and I found myself walking just behind Rivera as we neared the edge of the trees.

Ahead of us was the rear of the church.

He waited for the others to catch up and then checked his watch. Looking at Grady, he said, “The patrol comes by again in two and a half minutes. We need to be inside by then.”

Grady grinned. “No problem.”

Without another word he turned and dashed off across the lawn, headed for the rear of the church. The rest of us followed as quickly as we could.

As we drew closer I could see Grady crouched in front of a single door, using a set of picks to try to open the lock. He was working entirely by feel, his head turned away so he wouldn’t be distracted by what he was seeing. His focus was total and he didn’t even bother to glance up as the rest of us reached the door and gathered around him.

In the distance, I saw the gleam of a flashlight in the hands of the guard as he made his way toward us.

“Patrol’s coming,” I whispered, not wanting to distract Grady but knowing the rest of us were going to have to make a decision about what to do if he failed to get the door open in time.

Grady cursed quietly under his breath and redoubled his efforts.

The patrol drew closer, near enough that I could see the guard was carrying a firearm in addition to the flashlight.

“Come on, come on!” Rivera whispered.

Grady glanced at him, annoyed, and then gave his picks a quick little twist.

The door slid open without a sound.

We were in!

We piled through the entrance and pushed the door shut just as the flashlight outside slid across where we’d been standing moments before.

I held my breath, fully expecting the guard to notice something amiss and waiting for the hue and cry to go up at the discovery, but the night remained quiet and after a moment the patrol moved on as well.

I wasn’t the only one to let out a deep breath of air.

The team worked like a well-oiled unit, and it was clear they had done this sort of thing together before. They waited for Perkins to get his bearings and then we headed in his wake. With the lights off inside the church it was like broad daylight for me, so I slipped the sunglasses off my face and put them away in my pocket as we moved into the sanctuary proper.