Midnight Hunter. Kait Ballenger
Читать онлайн книгу.
from the casket filled Shane’s nose, but the scent of the dead wasn’t there. He blinked several times. Was he seeing correctly? Ash swore under his breath, a confirmation of Shane’s conclusion.
The casket was empty. No corpse, no half-decayed body, no bones. Nothing.
After another long moment of silence, Shane cleared his throat. “Um, Ash, where the hell is Mrs. Foley?”
Shane didn’t know all the details of Ash’s job as a ghost hunter, but the general training Shane had received from the Execution Underground before he’d started specializing in hunting witches and warlocks, but after he’d already earned his first PhD in religious studies—with a focus on the occult and pagan religions, of course—had taught him enough to know that generally corpses remained in one place, regardless of whether their spirit roamed the earth. And Jennifer Foley was supposed to be dead. Very dead.
Ash shook his head. “I have no fuckin’ clue.” He stared at the open casket with a stunned look on his face. A glazed aura clouded Ash’s green eyes, as if he were dreaming while awake. Shane knew that look. Ash struggled with PTSD. Shane didn’t know from what, because Ash wasn’t a former military man, and he’d never had the heart to ask. That look said, I’ve seen a lot of bad shit in my life.
“Ash, you with me?” Shane asked.
“Huh?” Ash looked up, roused from his trancelike state. He shook his head as if shaking the memories off. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Shane nodded before he tossed his shovel to the side. “I’ll give you a second. Don’t worry about calling Damon, I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, man,” Ash muttered.
Shane held up his hand. “No problem. I’ll handle it.”
That seemed to have become his motto: I’ll handle it. Even though he was both the youngest and least experienced among his team members, who were all his senior by at least five years, he acted as the oil for the sometimes squeaky Rochester division cog in the massive machine of the Execution Underground. A covert international organization of elite hunters, the Execution Underground protected humanity from the paranormal creatures who, unbeknownst to the general populace, lurked around every corner. When his fellow hunters, his division team members, needed his aid, he obliged. Always.
Earlier that morning he had read an article in the Democrat and Chronicle about the murder of Mr. Ted Foley. Reportedly, the deceased had been telling his close friends for several days before his death how his dead wife, Jennifer, the now-missing dead woman, was haunting him, threatening him. That detail had been enough for Shane, and he’d brought the article to the attention of the team. They’d all agreed it was best to take every precaution and ensure that the wife really went to her eternal rest. Aside from all the digging, it should have been an easy job for Ash, their resident ghost hunter, especially with Shane’s help with the hard labor. A very straightforward murderous poltergeist case. Easy to fix, if you had a corpse to burn. The case should have been dealt with tonight. Except...
Shane called Damon Brock, their division leader, to break the news. While he waited for Damon to pick up, Shane let out a tired sigh. Damn it. The night had gone from shit to supershit to megasupershit.
Missing bodies always complicated things.
* * *
VERA SANDERS SLIPPED out the heavy steel back door of Soft-Tails and into the damp alleyway. She wrapped her near-floor-length jacket around her, shielding her almost-bare legs. Despite her plaid miniskirt, fishnet stockings and stilettos, she might as well have been in the buff, given how the night air chilled her to the bone. She was used to it, though. Rochester had long winters and springs that often didn’t feel any different, and on nights like tonight, when she was slinging liquor behind the bar and working her ass off to fill her tip jar, she often found herself walking home in costume. And by costume she meant some barely there getup sanctioned by the strip club’s owner, her wannabe gangster sleazebag of an uncle. Thank goodness she was off work the next several nights.
Home.
The word skittered through her mind again.
Home was where she should have been going. Instead, she was holding a one-way ticket for the trouble train, and she knew it. Nothing good could come from what she was about to do, but damn, deciding to just let go had been such a relief. The familiar itch niggled beneath her skin. She longed for this like a druggie needed a fix.
Druggie?
Who was she kidding? She was a druggie. A black-magic druggie. She’d had one too many tastes, and now she was hooked. Just the thought of the familiar feeling of power racing through her body, supercharging her soul, sent a powerful shiver through her. She hurried down the alleyway out into the strip club’s parking lot and then to her car. Some part of her felt that if she slowed down for even one moment, the better half of her would win out again and she would end up going home, like she should. Back to the constant cravings. Back to the monotony of everyday life.
No. She couldn’t resign herself to that.
She quickly unlocked the door to her ancient Volkswagen Beetle and slid inside. She started the engine of the once-great piece of machinery, whose only flaw was having been driven for one too many decades more than it should have been, and peeled out of the parking lot. Damn, this was a dumb move. She wasn’t even really sure where she was going. Regular practitioners of black magic loved to be ridiculously cryptic. All her contact had given her was a general location. She would need to figure it out from there.
She drove across the city, singing so loudly that people waiting to cross the street could probably hear her—anything to drown out the “this is not a good idea” chatter in her head.
When she finally reached her destination in the heart of the city, she parked her car, and headed down the nearest empty alley. She stopped behind an overstuffed-and-smelling-of-rot Dumpster and removed her hands from the warm den of her jacket pockets. She held her hands out in front of her, closing her eyes with the certainty she was alone and allowing her white-magic power, the power she possessed within, to flow from the pit of her stomach, through her chest, down her arms and to the tips of her fingers.
A vibrant violet light pulsated from her hands, and she urged that light to lead her in the right direction. Glancing over her shoulder to ensure she was still alone and not being watched, she followed her instincts, slowly navigating the city’s back alleys until she reached a metal door with no handle. She allowed her magic to fold back in on itself before she balled her left hand into a fist and pounded on the metal door.
A young African-American woman with an afro poked her head out the door several moments later. She gave Vera the once-over, scanning her up and down with her shiny glossed lips pinched together, as if assessing Vera’s entire worth in a glance, before pushing the door fully open and gesturing her in.
Once Vera stepped inside, the woman closed the door behind her. The metal echoed, a loud, thunderous clang, like the door of a jail cell slamming shut, and Vera wondered if that perception was her conscience’s way of screaming, What the fuck do you think you’re doing? once again, as if the dingy haven’t-been-renovated-or-lived-in-since-the-sixties look of the place wasn’t enough to give her that vibe already. She couldn’t quite tell from the interior whether this was a gutted-out old business or apartment building, but she would venture a guess that there had been more than one waterbed in this establishment back in its day. The way the wooden floor creaked beneath her feet, as if it hadn’t been stepped on in ages, sent a slight chill down her spine. The creaking echoed courtesy of the equally wooden walls and wood coffered ceiling. How had termites not destroyed this building already?
“I’m Trista,” the woman said. The silver of her large hoop earrings glittered in the dim accent light of the hallway, along with the star-shaped diamond stud in her nose. She was beautiful in an exotic, high-sculpted-cheekbones and eyes-so-fierce-they-could-cut-you sort of way. “You’re here for the circle.” It was a statement, not a question.
Vera nodded. “Yeah.”