Shadow Born: A Joseph Hunter Novel: Book 1 (Joseph Hunter Series) Page 3

  “If I talk to her, who’ll know?” I asked.

  “Me,” he said, “and you. Mel will be safe. No one will know about this but us.”

  “And whomever wanted the vampire to get caught, to talk to you,” I said. “What if they’re pulling me away?”

  “I’ll have men in front of Derek’s house. Trained men with pacts. Mel will be safe.”

  “Shit,” I said, rubbing my head. The ache had returned, this time much deeper, as if someone had shoved a thorn into the stem of my brain.

  Two straight years of dedicating every second I had to finding Callie’s killers, followed by five years of trying to abandon and hide from my previous life. Now, Xander had something that could possibly change everything.

  I scratched the side of my nose. “Let me get a shower real quick, then you can buy me a breakfast burrito. I’m starving.” I looked across the room, to the still-dripping wall. “Another coffee sounds good, too.”

  3

  “Won’t lie to you,” I said, crossing a downtown Sacramento street and walking up to Xander’s building. Two homeless men sat near the front door of the offices. “I’m a little nervous.”

  Xander had allowed me one stop on the way over. I chose America’s staple fast-food restaurant for breakfast and coffee. After receiving the greasy bag from the drive-through window, he hadn’t allowed me to open it in his fancy car.

  “Crumbs,” he had said. “Grease. Leather seats. The smell.”

  I had to resist rubbing the hash browns all over his precious dashboard.

  We approached the building—a run-down detective agency wedged between a hair salon and a martial arts studio. It had a sign that was missing most of the letters in the title. Graffiti marked the bricks and bars covered the windows.

  The two homeless men who sat under the awning off to the side of the front door drank from a brown bag. How cliché, right? For a reason, though. When in doubt, play the stereotypes. Some habits die hard, and despite my retirement and inability to spot Xander’s trail, I still noticed more than the average person. Both men wore tattered, dirty clothes that reeked of vomit and urine, but beneath the stench emanated a pleasant, fragrant smell—much like deodorant and cologne. One man wore his sweatshirt’s hood up, but it didn’t disguise his clean-shaven face. The other man didn’t even bother to hide his perfectly-cut hair that he had styled messily for the character. The sour stench of cheap whiskey didn’t spill from the brown bag. Instead, I caught the heavy, beautiful fragrance of coffee. They regarded us for a second, then returned to their morning brew.

  A security guard moseyed around the perimeter of the shoddy building—one hired from a cheap agency as a body and a set of eyes. With only her taser gun as a weapon, she wouldn’t have been able to stop a litter of pup werewolves from breaking into the office, but that wasn’t the point. I’m sure the company had hired her to play a role, same as the not-homeless men played their role—to appear so cliché and stereotypical that the office blended into the background noise of the city. No one would take a second look at this place as they rushed on by.

  “Nervous about what?” Xander asked.

  We stood before the front door as I inhaled my sausage breakfast sandwich and guzzled my coffee. The sun burned through the morning cloud cover and shined on us. With the cool breeze and cool cement, the warmth felt downright heavenly. The food had also abated my hangover symptoms, apart from my roiling stomach. Maybe after I found a toilet, today wouldn’t end up too bad.

  With a mouthful of hash browns, I said, “First off, I’m a little nervous that you’re disguising your security as homeless.” I glanced down at the two men. They made a point to ignore me. “That’s never a good sign. But more, I’m a little nervous to be back in the game.”

  Xander glanced at the men sitting against the bricks and shook his head. He reached into his wallet, removed a crisp ten, and handed it to the closest man. “Breakfast is on me.” Returning his attention my way, he said with a tight voice, “You’re not back in it. You had that opportunity, but you refused.” He gestured toward the greasy food bag I carried. “You done with that?”

  “Well, standing on this sidewalk before this door, beside these two idiots… it’s closer than I ever thought I’d get again. I haven’t so much as said the word ‘monster’ since moving out of town.” I took another bite, swallowed without hardly chewing, and threw back the rest of my burnt coffee. “Here.” I tossed my trash at the two security men. “Make yourselves useful and throw this away.”

  “I’m sorry,” Xander said to them, though he didn’t make me pick up my trash and throw it away myself.

  He opened the door to a dusty waiting room and a bell chimed. Green cotton chairs wrapped around one corner of the room, all facing a receptionist desk that held a fake plant and a jar full of hard candy. In the center of the waiting room stood a table stacked with magazines. What did I tell you? Cliché is invisible. Stick to the norm and you’ll blend in like a raindrop in the ocean.

  A young man, probably in college, sat behind a computer screen. He glanced up at us when we entered. He had wide, blue eyes and dark hair that was already receding, despite his youth.

  “Mr. Shells,” the receptionist said with a fake smile.

  “Good morning, Chris. Any calls?”

  “A few. I forwarded all the messages to your phone.”

  “Really?” I asked, staring back and forth from Xander to the kid. “Your entire thing here is stolen straight from a Walter Mosley novel, and you go with a male secretary?” I shook my head. “Way to stay consistent.”

  “Times are changing,” Xander said, patting my shoulder. “We have to keep up with the times to stay invisible.”

  Chris made a sour face, as if confused by our conversation.

  “Forget it, kid,” I said, digging my fingers into the candy jar and then tossing him one. “Just enjoy the treats, yeah?”

  Xander shook his head, leading me behind the front desk and through a back door. The bland, faded colors of the waiting room extended into a hallway. Bright brown doors with blinds lined either side of the walls.

  “This is your monster-hunting base?” I asked. “It’s a far cry from Stark Tower.”

  Xander glared over his shoulder, as if attempting to burn me to ash on the spot. “I’m a private investigator, Joey. As are my colleagues.”

  I scoffed, but didn’t argue.

  Xander worked as a supernatural detective under the guise of a private investigator, to the best of my understanding. When local law enforcement came across a mysterious, unexplainable case, they bounced it to Mather’s Investigative Services. I had a loose understanding of the business from my previous life. They advertised as a supernatural agency—though most of the common world didn’t believe in supernatural happenings. A majority of the citizens saw M.I.S. as a scam, but some thought them credible. Either way, the company always had business. Did the Sacramento Police Department laugh about that possessed doll sitting on your shelf? Well, call M.I.S. Did a Chupacabra eat your cattle, and Sacramento Sheriff’s Department refused to hear your claim? You known what to do. Call M.I.S. Was your husband cheating on you with a slew of hookers? M.I.S. handled your non-paranormal needs, too.

  We traversed halfway down the hall, then Xander faced a door and removed a key. A placard in the shaded window read ALEXANDER SHELLS. After unlocking the door, we entered his office. It resembled a run-down classroom. A metallic desk sat straight across from the open door. On it rested a bin filled with papers and folders, a lamp, and a framed photograph turned away from me. Xander didn’t have a family—that I knew of—so I wondered what image resided between the frame. Beside the desk stood a metallic bookshelf containing more empty paper coffee cups than it did actual books. Across from the bookshelf was a shaded window. Under the window lay a shoddy couch. A metallic filing cabinet was pushed to the wall behind the desk.

  “This your office?” I asked, wandering around the room. “It’s nice. Quaint.”

&nb
sp; “Don’t start with me,” Xander said from the doorway. “Not with your house the way it is.”

  “Oh, really? Mr. High-and-fucking-Mighty over here. What, just because I live in a trailer means you’re some big shot, now?” I mostly spoke to irk him, knowing I could make him feel terrible about himself and apologize to me.

  “Not what I meant,” he said. “Live in a trailer for all I care, but you could clean it up a bit.”

  “What about all those coffee cups? You ever hear of a garbage can?”

  Xander marched to the sparse bookshelf and gripped a globe sitting on the middle shelf. It didn’t budge from its spot. I approached for a closer inspection and noticed the base was anchored to the metal with screws.

  He spun the Earth three times to the right, pressing his finger somewhere in Africa, then twice around to the left, pointing at South America, then once more to the right, holding the position somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Like something from a movie, the bookshelf actually creaked open to a stairwell that descended into dim light.

  I chuckled, my go-to response when I don’t know how to respond. “You’re serious, aren’t you? This isn’t a reenactment of a bad horror movie? A bookshelf just opened after you spun a globe?”

  Xander narrowed his eyes at me. He had always had a harder time finding humor than the average person. “You asked what I had done with the vampire. Well, we can’t keep these things detained with other criminals. Can you imagine a werewolf in Folsom Prison?”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, staring at him with wide eyes. “That you imprison them down here? What happened to the tried and true method of killing them?”

  When Xander and I both stood on the steps behind the secret door, he reached behind him and pulled the bookshelf shut. “Monsters are only cursed humans,” he said.

  “For a reason. They seek out a curse. They sell their soul.”

  “Not all of them,” he rebutted. “Besides, did you not sell your soul when you made that pact? Have you never made one mistake that’s haunted you forever?”

  I didn’t respond to that.

  “We all mess up,” Xander said, leading me down the stairs. “But some of the monsters, they didn’t even do that. They were victims of the curse, turned into monsters to satiate another’s lust.”

  “What?” I asked. “Do you say weird shit like that all the time now? Why can’t you be normal and say, ‘they were victims of a vampire or a werewolf bite?’ God damn, you always make things sound so… complicated.”

  “Either way,” Xander said, not biting on the bait I tossed him—I had even used the Lord’s name in vain, and he hadn’t bothered to acknowledge it with a sideways glance. This guy’s will was ironclad. “You expect me to kill them?”

  “You become soft since joining this company,” I said.

  “No,” Xander countered, stopping on the bottom step and wheeling to face me. “You went soft. My time with M.I.S. has made me reflect and change. These monsters can’t control their demons any more than a meth addict can control their craving to get high.”

  “So, this is monster rehab?” I asked, needing to lighten the mood. Before our special missions with the military, Xander had had some humor to him. In the years that had lapsed, though, it seemed that his humor had, too.

  Xander frowned. “This is my purpose. What Gabriel called me to do. Try to rehab them, to break the curse, to give them a second chance. If that doesn’t work, we try to teach them to control their corruption. To fight against their base desires.”

  I scoffed at the image of a vampire controlling its urge to destroy, then ran my fingers through my hair—something not made is impossible to unmake, or something like that. “What’s your success rate here?”

  He chewed on his lip for a second, then turned and resumed his walk. “There isn’t one.”

  I followed him down a dimly lit hall. Steel doors with stenciled numbers lined the walls. Some atrocity to the natural order waited behind each one.

  I said, “So, you keep all these monsters locked in here for what? To potentially escape and corrupt more innocent victims? You know as well as I do that this… this idea will never work.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I shook my head, confused. “Doesn’t even make sense.”

  “Maybe not,” Xander said. “But Albert is doing good things with this company. Progressive things.” Albert was the owner of Mather’s Investigative Services, a descendent of Cotton—you know, that Salem Witch dude. “Most people in the industry pitch their tent in your camp, having written off the monsters as monsters.”

  “But not you?” I asked. “You buy into this second-chance shit? What about the vampire that preyed on little girls? You think he deserves a second chance? What about the one you have detained, with information about my wife? You think she—or her companions, the people who murdered my wife—you think they deserve another fucking chance? What about sorcerers and necromancers? Acolytes using their given power to harm innocent people? They get a pass, too?”

  “No,” Xander said, his voice low. “They made their decisions. Old rules apply to them.”

  Old rules meant instant death, and it applied to those magic wielders who used their natural or imbued powers to harm innocent people. They didn’t come around often, as the Nephil severely screened those they granted their power to, but some did pop up every couple of years.

  Xander unzipped his jacket and reached into the interior lining. He removed a plastic pack of blood and a hardened wood stake, passing them to me. “Offer her the blood, hide the stake.”

  “Where will you be?” I said, wedging the weapon into my waistband and covering it with my shirt.

  “Right here. Door will stay open, just in case she tries something funny.”

  “You don’t think I can handle her myself?” I asked, grinning. “You’ve been spying on me. Have you not watched me demo anything? I can still hit pretty hard.”

  Xander knocked twice on the steel door. “Coming in!” he called, removing a skeleton key from his back pocket, along with a photograph. He faced me and held out the image.

  I grabbed it.

  My wife and I stood on the sandy, bloody desert overseas. We weren’t married yet, but we had created a near-nightly habit of sneaking away from base to learn more about one another. In the picture, we both wore our military fatigues with sidearms on our hips. She held an assault rifle, I gripped a twelve-gauge. We glared at the camera, as if we might shoot whoever dared to look at our picture.

  The memory swept me away from the prison block and took me to another time and world.

  The steel door popped, wrenching back to the present. Xander pulled it open.

  I looked up from the image and into the low light of the cell. I steeled my resolve, thinking of Callie and her burned body the murderer had left behind for me.

  Then I walked inside.

  The vampire sat in the center of her bed, hugging her knees to her chest and staring at me. She had fiery red hair and a freckled face and green eyes. She wore a thin, white nightgown that hugged the curves and swells of her body.

  Trying my best not to admire her fashion sense, I tossed the bag of blood to her, then shuffled to the corner of the small cell and leaned against the wall, crossing my arms. There, from a few feet away, I watched her feed from the bag.

  Let’s pause to learn a couple things about vampires. First, and most significantly, they don’t glitter. Second, they aren’t like what you’ve always believed them to be. The legends had it wrong, as they had most things wrong—the victors write history, write their own story, create their own strengths and weaknesses. In actuality, vampires were more or less humans cursed by the Nephil. If they drank human blood, they remained human, with no adverse vampiric weaknesses. But if they’re denied human blood, they gain vampiric powers, along with a demonic appearance. The curse was meant to keep them in service to their Nephil. Most serial killers are vampires, and most serial killers are never caught, so they kill an
d use the blood of their victims to continue to appear as human, living within our society to carry out the orders their masters gave them.

  This vampire appeared to be the picture of health, which made me think she didn’t need the blood I offered her. To vampires, blood was like doughnuts, though. You offer them some, and they’ll eat, hungry or not. It helped them stay young and beautiful.

  She held the transparent bag to her lips and said, “Thank you.” Like a rabbit nibbling away at a carrot, she extended her fangs and bit into the plastic. She carefully sucked the blood, staring at me with wide, green eyes the entire time—teasing me. An errant drop slid off her lip and down her chin. She paused in her feeding to lift the doughnut crumbs from her face then to lick it off her finger with a little too much acting.

  Still, my stomach somersaulted and heat pulsed within me. Vampires had the nasty ability to enthrall their victims through lust and sex, which was a pretty neat trick, given their unquenchable libido.

  I exhaled slowly and with control.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said, licking her lip.

  I shook my head and cleared my throat and adjusted my pants. “Not a problem,” I muttered. I had never seen a vampire consider the feelings of someone else—apologize for their actions as rude or harmful.

  Maybe M.I.S. had it right. Maybe these creatures could control their urges, given the right guidance. I chuckled at the thought. This vampire had charmed me, all right. I had to remember how dangerous their enthrallments could be. Glancing off to the side, I noticed a bright light bleeding through the open door and onto the prison floor. It touched the edge of her bed.

  Changing the subject, I asked, “Does it hurt you? The light.” I nodded to the floor.

  The vampire finished her meal. She stared at the creeping light, then shook her head. “No.” She set the empty bag on the mattress beside her feet.

  “Here,” I said. “I’ll take that.” I reached out a hand, enticing her to make a move. I wanted to see how much control she had over herself, if she could resist fresh blood after just tasting the stale, preserved blood.