Shadow Born: A Joseph Hunter Novel: Book 1 (Joseph Hunter Series) Page 9

  “My god,” I said. “Let me help you with that ugly.”

  I threw another chaotic fireball at the Raven, not worried about missing. The creature crouched seven feet from me. The flame hit it hard, removing its head clean from its body before crashing into the far wall and igniting the boxes and old keepsakes I had stored. I don’t know if decapitating the vampire helped with the ugly, but that’s how it happened. Dr. Hunter, some called me. Specializing in Raven facial reconstruction.

  The heat and pressure from the blast pressed me against the wall and threw some of Callie’s old boxes at me. Shirts and shoes lay spilled across the floor. The spreading fire must have kicked the second Raven into gear. It stood and bumbled toward me, hissing and spitting. I allowed it to get within arm’s length, and then I reached out and grabbed its wrist, pumping heat from my palms into its leathery skin. It screeched and pulled away from me, its skin sloughing off and sticking like glue to my hand.

  “What the—” I said, rubbing the mess on the ground. “You’re nasty.”

  Two more Ravens leaped into the smoky, fiery basement, landing softly and moving toward me. I put my palms together and spoke the Nephilim word for fire, then stretched my hands apart as if pulling two ends of a rubber band. A string of flame appeared from thin air. With my arms spread wide, I pushed the magic forward. It flew in a straight line, catching the two Ravens in the chest and melting through their bodies. They collapsed onto the boxes near me, lighting more of my wife’s belongings on fire. But I didn’t have the time to salvage Callie’s old stuff.

  The Raven whose arm I had burned had recovered enough to make a move. It lunged toward me, hissing.

  Five years had passed since I had last accessed my magic. I wasn’t conditioned for big fights like this. My body had already fatigued from the spent energy, as had my mind. I don’t think the burning boxes and the heat and the smoke helped any. Thankfully, I had punched a hole through the ceiling or else I would have passed out from the exhaust. As it was, I only had a very hard time breathing, not an impossible time.

  The remaining Raven swiped at me, scraping its talons across my chest. I still wore the armor that Xander had provided before we entered the parking garage. It wasn’t Kevlar, but a material that warded against attacks from magic wielders. The deflection allowed me enough time to gesture for another spell. Before I could, the creature screeched, collapsing onto me as dead weight. A dark, molasses liquid leaked out of the creature and soaked onto my shirt.

  “Fuck,” I said, straining to get the massive beast off me. Who knew what it looked like in its human form, but as a Raven, it stood taller than the average human and weighed about twice as much. The flames around me grew hotter, crawling closer.

  Xander appeared above me, standing in my bedroom and staring down the simmering hole. Despite the smoke clouding his features, I could make out his patented scowl. He wasn’t too pleased about something, which didn’t surprise me at all. I moaned and strained as I rolled the Raven off me. I moved away from the flames, choking on smoke.

  From above, Xander leaned over the edge and asked, “Need a hand?”

  The ceiling was only eight feet high. I could stretch and touch it. Pushing his helping hand away, I jumped and gripped the edge and tried to pull myself up, kicking my legs through thin air. With the energy I had already spent, I didn’t have enough left in the tank to perform a simple pull-up. It definitely wasn’t because I had decided to store my workout equipment in the basement for the past four years. I mean, was I out of shape? Yes, very much so, in the magical and the physical sense. I didn’t look like it, since my demolition job required a lot of physical exertion, and I was still young enough to have a decent metabolism—thirty, to be exact—but from what I hear, these next few years might be rough on my waistline. Too bad the workout equipment was about to burn down. Maybe this would have inspired me to utilize it once again.

  I kicked a leg over the ledge and crawled up to my bedroom floor, panting. My heart raced and sweat drenched my body. “It’s from the flames,” I said, out of breath. “It’s hot down there. And that scuffle… took it out of me. Sapped my strength. Otherwise… you know. Pull-up would’ve been easy.” I turned my head and met the wild, yellow eyes of a Raven. I screamed and scrambled away—more as a preemptive defensive maneuver than outright terror. I mean, you think I would fear a measly Raven? No way.

  “It’s dead,” Captain Obvious clarified as he wore the dictionary definition of a frown. “I killed them all.”

  “Not all of them,” I said, sitting against my bed. “I killed three of them. Wounded the fourth. So, I’ll take credit for that one, too.”

  “You found your guns,” Xander said, stating the obvious again, as they were literally strapped to my body.

  “Wow. You’re pretty observant. Did your Lord and Savior grant you the powers of observation as well and dickheadedness?”

  “What’s the plan from here?” He stared into the basement, where boxes and bodies burned to ash.

  In other words, he wanted to know if we should stay here and deal with the fire, or if we should call the fire department and let them handle the crisis while we went in search of Mel. The answer was obvious to me.

  I know I defended the trailer pretty passionately earlier, but I really didn’t care that much about it. It was a cheap property on barren land—I chose it because it was close to Mel’s new family and close to my new job.

  “Call the brigade,” I said, “while I collect a few things.” I stood, using the mattress for support. My legs trembled, and the room spun for a second.

  “What about the bodies?”

  “What about them?” I asked.

  “The Ravens won’t just explode to dust like in the movies. They leave their bones behind. Fire department will identify them as human. They’ll notify the police, who will then question you about why you had corpses in your secured basement.”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” I said. “I’ll tell them the truth. Say I know the infamous Alexander Shells, top private eye for Mather’s Investigative Services. So, suck on these nuts. Besides, dealing with law enforcement will derail my chances of finding Mel. Let’s get her back, then deal with the fallout afterward.” I leaned over and rolled the dead vampires in bedroom into the fiery furnace below. “There. Maybe they’ll burn to ash and all our problems will be solved.”

  Without caring to hear his argument, I stumbled into the living room. Xander’s mug still sat on the coffee table, while mind lay shattered on the floor. I ignored them and grabbed the framed picture of me and Callie. I broke the glass and removed the photograph, then shoved it in my back pocket with Mel’s artwork. Glancing around the single-wide for anything else I might need, I moseyed into the kitchen. My phone still rested in a bowl of uncooked rice. I fished it out. Amazingly, it powered on.

  “They’re on their way,” Xander said, appearing in the living room. “You ready to go?”

  I left the kitchen and joined him. “I’m not going to miss this shit-hole,” I said. “In fact, I’m guessing your place is much nicer.”

  Xander glanced around and nodded in affirmation. The smoke had seeped into the living room and kitchen, making the air thick with ash. “It is. But you’ll never see it.”

  I grinned, patting his back. “You think the Snake Head Lounge will let us in like this? Covered in soot and sweat and Raven ichor? We have to shower and change our clothes, my friend. Where do you propose we do that?”

  “You blew up my company car—”

  “Ravens,” I corrected.

  “You blew up your house.”

  “Trailer… and Ravens.”

  “Now, you want to go back to my place to shower and, what? Wear my clothes?”

  I shrugged. “We’re pretty close to the same size. I mean, your pants might be a little tight in this area,” I gestured toward my groin, “but it’s nothing I haven’t worked with before.”

  Xander shook his head. We were nowhere close to the same size. �
�Here’s the deal. Anything happens to my condo—”

  “Stop it,” I said. “Jesus said to forgive and forget. Don’t act like you’re not going to take me in, provide for me, give me the shirt off your back. It’s the Samaritan thing to do.” I reached into my pocket and removed the keys to our ride, then tossed them to Xander. “I get shotgun.”

  7

  I sat in the passenger seat and ran my fingers over the runes of my Benelli M1014—or Gretel—as Xander drove us to his condo in Sacramento. I wanted to pour energy into the runes and charge them, but I didn’t have the strength left in me. After using so much magic in the span of a few hours, my body barely had enough energy to keep my eyes open.

  So, as I sat there, holding Gretel and thinking about the mysterious Hecate, exhaustion pulled me under the dark waves of sleep. The car slowed and came to a stop, and my body willed itself awake. The dashboard read a little after eleven.

  “How was your nap?” Xander asked.

  I yawned and stretched, and then readjusted the shotgun on my lap. “Wasn’t napping. I was preparing my old friend here for a fight.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. “Oh, thanks for driving.”

  Xander smirked. “It’s interesting that part of the charging process includes snoring… but goes to show you what I know.” Xander slapped his forehead, as if he were the biggest dolt in history.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know. Better just to keep your mouth shut, so you don’t look so ignorant around the professionals.” I yawned again, unable to help myself.

  “Not to sound like a jerk—”

  “Classic start to any sentence. Not to sound like a jerk, or a racist, or a douchebag, but I am one.”

  Xander’s smile widened and he shook head, glancing out the driver’s window. “Your daughter is missing. How do you find the peace of mind to fall asleep?”

  Truthfully, I haven’t slept in,” I counted on my fingers, “five years.” During my time serving Hephaestus, I’d experienced too many real-life nightmares. Now, whenever I closed my eyes to sleep, I relived those experiences. That’s why I had spent so much time outside Derek’s house, watching it, waiting for something to happen. In my line of work, shit never calmed. I knew that mentality was in my own mind, that the storm was within me, not on the outside. It didn’t matter, though. After seeing death, living through hell, a person doesn’t just join the living again and not turn into a zombie. To combat my demons, I would drink. A lot. The alcohol fought against the memories, blurring and smearing them enough for me to fall into a blackout rest without nightmares.

  Tapping into my magic in the basement earlier and exhausting my energy had forced my body to shut down, and I had dozed off despite Mel’s disappearance. I couldn’t say that to Xander, though. I couldn’t admit my fears and weaknesses to him.

  I wiped my nose and rubbed my eyes, buying time to think of something clever to say. Honestly, I was a little embarrassed that I had fallen asleep. “The trick is letting go of things you can’t control. What the hell am I going to do now? Worrying does nothing but make me tense and cloud my judgment. So, I release what I can’t control, focus on what I can. Like sleep. Imagine fighting Hecate without any rest. That’s foolish.”

  Xander glared at me from the corner of his eye and scowled. He didn’t believe a word of my bullshit.

  Before he could follow up with another question I didn’t want to answer, I asked, “Are we going to make out in your car all night? Or you going to invite me up for a drink?”

  Let me start by saying that Xander didn’t live quite like I did. He had no land, as he owned his condo in downtown Sacramento. The neighboring units shared a wall with him—a thick, expensive wall, might I had. When he opened the front door to his second-story housing, I hesitated before entering. I felt intimidated to step into his place, like I might break or ruin something. Which, given my track record, wasn’t an inaccurate assumption.

  The extent of my knowledge about high-end furniture starts and ends with Restoration Hardware, and in all honesty, I don’t even know what that place is. I once overheard my coworkers discussing how they’d bought their dining room table from there, and how it cost so much money, but it was totally worth the price. In my tiny brain, I had thought my plastic table worked just as well as their fancy-shmancy one, at a fraction of the cost. I didn’t say that, though—I didn’t want to risk making them feel inadequate.

  If I had to guess, Xander’s condo was furnished with nothing but Restoration Hardware. It looked stupid expensive. He even had those weird pillows—the prickly and annoying ones people aren’t allowed to use—adorning his couch. He even had trinkets—like decorative figurines—sitting on his mantle. No, no, no. That’s not even the craziest part. He had a fucking cow rug—like a skinned cow, black with white spots—strewn across his living room floor. A coffee table stood on it, and home improvement magazines and recipe books and one of those eighty-dollar candles sat atop that.

  “You hunt that?” I asked, gesturing at the heifer. “That big game around here? A ten-thousand dollar-guided excursion, hunting the dangerous dairy cow?”

  Xander glowered at me, and then he stepped through the door. “It’s a minotaur,” he said.

  I chuckled at his funny. The minotaur were humans cursed by Poseidon—so, they were insanely powerful and Xander did not kill one and lay it across his floor as a rug. “How much does that fake investigator job pay you?” I asked. I poked a hand through the front door, making sure I wouldn’t burn to ash upon entering. When my arm didn’t incinerate with radiant light, I stepped into his condo and closed the door behind me. “And are they hiring?”

  Over the past few years, Xander had called me many times to offer me a full-time, part-time, contractor, consultant position at the company. I had refused every offer—for good reason, too. He still dealt in the world of magic and monsters. I had retired from that life to protect Mel. Since when is a daughter’s safety less important than a shit-ton of money?

  “It’s not a fake job,” he said, already in the kitchen and pouring a scotch, neat.

  I didn’t even want to know the outdated vintage of that single-malt. Is that the right terminology? Vintage? Probably not. I had yet to venture into the big leagues of alcohol consumption—the kind where you don’t drink to get drunk, but to taste your money burning down your throat. I usually stuck to house tequilas and domestic lagers, drinking them fast and furiously. Anything with a price tag over twenty bucks became a stretch for my thin wallet.

  “What?” I asked, still standing in the entryway. I felt like a kid going to his grandma’s house—the strict grandma that freaked out if you wore your shoes on the front porch and didn’t wash your hands before sitting on her white couch. “You work behind a secret bookshelf. How’s that not a fake job?”

  He answered from the kitchen. “I investigate whatever the clients ask me to investigate,” he said. “We advertise paranormal to the people, and we contract with law enforcement on a city, state, and federal level. Only thing we hide is the prison beneath our building. Doesn’t make it a fake job.” Xander popped out his head. “You going to stand there all night?”

  Glancing at my soot-covered clothes, I nodded. “I’ll get something in here dirty… or I’ll break something,” I said, speaking my deepest truth. I didn’t mind shattering someone’s fragile feelings or smashing their egos. Usually people who irked me to the point of verbally abusing them deserved it, anyway. They needed a self-check on their self-righteous attitudes. But breaking something that didn’t need breaking… well, that terrified me.

  Imagine the most obstructive, careless kid possible. Now, imagine the most non-kid house in the entire world. That was me in Xander’s condo. A bowling ball thrown at glass pins.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “Want a drink while you stand there?”

  I shook my head in the negative, but said, “Please.” It was a bad habit, my lips always ruling out my actions—or maybe it was vice
versa. Either way, my mind never agreed with my hands. “Scotch. Shaken, please. Never stirred. Neat.”

  “Do you even know what you’re saying?” Xander asked.

  “Not at all.” I shuffled around the living room, mesmerized that I couldn’t find dust on any of the shelves. “Where do you find the time to clean the place?”

  “At night,” he said. “When I can’t sleep.”

  I scratched the back of my ear, stopping in front of a canvas abstract painting. “What’s this represent?”

  “Whatever you see,” he said like a complete moron.

  I saw a white background blurred by three horizontal brushstrokes painted black. That’s all I saw. “Thought-provoking,” I muttered.

  Xander walked up and handed me the much-needed scotch.

  “Can I take this in the shower with me?” I asked. “I can’t remember the last time I showered sober. It’s a disgusting affair.”

  “Do whatever you want,” he said.

  I chuckled. “Don’t give me that freedom. You’ll learn to regret it quickly.”

  “I’m going to decompress a little,” he said. “Take some notes about what happened earlier and what we learned. See if I can’t declutter a few of the details.”

  “Journaling, you mean? You’re going to write in your diary? Dear Diary,” I said, “I finally reunited with my military crush, Joseph Labrador Hunter.”

  “Labrador?”

  “It’s an inside joke,” I said.

  “With whom?”

  “Myself. Whatever, you wouldn’t understand it even if I explained it to you.” I glanced around the living room. “Shouldn’t you have, I don’t know, like, a picture of Jesus or some candlelit shrine around here? You cursed earlier. Remember that? F-bomb blowing up my eardrums. You should definitely repent.”

  Xander sighed, drank a little too liberally from his glass, and asked, “You ever stop talking?”

  “Only to breathe, baby. Only to breathe.” We stood beside each other for a silent second, sipping scotch.