The Order of Brigid's Cross - The Wild Hunt (Book 1): The Wild Hunt (3 page)

The streets were deserted as Jamal jogged towards the park. He
figured people were either hiding inside or actually at the park by now.
 
A throw down in this neighborhood usually meant
semi-automatic guns with stray bullets that could easily pierce a door, window
or even a wall.
 
Usually, when the word
spread, people took to an interior room in their home.
 
Even though the park was two miles away, the
fight often spread to the surrounding area where no one was safe.
 
Jamal was glad his grandma’s room had no
windows. Because gun fire was so common, she would probably just sleep through
the noise, and if there were any sirens, they would be far enough away she
wouldn’t be disturbed.

He was about a block away from the park, and he could see
the cars and vans pulled up onto the grass, forming a circle around the middle
of the park. Suddenly, an explosion of gunshots rent the air and echoed down
the street. Screams followed, but they were drowned out by an even more
explosive round of gunfire.

He stepped into an overhang of a closed grocery store and
pulled the gun from beneath his jacket.
 
He held it in both hands, feeling the cold metal against his palms.
 
It felt heavier than he had imagined. He had
never fired a gun before.
 
He didn’t even
know if it was loaded. But, he had to trust Devonte. He had no choice.

With the gun palmed in his hand and the sleeve of his jacket
hiding it, he slipped out onto the sidewalk again and slowly made his way towards
the park, using the backdrop of the boarded up stores for protection.
 
Sliding along the front of each store, he
would pause and peer up the gangway between buildings to make sure no one else
was hiding there, waiting for an easy kill of an unsuspecting member of their
rival gang. The going was slow, but he wasn’t about to take any chances.

Finally, he reached the corner of the block.
 
He hid behind a newsstand, locked and closed up
for the night, and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm his pounding heart. The
gun war hadn’t slowed, and there were no sirens in the distance indicated cops
coming. “You got no choice, Jamal. You got to do this,” he whispered to
himself. “You
gotta
go now.”

He started to run out to the street when the ground rolled
beneath his feet, and he was thrown backwards to the curb, his gun skidding
across the asphalt.
 
He scrambled after his
gun but stayed down low.
 
The ground
rumbled again, and Jamal could hear a thundering sound in the distance.
 
What
the hell?

He glanced up, but the sky was clear and the moon was full.
Except… He watched a gray cloud race across the sky, dark and rolling, moving
in his direction.
 
He crawled backwards,
his eyes still on the sky, his hands scraping against concrete, as he moved as
quickly as he could. Finally, he hit against something solid and he forced
himself to look away from the sky and over his shoulder for a moment.
 
He was up against the smooth metal surface of
the newsstand. He should be safe here.

Then he looked up again, and his heart jumped to his throat as
the rotating cloud covered the moon and angled its descent towards earth. “It’s
a tornado,” he cried, struggling to his feet. “I
gotta
get inside.”

He jumped up and dashed back to the first vacant storefront.
The former plate glass door was now boarded up with various-sized pieces of
plywood that crossed over each other in several layers.
 
The large, showcase windows had also been
boarded over, and gangs from the area had spray painted them with ugly, black
marks.

Jamal reached out and yanked on the metal pull bar on the
door, hoping to snap the lock and get in.
 
The door jiggled slightly as Jamal desperately fought against the lock,
but the metal held, and the door stayed closed.

Suddenly, the wind increased, and trash cans and cardboard flew
down the street in front of him. The wailing sound of wind rushing through the
buildings reminded him of a video he had seen on the news when a hurricane had
hit the east coast.
 
This tornado was
coming fast and hard.
 
Desperate, he
threw his shoulder against the door, cracking one of the pieces of plywood. He
ran against it again, and it split in the middle. Prying his fingers into the
crack, he pulled on the wood, trying to increase the six-inch gap, but the wood
was too thick.

He dashed away from the door and out of the overhang, frantically
looking up and down the street for anything he could use to pry off the
plywood.
 
All of a sudden, the wind
seemed to change direction. Instead of between the buildings it was howling down
the street, creating a wind tunnel down the sidewalk.
 
Jamal’s body was shoved by the gust, and he
rammed his head on the brick façade. Then, the wind twisted and came from the
other direction, bringing with it an assortment of debris relentlessly pelting
his body.
 
Aluminum cans, newspapers,
paper cups, pebbles and garbage hit his back, pounded his body, and smacked
against his arms as he protected his head from the onslaught.

Struggling against the wind, he stumbled back towards the
door and the slight shelter the overhang provided. The wind hit again, nearly
lifting him off his feet. He pushed forward against the gust, trying to reach
the door, his heart pounding as the wind pulled him back towards the street. For
a moment, he was paralyzed, the force of the wind equaling the power of his
limbs.
 
He dug deep and forced himself to
push harder. Finally, he slapped his body against the brick façade and like a
rock climber, dug his fingertips into the gaps between the bricks for grip,
trying to find a solid hold. Inch by painful inch, he fought to move closer to
the doorway, fingertips scraped and bruised as he pulled himself forward,
fighting the drag of the maelstrom.

Finally, he reached the boarded door, shoved his hands back
into the small gap in the plywood and held on for dear life. The wind screamed
against the building, almost sounding human, and his body was shoved sideways. Squeezing
his fingers tighter, he held on as his legs were lifted off the ground and
pulled. Shoving his hand farther in for more grip, he felt the jagged plywood
slice through his hands, but he still held tight.
 
“Oh, Lord, please help me hold on,” he cried.

Suddenly there was quiet. His body smashed against the door,
ripping his hands out of the gap and cutting them deeply. His stomach turned
when he looked down and saw the damage; skin, muscles and tendons had been
severed to the bone.
 
The pain was immense.
He breathed in, ready to scream, but the sound died in his mouth when he saw a movement
out of the side of his eye. He reached for the gun that was no longer there.

Jamal faced the street to meet his enemy, but what he saw
was not what he expected.
 
The cloud, the
tornado was at street level now.
 
But it
wasn’t a cloud, it was an army, and they were walking out of the cloud.
 
There were at least a hundred of them
marching towards the park. The leader was tall—over ten feet.
 
His body was thick, and on his head he wore
the skull of some kind of giant deer. The antlers extended for yards in either
direction. He was riding on a giant, gray horse that breathed steam through its
wide nostrils while its sharp, stone hooves destroyed the asphalt beneath it.
 

Other creatures
followed,
some
riding and some on foot.
 
They were tall
and thin, just like their leader, and their clothes looked like ragged shrouds.
Moss and tree bark hung on the sharpened angles of their bodies.
 
Their limbs, long and sinewy, reminded Jamal
of willow tree limbs.
 
But instead of
soft leaves and tender branches, these limbs ended with twisted hands and
fingers. Elongated and spindly, their hands dragged against the ground as they walked,
and their sharp fingernails kindled sparks on the pavement.
 

They were monsters, monster soldiers, he realized as he
noticed the weapons they bore.
 
Nothing
like the weapons of today, but Jamal knew they would be deadly. Both sword and
bow, cast in bronzed metal, glimmered softly against the streetlights.

Then he heard the shrill howl and his blood ran cold.
 
Peering between the soldiers and the horses, Jamal
could see wolf-like creatures prowling, snapping at each other with their
overlong canines dripping with pus-like drool.
 
Their eyes glowed red in the dark night, and their claws clattered
against the pavement.

Then their scent hit him, and he nearly vomited.
Death.
They smelled like death.
 
He had smelled it before, finding a dead cat
back behind the projects, its body almost too far gone to recognize what it
was.
 
But that was a smell you never
forgot, and it was heavy in the air around him.

Jamal bit his lip until it bled. He sat in horrified silence
as the legion marched past him and into the park.
 
He prayed they wouldn’t look his way.
 
He prayed he would be safe. Then he heard the
screams.
Horrified human screams.
 
The soldiers had found their prey.

Wrapping his arms around his legs, he bent his head forward
and wept like a child.
 

Detective Sean O’Reilly’s stomach twisted as it did every
time he walked past the doors that opened into the lobby of the emergency room
of Cook County Hospital. He stepped onto the tiled floor and heard the noises
that were unique to a hospital. Soft-soled shoes against linoleum, the murmur
of the intercom, the quiet, anguished sobs of family members and the constant
beeping of monitoring equipment. Those sounds reminded him of the worst hours
of his life.

It had been years since he had carried his sister, Officer Mary
O’Reilly, into the hospital with a gunshot to her gut.
 
Years since he and the rest of his family sat
in the waiting room, crying and praying that she would not die.
 
Years since he discovered she had thrown herself
between him and a bullet with his name on it.

She was fine now, he reminded himself, more than fine.
 
She was on her honeymoon in Scotland with a
guy who worshipped the ground she walked on, and he’d better keep it that way.
Sean smiled slightly.
Yeah, things were
good with Mary.
 

He shook off those thoughts as he watched Detective Adrian
Williams approach him. Adrian was a behemoth, six feet five inches of solid
muscle. He walked like a bodybuilder, Sean thought, with a grin. His damn arms
were so muscular he couldn’t rest them at his side, so he looked like he was
always carrying some invisible beach ball. Well, a beach ball that weighed 300
pounds.

“Hey, Skinny,” Sean greeted his friend. “How are things in
the ‘hood?”

Adrian had worked in the Gang Enforcement Division of the
Chicago Police Department for about six months.
 
Before that, he worked with Sean in the Special Crimes Unit. He’d been
Sean’s rookie detective and was a quick learner and devoted law-enforcement
officer.
 
Sean had beamed like a proud
daddy when Adrian had received his promotion.

“Hey, Irish, nice to see you up and sober,” he teased back.

Sean glanced at his watch. “Well, it’s only midnight,” he
replied. “The real drinking doesn’t start until two or three.”

Adrian nodded, but the joking disappeared from his voice.
“Yeah, well, after what I’ve seen tonight I just might join you.”

Noting the change in his friend’s demeanor, Sean’s smile
dropped, and he lowered his voice. “So, what went down?”

“Worse throw down I’ve ever seen,” Adrian said, wiping his
hand over his eyes. “O’Reilly, you won’t believe the crime photos. The bodies
were hacked to pieces.”

“Hacked?” Sean asked. “Like knives?”

“Uh, uh, had to be bigger than that,” Adrian said. “There
were heads laying a couple yards from the bodies they belonged to, and those
heads, man, they were sliced clean off.
 
Arms, torsos…laying everywhere.
It was bad. It was like
nothing I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve seen a lot.”

“So, maybe machetes?”
Sean asked.
“Maybe we got some international throw down going on here?”

“Yeah, could have been a machete,” Adrian said, nodding
slowly. “But the
perps
who used them had to have been
on
roids
.”

“Or high on something,” Sean added.
“So
have you done any blood work?”

Taking a deep breath, Adrian leaned in a little closer. “Well,
if we had arrested someone we would have done blood work. But we’ve got
nothing,” he said quietly.

“No
perps
?”

“We’ve got nothing but a hundred maybe a hundred and twenty
dead bodies,” he said. “Two different gangs, almost everyone’s a corpse.”

“Almost?”

“Yeah, well, that’s why I called you in,” he said. “We got
this kid, looks like a new recruit, who got there a little late.
Probably saved his life.
He saw it going down, but he’s not
making any sense. I figured if anyone was an expert on not making any sense, it
was you.”

“Funny, real funny,” Sean said. “Do you think he’s covering
for himself?”

Adrian shook his head. “I found him huddled against an
abandoned building, crying his eyes out,” he said. “His hands were ripped to
pieces, but he didn’t even seem to notice. He was in shock. And when I told him
who I was, he about jumped into my arms he was so happy to see me.”

“Well, Skinny, you are
kinda
cute,” Sean said.

“Yeah, not that cute,” Adrian replied. “This kid is scared,
past scared. And whatever he saw, it doesn’t sound normal to me.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Yeah, they took care of his hands, but it’s his head I’m
worried about.”

Sean followed Adrian through the security doors of the emergency
room and back into one of the triage rooms.
 
Adrian pushed open the door and stepped inside. “Jamal, I want you to
meet a friend of mine,” he said as Sean entered behind him.
“Detective
Sean O’Reilly.”

“Hey, Jamal,” Sean said, coming up alongside the hospital
bed. The kid couldn’t have been more than twelve. His head was pressed against
the pillows like he was trying to hide.
 
His eyes were round and wary as he looked beyond Sean, searching the
room.

“The place is secure,” Sean reassured him. “We got the
hospital on lockdown. Nothing could get this far in.”

The boy relaxed visibly. “They
was
in the cloud,” he stammered. “They
was
in the freaking
clouds.”

Pulling a chair next to the bed, Sean sat down so Jamal
could look at him, face to face. “Why don’t we start from the beginning?” he
suggested. “That way, I get a whole picture of what happened and we don’t miss
anything important.”

Jamal nodded rapidly. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

“You hungry?”
Sean asked him,
sitting back against his chair, trying to look relaxed.

“I
ain’t
ate
since supper,” he answered.

Sean smiled at him. “Well, I remember when my brothers and I
were your age,” he said. “We’d have to eat every hour or so. I bet the
cafeteria has something. What would you like?”

The boy glanced quickly around the room and sunk further
into his pillow. “I don’t care,” he whispered.

“Hey, Skinny,” Sean said to Adrian, relieved to see the
young boy smile at the name. “How about picking up some food for us?”

Adrian nodded, understanding that a calm and relaxed witness
was a better witness. He and Sean had played this routine before, each one
getting the chance to be the errand boy. “You want me to get you some food?” he
asked and the boy retreated further into his pillow.

“Yeah, and don’t get us that green crap you eat,” Sean
replied, sharing a grin and wink with Jamal. “We don’t want salads or
vegetables. We want a couple of cheeseburgers and some fries.
Right, Jamal?”

Leaning forward, the boy nodded. “Um, right,” he said.

“And if they’ve got those cookies, you know those giant chocolate
chip ones,” Sean added, “We want those, too.”

Jamal smile and nodded.
“Yeah,
that’d be good,” he said.

“What do you want to drink?” Sean asked.

“Chocolate milk?” the boy asked hopefully.

“Oh, yeah, good call,” he replied with a smile. “Chocolate
milk — cold chocolate milk. Perfect.”

Sighing loudly, Adrian nodded. “It’s going hurt my heart
just getting this for you,” he said.

“Yeah, but you’ll get over it,” Sean teased, and Jamal
actually giggled.

Once the door had closed behind Adrian, Sean crossed one leg
over the other and stretched out in the chair.
 
He looked at the boy, nervously glancing from the door back to Sean. No,
he wasn’t ready yet.
 
He still had to
calm down a little.
 
Sean glanced at his
watch. It was twelve-thirty.
 
Well, the
only thing he had been planning on doing that night was sleep. He had time to
kill. “So, while we’re waiting for food, why don’t you tell me what sports you
like to play?”