The Order of Brigid's Cross - The Wild Hunt (Book 1): The Wild Hunt (5 page)

“Well, I feel a little overdressed,” a woman’s voice stated.

Sean turned quickly, automatically reaching for a gun that
wasn’t there. “You!” he exclaimed.

She nodded her head in acknowledgement, flipping her long,
red hair behind her shoulders, and slipped onto a bar stool on the other side
of the kitchen counter. She was dressed in workout clothes, black capris and a
short sleeved shirt. “How are you doing, Sean?”

He stared at the woman who had been in his dreams since he
was twelve.
 
A woman who, until a few
months ago, he thought was just an unusual, but incredibly hot, figment of his
imagination.
The same woman who only weeks ago had saved his
life by beheading some kind of creature in the bowels of the Grant Park
Underground Parking Lot.

“I don’t remember if I thanked you,” he said.

She shrugged easily. “Doesn’t matter,” she said, the Irish
lilt in her voice even more pronounced. “I don’t believe I thanked you when you
saved
me
life so many years ago.”

He leaned back against the stove, glanced down at his boxers
and blushed. “I—I apologize for my attire,” he grimaced, dropping the can,
rushing over and pulling out a chef’s apron from a drawer. He slipped it on and
tied it securely in the back. “Well, I guess this is better than nothing.”

She grinned. “You never know,” she said. “I might have
preferred nothing.”

“Yeah, well, not until you at least take me out for dinner,”
he tossed back.

Tiny jumped up on the counter and knocked his head against
Sean’s hand. “Yeah, just a minute, Tiny,” he said, picking up the can of food
again. “You don’t have your sword.”

She smiled again. “I don’t generally take it on social
calls,” she replied.

“Is this what this is?” he asked.
“A
social call?”

She nodded.
“Aye,” she said, “and a
warning.”

Pulling the top off the can, Sean scooped the contents out
of the can into Tiny’s dish, and the cat lumbered across the counter to his
breakfast.

“I normally don’t like cats,” she said, running her fingers
along Tiny’s back, the cat arching in response. “But this one has charm.”

“Thanks,” Sean replied, but kept his mind on the
conversation. “You said something about a warning.”

She stood and walked over to the door, lifting the metal
trivet he’d hung on a hook and shook her head. “This is aluminum,” she said, “not
iron. It won’t do you any good unless you’re planning on placing a hot pan
sideways on your door. You need iron.
Solid iron.”

“It looked like iron.”

She looked at him, her green eyes meeting his hazel ones.
“As we both know, looks can be deceiving.”

“Can I just ask why I need iron?

“Protection.”

“From what?
Vampires
and werewolves?”

“No, that would be garlic and silver bullets,” she replied.
“Iron is for fae.”

“Who the hell are you?” he asked calmly.

She walked over to him and he was reminded again how tall
she was, like a nubile Irish goddess. He was six feet four inches tall and she
was nearly his height.

“That’s not my story to tell,” she said. “Not yet.”

“Why should I trust you?” he asked.

She shrugged again. “I didn’t ask for your trust, although
you should realize by now that we both fight for the same side.”

She moved to leave, but he reached forward and grabbed her
arm, surprised at the relief he felt when her flesh was tangible beneath his
hand. “Not so fast,” he said. “How did you get into my apartment? Who sent you?
Who are you working for?”

She met his eyes, and he saw a glint of humor in them, and
also a glint of challenge.

“Ah, well, that’s for me to know,” she whispered, and then
disappeared in front of him.

“And you to find out,” her voice echoed in the room.

“I know you’re in here and I’m going to find you,” Sean yelled,
ripping through the clothing and pulling it from hangers onto the floor behind
him. Finally, all that was facing him was a blank wall.
 
Running his hand through his hair in
confusion, he shook his head and muttered, “Well damn. Could it have just been
another hallucination?”

Stepping away from his hall closet, he waded through the
sports paraphernalia, jackets, shoes and other miscellaneous items that had
occupied the space before he had emptied it out.
 
He leaned against the back of the couch and
gazed around his apartment. It looked like a small tornado had touched down;
closets were emptied, rooms torn apart and furniture upended.
 
Any place that might have hidden an adult had
been thoroughly searched.
 
His scrutiny
brought him back to the deadbolt on the front door.
 
It was still in place.
 
Still locked from the
inside.
There was no way she could have…

He ran his hand through his hair again. Nothing in his world
made a whole lot of sense anymore. What happened to the good old days when a
little good investigatory work told you the good guys from the bad guys?
 
Monsters, demons and Elk Kings were the stuff
novels were made of, not something that should be running down the streets of
his city.

“I must be losing it,” he sighed and pushed himself off his
perch.
 

He picked up his golf bag and studied the clubs for a
moment, then glanced at the front door. Hefting one out of the bag, he shook
his head. “No, it had to be iron, not an iron,” he decided and stuffed it back
in with the others.

After the apartment was put back in order, Sean looked at
his front door with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. A collection of large,
heavy, cast-iron skillets were hanging from bungee cords attached to hooks
screwed into the wall above his door. “That ought to keep them out,” he said,
stepping back and admiring his work. “If the iron doesn’t work, slapping their
heads against a pan sure will.”

An hour later Sean was showered, dressed and sitting at his
dining room table patched into the District’s computer system. Accessing the
records file, he started entering the information he received from Jamal during
the interview.
 
Shaking his head, he
looked at his notes again. “This is nuts,” he muttered. “There wasn’t a cloud
in the sky last night. How could there be tornado-like winds?”

Opening another window, he typed in the web address for the
local weather site and accessed their weather history.
 
Last night in Chicago at nine
p.m
., the wind was calm, the sky was
clear, the barometric pressure was holding steady and the temperature was in
the mid-fifties.
 
No tornadoes in the
vicinity.
 
No high or low pressure
systems in the vicinity.
 
What the hell
happened?

Glancing over at the television that was on, but muted, he
noticed that the news ticker at the bottom of the picture mentioned the park
where the attack had occurred. Reaching over, he grabbed the remote and turned
on the sound.

“This is Channel 7
news reporter Mimi Garcia at the scene of last night’s horrendous gang fight on
the city’s South Side.”

The camera scanned the scene, showing yellow police tape
cordoning off a majority of the field beyond a playground. The police were
keeping the camera crews far enough away from the scene that nothing grisly or
gruesome could be aired.

 
“Sources on the scene have estimated the death
total to be over one hundred, but those same sources have confided that because
of the brutality of the murders, it will take the Coroner’s Office weeks before
they can piece the bodies back together to get a final count. There has been no
official comment from the Mayor’s office yet this morning. But detractors
wonder if the Mayor is even concerned with the death of a hundred gang members.”

The scene switched to the front of Cook County Hospital.

“The lone survivor is
said to be in good condition at Cook County Hospital.”

“What the hell?” Sean growled. Slapping his mug down, he
lifted up his cell phone and called the police station. “Yeah, this is
O’Reilly,” he said. “Can you find out who the hell is spilling their guts to
Channel 7 and shut them down? And have someone go to Cook County and make sure
the survivor has some security.”

Returning to his computer, he paused again when he heard a
light knock on the door. “Just a minute,” he called, pushing back his chair and
walking across the room.
 
He peeked
through the spyhole in the door and saw Ian and Gillian standing on the other
side.

Professor Ian MacDougall was not your typical professor; he
was tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes and the body of an athlete.
 
He was a little younger than Sean, in his
early thirties, but his looks and his age often camouflaged his intellectual
capabilities. A computer prodigy at a young age, he then turned his questing
mind towards researching a topic that had interested him since his own
near-death experience at the age of three, paranormal psychology.

His
fiancée
, Gillian Flanagan, had
the creamy skin and the soft scattering of freckles that were characteristic of
her Irish background, as was her lively personality and quick wit.
 
Her sparkling brown eyes, auburn hair, impish
smile and diminutive height brought to mind the pixies that had been fabled to
roam her homeland. But those who knew her realized her petite frame housed an
IQ and a personality that transcended her outward appearance.
 
She was always ready for a lively discussion.
Whether it was about the best beer to be found in the world, Guinness, or international
relations and economics, she always had an opinion and she wasn’t afraid to
voice it.

 
“Okay, give me a
second,” Sean said, unhooking the pans. “I have to de-iron the door.”

A few moments later, the pans stacked on the bar stool next
to the door, he swung it open and let them enter.

“De-iron the door?” Ian asked. “Is that an American thing I
haven’t heard of yet?”

Sean angled his head in the direction of the stool. “You
told me to put iron over the door to protect myself,” he said. “That was the
best I could do.”

Chuckling, Gillian stepped forward and hefted one of the
pans. “Aye, that’ll do just fine,” she said, turning to Sean. “Would you be
expecting a pack of boggarts to be coming this way?”

“Boogers?”
Sean asked, scrunching
up his face in disgust.

Gillian’s grin widened. “No, boggarts, you dunderhead,” she
replied, pausing for a moment to think. “Um, goblins, I think that’s the term
you use.”

“Oh, goblins,” Sean said. “That sounds much better than
boogers.”

Ian walked past both of them and found Tiny perched on the
back of the couch, nearly purring loudly enough to cause the room to vibrate.
Absently scratching Tiny’s head, he looked around the apartment. “You’ve done
some cleaning I see,” he said.

“Well, I had a little search party this morning,” Sean
explained. “I had a visitor who appeared in my apartment, gave me a little
advice and then disappeared before my eyes.”

“A ghost?”
Ian asked casually,
because in his line of work the appearance of spirits had become an everyday
occurrence.

Shaking his head, Sean closed his door and hooked one of the
pans back over the door. “Not unless ghosts walk around with swords killing
monsters in underground parking garages,” he replied.

“A monster in the garage?”
Gillian
asked, walking over and scratching Tiny’s oversized belly. “There’s a good boy.
Do you like a scratched tummy?”

She smiled up at Sean and teased, “Was it one of those white
alligators that grow up in the sewer system?”

“No,” Sean said. “She had a name for it. Hell devil or
something like that.”

The smile left her face, she stopped scratching Tiny, and
her voice held a serious note when she asked, “Was it Heldeofol?”

“Yeah.
Yeah, that was it,” Sean
said. “Ugliest thing I’d ever seen.”

“You saw it?” she asked. “Really got a good look at it?”

“Well, yeah, actually twice in my life,” Sean explained.
“Once, when I was twelve and our family was in Ireland visiting my grandmother,
I was in the woods and heard someone call out. I ran over to see if I could
help, and this red-headed girl was fighting off a bear. Well, it looked like a
bear from the back.”
 

“But it wasn’t a bear,” Gillian inserted.

Sean shook his head. “No, it wasn’t like anything I’d ever
seen,” he replied. “I looked around, found a big rock, grabbed it and tossed it
at the beast’s head. I got its attention. That’s when it grabbed me by the
arm.”

“Did it inject you?” she asked.

“What?” Sean asked, surprised by the question.

“
Heldeofols
have long claws on the
ends of their fingers. Under one claw in each hand they have a hollow, narrow
bone pointed on the end, like a needle. Once they’ve captured their prey, the
bone extends from the claw into the victim, puncturing its skin and injecting venom
into its system,” she explained.

“Where were you when I was twelve?” he asked.

Grinning, she shrugged. “A wee babe in arms, I’d say. But
why do you ask?”

“I felt it, the injection, and then I started getting really
woozy,” he answered. “And I knew I was a goner. And this thing, this Heldeofol,
was looming over me; I guess it was waiting for me to take my last breath.”

“It does like its food deceased,” she agreed.

“But then this girl, this red-head, stepped up and sliced
its head from its shoulders,” he said. “And as soon as the deed was done…poof…
the big bad ugly disintegrated.”

“What happened next?” Ian asked.

“It gets a little fuzzy,” Sean said, extending his hand and
pointing to a thin scar across his palm. “I think she cut my hand and her hand
and held them together.”

“Blood mingling,” she said softly. “Well, no wonder.”