Stalker of Shadows (SPECTR Series 3 Book 1)

  Stalker of Shadows

  Jordan L. Hawk

  Stalker of Shadows (SPECTR Series 3 #1) © 2019 Jordan L. Hawk

  ISBN: 978-1-941230-36-7

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art © 2019 Lou Harper

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Edited by Annetta Ribken

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Share Your Experience

  End Notes

  About the Author

  Dedication

  For Beth, without whom none of this would be possible.

  One

  The monster has returned.

  Long ago, a pair of mortals cried out for aid. A brother and sister, whose family had turned against them, called them servants of the devil, because one could touch minds and the other read hearts. Afraid for their lives, they reached out through the veil and summoned two rougarous to possess them.

  For a time, they feared nothing.

  Then the monster came.

  It had no fear. No remorse. It could not be reasoned with, or opposed.

  It ate the sister. Drove its fangs into her throat and drank her blood, her energy, until nothing remained.

  The brother fled deep into the swamps. Hid itself from mortal and monster alike. Feeding when it had the opportunity, or else waiting out long years at the bottom of the swamp alongside the alligators and snapping turtles. With every passing decade, it grew larger and stronger.

  There are other rougarous in the swamps, and the ancient one thinks of them as its children, even though they are not in any sense a mortal would understand. It touches their minds, and though it cannot control them, it can guide them. Advise them when to band together, and when to hide. When to move, and when to remain.

  It feels their alarm, when the monster begins to hunt them.

  The monster will take them, one by one, unless they flee.

  There is a place the ancient one found, during the great storm, when the sea drowned the bayou. Perhaps the monster will not pursue them there. And if it does, perhaps there will be enough of them to make it reconsider its pursuit.

  The moon watches coldly as the rougarou leaves its den and takes the first step, then the next. As it travels, it touches the minds of the others with a simple command.

  Follow me.

  “There’s no such thing as vampires,” the man said derisively.

  Caleb paused for dramatic effect. The cool breeze ruffled his long hair, and the tourists clutching plastic cups filled with booze huddled deeper into their jackets. He ran his gaze slowly over each one of them, ending on the man who had decided to spoil the fun for everyone. Then he let a smile unfurl, wide enough to show off the plastic fangs he wore. “Are you so sure?”

  “This is nonsense,” Gray informed him.

  A young woman at the front of the group let out a squeal of delight. Caleb flashed her a grin and a wink. “This is New Orleans,” he said. “Here, anything is possible.”

  “Even more nonsense.”

  Ignoring the voice in his head, Caleb gave the group his most elegant bow. The walking stick in his hand and cape draping his shoulders added to the effect. “Now, if you’ll follow me. Our first stop is just down the street.”

  He set off, careful to keep an eye on the gaggle of excited tourists clustered behind him. December was the off season in New Orleans, which made it a bit easier to keep his charges from getting lost in the crowd. At least according to the other guides; Caleb had only been doing the vampire tours for a couple of weeks.

  Getting hired hadn’t been a problem. He fit the stereotype perfectly: tall, thin, pale, with a curtain of black hair all the way to his elbows. Slap on a velvet cape and put a wolf-headed cane in his hand, and voila: instant vampire.

  Of course, he had an actual vampire—a drakul—living in his head. Not that his boss or coworkers knew about Gray, of course.

  “This is the most absurd thing you have yet subjected me to,” Gray complained as Caleb led the way to the first stop on the tour. “We have fangs of our own. Why must we wear these false ones? They do not even have a blood groove. If we bit a demon with them, they would plug the wound and we could not drink.”

  For the millionth time, because our real fangs are way too scary. Plus you’d have to manifest, and everyone would run screaming.

  “Good. Then we could hunt demons instead of wasting our time with foolish mortals.”

  Caleb paused in front of a high, white wall bordering the sidewalk.

  “This is the Ursuline Convent,” he said, indicating the building beyond. “When New Orleans was founded, it was a rough-and-tumble French colony. The king wanted to civilize the colony and make it into a true city. The best way to do so, at least to his mind, was to send over women who would bring a level of refinement and smooth away the roughest edges of the outpost.”

  One of the women in the group rolled her eyes. Caleb grinned. “Totally sexist, right? Men are barbarians, and women have to civilize them. Yikes. But, from the ladies’ point of view, coming here gave them the chance for a life of adventure they couldn’t have if they stayed in Paris. So why not give it a try? Of course, as we’ve already mentioned, the king was sexist, so he sent along a group of Ursuline nuns to keep the ladies from partying down with the sailors on the way over.” He paused and smiled, making sure to flash the plastic fangs. “But it’s said, they were accompanied not only by nuns, but by a dark power.”

  The young woman hovering nearest to him clutched her plastic cup tighter, her eyes huge and eager.

  “You see,” Caleb went on, “the women brought their trousseaus with them, so they’d have everything they needed to start their new life here in the colony. But their belongings weren’t stored in ordinary chests, but in ones shaped like caskets. For that reason, they were called ‘Casket Girls.’” He paused again. “Most of the casket-shaped trousseaus held linens, household items, whatever a young bride would need. But one—perhaps an actual casket loaded on ship by mistake—contained something else.”

  Gray stirred. “This part is at least plausible.”

  Old memories unspooled behind Caleb’s eyes, like a black-and-white film that had jumped its sprockets. No color, no scent, and barely any sensation accompanied them.

  A hunt. Going to ground in a convenient crate. The sound of nails, then the rocking of a ship.

  Would you quit? Caleb shoved the memories back, before he got so distracted the tourists noticed.

  “As the voyage went on the maidens began to…change.” Caleb lowered his voice, and the group leaned in. The young woman in front’s eyes shone eagerly. “They grew pale. Listless during the light of day. And was it imagination, or were their teeth becoming more…prominent?” He grinned broadly, showing off the fake fangs again.

  “This is absurd. Mortals are not food.”

  “If not for the presence of the nuns, who knows what would have befallen the sailors on that ship? Or perhaps on the colony as a whole, once the Casket Girls arrived? But the faith of the nuns was strong, and they were able to keep the young women—now vampires—from feeding.” Caleb turned with a dramatic ge
sture toward the building. “It’s hard to make out at night, but come back during the day, and you’ll see the attic shutters are kept closed at all times. No matter how nice the day, or how hot the night. It’s said blessed nails hold them in place, and spirit wards are carved into the very stones of the window sills. For the nuns never gave up their charge and still tend the Casket Girls to this very day.”

  “Ridiculous. Spirit wards cannot hold us, and no chant or blessing has ever made the slightest difference to me.” Gray paused. “Unless accompanied by a stake. But it was the stake which pinned me in the coffin, not the words.”

  “Those poor girls,” gasped the young woman. “Wouldn’t another vampire want to free them?”

  “There’s no such thing,” the first tourist repeated.

  Before Caleb could respond, a middle-aged woman piped up. “I heard there are, but SPECTR has them all in an underground bunker somewhere. The government just wants us to think they aren’t real.”

  “There were some weird Congressional hearings last spring,” another tourist put in. “They hushed it all up, but Fort Sumter is still closed. And after what happened in Charleston last summer…well, it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  A chill that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature sluiced down Caleb’s back. He and Gray were damned lucky they hadn’t ended up in a SPECTR black ops site somewhere, after what had gone down.

  But they hadn’t. And he needed to focus on getting the group back on track.

  “Who can say what’s real and what isn’t?” he asked with a knowing wink. “Now, if you’ll follow me, our next destination is the house of Jacques Saint Germain, a man who threw lavish parties during which he never ate, but drank only…wine.”

  “More nonsense.”

  “I’m Natalie.” The young woman from the tour leaned over the bar, flashing Caleb a view of her cleavage along with her smile.

  The tour company operated out of a bar tucked away upstairs above a jazz club on Bourbon Street. The owners leaned hard into the vampire tropes, and instead of the typical bar stools and high tops, the furnishings looked like some Hollywood idea of a vampire’s parlor, complete with overstuffed chairs, divans, and couches. The skeletons of small animals lurked beneath glass domes atop the fireplace’s mantel, and most of the light came from LED candles, which flickered to simulate flames.

  One of Caleb’s paintings hung on the wall, a discreet sign indicating it was for sale. He’d painted the scene from Gray’s memories, adding splashes of color to give it a life those lusterless recollections lacked. Shadows gathered close around an African-American woman in an antebellum dress. In her hand was a lantern, its beams driving back the darkness. Determination squared her shoulders, and pride flashed in her dark eyes.

  Papillon had been her name, though Gray hadn’t known it, until one of her descendants told them over a century later. The rougarou Gray had been hunting attacked Papillon, and Gray took advantage of its preoccupation with its own prey to kill it. She’d been one of the few mortals to react to him with curiosity rather than fear.

  The encounter set off a chain of events that led to Caleb getting possessed a century and a half later. Then working with the Vigilant, the group Papillon founded and her descendants still ran. Or had, until the mess on Fort Sumter.

  He couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Charleston tonight. Focusing on the present, he returned Natalie’s smile. “Caleb.”

  “I remember.” The bar, such as it was, was a small space sectioned off from the rest of the room, and offered only one or two chairs to sit in. Most guests preferred to congregate on the couches before and after the tours, but he always got at least a few who wanted to sit and talk while he manned the bar.

  Natalie watched as he mixed a drink. In keeping with the decadent vampire theme, the bar specialized in absinthe cocktails, and Caleb tried not to make a face at the smell while he poured. Even before Gray had dialed all his senses up to eleven, he’d hated the taste of the stuff. Just after he’d started working here, he’d dared a single sip, and ended up spitting it out into the sink.

  A vampire bar that specialized in something no actual vampire could stand to drink.

  “You do tours and tend bar?” Natalie asked when he slid the drinks into the window for the server to take.

  “We all do a little bit of everything here,” Caleb replied. “We’re a small company, so it makes sense.”

  She nodded. “Then I’m really glad I ended up on your tour.”

  “So am I,” he said, because it was good customer service. “Where are you from?”

  He split his attention between chatting with Natalie and serving up more drinks. Gray had curled up into a disgruntled ball in the back of their shared brain, like an annoyed cat turning its back, so at least he didn’t have that distraction. The last tour of the evening returned, this one led by Laura, one of the lesbian co-owners. There was a brief rush, then the crowd slowly dwindled as the night went on.

  Natalie stayed glued to her chair, except for a couple of quick trips to the bathroom. Eventually, she was the only patron remaining.

  “Last call,” Caleb said, glancing at the antique clock on the mantel. “Want a to-go cup for that drink?”

  “Sure.” She watched as Caleb poured. “So, um. It’s been great talking to you. Would you like to go somewhere and, you know. Keep up the conversation?” Before Caleb could figure out how to turn her down, she leaned in and lowered her voice. “I’d let you bite me.”

  He froze, a sick twist in his gut. Sensing his alarm, Gray roused. More memories flickered, but these belonged to Caleb as well.

  Pain and rage, and mortal blood in his mouth. Because mortals weren’t food, Gray was right about that.

  Too bad mortal blood tasted so damned good.

  And sure, the guy they’d drank—Ericsson—had been an evil son of a bitch. It wouldn’t be hard to argue what he’d done had been a hell of a lot worse than what they’d done to him. But that wasn’t the point.

  The one line they absolutely weren’t supposed to cross, and they’d vaulted over it and kept on going. And it had come so, so close to costing them everything.

  They hadn’t tasted mortal blood since. Not even John’s. John used to let them scratch him during sex, lap up the beads of blood, and it had been the best fucking aphrodisiac in the world…

  Maybe he still would. But they didn’t ask, afraid of ripping the scab off a wound that might not be as healed as they hoped.

  Natalie’s offer wasn’t even remotely tempting. It made them both feel ill, and maybe he ought to be grateful for that much, at least.

  He forced his hands to move, focusing on finishing her drink. When it was done, he slid it across the counter without meeting her eyes. “That’s kind of you,” he said, and somehow managed a smile. “But the company has a strict no-feeding-on-the-customers policy. Do you need me to call you a ride?”

  Laura came out of the back and began to aggressively sweep the floor. Natalie glanced at her, then back at Caleb. Her chair scraped against the floor as she pushed it back, then picked up her drink. “No,” she said, not bothering to conceal her disappointment. “Good night, Caleb.”

  “Night.”

  Once she was gone, Laura chuckled. “I think that one half believed you’re actually a vampire.”

  “Yeah,” Caleb said as he went to lock the door after Natalie. “Pretty crazy, huh?”

  Two

  John leaned back from the computer and rubbed his eyes. A quick glance at the clock showed he’d lost hours staring at the screen.

  Another day surfing the web, mindlessly watching videos, broken up by a trip to the gym to stay in shape in case this was the day the phone finally rang.

  It seemed like all he’d done since Kaniyar had parked them here was sit on his ass in front of the laptop, endlessly scrolling. When the director of SPECTR told them to come to New Orleans and hold position until she got in touch, he’d thought he’d be glad to get off the road f
or a bit.

  Ever since Charleston, he, Caleb, and Gray tooled around the southeast on an extended road trip. They’d spent long hours driving, going where whim took them for the most part, with the occasional direction from Kaniyar. Usually when a Non-Human Entity popped up somewhere in the sticks, and they were the closest SPECTR agents to the trouble.

  It had been great at first. John had still been healing from the final battle against Drugoy and Yuri, the only other living drakul. Caleb and Gray were thrilled to be away from SPECTR—or at least, away from the constraints put on them in Charleston.

  Spending time together, just the three of them, no district chief breathing down their necks, had felt a little like a honeymoon. Except instead of fancy restaurants, they went to abandoned farmhouses overgrown with kudzu, and Gray happily ate whatever nasty thing laired there.

  After months of the same, the situation started to wear on John, though he hadn’t said anything about it to Caleb and Gray. Thanks to his healing leg, he hadn’t been up for a fight with so much as a ghoul, let alone some of the NHEs Kaniyar sent them after. Gray and Caleb would leave him in the hotel room, then come back covered in blood and happy as a pair of clams.

  Back in Charleston, they’d been a team. Now, John felt as though he was just following his boyfriends around. Like a groupie for a band, trailing along while they did their thing, and maybe hooking up afterward.

  Kaniyar wouldn’t have sent them to New Orleans if something wasn’t up. But it had been weeks since he’d heard from her. He’d tried calling her once or twice, but only gotten through to her secretary, who politely informed him there were no new orders.