Bad Grace (Watcher Chronicles Book 1)
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Authors: N.P. Martin
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Bad Grace
(Watcher Chronicles Book 1)
By
N.P. Martin
Copyright © 2015 by N.P. Martin
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CHAPTER 1
2004
Frank Swanson was sitting in the living room of his mountain cabin, in an armchair by a slowly dying fire, a fully loaded 9mm Beretta in one hand, a crumpled photograph in the other, when his cell phone rang in the kitchen next to the near empty bottle of Jack Daniels he’d been drinking from all night.
He hardly flinched when the phone rang, even though it was loud and intrusive in the quiet of the small cabin. His attention was fixed on the photograph he gripped tightly in one hand, or rather the woman who was in the photograph.
The phone kept ringing.
Frank ignored it. Pretended it wasn’t there at all. Kept staring at the dark haired woman with the hungry eyes in the photograph.
I’m so sorry, Rachel, he thought.
The phone continued to ring.
Frank gripped the gun in his hand, squeezed the grip. Dug the butt into his leg.
The phone stopped ringing.
With the same hand he held the photograph in, Frank grabbed the glass of whiskey on the arm of the chair he was sitting in. Downed what was left in the glass, which wasn’t much. He sat the glass back on the arm of the chair. Sat back in his seat. Rubbed at his temple with the gun still in his hand.
The woman in the photograph stared back at him. Long dark hair. Deep brown almond shaped eyes full of strength and confidence. He never got tired of looking into those eyes when Rachel was alive. It was the only time he felt like anyone really seen him for who he was. There was no hiding from those eyes.
They saw all and yet they still looked.
That’s what he loved the most about Rachel. When they looked at each other it was like looking in a mirror. Two souls exactly alike, both with the same purpose in life. A level of mutual understanding and acceptance that he would never find again.
Especially now that she was gone.
And it was all his fault.
The phone started ringing again. Louder. More insistent. Or at least that’s how it seemed to him.
Still, he ignored it.
The photograph was torn in half. That’s because Frank had ripped it in half. He used to be in the picture along with Rachel. It was taken in a mutual friend's house, at a small get together. Frank and Rachel both worked the same job, if you could call it that. It was high pressure work, to say the least, the reason they both loved it so much, one reason anyway. Occasionally they would get together with a few others, get drunk, smoke some weed, let off some steam. The photograph was taken when they were both drunk, arms around each other, as relaxed as they ever got. Rachel still had that look in her eyes though. The look of a Jaguar about to go on the hunt. Steady. Focused. Sexy as hell.
The phone kept ringing in the kitchen.
Frank gritted his teeth, looked to the side towards the kitchen. Thought about shooting the damn phone.
It stopped ringing.
He slumped back into his chair.
Rachel was still looking back at him. In his many nights of staring at that photograph, Frank had imagined Rachel saying many things to him. Some nights she spoke reassuringly, told him everything was going to be alright, that it really wasn’t his fault she was dead. Other nights, she blamed him for everything. Blamed him for not being able to stay away, for not allowing her to move on with her life, the life she had with his brother, Dean and their two kids, Leia and Josh. She would hate Frank in their imaginary conversations, tell him that she wished they’d never met. Not ever.
Just like she was saying now.
“I tried...” Frank’s face was scrunched up, like he was in pain. His brown eyes were wet.
You tried, Frank? Is that supposed to make me feel better? You didn’t fucking try hard enough, did you? If you did, I would still be around to see my kids grow up.
The phone started again.
Frank tightened his grip on the Beretta, wanted so badly to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger because he couldn’t bear hearing Rachel talk to him like that.
“What we had...it was—”
A mistake, Frank. We never should have been together. The only thing we were good at was killing. We killed everything. We killed you. We killed me. Only, you got to come back. I didn’t.
“No...”
The phone didn’t stop ringing, just wouldn’t goddamn stop.
Kill yourself, Frank. It’s all that’s left for you...
The gun was at his head, held there by his own trembling hand.
Do it, Frank. Just do it!
Fucking phone!
Do it do it do it...
“FUCK!”
He lowered the gun, started banging his head against the back of the armchair. In the kitchen, the phone stopped ringing. Then started again a second later.
Frank stopped banging his head against the seat. “I swear to fucking god...”
He stood up on shaky legs, shoved the photograph of Rachel into the back pocket of his jeans. Pushed the Beretta into the front of his waistband. Stomped the few steps into the tiny kitchen and looked at the still ringing cell phone on the bench beside the sink. He picked up the phone and the bottle of Jack Daniels at the same time, one in each hand. Took a swig from the bottle while looking at the phone. Blocked number.
If this is a sales call I’m going to hunt the bastards down, he thought.
He hit accept on the phone. “Whoever this is, it better be fucking good to ring me four times in a row.”
“Frank Swanson?” asked a male voice on the other end of the phone.
It wasn’t a voice that Frank recognized. “Who wants to know?”
“You’re a hard man to track down, Frank.”
“Who is this?”
“Someone in need of your particular skill set.”
“Oh yeah? What skill set would that be then?”
Not fucking suicide anyway, he thought.
“I have a bit of demon problem. I’m told you’re the best man to sort that out.”
Frank snorted and took another swig from the whiskey bottle, looked around for his cigarettes but couldn’t see them anywhere.
“You still there, Frank?” the voice on the phone said.
Fuck it, he thought. Might as well work if I can’t kill myself.
“Tell me where to meet you.”
CHAPTER 2
It took Frank about half an hour to drive from the cabin in the mountains to the darkly seductive cesspool of evil that was Mercy City, Pennsylvania. Not that most of the residents of the city saw it like that. A cesspit maybe. Sometimes evil even. But the vast majority of Mercy City’s residents remained dangerously unaware of the network of malevolence that permeated through every block in the city like the worst kind of cancer imaginable. Probably just as well. If the people of the city really knew what lived among them, they would run far away and never look back, except in fear that what lived in the city would hunt them down. Then Mercy City would be its very own Hell, housing every monster, demon and supernatural being you could think of. And people like Frank, of course. Not that Frank thought of himself as a person. Not anymore anyway, if indeed he ever did.
He was a few glasses of Jack away from breaking a breathalyzer as he drove his black ‘67 Chevrolet through the packed streets of downtown. The passenger side window was halfway down to let out the smoke from the cigarette that dangled from his lips. Loud music from the only radio station he ever listened to belted out of the speakers—a Seventies classic rock station currently playing “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” by Black Sabbath. He liked the music loud so it drowned out most of the noise outside the car and also the noise inside his own head, which was always more incessant and far more unsettling.
Sunday night. Past eleven o’clock. You’d think most people in the city would be at home, trying to relax, but unsettled by the fact that they had to start a whole new week with work or whatever it was they did. But no. By the looks of the streets, the crowds hanging around bars and clubs, the people gathered on every street corner, it looked like most of the city was out in force. A too large proportion of those people weren’t even people. They may have looked human, but they weren’t. They were something else entirely and they ran the city like they did most cities around the world.
Like they ran the world, in fact.
Frank caught glimpses of them as he drove—the demons, as they were all demons to him. Faces mostly. That was all he needed to see to know they were monsters. Demons. It was all in the eyes, the cold malevolence. Despite their sometimes monstrous faces, the burning eyes still gave them away the most.
If people could see, he often thought. But they didn’t. Only he could. Him and a too small network of others. Oftentimes he wished he
couldn’t
see. It’s not like he chose to have his eyes open. Destiny had done that for him. He just had to live with it, like he was doing now, driving towards the Sex Quarter to meet some guy who says he has a demon problem. Frank had told him on the phone that he had demon problems all the time, but he didn’t phone strangers for help. Sometimes Frank got abrasive, especially on the phone. Cell phones especially annoyed him. The guy with the demon problem had laughed like Frank had told him a joke, then said that he knew he had made the right choice in Watcher. Frank congratulated him on that and then bluntly said he would be with the guy in an hour before hanging up the phone.