Banshee Hunt (21 page)

Chapter Fourteen

It was after nine when James finally made it into the office. Later than he had ever come in before and he felt slightly guilty. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice when he arrived.

The others were busy, hunched around their computers, tapping away at the keys furiously. Busier than he'd ever seen them before. But once James got a look at what was on the screens he understood. They had Yasmin's files and were currently going through them, matching what was in them with what they'd got from Hong Kong. They were also matching it up with what he’d caught on his phone – the images they had of the banshee.

Yasmin was already with the others, tapping away. He guessed she'd got there about an hour before him. But then after he'd left her apartment James had had to rush across town to his own place to shower and change. He had also used the time to try and make some sense of things. Or tried to. There wasn't that much sense to be found.

He didn't know where his rush of blood to the head had come from the previous day. Certainly there had been a sense of achievement, especially on Yamin's part. And alcohol had definitely played a role – he remembered a bar at some point and his head was still telling him they might have drunk too much. Why wasn't her head hurting he wondered? She looked completely rested as she worked. Good genes? Or was she just hiding it better than him? But mostly it felt like some form of madness had overcome him. A temporary insanity that had simply robbed him of all his reason for a time. The sort of thing that happened to kids. However, he wasn't a teenager anymore. He never lost control. He didn't do stupid.

But apparently he did. Because what they had done had been the height of stupidity. For a while last night he had been a horny teenager in lust with no thought of the consequences. Certainly he'd known the stamina of a teenager. It was just that he hadn't woken up as that teenager. He'd woken up as a prematurely old man with all the worries of life weighing down on him. Not the sort to simply jump into bed with a woman he barely knew. Maybe the German could explain that to him. Not that he ever wanted to tell him about this.

If he was confused and embarrassed however, Yasmin didn't seem to be. In fact she looked the picture of efficiency and order. She flashed a look at him when he entered that was all business and then immediately returned to her work. The message was clear. She didn't want to talk about it. And maybe he thought as he sat at his desk and flicked on his own machine, that was for the best. They had a busy day ahead of them.

Besides, they were very different people. It was something he was just beginning to appreciate. He was a slob, and probably from the wrong side of the tracks. He hadn't realised that until that morning. But Yasmin was definitely from the right side of the tracks. She wore fashionable clothes and expensive jewellery. She had the money to own a sizeable, well decorated apartment in a good part of town and fill it with what looked like expensive art.  She drove a late model Mercedes.  

He on the other hand was barely keeping his head above water. Between alimony payments and Matti's schooling – and of course every so often another bill for his ex-wife's stay in the Fairview Haven clinic – his salary got shredded. So he drove around in a twenty year old BMW. His clothes were anything but fashionable. His apartment was basic. And he had little hope of digging his way out of his financial hole. He certainly wouldn't be buying expensive artworks to hang on the walls any time soon.

She had every reason to be disappointed in him he supposed. Ignoring his ice cold personality and abrasive nature as everyone kept telling him he had, he simply wasn't up to her standards. What had happened was simply hormones and frustration in action. And a boat load of booze. It wouldn't happen again. The clever thing would be to just forget that it had ever happened and move on. That was clearly what Yasmin was trying to do. He should do the same.

So James busied himself doing exactly what everyone else was doing. Hunting down the banshee.

Of course this hunt had to be done by computer.

They had the documents from the aide. They had some names on those documents – if only surnames. They also had the files that the Hong Kong office had sent them about the banshees. Most of which unfortunately consisted of reports without pictures. Also too often, rumours and speculation without hard facts. Regulating a family of fascinators had to be difficult. And it seemed that the Illuminati from that part of the world were only concerned with keeping things quiet. They didn't care about their criminal endeavours, as long as they were discreet. But they also had access to the driver's licence databases for the territory and a number of other databases with pictures. They had records of births deaths and marriages. And lastly they had the somewhat fuzzy image of the banshee he'd shot in the church. Now it was time to start marrying them up.

It meant starting with the family name of Harper Lee and then building a family tree from it through the records of births deaths and marriages. That would have been easier if the records had been complete and all translated into English. But they weren't. They were old, mostly paper documents that had been scanned – poorly – and where there was any English on them it was faded. So much for Hong Kong having been part of the British Empire he thought.

The next step in the process was to match up the list of names with records. Those provided by the Illuminati that could tell them something of the gifts and positions within the family. They were particularly interested in any document that had a photo like a drivers licence or identity card. Sometimes it was photos from the society pages of the local papers. Whatever could give them a face. They needed someone who looked like the Asian woman, someone who was a member of the family, and someone who was known to have the family gift.

Then last came the exciting bit. The moment when they'd find out if they had a match. A woman of the right age and family, with the gift and a face that could have been the one on his phone. But even that was difficult. The images they got from the records were often poor quality. The images on his phone were the same – apparently he was far from gifted when it came to taking pictures. Too often it was almost as though he was comparing one blurry blob with another. And there were a lot of them. They had to go through each of those images they had and compare them to the image they had of their banshee. Both visually and using facial recognition software. Daniels and IT were doing the facial recognition bit. James was concentrating instead on the faces and his memories. Neither of them was fast.

In fact the entire process was proving to be agonisingly slow and painstaking. The records were incomplete and no one spoke the language. The images they got from the databases were often old and out of date. They were also often of poor quality. In addition they had to make sure that each record related to the individual they were tracking. It was all too easy to have the birth certificate of one connected up to the Illuminati records for another if they weren't careful. To add to their woes the Harper Lees were a large family with hundreds of members, and there was no accurate picture of who among them had the banshee gift.

But the team persevered. And by the time six o'clock rolled around James thought he had a match.

Soo Chi Harper Lee. Aged fifty eight. Supposedly an accountant in the family business. And according to customs and immigration still in Hong Kong. So if it was her and she was in America, than she was both an illegal immigrant and unregistered with the Illuminati. The photo was old which suggested that either people could drive on Hong Kong roads with licences that were nearly twenty years out of date or she'd simply given up driving completely. It was of poor quality too. And the facial recognition only gave them an eighty seven percent match. But when he looked at the image James was sure. He'd seen her in the church. He'd studied her. He knew it was her.

Of course he had to be thorough. So even after he'd found her he carried on, working through the rest of the names, fuelled by coffee and a burning need to identify his quarry. And perhaps by the fact that she'd tried to kill him – three times! Though really the third time had been more a way of making good her escape than an actual murder attempt.

Still, by nine o'clock when all the others had gone home, her name was the only one that remained, and he celebrated a little. The hunter had finally found his quarry. That wasn't bad he thought. Not for a day that had begun in confusion and awkwardness.

Of course he realised as he turned off the lights and headed for the car, next came the hard part. Finding a woman who wasn’t officially in the country and likely using a false identity. And whom none of her victims seemed to really know anything about. That was going to be tough.

But finally he had the scent.

Chapter Fifteen

The following morning did not begin in its usual way. In fact it began earlier than normal with someone attempting to smash down his door at four AM. But even as James reacted to that, the door finally gave way and a stun grenade was tossed in. He recognised the crack as it went off even through his bedroom wall. After that a dozen officers in black tactical gear charged into the apartment, broke down the bedroom door, and tossed another stun grenade in together with tear gas. Lots of tear gas canisters. After that, while he was still lying there reeling and choking with tears streaming from his eyes, they grabbed him from his bed and threw him to the floor. Being handcuffed after that was almost a pleasant experience by comparison.

James tried to find out what was happening, yelling questions at the officers whenever he could. But the answers he got back were madness. They were yelling at him about being under arrest on terrorism charges and having bombed a church, but that was as much as he could work out before someone tasered him. Several someones actually and several times. After that things became a little vague.

There was the obligatory beating of course. He wasn't sure why that was happening when he was already down and cuffed, but a number of the black clad officers felt the need to kick him every so often and yell abuse. Then they tasered him some more, laughing as he convulsed. They also didn't let him dress, which meant he was lying there on the floor in pain wearing only a pair of fleece lined track pants and with blood running down from his mouth.

After that he was dragged out of his apartment. Literally dragged as no one seemed to want to help him to his feet. And then he was tossed down three flights of stairs one after the other and finally thrown in the back of a dark police van – twice! The first time he was thrown in so hard that he hit a security pole in the van used to cuff prisoners to. He bounced back off it only to lie there on the road staring up at the officers in shock and even more pain. That wasn't supposed to happen. Nor were they supposed to keep tasering him and kicking him while he lay there – but they did.

After that he was driven at high speed across town before ultimately being dragged into the station. He didn't know what station it was – it wasn't his old one and he hadn't had a view of anything from the back of the van. He didn't get much of a chance to see anything of it either as he was carried through it. Not much other than the green lino floor and the holding cells.

The floor of the holding cell though was a nice place to be he decided as he lay on it. It was cool and solid and most of all it didn't scream incoherently at him or beat him up. It also gave him a chance to collect his thoughts. Mostly it gave him a chance to register that this wasn't normal. It definitely wasn't procedure.

No one had read him his rights. No one had uncuffed him either, leaving him lying there, bleeding on the cell floor still in manacles. And then there was the violence. Too much violence. The police didn't do that. And they had done it in front of witnesses. A dozen black clad officers had pulled a half dressed man out of his apartment at four in the morning. Openly abusing him they had dragged him along the ground like a corpse, tossed him down the stairs and laughed at him as they did so – and all in front of the neighbours.

He thought the chances of this not ending up on the nightly news were slim. Moreover his neighbours were likely to be only the start of those who lodged complaints. Worse, there would be video. It was the twenty first century. There was always video.

But they might have problems even before that. Looking at the floor he could see trails of red all the way along it that he knew was his blood. These men might have gone mad. In fact it was the only explanation he could think of for what they'd done. But what about the rest of the police officers when they turned up for work and saw that? It was bound to cause people to ask questions. And if someone thought to check the station security they would witness the crime in action. That was madness. No one had bothered to clean the blood up. And he guessed that that same blood would be seen smeared throughout the rest of the station, covering the green lino floors he'd been dragged along. Did these officers have no thought of covering up their crime?

James would have asked, but there was no one around to ask. Once they'd thrown him in the holding cell, everyone had vanished for some reason. Maybe they'd gone back home to bed, their work for the morning done? Even the people who were supposed to be on duty watching over the prisoners were nowhere around. But someone always had to be on duty when even a single cell was occupied. That was protocol.

He could use a doctor. That was his next thought. James was hurting. He was sure that some of his ribs had been fractured. His jaw was swollen. Blood was pouring from his nose and his forehead while one of his eyes was so swollen that he couldn't see out of it. His left shoulder felt like it had been smashed. And every other part of him was bruised and battered. Unfortunately he was pretty sure a doctor hadn't been called. One should have been – it was procedure. But nothing about this was procedure.

In fact everything about it was wrong.

The statement about the church being bombed was wrong too. Somewhere in the middle of all the craziness the officers had screamed at him that he'd bombed a church. He could only think of one they could possibly mean. The problem was that it hadn't been bombed. Fire balled yes but not bombed. And fireballs didn't leave bomb residue or blast craters. Neither did lightning storms or detonations. In fact nothing about the crime scene said bomb. That had been helpful to them as the Illuminati had done their clean up. In fact they'd hardly had to do any clean up at all.

No bomb residue or blast zone, only scorch marks from electrics gone wrong. The conclusion even before West had started working his magic had always been going to be an electrical fire taking hold in the roof and then causing a stampede. As for the people he'd shot, they were nowhere to be found, and witness statements were unable to help with them. Some people had heard the gun shots and might have reported them, but popping sounds could just as easily be attributed to fluorescent lights going bang, especially when people were running and screaming. People seen lying on the floor bleeding could simply be the natural outcome of a panicked stampede. No one knew that what had happened had been anything other than an electrical fire and a stampede. But just to make things completely certain, most of the people in that church had been gifted of one sort or another. Unregistered gifted. They were happy to say fairly much what the Illuminati told them to. All they wanted was for it to go away.

So there was no evidence of a terrorist attack. Officially there was an old church with faulty wiring and a service that had gone tragically wrong. There was an ICE agent – him – caught up in the mess as he was participating in the congregation. And there was a story that had lasted on the news for a single night. What there wasn't as far as he knew, was a police investigation. The police didn't investigate accidental fires. The moment the report had hit their desks, the case had been closed. But even if they'd had cause to think it was something more than that the police didn't lead terrorist investigations either. That was the Fed's job.

Twenty minutes later though, his questions were answered as a middle aged Asian woman strode into the holding area with a confident look on her face. It was then that he understood. This had nothing to do with the police. They were just pawns. The banshee had sent them for him. And she hadn't done it simply so she could have a chat.

“Soo Chi Harper Lee.” James greeted her even before she opened her mouth. He wanted to get the upper hand from the outset. Although trying to do so while lying on the floor, bleeding and in pain, wasn’t particularly easy. He had a credibility problem.

“You know my name?”

She looked surprised, even a little taken aback. But she didn't look frightened. And why would she? She thought she held all the cards. And this was her version of payback for his spoiling her operation. The beating would only be the start of it. It would end with his death. James knew if he was to have any hope of surviving he had to make her think she didn't hold all the cards. He had to break her.

“Of course. All of the Illuminati know your name. We have your face. And we've destroyed your operation. Your face will be plastered all over the nightly news as a triad member. Soon your bank accounts will be completely empty too. And there'll be nowhere in the world you can run to. Even your own family won't take you back. Not when their financial concerns are now in the doghouse because of you. Their casino's pretty much gone and they'll know it's your fault. But please do call them, their lines have traces on them.”

“Worse for you though, now you've gone and attacked a hunter. An attack on one of the Illuminati is seen as an attack on all. You should know that.”

James smiled at her, calculating that it would unsettle her more. He knew he needed to. Especially when he saw the gun in her belt. He guessed she hadn't sent the police to grab him just so they could have a chat. This was about anger and vengeance. “You should enjoy your last few days of freedom. Because the rest of your life is going to be really bad. It may also be really short.”

“Yours may be shorter.” She smiled menacingly at him. “Hunter.” But she wasn't nearly as confident as she pretended. There was a quiver in her voice. The look of the hunted in her eyes.

“Then shoot me and stop wasting my time.”

James pretended a bravado he just didn't have. In theory the wards he had been spelled with might protect him – he actually didn't know. Mostly they were there to stop magical effects. Direct magical attacks. So he couldn't be spelled. A fascinator could not take control of his thoughts. A detonator could not explode him. But a possessed man could still hit him and a fireball could still burn him nicely. And bullets he wasn't sure of but he assumed they would hurt him. After all, if people were still able to beat and kick him, then the chances weren't good. Still, he could not show weakness. Not here. Not now.

“All in good time hunter.” She pulled out her weapon and started brushing it down with her fingers as if worried about dust. It was the banshee's turn to do the intimidating.

“I think I need to get some answers first. Like how did you get on to me? And what else do you know?”

“Really? You don't know?” James mocked her, trying to get under her skin once again. And then despite the pain involved he crawled up to his feet. He couldn't appear weak. Besides, she had a gun and he was handcuffed and trapped in a cell – a sitting duck. He had only one hope and how well it worked would depend on how quick he was on his feet.

“Besides, you didn't come for that. You may have told yourself that you did. But deep down inside you know the truth. This is about vengeance. I spoiled your plans. I've destroyed your life. You came to kill me; nothing else.” James knew he was right. He could see the hatred and fury moving behind her dark eyes. He recognised it because it also lived within him.

“Don't pretend you know me!” Her grip tightened on the gun.

“I do know you. I'm a hunter and you're my quarry. And I see the shit in your soul.” And he did. Maybe it was part instinct and part a dozen years as a cop but he'd also read the files on her in depth. “You spent years planning your new casino. You thought it would be the key to your financial independence. Your magical kingdom for the rest of your life. And I took it away from you. All of it, gone. I crushed your dreams. And you can't deal with that.”

“But it's more. This was your ticket out of the family business. Out of just being an accountant. Being the minor daughter who never got to make the decisions. This was your one glorious chance to be your own boss. To rule. It was your moment in the sun. And now it's gone forever.”

“You're going to be hunted. Soon you’ll be caught. Your powers are going to be bound and you'll be locked away for the rest of your life. It's only a matter of time. And worst of all everything your family always said about you – that you can't be relied upon – will be proven true. You're a failure. A mistake.”

“Be honest. You didn't do this bone headed thing to learn something from me. There's nothing I could tell you that will help you. You're beyond help. This is only about anger and hatred.”

James could see the rage growing in her eyes, and while it was dangerous to make an angry woman with a gun even more furious, it was what he had to do. He needed her total attention on him. Her eyes focussed purely on him.

“Are you trying to get yourself shot?”

“By you? Hardly.” James mocked her. “We both know you're the failure of the family. You don't do things yourself. You keep your hands clean by getting others to do it for you. And that's not going to change. You don't have the guts to look me in the eyes and pull the trigger. Not in cold blood.”