Hell Is Coming (The Watcher's Series Book 1) (7 page)

BOOK: Hell Is Coming (The Watcher's Series Book 1)
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“I told you,” I said. “I need your help. My brother has been taken.”

“Taken?”

“Kidnapped. Whatever. He’s gone and I need your help to get him back. My mom said you would help me. She told me to come here, said you owed her.”

His eyes narrowed and he cocked his head to one side. “Really? When exactly? She’s been gone for eleven years.”

“I know it sounds crazy, and I know my mom is dead practically, but she left me this video along with her journal and in the video she told me to come find you up here, that you could help me—help both of us actually—my brother and me—but I got home earlier and my brother was gone and my foster mother was dead—murdered in the bath and there was a message written in blood on the bathroom mirror and it said…it said they were coming for me as well and—”

“Okay, okay. Hold on.” He didn’t seem amused that a crazy-ass girl—niece or not—had landed at his doorstep unannounced, so I was surprised when he said, “Come inside.” I wasn’t sure about Frank or if I should be trusting him, but  I followed him into the cabin, not having much of choice.

The dog was still eying me suspiciously from outside as I went through the door. “Your dog doesn’t like me,” I said to Frank.

“You’re a stranger to him. Don’t take it personally.” He held the front door open. “Bane. In.” The Labrador dropped his ears and seemed to relax as it walked passed Frank and into the cabin, paying me no more attention as it went and slumped under the living room window, its guard duty done for the night.

Frank switched on the light—a single bare bulb that hung from the living room ceiling—and beckoned for me to take a seat. I paused for a second, taking in the interior of the cabin. It was pretty basic. No pictures on the walls except for a stuffed trout mounted over the fireplace, nothing that suggested anything about Frank’s personality. The place smelled earthy, all natural scents of cooking, whiskey, dog and a few other odors I couldn’t quite place. There were certainly no signs of the pungent air-fresheners that Diane often used in her home. It felt like I was the first woman to ever set foot in the place. Two armchairs sat in front of the fireplace. One chair looked threaded and well worn, the other like new. I sat in the less worn armchair by the open fire that was crackling away, filling the cabin with warmth that was a stark contrast to the cold outside.

The heat and comforting glow of the fire made me feel instantly more at ease. Real fires have always had that effect on me, though I was still twitchy as I watched Frank walk into the tiny adjoining kitchen and fill two glasses with whisky from a bottle that was almost empty. He looked disheveled in a creased blue shirt that hung over faded dark jeans. Again, I got the impression Frank didn’t get many visitors. He carried the two glasses over to where I was sitting, silently handed me one, and sat down in the chair opposite me. “Can I see that?” He was pointing to my mother’s journal.

I hesitated before I handed him the journal. There was a deep frown on his face as he turned the pages. I regarded him carefully as I sipped at the whiskey. I was more of a vodka girl but the whiskey would do. It warmed my insides and took the edge off my nerves.

“You read any of this yet?” Frank asked, still carefully turning the pages in the journal.

I shook my head. “Not yet. I only got it a few hours ago from the lockup.”

He seemed surprised. “You found the lockup?”

“My Mom left instructions before she…” I trailed off. How much did he know about what happened to my mom and dad? Did he know about the demon who took my mom or did he think what everyone else thought, that she was just gone?

He handed me back the book and then sat  staring at me like he was trying to work out what to make of me and my situation. “What?” I asked when I couldn’t take his gaze anymore.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“I guess me coming here is the last thing you expected. I wouldn’t have come if I had other options.”

He nodded and carried on drinking his whiskey, allowing silence to descend once more. Clearly he was used to silence living up there alone, was comfortable in it even. He stared into the fire for a moment before leaning over and lifting a log from the side of the fireplace. He threw the log on the fire and the flames leapt higher for a few seconds before settling back down again.

Seeing him in real life, I was once again shocked by how much he looked like my dad. He had the same dark hair, although it was slightly longer than my dad’s ever was, and more unkempt. Frank’s hair also had streaks of gray. No doubt if my dad was alive his hair would be gray as well. Frank’s eyes were also the same nut brown color as my dad’s ,although Frank’s eyes had a hint of the color of the whiskey in his glass.

That’s where the similarities between him and my dad  ended. Whereas my dad’s eyes had been soft and caring most of the time, Frank had a hard look in his, like he had seen too much bad stuff that had left him cold, jaded, and detached from everything. His face was more drawn than my dad’s had been, his mouth harder. I doubted he was as quick to smile as my dad had been. He seemed put out by my presence, like I was stirring up memories and emotions in him that he didn’t want disturbed.

“Look, I can go if you don’t want me here,” I said, sliding forward in my chair to get up.

He put out a hand. “Wait. Just…sit. It’s fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“You want another drink?” He got up and took my empty glass before I got a chance to answer. I frowned at him as he went to the kitchen and refilled the glasses. I sort of got the impression that Frank liked his whiskey.

Was that why he was behaving so strangely though?

He handed me my glass and sat back down.

“This is obviously weird for you,” I said.

Frank was rubbing the stubble on his chin with one hand. “Yeah. It’s a little weird, I have to say.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing you look exactly like your mom did at your age.”

“Okay.” What did he  want me to do about that?
“And?”

“And…you’re here. What is it you want from me?”

“I thought I was pretty clear on that outside. My brother’s been kidnapped and my mom left me instructions to come see you in the hope that you would maybe help me. Obviously she was wrong.” I placed the whiskey glass on the floor and stood up. “Sorry to bother you.” I fought back tears as I walked to the front door. The dog sat up, looking at me.

“Wait,” Frank said, standing.

I could see the guilt in his eyes when he noticed I was crying. “Look, I know I’m just a stranger to you, but you have to help me here. I’ve nowhere else to go. All this bad stuff is happening and I don’t know how to handle it…” He came over and I thought for one horrible second he was going to put his arms around me, but he just stood there awkwardly, not really knowing how to deal with my emotion. Maybe he wasn’t used to human contact, or at least not used to emotional eighteen-year-old girls.

“Come sit back down,” he said. He walked me back to the chair and then sat down himself.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sniffing and wiping away tears. “A lot has happened today.”

“You mentioned a video your mom made for you.”

“Yes, it’s in the laptop. You wanna see it?”

His eyes widened for a second and then he swallowed. “No. Later maybe.” He downed the rest of his whiskey. “What did your Mom tell you in this video?”

I told him everything my mom had said in the video, about how she was supposed to leave to protect us, about Josh and me being Watchers and everything that entailed. “Do you know what happened to her?” I asked. “Did a demon take her?”

Frank shifted in his seat. “What makes you say that?”

“I saw something take her that night, this horrible demon figure. It had her in its arms as it jumped into this orange circle of light on the floor and they just… disappeared. Then there was the huge dog beast that…killed my dad. No one believed me about that. They all said I was crazy from grief or some shit.”

“You weren’t crazy. She was taken.” He looked extremely uncomfortable talking about my mom and I wasn’t sure why until I remembered what she had said in the video, that my father still loved her despite everything.

“Did you have something to do with my mom’s death?”

The question seemed to catch him off guard. “I…no. That was all her doing, her choice.”

“What do you mean?”

He seemed to think for a second, like there was some internal battle going on and he didn’t know how to handle it. Then he visibly relaxed, like he just didn’t care anymore. He looked defeated by whatever emotional struggle he was going through. “You’ve obviously had a rough day. Why don’t you stay here tonight? Get some sleep and we’ll talk again in the morning. Maybe we can figure out why your brother was taken.”

Not really the response I was looking for. He didn’t seem willing to talk about my mom so I tried a different subject. “Did demons take my brother?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to look into the whole thing first. Don’t jump to conclusions just yet.” He stood up. “Come on, I’ll show you where your room is.”

He was giving me the brush off. I considered calling him out on it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t risk annoying or upsetting him in case he tossed me out. He was the only one who could help me get my brother back. I needed him. So I followed him out of the living room, taking the laptop and journal with me to a small bedroom that had a single bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers with a mirror on top, resting against the wall. Not exactly
MTV Cribs
but it would do. I’d stayed in worse over the years. He said goodnight and then he was gone, closing the door behind him.

I stood looking around the room for a second, barely taking in my new surroundings before sitting down on the creaky bed and looking out the window at the nearly full moon in the night sky. The moon looked so much more vivid up here than it did from the city. It was beautiful but it did nothing to lift my mood. I felt weirdly disconnected from everything, the way I used to feel when I took in a new foster home for the first time. It was like I was living inside some kind of dream world, only it wasn’t a dream but a nightmare that I couldn’t seem to wake up from.

I wasn’t sure I could even sleep knowing my brother was out there alone, being held captive by who the hell knew what. I was acutely aware time mattered when it came to kidnappings. I’d seen enough movies to know that the longer a person spent in captivity the less chance they had of being released or found, and if they were, they always came out damaged, physically, mentally, or both. I shut my eyes tightly when I felt like I was going to cry again. Crying wouldn’t help get Josh back. Only Frank could help me with that.

I lay back on the bed and opened my mom’s journal. It seemed to be a record of her job as a Watcher right from the first time she went out on the hunt when she was my age. The first page told of her and her father—my grandfather—whom I’d only met once before he died, when I was very young, so I barely remembered him except that he seemed nice, just a little scary.

The journal described my mom and grandfather hunting this demon called Zycklon. They tracked it to an abandoned school building in Mercy City. My mom killed it with a knife, some demon-killing knife her father had given her. It was her first kill. “
I had never been so afraid,”
she wrote.
“I thought the demon would kill me, but I managed to stab it with the knife while Dad watched. Afterwards I felt righteous, like I had made the world a better place. Dad was proud. This is what I want to do with my life, to be a Watcher and make the world safe from evil.”

On the same page there was a detailed sketch of the demon she had killed. It looked exactly like some of the demon faces I had sketched myself over the previous months. The demon had flaps of skin sticking out of both sides of its face like bat wings almost, translucent and patterned with thin blood vessels. The eyes were large and full of fierceness. I was quite taken aback by my mom’s artistic skills. I always wondered where I got my drawing talent. Growing up, I had never seen my mom draw anything. Now looking through her journal I could see she was more of an accomplished artist than even me. Her skill with a pencil was amazing. Not only did she capture the look of the demons perfectly, she also managed to convey the nature of the real monster underneath. That took real skill.

I read through more of the journal, taking in details of the many hunts my mom went on. It seemed like that was all she did—hunt monsters of every type and description. She loved it, that much was obvious by the way she wrote. She embraced the whole Watcher life like a calling, which I supposed it was. I mean who would willingly spend their life putting themselves in deep jeopardy while chasing evil unless it was something they felt they had no choice in?

I wondered if I would end up the same way, if I would embrace the life the way my mom did. I’d only just discovered this hidden world, so it was too early to say. Maybe if Josh hadn’t been taken, we could have helped each other understand what we were apparently fated for.

But Josh wasn’t around, so my main priority was finding him. I would do what I had to do, learn what I had to learn to get him back safely.

The rest would have to wait.

 

Chapter 6

The next morning it took me a minute to figure out where I was before I realized I was in my Uncle Frank’s cabin half way up a mountain. I hardly slept at all the night before. I thought about Josh, where he might be, who he might be with, what kind of torture he was being subjected to. Most of all I wondered if I was ever going to see him again. I quietly cried myself to sleep, where I eventually ended up having nightmares involving my mom and the demon who took her, massive hell beasts chasing me around the old house.

When I got up I could see no sign of Frank, so I went outside and found him out front in a grassy clearing by the edge of the trees. He stood in the cold morning air, topless, in a pair of faded jeans, hitting a punching bag that hung from one of the trees. I watched from the front door for a moment, my arms folded across my chest as I got used to the chilly air. I put Frank in his early forties, though with his wiry muscular body and the way he expertly moved around the punching bag—hitting it sometimes with shocking speed and power, the bag swinging wildly on the tree branch it was tethered to—he seemed a lot younger.

BOOK: Hell Is Coming (The Watcher's Series Book 1)
9.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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