Hell Is Coming (The Watcher's Series Book 1) (8 page)

One thing I hadn’t noticed last night was the view. It was breathtaking. Beyond the pine trees that ran right down the mountainside, I could see almost the whole of Mercy City in all its grimy glory, sprawled out with the two rivers running through it. I would have called it picturesque if I didn’t know any better, but I knew the city too well to get misty eyed over it.

Bane, the black Labrador, was sniffing around not far from Frank. The dog barked when he saw me, causing Frank to look my way. “Morning,” he said. I walked over to him, noticing a thick scar to the left of his spine, just below his shoulder blade. An old war wound, no doubt.

“You do this every morning?” I asked, standing a few feet away from him.

“Mostly.” He gave a small shrug. “Depends how much whiskey I drank the night before.”

I nodded.

“You train?”

“Train?” I wanted to laugh. If he only knew how much I resisted my brother’s repeated attempts to get me to join the gym. However, Frank’s seriousness in asking made any kind of mocking seem somehow inappropriate. “No, not really.”

“That’ll have to change.” He punched the bag again, sending it swinging away from him. “You’re gonna have to learn to use your abilities, and to do that, you have to train—a lot.”

I can’t say I liked the sound of that. Not at all. I also hoped Frank wasn’t going to get me to hit his punching bag in some lame effort to see what “skills” I had. I hadn’t long woken up and I needed coffee to function properly in the morning. It used to be that I needed pills to get me going, but that didn’t end well. Coffee did the job a lot more safely.

“Hit the bag.” He stepped away from the punching bag like he was giving me the floor or something. I felt the weight of his judgment and I hadn’t even thrown a punch yet.

“I don’t think so.” I folded my arms tighter around myself. “Seriously, I’m barely awake.”

He nodded and took a couple of steps towards me. I was slightly intimidated by the fact that he was topless. I tried not to look at the scars on his naked torso as he spoke. “You came to me for help, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, this is me helping you. You haven’t a chance in hell of getting your brother back without knowing how to protect yourself. The world you just stepped into, it’s about as heavy as it gets. If you can’t protect yourself, you’ll get killed. It’s that simple.” He took a few steps back again. “Now hit the bag.”

I kind of felt like he had just thrown a bucket of cold water over me. I couldn’t argue with his logic. If I wanted to survive a world where demons and monsters roamed free to kill when they felt like it—to break the necks of innocent foster parents who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—I would have to toughen up. Josh would be much amused by the irony. If he were here.

Alright, here we go
.

I stepped towards the bag, assumed a loose fighting stance the way Josh had tried to teach me in the past—one leg slightly forward, hands up in loose fists. I felt stiff and awkward under Frank’s gaze, but I threw a jab anyway, my fist stinging as it impacted with the surprisingly hard leather of the punching bag, which barely moved. I felt stupid and embarrassed by my woeful lack of skill.

“Hit off the back hand,” Frank said, Bane by his side now, watching on in amusement. Now I had a full audience. “Try to get your bodyweight behind the punch.”

I resisted sighing and faced the bag again, preparing for failure once more. I hit the bag with a right cross and again it barely moved.

Where was the super-strength that allowed me to kick a door in yesterday?

I blamed it on not being a morning person and hoped demons didn’t like to fight before ten a.m. If they did I was screwed.

“Use your hips to put your bodyweight into the strike. Hit it again and focus this time.”

Suddenly Frank is Mr.Miyagi now?

I hit the bag again, mild anger fuelling my actions this time. The punch felt more solid so I hit the bag again, throwing my hips forward and allowing my upper body to lean into the strike, slamming my fist into the hard leather. The bag jolted away from me. Without thinking I stepped aside as it came swinging back and I laid a left hook into it, hitting it hard enough to send it swinging in a different direction. I stepped back, shocked by my sudden competence, but also strangely pleased.

Something clicked then, like I suddenly got why Josh loved to train and hit things so much. It was a kind of release I had never experienced before, not through drugs or sex or even art. I suddenly felt more alive than I had ever been, like part of me had been asleep and was now awake. Who knew throwing a few punches could be such a revelation?

“Nice,” Frank said, mildly impressed. “Everything you need is already inside you. You’re Nephilim. The skill is hardcoded in your DNA—you just need to coax it out.”

My hand throbbed from hitting the hard leather. “I’ll keep that in mind. In the meantime, I need a coffee, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure, come on.” We walked towards the cabin and he stopped by Josh’s car. “1969 Mustang. I used to have one of these. Great car until a Wendigo tore it apart on me.”

A Wendigo?

“My brother likes his classic cars.” I pointed to Frank’s car. “’67 Chevy, right?”

Frank nodded approvingly. “You know your cars.”

“Not really. My brother does though. I guess it runs in the family.”

He gave a slight smile. “I guess so.”

Back in the cabin, Frank put on a shirt and made coffee. We sat in the kitchen at a tiny breakfast bar. “I made some calls last night,” he said. “Digging into your brother’s abduction.”

I perked up. “And?”

“Well, the only thing I got was that your brother is apparently not the only one who has gone missing. Nephilim kids all over the country have been disappearing over the last six months and no one seems to know why. It’s very strange. Demons are most likely behind it, they always are.”

My heart felt heavy in my chest. “I can’t believe this is happening again.”

Frank frowned. “What’s happening again?”

“A demon took my mother, now one has taken my brother.”

Frank looked away, drank his coffee.

“You wanna tell me what happened with my mom?”

His discomfort returned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean why was she taken? She never mentioned why on the video she left me.”

“You really want to know?” He didn’t look like he wanted to tell me but I was leaving him no choice.

“Yes.”

His flushed face looked pained. “She sold her soul, that’s the long and the short of it.”

He might as well have thrown his coffee in my face. “Sold her
soul
? What the hell for? Can you even do that?”

“You can do it alright.” He got up and washed out his cup then stood leaning against the sink with his arms folded.

“But why?”  He didn’t want to tell me for some reason. I didn’t care, I had to know. “Why, Frank?”

“To save me, alright?” He stared at me as if waiting for my reaction and when I didn’t say anything he spoke again. “Your mom sold her soul to bring me back from the dead.” He shrugged. “Now you know.”

I took a deep breath while I tried to make sense of what he just told me.

This shit just keeps getting better.

“Why would she sacrifice herself like that to save
you
? It doesn’t make sense.”

Frank pressed his lips tightly together as he stared hard at the floor. I thought he looked guilty of something. “It’s complicated,” was all he said.

“Complicated? Explain it to me.” I tensed up as my anger  mounted.

“You really want to do this now?”

A deep scowl settled on my face. “I need to know.”

Frank took a deep breath before speaking. I listened, my lips tightly pursed. “Rachel—your mom—was out hunting a pack of demons who’d been causing havoc in Mercy City for a while. The demons were on a killing spree, murdering anyone who crossed their path.” I was about to ask why the demons were killing people, but Frank raised his eyebrows at me and shook his head like he knew what I was going to say. “ Don’t ask why. Some of them are just like that.” He paused for a second while he seemed to get lost in the memories. “ So Rachel tracked them down and she went on her own to kill them, no backup, which was stupid because I was always telling her about taking backup. But your mom was stubborn as hell at times, thought she could handle everything on her own.” He paused again to shake his head. “Anyway, she calls me, say’s she’s in trouble, that she’s pinned down by these demons in this old building, so I go to help her and we kill them all, or so we thought. One of them was hiding, jumped out and knifed me in the back.”

That would explain the scar
.

“So then what happened?” I asked.

Frank shrugged. “I died. Then I remember coming back, like waking up from sleep. Your mom didn’t tell me at first what she’d done, told me I’d been unconscious for a while, but I knew something was wrong so I didn’t quit until I got it out of her.” He shook his head again like he was still trying to fathom my mom’s behavior back then.  “She made a deal with a crossroads demon—her soul for my resurrection.”

“That still doesn’t make sense to me,” I said. “Why would she trade her life for yours?”

“I don’t know.” He took a glass from one of the cupboards and poured himself a whiskey.

“Seriously? At this time of the morning?”

Frank shrugged, said nothing.

Great. The man’s a drunk
.

“I think you’re full of shit, Frank.” I stood up from the breakfast bar to confront him. “There’s stuff you’re not telling me.”

“I told you everything,” he said, moving past me into the living room, taking the whiskey bottle with him. He sat down in one of the armchairs and poured himself another glass.

I stood staring at him, heat flushing through my body, my fists curling and uncurling. “Screw this,” I said finally. “This was a bad idea, coming here.” I stormed past him to the bedroom where I retrieved the laptop and journal and headed for the door.

“Where you going?” he called. “Wait!” I was out the door, heading to the car when he came out after me. “What about your brother?”

“I’ll find him myself,” I said, opening the car door and throwing the laptop and journal into the back seat. “Maybe I’ll sell my soul to get him back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He was holding the door open. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

“So you trade your soul to bring me back. Makes about as much sense as my mom trading hers for you, doesn’t it?” I pulled the door from his grip and slammed it closed, started the engine and backed out.

“Wait!” Frank was shouting as I turned the car and started driving down the mountain road. I sped off and didn’t look back.

When I got to the city, I considered that maybe I had been a little hard on Frank, but I was just so sick of the secrets. My whole life had been a lie up until that point. There I was, trying to be this ordinary girl when all along I was destined for a life that was far from ordinary, a life that would probably do me more harm than good if my mom and Frank were anything to go by, not to mention Josh. I knew Frank wasn’t telling me everything, that he was hiding something. I expected him to be open with me, considering who I was, but no, I was wrong about that.

I couldn’t help it. I ended up driving by Diane’s house, saw the police had cordoned off the house, the forensics van and cop cars parked outside. What were they thinking happened? That I killed my foster mother? That Josh did? What would they make of the writing on the mirror? Cover-up maybe? I wanted to go in the house, look around again for clues, but I knew if I did I’d be arrested on the spot and taken in for questioning. It was a situation I’d have difficulty explaining. The cops would think I was crazy and then they would look into my background, see the statement I gave when I was seven, then they would definitely think I was nuts. They would throw me in a psych ward somewhere and I’d never get Josh back. I drove away from the house.

I would have to be careful. No doubt the cops would be looking for me, probably have APB’s or something out for me and Josh both. I continued to drive nowhere in particular, just moving through the city streets, looking out the window, searching for Josh. Ridiculous, I know, but I was half-hoping to see him walking the streets, completely fine like nothing had happened. Instead what I saw were more demon faces, but in a new light. I knew exactly what they were now and I kept wondering if any of them had something to do with Diane’s murder or Josh’s abduction. Some of the demons stared back at me, like they knew what I was; which was more than I could say for myself.

It was for that reason that I found myself driving towards the storage facility where I’d been the day before with Kasey. The creepy old guy was there behind the reception counter, leering at me. “Back to show me those titties, I hope,” he said.

“Go fuck yourself, old man,” I said and strode right past him, heading down the corridor to my mom’s lockup. When I got there I opened the shutter, turned on the light, and pulled the shutter back down again. I started to look around, more carefully than I did the first time now that I was alone.

Anything to do with her ‘job,’ my mom seemed to keep in that place. It was understandable that she didn’t store any of it at the house, lest one of her children stumble across it. Not only that, the cops and the media would have had a field day if they’d found all this stuff at the house eleven years ago. Mom would have been branded a Satanist or Occultist as well as a potential murderer.

I looked at the weapons on the back wall first. I counted about eight different guns, none of which I knew anything about. The larger ones seemed like automatic weapons, military grade probably. Who the hell knew where she got those from? The smaller guns were handguns, two semi-automatic and one large chrome six-shooter that looked like a damned hand cannon. I picked it up and gasped at the weight of it. I thought if I fired the thing I would go flying back because of the massive recoil.

What I was more interested in were the swords and knifes. Something about the gleaming blades drew me to them. There were two swords in particular attached to the wall, crossing one another, with blades of about three feet in length, slightly smaller than a normal Katana—which I only knew because Josh owned a Japanese Katana. I took the two swords off the wall and started playing around with them, feeling their weight, swinging them around. Even though I hadn’t much of a clue as to how to use them, the two swords felt good in my hands, almost like they belonged there. I remembered what Frank and my mom had said, that ingrained fighting ability was a part of the Watcher awakening process. My fighting ability didn’t seem to have manifested just yet. I put the swords down on the bench that ran along the wall.