Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) Read Free Page A

orange hair atop his head going in every which direction and the quick, twitchy movements of somebody with a severe case of ADD. He was dressed in a wide-lapelled maroon suit with a perfectly folded pocket square and pair of now-wet leather shoes. The silvery gleam that surrounded him let me know he was one of the Gifted, those humans who have gained the ability to tap into the supernatural essence of the world and use it for their own means, but the weakness of the aura told me he wasn’t all that powerful.
    The same couldn’t be said for his two companions, however. Just one look at either of them was enough to tell me that I’d gone from the frying pan into the fire.
    The woman was not the weight-lifting Russian muscle-head I’d been expecting, but was instead a complete stunner who practically dripped sexual attraction: long legs wrapped in a pair of skintight leather pants, a beautifully curvaceous body peeking out of a silk blouse, and a head full of long dark hair that fell past her shoulders. There was a gleam in her eyes that promised delights beyond anything you could possibly imagine, and when she licked her lips just so, as she did when I glanced in her direction, the average red-blooded American male would have had more than a little trouble concentrating.
    Thankfully I didn’t, as my ghostsight allowed me to see past all of that to the true creature behind the disguise she wore. Don’t get me wrong, she was still beautiful, but the demonic blood that ran through her veins was easy enough to see when the Veil was stripped away. The sense of hunger, of sheer need, that rolled off of her had my body responding despite the fact that my head was screaming no. She would no doubt provide a night beyond your wildest dreams, but that might just end up being the last one you would enjoy. I didn’t need anything that badly, thank you very much.
    But as scary as the demon half-breed might have been, she was nothing compared to the leader of the group. If the cold hadn’t had me shaking, the sight of him would have done the trick. He was a tall Hispanic man in his midthirties, maybe six foot one or so, with a cleanly shaven head and an angular face that ended in a dark goatee. His eyes, as black as night, stared out from deep sockets that gave his face an almost skeletal appearance.
    He had a fur-lined men’s coat draped over his shoulders but was otherwise naked from the waist up, displaying the upper body tattoo he was sporting. That tattoo was a riot of shapes and colors and depicted a hellish landscape where demons and devils were tormenting humans in a hundred different ways. The figures in it, human and demon alike, appeared to writhe and move of their own accord if you stared at them for too long. From the waist down he wore black jeans held up by a belt with an oversized silver buckle, and he had leather motorcycle boots on his feet. In his right hand was the pistol that had been pressed against my forehead just moments before.
    The gun wasn’t what made him scary, though. Call me crazy, but I was much more frightened by the aura that surrounded him, an aura full of corruption and the shifting faces of the restless dead—each one representing some innocent soul that he’d taken during the practice of his dark arts—than I was by the blue-tinted piece of Detroit steel in his hand. This guy was a serious practitioner, far more powerful than my friend Denise Clearwater or even her former companion Simon Gallagher, the combat mage.
    That much power was scary in and of itself. In the hands of someone like this, it was terrifying.
    I didn’t know who the hell these people were or what they wanted with me, but it didn’t take a genius to realize that going anywhere with them was probably not a good idea, so I did the one thing no one ever expects the blind guy to do.
    I ran.
    I bolted to the right, wanting to get away from Demon Lady as quickly as I could while still staying out of Tattoo’s reach. That meant