Night Cries (Hunters of the Dark #2) Read online

  Rachel looked up at Shanna for a moment before nodding and moving to tie up the unconscious man.

  Shanna and Amelia left the room and cautiously approached the staircase.

  Afraid of what she’d find, Shanna went first to get it over with. She thrust herself up the stairs and down a short hallway that led up to a thick metal door, Cameron’s smiling face and alternately, bloody face, vying for attention in her mind’s eye. Please be okay.

  Amelia caught up to her in a moment and stared at a padlock on the door. “You’d think our friends were dangerous or something,” she muttered before she kneeled before the door, putting herself at eye level with the pad lock. “This’ll be a synch.” She muttered something and took a deep breath. She let a breath out slowly and as Shanna watched, the pad lock opened with a soft click.

  Shanna raised an eyebrow. “You know, air doesn’t get as much credit as it should. That or you and Linka are badasses.”

  “Linka?” Amelia stood up and ripped the padlock from the door.

  “You never watched Captain Planet as a kid? Never mind.” Shanna looked back at her friend and smiled encouragingly. “I’ll be right back.” Drawing out her cross dagger, she took a deep breath. She then proceeded to push the door open with an audible creak that made her wince.

  Peeking into the room, Shanna saw Cameron lying on a bed, restraints holding his limbs down. She felt a surge of relief flow through her and hurried inside. “Cameron?”

  As she closed the door behind her, she saw a shadow move out of the corner of her eye and she ducked just in time to miss having a fire hydrant smashed into her face. She whirled around and slammed the hilt of her dagger into the back of the head she found there and a head of brown hair went down.

  “Ow,” the guy cried, putting a hand to his head.

  “Stay down,” Shanna commanded, holding the dagger against the side of his neck.

  “Down, yes. This is me staying down,” a voice with a British accent proclaimed. “No need to do anything messy. Your prize is right over there. Claim it and be gone.”

  Shanna hit him with the dagger’s hilt again, earning another cry. “That’s not an ‘it,’ Jackass. That’s Cameron. A hunter you took by mistake.”

  The guy froze as Amelia and Rachel entered the room, careful to give plenty of room as they walked around him.

  “Cameron!” Amelia exclaimed. She headed over to the bed he was strapped down to and got to work on freeing him.

  Rachel turned a corner at the end of the room and looked back. “The others are down this way. I’ll get them.”

  “Now, stand up slowly,” Shanna ordered her captive, watching him shakily rise to his feet. When he was erect, he turned around and looked Shanna in the face, surprised at what he saw.

  “You...you’re her,” he choked out. “You...is that really a hunter?” He peeked around Shanna at Amelia and Cameron.

  “He’s free,” Amelia announced. “He looks unharmed. Pretty drugged up

  though.”

  “Thank god,” Shanna breathed. “Can you help Rachel with the others?”

  “On it,” Amelia said with a salute, leaving Cameron leaning against the back of the bed, eyes closed.

  Shanna scanned Cameron quickly from across the room, making sure he was only groggy from drugs, which appeared to be the case. She felt relief sweep through her body, nearly making her weary as the adrenaline that had been pumping through her ground to a halt. She stifled a yawn and gestured with her dagger for the brunette guy to follow the others into the other room. He stared at her for a moment before obeying. As he marched ahead of her, she checked him out from head to toe. He was a lot younger than she’d at first suspected. Mid to late twenties, probably. Lean build, snappy dresser, walked with confidence, even with a knife to his back. It was like he knew she wouldn’t harm him. And he had a pretty beautiful face. His hair was a bit spiky with product, framing his luscious lips and perfect cheekbones. And he had a kind quality to him, like he cared about everyone, everything. Like he was genuinely interested in life and wanted to make things better. Shanna felt rather guilty holding a dagger to the guy, seeing as how she took an immediate liking to him. Even if he did have a stash of torture devices in the basement. She killed things for a living, and she deemed herself a good person, after all. “We’re not the bad guys,” she found herself explaining. “We made a mistake. Cameron...the guy you took, we couldn’t let him be tortured when we found his imposter. We had to stop you from...making it worse than we - than I - already did. I know you probably don’t believe us, but you guys are kind of in the dark here without radio contact. That’s why, you know, the extreme measures here.”

  “I understand,” he said, sounding genuine. “I think that what you’re doing is quite noble. And I do believe you. But please, call me Hunter.”

  Shanna paused and looked at him sideways.

  “My name is Hunter. I promise, no pun intended.” He looked back at her and smiled, melting her defenses.

  Shanna lowered her dagger. “Okay, Hunter. There are about to be a dozen of us, one of you. You must have some way to contact Valor to verify we’re legit.”

  “I told you that I believe you and I do. I...” he hesitated. “I have something I would like to show you though, if you trust me.”

  “Can it wait?”

  Hunter nodded. “Yes, yes. Of course.”

  They came around the corner and Shanna was happy to see all of her friends up and well, complaining of various aches, but otherwise unharmed. Any amount of worry that had been roiling in her gut was suddenly put at ease, even if they were still in a sticky situation. Things couldn’t be that bad if all of her friends were all right.

  “See?” Jordan called out to her. “I told you it would all turn out well in the end.”

  Shanna smiled, feeling a cheeriness course through her at his voice. “You were right, of course.” She looked over at Cameron, his eyes still closed, his mouth slightly open. It did all turn out well.

  “This doesn’t look very good,” a soft voice announced from behind them. “Not one bit.”

  Shanna turned to see a short girl, maybe fourteen, standing in the door to the room, long dark curly hair flowing down either side of her shoulders. She wore a white t-shirt with a big smiley face staring out from across her chest, and pink jeans with a rainbow colored belt. The belt matched the straps of the backpack that bulged out from behind her back. She looked completely innocent and sweet, but Shanna got a chill at the next words to come out of her mouth.

  “Do you want me to hurt them, Hunter? I can if you’d like.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Shanna looked at Hunter for a moment, speechless, then back at the girl.

  “No, no, it’s quite alright, Krystal. These are friends. There seems to have been an egregious error on our part. Please do make them feel welcome.”

  Krystal seemed to mull this over for a moment, looking Shanna up and down slowly. Then as if a switch had been flicked, she smiled brightly, showing off a perfect set of teeth. “Okay. Nice to meet you. I’m Krystal Falstad.”

  “Shanna Hunt.”

  Krystal walked up to them and shook Shanna’s hand briefly before turning to look at the others. “All those people you had tied up were good guys, huh?”

  Hunter nodded glumly. “Unfortunately that seems to be the case.” He stopped, then shook his head. “I mean, it’s unfortunate that we tied them up. It’s rather fortunate that they’re good guys.”

  “Apology accepted,” Amelia said wistfully as she joined them and introduced herself. “Now, I hate to impede the happy little introductions we have going here, but there’s something strange going on. The air’s practically screaming warnings at me.”

  “Yeah,” Shanna bit her lip. “Hunter, is there somewhere where we can all sit down and talk? There’s quite a bit that we need to go over.”

  Hunter nodded. “Of
course. On the third floor, there’s a conference room.”

  “Good. Why don’t you collect your men and meet us there?”

  Amelia put a hand on Shanna’s arm. “I think I’ll collect Hunter’s men. I’ll take Jordan with me.”

  Shanna exchanged a meaningful look with her, one that spoke volumes if her frosty tone hadn’t been blatant enough, before Jordan approached them with “I thought I heard my name.”

  Nodding, Shanna looked up briefly at Hunter, feeling a little sorry for the sudden awkward spot they’d put him in, but at the same time realizing that Amelia needed to do this, be extra cautious, given that she was just tortured at the hands of these men.

  “I understand your reluctance to trust me right away,” Hunter conceded. “Please, do what you have to do.”

  Amelia looked Hunter over carefully and nodded with a tight face, gesturing for Jordan to follow her out of the room.

  As soon as she was gone, Hunter sighed. “I feel awful about this. I really don’t blame your friend…anyone…for having reservations about me. I just hope that I can perhaps earn your trust again.”

  Krystal watched them silently as Shanna flushed and waved her hand, citing “You have nothing to prove to me. I’m as much to blame for this as you. Even more so.”

  Hunter didn’t agree, but he didn’t pry either, and he chose to walk Krystal up to the conference room to wait for everybody.

  As soon as he was gone, Shanna went to greet her friends, then sat down on the bed beside Cameron, who she wasn’t entirely sure realized that she was there, despite his eyes having turned to her for a moment before closing. But she held his hand for a moment and did her best to stifle the sobs that threatened to burst from her. The guilt she felt was overwhelming and was only put aside when Jade placed a hand on her shoulder and told her that she’d help her bring Cameron upstairs.

  Shanna smiled and laughed awkwardly as she dabbed at her eyes, just in case a stray tear had worked its way out. Then together, she and Jade carried Cameron between them up to the conference room.

  “You know, I feel just as bad about this as you do,” Jade said as they made their way awkwardly up the staircase. “But I actually have something to feel bad about. You, you did the right thing. You were going to put both the guys to the ground. I ruined the plan and stopped you and…that’s why we’re here. I’m really sorry for my interference, and I don’t want you to go around feeling guilty when I’m the only one here who deserves it. Okay?”

  Shanna shook her head slowly. “No, Jade. It was an honest mistake. It was all an absurd string of coincidences that led us here. You don’t need to apologize for anything.”

  “Well, let me do the apologizing when Cameron breaks out of his daze. I want to be the one doing the explaining. I couldn’t stand it if this got between the two of you.”

  Shanna felt a chill at her words, and looked quickly at Cameron. “I appreciate it, but I would like the chance to talk to him about this first.”

  Jade nodded glumly as they reached the conference room and set Cameron down at one of dozens of straight-backed chairs surrounding the ridiculously long table in the cramped room.

  Shanna decided that it would be best to sit beside Hunter at the meeting, since she felt that the others harbored ill feelings toward him and she didn’t want him to feel like he was being attacked. She could tell that he was grateful for her presence when she took her seat, Krystal on the other side of him, and his two other men beyond her.

  They made a quick round of introductions in which the sandy-haired, shorter scholar with Hunter was introduced as Saul and the beefy bald guy who looked like a bouncer was Todd.

  “Okay, now that we’re all here, let’s have a quick chat about our situation,” Amelia began, looking the group over. “Obviously, things didn’t go as planned during our rescue attempt, but it seems that everyone got away with minor scrapes and bruises, so we can deem our mission accomplished when all is said and done. Cameron’s still out of it, but he should be fine in a few hours, according to Hunter, who administered his sedative.”

  “So, are we all cool and working together now?” Brett asked, his feet on the table, leaning back in his chair, oblivious to the tension in the room.

  “We’re as good as we’re going to get for now,” Jordan told him, sending a meaningful look in Amelia’s direction.

  “Good. So is Valor going to send a posse out to pick us up now or what?”

  Amelia opened and closed her mouth. “I…I don’t really…I suppose that’s what we’re here to discuss. The next course of action. It seems that that would be the most likely way to proceed.”

  “But it’s not possible, is it?” Rachel asked, turning from Amelia to Hunter. “You can’t get ahold of anybody here either.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jordan jumped in. “Either? Is a power line down or something?”

  “Or something.”

  Hunter met Rachel’s stare and nodded. “Yes, she is right, I’m afraid. This place isn’t able to communicate directly with the outside world. I saw the devastation of the city on the way in, and Todd, who was stationed here while we were away, informed us of a mass evacuation that took place a few days back, when he came to pick us up from the scene of the accident up the road. I didn’t know for sure if the phone lines were down, but I’m not surprised.”

  “They’re not all down. Most of them are. Most of the power lines too. But some phones work. Not that they help. No one can hear us, let alone see us.”

  There was a small pause before Hunter nodded stoically. “Yes, it would seem that you’re on the same plane as we are. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to see the building, let alone enter it.”

  “Whoa, what?” Jordan shook his head. “No one can hear us? Same plane?”

  “Yes. It’s a little complicated, but basically, this facility is on a slightly different wave length than that of the one everyone else lives on. We’re all here in this physical place, but we can’t quite interact with one another. Or see one another, necessarily.”

  Brett merely scratched his head.

  Jade sat forward. “It’s like a radio. All of the channels are there, but if you’re not tuned in to the right frequency, then you can’t hear the broadcast. You’ll only be able to get the broadcast from whatever signal your dial is tuned in to pick up.”

  “Brilliant metaphor,” Hunter told her. “And quite right. We’ve been able to, ah, tune our frequency to see the plane that others live on, but it doesn’t go both ways. We still live on a different frequency, and can not interact with people directly. We can touch objects, anything that isn’t alive, but cats, dogs, people - can not see us, hear us, or touch us.”

  “So we’re invisible?” Brett asked, suddenly excited.

  “And intangible.”

  “Like ghosts,” Krystal brought up. “Ghosts live on a different plane of existence. We can’t hear them or see them, touch them. But they can move objects if they concentrate. They have found ways to appear briefly. But ultimately, they don’t live with us. They live around us.”

  Natalia, who had been silent up until now, cocked her head. “I’m sorry. Are you a scholar?”

  Krystal looked startled and glanced over at Hunter.

  “She is with us,” he said.

  Natalia arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  “So why are we like this?” Amelia asked. “You said that this facility is on another plane. So how come we are now too?”

  “Yes, this place was visible to us,” Rachel piped up. “Shanna and I both saw it from town.”

  Hunter sighed. “Usually, when we get close to base, we flick a switch in our vehicles that envelop them and those within, shifting their frequency to the same one as our headquarters resides in.”

  “Why is it even on another plane?” Jordan interrupted.

  “To make them harder to attack,” Jade answered for Hunter. “To make th
em harder to find.”

  “Quite right. And like I said, it’s usually a simple matter to switch frequencies, but this time, under your attack…”

  “You switched it earlier than usual.”

  “Yes, but even that would not have made much of a difference. We would have appeared to have disappeared to you. And that’s how it should have gone.”

  “But?” Shanna urged.

  Hunter looked over at her and sighed. “But another factor was involved that we were unaware of. Whatever forced the town to evacuate, that song you heard wash over us at the same moment that we tried to implement the shift of frequency, it somehow interfered with it and caused it to go haywire. It exploded instead of enveloping us.”

  “That white light…”

  “Correct. I assume everyone in the vicinity was effected. Every living person it touched was shifted to this frequency.”

  Jade smiled. “That explains it then. So it should be a simple matter of flicking a switch again.”

  Hunter looked briefly at Saul and Todd. “Yes, well, that burst of light seems to have fried our systems here, and it could take some time to repair them.”

  “But you will be able to repair them.”

  “Yes. Todd is quite good with machines. I am confident in his ability to repair the damage done. But I am rather afraid of another episode like the last one. If we try to revert things to the right frequency and that song should sound again…it could explode and destroy our one last hope at returning to our reality.”

  Shanna’s jaw dropped. “Our last hope?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Amelia stood up. “We’ll investigate what caused this city to evacuate and put a stop to it so that it can’t interfere with the machine again.”

  “It’ll feel good to do something while we’re waiting anyway,” Jordan added.

  “Um…there’s a little something else we should mention,” Rachel spoke up. “There are two girls…they’re waiting for us in the ruins right now, but they were also hit by the white light. They don’t know about any of this and I prefer to keep it that way. But we kind of need to distract them while we look into what’s going on here. No need to get them involved and ultimately, hurt.”

  Amelia nodded. “That shouldn’t be a problem. Maybe we can even do it in shifts. Do they know anything about what happened in town?”