Free Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) by Joseph Nassise

stood up slowly, holding my hands up to show I hadn’t meant to try any funny business.
    Perhaps recognizing that I needed something to do, Rivera said, “You’re on overwatch. Make sure nothing else, human or otherwise, tries to sneak up on us while we’re doing this.”
    “Doing what?” I wanted to ask, but I let it go, knowing they weren’t going to give me an answer. I’d learn more just by watching.
    Ilyana reached into the coffin and picked something up. I didn’t realize what it was until she started tossing it back and forth from one hand to the other. The eye sockets seemed to stare at me in silent accusation as the skull bounced from palm to palm.
    I looked up, caught her watching me with that sly little gaze of hers, and in my mind’s eye I watched again as her jaw came unhinged and she swallowed a rampaging spectre like it was a piece of Halloween candy. I shuddered and turned away, doing my best to ignore Ilyana’s little bark of amusement as I did so.
    My ghostsight let me see that we were truly alone for the first time since we’d arrived; the horde of ghosts that had been watching us appeared to have fled. For once I wasn’t afraid to keep my ghostsight activated; anything that came looking for trouble would find Ilyana waiting instead. Given what she’d done with the spectre, I didn’t think she’d have much difficulty handling anything short of a major demon or two.
    Even then, I might have bet on her.
    The ghosts that had been watching us prior to the spectre’s arrival had vanished and there didn’t seem to be anything else down here with us, supernatural or otherwise, leaving me with little to watch on “overwatch” other than my companions.
    After removing the body and dumping it to one side, Rivera and Grady began methodically going over the interior of the stone coffin, inch by inch. They ran their hands across the stone, knocked on it with their knuckles, tried to push and pull in various place, all without success. Whatever they were looking for, it just didn’t seem to be there.
    At last, frustrated, Rivera called Perkins over.
    “Where is it?” the mage asked, his accent more prominent when he was irritated.
    Perkins smiled and held out a hand, palm up.
    “Twenty bucks, wasn’t it?”
    Rivera didn’t say anything, and after a moment or two of continued silence, Perkins’s smile slowly faded and his hand fell back to his side. Without even bothering to look in that direction, Perkins pointed over his shoulder at the body dumped so carelessly on the floor just a few moments before.
    “The sword.”
    Grady frowned. “You have got to be kidding me.”
    “Do I look like I’m kidding?” Perkins asked.
    “Yes,” Grady snapped back, as he walked over to the remains of the coffin’s former tenant. “You always look like you’re kidding, which is why I’m always calling you a big joke. See how that works?”
    Perkins gave him the finger but didn’t say anything.
    One thing was for sure: there certainly wasn’t any love lost between any of my companions. I filed that little fact away with the others I’d picked up over the last day or two. Who knew when something I’d picked up along the way might come in handy?
    Grady kicked the bones out of the way, picked up the sword, and carried it back to the others. Perkins reached for it, but Rivera took it from Grady instead.
    With Ilyana and me looking on from a distance, Rivera carefully examined the sword. His attention quickly settled on the hilt of the weapon and, more specifically, on the crossguard itself.
    As he focused on it, so did I. When seen through the unique filter of my ghostsight, it was less a piece of metal and more a twisting, turning length of living darkness.
    I was utterly unsurprised to see the vulpine smile that crossed his face when he gave the crossguard a quick yank and it came free in his hands.

 
    11
    The next couple of days passed without incident. Fuentes was so completely confident that his