I crossed my legs and leaned back in my chair, trying desperately not to look like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Kabita must not have met our new client in person. He was giving me the heebie-jeebies big time. Granted, when it came to humans, my Spidey senses weren’t so accurate, but seriously, there was something a little off with this guy.
The room we were meeting in was all dark wood paneling and big leather chairs, plush wine-red carpet and even plusher drapes. All very manly. All very overbearing. And the client? Well, he was just as bad.
Sure he was good looking and suave. Definitely suave, but in a creepy Julian Sands kind of way. Like you wouldn’t be surprised to see this guy hanging out with royals or schmoozing with the rest of the rich and powerful, but you sure wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley. He made my skin itch.
Then again, maybe I was wrong. After all, Kabita had vetted the guy and Kabita was never wrong. If she met him in person. Dear gods, I hoped she met him in person.
So, Mr. ah …” Not Sands. Bloody hell, what was it? I snuck a glance at the file. “Mr. Darroch. How can I help you exactly?”
He gave me what I could only interpret as a smarmy smile. I hated smarmy. Made me feel like I needed a shower. “Please, Ms. Bailey, call me Brent.” I tried not to wince. Ever since my brief flirtation with college, I’d hated the name Brent. Long story, but let’s just say … ew.
“Right.” I forced a smile. “Brent. How can I help you? I hear you have a slight problem with a Sunwalker?” I couldn’t quite keep the disbelief out of my voice.
He quirked a smile at that. Not so smarmy this time. In fact, he seemed genuinely amused. “I know. Sounds insane, doesn’t it? Rich businessman chasing after a mythical Sunwalker.” He leaned forward earnestly. I was surprised. He did earnest pretty well. “Then again, until a few years ago, you believed vampires and lycanthropes and demons were pure fiction.”
He had a point. Once upon a time, we’d all thought the monsters that dwelt among us were just a myth, but that had changed, at least for those of us who’d been sworn to protect the rest of our kind. No one knew that better than me.
“Sunwalkers are real, Ms. Bailey. Or at least one of them is real.” He leaned back and steepled his fingers together in an excellent Dr. Evil impression.
“Excuse me? Did you say one? As in there is one Sunwalker?” Images of the Highlander flooded my mind. There can be only one. I really had to stop watching so much TV. My mother was right; it was rotting my brain.
Darroch nodded. “Yes. According to legend, there were more, once upon a time. Dozens of Sunwalkers lived among us, if not hundreds. Now there is just one left.”
How did he know that? “And what does this Sunwalker have to do with this object you want us to retrieve?”
“The object is a family heirloom. A necklace. Not particularly valuable except, perhaps, to collectors of the arcane.”
My ears perked up. “The arcane?” Oh, juicy. I did love a good magical twist. Kept things interesting.
He nodded. “According to family legend, the necklace was created by an ancestor of mine who dabbled in the magic arts. He created the necklace, a simple amulet on a chain, as a sort of ward with magical symbols and so on. I don’t know if it ever held any real magic, but it certainly doesn’t now. However, it might be of interest to a collector or a museum as a curiosity more than anything.”
I always found it interesting when a client was willing to kill to get back an object he claimed had no value. Frankly, that’s just not normal. In my experience, the object usually had a great deal of value to someone, somewhere, otherwise killing someone for it wasn’t worth the risk. Granted, in this case, it was a Sunwalker he wanted me to kill, so there wasn’t exactly any risk involved. At least not to Brent Darroch.
“About 20 years ago,” Darroch continued, “this particular Sunwalker stole the necklace. I believe he thought it would give him some sort of power.” He laughed, but the laugh sounded forced. “I’ll bet he was surprised to find it a useless hunk of metal. In any case, it has sentimental value and I want it back.”
His eyes bored into me like twin icicles. I forced back a shiver. “I also want you to destroy this Sunwalker. He is extremely dangerous. One is bad enough, but should he begin to perpetuate his kind again, the world as we know it will be destroyed as it almost was once before.”
I’d no doubt he was right about that. I could just imagine the havoc an army of Sunwalkers could wreak on humanity. Humanity wreaked enough havoc on itself; it didn’t need any help from the undead. Besides which, part of our purview was to hunt and kill any and all supernatural creatures who posed a threat to humanity. Vampires were certainly in that category and, I imagined, so were Sunwalkers, being of the same ilk and all that.