Slayers (Jake Hawkins Book 1) Page 5

  Jake felt a little relieved. His gut loosened slightly. If there were slayers dotted across the globe, it would have been an unimaginably daunting concept.

  “Six months after we returned,” Wolfe continued, “we saved a man called Link from a slayer attack and he joined our ranks.

  “And here we are now. Six of us. Thousands of them.”

  *

  The room had been quiet for almost ten minutes. Jake sagged back into the couch cushions and stared up at the ceiling. He could feel his mind spinning. There was a lot to process. Wolfe stayed silent, letting him think.

  One last question.

  “How did you find me?” he asked.

  Wolfe smiled. “You’re one of the luckiest people alive. I was scouting for slayers. We had picked up activity in the area just a few days ago and I was trawling the rooftops in search for clues. I’ve only ever come across two slayer attacks as they happened, yours and Link’s.”

  Jake shook his head in bewilderment. If the timing had been wrong, he wouldn’t be here. There was another pause, and then, finally, he came to what mattered.

  “So what happens now?”

  Now,” Wolfe said, “you can do as you please. I’ll take you wherever you want to go, but you can’t breathe a word of what you heard here.”

  “I have nowhere to go. No-one to tell.”

  “You don’t have a home?”

  “I did this morning. Not anymore. I’m not welcome back. I’m having trouble at school too.”

  “That’s … unfortunate.”

  Their eyes met and Jake could see Wolfe knew that all this had happened. But how?

  As if reading his mind, Wolfe spoke up.

  “When you were unconscious, I did some research. Made some calls. Pretended to be people I’m not in order to get information I needed. I had to find out a bit more about you.”

  “So you know about my situation?”

  “I know you’re expelled. Your vice principal was a lovely woman who had a lot to say about you – none of it pleasant. You’re facing charges from the victim’s parents. He has a broken nose and three cracked ribs and almost choked to death on his own blood.”

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “I also know that hospital records state your dad checked himself in this morning with a concussion sustained from a heavy object. I’m guessing that is why you’re not welcome back home.”

  “I …” Jake repeated.

  Inwardly, he unwound. For hours he had been fretting over whether his dad was okay. It was relieving to hear the man was alive. Jake was a little anxious that Wolfe knew of what he had done. Was he being judged?

  “What the hell happened today, Jake?” Wolfe said.

  “I don’t know. Everything’s turned upside down and I can’t tell if I’m dreaming or not.”

  Wolfe hesitated.

  “Maybe I can offer you a way out,” he said.

  “A way out?”

  “You can join us.”

  Jake froze. Then he burst out laughing.

  “You can’t be serious?” he scoffed. “You want a sixteen-year-old to come and hunt slayers with you?”

  “We need another man. Our business doesn’t exactly have the largest line of candidates. You have no home to return to. You have a family pressing charges against you that could even go so far as attempted murder. I’m not trying to coerce you here. I’m just giving you the facts.”

  “So what are you saying?” Jake couldn’t believe it.

  “I’m saying that we can provide you with a way out of all this mess. If you want, you can live here. There’s more than enough room. But you’ll have to hunt.”

  As the shock of the sudden proposition wore off, Jake’s temple began to throb. Hot fingers grasped each side of his brain and started to apply slow, excruciating pressure. The concept of joining Wolfe began to sound a little more reasonable. But it was still ludicrous. Jake sank into the couch, feeling all too sorry for himself, contemplating just how much his life had changed in the course of a single day.

  “I’m not going to tell you it’s the safest job in the world,” Wolfe said. “Because it’s not. But we will protect you at all costs. You’ll be trained, and we’ll only send you out into the real world when you feel ready.

  “The choice is yours.”

  He couldn’t.

  Just the thought of having another encounter with a slayer made Jake clammy. It was impossible to voluntarily make that decision. There was still a remnant of hope left. He could make things right with his dad, with Adrian, with the school, and then it would all be okay.

  “No,” he said. “I barely even know you, and I’d rather spend some time in jail than put my life on the line. I can’t do it. Take me back home.”

  Wolfe shrugged, as if he had been expecting the response all along. “Fair enough. Come with me. I’ll drive you back.”

  Jake hesitated. He was anticipating an argument, an attempt to coerce him into joining, but Wolfe didn’t seem bothered in the slightest.

  “Do you know where I live?”

  “Of course.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Your ID gave me a starting point. Computers did the rest.”

  “That’s not legal.”

  Wolfe smiled. “Good luck pressing charges.”

  Jake hesitated. There was a fleeting moment in which he wondered just who Wolfe was, if the man had any family, if he lived alone. There was a great deal of mystery still unsolved.

  Wolfe led him past the couch to the other end of the room. There was a set of double doors, firmly closed.

  Wolfe pulled a thick blindfold out of his pocket and tossed it to Jake.

  “Almost forgot,” he said. “Put this on.”

  “I’m not wearing a blindfold.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “No,” Jake said, raising his voice. “I’m not.”

  He could feel the anger rising once again. Deep breaths did little to help him calm down. There was too much going on.

  “Look, Jake, I’m not comfortable with you knowing where I live,” Wolfe said. “Now put it on. If you want to go back to your old life, then you can’t know anything more about me.”

  “You told me a lot.”

  “And at the same time I barely told you anything. What would you say if you tried to explain this to someone? That a mysterious man saved you from getting eaten by a monster, then took you back to his house and gave you their entire history?”

  “That is what happened.”

  Wolfe winked. “But who’s going to believe that?”

  Jake sighed and wrapped the black material over his eyes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  He was led through corridors and across a gravel driveway and thrust into a car. Fifteen minutes later, Wolfe whisked the blindfold off.

  They were on the Princes Freeway, speeding down a section that Jake wasn’t familiar with. The two lanes of traffic trailed off into the distance. Yellow floodlights illuminated the darkness.

  He was sitting inside the passenger seat of an Audi R8. The engine made light work of the freeway. Jake took a glance at the speedometer and saw they were doing over a hundred kilometres an hour. By now they could be fifteen minutes away from a thousand different locations. There was no way to ascertain where Wolfe lived. Quite frankly, he didn’t care. The more distance he could put between the real world and this strange, twisted fantasy, the better.

  They sat in silence for the drive. Wolfe was no longer talkative. Now that he knew Jake wasn’t interested in joining, he had clammed up.

  Jake didn’t mind. He settled back into his seat and watched the traffic go by.

  *

  It didn't take long to reach the apartment. The Audi slowed and came to a halt on the opposite side of the street. The neighbourhood was dark. A single streetlight cast an eerie glow over the street. Jake stared at his front door. The kitchen light was on. He could see it shining through the cheap lace curtains. His dad was home. The
street was deathly silent, and somewhere nearby a cricket was chirping, almost in time to the nervous rhythm of his heart.

  Now he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go back.

  But he had two options. He could return to the familiar, no matter how slim his chances of a decent outcome were looking. Or he could work for a stranger, killing monsters. One seemed infinitely more appealing than the other.

  “Here,” Wolfe said. He leant over and handed Jake a black iPhone.

  Jake turned it over in his hand. “What’s this for?”

  “My number’s in there. If you change your mind, call it. We’ll get you out of any situation you find yourself in. If we do, though, there’s no going back.”

  Jake wondered just who ‘we’ was. He hadn’t even seen a glimpse of any others in the mansion. Was Wolfe really working with a Delta Force team? Or were his stories simply the delusions of a lone madman?

  “You sound like you know what I’m going to do,” he said.

  “I’m only giving you an option,” Wolfe said. “It’s yours to take. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Jake nodded. His hand ran to the door handle before he realised what Wolfe had done for him.

  “Thanks for saving me, man,” he said. “This has been the craziest day of my life, but at least it gets to finish. You could have left me to die. So thank you. Glad to know someone’s on my side.”

  “Good luck, kid,” Wolfe said. He gave Jake an encouraging smile. “I hope you can sort this out.”

  “Thank you,” he repeated.

  He shook the man’s hand, swung the door of the sports car open and stepped outside. The Audi took off, leaving him alone in the middle of the road.

  It was freezing. The storm had left a sheen of dew in its aftermath. His breath frosted in the dim light. He shoved one hand into a pocket, and with the other pulled up the list of contacts on the phone. A lone number had been saved. He read it out loud a few times and committed it to memory, then tucked the phone away and stepped up onto the tiny footpath that led to his flat.

  His heart was pounding now. His dad was on the other side of the door. He hadn’t even prepared an apology.

  He raised a fist to knock, and then he heard it.

  A police siren.

  The wailing ascended in volume. Before he could utter a word, a squad car screeched to a stop in front of the flat. Two police officers got out.

  “Jake Hawkins?” one of them asked.

  Jake didn’t know what to do. He walked awkwardly towards them.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s me.”

  One of the officers motioned to a set of handcuffs he was holding. The man looked to be in his early fifties. He had large bags underneath his eyes.

  “I’m going to have to put these on you,” he said. “You’re under arrest, son.”

  “For what?” Jake asked as politely as he could.

  “According to an eyewitness you assaulted one Adrian Turner at roughly 10a.m. this morning. His injuries were severe enough that his family have decided to press charges. We’re taking you into custody.”

  So Wolfe had been right. He was under arrest.

  The two policemen led him to the car. As the three of them walked, one officer read him his rights. He didn’t resist when the older one slapped the handcuffs on him, or when they gently pushed him down into the back seat and strapped his seatbelt on. Seconds later, the sedan took off.

  He sat in silence. Yesterday, if this exact same situation had occurred, he would have been scared to death. Now, he was surprisingly indifferent. It wasn’t because he didn’t think he was in trouble. He knew he was in deep. It was because there was nothing left for him back there. Whether he spent the next year in a jail cell or on the street made little difference.

  The arrival of the police had been so exact that it couldn’t have been a coincidence. His dad must have been watching from the apartment. The fact that he wouldn’t even give Jake the courtesy of a conversation, proved how little he cared about reconciliation.

  As the streetlights flashed by, he stared out the window and wondered. Wondered about his luck. Wondered about his future. Wondered about how things could have been normal had he not acted impulsively and instead thought out his actions in advance. But it was too late to change what had happened.

  When they arrived at the station, Jake was escorted from the patrol car and led through several whitewash corridors, each as bland as the last. At some point, one of the officers patted him down and removed the phone from his inside pocket. He barely paid them any attention.

  Jake coasted through the bleak surroundings in an automated state. Truth was, he had been feeling out of touch with reality ever since he had blacked out in the abandoned apartment.

  The apartment.

  A flood of memories came rushing back. The alleyway, the ambush, the rescue. Slayers. Jake felt an irresistible urge overcoming him. He needed to know more. Now that he knew they existed, he would never stop thinking about them.

  A discovery like that changes you.

  It had. What was so important about this world now that he knew another world existed, hidden within? How could he turn his back on it?

  He snapped him out of his thoughts as they stopped by a holding cell. It was a tiny concrete box with three blank walls and a row of iron bars at the front. Jake was led inside and the door closed behind him.

  The officer spoke through the bars. “We’ll keep you here until we can sort out a few things. Someone will come and get you in the morning. Try and get some sleep.”

  He walked off.

  Jake looked over his cell. A thin metal bed frame – complete with an equally thin mattress – and a dirty toilet were the room’s only contents. It wouldn’t have been too bad, but the entire place smelt like a homeless man had thrown up in it.

  Jake sighed, moved over to the bed and sat down on the mattress, resting his head against the brick wall. It was freezing, but it shocked a bit of energy back into him. There was no chance he would get any sleep tonight. He wasn’t putting his face anywhere near that mattress, and there was a lot on his mind.

  He simply sat.

  *

  The night passed relatively quickly. Sometime during the eight hours, Jake came to a decision.

  When the morning arrived, a stern-looking policeman unlocked his cell and led him to an interview room. The man introduced himself as Superintendent Bryce. He wasn’t one of the ones who had arrested Jake last night. He was someone else. Anger was plastered across his face. Jake sensed he had to deal with thugs daily.

  Bryce seated him at a wooden table in the middle of the room. Apart from that, the space was bare, save for a rectangular window set high into the brick on his left, blocked by steel bars. The pale light of dawn was streaking in.

  “Righto,” Bryce muttered, shuffling through his files. He looked up. “What’s your name?”

  “Jake Hawkins.”

  “Mmhmm.” Bryce ticked a box. “Alright, Jake, I’m going to need a statement from you. So we’re going to go through exactly what happened yesterday-”

  “Can I make a phone call?”

  “You can call whoever you want after we sort this out. Is that understood?”

  “No. You’re legally obliged to let me make a private call and a call to a lawyer – if that’s what I want.”

  Bryce scowled. “You’ve got an attitude.”

  Jake said nothing.

  “Can you tell me your whereabouts at quarter to eleven yesterday morning?”

  “Phone call.”

  Silence.

  “Fine,” Bryce said. “You get your phone call. Then we get this statement, or you’ll be in a lot more trouble than you’re already in.”

  He slid a corded phone and cradle across the desk and exited the room, locking the door securely behind him as he left. Jake picked up the receiver and started punching in numbers as they came back to him from the night before. When he got to the last number, he froze.

  What was it
? A five or a six? He couldn’t remember.

  Panic began to develop, and the longer he sat there the more it intensified. If he picked the wrong number, the wrong person would pick up and that would be that. He didn’t know if he was allowed a second phone call while in custody.

  Just as he was on the verge of an anxiety attack, he remembered it.

  A six.

  He thumbed the digit, then waited as the dial tone sounded.

  One ring.

  Two rings.

  “Good morning, Harper & Benson Cleaning Services, how may I be of assistance?”

  The voice was male, clean and crisp.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jake said into the phone, not caring what some customer service member on the other side thought of him. He had got it wrong.

  “I’m sorry, sir?” the voice said.

  “Never mind,” Jake said, taking the phone away from his ear.

  It was halfway to the cradle when he heard a faint voice. “Jake?”

  He froze and raised the phone again. “Yeah?”

  “It’s Wolfe. You sure cut that close, buddy.”

  He let out a sigh. Then he remembered what he had called for. Fear had dried his mouth and made his skin clammy. Without hesitation, he spoke the two words that would change his life forever.

  “I’m in.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Are you sure?” Wolfe said. “There’s no going back from this.”

  “I know.”

  “You can’t change your mind afterwards.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, alright then.” He sounded relieved. “Listen, we know you’re at the police station. We just don’t know what room you’re in. Any idea?”

  “There’s a window facing out. It’s up high and there’s bars across the top.”

  Jake had inadvertently lowered his voice. He didn’t want Bryce to hear a word he was saying.

  “That’s what we thought,” Wolfe said. “But we had to make sure. Hold on for a minute: stay on the line.”