Czytaj książkę: «Taming The Hunter»

Chapter 1

Dane Winthur set aside yet another dusty accountant’s box filled with cards that dated back to the early 1900s. While the Agency had been established only a decade ago, they had been operating unofficially for over a century. During that century, detailed cards had been written on each weapon or entity they had encountered and/or confiscated for secure storage. Dane had volunteered to go through the files and verify that each had been entered in the computer database.

His laptop sat on a stack of flat boxes to his right. So far, about 75 percent of the card files had been entered. But there was no rhyme nor reason why one card had been entered and another had not. It was a grueling, time-consuming task, but he was the newbie on the block in the Agency, having been with them for only two years, so he didn’t mind some grunt work to prove his worth.

Besides, as a scientist by trade, he found the paperwork and attention to detail came naturally to him.

Now he fingered another yellowed piece of five-by-eight card stock that seemed newer than the other cards, most of which displayed frayed edges and coffee stains. Another weapon was listed on this one—a dagger that dated back to the thirteenth century. It had been marked as “To Note,” not something the Agency had in hand, but wanted to keep an eye on. He scanned the rest of the notes.

“Belonged to a witch hunter, eh?”

He typed the weapon ID number into the database. It didn’t bring up a matching record, so he was about to set the card aside on the “to be entered” stack when a name caught his eye from the description below the record ID information. “Edison Winthur?”

He read the description carefully and muttered the last line out loud. “Last known owner: Edison Winthur, California.”

Blowing out a breath, Dane sat back against the stack of boxes behind him in the depths of the storage facility the Agency had leased for the old records. A strange smile curled his lips, and he flicked the card between his fingers.

“My father?”

Two weeks later...

“I’ve tracked down a location for the dagger, Winthur,” Jason said over the phone.

Phone clasped to his ear, Dane tossed aside his surfboard and wandered across the sand to sit on a smooth boulder edging his property. A thermal wet suit allowed him to surf in the fifty-degree waters. January was always the best month to catch some killer waves. He’d noticed his cell phone glowing when he’d landed on the sand and had returned the call immediately.

“The witch hunter’s blade?” he asked Jason Meadows, who worked in Research out of his apartment in New York. All Agency positions were “in situ,” since there was no home office or official headquarters. Jason was a cyber guru who could tease out the most hidden of information from a jumble of bits and bytes.

“Yes, that one. Let me text you the address. It’s currently owned by an antiques store called Stuart’s Stuff. Hang on.”

Dane smiled at the flock of seabirds swooping over the beach. But his levity was more for the discovery he’d made weeks earlier while going through some of the Agency’s old files.

Dane was head of Weapons. Well, he was the only one in the department. It was newly created because there had been a need. Their crew was small and distributed across the United States and Europe. Tor Rindle was the head of the Agency and had been visiting the States when he and Dane had met—over the disintegrating fur, flesh and bones of a werewolf.

Yeah, that had taken a lot of philosophy-changing faith on Dane’s part. He was a geologist who had never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t want to debunk. But the werewolf? Dane had no choice but to believe. And he had been strangely thankful when Tor had told him about the Agency and offered him the job. Such work aligned with a weird memory he’d had from when he was eight. The Agency was secretive, which was cool. James Bond gadgets were not in abundance, though. They used science to debunk myth and the paranormal—to keep humanity safe from the real monsters.

Whether or not the dagger listed on the file card possessed any sort of paranormal powers hadn’t been recorded. Dane’s job was to rule out that sort of stuff. Or if not, to put a spin on it. Not that this was an official job. He was simply curious. Or rather, compelled after he’d seen his father’s name listed on the card. A man he had known only for the first few years of his life, and “known” simply meant that he’d been his son and had existed in the man’s life.

And to think the word compelled set his heart racing. The first time he’d learned the meaning of that word he had been eight. And the few times since then that a compulsion had come upon him, he’d always been whisked back to that time when his mother had found him standing in the basement, sword in hand. She’d been so angry. Outraged. He hadn’t understood.

But he was compelled to understand now, because it might fill in some integral knowledge he required to become completely whole. To simply know.

“Sent it,” Jason said over the line. “Do you know this one has a legend attached to it of belonging to a witch hunter? Not sure if the blade itself is supposed to possess magical capabilities. But you know, witches.”

“Yeah. Witches.” Dane chuckled. “It’s always something.”

Though he’d not encountered witches in his service to the Agency, he was always up for an adventure, both physically and mentally. And learning about new creatures? Fascinating stuff. Because really? The world was a better place thanks to the Agency’s ability to think fast and to explain away the unexplainable with complicated scientific terms and theories.

“So why this blade,” said Jason, “if I can ask? I mean, this isn’t an assigned job. What’s so remarkable about this item?”

Dane twisted at the waist and turned, which flexed his abs. His muscles were rapidly cooling, even with the warm suit to protect him from the chilly temperature. He wasn’t much of a sharer. Then again, Jason was an okay guy, and it wasn’t as though he was going to call up the boss and tell him Dane was using Agency time to pursue personal issues.

“The last known owner was my father.”

“Oh man, cool. So, was he the witch hunter?”

Dane chuckled. “I doubt that very much.”

On the other hand, what did he know about his father? Edison Winthur had died during a cave spelunking expedition. He’d fallen five hundred yards down a narrow chute, and his body had never been recovered. It had occurred a year after Dane’s mother had divorced him. Dane had been three when Edison died.

And still his mother’s words resounded loudly in his thoughts. Don’t be like your father. He was such a dreamer.

“Should I schedule you for a weeklong vacation so we don’t overbook you?” Jason asked.

Dane had to shake himself back from the haunting warning his mother had issued so many times. “Uh, sure. Give me a few days, at the very least.”

“Fine. I have a contact name for the shop owner. I’m texting that to you, too.”

“Where is this place?”

“In a northern suburb of Minneapolis.”

“Seriously?” Dane winced as a sea breeze skinned his face with a cold kiss. “Isn’t it, like, thirty degrees in Minnesota right now?”

“Do I sense an inordinate fear of the weather from the guy who surfs in January?”

“Never. But you know, anything below fifty is crazy cold.”

“Ha! You’ll have to bring along a sweater. Give me a call when you have the dagger in hand. Unless...you’re doing this one under the radar?”

“Not at all. The dagger wasn’t an assigned job, but I have no intention of keeping it a secret. Whatever I find will be documented, and I’ll address any issues regarding spin or how it should be stored when I’ve had a look at it.”

“Cool. I’ve got you scheduled through the week. I can arrange a flight for you, as well. Will text the details.”

“Thanks, Jason.”

Dane hung up and tugged at the zipper on his wet suit.

The key goal in finding this dagger would, with any luck, answer the questions he’d asked himself since he was eight. Was this the same dagger?

The secondary goal was more emotionally rooted in the limited knowledge he’d been given about his father. He’d always wanted to learn as much as he could about a man his mother had described as “having his head in the clouds.” And he’d lost track of how many times she’d admonished Dane not to be like his father.

Having one’s head in the clouds didn’t sound dangerous to Dane. Only if one also lacked logic and rationality, which he subscribed to. Always.

What an opportunity that would be, to hold something his father had actually owned. Or rather, to hold it once again.

But had the old man been a witch hunter?

“Doubt it,” he muttered, and grabbed his board.

* * *

Dane had joked with Jason about Minnesota being thirty degrees on this January day. Actually, it was two. Degrees. He’d left the beach for two degrees. And he felt both those single digits breeze through his lightweight wool jacket and permeate his tweed vest and the dress shirt beneath as the chill fixed itself into his skin and sent out wicked feelers for the network of his once-warm veins.

He rushed down a sidewalk edged with dirty snow heaps the city plow had pushed up as his cab had parked in the nearby lot. The concrete was white from the chemicals added to the sodium chloride used in abundance on the roads. The first time he’d ever heard the term “salting the roads” Dane had imagined a large kitchen saltshaker suspended from the back of a truck. His childhood imagination had been so vivid (when his mother wasn’t aware).

He had that very imagination to thank for being here right now. And he wasn’t sure whether or not it was something he should be thankful for. Fantasy was best served in small doses, and even then, only on the silver screen or the pages of a novel. Very well; his mother had been right.

Dane whispered his thanks when the antiques shop door opened to whoosh a welcoming warmth across his frozen cheeks. He huffed and clapped his gloved hands together, stomping his feet, even though there was no snow on his leather loafers. The weird stomping-clapping performance managed to get the warmth flowing through his system.

A kind-looking woman, who looked to be in her eighties, appeared from behind a glass case and sailed over to the counter, which was littered with an assortment of Halloween ornaments and wooden black cats, bright orange Halloween Festival buttons and a plethora of orange-and-black garland.

“I’m Dane Winthur,” he announced, with a chill invading his tone. “A colleague of mine should have called about a dagger two days ago?” Jason had said he’d handle alerting the shop that Dane was on his way.

“A dagger?” The woman shook her head and adjusted the frothy white hair piled loosely atop her head.

“Yes, uh... I was told Mr. Stuart is the owner? Is he in?”

“Mr. Winther, I’m so sorry, my brother and his wife are out of town for a family funeral. Just left this morning, actually. Oh, wait now. I do recall him mentioning something as he was going through the list of things for me to do in his absence. You’re the scientist, yes?”

Dane bristled but tried his best not to show it. The owner of this antiques shop had known he was coming to pick up the dagger. Traveling halfway across the United States and—he wasn’t here? That took some kind of nerve, to up and leave without calling to let him know.

“Yes,” he answered, calming his rising ire. “I’ve traveled from California to your lovely yet icy state for the dagger.” He patted his vest pocket, where he’d tucked the dossier and a printed photo of the dagger, and pulled it out. Unfolding it, he showed it to the woman. “Did Mr. Stuart leave it in your care?”

“Not exactly.” She squinted as she studied the photo. “Harold did mention you were coming as he headed off to the airport. He was in a hurry because they managed to snag a pair of last-minute standby seats for the flight to Hawaii. I’m so sorry, Mr. Winthur. You know how funerals are. Can’t plan for them.”

“Of course. Well. Does not exactly mean no, not at all, or maybe, I might know where the dagger is?”

“It means maybe, I don’t know where it is. I mean, I do know where it is, but I don’t have access to it. We were going to close the shop, because I’m not much for handling inventory and the finer items my brother stocks, but I do like to hand out my cookies to the locals. Help yourself.” The woman gestured to a plate of chocolate chip cookies on the counter that Dane hadn’t noticed before.

Now that he did, his frozen senses thawed and the scent of sugar and chocolate teased sweetly. He picked up a cookie. It was warm, bless the cookie gods. Had he been annoyed about something? Who could remain angry when biting into chewy, warm chocolate and sugar?

A funeral. He couldn’t possibly be rude and insist on anything, but he would nudge as best he could. “How long will your brother be away?”

“Four or five days. The flight takes almost a whole day, so that’s two days of travel time right there.”

“The funeral is in Hawaii?” A much better place—for a vacation or a funeral—than this Arctic tundra. “Lucky fellow.”

“Ah? Hmm...” She tugged the plate back to her side of the counter.

“Sorry. I mean, really sorry. For the, er, bereaved.” So he wasn’t a master at compassion. Feelings were so...complicated. “Did Mr. Stuart leave the blade in a safe or some such?”

“Oh, he did, but it’s a newfangled fancy-doodle kind of thing that requires him putting his eye up to it to open.”

“Oh. Biometric, eh? Quite a fancy-doodle thing, indeed.”

Especially for a run-down little shop that currently offered a sale on 1970s disco balls, as displayed in the front window. After New Years Discount! Get Them Before They’re Gone! Had he stepped into the seventies?

“I really do need to get my hands on that dagger,” Dane said. “The information I’ve collected about it states it once belonged to Edison Winthur. He was my father.”

“Oh, my. That’s mighty interesting. He’s passed?”

“Yes, when I was very young.”

“I’m so sorry.” The cookie plate was pushed closer. “Harold should have left the dagger out for me to sell to you, but he’s always been so careful about the weapons he sells. High security, and all that fiddle-faddle.”

“Fiddle-faddle can be a bother.” Dane crossed his arms high on his chest and fought to keep from asking if he could take a look at the safe. But it would be impossible to crack if it required the owner’s retinal scan.

“The agency I work for has a penchant for tracking down weapons with a fantastical legend attached to them.” He never explained the Agency beyond that. What people didn’t know regarding the Agency, they didn’t need to learn. “I’m also a geologist. The metals used in ancient swords and blades fascinate me.”

“I thought geology was rocks?” the old woman asked.

“It is, but the cold iron used in the—” Dane winced and nodded. “Yes, just rocks. Uh, so your brother will be back...when?”

“Friday.”

And today was Monday. Must he stay here an entire week? In what closely resembled a storm-ravaged tundra? And the old man had insisted someone pick up the dagger in person. He hadn’t wanted to send it by post. A wise decision when it came to weapons that could possess a volatile nature. Of course, Mr. Stuart couldn’t know about that. Or could he?

Hmm...

Dane smiled at the woman through a tight jaw.

“Will it be a problem for you to stay in our fine little town for a bit? There are hotels along Highway 10, not far from here. Oh! And there’s the Winter Fantasy Ball this evening over at the Bleekwood mansion. You might stop in. I suspect the local girls would love to marvel over such a fine, er, studious fellow as yourself.”

Dane nodded appreciatively even as he felt the back of his neck heat. A geriatric flirting with him? It was sweet. But a week in this icebox? He wasn’t sure his sand-and-surf blood could manage that long without freezing.

A biometric safe. Just his luck.

On the other hand, he did favor a rousing adventure. Learning to survive in the icy tundra? Sign him up!

He shoved a hand in his pocket, where he touched the comforting curve of a plastic Bic lighter. He always carried one with him. He wasn’t a smoker, but when he became agitated, he calmed himself by flicking it over and over.

Hey, to each his own.

He palmed another cookie and bit into it. “Tell me the best place to stay around here?”