“George,” I asked, not taking my eyes off the girl. “Do you have a description for the missing girlfriend?”
She looked up at me at just that moment. There were probably a dozen yards and twenty people between us—and she looked at me as if she had known exactly where I was standing.
She smiled at me and the bite on my neck flared in a bone-shivering spike of pain that made me stagger before it died completely, like something had short-circuited. As it did, her face twisted with pain—and then malevolent anger.
“That’s her,” said George, coming to alert as he saw who I was looking at. “Hispanic female, pink top.”
He didn’t speak loudly, but I think, from her change of expression, she heard him, so her hearing was at least as good as ours. As we started toward her, she looked around at all the police surrounding her. Briefly she looked frustrated—and then she looked at us again. Her shoulders relaxed and she smiled—right before she ran.
George bolted after her—and I bolted after him.
“George,” I called out, because—wouldn’t you know it—George was one of the very few werewolves who were faster than I was. “Let her go—if she bites you, you belong to her! Then you die! George, wait!”
I couldn’t tell if he was paying attention or not. The call of a hunt is pretty strong, and I wasn’t Adam.
The woman fled down a side street that was edged with automotive boneyards, warehouses, and empty lots. She reeked of that distinctive magic and she was moving as fast as a werewolf. I was pretty sure we’d found our jackrabbit. George was hot on her heels, gaining a few inches with every stride.
I was twenty or thirty feet behind them and losing ground rapidly. Neither of them seemed to be having trouble with the rough and uneven sidewalk, but it tripped me up once and I almost tumbled head over heels. I kept my feet but it slowed me down.
The woman dropped out of sight down a narrow dirt track between a pair of industrial-looking buildings that wore an air of abandonment. When George disappeared around the corner, too, I found an extra burst of speed from somewhere.
At the same time, I ripped at the closed bond between Adam and me. It gave in to my frantic attempt, but I’d done something to our bond . . . it felt wounded somehow, bleeding. But I would worry about that later. I needed to keep George safe.
I turned the corner and saw George closing in on the woman quickly—I was pretty sure she had deliberately slowed her pace. There was a woman curled up against the building in a fetal position, her face pressed against the wall as if she were trying to hide. But she wasn’t moving and my instincts told me she wasn’t a threat, so I ran past her.
“George, stop!” The command rang with the power of an Alpha werewolf because I had stolen it from Adam.
George stopped in his tracks, and so did the woman—who was the smoke beast. They had run past the building and stood in what might have been, in better days, a small parking lot. I stopped, too.
“Get back here,” I told George. In my back pocket, my cell phone started to ring. Probably Adam wondering why I’d torn at our bond. But I was busy. I told George again, “If it bites you, it will steal your will. Aiden says that once it takes you over, it will kill you.” Or he would die. Aiden hadn’t been clear on that point, so I wasn’t, either.
When it hadn’t been able to steal my will, it had tried to kill me, though, so I thought what I’d said was a good bet. The running water had severed the connection between it and the bite—but I thought of the smoke I had swallowed. Maybe there had been enough left in me for it to try again today. It hadn’t worked.
George kept his eyes on the woman, but he obeyed me—backing up rapidly until we stood shoulder to shoulder.
“George,” I said. “There’s someone on the ground against the wall of the building behind us, to my left.”
He glanced over my shoulder and growled, “Missed that.” He strode behind me—paying me the compliment of trusting me to guard us from the creature.
The woman stayed where she was, frowning at me.
“Who are you?” she asked. She spoke as if English was difficult for her, and not as if she spoke Spanish. Her accent was nothing I’d heard before. If her word choice was odd, it didn’t take away from the edge of rage in her voice. “My power is big. Why are you not mine?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “What do you want?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “If the stupid man had not stopped us. There would be many dead and I would have more power. More enough to take you.”
“You get power from the people you kill?” I asked.
“Stupid you,” she sneered. “Death is powerful magic. My puppets kill and give me magic to be this.”
George approached me and stood just to my right. “Dead body,” he told me—and he sounded a little freaked out. It took a lot to freak out a police officer who was also a werewolf. “Her dead body.”
“Dead that one,” the woman said, running her hands down her body in a way that was a little obscene without being sexy at all. “I own this now. In this shape I kill you and the magic is wasted. Cannot eat death in my own body, only through puppets. Rules. Stupid rules.”
She was giving us a lot of information, I thought—but it was almost as if she weren’t talking to George and me. As if she were clarifying her thoughts.
This creature had lived in Underhill for who knew how long—and Underhill was a place where magic was plentiful. Maybe the rules were different here than in Underhill—and this creature was working them out aloud. It sounded like she had trouble powering her own magic and she was killing people to make up for it.
She made up her mind about something—I saw it in her eyes before she spoke. “Dead and you are not a problem, little dog. Regret because much power to eat from you. But prefer dead now to power later.”
And she charged us.
I skidded back, drawing my Sig as George engaged her. He hadn’t had to warn me off—we both knew who was the better fighter in this kind of scenario. I had the gun out and pointed, but the fight was moving too fast for a safe shot.
George wasn’t just better than me, he was one of our best fighters in unarmed human combat. He’d had experience, Adam had told me, before Adam took over his pack, and Adam had pushed him to sharpen those skills.
The beast seemed to be having a little trouble fighting in the form of the woman. I could tell that she was used to being heavier by the way she tried to use her weight. She was also used to fighting with teeth and claws instead of leverage and blunt force. Even so, the fight looked pretty even to me.
“Don’t let her bite you,” I reminded George, though he already knew that. That I repeated it again was more because I was horrified at the idea of something being able to take over your mind.
I wasn’t even certain that it was useful advice, because I wasn’t sure that it was only a bite he had to worry about. She’d turned a semi into concrete. I didn’t understand the rules of her magic and that scared me. Without knowing what she could do, I couldn’t keep anyone safe.
Her weight might not be what she was used to, but she was strong. And as she and George fought, she was getting better at using what she had. She twisted and George—who looked like he should be able to crumple her up and put her in a trash can—flew through the air.
I shot her three times before George hit the side of the building. My Sig held a ten-round magazine and I didn’t quit shooting until it was empty. I wasn’t standing more than fifteen feet away—every shot was on target.
She stopped dead in her tracks when the first shot hit her in the middle of her forehead. The second and third shots went into her cheekbone, just below the eye. The first three shots had jerked her torso a little toward me, angling her body so that I had a three-quarter frontal view.
I put the next three in her chest where a human’s heart would be. Because I didn’
t know what she really was, the next three took the other side of her chest. I put the final round in her right eye.
I kept the empty gun in my hand because it could make a pretty good weapon. I set my feet into horse stance—a good balanced position. George had bounced back to his feet and taken two running steps to stand just in front of me, so he’d be the first to engage her again.
She . . . she just stood there—swaying a little. There were dark holes where the bullets had gone in. But there was no blood, nor even the scent of blood, only the acrid scent of gunpowder and the smell I’d come to associate with this creature.
Behind us, pounding footsteps announced that the police officers gathered at the semi accident had heard the shots and were coming. The creature heard them, too, tipped her head, smiled at me—and dissolved into smoke that quickly dissipated, taking with it the scent of magic. A soft metallic sound accompanied ten bullets hitting the hard-packed gravel.
“Fuck,” said a woman’s voice behind me.
I turned to see a police officer in uniform, her gun out and aimed at the place the woman had been. The next officer, who hadn’t seen the beast dissolve, had his gun pointed at me.
“Drop your weapon,” he said.
George flung his hands up into the air and growled. “Greenhorn.” He sucked in a breath, trying to get a handle on his wolf, as the little space between buildings filled up with Pasco PD. His eyes flashed bright yellow, a sign that the wolf was still ready for a fight, when he said, “We’re all good guys here. Stand down, Patton.”
I set my gun on the ground anyway, not wanting to get shot by an overzealous or scared officer. It wasn’t like it was going to be much of a defense against a creature that I could shoot ten times with a .40-caliber weapon and not do much more than surprise it.
“What was that thing?” asked the police officer who’d been first on scene.
“We don’t know,” growled George. “But that’s what turned the semi to cement.”
“Concrete,” said one of the police officers in a small voice. “Cement is what you mix with water to get concrete.”
George ignored him, instead stalking over to the body still curled up against the old building just beneath a wannabe gang tag. He knelt without touching.
“She’s about sixteen,” he told . . . me, I thought. “Her scent is all over that tractor. Freaking driver is forty if he’s a day.”
“Forty-two,” said someone. “We can get him for statutory.”
I left my empty gun on the ground and walked over to the body. I couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary. I dropped to one knee beside George and said, “I have to touch her to be sure.”
“Do it,” he said.
I put a finger on her neck—and realized that she was wearing the same clothing the creature . . . beast had been. Before I could process it, the smell of magic flooded over me. It was as if, I thought, sitting all the way on the ground, the magic had been entirely encased in the body until I touched it and released it.
“That sucks,” said a voice just behind me.
I turned my head and started, bumping into George pretty hard. As he put a hand out to steady himself, he turned to look where I was looking, his body tight and ready to move.
The beast had seemed old, even in the shape of a young woman. This girl looking over my shoulder at the body, at her body, was very young. It was the same face and body the beast had worn—but whatever animated this one, it was not our monster.
She met my eyes, her arms wrapped around her rib cage.
“Damn,” she said. “Guess Mama was right. She told me that someday I’d regret jumping in a car with any stranger willing to pick me up.” Her voice was similar to the smoke beast’s, but her English was unaccented and the rhythm of her words was smoother.
She might not have ID on her, I thought reluctantly. She might have information we needed. I decided to risk strengthening her, though condemning anyone to haunt this sad little space didn’t seem kind. Maybe she could make it to the cheerful bakery down the street.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Liv—like that actress, the one on the white horse in the movie with the monsters,” she said. “Liv Mendoza.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” I asked.
The ghost shivered. “I was out behind the gas station—” She gave me a guilty look. “Never mind what I was doing. Not your business. Anyway this rabbit just came out and bit me—right here.” She stretched out her arm—and two crusted wounds appeared. “And then something sat in my head and ran the show. It just took over.” A tear appeared and she wiped it off with the back of her wrist. “I couldn’t even make a phone call. And when it was done with me, it discarded my body like a, like a snake sheds its skin.” She looked away from me. “I wish,” she said, “I had died on a beach somewhere. Or in one of those meadows you see in movies, the ones with flowers. I like flowers.”
“Who are you talking to, Mercy?” asked George.
I held up a hand—but she was gone, leaving me with most of the Pasco PD staring at me. Hopefully she was gone for good.
I shrugged, sighed, and told them, “I see dead people.”
* * *
• • •
My phone rang as I was crawling back over the Blue Bridge toward the garage with the parts in the trunk of my car. I took a chance and glanced at the screen. It was Adam. It took me another five or six minutes to get across the bridge and on a street where I could pull over to call him back. I had six missed phone calls from Adam.
“Hey,” I said.
“I have a headache,” Adam said without preamble. “What happened?”
I did, too, now that the adrenaline from the confrontation with the smoke beast was starting to die down. I prodded our bond. The weird bleeding sensation was gone, though the bond was definitely the cause of my headache. My fooling around with it made me wince.
“Quit that,” Adam said. “Tell me what happened.”
So I did.
* * *
• • •
I had to repeat the whole story to Tad and Zee when I got to the shop, parts in hand. I restarted the story from my first sighting of Anna’s ghost up through today’s confrontation, adding in the pieces that I’d left off or glossed over when I’d talked to them earlier.
“Is it a skinwalker?” asked Tad when I was done.
Zee just grunted and continued to loosen bolts with his ratchet, which had chattered at us most of the time I’d been talking. Tad had stopped working about halfway through the story, but Zee, although his expression had been getting grimmer and grimmer, had continued to work.
My phone chimed with a text—and with the way things were, I couldn’t ignore it.
“I don’t think so,” I said, getting out my phone. “There are vampires in Underhill, but I don’t know that I’d believe in skinwalkers there.” I’d never run into one of those, and I didn’t care to do so, either.
The text was from Aiden, sent to both Adam and me.
Tilly confirms smoke beast. Says no other escapees. She is sad she cannot help hunt him. Knows from me that you are good at killing monsters. Wishes you good luck. This is my fault, I am VERY sorry.
I read Aiden’s text to them out loud—everything except for the last sentence, which was nonsense.
“No,” said Zee. “It is not a skinwalker. Skinwalkers are native to this land. This is something from the Old Country.”
“You know what it is?” I asked.
“Nein,” he said. “A creature who transforms one thing into another. Who can infest someone with magic that appears as smoke. Using that magic, it turns its victims into puppets to kill for it, in order to gain power from those deaths. And then can mimic the forms of those it has used as puppets.” He frowned. “Magic has rules, Mercy. Especially for the fae. Transformation magic—that is ra
re and belongs to only a few types of fae—but, with the exception of several of the Gray Lords, generally those are not powerful creatures.”
I thought about what it had done and not done. “It didn’t turn George or me into concrete,” I told him. “Though maybe it can only do that with nonliving things?”
“Generally living or nonliving doesn’t matter to that kind of magic,” Zee said. “But that it didn’t transform you suggests that it had used up all of its magic.”
“Okay,” I said.
“So,” he agreed. “But this other magic that it has—this is oddly complicated for fae magic.”
He shook his head. “Bite and infest a living being with magic that manifests as smoke that allows it to take over the body. Then it has to use that body to kill in order to gain enough power to assume the shape of the person it has killed.”
“It sounds so weird when you put it like that,” Tad said.
Zee nodded. “More like something you’d find on a cursed artifact. A series of steps followed by results that allow you to take the next steps. I know of a few of the fae who have magic that is like this—it allows weaker fae to work complex magic. But their magic uses none of these steps.”
He shook his head again. “I will go tonight and speak with Uncle Mike.” He gave me a speculative look. “You might contact Beauclaire. He will talk to you before he does me.”
Aiden had suggested that, too—I raised my hands. “I am not in the personal communication circle for Lugh’s son. The Gray Lords are, one and all, above my pay grade.”
Zee eyed me suspiciously for a moment before shrugging. “All right, Liebchen. Perhaps Uncle Mike can talk to Beauclaire.”
My phone chimed again, this time from Darryl—also addressed to Adam and me.
Ogden called. Worried that there is something amiss at his house. Auriele and I are joining him and the three of us will go back to his house. Will update you as necessary.
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