The house isn’t what bothers me. The whole neighborhood is still – not a cricket chirps, not a dog howls. It’s unnerving, unnatural. Even the wind has stopped. It’s as if Nature itself has been put on pause.
Madeline gets out of the Jeep, peering around nervously. “Something’s not right here.”
Wordlessly I move my shirt and draw my gun. My holster is a memento from my days as an Envoy, designed especially for me. I carry two spare magazines in addition to the one already in the weapon. That one holds regular, hollow-point bullets. The second one, silver. The last… well, they’re for special occasions. I’m not sure what kind of occasion this qualifies as, so I leave the regular rounds in.
“That’s their car,” she says, pointing. A new BMW, deep crimson, crouches in a pool of light cast from a cheap plastic light fixture over the garage. The car has to be worth twice what the house is. It’s a damn foolish thing to do, leaving it out in the open for the urban predators to feed on. Then again, it might have a repulsion spell on it, designed to chase away unwanted attention. Such spells are fairly common, and Linear uses the best.
I cross the small lawn, Madeline quietly at my heels. Her palms are open, her face rigid with concentration. I’ve seen enough witches at work to know she has some kind of spell ready to go. Her weapon is loaded, too.
As we near the door I notice an unmistakable shape lying on the grass, partially underneath a hedge. “Shit,” I whisper.
“What? Oh no,” Madeline gasps, hands falling to her sides. I gesture for Madeline to remain behind and, crouching, edge my way up to the body.
It used to be a man, but that’s all I can tell. Beyond that I’d need a doctor for particulars, but I break out a penlight and check anyway. Immediately I wish I hadn’t. The legs are intact, but the upper body is unrecognizable. It looks like it has been crushed under a truck, then torn brutally in half from shoulder to hip. Or maybe the tearing came first, I can’t tell. At first I think that the head is lying face down in the loam, but a closer look shows me that the front of the head simply isn’t there at all. Blood, glistening black in the wan light, is soaking into the ground in a widening puddle. The blood is still flowing freely. This could only have happened moments before.
That means that whatever it was that did it is still here.
I force myself to kneel down next to the body, though my stomach roils. I’ve seen a lot over the years, but this is rough even by my standards. Judging from the sound of vomiting coming from behind me, it’s way over Madeline’s head. I shine the light around the grass, the light sparking on the dew, trying to find some hint as to what could have done this.
I almost miss it. Even when I do realize what I’m looking at it takes a moment for me to understand, but when I realize what I’m kneeling in I jump to my feet and step back. It’s a footprint, almost two feet wide. Human-shaped, but with four splayed toes and what looks like claw indentations at the tips.
I back up with my gun up, trying to see the entire property at once, until I’m with Madeline again.
“One of yours?”
She nods, breath rattling. “Peter. One of the couriers. What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “I’ve never seen anything like that before, but whatever did it was definitely not human. Ghoul wouldn’t have left anything behind. Werewolf wouldn’t have crushed him, and a vampire would have just drained him and left the body intact. The footprint’s new, too. Wrong shape for a dragon. Too big for a Sasquatch, and they don’t live around here anyway.” I’m starting to babble. I shut up and scan the ground, at least as far as I can in the darkness, but can’t spot any other tracks.
“So, what is it?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “And more important, I don’t know where it went. We need to get out of here, now.”
“Not without my razor.”
“Madeline…”
“There are still two men inside, Ian.”
I curse inwardly, but she’s right. I nod, and she moves up to stand next to me. Together we move towards the porch but freeze when we hear the gunshot. A small one, and only one, from somewhere inside the house. We hardly have time to note the sound for what it is when a horrific sound shakes the air, boiling out of the house hot on the heels of the gunshot. It’s so terrifying it robs me of words, a demonic nightmare of a roar that freezes me with its primordial terror. I’ve never imagined that there could even be such a sound. It’s agony, rage and hatred forged into a voice, turning my skin into endless waves of goosebumps. I feel the night air seeping through my close-cut hair to my scalp and raise my hand to my head. My hair is standing on end.
Then the scream comes, a single, plaintive breath of a wail that ends almost before it begins. Almost.
I take the two steps up onto the porch in a bound, leaving Madeline on the lawn. From inside the house I can hear sounds of destruction – someone is redecorating the place, violently. I try to peer through the bay window, and even though it’s obscured by a heavy curtain I can still see something moving in the room, a vague shape that seems to fill the room. As I try to make out even a single detail a low sound rolls out of the house, deeper than thunder, rumbling over the nerves of my spine like a heavy freight car.
I freeze in place against my will. It’s a growl, but the likes of which I have never heard before. My body reacts to it on a primitive level, freezing me in place like a gazelle hearing the call of a lion on the opposite side of a tree. I shake myself out of it with a physical effort, moving my index finger firmly onto the trigger as I reach for the doorknob.
A vicious, animalistic snarl from the other side of the door gives me a half second warning. I throw myself to the side as the door explodes outward, a cloud of wooden shards as thick as my finger blasting me like shrapnel. I manage to close my eyes and turn away from the flying wreckage as I hit the porch. Dazed, I look up.
I have a quick impression of size. Matted fur. Blinding speed. A foul, rank odor. Later I would be able to recall something as unyielding as oak and the size of a serving tray grabbing me by the shirtfront, the sensation of being hefted off the porch and then sailing quietly through the darkness, the shattering impact as I land badly on the lawn, the back of my head cracking hard off the ground and my gun spiraling off into the night. The world fractures, spinning wildly into a glittery silver shower. Through it all a mammoth shape lurches, phantom and indistinct in the haze my mind has become. I watch it lope onto the grass, around the corner of the house and melt into the darkness.
Then my mind joins it, and I know no more.
Three
Twenty minutes later I’m conscious and hating it.
An occasional flash and distant rumble from the thick, roiling blanket of thunderheads heralds the oncoming storm, though the weather report that morning had said there was no chance of rain for the rest of the week. Then again, the weathermen in this town are wrong with surprising frequency. Make of that what you will.
I’m sitting on the very same lawn that now bears the imprint of my spread-eagled body. Fortunately for me I landed on the other side of the porch from Peter’s crushed body, so I don’t have to see what was being done to his body by the crime scene techs. My own body has enough problems, which are at this moment being worked over none too gently by a none-too-gentle EMT. I’m pretty sure that in my one on one toughness contest with the ground I’d come in a distant second. I hurt from tailbone to skull. Actually, my skull is somewhat in question.
“I don’t think anything’s broken,” she says, flashing that stupid flashlight in my eyes. Even squatting next to me Claire Carlisle is impressively tall. When standing she’s five feet ten in sneakers, the same height as me but tall for a woman, with strong cheekbones, freckles and strawberry hair cut in a throwback pageboy. If you ask her, she’ll tell you that she’s too not to be considered attractive. She’s not blonde, not petite, not overly made-up, not blessed with curves like a burlesque dancer.
We know each other
, not that you’d know it to watch her work on me. Then again, it might explain some things. We have a past, of sorts. Not that kind. She’s a witch who came to me for help about a year ago. She wanted to get free of her coven but couldn’t manage to do it on her own. I helped her but it had been a challenge, and her exit hadn’t been a clean one. Though she had gotten what she wanted, she has never exactly warmed up to me. I’ve never pushed. When a witch leaves her coven it can be traumatic, like walking away from your entire family. That can leave scars far worse than mine.
“I’ll have to take your word for it. Feels like if my brain has been scooped out with a melon baller and packed back in wrong.”
“You’ll want to get yourself checked out,” she tells me as he closes her medical kit. “There’s a good chance you have a concussion.”
I start to nod my thanks, feel the warning spear of pain, and instead simply say, “Thanks.”
She nods freely, then rises to her full height and saunters off to the ambulance. She doesn’t seem to feel the need to stay and make sure I’m ok, and she isn’t needed inside the house. In this case, the medical examiner and his team are playing the parts of all the King’s horses and all the King’s men. From what I’ve overheard from the people who had been inside, Humpty Dumpty is irreparable.
Madeline is standing next to the ambulance when Claire climbs in the back. The EMT comes dangerously close to bumping into the visiting witch, but never even glances in her direction. Madeline is magically cloaking herself from view. She had done what she could to care for me before the professionals could get there, careful not to touch my skin with hers in the process, but had slid to the sidelines when the flashing lights started showing. Now that I’m clear she begins to walk in my direction, then stops suddenly and looks past me. I don’t bother looking. I know what’s coming.
“DeLong. I heard you were here,” a rough clipped voice says.
I subtly gesture for her to stay back as I turn at the waist and angle my eyes upward, afraid to move my head. I know that voice. “Good to see you too, Math.”
I had met Lance Matthiassen three years ago, the day after I’d moved here. He’d been a prick then, too. I’d done a bit of research on him right after, correctly figuring him to be a pain in the ass that I’d have to handle sooner or later. Apparently, a four-year stint in the Marine Corps reinforced most of his negative tendencies, while doing nothing to strengthen the positive ones. He’s always been cocksure, arrogant and unforgiving, slow to resort to violence but devastating once let loose. The problem was that those same attributes that made him a world-class asshole combine to make him one hell of a good cop. Not one who was likely to win any awards for charm or witty banter, but one who can be counted on without fail to nail down the toughest of jobs. He also has an inexplicable detestation of all private investigators. Nobody knows why except maybe for Math himself. Oh, and don’t call him Math. He hates it.
Although I’m not a PI myself, I don’t think I rate much higher than one in his eyes because of my retirement cover. As far as he and the rest of the humans here know, I’m a retired CIA agent. I always thought that was a bit too dramatic, but it was necessary to have a background like that built for me when I was moved here since it allows me to carry a gun if I need to. Since I wasn’t lying to Madeline when I said I’d made enemies in my life I almost always carry one.
I try my best to avoid bringing human law enforcement into magical business, but once or twice it has been impossible to avoid (like when a werewolf changes shape for the first time in a crowded suburban house there’s screaming involved, which isn’t my fault). So far I’ve managed to stay out of the SBPD crosshairs, more or less, but that doesn’t mean I want to push my luck.
I give him a visual once over. He’s got a face like a bulldog’s growl. He isn’t in uniform, which surprises me. He’s wearing black slacks with creases that would hurt if you touched them, a crisp white button-down shirt, a tie that has been tied with mechanical precision and black shoes that you shouldn’t look at without sunglasses. “Plainclothes,” I say. “Congratulations, Math.”
His stony face never changes. I knew he’s seething inside, but he’d never dream of letting his anger show. The day he shows emotion is the day I run screaming for the horizon. “You’ve been laying low. Captain Bayle had hoped you’d left town.”
“Yeah? Tell him that I have hopes for him, too.” I look around, and it doesn’t hurt as much as I’d worried it would. I’d have been relieved if prior experience doesn’t tell me that I’ll eventually make up the pain difference tomorrow. “How bad is it?”
He ignores me, as I expect him to. “What were you doing here?”
“Doing a favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
“Ever hear of confidentiality?”
His stare never breaks. Finally, I sigh as if caving in.
“My friend had a family heirloom stolen. I found out that it might have been in this house. I was coming to check it out when I got clobbered.”
“What did you see?”
I saw a monster the size of a Humvee swat me like a fly. “Not much. I heard a scream, but just as I was getting up to the door something hit me on the head.”
“You were on the porch when you got hit? How’d you end lying up on the lawn?”
“We must have fought up the sidewalk and I don’t remember it. I guess he threw me.”
“I thought you practiced judo or something.”
I gently rub my hand over the lump on the back of my head. “Jesus, Math. I’m probably concussed here. Didn’t anyone ever get the drop on you before?”
“No. Was the heirloom in the house?”
Now I’m getting pissed. “Save the double talk, Math. I told you before I haven’t been in the house yet. I was told there was a chance that it could be there. I got jacked before I could even knock on the door, let alone go inside.”
“Do you think it’s inside?”
“I think it was.”
“But you don’t think it is now?”
I shrug.
“What kind of heirloom is it?”
I give him a quick description of the box and the razor. Hell, if it’s sitting in an evidence bag right now my role in this little farce will be over and I can go home. I can give Madeline the SBPD’s number and let her pick it up at her leisure.
“We haven’t found anything like that yet,” Matthiassen says. He checks his notes. “But we haven’t been here too long. Give me your client’s phone number and we’ll call him if it turns up.”
I see no need to correct the gender error. He’s fishing, and rather clumsily for him. “Just call me, Math. I’ll take it from there. Ask Captain Bayle. I’m sure he has my number.”
He stares in silence, eyes cutting into me, for so long that I begin to worry. He’s never spent much time on me before, just looking on disdainfully from a distance. Now he seems to be seeing me for the first time, and I don’t like it.
“What’s going on here?” he demands.
“What are you…”
“Shut up,” he snaps. “There are two dead men here. We don’t know what could have done what’s been done to them. And here you are.”
“I told you, I’m…”
“I’m not a fool, DeLong. This isn’t the first time something inexplicable has happened in this town. A couple of times a year we get a crime scene we can’t explain, and you seem to be there for almost all of them. Why is that?”
I look at him for a quiet moment. For most supernatural things, telling a human their secrets could earn them a corrective visit from an Envoy. Each flavor of magical beings has their own Traditions (capitalization intentional). Traditions bind every creed and culture, some common, some unique. One of the few universal ones, though is this – Keep Your Secrets. It’s part of their survival instincts. Humans outnumber nonhumans by vast amounts. If they got it in their collective heads every magical being in the world would be burned out in short order, though not without
significant damage to their own. Internecine warfare, but almost certainly unavoidable.
I have no wish to bring that kind of trouble down on anyone, so I keep Secrets, too.
Math is a lot of things, but he’s a cop first and a human being last. I can’t tell him the truth, no matter how much easier it would make my life. Besides, he’d never believe me anyway.
I shrug. “Could be your imagination,” I say hopefully.
He aims his flattop at me. “I don’t have an imagination.”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you,” I say.
“But you know what not to tell me.” He stared, unblinking, for a moment, then snaps his notebook shut. “Come on,” he says.
“Where?”
“Inside.”
I can’t help it. I do a genuine double take. “You want me to go into a crime scene?”
“Like I said, I’m not a fool. I know what we see when we look in there. I want to know what you see.”
“Lance, I’m… I’m touched. I have to be the first civilian you’ve let in on your investigation. I feel honored.”
“When you see it,” he says in a tone as flat as his hairstyle, “you won’t.”
I push myself to my feet with a groan. He doesn’t offer me a hand up. I wouldn’t take it, if he did. Holding myself as erect as possible I follow him into the house.
The door opens directly into what had once been the living room. On the way in I almost bump into Matthiasen’s partner, Adam Farelli, whose bulk is practically filling the doorway. Adam is a contrast to Math in almost every way: rounded and soft of body, wrinkled suit, tousled hair, smile lines.
I’ve never really talked to him at length, but I know that unlike the rest of the SBPD he’s clued in to what really goes on in Superstition Bay. Exactly how and how much he knows is a mystery even to me, and I’ve asked a lot of people. But he seems to draw an awful lot of calls involving the supernatural, far more than coincidence should allow. Either he’s got some kind of inside hook or else is somehow able to latch on to things outside the normal realm of police work. The bottom line is that he’s a good man, and it’s always helpful to have one of those on your side.
Swim Like Hell: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 4