Black-Hearted Devil

by Sierra Dean

  “So, with that in mind, you’ll have to forgive me, but I found this video very confusing.”

  He pulled up a grainy black and white video on the laptop. It showed four different panels in a square, each a distinct camera angle on a different area of a building. My stomach clenched when I realized it was the church in Franklinton where the incident we were just discussing had taken place. At first I thought he was about to show me footage of the events of that night, but the time stamp on the video was for yesterday, just before midnight.

  At first there was nothing, just empty views of different church facilities.

  “Since that night, the church has been vacant until a local trust can decide what to do with it. They want to sell it to another church group, given that’s the most logical use for the building, but I gather no churches are interested in buying a building where werewolves were tortured and killed in the basement.” He glanced up and saw something in my expression that made him add, “Sorry.”

  “What are we looking at, exactly?”

  “Last night, like most nights, a security guard was working on site, you know keeping any squatters or kids out, that sort of thing. The same guard works every evening shift, different guy on weekends. This guard,” He tapped the screen as a man walked into view. The guy was chubby, moving slowly, but seemed focused on his work, checking every inch of the area he was in. “That’s Jim Kind.”

  There was no way this story had a happy ending. The guy having the last name Kind was some sort of terrible omen.

  “The guards are unarmed, beyond a stun gun and night stick. No guns. They didn’t think that sort of thing was necessary for the location, given how remote it was and how little trouble they’d had over the last year. Can’t say I’d have done it any differently myself.”

  “Him not being armed, I’m assuming that’s relevant?” I asked.

  Bryce nodded grimly. “Just watch, won’t be long now.” He got up from the chair but left the laptop on. He had seen it before, of course, but I guess he had no interest in watching it again. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, wishing I had the option to walk away as well. The suspense was killing me.

  A man appeared in the frame behind Jim, and it might as well have been a jump scare moment in a horror movie, because I was so surprised by his arrival I let out a yelp.

  He just stood there. A dark, looming figure, waiting in perfect stillness at the corner of the screen. Jim didn’t notice him. The guard continued to scan the large room, and the man in the back hadn’t made any noises or sudden movements. As Jim approached the area where the pulpit had been, the dark figure moved.

  I’d expected him to go slowly, but he didn’t. He rushed towards the front of the room with his arms glued to his sides and his steps long, loping bounds. He was at Jim before the guard even had time to react.

  I flinched as the dark man leapt on Jim’s back and tackled him to the ground. When he grabbed his neck and twisted it, easy as if it was the cap on a pop bottle, I looked away entirely.

  “Keep watching,” Bryce instructed. He’d filled a glass with water and I hadn’t even noticed.

  Wilder had moved to my side and the heat of his body up against mine was enough to restore a modicum of calm. Instead of wild anxiety I only felt steady unease. What on earth could be worse than watching a man having his neck snapped that Bryce wanted me to continue watching the video?

  The dark figure moved out of the room, leaving Jim Kind’s body on the floor, eyes still open, head at an odd angle thanks to the newly broken neck. A moment later the dark man, cloaked in shadows, appeared in another frame of the video footage, prowling through the scene as if hunting for something.

  I realized he was in the audio video control room, where the lights and spectacle of the church had once been operated. He poked and prodded at a variety of buttons, then picked up a microphone from the console and tapped it. Since the video was silent I couldn’t tell if he was hearing what he wanted to, but he must have.

  He lifted the microphone to his mouth as his eyes scanned the room. He stopped searching when he spotted the camera. He clambered up onto a chair, pulling his face level with the security cam, and it was like he was looking directly at me.

  Timothy Deerling.

  The very same Timothy Deerling who had part of his skull blown open by a bullet a year ago when he’d tried to kill me.

  I sucked in a breath and Wilder recoiled.

  Deerling was speaking, but I couldn’t read his lips, the video was too dark to make it out.

  “What’s he saying?” I asked.

  Bryce pulled a phone out of his pocket, prodded at a few buttons, and then crackling audio began to play. It was especially eerie since the words did not match up to the motion of Deerling’s lips.

  “I shouldn’t have expected her to be here still.” He coughed once, then chuckled. “I’m coming for you, girlie. Gonna finish what I started. Gonna see you dead one way or another. Dead like me.” Again he laughed.

  On screen he had finished talking and was just smiling a grim, determined, and utterly skin-crawling smile.

  “Gonna get you, Genie McQueen.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The video ended abruptly, and the detective put his phone back in his pocket.

  “I mean… he could be talking about anyone named Genie,” I fumbled.

  “Anyone named Genie who was present at the time of his death?” Bryce asked.

  A thought struck me, and a spear of worry stabbed through my heart. “The deputy. Josie Dwyer. If Deerling is out there just randomly attacking strangers, there’s a good chance he might go after the person who actually killed him while he’s at it.”

  “Deputy Dwyer was working when this happened, and the Franklinton sheriff’s department has decided to keep her under watchful eye at the station until Deerling is apprehended. But that’s a problem in and of itself. He’s gone.”

  “Because of course he is,” Wilder said.

  I closed Bryce’s laptop and pushed it back towards him.

  “Now, I have to say Ms. McQueen, I was expecting you to be a wee bit more surprised that a dead man was walking around making threats against you.”

  “I was surprised. Didn’t you see me? I did this.” I mimicked my earlier gasp.

  Bryce rolled his eyes and set his empty water glass in the sink. “Let’s not bullshit each other here. I know you know what’s happening, you know that you know what’s happening. I don’t feel like running around in circles convincing you to tell me the truth. I’d like to think that after the situation we witnessed at that sorority house that you and I are, I don’t know. Friends?”

  I liked Bryce. And for a cop, he was more willing than most to accept all the weird and wonderful things that went along with the supernatural coexisting with the mundane. He’d helped me when my wolves were in trouble, and he also hadn’t gone screaming for the hills when I’d had to explain that a bunch of girls had literally been eaten by a demonic house.

  That put in him pretty high esteem in my books. Even if I thought his personal grooming and car cleanliness were atrocious. I literally ran alongside a pack of humans who turned into animals, so I wasn’t going to call him on keeping too many food wrappers in his passenger seat when I had been known to wake up covered in rabbit blood from time to time.

  We all had bad habits.

  “Okay,” I said. “But you might want to sit down.”

  Wilder gave me a look and a silent head shake, saying he didn’t think it was a particularly smart idea for me to let another human in on this new whirlwind of bullshit we were experiencing. But Bryce had seen the video before we had. He’d told me Deerling was out there, and he’d done it by coming to me, rather than dragging me down to the police station and making a public spectacle of it.

  Maybe we really were friends. At least whatever version of that could exist between a cop and a werewolf Alpha in this world.

  He obediently took a seat at the table and put his laptop bac
k in the bag he’d brought. Attentively, he folded his hands on the table like an eager schoolboy and waited for me to speak. Man, if only everyone in my life treated me like I was this worthy of respect and attention.

  My own brother, for example.

  “I don’t have all the answers I’m sure you want, and I genuinely wish I did. So it may seem like I’m keeping things hidden but I promise I’m not.”

  “And for the time being, I’ll believe that’s true.” A small smile.

  “Fair enough.”

  I explained, with as much brevity as possible, my mother’s unexpected return from the grave, her seeming focus on killing me, and the gist of what Santiago had told me about the curse looming over me. I left out the bit about the charred woman on the highway, because that one was just a bit too weird to explain without a lot of additional info. It was one thing for him to accept that the dead were out to get me, but telling the story of a burned body that spoke through a witch… well, that was a lot.

  “So, you’re telling me that this witch friend of yours, the one from the house I’m assuming?” He waited for me to nod. “He says there are four of these risen dead you should expect?”

  “The voice speaking through him implied that, yes.”

  “And so far we have Deerling and your mother?”

  I nodded, keeping my face impassive. “And whoever the voice was.” That seemed like a fair compromise, at least he knew we had three of four. No matter how much I tried to rack my brains, I couldn’t fathom who the fourth would be. But if you’d asked me an hour ago I wouldn’t have singled out Deerling as an option either.

  I might just need to let myself continue to be unpleasantly surprised. If I needed to make a mental list of everyone who had died in proximity to me, I might be at this a while. And none of the dead targeting me made sense in my mind. I hadn’t killed them myself, so why they had a vendetta to settle against me was as much a mystery as who had put this curse on me in the first place.

  “Let me just make sure I have this straight. Someone cursed you—according to a witch—and as a result the dead are rising from their graves to kill you?”

  “Seems like.”

  “Yeah that about sums it up,” Wilder said.

  “Jesus Christ, girl. Are all supes lives like this, or are you special?”

  “Oh, this is a McQueen thing, I’m afraid. You should meet my sister.”

  “I’m not sure I’d survive meeting another McQueen sister, but thanks.”

  I gave him a thin, appreciative smile. “I think it goes without saying that dealing with Deerling is probably well outside the scope of what a police department is prepared to handle. I’m not even sure what they are. They’re not ghosts, they’re not necromanced dead. They’re alive, but also not? I have no idea if it gives them special powers or strength, so don’t ask. I have no idea if killing me will also kill them. I don’t even know if they can be killed because they’re technically already dead. So I have more questions than answers at this point. Best I can tell you is: steer clear of them.”

  “You know that’s not an option for us. We still have to serve and protect, that job doesn’t simply go away because we’re up against something we don’t understand.”

  I sat down so we were on the same level and I could meet his gaze directly. “People will die if you send them up against these monsters.”

  Bryce gave me a sad smile. “People will die if I don’t.”

  It was Wilder who spoke then. “Not if we can help it. If you just let us do what needs doing, and don’t try to wrap us up in red tape, we’ll try to make sure no one gets hurt.”

  “I can’t promise to let you work above the law and you know it. And I only have oversight of so much. The only reason I know about the thing in Franklinton is that I’d been in contact with their office during our investigation into your pack last month. They have a small enough force out there that they remembered me mentioning you and sent this my way as a courtesy. Without that we’d have had no warning at all about this.”

  I sighed and resisted the urge to bash my head against the table. He was right. His attention to detail and over-involvement were the only reason I currently knew Deerling was alive. I couldn’t put human lives at risk though. If something happened to Bryce because he nosed his way into this and got himself or some of his fellow officers killed in the process, I’d never forgive myself.

  And given my current track record, they’d probably just come back to life with a desire to kill me. Sort of how things were going for me lately.

  “I will keep you in the loop, but if you can, please try not to engage them. Mercy and Deerling were both werewolves when they were alive, and that means they will likely still have that strength. A werewolf who has no concern for human life is more dangerous than I can explain. What Deerling did to that security guard, that wasn’t even a surface scratch of what he’s capable of. He could tear a human man apart limb from limb. So could Mercy.”

  “So could you, I’m guessing.”

  “I’ve never tested the theory.”

  “Good.” He rocked back on the chair, folding his hands on his stomach and looking at Wilder and I with an expression that gave absolutely nothing away. I wanted to ask what he was thinking, but at the same time I didn’t want to know. I probably wasn’t going to like it.

  “I will do what I can to give you the room you need to resolve this as a pack matter. But if your mother or Deerling are seen in public areas putting human lives at risk again, all bets are off. I will also do my best to explain to outside law enforcement why they should limit engagement with these people, but I can’t guarantee they’re going to understand. I mean how do you explain something like the undead without people thinking of zombies?”

  “There are no such things as zombies,” I assured him.

  He scoffed. “Okay, you can say that with a straight face, and that’s cool, but I watched the dead walk the streets of New York on CNN just like everyone else. And I’m sitting across a kitchen table from a werewolf. Last night I had to issue a citation to a vampire. These are not normal things. These aren’t activities I thought I’d ever participate in. So, you can tell me there are no such thing as zombies, but you’re doing it in the same conversation where you told me your beheaded mother and a man who was shot in the face have both come back from the dead and want to kill you.” He gave a little shrug. “Maybe you can understand why I think a bunch of regular beat cops might have trouble making the distinction.”

  “I don’t even know how to explain it to myself, to be honest.”

  Bryce nodded. “Well, all right then. Good enough for me.”

  He pushed himself up to his feet and offered me his hand, which I rose to shake in dumbfounded silence. “I’ll be in touch soon, but I hope you keep your word and loop me in if you learn anything new. I can only help people if you help me.”

  I smiled. “I can promise to include you when I think it’s safe, and update information when I have it.”

  “The best I can ask for, I suppose.”

  After he showed himself out I moved into the living room and flopped down on one of my couches, burying my head in the plush cushions and letting out a muffled scream until my lung were empty and I felt at least a little bit unburdened. When I sat up again, Wilder was standing in front of the TV with his hands in his pockets, waiting quietly for me to finish.

  “Get your bag packed,” I said grimly. “Don’t bring anything nice, pack rubber boots if you’ve got them, and for the love of all that is holy, make sure you bring bug repellent.”

  “It’s November.”

  “Yeah, and where we’re going the bugs don’t give a shit about your calendar.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Maurepas swamp falls roughly halfway between New Orleans and St. Francisville, so I was very familiar with the route to get there, having driven between the city and Callum’s compound about a million times over the last few years.

  Still, with my new mission
in mind it felt as if Wilder and I were heading into the great unknown, a scary unexplored dead zone, rather than a place I had spent the formative years of my coming of age.

  I tried initially to make small talk, but after about fifteen minutes I found myself unable to fake a cheerful attitude and put the radio on instead. Some pop ballad bopped, and the lean trees zipped past in a blur of green and brown. My mind went blank, something I was all too grateful for.

  “Who do you think did it?” Wilder turned down the radio.

  “The curse?” I wanted to turn the volume back up and stay lost a while longer, but we’d soon be approaching our destination, and it was probably best I focused again, even if I didn’t want to.

  “Yeah.”

  “Was it you?” I glanced over at him, smirking.

  “I’ve cursed you more than once, Princess, especially when you’re driving me nuts, but no, I can’t say this one was my doing.”

  “That’s good to know, thanks.”

  “If I was the detective, I’d ask if you have any enemies.”

  A laugh bubbled out of my throat. “That list might take awhile.”

  “You are a very popular young lady, aren’t you?”

  “The popularist.”

  “I thought about Hank,” Wilder confessed.

  Hank Shaw, Wilder’s brother, would be the kind of person a smart investigator would narrow in on first. He’d been with us in Franklinton when the whole Deerling thing went down. In fact, the entire reason we’d been there was to get Hank out of jail, and that had gone spectacularly wrong on every feasible level.

  There was the added element of Hank having previously worked with Mercy as a member of her pack of strays when she’d taken to the streets of New York to kill Secret. So, yeah, he certainly had the pedigree of someone who would try to curse me to death.

  Still, it didn’t feel right.

  “Strikes me as being a little high concept for Hank. Not to mention the whole thing where I helped save his life. Is he still carrying some vendetta I don’t know about?”