Life and Limb

by Jennifer Roberson

  * * *

  —

  No alarms on this place,” I noted quietly after we inspected the entire perimeter of the big log building and met out back once more. “Well, far as I can tell.”

  “So, we break a window and just two-step in there?” McCue asked in a low voice. “This is for shit, you realize. This is breaking and entering. We get arrested—how the hell do we explain anything?”

  “Wanted to shoot some pool, maybe? Who can tell with drunk guys. Which is about the only cover story that might work.” I attempted to peer in a window, but it was blocked by drapes. “You can tell ’em anything you want to, even the truth, but it won’t get you very far. So the key is: Don’t get caught.” I knelt at the door, set down the shotgun. Gestured Remi to bend down and kept my voice very low, almost a whisper. “You got that little flashlight Lily gave you? Shine it here, on the lock.”

  McCue, squatting, turned on the flashlight, bent down to aim it. Like me, he spoke barely above a whisper. You’d have to be kissing close to hear us. “What the hell are you doing—wait . . . are those—?” He didn’t finish, just rose abruptly and grabbed my right arm, literally yanking me away from the building. “You’ve got lockpicks?”

  I shrugged. “Well, if you don’t have a key—these’ll do.”

  It’s difficult to sound scandalized in a strangled whisper, but he managed it. “You ride around on a motorcycle carrying lockpicks? Just how often do you do this sort of thing?”

  “Breaking in, or attempting to kill ghosts hosting demons?” I grinned at his expression. “I know how to use them—” I’d actually learned in prison, though I didn’t tell him that, “—but I don’t carry lockpicks, no. Or didn’t until tonight. Lily slipped ’em to me. Now, come on. Let’s get this done.”

  He followed me back the few steps to the door. “This is not what I signed on for.”

  I squatted again, motioning for him to aim the flashlight at the lock. “You’ve been a good boy all your life?”

  “Damn right I have,” McCue whispered back. “Well, except for that little fracas me and Luke got mixed up in at my high school graduation. But that didn’t amount to much. Busted nose, a few teeth knocked out—not mine, you understand. I had some moves by then.” He paused. “Better than Jagger.”

  I felt the tumblers shift and click. I removed the picks, set my hand on the doorknob and turned. Yup. Pushed open the door but didn’t enter, just knelt there and zipped the pick kit closed, tucked it into a pocket. Then I picked up the shotgun and slowly rose.

  McCue stepped close against the chinked log wall. “How often you used those suckers?” he whispered. “You do this regular—this breaking in? Does Grandaddy know?”

  “If I tell you it makes you an accessory.”

  “I’m already an accessory on this break-in, asshat!”

  I ignored the conversation. “You do know how to shoot, right?”

  McCue’s quiet tone was dry. “Guess we’ll find out. Meanwhile, you sensing anything surrogate-like in there? Since you’re a living EMF meter and all.”

  “I’m sensing a certain amount of cowboy bullshit. And anyway, she said it would take time. No, I don’t get any kind of vibe, other than feeling pretty damn stupid about this whole thing.” I pushed the door open with infinite care. “I think we should have asked Lily a lot more questions.”

  Remi leaned close again as he spoke. “You’re the folklorist. Seem to know this shit.”

  “That doesn’t make me a ghost hunter. Buster. What the hell ever.”

  “And I didn’t get the feeling she was going to say much more other than telling us to come back with our shields—or on ’em. You know, all Spartan-like.”

  “You don’t look too Spartan in that hat.”

  “Protective coloration,” came the whispered reply. “Now, of the two of us, who’s more likely to be taken for a drunk cowboy wandering around a cowboy bar after hours in the dark, should the cops come by—a guy who is a cowboy, or an ex-con biker dude? With lockpicks in his pocket. And guns, which he shouldn’t rightly be carrying since he’s an ex-con. And should we even be talking?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, if ghosts—or demons—have working ears, we might could give ourselves away if we keep having long-winded conversations.”

  “No one could hear us from a foot away,” I pointed out, well within that foot, “and if what Lily told us is true, they already know we’re here and we could probably shout at the top of our lungs.” I eased my way inside the door. Same door I’d exited a matter of hours before, in pursuit of the woman—who wasn’t, as it turned out, actually a woman. And there came the squick factor again. I sought another topic immediately. “You know, some people believe Einstein proved ghosts exist.”

  McCue, trying to combine utter disbelief with keeping his voice down, sounded strangled. “Einstein? Why are we talking about Einstein?”

  “But I think it’s bullshit.”

  “Einstein is bullshit, or these ‘some people’?”

  I shrugged. “We’re made up of electrical energy. People, I mean. And Einstein said that when people die, that energy goes somewhere. Into the environment. That it can’t be destroyed, only changed from one form to another.”

  “So, that’s where the EMF meters come in. Or you. Sniffin’ out that released electrical energy.”

  I took a few more steps inside. “That’s the theory.” Muted light at the back of the bar didn’t illuminate much, but it kept the place from being pitch black. I advanced a few more steps.

  McCue followed closely. “Mighty thin theory.”

  “That never stopped conspiracy theorists, or UFO whackjobs.”

  “You know, according to the Bible, there’s no such thing as actual real ghosts. You die, you get judged, you go to heaven or hell. End of story. Which jibes with what Grandaddy said.”

  I shook my head. “He said a lot. What specifically do you mean?”

  “I’ll quote chapter and verse later, but the Bible says if there are ghosts hanging around, they’re demons. That any paranormal activity, if evidence of it is found, is because demons are controlling it. But there are positive spirit beings. Angels.” He paused. “I wonder . . .”

  I put a hand on a pool table to spot myself, moved carefully around it. Cradled the shotgun in two hands again. “Wonder what?”

  McCue was very close. “Do you suppose we give off any kind of special electrical energy? You and me, I mean. Because of our beacons.”

  “What, you mean like Iron Man’s power plant?”

  “I wonder if we’d set off EMF meters. Or airport scanners. Or if an MRI or CT machine would pick up anything.”

  “Maybe we should go to Vegas,” I said dryly, “see if we can take control of all the slot machines. Make all those little old ladies happy with their nickels.”

  “They might could give us a percentage,” McCue agreed. “We’d be rich in no time, five cents a deposit. Now, what was it Lily said about these ghosts? Husband and wife?”

  “She tripped at the top of the steps, fell down them and broke her neck,” I explained. “Despondent husband killed himself a year or two later. If the impulse for these demons is to initially behave as the ghosts would, they’ll hang around where they died.”

  “So we look for her on the stairs?”

  “And for him in front of the fireplace, where he offed himself.”

  We moved through the pool tables, stepped out onto the main floor. In silence we waited, examining surroundings in low-level illumination.

  I reflected that yes, one might term it “spooky.” All kinds of dead animals with colored marble eyes and bared yellow teeth hung off the walls, crouched along the beams, inhabited corners. Antlers on mounted trophy heads stabbed the air.

  I heard the clink of glass from the bar and jerked my head around.

 
No one was there.

  Flames roared up in the fireplace where none had blazed before.

  The chair before the fireplace rocked, with no one in it.

  “Okay,” McCue murmured, “this officially qualifies as weird.”

  “Or haunted.”

  “‘Haunted’ is weird.” He paused. “You getting any kind of a feeling about this?”

  I shook my head. “You’re supposed to be the one who can sense demons. You getting anything?”

  “Smells a little funny.”

  I opened my mouth to make a comment, but suddenly a woman stood before us, appearing from out of the dark. I stared in disbelief. Her head, the neck obviously broken, lay loosely on one shoulder, which grossed me out. But it didn’t seem to bother her.

  Then she grabbed Remi McCue and flung him across the room.

  * * *

  —

  I heard the cut-off yelp from McCue, the crashing of body through tables and chairs. Then she was right on top of him, and in his hands was a shotgun, not good for close-in fighting. Even as he tried to raise it, the woman—ghost? demon?—chopped down hard at the barrel. It clattered out of his hands.

  Definitely corporeal. Definitely pissed.

  I yanked my revolver from the holster and fired a powdered iron shell. The woman disappeared—dematerialized?—but, dammit, in the middle of the melee I had not gotten off a chest or head shot. Winged her, maybe. Damn—I’d been right there, right there, and hadn’t made the shot. Not the kill shot.

  Or whatever it was when you destroyed a ghost. Or a demon. Or whatever. Ghosticide? Demonicide?

  I moved rapidly to the wall, putting my back against it. Heart rate was high, and I released a long breath. “Lily is so going to give me much shit about all of this,” I muttered, revolver cradled in both hands. “Hey, McCue?” I saw no reason to keep my voice down now; the female ghost clearly knew I was present. “Remi? Hey—cowboy!”

  No answer.

  Shit.

  I waited a moment, listening hard. No more clinking of glasses at the bar, no more creak of the rocking chair, no more crackle of flames in the fireplace.

  When no further attack seemed imminent, I opted to see if I could work my way across the roadhouse, discover if McCue had survived being flung across the room like a rag doll. Because I was certain Lily would give me more shit if the cowboy was actually dead.

  Hell, Grandaddy might murder me if I’d got Remi killed.

  But that was the last coherent thought I had, because every dead, stuffed, marble-eyed animal in the place came alive.

  And all of them apparently had me on their menu.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Well, hell,” I muttered.

  I did a quick mental inventory of my personal armory. Five shots left in the shotgun, five in the Taurus; plus the Bowie and KA-BAR.

  But—what the hell works on reanimated stuffed animals? That wasn’t anything I’d ever read about. And could they actually see out of those fake-ass marble eyes?

  Cougar. Bobcat. Lynx. Wolf. Some bristly pig-looking thing with nasty tusks. All prowled toward me from out of an almost lightless space, clearly able to see very well indeed out of their fake-ass eyes. They even sounded real.

  They also sounded hungry.

  “Hey, McCue! You alive over there?” Backup would be good. “Would an exorcism work on these things? Maybe knock the stuffing out of ’em?”

  No answer. I began to wonder if maybe the cowboy truly was dead. The idea sent a curl of nausea through my belly.

  Lily Morrigan had said a heavenly soul extinguished by a demon would not go to heaven.

  And for some inexplicable reason—considering I didn’t truly know the man—that really, seriously, significantly pissed me off. Because if heaven was real, so was hell. It blind-sided me, the anger. And it fueled me.

  I took out the cougar first, then the lynx, followed up with the bobcat, the wolf. The pig-thing took my last round.

  I heard Lily’s voice again, ‘You’ve only got five shots, but if you can’t put down something within five, maybe you deserve to be dead.’

  Yeah, well, that might be true if the target were just one thing, not five possessed animals—that were deceased, but somehow not.

  “Bear!” shouted the cowboy, who was, hosanna and hallelujah, not dead after all.

  I swung around, reaching for the Bowie. I’d forgotten about the damn stuffed grizzly.

  I thought about diving for the shotgun lying on the floor, but that meant I’d be going to the bear. The very large bear who could indeed see me out of its fake-ass eyes. Because it stared right at me.

  Shit. I wasn’t good at throwing knives. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to close with the sucker. So I threw it.

  And missed.

  I was out of ammo, lacked the rifle, figured I’d miss with the KA-BAR, too. And time was just flat gone. So I grabbed up billiard balls already racked on the nearest table and began hurling them at the bear. I’d been a pitcher in high school; I nailed the sucker a few pretty good ones right in the face. Even broke out one of the eyes. But the bear kept coming.

  “Duck!” McCue yelled.

  I flung myself down as far from the bear as I could get in one frantic leap aside before dropping, automatically shielding my head. And then I heard a series of reports as Remi fired all five chambers from the revolver into the bear.

  As the animal toppled, I shoved myself out of the path of destruction. The massive grizzly fell hard and heavy, face down. For one startled moment I was eye-to-eye with the dead—re-dead?—bear, and then I scrambled to my knees and scooped up the other shotgun. I tucked it under my arm between ribs and elbow, then dug into a jacket pocket for additional ammunition to reload the revolver.

  “Mighty fine shootin,’ there, Tex,” I noted as McCue came cautiously forward to inspect the bear.

  The cowboy looked around the field of battle. “Man, looks like we took out half a zoo.”

  I slid bullets into the revolver. “What’s that pig-thing?”

  “Javelina. With a ‘j,’ but pronounced as an ‘h.’ You know—just so you sound smart when you tell stories about this.”

  I was pretty damn sure I wasn’t going to be telling any stories about the night stuffed animals came to life in a cowboy bar in Arizona. “Hava-what?”

  “Javelina. Peccary. Not actually a pig. They inhabit Mexico, the Southwestern U.S.” He gazed down at the pile of bristle and tusks, lips pursed as he nodded appreciation. “Males can mass over eighty pounds. Nasty suckers, they are. We got ’em in Texas, too.”

  I noticed he seemed a little shaky. “You okay?”

  McCue nodded, ran a tentative hand through short dark hair at the back of his head and winced. “Caught me a good lick on the edge of a table, but it’s too far from my heart to kill me.” He glanced around. “Where’s my hat? I feel naked.”

  I caught a glimpse of something behind the cowboy. “Down!” I yelled, and as McCue dropped I fired the shotgun at the husband half of the ghost couple.

  Who nonetheless managed to grab McCue around his throat as it went down, because I had pulled my shot upward, too worried about nailing McCue with the buckshot spread. I saw the spray of—goo?—burst from the male ghost’s head as he—it—collapsed, but there was nothing about him that suggested he was dead. Well, dead again. And despite the fact the man—or ghost, or demon—was missing half his head on one side from the original shot that killed him, and a divot in the other side of his skull where my spread had struck him, the ghost-demon had both hands gripped around McCue’s throat from behind, digging fingers in.

  Corporeal, all right. Because even as he lay tangled on the floor with the ghost-demon, Remi was clearly being strangled.

  “Are you really that stupid?” I walked up to place the muzzle of the Taurus against the oozing head. “It’s a si
lver bullet dipped in holy oil, asshole, and from this range I don’t miss.”

  And I fired.

  The ghost-demon, which resembled nothing so much as a perfectly presentable, infinitely normal man missing part of his head, made an odd discordant noise like a deflating bagpipe, rippled head to foot, broke up as if pixelated, then collapsed into a pile of dust and grit.

  McCue, who was clutching his throat as he lay on the floor, croaked, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Killing me a demon.” I reached down a hand. “Come on.”

  “Jesus, man, I was right in front of it—you could have hit me! And you splattered its brains all over me!”

  “Ghost brains,” I reminded him. “Not real.”

  “They sure as hell felt real! A little warning next time. Holy Christ.”

  I was aware of an odor. Sickly sweet. Powerful. Jesus, but it stank. “It was a bullet, not buckshot. Went right through his head. Dude, you whine like this all the time?” I gestured with my outstretched hand. “Come on. Up from there.”

  McCue clamped onto my hand, allowed himself to be pulled up from the floor. He opened his mouth to say something more, and then I felt a flash of heat in my hand, startling enough that I jerked my hand away from McCue’s and stared at it in alarm.

  What the—?

  McCue echoed me, and I glanced up to find a pair of very startled blue eyes fixed on my own.

  I heard Grandaddy’s voice again. ‘That day when you offered to carry your brother’s pain, begged me to lift it from him, to give it to you, I knew you were ready. And you consented. But you weren’t sealed to Matthew that day, Gabriel. Because he isn’t heaven-born. You were sealed to Remi.’

  It rose up like a tide, a slow but relentless drive of water to the shore, to break upon the land. And I knew in my bones.