“The genius loci?”
Travis shrugged. “More like a side effect of it, I think. Or maybe it goes with the spriggan. Let’s do the job, and see if it gets any better.” He didn’t have to add that the area had triggered a headache. Brent could see from the squint of his eyes and the pinch of his mouth that Travis already felt the area’s effects.
The truck was empty. They checked it, careful not to touch or leave fingerprints or DNA. After they dealt with the spriggan, Brent would call Doug. Before then, the cops would only be a liability.
One by one, they eliminated the ruins and the crumbling structures as the fey’s hiding places. Most were too small or offered too little shelter, and even the brick building looked like it had lain undisturbed for decades.
That left the mine, as Brent feared from the start. Going in after the spriggan would be suicidal, so he could only hope that the lore wasn’t a bunch of malarkey.
In addition to turning their shirts inside-out, they had iron filings and salt in their pockets along with the bread crusts. Both men carried silver and iron knives. Travis’s shotgun shells were filled with rock salt, while those in the gun Brent carried were iron pellets.
Travis covered him while Brent made a large circle with the rock salt on a bare patch of ground, leaving one part open for the trap. Inside the salt circle, Brent set a large bowl and filled it to the brim with fresh cream. Since a few of the sources also suggested that the fey had a sweet tooth, he added some cookies for good measure. Once the spriggan went inside the circle, he shouldn’t be able to get out except through the gap in the salt, where Brent and Travis would be waiting.
Assuming the lore was right.
Brent dribbled some extra cream from the trap circle up to the mine entrance, dropping a few cookies as well. Then he and Travis found cover in the concrete ruins of a building’s foundation and waited.
Nothing happened for long enough that Brent’s patience waned. He fidgeted, checking the time, staring at the mine entrance as if he could force the spriggan from cover by sheer willpower. Travis gave him a glare that got Brent to settle but only for a short time.
After what seemed like an eternity, Travis raised his head as if he were scenting the breeze. “Something’s coming.”
When Brent thought of the fey, he pictured the exceptionally pretty creatures seen in movies or the equally impressive dark beings from his gaming manuals. Apparently, movie animators and game designers had never seen a real fairy.
The being that slipped cautiously from between the broken boards at the mouth of Zimmer Eight moved like a hunched ape. Its size—that of a chimp—strengthened the impression. The body was hairless, and its limbs long and thin, but the spriggan was hardly the graceful, elegant fairy from the illustrations in children’s books.
Yet for all its oddities, something about the spriggan captivated his attention. Brent took a half-step toward the circle and stopped when Travis held up a hand. Was this magic? Brent had read enough stories where the fey tempted people away from their homes, into the marsh or elsewhere, never to be seen again.
“It’s a glamor,” Travis said. “Like a vampire can cast. You see the ugliness, but you don’t care. It’s the way it lures its victims.”
Maybe the bread and wrong-side clothing helped, at least a little, or perhaps it was the iron in his pockets and the knives in his scabbards, but Brent saw the spriggan with an odd double vision. The misshapen creature, with its too-long face and frighteningly wide mouth, was overlaid with the image of a luminous being that morphed into the artist’s ideal of a wood nymph the longer Brent stared at the monster.
“Look,” Travis murmured, barely audible.
The spriggan paused as it followed the dollops of cream and bits of cookie, hesitating as it neared the broken circle. Travis had intentionally left the entrance wide enough that the salt would not crowd the opening, and Brent hoped that the ample break gave the creature a false sense of security.
Hunger won out over caution. The spriggan loped up to the opening and then through it, intent on claiming the large bowl of cream and the pile of cookies in the center.
Brent and Travis shared a look. Now!
The blast of Travis’s shotgun echoed from the hills as the salt rounds hit the dirt, scattering and sealing the spriggan inside the circle. Alarmed, the fey drew itself up and screeched, a hideous, ear-piercing wail. Seconds after Travis’s shot, Brent unloaded both barrels of iron pellets, hitting the fairy directly in the chest.
The creature screamed again as black streaks appeared from every place the iron pierced its milk-white skin. The glamor vanished, leaving only the fey’s hideous true form, and it bared its knife-sharp teeth. The spriggan launched itself at them but drew back from the salt as if burned.
“Now what?” Brent asked. They had the creature contained, but he wasn’t entirely sure how to kill the thing.
“You keep him covered, and I’ll check inside the entrance to the mine for the victims,” Travis said.
“You’re the one with the magic.”
“You’re a better shot.”
Brent conceded with a glare.
“I want to get the victims out before you cap him,” Travis said.
“Cap him? Why don’t I just waste him or blow him away ? Did we somehow end up in a Bruce Willis movie?”
Travis shot a grin over his shoulder as he jogged toward the mine. “I’m just trying to speak the language of a hard-boiled private dick.”
“Bite me,” Brent replied, flipping him off for good measure.
Bleak humor in the face of danger felt familiar, a way Brent and his squadron coped when shit got real. Brent turned back to the spriggan, which paced its circle like a death row inmate, testing the warding and drawing back with a squeal each time as the salt repelled it.
“Settle down,” he warned. “Your time is coming.”
The image of a suitcase full of money suddenly filled his vision. Beyond the table that held the case and cash, an idyllic beach stretched toward the ocean. Brent heard music and laughter coming from nearby, as a warm breeze caressed his face. A figure on the beach waved, and he recognized Danny, healthy and whole, standing beside a beautiful woman who blew a kiss to Brent.
“Whoa!” he muttered, realizing he’d taken a step or two closer to the circle. Inside, the spriggan watched him, its golden eyes burning with an inner fire. Brent backed up, and raised his Glock, figuring that putting a silver bullet between the creature’s eyes would be a first step to making it real dead.
“Try it again, and I won’t wait for him to come back,” Brent growled.
Had that been how the spriggan drew its victims within reach? From the knowing, crafty smile the monster gave him, Brent figured that to be true. What had it promised each of the young women it lured into the truck? Brent juggled the guns so he could close one hand around the bread crusts and iron in his pocket. Immediately, his mind cleared, and the spriggan growled as any remaining connection severed.
“Hurry!” Brent shouted as anger replaced the disorientation and allure of the fairy’s trap. Money, luxury, and sex were generic bait, but somehow the monster had picked Danny’s image from his mind, and that made Brent furious. Could the creature read his thoughts? Brent imagined taking the fey apart limb from limb, slowly and with a lot of salt. The spriggan hissed and jumped back, putting more distance between them.
“Fuck with me again, and I’ll do it,” Brent promised, leveling the Glock at the creature.
“Coming out!” Travis called. Brent did not turn, unwilling to take his attention off the spriggan for even an instant.
He heard the weeds rustle and Travis murmuring to someone else, but no other voices. After a few more minutes, the ex-priest joined him, shotgun in hand.
“Three of them were already dead, along with a man, whom I guess was the truck owner,” Travis reported. “Looked drained dry, like mummies. If there were other bodies, they were farther back. I found two of them alive—the most recent
ones taken. Rachael and Alicia. I got them out of the mine. They’re waiting near the tunnel mouth, with the thermal blankets I packed in and some water bottles. Let’s finish this, and we’ll get Doug out here to clean up the mess.”
“Thought you’d never ask,” Brent muttered. His silver bullet hit the spriggan squarely in the forehead. The creature dropped to its knees with an unholy shriek, then threw itself in their directions, hands outstretched as if to rip them apart.
Travis’s shot with an iron round caught the spriggan full in the face. Its head split open, and the rest of its body shriveled. Brent unloaded another two shotgun shells of iron into the monster, and the creature collapsed in a flash of light that caused them both to look away. When they looked back, all that remained was a cindered shell.
“Now what?” Brent asked.
“Burn the fucker,” Travis said. “And chop it to bits, for good measure. Salt the remains. I saw those bodies in the mine. We need to make sure the son of a bitch stays dead.”
Brent moved warily to comply, deciding this was one situation where overkill was a virtue. He hacked at the stringy body with an iron machete and sprinkled the parts with salt and iron filings. Lighter fluid set what was left of the corpse aflame. Travis stood watch for a few moments until he seemed sure the creature would not rise from the ashes, and then went back to check on the victims, who were just beginning to rouse from the glamor the spriggan had placed on them.
“We found them,” Travis reported on his phone to Doug as he came back to rejoin Brent. “They’re weak, and it looks like they might have been drugged, maybe in shock. But we’ve got two of them alive, and the bodies of some others are in the mine.” He paused to listen. “Yeah, we’re just leaving. Give us fifteen minutes for a head start, and we’ll be long gone.”
He turned to Brent. “Come on. I need to call Ellie and let her know Rachael’s okay. Let’s get out of here before we have to explain any of this. Neither of us would look good in orange jumpsuits.”
Chapter Fourteen
“We had a less than friendly visit from the diocese,” Jon reported as Travis headed back from the archive. “They didn’t do anything, but they made a lot of comments that could be taken as a threat.”
“St. Dismas doesn’t belong to the diocese,” Travis snapped, then took a deep breath, remembering that his second-in-command knew that. “Sorry. I mean, the diocese doesn’t have any control over us.”
“No, but you know how sensitive donors are to any hint of scandal,” Jon replied. “A word in the right—or wrong—ear, some vague rumors floating around, and our funding could get cut back. Donations could fall.”
“Fuck,” Travis muttered. No one knew how to play politics like high-level Vatican operatives; after all, they’d been doing it since the time of the Medicis. Machiavelli learned everything he knew from the cardinals; of that, Travis felt certain after his time with the Sinistram.
“Any idea of what they’re fishing for?” he asked, doing his best not to take out his ire on his friend.
“You. Oh, besides that?” Jon answered. “I imagine whatever you did lately to piss off Father Liam has him trying to mark his territory and remind you who the alpha dog is.”
“I’ll call him. Not that he or the Sinistram have been remarkably helpful with the current fuckupedness,” Travis grated.
“Can’t imagine that central Pennsylvania is on their radar,” Jon said. “Not big-picture enough.”
“From what I can tell, it wasn’t on their radar the last two times the cycle happened—and I’d bet money they didn’t bother coming around before that, either.” That was one of the things that always bothered Travis the most about the Sinistram, the way it picked and chose its involvement in ways that seemed more driven by internal politics than saving lives.
“Do you really want their help? Be careful what you wish for.”
Travis glanced up. “No. Since they’d be about as helpful as the feds, rolling in and taking control and making everything worse.” He thought of Brent doing the same dangerous dance to stay out of CHARON’s reach. Ironic that they both found themselves saving the world in spite of the supernatural special ops folks, not because of them.
“I did my best to smooth things over, answered their questions, told them what they wanted to hear,” Jon continued. “But it was pretty clear that they really wanted to talk to you.”
“You didn’t tell them where I was?”
“Hell, no! Matthew and I’ve got your back,” Jon replied with a laugh. “But I’m sure they’ll return, and they aren’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer for long.”
“If they’re really as good at monitoring threat levels as they claim to be, I would have thought Father Liam could have figured it out for himself.”
“Maybe he has, but he still wants you to come to him.”
Travis felt sure that Jon was right; it was always a power game with Father Liam. No doubt that was part of what enabled his rise to the upper echelons of the Sinistram—that, and his ruthlessness wrapped in convenient piety.
“Travis? Are you still there?” Jon’s tone told Travis that his friend had tried and failed to get his attention.
“Yeah. I’m here. What else?”
“I asked if you knew when you’d be back. If it’s more than a few days, I’m gonna need to drive some paperwork out to you.”
“Don’t,” Travis warned. “Stay clear. We’ll figure out something, but stay the hell away from here. I have a feeling that it’s going to come to a head soon, and when it does, you’ll hear about it. Just…stay safe.”
“You, too,” Jon warned. “You’re not expendable, Travis. I seem to need to remind you of that fact. You paid a little too much attention when they were talking about guilt and martyrdom.”
Travis’s laugh was bitter. “Yeah. Maybe so. Don’t worry—I intend to come back, just to drive you and Matthew nuts.”
“You still working with that PI, or is he dead in a ditch somewhere?”
Travis grinned. “Actually, we’ve got an understanding. He’s okay.”
“Well, whadaya know? The Lone Ranger finally found a sidekick.”
Travis felt certain Brent would kick him somewhere else if he ever heard that reference. “Not exactly. But…we’re good.”
Jon was quiet for a moment. “I’m glad. Too risky to be doing this kind of thing all alone. Maybe it’s true, what they say about ‘mysterious ways’ and all that.”
“More like ‘necessity is the mother of intervention.’”
“That’s ‘invention.’”
“Says you.” Travis sighed. “Look, thanks for the head’s up. I’ll call Liam and get back as soon as I can. If you need something before then, there’s always email.”
“Be careful,” Jon replied. “Matthew says he’ll kick your ass if you don’t come back in one piece.”
“Duly noted.” Travis ended the call, dodged a couple of white and green slow-moving Preston Energy trucks, and speed-dialed Father Liam.
“Travis. So good to—”
“Lay the fuck off my people,” Travis snapped.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Liam replied, as smooth and unruffled as always.
“The hell you don’t. Tell your diocese dogs to stop sniffing around St. Dismas. Threatening a halfway house is low, even for you.”
“We merely want you to return to the fold.”
“Sorry, I’m busy saving the sheep that aren’t worth your while.”
“You’re meddling in things you don’t understand,” Liam replied, as his velvet tone turned to steel.
“I understand that a lot of people are going to die unless I do something to stop it.”
“Every war has collateral damage. In the big scheme of things, there are much more important targets.”
“Next you’re going to tell me we have to destroy the village to save it.”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“No . Listen to me, you sanctimonious prick. I’
m going to do my best to save some people who aren’t important to your grand scheme. When that’s done, I’ll be back in town if you want to talk. But keep your dogs away from St. Dismas. If there are whispers of any kind that affect the Center…just remember that you’re not the only one with a few well-placed friends.” Travis ended the call before Liam could bluster in response.
Travis pulled into the motel parking lot just as a pizza delivery driver pulled out, giving him an idea of Brent’s plans for dinner. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he’d only had the motel’s cold muffins for breakfast and a protein bar for lunch since he’d spent the day scouring Hazel’s research for more clues to how to stop the cataclysm.
“Pizza again?” he asked as he walked in.
Brent grinned. “You’re psychic, right?”
“No, dumbass, I passed the driver on the way in.” Travis shrugged out of his backpack and headed for the cardboard box that held the pizza.
“Make any progress?” Brent snagged two pieces before Travis reached the box and dodged out of the way.
“Not as much as I’d like,” Travis replied, deciding not to burden Brent with Liam’s most recent shenanigans. “Validation that the 1918 cycle looked a lot like both the 1968 one and the current mess. Hazel had some bits and pieces about the 1868 cycle, and it matches, too. Although there was so much chaos after the war and such a frenzy of mining and new railroads and factories being built that big messy accidents seemed to be the rule more than the exception.”
Brent nodded, his mouth too full of pizza to speak. “I have Simon looking into how to close a hell-mouth, hell gate, nexus…whatever we want to call it,” he said when he swallowed. “And I heard back from Chiara Hamilton, my friend Mark’s go-to researcher for hunter intel. She’s got some ideas on how to stop the grief demons. Figured we’d want them out of the way before we go after the genius loci.”
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