Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic

by SM Reine

  Thinking of monsters made my mind drift back to the mine shaft again. I shook my head and shoved the image of the mauled man out of my mind. I was playing the game for a distraction, not a reminder. Besides, a “monster” hadn’t killed that fellow, no matter what it had looked like. The only monsters in the world were human beings, and they could come up with evils aplenty without the help of mythical creatures.

  “Where are you?” I asked after answering greetings from guild mates, collecting my earnings from the auction house, and checking to see which of my buddies were online. Simon, AKA Makk Twuk, the mighty dwarf warrior, was missing. “You’re not in the game.”

  The pale glow of the screen shone on his face. He was intent on something, just not RealmSaga.

  “Not yet,” Simon murmured.

  I leaned across the table and peered at his screen. “What are you looking up?” I asked, recognizing search engine results. Then I leaned closer and caught a name. “Ah.”

  “Artemis Sideris.” He stared up at me. “She won Wimbledon?”

  “Yeah, do you know what sport that is?”

  His incredulous stare turned into a dirty glare. “I’m not that clueless. Besides—” he tapped the screen, “—it says right here. Wimbledon is the biggest tennis tournament in the world.”

  “Technically, it’s not any bigger than the three other slams, but it’s the oldest and most prestigious.” I nodded toward his laptop. “You read what happened after that, yet?”

  “I’ve got it open now.” His focus returned to the screen, his eyes tracking the words as he read. “...only twenty-one when she won her first slam... was the year her game truly came together, her grace on court and sheer agility a pleasure to watch in an era where bigger rackets and advanced string technology have made tennis a game of power and heavy hitting... expected her to win many more slams, but tragedy struck on the evening after her greatest victory. She, her coach, and her physical trainer were returning from a celebratory dinner when their car failed to get out of the way of a swerving truck quickly enough.” Simon lapsed into silence, though his eyes kept skimming down the screen. “She and the trainer were critically injured,” he finally said, summarizing. “The coach didn’t make it. She was the one driving. Later allegations claimed she was under the influence of alcohol, though she denied it.”

  “Her coach was only in his thirties and recently retired himself,” I said. “He’d been well liked and considered one of the greatest players of all time. I never followed the sport either, but from the articles, it sounded like the whole tennis world blamed her for his death.” I had read a lot of those articles at the time, the summer before last. Even though I hadn’t heard from Temi in years, I’d checked in on her career now and then, and my whole family had gotten up early to watch that Wimbledon final. It wasn’t every day the kid from down the street hit it big in professional sports. “The last I heard, she’d had a whole bunch of surgery done on her leg and was in rehab. Her knee cap had been shattered into a few bazillion pieces, and I think a bunch of her other bones and joints were smashed up too. She spent months in recovery, but I’m guessing from the limp—and the fact that she’s not playing again—that it never got back to 100 percent.”

  “Wow.” Simon closed the lid on his laptop. “Is that why you don’t like her? Because of the accident? Do you think she was lying about drinking?”

  “I don’t not like her,” I said, not quite the same as claiming I did like her, I admitted to myself. “But anyway it’s not about that. When we were kids, we were best friends. We were both homeschooled since we lived out there in the boonies, so we didn’t have a lot of other opportunities to meet children outside of our community. We ran all over the countryside together, having adventures and getting in trouble, being like sisters, I guess. Our fathers both decided we should get involved with sports to keep us from finding more trouble, so after school, our parents would take turns driving us into town and dropping us off, her for tennis practice and me for swim team. It was just fun and exercise for me, but she was really good. Obviously.” I waved to his laptop. “When we were fourteen, she went off to Florida to some tennis academy, and I never heard from her again. I wrote a couple of letters, but she didn’t write back, so...” I shrugged. “Whatever. High school started, and I made other friends.”

  “She just stopped talking to you?” Simon asked. “She doesn’t seem like someone who would do that.”

  “Oh, like you know her so well after spending all of two hours with her.”

  My words came out harsher than I’d intended, and Simon drew back at the sarcasm in my tone.

  “Well, she did save our asses in that two hours,” he said.

  I sank back into my seat and fiddled with the navigation keys, sending my avatar wandering around town, I pretended I was interested in the paladin hawking Arrows of Righteous Wrath in the chat window. I could feel Simon watching me though, like he was waiting for a more detailed explanation. The real explanation.

  I sighed. He’d nag it out of me eventually. Or guess it. He wasn’t one of those obtuse guys who had the perceptive acumen of a rock. “The night before she left, we might have...”

  “Fought?” he guessed.

  “No.”

  “Wrecked your dad’s car?”

  “No,” I said, giving him an exasperated look. Did he want the story or not?

  He seemed to be having fun guessing though, for he leaned forward, grinned, and tried, “Accidentally killed someone, then buried the body together, where nobody could find it?”

  What a lunatic. “Yeah, that was it. And now that you know, we’ll have to kill you too. Have you filled out your will yet?”

  “Nah, I don’t have anything to leave.”

  “You have your thriving app business,” I said. “Sure, you only sell four apps a day right now, but I bet they’ll take off once you’re dead.”

  Simon shook his head. “You’re thinking of art. Apps don’t work that way. The world forgets about you thirty-seven seconds after you stop promoting your work.”

  “Ah. So, are you going to log in and play, or what?” I waved to his computer, hoping to distract him from his original inquiry. “Drizzt and Strider are asking where you are. Or shall I tell them you’re in the shower?”

  Simon prodded at his crusty hair. He claimed to have used three canteens of water to wash up, but it wasn’t all that evident. At least we’d both be flame-retardant if someone’s campfire got out of hand tonight.

  “We’re going to see her again tomorrow,” he said. “I guess I can ask her why she stopped communicating with you.”

  I winced. So much for distracting him. “Don’t do that,” I said, turning the “don’t” into a drawn out whine.

  “If you’d enlighten me, I wouldn’t have to.”

  I glowered into my keyboard. “Look... I kissed her, all right?”

  In the stunned silence that followed, I had ample time to admire the crickets chirping outside and the distant hoots of an owl. A Great Horned or a Spotted? My grandfather would know. I should probably get up and close that window. The temperature had dropped since sunset.

  “You kissed her?” Simon finally asked. “On the lips?”

  “No, on her elbow.” Funny how sarcastic I became when I was uncomfortable.

  “But you like guys. I’ve seen you date lots of guys. Well, okay I’ve only seen you date two, but you mooned after at least five others while we were in school.”

  Seriously? He’d been counting? I needed to clean him up and find him a girl. Not Temi though. Even with her checkered past and her uncertain future, she was out of his league. “Yes, yes, I moon after guys now.”

  “Now? Does that mean you used to...” His eyebrows quirked. How had I known he’d be intrigued by this sort of thing?

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. I was fourteen. I was trying to find myself. That’s all.”

  His forehead scrunched up like the skin on a Shar Pei.

  “Could we drop it?” I as
ked.

  Simon lifted a hand. “Sh.”

  It was only then that I realized the scrunched forehead wasn’t turned toward me but toward the window I hadn’t gotten up to close. “Do you hear that?”

  A set of ghostly fingertips played the piano on my spine. “What? And you better not be screwing with me. I won’t find it very funny after the day we’ve had.”

  When Simon looked at me, his usual mischievousness was absent from his eyes. “It got quiet, really quiet.”

  The crickets had stopped chirping, and the owl had disappeared. A faint crack came from a campfire across the way, but nobody was talking. I leaned toward the window, but didn’t see anyone about. “Maybe people have gone to bed,” I said, though that didn’t explain the silent crickets. “Or maybe there’s a coyote or javelina out there. We are in the forest.”

  Prescott had a population of forty thousand, with another sixty in the nearby towns, but it also backed up to national forest on multiple sides. Three miles out of downtown to the south or west, and you were in woods filled with all sorts of critters. Granted, we hadn’t seen anything fiercer than deer yet at the White Spar, but we hadn’t been roaming around at night either.

  The image of that mauled body had popped into my head again when the first shriek came from the other side of the campground.

  CHAPTER 7

  Simon and I stared out the window, trying to pinpoint the source of the shriek. It came again, reminding me all too much of the cry we’d heard from the man in the tunnel, though this one belonged to a woman. The notes of terror and pain... they were the same. I hoped I was wrong, that it was unrelated. Maybe there was some domestic abuse going on in one of the trailers. Not that I’d be a fan of that, but it’d be less disturbing than another decapitation.

  Flashlights appeared at the far end of the campground, the beams streaking around, moving too wildly to be effective. I caught glimpses of trees and grass in their light but not much else. A man and a boy jumped out of the big camp host trailer. The man waved the boy back inside.

  “We should do something,” I whispered, feeling like a coward for huddling in the van.

  “Like get out of here?” Simon pointed to the driver’s seat. His face was ashen, and I knew he was thinking of the dead man too.

  “I thought you’d want to run out and take pictures.”

  “You take pictures in the aftermath not in the... math. That’s how you get killed.”

  One more scream came, but this one halted in the middle, cut off abruptly. The man charged into the woods. If he had a gun or anything useful for fighting a... big animal, I didn’t see it. I hooked my whip onto my belt and grabbed the bow and quiver. What I thought I was going to do out there I didn’t know, especially given how ineffective I’d been in the skirmish with the motorcycle riders. I grabbed a flashlight and slid open the van door anyway.

  I’d like to say I strode confidently toward the camp host’s site, but it was a furtive I-hope-nothing-notices-me sneak with many glances toward the trees on either side of the road. A car rumbled past on the highway, its lights momentarily piercing the forest. I peered in the direction of the scream and spotted the man charging into the woods toward... my stomach twisted. That wasn’t a body, was it? It was too far away to be certain. It was probably a log.

  “Yeah, tell yourself things like that,” I muttered, “and maybe that’ll make it true.”

  Simon’s voice floated after me. He was standing in front of the van, talking to a 9-1-1 operator on the phone. Good idea, and probably smarter than charging into the woods. I hesitated. It shouldn’t take long for the police to get out here. Maybe I’d be better off waiting. A few car doors were slamming in other camp sites, and I heard a number of harsh whispered conversations. Other people were watching, but nobody else was running out to help.

  “Oh my god, oh my god,” came the man’s voice from the woods.

  “Dad?” called the boy from the camper, a quaver in his tone. “What happened to Mom?”

  A loud rustling came from the man’s direction, and he didn’t respond.

  I clenched my fist tighter about the bow. Someone had to do something. I jogged toward the camp host site.

  A car started up behind me. People leaving? Not surprising. I wished I could see more of what was out there. The lack of electrical hookups meant nobody had anything stronger than flashlights and battery-operated camping lamps.

  A heartbeat before I reached the picnic table beside the trailer, another scream erupted from the woods. It was the man this time.

  “Dad!” the boy shrieked out a window two feet from my head.

  I jumped, almost dropping the bow. I groped for something reassuring to say to the kid, though who was I that he would believe me? “It’ll be all right,” I tried. “Wait inside.”

  The weeds rustled not twenty feet ahead of me. I nocked an arrow, lifted my bow, and drew it back to my jaw. I couldn’t fire randomly, not if the man might still be alive out there, so I waited, trying to keep my breathing calm so I could shoot when the opportunity arose. But I was no big game hunter who was used to facing down lions and rhinos on the African savannah. My hands shook so hard the arrow slipped free twice.

  Bright lights flared up behind me, shining into the woods. Simon had brought the van over.

  “Get in here, Del,” he ordered. “Wait for the police.”

  I should have heeded him, but my eyes were riveted to the brush. Something big and dark had streaked between trees now lit by headlights. I couldn’t make out details, but I was confident it wasn’t a person. Maybe a giant bear? One that had gone rabid? If it’d stop for a moment so I could get a clear shot...

  The kid was yelling again. I squinted into the woods, trying to concentrate. I took a few steps closer, toward the end of the picnic table.

  “Damn it, Delia,” Simon barked. He opened the van door and jumped out beside me, a tire iron in his hand. He reached for my arm, no doubt to drag me inside. Probably not a bad idea, but...

  There. A black form reared up behind a patch of bushes. It turned toward me, and I fired. It dropped down, bushes thrashing and wood snapping. I shook off Simon’s grasping hand and pulled out another arrow.

  “Look out!”

  This time Simon succeeded in grabbing me. He didn’t yank me toward the van but pushed me to the ground. A crack like a cannon firing sounded right behind us. Something sharp pelted the side of my face. The lighting dimmed. I ducked, confused as to what had happened until Simon spoke again.

  “What the—it threw a rock?”

  I stared past him and to the front of the van. One of the headlights was out, shards of clear plastic littering the asphalt. A head-sized stone lay down there too.

  “We better—”

  Another rock sailed out of the night. I ducked, but it wasn’t aimed at me. With disturbing accuracy, it slammed into the other headlight. Darkness smothered us. My night vision was useless after being so close to the lights. I patted around for my bow—I’d dropped it in the fall—and let Simon haul me to my feet. I didn’t need him yelling at me to convince me to race for the nearest van door. If my arrow had hit that thing, it sure hadn’t hurt it.

  I kept my head down, expecting more rocks to pelt us, but another shriek sounded instead, this time from the other side of camp. Glass shattered over there.

  “There’s not more than one, is there?” I threw open the door and lunged into the back of the van.

  Simon was already in the driver’s seat. “I think it ran around the camp.”

  “What is it?”

  “I didn’t get a good look.”

  Sirens wailed in the distance. The cops. Finally. I hoped they showed up with armor and automatic weapons. By now, I’d had enough of being brave and would be happy hiding in the van while the professionals took care of the problem. Rock-throwing bears were beyond my pay grade.

  I came up to the front seat at the same time as a pair of police cars drove into sight, their red lights throwing flash
es of illumination into the woods. Those flashes lit up the campground too. Three lots down from ours sat an SUV with the windshield and one of the windows smashed in. I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside—or had been.

  “Only two police cars?” I asked. “That’s it?”

  “All I told the operator was that there was screaming,” Simon said. “I didn’t think the lady would take me seriously if I mentioned monsters.”

  Four cops flowed out of the cars, guns in their hands. At least they were armed.

  “Bear, bear!” someone yelled from the other end of the campground. “It got—oh, Jesus, it killed Stacy!”

  Two of the cops raced in that direction. The remaining two looked around, probably trying to find the person who’d made the call. I didn’t want to talk to them, not after we’d already been questioned in regard to a murder that day—surely it would appear suspicious if we were the ones to report more trouble—but one of them headed for our van and one for the camp host’s trailer. Only that poor kid was in there. He wouldn’t be able to tell them anything cogent.

  Reluctantly, I climbed out of the van, leaving my bow and arrows inside. The last thing I needed was for them to think I was the crazy idiot running around attacking people. The officer veered toward Simon—he’d stepped outside first. They spoke quietly, and Simon pointed into the woods where the first two people had... disappeared.

  I stood back and shivered. The air felt about thirty degrees colder than when we’d first driven into the campground that evening. The screams had stopped, and I didn’t hear any more thrashing about in the woods. I did hear the rumble of engines approaching from the street. They sounded like motorcycles.

  “Must be motorcycle police,” I muttered. There was no way our two strange Harley riders would show up here. They couldn’t possibly know about this.

  Gunshots fired from the woods behind the battered SUV. Snatches of the cops’ conversation reached my ears.