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

by SM Reine

  The doors at the downtown library were locked. I checked the time on my phone. The building should have opened a few minutes ago.

  “Why do I have a feeling the library is on Monster Holiday?” I asked.

  “Because we haven’t seen a soul since we left the hotel?” Simon asked.

  “I wonder if something else vile happened last night.” I took out my phone to check the news from the local papers. After the previous day’s over-stimulating events, I’d slept like a fossil buried in sediment twenty feet deep. If strange predators wearing plastic armor had terrorized the city, I hadn’t heard it.

  Simon removed his computer bag and plopped down with his back to the front door. He pulled out his MacBook and propped it on his thighs. He was only wearing jeans, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and of course his white socks and sandals. The morning sun had little warmth, and I could think of more appealing places to do research, but maybe he believed someone would be by with the keys eventually. He’d wanted to find big paper maps of the area that he could spread out on a table. While everything was online these days, there were times when real maps were nicer to deal with. But if we weren’t going to be able to get in...

  I glanced at the street. Temi had driven off in her Jag to get us some breakfast from an organic grocery store she’d recommended and to drop Autumn off at a veterinary office that handled livestock as well as pets. I felt bad sending her on errands, but she hadn’t been confident in her ability to help us research. I thought she was selling herself short—just because she hadn’t finished school didn’t mean she wasn’t bright—but if she was more comfortable helping in other ways, that was fine. If nothing else, I knew we’d get something superior to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for our morning meal.

  “Nobody turned off their router for the night,” Simon said. “We’ve got good wifi here.”

  I finished scanning the Daily Courier’s latest entries. “Did you check your tracker this morning? If our new friends are still at the Vendome, they might have had a difficult night.”

  “I forgot. I didn’t think they’d go anywhere interesting until they heard back from us.” Simon dug out his phone. “What happened?”

  “Rabid Bear Slays Four at Historic Prescott Hotel,” I read the headline aloud.

  “The Vendome?” Simon asked.

  “The Vendome. The front door was torn from its hinges, the carpet and furniture shredded on the first floor, and three doors on the second floor bashed in. Those doors were on the street side of the hotel. A businessman was killed in his bed in one room and a couple of tourists in another. The bodies were mauled horribly, two with the heads decapitated. None of the eyewitnesses saw more than a black blur, though most people were busy fleeing the hotel, some through their second-story windows, when the screams started. The police say it was the same animal that attacked the campground. Residents are being told to stay inside until its been found and brought down.”

  “It sounds like staying inside didn’t work out well for the people in the hotel,” Simon said.

  “Yeah.”

  “The street side of the hotel on the second floor, you said?”

  I nodded. “The article doesn’t specifically say that corner room was targeted, but I think we can assume the creature was looking for our friends.”

  “And the sword that can supposedly damage it, though it doesn’t seem like anyone has drawn blood from it yet. Unless...” Simon drummed his fingers on his laptop. “Unless it doesn’t have blood.”

  “Because it’s made from Mountain Dew bottles?”

  “Well, all the evidence points to it being something weird. And we didn’t see that fight. We don’t know for sure that it wasn’t injured.”

  “It couldn’t have been too injured if it was tearing through the forest, flinging itself at innocent people’s vans,” I said.

  “True, but Eleriss and Jakatra must have driven it back somehow to buy themselves time to jump on their bikes and get away.”

  I flicked my hand to concede the point.

  “They’ve moved,” Simon said, eyeing his tracking app. “They’re at... let me switch to the better map and check that street. They moved to the Best Western. Just up the street from our Motel 6.”

  “How wonderful.” It was a good thing last night’s sleep had been peaceful, because tonight’s might be less serene. “They must have decided it’d be less reprehensible to invite monsters to destroy chain hotels rather than historic buildings.”

  “Yeah, I wonder why they’re staying in one place at all if they know they’re being hunted. They could sleep during the day and drive around at night to avoid the predator.”

  I shrugged. “Whatever logic is guiding those two, I don’t think it’ll end up making a lot of sense to us.”

  “I also wonder what it is they’re still looking for. Maybe they only have half of their weapon, or it’s missing some key part that will make it more powerful. Otherwise, why would they be searching for another cave? Something else that they need is here in Prescott.”

  “You better find their cave for them then.”

  “Yes, yes.” Simon tapped on the keyboard. “I’m on it.”

  I sat down beside him and pulled out my own computer. A breeze whispered down the empty street, pushing orange and brown leaves before it. Even though I’d grabbed a jacket that morning, the cold from the cement soon seeped through my jeans. I hoped the sun would rise over the buildings and warm our spot soon, especially if no one showed up to open the library.

  Simon had finally uploaded the voice file to our server, so I sent the link off to the linguistics professor I had in mind. Next I pulled up local maps to see if I could help identify potential cave spots. Simon’s software was good, but we’d need to narrow down the search area or it’d take a year to cover all the ground around Prescott.

  “We’re looking for limestone caverns, right?” he asked.

  “Must be. There are lava tubes up around Flagstaff, but I don’t think there was any volcanic activity this far south.” Of course, I hadn’t thought there were any significant caves in these mountains. I ran a quick search for limestone quarries and came up with a hit. “Yeah, it looks like there are deposits around.”

  “And limestone caves are formed by water,” Simon mused, his fingers tapping across his keyboard.

  “Yes, they’re usually just below the water table. We’ve got the Prescott and Chino aquifers around here. Those might be likely spots.” I ran a search to find the exact locations of the subterranean water supplies.

  “Anything right under town or in the farmlands would be unlikely,” Simon mused. “Especially if the caverns are as big as those guys think. People would have found them when they were drilling for wells.”

  “Hm. The Prescott aquifer is to the north-northeast of Prescott and northwest of Prescott Valley. This map isn’t very good, but it looks like the Granite Creek area, maybe including Willow and Watson Lakes.” I was guessing because the map I’d found lacked above-ground terrain features. I wondered if we could find out where the librarian lived, show up at her door, and ask for the key.

  Simon leaned over to study my screen. “There are some good-sized parks in there. Remember that hike we did the first day? The one that went north of the rail trail? Nobody could have drilled under all that granite around the lakes.”

  “Oooh,” I said, the craggy Granite Dells popping into my mind. We’d clambered all over those giant boulders. In spots, the trails were simply marked with white dots painted on the rocks. “Think that’s a big enough area to hide their cave?”

  “Could be. It’ll be hard for my program to see under that much solid mass. I’ll mark the lakes though. Where’s the Chino aquifer? Under town?”

  “Yeah, and under the farms out there. It looks like it might extend into the national forest to the west.” I pulled up another map. “Of course, there’s nothing guaranteeing a cave would be in the aquifer systems. If we’re looking at the entire Verde River watershed... that
’s hundreds of square miles.”

  “I’ve got it all up over here,” Simon said. “I’ll do some comparisons and see what matches our criteria.”

  I sneaked a peek at his screen. He’d found much more detailed maps than I had. It figured.

  The rumble of big trucks drifted up the street. Someone was out in town, risking the monster-infested neighborhoods.

  “Ah,” I said when they came into sight. A convey of National Guard vehicles rolled past, hummers and 5-Tons painted in tan desert colors. The soldiers in the seats peered to either side of the street with interest. A grizzled older man with gray hair who was being driven by a woman my age gave us a suspicious squint. I waved cheerfully.

  “Sorry, no monsters out before dusk,” I murmured as the hummer drove out of sight.

  “Huh?” With his attention focused on the screen, Simon hadn’t noticed the trucks.

  “Nothing.”

  My phone bleeped. I had a text message from an unfamiliar number with a Phoenix area code. It read: What the hell was that?

  I took a guess and texted back, Professor Wilkons?

  Yes. I’m running it through the computer, but there’s nothing familiar about that language. Where are you?

  I’m not surprised. Prescott. I thought about calling him, but remembered him as a quirky introvert who preferred research to teaching and dead languages to spoken ones.

  Isn’t a bear mauling the city up there?

  Something like that. Will you let me know what the computer says? We’ve got a mystery up here.

  No shit.

  “You know, linguists aren’t nearly as articulate as you’d think,” I said.

  “I like your lakes.” Simon was in his own world.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Undeveloped land over the aquifer. It’s nearby too. Your Verde Watershed includes a lot of national parks too—couldn’t you see some awesome caves hiding under those red rocks in Sedona?—but I’m going to put my program to work on the local stuff first. Eleriss and Jakatra moved up the street to the Best Western, not to Sedona or Flagstaff or anywhere else in Northern Arizona.”

  I nodded. “They specifically said it was in this area.”

  My phone beeped again. It’s not Klingon. I checked.

  I showed Simon the screen, figuring it would amuse him.

  All he said was, “I could have told you that.”

  I returned the text: As odd as the two speakers are, I don’t think they’re Trekkies. They thought they were alone and didn’t know we were recording them, so I’m sure they were using their native language. As soon as I sent the message, I wondered if I should admit to our spying tendencies to a university professor. I was on the verge of explaining that they’d been trespassing in our van when Wilkons responded.

  Understood. The computer program will run it against all of the known languages on Earth, dead and living. I just thought I’d check popular fictional ones.

  A familiar Jag rolled up and stopped next to the curb. The utter availability of parking in downtown Prescott was notable. I wondered how much these “bear” maulings would hurt the tourist industry.

  I stood, glad to have an excuse to remove my rump from the cold cement. If Simon had noticed his would-be girlfriend drive up, or me putting my laptop aside to stand, he didn’t show it. He was chewing on his lip and staring intently at something.

  “Hey, Temi.” I waved and my stomach gurgled an even more enthusiastic greeting when it noted the canvas grocery bag in her hand.

  She strode up the walkway, her limp barely noticeable, her face grim, but she nodded at my greeting. “There are army vehicles all over town.”

  “National Guard, I think. We saw them come down this street.”

  “The police have barricades up by that hotel and coffee shop we visited,” Temi said.

  “Not surprising. Did you hear about the carnage there last night?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t hear about any men in black leather being among the dead. When you were researching, did you...?”

  “They’ve moved their motorcycles to the Best Western, so I’m sure they’re fine.”

  “Oh, that’s only a couple of blocks away from our motel, isn’t it?” She gazed up the street.

  “Don’t remind me,” I said. “Anything promising in that bag?”

  “Not much.” Temi handed it to me. “There were only two people working at New Frontiers. These are yesterday’s leftovers.”

  I pulled out several wedges of salmon, an entirely-too-healthy-sounding kale salad, and some promising cranberry coconut bars. “Looks a lot better than our usual breakfast. Yo, Simon, you want some salmon?”

  He blinked and looked up. “Oh, Artemis. Hi. Uhm.” He waved shyly.

  I dropped containers of salmon and coconut bars in his lap, knowing he wouldn’t touch the greens unless his mother was here—or he thought it would impress Temi. He’d already returned his focus to the screen, though, and didn’t notice.

  Temi considered the brick front of the library building. “When you spoke of coming here to do research, I imagined you inside, at tables with books around you.”

  “Yes, me too,” I said. “We’re still hoping someone might show up to unlock the door.”

  Temi sat at the bottom of the steps and opened the containers holding her food. I contemplating returning to my research—Simon seemed to have the cave hunt in hand, but I wanted to look for information on the coin Eleriss had given us. I wished I knew of an archaeological equivalent of that DNA sequencer Autumn had mentioned. It’d be great if we could scan a picture of the coin and run it through some software that would spit out an identification of the civilization and era it had come from. As it was, I’d have to post pictures to some archaeology forums and see if anyone had any ideas. That could wait though; I didn’t have a scanner, so it’d take a trip to one of the shipping stores that had computers.

  Breakfast in hand, I sat at the bottom of the steps with Temi, leaving Simon, his fingers flying again, in his spot against the doors. Another convoy of National Guard vehicles passed us by, and I wondered if we’d soon see troops marching through the streets with rifles.

  “Your friend said she’d call when she’s ready to be picked up,” Temi said after we’d finished eating. “It sounded like she’ll be able to access a lab right away.”

  “That’s good. I’ve got someone working on the language program, so—” My phone beeped. “That might be him now.”

  The text message was indeed from Professor Wilkons. No matches. It’s weirder than Basque.

  “Hm.” I typed in, What about single-word matches? If there aren’t any full language matches, might there at least be some shared words?

  We’ll see. I have the computer running a deeper analysis.

  Thank you.

  I put the phone down and chomped on my salmon. I’d never been a fish lover, but I felt a vague sense of duty to my body to eat it and the salad before diving into the dessert bar.

  “Basque?” Temi asked. She’d been peering over my shoulder as I texted. “That’s a Spanish language, right?”

  “Not exactly. The Basque region is located mostly in Spain—it’s up around the border shared with France, but it’s a language isolate that doesn’t have anything in common with the Indo-European romance languages surrounding it. It’s not like any other languages, really. There are a lot of interesting hypotheses by linguists, trying to link it to more distant languages—all contested though. One of my school friends did a paper on the idea that the Basques are descended from the Neanderthals, because it’s widely known that they lived in Western Europe. She had some modern information on blood types and DNA analysis, speaking of all that stuff, to back it up. It was an interesting paper.”

  Temi turned toward the street, her face thoughtful. “You guys have a wide breadth of knowledge. Is there anything that would be useful for me to study? To assist with research?”

  “Actually, we have extremely specialized knowledge th
at’s not at all useful outside of our business.” I smirked. “That’s what a degree in a specific field gets you. If you want to study something, that’s fine, but do it because you’re interested in it, not because of us. All this monster stuff is outside of the realm of our usual work. Most people who do antiquing as a source of income don’t have a formal education in a related field. They pick it up as they go and learn what people will pay for and what they won’t. I’m still learning myself when it comes to that.”

  “I wonder...”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I’m sure it’s a dumb idea.”

  I thought of the idea she’d proposed that Autumn had shot down. I didn’t want her to think we wouldn’t value any contributions she might have. “You know, a lot of breakthroughs and innovations come from individuals who don’t have a background in the field. Sometimes the experts in an industry have this sort of myopic thinking where they’re so influenced by their peers and mentors, who were trained by their peers and mentors, that they can’t see the problems from a fresh angle. Whereas an outsider can bring that fresh perspective, especially in this day and age when there’s so much information available to anyone who wants to research it.”

  Temi shrugged. “I don’t have any brilliant innovations. I was just wondering, well, this Basque isn’t the only language isolate, I assume? What if those two were speaking another? From somewhere on the planet that hasn’t been studied thoroughly and isn’t in your professor’s computer.”

  It seemed Temi wasn’t ready to buy into the notion of alien visitors either. She hadn’t seen the glow-in-the-dark eyes...

  “There aren’t that many places left on the planet that haven’t been studied thoroughly,” I said. “The languages of New Guinea haven’t been scrutinized in much depth yet, but those two look like a couple of white guys, even if they’re a little odd in appearance. They sure don’t look like some native of New Guinea.”

  “Do I look like a native of New Mexico?” Temi asked dryly.

  “Well, no, but it’s hard to imagine some obscure back-wilderness race adopting a couple of white kids and raising them to speak their language. Or some dead language. Unless...” I trailed off. Now I was the one hesitant to share stupid ideas.