The Goddess Durga Series: (Urban Fantasy box set)

by Jen Pretty

  As the door opened and the icy air met my face, my feet glued to the floor and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to get off the plane. How did people live here? It was like the North Pole.

  “Welcome to the Ottawa International Airport. My name is Wendy,” a cheery woman said as I disembarked and regretted every decision, I had made in my whole life that had led me to this place. The cold air permeated my pants and froze my skin on contact. A breeze came across the open tarmac and burned my cheeks, freezing my nostrils shut and frosting my eyelashes, making my eyes water. The tears froze to my face, burning like acid.

  “Why are we here?” I asked. I knew my basic Canadian geography and Ottawa wasn’t particularly northern. Not that I wanted to go more north after experiencing this first hand.

  “We have to switch planes. Ours isn’t made to land on snow,” Cedric said. I looked back at the plane, wishing we could go home. What is this crazy-ass, fallen vampire doing in this godforsaken place anyway?

  “Come on, Lark. It's an adventure,” Drew said with a shiver to his voice. He was huddled up beside me a bit closer than casual, but he blocked the worst of the wind. Maybe that was why Canadians were so friendly; they huddled together for warmth.

  Positive I had just solved the mystery of the Canadian people, I followed along behind Wendy who led us into the airport to wait for our more winter-ready plane.

  Inside was fast food restaurants and cafés as well as hordes of people moving about. It was a busy hub of international travel.

  Drew stopped at a shop and bought some mittens for himself and me. I stuffed those in the pocket of my parka. Wendy walked us to a comfortable restaurant. It was warm in the booth and we all removed our coats and hats and settled into the fake leather covered bench seats to wait.

  “How long will we be waiting here?” I asked Cedric. I wanted to get this over with, so we could get back to a more reasonable climate. I was not hardy enough for this place.

  “I think an hour or so. Just long enough to get some food and we will be on our way. The next plane ride is only an hour. A local vampire thinks he spotted Vernon in a hunting camp beside the Hudson Bay.”

  Freaking vampires, what the heck would possess someone to live up here?

  We ordered some food and ate quietly for a few minutes.

  “Do you think it will be colder further north?” I asked around a bite of my french fries covered in cheese and gravy. It was pretty good. Not as good as bacon.

  Cedric looked at me with a bit of a sad expression. “Vampires don’t really feel the cold,” he said.

  “What? Drew does,” I objected.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty cold,” Drew agreed.

  “That’s because you are young still,” Vlad said to Drew before taking another sip of his soup.

  Drew nodded and went back to eating. Vampires physiology was weird.

  Just as we finished, Wendy popped back up out of nowhere. “Hey, guys, your plane is ready. You can follow me and I will lead the way.” Wendy’s chipper voice contrasted harshly with my interest in going back outside, but we shuffled out of the booth and followed dutifully along behind her while bundling back into our coats, hats, and mitts.

  By the time we got to the door, I was sweating, but that didn’t last long. As the outside door slid open, winter hit me right in the face. I had forgotten how cold it was or maybe I just blocked it out. My eyelashes froze together, so I could barely open my eyes. The air I pulled into my lungs burned and I coughed it back out again. Looking around, except for Drew, everyone else seemed to be handling the temperature with stoic dignity. I liked Drew a bit more at that moment as I watched him tuck his face down into the front of his coat and walk along nearly blind. He and I were on the same team. The say-no-to-snow team. I hurried after Wendy, in her pretty jacket and stylish scarf and hat set until she started walking us towards a small plane, then I passed her and hurried up the steps and through the door into the tiny craft.

  There were only ten seats, and they were crammed in together. Not luxurious like Vincent’s jet. I wasn’t sure about flying in the tiny tin can, but I was sure I didn’t want to be outside any longer. The rest of the team caught up to me and Wendy wished us well and closed the door before she sauntered back towards the airport like her ass wasn’t being frozen off. I sighed with relief when I found a seat directly under a heater and curled up under a blanket. I had an hour to thaw out before I would have to go out in that weather again. The plane wasn’t that warm, but it was warm enough.

  The plane dipped and rose in the sky, making my stomach drop and leap up into my throat. Drew was looking kind of pale too, but Vlad just read a book while Cedric played a game of solitaire. They seemed relaxed even in the face of certain death. Every time the plane dropped, I was sure it was going down and we would all die in a fiery ball. Then it would right itself, and we would carry on to our destination.

  Durga had been surprisingly quiet the whole day, but I could feel her stirring now that it was getting late in the afternoon. It was just about the time I would regularly get up. She and I had gotten into a pretty solid routine. She left me alone during the day and I let her hunt at night. It was working for us.

  “Ok, we are going to be landing in about 5 minutes,” the pilot's voice came over the tiny mechanical speaker. “It might be pretty rough, leave your seatbelts on.”

  “Oh, great,” I muttered. At least I would be on the ground again.

  The plane dropped quickly. Out the window, to my left, was all white but out the window to my right was the blue of the Hudson Bay. It stretched out until it met the horizon. The sight distracted me until a bump alerted me to the fact we had touched down. The following bumps and skids and slides and screams were just the icing on the cake of this hunting trip. Finally, the plane slid sideways to a stop and I unclenched my hands from the armrests, taking deep breaths to try and calm my racing heart. Everyone was looking at me like I had lost my mind and I realized I was the only one who had been screaming. I wondered if we could drive home as I tucked back into my winter clothes. Drew handed me a pair of snow pants. I had no idea where they came from, but once I had them on, he passed me a pair of thick insulated boots.

  “I think I love you, Drew,” I muttered.

  He gave me a goofy grin, and we disembarked from the death trap and into the frozen world that would probably kill us.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Someone sat on a snowmobile at the bottom of the small steps, bundled up beyond recognition. As I watched, they turned their helmeted head and lifted the visor reveling a man with glowing eyes. Not a man, he was a vampire.

  The chainsaw hum of more snowmobiles drew my attention away and three more vehicles pulled up beside the first one.

  The engines turned off and the silence of the snowy landscape was broken only by the whistle of the wind as it breached my hat and froze my ears. I tucked my hood up and pulled it tight as the vampire swung off his snowmobile and swaggered towards us like he was straight out of an old-time western movie. I snorted at the thought. He could very well have been around when the west was won. He cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “Thanks for coming, folks. My name is Ajax. I’m the leader up here in the north. We can take you to our estate on the snowmobiles.” He gave me a wink. “You can ride with me, darlin'.”

  I felt my stomach rise into my mouth, the only warning I had that Durga had something to say to this frozen cowboy.

  Instead, the snow suddenly became cast in red as my eyes changed and Durga blasted forward, taking over completely and shoving him to the ground. She straddled his chest and held him down by the throat as my knife flashed into my hand and she sliced his cheek in a shallow, quick movement.

  The scent of his blood filled the air even before anyone else had moved. She pulled his scent in through my nose and then let it out with a gentle sigh.

  “You may escort us to the estate,” she said, as she dusted the snow off my knees before retreating to her usual place inside me.

&
nbsp; “Sorry,” I said awkwardly. Swallowing the vomit that tried to force its way up my throat. Clive took a step back and watched me like I might explode again. God. Someday I would get used to Durga’s random acts of violence. Today was not that day.

  “Shit, Lark,” Drew breathed. Like it was my fault that Durga was a terrible house guest.

  Ajax didn’t get up right away, he lay in the snow and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths and giving thanks to whatever God he worshipped. Sometimes Durga was a bit of a drama queen.

  He rose and dusted the snow off himself, then nodded once deeply and waved me towards his snowmobile. Clive tossed our bags onto a sled attached to the back of one of the snowmobiles and secured it down, then we each climbed on one of the noisy machines behind the driver and we took off across the open range. The adrenaline of sliding over the snow at breakneck speeds was tempered by the fact that I couldn’t feel my face and had to tuck into Ajax’s back so I didn’t lose my nose to frostbite.

  The ‘estate’ as they called it, was a low squat building that stretched across the landscape. The flat roof was buried in snow, but a garage door opened as we slid up and the snowmobiles drove straight in, the door sliding shut behind us.

  I climbed off the machine and took off my mitt to wrap my warm hand around my numb nose. Vlad walked up next to me looking fine and not frostbitten at all.

  “You aren’t made for this weather, are you Lark?”

  “What was your first clue?” I asked in a snide tone, but I jokingly bumped my shoulder into his, making him laugh.

  “Ok, folks, if y’all want to follow me, I can show you to your room and then we can head out to the cabin we thought we saw that old snake hiding at,” Ajax said before marching towards a door that led out of the garage.

  As I walked through the door, I was surprised to find it looked like a house from the early 70s. The walls were wood, and the furniture was all a green plaid pattern. The curtains matched the carpet in a shade of orange that should not have ever existed. Despite the retro look, it was warm and there was a fire crackling away by one wall.

  There were several other vampires around and about a dozen or so humans. I supposed they had to get their blood from somewhere. Living in the middle of nowhere, couldn’t offer easy access to volunteers.

  “Here you are, guys. Sorry, we can’t offer nicer accommodations, but hopefully, we can wrap this up quickly and get y’all back to where you came from.” He looked at me; I was still wearing my snowsuit and felt like a blimp wearing it indoors, but I was barely starting to feel my ass again and I wasn’t ready to take it off.

  Clive dumped our bags on the bed and I rooted through mine for some gum. Chewing it always helped settle my stomach. The nausea from Durga’s display beside the airplane was still plaguing me. She tried to come forward again, but I squashed her down. No more Mrs. Nice Lark. This deity needed to learn some manners.

  I waddled into the tiny washroom making a classy swish-swish noise as the legs of my snow pants rubbed together, then struggled out of the snowsuit. God, all these layers were inconvenient.

  When I walked back out carrying my outdoor gear, the team was ready to go and waiting by the door that led back to the garage. Vlad was in the middle of an animated discussion in Russian with one of the female vampires. It sounded like they knew each other and the woman was smiling at him in a way I recognized. Her hand was on his arm and she laughed a bit too loud. Yup, some history there. I didn’t know much about Vlad’s life, he was a private guy, so this was a rare insight into the world of Vlad.

  I fought my way back into the snow suit and we all climbed aboard the noisy snowmobiles. When the garage door opened, I realized it was fully dark out now, even though it was still early evening. Luckily the sleds had headlights. This time I pulled my hood down tighter and tucked my chin into the coat. I still had to bury my face in Ajax’s back, but it wasn’t as bad as the first time. I was able to peek sideways for a few moments as we left the forest trail an hour later and approached the open shoreline to catch a glimpse of the bay. The white-capped waves that glittered in the moonlight seemed to call to me. It didn’t feel like when I sensed a vampire. It was like a beacon guiding me home. Every wave was a hand drawing me forward.

  The snowmobile stopped in front of a small log cabin edging the Hudson Bay. The frigid water lapped at the shore. When I commented that it should be frozen, one of the other vampires informed me that it was high enough in salt that it wouldn’t freeze until nearly Christmas, but he warned me to keep my eyes peeled for polar bears. Like this frozen world wasn’t already deadly enough.

  We entered the cottage and every vampire breathed deeply. I sucked air in through my nose too but didn’t smell anything. These vamps could scent a whole lot more than I could so I watched as Vlad circled the tiny room, his nostrils flaring. It could hardly be called a cabin. The one-room structure was so small, it only had a bed and a wood burning cook stove. I took off my mitt, held my hand above the stove and slowly lowered it until I was touching it. It was cold.

  “He was here, but not today. How long ago did you see him?” Vlad asked Ajax.

  “Yesterday morning. We were out fishing on the Bay and saw movement. I pulled in close to shore, but there is nowhere to dock here. Not that I would have faced him alone anyway. I’m only half your age, Vlad.”

  “No, you did the right thing. Maybe we could go around the area and see if Durga has any idea which direction he went,” Vlad said, glancing sideways at me for confirmation as he said it.

  I nodded and we all mounted up and moved ‘em out. We trailed along the shore of the bay for a while and then doubled back, moving more inland to the tree line. The snow here was more powdery and deeper, so the snowmobiles had to go slower, but in the protection of the tree line, I was able to send out my senses and look for the old vampire or any vampire. I slowed my breathing and reached out farther. I found the vampires back at the estate, but nothing else. I tapped Ajax shoulder and shook my head when he turned to look at me. He cursed and turned the machine around before stopping and shutting it off to talk to the rest of the vampires.

  “Sorry, guys. I don’t sense him here at all,” I said, pulling my face back into my coat to try and warm up my chin.

  “I haven’t caught his scent either,” Vlad said. “He must have left. I checked with the Canadian Air traffic control and there were several planes scheduled within a reasonable distance of here in the last 24 hours. He could have easily been on one of them. There is even a road kept plowed close enough he could have taken a sled there and then driven out. Particularly if he knew he was spotted.”

  “I wish I had been able to contact Vaughn sooner,” Ajax said, kicking some snow from his boot.

  “Don’t worry about it; it's only a matter of time before we catch up to him,” I assured Ajax, though I had my serious doubts. Vernon was sneaky and smart for a fallen vampire. All the other fallen vampires I had met were like wild animals. Completely out of control and vicious.

  We headed back to the estate. Our plane wouldn’t arrive until the next morning to take us back to Ottawa. Another failed attempt.

  At the house, we had some dinner and Ajax set up my phone to access the internet. So, I found Frankie online and sent him a message. My phone dinged a second later.

  What the heck are you doing in Canada? – he sent.

  Chasing down the creepy old vampire. – I replied

  Jesus. Did you find him? - He sent. He knew exactly who I meant.

  He was here, but now he’s gone. – I replied.

  Frankie had become a bit obsessed with catching Vernon after the way he had been knocked out and tied up in the warehouse to be used as bait to kill me. He had been gone more than he had been home over the last month; following leads acquired from mysterious sources in the magical community. I offered to share leads with him, but he said he wanted to divide and conquer.

  Laughter from the living room caught my attention. Vlad and the Russian vampire he had b
een talking to before were sitting close with smiles on their faces. She introduced herself at dinner. Her name was Darya and, apparently, she and Vlad knew each other before he left Russia for North America. I suspected it was more than a passing acquaintance and hearing him laugh like that confirmed it in my mind.

  I smiled to myself and continued drinking my cup of tea.

  “What are you smiling at?” Ajax asked as he sat down at the table across from me, a cup of coffee in hand.

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  “Do you speak Russian?” he whispered, looking past my shoulder at the pair of vampires giggling on the couch.

  “No, but that is a universal language, is it not?” I replied taking another sip of my tea. He flashed me a crooked grin.

  “I suppose so. I think I might be losing my first in command. It sounds like she might be heading south with you,” He said before taking a sip of his coffee.

  I peeked over my shoulder, wishing I had learned Russian so I could eavesdrop properly. Not that it was any of my business.

  By three in the morning I had played every game I had on my phone and killed my phone battery. Ajax turned on an action movie and some of the other vampires came out to watch with us. One of them made popcorn and placed it on the table in front of me cautiously watching my every move before he moved back across the room to a chair that was far enough that he could barely see the tv, but he kept his eyes towards my feet anyway. Thank you, Durga, for making my life so awkward. I sighed and tried smiling at him, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye so I gave up and ate the damn popcorn. Only a couple more hours till we could leave and the poor vampire would be safe from me and my crazy ass deity.

  I rose to use the washroom as the movie ended and the vampire who had been afraid of me left so fast that he knocked over his chair in his haste.

  I stared at myself in the mirror. Durga tried to push her way to the surface and my eyes turned red, but I pushed her back down. I wasn’t crazy about feeling like a bully and that’s what it felt like to have an innocent vampire afraid of me. I walked out of the bathroom and lay down on the bed in the corner of the guest room.