Witch Hunter

by Shannon Curtis

  “Dave!”

  Dave startled at the call and drew back. They both turned. Noah was hurtling down the street, weaving his wave through the crowd.

  “Hey, Noa—oh.” Dave grunted when the kid ran into him full tilt. Noah clung to his legs, and Dave stooped down to hug him back.

  “How’s my little badass going?”

  Sully winced at the language, but Noah laughed. “Great. How is the king of badass?”

  Oh, my God. Now the kids were repeating it. She watched as Noah’s father—George, Susanne’s husband—shook his head as he approached, overhearing his son.

  “The king is good,” Dave remarked, then dropped Noah to his feet. He shook hands with George. “Hey, how you doing?”

  George nodded. “We’re...getting by.” Sully could see the haunted look in his eyes, the dark circles and deep grooves. His wife’s death had hit him hard. She ruffled Noah’s red hair.

  Dave looked down at the little boy. “Hey, do you want to come help me at the booth? Folks might be a little braver if they know you’ve got one of my tattoos...?” He raised his brow at George, who nodded in relief. “Thanks. I’ve got to go watch his sister in the pumpkin fairy production.”

  Sully blinked away a tear. Susanne was usually one of the stagehands for these things, working behind the scenes to get all the kids into costumes, soothe fluttery tummies and offer all sorts of encouragement. Noah’s sister, Cherie, would be facing her first concert without her mom.

  “Take your time, Dave and I can watch Noah,” she told him.

  George patted her on the arm. “Thanks,” he said hoarsely, his eyes red, and hurried away before his son noticed.

  Dave stretched his hand out to Noah. “Come on, LB, let’s go get our ink on.”

  Noah scrunched up his nose. “LB?”

  “Little Badass.” Dave put a hand up over his mouth and mock whispered, “It’ll be our secret.”

  Noah nodded. “Okay, KB.”

  Dave tilted his head. “KB?”

  “King of Badass,” Noah explained, his tone suggesting it was obvious.

  Dave chuckled. “Yeah, that’ll definitely be our secret.”

  Sully watched as the tall, leather-clad man led the little boy over to the booth. Noah was practically skipping. Jacob greeted both of them, then went and got a stool for Noah to sit on as Dave set up his kit.

  It was sweet, in a weird, testosterone-laden way.

  She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and glanced at the list of twelve names. Mrs. Forsyth was already trying to locate the older purebloods, and as soon as Dave was ready for clients, Jacob would be out combing the crowd.

  For now, it was her turn. She was on the hunt for purebloods.

  * * *

  Dave taped the adhesive bandage over the new tattoo and smiled at the twentysomething-year-old woman. She flicked her hair over her shoulder and eyed him.

  “I’m thinking about getting a tattoo...here,” she said. His gaze dropped to where she indicated. She was drawing her denim skirt higher up her thigh.

  His eyebrows rose, and he gently grasped her wrist, stopping her from baring any more leg. “Uh, another time. It’s best to let the body recover a little before going for the next tatt.”

  She pouted. He was sure she was trying to be flirtatious, but all he noticed was that her mouth didn’t have that cute little quirk in it like Sully’s did.

  The woman sighed. “Fine. Maybe later, then?”

  He gave her a noncommittal nod. “Maybe.”

  He turned away to clean and sterilize the needles, and looked up when Jacob joined him.

  “How many is that?”

  “Seven,” Dave said, washing the needles in a solution before placing them in the pot on top of the camping stove Jacob had provided. It was rough, it was rudimentary, but the end result was sterilized needles ready to be used on the next pureblood null to make it to his booth.

  Mrs. Forsyth had managed to locate the older purebloods, and Sully had tracked down three. Jacob had found two.

  Dave leaned back to look behind Jacob. “Where’s Noah?”

  “Oh, he’s right—” Jacob jerked his thumb over his shoulder as he turned. He frowned. “He was right behind me.”

  Dave closed his kit with a snap and rose. He lifted the cloth on the booth to look under. No Noah. He straightened to scan the crowd. “Well, he’s not there, now.”

  Jacob paled. “I swear, he was right behind me.”

  Dave nodded, holding up a hand. “Okay. He’s a kid. There could be lots of explanations, from deciding to go watch his sister in her concert to being distracted by a funny-shaped bird poop. Let’s look.”

  Jacob nodded. “I’ll go look around the stage,” he commented, and strode off in the direction of the area designated for performances.

  Dave sighed. “Great. I’ll take the bird poop.” He walked around the booth, scanning the crowd. He wasn’t going to panic. Sure, the kid was cute. Pretty cool, actually. And tatted up with his own special ward. Noah was also full of curiosity, if his gazillion and one questions about tattooing, motorbikes, sunglasses, laser eyes, magic powers, leather underpants—how the hell that had come up, he still didn’t know—and needles maybe turning into ninja spears for grasshoppers were anything to go by.

  “Noah!” he called out the boy’s name as he made his way through the crowd. The colors of the booths started to darken, and he looked up. Storm clouds were skidding across the sky.

  Dave glanced about, his pace quickening. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this, at all.

  “Noah!”

  Chapter 22

  Sully glanced down at her paper. She, along with Mrs. Forsyth and Jacob, had managed to find eight out of the twelve remaining purebloods. Four were still outstanding. Marty needed only three. The paper in her hand darkened, and she looked up. Dark clouds, thick and voluminous, skittered across the sky, as though the Ancestors were angry and frowning down at everyone. She frowned. That cloud action was too fast to be natural. The night would arrive early.

  Marty.

  Damn him. She started to walk back toward Dave’s booth. She waved to Cheryl, who was manning the Brewhaus Diner coffee stand. She noticed Tyler, in his sheriff uniform, standing beside it. She almost went up to him to ask him when she might be able to get into her home, but he was frowning as he tried to catch Cheryl’s attention, and Cheryl was steadfastly ignoring him as she chatted to a young man who’d received his coffee but didn’t seem in any hurry to move along.

  Sully turned away. She’d have to catch Cheryl later for an update, but it looked like something had definitely changed between those two. She took two steps and halted. Was that Noah?

  The red-haired boy was being led away from the crowd, toward the head of the walking trail that led down to Crescent Beach. He was being led by a woman wearing a long flowing skirt and a billowy top. A woman who looked a lot like Sully.

  Sully blinked. No...

  Noah tripped, and the woman turned to tug on his hand. Sully’s heart seized in her chest, then started hammering.

  “Noah!” She started to run after the pair, and stumbled a little when the woman looked casually over her shoulder. It was like looking into a mirror, or at a long-lost twin. The face staring back at her was her own.

  Except for the eyes. Where Sully’s eyes were blue, this woman’s eyes were jet black. The woman spotted Sully, and her lips lifted in a smile. Then her features started to waver, and the boneless mass morphed into masculine features she knew all too well, and Marty scooped up a surprised Noah and started running.

  “Noah,” Sully screamed and bolted after them.

  * * *

  Dave stared around the petting zoo in frustration. Noah wasn’t here, either. He moved his arm away from a donkey whose attention was becoming way too personal. Jacob hurried over to him,
with George, Noah’s father, close on his heels, his face pale with worry.

  “I take he’s not watching his sister’s concert?” Dave commented.

  Jacob shook his head, and George ran his hands through his dark hair. “Where is he?” The man’s tone was panicked, his eyes wide with consternation. The man had lost his wife in a violent crime—Dave couldn’t begin to imagine how he was processing the disappearance of his son.

  “Is everything okay?”

  Dave turned at the query. Tyler Clinton, in full sheriff’s uniform, was eyeing George with concern. His normal reticence to involve the police, to involve others, disappeared. A little boy was missing.

  “Sheriff, we need your help.” Dave quickly informed him of Noah’s disappearance, along with the fact that he may have been taken by a man who can change his appearance, by taking on the facade of anyone he came into physical contact with, and who was responsible for the recent murders in Serenity Cove.

  To his credit, the sheriff took it well.

  “You son of a bitch,” Tyler hissed, eyes flashing with anger, his fists clenched. “You’ve known all this time—” he bit the words off, his gaze taking in George and Jacob. The sheriff pulled the radio from its holster on his hip and called for all available deputies to attend the festival in search of a missing six-year-old, believed to have been abducted. Then he pointed a finger at Dave. “You’re with me. You withheld vital information to an ongoing murder investigation. That’s obstruction.”

  The sheriff turned to George. “Do you have a recent photo of Noah? I’ll need to distribute to the guys when they get here. We’ll also make announcements from the staging area, and see if we can get everyone to help.” He placed his hands on his hips, then looked at Dave. “Can this guy really play swapsies with his face?”

  Dave nodded. “Yep.”

  Tyler sighed, then turned in the direction of the stage. “Let’s get to it, then.”

  It wasn’t long before most of the activities at the Festival were shut down—not because Tyler called for it, but because pretty much all of those attending the street fair wanted to help in the search of the boy. Tyler split the crowd into groups and assigned the groups areas to search.

  Tyler beckoned him, and Dave followed him down the length of the street.

  “You should have told me.” Tyler’s voice was low, and full of controlled anger.

  Dave shot him a look. “Yeah, I can totally see how that conversation would have gone. ‘Hey, Sheriff, your killer is a witch—I don’t know who he is, or what he looks like, or why he’s doing it, but I’ll take it from here.’” Dave shook his head.

  Tyler peered through the glass windows of a store. “You still should have told me.”

  “You were already suspicious of me,” Dave reminded him.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “How many tourists do you ask when they’re leaving?”

  Tyler’s lips curved as he looked back at him, eyeing the bike leathers. “You were never a tourist.”

  “But you see where I’m going with this. I have a job to do, too.”

  “You could have just told me.”

  “We witches don’t air our dirty laundry.” Dave looked inside the window of the next store. Most of them were closed for the festival holiday. “Just like the wolves, the vampires, the bears...”

  “So you were really going to kill your witch and leave me with an unsolved murder?”

  “I’m a Witch Hunter.”

  Tyler grimaced. “No wonder people don’t trust witches,” he muttered.

  “Hey, people trust witches,” Dave protested. Tyler arched his eyebrow. “Mostly,” Dave added, trying to be as truthful as he could.

  Dave held up both hands. “Witch Hunter.” He didn’t like playing that card, would prefer to just drift in and out of a mission without pissing off the local law enforcement, but the reality is that he had a duty that, while focused on witches, had the recognition and enforcement from Reform authorities.

  “The path of least resistance,” Dave told him as they crossed the street. There was a break in the buildings, with what looked like a trail down toward the beach.

  “So keeping this from me was to avoid an uncomfortable conversation,” Tyler said, his tone dry.

  Dave nodded. “Like this one? Hell, yeah.” He squinted as he scanned the beach briefly. The wind was picking up, the temperature had dropped several degrees and the waves were crashing against the shore as though being hurled at the beach. He was about to move on when a figure running in the distance. Black pants, gray shirt.

  Sully.

  And she was bolting after something.

  “Sully!” he cried out, taking the trail. His words were snatched away by the wind.

  “What is it?” Tyler asked as he reached the top of the trail.

  “Sully. Something’s wrong.”

  Sully wasn’t jogging leisurely along the beach. She was running at full pelt and was almost at the end of the beach where the headland started to rear out of the water. Dave took off after.

  * * *

  Sully clambered over the rocks. She heard Noah cry out, heard the fear in the little boy’s voice. She hurried, her feet scrabbling over the wet stones slick with seaweed. The waves rolled in, smashing against the rocks, and she ducked under the spray.

  She had to wait for a wave to recede before she climbed around a larger rock formation and stumbled when she landed on wet sand. A hole loomed in front of her, the entrance to a cave. The sand was drier up near the mouth of the cave, and she ran, plowing through the sand until she reached the cave and entered.

  “Mar—”

  An invisible force pushed at her, sending her flying against the rock wall of the cave. She landed heavily on the sandy floor, coughing as she tried to catch her breath.

  Wicked laughter echoed through the cave, and she raised her head. The cave was huge, with various rock formations that created bridges and ramps within the space, so it was almost like a multilevel labyrinth, resident monster included.

  She eyed Marty who was presently carrying a struggling Noah up a ramp. Had he—had Marty just magically blindsided her while carrying a null? His powers were getting stronger. Her shaking hands clenched fistfuls of sand. This was Marty. The guy who’d almost drained her dry, who had scared her so much, had hurt her so much, that she’d run from him. Not walked out. Not left. Run. All those years of training on the West Coast, all those hours of practicing with the weapons she created, all of that fled her in the face of the man she’d once trusted, and who had abused her so much. Memories, of him screaming in her face, of him pushing her, of her falling over furniture, against walls and doors, of glass breaking, cutting...they all surfaced, along with her sense of powerlessness, of the very real danger she faced with this witch.

  “Let him go, Marty,” she called out to him, and rose to her feet. She quickly bolstered her shields as she ran over to the base of the rocky ramp. The closer she got to Noah, though, the harder it was to maintain the protection.

  Marty turned to face her. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Sully.” He looked different. His skin was almost radiant, his eyes flashing. As though power itself was coursing through his veins, bringing with it a confidence and brashness she could never feed him. “I need him. He’s the last.”

  Did that mean he’d killed already? She didn’t think so. Each time she’d delivered a null to Dave at the stand, he’d seemed in good health and not reeling from the wound on his chest. Did that mean he’d captured the nulls? Is that why nobody could find the remaining purebloods?

  “No, you don’t.” She started to jog up the ramp, and Marty whirled, his hand out.

  “Stop right there,” he told her. He reached behind him and pulled something out from the waistband of his jeans. Sully swallowed when she recognized the ceremonial knife she’d seen used in the vision
to kill Amanda Sinclair. “Admittedly, I don’t like using kids, but I’m working with a short time frame, here.”

  “You have to see this is crazy,” Sully said, panting as she slowly advanced, arms up, palms out in a nonthreatening pose. Even she could see how much her hands were shaking.

  Marty’s eyebrows rose. “Crazy, huh? Crazy like a fox, maybe.”

  Noah squirmed, and Marty shook the boy. Sully took a couple of extra steps forward.

  “I know what you have planned,” she told him. “And it’s clever, I have to admit—but it’s so wrong, Marty.”

  Marty smiled grimly. “Only those in a weaker position would say that. To me, this feels very right—and long overdue.”

  Sully stepped closer again, and she had to lock her knees to stop from collapsing. Everything felt so unstable, so...shaken. “Why, Marty? Why are you doing this?”

  Marty’s smile turned into an unattractive twist. “Do you remember what you called me, Sully? Remember that day you ran out like a rat scurrying in a sewer...?”

  Sully glanced at Noah. The boy was looking between them, his face pale, but his eyes—so like his mother’s—showed a spurt of rebellion. She held out her palm in his direction, trying to make her warning to the boy to hold still look casual in the eyes of his captor. She’d learned that if you didn’t move, didn’t make eye contact, just burrowed down and let him vent, the storm would eventually pass.

  “I remember begging you to stop,” she told him quietly. “I remember you throwing me against that mirror.”

  Marty huffed. “Well, that was an accident,” he told her. “You got me so mad.”

  She pursed her lips. So him throwing her up against a wall mirror was her fault? She shook her head. “You hurt me.”

  “When my father found out the Alder Keeper of the Books had cast me aside, he banished me from my coven,” he rasped, and Noah cried out as the grip on the back of his neck tightened. “You called me pathetic.”

  Sully took a deep, quivering breath. “I realize that must have sounded harsh,” she allowed. She couldn’t agree with him, but she didn’t want to outright challenge him, not knowing how he’d react.