Bloodthorn

by Tamara Grantham

  “What did it look like?” Heidel asked.

  “Impossible to say for sure. I tracked it most of the day. It led me in circles through the forest, taunting me, using magic to stay hidden. When it grew weary of being chased, it appeared briefly, attacked me, and then retreated.”

  “Can’t you tell us anything else about it?” I asked.

  “It had unusual claws or nails. Long, sickle-like. Unnaturally long.”

  “That is not much to go on,” Heidel replied. “We are searching for a beast with long nails.”

  “Unnaturally long, I believe, were my exact words.”

  He almost sounded like the old Kull again. Almost.

  “Any other details you can remember?” I asked.

  He was silent for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I heard the sound of chains clinking.”

  The candles sputtered, making shadows dart around the room. “Chains?” I asked.

  “Yes. It was only on a few occasions.”

  “But how can that be?” Heidel asked. “If the creature has chains dragging behind it, wouldn’t you have heard them more frequently while you tracked it?”

  “You are right. I should have heard them more frequently. The creature should have been easy to track if it were carrying chains.”

  “Then you are failing in your tracking skills,” Heidel said.

  “No,” I said, “if it’s a beast of magic, then it could have been changing its shape, which means the creature is most likely a shape-shifter as we suspected.”

  “It could be a phøca,” Heidel said. “But if it is, then its powers are limited. They can only take two different forms—that of a beast and that of a man.”

  “Then that’s a good thing,” I said. “If it’s limited to two forms, we should have an easier time of finding it.”

  “Yet we still aren’t sure what either of its forms—beast or human—looks like. Can you remember anything else about it, Brother?” Heidel asked.

  Kull seemed to ponder. “Yes, there is something else.” He reached into his cloak’s pocket and pulled something out. I focused and found he was holding a few strands of coarse hair. “This was in the forest. I found it in several spots wrapped around briars. It’s possible that it comes from an ordinary Earth beast. I wasn’t sure.” His eyes flicked to mine. “I thought perhaps you would know.”

  He held his hand toward me, but I hesitated before touching it. Finally, I mustered my courage and took the hair from him, doing my best not to let my skin touch his. I failed. My fingers brushed against his hand, making my heart race. How would I ever be able to get over him with crap like that happening?

  I buried my feelings as best as I could and turned to the strands of hair instead. They were thick and dark colored, and when I ran my fingers along the strands, they felt coarse. “It might be boar or horsehair—or perhaps goat hair—although I can’t say for sure. The story from the fairy tome spoke of giant rams.”

  I studied the strands more closely, this time searching for magical residue. As soon as I reached out, I felt the magic. A wave of blackness washed over me, making bile rise into my throat. I dropped the hairs and stumbled back.

  “Are you okay?” Heidel asked.

  “I’m all right. But there’s dark magic in the hair. Those strands definitely did not come from an Earth creature.”

  “Then what did they come from?” Kull asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s really no way for me to tell.”

  “Surely there must be some way.”

  I studied the hairs lying on the floor. “My stepfather would know.”

  “Then we must go to him,” Heidel said.

  I hesitated. “For us to do that, we’ll have to wait until morning. My mirror has been acting strangely, and I won’t use it unless I have the first rays of morning sun to negate any residual bad energy.”

  “I’ll accompany you,” Heidel said, “as will my brother.”

  I eyed Kull. “He’s hardly in any shape to travel.”

  “I’m well enough,” Kull said. “It’s my place to see the fairies’ stone restored. I dare not break my forefathers’ oath.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Get as much rest as you can. I’ll meet you in the field before sunrise. Be prepared to travel. I suspect that when we get to Faythander, we’ll have work to do, and it won’t be easy.”

  I turned and left the room, leaving Heidel and her brother behind. When I stepped outside the tent, low-lying gray clouds obscured the sky, and the air had grown chilly. I pulled my cloak close as I walked the short distance from the tent to my camper trailer, intent on studying a few Faythander texts before setting off tomorrow, but as I rounded the corner and approached the front steps, I found Brent standing at the door.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He held up his cell. “You weren’t answering.”

  “Oh yeah, sorry about that. My phone got smashed by an angry Viking.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Viking?”

  “Well, Wult, if you want to get technical. So what’s up?”

  “I’m meeting with the lead detective in an hour. Someone’s been feeding him some pretty nasty misinformation about you.”

  “Rakestraw,” I said. “He hates me.”

  “Yeah, that was my thought, too, although I have no way of proving it. Anyway, if you’re game, I’d like to take you downtown to meet with my boss—you know, to prove to him that you’re not a fraud. If you’d like to keep helping with the case, I think you should come.”

  I glanced up at the trailer. “We have to go now?”

  “Unfortunately, yes, if we want to beat the traffic.”

  “Fine, let me grab a jacket.” I headed for my door when Brent stopped me.

  “Hey, Olive… you might want to change clothes. You know, since we’re meeting with my boss.”

  “What’s wrong with my cloak and boots?”

  He laughed. “Nothing. To be honest, they suit you.”

  “You’re a true friend to nerds everywhere, Brent.”

  I turned away from him to enter the trailer. As I shut the door behind me, I felt a little odd at my ability to laugh and joke with Brent. He didn’t seem like the same person I remembered. Was it his new career that had changed him?

  I ditched my Ren Fair costume for a more modern look. The closest thing I found to something nice was my white turtleneck sweater and my black knee-length skirt. I’d had the skirt since high school, and if anyone decided to inspect it closely, they’d find that I’d sloppily re-hemmed the bottom seam on a few occasions. Hopefully, no one would bother to get that close.

  My black knee-high boots were the only shoes that fit the ensemble. They were clunky with lace-up ties and fur-trimmed tops, but after putting them on and inspecting myself in the mirror, I decided they worked well enough.

  It certainly wasn’t business attire, or even business casual, but hopefully, Brent’s boss could look past it.

  I found Brent, phone in hand, sitting on the bottom step outside my trailer. He glanced at me, then quickly back at his phone.

  “That was fast,” he said.

  “I didn’t have much to choose from. Still broke, you know. Where are you parked?”

  “Back at the front. It’s a bit of a walk. Do you mind?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  We made our way through the rows of tents. We talked about the weather until we made it back to his cruiser. Thankfully, he didn’t help me inside, which I respected as I seriously hoped he didn’t think this was any sort of date.

  He drove one of those large cars with the deceptively souped-up engine. It was a dark blue that blended in with the darkening evening and made it hard to spot on a moonless night.

  We made it out of the small town of Plantersville and headed for Houston. Brent put his car’s muscle to good use as he pushed the speed limit.

  My mind wandered as we drove. I thought of the strange hairs Kull had found in the forest. What sort of Faythander creature w
ould have had that sort of hair? Then there was the issue of the dark magic. I’d encountered a growing list of creatures with dark magic of late, and I was still clueless as to where they had come from.

  When we navigated onto I-45, Brent started a conversation, and talking to him came more naturally than I’d expected. It was hard for me to imagine this was the same guy I’d dumped last December. He’d changed so much since then. We both had.

  Up ahead, the Houston city skyline came into view, towering skyscrapers that seemed to disappear in a hazy sky.

  “The chief,” Brent said, “he wants things done his way. Even if you do the job right, he’ll still chew you out if you didn’t do it his way.”

  “Lovely. You know, you could have warned me before I got in the car.”

  “But would you have come?”

  Obviously, Brent had no idea who I’d been up against in the past. “Don’t worry, I can handle it.”

  “I hope so. For the sake of the investigation, you’d better be right.”

  Brent exited the freeway and turned onto Goodman Drive. I spotted the police station down the road—a one-story, tan building with small, barred windows. We pulled into the parking lot, parked, and exited the car.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect as we entered the building, but as we crossed through a pair of dingy glass doors, I found the place more crowded than I had anticipated. Inside, the décor was a throwback from the eighties, with a shag rug that smelled musty and outdated plastic waiting-room chairs.

  People crowded the front desk area, some of them in cuffs, some of them with bloody lips or bruised eyes. Brent led me through the crowd, down a hall past the front desk, and stopped in front of a door labeled Harry J. Rapier, North Division Lead Detective, Harris County PD.

  Brent knocked lightly on the door, and a second later, it was thrown open.

  “What took you so long? I needed you here twenty minutes ago,” the guy—I assumed Detective Rapier—shouted. He was a short man with a pockmarked face, small eyes, and a dark beard. His large middle sagged over his belt.

  “Sorry, sir, I came as quick as I could.”

  “Fine. Just come in.” He led us inside. His office was cluttered with papers and filing cabinets, and cigarette smoke fogged the room.

  “Sanchez,” Rapier said with a red face, “take a seat.” He turned to me. “And you, too.”

  We sat in the two chairs opposite the desk.

  As soon as I sat, the lead detective pulled a cigarette from a drawer and lit it. He rubbed his forehead as he stared at a stack of papers on his desk. “This is her?” he said to Brent.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dammit, Sanchez, this had better be worth my time. If you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a gang of reds to process, the whole city is going down the crapper—like someone dropped a bomb on the place—and I don’t have time to sit and chitchat.”

  “We’re not chitchatting, sir. Miss Kennedy is here to help with the Duncan-Kaufman investigation. She’s the doctor I told you about.”

  Detective Rapier eyed me. “You sure you want to help?”

  “I am.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you what I’ve told every cop wannabe. You’ve got two choices. You work pro-bono as you’ve been doing. You’ll be considered an informant and nothing more. You get no pay, and we have the option of denying your help at any time. There are no papers to sign, which means you’ll have no legal protection at all. If something happens that you don’t like, you deal with it. If someone does something you don’t like, deal with it. Chances are, you’ll end up behind bars anyway, because most people who do what you do are usually trying to hide something and hope to lead us in the wrong direction. It doesn’t work—it never has—and it just makes you look guiltier.

  “Second option—you quit what you’re doing and go back to your life. Personally, I would take the second option.”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer. He obviously didn’t want me on the case, but I knew they’d never find the killer without my help.

  “Option two would be a huge mistake,” I answered.

  His eyes narrowed. “How so?”

  “Because the person you’re looking for isn’t who you think, and I have inside information on this guy.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  He crossed his arms. “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because,” Brent answered for me, “both of the victims are connected to her clients. If anyone knows who to look for or how to correctly profile this guy, it’s her. She’s spent her career studying misfits and recluses. She knows these people inside out. It would be a blunder on our part if we didn’t include her, and it could result in letting this guy walk. The PD has enough bad press as it is.”

  “Bad press? Son, what do you think’s gonna happen when they find out we’re working with a mother-lovin’ psychic!”

  “I’m not a psychic,” I put in.

  “Close enough,” the detective said. “I’ve seen your ads in the paper—fairy world and repressed memories, a bunch of depression nonsense.”

  “You’ve seen my ads?” This was wonderful news—I’d bought the cheapest line space possible, and he’d seen it! I needed to celebrate. Right after I got him off my back.

  “Look,” he said, “the truth is, we’re going through a rough patch. Ever since Possess hit the streets, the city’s been in an uproar. I’ve got every officer on the force getting called in at unholy hours because gang fights are breaking out all over the city. So far, we’ve tried to keep quiet about it. When the press gets involved, they do more damage than they understand. Announce to the world that there’s a new drug out there, and everyone starts buying. If I’ve got a psychic working my cases, what do you think the media circus will do then?”

  “I am not a psychic,” I repeated for the second time.

  “Detective Rapier,” Brent said, “as I’ve explained before, the sooner we find this guy, the quicker the media will lay off us. If we catch him quickly enough, they won’t have time to find out who was involved in the capture before they race off to the next story.”

  Detective Rapier worked his jaw back and forth. “You think she can find him that fast?”

  “I’m confident she can.”

  I wasn’t. Not at all. But I kept my mouth shut.

  A knock came at the door, and a young woman stuck her head inside. “They’re ready,” she said.

  The detective nodded and headed for the door. “Sanchez,” he called over his shoulder, “get this case tied up soon, and I let her stay. You’ve got one week, or she’s off. Now get out of my office.”

  We stood and followed him out of the room.

  “So I can work the case?” I whispered to Brent.

  “Looks that way.”

  We exited the police station, and I felt relieved as I climbed into Brent’s car. The sun had warmed the interior—such a contrast to the chill outside. Brent sat in the driver’s seat and cranked the engine, but before shifting gears, he peered at the station with a brooding look on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “All this talk about the new drug. Jordan was carrying Possess, and we know that Mr. Duncan had it in his system. I read the tox report for Mr. Kaufman right before I met up with you, and he had it in his system as well.”

  “But what’s the connection?” I asked. “Assuming they both got it from Jordan, where did he get it from? And how did it end up on Houston’s streets? And who else is selling it?”

  “I don’t know, but we’d better find out,” Brent said as he shifted gears and pulled out of the parking space.

  We made it back to the freeway as the sun dipped toward the west. My mind was so wrapped up in my thoughts that when Brent mentioned dinner, I gave a brief acknowledgment and went back to pondering.

  Why couldn’t I stop thinking of King Skullsplitter? He’d beaten his sister, for goodness’ sake—at least, that’s what I’d been led to believe.
But somehow, I couldn’t accept it as truth. Kull may have been a brutal fighter on the outside, but I’d known him as someone else—someone who would have sacrificed his own life before harming his family.

  Something didn’t add up. Either Kull truly was a different person now, or I’d been misled.

  The car stopped, and I came out of my thoughts to find we’d stopped at a barbecue place. Aunt Mae’s Pork Butt was tacked to the building’s storefront.

  “Barbecue? Brent, I’m in my white shirt,” I said.

  “Humor me on this one. Trust me, you’ve never tasted barbecue like this before.”

  I grumbled as I exited the car and followed him through the parking lot. Hulking pine trees overshadowed the log-planked building, and the wind carried with it the tangy scent of barbecue. Copper-colored pine needles carpeted the ground under our feet as we made our way toward the restaurant. Despite being so close to the city, the air was quiet and the sky cloudless and blue overhead.

  We entered the restaurant and found a seat in a booth at the back. It was one of those Ma and Pa places, with the red-checkered tablecloths, a long glass box in the back displaying lemon and coconut pies, and a jukebox playing “Love Me Tender.” The place wasn’t a dive, but it wouldn’t have been my first choice if I’d had any say in the matter.

  “We could have just found a drive thru,” I told Brent as I sat across from him.

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  He passed me a menu, and as I scanned over it, I decided I was okay with the place. At least we hadn’t stopped at some fancy Italian restaurant—then I would’ve had a hard time rationalizing this wasn’t a date.

  When the waitress arrived, we both placed our orders, and soon after that, our food came out of the kitchen.

  “What do you think?” Brent asked as I tried my pulled-pork sandwich.

  “It’s not bad.”

  To be fair, I hardly ever ate barbecue, so I didn’t have much to compare it to.

  “You know,” he said after a pause in our conversation, “there was a time when I thought I wanted to have a family and all. But now, I’m happy the way I am. Work isn’t all stress all the time. It settles down now and then. I guess I’m saying that I’m happy with the way my life is now.”