I Was a Teenage Weredeer

by C. T. Phipps

  “What’s in here?” I asked, physically turning her back to the gate.

  “The Old Lodge, supposedly,” Maria said. “The Darkwater. The Falls, of course. A lot of pines. Ghosts. I hate ghosts.”

  “Spirits,” I said, feeling silly after Maria had given a much more detailed answer. “Lots and lots of spirits.”

  “Will we see them?” Emma asked.

  “Not a shaman,” I said. “But I didn’t…”

  Damnit, I hadn’t wanted to say that.

  “You’ve been here before?” Maria asked.

  “A long time ago.” I walked forward down what looked like a path and called out, “Agent Timmons! Alex?”

  The silence was deafening.

  “Shouldn’t he have heard us?”

  That was when I saw a cellphone on the ground. Its screen was glowing brightly, providing some of the only illumination around us. Walking over, I picked it up and saw it had been used to send the text I’d received. It was Agent Timmons’s cellphone.

  Ah, hell.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Okay, time for me to go!” Maria said, turning around and starting for the car again.

  I grabbed her for a second time, only for her to dodge out of the way only to run face-first into Emma’s chest.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Emma asked, grabbing her by both shoulders.

  “Away from danger!” Maria said, cheerfully. “I’m a creature of instincts and when there’s something awful about to happen, the best thing to do is fly away.”

  “We don’t know anything awful has happened,” I said, my voice not exactly conveying reassurance.

  “Hello! Haunted creepy woods,” Maria said, gesturing about. “Cellphone on the ground. About the only thing worse right now would be you telling us we need to investigate.”

  “We need to investigate,” I said, leaning down and picking up Alex’s cellphone.

  “See!” Maria said, getting away from Emma and flapping her arms about. “An even worse thing would be to tell Emma to let me go and get help.”

  I stared back at her. “We’re not letting you go.”

  “Dammit, you’re supposed to fall for reverse psychology!” Maria said, putting her hands on her hips. “Be more dumb.”

  I rolled my eyes. “We’re going to find out what happened if it’s the last thing we do.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of!” Maria piped in.

  I felt a headache coming on as I tried to figure out what might have occurred. Alex was someone who could take care of himself but there wasn’t much he could have done to stave off an attack like the one we’d experienced earlier. Was there? Holding the cellphone in my hands, I tried to get a sense of what had happened.

  I proceeded to find myself filled with a sense of warmth and light I hadn’t expected. There was a calm certainty and sense of iron-clad determination possessed by this cellphone’s owner. It was something that didn’t reek of self-righteousness, but someone who had experienced terrible things and didn’t want to have anyone else suffer them.

  I knew that feeling well.

  What followed was a vision of him texting me before he was struck from behind and then grabbed in a headlock. A voice, harsh and guttural, whispered something into his ear that caused him to lose consciousness. Some kind of spell. His last thought was worrying about Emma and I. He wasn’t dead, though.

  “Alex has been kidnapped,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We have to rescue him.”

  “Or call the cops!” Maria suggested.

  “Cops have better things to do than get killed,” I said, quoting Big Trouble in Little China.

  “So do we!” Maria shouted.

  That caused a huge flock of birds to jump out from the trees around us and sail into the air.

  “See? They know what’s what,” Maria said, sighing.

  “We can’t call the cops,” Emma said, frowning as she looked around. “They were already here. Did you see anything about Clara?”

  I cleaned the cellphone off and put it in my pocket. “No, no I didn’t.”

  I didn’t want to bring up the fact Clara had to have been there when Alex was ambushed and should have done something. The fact that she hadn’t was suspicious. As was the fact that she hadn’t come with any deputies.

  “I see,” Emma said. “Then we have to go.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?” Maria said, throwing her hands up in the air.

  “Isn’t your brother out here? Don’t you want to find him?” I asked, daring her to argue.

  Maria instantly deflated. “You’re right, he is. Rudy said he was coming out here the moment he found out Jeremy was in jail. He was already having a bit of a nervous breakdown since Courtney died.”

  “Was murdered,” I corrected. “Was he close to Courtney?”

  “She was his girlfriend, yeah,” Maria said.

  “Someone actually touched your brother?” Emma asked. “Willingly?”

  Maria turned around and gave a nasty look to Emma.

  “It’s probably best if you forget I said that,” Emma said, frowning. “I’m not as good as Jane at being incredibly rude during times of great emotional distress.”

  Maria looked over at me.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s a fair cop.”

  “You need to tell us everything,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Not just a short summary, but everything.”

  “Isn’t it a bad idea to just be standing here talking when that might attract whatever kidnapped the FBI agent?” Maria said, sighing. “I’m not just following my crow instincts here. I’m pointing out some basic survival strategies.”

  “I have a gun,” I said, thinking about the one Alex had given me. “And a Taser.”

  “Oh that’s going to keep the Hellbeasts away,” Maria muttered.

  “It’s a magic gun,” I clarified. “Probably.”

  “That would have probably helped Agent Timmons,” Emma said. “You know, if he hadn’t given it to you.”

  I blanched at that.

  “Which I probably should have kept to myself,” Emma said, wincing. “I’m shutting up now.”

  “I’m also a deputized agent,” I said, as if it actually meant something. “So I’m in charge.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not a real thing,” Maria said. “Also, you need to be twenty-three to join the FBI.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Tell me everything.”

  Maria met my gaze, a fierce anger beneath her black eyes. “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

  Emma sighed. “Now I’m starting to understand why my ancestors ate yours.”

  Maria glanced between us, unhappy. “You don’t know what it’s like being me. Both of you are natural-born shifters. I, however, had to grow up on the wrong side of the tracks with my brother. Both of us struggling under the expectations of two human parents who hoped, desperately, that the gene would carry true.”

  “Both your parents are doctors,” I said, unimpressed. “You have a nicer house than anyone in town but Emma, and she lives in a hotel.”

  “Behind the hotel!” Emma corrected. “In a mansion, admittedly. Okay, forget I said that.”

  “I didn’t know you knew that,” Maria said, looking bashful. “Everything I said about being a natural shifter was true, though. My dad was a Squib like in Harry Potter, though. Mom had no werecrow blood at all. She was a convert to the whole crazy nature religion your mom is the high dingy-do of. Both of them wanted shifter children and hoped Rudy would show the genes. That’s unlikely when you don’t have two shifter parents, though. Blame it on the fact we’re not a real species.”

  “We are so!” I said, appalled.

  “We’re only able to turn into animals because millions of years ago,” Maria said, dramatically increasing the timescale of how long shapeshifters had been around, “our ancestors drank some Elder God blood with the first vampires. Not exactly a heritage to be proud of. Actually, why do we a
ct like we’re all in tune with nature and stuff if we’re a bunch of demon-blooded abominations?”

  “Because we’re awesome,” I said, pointing at her. “Stay on topic.”

  “Right, Rudy and I wanted to be demon-blooded abominations,” Maria said, deliberately baiting me.

  Nothing Maria said was untrue but it still managed to get under my skin due to the fact I’d been raised by shamans. Mind you, in our religion, the difference between demons and spirits were mostly a matter of how they felt about you at the time. It was a belief that didn’t feel right after my trip to Hell. I was going to have to bring that up with Mom.

  “Victoria came to me last year,” Maria said, her voice trailing off as if she was imagining Emma’s dead sister before us. “I’ve always hated and loved Victoria. She had that magical thing about her that is hard to put into words. There were times when we were best friends, ya know? Hanging out in the woods? Drinking, fun, hooking up. That fun, good-time girl was the part she hid from her girl posse. The part I liked.”

  “You were her secret,” I said, wondering about Victoria.

  “One of them,” Maria said, sighing. “I mean, I’m not Emma, I never hid that I swing both ways.”

  Emma’s eyes widened.

  “Pfft,” I said, waving my hand. “She’s not hiding it.”

  Emma almost choked.

  “Or maybe you didn’t notice she was,” Maria said, looking between us. “But when Victoria became a werewolf, she changed.”

  “I doubt it,” I said, thinking of Emma’s drowning story. “Everything I’ve seen just reinforces she was awful.”

  “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” Maria said, looking at the trees. “Especially around here. You never know what’s listening.”

  I didn’t respond to that. “So you found out about the fact Victoria was a skinwalker?”

  “Yeah,” Maria said, sucking in her breath. “I was the first she shared the truth with. Jeremy was the other. We were all sort of together.”

  I covered my face, trying not to picture that. “I hate to say it but please go on.”

  “We always used to come out here because no one else would bother us,” Maria said, frowning. “Jeremy was the one who suggested it because his cousin drowned out here. Err, I suppose yours did too.”

  I didn’t respond. “Keep talking.”

  “Victoria claimed she used this place to think whenever she was about to have a meltdown about being Miss Perfect for her father and grandfather. You didn’t know her like I did but she was dealing with a lot of crap. A lot of terrible things done to her.”

  “I know,” Emma said, cutting in sharply. “She wasn’t the only one. I wanted to go to Clara. To Mrs. Doe. To anyone.”

  Maria’s face became sympathetic. “Yeah, well, Victoria turned to religion to cope.”

  I blinked. “Victoria? Religious?”

  “Not in the churchgoing way,” Maria said, rolling her eyes. “More like the ‘pray on your knees when you’re alone’ type. Like I said, she had a lot going on in her life. One of those times, though, out here, God answered—or a god.”

  “The Lodge,” I said.

  Maria nodded. “Victoria said she’d made a promise to the spirit of the Lodge and that it would give us what it wanted if we joined in worshiping it.”

  “And that didn’t set you off?” I asked, harsher than I expected. “Making random pacts with spirits in the woods?”

  “We’re not in Salem and this isn’t the sixteenth century,” Maria said, her voice catching in her throat. “Also, my friends are dead, so maybe I know what we did was wrong?”

  I didn’t respond. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Maria said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and trying to light one, only to put it away before she did. “Sorry, I’m trying to quit.”

  “Good call,” I said, hating the smell as a shapechanger. If you thought cigarette smoke was bad in a tight space, imagine if your sense of smell was ten times more powerful.

  “When I say Victoria changed, I mean that literally,” Maria said, a sickened look on her face. “One of the first things we started to do once we began practicing magic was channeling. Letting the Lodge spirit—we called him the Big Bad Wolf—into us.”

  I was stunned. “You…what now? You let a spirit inside you?”

  That was like Shamanism 101. You did not do that unless you were absolutely sure they were going to leave.

  “It was a rush,” Maria said, sighing. “More than you could imagine. Not only were we stronger and more powerful, but the Big Bad Wolf made us feel invincible. Jeremy hated the feeling and didn’t do it more than one or two times. Rudy, well, he reacted really badly to it. Rudy was kind of a self-centered dweeb before, but he became barely able to function when the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t inside him.”

  I almost pitied him. Almost. “And Victoria?”

  “Victoria loved him,” Maria said, frowning. “Loved it. I don’t think it really has a gender. Virtually the entirety of her senior year was spent running around with it inside her.”

  I lifted my hands in a strangling gesture. “You were letting a demon walk around a high school?”

  Maria looked down. “Yeah, I guess it was a demon. We didn’t pick up on that, though, until it wanted lives.”

  Okay, that escalated quickly. “Lives? As in people’s lives.”

  “Not at first,” Maria said, pulling out her cigarettes again and shoving one in her mouth. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get her lighter to work and ended up throwing it on the ground. “It wanted animals first and other sacrifices. Whiskey, cigarettes, sex, normal stuff. You would have it possess you when you—”

  “I get it,” I said, sighing. “You and my brother were a full-on witch cult.”

  “Coven,” Maria corrected. “After Courtney and I made our transformations, the Big Bad Wolf wanted five lives. It said it was repayment for past wrongs. Something that had been demanded long ago but members of Victoria’s family had failed to pay on.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I stopped paying attention after the words human sacrifice became involved,” Maria said. “That’s when I bailed and so did Jeremy. Rudy—”

  “What did he do?” I asked, immensely relieved my brother wasn’t involved in human sacrifice.

  “I don’t know,” Maria said, frowning. “Victoria wouldn’t let it go, though. Even when we managed to put down the Big Bad Wolf and do a binding spell to keep it in the Lodge. A bit like locking it in its own house, but none of us were really thinking clearly at the time. Victoria said she needed it to protect her and her sister from her grandfather. That she’d realized what a monster he was.”

  I looked back at Emma. “Is she talking about—”

  “Don’t,” Emma said, her voice icy. “Don’t say a word.”

  I sucked in my breath, an icy chill passing over my shoulder. “Wow.”

  “It wasn’t that kind of abuse,” Emma said, softly. “Thank the Goddess.”

  I didn’t want to ask what kind it was.

  “How did dealing drugs enter this?” I said, trying to figure out if Lucien had known about this thing.

  “Drugs are a good way to make money,” Maria said. “Money to buy more magic as well as other things. Like drugs.”

  Oh, so that was a red herring. “Never mind.”

  “It’s because of our side business that Thomas Hart ended up dead,” Maria said, her voice sick with regret but also a bit of contempt and anger. “He was a lowlife drug dealer that was one of Lucien’s people but one of the worst. He tried to get Victoria to pay any bills in…well, let’s just say the world wasn’t a worse place for him dying.”

  “Victoria killed him,” I said, following the train of logic. “But now she’s dead.”

  Maria looked down. “The Big Bad Wolf was using her to feed itself. It’s why he hooked her up with Gerald the vampire because it wanted the pleasures of one of the undead. I think Hart was an attempt to feed it.”
>
  I stared at her. “So what, you think your brother is possessed?”

  Maria didn’t answer. “Someone is targeting us specifically and I can’t help but think it’s that monster. My brother isn’t at fault, though.”

  “We’ll find him,” I promised.

  I was surprised I meant it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Maria was less than impressed with my proclamation. “Oh, yeah, I’m certain my brother is as good as safe now. I have a venison waitress and a woof-woof princess as my allies against a demon god working with a serial killer.”

  I stared at her. “Am I this rude? Is this what I sound like?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Emma said. “Yes, it is.”

  Maria snorted then reached into her pocket and pulled out a foot-long black flashlight. “Okay, well, at least I’m prepared.”

  I blinked and looked at her painted on jeans then at the huge flashlight. “How did you—”

  “Magic,” Maria said. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  I remembered Alex doing the same thing and wondered what sort of mojo I’d have to get to conjure bricks of gold. “Right, well, we have to start tracking the victims. Every second counts.”

  “Every second we wasted having me tell you about me and Victoria? Those seconds?” Maria said, her voice even more sarcastic than mine.

  “Yes, those seconds,” I said, wishing I had a professional’s training in finding kidnapped FBI agents. This was the second time I’d had to rescue Alex and I was starting to feel like Wonder Woman with Steve Trevor. “Emma, do you think you could help with this?”

  Emma blinked. “What do you mean?”

  I looked down at the mud splatters on the ground. “I don’t know, I mean can’t you—”

  “Wait, you want me to act like a bloodhound?” Emma said, looking stunned.

  “No good?”

  “No, it’s brilliant!” Emma said. “I mean, the rain will make it hard, but I can still do it.”

  Oh, cool.

  “Finally, some werecrow vengeance,” Maria said. “Though I’d be happier if I was the one holding the gun.”

  “Yeah, no chance of that.” I didn’t think Maria was the murderer but that was far and away from trusting her.