“Do you know what the wolves are?”
I shrugged. “Something like the critters in my shop that keep putting holes in my leg? Only not green?”
Foster laughed outright. He gasped for air and barked out another series of laughs. After I was sure there had to be tears pouring down his face, he caught his breath and quieted down. “Thanks, Damian, I needed that.”
“It wasn’t that funny.”
“It does give quite a visual, though.”
I smiled. “Wolves of war, huh?”
“Yes, not the kind of bear you want to poke with a stick.”
I grinned. “There’s no such thing as a bear you don’t poke with a stick.”
Foster shook his head. “They’re shapeshifters, Damian, werewolves.”
I almost drove Vicky into the triangle of yellow barrels at the exit to Clarkson Road. There was a high-pitched scream beside me just before I remembered to slam on the brakes and yank on the wheel as the car slowed down. I gaped at Foster. “Um, what did you say?”
He was screaming again. “I said you almost hit the highway impact attenuation devices!”
“The what?”
“The barrels! The big fucking yellow barrels!”
“Oh.” I said as I flexed my hand on the wheel. “Well, you just told me shapeshifters are living ten miles from my store, from my home. That kind of has an impact on a person.”
“Why?”
“Shapeshifters aren’t supposed to exist anymore,” I said in a flat voice.
“You necromancers are an odd bunch. Zombie horde? No problem. Going to the mall to kill a vampire? No problem. A pack of werewolves lives in my city? The world is bloody ending!”
“A what?!” I concentrated on the road and managed not to curb Vicky.
“A pack, the Saint Louis pack.”
I blinked and shook my head. “Are you just screwing with me?”
Foster laughed again. “No, I will swear by my sword I am not. Carter only lives about three minutes from the shop, just off Fifth Street. He’s been in our store a few times.”
I felt my eyebrows reach for the sky. “No more surprises before we find the vampire that attacked Karen. Good god man, werewolves?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Foster bobbed through the air in the front seat as I pulled around the outer circle of Chesterfield Mall. We passed the movie theater and a few restaurants in the broad building before we came to the Dillard’s entrance on the east side. As we made it further around the circle, the small parking garage came into view on the north side of the mall. I do mean small, it only held about fifteen or twenty vehicles. This late, only employee cars were in the lot.
“Something will be out of place,” Foster said.
I nodded and turned up the center lane of the parking lot that led to the garage. BMWs, Mercedes, Cadillacs, and a few mid-priced but very nice sedans lined the lot. There was only one car that didn’t fit in with the rather affluent area.
“There,” Foster said as I drew the same conclusion.
Just outside the entrance to the parking garage was a battered blue van. Vampires Suck was spray painted in dripping red letters across the side of the behemoth.
“Subtle,” I muttered. “I almost missed that one.”
I parked Vicky several spaces away from the van. I hoped it would be far enough away if things got nasty. Foster was silent in the dead air, the only sound a tiny squeak of leather as his hand flexed around his sword’s hilt.
“There’re cameras in the garage, I’m guessing.”
“Not for long,” he said.
I opened the door and Foster shot out ahead of me. A small shower of sparks lit up one corner of the garage in a burst of light before Foster came back to my side. He swooped close and flashed into his full-sized form as he sheathed his sword. My eyes wandered around, wondering what people might think if they saw a seven-foot fairy walking around in Chesterfield Mall. A second later, I smacked my forehead.
“They can’t see you.”
“Of course not,” he said. He let out a low chuckle and grinned. “You wanted me to take out the cameras for both of us, not just you?”
“Yeah,” I said as I rolled my eyes, “it’s easy to forget normal people can’t see you.” I glanced up at Foster. He grinned again, stretched his wings, and stepped toward the van. His hand returned to the sheathed sword as he braced himself with legs spread and knees bent. With a twist at his waist, the sword screamed out of the scabbard and sparked through the van’s rear doors in one quick slash. The lock was rendered useless.
Foster sheathed his sword and stood up straight. “You have your bottle?”
I nodded.
“Good,” he said as he patted his in the belt on the left side of his waist. He pulled the handle on the right door. The half of the door below the slash swung open.
“Neat trick,” I said. My hand was firmly wrapped around the pepperbox concealed under my left arm.
He smiled and pulled the top half open, and then I could see inside. I hadn’t fully registered what I was looking at before I turned around and puked all over the landscaping.
“Shit,” was all Foster said.
Pieces of bodies were hanging from the ceiling on meat hooks, gently swaying from Foster breaking the doors apart. Hands and feet, legs, heads, and more layered the ceiling and the walls and the floor. A pile of limbs was stacked in what looked like a copper fire pit. Intestines were draped above the windows like gory valences.
It took me a minute to look again. “Christ, is Karen in there?” I said in a weak whisper.
Foster shrugged. “I don’t know what she looks like, but I don’t think the van would still be here if she was.” I cringed as Foster stepped inside the mobile slaughterhouse.
“Damian, I think there are wards in here.”
I took a deep breath and stuck my head in the van, shivering as I realized the floor I’d just put my hand on had been upholstered in skin. Foster pointed to the wall with a three-layered circle enclosing dozens of runes. I focused my Sight and grimaced as the area around the runes started pulsing with a sickly black and red energy. “Demon wards,” I muttered. “Wonderful.”
“No, no no no no no,” Foster hissed as he bent down to the floor.
I didn’t even want to ask, but “What is it?” came out of my mouth anyway.
“Not just vampires,” Foster said. “Humans, and there’s a—,” his voice hitched, “Nudd be damned, there’s a fucking kid in here!”
My heart sank. I watched Foster pull a little arm out of a pile of detritus and his head whipped around to me. I could see the rage behind the tears in his eyes as he closed his hand around the little fingers and laid the tiny piece of a life on the floor. “Get back,” he growled.
I did, and fast.
Foster’s howl shattered the night. It grew into a scream as his body began to glow. Swirls of orange and red flickered into being around him, spinning faster and growing thicker as he called on the wild fae. A swirling sphere of color like the storm clouds of Jupiter swallowed the van and Foster with it. The entire scene burst into a nova of flame and I closed my eyes against the light, the blast of heat hitting me like a desert wind. Foster’s scream fell silent. I heard his sword slide out of its sheath as he stepped from the smoke and flame. His body and wings were covered in soot, but no burns marred his flesh.
The smell hit me as the wards were dissolved by the fae-powered flames. The stench of burning skin and hair was overwhelming. I stepped away from the inferno, blinked a few times, and followed Foster into the garage.
“What will the authorities find?” I said.
“Nothing but a burned out van.” Foster’s voice was dead, his knuckles stark white with the pressure he put on the hilt of his sword.
Reason number eight hundred seventy four not to piss off a fairy, I thought to myself. “Who was the girl?”
He glanced at me. “Ask her ghost on the way out. The vampire had her bound to that abomination.”
My eyes swung back to the van and found a little translucent girl skipping around the flames. I almost retched again as tears pricked at my eyes and I turned back to Foster. “We need to do this fast. That fire is going to have cops here in minutes.”
“This won’t take long.” Foster’s arm snapped forward, catapulting his sword across the garage. A wet crunch blended with the distinctive ringing sound of Fae metal sliding through concrete.
Something unseen groaned and thrashed. A ragged breath filled the silence with a sickening burble. A few more steps forward and I found the source of the nauseating sounds. The vampire was pinned to the wall in the far corner, Foster’s sword stuck through his neck.
Foster grabbed a handful of the vampire’s hair and inched its face closer. His voice was flat, deadly. “You thought you’d get away with it? Killing my friend? Killing that little girl?”
The vampire opened its mouth but Foster jerked its head to the side in a quick, violent maneuver. The sword cleaved through half its neck, almost decapitating the monster in the process. Foster drew his sword out of the wall and stared at the blood.
“Colin was like a brother to me.” His voice was fast now, pulsing with anger. “Do you even remember the fairy you just killed?” Foster stomped on the vampire’s chest and I could hear the snaps as ribs collapsed. More gurgling huffs trickled out of the failing vampire. “You killed a child.” Foster stomped on the vampire’s groin until its entire crotch burst into a flat, fleshy, pool of gore. “A child!” Gurgling cries dripped out of the bloody mouth. I could only make out one weak word.
“Mercy …”
“There is no mercy for the merciless.” Foster slammed his sword into the remnants the vamp’s crotch, hard enough to slide through the asphalt beneath. The bastard’s eyes bulged and I marveled at the fact it hadn’t passed out.
“My mother is Cara, Sanatio of the Sidhe and I am her demon sword.” The vampire’s eyes closed as Foster grabbed its ankles and cleaved its body in two by jerking it over the sword. Grotesque tearing sounds echoed through the garage, punctuated with the pop of joints and cartilage as skin and clothing parted. Foster didn’t stop until the skull crunched on the blade.
As the blade split the skull, Foster drew the dark bottle from his belt and pulled the stopper out. He jammed the neck of it into the vampire’s mouth and I watched that infernal device go to work. More than an aura was ripped away from that devil. I watched the dim yellow glow swell into being as the vampire’s soul was torn away and twisted inside its own aura, only to have the mass shredded and bound together again and again as both threads of being spiraled into the dark bottle. I glimpsed the blackened red of a demon’s tainted aura before Foster sealed it all away.
Nausea tore at my gut. The vampire would have felt all of it. His aura and his soul were still attached to the body up until the point Foster placed the stopper in the bottle. The tiny pieces of its aura still attached to the remains turned to the white and black colors of the dead in an instant.
“Rest well, Colin,” Foster whispered.
I stared at the bottle in Foster’s hands before my eyes trailed back to the mess at our feet. My stomach did little flip-flops as the body twitched.
“I think you managed to cut his skull exactly in half. Does that still count as a severed head?”
Foster slid the dark bottle back into his belt and smiled. He drew the bloodied sword from the pavement and lashed out at the vampire’s neck, removing both halves of the head in a swift slash.
My head turned as fast as my hand leapt to my gun when someone gasped behind us. I thought we were screwed until the fangs flashed out and the petite brunette woman dropped into a defensive stance. I put a hand out on the silver Mercedes beside me, sighed, and smiled. “Karen, I presume?”
She blinked slowly. I thought her face was a little mousy, and adorable, even as her eyes shifted from Foster, to me, and to the bits and pieces on the ground. “You killed him.” Ah, she was observant too.
Foster nodded and wiped his sword down with a scrap of cloth.
“Quite thoroughly,” I said unnecessarily.
Karen stepped up to the body and spit on it.
“He’ll suffer,” Foster said as he paused in his cleaning and patted his belt.
Karen didn’t ask any questions, she only nodded.
“Help me put the pieces in the fire?” Foster said. He finished wiping down his sword, threw the rag on the body, and sheathed the blade. It clicked home with the finality only a fight can conjure.
Karen nodded and grabbed the left half while Foster grabbed the right. I tossed one half of the head into the fire, then went back to find the other. It’d spun off beneath an SUV. That would have been a nasty surprise. I picked it up by the least gory chunk of hair I could find and tossed it into the flames before wiping my hands on my shirt.
“Yuck,” I said.
Karen had a weak smile on her face. She bowed her head and said, “Rest well, Colin.”
Foster gave her a smile and closed his eyes. He drew his sword, held the flat of the blade to his forehead, and nodded once. “Let’s go home,” he said as he sheathed the blade.
“Thank you,” Karen said. “I’ll get the Pit to send some Cleaners in, make sure the blood is gone. They have a few staffed on the local force, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Keep the Watchers out of it.”
I nodded. “Maybe we’ll see you at the Pit sometime.”
She smiled and walked away.
Foster was silent as we walked back to Vicky, the flames from the van still choking the air with smoke and the scent of burning rubber.
“You alright?”
“Yes, Colin was a good friend, Damian, and he is avenged.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I jerked my head back toward the inferno. “That was intense as hell.”
Foster threw his head back and laughed. “No, my friend, that was almost mercifully quick. If it weren’t for the demon, I would have taken my time.”
I shivered and kept my mouth shut. There are some things even the cat’s curiosity can keep its mouth shut for.
I was surprised when Foster climbed into Vicky while he was still seven feet tall. I couldn’t help but smile as he fumbled with the seatbelt, feeding his wings around the edge of the seat to get them inside.
“Yeah, let’s go home,” I said as I reached up to adjust the rearview mirror and let out a startled yelp.
“Stowaway,” Foster said with a smile.
A giggle rolled up from the back seat.
I’d forgotten about the ghost of the little girl after our vampire friend met his rather awful end. I almost jumped out of my skin when I checked the rearview mirror and she was sitting in the back seat. I’m not entirely sure where ‘jumped out of my skin’ falls on the fright meter, but I think it’s right up there with ‘crapped my pants.’
She smiled at me and bounced up and down on the seat. Her body was almost entirely gray except for a set of blazing blue eyes.
“Strong soul,” I murmured.
Foster twisted around as best he could in his seatbelt. “Hi,” said the ginormous fairy, with his wings stuffed into the small car and his knees drawn up to his chest.
The ghost giggled again and reached out to Foster’s wing. I cursed when her hand didn’t pass through it. It should have, instead it rested on his wing like a real hand.
“Do you have a name?” Foster said.
She nodded vigorously and pulled on his wing. A little shower of dust puffed into the air, I sneezed, and she giggled.
“Are you going to tell me your name?” he said.
She shook her head and smiled a devil’s smile, a familiar smile. My brain started working over time.
“Was that the only bad man?” Foster said quietly.
I watched her face close down. She stopped bouncing and scrambled into the corner of Vicky’s back seat. Her eyes dimmed and a tiny shake of her head was all the answer I needed. She held up two fingers. I met Foster’s eyes
as his face turned hard.
He took a deep breath and put a smile on again before turning back to the little ghost. “No one will ever hurt you again.”
“Shit!” I said.
“Not in front of the kid,” Foster said, his voice serious.
“She’s the girl from the Amber Alert. She’s the missing, that mother fu–” I stopped myself by squeezing the steering wheel and grinding my teeth.
I didn’t need to say more. Foster got it. He rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes. We’d taken down one of her killers. We’d find the other.
The little girl stared at her hands. I turned my eyes back to the road when the ghost suddenly launched herself into the front seat and wrapped her arms around Foster’s neck.
Foster closed his eyes and hugged her. No part of him phased through her tiny body. “What do we do?” he said as he glanced at me.
I blinked slowly and took a deep breath. “I might know someone that would like a ghost friend. He’d do a hell of a job protecting her too, if you don’t mind losing a little more sleep tonight of course.”
“Really?” Foster said.
I nodded and pulled onto Highway 40.
“Do you like panda bears, missy?”
The little ghost smiled and clapped her hands.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You sure, Zola?”
“Yes, stop rambling like a fresh fish. It’s a good idea. Take the girl to Forest Park. He will guard her better than any of us are able.”
“Thanks, Zola.” I nodded even though my master couldn’t see me.
“We can try to find out more about her later. It is tragic, but we have worse to deal with. Get some sleep, Damian.”
I laughed, hollow and lifeless, before I ended the call.
I didn’t tell Zola we were already in Forest Park. I was standing outside the birdcage in the dead of night with a tiny ghost holding my hand and a seven-foot fairy watching our backs. I closed my eyes and focused, gathering up a glowing ball of fae before sending it out in a pulse of power across the park. It wasn’t aimed at just any dead; it was aimed at attracting the attention of one particular ghost. It didn’t take long.
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