Bloodstone (A Stacy Justice Mystery)

by Barbra Annino

Deirdre said, “I’m just here to make sure you followed instructions.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I am talking about. Now where is Ivy? I haven’t seen her with you all afternoon.”

  That put me on edge. “Who are you?”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m Ivy’s—” She stopped instantly, gurgled and her eyes rolled back in her head. She crumpled into the car door.

  That’s when I saw the blood on her chest. I dropped to the ground and scrambled towards her, swinging my head to see where the shot came from.

  Deirdre opened her hand and dropped a piece of paper. I picked it up. She stirred then and said. “Go.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Go...protect...her...”

  “I can’t leave you!”

  Then another bullet whizzed past my head making me reconsider that decision.

  I opened the passenger door to her car, climbed in and hauled Deirdre in after me. I reached across her bleeding body to shut the door just as the side mirror shattered into tiny pieces.

  The keys were in her pocket and I didn’t look back as I gunned it out of the parking lot thinking that I had flunked the first rule of warfare.

  Never bring a knife to a gun fight.

  Deirdre opened her mouth and I said, “Don’t talk. I’ll get you to a hospital.”

  I fumbled in my pocket for my cell phone. I didn’t know the area that well. Had no idea where any hospital was, but we were right near the highway so I hopped on and tried to put as much distance between myself and the shooter as I could. My hands were shaking so bad, the steering wheel vibrated as I sped away.

  I didn’t drive fast enough.

  The back window exploded and another bullet ripped into Deirdre.

  She slumped forward. Motionless.

  Then, another shot must have hit a tire, because I lost control of the vehicle and careened into a ditch. The sickening sound of metal crushing metal almost made me lose my lunch.

  I didn’t have time to think about where I was or how bad I was hurt. I had to escape.

  SIXTY-ONE

  It was dark then, and the woods up ahead were thick as I ran, low to the ground. When I was sure no one was behind me, I placed the 9-1-1 call telling the operator that there had been an accident on Highway 20. I said a silent prayer for Deirdre as I disconnected. I didn’t want to think about how I would explain to John what happened to his bride.

  I didn’t even know myself.

  And where were Cinnamon and Thor?

  I unfolded the paper Deirdre slipped to me and used the light on my phone to read, hoping for another clue.

  Dear Sister,

  How the years fly by, but now the time has come for you and your young protégé to reunite. Watch over her when I cannot.

  It wasn’t signed, which irritated me to no end.

  Sister? As in blood relative? Did that mean the woman who raised Ivy was not my mother? Or did she mean it figuratively?

  Unless it was another family secret, which I was growing ever so tired of.

  Protégé. The word played in my mind. And then I saw the connection. Deirdre must have taught Ivy some of her skills. She was a black belt in Taekwondo, an art Ivy had mastered as well. But then wouldn’t Ivy have recognized her at the cottage last night? Unless she was too young to remember her. It sounded from the letter that they had been estranged for years. On purpose? Or had something happened to separate them?

  Was Deirdre the Guardian?

  I charged through the woods as fast as my boots would carry me. They felt tighter as if my feet and legs were swollen beneath the leather. The wind had kicked up considerably, but I wasn’t cold as I trudged through the gnarled branches and ice-coated rocks, snagging and tearing the sleeve of my jacket on a jagged limb. I had no idea if I was headed in the right direction, but I knew I wanted to get as far away from whoever had shot Deirdre as possible.

  Finally, over an hour later, I pulled out my cell and tried to call for help, but there was no reception.

  And then I saw her.

  The white deer. Standing gracefully still as if she were waiting for me.

  Her ears flickered and she blinked her almond-shaped eyes at me. Then she turned and bounded over a fallen log.

  Instinct told me to follow.

  She was only a few yards ahead of me so I kept my sight on her as we made our way through the forest. In the distance, I heard the screech of an owl.

  The deer’s fluid movements reminded me of the watery haze of the moon. She was all beauty and grace as she led me through the thick of hundred-year-old oaks. Her presence calmed me enough that I could clear my mind and just focus on getting to safety.

  We moved along at a brisk pace, neither of us stopping. My feet were throbbing after two more hours had passed, but I forced myself to ignore the pain.

  I tried to conjure a vision, tried to gain some clarity as to what to do now, but none came. The pentagram necklace was tucked in my jacket and I pressed it to my heart.

  A message drifted through me then. Though I wasn’t certain it was from Maegan, because the voice in my head was my own. It may have been a long-ago learned lesson.

  Three things from which never to be moved: one’s Oaths, one’s Gods, and the Truth.

  I wanted to shout out, but I didn’t in case the killer was still hunting me.

  The truth? That had been moved from me long ago. And this was not my oath, this was a family oath my ancestors had taken that I was now bound to.

  And a woman was dead because of it.

  And a young girl was missing.

  I vowed then and there to end it. Breaking the cycle was the only way.

  But first, Birdie had to know what I was about to do.

  I stopped, patted the pocket where the map was and checked my phone again. Still no signal.

  The imposition of living in a rural area—less access to technology. And take-out food.

  When I looked up, the white deer was gone.

  Cold fear like I had never known gripped me. I was alone in a dark woods without any idea how far from home I was. It was eight o’clock, the dinner would be starting and Derek was probably wondering where I was, bat guano in tow.

  And as if I had conjured them up, three bats flapped above my head, fluttering through the tree branches, collecting their evening meal.

  Which was promptly deposited on my head through the opposite orifice.

  You would think that being shot at, watching a woman take not one, but two bullets, smashing the second car in the span of twelve hours and losing my sister to a psychopath over something I only discovered a short while ago—would have broken me.

  But alas, no.

  What finally cracked my spirit was a bat crapping on my head.

  Hot tears flowed down my cheeks suddenly, followed by seething anger. I screamed into the night air. “You can’t leave me here, Maegan! No matter what you think of my decision. You can’t leave your great granddaughter stranded in the woods with a maniac on the loose!”

  “Well what in tarnation are you goin’ on about, little lady?”

  I spun around to see a man in a thick plaid jacket staring at me like I was an escaped mental patient.

  He was holding a shotgun.

  “Well, who you talkin’ to?”

  I stammered, “Um, no one. I’m...I’m...”

  He cocked his head. “You lost or something?”

  Or something. I nodded.

  The man grunted. “Ain’t no reason to go yellin' at the woods. You’ve already scared the goats half to death just traipsin’ through the property. Thought it was them school kids come to mess with ‘em again. So I grabbed Old Blue here for moral support.” He shook the shotgun.

  Realization dawned on me and I stepped forward to get a better look at him. “Mr. Shelby?”

  He squinted at me. “Yeah, that’s me. And you are?”

 
; My gramps had sold Mr. Shelby the land for his farm forty years ago. “I’m Oscar Sheridan’s granddaughter.”

  He chuckled. “You don’t say. Look at you all grown up. Well come on, it’s cold out here.”

  I followed Mr. Shelby out of the woods and into his home.

  “Rest room’s around the corner there. I’ll put on more coffee.”

  I accepted the offer, did my business and washed up.

  When I got back to the kitchen Mr. Shelby said. “Never had three visitors in one day.”

  “Three?” I said just as Thor trotted in and pounced on me.

  He covered me in doggy licks, his tail thumping so hard he knocked over a cat. The cat hissed and ran from the room.

  “You two know each other?” Mr. Shelby asked.

  Relief washed over me. Cin must be here too, although I couldn’t imagine why. “Yes, um, I was looking for him actually. That’s why I was in the woods.”

  This lying thing was getting easier.

  Mr. Shelby handed me a coffee cup. “Sugar is on the table there. Milk is in the fridge. I gotta tend to the herd so you two just make yourselves comfortable. Feel free to call whoever you need.”

  He left. I prepped my cup, pulled out a chair and waited for the coffee to brew. I was exhausted. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes for a moment.

  When I opened them, Mr. Sayer was standing in the doorway.

  SIXTY-TWO

  I screamed, leapt back against the counter. “Don’t come near me.” I bent my arm toward the boot and the knife practically jumped into my hand. The wristbands tingled.

  Thor looked from me to Sayer, his face clouded with curiosity. He stood firm, his ears alert, waiting to see what would happen next.

  “No thanks, I already got one.” Sayer pulled a knife from his own pocket. It was the same one sticking out of his back this morning. “You look like hell.” He crinkled his nose. “Is that bat shit on your head?”

  What was happening?

  “Sit down,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Those boots cannot be comfortable.”

  “They won’t be when I implant one in your neck.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. He put the knife on the table and under the glare of the kitchen light, I could see that it was plastic.

  “They told me you’d be tough. But you’re also a pain in the ass.” He pulled out a chair and sat, nodded to another chair.

  I looked at Thor. He was studying my reactions.

  “Who told you that I’d be tough?”

  “The council.”

  “So then,” thoughts whizzed through my mind, “that means you are—” The pieces were locking into place.

  “The Guardian. At your service.”

  I looked at Thor again. He still had the locket with the pennies dangling from his collar. I reached over to unclip it and checked the dates. My birth year, Ivy’s and another.

  But his name was Michael Sayer.

  “Toss me your driver’s license.”

  He reached into his back pocket and I tensed, grabbed the blade handle. The man at the table opened a billfold, extracted a card and slid it toward me.

  I quickly plucked it from the Formica.

  Michael Mahoney. DOB, 1958. The date of the third penny.

  Son of a bitch. The Guardian.

  I tossed his license back and said, “Well you suck at it.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and said, “Tell me about it. It was supposed to be my younger brother, but he died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged, picked up his license. “It was a long time ago.”

  I poured coffee in my cup, offered some to Mahoney and when he declined, I sunk into a chair. Thor finally relaxed then. He curled up next to me on the floor.

  “But there was blood on your shirt.”

  “Yeah, some idiot cut his finger on a shot glass at the bar when me and Deirdre were singing Karaoke. Squirted blood all over my back.”

  His shirt was inside out now.

  “What about the games? Playing dead—the murder mystery?”

  He leaned back and said, “Figured I’d have some fun while I was waiting for instructions. Can’t do anything without approval.” He smiled impishly. “Like you said, I suck at it. But waking up in the morgue? That lit a fire under my ass.”

  It was all sinking in slowly.

  “You know what they got me with?” he asked.

  “Zombie powder.”

  “No shit? We talking a Voodoo priest?”

  “I was hoping you would know.”

  He shook his head. “All I knew was the city and a name. Geraghty.”

  “What happened to you? Where did you go?”

  “I wandered around for a while, not knowing my own name. That’s when Shelby picked me up. I just told him my car broke down. He gave me a meal, couple pots of coffee and slowly the fog cleared. I offered to help wash off his goats as a thank you and it wasn’t until I saw you sitting there that it all came back.”

  That’s the plus side of rural life. People will always help a soul in need.

  I asked him if he knew what ‘Mahoney money’ meant. He didn’t. Then I asked if he knew what we were protecting. He knew about the page but didn’t know what was on it. I decided not to tell him about the insurance in my pocket.

  Then a thought occurred to me. “You were singing with Deirdre. Do you know her?”

  “Nah, just met her. Why?”

  His eyes darkened as I revealed what had happened. “A nice lady like that. She didn’t deserve that. Do you know who the Warrior is?”

  I nodded. “I think Deirdre may have been her aunt. Or she may be my sister. I’m not exactly sure yet. Her name is Ivy. She’s fourteen.”

  He tilted his head and said, “Are you shittin’ me?”

  “It gets worse. They have her.” I told him about the threats.

  Mahoney stood up, determined. He said, “Well let’s go get her.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  My phone finally caught a cell tower on the walk to the inn. I scrolled through my messages. There were quite a few from Cinnamon wondering where I was. I texted her and told her I had Thor and that I was on my way to Birdie’s. She messaged back that she got pulled over for speeding after picking up Thor’s dinner, and thanks to the arsenal in the back seat (oops), it took far longer than it should have. She finally convinced the officer that the knives were for a stage play she was performing in. When she got home, after waiting for me for an hour and realizing I wasn’t coming back, Thor took off and she had been searching for him and me ever since.

  Derek also texted wondering why I wasn’t answering his calls and to say that he couldn’t find the bat guano and did I want him to scrape some off of random houses? I ignored that and dialed my voicemail. Leo called to say that he was heading to Chicago with John, that Deirdre had been in an accident and was air lifted to a hospital.

  Oh, thank Goddess. She wasn’t dead! I said a prayer, asking for her to pull through and stuffed the phone in my pocket, shoving away a twinge of guilt for abandoning her on the highway.

  It was nine p.m. when we got there. I had one hour until I was to collect Ivy at the Riverview hotel and I told this to Mahoney.

  Fiona answered the door. “Mr. Sayer, how nice to see you.”

  No shocked expression, no hint of surprise, she just greeted him as if the dead rose every day in these parts. Geez.

  To me she said, meaningfully, “Stacy, your grandmother is waiting for you upstairs.” Then she frowned and said, “My stars, child, why do you always come here looking like something the cat wouldn’t kill.”

  There was simply no way to respond to that so I didn’t.

  She asked the man if he was hungry and he was. The two walked toward the dining room and I crawled up the stairs, preparing for the wrath of Birdie and more lectures on how the sky was falling. Thor followed me but then got distracted when he spotted an empty bed. He settled in for a nap
as I repeated the whole picture frame, hidden doorway trick from earlier.

  Birdie was pacing when I entered the room.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  My grandmother. Sharp and to the point. Like an ice-pick.

  “Really? No, hi granddaughter, glad to see you’re still alive? Just, well?”

  Birdie rolled her eyes dramatically.

  I said, “You want the good news or the bad news?” I hopped on top of the round table. The look on her face said she didn’t appreciate me disrespecting her furniture. I hoped the look on mine said I didn’t give a flying monkey’s ass.

  “Okay, let’s start with the good.” I clapped my hands. “I found the Guardian. Interesting turn of events, I must say. You would think that the almighty council in their infinite wisdom would appoint some hot guy built like a barbarian with dreamy eyes and defiant hair, but no. They chose a beer guzzling middle-aged moron who managed to take a hit off a puffer fish.”

  Birdie looked surprised. “Mr. Sayer?”

  “Mr. Mahoney,” I corrected.

  She nodded. “I see.”

  “Oh, but wait! It gets better. Because it’s not really a party until someone gets shot.”

  I let that sink in for a few seconds.

  She didn’t blink. Just said, “Leo called. I am aware of the situation.”

  “The situation? Is that what we’re calling it? I was shot at, Birdie, and Deirdre is fighting for her life because of it. That bullet was surely intended for me. And let’s not forget that a fourteen-year-old girl is being held hostage by heaven knows who and I still don’t know what it’s all about!” I was talking so fast, spit flew from my mouth. The more I talked, the more livid I became.

  “Do you know who Deirdre is?” she asked.

  The question came as a surprise. “No. Why, do you?”

  “I spoke with the council. She was the original Warrior, but then she did something stupid that brought much attention to herself. Got herself arrested and seriously injured a boy. So she was stripped of the position. Ivy is her replacement.”

  Right, Derek's story about Deirdre shattering her boyfriend’s jaw. “Are they related?”

  “I can’t say.”