McCoy went inside and shut and locked the door behind him. He removed the gun and placed it on the desk beside his computer. When doing research, he used the computer more often than not. When accuracy was critical, however, he turned to the two overstuffed bookcases which flanked the computer desk. He couldn’t trust everything he read on the internet, but the books were far more reliable.
He wasn’t interested in research at the moment. He wanted a beer. Ron had frustrated him; the demon had alarmed him. And the call from Sheriff Lyle had disturbed him to no small degree. On top of all that, he would soon be making his second trip to Shallow Springs in less than a year. When the fun got started, it just kept a-rollin’.
He went to the fridge, grabbed a beer and popped it open. He took a long swallow, relishing the coldness and taste. The back door in the kitchen led to a small porch, and he opened it and went outside. The rocking chair on the porch was his favorite seat in the house. He plopped down into it, removed his worn straw cowboy hat, and placed it on the small table beside the rocker.
There was a connection between the demon’s warning and the call from Lyle; it would be foolish to think otherwise. The demon had taken the form of a Sluagh, and the only place within thousands of miles where a Sluagh could be found was the Springs. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the connection.
The Sluagh might be responsible for one or two of the disappearances in the Springs, but McCoy couldn’t fathom the creatures being behind all of them. More than likely, other members of the Fey were at work here, also.
Damned fairies.
The Fey, or fairykind, were more concentrated in Shallow Springs than anywhere else this side of the Atlantic. Contrary to popular belief, they were not cute little creatures that flitted about on butterfly wings. They were mean, nasty beings, and they despised humans and reveled in their suffering.
The Sluagh were possibly the nastiest of the lot. They were the Hosts of the Unforgiven Dead, vile creatures which housed the souls of the evil and unrepentant. They travelled in packs like wild dogs and were known to prey on small children and people travelling alone. They usually tore their adult victims to shreds, but the children were abducted, never to be seen again.
McCoy wondered about the child whose form the demon had taken. Had she been kidnapped by the Sluagh? For a moment there was almost something, a bit of a memory, but then it was gone. He shook his head. His powers of recall weren’t what they used to be; age was, in truth, like a thief in the night. He was only forty-six, but he felt decades older. His body wasn’t what it used to be, either. Some mornings, it was a struggle just to get out of bed.
He finished the beer and decided it had been good enough to warrant another. He’d made it halfway to the fridge when his cell rang. He took it out of his shirt pocket, handling it the way a bachelor might handle a shitty diaper. He really hoped it wasn’t Lyle.
It wasn’t. With a sigh of relief, he clicked the talk button.
“We still on for tonight?” asked Amanda Porter.
“You bet. Might have to make an early evening of it, though.”
“Why? You got another date after me?” she teased.
“Tomorrow. Early. But he’s a sight uglier than you, I promise.”
“A client?”
“Bob Lyle, over in the Springs,” McCoy said. Amanda said nothing, an indication that she didn’t exactly approve. “Some people are missing,” he went on. “May be something, may be nothing.”
“Bullshit. We are talking about Shallow Springs.”
“Yeah, well. Let’s not talk about that now. We’ve got a Chinese buffet to terrorize.”
“You’re going to get yourself into trouble over there,” Amanda pouted.
“Already did. I met you there, didn’t I?”
“Not looking to score tonight?”
“Okay, okay. I’m shutting up. Be ready at six?” he asked.
“Yeah. But we’re taking my car. I’m not riding in that deathtrap.”
“Shhhh! Boo’s really sensitive.”
“I’m serious. My car.”
“If you insist. See you in a few hours.”
He hung up and checked the time. After four. Time to hit the shower and wash the smell of demon off. That, and the lavender powder. He shambled off to the bathroom, burying thoughts of Shallow Springs, determined to have a good evening.
***
Ben Rollins was bored. Sometimes when Ben was bored, he drank. Other times, he hopped into his ’87 Camaro and went for a drive. He was currently doing both simultaneously, though he was only two beers into the drinking side of it. But that was all right. The sun was just starting to sink behind the mountains, and he had all night.
He was currently heading down Duncan Road, and there were two reasons for this: since he was drinking and driving, it was prudent to avoid the four-lane highway and stick to the more deserted back roads, and Duncan Road was chock full of curves, which his car handled expertly as he sped along.
An eighties metal band blared from the stereo system, which had cost roughly twice what the car had. The car was equipped with t-tops (the actual tops having long since disappeared) and Ben’s long, blonde hair blew in the wind as he drove. He’d thought recently about having it cut—most of the guys he knew wore their hair short or completely shaved nowadays—but Connie liked it, and he wasn’t quite tired of getting into her pants yet. Not that he was really serious or anything, though he suspected she was; she’d been dropping little hints here and there lately. But Ben Rollins was no woman’s property, and sooner or later Connie would figure that out. Then she could either get used to the idea or take a hike. It really didn’t matter much to Ben either way.
He hadn’t passed another vehicle for quite some time, and he was beginning to get a little bolder with the curves. There hadn’t been any rain for days, so there wasn’t any danger of rounding a turn and finding a puddle of water in the road. Nor was there a likelihood of encountering the law this far out in the boonies. That was a good thing, because he was currently all out of favors from Sheriff Lyle.
Up until a month ago, Ben had held a job with the town’s public works department. The job had been hard work with lousy pay, but it did offer a few fringe benefits, one of which being that Lyle and his cronies tended to look the other way as far as town employees were concerned. Up to a point, of course. You couldn’t go out and kill somebody, but you could get away with a little drinking and driving, as long as you weren’t too far over the limit. But Ben had shown up late for work one time too many, and that had been the end of that.
He finished his beer and threw the dead soldier out of the car and into the ditch. It shattered as it hit. He bent down to fish a fresh brew from the carton in the floorboard, uncapped it, and when he looked back up he saw the girl standing in the road.
With a curse, he locked the brakes and went into a skid. A lesser man would have surely crashed right then and there, but Ben could handle his car, and he managed to pull out of the skid without overcorrecting. He missed the girl with inches to spare and squealed to a stop a hundred feet or so down the road. Wide-eyed and breathing heavily, he looked down and saw that he hadn’t spilled his beer. Thank God for small miracles.
Ben looked back at the girl. As far as he could tell, she had never even moved. But that wasn’t the strangest thing. The light was getting dim, but Ben could swear that she was completely naked.
He put the car in reverse and eased back to where the girl stood. His eyes had not been deceiving him; she was a bare as the day she’d been born. She looked to be about eighteen or nineteen, though it was really hard to tell with girls these days. Her long, blonde hair was mussed up and hid most of her face. Of course, Ben wasn’t exactly looking at her face. She was thin, but built like the proverbial brick shithouse, and he felt himself become aroused despite the near miss he’d just had.
“Hey,” he said. “Are you all right?”
The girl said nothing, and did not turn to look at hi
m.
“What the hell are you doing out here in the middle of the road, with no clothes? Jesus, I damn near ran you over!”
She turned then, and he saw that she was beautiful. Not good-looking, like Connie, or even really hot, like Dana Riley, but beautiful, like a model or movie star. He didn’t recognize her, but that didn’t surprise him. She was probably nine or ten years younger than he was, and he didn’t run with a younger crowd.
She smiled. It was a lopsided, goofy smile, and her eyes seemed unfocused. It dawned on Ben that the girl was high on something. Of course she was; why else would she be standing in the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere, and buff naked to boot? Pills, probably. Ben himself did not snort anything, though he wasn’t against the occasional joint. But he had seen plenty of people doped up, and this chick looked like she was trying to become their poster girl. It was sad, because she really was ultra-hot.
“Get in,” he said. “I’ll take you home. Or wherever.” The thought of driving the girl to her parent’s house in her present condition did not appeal to him. Most likely, he’d get shot before he could get out of their driveway.
The girl made no attempt to move, just stood there looking at Ben with that silly smile on her face. He couldn’t leave her out here, but he couldn’t take her home, either. Not yet, not until she came down off whatever mountain top she was presently on. The obvious answer was to take her back to his place. She could sober up there, and he could find something for her to wear from the stuff Connie had left lying around. Plus, he might get lucky if he played his cards right.
“Come on, hop in. I’ll get you into some clothes.” He gave her a sly wink. “I won’t bite, I promise.”
Her eyes focused somewhat, and her goofy smile transformed into a seductive pout. She stepped close enough to lean inside the car, putting her full breasts within inches of Ben’s face. He didn’t think he’d ever seen such a perfect pair, and he was suddenly obsessed with getting the girl back to his house.
She brushed her unruly hair away from her face. Ben tore his attention away from her boobs long enough to see that she had pale blue eyes and soft features. Her lips were full and dark, begging to be kissed. He suddenly realized he had never felt such desire for a woman before, and the feeling frightened him.
“You won’t bite?” she asked. Her voice startled him into jumping, even though she spoke softly, almost a whisper. Her words seemed to have a hypnotic effect. He felt as if he were being suffocated by pleasure and lust.
“No,” he managed. “I won’t. Promise.”
She smiled, her face a portrait of sexuality. But was there something else there, as well? A cruelty, lurking just below the surface? And maybe hunger, too? She leaned closer and put her mouth to his ear. He could feel her breath, hot and sultry. Her tongue brushed lightly against his neck, and he nearly melted with desire.
“I bite,” she whispered with a flirtatious laugh. “We all bite out here.”
“You do?” In some back corner of his brain, alarms were going off, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Uh-huh.” Her voice was so freaking sexy. He needed air in a bad way, but he couldn’t tear himself away.
The car shuddered slightly, like something had crawled onto the trunk. Then another something. The rational part of him, what was left of it, wanted to turn and look, but he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the girl. He felt like he was going to explode at any second. More and more small bodies climbed onto the vehicle, and he could actually feel the car begin to squat from the added weight. But still he could not look away from her. His lust held him immobilized, aware but uncaring about anything but her.
“Do you want me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he breathed.
“Forever?”
“Oh God, yes.”
She held his eyes with hers; those pale, sexy, evil eyes. He saw a red droplet appear on her cheek, then another. He didn’t understand at first, but then the pain suddenly hit him, hot as fire, and he felt his attackers upon him, biting and clawing and forcing him down. Still he could not tear his gaze away, even as his flesh was ripped and his blood sprayed onto the car’s upholstery. He continued to stare at her after the life faded from his eyes.
Ben died without ever seeing what had killed him.
Chapter Three
“Have you noticed that there are other people here?” Amanda asked as McCoy returned with his third plate.
“Yeah,” he said as he sat down at their table. “So?”
“I’m guessing a few of them came here to eat. If you leave anything, that is.”
McCoy shrugged and took a bite from an eggroll. “I’m a growing boy,” he mumbled. “Besides, banishing demons takes a lot out of a man.”
“But you didn’t actually banish it.”
“Well, if you want to split hairs and get all technical…”
“And you’re still going back to Shallow Springs. Even after the demon’s warning.”
“It wasn’t exactly a warning. Demons are liars and deceivers. It was probably just trying to rattle me enough so it could escape.”
“And you think it’s just a coincidence that Lyle called right after that?”
“There is such a thing. That’s why they came up with a word for it: coincidence.”
Amanda rolled her eyes and took another sip of her drink. There was absolutely no arguing with Finn McCoy. It was like the old saying about trying to teach a pig to sing. But she was beginning to care for him, deeply, and she did not want him to go and get himself hurt. Or worse.
“Besides,” he said, “I’m going in the daytime. I’ll be back long before dark.”
“Yeah. Think back about six months. That’s what you thought when you came to my house on the lake.”
“Well, there was no way I could have anticipated a water hound.”
Last April, Amanda had come seeking McCoy’s help because she thought something was stalking her. As it turned out, something had been stalking her, and it had damned near killed both of them. Since then, Amanda had moved into an apartment about three miles from McCoy’s house, and had taken a job as a paralegal with a local law firm.
“Maybe I can take off tomorrow,” Amanda said. “I want to come with you.”
McCoy nearly choked on a bean sprout. “Forget it,” he said. “We moved you out of that place for a reason. You’ve got no business going back.”
“And you do?”
He gave her a look, his honest look, which meant that whatever he was about to say was serious, all joking aside.
“People are missing, Amanda. They’re probably dead. It’s been going on for years, but now it’s really picking up for some reason. I need to find out why.”
“But why you?” She was frustrated almost to the point of tears.
“Who else do these people have? Lyle? He’s not going to risk his ass to help them.”
“But he’s willing to risk yours, and you’re just dumb enough to let him.”
He saw that she was worried, and he didn’t want to cause her any pain. He had taken quite a shine to her in the last six months, and he also knew that she felt the same way. But this was what he did, this was what he was. Amanda knew that coming into it, and she would have to make peace with it sooner or later.
“I can’t turn a blind eye anymore,” he said. “Like I said, this has been going on for decades. Probably centuries. I could have done something before, but I didn’t. I’ve been no better than Lyle, worrying about my own hide. But I can’t do it anymore. It has to stop.”
Amanda realized at that moment that she loved this man, and that epiphany caused her both joy and pain. On one hand, she was ecstatic to learn that she could still feel this way about a man after her first marriage had ended in an ugly divorce. But it also frightened her to fall for a man who battled ghosts, demons, and monsters on an almost daily basis. She wasn’t sure if she could handle that pressure.
“Finn,” she said. “I understand why you feel
you need to do this. I really do. And I won’t tag along tomorrow when you go to see Lyle. But you can’t keep treating me like some fragile little girl. Not if you want this to work. I’m a grown woman, and I can handle myself.”
“I never said that you couldn’t.”
“No, but you treat me that way. If it weren’t for me, that water hound would have eaten you for supper, remember?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then. I’m not asking to be your sidekick or anything, but you can’t keep me locked out. I know what’s out there now, and I worry about you.”
He started to say something, thought about it, and took another bite of food instead. They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Amanda was beginning to worry that she’d jinxed it, that she should have kept her mouth shut. Finally, though, he looked up at her.
“It’s hard for me,” he said. “Aside from my parents and a few friends when I was young, I’ve never really been close to anyone. It’s not that I didn’t want to. I couldn’t afford to. With all the things I’ve seen…I know it’s selfish, but I’ve always been afraid of letting someone get close and then losing them.”
His words touched her even more, and she had to fight to keep her eyes from misting up. Though she might be setting herself up for pain later on, she couldn’t think of another man she’d rather be with.
“Okay,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Enough of this mushy stuff. What do you plan to do after Lyle fills you in?”
McCoy, genuinely relieved that the conversation was going in a different direction, shrugged. ”If I have time, I’d like to visit a couple of the sites where someone went missing. See if I can find anything. We’ll go from there, I guess.”
Amanda didn’t miss the we’ll instead of I’ll, and she smiled to herself. He was trying, God love him, and that was all that she could ask for.
Homecoming (A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller Book 1) Page 3