Spells, Salt, & Steel
Gail Z. Martin
Larry N. Martin
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Afterword
About the Authors
Stay in Touch
Falstaff Books
Chapter 1
When all else fails, the ass end of a carp makes a damn fine weapon.
I’d been lying in wait for the ningen to show up, and by the wee hours of the morning, I was tired and cranky and out of coffee. As soon as the sun went down, I pulled in to the Linesville, Pennsylvania, spillway. The tourists were gone, and the concession stand’s gates were closed. Still blows my mind how many people will come look at a bunch of fish. Even if those fish are a boiling, writhing mass of three-foot long, twenty-pound carp that look like something out of a Biblical plague.
I’m Mark Wojcik, mechanic—and monster hunter. I gank things that go bump in the night so that most people never have to know supernatural uglies exist outside of bad horror movies. No one chooses this life; it chooses you, usually in a violent and awful way. In my case, a deer hunt turned into a wendigo hunting us. I survived—barely—but my father, brother, uncle, and cousin didn’t. Neither did the wendigo, when I was done with it.
The carp weren’t my problem. Tourists loved throwing day-old bread into the water to watch the carp roil over each other, mouths gaping. Tonight, they weren’t the only ones with an unnatural interest in big fish.
A corpse-pale creature balanced on the low concrete rim of the spillway catch basin. It stood about five feet tall, slender with long arms, and a body that looked like a giant white tadpole with arms and skinny, short legs. Ningen can get as big as sixty feet, or so the cryptid sites say, but then again, they say that ningen are only found in Japan, so I don’t put much stock in them.
“Koko ni sakana no kao ga kuru,” I called to it, betting that a Japanese monster might understand Japanese. Then again, I’d looked up key phrases on Google Translate, so God only knows what I actually said. “Come here, fish face,” I repeated in English, in case the ningen was bilingual.
The ningen cocked its round head and blinked its solid black eyes. I leaned over the railing and waved my bait at it, a nice piece of salmon I’d paid fifteen bucks for at the supermarket, thinking the creature might want an upgrade.
“That’s it,” I coaxed, dangling the prime wild salmon and giving it a shake. “That’s a good little sekana no neko.” That’s the magic of translation: “fish fucker” sounds classier in a foreign language.
If the ningen felt offended, it didn’t look it, although for all I knew, maybe I’d been descriptive instead of insulting. The ningen raised its head and opened its mouth, scenting the air. It shuffled toward me on its stubby legs, like it had its pants down around its knees. I grinned, keeping the sharpened iron harpoon blade concealed behind my back in my right hand.
At the speed the ningen hop-walked, it might take it ten minutes to get to me, but once I ganked him, I’d be back home relaxing with a nice cold beer.
That’s when the damn thing leapt into the air like a horny salmon going to spawn and grabbed the filet in my hand so hard he pulled me over the fence and into the carp-filled water.
I lost the piece of fish, but managed to keep the harpoon. When I fell in, fully-clothed and in my steel-toe boots, I thought I’d sink, but I fell onto the roiling carp that made a moving, lumpy net beneath me. They buoyed me along just long enough for me to regain my wits and scramble onto the small stretch of rocky shore between the overflow basin and the wall below the fence.
The ningen crouched, eyeing me as it shoved the raw salmon into its mouth, and I got a look at its jagged, sharp teeth—something else the cryptid reports had been less than accurate about. I realized then that the small strip of land around me was covered with fish bones. Those all-black eyes kept staring at me, and although I’d heard long pig tasted like chicken, this jagoff looked like he was wondering how much I’d taste like fish.
It sprang for me, and I rolled, gritting my teeth as the sharp stones and fish bones jabbed through my jacket and jeans. I brought up my harpoon gun and got off a shot. The barbed iron blade hit the ningen in the shoulder instead of the chest like I’d hoped, but it must have hurt like a mother since the thing let out an ungodly howl that would have put any loon to shame.
I yanked on the rope attached to the base of the blade with all my might. The ningen stumbled toward me. Then it grabbed the rope and pulled. And I found myself face down in the water, getting smacked in the head by carp the size of toddlers.
I scrambled back onto the rocky bank. What little I could find about ningen, that was written in English, said it would have less power on land. I yanked the rope again, getting angry now, and the ningen bared its barracuda teeth at me and gave another ear-splitting shriek.
The iron had an effect on it; I could see black veins radiating from where the blade lodged in its shoulder, spreading across the once-perfect white skin. I just didn’t know how long the iron blade would take to kill the creature, or if it would do the job completely. My gun was safe and dry in my truck, since I’d figured going for a forced swim was likely. But I had a couple more tricks up my soggy sleeves.
The ningen closed in on me, and I grabbed a kada, one of those martial arts sickle blades, from a scabbard on my back. I didn’t know if Japanese weapons were extra-lethal on Japanese monsters, but I fully intended to go ninja on its ass for leaving me soggy and freezing and smelling like carp.
“Let’s see you shi’ne, you piece of fish shit,” I muttered. I watched as much anime as my Crunchy Roll subscription could handle, and I’d picked up on a few overused phrases. “Die” seemed like a good one.
Except that the ningen didn’t seem to take it the way I’d intended and jerked me back into the water.
I managed to roll so I got the kada blade between us and swung as hard as I could, sinking the point of the curved blade into its chest where I hoped its heart might be. The black veins from the iron blade had spread across its entire torso, up its fish-belly white neck, and down its overly long arms.
But it wasn’t dead yet, and it came at me again, forcing me to fall backward in the water into another mass of carp. I kicked with my legs to get some distance between myself and the ningen. The carp weren’t pleased to have me land on them, and one of the fish jumped out of the water and landed in my arms, all thirty pounds of him.
Instinct took over, and I wrapped both arms around the carp’s middle and thrust its powerful tail toward the ningen. The fish wriggled wildly in my grip, its tail slapping back and forth with sharp scales and fins. It knocked the harpoon deeper into the ningen’s chest, as the black lacework of the iron’s poison spread across the rest of its skin.
I got my feet under me and dragged myself onto the shore, still holding a pissed-off carp between me and the monster. The ningen lurched forward, grabbing for me with its long, skeletal arms and clammy, dead white hands. Then it fell over and lay face-down amid the carp, completely covered by the deadly pattern of the iron’s taint running through its veins.
“Tora, tora, tora that, fish fucker,” I muttered. I dropped the carp, and it disappeared into the roiling mass of its companions.
I hauled myself back up on the rocky shore and caught my breath. The night was warm, but that’s a relative statement in this neck of Northwestern Pennsylvania, and I started to shiver. The ningen lay where it fell, and I was just about to pull it
out of the water when I saw its body twitch.
“Oh, no you don’t!” I growled, but before I could climb up the wall to get my gun out of the truck, the carp began to thrash. My stomach turned as I realized that the ningen wasn’t moving on its own; its body jerked and moved because dozens of carp were nibbling at its flesh.
In the next moment, the ningen’s form sank lower, pulled down by the fish. The pale body vanished beneath the water, and the fish fought each other to get closer, obscuring it from view.
“Hey buddy! No fishing!” I turned and got a face full of flashlight beam, blinding me. The perfect end to a lousy evening would be getting arrested for monstercide. Or in this case, fishing without a license.
“Oh, it’s you, Mark.”
I blinked and recognized a familiar voice. Louie Marino, a guy I’d known since first grade, and one of Linesville’s Finest.
“Not fishing, Louie. Honest. Just business.” Louie’s one of the few area cops who know what I really do. He gets it—mainly because when he had a nasty little infestation of demon-possessed rabid raccoons a few years back, I took care of it for him, no questions asked.
“Keeping busy?” he asked, angling the flashlight so I could see again.
“Always. They pay you enough to be on fish patrol at this hour?”
Louie shrugged. “Workin’ nights this week. Drew the short straw. Just another day in paradise.” He wrinkled his nose. “You stink like carp.”
“I’ve heard of ‘swimming with the fishes,’ just didn’t intend to take it literally,” I replied, wringing out the water from the hem of my flannel shirt.
“Do I want to know?”
I shook my head. “Probably not. If the rangers at the Spillway say anything about their fish count being down, tell them it’s been taken care of.”
Louis grinned, taking in my utterly disreputable condition. “You’re just lucky I was on duty tonight, or you’d be going from the fish tank to the drunk tank.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny,” I mumbled, although I knew he was right. “Oh, and Louie?” I said as we headed back to our vehicles. “If I were you, I wouldn’t eat any carp out of the lake this season. I think their diet’s been a little…off.”
Regular soap didn’t get the carp stink off of me, so I opted for the canned tomato juice I keep around in case of skunk. That made me feel like a Bloody Mary, but being a brunch drink was better than smelling like day-old catch.
I knew when I ambled in to Hamilton Hardware the next day that I’d be in for a ribbing.
“Whoa, Chick!” Blair Hamilton called, her affectionate mangling of my last name. I’d long ago quit correcting her—since it only made things worse—but for the record, it’s pronounced “voy-chick.” I’ll answer to anything close. Most people who can’t figure it out just go with “Mark.”
“Whoa, yourself,” I replied. “What’s the word on the street?”
Blair blew raspberries. “This is Conneaut Lake. Nothing ever happens here.” Blair is five-ten to my six-two and with her military background, I’d put my money on her in a fair fight. She inherited the family hardware store, the third-generation Hamilton to supply the good folks of Conneaut Lake with all their hunting, fishing, shooting, and hardware needs.
She gave a knowing grin. “Except that I hear there was a commotion over at the Spillway in Linesville last night. Poachers or something.”
“That so? Can’t trust anyone these days,” I replied. The store was fairly empty. I’d intentionally waited until the “dawn patrol” of DIY-ers and contractors filled their urgent orders and I knew Blair would have time for some less conventional requests.
“I got a job coming up,” I said when the few remaining customers were out of earshot. “Gonna need another big bag of rock salt, a case of shotgun shells, and about fifty feet of hemp rope.” I paused. “Oh, and can you let Chiara know I need her help on something?”
“How about you tell me yourself?” Chiara Moretti Hamilton slipped behind the counter and threw an arm around Blair’s waist.
“I need some intel,” I replied.
Chiara gave her wife a squeeze and then beckoned for me to follow her. “Step into my parlor,” she said.
I followed her through a doorway Blair had cut into one wall of the hardware store that led to the adjacent building, which had been many things over the last century. Now, it housed Crystal Dreams, Chiara’s New Age bookstore, café, and gift shop. In the renovated office upstairs, Chiara also ran a website development company. On the sly, she did Dark Web research for me and other hunters, and there was an invitation-only back room behind the hardware store that carried a variety of silver, iron, spelled tools and weapons, holy water by the keg, and other hard-to-find herbs and items necessary for hunting or warding off ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties. She and Blair weren’t even thirty yet, and they made me feel like a slacker, even though I had less than ten years on them and owned my own car repair shop.
“Coffee first,” she said, holding up a hand to stop me before I got on a roll. “And sugar.” She poured me a cup of joe, black, and started a latte for herself. Then Chiara reached into the display case and pulled out a couple of sfogliatelli pastries fresh from her family’s bakery.
“Good, right?” She nudged as I bit into the lobster tail-shaped flaky bit of heaven and gave a pornographic groan of sheer bliss.
“You’re not going to make Blair jealous, you know,” she joked. “I don’t bat for that team.”
“Shhh,” I joked. “Don’t ruin the moment. This is between me and the pastry,” I said, and rolled my eyes back in my head with another groan.
“You better not try that if you ever stop by the bakery,” Chiara warned. “Grandma won’t put up with any ‘lascivious goings on.’”
“Spoilsport,” I retorted. Chiara treats me like one of her older brothers, and considering that she’s got five of them, she can dish it out and take it with the best of them. I chugged the coffee, still groggy from the late night, and Chiara obligingly refilled it before taking a seat at the bar next to me.
“So what is it this time?” she asked. At the moment, the cafe was unusually quiet. That wouldn’t last. Tonight, the Tuesday night Bunko group would be gathering in the social room in the back, and no one aside from a privileged few would realize it was really the local coven. There aren’t a lot of people in the supernatural community around these parts and mostly, we look after our own.
“I need everything you can find on the old Keystone Ordinance Works plant,” I said, sipping the coffee to make it last and savoring the caffeine buzz.
“You mean the KOW?” She pronounced it “cow” and laughed when I looked puzzled. “The old TNT plant in Geneva?”
I nodded. “Yeah. You’ve heard the story about the Nazi sniper that got shot off the water tower?”
“Hasn’t everyone?”
“Yeah, well apparently it’s true, and something’s got his ghost riled up.”
“You know that place is dangerous, right?” Chiara cautioned. She tucked a strand of dark hair behind one multiply-pierced ear. Chiara’s thin enough to qualify as “waif-ish,” but she’d hit me if I ever called her that. With long dark hair, big brown eyes, and a light olive complexion, Chiara’s a looker, but she’s been heart-and-soul for Blair since high school. “Part of it’s owned by a big corporation that doesn’t like urban explorers, some of it’s still military—and lord knows, they’re not friendly—and the other piece is owned by a local guy who’s put out the word that trespassers will be arrested, or maybe shot.”
“Nice,” I muttered. “Actually, I’ve got the invitation from a guy in the corporation, and they’re paying me. I did a job for his uncle—got rid of a ghost that was hanging around his hunting cabin, scaring off the game—and got me access.”
“Not going to help you if your Nazi spook Heil-Hitlers over onto private property and you get your butt filled with buckshot.”
I shrugged. “Won’t be the first time, probably no
t the last either.” I drained my coffee cup and met her gaze. “Can you see what you can dig up? I’ve got all the easy stuff Google can give me.”
“You want what’s in the old records—old government records—don’t you?”
“Something powered this ghost up after seventy years, and he’s been poltergeisting around the place, vandalizing corporate property.”
“You sure it isn’t kids?” Chiara asked. “Every high school kid around here knows the story, and a ‘no trespassing’ sign is an open invitation for anyone who wants to impress a date enough to get lucky.”
My eyes narrowed. “Do I sense a story here?”
Chiara grinned, though her cheeks colored a bit. “Maybe. Blair hopped the fence and brought me back a souvenir when we were first dating.”
“And did she get lucky?”
Chiara’s blush deepened, as if I hadn’t already guessed the answer. “Shut up,” she protested in jest, and smacked me on the arm. “When do you need the intel?”
“As soon as you can get it,” I replied. “Apparently the company is planning to refurbish some of the old buildings on its land for labs and product testing. The planning team that went out to look at the buildings thought they were being shot at. They called the cops, reported gun shots, and holed up like they were under siege.”
“And when the cops came?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. No spent shells, no footprints or tire tracks, no bullet holes. Now the architect and the designer refuse to set foot on the property until it gets ‘exorcised,’” I added, making air quotes.
“Are you trying to put Father Minnelli out of a job?” Chiara teased.
I put my hand over my heart. “As God is my witness, and much to my grandmother’s sorrow, I’ve got no interest in being a priest,” I swore. “I just didn’t have time to waste explaining that ‘exorcising’ ghosts won’t do a damn bit of good. Demons, yes. Ghosts, no.”
Spells, Salt, & Steel--A New Templars Novella Page 1