by P. R. Frost
Did I dare care for anyone?
Cynthia was missing. And so was the dog.
Body heat returned. Clarity flooded my mind with the same tidal wave as a jolt of coffee.
Donovan must have sensed the change in my body tension. He slid away from me. I barely noticed.
“Those wounds don’t look too bad. Just grazes. But you really need a rabies shot to make sure,” the medic said, inspecting the areas beneath the bandages. They’d already begun to close.
“Which way did the dog go?” I asked anyone who could hear me.
Shrugs all around.
“Gollum?”
“North, I think. Forget the dog. I can’t find Cynthia.”
“She’s with Leonard, or she’s with the dog. I’m going after the dog.” I jumped to my feet, knocking the crouching medic on his heels. My leg buckled, and I stumbled.
I might heal fast and clean, but the dog was a demon.
His bite would fell the healthiest of big men.
“Not now, miss.” A deputy in a sheriff’s uniform stood squarely in front of me, one hand on my shoulder steadying my balance. “That’s my job. You are just a civilian who has suffered injury and a severe shock. Get in that ambulance and go to the hospital. Change your clothes, but save those. They may be evidence. Someone will come to you and finish questioning you.”
“Is anyone looking for that dog? It’s a killer. Six bodies in three states by my count.” I shrugged off the ambulance and the rabies shot. No germ would dare infect my body after the imp flu.
Modern medicine had nothing to combat demon toxin.
I needed Scrap to do that.
“It’s being taken care of, miss. Now, if you refuse medical treatment, return to your room and rest. Drink some coffee and calm down.” He turned his back on me.
“The deputy is right, L’akita.” Donovan cupped my elbow with one hand. His fingers dug into the flesh of my upper arm painfully.
“But…”
“I’ll look into it.” Gollum speared me with an intent gaze above his glasses, which had, of course, slid down his nose. Then he grabbed me in a quick hug. “Scrap needs to recover. He needs you and privacy,” he whispered.
I didn’t have time to question him before Donovan literally dragged me back into the hotel.
A decidedly subdued crowd gathered as close to the doors as possible. They peered intently at the flurry of police activity, the coroner’s van, the ambulance.
Halfway to the elevator another deputy appeared at my side. “Did the deceased have family?” He held a notebook in front of him, poised to write down everything I said.
“I have an address on my PDA. It’s in my room.”
Along with Bob’s work number and a myriad of other details.
Details. I could handle details. Then I wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to anticipate adding yet another ghost to the ones that already visited me.
Cold. I am too cold. As cold as if I had returned to the realm of imps. But I’m hiding beneath the bloodmobile. I can only shiver and watch. I wounded a beast that I should have protected.
A man has died. I should have protected him even more.
Donovan’s demon children had as much to do with his death as the dog. They were all going for Cynthia, but Bob got in the way. I do not think the demons wanted to protect Cynthia.
I do not think they are merely humans wearing masks.
Tess mourns. She’s as fragile as a frozen rose and may break if I don’t return to her soon.
But I am too cold. I can’t move. I can’t jump from here to there. I’ve got to eat. The thought of food turns my tummy.
We’re hunting the wrong beast. I knew it the moment my blades cut into the flesh of the dog and drew blood. This is no demon. This guy’s on a mission to stop evil.
So who’s the bad guy who allowed me to transform? Whose evil became stronger than the barrier around Donovan that keeps me away?
Why didn’t we know about the dog before?
Why did Bob have to die before we discovered this? He didn’t need to die if we had known.
He did not need to die.
If I do not move, I will die.
I’m too cold to move. Too tired to comfort my warrior. Too hungry to live.
I need a cigar. And a beer.
“This is more than just a job, or a duty now. This is personal!” I screamed into the crisp desert night. The balcony railing outside my hotel suite bit into my hands where I gripped it. My leg and arm hurt like hell, but I needed the pain to take some of the hurt out of my heart. If I rested just a bit, propped the leg up on pillows, I’d relive the nightmare, watch Bob die in my arms again.
Just as Dill had died in my arms.
I stomped with the hurt leg just to make it hurt more.
I’d changed into a loose caftan that didn’t rub on the bulky bandages on my right arm and left leg. My sweater and slacks were ruined by Bob’s blood. So was Gollum’s shirt. The police had them, testing them for DNA.
The police had asked endless questions. Donovan had deserted me to tend to his demanding demon children.
I’d made numerous phone calls to Bob’s family and workplace.
Scrap sulked silently beneath my bed in the other room of the suite. He must have been as exhausted and depressed as I was.
Cynthia had disappeared along with all trace of the dog.
Only Gollum remained at my side.
I scanned the skies for a trace of the Goddess to tell me to go ahead and seek out that bloody dog. But it was the wrong quarter of the moon and storm clouds blotted out the stars.
Anger continued to boil through me. I’d cried my tears, nursed my wounds, washed away the stink of death with a shower. And now I had to do something.
But what?
“So, you finally admit that you have a duty to hunt this dog, other than your personal connection to his latest victim,” Gollum said quietly. He lounged in the armchair just inside the French doors. His legs stretched out onto the coffee table. An empty beer bottle dangled from his hand. His third. Or was it his fifth?
I’d had two myself, then switched to scotch. I needed the burn down my gullet to remind me that I lived.
“You seem to know more about me than mundane people are supposed to know,” I replied cautiously. Secrecy had been pounded into me by the Sisterhood. If people knew how many demons crossed the portals between dimensions, we’d have mass panic on our hands, witch hunts, and major interference from the xenophobic military.
How could we do our work properly without secrecy?
“I have made my life’s work tracing folklore and legends about the supernatural back to the source,” Gollum said. He pronounced each word carefully as if afraid he’d slur them.
“A little hard when most of the stories began before recorded history,” I snorted. I wanted to scratch beneath my bandages but knew I shouldn’t. If only Scrap would recover enough to lick the wounds, they’d heal faster and cleaner. Had he drunk the beer and OJ I’d ordered for him?
“Hard to trace, but not impossible.” Gollum raised the beer bottle to his mouth, discovered it was empty, and replaced it with one from the mini fridge, then took up his same pose and the conversation as if the interruption had never happened. “It’s surprising how many current stories of magic, hauntings, and miracles have their sources in the dim mists of time. More surprising how often the source has remanifested in modern times, and throughout history.”
He ran the last two words together, then corrected himself, on guard against any appearance of being drunk.
How much could the man drink?
“You’re a demon hunter.” I’d been warned about people like him. Fanatics who misinterpreted facts, sometimes deliberately, to prove their point. They also seemed intent upon murder and mayhem in the name of ridding the world of demons.
Pity, I’d come to like Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe.
“You could say I hunt demons. I prefer to consider myself a seeker of the tru
th. An archivist. Someone needs to record this hidden history.”
“Like your grandfather?” I still lusted after that musty old book. Maybe Gollum wasn’t as bad as most demon hunters.
“You could call it a family tradition.” He pushed his glasses up and peered at me mildly. “Much as your calling tends to run in families.”
Back to the issue of the Sisterhood of the Celestial Blade Warriors, just when I thought I’d neatly sidestepped it. I thought briefly of MoonFeather. She’d understand about the Sisterhood. I didn’t take her for the warrior type, though.
She fought battles against society with calm, balance, and restorative herbs. Though I’d heard stories about how she could tongue-lash officious clerics and leave them bleeding in their own aisles.
But her cats? Try crossing her threshold without an invitation and you’d swear at least two of her nine cats had demon origins.
Then again, I wasn’t the warrior type before the infection had opened new pathways in my brain, and the training had awakened suppressed instincts.
I returned Gollum’s stare, refusing to make a comment.
“I’ve seen the Celestial Blade,” he commented. “I watched it dissolve when it rolled beneath the bloodmobile. I can also detect the telltale half-moon scar on your cheek.”
Standoff.
“You said you’d seen a reference to the… Celestial Blade Warriors.” There were also Brotherhoods, or so I was told.
“One oblique reference in a text that escaped burning by the Inquisition in the seventeenth century.”
“And this book came into your possession how?”
“Family secret,” he said on a big grin. “And I’m the last of the family.” He took another gulp of beer.
“Cynthia said there was a blanket that must be recovered or humanity will shrivel and die without honor.”
I couldn’t remember her exact words, but this sounded close. “Does that ring any bells with you?” I wandered back into the suite and headed for the mini bar. I needed more scotch. That might calm the ache in my wounds and numb the pain in my heart.
Damnation, I shouldn’t drink hard stuff when I hurt so badly, inside and out. If I started drinking now, I might not stop.
I settled for a beer.
“Let me think a moment. The blanket does sound familiar.”
Gollum took off his glasses and leaned his head back. His closed eyes twitched as if he read the insides of his eyelids or dreamed deeply.
I plopped into the matching armchair and studied my beer bottle, a local microbrew that tasted faintly of huckleberries. I looked more closely at the label. “Stalking Moon Brew Pub.” Leonard must have sent over a six-pack when I was out of the room.
Why was he avoiding me? Had Cynthia returned home safely?
Suddenly Gollum sat bolt upright, eyes still closed.
He began speaking in tongues.
I grabbed my dictation recorder and switched it on.
Whatever he said in this dreamlike state might be important.
Or maybe he was just drunk.
After chanting a lengthy recital, he remained absolutely still and silent.
“What does it mean, Guilford?” I asked quietly, careful not to disturb his trance. I’d never seen anything like this, and I’d seen a lot of strange things over the years, feigned and real.
He opened his mouth and repeated the chant. This time in English.
“In the bad lands between here and there and nowhere, in a deep ravine that no one can find, lives a woman older than anyone can remember, older than any other person. All day long she weaves the blanket of life. She uses the old style of weaving with gathered goat wool, cedar bark, porcupine quills, and hummingbird feathers. All day long as she weaves, she imparts to mankind honor and dignity, courage and moral strength.
“Beside her sits the Shunka Sapa, her dog that is bigger than a wolfhound, uglier than a mastiff, and meaner than a pit bull.
“Each evening when the old woman puts aside her weaving to stir the stew of life that feeds her and all mankind, the dog rips out what she has woven that day. For if she ever finishes the weaving, the world will come to an end. There will be no more life to weave.”
Gollum slumped down into the chair and began to snore.
I switched off the tape recorder.
“Something to think about.” I went into the bedroom and switched on my laptop.
For the rest of the night I poured my grief and my thoughts into my work. I wrote and wrote until I, too, slept, slumped across the table, the cursor still blinking, awaiting my command.
Chapter 17
I’M HUNGRY, SCRAP wailed in my ear. My stomach growled as I straightened up from sleeping hunched over the desk. I automatically wakened the computer and saved whatever I had written last night to both the hard drive and the flash drive. I even e-mailed the new work to myself as a backup. Then I pocketed the little flash drive.
“Food?” I had to think about that for a moment. “I guess I’m hungry, too.” I looked at my rumpled caftan.
“I need a shower before I do anything.”
Room service? my imp asked hopefully.
Yesterday’s events came flooding back through me.
Suddenly I wasn’t hungry anymore. I wasn’t interested in doing anything.
I slumped back into my chair and stared at the empty computer screen; my suddenly empty life.
Scrap jumped to my left shoulder and rubbed his face against my cheek, the first show of affection from him since he came into my life. I liked him, he said simply.
“I loved him. Best friend doesn’t begin to describe what I feel.”
Uh, Tess, we need to talk.
No sarcasm, no “babe” or drawled “darling.” Something was up.
“Spill it, imp.”
The dog is not a demon.
“What do you mean, ‘he’s not a demon’? He killed my best friend! He’s left a string of dead bodies and maimed children across three states and a province of Canada!”
He’s not a demon. I tasted his blood. He’s one of the good guys on a mission. The innocents got in the way.
“If he’s not a demon, how could you transform?”
I don’t know. I just know the dog is one of the good guys. We should be fighting with him, not against him.
“And why should I believe you?” I stared at the translucent blue being incredulously. Heat flooded my face. Anger roiled in my stomach.
I’m your imp. I can’t lie to you.
“You won’t even admit that you’re gay. You won’t tell me anything about your home world. Why should I believe anything you say?”
Trust me, please.
I marched into the shower without answering him.
The sharp spray drove a little of my indignation out of me. But only a little.
“Dog’s one of the good guys, my ass!”
Dog had killed Bob. Nothing could make me believe the beast was anything other than a demon, or fill the vacancy behind my heart.
I ripped off the bandages on my leg and arm, almost welcoming the ripping hurt from adhesive resisting me.
The wounds were still raw, still burning, but not weeping.
I was so angry with Scrap I couldn’t ask him to lick the wounds to make them heal faster. I didn’t bother covering them again.
If the dog were a demon, the toxin in his saliva would make those wounds a lot worse, Scrap whispered.
“I’ve still got the scar from the first time he bit me.”
I shut out Scrap’s further protestations. He was wrong about this. I knew it in my gut and my heart.
He was just plain wrong.
With my hair still damply springing into tight curls, dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved blouse, and walking shoes, I strode into the living room of the suite and froze in surprise.
Gollum peered over a map spread on the coffee table.
His hair tumbled into his eyes and looked endearingly rumpled. He pushed idly at the glasses that s
lid down his nose.
I’d forgotten about him.
“Been awake long?” I asked, as if he usually slept in my armchair. I wasn’t really in the mood for banter, but I didn’t need to take my anger at Scrap out on Gollum.
“A few minutes. Long enough to find this map among your freebies from the hotel. Must be nice getting the best suite in the hotel. I didn’t get a map,” he grumbled, never looking up from his study. He acted as if he did usually sleep in my armchair.
I couldn’t allow this to become a habit. He might have become a partner in my quest to find and kill the dog, but I wasn’t about to let him into my life.
Him or anyone else, I thought as I remembered another man I had let sleep a lot closer to me than the armchair.
Once.
Donovan.
He might become my next great love, but he had deserted me in favor of the adult children of clients.
I couldn’t bear to love another man and lose him, or have him killed.
“Tell me what’s so interesting about that map over breakfast. I haven’t had anything but coffee and booze since… since breakfast yesterday.”
“Good idea.” As he unfolded his gangling length, he knocked the map askew.
“Where’s my dictation tape?” I scanned the area around the coffee table. The map lay flat, without a telltale bulge beneath it.
“Is it important? I might have knocked it off when I cleared the table. I don’t remember.”
He’s as oblivious to the world as you get when you write, Scrap snorted.
“We can listen to it when we get back. It’s very interesting.”
I didn’t want to talk to Scrap right now.
“What’s on it?”
Briefly I explained his trance, his speaking in tongues, and finally chanting an explanation about the dog.
“Tell me the legend while we eat. I don’t remember a thing. I think I had a bit too much to drink.”
He opened the door to the corridor to find Donovan about to knock. Behind him stood his three friends still wearing their masks.
A burning sensation flared up my spine. Scrap hissed and blinked out.
“The con’s over, kids. Time to come back to reality,” I said. All my disappointment that Donovan had left me before I was ready to cope on my own welled up.