The copter landed about a hundred feet down the beach and the door slid open. Two men jumped out—one wearing a huge cowboy hat, a suit, and cowboy boots with spurs, and the other dressed in all-black commando gear. A female vampire with huge balloon-like breasts, lips so red they were obvious from where Gabe and Sophia sat on the beach, huge fake-blonde hair, shoes with deadly-looking heels, and a glittery red sequin dress waited in the copter. She chewed gum, checked her spikey nails, and looked bored.
Ranger sniffed the air. He frowned. “That must have hurt,” he muttered. “Since I took her token.” Then he shrugged and walked toward the vampires.
He didn’t mean the weird female vampire in the copter. He hadn’t been looking at her.
Had the tall woman Gabe didn’t know, the one who’d reached for the van’s door handle, followed them? Had the elves? “Is Papa here?” he asked Sophia, even though there was no way Papa could have found them.
She grinned.
If Papa had followed, then other magicals were here.
Hopefully they’d get here before the vamps decided to have a snack.
Chapter 24
Ranger said something to the vampire in the big hat, then pointed at Gabe and Sophia. Big Hat nodded and shooed Commando in their direction.
Gabe pulled his sister to his side. If they ran, the vampire would catch and eat them for sure. If they stayed, the vampires would probably pass them around like a bowl of candy.
“Are they here, Sophia?” he whispered. “Are they coming?”
“Don’t talk to the vampire,” she said, and pushed away from his grip. Then she settled herself on the grass like she was about to talk to an Eternal One in a video game.
The bodyguard Commando vamp stopped about six feet from Gabe and Sophia. He stood with hands clasped in front of his groin the way all commandos stood, dressed head-to-toe in black tactical gear like he was an action movie star. Black glasses covered his eyes even though all they had out here was starlight. Black driving gloves covered his hands. His long-sleeved tactical t-shirt showed off his bodybuilder physique, but his pale, uncovered skin still glowed in the night air like someone had polished up a stick of chalk.
He had one of those military knock-off guns Papa hated so much. The kind that killed a lot people in a very short amount of time and made Papa’s job so unsafe, even in Alfheim.
It was like these vampires had forgotten how to fake being mundane and were walking around wearing clown outfits because someone on the Internet told them that was how real people dressed.
Sophia stared at the guard. “He’s going to kill you the moment he doesn’t think he needs his personal army anymore.” She pointed at the Ten Gallon vamp talking to Ranger. “Once he’s in control, he’s going to behead you and your entire crew.”
“Sophia!” Gabe whispered. “Leave the vampire alone.” The last thing they needed was to egg on a vampire.
The bodyguard’s lip twitched.
“Did he tell you who we are?” she asked the vamp. “You never liked Mr. Oil Man’s son, did you? No one liked him. He was dangerous even to your kind. Messed up in the head like…” Her eyebrows pinched together. “… like an old coyote who’d been feeding on garbage too long.”
How did she know so much?
“You were in on ignoring him, weren’t you? Part of the team that let him slip his leash and go eat people like us.”
The bodyguard’s lip twitched again.
Sophia’s eyes widened. “You all did it on purpose hoping the elves would come down from the north and take care of your problem for you! And now you all act like my papa didn’t do you a favor.”
The guard did a little Heh movement with his shoulders and eyebrow.
Sophia pointed at the vamp but turned to Gabe. “They eat college kids who come here to party.”
Not that Gabe knew anything about South Padre Island, other than that it was where several of the Gulf Coast Clans ran tourist businesses, and that they were never, ever to come down here for any reason whatsoever, now or in the future.
At least that’s what Momma told Papa one night when they thought all the kids were either playing or asleep. She’d said something about asking the elves to “deal with the problem once and for all,” and Papa had responded with something about the vampires being “slave runners before the Civil War. There’s money and heritage involved.”
It still didn’t make any sense why the vampires had been allowed to run businesses in South Padre Island. In Alfheim, the elves always “took care of the problem.” Except for their own vampires. And look how that had turned out.
Ten Gallon pointed at the sword, then raised his hands. Seemed these bloodsuckers didn’t want anything around that would give the elves an excuse to come around again.
Sophia stared at the sword. “The elves don’t care about you, Mr. Vampire.”
The guard moved his head to look down at her, but he didn’t say anything.
“They care about us,” Gabe said. “So you know. Even if your boss leaves that sword in the dirt, the elves definitely have an excuse to pay you all a visit.”
“Mr. Bjorn was soooo maaaddddd, wasn’t he, Gabe?” Sophia asked. “And Ms. Benta can be mean but she likes Momma a lot and Ranger there hurt our momma who’s about to have another baby.” She inhaled. “And that made Ms. Benta soooo maaaddddd.” She shook her head.
“Sophia…” Gabe whispered.
“I tell the truth, Gabe!” she said. “It’s going to be like that television show about the Vikings but with magic and a lot of dead vampires.” She scrunched up her little face. “I bet Mr. Magnus would be happy to buy all the resorts here. Papa says he’s a good businessman.”
“Sophia!” She’d told him not to talk to the vampire but here she was poking him with a stick.
Sophia leaned toward the guard. She twisted her head to the side. “Do you have a plan?”
The vampire gave her a little nod.
She leaned back and cupped her hands over her mouth. “He has a plan, Gabe!” she shout-whispered.
Behind them, in the clearing in front of the copter, Ten Gallon gave Ranger a little shove. Ranger responded by swinging the sword around and pointing it at Ten Gallon’s head.
The bodyguard sighed. He stripped off his black-lensed glasses.
His eyes were so blue and bright they looked like ice from a glacier. “Darlin’,” he drawled. “I suppose those elves of yours don’t know nothin’ about American Chosen One lore, huh? ‘Cause they ain’t real Americans.” He snorted. “I should kill you now and save myself some future agony. But where’d the fun be with that?”
Ten Gallon laughed as Ranger backed away.
“What’s your name?” Sophia asked the vampire.
“Oh, sweetie pie, I’m Faceless Thug Number One.” He turned away from them so fast Gabe didn’t see him move. He placed three shots into Ten Gallon’s head, and another three into his heart.
Sophia screamed.
“He shoulda realized when I didn’t heed The Call that I was a threat,” the vamp said.
Ranger, sword in hand, ran for the bushes. The shots got the female vamp’s attention, but not so much that she stopped looking bored. The pilot sat behind the controls and didn’t seem to notice what was happening.
The bodyguard pulled a machete off his back as he walked toward Ten Gallon. “Run along, lil’ Chosen Ones, before I change my mind.”
Gabe grabbed his sister and they ran as fast as they could into the trees.
Chapter 25
The copter lifted off just as Ed and Wrenn burst through the brush. Ed’s shotgun wouldn’t do damage, not twenty yards down the beach, nor was it likely to even nick the paint on that particular machine. The thing was as black as the night and looked fully shielded.
“You’re a witch!” he shouted. “Zap it or something!” Not that he believed she was a witch any more than he believed Frank Victorsson was a jotunn.
But they had to do something. His kids were on that
copter.
“I’m not a strong witch!” Wrenn threw a rock at the copter as it lifted into the air. “That kind of intervention takes a full magical.” She pulled out her phone and waved it at Ed. “We can call in the Guard.”
There’d be repercussions if either the elves or the fae showed up in South Padre Island and engaged the vampires in a full-frontal attack.
But then again, Ragnarok was upon them, so as the kids said, you only live once. “Do not call in the fae.” He pulled out his phone. Magnus’s number went to voicemail. “If you can do the whole gate thing, now’s the time,” he said. He hung up and dialed Bjorn and left the same message.
“They’re on their way,” Wrenn said.
She had no idea. None. “How the hell do you know that?” he yelled.
“Because they’re not fae—quiet.” She held up her hand. “Red?”
They hadn’t taken the sword? Ed turned around to look back into the brush, in the direction Wrenn had pointed her ear even though she was looking down so she could concentrate.
He turned, and Ranger punched him in the face.
“I dinnae like ye, mundane,” the kelpie said.
Ed stepped back and swung up the shotgun. “Where are my children?” The son of a bitch had to know.
Ranger also stepped back and swung up the sword. “Ye managed t’ scuttle my chances here an’ ye did it wi’out even bein’ on th’ beach.”
Ed cocked the gun. “Did they take my kids?” Maybe the kids had run into the brush. “Gabe! Sophia!” They needed to stay hidden and away from the kelpie, but Ed needed to know.
Ranger flicked back and forth between pointing the sword at Ed and pointing it at Wrenn. “Clayton’s dead,” he said. “His douchey bodyguard macheted that hat right off his ten-gallon head.” He used his other hand to draw a line over the braided leather and silver around his neck.
“So?” Ed said. Vamp-on-vamp violence wasn’t his problem.
“So?” Ranger chuckled. “Old clan dead. New clan doesnae care.” He shrugged.
Were he and his family free of the vampire threat? Ed aimed the gun. “Where are my kids?” he yelled.
“Queen Titania’s gonnae make an example o’ me,” Ranger said. “If I go back. She might even hand me over t’ the King first, so he can make his own example.”
“Help me take down the entire syndicate and I’ll ask the King to give you leniency,” Wrenn said. She moved closer.
“An’ then I’d be a traitor t’ my kind, a kelpie who helped a woman o’ my own free will.” Ranger slid his foot back as if he were about to run into the brush.
If he dropped into stallion form, they’d never catch him.
“Alfheim will help you,” Ed said. He shouldn’t offer Alfheim’s magical help to anyone or anything. Ever. It wasn’t his place. Or his pay grade. “They helped Tony and Ivan for seventy years until they turned on the elves.” And they would have stayed helped, if Frank’s brother hadn’t come around.
“Nae thanks, lawman. I’d rather not trade th’ Queen’s golden cage for one lined wi’ elven silver.”
Ed lowered the shotgun. It always came back to cages, didn’t it? His. The kids’. The elves’, for goodness sake, that one huge cage where they were trapped by the ways of their mundanes because that’s how magic worked. They were as naively insular and stoic as the local Nordic Americans, because for the elves, it was literally as genetic as it was cultural.
And everyone inside that cage had to deal with its bars every single day.
But the elves were trying. It was like eating healthy when every single one of your genes screamed I’m gonna explode your heart and kill ya early. Hence the mistakes with the vampires.
And here Ed was offering up a new sacrifice to that very same mistake by promising a kelpie access to the same floundering attempt at expanding their horizons that had let vampires into Alfheim in the first place.
What the hell was wrong with him? No kelpies in Alfheim.
“You think you’re in a cage?” Ed yelled. “What’d you do to get yourself locked up, Dumbass McHorseface? Huh? Besides all the murdering and trafficking and dark fae-ing? You know, the behaviors that should get you put down, not locked up?” He aimed the shotgun again.
For a split second, Ranger’s face fell as if he were a kid who’d just realized how terrible he was for kicking the dog. But that look vanished as quickly as it had appeared and the kelpie’s face stretched out into that terrified crazy look of manic fury.
“Ranger…” Wrenn held out her hand. “Give me the sword.”
He glared at her. “I remember this sword,” he growled.
Wrenn dropped her hand. “What?”
“She remembers me,” he said. “Why d’ ye think I can hold her? Why d’ ye think she keeps callin’ out about bindin’ Fenrir?”
“Set. It. Down, Ranger,” Wrenn said. “Now.”
“Tell me where my kids are!” Ed yelled. “Did the vamps take them?”
“Dinnae ken! Dinnae care, lawman!” Ranger bellowed.
“I’ve killed a vamp,” Ed snarled. “I’ll kill a kelpie, too.”
“Oh, aren’t we manly!” Ranger made a kissy face. “Perhaps ye are like-minded.”
“Stop!” Wrenn yelled.
She pointed at the brush about twenty feet down the beach.
Sophia stood on the sand, her brother behind her with his hand on her shoulder. “We ran when the vampires…” She inhaled. “The one shot the other one with the hat.”
“Then he used a machete, Papa. Sophia didn’t see,” Gabe said.
Which meant he had. He’d seen a vampire behead another vampire. In real life, under a Texas moon, on a real beach.
Ed’s kids knew his job sometimes involved bad things, and that sometimes those bad things were horrible and terrifying and that they gave both Momma and Papa bad dreams.
But they didn’t have specifics about the bad things. They thought violence meant hitting your sibling and him saying Ow! They thought breaking the law meant a stern talking-to from someone in a brown Alfheim County Sheriff Department uniform.
The vast majority of his job was issuing warnings and directing traffic. But sometimes there were vampires. Sometimes there were kelpies. And sometimes there were fae problems that meant his kids saw things they should not.
“That sword would have killed you the first time you met, Ranger,” Sophia said. “She’ll do it now, the moment she fully wakes up.”
Or knew things they should not.
Ranger looked at the sword in his hand. His mouth rounded.
He dropped the blade.
The hotheaded, exhausted part of Ed’s brain wanted to use the butt of his shotgun to beat Ranger into unconsciousness. To take care of the problem once and for all, even though he doubted he could do enough real damage to the kelpie to… what? Curb-stomp his brain into the sand? Incapacitate him? Haul him into a holding cell in Alfheim?
This wasn’t the same as the situation with the vampire. Ranger wasn’t actively attacking him. Nothing about Ed’s past mattered in relation to a kelpie who trafficked fae victims, except the victims part.
He shouldered the gun again. “On your knees. Hands on your head. Now!”
Ranger looked at Sophia. “I hope ye survive this, young one.”
White magical fire flared out from the sides of Ranger’s eyes like he was some cartoon character. Blistering white light, as if the brightness itself would cause wounds and welts.
And then it was gone and his eyes were back to their ice green.
Wrenn knocked him to the ground and dropped her full body weight onto his back, pinning his hips and arms. “The bridle,” she said. “On his neck. Get it off.”
Ed remembered something about kelpies and their bridles. He pulled out his pocketknife and flipped open the blade.
“Dinnae cut it!” Ranger wailed. “Please. Dinnae.”
Ed looked at the knots and braids as they wove themselves through the multiple silver rings. “What do
I do?” he asked.
“I will find that fine wife of yours,” Ranger growled through a thickening accent. “I cannot help myself. I am a kelpie.”
A wrong accent. He sounded somewhere between Latin and Spanish.
The next string of words was not Scottish, or any Spanish Ed understood, though he knew the kelpie spoke Spanish. He picked out words that sounded very much like life and church.
The white fire around Ranger’s eyes reappeared.
“What the hell?” Ed’s instincts were to get away from the kelpie. To move back as far as possible. To not breathe the same air.
He cut off the bridle and yanked it out from around Ranger’s neck.
The kelpie immediately calmed down. The white vanished. Ranger coughed and inhaled sharply. “I must do as ye order, lawman,” he whispered. “Ye have my bridle.”
A thought manifested in Ed’s head. A terrible thought, one he would never admit to anyone. One that came out because of his exhaustion, and his hotheadedness.
Tell him to kill himself, he thought. Sweep away the problem, out of his thoughts and out of his life. To be judge, jury, and executioner as if he were as much an aspect of a god as his employers.
If it had been just them out here on this beach, he would have. But Wrenn would take Ranger back to where some of those victims might see a tiny bit of justice. And Ed heard shuffling behind them.
“We will take the bridle,” Sophia said.
Wrenn put out her hand. “Are you sure you want to keep a kelpie’s bridle? You’ll have him under control, but not his brothers.”
“We’re a syndicate, ye ken,” Ranger said.
Sophia stared Wrenn dead in the eye, her almost-ten-year-old face stern and her lips set. “Gabe, put the bridle in your pocket. Please, Papa. It needs to come home with us.”
She wanted Ed to give it to her brother. “Can you tell us why, honey?” he asked gently.
She pointed at Ranger and shook her head. “This is the oracle’s boon to you,” she said.
She knew exactly what she was saying, and why, and for whom. Of this Ed was sure. He handed the bridle to Gabe, who stuffed it into his pocket.
Death Kissed Page 15