by Ann Charles
“Here kitty, kitty,” Doc taunted from off to my left.
The White Grizzly looked his way, the low growl starting up again.
I glanced in Doc’s direction, too, wondering what in the hell he was doing. Not ten feet away, he stood next to a crooked tombstone, the charm Aunt Zoe had given him dangling in the moonlight.
“Doc, are you trying to get yourself fileted?”
“Just buying you time, Killer.”
With the shotgun out of reach, bludgeoning it to death was off the table. I needed something sharp, something to bury in its ugly hide.
The beast snarled at Doc, taking another step closer.
Doc was acting as bait, and if I didn’t find something to kill this vile thing real quick, he might end up as a meal.
Then I remembered the rod that had almost impaled me. With a solid tug, I pulled it free. The end that had been in the ground was pointy, not as sharp as I’d like, but it would do in a pinch.
The creature leaned back on its haunches, getting ready to lunge at Doc.
Without a sound, I attacked first, moving like my boots were on fire. It dodged too late, unable to escape me as I drove down hard with the rod, trying to penetrate its wide back. Its hide was thick, withstanding the pointed metal for a split second. Doubling my efforts, I put my weight into it, shoving harder with a grunt. Finally the rod plunged through, sinking into the beast with a swift, sickening ease.
The White Grizzly roared, rolling onto its side, taking me with it while its claws swiped wildly at my face, arms, and chest, almost catching me once or twice
I rolled off of it, scrambling to my feet again.
“Violet,” Natalie yelled from behind me. “Catch!”
I raised my hand without thinking as I turned her way, plucking the old shotgun from the air as it flew toward me. Just as my dad had taught me years ago when I was learning how to belt a softball into the outfield, I choked up on the barrels and tightened my grip. Striding over to where it writhed in the grass, I stood over it just as its claws reached around and tugged the metal rod free. A dark fluid coated the white fur around the wound.
It hissed at me, lunging upward with snapping teeth.
I easily dodged the attack and then planted my boots firmly on the ground. “Go back to whatever hell you came from, you nasty son of a bitch.”
It bared its teeth again.
I didn’t wait for further invitation and swung, catching it square in the side of the head.
The crack reverberated up through the gun barrels, making my hands sting with pins and needles. The stock splintered, a chunk of wood flying off into the darkness, making it a ragged, wooden dagger.
The White Grizzly slumped to the ground, looking up at me through its one milky eye, its breath wheezing. A whimpering sound rose from its chest, sounding human-like.
“Say goodnight, Gracie.” I raised the shotgun again, this time with the double barrels pointed skyward, and buried the splintered stock into the beast’s chest.
The milky eye rolled up, its jaw sagged open, a black tongue lolled out.
All was silent.
The job was done.
“Goodnight,” I whispered.
Someone grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me back and away from the dead beast. “You’re bleeding,” Doc said, turning me to face him. He lifted my arm. For the first time, I noticed the gashes in my coat sleeve.
Holding his rib cage, Cooper walked over to the beast, prodding it with his boot and then leaned over it when it stayed dead. Then he jumped back. “Jesus! It’s moving.”
Doc pushed me behind him.
“Wait,” Cooper said. “Actually, I think it’s melting.”
“What?”
We joined him, staring down at it. He patted his pockets and then pulled out a flashlight from an inside one and shined it on the beast.
Cooper was right. It was melting like an ice cream cone on a sun drenched sidewalk, leaving a white gooey mess on the grass.
“What in the hell was that thing?” Natalie came up beside me, grabbing my arm as she stared down at it.
“The White Grizzly,” Cooper muttered, scrubbing a hand down his face.
“I thought that was just an old wives’ tale,” she said, echoing Cooper’s earlier words.
Within seconds, the notorious White Grizzly was nothing but a big puddle of goo. Then the goo began to darken, turning into a black tar like substance that bubbled once or twice before sinking down into the earth. Within minutes, nothing was left but a stain on the grass.
“Well,” Natalie said, walking over and plopping down onto a gravestone. “Now I’ve seen just about everything. Where’s that hooch of Harvey’s?”
Actually we were just getting started, but now wasn’t the time to drop that bomb on her after what she’d just witnessed.
I frowned up at Doc. “You could have gotten yourself killed, damn it.”
He frowned back. “I told you not to leave my side.”
Natalie laughed, a hard, cold, jarring laugh. “And here I figured we’d light some candles tonight, play with a Ouija board a little, and tell a ghost story or two.” She shivered, pulling her jacket tight around her. “I’ll say one thing—you guys really know how to throw a kickass séance.”
“Where are Cornelius and Harvey?” I looked around, worried at their absence.
“I left Cornelius in the barn,” Doc said. “He was excited about something he’d caught on one of his recorders.”
“Harvey is over by his chicken coop,” Natalie said.
I peered in that direction, not seeing any movement in the thick shadows of the setting moon. “What’s he doing there?”
“Digging for tins of money.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Saturday, November 3rd
Meanwhile, back in Deadwood …
The morning dawned. Period.
Thank God.
After last night’s fun and games with old milky eyes, the sight of the sun’s rays coming through my bedroom window made me feel like dancing the Charleston across the floor.
I sat up, stretching my sore back muscles. Man, I needed Doc’s magic hands. Turned out killing was tough on a body, especially for an aging, out of shape mother of two.
Something grunted beside me. Or was that a snore?
I looked over. There was a lump under the covers.
“Natalie?” I whispered, trying to remember last night’s events after leaving Harvey’s ranch. It was a blur after the adrenaline rush in the graveyard. Cooper’s sore ribs, Natalie’s questions, Harvey’s broken shotgun, Doc’s insistence on getting me back home and safe.
The lump moved. The covers lifted and fell slightly with each breath.
I reached over and grabbed the top of my comforter, pulling it down several inches. Tuffs of white hair poked out from under the covers.
What the … ? I yanked it down.
A pair of milky eyes stared up at me.
I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
Its black lips pulled back from a set of sharp, blood-stained teeth.
A creaky sound escaped from my throat.
It snarled. Then it lunged up at me, teeth snapping.
I tried to scream again, but nothing came out.
Wake up!
I snapped upright in bed and screamed for real, blinking awake. Dark clouds filled the sky outside my bedroom window. Chicken feathers floated in the air. I caught sight of tail feathers racing out my half-open door into the hallway.
Holding my chest, I groaned and flopped back onto my pillow.
“Hells bells!” Natalie said from beside me in the bed. “You just scared five years off my life, woman!”
I looked over into her wide eyes. “I warned you about sleeping with me, but you were too big a chicken shit to stay on the couch.”
“Sticks and stones, baby cakes, but creepy otherworldly beasts scare the chicken shit right out of me.”
“Me, too.”
“There was
no way I was sleeping alone last night.” She rolled onto her side facing me and leaned on her elbow. “Sorry to kick Doc out of your bed.”
“You didn’t kick him out. If he’d stayed, he would have slept on the couch. I don’t think the kids are ready to see him gracing my sheets yet.”
“Now that I’ve been tried by fire, tell me my dear best friend whom I’ve known since we were little kids, what in the heck is going on with you and how come I’m just now finding out about all of this freaky crap?”
I started with the easy answer. “What’s going on with me is I’ve recently found out that I’m an executioner.”
Her eyebrows scrunched up. “I’ve always wondered, is the black hood mandatory per the executioner union rules or could you wear something more uplifting, like a rainbow wig, and still be up to code?”
“Those rainbow wigs always itch.”
“I suppose scratching while up there in front of the angry mob would look unprofessional.”
“Exactly. You know how image conscious I am these days.” That was actually true now that Jerry commented on each of my outfits.
Her grin flat-lined. “An executioner? What the blazes?”
I took a deep breath and let the whole long story gush out, starting with what happened at Mudder Brothers when I stabbed the albino juggernaut in the back, continuing through my bathroom party with the deadly bitch at the Opera House, including the bit about Ms. Wolff and the trick with mirrors during the séance in her apartment and ending with Aunt Zoe’s version of my family history and my current role.
“Wow.” She massaged her temples, like she was having trouble fitting my story between them. “Do you know how nutty that sounds?”
“It’s a sure-fire guarantee for a straightjacket.”
“And a padded room.” She rolled onto her back, shaking her head at the ceiling. “Damn, Vi.”
“I know.” Then I remembered Prudence. “Oh, I forgot to tell you about the other executioner.”
Her expression was raised eyebrows and round peepers. “There’s another one?”
I nodded. “She lives at the Carhart house up in Lead. Well, she doesn’t really ‘live’ there because she’s dead. Prudence can only talk to me by temporarily possessing the living and using them as microphones.”
“No way.” She covered her eyes with the heels of her palms. “This is all so …”
I threw back the covers. “You already said nutty.”
“Unreal.”
“I wish.” I would have loved to go back to my pre-killer life. I stood and stretched, my body one big bruised muscle. My extra-long T-shirt felt heavy on my aching shoulders. Was this what boxers felt like the morning after a few rounds in the ring? I needed to soak in a vat of Epsom salt.
“But when I think about how you moved last night …” She trailed off again.
I bent over, reaching for my toes. My lower back twanged. Ouch! “What do you mean?”
“You were fast.”
I hadn’t felt any different from normal. “Fast like when I chase down the ice cream truck?”
She snorted. “Way faster. I’m talking freaky fast and really strong.”
I bent to the side, stretching my arm upward. “I was wearing deodorant, smartass.”
“I’m serious, Vi. Think about it. You broke the stock of a shotgun over that thing’s head. That’s not normal.”
I stood upright, frowning at her. “Are you forgetting my high school softball batting record?”
“Yeah, but belting homeruns was something you were good at almost two decades ago.” She sat up, my smiley face pajama top buttoned crookedly up her chest. “That thing was huge, like a big bear.”
I stretched the other way, wincing at the stabbing pain in my shoulder. “I remember.”
“And it was pissed off.”
Yeah, and anti-Sharfrichter. I pointed at the bandage wrap on my forearm where it had left its still-stinging mark. “I noticed.”
“Hitting it with a shotgun shouldn’t have knocked it for a loop like it did, especially considering it was a girl doing the swinging.” She balled up her pillow and hugged it against her stomach. “You’re like the bionic woman.”
I cupped my hand to my ear. “Na-na-na-na-na,” I said, pretending to have super-duper hearing. “You hear that? Someone’s calling for us.”
“That’s the bionic man’s sound, dipshit.”
Paradoxically, my cell phone rang.
“See, I was right, you can hear into the future.” Natalie grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand. “And lookee here.” She held out the phone. “It’s your bionic boyfriend.”
Sure enough, Doc’s name was on the screen. “It was Radar O’Reilly from MASH who could hear things before they happened, dork,” I said, taking the phone. “The bionic woman could hear stuff from far away.”
“Same difference.”
I took the call. “Bonjour, Gomez. How’d you sleep?”
“Tell Steve Austin I want to feel the muscles on his bionic arm,” Natalie said.
I mimed zipping her lips closed.
“My bed is cold and lonely without you, Tish.”
“We’ll have to do something about that.”
“Okay.”
Okay? What did that mean? Wait. I wasn’t going to go down that rabbit hole. “You coming over for breakfast, or did you eat already?” I asked him a safe, easy question.
“We already ate.”
“We?”
“Cooper woke me up before dawn.”
“How considerate of him.” I rubbed my lower back muscles. All of that shotgun swinging had really done a number on me. “Why?”
“He had something on his mind.”
“Besides Smith and Wesson’s newest revolver?”
He chuckled. “He wanted to go back out to the ranch.”
I stopped massaging. “Why?”
“To check the nest.”
“The nest? You mean that cave up on the hill behind Harvey’s place? The place they found those teeth and old clothes?”
Natalie scrambled off the bed and put her ear next to mine, listening in.
“An abandoned mine, actually,” Doc said, “and yes—that nest.”
“Did he go out there?”
“Yes, we did.”
“He dragged you along?” That wasn’t normal police procedure for Cooper.
“I offered to go with him.”
“You offered to go with a prickly detective to a spooky ranch in the dark and climb up to a creepy, weird mine after what happened there last night?”
“The sun was coming up, and we were armed. He played nice and shared his weapons.”
“Don’t get me started on those damned guns of his.”
“He was hurting. I didn’t think he should climb up there alone.”
Natalie got all squinty eyed, her upper lip wrinkling. Apparently, last night’s quarrel with the mulish detective still stung.
The White Grizzly had left its mark on Cooper when it had tackled him, its weight bruising, maybe more. Natalie had wanted him to go to the ER to make sure there was no internal damage and maybe get some stitches where a couple of its claws had torn through his leather coat. He’d flat out refused, not wanting any record of the night’s events on file.
“Are his ribs still hurting? Or is it something else?”
“Just the ribs. He thinks one might be fractured. Maybe two.”
He needs to go to the hospital! Natalie mouthed.
I shushed her with my finger. “I told the bozo not to shoot at that thing, but he’s too hard-headed to listen.”
“Reminds me of someone else.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I told you not to leave my side.”
Natalie pointed at the phone, then her nose, then me.
I reached out and flicked her nose for taking Doc’s side. “Come on,” I said to Doc. “Let’s not do this dance again.” We’d waltzed plenty last night about this deviation I’d
made in the game plan. I changed the subject. “Did you find anything up at the mine?”
“The body. What was left of it, anyway.”
Natalie grimaced. I concurred.
“Had the bone eater worked on it some more?” I asked, thinking of those scary teeth from my nightmare.
“That was our conclusion.”
“That’s horrible.” I sat on the bed.
Natalie dropped down next to me, still listening in.
“Do the cops even have a clue who the victim was?”
“Cooper didn’t say and I didn’t ask.”
“How did the body get back out to the ranch?”
“That’s still up for debate.” I heard a mumbling sound in the background. “Cooper wants to talk to you.”
“Now?” I was a shower and a tooth brushing away from being ready to verbally spar with the detective.
“No. He wants to meet at The Old Prospector in an hour.”
I’d have to call in to work, see what was going on with the TV crew and how Jerry felt about my being late. “Why there?”
“Because Cornelius called me.”
“He called you?”
“He was looking for a ‘Violet Parker’ and mentioned something about the need for a protein shake.”
Why hadn’t the bonehead called me? Scratch that. Cornelius wasn’t much of one for making sense, especially this early in the morning before his precious shake.
“When I explained who he’d actually called, he told me we both needed to come over and listen to the recording of the séance.”
“Did he hear something odd?”
“Something odd at a séance with you, Killer?” Doc laughed. “When does that ever happen?”
“Listen, wise guy, you’re like two coffees ahead of me here.”
“You should have spent the night with me. I’d have woken you up with something more invigorating than caffeine.”
Natalie covered her heart and pretended to swoon. I shoved her backward on the bed.
“Promises, promises,” I said to Doc. “Did Cornelius give a clue about what’s on the recording?”
“No. He mentioned that he wants to see if you have answers the rest of us don’t, and then he told me to have you bring a protein shake with us along with some licorice—the old fashioned kind—and hung up.”
Did he mean the black licorice? Did he want it in his protein shake? I shook those thoughts away and returned to the more normal topic—the séance. “Why would I have these elusive answers?”