by Lexi George
“What is gone?”
“Th-the ammo. Somebody broke in to the office last night and stole the bullets out of my safe.” Trey clutched the windowsill. “B-but, I can get more. I promise. Tell Beck I just need a little more time.”
“You lie,” Conall said. A furious rage iced his veins. “Rebekah would never make a deal with the demons.”
“Who said anything about her? I’m talking about Evan Beck. You know him? You work for the demons, too?”
So, Rebekah’s accursed brother had adopted Beck as his surname. How interesting.
“No, Peterson,” Conall said. Sheets of ice covered the floor, desk, and chair, and crept up the walls, surrounding the window Trey sat in. “I am not in league with the demons.”
“Who are you with then?” Sweat beaded Peterson’s brow and upper lip in spite of the chill. “Maybe we can work something out. The bullets are gone, but I can get more. I swear. Bullets, knives, swords—I can get you whatever you want.”
“A man most eager to bargain,” Duncan murmured.
“And with whoever is most expedient,” Conall said. “These stolen bullets were requisitioned by Evan Beck?”
“Not exactly.” Trey fretted with the length of cloth around his neck that humans called a “tie.” “He approached me about a stone knife my grandfather had. It was destroyed in a fire, but I found some notes in a safe-deposit box. The notes were sketchy, but the old man kept babbling on about crater rock, and I put two and two together.”
“Your grandfather had plans to supply arms to the demons, and you mean to take over the operation.”
“No! I mean, sure, I thought about it. Evan made it sound so easy. But that was before I saw them.” Trey shuddered. “They’re worse than the old man. I want out. Maybe you and I can do business.”
Conall gave him a cold smile. “I do not think so. The demon hunter your grandfather stabbed is my brother Ansgar.”
“Your brother?” Trey gave him a sickly smile. “No hard feelings, huh?”
A blond apparition materialized on a nauseating wave of perfume. Hands on hips, she glared at Conall and Duncan.
“Who are you and what do you want with my husband?” She snapped her head around as Peterson made a strangled noise. “Trey, what are you doing in the window? Don’t you even think about leaving. It’s time for our marriage counseling. You’ve missed the last two sessions. I’m starting to think you’re not committed to our relationship. Are you listening to me? Trey? Trey?”
Peterson shifted into a large, black and white spotted dog and jumped out the open window, abandoning his fine clothes on the floor.
“Trey Peterson, you get back here this instant!” The blonde rushed to the window, watching as the dog ran away. She turned in a huff. “Ooh, I hate when he pulls that Dalmatian shit.”
“Follow him,” Conall told Duncan quietly. “Bring him back.”
Duncan vanished.
The ghost turned on Conall. “This is your fault. You said something to upset him.” Her nose twitched and she sneezed, hard. “There’s a cat in this room. Where is it?” She looked around, her eyes narrowed. “Come out, you flea bag. I know you’re in here.”
“Meow,” Annie said, slinking out from under Trey’s desk.
The cat darted past the angry ghost and ran behind Conall.
“Meredith Peterson, I assume?” Conall asked the shade.
“My, aren’t you the genius?” Meredith sneezed again. “Get that damn thing out of here. I’m allergic.”
“You are dead. Your reaction to the creature is imagined.”
Her narrow chest swelled. “That kind of insensitive remark is exactly why I’m in therapy, asshole.”
She disappeared with a furious pop and another heavy gust of perfume. Conall walked over to examine the open safe. Empty; as he suspected. Whoever had stolen the bullets had taken Blake Peterson’s notes as well—if Peterson was telling the truth and his grandfather had documented his findings.
They would know soon enough. Duncan was an excellent tracker. Peterson would not long elude one of Conall’s finest warriors.
A small sound drew his attention. Turning, he saw the cat and crouched on his heels.
“Come here, little one,” he said. “I will not hurt you.”
Doubt shadowed the cat’s brilliant copper eyes.
“You have my word,” Conall said. “It is past time you dropped this foolish guise. I know what you are.”
The cat’s form shimmered like a desert mirage and vanished. A dirty little girl with tangled brown hair scowled at him. She wore a large cotton shirt like a shift, and her small feet were bare.
“How?” she asked.
“Your brain patterns are different from a cat’s,” he said. “And I noticed the empty candy wrappers scattered about the bar. As a rule, felines do not enjoy sweets.”
She looked belligerent. “You don’t know it was me. It could’ve been Tommy.”
“But it was not him. It was you.”
“I don’t wanna talk about the stupid old zombie. I hate him.”
“You do not hate him. You are very fond of him. What happened, did he send you away?”
Her chin quivered and she looked away, scowling. “He yelled at me and threw rocks. I don’t care. I don’t need him. I don’t need nobody.”
“The zombie suffers,” Conall said. “He sent you away to protect you.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s stupid. Friends don’t do that. I’m a kid and I know that.”
“You are a fierce little thing,” Conall said. “You remind me of Rebekah.”
“Do not. She’s beautiful.”
“Yes, she is. I imagine she was very much like you as a little girl.”
“I saw you kissing her out on the dock. You love her, dontcha?”
“Yes, I do. Very much.”
“Then why are you here? She’s in trouble.”
Fear sliced through Conall. “What?”
Her scowl deepened. “The demons are gonna get her. I been trying to warn you.”
Duncan reappeared. He was alone.
“Peterson is dead,” he said. “In his haste to escape, he ran beneath the wheels of a motorized carriage and was crushed.” He looked at Annie. “Who is this dirty little imp?”
Annie kicked him. “Don’t call me names.”
Duncan rubbed his bruised shin. “A ferocious little thing, is she not?”
“Her name is Annie,” Conall said. “Stay with her. Rebekah is in danger.”
The demons buzzed out of the hat, ragged black shadows with claws and howling mouths, and flew at Beck. The ring on her finger hummed to life, like Bilbo’s Sting when goblins were near. There were nine wraiths in all; too many. Beck yanked the metal pour spout out of the bottle and tossed the pepper sauce at them. It splattered three of the demons and they recoiled, writhing in the air, and fluttered like shreds of tissue paper to the floor.
Dancy the demon woman hopped up and down in fury, her painted orange lips stretched in an ugly snarl.
“Get her,” she screamed. “Kill the demon hunter’s bitch.”
The remaining wraiths dive-bombed Beck. She yelped and ducked behind a rack of bras.
“Run,” she shouted at Verbena. Picking up the metal rack, she swung it at a swooping demon, knocking it aside. “Get out of the store.”
The girl ran over to her. “No, I ain’t leaving you.”
Back to back, they watched the circling wraiths. They were truly horrible to look at, with bony, scabrous hands and fanged, hungry mouths, and they radiated hate and soul-sapping fear.
Shaking off her terror, Beck broke off part of the chrome rack. The ring flared, and the piece of metal in her hand became a shining blade of blue fire. This wasn’t Sting; this was Glamdring, the mighty weapon wielded by Gandalf against the Balrog, forged by the Elves in the First Age.
The blazing sword filled her with courage. She was a hero of old. She was totally kickass. She would take Evil to the whup shack and save the
Shire—uh, Hannah—from the Orcs.
A wraith attacked with a chilling cry. Beck plunged her shining blade into the heart of the thing, and it shattered with a horrible cry. Black dust rained down upon them; it smelled like charred road kill. Ugh.
“My hair,” Verbena shrieked, clapping an enormous turquoise bra over her head.
Beck hoisted her makeshift Foe Hammer in the air in a gesture of triumph. “Yeah,” she shouted. “That’s what I’m talking about. Four of you buzzards down, five to go. Come on, dick-wads. Come to Mama.”
Not poetry, perhaps, or a stirring battle cry like William Wallace’s in Braveheart, but the demons got the gist of it. They regrouped and dive-bombed her like a murder of crows. Beck caught another one on the end of her sword. A beam of light shot out and the wraith disintegrated. A second demon darted past, leaving a long, burning scratch on Beck’s neck. A third jumped at her. Sharp claws ripped Beck’s shoulder. She screamed in pain and whacked blindly at the demon with her sword. The demon tumbled to the floor and Beck stabbed it. The demon exploded in a puff of odiferous ash.
She turned in a circle, flailing her weapon to ward off the next attack. None came.
“Look,” Verbena said, pointing. She was still wearing the bra. One cup covered her head; the other cup, large enough to hold a small watermelon, dangled next to her cheek.
Conall stalked through the store, his obsidian eyes shining with battle lust, his sword drawn. Beck blinked down at the weapon in her hand. She held the twisted remnants of a lingerie rack, not a gleaming Elven sword. Conall was death walking, and she was a chick holding a glorified coat hanger. He swung his blade and sliced a demon in half. It died with a bloodcurdling shriek. The two remaining wraiths blasted through the front display window like a couple of miniature jets, shattering the glass.
Only one demon left—Demon Dancy. Where did she go?
“There,” Verbena cried, pointing again.
A huge, hairy orange spider clung to the ceiling above Conall’s head.
“Conall,” Beck shrieked as the spider pounced.
He leaped aside, and the spider’s fangs struck the spot where he’d been standing an instant before. Shouting something in a strange tongue, Conall rushed the monster with his sword. The spider sprang away and Conall gave chase.
They ricocheted around the room, this way and that. The spider was fast, but Conall was faster; Nemesis on steroids.
The spider was no match for him. He’d kill it as easily as he’d slain the trolls. Problem was, Dancy Smith was in there, somewhere. She’d die along with the demon. Beck had to do something, and fast, or the female denizens of Hannah would be rudderless in the sea of fashion.
She scrambled around, looking for the metal pour spout. There—half buried beneath a pile of nylon panties. She snatched it up and jammed it back into the neck of the pepper sauce bottle. Conall and the demon were still going at it. The spider hissed and sputtered, bouncing around the room like a rubber ball as it tried to avoid Conall’s sword. Ropes of gauze shot out of the bug’s spinnerets and floated about, hanging lazily in the air and clinging in sticky strands to the merchandise in the store.
Watching the spider’s frantic gyrations made Beck dizzy. The spider sprang across the room and back again, landing with her big old spider butt in Beck’s face. Beck seized her chance and sprang onto the bug’s back. The orange hair covering the spider’s bloated body was stiff as wire and razor sharp.
She plunged the metal spout into the narrow waist connecting the spider’s abdomen to the head, wincing as the sharp bristles sliced her hand and wrist.
The demon leaked out of the spider and into the bottle. With a thin, whistling shriek, the monster collapsed beneath Beck like a punctured balloon. She put her thumb over the spout to keep the demon inside.
“Umph,” Dancy mumbled, her face mashed against the floor.
Beck was sitting on top of the old lady, riding her like a mechanical bull. Awkward.
With a hoarse cry, Conall yanked Beck off Dancy and into his arms. “Rebekah, are you hurt?”
“Just a few scratches.”
“Little fool.” His face was taut with anger. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking you were about to kill Dancy.” She handed him the hot sauce bottle with the demon inside. “You’d better do something with this. Keep your thumb over the opening or it’ll get out.”
Conall snarled and crumpled the metal spout like it was tinfoil.
“Or you could do that,” Beck said. The big show-off.
“What happened?” Dancy Smith sat up and spat out a glob of orange hair. “Was there a tornado?”
Poor Dancy and her store were a wreck. Both shoes were gone, Dancy’s hair resembled Verbena’s before the Jeannine makeover, and her stockings and clothes were in shreds.
Verbena helped the elderly lady to her feet and over to a chair.
“You don’t look so good, Miss Dancy,” Verbena said. “You’d best sit for a spell.” She took the bra off her head and clapped it over Dancy’s ruined coiffure. “There, so you don’t go into shock.”
Duncan appeared, a grubby child in a ragged T-shirt at his side. The little girl’s dark hair was a rat’s nest of filthy tangles.
“Where’d you get the kid?” Beck asked.
“I’m not a kid,” the little girl said, a trifle indignantly. “I’m Annie.”
“Annie?” Beck took a cautious step closer and then another, afraid she might startle the child. She blinked down into a pair of purple irises ringed in bright copper. “Annie?”
“Yes. Can we go now? I’m hungry.”
Beck held out her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Annie took it.
“What would you like to eat?” Beck asked.
“Anything but tuna,” Annie said.
Conall handed Duncan the hot sauce bottle. “Rebekah captured a demon. Transfer it to a djevel flaskke and clean up this mess.” Sirens sounded in the distance. “Preferably before the authorities arrive.”
He bowed to Dancy. “Madam, my brother will settle our bill. We have shopped enough for one day.”
Chapter Thirty-three
The next morning, Conall got up before daybreak and went fishing. He returned from the river carrying a string of trout, three big catfish, and a five-pound spotted bass, cleaned and ready to cook. Beck’s father liked to fish, but he didn’t catch much. Conall, on the other hand, was the freaking fish whisperer.
While Conall pan-seared the trout, Beck fried hash browns and cut up some fruit. She liked working in the kitchen with him. Conall went about the business of cooking with the same confidence, quiet efficiency, and attention to detail that he did everything, including sex.
Especially sex, Beck thought, her stomach fluttering at the memory of the things they’d done the night before. He’d been very efficient about that, too, though not nearly as quiet. She hadn’t been quiet, either. She’d sung several rounds of the Orgasm Song. Good thing he’d used his Dalvahni magic to sound proof their room, or Annie might have been scarred for life.
Beck took a seat at the table across from Conall, and glanced at the child to her left. Annie swung her legs back and forth under her chair. She’d turned her nose up at the fish and was finishing off a bowl of cereal.
We’re just like a real family, Beck thought with a wistful pang. If only . . .
She unfolded the special edition of the Hannah Herald that had been delivered that morning. Trey Peterson’s death was big news.
“According to the Herald, the driver swears he ran over a spotted dog,” she told Conall, reading from a front page article. The heading read: TIMBER TYCOON KILLED IN THE BUFF.” He got out of his car to check, and found Trey Peterson lying in the road, naked as a baby.”
Conall took a big bite of fish and chewed thoughtfully. “ ’Twould seem he shifted ere he died.”
“Thank goodness,” Beck said. “Otherwise, some city worker would’ve dumped him in a hole with the rest of the road kill.” Sh
e shuddered. “And nobody would ever know what happened to Trey Peterson. At least this way, his family gets closure and he gets a decent burial.”
Annie put her spoon down. “I’m done.”
“Okay, go brush your teeth,” Beck said. “I need to get to work.”
“I’m going with you, right? Tommy might come back.”
Beck felt a wave of sadness. Tommy was out there, somewhere, struggling against his zombie nature.
“Yes, but first you have to brush your teeth,” Beck said.
“I brushed them last night. Jeez.”
“Nonetheless, you will brush them again,” Conall said calmly. “Now.”
Grumbling, Annie trudged out of the kitchen.
Beck shook her head in amazement. A bath and some new clothes, and Annie looked like any other eight-year-old girl, with her dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and tied with a ribbon. The bath had been something of a challenge. From what they’d been able to learn, Annie’s mother had died when Annie was a toddler, and the orphaned child had become a ward of the state. Annie had bounced around a lot, never staying long with any family. Reading between the lines and remembering her own childhood mishaps, Beck suspected Annie’s kith abilities had freaked out her norm foster parents.
In fairness to the norms, Annie’s banshee routine scared the crap out of most supers, too.
Annie had run away from her last placement, and she’d been on her own for more than two years, surviving in cat form by living off the land. Annie Glenn was one tough little cookie. Annie the cat, however, did not like water, which made bath time interesting.
The child had been filthy—it had taken two tubs of water to get her clean. She’d reminded Beck of the character Newt from the movie Alien, with her matted hair and sometimes feral behavior. Beck had feared she might have to shave the child’s head. She’d put in a distress call to Verbena, who’d shown up with Toby and a bottle of Fiona Fix-It. Beck had no idea what Evie Douglass Dalvahni put in the miracle product she’d concocted, but Beck wanted to buy stock in it. It had cleaned and tamed Annie’s grubby, snarled locks in one application.
Contrary to Conall’s declaration that he’d had enough shopping for one day, he’d bravely gone back to town Tuesday afternoon armed with Annie’s measurements, a tracing of her feet, and a list. Beck had asked him to get the child a few things, just enough to tide them over. Conall Claus had returned laden with packages. Dottie Wise, the owner of Toodles, Hannah’s only clothing store for kids, was doing a happy dance somewhere, celebrating her biggest sale ever.