by M. D. Massey
Awesome way to return to the hunter life, Colin, I thought as I struggled to get my bearings. I shook off the blow and forced myself to take short, quick breaths to relax the muscles in my abdomen. Nothing felt broken, and I hadn’t stabbed myself with my sword, so that was a plus. I rolled unsteadily to my knees, grabbing the edge of the grave to pull myself upright.
Sabine’s scream pierced the night, cutting through my concussed mental haze and bringing me back into focus. I vaulted out of the grave, a bit unsteady but functional, and ran in the direction of the scream. Sabine was crab-walking backward away from the ghoul, but the fat lady was having none of it. The ghoul skittered forward like a spider and grabbed Sabine’s ankle, pulling her away from the tree that had been her destination. Sabine grabbed onto a root and began kicking the ghoul in the face with her high-top Vans.
“Let—go—of—my—fucking—ankle!” she swore as she stomped the ghoul in the face over and over again. She held onto the tree root for dear life, but pulled her knee all the way up to her stomach to get the maximum amount of power into each kick. Apparently, Sabine was no shrinking violet in a fight—good to know.
The ghoul finally got a clue and released one hand to grab Sabine’s other ankle. She curled her rotten lips back with a snarl to reveal black and decayed teeth, rearing her head back to chomp down on Sabine’s calf.
“No!” I yelled, tossing the flashbulb cantrip in her face from a few feet away. I shielded my eyes, but the flash still partially blinded me as well. Normally, I would have triggered it from behind cover, but dangerous circumstances often called for risky tactics. The ghoul screamed. I blinked to clear the spots from my eyes and heard it scurrying away.
“Sabine, are you okay?” I asked as I felt my way forward, vision slowly returning as I grabbed a tombstone to steady myself.
“Still here, and still not a ghoul snack,” she replied with a slight quiver in her voice. “I take back what I said about your job—totally not boring. But I’m still freezing my ass off.”
I reached down to help her up. She grabbed my hand and I pulled her up with a little too much effort, sending her stumbling into me. We collided and I grabbed her, instinctively hugging her close as her hands and face met my chest. My heart was pounding, more from adrenaline than anything. For a moment I flashed back to the cave, the night I’d lost Jesse.
“You scared the shit out of me!” I exclaimed.
Sabine stiffened in my arms, then relaxed slightly. She mumbled something unintelligible. I released her and gently put her at arm’s length.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
She looked down at the ground, avoiding my gaze. I realized her scent was on me, a combination of lilacs, spring rain, and another smell that I couldn’t identify but that made my heart race. Fae pheromones? Faeromones? I let go of her, and my arms drifted to my sides.
“Well, that was—new,” she stated awkwardly.
I’d never really displayed that sort of emotion toward Sabine before. She was my friend, and I might have given her a friendly hug every now and again in greeting, but such displays of affection were always brief and passionless. I guess I just hadn’t realized how much I cared for her.
I decided to clear the air. “Okay, so this is awkward. Sorry for the groping bear hug. I got a little emotional after seeing that ghoul try to eat you.”
“A little? If you say so. Makes me wonder what you’re like when you really get worked up.”
The corners of her mouth turned up slightly, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. Dawn was just beginning to peek over the trees to the east, and the look on her face said she wasn’t entirely displeased by how I’d reacted.
Damn it. I really wasn’t interested in Sabine that way. At least, I didn’t think I was—and the last thing I wanted was to give her that impression. I liked things the way they were, with zero complications. I had no idea how to deal with the fact that she might actually be interested in being more than just friends.
So, I did what any guy in that situation might do. I ran away.
“Look, I have to get after that ghoul while the trail is fresh. Sun’s coming up, so it’ll be safe to head back to your car.”
I starting jogging after the ghoul, nearly tripping again over a grave marker as Sabine watched me go.
“I’ll text you later!” I yelled as I took off at a run.
Smooth, Colin. Real smooth.
I tracked the second ghoul by scent through the cemetery, waving at a grumpy-looking caretaker as I neared the exit. The old man merely scowled and stared at me, keeping both hands on his rake and looking like my very presence was a personal affront.
“Running around in the dark’ll be the end of you, young man.”
His grumpiness made me smile. “I’ll do my best to stay in one piece,” I replied.
The old man harrumphed with a “get off my lawn” stare as I passed. Old people, I’ll never figure them out. I headed through the gates and into the residential and commercial district beyond the cemetery grounds.
This area of Austin was in a state of transition, slowly being gentrified. The black and Hispanic community that had lived there for decades was being pushed out by ever-increasing property taxes and the promise of a disproportionately large payout on what once had been considered junk real estate. It wasn’t uncommon to see a fifty by one hundred fifty-foot lot in this area with a rundown, one-bedroom shotgun house selling for a quarter-million dollars.
When you were someone who subsisted below the poverty level, and your yearly taxes jumped from a few hundred a year to more than you’d pay for a year’s rent on an apartment in the suburbs, cashing in and pulling up stakes looked pretty good. Unfortunately, the inevitable, crushing advance of what the city council called “progress and revitalization” meant that ethnic communities in Austin—who had roots going back a hundred years or more—were now being broken up and cast to the four winds. It was both saddening and maddening, a reminder that political animals of every type and species all fed at the same trough: that of the almighty dollar.
I told myself I’d be doing my small part to save East Austin by making sure this ghoul wasn’t around to terrorize the area any longer. Although, when I thought about the prospect of the ghoul chewing the faces off a few yuppies and hipsters, slowing the gentrification of the area just a bit, I was slightly tempted to just let it go for a day or two. Just slightly, mind you—I might have longed for social justice, but not at the cost of innocent lives.
Still, one could dream.
My chase led me several blocks out of the cemetery, through an alley and well past Chicon into a residential area. It was a mix of older homes and lots that had been cleared to make way for modern homes that looked so out of place they’d have given Frank Lloyd Wright nightmares. Most were wedged into tiny lots that forced architects to design multi-story monstrosities that stuck out like a mosh pit at a Taylor Swift concert. The scent trail led not to one of the more modern homes, but to a small abandoned shack of a house that had been marked for demolition.
The small, dilapidated one-story house sat close to the front of the lot, with a threadbare lawn and a rusted chainlink fence—the only features that separated it from the cracked and tilted sidewalk and freshly surfaced street. Light blue paint peeled away from the clapboard siding, and the smell of fresh tortillas being made at the factory down the street mingled with the crisp fall air and the scent of decay and death coming from inside the home. I chose to circle around the block and come at it from the alley behind the house, vaulting the chicken wire fence in the back and cutting through a weed-strewn yard to reach the ramshackle rear porch and entry. The wooden stairs leading up to the porch tilted at an odd angle, and the roof over the porch itself looked rotten and on the verge of collapsing. I stepped lightly on the stairs and porch, both to mask the sounds of my approach and out of fear of falling through the deck.
The back door had been boarded shut, along with all the windows. I located a window where
the plywood covering had been pulled free on three sides, allowing me to pull the board up like it was hinged at the top. Muddy footprints, fresh dirt on the sill, and the stench of decay told me this was where the ghouls had been hiding out during the day. I pulled my short sword from inside my Craneskin Bag, where I’d stashed it before chasing the ghoul out of the cemetery. I triggered a cantrip to enhance my vision slightly and entered the premises.
Inside, it was pretty much what you’d expect from a recently abandoned home in this area; the family who had once lived here had cleared out most of their belongings, but some signs of their presence still remained. A TV stand that had been deemed too worthless to move or sell sat against one wall, along with some random photos that had been discarded along with the family’s connections to the old neighborhood. I imagined someone’s kids had sold this place after their parents had passed away, and pitied them for not valuing their family’s history. Or, maybe those were photos of people and places they’d as soon forget. I knew how that felt, and reminded myself that I had no right judging others for wanting to leave the past where it belonged.
The rustling sounds of movement came from down a hall to my right, and I advanced through the home toward my prey. I suspected the ghoul would be bedding down for the day, hiding out and waiting for the opportunity to seek out food after dark. The danger with ghouls was not so much that they’d dig up graves to eat the dead, but the inevitable event that they’d develop a taste for fresher fare. At that point they’d kill, potentially spreading the disease they carried in their saliva to new hosts. These ghouls must have been freshly made, but what wasn’t clear was how this one had advanced to such a pitiful state of decay.
I crept down the hall to an open door at the very end. Mold and stale air mingled with the now overpowering scent of the ghoul. It almost made me wish there was troll-scent nearby to cover it up—almost. The rustling sounds settled in the room beyond, so I stepped forward to peek in. As I did I stepped on broken glass, snapping it with a sound that may as well have been a gunshot in the early morning quiet.
The ghoul began to growl and sniff. I decided the time for stealth was over, and came around the corner swinging. She was partially covered under a pile of discarded clothing, newspaper, stuffed animals, and leaves. For a split second I marveled at how these creatures reverted to primal behavior in a bid for extending their second lives as long as possible, sheltering during the day and hunting at night like any nocturnal predator.
She spotted me and lunged out from under the detritus of her nest. I swung as she leapt, catching her just under the nose with the edge of my sword, cleaving her head cleanly and severing her brain stem. To my detriment, however, the fact that she was no longer animate didn’t make a damned bit of difference to her momentum. Her corpse crashed into me with sufficient force to knock me over, and I landed in a pile of trash with three hundred pounds of rotting flesh on top of me.
I grunted and rolled her off, thanking my lucky stars that I hadn’t stabbed myself during the fall. The stench was too much to bear. I turned over on my hands and knees, retching up bile and coffee all over the floor and trash beneath me. I crawled out in the hall where the smell wasn’t as bad, sitting with my back to the wall until the dry heaves subsided. Then I wiped my mouth and thought about how I was going to get rid of the bodies. I could bury the other ghoul in the grave they’d dug up, but based on the size of this one, it was staying put.
I decided I’d either have to bury her under the house, or incinerate her so thoroughly with magic that not even her bones would remain. Since I lacked a spell for disposing corpses, it looked like digging was my only option. The corpse at the cemetery was my first priority, since it was exposed and likely to be discovered soon. Before heading back to the cemetery, I reluctantly took a quick look around, just to make sure there weren’t any other ghouls holed up in the house.
As I opened the door to the other bedroom, my reticence turned to shock. The room had been cleared of all trash, furniture, and debris. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered in arcane symbols. An iron tang hung in the air, and I realized with dread that the symbols had been painted in blood. A summoning circle had been drawn in the center of the floor, containing three eviscerated cats. Their guts had been arranged into more glyphs and symbols, obviously as part of the forbidden rituals that had been done here.
It seemed I was no longer looking for a rogue vampire. Instead, I was on the trail of a necromancer.
Chapter Six
“Are you out of your freaking mind?”
I had Belladonna on the phone, and had just asked if she could get the Circle’s research department to run a search on known necromancers. Apparently, that’d been a bad idea.
“Colin, do you know what kind of shit storm I ended up in after that mess you made at Crowley’s place? Besides, it’s not like I can just go to Research and say, ‘Hey, I need you guys to drop everything and spend a couple of days looking into a few thousand random people—oh, and by the way, you’ll need to suss that list out yourselves. Thanks!’ I mean, you’re cute and all, but that’s not going to go very far with the eggheads in Research.”
“Um—I guess I didn’t think about that. Sorry I asked.”
“Oh, it’s not a problem, loverboy. If I had my way, I’d order all those geeks to get on your problem yesterday and have an answer for me by tonight. But I don’t have that kind of juice in the Circle. Not yet, anyway. And especially not since Gunnarson put me on his shit-list after Crowley went off the deep end. He thinks I’m covering for either you or Crowley. My only saving grace so far has been that he can’t figure out which one of you I’m involved with.”
“You’re not involved with either of us, Bells. Seems like you could just tell him that and get him off your case.”
She snickered. “You just keep telling yourself that. I’ll see you later tonight at Luther’s, if I can get away from the crap detail Gunnarson has me on. I’ll text you if I get free.”
Just as I was about to hang up, I realized something she said had triggered my oh-shit-o-meter.
“Wait—what do you mean when you say ‘just keep telling yourself that’?”
She giggled softly, then whispered just loud enough for me to hear. “Ciao, loverboy. We’ll sort this out later.”
“Bells, don’t hang up—”
She made a smooching sound into the phone, which would have been corny if anyone else had done it. But with Bells, it just seemed normal. Then she hung up on me. Damn it.
The good news was that I’d already taken care of the ghoul and grave back at the cemetery. With any luck, no one would notice the buried ghoul until some development company turned the plot and cemetery into a concert center or condominium high-rise a hundred years from now.
I would have liked to have left him somewhere the cops could have found him, if only to give his family closure. But leaving a ghoul’s corpse around would only create more questions than it would answer. An autopsy might reveal changes in the ghoul’s physiology that just could not be explained—and besides, there was always the odd chance I might leave DNA on or around the body.
Plus, they’d want to know why he had human remains in his stomach, and the time of death would be all screwed up compared to the physical evidence. All of that amounted to a whole lot of nope on leading the cops to the corpse, and a whole lot of unanswered questions for his family and loved ones.
Sometimes, I really hated my job.
As for the other ghoul, I’d left her under some garbage at the abandoned house. A notice on the back door said it was marked for demolition next week. That meant I could leave her there a little while longer, just as long as I made sure no one stumbled over her before I got back. With that in mind, I’d put a see-me-not spell on her, along with a cantrip to hide the smell. That would keep her hidden until I could get someone over there who knew more about necromancers than me—namely, Finn. He’d been staying sober lately, and he’d know what to do. But first, I needed
to clean up so I could get back to Luther with the news.
I was covered in mud and various body fluids of questionable provenance and odor, which made me glad I drove a Vespa—no seats or carpet to clean, and plenty of ventilation. Unfortunately, it was almost noon on a Saturday, so the junkyard would be hopping. Thankfully, folks who bought car parts from junkyards weren’t usually the nosy, judgmental type. Once home, I managed to clean up and grab some fresh clothes without getting too many looks from customers and coworkers. Presentable again, I headed out to the yard to find Finn.
He had his head under the hood of a nicely kept AMC Gremlin. The Gremlin was considered to be either one of the ugliest or coolest production cars ever made in the US, depending on who you spoke to and how they felt about mid-seventies domestic hatchbacks. As I walked up, he noticed me coming and dropped the hood, wiping his hands on a mechanic’s cloth before shoving it into the pocket of his coveralls. It was weird seeing him like this, with his white hair pulled back into a ponytail and his beard grown long and untrimmed. He looked like an outlaw biker or a Grateful Dead roadie. It was a far cry from the Finn I remembered from just a few years back, the guy who wore bespoke leather shoes and suit vests, who spoke and acted like a college professor.
This Finn smoked roll-your-own cigarettes, cursed like a sailor, and was as bawdy as a pirate on Viagra. I honestly couldn’t decide which version of him I liked better. Or hated more, depending on the day and my mood. At least this Finn shot me straight, and I had to admit that since he’d sobered up he was a lot more fun than the old one. In spite of his efforts to atone and make amends, I still had a hard time being nice to him. For the most part I did my best to be civil, even on days when Jesse’s memory had my heart aching like a fresh bruise.