by Tracy Sharp
In one swift motion, the wolf leapt across the shallow grave and knocked Ezra down, placing both paws on his chest and growling, his huge teeth an inch from Ezra’s face.
Candace jumped to her feet. “Stop.”
“Yeah, mutt, stop. Or I’ll do to you what I did to the last supernatural dog who attacked me this evening. That had been a two headed hell hound. Ending your furry ass would be nothing.” Ezra grinned, staring right back into the wolf’s narrowed eyes, a direct challenge to any canine.
He was either very brave or very stupid. “Ezra. Stow it... You, too... whoever you are.”
The wolf hesitated, and then gave a final growl before slowly backing off. He stepped off Ezra and moved a few feet away, looking away from them both.
Snubbed by a wolf shifter. That’s a first, Candace thought. “The both of you need to chill. Don’t either of you have any respect for the dead?”
The wolf lowered his head and then lay down on the ground, placing his muzzle to his paws. He huffed out a chastised breath and looked away.
Ezra also lowered his head. “You’re right. Sorry.”
Candy went back to looking at the driver’s license. “Fine. Let’s focus here.”
Ezra gave a nod and came back to the shallow grave. He gestured toward the wallet. “Who is she?”
“Emma L. Pearson. Twenty-one years old.” A sickening thought occurred to her. She turned to the wolf. “Excuse me, Fluffy, does your sniffer detect any other... graves out here?”
The majestic creature pushed himself up and stood, sniffing the air, and in that moment the moon hung low between the trees, and he looked for all the world like every gorgeous depiction of a mystical wolf standing in front of the backdrop of the moon.
He looked magical.
And then he lowered and raised his head in a nod and headed, nose lowered to sniff at the ground, deeper into the woods.
17
Ezra
I didn’t trust him. Wolves are predators and in the course of my career, my experience was that wolves are brutal killers. A couple of years back I had to put down a pack of rogue wolves that tore their victims apart for fun and sport.
I didn’t like this one being anywhere near Candy. Wolves are wild animals, and even the seemingly peaceful ones could turn on you at any time, just like every nightmarish news story of a dog attacking and killing someone.
This wolf was no different. He may seem docile with Candace, and he could roll onto his back and show her his belly until the cows came home, but I knew that there would come a time that he might turn on her. We knew nothing about him. Why was he hiding behind his animal form?
There are many shifters who prefer their animal form. But if this wolf was on the up and up, he would’ve come clean with Candy from the get-go. Not let her believe he was just a lone wolf and nothing more. Man’s, or in this case, woman’s best friend.
But, for all that, I had to admit the dog was useful. He’d found three other shallow graves in the area, and was still searching, nose to the ground.
Each victim had been buried in front of a tree. The moonlight had become murky, and when he signaled again, sitting still and waiting for us, his silvery form looked an unearthly grey. His nocturnal eyes seemed to glow as he waited for us.
When we got close, he lowered his head and walked slowly away. He climbed a hill and sat watching the moon, and then let out a long, sorrowful howl, the sound eerily beautiful and heartbreaking.
A shiver went through me and my eyes watered. Five graves. Five women.
By walking away, the wolf shifter had made it clear that he wasn’t going to dig up any more dead young women. He’d had enough. I could relate. He turned his head our way one more time, and then ran off.
“I need to call this in.” Candace stared down at the last mound, looking utterly exhausted and defeated.
“You’re on suspension,” I said to her. “And how are you going to explain finding all these bodies?”
“I’ll tell them that he attacked me in my home. The place is a damned wreck. They’ll believe it. I’ll tell them that I woke up in the field and he was already dead beside me. They’ll assume a wild animal tore his throat out. That part I won’t even have to lie about.”
“How will you explain finding all these graves?” I asked her.
“I’ll say that I ran through the woods to get away and literally tripped over the first one, which had already been dug up. From there, I just went searching.”
I didn’t know if I liked it. There was a pretty good chance they wouldn’t believe her. She’d taken enough heat for that video, courtesy of the shapeshifter body double. Candy read the doubt it on my face.
“Ezra, the guy’s DNA will be all over these women. We haven’t even looked in his house yet. I’m pretty sure we’ll find all kinds of evidence there.”
“Okay. Your call.” Police work was her realm. Even though I was fairly positive the guy who did this was some kind of lower demon, or had been possessed by one. I was only beginning to get an idea of what the laws of the underworld were. In this real world, the laws of man were king.
But in the end, I had no reason to worry. Candace had been right. The cops believed her, because the guy’s house was a serial killer’s dream. Edwin Munche had been busy. Postal worker by day, and serial killer by night. His basement had been converted into a dungeon of sorts, and he’d filmed everything he’d done to those women. But there were more tapes than there were women found in those woods.
A little digging into his records had shown all the other states he’d lived in. The police had their work cut out for them, checking the time lines of where he lived against those of when young women went missing in those areas.
I waited at the police station while they interviewed Candace. She told them she’d called me after the incident, and that I knew nothing about it. For now they seemed to except that explanation, even though her captain, Healy, I think it is, gave me a long look that told me he was watching me.
Candace was quiet on the way back to her house. I found an old rock and roll play list and she seemed to settle into her seat, closing her eyes. It had been a long couple of days for her. Her life had changed. Things would never be the same again. Now that she’d been in hell and had come back out, she had one foot in the supernatural world, and one foot in the normal world. She’d have to always be looking over her shoulder. I felt a twinge of guilt for that.
As I pulled into the drive-way, she broke the silence. “They seemed to believe me. As far as that video goes, I’m still on suspension pending investigation.”
We climbed out of the car and I followed her up her stairs. “I’m sorry, Candace. If you hadn’t met me, none of this would’ve happened to you.”
“That’s not true.” She stopped, turned, and sat on the front step. “You said it yourself. I was probably heading for this my whole life. I just didn’t know it.”
I stared off into the night, and watched as fireflies flashed out of the darkness, and vanished again, only to reappear somewhere else. “You want my take?”
“Yeah.” Her voice sounded tired. Worn out.
“Guardians are guided into jobs like law enforcement to prepare for work as supernatural hunters. Some believe, and I’m not sure if I fall into this category or not, that there is a reason for everything, and that there really is a plan for everyone.”
“I don’t know if I believe that, either. Some of the stuff I’ve seen, Ezra. There’s no reason for it.”
That was the truth. “I know. Believe me, I know.”
“So, what is it, then?”
I took a long breath and let it out, thinking. “There are reasons for some things. Some things, maybe, are planned. I think there is bad in this world, and that for everything bad, there has to be good. Like a balance. I think that you were chosen for your qualities. For your open-mindedness and your courage. Maybe for your psychic spark. Who knows? But you were chosen.”
She huffed out a short laug
h. “Psychic spark? I didn’t see any of this coming. And chosen by who?”
“Candy, what about all the things your intuition tells you on a daily basis?”
I felt her shrug beside me. She was a gray shape in the gauzy darkness. “Cop’s intuition.”
“Really? Are you going to tell me you haven’t always had that strong intuition? You haven’t always just known some things. Things that were impossible to know in advance?”
She was silent for a beat. “Okay. Yeah. I have. But if I was chosen, as you say, then who did the choosing?”
It was my turn to shrug. “By the Gods, by the Fates. Who knows? But it happened. And now this is who you are.”
She stared out at the night, quiet. Then she said, “It sure is.”
“So, knowing that, do you want your job back?”
Clouds that had been covering the moon moved away from them, and suddenly I could see her more clearly. She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again, considering. “I do and I don’t.”
“Ok. What about the job do you want back?”
She lifted her hands from where they’d been resting between her thighs. “My badge and my gun. The title. I want to protect people, keep law and order, and put the bad guys away.”
“You can do all that without your job. You won’t have your badge, but you can still have weapons. Ones that will work against the monsters. You can keep law and order for normals by putting the monsters down or sending them back to hell. There aren’t enough of us around, Candace. You’re kind of doing it now, anyway, which is why you’re on suspension.”
“True.”
“We could really use you on our team full time.” I could use her on my team full time. As a partner. As much as I worried for her safety, she was good. I could use her skills.
She nodded, placed a hand on her forehead. “My brain is sore.”
“You need some shut eye. Go. I’ll set up some protection charms preternatural alarms around your house. Go on. You’re safe with me.”
And she was. I’d die before I let anything happen to her.
Candace
As she awoke, Candace was aware of an unsettled feeling, but couldn’t pinpoint the source of her unease. Her eyes snapped open, heart hammering. She sat straight up in her bed. Her gaze flicked around the dim light of her bedroom, and stopped at the boarded up window. Everything came back to her all at once.
A sense of dread crept over her. Things that went bump in the night were after her. But as she looked at the board covering the window, she felt the first stirrings of real fury burn in the pit of her stomach. If there was one thing she couldn’t abide, it was being afraid.
Screw this. I refuse.
Candace swung her legs over the side of her bed and strode across her bedroom and through the open door. She found Ezra sitting in her easy chair, hands on the arms with his fingers spread over the edges, as if at the ready. He had long fingers. Gentle hands. She noticed hands as part of her job, and she’d always felt that his hands were gentle and expressive. It was amazing that he had such power at the tips of his fingers.
It was nice having a friend who could summon magic with his hands.
To her surprise, she found herself wondering what other magic he could do with those hands. She gave herself a mental head shake. That was the last thing she should be thinking of. But it was nice thinking of something other than monsters, even if just for a second.
Ezra heard her coming and shifted in the chair to look at her. “Did you sleep?”
“Surprisingly, yes. I bet you didn’t, though.”
“I got a few winks. I’ve never really been a big sleeper.” He gave her a sleepy smile.
She stood over him, her eyes moving over his long legs and strong chest. The urge to just climb up onto his lap and straddle him was suddenly overwhelming.
She watched with a mixture of hunger and amusement as his gray gaze traveled the up the length of her body. There was a suspended moment where she could almost hear the crackling of mutual want between them.
But then, she got her wits about her. Distracting herself from the current situation wouldn’t make it go away. “Ezra, I need to go back in.”
His eyes dropped for a second as he shifted on the couch, and then he looked back up at her face. “To work? Did they call you?”
“No. Into hell.”
He sat forward, his face alarmed. “What?”
“I need to go back into hell. I’m not going to live the rest of my days running from phantoms and demons. This is bullshit. It has to stop.”
Ezra stared at her. “I’m confused. You don’t want to be chased by demons who want to drag you back into hell, so you’re going in of your own free will?”
“Yeah.”
“So, your plan is to commit suicide?”
“No. My plan is to bargain with whoever is in charge. There must be something they want.”
“Yeah, they want you. And me, according to Strummer. Forgive me for saying this, but I think this plan is ill-advised.”
“I need Strummer to pull me out again.”
Ezra slowly stood up from the chair and stepped toward her. “Candy, what if Strummer can’t pull you back out? What if you die down there?”
“It’s a chance I’m willing to take, because unless the devil and I come to some kind of understanding, my days are numbered anyway.”
Ezra
I hated to admit it, but Candace was right. I could spend every waking moment with her, and she could train and become a highly skilled fighter of monsters, but eventually, they would get her. And if Strummer was right, it meant that my days were numbered, too.
So, that meant that I needed to go back into hell with her.
This meant Strummer had two people to pull back out.
Calling Strummer on his cell phone was much easier than sending out a mental S.O.S. He sounded just as emotionless and dead calm on the phone as he did in person. “I’ve sealed the portal. You know this. You were there.”
I knew what I was asking him was a pain in his ass, so I kept my voice cheerful. Like I was merely asking to borrow a five-spot from a buddy. “I assume you can unseal it, right?”
“It’s not a Ziploc bag, Ezra.”
“I know. But look, we really don’t see any other way to keep hell’s minions from us. They’re just going to keep coming, right?
“Yes.”
“So, we’d just be putting off the inevitable, right?”
“Yes.”
“Great. So, unless you have any other suggestions, this is the way to go.”
“Ezra. I suppose I don’t need to tell you how dangerous your plan is.”
He didn’t. I wasn’t wild about the idea, either. “Candy and I have full confidence in your ability to pull us back out.”
There was a long pause. Finally, Strummer said, “Meet me at the bridge at midnight.”
Then the line went dead.
“Right,” I said, under my breath. “Good talk.”
18
Candace
“Midnight. Why not now?” Candace paced her living room floor. Now that she’d decided she was going back into hell, she wanted to do it now, before she lost her nerve.
Ezra stood in the middle of her living room, hands shoved in his pockets, looking for all the world like a college kid waiting for the bus. He had such a youthful, innocent thing going on. She wanted to ruffle his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a low traffic time?”
Her cell buzzed from the charger on the side table beside the chair. Candace looked at the screen. Healy. Great.
“Captain.” She braced herself for what he’d say. No matter what, the subject matter wouldn’t be good.
His rough voice was even more curt than usual. “Beck. Come in as soon as you can.”
She wanted to ask what it was about, her job or the lack there of, or Edwin Munche and the women he murdered. Some other nightmare. None of it was good. She refrained. “Okay. On my way.”
Ezra raised his brows at her in question.
Candace shrugged, and headed for the bathroom to make herself look like she hadn’t been tangling with demons in one way or another the past couple of days.
After pulling her hair into a ponytail she slid on a pair of converse sneakers. She thought of her ruined trooper boots and felt like crying. It seemed like everything that had identified her as a cop, to herself as well as to others, was being stripped away from her.
Suck it up, buttercup. Thing are going to get worse before they get better. She headed out the door with Ezra close behind.
“I’m taking my bike,” she said, heading to her garage where she kept her motorcycle.
“Are you sure? I can drive you.”
“Thanks, but no. I’m good.”
“Okay. I’ll wait for you in the parking lot.”
“Ezra, I’m good. I’ll call you later. Okay?” The need for some air and to get her bearings was overwhelming. She needed to gather her strength, and to do that, she needed to stand on her own two feet.
He hesitated, and then gave her a nod. “Okay.”
The ride to the precinct was refreshing. Candace was relieved to find that at that moment, she was unafraid of demons or phantoms coming after her. In fact, she welcomed it. She’d never been one to run under attack, which was one of the reasons she’d become a cop, but now the courage she felt was reckless and she knew it. But she didn’t care.
How could things get worse? She was on suspension, her reputation was shot, and demons were coming for her.
Candace learned long ago that the only way to deal with a problem was to face it head on. That meant going back into hell and finding whoever was in charge. She wasn’t stupid, she knew that going back in could mean that she might not come back out. Or that she might not come back out alive, or even the same. But as long as she left things as they were, she’d be looking over her shoulder the rest of her life, and some day, when her guard was down or when she just wasn’t at her best, they’d get her.