Hot, Hard & Howling

by Mari Freeman

  Shaking her head as she turned on the light, Nell realized she had fired a gun—and then sent a huge blast of her power—at a bunch of moths. Many of them were still flitting, a few toward the blaring light fixture, others haphazardly in reaction to her movements, but the majority of them were alighting to a particular place. Past the overturned table, close to the far wall, was a box on its side, spilled open, papers and stones strewn across the floor. It was a box of research papers. She recognized the writing on one of the scattered documents. The moths were all heading toward the contents of the box.

  The creatures stirred again as she moved through them. The design on the moths seemed familiar, as if she should recognize the significance of the blue and silver markings on their wings. But then, everything meant something. Surely a basement full of six-inch black moths was a harbinger. As if she needed this day to get any more stressful.

  The winged insects were clamoring over the box, hundreds of the black, blue and silver beasts clung to the cardboard, the pages and the stones. Nell glanced at the lone window. Broken. She turned back to the stairs, still pointing the gun, ready to fire, and allowed her body to gently shift back to her human form. The golden, glowing shadow of the Dragon under her skin melted back to soft, tanned human flesh. She felt more comfortable in this body, even if it was far more vulnerable

  A trail of blood led up the stairs. She’d hit someone or something. She followed the trail through the kitchen and out onto the deck. Whatever she’d shot, it was gone now. She locked the door as she went back in.

  Back in the basement she settled her attention on the scattered papers. Her father’s shakily printed words covered the pages. His notes from Scotland. His last excursion.

  The shipping labels and stickers had kept Nell away from these particular boxes. She wasn’t ready to go through the last of his work.

  Personal effects—Gregor Ambercroft.

  Isle of Skye. Scotland.

  Handle with care.

  One of the moths fluttered to her, landing on her arm. Tiny legs gripping the faint hair made her shiver. She scanned the depths of the shelves in the basement one more time. She was alone. Alone with a thousand moths and a mystery.

  The moth opened and closed its wings in a slow, steady, hypnotic rhythm. The markings on it were vibrant in the harsh light of the bare bulb. Nell reached down and righted the overturned table, then tried to get the moth to move off her arm. The thing clung stubbornly to its spot.

  Another joined the first, and then another. If she’d been afraid of insects this would be a very trying event. “All right, kids, this isn’t going to work.” She shooed them as she tried to gather the contents of the spilled box onto the table. “What brought you all here this evening?”

  Two other boxes had landed on their sides on the floor, still concealing their contents behind generous amounts of shipping tape. Somebody had wanted these things sealed tight. But this one had opened and scattered easily.

  The notes were normal descriptions of a cave system, the drawings mundane and scientific. On most pages, anyway. She found several yellow legal pad pages stapled together, also with her father’s handwriting, that didn’t match the rest of the research notes. The print on these pages was from edge to edge and top to bottom, no margins and very few spaces. It was crowded and messy. Not that his usual print wasn’t hard enough to decipher, but this was almost illegible.

  Nell gathered the remaining spilled papers, scanning the notes, articles and newspaper clippings. All of them on the Isle of Skye caves. She emptied the box, flipping through the documents. Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. Other than the freaking moths. Nothing looked worthy of stealing, worthy of an attack. She picked up the box…

  And the moths converged, fluttering and landing on her head, her shoulders, on the box.

  She dropped the box to the table and waived her hands wildly over her head in a vain attempt to scatter the moths. They clung, walking and fluttering their wings over her body and hair. More and more of them took to the air to swarm her. Nell stepped away from the table and tried to shake them off. Some fell away but took no time in returning.

  “I don’t want to hurt any of you, but you’re starting to freak me out.” Her Demon power would do little good in this situation. She was good for flinging dildos, but intricate work to safely remove confused moths was way out of her league. “Crap.”

  She hated to do it, but she brushed the few from her face and eyes. She felt their wings fold and bend as she did so and grimaced. She knew these things were somehow significant and wanted to do as little damage as possible. They weren’t native to the area. Something brought them here.

  A tiny spark of magic made Nell pause. She wasn’t extremely sensitive to the magic of others, not like her sister Sonja was, but she knew blood magic when she felt it.

  She froze, letting the moths continue their attempts to cover her body. She listened and tried to reach out again, to sense an intruder.

  Nothing.

  She raised a hand and scrunched her eyes enough to really study the creatures. She turned her hand palm up and two moved to cover her fingers and palm.

  And she felt it.

  In her fingers at first, then she opened herself to it fully. Tiny little sparks of magic were emanating from the moths.

  “What are you?” she questioned as she inspected the insects. The winged harbingers remained silent. Mi-ma would know, and Nell was ready to get the heck out of the basement and the house. She glanced down to see several moths still lingered on the box itself, but only around the bottom. She lifted the box to see if there was anything unusual on the exterior to attract them. It was empty but still felt bulky, as though it were still stuffed full.

  “Tricky.” She turned it over and thumped the bottom. Solid. She looked around for something to break the tape. Moths fluttered and struggled to stay with her as she moved across the large room to a toolbox in the corner.

  “You gals are going to have to hang on a little tighter.” Nell slashed the tape with a box cutter from the toolbox and opened the bottom flaps to reveal a beautiful, dark panel of wood. She righted the box and cut the false bottom from the inside, the cardboard falling away to reveal what looked like an exotic wooden case. She pulled the rest of the cardboard away and was left holding what she strongly suspected was a colossal powder keg.

  The dark-grained wood was the color of coffee beans and just as shiny, with veins of red streaked through it like thin streams of blood. At a foot square and about three inches deep, it felt much lighter than she would have thought something of its size should have been. It had no seams that she could see. It just looked like a solid chunk of wood, but she knew better.

  This was getting more and more interesting.

  The moths swarmed around the room in an attempt to get closer to her, closer to the box. She scooped up the stapled notes and headed up the stairs. “So this is what someone’s after.” She looked at the largest group of the moths that had gathered on her chest. “If you want me, you’re going to have to keep up, ladies.”

  * * * * *

  Trina screeched even before the door was fully opened. Nell’s youngest sister backpedaled away from her as she stood in the doorway. Despite Nell’s best efforts, many of the moths had managed to make it into the car and were stubbornly hanging on. Even open windows and broken speed limits couldn’t suck the moths out of her life.

  “Black Witch,” Trina hissed and turned toward the kitchen. “Mi-ma! Nell’s brought Black Witch moths into the house!”

  Nell had suspected someone around here would know what the little buggers were. But she wasn’t exactly happy about Trina’s reaction or the tattletale tone in her voice. “Not a good omen, huh? Crap.”

  Mi-ma met Nell in the dining room. “One would think not, what with a name like Black Witch.”

  “I’m not exactly asking for their company.” She looked back at the closed front door. “I suspect more will be showing up. You may want to close
the windows.” Nell pulled the papers and the box out of her backpack.

  Mi-ma pulled a moth off Nell’s head and inspected the wings. “Black Witch moths are known to be harbingers of death. Where did they find you?”

  “The basement.” Trina and Sonja joined them at the table after closing the windows and Nell quickly related the story. All three sisters looked to their grandmother for answers.

  Mi-ma ran her hands over the box as if her fingers had x-ray vision and could see through the wood, unlocking all its mysteries. She set it on the table and tapped her round chin as one of the moths lighted on her fuzzy gray hair. “There’s a blood-magic cult that mixes African Voodoo, animal sacrifices…” She hunched her shoulders and shivered. “This box feels dark like that. The moths would make sense if this is a Voodoo trinket.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Trina said. “Did you get mixed up with a blood-magic cult when you were off gallivanting all over the world?”

  Nell looked at Trina. Her bright blue eyes truly looked concerned. “Um, blood magic? Me? Right, Trina. I was traveling. I spent time in spas and four-star hotels. I wasn’t off looking for trouble. No cults.” She looked at Sonja. “Wouldn’t your Spidey senses have told you if I was doing blood magic?”

  Trina crossed her arms. “Vampire nests aren’t exactly what I would consider spas.”

  Nell huffed. Sonja picked up the box and clutched it to her breast. Several of the moths fluttered toward her, making shadows dance over the table. “I don’t like the energy this thing gives off at all. It’s made for evil, by evil.”

  “Why would Dad have anything like that?” Trina looked to Mi-ma, who’d settled into the big chair at the end of the dark oak table. The same table Ambercrofts had sat around while discussing family issues, celebrating successes and sharing their lives for generations.

  She let out a big breath. “Gregor was much like our Nell, always into something. You never knew what that boy was up to.”

  Nell smiled at the thought of anyone other than Mi-ma calling her father “boy”. She went over and rubbed her grandmother’s shoulders. Touching Mi-ma calmed her. “We need to get it open,” Nell said as the moths returned. She brushed her forehead to encourage the creatures to remain out of her face.

  Sonja put the ominous wooden box back on the table. They all contemplated the consequences of opening this particular package. “We need to call the Prime. Twice you’ve been attacked over this box.” She picked up the notes and paged through them as she spoke

  “No way, no how, am I dealing with that Prime ever again.”

  Mi-ma huffed. “I believe Sonja is right here, Nelly.”

  Nell grabbed the box off the table and walked it over to the kitchen counter. Turning it slowly under the brighter light in the kitchen, she examined it. “I think we should at least try to open it ourselves first. I don’t need the Prime to figure this out.” She retrieved a knife out of the dish rack and poked at the side.

  “Nell!” Trina shrieked. “What the heck are you doing? What if it’s spelled?”

  Nell balanced the box on its side and poked the blade into another spot. “Haven’t you noticed all the giant moths floating around me? You know, the harbinger-of-death bugs?” She banged the wooden box on the counter, scattering a couple of them. She inspected it for damage then scrunched up her face in frustration. “More like hexed, I suspect.”

  Trina walked up beside her. “You are so stubborn.” She took the box and looked it over.

  “No scorching, please,” Nell said. Trina’s Demon gift was rare and hard to manage. They were all a little unpredictable with their powers but Trina had to be the most careful. Fire starting was useful at times, backyard barbecues and lighting candles and such, but the rest of the time it was dangerous. Trina lived in a cinderblock house and still had problems when she got upset. She stayed away from people. That way, she prevented herself from singeing strangers with an absentminded hand gesture.

  “Not funny.” Trina brushed the top of the box with her fingertips. She returned to the dining room and handed it back to Mi-ma. “Feel the texture of the reddish grain. It’s slightly raised.”

  Sonja looked at Nell over her glasses, dark hair falling into her eyes as she did so. “I think we need some reinforcements.”

  “No Prime,” Nell insisted. “He won’t know what the hell to do with it either. He’ll just turn it over to the Council. They’ll keep it for their own use. If it’s worth killing over, it’s bound to be valuable. I want to know what it is first.”

  Sonja sat. “I didn’t think about that. You’re right. We shouldn’t show Trent. Heck, it’s ours. It was in our basement. Why does he need to know anyway?”

  Nell eyed her sister. That was quite the one-eighty. But then, Sonja had always lived here and routinely remained uninvolved. Happy in her little cottage tucked in the mountains. Happy to stay close to Mi-ma and family. Nell was pretty sure the thought of having to deal with the Council in any way frightened her little sister. It should. “Right. It’s ours.”

  Unless someone else comes looking for it, Nell thought.

  Hot, Hard & Howling

  Chapter Six

  “The deadbeat hasn’t paid me in two weeks. You pay his bill and you’re in.” The smelly, old clerk gave Trent a sideways grin accented with one gold tooth and two or three empty spaces where teeth may have once lived.

  It was nearly two a.m. and he’d finally traced Crey to this slimy hotel. Maybe he’d get lucky and catch the Sorcerer asleep. He tossed a couple twenties on the counter. “I seem to be making regular contributions to your retirement, old man.”

  The clerk snickered, brushed his greasy gray hair out of his face and took a swig out of an unlabeled bottle. “Retirement. Sure.” He tucked the bottle into his back pocket and fished a key out of a shoebox on the counter. “I’ll be moving to Jamaica or someplace sunny, I suppose.” He snickered again, his frail body shaking from the effort. “With my young, purty girlfriend.” He was out-and out-laughing, completely amused by his own sad fantasy. “You make me smile, Nicholas.”

  “Glad to be of service.” They made their way along the strip of rooms. The single-story building sat roadside, just outside of town. The peeling paint and the dirty windows turned away most law-abiding customers. It was a hangout for prostitutes and thugs. Not that there was a lot of them in the small mountain community, but there were enough.

  The old man stopped at the next-to-last door and nodded toward the room on the end. “I know you ain’t no regular cop, Nicholas, but you’s a good’un.” He handed Trent the key to the room. “I also knows this one is vermin.” He started walking back toward the tiny office. “You won’t mind dropping off the key on your way out, would ya?” He didn’t look back or wait for a response.

  Trent wondered idly what kind of “cop” the clerk thought he was. Vigilante? Fed? Didn’t know. He looked at the door to that room and no longer cared.

  Trent sniffed the air. The entire motel reeked of wet carpet and body odor. From outside, he couldn’t pick out a particular scent if he had to. He leaned against the door, listening for movement in the room. Nothing.

  He put the key in and turned it, trying to make as little noise as possible. The lock clicked loudly when the bolt withdrew, the door popping opened slightly. He grimaced at the racket. Trent stood still for an instant, straining to hear, feel or sense if he’d awakened Crey. He’d rather have blasted in, fangs showing. He waited a full minute. Still nothing.

  He shoved the door all the way open. The bare bulb above the door partially illuminated the room. The bed was a mess, sheets hanging off on the floor. Towels were piled up next to the white plastic stand that held a decades-old television. Empty drink bottles and food cartons littered the tiny basin around the sink.

  From the smell of the old food, it’d been sitting there for days. Chances were Crey had been gone just as long. Trent reached in and flipped the light switch. The place was an absolute mess. When he entered the r
oom the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He smelled it clearly now. Blood magic.

  He realized the bed was pushed from its normal spot against the center of a wall. It was shoved toward the door, making room for something on the far side. He stepped farther into the room, over the lump of sheets.

  “Shit.”

  A circle was burned into the floor, inside it a five-pointed star. Large candles inside the circle marked the four directions of the earth. All had burned down to the base, wax spread out and hardened into solid puddles in the matted blue carpet. Ash and stones were scattered throughout the circle. The rotting remains of a dead cat, its throat cut and blood spilled, laid over more ash and moons only knew else in the center. Trent saw a few bones, tiny and humanlike, peeking from beneath the cat’s body. He nudged the stiff carcass slightly to the side and studied the small bones.

  “Shit.” He pulled out his cell. He searched through the contacts for a number he’d never before had to call and hit the send button.

  “Location?” a stern female voice barked.

  He gave her the address. “I’ve got a sacrifice.”

  There was no response. No conversation. Keys clattered in the background. “Can you hold the location for forty-five minutes?”

  Trent looked around the deserted area. Keeping the old clerk away from the room would be no problem. More than likely he was already passed out. “Affirmative.”

  The line went dead.

  He closed the door and glanced around the room. This sicko had definitely performed the spell on the human who’d attacked Nell. Trent’s blood boiled at the thought.

  He used his boot to push the cat remains farther off the pile. There were several of the tiny bones. He ground his teeth, fighting off his anger. His wolf was stretching, wanting to protect Nell. This guy was still out there.