Right to the Kill (Harmony Black Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  Jessie glanced at Harmony. Harmony responded with a tiny shake of her head. This line of questioning wasn’t getting them anywhere. They needed hard facts; all Sally Ann had to offer was mythology and the faith she’d been taught.

  “We saw your people toss their victims to the…priestesses,” Harmony said, “so they could go into the cave. Where do you keep the bodies of the people you kill? The meat locker?”

  Bringing up the mermaids had been a misstep. Sally Ann had found mental refuge in her religion and bristled with a streak of fresh defiance. The gun against her forehead wasn’t scaring her now, not with visions of her deep-water god dancing through her imagination. Sometimes the difference between a believer and a zealot was just a little bit of encouragement. She looked to Jessie, and her lips pursed in a cruel, tight smile.

  “Why? You hungry for seconds? Betcha didn’t know what was in that brisket we fed you. Oh, you just gobbled it down. Came from the left thigh of a hiker who made a wrong turn.”

  Harmony figured Sally Ann expected shock. Horror. Denial. Her look of glee faltered as Jessie responded with a deadpan stare, no reaction at all. Harmony kept Sally Ann covered with her pistol as Jessie took a step back and holstered her weapon. She delicately plucked the amber contact lenses from her eyes.

  Their true color, inhumanly turquoise and glowing with inner fire, blazed in the shadows. Sally Ann cringed as her bravado cracked at the edges.

  “What…what are you?” she whispered.

  “I’m the kind of monster you can only pretend to be,” Jessie told her. “By the way? The brisket was good, but it needed more chili powder. Human meat is naturally gamy; you have to adjust your spices to compensate.”

  Sally Ann turned to Harmony, wordlessly begging for intercession.

  “Body storage,” Harmony said. “Where?”

  “There ain’t none right now. There—there ain’t, and that’s the truth. The rest of the hiker went to feed the priestesses. Only other body we ain’t used up was that outsider, the one we caught poking around last night.”

  “Dominguez,” Jessie said.

  “The doctor had us burn the body. Said it was tainted meat, it’d make us sick, and it wasn’t a good sacrifice neither.”

  “Well,” Jessie said. “That’s a damn shame.”

  She walked in a slow circle around the kneeling woman, coming to a stop behind her back.

  “I mean, damn shame for you, since we need a fresh corpse.”

  Sally Ann opened her mouth, inhaled deep, about to scream for help. She never got a chance. Her neck snapped like a fistful of twigs and her body pitched to the floor, dying with a spasmodic kick of her powder-blue shoes.

  “We could have taken someone closer to the shoreline,” Harmony pointed out. “Would have made for an easier trip.”

  Jessie crouched down, grabbed Sally Ann’s body under the shoulders, and heaved up, lifting from the knees. She slung the dead weight over her shoulders like a firefighter.

  “Wasn’t like we were going to let her live anyway. I don’t mind the exercise.”

  “We’ve got the offering,” Harmony said with a nod to the tunnel mouth. “Now we need the trumpet. Unless there’s something we missed—and that’s a big, big ‘unless’—the two combined should get us into that cave.”

  “Let’s split up. I’ll drop off our dead restaurateur by the boat and spread a little love—in the form of plastic explosives—down by the docks and the boathouse. You hit the church, grab the trumpet, and meet me in…let’s say twenty minutes.”

  “Make it twenty-five,” Harmony said, shouldering her courier pack. “I want to leave a few care packages behind.”

  37.

  Harmony made her way through the bootleggers’ tunnel, guided by the glow of her phone. The walls were uneven, bearing the scars of countless pickax strikes, carved from the earth with sweat and muscle and held up with rugged wooden struts. Faint grooves marred the tilted floor, marking the paths of wheeled carts as they moved their contraband cargo beneath the watchful eyes of the law.

  Her underground road ended at a blank wall, another loose patch of drywall shoved up to conceal the exit. No way to tell what was on the other side, and when she leaned close, all she heard was the faint rustle of rats. She pocketed her phone, braced her shotgun, and put her shoulder to the concealed door. It jolted open, just a few inches, with a squeal of metal on stone. She waited and listened. There was no commotion, nothing to indicate she’d been overheard.

  Harmony chanced one more shove, one more high-pitched squeal, widening the gap far enough to squeeze through.

  She was in the church basement. The storm-cellar doors still hung open from the night before, letting in soft moonlight to guide her footsteps. She made her way through the garage-sale clutter, over to the stairway on the far side, and up to the dead minister’s office. Dust caught in her throat and she fought the urge to cough. She crossed the office and cracked the door leading to the gallery.

  Empty. The lights were off, the pews abandoned. The front doors were wide open, though—maybe anticipating another assembly where Cranston could preach to the faithful—and a couple of townies were guarding the entrance. They had their backs to her, eyes on the street, but either one could turn and catch her in a heartbeat.

  She didn’t want a fight here. A fight meant noise, and noise meant a repeat of last night’s pursuit. Silence was their best ally right now. She slowly emerged from the doorway, head ducked and breath held, creeping as fast as she could toward the fish-headed effigy and the bone trumpet in its mummified hand.

  As she stepped close, the wood under the thin red carpet groaned. She froze.

  They hadn’t noticed. They stood side by side with hunting shotguns propped casually on their shoulders, watching the empty road.

  Her fingers curled around the trumpet. The bone was oddly cold to the touch. It felt wet, as if dipped in sea foam. She tugged and the mummy’s fingers clung to it, obstinate. She tugged harder.

  The hand snapped off at its crucified wrist. Harmony grimaced as she turned, slinking back to the doorway with her prize, heart pounding.

  She waited until she was back in the minister’s office, in the safety of darkness, before wrestling the fingers free and tossing the empty hand to the floor. Blasphemy was going to be the least of her sins tonight. She checked the time. Fifteen minutes left before the rendezvous. She unslung her courier pack as she made for the cellar stairs, looking for a few good spots to plant an explosive surprise along the way.

  * * *

  Jessie was already on the shore in the shadow of the lighthouse, with Sally Ann’s body lying limp in the belly of the Zodiac. Harmony jogged up, showed her the bone trumpet, and they shoved the inflatable off the rocks. They splashed in the shallows, icy water soaking their feet, and clambered on board.

  They waited for the sweep of the lighthouse beam to pass them by. The engine purred, and Harmony steered them out to sea.

  Away from the village, the ocean was a blotchy morass, the islets becoming the looming, shaggy heads of aquatic giants. Jessie switched on the halogen beam. She aimed it to chart their course, keeping an eye on the jagged rocks below the surface as Harmony piloted them into the maze. The cove was just ahead.

  “You ready for this?” Jessie whispered.

  “No,” Harmony said. “But let’s do it anyway.”

  She steeled herself as she turned the motor, steering toward the mouth of the cove. As they neared the crab-pincer outcroppings that marked the mermaids’ territory, she killed the engine.

  They drifted in. The halogen beam caught shapes under the water. Sinuous, circling. Hungry. Harmony’s coin fluttered against her skin, beating out a hummingbird warning.

  Harmony put the bone trumpet to her lips. She blew, a long and mournful bellow like a whale’s mating call. Then a second time, and a third, mimicking the villagers.

  The last reverberation echoed off the rocks. Jessie took hold of Sally Ann’s body, lifted her by the sho
ulders, and shoved her overboard. Salty foam splashed across their faces as she hit the water and sank.

  The shadows lurched. They dove for the treat, and the beam caught flashes of piranha frenzy as the mermaids tore her corpse to pieces. Harmony started the engine and they sailed on, under dangling stalactite teeth and into the bootleggers’ cave.

  Most of the cave was inky water under a twenty-foot overhang, encircled by a broad ledge of rock and thick with the tang of salt. The old rumrunners had built a miniature warehouse for their contraband: on the far edge of the cave, wooden scaffolding on rusted struts formed ramps and platforms, two levels between the rough rock floor and the top of the cave. Empty now, but Harmony could picture it full of barrels and booze crates, ready for delivery to the mainland. She cut the engine again, steering toward the platform and letting momentum carry them the rest of the way, until they bumped against the stone outcropping.

  “Don’t know how much of a grace period we’ve got,” Jessie said. “Let’s plant the charges and get the hell out of here.”

  They climbed out of the boat and went in opposite directions, aiming to cover as much of the inner wall as they could. They left the halogen lamp on for light, tilting it toward the heart of the cavern. Jessie slapped a Semtex brick against the stone, pressing it tight until she was sure the adhesive would hold. Then she slid the prongs of an electronic detonator, marked with a dot of green paint, into the heart of the brick.

  Harmony rushed along the curve of stone, fast as she dared on the slick rock. She saw shapes in the water, curious, bobbing close to the surface. Not attacking, not yet, but one wrong move could send her sliding right over the edge of the outcropping.

  There was a break in the stone. Another tunnel, sloping downward at an angle and ending in a rounded pool. She wasn’t sure if it was just another rupture in the cave floor, but something about the water seemed different. Murkier. Dirtier. She pressed a brick of explosive near the opening and moved on, aiming to cover the far end of the cave and work her way inward, meeting Jessie back at the boat.

  Two bricks up and the mermaids were agitated. They knew something was wrong. Their forms twisted and twirled in the brine, tails slapping.

  “Jessie,” Harmony called out, “we have to go.”

  Jessie was climbing the scaffolding, angling for the top of the bootleggers’ platform.

  “Almost there,” she called back. “Want to make sure we bring the whole damn roof down.”

  A sound caught Harmony’s ear. Bubbling, burbling, like stones tumbling into water. She hustled back and peered down the tunnel.

  The pool was roiling. Shadows rippled below, like a nest of water moccasins all wide awake and slithering. And as they neared the surface she realized it wasn’t a nest. It was a single shadow. She fell back, shouting a warning as the pool erupted.

  The bull was here.

  He shot up the tunnel and into the halogen glow, amphibious, fast, angry, emerging with a squeal in eight different pitches from eight different mouths. He was taller than Harmony, wide as a truck, a squirming bulk that defied any rational form. He was a living tumbleweed of tentacles and knots of blubber, his surface erupting with shark-fanged maws that blossomed from his body at will, snapping in the direction of food as he reformed and reshaped his body in fluid motion. The bull careened toward the light and hit the scaffolding with a brutal slam. Jessie was up on her toes, fixing the last brick into place, and she nearly pitched off the edge. She caught herself, dropping to her hands and knees, clinging to the scaffold as the antique metal groaned.

  It’s defending the mermaids, Harmony realized. She moved on instinct. To save Jessie, she needed to become a bigger threat.

  Earth, air, water, fire, she thought, evoking her mnemonic trigger. Garb me in your raiment. Arm me with your weapons.

  She dropped to her knees at the outcropping’s edge, her body turned to an elemental forge, and thrust her open palms toward the water. The latent energy in the air around her became heat, amplified and focused by the bellows of her heart, and then fire. Fire that blasted out in a flamethrower torrent and made the water boil.

  The boil spread and the mermaids screamed. She heard their voices now, shrill and terrified and bouncing off the cavern walls as they struggled to escape the killing heat. The bull rolled on its tentacles, sensing the danger, and charged toward her in an enraged, shrieking stampede.

  Harmony’s guts churned, stabbing cramps setting in, her body demanding that she pay in pain for siphoning that much power. She had to fight through it. She forced herself to her feet and swung up the shotgun.

  The Benelli roared. Blast after blast of concentrated buckshot tore into the creature’s bulk. Black rainbow blood spattered the superheated water and ignited like ribbon trails of gasoline. The bull kept coming. She walked backward as she pulled the trigger, buying room, until her heel almost slipped on the farthest edge of the outcropping.

  She spent her last shell. Nowhere to go but the mouths of the bull or dive and take her chances with the mermaids below.

  Then Jessie loomed up behind him, shotgun braced. Harmony dropped low and clear as she opened fire. The bull shrieked, whirling around on his tentacles but pitching off-balance as he tried to focus on Jessie. He caterwauled and teetered on the slick stone. With a final roar of the shotgun, the bull slipped and plunged into the water with a cannonball splash. They watched him kick away, diving deep, leaving shimmering blood trails behind as he fled.

  They ran along the rocky curve and piled into the Zodiac. The engine grumbled to life. Harmony steered, pointing the nose outward, blowing the bone trumpet as they wove around patches of burning blood on the restless, churning water. It didn’t help. A mermaid lunged, maw-petals wide and aiming to chomp a hole in the inflatable boat. Harmony juked hard, yanking the wheel, and slid out of the way. The boat bounced as the propeller chopped into blubber and bone.

  The second they cleared the mouth of the cave, Jessie triggered the Semtex.

  The world went white. Harmony’s vision blurred out and a thunderclap deafened her ears. She felt the water swell under the boat, a shock wave that picked them up and flung them like a child’s toy, shooting them between the crab-pincer rocks of the cove on a burst of summer heat. They splashed down hard and skidded in the water. She had a white-knuckle grip on the wheel, leaning back as she wrestled with momentum and brought the boat under control.

  They plowed through the shallows, sleek and fast, aiming their sights for the village.

  38.

  Graykettle loomed in the distance, and the beam of the lighthouse chopped across the dark water.

  Jessie killed the halogen beam. They rode dark, watching for distant lights. There was movement on the docks, frantic, boat lights powering up. The villagers had seen the explosion from the shore.

  “Round two?” Harmony asked.

  “Wait for it,” Jessie murmured. “Want to make sure we get as many as we can. Let ’em rally and…”

  She counted to three. Then she punched the activation button for the yellow-paint detonators.

  The night lit up like high noon.

  The docks and the old boathouses detonated in a pair of blazing fireballs, smoke rising to lick the overcast sky, setting off chain-reaction explosions as boats and fuel tanks went up in the onslaught. The stained-glass windows of the church exploded, worm-eaten clapboard flying like shrapnel as its walls buckled and its steeple toppled and fell. A natural gas pipeline, snaking through the heart of the village, caught fire and erupted. The ruptured pipeline drew a jagged red sigil along the village map, like a curse-spell writ large and washing the streets with purifying flame.

  They ran the boat aground and jumped out, moving fast and on foot, winding their way through the chaos. The air was thick with distant screams, the roaring of the flames, the occasional metallic crump of a gas tank bursting or the slow agonized groan of a moldering wall caving in. Graykettle was dying. To finish it off, they had to drive a sword through the heart of th
e beast.

  The old cannery was empty, bathing in moonlight under its caved-in roof. Hazy moonlight, blotted out by torrents of black smoke that smelled like hickory. The tank was right where Sally Ann said it was, and the side hatch, by all appearances welded shut, popped right open under Jessie’s fingertips. The welding seams were nothing but rough putty, painted dull silver. A ladder ran to the base of the hollow tank, down below the village street.

  It ended at a reinforced steel door. A slim bolt-hole at eye level was securely locked. So was the imposing doorknob, with a stout vintage keyhole.

  Harmony had left her empty shotgun in the boat. Now she braced her pistol, taking deep breaths to prepare herself, and locked eyes with Jessie.

  “You know what I need to do, right?” Jessie asked her.

  She knew. “No friendlies on the other side of that door. Let it out.”

  Jessie took a couple of steps back. She grinned hungrily at the steel, looking at it like a birthday present, and she was about to tear the wrapper open. When she spoke, eyes blazing in the color of winter ice, she spoke with another woman’s voice.

  “About goddamn time.”

  * * *

  The bootleggers’ fortress was a warren of storage rooms and pleasure dens, long abandoned by time. It had made a fine enough base of operations, Cranston reasoned. Crude compared to his Tampa operation, but effective. And secure, until now. Until the ceiling shook, dust raining down from the old splintered rafters, and all of his security-camera feeds capturing the surface world went blank.

  All but one. The one showing the two women—Bobby’s women, he was quite sure, following on the heels of their missing associate—making their way into the false tank at the cannery. He didn’t understand how he’d judged the situation so wrongly. No matter. This was the end of their journey.

  Cranston marched through the chaos, barking orders. The old fortress was built like a cross. A long, pillar-lined hallway marked the entrance, ending at the steel door on one side and a crossroads on the other. To the left of the main gallery, assembly tables for the delivery devices, row after row of briefcase bombs complete and ready to receive their blessed payload. On the other side, laboratory equipment and workstations lined the walls.