She blew a stray hair out of her face, took a granola bar out of her pocket, and opened it.
“Hungry?” she asked.
“Starving.”
She broke the bar in half and tossed me the larger piece. I watched as she took a bite of her half.
“Interesting,” I said.
“What is?”
“What you’re eating.”
She frowned and gave me a funny look.
“Never mind.” I shrugged, smiling to myself. In my head, I crossed out two items on a list: vampire and ghoul.
You see, Lilian wasn’t human. That much I knew for sure. She had to make frequent visits to the town hag, presumably to refresh her glamour—the spell that kept her looking human.
Only trouble was I didn’t know what kind of non-human she was. And she wouldn’t tell me.
So it had become a kind of game between us. We even had a bet running. If I couldn’t guess what she was before the last day of winter, I had to shave my beard off. But if I did guess correctly, she was going to take me out for a five-course dinner at the Black Cat, the fanciest restaurant in town.
I really wanted to win that bet. I liked my beard.
I’d never seen her eating before, but now that I’d watched her bite into that granola bar, I could rule out the possibility that she was either a greater vampire or a ghoul. Which was something of a relief, to be honest. Going on a date with a vampire seemed like an incredibly stupid idea.
Something else had been tickling the back of my brain as well. When the baiter vamp had been attacking me, she’d paid no attention to Lilian up there on the landing. Maybe it was just the bloodlust, but I almost got the feeling that the creature couldn’t sense Lilian at all.
Very interesting.
“All right.” Doctor Alcaraz slammed her notebook shut and turned back to us. “The baiter’s wounds are healing nicely. I wish I could be as positive about the incredibly rare mountain troll humerus you casually threw out the window.”
She shot me a glare. As if I were to blame for trying to keep my blood inside my body.
Alcaraz turned to Lilian. “I’m impressed by the success of the hag’s new sleeping draught.”
“Told you it would work,” Lilian said.
“Hang on,” I interrupted. “You mean to tell me you weren’t sure that dart would put the vampire to sleep?”
“I was pretty sure,” Lilian said.
“Pretty sure,” I repeated flatly. “And what was the backup plan if it didn’t work?”
She shrugged. “You could’ve handled her, couldn’t you?” She eyed me with a smile, waiting to see if I’d admit just how close I’d come to losing that fight. I was trapped.
I just scowled and kept my mouth shut.
“Never mind,” Alcaraz said. “It all worked out. Most of the damage is repairable, and the only irreplaceable loss was the roggenwolf. A rare beast, these days, but nothing to be done about that. Now, I suppose this creature here is what prompted your visit.”
The dog cage was sitting on a table next to me, surprisingly quiet. Lawrence’s encounter with the vampire seemed to have left him a little traumatized.
I knew exactly how he felt.
Alcaraz pushed her coke-bottle glasses up on her squat little nose and peered through the cage door with a frown on her face. She was a big, round woman, permanently hunched over with no neck to speak of. Between that and her glasses, which made her eyes seem twice their normal size, she always reminded me of an elderly owl.
While she studied the creature, I gave her the story about my sister’s basement. I left off how badly I got cut up by the little bastard. It was kind of embarrassing.
Lawrence snarled and swiped a claw at Alcaraz through the cage door, but the old woman didn’t flinch.
“Hmm,” Alcaraz said when I was done talking.
I waited patiently for her to elaborate. After a couple of minutes, no further explanation was forthcoming. I cleared my throat.
“Well?”
“Well what?” Alcaraz said, not even looking at me.
“What is he?”
Alcaraz ignored the question.
Lilian leaned in close to me, confiding in a loud whisper, “She has no idea.”
“I have no idea yet,” Alcaraz corrected. “And the sooner I’m allowed to get on with my work, the sooner I can have an answer for you. Is that acceptable, Mr. Turner?”
The way she asked didn’t really leave much room for disagreement. “Very acceptable. Thank you.” I stood. “I’ll leave him in your capable hands.”
I didn’t think she even heard me. She’d already become distracted again, scribbling something in a new notebook. “Girl, I’ll need some more of that scrying potion. Fetch some for me, will you?”
“You used the last of that a week ago,” Lilian said. “Remember?”
“Then go get some more from the hag,” the old woman said. “Give her two cockatrice eggs, this time, and no more. I won’t have her fleecing us again. And while you’re at it, we need a new fixative suitable for bloodless organisms. And—are you writing this all down?”
I decided it was my cue to leave. I met Lilian’s eyes, grinned, and waggled my fingers goodbye. She grimaced and turned back to face the old doctor’s browbeating.
Strangely, I was a little sad to be leaving Lawrence behind. I looked over my shoulder when I got to the door and saw him watching me through the bars of the cage.
The little bastard was kind of cute, in an ugly sort of way.
Against my better judgment, I interrupted Alcaraz as she continued to issue instructions and reprimands to Lilian. “Doctor. You’re not going to…stuff him or anything, are you?”
She fixed me with her bug-eyed glare. “No, Mr. Turner. I normally wait until they’re dead before I do that. But in your case, I might make an exception.”
I was pretty sure she was joking, but I got the hell out of there in a hurry, just in case.
As soon as I got back to my van, I stripped off the ancient shirt Alcaraz had given me and pulled on one of the spare T-shirts I kept in the van. I popped a couple of painkillers to ward off the burning of my chest wounds, and followed them up with a swig of one of Early’s special tinctures. It wouldn’t do much for the pain, but it would keep the shakes at bay. Nearly getting killed by a vampire does terrible things to your mental fortitude.
My tracking potion had finally matured. The color had gone a deep, murky crimson. Just what the doctor ordered. I plucked the bottle off the dashboard and uncorked it.
“All right, Delilah,” I said to the plastic hula girl on my dashboard. “Vacation’s over. Time for you to earn your keep.”
I used my eyedropper to extract some of the potion from the bottle. Carefully, I applied a single drop to both of her upturned hands.
For a moment, she just quivered in place. Then, slowly, she began to tilt to one side, like she was being pulled on by an invisible string.
Delilah had picked up the hobgoblin’s trail.
I smiled. “Gotcha.”
10
My muscles ached and the claw marks on my chest still burned like someone had rubbed chili sauce into the wounds, but it felt damn good to be on a job again.
It had been a weird afternoon, that was for sure, and I knew I’d be having nightmares about that damn baiter vamp for a few weeks to come. But for now I could put all that aside and get back to basics.
This was proper cunning man’s work. Nothing flashy. Nothing dangerous. I wasn’t cut out for that kind of stuff, not anymore. I left all that behind years ago, when I ran back to Lost Falls with my brother avenged and my mind in tatters.
It had been Early who’d picked up the pieces, put me back together. He showed me I could be someone else. Someone who helped people. Someone I could be proud of.
It wasn’t glamorous, and there wasn’t much money in it. But there was nothing quite like breaking a bad curse or reuniting a man with something precious that’d been taken from him. It j
ust felt…good.
After all the excitement at Alcaraz’s place, it was getting late by the time I was on the trail of the thieving hobgoblin. I’d picked up some drive-thru on the way, and now I was polishing off the last of the cold fries in the bottom of the bag.
The last glimmers of sunlight disappeared behind the thick forest of the valley. Clouds were moving in fast. It’d rain tonight. That made things a little trickier. Rain could disturb the hobgoblin’s trail as surely as it wiped away footprints. I couldn’t afford any more delays.
Delilah the hula girl danced on my dashboard as I drove, pointing the way. By the way she moved, I guessed the hobgoblin was a few miles outside town. Assuming the creature hadn’t ditched the rattle somewhere along the way, I could be finished with the job and be back home soon after midnight. Maybe I’d even have a chance to get Early to check on my wounds before I collapsed for the night.
The thought of bed soon had me yawning. The fight with the vampire had really taken it out of me, and my bones were growing heavy now that the adrenaline had stopped pumping. I sucked up the last of my Coke, hoping the caffeinated sugar water would keep me awake.
Delilah pointed me south, across the Rosetta River. The main township of Lost Falls hugged the north bank of the river. Further downstream were the Falls themselves, but my route took me in the other direction. As I crossed the bridge, my headlights washed across a chipped and bird-shit-stained statue of a cartoon river troll. It was what passed for a town mascot around these parts.
Out of habit, I rolled down the window and tossed a coin into the river below. It was highly unlikely that there was a real troll down there, but I’d had a bad enough day already. I didn’t want to take any more risks.
As I left the lights of the town behind, the dark of the forest seemed to press in close. The only light around was a flashing red bulb atop a radio tower ahead. Up there on that hill was the town’s radio station.
I checked the time. My sister would be working at the station right now. I rarely listened to the radio nowadays—seeing as music meant nothing to me anymore—but tonight, to ward off the dark, I switched on the radio and twiddled the dial until Alice’s voice crackled to life.
“-come back to Falls Radio, where we’re taking your calls until three a.m., the witching hour. I hope you’re all safe and sound this evening. Before the break we heard from a gentleman driving out near the mountain, who reported seeing the shadow of a large beast dart across the road in front of him. Just a stray dog, or something more? I’ll let you decide. Ah, looks like we have our second caller of the evening. You’re live with Alice, what do you have for us tonight?”
Alice loved playing up the town’s legends, and even I had to admit she was pretty good at it. When she was working she adopted a soft voice that made the hairs on the back of your neck stick up, even if you knew that most of what she was saying was complete bullshit.
“Hello?” the caller said. “Am I on the air?”
“You’re live right now, ma’am,” Alice said. “Tell us why you’re calling.”
“It’s about that creature by the mountain, the one that other man called about. I saw it too.”
“Another sighting. This story is heating up. What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Carol.”
“What did you see, Carol?”
“Well, my husband and I were driving back into town. We were visiting my mother, you see, because she’s sick. Smoked all her life, and now she’s got the emphysema. So we’d been out of town for a few days, visiting her, but my husband had to get back for work, so—”
“Tell us about the beast,” Alice interrupted.
“Oh, yes, well, we were driving into town—we were coming from the east, you see—and as we came around the corner I saw this shadow on the side of the road. So I yelled at my husband to stop the car, because I thought it might be a person. Like maybe they’re hurt or something.”
“And then what happened?”
“We pulled over, and I jumped out and ran back toward the shape. I could see it was moving a little. So I called out, I said, ‘Are you all right?’ And then, and then it kind of lifted its head.”
“It wasn’t a person?” Alice said.
“No. No it wasn’t. It was like…like a big, black dog. But not just big, like, really big. As big as my husband. Bigger. And my husband’s not a small man. This…this thing, it looked like there was blood on its nose. It was dark, but I’m pretty sure there was blood on it. Its fur was matted, you see. And…and…”
“What, Carol?”
“It had no eyes.”
“No eyes? Are you sure? You said it was dark.”
“I’m sure.” The woman’s voice quivered. “There were just holes. Holes where its eyes should have been.”
I grinned to myself as I listened, shaking my head. The beast was almost certainly some poor injured dog. Hit by a car, probably.
“What did you do then, Carol?”
“I froze,” the caller said. “For a moment, I just froze up. And then the creature growled. I’ve never heard a sound like that in my life. So I turned and I jumped back into the car and I screamed for my husband to drive.”
“Did your husband see the beast?”
“No. It all happened so fast. He hadn’t even got out of the car. But I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Thank you so much for your call, Carol. There you have it, listeners. A second sighting of this strange beast lurking on the edge of town. If anyone else out there has seen it, please call us now. And if you’re driving out near the mountain tonight, friends, then be careful. When we come back from the break, we’ll be talking to Francesca Kaufmann about her new book, Heartflesh: The Vampire Conspiracy. If you’re concerned, like I am, that our government has been infiltrated by blood-drinking creatures of the night, you won’t want to miss this. Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back.”
I was impressed. My sister could be pretty earnest when she put some effort into it.
I half-listened to the rest of the program as I drove deeper into the forest. Unlike the eastern road, which was apparently lousy with blind werewolves, my route was nearly empty. Logging trucks used to pack this road, but the timber industry had moved out of here in the last decade. Bad for the town, but at least it meant I had the road to myself.
The hobgoblin had apparently chosen to stick to low ground, which was fine by me. Delilah’s dancing grew more insistent with every passing minute.
I was getting close.
A roadside cafe emerged out of the darkness ahead of me. All the lights were off, no cars parked outside. As I drove past, Delilah’s hula dance spun back to point behind me.
I stopped in the road and examined the cafe in the side mirror.
“Found you,” I muttered.
11
I did a U-turn, switched my headlights off, and pulled quietly into the cafe’s parking lot. No point spooking the hobgoblin. With luck, it’d be asleep right now.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of getting hurt—hobgoblins were generally harmless, if a huge pain in the ass. I just didn’t want the thing making a run for it. If it got scared and bolted into the forest, I’d have a hell of a time trying to follow.
And unlike the hobgoblin, not everything in the forest was harmless.
Before I got out, I took a moment to look over the cafe. It had seen better days. The sign read G ld Dig ers Cafe, having long since lost the o and one of the gs. They seemed to be going for an old-timey mining theme, with a wooden facade and a faded cartoon prospector looking sourly down at me.
The front doors were chained closed. The hobgoblin had probably found a back way in. The little bastards were good at that.
“Found yourself somewhere pretty nice to spend the night,” I said. “Not willing to sleep in the wild, huh? Must’ve gone soft.”
No point taking my whole kit in with me. I prepared a simple written charm, then pocketed a chain of coins and small silver bells—they were g
ood for distracting and entrancing hobgoblins. If that failed, I also had a fetish made of twine and chicken bones. I didn’t want to use it unless I had to—the fetish was designed to overwhelm the hobgoblin’s mind with fear, freezing the creature in place. Not exactly pleasant.
Last of all I pocketed a set of lock picks and hung my truncheon on my belt. I felt stupid, bringing the weapon, but after the day I’d had, I wasn’t taking any chances.
Taking a deep breath, I climbed out of the van and quietly shut the door. A quick glance showed me that there were no cameras watching the parking lot. That made things easier.
Even without streetlights, the waxing moon gave enough light for me to see by. I only hoped I was done before those rainclouds came in and smothered the light.
As I made my way around the side of the cafe, I reached into my pocket and found the silver pendant I’d used to absorb the echoes of the rattle’s history. I let it hang down. It swung ever so slightly. No doubt about it, I was in the right place.
There was a high wooden fence around the back of the cafe, with another chain keeping the gate locked. The gaps in the bottom of the fence were far too small for me to fit through, but a hobgoblin would’ve had no problem.
Glancing along the fence, I decided the easiest place to scale it would be where it met the side of the cafe. There was a drainpipe bolted to the wall there. I tested it, and decided I could trust it to hold my weight for at least a couple of seconds.
I pocketed the pendant, grabbed hold of the drainpipe, and hauled myself up. My wounded chest didn’t thank me for it. Grunting and panting and trying not to swear out loud, I got my hand to the top of the fence and scrambled over. With one last groan, I threw myself unceremoniously down on the other side.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered as I picked myself up, prodding gingerly at my wounds. Felt like one of the cuts had broken open. Just what I needed.
I looked around. The cafe was even less impressive from back here. Smelled a hell of a lot worse, too, though I put that down to the overflowing dumpster sitting nearby.
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