Hellhound (A Deadtown Novel)

by Nancy Holzner

  But my father had done something that no one among the Cerddorion—hell, no one of any species—had ever managed to do. He’d hijacked the body of a falcon to come back from the dead.

  After my father, Evan Vaughn, was killed by the Destroyer, whom I’d foolishly summoned in my eighteen-year-old know-it-all mode, Dad spent ten years in the Darklands, first serving in Arawn’s court and then, when his shade had been marked for reincarnation, hiding out in a cave. More than anything, Dad wanted to keep his spirit from being cleansed of its memories and recycled into the body of a newborn infant. When I followed Pryce into the Darklands, Dad helped me track him down. But the closer we got to Tywyll, Arawn’s capital, the stronger the pull of reincarnation became. The magic that gave Dad a body in the Darklands drained away from him, and his spirit was in danger of dispersing into nothing. In fact, I thought I’d lost him forever.

  But no Vaughn has ever quit without a fight. Dad knew that the Night Hag required three items as my price of passage out of the Darklands. One of these was the white falcon of Hellsmoor, a magical bird that could enter places from which others were barred. The hag demanded I bring her the falcon, along with a magic arrow and Lord Arawn’s hunting horn, to make her nightly hunts more amusing. To Dad, the falcon looked like an escape plan. He bound his spirit to the bird’s body and hitched a ride back to the world of the living.

  A brilliant idea, with one big downside. That downside was currently sitting on my living room sofa pecking popcorn from my roommate’s hand.

  Juliet scattered some popcorn across the coffee table, and Dad hopped over to peck at it. Juliet stretched and stood. “My coffin calls,” she said. “What time is it, anyway?”

  “Nearly eight.”

  “No wonder I’m tired. I should have reinterred myself hours ago. But the program your father and I were watching was just so . . . fascinating.” Uh-oh. It sounded like Juliet was starting a new television obsession. Well, at least it would be cheaper than the time she bought every single product labeled “As Seen on TV.”

  She waved good night and went down the hallway. A moment later her bedroom door clicked closed.

  I sat down on the sofa where Juliet had been and picked up the popcorn bowl. Only a few crumbs left at the bottom. I set the bowl on the table.

  “What were you guys watching?” I asked my father.

  “A show about birds of prey. Their habitats, behavior—that sort of thing.”

  “Feeding habits?” I doubted wild falcons had much popcorn in their diet.

  “Let’s gloss over that part,” he said, popcorn spilling from his beak. “I figure, though, that if I’m going to be in this body, I have to be able to pass myself off as an actual falcon when needed. If I act like myself, I’ll end up as a sideshow attraction.”

  “Or the Night Hag’s pet.” Dad had escaped from the Night Hag, but she was a huntress at heart and would never quit trying to get him back. Although she didn’t know the falcon was my father—almost no one did—she’d offered me a trade. If I returned the white falcon to her, she would release Kane from his servitude as a hellhound.

  Kane, free of pain and subjugation.

  Her offer was tempting, I had to admit. I’d take her up on it in a heartbeat, except for two things. One: The falcon in question was my father. And you just don’t hand your dad over to an evil, vindictive spirit, even if it means freeing your boyfriend from same. Two: Obscure, ancient prophecies hinted that a white falcon had a role to play in the coming war among the realms. Unfortunately, said prophecies were obscure enough that we didn’t know exactly what that role would be—or even if Dad was the falcon referred to. But when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake, you don’t sit around playing guessing games.

  Still . . . there was Kane. The warmth that made his gray eyes glow when he smiled. His courage, the courage to go to hell and back—for me. His sense of fair play. His belief in justice. The Night Hag wanted to destroy all that, to strip away everything that made Kane who he was, leaving nothing but a shattered, empty shell.

  It almost made me think it would be worth it, worth anything, to wrest Kane from her power.

  For three weeks, my thoughts had circled in that endless loop: Dad . . . the prophecies . . . Kane. Over and over again. I thought I’d have time to plan a strategy. But now the full moon was approaching, and I still didn’t see any way out of this mess.

  It didn’t help that Dad had made me swear to keep his return a secret. I hadn’t told a soul, not even Kane. Not even Mab, my aunt and demon-fighting mentor—and I told her everything. Mab knew I’d brought the white falcon out of the Darklands, but she didn’t know Dad had come with it.

  Dad, done inspecting the coffee table for popcorn kernels, perched on the back of the sofa and preened his feathers.

  “Have you told Mom yet?” I asked. When Dad wasn’t hanging out at my place watching TV, he spent most of his time staking out the suburban neighborhood of my sister, Gwen. Mom had left her retirement condo in Florida to move in with the Santini family for a while, helping Gwen’s daughter, Maria, adjust to the shapeshifting abilities she was starting to manifest. Mom and Gwen had both remarked several times on the large white falcon nesting in the area. But my promise to Dad kept me silent. As far as I could tell, Juliet was the only one besides me who knew—and I suspected that had something to do with her willingness to make popcorn.

  “Of course I’ll tell your mother. I’m waiting for the right moment.”

  “Dad, there is no right moment. When a bird opens his beak and starts talking, it’s bound to be a shock. When that bird says, ‘Hi, honey, I’m home. Did you miss me?’ it’s guaranteed to up the voltage.”

  “I don’t see what’s so strange about a talking bird. Parrots talk.”

  “But they don’t have conversations. Anyway, you’re not a parrot.”

  “Damn right.” Dad puffed out his chest. “You won’t hear me begging for a cracker.” He eyed the empty popcorn bowl. “I wouldn’t mind a cheeseburger, though.”

  “If I’d known you were here, I’d have brought you one.” The white falcon had a magical ability to go anywhere he wanted—locked doors and walls be damned—but hadn’t yet mastered the art of calling ahead.

  Besides hanging out, getting fed, and watching TV, there was another reason my father spent time in my apartment. I asked about it now. “Dad, have you looked at the book recently?”

  I didn’t have to name the title. He knew which book I meant: The Book of Utter Darkness, an ancient volume written in the language of Hell, which outlined the history of the conflict between demons and the Cerddorion—from the demons’ point of view. It contained prophecies of how that conflict would end, prophecies that were now coming to pass left and right. It was this book that mentioned the white falcon.

  The book and I had a history. For years, it had fascinated me on Mab’s library shelf, the only book I was forbidden to read. When I was eighteen and considered myself a highly trained demon slayer, I took the book down and, leafing through, conjured a demon. I guess my intention was to show there was no demon I couldn’t take down. The demon that answered the call was Difethwr, the Hellion that marked me and killed my father. I’d vowed never to touch the book again, and for years I didn’t, but the times it prophesied were now upon us. At Mab’s insistence, I went from avoiding the book to studying it. We needed to find out what was coming and how we might counter it. But the book was full of tricks. You couldn’t read it the way you’d read a normal book; you had to stare at the unfathomable words until a meaning took shape in your mind. Sometimes the meaning didn’t come. Sometimes it came in riddles—riddles that tried to trip up and fool the reader into believing whatever meaning the book was pushing.

  Lately, whenever I looked into the book, one of two things happened: Either I stared at its pages until I went cross-eyed, getting nothing, or else the book hit me hard with a vision of destruction so terrible and all-encompassing it left me shaking for hours. Not exactly surprising,
then, that I was back to avoiding The Book of Utter Darkness. Since Dad was willing to spend time with it, I was happy to hand it over to him. He’d perch on the back of a kitchen chair, the book open before him on the table. For hours at a time, he’d stare at the book with that predator’s gaze, turning pages with his beak.

  “I looked at it for a little while,” he said now, “before my show came on.”

  “Anything new?”

  “Hard to tell. The book doesn’t speak to me, to Evan Vaughn, I mean. Everything I get from it goes straight to the falcon part of my brain.” Mab said the book referred to the white falcon, but in all my terrible visions of a burning landscape terrorized by demons, the falcon had never appeared. “I get flashes of imagery,” Dad continued, “but they’re filtered through the falcon’s perception, so it’s hard to know what they mean.”

  “What kind of imagery?”

  “Darkness, mostly. But it’s not the kind of darkness that makes the falcon want to return to his nest. I guess that means it’s not night. It’s a darkness that grows thicker and thinner, that burns my lungs.”

  “Smoke.” There was plenty of smoke in my visions. They showed the entire East Coast in flames.

  “Yeah, smoke. It must be that. But it’s damn frustrating, Vic. The falcon doesn’t have any words for anything. He’s driven by instinct. He knows hunger, hunting, sleeping, danger.” His head turned almost all the way around, toward the TV. “That’s another reason I was watching the nature show. I was hoping it would give me some insight into how this body’s brain works. So I can interpret its images and feelings better.”

  I nodded. “So this darkness, or smoke—does it come with a feeling of danger?”

  The falcon cocked his head as Dad considered. “Yes. The burning feeling in the bird’s lungs makes him want to fly higher. But he doesn’t want to flee. He’s not afraid. Instead he’s . . . excited. And hungry. But . . .” For a moment, I could almost see Dad’s face—his real face—superimposed on the falcon’s, frowning as he struggled to express his meaning. “But not like the kind of hunger that wants a cheeseburger or, you know, a rat. The feeling isn’t in the bird’s stomach; it’s . . . I don’t know where it is. But the only way I can describe it is hunger.”

  “Weird.” I understood how hard it was, trying to use the human mind to interpret an animal’s perceptions. When I came out of a shift, I had exactly the same problem. “In your visions, is the falcon’s hunger ever satisfied? Does it feed?”

  “That’s a good question. The short answer is no, it doesn’t. But there’s a jolt of attention, followed by excitement. The feeling a falcon gets when its vision locks onto a mouse or a rabbit or whatever moving in a field below.”

  “When it spots its prey.”

  “Exactly. Then everything blacks out. The book drops the curtain, so to speak, and I can’t see what caught the bird’s attention. I’ll tell you one thing, though. When I come back to myself, I’m ravenous.” His hooked beak opened and closed. “In fact, I think I’ll go out and get that cheeseburger now. Maybe a couple.”

  “Munchies?” Dad may have been stuck in a falcon’s body, but he didn’t share his host’s taste for raw, still-squirming meat. Dad’s favorite hunting ground was Munchies, a fast-food restaurant in Deadtown, where one of the zombie short-order cooks had taken a liking to him. Dad hadn’t spoken or anything, but whenever the white falcon appeared, the cook would toss a cheeseburger upward and watch admiringly as the bird caught the food in his talons and climbed into the sky.

  The falcon glanced at the clock. “Shoot, I missed Munchies. They close an hour before dawn.”

  “They might be open today. Half of Deadtown’s zombies are milling around out there.” And when zombies mill, they get hungry.

  “I noticed that when I flew into town. What’s going on?”

  I filled him in. “Daniel, he’s a homicide detective, thinks the Morfran is somehow involved. From what I saw at the scene, I suspect he’s right. But from witness accounts, it doesn’t sound like a straightforward Morfran attack. So I’m going to interview the witnesses tonight. Maybe that will help us understand what happened.”

  His falcon eyes bright, Dad nodded. “You should take another look at the book, Vic. New Morfran activity might be an omen.”

  “You’re right.” A wave of weariness washed over me, and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. “I will. But later.” I needed to sleep. If I even glanced at the book right now, while I was tired and weak, it would attack. Once my mind was clear, I’d try again.

  Dad left, hoping to scrounge a cheeseburger or two, and I got ready for bed. I thought about contacting Mab at her home in Wales to tell her about the zombie attack and its possible Morfran connection. She’d want to know. But I decided to wait. It would make more sense to talk to the witnesses first. That way, I’d have a better idea of what we were dealing with.

  Right now, the only thing I knew for sure was this: Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

  5

  I WOKE UP AROUND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON, AFTER A long sleep blessedly free of dreams. No zombies rioting in the Zone. No visions of Boston burning. No flashbacks to the sheet-covered bodies or stinking black slime of Daniel’s crime scene. Those images decided to wait until I opened my eyes, when they all came rushing back, reminding me of the problems crowding around and clamoring for my attention.

  Rolling over and clamping a pillow on top of my head wouldn’t do anything to make them go away. I know. I tried.

  That left one option: facing them. By the time I’d hit the shower, pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and downed two mugs of black coffee, I felt almost ready to do just that.

  I still had some time before I went to meet Daniel at the Tremont Street checkpoint, so I thought about which weapons to take on tonight’s expedition. I wasn’t going demon-hunting, so I didn’t need my usual assorting of daggers, a sword or two, and bullets, all in demon-busting bronze. Still, it would be dark soon, the time when demons are free to enter in the human plane, and you never know when one might materialize in your face, waving its claws and spewing its sulfur-and-brimstone halitosis. I’d bring along a bronze-bladed dagger or two, just in case. A pistol and a couple of magazines of bronze bullets couldn’t hurt either.

  But one weapon was a must-have for tonight: Hellforged, an obsidian dagger that, true to its name, had been fashioned by demons in the depths of Hell. Centuries ago, the Cerddorion had stolen it from a Hellion, and it was the only tool we had to control the Morfran.

  Hellforged rested in my hand, its polished black blade gleaming. The first time I ever touched this dagger, it leapt away from me like a skittish colt. Hellforged had a mind of its own, and my early attempts to use it were clumsy. But we’d learned how to work together. Now, a quiet vibration thrummed through the dagger as I held it, but it didn’t twitch or jump. I slid it into its ankle holster, hoping there would be no need to use it tonight.

  Hellforged could call and hold the Morfran, but only slate could imprison the spirit. For that, I had a specially made slate plaque, commissioned by Mab from a local witch in Wales. The plaque looked like something your grandmother would hang in her gingham-curtained kitchen. Surrounded by a painted border of curlicues were the words HOME SWEET HOME. The curlicues were magically charged symbols that strengthened the slate and increased its capacity to hold the Morfran. HOME SWEET HOME had no magical significance; it was my aunt’s idea of a joke.

  Okay, so Mab doesn’t have the world’s sharpest sense of humor. She’s still a formidable demon fighter.

  I tucked the slate into my jacket’s inner pocket. After checking again to make sure my weapons were secure, I went to meet Daniel.

  THE SCENE IN DEADTOWN HADN’T CHANGED MUCH SINCE this morning. All the zombies who’d usually be working the night shift were restricted to DA-1, thanks to the Code Red, and every single one of them seemed to be out on the streets. The mood was tense, the air buzzing with that electric feeling that happens right befo
re lightning strikes.

  I kept my gaze on the pavement in front of me, though I could feel heads turn to track my path. I ignored occasional pushes, choosing to interpret them as harmless jostling on a crowded sidewalk, despite flares from my demon mark that urged me to turn and punch whoever had shoved me.

  Then someone stopped in front of me, deliberately blocking my path. Uh-oh, I thought, raising my eyes, here it comes. My demon mark goaded me to reach for a weapon. I balled my hand into a fist, but kept my arm at my side.

  “Hi, Vicky. Jeez, how loud do I have to shout your name? I called you, like, three times, and then I still had to stop right in front of you to get your attention.”

  “Tina.” My fist unclenched. Standing in front of me was the teenage zombie who’d briefly been my apprentice before a new shiny object had come along to distract her from demon slaying. Lately, though, she’d been trying to get back in my good graces, even studying demonology on her own time. I was glad I hadn’t gone for a weapon. Tina could be annoying, but she was basically a good kid.

  Tonight she wore purple skinny jeans and a tight T-shirt bearing the slogan CODE RED? KILL IT DEAD! spelled out in rhinestones. It looked like Tina had found yet another new shiny object. Literally.

  “Nice shirt. Is it a political statement or a fashion statement?”

  “Both, of course. Duh. Plus an artistic statement, too. I made it, and I’m selling zillions of them out of my Etsy store. Mostly to norms, if you can believe that.” Her gray-green face creased in a scowl. “Although I can’t tell whether they want to stand in solidarity with us in Deadtown or just, you know, look cool.” Her expression brightened. “Hey, you want one? I’ll let you have it for fiftee—uh, ten percent off.”

  “I don’t think I’m cool enough to wear that.”

  Tina tilted her head as she appraised my outfit. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Anyway, here.” She thrust a piece of paper at my face.