“As did you.” She cut a sharp glance at him, before returning her attention to the highway. “Going to turn in your boyfriend?”
“No, but...”
“But exceptions are just for you?”
She had him there.
“Wait a minute,” Caleb said, “why do we have to go to your cousin for this? Couldn’t we just summon it anywhere? You can, um, horse it and we’ll find out if it knows what your mother knew.”
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, and John caught a whiff of warm plastic. At least she didn’t set the car on fire. “Because I’m too pissed off right now.”
John frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Don’t you get it yet, Starkweather?” Disgust laced her voice, though at him or the world in general, he didn’t know. “NHEs don’t corrupt us. We corrupt them.”
He exchanged a look with Caleb, who seemed just as bewildered. “What do you mean?”
Tiffany sighed impatiently. “They aren’t human. Whatever their natural state is, they don’t experience the world the way we do.”
“It’s true,” Caleb piped up from the back seat. “Even with the memories of a few thousand corpses, Gray still doesn’t always understand things. Love and hate and pain were just concepts, before me.”
“There’s a reason a lot of ritual surrounds any sort of summoning, no matter the culture,” Tiffany said. “People, especially the one being possessed, have to be in the right headspace. Ceremonies, trances, rituals, all are a way of making sure the person is calm. On an even keel. Now imagine you’re an NHE. Maybe humans have summoned you before, for a few minutes or even a few hours at a time. You got to experience emotion and sensation, but only under very controlled circumstances.”
She put on the blinker, then swore when someone else merged into the opening instead. “Use your fucking turn signal, asshole! Where was I? Right, so one day someone from the family or tribe calls on you for help, because they’re out of options. You come into their body and find yourself in the middle of the wilderness, in the freezing cold, starving to death. Extreme fear, hunger, terror, things you have no natural means of coping with. The confusion, the panic, you’d feel. The inability to deal with it. You’d go mad.”
John swallowed against a throat gone suddenly dry. “You’re describing a wendigo.”
Tiffany nodded. “Yeah. Werewolves are driven insane by a host’s need to destroy. Incubi are imprinted with the desire to control. And once an NHE is broken, it’s done. Even if it’s exorcised, the next time someone tries calling it up, they just end up with a monster in their face. So right now, I can’t take the risk.”
“Is that what happened to the other drakul?” Caleb asked. “If they possessed warriors, or at least people who really, really wanted to kill demons...”
“The lust for blood overrides everything else.” Tiffany glanced at him the rearview mirror. “But the dead don’t have passions. Just memories.”
“Huh.” Caleb fell silent, and it was Gray who said, “She was pure.”
Tiffany started at the sudden change. John twisted around to look in the back seat. Gray watched them through lightning-laced eyes. “Gray?”
“I believe the mortal—” He stopped and cocked his head, as if listening. “I believe Tiffany,” he corrected, “is right. The memories are not entirely clear, but when I was summoned into this world, the woman they chose to be my first body was pure.”
“She?” John asked, then immediately felt like an idiot. “Sorry, you just seem so...masculine,” he finished awkwardly.
“I have no inherent gender.” Gray got a listening expression on his face again. “Also, Caleb wishes me to thank you for reinforcing outdated binary notions. I do not believe he is sincere in his thanks, however.”
“I bet,” John muttered. “She was a virgin?”
“Why should such a thing matter?” Gray paused once more. “Ah. Mortal nonsense. She was pure of purpose. She wished only to protect her people from the demons. Nothing meant more to her—not her lover, nor gold, nor power. She felt no fear when she mounted the temple steps to be strangled.”
“Fucking hell,” Tiffany said. “Horrible.”
“Why? It was her wish.”
“They didn’t have any extra bodies lying around?”
“But he’s making your point,” John said. A picture had started to form in his mind. “Maybe they didn’t want to take the risk. Obviously they knew what happened when drakul came into a living body and became overwhelmed by the sensations. If they’d stuffed Gray into the body of an executed murderer and he’d gone crazy from the memories...”
“Huh. Okay, point taken.”
“And when Gray finally did end up in a living body,” John went on, his heart beating more rapidly, “he didn’t lose it because he already had the cushion of memories in place from the dead he’d taken over. He might not have experienced emotions and sensations first hand, but at least none of them were incomprehensible to him.”
He cast a triumphant grin at the back seat. Gray had retreated; Caleb frowned thoughtfully. “You might be onto something there.”
Some of the strain eased from Tiffany’s face. “So taking a gamble on you wasn’t as crazy as everyone else thinks. Good to know.”
* * *
Caleb’s butt had gone numb by the time they pulled off the paved road and began bumping along a rutted dirt track. Apparently these cousins came from the side of the family who didn’t have multi-million dollar houses on Isle of Palms.
Gray stirred, like a tiger waking up from a nap. “You are worried.”
Caleb wanted to deny it, but lying to someone who shared your brain wasn’t an option. Yeah. I mean...what if it’s true? About my emotions and stuff. What if I’ve corrupted you somehow? Or do it later on?
“You have changed me. And I have changed you. Is this corruption?”
Not if it’s for the better.
“Then you have no need for concern.”
Caleb wiped his palms on his jeans, glad no one paid much attention to him at the moment. John, for sure, would have picked up on his concern. How can I know? You’ve always wanted to feed, I get it, but it’s different now, right? And you want sex, and—
“Is wanting things inherently bad?”
I guess not.
Tiffany snapped her fingers in the air. “Caleb! Stop zoning out back there and pay attention!”
He cursed silently. “Um, yeah. Sorry. What did you say?”
“I said we’re almost there. I want you to stay in the car, got it?”
They passed a battered mailbox pocked from birdshot. “Why?”
“Are you kidding me?” She rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you noticed how other NHEs react to you? Those soldiers running for their lives yesterday?”
“Yeah, but those were demons.” This NHE Tiffany is talking about summoning...you wouldn’t want to eat it, would you?
“Perhaps.” Gray’s interest perked. “Do you think John would let us?”
“Fuck,” Caleb said aloud. “Yeah, okay. Don’t bring the lion into a clearing where you’re trying to lure a deer.”
John turned around in his seat to look at Caleb. “Gray sees any NHE as prey?”
“I’m not sure about all of them, but probably. Any he thinks he can eat.” Caleb sighed. “I haven’t noticed any memories of him snacking on the sort of temporary possession we’re talking about here, probably because he wouldn’t have time to track it down before it returned to the etheric plane. Which is good, I guess. At least he’s only eaten the dangerous ones.”
John didn’t seem entirely convinced, but Caleb thought the dangerous descriptor bothered him more than anything else. John didn’t seem on board with the Vigilant when it came to the safety of summoning any NHEs.
And hell, if Tiffany’s theory about mortals corrupting NHEs was right, maybe John had a point. Maybe there shouldn’t be any contact for the safety of the NHE as much as the human. Why take the
chance of turning them into monsters?
“I do not regret being summoned.”
No, but you aren’t stuck in a haze of hunger and cold and pain all the time, either. The memory of the wendigo sent a shiver through him. That could have been you.
“But it was not. Why do you insist on worrying about things that never happened?”
The car slowed abruptly, the seatbelt going tight over his chest. “Something’s wrong,” Tiffany said.
Caleb peered out the front window, in between the two seats. It reminded him inescapably of the day he’d become possessed by Gray, sitting in the backseat of a Fist van and trying to get a glimpse of the monster’s lair. Instead of a falling-down ruin, though, he glimpsed a simple doublewide with a neat yard. An older model van sat out front, and a swing set flanked the driveway.
All the tires on the van were flat.
It would have been weird under other circumstances, but in these... something was seriously off.
Tiffany stopped the car, engine idling. None of the curtains twitched, and no one came out to greet them.
“What do you want to do?” John asked, tension practically vibrating off him.
A long moment of silence. Tiffany switched off the car. “We find out what the hell is going on here.”
Caleb unsnapped the buckle on his seatbelt. “I’ll go first.”
“Caleb,” John began, but Caleb cut him off.
“No. If there’s a sniper, or an ambush, or if Tiffany’s cousin has freaked out and opens up with a shotgun, I’m the one to take the bullet.” It would hurt like fuck, but he’d probably survive it.
“Go,” Tiffany ordered.
“Aye-aye, la capitaine,” he muttered, and climbed out. Every muscle drew tight, bracing for the impact of a slug.
Nothing.
Closing the car door behind him, he walked deliberately into the open space beside the van. Gray hovered just beneath their skin, ready to heal their body as fast as possible so they could get on with the ass-kicking part. His heart raced. Electricity tingled over his skin, and his hair stirred of its own accord, not a breath of wind to move it.
Still nothing.
No bullet. No shouted orders to freeze. Not even a concealed land mine beneath the churned gravel of the drive.
But a heavy vehicle had left tire tracks in the dirt. And sunlight gleamed from a spent bullet casing.
The sedan’s doors slammed, John and Tiffany having apparently decided it safe to come out. Caleb crouched down and pointed at the casing. Tiffany hissed softly. She’d lost her mom already, and now it didn’t look good for her extended family. But she didn’t freak out, either from her training with the Vigilant, or because she really was a SPECTR agent at heart.
“Okay,” she said, firming her grip on her gun. “Let’s reconnoiter the house.”
* * *
John’s every muscle drew tight, senses taking in each detail of the deserted yard. The only sounds came from chirping birds and spring frogs. Yellow tulips lined the walk in front of the house, and the first leaves budded on the trees. A bright red ball lay in the green grass.
In any other circumstances, the homestead would have struck him as idyllic. But given a van with flat tires and spent bullet casings, the scene took on an ominous edge. “How many people live here?”
Tiffany’s gaze swept the yard and surrounding woods. “Ordinarily? Four. But this was supposed to be a ceremony. Aunt DeeDee would be here to summon and exorcise. Marcus might horse, or cousin Rhonda, if she could make it. As few as five, but this is a family get-together, so possibly as many as eight.” She swallowed convulsively. “Marcus’s kids are only in elementary school.”
Sekhmet, Devourer of Evil, save them. He drew his Glock and joined Tiffany on the porch, flanking the door with their backs against the vinyl siding. He nodded at Caleb, who kicked the door open.
It slammed against the wall, and Caleb went through. No one shouted or started shooting. John wasn’t sure if he could count that a good sign or not.
He and Tiffany slipped inside. The door opened on an ordinary living room: recliner, wide-screen TV, couch, pictures of children on the wall. A card table lay on its side, and the pieces of a smashed porcelain figurine littered the carpet. Someone had fought back.
A smoky haze floated near the ceiling, accompanied by the acrid smell of food charring to ash. Tiffany frowned and stepped past a breakfast nook, into the kitchen. A soft click announced she’d turned off the stove.
“Charlene was in the middle of cooking,” she said. John joined her beside the blackened remains of what appeared to be chicken in a skillet, a half-chopped carrot still on the cutting board.
“Knife’s gone,” he said, noting the empty place in the block.
Tiffany nodded tightly. “I hope she got one of the bastards.”
“I hear something,” Caleb called from the living room.
John hurried to join him, Tiffany following. Caleb stood at the entrance to a hall coming off the den. The crackle of Gray’s energy brushed against John’s perception, the drakul ready to act at a moment’s notice. More pictures of kids hung in the hall, accompanied by a wedding portrait and a couple of framed college degrees.
All of the doors stood open except for the one at the end.
“It’s coming from behind the closed door,” Caleb said. He eased down the hall, glancing through the open doors as he passed. No one jumped out at him. Still, John took a careful look around the doorways before crossing in front of them. A bedroom, bath, and small office, all empty. The computer in the office was still on, monitor displaying a spreadsheet.
Caleb paused at the end of the hall. John heard the sound now, too, like the low murmur of voices, muffled by the door. Was someone in there? But anyone inside would surely have heard them walking down the hall.
John covered the door with his Glock, prepared to fire. At his nod, Caleb threw open the door.
High, bright laughter poured out from a TV turned to a children’s station. Bright colors decorated the room, and toys lay strewn about on the floor. A bunk bed with rocket ship comforters stood against the wall, and a mobile of the solar system hung from the ceiling.
“The girls are really into all this space stuff,” Tiffany said, staring at the mobile. Her voice shook slightly. “I planned on taking them up to DC, to the Air and Space Museum, this summer after school let out.”
“Yeah,” John said. How must she feel right now? Her mother dead, and now this...whatever this was. Thank the Goddess they hadn’t found any bodies. Yet. “Sounds like fun.”
“Come on.” She led the way back to the living room. Caleb shut off the TV before joining them. “What the hell is going on here?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” John nodded in the direction of the back door. “Let’s search the back yard, see if we can find any clues.”
Caleb looked dubious, but made for the door anyway. As they stepped outside, he froze, nostrils flaring. “Shit.”
“What is it?” John asked, his stomach going sour.
“I smell blood. Lots of blood.”
Chapter 6
Caleb took another breath and scanned the small yard behind the doublewide. There was a garden, its earth newly turned, in preparation for the spring planting. A trampoline, probably for the kids to jump around on. And, of course, the reek of blood, human and untainted by any scent of demon.
God, if the blood belonged to one of the little girls whose room they’d seen...
Gray hovered just under his skin, reflecting back Caleb’s tension. “There.” A splash of red on the grass near the edge of the woods. Someone shot while trying to run?
But a little splash wasn’t enough to explain the strength of the scent. Time to play tracker dog again, I guess.
Caleb led the way to the woods, pausing to touch the bloody grass. “Still tacky.”
“No more than an hour old,” John said. “Probably less.” Tiffany didn’t say anything, and Caleb remembered this blood probabl
y belonged to someone she knew. Maybe even a relative. Maybe a child.
Caleb stepped into the thick woods. Shrubs and small trees snagged at his coat, and sticks popped under his boots. He didn’t know anything about the woods, but even without his amped-up sense of smell, he could have followed the blood trail. Drips and drops spattered leaves and the ground.
The land sloped gently down toward a creek. The rusty stink grew stronger. “Hello?” Caleb called. “Is someone out here? We’re here to help.”
“It’s Tiffany,” Tiffany added. “Anyone here? Marcus? Charlene?”
Was that a moan? Caleb turned in the direction of the sound, and spotted the edge of a green shirt, just visible on the other side of a fallen tree on the creek’s edge.
A man sprawled there, legs stretched out in front of him, his shirt and jeans soaked with blood. From the amount of gray in his hair and wrinkles around his eyes, he looked to be in his sixties. His breath rattled ominously, and his polo shirt sported a black hole just under the pocket.
“Uncle Frank?” Tiffany holstered her gun and fell to her knees by the man.
He blinked sluggishly. “Tiffany?” he asked, his voice so faint even Caleb had to strain to hear.
“Yeah, it’s me.” She reached for his shirt, but he weakly batted her hands away.
“I’m done for.” A racking cough seized him. When it ended, he spat out bloody froth to one side. “SPECTR did this. Came and took everyone. I tried to run, thought I could get help...”
“Shh. It’s okay.” Tiffany gently peeled the edges of the shirt away from the wound. Fresh blood oozed free.
“Why? Why’d they take everybody? The girls are just six.” The old man swallowed convulsively. “You got to get them back, Tiff. You got to.”
Tiffany bit her lip. “I will, Uncle Frank. I swear.”
He didn’t answer, just let out a long, rattling breath before failing to draw another. Tiffany sank back onto the forest floor and put her hand over her eyes.
Fuck. Caleb exchanged a glance with John, neither of them sure what to say. Tiffany had lost her mom and an uncle in just over twenty-four hours, and now SPECTR kidnapped her young cousins on top of it?
Summoner of Storms Page 5