Secrets of Skin and Stone
Page 3
Well, that and whoever had gotten to my dog.
Chapter Three
Gris
Moonlight bathed the old structure, turning it shades of blue and purple. The night had always felt welcoming to me; though, admittedly less so with the task ahead of me tonight. The closer we got to the mill, the heavier the atmosphere the fiends put off. Hopefully I didn’t get my ass handed to me with my cousin just outside the door.
The rickety mill’s door nearly fell from its frame when I opened it. I shifted into my Watcher form when I was out of my cousin’s sight. The thought of tackling all these fiends alone had me jittery. Adrenaline stole my breath, from both excitement and a healthy amount of uneasiness. I winced at the loud creak as I slammed the door closed. It drew the attention of all the wispy creatures inside. The fiends turned toward me all at once. Oh hell. I’d just shut myself in and committed to a cage match that might kill me. The monsters never held with taking turns and rushed me all at once. Even with my armored skin, the jagged board that I slammed up against knocked the wind out of me.
“Sounds like there’s a few of ‘em in there,” my cousin said from outside. Only Watchers could see and hear fiends so he was judging that based on the sound of me crashing around.
“Ya think?” I sprang forward with my talons extended. I grabbed a fiend by the throat, my long black nails gouging into its vapory substance. Throwing it to the old mill’s floor, I plunged my other hand through its chest. A sting shot through me as another fiend latched onto my back.
“I’d help you if I could, but seeing as how I didn’t get the birthright…”
Yeah, well, I might die for getting the birthright, so I wasn’t about to cry over my cousin losing out.
Ducking, I yanked the fiend off my back like I was pulling off a shirt. Down it went, and then its heart was dripping through my talons. I shook the dissolving ooze off and moved on. These fiends were rabid, and I still had another four circling me. It was hard to bob and weave and still keep my wings tucked. The last thing I needed was to round off this night by getting my wings sewn.
“Why are there so many?” I shouted.
My cousin sniffed. “Well, like we told you. Strange things are happening here.”
“Is somebody to blame for it? This kind of thing doesn’t just happen.” Groups of fiends were like the stench of fetid evil. You typically found a human at the heart of unusual activity, and what I was in the middle of was definitely unusual. “Give me names, Danny!” I jumped back, missing a swipe from one of the remaining four fiends.
“Hell, I don’t know. That’s why Critch sent for you. This is your job. If you can’t handle it, we can always call Uncle Jack.”
Like hell. My dad wasn’t coming here unless I lost a limb.
I flung myself at another fiend and twisted to avoid its claws. With it wrapped in a chokehold, I drove my talons through its chest and caught another scrape to the back. Damn, these things were mean. If only something other than ripping out their hearts would kill them.
“Why are they even in here?” I yelled. Sulfur tinged the air. Possibly something had gone bad, but the place wasn’t littered with beer bottles or trash. Research hadn’t told me much about the place, as Hidden Creek wasn’t on the cutting-edge of historical documentation.
“Everybody ‘round here figures it’s haunted. On account of somebody hanging themselves inside.” He smothered a laugh before asking, “Was that you that just hit the wall?”
Dazed, I blinked. I’d taken the equivalent of a monster’s right hook to the face. My lip felt really split this time, and I was seeing bursts of light. I held both my hands up to ward off a quick attack. In a stroke of pure luck, a fiend impaled itself on my outstretched hand. Not one to miss an opportunity, I grabbed its heart. Either I had two left, or I had one and that last knock to my head had me seeing double. “A suicide isn’t enough. I’m looking for a bigger source. Who stands out in this town?”
“Now that you mention it, there is this one family. All high and mighty. Different from everyone else.”
“Different how?”
Two years ago, I might not have survived this job. My great-uncle wasn’t wrong in sending for a Watcher. I ducked a claw aimed right at my face. Nasty, ornery things. I’d fought rural fiends before, but these seemed more uncivilized than those.
“They’re not a generations-old family, for one. And they just sit on their land, not doing anything with it. Mr. Devon is in computers, so they think they’re better than everyone else. Piper especially.”
“Piper?”
“The daughter. Remember that old lady I told you about who went crazy and drove through the barbershop window? Well, last week, this guy shot up the library…and guess who’d just left? Piper.”
Surging upward, I snagged the heart of another fiend. “So?”
“So, you wanted to know who didn’t fit in? That’d be the Devons. Though, everyone is acting strange. Whole town seems bedeviled.”
The final fiend paused, then its mouth dropped open in a screech that made its sharp teeth look extra long, even if they were vapory. The first time I’d seen one do that, I’d screamed right back. Now, it just seemed at odds with my cousin outside. “Why move to a place like Hidden Creek if you’re fixin‘ to leave every day for work?” Danny asked. “And Piper had been in the library.”
“So? Literacy hasn’t been a sign of devil-worship since the Middle Ages.” I circled the last fiend. The cuts on my back pulled as I moved. I’d gotten good and torn up this time.
“Librarian says Piper looks up all sorts of strange things.”
“Define strange.”
He snorted. “Reads about murder. Seems to focus on the occult.”
Now we were talking.
“Town only puts up with the Devons on account of her mama being a church-going woman and involved.”
I’d check out this family tomorrow. For now, I sucked in a deep breath and ran at the last fiend. It pulsed toward me, its long vapor arm outstretched like we were jousting. Ducking sideways, I avoided the fiend’s claws while plunging my own talons through its body. And…silence. The mill was back to being abandoned and empty—and it really reeked of sulfur now. I leaned over, planting my hands on my knees as I breathed.
“Gris?” Danny rattled the door.
I shifted back to my human form. My skin tightened as my body twisted and warped. Somedays, I couldn’t tell which side of me felt more foreign. The crackling of my body shifting and softening was uncomfortably loud when I knew I had an audience. “Yeah. They’re gone. Come in.”
He entered, squinting into the darkness. “How many were there?”
“Nine.”
He nodded. “Is that a lot?”
“It’s enough.” I didn’t want to seem as beat as I was, but, holy hell, nine had felt like a freaking army. And they’d been as ornery as I’d ever seen them.
Danny shrugged. “Critch did say we had problems here.”
A month ago, Uncle Critch had sent an email saying there were fiends in Hidden Creek that needed taken care of. Seeing as he was a “retired” Watcher, he’d know. “Having some fiends isn’t the same as having nine in an abandoned mill, plus one waiting for me on my porch.”
“Is that what happened to the swing?”
I straightened and ignored his question. Pulling a flashlight from my loose khakis, I started examining the mill.
“A fiend took me by surprise.” Crouching, I pulled up a suspiciously loose floorboard. “That’s not normal, either, one waiting to attack a Watcher. They avoid us.”
“I wouldn’t know. Never seen the damn things. I have a real job.” Danny worked at his dad’s machine shop that was right across from the house I was renting. “It might not pay half as well as flying around and killing things, but we can’t all be gargoyles.” He leaned against the wall as I shone the light down into the dark recesses of the mill’s crawlspace.
“Something smells,” I said, but I made no move to go down there.
Danny and I shared the blackish-brown eyes of our Granddaddy Trent, and we were close to the same age, but that was where the resemblance ended. Danny’s blond hair was almost bleached white from time spent in the sun. I didn’t see enough of the sun due to all my nights spent fighting the things in the shadows.
I yanked up another floorboard. “Hey, I met this girl earlier in that barn beside the house.”
“I can’t believe you went in that barn, what with you turning your nose up at the dust in here.”
After pulling up another board, I lowered myself into the three-foot-tall crawlspace running under the mill. The flashlight’s beam skimmed across the skeletons of more rats than I ever needed to see. There was a fabric-covered lump in the middle of the rat graveyard, and I tried to work up the desire to go grab it.
“So you’re here less than a day and already meeting girls,” Danny said. “Trying to show us up?”
“Ain’t my fault you’re so ugly you look like something the dog was keeping under the porch.” We used to compete in insults whenever we’d meet up. We competed in everything over the years.
“You’re so ugly your mama stuck a sack on your head as a kid.” Danny’s weren’t always particularly witty.
“Yeah, well, you’re so ugly you hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down.”
“Gris, you’re so ugly, when you look in a mirror, your reflection turns to stone.”
I winced. That one hit too close to home. “If I had a dog as ugly as you, I’d shave his butt and teach him to walk backward.”
Danny said, “You’re uglier than the east end of a horse headed west.”
I took a quarter out of my pocket, acknowledging he’d won, and set it on the floorboards before ducking back down. Here went nothing. Damn, it smelled bad. I was a city boy. “So this girl from the barn, you with me, Danny? She’s about five-two—maybe shorter. Blond hair. Green eyes.” I banged my head on the floor above me as I tried to avoid kneeling in rat bones. To hell with it, I was too tall. Luckily, a box of clothes had arrived from my mom today. I could burn these pants. Putting the flashlight between my teeth, I crawled toward the sack that’d been thrown down here.
“How old?” Danny asked.
“Don‘t know.” I tried to mumble a reply around my flashlight before sighing and propping it in the dirt. I had incredible night vision, but I’d just as soon not accidentally stick my hand on one of the broken beer bottles. “Might be young—ish. Probably not too young.”
“A bit twitchy and mouthy? Watches you like she don’t trust you an inch?”
Not quite the adjectives I’d use, but I could see what he was saying. “Sounds about right. Beautiful…uhh, cute.”
“That, Gris, was Miss Piper Devon.”
“That was Piper?”
“Yep. Should’ve guessed she’d trespass in our barn.”
I rolled my eyes and picked up the sack. It wasn’t covered in dust like everything else down here. It was fairly clean. “She seemed all right.” Not that I spent a lot of time with anybody my age. The birthright had sort of killed all hopes of being “normal.”
“She’s stuck-up. Thinks she’s smarter than everyone.”
“Is she smarter?”
“Well, it’s a given that she’s valedictorian—has been for a while.”
I opened the sack and scooted back toward my flashlight. The scent was potent—sulfur being the strongest.
“Find something?” Danny asked.
“How long has the town seemed bedeviled?” I didn’t want to share what I’d found until I knew what it meant.
“Year. Year and a half. Folks started talking about bad dreams and ghosts. Then, some just started to snap—like they couldn’t control their impulses.”
“How long have the Devons been your neighbors?” Not that I wanted Piper to be the one planting curse sacks like the one in my hand, but I was here to do a job, and it might be over fairly quick.
“Oh, eight or nine years.”
Closing my eyes, I tried to find some inner reserve of patience. I’d forgotten how some small towns didn’t accept newcomers. Something was wrong in Hidden Creek. Especially if someone was killing dogs.
“Don‘t underestimate her,” Danny said. “Piper is creepy. She watches things. Watches people. She stares at you with this devil look and don’t ever blink. You put her in a horror movie and people’d know right off the bat she’s evil.”
“Only on account of her being the last person you’d suspect. C’mon, Danny, she weighs like one-ten soaking wet and she’s sweet.” Sweet as sugar, sassy as tart lemonade.
“She stares, Gris. Stares.”
Likely imagination on Danny’s part. He and his parents were wired to be suspicious because they knew what lurked in the shadows, even if they couldn’t see it. They weren’t wrong about Hidden Creek, so far. But Piper? She wore cheery, checkered dresses and had a dusting of freckles spread across her face. Evil people didn’t have freckles. I tucked the curse bag into one of my pockets and made my way through the crunching, fragile rat bones.
“When you catch her watching you, judging you… She sees things. Knows things. She gets in your head. But maybe you reckon you got nothing to hide. Hell, Gris, you always did act like the sun shines brighter for you. Always getting above your raisin’. It’s like you think…”
He muttered a few things under his breath as I reached the break in the floorboards.
“You kiss your mama with that mouth?” I pushed out of the nasty, dusty hole.
Danny raised his eyebrows.
“We‘ve all got something to hide,” I said. Most of the people around here were hiding a little shoplifting or maybe some drug abuse in the ugly corners of their souls. My dark corners had wings. “She said her dog got killed this morning.”
He stopped what he was doing for a breath, but then he went back to it. “So?”
“That happen a lot?”
“Some. You aren’t in the city anymore. We don’t dress up our pets like they’re kids or paint their toenails. They roam around like animals are supposed to. Shoot, that barn used to have cats until they got into some antifreeze in our garage. We got a decent amount of meaner critters in the woods nearby, too.”
“She said somebody had done it—not another dog or another animal. A human did it. That doesn’t happen all that often, does it? People killing pets?”
He shrugged. “It was probably her.”
“You seriously believe she killed her own dog?”
“Hard to say,” he said finally. “People are different from how they look sometimes. Even girls. Especially girls.” He nodded down at the floorboards that I didn’t bother putting back. “What did you find?”
“Nothing.” The lie was sour on my tongue. I didn’t even know why I was lying. Danny was my cousin.
I’d gotten the birthright and he hadn’t. Some part of me knew that was a problem. It was a problem for Critch. Old fool figured I’d stolen the birthright from him. There were only ever two Watchers in a direct line at once, so he’d lost his powers when I’d gotten mine.
“Do you really think one of the Devons could account for the town being bedeviled?” I asked. “Do you think Piper is doing something? You have enough of our Watcher blood to sense things.” It was stupid, but I liked her. On the other hand, I was charged with killing fiends, and if she was calling them somehow…
Danny shrugged. “Not all evil looks the same, Gris.” He spun his truck keys around a finger and shook his head. “Asked her out once—little over a year ago. On great granddaddy’s grave, she looked right through me and said she’d rather not. Who was she waiting round for? Believe it or not, I do all right with girls, but Piper wouldn’t give me the time of day. You’d think she’d be less choosy but, no, she shut us all down. Like she could do any better. She’d have been lucky to have Jimmy, and I swear that boy
has lice every few weeks.”
No wonder she’d been irritable with me. She’d probably seen a lot of the local “charm” played out over the years. At least she hadn’t gone for Danny—that suggested she had good taste. I examined the rest of the mill, looking for more sacks. There had to be more. No matter the contents, a single curse sack wouldn’t drag in nine fiends.
“She lives in that white farmhouse up the road from your place?” I tossed aside a broken table.
“Yep. You gonna go watch her?”
“I’d like to know what killed her dog.” From all Danny had told me, the bedeviling of the town hadn’t reaped any human causalities. Some joker might just think it was funny to throw curse sacks around. Hell, Critch might do that just to get back at me.
“Maybe fiends killed the dog. Maybe the whole town is a time bomb. Tick. Tick. Tick.” He kicked a bottle and it broke on the wall opposite him.
Hopefully, my cousin hadn’t seen me jump. “Fiends can kill, but since they feed on people’s dark thoughts and nightmares, it’d usually be through collateral damage. Sometimes an animal might be in the way—or if the bedeviling has gone on a while, a person’s mind is so far gone, they’ll kill others or animals themselves.”
“Which is what has been happening here.”
“You mean with other animals?”
“There’ve been a few other issues with animals. Might’ve been related to fiends—one way or another. This old farmer slaughtered like half his cows one night six months ago. Hasn’t been the same since—jumpy. Some said drugs. Some said he just snapped. Some of the guys at school reckoned he sold Piper her dog when it was a pup so she cursed him and made him go mad and kill those cows.”
“She cursed him for selling her a pet?”
“The dog did bark.”
“Piper had nothing to do with this. And there’s no real reason for a fiend to kill an animal just to kill it. Animals don’t feel fear or anger or pain the way we do. I won’t say it’s impossible they killed her dog to bedevil her—the fiends here aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen. The way they’re behaving means something is happening in this town.” Hidden Creek had hidden depths—that was for certain.