I was wearing jeans, sweaters, and Evangelina’s faux leather coat. As vegetarians, my sisters didn’t own leather, and I couldn’t afford it. I carried twelve stakes, extra flashlight, medical supplies, ammunition, and five charms: two healing charms, one walking-away charm, one empowerment, and one obfuscation.
Evan was similarly dressed, refusing to be left behind, loaded down with talismans, charms, battery-powered lights, a machete, and a twenty-pound mallet, suitable for bashing in heads. It wouldn’t kill a vampire, but it would incapacitate one long enough to stake it and take its head. We were ready to go in when Brax drove up, got out, and sauntered over. He was dressed in SWAT team gear and guns. “What? You think I’d let civilians go after the rogues alone? Not gonna happen, people.”
We hadn’t told Brax. I glared at Evan, who shrugged, unapologetic.
“What are you carrying?” Jane asked. When he told her, she shook her head and handed him a box of ammunition. “Hand-packed, silver-flechette rounds, loaded for vamp. They can’t heal from it. A direct heart shot will take them out.”
“Sweet,” Brax said, removing his ammunition from a shotgun and re-loading as he looked us over. “So we got an earth witch, her husband, a vamp hunter, and me. Lock and load, people.” Satisfied, he pushed in front and led the way. Once inside, we walked four abreast as my sisters set up a command center at the entrance. Behind us I could hear the three witches chanting protective incantations while Regan and Amelia began to pray.
We passed parts of several bodies. My earth gift recoiled, closing up. There were too many dead. I had hoped to be able to sense the presence of the rogue vampires, but with my gift so overloaded, I doubted I’d be of much help at all. The smell of rancid meat and rotting blood was beyond horrible. Charnel house effluvia. I stopped looking after the first limb—part of a young woman’s leg.
Except for the stench and the body parts, the first hundred yards was easy. After that, things went to hell in a handbasket.
We heard singing, a childhood melody. “Starlight, star fright, first star . . . No. Starlight blood fight . . . No. I don’ ’member. I don’ ’member—” The voice stopped, the cutoff sharp as a knife. “People,” she whispered, the word echoing in the mine. “Blood . . . ”
And she was on us. Face caught in the flashlight. A ravening animal. Flashing fangs. Blood-red eyes centered with blacker-than-night pupils. Nails like black claws. She took down Evan with one swipe. I screamed. Blood splattered. His flashlight fell. Its beam rocking in shadows. One glimpse of a body. Leaping. Flying. Landed on Jane. Inhumanly fast. Jane rolled into the dark.
I lost them in the swinging light. Found Evan by falling on him. Hot blood pulsed into my hand. I pressed on the wound, guided by earth magic. I called on Mother Earth for healing. Moments later, Jane knelt beside me, breathing hard, smelling foul. She steadied the light. Evan was still alive, fighting to breathe, my hands covered with his blood. His skin was pasty. The wound was across his right shoulder, had sliced his jugular, and he had lost a lot of blood, though my healing had clotted over the wound.
I pressed one of the healing amulets my sisters had made over the wound, chanting in the old tongue. “Cneasaigh, cneasaigh a bháis báite in fhuil,” over and over. Gaelic for, “Heal, heal, blood-soaked death.”
Minutes later, I felt Evan take a full breath. Felt his heartbeat steady under my hands. In the uncertain light, my tears splashed on his face. He opened his eyes and looked up at me. His beard was brighter than usual, tangled with his blood. He held my gaze, telling me so much in that one look. He loved me. Trusted me. Knew I was going on without him. Promised to live. Promised to take care of our children if I didn’t make it back. Demanded I live and come back to him. I sobbed with relief. Buried my face in his healing neck and cried.
We carried Evan back to the entrance, where my sisters called for an ambulance. As soon as he was stable, the three of us redistributed the supplies and headed back in to the mine. I saw the severed head of the rogue in the shadows. Jane’s first forty-thousand-dollar trophy.
We had done one useful thing. We had rewritten the history books. We had proved that vampires could move around in the daylight so long as they were in complete absence of the sun. That meant we would have to fight rather than just stake and run. Lucky us.
There were six vampires left and three of us. By now, the remaining ones were surely alerted to our presence. Not good odds.
We were deeply underground when the next attack took place. Jane must have smelled them coming, because she shouted, “Ten o’clock! Two of them.” Her gun boomed. Brax’s spat flames as it fired. Two vampires fell. Jane dispatched them with a knife shaped like a small sword. While she sawed, and I looked away, she murmured, “Three down, four to go,” over and over, like a rich miser counting his gold.
We moved on. Down a level, deeper into the mountain. Jane led the way now, ignoring some branching tunnels, taking others, assuring us she knew where we were and where Carmen was. Like me, she ignored Brax’s questions about how.
Just after we passed a cross-tunnel, two vampires came at us from behind, a flanking maneuver. I never heard them. In front of me, Jane whirled. I dropped to the tunnel floor, cowering. She fired. The muzzle flash blinded me. More gunshots sounded, echoing. Brax yelled, the sound full of pain.
Jane stepped over me, straddling me in the dark, her boots lit by a wildly tottering light. I snatched it and turned it on Brax. He knelt nearby, blood at his throat. A vampire lay at his knees, a stake through her chest. My ears were ringing, blasted by the concussion of firepower. In the light, I saw Jane hand a bandage to Brax and pull one of her knives. Her shadow on the mine wall raised up the knife and brought it down, beheading the rogues; my hearing began to come back; the chopping sounded soggy.
She left the heads. “For pickup on the way out. The odds just turned in our favor.”
I couldn’t look at the heads. I had been no help at all. I was the weak link in the trio. I squared my shoulders and fingered the charms I carried. I was supposed to hold them until Jane said to activate them. It would be soon.
We moved on down the widening tunnel. Jane touched my arm in the dark. I jumped. She tapped my hand and mouthed, “Charm one. Now.”
Clumsy, I pulled the charm, activated it, and tossed it to the left. The sound of footsteps echoed, as if we were still moving, but down a side tunnel. Then I activated the second charm, the one my sisters and I had worked on all day. The obfuscation charm. It was the closest thing in all of our histories to an invisibility spell, and no witch had perfected it in hundreds of years.
Following the directions I had memorized, I drew in the image of the rock floor and walls, and cloaked it around us. I nodded to Jane. She cut off the light. Moments later, she moved forward slowly, Brax at her side. I followed, one hand on each shoulder. The one on Brax’s shoulder was sticky with blood. He was still bleeding. Vampires can smell blood. The obfuscation spell wasn’t intended to block scents.
A faint light appeared ahead, growing brighter as we moved and the tunnel opened out. We stopped. The space before us was a juncture from which five tunnels branched. Centered, was a table with a lantern, several chairs, and cots. Carmen was lying on one, cradling her belly, her eyes open and darting. Two teenaged girls were on another cot, huddling together, eyes wide and fearful. No vampires were in the room.
We moved quietly to Carmen and I bent over her. I slammed my hand over her mouth. She bucked, squealing. “Carmen. It’s Molly,” I whispered. She stopped fighting. Raised a hand and touched mine. She nodded. I removed my hand.
She whispered, “They went that way.”
“Come on. Tell the others to come. But be quiet.”
Moving awkwardly, Carmen rolled off the cot and stood. She motioned to the two girls. “Come on. Come with me.” When both girls refused, my baby sister waddled over, slapped them both resoundingly, gripped each by an arm, and hauled them up. “I said, come with me. It wasn’t a damn invitation.”
“So much for stealth,” Jane said. “Move it!” She shoved the two girls and me toward the tunnel out. Stumbling, we raced to the dark. I switched on the flashlight, put it in Carmen’s hands. Pulled the last two charms. The empowerment charm was meant to take strength from a winning opponent and give it to a losing, dying one. It could be used only in clear life-and-death situations. The other was my last healing charm.
We made the first turn, feet slapping the stone, gasping. Something crashed into us. A girl and Jane went down with the vampire. Tangled limbs. The vampire somersaulted. Taking Jane with him. Crouching. He held her in front of him. Jane’s head in one hand. Twisting it up and back. His fangs extended fully. He sank fangs and claws into Jane’s throat, above her mail collar. Ripping. The collar hit the ground.
Brax shouted. “Run!” He picked up the fallen girl and shoved her down the tunnel. The last vamp landed on his back. Brax went down. Rolling. Blood spurting. Shadows like monsters on the far wall.
In the wavering light, Jane’s throat gushed blood. Pumping bright.
Carmen and I backed against the mine wall. I was frozen, indecisive. Whom to save? I didn’t know for sure who was winning or losing. I didn’t know what would happen if I activated the empowerment charm. I pulled the extra flashlight and switched it on.
Brax rolled. Into the light. Eyes wild. The vampire rolled with him. Eating his throat. Brax was dying. I activated the empowerment charm. Tossed it.
It landed. Brax’s breath gargled. The vampire fell. Brax rose over him, stake in hand. Brought the stake down. Missed his heart.
I pointed. “Run. That way.” Carmen ran, her flashlight bouncing. I set down the last light, pulled stakes from my pockets. Rushed the vampire. Stabbed down with all my might. One sharpened stake ripped through his clothes. Into his flesh. I stabbed again. Blood splashed up, crimson and slick. I fumbled two more stakes.
Brax, beside me, took them. Rolled the vampire into the light. Raised his arms high. Rammed them into the rogue’s chest.
Blood gushed. Brax fell over it. Silent. So silent. Neither moved.
I activated the healing amulet. Looked over my shoulder. At Jane.
The vampire was behind her. Her throat was mostly gone. Blood was everywhere. Spine bones were visible in the raw meat of her throat.
Yet, even without a trachea, she was growling. Face shifting. Gray light danced. Her hands, clawed and tawny, reached back. Dug into the skull of the vampire. Whipped him forward. Over her. He slammed into the rock floor. Bounced limply.
Sobbing, I grabbed Brax’s shoulder. Pulled him over. Dropped the charm on his chest.
Jane leaped onto the vampire. Ripped out his throat. Tore into his stomach. Slashed clothes and flesh. Blood spurted. She shifted. Gray light. Black motes. And her cat screamed.
I watched as her beast tore the vampire apart. Screaming with rage.
We made it to the mine entrance, Carmen and the girls running ahead, into the arms of my sisters. Evangelina raised a hand to me, framed by pale light, and pulled the girls outside, leaving the entrance empty, dawn pouring in. I didn’t know how the night had passed, where the time had disappeared. But I stopped there, inside the mine with Jane, looking out, into the day. In the urgency of finding the girls and getting them all back to safety, we hadn’t spoken about the fight.
Now, she touched her throat. Hitched Brax higher. He hadn’t made it. Jane had carried him out, his blood seeping all over her, through the rents in her clothes made by fighting vampires and by Jane herself, as she shifted inside them. “Is he,” she asked, her damaged voice raspy as stone, “dead because you used the last healing charm on me?” She swallowed, the movement of poorly healed muscles audible. “Is that why you’re crying?”
Guilt lanced through me. Tears, falling for the last hour, burned my face. “No,” I whispered. “I used it on Brax. But he was too far gone for a healing charm.”
“And me?” The sound was pained, the words hurting her throat.
“I trusted in your beast to heal you.”
She nodded, staring into the dawn. “You did the right thing.” Again she hitched Brax higher. Whispery-voiced, she continued. “I got seven heads to pick up and turn in”—she slanted her eyes at me—“and we got a cool quarter mil waiting. Come on. Day’s wasting.” Jane Yellowrock walked into the sunlight, her tawny eyes still glowing.
And I walked beside her.
Faith Hunter was born in Louisiana and raised all over the South. “Signatures of the Dead” is a prequel to her Skinwalker series, featuring Jane Yellowrock. Blood Trade, the sixth Skinwalker novel, was recently released. Her Rogue Mage novels—Bloodring, Seraphs, and Host—feature a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic, alternate reality, urban fantasy world. The novels are the basis for the role playing game, Rogue Mage, that premiered in 2012. Under the pen name Gwen Hunter, she writes action-adventure, mysteries, and thrillers. As Faith and Gwen, she has more than twenty books in print in twenty-eight countries. She and her husband love to RV, traveling with their dogs to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast.
The Case: A woman’s ex-husband has physically assaulted her half a dozen times. Now he’s threatening to kill her—tonight.
The Investigator: Sam Hunter—currently a Philadelphia PI, formerly a detective with the Minneapolis PD.
LIKE PART OF THE FAMILY
Jonathan Maberry
“My ex-husband is trying to kill me,” she said.
She was one of those cookie-cutter East Coast blondes. Pale skin, pale hair, pale eyes. Lots of New Age jewelry. Not a lot of curves, and too much perfume. Kind of pretty if you dig the modeling-scene heroin chic look. Or if you troll the anorexia twelve-steps or crack houses looking for easy ass that’s so desperate for affection they’ll boff you blind for a smile. Not my kind. I like a little more meat on the bone, and a bit more sanity in the eyes. This one came to me on a referral from another client.
“He actually try?”
“I can tell, Mr. Hunter.”
Yeah, I thought and tried not to sigh. What I figured.
“You call the cops?”
She shrugged.
“What’s that mean? You call them or not?”
“I called,” she said. “They said that there wasn’t anything they could do unless he did something first.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Can’t arrest someone for thinking about something.”
“He threatened me.”
“Anyone hear him make the threat?”
“No.”
“Then it’s your word.”
“That’s what the police said.” She crossed her legs. Her legs were on the thin side of being nice. Probably were nice before drugs or stress or a fractured self-image wasted her down to Sally Stick-figure.
Skirt was short, shoes looked expensive. I have three ex-wives and I pay alimony bigger than India’s national debt. I know how expensive women’s shoes are. I was wearing black sneakers from Payless. Glad I had a desk between me and her.
“Your husband ever hurt you?” I asked. “Or try to?”
“Ex,” she corrected. “And . . . yes. That’s why I left him. He hit me a few times. Mostly when he was drunk and out of control.”
I held up a hand. “Don’t make excuses for him. He hit you. Being drunk doesn’t change the rules. Might even make it worse, especially if he did it once while drunk and then let himself come home drunk again.”
She digested that. She’d probably heard that rap before but it might have come from a female caseworker or a shrink. From the way her eyes shifted to me and away and back again I guessed she’d never heard that from a man before. I guess for her, men were the Big Bad. Too many of them are.
It was ten to five, but it was already
dark outside. December snow swirled past the window. It wasn’t accumulating, so the snow still looked pretty. Once it started piling up I hated the shit. My secretary, Mrs. Gilligan, fled at the first flake. Typical Philadelphian—they think the world will come to a screeching halt if there’s half an inch on the ground. She’s probably at Wegmans stocking up on milk, bread, and toilet paper. The staples of the apocalypse. Me, I grew up in Minneapolis, and out in the Cities we think twenty inches is getting off light. Doesn’t mean I don’t hate the shit, though. A low annual snowfall is one of the reasons I moved to Philly after I got my PI license. Easier to hunt if you don’t have to slog through snow.
“When he hit you,” I said, “you report it?”
“No.”
“Not to the cops?”
“No.”
“Women’s shelter?
“No.”
“Anyone? A friend?”
She shook her head. “I was . . . embarrassed, Mr. Hunter. A black eye and all. Didn’t want to be seen.”
Which means there’s no record. Nothing to support her case about ex-hubby wanting to kill her.
I drummed my fingers on the desk blotter. I get these kinds of cases every once in a while, though I stayed well clear of domestic disputes and spousal abuse cases when I was with Minneapolis PD. I have a temper, and by the time they asked for my shield back I had six reprimands in my jacket for excessive force. At one of my IA hearings the captain said he was disappointed that I showed no remorse for the last “incident.” I busted a child molester and somehow while the guy was, um, resisting arrest he managed to get mauled and mangled a bit. The pedophile tried to spin some crazy shit that I sicced a dog on him, but I don’t have a dog. I said that he got mauled by a stray during a foot pursuit. Even at my own hearing I couldn’t keep a smile off my face to save my job. Squeaked by on that one, but next time something like it happened—this time with a guy who whipped his wife half to death with an extension cord because she wasn’t “willing enough” in the bedroom—I was out on my ass. He ran into the same stray dog. Weird how that happens, huh? Long story short, I already didn’t have the warm fuzzies for her husband. We all have our buttons, and when the strong prey on the weak, all of mine get pushed.
Weird Detectives Page 47