by Alex Gates
Dakota released me from her charm, then spun on her heel and sauntered to the side door. “First thing’s first,” she said. “Since you stole my credit card, I don’t have any cash.” She gripped the door handle and twisted, pulling it open. An alarm barked into the night. Dakota looked up and around. “Oops. Might want to hurry. Cops love hanging out in this area.”
Her phone vibrated in my hand. I typed in the passcode she had given me a few minutes earlier and unlocked the screen. Xander had sent the address to Elizabeth’s house.
“Were you guys talking about magic?” she asked, shouting over the lounge’s blaring alarms.
I plugged the address into the phone’s navigation. The directions loaded. It would take nearly twenty minutes to get to Elizabeth’s house. That was driving. I didn’t even bother to tap over to the walking estimate. I knew it would take nearly an hour. Did I have an hour to waste walking somewhere I could have driven? Besides, what if a curious cop decided to ask me why I was running at three in the morning in dress shoes, baggy-ass jeans, and a button-down shirt? I had to avoid any contact with law enforcement until I found Mel.
“Were you?” she asked.
“What?” I asked, glancing up from the screen.
“Talking about magic? You can use it?”
I scratched my head, then glanced back at the phone’s estimated driving time. It didn’t matter how I justified it, I needed a car. And Dakota was my only chance at acquiring one at this time of night and on short notice. “Fuck it,” I said, stumbling back up the ramp to her. “You’re something else, you know that?”
She smirked, all lips and no teeth. “It’s either this… or you take me out to dinner,” she said, grabbing my arm, preventing me from entering the club.
“What?” I asked.
“Well, I was mostly joking about having you rob the place. Honestly, I didn’t think you’d go through with it. So, on second thought, maybe I don’t want that dinner. Maybe I will take the cash.”
“You were joking?” I asked. The alarm continued to wail, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t wrap my head around what she had said.
“Well, before you stammer yourself to death,” she said, sliding her fingers down my forearm and grabbing my hand, interlacing her fingers with mine, “we need to go. We can’t just stand beside this open door all night. Someone is bound to respond sooner or later.” She stepped away from the door, down one of the stairs, and pulled me forward, leading me to follow.
I had almost robbed the lounge, risking another encounter with law enforcement, to steal some cash for Dakota. What was I doing? I needed to get my shit together if I planned to save Mel. I had to stop making excuses. I had to start leading this charge to find my daughter. I didn’t care how attractive or charming…
Charming, I thought, my heart sinking. Was Dakota an Empousa? Had she enthralled me to keep me off Mel’s tracks? Is that why she had spoken to me in the lounge earlier?
I ripped my hand free from her grip. We had moved about seven feet. The screeching continued from within the building. The cops would arrive any second, now. I couldn’t press her for information right then. We needed to get somewhere safer.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“You’re taking me to your car,” I said. “No tricks. Nothing weird. Straight to your car, then you’re driving me to where I need to go. Understood?”
She used her hand to fan her face. “Wow,” she said, panting. “You’re making me hot with that tone.”
I knew she meant to fluster me, and I hated that it worked. My innards spiraled and tightened.
“Well,” she said, “we going to stand her all night and stare at each other? Or you ready to go?”
In Dakota’s car, driving away from the tripped lounge, I sat in the passenger seat and told her to turn left at the next light. The phone stated we were nine minutes from our destination.
“Dinner?” I asked, as we waited at the crosswalk. A sign beside the signal read, No right turn on red. There was no traffic either, so stopping and waiting for no reason at all ate me alive. Had I sat behind the wheel, I probably would have risked the ticket. But Dakota had insisted on driving, said we couldn’t use her car if she didn’t. So, I had relented.
“Dinner,” she answered, gripping the wheel with both hands. As we drove, they seemed to drift anywhere but the steering wheel, and at one time, she even drove with her kneecap. But, as we sat and waited, she gripped the leather like we might careen off a cliff.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to go dinner with me? You don’t even know me. Maybe I’m some monster… or someone who kills monsters. Maybe I’m a bad person.”
The light turned green, and Dakota turned right, only to slam on her brakes. “Sorry,” she said, waving through the window and cringing a little. A college-aged couple glared at us as they passed through the crosswalk. When it was clear, Dakota slowly moved through it, then picked up speed. Taking her hands off the wheel and messing with her split ends, she glanced at me. “You?” she chuckled. “A bad person?”
For some strange reason, that offended me. Why couldn’t I be a bad person? “I was detained earlier,” I said, “after a pretty brutal fight. I almost robbed the Snake Head Lounge. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s this high-end, well-secured bar that calls itself a lounge because it’s fancy. But did I care? No. Because I’m a bad boy.”
Dakota stopped for another light. It glowed red against her face. “You’re an idiot,” she said.
Warmth spread through my body at that simple statement. Was she doing it again? Enthralling me? Is that why I kept getting tongue-tied around her and acting strange? I adjusted in my seat and glanced at her phone—which I still hadn’t given back to her. “Get onto 50 East here. Take the 34th Street exit.” I set the phone back on my lap. “Who are you?” I asked.
The light turned, shading her face in a soft green glow. “I’m Dakota,” she said, stepping on the accelerator and heading toward the highway.
“But who’s Dakota?”
She hesitated, then said, “A Nephil granted you magic, didn’t they? I overheard some of your conversation earlier.”
“You don’t get to ask any more questions,” I said. How did she know about Nephil? About magic? “Who is Dakota?”
Scratching her cheek, she glanced at me, and then clicked on the radio and turned up the dial. “I love this song!” she yelled over the music. She sang along to lyrics I had never heard before.
I pressed the knob, silencing the radio, though she continued to belt out the tune. After a second, she quieted and frowned at me. The tires rolled over asphalt, and the breaks squeaked as she came to another red light.
“As much as I’d love to hear you sing, I only enjoy Christmas music. Year round. Everything else just kind of… chafes my ear sockets. So, back to my question, because how do I know you’re not a murdering psychopath?”
“Well, when I was about eight,” Dakota said, “I watched my daddy murder my mommy and my brubby with the business end of a hammer. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a hammer crack a skull, but it’s not something you easily forget.” She paused, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “He came after me, next. Bloody footprints trailed him. A clump of red hair stuck to the hammer’s claw. I cowered against the wall, sank down to the floor, thumb in my mouth like a baby. But guess what?”
To Sheep, a brutal attack like that would have been written off as a man who had snapped and killed his family. The editor would have created an eye-catching headline, and the press would have ran the story for a few hours, then the world would have forgotten it had happened when the next story came along. Being a card-carrying member of the supernatural world, I knew better.
The Nephil weren’t evil, but they weren’t good, either. They were nothing more than self-serving and opportunistic pricks controlled by their desires—kind of like most people I know. Sometimes, they fell in lust w
ith humans. I mean, think about it—fallen angels hooked up with ancient people to create the Nephil. Why wouldn’t the Nephil get some male or lady boners for the mortal race? Some Nephil probably saw Dakota’s daddy, lusted over that hunk of dad-bod and thirsted for him bad. Being a super awesome husband, daddy-o most likely refused the sexual advances of the supernatural being. That, in turn, led to some Nephil getting their fragile ego damaged and cursing him for no better reason than spite. Not knowing he was cursed, the loving, gentle father went on a family killing spree.
The story is speculation, but if he was cursed without warning, he probably didn’t know how to—or that he even needed to—control his new hunger with blood.
“What?” I asked, imagining this little girl, about Mel’s age, sinking to the ground in fear as a Cursed man approached her with a bloodied hammer.
“I didn’t cry. Not in front of him. He could see me afraid, because we were all afraid, including him. But I would not allow that man to see me cry.”
Dakota turned onto the highway, and I glanced at her. The cab of the car was dark, but with the help of the streetlights, I could see flashes of her face. The tears she had saved from her father slipped down her cheeks.
“What happened?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He cocked the hammer back, and I squeezed my eyes shut so hard that my head hurt. The blow never landed. I didn’t dare open my eyes, because I didn’t want to see him like that. I didn’t want to see the hammer in his red hand. So I held them shut for… I don’t know how long. I finally grew brave enough to open them.” Dakota paused and gulped, inhaling deeply. “And he was gone.”
“Gone?” I asked.
“I never saw or heard from him again. He had just… vanished.” Her fingers hovered over the radio knob before she pulled her hand back. “I know about the Nephil and magic,” she said. “We were happy, as a family. My dad had a farm in Oregon that we lived on. He barely drank, never cussed, had a temper as hot as a cube of ice. I never once saw him without a smile. He laughed when he spoke. You ever hear that before? Someone who’s so happy and kind, that their words are… it sounds like they’re laughing.”
I couldn’t imagine someone so happy. Did that type of joy even exist? “No,” I said.
“Well, that was him. Then, that night…” She didn’t finish the sentence. I already knew what happened that night. “Newspapers fucked it all up, too. Said he abused my mom, me, and my brother. Said we were in debt. Said he entered business with the wrong kind of people, made the wrong kinds of deals, because shit like that doesn’t just happen for no reason at all.”
Dakota turned off the highway onto 34th Street.
“About a mile,” I said. “Take a right on Folsom Boulevard.”
She nodded.
“You think he’s still out there?” I asked.
“No,” she said without hesitation “he died that night. Maybe not his body, but his soul. It’s still out there, whatever took my dad from me. I think that thing’s still out there. And one day, I plan to find it and kill it for what it did.”
“Why are you helping me?” I asked, sensing our encounter at the bar wasn’t entirely chanced.
“Like I said, to build a list of favors from you.” She grinned, but it was shallow and forced. “You are the infamous Joseph Hunter—the killer of killers—are you not?”
If she knew my full name, then she knew the stories that accompanied it. She knew about the Nephil and about magic and that one had probably cursed her father.
“If you know that, you know what kind of person I am. Which means you’re only interested in me for one reason—to complete a job for you. That’s why you wanted dinner? Turn here.”
Dakota almost missed our corner. She took it fast, tires sliding on the wet asphalt. She corrected and straightened the vehicle with ease.
“Left on 45th,” I said.
“The Fabulous Forty, eh? Fancy.”
Yeah, I thought. Very fancy for a bartender. “You familiar with Sacramento?”
“Not much, but it’s almost Christmas. As an out-of-towner asking the locals what to do, nearly everyone says to walk through the Fab Forty and check out the lights.”
“They are quite amazing.”
“See,” she said, turning to me and grinning, this time with less effort. “Not a bad guy.”
I scoffed. “Oh, really? Christmas lights are the standard for good and bad now? Didn’t know that, Sandy Clause. I must be the greatest guy in the world, then.” A moment of silence passed. “Dinner?”
Dakota nodded. “I’ve spent the past twenty years trying to figure out what happened to him. And it boiled down to two things—he snapped from some pressure I never knew existed, like the media said, or he was cursed. And I refuse to accept the fact that my father, a man who loved harder than anyone in this world, would do what he did. So, I dove into demonology and religion, into myths and legends. I researched the supernatural in our world, spoke with self-proclaimed experts. The deeper I went, the more credible the sources became. Then, your name started appearing.”
She had intentionally sought me out for my skill set. “How long did you look for me?” Unlike the Nephil or other Acolytes, she couldn’t track me through magic. Which meant she had to find me through more shrewd means—much like Xander had. Did I really leave that obvious of a nonmagical trail?
“This my turn?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“About four months,” she said, taking the turn. “I meant to approach you last week, but I couldn’t. I’ve been following you since, more or less.”
“So, you didn’t have friends with you at the bar tonight?”
“I didn’t want to seem desperate.”
“I think it’s… yeah,” I said, pointing out her driver’s window and across the street. “It’s that house there, without any lights at all. Pull up a few houses to stay out of sight. You know, pretend like you’re still stalking me.”
She giggled. “I didn’t even have to try that hard. Between the way you drank and your hangovers and the focus you poured into creeping on that family, I don’t think you would have noticed a tyrannosaur walking up behind you.” Dakota pulled her car to the curb and turned off the ignition.
I scanned the street for the car Xander and I had used, but I couldn’t locate it. “What do you know about that family?” I asked.
“What family? The one you kept stalking?” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Derek and Marie Anderson. They couldn’t have children on their own, so about seven years ago they adopted a little girl. Named her Melanie. Recently, both the husband and wife began counseling for reoccurring nightmares. Melanie—Mel, as they called her—also saw a counselor. Apparently, she displayed odd behaviors at school, and her artwork upset the teachers.”
How had I not known about any of that?
“Mel’s your daughter, isn’t she?” Dakota asked.
The question gut-punched me, and I lost my breath for a second. I coughed. “No,” I said after a moment.
“I think so,” Dakota continued. “Despite your infamy, your name lost power five years ago. My contacts believed you dead, that your past and your accumulated enemies had finally killed you. But no one knew for sure. I’m not good at a lot of things, Mr. Hunter, but I can dig. Your wife died seven years ago, shortly after your daughter’s birth. That’s when the Andersons found a daughter. For two years after her murder, you terrorized Sacramento and the surrounding areas for information about her killer. When nothing came up, you decided to hang your hat on the revenge business and move closer to Melanie.”
I licked my lips. My entire mouth felt too dry.
“I’m not the only one who found out, am I?” she asked. “The Anderson’s were murdered tonight. Melanie was taken. Your past has caught up with you, hasn’t it?”
Why did her father let her live? I thought. If cursed, what had he been able to see in Dakota beyond a meal? I would have to figure those questions out later… or n
ot. I had about two hours to find my daughter, after which I would have to worry about Hephaestus and the other Nephil, too. If I lived long enough to help her, then sure, I would ask why daddy allowed her to live. Until then, I didn’t really care. I had to make sure no further interruptions hampered me in my search.
“I need to know something,” I said. “How obvious was my trail? Will investigators searching the Andersons connect Mel to me? Will people in the neighborhood know my face, describe my car, anything?” If Dakota had figured it out, would a detective? And if so, what did that mean for me?
“Yes,” she said, reaching into the center counsel and removing a leather case. She flipped it open to reveal a homicide detective badge. Her left hand rose from her side, pointing a gun at me. “They already did.”
“Please don’t point that at me unless you plan to shoot it,” I said. “It’s a bad habit people fall into.”
Dakota held the gun up, the barrel steady and straight on my heart.
I slowly raised my right hand. “I have an itch on my nose. Can I scratch it?”
“Go ahead,” she said.
I did, along with my eyebrow, taking advantage of her permission. “You planning to shoot me?”
“No,” she said, setting her badge back into the counsel.
“You planning to arrest me? If you do, you might as well keep that gun on my heart. I’m saving my daughter, unless you kill me.”
She stuck her tongue over her upper lip and bit it, shaking her head. “Not if you swear to help me. I told you the truth. I want to find him.”
I stared at my lap, folded my hands into each other. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know how much of my phone conversation you heard earlier, but I have less than three hours to find my daughter. After that, a Nephil has marked me for death. I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to take you out to dinner.” My head darted up, and I wore a grin for a mask. “But look on the bright side. Your department won’t have to waste taxpayer money to fund finding, arresting, and holding me. Everyone wins.” I grabbed the car’s door handle. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”