The Ghoul Vendetta

by Lisa Shearin

  Rake did the same thing back at him.

  I was tempted to smack both of them with a rolled-up newspaper.

  • • •

  The flight to the Hudson Highlands was blessedly uneventful.

  Rake didn’t suggest that Yasha fly cargo, and Yasha didn’t pee on Rake’s fancy hiking boots. It was about all I was hoping for at this point.

  I was hoping for a better experience on Pollepel Island than we’d had on our previous jaunt to another of New York’s river islands.

  North Brother Island in the East River was twenty acres of pure unconditional spookiness located between the Bronx and Riker’s Island, the cozy home of the New York City Department of Correction main jail complex. Riverside Hospital had operated here until 1963, when it was closed to the public, the island abandoned and officially declared off-limits to the public.

  North Brother Island had been home to the hospital, Typhoid Mary, a tuberculosis pavilion, and a heroin addict treatment center. And of architectural interest, the hospital’s chapel that had been located next to the island’s dock had been converted into the morgue for easily getting dead bodies off the island for burial on nearby Hart Island.

  Pollepel Island only had a haunted Scottish castle and possibly a kraken lurking offshore.

  Piece of cake.

  • • •

  The Range Rover that Rake had rented was very new and very nice. It had been delivered to the county airport where we’d landed. I kept Yasha out of sight until the rental agency guy had gone.

  I glanced inside and winced. The leather seats were soft as a baby’s butt. Yasha’s claws would punch holes all in it.

  “Okay, we need a pad or—”

  “Got it.” Kylie tossed the picnic blanket Kitty had brought back into the third-row seat.

  Behind the third row of seats were Kitty’s picnic supplies. Beneath those in a cargo compartment were what most day-trippers wouldn’t be bringing with them—guns, knives, and enough ammo to start our own little war, which was exactly what we would do if that’s what it took to get Ian back. Those were concealed under a Rake-constructed glamour to hide them from any potentially prying law enforcement or ranger eyes.

  Soon we were headed north to the small marina where we’d meet up with our guides.

  Rake was driving, I was in the front passenger seat. Behind us were Kylie and Roy; Kitty, who was nearly as small as Kylie, was sharing the third-row seat with Yasha. He hadn’t stopped squirming since we’d left Manhattan fifty miles ago. Though someone as large as Yasha didn’t squirm so much as shift, and the Range Rover shifted with him. Yasha would shift; Rake would sigh. Just because he understood the reason for it didn’t mean he wanted to put up with it. I had to admit, it wasn’t exactly soothing to have a massive Russian almost werewolf disguised as a huge German shepherd in the backseat. We’d suffer in silence. At least I would. Rake’s sighs were turning to snarls. Yasha wasn’t the only creature with fangs in the car. Rake and I both knew Yasha was worried sick about Ian, but I wasn’t sure if he’d ever been in a moving vehicle that he wasn’t driving. At least in four-legged form, Yasha couldn’t be a backseat driver. Though he could grumble—and grumble he did—until Kitty pulled his front half over into her lap and started rubbing his ears. Grumbles promptly turned to a prolonged groan. That would keep Yasha happy for a while.

  Before we arrived at the marina, Kitty continued my education in all things portal, and made sure that Kylie had realistic expectations of what we could find—and would not find.

  “There is a possibility,” she said, “a remote one, but still a possibility, that Janus will not have opened the portal on Pollepel yet. If he was concerned about it being located, or is simply cautious, he could keep it closed until he needs to set up the ritual. At that point, he’ll have to come out onto the island itself. If he needs the power boost that the intersecting ley lines will give him, he can’t work his ritual while inside of his pocket dimension, even if it’s directly over the ley lines. The ley lines’ power can’t pass through the island into a dimensional wall.”

  “Even if it’s the summer solstice and all veils, dimensions, whatever are thinner?” I asked.

  “Not even then. He must have direct contact with the land. He will have to come out before midnight.”

  Roy chuckled grimly. “And when he does, we’ll be waiting with some firepower of our own.”

  “Even if he’s hidden in a pocket dimension, won’t he know we’re there?” Kylie asked.

  “Oh yes,” Rake said.

  That earned him scowls from everyone else in the vehicle.

  “I’m not trying to be the bearer of bad news,” he continued, “merely stating fact. A mage doesn’t live as long as he has without knowing every trick in the book, and writing a lot of them himself. He’ll know we’re there. The question is, will he be cocky enough to think we can’t do anything to stop him, or will he take action now?” He paused. “Which is why no one is to go anywhere alone. He already has Ian. We don’t want him getting his hands on anyone else.”

  Rake didn’t shoot a meaningful look at anybody, but I knew he meant me and Kitty. We were the portal finders. Rake would locate where the ley lines intersected, though I had a feeling that after my experience on North Brother Island I wouldn’t be too shabby at that job myself. I had a feeling that my newfound portal-finding skills were due in part to my contact with those ley lines—and the seven cursed diamonds they’d activated.

  But I wouldn’t go off anywhere on my own. I had no intention of giving Janus any more than he already had.

  “How are your goblin friends getting here?” I asked Rake.

  “Same way Janus did. A portal. They have the coordinates. I’ll let them know when we have confirmation that’s where tonight’s party will be.”

  “Party?”

  “These people live for things like this. Hunting down sea monsters descended from gods is their idea of a fun night out.”

  30

  I didn’t know how much money Rake had donated to the Bannerman Castle Trust, but it must have been a lot.

  The two representatives of the Bannerman Castle Trust were delighted to give their new patron and his friends a tour of the island and castle. When someone is donating that much, it was a given that they wanted to see what their investment would be used for.

  It was a bright, sunny day. It didn’t matter that it was a weekday, the Hudson River, and state parks around Pollepel Island would be full of people. We were getting there during the day, so we’d be ready to move when night came. The moment Kitty and I confirmed that there were one or more portals on Pollepel Island, we’d notify Alain Moreau, who would put things in motion there. The commando teams were packing and preparing now. All they were waiting on was a green light from us.

  I didn’t know how Moreau was planning to get two fully equipped commando teams here. The most efficient way would be by air. Black helicopters attracted attention anywhere, but especially in the skies around New York City. Then there was the issue of a staging area. I glanced over at Roy. As we approached the island, he had his tablet out, looking around, and then tapping away. That was Roy’s job, and he was eminently qualified.

  My job and Kitty’s was to find that portal. Kylie was here to tap into her bond with Ian and, if possible, locate him. Until we did our jobs, Roy and Sandra’s people couldn’t do theirs.

  I was carrying a weapon for Ian—Lugh’s Spear. We didn’t have any way of knowing if it would be needed, or if it would do any good, but Ian was Lugh’s descendant, and the spear had already proven that it recognized him. Better to have it and not need it than to not have it and definitely need it. Lugh had killed Balor, broken the Fomorians, and forced them into the sea with this spear by his side, so I wasn’t about to leave it in the lab.

  I had the spearhead in a backpack. If the spear had liked Ian in the lab, I was hoping
it’d work like a divining rod here. Stranger things happened in my life every day. It was all in how you defined strange. Most folk’s strange was my ho-hum, daily routine.

  The lab had put it in a padded silk pouch. For some reason, silk didn’t block supernatural weapon vibes. I wanted it to react when I got close to Ian—portal or no portal—but at the same time, I didn’t want to have to explain my backpack glowing, or possibly even worse, vibrating.

  Yasha smelled Fomorians before we’d even set foot on the island.

  I sat in the absolute center of the boat. This part of the Hudson River was deep enough to hide a kraken, and I had no desire to look over the side and see an eye the size of a VW Bug staring back at me.

  We’d set up a signal for Yasha smelling Fomorians, ghouls, or Janus himself. During our last encounter with Janus under Times Square on New Year’s Eve, Yasha had been in his werewolf form and had gotten a good snootful of what Janus smelled like.

  One bark was for fish men. Two barks meant Janus.

  As we crossed the river, it’d been nothing but single barks. Fortunately, there’d been plenty of them. That was good; that meant we were in the right place.

  What I wanted most was a double.

  • • •

  I’d hoped to feel something the moment I set foot on the Pollepel Island dock.

  I was disappointed.

  Then again, none of us would have actual contact with the land itself until we reached the top of the stairway that the Trust had constructed to make the island more accessible to tour groups. Getting there was easy for me since I had Yasha pulling at his leash the entire way up. I didn’t think he was sensing anything we couldn’t; he knew Ian was here somewhere and wanted to find him now.

  Rake was a multitasking master. He was talking with the Trust people, asking probing questions, while simultaneously probing with his magic. Fortunately, the rest of us didn’t have to hide what we were doing. We were here to be curious and look around.

  When Yasha and I reached the top of the stairs and set foot on the island, the ley lines’ power vibrated up from the core of the island through the soles of my feet to the top of my head.

  Yasha barked happily.

  I reached down and patted his shoulder. “You said it, buddy.” I looked down at Kylie, who wasn’t far behind me, and grinned.

  The dryad ran up the rest of the stairs. “Ley lines?”

  “Oh yeah. Feels like there’s a subway train running under here.”

  She squeezed my arm and took a shuddering breath. We were all wearing sunglasses, but I think Kylie might have been a little teary-eyed. I was blaming my misties on the pollen.

  She started to pull away.

  “We stay together, remember?”

  Kylie stopped. “Dammit.”

  “I feel the same way, but we don’t want to give Ian reason to yell at us later, because you know he will.”

  We moved aside to let the others pass. When Rake took his first step onto the island, I was watching for his reaction.

  He gave our hosts a dazzling smile. “It’s just as I imagined it would be.”

  Kylie and I resisted the urge to high-five.

  It wasn’t just us who Janus might go after if he felt we were getting too close. The three representatives of the Trust would be collateral damage. I couldn’t see Janus not taking action just because there were a couple of innocent bystanders. To him, they’d be cannon fodder, or whatever ancient Irish warriors used to throw back at their enemies.

  We stayed with our hosts throughout the initial tour. Then Rake did his job and started asking construction-type questions about the Trust’s plans for the island if they had the funding to do everything they wanted to do. The dock and stairway had been built so that the island and castle could be opened to the public for guided tours. That had happened in the fall of 2003. The Trust’s biggest—and most expensive—mission was to stabilize the castle and other island structures, including the house Bannerman had built as a summer residence for his family. The Trust hoped to restore the house and use it as a visitors’ center. Once our guide started going into all the restoration details, that was all the distraction the rest of us needed. The Trust’s representatives knew we were just friends along for the trip. We acted politely bored, so they gave us an equally polite warning to stay away from the parts of the castle walls that were only upright because they’d been braced.

  We went off to explore.

  We were all wearing hardhats and Yasha was on a leash. Me, Kylie, and Kitty walked Yasha around the island. Roy was nearby. Even in his human form, Yasha’s sense of smell was keen, but in this form and this close to the full moon, anything living or undead that had been on this island in the past two days, the Russian would know about.

  Especially if it was Ian.

  As to sensing portals and ley lines, Kitty and I wouldn’t get in each other’s way. When a magic user was doing their thing, having another magic user in the immediate vicinity could interfere with concentration. But Kitty and I weren’t working any magic, we were simply opening our senses to what was there.

  The island appeared to be deserted.

  But not every Fomorian could be contained in whatever pocket dimension Janus had created to house his prisoner. Even if that portal had been opened here for mere seconds, Yasha’s sniffer would pick up their scent.

  I’d wanted to douse myself with bug spray before setting foot on the island, but that would have interfered with Yasha’s sense of smell. A couple of ticks and mosquito welts would be a small price to pay for Ian’s survival. That didn’t stop me from a serious bout of psychosomatic itching. I’d picked one tick off of myself already, so of course, now I felt like I was crawling with the things.

  With a whine, Yasha sat back on his haunches and his rear foot pounded the ground as he tried to scratch under his left armpit, or whatever it was called on a dog. I’d have offered to help, but I had my own itches to contend with.

  “Of the few portals I’ve experienced,” I said to Kitty, “all of them have been on a wall: in an apartment, a parking garage, a wine cellar.”

  “It’s easier to conjure them that way,” she replied. “And considering what else this Janus has planned for tonight, my guess would be he’d opt for easy. Plus, from what you’ve told me, he’s arrogant enough to believe he wouldn’t need to make the extra effort.”

  A half dome of rock seemed to take up a fourth of the island or more. The top of it was as tall as the tallest wall of the castle.

  Roy and I exchanged glances and we all started climbing.

  As a team commander, Roy needed to get a look at the entire island for tactical purposes. He’d brought binoculars and a killer camera. The rest of us brought our portal-seeking or Ian-finding senses.

  It was seriously windy up there.

  Roy got a lot of what he needed. Yasha smelled the Fomorians in the water around the island.

  All me, Kitty, and Kylie got was some seriously wind-tangled hair. What we could sense wasn’t carried on wind currents.

  Spread out below us was six acres of island. Immediately below us was the dock. Beyond that, on the other side of the island were the ruins of the castle. Tucked into the trees on a high point facing downriver was the Bannermans’ summer residence. All had walls, even if those walls were propped up as was the case with the castle.

  Any of them could contain a portal.

  We needed to get into those buildings—buildings that were blocked off by posts and chains.

  We ignored them; we had to. We didn’t have time to do otherwise.

  • • •

  Rake and the Trust folks were still near the castle, which left us free and clear to explore the remains of the Bannermans’ summer home. It was two stories tall and had been constructed with the same island stone that had been used to build the castle. The many windows we
re boarded up, the doors barred, and all access was roped off. We weren’t about to let that stop us. Two towers flanked the main picture window that faced south toward West Point. The house continued behind these and included impressively curved walls filled with windows. If I had that kind of a view from my own private island, I’d have made the most of it, too. Though with the windows covered by black-painted plywood, I got the unsettling impression of a lot of eyes all staring at yours truly.

  We made a circuit of the outside of the house. Neither Kitty nor I got any sense of a portal from any of the house’s walls. The front door was unsurprisingly padlocked.

  “I got this,” Kitty said.

  I smiled. “Oh yeah, our friendly neighborhood safecracker.” I stood aside. “Be my guest.”

  Within seconds, there was a click and the door was open.

  “Portal opener, baker, and safecracker,” Roy noted. “I’m impressed.”

  I made sure my hardhat was as firmly on my head as possible, and stepped through to inside. In the front room, which had probably been the Bannermans’ family room, was broken furniture and the remains of an old-fashioned pump organ. I’d remembered reading that Francis Bannerman’s wife, Helen, had liked to play. I was surprised the family hadn’t taken the organ when they’d moved out for good. Then again, the thing was huge and heavy.

  Roy checked the next room before we went in, and then stepped back into the living room so he could keep an eye on us and watch for Rake and our hosts.

  We passed through an arched doorway into what had been the kitchen. It was empty of furniture, at least intact furniture. In the corner of the room was a narrow opening in the wall with stairs that had been carved into the rock of the island, leading down to what I assumed would be a root cellar. Even across the room, I felt the cool, damp air coming up from below. Cool enough to almost use it as a refrigerator back when the Bannermans had occupied the house.

  The Bannermans weren’t here now; something else was. My senses immediately went on full alert. The only thing missing was a flashing neon sign over the opening that said “Evil Villain Lair.” Just because I didn’t sense a portal didn’t mean there wasn’t anything down there. Plenty of other senses with a vested interest in my self-preservation were telling me loud and clear not to go down there.