Open Season

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Thanks, I think,” I replied with a chuckle. “You look pretty sharp yourself.” Sara always dressed in a nice sweater and slacks, but she had added more sparkle, and her black lace top looked more “date night” than “business.”

  She blushed. Both of us were out of practice giving and receiving compliments. Her husband had inherited the B&B, and she continued it in his memory after he died in a car wreck. She had made me for a monster hunter almost as soon as we met. That made it unlikely I’d be ditched for being delusional, although I’d probably be able to fuck up something else. Handy also that Sara had been a nurse before taking up inn-keeping, and she’d stitched me back together again more than once.

  Did I have a way with women, or what?

  “Where to?” I asked as I backed out of the driveway. Since she knew the area, I let her pick the restaurant, with a plea not to go to Patterson’s Diner. I liked that place just fine for breakfast and lunch, but my hopes were for something a little quieter and more romantic tonight.

  She gave directions, and I found myself parking in front of a mom-and-pop Italian place. It reminded me of the restaurant Chiara’s parents ran, which was one of my favorites, and I felt a little like I was cheating by eating somewhere else. “Looks nice,” I said, reaching up to straighten a tie I wasn’t wearing. If she noticed the nervous movement, she didn’t mention it.

  When we walked in, Sara greeted the owners like old friends. Kane isn’t that big a town, and I figured Sara probably did the Chamber of Commerce thing and rocked being a community booster. She knew everyone, and they all seemed to love her. Back home, I was used to a more mixed reaction.

  Sara’s connections paid off. We ended up with a table with a candle, tucked into a quiet corner. I’d hung out with Chiara and Blair long enough to know my way around a wine list and ordered a bottle. The candles played up her blue eyes and caught the highlights in her short dark hair.

  For a while, we chatted about the weather, how the Steelers and Nittany Lions were doing in the season, and the latest action movies we both loved. Dinner gave my favorite restaurant a run for its money, although I’d never tell Chiara that. Not only would it be rude, but her nonno had Mob connections, and I didn’t want to sleep with the fishes.

  Finally, after we’d shared a fantastic piece of homemade cheesecake, Sara leaned back in her chair. “So…what are you hunting this time?” she asked, toying with her wineglass so that it caught the candlelight.

  I slumped. “I’m sorry. I know I said I’d come up when I wasn’t on the job. And then Father Leo called, and it kinda fell into my lap.”

  She reached out to cover my hand with hers. “I’m not complaining. You’re always welcome. It would just be fun not to need to worry.”

  Damn. I’d gotten so used to flying solo, it hadn’t occurred to me that someone would worry. One more reason I wasn’t good boyfriend material. Then she gave my hand a squeeze and met my gaze when I looked up. “That wasn’t meant as a dig,” she said quietly. “I care. So I worry.”

  My heart did a funny little flutter that made me feel like I was back in high school, stealing a kiss from the girl I liked in tenth grade. “I’m glad,” I said. Then rolled my eyes. “I mean, I’m not glad that you worry, I meant—”

  She chuckled. “I know what you meant, Mark. It’s okay.”

  Apparently, her requirements for male companionship didn’t require coherence. I felt my cheeks flush and took a sip of my wine to allow more time between saying one stupid thing and the next.

  “What are you after?” she asked, putting me out of my misery.

  “Don’t know yet,” I replied, grateful for the save. “Just that we think it’s behind the deer hunters who’ve gone missing each year. And maybe it flies and travels in a pack.”

  I could see the concern in her eyes. “I knew some of those men. The police tried to say, at first, that maybe they’d run off. Like they took a wrong turn and went to Vegas and never came back. But…that wasn’t true. Those guys were solid. They had wives and kids and lovers they thought hung the moon and jobs and businesses—they weren’t the kind to cut and run.”

  “It seems to be connected to that new part of the forest they opened up for hunting,” I said, savoring the last of my wine. “Do you know if anyone’s seen anything? It can’t swallow up everyone’s who’s hunted there.”

  Sara frowned. “People talk. I’ve heard stories about strange lights in the skies and dogs barking when there shouldn’t have been any dogs nearby. A couple of guys claimed to have been out on the nights when the others vanished, and they said they felt something rush by like a freight train and ran the other direction.” She shrugged. “No way to know whether it’s just a good story, but that’s what’s out there.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. I wondered whether I should have brought Father Leo along. Buzzkill for the date, but maybe this was too big for a one-man job.

  “Promise you’ll be careful.” Sara’s hand was warm, and the look in her eyes made me happy and a little scared all at once.

  “I promise,” I replied. And for the first time in a long while, I truly cared about making it back from the hunt in one piece.

  We held hands in the truck on the way back. I’d have to remember that restaurant; in nice weather, it would have been a pleasant walk. When we reached the B&B, I leaned in for a kiss. Sara stretched up to reach me, and for just a few moments, we lingered in the foyer, trading kisses that held a promise for more.

  By unspoken agreement, we were taking things slow. We’d both been hurt, and maybe neither of us knew what we wanted out of…whatever this thing between us turned out to be. I had my shop and my life back in Atlantic. She had the B&B and her life here. People had worked through worse odds. Hell, my parents courted long-distance when he was in ‘Nam. If we wanted to figure it out, we would. But, it was too soon for those worries. Too soon for more than warm kisses and the way she felt so good pressed up against me. And then we were stepping back, and she brushed her lips across my cheek.

  “Go get ‘em,” she said. “But be sure you come back.”

  Chapter 6

  “Fuck. It’s the Wild Hunt.” I stared at the laptop and ran my hand back through my hair.

  It made sense. A once a year reaping, in an area the original inhabitants considered to be cursed, with strange lights and monsters that hunted in a pack and “swooped” down from the sky.

  I re-read the lore around the Wild Hunt. People all over Europe had told stories for hundreds of years about a frightening cavalcade of spirits that rode the night skies during winter and harvested unlucky souls who would be doomed to ride with them forever. The baying of ghostly hounds and the clatter of spectral hoof beats went right along with the legend.

  Some of the stories blamed the fey, while others said Odin himself led the hunt. Still more named the Erlking or Perchta as the leaders, frightening creatures known for a taste for blood. No matter who was in charge, the Hunt looked like an invincible foe.

  I’d need to think about how to defeat the Wild Hunt, and no good ideas came to mind. So, in the meantime, I figured it might help to learn a little more about the men who vanished.

  “Hey Steve,” I said, calling up my cop friend. “I need a favor.”

  Two hours later, Steve Louden and I had holed up in the back booth at Patterson’s Diner with a slew of folders spread across the table plus my laptop and two bottomless cups of coffee. Unlike Sheriff Sumbitch, I trusted Steve, who had been one of the guys who hauled my ass out of the woods when the wendigo attacked. Lucky for me, he also knew about the kind of creatures I hunted.

  “Thirty guys vanished, one at a time, over five years, and no one blinks?” I asked.

  Steve looked a little offended. “We investigated,” he replied tartly. “We just didn’t find anything to go on. Look at the reports.”

  I sighed. “Didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” I said, trying to smooth things over. “One at a time, it probably didn’t seem connected.
”

  “Oh, we tried to find connections,” Steve corrected me. “We looked at serial killer profiles, tried to see if there were aggressive bears, or maybe a cougar. Nothing.”

  “And you’re sure the men actually were out hunting when they vanished?” I had to ask. “They didn’t just pull a runner?”

  Steve passed a hand over his face. “We thought of that, too. Believe me, we would have preferred to find out that they were alive and living with a stripper in Vegas than just gone—poof—off the face of the Earth. But nothing.” He took a swig of coffee and smiled as the server came by with a refill.

  “And here’s the thing—most people who decide to chuck it all and disappear slip up sooner or later. They use a credit card or access an ATM or get pulled over for speeding. Something from their past trips them up, and they show up on the radar. But these guys? Nada.”

  I flipped the nearest folder open. Marvin Keller had been forty-five years old. Divorced. No kids. Lost his job when a local factory shut down and ended up working as a janitor. Huh. I reached for the next folder. Rick Vernon had a similar story. Lost a nasty enough custody battle with his ex-wife that the cops thought she might have offed him. On probation at work for coming in late and hungover. The third file told the sad tale of Burt Walker, recently widowed, retired, with no close family and few friends. One of the notes said that witnesses claimed he took long walks at all hours and had seemed depressed.

  “What?” Steve asked. “You’ve got that look.”

  I smirked. “Who, me?” I put down the file and looked at the rest of the folders. “Can you tell me if all of the men who vanished could have been considered depressed, maybe even suicidal?”

  Steve frowned. “You think they killed themselves? We would have found bodies.”

  I shook my head. “No. But some supernatural entities are attracted to negative emotions. The three files I read had the blues written all over them. You said the victims were all different ages, incomes, professions, hell, even ethnicity. So there has to be something in common because other guys went hunting around the same time and walked back out.”

  It only took us a few minutes to comb through the rest of the files and confirm my theory. Steve slid down into his seat and drained his coffee. “Shit. You’re right. They all had good reasons to be depressed.” He looked up at me, confusion clear on his face. “But still, there are probably hundreds of people around here who are having a rough time of it. They don’t disappear into thin air. Why these guys?”

  I shrugged. “Wrong place at the wrong time. They didn’t vanish walking down the sidewalk. They were out in the ass end of nowhere in an area that scared the crap out of the tribes that used to live here. That stretch of forest has probably belonged to the Wild Hunt for a lot longer than there’s been a town.”

  “What did it do for victims before then?” Steve challenged. “Or when the area was closed to hunting for about a hundred years. Long time to go without a meal.”

  I nursed my coffee, thinking. “The Wild Hunt doesn’t eat the people it takes. At least, not according to most legends. It kinda shanghais them to ride along forever. But maybe some people are more willing than others.”

  “So you think maybe even when the forest was off limits, it, what, called people to the hunt?”

  “Maybe. There are cliffs with a reputation for enticing suicidal people to their deaths,” I replied. “All those lovers’ leap places.”

  Steve straightened as a thought hit him. “How are you going to stop it?”

  “Haven’t figured it out yet, but I’ll come up with something.”

  “Can you shoot them? You know, silver bullets and all?”

  “No idea, but probably not. And if there’s a whole group plus a pack of hounds, I’d need an AK.”

  “We tend to discourage those for deer hunting,” Steve remarked.

  “At least, if you want anything left of the deer.”

  “Do you need backup?” he offered. “I have a couple of friends who are retired from the force, and they’d come out with us, no questions asked.”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, but I don’t want to put anyone else in danger since it’s not like we can ambush them. I’m going to go back and look over the lore again. There’s got to be a way around this without going in full metal jacket.”

  “If we don’t close the area off, it’ll keep happening.”

  “Yeah. Can’t tell the Park Service the truth, but maybe there’s something dangerous to blame the disappearances on that gets that area blocked as a hazard.”

  “I’ll work on it,” Steve promised, finishing the last of his coffee. “I’ve got some friends who might be able to pull some strings. Just, be careful.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said with a laugh. “Sara has already warned me that she’ll haul my sorry soul back from Purgatory and rip me a new one if I let anything happen.”

  Steve grinned. “Good. She’s a fearsome woman, and a damned good catch if you can hang onto her,” he added.

  “I intend to do my best,” I replied. And to my surprise, I realized that I meant it.

  The afternoon passed quickly as I poured over all the information I could find about the Wild Hunt, not just on the regular internet, but on the Occulatum’s Dark Web hunter information sites and some other, more dodgy sources that catered to customers working both sides of the supernatural street.

  Now and again, I heard Sara singing to herself as she and the housekeeper made up the rooms, cleaned, and went through their daily routine. I hadn’t really thought about what it took to keep the place running. Sara seemed to enjoy the work, as well as the constant stream of new people and returning guests who came through the inn and who became instant friends.

  Doubt stabbed at me again. Sara and I were tiptoeing into…something. We had barely gotten past a kiss goodnight, but I felt a stronger attraction to her than I’d felt to anyone since Lara and I broke up. I wondered if she felt the same, and what that would eventually lead to. We both had baggage, but mine seemed heavier, and whether or not I was much of a catch seemed highly debatable. Still, she hadn’t kicked me to the curb, so maybe all wasn’t lost quite yet.

  Reluctantly, I turned back to my research. Depending on the version of the story I read, there were a few loopholes for dealing with the Wild Hunt. Running away and covering your ears was the most popular. I couldn’t blame anyone for that, but it wasn’t going to accomplish my goal.

  A few of the legends involved tricking the leader of the Hunt with a riddle. I sucked at knock-knock jokes and was worse at riddles, even the ones that came in fortune cookies and inside gum wrappers.

  Some stories said that the leader gave each man a choice before conscripting him into his ghostly posse, while others made it sound more like a raid for hostages. But one or two tales involved a bargain, either a promise to be kept or some kind of barter. That sounded more promising than anything else I’d read, but I had no idea what to get for a dead guy who had everything.

  As I debated the possibilities, I heard a knock at the door. “Come in,” I called.

  Sara poked her head inside. “Is coffee too much of an interruption?”

  I smiled. “Never. Especially not if you brought two cups.”

  She returned the smile. “Just one cup, but there’s a whole pot so you can have refills.” She set the tray with the coffee on the other side of the table and perched on the edge of the second chair. “Find anything useful?”

  I didn’t want to worry her more than necessary, so I withheld the insights gained from going over the missing men’s files. “I think I’ve got a lead or two. Still trying to come up with a plan.”

  “Is that how it works for you? Run in first, make it up as you go?”

  I couldn’t quite get a fix on her tone, but I figured it for a mix of worry and warning.

  “Problem is, you can make all the pretty plans you want, and it all goes to hell once you’re in the thick of things,” I said, pouring a cup of coffee and takin
g a gulp that burned the whole way down. “I try to be prepared,” I nodded toward the laptop, “and have a couple of game plans in mind. But when it all comes down to the wire, that’s when you’ve got to improvise.” I paused. “And it’s not just me. I’ve heard it from all the hunters I know.”

  Sara sighed. “I understand. Truly. My brother was in the army, and he said the same thing about battles. Lots of nice plans and maps, and then it all goes ass-side upwards when the shooting starts.”

  “Steve’s going to see if he can get the wheels turning to put that part of the forest out of bounds again.”

  “In case you can’t kill whatever it is?”

  I sucked down the rest of the coffee and poured more. “I’m pretty sure I can’t kill it. But I might be able to make some kind of deal with it.”

  She frowned. “Don’t sell your soul. I kinda like you the way you are.”

  Despite her joking tone, I felt a strange warmth in my chest at her words. “Thanks. Me too—I mean, I like you—”

  “I know,” she chuckled and patted my knee. “But seriously, don’t put yourself in a corner. Aren’t supernatural creatures supposed to be greedy? Maybe there’s a way to bribe it—”

  My eyes widened. I leaned forward and gave her a big kiss. “That’s it! You’re a genius!”

  She kissed me back, and the warmth over my heart went south quickly. I shifted, hoping she didn’t notice, but kind of happy that apparently, the rest of my body liked her just fine, too.

  “Don’t tell me now. I’ll just worry. But when you come back,” she added, “I want to hear all about it. Maybe we can celebrate.” Her eyes promised mischief, and perhaps more.

  “That sounds like the kind of plan I can stick to.”

  Every hunt feels different. Sometimes, the adrenaline buzz is like good whiskey, only it doesn’t dull the senses, it sharpens them until it feels like I could see like a hawk, hear like a wolf, react like a cheetah. Other times, there’s ice in my belly, and time seems to slow down like in one of those movies where people hover in midair when they kick someone. That doesn’t actually happen, but it feels like it could.