by Clare Kauter
Vampire Campfire
Damned Girl Book 5
Clare Kauter
Copyright © 2017 by Clare Kauter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover created with help from Brusheezy.com.
For Zootopia, my favourite movie ever.
* * *
What do you mean I can’t dedicate my book to a movie? Don’t tell me what I know, Travis.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
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Also by Clare Kauter
About the Author
What now?
Losing Your Head
Chapter 1
A passing breeze carried the ork’s fetid aroma across the table to me, setting my nostrils on fire. My upper lip curled and I set my coffee down on the table while I attempted to get my churning stomach under control. Why had I sat downwind from him? I hadn’t thought this through. The ork smelled of rotten fish and bedsores with a hint of vanilla, though the tinge of sweetness only seemed to make the stench worse.
The other cafe customers were clearly uncomfortable about the ork’s presence. We were sitting in the open-air dining area of Witch’s Brew Cafe and Bookstore, which was run by Hecate, head of the local coven and chief of Hellfire Shire magical law enforcement. The cafe doubled as the magic police station, and due to the absence of an interrogation room, this was the best place I had to question the ork.
Most of the customers who frequented the cafe were creatures of the light, and I doubted any of them had been this close to an ork before. Orks had a reputation for snacking on light-dwellers, so most of the people around here avoided them at all costs. I wasn’t too worried about this guy attacking me (I could take care of myself), but his stench was making my eyes water. I needed to ask him the questions I’d brought him here to ask and then kick him out.
It was mid-morning, and we were sitting in a patch of sunlight, trying to stay warm in the chilly winter air. I was wearing my coven-issue winter robes, plus jeans tucked into lace-up black boots and a thick grey jumper. Even so, the wind was biting into me. My face felt so cold I thought my nose might drop off. (Although with the ork sitting so close, that could actually be a blessing.)
I tried another sip of my latte to warm myself up and glanced across the room at the barista, who was glaring at me. The witch manning the espresso machine had been shooting me daggers the entire time I’d been sitting at the table. I wondered if she’d spat in my lavender coconut milk latte. (Honestly, with an order that obnoxious, I could kind of understand if she had.)
I suspected that the real reason for her hostility wasn’t my obnoxious order, or even the fact that I’d brought an ork into her place of work. She was pissed that she had to work the coffee machine here at the cafe even though she’d been in the coven for years, whereas I’d only recently joined and already I’d been promoted to detective. Duties of the coven’s witches were split between working at Witch’s Brew and working cases. Thanks to my particular skill set, I hadn’t had to work so much as one shift here, and I could kind of understand the barista’s annoyance.
The latte was delicious, even if she had spat in it. Maybe that was her secret ingredient. I flashed her a grin and took another sip, closing my eyes in bliss before opening them and giving her a thumbs up. She glowered back at me.
“Why can’t I have a coffee?” the ork whined.
“Because I caught you trying to eat a baby, Steven,” I snapped. “Now just drink your apple juice and stop complaining.”
He picked up his glass, grumbling. “I already told you, I wasn’t going to eat him. I was just looking.”
“That’s not what his mother says. And that’s not what the drool dripping from your mouth says, either.”
He frowned and wiped around his mouth. “That’s circumstantial.”
“Shut up, Steven.”
He shut up.
“Alright. Let’s forget about the baby snacking incident for a moment. I want to talk to you about Gladesta. You live there, correct? In the caves?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“And before you lived there, it was inhabited by a group of vampires, correct?”
He shifted in his seat and avoided eye contact.
“Steven. Steven, look at me.”
He huffed, crossed his arms and finally made eye contact.
“Did you chase the vampires out?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s what we’ve always done! I didn’t know it was a crime.”
“I’m not going to arrest you for taking over the caves, Steven. I want to know what happened to the vampires. Specifically, Honey and Pierre.”
He frowned. “Who?”
I sighed. “The two conjurers with the cat.”
“Oh, you mean the ones who look like Team Rocket from Pokémon?”
I nodded. “Yes, them!”
He shook his head. “They weren’t there.”
“What do you mean they weren’t there?”
Shrugging, he said, “There were other vamps there, but not them two.”
“Those two.”
“Whatever.”
I fiddled absentmindedly with the chain hanging around my neck. It was obscured by my jumper and robes, so others couldn’t see it, but I could feel it there. Since finding the magical arrowhead in Scotland recently, it had been getting a little inconvenient to carry the Doomstone and both companions (the arrowhead and the key) around in my pocket, so I’d bought a jewellery-making kit and turned them into a necklace. I was no master jeweller, so the end product didn’t look particularly fancy, but it wasn’t like I was going to show it off to anybody. The whole point of the necklace was to make it easier for me to carry the items around without people noticing them.
I sighed, my fingertips tracing the engraving on the side of the arrowhead. “Are you sure they weren’t there?”
The ork nodded. “I saw them a while back while I was, uh, going for a walk in the forest,” – trying to find some faeries to eat, more likely – “and they’d changed. Their energy was all different.”
“When did you see them?”
He shrugged. “A couple of months ago.”
I nodded. I’d been hoping he’d say more recently, but this fit with the timeline I’d established of when Honey went missing. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of months now, although I had seen Pierre. I was pretty sure he’d kidnapped her, because Pierre had tried to attack me since then and Honey hadn’t stopped him like she usually did.
Ever since she’d drunk my magical blood, Honey had become kind of invested in keeping me alive. Apparently my blood had given her new abilities, including coming out during the day. Pierre had not taken that news well, and he’d been trying to hunt me down ever since. A while back he’d fortified
his powers somehow and now he operated like a kind of magical vortex, sucking the light out of the world around him. I had no idea how he’d done it, but I did know that it had made him a lot more dangerous. And since Honey hadn’t been seen for months, I was guessing Pierre had used his new powers to capture her. He was in love with her, so I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have killed her. I just couldn’t figure out where he was keeping her. Hence my questioning the ork.
“Do you have any idea where Pierre could be staying now?”
Steven shook his head. “Nope.”
“Haven’t heard any rumours?”
He shook his head again.
I sighed and sank back in my seat, disappointed. I’d really been hoping this interview would turn something up. I’d been working on this case ever since I’d become a cop and yet I still had no real leads. I needed to find Honey, and not just because I missed having a sun-proof vamp watching my back. I felt bad about what had happened to her. It was my fault she was in this mess. I mean, OK, she’d chosen to bite me in the first place, but I still felt a little guilty. Plus, having a vamp like Pierre running around Hellfire Shire worried me. He was too powerful to be allowed to continue. I needed to take him down, and I needed Honey to help me do that.
What now? I’d hit a wall again. Talking to Steven had been kind of a last-ditch effort, and he hadn’t given me anything helpful. Now I knew that Pierre and Honey had left the Gladesta Caves before the orks had stormed the place, but I’d already suspected as much. I’d drawn a blank. Now all there was to do was give Steven a stern talking to about eating other people’s kids. He hadn’t actually attacked the kid or anything, and seeing as there was no law against looking creepy, there wasn’t anything I could book him on so I’d have to just let him go. Oh well. It was probably best not to have him stinking up the cells. My nose could definitely do with a break from his odour.
“Am I free to go?” asked Steven.
“You’re free to go when I tell you that you’re free,” I snapped. A breeze picked up at that moment and Steven’s hearty bouquet wafted my way. I coughed and wheezed for a moment before managing to say, “You’re free.”
Steven hurriedly pushed himself up from the table before I could change my mind. I rolled my eyes and looked around me when something caught my eye. Across the cafe, near the counter where the ever-so-cheery barista was aggressively grinding beans (looking like maybe she wouldn’t mind shoving my head in the grinder), the air rippled a little. It was tricky to see because I was outside in the bright sunlight while the shimmering air was in the dimly lit interior of the cafe. I tipped my sunglasses down on my nose and peered over the rim to get a better look. Without the polarising effect of the glasses, I could now see that the shimmering air was, in fact, a ghost.
His aura was greyish, which meant that he was just your average ghost. No special abilities. Couldn’t manifest into a solid form like a poltergeist, couldn’t appear to normals and annoy them. Eventually he’d figure out how to teleport and he’d be able to walk through walls and such, but that was all basic ghost stuff. He was a no-frills spirit.
Steven was lumbering across the cafe, making his way to the door. When he reached the ghost he stepped around him and continued towards the exit. No one else in the cafe was looking in the ghost’s direction, and the witches who had been watching Steven (eyeing him warily, as if he’d suddenly decide to go on a murder spree inside the police station) seemed confused when he sidestepped the spirit.
I rolled my eyes. The born magicals in the room could see the ghost, but most of the normals who’d decided to become witches couldn’t. I’d been in the coven for a while now, but it still surprised me when witches couldn’t see ghosts or do other things that I thought of as basic. Why become a witch if you can’t even see a ghost, you know?
The ghost scanned the room and eventually locked eyes with me before walking in my direction. Had he come here looking for me? I didn’t recognise him, so I wasn’t sure how he could know who I was. Then again, a lot of people I didn’t know seemed to know who I was. When I saw who was walking along behind him, it suddenly made sense. The ghost and his companion drew up to my table. The ghost was about to sit on the chair Steven had been using, but then appeared to notice the slime the ork had left behind and dragged a chair over from another table. The gold-rimmed-glasses-wearing gorilla who’d escorted the spirit into the cafe did the same, pulling up a seat and sitting down next to me.
“Howdy, partner,” said Henry. “I’ve got a new case for us.”
Chapter 2
OK, I guess we need to skip back for a second. You’re probably getting a little lost. Or maybe you’re not, in which case, good for you! You’re smarter than I gave you credit for. But just for the slow kids in the room, allow me to explain.
A couple of months back, I’d finally received my licence to perform magic and been sworn in as a magic cop. Shapeshifting Department official Henry had been at that coven meeting, and he’d told me he was moving back to Australia to keep an eye on me. (Well, he didn’t exactly say that, but it was implied.)
At my ‘becoming a cop’ ceremony, I’d finally managed to convince Henry to tell me what had broken the clouding spells blocking his memories of me murdering people in front of him. Part of it was that he’d spent time around me – apparently I ooze some sort of magical force field that breaks clouding spells. Good for when people are trying to keep stuff from me, but not so good for the other way round. Because of me, Henry’s memories started to come back, and then someone else gave them an extra push until he remembered everything. After much convincing, Henry had finally pointed the finger at who was responsible.
The Grim Reaper.
I didn’t know what he was playing at. I’d known the Reaper since I’d committed my first couple of murders as a teenager (not as bad as it sounds, I promise), and up until recently I’d been under the impression that he and I were friends. However, for the past few months he’d seemed to be doing everything in his power to thwart me. So I made the trip down to Hell to pay him a visit.
* * *
After storming down the streets of Hell, looking so furious I even caused a couple of demons to shrink back in fear, I found myself outside the graveyard containing the crypt that led to Death’s house. His home actually existed outside of space, but his front door was here in Hell. I picked my way through the crumbled tombstones and rubble, across the slimy, mossy cobblestones, until I reached his front door. I performed the necessary blood sacrifice and the door began to open.
“What the hell are you playing at?” I demanded, bursting into the room. Well, bursting in as much as possible when the door is stone and takes an excruciatingly long time to slide open. Seriously, we’re talking, like, a full thirty seconds for it to open wide enough that I could fit through. I grew impatient about ten seconds in and decided to push through sideways. Trouble was, I kind of jumped in a little early and ended up stuck. I blame all the baked goods Henry had been feeding into me at my police initiation ceremony earlier that night. Anyway, I wobbled and squeezed and wriggled through the partially open door in a very dignified manner.
Death was sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat in the middle of his lounge room wearing a lose-fitting pair of cotton pants (the kind you’d expect to see at Byron Bay rather than on the Reaper of Souls himself), his hands resting palms-up on his knees. He was shirtless, showing off his very toned – and non-skeletal, despite the myths – torso. He was doing his daily meditation, which helped him focus his energy for time travel and reaping souls and understanding the mysteries of the universe. Or so he said.
He cracked one eye open at the sound of my voice, then shut it again and went back to ignoring me.
Clenching my jaw, I tried not to lose my temper, although I was kind of curious to see what would happen if I did. Could my crazy death magic actually hurt Death himself? Seemed unlikely, but part of me wanted to give it a go just in case. I had the Doomstone and two companions now. Who knew what kind o
f stunts I could pull?
When he didn’t answer, I decided to help jog his memory.
“With Henry. The fact that you broke his clouding spells?”
Nothing. I was very much on the verge of losing my temper by this point.
“He works for The Department!” I yelled. “Did it not occur to you that he could have me arrested?”
Death opened his eyes just to roll them before closing them and going back to his meditation session.
“The Department of Magic and Death,” said the Grim Reaper, sounding bored. “You know who I am, right?”
“What, so now you control The Department?”
“Well, let’s just say that the people who work there don’t like to piss me off.”
“That’s great for you,” I said. “I don’t have that protection. You’re lucky Henry chose not to turn me in!”
He laughed like I’d said the stupidest thing he could imagine. “Luck has nothing to do with it.”
I crossed my arms. “You have some explaining to do.”
Sighing, he pushed himself to his feet. “Fine. I broke Henry’s clouding spells because I figured you could do with having someone else on your side apart from a wanted criminal.”
He made his way across the polished concrete floor towards the kitchen. I followed. “You mean Ed?” I snorted. “I’m not entirely sure he’s on anyone’s side other than his own.”
Death didn’t answer. I thought for a moment.