The Junkyard Druid Box Set 2

by M. D. Massey

  “Why not?” they asked in unison.

  “Depending on the spell or ritual they’re having you perform, you could be pledging your souls to their evil clown god, or indenturing yourselves to him in eternal service, or agreeing to be sacrificed at some future date… I mean, there’s no telling what they’re having you do.”

  The boys looked at each other, then Kenny held his thumb and forefinger apart. “What if I told you we did, but only just a little?”

  “Fuck my life,” I mumbled.

  Bells was waiting for me in the parking lot of the junkyard when I pulled up, sitting on the metal barrier that protected the fence from our patrons’ cars.

  “How’d you know I was coming?” I asked as I got out of Crowley’s car.

  “Eh, the Circle called off their manhunt for you, so I assumed they got what they wanted. And whenever things go sideways you always retreat here. This place is like your fortress of solitude.”

  “It hasn’t really afforded me much seclusion lately, but it is the only place I call home. Plus, working on cars helps me think.”

  “I know,” she said, looking off in the distance. An awkward silence followed.

  “Bells, just to be clear, I’m totally myself again. Anything I said or did over the past few weeks, it probably wasn’t me, and I am deeply sorry for it.”

  She looked at me, her eyes soft but sad. “I knew that the moment you stepped out of Crowley’s deathtrap of a car. There’s not much I don’t know about you, druid boy. Just like I know you have unresolved feelings for the dryad living in your backyard.”

  I glanced at the druid tree’s upper reaches, towering over the junkyard. Or, perhaps, protecting it.

  “Belladonna, I honestly never expected this to happen.”

  She closed her eyes, just for a moment, and when she opened them they were wet with tears. “Damn it, I didn’t want to cry.”

  “Are you…” I paused for a moment, not wanting to say it. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. I wanted to offer her a tissue or something, but all I had on me was lint and regret.

  “Colin, from the day I met you I knew we were going to be close. But I also knew from the start that you were still in love with Jesse. I accepted that, and when I did, I made a decision that if we could only be friends, then that would have to be enough.”

  “Bells—”

  “Uh-uh, let me finish. Right now, I think you need some space to sort your feelings out, both about us and that thing in your backyard. Personally, I think she’s wrong for you, but then again she’d probably say the same thing about me—she might just be right.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re one of the most beautiful, caring, passionate people I know. I mean that.”

  “Colin, just stop. You’re making this harder than it has to be.”

  I stepped in and grabbed her hands. “I don’t want to lose you, Belladonna Becerra.”

  “You can’t lose me, tonto. I already told you I’ll stick around, no matter what—and I’ll still be here after you hash your feelings out.”

  “That’s hardly fair to you, Bells.”

  She squeezed my hands and released them before taking a step back. “Regardless, until you decide how you feel about her, I think it’s best if we stayed away from each other. Now, I’m going to go before I completely lose it.”

  “Bells, don’t leave. Please.” I stepped forward to embrace her, and as I did the irises and whites of her eyes flashed from their normal brown and white to an iridescent gold. Her pupils changed shape as well, becoming vertical slits in an instant.

  Belladonna pushed me away with the kind of strength and explosiveness only ’thropes and vamps could muster. As I flew through the air, everything seemed to be going in slow motion. She looked at me with those golden snake eyes, tears brimming despite their strangeness. Her skin broke out in scales that flashed brightly in the sun, like diamonds catching the light. Then, she hissed, at me or perhaps out of reflex, displaying a forked tongue and a rather large set of fangs.

  I thought back to the night raven’s augury.

  The truth revealed in serpent’s eyes.

  Time sped up again as I concluded my brief flight, crashing into Crowley’s windshield. I landed with such force that my body folded, sending me through the glass and into the front seat. By the time I extricated myself from the car, Belladonna was gone, the exhaust notes from her bike fading in the distance.

  I was about to hop in the car to follow her, when a pleasant tenor voice spoke up behind me in a familiar, peculiar brogue.

  “If I were you, I’d let her cool off a tad. Serpenthrope venom packs quite a wallop, plus it’ll eat holes in yer wardrobe.” He coughed softly. “Though, in this case, it’d likely be an improvement.”

  I turned around, leaning my butt against the door to shut it as I crossed my arms. The fae before me looked like a teen from the fifties in his cuffed pants, polished black shoes, white t-shirt, and James Dean haircut. Yet I knew he was anything but the harmless youth he appeared.

  “Click, your timing is impeccable,” I said, my voice oozing with sarcasm.

  “Be that as it may—I am a chronomancer, after all—there’s a lot more at stake here than ye might be realizing. What with that stone fallin’ into the wrong hands, all fecking bets are off.”

  “You’re a time mage. Can’t you just roll things back a day or so and let me fix this?” I figured it was worth a shot to ask.

  Click shook his head, causing the lock of hair that fell down his forehead to swing back and forth like a windshield wiper. “Doesn’t work that way! Bah, there’s no time ta’ explain—best if I show you by taking you a wee bit down the Twisted Paths.”

  The youthful-looking magician leapt forward, grabbing me by the lapels. Then, he took a step back, pulling me through what looked like a magical portal—except when we stepped through, it felt like the whole earth had moved, not us.

  I blinked several times, because the landscape had utterly and completely changed. The skies were dark with soot and smoke, and the air carried the scent of cooked turkey legs, pine trees, and blood. From what I could tell, we stood in the middle of what looked to be a Renaissance Festival gone mad. There were colorful tents all around, mushroom clouds in the distance, and people dressed in medieval costumes were screaming and running to and fro in panic.

  And all around us, I saw zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.

  “Click, what the f—?”

  He shoved me away. “I’m goin’ ta leave you here for a time, just so you can fully absorb the direness of the situation. Have fun!”

  The chronomancer vanished, leaving me standing dumbfounded in a scene straight out of a Romero flick.

  Fuck. My. Life.

  This concludes Book 6 in the Colin McCool Paranormal Suspense Series, but the story will continue in Book 7, Druid Vengeance…

  Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter at MDMassey.com, so you can be among the first to hear when the next Junkyard Druid novel releases!

  Psst! Want to know what happens to Colin in the alternate future where Click stranded him? That story is revealed in Book 3 of my THEM post-apocalyptic series, Counteraction.

  Druid Vengeance

  Book 7

  1

  Living in an undead apocalypse is a real pain in the ass.

  I know the more accepted nomenclature would be “zombie apocalypse,” but that designation just didn’t do the whole thing justice. This timeline, alternate future, or wherever the hell Click had left me was full of vampires, revenants, and ghouls. Not to mention a shit-ton of ’thropes as well—not all of them friendly.

  Back in my own reality—because that’s how I’d chosen to define it—most intelligent monsters were either kept under control or became civilized, even tame. As for the rest, human hunters and higher-order supernaturals killed lower-order supernatural predators on sight, which kept the feral undead population contained. Vam
pires, for the most part, tended to avoid preying on humans. The same could be said for most lycanthropes as well.

  But here? Well, let’s just say no prey was off limits to the supernatural species who now dominated the landscape.

  Yep, I’m gonna kick Click’s lily-white ass the second I get back.

  “Click,” as he liked to call himself, was an incredibly powerful mage skilled in the forbidden art of chronomancy—the manipulation of time. He was also a sort of trickster god, a fact I’d worked out since he’d left me here. I’d known he was trouble, but hadn’t realized just how cuckoo he was until he’d pulled this latest stunt. Since then, I’d obsessed over his true identity and how I might get back to my own timeline.

  That is, when I wasn’t preoccupied with staying alive.

  Currently I was on a scavenging run, sneaking through the aisles of an IGA grocery store to gather supplies for the group I’d hooked up with. They were mostly kids, ages ranging from grade school to tween. Despite the best efforts of their guardian, they’d have been zombie snacks already if I hadn’t intervened. Obviously, it took a lot of work to keep a few dozen school-age children alive in a zombie apocalypse, and much of that effort involved keeping them fed.

  Maybe it’s best Bells and I broke up, I thought as I drove a steel spike through a particularly corpulent zombie’s skull from behind. The zombie was a thirty-ish Anglo woman in a gore-stained mumu, somehow still wearing a single battered flip-flop. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to want to have kids after this is all over. I’m pretty much burned out on the whole idea already.

  Using a bit of my Fomorian strength, I gently lowered the now de-animated corpse to floor, opting for stealth over speed. Good thing I’d partially-shifted before I’d come in here. The object was to draw as little attention as possible—preferably none. High-population areas were crawling with deaders, and they would happily venture into the sunlight for the chance at a warm meal. Nothing was worse than drawing a swarm and then spending an afternoon fighting your way free. I knew, because I’d done it.

  The shelves were barren of anything edible, so I moved toward the back of the store. Survivors, although they were few and far between, generally weren’t in the habit of exploring dark and gloomy places. That’s where the really dangerous undead lurked during the day, resting and waiting for some unsuspecting human to waltz into their lair looking for food and supplies.

  More for me, then. In more ways than one.

  I enjoyed going on these scavenger runs, partially because they provided a reprieve from scared, whiny kids. But going out alone also gave me the opportunity to let my other side loose, so I could vent my frustrations on the apex predators in this reality.

  Vampires.

  I’d never been a vampophobe, as most vamps I’d known had been civil toward humans, even friendly. Heck, one of my best friends back in Austin was the local coven leader, a guy I’d trust with my life. But not in this reality. Nope.

  From what I’d surmised, when the zombie outbreak had gone down, the fae had left for Underhill, the ’thropes had become feral, and The Cold Iron Circle had either been killed off or voluntarily disappeared. That had left a power vacuum the vamps had been suspiciously ready to fill, a fact that hadn’t gone unnoticed by yours truly.

  There seemed to be no end to their number, which had puzzled me from the start. Where were they all coming from? It was hellaciously hard for a vamp to make others of its kind, because the vyrus didn’t always take. Often, the young ones would end up making zombies or ghouls instead of vamps. It took an elder or master vamp to reliably turn humans into vampires, and always in limited numbers due to the time involved. How they’d multiplied so fast was a mystery to me.

  I also wondered if the evil vampire covens had been behind the zombie outbreak, and took every opportunity to question said species whenever I ran across them. Which was often, considering I actively sought them out when I could.

  Pushing the door to the stock room open, I triggered a cantrip to make my Fomorian-enhanced vision even better suited for the current low light conditions. I tossed an empty tin can into the room and waited, listening for a good thirty seconds for any sign that the undead were present. Then, I propped the doors open to let the weak, reflected light in, just like any normal human would.

  I could see them, perched as they were like spiders clinging to the ceiling at the far corners of the warehouse, deep in the shadows and well away from any errant rays of sunlight. The would-be predators had likely been aware of my presence since I’d entered the store, and now their beady, bloodshot eyes followed me as I feigned feeling my way around in the dark. I suppressed a smile as I lit a candle with a match, playing it up for my audience until the very last. There were five of them, and they were all very much awake.

  Jackpot.

  Younger vamps would be forced to rest at this time, but this was an older coven. They’d been around before the shit hit the fan—decades, probably. That meant they were more likely to know what the hell had caused the dead to rise en masse, in concert with the low-intensity nuclear war that had decimated major population areas. Thus far, I’d only gotten bits and pieces, because I’d yet to come across a coven consisting of vamps more than a few months old.

  But today—today I might just get the answers I’d been searching for over the last half-year or so. And I intended to have those answers, even if I had to drag it out of their cold, hard flesh. As I inwardly reveled in my good luck, the vamps began to creep toward me along the ceiling.

  Come to papa, you bloodsucking pieces of shit.

  Better play this one to the hilt—figure out who the leader of the bunch is before I let ’em have it. I stumbled my way deeper into the room, knocking things over indiscriminately and blinking like I was trying to adjust my eyes to the gloom. All the while, the vamps skittered above noiselessly, positioning themselves for the inevitable pre-ambush build up that preceded the typical vampire feeding.

  Up until a few months ago, I’d rarely seen vampires feed, and then only the less-advanced nosferatu variant of the species. While nos-types preferred to hunt their prey down and immediately feed with abandon, I’d discovered that higher vamps liked to toy with their prey. It had something to do with the flavor of the blood elicited by the release of certain stress hormones—or so I’d been told. For that reason, I jumped like a startled child when the doors to the warehouse swung shut behind me, even though I’d seen a vamp headed that way just moments before.

  A heavy metal shelf then slid across the floor, blocking the exit. It was laden with cartons of clean drinking water and bags of water softener pellets, and way too heavy for any human to move. I dropped into a crouch, ostensibly searching the shadows for whatever dangers lurked there while silently cheering the find.

  Thanks for pointing that shelf out for me, folks. Clean drinking water was a luxury in this world, and most in our group had suffered through weeks of diarrhea and vomiting before their stomachs had become accustomed to drinking less-than-potable fluids. I’d definitely be hauling a few cases of that water back to camp.

  The chatter started right on cue, voices echoing from all directions. It was all part of the build-up, designed to have me pissing my pants before they pounced.

  “What do we have here?”

  “A little lost lamb.”

  “Lost, and far from home.”

  “Far from safety.”

  “Nothing is safe anymore, is it, little lamb?”

  I pulled a pistol, swinging it around as if blind. “H-h-who’s there? This gun is loaded—I swear I’ll shoot!”

  Their sibilant, hissing voices responded in kind.

  “Thinks it can hurt us with that toy.”

  “It’s not iron nor lead that can hurt us, little lamb.”

  “But we can hurt it, yes, we can.”

  “Hurt it…”

  “Drain it…”

  “Just a sip…”

  “And then a gulp…”

  “And then
we drink it dry!”

  Good grief, these clowns have been watching too many Peter Jackson films.

  Finally, the leader revealed herself. She was a slight wisp of a thing with close-cropped purple hair, who hadn’t been a day older than seventeen when she’d been turned. As the coven leader, she’d reserve the pleasure of taking me down for herself, drinking her fill before allowing her subordinates to feed. She scuttled across the exposed metal joists above, stopping directly overhead.

  I quivered and let out a low moan, patiently keeping up my act until she dropped from the ceiling.

  Gotcha.

  I holstered the pistol and stood in one smooth motion, grabbing the coven leader by the neck in a left-handed death grip as she fell toward me. Over the last several months, I’d gained a deeper understanding of my Fomorian-derived talents, learning to alter my bone density and musculature while still retaining the bulk of my human features and form. It was a handy trick, especially when I needed access to my superhuman strength, speed, and durability without tipping my enemies off that I was more than human.

  “Solas,” I said, triggering the light spell I’d prepared before coming in here. In an instant, greatly-weakened but highly-effective sunlight I’d gathered outside before entering the store illuminated the room. I had no idea why the vyrus reacted so violently to sunlight, and I didn’t care. All that really mattered was that the spell worked—spectacularly.

  The coven leader went batshit crazy, screaming and squirming as her skin blistered and burned. The rest of her little coven cried out in kind. I held my captive off the floor, chuckling even as her hardened nails dug deep furrows into my arm. The noise of her struggle and the coven’s screams would draw more zombies, but the vamps had done me the favor of securing the room. I had time to play.