Monster Born (Northern Creatures Book 1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Chapter 12

  Many types of werewolves walk the Earth. The Americas had their own flavor of wolf who tended to be bigger and tamer than their Old World forebears, and hewed closer to the popular Hollywood mythology. The Geroux brothers were old French Catholic loup-garou, and two of the other wolves in the pack were descended from the beasts of the Scottish moors. Axlam, though changed by another loup-garou, presented her own unique version at each full moon.

  The elves had their own version of diversity that mirrored the cultures of the world.

  In fact, the magical creatures of the world were as widely varied as the mundanes. I’d forgotten just how widely varied.

  Most of them did not have the knowledge or the inclination to cross borders or pierce veils. Most of them didn’t understand magic beyond their own personal flavors.

  But every so often, someone got angry enough to motivate inquiries and attempts. Someone opened doors they should not. And when those doors opened, things took advantage.

  Dark, angry, dead things motivated by hungers more than by any need to live.

  Things which, even though they reside in the dankest parts of each and every version of Hell out there, carry enough maleficence to manifest a version of caring.

  Someone slapped my cheek. “Frank?” a male voice said. Then a puff filled my mouth.

  I still couldn’t see. I’d lost consciousness. I’d dropped over like a sack of potatoes because I’d been an idiot and sent a tracer enchantment into the jaws of Hell itself.

  Another puff forced its way into my throat.

  “Frank!” The man slapped me again.

  Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. I gasped. Air slid into my lungs, but the world stayed black.

  Someone pried open one of my eyelids and flashed a light at my pupil.

  I slapped away the hand. “I’m awake!” I shook my head hoping to drive off all the afterimage circles and dots.

  Ed Martinez sat back on his heels. “You weren’t breathing.”

  I attempted to sit up. It didn’t work. I fell flat on my back again.

  “Why the hell are you up here?” Ed asked. He waved his hand at the flat meadow that had long ago replaced the burned-out husk of Rose’s cottage.

  Without the enchantments, only the hearth remained. Under the silver moonlight, the big granite boulders that made up the chimney shimmered as if they’d caught the world in their internal quartz flecks.

  I’d set those stones with the same precision and care as I’d given Lizzy’s cairn.

  “What is this place?” Ed asked.

  I forced myself onto my hands and knees. “How did you get up here?”

  Ed pocketed his flashlight. “I climbed, same as you.” He nodded toward the trail. “I knew something went down at that old hotel the elves like to use. I could tell when you came stumbling out like a drunk.”

  He frowned like a father who’d just caught his son with his first sneaked beer. “Then your dog showed up with Arne right behind him.” He sniffed and looked away. “Damn angry elf, that one.”

  “Arne’s never taken you inside?” Ed was town sheriff. He knew about the magicals. Why hadn’t Arne granted him at least the courtesy of knowing what “that old hotel” really was?

  But I knew. There were rules.

  There were always rules, with the elves.

  “No…” Ed clearly understood that the hotel was someplace special. He just didn’t know why.

  I rubbed at my neck. The constriction in my throat continued, and my muscles still pulsed with my heartbeat.

  I was alive. “Where’s my dog? He was supposed to stay with Akeyla.” The barking had to be Marcus Aurelius.

  Ed stood. “Well, he didn’t. He’s down by your truck.” He dusted off his knees. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have found you without his insistent yelping.”

  I’d remembered something about wolves and magical creatures and diversity. About the dead and the living and ghosts. And I’d learned a lesson.

  I checked my forearm. All but one of my tracer enchantments marched up my skin with shimmering, magical precision. I glanced around the Hill. No magic anywhere. None. Nothing on the lone hearth or clinging to the meadow grasses. No shimmers beyond the moonlight. No scent of cold mountain air, or soot, or ghosts.

  Just me, Ed, and my barking dog down below.

  But that didn’t mean there wasn’t still magic here. Magic about which Rose wanted me to know. I shook my head, trying to remember what I’d learned.

  “I think Maura’s ex enchanted a flower,” I said. “I think it got by the elves. He wanted to open a portal.” Idiot, I thought. “I don’t think he managed.”

  I think something else managed.

  “My anger, the ghosts, maybe even what happened at the café—I think it all might have been warnings.” Harbingers. Calls from the other side. They were connected somehow, even if I wasn’t quite sure how.

  “Warnings?” Ed asked.

  I inhaled deeply and tried to settle my unsettled body. “I see magic,” I said. “The elves’ magic appears as sheets of Aurora Borealis light. The wolves’ magic is similar. But not all magic from all sources will look the same.”

  Ed humphed.

  I might perceive Hawaiian magic differently—or not at all. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t affect me, or Alfheim.

  Or light up the route Maura’s ex tried to use to make his portal.

  “This might be a lot worse than an attempted visitation by a creepily persistent ex,” I said. “Do you know the land easiest to bridge? The one closest to the surface? The realm easiest to access with magic?”

  Ed took off his hat and ran his hand over the top of his head. “The place where ghosts and demons come from?”

  I nodded. “The Land of the Dead.” The place the magic left behind by Rose was keen on me noticing.

  Ed placed his hat back on his head. “Which one?”

  “They’re all different locations in the same territory,” I said.

  He sniffed. “Of course they are.” He shook his head. “And Maura’s ex thought he could walk through for a visit?”

  I pointed at the hearth. “Except he’s fire magic. Too chaotic. I don’t think he knew what he was doing.”

  Ed rubbed his face. “He’s just belligerent enough to think the consequences didn’t matter as long as he got to talk to his woman.” He shook his head. “Why are these asses so damned predictable?”

  I feared the worst of the dead had used Maura’s ex’s belligerence as an escape route.

  “We need to find the point of enchantment.” I pointed at the path. “I think a hitchhiker came through.”

  Something from The Land of the Dead with enough motivation to overcome the lack of caring that was death. Something strong and cunning. Something smart enough to notice a portal, and to use it.

  Ed grunted and looked up at the sky. “Of course something else came through. Isn’t that the price of admission with magic? Bad crawling out of the dungeon?”

  I rose up on my knees. “Where’s the book?” Rose used that book to show me the truth. Maybe it would tell me how to kill the hitchhiker.

  I glanced around. No wrapped package anywhere. No unwrapped ones, either.

  “What book?” Ed waved his flashlight.

  “Ivan gave me one of Rose’s notebooks,” I said. “I brought it with me. Thought maybe I could read it in Rose’s space. Gather some insight.”

  Ed trained his flashlight on my chest. “You got a magic notebook from a vampire and you brought it into the domain of a dead witch?” He sounded as if he wanted to slap the living daylights out of me. “And you’re wondering why something nasty hijacked a dumbass’s attempt to harass his ex? Now who’s bullheaded about the consequences of magic?”

  He had a point. “I didn’t realize what was happening until I opened the book in there,” I pointed at the hearth, “and an enchanted tropical flower fell out.”

  Ed frowned.

  “It worked, didn’
t it?” I rubbed at my neck again. “Rose showed me the truth.”

  Ed did not respond, but his face said Sure thing, buddy.

  “The book was blank.” I rubbed at my neck yet again. “No obvious spells.” And again. “I don’t think it’s actually blank.”

  Not if a flower fell out of it.

  “Of course it’s not blank!” Ed yelled. “Nothing a witch touches is ever blank.”

  Ed swung his flashlight around again. “You got that notebook from those two creepy shits? The Bitersons? Why the hell does Arne let them stay in Alfheim? They’re vampires. They’re dangerous.”

  And yet Ed stayed in Alfheim, too. “The same reason he brought you in, Ed,” I said. “Same as me. Arne likes to care for wayward souls.”

  Ed’s guffaw turned into a choked snort. “You know damned well why I brought my family here.” He brushed off his thigh. “After I killed that vamp, the clans took it personally.” He waved his arms at the wider world. “Do you think my kids like the snow? Do you think I enjoy the blizzards? Minnesota ain’t nearly as nice as you people like to think it is. But that’s okay. Vampires won’t get us here.”

  Every single hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Every one of my scars tingled. My stomach crunched in on itself and it wasn’t from the magical ordeal I’d just survived. No, this feeling was here-and-now.

  “Ed,” I said as I pushed myself to my reluctant feet, “My head’s mushy.” So much swirled.

  He didn’t move to help support my weight. I towered over him and outweighed him by a good hundred-plus pounds. No use in him getting hurt if I stumbled into him.

  Ed’s demeanor stiffened. “Because of the same reason you stumbled out of the hotel? Or because of other reasons?” He stopped playing dad and turned one hundred percent cop. He looked around and his hand landed on his service weapon.

  Ed, it seemed, was having the same subconscious fear and alert responses as I was.

  “Both, I suspect,” I said.

  He moved toward me, his hand still on his weapon, and turned so we were back-to-back. “I followed you from the Mayor’s office,” he said. “I figured she’d send you to talk to Maura.”

  “She did.”

  Ed nodded. “I wanted to ask her some questions.”

  “I know that, Ed.” The shadows around the hearth slipped. They shuddered a miniscule, tiny bit, a usually unnoticeable amount, but I had the dead caring enough to try to teach me a lesson.

  “Do you know much about how vampires enthrall their victims?” Ed asked.

  There were as many types of vampires as there were werewolves. Maybe more. The world—and Americans in particular—seemed to be enamored with taming the horror that was the murderous bloodsucker. Since the end of World War II, vampires had become the dapper, charismatic stand-in for all the bad things mundanes did to each other.

  But evil was evil no matter how handsome and charming it presented itself to be. No matter how it manipulated and, as Maura described it, “gaslit.” Seemed her ex liked to lie and reframe events to make himself out as the victim.

  Maura called it gaslighting. I called it pathetic, sniveling, conniving, worm behavior. And pathetic, sniveling, conniving, worm behavior was exactly how vampires acted.

  “I know, Ed,” I said. But unlike an abusive mundane, vampires had malignant magic to make their gaslighting all that much easier.

  “See, Frank, shit like what went down at the café went down in a couple of the towns in my county back in Texas. Weird, odd, stuff that messed over some young woman. It happened for about three, maybe five years. Everyone thought it was par for the course, you know? Young men can be terrible human beings.”

  So many mundanes can be terrible human beings. Even the good people of Alfheim closed ranks and refused to help outsiders in need.

  “Then it escalated. The women started vanishing. I started finding parts.”

  I knew some of the story. The vampire had taken at least ten women and four men.

  “I had never in my life been so thankful as the day I learned that the world really did have magical creatures.”

  Arne and the Geroux brothers had learned about the killings and traveled to the site to investigate, thinking that they had a rogue werewolf on their hands.

  Not a wolf. A vampire.

  Very few demons were motivated, cunning, and perceptive. But certain motivations will wind up a demon. Certain motivations will call it back to where it could feed.

  “Something about the café raised my hackles,” Ed said. “And it wasn’t just your ghosts, Mr. Victorsson. The speed at which those two uploaded the video. The fact that they knew who and when to film. The weird effects not only on little Akeyla, but also on you.” He unclipped his weapon. “I had a feeling.”

  Marcus Aurelius stopped howling.

  The shadows by the hearth twitched.

  “The hitchhiker is a vampire, isn’t it?” Ed asked.

  Primordial hunger and addiction could motivate a demon.

  A vampire had come through, and not an everyday bloodsucker like Tony or Ivan. This was one of the demon-like shades, the anti-life thing that possesses a human and turns him or her into vampire.

  This one felt like a vampire god.

  I pushed him toward the path. “Go!” I said.

  Ed ran. I yanked my big torch light off its loop on my belt and swung it first toward the route down, so Ed had some idea of where to go.

  Then I swung it back at the shadows.

  Blackness punched me in the face.

  Chapter 13

  A right jab hit me square in the nose. My septum moved, but thankfully did not snap. My head jerked; my shoulders followed. I dropped the flashlight as I rotated, but kept enough of my wits to duck as the shadow swung again.

  Whatever hit me was more than seven feet tall, strong—and cloaked in ash-filled shadows. Mist swirled around it like black silk death-shrouds.

  It danced out of the light’s beam.

  Why hadn’t my protection enchantments kicked on the way they had inside the ghost-cottage? Their purpose was to protect me from the intentional harm inflicted by magic—elven, fae, witch, white, black, vampire, or anything in between. Yet, like my tracers with Lizzy, not one of my tattoos responded.

  The creature landed a kick to my left kidney.

  I understood pain. I had awakened into life full of pain so sharp, so cutting, so utterly raw that it pulsed along my flesh. I used to live inside that shell of anguish, of sensitivity to the noises of the world, to the chirping of birds. To the scents of cooking. To animals.

  The new pain radiating outward from my lower back was all my previous torment distilled down to one knife-like wound.

  I bellowed and buckled over. The creature laughed. Then a blinding, white light exploded in front of my eyes.

  Ed trained his flashlight—and his gun—on my head. “Stand down!” he yelled.

  Not on my head. On the shadows behind my head. Stars popped in my vision, and a tunnel formed.

  I couldn’t pass out. I couldn’t leave Ed alone with whatever had walked through an abuser’s portal.

  The thing danced out of the light, but Ed’s beam didn’t follow. I looked up at his face.

  He couldn’t see it. His eyes weren’t tracking the wisps of shadows it left behind.

  “Turn the light on yourself!” I bellowed. It didn’t like the light. Maybe it would leave Ed alone if he was bathed in it.

  “But…”

  The thing lunged past me.

  “Now!” I yelled.

  Ed turned the flashlight toward his face and immediately shouted a loud, long stream of Latin church words.

  The creature pulled up short. Small tendrils of smoke-like shadow poked toward Ed’s face, pulled back, then wrapped around his legs.

  I snatched my flashlight off the grass and illuminated Ed’s entire front. My hand wavered as I swallowed down the need to vomit up my kidney, but I would not allow this thing to harm a good man with a good family.<
br />
  Ed shouted another string of holy words. A laugh I couldn’t pinpoint echoed through the meadow. Latin only worked on a subset of Old World vampires and other dark creatures, which this one obviously was not.

  Ed switched to Spanish. Again, the thing laughed. Ed tried French, then what I guessed to be Mandarin.

  The creature laughed and swirled around the meadow’s shadows as if Ed’s preparedness was the funniest thing it had ever encountered in its malevolent life.

  Whatever kind of primordial vampire it was, it didn’t believe we could do it harm, and from its lack of response to Ed’s holy words, it was probably correct.

  I pulled myself up and slowly moved toward Ed. “Keep the light on you,” I said. Just as slowly, with my arm held tight against my side because of my kidney, I dropped a tracer enchantment into my fist.

  Would it work? I doubted it would make a difference. But I had to try.

  “We know what you are,” I said. “You’ve lost your power of surprise.” Vampires, like most predators, left an area once they could no longer stalk their pray. And a running vampire was easier to track and kill.

  It laughed again. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure enough,” I said.

  The shadows spun. Wisps became streamers and curls become coils, and for a moment, it took on a human shape. “It’s a new world, son of Victor, with new ways of living.”

  The smoke hardened. It folded and it molded and the thing stared at me out of obsidian eyes. “And so many paths to death.”

  I whipped a tracer enchantment at a mannequin made of shadows.

  Nothing flickered. No trails of smoke or lights, but the energy in the air changed. The air freshened and the light cleared. The meadow’s grass came into focus. Night sounds returned.

  The vampire vanished—but not my tracer.

  “Damn it!” I yelled. “It shook the tracer enchantment.” We wouldn’t be able to locate it again. Not easily.

  “Is it gone?” Ed mumbled. “The vamp in Texas couldn’t alter what we saw to that extent. It couldn’t inflict like…”

  He vomited onto the grass.

  I staggered over. My demi-health made me cold, scarred, corpse-like, but it also meant my body did not deviate from its normal systemic state. And right now, that meant fixing its damaged kidney much faster than if I’d been born human.