Monster Born (Northern Creatures Book 1)

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  It hadn’t touched Ed other than encircling his legs. Was he bitten? Did it drain life force? Some vampires—and some witches—had mastered draining life without leaving a mark on their victims.

  I checked the back of his neck for bites. “You okay? Are you bleeding? Did it bite you?” Some vampires could also bite and then heal the wound. “Do you feel dizzy?” Ed did look ashen.

  “I don’t think it bit me.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You?”

  “My nose hurts.” I rubbed the bridge. “The kidney is healing. I don’t think vampires like my blood.” I’d yet to have one try to bite me. Punch and attack, yes. But bite, no.

  “We need to call this in,” Ed said. “Arne needs to know. So do Gerard and Remy.” He rubbed his shoulder. “I…” He looked up at the moon. “You know how people ignore tales of ghosts? How they say that poltergeists are all in the victim’s head?”

  I nodded. “Usually, they are.”

  Ed shook out his arm. “That’s what I thought… felt… I don’t know, while it was here. I knew you were reacting to something. I knew it was here, but I couldn’t see or hear it.” He sighed. “I couldn’t sense it at all. Nothing. Yet I knew.”

  Perhaps Ed also had a sensitivity to magic. Not visually, like me, but perhaps in some subconscious way.

  “What the hell do I tell my deputies?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” The last time I’d dealt with a vampire was in the sixties. It had been preying on students on my college campus. It paid for feedings, though. Everybody knew about the sugar daddy with the weird sexual tastes.

  That vampire hadn’t been… smoky. I glanced back at the hearth. The house had been here. Rose’s life had been here. But it had been ash.

  The damned thing had cloaked itself in a witch’s ashes.

  I helped Ed toward the path. “What did you tell them last time? In Texas?”

  Ed stared at the moon. “That we had a vicious serial killer.” He shook as if a ghost was drawing its finger up his spine. “I don’t think it’s that simple this time.”

  This one hadn’t yet killed, and part of me wondered if it would. This one was different. The ash-shadow veil, the laughter, the hiding on a witch’s property. The messing with the lives of elves.

  Maybe we weren’t dealing with a vampire-demon. Maybe we were dealing with something worse.

  I pointed my flashlight at the path. “We need to talk to—” I realized I hadn’t heard Marcus Aurelius since before the creature attacked.

  “My dog!” I said, and ran for the path.

  Chapter 14

  The emperor was nowhere to be found. He wasn’t in the back of my truck, or waiting next to Ed’s cruiser. He didn’t come when I called.

  “Look.” Ed pointed at the dirt track that served as the road. “Tracks.”

  Marcus Aurelius had run away from the vehicles and back toward the lake. After about fifty yards, his tracks veered into the woods where I lost them in the gloom.

  “Here, boy!” I called. Perhaps he’d hidden because of the vampire creature.

  No rustling. No yipping, no padding of dog feet.

  “We’ll come back in the morning,” Ed said. “I want another look at the site.”

  I had no other option. Tracking a dog into a dark forest in the middle of the night wasn’t a good idea even without malevolence on the prowl.

  Ed patted my arm. “That thing was on top of the hill with us. It couldn’t have gotten him.” He pointed at the trees. “He’s hiding. He’s smart. We’ll get him in the morning.”

  What if Ed was wrong and I’d let down not only Akeyla, but also my dog? I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers into my forehead. I didn’t have the option of such thinking. Not while a vampire stalked Alfheim.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed. No answer from Arne. He must still be at The Great Hall. “We found the real problem,” I said to his voice mail, and hung up.

  Dag answered her phone. She sniffed as if she could smell black magic on me from the other side of the connection. “I take it you found something at Rose’s Hill?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll come to your place.” She hung up.

  I stared at my phone for a long moment. “That was odd.”

  Ed chuckled. “Odd? After what we just survived?”

  I tucked my phone into my pocket. “Call the Geroux brothers. Tell them what happened. Then take your wife and kids to stay with the wolves.”

  Ed looked back at the hill. He frowned, and the two of us stood silent in the forest, still a good fifty yards down the track from our vehicles. I almost asked him to turn off his flashlight. I almost turned off mine. I almost asked him to breathe in the rich, earthy, night magic of the land. To let it cleanse away the malevolent smoke we’d both breathed at the top of the hill.

  But I didn’t. Inviting in shadows right now was too dangerous.

  Ed adjusted his belt. He’d left his weapon unsnapped, just in case.

  Yes, it was most definitely too dangerous to walk in the dark right now.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think you are a wise man, Mr. Victorsson.”

  I pulled the truck up to my garage. Dag’s roadster sat off to the side, under the motion-sensing string of lights between my house and the side gate. The lights give the area a nice, warm glow, and I’ve found that the few visitors I get prefer them to a massive halogen bursting on as they drive up.

  Dag’s roadster is as sleek and powerful as its owner. It’s also the same shade of gray-blue-green as her magic.

  She’d been surprised when I told her that, but it made her smile.

  The elves, for all their bluster and power, were just as much people as the mundanes of the town. Maybe more so, in some cases. The long-lived elves had an understanding of life that the younger ones did not.

  Dag had that understanding, a sort of perfecting of the act of living. She, like Arne and a few of the other powerful elves, had lived multiple lifetimes. Not just multiple centuries, but multiple identities with multiple families.

  Maura was not Dag and Arne’s only child. She was just their only modern one.

  And, I suspected, the most free of all their children. Free, because she lived in a time when her father would not marry her off for political gain.

  Dag understood. Dag treasured. Dag did not want her daughter to return to a situation where she lost her freedom.

  My gate, with its iron scrollwork and its drilled, colorful, repurposed wine bottles, was an overly-artsy gift from Maura. She’d commissioned it while she still lived in Hawaii and had it delivered out of the blue one day. I’d never asked why, and didn’t plan to. The gate was lovely, a work of art created by one of the many artists who lived nearby, even if it was odd. I installed it immediately, and display it proudly.

  It stood open.

  Dag waited on my deck, her back to the house and her magic a shimmering, swirling plume around her otherwise glamoured body.

  From behind, she looked appropriately middle-aged to be Maura’s mother. Fifty-ish, perhaps—still young enough to have another child if she wanted, which gave her an air of fertility goddess. Good “mayor” age, she liked to say. Good for culling subconscious respect from the mundanes.

  But tonight, she looked small and crushed inward, as if the weight of her centuries had finally settled onto her shoulders.

  She inhaled as I rounded the corner of the house. Her plume of magic responded by shrinking in on itself in small bursts that seemed to mimic her beating heart.

  I think it noticed me before she did.

  Her glamour shifted and that sense of the weight of years—of life—vanished. Dagrun Tyrsdottir became, once again, the elf no one dared annoy.

  “Frank,” she said, as she pointed at the glass and chrome monstrosity across the lake. “I had no idea they were going to build that.” Her sniff settled into a frown. “It’s Danish modern, at least.”

  I chuckled. “Danish glass and chrome reflect just as much
unwanted glare through my windows as any other culture’s modern nonsense.”

  Dag smiled, but it quickly vanished. “Maura and Akeyla will not leave The Great Hall until I say so.”

  I had expected as much, but the way Dag said it made me wonder. “You overruled Arne, didn’t you?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “He should not have run you out of The Hall. He should have gone with you to Rose’s Hill.” She turned her back to me again. “Do not expect an apology or any acknowledgement of his mistake.”

  Their argument must have been intense for her to say such a thing. But it wasn’t the emotional or even the social awkwardness that clenched up my gut. Her words were a coded “Do not expect help from Arne.”

  He would help, but he would not be helpful, because he was mad at me for showing disrespect, even though no disrespect was meant.

  I closed my eyes and did my best not to sigh.

  Dag clicked her tongue. When I opened my eyes again, she wore an expression that clearly indicated how well we understood each other.

  Arne had likely locked onto sending Maura back to Hawaii to show his kingdom how well he had the situation under control.

  Dag chuckled. “I’m the one married to him.”

  “Maura and Akeyla,” I pointed at my house. “They can’t go back.”

  Her grip on her elbows tightened. “I know. Arne says he’ll send you or Remy or one of the other wolves to be her guard dog for the decade she has to live on that island.” She looked back at the lake. “He’s been King so long he no longer understands how intimate terror works.”

  She rubbed her forehead and changed the subject. “Tell me what happened at Rose’s Hill.”

  “Ed’s fetching his family. I told him to go to the wolves until we deal with this thing.”

  Dag inhaled. “What did you find?”

  “It felt like the evil that replaces a person’s soul, when they turn.” I shook my head. Every vampire was a dual soul. All vampires were possessed. “A vampire-demon. I think Maura’s ex inadvertently gave it access to Alfheim. I think that idiot thought he could make a portal through The Land of the Dead.”

  “And this vampire-demon noticed the path,” Dag said.

  I nodded.

  “Do you think one of the clans is taking advantage to send an assassin north for Ed?” Her face hardened. “I will personally kill every vampire on this continent if any harm comes to the Martinez family.” She inhaled again. “I will kill them all if they caused the harm that has befallen my daughter.”

  The plume of magic around Dag erupted into a bright tornado of white, blue, and green aurora sheets. It spun for a long moment, then twisted down into what looked like magical armor.

  Never, in my two centuries with the elves, had I ever seen any of their magic manifest the way it was manifesting around Dag right now.

  “Tell me what you see, Frank Victorsson,” she whispered.

  “Your magic.” I traced the outline of a sigil manifesting over her shoulder. “It’s building around you like a suit of armor.”

  Her nod was almost imperceptible. “If ever there was proof of your ability to see magic, it is this moment, son of Victor.” She held up her hand before I could answer. “Tell me of the creature.”

  “It hits hard.” I brushed my hand over my kidney. “I could see it. Ed could not.” Now I inhaled. “It did not have magic I recognize. Not the way you do, or Rose did. It cloaked itself in death and ash.”

  “And you are sure it was a vampire?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. Ed’s instincts say vampire, as do mine. But, as I said, it was cloaked.” I shook my head. “Though I do think it is a demon.”

  She nodded.

  “There’s something else.” How was I to explain? “I stopped at the library earlier today.”

  Dag turned her body fully toward mine and dropped her hands off her elbows. “Continue.”

  “I wanted to see if there was anything in Rose’s papers about ghosts.” There was a bouquet on the counter at the library. One with huge tropical blossoms.

  How stupid could I have been? Damned vampires. They were as sneaky as they were evil. “Ivan gave me a notebook. It was blank. Looked blank. I took it with me to Rose’s Hill to see if being in her space made whatever she recorded visible.”

  The truth was I didn’t know whether Ivan or Tony called the creature, or if it was attracted to them because their proximity to the flowers, or even if it was a vampire.

  “The creature has the book?” Dag did not, at all, look surprised. If anything, she looked like a mother waiting for a child to explain for himself his misdeeds.

  I tapped my head. “It vanished before the creature showed up, so I don’t know if he took it or not.” Rose could have taken it, I thought, but did not say.

  Dag walked over. She leaned her head to the side and looked up at my face. “What is the common thread here?”

  I shook my head. “Boundary crossing. Veil piercing. Disguises.”

  Dag tapped my chest. “The approaching Samhain makes those magicks easier to wield. That is all. They are tools.”

  Tools to expose my personal weaknesses? I frowned. Why would a vampire target me?

  She patted my chest. “I believe Ivan needs a visit.”

  No one other than Arne visited the Bitersons at night. No one was that stupid. “In the morning?” I asked. “I left Marcus Aurelius in the woods. Ed thinks he’s hiding. If the—”

  Her fingers curled and she pressed the tips into my flesh. “Come.”

  With that, the Queen of Alfheim, an elf cloaked in armor-magic, walked toward her roadster.

  Chapter 15

  The windows of the Ramsey Mansion Library glowed as if Hell itself had set the interior on fire. Thankfully, we were well past closing time, and no mundanes were around. Very few drove by on the highway, and I suspected that those who did would not see anything unusual.

  The glow was purely magic.

  I pointed. “That cannot be good.”

  Dag hoisted her quiver onto her back. The arrows glimmered in the moonlight, each enchanted with elven magic. She pulled one out and held it out for me to see.

  Only the very tip of the arrow glinted with metal. The rest of the arrowhead and the shaft had been fashioned out of the one continuous sapling branch.

  “Oak,” Dag said. “Best for vampires. The tip is silver.” She placed the arrow back into her quiver.

  Dag touched my arm. “Tony and Ivan have lived among us for decades.”

  I knew exactly what she meant—this was not a clear-cut, black and white situation. Ivan might have meant to trick me, or he might have been tricked himself by the magic of the book. Or everyone might be lying. Or not. I was not to break anyone’s head until we had answers.

  I nodded and took point. Vampires did not like my blood, but a few of them had a taste for elf. Tony and Ivan, supposedly did not, but the creature might be a different story.

  And from the unnatural glow coming from the windows, we could be walking into anything, including the creature lounging on top of the library desk reading one of Tony’s bodice-rippers.

  The library’s doors blew open. Tony flew over the threshold.

  He bounced down the steps—bones cracking and lungs gasping for air—and landed at my feet.

  Vampires are tough. Landing the way he did on the last three steps would have killed a mundane man. Tony groaned, snapped his shoulder back into its socket, and licked the blood off his lip.

  He stayed on his back on the granite between the topiaries, obviously in too much pain to move. “Mr. Victorsson. Mayor Tyrsdottir,” he said. “I’m humbled our King felt the need to call in reinforcements.”

  Dag looked down at Tony, then up at the door. “Arne!” she yelled.

  Bright, blinding white magic erupted through the open door. I cringed and squinted, and reflexively shielded my eyes.

  Tony wiped blood off the corner of his mouth as he watched. “Fascinating,” he intoned.


  Arne’s lynx bounded out the door. He growled and flicked his stubby tail, then sat down and began licking his paw and cleaning his fluffy, tipped ear.

  “Gaupe?” Dag walked up the steps toward the cat. “Why are you here?”

  The lynx ignored her and continued to clean his face.

  Tony snickered. “Your husband’s got a genuine mad-on, Mayor Tyrsdottir.” He slowly pushed himself to sitting. “I’m surprised he didn’t bring his canine helpers.”

  “Arne!” Dag yelled again. She pulled an arrow and armed her bow before returning to the landing and kicking Tony’s thigh. “Speak!”

  He held up his hands. “Seems the sheriff called our King and told him his daughter let in a rogue vampire.” He sniffed. “I told him that neither Ivan nor I sensed another vampire! Do you think I want some crazy bastard in our territory? How will that help me? I have a good thing going here.”

  Dag lowered her bow.

  Tony thrust out his chin. “Vampires cannot stay in one life. We cannot build.” He rubbed at his belly. “Unless we align ourselves with one of the clans. Who wants that? You two have no idea. The world’s prima donna vampires control the planet’s strategic reserves of backstabbing bitchiness.”

  Dag rolled her eyes. “Perhaps I should put you out of your misery, Mr. Biterson.”

  Tony’s lip curled and for a split second, a fang showed.

  But he pulled it back and grinned. “Why Mayor Tyrsdottir, I do believe your compassion is showing.”

  Faster than I could draw breath, Dag drew her bow. Tony snickered.

  “Tony…” When he looked up at me, I shook my head.

  Tony sighed and slowly stood. “I apologize, my beautiful Elf Queen of the Upper Midwest.” He winked. “You betcha.”

  Dag poked Tony in the chest with the tip of her arrow. “Speak of my husband.”

  Tony wisped his hand through the air like an Eighteenth-Century fop. “Our handsome Elf King broke my locks.” He pointed at the wide-open door. “That’s gonna cost, ya know.”