by Ward Parker
Jack looked offended. “Not like a hound dog. Like an ogre.”
“Sorry. But how do you do that?”
“You’re asking me for my trade secrets? My tracking skills are what I’m famous for. In my, um, previous career I made good money tracking down humans in the witness protection program.”
“You found out where they were living, right? That’s all. Right?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I made sure they wouldn’t talk. Ever again.”
“Oh, my,” Missy said.
“Do you mind if I take your gnome?”
“Jack, you can keep him. Forever. He’s yours with my blessings. I bet he’d look great in your garden.”
“I need him with me while I track down the black-magic witch. Then I’ll bring your gnome home.”
“I said that won’t be necessary.
Jack performed the ritual in the parking lot of a home improvement box store. He was at the very far end of the lot, away from any other cars, so no one noticed him kneeling naked beside his car. A cattle egret searching for insects strutted past him and looked at him quizzically. But otherwise, he was alone with his prayers adapted from ones passed down from the Spanish Inquisition.
Shortly after finishing, he caught the scent of the black magic. It wasn’t the smell of brimstone or sulfur as you might expect. It was more like bad cabbage. Now he knew which direction to go and he drove the van to the nearest highway. He would need to make adjustments to his route as he progressed, but he felt confident that he could follow the scent to its source.
Two hours later, Jack was hungry, so he stopped at a fast-food chain for a meal. He selected what he called a Happy Meal, a young tourist from Iowa snatched from his car. After Jack tossed the bones in a dumpster, he got back on the two-lane highway that meandered through farm country and small towns in the central part of the state.
The scent was getting stronger, no denying it. He glanced at the gnome standing in the passenger seat, secured by its safety belt.
“You will be free soon, little guy,” the ogre said to it.
An hour later, as row after row of citrus trees lined the road, he suddenly felt as if he were being watched. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. Just a beat-up pickup behind him. No one in front of him.
There, he felt it again. Some magic was definitely at work here. A prickling sensation ran through his scalp and down his neck. He swallowed with fear and ran his finger between his collar and neck.
Black magic, he was sure of it.
He shrugged off the feeling and concentrated on the road and the scent he followed. It wasn’t a constant smell like driving toward a fertilizer factory. The way it worked was he’d pick up tiny puffs of scent here and there, like tumbleweeds tossed by the wind. And he would simply travel in the direction they came from. The witch who created the magic emitted a certain degree of scent herself, having been permeated with the massive power she’d built to do her magic. But every day she sent out more odors as she cast new spells or used her magic in other ways. Even mundane daily activities emitted odors of magic. If you were a powerful sorcerer, that is.
The scent was getting very strong now. A low humming distracted him. It came from the gnome beside him. It was vibrating compactly, so rapidly it looked blurry.
Again, that prickling in his scalp.
As the unofficial enforcer for the Magic Guild of San Marcos, Jack had dealt with his share of unsavory characters. It was like his years working for the mob, except now his opponents used lightning bolts and concussion spells instead of bullets and bombs. The Guild had other agents who dealt with the normal regulating work of keeping the witches and wizards of Northeast Florida in line and paid-up on their annual dues.
Jack was the one who dealt with the dangerous ones, the magicians gone rogue, the evil sorcerers of black magic. Normally, Jack only had to convince them to leave the area, reminding them he had the power of the Guild behind him if the wrongdoers didn’t agree to leave. Sometimes, though, they fought back.
Jack only knew a little magic, not enough to defend himself against a powerful sorceress. If he wasn’t able to stop violators the human way—with bullets in their corporeal bodies—he would normally hightail it out of there and let Bob and his troops take care of it. Jack was primarily a tracker. He was an enforcer only to the extent of his limited offensive weapons.
That’s why he had no issue with doing as the witch Missy Mindle had requested: find her mother, convey that information to Ms. Mindle, and then get out of the way.
He imagined the sorceress lived in a creepy, old Victorian mansion on an enormous lot surrounded by moss-draped oak trees. Instead, the scent told him to turn off the highway onto a bumpy dirt road that crossed empty fields and ended at a ditch. There, a narrow dirt driveway snaked parallel to the ditch and disappeared into a forest of pine trees. Just visible through the trees was a small red-brick home.
This was the lair of the sorceress.
A beat-up black mailbox sat precariously atop a wooden post with the number “666” painted on it in silver.
“Really?” Jack said aloud. Was that a joke?
He pulled out his phone. According to his real estate app, 666 Thirteenth Street was truly the address. The house was not for sale and last sold in 1980 for $39,000. With his overly beefy fingers, it took a lot of typos before he pulled up the county property appraiser’s website and found that the owner’s name was Ruth Bent.
So his supernatural sense of smell and a religious ritual had brought him here. But it was the internet that tied the bow on the package. He texted the information to Ms. Mindle.
Then he pulled partway into the driveway to turn around. And that’s when the spell caught him.
Missy had hoped sending her gnome away with Jack would put an end to the gnome-related accidental deaths in Jellyfish Beach. But she was wrong. Her phone rang.
“Hey, Missy, it’s Matt. I just heard a call on my police scanner. There’s been a fatality in Freddie’s neighborhood.”
“Oh, my.” Missy guessed that Freddie’s missing gnomes had returned home and were up to no good.
Matt gave her the address, and they agreed to meet there.
“Is your gnome at home?” he asked.
“Um, no. Someone borrowed him and took him for a road trip.”
“Are you serious? You mean that meme where they bring a gnome on their vacation and take pictures of it in front of famous monuments?”
“Not exactly. It’s a long story which I promise I’ll explain. But I’m pretty sure my gnome was not involved with this fatality.”
The address in question was a construction lot about four houses down from Freddie. It looked like an older home had been knocked down and construction on a McMansion had begun. A porta-potty stood near the road and an officer held the door open as he peered inside.
Missy hoped the fatality had been from natural causes while the deceased just happened to be using the john.
Matt parked behind her and they both walked onto the property as if they had every right to. Missy looked past the cop into the shadowy interior of the porta-potty.
A man’s legs protruded from the toilet.
“Oh, man,” Matt said, “what a crappy way to—”
“Don’t even go there,” Missy said. “No toilet jokes, please.”
The cop turned and saw them. He looked like he was about to puke.
“I think he drowned down there, in the tank that holds all the—”
Turns out the cop truly had been about to puke.
Aside from hers and Matt’s, the only other vehicles on the scene were the patrol car and a Lamborghini. The guy with his head in the sewage was obviously a rich guy.
After the cop finished retching, Missy asked, “is he the property owner?”
“He’s the developer,” the cop said. “He builds homes on spec and then sells them for millions. That’s how good the market is here.”
It won’t continue to be good if this neigh
borhood has a gnome problem, Missy thought.
“Who called it in?” Matt asked.
“I did,” the cop said. “I was on patrol, saw the developer’s car but not the developer. I figured he was in the crapper. But I noticed the door was ajar, so I stopped to see what was up.”
“Did you happen to see any—”
“Matt. Come here,” Missy said, leading him toward the concrete slab with the plumbing and electrical pipes sticking up like weeds. “Look.”
At the rear of the lot, on top of a stack of concrete blocks, stood two gnomes. One of them was the beach-themed gnome in a Hawaiian shirt she had bought hoping it would lure her original gnome home.
“Construction workers normally don’t bring gnomes to worksites,” Matt said.
“And I don’t believe neighborhood kids put them here as a joke.”
“I guess the gnome rebellion continues, even without its leader.”
“That’s not funny,” Missy said.
“It wasn’t a joke. What are we going to do about this? Notify everyone in Jellyfish Beach to destroy any gnomes they may have?”
“I’m going to try to make the sorceress who started this stop it.”
She explained how she determined a demon possessed the gnome and how the demon’s influence was spreading to other gnomes. She hesitated, but then told Matt the rest of the story.
“Your mother did this? The sweet lady who lives in Tennessee?”
“That’s my adoptive mother. I meant my birth mother.”
“But I thought she was deceased.”
“So did I until recently. I’m not a hundred percent positive it’s her who caused all this, but if it was, she’s now a sorceress practicing black magic.”
“There’s a lot you haven’t told me,” Matt said, sulking. “I thought we were friends.”
“You don’t have to tell friends everything. Especially not that your mother is an evil sorceress. It’s not as if I’d invite you to Thanksgiving at her place.”
“So how are you going to get Mom to stop the gnomes?”
“I will try to convince her to release the demon. Hopefully that will erase its influence in the other infected gnomes. Remember Bob the Arch-Mage? His enforcer is tracking down whoever’s magic is responsible, whether it’s my mother or not.”
Her phone vibrated, and she saw the text message.
“Speak of the devil. Oops, sorry,” she said. “Poor choice of words.”
16
New Hunting Grounds
The Werewolf Women’s Club badly needed to find a new hunting ground. The small parcels of land they used temporarily were too dangerous. They could use each only once, in case the police spotted them and started monitoring the area.
The fringes of the Everglades seemed like a decent option at first, but proved to be a horrible choice. First, invasive Burmese pythons had eaten most of the game the women liked to catch. Then, there was all the firm ground suddenly turning into marsh. At their age, they didn’t like those kinds of surprises.
The tipping point was the incident with the alligator. Denise, bless her heart, didn’t realize how fast gators could be when she stopped to sniff Brenda’s butt (as if after all these years she still needed to sniff it). She couldn’t have picked a worse place to stop.
Werewolves are strong, even those in their senior years, but no creature alive, supernatural or not, is strong enough to pry open a gator’s clenched jaw.
When the gator struck and grabbed her hind leg, Denise yelped in pain. The rest of the pack returned. Josie knew that Denise could regenerate the damage from the bite, but if the gator dragged her underwater, as they do with their prey, even a werewolf wouldn’t survive that.
Fortunately, Josie knew one of the few ways to get a gator to open its jaws. As the reptile backed its way toward the water, Denise thrashing as she tried to free her leg, the rest of the pack attacked the beast, trying to tear out chunks of its armored hide. They wounded the gator, but it wasn’t enough.
Josie raced up and went right for the creature’s eyes. Slashing and poking with her nails, she damaged an eyeball. The gator roared and in that instant of an open mouth, Denise removed her leg. The gator quickly retreated, and the pack did too. As soon as Denise’s leg healed, they shifted back to human and headed home.
Tonight, though, they believed they found a promising new candidate for a hunting ground. An electronics plant far west of town had closed, the company bankrupt. They sold all their equipment and left the building vacant. Josie had heard about in the news a while back.
But the best part, which she hadn’t realized, was the factory was on a giant parcel of vacant, wooded land. The company had bought it cheaply years ago, planning to expand their plant and lease space to other companies. Josie happened to be having breakfast at the local diner, sitting at the counter, when she saw a newspaper left behind on the seat next to her. It was folded open to the story about how there still wasn't a buyer for the land. Lots and lots of pristine land, no security guards, and a low probability that any human, let alone law enforcement, would go there. The club couldn't wait to explore it.
On Thursday night, Kevin drove them there in the shuttle bus. This property was farther west than the Unger Tract, so it took a while to get there. The women yelled at Kevin to get off the bus, they were so eager to shed their clothes and shift.
Once their transformation was complete, Josie led them off the bus. That was as far as the leading went. Each member of the pack picked up scents and went off in her own direction. Josie didn’t like that. Wolves hunt in packs for a reason, the superiority of numbers and tactical cooperation. It was also dangerous to stray off on one’s own, especially in unfamiliar territory. But try telling that to old werewolves set in their ways, not used to hearing what to do anymore. Josie growled and took up the low-ranking position of following behind the pack. At least it helped her keep an eye and nose on her friends.
The bulk of them seemed to have followed a narrow game trail winding north. She knew why: the scent of deer. But she also sensed wolves peeling off to the east and west. Everyone was excited to be exploring fresh territory, and the scents were exhilarating. There was plenty of game here, and it had never been hunted before, so the animals were slow to react.
The scream of a captured rabbit came from her right. Wanda was on it, killing it quickly and beginning to devour it. Josie kept running to keep up with the main body of the pack.
Up ahead, three wolves had treed a raccoon. They used their opposable thumbs and human-like traits to climb the tree in pursuit. The poor raccoon must have been stunned to see that.
A triumphant howl came from several hundred yards ahead. They'd driven their prey to ground. Others joined in the howl. It was a big celebration. They must have killed the deer. Josie left the game trail and raced through the dense woods, instinctively maneuvering in the darkness between trees, under vines, and over the saw palmettos.
Josie smelled blood and deer. And as she approached her friends, the scent of excitement was strong. Tanya barked in greeting as Josie reached them.
Had this been a Werewolf Women’s Club luncheon, her fellow club members would have behaved with decorum, politely dividing the food and sharing with all. Tonight, it was every wolf for herself.
In the midst of the feeding frenzy, the shot rang out.
Oh no, Josie thought. Not again.
After the first shot came two more.
The wolves stopped eating and growled. Josie took off in the direction the shots had come from. She heard the wolves behind her. And sensed that the other pack members who had pursued their own prey were now converging through the forest toward the crime scene.
Teresa lay crumpled at the base of a slash pine tree. She was in human form, naked, face down in dead leaves, legs splayed out at awkward angles. One sniff told Josie that she was dead. Bullet wounds in her right shoulder and upper thigh were visible. Josie whined as the other pack members gathered around their fallen friend.<
br />
But Josie had no time for mourning. She circled the area around the body, sampling every scent. Soon, the lingering odor of cordite of the fired weapon was stronger. She saw broken plants here and there. And then a footprint in soft ground. There was that sharp, distinctive smell of rubber. It had to be from boots.
Though there was barely a moon, Josie’s sensitive eyes caught the faint glimmer of metal. It was a spent cartridge. It was an inconvenient time not to have pockets, so she picked up the cartridge with her mouth.
Josie followed the trail the human had made back to the abandoned factory. At the edge of the forest she stopped and kept in the shadows, watching for movement. There was nothing. She circled around until she had a view of the side of the building where the shuttle van had been stealthily parked. Where was Kevin? He might be asleep in the van, but the gunshots surely would have awakened him. Perhaps he had entered the woods to investigate.
But then she saw the dark shape lying on the ground at the edge of the forest two hundred feet away from her.
The scent of werewolf blood drifted toward her in the faint breeze. Oh, no, she thought.
She ran to the body. It was Kevin. He lay on his stomach naked. The back of his bald head was covered in blood. Wolf fur lay in clumps around him, so he must have been in wolf form and shifted back when he was killed.
He groaned.
Thank God, he wasn’t dead.
She dropped the cartridge from her mouth and licked the blood from his head with her long tongue, revealing the wound. It wasn’t too bad, just a grazing, but the surrounding flesh was tender and bruised. She touched his cheek with her muzzle.
“What happened?” he said with a croak.
She took the cartridge into her mouth again and ran around the abandoned factory, looking for signs of the assailant. No one was around.
But the gate of the chain-link fence at the entrance was open. She trotted over. The gate had been locked with a chain and padlocked. When they arrived, Kevin had cut the lock with bolt cutters and, after the bus drove through, closed the gate and arranged the chain to look like it was still attached. Now the chain dangled free and there was a foot-wide gap in the gate the intruder had been too sloppy to close.