Tooth and Nail

by Chris Underwood

  “One of my kin is dead, cunning man. No vampire dies in this town unless it’s by my order. And every vampire here knows that. I am the sole arbiter of their life and death. I am the sword of Damocles hanging over each and every one of their heads.” She let the words sink in for a second. “Or I was. Now I am not. Now, someone or something has taken it upon themselves to shed vampire blood in my territory. Do you understand how that makes me look?”

  I swallowed, trying to compose myself as I stared at the shining teeth of this killer. I tried to pull myself back up to my full height, but she held on tight to my collar, not moving an inch. Rain pattered against the umbrella Isaac held above us.

  “Weak,” I said. “It makes you look weak.”

  “I cannot be weak, Mr. Turner. If I am weak, I fall. If I fall, one of these vampires will take my place. And the laws I have enforced for nearly a century will not be their laws. I assure you of that. Is that what you want? Do you want vampires taking whatever swains they like? Do you want one of my brothers or sisters to cast aside the bonds that hold our community in a tenuous state of peace? Those are possibilities. You know that.”

  I thought of the vampires I knew. She was right.

  “Point taken.” I put my hand over hers and gently tried to peel her fingers off my collar. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

  In the space of a millisecond, she regained her composure. Her face became a mask of calm and she released my collar.

  “I’ve known Early for some time,” she said. “He likes to present himself as a neutral party in our fractured community. A mediator. I’ve heard you follow the same path.”

  “When I can,” I said cautiously.

  “I suspect that before this night is over I will have use for someone who appears neutral. If you are as wise as your mentor, Mr. Turner, I suggest you stay quiet and do your part.” She looked past my shoulder. “Ah, perhaps now we’ll have some answers.”

  I followed her gaze. Through the rain, a swain was approaching, escorting a hunched man wrapped in an oversized woolen coat. He had a face like a prune, with eyes that squinted so much I was surprised he could see where he was going. Two big tufts of gray hair spiked up from either side of his head, flanking a bald dome glistening with rain.

  It took me a few moments to recognize him. He was a member of our community, a back-alley potion dealer by the name of Whitworth that sold his wares to the poor and unsuspecting.

  Once, a couple of years ago, Early had had to tend to a poor ghoul who’d had a nasty reaction to one of the dealer’s love philters. Any potion brewer worth his salt should’ve known that black rose thorns are toxic to ghouls. Somehow, though, this guy stayed in business. Our community didn’t exactly have a regulatory authority to breathe down his neck.

  Lockhart offered the man a gentle smile as he approached, laying a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry to get you out in this weather, Charles.”

  He swallowed and shook his head. “Nothin’ else to be done about it.”

  “You did the right thing, calling us. Where did you find them?”

  He pointed with a gnarled finger. “Down by the river. I’ll show you.” He paused and looked down at Lockhart’s gown. “Bit muddy down there, though.”

  “A little dirt never hurt anyone. Lead on.”

  With a deferential bob of his head, the potion seller turned and scurried away toward the river. Lockhart and Isaac followed, soon accompanied by Atwood and a couple of other nearby vampires.

  I sidled up next to Lockhart again. “You friends with this guy?” I asked, jerking my head toward Whitworth.

  “He has his uses.”

  “He’s a cowboy. Half his stuff has toxic side effects.”

  “But he’s inventive, and his products work. Sometimes, that’s all we need.”

  I grunted. The vampires weren’t the ones who had to clean up the mess when some poor sap got sick on the bastard’s shoddy product.

  We trudged through high grasses, the mud sucking at our shoes. Somewhere ahead of us I could hear the river raging. Whitworth wasn’t bothering to stay under the umbrella offered to him by one of the swains. He waved his hand toward an isolated property set apart from the rest of Doyle’s Reach.

  “My trailer’s over there, see? I was out most of the evening, though. Gotta keep busy. Someone needs my stuff in a hurry, you better believe I’ll deliver. That’s how you get loyal customers, you know?”

  Lockhart nodded sagely. “Very wise.”

  “So anyway, I get home about an hour and a half ago, and I see the door to my trailer is swinging around in the wind. Now, I know I didn’t leave it open. Can’t do that around here. Every time, I check that it’s locked. Every time.”

  As he walked, he turned back and eyed Lockhart, as if daring her to suggest that he wasn’t as careful as he claimed. She just smiled and nodded.

  “Anyway,” Whitworth said with a grunt, “I figure someone’s been trying to rob me.”

  “Burgle you,” Lockhart corrected.

  “Huh?”

  “If you weren’t there, it was a burglary, not a robbery.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean. Anyway, I stood outside a couple minutes, because I wasn’t sure if they were still in there. I’m an old man. I can’t go fighting robbers—I mean burglars—not at my age. So I waited around, and then I got my courage up and went in.”

  “And had you been burgled?” Lockhart asked.

  “It was funny. They hadn’t trashed the place or anything. Sure, a couple of things were out of place. But I’d been expecting worse. Wasn’t even too muddy inside.”

  “So the intruder didn’t take anything?”

  “I didn’t say that. Most of my stuff, they didn’t touch. But they knew what they were after. Every glamour I had on hand was gone. Must’ve been seven, eight bottles. Nothing else. Just glamours.”

  I had to stop myself from snorting. Most of the Strangers who used this guy’s glamours to conceal their monstrous identities would’ve been better off just wearing a pantyhose leg over their head. Good glamours were notoriously difficult to produce—neither Early nor I had the necessary talent to pull it off. If a Stranger really wanted to appear human, their best bet was to buy a glamour from the town hag. But her skills were expensive, which let bottom feeders like this guy fill in the gaps in the market.

  “’Scuse the language,” the potion seller continued, “but I was fuckin’ mad. That was half a week’s work they stole from me. All so they could sell it on the black market, I figured. I grabbed a flashlight and went back outside, trying to see if I could see anything. A clue, you know? Maybe it was one of my neighbors who’d done it. There’s a few shady Strangers around here.” He looked toward the small village suspiciously, as if he could make out those shady Strangers even in the dark and rain.

  “What did you find?” Lockhart prompted.

  The potion seller brought his attention back to us. “Take a look for yourself. You can probably see from here. Hey, boy, give me your light.”

  He snatched the flashlight out of a swain’s hand and aimed the beam back toward his property. I squinted in the direction of the beam.

  It was a little hard to make out in the rain, but then I saw it. A large gap in the wooden fence that marked the back of his property. On either side of the gap, the planks were splintered and broken, as if something big and heavy had smashed right through them.

  “They drove right through my back fence,” the potion seller said. “I didn’t see it until I got back outside. Too dark at first. But look at that. They tore up my yard as well. Tire marks everywhere. I went out back, followed the tracks.” He moved the flashlight beam along ahead of us, where I could just make out a trail cutting through the tall grass. “Until…well, see for yourself.”

  His flashlight beam came to rest on a large oak tree standing tall near the riverbank. Behind, the swollen river raged, its fast-moving water shining in the glow of the potion seller’s flashl
ight.

  A big red pickup truck was wrapped around the base of the tree. It had clearly been going at a decent speed when it had plowed head-on into the oak. The front was totally crumpled. As near as I could tell all the windows were shattered. Mud was splattered all up the side of the truck.

  Several swains raised their own flashlights, casting more light upon the truck. As they did so, I spotted the shadow of a large figure slumped behind the wheel.

  “Hell,” I whispered.

  Lockhart gave no sign that she was in any hurry at all, yet somehow she was moving faster than the rest of us. Isaac called for her to wait, but she didn’t slow. I followed after her, stomping toward the truck as fast as the mud would allow, overtaking the potion seller and outpacing the umbrella-bearing swains.

  Lockhart stopped in her tracks a few paces from the truck. I hurried on past her.

  I reached the door of the truck and yanked on the door handle. It didn’t budge. The frame was too crumpled. I tugged once more, putting all my strength into it. Nothing.

  “Hey!” I yelled to Lockhart. “Give me a hand with this.”

  She didn’t pay any attention to me. She was looking away, like she couldn’t bear the sight of it.

  I didn’t know what the hell had caused the queen of the vampires to suddenly get squeamish, but I didn’t really care. I used my elbow to knock out the last few fragments of broken safety glass in the side window of the truck, then I reached inside, pulling the slumped figure off the steering wheel.

  His head lolled back against the headrest. It was a big head, with a wide bottom jaw that jutted forward. Blood matted his hair to his face and stained the ratty T-shirt he’d barely managed to squeeze into.

  A piece of the vehicle’s frame was driven into his stomach. Out of instinct, I touched his thick, muscular neck, feeling for a pulse. I wasn’t surprised when I couldn’t find one.

  I stared at the dead man for several seconds, my mind working. Then, slowly, I turned back to Lockhart.

  “This guy isn’t a vampire,” I said.

  “I know.” She still wasn’t looking at me.

  I glanced at the body again, then back at Lockhart. “He’s an ogre.”

  Lockhart just nodded. She barely seemed to be listening to me.

  I growled and took a step toward her. “What the hell is going…?”

  I trailed off as I caught sight of something else. A second shadowed figure was pinned against the tree by the weight of the truck. On my approach, the crumpled hood of the truck had concealed the figure from my view. But now, as more flashlight beams drew closer, I could see it.

  A woman’s body, petite, wearing a dark blouse that had helped her blend into the black of the night.

  Lockhart moved slowly to the front of the truck, staring silently at the woman’s body. Then she lowered her eyes and crouched down to pick up something lying in the mud next to us.

  The swains and the potion seller arrived with their lights just as Lockhart drew herself up. She wiped a hand gently across the thing she was holding, clearing away the mud. I found myself staring into a pair of narrow, red-rimmed eyes.

  The severed head was dark-skinned, feminine, and yet inhuman. The skin was pulled tight across high cheekbones. Her lips were peeled back to reveal sharpened fangs.

  I glanced back at the body pinned to the tree. At the ragged stump of a neck that sat just above those narrow shoulders. At the wooden stake that was driven into her chest. That stake would’ve left her paralyzed but alive as her head was hacked from her shoulders.

  Lockhart spoke without taking her eyes off the severed head of the dead vampire. “Do you understand now, Mr. Turner, why I asked you to come with us?”

  I looked from Lockhart, to the decapitated vampire’s body, to the dead ogre sitting behind the wheel of the pickup.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m starting to get some idea.”

  4

  This was a mess. So I did what I always do when things get hairy. I called Early. If anyone knew what to do, it’d be my old mentor.

  The old man picked up on the second ring. I thought he might have hit the hay for the night—Early needs as much beauty sleep as he can get—but he sounded wide awake when he answered.

  I gave him the run-down as soon as he said hello. I practically had to shout to make myself heard over the pounding rain and the roaring river.

  “Lockhart says the vampire’s name is Selene Eventide. Apparently she worked pretty closely with Lockhart. An enforcer, basically. Sounds like a tough cookie. Lockhart says she might’ve been in Doyle’s Reach checking up on the vampires’ interests here, but she can’t be sure. As for the ogre, I don’t have a damn clue what he was doing here. Don’t even know his name.”

  “One-tusk,” Early said.

  “What?”

  “The ogre. He’s called One-tusk. He’s been missing all afternoon. That’s the word, anyway.”

  “What word?” I paused. “Wait, are you driving right now?”

  “I think Whitworth talked to more than just the vampires,” Early said. “Keep things under control until I get there. I’m fifteen minutes away.”

  Fifteen minutes? That meant he was already on his way before I called. I started to ask him what was going on, but he cut me off.

  “I have to go,” he said. “You’ll be fine. Just keep a lid on things. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  And with that, he hung up. I stood beneath the meager shelter of the oak tree and stared at my phone for a few seconds, my mind working. Then I looked up, taking in the scene around me.

  A group of four swains—the burliest of the bunch—were working to free the dead vampire’s body from where it was pinned to the base of the tree. But the pickup truck had hit with enough force that it had practically fused with the tree. Between the mud and the twisted metal, the swains weren’t making much progress.

  The severed head of Selene Eventide had been spirited away by Lockhart’s swain. No one had touched the dead ogre sitting in the driver’s seat.

  Lockhart was standing in another small huddle of umbrellas a few feet away from the truck. As I approached, I found her talking quickly to two other vampires—Carlotta Atwood and a strongly built male vampire with the kind of five-o’clock shadow that only men on magazine covers have.

  “No, Booker,” Lockhart was saying to the male vampire. “We secure the area. That’s it.”

  The male vampire shook his head. His voice was deep and smooth as the sea on a clear day. “They could be anywhere by now. They’re big, but they’re fast. I can put together a hunting party in—”

  “I said no,” Lockhart interrupted. “I can see your eyes, Booker. Your blood is up. I won’t have you chasing phantoms.”

  “Phantoms?” He pointed a finger toward the truck. “That one didn’t cut off her head, which means he had friends. We can’t allow them to escape.”

  “We won’t. But we must be patient.”

  I sidled up next to Nolan, who was holding Atwood’s umbrella. “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  “Booker believes one or more of Mistress Eventide’s killers are still at large. He wants to hunt them down and bring them here to face summary execution.”

  I grunted. I could understand the sentiment, but I thought Lockhart was right to be cautious. There were too many things we didn’t understand yet.

  “And who is this Booker guy?” I whispered.

  “One of Mistress Lockhart’s primary rivals.”

  “You folk do like to squabble, don’t you?” I stepped forward just as Booker was puffing himself up for another argument. “Mind if I cut in?” I said to Lockhart.

  Booker glared at me. “You’ll wait your turn, human.”

  “No,” Lockhart snapped at him. “You’ll wait yours. Get me my perimeter. Or should I assign that duty to someone else?”

  For a moment, Booker just glared. Then, with a sardonic smile and a dismissive wave of his hand, he inclined his head. “Of course. Right away, ma’a
m.”

  He turned and gave a sharp whistle. Several vampires and swains turned toward him, and he began barking orders as he strode away.

  I felt Carlotta Atwood relax. Guess it’s no fun when Mommy and Daddy are fighting.

  Lockhart seemed less concerned. She turned to me. “Please excuse Booker. He’s a vital part of this family. He just lacks subtlety.”

  “I know how that feels. You figured out what the hell’s going on here yet?”

  “It appears that Selene encountered the ogre burgling our friend’s trailer. We found the bottles of glamour in the back of his truck. Selene must have intervened, and a fight ensued.”

  “I got a look at her skin,” I said. “It’s all red and blistered. She got badly burned by some running water. She was in the river.”

  Lockhart nodded. “It seems so. It would have left her weak, and too slow to avoid getting hit by the truck. Once she was pinned to the tree, it would’ve been a simple matter for her attackers to plant a stake in her heart and decapitate her.”

  “You find the blade?”

  “Not yet. Her assailants likely took it when they fled.”

  “You’re making a lot of assumptions here.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What else would you have me do?”

  I shrugged, ignoring the question. “Has anyone had a look at Whitworth’s trailer yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it match his story?”

  She glanced at Isaac, who nodded. “I think so,” the swain said.

  “No muddy footprints inside?”

  Isaac shook his head.

  I pointed to the dead ogre sitting in the truck. “You think he managed to break into a trailer and steal a bunch of glamours without leaving a footprint?”

  Lockhart’s mouth formed a tight line. She leaned closer to me, her eyes ignoring the swains and Atwood and everything around us.

  “Perhaps you still don’t understand your role here,” Lockhart said in a low voice. “We can conduct our own investigation.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m just here to play neutral observer, right? Well, don’t you worry about that. You’ve got a second one on the way right now.”