Dirty Deeds

by D V Wolfe

  I scratched the back of my head. “Well, what does she like? I mean, what makes her sleep?”

  Sprig gave a weary sigh. “We can’t stay anywhere that doesn’t have these fancy silk sheets for her to sleep on and she always plays the same new age album over and over when she wants to sleep. It’s mind-numbing.” This. Coming from Sprig, who until this encounter, I’d assumed had left most of his higher brain functions back in the ‘otherworld’.

  “Well, if we can get her settled in your car and sleeping, and you can follow me to Illinois, we could probably make it to Kildare in about six hours. Kess will probably have some idea of how to help her.”

  Sprig carried Vix, and Noah and I followed. I sent Noah back to Lucy to put the lock pick set away and grab the hose I kept in the truck bed. “Pop the trunk,” I said to Sprig. Amongst Vix’s other quirks, I knew she was the epitome of the Puca kleptomaniac stereotype. “Which bag is hers?”

  Sprig snorted. “They’re all hers.”

  I started unzipping suitcases, duffle bags, and backpacks and digging through them. On the third one, I hit pay dirt. Sets and sets of silk sheets. I pulled out an armload and pushed past Sprig. I tugged open the passenger side door and reclined the seat. I laid out one of the sheets and backed up so that Sprig could lay her down on it. After he set her down I moved forward to wrap the sheets around her but Sprig just held a hand out to me. “Give them here.” I handed him the rest of the sheets and he began to gently tuck her in. “I didn’t know she’d been stealing these,” he said, his voice soft. “I didn’t notice. Or maybe I just didn’t want to.”

  “Sprig,” I asked, watching him carefully wrap up his sister. “Why did you leave the Otherworld? I mean, it’s obvious this is hard for you.”

  Sprig shrugged. “Because Vix wanted to come so badly. She’s always been fond of you mortals. And after all the wars at home, all the times she’d saved my ass from death, I knew I had to come with her, keep her safe...if I could.”

  I heard something dragging on the concrete and looked up to see Noah screwing the hose to the spigot next to the women’s restroom door.

  “I know what you mean,” I said to Sprig. And I did. I watched Noah start to spray down the concrete, attempting to wash away the blood. Noah was my Sprig, coming along on this suicide run.

  I looked back at Vix and noticed her eyes were closed and she wasn’t struggling as hard to try to hurt herself. Sprig was wrapping her up like a mummy with a sheet between her arms and the rest of her body and then sheets between each arm to keep them from scratching each other.

  “There,” Sprig said, getting to his feet.

  “We’ll get loaded up, and then you just follow us,” I said. Sprig nodded. Vix was starting to struggle against the wraps around her. “Better find that new age album,” I said.

  Sprig groaned. “It’s a long drive from here, so we better shake a leg,” I said. He groaned louder. “Come on, it won’t be so bad.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Sprig said. “You’re not about to listen to the same new age album over and over for the next six hours.”

  I could not argue with that.

  8

  Noah was quiet as we backed out of the parking space and headed back for the highway. I checked my mirror and saw the black mustang drive forward, before turning wide and slow around the parking lot to line up behind us. I smiled to myself. Sprig was trying to be gentle with her. His sister, the murderous general who dragged him all over hell’s half-acre, because she liked mortals.

  “Sprig’s a good brother,” I said to Noah, as we pulled forward. I caught a glimpse in the rearview mirror of Sprig. He had a hand on Vix’s shoulder to brace her, as he carefully made the turn to follow.

  Noah turned to look behind us. “Have you ever heard of this happening to Pucas before? Going nuts, I mean. Scratching themselves and pulling out their hair?”

  I shook my head. “Never. And the fact that she had those three poor saps locked up in the bathroom with her and she didn’t open a single vein on any of them? That’s unheard of. I mean, from what I’ve been told, that would take unbelievable willpower from even the strongest Puca to resist a blood bath under those circumstances.” I glanced up at Noah and noticed that he was looking pale.

  “So Pucas drain the blood out of people and bathe in it? Why?” he asked, his question punctuated by a gulping noise and the bobbing of his adam’s apple.

  “Well, like I said earlier, Pucas can be both good and evil. They can help, or screw you over. They usually lean more towards helping, but they come from a very vicious background and blood is a powerful substance, often used to make them stronger. I was told that often in the ‘Otherworld’, before a battle, soldiers would take blood baths to make sure they were at their strongest before the fight. Kind of like topping off the tank right before a road trip, know what I mean?”

  Noah’s face was slack-jawed and his eyes were slightly out of focus. I decided to let him try to chew and swallow what I’d been telling him so he didn’t choke. I reached for the radio knob. After about three songs with no interruption from Walter, I decided to call Tags. Walter had basically told me to ‘fuck off’ and Rosetta would only hound me about Gabe. Tags was up at bat. Hopefully, he knew what to do with this new curveball.

  The phone rang twice and then there was a clatter as if someone had knocked it off its cradle.

  I waited. I heard breathing. “Tags!” I barked. “Pick up. There’s something brewing.”

  There was a scuffle and then a sound like someone kicking the receiver. “Shit!” I heard Tags say from somewhere above the phone. Finally, he came on the line. “Hello?”

  “Catch you at a bad time?” I asked.

  “What?” Tags said. “No. Who is this?”

  “It’s the shit fairy. Who do you think it is?”

  “Bane?” Tags said.

  “Miss me?”

  “Not exactly,” Tags’ voice was oddly slurred. “You know ‘shit fairy’ isn’t a bad nickname for you. What do you want?”

  “Man, I just inspire all kinds of manners in the folks I telephone,” I said. “Have you been listening to the radio?”

  Tags hesitated. “Not in the last couple of days. It’s...I haven’t wanted to…”

  I shook my head. “Tags, those Bonanza reruns aren’t going anywhere, surely you can…”

  “It’s the thirtieth, Bane,” Tags spat. “The thirtieth of May, remember?”

  Something heavy and cold had just slid into my stomach. May Thirtieth. It was Gary’s birthday; my former partner, Tags’ former brother.

  I didn’t know what to say. So I said the stupid sentiment that everyone else says when they don’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”

  Tags grunted. “Don’t suppose you spend a lot of time staring at calendars. Damn things probably give you a rash, what with only having five months left.”

  A low shot, but I deserved it. I was starting to make peace with the fact that Tags was never going to forgive me for his brother’s death. I was quiet. Being a narcissistic asshole with tunnel vision and a selfish outlook on life, I expected to get a hearty telling off. And I deserved it. I should have never taken Gary as a partner. He was a good hunter but there was something about having a partner that makes you weak. And dependent. And care too much. I glanced over at Noah who was slumped against the door, his eyes closed.

  “Well to what do I owe the pleasure of a phone call from the world’s biggest asshole on such an...important day,” Tags said, his voice more gruff than usual.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’m sorry I bothered you...I’m just...sorry, Tags.”

  “Bane,” Tags said. “I know you wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important. Seeing as how you didn’t even know what day it was, it can’t be to commiserate with me over my dead little brother, so what do you want?”

  I sighed. This was shitty of me to ask while Tags was grieving, but I was desperate and now he’d offered an opening. “Uh,” I started, trying to ma
ke this as concise and painless as possible. “Walter hasn’t been making any weather reports for the last, well, day and a half, at this point,” I began.

  “If you called to ask if I’m standing over him with a gun to his head while he’s on the shitter, I’ll have to disappoint you,” Tags said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Tags, I called you at home. Now unless you brought Walter over for a very disturbing play date, I didn’t consider that a possibility. Anyway, no one has a gun on him. I called and talked to him. Said he was so excited, he was going to take himself out to dinner. Said he hadn’t seen anything for more than a day at that point. The kid and I have been listening to the radio all day and night and nothing.”

  “The kid?!” Tags shouted.

  “Spare me the lecture, ok?” I said. “The kid wanted to stay, fought me tooth and nail to stay, and Rosetta has already reamed me out because of it. Can we skip ahead?” I heard a huge sigh from Tags and decided to take advantage of his disbelief at my stupidity or carelessness or whatever, to finish the main reason I’d called him. “Anyway,” I said. “This radio silence is particularly irksome because Sister Smile and her tribe have broken camp from south of Lancaster, and apparently decided to take their show on the road. This is made even more troubling by the fact that they have been gorging themselves on...”

  “Holy crap on a cracker,” Tags breathed. “The demon-blood fueled cannibals are out on the road? Just running amok? And Walter hasn’t heard a peep about them?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. They shouldn’t have the juice to be able to block him. I mean, when they were just humans gnawing on other humans, they didn’t make it on Walter’s radar, but now that demons are involved... Walter might not be able to tell who they are, but they should still leave enough traces behind for him to be able to tell there’s something there. But absolute silence?” A horrifying thought had just occurred to me. “Tags, can Walter be possessed?” There was a silence and I felt fear creeping down my hairline along with fine beads of sweat.

  I heard a satisfied sigh and the slosh of liquid.

  “Are you drinking?” I asked Tags.

  “So?” Tags said. “It’s my dead brother’s birthday. Am I not allowed to celebrate on his behalf?”

  Tags wasn’t drunk but he was definitely tipsy. I tried again. “Tags, can Walter be possessed?”

  “Nah,” Tags said. “Harbingers are immune to the ‘Heaven and Hell’ crap. I don’t think they’re immune to everything and all the regular stuff can interfere with their seeing if it’s skilled enough. But for the most, they’re pretty inpentrib...inpervion…”

  “Impenetrable. Impervious, got it,” I said. “Could Walter have lost his, you know, edge? Skills?”

  “Bane, sometimes I swear you have shit for brains,” Tags said and I could tell the alcohol was starting to flood his bloodstream. I needed to move this along, but Tags wasn’t done yet. “Harbingers are born Harbingers and they die Harbingers. They don’t retire or just ‘lose’ their stuff. Maybe if you knew this shit, Gary wouldn’t….” He trailed off.

  “Be dead,” I finished for him. “I know. Thanks for the help, Tags. Make sure and take some aspirin before going to bed.”

  I heard him sob and I hung up. There was a fresh wound in my gut, thinking about Tags and Gary and all the damage I’d done there. I couldn’t even do my ‘do-over life’ without causing disastrous bullshit.

  “Who was that,” Noah yawned beside me, sitting up and wiping the drool off his chin with his shirt.

  “Tags,” I said. “I wanted to see if he’d heard anything.”

  “Had he?” Noah asked.

  I shook my head. “No, but for what it’s worth, according to Tags, the silence isn’t Walter’s fault.”

  Noah shrugged. “Good news for Walter, I guess.”

  We were quiet for a while as we headed north. I checked my rearview every now and then to make sure the black mustang was keeping up with us.

  “Bane,” Noah said after a while. “How do you know all this stuff?” I turned to look at him. “I mean about Pucas and demons and Rawheads,” Noah said.

  “Learned it after completely screwing up multiple times and realizing that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I learned it from other hunters who were kind enough to show me what was what. Mostly learned by asking,” I said.

  “And now we’re going to see a Druid,” Noah said. “Which is probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever said out loud.”

  Kildare was a sleepy town of seven hundred. There was one church, one bar, one school, and one Celt Druid. Kess made her living as a park ranger by day. She left her house every day in the polyester khaki uniform, complete with the park ranger hat and hiking boots. She would check-in at the park office in the uniform, check-out in the uniform, and go into her house at the end of the day in the uniform. But the rest of the time, Kess Dorfin was buck-naked. At least, so I’d been told by every hunter who had ever needed to drop by her place to ask for advice.

  The park she worked at even had a recent urban legend of a deer woman who stalked hikers. This was how Kess’ daytime activities sans clothes were discovered. Fletcher Higgins was the first hunter to go after the deer woman, only to find it was just Kess, on her lunch break, naked and communing with nature, deep in the woods. When Vix and Sprig had first appeared on my radar, I’d been bitching about Vix while I was at Pitch’s Flask and Civ Wiggins, another hunter, had told me I was probably dealing with a Puca and then pointed me towards Kess. The first time I’d set foot in Kess’ house and had seen her sitting naked and cross-legged on her living room floor, under her skylight, wearing her crown of antlers and a smile, I thought I’d been punked.

  It was close to five am by the time we rolled into Kildare. Houses lined the two-lane highway that shot through town and acted as their main street. I took the side street that wound around the school and the park behind it and turned down the dirt lane that led to Kess’ front door. Her house was an old two-story white Tudor, with moss growing up the sides and across the roof. The roof itself was buckling under the weight of fallen tree branches, bird nests, a decade worth of leaves, and god-knew-what-else.

  The summer sun was painting the horizon blood red when I parked Lucy to the side, leaving the space right next to Kess’ Jeep open for Sprig and Vix. Noah and I climbed out of Lucy and stood, helplessly watching Sprig run around to the passenger side door and pull Vix out of the car. He carried her in his arms, holding her tightly, as she struggled against him. Noah hurried to close the car door behind him and I hustled up the stairs and leaned on Kess’ doorbell.

  The door was thrown open and I felt both Sprig and Noah take a big step backward behind me.

  “Good morning Kess,” I said, reaching to open the screen door. It was locked. I looked up at her, trying to keep my gaze on her bright green eyes and silver-blonde hair. I focused on what looked like a moth climbing one of her locks and said. “We need some help.”

  “That,” Kess began, her floaty voice an octave higher than I remembered. “Is just the beginning of your needs. What destruction do you carry?”

  I frowned. “I’m not armed. I left my guns in the car.”

  “Weapons of metal are mere pebbles in the wake of the destruction you bear.”

  I sighed. “Look, Kess, can you just let us in?” I turned to look back at Sprig who was holding Vix to him as tightly as he could to keep her from head-butting him. She was fighting against the sheets and Sprig was desperately trying not to lose his hold and drop her. “These are the Pucas I was telling you about,” I said, motioning to Sprig. “This is Sprig and his sister Vix.” I motioned to the silk sheet cocoon. “Vix is really sick. We need your help.”

  Kess’ face didn’t change. She didn’t blink, which was another creepy habit of hers. She just leaned forward, unlocked the door, and stepped back. I jerked it open and ushered Sprig inside, followed by Noah who kept his eyes focused on the floor. I stepped inside and was hit in the face with what felt like a handful of
dirt.