by D V Wolfe
“I want this mother fucker,” I growled.
Stacks turned to look at me. “I mean, I’m not surprised, but you seem a little more ‘this time it’s personal’ than you usually get about these things.”
I dug in my pocket and pulled out Festus’ tooth. I handed it to Stacks. “He killed Festus.”
“Shit,” Stacks breathed, looking at the tooth.
“They all did. I don’t give a shit right now if they are humans. I want them dead,” I said. I turned to look at Stacks. “Did you get anything off the video that might help track them?”
“Like what? License plate numbers?” Stacks asked.
I shrugged. “I’m sure they’re fake or stolen, but in case one of them gets pulled over, can you program something so it would let you know if those tag numbers are run anywhere in the U.S. by law enforcement?”
Stacks paused and nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think I could do that.”
I nodded and moved towards the edge of the bed. There was an angry heat in my chest that wouldn’t go away. “Thanks for calling, Stacks,” I said. “This changes some things.” I glanced back at the screen and stared at the paused image of that smirk, a finger sliding across his tongue.
Stacks had programming to do and when Noah got back from the bathroom, we saw ourselves out and headed back to the truck. It was almost noon and I looked over at Noah when we loaded up. “You hungry?”
“Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be hungry again after that.”
I nodded and turned the engine over. “I give you about as far as Dayton before you’re ready for some grub.”
“No bet,” Noah muttered. “I know myself too well.” He sighed. “Aw, man.”
I looked over at him. “What?”
Noah turned to look at me, an expression of pure remorse on his face. “ I forgot to get in that parting shot on ‘old Willy’.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “I’m sure you’ll get another chance.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Noah muttered. He shook his head and stared out the window as I moved us through Messina along back roads. That twisted, smirking face. I couldn’t get it out of my head.
“I guess that’s who that guy was talking about,” Noah said.
I turned to look at him. “What guy?”
Noah looked sick again as he turned to face me. “The guy, at the campground with the…,” he put a hand to his stomach and pulled it away, indicating his guts falling out.
“Noah, you could have just said ‘the guy at the campground’, there was only one of them.”
Noah glared at me. “He said, ‘he blessed the offerings’ and ‘he ignited us’.”
“You think he was talking about blood-thirsty Lurch in the white sports jacket?” I asked.
Noah shrugged. “It would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
The dying man’s words replayed in my head. He’d been trying to say something at one point. Mast. Mast. “I think you’re right, Noah,” I said. He turned to look at me. “I think at one point, Mr. Disembowelment might have been trying to say ‘Master’.”
Noah shook his head. “So where does all of this leave us?”
“Well, Sister Smile was strong, but her power really, when I think about it, came from the tribe following her orders. She didn’t have to be physically strong. She had the fear of those under her to keep her in her position.”
“But Lurch,” Noah said.
I nodded. “I never saw Sister Smile snap a neck, let alone do it with so little effort.”
“Do...do you think he’s not a human?” Noah asked.
I didn’t know how to answer that, so Noah’s question just hung in the air between us as we drove. A few minutes later, my cell phone started ringing, making us both jump. That face, smirking at the camera had been invading my vision, every time I blinked. I almost wished Rosetta’s pills weren’t so damn good this time. Having the citizens of Ashley to distract me would have almost been a relief, trading guilt for this gut-churning rage. I could feel my short temper and when I looked at the caller ID screen on the phone and saw that the number was blocked, I felt the heat rising, ready to boil over on Gabe. If he had such a fancy blood magic link, why hadn’t he figured out that there had been a coup, dethroning Sister Smile?
“Go to hell, Gabe,” I yelled at the phone.
There was a pause.
“Wow,” the voice laughed and I could almost smell the suntan lotion through the phone. “Are you back with Gabe?”
I sighed. “Hi, Joel. No. What do you want?”
“I can feel the warm fuzzies from here,” Joel said. “So you just assumed I was Gabe, the blast from your past?”
“Long story,” I said. “Was there a reason you called?”
Now it was Joel’s turn to hesitate.
“Joel?” I asked.
“I know you’re really busy and you’ve got your own shit to deal with and now apparently, Gabe Helsin,” Joel began.
“Gonna stop you there,” I said. “Gabe Helsin is not in my life.”
I could almost hear Joel’s smile over the phone and I really wanted to hang up on him, but I knew Joel wouldn’t have called me without a reason. We’d been together for three weeks over a year ago but we’d both gone into it as friends and came out of it as friends. He was a good guy and he knew why I was here, and that I had a clock ticking on me. He hadn’t put any pressure on me for it to be any kind of a commitment.
“Oh buckaroo,” Joel said. I rolled my eyes at Joel’s nickname for me, which he thought was so original when he learned I was from Kansas. “You are in it so deep,” he finished.
“If you mean supernatural shit, then yes.”
“Whoa,” Joel said. “What’s happening on your end.”
I sighed. “We’re trying to track a tribe of cannibals who killed my accountant and have been snacking on demons, a Puca I know is suffering from ‘will sickness’ and you probably already noticed, but Walter hasn’t been making any weather reports.”
“Is he sick?” Joel asked, my last statement apparently being the first that landed with him.
“Nope,” I said. “I called and talked to him. He said he just hadn’t seen anything in the last day and a half. A ‘clear horizon’ he said.”
“That can’t be good,” Joel said.
“Agreed,”
“So with the other stuff, you’re probably pretty busy at the moment…” Joel said, his voice pre-prepped for disappointment, it seemed.
“Not really,” I said. “I currently have no way to track the cannibals. Stacks is working on it but I’m almost hoping for some kind of breaking news. They broke their longtime camp south of Lancaster and with Walter on the bench, I have no way to find out what’s out there to hunt at the moment unless another hunter calls to tell me.”
“Oh,” Joel said and I could almost hear his surfer posture straightening up. “So you might have time to help me with a little problem?”
“As long as this isn’t a pick up line,” I said, trying to suppress a smile.
“Oh come on,” Joel said. “My pick up lines are much better than that...and it’s never a ‘little’ problem I’m having...”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” I said to him, rolling my eyes. “So what’s your ‘little problem’?”
“Bugbears,” Joel said, his tone changing to all-business.
“Bedbugs?” I asked, wondering if I’d heard him wrong.
“What? No. Bugbears, the hobgoblins,” Joel said.
“Hobgoblins,” I said, deadpan.
“Yes,” Joel said.
“And why do you need help?” I asked.
I heard Joel heave a heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “Because they’re quick.”
“And they have a lower center of gravity than you?” I asked. “Joel, they’re fae. Just throw them in a sack and cross a river with them or play tag something made of iron.”
“You don’t understand,” Joel said. “You said a Puca you know has ‘will sic
kness’?”
“Yeah,” I said, slowly. I didn’t like where this was going.
“Did it turn them into a murder machine?” Joel asked.
“No,” I said. “She had three innocents locked in a bathroom with her but instead of blood bathing, she started attacking herself.”
“So she resisted killing,” Joel said. “So resistance is possible.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But Bugbears aren’t quite as sentient as Pucas, so why do you ask?”
“Because I’m in Sparta, Alabama and there are six dead kids. All with broken necks and bite marks.”
“Shit,” I said. “Well, that clinches it that something is blocking Walter. Otherwise, he should have seen this. How did you stumble across it?”
“I saw it on the news,” Joel said. “The police think it’s a serial killer.”
“And you’re sure that it’s Bugbears?” I asked.
“I found scratch marks on the trees. They’re the fae symbols of ownership the bugbears put on new territory. I can’t find the den though. I think it’s in the woods behind the school,” Joel said. “But the woods are huge and trying to keep an eye out to make sure no more kids wander into the woods, makes it hard to also search them. Do you have time to lend a hand?”
“Where is Sparta?” I asked, glancing at a road sign as we passed it.
“About an hour and a half south of Birmingham,” Joel said.
I pulled the phone away from my face to look at the time.
“We’re about eight hours out,” I said. “You’re buying dinner.”
“Gladly,” Joel said. “There’s a diner on Main Street, just look for my Subaru.”
11
I hung up with Joel and turned to look at Noah.
He groaned. “Who’s Joel and where are we going now? I heard you say something about bears and eight hours.”
“Bugbears,” I said, changing lanes and taking the south off-ramp. “We’re headed to Sparta, Alabama.”
“What the hell is a ‘bugbear’?” Noah asked.
“It’s a kind of fae,” I said.
“Like Vix and Sprig?”
I nodded. “Kind of, but a lot less human. They usually show up in the form of these smaller bears. Usually, they screw with a human here or there, but Joel said that six kids have already been killed by the ones in Sparta. He’s found the fae claiming symbols scratched into the trees in the woods behind a school. He just needs a hand.”
Noah sat up straighter. “They’re killing kids?”
I nodded. “Not a typical move for Bugbears.”
“Why are they doing it then?” Noah asked.
“Not sure,” I said. Between Sister Smile being dethroned, the cannibals eating demons which they should have never have been able to do, Walter not having his visions, and Vix’s sickness, nothing seemed to be acting like it should.
“Do you think it’s related to Vix and the ‘will sickness’?” Noah asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think it’s a good hypothesis.”
The phone on the seat between us rang and I flipped it open.
“Hello.”
“Well, it’s good to hear that you didn’t let your lack of self-preservation instincts get you killed.”
Nya. Finally.
“Where have you been?” I asked Nya, and even I could feel the pent up fear and annoyance in my voice.
“Sorry,” Nya sighed. “I’ve been going from libraries to occultists, to some pretty unsavory places, trying to find something, anything that would give me a money-back guarantee on killing this demon that’s after you.”
I took a breath. She was alive and she sounded fine. “We have something that will work,” I said.
“What?!”
“Yeah,” I continued, breathing deep, preparing to rip the band-aid off. She was going to be pissed, but like Rosetta, if you wanted to get a word in edgewise, you did it first and you did it fast before they could build up a head of steam and rip you a new one. “We used it to kill some demons in St. Louis. Apparently, there was a demon there called Scratch that was the personal valet for the Duke…”
“You fucking went to St. Louis after I told you not to?!” She screeched.
“Hang on,” I said. “Technically you didn’t forbid me from going…”
“I don’t fucking care, Bane,” Nya said. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”
“Well I didn’t,” I snapped. “And I killed Scratch and the Duke didn’t rise. So he’s not topside to come kill me and he still has my contract.”
“Wow,” Nya said, all the anger fading from her voice. “Oh well, how were you supposed to know that if you killed this Scratch demon, the dick with your contract wouldn’t be able to rise?”
“I did know,” I said.
“And you still killed the demon who could do the rising and bring you face-to-face for a showdown to get your soul back?”
I glanced over at Noah. “Yeah.”
“Why?” Nya asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The fact is, the big baddie isn’t rising and everything as far as what I have to do, is still the same. Well, except for Sister Smile’s tribe showing up with a new Sheriff in town and chowing down on all the other demons.”
“Wait,” Nya said. “What? Hold on.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a long story. Somehow Sister Smile’s crew tracked me to St. Louis. They took Festus but didn’t try to come inside the warehouse to get the rest of us. Then later, when we were dealing with the demons, they showed up and took all of them.”
“What do you mean ‘took’?” Nya asked.
“Bodies missing, blood sprayed everywhere like a Tarantino film and smears all the way to the front door. The blood curdled on the salt tape at the entrance. And Noah and I just went to see Stacks and we looked at some security camera footage from that night. Apparently, Sister Smile has been dethroned and this big, bald behemoth has taken over the tribe.”
“Sister Smile isn’t running the tribe?” Nya asked. “Wait and who’s Noah?”
I hesitated. Nya was going to react just like Rosetta so I decided on a white lie. “He helped out on the hunt in St. Louis. He’s been going on the last couple of hunts with me.” I glanced over at Noah who was sitting up straighter in his seat, trying not to smile and turning to look out the passenger side window.