by C. C. Mahon
“I’m sorry, really. But I fail to see what I can do to help you. I sell beer and cocktails. I don’t find missing people.”
“But when your bartender and waitress went missing,” interjected Mother Dragon, “you intervened. You rescued your waitress and decapitated your bartender’s murderer. You found them.”
“I…a wizard found my waitress,” I said, “and a cop tracked down the murderer.”
“But you decapitated her!” insisted Mother Dragon. “A Valkyrie!”
“Yes, all right,” I said. “But this case doesn’t involve decapitating someone, does it?”
I looked them over one by one, looking for an answer. I had no intentions of fighting another psychopathic goddess, and I had even less intentions of cutting off more heads. The one I had detached still haunted my nights.
“Our loved ones didn’t disappear on their own,” said the third biker who hadn’t spoken up until now. “We found Kitty’s bike. It had been in an accident, probably hit by a semi or a big 4X4. There were traces of blood. But no signs of Kitty. That was a week ago. If he was injured, he would have had plenty of time to heal. We’re not asking you to decapitate anyone. We know how to do that. But we looked everywhere, sniffed in every corner, and we didn’t find anything. We need a…uh…an outside opinion, I guess.”
“Adam gets home every night at seven,” said Mother Dragon. “And if he’s going to be late, he calls us. He would never go three days without contacting us.”
I let out a sigh of frustration. “I’m sorry,” I said, “really. I don’t see how I can help you. Leave me copies of the pictures and your phone numbers. I can ask around the club. If you want, I can ask the wizard who helped me if he can give you a quote or work pro bono. But other than that…” I spread my arms in a sign of helplessness. Their faces closed off.
“Very well,” said Father Dragon, “we understand. Thank you for your time.”
He wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulders and led her to the exit. The young succubus hesitated for a moment before turning around, her phone in hand. She approached a table and showed them her sister’s picture. I saw heads shaking from left to right.
The bikers stayed leaning against the bar, as if they were too overwhelmed to decide to move.
I poured three beers. “On the house,” I said. “I truly am sorry.”
I took another glass from the sink and went back to cleaning.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” said biker number one. “It’s us. We should’ve known it wasn’t going to work. But with all the stories we’ve heard about you…”
“What stories?”
“It’s not every day we see a goddess, even in Vegas. So a crazy goddess who’s killing members of the community, it makes some noise. And when we learned someone had settled the score…” He shrugged and went back to his beer.
“Everyone felt relieved,” finished biker number three.
“We thought there was finally a sheriff in town,” added biker number two. “Someone looking out for the little guy.”
“But you,” I said, “you’re metamorphs. Can’t you help each other out?”
“We’re a small pack. Pumas aren’t known for wanting to live in groups.”
“Okay, but what about the other packs? The coyotes, for example?”
The three metamorphs in front of me hissed.
“Let’s just say the packs don’t get along,” said one of them.
“We tolerate each other to keep from slaughtering each other,” added the other. “For the rest, it’s everyone for themselves.”
“What does Kitty’s family think?” I asked.
“We haven’t contacted them.”
“Why not?”
“Kitty is from outside the city. If his family shows up in Vegas pissed off because one of their own has gone missing…the coyotes won’t accept it. And we’ll be the ones who pay for it. No, we’ll deal with it ourselves.”
They drained their glasses, thanked me, and left, heads and shoulders slumped. The young succubus finished up her round of the bar and left not long after the bikers.
I stayed behind my counter, a bitter aftertaste in the back of my throat. I continued to clean my glass as if it had personally insulted me. A few minutes later, a new voice made me jump.
“Something bothering you?”
I lowered my eyes to the shards of glass between my hands before turning towards the new individual.
Lola King was a cop and one hundred percent human. Two reasons why she stood out in my club for supernatural creatures. But she had helped me stop my bartender’s murderer permanently, and for that, she had earned the right to drink for free when she wanted to.
I threw the glass shards in the trash before answering her. “Apparently people are saying I’m the new sheriff in town.”
Lola’s thin eyebrows raised towards her blonde hairline.
“Three supernaturals disappeared recently,” I said, “and their families came to ask me to find them.”
“Hey, that’s my job!”
“That’s what I told them. But they have no faith in the police. They don’t want to attract the attention of humans.”
“Supernaturals don’t have their own police force?”
“I guess not.”
She frowned. “How has a community settled here without organizing in an official capacity?”
“There are clans and various groups,” I said.
“Like the Sorcerer’s Guild?”
“Yes. But the Guild charges for their services, and they’re not accessible to everyone.”
“And other than that, there’s no officials, no community services?”
“There’s Customs.”
“What? What does customs have to do with this?”
“No, ‘capital C Customs.’ It’s a supernatural organization. But no one has been able to explain to me what they do or even who they are. From what I can gather, their mission is ‘important,’ and they ‘deal with quotas, not people.’”
“An immigration service?”
I shrugged. “All I know is that I’m not a detective,” I said in conclusion.
“If you want, I can take a look,” offered Lola. “Who’s gone missing?”
“A biker named Kitty, a succubus called Patricia, and a dragon named Adam.”
Lola looked at me in silence. Her perfectly neutral expression didn’t betray any emotions. Then she blurted, “Seriously?”
“You accompanied a vampire, a harpy, and a wizard to fight a Valkyrie and a pack of meta-coyotes. Don’t tell me you’re shocked by a dragon and a succubus.”
“But the biker, do they really call him Kitty?”
I poured us two cocktails—Green Ghosts, my specialty.
“What about you?” I said. “What’s new at the Las Vegas PD?”
Lola pouted. “That old bastard Dale managed to get himself promoted.”
Oliver Dale was a detective like Lola. I had actually met him at the same time as I’d met Lola. But unlike her, I didn’t trust Dale. It might have been because of the scar that crossed his eye and kept distracting me whenever I talked to him in person. Or his strange ability to look exactly where I was standing when I was hiding behind an illusion. Or the bizarre questions that he’d come to ask me just after I’d decapitated the Valkyrie…
Lola was explaining to me that Dale, who had just gotten to Vegas, should have never even made the list of candidates for this promotion. “It’s not like I was expecting to get the job,” she said. “I’m a woman, and young at that. It will be a long time before someone takes me seriously. But there were at least three people with enough seniority and experience to do the job. And it’s this guy who came out of nowhere who gets it. Safe to say, he didn’t make any friends.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “If he’s not your partner anymore, he’ll finally leave you alone.”
“You’re kidding? He’s my direct superior now.”
I poured her a vodka.
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“But I won’t let them push me around!” declared Lola after her second vodka. “And my first act of resistance will be to investigate your lost kittens. Go ahead, give me the names.”
I felt heat rise into my cheeks, and it had nothing to do with the alcohol.
“I didn’t think to get their last names,” I admitted. “And they didn’t want to leave me their numbers.”
Lola looked at me with pity before shaking her head. “With a sheriff like you, Vegas isn’t out of the woods yet.”
5
I didn’t used to have nightmares before.
Then I met Callum, and the nightmare lasted two whole years, night and day alike. After, when I ran, I found out touching the sword kept the worst dreams at bay. Like a blankie. A metal blankie that blithely cut through my bedding—but never harmed me.
After having spent the night working behind the bar, taking a quick shower, and having a bite to eat, I fell deeply asleep, one hand on the sword. The dream started immediately. I was floating over unclear terrain: lots of sand, thorn bushes, concrete streets. It looked like an abandoned airfield. The morning sun was casting shadows on the landscape. In those shadows, something was breathing. Curious, I floated over to discover a wolf hiding behind some brush. Laying under the bush, his gray fur blended into the shadows, and his ears perked up. A little further, there was a second animal, then a third. They smelled of humid air and the forest under the snow.
Something shivered in the air. Another odor: fresh grass. The coyotes arrived without a sound, scattered. From above, they looked like dogs with beige and tawny fur.
A call sounded from outside my field of vision, a coyote howl that ended in a yelp of pain. The wolves immediately jumped out from their hiding places. There was more of them than I had thought: six, maybe more. The agile bodies dashed through the bushes, and the battle started.
The wolves were much bigger than the coyotes. Their heads were wider, which meant their jaws were stronger. Their furs ranged from charcoal black to snow white, going through every shade of gray in between.
The air filled with growls and yelps of pain. Soon the smell of blood took over the others as the wolves sunk their teeth into the coyotes’ supple bodies.
A coyote, tall on his legs but gaunt, found himself pinned under the weight of three wolves. The wolves’ jaws closed down on the neck, the trachea, and the shoulders of the coyote. In the victim’s bulging eyes, I could make out the pain, the fear, and the certainty that death was imminent. It was too much for me. I descended on the group, with as much ease as if I was a bird or a specter.
I realized I was holding my sword when it caught fire. The wolves let go of their prey and jumped back. I set foot next to the coyote, determined to hold back the aggressors. I shoved my flaming sword under their noses, and they backed up, like wild beasts terrified by fire. But as soon as I turned my back on them, I felt them encroaching. I turned around just in time to stop a gray wolf from biting through my legs. My sword gashed his cheek, and he backed up with a yelp of pain mixed with surprise.
The injured coyote was pretty banged up. The wolves knew it, too. They refused to give up their victory. They circled me, each one jumping at me one at a time to bite me, tire me out, and divide my attention. And if I didn’t put a stop to it quickly, they were going to succeed.
I picked out the biggest and most aggressive wolf of the bunch, a beast with anthracite gray fur that must have weighed one and a half times my weight. When he threw himself forward, I did the same, sword pointed towards him. My blade slid along his throat, piercing his fur from throat to shoulder. The smell of charred flesh and singed fur filled my nostrils. The wolf yelped in pain.
Unfortunately for me, the movement brought the monster’s mouth far too close to my face. His breath brushed my skin. His jaw opened, revealing teeth worthy of a museum. My arm was stretched too far; my sword whipped at nothing. The monster was going to bite off half my face…
I switched my grip on the handle of the sword and used the pommel to hit the wolf on the side of the head. Bone cracked. The wolf’s eyes rolled back into its head. I twisted to try to avoid the collision and felt myself fly.
I sometimes flew in my dreams. I had even started this one flying over unclear terrain. But this time, I felt my muscles contract between my shoulder blades. I felt my wings unfurl, push against the air, and propel me backwards, far from the monster and its sharp teeth.
The wolf fell to the ground with a thud. His counterparts jumped back. I was floating…no, flying several feet above them. They looked in every direction and sniffed the air, as if they couldn’t see me.
A flap of my wings propelled me a couple dozen feet above the scene, high enough to see that around us the other fighters had not backed off. Groups of frenzied coyotes were going after isolated wolves all over the place. In other places, the wolves had the upper hand. The smell of blood and the sounds of fights made me nauseous. I wanted it all to stop.
I descended on a group at random and hit the backs of the coyotes with one strike of the sword. The cries of pain and surprise replaced the growls. A flap of wings propelled me over another group that I hit the same way. My attacks were imprecise and superficial. I was looking above all to distract the wolves and the coyotes from their prey, to scare them, to discourage them.
The coyote that I had defended was once again suffering the assaults of his tormentors. I presented them with several blows of the sword, raising myself in the air after each assault, with the satisfaction of seeing the wolves’ jaws close on nothing when they tried to retaliate.
I was not only flying, but I was invisible, and I could hit who I wanted when I wanted…The feeling of power made my head spin, making me want to laugh and dance. I executed a fierce choreography of slashes and flaps of wings that filled the air with the odors of burnt flesh and singed fur and above all the smell of ozone.
The yelps of pain and the groans of frustration made up a joyous melody to my ears, until a short call imposed silence.
The individual that had just sounded the retreat was a coyote, mounted on elevated terrain. His tawny fur was marked with gray on the shoulders. I had already seen him in real life: it was Max. In a few moments, and in absolute silence, the coyotes went back where they came from. Several were limping badly. Their leader left the battlefield last. On their end, the wolves executed a similar retreat. The first police sirens sounded in the distance.
A yelp of pain resounded. Two wolves hadn’t obeyed their leader’s signal. Staying behind, they had just jumped on a trailing coyote. The coyote seemed badly injured, and he was isolated. He didn’t stand a chance…
My anger reignited my sword’s flame. I descended on the wolves with a roar of rage, slashing their massive backs with swings of my flaming sword. The wolves jumped with surprised yelps, looking for the source of the invisible threat. I was about to settle the score with these vicious beasts…
Suddenly, I felt myself propelled backwards, as if being pulled back by a bungee cord. The coyotes and the wolves were moving away at full speed, the two packs, the unclear terrain…I thought I saw the coyotes rushing over to help their comrade, and…
A rain storm pulled me from my sleep. I sat up with a cry of outrage. I was in my bed. I brandished my sword, engulfed in flames. And the fire prevention system had been set off.
“All right, I get it!” I yelled to cover the sound of the alarm piercing my ears. “Shut it off.”
The alarm turned off, but the rain continued to soak my bed and little old me. It wasn’t coming from sprinklers installed on the ceiling but from a dark gray cloud floating six feet above my bed. I cursed the Sorcerers’ Guild and their security systems. Which did nothing to stop the downpour.
With an effort of will I extinguished my sword’s flame. My sheets had caught on fire, and I smothered the flames that the water hadn’t extinguished yet. It only stopped raining in my apartment once they were.
I rid myself of my sheets and got out of be
d. The mattress had started to catch fire, and it wouldn’t have taken much for me to go up in smoke, like a little old lady who fell asleep with her cigarette.
I examined the rest of my bed, then the sword that I was still holding, before thinking to check if I was injured.
My shirt was singed, but the fire hadn’t had time to reach my skin. I revised my judgement of the Guild. Without the wizards, I wouldn’t have come out of it as well as I did.
I put the sword back in its casing, took off my wet T-shirt, and grabbed a towel to dry myself.
Only my bed was wet. The rest of the apartment hadn’t suffered any damage.
The sun was beaming through the large skylights. It must have been around noon. I got dressed, made myself a double cup of coffee, and let myself sink into my sofa.
I could have died in the flames. Because of my sword. No, because of my nightmare.
I didn’t normally have such vivid dreams when I slept with my sword. It was actually why I had started sleeping with it, holding it against me. It acted as a blankie, reassured me, and kept my worst nightmares at bay. Until today.
6
It was an ordinary night at the club. Something in the atmosphere bugged me, but I wasn’t able to put my finger on it.
It was still early according to my clientele—supernaturals lived at night. The usual mix of mythical creatures and more or less magically skilled humans were talking nervously in small groups. Barbie was working and moved with agility between the tables despite her big red harpy wings. Matteo was hidden away in the kitchen, as was his usual. Up top, Nate filtered the people coming in. Everything was going well in my little world. Then Max and Jenny arrived.
Those two were regulars. Max ran a transportation company by day and a clan of coyotes on nights and weekends. Jenny was his second in the clan. They had been there for the death of the Valkyrie—they had even had a decisive role. And then they had eaten her. I should have been grateful to them, but I couldn’t help but feel nauseous every time I thought about it. Seeing them approach, I told myself that if anyone could claim side effects post-Valkyrie, it was them. Then the light hit their faces and my thoughts took a completely different turn.