Fields of Blood (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 2) (14 page)

Unfortunately, I did understand. But that didn’t help me. We had to find Sadie, before Milus Dei could. And they obviously already knew the location of the werewolf bunker. “You don’t have any idea?” I said.

“I don’t
want
an idea.” She sighed and leaned against the open door of the cell. “But I can point you to someone who probably does.”

“Who?”

“Chester Rigby.” A frown tightened her mouth, as if just saying the name was bad news. “He’s…well, frankly, he’s nuts. Comes from a long line of local crazies, tinfoil hat conspiracy types. But he’s not always wrong, and he’s been all over the King.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Elvis?”

A startled laugh escaped her. “Forgot who I was talking to for a minute,” she said. “King Whistler Mountain, the one that path you were trying to use leads up. Queen Whistler’s on the other side of town. Chester’s about the only one in town who’s gone up the mountain and come back down.”

Well, a crazy conspiracy nut who may or may not know something was better than nothing. “Thank you,” I said. “Can you tell us how to find him?”

“I’ll give you his address. Just don’t tell him I sent you, or he won’t talk to you.”

“Got it.” I closed my eyes briefly. “So I know I’m probably pushing my luck here, but I don’t suppose you’ve got a few extra men’s shirts? And…a spare vehicle?”

The sheriff scrubbed a hand down her face. “I must be as crazy as Chester,” she murmured. “You can take the station Jeep, I guess. We just use it for banging around the back roads, so it’s not in great shape. But you have to promise you’ll find out what happened to the missing people.”

Taeral coughed deliberately and shot me a warning look. I knew what he was trying to say—promises were dangerous things. I wasn’t sure if the same rules applied to me, since I was only half Fae, but I knew there’d be some kind of consequence if I didn’t keep it.

Unfortunately, this was the only option.

“All right,” I said. “I promise.”

C
HAPTER 20

C
hester Rigby lived at the far end of Elk Heights, on a road that was identified as Access Road B-7. Sheriff Gormann would only explain that no one else lived on the road, and that we couldn’t miss the place. Especially in broad daylight.

At least we hadn’t been unconscious all day. But any time we lost now was too much.

It was a little after noon when we set out to find the town nutcase. As warned, the Jeep was not in great shape. Cramped open cab with no roof, dead shocks, and steering with the responsiveness of a boulder. The badly maintained roads didn’t help, especially when they stopped being paved and went to gravel, and then dirt. Access Road B-7 was little more than an overgrown four-wheeler path.

Taeral rode with his eyes closed, hitching a sharp breath every time the clattering vehicle caught a bump or a pothole.

“So, what’s the deal with mandrake?” I said. “Is it the same as cold iron?”

He winced. “It is more of a drug,” he said slowly. “Some Fae use it deliberately, in very small amounts.”

“For what?”

“To…enhance.”

“Er.” That kind of sounded like a sex thing. “Do I want to know what it enhances?”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “Unfortunately, that as well,” he said, like he knew what I was thinking. He had said before that he was a little bit psychic. “A single drop of mandrake oil intensifies all sensation. Every sight, sound and taste, every touch. Pleasure…and pain.”

“Jesus Christ,” I rasped. “And you got dosed with a lot more than a drop.”

“Aye.”

I gave an involuntary shudder. Now I really didn’t blame him for hating Reun. I’d seen how he reacted to the smallest cut with mandrake in his system, and I’d been extremely careful getting the bullet out. I couldn’t even imagine how more serious injuries would feel—like the ones that left those scars on his back.

“You can heal from this stuff, right?” I said. “I mean, not to be an alarmist or anything, but you really don’t seem like you’re getting better.”

“I’ll improve, once the moon rises.”

“I hope so.” I slowed the Jeep to a crawl and babied it over a series of deep ruts, gritting my teeth against the jostling. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be much longer until we found the nutcase. This was agony for Taeral, and I was still feeling the effects of the werewolf beating. They were damned strong—and it made me glad I’d never actually fought Sadie. I had a feeling she’d win. “How does that work, anyway?” I said. “The moon thing. I get werewolves and the moon, I guess…but what does it have to do with the Fae?”

A distant expression crossed Taeral’s face. “In Arcadia, the moon is far brighter than its reflection in this realm,” he said. “And it is eternal.”

“Um. Eternal how?”

“There is no sun in Arcadia. Only the moon, always.”

“So it’s permanent night there.”

“It is. But never as dark and dreary as the nights in this human shade of existence.” He closed his eyes again. “The Fae spark is tied to the moon, and so in our realm, magic is also eternal,” he said. “But here, there are limitations. That is the advantage of the moonstone… it allows you to access magic, even when the moon is not present to restore your spark.”

That made sense, at least. I knew the pendant acted like a moonlight-powered battery, storing a charge I could use any time. But I had a spark, a limit to how much magic I could use, just like Taeral. And if that ran out, the moonstone wouldn’t do me any good.

It didn’t create magic. Just enhanced it.

I was about to pester Taeral with more questions about magic and Arcadia, when I rounded a curve in the access road and found Chester Rigby’s place.

The sheriff was right. It was impossible to miss.

At first glance, it looked like a junkyard. The dirt path ended ahead, petering out to a sprawling spread of rusted vehicles and assorted machinery—from vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances to TVs, monitors, and computer components. Something that looked like an entire studio soundboard leaned against the shell of an El Camino. A refrigerator propped open with a cement block contained a stack of stereo speakers. There was a compact car resting on its roof, tires pointing to the sky, with what looked like a layer of CDs glued shiny-side-up to the undercarriage. A few roughly built sheds sprang up here and there among the junk, and a two-story barn stood at the back of the property, in the shadow of the King.

But the centerpiece of the place was a vehicle I hated instinctively—a silver Airstream camper.

At least it didn’t look much like Orville and Reba Valentine’s traveling house of misery. If I wasn’t familiar with the model, I wouldn’t have recognized the Airstream under the reinforced steel siding, the metal plates bolted over the windows, and the hardware bristling from the roof. I counted ten satellite dishes and at least twenty-five antennae of varying shapes and sizes.

I pulled off the access road at an angle, pointing the nose of the Jeep toward the camper. With a place like this, I would’ve expected a truckload of posted notices and No Trespassing signs, but I hadn’t seen any.

I realized why when a hinged hatch in the middle of the camper door lifted, and a double-barreled shotgun poked out.

C
HAPTER 21

“I
know what you are,” a voice shouted from behind the shotgun. “And you’re not taking me back to your ship!”

Before I could say
what ship
, the gun went off.

The shot plowed the ground a few feet in front of the Jeep, spraying dirt on the windshield and kicking up a cloud of dust. “Go on! Get out of here, aliens!” the voice yelled. “And tell your friends if anybody comes back here, I’ll blow ’em to pieces!”

I nudged Taeral and raised my arms over my head. With a deep frown, he did the same, and I called, “We’re not—”

“Cyborg aliens!” The shotgun drew back inside.

“Great,” I muttered, putting my arms down. “This is going well.”

Taeral shook his head and lowered his arms. “Perhaps we should track them ourselves,” he said. “If we follow the shuttle path—”

The camper door burst open, and…something jumped out.

Chester Rigby wore a bright yellow hazmat suit, complete with hood and glass faceplate. Some kind of pack was strapped to his back. Aluminum accordion-style hoses connected the pack to a long metal tube that he aimed at us as he approached the Jeep.

“One blast with this’ll fry your circuits.” Chester’s voice was muffled by the suit. He reached awkwardly across his body with a gloved hand and flipped a switch on the pack.

It started humming. Blue-white sparks crackled inside the tube.

“Whoa. We’re not aliens,” I said. “We need your help. Our friend was, uh, kidnapped, and…someone told us you might know where we can find the kidnappers.”

He gestured with the tube. “Who told you that?”

“Um. The voices?”

“If you just came out here to make fun of me, I’m going back for the shotgun.”

“No, that’s not it. I’m sorry.” After a brief internal debate, I decided to go with the truth and hope for the best. “Sheriff Gormann said you could help us find the werewolves.”

Chester didn’t move for a long moment. At last, he lowered the tube, then reached over and turned the switch off. “She would say that,” he mumbled through the suit. “Well, if the werewolves took your friend, I guess you’d better come inside.”

He turned and clomped casually back to the camper. As if people came to ask him about werewolves every day.

“I’m not certain this is a good idea,” Taeral said.

“Tell me about it. But unless you’ve got a better one…”

He sighed. “I suppose I don’t.”

We got out of the Jeep, and followed Chester.

The inside of the camper was just as bizarre as the outside.

Half of it looked normal, more or less. The front end was a small living room with two tattered floral couches, grouped around a scuffed coffee table and facing a big-screen television. Which was hooked to a combo DVD/VCR, a stereo, a cable box, a computer tower, and a police scanner. There was a dining nook behind the living room—just a folding table with two bench seats—then a small kitchen with a sink, stove, dishwasher, three microwaves, and a huge steel safe. The lower cabinets had been replaced with filing cabinets. Loose boards served as countertops.

Everything beyond the kitchen was part security system, part monitoring station, and part mad scientist workshop. Multiple screens, computers and servers, tools and electronic parts and home-built gadgets—and stacks of paper, from standard sheets to newspapers to rolled blueprints.

A heavy black curtain hung across the back of the camper, hiding the last few feet of space. That was where Chester had gone.

Taeral and I sat on the longer of the couches. It wasn’t long before Chester returned, carrying a manila folder in one hand and a black fabric case in the other. Without the hazmat suit, he was a wiry man of average height in black cargo pants and a thermal camouflage shirt. Close to forty, with a buzz cut and a few days’ worth of dark scruff. His skin was tanned leather, the sign of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors.