NOT DEAD YET: A Lucy Hart, DEATHDEALER Novel (Book Two) (9 page)

Jenifer looked over to where her maintenance cart was parked, and the blood and axe still there.  Lucy could see the worry in her eyes before her eyebrows knitted together in a small, perplexed scowl.

“Don’t worry,” Lucy told her.  “I won’t take the bus until we figure out what just happened, okay?”

Jenifer’s expression softened, the look relieved.  “Thank you.  I’d feel better about that.”

“But if it goes on too long, you know your mother is going to come banging on my door.”

“I’ll tell her I saw you and you said you were taking... a little trip to wine country with you super hot fiancé here.”  She wriggled her eyebrows.

Lucy laughed.  She could see more and more of Shirley in her daughter.  “You do that.”

Jenifer peered over her shoulder to find a gaggle of teenagers clustered around the fallen axe and the puddle of blood.

“Get out of there, now!”  And with that she beat feet in their direction, making them scatter like pigeons.

~*~

She’d told what had happened about a hundred times to the police detective heading the investigation.  They’d been at the police station for hours.  Gabriel and Dante hadn’t left her side for a minute, and the police, though they asked many questions, were very, very polite. 

They did say that the homicidal axe boy had no record, not even an identity they could dredge up.  That didn’t sound all that good.  And from the look on Dante’s usually emotionless, dapper face, she saw that that alone was a reason to worry. 

Finally, after Dante politely put his foot down to more questions, they were allowed to leave.  The moment she was out in the dark, cool air of night, she felt better.  Just breathing it in, letting the night into her, anchored her in a way that nothing else did.

Again, another reason to worry.

Dante and Gabriel had come in separate cars, so she rode with Gabriel.  She didn’t know where they were going, but just then she didn’t care.  As long as it wasn’t a Wal-Mart or a police station, she’d be thrilled to be there. 

As soon as she was in the car, and Gabriel angled into the driver’s seat, he said, “So what didn’t you tell the police?”

She blinked at him incredulously as the car idled, but his even gaze at her as they sat there told her he knew better.

Damn him and his observant behavior.

“Well, there was the part where I was moving way faster than I should be able to... again.”

Gabriel looked away as he put the car into drive and started to put distance between them and the police station.  She could tell by the tension in his shoulders that he wasn’t happy about that at all.  They’d already figured it was a vampire related strength—probably from when she’d drunk Vin Tokar’s Blood.

She still shivered inside just thinking about having done that... but it had tasted so sweet, and it had saved her life.

She rolled her eyes and plunged on.  “And I didn’t tell them that it was Abbey who saved me.”

He looked at me bewildered for a beat, and then back to the traffic ahead.  “Abbey?  How?”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but it seems my witchy best friend and neighbor has gotten her black belt in magical Kung Fu.”

She could tell by the way his eye brows crinkled that she had to explain more clearly.  A good education and a career in business didn’t allow for her sweetie’s vocabulary to stray much.

“She used magic to drop a TV monitor on him, just before he tried to chop me in half.”

“Oh,” he said in relief, and then he turned and gave Lucy a startled look.  “Oh... ”

“Yeah.  And though I’m concerned she suddenly has all this power... I guess I have no place to complain.”

Gabriel looked straight ahead, and then took a deep breath.  “What else can your little witch friend do?”

I shook my head.  That was a very good question.    

~*~

Abbey Adams patted the ground down, and replaced the small circle of grass she’d carved out of her grandmother’s lawn.  Her knees were sore; even through the pair of blue jeans she’d changed into: spending nearly an hour kneeling in the dirt took its toll. 

She pulled herself to her feet once again, and marked off twenty steps.  It was the exact spot where her grandmother’s property and Lucy’s grandmother’s property met.  With a groan she hit her knees and pulled the last crocodile tooth from the canvas sack they’d come in.

She’d wanted the bones of a Komodo dragon, something dead that had its lineage and DNA linked to a primordial past.  But the best she could find between the three magic shops she’d journeyed to were the crocodile teeth.  They weren’t as exotic as she’d wanted, but for the spell she’d planned on doing their pedigree would do.  Plus they had been fresh.  The beast had died no more than a month prior.  She’d be hard pressed to find better, especially on such short notice. 

Abbey had decided to install the ward as she watched the police haul the axe-wielding psychopath away.  She needed to know when or if anything hostile came near her friend—or her grandmother—again.  She would be ready for them this time.  She didn’t have many friends... none at all in Four Corners, except for Lucy.  And she’d be damned if anything was going to happen to her.

Abbey still felt guilty about tricking her a couple months back, and accidentally raising every dead body in the graveyard behind their two houses.  She’d almost gotten them both killed, and the implications of over a hundred uncontrolled zombies traipsing around, snacking on her neighbors, made her stomach lurch.  She didn’t know any of them well.  She kept them all at bay with her extreme style and her abrasive personality.

All except Lucy.

Abbey pushed the last crocodile tooth down into the ground until she felt it touch the first she’d buried.  The instant they touched, the magic snapped and she chanted the short yet potent ward she’d learned from a voodoo practitioner she’d met in Sacramento.  She’d taught her to do the spell with dove feathers stuck in tiny balls of a simple dough—hers had been noodle dough.  But Abbey knew her magic better than anyone else.  It was steeped in necromancy, an odd and nightmarish after effect of raising the dead using Lucy’s necromancy.  It had tainted her small talent, and had opened a door that would never close.

She would always be linked to death, to dark magicks.  She accepted this.  But it didn’t make it any easier.  She was the weird girl, so strange that she couldn’t show her face unless it was masked by enough pancake makeup to make her look like an albino.

The spell spun, it pitched in her hand, and railed against her power for an agonizing moment.  It didn’t want to be obedient.  It wanted to be lethal and take its hunger out in blood.  But Abbey didn’t need it to do that.  She needed it to be a warning signal.  So she pushed back against the nearly sentient magic of the ward she’d built, and ground it back down into the teeth she’d planted.  The magic coalesced and then faded, sleeping with one eye open, waiting for something seeking violence to cross its path.

She felt the strength slide out of her and into the ground on which she knelt. She knew that a spell as intricate as this one would cost her more than the usual headache or a bloody nose.  So she wasn’t surprised when she drained.

As the spell paled to nearly nothingness, Abbey heard the scuff of someone’s shoes on her grandmother’s driveway.  She snapped her head in the sound’s direction and almost fell over at the sight of Oz standing there, a warm smile lighting the dark feature of his face.  He wore all black, except for a dark blue t-shirt that sported a white outline logo of Stewie from
The Family Guy.

She gulped in a breath and quickly pocketed the canvas sack that had held the crocodile’s teeth. 

She wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing there.  But she was afraid he’d ask her what she was doing in return.  She was also pretty sure her voice would make that annoying high pitched squeak teen-aged girls the world over made whenever they were around a guy they liked.  And she flatly refused to be one of those girls... even if she really, really liked this guy.

He was tall and exotically handsome, and he made her feel pretty for the first time in her entire life.  He saw through her makeup and bravado, and actually liked what he saw.  Or so that’s what she’d told herself all day, thinking about the moment when their hands had touched as he’d given her his phone number.

She’d almost thrown it away... but she very much wanted to see him again, so she’d committed it to memory before stowing it away in her jewelry box.  The dinky little satin lined kind with a plastic ballerina that popped up and danced in a circle.  Her parents had given it to her on her sixth birthday, and she would never, ever part with it.

With a start she realized she hadn’t said anything, and they’d been standing there, just silently staring at each other. 

I’m such a dork!

She took a breath to say something... what?  She had no idea.  But Oz beat her to it.

“So you’re working some sort of spell, huh?”

Oh shit!
  Abbey turned her head and tried to think up a retort, but stopped herself.  “Who the hell are you?”  It came out more acidic than she’d planned, but he was at her home uninvited, and throwing around knowledge he shouldn’t have been in front of a perfect stranger.  So he was in the wrong, not she.

You could cut the condescension in his voice with a knife.  “I’m Oz.  We met earlier today at the Wal-Mart I work at.”

Abbey was about to snap at him when he cut across her.

“You know, where you dumped a big, honking TV monitor on some psycho-with-an-axe’s head.”

Though she liked him, he was scaring her.  How did he know about magic?  And how could he have guessed that she had worked such things?  He was obviously in the trade, and that alone made him dangerous in her book.  Not to mention she’d just shoved a butt load of her power into the ward she’d just built.  So if he was there for a fight, he’d probably be able to slap her down with little trouble.

But Abbey always carried pre-mixed ampoules of defensive potions on her person.  There was a particularly nasty mace/dust-devil potion in her right boot.  If she could just reach it before he made his move...

Oz held up his hands and backed up a big step.  “I’m not here to fight or anything else you might be thinking.”  He got this devilish grin on his face.  “Well, there are a couple things that I would be most interested in doing with you, but I mean you absolutely no harm.”

Abbey pulled her fingers out of her boot, leaving behind the ampoule of potion.  This was stupid, but she didn’t feel like he was a threat, and something in her told her he wasn’t lying.

Of course that was probably just her hormones talking, and she knew from endless research that most of the world’s problems were caused by hormones.

“Then what exactly are you doing here, in the middle of the night?”  Abbey had started the ward spell at exactly half past eleven, and it had taken the entire witching hour to build the ward and chant the spell.  She’d needed not only the midnight hour, but the peace and quiet it afforded.

“Looking for you.”

That surprised her; though why she had no earthly idea.  “So you just searched all over southern California until you found me.  You should be a private investigator of something.”

“Or a psychic,” he said, his dark brown eyes piercing her straight through.  “I felt you out, sort of.”

Psychic... and he felt me out... talk about creepy.

He looked over Abbey’s shoulder, a puzzled look making his expression pricelessly handsome in the waxing light of the crescent moon.  He breathed in deeply, and let it out with slow deliberation.  Then he looked down at her.  She was still kneeling and suddenly felt rather silly. 

“Are you finished with your spell, there?”

“Well... yes, I was just—”

“Great.” He moved toward her and helped her to her feet, and then took her hand in his and led her quickly to and through her back yard.  That’s when a little warning voice piped up in Abbey’s mind. 

He’s leading you straight to the graveyard!  You can’t go in there.
 

She hadn’t dared go near the place, for any reason.  But the truth was that she so very much wanted to go back.  It called to her every single night, and she dreamed of walking through it, the night wind cool and tickling as she swept her hands over the tombstones, as if they were flowers in a garden.  The dream was so strong—so intoxicating—it made her ache to do it in real life.

But that was in dreams.  This was real life, and the very thought of returning to where she’d so nearly killed herself made her panic.  She halted her stride and tried to pull Oz to a stop.  And to her surprise he did stop. 

He turned back to her, his face limned by moonlight and shadow.  He leaned into her as if he were about to kiss her.  She could feel the warmth of his flesh hovering just apart from her own.  She could feel his breath against her lips, and so wanted to cross that distance and taste his mouth.

But he spoke instead.  “There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”

It wasn’t at all what she’d thought he’d say.  “What?”

“A couple someones, actually.”  He pulled away from her, letting her hand go.  She felt so cold and alone the instant their hands parted company.  It was insanity, but it was undeniable.  She felt a connection to this guy, this total stranger.