Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities Book 2) (13 page)

Whoa. This is not like me.
I was starting to wonder if I needed to see a therapist. I took a deep breath, and then another. The awful guilt receded, but I knew it was at the edge of my mind, waiting for an opening to rush back in and smother me.
What’s wrong with me? Is the pressure finally getting to me?

Even after I pushed away the terrible guilt, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Taking the velvet box with the hair wreath out of my pocket didn’t ease my mind. Huguenin is a lonely road. Low brick walls lined the sides of the road, with cemeteries on either side. Although it was broad daylight, I felt a chill go down my back.

I blinked, and saw a man coming down the street toward me. He was walking down the middle of the road, and his posture raised a primal fear in me. Tall and raw-boned, the stranger held his hands away from his sides like a marshal in an Old West movie about to go into a gunfight. He wore jeans and a dark t-shirt with a collared shirt open over top. Something about the way he moved was all wrong. That’s when I realized I recognized him. Mr. Super-Handsome himself. Coffee Guy. And I did not think he had shown up here just to chat about a latte.

Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go and no one was in sight, except for Coffee Guy, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He was a little too perfect to be trusted. Maybe a little too perfect to be human.

Options? Not many. If this guy was faster than a human, he could probably be on me before I could get anywhere to call for help. There wasn’t a whole lot out here besides the cemeteries. Turning around wouldn’t work, since the road that intersected behind me was currently closed for water main repairs. No one had expected a traffic jam at the cemetery, or the need to outrun a renegade underwear model.

I kept the car moving, picking up speed to be a little more threatening. Coffee Guy kept walking right down the center of the street, and there was no mistaking the fact that his attention was completely on me. He looked like trouble, and not in an attractive kind of way.

He stared at me, head down but gaze lifted. It made me think of the way a wolf moves right before the kill. People talk about a smoldering gaze like something sexy, but I was pretty sure that the look in this guy’s eyes was more hellfire than attraction.

I gunned the gas a little, revving the engine and moving faster. Still, the stranger kept walking straight for me. I could run him down, but that could raise awkward questions if he turned out to be a real underwear model. Or, I could speed up and play a game of chicken, betting that he would jump out of my way. I didn’t think he looked sane enough to count on that. Option number three was to get to the cross-street before he did, and hope he didn’t have any tricks up his sleeve.

Coffee Guy just beat me to the cross-street when a car shot from the side street and hit him at full speed, tossing his body up in the air. For a horrible moment, I saw a young man fly limply from a terrible collision. And then, I saw something even more horrible. Coffee Guy twisted in mid-air like a gymnast from an impact that should have killed him. He landed in a crouch, and the illusion wavered.

My, what big teeth you have.

The magazine cover model was gone, and in his place was one butt-ugly monster. Big and muscular, with arms and legs too long to be human, the monster resembled a bloody skinned carcass. He was big enough that the dent in the car that hit him could have been from a deer or a moose. His head was oversized for the body, with a lantern jaw and sharp teeth, cat-slitted eyes that glowed red, and his infernal gaze was locked right on me.

I couldn’t see a driver in the car that had hit the creature, and I was hoping they had the good sense to get the hell out of there. The monster rushed toward me, and I had a choice to make. Ram him again with a car that was much smaller and lighter than the sedan that hadn’t put a scratch on him, or stand and fight. I didn’t much care for either one, so I came up with Plan C. I decided to do both.

I have another weapon that’s like my athame but it shoots fire, an old walking stick that belonged to Sorren’s maker, Alard. I’d left it in the car, just in case. Now, I grabbed the walking stick in my left hand so I could level it out the driver’s side window like a lance, bracing my elbow against the window frame. I gripped the steering wheel with my right hand. Then I called up my will, reached out my touch magic to the resonance and memories in the walking stick, and floored the gas.

A stream of fire shot from the walking stick, striking the monster squarely in the chest. My Mini Cooper peeled rubber as I pushed its acceleration to the limits, swerving past the creature to get clear. I was pretty sure I was going to make it, before the monster leaped toward me, landing on the hood of my car. Its body was blackened and charred with strips of burned flesh hanging down in tatters, and its toothy maw pressed up against the windshield, terrifyingly close.

He was too close to blast again with my walking stick, and I sure as hell couldn’t drive into town this way. Gravel and loose bits of asphalt crunched under my tires, and I had an idea that was either going to set me free or get me dead.

Before I could second-guess myself, I picked up speed, then pulled the handbrake and hit the gas. The Mini Cooper started to doughnut, spinning in a circle so hard my seat belt seized up. I had a death grip on the steering wheel. The engine whined and the car went into its second loop, careening into the turn. The monster lost its grip and fell off the hood, leaving a trail of claw marks across the metal. Suddenly free of the extra weight, the Mini Cooper skidded off the road and into the brush, knocking over the white roadside shrine.

My ears were ringing from the impact of the sudden stop, and I was pretty sure my neck would be sore tomorrow, but the airbag didn’t inflate and I wasn’t dead. Stunned, it took me a moment to struggle with my seatbelt. Blood was running down my face from a cut over my left eye. I reached for the walking stick and my spoon-athame, prepared to fight that thing once more.

Shots rang out. I didn’t need to see the gun to know it was big, and the noise was deafening. My head was spinning. The car door refused to budge and I had to kick it open. When I crawled out, I stopped cold at what I saw.

Daniel Hunter stood in the middle of the street in a wide-legged shooting stance, plugging the monster with bullet after bullet. The creature staggered, but it did not stop. At this rate, if Daniel didn’t have any other tricks up his sleeve, we were both going to die.

Something crunched under my foot. I looked down, and saw part of the broken white memorial cross. The air around me shimmered, and I could make out the faint images of two young men in their late teens. They were watching me as if they could see me, but I couldn’t hear what they were trying to say. My hands shook as I raised the walking stick, determined to go down fighting, although I wasn’t sure I had enough juice in me to send another blast.

The ghosts moved closer, and I was aware of the broken memorial under my foot. Even through the sole of my shoe, I could sense the deep emotions of the person who had placed the marker. Wrenching grief, dark loneliness, and deep, true love.

Terrified, bleeding and out of good ideas, I plunged my magic down into that broken marker and pulled hard.

An orange jet of fire streamed from the walking stick and hit the monster in its head and shoulders. The creature shrieked and writhed. Filled with the borrowed energy of the shrine, I kept him bathed in flame too bright to watch. Smoke and the smell of burned and rotten meat filled the air. Daniel produced a shotgun from somewhere, and aimed for the thing’s knees.

The monster tottered for a few seconds before collapsing onto the roadway. It jerked once, then went still. The monster’s head was a charred skull, and most of its upper body had been burned away or shot to pieces. Daniel sauntered up to the body and pumped one more round into it for good measure. As I watched in stunned silence, the corpse vanished.

The ghosts of the two young men turned to me with sad smiles and disappeared as well.

Daniel bent down and picked up something from the asphalt, and I realized he was gathering spent shells. I collapsed against the side of my wrecked car. Now that the crisis was over, I felt drained and light-headed. And I didn’t even want to think about the Mini Cooper.

After a few minutes, Daniel loped over. “You all right?” he asked, giving me a once-over from head to toe. He frowned as he saw the blood on my face, and stepped closer. I wasn’t in the mood to fight about it as he checked my scalp.

“Looks worse than it is,” he said. “You can move everything?” I nodded. “Seeing double?” I shook my head gingerly. “Headache?” My nod was imperceptible. “Neck hurts?” I had the feeling from his questions that Daniel had been in enough fights and wrecks to have some experience with the subject.

In the distance, sirens wailed. “Look, I’ve got to get out of here,” he said. I moved to argue, but he shook his head. “No buts. You’ve got a reason to be here. I don’t. Tell them a deer jumped out of the woods. If they ask you about the charred mark on the road, play dumb. Tell them you didn’t see it. Don’t worry – that thing isn’t coming back soon.”

Maybe not, but it’s likely to have friends.

Daniel sprinted away and drove off. I dug my cell phone out of my purse and called Teag. He nearly had a conniption when I told him what happened.

“No, don’t come out here,” I said. “I’ll have them take me to St. Francis. But I’ll need a ride home from there. And someone’s going to have to tow the car.” Despite the headache and the sore neck, I was with it enough to bemoan my poor mangled Mini Cooper. I was sure it had given its all for me.

Teag reluctantly agreed to meet me at the hospital. I shifted in my seat, and saw the broken bits of the memorial by my foot. A pang of guilt shot through me for ruining the shrine.

I bent down and picked up the pieces. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to create the memorial for two young men who died before their time. I had already felt the initial images from the memorial when the ghosts appeared, so handling the wooden pieces now didn’t send me into a swoon. Still, the longing and loss was clear, as was the love that went into the homemade marker. I resolved to replace it. That’s when I looked up and saw the ghosts of the two young men standing by my car, waiting with me until help arrived.

The police sirens were so loud that I thought my head would explode. A police car, an ambulance and a fire truck roared down the road and stopped when they saw my car.

“What happened?” the officer asked, taking in my disheveled condition and the ruined car.

“Deer,” I said. “Came out of nowhere. Wrecked my car,” I said ruefully.

The rest of the questions were a blur, and since I felt woozy, I mostly concentrated on not passing out. I must have looked pretty bad, because the cop never even tried to ask me about the scorch mark on the pavement.

Two very nice EMTs loaded me onto a gurney. “A precaution,” one said as I tried to object.

“My car –” I protested.

One of the EMTs, a big man who looked more like a linebacker than an emergency medical technician shook his head. “Honey,” he said, “that car’s not going anywhere. They’re gonna have to haul it out.”

I blinked back tears. Then I got mad. It didn’t matter that the monster who wrecked my Mini Cooper had been run over, shot, and incinerated. Someone had sent him, and he, she or it was going to answer to me before this was over.

I don’t remember much about the time at the hospital. I was poked and prodded and asked the same questions over and over again. They made me take a Breathalyzer test and took blood to make sure I wasn’t on something. Huh. If I’d have told them what really happened, they’d have been sure I was using.

Finally, when they had cleaned me up and run all their tests, they let Teag come in to see me. He paused in the doorway and shook his head. “Oh Cassidy,” he said with a little moan. “I am so sorry I didn’t go with you.”

I dismissed his comment with a gesture. “Someone had to mind the store. Maggie couldn’t do it alone,” I said. “And it’s not as bad as it looks. Scalp wounds bleed a lot. I’m going to have a nasty bruise from the seatbelt, but other than some sore muscles, I’m good to go.”

“I found out where they towed the Mini Cooper,” he said. “No estimate yet, but I made sure they had your contact information.”

“Thanks,” I replied. I wanted to tell him what really happened, but there were too many people around. From the look he gave me, I was pretty sure that he had figured out it wasn’t as simple as I had made it sound.

Another hour passed before they let me leave. The emergency room doctor gave me a bottle of pain pills and instructions on what to watch out for. The worst part was having to leave in a wheelchair, but Teag didn’t mind pushing me out.

“Anthony insisted I take his car so you’d be more comfortable,” Teag said. His old Volvo was reliable and safe, but Anthony referred to it as a beater. To be honest, I didn’t mind, although the Lexus was more like sitting on a leather couch in a comfortable, mobile living room.

“Tell him thanks for me,” I mumbled. Despite the pills, every movement hurt.

I swore a lot as Teag helped me into the car. He waited until we were out of the parking lot before he stole a sideways glance at me. “Okay. Spill.”

I gave him a very abbreviated recap of what Father Anne and I did at the cemetery, about the monster’s appearance, and Daniel Hunter’s unexpected arrival.