by Tanya Huff
“Purple plants?”
“Like all those plants Grace owns.”
“Would Vicki like an African violet? For Christ’s sake, Henry, she’s turning forty not eighty.”
Reaching across the front seat, Henry smacked him on the back of head. “Don’t blaspheme.”
Just before the sign for the Nohomeen Reserve, a gravel road led off to the east, into the mountains. The boot swung around so quickly to the passenger window, it nearly smacked Tony in the head. As Henry turned off the highway, it centered itself on the windshield again, bouncing a time or two for emphasis.
“Not exactly a BMW kind of road,” Tony pointed out as a pothole nearly slammed his teeth through his tongue.
“We’ll manage.”
After a fifteen kilometres, the road curved to run nearly due north, past the east edge of the Keetlecut Reserve and further up into the wild. They passed a clear cut on the right—the scar on the mountainside appallingly visible even by moon and starlight—then three kilometres later the boot slid hard to the left, the rubber sole squeaking against the glass.
Leaning out past Henry, Tony stared into the darkness. “I don’t see a road.”
“There’s a forestry track.”
“Yeah.” Tony clutched at the seat as the car bounced through ruts. “Remember what you said earlier about a high road clearance and four-wheel drive? And hey!” he nearly shrieked as they lost even the dubious help from the headlights. “Lights!”
“We don’t want them to see us coming.”
“You don’t think the roar of the engine will give us away? Or the sound of my teeth slamming together?”
A moment later, Tony was wishing he hadn’t said that as Henry stopped the car. Except that he didn’t want the engine to give them away. He didn’t want to walk for kilometers up a mountain through the woods in the dark either, but then again Julie Martin hadn’t wanted to be snatched out of her backyard, so in comparison, he really had nothing he could justify complaining about.
He crammed handfuls of herbs into an outside pocket on his backpack and wrestled the red rubber boot into the plastic bag. When he held the handles it was like a red rubber divining rod, pulling with enough force it seemed safest to wrap the handles around his wrist. As he leaned back into the front seat for his backpack, it started to rain. “Wonderful,” he muttered, straightening and carefully closing the door. “Welcome to March in British Columbia. Henry, it’s almost one, and sunrise is at six oh six. Unless you want to spend the day wrapped in a blackout curtain and locked in your trunk, we need to be back at the car by three. Do we have time…”
“Yes.”
That single syllable held almost five hundred years of certainty. Tony sighed. “I don’t want to leave her out here either, but…”
“We have time.”
The flash of teeth, too white in the darkness, suggested Tony stop arguing. That was fine with him except he wasn’t the one who spontaneously combusted in sunlight or bitched and complained for months after he spent the day wrapped around his spare tire and jack. And it wasn’t like camping out was an option. He skipped the Brokeback Vampire reference in favour of suggesting Henry head for his sanctuary and he go on alone. “I’m not entirely helpless, you know.”
“You’re wasting time,” Henry snarled.
*
The evil that had taken the child was close. The drumming of the rain kept him from hearing heartbeats—if these things had hearts—and the sheets of water had washed away any chance of a scent trail, but Henry knew they were close never the less. Vicki would have called it a hunch and followed it for no reason she could articulate, so he would do the same.
For twenty minutes they moved up the forestry track, his hand around Tony’s elbow both to hurry his pace and to keep him from the worst of the trail invisible to mortal eyes in the dark and the rain. The white bag pulled straight out from Tony’s outstretched arm, a blood hound made of boot and belladonna. A step further and the bag pulled so hard to the right Tony stumbled and would have fallen had Henry’s grip not kept him on his feet.
The track became two lines in the grass that led to a light just visible through the trees. Not an electric light, but not fire either. A lantern. Behind a window.
“Werewolves build shelters,” Tony muttered, ducking under a sodden evergreen branch. “Or the pack could be squatting in a hunting cabin.”
“I hear nothing that says these are werewolves.” But also nothing that said they weren’t.
The rain continued to mask sound and scent, but its tone and timbre changed as they drew closer to the building and a pair of large, black SUV’s. The cabin, crudely built and listing to the left, did not match the cars.
Lips drawn back off his teeth, Henry plucked a bit of sodden fur from where it had been caught in one of the doors. “Dog. And the stink of old death I caught by the river lingers still.”
“It was wearing dog? Okay.” A moment while Tony assimilated that. “Still could be giants then, these things…” A nod toward the SUV’s. “…are fucking huge. Hang on.” Releasing one handle, Tony reached into the bag and used the ball of his thumb to smudge out the rune. With the boot now no more than a reminder that a child’s life hung in the balance, he wrapped the plastic tight, and shoved it into his jacket pocket. “I’ll likely need both hands.”
The rune in his left hand throbbed with the beat of his heart.
As they stepped under the eaves of the roof and out of the pounding distraction of the rain, Henry felt something die. Not the child—he could hear her heartbeat now, too slow but steady, probably drugged—an animal who had died terrified and in great pain. Growling deep in his throat, he looked in through the filthy window.
Half a dozen kerosene lanterns hung from the rafters of the single room. One lantern alone made shadows, mystery. Six together threw a light that was almost clinical.
There were two men, middle-aged and well fed, standing at each end of a wooden table stained with blood. Henry saw nails and a hammer and didn’t need to see anymore. Over the centuries he had seen enough torture to recognize it in the set of a torturer’s shoulders, in the glitter in the eye. Both these men were smiling, breathing heavily, and gazing down on their work with satisfaction.
He had seen their expressions on priests of the Inquisition.
They might have started by accident, inflicting pain on a hunting trophy wounded but not killed. Over time, they had come to need more reaction than an animal could provide, and to answer that need Julie Martin lay curled in the corner of an over-stuffed sofa wearing one red rubber boot and one filthy pink sock. Her face was dirty, but she seemed unharmed. From what he knew of men like these, Henry suspected the drugs that had kept her quiet had kept her safe. There was no point in inflicting pain on the unaware.
The raw pelts draped over the back of a chair had probably been worn when they took the girl. Perhaps as disguise. Perhaps as a way of working themselves up to the deed, reminding themselves of pleasures to come. Grace Alton had seen the evil. Had seen clearer than anyone had believed.
“They’re just men.” But not even Tony sounded surprised.
“There is no such thing as just men,” Henry growled, barely holding the Hunter in check. “Angels and demons both come of men. To say these two are just men is to deny that. Is to deny this. I want the girl safe first.”
“I’ve got her. Just open the door.”
Henry didn’t so much open the door as rip it off its hinges, rusted nails screaming as they were torn from the wood, the blood scent roiling out to engulf him.
He sensed rather than saw Tony hold out his scared hand and call. A heartbeat later the young wizard staggered back under the weight of the child and grunted, “Go.”
Henry smiled.
And the two men at the table learned what terror meant.
*
Tony slid the boot onto Julie’s foot and lifted the sleeping child off the back seat of the car, settling her against his shoulder. Driving
back to Lytton, the drugs had begun to release their hold and, to keep her from waking, he’d sung her a Lullaby from his laptop. It hadn’t seemed to matter that the words were in a language she’d never heard nor would probably hear again. She’d sighed, smiled, and slipped her thumb into her mouth. Now, he wrapped them both in a Notice-me-not and carried her up the road to her parents’ house. Although it was just past two in the morning, all the lights were still on when he laid her gently on the mat and rang the bell.
Rolling the ball bearing between his thumb and forefinger, he walked back to the car listening to the crying and the laughing and wishing he could bottle it. The sound of hearts mending and innocence saved; it would make the perfect present for Vicki.
*
“You think she’ll remember anything?”
With the notice-me-not wrapped around the car, Henry drove back toward Vancouver at considerably more than the legal speed, racing the sunrise. “I hope not.”
“You think they’ll ever find the bodies?”
He shrugged, not caring. “I expect someone will stumble over them eventually.”
“You didn’t leave anything that would lead the cops back to you? I mean…” Tony slouched against the seat belt strap. “…these were men.”
Henry turned just far enough that Tony could see the Hunter in his eyes. “Would you have preferred we left them to the law?”
“Hell, no.” He scraped a bit of mud off his damp jeans. They hadn’t done anything to that kid yet, but they were definitely going to. “It’s just monsters are one thing, but those…”
“Were also monsters. Do you have to throw up again?”
It had been reaction not to what Henry had done, but to suddenly realizing just what they’d prevented. It had also been incredibly embarrassing, but the rain had washed the stink off his boots.
“No.”
“Good. It doesn’t matter if or when they find the bodies, Tony. There’s nothing that can link them back to us. To me.” His teeth were too white in the headlights of a passing transport and his eyes were too dark. “No one believes in vampires.”
Tony stared at the face of the Hunter unmasked and shuddered. “Dude, we’re doing a hundred and fifty-five klicks. Could you maybe watch the road?”
*
“All right, I still don’t understand how forty is any more important than one hundred and forty, but I think I’ve got Vicki’s birthday covered.” Henry pulled a jeweller’s box from his jacket pocket and opened it. “One pair half carat diamond earrings.”
Tony stepped aside to let Henry into his apartment, peered down at the stones, and nodded. “Good choice, not too flashy, not too small. Diamonds are forever, and so is she.”
“Now, read the card.”
“Ah, you’ve included a newspaper clipping about the miraculous return of Julie Martin. Very smart. Almost makes up for the pink, sparkly roses on the front of this thing. Blah, blah, blah, as you approach the most wonderful years of your life, blah, blah, young as you ever were, blah, in your name a pair of evil men have been sent to Hell where they belong.” Tony looked up and grinned. “Man, they really do make a card for every occasion.”
“I added the last bit.”
“No shit? Seriously, Henry, it’s perfect. You don’t have to wrap it, she doesn’t have to find space for it, and you can’t beat the sentiment.”
“You think she’ll like it?”
“Like it?” Tony snorted as he tossed the card onto his kitchen table. “I think she’ll want to collect the whole set. You should start thinking about what you’re going to do when she turns fifty.”
“Fifty.” Halfway across the apartment, Henry froze.
“Fifty. Sixty-five. Seventy-five. Ninety. One hundred. One hundred and twenty-seven.”
“One hundred and twenty-seven?”
“Kidding. You get her something really fine at one hundred, and you’re probably good until at least one-fifty…”
Author’s Note
A lot of people liked Brianna Bane when she appeared in Smoke and Mirrors. She had… spunk. (Boomer joke.) Now, I don’t have kids, nor do I spend much time with kids, and I’ve never seen Mean Girls so I’m particularly proud of how these kids turned out.
The Smoke stories seem to be tied to the books a little more than the Blood stories are. I think this works if you haven’t read the books, but I have no real way of telling.
The orange and seed thing? It’s what my doctor told me to look for during breast exams. I don’t know where Tony heard it. I don’t want to know.
AFTER SCHOOL SPECIALS
“Ashley, your freak sister is doing it again.”
The drawl was unmistakable; Sandra Ohi, Ashley’s only serious competition. Having come back from South Carolina for second term after having actually worked on a movie with her mother, a movie where she had lines and got to cry on camera, a movie shown in class during Black History month, Ashley would have ruled the eighth grade girls at The Nellie Parks Academy except for one thing.
Arranging her face in the expression her mother usually saved for her father—somewhere between “Oh, it’s you.” and “Drop dead.”—Ashley turned to face Sandra and the trio of girls currently in her inner circle. “Why so interested in a grade five, Sandra? Oh that’s right,” she continued, too sweetly, “you were told to stop hanging around with the grade threes.”
As Ashley’s posse snickered, Sandra tossed a perfect fall of blue-black hair back over her shoulder. “As much as I would have preferred to avoid her, the little weirdo is standing in the middle of the atrium talking to the ceiling. She’s impossible to avoid. Everyone has noticed her. I’m glad you don’t mind that’s she’s so noticeable.”
“Well, you’d know about having a sister who’s noticeable, wouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Last I heard the whole entire senior year of Mackenzie College had…” Ashley matched Sandra’s annoying emphasis. “… noticed your sister.”
Sandra’s eyes narrowed and the nostrils of her extremely expensive, made-in-America nose flared. “Your father’s show is stupid.”
Her father had taught her to never bother arguing an unarguable position. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t change the fact that your sister is a slut.”
Apparently Sandra’s father had taught her the same thing. “At least my sister is a slut in a different school!”
Embarrassing family members might be the norm, but they could be denied as long as they weren’t sharing the same cafeterias and hallways and extracurricular activity rooms. Unfortunately, until she graduated and moved on to high school at the end of the year, Ashley was stuck with Brianna intruding on her space.
Well aware that she’d scored the final point, Sandra sneered and swept past, trailed by her three acolytes—also sneering.
Ashley took a deep breath, and then another, because after a certain age screaming wasn’t cool. “I’ll be in the atrium,” she snarled and stalked off.
Her girls were smart. They didn’t follow.
*
“Ow! You’re hurting me, you big cow!”
Ashley tightened her grip on Brianna’s arm and dragged her out the front door of the school. “Stop being such a baby.”
“I’m telling!”
An extra yank kept the little dweeb off balance and unable to kick. “I’m telling first because you promised to stop the freak show at school!”
“I wasn’t doing nothing.”
“You were staring at the ceiling,” Ashley snapped, pulling her sister close and spitting the words right into her face. “And you were talking to yourself.”
“I was talking to my familiar.”
“It’s not a familiar. It’s a bug in a box!”
“Well, it’s smarter than you!” Brianna rubbed her arm and scowled up at the older girl. “And better looking, too!”
“There’s the car.” Pushing the brat in front of their father’s Lexus would have consequences. They’d so almos
t be worth it. “Come on!”
“I don’t have to do what you say.”
“I’ll drag you.”
Brianna glanced down at the pavement and then up at the car, clearly considering it, but when Ashley started forward, she hurried to keep up. Once strapped into the back seat, she pulled a small gold jewellery box out of the breast pocket of her uniform jacket, opened it a crack and peered inside. Opened it a little wider. “Oh great. My familiar’s dead.”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “It’s a bug!”
“Probably died from having to be in the same car as you.” She dumped the dead cricket out on her palm and poked it once or twice. “Hey.” Two hard kicks to the back of the driver’s seat. “Hey, Theodore, unlock the window. I gotta open it.”
“Your father says no. Not after what happened the last time.”
“I didn’t actually go anywhere!”
“Still no.”
“Suit yourself.” She flicked the dead cricket at the back of the driver’s head. It bounced off his hair and against all odds dropped into the space between collar and skin.
Rubber shrieked against asphalt as he braked.
Ashley sighed. “Next time let her open the window, dumbass.”
*
“CB Productions, may I help you?” Phone tucked under her chin, Amy continued to sort and staple the next day’s sides. “No, the box company is long gone. You’ve reached CB Productions; home of Darkest Night, the highest rated vampire detective show in syndication. What? Well, we’ve never heard of you either. Can’t beat the glamour of show business,” she muttered as she hung up, slammed in another staple, and added one more set to the finished pile. “There are days…” Sort. Staple. Stack. “…when I think I should have stuck with NASCAR.” Sort. Staple. “Crap!” More and more, this was becoming one of those days. She hurriedly put the stapler away as the boss’ daughters came through the front door.
They were better than they used to be. Although it was a DEFCON 4 as opposed to a DEFCON 5 kind of better.
“You’re wearing too much black stuff on your eyes,” Ashley sneered. “Are you trying to look like a raccoon?”
