by Ann Charles
I took her hand and let her pull me upright. Grabbing the ax out of the snow, I crept over to where the Nachzehrer lay in a tangled heap of saggy flesh on the road behind her truck. More blackish goo oozed out of a huge gash in its shoulder. Its right arm dangled by just a few muscles and strips of leathery flesh.
“You have to kill it, Vi.” Natalie joined me. “Remember the partially burned one Coop said was hit by a car and its arm fell off? That one got right back up and tried to attack the driver.” She squeezed my shoulder. “It won’t stop until it kills you.”
I blew out a breath. “I know.”
“Yeah, well hurry up before it gets its second wind.”
I gripped the ax. “Step back.”
After she’d moved a few feet away, I lifted the ax over my head. Wincing in advance, I closed my eyes and swung.
The ax connected with a sickening, squelchy sound. I waited for an explosion or splattering or something else vile.
The thing gurgled.
“Oh jeez, Vi.” Natalie crunched through the snow behind me. “You closed your eyes, didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” I said, opening them.
The ax had missed its mark, landing in the sternum instead of the neck. More black goo oozed out onto the snow. A lot more.
The Nachzehrer warbled out a growl and rolled to the side with its jaws snapping. Its sharp teeth scraped over the toe of my boot. I hopped back, leaving the ax still stuck in its chest.
“You did close your eyes.” Natalie bumped me aside. “You always close your eyes when you chop wood.” She dodged the creature’s long fingers and yanked the ax free.
It gurgle-growled again and took a swipe at her, but she moved away in time.
“Okay, maybe I did close my eyes a little.”
She handed me the ax, pulling me out of the way when the Nachzehrer tried to grab my leg. “This time, keep your eyes open when you swing.”
“I’ll try.”
“And hurry up before something else catches a whiff of your blood and comes looking for its next meal.”
I shook the tension out of my arms, stretched my neck side to side, and then raised the ax overhead again. “It’s supposed to be my day off.”
“There’s no rest for the wicked, toots.”
The Nachzehrer hissed and lunged up toward me, its teeth snapping.
“Violet! Now!”
Keeping my eyes wide open this time, I swung.
Chapter Seven
An hour plus a shower later …
“And then the Nachzehrer withered away in the snow, leaving behind nothing more than a dusty shadow,” I said, taking the freshly cleaned and rinsed dinner plate Doc held out to me. “Like when you smash a moth against a window.”
“Christ, Killer.” Tension lines crisscrossed Doc’s face. “You need to start carrying your mace with you.”
I agreed, but the mace he was referring to was long with several sharp points on the business end. “It’s going to be tough to fit that in my purse,” I said with a smile, trying to use a little humor to ease some of his worries. “Maybe you should switch places with Harvey and play bodyguard until we catch them all.”
“I’d rather keep you tied up in the bedroom.”
He leaned closer, his eyes sliding to my lips with obvious intent, but a certain annoying detective interrupted us before I could finish what was on Doc’s mind.
“You shouldn’t have killed it,” Cooper said as he set a stack of dirty bowls on the counter on the other side of Doc, who was wrist-deep in sudsy dishwater.
I nudged my head toward the kitchen table, where Natalie, Harvey, and Aunt Zoe were relaxing while Doc and I did our part cleaning up after a meal of hearty beef stroganoff and a sweet berry cobbler that still had me licking sugary goodness off my lips.
“Tell that to your girlfriend. She insisted I finish the job before we hightailed it out of there.”
Or rather fishtailed it out of there, being that all of the fresh snow made for a slippery slide back down the hill. I’d left a finger indentation—or four—on Natalie’s dashboard by the time we’d skidded onto the main drag.
“What was Vi supposed to do, Coop?” Natalie came to my defense, of course, same as she always had since our pre-training bra days when we’d see how many pieces of bubblegum we could stuff in our mouths at once. “Handcuff the gangly sucker and bring it down to the station for some stale doughnuts and burnt coffee?” She crossed her arms over her bib overalls, scowling at him. “Or maybe Vi should have asked me to get hold of you on the old walkie-talkie so you could tell us what to do with the thing. Oh, wait. That wouldn’t have worked because I’m not part of your little walkie-talkie club, am I?”
Cooper took her scowl and cranked it up to a full-on glare that he aimed at me instead of her. With his finger-plowed hair sticking up like rows of shark teeth, and not one, but two muscles clenching in his cheek, he looked a heartbeat away from popping his top.
“What?” I raised my hands in surrender, holding the mostly dry plate between us as a shield. “I told you she’d be pissed if you didn’t invite her to be part of our posse.”
He groaned rather than growled, surprising me into lowering the plate. “There is no damned posse, Parker.” An uncommonly soft sigh followed, then a single shake of his head before he turned to Natalie. “I have a valid reason for not giving you a walkie-talkie.”
She set her jaw. “Let me guess, it’s something to do with protecting fragile li’l me.”
“Partially, yes.” He crossed to the refrigerator.
Two red blotches appeared on Natalie’s cheeks. Uh oh. It appeared his answer had lit a fire inside of her. Cooper had best back slowly out of the room. And then run.
Harvey snorted. “Coop, did you leave your brains in your back pocket?”
Cooper grabbed two bottles of beer out of the refrigerator, pointing one at Natalie. “But not in the way you’re probably thinking, Beals, so you can stop giving me that go-to-hell look.”
I took a clean bowl from the sink and started drying it, glad the focus was off of me for a moment. I’d been in the spotlight since we’d finished supper and the kids had headed upstairs—one to take a bubble bath, the other to read his newly acquired library book about cannons throughout history. I had a feeling Harvey had something to do with Layne’s reading choice, what with his recent purchase of an actual old cannon.
Anyway, I’d started story time with what Aunt Zoe, Harvey, and I had learned from Dominick earlier at the old school, filling in Doc, Natalie, and Cooper so that my ending tale of the Nachzehrer had more oomph. I’d skipped the part of my day showcasing Cornelius and the weird voices, giving Natalie a warning look when she seemed about ready to bring it up. That unnerving segment was something I wanted to save for later when Doc and I could hash out the who, how, where, why, and what-the-fuck answers.
Aunt Zoe glanced up from the leather notebook opened on the table in front of her, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear. She still wore her jeans, but had exchanged her work shirt for a clean sweater.
She’d been adding to her earlier notes about the Nachzehrer as I talked, drilling me for several minutes about its apparent lack of hearing and sight. Although, after weighing Natalie’s take on the creature’s impairments, we were all pretty sure the blindness was only temporary due to cracking its noggin on that pine tree.
After focusing on Natalie for a moment, Aunt Zoe chuckled. “That’s more like a you’re-full-of-crap look, if you ask me.”
Natalie touched her finger to her nose and then pointed at Zoe with a slight smirk. “Bingo.”
“I’m not full of shit.” Cooper used the edge of the counter next to Doc to quickly knock the bottle caps off both beers. He took a drink from one and set the other down on the table in front of the smirker. “I didn’t give you a walkie-talkie, Nat, because you live under the same roof as Detective Hawke. We all know how sound travels through the vents in that place.”
Natalie and Hawke w
ere both staying in apartments at Galena House this winter, which was owned by Freesia Tender, one of my clients. Officially, Hawke was more of a squatter, having taken over the late Ms. Wolff’s place, aka the crime scene, insisting someone needed to stay there to protect more police evidence from being stolen by burglars. In particular, by “burglars,” he meant me. The detective’s paranoia about me these days seemed to know no bounds. The irony was that while I was very interested in the buttload of old German Black Forest clocks hanging on the walls in that apartment, it wasn’t me who had been sneaking in and taking them.
Natalie lived right above Ms. Wolff’s apartment and was trading her handywoman skills for her one-bedroom digs. When she wasn’t helping Freesia fix up the place in order to make it easier for me to find a buyer, she’d taken to playing nosy neighbor. Hawke appeared clueless that his phone conversations were coming through the vents loud and clear. Well, mostly anyway.
Cooper returned to the seat next to Natalie. “I’m just trying to keep Hawke from hearing about Parker’s guano-psychotic life and dreaming up any more witchy-witch ideas about you two.” He clinked his bottle against hers and then tipped it back for another swallow.
“ ‘Guano-psychotic’?” I spelled that word out in my head.
“Batshit crazy,” Doc supplied, pulling the plug on the dishwater.
I cut Cooper a glare while handing Doc the dishtowel so he could dry his hands. “I’m not crazy.”
“I was talking about your life, not you. Although if you want to split curly, crazy hairs …”
“I think Violet’s pretty damned badass-tastic,” Natalie said. “But she could use some coaching on planting an ax.”
“I did just fine.” At her raised eyebrow, I added, “I mean, the second time. The first was a warm-up swing.”
Harvey scratched his beard. “Did you put a coin in that critter’s mouth before lopping off its head?”
“Why would she put a coin in its mouth?” Natalie asked.
Aunt Zoe spoke while writing a couple of words on the page. “There is a myth that said you have to put a coin in its mouth when you kill it. Masterson debunked it, but …”
“Hmm.” Natalie sat forward, leaning her elbows on the table. “Maybe that’s a rule for non-Scharfrichter types.”
“I’ve made a note here that no coin was used.” Aunt Zoe’s blue gaze shifted to me. “But maybe next time you could try slipping a coin in its mouth before you kill it just to see if it makes a difference.”
I guffawed. “Natalie, you saw the sharp pointy teeth on that sucker. I’ll lose a finger trying to put a coin in there.”
Doc kept the towel, nudging me aside and reaching for a rinsed bowl. “We can try the coin if I’m there. Otherwise, just turn it to dust.”
“I don’t want you to lose any fingers either.” I shoulder bumped him, batting my lashes at him. “Your fingers are magic,” I said for his ears only.
“Metal is metal, Sparky,” Harvey said. “Screw the coin. Just jam Bessie’s 12-gauge barrel in its maw and yank on the trigger. Same difference at a safe distance.”
Natalie turned to Cooper. “I thought you aren’t supposed to ‘yank’ on a trigger.”
He shrugged. “Up close like that, yanking will work, too.”
“For the record,” I said, hopping up on the counter. “Since you see ghosts now, Cooper, your life is as much of a crap carnival as mine.”
“Not quite,” Doc said.
Cooper pointed his beer toward us. “What he said.”
“Hey.” I lightly backhanded Doc’s shoulder. “Whose side are you on?”
“Yours, Boots. Always.” Since he used that particular nickname for me, which was usually followed by pleasurable activities involving his hands and mouth, I let him lean over and steal a kiss. “But you have to admit that seeing ghosts is not on the same level as having to decapitate a parasitic bogeyman that has matured by being deposited in a human’s ear canal so that it can devour not only its host’s innards, but transform it at a cellular level, too.” He returned to drying bowls. “A ghost is child’s play compared to a Nachzehrer.”
I cast a frown in Doc’s direction when he wasn’t looking. I wasn’t so sure he was right after what Cornelius and I had heard this afternoon. For all we knew, cannibalistic hosts might be a fun-filled fiesta compared to the horror that was perfecting Doc’s voice in the walls of The Old Prospector Hotel.
“So what’s the plan?” Natalie asked. “Should we head out at dawn and begin the hunt?”
Aunt Zoe looked up again from her notes. “The hunt for what?”
Natalie thumbed in my direction “The other Nachzehrer hiding in the hills waiting to attack Violet. The partially burnt, one-armed bastard that Coop told us about before.”
“Bad idea,” Cooper said, earning an eyeroll from her.
“What’re we gonna use for bait?” Harvey asked.
“I’m not going anywhere at dawn, except to the shower,” I told them, leaning back against the upper cupboard doors.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Doc said, finishing up the dishes. He draped the towel over the faucet and then stepped between my knees, resting his hands on my thighs. His gaze dipped below my chin. “Maybe I should follow you into the shower,” he said quietly. “You know, do some backup bodyguarding.”
I grinned. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“Are you going to just sit around, Vi, and wait for the other Nachzehrer to surprise you?” Natalie asked. “We were lucky today. The one we dealt with was clumsy, and I had an ax handy. Next time might not go so well.”
“Sure as shootin’, sittin’ around whistlin’ up the wind isn’t gonna do us much good,” Harvey agreed.
At least I thought he was taking Natalie’s side.
“Do you two have some kind of death wish?” Cooper asked, setting his empty beer bottle down with a hard thud. “The last thing we need to do is go tromping through the hills in all of that snow where these creatures can move twice as fast as us.”
“Or more,” I added. “Let me get through this weekend’s parties and then I’ll go out searching with you guys. But not at dawn. Never at dawn.”
Doc’s back was still turned toward the rest of the group, so they didn’t see the wince he made at my words.
But I did. I paused and retraced my last …
“What parties?” Cooper’s gaze was locked onto me tighter than a choke collar. “I thought there was just the one party for your work.”
Uh oh! I’d been thinking about his surprise birthday party tomorrow and Sunday’s big release shindig. I licked my suddenly dry lips. “I meant ‘party,’ as a singular noun. It was a slip of the tongue. That’s all. I swear.”
His eyes narrowed to gunfight-at-high-noon slits.
Yikes! “Sheesh, Cooper. Chill out. There’s no need to take me down to the station and tie me up in the interrogation room. Actually, I don’t think you’re allowed to tie up a suspect, are you?” I was sinking into a pool of bibble-babble, but couldn’t seem to stop. “Sometimes my mouth doesn’t listen to my brain, and I accidentally make my nouns plural, like ‘What’s up, Docs,’ and ‘I’ll have some bacons, Harvey.’ It’s just a fluke, really. Right, Nat?”
Natalie squeezed her lips together and rolled them inside, giving me a pointed stare that said I should follow her example.
“Parker, if you are covering up for—”
“Maybe Harvey and I will go out hunting on our own tomorrow morning.” Natalie interrupted before he could finish what was probably a jail-themed threat. “Violet has to work, so we can go do some pre-hunting prep work. You know, tracking, asking a few questions here and there. That sort of detective work. What do you think, Harvey?”
He grunted. “We’ll put out the fire and hit the trail before it gets too cold.”
Cooper frowned across at his uncle. “No, you won’t. We need to do this methodically to reduce risks.”
Whew! Natalie’s diversion had worked. At
least I hoped it was just a diversion. She and Harvey didn’t need to go looking for trouble on my behalf.
“How do you propose we start, Coop?” Aunt Zoe asked.
“We lay out a map of the northern Hills and track all known past locations, like the taxidermy shop.”
Doc settled against the counter next to me. “I’d like to return to Jones’ Taxidermy for another look around. You think that can be arranged, Coop?”
“Why?” Aunt Zoe set her pen down and leaned back in her chair. “Did you notice something odd when you were there last night?”
I scoffed. “Besides all of the creepy stuffed critters watching us with those glass eyes?”
“I noticed Coop,” Doc said.
“What about him?” I looked to Cooper, waiting for him to deny whatever Doc was implicating, but he didn’t.
“Did you see somethin’, boy?” Harvey asked his nephew.
Cooper made a pained face. “You had already left,” he told his uncle. “And Parker was in her vehicle waiting for Nyce, who was talking to Jonesy. The other officers had taken off and I was doing one last sweep around the perimeter.”
“Alone?” Natalie asked, her expression showing exactly how she felt about him taking that risk.
“Not completely. I had my firearm.”
“What did you see?” I echoed Harvey’s question. Had the Nachzehrer that broke into the taxidermy shop been hiding in the trees, watching us? Waiting for the right moment to attack? Or had it been something else? A bounty hunter?
“Someone was standing in the shadows just out of reach of the headlights.”
“That’s creepy,” Natalie whispered. “What did you do?”
“He didn’t see me, so I held back, watching to see his next move.” Cooper shrugged. “Then he passed right in front of me, not three feet away, and disappeared into the side of the hill abutting the shop.”
Ah, so it was a ghost.
“Did you recognize him?” Aunt Zoe asked.
“Was it Jonesy’s grandpappy?” Harvey hooked his thumbs in his suspenders. “You remember him, dontcha? He wore a patch over one eye. Supposedly lost it in the war. Was the left one, I think.”
