He plucked the drape free, greeted by the sight of his own reflection. He looked worn enough to fit right in with the Fairchild household. Behind him was a clear view of Lydia’s bedroom window, the woods beyond visible through the glass. He caught something in the corner of his gaze as he turned away, frustrated. It might have been a smudge, but that didn’t fit the image of the dusty but well-kept room.
Johnathan approached the window. There was something scored in the wood, partially hidden beneath the closed sill. He unlatched it and lifted the sash to reveal the rest.
There it was, the symbol, the same damn symbol he saw burned into Mary Elizabeth’s bones, a half circle split by a straight line, reminiscent of horns.
“Behold, a clue,” he said. Little bits and pieces of the puzzle were clicking into place, and Johnathan had a very sobering theory: both of Lydia Fairchild’s parents knew a great deal about her disappearance. What bothered him more was why they would hide their knowledge. Or were they hiding their shame? The thought set his teeth on edge.
Raised voices carried through the house, dominated by the unfamiliar boom of an angry male voice. Mr. Fairchild had emerged.
Johnathan sighed through his nose. It was time to inquire why this symbol had been carved into their dead daughter’s windowsill. Vic might have the tact to get them into the house, but this revelation called for Johnathan’s “bulldog charm” to shake loose the information they needed. He wanted to know how involved these two were with their daughter’s death. No, needed to know. The need flared in his chest, hot and sharp.
It wasn’t the sound of movement, but the sense of something watching him that made the hair on his arms rise. Johnathan looked up.
The beast stood in the yard, outside Lydia’s window, bare to the full light of day.
Chapter Fourteen
Sunlight soaked the backyard in warm, buttery pools, lit the brilliant green blades of grass, and filtered through the branches at the edge of the woods in a tangle of shadows like a Gordian knot. There were no shadows hiding the beast. It stood in the barest shade of the house, its hindquarters struck by the sun. The light shone off a glossy black coat of fur.
It had the rough shape of a hound, but that was where the comparison ended. The body was wrong, the musculature too bulky for such a whippet-thin build, the muscles bunched in thick slabs across its shoulders and hind legs, built for speed and power. The legs were too long, bent at an odd angle that suggested the creature wasn’t a quadruped by natural design, and tipped in curved talons reminiscent of a hawk or owl rather than a canine. That disproportionate build carried through the wide set of its chest to the skull, the jaw too large, too long, the hinge of the mandible much too high, evident even though its head dipped down to watch Johnathan with two forward facing eyes that glowed within its dark face.
Johnathan registered the details rapidly, committing a mental picture to memory. He shoved the sash higher before backing up a couple steps; he needed space. The creature maintained eye contact, watching him, waiting. For what? Johnathan dropped low and tensed.
“Vic, it’s here!” he roared as he surged forward and dove out the window.
He hit the ground in a roll that should have put him face to face with the beast. Instead, he came up with the log hook in his hands and swore at the sight of the creature racing for the cover of the woods.
“It’s going for the woods!” Johnathan lurched into a run. The vampire could bloody well catch up.
He tore across the lawn and smashed into the tree line. Branches slapped and stung the exposed skin of his neck and face. Pine sap clung to his hair. He could see the beast, following its flight as it wove and ducked through the tree trunks, but the only footsteps he heard were his own as he ran headlong, a pursuit without stealth or restraint.
The beast made no sound at all, no yips or snarls or warning howls while it led him deeper into the woods. Johnathan stumbled, so caught up in the mindless chase that he didn’t catch the tactic for several moments.
He was being led.
His grip on the log hook tightened. He should stop. But if he stopped now he would lose the beast. If he followed it, it would likely lead him to a trap.
With a snarl of frustration, Johnathan skidded to a halt over a carpet of slippery yellow pine needles while the beast vanished between the trees. The run caught up to him, pinching his lungs. His pulse pounded between his ears.
Johnathan braced his hands on his thighs, steaming and snorting like a horse pulled up mid gallop. He could have kept that pace for another ten minutes, thanks to the Society’s physical conditioning, but he would be in no shape to confront whatever waited at the end of the run. Time to get his bearings while he waited for the vampire.
Where was the vampire?
“Vic?”
The forest swallowed his voice. Johnathan straightened. The surrounding trees weren’t densely packed together. There were wide gaps between the trunks, old pines that were green and feathery at the top while the lower branches were bare, jutting from the trunks like broken bones.
Johnathan tilted his head as he looked at those skeletal midriffs, trying to pinpoint what was wrong with the picture. Pine, so much pine surrounding him. Pine was a soft wood, an ideal wood for mass construction, but this stretch of trees was untouched by the bite of axes. A plum spot of lumber, unscathed, behind the home of a former mill owner. Johnathan took a step over the spongy layer of dead pine needles at least an inch deep. The scent of pine was cloyingly thick, but he could still catch a whiff of rot, of moss, and other growing and decaying things.
“Vic?” he called again.
Silence, complete silence. The forest soaked up his voice the second it left his lips. The quiet was absolute, no birds, no squirrels, not a hint of life among those bone-riddled trees. The only sound Johnathan heard were ones of his own making.
He spun with a sharp inhale, trying to gauge how far he’d chased the beast. The trees surrounded him without end. Tension threaded through his spine, a feeling of claustrophobia. Johnathan knew a box when he saw it. The question was, what else did this one contain?
The silence pressed around him. Again, the sensation of being watched clawed at his nerves. Johnathan pivoted, his gaze flickering amid the trees, searching. Back and forth, back and forth, where was it, where?
He stopped and stared straight ahead. What he thought were the spindly roots of a fallen tree rose from the ground. This new entity revealed itself, far larger and more imposing than the misshapen beast he’d chased here. The trap sprang around him.
Johnathan’s gaze followed, up, up, until the being stood at full height, a giant construct of branch and bone and a crown of massive horns that brushed the underside of the feathery pine canopy. The horns curled up from a skull mask. He thought the skull was from an elk or stag at first, except the eye sockets faced forward, like a predator. The jaws possessed long canine teeth. It stood, tall as a house on spindle limbs in the silent stillness, some ill-summoned god of the wood, and Johnathan gawked at it like a first-year rookie.
Twin red flares lit within the skull’s eye sockets, and the jaw clicked open to reveal a wet dark maw. Not a mask at all, but exposed bone fused to the tissue beneath. The creature’s mouth opened wide in a soundless roar that made the tree trunks shiver.
Johnathan’s breath seized. He took a step back, the desire for flight overwhelming. It was his training that held him there, rooted to the ground.
The creature tilted its head, studied him with the distant bemusement one gave an interesting insect. The log hook dropped from Johnathan’s numb fingers, inane, utterly useless—it wouldn’t serve him here. Nothing would save him.
The creature shambled forward, tottering on thin legs, but its torso remained poised with eerie grace, as if the two halves of its body were out of sync with each other, incomplete. A mishmash creature, discordant as the beast he’d followed here. The trees shivered with each of its steps, the ancient pines creaking and cracking. They bent awa
y, creating room for the giant to move.
Johnathan’s muscles were rigid, no longer held in place by the mettle of his training, rather pinned by the terror that ran in cold sweat down his spine.
The creature’s burning red eyes skewered him, locked and shaking in place. It bore down on him, extending a hand with claws each longer than his finger, hooked at the end to tear the flesh from his bones.
His thoughts evaporated as the creature came within striking distance, terror a senseless buzz that overtook every good sense the Society had beaten into him. A small part of him latched onto the insane urge to fall to his knees in supplication, to throw himself at the being’s clawed feet in an act of worship, though there was no mercy in those burning alien eyes. His knees remained locked when the creature paused, inhaling with a deep whiff that stirred Johnathan’s sap-shot and sweat-drenched hair. It leaned back until that deep red gaze met his own, slitted pupils scouring his face, searching.
The movement shook loose a cord tied round the creature’s neck, the metallic flash pulling at Johnathan’s attention despite the instinctual fear shackling him in place. There was a coin hanging there, such an innocuous item that it broke through the buzz in his mind. His gaze followed the flash of gold until he caught sight of a symbol on the coin’s face. Cold raced down his spine. The same split half circle, and now he could only think of it as horns as the creature exhaled.
The connection snapped. The creature let out a rumbling bellow, a sound that rattled birds from their nests, then staggered away into the wood.
Johnathan had been spared. And he had no idea why.
Lightheaded, Johnathan sucked in a shuddering breath, the air expanding his fear-tight chest. The creature’s presence faded from the surrounding forest, as subtle as its arrival.
The trees groaned and swayed upright until the normal quiet of the woods settled around him. Fear released its chokehold on his body. He had no idea what he’d just encountered or why the forest creature didn’t shred him, but the connection he’d felt to it still shook him.
His mind reeled. That—thing—was like nothing he had ever even heard of and, unsettled as he was by his choice, he was certain he’d made the right call to send off the report. Johnathan knew one thing for certain, and that was that he was far, far, over his head. Now he had to find his way out of this infernal forest and throttle a vampire for leaving him at the mercy of this primeval guardian of nature or whatever ilk it descended from.
Johnathan grit his teeth, and his shoulders drooped. Everything he’d done in the last fifteen minutes was against the Society’s ingrained protocol. He’d run, without backup, chasing a creature of unknown origin, which he lost in seconds, only to encounter another entity that for some nefarious mercy hadn’t killed him.
Something hot and wet slid across his palm, like the lick of an open flame. Johnathan sucked in a breath and grabbed his wrist, staring at his hand where the skin glistened, faintly red, as if scalded by the contact. The same hand he’d washed soot off this morning. The beast had licked his healed palm.
A canine whine sliced through the silence. Slowly, Johnathan turned around. The beast crouched at his feet, its limbs set with an air of uncertainty. He watched it, waited for it to attack.
The beast ducked its head, its burning eyes downcast. It whined again and crawled around him with its whip-thin tail tucked between its legs. This time Johnathan didn’t follow when it disappeared into the trees, unnerved by its actions. He stood rigid, confused, but the mind-numbing terror he’d felt only moments ago was absent. There was something almost…pitiful about the beast. Or perhaps he’d exhausted his reserves of fear after his encounter with the towering creature.
Why had he been spared? That was a great question and a dangerous one. A helpless smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Johnathan didn’t believe in coincidence, not with the universe shouting in his ear. None of this bode well for him. Vic might insist he only had one of three threats to worry about, but the mysterious creatures of Cress Haven looked like the frontrunner to do him in. It was humbling, after years of brutal training, to find himself so outclassed in his first foray into the field.
Not until that moment, at the brush of the beast’s tongue, did Johnathan realize how much he’d ignored the wound. The importance of it had fallen to the wayside, like the deaths of the missing girls among the townsfolk. He’d failed to bring it to Vic’s attention. He’d failed to maintain his own attention.
Johnathan curled his hand into a fist, pressing it to his chest where his heart beat, far too slow and calm for what he’d just encountered. Even now, he could feel the seriousness of his situation slipping away from him, the sharp, stark details of the towering creature losing cohesion and dissolving, like silt washed away in a stream. A curious sensation, the malaise seeping through him, strong enough to banish fear and worry, but his determination to root out the source of Cress Haven’s troubles remained intact. A faint sense of manipulation clung to him, settling on him like a cloak of unease he couldn’t completely shake off.
Johnathan looked up. Instead of trees, he could see the Fairchild's house, when he knew it wasn’t there a moment ago. Vic was still nowhere to be seen. Did this mean the vampire was still mired in the affairs of the Fairchilds while Johnathan had tossed himself into another life-threatening situation?
The idea irritated him beyond the pale. How difficult could a man and woman wrought with grief be for a vampire of Vic’s skill? The fiend picked up on heartbeats through the outer walls of a house; he bloody well heard Johnathan’s shout.
Grumbling, Johnathan snatched his log hook off the ground and began trudging back, his mood even darker for the confrontation ahead.
A blast of noise shredded the oppressive silence of the forest. The force of the sound punched him in the chest like a mighty fist, knocking him off his feet. Red-hot agony drove a spike through his shoulder, gasping at the ball of pain lodged there.
The copper scent of fresh blood washed over him. A wild-eyed stranger stepped through the trees, a spent pistol in one limp hand. His arm shook as he aimed a second primed gun at Johnathan’s prone form.
Chapter Fifteen
Johnathan’s focus funneled to the hollow muzzle aimed at his face. Pain radiated from his shoulder. His veins throbbed, a web of fire beneath his skin. The hard knot where the bullet lay lodged in his flesh burned, not that he could do much about it while the ragged stranger held him at point-blank range.
“Unclean thing,” the man spat.
A drop of spittle hit Johnathan’s cheek, but he didn’t move to wipe it away. The man clearly had an itchy trigger finger. The slightest twitch could send a bullet through Johnathan’s teeth.
The man took a step closer. “Wretched creature. You took my daughter from me.” His voice was a hoarse rasp to match the unhealthy rattle of his breath. “My sweet girl,” he breathed.
Johnathan held perfectly still. “Mr. Fairchild?”
The man jolted and shook the pistol in Johnathan’s face. “This wasn’t the bargain we made.” His hair hung flat against his skull in greasy clumps. Food and sweat stained his shirt, draped loosely on the emaciated frame of what was once a much larger man. He glared down at Johnathan with bloodshot eyes, wide and wild, the whites tinted yellow. Steeped in alcohol, a cloud of gin-soaked breath wafted from his mouth, mingling with his unwashed scent. He didn’t even see Johnathan.
Fairchild tossed the spent pistol, wiping away the sweat dripping into his eyes. He kept his primed firearm aimed at Johnathan’s face. “This isn’t the bargain we made, you bastard.”
The man swayed on his feet. Johnathan thought about the log hook, wondering if it had fallen nearby. Was it close enough to stop this madman? He couldn’t chance it. This close, it was impossible for Fairchild to miss, though it was a matter of debate where the bullet would hit.
“You promised me…promised me…” Mr. Fairchild sobbed, the sound welling up from deep in the man’s chest. “Lydia, my poor Lydia.
I’m so sorry.” Mr. Fairchild was a lost man, drunk and ranting, taken over by the personal demons that clouded his mind.
Johnathan grit his teeth. Pain or not, here were answers if he could simply draw them out without getting shot. “What was promised to you, Fairchild?”
The man’s grip tightened on the gun. “You know,” he hissed, baring his yellowed teeth.
Johnathan swallowed hard. The fire in his shoulder flared in time to his pulse. “Please, good sir, remind me of our terms,” he coaxed. If the unstable man saw him as someone else, he would play the part for as long as he could hold onto consciousness.
“Wealth beyond measure,” Mr. Fairchild snarled. “The bountiful wealth beneath the earth. You promised enough riches to keep my family set for generations. If only I opened…” His words trailed off, the man’s unfocused gaze settling on Johnathan in a moment of bloodshot clarity. “Oh God, what have I done?” Fairchild whispered, covering his mouth with the back of his free hand.
“Please,” said Johnathan, abandoning the pretense. “Tell me of your bargain.”
The gun lowered a fraction. Tears spilled down the man’s haggard face. “I wanted to give them everything. I wanted my family to have everything. Cernunnos promised me—” His face went slack, and the moment crumpled in on itself. The man’s frayed sanity dispersed like wood smoke. He stared at something behind Johnathan, and in that fractured moment, his face contracted with fear and rage. “You! You’re tainted—”
Temptation struck Johnathan, the desire to steal a glance over his shoulder, but when a snarl rolled through the air, a coarse, raw sound from an inhuman mouth, fear got the better of him, freezing him cold.
Mr. Fairchild shook violently, attempting to retrain his aim behind Johnathan. The snarl guttered into a chilling scream, a high-pitched tortured sound. A urine stain spread across the front of Mr. Fairchild’s trousers.
A Bargain of Blood and Gold Page 11
