The Tomb
By
Neil Carstairs
Copyright © 2017 by Neil Carstairs
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Art by Ace Book Covers.
AceBookCovers.com
Acknowledgements
Once again, special thanks to Emma Jaye whose guidance and help pushed this novel over the finishing line. I would also like to thank Nero Seal for his marketing artwork and Sara Miller who can be found on Facebook at Pretty Little Book Promotion and PA Service.
Also by Neil Carstairs
Scarrett & Kramer Novels
#1 The Creator
#2 The Anomaly
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Chapter One
The honky-tonk bar sat alongside a county road somewhere south of Havana, Kansas. Around it stretched a pan flat area of land that had seen a month’s rainfall in forty-eight hours and didn’t look like it could take much more. Vera had worked the bar for the last thirteen years and knew every one of the locals who came through the door by their first name. She also knew the travelling salesmen and the kids from town with their fake IDs. Then there were the cops and state troopers who rolled through once in a while to make sure that everything was quiet and maybe hang around awhile listening to whatever band played that night.
Vera knew them all, but she didn’t know the guy who’d come in an hour ago, parked himself at the end of the bar and ordered a beer with a whisky chaser. He still sat there, the beer half drunk and the whisky untouched, staring at the polished wood of the bar and drawing circles in the condensation that formed on his glass as the jukebox pounded out Dwight Yoakam’s A Heart Like Mine. Vera didn’t know him, but she knew that look.
“You okay, son?” she leaned on the bar, resting her forearms in his line of vision so he could see her muscles and tattoos.
“Yeah.”
Vera barely heard him above the music. Sometimes conversations weren’t the easiest thing to have in the bar. She waited for him to look up at her. They always did. It was a matter of waiting them out, and at this time of the afternoon the place wasn’t exactly bursting with clients, so she had plenty of waiting time on hand. Her patience got its reward as his eyes rose to meet hers.
“What’s your name?” Vera asked.
“Ben,” he said, as Yoakam’s track faded out, replaced by Brandy Clark’s Girl Next Door.
“And what’s her name?”
Ben frowned. “What d’you mean?”
“I’ve seen plenty of guys with the same look you’ve got on their faces. It’s always a woman who’s caused it.”
Ben sighed and said, “Joanne.”
“How long were you together?” Vera asked.
Ben stared past her as if trying to see a wall calendar that wasn’t there. “Eight months,” he said.
“And she called time?”
Ben nodded. “We worked together, and it all got too much according to her. We were with each other all day and all night. She says she didn’t have any free space.”
Vera pointed at his drinks. “You driving?”
“Yeah.”
She took the whisky away. “I’ll let you finish the beer, but we don’t like customers who come here and drink to forget, then forget how to drive and end up killing someone.”
His shoulders seemed to sag a little more. Vera smiled and patted his arm. “Listen, Ben. It hurts now, but you’ll get over it.”
The door burst open, and two locals came in. They hollered hello to friends at the pool table as they made their way to the bar. Vera left Ben to serve them. His gaze returned to the beer, and he didn’t see the girl slide onto the stool next to him until she said,
“I heard what you said to Vera.”
Ben looked at her; young, maybe only twenty. Brunette, brown eyes, full lips and fuller figure. She gave him a smile and put her hand on his arm. “Eight months is nothing, a friend of mine dumped her boyfriend after three years. Can you imagine that? Three years, that’s almost like...a lifetime.”
Ben laughed. Three years, a lifetime. The girl seemed pleased with herself that she’d knocked the morose expression from his face. Her hand dropped from his arm to his leg.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No, just passing through,” he said, looking down to where she stroked his thigh.
“I know all the guys around here. It’s nice to see a new face. Where’re you from?”
“Virginia,” Ben said. He put his hand on hers to stop the movement.
“Wow,” she replied with a wide-eyed smile. “You’re a long way from home.”
“Tell me about it.” Her hand didn’t stroke any longer, but she managed to move her fingers in a massaging motion that reminded Ben of someone else’s hand.
She leaned close. “My name’s Candy,” she said. “And all the guys around here have a crush on me. They call me Candy Crush.”
Ben saw something in her eyes that made him release his hold on her wrist.
Vera came back, rested on the bar and said, “I see you’ve met my niece.”
“We were having a conversation about getting dumped,” Candy said. “You know the best cure for getting dumped is having a good time?”
“I didn’t know that,” Ben said. Aunt and niece were poles apart in looks. Where Candy had fresh looks and soft curves her aunt had weather-beaten skin, hard muscles and tattoos of knives and guns.
“Sure is,” Candy said. She leaned against him and draped an arm around his shoulder. “And since the bar’s so quiet, why don’t we hop out back and have some fun?”
“What kind of fun?” Ben glanced at Vera, but she didn’t seem bothered by the way Candy spoke or acted.
Candy slipped from her barstool and took hold of Ben’s hand. She tugged him with her around the end of the bar towards a door marked ‘Private’. Ben resisted, but not too much. Candy wore skin tight denim and cowboy boots and the view he had made him wonder how private the room would be.
As Candy pushed her way through the door Ben heard Vera shout across to one of the customers, “Hey, Joe, mind the store for me. I’ll be out back.”
Ben almost tripped as he followed Candy into the room. He looked back. The door swung shut but not before he caught a glimpse of Vera heading his way with a wicked smile on her face. The room looked like half-kitchen and half-office. A big table dominated the centre with six dining chairs of mixed heritage placed around it.
Ben turned as Candy pulled at him again. She’d backed up against one wall and pulled him into her soft figure. Her arms went around him as the door opened and Vera came in. She locked the door behind her. Ben heard all this as Candy pulled his face down to hers. Her breath smelled of mint. In the moment before their lips met Ben twisted out of her arms.
“Oh, hey, honey.” Candy tried to grab him back, but Ben managed to elude her grasp as he headed to where Vera now sat at in a chair that she’d turned to
face them.
“How about you?” Ben asked.
“I’ll watch,” Vera said, with a hint of a smile.
With Candy close behind, so close he could feel her breasts pressing into his back, Ben’s hand slid into the waistband of his jeans. Candy must have thought the move was for her. She giggled in his ear, “Vera likes to watch.”
Candy didn’t notice the slim gun Ben pulled out. “Are you sure?” he asked Vera.
She folded her arms and rested back in the chair. “Completely,” she said.
The compressed air cartridge made a thwack sound as Ben fired the dart into Vera’s left shoulder. She yelped in shock and surprise and came to her feet. Ben saw her eyes turn crimson as Candy’s grasp around Ben relaxed for a moment. She tried to see what was happening. Ben jerked free as Vera reached for him. He had another drug dart but it was tucked away in an inside pocket of his sports jacket, and Vera’s lunge meant he had no time to reach for it. He threw himself right, bouncing across a wooden chair.
“What’s happened? What’s happened?” Candy stared at Vera.
“He shot me,” Vera said. She pulled the dart from her shoulder and stared at it.
Both women turned to Ben as he scrambled to his feet.
***
Two of them. Ben wondered if he’d live long enough for the cavalry to arrive as he triggered the alarm on his belt.
He half-ignored Vera. She looked pissed as hell, and out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw the slabs of muscle growing as her bone structure expanded. Vera went from about five-eight to six-and-a-half feet tall in the time it Ben to back away enough to get the dining table between them. Candy changed as well. She lost her curves as she stepped after him. Ben saw her teeth melt into fangs. Both women hissed at him. Not a good sound. Candy took the left and Vera the right path around the table. The older woman looked a bit unsteady. Ben went her way, grabbing a chair and swinging it at her. Vera couldn’t move fast enough, the chair legs swept her aside and she fell hard onto the tiled floor. Ben saw her head go back, the crimson in her eyes fading to a sickly yellow. She panted as she tried to rise and then the drug got her and she slumped down.
One left.
Candy moved fast and Ben pulled the chair up between them to stave off her attack. The legs slammed into Candy’s body, her weight driving Ben back a couple of steps. A hand lashed out, and Ben ducked. She pushed again, twisting against the chair, it slid past her body and Ben fell forward at the sudden change in momentum. Ben saw her hands twist into claws and then she had him. Ben blocked her bite with a forearm to the throat. He kept it there, holding her head back as she spat and snarled at him. Pain flared from his ribs as she punched him. Ben stamped hard on her foot, and she screamed, one leg folding and giving Ben a chance to kick her clear.
Candy rolled away and came up as her skin turned a boiled red. Her long brown hair seemed to suck back into her scalp, revealing a blistered dome of a skull. She drove in hard, her shoulder taking Ben in the stomach and lifting him from his feet. They hit chairs and the dining table, the wooden edge smacking hard on Ben’s lower back. He felt the old wound flare, a sheet of fire that rushed up his spine. For a moment he weakened, and Candy took him down to the floor, clawed hands wrapping around his throat. Her weight crushed onto Ben. He saw nothing but her snarling face and heard nothing but her rasping breath. Threads of saliva spilled down from her mouth, and those crimson eyes burned with a hate that engulfed him.
Then she rose, her grip lessening. Candy stared at the door. Through the pounding of his blood, Ben heard sirens. The cavalry. With Candy distracted he got one hand free and punched her in the throat. She fell back, rolling clear of Ben as someone began hammering on the door. Their eyes met. Candy spat at him. She took one, swift glance at Vera and then launched herself across the room towards the window. She bounced up onto the stone work surface as three hard bangs on the door broke the lock and black clad figures stormed in. Candy punched the glass out of the window. She got halfway through before the newcomers opened fire. Ben heard her scream as she fell from view with four darts in her back.
He sat up, testing his neck where Candy had strangled him.
“Two of them?” a pair of feet appeared in his vision.
“Yeah,” he said, as best he could after being half-strangled. He tried to look up, but his neck muscles protested too much.
A hand came down, and Ben took the offer to be pulled to his feet.
“You okay?” Joanne Kramer asked. She wore the same all-black utility outfit the rest of the security team wore, along with a helmet and visor.
“Why’s it always me?”
“Because the reports we had were a succubus operating in this area, and we know how attractive you are to them, don’t we?”
They watched as two members of the team shackled Vera’s wrists and ankles. A stretcher came in, and they loaded Vera onto it. Ben and Kramer followed her out. The jukebox sat silent and dark now, the rest of the bar empty.
“We’ve moved the customers outside,” Kramer said as Ben found the same barstool he’d sat on before. “I’m pretty sure they’re all clean, but we’ll interview and run the usual blood tests to make sure.”
Ben wasn’t listening. His ribs ached and the wound on his back burned from where he’d collided with the table. Kramer noticed and said, “Do you need to see a medic?”
“Might be best,” Ben said.
***
Twenty minutes later Ben sat in the back of an ambulance as a paramedic checked him over. The afternoon sun cast long shadows from the Homeland Security vehicles that now filled the honky-tonk’s parking lot. Candy and Vera were on their way to prison cells in separate cars and right now the investigation focussed on finding out how many victims the two succubi had claimed since they started operating out of the bar.
Kramer wandered over, phone to her ear. Ben already knew what the paramedic thought and it involved a trip to the nearest hospital for x-rays and scans. Ben didn’t expect Kramer to think much of that. She’d want to be on the road as soon as possible and not hanging around in the waiting room of another hospital because Ben Scarrett had got himself injured again.
She finished the call and said to the paramedic, “So can I take him home?”
“I’ve told him he needs to get x-rays of his ribs to be on the safe side.”
“No can do on that.” Kramer rested against the back of the ambulance. “We need to roll.”
“Well it’s a recommendation,” the paramedic said. “If not today, then as soon as possible. Especially if the pain gets worse.”
“His pain always gets worse,” Kramer said. “Come on, Scarrett, let’s get going.”
With a quick ‘thank you’ to the paramedic Ben followed Kramer to her car. He waited as she took off her kevlar jacket and stowed it away. She wore a navy blue t-shirt under it that clung to her curves as she stretched her arms above her head. Ben looked away. If they’d been somewhere private he might have mentioned how good she looked, but they weren’t, and Kramer liked a little boundary between them when they were on duty.
The fields that surrounded the honky-tonk were full of some small plant with dark green leaves. Ben had no idea what they were, and he only used them as an excuse to ignore Kramer as she came around the car to stand next to him.
“What’s up?” she stood close enough that her arm brushed his.
“I guess I’m tired,” Ben said, still not looking at her.
“We had a long day yesterday getting here,” Kramer said. “You can grab some shut-eye on the flight to Boston.”
Ben didn’t ask why they would be going to Boston. He didn’t want to know. The fight with Vera and Candy had taken a lot of his energy and all of a sudden Ben knew where he wanted to be. “I’m going to quit,” he said.
Ben felt Kramer stiffen beside him. “What?” she sounded shocked.
“This finished me.” Ben gestured at the bar. “Another beating from some weird ass creature that shouldn’t exist but
does.”
“Scarrett,” Kramer said, her voice quiet against the backdrop of noise from the other investigators. “Don’t rush a decision like this. Give it a couple of days.”
“I’ve given it more than that,” Ben admitted. “I’ve been thinking about it for a month or so.”
“And you haven’t spoken to me?”
Ben heard the hurt in Kramer’s voice. He turned to face her. “I couldn’t. I needed to work it out for myself.”
“And now you tell me?” she put a hand on his arm. “Can we talk it over? Maybe make some changes? Whatever you think, you’re a key part of the team. And I may not always show it, but I need you at my side.”
“I know.” Ben wanted to hold her. “But me quitting doesn’t mean the end of us. I can be the guy you come home to at the end of a mission. I’ll have an idea of what you’ve been through and–”
“Stop,” Kramer said. Her hand gripped his arm a little tighter. She looked a little off, as if Ben’s decision had shocked her. “I can’t have you walk out like this. You need to come to Boston, call it your last fling. Yeah?”
“You won’t try and persuade me to stay?” Ben asked. He wouldn’t call himself suspicious, but sometimes Kramer had a knack of getting things to fall her way.
Her smile dazzled him. “Now what kind of things could I do to you that would make you want to be at my side?”
Damn, she’s beautiful.
“Well, I could think of a few right now,” Ben said.
Kramer laughed. “Write up a list and show it to me later, yeah?”
“The whole list?” Ben asked, hopefully.
Kramer touched her lips to his cheek. “I’ll pick my favourite three,” she said. “Now, about Boston.”
Ben tried to get his mind back on track. Oh, yeah, Boston. “What’s the rush?”
“I took a call from General Dawson. We need to get to there.”
“I guess it’s not for sightseeing?” Ben asked.
The Tomb (Scarrett & Kramer Book 3) Page 1
