by Sara Clancy
“It exploded?” the woman asked.
“That’s right, officer. It went boom.” After another long string of coughs, he croaked out a request that someone crack a window open.
Nicole did and he shuffled a little further from her.
“Even if it did,” Dorothy said. “Why can’t we see the remains?”
He shrugged and tried not to get distracted by how weird one of his hands looked. “Don’t know. Still trying to figure out why you can’t feel it.”
“Feel it?” Nicole asked.
He looked her over, his lip curling in disgust as he gagged.
“I’m covered in Dullahan goo?” Nicole whirled to face her mother. “Can we go home? I need a shower.”
“This is more important,” Dorothy snapped.
“Is it, though?” Benton didn’t mean to bark back, but Dorothy's rough voice didn’t give him much option. “I’m still going to be a banshee once you’re clean. It seems like you’re angry enough without having to clean up my vomit. Nicole still goes on about it.”
Dorothy narrowed her gaze on him, but he wasn’t sure how he had made her angry. If anything, he had been going out of his way to keep her happy.
“Nicole told me that you weren’t involved with the bodies in the basement.”
“True,” Benton winced as he swallowed. “I dreamt about some of them, but I didn’t kill ‘em. Did I?” He contemplated it for a moment. “No. I didn’t. Definitely didn’t.”
“And the … what did you call it?”
“Leanan Sidhe,” Nicole offered.
“Oh, she killed it,” he jabbed a thumb towards Nicole. Rolling his head to lean it against the chair, he blinked at her, his brow furrowing. “Should I not have said that? It feels like I shouldn’t have.”
Nicole smiled and reached out to pat his knee. “It’s fine.”
“Good,” he mumbled. “Please, don’t touch me with those gross, bloody hands.”
Nicole whirled to her mother, but Dorothy still wouldn’t hear her. Instead, she kept her attention focused on Benton.
“How did you make that noise?”
“Banshee.” He tried to click his fingers and instantly regretted it when the pain in his hand blazed again. After hissing in pain, he settled for finger guns that for some reason sounded like lasers. “And, before you ask, that’s about all I know.”
“Well, I still have more questions.”
“So do I. I suggest asking Nicole. She’s really into this sort of stuff. Oh, I have a question,” Benton met the officer’s gaze as he leaned forward. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m still deciding,” Dorothy snapped.
Benton shrugged and slumped back. “Better make your choice soon.”
“Don’t test me, Benton. I’m still not convinced that you two aren’t delusional.”
“Living dead guy wasn’t enough for you?” Benton snorted.
Nicole lifted her hand to silence him as she spoke to her mother, “What do you need?”
“Real, physical, tangible proof,” was the instant response.
“You have his scream on tape,” Nicole said in a shrill pitch.
“So he made a weird noise.”
Benton laughed, the sound breaking into a painful cough that he didn’t quite regret.
Nicole huffed almost petulantly. “Fine. How about the remains of a mythical creature?”
“The horseman exploded,” Dorothy said.
“The Leanan Sidhe didn’t,” Nicole said. “I’ll take you to its corpse. Just let me get Benton back inside.”
“No, he’s coming with us.”
Benton felt their eyes on him and shrugged. “Sure, why not? Road trip!”
“Fine,” Nicole said as she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “But you’re letting me have a shower first. That’s non-negotiable.”
***
When Benton came back to his senses, the rising sun was giving the horizon a gilded edge. A blanket of low clouds crossed the sky in soft wisps of purple and pink. He blinked at it as the pain in his hand fought back the remaining haze of the painkillers.
“Why are we at the Leanan Sidhe’s grave?” he asked.
He could barely get his tongue to move, and his voice sounded like a deep growl. Each syllable hurt as much as his hand. Blinking again, he realized that he was slumped against the back door of the police cruiser. And he was pretty sure he was drooling. Pushing himself up, he wiped a knuckle over the corner of his mouth and turned his head to Nicole. She quirked her eyebrows.
“We went over this. Twice.”
He slummed back against the seat and instantly regretted it. The lingering stench of rotted flesh still lingered over her skin and had long since filled the car. He leaned back towards the open window.
“Can you stop hanging your head out the window like a dog?” she asked.
“You stink.”
“I bathed!” Nicole said indigently. “With lavender and rose bath salts and sweet grass scented soap. I smell amazing.”
“You smell like road kill on a desert highway in the middle of summer,” he mumbled.
“That’s very specific,” she said before adding nervously, “but I’m not covered in it anymore, right?”
He looked over at her. “Right.”
“Good. And we’re here because mom wanted to see the Sidhe for herself. She dug it up about two hours ago. She’s still staring at it.”
Leaning slightly to the side, he looked between the front seats. Dorothy was crouched next to the open grave, staring at the disrupted earth with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“She’s not taking it well,” Nicole said softly.
“I don’t suppose she'll tell us what she’s going to do,” he croaked.
“I think we’re okay,” Nicole said. “I mean, she’s told everyone about the basement, but also that we found it. So I guess that will explain why our DNA is everywhere. I don’t think she’s going to tell anyone about this, though. Or about you.”
Benton managed to nod once before he slumped back against the seat.
After a moment of silence, Nicole spoke again, “Thank you, Benton.” He could hear a small giggle in her voice. “For saving me. I actually heard your scream while you were in the Dullahan.”
“What?” Benton’s face scrunched up. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “And I am far too big of a person to mention that if you had agreed to let me do a few non-invasive tests, we might actually have some answers right now.”
He slid his eyes to the side to look at her. “And you would never rub it in like that.”
“Of course not,” she smiled. “No matter how right I was, and consequently, how wrong you were, I would never tell you I told you so.”
The swift laugh that bubbled from him transformed into a coughing fit. Tears lined the corners of his eyes when he was finally able to draw in another breath. Nicole rubbed his shoulders and he relaxed into the touch.
“Okay. Fine. You can do your tests.”
“Oh,” she said swiftly. “If you think that’s for the best.”
“Shut up,” he smiled.
“Why do you think your scream was different?” she asked idly. “I mean, this time sounded really different from last month.”
“The first time I was scared,” he mumbled sleepily. “This time, I was a lot angrier than I was afraid.”
“Well, next time I’ll remember to get you angry,” she said.
“Next time?”
“I didn’t have time to put the symbol up straight away. I mean, I went back and sketched one under the table with permanent marker, but it’s a morgue. It has to get cleaned a lot, right? At some point, someone’s going to find it and scrub it off. And that’s assuming the symbol does anything, anyway. I’m guessing, sooner or later, something else is going to come our way.”
His eyelids began to shut. “Great.”
“Hey, we’re doing pretty well,” she protested. “Thi
s time it didn’t even take us a week. I’m sure we can take care of whatever comes next in less than a day.”
“It’s good to have a goal.” He tried to smirk, but was too tired and sore to make it work.
Slowly, he sunk down to the side, falling steadily until he was using her thighs as a pillow.
“I thought I stank,” she chuckled.
“You do. What is your mom doing?”
“Still struggling to reconcile with the knowledge that the paranormal exists with what she knows about the world,” Nicole said, as she began to trail her nails gently along the curve of his ear.
With a contented sigh, he stared at the back of the front seats, watching the shadows disappear as the sun continued to rise. The drugs pumped in his system, masked his pain and worked with his fatigue to draw him closer to sleep.
“That’s probably going to take a while,” he mumbled.
“Most likely.”
He was silent for a long moment. “My hand hurts.”
“I know. Try and sleep. I’ll wake you if anything good happens.”
Benton hummed, enjoying the soft curve of her fingers, the loose airy feeling the drugs gave his limbs. In the silence, he listened to her breathing and relaxed against her warmth.
“You’re going to help me, right?” he asked. “With whatever comes next?”
“Of course. That’s what best friends are for. And don’t argue with me on that. I have earned ‘best’ friend status.”
“Yeah, you have,” he smiled.
Unable to fight it anymore, his eyelids shut, and his dreams emerged and swept him away.
* * *
Shattered Dreams
Banshee Series Book 3
Chapter 1
The sound of rattling bones hit his ears in a constant drone that kept Benton Bertrand tittering on the precipice of sleep. For a moment, he floated within the haze, his body desperate for oblivion. But the clash of raw bones grew louder. It filled his head, and in one startling moment, he realized that the sound was real. He snapped his eyes open, not daring to move. He blinked at the ever-shifting light above him. Ashen clouds sailed across the low Alberta sky. Each time they blotted out the sun, the temperature seemed to plummet as the autumn chill crept up from the earth below him. His sleep deprived mind struggled to remember where he was. He couldn’t recall why he was flat on his back with thick blades of prairie grass surrounding him.
Just when he resolved to sit up, one of the sources of the ghastly noise came into vision. The great horned owl peered down at him with blazing, unblinking yellow eyes. Benton held his breath watching the colossal bird as it dipped lower, bringing the razor sharp hook of its beak closer to the delicate skin of his face. The brittle sound of grass cracking echoed in his ears and he realized how close its talons were. The very tip of one grazed his outer ear. It wasn't rough, but still enough to slice cleanly through his skin. Benton flinched, and the owl shrieked at his movement, its wings spread wide. It snapped wildly, creating a sound in perfect mimicry of bone striking bone, the needle-like point edging ever closer to his eyes.
A thunderous crack broke over all other sounds. Benton slightly recoiled from the gunshot sound as the bird took flight. The flock that had surrounded him filled the sky with dark shadows against the gathering clouds, each one as silent as a ghost. Releasing a long sigh, Benton sluggishly lurched into a sitting position. He braced his elbows on his bent knees, and gingerly touched a finger to his left ear, flinching as the sting grew sharper upon contact. Blood smeared his fingertip as he placed his hand back on the grass.
“You okay?” Nicole called to him. He offered her a wave of both confirmation and thanks.
He remembered not to use his left hand, to keep her from seeing the blood, but he had completely forgotten about the scars that now covered his right palm. Flicking his eyes up, he was just in time to see Nicole stiffen and shift her attention down to the handgun she was holding. It wasn’t her fault that she had brought it along.
The fire that they had stumbled across wasn’t anything they could have predicted or prepared for. It existed only because of a symbol etched on the walls of a hidden room in a forgotten basement. She couldn’t see it and had passed through the unworldly flames without a problem. For Benton, however, the flames had felt like boiling oil. Something slick that had coated his skin and continued to cook his flesh, long after he had removed his hand from it. The double standard existed because he was a banshee. The result would have been the same if he had touched it for any reason. But he had been reaching for her outstretched hand, so she carried her guilt over it.
“I’m fine,” he called out once he found his voice. “Thanks.”
She looked at him. Or at least at his hand.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he promised, his voice growing a little more intense than he would have liked. But at least it provoked a reaction, and she met his gaze.
“Have you got any feeling back in your palm yet?” she asked.
He puffed out his cheeks and drew his legs up closer, dangling his forearms over his knees.
“Nope. Please stop asking.”
“I don’t ask that often,” she protested.
Benton had completely forgotten that Dorothy, Nicole’s mother, was only a few steps to the side until she spoke.
“You’ve asked him that three times this week,” Dorothy said. “And that’s just the ones that I know of.”
It had been almost three months since Dorothy had been let in on the loads of crazy that made up most of Benton’s existence, but she still felt like a new addition. Admittedly, it was nice to have her in on it. Ever since he was ten, Benton had been on his own trying to warn the people that he dreamed about. People didn’t tend to react well to a random stranger telling them they were about to be brutally murdered. His attempts generally ended in one of three ways: him writhing in pain, him being completely ignored, or him becoming the focus of a police investigation when what he dreamed became a reality.
His ‘ability’ – as Nicole liked to call it – had ruined his life more than once, and outright destroyed his relationship with his parents. Things went a lot more smoothly when he had a Constable in the Royal Canadian Police on his side. Benton always worked with a name and the sudden knowledge of how to contact them; sometimes through a phone number or address, but more often an email. And Dorothy could do a lot more with that than he could have ever achieved. She could warn the people and protect Benton at the same time, and it felt like things were finally working as they should. They couldn’t save everyone, but they saved a few, and that was enough.
A more unexpected perk, however, was that he now had backup when dealing with the force of nature and neurosis, who was, Nicole Rider. The two women’s voices became background music, as a weary ache worked its way into his bones. He rubbed his hands over his tired eyes. The smooth scar tissue of his right palm was still an odd sensation, but not an entirely unpleasant one.
“Will you please back me up here?”
It took Benton a few heartbeats to realize that Nicole had shot the question at him. It effectively drew him back into the conversation to which he hadn’t been paying the slightest bit of attention.
He jabbed a finger in Nicole’s direction. “She’s right.”
Nicole’s victorious smile only lasted a moment before she asked, “You have no idea what we were talking about, do you?”
“Not a clue,” he assured.
“But you still picked my side?”
“Your mom doesn’t sulk for three hours when I don’t pick hers,” Benton said as he let his hands drop.
A sour expression twisted up her doll-like features before she turned to face him fully. The sunlight glistened off the barrel of the gun she still held, and it unnerved him a little how she seemed to have forgotten it was there. At least none of her fingers were near the trigger and it was pointed to the ground.
“Did you sleep at all last night?” she asked.
“I never
sleep well,” he dismissed.
Her lips scrunched up just a little and he knew she wasn’t about to let this go. Heaving a sigh, he loosely gestured to nothing in particular.
“Think I got at least three hours,” he admitted.
“But you didn’t get a name?” Dorothy pressed.
“Oh, no, I did. I just decided to keep it as a surprise,” Benton snapped. He instantly regretted it. And not just because Dorothy could make steel melt with the fire, but she sure could pack in a glare. “Sorry. I’m just really tired.”
He rubbed his eyes again and tried, for what felt like the hundredth time, to explain the new breed of madness that met him in REM sleep. “It’s like a kaleidoscope of static. I know it’s there, but I just can’t...”
With a frustrated growl, he threw his hands up in the air.
“The whale recordings didn’t help at all?” Nicole asked.
Ever since he had told her, Nicole had been systematically subjecting him to every remedy she could find. Medication was out of the question. Not being able to wake up from hideous and violent nightmares was, in his experience, mental torture. It felt like he had tried every home remedy under the sun. None of it worked, and Nicole was beginning to take that as a personal challenge.
“Do you think it has something to do with the Dullahan?” Nicole asked.
The monster that killed by whispering the name of its victim. The one that had harvested people’s organs, for the sheer joy of it, had been the second paranormal creature Benton had encountered. It marked the only time in his life that his ‘host’ body had ever known he was there. Normally, as he slept, he seemed to slip into the bodies of the killers. Becoming them. The Dullahan had physically tossed him out of its mind. Benton hadn’t been prepared for that. The memory was still enough to send shivers down his spine.
“The Dullahan is dead,” he said.
“We never saw a body,” Dorothy noted.
“You never saw a body,” he corrected. “Trust me. It exploded, and you guys walked around covered in its internal organs. You both smelled like road kill for days.”
