Embrace of Darkness

by Bilinda Sheehan

  10

  Three hours later, I found myself standing in the centre of Fortune. The sign as we’d entered the town had boasted of a population of 6,099, a population which had been heavily impacted by the recent spate of missing people.

  Pausing outside the local Sheriff’s office, I stared up at the squat beige building and drew in a deep breath of warm, oppressive air. Sweat trailed down my spine and I found myself longing for the cool oasis of the air-conditioned SUV.

  “This reminds me of the swamps of Faerie,” Victoria said suddenly as she leaned against the car door. The large black sunglasses she wore took up most of her face, making her look gaunt, her complexion more wan than usual.

  “Are you all right?” I straightened up, ignoring the way my jeans clung to my legs as though they’d been painted on. As soon as we were done here, I planned on heading to the motel to take an ice cold shower. Anything just to wash the sticky grime of the day’s work from my skin.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, “just need to drink more water is all.” She sounded grumpy, more than usual which for Victoria was an achievement all by itself.

  The screech of a lone bird of prey tore at my ears and I glanced toward the road in time to see a hawk dive bomb toward the asphalt. There was something small and dark in the middle of the street and the hawk landed on it, wickedly sharp claws that would rip the flesh of its victim apart extended.

  I blinked against the sun as the hawk rose into the air once more, carrying its prey away in its talons.

  “In the swamps that bird would have been bigger,” Victoria said, watching the hawk with the same interest I had.

  Without saying anything else to her, I headed for the glass doors that led to the Sheriff’s office and pushed it open, praying for a blast of icy air. Instead, I was slapped in the face with a wall of heat, making it difficult to draw breath as I stepped onto the parquet floor of the reception area.

  The place reeked of coffee, overlaid with the unpleasant scent of body odour and men’s body spray.

  I was suddenly glad I’d skipped lunch.

  “Can I help you, dear?” A woman with pearly white hair, piled high in a bun on her head, who I judged to be in her mid-sixties sat behind the high wooden counter that ran the length of the confined reception space.

  I hadn’t been here more than a minute and already I was claustrophobic.

  “We’re here from the Elite,” I said, “we were asked to come and investigate some strange disappearances…”

  As I spoke, Victoria stepped into the reception and the welcoming smile the woman had worn quickly faded. Her cheeks paled as her gaze travelled over Victoria’s imposing appearance. Her otherworldly vibe was suddenly stronger and I fought the urge to turn and look up at her to see if her eyes were still human behind the glasses she wore.

  “Of course,” the woman said swallowing hard. “I’ll buzz you straight through. The Sheriff is out back in his office…” I could tell there was something else she wanted to say to me but she held back.

  She hobbled to her feet and made her way toward the end of the counter, unhooking a latch from her side so she could lift a section of counter out of the way.

  “Here,” I said, moving forward to take the weight from her, “I can help.”

  “Don’t you mind,” she said, with a cheerful smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’ve got it, dear.” She swung it up with practiced ease and gestured for me to step through the gap created.

  Her arthritic hands hit a button beneath the counter and a large buzz echoed from somewhere behind the door to our left. The door clicked and I pushed the door open, revealing a short corridor beyond.

  She nodded her encouragement and I stepped through, noting how the air back here seemed at least a little cooler than the reception had been.

  Rounding the end of the corridor, we stepped into a small office space. Three wooden desks were scattered around, a desktop computer took up most of the space on each workstation but they all had their share of files and papers lending the whole space a cluttered atmosphere.

  The door at the back of the room marked Sheriff stood slightly ajar and it was that I headed straight toward. Leaving Victoria to follow me.

  I rapped on the glass of the door and was greeted with a gruff voice that bid me enter.

  Pushing the door open, I stepped inside and found myself face to face with a tall man, whose wide shoulders almost touched the walls on either side of his desk.

  “Who are you?” he barked the question out before I could even get my greeting out.

  “My name is Amber Morgan,” I said, “and this is my colleague Victoria Tellon.”

  “The Goon Squad,” the sheriff said before I could tell him we were with the Elite.

  “Some people call us that,” I said.

  “Well what would you call it?” There was an edge to his voice and I could tell from the way he was eyeing us both up that he was wholly unimpressed with what the Elite had decided to send down to him in the way of investigative help.

  I shrugged. “What I call it doesn’t really matter,” I said, “so long as by the time I’m done here the monsters are back in their boxes.”

  “I’m Sheriff Kevin Smith,” he said grudgingly. He pursed his lips and gestured to the chairs opposite his desk. “Grab a seat. I’ll get you up to speed on what we’ve got so far.”

  I shook my head. “If it’s all the same with you, Sheriff, we’d much rather go and visit the location where the last known person disappeared.”

  “If you think I let my guys screw the pooch on the crime scene you’ve got another thing coming,” he said, the hostility in his voice ratcheting up by several notches.

  “Not at all,” Victoria said smoothly from her vantage point in the doorway. “It’s just there’s things we can do with a crime scene that others can’t and the longer we leave this, the less likely we are to get an accurate read on things.”

  He glanced between us and I could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced. It would be so easy to pull the jurisdiction card, to claim this as an Elite case and lock him and his guys out for good but then any intel they’d already gathered would be lost to us. No, in cases such as these it was to our advantage to keep the locals on our side rather than make enemies of them.

  “Look,” I said, “we’re only here to help you.”

  “You think we need help?” The hostility was back in his voice.

  “Normally, I would say no but when it comes to the monsters,” I said, “who better to hunt them than the monsters themselves?”

  I gave a subtle nod in Victoria’s direction and watched the Sheriff’s eyes widen in fear as Victoria shifted seamlessly from human to her Changeling form and then back again.

  He rammed his swivel chair back violently from the desk, knocking a pile of files that had been stacked precariously on the edge of his desk, to the floor. He opened his mouth but no sound came out and his skin had turned ashy beneath the warm tan he had.

  Not that I could blame him for his reaction. I’d seen Victoria shift from one form to the next enough times now to be used to it and yet I still wasn’t. There was something in the way her skin rippled, like it wasn’t solid but a malleable fluid that flowed outward from her eyes.

  “What the fuck are you?”

  I dropped my gaze to hide the smile I knew I wore. The last thing he needed was to think we were laughing at his discomfort when I definitely wasn’t.

  “We’re the Elite and like I said, we’re here to help you.” The Sheriff began to splutter, as he climbed to his feet, unable to get his words out quick enough as he put his chair between him and us. “But,” I said, effectively silencing him, “you need to understand that there are things we’re just better at doing and when it comes to whatever is taking your people you’re going to want us out there on the front line and not your men.”

  “And you swear you won’t…” he trailed off, suddenly unable to meet our eyes.

  “If you’re worr
ied will I eat any of your town,” Victoria said, managing to sound utterly bored, “you can rest easy. I’ve got a sweet tooth that humans just don’t quite satisfy.”

  I didn’t think the Sheriff’s eyes could widen anymore than they already had. I was wrong and for one terrible second I thought he was going to keel over and I so didn’t want a dead body on my hands this soon into the investigation. We were here to try and preserve life, not end it.

  I gave Victoria a withering look and she shrugged as if to say, ‘what, I was just being honest.’

  The Sheriff gripped the back of his chair and nodded. “Fine, I’ll take you to the place but we’re taking separate vehicles,” he said.

  “Done.”

  I turned to leave the room.

  “Hang back a sec,” he said, his voice sounding steadier with each passing moment. I turned to face him and while the colour hadn’t returned to his cheeks, he also wasn’t hiding behind his swivel chair anymore either.

  “Don’t go showing the others ‘round here what you can do,” he said, more to Victoria than me.

  “Why not?” Victoria furrowed her brow.

  “Because fear can make some men forget what side of the law you actually walk on.”

  “Are you telling us, that if Victoria’s abilities are exposed someone is going to try and hurt her?”

  The Sheriff shrugged. “Take it as a piece of friendly advice is all. I’m not saying anyone would try and hurt you per se but we don’t get many of your sort out here and the townsfolk are already spooked enough. I don’t want any misunderstandings…”

  Victoria opened her mouth to argue but I shook my head at her. There was no point in arguing. Fear of the unknown caused overreactions in people, the Sheriff wasn’t wrong there. The best we could do in this case was get in, figure out the issue, bag the one responsible and head home. The sooner the better…

  “If I have to defend myself, Sheriff,” Victoria said, “I will. No matter the emotion driving their response. I’m not willing to die because of another’s ignorance, I value my life a little more than that.”

  Victoria left, leaving the Sheriff to stare after her. I followed suit, not wanting to get dragged into another back and forth conversation that would only result in us wasting more daylight.

  And Victoria was right. Too often people hid their actions behind their ignorance. Getting away with the most heinous of acts that would normally be deemed as criminal. It would continue until we declared an end to the excuses. But I had a feeling that nothing would change until those with the true power decided to fight back.

  11

  I parked the SUV behind the Sheriff’s car. We were just outside the town, surrounded by open fields, the dry heat baking the ground beneath my feet as I stepped out of the car.

  The rumble of an engine ground against my ears and I turned my head in time to see a huge truck roar past, just inches from where I stood. The blast of heat kicked up from the road slammed into me, along with the dust. I blinked away the worst of the gritty dirt and shielded my eyes with my hand as the truck speeded into the distance. The back of the truck was loaded down with large logs, held in place with heavy duty straps. The gentle breeze carried a unpleasant mixture of diesel and tree sap on the air.

  “Someone’s in a hurry,” I said as the Sheriff climbed stiffly from the front seat of his car.

  “We’re on them continuously to slow down. Nothing seems to work…”

  “They’ll kill someone if they keep it up.”

  “Already did,” he said sadly, “A young local boy was killed in town just a few months back. Driver wasn’t drunk or anything, just going to fast when the boy ran out in front of him chasing after something or other…”

  “And they still won’t slow down?”

  Sheriff shook his head. “Nah, they’ve got contracts to meet and schedules to keep. His death slowed them down a little but he wasn’t in the ground five minutes when it was all forgotten and they were right back up to speed.”

  “Can you not talk to them about it?”

  The Sheriff let out a short bark of a laugh and shook his head.

  “They own this place,” he said, “we talk to them until we’re blue in the face but it doesn’t make a difference. They give us assurances and then nothing changes.”

  “Maybe we should talk to them,” I mused, “who runs the operation?”

  “Rikerson Logging Inc.” He plopped his hat on his head, shading his eyes so I could no longer read the expression in them. “You’re welcome to go and talk to them but don’t expect anything from it. The only god they know is the one that’s printed on a dollar bill.”

  Victoria hopping a fence on the opposite side of the SUV caught my attention and I watched as she disappeared into the immature trees that lined the embankment.

  “How does she know where to go?” The Sheriff called to me as I hurried after the Changeling.

  “Following her instincts,” I said.

  I climbed the fence, dropping down onto the other side with a muffled thud. Despite the trees thriving in here, the ground itself was dry and arid beneath my boots.

  I turned and watched as the Sheriff huffed his way over the fence. For such a large man, he moved quickly, as sure-footed as any cat. If he wasn’t so out of breath from the heat and exertion, I might have considered him stealthy.

  “This way,” he said, nodding in the direction Victoria had disappeared.

  The ground sloped sharply away beneath us and I used the trees to keep my footing as we proceeded cautiously through the trees.

  “So how did you find this place?”

  “Jessie Owens was out here with her boyfriend,” the Sheriff said a little breathlessly. “It’s a popular spot for the high-school kids to come to, they do things out here they don’t want their parents finding out about.”

  “I remember her name from the files,” I said, “the deputy her interviewed her couldn’t get much out of her except that Steve, her boyfriend was missing.”

  “Taken,” the Sheriff clarified. “Jessie said Steve was taken. That one minute they were getting hot and heavy with one another and the next he was snatched away…”

  The sound of a river rushing past grew louder as we descended through the trees. And when we broke through the cover of the trees, I found myself on a grassy bank next to a wide and fast flowing waterway.

  “Shame too,” the Sheriff said joining me. “The Taylor’s are a good family, Steve was a smart kid, heading to college next year.”

  “She sure he didn’t just fall in the water?” I said, catching sight of Victoria off to my left prowling along the riverbank. “It’s fast, it’d be easy to get dragged down in that.”

  The Sheriff shook his head. “It’s not always like this,” he said, gesturing to the water, “we had a big storm last night and the river has swelled. Give her a day or two and she’ll calm down again. Be quiet as a mouse and peaceful as a church.”

  “And it was calm when Jessie and Steve were here?”

  The Sheriff nodded. “No rains for two weeks, she’d dwindled all the way down.”

  “And Steve wouldn’t have left or—”

  “I’ve got blood here,” Victoria said, from somewhere in the bushes.

  Tracking the sound of her voice, I found her crouched over a patch of dark earth.

  “You sure?”

  Victoria cast a withering glare over her shoulder in my direction. “Are you really asking me that?”

  “How does she know it’s blood?” The Sheriff asked, catching up to us. “We swept this whole area here, couldn’t find anything.”

  “Dogs?” I straightened up and pushed my red hair back out of my face.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Did you use dogs or did you and your men scour the area yourselves?”

  “We used dogs,” he said indignantly. “We’re not stupid, we always use dogs for missing persons like this…”

  “Wouldn’t have done any good,” Victoria said, bending ov
er so her face was scant inches from the ground. “The scent markers here are too muddled for any dog to figure it out.”

  “Our dogs wouldn’t miss blood. Old Bill is the best bloodhound in the country. He—”

  Victoria shook her head. “You mistake me,” she said, “a dog is an animal. He could smell the blood but whatever took your guy was a true predator. Your dog was too smart to lead you back to the predator’s nest, getting you and your men killed in the process.”

  “You’re telling me the dogs were too afraid to signal that there was blood here?” The Sheriff’s face had lost its colour once more.

  “I am,” Victoria said, “he probably saved your lives.”

  “Well shit…”

  I found myself nodding in agreement with the Sheriff’s colourful descriptor.

  “You should walk the scene here,” Victoria said, pointing to where the blood had long since soaked into the earth. “I can’t be sure but our guy lost a significant portion of his blood right here. I think he fought back and it’s probably what saved the girl.”

  It made sense. It was unlike any preternatural I’d met to leave behind a potential food source. However if Steve thought they were going to go back for Jessie and he fought back to save her… It was a sad end for the kid but if it were true he was a hero.

  “If I do it right, I can start where he was snatched from,” I said to Victoria, indicating the grassy bank behind me. “That way, we’ll have a wider view of how they operate.”

  She shrugged. “Good enough for me.”

  I turned to the Sheriff. “You might want to head back to the car…”

  “If it’s all the same with you, I’d much rather stay.”

  “You don’t need to be brave,” I said, “these kinds of things tend to get weird and magic isn’t for everyone.”

  The Sheriff huffed a breath. “I appreciate the concern but I knew this boy. I know his family… Heck, I know everyone that’s gone missing here and if this is how we catch the ones responsible then so be it. I might not like it but I do need to stay, to witness it all so I can look his family in the eye and tell them I did everything I could to bring their son home alive.”