Hex Appeal

by P. N. Elrod

  In the background, as distant as another world, the click of Greg’s strobe sounded like the dry scrape of claws on cement.

  “All right, but there’s something you’re torn up with guilt about. Something to do with Toland. What is it?”

  Prieto was maneuvering me into talking, and he was frighteningly good at it. I could see now why he was such an excellent detective; he had a calm, gentle manner toward suspects, one that made me want to confide in him. Unburden myself and relieve the boiling internal pressure.

  I sucked in a deep breath, turned, and walked away toward the street. I’d dismissed the cab, and now I was sorry I had; I’d expected that Prieto would offer a ride back home, or have one of the uniformed officers do it, but the last thing I wanted was to be stuck in a car with him now. I was frighteningly fragile, and he’d know just where to push to collapse my thin, wavering wall of resistance.

  “Holly Anne,” he said from behind—closer than I thought he should be. “Is he off looking for the killer? Because that’s not his job. That’s mine. You have to tell me what you know. He could be in a lot of danger if he goes off and tangles with this cold bastard.”

  Good. That came bubbling up from the black, angry depths of my soul, and I tried to push that down, tried to excuse it as temper. “He’ll be fine,” I said. “He’s strong.” God, I was so disappointed in him now. And angry. And frustrated.

  And then I felt it.

  My stride faltered a little, as if I’d hit an unexpectedly soft patch of ground, but it wasn’t a physical blow, it was a feeling that swept over me, like a stinging black rain.

  Weakness. Disconnection. Loss.

  I knew that feeling, I’d been dreading it all this time, every day, every hour. It was the other shoe dropping.

  It was Andy Toland losing his iron-hard grip on life and sliding back into the darkness from which he’d come.

  I stopped and wrapped my arms around my stomach, shocked by the depth of the desperation ripping through me. No, no, no … I wasn’t sure if it was me feeling that, or Andy, or both of us, a tangled knot of despair and pain and anguish. Oh, mercy, please …

  “You all right?” Prieto touched my shoulder, but I couldn’t respond. I panted for breath, and there were tears shimmering in my eyes. Bright, harsh tears that bent the light and broke it into twisting black shadows. Death was coming.

  Death was here. I was losing him, and I didn’t know why, or how, or how to stop it.

  I heard an engine roaring, and looked up to see a car round the corner and pull into the parking area, skidding and sliding in a greasy veil of smoke. My car. A shadow behind the wheel. Before the momentum was burned away, the driver’s side door snapped open, and a body tumbled out in a loose-limbed heap.

  Andy.

  He rolled over on his back, gasping, arching in the struggle to resist the touch of the darkness that was welling up inside. I could feel it drenching his cells, drowning the life out of him.

  I wasn’t even aware of falling on my knees beside him on the cracked surface, but the touch of his skin was the most real thing in the world to me. “Andy—Andy, no…”

  He grabbed for my hand and squeezed it tight. His eyes were wide and blank with concentration. I could see that the whites of his eyes were coloring over with blackness. Death was coming, and coming fast.

  “Found the resurrection witch. He’s dead,” he gasped out. “Holly, Holly, I damn sure didn’t mean for this to happen. I never meant to cause suffering. You believe that?”

  “I do,” I said. It was hard for me to see his expression now, through the bright veil of my tears. “You made the shells. You didn’t know what they’d be used for.”

  “Should have,” he whispered. “Should have fucking well known. I killed that witch, but he gave up his black-hearted son of a bitch boss first. Gave him up and he’s here, Holly, he’s right here with you, and I had to make it back to you, I had to…”

  I didn’t know what that meant. I looked over my shoulder; Prieto stood nearby, watching us with a confused expression. His cell phone was in his hand, but I could see that he didn’t know who he could call for help. Not for this. “He dying?” Prieto asked.

  I was afraid to tell him, but there was no doubt of it, not now. I could sense the relentless tide of it growing inside him. “No, Andy, stay with me,” I begged. “God, please, stay with me, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I doubted you…”

  “Holly, listen,” he said. His voice was faint, but there was a note of urgency in it, a raw edge of insistence. “He’s right here.”

  Prieto. No. I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t, but I turned to look at him. He frowned back. He hadn’t heard what Andy had said. “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would he call us in, why would he if he knew—”

  “Not him!” Andy forced the words out, and squeezed my hands so hard I felt bones shift. “Other one.”

  The blue car.

  Greg.

  I didn’t register the sound of the gunshot immediately; it took a long, confused second to penetrate as anything but a sharp, alien noise. By then Prieto was falling, the cell phone dropping to shatter on the pavement before he did. Half of his face was gone in a red ruin of bone and blood and brain, and, for a numbed instant, I thought his head had actually exploded in some kind of freak accident …

  And then I realized that someone had shot him, as a bullet ricocheted off the door of the car and dug a raw gouge in the pavement not a foot away from me.

  I screamed and ducked. Andy tried get up, to put himself in front of me because that was who he was, what he had always been.

  I’d given up on him. I’d let myself doubt, and doubt had set him adrift just when he needed me most. And still he’d fought his way back out of the dark to come here. To warn me.

  I wrenched open the back door of my car, and there, in the back floorboards, were two bags. Andy’s, and mine. I threw myself inside and grabbed both. I thumped Andy’s down on the pavement next to him.

  He didn’t reach for it. In fact, he didn’t move at all. I still felt the connection between us, but it was pulling at me like a razor-sharp hook in flesh, and I was gasping from the agony of it. Death was dragging him away, and he was fighting it with every single ounce of magic and courage he possessed.

  I didn’t dare try to get to him, there wasn’t time. Instead, I dumped the contents of my own bag on the floorboards.

  The gun tumbled out, solid and reassuring, and I got it up and aimed just as a shadow stepped in front of the driver’s side door.

  Greg. So damn normal. I’d spent an entire evening sitting in a car with him, laughing at his jokes, sharing chips and ranch dip and discussing the merits of the original Star Trek with the follow-ons. I’d liked that Greg, but now, as I saw his face, I realized that the man I’d gotten to know had been a ghost. A mask.

  What was behind it was something not really human—full of cruel anticipation and dark pleasure and a particularly soulless kind of glee that held no hint of joy.

  He pointed his weapon straight at me and smiled. “Drop it,” he said. “I already killed Prieto, and this guy’s gone, too.” He nudged Andy with his foot, and Andy’s head lolled bonelessly. He was pale and lifeless as a rubber doll. His eyes were open, but blank as glass. “Drop it.”

  I squeezed the trigger, but he was faster. My shot went wide. His hit my shoulder and slammed me back against the upholstery in a bright red spray of blood. It must have hurt, but my brain skipped a beat, then it was just numb, as if I’d been asleep on that side of my body for too long. Shock, clamping down to preserve my life.

  I’d dropped the gun. I bent forward to try to pick it up, but he grabbed my foot and dragged me out, flailing, leaving a thick wet trail of crimson behind. He kept dragging, past Prieto’s corpse, onto the grass. I tried to get up when he released his hold, but he put a knee in the center of my chest as he put his gun away and drew a knife. “Never shot a woman before,” he said. “It’s not as much fun as I’d hoped. You d
idn’t scream enough, but we can fix that. We’ll have to make this quick, though, Holly Anne; it’s kind of public around here. Exciting, though, isn’t it?” His grin was loose and wet and horrifying. “I sat there all night with you in that car, you know, wondering if I should take you over to that field and do you there for your friends to find. If you’d followed me out there, I don’t think I could have stopped myself.”

  I shut my eyes because there was nothing I could do now. I was wounded, and he had the knife, I had nothing at all. Not even hope.

  Andy. I love you, I always loved you, I am so sorry I even doubted it …

  At least we could be together, somewhere beyond all this. Somewhere far from the pain and the sharp bite of the blade as it touched my arm, widening the bullet wound. Cutting my life away. I heard myself scream, but I focused on retreating into a place of silence, of peace, of Andy.

  I love you. I’m so sorry for hurting you. You’re the only thing that ever really mattered to me, the only man who ever touched me in my heart, and I love you, I will always …

  “I know,” Andy Toland said. I thought it was in my head, I really did; reality had come undone. I opened my eyes. It wasn’t Andy crouching over me, it was the killer, Greg, with his totally normal blue golf shirt underneath, and his totally normal face with a wolf’s eyes and a shark’s smile like some horrible accident of nature …

  But it had been Andy speaking. He was standing right behind Greg. Pale as death, stark as an ink drawing, built of flesh and blood and bone and rage.

  And below all that, there was love, oh God, so much love it mended my shattered heart into an unbreakable whole.

  He pumped his shotgun one-handed and put it to the back of Greg’s head. For a second, Greg froze; his predator’s eyes turned frightened, and his smile faltered. Then he dropped the knife and held up his hands. “Please don’t shoot,” he said. “I surrender. I won’t give you any trouble.”

  He must have thought that would do it. I could have told him different because Andy Toland was never a policeman, was never a lawyer; he grew up in a world where, sometimes, the only judge, jury, and justice was to be had in the flash of a gun.

  And this was personal.

  I turned my head just in time before he fired the shotgun. Both barrels.

  Andy had angled the shot up, but some of the blood and … other things … fell on me. I expected to feel Greg’s lifeless corpse sprawl across me, but Andy had hold of his collar, and he pitched him off to the side like trash. Then Andy dropped to his knees and clamped both hands on my shoulder.

  I still felt the pull of the dark, but this time I realized that it wasn’t Andy fighting that tide. It was me. “Holly Anne,” he said. “Holly, you listen to me. Listen. You’re not leaving. I ain’t allowing that. You just listen.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I felt vague and distant now. “I was angry you didn’t tell me. You understand? I didn’t mean to let you go.”

  “All done now,” he said in his most smooth, soothing voice. His buttery voice, the one he used to lie to my boss to get my day off. Oh Jesus, I was going to die on my day off. That was just sad. And I hadn’t gotten my reports finished.

  Andy cursed in a soft, trembling voice, and fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone. He punched 911, but I didn’t hear the conversation. I was busy thinking how odd it was to be looking at him from so great a distance. He had a nice nose after all, even if it had been broken once. I couldn’t understand why he was crying. “Did you have a shotgun in your bag?” I asked. “Because that must have been really heavy.”

  “Shut up, my love, please Jesus—”

  “I love you,” I said. It was important to say it.

  And then I closed my eyes and with a great sense of relief, let go.

  And Andy Toland held me, hovering there, suspended in the dark, tethered to him by the unbreakable chain of our love.

  * * *

  It took two surgeries and three weeks in the hospital to put my arm back together properly, and Andy never left my side. I think there might have been some violence involved in his defiance of visiting hours, but by the time I was conscious enough to really know, he and the medical community had achieved a cautious truce.

  The police chief showed up to formally shake my other hand and present me with a certificate of appreciation, which was nice. There was a check for my services, too, which was even better. My boss sent flowers.

  Andy looked good on the evening news, telling all them reporting sons of bitches to go to hell. I almost choked on my chicken broth.

  But the best thing … the best of all … was going home with Andy, and being carried over the threshold, and smelling the astonishing scent of his potion brewing in its final stage. “I made sure it wasn’t so smelly for you,” he said. “Got a surprise, too.”

  I breathed in Holly’s Balm and rested my head against his shoulder. “No more surprises,” I said. “Promise me.”

  “All right then.” He smiled, put me on the couch, and pulled up a chair. He pulled from his pocket a thick sheaf of papers, which he unfolded. “You need to sign these.”

  “What is it?”

  “Company papers.”

  “Company for what?”

  “Holly’s Balm,” he said. “You own it, and I just got the first check for agreeing to let this company sell it. All I got to do is give ’em the recipe, and they’ll hire on the potions witches to do it. Us included. Should make us a tidy sum in paychecks, plus this signing bonus for you.”

  Oh, there was a check. He held it in front of me.

  That was a lot of zeroes. Six of them, with a respectably large single digit in front of them.

  “Andy—I can’t take all this…”

  “It’s only half,” he said. “The other half’s gone to Detective Prieto’s family. They won’t want for nothing, I promise you that. And—and to the families of them girls. I sent it without signing the note.” A quiet, shy smile spread over his lips. “Did good this time, didn’t I?”

  I took the check, put it and the papers aside, and kissed him, long and sweet. He tasted like the potion, like every good thing that had ever happened in the world and nothing bad.

  “Yes,” I said. “You did good.”

  The potion was called Holly’s Balm, but the fact was … he was all the balm I’d ever need.

  * * *

  Author’s Bio:

  Rachel Caine is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the Morganville Vampires series, the Weather Warden series, the Outcast Season series, and the new Revivalist series. She lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas. Her website is www.rachelcaine.com.

  SNOW JOB

  by CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

  Everyone wondered why a Sin City bigwig like Christophe performed twice nightly as “Cocaine” with his own rock band at his Inferno Hotel venue. That was like “the Donald” leading a fifties doo-wop group nightly at the Trump Las Vegas, although that very thought was more shuddersome than a pack of feral zombies invading a tea party.

  Everyone was dying to know, in a 2013 Vegas packed with supernatural moguls, just what flavor of paranormal the Seven Deadly Sins’ lead singer, Christophe, aka Cocaine, aka Snow, was. Rumor whispered that he was an albino vampire, but Snow maintained that was way off base.

  Except for the albino part, obviously.

  One night between shows, the rock-star mogul stepped firmly out of character.

  “Get me Delilah Street,” Snow told his security chief, Grizelle, even though he knew that the formidable shapeshifter hated Delilah Street almost as much as Delilah Street claimed to hate him.

  “You’ve never asked me to provide you with a woman before,” Grizelle observed.

  “I’m not asking now. She’s a paranormal investigator.”

  “She’s a self-advertised paranormal investigator. I find her annoying. I thought you did, too.”

  His colorless lips sketched the shadow of a smile. “I do.”

  “She’s a
bloody amateur,” Grizelle went on, “and she’s the Cadaver Kid’s girlfriend, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “She’s going to be my bloody amateur next. And, Grizelle, I notice everything, including when you’re jealous.”

  “Jealous? Who’s got your back with tooth and claw?”

  “You do.”

  His pale hand stroked the top of her gleaming ebony hair, which was styled into shoulder-length braids. She was a tall, handsome woman with watered-silk skin, a moiré pattern of black and deepest gray that outshone her emerald green silk sheath dress and metal-heeled gladiator sandals.

  As Grizelle leaned into his fond gesture, her moiré skin sprouted black-and-white fur, and the green gown dwindled into the concentrated gleam of feline irises. Now that Grizelle had shifted into a huge black-striped white tiger, her platter-sized paws rested on the broad shoulders of Snow’s white leather jumpsuit, and her emerald eyes were slitted with devotion as one furred cheek rubbed her scent on him.

  Her gesture almost dislodged the black sunglasses he always wore to shield his presumably pink eyes from the light.

  “I’m going to need a human investigator in my corner very soon, Grizelle,” he whispered into her large, tufted ear.

  The white big cat eased down onto all fours before rising in her human form, shaking her stripes into velvety black skin and satiny black hair. Her flashing emerald eyes evoked the glitzy green costume of Envy in the Seven Deadly Sins band.

  “I’m your security chief,” she reminded her boss. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I told you. Delilah Street isn’t here.” His voice held the sharpness of command now.

  “She doesn’t like you,” Grizelle half growled, sounding cattier than a soap-opera diva. “It might be difficult to convince her to jump at your call.”

  “I’m sure you’ll devise a plan. Don’t wait. Something wicked this way comes.”

  * * *

  You’d think a girl could get a peaceful night’s snooze in a cozy Enchanted Cottage. Sleeping Beauty managed it for decades in a drafty old castle.