Moon In The Mirror: A Tess Noncoire Adventure

by P. R. Frost

  Allie already had hers out.

  Mine. You are mine, the wind howled.

  “Wanna take a bet on that?” I called back. I swung my weapon in a full circle over my head, around my knees, and back and forth at waist level.

  Vengeance is mine! the Windago screamed. The Orculli don’t order me around.

  The real wind swallowed her words.

  A shadow coalesced between the puddles of light. Tall, bulky, vaguely humanoid. At least it had arms and legs. And lots and lots of unkempt, smelly fur.

  No wonder these critters became antisocial. No one would come near them until they bathed.

  Mike emptied his weapon into the shadow. The bullets passed right through it.

  Silly human. You can’t hurt me. But you can become my new mate. The shadow advanced on Mike.

  He shook so badly he dropped his weapon. A dark stain spread downward from his crotch.

  Now that’s irony. He could coolly perform an emergency tracheotomy but wet his pants in the face of a demon.

  The Windago kept coming, pressing Mike farther and farther into the darkness. She reached out one long arm and grabbed for the poor man.

  He screamed and backpedaled.

  “Shit! Leave the poor guy alone. He’s too young for you, Lilia David.” I took a chance that there was still a morsel of humanity left in the creature. I had no proof that she and her mate were the reclusive author Howard Ebson and his longtime companion. But I had killed the mate last autumn and Howard hadn’t shown up the next day to receive a lifetime achievement award. Lilia had accepted it for him with bad grace.

  The Windago hissed and turned her attention back to me. She reached spectral hands toward me.

  “Don’t let her touch you. She’ll freeze-dry anything she touches.” I could see ice crystals forming in the air around me. I stayed firmly in the center of one circle of light.

  Allie dragged Mike into another. He held his arm awkwardly, cradling it against his body. He whimpered in pain.

  Damn. I really hoped he hadn’t been bit. If he had, I’d have to kill him before three days had passed and he became a Windago.

  Anger shot liquid fire through my veins.

  The Windago paused at the edge of the light.

  I could see the fuzz around the edges of her shadows. Hair. Akin to Sasquatch.

  I’d killed a dozen Sasquatch in one battle. There was only one Windago tonight.

  “Come and get me, Lilia. I dare you.” I swung the Celestial Blade closer to her.

  She snarled. Red pinpoints of light in the region of her eyes glowed brighter.

  Before she could think about risking the light, I took the last step I needed. My blade whisked across her middle, slicing through fur.

  But not hide.

  She retreated with the wind and disappeared behind a spindly little maple at the verge of the parking lot. You killed my mate. Now I’ll replace him with yours! she screeched.

  “Laugh’s on you, Lilia. I don’t have a mate anymore.”

  So you think now.

  An unearthly silence followed her pronouncement. My gut grew cold.

  That was hardly any fun at all, Scrap complained. He dropped back to his normal form, tinged only a little bit pink.

  “There’s beer and OJ in the car. Meet me at home and I’ll feed you,” I whispered.

  He popped out.

  “You didn’t see anything, Mike. You hear me, Mike?” Allie demanded her partner’s attention.

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “You didn’t see anything. You didn’t hear anything.”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “If you say one word, you’ll be strapped to a desk from here to eternity filling out paperwork. You got that?” She held him upright by the lapels of his jacket. He nodded, eyes wide in fear.

  Fear of her, or of the Windago?

  I pulled on his left arm, the one that hung limply at his side. Slashed jacket and shirt sleeve. The skin beneath looked an angry red, like a cat scratch. No trace of blood.

  “You’ll be okay. But watch that for traces of infection. See you tomorrow, Allie. I’ll fill out your forms then.” Jauntily I waved and climbed into my car for the short drive home.

  Exhaustion, mental and physical pulled at my limbs and my eyelids. I wanted nothing more than to crawl under the down duvet and sleep for a week.

  I really needed that vacation.

  So, of course, Scrap chose that time to sit on the bed-stead and lecture me for two hours about the dangers of letting the Windago get away. About letting Donovan come too close to me. About our need to call on the Sisterhood for help. About my need to do more research. About the dangers of letting Darren stay in the house too long. About his need to choose my wardrobe. About my failure to provide him with enough mold to sustain life. About the lack of beer in the fridge.

  Dill added his own litany of grief. He was running out of time in limbo. His Powers That Be demanded I get rid of the imp and embrace Dill. He ran the same arguments over and over.

  “Dill, you used to have a sense of humor,” I reminded him. And myself. “Time was you’d belittle those Powers That Be with puns and scathing commentary on their pompous attitude and useless pronouncements.

  Silence.

  Could he be just a construct trying to force me to get rid of Scrap for a demonic reason?

  I clenched my teeth and repeated Gollum’s statement. “No one comes back from the dead.”

  Smelling of sulfur and brimstone, Dill vanished in a huff.

  “I can’t go back, Dill. I have to move forward,” I whispered into the silence.

  And then Scrap started to clean. He was very frustrated that he’d gone to the trouble of transforming and hadn’t even gotten a taste of Windago blood.

  Dust and stray socks flew through the air. The sharp smell of pine cleaner filled my head and made me sneeze. Mom is the only person who can outclean Scrap. And she prefers bleach.

  On and on he went until the drone of his voice finally lulled me to sleep. I think he moved on to the kitchen then.

  I did not sleep well. My dreams took me back to the Citadel. Back to a time when I still grieved for Dill so heavily I could hardly think. Back to a time when Scrap was new to me and I had yet to build enough confidence in myself to understand why we must be the ones to fight to preserve humanity from demon invasions.

  My nightmares back then had repeated themselves often. They went on and on until I could no longer tell if I remembered a dream, or remembered reality.

  Face your personal demons in your own reality and they might go away, Scrap had whispered to me in the dead of night when I dared not sleep.

  He had a point.

  “Sometimes they are like huge gorillas, but more human. Bigfoot?”

  Sasquatch. Big, ugly, hairy, with fists like clubs and teeth like daggers.

  “Yeah.”

  What else?

  There were more. There were always more. Every time I dreamed, my fertile imagination came up with a different demon. Big ones, little ones, humanoid ones, squid ones, bug ones. I described a few.

  “They come out of doorways into a big featureless room. It’s all white and round and I can’t see its limits unless a door opens. And all the doors are different.”

  That’s the chat room. You can pass into any dimension from there.

  “Is that like the eleventh dimension?” That wasn’t the right term. I couldn’t remember the details of the program I’d watched on TV about String Theory. Or was it Membrane Theory? Some scientists apparently had begun to believe in alternate universes. Ghosts could be explained as a temporary overlap of those universes.

  That pushed more of my creep buttons. What if in another reality Dill had not died?

  I think I cried myself to sleep both that night back at the Citadel and this night snug in my own bed on Cape Cod.

  Chapter 17

  I AWOKE FRIDAY morning feeling heavy and groggy. The clock told me it was pushing nine. Th
e telephone beside my bed rang seven times. I ignored it. Too wrapped up in my own fog to bother.

  It rang again. Another seven times. Its shrillness cut through the cobwebs in my brain.

  “What?” I snarled on the sixth ring.

  “This is James Frazier of the Cape Gazette. I’m looking for a Miss WindScribe.”

  What? How?

  “Wrong number.” I slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

  It rang again. “Ugh,” I groaned and dragged myself into the shower. The sharp sting revived me a little. Nothing really helped until I stumbled downstairs— careful not to bump my head on the overhead beam that crossed the steep flight that was little more than a broad ladder—and dove into my first cup of coffee.

  Everyone in the family knew my habits and I found a stack of notes propped up on the coffeepot.

  Idly I wandered back to the closed door leading to Gollum’s apartment. He opened the door on my first knock looking fresh and alert. He’d traded his summer uniform of pressed khakis and polo shirt for crisp cords and turtleneck. With his glasses perched atop his head, I could see his mild blue eyes. I read concern there and something else I wasn’t sure I wanted to identify.

  “Mom and Darren headed for Boston, at some ungodly hour this morning. If I heard her correctly when she tried to wake me, I think they are looking for rings. She made coffee if you want some,” I croaked, cradling my cup of the life-giving substance.

  “Thanks, but I’ve already made myself a pot here. About an hour ago Allie took WindScribe down to headquarters to question her about other relatives who might take her in.”

  “You look ready to tackle the world.”

  “Which you don’t. I have a meeting at the college at eleven. Then I need to head up to Boston for the lecture tonight. You coming?”

  “Wish I could. But I don’t quite dare leave with MoonFeather coming this afternoon. And WindScribe. I’m wondering if she has a drug problem. What are you lecturing on?”

  “The Windago.”

  “Aren’t they a Midwest phenomena?” One of them had followed me from Wisconsin anyway. That area had about the coldest north woods I could think of to harbor those nasty critters.

  “Originated here in New England, then moved west with the native tribes.” Gollum looked like he might settle in for a prelude to tonight’s lecture.

  “What got you started on that horror story? I thought European demons were your specialty.” I needed more coffee if I was going to let him get started.

  “I began looking for the shadow demons who freeze-dry their prey that you stumbled across last autumn in Wisconsin.”

  I suppressed a tremble in the back of my knees. Then I gave a brief recounting of last night’s adventures.

  “Damn. I knew I should have gone with you.”

  “What could you have done?” Somehow I just could not imagine Gollum fending off three teenage muggers or a vengeful Windago. He researched. I fought.

  “I don’t know that I could have done anything other than deter the muggers just by being male and you not being alone. I feel useless. I could have collected more data on the Windago so that you could be better prepared next time.”

  “Next time I don’t think she’ll come alone,” I mused. But who among my acquaintances would she claim as her new mate. I didn’t think Dill’s ghost would satisfy her.

  Something in Gollum’s expression as he looked at me shocked me to my core. “Lilia will come after you next,” I said quietly, not sure I wanted to face any side of that issue. “Do you have some kind of charm or ward to keep her away from you when I’m not around?”

  “I think I can manage.” He quirked me a lopsided grin and gestured me into his new lair and retrieved a sheaf of notes from the desk. “Windago victims are said to have their hearts frozen.” He perused the papers with only half his attention. Unusual.

  The other half of his attention seemed to be on me.

  Way outside my comfort zone.

  “Lucky I didn’t let one of those things touch me,” I said. Once again I saw in my mind Mike cradling his arm against his chest. “We may have a problem. I think we need to keep an eye on Allie’s new partner. He may have gotten tagged.”

  “If he was, you know what you have to do.” Gollum looked me square in the eye.

  I nodded and shivered with more than just the cold drafts that plagued my house and eluded my caulk gun. The enormity of my task as a Warrior of the Celestial Blade hit me anew.

  I was charged with keeping these horrors away from humanity, killing them when I could, driving them back to their own dimension when I couldn’t.

  Alone.

  Without the support of my Sisterhood.

  “Looks to me like your heart has been frozen,” Dill quipped from his post by the desk. He leaned against it casually, long legs stretched out. “If you had a heart, you’d take pity on me and let us be together as we are meant to be.”

  I ignored him.

  Just then Gandalf, Gollum’s long-haired white cat darted between his legs and squeezed past me and out the door.

  “Sorry,” Gollum apologized as he dove for the errant beast.

  Scrap swooped down the stairs and brushed past the fleeing cat. He came up with a pawful of white hairs, laughing inanely. Then he sneezed. Green slime sprayed the walls. I hoped it was invisible to everyone but me.

  “You’re going to clean that up,” I admonished my imp.

  He just laughed some more, flitting in a circle above the cat’s head.

  Gandalf snarled and swatted Scrap, claws fully extended. He drew blood from Scrap’s butt.

  This means war! Scrap yelled. He sounded decidedly stuffy.

  “What’s going on?” Gollum asked, scratching his scalp.

  “Ongoing feud between our familiars.”

  “Did Gandalf hurt Scrap?”

  I forgot that Gollum couldn’t see either Scrap or Dill.

  Yes, he did. I’m bleeding!

  “Put some iodine on it,” I snapped. “And leave the cat alone.”

  “I’ll just put him back where he belongs.” Gollum scooped up the cat and threw him into the apartment, closing the door sharply behind Gandalf.

  I heard the cat’s smug purr of triumph through the closed door.

  “I need to show you something.” I led Gollum back into the kitchen. From there, I showed him the door hidden behind some pantry shelves that opened onto the cellar steps. “There’s another entrance from the outside, but that’s covered with snow at the moment.” I led him down the freestanding wooden steps, added many years after the root cellar was dug.

  “This place is really old,” he said, caressing ancient beams and drinking in the dank smell of mold and laundry, counting rows of preserves.