“Call me Vath,” he said, flashing a quick smile, his eyes lingering on Demi just a little too long before drifting back to Cara.
“You been around these parts long?” Doug asked. “Ever see anything like this before?”
“I’ve lived here all my life,” Cara said. “My great-grandmother built that house over a hundred years ago as a sanitarium for TB patients. Eventually the sick stopped coming, but people kept on dying, same as always, so the family converted the sanitorium into a funeral home. We see the occasional lost dog turned up mauled by a bobcat or coyotes, and everyone knows there’s bears in the woods. But nothing like this.”
“You live right here?” Demi asked, jerking her head toward the funeral home. Cara nodded absently. “That must be creepy, living in a cemetery.”
“It’s peaceful,” Cara said. “I have quiet neighbors.”
“I should get her back to the house,” Vath said. “All this stress isn’t good for her.”
“He’s right,” Cara said, nodding. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“She always like them so young?” Demi asked after the couple departed. Mike chuckled.
“That’s the thing about Cara,” he said. “Bit of a wild woman, but the town loves her. Real shame about all this mess had to happen right here. Anyway, we’re about to wrap this up and get the body moved inside so Cara can get her cleaned up for the family.
“You’re letting Cara take custody of the body?” Vera asked. “She’s not a suspect?”
“Cara and her family have been running the funeral home for as long as anyone can remember,” Mike said. “Even if this were anything other than an animal attack, there’s no way Cara could be involved. Just not possible. Anyway, you might want to check out the tavern down the hill. That’s the last place any of the girls were seen. We’re thinking they had a few too many, got lost in the woods, and wound up a mountain lion’s midnight snack. We’ll catch that cougar though.”
“I don’t know what’s killing people here,” Demi said once Mike and his partner left them standing alone in the middle of the graveyard. “But the cops are right about one thing—we’re definitely dealing with a cougar.”
“Oh, come on,” Doug said. “She’s the hottest mortician I’ve ever seen.”
“We all know the bulk of your dating life takes place in funeral homes, but you don’t have to draw attention to it, Seabiscuit,” Demi replied.
“You always this mean to him?” Vera asked, giving Demi a sideways glance.
“Yes, she is,” Doug said. Demi rolled her eyes.
“I’m just teasing,” she said. “He’s a big boy. So we gonna check out this tavern or what?”
“Isn’t it a little early to be drinking?” Vera asked.
“No such thing,” Demi said, shaking her head.
***
It had everything a bar needed to have, at a bare minimum, to call it a bar, but to call it a bar was still being generous in Demi’s estimation. The town’s commercial center occupied about two blocks of the main street, boasting small-town staples like a hardware store, a thrift shop, and a pizzeria in a stretch of two- and three-story brick buildings pressed tightly against each other. The sign over the front door read “sports bar”, which only set the unachievable standard even higher.
Inside, past the swinging glass doors and the windows bearing neon advertisements for the cheapest brands of beer, dim lights hung over two tiny tables along one wall of the narrow establishment. The other boasted the bar itself, a sticky length of linoleum countertop that stretched all the way to the back of the L-shaped establishment, where the room opened up to allow just enough space for a pool table and an arcade game.
They’d ordered a pizza next door to fortify themselves for the long stakeout ahead—leaving the leftovers out in the car with Doug, who was surveilling the bar from across the street—and Demi was ready to get started. “I’ll get a Three Wisemen,” she said, tapping her fingers on the bar to get the attention of the bleary-eyed bartender. She was blonde and college-aged and probably not wearing a bra under her tight black t-shirt.
“Me too, hun,” Vera said, sliding onto the barstool next to Demi’s. The bartender replied with a cheerful smile, and in a few moments bounced back to present them with a pair of rocks glasses filled halfway with brown liquor.
“That just looks like one wiseman to me,” Demi said, arching her eyebrows at the bartender. “I asked for three.”
“I make ‘em pretty strong,” the girl replied, ignoring Demi’s sarcasm. “You might want to see how you like them first.”
“Challenge accepted,” Demi said, downing the contents of her glass in a single fiery gulp.
“Slow it down there, kiddo,” Vera said, tossing her glass back. She wiped her lips with the back of her wrist and set the glass upside down on the bar.
“Got a couple of professionals in the house,” the bartender said, quickly replacing their drinks. Vera ordered them a pitcher of beer and warned Demi to pace herself, but that only had the opposite effect. By the time their second pitcher arrived, their third round of wisemen sitting empty on the bar, the world was a spinning blur.
“Dammit,” Vera swore, slapping her palm against the bar. “I should’ve known better than to try to keep up with you.”
“Eh,” Demi said sleepily, reaching for a plate of hot wings she couldn’t remember ordering. All she could smell was yeast, buffalo sauce, and vomit. “You’re doing a helluva lot better than Doug would. Boy can’t… ho—oh!—old his liquor.” She grimaced, forcing bile back down her throat.
“You should be nicer to him,” Vera said, swaying on her barstool. “I mean… what is he? Your partner? Boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend? Hell no. I don’t have boyfriends,” Demi said, giving that some thought. It wasn’t exactly like this nomadic life she was living made traditional romance easy, but if she was being honest, she hadn’t gotten past a first date—if you could call hooking up with a stranger at a bar a date—since she’d joined the service. The thought of a normal relationship seemed so foreign to her that it wasn’t even something she hoped for. People like her didn’t get nice things like that. It’s just how it was.
“Come on, sweetie,” Vera said, waving to the bartender for another pitcher. Somehow it had gotten darker outside, and the bar had gotten more crowded. The waitress leaned over the counter, bouncing on her feet to the delight of the middle-aged men gathered at the other end of the bar. “Who else cares about you more than him? Least you could do is be nice to him.”
“I don’t know how,” Demi admitted with a sigh. “I’m trying.” And it was true. Despite living outside the law these past few months, she felt like a better person than she’d had in a long time. But that was only a marginal improvement, because who she had been was pretty awful.
Vera said something that sounded preachy, and Demi leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the bar and closing her eyes.
“You ready for another one?” a man’s voice asked, and Demi sat back up, blinking in confusion.
“Huh?” she asked before the question sank in. “Hell yeah, I am.”
“I thought you were down for the count,” Vera said. Demi looked over to see the bar was nearly empty aside from a few older men sipping bottled beer and staring up silently at a basketball game on the so-called sports bar’s only TV. The bouncy bartender was gone. In her place stood Cara’s young boyfriend, now dressed all in black. “Gonna hit the head,” Vera said, patting Demi on the shoulder. “Maybe then we can get out of here.”
“Never had an FBI agent pass out in my bar before,” Vath said, placing another wisemen shot in front of her. She reached for it, but he gripped the glass warily. “You sure you haven’t had enough?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough, buddy,” Demi said, and he released the glass. She raised it slowly to her lips, her mind struggling to put her thoughts together. Vath. Cara. The cemetery. The dead girls. This bar. Cara. Vath.
“Your bar?” Demi asked, leaning forward with a giggle, her lips resting on the edge of the glass as she stared up at him. “Buy a girl a drink?”
“For you, I’ll buy them all,” Vath said, chuckling. “We close in an hour, but I live upstairs. You’re welcome to stay and sleep this off. Or…” He trailed off, and Demi grinned over her drink, faking a smile before she downed the shot. She wasn’t stupid. Drunk as she was, she could still see it was no coincidence the dead girls had all been last seen here. They’d probably accepted the same offer he’d just made to her. She didn’t know what he was, but she knew how to find out.
“I’ll think about it,” Demi promised, and one of the other patrons called out for a beer, pulling Vath away.
“You ready to hit it?” Vera asked, stumbling back from the restroom, her cheeks flushed red. She tripped over one of the empty tables, barely catching herself. “Guess I’ve had enough,” she said, laughing absently. “Besides, there’s no girls left here for a monster to kill. Just a bunch of fat old men.”
“I think I’ve got a lead, actually,” Demi said, putting an arm over Vera’s shoulder and walking her toward the door. Maybe it was the fact that she got this drunk nearly every night, but Demi’s head was already beginning to clear, her thoughts coming back into focus. “Just go back to Doug and tell him to keep an eye out. I think Vath’s our monster.”
“What is he?” Vera asked.
“No idea,” Demi said. “Guess I’ll find out after I sleep with him.”
“Huh,” Vera said, giving her an uncertain look. “Well, you’re the monster expert.”
The door opened behind the blonde, and Cara stood in the doorway, stepping aside to allow Vera to stumble past. Cara looked right through her, staring straight into Demi’s eyes, an unspoken accusation on her lips.
“Listen,” Demi said, hoping to warn Cara away. From what the police had said, she sounded like a great lady, and any woman deserved better than a man like Vath, even if he did turn out to be human.
“Have him if you want,” Cara said sharply. “He can’t help himself—one look at you, your boobs spilling out like a whore. Of course he would want to take you. Don’t worry about me, concern yourself with the stench of death that clings to you.”
Demi raised her arm and sniffed herself, wrinkling her nose. “It’s not that bad,” she said, perhaps overly optimistically.
“I know it well myself,” Cara said. “But not by choice. This was the fate I was handed, but I love life above all else. You though? How many people have you killed?”
“Jesus, lady,” Demi said, taken aback by the sudden accusation, which was a little too on the nose. “Chill out. I wasn’t going to sleep with your man.” Not entirely a lie, since she didn’t believe Vath was really a man.
“You should,” Cara said, her hair swaying as she turned back towards the door. “Maybe that’s the only thing that can fill the emptiness in your heart, if only for a moment—bringing pain to others.”
Demi kept staring even after the door swung shut, and she stood there for a long time, stung by the truth of those words. Doug was the only friend she had left in the world, and she couldn’t even bring herself to be kind to him. She had just been so used to inflicting pain for so long that nothing else came naturally. This wasn’t the way she wanted to be, but how could she be anything else than what she was?
She couldn’t say how long she stood there, barely cognizant of the other patrons stumbling past her after last call, but when Vath appeared behind her, putting his hands on her shoulder and pulling her body to him, her lips met his and she sank into his embrace.
***
Demi opened one eye, breaking a layer of crust away only to shut it in response to the angry glare of the sun. She stayed like that awhile, her face pressed flat against a mattress without a pillow, one foot outstretched and uncovered by her blanket. Everything smelled like a man, and more faintly, vomit. “Ugh,” she groaned, going through her usual morning routine of trying to remember where she was and how she’d gotten there.
The stench of death, Cara had said accusingly, and Demi shot upright at the memory, flinging the covers away. She scrambled for her gun, which was nowhere to be found. She blinked in frustration, brushing away the hair plastered to the side of her face. She was in a split-level loft apartment with exposed brick walls and a skylight through which the offensive sunlight poured freely. A wrought-iron railing guarded the edge of the sleeping loft, and a spiral staircase gave access to a spacious kitchen and living area.
She spotted her clothes lying in a pile near the railing, and she slid out of bed and put her underwear back on. She heard the crack of an egg downstairs and the sizzle of bacon in a skillet. She pulled her shirt on, and her body drifted towards the staircase, drawn instinctively to the scent of breakfast.
“Finally awake, huh?” Vath asked when she stepped down to the main level, her pants draped over her arm. Her gun and holster hung from a coatrack near another staircase that ran down to the back alley of the bar. Part of her wanted to lunge for it and get Vath on his knees until he told her what he was. But as sure as she had been last night that he was something other than human, here she was, alive and unharmed. Maybe she’d slept with Cara’s boyfriend for no reason.
This is the fate I was handed, Cara had said. At the time, she’d seemed like a woman upset that Demi was headed for her man’s bedroom, but now that she reflected, maybe it was more than that. Why would a lady like her work in a funeral home in the literal middle of nowhere? She had to be hiding something.
“Come on then,” Demi said. “You better pack me some bacon to go before I get these pants on, or I will shoot you.”
“Yeah,” Vath said, chuckling as he scraped a generous helping of meat into a plastic container over a bed of eggs and potatoes. “I think you threatened to kill me about eight times last night.”
“And yet here we are,” Demi said, grabbing an unclaimed glass of milk off the counter and draining it in a long gulp. Her stomach churned in protest, but at least her mouth wasn’t so dry.
“Come back by tonight?” Vath asked. Demi stepped into her pants and pulled them up to her waist. She shrugged noncommittally and collected her food.
“How about it?” Vath asked again. Demi fastened her holster to her belt, and a chime rang out from the stairwell below.
“Sounds like you’ve got company,” Demi said, heading down the long flight of stairs. Part of her dreaded meeting Cara at the door, while another part relished the opportunity to confront the woman, to use her discomfort against her. Angry people often revealed things they wouldn’t otherwise, and Demi was sure that was doubly true for monsters.
To her surprise, it wasn’t Cara waiting for her when she opened the door, but the bartender from the night before, dressed in tiny shorts and a tank-top that bounced with every absent rock of her feet. Demi smiled at her awkwardly, unsure what to say.
“My turn,” the girl said, passing Demi with a giggle, bouncing all the way up. Demi stepped out onto a concrete landing about six feet over the alley, letting the door close behind her. She followed a ramp down to the alley, passing the bar’s loading dock and dumpster before heading out to the main street. Doug was still parked out front, Vera passed out ungraciously in the passenger seat.
“Out,” Demi said, rapping her knuckles against Doug’s window. He rolled the window down and gave her a bewildered look.
“You’re not driving,” Doug said. “I can still smell the bourbon.”
“Yeah, but not the scotch and sour mash,” Demi said, pulling the door open. Doug groaned and climbed out of the car.
“We’ve been up all night waiting for you,” Doug grumbled. Vera snored loudly. “Well… I was, at least.”
“Jealous, huh?” Demi said, growling as she undid the adjustments Doug had made to her seat.
“Not really,” Doug said halfheartedly, and Demi remembered she was supposed to be trying to be nicer. “So is he our thing?”
“I don’t know,” Demi said, trying to soften her voice. “The creep must have slipped something in my drink, because I can’t remember anything.”
“I don’t think that was it,” Vera said without opening her eyes. “It was probably the eight wisemen you drank.” She went back to snoring.
“Yeah, well, who was counting?” Demi asked. “Anyway, I’m still alive, so Vath probably isn’t our thing—even if he is mashing every potato in the state.”
“Starting with yours,” Doug mumbled. “Not that it hadn’t already been diced, scalloped, or otherwise julienned in every town from here to Santa Fe.”
“Don’t hate,” Demi said, doing her best not to lash back. “I was getting some majorly creepy vibes from Cara. She said she could smell death on me. Maybe we’ve been made.”
“You think Cara is the thing we’re after?” Doug asked. “Then what is she?”
“We saw her in the daylight,” Demi said. “So not a vampire. Maybe a werewolf, the way the bodies were mangled?”
“I don’t know,” Doug said. “She hangs around a graveyard all the time. Maybe a ghoul?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Demi said, sighing at herself for being so impatient. “Ghouls are scavengers.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Doug agreed. “They should only eat dead meat.” All this talk was largely theoretical, since neither of them had ever taken on anything more physical than a ghost. Cynthia and Mariela had told them about all sorts of things, but aside from the nahual that started it all, they’d never faced down a real monster.
“Well, Step One, let’s shoot it with silver and see what happens,” Demi said. Doug rolled his eyes.
“And if that doesn’t do it?” he asked.
“Shoot it again,” Vera mumbled, immediately snoring again.
“Is she awake or not?” Doug asked, exchanging glances with Demi. The blonde woman didn’t answer. Demi pulled out the breakfast Vath had packed for her and started eating it with her hand.
“Can I get some of that before you get your fingers all over it?” Doug asked.
Demi Mondaine: Volume One Page 9
