Aspen

by Skye Knizley

  Raven raised her tea to her lips and drank. The brew was fragrant and strong, a mix of cinnamon and black tea that was considered to provide healing and energy. She savored the sweet drink then set it aside. “I didn’t think she would be gone so long, that’s all. I miss her.”

  Marie continued to stare a moment longer, then her wide mouth broke into another smile. “My child has feelings for her, for this Aspen. It is about time, Du Guerre was no good for you!”

  “It isn’t like that, Marie. She’s my friend and my familiar, I wouldn’t be much of a Mistress if I didn’t miss her,” Raven said.

  Marie shook her head. “You may tell yourself that, Ravenel, but I know better. It shows in your eyes. Call her and bring her home.”

  Raven had to admit that she was tempted. She could feel the kid out there, somewhere, and she missed her. But she had work to do.

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  Marie sighed. “As you wish, Child. What brings you to my door this night, if it is not your love?”

  Raven pulled the photo out of her pocket and placed it on the counter. “Do you recognize this symbol?”

  Marie turned it for a better look. She then nodded and the look on her face was not a good one. “I do. It is the five-fold circle, an ancient symbol of balance, of justice. Where did you get it?”

  “It was tattooed on the right shoulder of a man that tried to kill me and Rupe this morning.”

  Marie nodded and rubbed her lip with one finger. “Tell me, girl. This man, did he have companions?”

  Raven put the photo back in her pocket. “Yeah, seven of them. They exploded like vampires when I shot them, but the ash was shiny, like fine glitter. Do you know what they are?”

  “The Gallowglass,” Marie said, then spat as if the word itself was distasteful.

  “The who?”

  “The Gallowglass,” Marie repeated. “Gallowglass Knights. Like you, they bring the weight of the law, but there is no justice in it. They hunt Faeries that can challenge the current king’s right to rule.”

  Raven stared at her. “Faeries. Are we talking about the little winged things about the size of a toy doll?”

  Marie smiled and began sorting through the tomes behind the counter. “That is but one of their forms. In the Faewild, yes, most have wings and are perhaps five feet tall. In our world, what they call the Earthrealm, they are human. Or at least human looking.”

  She pulled down a tome and placed it on the counter. The open page was a charcoal drawing of a humanoid woman with butterfly wings. She was nude, save for a sash around her waist. Raven examined the drawing then flipped to the next page, which looked like a map of some huge forest.

  “What is the Faewild if it isn’t part of Earth?”

  “Your father neglected your studies. The Faewild is as much a part of Earth as any other. It isn’t as much a ‘where’ as a ‘when.’ It is a primordial forest that exists in the time between now and then,” Marie said.

  Raven fought to keep her annoyance off her face. “You’re talking in riddles.”

  Marie shrugged. “When it comes to the Fae, it is the only way to talk. Much like the Veil, where lost souls exist, the Faewild is a place that exists atop ours. It is populated by the Fae, who used to be a kind and carefree people. Many years ago, the rightful king was murdered, as were all his descendants, and a regent rose to power. He took the Gallowglass, who previously were simply police, and tasked them with hunting down anyone who would oppose his will.”

  “He sounds like a swell guy. What would they want with humans?”

  Marie put the book away. “Ravenel, vampires are not the only ones who may give birth to half breeds. Many humans carry Fae blood, more even than carry vampire or lycan. I would suspect anyone who has the attention of the Gallowglass is a distant cousin of the murdered king. He is paranoid and sadistic, more interested in power than anything else. His people are simply being thorough and killing anyone who carries royal blood.”

  Raven shook her head. “Not in my city.”

  Marie smiled. “That is why I love you, Ravenel. Your sense of justice is immutable. I take it from what you said, you already dealt with them?”

  “Some, but maybe not all. They had more than one target. They killed the first one and were hunting the second when Rupe and I stopped them. If there are more, how would I know?”

  Marie shrugged. “Not easily, child. In our world they are nearly identical to us. If you had their blood and a witch, you could enchant a followstone. Otherwise, it will be like finding anyone else in this city. You will have to use your experience and seek them out.”

  “Marvelous.”

  Raven pulled a fifty-dollar bill from her pocket and placed it on the counter. “Thank you for the tea.”

  She had a hand on the door when Marie called after her. “Will you contact your familiar? This Aspen?”

  Raven didn’t look back. “No. Not right now, anyway. Not until I know she is safe. Goodnight.”

  She stepped out into the night and looked up at the sky. The odd purple-black clouds were still swirling, and they gave her a bad feeling. Something wasn’t right and it was worse than some Faeries hunting where they didn’t belong. There was something else, a sense of danger she couldn’t place.

  But the priority was to make sure Aspen and anyone else with dormant Fae blood was safe from the Faerie Gestapo. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and pressed a number she could dial in her sleep. It was picked up almost immediately.

  “Levac.”

  “Rupe, it’s me. Who do we know in town who makes quality fake id’s?” Raven asked.

  Levac was thinking. She could hear him tapping his teeth with what was likely a takeout chopstick. “The quality we found on the eight stooges? Only one guy. Oliver Becker. He works out of a—”

  “Jewelry store on the loop,” Raven said. “I encountered him when I was with vice, but I thought he left the business and went legit.”

  “He did. But word is, when the recession hit and sales went down, he returned to his old ways. Murtaugh had some of his good about a week ago,” Levac said.

  “Meet me at the Donut Vault, we’re going to go have some words with him.”

  II

  Devil’s Lake, MO, 1:00 a.m.

  The Grand Hotel had never lived up to the name. It was a six-story monolith that stood in the center of town, a grey shadow only somewhat taller than the others with the letters Grand Hotel picked out around the top in white letters. The building faced the main street, with a pair of doors just a few steps from the pavement. A single light, the kind with a metal shade and steel support popular in noir films, beamed a pitiful yellow glow onto the entryway. A smear of blood so old it was black, covered the wall to the right of the doors and continued across the sidewalk where it vanished into a noisome storm drain. Aspen tried the door. It opened with effort and jammed against the sidewalk.

  Inside, the lobby was a mess. It had once been well appointed, for a small rural hotel, with a large registration desk, two brass-doored elevators and a coffee shop that opened into the lobby. Now, the tables were upturned and shattered, the chairs lay in disarray and the elevator doors were painted with the words ‘No Hope’.

  Rather than risk the rickety elevators, Aspen led the way through the side door and up the stairs, which were dirty and smelled strongly of old urine. When they reached the third floor, she pulled the fire door open and braced it with a rusty nail that appeared to have been left for just that reason.

  The third floor hallway led the length of the hotel and met a secondary corridor just beyond the center, forming a cross. The carpet was off-green with a pattern that made it look like a cheap Persian knockoff and the walls were of torn flowered wallpaper so faded it was hard to tell what color the flowers had been. They were now a sort of washed-out red, like old blood.

 
Aspen started down the hallway, her light held high. The corridor was almost devoid of debris, save for dust that had fallen from the flaking ceiling and piles of ash that rested against the walls. Most of the room doors were open and it was clear they had been ransacked for anything useful. Bedsheets, towels, mirrors and toiletries had all been scavenged at some unknowable time in the past. It was so bare that Aspen felt as if some kind of apocalypse had happened, and somehow they hadn’t noticed.

  “I don’t get this,” Jynx said. “This town was supposed to have been evacuated due to a mine fire, right? They somehow ignited sulfurous coal and couldn’t put it out.”

  Aspen shined her light into yet another abandoned room. “Yes, that’s what all the reports I could find said.”

  Jynx looked at her. “So who scavenged everything? Not the nosferatu, they don’t have the brains of your average squirrel, and not Martel, he’s only been missing a few days. These rooms have been open for decades.”

  Aspen cocked her head. “It isn’t like the town was walled off or something, Jynx. People have been coming here for years to debunk the ghost stories. Come on, tell me you never took a bath towel or something as a souvenir from a hunt.”

  Jynx looked away. “If I’m honest, most of our towels back home were borrowed from hotels we stayed at during hunts, but that’s because I like the thread count. But really? The sheets and everything too? You don’t think that’s just a little weird?”

  “Have you seen what’s for sale on Ebay? People will buy toast with Jesus on it.”

  Aspen stopped at the last door in the hallway and pulled the key out of her pocket. The door was different than the others. Where they were dirty and looked as if they’d been wedged open for a hundred years not just fifty some-odd years, this door was worn and well-used. The key slid into the lock as if it had done so hundreds of times. But she had to wiggle it in the mechanism to make the door open. She pushed it aside and looked into a room that looked much more like a loved apartment than an old motel room. It looked as if it had once held two beds, but now there was only one. The rest of the space included a scavenged desk and chair so worn the stuffing was held in place with duct tape. All around the desk were bedsheets that had been torn into pieces about the size of an average white board and they were covered with black script.

  “One mystery solved,” Jynx said.

  The bed was clean, the bathroom was used, but clean and contained a collection of toiletries scavenged from other rooms.

  Aspen started sorting through the pile of fabric.

  “What language is this? It’s like a cross between hieroglyphics and Dr. Zhu’s autopsy reports,” she muttered.

  The writing was difficult to decipher, but it looked as if two different people had been using the cloth to keep notes about the town and something they called “the other”. She could tell by the loops and whirls of the writing that one of the people had been a man, the other female.

  She sorted the pile of cloth into two sets and placed one on the floor, the other on the bed. She then started going through the desk. It looked like the kind of furniture that might have been in an executive office, at least until the fire. Then it had been moved here. The center drawer contained a map of the town cobbled together from everything from road maps to the low-detail things given to tourists at rest areas. It looked as if the pair had explored the town very thoroughly, with several areas circled and labeled with simple words. “Danger” and “No Exit” were the most common.

  “They were busy, they did all this in just a few days,” Aspen said.

  Jynx was sorting through the fabric. “They might have been here longer than you think, Asp. Check this out.”

  Aspen took the offered piece of fabric and held it up. Unlike the more recent pieces, this one was dated. The date at the top was today’s.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I would guess the ink on this is more like five years old. Maybe older. You can tell by the way it is shading to red on the edges.”

  Jynx held up more sections. “This one is dated next year, but looks just as old. And this one is next October.”

  She dropped them and cocked her head at Aspen. “You know, they might have been stuck here just like we are.”

  Aspen nodded. The thought had occurred to her. This wasn’t just a run of the mill preternatural or a haunting. Something weird was going on, something that killed Martel even after he’d escaped.

  “Martel got out, so will we,” she said.

  “Martel dropped dead in one of Creek’s rooms. I wouldn’t say he escaped so much as he was late boarding the train,” Jynx said.

  She turned to look out the window. “Not that I’m complaining, this is still much more fun than staring at my sister, waiting for her to do something.”

  Aspen continued going through the desk. “When we get home, you and I have to talk about your weird idea of what fun is.”

  Jynx looked at her. “Why? Are you saying you would rather be flipping burgers and scraping egg off Creek’s counters instead of rummaging through a decades old desk trying to solve a mystery?”

  Aspen smiled. “Not on your life.”

  Jynx looked back out the window. “I rest my case. There’s a light out there, it looks like a lantern or flashlight or something. Maybe the missing chick is out looking for her friend.”

  Aspen kicked the bottom desk drawer closed, it had contained nothing but an assortment of 1960s magazines. “Let’s go check it out, we can come back for this stuff later.”

  Outside, the night had grown as black as pitch. The sky was still obscured by the swirling mass of clouds that hung over the village like impending doom. Aspen followed Jynx down the sidewalk in the direction of the old gas station and their camp. The streets were deserted without even a hint of the strange ash and debris that had fallen just a few hours before.

  Jynx slowed and drew her pistols as they neared the edge of town. The light was just ahead, somewhere close to the general store, now. Aspen could see it panning over the building, a narrow beam of yellow light moving slowly. Jynx made to step out with her weapons. Aspen stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. When Jynx looked at her, she shook her head.

  “Let me go. You cover me, I left my gun somewhere back at the church,” she whispered.

  Jynx screwed her face up in annoyance. “Like you need a gun! If she gets out of hand, nuke the bitch!”

  “I can’t just roast everyone! Cover me, okay?”

  Jynx shrugged. “Fine, just be careful, I’ve seen enough dead people for one day.”

  Aspen stepped out with her hands over her head, showing she was unarmed. A figure dressed in a tee-shirt and jeans, with hair held in a long ponytail and what looked like a shower curtain over its shoulders, stood near the store looking at the burning wreckage.

  “Hello?” Aspen called.

  The figure spun and aimed the light at her. It was a woman, one of the members of Martel’s team. She looked tired and drawn, with threads of blue tracing beneath her skin.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” the woman asked.

  Aspen showed her hands. “My name is Aspen, Aspen Kincaid. I’m not here to hurt you, I’m trying to help.”

  “How did you get here? Are you…are you from outside?” the woman asked.

  Aspen smiled in what she hoped was her friendliest manner. “I am, I came to investigate what is happening here.”

  The woman sagged, her face an odd mixture of sadness and hope. “Then Kris made it, he found a way out. Is he with you?”

  Aspen shook her head. “I’m sorry, no. He died in his sleep a few nights ago. He went quietly, if that’s any consolation.”

  The woman sagged even more, her hands going to her face. “No. That’s how they all go, with a whimper.”

  Aspen lowered her hands and steppes closer. “I’m sorry, ma’am. My friend a
nd I did everything we could for him, we couldn’t stop the disease.”

  The woman raised her head. “Friend? There is more than one of you?”

  Aspen waved to Jynx, who stepped out of the darkness, one pistol held loosely in her right hand.

  “Yes. This is my friend, Jynx. Can you tell us what happened to you and your team?” Aspen asked.

  The woman shook her head. “It all happened so long ago…we were here to debunk the haunting. Kris thought it had something to do with the fumes from the fire. That the townspeople and ghost hunters succumbed to a mass hallucination. We brought devices to gather samples and wore masks to protect us. But it wasn’t the gas at all. We’d barely set up camp when the strange sounds started. Then the creatures came and we ran deeper into the village.”

  “I’m impressed you’ve stayed alive so long. How did you survive the nosferatu?” Jynx asked.

  The woman raised her eyes and Aspen could see the confusion in them. “Nosferatu? You mean vampires? We didn’t see anything like that, it was the werewolves. We ran and hid within the old hotel. They caught poor Harper and tore him to pieces right outside the doors.”

  The woman began sobbing. “I watched them, watched them fight over the scraps.”

  Aspen hugged her. “It’s okay. Shh. Come on, let’s get you somewhere safe.”

  She held the woman and started guiding her back toward the hotel. Jynx walked on the other side, weapon ready.

  “These lycans—”

  “What?” the woman asked.

  “The werewolves,” Jynx said. “Was one of them big and black? Like, all black? No stripes or other coloration?”

  “Yes…yes, I think it was the leader. Why?”

  Jynx thumbed back the hammer on her Colt. “Because it is about fifty yards behind us.”

  Aspen turned her head enough to see it behind them. One of the biggest lycans she’d ever seen was standing just beyond the gas station at the end of the main street. It hadn’t yet caught their scent, but she imagined she could see its nose twitching in the wind.