by Livia Quinn
Turns out, I should have given that comparison a bit more thought.
The neighborhood was unusually quiet when I pulled up in front of the Karrakas’ home. It didn’t look like anyone was home other than a man, maybe Mr. Karrakas who came driving up on his golf cart, his own personal golf cart complete with fancy gold trim. The Karrakases’ affinity for excess would get them a certain unwanted kind of attention. It wouldn’t be long before I saw a gold bumper at the pawnshop on one of my check-ups.
“Mr. Karrakas?” I called. He nodded, looking somewhat familiar. I’d met the councilman shortly after taking office. “Is your wife home? I need to ask her some questions.”
“What’s this about, Sheriff? Don’t you have better things to do than harass people like us? We pay your salary in case you don’t know.”
“Yes, sir, and so does every other citizen in this parish. Now, if you don’t mind, can we go inside? I need to speak with your wife.”
Shaking his head, Mr. Karrakas reluctantly led me up the drive to the garage. I noticed both cars were present as he opened the door into the kitchen. “Anita,” he called and offered me a chair. I declined. “She must be out back.” We walked through the back door onto the terrace. He called her again but didn’t get a response. I began my own search of the extensive gardens.
“Isn’t there a greenhouse where your wife works with her plants?”
The man considered me for a few seconds then nodded. I felt an odd sensation, like being poked in the gut with a dragon claw. His eyebrow rose when I winced. “Follow me. I’ll take you there.”
We walked out to the backyard. Martinez had been more than adequate at his job. Lush landscaping surrounded the greenhouse and pool right up to the fairway. I was impressed.
“If you’ll see if you can find your wife, I’ll just hang around out here. Do you know where she went, sir?” I asked as I tried to look casual. I’d spotted the tool shed and wanted a look inside.
“She might have gone to town. Is it necessary that you speak to her?” he asked huffily.
“Yessir, it is.”
Sighing gustily, the man strode out of sight.
The shed was neatly arranged with the tools of Manny’s trade. Shovels, rakes, leaf blower, weed-eaters, a gargantuan Dixie-Chopper mower with a mulcher—overkill for a residential property but not surprising given who the owner was. There were electrical tools for fixing fountains, replacement lights and a containment area for the chemicals as well.
It looked like the supply cabinet hadn’t been locked the last time it had been used. Strange. A man as particular as Manny would have made sure he locked the chemicals up. I moved a bug zapper to the side and looked at the lock. It hung on one side of the latch but didn’t appear to be broken. Maybe they’d lost the key. So she’d purchased the chemicals but Manny might have had access as well.
“Sheriff.”
I thought Karrakas had gone back into the house. Had he been following me while I took stock of the shed? Odd that he’d been able to sneak up on me, especially with my new dragon senses.
Then in my peripheral vision I saw something near the gazebo. “Mr. Karrakas, I’d like for you to go back to the house and call 911.”
“Why? What—”
“Just do it,” I ordered and he turned toward the house. Someone lay on the ground, two legs extended from the edge of a pile of cedar shavings. As I got closer I could see it looked like a female. The knee length khakis still had sharp creases in them, a testament to Maria’s laundering abilities.
My finger hovered over the radio button as the air shimmered around the body and whatever had been disguising its real shape dissolved. Now, in place of the woman in khakis lay an older male, in trousers and a blue golf shirt. And this body looked like it had been there a while. “Dispatch—”
I heard a grunt behind me and turned as a heavy object slammed into the back of my head. Sheer self-preservation had me rolling away while I tried to clear my vision, listening for movement from my attacker. I shook my head as a blurry figure came at me from the left. I covered my head and tried to roll but a heavy object that felt like a club plowed into my ribs.
Chapter 34
Where’s my valet? I really, really need my clothes…
Jack
Air left my lungs in a rush as the creature advanced on me. I squinted and found myself staring into black holes in a skull devoid of expression or humanity. Except for the blonde hair and distinctive barrette I wouldn’t have recognized… the lady of the house.
This was one of those walking dead creatures we’d fought during Chaos. I rolled in the opposite direction knowing how strong they were. If I could just shift… but time was in short supply.
It wasn’t that the Karrakas zombie was fast, she wasn’t. However even in her changeling form, she retained her bitchy attitude, coming at me with a relentless ferocity that gave no quarter or distance for recovery. The thing was indefatigable in its pursuit.
I knew from experience, they felt no pain so in order to inflict lethal damage, one had to disconnect them from their motor skills; I wasn’t even sure how she was sensing where I was, by sight, hearing? And I had another problem.
When Fritz had been turned into one, Montana and Conor had demonstrated how to kill them. To keep the parts from regenerating, the limbs had to be incinerated to ash. But if I didn’t make some headway soon I wasn’t going to have to worry about that.
I took a chance and pulled my gun, firing the entire clip into the space between its eyes. The force of the bullets alone rocked it back on its heels and at least for the space of a few seconds it wasn’t moving forward. Counting on the possibility that there was some kind of directional antenna in its head I crab-walked until I put a tall concrete fountain between us, then, I called the change. If ever I needed a swift change this was it.
Relief poured through me as I found myself staring down on my opponent but it was short-lived. The creature was not intimidated by my size or bulk. It just kept coming. Concern about my lack of fire breath swept through me then I thought of Tempe’s earlier joking comment. I jumped back as the zombie tried to stomp on my feet then with my claws fully extended I aimed for its left arm. It hit the ground in five neatly carved blocks.
Hooyah! As satisfying as that was, I knew it wouldn’t stop. The word “regroup” wasn’t in its DNA. It had no emotional attachment to losing a limb and felt no pain so I aimed for the other arm, turning it into chunky tofu as well. But a glance at the pieces on the ground proved they weren’t dead, or dead-er. I might be just multiplying the damn thing like a Hydra.
I got serious, swiping at it, cutting and dicing until it couldn’t walk, just wobbled, its head trying to lurch the torso forward. I looked around for a butane tank, a tiki torch, something I could use to light the giblets up. Something moved in my peripheral vision and a hot wind preceded the fire that engulfed the zombie chop suey. The creature burst into flames like a movie stuntman doused with gas. I looked up.
Conor hovered above me. Fire from his mouth shot like a torch over the leftovers on the ground turning them to embers. His eyes glowed a fiery red. I was as usual enthralled by his awesomeness and didn’t turn back to the zombie until the dragon’s eyes went golden again.
He funneled down into the sword-carrying knight and strode over to the still smoldering bits, stomping on them with his heavy metal boots. Ah, those boots came in handy for putting out fires.
I shifted and knelt beside the body of what I believed was Mr. Karrakas. He didn’t seem in danger of coming back to “life” anytime soon so I turned to Conor, who said, “You did well, aye?”
I snorted. He’d been the one to annihilate the thing. “I didn’t do much,” I shrugged my bare shoulder.
“Ach, a baby bird must risk leaving the safety of the nest before it can fly.” I could only hope his analogy was supposed to eventually apply to me. But did he see me as some kind of child? I didn’t know how I felt about that.
A siren shrilled
in the distance and Conor suddenly vanished leaving me alone. I looked around, anxiously waiting for my valet to appear with my clothes. The siren grew louder and was joined by another, and then another. I peaked around the side of the gazebo. Where was the damn valet? I’d actually come to depend on them to deliver my clothes and had even stopped stowing a change in my unit. Sweat trickled down my naked back while I crept about the once immaculate yard looking for somewhere to hide. Geez, could this get any worse? It was just what I’d been worried about.
I surveyed the damage to the backyard as I glimpsed Montana’s van coming down the street and heard Ryan’s cruiser screech to a halt. Now what? I heard the ME call out to Rafe and I ducked around the side of the house. It wasn’t that I was particularly modest but I wasn’t exactly thrilled to walk out into the middle of my crime scene in the nude either.
Shit. Where was my valet? I really, really needed my clothes. I crouched behind an azalea bush and watched as Thorpe knelt on the ground by the body running his fingers across the spots where the grass had been burned away. He picked up something but tossed it back to the ground as Ryan and Montana approached. Maybe I could get Ryan’s attention somehow.
More lights and sirens announced the arrival of even more deputies and I eased back toward the other end of the house. It was just a matter of when, not if, I would be discovered lurking naked in Karrakas’ shrubbery. Finally, when everyone had relocated to the backyard, I made a run for my unit. There was no one to witness my shame except a parked delivery truck across the street.
Thanking God it wasn’t locked, I climbed in and cranked the car. I did a little recon on the street then looked over into the back seat for a jacket or a blanket, anything. Nada. Damn, I’d have to take the back streets to the house and hope no one saw me.
A phone rang from somewhere in the car. My cell phone! I searched for it, as the female voice sang, “That ain’t no way to treat a lady. That ain’t no way to treat a woman you love…” Not my ringtone. I looked through the windows and leaned over the console and reached for my phone on the back seat. The display read, Unknown. What the—
The radio squawked. Peggy put me through to Ryan. “Hold on a second, boss,” he said and I heard him talking to the ME. “There was only one victim, Doc. That’s him, Mr. George Karrakas. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was poisoned. Can you get me the report asap? Yeah, Jack. Where are you?”
“I saw you arrive and knew you’d handle the scene. I have to get up to Campbell Green to see Mystiq Campbell.” I stopped there. He didn’t need to know everything.
“This back yard’s a wreck. If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone had breathed fire all over it,” Ryan said his tone speculative. I could tell he was trying to figure out how everything had gone down.
“Could be. Doesn’t matter. Once I saw the cabinet holding the chemicals was unlocked, I knew it was going to be difficult to prove her motive and intent when Manny also had access. We’ll lay the whole fiasco at the feet of Mrs. Karrakas for the murder of her husband when Dan gives us the COD.”
There was probably no way to know when Mrs. Karrakas was turned into that creature. It was evident she’d been involved in River’s kidnapping and the power play by the variants. She, or it, had glamoured herself and the husband’s body, and fooled us all until I discovered him on the ground. My guess was at one point, she was probably as human as Georgeanne had been but she’d been corrupted by the variants, used and eventually possessed in one of their common tactics.
Phoebe said Destiny had probably inherited a gang element from the Chaos, beings that would wait until the right time to take their shot. But after the Para-moon, Mrs. K had filed another complaint against Tempe. Why would she call attention to herself? I was reminded of Georgeanne, another narcissistic variant on a power trip. Karrakas obviously thought she was smarter than everyone else, including those she employed.
“Write it up, Ryan. I’ll meet you at the office later and fill in the blanks. Luckily traffic was light and I made it into my garage without seeing anyone and hoped no one had seen me.
Jack
It didn’t take long for me to dress at the house and head to Hugo where the Campbell Glen estate was located. I packed a backup in case my valets fell down on the job again and thirty minutes later pulled into the crowded parking lot near the entrance.
As soon as I walked through the double stained glass doors of Nature’s Lagniappe and wound my way through the line of customers waiting for tables, I was hit with the sound of dishes being shuffled in the kitchen, servers taking orders and the general din of a busy restaurant. Mystiq, the owner of the estate smiled at me from the hostess table and held up her index finger.
While she and the hostess directed customers to tables, I looked around at the West End’s most popular new restaurant. She’d taken a bold stance with the Storm Lake Tourism Board, insisting on stronger guidelines for the environment on the lake before she agreed to spend an enormous amount of family money turning the Campbell Green estate into a growing tourist draw. It was smart business on her part in an age where the push for renewable resources and green living was increasing.
But Mystiq’s motivation was based on more—she was an old friend of the Pomeroys and a magic healer who’d been the one to save Dylan. She’d promised to keep looking for antidotes to help him return to his old supernatural self. It was one of the reasons I was here.
The room was crowded with families and it reminded me of when I’d brought Jordie and Tempe here. I’d had so much hope for our future that night, but really, the only thing that hadn’t changed for the better since that night was my own attitude. Tempe had accepted her power and the circumstances surrounding her parents’ schemes. Jordie thought our new life and the realities of it were exciting.
“Jack, it’s good to see you. You were on my list to call but I’ve been swamped.”
“Looks like business is great, Mystiq. I’m sorry to show up unannounced but there have been some developments.” I looked around for a secluded spot. There were none. “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”
“Of course, pardon me a minute.” She studied her clipboard and after directing the seating of several parties handed it over to her hostess. “Let’s go to my office,” she said. I wound through the crowd shaking hands with a few locals, following her past the front counter to a small office with a one-way mirror overlooking the kitchen.
She smiled when I glanced in at the activity there. “The kitchen is the hub. I can easily tell how things are going overall by watching the orders coming in and out.” She offered me a seat near her desk and pulled an old leather journal off a shelf, handling it as if it were very fragile then she placed her hands on the edge of the desk and leaned forward. “So, tell me… what’s happened?”
“Yesterday, Dylan showed up in his human form and he’s able to shift between that form and his canine wolf, but so far, no Finrir.”
She sighed. “I’m happy to hear that. Perhaps this will be the first step toward a full transformation.”
This wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. I leaned back in the chair. “How so? I thought you said something about an antidote.”
“I searched for an antidote but what I found,” she paused as she carefully opened the huge thick-paged book to a bookmarked spot, “was more about the history of supernaturals and let’s call it the physiology of Paramortals.” With her gaze locked on mine, her brow arched. “You’re aware that not all beings who accepted the Paramortal pact were blood, or even spell, bound, right? Some of the older species simply gave their word of honor. Imagine how powerful this pact was to transcend centuries and generations of progeny.” Her words made me appreciate the Paramortal ancestors’ foresight and their dedication to their decedents’ future. Our present.
“These journals include a physiological knowledge base that would rival an IT giant on subjects like magic, essence, and restorative powers. They answer questions about how beings mature, digress, even wha
t contributes to extinction. Tempe’s progression since her first awakening is a perfect illustration of what can happen when supernaturals are pushed to their limits. It’s repeated over and over in these pages.”
Her long elegant fingers landed on top of the open book. She paused briefly, her eyes direct, “Dragons are not considered Paramortals, Jack. They were one of the honor clans.”
My shock drew a kind laugh from Mystiq, “Yes, I know you’re having some trouble adjusting but rest assured, that’s normal.”
So the knight—wait, “Is that why Conor didn’t lose his power during the Chaos?” She nodded. What about my parents, my mother? What else did she know about me? If there was history, were they in those journals? Questions were bouncing around in my head faster than I could form words.
Chapter 35
“Phineas, we’ll finally get a chance to have phone sex.”
Tempe
When I turned into the driveway to Inez’ little bungalow before class that evening, I parked next to Mr. Jackson’s red pickup. The thing was ancient. Inez’ newly revitalized boyfriend needed something spiffier, a ride he could show his lady off in. I was surprised and pleased to see them back together but as I got closer I realized that all was not rosy in geriatric land.
“Phineas, I am not promising to spend the night with you tonight. I have some important research to do. Ah, here’s Tempe now.”
Ha! Is that what she was calling it? I could almost hear Elvis and the Blue Moon witches singing, I..vve put a spell on you…da dada dadum!
“What the devil does that mean? Research.” Mr. Jackson turned to me. “Have you decided to do something about this mess you’ve created?”
