Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  “Those are trees, dummy,” Jesse said good-naturedly. Then he frowned. “They’re blocking the satellite from really seeing what the space looks like, but I’m guessing it’s a yard. Or a really big garden.”

  I nodded. It made sense that the Luparii scout wanted more space and privacy, especially if the bargest was so big or terrifying that it actually couldn’t pass for a dog. It also kept both of them from being seen by a bunch of hotel employees who might gossip.

  “You can’t really see all the entrances and exits, which is a problem,” Jesse observed. “We’ll be going in blind.”

  “So what do we do?” I said, sitting back on the sofa.

  Jesse looked disconcerted. “I have no idea,” he answered. “I’m not usually on the criminal end of this kind of thing. How does one go about dognapping?”

  I thought about it for a moment. We could stake out the guy’s place and hope he’d go out for food or something so we could steal the dog. But if I had a magical creature that my family had perfected after centuries of trial and error, not to mention made using a human sacrifice, I probably wouldn’t let it out of my sight on the day of the full moon, not even for In-N-Out Burger.

  Then I grinned. “Jesse,” I said sweetly, “would you be a lamb and run upstairs for my Taser?”

  There were still a few more things to take care of. First we went by Jesse’s place so he could get his police uniform. Then we stopped at a pet supply store for an extra large muzzle, a leash and collar, and some dog food. I had no idea what bargests ate—it could be exclusively squirrel livers, for all we knew—but Noring had said the thing was at least part dog. We got the expensive canned stuff that promised to be the most meatlike.

  I thought we were done by then, but Jesse insisted on stopping at Home Depot.

  “Why Home Depot?” I asked dubiously.

  Jesse gave me a mysterious smile. “You’ll see.” Then he said, “Hey, if I keep receipts, will Dashiell reimburse me?”

  I waited in the car while he went into the store, mostly because Home Depot is the size of a football field and I wasn’t up for the exercise. When Jesse came out, he wasn’t carrying anything—but he was pulling a big utility wagon, the kind serious gardeners use to pull potted plants around. I could see a roll of duct tape rattling around the back. “Oh,” I said. “Well. Good thing we have the van.” I held up my hand for a high five.

  Up until then, we had been pretty cheerful about the whole ridiculous plan, but for the last few miles the mood in the van grew subdued. I was having . . . well, not second thoughts, exactly, but certainly some new reservations, now that some of my initial excitement (and caffeine high) had waned. I didn’t know about Jesse, but I was painfully aware of how tenuous our plan was.

  But then again, we were taking a gamble no matter which way we turned. And there was one thing I was sure of: if the bad guy has a weapon, you have to take it away. Even if we couldn’t use the bargest, at least keeping it away from the Luparii scout meant that he couldn’t go after Will’s people tonight.

  “This is it,” Jesse said finally. We had arrived at the condo building, a three-story, white and pale blue affair with archways everywhere. Like, everywhere. I don’t know anything about architecture, but I do know when a building looks like someone drew wavy lines on it with crayon. Its ornateness wasn’t feminine, exactly, but it was too elegant for the neighborhood by half.

  “It looks like it belongs on top of a cake,” Jesse observed, leaning over the steering wheel so he could stare at it better.

  “It looks like it is the top of the cake,” I countered.

  He drove past the building to the next block and pulled over to the curb. “Okay. I’m gonna change,” Jesse said. He wasn’t using his “official police business” voice, but he did sound like a cop: in control, serious, trustworthy. The effect was kind of ruined when he added, “No peeking while I’m naked.”

  I snorted as he crawled into the back of the van, grabbing the hanger with his old uniform. “I’m a professional,” I said loftily. “Professionals do not peek.” He hadn’t wanted to drive around the city in LAPD garb, for some reason. I debated turning my head just a little to peek despite my words, but I figured that would be taken for flirting, and I wasn’t ready for that, exactly.

  He ducked back between the two front seats. “Okay,” Jesse said, tension thickening his voice. “Are you ready?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. “But let’s do it anyway.” I pulled on my old USC baseball cap. We’d loaded the dog supplies and Jesse’s street clothes into an old backpack, and I put that on as well.

  To my surprise, he leaned just a little farther and planted a swift, gentle kiss on my lips, tweaking the brim of my hat as he pulled back. “Good luck,” he told me.

  “Uh . . . right. Yes. And you as well,” I sputtered, and opened the door.

  I began walking back toward the condo. There was no security team or anything, and I didn’t spot any obvious cameras, although it was hard to really look and keep my head down at the same time. It would make sense for the Luparii scout to want to stay somewhere that valued privacy over ostentatious security, though.

  The building was shaped like a long rectangle, split length-wise by a pretty open-air courtyard that ran the whole length of the building. There was a tasteful fountain burbling dead center in the courtyard, between a modest swimming pool on one side and several sets of café tables and chairs on the other. No one was using either area, and I breathed a sigh a relief—we wouldn’t have to try to do this with witnesses.

  A narrow cobblestone path framed the courtyard and provided little walkways to each of the ten or twelve doors that framed the long sides of the rectangle. I started down the path, figuring number 144 was probably on the ground level. Each condo had picture windows on either side of an ornate, Spanish-style wood-and-iron door, but almost every single window had closed blinds. It was a shame—all that fancy landscaping for the courtyard, and nobody was willing to sacrifice their privacy to look at it.

  The landscaping suited my purposes, though. There was a waist-high hedge that ran between the cobblestone pathways for each condo, underneath the windows. That would make it a lot easier to sneak up on the Luparii scout. I didn’t want to give him time to see me coming. If he got skittish and tried a spell, he might figure out what I was. And although he couldn’t hex me, he could still send the bargest to eat me. And I had no idea how the Taser would work against a magical dog-monster.

  I spotted the iron placard for number 144 and kept right on going. The barking began when I was still a good twenty feet away, a low sound that seemed to come from a very deep chest. Damn. The thing really did have strong senses. A female voice shouted inside the building, a guttural blur of a word that had to be French, and the barking ceased abruptly. It was well trained, if nothing else. I saw the white blinds shift in one of the condo’s windows as fingers with red nails made a vertical hole between them. I made a special effort to look purposeful and confident, feeling the comforting bump of the Taser in my pocket. I never so much as glanced at the window for 144, and after a few seconds I saw the blinds snap closed again out of the corner of my eye. I kept going, making my slow way to the next footpath.

  My thoughts spun. A woman. The Luparii scout was a woman. I felt like an idiot. Of course she was a woman; the vast majority of witches were. Why had we assumed that she’d be male? Because she was evil?

  Stupid Scarlett. Ladies can be bad guys too.

  I walked right up to the door of number 112, listening closely. If there were people at home, they were being quiet about it. I glanced around—still no people—and dropped down to all fours. The space between the building and the hedge was just wide enough for me to crawl through without brushing against the shrubbery, and almost tall enough to hide me completely. I lifted my cane and set it very gently a few feet in front of me, without making noise. Then I crawled after it on my hands and one knee and repeated the process, making my way under the condo’s pict
ure window and toward number 144. I was agonizingly slow, which I hoped would work in my favor. Who would expect an injured burglar with a cane, who attacked in broad daylight? Hopefully no one, although if any city was going to have a handicapped, crawling daytime burglar, it’d probably be LA.

  Focus, Scarlett. As I reached the bottom of the picture window by 144, I felt the scout in my radius on the other side of the wall. Up close, I could see that the condo’s windows had a latticework of sturdy bars, painted white so as to be almost invisible against the blinds. Huh. Between the security sticker in the window, the bars, and that heavy wood-and-iron door, we’d better hope this plan worked. We weren’t getting into the condo otherwise.

  I was under the center of the window when I heard a loud creak right on the other side of the wall, stunningly close to where I was. I froze. A female voice murmured something in French again, and I felt a stab of fear. What if she wasn’t alone? I closed my eyes, concentrated, and extended my radius. No other witches, but there was a muted yelp, and I felt something new in my radius. Emphasis on the new.

  A witch in my radius felt like a faint buzz of white noise, and this new thing was similar, but the . . . shape of it, for lack of a better term, was different. Subtler. There was another spark to it too: something wild. I might not even have noticed that spark if I wasn’t concentrating so hard, tuned in to Radio Scarlett.

  I heard footsteps. Leaning forward, I peered beyond the hedge and into the pathway for 144. Jesse was just rounding the fountain, marching in my general direction, looking handsome and professional in his police uniform. He spotted me—or maybe the condo number—and abruptly altered course to head straight for 144, not trying to hide it. Our eyes met, and I thought I saw him give a little nod.

  Still on my hands and knees, I flicked my index finger at the door and mouthed, “woman.” Since we’d been expecting a man all along, I didn’t want him to let his guard down when a woman opened the door. Confusion flickered across his face, and he faltered a step. “Woooman,” I mouthed again, eyebrows up emphatically. “Lady,” I tried. But he wasn’t getting it. He was getting very close now, so I rolled my eyes, leaned back on my heel, and mimed giant breasts in front of my own very average-sized ones. “Woman,” I mouthed again, pointing at the door. He nodded, comprehension flooding his face. Finally. I ducked back down below the hedge just in time—I heard the metallic rustle of the blinds right above my head as the Luparii peeked out again.

  Jesse arrived at the door, only inches away from me, and rapped three times, causing the dog to bark again. Maybe not that well trained.

  The door did not open, but she shouted through it. “Who ees zhere?” she asked in heavily accented French.

  “LAPD, ma’am,” Jesse said sternly. He held his ID up to the peephole. “We’ve had a complaint from one of your neighbors about a barking dog.”

  “I do not . . . my Eenglish ees . . .” She faltered. I frowned. We had not anticipated her being unable to understand us.

  But to my very extreme surprise, Jesse jumped in with, “Je suis avec la police, madame. Ouvrez la porte, s’il vous plaît.”

  My eyes bugged out of my head, but I could feel Jesse very pointedly not looking down at me. He didn’t want to give me away, but it was still kind of funny.

  I caught the words “police” and “porte,” which I assumed was “door,” but I totally lost the thread when the woman yelled, “Le chien ne sera pas aboyer plus. Je te le promets.”

  “J’ai besoin de vous parler, madame. Attachez le chien. Ouvrez la porte.” He held up the ID again.

  I stared at Jesse, trying to pick up from his expression what the hell was going on. But he remained very firm and professional. I waited. After a long moment of silence, I heard at least three bolts thrown open, and a crack appeared in the door.

  My Taser is very special. It’s a police-issued, drive stun model, meaning I hold it directly against a target and it hurts like a bitch. Unlike most drive stun models, however, mine has been modified to affect the central nervous system the same way a Taser gun does. It’s the best nonlethal weapon for a null because it means I don’t have to dick around with trying to shoot a weapon at supernatural creatures who are probably moving really fast. By the time you’re close enough to me to be a physical threat, you’re close enough to tase.

  It’s basically a pocket-sized cattle prod.

  I could have given it to Jesse to use, but since I had to be right there anyway to make sure she couldn’t use her magic, we had decided it was best for me to do the tasing while Jesse distracted her. It works through clothes, but when the Luparii scout finally opened the door all the way, I opted not to take chances. As Jesse began to speak in rapid French, I slid up the cuff of her sleek black pants, pressed the Taser against her skin, and pulled the trigger. The whole thing was over faster than she could say, “Ooh la la! A Taser!”

  Or whatever French people say.

  Chapter 42

  I held the Taser on her skin until the woman crumpled forward. Jesse was ready to catch her though, dragging her quickly into the condo and dumping her just inside the door. I hauled myself to my feet and followed as fast as I could. I slammed the door closed behind me, and we exchanged a relieved grin while I caught my breath. From deeper in the condo, the bargest began to bark again.

  I looked at the woman at my feet. She was very tall, maybe six feet; blonde and beautiful in a harsh, imperialist kind of way. In a movie she’d be cast as a German Nazi ice queen, French heritage or not. She glared at me with her lips moving, but I knew from experience that she lacked the fine motor skills for talking.

  The condo’s front door opened directly onto a living room/dining room combination, with the kitchen off to our left. She must have had the bargest restrained in a back bedroom. “You told her to put the dog away?” I asked Jesse. He nodded.

  “So,” I said to Jesse, “You speak French.”

  “A little,” he admitted. “I already spoke Spanish, so in high school my mom made me take French. Haven’t used it in years, though.” Jesse wrinkled his nose. “Smell that?”

  I glanced around the condo. It wasn’t even furnished, not really, but what little furniture was there probably cost more than my van. “Money?”

  “Piss,” Jesse corrected. “I think she pissed herself.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that happens.”

  He nudged the Luparii scout’s body with a toe. She glared up at us, conscious but unable to access the ability for speech. Jesse glanced down at my Taser. “Is that thing street legal?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Let’s call it legal-adjacent,” I suggested.

  “Will she be okay?”

  The barking from the back room had gotten so loud that he had to repeat himself twice before I understood. “She’ll be fine,” I yelled back. “We should get her tied up before she recovers though.”

  Jesse produced the roll of duct tape from behind his back, where he must have tucked it into his belt, and we got to work taping the woman’s ankles, wrists, and mouth. We used more than half the roll before Jesse declared her officially subdued. As he tore off the tape, I spotted a very expensive handbag sitting on the countertop. “Hey,” I called, crossing the empty kitchen to the bag. I almost didn’t want to put my grubby hands inside it, it looked so expensive. I solved the problem by flipping the damn thing over. A small mound of purse paraphernalia scattered across the counter.

  Jesse picked up a French passport. “Her name is Petra Corbett,” he called over the sound of barking.

  “Doesn’t sound very French,” I yelled back. He just shrugged.

  “We gotta get it to be quiet, or someone’s gonna call the LAPD for real,” Jesse pointed out. I nodded, and he started for the back bedroom. I hobbled after him.

  Jesse opened the bedroom door very slowly, but the bargest didn’t dart out and trample him. It must have been in a crate or something. But when the door began to move, the thing went suddenly quiet, and Jesse and I exchanged a nervous glance. He
pushed the door the rest of the way open.

  I swung the backpack around so I could dig the dog stuff out of it, but I looked up when I heard Jesse’s gasp. He was planted in the doorway, frozen, mouth wide open. “Holy shit,” he breathed.

  “What?” I said, making my way toward the doorway.

  “That,” Jesse said, eyes huge and round, “is the ugliest fucking dog I have ever seen.”

  I came up behind Jesse’s shoulder and got my first look at the bargest.

  The back bedroom was fairly large and had no furniture, but a lot of space was taken up by an enormous wire crate that didn’t look sturdy enough for what was inside. The bargest stood tense and growling within it, paws planted in all four corners of the crate. I had been expecting big, and it was very big. Almost three feet at the shoulder, and I was guessing about a hundred and eighty pounds. Big, yes, but not the biggest dog I’d ever seen.

  But Jesse was right; it was hideous. Except for the ears, the bargest looked like someone had taken a Scottish deerhound, shaved off huge swathes of its fur, and dipped it in the blackest of black ink—except that its face was lumpy and not quite symmetrical, giving the overall impression that it had recently lost a prizefight. Tufts of short, coarse fur covered part of the back and one ear, while the rest of its skin was hairless, with a pebbly reptile-like texture that looked a little like . . . armor. The hairless ear had been torn at some point and had healed not quite right. The good ear flicked forward, and I realized that it was a perfect wolf’s ear.

  If Frankenstein made a dog . . .

  It snarled, drawing black lips up over terrible white teeth. Jesse took an involuntary step back, stretching out his arm protectively. “This isn’t gonna work, Scar,” he warned. “That thing is dangerous.” Jesse held out his hand. “Give me the Taser. We’ll tape it up and take it to Dashiell or Kirsten. They’ll find a humane way to put it down.”

  I stared at the bargest. Once you got past the ugliness and the size, it looked . . . like a dog. A terrified, confused dog. “Let me talk to it,” I suggested.