Rangers

by Chloe Garner

  “So, we have all three, here, right?” Sam asked.

  “Sure. If this were a human laying here, I’d call it case closed and start looking for the thing. But a cow… The level of demon who finds killing a cow exciting is also going to eat it. All of the… pieces seem to be here.”

  She pulled a vial out of her backpack and put her knife to the cow’s throat, puncturing through to an artery, then put her knee on the cow’s shoulder and ran her hand up its neck to fill the vial.

  “What’s that for?” Jason asked.

  “Waste not,” she said, wiping the outside of the vial clean on the cow’s hide and putting the lid back on the glass.

  “That’s sick,” Jason said.

  “Just wait until I need it,” she said. She said a few harsh, sharp-sounding words to the glass, then put it back in her bag.

  “Things have changed since you were here last,” Heather said. Sam nodded.

  “She has fewer secrets,” he said.

  “Just because it is true doesn’t mean it is good,” she told him. He looked at her.

  “Are you saying you don’t trust her any more?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “Good people choose bad paths. Be careful.”

  He nodded.

  “So, just the cows?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “I found out today that a rancher found his dog cut open, yesterday, out behind his house. Something with this much evil in it, that close to people…”

  Sam nodded.

  “I’m glad you called us. I’ll let Simon know what we’ve got, and we’ll go talk to the sheriff.”

  “I’ve done that. He says that it’s vandals.”

  “What else would he say?”

  “I’d like to take a look at the reports,” Samantha said, brushing her hands off on her jeans. Jason snorted.

  “And how do you expect to do that?” he asked. She shrugged.

  “Go into the police station and look at them,” she said. Sam frowned at her. She was dead serious.

  “And you’re, what, just going to walk in there? They’re just going to let you?” Jason asked.

  “This far south, they get the door for me,” she said.

  <><><>

  Sam and Jason sat in the parking lot.

  “I can’t believe you let her go in there,” Jason said. Heather hadn’t been real excited about it, either, but Samantha had insisted she could do it, and Sam had been curious. Two votes to two, Samantha got her way. She had gone upstairs and changed into a simple black dress that went just past her knees, coming back downstairs with her hair brushed out, but simple, and her makeup done. She was pretty, but unremarkable. Someone at the police station had, indeed, gotten the front door for her, and now Sam and Jason had been sitting, staring at the station from a block away for most of thirty minutes. She walked back out, another officer holding the door for her, and she waved over her shoulder at him as she walked down the front walkway.

  “I’ll be damned,” Jason said. “She actually got away with it.”

  She was carrying the same stack of folders she had had when she went in, held against her chest in librarian fashion. Jason started the car and they picked her up at the sidewalk.

  “Cows, pigs, goats, a few dogs,” she said, getting in. “They don’t do much investigation, but from the look of it, nothing was eaten. Doesn’t make sense.”

  “They just let you go through their files,” Jason said. She looked up from the stack of papers in her lap.

  “It’s kind of my original super power,” she said. “I’m invisible.”

  “Can I see?” Sam asked, reaching over the seat. She handed him a folder with photocopies of pictures and reports. He paged through it.

  “Doesn’t match anything I know of, either,” he said.

  “Texas is weird,” Samantha said.

  “How’s that?”

  “This is the home of southern charm, sure, and the staff were really nice to me, but there were a couple of guys sitting in there that really gave me the creeps. And then there’s the fact that no one is making a big deal out of this. It’s a rancher problem.”

  “Well, we’ll go map this out and see if there are any patterns,” Sam said.

  “Heather said not to be late for dinner,” Jason said, putting the car in gear, “and I have no intention of it.”

  <><><>

  Later that evening, Sam and Samantha stood over a map on the coffee table, searching for patterns in the red marks they had made on it.

  “It’s just… town,” Sam said.

  “I don’t see anything significant in the shape,” Samantha said, closing her laptop.

  “All that I’ve got is that it looks like the same knife in the two pictures compared to the cow today,” Jason said from where he was draped over an armchair. “And that’s only a guess. These pictures suck.”

  Samantha nodded.

  “They really weren’t any better in color.”

  She tipped her head to the side and knelt.

  “They’re all decently close to a road,” she said, tracing distances with her fingers.

  “They were all just out of earshot of a house,” Heather called from the kitchen. “Within a quarter mile, in most cases.”

  “Or there are a bunch we haven’t heard about, because no one has found them,” Sam said. Samantha nodded. Heather walked into the living room with a tray of coffee mugs.

  “Cows die all the time. If the coyotes find them before people do, they’re just going to look like a chewed-on cow. No one reports those.”

  Samantha sighed. One advantage to working with Carter was that you generally only got called in when someone actually laid eyes on a demon. This tracking down something that could be anything work was exhausting.

  “They’re just cows,” she offered.

  “If it’s a demon, we kill it,” Jason said emphatically, not looking up from the file. Sam shrugged at her. He agreed.

  “Idealists,” she muttered, pleased all the same. Heather sat down on the couch and leaned out to look at the map.

  “Richards, Klein, Johnson,” she said, naming the properties. Samantha was suddenly struck with the memory of what it was like to have neighbors. “Nothing special about them.” She pointed at the next X. “Rodriguez. They aren’t even all white. Cruz. All ages, different temperaments. I don’t think it’s about the ranchers.”

  There was a scream outside, high, sharp, human. Coffee splattered across the table and the floor as all four of them bolted for the front door.

  “Elizabeth,” Heather said, running out the front door. Elizabeth was running out of the garage, clutching her arm. She ran into Heather’s arms.

  “Someone… I saw him… he… I saw him…”

  “Inside,” Jason said, pushing Heather and Elizabeth back up the stairs as he looked over his shoulder. Sam and Samantha stood at the bottom of the stairs until Elizabeth and Heather were inside, then Jason whistled and they walked up the stairs backwards. Samantha had a knife in her hand that she didn’t remember drawing. She hadn’t realized that Sam or Jason was carrying a gun, but they were both armed, at alert. Jason closed the door and stood with his back against it, looking out the glass beside the doorway. He jerked his head at Sam and Samantha.

  “Go.”

  They found themselves following a blood trail into the dining room, where Elizabeth was sitting at the table, staring at the long, gaping cut down her forearm. Blood was pooling on the table and Heather was coming out of the kitchen with a dish towel.

  “First aid is in the trunk in the living room,” she said to Sam. He left as Heather wrapped the wound, just to close it, and returned, pulling a roll of bandaging out of the box. Elizabeth stared at nothing. Samantha sat down across the table from her and glanced up at Heather. Heather nodded.

  “What did you see, Elizabeth?” Samantha asked. Sam joined Heather, handing her the bandaging.

  “Do you want to stitch it now, or wait?” he asked softly. Heather shook her
head, taking the bandages and jerking her head at Samantha. Sam nodded and took a firm grip on Elizabeth’s arm through the dish towel, rolling it back as Heather wound the bandage tightly over the wound. Elizabeth whimpered.

  “What did you see, Beloved?” Samantha asked.

  “He was watching me,” Elizabeth mumbled.

  “Okay,” Samantha said. “How tall was he?” she asked.

  “Skinny,” Elizabeth said, eyes focusing a bit, then drifting away again. She yelped as Sam squeezed together another section of flesh and Heather started wrapping it.

  “Easy,” Samantha said. “What color was his skin?”

  “White. He was white.”

  “Human?”

  “A guy. It was a guy,” Elizabeth said, her eyebrows creasing down hard over her eyes as she started to cry. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

  “Okay. Good. And then he cut you?”

  “He had a knife. A long knife. I thought he was a hub cap,” Elizabeth said.

  “Did he say anything?”

  Elizabeth shook her head, then looked up at Sam and made a rough barking noise. Sam stepped back. Elizabeth looked down at the table, tears dripping into the blood there. Heather whispered something in a language Samantha didn’t know.

  “That’s what he said,” Elizabeth finally whispered. Samantha pressed her lips together and looked at Heather.

  “Her shirt,” she said softly. Heather pulled Elizabeth’s arm up out of the way, finding that Elizabeth’s other hand was clutching a bloody section of her shirt. Heather untangled her daughter’s fingers and peeled the cloth away, holding up a hand and shaking her head. It wasn’t that bad. Elizabeth still didn’t move. Jason came walking past, in the living room, checking windows.

  “Shadows,” he said. “No one getting close.”

  “More than one?” Sam asked.

  “Could be. Don’t know.”

  Sam disappeared out of view for a moment and Samantha heard heavy furniture grating over the floor. That would be the china hutch moving in front of the back door. Jason walked past again, glancing over at Elizabeth, then Samantha, and continued back to the front door.

  “Can you tell me anything about the knife he had?” Samantha asked Elizabeth. The girl shuddered, retreating into herself. Heather covered her daughter with her arms and looked at Samantha, not with hostility, but with a quiet desperation. Samantha nodded.

  “Get her a blanket and get her upstairs.”

  “They have a basement,” Sam said. “That’s better.”

  Samantha nodded.

  “I’m coming with you,” Heather said. Samantha shook her head and Sam put his hand on Heather’s shoulder.

  “Child, I’ve been doing this since before you first breathed,” Heather said, drawing herself up.

  “Stay with her. If you don’t, one of us will have to, and she needs you,” Samantha said. Elizabeth was shaking, her teeth chattering audibly. Heather squared her jaw and nodded.

  She said a few more words in her own tongue, holding up her hands, then nodded firmly. “Be careful.”

  Samantha nodded and stood aside as Sam approached with a blanket then led Heather and Elizabeth to the door that led to the basement.

  “Block it?” he asked after he shut the door. Samantha shook her head.

  “They need to be able to get out if it glitches down there,” she said. He nodded. They found Jason at a front window, tense with alertness.

  “Lights,” he said. Sam nodded and left to go turn the first floor lights off.

  “What have we got?” he asked Samantha.

  “Human form. Didn’t speak, but that’s not very conclusive. Sadistic doesn’t tell us much, either. Skinny white guy. Likes blades. Could be a blood demon, likes to watch things bleed.” She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “They all die the same,” Jason said, checking the chamber on his gun.

  “Right,” Samantha said, running into the living room to get her backpack.

  “I’ve got it,” she said, edging over in front of the window. “You need to go get your shotgun. Iron shot.”

  He glanced at her and nodded. She searched through the backpack without looking, watching the shadows around the workshop with a mind that imagined animate shapes in every undulating shade of darkness. She found the special gun and its mate, then dug deeper for ammunition. She kept clips of steel bullets for both guns, full time. Sam rejoined her, and she handed him the standard gun.

  “I have mine,” he said.

  “This one is built for steel bullets,” she said. “And these,” she said, holding up the magazine, “are special steel.”

  He accepted the gun and loaded the magazine, shoving it into his pants in front of his own gun. He leaned against the window frame as Samantha loaded her own gun. She pulled the machete out next, then the belt that slung it, and put on both, then pulled out her hatchet. It had a loop on the belt, as well. She felt much less naked, with those bouncing against her thighs. Jason returned, loading the shot gun, and looked up.

  “Are we set?”

  Samantha nodded. She picked up her backpack and put it on.

  “Keep the house to our back, keep an eye for anything getting around,” he said. “Left,” he said, pointing at Samantha. “Right.” Sam. They nodded. They opened the front door and walked out onto the porch.

  “Why is it here?” Samantha asked. Jason shook his head.

  “Must have seen us at the site today. We spooked it?”

  Samantha nodded then crept left, head up, pulse picking up as she headed across the wide gravel driveway. Jason pulled out a flashlight and scanned it across the front of the workshop. Samantha groaned internally. It made him a target, but she couldn’t argue with it. They needed to see what they were coming up on. Something glinted in a window and vanished. She heard Sam hiss - a simple communication. He had seen it, too. Jason swept the light across the second story, then, quickly scanning the rest of the yard, focused the light on the open garage door.

  Samantha pushed further left, coming at the building at the back door. Jason was pointed at the garage door, and it appeared that Sam was going to go in through a side access door. She hated the idea of the three of them going into a dark building wielding guns, but it was the only way to be sure that he didn’t get around behind them while they were in the workshop. She pulled a very exact idea of where Sam was into the forefront of her mind. At least she could make sure she wouldn’t shoot him by mistake. She felt him do the same. Dropping her backpack just inside the door, she reached for the lightswitch, click, but was unsurprised to find it dead.

  Finely-tuned reflexes had her on the floor before her brain had processed the trip wire. The muzzle flash shocked her eyes at the same time that a pellet tore across her back. Her mouth flew open to cry out, and only years of hard training kept her silent. She felt for mobility through her left arm. The pellet had embedded itself under her shoulder blade, and it was screamingly painful to put her arm back, but as long as she kept the rotation of her shoulder to a narrow angle and used her elbow for the rest of her range of motion, she’d make it.

  “Trip wire!” she yelled, kneeling and taking another moment. The hot streak across her back where angry flesh was slowly beginning to bleed made her angry. She reached up to find the shotgun and jerked it free furiously. Something made a sharp whirring noise somewhere in front of her. She was on her feet and against the wall in another spurt of involuntary motion.

  “You good?” Jason yelled back.

  “Yeah.”

  Sam hadn’t even mentally blinked. He was at high focus, and apparently her anger had been enough to keep him on task. She angrily rolled her shoulder again, drawing the pain on purpose. She narrowed her eyes and raised her gun again and walked through the back office, moving more carefully with her feet and forcing her eyes to pull information out of the near-blank blackness. The office was empty. She stepped to one side of the door into the main garage and turned the doorknob, pushing the door just
far enough to get the latch clear, then pulled her hand clear, listening and breathing. Taking too deep a breath pressed her ribs against her shoulder blade and brought tears to her eyes. She breathed out hard and closed her eyes, forcing focus.

  She nudged the door a bit further, then crossed in front of it with a swift, practiced motion. The garage was lit with the dissipated reflections from Jason’s flashlight, and she only saw the silhouettes of equipment and three cars. She checked the floor in front of the door more carefully, then nudged the door again. A car engine started. She jerked back against the wall again, ears straining to be eyes instead. She kicked the door all the way open and stood well back from it. Jason jerked the flashlight at her, then away. She checked the ground again and walked over closer to where he stood.

  “That was for me,” he said softly over the sound of the car engine, shining his flashlight at a hunting knife buried deep into a wood workbench at chest level. He showed her the ropework that had flung it and she nodded.

  “I know how to make one of those,” he said. “Do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “The cars are empty?” she asked.

  “As far as I can tell.”

  She nodded, then motioned that she was headed back over to the left wall. He held out a hand to pause her.

  “Sam’s okay?”

  She nodded, putting her hand on his wrist so he wouldn’t point the flashlight, then pointed at a point against the far wall where Sam was holed up. Jason nodded. She swept left.

  Jason was covering from the front of the garage, keeping surprises off of her as she took quick peaks into the first two, silent cars. Someone could have been hiding in either of them, down in the floorboards, but she didn’t want to expose herself long enough to shade her face against the glass to check. If they were there, that would be the best chance they would get to shoot her in the face, or come through the glass at her; it wasn’t worth the risk to know for certain. She got to the third car and, back to the bodywork, jerked her head up to get a quick look in it. It was just as empty as the other two. She made her way around it, eyes and ears alert, but the engine idling was enough to keep her from being able to hear footsteps, no matter how quiet or careful she was. She needed the engine off.