Dervishes Don't Dance: A Paranormal Suspense Novel with a Touch of Romance (Valkyrie Bestiary Book 2)

by Kim McDougall

  “I hope you have some antiseptic in that pack. Your shoulder is bleeding, and who knows what was on those claws.”

  And just like that, we were back to the efficient but cold version of Henry Mason.

  We met Angus and a couple of other Guardians as we left the warehouse. Mason spoke to them quietly, and they headed back inside the building. We went on to find Captain Lowe.

  I let Mason fill her in and found a quiet spot to rest. My head still spun from the flash bomb, and my many bruises started to make themselves known. I crumpled to the ground at the edge of the parking lot where the gravel met grass. Hub trucks lit the scene in stark white light that hurt my eyes. Officers had cordoned off the site, but a crowd had already gathered to watch paramedics load bodies into ambulances.

  It was hot, even for June, with that muggy air that hinted at rain. Sweat mingled with the blood and dirt on my face and dripped under my collar. A hub tech came by and gave me a bottle of water. I drank most of it and then splashed my face with the rest.

  In front of me, a large slug oozed across the gravel. The humidity had made him optimistic that he could cover the expanse of the parking lot before drying up. He wasn’t going to make it.

  I plucked him off the gravel and dropped him into a patch of weeds and grass on the edge of the lot. I looked up at the sound of feet coming across the gravel.

  “Did you just save a slug?” Mason asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “I sure hope that’s not a smirk I see on your face.”

  “No, ma’am. Never. And not after that fight. You were amazing.”

  “Yep, I’m a killer with a taser.”

  “Not that.”

  “Oh, you mean when I threw up in the dark.”

  He pinched the skin between his brows.

  “Why can’t you just take a well-deserved compliment with grace?”

  I shrugged, feeling childish but not knowing how to stop.

  He sat on the grass beside me.

  “I’m just trying to say I’m sorry.”

  I picked through the clovers in the grass looking for four-leafers.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “At the courthouse.” He rubbed the back of his neck with a dusty hand. “I was too harsh.”

  “But not wrong?”

  He took a deep breath. “No. Not wrong. When I say I want you to stay out of my business, it’s not because I think you can’t handle the fight. But there’s a battle coming that won’t be won with a sword.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know who owns GenPort?” He waved a hand at the construction site, now burning with a dozen small fires.

  “Gerard Golovin.” He let that sink in for a moment.

  “You think he wants the bloodstone for this? What for?”

  Mason shook his head. He looked as tired as I felt. “I don’t know. But it’s all tangled together somehow. I wasn’t put on trial because I violated the Black Hat Act. That’s a joke. We all have relics we shouldn’t have. No way Hub could police that. I was tried because Gerard wants the bloodstone. I don’t know why, but I can’t let him keep it. It’s too dangerous, and I don’t trust his motives.”

  “So we get it back.” Mason had had my back during the whole dragon fiasco. He’d earned my loyalty, even if he didn’t want it.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to make clear.” His dark eyes hid all emotion. “There is no ‘we.’ Not this time. Golovin is a prime minister. He won’t give in without a fight. It’s going to get messy, and I want you to stay out of it.”

  I stood up to leave, then turned on him. “And I want you to stop treating me like some delicate flower! I think I’ve proven myself!” Later, I would understand that raising my voice was not the best way to deal with Mason, but I was exhausted, and bruised in heart and spirit.

  Mason stood, rising to the bait and yelled back. “The only thing you’ve proven is that you’re reckless!”

  We were standing close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off his skin. Behind him, to the east, the sky was beginning to lighten. He’d win this argument just by turning to stone, and in that moment, I was unreasonably bitter about that.

  I backed away. “Look. I don’t want to fight. There is a whole lot more going on here. Do you see those fires?” I pointed to the smoky haze over the construction site. “And all this mess? This is Terra fighting back. She won’t let us dig into her heart without consequences. So while you and Gerard Golovin squabble over your toys, someone needs to watch your back.”

  He stepped in closer and ran his fingers along my cheek. His eyes were dark and sad. “You’re right. But it can’t be you.”

  ValkyrieBestiary.com/dervish

  Dervish Goes Nova

  (April 14, 2078)

  A fire dervish has been pestering people in Pointe-Claire lately. I chased him from the chimney of one of my clients again today. She thought she had raccoons. This is only the second dervish I’ve met in over ten years of critter wrangling. They’re that rare.

  For those of you who don’t know, a fire dervish isn’t really a dervish any more than a Tasmanian devil is a devil. The name refers to the whirling. They like to spin. Sometimes for fun, sometimes in agitation. The spinning seems to ramp up their magic potential, causing a maelstrom of power.

  Dervishes have often been mistaken for brownies or gnomes. They are similar in stature and mostly humanoid, but covered in curly fur, usually gray or brown, but sometimes black or brindled. The first time I saw one, I thought, “Wow, a poodle mated with a gnome.” Would that make it a gnoodle?

  My first encounter was about six years ago. That dervish was old even by fae standards, and he walked with a cane. Some kids had cornered him in an alley and thought it would be fun to taunt him into spinning. Probably the same kind of kids that like to squash stinkbugs just to see if they smell bad.

  I was walking by the alley on my way to a job when the wind suddenly picked up, tossing debris in the air like a mini tornado. I heard the kids whooping and hollering and went to investigate. They were poking the dervish with sticks. One kid shook a bottle of soda and sprayed it over him. The poor creature was disoriented and scared. As he spun, smoke streamed from his ears. Though I’d never encountered a dervish before, I could sense the build-up of power coming off him.

  The kids were too dumb to realize they were in the line of fire. I used my best angry adult voice to scatter them, and then I tackled the dervish, like smothering a fire with my body.

  Thinking back now, that was really foolish. I’ve read a lot more about dervishes since and know that my actions could have made things worse. Much worse. I think the only reason I escaped with nothing but a few scrapes was because of the dervish’s advanced age.

  So my questions for you good reader are these:

  Have you ever seen a fire dervish go nova?

  What’s the best way to de-escalate a pre-nova dervish spin?

  I ask only to be ready for my next encounter. This new dervish is young and healthy. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing more of him.

  Comments (7)

  Unfortunately, there will always be dumb kids around, looking for fun at the expense of another living creature :(

  Cornucopia277 (April 14, 2078)

  ——

  Give those kids medals! Making our streets safe from fae scum!

  CurtWad (April 15, 2078)

  ——

  It takes a lot to make a dervish go nova. But when they do, it’s deadly. One took down half a block of apartments in my ward last year. I didn’t see it, but there were eye-witnesses. Said it was like a fiery tornado!

  BeverageBaker (April 20, 2078)

  I’m sorry to hear that. Were there many casualties? Did the dervish survive?

  Valkyrie367
(April 21, 2078)

  3 dead that I know of. They never found the dervish. The building collapsed on top of him.

  BeverageBaker (April 21, 2078)

  ——

  Best way to stop a dervish from going nova? A bullet between the eyes. Works on fairies too.

  Holierthan666 (May 1, 2078)

  ——

  Wow! A dervish? I’ve heard of those, but never seen one. They sound dangerous.

  DaddysGirl (June 10, 2080)

  Chapter

  5

  Five months later…

  I dumped my sword in the umbrella stand beside my door, happy to be home after a long workday. I found Gabe and Jacoby in the large area that was once a garage. We used it as a gym and to store extra cages, traps and tools. A nerve-jangling soundtrack that instantly made me feel old blasted from a portable speaker.

  Gabe, stripped to the waist, was busy cleaning cages. He held a scrub brush like a microphone and sang along to the screeching notes. Jacoby danced beside him, holding the spray nozzle of a hose.

  I took a moment to drink in the sight of wet Gabe, his bare shoulders flexing, butt prominently displayed in tight jeans as he leaned over the cage.

  Wow. And I mean…wow.

  Not that I would ever act on the hormones that spiked in me every time I saw him engaged in manual labor. Gabriel Devi was gorgeous but he was also a mystery. And my employee, so off limits.

  After a long string of unsuccessful assistants, I was lucky to have him. Not once had he shrunk away at the sight of blood or bug guts. And he was a computer wiz. I was so well organized, I couldn’t go to the bathroom without checking my schedule. He worked hard. The customers liked him and so did I. But I just couldn’t figure him out.

  He stood over six feet and his black curly hair begged to be touched. With his rich golden skin and dark eyes fringed in lashes longer than any man had a right to, he could model in any of the best net-zines. His magic resonated with divine power. I guessed he was some sort of godling. With a name like Devi, he was probably part of the growing Hindu pantheon in Montreal. And he had money. Or at least he came from money because he drove a sleek silver car, one with the new hands-free drive systems that cost more than I paid him in a year.

  So why was he working as an office manager for a small pest control operation? I’d asked him that very question and he said, “Because I need to do something,” putting weight on the word “do” as if the alternative was unthinkable.

  Yes, he was an enigma.

  I put that thought on hold when I realized that Jacoby was spinning to the increasingly aggressive music. A little whirlwind had blown up around him. Stray leaves and dirt swirled around his feet.

  The music beat faster, building to a discordant crescendo, and Jacoby was caught in its spell. Gabe seemed oblivious to the danger of a fire dervish going nova right beside him.

  “Gabe! Stop him!” I ran forward, but skidded on the wet floor. Gabe looked up, startled. “Turn off the music!” I shouted.

  Smoke billowed from Jacoby’s ears, and his eyes glazed over. The twister spiraling around him sparked like a firecracker. I dove at him, trapping his arms to his sides, even as sparks zapped my hair and face. Jacoby strained to keep spinning, his legs scrabbling against the cement floor.

  The music cut to blissful silence.

  “What the hell?” Gabe asked, crouching at my side.

  “He’s a dervish…you can’t…” I struggled to speak while trying to restrain Jacoby without hurting him. Last time this happened, Nesi had drugged him.

  “The hose! Drench him now!”

  Gabe grabbed the nozzle and sprayed us both. Steam blistered from Jacoby, but the cold and wet calmed him and he fell limply into my arms.

  “Get Gita!”

  Gabe rushed away. Moments later Gita arrived and clucked like an angry hen when she took in the scene.

  “’Tis nothing but ill fortune to have such a creature about. Death will be coming to this house, for sure.”

  I just nodded and laid Jacoby in a puddle on the floor. His poodle fur was bedraggled and his limbs still twitched.

  “Do you have something to make him sleep?” I asked. Gita made all kinds of tinctures from our tiny herb garden. She nodded and left. Gabe returned with a pile of towels. He propped Jacoby up while I wrapped him in terry cloth. Smoke seeped from his ears.

  “What happened?” Gabe asked.

  I was irrationally angry and had to take a minute to breathe and sort my thoughts.

  Gabe was a terrific assistant, I reminded myself. This near miss was my fault. Gabe was so competent at so many things, I had been lax in his training. He’d had no idea that a dervish could be dangerous. Jacoby’s peculiar magic was the reason I had resisted letting him stay with us in the first place; the reason he had his own house in the yard rather than a nook inside like the others.

  “Did I hurt him somehow?” Gabe asked. “Was it the music?”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said finally. “You didn’t know. It’s my fault for assuming you did.”

  “Know what?”

  “Jacoby isn’t just a regular dervish. He’s a fire dervish. That means that if he gets too excited, he goes nova.”

  “Like a star?”

  “Like a tiny exploding star.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yep.”

  “Have you seen this happen?”

  “No, but I came close once. Some kids caught one in an alley and were tormenting him. I stopped them just in time.”

  “Jacoby?”

  “No. Another dervish, a long time ago. He was much older. I’m not sure if Jacoby’s youth makes him more or less unstable. But he’s been following me around for years without a problem.”

  “So you thought it was a good idea to let this living bomb stay here.” Gabe leaned back as if the dervish might go off at any minute.

  “Clearly, I didn’t take your evil music into consideration.” I smiled to downplay the danger. Gabe wasn’t impressed.

  “Look, it takes a lot to make a dervish go nova. Mostly he’ll just smoke, but...”

  “But you can never be sure.”

  I shrugged. “He probably wouldn’t have exploded. It takes a real surge of emotion to bring him to that level of heat.”

  Gabe looked around the garage. Bits of leaves were soaked and stuck to the floor. The air smelled of smoke.

  He shook his head. “Any other potential Armageddons I should know about around here?”

  I thought of the various kinds of venom and other health hazards living in the cages that lined the walls of my apartment.

  “Maybe we should make a list.”

  Gita returned with a small vial. In her no-nonsense way, she plugged Jacoby’s nose until he gasped, then dumped the contents down his throat.

  “We’ll keep him inside for now,” I said. “Let him dry off and rest.” Jacoby had a tiny house in my yard, but even though the weather was oddly warm for November, I wanted him inside where I could keep an eye on him.

  An hour later, I sat at the kitchen table watching the news and eating the ploughman’s lunch that Gita had prepared for me as a late dinner. In my youth, I’d been a vegetarian, but in the post-war era, protein was scarce. I took what I could get. Which meant I didn’t look too closely at Gita’s homemade sausage. She dumped another wedge of cheese on my plate. She wouldn’t be happy until I had fat, jolly cheeks. Luckily, my job let me burn off the calories she insisted on force-feeding me.

  I stopped her when she started slicing another huge chunk of crusty French bread to go along with the cheese.

  “You need to eat more,” she rasped. When I refused again, she pouted and stomped off to her closet.

  No, I wasn’t some cruel dictator that forced my banshee housekeeper to live in a shoe closet. Gita preferred small, da
rk places. She’d built her nest in there, and nothing I could say would change her mind. At least she didn’t cry.

  After her scream-to-end-all-screams that brought down a condo, Gita had slept for a week. Her voice didn’t come back for a month and another five months later, it was still frail. But she didn’t cry anymore, as if that one scream had fulfilled her wailing quota for a year.

  After dinner, I checked on the critters. Willow, my gray cat, twined around my ankles, and I fed her some turkey hash. Clarence, my basilisk was curled up like a kitten on the couch and snoring softly. He looked a little ragged around the edges, like he was about to go into another molt. Hunter, the pygmy kraken, had snuck out of his tank to wrap around Clarence’s serpent tail. He watched me with huge brown eyes as if daring me to try and pry off his suckers.

  I poked my nose in on the rats, the eel, the various rodents and lizard-like things that I couldn’t yet identify. Kur, my ice sprite, dozed on his bowl of ice cubes. With each snore, his blue lips trembled and the white feathery fur on his chest swayed. Bijou, the brilliantly-hued snail, munched through a head of lettuce. I let my thoughts stray for only a moment to the night that Mason had given him to me. It seemed so long ago.

  A red balloon in the corner of the living room told me where Thomas the tortoise was. The balloon was another of Gabe’s innovations. After losing the tortoise for nearly a week, we tied a balloon around him when we let him out to roam.

  “Time to go back in your terrarium.” I scooped him up and untied the string, letting the balloon float to the ceiling.

  Next, I checked on Jacoby, who was still asleep in the office while Gabe rushed about, tidying up. He never left his desk unorganized at the end of the day. As I finished topping up the water bowls for the cages in the office, he pointed to his computer where the screen showed a calendar full of appointments.

  “You’re all booked tomorrow. Only two urgencies though. I told them you’d be there before noon. One is bats. The other might be brownies,” he frowned. “Sorry about that.” He knew I hated brownies. “The others can wait.”

  “Why are you in such a hurry? Hot date?”