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

by Kim McDougall

  Betsy frowned. “You are here about the takers?”

  “I heard of them. Don’t know if they’re involved in my…uh, brother’s disappearance though. How do you know about them?”

  “Everybody’s talking about the takers. They snatch people right off the streets. No one wants to go out at night anymore. But my neighbor’s kid was taken in broad daylight!”

  She looked around again to be sure that we weren’t overheard, then said, “Some say they’re taking only kids with super magic, for experiments, you know? So it’s gotta be those alchemists.” She whispered that last word.

  I’d had the same thought many times in the last few days.

  A rogue fae was also a possibility. It wasn’t unheard of for one of the stronger fae to break free of Leighna’s strict rule and start rampaging the city. Some of the ancient ones had looser ideas of civilization. Some also had a deep yen for human flesh. But if a fae was stealing kids, he’d pick off the weak ones, not those with strong magic. No point fighting with your food if you didn’t have to.

  Who would want kids with off-the-charts magic ability? The alchemists were the obvious choice. They were the least populous arm of the triumvirate that ruled Montreal, but they held the keys to the technology that kept the ward humming. For that reason, they were well funded and given free rein to conduct all manner of experiments.

  But there was another, more frightening option. What had Leighna said about the demon in Underhill? He ate magic. By the One-eyed Father, I didn’t know which was worse, a demon loose in the ward or unsanctioned alchemy experiments.

  “Are you worried that you’ll be taken?” I asked.

  “Not me. I’m a dud. I’ve got only one magic trick and it’s pretty pathetic.” She templed her fingers and concentrated on the space between her hands. Beads of sweat burst from her forehead, and her jaw set in a tight clench. A tiny storm cloud bloomed in the cavity between her hands. It swirled and flashed with mini lightning bolts. After a moment, Betsy let it drop and she sagged against the wall.

  “That’s your pathetic trick?” I knew Hub mages who couldn’t call on that much magic. But the effort obviously took a lot out of her.

  “My sister Maeve is much better. She’s amazing.” Her tired face lit up. “She can call the wind and make it rain just on our yard. We do that sometimes when it gets really hot.” She looked shy, as if I might scold her for messing with the weather. “But Maeve’s not like everyone else, you know?”

  I let her explain before drawing conclusions.

  “She’s a little slow at some things. Doesn’t like people. My ma used to say she had to be a changeling, left by hobgoblins when they took her real daughter. But Maeve’s my sister. I feel it in my bones, you know?”

  I nodded like I did know, but really, I’d never had that familial connection with anyone.

  “Anyway, I try to keep her safe, but I can’t watch her all day. I gotta work.” She nodded toward the tavern. “And Maeve likes to roam. No matter how dangerous I tell her the streets are. She won’t listen. These takers will get her. I just know it.”

  “Can you give me the names of the others who went missing?”

  A door banged opened in the alley, and the scowling bartender came out.

  “Break’s over, missy. Get back inside. Someone puked in the bathroom. Go clean it up.”

  Betsy jumped and ran inside. The bartender looked me up and down and slammed the door behind him. I sighed. At least Betsy had given me her contact info. A minute later, a couple of names came through by message. The missing kids. Then another note that said, “Don’t let them take Maeve!”

  I decided that was enough detective work for one day and headed down the alley, hoping it would come out on the street where I’d parked. Four pookas huddled in the alcove of a door, whispering and generally looking suspicious. The throbbing beat of a rock-band came through the door, drowning out the pookas’ words.

  “Hey,” I called out. Four round faces turned my way. Their baseball-sized eyes were full of shock and fear. And then they ran.

  “Wait! I just have some questions!”

  Running through an alley is never a good idea. Too easy to trip over garbage or slip in a puddle of unidentified fluids. Chasing fae through an increasingly dark alley was an exceptionally bad idea. The pookas knew this neighborhood better than me. They sprinted over debris I had to run around. I nearly lost them when the alley forked. Three pookas went one way, and I chased down the last one. He was an agile little guy and gave me a good run, but I finally cornered him behind a dumpster. He crouched like a primate, but his face was more feline, and a whip-like tail curled up behind him. His long ears flattened against his head, and his fur had already changed color to blend into the brick wall.

  “Take it! Take it! I give up!” He thrust a candy bar at me. The paper was ripped, and a bite had been taken from it. Already, the pooka’s hands shook, and the pupils in his enormous eyes dilated to fill the iris.

  “Relax. I’m not Hub.” I handed him back his chocolate. No shop keeper in their right mind would sell chocolate to a pooka. It was like crack to them. They hoarded it like street drugs, and I’d probably interrupted a trade.

  The pooka clutched his dope to his chest. “What do you want?”

  “Answers. Nothing about you and your friends. I want to know about the takers.”

  The pooka peered down the alley and nibbled the candy. His eyes were going glassy.

  “When they come, they take. When they come, you hide.” He shifted on his feet and his fur changed color again to blend into the rusted metal of the dumpster.

  “They come, you hide. They come, you hide.” He rocked back and forth, repeating this in a sing-song voice. He was already too far gone on the chocolate high. I couldn’t leave him there, but when I reached down to help him up, the little beast went wild. He snarled and lunged, pointed teeth snapping at me. I scrambled out of the way, and he ran off.

  Fine. I didn’t want to be stuck with a stoned pooka anyway.

  I backtracked down the alley. This section of town was a rabbit’s warren of winding lanes that reeked of garbage and urine. The alleys mostly backed up onto businesses, but a clothesline of shirts and underwear strung from one window across to another told me than this one was inhabited. I turned a corner thinking I recognized a particular trash bin, walked another fifty meters and realized I was lost.

  A car honked. Someone shouted and slammed a door. A TV was playing too loud, but these were distant sounds. In the alley—now almost completely dark—I turned to retrace my steps and keened that someone was lurking at the last intersection.

  I was too far away to get a sense of their magic, but I didn’t trust lurkers. I turned back, continuing down the strange alley, hoping it would merge with Talon Street. Behind me, the presence moved with stealth. And fast. I picked up my pace. Garbage was strewn in my path, and I kicked a bottle as I tramped through it. The sound of glass shattering against the stone wall was shockingly loud. I could hear my breathing, harsh and ragged with fear. My assailant—if I wasn’t just jumping at shadows—was dead silent.

  Panic made me choose badly at the next intersection. To the right was pure darkness, but a light shone distantly to the left. I ran toward it, only to find a dim bulb over a locked door and a dead end.

  I banged on the door. Something scraped the asphalt behind me. I whirled, pulling my sword in one motion.

  To find Emil grinning at me with arms held wide. The tip of my sword snagged his shirt just below his heart.

  He smiled. “Do it.”

  “Charming.” I started to lower my blade, but he stepped forward, wedging it against his breastbone.

  “You really don’t want to cut yourself with this sword.”

  “Don’t I, Valkyrie?” He said that last word like a caress and ran a finger along my jaw. I jerked backward, coming up against a
pile of crates left in the alley.

  Emil let his hand drop. “I’ve done my research. I know what that blade does. It releases. It frees.” His intense eyes pinned me, and he spoke like he was trying to seduce me. He leaned in and whispered, “Do it, Kyra. You know you want to.”

  A vision of Joran, skin rotting off him, flashed in my mind. Emil wasn’t human, but my sword would do the job. I’d killed enough opji in that battle last spring. It might take two or three blows, but the blade would bring him a true death.

  My sword hummed in anticipation. Emil smiled. He really was a handsome bugger. Hair curled in a messy mop, hazel eyes that never quite matched the humor in his sly grin.

  I didn’t want to kill him. He might want to die, but that didn’t mean I wanted his death to be my burden for the rest of my life. I carried enough of those memories.

  I backed away and lowered my sword. “I can’t do it.”

  Emil tried to grab my hand in the sword’s grip.

  I’d been here before. He would plunge the blade into his own heart, forcing my hand to be the bearer of his death.

  Not again!

  I punched him and held the sword out of his reach. He lunged, his eyes manic and fingers grasping. I backed up, trod in something soft and fell, banging my knee on the cement. I put two hands on the ground to push up, and a yelp escaped me.

  I was looking straight into the eyes of a dead woman.

  Chapter

  17

  Broken glass littered the ground around me. The pile of crates had toppled when I tripped over the body and now lay in a broken heap. Some kind of rodent rummaged under the debris.

  Mason found me sitting against a dirty wall, with my chin resting on my knees—knees crusted in something foul from my fall. The body faced away from me so I could no longer see her eyes. Small mercies.

  “Hey,” Mason said as he crouched beside me.

  “Hey.” I refused to look at him.

  “What’s he doing lurking in the shadows?” He nodded toward Emil, who leaned against the far wall, feet crossed at the ankle and arms crossed against his chest. He nodded back at Mason.

  “Emil? Just ignore him. We were having a chat when I found the body.”

  I’d called Mason first because the dead woman wore the distinctive white coat favored by the alchemists, and I recognized her from the pictures in Cyril’s apartment. Cyril was also working with the alchemists. I didn’t know if the two deaths were related or if they had anything to do with the takers, but I figured that Mason would want to see the scene before Hub took over. At least that’s what I’d told myself. It was a gut reaction. When I was in trouble, he was the first person I thought of, and now I felt a sudden rush of relief to have him crouching beside me.

  “Any idea who she is?” I asked.

  Mason leaned over the body. “Lorraine Reed.”

  “You know her well?”

  “Not really. I’ve seen her around Perrot Island. Her lab is in a different building than mine.”

  “Does she work with Gerard?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Cyril knew her.”

  Mason quirked one eyebrow. “How do you know?”

  I handed him my widget, open to the picture I’d downloaded in Cyril’s apartment.

  “That’s her on the right, isn’t it?”

  Mason studied the picture and nodded. Then he took a pen from his pocket and used it to lift the victim’s hair where it lay over her chest.

  “She still has her ID badge.” He pulled a gleam from his pack and shook it before tossing it up to hover overhead. The tiny globe lit the scene too well, highlighting gore that the shadows had hidden.

  Lorraine Reed had been stabbed several times. Blood soaked the back of her coat and matted her hair. A gash split the skin under her unseeing right eye. It was crusted with dirt and gravel. Her lips were parted and lipstick smeared across her chin as if someone had tried to gag her. One hand partially covered a cracked widget.

  “Doesn’t look like a robbery gone bad.” Mason’s eyes took in every detail but he didn’t touch her. “Those ID badges fetch a good price on the black market.”

  So not a mugging, unless the assailant was too dumb to know the value of tech. Not a sexual assault. There were many other reasons for murder, more personal reasons. Revenge, jealousy, love turned bad. Or someone could have wanted to silence Ms. Reed.

  I could feel the weight of Mason’s gaze as he watched me work through the possibilities.

  “This is becoming a habit,” he said. “You and me huddled over a cooling body.”

  I let out a harsh laugh. “At least we don’t have to worry about boring small talk.”

  His smile didn’t reach his eyes. That was all right. My laugh hadn’t touched my heart either. There was nothing to be happy about here.

  He took my hand, his fingers warm and solid, and he tugged me up. He pulled too hard, and I fell against him before finding my feet. My chest bumped against his. We were so close. Close enough to kiss. His eyes flicked down to my mouth and back up again.

  “Kyra, I’m sorry. I had no right to berate you at the funeral. I want you in my business. Truly. I just don’t know how to let you in.”

  “You’re doing a good job right now.”

  He grinned. My heart put on a tutu and did a little dance.

  Gently, like I was made of spun sugar, he pushed me away and said, “Let’s take some pictures, then we’d better call Hub.”

  I nodded and dusted gravel from my pants.

  Emil jumped onto a dumpster. He didn’t climb. He just bent his knees and launched six feet into the air to land on the metal lid with a bang.

  Mason arched his brow and looked at me in surprise. I shook my head to say I had no idea what the vamp was up to.

  “Your little dance is sweet,” Emil said. “But I’ve got places to be.” He started to climb. The wall of the four-story building was streaked with sludge from a broken eave. Emil didn’t care. His fingers stuck to the brick like they had suckers. His booted toes found crannies for purchase, and he scampered up the wall like a spider to stand on the edge of the roof with his arms spread wide to the night.

  “Not again,” I groaned.

  “You can take my body, but you can’t take my soul!” The vamp tipped forward, arms still spread, and fell head-first onto the pavement.

  I jumped at the impact.

  “Ciboire.” Mason rolled his eyes and then nudged the gleam into the alley to hover over Emil’s crumpled form.

  His head was an indistinguishable pile of mash. One arm stuck straight up, broken at the shoulder. As we watched, it flopped over his wreck of a face.

  “He’s been doing that all week.” I ran a hand over my tired eyes. “Every time I turn around. Today, he chased me here. He wants me to end him with my sword.”

  “Could you do that?”

  I shrugged. “I killed a lot of opji last spring.”

  “So just do it, if that’s what he wants.”

  “Really? Just because some jerk wants to die, I should play the grim reaper for him? I should carry that burden for the rest of my life?”

  Mason held up his hands in defense. “I didn’t mean to pull your trigger.”

  “Sorry.” I turned away from the pile of vamp mush. “I just had a hard day…a hard week, really.” Mason stared at me. He knew there was more to that outburst.

  “I have a problem with suicide. I mean, everybody should have a problem with it, but I have…experience.”

  He watched me steadily, not prodding, just waiting.

  “My cousin Aaric, a kissing-cousin, you could say…he was tired of the whole immorality thing too.” Should I be telling this story to another immortal, one who already professed to being weary of this world? But the weight of his gaze bore down on me. He wouldn’t let this go.<
br />
  “Aaric forced me…forced my hand to be the one that killed him. My sword. Right into his heart.”

  “He needed a Valkyrie sword to die,” Mason said, and I nodded. “And he needed a Valkyrie to wield the magic.” I nodded again. He tipped my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes. “And you loved him.”

  “Yes.”

  The memory of that fresh, innocent love was forever tainted by Aaric’s last gasping breath.

  “And this Emil guy?”

  “Do I love Emil?” Was he serious? “He’s just some whacko who’s been following me around.”

  Mason nodded, but I could tell he was relieved.

  “You still want to call Hub?” he asked.

  “Yes, but we’d better go scrape vampire off the sidewalk first before someone slips in it.”

  Chapter

  18

  Vikings loved a good sacrifice, the gorier the better. They spilled animal blood at every solstice and equinox to honor the gods. Enemies were sacrificed to Odin by gutting the victim from tailbone to neck and separating the backbone with an ax so his organs could be displayed in a delightful pose called the blood-eagle. So I wasn’t surprised that the Viking ritual to put my blade into stasis required blood.

  The recipe written in Leighna’s neat handwriting on precious old-world paper lay on my counter. The ingredients included hemp seeds, licorice root, fresh mead and—because no Viking ritual was complete without it—the blood of a bull in rut.

  I had a cutting from my pot plant, licorice root—thanks to Gita who liked to chew on it—a bottle of beer and a porterhouse steak. It would have to do.

  I crushed the roots and leaves with a mortar and pestle by candlelight. The sun was just setting and my windowless kitchen was dim, but there was no point in turning on a light.

  Since the wars, Terra had not allowed people to cut into her for fuel. Wind and solar power were acceptable, but limiting, for the new world order of small city states. Ley-lines were the go-to source of power. The magic that flowed through these veins seemed limitless, and so far, Terra didn’t mind us tapping into them. The alchemists had created the new science of technomancy that blended ley-line power with state-of-the-art technology to power cars, heat homes and light the night. I had come to the conclusion that Errol didn’t affect this electricity so much as the magic that fueled it.