The Ledberg Runestone

by Patrick Donovan

  “Fourteen thousand, four hundred dollars,” Cash said in that serial killer monotone.

  “The fuck are you talking about?” I snapped, my anger overriding my common sense.

  “Now, Jonah, let’s not get carried away. You agreed to the terms. Twenty points on the principal, interest gets paid before the principal. That was the deal and you’re short two large and some change.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said.

  “No, that’s business.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I said, one hand clenching the handle of my mug a little too hard. It took everything I had to keep from smashing him in the head with it.

  Waylon held up a hand.

  “Slow down there, chief. I’m a decent human being. You tried to make good and I can appreciate that. Now, here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll give you—I don’t know. Cash, what do you think?”

  “A day.”

  “Nah, let’s say two,” Waylon said. “Two days. Get me my money in two days and we’ll be square. If you don’t, well, I don’t know how much clearer I can be with you. I’ll probably have to go seek payment elsewhere.”

  I took the hint.

  “If you go near my old man, Waylon, I’ll kill you,” I said. In that moment, I meant it.

  Cash stood up. My hand tightened on the beer mug, the only weapon I had. Waylon held a hand up, meeting Cash’s eyes. The tension leaked out of the younger Carver brother and he slid back down into the seat.

  Waylon turned towards me. He wore a smug, arrogant grin.

  “Jonah, I’m going to let that go. I get it, you’re emotional. I’m a reasonable man, but let’s be clear, if you ever threaten me again, well, I’m going to let Cash get up and I’m going to walk away.”

  He stood up.

  “Now get the fuck out of my bar,” he said.

  I obliged him. Melly watched me go, her eyes darting between me and both Carver brothers.

  Outside of the Poor Confederate, the rain had gone from a light drizzle to a torrential downpour. It summed up my mood perfectly. The rain, coupled with the chill in the air, made me feel tired and heavy and set a deep ache into my leg. I crossed the parking lot at what, for me at least, was a close approximation of a jog, and slid the key into the driver’s side door lock.

  I felt the rise of power in the air as I was opening the door. It didn’t have the sudden, snapping tension of a spell. This was something entirely different. It was more of a presence. A very strong, scary presence and it wasn’t even close to human.

  Chapter 6

  I turned around as slowly and non-threateningly as possible, just in case the owner of said presence was of the face-eating persuasion. The woman, who looked like she was barely old enough to vote, stood at the far edge of the small parking lot. Like me, she was drenched to the bone, blonde hair hanging in loose, lanky strands around her face. She wore jeans that consisted of more rips than denim and a Mötley Crüe T-shirt, cut short enough to show a flat plane of stomach. Her eyeliner was smeared, giving her eyes a dark, shadowed look.

  We stood there in the rain, getting soaked to the bone and staring at each other.

  When she finally did move, it was at a slow, purposeful stride. The closer she got, the more I wanted to jump inside my truck and hide. There was something about her that scared the absolute piss out of me in a way that Waylon and his brother couldn’t come close to.

  She stopped maybe six inches away from me, close enough that, despite the rain, I could smell her shampoo, or perfume radiating off of her. It was odd. I couldn’t place the smell, but it made me think of flowers growing in snow.

  “It is you,” she said, finally.

  “Uh, yeah?”

  She reached out, her fingertips ever so lightly dancing across my cheek. It made me shiver. I didn’t know what the hell this woman was, and I damned sure wasn’t about to open up my senses to view her aura. I had a terrifying feeling that it would be like staring into the sun.

  “You have to stop her,” she said.

  “I, what?”

  “You have to stop her,” she repeated.

  “I take it you mean Lysone?”

  “You have to get what she wants and you have to stop her.”

  “Lady, what the in the bloody blue hell are you talking about?” I asked, taking a step back. I’d had my fair share of irritation for one day. All I wanted to do was get in my truck, have a drink, and get on with finding this stupid rock. Instead, I’d already had to deal with death threats, loan sharks, and now, to top it all off, this special kind of crazy.

  It wasn’t even noon yet.

  “You don’t understand all the things tied to you, all the paths you must travel to make this right,” she said.

  I took another step back and the girl’s hand shot out, wrapping around my wrist. She may have weighed a total of ninety pounds, but she had a grip that would put Waylon to shame.

  It felt like an electrical current shot up my arm as the girl’s eyes turned white. The color, which was a pale sky blue, drained out, as did the black of her pupils.

  I tried to jerk my hand back, to break her grip, and found that I was severely lacking in the strength department. That same fear I’d felt initially ramped up a notch. I started jerking my arm back, trying to break her grip.

  It was at that point that she chose to let go. I fell backwards, directly into a puddle.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” I growled, picking my cane up out of the gravel and struggling back to my feet. “Look lady, I don’t know what the hell your problem is, but I’m done. I’m out. Deuces.”

  “No, you’re not done at all. Not in the slightest. You’ve started to play her game, and now you’re dancing,” she said, and turned a pirouette right in the middle of the parking lot. “And you’ll dance, just like she wants you to, unless you change the rules. You have to change the rules.”

  The girl positioned herself between me and my truck, blocking my path. She let her arms hang limp at her sides and tilted her head.

  “You really don’t see it do you? What you’ve started? What you’re doing?”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Then you’re not looking in the right places, are you?”

  I stood there, soaking wet, irritated, and more than a little pissed off. She wasn’t going to let me leave, at least not yet. That much was obvious.

  “So where exactly are the right places, then? I’d really like to wrap this up so I can leave.”

  She shook her head.

  “Not here.”

  “C’mon, give me something. Work with me here.”

  “Oh no, I can’t give you anything. You’re already going to take on so much.”

  “What am I going to take on then, exactly?” I asked.

  “Something you shouldn’t. Something you should leave alone.”

  “You mean the stone?” I asked.

  “No, not the stone. A key. For a lock. A big lock.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. So what does the key unlock then?”

  “A big, big lock.”

  I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. If the little twinge I felt in my temples at the moment was any indication of the headache I had rolling in, then before it was all said and done it was going to be one hell of a migraine.

  “What does the lock, uh lock?” I asked, spacing out my words like I was talking to a small child.

  “You tell me,” she said.

  I gaped at her. That was just about all I could handle from this terrifying tween.

  “And I’m done.”

  I started towards the front of my truck. I was keen on the idea of getting out of the rain and getting my hands on a little something to warm my guts. I slowed down as I got close to her, just in case she tried anything, but she stepped aside and let me pass. I had the door open when she put a surprisingly light hand on my shoulder. I turned around.

  “Jonah. You need to stop her,” she said, sounding surprisingly lucid all of a sudden.

&
nbsp; “Stop what, exactly?”

  “You can’t let her use it,” she said, her hand moving from my shoulder to touch my cheek again. She pushed a little bit of hair behind my ear. I used my cane to push her hand away, albeit gently. I didn’t want to encourage her to try and break my neck or anything by moving too fast.

  “Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about, lady. It’s cold. It’s pouring rain. Unless you’re about to impart some Yoda-like wisdom on me, we’re done here,” I said.

  After another moment of silence on her end, I turned and got into my truck. She took a step back so I could close the door.

  She was still standing there, watching me while I backed out of the lot and onto the street.

  Chapter 7

  I spent most of the drive back to Asheville shaking off the lingering fear from my meeting with, well, whoever she was. I was pretty sure she had been alluding to the stone that Lysone wanted me to find, but at the moment I had bigger fish to fry. It was already close to one in the afternoon, which left me with roughly twenty hours to find this hunk of rock, acquire it, return it, get paid, and still somehow scrounge up another several thousand dollars with which to pay off Waylon and Cash.

  My life, I tell you. It’s some kind of stellar.

  As far as Asheville went, there was, at best, a miniscule portion of the mundane community that was in the know when it came to the supernatural. Those that knew a little something about something did their best to keep it quiet. Outside of a few factions—your vampires, werewolves, and Fae types—the majority of the ones in the know weren’t much more than dabblers. We’re talking your hippy wiccans, book store sorcerers, the occasional satanist, a few wannabe psychics, tarot card readers, conjure men, and every once in a while, some curious shmuck with a genuine academic interest. The mundanes that didn’t run in the same circles I did were perfectly content to ignore anything strange, pretend it didn’t happen, or just rationalize it away. After all, it’s a lot easier to tell the folks around the water cooler that the shape you saw crouched over the homeless guy in the alley was just another homeless guy instead of say, a vampire looking for a late-night snack, or a Fae in the midst of one of their deals, most of which involved a mark giving up their first born in exchange for power, money, sex, or any other number of vices they felt the urge to indulge in.

  What I needed right now was someone who was in the know when it came to the things that went bump in the night. Thankfully, that person actually owed me a favor, and not vice versa for a change. Bonus: I knew exactly where to find him.

  I swung by my trailer, which, as far as homes go, wasn’t much more than a metal box situated under a willow tree in the back corner of the Shady View Trailer park. I took a couple of hours to eat, change my bandages, rest up and put on a fresh, dry set of clothes. Thankfully, there was enough ointment smeared over my sutures that between that and the bandages, they hadn’t really gotten wet. Once I’d made myself as presentable as I could be after the day I’d had I made the drive to Abandon.

  Thirty minutes later I was parked in the small lot across the street, watching what was essentially the United Nations for Asheville’s nastier denizens. This was where the vampires came to play their politics or pick up potential thralls, the Unseelie Fae came to indulge whatever appetite so moved them at the moment, and any other number of nasty things did their business. Namely, it was because Abandon was safe. They all considered this place as a sort of neutral ground, and as such, they were free to do their thing as long as they kept it nice and civil, though nice and civil has a whole different meaning when it involves a room full of monsters.

  At first glance, Abandon looked like nothing more than an empty, derelict warehouse set in the middle of a bunch of other empty, derelict warehouses. That was, however, exactly what they wanted you to think. I’d looked in the joint before, a long time ago, without the mental walls in place that I use to block out the spirit world. What was underneath the illusion of the abandoned warehouse was, in truth, an opulent house. This place was about ten miles past expensive. It was three stories tall, the front surrounded by massive marble pillars wrapped in ivy. Statuary of various mythological figures lined the sidewalk under the guise of trashcans and streetlights. It was the infamous Faerie illusion magic of glamour at its finest and running at full power.

  Once the rain slowed down enough that I wouldn’t be forced to swim to make it across the street, I got out of my truck and made a shambling run for the entrance. Abandon didn’t need bouncers. There was an enchantment on the place. If the owner, who was an absolute nightmare in his own right, didn’t want you here, you didn’t come in. It was as simple as that. You walked through the door and found yourself in the building next door, or down the street, or across town, or God knew where. I wasn’t exactly sure where I stood with him, so I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and walked through the unmarked steel door that served as the entrance.

  Everything went black and I felt like I’d walked into Saran wrap, like the air itself became tactile and elastic. For a moment, no longer than a breath, I felt weightless.

  No matter how many times I came here, stepping into the club proper always threw me off. I knew full well that I should be standing in the husk of some factory from days gone by and not in what was essentially the world’s strangest aviary. Ferns and flowers of all colors lined marble paths roughly as wide as city streets. Exotic bushes had been grown and shaped into booths. The paths opened onto a large dance floor, in the center of which was a massive ash tree, its branches reaching from wall to wall. The leaves alone were the size of hubcaps. Its upper branches stretched out and created a ceiling overhead, through which the twinkle of stars could be seen. An occasional butterfly drifted by and birds could be heard singing high up in the tree. Music, something medieval-sounding, with just a bit of a modern electronic vibe, seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  People were scattered about, some dressed, more in various states of undress. There were couples at tables, lines of white powder drawn out on massive leaves or flower petals, some with straws, some with syringes. I could pick out the Fae among the crowd. They were beautiful, startlingly perfect creatures of alien grace and sensuality. Security looked more like the massive bruisers that you’d expect to read about living under bridges or in caves. I saw a few other supernatural types scattered amongst the crowd, vampires mostly. They were the easiest to spot given that most of them looked diseased, veins showing through their pale skin, eyes and teeth yellowed. The fact that, regardless of gender, they didn’t have any hair, helped make them a little easier to pick out, too.

  It took me a few minutes to survey the crowd, but I found whom I was searching for at the back corner of the dance floor, leaning against a booth. I picked my way through the throng, which, with a cane, was a lot harder than it looked. Just being in this place lit up every base desire you can imagine, and very attractive women in very little clothing motioned me over and whispered something in my ear as I passed. The three-minute walk felt closer to twenty.

  Penny was Abandon’s resident Doctor Feelgood, selling everything from prescription pain pills to crystal meth, all the way up to drugs that were only identified by a string of numbers and letters. He was average height, a little on the thin side, and tended to dress loudly. Tonight it was lime-green slacks and a blue-and-red Hawaiian shirt. His hair was an obnoxiously bright copper.

  I sauntered over and took a spot next to him.

  “Penny,” I said, waiting to interject until after he had passed off a small baggie of white powder to a customer.

  “Jonah, been a minute since you’ve been up in here. Should I take it that means you’re not here on a social call?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said. “I’m guessing you’re not looking for party favors?”

  “Nope.”

  “Looking to hear the word on the street then, huh?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  Penny nodded
. In a lot of ways being a drug dealer in a club was a lot like being a janitor at the CIA. You were a part of the scenery. People talked openly around you because, as far as they were concerned, you were inconsequential. You were the help. Once you did what was needed of you, you ceased to exist. In turn, this meant you overhead a lot of things that people probably didn’t want overheard. Things that, to the right person, could be valuable. Penny was smart and spun the information game into a pretty lucrative side racket. It would probably get him killed, but hey, beggars and choosers and all that.

  “Alright, lay it on me.”

  “A runestone, or rather, a piece of one. Word on the playground is that it’s popped up local. I need to know who has it.”

  “I might have heard something,” Penny said. “What’s it worth?”

  “A clean slate?”

  Penny nodded, mulling that over for a minute. A few years ago, he wasn’t much more than a corner dealer when a rather nasty street gang, the Voodoo Kings had moved in. They were intent on making a name for themselves and, as such, had started taking out their competition. Big difference between them and the other bands of hoodlums running around the streets. The Kings, instead of using guns, would use some good old fashion black magic and craft a rep for themselves that put them at the top of the food chain. In the process, they cursed Penny. I’d intervened and he’d paid me pretty well as a result. Part of said payment was the promise of a favor.

  “Yeah, alright,” Penny said, finally. “It’s not a lot. May not even have anything to do with what you’re looking for.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “Boss man shut the place down last night for a meeting.”

  “Yeah? With who?”

  “Honestly?”

  “No, lie to me,” I said.

  “I’m pretty sure it was Mama Duvalier.”

  I quirked a brow. Mama Duvalier was something of a mystery around Asheville. A lot of people had heard of her, even folks outside of the supernatural circles, but no one really knew her. She was equal parts myth, folk hero, and local legend. My mentor, Gretchen, had mentioned her a few times before she passed away a few years ago. The vibe I got was that there wasn’t a lot of love lost between the two, but there was a ton of respect. I didn’t know much more about her outside of what the rumor mill churned out, but word was that she and her family had a spot on a mountain this side of Maggie Valley and were involved in some pretty dark shit. I knew the general location, but not the exact address. That being said, I was pretty sure could find it if need be.