Demon Hunting In a Dive Bar

by Lexi George

“Conall is not my boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Is he right?” Beck demanded. “Did you do this?”

  Conall returned her perusal, calm and impassive. “Yes.”

  “Why? How?”

  “I wanted to be of service. I do not wish you to regret your decision to hire me.”

  “What?” Toby’s eyes bulged. “You’ve gone and hired him, too? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m certifiable,” Beck said. She waved her hand at Conall. “Explain.”

  He shrugged. “The djegrali seldom come peaceably. The Dalvahni must be able to set things to rights once the battle is won, or else we are in violation of the Directive Against Conspicuousness.”

  “The what?”

  “The Directive Against Conspicuousness.”

  Conall enunciated each word like she was slow, or something. And maybe she was, because she was having a hard time with this. He was talking about magic. Magic she knew about; she was a demonoid. But it was one more weapon to add to his already overstocked arsenal.

  “You are dissatisfied with the results?” he asked.

  He was doing it again, studying her like she was some kind of science project.

  On any other guy, it would have come across as anxious to please, but not on him. On him, it came across as predatory, the Big Bad Wolf sizing up Little Red Riding Hood for a snack.

  “The results are Jim Dandy, but you should’ve damn well asked first,” she said. “I don’t like being beholden to you.”

  “Now, Becky, that’s plain rude,” Toby said. “I don’t appreciate you hiring him without my say-so, but the guy did us a favor. I mean, jeez, look at this place.”

  “Favor schmavor. You don’t know him. He’s not the type to do something for nothing.”

  Conall raised his brows. “You had no such complaint last night.”

  Beck’s cheeks grew hot. How dare he bring up last night in front of other people? She glanced at Toby and the ghost. Junior was studying the edges of his perfectly starched cuffs, and Toby was staring off into space pretending like he hadn’t heard.

  She knew better. Junior was being polite, and Toby’s hearing was just fine.

  Conall moved to her side. “I have embarrassed you. Forgive me,” he said in a low voice. “You were upset last night and I wanted to give you ease.”

  Oh, he’d given her ease, all right. They probably heard her “ease” clean over in Baldwin County.

  “So, what did Charlie Skinner want?” Toby asked. “I saw you talking to him out back.”

  Beck tried to collect herself. “He heard about the fight last night and wanted to square things.”

  Toby snorted. “Bet he didn’t offer to pay Earl’s tab.”

  “No. He wanted to leave Earl at the bar to work it off.”

  Toby hooted in disbelief. “Earl, work? He ain’t never hit a lick at a snake in his life. Don’t even help his daddy with the family b’ness.”

  “Which is?” Conall asked.

  “Moonshine,” Toby said. “And b’ness must be pretty good. You get a load of them boots Charlie had on, Becky?”

  “Couldn’t miss them. They were butt ugly.”

  “Ugly, hell,” Toby said. “Them boots were Paul Bonds. Custom made. Pair like that’ll run you fifteen hundred, easy.”

  Beck gave a low whistle. “That’s a lot of moonshine.”

  Toby chuckled. “Sho’ is.”

  “Earl said he had a new hunting dog,” she said, thinking. “A Brittany spaniel.”

  “Pure bred?” Toby asked.

  “I got that impression.”

  “Well, well, well.” Toby’s nose twitched like he was on the scent. “Looks like the Skinners are living high on the hawg.”

  Beck pulled the envelope out of her pocket. “Charlie delivered this invitation. Seems the kith are gathering at the Peterson hunting cabin this afternoon.” She looked at Junior. “Charlie said he and Trey are tight.”

  “Charlie Skinner and my son don’t run in the same circles.”

  “And since when do the kith gather?” Toby asked.

  “I was wondering the same thing.” Beck smoothed the wrinkled invitation against her palm. “I’m going to the meeting to find out.”

  “I should not be surprised if your brother is at this gathering,” Conall said. “It cannot be a coincidence that this meeting and his arrival coincide.”

  Toby’s bright gaze darted from Conall to Beck. “Brother? What brother?”

  Oh, boy. This was going to be hard to explain.

  “A guy came up to me as Conall and I were leaving the wedding,” Beck said. “His name is Evan. He’s my twin.”

  “Baby girl, you know that ain’t possible.” Toby’s tone was gentle. “This feller, whoever he is, is pulling your leg.”

  “I don’t think so,” Beck said. “When I was a little girl, I had an imaginary friend named Evan. Only, turns out, he’s real.”

  “You had an imaginary friend?” Toby’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “You never told me this.”

  “Evan said grown-ups wouldn’t understand.” Beck looked away. “Daddy already thought I was a freak. I was afraid he’d send me away if he found out.”

  Send her away from Toby; she couldn’t have borne that.

  Toby gave a low whistle of surprise. “My God, Becky, you’re serious. You really think this guy’s telling the truth.”

  “I know he is.”

  “Son of a gun. Does your daddy know?”

  “No, and we’re keeping it that way.” She pressed her lips together. “I want to find out more about Evan and what he’s been up to all these years.”

  And, more importantly, why he smells like demons.

  “I’m going with you to this meeting,” Toby said. “I want to take a gander at this Evan fellow.”

  Junior heaved a plaintive sigh. “I’d go, too, but Trey can’t see me. He doesn’t want to.”

  Poor Junior. Sometimes, family sucked.

  “I’m sure that’s not the case,” Beck said. “Lots of people can’t see ghosts.”

  Junior’s face tightened. “He can see that bitchy dead wife of his just fine. He blocks me because it reminds him of—”

  He stopped.

  “Reminds him of what?” Beck prodded.

  “My death, all right?” Junior snapped. “Trey saw me die when he was ten years old.”

  Beck’s eyes widened. “The accident out at the mill back in the eighties—that was you. There was an article about it in the paper. They named the annual turkey shoot after you. It was a big deal.”

  Junior’s eyes blazed. “I loathe hunting, and my death was no accident. My father threw me into a saw to teach Trey a lesson.” Energy whirled around the ghost, lifting Beck’s hair and making her skin prickle. “He said he didn’t want Trey to grow up to be like me. He said I was weak because I love music and play the piano.” His eyes glowed hotter. “That son of a bitch murdered me in front of my own son. That’s why Trey can’t see me. It hurts too much to remember.”

  Crack. Junior disappeared, shattering the MILLER LITE sign on the wall in his wake.

  “Whew, somebody’s touchy,” Toby said.

  Conall repaired the broken sign with a negligent lift of his hand. “I will accompany you to this gathering in the event things should go amuck.”

  Amuck. Not a word people used much anymore, Beck reflected. A mucking shame, too, because it was so apt. Things frequently went amuck when the kith were involved.

  “Bad idea,” she said. “You stay here and keep an eye on things while we’re gone.”

  Conall frowned and Beck could have sworn the lights in the room dimmed. “No.”

  She propped one hand on her hip. “You said you trusted me. Time to put your money where your mouth is, Mr. Dalvahni.”

  “This has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with duty,” Conall said, his deep voice stiff with disapproval. “One of the kith may have information abo
ut this secret weapon the djegrali have discovered. If so, it is imperative I be at this meeting.”

  “You’re not from around here and you’re not kith. You’ll stick out like a turd in a bucket of buttermilk.”

  “I concede the rationality of your argument that my presence at this gathering might draw attention—”

  “Duh, you think?” Beck said. He was big and beautiful and he radiated power and menace. Showing up with Elvis in drag might create a bigger stir, but she doubted it.

  “—therefore I will make myself invisible.”

  “No,” Beck said. “The place will be crawling with kith. Just because I can’t see you when you’re wearing your invisible Underoos doesn’t mean no one else can. The kith have different abilities. Right, Toby?”

  “Yup,” Toby said.

  “Toby and I will go to the meeting,” Beck said. “Alone. We’ll be your eyes and ears.”

  “Rebekah, I do not think—”

  “I want your promise.”

  Conall fell silent. “Very well,” he said at last. His mouth thinned. “We will do it your way this once. But not unless I get a promise of my own.” He slipped a silver ring off his hand and slid it on her left index finger. It was way too big, but the band magically shrank until it fit. “At the first sign of danger, speak to the ring. Do not hesitate. This you must promise me.”

  Speak to the ring? What was she, Gollum? She’d feel like an idiot.

  “Sure. Whatever you say.”

  He stepped closer, his eyes hard as agate. “I gave you my word, Rebekah. Now I want yours.”

  “Okay, okay, keep your panties on. I promise I’ll speak to the fricking ring if there’s a problem. There, satisfied?”

  “No. I am not accustomed to sitting idly by whilst others ride into battle. But I am inured to this course, for the moment.”

  “Relax. Nothing’s going to happen. It’s beer and barbecue. Says so on the invitation. People will get drunk and run around naked and throw up, and somebody will get their truck stuck in a ditch. I’ve seen it a million times.”

  “Proceed with caution,” Conall said. “ ’Tis an age-old trick to lull one’s enemies into complacence by plying them with food and drink.” He made a slashing motion in the air. “Once they are sleepy and replete, you move in for the kill.”

  Hoo boy—Mr. Look on the Bright Side of Life.

  “Thanks, I’ll remember that,” she said, shoving the invitation back in her pocket. “Don’t overeat and don’t get wasted. Piece of cake.”

  Later that afternoon, freshly showered, her hair washed and dried and a smattering of makeup applied, Beck stood in her walk-in closet trying to decide what to wear. After some deliberation, she opted for comfort, pulling on jeans, a moss-green cable-knit sweater, her favorite brown boots, and a leather jacket. No sense getting gussied up to go tromping around in the woods.

  “Nice,” Toby said, getting to his feet when she emerged from the bedroom. “We’ll take my truck. Wouldn’t want that fancy ride of yours to get scratched, and you can’t hurt old ’Retta.”

  Beck smiled to herself. Loretta was Toby’s name for the ancient Ford he kept as a second vehicle. Loretta was kind of like Toby, a little worse for wear on the outside, but the innards worked just fine.

  They climbed in the truck and took off, following the directions in the invitation. The Peterson hunting cabin was located on a chunk of privately owned land in the northwest corner of Behr County. Privately owned by the Petersons, of course—more than ten thousand acres of thick woods stocked with game for the Petersons’ pleasure.

  The closest bit of civilization was Musso, a one-traffic-light hole in the road with a gas station. But Musso was three roads and ten miles back, leaving them drowning in trees. Beck was at home in the woods. But these woods made her nervous. She couldn’t shake a feeling of unease. The trees seemed to press in around them, like silent, green giants. These were not friendly woods. These were scary woods straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales or Middle Earth, full of dark, hungry things.

  Death crouched in those trees. Beck felt it waiting.

  Get a grip, she scolded herself. This is Conall’s fault. All his talk of enemies lying in wait has made you jumpy. Don’t let him spook you.

  She gripped the seat with both hands to keep from bouncing onto the floorboard as Toby aimed his battered pickup down yet another dirt road. Hog trails disappeared from the road into the thick brush.

  “Good thing that invitation included a map, or we never would’ve found the place,” Toby said, taking a right at a fork in the road.

  “No kidding,” Beck said. “And I thought we lived in the boonies.”

  “We must be getting close.” He eased the old truck through a line of vehicles parked along both sides of the road. “Look at all the cars.”

  They rounded a curve and came into a huge clearing.

  Toby slammed on the brakes. “Cheezy Pete, that ain’t no hunting cabin. It’s a freaking hotel.”

  A sprawling two-story lodge built out of logs hunkered on a stone foundation. Smoke curled out of a towering chimney at one end of the building. The dirt road gave way to a white gravel drive that curved past the house and beyond to a multicar garage.

  A bonfire blazed in a stone pit in front of the palatial home, and wood smoke and the scent of roasting meat wafted from an industrial-size grill on wheels. Plank tables loaded with food banked the wide porch steps, and burly servants with trays wandered among the guests offering festive drinks in plastic cocktail glasses.

  Hundreds of people milled around the lawn, a lush oasis of winter rye grass in the middle of the vast hunting preserve. Beck recognized some of the faces from the bar or from around town, but there were quite a few folks she didn’t know. Everybody was laughing and drinking and talking. It was a par-tay, and the kith were out in force.

  The crowd hummed with restless expectancy, like a large animal stretching its muscles in anticipation. But in anticipation of what? The atmosphere was reminiscent of the primal tug of the shifter moon the night before, and yet different.

  Darker and more dangerous.

  Beck was gripped by a sudden, unreasoning urge to turn and run, and keep on running.

  She glanced over at Toby. His expression was tense and alert, his long nose aquiver. He sensed it, too, the Big Ugly lying in wait.

  He gripped the steering wheel. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Me, too.” She swallowed the nervous lump in her throat. “I don’t think this is our kind of party after all. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Roger that.”

  Toby slung the truck into reverse, backed up a few feet, and stopped.

  “Shit,” he said. “Road’s gone.”

  “What?” Beck wheeled around to take a look.

  Behind the Ford, rye grass undulated in the breeze; beyond that, nothing but thick woods. The road was gone, swallowed up by the trees.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A no-neck goon yanked the passenger door open and pulled Beck out of the truck. The smell of cheap cologne climbed up her nose and coated the back of her throat, making her sneeze. Jeez, somebody needed to ease up on the aftershave.

  Squatty and heavy with muscle, the goon had closely cropped muddy brown hair and small, unblinking dark eyes. His conservative dress—crisply starched khakis and a pink shirt embossed with an oversized pony on the front—was at odds with his brutish appearance. The result was jarring and just plain wrong, like a rhino in a tutu.

  “Hey, what’s the big idea?” Beck said, trying to wrest her arm from his iron grip. “Let go of me.”

  It was a waste of time. The guy had hands like meat hooks.

  “Boss say bring you,” the tank said, tugging her toward the house.

  His speech was guttural and thick, like talking was a newly acquired skill. Sharp as a spoon, this one, Beck thought.

  And loaded with personality; Tommy was more animated than this guy, and Tommy was dead.

  �
��Toby,” Beck yelled over her shoulder.

  “Right behind you, baby girl.”

  Toby came around the other side of the truck accompanied by a baldheaded slab of beef in khakis and a royal blue shirt with cheery lemon yellow embroidery. The two thugs marched Beck and Toby up to the house and onto the spacious front porch.

  “Stay here,” Meat Hooks and Baldy growled in unison.

  Lurching back down the steps, they took side-by-side positions and froze in place like a couple of grotesque Polo-clad refugees from the Island of Naboombu.

  “What the hell?” Toby said. “Something wrong with them two. They smell funny.”

  “No kidding. I think the one in pink took a bath in Axe.”

  Toby grunted. “Trying to cover up something with all that stinkum.”

  Beck’s stomach did a queasy flip-flop. “Demons?”

  “Don’t think so. Demons smell rotten.” Toby rubbed the end of his long nose. “These guys smell more like dirt. Like when you’re digging in the leaves after a vole and you get to the mulch underneath where the worms and blind things live. Know what I mean?”

  No, she didn’t. But, then, she’d never been a dog. “What are they?”

  “Dunno,” Toby said. “Not human. More’n that—couldn’t say.”

  Charlie Skinner staggered around the side of the house, an open Mason jar in one hand. He stomped up the steps in the red and yellow boots.

  “Lookee here what the cat done drug up,” he twanged. “If it ain’t Miss High and Mighty and her fav-o-rite hound. Figured you’s too good for the rest of us.” He took a swig from the jar and gave Beck a knowing leer. “Wuzza matter, you smell money and come a-running?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Beck said.

  “Big changes in the wind. You throw in with the right folks, and you could make a pile.”

  Charlie was a pile. The kind treated with Preparation H.

  “Which folks?” She kept her tone pleasant. “You mean the Petersons?”

  “Hell no. Trey Peterson ain’t no big thang, not compared to them.”

  “Them?”

  Charlie waved his arm, sloshing the contents of the jar. “The big kahunas, the guys in charge. If you’s smart, you’ll go along with the plan.”