by M. D. Massey
Her mouth turned up in a crooked grin as she sauntered over. “So, McCool, I hear you’re a perv? You been holding out on me, or what?”
“Ha ha, very funny. If it wasn’t for your tendency to turn every conversation toward sex and nudity, I wouldn’t have been embarrassed in public.”
“Oh, but I don’t really speak about sex, loverboy—I only allude to it. I leave the direct approach to amateurs and phone sex pros.”
I rolled my eyes, but my cheeks flushed hotly. “Noted. Now, can we go check this place out, or what?”
“You got it, cutie. But just one thing—where’s the building?”
It was my turn to smile. I had to take my victories where I could, after all. “Look hard, and concentrate.” I pointed at the building.
She did so, squinting until surprise registered on her face. “Shit, McCool, that’s some serious concealment magic. You think this is our guy?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Only one way to find out.” I swept my arm in a grandiose gesture and bowed at the waist. “After you.”
She slapped my butt on her way past, and I didn’t even bother protesting the uninvited contact. I wasn’t sure whether it was because she was wearing me down, or because I liked it. Either way I was screwed, and probably would literally be at some point. Maybe it was due, but now wasn’t the time to ponder my sex life—or lack of it. Right now, we had a necromancer to hunt.
I gladly followed behind Bells as she approached the building. The truth was, she was better at tactical stuff than me. Sure, my teacher had two thousand years of knowledge to pass on, but how did you distill all that down to a few years of training? You couldn’t, and that meant the training I’d received was haphazard and anachronistic in many ways. Oh, I could swing a sword, cast a few useful spells, treat minor wounds with herbs and poultices, and identify all manner of supernatural creatures. But modern military and tactical skills were just not part of the program.
Belladonna, on the other hand—now there was someone with a deep and very specialized skill set. The Circle’s hunter-wizard teams were trained much in the same way modern special forces troops were. They were taught to move fast, silently, and to overwhelm their enemies with shock and awe. To put it in gamer terms, I was more like a bard, while she was like a dual-classed ninja paladin. And make no mistake about it: there were few people I’d rather have beside me in a fight.
She stopped for a moment and whistled. “Whoa, that’s one hell of a powerful ‘look away go away’ spell. Almost made me turn around and leave, even though I know what’s there. Colin, I think we’ve found our necromancer.”
I decided to withhold judgment until we had undeniable proof, but it was looking bad for Erskine. Still, I wasn’t going to take out a cop unless I was sure he was both dirty and a threat to public safety. Covering up a dead cop would be difficult, and I suspected I’d need to get Maeve involved to make it work. When cops got killed, their brothers and sisters wouldn’t rest until they found the killer, and rightly so. If he turned out to really be our guy, nothing about this was going to be easy.
Bells shook it off and walked up to the front as if she were there on business, so I followed her lead. The building had surveillance cameras, so I sparked them with a short-circuit spell to ensure we wouldn’t be implicated later if things went sideways. Once we confirmed the place was buttoned up tight, we ducked around the back of the building.
Bells moved forward in a crouch, stopping under a dust-covered window. A quick look inside told us no one was home. I grabbed a rock, wrapped it in a discarded rag, and busted out a pane of glass. Then I reached in and unlatched the window so we could enter.
Inside, the middle of the warehouse was brightly illuminated by sunlight, but the far corners were cloaked in shadow. With the stark difference in lighting, a night vision cantrip wouldn’t do us much good. We crouched just inside the window behind a large wooden crate, taking time to allow our eyes to adjust. It was deathly quiet inside the place, so we stuck to hand signals as we moved through the building, with Bells in the lead holding a tricked out Colt .45 Government model. I tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to a stairway that led to an upstairs office. She nodded and we headed that way.
I decided that when in Rome, you draw your pistol. I pulled the Glock from my bag, press-checking the chamber to make sure I was cocked and locked. That crap you always saw on TV with people racking the slide on their pistol when they pulled it out was pure nonsense. If you were going to carry a gun, you kept a round in the chamber. Didn’t do you much good when you needed it if you didn’t.
We made nary a sound as we stalked to the stairs and crept up to the door at the top. When we reached the office, she motioned for me to stay back. Bells chose to remain concealed behind the wall next to the door as she opened it, so I crouched and followed her lead. As soon as she turned the handle I felt a spell release. I immediately shifted my vision into second sight and witnessed the remains of an incredibly powerful glamour and stasis spell dissipating in a rush of spent magic.
Then, the moans of dozens of undead echoed up from the warehouse floor as they emerged from behind stacks of boxes and rows of crates. They noticed us immediately, and homed in on our position.
We were surrounded and trapped. And we had played right into the necromancer’s hands.
Chapter Thirteen
“It’s a trap!” I yelled, right next to Belladonna’s ear.
“No shit, Ackbar? What gave it away—was it the dozens of undead converging on us, or the fact that we really are trapped?”
She wasted no further time in conversation, and drew another large-bore pistol from within her jacket. A split-second later Bells was taking out ghouls Lara Croft style, with both pistols blazing and missing nary a skull or kneecap.
I waited until she had to reload to begin firing, since I only had a single thirty-round magazine available to me. Unlike Belladonna, I didn’t carry six spare mags on me at any given time. Sure, I had them inside my Craneskin Bag, but it’d take too long to rummage around and find them. I paused between shots to provide my retort, if only to save face.
“I just always wanted to say that in real life.” I fired three more shots, taking out two of the advancing ghouls. Blam! Blam-blam! “But in hindsight, I realize that finding the perfect context kind of takes the fun out of it.”
The slide locked back on my Glock, just as I took a bead on a ghoul advancing up the stairs toward us. “I’m out!” I yelled.
“Then duck, or start cutting—I don’t care which,” she replied.
I ducked. Hot brass rained down on me as Belladonna’s twin pistols ate through the crowd below, as well as those who had made it to the stairs. I tossed the pistol back in my bag and drew my short sword, ready to cover for Bells the next time she needed to reload.
Belladonna might have been a much better shot than me, but few people could best me at swordsmanship. My long, lean frame and near-superhuman agility and speed, combined with years of practice under the watchful eye of Finn, made me deadly with a blade. I was supremely confident in my skills, because I’d tested myself many times. I’d trained with reenactment swordsmen, with practitioners of Western and Eastern martial arts, with machete fencers from the Caribbean and South America, and with stick and knife fighters from the islands of Southeast Asia.
And in every single instance, the simple, brutal Celtic fighting style that Finn had taught me held up. That was the thing about modern martial artists; most of what they practiced was decades or even centuries divorced from the days when practitioners actually had to rely on their skills for their daily survival. That meant many modern fighters had bad habits, derived from practicing for show or points instead of the quick kill.
Only once had a swordsman given me a hard time, and that was a Spanish fencer who’d marked the shit out of my limbs for most of our bout—that is, until I’d taken him out Rob Roy style. But for sheer utility, nothing I’d seen had compared to what I’d learned from Finn, not even t
he stuff they taught hunters at the Circle. So as soon as I heard Bells reaching for her last two magazines, I leapt into the fray.
I caught the first ghoul just as I turned the corner on the stairs, dropping low under a lunging grab and slicing his quadriceps just above the knee. His stench almost made me choke, but I followed through cleanly and pivoted with a backhanded stroke that took the thing’s head clean off. There was no pause in my movements as I stabbed the next in line through the brain, via a thrust to the nasal cavity. I kicked her in the chest and yanked hard as she fell, feeling the suction on my blade release as I unsheathed it from her head.
I lopped another ghoul’s hands off as it reached for me, a tactic that meant little to the ghoul but kept it from pulling itself closer. I danced back and dropped low, severing its lead leg at the ankle. The thing nearly fell on me, but I rolled to my left to avoid it and came up in the middle of three more of the disgusting creatures. I was about to go to town on them when three shots echoed from the stairs. All three ghouls collapsed in a spatter of brains and gore.
I looked around the room; there were no more undead left standing. Bells calmly walked around the space, her face a mask as she dispatched those still groaning and twitching. I helped her in her task by severing a few more heads. Finally, we were greeted by a welcome silence, accompanied by the unwelcome stench of two dozen rotting corpses mingled with the smell of gunpowder and dust.
“You think anyone heard that racket?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. But as strong as that see-me-not spell is, I doubt they’ll be able to pinpoint where it came from.” I pointed to the office above. “C’mon, let’s see if we can find anything useful.”
“You go ahead—I’m going to call a clean-up team to take care of these corpses.” She winked at me. “Gunnarson did say that the Circle’s resources were at our disposal.”
I nodded and returned a smile, then headed into the office. Inside, it looked just like a typical man cave or dad’s den—the kind you’d find in any middle class home. There were neon beer signs on the walls, sporting collectibles and bowling trophies, and an outdated girly calendar. The desk was covered in random crap, mostly old newspapers and copies of Sports Illustrated and Field and Stream. I tossed the desk, finding nothing but a stack of porn, a half-empty bottle of Dewar’s, a stained and cracked coffee mug, a woman’s bra sized 36C, and a box of .40 mm rounds.
A search of the file cabinets turned up more of the same: the detritus of a middle-aged loser’s life. Who am I kidding, this could be me in twenty-five years, I thought. The truth was, I had no idea what a middle-aged man’s life should have looked like, since my dad had died when I was very young. But, something told me it shouldn’t have looked like this.
I checked the place high and low and found nothing that might implicate Erskine as our necromancer. Based on the heap of dead ghouls downstairs, I couldn’t help but conclude that he was our guy. All I needed was a single, damning bit of evidence to convince me he needed to be taken out. I shifted my vision into the magical spectrum and scanned the room.
The residual magic from the spell we’d triggered earlier still shone like a beacon, drowning out anything else I might have spotted. That had been some spell, to keep all those ghouls in stasis and hide them from us so completely. Whoever cast it had some major juju, and I really wasn’t looking forward to tangling with them. Hopefully when I caught up with them I’d be able to let the Circle handle it.
I growled in frustration as my search ended fruitlessly. Then, just as I turned to leave, I glanced up at the ceiling. Something flashed at me, briefly, from the tiles above. I pulled up a folding metal chair and stood on it, pushing a ceiling tile loose with the tip of my sword. A small, leather-bound book fell out, landing on the floor with a smack.
I stepped off the chair and nudged it open with my blade. Magic users often trapped their personal spell books, so it was always prudent to use discretion when first opening an unfamiliar tome. As the cover fell back, it revealed pages of handwritten notes, similar to the runes and markings I’d found at the abandoned house near the cemetery.
I couldn’t help but crack a grin. We’d found our necromancer.
Belladonna and I were both ecstatic, because now we had an actual target to go after. The question was, how were we going to handle it? Taking out a cop was not something either one of us took lightly. As we sat on the front step back at the junkyard, sipping brews, we debated how to deal with Erskine.
I took a swig and squinted at nothing in particular. “We could find a way to let the law handle it, just to get him off the street. Maybe frame him for the ghoul murders, or even plant some evidence that he’s dealing drugs or something.”
She shook her head. “Too risky. For one, he’s probably already onto us, considering that trap he laid at his warehouse. That was meant for us—or at least for you, since you’re the one who has been poking around. I mean, you’ve pretty much been one step behind him since this thing started. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t bolt soon.
“And besides, so far he’s been covering his tracks pretty good from inside the department. You really think we could make something stick? Heck, we don’t even know if there are other dirty cops involved—his partner, for one. For all we know, he might find a way to make it blow up in our faces.”
I peeled the label off my beer as I pondered what she’d said.
“That’s if he actually knows who we are, Bells. As far as I know, ghouls aren’t smart enough to convey what they’ve seen to their makers. So far, the only people who can connect me to the case are the living dead. And only one of them has survived a run-in with me.”
“Speaking of which, what happened to that thing? As long as Erskine’s alive, it’ll keep roaming the city.”
“Good point. Even if we did manage to get Erskine put in jail, that super-ghoul of his will still be out there killing. No, I think you’re right—we need to take him out, for good.”
Belladonna’s eyes crinkled at the corners as she made a duck face at me.
“Oh, I like it when you talk tough. Do it again.”
I looked away, uncomfortable with her flirting. Usually it was no big deal, but lately it had been putting me off my game. To be honest, I’d been distracted by her presence more and more over the last several weeks. I couldn’t deny that I found Belladonna to be attractive… very attractive, in fact.
My mind flashed back to watching her earlier, shooting those ghouls with both guns blazing, her face lit up with glee. In many ways Bells reminded me of Jesse, at least when it came to hunting. Jesse had been the peas to my carrots, the jelly on my peanut butter sandwich. Because of the bond we’d developed through training with Finn and hunting, she understood me like few others could. I missed having that in my life.
While I was still deep in thought, Bells scooted close to me. She whispered in my ear and gave it a tiny nibble.
“Don’t deny it, loverboy. You want me just as badly as I want you.”
A shiver went down my spine at the touch of her teeth on my skin. It was true. I did want her, more than I cared to admit. I felt her hot breath on my cheek and neck as her hand slipped under my shirt, caressing my skin. I turned to her and we kissed, hungrily. Before I knew it she was on her back on the rough concrete of the warehouse porch. I was on top of her, kissing her lips, her neck, and the bare skin of her cleavage.
She wrapped her legs around me, grinding into me, and I responded in kind. Then she pulled my arm across her body, shifting her hips and scissoring her legs in a textbook sweep that took me off my knees and onto my back instead. She effortlessly landed lightly on top of me.
She leaned in and softly kissed me. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Bells, I’m not—I can’t—I don’t know if I’m quite ready for this,” I stuttered, my voice a husky cry for warmth and comfort despite my statement to the contrary. It had been a long time, and damn it I was so lonely.
A single tear ran down my cheek,
hot and wet.
Belladonna wiped it away, ever so softly with her thumb.
“Sshh, I know,” she whispered.
She stood and pulled me up with her, and I followed willingly as she led me to my room. And oh, how badly did I need this.
We were already tearing each other’s clothes off as we stumbled through the door. I practically ripped my shirt off, watching as she pulled off her boots and shimmied out of her pants, inch by inch. Her abs were rock hard, and the ridges they made led my eyes down to her hips and thighs.
Two thoughts crossed my mind as our bodies hit the mattress, tangled up in each other. One, that we weren’t going to get much planning done tonight. And second, I hoped Jesse would forgive me for being human.
Chapter Fourteen
An hour later… okay, fifteen minutes. Did I mention that it’d been a long time? Anyway, a short while later we were lying in bed enjoying the afterglow, not really snuggling—but not heading for opposite sides of the mattress either.
That’s when I popped the question. No, not that question, the other one.
“Bells?”
“Yeah?”
“Mind if I ask you a question?”
“Sure, why not? I think you earned it.”
“Was I—any good? I mean, I only ask because—”
With a sharp intake of breath, she cut me off. “Because besides Jesse, I’m the only girl you’ve slept with? And you think I’m way more experienced, which puts you at a disadvantage?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Stop. Colin, do you want to know how many guys I’ve slept with?”
