And that’s when their hands touched. Liam felt the sensation of Patrick’s hand close to his, a warmth of skin on skin that sent another little thrill through his whole body.
A static charge snapped between them and caused both Liam and Patrick to flinch, and Liam glanced down at his hand. The plastic Band-Aid that Patrick had between his fingers was stuck to the back of Liam’s hand.
Then Liam staggered.
She was there. Apocalypse Annie seemed like a fitting name. The same woman he’d seen the first night when he received the stone came into view. She dressed the same, same dusty jacket. He thought of her as Apocalypse Annie because of what she looked like, an extra in a Mad Max movie, even as his world swayed. Time moved a little different.
And Patrick stumbled too and fell to the floor first. Liam’s vision swam, overcome with dizziness. And he was someplace else…
The world was on fire.
Everything aflame, even the trees as far as Liam could see. The blackened and burning bones of a structure were not far off, and the people—his people—were on the run.
But he marched forward, against the tide of his people under attack.
He stood at the head of a column of soldiers. Behind him were nine generals. They were his generals, he their leader. The battle they were marching to lay up ahead, and it burned the sky an angry red. Black clouds of smoke billowed up from the town they’d come to call home, that they had built over the ages since their escape from their shackles. And now, their slavemasters had come to take them home.
Even at this distance, he could see them, the dark armies of the Sidhe, their twisted faces, sharp teeth, and black eyes.
The Unseelie Sidhe. At the head of that pale, undulating mass, their king and queen.
The battle raged. There was a flash.
Then darkness.
Eight
Marisone County, Colorado
The squelch of a radio speaker near scared Pete out of his britches. He snapped awake and scanned the stretch of road from side to side over the hood of his police cruiser and wiped his face with a sweaty palm that still stunk a little of salami sandwich. The windows were open, and a warmish breeze meandered in from outside and through the car, carrying with it the scent of pine needles and turned earth and a hint of cow manure from nearby farmers fertilizing their fields.
“Car 117, dispatch. Pete, you there?” Krista’s voice over his radio.
He’d set himself up behind a tall road sign out on route 67 where he laid a speed trap of sorts. There wasn’t much speed to trap out in this part of the county, however, which is why he chose it. Sometimes there’d be a kid to siren down, maybe a soccer mom from the new development that seemed to attract even more people and unknown faces to their little quiet mountain-locked county. But mostly, it was just nice and quiet.
“Pete. Helloooo?”
Until now.
Maybe he could ignore the radio and she’d call Buster. With a napkin left over from lunch, he dabbed at his forehead. He scanned the field in front of him. Springtime in the mountains, and already they were seeing warmer temps than usual.
Most of these were still the same old country roads he remembered from his childhood. Long stretches with open fields and farm land that butted up to the foothills and tall mountains far off in the distance. And it was all about the same pace as it was back when he was a kid: Seventeen cars had driven by in the last three hours. At least those were the ones he counted before he drifted off to dreamland. And hell, he wasn’t even paying that much attention before either.
“Pete! I know you’re out there.”
Dammit! He fumbled for the hand microphone of the radio.
“Yeah, Krista, I’m here.” Pete sighed and looked at his watch. “But need I remind you that I’m off work in an hour. I got my kid’s game tonight.”
“C’mon, Pete. I got something that needs checking into. Please? For me? It’ll be quick!” Her voice lilted in that tone that always got him. She was cute, blond, and new to the station, and it made him feel just a little this side of guilty that it wasn’t long ago she was somebody he’d seen bouncing around at high school football games as a cheerleader when he was assigned to work security. She was the type that smiled up with big, blue eyes and bit her bottom lip in a way that even the dead might sit up and take notice. Her habit was to come to work in an open blouse that showed all that sweet, just-graduated cleavage he liked to stare at while he sat at his desk pretending to fill out paperwork or research some case, which in Marisone was often little more than a missing bike or the occasional marijuana-smoking offense. Staring at her made him feel younger, back at his football-playing weight. He told the sheriff she was good for the station. She kept the blood flowing.
But right now, his blood flowed toward the end of his shift. “Where’s Buster?”
“He’s dealing with crazy old Judith again.” Crazy old Judith was something of a joke around the station. She always talked about seeing ghosts and people working black magic. She called the sheriff’s office like they were supposed to do something about the phantoms in her head.
“That’s the fourth time this month, ain’t it?”
“Sure is.”
“She must done gone full off her rocker.”
“Sounds like it to me.”
Pete held the microphone away a bit and put his hand on the steering wheel. He looked out over the tall grass and the sudden rise of cliff face a ways beyond. He let out a long sigh. “Fine. What you got for me?” It was probably just the usual. With any luck, it’d be something small enough he could shrug it off and go on home.
“Thank you, Pete. You’re the best.” Krista had a way of smiling even over the speakers, and it made Pete think dirty things. I’d be happy to show you what I’m the best at, little chickie. Krista smacked gum into the speaker.
“This ain’t our usual,” Krista said. “The call said there was blood.”
“Blood?” Shit.
“We got a call a bit ago about some blood on the door of some little guard house on the driveway where all those rich people live. You know the place.”
There was only one road he could think of to fit that description. “Aelhollow Lane?”
“That’s the one.”
“Blood, huh?”
“It’s probably nothing, Pete. Just go on out there and give it a look-see. Probably somebody went hunting and cleaned a deer too close to a gatehouse or something.”
“You never been hunting, I reckon,” Pete said over the speaker. Said for the fact that it wasn’t even deer season.
“Do I look like a hunting and fishing kind of girl to you?” She laughed. And no she did not. She was the kind of girl that guys like him could only hope would want to chat a bit while sipping suds down at the Elks Lodge.
“I’ll radio when I get there,” Pete said, and he started up his cruiser.
The trip over was fifteen minutes, back through some of the windiest roads in Marisone County. Pete rarely drove out this way. It was just one long road that twisted through dense forest that kissed on up the side of the mountain. Marisone County, Colorado was about two hours west of Fort Collins. It had always been a secret getaway for a few folks in from Fort Collins or even Denver. A sparkling mountain lake stood in the center as their one tourist draw, big enough to boat on and fish. People would come in and spend the summer. But even at its busiest time, not many made it out this far in the corner of the county unless they had some other business to attend to.
Aelhollow Lane. It was a place owned by a man named Randall Corbett. People in Marisone barely saw any of them except for the rare moments when someone who worked for them drove into town. Rarer still to see any of the actual Corbett family. As far as Pete could recollect, he’d only met the oldest son, Eoin, only once.
They had big walls around their property. Nobody knew exactly how much property they owned. It wasn’t contained just to Marisone County but stretched over the mountain and down the other side. Occasiona
lly, the Marisone County Department of Planning got a request from some outside developer wanting to take up some of that unaltered land to build hotels and a ski resort or some expensive housing developments. Those sloping hills in that section of the valley would make for some pretty nice skiing. But those developers were shut down quick, and they rarely heard from again.
Only once that Pete could recall did someone actually sitting on the Marisone city council raise a stink about the Corbett land. The Corbetts had a sweetheart deal that kept them from paying too many taxes. In an effort to raise more revenue for the county, one of the council members raised the issue of using imminent domain to take a chunk of that virgin property in the form of back taxes, and he even managed to gather some support from other council members. But his tune changed in the course of a night, and he resigned, citing heart problems. The Corbetts kept the land to themselves.
The Corbett place was a constant source of rumor. Some said they had their own little town up there. Others said it was a secret military base. Anyone who’d ever had more of a story to tell was always somebody who knew somebody who saw the place once. Like a guy Pete went to high school with said his uncle had to install HVAC services for the Corbetts, said he was able to get up close and personal with the huge manor house up there. It looked like one of those houses out of Europe, he said. Almost a castle with tall spires and expansive wings like the homes of kings and queens. But nobody ever knew for sure because none of them had ever really been past those front gates. He’d never even heard of anybody from the town flying over that place.
Crazy-ass rich people. But they were here before the city was even formed. They had rights to the land, he guessed.
When he reached the driveway, he had a short moment to realize that he’d never actually turned his police cruiser onto this road in the county before. Nothing marked the driveway as anything special, just a lone sign that read Aelhollow Lane. It was wide enough to accommodate a large vehicle. Delivery trucks sometimes made their way up here.
Until now, there wasn’t ever any reason for him to come up this way. He’d been everywhere in this county except for where he drove his cruiser now. Sixteen years of working for the sheriff’s office of Marisone County, and he was about to experience something he never had before. He wasn’t sure why that was such a big deal to him in that moment, but it was.
The drive was tree-lined. A wall of trees on either side of his car that seemed to loom and overhang like they might at any moment pluck the car from the asphalt roadway and swallow it whole. Maybe this was why he never thought to drive up here. It dug deep into his creep factor. He’d never seen forest land so thick as it was here, and he’d lived in Marisone all his life. Finally, he reached the entrance to whatever lay beyond, and immediately he could tell something was wrong.
Stone pillars stood on either side of the driveway, the thick walls in both directions reaching behind the guard house next to the drive. Pete pulled his car to a stop, and he leaned forward in the driver’s seat to get a better look.
The heavy gate that was supposed to stretch across the driveway was a twisted, tangled mess of bent wrought iron.
He got out of his cruiser with the sun hanging low in the sky, and only a thin stretch of daylight through the trees overhead. If this was any indication, his kid’s ball game was quickly becoming an impossibility.
The old-stone guard structure was a small bungalow-style house in its own right. The front of the guard house had a large window that Pete thought, as he approached the house, was clean glass until the twinkle of shards littering the grassy lawn caught his eye. The only visible entrance to the place faced toward the driveway so that a guard from inside could step out to inspect whoever approached the gate. The doorway gaped half open with the evening light struggling to fill up the space beyond. And there, on the concrete step, was a dark, red smear of something that Pete sure hoped was spilled paint, even as he knew the truth in his gut.
Hand trembling slightly, Pete reached up and thumbed the speaker attached to his shoulder. “Unit 117 reporting in. I’m here at Aelhollow Lane.” He peered toward the blood stains. “We definitely got problems out here. I’m going to check it out.”
“Roger, Pete. Be careful, hon,” Krista came back. “Holler if you need anything.”
Pete didn’t respond. He was too busy walking closer to the blood stain, his hand resting on the butt of his gun. Maybe Krista was right. Maybe it was some messy hunter back from cleaning a kill out in the woods, and this was all one big, silly misunderstanding.
And the broken window? What silly misunderstanding could explain that? Pete gulped.
“Hello?” Pete called. “Marisone County sheriff’s department.” The gaping, dark holes gave little indication of what lay inside. Both to Pete’s relief and fear, there was no movement either. And no sound.
Pete stepped carefully toward the guard house. He pulled the mag flashlight from his belt and turned it on, holding it with the shaft of the flashlight over his shoulder. This wasn’t the kind of town where guns were drawn during well-being checks. That’s what this was, right? A well-being check? Blood on a door sure hinted at something—or someone—with a serious lack of well-being.
He got to the door and reached out to slide it open the rest of the way. The light from his flashlight fell on the floor of the guard house. A tall stool lay on its side next to a long counter that spanned the front of the guard house below the shattered sheet-glass window. Splintered holes marked up the cabinets in a staccato pattern that could only be from one thing—gun shots.
The floor glistened in a bright-red pool. The smell confirmed it, a coppery odor that his years of hunting told him exactly what he was looking at. Definitely blood.
But there was no apparent source of the blood. The guard house was large enough on the inside that he’d have to go in. Now, he did pull out his gun.
Into his shoulder mic, “Uh, Krista? Yeah, we definitely got blood out here.” He studied the pool. “And whoever’s missing that much blood probably didn’t survive.”
“You sure, Pete?” Krista said back.
“What do you think?” he shot back a little sharper than he meant to. His fear talking. “Of course, I’m sure.”
“Well alrighty then. You got a body?”
Pete shined the light around the interior of the guard house. “No. There’s no visible body.”
“Invisible then?”
“No, smartie pants! Send someone else out here. We need to look into this.” There was a phone and a red button to open the electric gate. “And I’ll try to call the house up there and see if anybody answers.” But, as he reached for the phone and put it to his ear, he didn’t think that was going to happen. There was no ring tone.
“I’ll send somebody,” Krista said. He let her voice fall into the background as he looked further around the security office. On the wall, he found a light switch, and he turned it on. It lit up the office with overhead fluorescent lighting. A typical office setup, filing cabinets and computer screens. It definitely looked like more of a law-enforcement operation than a simple guard house should have. It was almost the same size and setup as their sheriff’s office back in town. Two desks stood facing the front guard stand. He could see the extent of the blood in the room. It ran up against and curled around one of the legs of the desk closest to the sliding door. There was spatter on the walls. When he looked up, he saw spots of blood on the ceiling. A desk chair was turned on its side, and the other was pushed far away from its desk like somebody shoved it there and left it. A flat-screen computer monitor lay face down. On one wall were more pock marks left by bullets. Behind a desk, he found a handgun that couldn’t have been the only source for all the bullet holes he saw. And that was confirmed when he saw the gun cabinet that stood open with space enough for six rifles, all of them gone.
Pete attempted to skirt the puddles of blood, though he failed. It was impossible due to how much was there. He went deeper into the guard house to
see if he could find a body, dead or alive.
He found one of those missing rifles on the floor, an M4A1, the type used by the military. This was clearly more than a simple security house.
Peering closer, Pete jumped back. Underneath the gun was the hand that once held it, the finger still curled around the trigger. “Where’s the rest of him…?” he asked no one.
Severed at the wrist. Or maybe torn. Pete fought the urge to throw up. He struggled to stop the sandwich he’d had earlier, now gurgling around in his stomach, from spilling out all over what had certainly just become a huge crime scene. Probably the biggest crime scene in the history of the Marisone County Sheriff’s Office.
What was it? Defense? Aggression? To him, it looked like the people inside this guard house were all firing in one direction, the direction of the front window. There were no return shots on the back wall.
But who did they defend themselves against?
The walkie on his belt squelched, and it caused him to jump.
“Krista, how’s that backup looking?” he said into the microphone.
“Hold your britches,” Krista said back over the walkie. “I’m working on it.”
“No. Hurry. We got problems out here. Big problems.” His words tumbled out of his mouth.
Krista started asking questions, but a scream from outside turned him around with his gun aimed. Trembling in his hand, but aimed all the same.
The screech came again from outside. Maybe a fox? Foxes scream like a dying woman. If it was a fox, it was a really big fox.
Pete made his way out of the guard house again, and he gawked up into the dark forest that lined the driveway. He aimed his gun on hands that refused to stay steady. It was getting too dark to see much of anything except for what wasn’t covered by overhead branches. Clouds rolled overhead in a sky that turned as if stirred by the hand of God. They centered over a place further up the driveway so much that Pete was sure he was witnessing the forming of a tornado, except there were no other signs of a storm anywhere else except above that one spot, a spot that circled and seemed to grow outward in all directions.
The Stone (Lockstone Book 1) Page 11
