by Deanna Chase
Elise wasn’t sure if she admired the kid or hated her.
Rylie set her coffee down. “Cain worked with other people. He had allies, maybe even…some kind of secret cult? He had followers in the Union.” She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “There were even traitors among people I considered friends.”
“And they’ve survived?” Sir Lumpy rolled onto his side, sprawling over Elise’s thighs.
“Maybe. The friend of mine, the witch that had worked for Cain—he’s dead. But the people in the Union? Maybe. Who knows who else might still be in the Apple?”
The Apple. A chill washed over Elise, making the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and the injury on her bicep ache. “What did you say the cult was called?”
“The Apple,” Rylie said again.
Elise shut her eyes. But there was no shutting out the memories.
She was instantly in the garden again, staring up at the Tree. Its trunk was wide enough to contain an entire city inside its core. Hidden underneath the roots was a lake of sap, the blood of the Tree. And dangling from the desiccated branches hung glossy red apples.
The apples, and the Tree, were both gone now. They couldn’t hurt Elise anymore.
Or so she believed.
Was this why James had lured Elise to the werewolves of Northgate? Were there ends left yet untied?
“Elise?”
She opened her eyes. Rylie was leaning toward her, worry painted on her features.
“Cain led this cult?” Elise asked, trying to keep her tone level. Her black fingernails dug into her kneecaps. Sir Lumpy nudged her wrist with his slimy nose.
“Yeah, I think so. For a while. But I think it must have existed before he did, too, because Scott—the witch—had been in it for a long time, longer than Cain would have been alive, and…” Rylie trailed off. Her brow furrowed. “What could the cult have to do with the garden?”
Elise’s breath hitched. “Did you see that? My memories?”
“No, I only know what I saw when I bit you,” Rylie said. “That garden. The apples.” She gave a shaky laugh. “It’s all a coincidence, right?”
Elise didn’t believe in coincidences. Not anymore.
She shooed the cat off of her lap so that she could stand, and he washed his paw vigorously as if he had to get the stink of demon off of his fur. It was raining harder outside.
“There’s no reason to think that Cain or the Apple would have anything to do with these murders,” Elise said. “All we know right now is that someone is trying to blame a series of murders on werewolves. It may not even be a personal attack on your pack.”
“Do you really think that?” Rylie asked.
Elise’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “I need to see the files that Seth and Abel stole.”
Rylie nodded at the kitchen counter. “They’re over there. Top drawer, right of the stove.”
Elise found the manila folder in with the whisks and cookie cutters. It was as thick as a text book, with more folders inside; each one was labeled with the name of another victim. She flipped through them quickly. Everything was either hand-written or done on typewriter.
“How did you get this from the guys?” she asked, spreading the folders across the counter. Sir Lumpy jumped up, settling on top of a stack of pages and folding his paws underneath him. His body was shaped like a loaf of bread. A moldy loaf of bread.
“I asked Seth for the files, and he gave them to me,” Rylie said.
Elise shot a look at her. The girl shrugged.
“They knew I wouldn’t want them to break into the sheriff’s department, so they figured they’d rather ask forgiveness than permission,” Rylie said. Elise’s disbelief must have shown on her face. “They meant well.”
Elise shook her head. If Rylie wasn’t angry about their lies, there was no point in arguing about it. They had bigger problems.
There were eight separate folders within the files: six for the murders, two for the missing persons. These were the originals, too—not photocopies. The Grove County Sheriff’s Department must have been losing their minds over the loss.
Inside, she found photos of the cadavers and crime scenes. There wasn’t enough detail for Elise to tell if those scenes had been falsified as well. She set them aside, then wrested the folder that Sir Lumpy was attempting to incubate from underneath his fat rolls. He glared at her out of one bulging eye.
The missing persons reports didn’t include photos. They had been hand-written in blocky letters with blue ink. Interestingly, Lucinde Ramirez’s report was in different handwriting than most of the other paperwork. The ink was black. The letters were like slashes, nearly illegible.
James’s handwriting was neat and precise, not this messy excuse for cursive. If it was his work, he must have had someone else fill out the report.
Elise skimmed the details.
Lucinde Ramirez. Nine years old. Height and weight were listed. Her features were described as Latina. It didn’t yield any new information.
Frustrated, Elise tossed those aside, and looked at the reports on the murder scenes again, searching for the coroner’s name. It was printed at the top of the page, along with the sheriff’s name, in uneven typewritten letters: Stephanie Armstrong, MD.
She flipped the forms over. The coroner had signed off on the back. Her handwriting was sharp, illegible. Identical to the handwriting on Lucinde Ramirez’s missing persons report.
“Armstrong,” Elise murmured.
Rylie came over to stand in the kitchen, arms hugged around her body. She didn’t move close enough to look at the photographs of the crime scenes, although Elise could tell that Rylie glimpsed them, because her heart rate sped. “What did you say?”
“Armstrong. That’s the coroner’s name. Where have I heard that recently?”
“You mean, like, Father Armstrong?”
That was it. The young priest that worked with Father Night was named Father Armstrong. Was he married to the coroner? No—there was that inconvenient little oath of celibacy interfering with that. They could have been related, though. It was a small town, and a good start.
Elise closed the files again. “I’m going to church.”
“What did I miss? What did you find in those files?”
She hesitated with her hand on the front door, studying Rylie—this quiet, blond twenty year old werewolf in charge of an entire pack, who had seen zombies and had the hatred of the Union directed at her.
Seth and Abel Wilder might try to protect Rylie from whatever was happening, but Elise didn’t think that she needed protecting.
“I’ll fill you in on the way,” Elise said. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rylie produced a set of car keys and led Elise to a covered parking area, which held five vehicles: three trucks, a van, and a steel blue Chevy Chevelle SS.
Rylie went for the muscle car.
“What are you doing?” Abel asked, striding up with a long-legged gait that made him move at the speed of a run, even when he looked like he was strolling. In the haze of stormy daylight, Elise could see exactly how hideous his scars were. Whatever had attacked him had practically chewed off half of his face, leaving ragged gouges in the shape of teeth near the corner of his mouth. Raw pink flesh crawled down his neck and covered his shoulder.
“I’m investigating,” Rylie said.
“With my car?”
“Yes.” She stretched up on her toes to kiss him, one hand cupping his scarred cheek. She didn’t hesitate to touch him for even a split second. “I have my phone if you need me.”
Abel accepted the gesture without kissing her back. He stared hard at Elise—a mistrustful look that she readily returned. When Rylie dropped back on her heels, he snagged the keys out of her hands. “If that thing’s getting in the Chevelle, I’m going, too.”
Shock turned Rylie’s eyes to huge circles. “Abel!”
“It’s fine,” Elise said, meaning both the insult of calling he
r “that thing” and Abel driving. She believed that Rylie had nothing to do with the murders. She was somewhat less convinced about Abel, who had stolen files, lied to Rylie, and shot Elise in the face.
Keep your friends close…
They got in the car: Abel and Rylie in front, Elise in back. There was a knitted blanket covered in wolf fur thrown over the seats. She pulled it into her lap in case the sun felt like emerging on the drive to St. Philomene’s Cathedral.
It didn’t. In fact, even if it hadn’t been raining, Elise doubted that she would have seen sunlight on the road to Northgate. The sanctuary was well and truly buried in the mountains. It took much longer to take the slow, winding dirt road through the trees than it did to walk a straight line through the forest.
Rylie turned in the front seat, hanging her elbows over the back to look at Elise. “These murders—they’re not just doing it because it’s bad PR for werewolves. They’ve been calling the deaths ‘animal attacks’ on the news, so it’s not like the murderers are hurting public opinion. There has to be some other reason they’re killing so many people.”
Elise watched the trees flashing past the window as she considered the question. Occasionally, she glimpsed a hint of white fur, a flash of metal. Seth and the wolves were pacing the Chevelle. Rylie may have denied that Seth and Abel were her bodyguards or boyfriends, but the pack seemed to be as fiercely protective of her as their leader as she was of them.
Rylie’s question was interesting. Could there be another reason that someone was killing so many people—a reason beyond sending messages?
“Could be a typical serial killer trying to blame it on the preternaturals, like a copycat,” Elise said. “Or human sacrifice. Or…”
“Human sacrifice?” Abel asked without turning.
Elise had only thrown the option out there because she was thinking out loud. But once she considered the option, it seemed more intriguing. Seven people dead, killed routinely every two weeks. They could be building energy to feed a demon-god. “Or some kind of spellcraft feeding off of human lives for energy,” she murmured aloud.
“In Northgate?” Rylie asked. “Are you kidding? You won’t find any Satanists here.”
Maybe there were no demon-worshippers, but Lincoln had told Elise that Father Night had initially moved to Northgate to combat a nightmare demon. There had been evil in the town before. Who knew what might have lingered?
Nightmares were among the most common hellborn on Earth, but they originated from the darkest pits of Hell. They evoked fear in humans and fed off of it. The strongest of them could pass for human, but not well; at their most corporeal, they were little more than skeletons concealed under a waxy layer of flesh. The most annoying part was that they were impossible to kill—they could only be exorcised back to Hell, returned to their basest form in the pit.
Father Night was a good priest, but a great exorcist. He wouldn’t have left a nightmare lingering in Northgate.
Right?
It was late afternoon when they reached town. Even in the middle of the week, during the hours people should have been at work, Poppy’s parking lot was filled. Cars overflowed onto the street, parked along the curb, almost all the way to the church. The smell of baking pies wafted through the vents when the car drove past. Elise couldn’t help but think of the deputy trapped between her thighs. It would be a long time before she could see cherry pie innocently again.
Abel passed Poppy’s without stopping, immune to the lure of baked goods, and parked in front of St. Philomene’s. The rain was a constant drizzle now, turning the ground into a muddy slurry. The stack of unattached shutters dripped water like a miniature waterfall. Work hadn’t progressed since Elise’s visit on Sunday.
Elise pulled the blanket over her head and got out of the car.
“What, are you the Wicked Witch?” Abel asked. “Going to melt if you get wet?”
She ignored him. The cloud coverage was good enough that she shouldn’t have needed protection from the sun, but she was still aching from Rylie’s bite, and the diffused light alone was making her skin prickle. Elise didn’t care if she looked stupid, as long as it meant she could focus on the investigation.
Her heart was still pounding by the time she reached the front door of St. Philomene’s. She slammed her shoulder into the door and stumbled inside. She wasn’t sure if her face was drenched by rain or sweat.
As soon as Rylie and Abel shut the door behind them, Elise let the blanket drop to her shoulders, hugging it around her body like a cape.
Unlike Poppy’s, the cathedral was completely empty, its hallowed walls echoing softly with the memory of reverent prayer. Dust hung suspended in beams of gray light shining through stained glass windows. There was nothing between Elise and the altar but rows of empty pews and the shifting, cloudy shadows on the floor.
She dipped her fingers in the holy water as she stepped forward, crossing herself. “Father Night?” Elise called, voice echoing off of the vaulted ceiling. She side-stepped a beam of light. “Father Armstrong?”
Abel and Rylie followed close behind with the stealthy silence of werewolves. The only thing that gave their movement away was the wet squelching of their shoes on the wood floors.
“I don’t think anyone’s here,” Rylie whispered.
Elise stretched out her senses. Aside from the two powerful werewolves behind her, the church felt empty of anything inhuman. Even Father Night should have registered like the ringing of a bell. She could always recognize someone that had been touched by evil during an exorcism.
“You’re right,” she agreed.
But she still edged along the wall of the church, moving for the back door. She hiked the blanket over her head again and stepped onto the lawn behind the church.
Behind St. Philomene’s Cathedral stood two mobile homes. One of them looked like it had been standing as long as the church itself; the other was a more recent addition. Both of them were ugly, despite obvious attempts to make the priests’ housing homier. The path leading to their porches were lined with increasingly soggy flowers; the vegetable beds, already harvested for the season, were a soup of soil and dried leaves. A white cross guarded the place the path split off into two, leading to each door.
Father Night, having replaced Father Davidek, probably lived in the older mobile home, so Elise climbed the steps to the front door of the newer trailer.
She knocked on the door.
“Father Armstrong?” Rylie called, cupping her hands on either side of her face to peer through the window. His lace curtains were pulled back, offering them a clear view into the living room.
“Anything?” Elise asked.
Rylie shook her head. “Looks empty.”
Elise pounded her fist into the door again, louder than before. The door trembled. Nobody responded.
Her skin prickled unpleasantly, and a wave of dizzying heat washed over her, making it hard to breathe. The blanket wasn’t doing the trick. Elise needed to get inside.
Lincoln probably would have told her to wait. Get a warrant. Keep the investigation legal.
Good thing Lincoln wasn’t there.
“Shout if you see someone coming,” Elise said.
She crouched on the top step, shrouding her entire body with the woven blanket. The wool was actually leaving faint red impressions on her skin, as though the fibers were made of razor-edged steel. Her body was more than protesting being out during the day. Her skin had gone as paper-fragile as any nightmare’s.
“What the fuck?” Abel asked as Elise curled into the smallest ball possible, contained within the darkness of the blanket.
She kicked the edge of the cloth so that it covered the last gap, leaving her in as near-perfect shadow as she could manage during the day. Elise had made sure not to close the blanket over the bottom crack of Father Armstrong’s door, and now she focused on it as she began unraveling her skin.
Elise’s lower body misted first, and then her upper half followed. Without a body t
o support it, the blanket collapsed.
She slipped under the door.
For an instant, Elise could see the entirety of Father Armstrong’s home, inhabiting the shadows under his furniture. His bed’s sheets were rumpled. The stink of sweat and semen and lube filled the air. She saw a spider clinging to the drain of the kitchen sink, the loaf of stale bread he had thrown out. She saw faint, muddy footprints on the kitchen linoleum.
When Elise’s mist touched the Bible under the window, energy shocked through her.
She crashed back into her body, falling to her knees on the living room floor. She gasped as her hands flew to her neck. Elise struggled to breathe, like her esophagus was gone again—a bloody wound shredded by werewolf jaws—but her neck felt intact.
Her fingers traced the circle of puncture wounds on her skin.
Still unhealed.
“Elise?” Rylie’s voice came muffled through the wall. “Where’d you go?”
Elise struggled to her feet and jerked the curtains shut, blocking out the light. It took all of her strength to get that close to the glass. She sank to a crouch, pressing her forehead to her knees, and tried to control her breathing.
How the hell was she supposed to hunt a murderer without working during the day?
“Elise?”
She stood. Father Armstrong’s door had three locks on the inside in addition to the one on the handle. That was a lot of security for a man that lived in blissful, devout Northgate.
She flipped the deadbolts and opened the door.
Abel stood on the step, hand in his jacket—undoubtedly on the verge of drawing his gun. He looked shocked to see Elise. Rylie was a few steps behind him.
Letting the light in made Elise ache all over again, heart speeding and skin prickling with sweat. She stepped aside. “Come on in,” she said. “Quickly.”
Abel hesitated. “It’s not right to break into a priest’s house.”
“Now,” Elise hissed.
Rylie shoved Abel inside. They slammed the door.
