Bare Bones

by Debra Dunbar

  A long shot was the only shot we had. “Thanks. Let me know if you can get anything out of it, anything at all.”

  Russell edged his way slowly through the packed crowd, reaching the corner of the stage just as a group of kids started wheeling amps into place and taping cables to the floor. One picked up a guitar, moving it from the side to front and center, placing it on a stand and plugging it in. Russell’s eyes followed, focusing slightly to the right of the guitar.

  The guitar? Or the roadie? Judging from Russell’s reaction, I was guessing the ghost was somewhat attached to either one.

  Just as the band was beginning their warm-up, I spotted Tremelay, working the room as I had been doing. I had to laugh at how incongruous he seemed, a middle-aged man among all these young people. It wasn’t just his age, though. Tremelay walked like a cop. He might as well have had a sign stapled to his forehead that announced he was police. I was rethinking the benefit of his presence here. If the skinwalkers were at all nervous, they’d vanish the moment they saw him.

  Although teens were generally cocky and overconfident. They’d managed to hitchhike their way to Baltimore from South Carolina. They’d killed at least seven people without any repercussions. There was a good chance that at this point they felt invincible.

  So I ignored Tremelay and made my way to the stage, catching Russell’s eye as I approached. The canned music dropped in volume, and sound checks began, the voices echoing loudly in the room in between stretches of silence. The crowd buzzed in the background, kids literally hopping in excitement.

  “I can’t quite make out what the spirit looks like, but he says his name is Travis Dawson,” Russell told me, leaning close to be heard without shouting. “He’s quite agitated that someone else is taking his place leading his band.”

  The shapeshifter. I looked down at the crude band advertisement on my phone and saw that Travis Dawson was indeed the lead guitarist and singer of the band. This might be a local group playing in abandoned buildings, but judging from the packed room they had a significant following. I could see where a spirit would be upset, losing not only his young life, but the band he’d fronted. It was one thing to be dead, another to watch an imposter in your skin take your place before an adoring group of teens.

  The crowd erupted as the band took the stage. Travis looked just like the ad picture. The tall lanky guy with a fuzzy poof of black hair tuned his guitar, intent on adjusting the instrument and the mic. I watched, fascinated at how well the imposter had assumed Travis’ identity. It was like he loved playing this instrument, like playing in this band was the highlight of his life. My resolve wavered with indecision. What if Russell was wrong? Nothing in the ease and confidence of this guy sent up red flags or gave me any indication that he wasn’t exactly who he was supposed to be.

  “Are you sure?” I asked Russell, pointing at the lead singer.

  The necromancer watched intently as Travis draped the guitar strap over his head, settling the instrument on his hip. “Yes. The ghost is very agitated and trying to take the guitar from him. He’s becoming more distinct and I can definitely see the resemblance.”

  Time to trust a ghost and a necromancer over my own eyes and intuition.

  I thanked Russell and watched him make his way through the crowd. I didn’t blame him for wanting to leave before the band started. This was hardly his kind of music, and honestly he stood out. So did Tremelay and I, but one less out of place individual improved our chances of catching the skinwalkers before they got wind of us and vanished.

  The band started playing to the screams of the crowd. A mosh pit formed and I backed away, keeping an eye on Travis as I also tried to look for Tremelay. I doubted the skinwalker was going anywhere until the end of the concert. I couldn’t see him walking out on this unless he felt his life was in danger. And I had no intention of confronting him until I could get him alone, or after the concert when the crowd had left and there were less civilians to get caught in any crossfire. Just because he knew magic didn’t mean the guy didn’t have a gun in his pocket as I did. No sense in getting a bunch of kids shot just because I couldn’t be patient.

  I finally found Tremelay and nodded to him, jerking my head toward the stage and mouthing “Travis.” He nodded back and edged to the other side, so we were flanking the band. I assumed the other skinwalker was here, too, but Russell hadn’t seen any more than the one ghost. If the second skinwalker wasn’t posing as Bradley or Gary, then we wouldn’t recognize him. Which would make it all the more dangerous to confront Travis. His accomplice could be anyone in the band, or even in the crowd. I was even beginning to be paranoid about the pierced woman collecting money at the door.

  I knew the exact moment when Travis spotted the detective. He hit a wrong note, his eyes narrowing as he focused into the crowd, then he plastered a stiff smile on his face and continued to play. After a few sets, the band took a break and the canned music took over. Travis scanned the crowd and I tried to make myself look like I was with the group of teenagers behind me, turning my back on the stage and hoping I was unrecognizable from this angle.

  When I turned around, I couldn’t see Tremelay anywhere. Or Travis. I had a moment of panic trying to remember where I’d last seen the detective, and headed in that direction. The mosh pit had disbanded with the break in the live music, but the crowd was still thick and I wasn’t tall enough to see over a good number of these kids. Tremelay was nowhere to be found at the far corner of the stage, but I did see a door half-hidden by the stack of amps. It looked to be to a rear storeroom, and was partially open. I edged forward cautiously and peered in to see duffle bags and spare equipment.

  There were no exit doors, no windows, and no band members. I made my way into the room and looked at the duffle bags, open with articles of clothing spilling out, and at the coats draped over cheap metal chairs. This was where the band changed and got ready, but where were they? Smoke breaks? Most everyone in the crowd was vaping, catching their nicotine fix in a way that didn’t violate Maryland’s tobacco in public places prohibition. Not that the concert goers probably cared judging from the scent of cannabis and the open exchange of pills going on.

  Rabid Rabbit was an industrial band, gritty and old school. No doubt they were smoking the real thing—joints included—out back behind the garage. Now was the time to dig through Travis Dawson’s stuff and see if there was anything here to indicate which skinwalker had assumed his identity. The first few bags held only clothing and an assortment of porn mags. I was ready to dismiss the last bag as clothing-only until I pulled out a handful of pictures. It was odd to find actual photos when most everyone stored images electronically. There was a worn and tattered picture of a man and woman smiling down at a small boy holding a puppy. Another of what seemed to be the same boy riding a tricycle while the woman cheered on. And another of the boy, the man behind him helping him hold a baseball bat. I went to put them back and saw one more, tucked against the side of the duffle bag. It was a boy and a girl—Brian Huang’s children. Did this mean Lawton King was in Travis Dawson’s skin? Or that he was posing as another member of the band?

  I shoved the pictures back into the bag and turned to go, nearly having a heart attack as I saw someone standing just inside of the door. I hadn’t heard him, and he’d managed to slip in without disrupting the flashing light from the garage bay.

  He closed the door behind him with a firm click. Even in the dim light I recognized Travis Dawson.

  Chapter 28

  WHAT ARE YOU doing in here?”

  I recognized the tenor of those smooth words. He wasn’t sure if I was a crazed groupie looking for souvenirs, or if I was a crazed groupie here to offer myself up as a notch on one of their bedposts. I was just surprised that even with the dim storeroom lighting he hadn’t recognized me.

  Which meant he was probably not the skinwalker who had been impersonating Huang, the one whose pictures I’d just been pawing through, the one who I’d suspected was Lawton King. That skin
walker would have known me on sight. The other one, Gary Jarvett, had only met me the once while he was impersonating Bradley Lewis.

  I wasn’t sure which option was better. Lawton seemed a scared boy who just wanted to go home. Gary…well, he’d been creepy as Bradley Lewis and judging from what the picker had said, he was the violent leader of the three. And he was the one blocking my exit. My hand snaked down toward the heavy pistol in my pocket. His eyes narrowed, dropping to follow the motion.

  Shit. Think fast or draw and shoot. And I really didn’t want to discharge a firearm in a crowded building where nothing but a thin plywood wall separated us from the main concert area.

  “You’re Travis Dawson,” I said breathlessly, feeling like a total idiot. “I just wanted a souvenir. A T-shirt or something. I’m sorry. I’ll leave now.”

  I jabbed a finger against the sewing needle I’d stashed in the cuff of my sleeve. With a quick word under my breath, I’d activated the rebound spell. All I needed now was for him to cast something to freeze or incapacitate me, and I’d have him.

  Instead Travis advanced, still blocking my path to the door. “You look familiar. Older than the usual crowd here. Didn’t I see you at the Midnight Visitor concert the other night?”

  Double shit. I moved toward him, figuring I could dart around and toward the door if needed. I had the rebound spell in place, and was pretty sure I could take him if he got physical. Whatever he was originally, Travis Dawson wasn’t muscular. A good elbow to the diaphragm or fist to the nose would do it.

  But something weird happened when I got close to the skinwalker. I forgot about punching him or skipping around him and just stood there, staring at his shirt and wondering what I was supposed to be doing. Travis put his hands on my shoulders and eased them slowly down my arms. “I don’t like you going through our stuff. Think it’s best if you just stay here.”

  Part of my brain was perfectly okay with that suggestion but part wanted me to leave. I thought about which option I should take as his hands worked their way down my arms, coming to rest on the leather bracelets.

  I felt his hands tighten, heard an intake of breath and the snap of the leather cuff. His index finger touched the tattoo and it flamed to life, clearing my brain and causing the skinwalker to yelp and yank his hands away from me.

  What the heck was I doing? This guy had murdered, and I was just standing like a mannequin in front of him. He hadn’t cast any spell to rebound back on him, so I tried the next suggestion of Garza’s

  “Gary Jarvett. I know who you are and I reveal your true name to everyone. Everyone in Baltimore.” I was slurring my speech and wasn’t sure how effective option two was going to be on the skinwalker. It’d better work, because option three involved bullets.

  I didn’t know if it hindered his magical abilities, but my words certainly had an impact.

  “Fucking Templar.” he snarled. His hand came at my face and I ducked, blocking it with my right and punching out with my left.

  His head jerked to the side as my fist hit his jaw. Without his magic I felt pretty confident that I could best him, so I swung with the right, surprised at the sticky-slippery feel of blood on my palm. He took the blow, punching toward me with his right. I had on the flak jacket, so I braced for the blow and kept swinging, blood beginning to fly from the cut on my hand.

  How the hell was I bleeding? My palm stung just as I realized that whatever Travis held in his right hand was stuck in the plates of my jacket. With a twist he pulled free, slashing me across the arm with something long and sharp. He had a knife. I hadn’t seen one in his hand, but it was the only thing that made sense.

  I punched and kicked and elbowed, trying both to stay free of the knife and disable him. No way I was escaping out the door and letting this guy get away. He was going down, whether it was by my fists or from a gunshot. Unfortunately I was too busy hitting him and trying to avoid getting stabbed to dig the gun out of the recesses of my cargo pants, where its weight slapped against my leg with each of my movements.

  One of my punches went wide and I stumbled off balance, feeling the blade slice through the fabric covering my jacket. Before I could regain my balance, Travis punched me with far more force than a skinny teen should have. My head jerked to the side as I fell to my knee. I saw the foot coming toward my face and tried to launch myself upward and back, taking the kick in the chest instead.

  Pain exploded across my ribs. I slid across the room from the impact, my back and head slamming into the concrete wall. Everything dimmed and I felt myself crumple in a heap on the floor. I struggled to catch my breath and with what was left of my foggy brain I dug in my pocket, feeling for my gun.

  The door opened. “Hurry up, we’re getting ready to…” the male voice tapered off in confusion. My hand closed around the hard steel, but I hesitated, uncertain if the new guy was a band member who’d just stumbled upon us or a roadie. I wasn’t about to fire the gun and risk killing someone in the crossfire.

  “It’s that Templar woman,” Travis told him. “Help me.”

  Shit. The other skinwalker was one of the guys in the band. I took a painful breath and looked out from partially closed eyes, slowly sliding the gun free of my pocket.

  “Break her neck and get out of here before the others come looking for you,” Travis said. “Stash her behind the benches and you can skin her later.”

  “No!” the other boy said, his voice panicked. “Just tie her up and we’ll run for it.”

  “Fine. I’ll kill her myself.” Travis took a step toward me and the other boy grabbed his arm.

  “She’s a Templar, Gary. You can’t kill her. It will cause a war. They’ll exterminate every last one of us.”

  Gary/Travis pulled free. “I don’t give a shit about the rest of them. They’ll never catch us. We’ll stay one step ahead of them.”

  The rest of them? I hesitated, my finger on the trigger. How many murderous skinwalkers were there? Everything had pointed to just these three teens, but from what Gary said, there were more? In Baltimore or spread all over the country?

  I saw Gary walk toward me, saw the short dark-skinned boy with the bleach-blond hair behind him shut his eyes tight. Not gonna happen. I rolled to the side, yanking the gun from my pocket and firing at Gary. I know that Garza said to shoot them in the neck, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a shot that might miss and hit the concert goers on the other side of the plywood.

  Red bloomed on his chest and Travis looked down in shock. “The bitch shot me. Did you see that? She shot me.”

  Besides the brief stain of blood, my shot didn’t seem to do anything so I proceeded to unload the magazine in his chest, scooting upright when the clip was empty and using the wall at my back to get to my feet.

  Travis dove for me, and I clubbed him with the pistol, suddenly regretting how the wall at my back hindered my mobility.

  “Help me,” Travis shouted as I landed a hard blow against his jaw. In the background I heard people screaming and shouting. I kept hitting, every breath sending a stabbing pain through my ribs. The knife slashed along my arms and I kicked, trying to get room to maneuver out of its way.

  “Help me you stupid fucker, before she knocks my brains out.”

  I smashed the butt of the pistol against Travis’s nose, and he bent in half, head-butting me in the stomach. I looked up just in time to see a piece of lumber coming for my head and raised my arm a second too late to completely block it.

  My arm went numb. I heard the pistol clatter to the floor. Everything spun as I went to one knee. Then I felt warm breath against my face. My eyelids grew heavy, my mind thick, then everything went black.

  Chapter 29

  MY HEAD WAS pounding as if my brains were trying to exit my skull. Even the shallow breaths I was taking sent a rhythmic ache through my chest. I kept my eyes closed and took in my surroundings with my other senses, unwilling to give away to my captors that I’d regained consciousness.

  Hurting as I was, regaining cons
ciousness was a good thing. I’d expected them to kill me right there, but I guessed the gunshots and the stampede of people would not have left much time to murder someone and skin them in a back room. How they managed to drag an unconscious woman out of the concert garage and take off was beyond me. I hoped they’d been seen. I hoped that right now Tremelay was on their trail, bearing down on them like a detective with Templar blood would.

  There was no light filtering through my eyelids, so either it was dim, or it was night, or I was somewhere with no windows. Dark. I shivered in the damp chill, feeling the uneven ground beneath my body, the sharp jab of either rocks or dirt clods against me. It smelled of chemical fertilizer, of mold, of turpentine and bleach. And very faintly of laundry detergent. I could hear nothing beyond the pounding in my head.

  Taking a cautious breath I eased open my eyes. I was in a basement—dirt floor with a cement pad in the corner serving as foundation for an ancient washer and dryer. Faint light filtered through a tiny window near the ceiling. A set of narrow wooden steps led up, presumably to the rest of the house. There was an old paint rag, stiff and rough in my mouth. My hands were bound together with silver duct tape, as were my ankles. I winced at the blood staining my shirt sleeves and pants, beginning to feel the sting of dozens of cuts and slices. Thank heaven for the vest or I would have suffered far worse from Gary’s knife.

  There was a metal support pole a few feet in front of me, paint peeling. What caught my eye was the jagged edge of metal where something had been cut from it. Perfect for sawing through duct tape—and probably adding to my wounds. I rocked up to my knees, practically throwing up at the motion. I had to get this duct tape off and find something that could act as a weapon. There was no way I was going to fit through that tiny window, which meant my only way out was up the stairs and past whatever skinwalkers were in the upper part of the house. I scooted on my knees across the uneven dirt floor, managing to make it to the pole without face-planting into the ground. There, I wiggled around backward and arched my back, trying to reach the jagged piece of metal.