Bare Bones

by Debra Dunbar

  I noticed he’d phrased this carefully to avoid the gruesome truth. “You kill a human being and assume their identity. You do kill.”

  His eyes met mind, steady and honest. “We make every effort to take the skins of those who are newly dead. Overdose victims, head trauma—as long as the skin hasn’t suffered more than minimal damage we can repair it when we put it on. But sometimes…yes. Sometimes we have no choice but to kill a human and take a skin. If it’s a matter of life or death, we will kill to preserve our anonymity, to protect ourselves and our family. Please understand, we’d be wiped out by the humans if they saw us and knew we were more than just an old folktale.”

  I sipped my martini, imagining a skinned corpse walking down the street, trying to get a meal in a diner, working at a call center, and I saw what he meant. “How many skins do you have? Does every Boo Hag have a collection of identities they can assume, like these teens are doing?”

  He set his drink down. “I only have one skin, one identity. We don’t collect. I’ve never heard of a Boo Hag doing what these kids are doing. That’s why I didn’t come forward at first. I honestly didn’t believe they could be Boo Hag. I too thought this was a human serial killer, or some other kind of creature. We’re peaceful. We don’t want to kill, and we take every effort to avoid it. Yes, it’s fraud, and technically identity theft, but we don’t murder.”

  The three kids terrorizing Baltimore were committing murder, but right now I wanted to know about this man in front of me who’d presented himself as Sean Merrill. “Did all this happen two years ago? When you said you woke up and discovered you weren’t the same person?”

  There wasn’t even a hint of malice in his expression, just honesty. And sadness. “I was a ninety-year-old man the day I met Sean Merrill. I’d been searching for almost five years for a suitable skin when I came across the accident. He’d been hit head on and died of internal injuries. It was on a back road, so it took a while for another car to come along and call 911. The doctors said it was a miracle I’d survived the accident, let alone walked away with such minor injuries. That was two years ago. I took Sean Merrill’s skin, divorced his wife, and began a new life.”

  Immediately I thought of my friend who was already half in love with him and drained my martini glass “And Janice? What are you going to do about Janice?”

  His gaze warmed, a smile turning up the corner of his mouth. “Just because I’m a creature in a borrowed skin doesn’t mean I like living alone. For two hundred years I’ve lived by day as a human. I would like to have a companion—one who doesn’t want children, one who trusts that I’m not cheating on her when I’m out late at night. Janice is a smart, kind woman. She’s the sort of woman I could fall in love with.”

  “Will you tell her?” At this moment I was far more concerned about Janice than the killers running around Baltimore and any part this man might play in all of that.

  The smile widened. “If things continue on between us, yes. I never thought I could tell someone, but Janice knows about vampires and mages, demons and angels. I hope she can accept the man I am under the skin.”

  It was one thing to know about the presence of supernatural creatures, another entirely to date one. But that was up to Janice. “You need to tell her. No waiting until she’s in love and you break her heart. I want you to tell her this week, or I’ll do it for you.”

  He nodded, taking another sip of his martini. “But that’s not the reason I’m here. I would have been more than happy to keep my true nature a secret from you, but these three Boo Hag threaten us all with their murders and reckless actions. You need to know everything about them.”

  I did. Starting with how they managed to take me out. “So what’s with the sleepy stuff? I encountered two last night and they had something that made me so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open. They actually knocked me out with it.”

  Sean grimaced. “We’re only supposed to do that when we come upon someone who is already asleep. There’s a narcotic in our breath that we use while we feed to keep the human in a deep sleep. I’m sure you can understand how alarming it would be for someone to wake up and find a monster inches from his face.”

  That would be more than alarming. “So you take their life essence through their breath? How much? What are the side effects to the human afterward?”

  Sean held up his hands. “Let me step back and explain more about us. We’re genderless, although after years of wearing human skins, we develop a preference. Obviously we cannot bear children with humans, but once every century or two, we do produce offspring asexually. Boo Hag live for approximately three hundred years. Each night we shed our skin and find a human to ‘ride’ stealing their life-force through their breath as they sleep. We do not kill our victims. They wake up feeling a bit tired and groggy, but recover within a few days.”

  It didn’t sound too bad outside of the human skin thing. “Every night you walk around like a skinned corpse to feed? Sounds risky.”

  “It is, which is why the narcotic in our breath is so important. We also can move short distances by transforming into smoke. It allows us to gain entry to homes under doors or through cracks in the window sills.”

  And that was how Lawton as Brian Huang escaped the jail cell, although I was still amazed that he’d navigated the city in his Boo Hag form without anyone calling the police.

  “We move fast,” Sean added. “I’m sure humans have caught a glimpse of us over the years but at night with dim light and our speed, most probably think the monster they saw was just their eyes playing a trick on them.”

  All that was going to make it even harder to catch the murderers. “Do you know these three Boo Hag who are spree killing in Baltimore?”

  He shook his head. “Not personally. They’re just kids. They weren’t even born last time I was home to visit. A few of us live outside of the main clan in South Carolina, but we all return there when we have offspring so that Grandmother may raise them properly. She ensures they have the skills and social training to interact and live among the humans, otherwise they could endanger us all. I can assure you, this sort of thing has never happened before.”

  “So this Grandmother lost a few of her young before they were adequately trained?” I went to sip my martini, and got a mouth full of olives instead. Time for a refill.

  As if reading my mind, Sean took my empty glass and rose to make another. “Fully trained or not, young Boo Hag don’t act like this. I didn’t even suspect the killers were Boo Hag until a few days ago when Janice confided in me the gruesome nature of the crimes. Even then…Boo Hag aren’t like this. We’re peaceful. We just want to fit in and live without notice or persecution. Their taking of skins and wearing them seemed suspiciously like what we do, so I made a phone call home and discovered that, yes, three of our young had left the nest without permission.”

  I accepted the second martini gratefully. “Three Boo Hag. They hitchhiked their way up with that picker, took a skin at the rest stop, took another at the museum. They took Brian Huang, Bradley Lewis, Travis Dawson, some kid named Strike—why do they need all these skins?”

  Sean shook his head. “They don’t need more than one skin. I think they’re collecting. Maybe they aren’t satisfied living as one human during the day, so they grab the skins of whoever is convenient, whoever appeals to them? Maybe they’re trying out these lives like teenage girls in a department store dressing room, discarding the ones they no longer want? I don’t know. None of this makes sense to me. If Grandmother hadn’t confirmed these three were missing—these exact three—then I wouldn’t have believed they were Boo Hag at all.”

  What had gone wrong with these three that hadn’t happened ever before in Boo Hag history? Did they feed from the wrong person? Fall in with the wrong crowd? Whatever their past or motives, they were three teens, runaways who were drunk on freedom and power in a human world and killing whoever they wanted—vampire or human. Well, at least two were. Lawton had insisted he hadn’t killed
, and I believed him.

  “They’re not ready to be away from the nest, away from the supervision of Grandmother,” Sean continued. “I know they’re on a killing spree, but they’re very young. They’re just kids. Maybe they don’t yet understand the nature of their actions.”

  Like amoral toddlers pulling the wings off butterflies? Regardless, they were killing people and they needed to be stopped. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

  It was Sean’s turn to drain his martini. “I don’t know what I can do about it. They’re not my children. Plus they are three and I am one. Only Grandmother has the power to rein them in. She is trying to get up here as fast as she can now that she knows where they landed but there are five other children who need her. She can’t just drop everything and come.”

  “She needs to get a move on and stop them, or I’m going to have to kill them. I can’t allow them to run around murdering humans while Grandmother takes her sweet time getting up here.”

  But could I? My stomach roiled at the thought. As deranged as Gary was, he was still a kid. It had been hard enough to kill Dark Iron. What would it do to my soul, to my sanity, to run my sword through teenagers? I envisioned plunging Trusty into the Boo Hag’s chest, facing him head on as I hadn’t done with Dark Iron. Gary would know I was both his judge and executioner. I’d see it in his eyes. I’d have to do this, and I’d have to do it with conviction—not delaying and wavering like I’d done with the mage.

  It wasn’t like Tremelay could prosecute them, and I was in no position to restrain them and transport them back to South Carolina.

  Sean swallowed hard and nodded. “I understand. Rules are rules and I don’t want these three to jeopardize the safety of all of us with their actions. But if you can find a way… They’re kids.”

  Kids. There had to be another way. “Would it help for you to talk to them? Let them know Grandmother is on her way and she’s not happy?” Sheesh, it sounded like a childhood threat. Just wait until your father gets home.

  “They don’t know me.” He hesitated. “I can try. I’m not sure I can talk any sense into them, but I’ll try. I just… I have a good life here. I don’t want to have to leave. Can you promise to keep my secret? I don’t want others to know what I am, that I’m not human.”

  “I can’t guarantee that. My detective friend is going to have to know and probably the vampires. No one is going to want a public panic, and honestly, most aren’t going to believe you all exist anyway. I think you can rest assured you’ll continue to have some degree of anonymity outside of the paranormal community.

  He nodded. “Thank you. I’ll help you to stop and apprehend these three any way that I can.”

  Now that I knew what I was dealing with, I was about to pump Sean Merrill for information. “So your main clan is in South Carolina? How many Boo Hag are there? I’ve never heard of you before, and there’s nothing in the Templar books about you.”

  He sighed. “We’re not from Europe and we keep to ourselves. We’re less than a footnote in most books on the supernatural. There are seven billion humans in this world, tens of thousands of vampires. There are fifty Boo Hag. Fifty. Worldwide. Most of us live in our nest in South Carolina. Fifty. We are no threat to humanity compared to all the other creatures in the world.”

  They were about to be forty-seven, maybe forty-eight, unless Sean could talk these kids off the ledge or Grandmother managed to put her scooter into high gear. “So how do I locate these young Boo Hag? How do I restrain them?” And how do I kill them?

  Sean’s jaw clenched and he stared into his empty glass. I knew he didn’t want to tell me their vulnerabilities when I could turn around and use them on him or the rest of his family. “As far as weapons go, salt is horribly painful for us.”

  “Salt?” I used to wonder about vampires and garlic, but salt? That was in everything. How the heck did they avoid it without forsaking all restaurant dining and never leaving the home when the snow plows were treating the roads?

  “The human skin lessens the effect. Like this.” He held up the martini glass. “I can ingest it in moderation and touch it. On an open cut it would be agony. In my Boo Hag form, it would severely damage and possibly kill me.”

  Low sodium diet, but beyond that I wasn’t sure how helpful the salt sensitivity would be. If I were lucky enough to catch one out of his human skin…but how likely would that be?

  “Anything else?”

  Sean nodded. “We’re vulnerable to magic. A spell will work on us just as it would on a human.” He eyed Trusty, his mouth twisting downward. “A Templar can permanently disable or kill us with their sword. Only a consecrated weapon will work. Guns or normal weapons have no lasting effect on us, but that will put us in the grave.”

  And he’d sat here, having martinis with me with a lethal weapon inches from him. It made me realize how much Sean wanted to help—both the humans in his town and his Boo Hag family. It made me realize that in spite of his fear of discovery he’d decided to trust me—his girlfriend’s friend.

  Now it was time for me to trust him.

  “The three seem to have split up. The two boys are in the city, wearing the skins of musicians in a local band as of last night. The girl went up north a few days ago on her own. She’s taken at least one vampire skin. Possibly two.”

  His eyes flicked toward mine. “A vampire skin? We don’t mess with vampires. In fact, we stay as far away from them as possible. I can’t imagine what a Boo Hag would do with a vampire skin.”

  I pushed my half-empty glass away, needing a clear head for this. “I overheard the girl once, before I knew she was affiliated with the killers. She seems to have a thing for vampires, a kind of fetish. Is that normal?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing about these three is normal. We educate all of our children. They have access to television, magazines, current culture—all this is so they can better assimilate when they move in the human world. I know there are humans who are fascinated with vampire culture. I guess a Boo Hag could be the same.”

  The movies, the books. Vampire folktales carried that forbidden erotic component that reality supported. How many times had humans been fixated on the legend, only to fall hard into a blood-slave life once they discovered there was truth to the tales? A human with an obsession with vampires would either cosplay, or take up with the real thing either as a blood slave or Renfield. I guess a Boo Hag that was equally obsessed would take a skin. Judging from what Dario said about the reported taste of their blood, the life of a slave would be off the table. And I doubted they could be turned. The only way a Boo Hag could get close to vampires was by becoming one the only way they knew how.

  Yikes. “How bad is this going to be? How is a Boo Hag going to react to wearing a vampire skin?”

  Sean slowly shook his head. “We’re constrained by the knowledge and somewhat by the physical limitations of our skin’s former owner, so I don’t see how useful a vampire skin would be to one of us. At night we shed our skin to go ride. She couldn’t wear a vampire skin during the day or it would disintegrate in the sun, leaving her exposed in her natural form. And if she wore it at night…she can drink all the blood she wants, but it’s not going to sustain her for long. A Boo Hag needs to ride, or they’ll starve to death.”

  “How long can she go without feeding?” I wondered how crazy this teen was, if her vampire fantasy would kill her before we managed to catch her.

  “Six, seven days maybe. She’s going to be really weak after a few days.”

  “So we’ve got vampire-wannabe Bonnie, and two rock musician wannabe Clydes,” I mused. “Any ideas on how to find them?”

  “You could try the victims’ homes. We take on more than a human’s form when we wear their skin. We have their memories, their skills, their knowledge, and a good bit of their personality. The longer we wear a certain skin, the more we become attached to that persona.”

  This had to be the weirdest thing I’d ever heard of, but it made Lawton’s strange word
s in the basement suddenly clear. He’d loved being Lawton, and missed that person. And when he’d become Brian Huang, it had been hard to force himself away from the responsibilities the man had held dear.

  “So you’re a mix of the Boo Hag you’ve always been and Sean Merrill?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I’ve never had a problem with snakes, but Sean was terrified of them. I jump three feet every time I see one now, and even though I know deep down there’s nothing to fear, I can’t help myself. I also now love baseball and find myself longing to vacation at a very specific campground in Tennessee.”

  “These guys switched after being in Brian Huang and Bradley Lewis’s skins for days. How easy is it to do that?”

  “It’s not. Switching skins daily probably wouldn’t be too difficult. You wouldn’t have time to get used to the human you’re taking on. Keeping one on for a week and then switching would be very jarring, downright painful. A Boo Hag would need to have a good reason to switch, and afterwards they’d be very reluctant to switch again unless absolutely necessary.”

  “But these three came here as teenage kids—kids who had been reported as missing ten years ago. After ten years in those skins they switched?”

  “It’s like getting a static shock,” Sean explained. “The first transition would be the hardest. I’d imagine they would slow down their identity changes either because of the discomfort or as a natural part of the maturation process. We want to live our human’s life. We take on their mannerisms, likes and dislikes. If they find a human whose personality and lifestyle they truly enjoy, they won’t want to give it up. From what you’ve told me, they’ll probably want to stay as Dawson and Strike. Unless they feel their lives are in danger, they won’t want to keep changing identities. They might keep killing, but as a Boo Hag, they’ll eventually want to stay with one human form as long as they can.”

  But in the meantime they’d disappear into the crowd, never to be seen again. I doubted they’d ever be truly mature enough to exist in human society at this point. They’d always be murderous teenage runaways, endangering themselves and possibly the humans they encountered and rode.