by Clare Kauter
I felt my necklace grow warmer and my temper heated up with it. “You’re just annoyed because when we were in the North Pole I was saved by a pod of wereorcas while you stood by doing nothing.” I thought for a moment. “Well, you stood by watching me freeze to death. Actually, you flapped in the air nearby, too pathetic to shift into something that could help me. What was it – was the water too cold?”
“The orcas showed up before I had time to shift,” Henry snapped. “It’s not like if they hadn’t arrived I would have just left you there to die.”
“You sure about that?”
Henry just rolled his eyes at me and continued walking.
Chapter 8
We made our way through the forest, checking in on various campsites and people performing rituals along the way. A couple of times Henry and I, despite our best efforts, bumped into wards protecting campsites and were repelled backwards, swearing to ourselves and rubbing whichever bit of flesh had been shocked by the protective charms. Luckily the wards we hit were all put up by light dwellers, so they were pretty weak and didn’t leave much more than a slight red mark, as if we’d been slapped. If they’d been produced by creatures of the night, we could have lost limbs.
Henry was quiet as we made our way through the Black Forest, still annoyed at me for what I’d said about the wereorcas. Or rather, what I’d said about him not helping me when we were in the North Pole. At least, that’s what I assumed he was angry about – he hadn’t exactly told me, what with him remaining silent and all.
I felt kind of bad about what I’d said, but I was still annoyed at him for insisting we should check on the wereorcas. They were good people. I mean, sure, they broke the law on occasion, but it was for a good cause. Sometimes Henry was so straight-laced.
Even so, I hadn’t meant to lose my temper like that. It had been happening a lot recently. Ever since I’d become a cop, I’d had a harder time staying calm. I suspected it had something to do with the new companion item hanging around my neck, which worried me. I knew it was making my powers stronger, but it was also making me get angry at the drop of a hat. I was really going to have to keep an eye on that, because when I got angry my powers had a tendency to spill out, and that rarely ended well. Maybe in addition to reading self-help books about unlocking my potential I needed to read about anger management or something.
The forest was bustling, just as we’d expected it to be. There were cauldrons like the one I’d seen earlier in the day boiling away over campfires while suspended in mid-air, flames licking at their bases, only now they were surrounded by witches and various other creatures, magical and not, performing rites as the full moon neared. Rabbits and possums and other woodland creatures sat side-by-side with humans who had an affinity for the magical arts, joining in the festivities.
Normals also liked to come to the forest around this time of the lunar cycle, to see the sights and do the touristy thing. Ordinarily, it would be fine. They’d be perfectly safe in the forest, especially with so many people around to keep an eye on them, but given what had happened lately with all the magicals disappearing, I was a little concerned. If even magicals were at risk, I didn’t know what might happen to these normals given their lack of natural defences.
Still, it wasn’t like I was going to send the normals on their way – I knew that Hellfire Shire relied on their money to keep the local economy running. They kept mediums and dodgy little trinket stores in business, and there were plenty of people around here who depended on those trades for their livelihoods. My adoptive mother Satan had taught me that business had to come before morals, and while I wasn’t entirely sure I agreed with her, I didn’t totally disagree with her either.
We checked in with a few dark magicals we passed on our way down to the beach, along with a good number of light dwellers, but we didn’t find anything suspicious. Other than, you know, people hurriedly hiding certain vials and bunches of herbs when we arrived. I wondered who was responsible for the disappearances. Could a light dweller be behind it? The most psychotic murderer I’d ever met had been a creature of the light, and I’ve met my fair share of psychos. While creatures of the night were naturally talented at performing darker kinds of magic, that didn’t mean creatures of the light weren’t also drawn to the darkness.
We didn’t encounter anything interesting, really, until we reached the beach. I mean, we found some witches dancing naked under the moonlight, but that was less interesting and more terrifying. There were plenty of people out performing rites and rituals, but we hadn’t found our kidnapper or murderer, nor had we seen any sign of Pierre or Honey.
When we reached the beach, however, we spotted something that made us pause. Henry transformed from a wolf into a human and turned, pressing his finger to his lips in a ‘shush’ motion. I stopped in my tracks and did as I was asked. He silently gestured to me to follow him and I did. He led me over to some kind of bush with thick foliage, and we both crouched down behind it. I was about to ask him why he’d brought me over here when I followed his eye line and spotted what he was looking at. He was staring down at the sea, but I couldn’t sense any wereorcas nearby. (Pity. I would have liked to introduce myself. I wondered if they’d be the same guys I’d met in the arctic. It was unlikely, but – yeah, I’m getting off track.) Studying the strip of forest just next to the sand, I soon realised it wasn’t a wereorca Henry was watching. It was a pair of vampires.
Not Pierre and Honey, unfortunately. I didn’t recognise these vampires, but I could tell by the energy and the metallic smell of blood in the air what they were. I wondered if they’d been kicked out of the caves when the orks had taken over Gladesta. It seemed likely – there weren’t that many vampires living in the area, as far as I knew. These guys were crouched behind a bush, just like Henry and I were, a little further down the beach. Squinting in the moonlight, I tried to figure out what they were doing. It didn’t take me long to work it out.
Down on the beach, I could see a group of women bathing in the shallow waves. Some were sitting on rocks, others were swimming in the shallows, and some were dancing on the sand while singing to the moon. These women, like the witches we’d seen in the forest, were naked, yet for some reason this didn’t seem as startling. It did seem super creepy that we were hiding behind a bush watching them, but the vampires started it. We were only doing this to help the women.
As we watched, the water around them grew brighter as energy flooded through it from the women’s ritual. The energy made the water ripple and dance and leap, and the waves moved differently around them. I realised what the women were, though I had never seen their kind before. They were sirens, singing to the moon and the sea. Sirens were a type of faery, and they were very rare-y (ha). They weren’t often seen, and when they were, the people who saw them didn’t often survive.
Gulp. Maybe hiding in this bush hadn’t been such a bad move after all.
Men seemed to have an especially bad mortality rate after seeing sirens. I gave Henry the side eye, wondering what effect these women were having on him. No, I wasn’t jealous, before you even start saying that. Okay, so maybe I was. They were beautiful, and they could sing, and with their perfect energy swirling around them like that, bubbling white and blue and green like the ocean and the sea foam, they were mesmerising. When I looked at Henry, however, he was looking straight back at me. He jerked his head towards the vampires. I frowned, wondering what he was trying to tell me. Then it clicked. Sirens were a kind of faery. Vampires, though not generally all that fussy about who they munched on, thought faeries were especially delicious. The sirens were in danger.
What do we do? I mouthed.
Henry pointed at the vampires, then at me and him, and then performed some complicated hand gestures that looked militaristic but didn’t exactly convey what we were supposed to do in easy-to-interpret motions. I was about to tell Henry as much – well, mouth it to him – when he shifted back into a massive white wolf and leapt out from behind the bush, sailing th
rough the air (rather regally) in the direction of the vamps.
I swore and scrambled to my feet, rushing to join him in his assault on the vampires. As we neared them, the wind picked up, blowing from the forest down to the sea. The sirens immediately stopped their singing and the illumination that their ritual’s energy had provided disappeared. The women had caught the vampires’ scent. They cried out to each other in a language I didn’t understand and judging by the splashing, they slipped into the water and swam away.
I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the moonlight. Without the added light from the sirens’ energy streams, I was now at a disadvantage against the vamps, whose night vision was impeccable. Henry had leapt onto one of the vampires and had him pinned down, growling and dripping drool in his face. “Ew, gross dude,” said the vampire. Henry didn’t let up.
The other vampire was slowly stalking towards me, teeth bared. “You chased away our meal,” he said. “So I guess you’re about to become dinner instead.”
“Ooh, I wouldn’t recommend it, my friend.”
“I’m going to tear you into pieces and slurp up your intestines like spaghetti,” he growled. He continued to advance towards me.
“I doubt it, but do your damnedest,” I replied. He continued to stalk towards me and I raised my eyebrows at him, standing my ground. He stopped.
“You’re not scared,” he said, bemused.
“I’m not,” I replied.
“Why aren’t you scared?”
“Because trust me, I’m not the one who is going to come out of this second-best,” I replied.
His brow wrinkled. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I’m a cop and you just admitted to me that you were planning on killing all those lovely women who were frolicking about in the waves.”
If vampires had enough blood running through their veins, this one would have paled. As it was, he just stayed the same colour but looked a bit scared. “Hey now, I didn’t say – I didn’t mean – I wasn’t really going to –”
“And you just threatened a police officer,” I continued. “Do I need to go on?”
The vampire shook his head. “No miss – ma’am – I’m sorry. If I’d known you were –”
“If you’d known me, you wouldn’t have threatened to eat me? You shouldn’t really be threatening to eat anyone, Dracula.”
“My name’s not –”
“Vlad, then.”
“That’s not…” He trailed off, seeming to realise that his arguments were pointless.
“Now, my friend here,” I said, gesturing to Henry, “and I are both officers of the law, and you’ve admitted to us that you planned on breaking said law tonight. We’re going to have to take you down to the station.”
The vampire lying on the ground, pinned down by Henry, groaned. “Please you guys, you don’t have to do that. We just – we just wanted to look. We weren’t actually going to hurt those women. We only said that to scare you.”
“Oh, so you were just hiding in the bushes watching them dance about naked for entirely innocent reasons?” I replied. “Well, in that case…”
The vamp who was standing up in front of me shook his head. “You don’t have to arrest us. We won’t do it again.”
“We didn’t do anything in the first place,” said the vamp on the ground.
“Sure you didn’t,” Henry growled in his face. The vamp flinched, apparently not enjoying Henry’s doggy breath. (Did Henry have doggy breath? I wasn’t sure. I’d never actually been that close to his face while he was in shifter form. Shifted into a wolf, I mean. Or a gorilla. Well, there was that one time I was close to his face while he was a gorilla, but since he’d changed mid-kiss I’d been so shocked that I hadn’t really stopped to pay attention to his breath. As I remembered, it just smelt like his normal breath. This has been a bit of a tangent. I’m sorry.)
“We might be able to let you off with a warning,” I said. The vampire in front of me nodded his head vigorously.
“Please, we’ll do anything.”
“Anything?”
He frowned slightly and looked across to his partner on the ground. “Well maybe not anything…”
“What can you tell me about a vampire named Pierre?” I asked. Yes, I know I wasn’t meant to be investigating that particular mystery, but these two had basically been dropped in my lap. I had two vampires in front of me, eager to please. As if I was going to pass up the opportunity to question them.
“What about him?” asked the vampire in front of me, looking concerned.
“You know him?”
The vampire nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Or at least I used to.”
My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Back when he was with Honey – that’s his girlfriend –”
I nodded. “I know Honey.”
“You do?” His eyes widened as he stared at me. “Oh god, are you that demon she bit? The one with the poisonous blood?”
I grinned slowly. I quite liked that description. “That’s me.”
“R–right,” he stammered, now looking at me like I was the one who’d threatened to tear him apart and eat his innards like a delicious Italian feast. “Well, uh, if you know about that, you probably know about how Pierre went kind of crazy afterwards. He performed all these rituals and found talismans to fortify his magical capabilities. Now he’s got this crazy energy…”
“I know about his energy,” I said. “What I need you to tell me is where he is now.”
The vamp shook his head. “I’m real sorry, officer, but I don’t know. After he went crazy he left the caves and he hasn’t spoken to us since. There’s only one thing he’s concerned about: fixing Honey so she goes back to normal. Well, that and…”
“Yes?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “And killing you.”
Chapter 9
As promised, we let the vamps off with a warning, though I put a magical tracker on both of them that would alert me if they attacked anyone anytime soon. It would only last until next full moon, but you know what they say – it takes one lunar cycle to break a bad habit. I could only hope it worked on the vamps.
Henry came back to my house for the night. (Not like that, before you start.) Since we were kind of famished from our late night shift and we hadn’t eaten since the cucumber sandwiches and soggy biscuits at the church hours earlier, I cooked us up some dinner. I made spaghetti with a smoky tomato, lentil and olive sauce, garnished with parsley from the garden. I know it was messed up, but that vamp’s talk of slurping up my intestines had really made me crave pasta. After that, I found a blanket for Henry and we said goodnight.
* * *
Henry, now in wolf form, was curled up on the couch sleeping when I sneaked downstairs that night. I was still dressed in the clothes I’d worn on the forest patrol earlier, even though I knew I was going to be way too hot where I was headed. I watched his chest rise and fall just to make doubly sure that he was asleep before tiptoeing my way across the room, heading for the door.
As I passed the couch, Henry spoke. I froze. “The wereorcas,” he mumbled. “They’re coming to get me. I don’t want to be an orca. I like humpbacks.”
My lips curved into a smile and I held back a laugh. He was too adorable. I resisted the urge to stroke his soft fur and comfort him. That was potentially a little creepy, stroking him while he slept. Plus it might wake him up and I had somewhere to be that I didn’t want Henry knowing about. More specifically, I didn’t want Henry to know how I was going to get there. Besides, I was a little worried that if I did start running my fingers through Henry’s fur I might get distracted and curl up next to him rather than carrying out my mission.
When I was sure that he was sound asleep, I crept to the front door, opening it as quietly as I could. It creaked louder than I’d ever heard it creak before, sounding kind of like a trombone. I cringed and looked back at Henry, but he still appeared to be fast asleep. I closed the door behind me as qui
etly as I could and hurried down the path to the gate.
As I strode towards the forest, my shoulders hunched against the cold, I found my mind wandering back to Henry. I hated lying to him. Well, I wasn’t so much lying to him; I just wasn’t telling him certain things. Like the fact that I was going to be seeing a certain poltergeist tonight. Nothing salacious, I assure you – I was only going to be visiting Ed in passing on my way to the restricted section of the library in Hell. Ed’s crack was the fastest way for me to get there, and yes, I’m aware that that sounds a bit wrong.
Not telling Henry what I was doing tonight made me uncomfortable. After all, he knew all my other secrets and he hadn’t dobbed me in, even after I’d tried to convince him he was losing his mind to save my own skin. Of course, Henry had Death watching him like a hawk to make sure he didn’t do anything to put me in danger, but I was pretty sure he would have been on my side anyway.
What exactly was going on between me and Henry? I had no idea, and the thought of talking it through with him gave me heart palpitations. Not in a good way. It was like we had this thing hanging over us that we’d never addressed, and we were both just trying to ignore it. One day it was going to fall down and squash the both of us. (No, I don’t know what exactly I mean by that either. Just roll with it.)
I knew I liked Henry, and I knew he liked me – or at least he had in the past. Unless he’d only made out with me to try and get information, though that seemed unlikely. No, I was pretty sure he’d liked me, but then I’d sort of messed things up with the whole I’m not a murderer, you just have a drinking problem thing. But he baked cakes for me! That had to mean something, right? And I knew I had feelings for him, although I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what those feelings were. I found him attractive even when he was in animal form, which was one of the many reasons I probably needed a therapist. I knew I needed to sort things out with Henry, but I had no idea how. Sneaking off to see Ed in the wee hours of the morning probably wasn’t the best place to start, though, and yet here I was.
