Joe rubbed his hands over his face. “They’re different in other ways, too.”
“Different how? Other than being lonely geeks before, and part of their weird in-crowd with a penchant for mild self-harming now? If it’s a case for anyone, isn’t it more for the campus psychologist than us?”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Joe persevered. “Their personalities have changed. They’re sassy, tough, and confident.”
“Er… that’s a good thing, right?”
“It’s weird, Lia. Think about it. If a bunch of misfits get together and form a club, it’s nothing to write home about, I grant you that. But if they all, after mysteriously disappearing who knows where, come back with altered personalities - so even their families say they’re like different people - come on, Lia, you have to admit, that’s edging into paranormal territory.”
“The detective is right,” Grandma said.
Frowning, I bit my lip. I so didn’t want to have to deal with this stuff. It wasn’t part of my remit as a Dragon-born Guardian. And I already felt pissed at Dan for waltzing out like a prima donna, and Joe for provoking him.
Okay, I could blame myself in part – it was obvious I’d totally forgotten he was coming. But if it hadn’t been for Joe Summers and his gang of vanishing geek girls, I’d have made it up with Dan without him even knowing I’d forgotten. Except there was the lie about the jam.
“Lia,” Joe was saying, “I’ve looked up the girls who’ve vanished and returned so far. There’s a pattern. Apart from that they’re all geeky loner types; they’re being taken in class order. And by my reckoning…”
“Whoa,” I said. “Hold it there Mr. Detective. You think they’re being taken? Taken by whom? Why?”
He ignored the question and plowed ahead with his explanation. “By my reckoning the next girl to go will be Samantha Rivers. That will make thirteen of them, and I understand from hacking into the messages on their ‘phones, they’re meeting tonight in Highgate Cemetery.”
“Samantha Rivers?” My throat was dry. I reached for my tea but it had gone cold. Sipping it anyway, I said, “I know Sam. She’s Dan’s old girlfriend. She's about as geeky as they get.”
Joe Summers reached over to his ‘phone and tapped the screen, then turned it to face me. There was Sam; Dan’s ex, smiling at me from a family photograph.
“The thirteenth,” Joe said.
“You think a Coven? Witches?”
He shrugged. “I think she’s in danger, Lia. I think they all are. And I don't think we’re dealing with ghosts and ghouls and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. I’m out of my league. It may not be demons, but I don't like it and I'm asking you to help me.”
I stood up, turning away from the photograph.
“Sure,” I said at last. “I’ll help. But what I can do?”
“You can - how do you say it in American? - kick ass. More, you can kick supernatural ass. Beat up bad guys. And anyway, I don’t want to face this alone.”
I turned back to Joe and looked into his eyes. That visceral feeling of raw attraction shivered through me again. Inappropriate much, Lia.
“So what is the next step?” Grandma said. She’d been listening carefully and, I realized, waiting patiently for me to make the right decision. “If they are planning on meeting tonight and you think somehow they will take Sam…”
“I guess the first thing we do is find out what’s going on with her,” I said.
“Maybe,” Joe said. “What about the other girls? We know they’re meeting at Highgate Cemetery, but that’s a big place full of overgrown tombs and woods and hiding places. It could take a while to find them. And we don’t know what they want to do there. It could be anything from taking drugs to raising zombies from the dead.”
“But the priority should still be that we get to Sam before they do, right?”
“If we’re not too late already,” Joe said with a pointed look in my direction. Then a thought struck him. “Dan used to be Sam's boyfriend, you said? And they still see each other as friends?”
“Yes. So?”
“He’ll know who she sees, what she’s interested in and…”
“No, let’s not bring Dan into this. I mean you’ve seen the mood he’s in. He’s jealous as hell. I already caused him enough trouble. Leave him out of it. I say we go straight to Sam’s place and find out what’s going on. If she’s in danger, the sooner we get there the better.”
“Dan’s jealous?” Joe said, smiling. “Does he have reason to be?”
Before I could answer, the ‘phone rang in the hall. “I’ll get it,” Grandma said, standing up and leaving the room. A moment later she reappeared in the kitchen.
“It’s Dan,” she said.
“Tell him I’ve gone out,” I said, looking at Joe.
“Are you sure? You want to lie to him?”
“It’s just a little white lie. I’ll be out in five minutes. It’s as good as true. I want to keep him out of this, okay?”
“He’s a nice boy, Lia.”
“All the more reason to keep his nose clean, right?”
There was a moment of tension but it soon passed. Grandma returned to the telephone. “I’m afraid she just left,” she said. Then, after a second of silence, “I’m afraid so.”
“You told him I’d left with Joe?” I practically screamed when she came back.
Grandma’s face was like cold steel. “It was your lie, not mine, young lady. Now as I understand it you have better things to do than screaming at me. I suggest you get on with it before it’s too late. In the meantime I’ll see what I can do in my study. I’ll look up this scratch mark for a start. It might be nothing, or it might be something, and I intend to find out. Make sure you have your ’phone with you Lia. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”
I took Joe’s hand to pull him into the hallway. A shock of energy zapped between our fingers. I pulled my hand away. What the…? I flashed my eyes to him. It seemed he’d noticed nothing. I guessed it was my own psychic hypersensitivity. Geez, girl. Steady.
Outside, the night was frosty and cold. Ice crystals still glistened on the grass, gray in the moonlight. “Full moon tonight,” I said, shivering. The hounds continued their baleful wailing. The lights on Joe’s car flashed as the doors clicked open. I slipped into the passenger seat as he settled in beside me and fired the engine.
“Okay,” I sighed. “I’m in. So let’s go.”
“To Sam’s place?”
“I guess. Does she live with her parents, or in halls, or a shared house, or what?”
“None of the above. Her folks are pretty well heeled. They bought her an apartment in a block out back of the main university buildings.”
Joe slipped the gears into place, released the clutch, and pressed his foot to the accelerator. Crunching over the gravel, he drove the car along the drive and swung out onto the main road.
Bright and cold, the eye of moon watched us from the winter sky. The Jaguar’s engine thrummed, and the baying of the hounds sent a trickle of ice down my spine.
I glanced at the moon-crystal I wore around my neck. It was clear. That’s a good sign, at least, I thought. I so wanted this to turn out to be nothing.
But I couldn’t shake off a rising sense of dread.
CHAPTER THREE
EVEN IN A CAR LIKE JOE’S, the journey into town would take a while.
“Did you bring your magic sword with you?” Joe said.
“Why are you smirking?”
“Sorry,” he said, gesturing wiping the smile from his face. “It’s just I’m not used to saying things like that and being serious. But I mean it. Do you have the sword?”
“Listen,” I said, twisting around in my seat and leaning toward him. “I’m here because I know these girls, because it’s going on at my University. I’m here as a fellow student who just has an inkling about things supernatural, okay? That ‘magic sword’ as you call it, is Excalibur; forged thousands of years ago for the Pendrago
n - King Arthur, as you’d think of him. It’s the most powerful arcane artifact in the world, and it’s only used for slaying demons.”
“Right,” Joe said, looking sheepish. “So you don’t whip it out to deal with messed up crazy kids.”
“Let’s hope that’s all we’re dealing with.”
“Let’s hope.”
We drove on down the highway in silence, each lost in our own thoughts, as the countryside gave way to the London suburbs.
“Listen,” Joe said at last. “Do you mind if we swing by my place? It’s on the way to Sam’s apartment. I’d like to pick up a couple of things. It’ll add five minutes to the journey, no more.”
“Sure, but make it quick,” I said. “Apparently lives are at stake.”
“You’re not convinced, are you?”
“I’m convinced these girls are up to something. I’m not convinced it’s anything bad - even if it is totally weird. There’re no laws against weird.”
“You don’t think they’re in danger?”
“No-one’s hurt yet, are they?”
“No. But what about the scratch marks?”
“A scratch is just a scratch. No worse than a tattoo or a piercing.”
“I guess you’re right.” Then Joe laughed. “I hope at the end of all this you get the chance to laugh in my face and tell me I was wasting your time.”
“I’d like that.”
Joe swung the car off the main highway and down a series of smaller streets lined with stores, houses and apartment blocks. He pulled over into a parking lot. “That’s my place. Up there.” He pointed at what could have been any of a dozen windows in a swish looking block with double iron gates and a uniformed porter at the door.
“Nice.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Joe closed the car door behind him and jogged over to the porter’s gate.
It was an unusual area of town, I thought. A line of grubby kebab and fried fish outlets jostled with chaotic little independent stores hawking rip-off versions of branded electronics. Built between were blocks like Joe’s – renovated warehouses, and now stylish oases of comfort for the professional class.
I was watching people coming and going on the street, wondering what kind of lives they all led, when my crystal became warm. Never a good sign. I looked down. It turned a deep pink; like a drop of blood diffused in water.
I leaned forward, wiping condensation from the windows, and scoured the vicinity for anything strange.
A gang of girls, huddled together like a pack of hounds, caught my eye. And not just my eye: my psychic senses were buzzing. I unlatched the safety belt and wound the window down to get a clearer view across the street.
I know those girls. That’s them, I thought. They dressed in punk style, pierced and tattooed, and had dyed, spiked hair. If I hadn’t been looking for it, and if they hadn’t been wearing short skirts, I guess I wouldn’t have noticed the three parallel scars each girl had on her inner thigh. Ouch and icky, I thought. I am feeling totally creeped out.
Apart from that, the girls behaved normally; laughing, looking at stuff on their ‘phones, linking arms. No-one else around seemed to think there was anything out the ordinary.
A young guy passing by turned back, rocking on his heels, hands in pockets, and wolf-whistled. I guess under the male gaze their outfits were kind of provocative, but in my book that was no excuse for the guy’s sexist behavior.
The girls stopped as one. They turned back to face the guy. He sauntered toward them. “Hey, ladies,” he said, smirking and letting his eyes slide over them, head to toe.
The tallest girl stepped forward. She snarled, growling like a wild animal; a guttural, inhuman sound. The guy paled. He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender, his face a picture of fear. Then he turned - and literally ran.
The girl turned back to the group, and they carried on as before, along the street, and then vanished out of sight. They were gone before I’d counted them. But I thought there were twelve. So maybe they haven’t taken Sam yet, I figured.
A second later and Joe jogged back to the car. He had a duffle bag slung over his shoulder which he dumped in the trunk before slinging himself back into the driving seat.
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks for waiting.”
“I saw the gang.”
“How do you mean?”
“A group of girls - dolled up in crazy makeup, spiked, died hair; kind of classic punk look. But the way they behaved was like… well, like a pack - you know, of wild dogs or hounds, maybe.”
“Was there something else?” The engine thrummed into life and Joe swung the car back out into the traffic.
“Nothing specific,” I said. “My crystal went pink, although that could have been anything in a crowded street like this. But I felt there was something weird.”
At the time I’d been sure something was wrong, but now I couldn’t say I’d seen anything out of the ordinary. Even the girl growling could have been a stunt.
“How weird? You think we should leave Sam for now and follow those girls?”
“I guess not. Sam wasn’t with them. At least I didn’t see her, which has to be a good thing. So let’s get to her before anyone else does.”
It didn’t take long to get to Sam’s block, but as I stepped down from the car I had a powerful sense that something was mighty wrong. I guess Joe must have seen it in my face. He paused as he lifted his duffel bag out of the trunk and raised an eyebrow.
“You got the heebie-jeebies?”
My moon-crystal was hot, glowing red.
“Yup,” I said, scanning the shadows beneath the building. There was definitely something wrong. I was coming round to Joe’s point of view and I didn’t like it. “We should prepare for nastiness. What’s in the duffel bag?”
He grinned, loosening the rope and pulling out a silver cross, a bundle of garlic bulbs, along with two horseshoes and a canister of silver bullets.
“Looks dated, I know,” he said, frowning now at the stuff in his hands as if he doubted it could be of any use. “But I’m told the old tools are still the most reliable.” He stuffed everything back in the bag.
“You wearing your VIBE?” I said.
The device was one of the most useful things he had in his under-funded array of corny equipment. The Vibrational Interference Biokinetic Equalizer neutralized supernatural frequencies and rendered him psychically invisible; very useful for sneaking up on ghosts and ghouls.
He patted his breast pocket. “Never without it,” he grinned. “Although getting a reissue after your friend Moratu sent his heavies in to ‘borrow’ the last one was a bureaucratic nightmare.”
I’d asked him because I couldn’t only see him, hear him, and smell him, but I could sense his psychic presence even when I turned my back to him.
“Maybe you should switch it on?” I said, unable to suppress my grin.
“Ah.” He fumbled under his jacket and his presence vanished. “Right. Good point.”
“Okay, enough shop talk; kids to rescue, worlds to save, and all that. What number’s her apartment?”
“Number 13.”
He shrugged. “Lucky for some.”
The main doors to the apartment block were locked. It wasn’t sufficiently upmarket of a place to have a 24/7 security guy. We stared at an electronic card swipe next to an array of buzzers.
“Shall we ring up?” Joe said.
My crystal was getting hotter.
“I reckon we should preserve the element of surprise. You have a way of getting in here?”
He shook his head. “Nope. A universal skeleton key would be nice, but…” He shrugged and patted his jacket where he’d concealed the VIBE. “No more pennies in the Metropolitan piggy-bank.”
“Okay, give me a minute. I’ve never tried telekinesis with electronics.”
Joe stood back and looked over his shoulder. “Now’s a good time to try,” he said. “There’s no-one about.”
Stretching out
my fingers, I placed my palm a few inches from the surface of the card swipe. Focusing my mind I reached into the device psychically, looking for the pattern in the system. With mechanical locks it’s a lot easier to visualize. But if I’d worried it would be harder with electronics, I needn’t have.
In fact, the circuits resonated at frequencies closer to psychic vibrations than simple mechanics. I summoned only the slightest amount of energy and propelled it through my fingers into the lock. A flash of blue light and the door sprung open.
“I’m glad you’re one of the good guys,” Joe said, nodding his approval of my electronic lock picking.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The door smoothed shut behind us. We were standing in a foyer. The walls were papered and painted, the floor covered in washable tiles, and the left side hosted a battery of lockable mail boxes. Ahead of us we had the elevator and the stairs.
“It’s on floor three,” Joe said. “How’s the crystal?”
“Hot.”
“Elevator or stairs?”
“I guess we need to cover both. It’d be a bummer if she came down the stairs while we were going up in the elevator.”
“So I’ll take the elevator. You hit the stairs and we’ll meet on floor three.”
“Deal.”
I left Joe waiting for the elevator doors to open and started up the stairs three at a time.
There was a small landing on the first floor with glass fire doors leading into a corridor. I glanced through, but there was no movement and I got no sense of any psychic disturbance in that direction.
Which is weird, Lia, I thought. Because your moon-crystal is glowing red. I turned from the door and headed on up the stairs. Onwards and upwards. I hope Joe’s okay up there. I realized he’d likely reach the door of Sam’s flat before me. At least he had the VIBE and his duffel bag of tricks, just in case.
I didn’t pause on the second floor, but when I hit the landing on the third floor, it was like running into an invisible wall of evil.
Wolf Moon: Lia Stone: Demon Hunter - Episode Two (Dragon-born Guardians Series Book 2) Page 2
