Night's Fall (Night's Champion Book 2)

by Richard Parry

  He suffers.

  Danny stood straighter. “No.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No.”

  Carlisle nodded, like she was agreeing, then she turned to face Danny. “Fill me in. What’s the point?”

  “I just…” She trailed off, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t think this is the life for your kid?”

  “Adalia?

  “You got another kid?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean … no, I don’t have another kid. Yes, the life is fine.”

  “It’s fine?”

  Danny shrugged. “You know it isn’t.”

  Carlisle nodded again. “That makes no sense at all.”

  “You didn’t have to come with me.” Danny began to pick at the wall behind her, the thatch snagging against her fingertips. It was old, brittle with the cold that wrapped around her. Snow stretched out in front of the porch, painting the bare trees white. Their cottage was small, she’d grabbed it for just a few dollars online. If she thought about it, could almost feel the heat of the fire inside. Almost. “You really didn’t.”

  “I really did.” Carlisle sneezed. “You could have the decency to show you’re cold. Just a little.”

  “I am cold. It’s fucking freezing out here.” Danny gave her head a shake, catching a flash of curls out of the corner of her eyes. She reached up, ran a hand through her hair. “God damn. I need a hair cut.”

  “You need to call Everard.”

  “I need a haircut more than that.”

  “You really don’t,” said Carlisle. “You need to get your ass back to the world.”

  “Why?”

  “Couple of reasons I can think of,” said Carlisle. “The first being that you can’t be homeschooling your kid forever—”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she needs to get out there. In the middle of it. Meet friends.”

  “Meet people who want to kill her.”

  “Come on,” said Carlisle. “Be reasonable. They don’t want to kill her. Mostly, they want to kill Everard.”

  My Valentine. Danny felt her lips twinge upward in a smile. “You got a second reason?”

  “My medical’s lapsed,” said Carlisle. “This weather’s going to kill me.”

  Danny felt the smile fall away from her face. “I miss him.”

  “I know.”

  “I miss him like the desert misses the rain,” she said. “But…”

  Carlisle waited her out, just turning back to look into the woods, saying nothing.

  “Okay,” said Danny, “it’s like this. I miss him, but I don’t know if it’s me that misses him.”

  We are the same.

  Carlisle shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  Danny frowned. “I—”

  “I’ll let you think it over,” said Carlisle. “I used to get paid to catch bad people, like Batman, okay? This isn’t really in my wheelhouse. I’m going back inside to watch bad TV.”

  “There’s no TV reception out here.”

  “That’s why it’s bad,” said Carlisle. “Also, they’ve found us.”

  Danny felt her breath catch. “Biomne?”

  “Not unless they’ve opened up a resort in the Caribbean.” Danny heard something wistful in her tone, but when Carlisle spoke again her voice had gone hard. “Different ‘they.’ Still assholes though, whoever they are.”

  “When?”

  “Last night,” said Carlisle. “They didn’t follow me back here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No.” Danny felt Carlisle shrug in the darkness. “Not really sure about much at the moment. I’m not sure if we should stay, or go. I’m not sure if I should roll into town, maybe get in a fight. I don’t know if I should get drunk. I don’t know about raising teenage girls—”

  “You don’t need to—”

  “—or how to keep it all together in my head. You remember Elliot?” Carlisle’s voice had gone soft in the cold.

  “We never met,” said Danny. She was caught off guard for a moment, felt that Carlisle was wanting something from her. “We never … that was before all this.”

  “Sorta,” said Carlisle. “Kinda not as well. He went missing in the middle. I saw him again last night.”

  “He’s alive?” Danny turned to look at Carlisle. “He’s okay?”

  “Not really,” said Carlisle. “I don’t think so.”

  Danny felt Carlisle move, then the thud of the door as it closed behind her friend. She breathed, watching her breath misting in front of her.

  The desert misses the rain. The night misses the moon. Pack mate.

  “I know,” she said to the empty air. “I know.”

  ∙ • ● • ∙

  When she checked her phone, there weren’t any messages. Just a missed call from a number she knew by heart.

  “Your phone rang again,” said Adalia. Her tone was accusing.

  “I know, honey,” said Danny. She stamped her feet to get the blood moving. Force of habit. Not like she needed to. Not anymore — the blood always moved just fine. She caught a glimpse of herself in the old mirror hung over the fireplace. It was spotted with age, easy to look at. It hid so many sins she knew must be written on her face. She looked away, not wanting to meet her own eyes.

  “It rang yesterday too,” said Adalia.

  “I know,” said Danny. “I know.”

  “And —”

  “I know!” Danny tossed the phone aside.

  Adalia hunkered into the couch she was sitting on, the back of it cutting her off from Danny’s view. Danny could see the tips of flames licking up into the chimney from where she stood, the couch not quite blocking her view. Adalia said something, almost too low to hear, but it’d been a long time since Danny had been able to pretend she hadn’t heard something.

  Still. You needed to pretend, sometimes. You needed to be a mother, sometimes. Or all the time. Even when you wanted to run, or hunt, or cry. “What was that?”

  “He always calls,” her daughter said again. “And you never answer.”

  Danny looked down at her hands, then at the back of the couch. Adalia hadn’t surfaced again — her eyes probably on the fire. “It’s complicated.”

  “Mom? If I had a boyfriend—”

  “If?”

  “If I had a boyfriend, and he called me and I didn’t pick up for a week — or a month, or a year — do you know what would happen?”

  Danny shrugged, even though she knew Adalia couldn’t see her. “I’m a bit out of touch with the kids of today.”

  “I’d be so dumped,” said Adalia. “Dumped. Like, he would stop calling.”

  The night misses the moon.

  “Maybe…” Danny felt her voice catch. “Maybe I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “What if,” said Adalia, “tomorrow is the day he stops wanting to talk?”

  Danny’s reply was cut off by Carlisle stamping in from the hallway. She was decked out in loose-fitting faded jeans and an old bomber jacket. “I’m out.”

  “You’re what?” Danny blinked at her.

  “Going out. Before we spend so much time together we start synchronizing periods. Shark week three at a time is hell. Just the thought of two at a time was why I’d never be a lesbian.”

  “I thought,” said Adalia’s voice from behind the couch, “you weren’t lesbian because you—”

  “And that’s my cue,” said Carlisle. “Kid? Stuff we talk about when your Mom’s not here is like stuff that goes on in Vegas.”

  “I’ve never been to Vegas.”

  “Good,” said Carlisle, as the door rattled closed behind her. The sound of their big truck starting up pattered against the outside of the cabin, fading as the distance ate the sound.

  Danny looked at the door, the night falling outside. The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. She took a half step towards the couch where Adalia sat, then stopped, looking at her phone again.

  Tomorrow. She�
��d call tomorrow. Because…

  Because she just wasn’t ready yet.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Carlisle looked at the door to the bar, the snow falling around her. Her bomber jacket wasn’t warm enough for this, not by a long shot, but she’d get warm inside soon enough, and she wanted to be free to move. She reached behind her to the sidearm she had tucked into the waist of her jeans, then pulled her jacket down over the top. The Eagle was big but felt comfortable against her back — an old friend, one she’d felt she’d needed since … well, since she’d started hunting bigger game.

  Your problem, she said to herself as she walked towards the entrance to the bar, is that you can’t leave shit alone. You should get Danny and her kid, get them in the truck, and drive, just fucking drive until there’s no more people anywhere around you.

  Except, that’s what they’d tried to do when they found this place. Drove to a point where there wasn’t supposed to be a town on a map, and they’d still found her. Carlisle felt the weight of it on her shoulders. They hadn’t tracked Danny, or even the kid. Detective Carlisle, the Caribbean man had said. He’d known who she was, what she was from before.

  There were trucks parked out front tonight, five of them, one of them big and black. Snow was gathering against them, softening the edges of their shapes in the dark. The black truck had tinted windows that were out of place in in a town where the night lasted far too long. As she got near it, she kneeled down in the snow, fishing the tracker — a small box, easy to miss unless you were looking for it — out of a pocket. Carlisle flicked a switch on the box, then stuck it up under the wheel arch. She brushed snow from her knees, then breathed the night air, the dry cold of it sharp in her nose. She didn’t have Danny’s gifts, but she could catch the scent of bad liquor and cheap men on the air as well as the next girl.

  She looked around one more time. Last chance. Just walk the fuck away. She ran a hand through her hair, then walked to the door of the bar — wrong way, wrong damn way Carlisle — pushing it open in a smooth motion. Warmth and light and the smell of fried food hit her all at the same time, and she stood still for a moment, door open behind her, snow falling and tumbling in around her feet.

  Carlisle saw them in the bar — Caribbean, perfect teeth showing as his lips started to pull up in a smile of recognition. She felt an unexpected, almost foreign twinge in her gut — you hardly know the man, get over it Carlisle — and pushed it aside. She looked at the two other men that stood next to him, their heads turning to look at her. She let the door close behind her as she took in the other men in the bar, all cut of the same cloth — heavy set, too much fat over muscle made strong by working outside in the cold.

  “Detective Carlisle,” said Caribbean. He looked genuinely pleased to see her, his eyes flicking down and back up as he—

  Don’t kid yourself, Carlisle. He’s ten years younger than you, and was probably banging cheerleaders in college. You hate cheerleaders.

  —stood up, arms wide and welcoming. “It looks like we won’t need a search after all.”

  “I’ll get to you in a second,” she said, then turned to the men Caribbean and his team were talking to. “All you guys? Get out.”

  The one closest to her looked her up and down, nothing nice at all in it. He had a plaid shirt, some relic of twenty years ago, stains down the front. He did the glance — eyes down, eyes up, smile in the eyes — before speaking. “Well look what we’ve got here,” he said. “Guys, we’ve—”

  “No,” said Carlisle. “This isn’t going to be that kind of night.”

  Plaid started to get up, anger pulling at his face. It looked at home there. “Now listen here, missy,” he said.

  “No,” said Carlisle again. “You’ll listen to me.” The cop came back into her tone, comfortable and natural. “These men are wanting to hire you. Easy money, they said.”

  Caribbean stepped forward, started to open his mouth.

  “No,” said Carlisle. “I haven’t finished. Easy money, like I said, all you got to do is find some people living in a cabin. Not many tourists around here, you think you know where they are and what to look for. But what you don’t know,” said Carlisle, “is what happened to the last group of heroes who tried to bag ‘em. You think maybe a cabin full of chicks is easy, you’ll just roll up and stuff them in a bag for your new, rich friend here.”

  The jukebox started playing then, the same damn Johnny Cash song kicking on that was playing last night. Plaid was standing now, his jowls shaking as he spoke. “Looks like you just came to give us an advance.”

  “No,” said Carlisle. “The problem with you people is you don’t listen. I’ve come to give you an escape.” She walked closer to them, trailing her fingers over a table top as she approached the group. She spoke again, looking at the group of men, but hoping Caribbean was listening. He has to. “She doesn’t like killing them. She can’t stop once she starts.”

  Plaid looked confused, but he was the kind of man that didn’t let a little thing like that slow him down. He stepped forward, reaching a hand out towards Carlisle’s arm. She watched the hand come, let the man step into kissing distance. Carlisle felt the hand close on her arm and almost let herself smile, closing her eyes and letting her breath out. She could feel it as Plaid’s hand applied pressure, implied possession, as the man leaned away from her, his voice sounding like he’d turned to face the other men, heard him say, “Boys, I think we’ve—”

  Her eyes snapped open as her hand whipped around in a haito strike, the blade formed by the top edge of her hand hitting the soft tissue in the man’s neck. Plaid’s voice was cut off and he gagged, sagging a little and turning to face her. His hand softened just enough on Carlisle’s arm; she dropped her shoulder, breaking free of the grip, then rose up, using her momentum to slam a palm heel under the man’s chin. He lifted up, head whipping back, then toppled out on the ground like a falling tree, glasses and bottles on the tables around her shaking and jumping.

  Carlisle held her pose for a couple of heartbeats, then lowered her hand back to her side. “I said,” she said, eyes on Plaid’s four friends, “that this wasn’t going to be that kind of night. Could be a different kind of night if you want it to be. Your call.” She saw anger building in the group, a man with a Michelin jacket putting an uncertain hand on the belly that stuck out over his waistband. A friend of his with a cap that said Welcome to Miami pulled the hat off, slicked back his already slick hair, then put it back on. The third took a pull from his beer — does he actually have a shirt that advertises Miller? — while the last man reached under his vest and pulled out a small revolver. It looked like a 38 Special — she’d know the shape of the Smith & Wesson from any angle. She’d had one for years.

  “If you point that gun at me,” she said, “you’re going home in a bag.”

  38 Special looked down at the gun in his hand, then back up to Carlisle. He thought about it, then raised the gun, slow and deliberate, and pointed it at Carlisle.

  She frowned. “That wasn’t the best call you’ve made tonight.”

  The man looked at her, then at the gun in his hand as he tipped it slightly before pointing it back at her. “What?”

  “See,” she said, “you think you’ve got a gun pointed at me, and you’re in charge.”

  “That’s right,” said 38 Special, looking at her over the barrel. “I’ve got the gun.”

  “You’ve got the gun,” Carlisle agreed, nodding. “It’d work better for you if the safety was off.”

  “You think I’m going to fall for that?”

  “No,” said Carlisle. She licked her lips, then let them part in a fierce, tight smile.

  “Fuck this,” said 38 Special, and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. Carlisle shrugged. “Safety’s on.” She pointed. “It’s the little thing there on the side,” she said. “Just above your thumb.”

  The man looked at the gun, then clicked the safety switch. “Now,” he said, “we’re—”

>   Carlisle stepped forward with her left leg, letting her right foot catch the base of a chair next to her. She kicked the chair across the space between them, letting her momentum take her a little to the left. The chair spun through the air, then collided with the man’s arm. The revolver fired, the bullet spitting past her, shattering something made of glass behind her. 38 Special went down, the chair hitting him in the bridge of the nose. A touch of cold licked at her back — he shot out a window — as she pushed herself into a dash towards the three standing men.

  Michelin took a swing at her as she got close, so slow it was almost comical. She stepped under his arm — got to get him in the way, give me something to work with — giving him a gentle push and spinning him around so his back faced her. Carlisle stamped down hard on the back of one of the man’s knees, grabbing the back of his hair at the same time. He fell backward like a falling anvil, and she stepped to the side and slammed a fist into his face as he fell past her. He didn’t get up.

  Something behind her — some fragment of sound — drew her back around, and she saw man with the Miami cap had grabbed a pool cue. He waved it at her. “Bitch!”

  Carlisle looked past him, took in Caribbean. The man was standing in his impeccable suit, arms folded. The two men at his side watched. She shrugged, raising an eyebrow at him. He unfolded his arms, held a hand out, palm up towards Miami, a gesture that said go ahead.

  Weird. She could solve that later. One case at a time, Carlisle. She took four quick steps towards Miami, then leaned back as the man swung the cue towards her head. She didn’t slow herself, stepping inside his reach and grabbing the hands that held the wood. They locked together, shoulder to shoulder, and Carlisle let him see her smile. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Bitch!” said the man again, and tried to wrestle the cue from her. She let herself be tugged around, then planted her feet and swung the cue back around between them, using it like a lever. There was a crack as the man’s wrist snapped, and he screamed. She took two steps away, still holding the cue, then swung it back around into the side of the man’s head. He dropped like a stone, a tooth spinning across the room. It clattered against the jukebox, which skipped and started to change tracks. Probably more Johnny Cash.