Hellhound (A Deadtown Novel)

by Nancy Holzner

  “That’s the third victim’s head?” I asked, pointing.

  Daniel nodded.

  There was no sign of Malone’s body. Not at first glance, anyway. You couldn’t put a white sheet over what I was looking for.

  Beyond the headless human body, a large puddle of black goo covered the street. It looked like a truckload of tar had spilled there. I walked toward it, noticing two things as I went: Flecks of the black stuff speckled the van and nearby buildings, and the dead, sour smell I’d noted back at the police line grew stronger. It made the air a viscous, putrid fog.

  Although it was full daylight now, I opened my senses to the demon plane—and staggered back a step. If the smell was bad in my reality, here it was unbearable. I covered my nose with both hands and scanned the area. In this perspective, the morning light dimmed to an ashy gray twilight, smudging the scene with filth. Demons can’t materialize in daylight, so I didn’t expect to see any hanging around. I didn’t; the streets and sky were empty.

  If the Morfran had been involved in what happened here, the spirit was gone now.

  From the looks of what was left of Tom Malone, the Morfran was involved, I thought as I pulled back from the demon plane. Back in human reality, the smell was less overwhelming, and I let my hands fall to my sides. I inspected the black slime that covered the street. Crime scene technicians, swathed in protective gear, combed through it, picking things up with tweezers and dropping them into evidence bags. Daniel showed me what they’d collected so far: bone fragments. Scraps of cloth. A clump of hair. A tooth.

  “You’re right,” I told him. “It sure as hell looks like Malone was killed by the Morfran.”

  A Morfran attack has three stages. First, the attacking spirit gouges out chunks of flesh and enters the victim, causing pressure to build inside the head. As this screaming headache grows, more Morfran enters the body and feeds. The pressure in the head increases, filling the entire body with agonizing pain. Finally, the pressure becomes too much, and—kaboom!—the victim explodes. Leaving exactly the kind of mess now gunking up Lincoln Street.

  We walked back to the scene perimeter, away from the slime and the smell. Daniel removed his mask and stuck it in his pocket.

  Something was bothering me. “You remember the stages of a Morfran attack, right?”

  He nodded. “Entry, feeding, explosion.”

  “You said two of the witnesses heard crows. Did anyone say anything about seeing crows attack Malone? You know, materialized Morfran.”

  “I asked. No one saw anything like that.”

  “Then what about wounds spontaneously opening up on Malone’s body, like he was being slashed by an invisible knife? The Morfran doesn’t always materialize when it attacks.”

  “All they said was what I told you. Malone dropped to his knees, clutched his head, and then . . .” Daniel gestured toward the zombie’s remains. “I see what you mean, though. Unless the witnesses left something out, it doesn’t follow the pattern.” He ran a hand through his hair, then shrugged.

  “I need to interview the zombie witnesses,” I said.

  Daniel gave me a half smile. “Does that mean you want the job?”

  “What job?” a man’s voice asked from behind me. “Costello, what’s this paranormal doing outside DA-1? The code level’s at red, you know.”

  “Shit,” muttered Daniel. Then he raised his voice. “So, Foster, you finally decided to answer your phone?”

  I turned to see the bald head and perpetual scowl of Daniel’s partner. Daniel believed they’d been put together because he, Daniel, was thought to be too sympathetic to paranormals. Foster, who had no such scruples, had reported Daniel several times for violating department policies regarding those of us whose DNA reads something other than “human.” Those department policies had been created by Commissioner Hampson, who’d like nothing better than to send in the wrecking balls and knock Deadtown off the map.

  Foster kept his beady eyes on me. “My phone battery died. Now, are you going to keep violating the Code Red, or are you going to call some uniforms to escort this . . . creature back to DA-1?”

  Creature. My demon mark blew up like a firecracker, and I had to grab my own right arm to stop myself from hauling off and punching that scowl off his ugly face. Give him something to spice up his goddamn report.

  Daniel laid his hand on my shoulder. “Vicky’s on the exceptions list. You’d know that if you’d bother to check.”

  Foster continued his stare-down like he was daring me to start something.

  “She’s on a list of approved consultants,” Daniel went on. “An expert on demons. She’s worked with us in that capacity before.”

  That was true. If you define “working with” as being dragged out of bed by the Goon Squad and marched to their headquarters for questioning. At least this time Daniel had picked up the phone and called me.

  “Vicky.” Daniel turned to me, and I broke eye contact with Foster. “We need your help on this.” He named a per diem rate. “Save receipts for any expenses that come up. You’ll get reimbursed. And you shouldn’t have any more trouble getting through the checkpoints. Once this goes through, you’ll be on the permanent ‘clear’ list.”

  “And that means?”

  “Your approved status remains the same, no matter what the code level.”

  “Until revoked,” Foster added, savoring the words.

  “Yes, until revoked,” Daniel snapped. “Just like your detective’s shield is good until it’s revoked.”

  Foster’s snorty laugh showed how little he feared that happening.

  Daniel lightly touched my arm, turning me away from Foster. We started walking toward Deadtown. “I’ll see you back to the checkpoint, then start on the paperwork right away. I’d like you to come out and interview the witnesses tonight, as soon as it’s dark.”

  Behind us, Foster snorted out another laugh. I turned to glare at him. The detective’s eyes gleamed, as though he was seeing a vision of Daniel wrapped like a mummy in miles and miles of red tape.

  3

  AFTER SUNRISE, DEADTOWN BECOMES A GHOST TOWN. (Well, not literally—ghosts are one of the few paranormal beings you won’t find here. Arawn, lord of the dead, does a pretty good job of keeping the shades of the departed within the boundaries of his realm.) But today, even though the sun had been up for more than an hour, the streets were crowded. And the mood wasn’t what you’d call festive.

  Zombies gathered in small groups, some listening to street-corner orators, others looking like they were ready for trouble the moment somebody else started it. Most were bundled up against the skin-damaging sunlight, wearing wide-brimmed hats, sunglasses, scarves or bandanas, coats, gloves. They looked more ready for a polar expedition than a political protest.

  But protest was in the air. Deadtown residents were beyond fed up. And they were getting ready to do something about it.

  Snatches of speeches faded in and out as I passed:

  “. . . Previously Deceased Humans. Hear that? Humans. Unlike some others around here, we’re human, and we deserve the same rights we had before the plague . . .”

  “. . . no longer willing to play the scapegoat for every crisis in Boston . . .”

  “. . . take back what’s ours! Before the plague, I owned my own business and two homes. Now? By law I can’t own anything. I work as a manual laborer. How ’bout you? How many here have similar stories?”

  A zombie turned to watch me walk by, then nudged another standing next to him. Their heads moved as they tracked me; even with their eyes hidden behind sunglasses, the hostility was palpable. I stopped. Putting my fists on my hips, I faced them, returning their stares. It wasn’t a challenge, simply a message that I would not be hurried on my way by a couple of zombies who didn’t like the looks of someone like me in their neighborhood.

  I can’t help it if I look like a human. Most of the time.

  After ten or twelve long seconds, the second zombie turned back to the speaker. The other
watched me for another heartbeat or two. Then he also turned around.

  I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Then I continued down the block.

  At the intersection, I paused. If I turned left here, a few minutes’ walk would take me to Kane’s town house. Kane, the monster I loved . . . or thought I did. Like many werewolves who held professional jobs, he worked norm hours. Usually he’d be at his office by now. But that office was near Government Center in the human part of town, and Deadtown was locked down tighter than a maximum security prison. Kane wasn’t on any Code Red exceptions list. As a high-profile lawyer working to secure civil rights for paranormals, he had too many enemies in the Police Commissioner’s Office. So right now, he was either working from home or making his own street-corner speech, one urging calm and using the courts—not violence—to redress grievances.

  I wanted to see him. Five minutes and I could be there. I’d go up to the front door and pull out my key . . . I sighed. No, I wouldn’t. Even though Kane had given me a key to his place months ago, I wouldn’t use it. I’d ring the bell. And the reason why was the same reason I stood on this corner, unable to make my feet move in the direction I wanted to go.

  After years of on-again, off-again dating, Kane had told me he loved me. That he wanted to take our relationship to the next level. And I, world champion of commitment-phobes, had managed to admit I felt the same way. So why wasn’t I running to be with him now?

  Why, indeed.

  A couple of weeks ago, I’d followed Pryce into the Darklands, the realm of the dead, to try to stop him from recreating his lost shadow demon and reclaiming his power. I’d failed. Not only did Pryce have a shadow demon again, that shadow demon was the biggest, nastiest Hellion I’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. Although I’d killed Difethwr, the Destroyer, Pryce had managed to resurrect the Hellion, binding himself to it in the process. The Destroyer and I went way back—more than ten years ago, the Hellion placed its mark on me, the mark that made me want to smash things when I didn’t keep it under control. When Pryce brought the Destroyer back to life—bigger and nastier than ever—my little anger-management problem boiled over.

  These days, dating me was on a par with dating an active volcano. Any little thing could trigger an explosion, like when I’d surveyed the destruction in the New Combat Zone and wanted to join in. But the Destroyer’s claim on me wasn’t the worst of it.

  When I’d disappeared into the Darklands, Kane followed me there, determined to bring me home. But the realm of the dead doesn’t issue tourist visas. To get in, he’d made a bargain with Mallt-y-Nos, aka the Night Hag, a psychopomp who drives wandering spirits of the recently departed into the Darklands. Mallt-y-Nos is a hunter. She loves nothing more than to chase terrified, disoriented souls through the night, her pack of hellhounds snapping at their heels. As his price of admission to the Darklands, Kane agreed to serve the Night Hag as one of those hellhounds for a year and a day.

  When he made the deal, Kane had no way of knowing what he was getting into.

  He knew better now.

  The Night Hag’s hellhounds are creatures made of pain. Fiery, agonizing pain miles beyond anything imaginable. The burning drives the frantic hounds onward—running, running from the pain—but no relief ever comes. The hag intensifies the torture to force the hounds to obey her commands. It’s the kind of pain that pushes everything out—thoughts, judgments, even sanity—consuming all. I knew, because I’d experienced it. To enter the Darklands, I’d made my own bargain with the Night Hag. She’d forced me to shift into a hellhound and then run me across the border.

  Now, Kane had experienced it, too. Just once, but once was enough to break nearly anyone. And for the next twelve full moons, his werewolf form would be twisted, over and over again, into a monstrous hound that knows nothing but pain.

  The Night Hag hates me because even though I fulfilled the terms of our deal, things didn’t turn out in her favor. She’s vowed that her hellhounds will tear me to pieces. And she’s waiting until the next full moon, when her pack will have an extra member: Kane.

  He’ll be forced to obey the Night Hag’s command; the pain won’t leave room for anything else. I know it, and he knows it.

  There’s no way around it: I love you doesn’t stand a chance against Sorry, but in a few days I’ll be forced to hunt you down and kill you. Was it any wonder we were avoiding each other?

  With a heavy heart, I crossed the street and headed home.

  IN MY BUILDING’S LOBBY, I NODDED GOOD MORNING TO CLYDE, the doorman, who was stationed at his desk. He was eating, as zombies do, but Clyde’s sense of decorum was such that he never wanted to be caught snacking on the job. He stashed a crinkly cellophane bag in the desk and brushed some crumbs off his uniform.

  “Good morning, Ms. Vaughn,” he said. I’d asked about a hundred times for him to call me Vicky, but to Clyde being on a first-name basis with tenants was as much a faux pas as picking one’s nose in public. “Mr. Kane stopped by while you were out.”

  My heartbeat surged. “Is he upstairs?”

  Clyde pursed his lips. He’d been a minister in his former, pre-plague life, and becoming a zombie hadn’t changed his moral sense one iota. Although he’d never uttered a judgmental word, he’d let me know in no uncertain terms what he thought when I gave Kane a key to my apartment. In fact, he was letting me know right now. If you’ve never gotten a disapproving look from a holier-than-thou zombie, you haven’t really lived. Still, once you get past the disapproval, Clyde’s a good guy.

  “No,” he finally said. “He seemed very concerned with that business out there.” Clyde waved a hand toward the door, whether to indicate the zombie unrest in Deadtown or the state of the world in general I couldn’t tell. “He requested that I inform you he’ll telephone this evening.”

  As the rhythm of my heart settled back to normal, I wondered whether it was pleasure or anxiety that sped it up in the first place. Both, probably. At any rate, Kane knew I usually slept during the day, so he was assuming I’d come home from wherever and fall into bed. Which was exactly what I intended to do.

  If only he were there to fall into bed with me.

  I wished. In the days since we’d returned from the Darklands, Kane and I had barely been able to look one another in the eye, let alone touch each other. It was like each of us was afraid the other would break.

  Maybe we would.

  A sigh escaped me before I squared my shoulders and thanked Clyde. His expression softened, as much as it’s possible for a zombie’s face to go soft. “Is everything all right, Ms. Vaughn?”

  No. These days, nothing was within shouting distance of all right. But I pasted on a smile and nodded. “Fine.”

  Clyde tilted his head skeptically, as if trying to see inside mine. “If I can be of any assistance. I’m a trained counselor, you know . . .” He blinked, as if suddenly remembering his place, and nodded sharply.

  “Thanks, Clyde.” My words seemed to embarrass him. He shuffled papers on his desk and wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Well, have a good day,” I said. He didn’t reply.

  Walking across the lobby to the elevators, I wondered how long it had been since either of us had had a truly good day. Was there such a thing in Deadtown?

  4

  I COULD HEAR JULIET’S MOVIE SCREEN–SIZE TV BLARING through the front door as I inserted my key. One of the disadvantages of having a 650-year-old vampire for a roommate was her simultaneous fascination and boredom with contemporary life. Juliet was intrigued by modern technology, which was why she bought the biggest, flattest, highest-definition television she could find. But during her many centuries of undeath, she’d seen it all—aside from intermittent “fascinations” (her word) with home shopping channels or the latest reality show, she couldn’t sustain interest in what was on. In other words, she loved her TV but couldn’t care less about the content. She’d turn it on, crank up the volume in all six speakers, marvel at the quality of the picture and the sound, a
nd then wander off to find something else to do. Seeing as the sun had come up hours ago, she was undoubtedly tucked into her coffin, dead to the world, leaving me to risk going totally deaf in the time it took to cross the living room, pick up the remote, and turn the damn thing off.

  Good thing our neighbors are vampires, too, I thought, opening the door and wincing against the assault of sound. Once a vampire resumes the shroud for the day, nothing disturbs him until sundown. At least I didn’t have to deal with angry neighbors pounding on—or more likely through—the walls.

  To my surprise, Juliet was still up. She sat in the dark room, blackout shades drawn, her face tinged by the flickering bluish light from the screen. She didn’t notice me come in; she was absorbed in some nature program, absentmindedly eating popcorn from a bowl in her lap.

  I switched on the overhead light, and she turned toward me, blinking.

  “Can you turn that down?” I shouted.

  She leaned forward and picked up the remote. Several clicks later, I could actually hear myself think.

  “What did you say? I couldn’t hear you over the television.”

  Before I could think of a suitably sarcastic reply, a large white bird hopped onto Juliet’s shoulder. “It was a little loud, I guess,” the falcon said. “But those surround-sound speakers are brilliant.” He cocked his head and fixed his sharp gaze on the bowl in Juliet’s lap. “May I have some more popcorn?”

  “Hi, Dad,” I said, as Juliet offered a kernel to the hooked beak.

  Yes, my father is a white falcon. A talking white falcon with rainbow-colored eyes.

  He hadn’t always been a bird, of course. Although I come from a race of shapeshifters, Dad’s condition was unheard of, even among our kind. For one thing, only Cerddorion females have the ability to shift (it arrives with all the other joys of puberty). For another, when I change shape, the animal brain takes over. If I shifted into a falcon, I wouldn’t be sitting in anyone’s living room, watching TV, eating popcorn, and making conversation. I’d be out hunting mice or whatever it is falcons do. Real falcons, I mean.