Dark Divide: A Cormac and Amelia Story

by Carrie Vaughn

  Trina shook her head. “I knew something was off with that guy. He’s from Fresno.”

  Domingo sighed. “Thank you, I suppose. The police will probably want to talk to you again—”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “But I’ll need to tell them—”

  “Call it an anonymous tip. Someone found their bodies and left voice mail.”

  After a moment, she nodded. “I may need to call in a favor or two, but I’ll leave you out of it.”

  “Thanks.”

  She went to a kitchen drawer, opened it, drew out a fat envelope, which she set on the table in front of him. It was full of cash, just like he asked. “I think I totaled up your expenses all right. Let me know if it’s short.”

  “And the cabin?” Trina said. “Don’t worry about it. Free of charge. Just for, you know.”

  He almost pushed the envelope back. He liked Domingo. What had happened here? That needed to be taken down. This wasn’t a job, this was a crusade for the public good.

  Is that a little pride I sense, hm?

  The altruistic thing would be to refuse payment and drive off into the sunset. But he took the money because the gas he’d burned to get here was more than he could afford. Besides, he deserved a little compensation for that nightmare. For facing Famine itself and living to tell about it. But he at least counted out what he would have spent on the cabin and gave it back to her.

  “Thanks,” he said. Annie and Trina shared a wry smile.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  He could ask her out to dinner. He could maybe stick around a couple more days. He could do a lot of things, he supposed. But he wanted to get back home.

  “I’m happy I could help, Ms. Domingo,” he said, and offered his hand for shaking.

  “I’ll call you if we get any other weird trouble around here, yeah?”

  “You’ve got my number,” he said.

  Amelia had one last task she wanted to perform before they took to the interstate to head out of the valley, so Cormac went to the supermarket up the road and bought a bouquet of flowers. Plenty of daisies this time of year, and Amelia liked daisies. Next, they drove out to the Alder Creek site, where the Donner family had camped. Camped, starved, and mostly died. Half the kids had survived. None of the adults did.

  At Amelia’s direction, he stepped a few feet off the trail and found a likely spot, near a living pine and hidden in the grasses where a conscientious ranger wouldn’t be likely to see it right away. There, he laid the thin bouquet on the ground, and thought about Tamsen Donner.

  Not just her, Amelia thought. All the mothers, really. If I was in the habit of praying, I would pray for them, trying to keep all those children alive through the nightmare. It’s the women of the camp I mourn.

  They couldn’t change anything. The prayers, the flowers—they were never for those who’d died. They were for the living, who wanted to help but couldn’t, not a hundred and fifty years later. So you lay down flowers and try not to think of what you’d have done if it had been you in that camp.

  He stood for a moment enjoying the clean air, the pure morning sun blazing down. Soaking in some of that elusive peace. If he felt a hand in his, giving a comforting touch of pressure, surely it was his imagination.

  I think it’s far past time we leave this place and go home.

  Cormac knew she was right.

  Kitty and Ben stared at Cormac across the table, and the longer they did the weirder this got. Obviously he hadn’t explained things very well, but he wasn’t sure what else he could say to make his trip out to Truckee sound more reasonable. They’d wanted to know what happened. Maybe he shouldn’t have told them.

  Finally, baby Jon fidgeted in Kitty’s arms, and that distracted them from their astonishment. He still wasn’t used to seeing the couple with a baby, but that was another issue. Babies were something that happened to other people, not anyone he knew.

  “Famine? The Third Horseman of the Apocalypse Famine?” Ben said.

  Cormac shrugged. “Don’t know that I’d swear to it in court. But it was pretty convincing.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” Kitty said. “Why am I even surprised? The shit we’ve seen? Sorry, pardon my language, don’t learn that word.” She kissed the baby’s fuzzy head, and he yawned.

  Ben was Cormac’s cousin and sometime lawyer. Kitty, he’d planned on killing the first time they met. Now, in one of the stranger mysteries in Cormac’s life, they were friends. The couple were both werewolves. Cormac had introduced them to each other, and. . .well. That had turned out all right, in the end.

  Today, they occupied a corner booth at Wild Things, Kitty and Ben’s new café slash coffee shop venture. More upscale than these places usually were, the café gave the impression of being part of the atrium of a modest country house, refined yet homey. Well lit and furnished, it had a good selection of art on the walls, books in scuffed bookshelves, and inviting sofas, chairs, and tables distributed throughout, with enough space in between that people weren’t likely to jostle each other moving around. Werewolves were territorial and sensitive to that sort of thing.

  Cormac still kept a silver-laced penknife in his pocket, just in case.

  “But it’s okay?” Ben asked. “It’s. . .not going to follow you or try to take revenge.”

  “No, I think it got whatever revenge it needed when it killed Peterson.”

  And good riddance. Let that be a warning if we ever tend toward hubris, hm?

  “So why do you still look worried?”

  Cormac gave a quick, wry smile which vanished almost instantly, and looked away. “I’m always worried.”

  Kitty got that look, then. The focused one that meant she was studying him, getting ready to ask a question he wouldn’t be able to dodge. But Jon fidgeted again, emitting a spectacular amount of drool, and she grabbed a napkin to stop the flow.

  They are a bit like alien creatures, aren’t they?

  Cormac had never held a baby in his life until this one came along. Kitty had insisted. “You’re his godfather. Just hold him once, so you can say you did. Maybe Amelia wants to hold him, ask her.” And, surprisingly, Amelia—whom Kitty had gleefully dubbed the fairy godmother—did. Just to see what it’s like, she’d said. The baby had been surprisingly solid in his arms, a firm weight pressing against him. Cormac had held his breath, hoping the baby didn’t wake up, that he didn’t drop him, and that Jon would grow up to be nothing like himself. Cormac as godfather was a terrible mistake. At the same time, he knew, in some fundamental and horrible way, that he would do anything in his power to protect this small life. They were a pack, Kitty liked to say. So, he now had a godson to go along with his cousin and whatever the hell Kitty was. And Amelia, whatever she was. It was illogical. It was family. Strange and comforting, all at once.

  “So what’s different this time?” she asked. “Something’s different. If this wasn’t bothering you, you wouldn’t have told us about it.”

  He almost hadn’t. He didn’t want them to worry, not about him. They had more important things to worry about. Like that kid. “I don’t know. We thought we’d seen it all. I’ve never felt like I crossed a line I couldn’t handle before. Then this happens.” Maybe he was just getting old.

  “You’re not thinking of quitting, are you?” Kitty asked.

  He hadn’t meant to hesitate, but he took an extra breath. And another. The couple exchanged one of those couple-glances, worried and full of questions as well as secret, silent plotting. Like they were thinking, No, you say something. . . .

  We aren’t quitting, Amelia said. Then added, more softly. Are we?

  “Amelia says no,” Cormac says. “And no, we aren’t.”

  “Well, good,” Kitty said, decisive. “Because the both of you have a really unique set of skills.”

  Yes. Exactly. And we must use those skills. You understand, don’t you?

  He could almost imagine Amelia sitting next to him, explaining. Persuading. He c
huckled.

  “Now what?” Ben said. “This isn’t funny, this is some kind of Biblical shit—”

  “Language,” Kitty said.

  “Kitty, hon, he’s six months old—”

  “And I swear if ‘shit’ ends up being his first word—”

  Jon grinned and burbled something that was, fortunately, incomprehensible.

  “Maybe that’s it,” Cormac said. “There’s some crazy stuff out there and we have these skills. . . . I just never had, I guess you’d call it purpose before. Not like this.”

  “Well,” Kitty said. “Purpose seems to suit you.”

  “I was worried,” Ben confessed. “When you put the guns away, if you’d find something else. And here you are.”

  Cormac smirked and looked away. This was getting too serious for him. “We’ll see.”

  In a meadow in his mind, Amelia smiled.

  Cormac and Amelia travel to South Dakota, where an archeologist has hired them to examine an artifact for possible magical qualities. Cormac is skeptical, Amelia is intrigued. And it turns out – the whole thing is a trap. Who from Cormac’s past is out for revenge, and can he survive?

  Pre-order Badlands Witch now!

  To read more about Cormac and Amelia, look for “Long Time Waiting,” available as part of

  Kitty’s Greatest Hits.

  Coming in 2020

  Discover the thrilling, deadly chronicles of the noble immortal who becomes Rick, ally of bestselling author Carrie Vaughn’s fan-favorite werewolf, Kitty Norville.

  Ricardo de Avila would have followed Coronado to the ends of the earth. Instead, Ricardo found the end of his mortal life, and a new identity—as the Immortal Conquistador.

  For over five hundred years, Ricardo keeps unwillingly upsetting the established order. He has protected his found family from marauding demons, teamed up with a legendary gunslinger, appointed himself the Master of Denver, and called upon a church buried under the Vatican. He has tended bar and fended off werewolves.

  Life for a vampire is long, but it is never simple.

  Pre-order The Immortal Conquistador now

  Other Books by Carrie Vaughn

  Carrie’s Website

  www.carrievaughn.com

  Carrie Vaughn is best known for her New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk radio show for the supernaturally disadvantaged. Her latest novels include a post-apocalyptic murder mystery, Bannerless, winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, and its sequel, The Wild Dead. She’s written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upwards of 80 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado.

  Dark Divide

  Copyright © 2019 by Carrie Vaughn, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Credits:

  Cover Design: Joe Campanella

  Interior design and formatting by:

  www.emtippettsbookdesigns.com