Low Midnight (Kitty Norville Book 13)

by Carrie Vaughn

  The trail leveled off to a small plateau, maybe fifty yards across, bound by a narrow ridge on one side, sloping down into the next valley on the other. He checked the GPS and confirmed, this was it. The pines here were small, gnarled by the wind, which must have blown pretty much constantly. A handful of birds, chickadees it sounded like, flitted in a stand of scrub oak. Blowing grit rattled against his sunglasses.

  Surely anything he might have left here will be long gone, Amelia observed.

  Cormac took a slow walk around the site anyway, tipping up rocks with his boots, checking under trees for anything out of place. Didn’t even find a broken beer bottle or weather-faded can, which meant nobody came up here much. At least, nobody stopped for long if they did. He wondered if bringing a metal detector up here would uncover anything.

  He took a moment to stand still, listening. Waiting for that prickling on the back of his neck that told him something strange was close by, a feeling of warning that had as much to do with instinct as anything supernatural.

  Let’s scry a bit, see if anything turns up.

  Since meeting Amelia and leaving prison, he’d taken to carrying a collection of items in his pockets. String, a candle stub, a packet of salt, a few herbs like sage and rowan. A piece of chalk, a bit of iron, a quartz crystal. The most basic tools of spell casting. He could work just about any kind of basic magic with these items. Rather, Amelia could work magic, using his body to manipulate the items, to power the spells. She’d been able to use her magic to preserve her soul, but without a body, she couldn’t use what she’d learned.

  Over time, Cormac had come to see the usefulness of Amelia’s brand of magic. Made up a little for losing his guns—though as he sometimes joked at Ben, it wasn’t having guns that was strictly illegal for a convicted felon like him; it was getting caught with them. Ben didn’t think that was funny.

  This is quite simple, really. It won’t tell us details, but it will tell us if this location has a strong magical presence or not. This might indicate if Kuzniak used magic to kill Crane.

  “Let’s get to it then.”

  First, face east. Then we’ll need a small hole in the ground—

  He found east by the sun, which was edging past noon to the western hills, then found a sheltered space where he dug a divot in the ground using his boot heel.

  We need kindling for a fire, and a match—

  Using his pocket knife, he cut a twig and its lingering dried-up leaves from a scrub oak and crumbled the vegetation into the hole. Early discussions between them established that a disposable lighter worked just as well as a match. Better, even, though it might not have been as elegant and mysterious. Amelia was still getting used to the wondrous modern technology.

  In the end, he could only do so much, following the easy directions she gave him. He could do the prep work, the hard labor. But just about every spell had a moment where timing and precision came into the mix. A deeper knowledge, the kind of thing Amelia had spent her life studying, and Cormac hadn’t. So he gave himself over to Amelia.

  In that moment, he didn’t have control of his body. He was there looking through his eyes, he could feel his thumb resting on the lighter, felt the sun’s heat on the back of his neck, but Amelia was doing the moving. Wasn’t quite an out-of-body experience. More like sitting in the passenger seat when you didn’t know if the person next to you could really drive. He’d learned to sit back calmly, resting in the back of his own mind so he didn’t panic and freeze up.

  Kitty told him once that he’d fallen asleep, but Amelia hadn’t, and talked in a dreamlike state. He didn’t remember that. He wouldn’t say that he was afraid she’d up and take him over entirely one of these days, waiting until he fell asleep and then going for some walk he wouldn’t appreciate. But nervous wasn’t quite afraid, was it?

  I wouldn’t do that, she commented. When you sleep, I sleep. I was talking in your sleep, that time.

  That didn’t even make sense.

  She held up the lighter and a length of red string, then whispered an incantation with his voice, something in a language he didn’t know, probably Latin but knowing Amelia it could have been anything. She repeated the incantation twice more, set the string on fire, and dropped it in the makeshift cauldron filled with leaves.

  The vegetation instantly caught and flared in a foot-high burst of flame that made Cormac sit back. In a moment, the leaves were nothing but ashes, and the edges of the shallow dish in the soil were scorched.

  Amelia gave a mental shiver that might have been a deep sigh. “That’s good enough, I think.”

  It felt like an extra long blink, a brief moment of vertigo, and she fell into the back of his mind. He was at the fore, right where he belonged, without even thinking of it, like nothing had happened. Back in control of his body, Cormac brushed himself off and looked around to make sure they hadn’t set anything on fire.

  “I take it that’s a positive,” he murmured.

  Oh, I would very much say so.

  A noise—footsteps—caught Cormac’s ear, and a male voice shouted at them from the head of the trail. “Hey, you! You there! Stand up! Keep your hands up!”

  He looked over his shoulder to see a man standing some thirty yards away, holding a rifle pointed at him.

  Chapter 8

  CORMAC STILL held the lighter. He kept it in sight, putting both his hands up while he slowly got to his feet, stamping out the last of the smoldering ashes. So, this must have been the guy poking around Judi and Frida had mentioned.

  There were actually four guys, three with guns, but only the guy in the middle had drawn on him. The other two who were carrying waited to see what their alpha male buddy would do, and if Cormac was going to give them any trouble. The fourth guy stood behind the others, hunched in a long overcoat and looking miserable. Cormac kept his eyes on the armed trio while mentally reviewing the area and his escape routes. He couldn’t win in a fight with all three of them, but there was enough cover here he could avoid getting shot. If he had to, he could go over the edge of the plateau and slide to safety on his ass without getting himself too badly hurt. Though his recently broken and healed arm throbbed at the memory of how well that sort of thing usually went.

  He nudged Amelia. You got anything that can spook these guys?

  Nothing that’s faster than they can fire on us.

  “Cormac Bennett?”

  When the man lowered the rifle from his shoulder, Cormac recognized him. “Anderson Layne,” he answered, without enthusiasm.

  He hadn’t seen the man in more than a decade. Guy must have been in his forties now, his buzz cut more gray than brown, but he had the same glare and the same gnarled set to his limbs, big knuckles gripping the rifle, broad shoulders showing through his heavy tan hunting jacket. He was someone who worked out compulsively, a big guy who knew his strength, but was trying not to notice he was getting older.

  Cormac cursed to himself. Out of all the places and times he could have run into Anderson Layne, it had to be here, and now. On the other hand, Layne seemed happy to see him. Maybe Cormac should have expected this. Knowing these guys was either going to make this easier or harder.

  Laughing, Layne tucked the rifle under his arm, which was only mildly comforting.

  “Jesus, how long’s it been? How you doing?” He strode forward, hand outstretched to shake, and Cormac walked up to meet him. “You guys remember Cormac? Douglas Bennett’s kid? Who’d have figured it, running into you out here?”

  Layne had been part of the bunch headed up by David O’Farrell, Ben’s father. Militia and sovereignty activists playing at being freedom fighters, mostly using it as an excuse to collect automatic weapons and blow shit up. Cormac had been mixed up with them in his late teens—they had access to guns, and they had connections. Everybody seemed to know his father, and Cormac had gotten his first few jobs through those contacts. When Ben went away to college, then law school, Cormac drifted away from his increasingly unbalanced uncle. Ben had
seen the writing on the wall and tried to get his father to give up the movement. David O’Farrell didn’t take the warning, declaring instead that his son had been suckered by the government and was a fool for following the rules. On the other hand, Cormac did take the warning, because Ben wasn’t stupid, and he turned out to be right. When his uncle had been arrested on a catalog of conspiracy charges, the group had scattered. Cormac hadn’t seen them in over a decade, and he didn’t miss them at all. He shook Layne’s hand anyway.

  The other two might have been part of that bunch, back in the day. Cormac hadn’t known everyone, or hadn’t bothered remembering everyone. They were closer to his age than Layne’s. Layne’s protégés, just as Layne had been David’s. And the beat went on.

  Cormac nodded at them and said, “Been awhile.”

  “So,” Layne said, questioningly, studiously. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Oh, taking a walk, checking things out. Heard some ghost stories about the spot, wanted to see for myself.”

  “You want to see ghosts, shouldn’t you be out here at midnight?”

  “Depends on the ghost. What about you? Coming up here to shoot cans or something?”

  Layne’s smile might have gotten stiffer at that. “Where are you these days, still up in Greeley? You have time to go get a drink? I think we might be able to help each other.”

  He very much didn’t want to go drink with Anderson Layne. Just seeing the guy standing there felt like fishhooks from his old life biting into him, trying to drag him off. But Layne being here might mean he knew something. This was the next signpost on the trail. In the end, he was still standing between Cormac and the way out, holding a gun.

  Cormac agreed to the drink.

  * * *

  THEY RECONVENED in a run-down biker bar off Highway 24 just outside of Woodland Park. Cormac gathered that it was a regular haunt of Layne’s and his bunch. The bartender, a tall, skinny white guy with a beard and tattoos peeking out from under his shirt collar, waved when they came in and greeted Layne by name. After coming in from the bright afternoon, Cormac paused a moment to take off his sunglasses and let his vision adjust to the darker interior, lit by a few overhead lights and sun coming in through a tinted front window. The place was cheap, cheap-looking, fully by intention, with a concrete floor and stale, beer-tinged air. Wood paneling on the walls was decorated with lots of neon beer ads and posters for old promotions, like last season’s Broncos football schedule. A Confederate flag hung on the back wall as some sort of test—if it offended you, you probably shouldn’t be here. He ducked his head to hide a smile at the predictability of it all.

  Layne brazened in like he owned the place and couldn’t be at all subtle. He hauled himself onto a barstool and announced, “Hey, Dan! Guess who I found? It’s Cormac Bennett—you know, Douglas Bennett’s kid. The vampire hunter! You’re still into that weird shit, aren’t you?”

  About as subtle as dynamite. Bartender Dan stretched out his hand for Cormac to shake, which he did as he joined Layne at the bar.

  “It’s not as exciting as it sounds,” Cormac said. “Not like in the movies.”

  “And I’m sure you’re just being modest,” Layne insisted. “You know, you might not believe this, but I was just thinking of calling you. I might have a job for you.”

  Dan put bottles in front of them, and Cormac sipped. People kept offering him jobs—why didn’t he feel lucky? “Yeah?” Curt, noncommittal.

  “How much have you heard about that spot on the plateau?”

  Cormac decided to hold out some bait, do some fishing. “Back a hundred or so years ago, a prospector staked a claim up there and ran into trouble. Stories say he killed someone. Stories don’t say whether he ever found any gold.”

  “Yeah, I know those stories. Kind of like the ones about your dad. I mean, we all heard about him going after weird shit—werewolves, vampires, you know?—but this was years ago and we all thought that was bullshit, just crazy stories to make him come off even scarier than he was. But then—well, it was all true, wasn’t it? And we heard all the stories about how you picked up where he left off, hunting monsters.” He had a disturbing gleam in his eyes.

  Cormac didn’t have a clue what those stories looked like from the outside, or what someone like Layne saw in them. “That was a long time ago. I haven’t been hunting in years.”

  Layne clearly didn’t believe him. That grin suggested they were both in on a secret. “Can I ask you something? What if I wanted to get in on that? I figure there are a lot more of them than we ever thought. If you’re not hunting them anymore—teach me to do it. I’ll get in on the action.”

  The thought of someone like Layne going after Kitty and Ben made Cormac want to shoot the bastard. And this was why it was probably just as well he didn’t carry a gun anymore.

  “Why?” Cormac said flatly, first thing to come into his head. Might even have been Amelia who said it.

  Layne shrugged like it was obvious. “Someone’s got to. The more the better, right? It’s them or us.”

  In the space of about a second Cormac thought up, mulled over, worked out, and then rejected a plan to agree to teach Layne how to hunt the supernatural—and then teach him flat-out wrong, so that the first time the guy went up against a vampire or lycanthrope it would be sure to end very badly for him.

  “You know,” he said, “Some of my best friends are werewolves.” Layne chuckled, clearly not sure whether or not he had just made a joke, so Cormac moved on. “Tell me about what’s up on that plateau. You hunting vampires up there?”

  Layne’s grin went feral. “Let me introduce you to the man who’s going to make things happen.” He pointed to the sullen man of the group, still hunched up in his coat like he was out in the cold. He glared back at Cormac. “Cormac, this is Milo Kuzniak.”

  Cormac’s first thought: the guy was a vampire. Milo Kuzniak had been in his thirties over a century ago, he couldn’t still be alive—unless he was a vampire. But the broad daylight outside said no, he wasn’t, unless he’d come up with a way to make himself immune to daylight. Now there was an unhappy thought.

  Or maybe Cormac had been spending too much time with monsters.

  It’s a coincidence. Has to be, Amelia thought.

  He hadn’t found any pictures of the old prospector Kuzniak and couldn’t guess if this guy, who appeared to be in his late twenties, had any physical resemblance to him. He had dark hair cut short and a round face, crooked teeth, and a hungry look in his eyes. Even hungrier than Layne.

  “I knew another guy named Kuzniak once. You from around here?” Cormac said, offhand, because he had to say something.

  The guy licked his lips as if thinking, maybe wondering if he was giving anything away. “Yes. My great-grandfather homesteaded out here. I’m named after him.”

  A perfectly reasonable, normal explanation. “You inherit anything else from him?”

  He gave a lopsided shrug. “This and that. You really hunt vampires?”

  “Once or twice.”

  Kuzniak donned a contemptuous grin. “There’s no vampires around here.”

  “Then I’ll leave the garlic and holy water at home,” he said. Given the kind of company Kitty and Ben kept, he always had a stake at hand, tucked into a pocket inside the sleeve of his jacket. If he really wanted to be a jackass he could slip it out, twirl it around his fingers a couple of times, make some kind of threat. But this was all just posturing. Instead he said, “You’re going after the gold, aren’t you?”

  Kuzniak’s expression shut down, and he looked to Layne, who just smiled. “See? I told you, the guy’s smart. Worth having on our side. I’m telling you, Douglas Bennett’s kid—he’ll know things. He can help.”

  “I know everything we need,” Kuzniak argued.

  “If that was true, we’d be done with it all already, wouldn’t we?”

  This pit was getting deeper and deeper. Cormac had the thought that maybe he should just walk away. It wasn’t too late.


  If he knows what the first Milo Kuzniak knew, then he might know what killed Crane. We stay. Cormac guessed that Amelia wasn’t even thinking about passing the information along to Judi and Frida—she wanted to know, all for herself.

  “What about it, Bennett? You in?”

  “For a cut, I assume,” he answered.

  “Sure. Even cut like the rest of us. Assuming you can do the job I’ve got in mind for you.”

  That meant all the rest of the gang’s cuts just shrank, and none of them looked happy about it. Likely, Layne was pitting them against each other. A little friendly competition among subordinates looking for promotion. This was exactly why Cormac preferred working alone.

  This ought to be fun. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Layne’s two heavies went to play pool at a crappy, beat up pool table. The younger Kuzniak moved down the bar, glaring at Cormac like he was planning what curse to cast on him, and Cormac was thinking it was about time he got out of here. But Layne kept staring at him. Hero worship, just about.

  “What?” he finally said to Layne.

  “It’s fate, you know. Fate that I’d run into Douglas Bennett’s kid, right here and now.”

  Second time in as many days someone evoked fate at him. He didn’t think much of fate’s judgment.

  “I’ve heard my dad’s name more in the last hour than I have in the last ten years.”

  “He’s a legend, you know that.”

  Yes, he did. But only in circles like this. The man had died more than half Cormac’s lifetime ago. There’d been a time all he wanted in life was to make the man proud. He’d been desperate to make his dead father proud, and horrified to think Douglas Bennett would be disappointed instead. Every time Cormac missed a shot, he imagined his father was looking down on him, shaking his head.

  At some point—maybe in prison—Cormac was able to look back and think maybe his father didn’t matter so much. He’d been a man, he’d made mistakes. He’d been single minded, obsessive. He’d died young, violently, like Cormac assumed would happen to him. Until he decided that maybe it didn’t have to go that way, and that maybe Douglas Bennett had been wrong about the monsters.