by C. T. Phipps
“Oh that’s not good,” I said, trying to take a step back before finding myself almost burned by the fire behind me.
“You’re a fire elemental?” Maria said, staring. “What?”
“You wanted to be a shapeshifter,” Rudy said, his voice now so low it rivaled Darth Vader’s. “I wanted to be powerful. Screw Mom and Dad’s dreams. Fire is the only way to purify this place. The mob knew that even if they didn’t realize it was. They’d only wanted to end the relationship because Anya O’Henry was rich and famous. But what they’d stumbled upon was a union of the divine—”
“Listen,” I said, regretting electrocuting him three times. “You don’t have to do this. I know I keep saying that but that’s because I don’t want you to kill me.”
Maria elbowed me.
“Defense mechanism!” I said. “Sorry.”
“It’s a bad defense!” Maria said. “Really, really awful!”
“You can leave,” Rudy said, causing the flames to climb up the side of the walls and hang from the ceiling in defiance of physics. “You and Maria. I have to stay here and burn with it. Her. Two more must die to end this.”
I wasn’t going to let the sheriff die so Rudy could out in a weird suicide pact. “It’s over, Rudy! It’s beaten!”
“It’s not over!” Rudy screamed. “I thought when I sacrificed her she’d be gone and I’d pay her back for Courtney but she’s back! In the heads of others like suits! We can’t let the children back, too, because they won’t be real! Just the anger of the Red Wolf made manifest!”
What the hell was he talking about? “Rudy, stop this, please!”
Maria grabbed hold of me tightly, terrified of the flames. The fire licked at my back and caused me to suppress a scream even as the smoke was choking my lungs. A pathway opened up for us to flee, but it didn’t come anywhere near Rudy or the sheriff as he walked through fire to her.
I was left with a choice, saving myself and Maria while letting the sheriff die or trying something stupid. The choice paralyzed me and in the end, I couldn’t make up my mind while Maria seemed frozen with the same indecision.
Then Clara stabbed Rudy in the chest with the sacrificial dagger, despite it last being halfway across the room. Rudy stared at her, eyes wide, and tried to mouth something, but no words came out. A triumphant grin was on Clara’s face and, for a moment, she looked terrifying. Then it was gone.
The flames inside the building disappeared all at once and so did the heat. My face was covered in sweat while poor Maria looked positively boiled. Clara dropped to the ground, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, leaving the place feeling empty and free. The Big Bad Wolf had departed for greener pastures, whether back to the Underwood or into a new host somewhere else.
As Green Day would say, good riddance. Maria, however, screamed and ran to her brother.
The front wall of the Lodge collapsed with a huge dinosaur-like tail smashing through the sides, followed by Lucien’s hybrid form tearing its doors down. Beyond, I could see Alex and the others standing over the remains of the Big Bad Wolf’s animal army. Deana and Harvey were injured and getting treated but it seemed like they’d managed to tear through everything the evil spirit had thrown at them. We’d won. Sort of.
Alex went over to the fallen form of Sheriff O’Henry first, something I felt a bit insulted by, while Emma trotted over to me. Emma was still a dire wolf and I could see several cuts on her body as well as a mangled leg. She turned into a regular human, which healed some of the cuts, but almost collapsed into my arms.
I caught her and helped her sit down, holding her in my arms. “Are you okay?”
“That’s what I mean to ask you,” Emma said, coughing. “Is it gone? Is it dead?”
I didn’t have an answer for it as Rudy’s words meant he hadn’t been possessed by the Big Bad Wolf. Not completely, at least. Hell, it seemed like he was determined to die stopping it at the end. I’d say it was heroic if not for the fact I suspected it was to avoid the consequences of what he’d done.
“I don’t know,” I said, staring over at Maria as she cried over her brother’s corpse until Lucien pulled her away. “I wish I could tell you.”
“Was that vision we saw true?” Emma said, surprising me. I’d thought I was the only person who’d seen it. “Did my grandfather really start all this?”
“My grandmother was involved too. So were a lot of townspeople,” I said, looking around. “This was plain old human evil at the start. It infected the spirit of these woods and turned it into a monster. Everyone else just paid the cost.”
“I know that feeling.”
Emma’s other wounds healed a few minutes later. I helped her up and out of the Lodge before taking her to a nearby stump to tell her everything I’d learned.
And I did mean everything.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Time functioned differently in the Spirit World. By the time everyone had got back to the parking lot, it was sunrise. What followed was a bunch of park rangers, ambulance drivers, and other people becoming involved in resolving things. That included getting Rudy’s body transported out of the Lodge, calling in more people to remove the bodies from the lake, and trying to get everyone’s story straight for the official statements that were going to go on the public record.
I was disappointed Agent Timmons was perfectly willing to lie about the specifics. The public wasn’t ready to know about the fact the town was haunted by not one but two demons, including one who had murdered Goddess knew how many swimmers over the years. Supernaturals were still too new to have their history revealed to the public. Hell, the whole murder frenzy that had started this was in part because people had a bad reaction to seeing a kid become a wolf. Still, it felt wrong.
My parents had also arrived along with the Gonzaleses, having turned around with my brother thanks to my mother having a vision of me in danger. How she’d convinced the people transporting Jeremy to come with her was probably best chalked up to “things the public didn’t need to know magicians could casually do.” Lord knew they’d probably lock my mother up in Guantanamo Bay until she agreed to work for the CIA if they knew she could control minds—
assuming they didn’t already have their own collection of mages or vampires who could do that.
It was about ten in the morning and after my sixth cup of coffee that Emma finally came to join me on top of the Millennium Falcon’s hood. She looked as mentally exhausted as I did. Agent Timmons had conjured a black poncho that read “WITNESS” on the front in big yellow letters that helped keep the worst of the rain off of her. I still had my umbrella and I’d put it between the windshield wipers so I could sit underneath it like I was on the beach. It wasn’t raining presently but it had been sprinkling off and on since we’d escaped the Lodge.
“This has been a spectacularly crap day,” I said, offering her my thermos. It had been provided for by Lucien. Its origin explained why it tasted like it had liquor in it.
I’d been surprised to see Lucien Lyons had stayed for the press since I thought he, of all people, would be interested in keeping his role in all of this quiet. Instead, he’d done the exact opposite and somehow played himself off as a concerned citizen out to protect the community against evil. The official story was Rudy was responsible for the murders and he’d been a troubled kid suffering from drug use as well as an interest in the occult.
It made me sick.
“No kidding,” Emma said, taking the thermos and pouring herself a cup in the lid. “Did I mention I never want you to help me again?”
I laughed. “You may have mentioned it.”
“I’m kidding, sort of,” Emma said, frowning. “Except with no humor at all. This brought a lot of stuff out into the open.”
“Except for the parts being hidden,” I said, frowning.
“Clara is the one who came up with the cover story,” Emma said, surprising me. “Alex wanted to blame it on a ghost and clear Rudy’s name. Lucien wanted to cover the whole
thing up. It’s my aunt who’s vilifying him.”
“I’m not sure he doesn’t deserve to be vilified,” I said, frowning. “He was completely crazy at the end.”
“Maybe,” Emma said, looking over at Maria as she talked with her parents. They were a well-dressed couple who looked disgusted rather than in mourning. “Did you know the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it?”
I thought about that. “Makes sense. The reason people kill other people is usually because of sensible but jerkish reasons like wanting their stuff, resentment, love, or hate. You aren’t crazy to be a bigot, you’re just an ass. If Alex is any indication, mentally ill people are more offbeat or troubled than dangerous.”
I still wondered why the FBI let him in. Wouldn’t he have to pass a psych evaluation to become a special agent? Oh right, he had magic. That probably got around a lot of issues. The fact he was the son of two FBI agents probably helped.
“You forgot vengeance,” Emma said. “Vengeance is another reason people kill.”
“Yeah. There’s that. The Big Bad Wolf wants to kill the people who killed its family and Rudy kills Victoria for killing his girlfriend. I think that’s what he was rambling about at least. Then Clara kills Rudy for killing Victoria.”
“Also to save your life,” Emma pointed out. “Do you think Maria will try to avenge her brother?”
“No,” I said, thinking about how much I wanted to kill the kelpie. “Still, it’s going to be a pain in the ass for her in the coming months. She’s going to be known as the serial killer’s sister for the rest of her life. It might be a good idea to move out of Bright Falls.”
“It’s always a good idea to move out of this town,” Emma said, finally drinking her coffee. “It just has a way of sucking you back in.”
I looked over at Maria. “Do you think I should try and help her? Be there for her?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said. “Would she want us around her?”
I didn’t have an answer to that.
There was an oppressive silence until Emma broke it. “Have you talked with your mother yet?”
I wished Emma would give back my thermos. I needed some more liquored-up coffee. I would have been completely hammered by now if not for my weredeer metabolism. Apparently I just wasn’t a beer woman. “In the literal sense of saying a few words to her whenever she asked how I was, yes. Not in the sense of talking to her about meeting my dead grandfather, discovering she was a murderer, finding out one of my grandmothers was evil, and that Jeremy may not have been a murderer but was a demon-worshiping Chaos cultist.”
“I assume Slaanesh over Khorne,” Emma said, showing she’d paid way more attention to Jeremy’s geeky hobbies than me. Yet she hadn’t watched Twin Peaks or Twin Peaks: The Return! We would have to remedy that some weekend.
“Coffee, now,” I said, tired of waiting for her to pass it back.
Emma handed it over to me. “What are you going to tell her?”
“No idea,” I said, closing my eyes. “But I can’t work for her anymore. I can’t live with her either. I need to find someplace else.”
“You could come to work for my family at Pinewood,” Emma said, referring to her family’s hotel. “I mean, the pay is crap, but you’d be in with the management.”
I blinked. “I don’t know how I’d feel about working for your grandfather knowing what he did to you and Victoria.”
Emma didn’t react the way I expected. “Don’t worry about it. If my grandfather ever tries to hurt me again, I’ll kill him.”
I held the thermos cup lid in my hands as I tried to figure out how to broach my next question. “Do you mean that you’ll stand up to him or—”
“Rip his throat out,” Emma said, lifting a fist in the air. “The Old Ways say we should have put him down years ago because he’s too old to lead the pack.”
“The Old Ways being the ones that hate gays and believe might makes right?” I said, not quite gently enough.
Emma gave me a death glare before sliding off the hood of my car.
“Oh come on!” I said, realizing I’d screwed up. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Emma didn’t respond, though.
Dammit.
Not wanting to stay on the top of my Hummer after that screw up, I slid off the side and walked over to Agent Timmons. He was wearing a waterproof poncho similar to Emma’s with the words “FBI WIZARD” in bright yellow letters on both sides. He was talking to Deputy Chang and Warren with a pair of state police beside them. Their conversation was about reports and follow-ups, so I tugged on the back of Alex’s poncho.
“Yo,” I said. “I need to talk with you.”
Alex turned to look at me then nodded. “Absolutely. Guys, I’ll get right back to you.”
“You’re ditching us for the teenager?” Harvey said.
“She’s an adult to whom we owe our lives,” Alex said, frowning. “You should remember that.”
Harvey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s why.”
“I remember!” Dave said, holding up his cellphone. “Can I get a selfie with you two after this? I need to post the truth of this awful business on my blog!”
I stared at him. “Yes, Dave. Yes, you can. Just not now.”
“Aw,” Dave said, looking crestfallen.
I dragged Alex off to a part of the parking lot that was slightly less full of people coming to this disaster late. “Okay, I’m really ticked off at you right now.”
“I’m not exactly happy with myself,” Alex said, looking over at Maria. “This case didn’t turn out like I’d hoped.”
“What did you want from it?” I asked.
“To save lives,” Alex said, turning back. “Not to take them.”
Well, that defused most of my argument. “Why are we lying about what happened here?”
“Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington state have recently overturned their varmint laws,” Alex said, saying the last two words with pure disgust and loathing. “The Federal Supreme Court is entertaining a challenge to them all across the board. We can hope they will sign off on their unconstitutionality. However, the public is still undergoing a massive paradigm shift from disbelief to intolerance to, hopefully, acceptance regarding the supernatural.”
“Oh really?” I said, looking up at him. “I hadn’t noticed. You know, being one of the people who’d be shot if they ever stepped into Indiana.”
Alex gave a pained smile. “I’m not questioning your awareness. I’m saying the truth of reality has to be spoon fed to those minds unprepared to accept how the universe really works. Evolution, the Big Bang, relativity, and quantum physics all changed our perception of the cosmos, but only with great difficulty. People were ready to accept vampires in part because of a century of media depicting them as more than just monsters.”
“Even though most vampires are murderous bastards,” I said, repeating what I’d heard from shifters who’d dealt with them.
“Not all of them,” Alex said. “Better to let six guilty men go free than punish one innocent.”
“What America have you been living in?” I asked.
“People can accept vampires, shapeshifters, mages, psychics, and ghosts now. Indeed, they find the latter comforting rather than terrifying. However, it would take a lot less than the existence of demons and insane gods to turn the world from slow acceptance to a new inquisition. Someday, I hope the truth to be revealed to the world so that all can partake in studying the true reality to reach a higher spiritual plane but I don’t think that day is today.”
“So even with vampires and weredeer out in the open, it’s not all out in the open,” I said.
“No,” Alex said. “There’s plenty of departments in Washington that would love to strap me to a stake in the middle of the National Mall and set me on fire. I shudder to think of it happening to someone like you.”
Those words made me feel awkward and uncomfortable in a way entirely inappropriate to this convers
ation. “You mean like the people treated the Red Wolf and his wife.”
“Yes,” Alex said, sighing. “America is a study in contrasts. It is a nation founded on the principles of equality and democracy but built with slavery as well as genocide. We must acknowledge both sides of our heritage to forge the future.”
“One quarter Canadian Odawa here,” I said, raising hand. “Also a woman. We can vote now, you know.”
Alex chuckled. “Sorry, I do tend to ramble at times like this.”
“Times like this?” I asked.
“When I meet someone I like,” Alex said.
My face flushed. “Uh…”
Alex looked deeply into my eyes. “I’d like to help you find a teacher.”
That was like a record scratching in my head. “Wait, what?”
“You have amazing potential, Jane,” Alex said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I think you should harness that potential for good.”
I tried to process that. “Are you asking me out or to be a Jedi?”
“I would love to have dinner with you, but I don’t think Washington will allow me to stay long,” Alex said, looking disappointed. “Also, the Jedi part.”
My eyes blinked rapidly. “Okay, you have to explain the Jedi part.”
“Not literally, of course. What I mean is I know of an extremely powerful sorceress by the name of Kim Su who is looking for a pupil. I think you’d do well under her training if you want to continue using your powers to help the world. I also think your mother is someone you wouldn’t do well to learn under.”
The mention of my mother made my mouth turned dry. “Yeah, Judy and I aren’t going to try studying together anymore. What’s Kim Su, some kind of Asian martial arts master?”
“She’s picked up a lot across the centuries,” Alex said.
Centuries, huh? “She’s a vampire?”
They were the only immortal supernatural I knew with the exception of spirits.
“She’s something different,” Alex said.
