by M. D. Massey
“She started it,” I sulked.
Sophia Doroshenko tsked at me, then pulled herself up to her full height as she sat ramrod straight on the barstool, eyes locked on Luther. “My apologies, Luther. Please, continue.”
“Suck up,” I whispered, garnering a sigh and an eye roll from Luther. Sophia pursed her lips as she ignored me. I smirked, knowing I’d gotten the last word. It was petty, but then again so was I. “As I was saying, a mandurugo would leave a mark on the inside of the victim’s mouth after feeding. You say you checked inside each victim’s mouth, Sophia?”
“I did. I can assure you, my examination of each body was very thorough. I saw no evidence of a wound on the inside of the mouth, nor on their neck or limbs.”
I rubbed my chin. “Hmm… did you happen to check their genitalia and groin area?”
Luther nodded. “You’re thinking it could be a succubus or some similar creature?”
I tilted my head. “Maybe.” I turned to Sophia. “Any marks down below on any of the victims?”
“I—I did not think to look there,” she said, her face a mask.
I arched an eyebrow at Luther. “Tell me you still have the bodies lying around.”
He shook his head. “Too risky—those few we found were disposed of immediately. The last thing we need is for the authorities to find a body on a coven member’s property.”
I clucked my tongue. “That’s a shame. Be sure to call me if another stiff pops up. In the meantime, I’d like to check out the most recent site where a victim was found.”
Luther’s lips curled into a grin. “Absolutely. In fact, I’ll have your new liaison accompany you to the location.”
“I’d appreciate it, Luther, especially since I’m on foot at the moment. Incidentally, who is my liaison? Mateo, maybe?”
Sophia Doroshenko raised her hand. “Ahem… that would be me.”
I thrust my jaw out slightly and blew hair from my eyes. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.
Nine
A few minutes later, I was riding shotgun in a jet-black Corvette ZR-1 as it zipped in and out of traffic on Loop 360, which in fact wasn’t a loop at all but a north-south thoroughfare on the west side of town. Sophia Doroshenko gripped the wheel tightly, her driving gloves making small squeaking noises as she turned each corner at speed. I noted that she worked the clutch and gearshift expertly, hitting the precise RPMs needed to smoothly change gears without grinding the clutch or causing the engine to stutter and jerk. This was a woman who took her driving seriously.
“Do you enjoy driving American sports cars?” I asked.
She kept her eyes on the road as she responded. “They are adequate for the task. This is the automobile my host coven has provided, so it is what I use.”
I combed my fingers through my hair with a grunt. “Look, maybe we should start over, since we’re going to be working together and all. Allow me to begin by apologizing for my behavior earlier.”
The tall, blonde vampire shifted gears, sparing me a brief sideways glance before speaking. “I should not have insulted you before evaluating your worth. Luther is no fool, and he chooses his allies carefully. Perhaps there is something to you, after all.”
I chuckled good-naturedly. “Well, I’ll say this much—I like the way you drive.”
She snorted softly. “The KGB prepared its operatives well.”
“You’re Russian?”
Sophia shook her head slightly. “Ukrainian, actually. Cossack, if you want to be specific.”
“So, what brings a nice Ukrainian girl like you to Austin, Texas?”
Her expression darkened. “Coven business. I am resheniye problema for the covens, a problem solver. Where there is trouble, I am sent to intervene, to prevent exposure of our kind.”
“Huh. You were sent to help Luther find the thing that’s leaving dead bodies everywhere.”
“That, and other things.” She remained tight-lipped after that, so I decided to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Minutes later, after crossing the 360 Bridge heading north, Sophia made a sharp U-turn at Courtyard Drive. She floored it before screeching to a halt just off the shoulder, in an area where people typically parked when hiking up the Pennybacker Overlook. It was a popular place for couples to watch the sun set over the hills, plus the bridge and the Colorado River made a stunning backdrop for snaps and profile pics.
Sophia shifted the car into neutral and set the parking brake. “We are here,” she stated unceremoniously as she exited the car.
I followed suit, jogging to catch up. The vampire’s boots crunched the gravel underfoot at a steady and rapid pace, her bearing rigid as she proceeded toward the river.
“What, did they leave the body under the bridge?”
Sophia Doroshenko shook her head. “No, on the cliff above.”
“Man, they really did want the body to be found.”
“Yes. Come, I will show you.”
Her tall legs ate up the trail, and although she was moving slowly on my account, I had to struggle to keep up. When we reached the top, there were a few people there drinking beer and chatting. Sophia pulled out a flashlight, shining it in their eyes as she flashed a badge at them.
“Police business, please be on your way,” she commanded. The hikers complied, grumbling about Nazis and fascists as they left. Sophia Doroshenko stood with her hands on her hips as she watched them go.
“Americans, pfah!” she spat.
“Well, you can’t blame them,” I commented. “We did ruin their evening, after all.”
“Your people have no idea what fascism is, druid, and no appreciation for the freedoms they possess. They cry that they are oppressed, when they live in the most free society in the world.”
“Actually, last I checked, we were ranked seventeenth or something. I think Switzerland gets the prize for providing the most freedom to their citizens.”
Sophia sniffed. “Perhaps you should try living under Soviet rule, eh? Then you see what oppression is about.”
“Nope, I’m good,” I replied. “Now, can you show me where that last body was found?” I asked, hoping to change the subject. I hated discussing politics with people. It always ended up being an argument, which made it a complete waste of time. Besides, I had a case to solve and a fourteen-year-old to find.
“Yes, it was left there.” She pointed to the corner of the cliff, at a spot that put the 360 Bridge in the background. It was where just about everyone and their cousin posed for pictures when visiting the site.
“Damn, that’s bold.” I walked over and squatted near the area she’d indicated, touching the limestone bedrock beneath my feet. There was no sign of violence, and the smell of death had long since dissipated. However, I sensed something else here—a “disturbance in the force” of sorts.
“We are wasting our time, druid,” Sophia commented. “We should be out looking for another body, or trying to determine a pattern in the killings.”
I held one finger up. “Give me a second. We druids have methods of gaining information that are somewhat unconventional, and I’d like to try one of them.”
“Pfft. If you insist,” she replied.
I knelt, ignoring the jagged edges of rock that dug into my knees as I settled in. I planted my hands on my hips, then slowed my breathing as I extended my senses and awareness outward. All I needed was one small animal nearby that might have seen the killer, just one.
Sounds of cars passing below blended with the whine of an outboard motor in the distance. Underlying the harsh noise of civilization, I detected the soft lapping of water against the shoreline below, and the wind whistling through the juniper trees nearby. The air smelled of exhaust fumes, river water, cedar, and earth. I lowered my hands to the bedrock beneath me, extending my senses further into the night.
Bats and swallows whistled overhead, but none of them had seen anything. Field mice rustled in the leaves a few yards distant, but they had a habit of keeping their eyes o
n the skies and their next meal, so I didn’t bother with them. A rabbit laid curled up in its den down the hill, fearful of meeting its end in the jaws of a fox or coyote. It stayed in its burrow after dark, and thus made a poor witness to nocturnal events. A further scan revealed that no large predators were near enough to query, and none of the fauna here had witnessed anything of note.
I was just about to give up when I noticed that strange disturbance again. And this time, it noticed me as well.
I opened my eyes, because I knew instinctively that this presence wasn’t natural. My breath caught in my chest as a dim glow appeared just over the edge of the cliff. Suddenly, a pale white hand clawed its way over the edge, its black fingernails raking the stone with an unsettling skritching noise. Next rose a shock of black, disheveled hair, followed by a likewise pale hand and arm that pulled the creature over the side of the cliff and into view.
Scuttling over the cliff’s edge like a spider, its limbs canted at impossible angles, was a young Asian man with ghostly-white skin dressed in similarly pale rags. His eyes were the color of midnight, and his lips curled back in a wicked sneer that revealed crooked, black teeth. The thing’s feet were bare, and he rocked this way and that as he observed me where I knelt a few feet away.
“What is that thing?” Sophia asked.
I kept my eyes on it as I responded. “A ghost, I think.” Typically, when spirits remained on this plane after death it was for some purpose, and often that purpose was to see their killer brought to justice. I addressed the ghostly figure directly, hoping it might reveal its killer. “Am I right? Are you the ghost of the young man who was found here?”
“Fukushū…” it moaned in response.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said. “Do you speak English?”
The thing opened its mouth impossibly wide as it let out a screech that pierced the night. “Fukushū!” it wailed.
I felt Sophia’s cold, firm hand on my shoulder. “Vengeance, druid. The ghost cries for vengeance. We should go.”
“No—if it wants revenge, maybe it will tell us who its killer was so we can help it find peace.”
Sophia squeezed my shoulder tightly. “While your logic is sound, druid, your judgment is not. Somehow, I do not think this ghost knows the difference between friend and foe.”
I looked up at Sophia. “Oh, come on, it’s clearly asking for help—”
My words were cut off as a screeching white blur tackled me at about fifty miles an hour. I bowled over backwards, and found myself pinned to the ground by the ghost. Its hands were on my wrists, and it perched over me with its feet on my hips. Strangely, it felt heavy on me, more like the weight of an automobile than an ethereal being. Wherever it touched me cold seeped into my body, draining me of strength.
I struggled against its grip and weight, but I might as well have been trying to move a dump truck. Being in contact with it seemed to slowly be sucking the life out of me, and moment by moment I felt my limbs growing weaker. The thing kept screeching all the while, and slavered some sort of ectoplasm on my chest as it cried its misery to the night sky.
Sophia stood nearby, a mixture of amusement and concern on her face. “So, it just wants our help, eh?” she gloated.
“I could use a little help here myself, if you don’t mind?” I asked, with only a small bit of panic in my voice.
She chortled as she stepped forward to grab the ghost. Being no stranger to vampire strength, I fully expected her to pick the thing up and toss it off the cliff. To our mutual surprise, her hands slipped right through the ghost’s body. Even more surprising, it turned its head around one-hundred-eighty degrees like an owl, fixing her with that black-eyed stare. Then, it backhanded her across the chest, hard enough to send her sailing into the trees.
“Damn it, there goes my ride.”
I continued to struggle as I watched the ghost turn its head back around in a sort of ratcheting motion. It was altogether creepy and hypnotizing in a macabre, “train wreck happening right in front of me” sort of way. However, I didn’t start crapping my pants until it looked at me and opened its mouth wide enough to drive a mid-sized sedan down its throat.
“Fuck me sideways,” I hissed. “Damn it, dude, I am not your enemy!” I yelled as the ghost began to slowly lower its mouth to my neck. “Okay, fine then—have it your way.”
Recently dead ghosts were often befuddled and frustrated by their situation, which made them dangerous to deal with. Worse, it often took days or weeks for their memories to coalesce enough for them to focus on their purpose and stop poltergeisting the shit out of random people. While this ghost might eventually be able to tell friendlies from serial killers, right now it was angry and bewildered enough to kill anything that caught its attention, including me.
Knowing I had just one means of getting out of this predicament, I flipped my inner switch, shifting as far into my Fomorian form as I thought I safely could. Bones shifted and joints popped as my body rearranged itself into a larger, sturdier version of me. My skeleton lengthened, my skin thickened, and my muscles swelled as I gained mass and size.
The further the change progressed, the greater the urge I felt to rip-maim-tear-claw-dismember-kill. It was like a voice in the back of my head telling me to do terrible things—my Hyde-side, trying to take the driver’s seat. I pushed the urges down, ignoring them as I took stock of my situation.
I wasn’t sure how strong I was when I went one hundred percent Hyde-side, but if I had to guess, it was somewhere between Kraven the Hunter and Beast on the comic book scale of strength. However, in my half-shifted form, I could just barely bench the back end of a compact car, which equated to about a five hundred-pound press. I knew, because I’d tried it back at the junkyard, just to test the limits of what I could do when partially transformed.
But despite my considerable, if limited, strength, I still couldn’t toss the ghost off me. Obviously, it was using some otherworldly power that defied physics to hold me down, because technically an ethereal creature had no mass. It occurred to me that, if I didn’t do something immediately, it would breach my thickened skin with its teeth and suck the life force right out of my body.
If that happened, my Hyde-side might take over to save us… er, me. And that always led to bad things.
But I wasn’t completely down and out. It was going to suck, but I had an ace up my sleeve that this ghost didn’t know I could play.
Eye, you there?
As the “voice” I’d come to associate with Balor’s Eye replied, it sounded like it was calling to me from a great distance. Even so, it was a welcome presence.
-It is difficult for me to communicate with you in your partially-transformed state, but yes, I am here.-
That’s good news, because I need your help. Tell me, how well does that heat blast of yours work against ethereal creatures?
-Such as the shade that is currently preparing to drain your life force?-
That’d be what I was getting at, yes.
-Considering that I am, in effect, an inter-dimensional being myself, I am capable of altering a release of energy such that it affects beings and objects that are out of phase with this dimension.-
Give it to me in English, if you don’t mind.
-To use an expression from your own vernacular, I am fully capable of ‘blasting the living shit’ out of this ghost. Since the blast will be out of phase with your dimension, it shouldn’t harm you in the slightest.-
Will it kill the thing? I don’t really want to destroy it. I just want it off me so I can find its killer and help it pass on to the next life.
-No. It will merely disperse its energies. I estimate the entity will fully coalesce again within the span of one or two earth days.-
Do it.
I sensed rather than felt the Eye’s presence somewhere behind my eyeballs. Turning my eyes downward, I craned my neck to focus the Eye’s energy blast directly at the ghost’s head. The space between its gaping jaws was now a vast, d
ark pit that seemingly threatened to swallow me whole. Despite the grotesquery of its appearance, I felt bad for the thing, considering how it had presumably suffered as it died. However, I trusted that the Eye knew its business. A blast wouldn’t kill the ghost or prevent it from passing into the beyond.
As soon as I had my eyes fully focused on the ghost’s head, Balor’s Eye released its considerable energies at the specter. A beam of heatless light escaped from my eye sockets, hitting the ghost square in the face. Unlike past occasions when the Eye had blasted someone while I was in my half-Formorian form, my eyeballs didn’t melt out of my skull. Instead, I merely felt a tingling sensation that caused my eyeballs to itch.
Despite the lack of damage to my own physiology, the effect on the ghost was immediate and dramatic. In short, its head disintegrated in a puff of pale white sparkles and moondust. The thing’s body immediately followed suit. As the image of the haunt disappeared, all that was left was a keening, mournful wail that faded off into the night.
I stood and brushed myself off, unwittingly getting the ghost’s ectoplasmic slobber all over my hands. Since my jeans were shredded anyway due to increasing in size during my shift, I wiped my hands on my pants. Then, I glanced down at my boots, noting that my toes were poking out the front and the seams were torn down the sides. Resigned, I kicked them off. That’s when I noticed Sophia Doroshenko staring at me from a few feet away.
“Lajno!” she exclaimed. I didn’t need to understand Russian or Ukrainian to know it was an expletive.
“Um, don’t worry—I’m wearing my stretchy underwear, so if my clothes ripped in an embarrassing place, I swear I won’t accidentally flash you.”
The vampire stood stock still, and her voice held the barest tremor as she replied. “You’ve shifted into a form I’ve never seen before, not in three centuries on this earth. You shot fire from your eyes that banished the ghost. What kind of creature are you, druid?”
I suddenly realized Luther hadn’t revealed much about me to her. “Well, it’s complicated. And at the risk of sounding like a pompous ass, I’m kind of a one-off.”
