Demon's Dance

by Keri Arthur

  Straight at me.

  A small smile touched her perfect lips and then she lifted the hem of her long dress and continued climbing. She didn’t increase her pace, but the comet-like tail that trailed behind her shifted and flickered with renewed fierceness.

  Whether that spoke of vexation at being spotted or something else, I couldn’t say.

  Either way, she was going to reach the door before us.

  “Is your mistress near the exit?” I asked.

  “Yes. Whether she will see or sense this woman if there is magic involved is another matter entirely.”

  “But she’ll see the guy with her—whatever magic she’s using isn’t hiding him,” I said. “Besides, Maelle is capable of magic, so she should at least be sensitive to its presence.”

  “I am, in some circumstances,” he replied, his voice once again taking on Maelle’s tone, “but the cleaner the magic, the less I’m aware. It is the nature of the beast, I’m afraid.”

  The beast being the vampire, I presumed. “I wouldn’t classify the soucouyant’s magic as clean, Maelle.”

  The bigger news here is the fact she just admitted she’s attuned—and capable—of darker magic, Belle said. We seriously need to step lightly around this bitch.

  Like we haven’t been?

  I know, but we’ve now got confirmation that she’s a dark witch as well as a vamp. And it means that while she may not be radiating power, it’s totally possible she’s stronger than either of us magically.

  I still think the vampire is the bigger danger. I scanned the area near the door, but there were far too many taller people standing between it and me. Despite the fact she should have towered over them all, I couldn’t see her.

  I can. They’ve just reached the top step and have tucked in behind another couple. Belle gave Roger the second couple’s description and then added, The bitch just looked over her shoulder again. She knows we’re here.

  Yes. And, from all appearances, remained totally unworried by the fact.

  We came around the final curve and strode toward the door. Up ahead, Maelle had stopped the couple Belle had described, but the woman and her victim weren’t with them. I swore, pushed past Roger, and bolted toward the door.

  Maelle glanced over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

  “She’s not with them,” I said, and ran around the three of them.

  To see the woman gliding out the airlock doors.

  She must have sensed my nearness, because she paused and turned. Our gazes met—her eyes were full of fire and glittered in amusement.

  In that moment, I realized two things.

  One, she was a very old spirit and had no fear of a witch such as myself.

  And two, she was about to unleash hell.

  Seven

  Fire sprang across her fingertips, a fierce and violent storm of circular energy that reminded me of the orb that had taken out our car.

  I swore and hastily constructed an ensnaring spell. As the bitch unleashed her fire, I released my magic. The two intersected at the doorway and, for an instant, nothing happened. Fire and magic boiled around each other, neither getting the upper hand.

  Then, with a rush of power, the two exploded.

  I swore, spun around, and knocked Belle down. Heat sizzled over our heads as we hit the ground hard, and the smell of burning material and screams of fear filled the air.

  You okay? I asked, even as I disentangled myself from Belle.

  I think I’ll have one hell of a bruised shoulder tomorrow, but that’s better than being crisped. She hesitated. The bitch has left the building.

  I know.

  I scrambled to my feet. Saw Roger helping Maelle up—saw the scorch across his shirt and the bubbling skin underneath. He’d taken the brunt of the heat to protect his mistress and the two patrons standing with them.

  I grabbed Belle’s hand, helped her up, then spun and raced through the door. There were spots of fire burning in the foyer and smoke drifted, a black cloud that stung my throat with its foulness. As we ran past the cloakroom, the fire alarm sounded and the sprinklers activated, soaking the two of us in an instant.

  The street door was already open. I ran out and looked right and left. Saw a glimmer of red disappearing around a corner to our right. Spun and ran that way, my shoes squelching water with every step.

  We reached the corner and turned into the street. A couple with a kid in a pram strolled toward us, but there was no sign of the blonde or her next victim. I swore softly and ran out onto the road, my gaze sweeping the other side of the street.

  She was here somewhere—I could feel it.

  After a moment, I spotted her. Or rather, spotted the flash of red as she climbed into the passenger side of a silver car halfway up the road.

  “Belle, can you call the rangers?” I said, as I sprinted toward the car. The pair would be gone long before I got anywhere near them, but I still had to try.

  The car’s engine roared to life and the headlights came on, a bright flare that had me blinking. As the car pulled out of the parking spot, the blonde turned and raised her hand, idly waving at me. Anger surged and energy flowed across my fingertips in response. As the car pulled away, I flung the twisting threads of magic at the fast-disappearing vehicle. It didn’t stop it and it certainly wasn’t designed to track it. I wasn’t Monty, and I didn’t have the power or the knowledge to create something like that on the run.

  Instead, my magic hit the back of the vehicle and briefly enlarged the number plate. I memorized it then spun around and stalked back.

  Belle was still on the phone. I gave her the number to pass on and then added, “If Monty’s still helping Aiden with that other murder, we’ll need to be present when they go after that bitch.”

  “Aiden and Monty are still returning from Greenhill, and are still a good forty-five minutes away.”

  “We can’t afford to wait for them. Not if we want to save the man accompanying the soucouyant.”

  She hesitated, listening to whoever was on the end. “Tala will be here in five.”

  “Good.” I reached up and squeezed the water from my ponytail, and wished I could do the same to my clothes. “I don’t suppose you asked about the Greenhill murder?”

  Belle shoved her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, her expression grim. “Apparently, it’s another skinning victim.”

  I wrinkled my nose. No death was a good one, but Greenhill was a very small, close-knit border town community that consisted of little more than a pub and a hundred or so people, and this would hit them hard.

  “Which to me suggests we are dealing with two different entities.”

  “Bit of a coincidence that both of them can throw fire, though.”

  “Yes.” I hesitated. “If they’re capable of taking on alternate forms when required, why are they stealing skins?”

  “We don’t know that they both are.”

  “True.” I started walking back down the road. While we had absolutely no hope of catching the pair on foot, the restlessness inside refused to let me be still.

  Belle fell in step beside me. “I wonder if she’s capable of attaining multiple forms, or whether the one she used tonight is her only one?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.” I glanced at her, eyebrow raised. “Why?”

  “Because that woman is stunning. If she’s staying in a motel or rental, it should be a fairly easy task to find her.”

  “Except for two things,” I said. “The first being the sheer number of motels and rentals within the reservation.”

  “I didn’t say we’d be doing the ringing,” she replied, amused. “That’s a ranger type job, not witch. And the second?”

  “The fact that your gran’s book said that by day, a soucouyant is an old woman.”

  “Well, damn, forgot about that.” She thrust a hand through her wet hair, dragging it out of her face. “How the hell are we going to find someone who possibly has three different forms?”

  “I do
n’t know.” I hesitated. “We might be able to create a spell that could track down her energy output, but to do that we’d first have to get some sense of said output.”

  “I could run back to the club,” Belle said. “She had to have been in there for a while before she found her target. Even if her energy isn’t lingering, the damage caused by the fireball might just hold enough of her essence to design a spell around.”

  “And if we can’t, surely Monty will be able to.”

  “Exactly.” She swung the pack off her shoulder and handed it to me. It was waterproof, so even though water dripped from the straps, everything inside the pack should be dry. “Be careful if you do track the bitch down.”

  “I’ve been fireballed twice now. I do not intend to suffer through a third.”

  “Then we’d better start figuring out a proper fire dousing spell.” She glanced around at the sound of a siren. “That’ll be Tala. I’ll head off.”

  “Tread lightly around Maelle. She’s going to be mighty pissed.”

  “I think that may win the award for understatement of the year.”

  She jogged away. Several seconds later, a green-and-white SUV slid around the corner and roared toward me. I could see two figures inside—one was Tala, the other had reddish hair, which meant it was probably Duke, a ranger I’d seen on a couple of occasions but never been officially introduced to.

  The SUV slid to a halt beside me and Tala motioned me to hurry and get in. I ran across the road and jumped into the back of their vehicle.

  I’d barely pulled on the seat belt when Tala took off again. “I take it you managed to get an address from the rego number?”

  “Yes.” Duke’s voice had a decidedly Irish lilt to his voice, which suggested he was yet another wolf who’d come into the reservation under the exchange program. “It belongs to one Jason Harding, who lives in Louton.”

  Louton was one of a handful of small gold mining towns that ringed Castle Rock, and only ten minutes away. But that still gave the soucouyant too much of a head start, and more than enough time to hastily seduce and then kill.

  “So what, exactly, happened at the club?” Tala turned onto the highway that led down to Louton. “We got a report that the fire brigade had been called to the scene.”

  I gave them a brief rundown on what we were chasing and then said, “The bitch wasn’t trying to burn the club down—she was just trying to delay me.”

  “Successfully, it seems,” Duke commented.

  I glanced at him. “Yeah. But she’s aware her attack wasn’t fully successful and would expect us to track her victim down fairly quickly.”

  “Meaning she may not be there when we arrive.”

  “If they’re going to his place, yes. But she can seduce and feed anywhere between here and there.”

  “Meaning we’d better keep an eye out for an abandoned silver Kia.”

  Given this whole area was a rabbit warren of scrubby trees and intersecting tracks, it would be fairly easy for a Land Rover to disappear let alone a smallish sedan. But there was little point in stating the obvious.

  We roared down the highway—though calling it that was something of a misnomer given the road consisted of a single lane each way—and were soon out of Castle Rock and heading into Louton. Tala slowed enough to do a right into the street just past the local pub and then switched the siren off. The sudden silence was decidedly eerie.

  “The registered owner of the Kia lives in the last house at the other end of the street,” she said. “How do you want to play this?”

  I undid the seat belt and leaned forward. The glow of the SUV’s headlights revealed a street that was single lane and roughly asphalted. Light peeked out from the covered windows of the three nearest houses, but the far end of the street remained wrapped in shadows.

  I had no sense of the soucouyant; in fact, my senses were tugging me back down the road and out of Louton. And yet we couldn’t leave—not until we’d checked the house out. My instincts hadn’t been wrong often of late—and the star-struck stranger certainly couldn’t afford them to be wrong now—but the truth was, we knew very little about soucouyants and just what they were truly capable of. Given her ability to disappear to the senses of others, it was totally possible she was using a similar magic here.

  “Well?” Tala said, a touch impatiently.

  “I’m not feeling anything on the psychic radar, but I don’t think we can leave without checking that house out.”

  “And if they’re not there?”

  “We can discuss that after we uncover whether they’re there or not.”

  Annoyance ran through her expression, but she didn’t say anything and shoved the SUV back into gear. The house at the top of the hill was a single-story, tin-roofed old weatherboard cottage that was painted in an ugly brown. Rather weirdly, though the front door pointed toward the main street, there was no street access or even a pathway, and between the picket fence that surrounded the entire place and us was a rather large embankment.

  Tala continued past it and then swung left. A small carport and a number of old tin sheds lined the back fence, but there was a gateway at the far end.

  Tala stopped and the two rangers climbed out. I grabbed the pack and followed them. The night was still and quiet, and there was absolutely no sense of evil riding the darkness.

  The soucouyant wasn’t here.

  Duke’s nostrils flared briefly. “I can’t hear any sound coming from inside that house and there’s no olfactory evidence that anyone has recently passed by.”

  “Would there be after twenty minutes?” I asked curiously.

  “To normal senses, no. To a wolf or a dog, or indeed anything else that hunts by scent, yes.” He glanced at Tala. “What do you want to do?”

  Tala grimaced. “We’ll have to check it out, just in case this creature has done the deed and fled.”

  She’d certainly fled, but the deed hadn’t been done here. I rubbed my arms lightly and followed the two rangers through the gate. The path was broken and weed filled, but there was enough moonlight to prevent any slips or tripping over on my part.

  Tala motioned Duke to the back door and then moved around to the front. I stopped and crossed my arms. There was nothing here—nothing but cobwebs and silence. Duke tested the back door, peered in through the laundry window, and then moved around to the other side of the house.

  After a moment, they both returned. “The doors are all locked and there’s no sign or scent of life within the house,” Tala said. “What do you want to do?”

  “Go back onto the highway and head out of town.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “It’s still on the move?”

  I hesitated, prodding the tenuous psychic thread for answers. “No. But it’s somewhere outside of Louton.”

  Tala grunted. Though she looked dubious, she led the way back to the SUV. In very little time, we were on the move again.

  As we drove out of Louton and the road began a series of sweeping curves that climbed up the mountain, the tenuous thread of evil grew stronger.

  I leaned forward. “Slow down. We’re getting close.”

  As Tala immediately did so, Duke said, “This isn’t a brilliant area to be killing someone. There’s no room to park on the verge, and the entire area is a mix of large allotments and small holdings.”

  “There’re no street lights here, though, so if she goes off road, it’d be hard to see her,” Tala said. “And there are plenty of places along this road to do that, too.”

  We swept around another corner. The road ahead dipped down a slight incline and then ran straight. The headlights gleamed off the trees lining the hillside to our right, but to our left, beyond the metal guardrail, the land fell sharply away. In the distance, a house light shone, but between them and us was a wide, dark surface on which moonlight glimmered. It was a large dam or a small lake.

  The tenuous thread sharpened abruptly.

  “There,” I said, pointing to the water. “They’re
near that lake.”

  “I can’t see anything,” Duke said.

  “You may not,” Tala said. “I know that dam—it’s part of Old Benson’s property. There’s a dirt road that goes around the back of it, and if they’re on that, then they won’t be seen from here.”

  The protective guardrail ended as we hit the straight section of the road and, in the headlights, the land to our left began to look rather park-like. Tala swung onto a gravel entrance and killed the siren. Up ahead, the driveway split into two.

  “Take the left fork,” I said.

  She did so. As the headlights picked out the rusting metal structure of an old windmill, the tenuous thread of evil that had lead me here surged—and both trepidation and urgency spiked with it.

  I clenched my fingers and peered out through the windscreen, but there was nothing beyond trees, darkness, and that windmill to be seen.

  It was what I couldn’t see that was worrying me.

  “There,” Duke said. “Up ahead to our left, just off the road in the trees.”

  I shifted and, in the gleam of the headlights, saw what appeared to be a rear bumper bar. The rest of the car was little more than a shadowed outline; if there was anyone inside the vehicle, it wasn’t obvious from here.

  “I’m not liking the feel of this.” Tala halted the SUV but didn’t turn off the engine or get out. “At the very least, there should have been some reaction to us pinning them with our headlights. Is the soucouyant still here?”

  “Yes.”

  But why couldn’t we see her? Or, for that matter, her victim? The Kia wasn’t a large car and there wasn’t a whole lot of room in the back seat to stretch out in any way—something I knew from rather disastrous and totally unsatisfied experience. The soucouyant’s human form was well over six feet tall, and her victim had been at least several inches taller than me. Seduction room would have been sparse.

  “How do you want to play this?” Tala asked.

  I swung the pack onto the seat and quickly unzipped it. “I think I’d better go on alone to investigate—”