by Ben Meeks
“Took you long enough,” I said, stepping past her into the RV.
Two of her guards sat up front, driver and shotgun, literally. The other elf followed me in, and went to stand by the back of the RV. I found the Queen at the table and sat down. We stared at each other for a few seconds, both waiting for the other to start.
“I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain yourself,” I said, tired of the game.
“Obie, we have done some business and you have shown yourself to be a friend to the Nation,” she said, leaning forward and pointing one of her revolvers at me. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that that grants you the right to question or detain me. We are not equals.”
“Is that supposed to scare me? You think I haven’t been shot more times than I can count already,” I asked.
“You don’t think I know how to kill a Keeper?” she replied.
I leaned forward into the gun. “Then do it, but if you do, my kind will take everything from you.”
That wasn’t an empty threat and she knew it. The response to murdering a Keeper is both immediate and absolute. She sat still for a few seconds before returning the six-shooter to its holster.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Did you have Otis killed? I want the truth,” I said.
She relaxed back in her seat. “Do you know what the most admirable thing about a dog is? It doesn’t know it’s going to die. It lives in the moment because the moment is all it knows. It can’t contemplate the future. Occasionally, it can be beneficial to remind a dog of its mortality.”
“Why don’t you cut the crap and just give it to me straight,” I asked.
“Yes, I had him killed. Are you happy?” she said.
“Not even a little bit,” I said. “Why would you do that? We were finally, after years of tension and hostilities, starting to work together. Is peace not important to you at all?” I asked.
“Peace.” She laughed. “What kind of peace could we ever have with those beasts? They aren’t capable of it.”
“You don’t think Otis was serious about the agreement?”
“I have no doubt he meant it when he said it, but he would break his word eventually. He couldn’t help it, his nature would get the better of him.”
“What nature is that exactly?” I asked.
“Shifters have violent tendencies, I don’t need to tell you that. It’s not their fault, they just can’t control themselves. Combine their violent nature with the primitive male mind and throw in an entire pack that blindly follows, the threat was just too great. It had to be eliminated for the good of the Nation.”
“I see,” I said. I knew she felt some hostility toward males and shifters but I didn’t realize the extent of her prejudice until then. I didn’t think I was going to change her mind, at least not right then, and with everything that had happened, I wasn’t up for trying. “One more thing and I’ll go. I can’t owe you a favor. It could conflict with my obligations to Thera and I can’t be indebted to someone like that. It was wrong of me to make that agreement. I will be happy to pay for the soul stone, just let me know what you want.”
“See, you’re proving my point, not twenty-four hours into our agreement and you’re already backing out. It’s not your fault, males are dishonest by nature. Just return the stone and we will pretend it never happened. I would rather not have something that powerful unaccounted for anyway,” she said.
“Well, that’s a problem,” I said. “It was destroyed.”
“In that case I will hold you accountable to our original agreement.”
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Maybe you should spend some time thinking about it. You’re smart for what you are, you could make the right decision. I will come to you to fulfill our agreement and if you refuse you will have to face the consequences. Either way, you are going to pay for that stone,” she said.
“I’m trying to pay for it,” I said.
“You’ve held us up too long already,” she said. “You’re dismissed.”
There was no point trying to reason with her. We would have to settle it later. I slid out of the seat and went back to the truck without another word.
C H A P T E R • 31
I pulled into DeSoto Falls a little after three in the morning. Besides the fact that the park was supposed to be closed, it was an excellent time for discretion. I found an open spot to park the truck and made my way down the trail beside the campground. Most of the campers were asleep, a few adding gentle snores to the ambience of the forest. The few that were awake huddled beside dying fires. Most of the time people built fires for novelty, and not just the tourists. The easiest way to spot a tourist wasn’t by the campfire on a sweltering night; it was that they wouldn’t look at or speak to you. Afraid to make eye contact, no friendly greeting in passing. I just have to remind myself that they don’t mean to be rude, they just aren’t from around here. A moot point when they’re all unconscious.
I followed the trail to where I cut into the woods toward Livy’s camp. When I arrived, I found a few glowing embers of what was a campfire. That, combined with the gentle breathing I heard coming from the tent, lead me to believe Livy had gone to sleep hours ago. Thera had said Holt was awake but that didn’t mean he’s mobile yet. Deciding to let them rest, I got a couple of the tree shards and rekindled the fire.
Walasi’s voice entered my mind.
“Yes, the demon is dead. Everything is back to normal, sort of,” I said, looking at Naylet’s figure in the moonlight.
A crack opened in the hillside as Walasi peeked out, the electric green of his eye illuminated the campsite.
“We will pack up in the morning and get Livy and Holt home. It’s time to get on with things,” I said.
He wasn’t wrong. A few days in the woods might be a nice break. I would miss Otis’s funeral if I stayed and I needed to be there. “I would like to but there are some things I have to take care of.”
He settled, sending a shudder through the ground and little bits of dirt and rock cascading down the hill. I got the feeling he was disappointed.
“You okay?” I asked.
It hadn’t occurred to me until now, but there was no telling how old Walasi was, and he had to be in hiding here for three or four hundred years at least for me to have not known about him. It would be a horribly lonely existence. Could there be a time when I wouldn’t be able to blend in anymore and would be in a similar boat? I wouldn’t want to be out in the woods on my own like that.
“I’m sorry. I’ll try to get back up here soon,” I said.
“I thought I heard someone out here,” Holt said with his head sticking out of the tent.
“Good to see you’re awake. How are you feeling?” I asked.
He came over to join me by the fire. He moved deliberately, obviously still recovering from the venom. “Like I was hit by a train. I’m sore but I’ll be okay. Did you take care of the demon?”
“She is on a date with Hob as we speak,” I said, poking the fire with a branch from the tree. “We need to talk. Since you showed up we haven’t been much of a team. We need to fix that if we are going to work together. I don’t want to keep doing things the way we have been.”
“It hasn’t seemed like you want to work together. You’ve just been on my case about everything,” he said.
“You’re right. I wish I had a good excuse but the truth is I just don’t know what I’m doing. You’re my first apprentice and I have been treating you the way Cearbhall treated me. I learned some things recently that changed some things for me. I’ll just say, I don’t want the same kind of relationship with you that Cearbhall and I have,” I said.
“I was excited when I found out we were going to be working together. One of Cedric’s favorite stories was when the two of you shut down those hunters in Chattanooga. The
n I got here and things weren’t what I expected. If I’m being honest, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” he said. “With Cedric it was easy. Then he died and ever since I’ve been lost. I don’t feel like I belong here, or anywhere for that matter.”
“I’ve heard losing a mentor can be really tough. It can be disorienting to have such an important figure disappear overnight. Let’s start over together. Everyone should have the right to reinvent themselves. We will take it a day at a time and it will get better,” I said.
“It sounds good, but I don’t know how to do it,” he said.
“You haven’t met most of the people here so there’s still time to make those first impressions. The people you have met don’t know you well so they will come to know the person you become instead of the person you were. In the spirit of our new partnership, I spoke to Adan and set up a split for our dusting profits. You should have enough for your TV and anything else you want in a few weeks.”
He stretched his back, cringing at the stiffness. “Right now, all I want is to not feel like death.”
“As soon as Livy is awake we can get packed up, and get you somewhere comfortable to recover,” I said.
“Oh, she’s not asleep. She was meditating or something, sitting there staring off into nothing for hours. It’s kinda creeping me out,” he said. “What is she doing?”
“She’s a shaman, it’s called journeying. She sends her consciousness to the spirit world looking for answers or help. I don’t really understand it that well myself.”
“Aren’t they supposed to beat on drums and stuff?” he asked.
“She quit using the drum a long time ago. I don’t think she needs it anymore,” I said. “I’ll go wait on her to come back in the tent. We will get packed up and go as soon as she does.”
I got up and moved to the tent where I found Livy sitting cross-legged on the ground, eyes open, staring off into the infinite. If she saw me come in, she didn’t show it. I took a seat on the cot and waited.
After a few minutes of silence, she turned to me and said, “Obie, I am glad to see you safe.”
I smiled. “You ready to go home?”
“I’m sorry, Obie. I have been searching for Naylet, asking the spirits for guidance but I couldn’t find her. I tried my best.” Tears started to well up in her eyes and she covered her mouth with a hand.
“Oh, hey, don’t do that,” I said moving down to give her a hug. “It’s really okay. I’m coming to terms with . . . everything. You know what, let’s get both of you back home before we start worrying about anything else,” I said. “I’ll get the camp packed up.”
“What about Naylet?” Livy asked.
“I’m going to leave her here with Walasi for a bit. I’m not ready to deal with that yet,” I said.
In an hour we had the truck loaded. Everyone piled in and we headed to Livy’s. I unloaded the truck and got her settled before we left. Holt waited in the car. It wasn’t long before we said our goodbyes and I was on my way, glad for things to start to resemble normal again. We couldn’t go home. It would take some work before it would be livable again after what Petra had done to it. It was no place for Holt to recover. I had him up to speed on what the Queen had done by the time we got to the clubhouse. The junkyard was busier than normal. All the space not taken up by junked cars, waiting to be stripped and crushed, was being used for parking. A few of the T.O. were outside greeting people as they came in. I pulled up to Fisheye and rolled down the window.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Service for Otis. There’s still a little parking left on the south side,” he said, pointing to the far side of the property.
I gave him a nod and drove slowly, maneuvering around the cars and people making their way into the clubhouse, to an open patch of dirt large enough to park the truck on.
“The Queen really had Otis killed,” Holt said more to himself than me, still trying to wrap his head around it.
“Listen, before we go in there, I need to make sure we’re on the same page. I lied about it to Hank and said it was an accident. I would appreciate it if you keep that between us. I don’t want a war to break out over this. It would destabilize the region and cost a lot of lives. I’m going to tell him when things calm down and we will figure out how to handle it then.”
“I get it, but what about the Queen? She just gets away with it?” he asked.
It’s a fair question, there should be some consequences for her. “I’d like to think it will come back around.”
“Maybe we should make sure it does,” he said.
“Justice isn’t really our mission,” I said. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
“Kind of fast to hold services isn’t it?” he asked, getting out of the truck.
“They don’t embalm, so things have to move quickly before the body decays,” I said. “It’s an abomination to preserve a body and prevent it from rejoining the earth. We did the same thing with Cedric, remember?”
Hank was halfway to the truck by the time we got out. Deciding to wait on him so we could speak without a crowd around, I lowered the tailgate to sit on. I was hesitant, knowing that only a few hours ago it was filled with demon bodies, but Hob had sprayed it out before I left and there wasn’t a trace of what had been there hours before. I hopped on the tailgate and waited. Holt eased his way from the passenger seat to join me at the back of the truck.
“Holt, good to see you up and about,” Hank said.
“Thanks, I hope to be one hundred percent in a few days,” he said.
“We’re having a little get together to honor Otis. We’re taking him to Hob tonight so if you want to pay your respects sooner would be better than later.”
“He’s not getting buried?” I asked.
He shook his head. “He wanted to be dusted. I guess he really believed in what the two of you put together here.”
That stung a little considering I was keeping a secret about his death.
“I’ll go in and pay my respects, but after that, I have a couple things to take care of, not least of which is finding a place for us to stay.”
“What do you mean?” Hank asked.
“Petra trashed the house. It’s pretty much destroyed.” I said. “It’s going to take a while to get everything cleaned up and fixed.”
“You’ll stay at the clubhouse and the T.O. will help you fix it up,” Hank said.
“I appreciate the offer but I can’t. I will figure something out,” I replied, probably out of guilt more than anything.
“You can and you will. You saved a lot people on both sides of the veil tonight. It’s only fair that your life be put back as close to normal as we can get it. Luckily the Tortured Occult specializes in helping ultra-naturals down on their luck,” he said.
“All right, I appreciate it.”
“I haven’t had a chance until now to say it, but I’m sorry about Naylet. Any chance of getting her back to normal?” Hank asked.
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought,” I said. “Do you still have that moving truck?”
“Yeah, it’s parked around back,” he said.
“I need to borrow it for a while,” I said. “Let’s go pay our respects first though.”
I went back to the truck and picked up the pink bunny that had rolled under the seat and stuffed it into the pocket of my cargo shorts.
C H A P T E R • 32
I watched Carolina wrens chasing each other through the trees. Diving and banking, the aerial maneuvers were enough to make a Blue Angel jealous. Their rusty brown wings fluttered as they jumped from branch to branch, only stopping their games to sing their songs. They blended in well with the trees beside the little path leading back to where I had everything set up. I had arranged this little rendezvous on some private land where I knew we wouldn’t be disturbed. With everything in place, I just had to wait. I was feeling anxious and was glad to have the distraction the birds offered.
Farwell pulled his black SUV
up beside the moving truck and rolled down the window. “Could you have picked a spot that’s harder to find? I got turned around twice already. You want to tell me what we’re doing here?”
“I’m about to make you famous,” I said, getting out of the truck.
“Make somebody else famous and leave me alone,” he said, looking generally sour.
“I’m afraid you’re my only option,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of contacts in the police department. If you want to introduce me to someone else, I’ll be happy to bother them—if you want to explain all this to them that is.”
“So what do you want?” he questioned.
“You know all those missing babies over the past year? I think we found them. If everything goes according to plan, they will be here for you to return to their families soon,” I said. “I’m just waiting on a few more people to show up and we can see.”
“Let me get this straight, you don’t know if you found them, but you think you might have, and I’m here just in case it turns out that you did, in fact, find them?” he asked.
I gave him a smile. “Exactly.”
“How can you not know if you found them or not? That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Not really,” he said. “So, how am I supposed to explain finding a bunch of missing kids? Assuming you did find them, that is.”
I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and handed it to him. It was a note giving directions to where we were and explaining that the missing children could be found here. I had cut the letters out of magazines and pasted them to a sheet of paper; it looked like fun on TV, turns out it’s a lot of work. “Now you have an anonymous tip.”
“Goodie,” he said, looking at the note.
The rumble of motorcycles down the road foretold the T.O.’s arrival. Hank pulled off the road a minute later, followed by eight motorcycles and a van. The bikes parked in a line facing the road with the van to the side. Hank was the first off his bike and came over to where I was standing beside Farwell’s car.
