Haunted

by Kelley Armstrong

  "Good. Put this in the deepest. Now, one last thing--or two last..." He shook his head. "Never mind. Just...just..."

  "Go," I said, smiling.

  "And be careful."

  "I will," I said, then turned and opened the door.

  41

  I STEPPED INTO A SAGE-AND-GOLD MEADOW POLKA-DOTTED with jewel-toned wildflowers dipping and swaying in a warm summer's breeze. Overhead, the sun shone from a perfect aquamarine sky, marshmallow clouds drifting past, but never blocking its bright rays. Birds sang from the treetops. A butterfly fluttered past.

  "Serial-killer hell, huh?" I muttered. I started turning around. "Trsiel! You sent me to the wrong--"

  The door was gone. In its place was a dirt road, lined with tall grass and more wildflowers. The road led to a cluster of picture-perfect stone cottages.

  "Trsiel," I sighed. "When you screw up, you go all the way, don't you?"

  I took the vial of hellsbane potion from my pocket and peered at the clumps of tarlike ooze suspended in a muddy brown liquid. Yummy. I'd really rather not drink this stuff, only to have Trsiel do a mental forehead smack ten seconds later, realize his mistake, and reopen the door. In the meantime, no harm in checking out this village, seeing what kind of afterlife he had sent me to.

  As I approached the village, I was struck by the stillness of it. Though the birds continued to chirp and trill, not a glimmer of movement came from the collection of tiny houses. I shivered, reminded of some long-forgotten TV movie from the seventies, one of those Cold War nuclear-disaster flicks. After the bomb went off, the camera had panned around a pretty little town, devoid of life, only the cheerful tinkle of wind chimes breaking the silence.

  That's what this looked like. A ghost town. Only not like any real ghost town I'd ever seen. Walk down any street in our world and, even if you happened to arrive at the rare moment when no one was out-of-doors, you saw signs of life everywhere: a folded paperback under a shade tree, a pair of gardening gloves draped over a bush, an empty coffee mug on a porch railing. But here I saw none of that.

  I walked past the first pair of houses, gaze tripping from one to the other. The houses stared back with empty eyes, windows with no curtains or blinds, no hanging plants or gaudy sun-catchers...just blank, dead stares.

  I counted eight houses on this street, four to a side, perfectly spaced on postage-stamp lawns. There were no side roads, just this street petering out after a hundred feet to either side of the village, one side ending in the meadow, the other in a forest.

  I turned to the house on my left and narrowed my eyes to zoom in on the front windows. Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. Damn.

  I looked around, but the caution was more instinctive than intentional; there was no one here. I headed up the walk. The house sat at ground level, with no front porch or patio, just a gravel path leading to a door flanked with empty gardens. Above each garden was a single window. I tramped across the dirt garden and peered inside the left one. A bedroom...or so I assumed from the furnishings. Make that furnishing--singular. The only thing in the room was a twin-size bed. Not much of a bed, either, just a bare mattress on a frame. Cozy.

  I walked to the window on the other side of the front door. A living room-dining room combo, with a sofa, a dinette table, and a single chair. A crumpled throw rug in the corner caught my eye. No, not a rug...bedding. A sheet and a blanket lay near the corner, rumpled into a makeshift sleeping place, like a dog's bed.

  I looked back at the street. If there had been any dogs here, they were long gone. Not just the dogs, but all animals. The ghost world was like most urban areas--not obviously teeming with animal life, but if you looked close enough, you always saw it--a rabbit darting across a lawn, a gopher peeking from a ditch, a dog stretched out on a front stoop. But here there wasn't so much as a phantom squirrel scampering past. I could still hear the birds, but caught only the occasional glimpse of one, high above in a tree. An empty world. Maybe an afterlife town in the making, awaiting a population spurt, some disaster in the living world. Yet that didn't explain that nest of bedding...

  As I turned back to the house, I thought I saw a face reflected in a window of the house across the street. I swung around, but there was nothing there. Instinctively I tried to sharpen my sight, then swore when it didn't work. I scanned the two windows, watching for a shadow, a flicker of movement. Nothing.

  Where the hell was Trsiel? I reached into my pocket. As my fingers closed around the vial of hellsbane potion, something rustled beside me. I spun to see a big ornamental bush at the corner of the house, a couple of yards away. The breeze whispered through the leaves. Was that what I'd heard? Must have been, but--

  A floorboard creaked. My head shot up and I peered into the house. No way I'd hear a floorboard creak through those thick stone walls. So where...? My gaze traveled to the wooden porch on the neighboring house. Empty. I listened, body tense, but I heard nothing. Nothing. Not even the birds. I turned toward the window again.

  "Was sie sind?"

  I wheeled. A man stood behind me, a small man, no taller than five foot four, and thin, with skin that looked like it had been left out in the sun and shrunk, tanned and leathery, stretched taut against his bones. His face was a flesh-colored skull topped with sparse tufts of iron gray hair. As he studied me, he tilted his head to one side, then the other, the movement jerky, birdlike. His eyes lifted to mine, dull gray disks, like worn metal washers. He stared at me, unblinking, head jerking up and down now, taking me in from head to toe.

  "Was sie sind?" he said. "Answer. Now. What are you?"

  I blinked. As the words switched to English, his lips didn't follow, moving out of sync, like a badly dubbed movie.

  At a noise behind me, I glanced over my shoulder and found a man standing in the living room window. Average height, young--no more than early twenties--with dirty-blond hair that flopped over hooded blue eyes. Those eyes traveled over me, then up to mine, and his upper lips curled back to reveal canines filed to points. He ran his tongue over his teeth.

  Another rustle to my left, and a third man stepped off the porch of the neighboring house. He was chubby and baby-faced, with large brown eyes, a small nose, and a receding chin. A huge carved wooden club dangled from his hand. He lifted the club and smiled at me.

  "Guess Trsiel didn't screw up after all," I muttered.

  The bird-man struck first, leaping onto my side, one arm hooking around my neck to pull me down. A jab in the ribs foiled that plan, and he fell off with a shriek.

  "It fights," the man with the club said as he strolled across the lawn. "How well does it fight?"

  "Pretty damned well," I said. "But I suppose you aren't going to take my word for it."

  He broke into a run, club swinging over his head. At the same moment, bird-man flew at me again. I wheeled out of bird-man's path, and front-kicked club-man. My foot caught him square in the groin...and a blow that would have sent most men to their knees barely tottered him back a step. Obviously that particular vulnerability no longer worked here. Damn.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw bird-man coming again. I side-kicked him out of the way, then drove my fist into club-man's gut. As he doubled over, I wrenched the club from his hand and whipped it aside.

  "You use weapons and I will, too," I said. "And you won't like the ones I've got."

  As club-man recovered, I saw a shape move to my left and wheeled to see another man circling us, head cocked to the side, frowning as he watched me, trying to figure out what I was. I turned on club-man...and an arm grabbed me from behind. I flew off my feet. Teeth clamped into my right shoulder. I yelped, more from the shock of feeling pain than from the pain itself.

  The teeth dug in harder. I slammed my fist into my attacker's face. His head flew back, taking a chunk of my shoulder with it. As pain coursed through me, my attacker leapt at me again. I grabbed him and flipped him off me. It was the man from inside the cottage--the young one with the sharpened teeth.

  I
quickstepped back against the door, keeping my opponents where I could see them. Four now...and a fifth was slowly approaching from the far end of the road.

  "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" asked the man who'd been circling us. "And what can we do with it?"

  "That noise," the club-man said, licking his lips. "The loud noise. Make it do that again."

  The fourth man's mouth stretched in a thin smile and he slid something from the back of his waistband...a blade lashed with a dried vine onto a wooden handle. The blade was stone, chiseled into a knifepoint, like something an archeologist would dig up. How deeply did the need have to go to fashion such a weapon?

  The young man with the sharpened canines growled. The werewolf--I knew that now. Unable to change forms, but the wolf's instinct still running so deep that he slept in a dog's bed and sharpened his teeth to fangs, making the brand of weapon he understood. What supernatural instincts had the others retained?

  As this thought flew through my brain, the werewolf lunged. I dove to the side. The other man's knife slammed into my open hand, and pinned it to the wooden door. For a second, I could only stare at it in disbelief. Then I realized I'd turned my attention away, and whipped it back to the men. Too late. The werewolf struck me first, fangs sinking into my shoulder. Grimacing, I wrenched my hand from the door, the knife still embedded in my palm.

  I yanked the knife out and sliced it at the werewolf. It would have been a great move...had I been right-handed. As it was, the knife barely nicked him. I tried to flip it over to my wounded left hand, but he knocked it from my fingers.

  As the werewolf came at me again, I instinctively cast an energy-bolt spell. A sorcerer spell. Too late, I realized my mistake. The club-man grabbed my hair and whipped me back. I sailed off my feet, fire searing through my scalp as he spun me around by my hair. I squelched the instinct to struggle, and cast a binding spell. As the club-man froze, his grip loosened, and I flew free, hitting the ground hard. The men rushed toward me. I backflipped out of the way and cast a cover spell. They stopped dead.

  "Where did it go?" the club-man said. His lips quivered. "Is it gone?"

  The werewolf walked over to where I'd been and, for the millionth time in my life, I cursed the limitations of witch magic. Because the moment he bumped into me, the spell broke, and there wasn't a damn thing I could have done about it. As he leapt at me, I sprang to my feet and cast a binding spell. Caught him. And caught the bird-man but, again, hit the limitations of the spell as number three came at me. Still holding the other two in a binding spell, I front-kicked club-man in the gut. He went down, but right behind him was the man with the knife. His hand rose, and I was in the midst of trying to decide whether to transfer my binding spell from the werewolf or bird-man when a hand clamped down on the other man's shoulder.

  Behind him stood the man who'd been slowly making his way here, a dark-haired bearded man in his thirties, slender, with the kind of easy grin that made hearts flip. His eyes met mine, and I saw in them not the animal cunning of the others, but something more complex, a level of awareness the others had lost. I also saw that he was a sorcerer...or had sorcerer-based blood. And there was only one of those here.

  He said a few words in a language I didn't recognize, then the translation kicked in. "I believe our pretty guest has come for me," he said, eyes never leaving mine. "Am I correct?"

  "You are," I said.

  His gaze slid over me and he smiled. "When the angels send me a woman, they don't skimp, do they?"

  To my left, the werewolf snarled, his hooded gaze fixed on Dachev.

  "Your fun is over, pets," Dachev said. "Go back to your lairs."

  They hesitated but, after a mutter here, a grumble there, started to fall back.

  "Come," Dachev said to me. "We'll speak at my house."

  "No, we'll speak over there," I said, waving at the meadow.

  He nodded and tried to motion me forward, but I pointed at the road and, with a small smile, he took the lead.

  42

  AS I WALKED BEHIND DACHEV, I KEPT GLANCING OVER my shoulder. None of the others followed us. Dachev must wield some power here--like the first man to travel beyond his prehistoric village and discover the existence of a greater world. Unlike those early explorers, I doubted Dachev shared his knowledge with his comrades, instead retaining that false edge of superiority for as long as he could.

  When we reached the meadow, I led Dachev to a spot in the middle. Then I had a decision to make--turn my back to the village, to the forest at the other end, or to the meadow stretching off to either side. I chose the forest; it was far enough away that no one could leap out of it unnoticed, and I wanted to keep both eyes on that village.

  As I turned to Dachev, I found him studying me, not with the insolent leer from earlier, but an academic stare, accompanied by a slight frown.

  "We have met, have we not?" he said. "You appear familiar...and yet..." His frown flipped into a broad grin. "I'm quite certain I wouldn't forget such an angel. So much prettier than the other one they sent. He wasn't my type at all."

  "We've never met," I said. "The last time you were top-side, I hadn't even been born."

  He gave me another once-over, pausing at my eyes, his confusion obvious. He recognized something there...just wasn't sure what it was. Too bad. If he didn't know I was a witch, I wasn't enlightening him about that, any more than I was letting him know I wasn't an angel.

  "Do you have a name, pretty one?" he asked.

  "Everyone does."

  He waited. When I said nothing, his lips tweaked in a smile.

  "The exchange of names is the first part of any polite conversation," he said.

  "Yep," I said. "It is."

  When I didn't continue, he laughed. "Not even going to humor me, are you? The other one did. He was very polite. Very...understanding. And most companionable. I think he wanted to be my friend."

  "I'm sure he did."

  Dachev's brows lifted as he tried to suppress a grin.

  "You doubt his sincerity? Oh, but he was so sincere. He didn't make me stand in this meadow. He accepted my invitation, came right to my house, to prove how much he trusted me. Don't you trust me?"

  "No."

  Another barely contained grin. "You should. It makes things so much more pleasant. The other angel sat right at my table and told me he understood that I'd been tempted and succumbed. After all, I was human...just as he'd been, so he understood temptation. What the Fates did to me was wrong, putting this poor sinner in such a situation, into contact with one such as the Nix. She tempted me, and I fell from grace."

  "Uh-huh. Moving right along. You know why I'm here, so--"

  "See? Now you're being rude. Katsuo was so much nicer. He wasn't in a hurry. He listened to me, listened most intently as I confessed my sins and told him what the Nix and I had done. Then I told him what I wished I'd done...in beautiful, intricate detail, everything I wished I could have done to those women, if only it had been me in those killers' bodies. I described every cut I would have made, every degradation I would have inflicted." Dachev's face gathered in a mock frown. "That's when he left. Left without even saying good-bye." He looked over at me. "Do you think Katsuo remembers me? Perhaps in his dreams?" He flashed a wide smile. "I hope so."

  I said nothing.

  "Do angels dream?" he said. "Can they have nightmares? Or are they all dreams like this?" He waved a dismissive hand around the meadow. "Visions of wildflowers and sunny skies. We dream, you know. When we sleep, the cracks in our memory open, just enough to let out a flash here, a glimpse there. And there are no wildflowers and sunny skies in our dreams. Sometimes I hear the others screaming. They keep me awake at night."

  "Damned shame."

  A shark-toothed smile. "A damned shame indeed. You aren't even going to feign sympathy, are you?"

  "If you want sympathy, I'll send Katsuo. If you want to cut a deal, you're stuck with me."

  "A deal? I do like the sound of that. Let me see...what should I ask for?
Well, first, of course, I want out of here."

  I laughed.

  "Oh, not permanently. Just a visit, under escort, of course. I--"

  "No. I couldn't arrange it even if I wanted to."

  "Pictures, then."

  "Huh?"

  "When I was out there, with the Nix, whenever we killed someone, the police took so many pictures. Click, click, click. Every angle, every close-up." He closed his eyes and sighed. "Such attention to detail. Even I was impressed."

  "You want those photos?" I said.

  "No, no. Those I remember. And they weren't truly mine. I want mine--the ones I don't remember. I found newspaper clippings of what I'd done, but there were no pictures. So disappointing."

  "Cops didn't take crime photos back then," I lied.

  "No?"

  I looked him in the eye. "No."

  "I see. In that case, I will settle for descriptions. Those who reported on my case were most stingy with the details. Not so much as a single word about precisely what I did, only the broadest hints. I want--"

  "Detail," I said. "I get it. But you won't get it, because I don't know the details, and the only offer on the table here is one I can provide."

  "Use your imagination, then. Tell me what you think I did to those girls. Or, perhaps, I'll tell you what I think I did, what I see when I close my eyes."

  "Sure, let's do that. You tell me what you think you might have done, and I'll listen. You have an hour. At the end of that, if I'm still here, haven't tossed my cookies or bolted out the door, you'll tell me how you caught the Nix. And you'll tell me while I'm casting a lie-detection spell."

  Disappointment seeped into his face, then hardened into a petulant scowl as he realized this deal wouldn't be nearly as rewarding as he'd hoped. I might not want to hear his sadistic fantasies, but I'd listen, and I'd listen without giving him the reaction he craved. After all, they were just words, words unrelated to me, words not even grounded in fact, just the fantasies of a sick fuck who'd never have an opportunity to enact them.

  "Never mind that," he said at last. "I have something better. A game for two."

  "Let me guess. Hide-and-seek. And I don't get to be 'it.'"

  A glimmer of confusion, then he smiled. "Yes, hide-and-seek, as you say. You will run. When I catch you..." His gaze slithered down me, eyes darkening. "I may do as I wish. And then I will tell you what you want to know."