Corruption

by Jennifer Blackstream

  Lorelei’s face tightened with frustration, her red eyes glinting with anger. “But I look as I should. This is me, me as I truly am. Does that not mean this is also the truth?” She held up her and Laurie’s joined hands.

  “You have a true form, a form that remains the same wherever you are,” Gary explained. “What you see there,” he gestured at her hand, “is a representation of a concept. Your bond with Laurie. It is not objective because it has no true form. No reality.”

  “So did getting shot do that to Laurie or not?” Andy asked.

  “Could the bullet have been poisoned?”

  Andy frowned. “I don’t know. We didn’t ask them to test it.”

  “I can call Kylie and ask her to test it now,” I said.

  Gary nodded. “Have it tested as soon as possible. Something is keeping your paladin friend locked away, and until you figure out what that something is…”

  We all stared at Lorelei. The demon narrowed her eyes, looking back and forth between us. Suddenly, she froze.

  “Until then…I am in charge.” She stared hard at Gary, and a hint of excitement crept into her voice. “If Laurie is locked away so completely that she could not wake here, then her body is mine. Truly mine.”

  “Not truly,” Gary said pointedly.

  Lorelei’s mouth curved into a broad grin, turning her face into the stuff of nightmares. “A distinction without a difference.”

  Gary’s jaw tightened and he turned away from Lorelei to address me. “I’m sorry you can’t speak to them both as you desired, Shade. Unfortunately, I don’t believe there’s anything more to be done here?”

  “No,” I agreed.

  “Then I will return us to the physical plane. I— Wait.” Gary stiffened, tilting his head as if listening to something I couldn’t hear. His eyes shone, and I smelled woodsmoke and new leaves.

  “What is it?” I asked, lowering my voice.

  Gary met my eyes. “We have to go. We’re in danger.”

  Chapter 8

  Gary didn’t take the time to ease us into our bodies the way he’d coaxed our astral selves to leave them. I hit my physical form with a bone-jarring suddenness that made every muscle spasm in surprised outrage. I stayed in my seat, adjusting to the harsh return and scanning my surroundings for some sign of the danger.

  Three of the four walls of the Brewster sisters’ patio were nearly all glass, giving us an unimpeded view of our surroundings. It was after two thirty and April sunlight bathed the rows of headstones that lined the small cemetery at the back of the property. The forest lining the east side of the graveyard etched shadows on the grass, but I saw no one hiding amongst the trees.

  Movement out of the corner of my peripheral vision made me turn. A tail vanished behind a tombstone as an animal hid from my sight. Maybe a dog, or a large cat.

  “Can you sense any specifics?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

  “No.” He rose from his seat. The limbs that looked so awkward when you first met him now carried him with seamless grace, and he made no sound as he crept toward the window. An echo of his power I’d felt on the astral plane rolled out from his body, filling the patio with the scent of burning wood.

  Andy stood, keeping his back to the only solid wall of the patio. He held his gun, but he didn’t raise it.

  “A skinwalker,” Gary whispered.

  “The animal.” I pointed to the grave where I’d seen the tail vanish. “Behind that tombstone. Do you know what form the skinwalker is wearing now?”

  Gary followed my gesture to the tombstone. “He is not a true shifter, so there is no animal spirit to sense. I can only feel the wrongness of it, like a hint of bile in the back of my mouth. The skin he wears was not given, it was taken. The animal’s spirit did not offer the gift to whomever now wears its skin, and so the talisman’s aura is rotting away.”

  “What’s a skinwalker?” Andy asked. “You’re talking about him like he’s a man wearing a dead animal’s pelt.”

  “A succinct observation,” Gary agreed grimly. “A skinwalker is to a shaman what a rabid dog is to man’s best friend. He is a man who was taught the ways of the shaman, but chose to use those gifts for his own gain instead of the good of his community. A man who seeks to dominate the world around him rather than live in harmony with it.”

  “A skinwalker kills an animal and performs a ritualistic skinning to turn it into a talisman of sorts.” I didn’t take my eye off the tombstone. “By wearing the animal’s skin, they can take the form of that animal.” I motioned to the grave with my chin. “I thought I saw a dog or a cat, but if he’s a skinwalker, then it could be the danger Gary sensed.”

  “Will bullets hurt it?” Andy asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Peasblossom spoke up. She hung onto my earlobe as she balanced on my collarbone. “He’s not a true shifter.”

  All of us focused on the tombstone now, staring at it twenty yards away, waiting for the skinwalker to show itself. Andy seemed to realize we’d all made one spot the sole object of our attention and scanned the rest of the yard for any other threats.

  “What’s the difference between a ‘true shifter’ and a skinwalker?” he asked.

  Peasblossom answered again. “A true shifter is both man and animal, two spirits living in symbiotic harmony. That harmony grants them superior strength and healing, and even in human form their animal half gives them a heightened sense of smell and hearing. Better eyesight too, depending on the animal.” She scowled. “A skinwalker is a thief and a monster, putting his life above another’s with no gratitude for its sacrifice. While he wears the skin, he has the senses of the animal he killed, but there is no spirit left to guide him, and no symbiosis. He is that animal in body only.”

  “So what’s he doing here?” Andy asked.

  “Skinwalkers seek power, and most often they get it through the domination or destruction of others,” Gary said, disgust thick in his tone. “Whatever has brought him here, it isn’t good.”

  Suddenly a furry shape trotted out from behind the tombstone. I raised my eyebrows.

  “What is that?” Peasblossom demanded. “Has someone painted a dog?”

  It wasn’t a bad description. At first glance, I’d have dismissed it as a medium-sized dog, tawny and lean with short hair. It was only when it angled its body to the side I glimpsed the black stripes that began halfway down its back before melting into the darker fur of the thick tail that extended from its body in a downward slope reminiscent of a kangaroo.

  “I’m not sure what it is,” I admitted.

  The not-a-dog trotted closer to the house, its tongue lolling out in the epitome of the loyal neighborhood pooch. Something about its eyes contradicted the friendly image. Something hard and calculating.

  I readied a spell, Gary’s warning of impending danger echoing in my ears. The dog stopped and raised its face to the sky. The head kept going after the nose pointed straight up, and I blinked as the parting fur at the dog’s throat revealed a man’s face. There was a definite wrongness to the image, like a twisted mockery of birth.

  My stomach turned, and before my brain could process what I was seeing, I found myself staring at a blond man with dark brown eyes and leathering skin that suggested he’d spent most of his life in the sun. I’d put him in his mid-forties, fit and muscled in a way that came from physical labor rather than the gym. He wasn’t a large man, maybe five nine and a hundred and fifty pounds. But the necklace of teeth around his neck and the large machete at his side gave him the edge of danger that his size didn’t.

  The gun strapped across his back helped too.

  “Well, well,” Lorelei said, rising from her chair. She studied the newcomer from the top of his tousled head to the bottom of his faded blue jeans. “There’s a man I’d like to meet in a dark alley.”

  I wasn’t sure if she meant that in a sexual way or if she wanted to see if she could take him out despite his obvious defenses. Demons could be tricky that way.

  “You must be Moth
er Renard.” He drew a hand down the fur vest he wore, trailing the tips of his fingers over the ragged edge.

  I blinked, surprised by his Australian accent and the fact that the skinwalker knew my name. “I’m sorry?”

  He stepped closer to the glass wall of the patio, raising his voice. “I said you must be Mother Renard.”

  “Yes.” I frowned. “Who are you?”

  He grinned, an expression similar to the one he’d tried on as a dog. And like the dog’s expression, this grin didn’t match the look in his eyes. Something about the way he angled his body suggested he was talking to me, but his attention was on Lorelei.

  “They call me the Tasmanian Tiger,” he said. “But you can call me T.T.”

  I crossed my arms. “I will not. What is your name?”

  His grin widened. “Paul.”

  I debated trying to get his last name out of him, but I suspected it would be a waste of time. He’d probably given me a fake first name, there was no reason to make him come up with a fake last name. Before I could decide how to respond, Lorelei rose from her seat and gestured at the table.

  “I’m Lorelei. Won’t you come inside and have a cup of tea with us?”

  Her introduction seemed to give Paul the excuse he needed to turn his full attention to the demon. He looked her up and down, slowly, leisurely. Either he knew what she was and knew she’d welcome that sort of inspection, or he didn’t care if she wanted that sort of attention or not. Either way, I didn’t like it.

  “That’d be lovely, Lorelei. Don’t mind if I do.” He edged around the patio as if he already knew where the door was.

  How long has he been watching us? I wondered.

  “He’s been scouting the place,” Andy muttered under his breath. He still had his gun out, pointed down at the floor. “She shouldn’t have invited him inside.”

  “No, she should not,” I agreed. “But she’s extended an invitation. Withdrawing it now could make things…complicated.”

  “Complicated?” Andy echoed.

  “The Otherworld takes hospitality very seriously.”

  Gary jerked his chin toward the skinwalker as he clasped the door handle. “The vest he wears gives him the ability to change his shape. See how he’s cut it up? He had no respect for the animal, in life or in death.” He raised his voice as the skinwalker stepped inside the patio. “The animal you wear. A Tasmanian Tiger?”

  Paul winked. “Hence the nickname.” He drew a finger down the side of his face, tracing one of three long scars that went from his temple to his jaw. “Well, along with my pretty stripes, of course.”

  “Tasmanian Tigers are extinct,” Gary said, his voice warming with the first hint of temper.

  Paul shrugged. “They are now.”

  My temper flared, but before I could tell the skinwalker what I thought of poachers, Paul held up a hand. “That came out wrong, forgive me. What I meant was, they weren’t endangered when this vest was made. I would never wipe a species from the planet.”

  He was lying. And he wasn’t even trying to do it well. “Why are you here, Paul?” I asked, putting emphasis on his name.

  “I’m here to offer my services to you, Mother Renard. And to you, lovely Lorelei.”

  Lorelei raised a finger to her mouth and bit the tip. “How tempting. What is it you do?”

  “You’ll forgive me if I decline your generous offer,” I said coolly. “Why don’t you leave your card, and if I need to slaughter an animal, I’ll give you a call?”

  “Not very sporting to judge me on appearances,” Paul chastised me. “And you not even knowing why I’m here.”

  “Why are you here?” Andy asked.

  Paul ignored him the way so many Otherworlders ignored humans. He answered as if I’d asked the question. “Corban and Christophe are dead.”

  I stiffened, the magic I’d called in preparation for danger heating my palm. “How did you know Corban and Christophe?”

  “And how did you hear of their death?” Andy added.

  Paul shoved his fingers through his tangled blond hair. “I have not always been an…honorable man.”

  “Do tell,” Lorelei purred. She grasped the back of her chair and leaned forward, giving the skinwalker a good look at her cleavage.

  The corner of Paul’s mouth quirked up, but he tore his gaze from her to meet my eye. “My father was the elder in the village where I grew up. He expected me to follow in his footsteps, and he trained me early. But I’m ashamed to say I took a different and less honorable path.”

  He scratched the stubble on his chin and smiled as if recalling a fond memory. “I had a burning desire to prove myself, to be the smartest and the strongest. One night, I survived an attack by a bunyip. Almost died, but instead I ended up lying on the shore of a lake, bloody and half-mad with one of the bastard’s teeth in my grasp.” He gestured to a tooth on his necklace, a long canine the size of my thumb. “After that, I dedicated my life to pitting myself against creatures and people that killed other men. Anything that scared the other hunters became my next target.”

  “You’re a bounty hunter,” I guessed.

  He tipped his hat at me. “I was. Took only the dangerous assignments, the ones no one else would touch. And in my spare time, I killed some more.”

  Andy opened his mouth, and Paul winced. “Pardon the phrasing. I meant I hunted some more.”

  Andy didn’t believe him any more than I did.

  “Sounds like you enjoy a good time,” Lorelei spoke up, walking around the table to get closer to the bounty hunter. “So few men nowadays know how to relax, follow their passion.”

  “Tell us about how you followed your passion,” Andy deadpanned.

  The smile melted from Paul’s face. “When I look back on my life, I see blood and death. No friends, no family. Nothing a man can trust to keep going after he’s gone.” Paul rolled the bunyip tooth between his thumb and forefinger. “No man wants to believe he’ll be forgotten after the dirt gets between him and the sun.” He met my gaze then, and there was a somberness that hadn’t been there before. “I met Corban and Christophe. By this time, I’d gotten quite a reputation, but they talked to me like I was any other man, not just a killer, someone who hunted for fun.”

  Lorelei groaned and retreated to her seat to slump into her chair. “I don’t like where this story is going. It started out with such promise.”

  Paul shrugged. “Sorry, sheila. I’m afraid the boys got to me. Saved me, you might say. They made me see it wasn’t too late. I could test my skills and still have all the things that eluded me.”

  “They talked you into hunting bad guys,” Andy guessed.

  “They talked me into working defense instead of offense,” Paul corrected him. “I hired myself out to people who had things to get done, but faced a strong likelihood of dying in the process. Every other job was pro bono.” He looked at Gary. “The twins believed the charity would bring me rewards outside of monetary gain. Scrub some of the sin from my soul, so to speak.”

  Gary crossed his arms. “What soul?”

  Paul sighed. “I don’t blame you for doubting me. But the fact is, I failed Corban and Christophe. I check in on them once in awhile, but they kept this job close to the vest. I didn’t realize they’d gone off until it was too late to join them. And by the time I caught up…” He scratched his temple as if he still couldn’t believe it. “Shot. With a mundane weapon. They didn’t deserve that.”

  It said a lot about Paul that he considered a quick death by mundane means to be worse than the long and excruciating death that often waited for exorcists. Sociopaths often had difficulty imagining how others would feel in a situation if that feeling deviated from what they themselves would feel.

  “I want to help you find who killed them,” he told me. “I want to avenge their deaths.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “We have all the help we need, thank you.”

  “No one ever has all the help they need,” Paul corre
cted me. “I can help. I promise you, I have skills that no member of your team has.”

  “That’s what concerns me.” I paused. “How did you know my name? And that I was working this case?”

  “I’ve been following you,” Paul admitted.

  “And spying on us,” I added. “For how long?”

  “Long enough to know the bullet that shot her,” he gestured to Lorelei, “was meant for him.” He pointed at Andy.

  I froze. “What?”

  “You’ve made a kelpie angry,” Paul mused, crossing his arms as he faced Andy. “Mind if I ask how you managed that? Not that kelpies aren’t cranky critters, but they don’t usually venture far from water.” He snorted. “Lousy shot, but then what do you expect from someone who spends most of their time on four hooves?”

  “A kelpie shot at Andy?” I asked. Unease rolled through my stomach with enough force that I tasted stomach bile.

  “That he did. Saw him hiding behind the cafe. They look human enough on two legs, but I know a kelpie when I see one.”

  I stared at Andy, my heart pounding so hard I couldn’t hear my voice. “I told you. I told you they wouldn’t forget.” I shoved my fingers through my hair, ignoring the yelp of surprise from Peasblossom, who’d moved to sit on top of my head at some point. “We need to get you someplace safe. Do you have relatives out of state?”

  Andy settled into a wider stance. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Wouldn’t do you any good anyway,” Paul agreed. “If they want you bad enough, and it seems like they do, then they’ll find you anywhere. You’re safest staying near your witch.”

  I let the “your witch” comment go. Before I could think of a better way to argue with him, Silence stepped onto the patio. He smelled like a combination of new electronics and warm keyboard mixed with chocolate chip cookies.

  “Did you find something?” I asked him.

  Silence nodded and retreated into the house.