Dead Ground (Harbinger P.I. Book 4) Page 6

  I looked into the blackness of the cave. Maybe there were answers in the creature’s lair. “I’m going to take a look in there.”

  “I’ll keep watch out here,” Jim said. “If there are demons in the area, we need to be cautious.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “You coming, Leon?”

  Leon nodded. Jim handed him the Nikon, which Leon slung over his shoulder.

  We entered the cave, guided by the blue glow from our swords. The passageway looked barely wide enough for the nightwing to pass through but there was evidence that the creature had been here; its claws had left scratches on the rocks and there was a strong smell of death in the air. This was definitely a hunter’s lair.

  The passageway opened up into a circular space where a bed of pine branches lay on the floor. A half-eaten corpse had been shoved up against the wall, as if the nightwing were saving it for later.

  I went over to the body and held my sword over it, examining it in the blue light.

  Most of the face, neck, and chest had been eaten and from the condition of the ragged, dark red flesh, I guessed that the demon had been dead less than twenty-four hours.

  It was naked and I could see a tattoo on its left wrist. “Leon, get a shot of this,” I said. Demons sometimes wore tattoos that showed their allegiance to a certain master or displayed the symbol of their clan.

  The tattoo on this one’s arm was of a double-headed ax inside a triangle. I didn’t recognize it but a little research should tell us more about this demon and where it came from.

  Leon took a couple of photos and we left the cave.

  When we got outside, Jim was standing by the woods. He waved us over.

  “I think that’s how the demons got here,” he said, pointing into the trees.

  There was a small clearing on the other side of the stream and in the clearing stood a stone circle. The stones had been carved with a knotwork design that seemed to represent a cross within a circle.

  “A portal,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Jim took the camera from Leon and got some pictures. “But what’s it doing here and where does it lead?”

  We waded across the stream to the stones. They were huge but buried deep in the earth so that the part of them that was above ground stood waist-high. The larger stones were arranged around a smaller, inner circle of knee-high stones carved with the same knotwork pattern.

  “This symbol isn’t demonic,” I said, tracing my fingers over the design. “It’s faerie.”

  Jim frowned. “Why would demons be using a faerie circle? None of this makes sense.”

  “Hey, guys, something’s happening,” Leon said, pointing to a half dozen sparkles of light that had begun drifting up from the ground.

  The stone I was touching suddenly grew warm.

  “It’s being activated,” I said. “We need to get out of the circle.”

  We backed off as the sparkles of light increased in number. They floated up from the ground within the circle, twisting and interweaving until they became a light so bright it was difficult to look at.

  We hid behind nearby trees, sheathing our swords so the glow wouldn’t give us away. The light from the circle filled the woods for an instant and then died just as quickly.

  I peered around the trunk of my tree to see a woman standing in the center of the circle. She had long blond hair that was decorated with brightly-colored flowers and wore a long white dress over a bountiful figure.

  She looked around for a moment before calling out, “Alec, I know you’re there. It’s time for you to repay your debt to me.”

  Chapter 7

  “Crap,” I said when I realized who the woman was. The Lady of the Forest, the faerie queen that Leon and I had encountered when we’d traveled to Faerie in search of James Robinson, the victim of a changeling. I’d struck a bargain with the Lady in exchange for passage out of Faerie, but the terms had been that her envoy would offer me various ways to repay my debt and I was free to refuse each time, although I’d be in the Lady’s debt until I accepted one of the offers. The terms said nothing about her appearing in a stone circle and demanding repayment.

  I stepped out from behind the tree and walked to the circle. Leon and Jim followed.

  “What the hell do you want?” I asked her.

  “Alec,” she said, “you’re a hard man to find.” She smiled and I felt like my insides were melting. She may have pissed me off by turning up like this but she was a faerie and that meant her beauty exceeded that of human women. There was also a glamor spell around her, as evidenced by a tattoo on my left shoulder growing hotter.

  “If I’m so hard to find, how come you found me here, in the middle of nowhere, in Canada?”

  She pouted, pursing her luscious lips. “You don’t sound pleased to see me.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” I said.

  She sighed with frustration. “Perhaps you might be friendlier toward me if I looked more human.” The air around her shimmered and her form became blurry. When she came back into focus, she was still stunning, only now it was as if the Beauty Meter had been turned down from 11 out of 10 to an 8 or 9. She wore boots, jeans, and a green-check shirt. Her hair was loosely curled in an eighties-style perm. The blooming flowers were all gone, except for the white lily that represented my debt to her.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, spinning around slowly.

  I sighed. “Please, just tell me what you want.”

  Pointing to the white lily in her hair, she said, “I want you to repay your debt.”

  “No, we made a deal that your envoy would visit me and offer me various tasks and I would be able to refuse them. You turning up here like this wasn’t part of our agreement.”

  She folded her arms and pouted again. “Well, things have changed. This was the only was I could reach you.”

  “Our agreement hasn’t changed. We made a fair exchange—an exchange that is binding according to the laws of interaction between faeries and humans. You can’t just change that. I can refuse your request and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She stepped out of the stone circle and came toward us. “Please, Alec, I don’t have anywhere else to turn. You’re my only hope.” She put on a worried expression and even wrung her hands in a performance that might have won her an Academy Award during the days of silent movie melodrama, but I knew she was only trying to play me.

  “You’re overplaying the emotion,” I told her. “And your plea doesn’t really make sense, because the last time I saw you, you were sitting on a throne, being served by faerie warriors and human slaves.”

  She looked wistful for a moment and then sadness darkened her face. “As I said, things have changed.”

  “Alec,” Jim whispered, “she may be able to help us. She came through the portal so she knows what’s on the other side. Maybe she also knows how these demons got here and why they’re using a faerie circle.”

  “She’s a faerie,” I told him. “You know how dangerous they are. We can’t trust her.”

  “But if you’re already in debt to her anyway, maybe you should listen to what she has to say. We help her and she helps us.”

  “Accepting her help is why I’m in debt in the first place. I don’t want to get you and Leon involved in that.”

  “Okay,” Jim said, “but all I’m saying is we need help. We came here to kill the nightwing, which we did, but it turns out the nightwing was stopping something even worse from coming through that portal. Your friend here…”

  “She isn’t my friend.”

  “It’s just a figure of speech, Alec, don’t take it so personally. This faerie might have information we need to close this case. We can’t just walk away now, knowing that a horde of demons could come through that portal at any second. At least ask her what’s on the other side.”

  The Lady of the Forest looked at me with imploring eyes.

  I could see Jim’s point, but dealing with her put a bad taste in my mouth. “Before you tell me
what you want from me, I want something from you. If you give me some information I can use, then I might consider helping you. Do you know anything about the demons using this stone circle? ”

  “Demons?” She wrinkled her nose as if the hell-spawn were directly beneath it and she could smell their brimstone odor.

  “She doesn’t know anything,” I said to Jim.

  “Wait, I didn’t say that,” she said quickly. “Tell me more about these demons.”

  “If you know about them, you tell me,” I said.

  She hesitated, her brow furrowing.

  “I’m waiting,” I said.

  She held up a hand. “I’m thinking.”

  “She doesn’t know anything,” I repeated to Jim.

  “Maybe not,” he admitted.

  “Sorry,” I said to the Lady, “you don’t have any information that can help me so I don’t have time to pay off my debt to you right now because I’m busy working a case. So I refuse your…”

  “Wait!” she said. “The ax.”

  I waited for more information. When none came, I prompted her. “The ax?”

  “On their bodies. The symbol of the ax. Those are the demons you mean?”

  “All right,” I said. “Tell me more. Where do they come from? Why are they using a faerie ring to travel here?”

  She smiled, a flash of wickedness in her icy blue eyes. She waggled a finger at me as if scolding a naughty child. “Not so fast, Alec. I’ve proven to you that I have information you need. I can’t just give it away, especially to someone who is already in my debt.”

  “I’m not making any more deals with you,” I said.

  She put on a pained expression. “You make it sound so bad, as if dealing with me were the wickedest thing in the world. I’m not one of those demons, you know, I’m a faerie. A being of light. Of beauty. Of passion.”

  Her words slid into my mind and invaded my thoughts. The protection tattoo on my left shoulder began to heat up in warning.

  “Get out of my head,” I told her.

  She sighed. “You’re no fun. All right, I won’t ask for an exchange. I will simply announce my terms as follows: if you agree to assist me, your debt will be fulfilled and I will also tell you everything I know about the demons. Do we have a deal?”

  “Not until I know exactly how you want me to assist you.”

  “What? I’m giving you the demon information for free and you still think I’m trying to trick you?”

  I shrugged. Bargains with faeries were notoriously tricky, in some cases even deadly, so I wasn’t taking any chances.

  The Lady threw up her arms in frustration. “Very well. All I ask is your protection for three days and three nights. Simple. Do this and your debt to me will be paid. There, now the terms are stated clearly. Do you agree to them?”

  “Hold on. Protect you from what? Where are all your faerie guards? Why aren’t they protecting you?”

  “They’re dead. So, let’s make this exchange now, and in three days, it will be over. You will be able to go on with your life, your debt to me paid in full.”

  “It’s the ‘going on with my life’ part I’m worried about. Who’s after you? You had a small army of faerie warriors to protect you and they’re all dead? What makes you think I won’t end up the same way?”

  She looked into my eyes. “I believe you are a strong warrior. Since this lily flowered, I’ve been watching you, Alec. I keep track of all who owe me a service, but in you I saw great bravery and strength that the others did not possess. You stopped an army of the dead. You fought monsters that were the things of nightmares. And now, I believe you can protect me where my own faerie guard failed.”

  “Tell me what I’m expected to protect you from,” I said.

  “Two vampires. They want something that only I know the location of.”

  “And what is this thing?”

  “That’s simply a detail. It does not concern you or affect the exchange between us. Do you accept the terms?”

  “Give me a minute,” I said. Taking Jim and Leon to one side, I said, “What do you guys think? Should I just refuse her and tell her to be on her way?”

  Jim looked at me closely. “I know you, Alec. You won’t turn away anyone who needs your help, even a faerie. If anything happened to her, you would never forgive yourself.”

  “Yeah,” Leon agreed. “Besides, it’ll cancel your debt, man. How hard can it be to protect her from two vampires for a few days?”

  “The vampires killed her personal guard,” I reminded him. But who was I kidding? Jim was right; I wouldn’t turn the Lady away and leave her to her fate. She wasn’t an evil creature but she was running from two that were. Even if I wasn’t indebted to her, my job meant I couldn’t ignore the chance to take out two powerful vampires.

  “We’ll help you,” Leon told me.

  “No, this is my debt. I don’t want either of you involved.”

  Leon shook his head. “Just like we know you well enough to know you wouldn’t turn the faerie away, you should know us well enough to know we wouldn’t let you do this alone. Right, Jim?”

  “That’s right,” Jim agreed.

  “Thanks, guys,” I said. “I mean that.” I turned to the Lady and said, “I agree to protect you for three days and nights in exchange for the cancelation of my debt.”

  She let out a sigh of relief. “Excellent.” Looking back at the stone circle, she said, “We should leave this place.”

  “We can’t leave, we’re working a case,” I reminded her. “And you apparently have some information you’re going to share regarding the demons that came through the portal.”

  “Oh, yes. They were chasing me, trying to catch me for those disgusting vampires. I came here and they followed. The creature in the cave killed them. It didn’t hurt me, of course, because I’ve been here many times before and the creature knows me.”

  “So it ate the demons because they were chasing you?” Jim asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, it saved my life. If I’d been taken back to those vampires, I would have been tortured until I revealed the location of my item.”

  “Did you know the creature went crazy after eating those demons?”

  She seemed genuinely upset. Her blue eyes filled with tears that pooled on her lower lids. “Yes, poor thing. It even tried to attack me the next time I came through the portal. I didn’t dare come through again after that. I hoped the creature’s madness would pass so I used my magic to watch it. I saw it hunt down those people. And then your friend here,”—she indicated Jim with her hand—“was investigating the case and I needed to reach you, Alec, so it was fortuitous that he called you and brought you here.”

  I raised an eyebrow. It sounded too coincidental to me. “Was it just fortuitous, or was there more to it than that?”

  She turned her eyes downward, a guilty look spreading over her face. “I may have prompted him to call you by showing him certain dreams when he was investigating the case. Dreams of him calling you and both of you solving the case together.”

  Jim was furious. “What? You manipulated me?”

  “No, not at all. I simply put the idea in your head. You took it from there and called Alec.”

  “If you needed to reach me so badly, why did you bring me here? Why didn’t you just come to my office?” I asked her.

  She scoffed. “In that quaint little town you call home? It’s probably crawling with Cabal members. I couldn’t show my face there.”

  “Cabal? You mean the Midnight Cabal?”

  “Yes, the vampires are members of the Midnight Cabal.” She cast a glance at the stone circle. “We really should leave here.”

  Jim was seething. I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Don’t let her get to you.”

  “I did have those dreams,” he said. “I dreamed that you and I solved the case together. I guess that was why I called you. If I’d known it was only a faerie trying to bring you here, I’d never have done it. Goddamn it, Alec, she got into my
head.”

  I looked at the faerie queen. “So why didn’t you just give me the dreams?”

  “I couldn’t. The Cabal has closed down most of my portals to this world. This one is ancient and can’t be closed so easily. It was the only one I could use and you were too far away from here for me to influence your dreams.”

  “But you had no problem getting into my head,” Jim said, frustrated. “I was close enough to be toyed with.”

  “Hey, don’t sweat it,” I told him. “She brought us back together and that’s a good thing, no matter the reason for the reunion.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “You know I am. Now, I suggest we get the hell out of here before something nasty comes through that portal and makes our day even worse.”

  Chapter 8

  We got to the Jeep two hours later. On the journey back, the only conversation had been about my cases in Dearmont and Jim’s latest exploits. Leon had told us about the world of apps and how he’d gotten his ideas for the ones that had made him rich. The Lady of the Forest had walked a few feet behind us, arms folded like a sulking child.

  No one had spoken of our current situation. It was as if we’d made an unspoken agreement to let our emotions cool down before we discussed it again. I felt duped by the Lady and no doubt Jim did too. So we’d made the entire two-hour hike without acknowledging the faerie queen’s presence at all.

  Now that we were at the Jeep, she spoke up, arms still folded and face still sulky. “I don’t like being ignored.”

  “And we don’t like being played,” I said, stowing my backpack and weapons in the back of the Jeep.

  She sighed loudly. “I’m sorry about the dreams I gave your friend, all right? I didn’t know what else to do, how else to reach you.”

  “Remind me to give you my cell number,” I said, opening the rear door and getting in. “Actually, no, don’t. After this fiasco is over, I don’t want you getting in touch with me ever again.”

  She got in next to me. Her demeanor seemed to have changed and now she looked excited. She looked around the interior of the Jeep with wide, eager eyes.