It was just Erasmus, Jeff, and I in my Jeep. Erasmus had assumed he’d be sitting shotgun as always. When Jeff got there first, there was some pushback.
I didn’t have time for this. “Just get in the car, Erasmus!”
He muttered something in a guttural demon language that I didn’t understand, but that Jeff clearly did. He spun in his seat and glared. “I heard that!”
Buckling himself in, Erasmus merely smiled.
“Why are demons such dicks?” said Jeff, settling in.
Through the rearview mirror, I saw the smile disappear off Erasmus’ face.
“I hope you’ve figured out by now,” I said, ignoring their antics as I pulled into the street, “that we aren’t taking Jeff home right away.”
“Since you’ve got your crossbow, I sort of figured.” Jeff looked at the locket and put the chain around his neck. “Good thing this isn’t silver.”
“Yeah. So are you okay with helping me with this ghoul?”
“That’s what your friendly neighborhood werewolf is for.”
“I appreciate it.” I said, adjusting my grip on the steering wheel and making the turn toward the cemetery.
“Yeah. You know what the funny thing is? I always wanted a dog but figured I didn’t have the time. Now I’ve got the best of both worlds, I guess.”
He had the right to be sour about it. But it did make me feel guilty.
I followed the sign for the mortuary. Though the gates were closed, nothing was locked. You had to hand it to small towns.
I followed my headlights through the mist up the drive to the mortuary building. I figured we’d go toward the sign that said “back entrance.” I doubted many bodies came through the front door.
I parked the car, killed the engine, and sat, listening to the night. Peering into the sky, I wondered if my personal assassin was near.
Swinging to the back seat, I grabbed the crossbow. “That’s wicked,” said Jeff, admiring it.
“I guess. Erasmus, I have a feeling that Andras is waiting to pounce. I think he’s using the ghoul to find me somehow. Maybe they made a bargain.”
“Yes, I was wondering that myself. It is not beyond the scope of a demon to use such tactics. I know very little of Andras except by rumor. But a ghoul is little better than a dog. They wouldn’t have the capacity to bargain.”
“Then how is Andras using it?”
“He is said to be particularly devious and unrelenting. My best guess is that he is simply following him.”
“Great. How do I kill him?”
“You don’t.”
“Demons can be killed, can’t they?”
He squirmed a bit. “This is not a comfortable topic.”
It was Jeff’s turn to smile, and he turned around in his seat to give Erasmus his full wattage. “Don’t tell me you’re scared?”
“I know Kylie would never use these methods on me. You, on the other hand…”
“Jeff, could you wait outside?”
“What? Just as it was getting good?”
“Please. I need his help.”
He blew out a breath. “Okay. I’ll sniff around outside, see what I can find.” He meant that literally, of course. He got out of the Jeep and started removing his clothes. I turned away and saw him morph out of the corner of my eye. A blond wolf padded away into the shadows of the building.
I turned and faced Erasmus. “He’s gone now. Can you tell me? Do you…trust me?”
His eyes narrowed, and his scowl was world class. “You cannot kill a demon easily. Your Wiccan spell should have killed me, but it did not. Perhaps it wasn’t done correctly. Certainly being speared through the chest with iron would disable a demon and send them back to the Netherworld. And it isn’t easy to escape the Netherworld.”
“That’s why demons need to be summoned.”
“Precisely.”
“So why can you pass through over and over?”
“Because of the book. It serves as a gateway. Which is why other creatures can come through it as well.”
“That’s right. It’s a gateway. And it seems to strengthen spells and other gateways. That other vortex that the Ordo opened.”
“Shabiri assisted with that, no doubt.”
“You made that special arrow. Poisoned it by…by sticking it in your eye. Will that kill Andras?”
“It might.”
“Will it be enough to send him back?”
“It…might.”
I threw my head back. “I wish you had more definitive answers.”
“So do I. I’m sorry. I’ve never been required to do such a thing before.”
I swung open the car door and stepped out. It was bitterly cold. Each night seemed to be getting colder, and I didn’t like the look of that mist. Erasmus seemed to think the Draugr were laying low now, but I didn’t trust any of these Netherworld denizens.
I clutched the crossbow and moved with Erasmus to the door. It was dark. No lights or even motion sensors around. I guessed little Moody Bog generally didn’t have trouble with vandalism or break-ins. At least, until a certain party from Hansen Mills came to town.
I got my phone out, turned on the flashlight, and shined the light on the door. “How do we get in? Do you have a special breaking-in trick?”
He smiled and vanished. And then someone was opening the door from the inside. Before I could run, I realized that it was Erasmus.
“Well, that’s handy,” I muttered, trying to mask my doubling heartrate.
“This is very strange,” he said, frowning. “Why do you keep your dead in such a place?”
“Uh… It’s just a place to keep them before the funeral.”
He didn’t seem convinced. I ignored him to look around outside. “Jeff!” I whispered as loud as I could. “Jeff!”
Out of the mist came a four-footed shape—a blond wolf. He stopped before me, stuck out his tongue, and panted.
“Do you want to come in or stay out here?”
Somehow, I expected him to say something, but of course, he couldn’t in wolf form. Instead, he trotted past me inside.
I peered down the darkened hallway. “Now what?” I whispered.
Jeff’s ears pricked up. He gave a deep growl and crept into the darkness. Erasmus took up the rear guard as I readied the crossbow. And looky there. It had armed itself.
Never in a million years had I imagined creeping around what was essentially a morgue in the middle of the night. With a demon. And a werewolf. So okay. There were a lot of “nevers” to go around.
Both Erasmus and Jeff kept lifting their noses, presumably following the scent of the ghoul. We passed a time clock, a break room, and then turned a corner. Over a big double door hung a sign saying, “Morgue.” I really didn’t want to go in there, but where else are you gonna go when a ghoul needs to snack on a corpse?
I motioned for my companions to stay quiet as I carefully pushed on the door. Relieved it made no sound, I looked around at the stainless-steel wall of refrigerated doors. Slabs, I guess. One had been opened and rolled out. I knew it was the child, because the ghoul was bent over it and had taken on the appearance of a four-year-old boy in torn jeans and a striped shirt.
I raised the crossbow, aiming square in the middle of its back. It hadn’t noticed me yet. And it was making lip-smacking eating noises, messily devouring the kid that the Draugr had killed. Except that the ghoul itself looked like a kid. And I couldn’t shoot, even though I could feel Erasmus beside me urging me on.
I had to be sure. I had to know.
So I cleared my throat.
The ghoul stopped. When it moved its head to listen, I cleared my throat again.
It sprang into action and leapt to the side, leaving me a clear view of the child, naked, laid out on the stainless-steel tray. His guts had been torn out. Some ribs poked upward through the gore—broken, bitten through. I quickly looked away before the queasiness took over and tried to breathe out of my mouth. That way I couldn’t smell it, the thick tang of metal in the air, of blood.
Jeff began to growl behind me.
I turned. “Jeff, you…” But his eyes. They weren’t the normal wolfy eyes. They had turned red, and he was looking at me, lips snarled back, teeth bared, saliva dripping from his jaws.
I backed away. “Jeff?”
“It’s the blood,” said Erasmus. He stepped forward and pushed me behind him. “The blood drives them mad.”
“But it’s Jeff.”
“It’s a werewolf, Kylie. You must never forget it.”
“What do we do? I can’t shoot him. I won’t.”
Erasmus said nothing before he pounced. He grabbed Jeff’s furry neck, holding off the barking and snapping muzzle. Jeff went wild, as if he were a real wolf, snarling and scratching. Erasmus bared his own teeth, too numerous for a human mouth. His mouth suddenly stretched unnaturally wide and then all his teeth were sharp shark teeth. Barely escaping the snapping jaws, he pushed the werewolf, struggling, toward the double doors until they were out in the hall, where the growls and screams bounced off the walls and echoed.
I locked the door behind them, pushing up the deadbolts into the lintel. When I turned back, the ghoul was in the corner hissing at me, still looking like the Warren child. There was no way out.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” I said. But was it to the ghoul…or to me? I opened the Booke, after all. I brought these things to Moody Bog. I killed that child.
I wiped my sleeve over my suddenly wet eyes but kept the crossbow trained on the ghoul. “You’re not getting away this time.”
It hissed again, and I could tell it was ready to spring away. Maybe up to those transom windows.
I lifted the crossbow, and with my trigger hand against my cheek, I fired.
The bolt soared true and pierced the ghoul right in the chest. It screamed, and the mask of the Warren child shed like Jeff’s blond fur. It was the ghoul again, bugged eyes rolling in its head. It scrabbled at the arrow, but a beam of light was already shooting from the hole. More beams of lights began to tear through its body.
A transom window shattered and the Booke of the Hidden appeared before me, quill pen at the ready. It lay open to the next empty page, and I dropped the crossbow and picked up the quill. Jabbing the point of it into my left palm, I used the pooled blood to write on the blank page.
I first saw the ghoul on the street in front of my shop, and I pursued it to the cemetery…
I didn’t even know what I wrote. I just kept writing, telling the story of the ghoul and what I knew about it. Every time I looked up from the page, I saw each word tear another hole through the ghoul, or the gateway, or…whatever. I didn’t really understand it, but I kept writing until it disappeared completely into a painfully bright dot of light until that, too, was gone with a pop. The Booke slammed closed and fell to the floor.
And then my legs gave out. I sat beside the Booke, nursing my hand from all the pokes I had given it in the last few weeks. I was going to have to pick a different spot to get my blood, I decided vaguely, when Erasmus appeared in the room with a puff of dark smoke.
“Kylie, what happened?”
I showed him my bloody hand and gestured toward the Booke.
“You sent it back already?”
“Yeah. Come to think of it, didn’t that seem a little too simple?”
He didn’t say anything, but we both turned when the doors rattled. Jeff snarled and howled from the other side.
“How do we turn him off?”
He stalked over to the body on its tray and looked it over dispassionately, then shoved it back in the drawer and slammed the door. There was a little blood and…stuff…on the floor, and he knelt to scoop it up. He vanished, and immediately reappeared.
The snarling and howling suddenly stopped, replaced with whining.
Erasmus crossed to the door. Before I could shout for him not to open it, he did. The wolf bounded in right for me. I cowered, covering my head, but instead he nudged me, whining. He closed his mouth gently on my wrist without piercing the skin and pulled me toward him, then began to lick the blood away. I almost snatched my hand back—I certainly didn’t want Jeff getting a taste for my blood—but Erasmus stopped me.
“He’s only trying to heal you, Kylie. He’s attuned to you. He knows you’ve been injured.”
“Jeff,” I said with a tremble to my voice. “Jeff, shift already. Be Jeff again.”
The wolf stopped. He looked at my face, cocking his head to the side, when the fur started to shed in great handfuls. I thought I was used to it by now, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t used to watching his face shrink back from a muzzle to a human nose and mouth, from ears that were wide and pointy to two shell-like protrusions on the sides of his head, from back legs lengthening and twisting to human legs.
He sat beside me, holding my hand. Naked.
“I’m sorry, Kylie,” he said sorrowfully. “I don’t know what came over me. I smelled the blood and suddenly I wanted to kill. I’m so, so sorry.”
“We…we have to work on that, I guess. I thought the potion you take is supposed to…”
“I didn’t take it today. I thought I could learn to wean myself off of it.”
“Did Doc say you could?”
He looked away. “I just thought I could.”
“Well…now we know you can’t.”
“I fucking hate this!”
I put my arms around him. Ironically, as a man, Jeff didn’t have a lot of body hair. I rubbed his smooth back and tried not to think about his nakedness. After all, I’d seen him naked plenty of times while we were living together.
“It’s not your fault,” I kept repeating. But in my head, I also kept saying, It’s mine.
He wiped at his face and drew back. “So you got the little dope, huh?”
I looked back where the ghoul had stood and nodded. “Yeah. That was it.” We both glanced at the Booke on the floor.
I should have been celebrating. But I couldn’t help but feel it had been anti-climactic. Far too easy. Almost as if the ghoul had been a kind of placeholder for something worse. I had only a split second of waiting for the other shoe to drop when it did.
The wall with the transom windows exploded. I was flung back along with the bits of glass and broken cinder blocks, as something landed in the room.