Читать книгу Her Werewolf Hero - Michele Hauf - Страница 7

Chapter 1

“Go right in, Mr. Everhart.” The pretty secretary with bright blue eyes gestured over her shoulder with a pen while typing on the keyboard with her other hand.

Bron nodded his thanks and stepped toward the scanner portal positioned before the Director of Acquisitions’ door. He paused on its springy metal threshold, felt the prick of its supernatural scanning mechanism throughout his nervous system and knew the data that showed on the director’s monitor would report he was werewolf, approximately two centuries in age, and did not wear an Acquisitions-issued tracking chip.

He refused to be chipped like a dog. If he ever went missing, then tilt a glass to him at the local pub and warn Beneath he was on his way.

A stream of green light beaming from inside the metal scanner alerted him the scan was complete. Stepping forward activated a sliding steel door, and he entered a dimly lit office. The decor featured dark woods and rusted steel ceiling beams that lent a rustic atmosphere to the room. The director was a vampire, but really? Bron knew they could go out in the sunlight for short periods, and an overcast day generally did not cause them harm.

He wouldn’t ask. He never did. He wasn’t a curious man. He simply acted. Let the shrapnel fall where it will.

Ethan Pierce had an alarmingly bright smile and a scattering of silver within the short brown hair spiking from his scalp. “Everhart! Just return from Romania?”

Bron took a seat on the ultracomfortable leather chair before the director’s desk and propped a combat-booted foot across his opposite knee. “Two days returned and eager to put my hiking boots on again.”

“Excellent. I’ve a new assignment for you.”

The director slid a piece of paper toward Bron. As with most Acquisitions’ dossiers, it featured a small photograph or drawing of the item that required retrieval, and below that were listed details. This one featured what looked like a woodcut drawing of a human heart with a faintly hand-shaped mark across the muscle.

“The Purgatory Heart,” Ethan explained. “The mission is find and seize. I’ve sent the digital file to your phone, which includes a link to a related article found online. I’m afraid that’s all the printed research we’ve had time to gather, though Archives has provided us further details. We’ve been gauging activity regarding the object for a few days. There’s chatter circulating about it, and while we can’t pin the origin of that chatter, someone or thing very powerful wants it, judging by the universal vibrations that alerted us to the item.”

Universal vibrations. Early in his career as a Retriever for Acquisitions, Bron had learned everything put out a sort of pulse or tone, whether it was animal, vegetable, mineral or man. And thanks to magic, those vibrations could be read, sometimes even tracked.

“Since we don’t have a location or ID on the thing,” Ethan continued, “it seemed right up your alley. You do like a good adventure.”

Always.

Bron had already opened the file on his phone and tapped the link. He scanned over an article detailing a small museum in Prague. It displayed items that had been touched by souls from Purgatory. An open book featured a blackened handprint burned onto the pages. A rusted tin bucket showed a few fingerprints burned into the metal. A tattered hemp skirt again brandished a burnt handprint. Nothing about a heart, though.

Of course, had the heart been at the museum, the mission would not have been assigned to him. Simply stopping by and stealing an item displayed to the public was generally assigned to newer Retrievers. Not to those who viewed risk as their very lifeblood.

“Purgatory exists?” Bron wondered as he leaned back against the chair. It wasn’t often he sat—he craved movement, always—but the cushy leather chairs in the director’s office enticed him to relax and exhale. It was a rare feeling, and it sometimes made him uncomfortable.

Just thinking about relaxing made him sit up straight.

“Yes, it’s closely related to Daemonia, the Place of All Demons,” the director explained. “Purgatory is the midpoint between good and evil. A balance, if you will. And there is a portal from Daemonia to Purgatory, but not vice versa. Though, I understand there’s not a demon that would purposely make such a trip to Purgatory.”

“No demons eager to torture mortal souls? Sounds surprising.”

“There is torture, but it is a permanent and endless job. The demons you’ll find there are prisoners themselves. They are called Toll Gatherers; they test the purgatants.” The director tapped the paper. “The heart we want to secure and keep from nefarious hands has been gripped by a purgatorial soul and scarred with a handprint. You should recognize that when you find it.”

“Most certainly. What does this purgatorial heart do?”

Most objects Bron—any Retriever—was sent to obtain were usually of a highly volatile and magical nature. If put into the wrong hands? Devastation could occur. Not to mention things like mortal deaths, plagues, zombies and even a Cereberus, if he recalled that bungled snatch correctly.

“Unlike the passage from Daemonia, the heart opens a gateway into Purgatory—that goes both ways. Should Purgatory be breached by an unknown, there is the probability of souls breaking free. The balance between good and evil will be severely tilted toward evil. It’s on the same lines as all hell breaking lose. We’ve deemed the mission Necessary.”

Necessary, but not Critical, as were the top-secret missions. And a find and seize, which was the usual Retriever assignment. Rarely was a mission labeled find and finish.

“No known location?” Bron asked. “Where do I start?”

The director opened his top drawer and pulled out a thin square piece of crystal and set it on top of the dossier. Compelled by the promise of new and interesting technology, Bron leaned forward.

“A tracker,” Ethan provided. “It’s the latest tech addition to our arsenal. Had Crafts and Hexes bespell it. Press it between your thumb and forefinger and say ‘begin.’ Once it’s activated it’ll lead you right to the heart.”

“Siri will be jealous,” Bron said as he took the small but surprisingly hefty piece of crystal. It was about the size of a one-euro piece, and he couldn’t see through it despite its clear composition. He tucked it into his shirt pocket. That’s all he needed to get going. “Just activate and follow, got it.” He stood and nodded. “Appreciate the work, Director.”

“You’re our top Retriever, Everhart. I always go to you first. You’ve never let me down.”

“I don’t intend to start.”

“One thing about the tracker. The witch who bespelled it said the heart was something different than our usual nabs. Picks up soul vibrations or some such. Once you activate the tracker? It’ll lead you to the prize. But it’ll also send out vibrations that communicate with the heart. Anything or anyone who is interested—even those who are not and just want to cause trouble—will also feel the signal.”

“So it’ll be a race,” Bron said, tapping his shirt pocket.

“Yes. Go fully armed. Can’t imagine what creatures would like to get their hands on the key to Purgatory.”

Bron nodded. “Always ready for some action. Thanks, boss.”

* * *

Kizzy Lewis stepped through the dried grass that crunched underfoot along the ditch hugging Highway 2. To her right a faded plastic red ribbon fluttered in the breeze, and a bouquet of plastic geraniums that had been secured to a makeshift wooden cross offered a bright red spot along the stretch of summer-scorched country roadway.

Bright colors. Sad and terrifying memories.

This is where she and Keith had veered off the road on an icy January night. The yellow VW Bug Keith had been driving had soared over the concrete culvert and landed thirty feet below in the shallow stream that bisected two farmers’ potato fields. A mass of field stones and boulders had been piled up over the years, dug from the ground to prevent damage to farm equipment. The VW had hit the boulders grill first. Keith had flown over the steering wheel and through the windshield. Kizzy, wearing her seat belt, had been pinned inside the small vehicle.

Lifting her camera, which she wore around her neck on a leather strap, she exhaled and sniffed back the tears that had started the moment she’d stepped onto the roadside. Aiming, she clicked snapshots of the boulders. Not a trace of the car remained, yet yellow paint scrapes still marked some of the rocks.

This return to the scene of the accident had felt necessary. A means to finally push that horrible night into the past and lock the door? More like revisit it to confirm her nightmares were real. Eight months had passed since that devastating evening when her emotions had gotten the better of her and she’d spoken what she had been feeling for weeks. That their relationship was over. And she’d wanted out.

Keith had taken it hard, as he always took any criticism or suggestion that went against his designs on the world. She hadn’t realized how controlling he was until four months into their six-month relationship. He’d insisted she move in with him, so he would always know where she was.

The roads had been glare ice that January evening, following a rainstorm that had begun halfway home from a trip to the casino. She’d asked Keith to drive slower, to even pull over and wait it out. But he was not a man she could tell what to do.

“He didn’t deserve death,” she whispered. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to say something like “because he was a good man.”

Keith Munson had never raised a hand to her, though he had wielded his words cruelly. He hadn’t known how to treat her the way she expected to be treated. So she forgave him for that. And she would not think ill of the dead.

Now the terror of that moment when the car had taken flight and soared off the road returned to her with thunderous, thumping heartbeats. The sound of her screams, muffled in her memory, resounded much louder now. She clutched her camera against those crazy heartbeats. Hopes to stand back and observe the scene as a bystander, to take pictures, perhaps even go over the photos in detail after she’d processed them, had led her here.

And, yes, she sought closure. To take one final look, then walk away. And maybe the nightmares would stop.

She checked the view screen. In the past half hour, she’d taken well over a hundred photos. She’d return to the apartment in Thief River Falls and look them over.

In the past few months, Kizzy had grown accustomed to living on the road. Her soul demanded the movement and the unsure yet wondrous discovery of the new and even the familiar. Her Minnesota hometown, Thief River Falls—tucked close to the North Dakota border and a couple hours south of Canada—had felt like a place to stay and relax a bit before returning overseas to Romania for her next photography adventure. Europe had been her home since the accident. Her parents had been living there for nearly a decade, and the extra bedroom had been waiting for her as soon as the doctor had signed off on her feeling well enough to travel.

She’d rented the apartment here for a week. Not because she’d been homesick and had thought to catch up with friends. A week had simply been the best deal. And okay, she’d visited a few relatives and friends the first two days she’d been in town.

Kizzy headed back to her rental car, which she’d parked off the road, the wheels hugging the grassy ditch. Another hour would bring twilight, and she wanted to stop by the city park to end the day. She remembered how the setting sun would highlight the gorgeous northern pines in the forest edging the park and wanted to capture that light on film.

And maybe, she might discover a creature or two.

Her photography captured the otherworldly. Or at least, her idea of what could be something different, perhaps even paranormal. A creature or monster that had only been imagined on the page or in movies. She liked to play with shadow and light in an attempt to make others question their own reality. That was what art was about to her.

But her quest to capture myth and legend went deeper than that. Because those creatures did exist. She knew it. They just had to.

She’d been a believer since a young age. And her blog, Other Wonders, was wildly successful, her fan base being those with paranormal interests, as well as artists and creatives. The blog was five years old, and she boasted half a million subscribers with millions of hits yearly. The money she made by monetizing that blog funded her travel.

She’d snagged a few freelance jobs after a prospective employer had viewed her online galleries, including a photo shoot for National Geographic last year. It had been a dark, moody piece, and she’d framed silhouettes of trees and rocky outcrops to suggest dragon heads peering out from their lairs. They’d used it for a medieval piece. It hadn’t paid much, but it had been the catalyst to rocket her online stats.

Her next trip was to Romania. She’d managed to win a sponsorship from the Romanian tourism board to cover half her expenses. They’d been impressed by the Nat Geo feature. All she had to do was provide the board with scenic photos and grant them all rights to use. The Romanian forests promised to offer unique photography moments. And who knew? Maybe she’d catch a vampire hanging out at a dilapidated castle. Or a ghost? At the very least, she’d try to capture the essence of the otherworldly. It’s what she did. It was what she was compelled to do.

She was blessed to be doing something she enjoyed and not stuck behind a desk nine to five.

With a turn of the key in the ignition, the Taurus hummed to life. Kizzy didn’t own a car. Never had and couldn’t foresee ever needing to. She currently held no permanent address that required a car to get from a home to an office job. But she did appreciate the freedom a rental car granted when it was necessary to travel beyond city limits.

Shifting into gear, she allowed her gaze to linger on the boulders below. Her heart tightened, almost as if someone were squeezing it. She shook her head, thinking it was too early in the day for another nightmare. Why she dreamed about a werewolf grabbing her heart was beyond her. But the recurring dream had haunted her about twice a month since the accident.

“I’ve spent too much time seeking monsters,” she muttered as she turned the car around on the two-lane highway and headed toward Thief River Falls. “Bound to catch up with me in my dreams sooner or later. But a werewolf?”

Such creatures were on her list of most feared paranormals. As a believer, she knew to have a healthy fear of the more dangerous sorts, especially those who sported claws or talons. And there had been that one time when she was six and her dad had taken her camping at Lake Bronson. Had it been a werewolf lurking behind the outhouse on the moonlit summer night? She’d screamed so loudly, her father had thought she’d been attacked by a bear. He’d laughed when she’d told him what she thought it was.

Why did men always make her feel stupid for her beliefs? What was so wrong with having a healthy imagination? With not ruling anything out until it was proven otherwise?

Once back in town, she dropped off the car at the rental site because she didn’t plan to drive anywhere else out of city limits. The city was very walkable, and she would take a taxi to the airport at the end of the week. The apartment rental had included a bicycle, but she shook her head as she studied the pink ten-speed. The park was only a half-hour jaunt across the river.

With her trusty DSLR camera on a strap around her neck and the camera bag slung over one shoulder, she headed down the sidewalk and toward the vast city park. Her faded red Vans got her most places comfortably. And her standard slim jeans and a loose but comfy faded pink T-shirt saw her through summer like a pro. The gray linen scarf she’d slipped around her neck this morning hung out of her back jean pocket so it didn’t get tangled in the camera strap.

Crossing a street, she held up her hand to the honking car and swished her long brown hair over a shoulder to cast the driver a thankful smile. He waved her off, a disgusted grimace clouding his face. Didn’t he notice the gorgeous light on the horizon so swiftly slipping through the sky? Grump.

She quickened her steps. The park was not busy; maybe half a dozen people were scattered about, and a few of those were headed toward their cars. It was the supper hour. As she passed the swing sets, she had to laugh at the little girl getting a push from her dad. She screamed madly, but as soon as the swing made its return—from a mere two-foot lift into the air—she giggled.

Striding beyond the semiformal 4H gardens in which she’d spent her high school summers volunteering—clipping, trimming, getting the hornbeam and roses ready for fall—she leaped over the final box hedge. In her peripheral view, she sighted a man walking to her left. No kids in tow. If he had any appreciation for shadows and light, he should be taking in the glimmer of sun setting just beyond the jagged silhouette of forest. He looked a bit older than her, but beyond that she didn’t linger on his appearance.

Though she was twenty-nine, having kids was not on Kizzy’s radar. She’d not once heard her biological clock tick and wasn’t worried about that, either. A husband might add a new angle to this adventure called life but wasn’t necessary to her happiness. As long as he didn’t mind her wanderlust and constant need to move, a man would fit into her life nicely. As a partner in adventure, but never as someone she needed to take care of and expect the same from in return.

And he should never laugh at her beliefs.

Kizzy had been off the market, as her mother liked to call it, for eight months. Call it a bad relationship. Call it dying on the operating-room table and having to have her heart massaged back to life. She hadn’t been in the mood for dating. Sex? Always. But she wasn’t sure she could trust a man beyond a one-night bootie call.

Unless of course they happened to look like Jared Padalecki or Jensen Ackles.

She’d once thought a man could complete her. Probably all women had that thought at some point in their lives. But thankfully her mother, merely by example, had proven to Kizzy that the best relationships are not needy or demanding but rather a shared experience that thrives thanks to the independence of one another. And never balks at the partner’s need to explore anything meaningful.

In Kizzy’s case, what felt meaningful to her was to travel. This trip to Minnesota had been a gift from her parents. Really, though, she much preferred traveling Europe. And who knew? Maybe she’d grow richer in a few more years and could afford a trek to China or Australia.

It didn’t matter where she landed on the map. Wanderlust had officially settled into Kizzy’s soul.

“Ma’am?”

She was pulled from her musings fifty feet from the forest’s edge by the man walking toward her. He wore one of those panama hats tilted jauntily over one eye. Canvas pants tucked into high-laced combat boots, and a plain short-sleeved T-shirt stretched over remarkable pecs. Though he’d called out to her, his attention was riveted to something he held in his hand.

He looked mid-thirties. Dark hair swished to his shoulders. A beard and mustache framed his jaw and mouth. Whatever held his attention, he seemed to be using a guide for which direction to walk in. Perhaps doing a geocache, as her father loved to do. The city had a geocaching club.

He was probably harmless. Yet she wielded her camera as a shield before her chest. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.” He stopped ten feet from her and looked around, stretching his searching gaze for a long time across the playground area. Whatever he held in hand glinted with a beam of sunlight. She had probably guessed right about the geocaching. Could be tracking it with GPS on his phone.

Overhead, a dark shadow skimmed the sky, and she glanced above him. Those were some big birds.

“Ah, shit,” the man said. He tucked what he was holding into his pants pocket and turned to her. Panic brightened his blue eyes.

And Kizzy squinted to better sight the birds. They were bigger than vultures, which she rarely saw here in Minnesota. They looked...the size of dogs. Big dogs.

Seriously? “What the hell are those?”

“Harpies,” he said quickly and grabbed her by the arm. “Into the woods. We can lose them there.”

“What?” She struggled against his grasp, but he’d managed to seize her wrist and tugged her across the mown lawn toward the line of pine trees. “I’m not going with you!”

“And how will you get away from them?”

“Away from them?” She glanced up to the sky. Harpies? No way. Those were...mythical beings. And much as she believed—

One of them dove toward her.

Suddenly lifted from the ground, Kizzy was tossed over the man’s shoulder as he ran toward the woods.

She couldn’t scream. She should but did not. A curious fascination overwhelmed fear. She reached for her camera, banging against the man’s back, and tried to get a shot even as she was carried off by a stranger into the dark forest.