Sam Harlan (Book 3): Damned Cold (27 page)

Creepy.

“Did it get darker?” I asked, glancing in the sideview mirror.

Jodie ignored me. “Stop the truck.”

I stopped just as we came to a bridge. “What’s going on?”

“I have to check something.” She held up her hand and made an elaborate series of gestures. “Okay.”

A tingle ran down my spine. “What the hell was that?”

“A small charm guards the river. I removed it.”

“What kind of charm?”

“If we had passed through, we wouldn’t have seen things as they
really
are.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. “Good to know.”

She settled back against her seat and closed her eyes again. “Drive.”

I drove past several gravel patches where tourists could park and walk the trails before I finally came to an intersection, where Jodie instructed me to turn left.

“Does this place have any kind of security?” I asked.

“It belongs to the University of Illinois and Carlton sits on the board of directors. The security gets sent home with extra pay when the park is being used by the covens,” Jodie said. “The place will be abandoned if he is here.”

We passed a small parking lot to the left but she insisted I keep going. I followed the winding road as it split to avoid a tree and passed something that Jodie described as a sunken amphitheater until we reached a point deep in the woods.

Three black Dodge Durangos were parked against the side of the road, and Jodie said, “I told you. Pull over and turn off your lights.”

I stopped and flipped off the headlights. “There’s nothing
there
.”

“It’s down that path,” she said, pointing to a spot in the darkness.

I squinted, barely able to make out the gap between the trees that led deeper into the park.

“Can you make it?”

“I’ll—I’ll try.”

I got out and pulled my trench coat tighter. The temperature had plunged into the low teens. The moon was a barely visible distant crescent over the treetops. Most of the trees were bare of leaves, except for a few stragglers that hadn’t yet dropped, and the smell of wet and rotting leaves burned my sinuses.

The trial was difficult to navigate. Thick roots caught my boots with every footstep and I stumbled and jerked around, aiming the Ingram at the darkness around us. The going was slow but we were soon far from the truck.

“We’re sitting ducks out here,” I whispered.

“I know,” Jodie whispered back. She pointed left at a fork in the path. “That way.”

We followed the left path, and within a dozen yards, we noticed a glow in the distance. “Is that it?” I whispered.

She nodded. “There’s a stone altar in the middle of the clearing for ceremonial purposes. We must be careful.”

“Careful?” I whispered. I didn’t mention how foolish it was for us to interrupt a demon in the middle of a magical forest.

She stopped, held up the box, and whispered something. I felt a now-familiar tingle up my spine as she opened the box and withdrew a small wooden branch that had been stripped of its bark.

“That’s it?” I whispered. “
That’s
your magic wand?”

Before she could reply, there was a rustling in the bushes. I smelled something like the musk of a lion I had smelled once at a zoo and heard a growl so low that it was more vibration than anything else.

An animal approached from the woods, but it wasn’t like any animal I had seen before. It appeared to be some kind of Chinese dog, the kind printed on restaurant menus.

That was, if a Chinese dog could stand five-foot-high at the shoulders and glow a deep iridescent blue.

“What the hell is that thing?” I whispered.

“Don’t move,” Jodie warned, so softly I could barely hear. “Not an inch. It’s a Fu Dog.”

I steadied myself and the Fu Dog held its ground, watching us with eyes like giant rubies that pulsed with energy.

“If I shoot,” I said quietly, “they’ll know we’re here.”

“If we
don’t
stop it,” Jodie said softly, “it’s going to rip our spines out and eat our livers. Fu Dogs
love
liver.”

The Fu Dog’s head rolled to the side and it opened its mouth impossibly wide. Razor-sharp teeth glinted in the moonlight. “This is magic, isn’t it?”

“Have you ever seen anything like that in
nature
?” Jodie whispered bitterly. “Allerton bought dozens of Fu Dog statues, but one of them wasn’t
just
a statue. Silver bullets won’t stop it. Only magic will.”

“What are you waiting for?” I asked. “Kill it.”

“It’s going to take every bit of power in this wand. I won’t be of much use to you after that.”

The Fu Dog growled again, and it sounded like the rumbling of a freight train. “Maybe we can run for it.”

“I
can’t
run,” Jodie said. “And even if I could, it’s faster than us.”

“How do you know so much about Fu Dogs?”

“I’m the one who figured out how to activate it,” she said. “I never thought anybody would be stupid enough to actually do it.”

Electric sparks zapped between the Fu Dog’s teeth like the old-fashioned bug zapper that used to hang from my porch back in Arcanum. A wave of bitter-smelling ozone rolled our way. The Fu Dog took a step forward, then another, then it was moving so fast it became a ghostly blur.

Jesus!

Jodie yanked me to the ground as the Fu Dog sailed over us. I struggled to help Jodie up as the Fu Dog landed hard and clawed the dirt and leaves before spinning like a cat and turning back to us, its mouth wide and teeth sparking like a thunderstorm in the spring.

The smell of ozone was overpowering and there was another smell, too, a fetid stench of rotten meat that turned my stomach. Its eyes flared until they were red lanterns that lit the Fu Dog’s face in a devilish glow. It sprang forward and its paws kicked up leaves and dirt in a rooster tail behind it.

We’re dead. We are so dead!

Jodie pushed me to the side and raised her magic wand, shouting words I didn’t understand, and the woods exploded in sound and light as a cone of fire three feet wide at the tip of the wand and ten feet wide at the end struck the Fu Dog.

It was like an atomic bomb going off. I closed my eyes and held my hand in front of my face, but I could see through my eyelids like some kind of weird X-ray.

The sound was deafening. I’d once had the unfortunate luck to have an aerial bomb go off just above my head, an accident at a Fourth of July fireworks show when I was a kid. That aerial bomb didn’t hold a candle to the fury that Jodie unleashed.

The Fu Dog didn’t simply explode—it was erased from existence. The light died down and I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes to the dark, except it
wasn’t
dark. The leaves and twigs in the path of the cone of fire had been vaporized, but the wake of Jodie’s spell had ignited pockets of dead branches in the Fu Dog’s vicinity. Even the muddy leaves nearby were smoldering.

Jodie groaned and collapsed against me. “They know we’re here.”

“You think?”

“What should we do?”

I never got a chance to answer because it was then that Barlow arrived, drawn to the explosion, and smashed me across the face with inhuman strength.

* * *

My head thunk-thunked against tree roots as Barlow dragged me to the clearing by my leg. Jodie was hanging from Barlow’s shoulder. She twisted and shook in a futile attempt to escape his grasp. I kicked at him, but it was like kicking stone.

“
Stop
struggling,” Barlow said. “You’re only making it
worse
.”

“Let us go,” I said. “You can fight this.”

Barlow didn’t respond. He just kept walking briskly like he was out for an evening stroll.

Meriwether was waiting for us in the clearing with a leering grin on his face, my Kimber still tucked in his black slacks. He wore a black sweater as his only protection from the cold.

Barlow deposited us in front of him like a pair of prize trophies.

Meriwether’s coven wore black hooded cloaks and was arranged in a semicircle in front of a roaring bonfire. In front of the fire sat a white stone altar as big as a door, carefully balanced upon two large boulders. Dawn McKie was stretched across the altar, tied by thick ropes. She was naked and shivering and clearly terrified. The remaining members of Jodie’s coven knelt in the dirt, their heads bowed. Jameson and Callie were lashed to wooden poles driven into the ground at each end of the altar.

Nicky stood next to the altar, awkwardly holding the knife from Meriwether’s basement. He was staring at Dawn’s breasts in obvious fascination.

I wondered if Nicky knew the young woman he ogled was his sister. Given the hungry look on his face, I wasn’t sure it mattered.

There was a creaking noise from the edge of the clearing and I caught sight of the remaining stick man swiveling its head to watch everything with its lidless eyes. Snowflakes fell from the sky, small and perfectly formed. Meriwether held up his hands so they could land gently on his palms. “Marvelous,” he cried out. “It’s simply
marvelous
. I love snow. It reminds me of home.”

“That’s because you live in the eternal cold, away from God’s warmth,” Jameson shouted.

“Clever,” Meriwether said, rolling his eyes. “You continue to amuse me, Patrick.”

There was a long silence as the fire crackled and popped. The flames licked skyward and sent a stream of embers riding on currents of hot air. Jodie’s coven members were shaking, and most of them were sobbing quietly.

Meriwether regarded them coolly, then asked me, “What happened to Chester?”

I raised my chin and gave him my most intimidating stare. “That redneck hillbilly? I broke his fucking neck.”

A murmur arose from Meriwether’s people, but he just smiled and shook his head. “That’s a shame. He wasn’t the smartest man, but he
did
serve his purpose.”

I nodded at the members of his coven. “That’s all these people are to you, isn’t it? Just interchangeable widgets to serve your purpose.”

“Nice try,” Meriwether said with a grin. “They know what I am. They know I honor my promises. They
worship
me.”

“They don’t understand what you ask of them,” Jameson said. “They haven’t realized—”

Meriwether flicked his hand, palm up, and Jameson gagged on his own tongue, banging his head backward against the wooden pole. “That’s just about enough out of you, Patrick. What can you possibly say that will sway them? What can you offer? Your God? What has He done for anybody lately? Where are His blessings?”

Jameson choked out, “Look around you.” He coughed and cleared his throat, then addressed Meriwether’s coven. “You stand in the middle of His creation and you think He has abandoned you? He has given us the greatest gift of all. Free will.”

“Free will?” Meriwether said as the fire continued to crackle. “How worthless. Where has free will gotten you, old man? Trussed up like a turkey? What about the Sister? She’s married to God, isn’t she? What a letdown that must be, eh?”

Callie, who had silently watched their exchange, spoke up. “You mock what you don’t understand. Each of us has sin within us and the free will to ask for forgiveness. That’s something you’ll
never
understand.”

Meriwether sighed. “Your pretty words have no meaning here. The only thing that matters is the strength of my will. I’ll finish with Nicholas and then I’ll feed the Rexford woman to the vampire. Sooner or later I’ll discover the truth about vampires, even if I have to feed every one of them to the little beast.”

He squinted at me. “And, if that doesn’t work, I’ll tear Harlan apart and see what makes him tick.” His eyes narrowed and he focused his attention on me. “Oh, I know what you did, Harlan. My golem told me. You touched the beast within you. I can’t
wait
to play with it.”

I struggled against Barlow’s iron grip. “I’ll do it again, you bastard. I’ll call it up and rip your damned head off.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll
try
,” Meriwether said, “but I doubt you can manage it. You got lucky. Now you’re just a helpless little man. What a shame, too. I know so much about your family.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the bitter cold ran up my spine. “What?”

“As I said, knowledge
is
power,” Meriwether said. “I’ve watched the vampire hunters for a
very
long time. That kind of knowledge is—”

“I know all about Jack,” I said. “I’m the one who killed him.”

Meriwether tilted his head back in delight. “Ah, I’d wondered about that. Thank you for that piece of information. That connects many dots. But I
wasn’t
talking about Jack Harlan.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Jameson said. “Never trust a demon.”

“I
could
help you,” Meriwether mused. “I could tell you things about your family that would finally explain so much. Heh. I could, but I won’t.” He turned to the altar, where Nicholas still held the knife. “It’s time, Nicholas.”

* * *

Nicky raised the knife and took a halting step closer to the altar. The tip of the knife jerked back and forth and Nicky turned back to Meriwether. “I don’t think I wanna do this.”

“It’s just a game,” Meriwether said reassuringly. “You
love
games, and after this game, you’ll be right as rain.”

“It doesn’t
seem
like a game,” Nicky said. “It seems like—like a
bad
thing.”

“It’s a
small
bad thing that leads to a
good
thing,” Meriwether said, his voice rising in frustration. “This should cure you.”

Nicky blinked, watching his father with eyes full of reproach. “You told me I wasn’t sick. You told me I was just the way I was s’posed to be.”

Meriwether’s face went blank, losing any semblance of expression, and the voice that spoke was Haagenti’s. “You suffered brain damage at birth, Nicholas. This blood sacrifice will heal that damage and make you whole and will release me of my debt.”

“Why are you talking funny?” Nicky asked. “Why are we here? I don’t like this place. It’s
cold
.”

Before Meriwether could respond, I shouted, “That’s not your dad, Nicky. It’s a demon, and it wants you to kill your sister.”