A Wild Fright in Deadwood (Deadwood Humorous Mystery Book 7) (51 page)

“Jesus, Parker,” Cooper said from his seat in the peanut gallery. “Hawke’s right about your violent streak.”

“She started it.” I glared at Caly, sick of her games. She reminded me of a spoiled child tearing the wings off butterflies because she was bored. “Before I kick your ass for murdering my friends, the lawman here wants to know why you killed Katrina? How about you humor him so he’ll quit pestering me?”

“Her death was your fault,” Caly said.

“My fault?” Sheesh, first the caller in Ms. Wolff’s apartment and now Caly. Did anyone else want to step forward and blame me for more murders that I didn’t do? Anyone besides Detective Hawke?

“We cannot have you execute the succubus,” Caly continued.

Who was
we
?

“So I helped it to escape its bondage.”

“And then you killed Katrina with my war hammer?”

“The weapon was offered to me as a gift in exchange for freedom. Of course I could not turn down an opportunity to kill a human,” she said that last word with a sneer. “Especially with a weapon belonging to a
Scharfrichter
.”

“You set me up on purpose.” Caly would make a good chess player, the Deadwood police department acting as her pawns.

“We want what belongs to us.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first five hundred times you sent that message.”

“Give me the book or I will tear your daughter to pieces before your eyes.”

The mention of Addy sent a zing of adrenaline down through my arms and out of my fingertips. There it was—the gauntlet. Thrown down at my feet. I would now have to kill or be killed to protect my child. Prudence wouldn’t hesitate. Neither would I but not yet. I needed to know one more thing.

“Let me fill ‘er full of holes.” Harvey bumped me aside, doing his version of a guard dog, snarling and growling.

I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. “Wait.” I had another question for the hissy bitch first. “Why are you hanging human body parts in the trees around here?”

I wasn’t sure Caly was responsible for the foot Layne had found in that tree back in July, or the hand someone else had found up on Mount Roosevelt, but she might know the guilty party.

She laughed, haughty like. “It’s bait, of course. It’s about the only thing these disgusting monkey spawn are good for.”

“Bait for what?”

“You shall see, my kitten.” She lifted her sword to her mouth, her tongue flicking out and slowly licking up the blade.

I winced, my tongue shrinking back into my throat.

“You will be easy prey for the hunters,
Scharfrichter
.” She pointed the sword at me. “If I let you live that long.”

“What hunters?”

“Enough questions!” She sliced a Z through the air with her sword.

She must have some Zorro aspirations. Santa should leave her a black mask under the Christmas tree this year.

“Give me the book!”

Hmmm. I didn’t like her tone much. I opened my palm, frowning down at the Swiss Army knife in my hand. “I believe it’s time to put an end to your long life, Caly.”

I just hoped I had the right tool and enough grit to follow through without ending my own life in the process.

“We need to prove your innocence,” Cooper reminded me. “You can’t kill her.”

I turned my head partway toward him while keeping my focus on Caly. “You heard what she said about my kid. I’m not letting this bitch live long enough to deliver on her threat.”

“We need a confession from her, Parker.”

“You think you can kill me, kitten?” She snickered. “You are part human, remember? That makes you weak and slow.”

What did she mean by “part human”?

Something moved in the darkness behind Caly.

“I will tear out your heart be—”

A black shroud covered her ghoulish face, cutting her off, sliding down over her shoulders. Then a pair of arms wrapped around her from behind, locking hers down before she could free her sword or claws. She stumbled forward under the weight, falling facedown onto the floor with a muffled shriek of fury.

It all happened so fast, I didn’t notice her captor until he looked up while struggling to hold the spitfire under his weight.

My mouth fell open. “Doc?”

His face was tight with the strain of holding Caly prisoner. “How about a little help with this wildcat, Coop?”

That’s when I put together that the shroud was actually his leather coat and that Caly wouldn’t be kept down for long.

Cooper raced to Doc’s aid with me right behind him. I wrestled to get a grip on Caly’s legs as she kicked wildly, finally sitting on them in order to win. Doc moved off of her enough for Cooper to handcuff her wrist to her makeshift sword hilt behind her back.

Cooper shined his light on the sword. “What the hell is that?”

“Look.” I pointed at the disfigured flesh above the hilt, what was left of her arm above the elbow joint after I’d stabbed the glass into her forearm at our last meeting. “That’s what I was trying to explain to you that night at the Opera House.”

He leaned closer for a better look.

“Be careful,” I warned.

“She’s cuffed, Parker. Relax.”

I thought of the way Caly had kicked and clawed when Dominick Masterson had held her up by the scruff. I didn’t have a lot of faith in those handcuffs.

Cooper and Doc flipped her over while I continued to hold her legs. “Watch her,” I told Doc as she twisted and turned her head under the leather still cloaking her face. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she tore her way free with her sharp teeth alone.”

He tied his coat sleeves around her extra tight.

“Where were you?” I asked him.

“In the front corner closet.” He indicated the location with his head, still holding onto Caly’s shoulders. She was bucking with her whole body now. I could hear her hisses and her teeth gnashing through the leather.

“You left me,” I said more questioning than accusing.

“Your energy kept sending out these blinding bursts of light. I had to put some space between us in order to see well enough to open the doorway and slip over to the other side.”

“But
you
left me. Aren’t you the one always telling me not to go anywhere without you?”

“I only left physically. Mentally, I was there with you while you spoke with the old doll Ottó sent in his place.”

I let that soak in, thinking back to my time in the darkness with the two candle flames. “Ottó showed up later.” And so had Doc, telling me to run. He must have been the one who shoved me back out of the darkness and into the room with Cooper and Harvey.

“I saw. He came when he heard Caly approaching. He alerted me to her arrival so I had time to return. I waited in the closet until she’d passed and I could come up with some way to stop her.”

“What’re we gonna do with this hellcat?” Harvey asked, prodding Caly’s shoulder with his shotgun.

Her head turned under the coat in Harvey’s direction. I heard the clacking of her teeth again.

“I need to do my job,” I told Cooper in particular, since he was the main objector to me removing Caly from the equation.

Cooper shook his head. “I told you, we need her to clear your name and close several murder cases.”

“What? You think you’re going to take her into the station and she’ll cooperate without tearing you all to pieces? I’ll refer you to the blade attached to her arm.”

“We’ll keep her well-secured.” His voice was all matter-of-fact, his will unbending. The cop in him ruled on the topic, leaving no room for rebuttal. “Uncle Willis, go get your pickup and back it up to the steps. Then get your ass up here with the rope you keep under the seat. We’ll need your help carrying her down.”

Caly was still struggling, making inhuman noises and growls, wrenching her shoulders back and forth in spite of Doc’s attempt to keep her in place, showing no sign of weariness. If Cooper thought he’d just stroll her through the Deadwood Police Station, he must have been smoking happy weed while I was playing patty cake with Ottó’s old doll.

Harvey leaned Bessie against his shoulder and hitched toward the doorway.

I was watching him step outside and close the door when Caly snapped the chain holding the handcuffs together. I looked around in time to see her pop upright with enough force to send Cooper backward into the wall.

Caly’s struggle for freedom knocked Doc’s grip on her loose, and her arms were suddenly untethered. She tore off Doc’s coat and with a hiss whirled on Cooper, raising her sword as she turned.

Without thinking, I sprung forward, deflecting her sword with my left forearm as she swung it toward Cooper’s throat. Then I spun around and planted the corkscrew into the side of her throat.

Her snake eyes widened and bulged as I twisted the corkscrew deeper, leaning into her, shoving her off balance into the wall next to Cooper. She regained her bearings faster than I expected and lunged forward, sinking her teeth into my arm when she couldn’t free her sword blade from behind her. I felt the powerful clench of her bite through my wool coat as black smoke began to billow out of the hole where I’d buried the corkscrew.

With an angry cry, I drove it deeper, winding the corkscrew further into her throat. The need to put an end to her malicious reign filled my every cell. “This is for Jane and Wanda, you fucking bitch.” I shifted my weight, gaining more leverage while she continued to lash out at me. “And Helen Tarragon, too.”

A high-pitched humming noise came from her chest, growing louder as she thrashed under my weight. I jammed my arm deeper into her jaws, sacrificing my arm to keep her from biting at my face. I let go of the corkscrew which was now firmly planted deep in her neck and grabbed a fistful of her spiky hair. I yanked her head back.

Her hate-filled snake eyes were now lined with something cloudy and dark, almost black, along with the lower half of her face. Death was spreading through her, weakening her finally. I could smell it thick and heavy in the back of my throat.

“You’ve met your match, kitten.” I threw her words back at her and yanked my arm free of her jaws. Her skin withered, looking shrunken, hardened, like a long-dried Egyptian mummy. “Your killing days are through.”

“We will destroy you,
Scharfrichter
!” she croaked through blackened lips, her voice crackly.

Keeping a tight grip on her hair, I leaned in close. I wanted my eyes to be the last she saw. “Adios, Calypso.”

Vein-like fingers of blackness spread across the rest of her face. She writhed, opening her mouth wide in a silent scream as her face distorted, her nose and mouth elongating, her teeth lengthening as her lips pulled back.

I knew from experience what was going to happen next and shoved away from her, turning aside. “Cover your eyes,” I yelled to Doc and Cooper, shielding my own as a bright flash of light lit up the hallway followed by a searing blast of heat.

When the light faded and the heat dissipated, Caly was gone. There was nothing more than a wisp of smoke and a sprinkling of ashes left. A cold draft of air blew open the door and swirled through the room, whisking them away.

“Holy fuck,” Cooper said. He ran his fingers through his hair.

Doc grunted in agreement, leaning back against the wall.

Cooper’s beam of light searched the floor where Caly had been, roving over Caly’s blade and the Swiss Army knife lying there with the corkscrew still sticking out. He cursed and aimed the beam at me.

“Oops,” I said, squinting in the spotlight.

“Dammit, Parker,” Cooper stood, holstering his gun and then bending to pick up the blade. “I told you we needed her.”

“That was an accident.”

“Right. You just happened to fall forward and accidentally ram that corkscrew into her neck, twisting it as you fell?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“I saw the whole thing, remember?”

“And did you see how I saved your neck at the same time?”

“She would’ve missed me.”

“Whatever! While you were watching the whole damned thing, did you see her turn to ash and smoke? That’s what I was trying to tell you about the other one at the funeral parlor.”

Doc pushed to his feet and then leaned down to pick up the Swiss Army knife on the floor between us, folding the corkscrew back into place. He helped me to my feet.

“She bit you.” He pulled back the sleeve of my coat and checked my arm. Purplish-red marks marred my forearm, but no blood. “It doesn’t look like she broke skin.”

“Good, because I think she was a tiny bit rabid, minus the mouth foaming trick of course.”

With a sigh, he pulled me into his arms, holding me close for several seconds. “I know why she killed Katrina,” he spoke over my head.

“She hated blondes?” I asked, pulling away so I could look up at him.

“Not quite. The only way to release the
lidérc
from the wards imprisoning it was to let it attach to a host. Caly convinced Katrina that the lidérc would impart the immortality she craved. After the joining occurred, Caly cut Katrina’s thumb and used her blood to smear over the ward, telling her it was part of the process.”

“That explains the cut Eddie noticed,” Cooper said.

A cut? That was news to me.

“That allowed the
lidérc
to leave the confines of the building. However, it was still imprisoned in Katrina’s body—until Caly freed it.”

“By bludgeoning Katrina with my war hammer?”

“She pierced Katrina’s heart to set it free.”

“Did Ottó show you this?”

He shook his head. “The old doll did, or rather the little girl that Ottó killed while trying to remove the
lidérc
back in Hungary. She was using the doll, hiding behind the illusion of it. After Ottó killed the girl, the lidérc attached to him, but it held onto the little girl even after her death. She was a trophy of sorts is my guess.”

But now it must have let her and Ottó go, since they were still here and it was gone.

“This is just fucking great,” Cooper said, stalking out into the front room. He pointed Caly’s blade at me. “Let me make sure I have this straight. We have two ghosts here, no
lidérc
, and the killer has turned to ash and floated away. This is going to look real fucking fine on paperwork, Parker.”