Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology (15 page)

“But you can’t—”

Andy
interrupted me. “Who’d I be protecting?”

Prieto had been
waiting for the question, and he seemed to take a special kind of pleasure in
saying, “It’s her. Holly Anne Caldwell. These fucking freaks are taking out
witches.”

~

We left the
viewing room to go down the hall to a small, airless conference room, where
Prieto had set up shop for the night. He had folders.

He had a
lot
of folders.

I knew every
one of the victims. Shayle Gallagher had been the first—he’d been taken
right out of his flower shop (like me, he only moonlighted at the resurrection
business), and there had been signs of a vicious struggle. Could have been
robbery or a hate crime, so that hadn’t raised too many unusual flags at first,
especially with no body found.

Two weeks ago,
though, Harrison Wright had failed to show up to work at his medical practice,
and his multi-million dollar estate showed signs of the same brutal attack as
at Gallagher’s store.

Lottie Flores
had been the next victim, and she’d disappeared the day after I’d taken the
case from Sam.

“We kept it out
of the news,” Prieto said. “Wasn’t easy. Oh, and Sam agreed we shouldn’t
interrupt you while you were working.”

Sam agreed?
I was going to
have a talk with Sam. One involving a punch in the mouth.

“You said there
were dead peace officers,” Andy said. Prieto nodded.

“My officers
had missed a scheduled check-in. When backup arrived, their car was empty. They
were found in the Flores house.”

“Why not bring
one of them back, find out just what went on?”

Prieto looked
grim. “We thought about it, but the families wouldn’t sign off, and by then, we
were knee-deep in missing resurrection witches. Didn’t think we should waste
the time trying to convince anybody.”

I looked at the
photos of the two dead police officers, and felt my stomach twist. They’d been
beaten to death. That wasn’t easy to do with any officer, but you could at
least see how the five-foot-five, petite woman could have been overpowered. Not
her partner, six-foot-four and big enough to intimidate pretty much anyone. He
looked like he chewed nails as vitamins.

“Neither one
got a shot off,” Prieto said. “No sign of Flores in the house, but we found
blood and the same smash-up indicating a struggle. Blood in the bedroom turned
out to be hers.”

Lottie’s house
was neatly kept. Most of the damage was confined to her bedroom—bed
pulled sideways, covers wrenched half off, blood smeared on the sheets and
floor, leading down the hall. She’d been dragged out.

I hated Lottie.
I had good reason; I’d been her apprentice for three resurrections, before I’d
transferred to Marvin Jones, my permanent instructor. I’d hated every filthy
second of being around Lottie and watching her work. I’d lodged a complaint
against her with the Board of Review; nothing had come of it, of course. There
weren’t so many resurrection witches running around that they could afford to
turf one just because she was—let’s face it—a psychopath.

Even with all
that, it still made me cringe to think about what that had been like... and
what might still be happening to her.

The next file
was even worse, because I had no reason at all to dislike Monica Heitmeyer; she
was a nice older lady specializing, like me and Lottie, in resurrections, but
she mainly did family gigs, reconciling loved ones. As far as I knew, she’d
never done any work with the police. She was in the feel-good business.

Two more dead
officers at her house, these two killed in the back yard. One had a snapped
neck. The other looked like a sack of raw meat. Someone had used him for
punching practice. Monica, like Lottie, was missing, but she’d left behind a
lot of blood.

Andrew hadn’t said
anything. His eyes had gone dark and cold, and whatever he was thinking, he
kept it to himself.

“What makes you
think I’m next on the list?” I asked.

“Not a hell of
a lot of witches in your line of work in Austin,” Prieto said. “Most of them
are already gone. It’s down to you and the other one.”

“Annika,” I
said. “Annika Berwick.” I knew her slightly, not well enough to have much of a
feeling for how well she’d handle something like this. Annika was frail, nearly
seventy, a sweet old grandmother of a witch who’d informally retired from
practice last year. “You’re protecting her, right?”

“Sure they
are,” Andy said softly. His gaze hadn’t left Prieto at all. “They leave you
open, you’re the next target. That the idea, Detective? Holly’s your damn
stalking horse.”

Prieto didn’t
answer. The truth was that he probably had strike teams ready to roll, and full
surveillance, but he wanted it to look like he wasn’t coming anywhere near us.

He wanted
everyone to think that we were all on our own.

“Have you
talked to Annika?”

Prieto nodded. “She’s
good.”

I didn’t know
about Annika, but I knew how I felt about it, and
good
didn’t exactly ring true. I desperately needed a shower and a
gallon of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to deal with this.

All of this
explained why the Police Department was willing to spend the exorbitant cost to
have Andrew Toland brought back. Resurrection witches were a rare breed, and
valuable. Six in a city of more than 600,000; there were fewer in Dallas, only
a couple hanging tough against a storm of fundamentalist persecution. Austin
remained the home of the weird.

Didn’t feel
like home, right now.

I turned to
Andrew. “You don’t have to do this,” I said. “I can release you. I
should
release you. This isn’t your
fight, it’s mine.”

He gave me a
look that drilled right into my core. “No, it’s not. They were right to bring
me into it, Holly. This is how the war starts -- put down those who might
fight, and do it early. Nobody left to fight when the evil comes calling.” His
blue eyes took on distance and chill. “I’ve seen it done.”

It had, in
fact, been done to him. “It’s still not your problem.”

“True enough,”
he said, and there came that slow, warm smile again, breaking my heart. “Still.
I think you’re my problem.”

~

We didn’t speak
on the drive back. I heard the jingle of the bottles in my case in the back
seat; I’d been watching Andy for any sign that he needed a booster, but he
seemed fine. Better than fine, actually. The spell that bound him here also
bound us together; I knew I’d feel some sense from him if—when—he
began to feel pain, or drift.

So far,
nothing. It was like being with anyone. Any living person, that is.

“The last
time,” Andy said. “I know we got the killer. What about the girl? Did I get her
out?”

I shuddered. I
couldn’t help it, and I couldn’t hide it. All of a sudden, the realities of it
crashed down on me, and the lockbox of feelings blew open, and I was shaking
like a leaf in a storm.

I dimly heard
Andy asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell him. I pulled the car over
into a vacant parking lot, threw it into park, and stumbled out with my arms
wrapped around myself for comfort. The warm, humid air didn’t help. I was
shaking apart.

I heard Andy’s
passenger side door slam, and quick footsteps on the gravel, and then his arms wrapped
around me fast and hard. “Hush,” he murmured, with his lips against my hair. “Hush,
now, Holly. It’s not so bad as that.”

But it was, oh,
it was. His question had opened up Pandora’s box, and I couldn’t keep any of it
under lock and key anymore. “She—she—oh, Andy, I’m sorry—”

“She died,” he
said, and pushed me back far enough that he could look into my eyes. His were
dark, all pupil even under the streetlight. “Feared she would. Couldn’t get to
her before he cut her. All I could do was try to get her to you before it was
too late.”

My heart just
broke. He remembered, but he didn’t
know.
I’d resurrected Andrew last year to deal with a witch out of Chicago who’d been
on the run, who’d taken to abducting girls he fancied, killing them, and
reviving them over and over for his fun.
 

Andy had gone
in to stop the witch, and save the last girl before it was too late.

He’d
accomplished part of it—the witch was dead, and Andy had made damn
certain the bastard couldn’t come back. The girls he’d enslaved were gone as
well.

But that last
child, all of sixteen... she’d died in Andy’s arms, as he used the last of his
strength to try to get her to safety. It had felt like it was all for nothing,
because of that. It wasn’t—the witch wouldn’t be hurting anyone else—but
it had felt hollow. Horribly empty.

I hadn’t
realized until just now
why
it had
felt so awful. It had been the tragedy of the girl, yes, but it had been
Andy.
Andy’s stunning courage.

I’d felt him
go, and it had felt like losing someone I loved.

I burst into
tears and buried my face in his hospital-style shirt. He smelled sterile,
astringent, not living at all, but it didn’t matter. He felt
real.

And I could
not
be in love with a dead man. I just
could not. No matter how close we’d gotten before. No matter how good this felt
just now.

Andy smoothed
my hair with gentle strokes, not speaking. I felt him touch his lips gently to
the top of my head.

“I remember,
you know,” he said at last. “You were there all the time, Holly. You were all
that kept me moving, at the last. You were the light.”

That only made
me cry harder. I was thinking about him wounded and dying, struggling to save
that girl. About how I’d kept him alive, alive, alive through all the pain and
agony.

Until I hadn’t

It hadn’t been
Andy who’d faltered... it had been me. I hadn’t been strong enough for him, in
the end.

“She was dying
before I ever got to her,” he said. “And she’s peaceful now, Holly. So let it
be.”

I couldn’t stop
crying. His hand rubbed my back in slow, gentle circles.

“I don’t think
you understand what it was like waking up today, seeing you.” His fingers
touched my chin and tipped it up. “If I need to die for you, I will. But let’s
not spend the time in tears.”

I could feel
his heartbeat. See the fast pulse moving under his skin. I could feel our souls
touching, intimate in ways that mere living people couldn’t achieve, and I
understood just how deep this went between us.

I pressed my
hand over his heart, feeling the strong, steady pace. “You can’t stay with me,”
I said. My voice, normally so steady, sounded soft and uncertain. “We don’t get
second chances, Andy.”

He smiled. “Sure
we do,” he said. “What’s this, if it ain’t a second chance? Or, more proper for
me, a third?”

And he kissed
me. Warm lips, blood-warm, tasting of the potion that I’d given him.
Toxic,
something in me warned, but I
didn’t care.

Andy’s thumbs
stroked my cheekbones, and his big hands seemed so certain about what they were
doing.

I was kissing a
dead man, and I didn’t care a bit. I wanted to keep on kissing him until the
sun burned out.

The memory of
the harsh, bloodstained photographs Prieto had shown us flashed across my eyes,
and I pulled free with a gasp, stepping back.

“What?” he
asked. He took my hands, but didn’t try to pull me into his arms.

“It’s not
safe,” I said. “We’re not safe. We need to get inside.”

Andy smiled—a
real, full smile. “You think I can’t protect you, Holly?”

“I don’t want
you to have to.”

He nodded out
into the dark. “Ain’t the only one. Prieto sent a couple of fellas on our tail.
They’re parked over there, watching us.”

I shuddered. Somehow,
that made it even worse, both that there were eyes on us, and that I was
putting Prieto’s men at risk just by being such an easy target. “Let’s go
home.”

We got back in
the car, and I broke speed limits on the way.

~

Andy was all
business when we pulled into the drive. Although he’d never worked as a
bodyguard, at least not that I knew of, he made me stay in the car with the
motor running and the garage door open as he went into the house and checked it
out. I waited tensely, imagining every second that I would feel an echo of
something
through the bond... I’d lived
through the sickening spiral of his torment and death once already, and I knew
what it would feel like.

I nearly
screamed when he popped up next to the car and motioned for me to get out. I
closed the garage door, shut off the motor, and followed him into the house.

“Locks?” he
asked. I turned them, and then set the security alarm for instant alarm. If any
door or window opened, we’d know, and so would the police. My heart was
hammering. I thought about Lottie, evidently surprised in her sleep. Monica,
taken in the evening as she was getting ready for bed, bath water gone cold in
the tub. “They come at night,” I said. “Don’t open any doors or windows. The
alarm will go off.”