Harvest of Holidays (7 page)

Then she saw Jimmy. She hadn’t noticed his much smaller body at first. The gargoyle had taken all her attention.

Jimmy lay next to the gargoyle and it was very clear how he had died. The gargoyle’s claws were still hooked inside his chest and stomach. There were more cuts across his legs and arms. His jeans and tee-shirt were ripped open and the blood from the cuts soaked him and the floor around him.

Donna sat on the edge of the old La-Z-Boy that Jimmy had found discarded on the sidewalk and rescued. Donna’s head was in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking.

Connie and Joy stood back in the far corner by the kitchenette. Their faces were white.

Tally closed her eyes.

“What do you see?” Carson whispered.

“The blood is too widespread,” Tally murmured. “It’s all over the place. He fought even after they had cut him up. The toxin must have slowed him down, but he kept fighting.” She opened her eyes to look at the window once more. “There was more than just this one. They left this one because Jimmy killed him and dawn was too close.”

“I think this one was Doroth,” Carson said, studying it.

“Lirgon’s senior lieutenant,” Tally murmured. She looked around again. It was easier to concentrate on the minutiae, to focus on working out what had happened, than to consider the body at her feet. “Jimmy used the leg from the coffee table. You can see the end of it, jutting out under Doroth’s chin.”

The raw wood from the broken table leg was white against the dark, dirty brown of the gargoyle’s hide, a deadly punctuation mark. The coffee table had been another cast off, the spindly legs clawed and scratched. It had been shattered in the fight and Jimmy must have picked up one of the legs to defend himself. When that had failed him, he had got close enough to shove it up into Doroth’s brain, even as Doroth had been ripping and tearing at his stomach….

“They smashed in the window and came through, catching him by surprise,” Donna said, her voice husky. “He keeps his weapons in the bedroom. He didn’t get the chance to grab them, so he used whatever he could….” She drew in a breath that shuddered and hid her swollen face again.

Tally turned away, facing the door and the growing light of dawn outside. “We need to clean this up before anyone sees it.”

“Why do you know there was more than Doroth?” Carson asked. His tone was gentle.

“Valdeg…his chest was covered in blood.” She said it softly, hoping Donna was too upset to listen to her. “I thought he had been hunting, but now, seeing this….”

Carson’s jaw rippled. “And Lirgon, too?” he asked.

“Valdeg said Lirgon would find Jimmy on his own.” She dropped her voice even lower. “He said that Lirgon didn’t think we would give Jimmy up, even if we knew he had been…” She drew in a deep breath and glanced at Donna. “You know,” she finished.

Carson nodded.

Miguel cleared his throat loudly behind them. “There’s trees for miles, starting just across the road. We could set it up so it looks like a bear attack.”

“It won’t stand up to investigation,” Carson said. “A bear breaking into a trailer?”

“As long as it sows doubt, it will do,” Tally said. “We just need to get rid of anything to do with gargoyles and let the authorities try to figure out something from what’s left.”

Connie came forward, stepping over the debris. “I’ll take Donna home. She needs to be there for her kids.”

Donna wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, then lifted the hem of her shirt and wiped again. “No, I’m fine,” she said, but her voice was strained and raw. “You need everyone to work here, cleaning this up.”

“Do you know if Jimmy had a sledge hammer, Donna?” Tally asked.

She shook her head. “But I have one in my trunk.”

“Me, too,” Connie said.

Tally looked through the door at the rapidly lightening sky. “We wait for dawn and this thing to go into stone sleep. Then we break it up with sledgehammers and cart it away.”

“And then?” Donna asked.

“Then you go home and be a mother,” Tally said. “And we all go home and try to pretend this is Christmas day, too, and wait for the official news.”

Lirgon and Valdeg

It was a dark day. The heavy, low cloud that had settled in just before Christmas was still overhead, threatening snow. Even though it was mid-afternoon, the light was dim, making the thick snow cover over the cemetery look icy blue.

The headstones clustered thickly across the small cemetery, thrusting up into the air like spires punching through cloud cover. It was a silent, petrified stone forest and the most depressing place Carson had ever visited. Even the dappled shade and leafy green location where he had buried his first wife, over ten years ago, had been a peaceful and somnolent retreat in comparison.

Everything here felt chilly and unfriendly.

“Hell of a place to bury him,” Miguel murmured, looking around.

There was a gash of dark brown earth covered by fake lawn, just below them, and a small group of mourners, including Tally, standing next to the plain, very simple casket. The priest had already dashed for his car, to get out of the cold. He had left it running by the curb.

Tally’s coat barely covered her enormous belly and Carson had tried to talk her into staying home, where it was warm and safe, but she had insisted on coming to say goodbye to Jimmy.

Connie and Joy were on the other side of the grave from Tally, arm in arm. Nick and Damian stood on the sidewalk next to the row of battered junkers and beat up cars that was all any of them could afford. The two vampires could walk on consecrated ground – it was only the movies that pretended anything Christian was poisonous to vampires—but the pressure of so many spirits in one place made it uncomfortable for them, so they had hung back to watch from the road.

Carson had left the graveside before the short service was done, too upset to listen to the impersonal rites any longer. The neutral phrases just made him angry. He had climbed up the slope to where Nick and Damian stood watching and waited for it to be done so he could go home and crack the seal on the bottle of Jim Beam he had brought in honor of Jimmy. It would be the first drink he had taken for nearly six months.

Carson glanced at Donna, standing stiff and still next to Tally, her face white and expressionless. She hadn’t shed a single tear since she had got up from the battered chair in Jimmy’s place and set herself to cleaning up the mess. Tally was holding her hand, now, while Oscar stood just behind them. Perhaps it was a good thing Tally was here, after all.

“I don’t think Jimmy will care about where he’s buried,” Carson said, answering Miguel. “He’ll be off having a party with someone, somewhere.”

Miguel grinned. “Some little chickies, and lots of Jimmy B.”

“That sounds about right,” Carson said, and sighed.

Tally hugged Donna, then turned and made her way slowly and very carefully along the icy path, heading for where Carson stood with Miguel at the top of the mild slope. Behind her, Donna and Oscar looked at each other with the stiff expressions of strangers and started back along the path themselves. Connie and Joy followed. Oscar and Donna didn’t hold hands. They didn’t talk.

Carson sighed, this time mentally. What was it like for Oscar, to always wonder if his wife was going to come home each night after hunting? He had no idea how good Donna was. He had no clue what it would cost her personally to give up the life, if he demanded it. And now, after this, Carson guessed that Oscar would be building himself up to ask her to do just that.

As she reached the start of the short slope, Tally blocked Oscar and Donna from Carson’s view. He watched his wife climb the slope, taking the small, delicate steps that anyone who had lived in the Snow Belt for more than a few years acquired by experience, when walking over icy ground. He watched her, as his thoughts reassembled into a new idea, one that caught at his chest, and made his lips part in surprise. He considered the novel idea for a moment, then strode and slipped down the slope to Tally’s side and picked up her arm. “Careful, it’s lethal just here.”

“No miscarriages in the graveyard, no,” Miguel added from his safe position at the top of the slope.

“That would be just a tad too prophetic,” Nick added, his voice low.

Tally’s boots did slip and give away as they tackled the slope and she clung to Carson, dragging heavily at his arm, as they climbed to the level area where Miguel stood. Behind them, Oscar muttered, “You’d think a little bit of sand or salt would cripple their budget, wouldn’t you?”

Tally was breathing heavily and held up her hand. “Just a quick rest,” she said. “My balance is completely gone right now and everything takes three times as long, even walking.”

Carson held his hands out to Oscar and Donna and when they gripped them, hauled them up to the top.

“Thanks,” Oscar said stiffly.

Tally rubbed her belly and Donna smiled. “Any day now,” she said softly.

“Sooner the better,” Tally said. “I’m so sick of waddling and don’t get me started on peeing every thirty seconds.”

Oscar grinned, but it was a death’s head expression on his rigid and shocked face. “Donna threatened to put a chamber pot next to the bed, when she was pregnant. Said it would save a couple dozen trips to the bathroom every night.”

Carson gripped Tally’s cold hand in both of his. The new idea was blossoming, growing roots, filling out in his head. It was suddenly urgent that he speak, to syphon off some of it. To make it real by saying it aloud. “I thought of a way to take care of the baby,” he told her.

Everyone looked at him. Tally’s expression was intense. Hopeful.

It occurred to Carson that perhaps this wasn’t the best time to talk about such matters. He should wait until he got Tally on her own, and discuss it privately. But everyone standing around them was family. Everyone knew everyone’s intimate secrets. That was the way of it. So he gave a mental shrug and finished what he had started. “
I’ll
take care of him.”

“What do you mean?” Miguel asked, puzzled.

Carson could see from the change in Tally’s expression that she was following along fine. The furrow between her brows appeared. “No,” she said flatly.

He shook her hand for emphasis. “
Yes
,” he replied. “This makes all sorts of sense, Tally. You’re the hunter, you’re the one that was born to this life. You have all the instincts, all the…the
skills
. I fell into hunting by sheer accident. It’s not going to kill me to stay out of it for twenty years.”

“Twenty years?” Connie asked curiously.

“He means to stay home and raise the child, while Tally continues to hunt,” Damian said.

Nick’s hand settled on Carson’s shoulder, heavy and big. “Think hard before you make this decision,” he said softly. “You weren’t born into this life, but it has been all you’ve known for a long while.”

“A child demands sacrifices,” Carson insisted. “And this makes all sorts of sense in my head. In me. Here.” He pressed his fingers against his chest for emphasis. “You have to keep hunting, Tally. You made it your mission to rid the world of the Stonebrood Clan, and you should finish that. I don’t know anyone else who could do it instead of you. You’ve dealt with four of the gang already. There’s only two to go, and I suspect they will be the tough ones. You need to concentrate on finding them and dealing with them. You must hunt.”

Tally shook her head again, but there was doubt in her eyes. “I won’t take you away from hunting.”

“You won’t,” Carson said, and smiled. “That’s the best part of this. The clan…they’re making this personal. They’re learning about us and attacking our weaknesses. But I know the business. I can take care of the baby. I can protect him in a way that, say, Oscar could not. No offence, Oscar.”

Oscar shook his head a little. “It’s true. I would no more be able to pick up a sword and swing at a gargoyle than fly. And they
are
making this personal.”

Tally pressed her lips together, making the fullness all pouty. Carson knew she was considering what he said and pressed his point home. “I get to raise the baby, and because I know the business, I can take care of everything that the hunting interferes with. A steady job once he’s in school.
Real
money.”

Tally drew in a slow breath. “Perhaps,” she said. “It’s something to think about.”

Carson glanced at Nick and Damian. For once, they were not weighing in with their considered opinions. Were they finally beginning to understand that when it came to Tally, Carson knew what he was doing? Did they agree with him on this?

He added his final argument, the thought that had struck him a moment ago and shaped this idea into form. “I know how good you are at what you do, Tally. I know you can take care of yourself. I’m never going to sit at home worrying while you’re out hunting down whatever you’re hunting that week. Well, I’ll worry. Of course I will. This is a high risk business. But I’m never going to panic, or demand you give it up, or get stroppy about you being out at night all the time.”

Oscar drew in a sharp breath and licked his lips. His face was almost grey around the jaws and the nose. He looked sick.

Carson realized that Oscar would apply what he was saying to his own domestic arrangements. Oscar wasn’t a hunter. He
did
panic when Donna was out all night. Carson hadn’t meant to skewer him with such a comparison, but he didn’t want to diffuse his idea by trying to soothe Oscar into a better frame of mind. They each had to come to terms with this life, in their own way.

Peace
. Yes, that was what he felt, Carson realized. “This is the right thing to do,” he told Tally. “I feel it in my bones.”

Tally nodded. It was a tiny movement, but she was agreeing with him.

Miguel clapped Carson on the shoulder, much like Nick had done a moment before, but Miguel’s hand was small and light. “We should have a party,” he said firmly.

“I couldn’t….” Donna began weakly.

Carson was shocked, too. “We just buried Jimmy,” he pointed out.

Miguel nodded. “Yes and it’s New Year’s Eve. Jimmy would be disappointed if we didn’t throw a party on New Year’s Eve. A party for him. He liked them so much.”