Bad Blood

Fortunately, most of the buildings were vacant. It was almost nine. The workers had been gone for hours. The whole business district was empty, the streetlights casting shadows on nothing. Creek raised his crossbow toward the beast. This angle wasn’t going to work. He needed to be higher up. Heart level. He studied the buildings available to him, trying to determine which one would give him the best access.

Suddenly the creature reared its head back and unleashed a horrible roar. Creek parked the bike and yanked the crossbow free as he jumped off and ducked into the nearest doorway. The parking garage across the street would make a great bunker and give him the height he needed.

The demon seemed occupied with something. What exactly, Creek couldn’t tell, but he used the distraction for cover and ran to the parking garage. He found the stairs and went three stories up, coming out on the street side. Tucking himself behind a concrete pylon, he leveled his bow. The stench threatened to bring up the mayor’s arroz con pollo. The demon stood at a slight angle, hunched over something. There was no way for Creek to hit it properly. He’d have to wait until the demon moved.

Through the bow’s site, his field of vision was a small circle of blue-black flesh. Then he heard a woman’s voice. An angry woman’s voice.

“Eat me and I will haunt you for the rest of your unnatural life.”

The demon laughed.

Ducking and running, Creek got a couple pylons ahead of the beast, fixed his position, and took another look. From the new vantage point, he could see more of the creature’s front and the woman he held captive in his car-sized hands. She wore some kind of wig of black feathers. So much for the mayor canceling all Halloween events and setting a curfew.

“Go ahead and try, demon,” the woman taunted. “I’ll tear you apart from the inside.”

Not only was she bad at following directions, but she was crazy, too. Great. Creek lifted the bow and took aim. The demon snarled and lifted the woman toward his mouth. Creek released the first bolt.

It thunked home in the demon’s eye. Yowling, the creature dropped one hand from the woman to claw at its face, lifting its head and giving Creek perfect access to its heart. He planted the second bolt dead on target.

Hissing like a wet cat, the thing released the woman. She hit the ground hard and didn’t move. The demon went down next, taking off the corner of the First Florida Federal Bank. As it writhed on the ground, Creek ran for the stairs. Any second now, the demon would probably go up in flames. He had to get the woman out of danger, if she weren’t already dead.

He burst out of the parking garage, his crossbow already tucked away, and ran toward her. Keeping watch on the convulsing demon, he scooped her up and made tracks down the side street and out of the path of demon shrapnel.

Just past the crosswalk, the demon blew. Chunks of burning flesh and ribbons of acid-hot blood launched into the air. Creek pulled up beneath an awning, shielding the woman with his body, and hunkered down to ride out the downpour.

When the last piece fell—a toe by the looks of it—Creek unhinged and stood, at last taking a good look at the woman he’d rescued.

Her head lolled back over his arm. The feather wig stayed put. He walked out from beneath the shadow of the awning and into the light of the streetlamp. She wasn’t wearing a costume. The feathers were her hair. An icy memory swept through him, a snippet of a fairy tale his grandmother used to tell him when he was a little boy about a woman whose sorrow turned her into a raven, gave her the power to gather souls because she had none. That story had always fascinated and terrified him.

He snorted at his own foolishness. Samhain approached and its magic had started to affect him. He shook it off and chalked up the feather hair to the night’s power. That’s all it was. Anything was possible tonight. He kneeled with the woman in his arms, setting her gently on the sidewalk so he could feel for a pulse. There was none.

Sitting back on his heels, he sighed. Not the way he’d wanted this to go. “Sorry,” he muttered. What a beauty she’d been. Seminole maybe, with that pretty olive skin. Around her neck, she wore a tiny beaked skull on a silver chain. Her vest of textured black leather exposed a few inches of taut belly above her low slung dark jeans. Maybe she had ID in her pocket. He leaned forward to check.

The woman’s body seemed to move.

He jerked back, then exhaled. She wasn’t dead after all. He reached to check her pulse again and her body exploded into a cloud of cawing, squawking ravens. He fell back on his hands, then shifted to whip out his halm.

Feathers floated down like black snow, and the birds swarmed into a column in the middle of the street. Then somehow, as he watched, the woman who’d died in his arms walked out of the column and the ravens were gone.

The little boy who’d trembled at his grandmother’s story urged him to run, but Creek wasn’t eight anymore. He shoved to his feet, his halm at the ready.

She stepped onto the sidewalk but didn’t come any closer. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

Her eyes were as black as her hair. As black as a raven’s wing. She laughed, a dark, cawing sound that wasn’t as unpleasant as he’d expected. “You saved me.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Probably the wisest decision anyway, considering what she’d just done. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure you were dead.”

She tipped her head, peering at him. “I didn’t mean from the demon. I meant from the swamp witch.”