An American Weredeer in Michigan Read online

  Yolanda and Larry exchanged a confused look at Emma’s speech, though I wasn’t sure if it was because of the first or second part.

  “If you think weredeer are helpless then you don’t know jack pal,” I said, clutching my staff tightly. The item was hand-carved and allowed me to enhance my admittedly limited mystical talents greatly. I was ready to throw down and had the magic to do it.

  No you don’t, a voice spoke in my mind, but came from the direction of my back pocket where I could feel its owner’s presence. It was the Merlin Gun, my all-purpose weapon against evil. It was an old-timey Beretta possessed by an angel. Not kidding. They are not your enemies.

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” I said.

  “Whom are you talking to?” the woman asked, looking equally ready for a fight.

  “We’re not here to fight,” Larry said.

  “We’re not?” the woman said.

  “Dial it down, Yolanda,” Larry said, pointing the rod at us. “See? It’s not registering anything. They’re not what we’re looking for.”

  Yolanda frowned and pointed her gun to the ground. Her actions weren’t very reassuring.

  “What? You have an evil-detecting rod?” I asked, snorting at the very idea.

  “Basically, yeah,” Larry said. “It was a gift from an FBI agent.”

  I paused then closed my eyes before opening them again. “Would this FBI agent, by chance, be Agent Timmons?”

  The hunters exchanged a glance.

  “Goddammit.” Yolanda muttered. “Another group of his friends.”

  “Alex just became like ten percent less sexy,” I muttered, remembering he’d been a hunter before he’d been an FBI agent. He’d just used magic and gone after demons and serial killers versus generic supernaturals. So of course he’d know other people who were in the same profession. I just had done my best to ignore that uncomfortable fact about him. Mages were in the middle-ground between supernaturals and regular humans. Sometimes, they were burned at the stake with the rest of us and other times they were the ones doing the burning.

  I brought you to this location, the Merlin Gun spoke in my head. A great transgression has been done. It must be punished.

  Oh crap. “Uh, Emma, I think I may have accidentally led us to something nasty in the woods.”

  Emma stared at me. “Again?”

  “I don’t do this on purpose!” I snapped.

  Larry aimed his dowsing rod over the side of the cliff and it started jerking toward it in a comical fashion, dragging along the football-player-sized man. I found myself following him right up until the point he pointed just downward from it.

  It is there.

  Being a weredeer, I leapt down thirty feet and landed on my feet without injuring myself. I mentally made the Six Million Dollar Woman noise as I did so. The side of the cliff face was black rock of a kind I didn’t recognize and covered in strange pictograms of red trees, a gold woman (I could only tell because it had little circle boobs on its stick figure body—men, they never change), and a bunch of other symbols I couldn’t contextualize. Some of them had worn away, which helped obscure the symbols’ overall meaning even further.

  That was when I saw something sticking out from the ground, underneath a pile of moss, that smelled all too human.

  “Oh Goddess,” I said, cleaning away the dirt and mud to reveal the bones inside. A whole pile of tiny skeletons sitting on top of one another without any of the care or love that a proper burial would have shown. All of them were newborns. I had no idea how many of them were there. It took me a second to take it all in before I ran over to one of the nearby trees and threw up.

  Chapter Two

  Say what you will about humanity, but when they find out a bunch of babies have been murdered, they will usually react with the appropriate amount of shock and horror. A few hours after the discovery, Shadow Pine Park was full of every cop and state police officer in Bright Falls, plus the media.

  I was forced to sit by the wooden table with Emma, drinking coffee as we were interrogated over and over again by authorities about just what we’d found and why. It helped that the authorities were ostensibly led by Clara O’Henry but even she wasn’t going to be able to keep a lid on a crime this monumental.

  Not that she’d want to, hopefully.

  “How many were down there?” Emma asked, looking shell-shocked.

  “I dunno, but a lot,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Dozens at least.”

  “Do you think it was one of us?” Emma asked, her voice shaking a bit.

  “No,” I said, helpfully. “The bodies looked intact. A feral werewolf or other rabid predator shapeshifter would have torn them apart.”

  Emma looked at me. Her nose wrinkled in disgust and I realized that hadn’t been the answer she was looking for. “You are terrible at this.”

  I took a sip of my sixth or so cup of coffee. “Yeah, I really am.”

  The two hunters were nearby, having disposed of their weapons nearby and were adopting the position of being just a pair of hikers. I could have exposed them to Clara and was tempted to, but the fact that they were, ostensibly, friends of Alex kept me from doing so. Still, I wanted to know how they knew him and what my not-really-but-maybe-someday boyfriend was doing with this.

  “Maybe it was Satanists!” Emma said, speaking up as if the idea had just popped in her head. “Evil baby-sacrificing Satanists!”

  “Really?” I looked at her sideways. “That’s your working theory?”

  “There’s a lot more of them since demons turned out to be real,” Emma said. “Not the atheists-who-like-to-wear-black-and-listen-to-metal kind either.”

  “Hey, metal is cool and a lot of it based on The Lord of the Rings and World War Two,” I said defensively. “There’s also nothing wrong with black.”

  Emma gave a half-smile that quickly faded. I didn’t blame her for that. “Who could have done something like this, Jane? It’s so…evil.”

  “I dunno,” I said, going through various scenarios in my head. “I have a few theories, but nothing I want to think too hard upon.”

  In my study of ancient history, a course of a few dozen history books my magical tutor Kim Su said were “less wrong than most”, there was a lot of messed-up stuff humans used to do. History was closer to a blood-filled soap opera than Disney’s treatment of it with virtually every evil thing a person could do having been done somewhere sometime—and usually as part of an accepted cultural practice.

  “Do I want to know the theories?” Emma asked.

  “Maybe the children were unacceptable in some way,” I said, frowning. “The skeletons didn’t look damaged, so it was probable they were left to die of exposure. There’s also a much, much more acceptable possibility.”

  “Which is?” Emma asked.

  “It’s a cemetery,” I said. “Some time long ago, some rural folks took their babies who died at birth and put them here under the gravestone.”

  Emma blinked. “That would be much, much more acceptable.”

  Sheriff Clara O’Henry marched up to us, wearing a brown button-down shirt and black leather pants. A pair of mirror shades rested on her face, giving her a quiet authoritative look. She was a beautiful woman with short-cut hair and freckles mixed with a face like Naomi Watts. The fact she was considered the homely one of the sisters should tell you what the rest of the O’Henrys looked like. “The newborns were left to die of exposure.”

  I looked up to her. “Goddess dammit.”

  “Does the Goddess damn people?” Emma asked. “I thought she was all about peace, love, and Wicca.”

  “Wrong religion,” I said, looking at her. “Deeristrianity is kind of an interface smoothie of Christianity, paganism, and magic.”

  “Thirty-two so far,” Clara said. “Going back almost a century.”

  I blinked. “Okay, that’s unsettling.”

  “Yeah, it means we’re dealing with a long-lived organization like a cult—” Clara started to say.

/>   “Or a monster,” I said, frowning. “Something long-lived or immortal like a vampire.”

  “Or a demon,” I added, remembering the Big Bad Wolf. “Maybe it was our old enemy we killed last year. It was pretty insane.”

  Clara grimaced. She’d briefly been the Big Bad Wolf’s host and the experience had left her a changed woman. Not that I knew how, since she was still the ball-busting legalistic cop who harassed me about Lucien Lyons all the time but Emma assured me she was different. “As much as I’d like to think so, I doubt it. The Big Bad Wolf’s cult ended in the fifties and it was obsessed with fertility. It wouldn’t have harmed children.”

  I would have argued but I hadn’t been mentally linked to the monster. “There’s a lot of things that prey on children. Some of which live in Bright Falls.”

  “Fewer since you arrived,” Clara said.

  It was the closest thing to a compliment she’d ever given me before. “Is there anything you’ve seen the, uh, victims have in common?”

  “What are you asking?” Clara looked down.

  I closed my eyes. “Are they deformed? All girls? You know, the stuff evil patriarchal old men might think made them unacceptable? I’m thinking Craster from Game of Thrones here.”

  “Craster killed his male offspring,” Emma pointed out.

  “Shut up, Emma,” I said.

  “Sorry!” Emma winced.

  I had another theory which wasn’t going to be popular and that was the children didn’t show any sign of being shifters. The Pre-Reveal shapeshifter culture had been a lot more brutal and atavistic than any of my grandparents’ generation had liked to admit. Marcus O’Henry would have gladly killed any human children of his lineage. The only problem with that theory was that there was no way to tell whether someone would become a shapeshifter until adolescence. There were five thousand shapeshifters in Bright Falls and twice as many humans who had shapeshifter ancestors.

  “I don’t watch anything but ESPN,” Clara said simply. “I also don’t read fantasy.”

  “Surely someone would have reported stolen children,” Emma said. “I mean, we’re not that kind of place.”

  “All of the children had fae blood and all of them died before the Reveal,” Alex’s voice spoke through the air.

  My head turned to look about the dark-haired, classically handsome form of Agent Alexander Timmons. Alex was triracial, having said his grandmother was Chinese and his mother Hispanic. To me, he just looked awesome. He was wearing his usual black business suit and coat, which must have been sweltering in this heat unless he’d had it enchanted (a real possibility). He was carrying a staff like my own, which meant he was loaded for bear, as they were more blunt-force enhancers.

  “How did you get here?” I asked, standing up. Last I heard, Alex was in Hawaii investigating wereshark attacks on surfers.

  Alex walked over and gave me a hug. “Heimdall gave me a lift via the Rainbow Bridge.”

  “You know the Norse Gods?” I asked, wondering if it was possible. Alex was a spirit mage and they regularly visited the Spirit World’s stranger places. The ones where gods, dreams, and imagination regularly collided.

  “No, the comic book characters.” Alex smiled, looking around. “Though I suppose they’re more movie characters now.”

  “Did Loki look like Tom Hiddleston?” I asked, more curious than I should have been. “Just, you know, for clarity’s sake?”

  “Loki looks like whatever he wants to look like,” Alex muttered. “But that’s not important now.”

  Right. The dead children. God, I felt like an ass.

  A deer’s ass.

  “What are you doing here, Alex?” Clara said, smiling.

  I felt unconsciously jealous. “Well, we’ve found a big pile of bones, so why shouldn’t an FBI agent be here?”

  “I didn’t call them, though,” Clara said, crossing her arms. It was obvious she was torn between obvious gratitude for his presence and annoyance. “Also, how the hell do you know case details before I do?”

  “The FBI is actually establishing a permanent regional office here and in New Detroit after the destruction of the Department of Supernatural Security. I’ve volunteered to take up residence here,” Alex said, referring to events with the vampires.

  Apparently, something had eaten the souls of all the bigoted murderous agents in Washington D.C. before re-animating them as monsters. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys. It hadn’t done much for supernatural-human relations, though, and was part of the reason varmint laws were still on the books despite shapeshifters having nothing to do with it.

  “None of which is set to happen for months,” Clara said, removing her sunglasses and staring.

  Alex sighed. “Very well. Truth be told, I had a vision of the Lady of in the Lake telling me—”

  “Stop it,” Clara said, raising her hand. “Forget I asked.”

  “Probably for the best,” Alex admitted, smiling. “As for how I recognized the bodies had fae blood, I know from experience. Prior to the Reveal, the mages of the Americas kept a watch on fae-born children, since they tended to inherit a greater propensity to the Art than most humans. I also know that, because of this, many monsters preyed on them. Including fae themselves.”

  Fae, or the Manitou as my grandfather called them, were those spirits who chose to merge with humans on a permanent basis. It was less like demonic possession and more like a synthesis. They passed down their genes to their human children, who merged with fae themselves. Unfortunately, they tended to grow as arrogant and ruthless as any humans with power. Combine it with the fact spirits were amoral at the best of times and plenty of them were real dickbags.

  “Do you have any idea what caused this?” Clara asked the most pertinent question.

  “Perhaps a Daughter of Baga Yaga or Lilith,” Alex said, as if he was profiling a serial killer. White, male, may be related to Satan, mid-thirties, and you should probably check to see if he has cloven hooves.

  “I take it these are real things?” Clara said. “Just because I live in Bright Falls doesn’t mean I’ve memorized the Monstrous Manual.”

  I was stunned Clara had inadvertently revealed she was a geek. “Yeah, Lilith Fair aside, Lilith’s daughters are actually pretty awful to women. Alex once told me they often get jobs in maternity wings to—”

  “Stop,” Clara said.

  “Alex got the one he found.”

  “Stop,” Clara said, shaking her head. “Consider yourself recruited, Alex; I want this thing found and killed.”

  “You mean arrested, right?” I asked.

  “I know what I said,” Clara said, walking off.

  “Did you get sent here by the Lady of the Lake?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Alex said, watching Clara leave. “Kim Su asked me to come investigate. I sent Larry and Yolanda ahead. I’m as surprised as you that it led here, though. I was actually investigating something much more insidious.”

  “More insidious than mass infanticide?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Alex said, not missing a beat. “That doesn’t mean I’m not here to help.”

  “Yeah, well maybe you shouldn’t send hunters!” I said, angry that Alex had made time to come investigate another great evil but hadn’t made time to visit in months.

  “They’re not like that,” Alex said, taking a deep breath. “Larry and Yolanda only want to protect the innocent. They’ve both had very hard lives.”

  “Well, welcome to the rest of us,” I said, growling. “What did werewolves kill their entire family?”

  “Only Yolanda’s,” Alex said. “She only found out years later they were doing so to cover up the fact that they were kidnapping her son.”

  Ouch. Didn’t I feel like a douchebag. “What happened to him?”

  “Marcus O’Henry had him raised as a member of the werewolf clan here in Bright Falls. He left and eventually got himself shot in Louisiana. Not for being a werewolf either.”

  Now I felt outright shitty
. “I’m sorry. That still doesn’t give her permission to be High Queen of the Nasty to people just trying to have lunch.”

  Alex looked at me with sympathy in his eyes. “I’m sorry. It is good to see you again. I’ve missed you. I had nothing but the open road, bad coffee, and ill dreams to keep me company since I left Bright Falls.”

  I smiled. “Well, I’m glad to see you too. Maybe we can make up for our last failed first date.”

  “I’d like that very much,” Alex said, giving as much of a smile as appropriate when you were a hundred feet from a mass grave. Which was to say, slightly pained. Then again, most people didn’t have my “unique” ability to compartmentalize. “Are you still working at Pinehold?”

  I grimaced. “Yeah, that didn’t work out. I’ve been between jobs since the whole incident with the Big Bad Wolf.”

  I sustained myself by serving as a tour guide to all of the visitors to town I complained about constantly. As much as I hated giving out selfies, the fact was they were pretty easy to charge for since someone had put the bare bones of the story about the Big Bad Wolf on the Pinehold website. I wasn’t fond of being referred to as a Native American witch since, well, I knew plenty of real Odawa who resented my inclusion, but that was racism for you. It was enough to keep the lights on, though, since Mom and Dad had entered witness protection.

  “How’s my brother?” Alex said, cheerfully asking about Lucien.

  I stepped on Emma’s foot.

  Emma took the hint. “So what did you come here to investigate? You know, in case we have to Cthulhu-proof our houses or something.”

  Alex didn’t respond as he turned to look at the woods where a man in a brilliant-white suit with a thick bushy beard and blue mirror sunglasses started tromping through with a seeming army of similarly white-clothes-wearing individuals behind him. There were men, women, and even children among them.

  “Son of a bitch,” Alex said.

  “Hey!” Emma said. “Don’t use that word! That’s our word.”

  “Now is not the time, Emma,” Alex said, clutching his staff tightly.

  The deputies and police moved to intercept the newcomers but they all took steps back and parted like the Red Sea for the man in front. He raised his hands and spoke with a Southern evangelist’s flair. “We have here the sign of what the O’Henry family has wrought with its rampant destruction of these sacred woods! Evil has been brought to this town and it has cursed us all. This is why we must stop the development here and cast out the darkness.”