Caitlin Kelley_Monster Hunter Read online

  I took a bite, talking through the mouthful. “Isn’t what we do enough to scare you?”

  “I want to know,” he said after he swallowed.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and then licked a drop of sauce from it.

  “You are such a cavewoman.”

  “Whatever.” I wiped my hand on the towel. “You’d have done the same. I don’t know what this stuff is, but it’s heaven.”

  “God, yes.” He took another huge bite and flopped against the pillows to chew.

  I took a smaller bite. Food didn’t diminish the dream. I thought as I chewed, trying to figure out what about it seemed…familiar.

  “Hey-o.” Marty poked me in the side. “Food time. Sleep later.”

  Pointing at my mouth, I chewed and swallowed. “I’m eating.”

  “Any word from our new friend, La Fontaine?”

  “Nah.” I dipped a piece of shrimp in the sauce. “Don’t expect anything, either.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Tonight, we hunt the dog and tomorrow we follow Sister Betty’s damage control plan.”

  The hiss of metal scraping metal on our hotel room door made both of us turn.

  “What —”

  I held up my hand and strained to listen over the whump of the ceiling fan’s uneven spin. Something like…breathing.

  Shadow blotted out the light under the door.

  “Holy shit.” Marty’s hand covered his nose and mouth against the burnt, sulfurous reek filling the room.

  “Shut up,” I whispered.

  The shadow moved, retreated, a little light seeping in at the corners of the door. More scraping, like a wire brush against the metal, then the shadow under the door disappeared to the left, toward the open hall. Footsteps echoed like low thunder as it retreated.

  I threw the blankets back, food tumbling with them, and scrambled out of bed. In my t-shirt, underwear, and bare feet, I ran out the door.

  Eerie stillness filled the hall. The strange hour between dinner and bed time that almost always emptied a hotel meant silence. No footsteps. No breathing. No metal scraping. I couldn’t even hear TVs behind the closed doors I passed. At the end, where the hall split in opposite directions, I stopped, looking each way. No hint of the recent passage of any person, animal, or specter. I muttered a curse under my breath and spun from one direction to the other.

  “Sister Betty would chastise you for language. If she wasn’t distracted by your practically bare ass.” Marty stepped up beside me. “Cute panties, by the way.”

  I ignored his comments. “Whatever it was, it’s gone.”

  “You think it was Helen’s dog?”

  “Doubt it. It wouldn’t come for us.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t looking for us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She said its role was to guard the dead.”

  If it was looking for the dead, it would seek out the haunted places where it could herd them like an otherworldly border collie. “So maybe it’s herding them.”

  “Which is probably why I haven’t seen any. The little bastard’s collecting them. The question is, how do we find it?”

  “We go where the dead are. Or should be. Time to gear up.” I looked at my bare feet and the hem of the shirt brushing against my upper thighs. “Well, clothes first. Fighting naked sucks.”

  7

  The sun sunk behind the buildings as we dodged meandering pedestrians on Royal Street’s uneven sidewalks. I caught conversation in bits, not all of it English, but most of it excitement or anticipation of a night on Bourbon Street. A saxophone wailed a mournful blues riff in the distance under the strange half-twilight broken by street lights. Energy shivered through the air—some of it from the people, some from nearby magic. Maybe a practitioner worked nearby, or perhaps a street magician earned his living with something more advanced than sleight of hand. The buzzy hum of energy made the city all the more dreamlike and unreal. It felt like every postcard I’d ever seen.

  I hoped it would feel the same when I could finally enjoy it.

  “I’m glad we ate because otherwise, we might have to stop.” He turned, following the spicy, intoxicating smell of something deep fried wafting out of an open door. The hand-lettered sign advertised something called boudin balls.

  “Focus, foodie.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I called the office. Father Robicheau will be waiting for us. He’s the church’s monster hunter liaison and was Sister Evangeline’s local resource. He’s the keeper of the arsenal and will support us while we’re in town.”

  “You mean while we’re on this job. Once this is over, we get to go back to that whole vacation thing, right? Hurricanes, étouffée, binge drinking, and lounging by the pool?”

  “Yeah, of course. That’s what I meant.” For a moment, I’d forgotten I hadn’t come to work. It seemed so natural. My steps slowed some. Maybe that was part of my problem.

  “There’s a place I want to check out near the cathedral.” Marty outpaced me as I thought. “Not now, of course, but as soon as this is done.”

  Side-stepping a bent man, I turned to watch him walk away. Did he look familiar? Was he the same man from earlier? He shuffled down the uneven walkway without hesitation or haste, his back bent and head down.

  “Cee?” Marty stood at the corner across the street waiting for me.

  “Just a sec.”

  The hairy man in dirty clothes disappeared into the crowd.

  Maybe he just looked like the man who jumped us.

  The cut on my leg throbbed as if in recognition.

  Or maybe…

  Last night’s nightmare flashed across my eyes. After the first attack, after I escaped and thought myself safe, he’d cut my throat.

  The touch on my shoulder made me jump, and I swung, my arm slamming into Marty’s chest. “Oh my god, I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing him as his knees buckled.

  His eyes bulged as his breath wheezed. I dragged him across the sidewalk and propped him against the wall, supporting him as he gasped. After a few minutes, he didn’t look as purple or red. His voice rasped when he finally managed to speak. “What…the…hell?”

  Despite myself, I giggled when I answered. “You scared me.”

  He rubbed his chest, coughed, and took a deep breath, only to cough again. “You seriously need to relax.”

  “I thought you were…” The prospect of explaining that the man who attacked us earlier might be some nightmare come alive seemed comical. Impossible. Crazy. “Never mind.”

  His breath whistled. “I’ve seen you fight monsters but never realized how damned strong you are. How much do you work out again?”

  “I’m sorry, really. I didn’t mean to hit you.”

  “I’d hate to be on the end of a calculated swing.”

  Pride I wouldn’t have admitted to stirred within me. “Are you okay?”

  “You clotheslined me with a steel beam.” He rubbed his chest. “Next, you’re going to say you expect me to keep walking and help you.”

  “At least I didn’t break your sense of humor.”

  “Nah, just a couple of ribs.” He rubbed his chest again and stood up. “Either we’re becoming best friends or I’m in a horribly abusive relationship.”

  I kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  With a sigh, we fell in step. “Abusive relationship it is. At least you’re not making me withdraw my life savings.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the bank behind us. “I was going to ask if we had time to pick up pralines, but I’m not really hungry anymore.” Intoxicating cinnamon-scented air distracted him as we passed a shop window.

  I thought it best not to answer.

  We continued down Royal Street and ducked low-hanging branches in front of the courthouse. A lone musician with a saxophone played “Baker Street” to a mostly disinterested stream of tourists. With a rain-slicked street and full darkness, it would have been practically r
omantic. Clichéd, but romantic.

  “This is it.” Marty pointed at the next intersection. The air jangled with music spilling out of restaurants and stores, the chatter of tourists rolling by. “Take a right here.”

  We turned down the alley, Pirate’s Alley according to the street sign, and passed the wrought iron-encircled garden behind the church. In the dusk, it looked strange and overgrown. The rhythmic clang of a tambourine echoed down the street. I squinted, trying to see what lay at the far end of the church, but only caught glimpses between passing tourists. Waves of magic rolled through the alley, keeping time with the music.

  “Are you creeped out?” Marty whispered. “Because I’m creeped out.”

  “Lil’ bit,” I admitted, looking up at the church rising above the black fence and dark green flora.

  A woman passed us, her arms loaded with colorful paper shopping bags, laughing with another, similarly burdened woman. The magic had to be coming from the street in front of the church, unless someone had spelled the stores to make them more enticing. The air crackled and the pulse of New Orleans throbbed through both of us.

  “Miss Kelley?”

  Marty and I both jumped, almost colliding with strolling tourists. A dark shape lurked behind the fence between the end of the garden and the church’s white stone wall. Raising a hand in greeting, the figure leaned into the light from the store across the alley. The clean-shaven man smiled and bowed his head, his face disappearing into shadow again. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Quite alright,” I said.

  “Sure. I get broken ribs, but a stranger, ‘quite alright,’” Marty grumbled.

  The gate squeaked as the man in black opened it and gestured for us to enter. “My name is Father Robicheau. Please, come in. We’ll use the private entrance. It’s less…chaotic than Jackson Square at this hour.”

  Marty and I looked at each other and followed him through the gate.

  Inside, the church echoed with the music from the nave. Ethereal murmurs of lowered voices faded as we passed behind the altar and into a simply furnished private office. “The Archbishop sends his regrets that he wasn’t able to meet you personally.” His words betrayed no accent, but the polished crispness suggested he’d worked to erase one.

  I shook my head. “Save the pleasantries, Father. The Archbishop has no intention of meeting me. I pissed off the Pope so no upwardly-mobile cleric is going to meet with me. It doesn’t offend me, but there’s no need for the little white lies of social propriety.”

  The priest stammered, his hands fluttering on top of the desk like wounded white birds. “I assure you, Miss Kelley, it’s nothing like that, only—”

  “Like I said, I’m not offended, just saving us both a little time.”

  He didn’t respond. If I couldn’t hear his breathing, I’d have thought him a vampire. Or a statue.

  I cleared my throat. “Forgive me for being blunt, but I’m seeking support for my current assignment. The Vatican tasked me with hunting a black dog for the lady Helen.”

  His pallor deepened, his hands becoming deceptively calm and still. “What did you say?”

  Marty pulled out the paper and pushed it across the desk, a crumb of the wax seal falling to the calendar blotter. “This,” he said softly, as if breaking bad news, “is the signed order.”

  The cleric picked it up and read it. When he finished, he dropped it on the desk and stared at it wordlessly. He looked something like a saint at prayer with the overhead light reflecting like a halo in his ashy-blond hair.

  “I don’t mean to rush you, Father, but we’re short on time.” I glanced at the window over his head, the deep blue sky already pricked with starlight. “We’ve still got to locate and capture the dog. And when that’s done, I’m either going to help your replacement monster hunter find the monsters I’ve already discovered in the past twenty-four hours, or I’m going to fall into the first mixed drink I encounter. Whatever shows up first.”

  “I thought this was over the day we laid Sister Evangeline to rest.” The anguish in his voice made it hard to listen. “She mentored me from my first day in this church.” He looked up, as if expecting to see her hovering overhead. “She introduced me to the locals, their culture, and even told me monsters existed and hunted our flock.”

  Marty and I looked at each other as the priest stared at his desk calendar blotter. A shrug was the only thing Marty offered.

  “I thought her eccentric, a bit mad to be honest, even after she shared evidence of these fantastical things. I thought maybe her entire order was…off.” His rueful smile directed at the letter in front of him. “And then there was Bubba. Have you met him?”

  I shook my head, not wanting to extend the conversation.

  “He’s exactly what his name conjures. And then there’s Agent Hall from some federal agency that isn’t supposed to exist.” His eyes clouded, a little dreamy. “None of this is supposed to exist.”

  “Father—”

  He raised his hand. “I know. You’re on a schedule. I’ll be quick. As I said, I thought this would go away.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a brass key on a red satin tassel. “I never thought I’d unlock this door again. That God would intervene. And then Sister Bridgit called. Then you called.” The chimes tolled the hour as if punctuating his observations, accompanied by a lone soprano crescendo from within the church. “I hoped you wouldn’t show.”

  I rubbed my arms to tamp down gooseflesh. The last time I’d felt like this, I’d been hunting a coven of dark magic users kidnapping children. Research led me to an average New England house, but I walked in on some grandmotherly woman brewing something magical right on her Kenmore stovetop. I’m not sure which of us was more surprised. After she transformed into a long-limbed, skeletal demon beast, it hadn’t ended well. For her.

  The priest raised his arms, his eyes closed. “If this be the will of God, so be it.” He paused like that, unmoving for longer than was comfortable to watch, but it gave me a chance to look around the office.

  Nothing in the room stood out as supernatural in a non-religious way. A crucifix hung over a bookcase filled with an array of religious and spiritual texts from what I could read at a distance. Marty liked to tease that I needed glasses, but I’d never admit it by asking him what he saw on the shelves.

  A small door stood beside the bookshelf, something that might have been used in the 1800s during the reconstruction of the church. Before I could ponder possible uses, Father Robicheau knelt, unlocked the door, and pulled it open. A light clicked on automatically, and as he stepped away, my breath caught.

  “Holy…” Marty’s voice trailed off either because he caught himself or because he forgot to complete the thought.

  A cavern of wonders lay before us, and I got up out of the chair without waiting for an invitation. What lay beyond wasn’t exactly a room, nor a closet, but something in between. Arsenal was the only word that came to mind when I saw the weapons hanging on the red velour-lined walls. Even at my utterly average height, I’d need to duck to stand inside, though the contortion would be worth it. Scanning the orderly rows of gleaming metal, I recognized some of the same beauties from my personal collection—a snub-nosed Ruger like the one usually nestled in my boot holster, a matched pair of Sig Sauer’s—but there was so much more.

  One made me grin.

  A katana all but glittered with a seductive come-hither under the recessed lights, the white leather-wrapped handle pristine. I recognized it immediately. No doubt Sister Evangeline and I would have bonded over a fictional, bad-ass, female zombie hunter.

  The blade only distracted me for a moment. My heart fluttered as my eyes fell on a beautiful Mossberg 500 twelve-gauge shotgun hanging underneath it.

  “Easy, killer,” Marty whispered over my shoulder. “Sister Hotpants will get jealous if you drool over another woman like this.”

  I thumped his chest with a half-hearted backhand.

  The far wall with
the katana and twelve-gauge felt like a shrine. I slid into the low space and knelt, a matched pair of nickel plated 1911 .45 pistols catching my eye. “Hot damn,” I breathed, stroking a barrel with the lightest touch.

  “This was Sister Evangeline’s collection,” Father Robicheau said, “and though many were originally hers or left to her through family, she bequeathed them to the Church. You’re welcome to whatever you need.”

  I shivered and picked up one of the 1911s, hefting the solid weight before sighting the barrel. Perfection. The smell of gun oil. Sister Evangeline, whoever she was, cared for her stash.

  Each weapon had a place. Each gleamed, well-maintained and clean. No blank spaces.

  My stomach wrenched. She must have died unarmed, I realized. I fought the discomfort of not having more than the blade in the waistband sheath.

  “If you need transportation, her Harley’s still in a local garage.”

  I blinked, turning. “Harley?”

  “Yes.” One corner of his mouth twitched with amusement. “Sister Evangeline preferred traveling on her motorcycle. It’s a Harley Davidson.” He paused, scowling at the well-worn wooden floor. “I can never remember what kind, though she told me many times.”

  “Can you ride?” Marty asked.

  “He—uh, no.” I climbed out of the arsenal. “Thank you for the offer, Father. As much as I’d like to, I think New Orleans is safer if I stay on four wheels.”

  “I don’t ride either, but it didn’t stop me from taking it out once or twice.” He winked before glancing at the white-washed ceiling. “And thanks to God, both the bike and I are still unscathed.”

  Marty and I laughed with him, then fell silent with him as he cast his gaze to the ground, hands clasped in front of him. I wondered if he was praying. He radiated peace. For a moment, I let go of my suspicion. Maybe I was imagining it. Maybe I saw something that wasn’t there. I bowed my head and tried to find the peace to pray. Words didn’t come, except angry ones about Rome. About Shannon. About all the others who had died under my protection.