MOONSHINE: Book 2, Chapter 1
“That’s a given,” Niko said without an ounce of arrogance. “Although mine weren’t quite as…mmm…permeable as yours.” A finger touched an inky swath that coated the back of my hand. The blood clung to his finger and stretched between us, a clot of black spiderwebs, when he pulled away and he winced in empathy for the rough night in my immediate future. “Maybe some sort of lotion mixed with a citrus juice will get it off. We’ll experiment, come up with something.” Heedless of the further mess on the back of my neck, he laid his hand there and squeezed lightly. “Now, what happened?”
There wasn’t much point into putting it off. It wasn’t anything I was prepared to share with anyone else, but Niko wasn’t anyone. He was everyone, the only true family I’d ever known. And with him I wouldn’t have to say words that would sear and shrivel the throat, words that never should have to be said at all. Raising my eyes to his, I let him see what lurked in mine.
“Ah, damn. Damn.” For a fleeting moment, he rested his forehead against mine then he straightened to drop his hand from my neck and ask bleakly, “Where?”
“Top of the Ferris wheel.” Along with the bits and pieces of the world’s deadest bodach. Little girl lost and not a cop in sight. How could that be? How could she not have been missed? I rubbed a hand across my mouth and exhaled, “A little girl.”
Niko’s thoughts were running along the same lines as mine. “It must not have taken her here at the carnival. Perhaps they’re too unsure of their new hunting ground, don’t have their bolt holes set up just yet. She was probably taken from town. From her bed. Her parents may not even know that she’s gone.”
The carnival was upstate, about two and a half hours from our home in the city. On the outskirts of the small Hudson Falls, it would be simple enough for one or more of the bodachs to slip into town and disappear with a child. Simple to put your child to bed smelling of soap and toothpaste with her fingernails painted just to make her laugh, and her hair curly, soft, and without a hint of blood. Funny how one simple made a life and another simple took it.
“Did you touch her?”
It was a question I expected. Fact was I almost had. Despite knowing better, I’d reached down to touch the curve of a still cheek, stopping myself only at the last second. “No. But she was there when I killed that son of a bitch. Not a lot of room in one of those cars.” And if I stopped to think about it, really examine it, it would be safe to say bodach wasn’t the only blood I was wearing. The dirt on my bare feet had a red tinge, one that didn’t come from the muddy ground. Leaning my head back against the seat, I closed my eyes and said, “Can we go? I want to take a shower.”
“We’ll go,” he promised. “I’ll only be a minute.” He climbed back out and I heard the murmur of his voice at the rear of the car.
“He didn’t touch her, but there could still be DNA at the scene. I don’t believe the police will buy a kidnapping by literal boogeyman,” Niko was saying with a dark irony. “And I’d like to keep my brother from being entered into a criminal database that couldn’t wait to match him should he be detained at any one of the many killings we happen to be ‘passing by’. I need you to clean it up. Thoroughly.”
“What about the child?” That was our client’s voice, gruff and bass enough to shake the glass in the car windows. He was…truthfully, I didn’t know what he was. Maybe a giant of some kind, maybe not. He worked in the carnival sideshow as Bartholomew the Bull, World’s Tallest Man. He might’ve been; I don’t know. He was about eight feet. Damn big for a man although not so much for a giant. The second mouth high on his forehead he kept concealed by a long hank of ginger colored hair. The faint pattern of scales along his oversized jaw he passed off as bad skin and the heavy gold hoop hanging bull fashion from his nose distracted from the overly liquid brown of his eyes. He did a good job of going stealth amongst the sheep, but it wouldn’t stand up to an intense scrutiny, the kind that would come from a police investigation once kids started disappearing. Having the bodachs on his hometurf was bad news for a live and let live kind of monster, but Bart was a little too slow on his feet to catch them. Strong enough to rip them limb from limb, yeah, but just not quick enough.
And that’s how we had ended up here. Half a year ago when we’d been on the run from the Auphe, we’d had to take money where we could get it. I’d used a fake ID to work in a bar and Niko had pulled bodyguarding gigs for a guy who paid all his employees, including his accountant, under the table. Once we’d defeated my extended and bloodthirsty family, we’d had more options…but our talents were still fairly singular. Starting our own agency seemed a natural choice, at least for now. We planned on still doing the usual mundane babysitting of the famous, rich, and attention seeking. But there were other potential clients out there as well. We had more than one foot in the shadow world of the inhuman, and their money spent just the same. And this time we didn’t limit ourselves to being bodyguards. Jack-of-all-trades, that was us. If you had the money, we were willing to at least listen. Maybe we would discover if your favorite succubus was seeing you and only you. We might pull a job delivering a shipment of cursed jewelry. Or we could end up as glorified exterminators…like now. It sounded humorous, but it didn’t feel that way. Not now.
“Put her in the water,” came Niko’s reluctant reply. “A pond, lake. Make it a place they’ll soon find her, but also one that will take care of washing the evidence away or at the very least degrade it.”
“And the bodachs?” Bartholomew ground between overlarge teeth, sounding more disgruntled. It could be he thought cleanup should be included in the price, but those are the breaks. We kill. We don’t clean. You have to have some standards in this vale of tears. I kept my eyes shut. I’d been swimming in bodach stench so long now I could barely even smell myself anymore. It was a blessing…if a pretty damn small one considering how the night had played out. Turning my head to the side, I tried to surrender to a weariness that my night climb had seeping from overstrained muscles.
“As if I give a damn where you put those bastards,” Niko said with icy sharpness. There was the riffle of cash as apparently Barty-boy decided to not push his luck and forked over our fee.
Hardest fifty bucks I’d ever made.
Also in This Series:
Book 1
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
