Tall, Dark and Hairy (The Necro-Files Book 3) Read online

  “This child is under my protection,” Calvert says with her still hugging him.

  “Leonard,” Cecil admonishes.

  The guard and the two men who brought the ladder watch.

  “You’ve done something incredibly foolish, here,” Calvert says to Claiborne’s men. “Pray that you never learn exactly how foolish.”

  Claiborne’s men mutter. Calvert hears snatches and jeering laughter. The child wraps its arms around his neck tighter.

  “I don’t know why its brethren haven’t come for you. Perhaps the water. But you are fortunate that I am here.” He turns to the now dour faces. “I’m going to return the child. My men shall remain, and I caution you to treat them better than you have this helpless child. Without my staying hand, they can be prone to rash action.”

  He strides to the shore, Cecil following close at heel.

  “Are you sure that leaving is the wisest course of action at this moment, Leonard?”

  “I owe these creatures a debt, and I mean to repay it. This child’s kin once saved my life.”

  “That’s certainly fortuitous, but have you considered that they may not want it back? Perhaps that’s why they haven’t come for it.”

  “If that’s the case, I’ll find out why.”

  Cecil is out of arguments, though he sputters through a few more attempts. Leonard ignores him and finds a rowboat beached on the shore. He convinces the child to let go of him and allow herself to be set inside.

  “I could accompany you,” Cecil says. “I will admit to a certain fascination with the creature.”

  “No, brother, please. Stay with the men. And if Claiborne’s men attempt anything foolish, kill them all.”

  Cecil is too stunned by his brother’s words to respond, only watches as Leonard pushes off, his boat growing smaller and smaller as it moves toward the far shore of the mainland.

  Leonard rows in silence until he hits the shore and then climbs out. The child holds its arms out in a motion that so resembles a human child that Calvert has no thought of not complying, and lifts the child to his hip, feeling its soothing happiness fill him.

  “I’m afraid I have no idea how to go about finding your family, little one,” Calvert says as he climbs into the woods away from the shore. “I don’t suppose you have any suggestions? Some sort of call, perhaps, to alert them of our presence?”

  The child remains silent. They find a trail that deer, perhaps, have cut through the underbrush to get to the water and follow it deeper into the trees.

  They walk less than two miles into the mainland, the child asleep, its head on Calvert’s shoulder. Calvert steps over a downed tree, the path long since gone, and enters a small clearing where a handful of trees have fallen, leaving an opening in the canopy. Movement flashes in Calvert’s periphery, and he slows. He has a sword he can’t get to because of the child, a knife he could get to, though only with his left hand, which he doesn’t favor. He sees more movement, ahead this time, a dark form on the far edge of the clearing. It appears big. Calvert calls out.

  “I don’t think you’re a bear, because you’re too fast, and if you’re mountain lion or wolf, I can do little. But I hope you are one of the beings who rescued me from a pack of ravenous wolves some months back and contacted me last night. If that is who you are, I’ve brought your child back with the intent to return her and apologize.”

  Before him had been emptiness, but now one of the hairy beasts is there. Calvert flinches but tries not to make any other sudden movements.

  “She’s asleep. And she’s hurt, but not too badly, I don’t think.”

  Another and another appear, as if coalescing from the very gloom of the woods. One approaches and reaches for the child; he thinks it might be the one from the day before but can’t tell. Calvert gently slips the still sleeping child’s arms from his neck and hands her over. She fusses for a moment until she is safely tucked into the arms of this creature who seems to be her mother, Calvert thinks. It coos and strokes the little girl’s face. The mother looks up at Calvert, her eyes full of emotion. He nods. Nothing need be said.

  “Now, I must go negotiate a peace with these men.” He swallows and grimaces. “I promise you this, though. When my government is settled here, you will be protected by it. This is something I vow.”

  Another of the beasts, perhaps their leader, approaches Calvert. The others fall back. He notices that their number is decreasing; they seem to melt back into the woods. The leader reaches out a hand. Calvert takes it, like two men reaching an accord. An image of Calvert’s children appears in Calvert’s mind. They are outside the walls of St. Mary’s, playing in a field of wildflowers, oblivious to the world around them. Dark things skulk in the woods surrounding the fields; eyes glow, teeth glint. Calvert feels a lurch of terror and tries to call out, to warn his children. But his attention is drawn to a ring of the man-apes surrounding the children, much as they’d stood between Calvert and the wolves all those months before. The dark things are kept at bay. The image flashes, and Calvert’s children are larger, walking now to gather water. Still, nearby, the man-apes watch the children. And again, as adults, they are protected. The leader releases Calvert’s hand.

  “Thank you.” Calvert bows. The beasts are all gone except the leader and the mother, who holds the little female out for Calvert to hug. He takes her in his arms and is surprised by the strength of her grip. He returns the child, and they leave, followed by the leader, leaving Calvert alone in the wilderness. He turns and heads back to the rowboat.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was hot. I don’t mean Idris Elba hot, but like hell in August hot. And rural Virginia was beginning to resemble hell in other ways, or maybe some post-apocalyptic landscape where all the people had been replaced by Wal-Marts and strip malls. Thankfully, the heat was dying down when we finally pulled up to the line of cars waiting to be let into the campgrounds, five hours south of Baltimore. Hoots and snatches of excited phrases periodically erupted from the cars in front of us. We quickly took the sides of my roommate’s jeep down, burning our fingers on the metal of the thing’s body. It left us little shade from the sun but opened us up to any possibility of a breeze.

  I was trying to get excited about the festival, even though I was pretty sure I had a layer of salt covering my entire body from the sweat that had evaporated in the sun. I just wasn’t too sure about this whole spring break situation. I mean, I was rounding third on my first year at college, and I felt like I didn’t have a ton of friends. My closest were probably my bosses, which was kind of sad. Everyone just seemed to be busy with their own lives. When Emily invited me to come to a music festival with her, my first reaction was to laugh. Then I realized she was serious.

  “It’ll be the most fun you’ve ever had outside of bed,” she said, which I won’t even comment on because it would just be sad. It was my mom who really made me go.

  “You work too hard and have nothing to show for it,” she’d said, which had surprised the hell out of me. “You need to live your life and have some fun.” (A little backstory: my friend Dave had hooked up with someone recently and Mom thought I was in rebound mode, but it wasn’t like that. We’d just been friends. But he was too busy for that now. See what I mean?)

  So I’d agreed to go, partly because I was just bored with my life in certain ways. I mean, I’m busy as hell studying, saving the world, and eating alone in the dining hall every day, but it’s not necessarily a rewarding and stimulating kind of busy. And you never know: like Mom said, I might actually have some fun for once. Maybe Emily and I would bond a little more. Maybe I would meet a rich rock star and run away with him to Venice.

  Emily tapped the steering wheel in time to a Shizknit song playing on the radio. From the vehicles closest to us we could hear some more Shizknit tracks, as well as music by other bands that would be at the festival. It felt good, like I was part of this community of young people, and I decided to let it feel good, to join in. I turned and caught the eye of a guy in t
he car behind us. He nodded and smiled. I nodded back; I knew exactly what he meant.

  That’s when I heard the first screams. They came from somewhere ahead of us, near the front of the line that seemed to stretch back at least a mile. And they were getting closer.

  I strained to see as far as I could. Several cars up, someone darted out of an open vehicle like ours. Closer, people waved their arms and screamed.

  “Emily,” I said.

  “Hmm?” She fiddled with the radio.

  I pointed. Whatever it was, was getting closer. I looked behind us again. We were boxed in between the cars in front of and behind us and the concrete median on the driver’s side. To our right, trees blocked our escape with only a strip of grass to drive onto.

  “Hmm?” Emily repeated.

  “Something’s happening to those cars.” I tried not to sound as terrified as I was.

  More screams erupted from only about ten cars ahead of us. I didn’t know if it was demon possession or what.

  “I think we need to go.”

  She looked at me as if I’d started speaking German. “Why?”

  I pointed again, trying to emphasize the we-need-to-go-ness of the situation.

  It was about five cars up. People were batting at their heads, screaming, cursing. Someone four cars ahead of us jumped out, waving and yelling, hopped the median, and ran to the woods on the far side.

  “I really think we need to get away.” But it was too late. They were upon us: black flies, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. They engulfed the jeep, biting every inch of exposed skin, even our faces, which seemed like a real faux pas, but what do flies care?

  “It’s just flies.” Emily swatted at one while I slapped my head like a crazy person. “Calm down.”

  I tried. I even looked back at the guy behind us. He was cursing and waving at flies too, which made me feel better. At least I wasn’t the only person who looked like an idiot.

  The flies stayed with us the rest of the time we were in line, which, along with the heat and the totally nonexistent breeze, destroyed all the positivity I’d had about this trip.

  But somehow, finally, we made it to the front of the line and Emily got our camping spot.

  “I got us a good one,” Emily said. “It’s on the edge of a row, so it’s actually a little bigger than they usually are.”

  “Cool.” I swatted at a fly. “Wait, a row? As in we’re in a row with a bunch of strangers?”

  Emily gunned it, leaving the cloud of flies behind for a moment.

  “Is it going to be like this the whole time?” I asked. “With the flies?”

  “They usually go away at night.”

  “That’s something.”

  “Of course, that’s when the mosquitoes come out.”

  I laughed until she gave me a funny look.

  * * *

  We pulled up to our spot, parked, and started to unpack. We had been in the jeep a long time, a long time, if you know what I mean, so I enquired to Emily about the facilities. She pointed.

  “Keep your shoes on,” she said by way of troubling advice.

  The campground was laid out in rows of spots with graveled roads between them. Every couple rows, there was a big bathroom building with men’s and women’s rooms on either side and a Coke machine right in the center up front. Kids ran rampant, bored without technology, mostly riding bikes, and one, I swear to God, aimed right for my shin and ran into me with his Schwinn.

  “Ow!” I snatched for him but missed. “You better be glad I just got here and don’t know where to bury a body, yet.” Completely unfazed, he rode off to torment someone else. I secretly whispered a prayer for them and walked across the gravel and sand, which was already filling my sandals, into the bathroom.

  And, wow. I mean, wow. I understood what Emily meant about keeping my shoes on, because wow. I stood in the doorway and stared until some kid pushed me aside to get by.

  They were the toilets of the damned. The floor was wet and covered in yellow fly-poison. I could tell that’s what it was because there was a box of the stuff disintegrating on a shelf by the door. Dead flies and some not quite dead ones hung out with the corpses of their buddies, chilling. And the smell. I mean, I work in a funeral home, and I’ve smelled some awful stuff, but this. Man.

  Everything was gray and broken like some German mime’s nightmare. But desperate times… I covered my mouth with my hand and ventured inside. A woman in a towel emerged from the showers at the end, wearing tennis shoes. She didn’t make eye contact and shied away from me as if she still felt dirty. I sloshed over to the showers to get a peek. They were damp and moldy-looking, but basically just big open squares. That was doable. The toilets were pretty much the same, which wasn’t quite as doable.

  I steeled myself and dropped trou, but just a bit, mind you. I made sure not to let anything touch the floor except the soles of my shoes. The good thing about the toilets was they were handicap accessible, which meant they had these bars on either side, though, of course, those were sticky. I used them to prop myself up while I sang a little song about Vienna in the spring and pretended I was far away.

  On the way out, I passed another woman standing in the doorway, gap-mouthed in shock. I couldn’t bring myself to look her in the eye.

  * * *

  When I got back to the site, Emily had unloaded the tent and was dumping it out of the green bag.

  “I don’t know if I can handle that bathroom,” I said.

  “You get used to it.”

  “I don’t want to get used to it. That’s like saying you get used to a disease or something.”

  She ignored me, which was probably the best course of action, and focused on setting up the tent.

  I’m a city girl from Baltimore. I know nothing about tents. Frankly, I think the reason people go camping is so that they’ll have such an awful time they’ll appreciate all the rest of their lives when they’re not camping. I’d allowed Emily to persuade me otherwise, but because of the bathroom situation, I was thinking I had been right all along. But I helped as well as I could to lay out a tarp, raise the tent, and stake and tie it down.

  The tent was big—it advertised being large enough for six people. We’d each brought sleeping bags, but Emily produced a blow-up mattress, which she inflated with a battery-powered air pump. It was a queen and she said we could share.

  She unpacked two camp chairs inside and set them up with a tub in between.

  “Our reading area,” she said. She hung a battery-powered lamp for light.

  She also hung up a battery-powered fan for the tent. We went in, zipped the door up, and sat in our chairs. We opened the cooler, drank cool fizzy waters, and munched on some snacks we dug out of the tub, and were oh so civilized. Color my mind changed for real.

  “I can’t believe you come here every year,” I said.

  “This is the first time I’ve come on my own,” Emily said. I raised an eyebrow. “I mean without a boy.”

  “Sorry.”

  She laughed. “No, it’s cool. They never think ahead. Half the time, they don’t even want to bring a tent, just a sleeping bag and sleep in the car. Park at Wal-Mart or something.”

  “This is way better.”

  “This is supes better.”

  “Then they want to do it in the parking lot.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Well at least you could get cheap condoms.”

  She eyed me and then smiled. “You’re funny.”

  “You know, when you say it without laughing, it comes off as disingenuous.”

  She smiled again and looked away.

  “So why didn’t you come with a boy?” I asked. “I mean, I’m glad you invited me and everything, but I was a little surprised.”

  She shrugged. “Boys are boring. I thought it would be good for us to get to know each other, you know, living together.”

  “Um, we’re roommates. We already live together.”

  “You know what I mean. Interacting. Having fun.�
�� She looked at me. “I know you’ve been having a hard time after the attack and everything.”

  It was my turn to shrug.

  “That’s crazy. A serial killer? You must’ve been so scared.”

  “Yeah.” Though she didn’t realize it, she was referring to the time I was kidnapped by a transgendered vampire, who also happened to be a serial killer. “It was pretty scary.” Though maybe not as scary as the time I was attacked by a demon who’d been sicced on me by a vengeful, child-murdering witch.

  Yeah, I guess we really didn’t know that much about each other.

  She shook her head. “I like wouldn’t ever go outside again, you know? I’d live in a bubble or something.”

  “That would mean he won.” I did my best imitation of a Lifetime movie.

  “Yeah.” She went quiet.

  “So you’ve buckled down this term,” I said to relieve the awkwardness.

  She chuckled. “I figured I should try to do something with my life instead of just letting it happen to me.”

  I nodded. “Good plan. I should try that, myself.”

  “Well,” Emily said. “We should probably get out of this tent, then.”

  I agreed. It was getting a little too much like girl-time in here.

  * * *

  We decided to cruise over to the site of the concert. Or rather, Emily decided we should scout it out. When we got there, we found a big, open field with stages at either end. Big trucks were parked beside them, and the place bustled with activity. The whole thing was fenced off, and the people were too far away for us to see what they were doing.