Heavy Metal

  HEAVY METAL

  Heavy Metal Magic Series

  Origin Stories

  Margo Bond Collins

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Heavy Metal (Heavy Metal Magic: Origins)

  Savage & Silver

  Hell’s Silver Bells

  Resolutions | By Margo Bond Collins and Blaire Edens

  Sorcery and Silver

  Unwelcome Gifts | A Ruby Silver Story

  About the Authors | Margo Bond Collins

  Blaire Edens

  Heavy Metal © 2019 Margo Bond Collins

  All copyrights remain in control of the individual authors over their own works: Stories Copyright: © 2016-2018 Margo Bond Collins, © 2018 Margo Bond Collins & Blaire Edens. All stories included are republished by permission.

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  These are works of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  PUBLISHED BY BATHORY Gate Press.

  Cover design by Ravven.

  Savage & Silver

  1.

  Tombstone-fucking-Arizona.

  I couldn’t believe I was sitting in my parked van in downtown Tombstone.

  Again.

  Just to be clear, I hate Arizona with pretty much every fiber of my being. It’s about the worst place on earth, as far as I’m concerned.

  Definitely the last place I ever want to be.

  At least it was closer to midnight than midday. If there’s anything worse than Tombstone’s deserted faux-Old-West storefronts at night, it’s dealing with those same buildings in the blazing sun, along with sidewalks full of tourists, and the daily reenactments of the shootout at the OK Corral.

  I wasn’t even certain what brought me out here—only that I hadn’t been able to stop driving for more than gas and a drive-thru burger since I hit Santa Fe. Before that, I’d managed to grab a night of fitful sleep in Trinidad, Colorado, without any real idea of where I was headed.

  “Tombstone,” I muttered under my breath in disgust, opening the door and dropping down to the dusty pavement below. My boots thumping against the ground sounded disconcertingly loud in the still night. I shook my head and shut the door gently, so that it closed with barely a click. I had taken the interior light out three years ago, both to avoid ruining my night vision and to keep anyone from seeing me outlined neatly when I exited my vehicle. So unless they saw me drive up fifteen minutes before, nobody was likely to realize I was on the move, circling around the front end of the Chevy and sliding up under the overhang of a store’s roof.

  I was glad of my precautions a few seconds later when a low whistle cut through the air. I held my breath as I melted back into a shadowed doorway and glanced up and down the street.

  A low, fast-moving shadow darted out from between two buildings at the corner of the block I stood on and stopped right at the edge of Highway 80. I blinked, trying to get a clear sense of what I was looking at.

  A dog, maybe?

  The creature took another step forward and its image resolved itself in my mind, just as it pointed its nose in the air and sniffed.

  Cursing inwardly, I shrank further into the darkness of the doorway, hoping the overlapping smells of tourists, baked in by the sun all day, would hide my presence from the wolf in downtown Tombstone.

  No. Not wolf.

  Werewolf.

  I might’ve been able to convince myself that one of the Mexican gray wolves that government agents had worked so hard to reintroduce into the state had made its way this far south—if not for that whistle I’d heard.

  Besides, the internal pressure that had sent me racing as fast as I could, from the Canadian border of Montana back down to the Southwest, was building back up. It buzzed through my entire system, tightening the muscles alongside my spine, and sparking every nerve ending to life—sending exactly enough adrenaline through me to wake me up and get me ready for a fight.

  I suppressed the urge to step out of the shadows. I didn’t have the right tools for this, not on hand, anyway. And unless I was reading the signs wrong, there were at least two of them, but only one of me.

  Another form stepped out of the shadows across the street, and began crossing the highway, breaking into a trot until it met up with its—partner? Mate? The second wolf

  ’s arrival distracted the first one from its sniffing, and I watched as they touched noses, turned their backs on me, and jogged down the moonlit road.

  I stood perfectly still in the archway of the door for a long time after the werewolves had disappeared, in part because I didn’t want them to hear me or catch my scent and return—not until I was ready for them, anyway.

  Also, I was trying to figure out what to do.

  Last I’d heard, there weren’t any werewolves in southern Arizona at all. My cousins and I had wiped out the Phoenix pack almost four years ago, though, so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that someone had decided to start looking at taking over the territory again.

  The problem was, this was my territory.

  Well, one of the problems.

  The other problem—and probably the biggest difficulty for me, if I were willing to admit it—was that I had no idea where either of my cousins was at the moment.

  Without them, I was likely to be much less effective against these shapeshifters, given the fact that a silver bullet was the best way to take them down. And I’m deathly allergic to silver.

  I moved out of the doorway and took a step toward the van. A low growl from behind me froze me in my tracks.

  Holding my hands up and slightly out to the side so the werewolf could see I was unarmed, I pivoted very slowly, giving the creature plenty of time to let me know if I needed to stop.

  Plenty of time to kill me, too.

  I shoved the thought down hard and worked to keep my expression perfectly neutral as I came face-to-face with the monster most likely to kill a Silver.

  It was in its full-wolf form, not the half-human shape of many bad horror movies—though I had seen a werewolf in that partially shifted stage before. It was every bit as horrific as the movies made it out to be.

  If I hadn’t known better—if I had believed that this was an actual wolf—I would have thought it beautiful. Its full coat had a slight silvery sheen to it in the moonlight, matched by the bright gleam of its intelligent eyes as it watched me.

  “I’m leaving,” I said, taking a half step backward. The wolf’s growl stopped me a second time. “I don’t have any weapons,” I tried again.

  Other than the Bowie knife I tucked into the waistband of my jeans before I got out of the van.

  Something in my thoughts must’ve crossed my face, because the animal in front of me stepped forward so that its muzzle was clearly illuminated and raised its lip on one side to show a fang.

  “No weapons I’ll use,” I amended. I was certain it could hear my heart pounding in my chest, smell the terror rolling off me as a bead of sweat slipped down one side of my face, leaving a wind-cooled trail of moisture behind.

  Without breaking eye contact, th
e wolf pulled back into the shadows, retreating from me in perfect silence.

  No wonder I hadn’t heard it moving toward me.

  I didn’t wait to make sure it was gone. As soon as I could no longer make out it shape in the shadows or see any rays of moonlight reflected in its eyes, I dropped my hands and bolted for the van.

  2.

  Grace and Cassidy weren’t here in Tombstone with me, so I was guessing my cousins weren’t supposed to help me with this.

  Which was totally fucking stupid.

  “Yeah. Great. Send the only one who can’t use silver to take down the werewolves,” I muttered to myself.

  I left messages on every number I had for either of them, even though I suspected they’d been called off by that inborn sense a demon had cursed our ancestors with five generations ago. They were probably dealing with their own monster-hunting emergencies.

  I even resorted to calling my father, though I knew he wouldn’t pick up.

  I left the same message everywhere: “Hey. It’s Blaize. I saw wolves in Tombstone tonight. I could use some silver help.”

  I knew Daddy would hear it as Silver—my last name—while the cousins would think of the metal.

  They would all know why I was asking for help.

  Technically, Grace and Cassidy weren’t actually cousins of mine. Not by blood, anyway. We just shared a curse.

  And they would actually show up, if they could, which made them more family than most of my blood-relatives.

  I swiped my phone off and tossed it into the passenger seat of the van, then rubbed my hands over my eyes.

  I had to find someplace to stay tonight.

  Usually, I found an RV park or campground and slept in the van, but with werewolves roaming the nearby night and too few weapons on hand for comfort, I wanted the sense of false security I knew I’d find in the anonymity of a cheap chain motel on the interstate. Someplace with radio ads where they promised to leave the light on for me—or something like that, anyway.

  As soon as I’d been able to, I jumped into the van and took off toward the nearest big town. Sierra Vista was less than 30 miles away, and even if it didn’t have an interstate, it had the requisite anonymous hotels.

  I knew it was ridiculous to be as terrified as I was—I had taken down werewolves before. But never alone. Hunting with others meant that there were people who could cover for my disability. With Grace and Cassidy at my side, the fact that I couldn’t get too close to silver didn’t matter.

  But werewolves are freaking tough. Family legend had it that my great-great-some-number-more-great-grandmother, Ruby Silver, had taken out a werewolf all by herself, with nothing other than a pocket knife, a rock, and her own magic—after the demon had cursed her with the antipathy to silver.

  I wasn’t entirely sure I believed the story, and anyway, I wasn’t Ruby.

  Hell, I was less afraid of tracking down that demon to kill him and end the curse than I was of the two werewolves I had seen tonight.

  I found a likely looking hotel—one with an elevator and interior-hallway rooms, and a fairly full parking lot—and parked my van under a street light, as close to the lobby entrance as I could get. Then I grabbed my go-bag and my weapons bag and locked the van behind me.

  I didn’t exactly dash inside, but it wasn’t a stroll, either.

  That encounter with the wolf on the sidewalk had shaken me up even more than I realized.

  Up in my room, I shut the door, flipped the bolt, and closed the latch that served as a chain, then slumped with my back against the door.

  I drew in what felt like the first deep breath I had managed since I first heard the growl behind me in Tombstone.

  Even now, my hands trembled.

  Why had the wolf let me go?

  Maybe more to the point, why had it let me live?

  If it had attacked, I wouldn’t have been able to defend myself effectively.

  But it had backed away, even though it had the advantage.

  That didn’t fit with anything I knew about werewolves. And if what I knew about werewolves wasn’t true, then what else might be wrong?

  I shook my head to dispel the thought.

  “Don’t lose it, Silver,” I muttered to myself allowed, pushing away from the door and heading toward the A/C unit by the window. I dropped both bags on one of the two beds on my way by, then turned the air on as high and as cold as it would go, blasting it into the room as if to freeze out the hot, shaking terror I felt earlier.

  I had done the same thing on the drive over from Tombstone, turning all the van’s vents toward me.

  It hadn’t done any good then, but now I was beginning to calm down.

  Tucking one leg underneath me, I sat on the bed and pulled my weapons bag closer. I wouldn’t get caught out again—not without a whole slew of deadlies on me.

  I pulled out my Glock 9 mm and the Colt .38, and began the familiar ritual of cleaning the guns, one at a time.

  I fell asleep on my stomach, one arm under my own pillow, and one under the pillow next to me.

  I held a gun in each hand.

  3.

  The Silver family story about Ruby wasn’t the only one we had concerning werewolves. It’s just that the rest of them didn’t end so well. In fact, most Silvers—the ones with the Calling, anyway—died at the hands (or claws, I guess) of a werewolf.

  That was the deal with this curse: it wasn’t just a freak allergy to a metal, and it wasn’t only an irresistible urge to cleanse the southwestern United States of monsters. It was the two things combined—the need to hunt those creatures that could best be killed by the metal that would also kill me.

  Of course, other monsters were fair game as well, and if one of them happened to take me out, that was just fine with the demon who’d authored the familial curse.

  That son of a bitch had a twisted sense of humor, too, matching my family’s curse to our last name.

  It happened right around the turn of the century—the 19th to the 20th century, that is. Ruby had been hunting monsters across the Southwest with Trip Austin, the man who might or might not have been her husband but was definitely also my ancestor. The two of them had tangled with an elemental demon somewhere along the way, and it tracked them up into the mountains of Colorado, where it drew them into some kind of trap.

  The story gets hazy here. Somehow, Grace and Cassidy’s ancestors had also ended up there. There was some suggestion that they might have all worked for the same company, but Ruby and Trip were pretty clearly freelancers, so I’ve never really figured that bit out.

  Anyway, they all went down into a mine, something horrible happened, and the humans came out cursed—those who came out at all.

  And the demon got away entirely.

  Fast forward several generations, and you end up with me—a fifth-generation demon- and monster-hunter who is afraid of werewolves because she can’t get close to silver.

  Oh—and who can’t leave the Western United States.

  Not for long, anyway.

  4.

  My hands were still wrapped around the two guns when I woke the next morning. Of course, I knew that guns weren’t all that useful when killing werewolves. Or vampires, or ghouls, or demons. Fairies tended to hate them, but I really didn’t run up against that many of the Fae in New Mexico or Texas. As far as I knew, they preferred the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

  But every one of those creatures can feel pain, and that’s what guns are good for: making monsters think twice about coming at me.

  Last time we hunted together, Grace had preferred a hella-sharp blade, slightly curved and completely wicked looking. Cassidy was the strongest magic user among us, though we all three had trained to be proficient in all the standard methods of creature-killing.

  God, I missed those two.

  I took the opportunity for a long shower where the hot water never ran out, though I took the weapons bag into the bathroom with me and locked the door behind me.

  Once I h
ad dressed in clean clothes from the go-bag, I brewed a cup of crappy hotel coffee, and try to decide what I was going to do next.

  Closing my eyes, I drew on what magic I had, all earth magic. My sense of the ripples of power surrounding me was weaker up on the third floor—I always did better with magic when I was in direct contact with the ground. Still, I was able to tell that there were no supernaturals in the hotel, or immediately outside. It was at least safe enough for me to go get breakfast in the tiny dining room, and then check out.

  Before I left the safety of my room, though, I needed to try to figure out what my next step would be.

  I knew what I needed to do.

  I just didn’t want to.

  But no matter how long I paced back and forth in that room, no other answer came to me.

  I was going to have to go talk to Daddy.

  5.

  I’ve never been to New York. God, I want to. New York City especially. The thought of all those tall buildings surrounding me like the walls of a canyon, casting their long shadows so far that some streets never see sunlight—all that steel and concrete. It soothes me.

  When we finally track down the earth demon that cursed our families and kill it, New York is the first place I’m going to go. From there, I’ll hit every major city in Europe. London, Paris, Geneva, Barcelona, Athens. The more people, the better.

  I would give almost anything to get away from these wide-open spaces.

  So I couldn’t understand why Daddy had chosen to stay in this godforsaken, desolate world after Mama died. He was a hunter—at least, he used to be—but he wasn’t a Silver. It wouldn’t kill him to leave. Not like it would me.

  I’d been testing the limits of my boundaries ever since I’d been old enough to go out hunting on my own. In fact, that’s what I was doing when I got the Calling to Tombstone. It would’ve been easier if the curse had come with an instruction manual. After five generations, you’d think we would’ve figured it out. But it’s a little different for each of us.