Heavy Metal Read online

  Hell, for all I knew, they had.

  Dropping back to the ground, I pulled my gun up to take a shot, working to pull enough magic into me to attack with dirt and rocks, too.

  As if from a distance, I heard Grace’s gun fire, felt the silver rip out of it. Everything seemed to slow around me as I found my target, waiting until the right moment to squeeze the trigger.

  But as I did, another shape flew out of the darkness toward the sole remaining wolf.

  Another werewolf.

  In a blink, time sped back up. My bullet whined harmlessly into the desert.

  The two wolves rolled on the ground, growling and snapping.

  I moved toward Grace and we watched silently, guns at the ready.

  The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than a minute. The wolf that had been attacking me was wounded, no match for this new adversary, already bigger and stronger than it was. The new werewolf closed its jaws around other’s neck and gave a mighty shake.

  I heard the snap of bones from where I stood.

  I doubted if breaking a werewolf’s neck would kill it. But it didn’t matter, because the victorious wolf dragged the other one toward us, dropping its limp body several feet away and nudging it toward Grace. The desert moonlight glinted off its coat with a slight silvery sheen as it watched us.

  The same wolf that had warned me away before, I realized.

  “You want me to shoot it?” Grace asked.

  The shifter dipped its head once in a nod, then backed away slowly.

  Grace and I glanced at each other.

  With a shrug, she aimed her gun and put a silver bullet in the werewolf’s heart—then another into its brain, just to be sure.

  The wolf faded back into the desert night.

  11.

  “But why would it help us?” I asked for at least third time as we walked back toward town. I’d tucked my mangled wrist tucked inside my shirt to keep it motionless while we hiked. I had basic first aid supplies back in the van. Once I was bandaged up, I’d consider going to the ER in Sierra Vista to get the bones set. I just hated to answer questions about the wounds.

  “Who cares why it jumped in? Let’s just take it as a win.” Grace had holstered her silver weapons for my comfort, but was twirling a different knife in her hand, still high on the adrenaline of the fight.

  “That’s just it,” I persisted. “I’m sure it is a win. There is still a werewolf in Tombstone. For all we know, he’s planning to bring his pack here, set up werewolf shop once we’re gone.”

  “That’s a problem for another day.” Grace twirled her knife through her fingers. “I think you should come back to Vegas with me. How long has it been since you’ve taken a break?”

  “I was in Montana just last week. I’m thinking I might hit the Dakotas next.”

  “That’s not a break. That’s you obsessing about trying to get out of the curse.”

  As we neared the edge of town, a strange rumble began under the ground. Rocks and sand shifted, like an earthquake, but with a tinge of magic glowing through it.

  Dust flew up around us, blanketing our vision. I pulled my magic through me, up from the earth below, using it to clump the grains of sand together until they grew heavy and fell back to the earth.

  “What was that?” Grace asked, wiping grit from her face.

  “I don’t know.” I gazed around us suspiciously. “But something about it wasn’t right.”

  “You saw the magic, too, then.” Grace’s voice was low.

  A deep, malicious laugh echoed out of the night. “Smart little witches.”

  The voice seemed to come out of everywhere around us and nowhere at all. Its timbre shivered down into my stomach, twisting me up in knots. It felt like my allergy to silver. It felt evil.

  Whatever it was, I didn’t want to face it.

  Slowly, I began edging toward the building that marked the end of the desert, the beginning of Tombstone.

  Grace had no such qualms about engaging it, though. “What the hell are you? Show yourself. Coward. Loser,” she added, when whatever had spoken neither came out of the darkness nor said anything else.

  I reached out and grabbed her arm with my good hand. “Come on. Let’s get back to the van. I don’t know that I’m prepared for another fight tonight.”

  As we turned toward the parking lot, something rose out of the ground almost directly in front of us.

  It floated, only half visible, its shape vaguely human but covered in scales—almost reptilian.

  “Ruby’s demon,” I whispered.

  An unholy glee shone from his face.

  It matched the evil I’d felt.

  We ran, its laughter chasing us down the highway.

  But everywhere we turned, it popped up in front of us, laughing that sickening laugh.

  It’s herding us, I realized.

  We almost made it to the van. But when the demon blocked that path, as well, we turned and dashed into the O.K. Corral.

  We skidded to a stop—there was no place else to go.

  I wasn’t going to have time to bandage up my wrist, or to rest, or to prepare.

  I was about to face the demon that had cursed my family, and I was absolutely unprepared.

  I pulled my gun and shot three rounds into it. The bullets sank into the demon’s form but did no damage at all.

  Grace followed my gunshots with silver bullets from her gun.

  They didn’t work either.

  But didn’t Ruby and Trip use silver bullets?

  I tried desperately to remember what I’d read in Ruby’s journals about how she’d fought this creature.

  The only clear description she’d left behind was of her final encounter with it—the one when she had believed she’d banished it for good.

  That was before it cursed her and all who came after her.

  And she’d had all kinds of magical equipment with her. She’d used a circle, and a summoning spell of some kind, and even some kind of herbs. Plus silver bullets.

  I had neglected my magical training.

  Of the three of us, only Cassidy was prepared to fight this thing.

  It floated in before us, dust circling it in a swirling haze like smoke. Everywhere it moved, rocks rolled and tumbled and danced around it.

  “You’ve all done much better than I ever anticipated,” it said. “It’s been a delight watching all the tiny humans rush around through their minuscule lives, working so hard to rid the world of those monsters that are only natural to it.”

  I didn’t respond. My mind was working furiously as I tried to figure out how to deal with it.

  Grace hadn’t stopped fighting, however. Now she was fumbling bullets into her gun. The one that held silver—the six-shooter.

  Somehow, I didn’t think that our own version of a gunfight in the O.K. corral was going to end very well for us.

  We needed more options.

  I had been quietly gathering as much magic to myself as I could.

  Usually I relied on human weapons—knives, guns, occasionally a grenade or a flamethrower, even. Magic was always secondary for me.

  That’s going to change after this, I promised myself.

  It was time I learned how to use my powers more effectively.

  I pulled my elemental power out of the earth, up through the soles of my feet, drawing it into me thread by thread—teasing it out, hoping it didn’t break. I deposited it in every cell of my being. I could feel myself expanding, glowing, even as the demon continued to taunt us, circling around us.

  “Do something with that,” Grace whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

  As the magic poured into me, I lifted my head to stare the demon down. “Leave us alone,” I said in my most commanding voice.

  The demon threw his head back and howled with laughter. Then he took one single step toward us.

  From behind us, like déjà vu, a figure sailed old out of the darkness to land against the demon, growling and snapping.

&n
bsp; The wolf again.

  And again, fighting on our side.

  The demon tossed the werewolf aside easily, but it gave us the moment of distraction we needed. I took all the magic that I had stored inside me and pushed against it, pouring all of myself into it, too.

  It popped, crackling and snapping as if it were not earth magic at all, but more of the air, or maybe fire.

  Magic like I had never known before.

  I gathered it up and hurled it at the demon, even as Grace began stepping closer, firing both guns.

  For a moment, I thought my pure magic and her silver would work.

  Then, with a quick spin, the demon twisted himself into a whirlwind of dirt and slammed into Grace. She hit the ground hard and bounced.

  I didn’t have time to check on her—I could feel her, though, her life energy connected to the ground where she lay.

  I again pushed all the magic I had toward the demon. The wolf stood up and shook himself off from where he landed and stepped up to stand beside me. A moment later, Grace did, too.

  I could feel their power joining mine, and I drew from them, twining it with my own.

  Grace’s magic felt like family. I had known it all my life, felt it even when I hadn’t realized that was what I sensed.

  But the wolf’s power was different, hotter, earthier.

  It felt like home.

  With the surge I gained from them I shoved the demon down, back toward the earth, and back into the rocks he’d come from.

  I might not be able to eliminate him yet, but I could send him away, buy us time to escape.

  I could feel his strength diminishing, draining away.

  He took a step backward, and evil smile growing on his face.

  “Oh, little witchlet, how much you have yet to learn. I’ll be seeing you again.”

  He turned his back on us as if we were no threat and began walking away. But then he stopped, scooped something from the ground, and like a child skipping a stone across water, he tossed it toward us.

  Grace didn’t even have time to react before the rock hit her directly in the temple.

  12.

  She dropped without a sound. Something inside me broke as I realized she wasn’t moving, that the strand of power connecting us had cut off in an instant.

  With an inarticulate screech and a savagery I hadn’t known I possessed, I sent all the power inside me shooting out in one final surge.

  The demon screamed when it him, sizzling against the scales of his body and melting him into the ground.

  But I heard the echo of his laughter as he disappeared entirely.

  And through that laughter I could feel a single magical thread connecting us, even though he was gone.

  With a sob I dropped down, draping myself over my cousin’s prone, still body, frantically checking for a pulse where there was none to be found.

  Her beautiful blue eyes stared up at the desert sky, so clear and bright and full of stars.

  With my one good hand, I closed them.

  Tears poured down my face.

  After a few seconds, the wolf took my sleeve in his mouth and tugged, bringing me back to the present.

  There were voices from somewhere nearby.

  All our fighting had drawn attention.

  My training took over.

  Take the weapons and any ID.

  Leave the body.

  Get back to the family.

  There wasn’t anything I could do about Grace’s silver weapons—I couldn’t touch them—but I took everything else, removing it quickly and efficiently from her still-warm body.

  Then I paused, unwilling to walk away.

  I needed to get out of here, let the family know what had happened.

  Another sob escaped me. I stared around blankly until the wolf, whining, again urged me on.

  Once I started moving, I got us to my van quickly, opening up the back to let the wolf in.

  Then I climbed into the driver’s seat and stowed Grace’s weapons underneath it.

  As I drove down the highway, I began shaking. The werewolf—the one I knew nothing about other than he had been willing to save me—moved from the back of the van to the space between the front seats.

  He leaned head against my leg.

  I glanced down. “You going to tell me who you are?”

  Meeting my gaze with his own solemn one, he shook his head, then rested his chin on my thigh.

  With a shaky sigh, I pointed us toward Tucson.

  Guess I was going back to see Daddy sooner than I’d expected.

  With terrible news.

  And unexpected company.

  A Silver with a werewolf.

  Everything in my life was about to change.

  Grace was dead.

  I had a werewolf as a companion.

  And through that I had a line on this son-of-a-bitch demon who had caused all the misery in my life.

  I was going to track that fucker down and take him out once and for all.

  No matter what it took.

  Hell’s Silver Bells

  1.

  “I guess we’d better head out if we’re going to make Tucson by Christmas, huh?”

  Wolf’s ears perked up and he tilted his head as he gazed at me with his almost-white eyes. Then he lifted one shoulder in a shrug and jumped into the passenger seat of my van to stare out the window.

  Sometimes I forgot that Wolf wasn’t a dog. He wasn’t a pet. Hell, he wasn’t even really a wolf.

  He was a werewolf.

  At least, that’s what I assumed. I’d never actually seen him change from a wolf into either a person or even a wolfman—that hybrid shape that looks so ridiculous in movies and is abso-fucking-lutely terrifying in reality.

  But Wolf turned up to fight with me—and my cousin Grace—against the last werewolf pack we defeated together. And then he showed up again a little while later when the demon who cursed my family attacked us.

  Grace died during that battle. If Wolf hadn’t been there to urge me away from her body, I would’ve had to answer to human authorities for her death. So I trusted him. Maybe even more than I should.

  I took one last look across the Canadian border in Sweet Grass, Montana. That’s what I’d driven up here for in the first place—to stare across the border that so many other people found permeable, the one that, when I tried to cross it, hit me like a brick wall.

  To look out through my invisible cage’s bars.

  There was actually a Border Road—that was its name—but I’d learned years ago that it sometimes drifted over to the Canadian side, so I couldn’t drive very far along it. The curse that bound me was absolutely unrelenting in its boundaries.

  Someday, I would make my way across that border—or any of the others that bound me to the United States’ southwest—without doubling over in sheer agony. To do that, I was pretty sure I needed to permanently destroy the demon who’d created the curse.

  Not this week, though. Time to go home for the holidays.

  “Okay,” I sighed. “I’m ready. Tucson, here we come.”

  Not that Daddy would be thrilled to see Wolf with me. I thought he was going to have a heart attack the first time I showed up at his house with a werewolf in tow. Probably the only thing that saved Wolf back then was the news that the silver werewolf had helped save me from the attack that had killed Gracie.

  This time I was hoping for some Christmas cheer to put a damper on Daddy’s killing instinct.

  I turned the van around from the end of Church Street and made my way back to I-15. Before I pulled out, though, the demon-hunting compulsion sliced through me like a knife through the guts, like the worst case of cramps ever. I slammed on the brakes and managed to slide to the side of the street as I doubled over, wrapping my arms around my waist. Pain whited out my vision for several seconds, and when I came to myself again I was whispering, “Okay, okay. I’ve got it, got it. Colorado. Fine.”

  With my acceptance of the knowledge the compulsio
n gave me, the agony subsided to a dull ache centered behind my ribs, higher than its initial stabbing attack. I realized that Wolf had moved down beside me, his chin resting on my knee, my hands buried in the fur along his ruff. He tilted his head to examine me.

  “Looks like we need to stop in Colorado first.” My voice was raw with the aftereffects of the compulsion.

  He nodded in his particularly unwolflike way, rubbed his head against my cheek, and jumped back up into the passenger seat.

  It could have been worse—I didn’t usually even get that much information about where I was headed. Once in a while, the pain that came with the compulsion simply grew sharper if I headed in the wrong direction and abated if I moved the right way.

  Hell of a curse my family carried—confined to the southwest, cursed to hunt monsters, deathly allergic to silver. Always paying for something one of my ancestors did a long time ago. But I intended to break that curse. I’d spent my life hunting the son of a bitch who’d cursed us, who’d decided that the curse needed to be passed down through the generations.

  When I did finally come up against him, he killed my cousin Gracie.

  Never again, though. Next time, I’d be better prepared to take that fucker out.

  I didn’t think this was him, though—the compulsion to go to Colorado didn’t feel like the one that had sent me to Tombstone to face the earth demon.

  “No, this feels like a straight-up monster-hunt,” I said aloud to Wolf. I didn’t expect any kind of response from him—not really. I had taken to talking to him aloud as often as possible. If he ever answered me, I’d probably scream my fool head off. In a lot of ways it was like talking to myself or to a dog. I had to be careful not to let that tendency go too far. It was one thing to bury my hands and face in his fur when I was in pain. It was, however, something entirely different to rub my hand across his head as I walked by like I would a dog. I’d learned that the hard way. Wolf didn’t bite me, but he sure growled like he was about to.

  Still, as we headed toward Colorado, I speculated aloud to the non-shifting shifter who’d become my de facto partner.