Clean Sweep (11 page)

Oh, this was too good. I reached for the patio with my magic.

Sean stepped onto the concrete, putting his weight on the slab. The patio sank six inches into the ground. Sean jumped. He went straight up like a startled cat, twisted in the air, and landed on the grass. He-he! I raised the patio back up.

Sean took a step toward it. The patio slid back a foot. He took another step. The patio slid back again.

Sean spun to the house and saw me in the window. "Knock it off!"

I laughed and went to make the lemonade.

Chapter Seven

I used a spatula to rescue the last piece of French bread from the pan. I'd melted a bit of butter in a nonstick skillet and fried each piece until it turned golden brown. The trick wasn't getting the bread completely fried but instead just toasted enough for each slice to form a lovely golden crust.

I'd peeled some garlic cloves, so I took one, chopped the top off it, and began rubbing each slice of bread with the clove.

The first thing I'd done when I'd taken over the inn was update the kitchen with much larger windows, bring in new appliances, and replace the cracked and chipped white tile countertops. Money had been tight, so I'd gone with butcher block. The maple wood gave the kitchen a warm and inviting feel, and it was easier for the house to assimilate. Any building materials brought into the inn became part of the inn eventually. The inn could synthesize wood and stone, but it took a lot of energy, and providing it with the basics made things much easier. The inn fed on its environment, but the bulk of its life energy came from the guests and me. Without guests, it would fall dormant trying to conserve energy and when that happened, an inn decayed and fell apart just like any other house. When I had come to awaken Gertrude Hunt from its hibernation, it had been sleeping for so long, its siding had rotted away and a lot of the outside plumbing had succumbed to tree roots.

The day was in full swing, the afternoon golden and beautiful outside, and the countertops all but glowed as if glazed with honey. From my vantage point at the island, I could see the north patio facing the street. It was one of my favorite places to hang out. I'd sit in one of the canvas chairs and read my book.

Now the patio featured a smoker grill and Sean, armed with huge tongs. Beast lay by the grill. He'd bribed her with ribs.

I had to give it to him, the man knew how to build a fire. I kept the windows closed but even so, I could smell the spicy, tangy bite of hickory smoke. It smelled like childhood and it brought back the long, lazy summer days, barbecue, watermelon, and freeze pops. If I closed my eyes, I could almost convince myself it was Dad grilling outside rather than some werewolf with entitlement issues.

Best of all, the smoke drowned all other smells. Last night Sean had built an outdoor fire pit behind the house. He'd drawn a wide circle on the concrete, then built a wall of concrete blocks around it, leaving space to add wood. Next he lined the inside with fireproof bricks, leaving vent spaces, and installed the grill. We set the pots up, filled them with water from a hose, and let them cook through the night. The hickory chips in the fire pit drowned most of the stench, but if you stood right by the pot, you could smell an acrid, toxic odor. But to get to the back, any visitors would have to first pass by Sean's grill at the front of the house, and once they smelled the aroma of that barbecue, they wouldn't go any farther.

Sean raised the grill lid and checked the meat. He wore jeans and a plain green T-shirt. The T-shirt molded to his muscular shoulders. Sean had a peculiar kind of strength, powerful but lean, quick and supple, but without weakness. Like flexible steel.

And I've been looking at him entirely too long.

I finished with the bread, took a bowl with egg mixture out of the refrigerator, and started spreading it on the bread, arranging the slices on a pretty green platter as I went.

The screen door banged open and Sean sauntered into the kitchen. "What smells so good?"

How could he even smell it over the smoke? "Here, have one."

Sean snagged a sandwich off the platter and bit into it with a crunch. "Mmm. What's in this?"

"Egg, Miracle Whip, garlic, and French bread."

"So it's like an egg salad. It doesn't taste like an egg salad."

"That's because of the garlic and bread." I chopped green onion and sprinkled it on the sandwiches. "How are the ribs?"

"Good. We're about ready."

Sean reached for another sandwich. I raised my knife.

"Don't threaten me unless you mean to use it," he said.

"Don't steal food until it's served and I won't have to."

He laughed and went to wash his hands.

I took the lemonade and iced-tea pitchers to the table outside. Sean helped me bring out sandwiches, corn on the cob, napkins, and paper plates. Kayley Henderson and her boyfriend, Robbie, came down the sidewalk and stopped by the hedge.

"Are you the barbecue people?" Kayley asked.

"We are," I confirmed.

"We could smell it all the way from the bus stop." Robbie eyed the grill.

Sean emerged from inside. Kayley's eyebrows crept up.

"Why don't you join us," I said. "There's plenty to go around."

"Thank you!" Kayley chirped.

They came around and pulled up the chairs. A moment later Caldenia joined us.

Sean pulled the first rack of ribs off the grill and onto a wooden block. "Have to let them rest a bit."

Caldenia gifted Kayley with an inviting smile. "How are your studies going?"

For the next ten minutes we were entertained with stories of Cedar Creek High. Someone stole someone else's boyfriend, someone was selling their ADHD medication, and three boys were busted stealing the school flag. I wasn't that much older and things I'd been through would turn their hair white, but after hearing all that, I was really glad I was done with high school.

Sean carved the ribs and started passing them around the table. I cut a small piece from mine. It was delicious, just right, sweet and tangy with a hint of heat.

"Hey, you!" Margaret came up the street, her Pomeranian bouncing by her feet like a small fluff of fur. "Kayley, your mother is looking for you."

Kayley got up. "Can we take the food with us?"

I waved at them. "Please do."

"Thank you, Dina. The sandwiches are awesome."

The kids fled with their plates.

Misha ran around the hedge and Beast chased her, the two little dogs running in circles in the yard.

"Join us," Sean invited.

"Are you cooking for Dina?" Margaret opened her eyes wide. "Oooh."

"Don't they make a cute couple?" Caldenia said.

I resisted the urge to stab her with my fork. "We're not a couple. Sean fixed my smoker, so we decided to try it out."

"You're not cooking a dead body in there, are you?" Margaret asked.

I almost dropped my plate on my lap. "What? Eeew!"

Sean raised his eyebrows. "Why would you ask that?"

Margaret came around and sat in the chair. "You haven't seen the news? Turn on channel five."

Suddenly I got a cold nagging feeling that something was terribly wrong. I got up. "Excuse me a moment."

Sean followed me inside, into the front room.

"Screen," I said. "Channel five."

The wall opened, revealing the monitor. It came to life, showing footage of a rural house shot from above, likely from a helicopter.

"...Scene of a terrible tragedy," a male anchor's voice said. "What's the death count now, Amy?"

The footage switched to a blond reporter standing in front of a driveway. Behind her in the distance, the house loomed, flanked by police cars.

"Police officials confirmed that all forty-two cows were killed and partially eaten, Ryan. There is no official word on the condition of John Rook's body; however, sources close to the investigation tell us that he suffered the same fate as his livestock."

"Are you saying someone fed on his body?"

Amy looked like she was about to vomit. "It appears so, Ryan. He was dismembered postmortem and part of him and the cows has been... cooked."

I almost gagged.

"Nobody had seen John Rook for several days; he could've been dead for quite a while. We'll have to wait for the coroner's official..."

Below the footage a news update flashed: local farmer found dead, his livestock mutilated.

It had to be the dahaka. How horrible. It killed the farmer, cooked him, and fed him to its dogs. I had to stop it.

Sean pulled out his phone and typed in it. "It's less than ten miles north of here."

"What are you thinking?"

"Let's say I'm the dahaka. I have a pack of stalkers on my hands and I have to feed them, but I don't want to be found. Stalkers would likely require a lot of meat. They're large and carnivorous. So I find this farm with a herd of cattle. It's remote enough for me to hide for days. I kill the farmer, start slaughtering his cows, and use the stalkers to patrol the boundaries of my territory and make sure nobody is coming. Except if the stalkers are like dogs, then they'll get bored and start to roam farther and farther until they find something interesting."

"Like our subdivision."

"Exactly."

On the screen a shot of the butchered herd flashed again. It made me sick to my stomach. "Forty-two cows. That's a huge amount of meat."

"I found a leaked photo." Sean showed me his phone. On it a bloody carcass of a cow lay on the grass. Its head, back, and legs were intact, but its stomach was missing, and the entire front of the body was a mess of shredded red tissue.

"They went for the soft parts. Wasteful. This tells me that either he doesn't have great control of them or he doesn't care."

"Either way, he has to find an alternative food supply." I knew exactly where that supply was. Either he would hit more farms or he would come south, toward us.

Toward a subdivision filled with families.

I took a deep breath and plastered on a smile. We had to go out and chat with Margaret before she decided to come in and investigate what was taking us so long.

*** *** ***

I sat at the kitchen table. The werewolf sat across from me. Two perfectly round wooden spheres lay on the table, each about the size of a small kiwi. A complex pattern of dark, crisscrossing spirals wove through the wood. We'd fished them out of the pot once the flesh had fallen off the stalkers' bones. The inn grounds had swallowed both skeletons and the disgusting broth and pots with them. I wouldn't be reusing them.

The trackers waited on the surface of the table, quiet and inert. No magic emissions. No electromagnetic signals. Just two harmless-looking chunks of wood. But when I reached for them with my magic, I felt a spark. It curled deep inside them, vibrant and alive, waiting to be released so it could blossom.

Around us the inn was quiet. Caldenia had gone to bed, having delicately devoured enough meat to satiate three grown men. Outside the windows, a sunset burned down, one of those glorious Texas sunsets when the color grew thick and vivid and long stripes of clouds glowed orange on a nearly purple sky. Beast lay by my feet, gnawing on a bone Sean had given her. Through the day she had upgraded his status from
kill
on sight
to
suspicious
to
the man with delicious treats who can't be trusted
. She would take a bone from him, but petting was still out of the question.

Sean regarded the spheres with calm interest. "Can you activate them?"

"Yes."

"Did the trackers turn themselves off because the stalkers died?"

"I don't think so. From the scans, they look simple: turn on, turn off."

"So the dahaka deliberately turned them off."

"Probably."

Sean leaned back. "If I were him, stuck in an unfamiliar place, I would want to know where my dogs were at all times. He turned off the trackers. He's hiding, but not from us. From someone who can track him by whatever signal these things send out."

I thought out loud. "He could be hiding from someone he's hunting."

"Or someone who's hunting him," Sean said.

If someone was hunting a dahaka, that someone would be armed to the teeth, ruthless, and powerful. In other words, someone we would be wise to avoid. Or befriend.

Sean picked up one of the spheres and studied it. "You have to decide how involved you want to be."

"I know." If we left the dahaka to his own devices, he would kill again. I had no doubt of it. He had turned off the trackers for a reason, and he would want them kept off. If we reactivated them, he would stop what he was doing and come directly here to investigate. And not just him, but anyone else who could pick up his signal, predator or prey. "We can ignore him or we can give him a target."

"Agreed." Sean leaned back in his chair.

As long as the dahaka concentrated on the inn, the rest of the people would be somewhat safe. I was better equipped to deal with him than pretty much anyone else in the county. And if I did activate them, it would have to be here. I wasn't quite useless away from the inn's grounds, but I was a great deal weaker.

Activating the trackers on the grounds went against the fundamental principle of keeping an inn. The safety of the guests had to be maintained at all times. If I turned these things on, I would be putting Caldenia at risk. But the dahaka graduated to killing human beings. I was in a position to do something about it. Then again, if I made the inn a target, I would put my neighbors at risk. I would have to make sure to hold his attention here at the inn, where I was at my strongest.

I realized I was looking at the portrait of my parents. I wished so desperately I could ask for advice. I might as well wait for money to rain from the sky. I was alone. Nobody would offer me any guidance. I wasn't even sure guidance would do any good. I knew the appropriate course of action: sit on your hands, guard the inn, and do nothing.

Somebody had answer for the murder of John Rook.

"What happened to them?" Sean asked.

"Mmm?"

He nodded at the portrait.