Forest Moon Rising (6 page)

T
HEN THE VISION WAS GONE as fast as it came.

Back in reality, I pointed to my pastel-swirled cast sticking out below my pajama bottoms. “I tangled with a Nörglein. Actually, I tangled with a blackberry vine trip wire he strung across my path.”

“L’Akita,” he said gently, sitting beside me and taking my hand. His thumb stroked my palm sensuously.

Part of me tried to melt into a puddle of desire. Been there. Done that. Didn’t like the consequences. But, wow, did we have fun in the middle of it.

“You should have called me. I’d have helped you hunt the monster. What kind of demon is he?” His gaze met mine full on, without shying away. A sure sign he knew more than he implied. This man could lie more convincingly than most people told the truth.

I knew him too well to fall under his spell.

I jerked my hand away from him. “Nörglein are forest elves. Dark elves without conscience or a molecule of sympathy for others. They blur and change the paths before solitary travelers until they are thoroughly lost. Then they offer to show the way out in return for favors.”

Donovan had the grace to look away.

“Sexual favors from women hikers, the demand of a night with the wives of males. Any children born of the liaison belong to the Nörglein after weaning.” I coldly recited the
modus operandi
of the beasts, like reading a police blotter.

“I can’t allow you to endanger yourself with this guy, Tess. I’ve heard about him before.” Donovan took my hand again, lacing his fingers with mine.

Somehow I found the strength of will to reclaim my hand and my heart. There was a time when he could dissolve all my fears and reservations. Not any more. I loved someone else. I’d broken his power over me.

That was one of my problems with Donovan. I never knew if that intense desire and willingness to share my mind and body with him was true attraction or part of his magical glamour.

“How does the Nörglein get the wives of his male victims to cooperate?” Allie asked. She brought me a plate piled high with a veggie and cheese omelet and chunks of fried potatoes. The food smelled heavenly and I dug in without reservation.

For the past year and a half, I’d looked at food as fuel and picked at it only when necessary. Everything tasted like straw. I’d taken up exotic cooking in an attempt to find something, anything that appealed to me. I took more joy in the preparation process than the eating. My neighbors loved me for my leftovers.

Now it seemed the challenge of a demon quest had awakened my appetite as well as my mind.

Or maybe I’d finally worked through the seven stages of grief and could live again. About time.

“As near as I can tell, from hints in old legends and letters, the elf binds the lost man and then shape-changes into his form. He walks out, has a joyous reunion with his wife. During the night he slips away and releases his prisoner at the trailhead,” I related between bites. “When a baby is born nine months later, the woman remembers who fathered it. Not unusual for her to have a complete nervous breakdown. Two years later, the husband takes their baby and turns it loose at a designated spot in the woods. That was in medieval times. Modern women aren’t so obedient. If they fight giving their baby away, the Nörglein kidnaps it.”

Donovan snarled angrily.

“Ew, does he eat the kids?” Allie looked as if she was about to gag on her own omelet.

“Unknown. If he dines on toddlers, you’d think he’d just prowl the city kidnapping them at will. No, he seems most particular in claiming children with his own DNA.”

But Raquel remembered. The pattern was breaking down. Something had changed. I needed to know what in order to exploit his weakness.

“What’s the plan, Tess? This guy needs to be taken out. Fast.” Allie moved to the middle of the room, hands on hips, balance forward, outrage written on her grim face and aggressive posture. She pulled up the belt of her jeans as if hitching her utility belt full of weapons. Her fingers twitched, eager for the grip of a weapon.

“The plan is to watch and wait until I’m out of this friggin’ cast and can fight again.” I almost threw the now empty plate at her.

“If the Nörglein tripped you, then he probably spotted Scrap and knows who you are and the resources at your command,” Donovan mused. Somehow my hand was back in his again. His gentle thumb caressing my palm and up my wrist was more an extension of his thought process than seduction.

“So I’ll go in as bait. You two can follow at a discreet distance. Scrap can keep an eye on me and guide you to the lair. Easy.” Allie looked as if she wanted to draw her gun. Once a cop, always a cop.

“Don’t you have to go back to work?” I asked.

Allie looked away. “Steve should be back with your muffins by now.” She marched to the door and opened it, leaning out into the open stairwell. “Couldn’t you buy a condo with an elevator and interior corridor?”

“Limited access for bad guys following me. Corner unit with limited access to vulnerable neighbors. Metal stairs so I can hear anyone who approaches,” I mumbled. “Allie, what’s wrong with you and work?”

Steve appeared in the doorway. He kissed Allie and squeezed her shoulder. “She shot a man in the middle of a domestic dispute. She’s on administrative leave until state authorities complete an investigation.”

“I’m sure you’ll be exonerated,” I murmured. “You’ll be called back soon.”

“I’m not sure I want to go back to work.” Allie kept looking at her feet.

“You love being a cop,” I protested. “That’s all you ever wanted to be from the first day we met in kindergarten.”

“I hate dealing with men who beat their wives to death and then rape their thirteen-year-old daughters. I had to shoot him to keep him from coming after me with a baseball bat. I’m glad he died. Monsters like that shouldn’t be allowed to live,” she claimed righteously. Then her face fell and sadness clouded her eyes.

“I’d rather fight demons than my own kind who behave worse than demons.” She looked up and glared at me defiantly.

“Huh?” Steve said, his mouth hung open and he held the bakery sack loosely.

“Okay, there’s only one thing we can do.” I struggled to my feet—or rather one foot and the crutches.

Donovan leaped up and offered to pull me. Or carry me. I batted him away.

“What can we do, Tess?” Allie asked. Wisely, she stayed out of the way and let me manage on my own.

“What I should have done when I first moved here.”

“Find Gollum?” Allie offered hopefully.

“No.”

Silence all around as they looked at me speculatively.

“Go buy some furniture from my sister-in-law.”

“T
his is a really bad idea, Tess,” Donovan says as he drives his pretty cream-colored Mercedes across the top level of the Marquam Bridge. The rain-swollen Willamette River passes beneath us, muddy swirls catching on the bridge supports.

“If it’s such a bad idea, why are you driving me out to Cooper’s Furniture Emporium?” Tess asks from the backseat. She sits with her cast in Allie’s lap. Steve is riding shotgun.

And I’m perched on the window ledge behind Tess. It’s a pretty drive on a late Sunday morning. I don’t have enough calm to add to the acid mixture upsetting my tummy to appreciate the scenery. Showers and broken sunlight offer different perspectives on lovely vistas at every turn.

“For once in your life, I think you should listen to him,” I whisper to Tess. I’ve tried tugging her hair to make her pay attention to me.

She’s ignoring both Donovan and me.

“I’m driving you so you don’t go off on your own and get into more trouble.” Donovan scowls. He does that beautifully. Too bad he’s not gay. I could really go for him. But no, he’s in love with Tess in his own twisted, selfish way. “You should meet Doreen on neutral territory, tell her what you need and have it delivered.”

“How much trouble can the Coopers cause?” Tess asks. “We’re customers. And they are Damiri. They like money almost as much as they like blood.”

“Um . . . what’s a Damiri?” Steve asks. He looks car sick. But I think it’s the conversation.

“It’s a tribe of demons,” Allie supplies him the information. “The Coopers are half-breeds, otherwise they couldn’t shape-change to human form in this dimension.”

“Um . . .”

“Get used to it, Steve. Your baby sister has gotten involved with some really bizarre lifestyle groups,” Tess tells him.

I almost laugh. But that would mean she’s winning this argument. I can’t have that. I need her to go home and nurse her hurts and spend some quality time with her brother and his lovely fiancée.

“More bizarre than the kids at science fiction conventions who dress up as demons?” Steve asks hopefully.

“Modern day demons hang out at those cons and win hall costume prizes, but they aren’t really costumes,” Tess says. “I found that out the hard way.”

“Tess, is it legal to tell Steve the truth?” Allie asks. “I mean ... didn’t you take an oath of secrecy?”

“Too late now.” Tess flashes them a grimace of a grin. “I’m out of the broom closet.”

Oh, boy. We’re all in trouble now. When she gets that determined look on her face, nothing can dissuade her.

What if I got sick? Imps don’t vomit like humans do. We reject toxic food in other ways. If I blow enough flammable gas in her face she’ll just open a window and throw me out.

What to do? What to do?

“The Coopers will recognize you, Tess. You married their son. Hell, they
know
me!” Donovan protested.

I rolled my eyes. I’d only met the Coopers twice. Right after I married Dill, then again at their son’s funeral three months later. They’d avoided me through the entire painful procedure, barely recognizing my short time with Dill as a real marriage.

We’d reached a compromise on Dill’s estate only after I threatened to take them to court with an ironclad will. They got his trust fund—or what was left of it after he liquidated it as a down payment on our house in Cape Cod, the one I sold to my father and his partner last year—and the income from his share in the mysterious furniture store on a back country road out in the middle of nowhere. I got the house and his life insurance—double indemnity for murder or accident.

Only Doreen seemed intent upon contacting me again, to return a few family photos of mine that got mixed up in Dill’s stuff I couldn’t bear to look at again. In the last month she’d become even more persistent in trying to arrange a meeting.

I’d driven by Cooper’s dozens of times in the last year and never had the courage to stop. They didn’t seem to keep normal business hours, or to have any customers. The open sign never changed to closed, even at two in the morning.

“I think I’ll start with a dining table and chairs. Something simple, Craftsman design to match the railing. Lots of plain wood, light colored, to accent the parquet floor and kitchen cabinets,” I replied. “And maybe some end tables and lamps.” That is, if the Coopers had in stock anything but heavy, dark, gothic stuff for their fellow half-breed demons.

“She’s serious, Donovan,” Steve said. “I wish someone would fill me in. I’m a computer engineer, not a superhero.” He flashed me a wry grin, parroting back my own protests.

So I told Steve all about the year I went missing after I buried Dillwyn Bailey Cooper.

“Only you, Tess, would find a Citadel hidden in a dry canyon in Central Washington that houses a Sisterhood of dedicated demon fighters. I thought you made that up for your books.” Steve shook his head and frowned in disapproval. “Part of me dismisses this as illogical, the stupid wanderings of your imagination. But it explains a lot. And Allie believes you. She’s hinted ... I just thought her reading material had latched onto her mind a little too tightly.”