Silver Bullet (8 page)

The daimarachnid had wrapped up bodies. Human bodies. One male, one female. The female was blond and mostly intact. The male looked to be of Hispanic descent, from what I could see of his remains. His face had been chewed on.

Well, at least they weren’t demon babies.

I covered my nose with my web-free sleeve as I patted them down, searching for injuries. They weren’t old enough to be rotting yet—looked like they’d just been killed a few hours earlier, in fact. But the smell of blood was strong. The coppery stench was a slap to the face and I had to swallow back bile.

Whatever the spiders had been keeping the victims for, it hadn’t been to drink their blood.

“You know, I signed up for Magical Violations so I wouldn’t have to deal with dead people,” I told Suzy without lowering my arm, voice muffled by the sleeve. “After my last case, I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to work with this shit again for at least—oh, I don’t know, is a month too much to ask for? One month without dead people and blood?”

“If hopes were unicorns, we’d be galloping across a magical fairytale land of roses instead of shooting spiders,” she said flatly. Sensitive woman, Suzume Takeuchi. I could just bask in the sympathy. “What killed them?”

I wasn’t exactly equipped for an autopsy, but even though the male looked pretty thoroughly masticated, the only major injury I found on the female body were a pair of large punctures. I was going to bet both had fallen victim to daimarachnid venom. The scuffs and bleeding on the female weren’t significant enough to kill a person.

“Death by arachnophobia,” I intoned in my best fifties monster movie voice. “They came from the deep!”

“Uh huh. Any ideas what
this
means?” Suzy was actually touching the mangled male body, lifting what remained of his collar to reveal a tattoo. It was about as big around as her dainty palm and half-eaten. The half that I could still see looked like a bleeding red apple.

“It’s not any gang tattoo I recognize,” I said. “Hey! Maybe he’s a
Snow White
fan.”

“Guess loving Disney movies runs in the family. The other body has one, too.”

She was right about the woman being inked—probably not the Disney part, though. The dead woman had the bleeding apple tattooed on the side of her neck. It was even bigger than the man’s tattoo. Or maybe it just looked bigger because she hadn’t had her flesh chewed off by a man-eating spider.

I sat back on my heels. “The neck tattoo definitely has meaning.”

“And what would that be?” Suzy asked.

In a high-pitched, feminine voice, I said, “I’m totally unemployable.” My partner smacked me on the shoulder. “Hey!”

“Wait,” she said, suddenly focusing on the webbed wall behind me. “That’s not all rock and web in there. There’s something else.”

She had aimed the beam of the flashlight on something white and shiny. Suzy gave me an expectant look.

Guess that was my cue to dig it out.

With Suzy’s hunting knife, I sawed away more of the web. It was moister near the middle. I cringed as I peeled it back, trying to touch as little as possible, and definitely trying not to think which part of the spider it had come out of.

After a few minutes of work, I’d revealed something among the rubble that was…well, I wasn’t sure what. It
looked
like white marble. I hauled out one chunk that was the size of my head. It was heavier than it looked, like it was made from lead.

“Looks valuable,” I said, hefting it. The rocks shifted where I’d removed the stone, revealing other, larger pieces of white stone behind it.

“Looks like bone,” Suzy said. She reached out to touch it. “What do you think—”

Scuffling noises echoed up the tunnel. We spun simultaneously to face the darkness.

I didn’t see anything yet, but there was no question what that sound meant.

Suzy fumbled for her pistol, then stopped. She must have remembered that she’d emptied her magazine. I handed her the knife and she took it with trembling fingers.

The shuffling noises grew louder.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh holy fucking
fuck.

That sounded like a few more daimarachnids. Plural.

I shouldn’t have been in this mine. I should have been wasting sticky note pads by animating stick figure ninjas. I should have been sneaking mild laxative potions into Suzy’s coffee. I should have been calling in sick so that I could stay home and read the newest
Iron Druid
release. I should have been—well, just about any-fucking-where but here.

Drawing my Desert Eagle, I tried to count the bullets mentally. How many times had I shot the first spider?

“We’ll bring nukes next time,” Suzy whispered.

Next time? We’d be lucky if either of us had a next
morning
.

I didn’t say that out loud.

“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely nukes.”

Two daimarachnids appeared at the end of our pool of light—barely even fifty feet away. It wasn’t enough warning.

I fired without aiming. It was luck more than skill that blasted the top of the first demon’s carapace off. Red eyes splattered. Its legs buckled, sending it stumbling.

The other one climbed right over it without care.

And there was another behind it.

The second daimarachnid hit Suzy and slammed her into the collapsed wall. She grunted, hand locked against its face, just above the flailing pincers. They scraped at her shirt even though she held it, barely, at arm’s length.

She plunged the knife into its mouth.

I fired on the third one. First shot missed; second one hit in the center mass.

The other injured daimarachnid leaped up onto the wall, skittering at us from the ceiling. I lifted my gun. Fired again. Missed again.

It jumped on me. We hit the ground.

Venomous fangs filled my vision.

“Holy
fuck
!”

I jammed the Maglite into its jaw just as the pincers were about to strike, and they snapped shut on the flashlight instead of my face. It reared back a couple inches, squirmed on top of me. One of its legs banged hard into my shoulder. Felt like being hit by a car.

This close, I could hear wheezing, hear the
slurp-slurp
inside its mouth. Sounded like it had organs a spider shouldn’t have had. It exhaled hot air on me that smelled like rot.

I tried to bring the gun up—tried to shoot it through the head. Pulverize the brain.

But another leg slammed into my arm. The Desert Eagle snapped out of my grip. Metal clattered against stone.

The Maglite bent inside the spider’s jaw. It was biting down, making the metal groan. Five more seconds and the flashlight would be gone, leaving nothing between venomous death and me.

I’m going to die down here
. The realization washed over me, cold and jagged and aching.

I wished I’d called Domingo to say goodbye.

A gunshot exploded through the tunnel, loud enough to make the collapse tremble and dust spray over the daimarachnid and me.

Sounded like Suzy had found my gun. Maybe she’d at least be able to save herself.

Another booming gunshot.

Wait—that’s not the Desert Eagle
.

I’d barely had time to realize that I was hearing shotgun fire when the demon on top of me turned into mist. The flashlight shot from its mouth and smacked me in the face. Flesh and blood sprayed over me, getting in my hair and on my sparklebombed chin.

It even got in my goddamn
mouth
.

Not going to lie, I freaked out. I screamed and kicked away the now-limp bits of the spider.

My skin was burning. My tongue felt like I’d just tried to deep-throat a cactus.

I couldn’t feel relieved that the spider was dead. I could only think about making the pain stop. I stripped my shirt off, ripped it over my head, flung it to the floor. Slapped the patches of blood that were burning at my abs, wiping it off.

Shit, it’s on my jeans!

I started to unbuckle my belt.

“Well, don’t get
too
naked now,” drawled a masculine voice I didn’t recognize. “I’d be excited to see me too, but let’s keep some mystery in our budding relationship, eh?”

I fumbled for my bent flashlight. Aimed it down the tunnel.

Two men were standing ankle-deep in spider guts, wearing extremely
amused expressions and all-black clothing. And when I say they were wearing all black, I meant head to toe
black
-black. Combat gear. Flak jackets. Armored kneepads. Even the shotguns were black, aside from the white circle and arrow stamped on the side of the barrel.

That logo meant that they were from the Union.

The man who had spoken had his arm wrapped around Suzy’s waist. She was bleeding from her hairline and looking dazed, but she was alive.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked.

“My name’s Malcolm Gallagher,” said the guy holding Suzy. He jerked his thumb at his companion. “This is Bellamy. We’re the cavalry.”

THERE ARE A FEW things more embarrassing than wearing another man’s clothes—the clothes of a man about seventy percent of my size—but I couldn’t think of any of them when I left Silverton Mine and dressed myself.

Malcolm Gallagher was a small guy. His waist and inseam were both thirty inches, which was the size I’d worn in junior high. Unfortunately, he was the only one of the Union guys that had a spare uniform with him. My borrowing options were limited.

I couldn’t button the fly on his slacks. It looked like I was rocking a pair of high waters. Don’t even get me started on the way his shirt stretched across my shoulders.

It was slightly better than being naked or wearing demon blood-drenched clothes.

But only slightly.

Suzy must have been concussed. She didn’t laugh at me when I climbed back into the helicopter after dressing, having abandoned my bloodied clothes among the sagebrush. In fact, she could barely focus on my face at all.

“Anyone home?” I asked, snapping my fingers in front of her eyes.

She shoved my hand away. “Fuck you, Hawke.”

All right, she’s fine.

Malcolm clambered into the helicopter with us, whistling a fast-paced reel with his shotgun propped against his shoulder. He slammed the door shut as soon as he was settled.

“Go ahead,” he called up to the pilot, who gave him the thumbs-up.

Bellamy sat in the front row as well, looking like a frowning Fritz-clone. He talked on a BlackBerry and held the hunk of white marble that we’d recovered in his lap.

It turned out that our helicopter pilot had dropped us off and then popped down to the nearest Union outpost to pick up help, at Fritz’s request. Good thing he had, too, because we’d have been dead if he had waited a couple more hours to summon assistance. I was too young and too handsome to die at the jaws of a spider. I hadn’t even finished watching the last season of the
Battlestar Galactica
remake yet.

Of course, my pride might have been in better shape if I’d died. I tugged down the hem of my borrowed shirt. “Thanks for the help,” I told Malcolm, who was seated across from Suzy and me.

“Any time,” he said, setting the shotgun beside him. “Really, any time. I’m contractually obligated to provide support to the Office of Preternatural Affairs.”

I caught myself smiling. This guy wasn’t like the other Union kopides I’d run into before. They were mostly baby-faced ex-military assholes that thought the circumference of their necks bestowed all kinds of special privileges on them. You know those guys—the ones who do bicep curls in the squat racks and grunt so loudly that you can hear them all the way across the gym.

Malcolm was older, grizzled, with no hint of vanity. He had an eye patch. His face was heavily scarred and pockmarked. Looked like he’d been to Hell and back in his time, maybe literally. And he had a sense of humor. I desperately needed to soak up the vibes of someone funny right about now.

The helicopter lifted off and Suzy swayed, pressing a hand to her forehead. She’d mopped up some of the blood while I was changing, so I could see that she had a huge gash along her hairline. Looked like it was from getting knocked around, not from daimarachnid pincers—thankfully. If either of us had been bitten, we’d have been dead by now anyway.

“You all right, beautiful?” Malcolm asked.

Suzy’s brow furrowed. She looked at her hand as if expecting to see blood on it. “I’ll be fine once I’ve had a few years of sleep.”

“Can’t do anything about the sleep, but I bet a drink or six would fix you up right. As soon as we’re off-shift, I’m buying.” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows at her. She seemed to be too exhausted to notice.

“Where’s my knife?” she asked, massaging her temple.

I’d picked it up for her, along with her empty Beretta. “I’ve got it. Don’t worry.”

“Good.” She sagged against the seat, closing her eyes.

“No sleeping,” Malcolm said. “You might not wake up.”

“I’m not sleeping. Just checking my eyelids for holes.”

“As long as you don’t die checking your eyelids for holes, that’s just dandy.”

I kept her in the corner of my vision. I wouldn’t let her fall asleep, but if anyone deserved a few minutes of rest, it was Suzy. “We’re real grateful for your help, Malcolm, but you want to tell me how you managed to save the day in the nick of time?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Fritz called the outpost this morning. Said you guys are fresh, need some training handling demons and casting advanced magic. Wanted to see if we could spare some guys for education.” He spread his arms wide. “Here we are. I’m all about demons, and Bellamy’s all about magic.”

Then it was lucky that I’d accidentally sparklebombed Fritz that morning. Otherwise, he might not have been annoyed enough to request a Union babysitter in time.

Was this the man that Fritz had said was trustworthy? The one who was safe to tell about our team?

“So you’re friends with Fritz,” I said cautiously.

“Friends? Aye, I suppose so. Enough that he told me about his unsanctioned team and consultant, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Trustworthy
and
perceptive. “Good to have you with us.”

“I tend to think so, yeah,” Malcolm said. Modest guy. He rubbed his hands together. “Right. So! Now that we’re mates, tell me what led to that glorious mess of a near-fatal disaster I found down there. I haven’t seen a daimarachnid nest that size in—oh, never, actually.”