Night Terrors (Sarah Beauhall Book 4) (32 page)

Girl was smoking something righteous, that’s all I could figure. I wasn’t comfortable with that thought. I couldn’t bring Jai Li back here if the neighbor was unstable.

“Do you have a cross and all in your bedroom then?”

She grasped the cross around her neck and nodded, this time slowly. “I pray every night and every morning, but sometimes I hear a man calling, or a boy, I can’t tell.”

“A television, maybe?”

She shook her head. “No, not a television. Something evil is hunting him, something he’s hiding from.”

Well, some people thought television was evil. I wasn’t very fond of it.

“So, you’re not Katie?” she asked.

“No, I’m Sarah and I live with Katie.”

“Roommates?” the girl asked, looking at the floor.

I was getting annoyed. “Lovers, actually.”

She winced when I said that. It felt good to say it out loud.

“Yeah we can get a little loud, you know, with all the sex.” She was pissing me off. “Is that what you heard?” Of course, if it was, who was having sex here? I haven’t been here with Katie for a couple of months.

She winced again and shuddered. “Abomination,” she said, quietly this time, not talking to me or anyone else. I knew the words, knew the look. Here was one of those people from my prior life. It had been a while since I’d encountered it. It took me by surprise.

She shut the door and locked it. I heard her throw a dead bolt and put on the chain. Anger and shame rushed up through my abdomen, but I tamped them both down. Now was not the time. The runes on my calf flared to life, and the ones on my scalp remained cold and dormant. I tried to breathe through it, but I kept seeing those people from my past, my da, the churchie people, and all the rest of the close-minded idiots.

I punched the wall.

Felt good, damn it. I still had on my riding gloves, so I didn’t scrape up my knuckles when I went through the cheap paneling. Fortunately there was only about four inches of space before I encountered cinder block, and I was up to my wrist in splinters. I let out my breath and carefully pushed the splinters aside, widening the hole, so I could pull my hand out of the wall. That was awkward, but worked to let the final juice run out of me, leaving me frustrated and a little hurt. Lucky I didn’t break my wrist, or at least a few knuckles.

I went down the stairs and out the door, fuming. Elmer’s Gun and Knife Emporium was still open, and there were a couple of high school age kids inside looking at swords.

I went inside and walked up to the counter. Elmer was an old guy, older than da even—late fifties. He looked like someone’s grandpa: nice as could be, clean shaven, short hair, soft eyes. No one would peg him as a merchant of death. He preferred purveyor of home protection. I guess it depended on your politics. He kept spare keys and such to the apartments above, worked a deal with the super. I didn’t need a key, though. I needed a locksmith, or a crowbar.

“Hey, Elmer,” I called as I crossed the store. He looked over at me and smiled.

“Afternoon, Sarah.” Elmer liked me. He sold a few knives for me on consignment. Pretty pricey stuff for him, after the markup and all, but he had some high-end clientele. Knew the value of a good blade. “What’s up?”

“Crazy neighbor upstairs has painted a cross on our door, burned a couple dozen candles to the stubs all along the floor and wedged a key in the lock.”

“Huh,” he said, stepping back in front of the high schoolers who were debating on pulling a samurai sword from its sheath. “Don’t even think about it,” he said, placing his hand on the wooden and lacquered scabbard. That was a handmade dealio. I’d had a look at it once at Elmer’s insistence. Good folded steel, not anything like I did. Not my style of blade. Nice, though.

The kids shuffled away, more interested in fantasizing about sword battles than ponying up the twelve hundred dollars for that blade.

Once the testosterone machines had gone outside, Elmer put the sword back in the case and nodded his head in my direction. “You driving that fancy motor bike out yonder?”

I glanced out his windows and looked at the Ducati. “Oh, yeah. Sweet ride.”

“She’s a damned fine machine,” he said, smiling.

“You heard anything funny?” I asked. “Upstairs, I mean.”

“Beside miss crazy neighbor, you mean?”

I nodded. “Yeah. She claims to hear things from inside the apartment.”

“One of you girls leave a television on or something?”

My last trip I’d rushed out pretty damned fast, after Megan’s call. But did I have the television on? Maybe the radio? “Probably it,” I said to him. “I’ll call a locksmith and get things under control.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” he said as I headed to the door. “Oh, I could use a couple more of those Elvish short swords you make. Had a run on them lately. Sold the last three I had.”

Nice, that would be some nice scratch rolling in. “I’ll get some out to you next week.” I promised. “We can settle up on money then, okay?”

He waved, and I pushed back out into the great outdoors, fishing my cell phone out of my jacket.

Television made more sense than crazy neighbor hearing voices in our place. Of course, there was the possibility that she’d heard Gletts. He’d called to me through the mirror once upon a time, and I hadn’t seen him since Julie pulled me out of the Sideways. And the wall between our bedroom and the mirror opposite the room in the neighbor’s place had an old doorway to the Sideways. I’d almost been sucked in once. Maybe that’s what she was sensing.

Oh, crap. The book and the shield were both in the apartment. Would they be part of the problem? I jogged up the stairs to the hallway between our apartments and pulled Gram from her sheath holding her in front of the apartment door.

The sword jerked forward, nearly striking the door. I pulled it back at the last second, stopping the blade from smashing into the metal plate.

Maybe I should get some professional help. Of course, Qindra was probably tired of me calling her all the time. Last time a book had almost killed her. The time before that she’d gotten locked inside the house out in Chumstick battling ghosties. But she was the resident expert on weird shit. I was obligated to call her. Right?

She answered on the first ring with a sigh in her voice. “You never call for pleasure. What can I help you with this time?”

I filled her in on the weirdness.

“You want me to come out and open the apartment?” she asked.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather be on the scene for once when I was going to start something?”

Qindra sighed heavily. “You are a piece of work, Sarah Beauhall.”

I knew I had her.

“I take the shield with me when I leave,” she said, exasperated. “And anything else dangerous we find.”

Yikes, didn’t see that coming. But still, would be good to know what the hell that shield was capable of. “Yeah, okay. Whatever makes sense. Could you hurry?”

“Sarah, you are definitely a magnet for the strange and dangerous. Hang loose, I’ll be right over.”

Now all I had to do was wait. I walked across the street to Frank’s place, a dive watering hole Katie and I drank at sometimes. Mainly served neighborhood regulars. Frank hadn’t worked there in years. His son, Bobby Joe, ran the place and he watered down the drinks for most folks. Not me or Katie, though. I think the old dude had a crush on Katie. It was early, so I got a rum and coke, sat at the bar with a view outside and waited.

Katie was going to be pissed if something bad had gone down in our apartment. You know, something else. Crap …

Forty-eight

Qindra showed up thirty minutes later. I think she had one of those clicky things the fire department used to switch lights all red except for her. She denied it, but there was no way anyone else got through Seattle traffic that efficiently. Unless, maybe her Miata has been enchanted or something. That would be great for the Ducati. Maybe I’d broach the subject for my birthday or something.

She climbed out of her Miata, leaving it parked in front of Elmer’s behind my bike. The pickup truck was long gone.

“Shall we?” Qindra asked as I joined her at the curb.

“Neighbor is still home,” I warned as we crossed the street. “Real jumpy sort.”

“Don’t worry about her,” she assured me. “I’ll give her some peace.”

We went up the stairs and looked around. The place looked just like I’d left it, only the candles in front of our door had burned out.

“Early American Séance?” she asked with a wry grin.

“Whatever. Crazy religious person is the best I got.”

Qindra knocked on the neighbor’s door, but no one answered. She pulled out her wand, cast a few squiggles in the air and shrugged. “She’s inside, scared, but unharmed.”

“Can you show me how to do that?” I asked.

“No.”

That was blunt. At least she was smiling when she said it.

She walked back toward our door, stopped at the hole in the wall, and looked back at me. “Your work?”

“Oh, yeah,” I admitted.

She just shook her head at me and went to our door. More squiggles glowed in the air as she examined things. “Nothing magical here,” she said with a shrug. She tapped the lock and the broken key leapt out and clattered to the floor. She tapped the lock a second time and the door swung open.

Now, I am by no means a good housekeeper. I kill houseplants, goldfish, and anything else that can’t fend for itself due to absent mindedness and neglect. I do not pick up my underwear nor my socks. I have been known to leave a gallon of milk on the counter for a week or more and never, ever do I dust or do windows.

All that crossed my mind as the door swung open.

Everything we had in the apartment was gone. I had a moment of panic thinking about the book and shield I had stashed in the bedroom. What the hell had happened?

It’s not that the apartment was empty. There was just nothing mundane there. The walls had shiny white spaces where Katie’s pictures had once hung. The floors were completely bare, cabinets were devoid of contents and even doors. But more than that, everything glowed like phosphorescent white porcelain. It was creepy. Starting just inside the doorway crystal formations covered every flat surface, oozing out of the gaping cabinets, pooling into stalagmites all around the kitchen and along the bar. Great webs of crystals covered the windows and hung down from the corners of the room.

“This is new, I take it?” Qindra asked as she stepped toward the door.

“Wait!” I shouted, reaching for her, my hand landing on her shoulder at the same time her foot crossed the threshold, breaking the plane between outside and in. A wave of dizziness washed over us both. Qindra stumbled, breaking my contact, but pulling me into the room. I recognized this stomach churning sensation. I’d felt it the last time I’d been plunged into the Sideways. Of course, then I was astral, out-of-body. This was lighter, somehow, but just as disorienting.

“That’s strange,” Qindra said, turning toward me, her wand in front of her face.

That’s when the feeder dropped from the ceiling, knocking her to the floor.

It looked like a giant spider, with thick glassine spines and a myriad of glowing eyes. I lunged forward and caught the huge creepy with a crunching crescent kick to its body. Glass shards scattered across the floor as the nasty thing flew off of Qindra and shattered two crystalline formations near the bar before slamming into the wall. He was a big sucker, but didn’t have much mass. I slid the sheath across my body, pulling Gram free with one practiced motion. I crossed the room and sliced through the creature’s abdomen. It squealed and kicked as it parted into two twitching pieces.

I glanced up to make sure there were no more bitey things on the ceiling and stepped back to Qindra, my free hand out to her. The feeder had stabbed Qindra with its stinger, gouging a long gash across her left arm.

“Oh, damn,” Qindra said, staggering to her feet. “Was that poisonous?”

The way it was bleeding, I doubted any poison was going to get into her system, but I didn’t know. “Can you stop the bleeding?” I asked, scanning the apartment for more surprises.

“Yeah, hang on.” She picked her wand up off the floor and waved it over her arm. At first nothing happened. “What in the name of the seven hells?” she gasped.

Uh oh. “That’s not good.”

She looked up at me, panic flickering over her face. “Not good at all,” she said, the color draining from her. “Let’s try that again.” This time she really concentrated. She held the wand so tightly, her knuckles went white. There was a moment of straining on her face, as if she were lifting something heavy. Finally three yellow sparks shot from the wand and faint blue and green lights appeared, forming a lovely little rune above her arm. In just a few short seconds, the bleeding had stopped and the wound was closed like it was a couple of days old. “Why is this so hard?” she asked, breathless. “It will leave a scar, but I won’t bleed to death.”

That was encouraging, but I didn’t like the whole magic-won’t-work-right thing she had going there. Reminded me too much of how guns and things stopped working around too much magic.

“I guess the neighbor isn’t totally crazy,” I said.

“Sarah!” Qindra barked, pointing past me. I whirled and caught a second biter in mid-flight. This one had more than eight legs and resembled more of a millipede than an arachnid. Either way, it didn’t like Gram at all. It stank of rotted meat and something I couldn’t identify, but it was sharp, acrid. I backed away and hacked it a couple more times for good measure. It had mandibles the size of garden shears.

Qindra swirled her wand and a stuttering yellow stream flew across the room toward the bedroom where the second critter had emerged. The light struck it and it screamed, but it didn’t slow down. This one looked more a dung beetle with a large, hard shell. I stepped in front of Qindra, avoiding a large and very sharp looking crystalline formation, and stabbed forward, shearing off one long, spiny leg. The damn thing was fast. It shifted, reared back, and sprayed a cloud of purple fog. I staggered back, coughing, swinging Gram in front of me as my vision blurred.