Supernatural--Children of Anubis Read online

“What are we to do?” Muriel asked in a plaintive voice, but Nathan had no answer for her. One thing was certain, though: they couldn’t pray for divine guidance, not when their god was the problem that needed to be solved.

  FIVE

  Amos Boyd pulled into the driveway of his ranch house in the early afternoon. He parked, but instead of getting out of his pickup right away, he sat there awhile, thinking.

  He’d left around six a.m. and had already put in almost a full day’s work, and he was tired and hungry. He parked in the driveway because the garage door opener was broken. He worked as a handyman these days, but he never seemed to find the time to take care of the jobs that needed doing in his own home. It was like that old saying: The cobbler’s children always go barefoot.

  It was one thing to do work for others and get paid for it, and another to work for yourself for free. Especially when you were tired, which he was all too often these days. He didn’t think of himself as an old man—all right, not very old—but he ran out of energy earlier in the day than he used to. In his mind, he was still in his thirties, but his body was more than twice that, and it had its own ideas about when to work and when to rest. He’d started the morning fixing Louisa Hudson’s drier which only blew cold air, and he’d finished by mending a leaf blower for eighty-nine-year-old Tom Munoz, and he’d stuck around afterward to clear the leaves off the man’s yard at no extra charge. And in between he’d worked several more jobs. He was exhausted, and all he wanted to do now was eat lunch, sit in his favorite chair and watch TV the rest of the afternoon. And if he dozed off, so much the better. He needed the rest after everything that had happened.

  He’d wanted to stay busy this morning, wanted—no, needed— to work in order to keep his mind off the terrible thing he’d witnessed. He’d seen the mutilation and murder of a young man, and he hadn’t been able to prevent it. He’d been having trouble sleeping ever since, and when he’d finally drifted off last night, he had nightmares of being surrounded by fanged, snarling people who advanced toward him step by step, curved claws ready to tear into him. He’d woken up abruptly, momentarily disoriented. He thought he’d heard someone scream and realized that it must’ve been him. He’d started early today and worked hard all morning, hoping to tire himself out so he wouldn’t experience a repeat of last night.

  And as bad as seeing that young man murdered by those three crazy people—or whatever they were—the aftermath hadn’t been much more pleasant for him. Reporters from both Bridge Valley and neighboring towns had gotten wind of what had happened, and before long the sheriff’s office had reporters and news vans parked outside. A fair number of looky-loos showed up as well, most likely having heard the report on their police scanners or via social media. All those people looking at him, shouting questions… It had been too much for him, and when the sheriff finally turned him loose, he was more than ready to go home and try to forget about what he’d seen.

  As if that were possible.

  He’d done his best not to dwell on the murder today, but while he was repairing a machine or plastering a hole in the wall, images came to him—yellow eyes, blood-slick teeth and claws—accompanied by sounds and smells. Growling, the primitive scent of excited animals, the wet tearing of flesh, the crack of ribs…

  It hadn’t helped that he’d been getting calls from representatives of one media outlet or another, wanting him to appear on camera and talk about the “grisly crime” he’d witnessed. But worst of all was the knowledge that the police didn’t believe his story, that crazy people with fangs and claws killed a young man and stole his heart. Sheriff Crowder had kept a stony face the whole time he’d interviewed Amos, but it was clear the man hadn’t credited his story. Some of his deputies hadn’t bothered to hide their disbelief and exchanged smirking glances with each other when they thought he wasn’t looking.

  He was starting to doubt his own memories. Everything had happened so fast. Was it possible he’d only imagined the killers had possessed animalistic traits? Maybe they’d looked like beasts to him because they’d acted like beasts? And maybe he’d only thought he’d hit the woman when he’d shot at her. It was dark, and he had been scared and confused. Hard to aim in those circumstances. Sheriff Crowder had suggested all these things, and maybe the man had been right. Amos didn’t know.

  He got out of his pickup and entered his house. As soon as he set foot inside, he felt better. Coming home wasn’t the same without Emily here, but they’d lived in this house for close to fifty years, and her presence still suffused the place, and that was a comfort to him.

  He walked through the foyer and into the kitchen. Although he’d been looking forward to lunch, now that he was here, he wasn’t hungry. He was thirsty, however. He got a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and took a long, satisfying drink. When he lowered the bottle, he realized something was wrong.

  Rusty.

  Rusty was an old tabby cat that he’d picked up from an animal shelter a few weeks after Emily passed. He’d thought having a pet around the house would be good for him, and he figured a cat would be fairly low maintenance. He’d planned on getting a younger animal, but when he saw Rusty, grizzled old thing that he was, he felt he’d found a kindred spirit. Rusty wasn’t overly affectionate, which suited Amos fine, but the cat liked to be in the same room as his owner, and he always came to greet Amos when he got home and meow for a treat. Amos would give him a pinch of lunch meat—roast beef was his favorite—and then they’d settle down for a quiet evening of watching TV.

  But there was no Rusty.

  Amos supposed he could be down in the basement using his litterbox, but Rusty had never failed to greet him at the door. Not once.

  He felt a cold prickle on the back of his neck, as if someone was watching him. He put his beer down on the kitchen counter and turned around quickly, but no one was there.

  Getting paranoid in your old age, Amos. But on the other hand, he hadn’t reached his current age by not listening to his gut instincts. He told himself he should call 911, but he’d dealt with the sheriff and his deputies plenty yesterday. They already thought he was a few bricks shy of a load, and if he was letting his imagination run away with him, he didn’t want them to come out here, find nothing, and have another reason to laugh at him. No, whatever this was, he’d handle it alone. He went back outside to get his revolver from his pickup, and then returned to the house.

  Holding his gun with the barrel pointed toward the ceiling, like he’d seen cops in police shows do, he began slowly moving through the house, doing his best to make as little sound as possible. If there was someone else inside here with him, they’d have heard him come in, but he didn’t want them to know his exact location. He’d already been in the kitchen, so he checked the living room. As he entered, he was prepared to see an intruder—maybe holding a weapon of their own—standing in the middle of the room. But no one was there. He quickly checked behind the couch and the easy chairs on either side of it, but he found nothing other than a few dust bunnies.

  He turned back around and headed for the hallway that led to the bedrooms. The hall, like the living room, was empty. There were five doors in the hallway leading to three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a linen closet. He stood in the middle of the hall, listening for the slightest sound—a scrape of movement, a sigh of breath—but he heard nothing, save the nervous pounding of his heart. He flipped a mental coin and chose to investigate the bathroom first.

  If this was a movie, the hero would kick the door open, level his weapon, and shout, Freeze or I’ll shoot! This wasn’t a movie, though, and he opened the door the usual way, but he stepped to the side, in case someone was in there. But the bathroom was empty. Starting to feel a bit foolish now, he checked the bedroom across from the bathroom. This room had belonged to Amos and Emily’s only child, Traci. She was in her thirties and lived with her wife in Portland, so now it served as a guest room, which meant it stayed empty most of the year, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas, when Traci and Rebec
ca came to visit.

  It was empty, too.

  He continued down the hall, passing the linen closet on the way. There wasn’t enough room for anyone to hide in there—too many towels, sheets, and blankets—so he didn’t bother checking it. The last two rooms were located at the end of the hall, on opposite sides. The one on the right was his and Emily’s bedroom. He still thought of it as being hers too. The one on the left was nominally a home office—a desk for a computer, a filing cabinet for important papers—but over the years it had become an unofficial storage room. There were cardboard boxes filled with Traci’s childhood toys, clothes which Emily had never had the heart to get rid of, holiday decorations, and boxes of paperback westerns that Amos had read over the years and thought he might get around to rereading someday. It was as empty as the rest of the house. He closed the door to the office, stepped to the master bedroom, and then—expecting to find nothing— opened the door.

  Cool air wafted over him, and when he turned on the light, he saw the window over the bed had been broken, the curtains torn down and shredded on the floor. Glass shards covered the comforter, and standing nearby, slowly slicing her palm with a piece of glass—was the woman who’d ripped out the young man’s heart.

  She didn’t look at him at first. She watched blood flow from the wounds she’d created on her palm, almost hypnotized by it. Amos knew he had to be mistaken, but it looked as if the cuts healed almost as soon as she made them.

  She wore the same clothes she’d had on yesterday, only now they were stained with stiff patches of blood, and her eyes, teeth, and claws were those of a beast.

  My god, he thought. My nightmare from last night… it’s coming true.

  He’d lowered the revolver to his side when he’d stepped into the room, but now he raised it, took aim at the beast-woman, and fired. Once he started, he didn’t stop until he’d emptied his weapon. Amos was frightened, so his hand wasn’t as steady as it could be, but he still managed to put four of the revolver’s six rounds into the woman. One hit her left shoulder, one entered her lower left abdomen—drilling a hole through one of her kidneys, he thought—one struck the meat of her left thigh and passed right through, but one slammed into her chest, a few inches to the right of her heart. But while the woman’s body jerked with the impact of each bullet and she let out soft grunts of pain, she did not go down. Blood soaked her clothes with fresh gore, but she didn’t take her gaze from her palm, which she still slowly cut with the glass shard. After a moment, she looked at him and smiled, displaying fangs. She turned her wounded palm to him. Now there were no cuts or scars, no indication the skin had been marred at all.

  He understood why she did this. Just as her hand had healed the damage she’d inflicted upon it, so too had the bullet wounds he’d caused. His revolver might as well have been a pea-shooter for all the effect it had on her.

  The woman’s hand blurred. Fiery pain exploded in the space between the first and second fingers of his right hand. The woman had thrown the shard like a shuriken, and it had sunk deep into his flesh. He cried out in pain, and his hand sprang open reflexively. The revolver dropped to the floor with a heavy thunk. Not that the loss of the weapon mattered. He didn’t have any more ammunition on him, and even if he had, those bullets would’ve had no more effect than the first ones. Blood pattered to the floor like thick crimson rain. It was difficult to read expressions on the woman’s inhuman face, but he thought she was amused at the current situation. Amused, and excited.

  How had she found his home? Could she have tracked his scent? Before last night, he would’ve found the thought ridiculous, but now…

  He made no conscious decision to flee. One instant he was looking at the woman, and the next he was running down the hallway. He ran wildly, slamming his shoulders against the walls, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

  As he passed by the linen closet, the door flew open and one of the men who he’d seen with the woman yesterday leaped out, snarling. He swung his hand at Amos’s retreating back, and Amos cried out as claws tore through his shirt and ravaged the flesh underneath. The man was strong, much more so than he looked, and the strike nearly knocked Amos down. But he managed to remain on his feet and kept going, now bleeding from his back as well as his hand.

  How had the man squeezed himself into the linen closet? There was no way he should’ve fit. But the detail was not important right now, not when there was a pair of monsters in his home, eager to kill a… a…

  Witness, he thought. I saw what they did—what they are— and they want to make sure I never speak about it again.

  He ran down the hallway, intending to make for the front door so he could get in his pickup. But he heard footsteps behind him, accompanied by animalistic growls, and he knew that if he did manage to get out of the house—and that was a huge if right now—he’d never make it to his vehicle. The door to the basement was in the kitchen and if he could reach it… He veered toward the kitchen, ran to the basement door and slammed it shut behind him. The door had a lock on the inside, but before he could engage it, one of them slammed into the door and knocked him backward. He tumbled down the wooden stairs into darkness and hit his head on the concrete floor. The impact caused him to see a momentary flash of light behind his eyes, but the darkness quickly returned. He thought he’d lost consciousness—which at this point would come as a relief—but then he heard a click. Fluorescent light, real light, flooded his eyes.

  The basement was filled with more junk from his life with Emily and Traci that he’d never been able to part with. Traci’s first two-wheel bike—her big-girl bike, she’d called it. Emily’s workbench covered with crafting supplies—hot glue gun, scraps of paper, containers filled with beads and sequins. Plastic tubs filled with neatly folded old clothes. A long cardboard box containing the artificial Christmas tree he’d put up every year since Traci had been a baby. All of the things down here were remnants of his time on Earth, memories of what had been a life well lived. His only regret was how hard Traci would take his death. But she had Rebecca to comfort her. She’d be all right.

  He thought of Emily, thought of her loving smile, and it brought one of his own.

  See you soon, sweetie.

  The woman began descending the stairs, and the man followed behind her. They came slowly now he had nowhere to go. Amos put his hand out, intending to push himself to his feet so he could try to put up some kind of fight before he died. As he did, his hand touched something furry and wet, and when he looked to see what it was, he learned what had happened to poor Rusty.

  He heard movement behind him, and he turned his head to see the third man—fanged and clawed like the others— standing behind him. Or was it a different man? He looked so much like the other that they could be… Of course. Twins. Resting on the floor next to the man was a pile of towels, sheets, and blankets, along with some wooden shelves. He understood then how the other man had fit into the closet, and he had time to think it was a pretty clever trick before the three fell upon him, biting and clawing.

  SIX

  Greg stood next to his mother as she looked over the bananas. Most of them were green, a few were yellow, but none of them was to her liking. Normally he hated going shopping with her because she was so picky, but after screwing up the Rite of Renewal so badly this morning, he was relieved to be away from Nathan and Muriel. Neither of them had said or done anything to make him feel bad. They’d gone out of their way to reassure him that he’d do better next time. But he couldn’t forget the fury in his grandfather’s crimson eyes as their god used him as a weapon. So when Greg’s lessons were finished for the day, and his mother asked if he’d like to help her with the grocery shopping, he’d jumped at the chance. Anything to get away from the site of his failure.

  Marta Monsour picked up a bunch of ripe bananas and held them to her son’s face.

  “Do these smell like they’re starting to go bad?”

  Marta was in her late forties, short and thin, black-haired and brown-
skinned, like most of their people. Like Muriel, she believed it was more important to fit in with her environment than adhere to tradition when she was in public, and she blended into the crowd in a red Indiana Hoosiers sweatshirt and jeans. She tugged at her sleeves as if the cloth irritated her skin. Perhaps it did. His people did possess heightened senses, after all, touch included.

  And speaking of heightened senses…

  “Go on,” she urged. “Smell them.”

  Greg knew his mother wouldn’t be satisfied until he did as she wanted. While a jakkal’s senses remained strong when they were in human form, his were especially acute. He glanced around to make sure no one was looking, then closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

  “Sorry. They’re still fresh.” So much so that the smell nauseated him a little. Their people not only worshipped a god associated with death, but like the animals they were related to, they were carrion-eaters. They preferred their food to be at least on the verge of spoiling, if not rotting.

  Marta sighed and put the bananas in their cart. “We’ll just have to leave them out and wait until they’re ready,” she said. She gave him a smile. “Let’s go see if we can find some wilted lettuce.”

  She pushed the cart toward the lettuce, and Greg followed dutifully behind her. Maybe he’d made a bad choice accompanying her. Right now, stewing in his own shame at home sounded better than being a living rot detector for his mom. At least it wouldn’t have been as boring.

  He was tempted to put his earbuds in and listen to some music, but while his mom didn’t dress traditionally in public, she was still plenty traditional when it came to her expectations of his behavior. He knew she’d view his attempt to lose himself in music as disrespectful to her. So his phone would have to remain in his pocket, leaving him to listen to the tinny pop music playing over the grocery’s sound system.

  Sometimes being a monster really blew.