A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [68]
“Do you know where you’re going?” he asked. With no moonlight, no starlight, and, more importantly, his flashlight off so as not to give away their position, he stayed close.
“I can smell the wet ash from their fire. The candle wax.” She frowned. “Smells like gardenia.”
And then she froze.
Mike froze with her. “Vicki?”
“Burning blood. This way.”
He knew she was holding back so he could match her pace, his hand wrapped around her elbow as he ran full out, trusting her to steer him around any obstacle. They headed into the older part of the cemetery where ornate mausoleums housed the elite of the early 1900s. Clutching at her outstretched arm as she suddenly stopped, he nearly fell but found his balance at the last minute. They were close enough together, he could see her turning in place, head cocked.
“There.” A mausoleum set off a little from the rest. “I hear four heartbeats.”
Not for the first time, he wished she could return to the force. They had a canine unit, they had a mounted unit, they had a mountain bike unit for Christ’s sake—why not a bloodsucking undead unit? Her abilities were wasted within the narrow focus of her PI’s license.
He could see a flicker of light through the grill in the mausoleum’s door as they moved closer.
Teenagers. Peering carefully through the ornate iron-work, Mike could see four—three watching the fourth as she chanted over the smoking contents of a stainless steel mixing bowl set between the four white candles burning on the marble crypt in the center of the mausoleum. A triple circle about six feet in diameter had been drawn in what looked like sidewalk chalk on the back wall—a blue ring, then a red ring, then a white ring. In the center of the innermost circle was a complex scrawl of loops and angles.
Mike knew better than to equate youth with an absence of threat but nothing about the kids looked dangerous. Two of them—a thin white female and a tall East Indian male—were all but bouncing out of their black hightops. One of them—white male, shortest of the four—stood with his shoulders hunched and hands shoved into his hoodie’s pockets, looking a little scared. The body language of the girl doing the chanting suggested she wasn’t going to accept failure as an option.
He glanced down at Vicki and mouthed, “Demon?”
She shrugged and lifted her head to murmur, “I have no idea,” against his ear.
Whatever it was they were doing, they hadn’t done it it yet. Teenagers, he could handle. Demons . . .
He could, but he’d rather not.
Pushing his coat back to expose the badge on his belt, he pushed open the door. “Tell me,” he snapped in his best voice-of-authority, “that you’re not raising the dead, because that never turns out well.”
The scared boy made a sound Mike was pretty sure he’d deny later. The other two froze in place, mouths open. The chanting girl stopped chanting and turned—white female, pierced eyebrow, pierced lower lip. She had what looked like a silver fish knife in one hand and an impressive scowl for someone her age. This close, he doubted any of them were over fifteen.
“Ren!” Scared Boy took a step toward her. “It’s the cops.”
“I can see that.” She shoved a fall of black and white striped hair back off her face. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done!”
“What’s done?” Vicki asked.
Mike hadn’t seen Vicki move so he was damned sure Ren hadn’t. In all fairness, he had to admire her nerve—if he hadn’t been watching her, he wouldn’t have seen the flinch as she turned to find Vicki smiling at her from about ten centimeters away.
“The ritual.”
“I don’t see a demon.” Vicki peered into the bowl. “Unless it’s a very small demon. Another mouse,” she added, glancing over at Mike.
“Demons.” The bouncing boy rolled his eyes. “As if.”
“That’s so last millennium,” the girl beside him snorted.
Ren’s gaze skittered off Vicki’s face but, with the Hunter so close to the surface, Mike gave her points for the attempt. “If you must know,” she said as pride won out over