Ten Silver Bullets Read online

  TEN

  SILVER

  BULLETS

  Edited by Adam Millard

  First Published in the UK 2012

  This edition published 2012

  Copyright © Crowded Quarantine Publications 2012

  The Moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9571033-3-7

  © Crowded Quarantine Publications 2012

  www.crowdedquarantine.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  BLOOD MOON – R.S. Hunter 5

  COMPTIME – Rebecca Snow 30

  RHODESIAN NIGHTS – Douglas Vance Castagna 45

  PAWPRINTS ON A HEART – Zoe Adams 60

  WHAT'S THE SCOOP? - Chantal Boudreau 77

  THE STRENGTH OF A PACK – Rebecca Besser 91

  YOU SAY CURSE, I SAY TOMATO – Suzanne Robb 112

  US 20 – David Naughton-Shires 128

  FOR OUR SINS: A FABLE – Brent Abell 139

  AFTERWORD – Adam Millard 156

  BLOOD MOON

  By R.S. Hunter

  I jerked awake as the phone rang like a gunshot in my apartment. The cold sweat that coated my body made my sheets stick to my limbs. They ensnared my legs, and in a moment of terror that carried over from my restless sleep, I tried to kick them off. I calmed down when I realized where I was.

  “Damn,” I muttered. The taste of stale whisky coated my teeth and tongue.

  The phone rang again, definitely not helping my hangover. I lunged for it and managed to pick it up on the third ring.

  “What?” I growled.

  The sky outside was dark, all the stars hidden by the clouds. Rain pattered against the glass. Too much goddamn rain for my liking.

  “It’s Jackson,” the tired voice on the other end of the line said.

  Officer William Jackson. Maybe the closest thing I have to a friend, and it’s mostly a plus that he’s a cop. Except for when I got calls at three in the fucking morning.

  “Meet me at this address. It’s Frank Garcon’s place,” he said as he gave me the address of a house a little further up the river and away from the French Quarter where I lived. Not so far as to reach the really big mansions with the columns, the plantation homes.

  “Can it wait?” I asked. Based on the nightmares I’d been having I didn’t want to go back to bed. But I sure as hell didn’t want to venture out in the rain to some goddamn Frank Garcon’s place. Who the hell was he anyway? Name didn’t ring a bell.

  “No. Get here as soon as possible.”

  Jackson hung up before I could complain again. I knocked the phone off the night stand in frustration and stood up. Clothes were scattered around my cramped one-room apartment. I found the cleanest ones and put them on.

  Half-full bottles of booze sat on my tiny kitchen table. I didn’t care that they were out in the open. Were the cops going to raid me? Hell no. To me Prohibition was a toothless beast. A silver flask and one of my guns lay next to the bottles. I grabbed them both. Flask first, shaking it to see if it had anything left in it. Almost full. Good. I grabbed the revolver, spun open the chamber to make sure it was loaded. All six, perfect.

  I hoped I wouldn’t need to use the gun, but you didn’t last long in this business if you showed up places unprepared. Never bring a knife to a gun fight. That kind of thing.

  Gun and flask in hand, I headed to the coat rack standing near my front door. I stuck the gun in a shoulder holster and shrugged it on. I switched the flask to my opposite hand while I pulled on my overcoat. Its contents sloshed around inside. One drink before going? No. Best not to waste it now. Might need it after dealing with whatever Jackson needed me to see. Or to help drown out the voices in my head that screamed at me with words no mortal was ever supposed to hear.

  I put the flask inside my coat pocket, again not caring about the laws. Finally, I grabbed my hat and pulled it low on my head, creating shadows to partially hide my features. The rain pounded the sidewalk as I opened the front door. I sighed. Damn rain. I stepped outside into the early morning gloom. Water fell off the brim of my hat in a complete circle around my head.

  I walked through the streets, both cursing the hour but also enjoying the solitude it gave me. The Quarter’s gas lamps flickered, and in other sections of the city, electric lights shone weakly. Every now and then the clouds broke, letting the round moon help light the way. Around me, New Orleans smelled like bananas and all the other smells coming from the port, dampness and fish. The smell of baking bread cut through it here and there as some bakeries started early. Finally, the rain started to let up.

  Silhouetted under the streetlights, I saw a handful of whores. Wishful thinking on their part. Most of their clients had already passed out or purchased the services of their better looking companions. Some of them called out to me, half-heartedly, but we both knew they didn’t mean it. Like me, they just wanted to be inside, preferably asleep.

  That was New Orleans for you. An old city, full of people, history, and magic. All of them brought from all corners of the globe. One of the perks or curses, depending on your perspective, of being a bustling port city.

  After a short while the buildings changed to partly spread out houses, and I reached the home of Frank Garcon. A police car was parked against the curb. The house was stately but not overdone. As I walked up the front walkway, I saw the orange tip of a cigarette glowing on the front porch. Jackson waiting for me. The electric lamps flanking the front door were on, casting harsh shadows across Jackson’s face. It made the pock marks on his face look deeper than they were.

  “Jackson,” I said, sticking out my hand.

  “Sam,” he replied, taking one last drag on his cigarette before dropping it on the porch. He put it out with his heel then gave my hand a firm shake.

  “Where’s the body?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say there was a body on the phone.”

  I shrugged. “There’s always a body.”

  “Inside.”

  Jackson turned around and opened the front door, gesturing for me to follow him. The inside of the house was classy. Polished floors like I expected. Nothing too fancy, but well-off enough to maybe warrant a live-in servant or two. The first floor’s shutters were all drawn shut, and the inside was lit by electric lights. The rain had started up again, pattering against the roof and the iron fixtures on the outside of the house.

  I followed Jackson up the staircase from the large entrance foyer to the second story. My feet left damp spots on the ivory coloured carpet upstairs. We stopped before what looked like the door to a bedroom. I narrowed my eyes at the sight of it. Big, heavy wood. I saw iron bands running along it, holding the thick planks together. When the light hit the door just right, I saw tiny etchings on the surface. Most folk would have thought they were decorative and nothing more. I knew better. Jackson knew better, or at least he knew enough to call me.

  “It’s not pretty in there,” he said.

  “If I wanted pretty I would’ve found some company and stayed in bed.”

  He nodded then turned and pulled on the door. Even though he tried to hide it, I could see him straining to get it moving. Damn. The door must have been heavier than I first thought.

  Once he got the gap wide enough, I stepped past him, stopped short, and gasped. Now I’ve seen
things, terrible things. I was in Europe during and after the Great War. The memories of those events stayed with me, even over ten years later. But even before then, I’d seen inhuman things no man was meant to see. But this was enough to give me pause.

  Blood coated almost every surface in the room: the floor, the walls, some of it had even splattered itself on the ceiling, sticky and cloying. There was a woman’s corpse near the middle of the room, the source of all the blood. I was only able to tell it was a woman because of the clothes and the long blonde hair that fanned out around the shredded head and face. Her chest and throat had been brutally torn open. Broken tips of ribs stuck up into the air like jagged teeth around a gaping mouth.

  “The maid says she found Mrs. Garcon like that maybe an hour ago,” Jackson said.

  And where was Frank Garcon? Right now he was probably the number one suspect. I took a step closer, ignoring the blood that coated the soles of my shoes. I peered down into the chest cavity.

  “The heart’s gone,” I said.

  He looked down at the body and nodded, lips pressed tightly together.

  “What does it mean?” he asked, looking like he was trying to keep his mouth shut as much as possible.

  “Could be lots of things.”

  I frowned as I stared at the body. Something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t just because of the missing heart. I sniffed the air, and aside from the coppery scent of blood, that was it. Maybe only a very faint stench of death. No flies buzzing around the body. The corpse was fresh, very fresh.

  “How long do I have?” I asked.

  “Maybe an hour. That’s as long as the maid was willing to give you. She wants more of us,” he gestured toward his uniform, “here. She almost didn’t let you come.”

  I circled around the body, inspecting it from different angles. Once I got over the initial shock, I wasn’t bothered by the carnage. She wasn’t alive anymore, so there was no reason to be bothered by the sight. It was just a hunk of meat and bone.

  “What’d you tell the maid?”

  Jackson backed away from the body, hovering near the open door. “I told her you were a specialist we called in for special or unusual cases.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  I turned my attention away from the body and inspected the room. It was a fairly large room near one of the house’s corners. It could have been used as a guest bedroom. The walls were decorated with plain wallpaper, but now they were covered with blood and what looked like deep gouge marks. The windows were narrow, little more than slits protected by iron bars. Iron bars…on the inside?

  I wandered over to one of the windows and tested the bars. They didn’t budge an inch when I pulled on them, and like I guessed, they were made of solid iron. I spotted a latticed skylight set into the ceiling almost directly above the body. There were even bars reinforcing the lattice work. I followed the line from the skylight down to the ground.

  “Damn,” I muttered.

  I took a step forward and squatted down underneath the skylight. There was a huge circle inlaid in the floor, easily three or four feet in diameter. And then I spotted the second one a few inches inside the first one. I touched them and a tiny shock ran through my body. Well this was interesting. The smaller circle was made of iron, but the larger one was made of silver. Despite the blood splatters, the metal still gleamed. More lines of silver and iron ran inside the circles and created a multi-sided star. This was one hell of a containment circle. The person who had made it knew what they were doing.

  “Somebody didn’t want whatever was in here to get out,” I said.

  Still squatting, I looked up at the skylight. I could only see swirling clouds through it, but then all of a sudden they broke. The moon’s scarred face looked down at me. Slowly an idea began to form in my head. I resisted the urge to pull out the flask to help it along. Jackson was a good colleague, but only a half-friend. It’d make my life a lot harder if I defied the law right in front of him.

  I looked closer at the circles. Apprehension grew in my stomach. Parts of them were broken. Tiny pieces less than a half inch long had been removed. You had to be right down on the floor to notice them. The containment circle had been tampered with… the circle, the moon, the way the body had been mutilated.

  “What day’s today?” I demanded.

  “Tuesday the fourth,” he replied. “Why?”

  “Shit.”

  “What? Do you know who did this?”

  “Do the Garcons have any kids?” I asked.

  “No. Just Mr. and Mrs. Garcon lived here.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Then Frank Garcon’s a werewolf.”

  Jackson just stared at me, blinked a few times, then finally opened his mouth to speak. “A what?” he asked.

  “A werewolf, or a loup garou if you prefer the français.”

  “I thought with all the pentagrams and carvings that this was devil worship.”

  “Jackson,” I said, taking a step toward him. I crossed my arms in annoyance. “How many times do I have to tell you? Just ‘cause there’s a ‘pentagram’ doesn’t mean it’s Satanic.”

  “I just thought—“

  “Do me a favour and stop thinking for a minute. Just listen,” I snapped.

  He glowered at me, but thankfully he shut up. I wasn’t in the mood to have to argue with him.

  “Frank Garcon’s a werewolf, and he knew it.” I gestured down at the floor. “These circles and runes are basically a magic prison cell. Wouldn’t do shit with an ordinary person, even Frank when he’s unchanged could come and go as he pleased. But as soon as something magical gets inside it’s not getting out.”

  “Then how’d Frank get out? Something killed Mrs. Garcon,” Jackson said, sounding pleased that he potentially tripped me up.

  “That’s the thing. He shouldn’t have been able to get out.”

  I looked once more at the body of Mrs. Garcon lying on the floor. What was Frank thinking as he tore through his wife’s chest and ripped her heart out? Did he even know what he was doing at the time? Probably not. Werewolves dipped into this well of primal instinct. I’d seen one over in Scotland back before the turn of the century. Wasn’t a pretty sight.

  “He shouldn’t have been able to get out,” I repeated. “Not until after the full moon set, but somebody tampered with his precautions.”

  Jackson stepped past me and gingerly over the body. He kept his head high as he did. He walked over to one of the gouges in the wall and ran his fingers along it, probing it.

  “Look at the damage here,” he said. “Frank must have been loose for a while before killing Mrs. Garcon.”

  The walls of the room were covered with lots of deep scratch marks, all the way through the wallpaper and into the wood of the house.

  “Maybe Mrs. Garcon knew of her husband’s…condition.”

  He nodded. “She must have heard him thrashing around, making more noise than usual, and went to check on him.”

  I nodded. That made perfect sense. Mrs. Garcon came upstairs to check things out. She went inside the room and never came out. By now, weak sunlight started to filter through the windows and skylight. It made the blood on the ground look a brighter shade of red instead of a dark almost purple crimson. I checked my wristwatch, a handy little thing I picked up during the War. Soldiers used to wear them. You couldn’t fumble with a chain while shells were falling around you.

  It was almost dawn now, and coming from downstairs, I could hear the maid shuffling around and making noise. Too much time must have gone by without her seeing the arrival of more police officers. I had to leave soon to keep things from getting uncomfortable for Jackson. I didn’t have the best relationship with most of New Orleans’ police officers.

  “I better leave before the maid calls the cops, again,” I said.

  “I’ll drive you back.”

  I shook my head. “Go back to the station so you can one of the first ones here. Spin this however y
ou want, but try to keep it away from werewolves.”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “I know you’re not, but I don’t need any amateurs coming out of the bayou and getting in my way.”

  I pulled out a white handkerchief from my pocket and bent down next to the body. I dabbed at some of the blood coating the edges of her chest cavity. I also picked a few short, coarse grey hairs loose from the fabric of her clothes.

  “What’s that for?” he asked. “Evidence?”

  “Something like that.” I wrapped the handkerchief up and put it back in my pocket.

  The two of us looked at Mrs. Garcon’s body one last time, then turned and left the room. We headed downstairs and out the front door.

  “Where’re you headed?” Jackson asked as we reached the front porch.

  “To bed,” I said blinking in the early morning sun. “Garcon’s a werewolf. I don’t have to worry about him killing again until next month.”

  “That’s real compassionate.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t get paid for compassion.

  Jackson climbed into his car and drove away while I walked along the streets. The city started to come alive as the sun came up. More cars filled the roads; newspaper boys hawked their papers from the street corners.

  I lied to Jackson. I wasn’t going to go back to sleep. I couldn’t sleep now. With a quick glance over my shoulder, I pulled out my flask and took a long pull. I coughed slightly and scrambled to hide it from view as another police car drove by. Maybe it was Jackson already on his way back to the Garcon’s house. I couldn’t tell. As soon as the police car turned the corner, I took the flask back out and drained it. I wouldn’t be able to drink more until I refilled it back at my apartment, but I didn’t care. I needed it right then and there. The alcohol’s warmth radiated out from the centre of my stomach, going all the way to my fingers and toes.

  It was almost four years to the day since I had walked out on my previous employer. The nightmares always got worse every time the anniversary drew near. You don’t work as an executioner and hit man for the Sidhe for years and then simply walk away. Even though that life was behind me, my past was still plainly visible for any who had the Gift. But for normal people or even people like Jackson--those on the cusp of seeing how fucked up their world truly is, my past was invisible.