the porch, crashing hard into the ground. Stars swirled before my eyes and I couldn’t see. I tried to get up, but my arms and legs were numb. I couldn’t feel them. My thoughts stumbled all over each other as I tried to think.
The stars winked out one by one as blackness flooded the edges of my vision. I felt my body convulse…and then I felt nothing.
Chapter Three
“I told you he’d survive.”
A strange, smooth voice filtered through my ears and slid muffled into my brain. I heard the words, but I couldn’t make much sense of them; they sounded almost foreign. Pain flitted at the edge of my senses, muted and nagging more than debilitating, but it was there. Bright dots danced across the screens of my eyelids, but I was afraid to open them. There was a slight sense of motion and pressure inside my skull. It felt like there was a worm wiggling its way out of my brain.
“Damn. That’s some freaky shit right there,” another voice said from somewhere above me, this one rougher as though it belonged to a lifelong smoker. It sounded clearer than the first.
Cold and dizzy, I lay there as consciousness bitchslapped me into coherence and chased the pain away. The skin at my forehead twitched and something warm and wet slid down the side of my head, bouncing off my ear and thumping to the floor beside me. Logic and reasonable thought came back, at least as much as I was capable of, and it hit me what happened.
I’d been shot.
“What. The. Fuck?” Fury burned my cheeks and filled my veins with adrenaline. I sat up in a rush and opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was the barrel of my. 45 leveled at my face. My heart stilled in my chest. You think I’d be used to it by now.
“We both know what kind of bullets are in this, so let’s keep it civil.”
I glared past the barrel to the hand holding it, then up the black-clad arm to the man behind it. Dressed in what closely resembled a SWAT uniform, though with no identifying markings, the man who held my gun was older, but there was no taking his age for weakness. Shaved bald, his bushy eyebrows only had a sprinkling of black amidst the gray, but they drew my attention to the swirling green of his eyes. Narrowed, they stared at me from a sharp-featured face without expression. The only sign of life was the tiny flicker of the muscle of his jaw beneath his leathered skin. He reminded me a lot of Poe. He held the gun steady.
“Civil? You shot me in the head.”
“Actually, he did.” He motioned to a man standing behind him in the small, featureless room without taking his eyes, or the gun, off me.
Also dressed in SWAT regalia, the other guy was easily a foot and a half shorter than the first, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in girth. His arms stretched the fabric of his sleeves to its fullest, like he was smuggling mutant coconuts. The mass of his chest put McConnell to shame, and his short legs were thick as columns running down from the puffed up flak jacket. A little darker than Katon, his brown eyes stared at me from a round face. Even his cheeks were muscular. He held up a sniper rifle and wiggled it, smiling as he did.
“That’s Captain Emmett Johnson,” the older man told me, once more gesturing to the dwarf. “I’m Colonial Eli Castor, and you are Frank ‘Triggaltheron’ Trigg.”
“Thanks for telling me who I am.” My eyes drifted to Johnson. “I had forgotten seeing how a chunk of my brain was splattered across the sidewalk.” That seemed to amuse him. His smile grew wider.
“Well, Mister Trigg, I apologize for our abrasive introduction, but we felt it best to set the tone of our discussion early so we might head off any possible hostility…on your part, of course. I hope you understand,” Castor stated, as he pointed to a chair at my back. “Have a seat, please.”
“Of course.” Pleasantries aside, I knew a threat when I heard one. I had no idea who the hell these guys were, but they’d made their point by putting a bullet into my skull right outside my own home. They also knew about the DA slayers and my name-all of it-so they were connected to the supernatural world somehow.
I stood up slowly and dropped into the chair like a good boy as I scanned the room. These guys were human without a hint of magic whiffing off of them. Interesting. My own power flickered inside me. I felt pretty confident I could take them, if I needed to, without getting killed, but I wanted to know who they were and what they wanted first.
“Okay, you’ve got my attention. What now?”
“We have a little chat.” Castor handed my pistol to Johnson, who didn’t seem to mind keeping it trained on me. “But first, let me introduce our boss.”
He went to the reinforced steel door at the front of the room and knocked twice. Pressurized locks hissed and I heard a number of heavy bolts release, one at a time. Once they were done, he pulled the door open.
The room went cold, my breath misting in the sudden chill.
Right outside stood a tall, pale woman dressed in the chic equivalent of the SWAT suits, minus the vest. Her pale skin stood out bright against the deep blue of her form-fitting outfit. Purple eyes looked me over as she strolled into the room, her long white hair flowing behind her on an imaginary breeze. Castor shut the door behind her.
For a second, I thought she might be a revenant as my senses picked up the essence of her power. I let out a wispy sigh when I realized it wasn’t quite at that level. She was too solid for that, too. My puckering asshole relaxed when I caught the faint hint of decay mixed within the drift of her energy. She was undead of a different kind; a wight. I’d only seen a couple of them over the years. Neither had looked anything like this one.
For a dead chick, she was pretty hot.
The door closed behind her, the bolts sliding home, as she came to stand before me. “My name is Rebecca Shaw.” She held out her manicured hand.
I waved it away. “No offense, but I have more than enough frigid women in my life already. I’m not really looking to add another.” I winked and eased back in the seat. “How about you explain why Captain Picard and Bushwick Bill over there shot and kidnapped me.”
A cruel smile graced her lips. “Shot you?” She ran her cold fingertips across my forehead, sending a shiver down my spine. Her hand came away wet with blood but the wound had already healed. “I don’t see any kind of injury, do you captain, colonial?” she asked her flunkies.
Both answered with a chuckled, “No, ma’am.”
“As for kidnapping,” she continued, “we’re well within our rights to bring you in for questioning. It’s hardly abduction. You’re a suspect in a grievous case of crimes against humanity. We’re simply doing our duty.”
Her words jumbled together inside my head like a train wreck of huh? I had no idea what she was talking about, but it was pretty clear she and her minions worked for some kind of government agency. Now I only needed to find out the specifics of who, what, where, when, and why.
“Who are y’all, and what do you want?” I got straight to the point.
She wiped her hand on my sleeve, her smile still cracking her narrow face. She had nice teeth. “We work for the Department of Supernatural Investigation; DSI for short. The name is fairly self-explanatory, I would imagine. While the department has been in service for over ten years, the recent disturbance of supernatural energy that devastated the planet seemed to light a fire under the POTUS’ ass. We are now fully funded and authorized to do what needs to be done to end the threat of supernatural incursion.”
“So, you’re the Ghostbusters? Where’s Chevy and Dan?”
Johnson growled and took a step forward, but Rebecca stopped him with a look. “Joke if it makes you feel better, Trigg, but know this: We’ve been given every necessary clearance to deal with the problem as we see fit; as I see fit. As long as the bodies don’t float to the surface too often, no one in our government will be dredging the lake to look for them. Do you understand?”
I just stared at her and grinned. I’ve been intimidated by the best in my life, and she didn’t even begin to qualify.
She seemed to realize that. “Understand that I’m not trying to scare you. I know your relation to the Devil, and suspect you’ve seen far more frightening things than anyone in this room has ever experienced. However, we are not without resources. We set you up at your home, bagged and tagged you-without incident, I might add-using nothing more than our human element. All that cost less than ten dollars-gas money and a single bullet, if you’d like
