I expected him to fight me on it, but he simply shrugged and took out his phone, turning on the flashlight function. “Stay right there then. I’ll take photos so you can study the scene.”
I mock saluted him and watched him disappear. About thirty feet away, the rest of the cops milled around, not straying farther than the reach of the spotlight. I looked the other way, into the darkness not twenty feet away, and shivered as a wicked breeze blew past me.
Beneath my sweater and jacket, my necklace began to pulse with heat. Narrowing my eyes, I scanned the shadows around me.
“Can we get any more light down here?” I called out to one of the responding cops. I thought his name was Smith.
He shook his head. “There’s something funky going on. We can’t get any closer than this. We tried to set up a light right where you’re standing now, but it wouldn’t turn on.” He jerked his chin in the direction of where the light was now. “This is as close as we got where it would work. There’s some sort of magic in use here. That’s why we called you freaks in.”
His colleagues laughed at the jibe. The fucker was lucky I was standing where I was and too lazy to walk my ass back up there. Grinding my teeth, I looked at the shadows, then to where Sawyer’s flashlight was bouncing around inside the container. Another sharp gust of wind winged past me, the surrounding containers forming a tunnel. It seemed to call to me, that wind, and I took a step forward, straining my eyes to see who was there.
Because someone was there.
With one more furtive glance in Sawyer’s direction, I took a couple of steps into the darkness. I’d maybe only gone about fifteen feet when there was an audible pop and something brushed against my cheeks and neck. I tried not to twitch, because it felt a lot like spiders running over my skin.
I heard my name again, but this time, I heard it more clearly. Like whoever was there was only just past the next stack of containers. I reached for my side arm and held it down by my thigh. My skin still prickled like hands were running over it, stroking me and urging me farther into the dark.
“Hello?” I called, wincing when my voice echoed like I was standing inside a large room instead of the open air. Acoustics aside, the containers would have absorbed the sound rather than bounced it.
The opal burned a little hotter, and I moved it onto the outside of my jacket. The pale blue light it gave off allowed me to see a little more clearly. Now that I was in this sludge of darkness, the moonlight was a little better, although when I looked up in to the dark, starless sky, I couldn’t see the moon. That was tip-off number two that shit was not going well.
Sliding along the edge of one container, I kept sweeping the area with my gaze, looking for whatever the hell was going to jump out and make me pee my pants.
“It’s Buxton PD. If you know anything about the crime that’s been committed here, you can come forward.”
I stiffened when laughter bubbled out of the darkness and the opal glowed more brightly. I was torn between wanting to find out who was there and getting the fuck out of Dodge, because something wasn’t right here. I spun around, intending to leave, when I jerked back a step.
There was a woman standing before me. An old woman, and not as in a woman who had been weathered by time. This woman looked as if she’d been aged in the sun, her skin thick, black, and leathery. Her eyes were milky white and opaque, so I figured she was blind. But if she was, where did she come from, and why was she out here in the middle of the night… or was it early morning? I guessed it depended on how you looked at it.
“Hello?” I took another step back. The woman smiled, her jaw unhinging like a snake’s to reveal row after row of razor-sharp teeth. My necklace started to glow even more brightly, and I slid my foot back another step, shuffling away. The old crone watched me, tracking my movements like a hungry wolf, although I was sure her eyesight was gone.
“Ma’am?” I asked, swallowing. Gagging. Gagging on the smell of dead things and old blood.
The woman lifted her claw-like hand, complete with fingers double the length of a humans and tipped with inch-long curved blades for nails, and reached for me. I lifted my gun and took aim, squeezing off a round that ricocheted into one of the steel containers behind us and pinged into non-existence.
I’d shot her in the chest, but it had had no effect. It’d simply gone straight through her chest cavity and exited out of her spine. I took aim again, this time putting three into her—two in the chest and one in the head.
“What are you?” I asked, even though it was stupid. What was she going to do? Stop and tell me?
She hissed through her sharp teeth and came at me again. I danced backwards, trying to come up with a plausible explanation for this. I knew crazy shit happened to me, but this was taking it to the next level. I emptied my clip into the woman and swore when she screamed like a banshee and threw herself at me.
Ducking off to the side, I watched her fly past me, slam into the container, and crumple to the ground. Now I was torn. There was a woman who looked like she was ninety-five years old, in the cold, wearing nothing but a thin nighty, yet the other half of me—some might say the intelligent part—wanted to kill the bitch with anything at my disposal.
I staggered backwards, then screamed when something strong closed around my
