Fire And Steel (The Merryweather Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  “What we’re saying, Bran, is that you can trust us.” Underhill smiled sadly. “If not with your secrets, then with the knowledge that we understand that you can’t tell us everything. That you have your own secrets, just as your father did. And we respect that.”

  Brandon nodded and said. "I understand." And he did. These were his father’s boyhood friends. They had all faced the trials and tribulations of a boyhood in Matheson, a town that had dark and dangerous secrets, and it had marked them all. He could trust these men not to betray him, at least not of their own free will. But they didn’t know all of his families secrets and he needed to remember that. Meeting their silent desperate gazes, he said. “The gateway is closed. I can’t promise another way doesn’t exist, but it will take time for them to find it and gather the strength to use it.”

  “Time is something we desperately needed.” Teague said with a sigh. He ran a hand over his face, scratching at his beard and shook his head. “We have to regroup and resupply. And I have to convince the town council to let me hire more men. Or bring on the temporary summer deputies early.”

  “Do you want some help?” Marcus asked. He nodded toward Underhill. “Between the two of us, I think we have more than a few friends on the council. It might be enough to get something done?”

  Teague shrugged. “It can’t hurt.” Standing, he met Brandon’s gaze and put out his hand. "Thank you, Bran." He shook his head as he studied Brandon’s face. He said. "I have to tell you, I didn’t want to do this. Talk to you like this. But I’m glad we did. You’re a lot like your father."

  “Thank you.” Brandon said, taking the offered hand.

  “Don’t thank me, Bran.” Teague held his hand in a hard grip as he stared hard into Brandon’s eyes. He said. “I loved your dad like a brother and would have done anything to help him, if he’d asked. But he didn’t ask. He had secrets, just like you do, and I know those secrets are what killed him. Don’t let them kill you too.”

  Brandon met the man’s gaze for a long silent moment before saying. "Hunting grohlm takes courage, Officer Teague." He let go of the man’s hand. Teague's grip was strong, but compared to Brandon's callused hand, his skin was as soft as a girl's. Brandon looked at his father’s friends and said. "They’re fast and they’re nasty, but they are also cowards. When you hunt them, don't go alone. And don't go out at night, unless you intend to let them get the drop on you. They're deadly in the sunlight. But at night, you wont see them until they're on top of you." He started to leave, but stopped and looked at them all. “And watch your backs. They’re cowards, but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid. They can track you as well as you track them. Better, even. Watch out for ambushes. That’s how they’ll come at you.”

  Teague looked at the other two men before saying. "We'll keep that in mind. Thank you, Bran."

  Brandon didn’t say anything. Giving them all one last look, he walked out of the office and closed the door behind him.

  Chapter 29

  The days leading up to Christmas vacation go by with an agonizing slowness for most kids. Every day a slow grind of school and homework and steadily dropping temperatures until the time finally came.

  Not so for Brandon. For Brandon, the days were a blur of training and education. Gerrick seemed to think that he had to cram a lifetime of knowledge into Brandon's head in the space of those few weeks. And not just weapons and battle training. Etiquette and daily housework were also a part of his teaching. Brandon tried to argue against learning which forks to use at a formal dinner party or the proper way to knot a neck tie, but Gerrick insisted. He taught him how to change a flat tire with the same fierce eyed determination that he demonstrated the proper way to split a skull with an ax.

  It was exhausting.

  But as frustrating as all the extra lessons were, it wasn’t having to learn useless social skills that really irritated him. It was that Brandon couldn't help but feel that he was being prepared for an adulthood that would never come. It felt like whistling in a graveyard to him, a way of building false confidence. Like Gerrick was trying to bluff him into surviving past the new year.

  Brandon watched the time sliding away with a growing sense of dread, filled with the certain knowledge of his coming death. The harder Gerrick tried to convince him that he could win, the less he believed it. But he had made his peace with his end. His only condolence was that he was going to take Sha’ha’Zel with him, no matter the cost.

  Gerrick began teaching him two-handed combat, focusing on duel wielding swords, as opposed to using a shield. “In the heat of battle, there’s no need for a shield, not when a second sword works just as well.” He said, during a daytime training session. “A shield is heavy and unwieldy and, worse, they’re shit for stabbing somebody.” He demonstrated countless defensive parries using two blades, working Brandon through every form he knew. “Not carrying more than one blade is stupid. Dueling is for fools and children. And you can afford to be neither.”

  The techniques were similar to what he learned before, but the amount of skill required to learn them was something different. It was more about muscle memory than any active knowledge, working the forms over and over until they came instinctively. But Brandon was more than up to the challenge, learning the new forms as naturally as breathing. It was almost as if he was remembering instead of learning, tapping into a kind of genetic memory.

  He could actually remember using some of the techniques while a passenger inside his grandfather’s memories.

  It became rare that Gerrick walked away from the practice sessions without getting just as many bruises as he attempted to give Brandon.

  Neither of them talked about Thanksgiving night or what had happened. Gerrick never let it show, but he was impressed with how fast Brandon was learning. His own training had taken years, begun before he could even walk, and Brandon had already surpassed him in many ways. Of course, Gerrick had no pantheon of gods adding to his strength and speed, protecting him from injury, so any comparison was lopsided to begin with. And Gerrick still had years of experience that counted for more than any amount of training. He talked as they worked the forms, but never about the things that Brandon wanted to hear. He talked tactics, which mostly consisted mostly of killing your enemy before they have a chance to kill you. He discussed the merits of using a broadsword as opposed to a katana, particularly the fact that having only one sharp edge was a waste of good steel.

  But he said nothing about Brandon's parents. About their deaths or how they died. Anytime the subject was broached, Gerrick only shook his head and told him that the time wasn't right. He would know when it was.

  The town curfew remained in place and nobody protested or asked questions. People stopped staying outside any longer than was necessary, just to work and take care of errands, preferring to be home and inside before the sun set. The remaining police patrolled constantly, focusing on streets close to wooded areas and the lake. Keeping a careful eye on the shadows and dark places.

  Deputy Teague was quietly named the new Chief of Police. If anyone on the town council had any problem with the appointment, they knew enough to keep their mouths shut. He hired a half dozen new deputies and oversaw their training himself, with the help of Underhill and Winston. The deputies were all local, so they understood how Matheson worked and the need for secrecy. And though they expressed doubts about what Teague and the other hunters described, they took the training deadly serious.

  Their doubts lasted as long as their first hunt, which ended in a short skirmish on the outskirts of town. A local chicken farmer called in a complaint about something trying to get into one of his chicken houses. Teague took two squads out to the farm during the day and they set up ambush points around the long chicken houses. He led one group while Underhill and Winston took charge of the other.

  It was quiet most of the evening, lulling the new deputies into bored complacency that might have proved fatal if not for the other hunter’s presence. Underhill and Winston kept the ro
okies sharp and awake with whispered stories and threats of what would happen if they disappointed the new chief.

  That was when a small pack of grohlm slunk out of the shadows and all hell broke loose. The new rookies panicked and started shooting without aiming or even waiting for word from the other men. The grohlm scattered, screeching and howling into the darkness. If they hit anything other than the ground or air it was by accident. The grohlm were long gone by the time Teague and Underhill got the new deputies calmed down. More than one would go home and have to sneak soiled underwear into their washers behind their spouse’s back, to hide their shame.

  By the second hunt, they had accepted the strange terrifying fact that they were hunting monsters and were prepared for it when they saw the things creeping through the shadows. They had set up a pair of ambush points out in the woods, going out while it was still daylight and holing up until nightfall. When the grohlm appeared this time, the deputies waited for them to fully enter the killbox before taking careful aim and opening fire.

  The grohlm were cut down before they could flee and the new deputies got their first close up look at what they were risking their lives against. They all moved among the tattered and horrific corpses, shaking their heads and whistling softly to themselves. The clutch of grohlm were a mixed bag of animal types, mostly dogs and lizards, and their armor was minimal. But their twisted limbs and mangled faces looked all to human like.

  When a couple of the new men pulled out their cell phones, intending to snap a few pictures, Underhill stopped them, saying. “No photos. No Facebook posts or tweets. I don’t have to tell any of you what the town council will do to any of you dumb enough to try to put the word out there about these things.”

  So the phones were put away, with only a little bit of grumbling, and the hunt continued. Throughout the next few weeks, the hunters began perfecting their ambushes and started to feel like they were actually starting to make a difference. There were a few close calls, but nothing quite as catastrophic as those first couple of hunts, and if you listened hard during the quiet afternoons, you might hear the sporadic snaps and pops of gunfire coming from the Briar woods.

  Brandon and Gerrick continued their nightly patrols, avoiding the hunters as best they could, and did their part to winnow the monsters down. They stayed out of sight of the police, but found plenty of shell casings and the chopped and shredded remnants of fierce fire fights. The trees splintered and fallen over, shattered by machine gun fire, and signs that many grohlm had died. Black splotches of dried blood. Too pungent to be human. But no bodies. Human or otherwise.

  There still seemed to be too many of the things, hiding in the deep bush and under the rotted corpses of fallen trees, but their numbers no longer seemed so daunting. The grohlm fought smarter, as well, setting up more ambushes and counter offenses to try and slash at the hunters.

  In the weeks leading up to Christmas vacation, Brandon and Gerrick and the police killed hundreds of grohlm. Despite that, the town maintained the curfew and people still kept to the indoors as much as possible. They continued to feel the lingering presence of the darkness in their midst, but few people could point to any one thing to blame for the oppressive atmosphere. People still occasionally went missing, but nowhere near as many as before.

  Claire paused as she got out of her dad’s car and watched a lonely police cruiser move slowly through the main street intersection. The wind was icy and cut through her light jacket, making her shiver. Other than herself and the police car, she had the town to herself. It was getting dark, the sodium lamps flickering slowly to life, and she took a moment to appreciate the sparse Christmas decorations lining both sides of the street. There wasn’t much, just strings of lights attached to the phone and power lines, but it still was more than she expected. She was on a quick errand before heading home. She hadn’t planned on being out so late, but she had spent the afternoon with Emily and lost track of time.

  Emily was much recovered and the two girls spent the day together, just hanging out and talking while listening to music in Emily’s room. They talked mostly about their boy troubles. Claire talked about Brandon and the fear and doubt that left her almost breathless with terror at the thought of losing him. She told Emily about the day they slept together, described how it happened. How she felt afterwards. The emotional discomfort outweighing the physical.

  Emily talked about her feelings of loss and loneliness. Despite how it ended between her and Jack, there was a time when she had cared quite deeply for him. That all consuming love that only the very young or the very damaged really understand.

  Putting the police car from her mind, Claire returned to her task at hand and went to the closed door of Goldman’s Antiques and Curiosity Shop and tried the handle. Locked. She stepped close and put her hands on the glass, trying to peer into the shadowed darkness beyond the locked door. The interior was dark except for the soft glow of a desk lamp on the cluttered counter. Goldman was nowhere to be seen.

  Stuffing her hands in her pockets, Claire blew out her breath and shook her head. It had been a long shot, but she had been hoping to visit with the old man. She had a nagging feeling that he knew far more about the town’s supernatural goings on than anybody else in Matheson. Turning to leave, she stopped at the sight of the boy standing by the parked SUV.

  Albert said. “You shouldn’t be out alone like this, Claire. It isn’t safe.” He was dressed as he always was, in a button up shirt and bargain store khakis. He wasn’t wearing a coat. But he didn’t appear to be cold.

  Claire didn’t say anything. Not right away. She just looked at the smaller boy and watched her breath misting in the orange light of the street lamps and kept her hands in her pockets.

  He smiled, a slight quirking of the lips, and said. “You should go home. You don’t want to end up missing, do you?” His tone was gentle but somehow also mocking. He took a slow step toward her and looked around in an exaggerated manner. “It’s not safe to be out alone. With nobody here to protect you.”

  “I’m safe enough.” She said. She took a step toward the boy to show how much he intimidated her, which was not one little bit. Without the Kruegers backing him up, Albert was just a miserable little punk. Her green eye narrowed as she looked down her nose at him and said. “What do you want, Albert?”

  “Nothing. I just saw you and thought I would say hi.” He cocked his head to the side and his smile widened. “We should walk each other home, Claire. It would be safer.”

  A voice spoke from behind Claire, startling her and making her turn. “Safer for who?” A young woman stepped out of the shadows and into the orange light. The light washed out the highlights in her hair, turning the purple whitish, but Tuesday Jones was a most welcome sight to Claire. If this got ugly and she ended up having to hurt Albert, she wanted a witness. Claire didn’t now Tuesday Jones well, just as the cool girl who ran the record store, but she had heard stories about her. Apparently, she was a bit of a wild child in her family. The Jones were a family with a long history in Matheson. Her dad was some biggity wig on the town council and her brothers were all good looking and friendly. Especially Lyle, the youngest Jones, who was just a year or so older than Claire. Tuesday took a step toward Albert, her expression fierce. “You’re not bothering this girl, are you, sport?”

  Albert narrowed his eyes at the interruption but his smile became more friendly and less predatory when he looked at young woman. He said. “Of course not. I just think it’s dangerous to be out alone. And friends should watch out for one another.”

  Tuesday Jones wrinkled her nose at his syrupy tone and looked at Claire and asked. “Is he your friend?”

  “Not at all.” Claire shook her head. She said. “He’s a nasty little thug who likes to stalk girls and do pervy things around them.” She hated lying to the woman, but it was nice to see the sudden widening of Albert’s eyes. She continued. “I’ve tried telling him to leave me alone, but he just won’t listen.”

  Before Albert
could respond, Tuesday cut him off, saying. “You heard her, sport. Beat feet. Scram. Make like a tree, and get outta here.” She took a step toward him and said. “If that’s not clear enough for you, how about this little gem. Fuck off!”

  Albert’s smile disappeared as if a circuit breaker was thrown and he took a step to meet her, looking up at her with an icy gaze. He said. “You might want to be careful yourself, Miss Jones. It’s not just kids that are disappearing in Matheson.”

  Before Tuesday or Claire could respond to the threat, yet another voice spoke form the shadows. “Now that definitely sounded like a threat.” Another woman stepped from the shadows and Tuesday smiled at the sight of her. The woman was dressed in biker leathers and had her hair up in decorative hair curlers. Her make-up was fierce and her painted on eyebrows were razor sharp as they arched and she said. “Is everything okay, Day?”

  Another figure materialized at her shoulder, a massive young man with placid features and long black hair. He was dressed in a metal band tee shirt and ratty jeans and steel toed work boots. He said nothing, but leveled a dead eyed stare at Albert.

  If the smaller boy was intimidated by the other, he didn’t show it. Albert stared hard at the older woman, his expression unreadable. She met his stare for a long time, neither saying anything, before lifting a hand to stop the hulk beside her when he began to move forward. She broke the silence, saying. “You should go now, my friend. This isn’t a fight that you can afford to lose, I think.”

  Albert said nothing. He glanced at the others, his eyes settling on Claire. Then he winked, his smile returning as he suddenly darted away, disappearing into the shadows.

  Claire let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and shook her head. She laughed. It was a relieved sound in the darkness. “That was weird, right?” She looked at Tuesday and the other strange woman and her hulking companion and she said. “Thank you for that, for stepping in like you did. You didn’t really have to, though. Albert doesn’t scare me.”