Slayer: A Horror Novel (Carver Book 3), page 3
“So, Annette,” Zeke grumbled. “Can you tell us a bit more about your trip to Fountain Ridge?”
“If you tell me who you work for. You’re not feds, but you’re something like it?” Annette said. “You got credentials or something? A badge? A one-eight-hundred number I can call real quick?”
I waited for Zeke to spin some lie about who we were. The Order was secret, wasn’t it? That was always my assumption, but he surprised me and said, “We work for a department called the Order of the Octopus. We hunt monsters that hurt people.” He tapped the cover of her book. “Some of the monsters are right here in these pages, I’m sure. I got a badge, but it ain’t on me. I do have this card.” He dug a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the same kind of business card he gave me not long ago. Annette took it and studied it, flipping it over a few times. “Go on and call them. They’ll tell you what’s what.
Satisfied with the card, she held it back out to him. “I’m not gonna call. I believe you.” A light had clicked on in her eyes. Excitement, maybe. That surprised me too. How could someone just…believe that? It took fighting a damn werewolf to believe it myself.
“Good.” Zeke didn’t take the card. “You can keep that.”
“Thanks.” Annette slipped it into her book.
“Wait,” I said. “You’re not freaked out? Or is it that you don’t believe us?”
“I believe you,” she said. “And no, I’m not freaked. I always knew you existed—or something like you guys existed. I mean, there’s a ton of proof on the internet. Pictures and videos. Not the best quality, but enough to make someone like me, someone open-minded, a believer.”
“The UFO effect,” Zeke said. “That’s what we call it.”
“I’m lost,” I said.
“Of course you are, rook.” He shook his head. “Let me dumb it down for ya. You know those grainy photos out there of UFOs and Bigfoot and all that shit? Well, a lot of them—”
Annette butted in. “Basically, most of this evidence can’t be proven real or fake. And sometimes they’re so ridiculous, any sane and seemingly rational person would dismiss them as fake anyway, a hundred percent of the time. But the people who do believe them, people like me on the internet, mostly in Reddit echo chambers—well, we’re also dismissed as crazy just for entertaining the thought that a shaky video of triangular red lights high above Tokyo could actually be a UFO.
“So the Powers That Be—you guys and the government and the Illuminati or whatever cult is the flavor of the month, I’m assuming—wins out in the end because the rational people don’t believe the ‘proof,’ and the people like me who do believe are just thought of as insane. Therefore, the secrets, because they cannot be definitively proven real, remain safe.”
Zeke nodded, impressed. “Yeah. What she said.”
I squinted, kind of getting it. “I think I see.”
“Now about Fountain Ridge,” Zeke said, turning to Annette.
The young woman took a deep breath and began to tell us what she saw and felt there. It wasn’t much more than what was already in the blog post, except for a name.
“I’m going into my sophomore year at OSU. Studying journalism.” Annette held a hand up before she could be interrupted. “I know, journalism is dead. I’ve heard it a million times already. Investigative journalism, to be precise. I love the research. That’s why I started the blog. I needed a place I could practice my writing. You know, they say you have to get a million bad words out—not expletives—before you write anything worth reading.”
Zeke spun a finger in his famous get-on-with-it gesture.
“Yeah,” Annette said, “so I picked up a few things in my classes. Things I used to find some rabbit holes about Fountain Ridge, and then I found a name. Landry Franklin. He’s from Indiana.”
I was pacing. “Okay…and what significance does he have in all this?”
Annette held up a finger. “I’m getting to that, dude. Hold your horses.” She sighed. “Landry Franklin was there too,” Annette said. “He was there in Fountain Ridge the same time I was. He was there visiting his fiancé’s dad for Christmas.”
I shot a glance at Zeke. He looked at me and shook his head.
Wow, I was thinking. Being a pretty girl really earns you a lot of patience with the old dickhead.
“But Landry didn’t come home alone. His fiancé’s father tagged along with him.”
“Why? Where was his fiancé? She stayed back?”
“Franklin said in his statement that he and Audrey—the fiancé—had gotten into an argument and split up, and her father was coming back to move all her stuff out of his apartment.” Annette was squinting, nodding, waiting for me to catch on. I thought I was starting to.
“Statement? Like police statement?” I said. “What happened?”
“That’s the thing,” Annette said. “They never made it to Indiana. They crashed not far outside Fountain Ridge. Car flipped. Caught on fire, and the fiancé’s father burned to a crisp.”
“That sounds a little…” I said.
“Suspicious,” Zeke finished for me. “Or not. Could’ve just been an accident.”
“It gets worse,” Annette said. “They couldn’t find the fiancé or even the fiancé’s sister.”
“He killed them? This Landry Franklin?” I said, crossing my arms, wondering what this had to do with vampires. I nodded at Zeke. “How come the Order didn’t find out about this, but they found Glide’s blog with 237 page views?”
Annette scowled. It was oddly on par with Zeke’s scowls. “Hey, I’m way past that now.”
“Because it’s murder,” Zeke said. “Not monsters. We ain’t monitoring run-of-the-mill crimes of passion, rook. C’mon. There’s the police and the FBI and all them alphabet boys for shit like that.”
Fair point.
“They held Landry Franklin, but they couldn’t charge him on anything,” Annette said. “Few people vouched for him in town. Said he and his fiancé seemed perfectly in love and normal at the Christmas party. Said if they got into a fight and broke up, like Franklin claimed, they hadn’t seen it.”
“So they let him go?”
“They let him go.”
Zeke shifted. “I don’t know. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. He might’ve murdered them, but if he did, he got away with it. Shit happens. No evidence, the justice system is flawed, blah-blah-blah.”
“I don’t really get it,” I said. “If something happened, something supernatural, which is what you’re insinuating, then why wouldn’t he just come out and say it? He must’ve known he was looking like Suspect Number One and was most likely going to get tried.” The extent of my judicial knowledge went as far as Law & Order and various courtroom dramas, but it didn’t take an expert to know things weren’t in this guy’s favor. “He’d want to save his own ass. He’d be desperate, and a desperate man who had seen some crazy stuff might as well try to go for the insanity plea.”
“He never got charged, though,” Annette said. “He was held, but they let him go. Jurisdiction problems too, I think.” She shrugged in a beats-me type of way. “It never got to the point where he had to go into crazy mode. But if you ask me, he’s hiding something…because none of it adds up.”
“Hard for something to add up when you don’t even know the type of equation you’re working with,” I said.
I thought that sounded smart. You be the judge.
Zeke grunted. Whether in agreement or in annoyance, I couldn’t tell you.
“Sure,” Annette said. “But I was there, in Fountain Ridge. It wasn’t normal. Go out there yourself. It’s not far, and tell me you don’t feel it too. That place…it feels haunted.”
“I think we will,” Zeke said.
I turned to him, my eyebrow arched. “We will?”
“You got the whereabouts of this Landry Franklin fella?” he asked Annette, ignoring me. He was good at that. “Depending on how that goes, maybe we will end up in Fountain Ridge.”
“Don’t bother,” Annette said. “I already got him on the phone once. He won’t talk about it.”
“Oh, I don’t plan on calling him,” Zeke said. “You got an address?”
Annette blinked her wide eyes. There was a smile on her face, making her look even prettier than she already was. “Well, damn. Now I know you’re definitely not government. You guys don’t mess around.”
“No, young lady, we do not.”
Annette pulled out her smartphone, scrolled through it for a few seconds. “I’ve got it here somewhere.”
“You really did reach out?” I asked.
“Yeah. I told you I wanted to be a journalist.”
“With an interest in…” I peeked at the cover of the book she was reading. “…cryptozoology?”
“Might be we could use a brain like yours in the Order,” Zeke said. “You’d make a hell of an Index.
I squinted at him, a little offended. He hadn’t wanted me to join. I remembered that as plain as day the first time he’d visited Ali, Becca, and myself near the end of the summer of ’09. But here he was, handing out Order jobs and spilling secrets like he was getting paid to recruit.
Annette seemed to weigh his words for a bit, then said, “Maybe. If the journalist thing doesn’t work out. I like research but can’t say I’m crazy about school.”
“Think on it. You got the card. Now let me get that address, young lady, please.”
She ripped a strip of paper from the back of her cryptozoology book. “Got a pen?”
“You, uh—I can just give you my number, and you can just text it to me…if you want,” I said.
“I got a pen right here,” Zeke said, pulling a ballpoint out from his jacket pocket and handing it to Annette. He glanced at me, that normal disappointment a little more prominent in his eyes.
Annette scribbled the address down and gave it and the pen back to Zeke. “This was where he was when I tried to contact him, but that was, geez, at least four months ago. Who knows what he’s up to these days.”
“I’ll have some people look into it for us,” Zeke said. He stuck out his hand. Annette accepted it graciously. “It was a pleasure meeting you, and I very much appreciate your help.”
By God, was he actually smiling? Being polite?
“No problem,” Annette said. “It was nice to meet you guys too.”
Zeke turned and went back to the car. I followed him, shaking my head the whole way.
CHAPTER 2
MEAT STACKS
“Think you’re slick, huh, rook?” Zeke said.
Possum Run Lane was in the rearview.
“Slick?” I said. “No, not really.”
“Trying to give that girl your number?”
“What happened?” Ziggy asked. He manifested between us.
“Rook here thought he could try and be Casanova,” Zeke said, grinning.
“Ooo-la-la,” Ziggy said. The fur above his eyebrows waggled. Didn’t think I’d ever get used to that either, the human mannerisms by an inverse (or reverse?) Dalmatian. Talking was fine, but I drew the line at eyebrow waggling.
“It was worth a shot, okay?” I said. “She was very pretty, and she didn’t go running for the hills when she heard about what we do.”
“Trust me, rook,” Zeke said. “Ain’t no time for women when you’re doing this kinda work.”
“The ladies at Jane’s Brothel in Vegas would beg to differ, Zeke,” Ziggy mumbled.
“Can it, mutt. That don’t count.”
“What happened about the vampires? Was Glide a legitimate source like Beth thinks?” Ziggy said.
Zeke’s answer was to gun the engine. The Mustang hit the highway on-ramp, heading west. I had no idea where we were going.
“Well?” Ziggy said.
“Well, I’m thinking we’re gonna get to the bottom of this,” Zeke said. “But first, I’m hungry, and I could go for a burger.”
The place Zeke and I ended up in was called Meat Stacks. It was a burger joint nestled between a pair of packed honky-tonk bars. Loud country music poured out of its open doors. It was right around the corner from a strip club with a big rotating sign you could see from the highway, which asked and answered the question “Wut Do R Girls and R Mugs Have N Common? There Both Bottom-less!” Yep, wrong form of “they’re” and all. I thought Meat Stacks was a fitting name for a place in this part of town.
The burger joint was dead. Zeke asked the hostess, a large woman named Patty (also a fitting name for someone working in a burger joint) with a sour expression on her face, if we could have a table on the back patio. She grunted an affirmative, probably glad we wouldn’t be inside, stinking the place up even more, and led us through the dingy restaurant and then through a door leading to the back.
Here, I could get a good whiff of the nearby dumpsters and hear Jason Aldean or Garth Brooks singing about cold beers and tractors and all that usual country music stuff. Ziggy appeared under the table a few seconds after the lady had left us on our own.
“What I wouldn’t do for a good piece of meat,” the dog said.
“Yeah, I bet.” Zeke snickered. “Man meat, right?”
“Real mature,” I said.
Zeke showed me his middle finger as a teenage girl who looked too young to be working came out and took our orders. She didn’t so much as glance at Zig.
I got a side of fries. Zeke, skinny as he was, ordered a triple bacon cheeseburger, two sides of onion rings, and a large Coca-Cola.
“All right, I gotta make a few calls about this vampire shit,” Zeke said. He lit a cigarette despite the NO SMOKING ON THE PATIO sign behind him and pulled out his cell phone from that ratty jacket of his. He left Ziggy and I and went around the side of the building.
Ziggy took his spot. “Don’t take it to heart, kid. He means well.”
“I doubt that,” I said.
“He does. He’s not a bad guy.”
“I think I saw a glimpse of that when he was talking to our new friend Glide back there.” I shot a thumb over my shoulder in no particular direction. “You know, he basically offered her a job on the spot. Told her who we were and wasn’t even coy about it. I thought we were sworn to secrecy about this stuff, right?”
Ziggy did that weird dog-shrug thing. “Well, kind of. You’re not supposed to do stuff like that, but he’s…”
“Zeke, yeah. And he doesn’t give a shit,” I finished. Didn’t really blame him. He was on the brink of retirement. I think if he got kicked out, he would’ve been happy about it. The problem was that he was too damn good at his job. Apparently. Otherwise, I was sure he’d have been unemployed a long time ago.
“Yeah. Pretty much.” The dog leaned forward, lowered his voice. “Between you and me, though...”
I glanced around to make sure no prying eyes saw me carrying on a conversation with the slightly shimmering Dalmatian.
The place was deserted. And who cared, really? I had seen plenty of people talking to their dogs. Zig’s back was to the door of the restaurant. The staff might hear him if they came out, but they certainly wouldn’t see his lips moving slightly or how animated his face was. That was good.
“Yeah?”
“The Order isn’t doing too well numbers-wise. Recruits are at an all-time low. There’s not even enough to have regular orientations and trainings. Zeke is on his way out, along with about half a dozen other Slayers. There’s some weird power struggle going on at the top of the organization the Squid hasn’t addressed. Not that the Squid ever addresses much to begin with. And it seems the monsters and cases of the supernatural are outnumbering us three to one.”
“Well, I picked a perfect time to sign up, didn’t I?”
“Can’t look at it that way,” Zig said. “Besides, it’s in your blood. You know it. I know it. The Order knows it. You would’ve been fighting off the supernatural no matter what. For the Order of the Octopus or for some other less-official organization…or for your life. It was only a matter of time.”
I put my arms up in a what-are-you-gonna-do gesture. He was right. I knew that.
The waitress came out with our drinks, a basket of bread (which I thought looked slightly moldy), and butter that was so cold you needed a chisel. Zig turned himself invisible, which was something I had never seen in real-time before. He was all but indistinguishable to the naked eye. The waitress certainly didn’t notice. Then again, I thought her mind was elsewhere. The end of her shift, maybe.
The air across from me shimmered. It could’ve easily been mistaken for a heat wave in the summer, but if you reached out and put your hand through that shimmering air like I did when the waitress left, you would’ve felt nothing but ice. An ice that reminded you of the coldness of death. Or something very much like it.
“Quit it. That tickles,” Ziggy said, appearing again and only slightly quivery. “At least buy me a drink first.”
I chuckled.
“Did that girl accept Zeke’s offer?” he asked.
“Don’t think so. But she took a card, and she had an interest. No denying that.”
Ziggy was nodding. “A card is sometimes all it takes. Isn’t that right?” He winked, and I thought back to the card I was given almost a decade earlier. I still had it in my wallet. It was tucked behind the newer one I had gotten.
Yeah, sometimes a card was all it took.
I sipped at my water and cleared my throat. The water made my stomach growl, as did the smell of the grill burning inside the restaurant. Maybe I was a little hungrier than I’d thought.
“What’s orientation and training gonna be like?” I asked Ziggy.
“It’s boring, if I’m being perfectly honest.”
“Not as exciting as talking to a ghost dog?”
“Hardly anything as exciting as talking to me, kid.” The Dalmatian winked, and I was surprisingly unfazed by it. Strange how I was adapting to it all. Slowly but surely, as they say.
“They’ll read you the Oath, make you recite it back to them, and then swear you in,” Ziggy continued. “It’s pretty cut and dry. A lot more informal than it used to be. Training’s better. I can’t say for sure how many new recruits will be taking part in it, but back in the day, it used to be close to a hundred. Lots of competition among the different factions.”
