Harley rolled up her sleeves and strode toward the house. Time to find out what the hell was going on.

  •

  SOMEONE SET UP A GENERATOR and mobile lights as the daylight faded. Around three o’clock, they hauled the driver of the rig out, after laying down boards over the sagging floor joists.

  Dr. Murad Pranee had arrived an hour before and was standing by, his hands in the pockets of his heavy coat, his breath blowing out between his tusks as he watched the townsfolk working to extract Darien Sharp from the cab. It occurred to Harley that he was awake during daylight hours, too—that was something she would have to ask him about.

  When they laid Sharp on the ground, Pranee moved forward and bent over him. He paused and pulled back, then knelt beside him and examined him carefully.

  Harley moved up on the other side. “He’s alive?”

  “And undamaged, except for alcohol-drowned brain cells,” Pranee said, tapping at the man’s chest and listening with his stethoscope.

  Sharp groaned and tried to sit up.

  “Not so fast, Darien,” Pranee said shortly. “You’ll just vomit.”

  Harley caught a whiff of bourbon—a lot of it—and waved her hand in front of her face.

  “Hey, you’re all warm ‘n everything,” Sharp muttered, looking up at her.

  “He’s cold. There’s a shock,” Pranee said dryly. “I’m surprised he can feel anything at all.”

  “Is he fit enough to ask a few questions, doc?” Harley asked.

  “Oh, you can ask. I don’t know if the answers you’ll get will be worth much but knock yourself out.” Pranee slowly climbed to his feet, the first sign of exhaustion she’d seen in him. He glanced at the remains of the house. The snowplow was hauling whole sections away, now, the heavy chain stretched taut. “It’s Mary I’m concerned about.”

  Harley waved Bohdan and a couple of the bigger men nearby—one of them an orc, the other she thought might be a siren from the look of his eyes—and between them, they manhandled Darien Sharp into the back bench seat of Bohdan’s SUV.

  Harley got in on the other side and shut the door. “Don’t worry about the heater,” she told Bohdan as he got behind the driver’s wheel. “I’ll have this space warmed up in a minute.”

  Bohdan gave her a startled look, then a half-grin. He turned in the seat. “Let’s find out what he knows.”

  Harley grabbed Darien’s chin and gave him a shake. “Hey. Sharp! Listen to me. Can you hear me? Say yes, Sharp.”

  He was a tall man, with a rig driver’s pot belly but with muscles, too. Curly hair, nice eyes that were red from the booze. They slid toward her. “Chief?”

  “Right. Why did you drive your rig into the house, Darien? Come on, talk to me.”

  “Ah…boss?” Bohdan said. “Just so you know, he lives next door.”

  “Does he?” She shook Darien once more. “Did you miss your drive, Darien? Is that it? You were so drunk you overshot the house?”

  “No drives here, boss,” Bohdan pointed out. “They’re all back-alley garages on this street.”

  Harley nodded. “I just want him to give me a damn answer. Anything at all.” She shook Sharp’s face again. “Come on, Darien. Talk to me. Why did you flatten an entire fucking house?”

  Sharp belched.

  They both reared back out of the way of the fumes.

  “Jesus!” Bohdan breathed.

  “She did it,” Sharp said. “She kill’t’im.”

  “Maxwell? You’re talking about Lubbert Maxwell?” Harley said, her tone urgent.

  Amazingly, tears welled and ran down the man’s unshaved face. “I loved him…’n she kill’t him.”

  Harley shot a glance at Bohdan. “Maxwell was bi?” she breathed softly.

  “If he was, he was keeping it real low-down,” he murmured back. “First I’ve heard even a hint of it.”

  Darien Sharp wept, unaware of their whispered conversation.

  Harley turned back to him. “Sharp…you think Mary of Dormer…you think Mary Maxwell killed Lubbert? Hey, Sharp! Did you hear me?”

  Sharp wiped at his face. It took two tries. “She found out,” he muttered and sobbed again.

  “How long had you been lovers, Sharp?” She braced herself to shake him or repeat herself.

  But he said, between hiccups, “Nearly a year.” Then he wept again.

  Bohdan shook his head in disbelief.

  Harley sighed. “It still doesn’t add up. Mary was a homebody. Even if she did kill him…and that’s a part that doesn’t add up…but if she did, how the hell did he fall off Maze Peak lookout?”

  Darien Sharp hiccupped a couple more times and drew in a breath. “Thaz where he was? On Maze Peak?”

  “You know something about that, Sharp?”

  Darien rubbed his eyes with two big thumbs. “Can’t be right,” he muttered.

  “Why not?” Bohdan demanded.

  “Lubby woz…woz scared a heights. Pee himself standing at the top of stairs, man.”

  They stared at him.

  Sharp drew in another shuddering breath. “Why their house was a bungalow, get it?”

  “And he never went down the stairs to the basement…” Harley said.

  “Not ever.” Sharp dropped his head back against the headrest and sighed.

  Harley scrambled out of the car. “Stay with him!” she shouted at Bohdan and ran for the side of the house.

  Mojag caught up with her. “Boss?”

  “We need to find Mary. She’s a person of interest now.”

  Mojag’s eyes got very large. “It’s murder?”

  “I don’t know yet, but we really need to talk to her. Where were you looking for her, around the back? Show me.”

  He jogged with her. There were more people working on this side, and a forklift truck lifted up one of the flat sections as they got there.

  A hobgoblin bent and aimed a flashlight under the section as it lifted. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “I thought I was going to have to burrow my way in. Looks like someone got there before me.”

  Harley bent to look. A wide tunnel had been dug recently, for the sides still ran with pebbles and runnels of sand and dripped freshly melted ice water. The hole arrowed down into the earth for five meters, then sideways. Old, dirt-stained cinder blocks looked like they had exploded sideways into the bottom of the tunnel. And through the hole they had formed, the light of a lamp shone.

  “The basement,” Harley said. “She dug her way out.”

  Mojag looked at Harley. “She was an orc. Of the Earth.”

  “Yeah.” Harley held out her hand. “Can I use your car?”

  Mojag’s brows lifted high. “You?”

  “You have to stay here and direct these people. Keep the curious out of the danger zone. Bohdan is watching Darien Sharp—he’s gonna need processing, too. That leaves me.”

  Mojag hesitated, still.

  “It’s an emergency, Mojag. She’s potentially a murderer, and she’s out there.”

  “You know where she is,” Mojag said, slapping his keys into her hand.

  “I have a good idea, yeah.”

  •

  ANYONE NEAR THE CENTER OF town had been drawn to the lights and the noise and bustle surrounding what was left of the Maxwell house. Anyone arriving at the house was roped into the labor pool, which was shoring up the remains, and securing it for proper demolition in the spring.

  That left the streets empty. The short day was drawing to a close as Harley drove carefully out of town, heading northwest. She turned into the access road for the trail head and took the lookout fork when it appeared. Mojag had said the slope was good enough even for winter and his truck had four-wheel drive and massive winter tires.

  She drove into the gloaming, the headlights spearing the dark, the road climbing and switching back until it flattened out and turned into a wide parking area. Ahead, signage and a concrete apron with iron railings told her she’d reached the lookout.

  Harley parked, carefully pocketed the keys, and walked over to the concrete edge. Beyond the twenty-foot platform, the railing halted. Scrubby trees and prickly bushes were all that stood between a human and the long drop down to the trailhead.

  A figure, already dark, and made darker by the falling night, moved out from behind a tree.

  “Hello, Mary,” Harley said. “You left a bit of a mess behind.” She put her back to the railing, winced as the primary bones in her wings were pinched between her and the railing and straightened up once more.

  “I didn’t mean to. I tried to fix things, even.” Mary moved closer to the concrete, her bare feet making little sound on the snow.

  “Your only mistake is that you didn’t know your husband was afraid of heights.”

  “Because he never told me!” Mary cried. She moved even closer.

  Harley held still, but she could feel her wings separate, the tips lifting. Not quite unfolding, but ready to. “As far as I can figure it, you killed Lubbert at home. Then you bought him here and dropped him over the side, to make it look like he died from the fall. Then you made the mountain jump, so the snow would roll down on top of him. To cover him, Mary? Or to make it seem even more like an accident?”

  “Does it matter?” Mary sounded tired.

  “Of course it matters. Why you did it is the only thing that matters! I’m trying to understand. Honestly, I am.”

  Mary stood with her hands by her sides. Her claws were loose, non-threatening. Her big arms made the peacoat she was wearing seem well-padded. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I…I slapped him, and it…his head snapped sideways and there was a crunching sound…” She gave another soft snort. A sob, Harley interpreted. “Then he dropped and didn’t close his eyes and I knew…”

  “But why did you slap him?” Harley coaxed softly. “Did you get sick of being used? Of having to support him in a career that would never pay off?”

  “What are you talking about?” Mary said, her tone bewildered.

  Harley drew in a breath. “Okay, then why did you slap him?”

  Mary shifted on her feet. “I suppose it doesn’t matter any more, does it? Everyone will know, by now.”

  “This is Falconer. They’ll know by their first glass of eggnog tomorrow,” Harley said. “I won’t say a word, but you know how it works, here. They’ll learn it somehow.”

  Mary blew out a breath that fogged the air. “Lubbert told me he had been having an affair. With a man. Darien Sharp, he said. He wanted sex with that disgusting, beer-swilling pig next door, and not me.”

  Harley sighed.

  “He told me it made him sick to have to share a house with me, even though I live in the basement and he doesn’t. He said I was ugly!” And she covered her face with her hands.

  Harley shifted toward her, then changed her mind. “Those are extenuating circumstances, Mary. Everything he did, everything he didn’t do…it all counts. You just have to come back with me and tell your side of the story.”

  “Then I go to prison,” Mary said woodenly.

  “I don’t know. Possibly,” Harley hedged.

  “The Old Races don’t survive long in prison,” Mary pointed out. “The human inmates turn on them.”

  Harley couldn’t dispute that. She’d heard stories, before she had gone through her own phase change, that had curdled her stomach.

  And she had hesitated too long.

  Mary nodded, as if Harley had confirmed everything. She took off, her powerful legs driving her forward. For a second, Harley thought Mary was running at her. Then she realized she was running for the railing—blindly, desperately.

  “No!” Harley shouted, throwing out an arm. She caught hold of Mary’s sweater and was wrenched around herself. They both flipped over the iron bar and began to fall. Harley tried to get a better grip on Mary as the sweater began to rip.

  Mary pulled her knees up to her chest. Her horny feet planted in the middle of Harley’s belly and thrust. Harley’s fall checked. Mary’s sweater tore out of her grip.

  Harley’s wings snapped open instinctively. Immediately, air gathered under them and her fall slowed, as she watched Mary plummet to the bottom.

  She flexed her shoulders experimentally and her wings bore downward, a powerful thrust that lifted her up even higher. Then another beat. And another.

  Her heart screamed as she rose up above the level of the lookout. Mojag’s truck looked small and lonely as she kept climbing… Then, with a shift of her shoulder, she turned in the air and glided.

  Harley’s breath came fast and heavy, like she had been sprinting, but it wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t exertion.

  It was pure joy.

  •

  WHEN THE SHOP DOOR BELL chimed, Harley stirred and looked around the rocking chair she was sitting in. It didn’t surprise her to seen Campbell von Havre brushing snow off his shoulders and wide brimmed hat. The snow had been falling since dawn. It was a very white Christmas.

  “Close the door, you’re letting all the heat out,” Harley told him and turned back to the stove and put her hands out toward it.

  Campbell came over to the stove. “Kask told me about Mary, as I was her employer.” He pointed to the old orange crate. “May I?”

  “Sure.” She pulled the blanket in around her shoulders once more.

  Campbell’s eyes narrowed. His gaze shifted to the flames flickering inside the stove, to the blanket around her shoulders, to the front door. “You’re cold!” he breathed. And he smiled.

  “Yep.” She reached for her coffee. She realized she was grinning, herself. “I need to thank you, Campbell. You were right.” She hesitated. “All along the line, in fact.”

  Campbell studied the hat in his hand. “I think I scored my first Christmas present for the day.”

  “Too bad the Oilers are facing off the Flames tomorrow,” Harley added. “The Flames are going to get slaughtered again. All that Christmas cheer gone in sixty minutes.”

  “That’s more like it,” Campbell said, sounding relieved. “Oh, and look.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a tiny, gift-wrapped box, with an oversized Christmas ribbon on it. “A gift for a gift.” He held it out.

  Harley took it. “What is it?” She shook it.

  “I could tell you it’s something mundane, like a single gourmet chocolate hedgehog, but now what I feel it really is, is the remains of Pandora’s box.”

  She lowered the gift, her heart thudding. “Hope.”

  Campbell smiled. The warmth reached his eyes. “Merry Christmas, Harley.”

  ___________

  The next book in the Harley Firebird Series is The Shepherd of Fire

  Harley knows Campbell von Havre is hiding something she won’t like.

  Harley von Canmore is a firebird, one of the old races who are emerging across the globe. She is also the Police Chief of the tiny town of Falconer, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Harley’s town is nearly all old race people, which creates challenges that she never faced as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer. That includes dealing with Campbell von Havre, who works tirelessly to support the townsfolk. He is a dragon, and her element’s superior to whom she, as a firebird, must obey.

  When the grandson of the town’s doyen, Moira Falconer, is found in a hot tub and Campbell is connected to the death, Harley investigates the mystery surrounding Campbell. But not everyone in Falconer wants Harley digging that deep and the reaction to her investigation is violent…

  Get your copy of The Shepherd of Fire now!

  SPECIAL OFFER – FREE URBAN FANTASY

  A drought-ridden Arizona town hires a very special kind of rainmaker: A siren.

  But when it comes time to pay for her services, Mayor Archer Bertrand has a change of heart. After all, the old races are legally non-people and can’t sign contracts.

  That was just his first mistake.

  This short story is set in the old races-inhabited world of Magorian & Jones, written by Taylen Carver. It is not commercially released, but provided free to readers and fans of the series.

  Click here to get your copy:

  https://taylencarver.com/rainmaker-landing-page/

  DID YOU ENJOY THIS BOOK?

  HOW TO MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE!

  Reviews are powerful.

  Authors like me, without the financial muscle of a sleek New York publisher backing me, can’t take advertisements out in the subways and billboards of the world.

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  Taylen

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Best-selling Canadian author Taylen Carver writes edgy urban fantasy, doesn’t pull punches, and would rather be writing unless otherwise notified. When not writing, Taylen can usually be found inside speculative fiction of other authors. Favorites include Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, Kevin Hearne, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Emma Bull.

  OTHER BOOKS BY TAYLEN CARVER

  For reviews, excerpts, and more about each title, visit Taylen’s site and click on the cover you are interested in: https://taylencarver.com/books/

  Magorian & Jones

  The Memory of Water

  Rainmaker

  The Triumph of Felix

  The Shield of Agrona

  The Rivers Ran Red

  The Divine and Deadly

  Harley Firebird

  The Dragon of Falconer

  The Orc Who Cried

 

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