Blood Ghast Blues (Black Box Inc. Series Book 2) Read online

  “How the fuck is that a plan?” I shouted at Sharon as the front door swung shut.

  “Here is how,” Sharon said and held up her phone. “I called Teresa. Flip is meeting us at the office.”

  “So?”

  “So, we have a kobold head there and Flip is bringing a book with the ritual in it that will banish the blood ghast,” Sharon said as she crawled out from under the table. “But we must hurry. That nightmare cannot remain loose on the streets.”

  “Ya goddamn think?”

  “It is a sound plan,” the twins said in unison.

  “Go,” the brother said.

  “We’ll tell the police what happened,” the sister said.

  “Shit,” I said and dissolved my Dim rods. “Thanks.”

  I hurried over to Sharon and she gave me a puzzled look.

  “Those would have been helpful,” she said.

  “They drain energy,” I replied pushing her forward. “We need to run, not fight.”

  “Oh, yes, true,” she replied.

  We ran to the front door and burst out onto Short Corpse Lane. The bog sprites were long gone. All of the tourists were long gone and the street was empty. Far off to the west I heard a scream then Lassa’s yeti roar. The office was to the east and I took off running, pulling Sharon along as I grabbed her hand.

  We passed two Sweepers along the way and they each tipped their hats to us as they headed for the Raven’s Perch. There was a body to clean up inside. A few bodies. Or more precisely—body parts.

  We rounded the corner and nearly slammed into a dazed looking tourist couple on Battery Park Avenue. Normal humans from the way they stood there with nothing but pure terror on their faces. Asheville’s weird got a little too scary for them.

  I pushed past the couple and led us down the street towards our office. We were only three blocks away, but a lot can happen in three blocks. Far off, sirens sounded as well as another scream. Then another. And another. No yeti roar.

  “They’ll be fine, Chase,” Sharon said, hardly sounding convinced, as we sprinted to the next corner and turned onto Haywood Street. “They will be.”

  “I know,” I said, but I didn’t. Shotgun slugs, my Dim rods, several rounds from Harper’s Magnum didn’t stop the monster. My confidence wasn’t exactly boiling over.

  The sidewalks had been cleared of the buskers and street performers knew when to call it a night in the face of imminent danger. Without entertainment to gawk at, the evening’s strolling tourists had taken their cash and credit cards into the many restaurants and bars that lined the street, oblivious to the real reason the guy painted silver and the bluegrass trios had abandoned their hard-earned territories.

  The sirens grew closer and three Asheville PD cruisers raced past us in the opposite direction just as we reached our street. I saw Flip standing outside our office, a massive book in his tiny hands. He was hopping from foot to foot as he waited impatiently.

  “We do not have much time!” he called as we closed the distance to our office’s front door.

  Sharon had keys out and was unlocking the door as a shriek drew my attention away from the office. I looked up and down the street, but didn’t see the blood ghast.

  “Oh, my,” Flip gasped and I followed his gaze.

  Floating above the ledge of the building across the street was the blood ghast. Its orange eyes locked onto me and it dove. Fast.

  “Sharon!” I snarled. “Open door. Now.”

  “I am!” Sharon cried and I heard the small click of the lock.

  I shoved Flip in after her and was about to follow, but I knew the timing was off. I brought out the Dim rods again and swung them both as the blood ghast was about to collide with me. One rod caught it across the cheek and knocked it off its course. It slammed into the front window of our office and the glass shattered everywhere. Which wasn’t supposed to happen since the glass was hexed.

  “Chase!” Sharon screamed from inside.

  Goddammit . . .

  I burst through the front door and threw a Dim rod at the back of the blood ghast. Before the rod left my hand I altered its form slightly so that what hit the monster’s back was more of a machete than a rod. It stuck solid between the thing’s shoulder blades.

  The shriek the monster let loose sent me down to one knee. I thought my ears were going to start bleeding.

  “Get your ass up, Chase,” a voice said from my side.

  Two ice cold hands gripped me by the shoulders and lifted me to my feet.

  Travis.

  An old friend. A shapeshifter. And until a couple weeks ago, a living being. But he had his heart ripped out, literally, by the head of the faerie mafia, and now he was a ghost. Which made his being able to grab and pick me up a little confusing.

  “You’re the only one that can get the head,” Travis said. “Pull it from the Dim. I’ll handle the blood ghast.”

  I didn’t argue or waste time asking why he was here now.

  As the blood ghast struggled to pull the Dim machete from its back, Travis leapt onto the thing and wrapped his incorporeal arms around the monster’s throat and neck. More shrieking, but not send-me-to-my-knees volume, followed. I ignored the painful noise and rushed around the grappling beings to my desk where Sharon and Flip were huddled next to each other.

  I yanked open my key drawer, shoved my hand into the pile of Dim bits inside until I was able to vibe the right one. I pulled out the specific Dim key and brought the kobold head to me. A box appeared on top of my desk and I flicked the Dim key against the swirling black smoke of its surface. The box vanished, leaving only a fairly rotten kobold head.

  “What now?” I asked Flip.

  “You must stab your fingers through the eye sockets and repeat after me,” Flip said.

  “Goddammit,” I grumbled as I shoved the first two fingers of my right hand into the severed head’s eye sockets. The putrid eyeballs burst and the stink was sickening. “Now what?”

  There was a shout and a crash then Flip said, “Oh, no, not good.”

  I looked away from the kobold head to see Travis’s body halfway through the wall of the office and the blood ghast speeding at us.

  8.

  “WHAT DO I SAY?” I shouted at Flip.

  “We do not have time!” Flip cried.

  Big booms. The blood ghast lost most of its midsection as Harper leapt through the shattered window, Magnum blasting away. Lassa was right behind her and sprinted at the blood ghast, leaping into the air with something in his right hand.

  The goblin sickle.

  Lassa slashed down and the blood ghast was split in two, both halves dropping to the floor of our office like two tons of bricks.

  “Say the words, dude!” Lassa yelled as he stood over the blood ghast and began hacking away at it. Pieces of the monster flew this way and that, but none stayed still for long. They began to wiggle and move back toward each other. “It never stays apart! Start chanting!”

  “Flip!” I yelled.

  “Asgomoth fornum!” Flip cried.

  I copied that.

  “Hospot’oth liphorium!”

  More copying.

  “Spelternum gos mal!”

  I said those words and the kobold head burst apart. Then it was like time had stopped and the hundreds of bits of kobold skull, scalp, and brains froze in midair.

  “Move!” Harper cried and yanked Lassa away from the blood ghast.

  The dismembered monster became whole instantly then shrieked at full volume again as it was sucked straight at the frozen kobold bits. As the nightmare got closer it began to shrink and shrink until it was small enough to fit inside the shattered kobold head. The moment the blood ghast was dead center, the stopped time ended and the kobold head reassembled then blinked out of e
xistence, leaving our ears ringing and eyes wide.

  “That’s it?” I asked Flip.

  “Apparently so,” Flip said.

  “Apparently? Pal, apparently ain’t gonna goddamn cut it!”

  “Yes, that is it,” Flip said as his eyes scanned the open book. “That particular blood ghast is banished from this dimension forever.”

  “That particular blood ghast?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Yeah, dude, how many more are we talking?” Lassa asked as he limped over to his desk and sat down hard enough to almost crack his chair.

  “I am unsure how many more,” Flip said. “I only know that Ms. Sullivan has been on the phone with the DEX and this blood ghast attack is far from singular.”

  “Well, that’s just goddamn great,” I said and sat down.

  I rummaged around in my desk until I found what I was looking for. Special Agent Ducheré’s card.

  My phone was a shattered mess when I pulled it out of my pocket.

  “Here,” Sharon said. She tossed me her phone then went to her mini-fridge and opened it, pulling out a jar of pig’s blood. She downed half the jar and slumped into her own chair. “Ahhhh . . .”

  “Good idea,” Harper said, walking to a cabinet on the wall where we kept the liquor.

  “Hello?” Travis’s muffled voice called out. “A little help?”

  We turned and looked at his ghostly backside.

  “When did he show up?” Lassa asked.

  With an immense amount of effort, Lassa pushed up from his chair and went to Travis. He grabbed the ghost by the legs and pulled. Lassa’s hands almost went through Travis’s form, but the legs solidified enough that Lassa could get a grip and pull Travis free.

  “Thanks,” Travis said as he shook all over like a dog drying off. “That was different.”

  “You’re different,” I said, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “You’re dead and should be acting like a ghost. The way you tackled that blood ghast was not ghostlike and neither was getting stuck in a wall. Talk.”

  “Yeah, dude, I shouldn’t have been able to grab you,” Lassa said, returning to his chair.

  “Then why try?” I asked him.

  “Who am I to refuse grabbing an ass like that?” Lassa smirked.

  “Shapeshifter,” Travis said, rolling his eyes at Lassa. “We die differently. We ghost differently. Something to do with our control of our molecules.”

  “Whatever,” Harper said as she pulled the cork from a nice bottle of rye and took a swig. She tossed the bottle to Lassa who swigged as well. “Let’s not make it about you right now, Travis. Chase? Call Ducheré and get her ass over here.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said and dialed the special agent’s number.

  “Ducheré speaking.”

  “Ducheré? Chase Lawter. We banished a blood ghast and would really, really, really fucking like to have a chat with you. How fast can you get to my office?”

  “Eh hem,” Sharon said.

  “Our office,” I corrected and put my hand over the phone’s mic. “Sorry, Shar.”

  She shrugged.

  “Mr. Lawter, is everyone all right?”

  “We’re all in one piece, yeah. How fast can you get here?”

  “Two seconds?”

  “Do what?”

  “One second?”

  “Goddammit, stop messing with me,” I snapped.

  “Not messing with you, Mr. Lawter,” Ducheré said as she stood outside our shattered front window. She was quickly joined by six more DEX agents. “May I come in?”

  “Please,” I said. “But use the door. Wouldn’t want you to cut yourself.”

  “Watch the area,” Ducheré said to the other agents then came in through our open front door. No one had bothered to shut it since we were missing most of the front of our office anyway.

  The agents turned and guarded our office as Ducheré walked towards us. Then she came up short and grabbed her nose. “Ow.”

  “That’s interesting,” Harper said. She was busy retrieving the goblin sickle and pulling a cleaning cloth from her desk when Ducheré cried out. Harper lifted the sickle so Ducheré could get a good look. “Chase invited you in, but the security hex stopped you from passing the barrier. That means you have ill intent, Special Agent. I’m in a mood to kill some ill intent.”

  “Harper, be calm,” Sharon said. “Threatening an agent of the Department of Extradimensional Affairs will not help the situation.”

  “No, no, she is right to question my motives,” Ducheré said then reached into her blouse and pulled out the stasis ward. She unclasped the chain and set the amulet on the ground then walked past the wooden railing without a problem. “Sometimes protections counteract each other. Are we all right now, Ms. Kyles?”

  “Yeah, that checks out,” Harper said and went back to cleaning the goblin sickle which was severely stained with blood ghast gunk.

  Lassa held up the bottle of rye. “Care for a snort? If you do you better hurry up because this ain’t gonna last long, dude.”

  “Do not refer to me as dude, please,” Ducheré said. “Some professionalism would be appreciated.”

  “Oh, fuck that!” Sharon said as she finished her pig’s blood and slammed the empty jar down on her desktop.

  All eyes went to her.

  “Did Sharon just say fuck that to professionalism?” Lassa asked Harper soto voce.

  Harper held out her hand and Lassa tossed the rye back to her. She caught it without a bobble and flicked the cork out of the top with the tip of the goblin sickle. Then she drank nearly half the bottle, burped, and squinted at Sharon.

  “I’d say she’s a changeling, but I can smell those,” Harper said. She fetched the cork, replaced it, and tossed me the bottle. “Chase?”

  I caught the rye and glared at Ducheré. “You broke our business manager, Ducheré. Start talking or the six tough guys you brought with you won’t make it inside by a single foot before we beat your goddamn ass six ways to Wednesday.”

  “No, no, my apologies,” Sharon said over and over. “I lost my composure for a moment. Let’s not blow it out of proportion.”

  “Uh, may I go now?” Flip asked. “I should return this book to the firm’s library and report to Ms. Sullivan.”

  “You may return, but you will have to leave that book,” Ducheré said.

  “Oh, no, I’m afraid I cannot do that,” Flip said. “This is the property of Mulkahey, Delaney, and Sullivan—Attorneys at Law. If you would like to borrow it then you will need to submit a written request to the firm or obtain a warrant.”

  Ducheré reached into her suit jacket and produced a folded piece of paper. “A copy is similarly being presented to your firm’s partners as we speak. The DEX requires anything and everything regarding the summoning, banishment, and control of blood ghasts.”

  “Control?” I asked then shook my head. “Of course. Otherwise that goddamn nightmare would have run rampaging through the city.”

  “Uh, dude, isn’t that what happened? There’s some dead folk at the Raven’s Perch that may side on the rampage argument,” Lassa said.

  “Poor Cal,” Sharon said. “He was a nice troll.”

  “What? Cal’s dead?” Travis asked.

  Ducheré actually jumped and spun about to regard the shapeshifter ghost. “How did I not notice you there?”

  “Shapeshifter ghost,” Travis said with a shrug. “We’re different. Long story, really boring.”

  Ducheré eyed him for a couple of seconds then nodded and looked back to me while also positioning herself so her back wasn’t to Travis. I respected the caution.

  “It is unfortunate what happened at the Raven’s Perch tonight,” Ducheré said. “I had hoped to avoid
any more bloodshed, but tracking a blood ghast is near impossible. I had my men following you, but the mayhem happened so fast, and you exited the bar in such a hurry, that there was nothing they could do but contact me and follow you here. Luckily you dispatched the creature. I do thank you for that.”

  She held out her hand and turned her attention to Flip.

  “The book, if you please.”

  “Oh, the partners are going to be so upset,” Flip said as he handed the book over then gave us a short bow and a tip of his hat. “I’ll report to Ms. Sullivan and she will send over an invoice. I wish you all good luck.”

  “Make sure she knows that we did the majority of the work,” Sharon called after the gnome. “No extra charges, Mr. Flip!”

  She looked at me with a frown.

  “Do you think he heard me? I do hope he heard me.”

  “He heard you, Shar,” I said then took a deep breath and pointed my chin at Ducheré. “Talky time, Ducheré. You’re going to lay it all out on the table.”

  She studied me for a few seconds then nodded.

  “I suppose openness is the best policy at this moment,” she said. “Especially if the DEX is to employ your services.”

  “Employ our services?” Sharon asked and perked up. “The DEX? Federal money? Oh, here, let me get you a chair.”

  9.

  SHARON SET THE cup of coffee down on the desk next to Ducheré and gave the special agent a warm, zombie smile. “Careful. It’s hot.”

  “Thank you,” Ducheré said and picked up the mug. She took a long drink and didn’t flinch at the temperature. “Mmm. That is quite good.”

  “Locally roasted,” Sharon said. “I can get you some bags of beans to take back with you, if you’d like.”

  “The special agent can get coffee in DC, Shar,” I said. “How about we hurry this along and get to the ‘splaining, huh?”