Page 13 of Devils and the Dead
Ghosts concentrated around a strand of maples would lead me in a different direction of thought than ghosts who were trying to get the attention of the shifters on the mountain, regardless of where on the mountain they were.
“Well, yeah. But that stuff is kinda normal, you know?” Flick shifted in her seat. “Foggy people asking for Christmas decorations isn’t normal.”
True.
“Justelle, you go next,” Clinton prompted.
Justelle looked about five years or so younger than Flick. Her honey blonde hair was done up in an intricate braid. The light fuzz along her jawline would turn into soft fur as she got older.
“I live at the north end of the compound with my two brothers. We’ve had a persistent cold spot at the far west corner of our house for the last two months.” She gave me a tentative smile. “We thought it was some weird geologic thing, although my younger brother insists we must have built the house over a grave.”
“We didn’t come across any bones when we excavated for the compound,” Clinton jumped in. “If we had, I’d have stopped construction and called you right away.”
Werewolves were very superstitious about disturbing the dead. Dallas had sent for me three years ago when they’d accidentally unearthed a satyr grave when digging for a smoke pit. The incident had involved ceremonies and sacrifices as well as my contacting the deceased satyr to ask for his forgiveness in the disturbance of his remains. The werewolves marked the ground as consecrated and dug their smoke pit elsewhere. To this day they gave the location the same fearful respect they gave their own cemeteries, even though the deceased satyr hadn’t seemed to care about the fire pit one way or the other.
Justelle nodded at Clinton’s statement. “Anyway, when Flick told me what happened to her, I thought maybe the ghost she saw was a dryad or an ent or something, so I went out the next night. There was a silvery sort of ground fog all around the trees. It didn’t get cold or anything, and I didn’t see anything that looked like a person, but that fog sure was creepy.”
“Creepy how?” I asked, thinking how odd it was for a werewolf to admit anything was creepy.
“The fog came closer until I could hardly see anything through it. Then I got this tingly feeling like hands were touching my arms, like they were trying to tug on me and pull me somewhere, but they didn’t have the strength. I heard whispers but couldn’t tell what they were saying. Once the whispers started, I left. The fog cleared the moment I was free of that grove of trees. It was a clear night with a bright quarter moon. Not a cloud in the sky. I’ve seen ground fog before, but there wasn’t any down by the stream or in the valley, just in that cluster of sugar maples.”
I nodded, made a few notes on my pad of paper, then turned to Bay.
The male werewolf was built like a lumberjack. He was so furry that I doubted he did more than change physical shape when he shifted into his wolf form. Thick wavy facial hair stood out a good six inches from his cheeks. It was so long it completely covered his mouth. When he spoke, all I could see was the movement of his bushy beard.
“I chop trees for the compound. Sometimes it’s firewood. Sometimes it’s wood for the meat smokers. Sometimes it’s for the carpentry and furniture making crews. A few days ago late at night I heard some noises out back of my house where I keep the wood until the other crews come to get it. I went out, thinking maybe an animal was out there or something. There was no animal, but a tree I took down for the carpentry crew was bleeding.”
I paused my notes to look up at him in shock. “Bleeding?”
He nodded, his eyes wide. “I saw it. And I smelled it. Wasn’t sap or nothing. It was blood.”
“What sort of blood?” Werewolves had incredible noses. If Bay smelled blood, he should have been able to smell what the blood was from. In detail. As in “it was a fifteen-year-old female black bear shifter with a urinary tract infection who’d eaten a blueberry muffin for breakfast” detail.
“I don’t know. I’ve never smelled that sort of blood before.” He wrinkled his nose. “There was something wrong with it, though. And it smelled like magic—like bad magic.”
Magic smelled? That was the first I’d ever heard of that.
“Witch magic? Did it smell similar to magic that I or any of my sisters do?”
Bay frowned and looked down at the table. A few seconds passed before he raised his head. “No. Maybe a little like Sylvie’s magic, but not the same. And it wasn’t human or witch blood.”
Blood from a being that Bay hadn’t ever encountered before—a being who either had magic, or had been exposed to magic.
“Bay doesn’t go into town much, but with the building going on up here and everyone helping, he’s met most of the folks calling Accident home,” Clinton assured me.
That made what the werewolf had said even more of a mystery. Lots of the wolf shifters went their whole lives without seeing more than a handful of those outside of their compound. Those wolves wouldn’t know what a minotaur or a troll or a vampire smelled like. But Clinton was right. All of the town had pitched in to help build this community up on Savior Mountain, and the werewolves here would know what they all smelled like—even if they’d never actually seen them face-to-face.
That meant whatever bled on Bay’s wood pile was a supernatural being that didn’t currently reside in Accident.
“There’s more,” Bay said ominously. “That wood that was bleeding? It was sugar maple. I took that tree that had fallen and blocked the road a few weeks back, and hauled it over to my house. Nice thick trunk. Straight and true. Would have made good cabinets or flooring.”
“Where is this wood now?” I asked.
“Over at the carpenter’s place. He put it aside. Clinton said we wouldn’t want to cut it up until we’d talked to you.”
I put my notepad and pencil back in my bag and stood. “Let’s start there.”
I followed the four werewolves outside and over to a tidy cabin on the outskirts of the compound. Hand tools were lined up on benches. Planed boards were on saw horses. A tall, thin werewolf with bushy iron-gray hair was sharpening a bladed tool on a leather strop. He glanced up, then stood as we approached, lowering his eyes and giving Clinton a respectful nod.
