There was no need to tell her to stay next to him. He knew she would.
“Look to the right, where the tree trunk splits,” she murmured.
It took him a moment, but he finally saw it: the remnants of a small bundle of dried mistletoe hanging from the tree, tied with a leather cord. A small wooden medallion hung from the cord. A druid had been here, recognized it as a place of evil, and tried to contain it.
“Is the spell active?” he asked under his breath.
“No. It doesn’t radiate magic. It’s a
linked ward and someone has broken it.”
Magic and wards weren’t his expertise, but he’d learned what he had to from Kate. A linked ward meant that identical wards had been placed all around the perimeter of the mall, forming a ring, each ward a link in a chain. If one link was severed, the chain broke, and the containment failed.
She shuddered. He felt her fear. Something about this place deeply creeped her out.
The mist thickened to the right, twisting. He pretended not to see the woman who stepped out of it. She was about twenty-eight or thirty, white and very pale. A ragged dress hung off her shoulders, once probably blue or green, but now faded to a dirty grey and damp. Her stomach bulged out—she looked either dangerously bloated or about seven months pregnant. She didn’t smell pregnant. She wore no bra, and the fabric snagged on her erect nipples, tracing the contours of breasts. Her dishwater-blond hair fell to below her waist, framing her face like a curtain. It might have been a pretty face, he reflected, with sharp but delicate features, except her eyes were too hungry.
She walked up to the edge of the parking lot and stopped. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re waiting to meet someone,” Julie said.
“This is a dangerous place. Come with me. I have food.”
Julie looked at him. He read hesitation in her eyes.
“She has food,” he said, keeping his voice neutral.
“Then we should come.”
“Come with me,” the woman repeated, backing up. “Come.”
If he were alone, it probably wouldn’t have been food. It might have been sex. Or both.
He stepped into the parking lot, moving slowly, careful where he put his feet, tapping the stick in front of him. Julie followed closely. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the mist flood behind them, a milky impenetrable curtain.
“Come,” the woman repeated, moving deeper into the lot, toward the spire.
He followed. The mist was swirling now, dense and thick. Ahead their guide stepped to the side and vanished. He reached out with his left hand. Julie took it, her strong dry fingers grasping his. He reached forward with his stick and tapped like a blind man, listening for the splash. The stick landed into water. He tapped until he found solid pavement and they carefully skirted the hole, making their way toward Pillar Rock.
He kept tapping, guiding them between the holes. They passed another. Then another.
His stick landed into the water again. Something yanked it. He jerked back, pulling with all his strength. The mist burst, and the bloated woman lunged at him from the water. His mind registered the long claws protruding from hands with a scaly membrane between them and the enormous fish maw with the sharp pike teeth, but his body had already moved. He dodged, grasped her arm, and used her momentum to slide behind her, clenching her to him, her back to his chest, pinning her arms. Julie swung, her expression flat, and buried the three-inch spike of her tomahawk in the left part of the creature’s chest. The scent of blood shot through him, like a jolt of electric current.
The woman flailed in his arms, trying to rake at him with her claws. He strained, keeping her still. He could snap her neck, but the fear still rolled from Julie. She needed this kill. Once she killed one, everything would fall into place.
Julie pried the tomahawk free and chopped at the woman’s bulging stomach. It split like a water skin, and a half-decomposed human head rolled out. The sour stench drenched him and he nearly gagged.
The woman thrashed, kicking. Julie dodged, jerked a knife out of the sheath on her waist, and drove the six-inch blade into the woman’s chest. The blade sank in with a scrape of metal against bone. The fish-woman screeched, her spine suddenly rigid, and sagged. The mist around them turned red and thinned, melting.
“Heart’s on the right side,” Julie said.
Claws grabbed him from behind and yanked him into the cold muddy water. He went under.
A body rushed at him through the coffee-colored water, long, pale green, clawed hands outstretched, a fish mouth on a human head gaping. A white light exploded in his head. The chain of will and restraint imposed by human part of him creaked, and he let himself off it. A knife was in his hand, and as she came at him, he locked his hand on the rough lip of that gaping toothed mouth and stabbed his knife into her side. He yanked the blade free and stabbed her again and again, driving the knife in with controlled frenzy. She clawed at him. He ignored the sharp flashes of pain and kept stabbing. Her side turned into raw butchered wound. She jerked now, trying desperately to break free, but there was no hiding from his knife or the white burning rage inside him.
Circles swam before his eyes. He realized his body was telling him it was running out of air. The creature floated limp, the right side of her chest a bloody hole. He thrust his hand into it, felt the deflated sack of the dead heart, and tore it out. Never leave things unfinished.
His chest hurt as if a red-hot band squeezed it. The first pangs of drowning panic scraped at his insides.