Tooth and Nail Read online

  It just didn’t make sense. Maybe my hunch was right. Maybe Michael had been left altered by the magic that’d pumped through his blood. Maybe, just maybe, he even had a touch of the Sight. But there were other Seers in Lost Falls, and even more further afield. Surely the Dealer would have an easier time trading with them for information, rather than trying to extract some meaning from my hazy recollections of a two-year-old’s ramblings.

  But, in the end, it didn’t really matter what the Dealer was hoping to get from the deal. The information he was offering was certainly valuable to me, assuming he was telling the truth. If the deal didn’t put Michael in harm’s way, what was the problem? Why did I feel so uneasy about the whole thing?

  “Hell,” I muttered. “Why couldn’t you at least wait until I’d had a few hours’ sleep before you sprang this on me?”

  “I assumed you wouldn’t want to waste a single second.”

  “You overestimate my work ethic.”

  I sighed and looked toward the door. Back down the hallway, in a room much like this one, Rachel was lying in her bed, suffering. Maybe she’d been lucky enough to fall asleep. I doubted it.

  I put aside all thoughts of war between the vampires and the ogres. I put aside the fears of what that conflict would do to the rest of the town.

  Instead, I thought about Rachel. At the very least, she deserved to know why she was in so much pain. Hell, a little closure might be what she needed to break the bond that still tied her to Selene Eventide.

  The Dealer was looking at me silently, his mismatched face set into a look of patient serenity. I met his eyes.

  “Okay,” I said.

  The Dealer smiled and held out his hand. I hesitated a moment, then reached out and grasped his palm. His skin was cool and strangely clammy, like meat left out too long.

  “You always see reason in the end,” the Dealer said. “Shall we get started?”

  11

  The Dealer climbed out of his chair. Frowning, I stayed where I was.

  “Get started?” I said. “What do you mean? Just tell me who this witness is.”

  He beckoned. “Come.”

  The Dealer turned toward the old boxy TV that was sitting on the desk. One long finger stretched out and hit the power button. The TV came to life with a low hum. Static filled the screen. I could see fingerprints and dust smeared across the glass.

  Confused, I got off the bed and went over to him. “You brought the TV here?”

  “Of course.” He bent over and pressed a couple of buttons on the VCR.

  “How’d you sneak it in?” I shook my head. “You know what, never mind.”

  The picture on the TV remained a haze of static. The Dealer leaned over the TV and began fiddling with the cables.

  I stared at the old VCR. “So, what, did you catch the whole thing on your camcorder or something?” I dragged my finger across the top of the VCR, leaving a trail through the thick layer of dust. “You ever think about upgrading to digital?”

  He jerked a cable free of the back of the TV, and the static hissed and jumped for a second.

  “Ah, there we go,” the Dealer said.

  I frowned. “Still looks like a snowstorm to me.”

  “Look closer.”

  Now that he mentioned it, I thought I could see hazy shapes moving beyond the static. I leaned in and squinted, trying to make out the images.

  “If this is your idea of useful evidence,” I said, “I want a refund. What am I supposed to be—

  Hot, piercing pain punched into the back of my neck, just below the base of my skull. A buzzing, hissing sensation flooded my mind. My vision went blurry.

  I put my hand to the back of my head. I felt the wet stickiness of fresh blood flowing across my skin. My fingertips brushed something hard and rubbery sticking out of the back of my neck.

  I tried to jerk back, but I felt something go taut, keeping me from twisting away. Through hazy eyes, I saw a black cable stretching toward me from the back of the TV. The Dealer had thrust it into the back of my neck.

  I grabbed hold and tried to yank it out. It wouldn’t budge.

  Black and white static filled my vision. With a roar, I reached for the fuzzy shape of the Dealer. My fingers closed around his throat.

  “What is this?” I snarled.

  “Be calm, Osric.” His voice remained clear even as I crushed his windpipe.

  “Take it out!”

  I could no longer make out his features through the static. A crackling hiss filled my ears, nearly drowning out his response.

  “I’m afraid I can’t. That would violate my end of the deal. I would never back out of a deal, Osric.”

  With no effort at all, he peeled my fingers from his throat. I didn’t know if I was losing my strength or he was just impossibly powerful. I reached for him with my other hand, but his shape became lost in the static and my fingers closed on air.

  I staggered. A whine like a computer booting up filled my head, overlaid across the static hiss. I spun, trying to find the Dealer, but all I could see were dancing pinpricks of black and white. The cable stuck in the back of my neck went taut as I twisted, pulling me off balance. I hit the ground with a grunt that I could no longer hear.

  I felt something move next to me, and the Dealer’s voice came to me through the roar.

  “I said I would help you find the witness,” the Dealer said. “And that is exactly what I’m going to do.”

  “Nothing is ever easy with you,” I mumbled in response.

  I thought I heard the Dealer laugh, but I couldn’t be sure. The high-pitched whine faded, replaced by a steady hum. The crackling hiss began to change in tone as well. It began to sound like…rain.

  I turned, and the snowstorm across my eyes shifted. Shapes began to appear out of the haze, like the optical illusions in those Magic Eye books. Shapes of people moving, shapes of earth and trees. The sound of the rain grew heavier.

  My vision suddenly began spooling upward, like I was watching a bad TV picture. The sensation was nauseating. I tried to lean forward, put my hands on the ground, but my body didn’t respond. I couldn’t move my arms. I couldn’t move anything.

  Just as I was about to hurl, the image steadied again. Color faded in—what little of it there was. My vision became clear enough to make out the world around me, but it still felt like there was something between me and my surroundings. Everything was distorted slightly, as if it was coming to me through a lens. Dots of color—red, green, and blue—were scattered across the picture. Like I was sitting with my face pressed against an old TV screen.

  I took in the image in front of me. It was an image I’d seen before, not so many hours ago. Vampires and swains tromping through the mud at Doyle’s Reach, flashlights sweeping the area. Whenever a beam flashed past my eyes, a lens flare sparkled across my vision.

  My view lumbered forward like a shaky camcorder. There was no sense of movement, except for that feeling of motion sickness that churned my stomach again. Ahead, a familiar vampire appeared out of the dark and the rain. Atwood.

  “Is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

  The words were loud in my ears. It took me a moment to realize it was my own voice. It sounded more muffled than I was used to.

  Atwood didn’t look in my direction. The raindrops on her glasses flared in the light of a flashlight beam. “We’ve lost someone,” she said.

  “Do you mean lost, or lost lost?” My voice again, though I wasn’t the one speaking.

  Atwood’s face darkened. She didn’t reply.

  Suddenly, everything froze. A line of static appeared across my vision. The sound of rain vanished, leaving only that faint hum in the air. As I looked closer, I realized I could see individual raindrops frozen in mid-air like streaks across reality. The whole world jittered slightly, caught between one moment and the next.

  “What is this?” I said. My voice, not some echo of myself. I didn’t know if I still had a mouth, but I could speak, a
t least.

  The response came from somewhere behind me, though I couldn’t turn my head to face it.

  “This,” the Dealer said, “is how you stop a war.”

  12

  “You have nothing to fear, Osric,” the Dealer said. “The man who sold me this skill was a master of his art. I have been looking forward to testing it out.”

  “Wait,” I said, my vision still filled with the frozen image of Atwood at Doyle’s Reach. “Testing? You’re telling me you haven’t done this before?”

  “I bought all the necessary experience. You are quite safe, as long as you don’t remove the cable from your neck before we are finished.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to remove anything? I can’t move!”

  “Then you are safe even from yourself. Now, shall we continue? I would prefer that we complete our task before the memory recall magic begins to permanently affect your cognitive functions.”

  “I can hear that smile in your voice, Dealer. One day, I’m going to tear it off your ugly face and make you swallow it.”

  “No matter,” he said. “I will simply purchase another. Now, what can you see, Osric?”

  With a growl of frustration, I turned my attention back to the image fixed in my vision.

  “This is Doyle’s Reach,” I said.

  “No,” the Dealer replied. “This is your memory of Doyle’s Reach. With all the failings of your imperfect human memory.”

  “What good does that do me? You said I missed something. If I missed it, how can I remember it?”

  “The clue was there, my dear Osric. It was right there. You saw it. You just didn’t understand its significance.”

  “I still don’t see why you couldn’t just tell me.”

  “What fun would that be?” I heard him laugh. “Well, time, as they say, is a’wasting. Let’s watch, shall we?”

  Suddenly, the image in front of me began to move again. The deafening roar of the rain returned. The world stuttered for a moment, then Atwood continued her walk through the mud.

  The investigation at Doyle’s Reach played out just as I remembered it. I hassled Lockhart and nearly got my throat torn out for the trouble. We trudged toward the swollen, debris-filled river, to the tree perched on its bank, and the pickup wrapped around the trunk. I saw the ogre, One-tusk, seemingly dead behind the wheel, and then a few moments later the decapitated corpse of Selene Eventide pinned to the tree by the weight of the truck. Lockhart picked up the dead vampire’s head and wiped the mud from it. All the while, the rain hammered down on us.

  Lockhart turned to me, her mouth opening to speak. But at that moment, the world froze again. The roar of the rain suddenly ceased.

  “Did you see it?” came the Dealer’s voice from behind me.

  “See what? The vampire’s head?”

  “No, no. You’re too focused on the obvious. Let’s try again.”

  With a squeal, the world lurched. My vision became striped with lines of static as time reversed itself. Vampires and swains quick-marched backwards through the mud as raindrops streaked back into the sky.

  Then everything froze once more. I found myself staring at Atwood again, at the look on her face when she said they’d lost someone.

  My head spun like something was stirring up my brains from the inside. I fought down the urge to vomit. I supposed that meant I still had a stomach, at least.

  “Ready?” the Dealer said.

  I tried to swallow, but my body still wasn’t responding. “Wait, just let me—”

  The image began to move again. The dizzy, sickening sensation swept over me for several seconds as I adjusted to the movement once more.

  The scene played out just as it had before. For the first minute I watched everyone play their parts. Then I remembered what the Dealer had said. I was focused on the obvious. I was looking at Atwood, at Lockhart, at the bodies of One-tusk and Selene Eventide. As my past self trudged toward the pickup, I forced my attention away from the truck, toward the other details of the scene.

  I studied the vampires and swains gathered about, tried to make out more than their shapes in the darkness. Was one of them hiding something?

  I looked past them, to the truck, the tree, the river beyond. A flashlight beam passed over something that might have been a bird’s nest in one of the upper branches, or might’ve been nothing more than a trick of the light. Out on the river, a fallen log was swept downstream and into the darkness. On the far side of the river I could just make out the shapes of reeds drowning in the rush of water.

  “Can I get a clue?” I said over the sound of the rain. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

  The Dealer said nothing. Muttering a curse, I turned my attention back to the scene unfolding before me. It played for a couple more minutes, then froze again.

  “Well?” came the Dealer’s voice.

  “Well what? I don’t know what the hell—”

  The world threw itself into reverse once more. I tried to grab hold of something to steady myself, except I couldn’t feel my hands.

  “Fuck you,” I spat when the scene froze on Atwood’s face once more. “Just give me a goddamn second.”

  “You don’t have a second, Osric,” the Dealer said. “You only have a few more minutes before permanent brain injury becomes a real concern. Now pay attention this time.”

  The scene juddered back to life. A dull ache was growing behind my eyes. I felt sweat dampening my forehead as nausea crashed over me in waves. With the strength I had left, I forced myself to study the images shifting before me.

  The Dealer wasn’t going to release me until I found what he was trying to show me. I knew him well enough to know that. And if I came out of this a vegetable, well, he’d held up his end of the bargain.

  So I concentrated. Later, when I was out of this mess, I’d be having words with the Dealer. But for now there was only one way out of here.

  I scanned every blurry corner of the image as past me lumbered around. I was really starting to grow tired of my own voice.

  “Wait,” I said as I glimpsed a dark shadow in the most distant part of the image. “Wait, make it stop.”

  The world froze. Squinting, I peered past the shape of the tree and the truck to the river beyond. Floating in the river, being swept along by the current, was a fallen log. I couldn’t make out the details at this distance, but I could see it had a distinctive shape, like a Y with a curved tail.

  “Fast forward,” I said to the Dealer.

  The scene unfroze and began speeding along. Voices became rapid, indistinct squeaks. Lockhart and the others in her posse zipped about in front of me, but I kept my attention fixed on the river behind her.

  “Stop,” I said.

  Everything paused once more. I was closer to the river this time, right next to the truck. When I’d been here in real life, I’d been focusing on the ogre inside the pickup. Now, though, I was looking at something else. I was looking at the Y-shaped log being swept down the river.

  “That’s the second time I’ve seen that same log get swept past,” I said. “How the hell can the same log go down the same river twice in the space of a few minutes?”

  The Dealer said nothing, though I got the feeling he had a smug smile on his ugly face.

  I studied the log as closely as the dark, fuzzy image would allow. Doubt began to creep into my mind. What did a log have to do with anything? Maybe it was coincidence—the image wasn’t clear enough for me to be sure both logs were the same. And hell, I wasn’t even looking at some objective recording. This was my own memory, warts and all. Maybe my mind had just filled in the background of the scene with invented details. Maybe it was like in old cartoons, where to save time and money the background would loop behind the characters as they walked.

  “Play this bit again. Slow it down. Can you do that?”

  There was a now-familiar lurching sensation as the world backed up a few seconds, then everything froze once more. When it started to play again,
everything moved frame-by-frame, moment-by-moment. The world became a succession of images played one after another. I peered at the log flowing along the river in the background, straining to catch some detail that I’d missed. Something was weird about this, I could—

  “Wait,” I said. “Stop.”

  The image froze. I studied it closely.

  “Back it up a second.”

  A couple of frames ticked back as the log floated back upstream. As it rocked on the choppy river, I caught a glimpse of something slip out from beneath the surface of the river.

  “Stop,” I said again.

  I peered at the still frame. The ache in my head became a sharp, twisting pain.

  “You’re out of time, Osric,” the Dealer said.

  “Just a second,” I growled.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  I studied the log. I couldn’t be sure what I was looking at. Maybe it was a trick of the light, some artifact of the memory recall. But it almost looked like…

  “Eyes,” I whispered. “Peeking out from beneath the log. And there. Fingers holding on.” I paused. “There’s something floating beneath that log.”

  “And what is that something?”

  It was getting hard to think. The edges of the image were fading out—not static this time, but a throbbing red darkness. The nausea was returning. Forcing the pain aside, I ran through the possibilities in my head, comparing each of them to the blurry image in front of me.

  Seconds ticked past. The pain grew more intense, more difficult to ignore. I tasted copper in the back of my throat.

  “Vodyanoy.” My own voice echoed in my ears. “It’s a vodyanoy.”

  I felt a clammy hand touch the back of my neck. “Then you had better find it, don’t you think?”

  There was a sudden jerk, and the sharp pain of electricity arcing down my spine. Static swept across my eyes. And everything went black.

  13

  I awoke in bed. I first noticed the sheets. These were not the usual threadbare sheets I had at home. These were four-figure thread count sheets. The sort of sheets you feel like you’re going to slide right off.