Ghost Killer (25 page)

Clare accepted warmly, and made a note to send the Creede Historical Society a donation . . .
and if the Buddy Jemmings oral history helped her, she’d consider adding them to a
trust she was setting up for charities.

She was absolutely tired of waiting, and it didn’t appear like she’d be able to initiate
any positive steps soon.

Intolerable. Yes, her patience had definitely evaporated. She’d broken. Just plain
snapped. She
would
do something. Now.

Enzo suffered, and she couldn’t accept the failure to save her loving companion before
time ran out.

She’d seen him in that thin capsule, so she tended to believe the Other, who had no
liking for her.

It had occurred to her that the Other could lie. Or be mistaken? She kept hope alive
in her heart, sent blessings to Enzo, prayers to Whoever might listen, and prepared
to take action, to carry the fight to the ghost.

Perhaps she couldn’t extinguish the specter, but Clare intended to save her dog.

She’d watched the town, the tourists, and picked the spot for her stand, near the
canyon wall on the far side of the flume and to the north. That area, and the two
old rental cabins, seemed empty.

So she passed behind the hotel, crossed over the open bridge, holding the handrail,
and strode beyond even the farthest building. Not much space, but sufficient. And
deserted, and not easily seen. That was important. She had a little qualm that Zach
would not look for her here if anything happened to her . . . but if she died, it
wouldn’t matter, and if she freed Enzo, he could summon Zach. She preferred not to
think of a middle ground, that she might live but not free Enzo . . . but Caden might
be able to sense her, or Zach himself.

She studied the area, damp rather than dry from all the precipitation lately, with
scrubby wild grass that grew in clumps. She checked to see that there weren’t any
dangerous-looking rocks around. Of course the whole canyon wall loomed beside her,
but scrutinizing that, she didn’t see any outcroppings to be easily broken off and
dropped on her head. She hoped.

Yes, she
would
free Enzo!

Rolling her shoulders, stretching and loosening her muscles, she untied the knotted
tassels of the ivory sheath with one jerk. That worked well. She scrunched the tube
down and off, stuck it in her pocket, and looked at the metal sheath in the outdoor
natural sunlight, just beautiful. But she hesitated to completely draw the bone knife.
If she drew it, she’d have to use it, and she wanted to save the blade as a surprise
for the final fight . . . after they knew the woman’s name.

So she breathed deeply, sent her senses questing for the killer ghost, found her at
the confluence of the Willow creeks, and yelled with her mind,
You BITCH!

That felt good!
YOU BITCH!

She didn’t have to shout it again.

THE STORM WHIRLED
down the creek, the flume, onto land and straight for her. Incredibly fast! Quicker
than she’d imagined, than she’d truly prepared for.

Crap.

Why hadn’t she practiced
more
?

Because she was afraid.

Fear flooded her now, as the snowstorm bit and whipped and moved toward her. Forget
that!

She shut her eyes—good grief, she could
see
it better, experience it—with her eyes shut, and plunged into it. A maelstrom of
ghosts whirled and wept and shrieked around her like tattered banshees, mouths open,
crying, crying, crying. Pleading for her to help, to set
them
free. A thick, black, monstrous negative-energy
oily
spot pulsed black in the middle. Hard to reach. Maybe.

And teeth bit her, claws scraped her side, but she ignored them, looking for Enzo.
She
must
get him.

There! An encapsulated being, a dog, barked at her, pawed at the shield between them.
Once he got his paw through it, the dark being snapped out and he took his foot back,
dripping silver stuff, and cowered in his capsule—a capsule that showed cracks, and
thin areas—like the one she now saw Enzo pushing his paw through.

No, Enzo. Be still.

Clare! You have come for me!
He panted, turned his head toward her, and as he whizzed past in the funnel she saw
huge, sad eyes. Not hopeful.

Go back, Clare! It WANTS you.

She didn’t answer, set her feet, clenched her teeth, and remembered a knife-work pattern
Desiree and she had done and began cutting, timing her strokes to when Enzo’s capsule
would circle to her.

She dismissed the creeping cold, standard when working with ghosts, though she sipped
little panting breaths so her lungs wouldn’t freeze.

One. Two.
Three
, and Enzo flashed near. Again she leapt, straight for him, slicing into his capsule,
grabbing him—
yes,
she got him! She threw him from the storm, watched him fly free of it. The dark one
moved toward him.

Opening her mouth, she screamed her own anger and fear in a war cry, continued with
the stabbing, the weaving, the cutting . . . other spirits flung themselves at her,
onto the knife. Yes, even sheathed it freed them!

They wailed as they vanished, hurt, but gone from this time and place. No longer tortured
or finally absorbed by the central ghost.

That one whipped out nasty black tendrils. Those couldn’t touch the knife. But they
could cut Clare.

More and more ghosts thickened between her and the primary apparition, trying to impale
themselves on the knife and move on from this hideous torture.

Clare took one step back, another. Heard the roar of loss from the monster in the
middle as some of her chained ghosts vanished. Slowly, the core entity coalesced into
female shape.

Think! Clare wouldn’t last too long. She brought her hands together, stretched numb
fingers to find the sheath, pulled the blade out. It stuck a moment, then freed a
little and she saw an inch of red, red blade. She gasped; her mind seemed to crackle
as thought broke from icy slowness. Then one of her feet, next her calf, felt autumn
sun. Enzo pulling on her jeans.

And she was out of the whirling snowstorm, but continued to jab with her blade.

The specter compressed into a tight funnel, into a streak of gray-white-flashing-lightning.
It shot up into the blue sky and was gone.

Clare fell. Enzo stood over her, his front paws in her. She felt nothing.

Zach comes!
he yelled. Then he licked and licked and licked her face numb.
You SAVED me, Clare. From the big, evil, ghost thing. You can do ANYTHING!

A large black shadow fell over her and instead of feeling even colder or more fear,
she knew it was Zach, and it warmed her.

Then she passed out.

*   *   *

She came to consciousness when her stomach kept jostling against a hard surface. All
her blood had rushed to her head and she found herself laid over Zach’s shoulder as
he limped with her back to the hotel.

“It’s hard enough to keep my balance,” Zach said through gritted teeth. He sounded
steamed. “Keep still!”

“I can walk,” she protested.

“Let’s just get this done.” He threaded through buildings and rocky ground to the
closest open metal bridge over the flume.

He
did
have good balance as it was, even over the uneven ground. She tried a tiny shift.

“Stay still so I don’t drop you on your hard head.”

Just before they reached the hotel’s back dining area, he lowered her, saving her
the embarrassment of being seen like that, at least.

She knew her face was red, but he flushed with ruddy color, too.

“You scared the crap out of me. What the hell did you think you were doing?”

What spurted from her lips was, “Leave no man behind.”

He sent her a fulminating, disgusted look. “You’re not a damn marine. Or a ranger.”

Enzo barked.

Zach froze.

Staring at the gamboling Lab, who didn’t seem much hurt, Zach said, “You got Enzo
back.”

“I did.” She nodded and took a step and had to lean on Zach.

“That does it. One damn fight too many for me. I’m taking you to the medical clinic
to be checked out, and you’re letting me.”

Her mind swooped and spun in slow circles. Her face and body stung as if she had slashes.
Her breath came too slowly.

“The knife helped,” she said. Her fingers still clamped over it.

Propping her against his good side, Zach said, “Looks like the ghost ran away and
is hiding and brooding, as usual.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, managed around cold tongue and lips. “I had to take action.”

She thought she heard his teeth snap together, wasn’t at an angle where she could
see whether his jaw flexed. Then his body loosened a trifle. “I didn’t see your breaking
point coming. Shoulda.”

“Eh. The ivory tube is in my pocket.”

“See that, got it.” He plucked it from her front pocket, wrestled the knife from her
tight grip—and her fingers remained curved after it was gone. He stuck the knife in
the sheath, tied the tassels, and placed it in a zipped compartment of her purse,
which she realized she still wore with the strap across her body. Amazing. She hadn’t
given it a thought during the battle, and it hadn’t bothered her during the fight,
thrown her off balance. That was good to know since it made her better coordinated
than she’d believed.

At the clinic, both Zach and Enzo stayed with her as she was treated for cuts, bruises,
and scrapes. The nurses seemed to think she’d taken a tumble down a hiking path. Naturally,
neither she nor Zach contradicted them, though one of them kept glancing at Enzo,
then away. To take her mind off the pain, Clare wondered absently if that nurse had
noticed when the regular ghosts had gotten gobbled up. And if she had, whether she’d
liked that fact or not.

The nurse in charge gave her some antibacterial cream and recommended over-the-counter
painkillers. As for Clare, she yearned for a nice hot shower.

She and Zach had a late and quiet lunch at the hotel that for both of them seemed
to be nothing more than stoking up fuel. Enzo lay on her feet under the table. At
the end of their meal, the hostess delivered the oral history Clare had been waiting
for. It was on an old-fashioned CD.

When they went up, Clare headed for the shower, dragging butt. Again, Enzo followed,
as devoted now as he’d been when he’d first come to her. Occasionally he whuffled,
or licked her ankle, and always he watched her with adoring eyes. When she’d gently
asked if he should go to Caden, the dog flickered wildly.
You SAVED me, and you are my companion. I didn’t do my duty.
He lifted his head.
And the bad ghost got me because
I
was bad. Not gonna be bad again.

At that she bent down to pet him and reassure him. “You’re absolutely wrong. Caden
needed you.”

You wanted me with you.

Well, she couldn’t deny that. “Yes, I was selfish, and I love you, so of course I
wanted you with me. But you came when I blooded the knife, and I’m glad and grateful
for that.
And
the reason the ghost caught you was because you were defending me from the zombie.
You were a hero.”

I WAS. And you are a hero TOO! We will be heroes together!

“Yes, we will.”

I will stay with you. But that ghost is really, really mean and scary and crazy and
I think you’ve made it MAD.

“I’m sure I have. I love you, Enzo.”

I love you, Clare.

She’d already told Zach she’d need a nap to recharge, and he’d agreed. What was going
on in the man’s head, she didn’t quite know, but she figured he, too, had begun to
reach the end of his patience and a breaking point.

She stood under a hot shower for a long time, wishing for even a built-in tub, and
would have given a thousand dollars for a dip in a hot whirlpool. When the hot water
began to cool and she realized guiltily that her indulgence might impact the rest
of the guests, she hurriedly turned the water off, toweled dry, slipped on the robe,
and headed for the room.

Once there, Enzo jumped on the end of the bed and she chuckled. She ignored the sunshine,
Zach’s shadow on the window shades as he stood at the rail outside on the balcony,
and slipped between the sheets and then into the darkness of sleep.

*   *   *

After they returned from the medical center, Zach paced back and forth in the room
until he couldn’t take it anymore, then opened the balcony door and went out to stand
near the rail in the sun to observe people, and to think.

He kneaded the tightness at the back of his neck. He should have seen Clare’s break
coming, but, so far, she’d been the most patient of women, proceeding slowly and steadily
step-by-step in learning her new craft. Moving from one idea to the next when she
felt totally sure of the solidity of the previous conclusion.

But she’d blindsided him with her actions. He’d forgotten the fiery gypsy in her.

She’d scared him spitless, especially since he was running to her, following an inner
sense of where she was that had vanished the one other time in his life when he’d
needed to depend on it.

He’d only seen a couple of minutes of the fight as he gimped to her, and they would
sure talk about
that
, her moves, when she was recovered.

Gripping the square rail made his hands hurt, so he released it and, aware of any
eyes watching, let himself lope to the end of the balcony and back. The far room of
the three that shared it with them, the Jackpot, was empty. Zach sort of thought that
they hadn’t liked last night’s unusual storm, which had hit the hotel and nowhere
else in town. That had been the main buzz of a packed dining room at breakfast.

The people in the Commodore room were out Jeeping today—four-wheeling—following the
Rio Grande to its headwaters.

For him, too, everything was taking too long, though he was more accustomed to slowly
building a case than Clare.

He rubbed his face. He was getting lines, he knew it. No, he had the lines, they were
just engraving deeper. That didn’t matter except it showed the damn case gnawed at
him. Not because of the woo-woo stuff. Not because he thought he saw crows at the
edge of his vision or winging away, without being able to count them, which turned
out to be way more frustrating than just
seeing
them. Like what were they? Possibilities of the future not set? Or could he only
handle a couple of predictions at a time?

He hadn’t seen any crows since the fulfillment of the
four for death
that had applied to Linda Boucher. But he had no problem admitting to himself that
just the damned possibility of the dreaded four ate at the back of his mind. This
case had turned rotten.

He was simply not scared of his death, and there was a time when living wasn’t worth
a good spit to him, though life had turned real sweet for him lately.

Clare might die, and that notion shivered his heart.

They’d made a little progress. First they’d found the trigger for the ghost going
bad—the murder-suicide—then they’d determined the motive of the ghost—betrayal.

Blood the knife. Clare had done that and his blood was on the damned vampiric thing,
too.

Discover the core identity. That item was the one hanging them up. They were close.
He could feel it in the hairs on his nape, taste it on the back of his tongue like
a word that should come but that he’d misplaced. Frustrating thing was, there just
wasn’t any solid evidence they could track down of such a person as an anonymous whore
in a silver mining town of ten thousand. Em— Somebody. He felt a flare of pride that
he’d gotten that much out of the thing.

Crap—and now he massaged his temples. If he couldn’t get any info by regular means,
then it had to be through the unusual and weird.