A Grim Situation Read online

  A Grim Situation

  The GrimFaerie Chronicles Book 2

  By Whit McClendon

  Copyrights

  A Grim Situation

  The GrimFaerie Chronicles, Book 2

  Copyright © 2019 by Whit McClendon

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, Whit McClendon, or the publisher, Rolling Scroll Publishing, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at [email protected].

  Cover Art by: Wicked Smart Designs

  Copyediting by: Michelle McClish

  Published by: Rolling Scroll Publishing, Katy, TX

  Website: www.whitmcclendon.com

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  Acknowledgements

  Writing can be a very solitary endeavor. Fortunately, I have a crew of people who encourage, support, and help me as I get words on the page, and I appreciate them mightily. Tara Wood (look her up on Amazon), thanks for being so grabby about my stories. Michelle, thanks for your fabulous edits, and helping me remove all the extra that’s. Kathryn, thanks for your comments and ideas…they always help. Christina, thanks for constantly reminding me that I’m capable of doing this whole writing thing. RJ Batla, thank you for helping me with nuts and bolts along the way, and no, I’m not going to outline anything, so there. Thank you Larry for getting me to start attending conventions. I never would have done it without your urging and now I love them. Special thanks to Dennis L McKiernan, whom I count among my friends, and has always encouraged my writing. And thanks to Brian for cheering like a crazy person for me on occasion. They’re a good bunch. Really.

  ~Whit McClendon

  A Word from the Author

  This is a work of fiction. I figure you knew that, but since I’m delving into Native American mythology a bit here, I figured I’d remind my readers that I’m not an authority on Native American culture. I’ve pulled elements from different traditions and tribes with the intent of simply entertaining you. I mean no disrespect whatsoever to any part of Native American culture, which I find absolutely fascinating. I’m just making this up as I go.

  ~Whit McClendon

  Contents

  A Grim Situation

  The GrimFaerie Chronicles Book 2

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  The End

  Chapter 1

  Katy, Texas used to be a little country farm town. Several miles west of the center of Houston, it had once been separated from that bustling city by vast expanses of prairie grasses and rice fields. It had been quiet back then, but the last two decades had seen both cities grow until they met somewhere in the middle. Now, Katy was a bit of a metropolis in its own right, and it was hard to tell where Katy ended and Houston began. The last few years in particular had seen an explosion of growth, and Katy swelled near to bursting. That meant more subdivisions, more apartments, more everything.

  In spite of its rapid growth, there were still some quiet areas and lots of big trees in the older neighborhoods. That appealed to me. And since I’d been spending a lot more time with Ariana, the witch who lived on a family homestead west of Katy, it seemed logical for me to find lodgings close by. I don’t need much. I’m equally at home sleeping under a bridge or in a soft feather bed, though I’ll admit that I prefer to be under a roof. Keeps the rain out, as well as protecting me from winged creatures that might want to rip my head off while I doze. In my line of work, that’s just an occupational hazard.

  I’m not human, by the way. I’m known as Kane, and I’m a GrimFaerie. I’m faster, smarter, stronger, and sneakier than humans in general, and I have other abilities that come with being born of the Faerie race. There are lots of Faerie creatures, some big and some tiny. I’m man-sized, and although I’m built like a man, you’d rather not see me without my glamour in place. Without the illusion that makes me appear as an ordinary, forgettable human male, I’ve been told I’m…scary. I don’t know if it’s the claws or the fangs, but I have to think it’s something in my eyes. Faerie are from this world, yes, but it’s not exactly the same world you know, my friend. We’re different. And yes, some of us are frightening. I could kill you before you realized your head was missing. In my true guise, I look like I can do just that. To move among you, I hide my unusual features with a glamour. It keeps unwanted attention away from me so I can do my work unmolested.

  I’m an assassin by trade, and a darned good one. But I’m a peacekeeper…a good guy. Granted, it gets pretty messy when I get called in, but hey…peace comes at a price. I don’t come out for shoplifters or jaywalkers, though. The Goddess only sends me up to the plate when things get serious. Deadly serious.

  There’s a balance, and it’s delicate. You’ve heard of the never-ending battle between Good and Evil? Yeah, that’s not just in the movies. It’s right under your noses, folks. Mostly, we leave it up to you humans to do as you will. But when a sorcerer gets ambitious, or a creature that shouldn’t get loose from one of the Etherworlds somehow does just that, I’m the guy that gets called in.

  It had been quiet lately, though. I’d made a deal with a human that allowed me to live in a tidy little home in the middle of town in return for keeping up the place. He might have been looking to rent it out rather than have me live in it for free, but I might have used a touch of magick to influence him into our current arrangement. Even so, I would keep up my end of the bargain to the letter, so I repaired anything that even looked like it needed work. The place looked better now than it had when I moved in.

  The house backed up to a hike and bike trail that followed a drainage canal which fed into Mason Creek. When I wasn’t following up on a command from the Goddess, I often walked or ran along the trail, reveling in my love of movement. I can move blindingly fast if need be. More often, I’d just walk so that I could feel the breeze and listen to the birds. Super casual, that’s me.

  One afternoon, I stopped to sit on a green metal bench alongside the trail. Ordinarily, I don’t do that, but it seemed the thing to do at the time, and I tend to follow my instincts. Directly opposite me, across the canal, was the back side of a new apartment complex. It was gray and blocky, not very pleasing to the eye, but it was built with all the modern conveniences a young professional could want. Not many cars took up spaces in the lot on that side. I didn’t know if that was because it was late afternoon and everyone was at work or because the place was so new they hadn’t rented out all
the units. It looked pretty deserted out there, either way.

  The wind brushed against me and I relished the feel of it on my skin and in my hair. Beneath my glamour, my hair was long and dark, and I shrugged my head to keep it out of my face. I should braid it, I thought. Get it out of my way.

  I reached my hands up behind my head to follow the impulse when I heard a woman scream, a short, sharp sound that was quickly silenced. I bolted to my feet, trying to pinpoint its source. It came from the apartments across from me, but beyond that, I couldn’t tell anything more.

  As I watched, a glass door on one of the fourth floor balconies opened up and a man backed through it, dragging something. When I saw that the object in question was a woman, feebly struggling against him, I burst into action.

  Grass grew all the way down the slope until it met the concrete riverway, where steep concrete banks channeled the waist-high water through its course. I covered the distance to the canal in a blink and leaped over the twenty-foot wide river with about as much effort as you might use to step up onto a curb. I climbed the opposite slope and reached the iron fence that surrounded the complex. I put one hand on the top railing as I sailed over it to land on my feet in the parking lot.

  The man on the balcony was a pretty ordinary looking guy. Not big, not fat, not skinny either. Strictly dad-bod. He looked in his thirties, had dark hair with a receding hairline, and wore a blue polo shirt and khaki pants. However, the frightening, crazed gleam in his eye didn’t bring any sitcom dad to mind. Something was very wrong in there. As I watched, he grabbed the woman’s neck with one hand and her leg with the other, and easily lifted her still-struggling body over his head like a barbell. With a grunt of satisfaction, he flung her out over the parking lot and towards the unyielding pavement below. He chuckled maniacally to himself as he went back inside.

  I knew the fall might not kill her, but it would certainly break bones. I jumped up to intercept her falling weight as carefully as I could to avoid giving her whiplash. Her limbs were loose and flopping, but I gathered her close to my body to keep her under control. As I landed, I flexed my knees to absorb the shock, then I set her down in a patch of manicured grass nearby as gently as I could. I moved her hair out of her face with my fingers and tried to reassure her.

  “Hey,” I said, injecting a sense of comfort into the words with my magick. “Hey, I’ve got you. You’re safe. What happened?”

  She coughed, working around the swelling in her throat. She was in her early thirties, as best I could tell. Shoulder-length blonde hair that needed brushing, no makeup to speak of, but cute. I could already see the bruises left by his fingers appearing on her neck. Her eyes opened and finally latched onto mine. “He,” she began, “he’s insane!” Fear shone in her eyes as she continued in a hoarse whisper. “Andy’s not like that,” she shook her head side to side. “He’s never laid a finger on me. Today, he just went…crazy!”

  At that point, I heard something that froze my black heart. Andy was laughing, but it wasn’t Andy. I knew the sound of human laughter, and this was not it. The sound crawled through the air and up my spine, chilling me to the bone. It was a high-pitched, hysterical giggle that wasn’t human at all. I knew what it was, though. And it had no business here.

  “You’re safe now,” I reassured the woman. “Just stay here and rest easy. Someone will be along to get you.” I poured restful energy into my words, and the woman relaxed, curled over on one side, and went to sleep. I turned my eyes upward. A vicious, delighted giggle floated down to me and turned into a singsong chant.

  “GrimFaerie, GrimFaerie, won’t you come up and plaaaaaay?” Then that eerie, hateful laughter again.

  Oh, you bet I will, asshole.

  I let my claws slip out of my fingertips, and my fangs began to ache the way they do when my body is anticipating combat. I leaped to the third-floor balcony and landed inside its protective railing. The door that led into the apartment was open a crack. I heard something shatter inside. And more laughter. I dimmed myself and stalked through the back door.

  I was about to fight for my life. Who says Mondays aren’t fun?

  Chapter 2

  Blood has a sharp, coppery smell you can taste. It hangs in the air, thick and cloying. The smell hit me the moment I entered the apartment and my mouth began watering.

  The thing was in the kitchen when I entered, standing with its back to me and hunched over at one of the counters. It chewed at something, ravenously, and I could see a faint spray of blood across the ivory colored cabinets in front of it. The noise was awful as it chomped and slurped. I caught sight of something black and furry in its hands and noticed that a tail dangled from the small carcass. A cat, most likely. Suddenly, as if it had caught my scent, the creature that had been Andy froze. It canted its head slightly in my direction but did not turn to face me.

  “Want some, GrimFaerie? It’s fresh.” Its voice was harsh and shrill, and sounded like it had to hurt Andy’s throat to come out like that. It slowly turned its head farther so that it could see me. I wished it hadn’t. Andy’s eyes were unnaturally wide, and shot through with blood, the irises nothing more than pinpricks in spheres of sickly yellow. His gory lips were skinned back so I could see all of his teeth in an awful death’s-head grin. “Or have you become too civilized?” A low chuckle escaped it, grating through Andy’s tortured vocal cords. It stared right at me, as if seeing right through my dim glamour.

  Only a creature from the Etherworlds would have known what I was. There were many such worlds, some hellish, some enchanting beyond your wildest dreams. Almost all were dangerous to humans. I knew this beast, all right. Although it was a huge surprise to come across an incubus these days, the demons weren’t unheard of.

  “No thanks, I’m trying to quit,” I snarled.

  The thing that had been Andy whirled with unnatural, freaky speed and hurled the grisly carcass at my face, then grabbed a pair of kitchen knives and came at me in a screeching, horrific blur.

  I dodged the cat easily enough, and heard it thump wetly against the wall behind me. As much as I love wet work, that was just gross. I flipped a coffee table out of the way so I’d have more room to move and crouched, waiting for it to attack.

  Animated by the incubus, Andy came flying out of the kitchen. Creepy fast as he was, he was still slow by my standards, so I had a blink or two to decide how to deal with him. Incubi are nasty creatures. They jump into a human’s body and shove their consciousness into a tiny little corner of their mind. Sometimes, the human can still see, hear, and feel everything their body does, but can’t do a thing about it. If the incubus stays in the body too long, the original owner dies. Normally, they would bide their time, hide in plain sight for days, even weeks, until the owner’s spirit winked out and the demon gained full control. Then they’d just ride out that body’s lifespan, causing trouble of one kind or other until they died of natural causes or misadventure.

  Judging from the crazy that oozed out of this one, though, I was willing to bet it had only just made the leap, crammed the real Andy into a deep hole, and started partying. Patience didn’t seem too high on its list of virtues, and it wanted to have some fun right now.

  It lunged at me with one knife, the other coming in an instant later as the incubus tried to gut me. Staying calm, I lashed out, grabbed it by the wrist, and spun on the ball of my foot. I saw its already wide eyes switch from crazed attack-mode to surprise as I swung it around and hurled Andy’s body horizontally into the nearest wall. He impacted on his back, destroying the sheetrock and bending the lightweight aluminum studs behind it, but not going all the way through. Fortunately for Andy, there was a couch against that wall, and his body flopped onto it amidst a hail of chalky rubble and dust.

  I was in a spot. This incubus was already murderous, and likely to take as many innocent human lives as it could before someone put him down. The simplest thing I could do would be to slash its throat, but for all I knew, Andy was a perfectly normal guy until less than
an hour ago. He was probably still in there. I don’t mind killing humans when they deserve it, but chances were that this guy’d been minding his own business before this happened. I sighed and shook my head in disgust at myself as I watched Andy-demon trying to crawl out of the debris on the sofa. I must be going soft, I thought to myself as I decided to do things the hard way and let Andy live. That meant getting the demon out of him, pronto.

  You might wonder if I was going to call a young priest and an old priest to expel the demon. Nah. They have their magick, I have mine. It all comes from the same place, no matter what words you use. Mine was more elemental, more immediate. The land of Faerie was not far from the Hell that this thing had come from, metaphorically speaking. I knew its kind. And I knew what could get it out of Andy without a cross and fancy robes.

  It was starting to recover, so I punched poor Andy hard enough to stun both him and the demon, and they fell back to the sofa, raising a cloud of sheetrock dust. While the thing was rattled, I yanked a curtain off the rod hanging over the sliding glass door and used my claws to rip it into usable strips. Using my Faerie speed, I quickly bound Andy’s body at the ankles, thighs, and wrists before also tying its arms tightly to its sides. The incubus did not like that, not one bit.

  “Release me, Faerie!” he howled as he struggled against the makeshift shackles. “You don’t know who I am! I’ll kill you and everything you’ve ever loved! The witch will die screaming, and…” I smacked him in the head sharply, and when he opened his mouth again, I jammed another piece of curtain in there. Much better.

  “Sorry, Andy,” I mumbled. If he survived this, he’d probably need to spend some time in the hospital, but better that than the alternative. “You’ll thank me someday. Maybe.”