Pandora: An Urban Fantasy Anthology Read online

  Mac pointed at the bike. "The fucker's haunted."

  Tully couldn't help but laugh. Outside, the rain came down hard and lightening illuminated the sky. "Haunted? You mean like there's a ghost in it?"

  "Or riding it. Look," Mac said as he held his hands out at his sides. "When cars come in here, I assign them a parking place, I lock them up, and then I lock up the key. Funny thing was with this one, there's no key. They rolled it off the tow but no key. Makes sense since it was abandoned. But sometimes I got keys from old rides that fit. So I looked and found a few I thought would work. Came back out here—" He nodded to the bike. "But it ain't got no key hole."

  "You're saying no ignition?" Tully looked the bike over for a few minutes. Mac was right. He couldn't find an ignition. And there was something else. "Mac…where's the gas tank?"

  The supervisor nodded. "That ain't all it's missing." He pointed out a few key exhaust manifolds that weren't actually connected to the engine. Then he pointed out things not right about the engine. "Oh, and there's no registration number on this sucker. Anywhere. I had my flunkies give it a few good looks. Even called my nephew in last night to see if he could steal it."

  "And?"

  "I was in the office and saw the kid streaking out of here five minutes later. Jumped in his own ride and burned rubber leaving. Hasn't returned my calls."

  "And that's what makes you think it's haunted?" Tully would agree the bike was odd on a manufacturing level. Maybe it wasn't even real, but a prop of some kind.

  "No. It was right here when I locked up last night. When I came in, it was over against the back fence."

  "Someone broke in and dragged it over there?"

  "I sort of thought that. But there was no signs of a break-in. And I got cameras set up everywhere. Come 'ere."

  Tully followed Mac into his office, a walled-off five-by-five just inside the door. Lightening lit the sky again as he closed the door and Mac sat down in front of a computer.

  "Now, I spent a fortune about six months ago to up the security here, just after that Ragborne case? So this is state of the art, so to speak." He typed a few keys and a new split screen came up. Four different camera views. One at the impound entrance, one at the warehouse entrance, one at the back, and one close to the back of the lot. He pressed an arrow key and speed up the frames. The only visible instance this was happening was the counter moving forward on the lower left corner of each view and the cars passing by just past the fence in two views.

  Then he slowed it down and pointed to the top right view. "Watch."

  Tully leaned in as he saw a dark figure open the side door of the warehouse, the one beside the large double doors. He braced a hand on the desk as he put his face up to the screen. It was a woman, or the shape of a woman. She ran to a stack of tires, then looked around, then ran and ducked behind a large van. She left that view to the one on the left of the front gate. She ran past that camera, and then eventually showed up on the view of the back of the lot. The woman grabbed at the fence, but pulled back quickly and stuck her hands under her arms. The way she reacted— "Mac, has your fence got current?"

  "Saw that, eh? And no, it doesn't."

  Eventually she gave up and sat on the ground in front of the fence, just visible under a light.

  "That's where I found bike this morning."

  "Who's the girl?" Tully straightened, but he continued to look at the screen.

  "I have no fucking idea. Never saw her before. But she looks naked."

  "And this is why you think it's haunted?"

  "You got a better idea?"

  Tully pursed his lips. Actually, he did. "Mac…you mind if I do a little surveillance tonight? Park my car in the front inside the fence?"

  "Art, you can have a party, for all I care. I ain't stay'n' around no haunted motorcycle."

  Rachael’s Father

  The Stars Are Fire: Six

  By seven, Tully was seated in Mr. Mendez's living room. It was a modest house with loved and worn furniture, immaculately kept. He assumed the man had a housekeeper or friends that took care of him. He knew there weren't any grandkids. Rachael had been their only child.

  Embers glowed in the fireplace behind a peacock tail guard. Pictures in a variety of frames warred for space on the mantel and all of them were of an attractive, dark-haired young woman.

  "Mr. Mendez—"

  "Please. Call me Carlos."

  "Carlos…can you tell me if your daughter ever spoke about what happened that night? With Jeremy Donavan?"

  Carlos stared straight ahead for a long time and Tully patiently waited. He'd turned his phone off so there wouldn't be any interruptions. Then finally, "Sometimes…when she had moments of lucidity. But the things she talked about…"

  "Anything would help at this point."

  The old man's gaze moved to rest on Tully's face. "Is it really Jeremy?"

  "We believe so."

  "He looks the same."

  "Yes." Tully didn't add the fact the boy actually looked younger and he wasn't saying anything about the ears.

  "Maybe…it might make sense now. See, Rachael loved that boy. I saw it in her eyes when she spoke his name. I knew it because I felt the same way about Rachael's mother. And when I looked into Jeremy's eyes, I saw the same determination I had. I don't think any force in this world could break them apart."

  "So you didn't believe Jeremy attacked Rachael?"

  "At first….then I decided that wasn't possible." He shook his head and Tully thought he saw a bit of a flush against the man's cheeks. "Had a lot of arguments about that with the misses. But Rachael never pointed her finger at Jeremy, and they never found any evidence she was…"

  When he faltered, Tully stepped in. "Raped."

  "Yeah. She was just bruised on her wrists and her face. Like someone had bound her and struck her. She was disoriented for a long time. Would sit and stare at things as if she'd never seen them before."

  "Why did you commit her so quickly after Jeremy's disappearance?"

  He leaned to his right, his elbow firmly on the chair's armrest. "Delilah, her mother, had come downstairs early one morning and found Rachael in the kitchen. She'd pulled out one of the butcher knives and had cut her arms up. There was blood everywhere and she looked so…" He rubbed his face. "She looked fascinated. As if she'd never seen it before. She'd opened the refrigerator and took everything out and tasted it. Freaked Del out. We dialed 911 and they took her away." He sniffed. "We signed the papers and they kept her."

  "Did she say anything?" Tully needed Carlos to answer the question.

  "Before they took her and pumped drugs into her, she told us about trees with faces, and holes in the earth. Talked about how the man with the beautiful face fought valiantly. Del thought she meant Jeremy—I'm assuming you saw how he looked?"

  Tully nodded.

  "Del asked her about the motorcycles, the ones witnesses insisted they saw chase them down. But all she would say was some gibberish like rokh ear meeth ee-bon."

  What sort of language was that? "She said it more than once?"

  "Every time we asked her about that night. She said they hunted and the rokh ear meeth ee-bon took his prey." Carlos sighed. "Never made a lick of sense to anyone, and the doctors just took it as part of her psychosis."

  Tully had read the file. Rachael had never been a problem patient. Always docile and curious. Up until the day she died.

  "Carlos, the files I have didn't mention how she died."

  He put his hand to his face as his shoulders shook. "She…" He pulled his hand away and stood, faster and quicker than Tully thought a man of his age capable. Carlos's fists were tight, and he went to the mantel and picked up a picture of his daughter and stared at it. "They said there was an accident, and she ran out in front of one of the facility's trucks. But I didn't buy it. They wanted to pay us too much money in reparations, to make us keep quiet about it. Wanted to cremate her. We wanted her buried. So I snuck into the place—wasn't hard. And I foun
d her, detective."

  Tully stood. "What happened? What did you see?"

  "I don't know. What I found…what I saw in that box… they had it ready for the cremator to pick up, but it looked like they already did it." He lowered the photo and his eyes pleaded with Tully. "She was gray. Ash gray. Like she was made of stone. Her skin was cracked and calcified. She was still wearing the nightgown she liked. It had stains on it where they never cleaned her…something Del always complained about. Her hair was still brown and swept from her face…"

  "Ash…are you sure it was her?"

  He nodded. "It was her. It was her face. And when I touched her…" He reached his shaking hand out as if reliving that day. "Her arm…crumbled."

  Tully knitted his brow together. Crumbled? Ash? Was it possible they had already cremated her and her father had found her after?

  No…he knew how cremation worked. Bodies didn't stay intact. "You didn't tell anyone, did you?"

  "No. Not even Del. I dropped the injunction I'd started—you know, so we could bury her. I didn't see no point in burying something that wasn't real."

  "You don't believe she was real?"

  He offered Tully the photo. "This is real, detective. This was my Rachael. I don't believe what came back to us that morning was her. I don't think it ever was." A tear moved down his cheek. "But I think we were meant to believe it was. Del did…and that belief killed her a year later."

  Tully looked at the photo. It was a side profile of Rachael. She looked pensive, thoughtful.

  And oddly familiar.

  The Haunted Motorcycle

  The Stars Are Fire: Seven

  Tully got to the impound yard at eight and used the key Mac gave him to unlock the gate. He drove his truck inside and parked it in an available slot near the now closed warehouse doors. Mac promised he would leave everything just like it was the night before, so Tully cut the engine and the lights and settled in to watch.

  The most noticeable thing about the night as he half dozed in his seat was the rain. It stopped just after he arrived and as the time slipped further toward midnight, the clouds broke and the moon shone down so bright Tully could see as clear as day.

  The hairs on his arms stood on end before he saw her. At first he wasn't sure if it was just the shadows from the moon playing tricks with his exhaustion, or his imagination. He heard a noise first and saw the small door next to Mac's office open. He sat forward and watched as the lithe, pale body of a young woman stepped out. She held a rag in her hand and used it to grasp the door and shut it behind her.

  She was nude. And she was beautiful.

  Long, dark hair fell over her shoulders to her waist as she moved—no, glided—over the asphalt, to the right of his parked truck, along the impound's fence. Tully twisted in his seat to keep an eye on her, still not quite believing what he saw. He couldn't make out her face from this distance, but he was somehow afraid that if he showed himself, he'd break the spell.

  Once she reached the front, she never touched the fence, but stood in front of it and lifted her arms up. It moved and shook, but it never opened. When she turned to walk along the fence toward the back, Tully grabbed his gun, his badge, and a blanket before he flipped his truck's interior overhead light off and got out of his truck as quietly as he could.

  With the blanket slung over his left shoulder, and his gun tucked into the back of his jeans, he crouched down as he moved between the cars and stopped now and then to look for her. But she stuck to the same path as the night before and he kept up with her until she reached the back and looked through the fence to the world beyond.

  Tully tried to be as quiet as he could, and was sure most of his movements were masked by the slight hiss of the highway traffic beyond the fence. But as he came up behind her, his gun in his hands and now aimed at her more than attractive backside, he was shocked when she spoke to him. Her voice was clear, like the tone of a bell. "He's really dead, isn't he?"

  The words Stop, police, died on his lips, but he still held his gun straight in front of him, aimed at her back. He cleared his throat. "Miss, I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me. You're trespassing on state property and—"

  She turned at that moment and he saw her face. Tully's arms shook and he took a step back. It was her…it was Rachael Mendez!

  "Please tell me," she said, but didn't approach him. She had her arms down at her sides and her hair fell like a cloak over her shoulders. "My Jeremy is dead."

  Tully swallowed. What manner of hell was this? A dead woman was asking him about a dead man? She seemed calm, and sad. "Jeremy Donavan?"

  She nodded.

  "Yes. He's dead."

  "I didn't want to believe it," she said as she turned to look back through the fence. "But I couldn't reach him. I couldn't…touch him. And I'll never touch him again."

  "Miss…" Tully took several steps toward her but didn't lower his gun. "I'm afraid you'll have to come with me. I'm a police officer and you're trespassing—"

  "You locked me in here and now you want to arrest me?"

  That stopped him in his tracks. "Ma'am, I didn't lock you in here. This is an impound yard."

  "Yes." She looked back at him and he could see her face clearer. It really was Rachael Mendez, just as he'd seen her in the pictures on her father's mantel. "And you pulled me from that alley, from my love, and locked me in this lonely place behind a fence I cannot touch."

  "Can't touch? It's not electrified, ma'am."

  "Maybe not for you." She leaned her head to the left and he could see tears glisten on her cheeks. "What is your name?"

  "Detective Art Tully."

  She smiled and a breeze ruffled her hair. "Arthur. Very fitting. My name is Rachael."

  "I thought you might say that. You look like Rachael Mendez, but she died nineteen years ago."

  "Nineteen years?" Rachael put her hand to her face. "Has it been that long…no. Twenty. He Hunts every twenty years by the mortal calendar. We've been gone twenty years. Tell me, what did I supposedly die of? Where did I die?"

  Tully thought about what her father had said, about her body looking as if it had turned to stone. "You died in the sanitarium over in Middleton. But you died from…" he hesitated. Should he tell her the official report or what Mr. Mendez had seen for himself?

  He wasn't even sure he believed the woman standing in front of him was really Rachael Mendez.

  "Please, Arthur. I have to know what I allegedly died of. If you can't say, let me guess." She clasped her hands in front of her. Shadows moved along as clouds passed in front of the moon. "My body turned gray and cracked before it turned to stone, and then ash."

  That was just as Mendez said. "How did you know? That wasn't what the coroner reported."

  "I'm sure it wasn't. I know because that wasn't me. That was a Changeling. A thing of magic and despair. It had a part of me inside of it. What Ebon called my humanity. He believed by making it and sending it here I'd submit willing to be a dumb beast, one of his herd. But he was wrong. I survived. Our love…survived."

  "Your love?"

  "Mine and Jeremy's."

  Then suddenly she was there, in front of him, her hand past his gun, grasping his wrist. "Kill me, Arthur Tully, if you must, but I have to leave this prison and find Jeremy's body. Dawn will bring the last of the Hunt and if Ebon finds Jeremy he will take him back. He will pull my love's soul back again and again and use him as he has for the past twenty years."

  None of what she said made sense to Tully. None of it seemed real, except for the solid pressure of his gun against her skin. He smelled something burning and looked at her flesh where the barrel touched it.

  It was smoking.

  He pulled the gun away and she moved in close to put a hand to his cheek. "Listen to me, Arthur Tully. I am not a ghost. I am flesh and blood and real. As real as anything you've ever known in this world. I need your help to lay my love to rest."

  The Strange Truth

  The Stars Are Fire: Eight
>
  Sitting in his house, a cup of tea in front of him, his cell at his ear, Tully felt the world had somehow righted itself. It was only when Rachael stepped out of his bathroom, dressed in Cherish's jeans, white shirt, and sneakers, did he realize he'd been wishfully thinking.

  "Yeah, this is Detective Art Tully. I need to check on a body." He watched her pour herself a cup of tea and take the seat opposite him at his table. He didn't say anything while he asked about the body of Jeremy Donavan. When he got the news, he wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad.

  "Well?" Rachael said as he disconnected.

  "Cremated this afternoon. I won't know for sure till the morning because the crematorium is closed. It's after midnight." Tully put the phone on the table and sipped his tea. It tasted of bitter leaves and honey.

  "If it's true, then he'll be forced to leave Jeremy alone for eternity. But that won't stop him from looking for me. And now that I'm not surrounded by an iron fence, he'll be able to see me. I should leave here."

  She started to push her chair back, but he reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Not until I have answers."

  "I don't think you'll like them, or believe them."

  "Try me. I'm sitting here talking to a woman who looks exactly as she did when she disappeared twenty years ago. And I found the murdered body of a boy with pointed ears and eyes as sharp as a cat's with the same creepy immortal affliction. But his ears weren't pointed before he vanished. I've yet to come up with any kind of motive or suspect for his death."

  She put her hand on his. Her skin was warm and smooth. "You won't be able to arrest or prosecute the man that murdered my Jeremy. No one in this realm will."

  "You care to elaborate?"