“Almost everyone had dogs,” Derek said. “They’re all like that. One shot, one kill.”
Shooting with a bow and arrow was an acquired skill that required a lot of practice. Shooting a dog with an arrow through the eye from a distance large enough that the dog didn’t freak out at the sight or scent of a stranger was just about impossible. It would have to be a one-of-a-kind virtuoso shot. Andrea, my best friend, could do it, but I didn’t know of anyone else who could.
I went back inside and let myself into the backyard. Neat rows of strawberry bushes with the last berries of the season dark red, past the point of picking. A little wooden wagon with a doll inside. My heart squeezed itself into a tight, painful ball. There used to be young children here.
Derek hopped the six-foot fence—razor wire and all—like it was nothing and landed next to me. His gaze snagged on the doll. A pale-yellow fire rolled over his eyes.
I crouched by the dog, a big shaggy mutt with a lab’s goofy face. Flies buzzed around the body, swarming on the blood seeping through the wound and the shaft in his left orbit.
It was an arrow, not a crossbow bolt, with a wooden shaft and fletched with pale-gray feathers. Old school. Arrows weren’t bullets. Their trajectory was a lot more arched. The arrow would rise a few inches, then fall, and considering the dog’s reaction time, the shooter had to be around . . . thirty-five yards away. Give or take.
I turned. Behind me a large oak spread its branches just outside the fence.
Derek followed my gaze, took a running start across the garden, jumped, and bounced into the oak branches. He came back a moment later.
“Human,” he said. “And something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
The hair on his arms was standing up. Whatever it was, it didn’t smell right.
“What kind of scent is it?”
He shook his head. “The wrong kind of scent. Never smelled it before.”
Not good.
I glanced at Teddy Jo. “Do you have more to show me?”
“Follow me.”
We left the subdivision behind and got back to the Jeep. Teddy Jo got into the passenger seat. “Keep going down the parkway.”
I did.
The archers killed the dogs first. That was the most likely scenario. Unless they just hated dogs for some odd reason, it was done to keep the animals from barking. That put a hole into my mind-control theory. A creature or a human with the ability to subdue the will of others probably wouldn’t have bothered with dogs.
A kitsune might’ve made sense in an odd way. People disagreed on whether kitsune were actual magic animals, fox-spirits, or shapeshifters, but everyone agreed kitsune were trouble. They originated in Japan, and the older they got, the stronger their powers grew. They could weave illusions and influence dreams, and they hated dogs. But kitsune were physically foxes, with that unmistakable scent even in human form.
“Did you smell any foxes?” I asked.
“No,” Derek said.
Scratch that theory.
Ahead a road cut through a low hill to the right, ending in the parkway.
“Turn here,” Teddy Jo said.
I made the turn. The Jeep rolled over the old road, careening over the bumps. Ahead a huge building squatted, pale and windowless. A hole gaped in the roof.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Old Walmart distribution center.”
Derek jerked his door open and leaped out of the Jeep. I slammed on the brakes. He bent over the side of the road and retched.
“Are you okay?” I yelled.
“Stench,” he ground out, and retched again.
I shut off the Jeep. The sudden quiet was deafening. I didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary.
Quiet. Where the hell were the cicadas?
Derek came back to the Jeep. I tossed him a rag to wipe his mouth.
“This way.” Teddy Jo started up the road toward the warehouse.
We caught up with him. He pulled a small tub of VapoRub from his pocket and held it out to me.
“You’ll need it.”
I smeared some under my nose and gave it back. Teddy Jo offered it to Derek, who shook his head.
About twenty feet from the warehouse, the reek washed over me: oily, nasty, tinged with sulfur, the stench of something rotting and awful. It cut through the VapoRub like the ointment wasn’t even there. I almost clamped my hand over my mouth.
“Fuck.” Derek stopped to dry heave.
Teddy Jo’s face was made of stone.
We kept going. The stench was impossible now. Every breath I took was like inhaling poison.
We rounded the building. A glossy puddle spread in front of us, large enough to be a pond. Translucent, grayish beige, it flooded the entire back parking lot. Some sort of liquid . . . No, not liquid. Jellied like a layer of agar, and where the sun hit it just right, making it glow slightly, chunks of something solid darkened it.
I knelt by it.
What the hell was I looking at? Something long and stringy . . .
It hit me.
I spun around and ran. I made it five yards before the vomit tore out of me. At least I got far enough away to not contaminate the scene. I retched everything out and then dry heaved for another minute or two. Finally, the spasms died.
I turned. From this point I could still see it, a clump within the solid gel. Human scalp, the brown hair braided and tied with a pink scrunchie. The kind a child might wear.
The thin mask that made Teddy Jo human tore. Wings burst out of his shoulders, and when he opened his mouth, I glimpsed fangs. His voice made me want to curl into a ball. It was suffused with old magic and filled with raw, terrible grief.
“Somewhere in there is Alek Katsaros and Lisa Winley. His future wife. I can feel him, but he’s spread through the whole of it. I cannot bring him back to his family. He is lost. They are all lost in this mass grave.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He turned to me, his eyes completely black. “I can tell the cause of death at a glance. It is who I am. But I do not understand this. What is this?”
Derek’s face was terrible. “Is this vomit? Did something eat them all and regurgitate?”
I had a sick feeling I knew exactly what it was. I walked along the perimeter of the puddle. It looked about two feet deep at its center, settled into a pothole in the uneven parking lot that had sunk in due to rain and neglect. It took me four tries to circle the puddle, mostly because I had to stop and dry heave. I peered at the clumps of hair and loose gobs of flesh.
I’d witnessed plenty of violence and gore, but this was on another level. This was very high on the list of things I wished I had never seen. My chest hurt just from looking at it. I swallowed bile.
“What are you looking for?” Thanatos asked me in his arcane voice.
“It’s what I’m not finding. Bones.”
He stared at the gel. A muscle in his face jerked. He opened his mouth and screamed. It was not any sound a human could make, a cutting shriek, part eagle, part dying horse, part nothing I had ever heard.
Derek spun to me, a question on his face.
“It’s not the vomit of some monster,” I told him. “Someone boiled them.”
Derek recoiled.
I could barely speak. “They boiled them until their flesh fell off, extracted the bones, then dumped the broth here. And whatever they put into that liquid is either magic or poison. There are no flies and no maggots. There are no insects around it, period. I don’t hear a single cicada. All of those people and their children are in that.”
Derek squeezed his hands into fists. A ragged snarl tore out of him. “Who? Why?”
“That’s what we’ll have to find out.” And when I found them, they would wish they had been boiled instead.