Hex Appeal (P.N. Elrod) (Kitty Norville 4.60)

Officer Dean stared at me for a while. He chewed on a toothpick and squinted at me. “Got some holes.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “Like what?”

“Like all those kids saw a Bigfoot and them whatchamacalits. Ghouls. How come they didn’t say anything?”

“You walked in on them while they were all still trying to put their clothes back on. After flinging themselves into random sex with whoever happened to be close to them. They’re all denying that this ever happened right now.”

“Hngh,” Dean said. “What about the ghoul corpses?”

“After Irwin dragged their boss up to the fight, the ghouls quit when they saw him. River Shoulders told them all to get out of his sight and take their dead with them. They did.”

Dean squinted and consulted a list. “Pounder is gone. So is Connie Barrowill. Not officially missing, or nothing. Not yet. But where are they?”

I looked at Dean and shrugged.

* * *

I’d seen ghouls in all kinds of situations before—but I’d never seen them whipped into submission. Ghouls fought to the grisly, messy end. That was what they did. But River Shoulders had been more than their match. He’d left several of them alive when he could have killed them to the last, and he’d found their breaking point when Irwin had dragged Barrowill in by his hair. Ghouls could take a huge beating, but River Shoulders had given them one like I’d never seen, and when he ordered them to take their master and their dead and never to return, they’d snapped to it.

“Thanks, Connie,” I groaned as she settled me onto a section of convenient rubble. I was freezing. The frost on my clothes was rapidly melting away, but the chill had settled inward.

The girl looked acutely embarrassed, but that wasn’t in short supply in that dorm. That hallway was empty of other students for the moment, though. We had the place to ourselves, though I judged that the authorities would arrive in some form before long.

Irwin came over with a dust-covered blanket and wrapped it around her. He’d scrounged a ragged towel for himself though it did more to emphasize his physique than to hide it. The kid was ripped.

“Thank you, Irwin,” she said.

He grunted. Physically, he’d bounced back from the nearly lethal feeding like a rubber freaking ball. Maybe River Shoulders’s water-smoothing spell had done something to help that. Mentally, he was slowly refocusing. You could see the gleam coming back into his eyes. Until that happened, he’d listened to Connie. A guy could do worse.

“I…” Connie shook her head. “I remember all of it. But I have no idea what just happened.” She stared at River Shoulders for a moment, her expression more curious than fearful. “You … You stopped something bad from happening, I think.”

“Yeah, he did,” I confirmed.

Connie nodded toward him in a grateful little motion. “Thank you. Who are you?”

“Irwin’s dad,” I said.

Irwin blinked several times. He stared blankly at River Shoulders.

“Hello,” River rumbled. How something that large and that powerful could sit there bleeding from dozens of wounds and somehow look sheepish was beyond me. “I am very sorry we had to meet like that. I had hoped for something quieter. Maybe with music. And good food.”

“You can’t stay,” I said to River. “The authorities are on the way.”

River made a rumbling sound of agreement. “This is a disaster. What I did…” He shook his head. “This was in such awful taste.”

“Couldn’t have happened to nicer guys, though,” I said.

“Wait,” Connie said. “Wait. What the hell just happened here?”

Irwin put a hand on her shoulder, and said, to me, “She’s … she’s a vampire. Isn’t she?”

I blinked and nodded at him. “How did…?”

“Paranet,” he said. “There’s a whole page.”

“Wait,” Connie said again. “A … what? Am I going to sparkle or something?”

“God, no,” said Irwin and I, together.