Black Arts, White Craft (Black Hat Bureau 2)

Flame engulfed Asa as his change overtook him with brutal quickness, and I marveled he didn’t burn me.

“Smell bad.” He crowded me then pointed through the trees. “That way.”

“Smell bad as in…?” I drew my wand from my pocket. “Black magic?”

Nostrils flaring, he nodded once. “Death.”

Clay had precious cargo to defend, so I set out with the daemon to guide me.

The thrill of the hunt sang through my blood, the daemon’s fangs gleaming in a smile next to me. I tuned in to pick up on any heartbeats in the area but found no unfamiliar cadences. The daemon proved to me his sense of smell was stronger than my hearing. No surprise there. I learned early in my career that my extra senses were precise only when stalking food in close range. It wasn’t a distance talent.

Arm out to hold me back, the daemon cocked his head and filled his lungs, his forehead wrinkling.

“The book,” a paper-thin voice rustled from the darkness. “Give me the book.”

Leaning forward, I strained to see the final black witch. “What book?”

“The book,” she, and it was female, repeated in her reedy tone. “Give me the book.”

“That can’t be…” I stepped around the daemon’s reach to gawk. “Annie Waite?”

If it was the same woman, her mantra hadn’t changed, and that meant we had a run-of-the-mill zombie.

Less exotic, but equally gross, and just as deadly if we underestimated its threat.

Not glancing back, I pitched my voice to carry to Clay. “Have you heard from the other team?”

“No.” Clay, and therefore Colby, sounded closer than I would have liked. “That’s not unusual, though.”

Any team running secondary to one with me on it tended to cut a wide berth to avoid crossing my path. But it wasn’t like them not to text a warning the body they had been dispatched to retrieve the night before was missing.

A chill swept down my arms, a premonition I wouldn’t like the answers I was about to get.

“I can’t tell if she’s armed.” I nudged the daemon back. “Stay behind me until we know for certain.”

Far from being a zombie expert, I didn’t want to find out the hard way they were handy with a gun.

“No,” the daemon growled, prowling beside me. “Rue get hurt.”

Cold-iron poisoning nearly took out Asa, and the daemon with him. I wasn’t hiding where it was safe this time.

As much as it pained me to think of her as a weapon, I had Colby. Her power would protect us. All of us.

“Book, book, book.” Garbled words poured into the air. “Book, book, book.”

“Anyone else think that makes her sound like a chicken?”

Bawk-bawk-bawk.

“Chicken?” The daemon licked his lips. “Crunchy.”

For the sake of my mental health, I chose to believe he meant fried chicken skin, not bone-in live bird.

Death wasn’t a squeamish topic for me. Neither was a raw diet or even cannibalism. Hello? Heart eater. But there were perfectly good chicken tenders in the fridge back at the cabin, just waiting to be breaded and fried.

A mop of dirty hair plastered to the side of a head that faced off center in a way that wasn’t natural rose from the shadows as the zombie lumbered into the path ahead of us. The witch’s corpse lacked the fluid motions of the zombigo, and its coordination. She had been slapped together without care on a deadline.

Her uninspired shuffling ramped up when she set rheumy eyes on us, and she wet her lips.