Kelley Armstrong - My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon

The man gibbered and choked with fear, his glands opening up and pouring chemical terror into the meat. Dammit . Nothing sensible would come out of him for a while.

I decided to try to calm him down. "Hey. Why are you trying to bury me?"

Poison, you jackass. And you lapped it up . I've never been the quickest on the uptake, I leave that to Kat. I settle for being the most thorough, most of the time. My fingers tingled and my chest constricted, something foreign burning off through my metabolism and sending a wave of weakness through me. Good thing about being Sunrunner, most poisons run right through us and disperse, defeated by heightened tissue regrowth and our neurological resistances, built to handle the sensory overload of the change.

Bad thing? It hurts like hell, and it makes us cranky.

I didn't smell anything in the meat . Then it hit me again, a wave of sugar-coated nausea, and I cursed, grinding the chubby man down into the dirt.

The tea. Sweet enough to rot all the teeth, and sugar will cover up all sorts of things where a canine's concerned.

"OhGawd ohGawd—" A sharp stink wafted up. The man had actually peed himself.

Good Christ. What am I going to do now ? I showed my teeth in a wolf's grin and he cried out, trying to backpedal, his legs and arms flailing wildly. I let him go, standing up as he gibbered and moaned.

Just a good ole boy, never meaning no harm. Huh . I bent down, quick fingers working, and found a heavy ring of keys. It would be worth my while to find out who the hell he was and why he was burying bodies for someone, but I had a bigger concern.

Poison meant Evans was involved. Which meant Kat was vulnerable, and in deep trouble. I wrapped my fist in the man's overalls and shirt, hauling him up. "Where's your car, Bubba? Be a nice boy and tell me, and I'll let you live."

I CUT THE ENGINE AND LET THE TRUCK drift, rattling, down the long slope. I was about a mile from Evans's place, and pretty sure she'd know my unwitting benefactor's vehicle. The man was trussed with duct tape and tossed in the back with two toolboxes and various other odd bits, since I didn't want to murder him.

Not yet, anyway.

I got out, my boots crunching on gravel. The moon rose, high and white, casting knife-edged shadows along the ditches and under each little rock in the road. It was still hot-humid-damp, so the roostertail of dust the truck left in the air wouldn't be too visible. Besides, it was night.

But what if you're not just dealing with suckers, Mitch ? It was the voice of panic. Where's Kat? Dammit. What am I going to do ?

I rested my hand on the truck's hood for a moment, metal pinging as it cooled. The goddamn thing smelled like lit diesel farts and drove worse than a walleyed wino. It was loud and probably well-known in this neck of the woods. If I left it by the side of the road, sooner or later someone would find it, and whoever was behind all this would know I wasn't dead.

So I either had to dispose of both Bubba and his truck, or I had to work fast.

Of course, if Kat was already dead…

You stop that right now. It's only been a little while. They had just started to bury you. Chances are Kat's still alive, they have to figure out what she knows and if she told anyone.

Still, if Evans had poisoned me, she might not be inclined to keep Kat alive either.

Jesus Christ, Mitch, just get on with it!

In the end I decided to leave the truck by the side of the road. If someone found Bubba taped up in the bed, it wouldn't make a rat's ass worth of difference.

I'm no murderer. But if they hurt even one hair on Kat's head we were going to see just what a pissed-off Sunrunner can do to frail human flesh.

THE RAMBLING ANTEBELLUM HOUSE WAS DARK AND DESERTED. My Jeep sat in the gravel parking lot bordered with tall thin willows on three sides and a sloppy mix of kudzu on the fourth heading toward the road. The creek babbled a little under more willows, a long stone's throw away. It was child's play to force the back door—deadbolts are strong, but wooden doors tend to tear away from them if you apply enough force.

The kitchen was pin-neat and the downstairs was completely tidy as well. I went up the stairs to the second floor, took a hard right, and found the door to our suite open and the entire room looking like a hurricane had hit it.

Kat had put up a good fight. The window was busted all to hell, humid night seeping in as air-conditioning escaped. Grit lay everywhere, the smell of suckers rasping against my instincts. The mirrors were shattered and the mosquito netting over the bed was ripped up, the bed thrashed out of recognition and our luggage scattered around. Chairs were upended, the plush settee in a corner where she had probably tried to barricade herself, to judge by the damage to the wallpaper and plaster. The lightbulbs were all smashed, the ceiling fixture pulled out and dangling by a thread like a loose tooth, the lamps both overturned, their fringes tangled.

Small, my Kat. But packed with dynamite. Birch stakes lay scattered through the room, one driven into the flooring like a straw into a potato.

Damn, girl . If the situation had been otherwise, I might have smiled.

No clues. Just the remnants of a helluva fight. Violence still smoked in the air. Had I been deaf to it all, poisoned by sweet tea?

I made my way back downstairs, moving easily through the darkness. Evans's office was on the other side of the detached kitchen, in a connected outbuilding recent enough to still smell like fresh lumber to my sensitive nose. The lock was better than the deadbolts on the front and back doors, and the door itself was metal. Fortunately the new drywall wasn't nearly so resistant, and I walked right in, ducking to avoid the crossbar of the wall's skeleton, sneezing at clouds of chalky dust.

The office was pin-neat, with a wide tall window that looked out on the garden and a desk littered with paper. I glanced at the door and stopped, my skin chilling and rippling for a moment as I fought off the urge to shift to meet a new threat.

Hanging from the doorknob was a little muslin pouch tied with red ribbon. It stank of death, with a peculiar overtone of horehound candy. The fetish rocked slightly against the door, humming nastily to itself. The sound of its tapping was flabby fingers against a pane of wet glass.

I froze and looked around the office. The air was close, thick, and rank with sorcery. Another step in, and the sorcerer's den might wake up—who knew what little traps were left in here?

Great, Mitch. You idiot. How did you not smell her out? Her perfume, and that talcum powder — just the thing to dog up a sensitive nose. And she was scared, not of me but of the sheriff. Merciful Sun .

Something caught my eye. I bent down a little, peering out the window. When sitting at the desk, Evans would have her back to the wall instead of the door. File cabinets marched along the other wall. The picture window framed gardens, the ribbon of the road, forest, and Lover's Leap, glowing slick and wet under the almost-full moon.

"Holy shit," I breathed, and backed out through the hole in the wall.

Of all the bed-and-breakfasts in Virginia, we had to walk right into one run by a sorcerer. I stared through the Sunrunner-sized hole in the wall at the moonlight flooding over the desktop, a big bad Southern moon drenching everything with dead light. There was probably evidence in that office that would tell me what the hell was going on and why Kat had been taken.

You're dumb, Mitch, but you're not that dumb. You're not a private eye, you're a Sunrunner, and your wife's in trouble. You want to finish this honeymoon, you'll go and get her. You know where.