I grabbed my backpack and stepped out of the Jeep. Derek exited on the other side, moving with fluid grace. We took a right onto a side road and followed Teddy Jo, leaving the snarling Jeep behind.
The trees overshadowed the road. Normally the woods were quiet, but this was the summer of the seventeen-year cicada brood. Every seventeen years, the cicadas emerged in massive numbers and sang. The chorus was so loud, it screened all normal forest noises, distorting birdsong and squirrel chittering into odd alarming sounds.
A hastily erected sign by the side of the road announced, STAY OUT BY ORDER OF THE FULTON COUNTY SHERIFF.
Underneath was written, COY PARKER, YOU CROSS THIS LINE AGAIN, I’LL SHOOT YOU MYSELF. SHERIFF WATKINS.
“Who’s Coy Parker?”
“Local daredevil kid. I had a chat with him. He didn’t see anything.”
Something about the way Teddy Jo said that told me Coy Parker wasn’t about to poke his nose into this mess again.
“Why didn’t they post guards?” Derek asked.
“They’re stretched too thin,” Teddy Jo said. “They’ve got five people for the whole county. And there isn’t much to guard.”
“What’s all this about?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” Teddy Jo said.
The road curved to the right and brought us to a long street. Driveways peeled away from the road, each leading to a house on about a five-acre lot. Tall fences flanked the houses, some wood, some metal, topped with razor wire. Here and there a wrought iron fence allowed for a glimpse of a garden. With transportation chains disrupted by the Shift, a lot of people turned to gardening. Small farms like this sprang up all around Atlanta, sometimes in the city, but more often just on the outskirts.
It was quiet. Too quiet. This time of day, there should have been normal life noises: kids screaming and laughing, dogs barking, enchanted water engines growling. The whole street was steeped in silence, except for the horny cicadas singing up a storm. It was creepy.
Derek inhaled and crouched low to the ground.
“What is it?” I asked.
His upper lip trembled. “I don’t know.”
“Pick a house,” Teddy Jo said, his face devoid of all expression.
I turned down the nearest driveway. Derek took off down the street at what for him was an easy run and for most people would’ve been an impossible sprint. A wolf could smell its prey from almost two miles away. A shapeshifter during its lifetime cataloged thousands of scent signatures. If Derek wanted to track something, I wouldn’t stand in his way.
I scrutinized the house. Bars on the windows. Solid walls. A good post-Shift home: secure, defensible, no-nonsense. A narrow crack separated the edge of the solid blue door from the doorframe. Unlocked. I pushed it with my fingertips, and the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. The stench of rotting food wrapped around me. I stepped inside. Teddy Jo followed.
The house had an open floor plan, with the kitchen off to the left and a living room space to the right. On the far left, behind the kitchen and the island, a table stood with the remnants of someone’s breakfast on it. I moved closer. A glass bottle of maple syrup and plates with what might have been waffles covered with fuzz.
No proverbial signs of struggle. No blood, no bullet holes, no claw marks. Just an empty house. A street of empty houses. My stomach sank.
“Are all the rest like this?”
Teddy Jo nodded. He stayed at the entrance to the room, as if not wanting to enter the space. There was something disturbing about it, as if the air itself were solid and still. This was a dead house. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I felt it. Its people had died, and the heart of the home had died with them.
“How many?”
“The whole subdivision. Fifty houses. Two hundred and three people. Families.”
Damn.
What could do this? Had something compelled them to abandon their breakfast and simply walk out? A number of creatures could put humans under their control, most of them water-based. A Brazilian encantado could probably enchant an entire family. A strong human mage with a focus in telepathy might be able to keep four people under and make them obey his commands. Let’s say someone walked these people out of their house. Then what?
Outside I took a deep breath. Derek sauntered over.
“How are you involved in this?” I asked.
“I was called,” Teddy Jo said.
Ah. A Greek family had prayed to him, probably offered a sacrifice. In the old days it would’ve been a slave. Now it had probably been a deer or a cow.
“I drank the blood,” he said.
A pact had been made. He’d accepted their offering, and that obligated him to do something in return.
“What did they want?”
His voice was hollow. “They asked if their son was dead. He was supposed to get married on Saturday. He and his fiancée didn’t show. They became worried and came to check on them on Sunday. They found this. The family called the sheriffs. They are coming today to process the scene. That’s why we had to get here before they did.”
“What about their son?” Derek asked.
“Alek Katsaros is dead,” Teddy Jo said. “But I can’t return his remains to his family.”
“Why?” This was what he did. If a human of his faith or of Greek descent died, Thanatos would know exactly where his body fell.
“I’ll explain on the way.”
“Before we go,” Derek said, “there’s something I need you to see.”
I followed him to the back. A furry brown body lay behind the wrought iron fence. A shaft thrust out of the dead dog’s eye.
“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.