shifter whose father was the Great Coyote himself, was a borderline alcoholic. He kept himself sober and when he did drink, he never had more than one or two drinks. He was tightly wound, and a Dom, and altogether, a good man who walked on the freaky side of life. But then again, weren’t we all a little freaky?
“Good idea. We don’t have to go to a bar. I think I could persuade Yutani to go bowling.” He glanced over at Viktor. “Hey, want to go bowling to celebrate your engagement? We can take Yutani and Rafé with us as well.”
At that moment, my phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID. It was Angel. Frowning, I answered. “Hey, what’s up? How are you? When are you getting your butt back up here?”
She didn’t bother to answer. “Ember, turn on the TV. Channel 8 KPOZ. Hurry.”
I grabbed the remote from the counter and pointed it toward the break room television and switched it on to channel 8.
“This just in,” the newscaster said from behind the desk. “The town of Klarkson, on Highway 2, has been overrun by creatures that no one has yet been able to identify. They’re attacking the townsfolk. Several people have been seriously injured, including five children. Right now, police are swarming the graveyard from where the creatures are believed to have originated, but officers have been forced to fall back twice. Bullets are proving useless, and the creatures are inhumanly strong and appear entirely uncommunicative. Mayor Willis of Klarkson has appealed to the National Guard for help, and there’s so much chaos that no one seems to know what course of action to follow.”
The news anchor held her hand to her ear, pausing, then looked bleakly at the camera. “I have a report from the Klarkson Hospital. They are reporting the admittance of four adults in critical condition, along with three children who are also critical. If you are in Klarkson, police ask that you please stay in your houses and lock your doors and windows.”
I turned down the volume, looking at Herne. “What the hell?”
He was staring at the screen, a solemn look on his face. “This started in the graveyard? You know what I’m thinking.”
“Yeah, me too. Typhon.” I returned to my phone call with Angel. “How did you find out about this?”
“Urgent care has a TV in the waiting room and I’m waiting to pay my bill. You think it’s Typhon?” She paused, then added, “I have a feeling in my stomach, Ember—it’s not good.”
When Angel had a gut reaction to something, we paid attention. She was human, mostly—and I say mostly because we suspected that she had some degree of magic-born blood in her system—and she was an empath. She was also my best friend and had been since we were eight years old and got in a mud-wrestling battle that netted us both a trip to the principal’s office. After that less-than-auspicious start to our friendship, we bonded instantly.
“Not good, how? Not good as in, gee this sounds nasty, or not good as in, we’d better get ready or get our asses kicked?” I wasn’t sure where Klarkson was, but I knew that I didn’t want to go there.
“Not good as in, we’d better get prepared because there’s something much bigger on the horizon.” Her voice drifted off and after a moment she said, “I’ll be up shortly.”
I shoved my phone back in my pocket and turned to Herne. Both Viktor and he were watching the footage out of Klarkson. There wasn’t much yet, and they were running the same clips over and over, along with video taken by the townsfolk using their cell phones. A lot of it was fuzzy and indistinct, but after a few moments, a clip came on that was clear as a bell.
The creature looked a lot like a zombie in many ways, but there was a brightness to the eyes that whispered “cunning” to me. But zombies weren’t cunning. They had some form of sentience, but they weren’t the brightest bulbs in the socket. These creatures were corpses in varying stages of decay, but they crouched low, skulking along, and there was a malevolence to them that felt like more than the feeding frenzy of zombies. Nor were they ghouls. Given I’d spent most of my adult life cleaning up messes with sub-Fae and the undead, I could spot the differences.