Fresh Meat Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Details

  Dedication

  Fresh Meat

  Author's Note

  About the Author

  Fresh Meat

  6.5

  MEGAN DERR

  Deacon has served as Captain of the Guard of Clan Mordred since he was young—too young, everyone said, though none of them rushed in to help a boy who'd just inherited the role from a mother murdered in cold blood.

  It's given him little chance to do anything else with his life, and at just past forty, he'd like a break. Unfortunately, just as he's on the verge of requesting one, a problem he can neither ignore nor delegate arrives at his door: a whole lot of missing people, and all signs point to goblins.

  When he goes to the local sorcerer for assistance, however, it's to learn he's out of town and the only help on offer is Wyatt, the strange kid with a knack for alchemy, a penchant for trouble, and eyes that leave Deacon haunted and longing…

  Fresh Meat

  Dance with the Devil 6.5

  By Megan Derr

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Samantha M. Derr

  Cover designed by Natasha Snow

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition June 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Megan Derr

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781684315116

  To everyone who struggles with inner demons

  With deep gratitude and abiding thanks to Alex Jones for her help with the Muslim elements of this story. Everything right is credit her, anything still wrong is on me.

  Fresh Meat

  Deacon buried his mother at nineteen. Hunted down her killer and gutted him. Fought goblins. Draugr. Helped out some Ojibwe friends with a Wendigo that had fled onto clan territory. Dealt with Syndicate goons in two countries. That was just the tip of what he'd faced over the years. Much like his mother, his hair had gone gray well before he reached thirty. Very little intimidated or frightened him anymore.

  So why in the world was he finding it so hard to approach Amr and ask if he could take a few months off? Mordred was well-settled. Deacon had people who could run the guards just fine without him—his cousin Heather chief among them; she already practically ran the field teams all on her own. When she wasn't able to handle something, for whatever reason, there was Ken, the Mordred Steward, who had essentially been bred to handle anything involving violence and mayhem.

  There was absolutely no reason he couldn't ask for a break, and Amr would grant it without hesitation. He was a good friend and a great leader. He wanted his people happy and healthy, and would probably be the first to agree that Deacon deserved a vacation.

  All Deacon had to do was ask. Instead he was sitting alone in his office fretting about it and stalling on heading home.

  At his feet, Pentacle growled mockingly. Deacon nudged him with one booted foot, but he may as well have been trying to nudge a rock. In human and dragon form, Pentacle was a tank. He'd been particularly dangerous in the pits, according to former pit fighters, because everyone looked at his size and assumed it meant he sacrificed speed, but Pentacle could move like the wind, and his teeth and tail finished what sheer power didn't, never mind that he was a quad-black, which gave him a formidable range of elemental attacks. In drills, he had no problem holding his own against the steel dragons. He was magnificent, and Deacon would never stop being awed that Pentacle had chosen him.

  Pentacle growled again, affection and amusement in their bond, then went back to gnawing on the chunk of mutton Deacon had bought him as a treat from the usual cow and bison.

  Deacon looked away, queasy as ever at the sight of meat—especially raw meat. A travesty in a knight, but not an infrequent result of dealing with goblins. Several of his guards who'd been involved in that incident had turned vegetarian in the aftermath. At least Deacon wasn't so put off he couldn't feed Pentacle himself, instead of needing someone else to do it.

  And brooding about that wasn't really fixing the matter of his vacation, which he wouldn't get if he didn't ask for it. Deacon sighed. Whatever, at this point it was a problem for tomorrow, when he went to see Amr and Ken to give them the weekly update on the guards and all they knew about the city. He set to tidying up his desk and contemplating what to get for dinner on the way home. Chinese? Falafel? Tacos? Burger? The diner close to Mordred headquarters made the best black bean burger in existence; even the vegetarian place he'd favored back in Montréal hadn't been able to hold a candle to it.

  The door creaked open, and Heather stepped in, looking her usual beautiful, deadly self, clothes stained with blood in a couple of places and who knew what else in others. At her side was her dragon, a large, beautiful steel with a nasty scar cutting across her face, right through her left eye. She was from the former Pellinore clan, which had been cursed by Prince Avalon and forbidden to go near dragons ever again. Most of them had been folded into Mordred, but some had gone with the newly formed Clan St. George.

  Pentacle rumbled at them in greeting and growled inquisitively about the blood but didn't rise from his place on the floor. Allah forbid.

  "What?" Deacon asked, body tensing, dread settling into his gut like a bad meal. "I don't like the look on your face. I'm hungry and I want to go home." He groaned. "Please, Heather, don't ruin my night like I think you're about to."

  "Sorry, Asim," Heather replied, expression just growing even wearier and more somber. It must be really bad if she was using his real name. "You know all those missing people?"

  "Be hard to forget." Over the past few weeks, people had been vanishing. Could have been for months, but it was hard to say. They were being taken with meticulous slowness—one here, one there. By the time they'd noticed, there was no telling how long it had been going on, or how many were actually missing. They were mostly syndicate reluctant to join Mordred or downright hostile about it. Some were homeless the clan had been steadily helping. Other so-called riff-raff that slipped through societal cracks. The kind of people that were easy to miss, easy to shrug off, easy to stop caring about—if anyone had ever cared at all.

  Deacon cared. He cared a great deal. As much as he complained, if Heather finally had a lead for them to follow, he'd track it until he fell over.

  "We found one tonight. Renlo." She looked for a bare moment like she was going to cry. "Rather, we found what was left of him. If I had to guess, I'd say he got jumped and didn't go down as easily as they anticipated."

  "Yeah, people like to underestimate Renlo." Kid was quiet and shy, kept to himself, and was easily over three hundred pounds. He wasn't homeless, exactly, but he didn't have much of a home life either, and had refused all attempts to help him. People mistook him for a meek, fat pushover, when really he was just a guy who wanted to be left alone and could, when pushed, snap spines like they were dry twigs. "Still, if they managed to get him in the end anyway…"

  "There was also a whole hell of a lot of non-human blood at the scene. I gave most of it to the lab to verify, but honestly it's pretty damn obvious." She set a plastic bag on his desk. Inside was a dishtowel or something soaked in black-red blood that was already turning true black at the edges.

  Bile rose up to burn Deacon's throat. No, not this. Not again. "We have goblins. " Deacon tried to avoid cussing, but right then he really wanted to let loose with a few choice expletives. He sat back in his chair, grateful when Pen
tacle rose and settled his ponderous head in his lap. Deacon stroked his black, faintly opalescent scales, soothed by their slick warmth. Pentacle rumbled reassuringly, and Deacon's heart trip-trapped. Because he'd dealt with goblins before, but he'd been alone then. Now he had Pentacle, the fiercest, most beautiful dragon alive.

  "It gets worse," Heather said. "You'll probably want to go see it for yourself, so I have the area sealed off and under guard, but I took pictures." She pulled them up, then set the phone on the desk, spun it, and slid it.

  Deacon caught it deftly and frowned as he thumbed through roughly a dozen photos, all of them showing closeups of what looked to be some sort of spell circle. "So they've got a witch or something working with them."

  "Probably a sorcerer," Heather said. "Witches… not really their style."

  "No, I suppose not." Any magic-using human was dangerous, but witches were the ones who went off half-cocked and pulled crazy stunts without thinking about it first. They trusted to the magic, instead of focusing it precisely like sorcerers and alchemists. Ken was the epitome of a witch if ever Deacon had seen one, in stark contrast to Amr, who was a sorcerer born. If Deacon's hair wasn't already gray, Ken would turn it so. He might yet turn it white.

  Deacon sighed and gave her phone back. "Text those to me. I'll take them to Jackie, see what he thinks, so I don't have to bother Amr so late." No one who wanted to continue breathing bothered Amr once he and Ken were alone in their rooms for the night, and despite his job, Deacon didn't actually have a death wish. "I'll see what else we can figure out, and then compile a report to have ready for Amr first thing in the morning." He scrubbed at his face, dread and weariness running through him.

  The last time he'd had dealt with goblins like this—the kind that slunk around, kidnapped, tried to stay out of awareness of the rest of the territory—he'd lost two men and found them expertly butchered, along with twenty other humans and a few things not human. Deacon normally had a strong stomach, but seeing people, especially people he knew, turned into roasts and lunch meat was more than he'd been able to take.

  He'd never had the heart to tell their families that was how they'd ended and had just gone with died in the line of duty. The worst part had been not having bodies to give them for burial; they'd burned the entire nightmare down and done the best they could. That such a thing wasn't unusual in the paranormal world was of no real comfort. There should always be a body to bury. The living and the dead both deserved that much.

  "Are you okay, Dee?"

  Deacon waved a hand in the air. "I could use a break, but it can wait until this mess is dealt with. I'm not going on vacation when there are goblins picking away at us like cows for slaughter." There was no way he would foist such a miserable, scarring job off on his subordinates while he went off to relax and have fun.

  She nodded. "I'm gonna check in with the lab and add this to our map. I'll text you, if there's anything to text."

  Deacon nodded and bid her farewell. Then he went to his gun safe and retrieved the Glock 19 he'd just put away, along with his sap gloves and other weapons, and shrugged into his corduroy jacket. "Come on, Pen, you can visit the girls and your friends while I talk to Jackie."

  Which meant he'd probably also have to deal with Wyatt, Jackie's weird, nosy assistant who had to insert himself into everything. Why Jackie insisted on having a kid on his team, Deacon didn't know, but it also wasn't any of his business. It was clear Jackie had a soft spot for Wyatt, and Deacon certainly wasn't going to tell someone else how to run their own family, even if that family included a pushy, know-it-all brat who seemed to go looking for trouble.

  They headed across town, Pentacle gleefully enjoying the falling snow, occasionally snapping at flakes or thwacking shoveled piles with his tail like some overgrown toddler instead of a deadly weapon that looked like a cross between an ancient crocodile and a sabretooth tiger.

  Deacon loved him so much, some days it felt like his heart would pop. He'd just assumed, like everyone else in the clan, that he'd be one more generation of Mordreds who lived and died without ever bonding to dragons.

  But here they were, reinstated and a primary clan, and Pentacle had chosen him, the washed up, overworked, perpetually exhausted Captain of the Guard. Deacon had always wanted his own family, but one lover after another just got fed up with him. Long days, late nights, things he wouldn't and couldn't talk about, always exhausted, frequently wounded… Deacon had never blamed them; he was a lot to put up with. He settled for being the cool uncle to his sister's kids instead.

  Now, though, now he had someone all his own who loved him unconditionally, whom he loved just as fiercely. Pentacle might not be the lover, the spouse, he wanted, but he went a long way toward making Deacon feel less lonely.

  About twenty minutes later, they reached Club Heaven, a strip club that was really more of a hangout where some of the staff happened to pole dance. Not the kind of place where sorcerers usually hung out, let alone lived above, but Jackie and his crew were unusual even for abnormals. A sorcerer who fought with alchemical revolvers; an alchemist with skills far beyond his age; a scarred and scorned vampire; a strange, rune-covered demon; and a guardian angel. It was about as weird as weird could get.

  They stepped inside, bass thumping in Deacon's chest, the familiar smells of booze, sweat, and perfume washing over him. Various people lifted hands in greeting from around the large main room, and Deacon returned them before skimming around for the person he sought.

  "Hey, Captain," said Lenora, stopping with a drink-loaded tray expertly balanced on one arm. She tossed her long red hair back, baring her scantily clad breasts and winking at him.

  Deacon smiled in greeting, but then kept his eyes averted, though it was always a bit tricky to find something that was wasn't mostly-naked women to focus on in the club.

  "Didn't expect to see you tonight. Come looking for something?"

  "Working, unfortunately," he said, enjoying the smell of sweat and night jasmine cologne that wafted over him. She'd offered to play with him once, and Deacon couldn't say he wasn't tempted the tiniest bit, but Pentacle was his first and last amorous companion unless he found a partner. "Have you seen Jackie?"

  "Out of town. Don't know more than that. But Wyatt is at the bar."

  Of course he was. Of course Jackie was out of town and his only immediate option was Wyatt. Deacon stifled a sigh. "Thanks, I'll go see him."

  "Hope whatever's wrong gets fixed quickly and easily." She bustled off and Deacon headed for the bar.

  Even in the dim light and bustling crowd, it was easy to pick out Wyatt. Part of that was his youth. He was loud, brash, animated—alive in a way most abnormals weren't, that shine rubbed off quickly by the brutal world they lived in. They all became reserved and jaded, Deacon included. It had turned his hair gray fast. But Wyatt had somehow managed to retain his shine.

  Unfortunately, it was also Wyatt's beauty that made him easy to spot. Deacon hated himself for noticing. He was forty-two. If Wyatt was over twenty, he'd die of shock. He shouldn't be noticing Wyatt was breathtakingly gorgeous and ridiculously sexy. Yet here Deacon was, admiring the lines of him as he drank a beer he probably wasn't old enough for—not that normal laws mattered much to abnormals—and chatting with Candi, one of the bartenders.

  Wyatt could have been a model, he was that pretty. He was on the shorter end of average height, with the slender build of someone who was always burning energy. He had strawberry blond hair that hung around his head in a perpetual mess, blue eyes as clear as a summer lake, and skin so white he probably burned after just two minutes in the sun. He also seemed to turn red over every little thing. Deacon would find it adorable if it wasn't so vexing, since it seemed to come with a flustered, stumbling manner that meant Wyatt struggled to get his words out. Unless he was mad. Wyatt on a tear had plenty to say, at volume.

  There was also something about Wyatt that just nagged at Deacon, like there was something right in front of his face that he wasn't seein
g. He'd tried and tried to puzzle it out, but all it did was leave him flummoxed and annoyed. Wyatt seemed to have a talent for that.

  Well, staring wasn't going to get much done, so praying to a divine he didn't entirely believe in most days, much to the displeasure of his late, devout Muslim mother, Deacon pressed on through the crowd and called out, "Hey, Wyatt. I need a word."

  Wyatt jolted, nearly toppling off his bar stool. Candi saved his beer before it could fall across the bar. Giving Wyatt an amused look he didn't notice, she rolled her eyes and faded off.

  "Uh. You do? With me?" He stared at Deacon wide-eyed, cheeks flushing the color of his hair. "What's up?"

  "It's a lot to explain, but I need you to examine a spell circle for me."

  Wyatt smiled in that bright, always happy way of his, but Deacon didn't think he'd imagined the disappointment that had filled his face for a moment. "Sure, I can do that. Come on, we'll go somewhere we don't have to practically shout to be heard." He slid off his stool and led the way through the building, eventually up to the apartments where he, Jackie, and Ned lived, with the others close by.

  In the quiet of the little kitchen-dining area at the back of the apartment, they sat at the table and Deacon showed him the photos Heather had forwarded on. "We think a sorcerer might be involved, but we have no idea how exactly, or what this circle is intended to do."

  He didn't like at all the way Wyatt's expression darkened to something sharp and angry as he scrolled through the pictures. "You're close—this is alchemy, not sorcery."

  "Really? How can you tell? All spell circles look the same to me." Deacon's knowledge of magic was limited, for all that Clan Mordred was one of only three clans that had ever heavily engaged in magic, the other two being Pendragon and le Fay. Amr's family excelled at magic, but Deacon's line had always been pretty dull on that point. He knew drips and drabs, the stuff any paranormal knew, but not much else.

  "Supplemental runes," Wyatt said. "These here are a few of them. All magic requires sacrifice, right?"