AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Jugs is telling me he saw me with Demmy at the Hollow Leg a little while ago and that we left together. But I haven’t been to the Hollow Leg in a couple of days, so either Jugs had more than his usual at the bar, or someone’s walking around doing a really good impression of me.”
“Oh my God.” Ollie apparently held the phone away from his face as he said something to whoever was with him, because his voice got quieter. “It’s got to be the shapeshifter.”
Clarabell’s raked-over-hot-coals voice said something unintelligible in the background before Ollie came back on the line. “We know what’s been causing the drownings out at the pond.”
“What?”
“It’s a nix.”
“A nix? What the fuck is a nix?”
“It’s a creature that can shapeshift into whoever it wants to.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“What?” Lucia said, stepping out of his grandmother’s room again.
“Ollie and Clarabell are saying it’s called a nix and it can shapeshift into whoever it wants to.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Lucia said.
“Where are you?” Ollie asked.
“At Parson’s Pines. My grandmother was attacked. She said I tried to kill her.”
“Oh, shit. It must have some kind of vendetta against you or something.”
Cody huffed a breath. “Tell it to get in line.”
“We’re heading to you,” Ollie said.
“Who’s we?”
“Me and Clarabell,” Ollie replied. “And I’m calling Dave when I get into the car.”
“Yeah, all right. We need to find Demmy.”
“Have you checked the pond?” Ollie asked.
“Fuck!” Cody moved the phone from his mouth and said to Lucia, “We need to get to the pond, now.”
“We’re five minutes from there,” Lucia said.
Cody nodded and started running for the door. “Ollie, meet us at the pond.”
“See you there.”
The call disconnected and Cody gripped the phone as he ran through the door. He could hear Lucia shouting something from behind him, but he didn’t have the brain capacity to focus on it. All he could think about was getting to the pond and finding Demmy.
The heat made him gasp. It felt like someone slapped a blanket still damp and fresh out of the dryer over him. It was at least eighty-five percent humidity, maybe more, but it wasn’t raining. Not yet anyway.
He reached his truck and burned rubber as he pulled out of the lot, seeing Lucia and Deputy Walsh coming out the door at a jog and heading for the patrol car.
The pond was minutes away. Demmy would be fine, everything would be all right.
He started up a mental loop of the all too familiar mantra and forced himself not to look at the scar on his left forearm. This thing was not a zombie. It was not a werewolf. It was a nix, whatever the fuck that was, and Ollie would know how to stop it. All Cody had to do was get Demmy away from it.
The turnoff to Morley Trail came up on his left and he took it more than a little fast. For a moment, he was afraid he’d go off the trail and into the shallow drainage ditch that ran along the road. But then his tires caught and propelled him forward, sending him bouncing down the sand and gravel. At the eastern bank of Parson’s Pond, the trail forked to go around either side of the small lake and come together again at the other end. Cody went left, mostly due to muscle memory as the left side of the pond was where he and Demmy usually released their captured critters.
