Roses & Haunts Read online

  Shit, Iowin, are you listening to all this?

  All of it. Don’t panic.

  Jerrick gave her a little shake, enough to rattle her teeth but not enough to snap her head around, his face quickly shifting into lines of desperation. “What do you want me to say?” she whispered harshly. “You’ve already passed judgment on me, Jerrick. Anything I say won’t do a bit of good. And you never answered my question about Linnet.”

  Easier said than done! He’s not the enemy here, she thought rapidly. A double-doucheface cockhead with a penchant for colonial-era roofying supposed witches, yes, but he’s a victim as much as we are. Linnet did this.

  And she’s using you to pay the price.

  I think you give her too much credit. I think this spell was an accident and my presence is a coincidence, a happy accident.

  I wouldn’t call this happy, beloved, and I thought we didn’t believe in coincidences.

  That was before we knew the Headless Horseman was alive and well and dating my ancestor!

  “Nein, I need answers, Aloisia.”

  “So do I. Tell me what you have planned for Linnet and me—”

  “I love her,” he all but growled into her ear, any shred of civility vanishing from his face. “You cut me deeply by claiming I have no knowledge of love? Nein! I know love, Aloisia. I love deeply and I love Linnet. But I cannot be the man she needs, the man who will give her children, if I am unliving, if I am undying. I cannot wed her with this curse upon me and the village. Tell me what is going on before others die.”

  It all suddenly clicked. His interest in ruling this village, and his interest in her. Captain Jerrick von Knyphausen, brother of Landgrave Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel and next in line for the title, was terrified. He’d become immortal. He’d stumbled into the unexplainable, undefinable, in the mundane world and was too honorable or stubborn or both to walk away from it. Add love into the equation, and he was well and truly trapped. He was at his wit’s end for answers and smart enough to understand the hell that awaited himself, his men, and the good people of Sleepy Hollow if he didn’t find a way out.

  Her time playing damsel in distress was over.

  The fan clattered to the floor, her fingers grabbing the pressure point in his wrist and applying some physics of her own. He let go with a swallowed grunt, staring at her with wide eyes.

  “What do you mean, others?” she demanded, jabbing a finger into his chest. “Who’s died? What’s been happening here? Jerrick, I can help. I am—was, I mean--a cop, not that the term is recognized around here. What it truly means is that I investigate the bad things, protect the innocent, and attempt to right the wrongs. Believe it or not, we’re on the same side here. And for the record, I didn’t do anything to you. Aside from breaking your nose and your ribs, that is, but you deserved that and you know it. Let. Me. Help. You.”

  She’d all but backed him into the wall, every word of her last sentence punctuated with another finger-jab into his chest. Thank all the stars ever they were partially screened by a giant bale of hay. Who ever thought they’d be thankful for that?

  “Valkyrie,” he whispered in the wake of her silence, blue eyes wide and burning. “You are truly a Valkyrie come here to save us.”

  She expected a lot of things to happen after a statement like that. Flailing and screaming, potentially like a little girl, was primary on the list. Calls for burning her at a stake as a witch was next on the list (possibly with the massive materialization of pitchforks and rope, like that crap was left lying in reserve somewhere in a ‘break glass in case of witch’ wall kit or something).

  What she didn’t expect was the reverent bow, followed by the great brick wall of a man crashing down to one knee and pressing her knuckles to his forehead. “Save us, honored maiden of Odin. I am yours in this life and the next. Please, save us.”

  A single drop of moisture ran down her fingertips, his head lifting to reveal sorrowful baby-blues. The first honest and one hundred percent complete truth he’d given her since they’d tried to kill each other days ago.

  “Save us or deliver us unto Odin. Both will end the horror.”

  Son of a bitch.

  Alynia!

  I’m fine. I think. God, Iowin, what the hell is going on?

  I need that book.

  Go get Linnet and ask her for it. Ask her to show you the spell she used to do all this. Then figure out which building has the footprint we used to get here in the first place.

  What about you?

  I’m going to play Norse demi-god tonight.

  “Help me to help you, Jerrick,” she whispered, drawing him up to his feet. “Together, we’ll get through this.”

  “Ja. At your command.”

  “Take me to where these ‘others’ are located, the ones that have already died. I need to see them.”

  For once she was actually glad he was a trained soldier. Those heels clicked together in a proper German salute, and he turned without preamble towards the rest of the gathering.

  “Wait!” she rushed over to him, plucking the kerchief from—sigh!—her bodice, and dabbing it against his cheeks. “You are a proud warrior, Captain Jerrick. No more tears. This ends tonight.”

  Pride washed across his visage, and it had nothing to do with the mask he’d worn before. Pride and relief and joy. It was touching, almost made him seem like not so much of a dickhead—-until he brought that kerchief to his nose and inhaled deeply. Like the scent of her body was the rarest of perfumes. “Ja, Valkyrie.”

  She groaned, and hairstyle be damned, shoved her fingers through her hair. Pins clattered to the floor. Neither of them cared.

  “It’s Alynia, Jerrick. Not Valkyrie. Not Aloisia. My name is Alynia Caprice Tintreach. Say it with me now.”

  “Ah-Hlein-eh-Ah.”

  Bless his heart, he honestly tried.

  “Fuck it,” she rolled her eyes. “Aloisia. Just call me Aloisia. It’s easier for all of us.”

  “Ja. Fuck it Aloisia. Understood.”

  Her mouth fell open as he executed a military turn, tucking her kerchief into his breast pocket like a precious gold coin. She thought about calling after him, if only to correct him in the use of the phrase ‘fuck it.’ It wasn’t her title!

  Iowin’s guffaws of laughter floated across the bond. Well, wasn’t she just amusing the hell out of everyone tonight.

  Chapter 10

  They rode out into the night, six riders in black, like shadows smeared across the starlit landscape. It hadn’t taken Jerrick long to round up the core group of his men. In fact, since learning they couldn’t die on the battlefield, many of them had taken to always staying armed. Always ready for whatever challenge faced their unit next, ready to stand in the way of harm for their cause. Alynia changed her mind about them. They weren’t mercenaries at all. They were simply men—heavily armed and heavily trained warrior men—who happened to believe that the monarchy was the best system of government.

  Democrat or Republican. Monarchist or Patriot. It was all political differences.

  Save for the fact that their debates were answered with powder and steel rather than facts and well-prepared arguments.

  It was a point they’d discuss another night, she decided. Especially after they’d released Iowin to his own devices and rounded up enough black clothing to outfit Alynia as one of their own. Black breeches, black boots to the knee, black shirt and jacket. The jacket in particular was big in the shoulders and long on the arms, the cuffs reaching all the way to the first joints of her fingers. But they didn’t bat an eye as she rolled those up to mid-wrist and pulled her hair back into its beloved single braid. No more curls and pins and jewels. No more creams rubbed into her skin to create that look of delicate flawlessness.

  No more ass pillows, dress plumpers, petticoats, or stays.

  Just Alynia Caprice Tintreach, ex-cop and now time-traveling-adopted-Hessian-mercenary-pseudo-Valkyrie, armed with a long knife and her beloved, precious, Glock. They’d handed her a b
lack-bladed dagger to wear at her waist. Talk about getting medieval.

  She’d stared at herself long and hard in the mirror before they headed out. Dear stars above, in all that unrelieved black, she looked ready to play stunt double for any evil queen in any fantasy movie. Yeah, Carmina was never ever going to let her live this down.

  Her new Band of Brothers did more than bat an eye when the gun touched her palm, though. That’s where the near girl-like shrieking occurred. Magic flowed through her into the enchanted steel, mud and muck and whatever else they’d tried to use to understand her weapon flaked away from its exterior. Grooves and marks from chisels and files repaired themselves, what she hoped was gunpowder pumping itself out of the barrel in a spray of gray neutralized dust. The gun was whole, shiny and clean, and never felt better in her hand.

  Proof that magic was real. Proof that she was more than human. Proof that Caprice women preferred to do no harm, but had no trouble putting foot to ass to protect their own. And what do you know, the village of Sleepy Hollow had just been adopted by her. There was a new sheriff in town, and she was beyond pissed off.

  Lock and load, bitches. It was time to clean house.

  Alynia clung to Jerricks’s back, arms wrapped around his waist and head buried against his shoulder. It’d dimmed the hope she offered them when she mentioned she’d never ridden a horse in her entire life. They didn’t use horses where she came from, was the only explanation she could give. The fact that she was damn near terrified of them didn’t help with the situation, either. But it was hard not to yelp like a little girl when Jerrick applied boot heels and reins to his beloved warhorse. Dagger, was its name. And Dagger soared down the moon-soaked path, the rest of the band quickly at their heels.

  “How far until we reach them?” she screamed into the wind.

  “Not far,” Jerrick called back. “And you do not have to scream. I can hear you fine.”

  “Sorry,” she said at a somewhat less screeching volume. “I told you, we don’t use horses where we come from. This is all new to me.”

  He chuckled. She felt it deep in his chest, where her arms replayed his vice-like hold from their first meeting. “I thought all Valkyries were master riders.”

  “I thought all Hessian warlords killed for sport.”

  A snort of laughter from somewhere to her left had her opening her eyes. Jonas road at their side, his grin wide, his teeth flashing white in the moonlight. “Not all,” he winked. “If you come home to Hesse-Kassel with us, I will introduce you to a few who need honor retaught to them.”

  The rest laughed at that, Jerrick joining his men. Alynia smiled in spite of herself. They reminded her so much of her family, both work and blood. “Why so far away from the village?”

  The smile vanished from Jonas’ face in a blink. “They are the ones that died for us, lady Aloisia.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”

  “We keep them far from the village for the safety of all,” Jerrick explained. “It was our hope that the problem lay in a few dead, not in the entire citizenry of the village.”

  “I still don’t get it. How did they die for you? What was the problem?”

  Storm gray eyes met the steel-gray of her own. “’The’ problem, my lady. It is witchcraft.”

  “All will be explained when we reach the cemetery,” Jerrick decreed.

  No one felt like joking after that, and not even the exertion of flying across the hard-packed dirt road by moonlight could rouse their spirits.

  The bodies lay spread out before her, a gruesome story that needed no explanation. Twelve in total, their various limbs straightened to some semblance of a restful pose. The Hessians had done well by them in that regard at least, Alynia mused. Everyone kept in the stone sarcophagus of the abandoned mausoleum several miles away from the village proper. Each had their names chiseled above that of the former occupant, and below that the name of the Hessian who’d unwillingly swapped fate with the victim.

  Alynia knelt down by the first, wishing for latex gloves instead of the black leather that encircled her fingers. What was left of the man’s chest could have fit neatly in a small evidence bag, the late stage decomp telling the story of his death better than the missing remains. Unless she missed her guess, a large projectile slammed into the poor guy, exploding and obliterating ninety percent of his chest and abdomen.

  “Cannonball,” Jonas explained softly. “A cannonball from a rebel regiment broke free of the tree line, my lady. The shot was an impossible one, and we did not expect it to reach us.”

  “We did not anticipate the rebels’ intensity in battle,” a rider named Conrad picked up the tale. “Their zeal is commendable, but also borderline insane. They overloaded the cannon with powder to make that shot possible. It destroyed the cannon, its crew, and would have ended Jonas’ life.”

  “It should have ended my life,” Jonas insisted, fury tightening his features. “It did not. I survived.”

  “And when you returned to Sleepy Hollow, you found him,” she gestured to the body.

  “Ja. Herr Morgan was a cobbler, my lady, elderly and respected by the community. Next in line to become Mayor. He was found in his shop the day after the battle, his body just like this.”

  Alynia nodded, shoving her emotions into a corner of her heart and picking up her old chant: Do the job. Get the confession. Make the arrest. Go home. No room for emotions in any of that. She moved on to the next body, closing her eyes a long moment before forcing her mind to reconcile what was in front of her. Torso of a large male, head and limbs detached and resting in close approximation of their original position on the body.

  “Herr Thomas Doulcet, a farmer on the west end of the village,” Conrad continued. “This one was mine. I was captured by a grouping of rebels and found guilty in the eyes of their commander. They did not offer prisoner of war status to me,” his face clouded over with rage. “My execution was performed immediately, my limbs tied to the saddles of horses and—”

  She raised a hand, shaking her head back and forth. She didn’t need to hear the story. She saw it in the remains, could only imagine the hell Mr. Doulcet endured as his body was pulled apart slowly. Slowly, she understood, as Conrad’s limbs were attached. Those horses must have pulled and pulled over and over again, yanking Conrad’s arms and legs from their sockets, but unable to complete true dismemberment. All the while, Mr. Thomas died slowly.

  Horribly.

  They all died horribly. Twelve deaths by magic. Willing or unwilling, Linnet had murdered twelve people in the name of love.

  The first Caprice serial killer. The thought made her want to vomit more than the scene before her.

  It’s bad, Iowin whispered through the bond, the words not in the least bit a question.

  It’s bad, she confirmed, kneeling down next to the next body in line. Twelve dead that we know about, some quick and relatively painless. Others twisted enough to be prohibited by the bloody Geneva Convention. Stars, Iowin, what do we do with this one?

  Good question. His emotions grim. If this was a one-time spell, I… I don’t know. In our time, I’d have her under the auspice of one of your family until she learned how to better control her powers. In this time and place, I don’t think there’s anyone around to help her. There’s a reason magic runs in families, my Nia, and you’re staring right at it. Without each other to rely upon, to teach right and wrong, we end up with… with…

  With accidental witch serial killers, she rubbed at her nose with the back of one gloved hand, careful to keep her fingers away from her face. What I wouldn’t give for Beads of Binding right now.

  If we had them, we couldn’t make use of them. The spell in this book is intense, complex. I haven’t seen magic like this in decades.

  The news around here just gets better and better, she sighed aloud, staring up at the roof of the old mausoleum. How long to decipher it?

  I’ll need Linnet’s help to do that.

  She froze. Isn’t
she with you?

  She went back to her father’s house at his request. Apparently Mayor Caprice has had enough of his only daughter running off with newly arrived strange men in this village. She’s allowed to return when you or Captain Jerrick returns to escort her.

  Wait, where are you?

  His smile translated across the bond, along with the faint scents of night-blooming flowers. I’m back at the footprint. It wasn’t a house like we originally thought. It’s the gardens. We should get remarried in the gardens behind your grandmother’s house. You in that pale green dress, and me in breeches and waistcoat.

  She suppressed a smile. A goal to look forward to for sure, provided they made it out of this mess alive. I’d rather not wedding plan while standing over the dead.

  You’re standing for the dead, not over them. And I’ll have to wait for eternity before you stop doing that. Go be the cop, beloved. I’ll be the warlock.

  Be careful, Iowin. I don’t like you being in that garden alone. Remember what I said about everyone in that village having their own agenda.

  I will. Love you.

  Love you, too.

  The link faded, and she rose to her feet. He was right about one thing, and it had nothing to do with wedding plans. She always stood for the dead, and always would.

  “This is why you decapitated the men on the battlefield, wasn’t it?” she asked Jerrick. “Mercy killing on the off chance they’d end up the victims of your survival.”

  Jerrick frowned, his face a mask of shame, and nodded. “It was a better end than what happened to these men. This one was mine,” he stepped up next to the last body in the line, his handsome face drawn down in sadness. “The first to die in my place. His name was Abraham Von Trapp, called Bram Bones by the rest of the village. He was an apprentice physician, and the first to die in our stead.”