Free Deadtown by Nancy Holzner Page A

It’s just a question of timing—how close to election day. All they have to do is whip up a little panic, and Baldwin wins.”
    “Aren’t you overlooking something?” Kane stopped pacing and looked at me. “That Hellion didn’t attack at random. It went after my client, right after I exterminated those Drudes. What if it’s here for me?” My voice betrayed more panic than I wanted to show.
    “Vicky, I don’t think—”
    “Hang on a minute, Mr. Kane.” Costello squinted at me with intense interest, his blue eyes glinting. “Why do you think a Hellion would be after you?”
    The roaring started in my ears again, but I swallowed hard and pushed it down. “Why, Detective Costello . . . ?” God, it hurt even to think it. I didn’t know if I could force the words out. Another hard swallow. “Ten years ago, a Hellion murdered my father. Because of me.”

6
    MY FATHER NAMED ME. ONE YEAR BEFORE I WAS BORN—TO the day—he was visited in a dream by Saint Michael, sworn enemy of demons, and Saint David, patron saint of Wales. Saint Michael brandished his flaming sword and declared, “A girl child shall be born unto you, and her name shall be Victory.” Saint David nodded and made a gesture of blessing, then the two ascended—into heaven, I guess, or wherever saints go after they’ve delivered a prophecy. Dad thought they were growing taller, until he realized they were rising into the air. He could see the toenails of their sandaled feet at eye level for a moment, and then they were gone.
    Funny, Dad said, he’d never thought about archangels, or even saints, having toenails. But that was my favorite part of the story when I was a girl. Clean, pinkish toenails peeking out of golden sandals.
    Mom wanted to call me Rhiannon. But she was loopy on painkillers when my father filled out the birth certificate, so Victory I became.
    My childhood was normal enough, I suppose, for a demi-human whose birth had been foretold by a prophecy. We lived on the top floor of a Somerville triple-decker. Dad juggled three or four part-time teaching jobs at local colleges, and Mom stayed home with us two girls. When money got tight, she’d sell magazine subscriptions by phone from the kitchen. My parents were both Cerddorion—a race more common in their native Wales than in their adopted home of Boston—and I grew up trying to master the trick of being proud of my heritage while keeping it an absolute secret from the norms around me.
    I got by in school, played softball in Foss Park, and alternately fought with and confided in my older sister, Gwen. And then puberty hit—as if that weren’t tough enough—bringing with it the sudden, hard-to-control “gift” of shapeshifting. As I tried to learn how not to become a rampaging gorilla when I was angry or dissolve into a hyena when laughing, I also began my long education in demon slaying.
    No more softball. During the summer I was shipped off to my aunt’s manor house in North Wales to fulfill my destiny as a demon slayer. It was like school, only harder. I struggled to memorize entire books of information—the taxonomy of demons, their habits and habitats, the history of my family’s conflict with them—and Aunt Mab drilled me endlessly, peering disapprovingly over her glasses, her lips scrunched up like she’d tasted something awful. Outside, the green hills of Snowdonia, the woods and brooks and neighboring farms, called to me to explore. On the days when I got everything right, I could go run around outside. When I made a mistake, I had to stay in and study. I spent a lot of time indoors.
    But I loved Mab. Dad said she could fight with a flaming sword. Although I found that hard to picture, with her frizzy steel-wool hair and her high-necked, long-skirted, old-fashioned dresses, I didn’t doubt it for a minute. There was something formidable about my aunt, something that said don’t mess with me . I could believe she was the scourge of demonkind. Fashion sense aside,