Sometimes images pop up on my tumblr and then words happen. This is one of those times. Consider this a random side-mission in Lilly's life, well after Book 2. Maybe part of a later novel in the series if I can see it working in.
The whole scene felt so fucking cheesy, it looked unreal.
“This is like something out of a bad horror movie,” I whispered, because talking out loud seemed wrong somehow, tromping through a corn-field, with darkening clouds over head. The winds whipped my braid across my back, turned the corn stalks around at odd angles. It was like the Signs meets Twister, but I did not believe in aliens, and so scenes of Children of the Corn came to mind. Which was so not even close to the actual horror movie that was my life.
Zell snorted, but he tightened his grip around his gun too, the Bul Commander looking huge in his thin hands. In some cases I would say it was too much gun for the job, but we were looking for a body that Rhodell had said he smelled, and still no idea what had killed it. Only that Rhodell could not step foot on land so far from Mikail’s purview. So here we were, Zell and I, the team of the newly minted offices of Purga Private Eye, tromping around a corn field with guns we did not have carry-permits for, seeing if anything jumped out and tried to eat us.
The wind howled, actually fucking howled, and my heart slammed into my chest at the sound. Get a grip Lilly I chastised, there are no goddamn werewolves this far south, dumbass.
“Jumpy, jumpy,” Zell chuckled, and I laughed when a stray cornstalk smacked him in the face.
“Yeah, well, when something tries to eat us, I’ll be the one to kill it.”
“Or run from it.”
“That too.”
“You can’t outrun a zombie. Or a shifter. Fuck, you can’t outrun any of it.”
“Neither can you.”
“I don’t have to out run the monsters,” Zell grinned, “I just have to outrun you.”
“Yeah, and then I’d haunt your ass for all time.”
He didn’t say anything to that. I had stupidly referenced the Thing We Do Not Discuss. Monsters we joke about, ghosts, on the other hand, were no laughing matter. Not when we knew them so personally.
And then the fucking cornstalks rustled, fucking rustled, and it was so not the wind. My Beretta was two-handed in the direction of the noise without needing to think about. In the past few years aiming my best fire power towards the tiniest noise was the only thing that had kept me alive this long.
“Show yourself!” I shouted, all pretense of stealth gone.
“Slowly,” Zell added.
It didn’t go slowly. It fucking somersaulted out of the growth and onto the clearing of the path, landing easily on filthy boots with a grin. It was Finn, no last name, probably not his real first name either. Bounty hunter for hire.
“You’re pretty far from home, Lilly.”
“Hi to you too,” I drawled, lowering my Beretta, but not putting it away. I hadn’t since we got here. This place gave me the fucking creeps, which usually meant Very Bad Things had taken place here.
Finn opened his mouth to say something in that southern-boy-charm of his, when a fucking whole section of the crown growth snapped in one big go.
He stopped being charming then, and took off towards the sound, shotgun at the ready. Zell and I shared a look before we zoomed after him. The skies were getting ever darker over head, and it had nothing to do with the time of day.
I wondered if we could find the thing and the body before the tornadoes came.
The way my luck was going, I didn’t count on it.
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