The Dwarf Assassin

By Erik Bundy

A dwarf secret
A renegade assassin
Prehistoric evil
A shape-shifter is murdering dwarves in a local colony, and Amanda, the Sibyl’s apprentice, agrees to find this assassin who hides in plain sight. When the renegade killer stalks her one night on the dwarf reservation, she knows this is her warning . . . next comes death.

To stay alive, Amanda must sharpen her psychic powers into mental weapons and flush out this cunning killer. She must also learn the secret her dwarf friends are keeping from her. Clues lie scattered in the Sibyl’s orchard, among a shaman’s stones, in a sacred blue crystal cavern, and inside a mountain fortress called Saint Peter’s Door.

When the unthinkable happens, she realizes her power is not strong enough to defeat this killer alone. She must unleash an ally, supernatural evil she might not be able to control. Then she must force it to fight the ruthless assassin for her?

Is she willing to risk the dwarf colony to protect a life more precious than her own?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erik Bundy
• Release date: Dec 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370266975

Book preview

The Dwarf Assassin

A Paranormal Murder Mystery

Erik Bundy

Lucky Bat Books

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

About the Author

Chapter 1

Filmy white curtains filtered the afternoon sunlight glazing Tristan’s lean features, blurring them to the smoothness of pale marble. I watched him sleep, my curly-bearded scholar with the sculpted physique of a Greek gymnast, though his body was now slightly emaciated by disease .

His feathered alarm clock, a snarky crow, was due to land any minute now in the red oak shading our driveway and crawk him awake. The bird’s flight plan included daily stops at our house for saltine crackers or stale brown bread. Tris called the little beggar Crow Magnon. I always did appreciate men with a sense of humor. When I first met Tris and laughed about his using a crow for his winged wake-up calls, he shrugged and said, Why not? Time flies, right?

But Tris also had a second crow in his life, one that wanted to shorten it. The bird was now perched on our bed’s mahogany headboard, and only a psychic like me could see it and know it for what it was: his death bird. Always present, it was as silent and relentless as his disease.

When it first appeared on Tristan’s head one evening while he lounged in our backyard, I thought he had tamed Crow Magnon. Then I looked through the phantom crow’s glass-bead eye and nearly fainted from grief. Two weeks later, an oncologist told Tris that cancer was eating away his stomach. I had been wondering what had happened to his appetite.

The deadly crow now tilted its head to one side and eyed me with a cruel, sadistic stare. What was Tristan to this bird—a job or a meal? Did it feed off its victim’s life energy? I would have cut off my left arm to wipe his death crow out of existence.

Outside, Crow Magnon crawked three times to announce his hungry arrival. Nature calls, I chirped.

Tris opened his eyes and grumped, Your turn.

I gently elbowed his ribs and quoted Poe, Nevermore.

It's a crow, not a raven.

I yawned to show I wasn’t impressed by his correction. It’s always your turn, Tris. Crows recognize human faces. So even if he’s only a carrion eater, he only accepts food from the hand of Saint Tristan.

Tris sighed a whistling breath. Got to be a she-crow. Nags until she gets what she wants. Besides, its eyes remind me of yours. Hers are dark chocolate and yours are milk chocolate, but both of you have a knowing look.

Uh-huh. You’re talking about a bird that can‘t be bothered to lift a feather to fetch its own meal but gripes when its food isn’t set out immediately. Male. I gave ‘male’ two syllables for emphasis.

Tris grunted. You’re stereotyping.

And you’re not?

Peevishly, Crow Magnon crawked three times.

Whether male or female, Tristan said, it for sure is a modern bird. Wants immediate service. A fly-through window would suit it best.

I smiled up at the ceiling. If Tris didn't respond within a minute or two, Crow Magnon would become testy and begin bombarding our shingle roof with acorns. Definitely male, I argued.

Tris unlimbered out of bed. I watched him slip black jeans, left leg first as always, over silky boxer briefs that showed off his muscular butt to advantage. The hateful death crow fluttered off the headboard and landed weightlessly on his right shoulder.

Tris bent over our bed and skimmed a fingertip along my jawline. How is Mandy feeling this morning?

He suffered every day from gut-wrenching cancer and every month from grueling chemotherapy . . . and was now asking me how I felt? Oh, Tristan, I whispered and kissed the palm of his hand.

He smiled down, reassuring me. Right now, Mandy, I almost feel like a normal human being.

I pulled his pillow to me, fluffed it, and stuffed it behind my back for added comfort. Speaking of which, I’m going to force the dwarf shaman to help cure you.

He grunted. You mean kill me.

It’s me she hates, not you. You’re a regular dwarf saint. I tilted my head sideways, birdlike, and listened as Crow Magnon cawed again. As well as a crow saint.

Yeah, too bad the shaman doesn’t see my holiness. She loathes all humans and all males. And I fit both categories. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question.

Time to lighten up. I’m feeling good. I yawned and stretched. You know, relaxed and spoiled, like a princess lounging in bed. Not like the menial servant who has to get up to feed the animals.

Don’t rub it in.

After you feed Crow Magnon, slave, don’t forget me.

How about I save the loaf’s stale end piece for you?

Tris slipped on a rainbow-colored T-shirt with Jimi Hendrix on the front. You came home late last night, he said to me. Worried me. I never can tell if you’re in trouble.

I pretended to be bored and tried to look as jaded as Cleopatra. My not carrying a phone was a routine argument for us. The Sibyl’s not going to change her mind, dear.

"I know. She’s got a no-cell-phone rule so you’ll rely on your oddsense. But couldn’t you just carry a phone for emergencies? Keep it turned off otherwise?"

What emergencies, Tris? I’m on Sibyl business in a dwarf forest. I’m safer there than on any of our streets.

What if a renegade dwarf decides to knife you? Or you step into a booby trap?

What dwarf would dare defy the Sibyl? And I know where the booby traps are. I know where to step off the path.

Mandy, I’m just saying—

Come on, Tris, we both know who I need to fear the most.

He hummed and shrugged in surrender. Sibyls spoke for the Goddess and derived their pitiless powers from Her. They normally protected the dwarves, but they didn’t tolerate certain sins. They sometimes wiped out entire disobedient colonies.

The Goddess had marked me to become the next Sibyl, if I survived the training. Strict obedience was expected. Any lapse or show of resistance was punished with pain.

Frustrated, both Tris and I sighed in unison . . . and laughed at ourselves. He worried about me because he loved me. I didn’t choose this, Tris.

I know, but why did the Goddess choose you to become the next lizard woman anyway? You’re not skinny. You’re shapely. You don’t slink around. You walk with a bold step. And you’re not a quiet skink either.

He had asked the same question a dozen times already. Who knew why? Because I was psychic? No answer I could give would satisfy him.

There’s got to be some way to dodge this, he said.

Not that I know of.

Tris thought the Sibyls were sadists. Their prophecies always came true, but they were rarely understood. Tris compared it to running over something and not knowing what it was you had hit until you saw it in the rearview mirror. Often the dwarves only learn a prophecy’s real meaning in hindsight.

I waved away our discussion. I’m not going to fret about something I can’t change.

My main priorities in life were to heal Tris and to stay alive by surviving Sibyl training. One day I would kneel and ask the Goddess for Her blessing. If I wasn't seasoned and couldn't withstand Her divine presence, my flesh would melt, and the dwarves would find my skeleton lying in a puddle of liquid fat and pus.

Tristan spread his hands. Sorry, Mandy. This ain’t the way to start off your day. I just hate the thought of you needing a phone and not having one.

I blew him a puckish air kiss. So, big man, if I did call you from deep in the woods and yelled ‘Help, Help’, what would you do?

Tristan spread a hand over his chest and pretended my doubting him wounded him to the heart. I’d use my head, darlin’. I’d send the dwarf cavalry in to rescue you. They might be short in height, but they’re tall on mean and deadly. He rubbed his hands together and smirked.

An acorn thonked our roof, rattled down it, and clanged into the aluminum gutter.

Bombs away. I nestled down and moaned at the pleasure of remaining in bed. Better high step it, crow minion.

Tristan slipped into his Hawaiian sandals. Yeah, let me get her an appetizer so she’ll fly off and eat roadkill. He tilted his head to his left and whispered to the phantom death crow on his shoulder, What about you?

Other shoulder, I told him. It's glaring one-eyed at me. Typical male behavior.

Tris cleared his throat to let me know he didn’t agree that Crow Magnon was a male, but at the moment, he was too superior to argue. Well, your human male is up and dressed. After he tends to his feathered guest, he'll brew you some coffee. He smirked at me. Just so no one accuses him of being slothful.

A week before, I had teased him about lazing around like a coonhound warming in the morning sun. I had wanted him to dig a hole for a puppywood, as he called dogwood saplings, and he hadn’t. Tris finally admitted he was too weak that day to do any shovel work. That shut me up.

But it hadn’t ended there. When I went into our bathroom, the smell of lemon-scented bleach smacked my nose. Surprised, I huffed in anger. I had told Tris that the stink of Clorox, even with lemon to mask the odor, irritated my nose and made my eyes water. I made a point of not keeping any in the house. Half a second later, I smelled the faint, sour odor of his vomit.

A squirt of toothpaste lay on the lip of the bathroom's porcelain sink. After cleaning the sink with Clorox, Tristan had brushed his teeth to sweeten his breath and had dropped a dollop of toothpaste. Either he hadn’t seen the fallen toothpaste or had been too exhausted to clean it up.

I had dropped into the bathroom’s cane-back chair and cried for him . . . and for myself because I was losing him. I had already lost one husband. Now gentle and funny Tristan was dying on me too.

He now stood relaxed in the doorway of our bedroom, smirking, waiting for me to banter back. Come hell or high water, I was going to force the dwarf shaman onto his case.

Tris, I said in a serious tone, you know I'm mortified about that. I had no idea how sick you were that day.

I know, hon. Sorry, I was just teasing. His lips curled into a roguish smile. Though I do think humility should be part of a Sibyl apprentice’s training.

Right, so I’ll turn out like the current Sibyl. Who’s as humble as a male peacock in full display.

As soon as he left to feed Crow Magnon, I slipped out of bed. Princess time was over. Though I had slept into the afternoon, my night with the Sibyl still made me falling-down tired. Walking felt like wading against a strong current, my knees seemed full of grit, and my stomach was on the edge of being queasy.

I yanked the sheets off our bed. Tristan's sweat now had a chemical stink to it that could ruin my sleep. I decided to drink my creamed coffee while soaking in a hot sudsy bath. I would take what comfort I could this morning followed by discomfort tonight when I visited the cantankerous shaman. Maybe I would carry my SIG Sauer pistol with me. The old healer did hate humans, and she was more temperamental than the North Carolina weather.

Tris walked by the laundry room and saw me stuffing sheets into the washer. You're going to launder them down to cleaning rags. Before you moved in, I only needed to wash them half as often as you do.

That's because you’ve got a high tolerance for grease. You should’ve been a car mechanic.

He chuckled. Naw, I just had me a system. I slept on one side for a week or two, then moved over to the other side until the entire sheet needed washing. He grinned at me. Guess now both sides get dirty at the same time.

Not quite, buddy. One side gets greasy while the other side just gets perfumed. Your system before I got here sounds like coon-dog thinking to me. Lazy.

Why did I keep calling him lazy? He wasn’t.

I didn’t start the washer right away because I wanted the hot water. I poured syrupy green bubble bath, its horse chestnut scent provoking memories of childhood springtime, into the running water as it filled our white claw-foot tub. I then luxuriated in the foamy bath until it reddened my skin like a beach sunburn.

Tris came in with two mugs of coffee and set mine on the wire tray that hung across one end of the tub. He wiggled his eyebrows in appreciation of my tanned nakedness, though most of me was hidden under bubbles. Then he eased down into the cane-back chair, careful not to spill his coffee.

Sunlight from the open window passed through his death crow as if the bird were a pane of dark glass. The light also turned Tristan’s bearded face as pale as pie dough and shadowed his eye sockets. My throat knotted with grief.

We sat awhile in companionable silence, then Tris brought me a second cup of coffee. When I finished it, I pulled the drain plug and stood up. Tris smiled in admiration. As I dried off with a fluffy towel, I writhed like an erotically aroused movie star.

We can satisfy desire, he said.

I hope so, but I'm not cheap. It takes more than a cup of coffee to seduce me.

"I brought you two cups."

Noted, but I'll have my fine feast first, thank you.

See, you're just like Crow Magnon. Eating out of my hand. It’s a female thing.

I waved this away, too haughty and hungry now to be baited into arguing over a bird's sex. You need to eat too, big man. I will require all of your manly strength.

He bellowed like a love-struck bull, picked up my empty coffee mug, and skipped off to the kitchen. It was a delight to see him eager and frisky. Now if only the shaman and modern medicine got rid of the arrogant crow riding his shoulder.

The exhilarating smell of bacon scented the entire house by the time I came into the kitchen fully dressed with a bath towel wrapped around my damp hair. Tris was whisking eggs in a glass bowl. A third mug of coffee creamed to the color of milk chocolate waited on the counter for me. At the moment, life felt easy. The idea of breakfast in the afternoon warmed all four chambers of my female heart.

After a relaxed breakfast, we talked until I got tired of looking at the insolent death crow and glowered at it. You haven’t won yet. I patted the back of Tristan’s right hand. We can take care of the dirty dishes later.

Again he lowed like an aroused Brahma bull, then grabbed my hand, and led me off to our bedroom.

Chapter 2

At eight o’clock that evening as I cut buttery pastry triangles for croissants, the Sibyl’s disembodied voice reverberated in my kitchen, Come to me . I piled the dough on a tray, shoved it into the freezer, and rushed to our bedroom to dress .

Tris was in our weedy backyard, setting up for the arrival of his hairy guests. Nearly every night, dozens of male dwarves came to sing hippie songs and drink apple schnapps under an aluminum carport roof with him. Luckily, we didn’t have any close neighbors on Crying Woman Road, and so, no one was disturbed.

Dwarves only came above ground after dark. Sunlight’s deadly touch transformed their squat, muscular bodies into limestone statues wearing clothes. Anyway, no females were invited or welcome at these backyard stag parties. Instead of feeling offended, I was relieved.

I dressed for my hike through the darkening forest in a plaid lumberjack shirt, jeans, and ankle boots. My visit to the shaman was now delayed to a later night. The Sibyl would wrack my joints with pain or throw fire in my belly if I dawdled. I got my bicycle light out of a drawer in our mahogany buffet. I usually strapped it to my forehead when night walking in the dwarf woods, but this evening, I still had enough light not to need it. I stuffed it in a front pocket of my blue jeans. Then I went out and told Tris that my mistress had summoned me.

He grumbled, Two visits in two nights?

He didn’t need to remind me. I stood on tiptoe and kissed his hairy cheek. Sorry, Tris.

Without delay, I circled the house, crossed Crying Woman Road, and marched into the glooming forest. Limbs snagged at my flannel sleeves but nothing scratched the denim legs of my jeans. Dwarves used this trail every night to come to their revels with Tris. Their constant coming and going kept the path clear up to the level of their height.

I was maybe ten minutes away from the Sibyl’s grove when I heard a rustling sound. Was it a gray fox? They often scuffled through the dry leaf litter, their pointy ears pricked forward as they listened for the faint slither of tasty night crawlers. I sniffed the breeze to catch the fox’s scent. All I smelled was the exhalation of day’s stale breath as the gray trees and shrubs cooled.

The noise, now loud and bold, moved toward me. Feeling as exposed as a dug-up earthworm, I stopped to listen. Whatever lumbered under the murky sourwoods and redbuds weighed hundreds of pounds more than any light-footed fox. It was also closer to me than I had thought—not more than fifty yards away.

I slipped off the single-file path between two flame azaleas and squished into an ankle-deep mass of mushrooms. I hid in the deepest shadow I could find, breathing quietly, hoping my oddsense would kick in and reveal the beast to me. It also stopped. Nothing moved in the dusky woods except nervous leaves fluttered by swirling gusts.

The beast didn’t have the gamy reek of a black bear or musty scent of a boar that had strayed down the mountain. It stank of scorched leather. Gooseflesh puckered my upper arms. I felt its predator eyes watching me, its ear cocked toward me, its snout snuffling at my human scent.

Why had I acted like a prissy know-it-all and dismissed Tristan’s warning about emergencies? Cell phones were forbidden, sure, but the Sibyl hadn’t outlawed my SIG Sauer, though she probably would if I showed up with it holstered on my belt.

What on earth could this thing be? No animal in the Blue Ridge Mountains hunted humans, not regularly anyway. Was this one just curious, or starving, or was it supernatural? I should have at least brought a dwarf rune to protect me against demons.

It huffed and began crackling through a dismal thicket of twisted mountain laurels toward me. Shivering, I hunched behind the azaleas. If only I carried pistol. Or had a phone . . . no, a phone was useless. The dwarves were still in their underground city. Tris couldn’t send them to rescue me.

The beast sounded big as a Mack truck. But then, night sounds in a forest often seemed outsized. Sometimes a squirrel hopping in brittle brown leaves made as much noise as a boar. Maybe it wasn’t so large after all. And maybe I was lying to myself. This thing was big.

It rammed into another brooding stand of mountain laurels thirty yards away from me and stopped again. I couldn’t see it. Clotted patches of shadow in the twisted laurels camouflaged it. My nerves jangled with the urge to run. Fireflies blinked between us. The chuttering calls of cicadas sounded around me in the azaleas but not where the stalker waited.

Please, let it be earthborn, I whispered.

I had a much better chance if it was natural. I clenched my sweating hands and silently chanted, Don’t run, Mandy, don’t run. Triggering its chase response might get me killed.

Should I yell at it? No, bravado wasn’t going to scare it off. The suffocating forest around us was as hushed and expectant as a church with a congregation about to pray.

Then my oddsense blurred the maples and oaks hemming me in and lifted me into a realm of psychic knowing. I flinched. Intense evil smoked off the beast. It was bold as daylight, intelligent yet primordial, and it worshipped the black, yawning abyss of bottomless death. It knew my name and had come specifically to stalk me. It knew I hiked through the dark forest because the Sibyl had summoned me. It was beyond natural.

My oddsense faded, and I settled back into my dull senses, disappointed. I shivered as if someone had stepped on my future grave. Why hadn’t my oddsense shown me the beast? I knew it wasn’t a demon because they smelled like molten metal, not charred leather. Or anyway, the one I kept imprisoned in a wine bottle behind my washer stank of hot metal.

Why hadn’t it attacked me? I scanned the lower limbs of a nearby hickory, an easy tree to climb. Could this lumbering thing climb? Probably. I had heard the scrape of its claws. Besides, in North Carolina even gray foxes could climb tree trunks. But maybe it was too heavy and clumsy to claw its way up thin trunks?

The sun had dropped behind Devil’s Thumb Mountain, and the woods around me were darkening by the moment. There was no backdoor out of this situation, so why fret in place? Also, if I delayed much longer, the Sibyl might double me up with pain and make me easy prey for the thing. My boots made sucking sounds as I pulled them free from the mud studded with mushrooms. I trembled like a rabbit creeping out of its burrow.

I sauntered along the murky trail as if window shopping in a well-lit mall. My teeth clamped, I fought the impulse to run. Slow was the way to go. Bluff it into thinking I had protection and was dangerous. I walked. My spine prickled as if a bull’s-eye were sewn onto the back of my flannel shirt.

Shambling through the underbrush, the beast shadowed me. I avoided looking in its direction. I walked. An insane urge to whistle came over me, the feeling one gets when in a graveyard at night. Spider webs feathered my cheeks. Irritated, I swiped them away and continued to walk. Gnats flitted in front of my face. What did the thing want with me? I walked.

The beast swished through ferns, crackled through bushes, and snapped low tree limbs. Was it toying with me? My every nerve was electric with terror.

Then the thing gave a chesty grunt, roared, and exploded through the shrubbery.

I hurtled into full flight as if shot from a bow. My sight blurred at the edges and focused on the faint path. My body flowed like a muscle in liquid motion.

I slapped slashing tree limbs away from my eyes. My boots skimmed the ground like skates over ice. Behind me, the beast thrashed through the undergrowth, gaining on me, closing the gap. I couldn’t outrun it. Any second now, its hot breath would scald the back of my neck just before its teeth snapped my spine.

I threw myself off the path and waded into the undergrowth’s dark tangle. Blackberry vines tore at my shirt and the legs