The Demon Hunters by Linda Welch Page B

school.
    I all but gasped at the heat inside my
car, but I have to keep the windows closed in summer when it’s
parked, unless I want to drive with hornets, bees and a hundred
other bugs in there with me. Nothing liked driving off and finding
unexpected company in your car. My air-conditioning didn’t work, so
I opened the windows once I pulled out the driveway, though the
wind tugged at my hair and threatened my braid.
    Instead of heading west to downtown
Clarion, I took the old White Basin road, the only road to the
White Basin ski resort until John Hammond built a fancy new road
for the expected horde of visitors to the 2002 Olympics. Now only
residents use the old road, but it’s still well-maintained,
resurfaced in places in summer and the snow plowed in winter. It’s
the scenic route and a nice drive in spring, summer and
fall.
    I smelled the scent of flowering alder
and wild flowers on the air. Fat silvered cloud masses dotted a
deep-blue sky. I could hear nothing above the noise of the engine,
not even the ever-present grasshoppers. The air cooled as I climbed
the winding road, feeling oh-so-good on my skin, and I put my arm
out the window to channel it inside. A doe and her fawn raised
their heads from the grass as I passed a mountain meadow, ears
perking forward, nostrils flaring.
    Bella Vista is a ten-mile, unpaved,
winding mountain road. The area is ultra-private with the houses
set way back, the driveways gated. You can’t just drive in. But the
gates belonging to 1582 North Bella Vista stood wide open and I
drove right through and on down the asphalt driveway. The
burned-out shell of the house sat below me in a large hollow in the
mountainside. A good location for privacy, although not the best
when the spring thaw came, but the French ditch around the house
would divert snowmelt away from the foundations and down a
gully.
    Not much of the house still stood and
the remaining blackened and crumbling brick walls gave me no idea
of the original layout. The smell of charred brick and burnt timber
still lingered. I parked the car, got out and walked down to the
house.
    By the look of it, the fire must have
been fierce. According to the newspaper article, Daven wasn’t home
at the time and the fire went unnoticed as the evening winds blew
the smoke up a narrow ravine, where it dispersed among the pine. A
neighbor saw the flames as she returned home in the dusk of
evening. Unchecked, the fire could have taken out the entire
mountainside.
    I was sorely tempted to call one of my
old contacts at Clarion PD. The newspaper article said the Fire
Marshall ruled arson, but what did the arsonists use? This place
looked like it had been bombed.
    Vehicles had driven over the lot after
the fire department soaked it down, creating deep ruts now dried
hard as rock. There was an empty feeling to the area, a desolate
silence. The birds and animals would not return while the fire
stink tainted the air.
    Sometimes curiosity takes me to a
place. Sometimes it’s a hunch. Whatever took me to Daven’s ruined
house, it was worth the effort.
    I heard voices, two men talking in
hoarse whispers. I looked up at the road.
    “ Someone’s
here.”
    “ Yeah, so what? More nosey
locals.”
    “ Yeah, probably. So, what
we gonna do tonight?”
    “ Me, I was thinking of
hanging around this burned house. You?”
    “ What a coincidence. Just
what I had in mind. Shall we?”
    Bemused, I looked over at two men who
appeared on the road above the house. Neither had a regional accent
I could identify, which can be the case when a person spends their
life moving from town to town, state to state. Shabby, they wore
long grubby overcoats which had seen far better days, and worn
boots. The taller one wore a black stocking-cap over his long,
straggling gray hair. He stood stiff and upright, a military
bearing. The other guy’s blond hair was shaved almost to the scalp.
And both carried swords.
    I’d never seen anything like those
swords. With an