by R. Lee Moore
“Not a good idea,” she said. “They're crime scene photos. Not something most people can handle.”
The woman huffed derisively. Her eyes began to darken and slowly descend back into the satiny black pools that she had inside the club. An uncomfortable shiver that started just behind the neck crawled down Tamina's spine.
“I've seen death before,” the woman said. Her voice was soft. Seductive. Her head began to gently sway back and forth though her eyes remained locked on Tamina. “Show them to me. You do want me to see them don't you?”
It was as if a mist had crept up and wound its way through her mind. She couldn't help but follow those intoxicating eyes with her own, and it was drowning out everything else all around her.
Without even thinking about it, Tamina tapped the screen of her phone and brought the pictures up. She felt her hand extending outward offering up her phone to the woman. The other woman had made a reasonable request hadn't she? What was the harm in showing her the pictures, she thought. She wanted to see them after all.
It seemed harmless enough, but for some reason it felt wrong all the same. There was a voice screaming in the back of her head. It was muffled, muted, and hard to understand, but something deep within her knew something was wrong. She just couldn't figure out what it was.
She felt almost the same feeling that she felt with this woman inside the club. That helpless lost in the moment kind of feeling of drifting around in a clouded haze. A small kernel of realization, a fragment of thought forming in the back of her mind. Screaming a muffled muted scream.
“Give it to me,” the woman insisted. The tones of her voice soft and seductive like warm honey dripping directly into her thoughts. “You know you want to.”
This was wrong Tamina thought. No matter how much the woman's soft sultry voice was worming its way down into the deepest recesses of her mind. Something was happening, the woman was doing something to her just as she'd done in the club, and she didn't like it.
“ 'Ak'eed,” Tamina swore at the sudden realization of what was happening.
The anger she felt at being manipulated gave her all the strength she needed for a sudden burst of movement that took the other woman by surprise. She jerked her hand back, bent her arm and cracked her elbow violently into the woman's face. There was a satisfying crunch of bone on impact, and the woman staggered back and away with a high-pitched cry of pain and shock. Almost instantly, the clouded haze that had drifted over Tamina's mind dissipated into nothingness. She shook her head to clear out the last of the cobwebs and threw a venomous glare at the other woman.
“Bitch,” Tamina snarled.
She began advancing on the startled and wounded woman with murderous intent, but stopped short when she saw the two amazon women emerge from the doorway in a quickened rush. They must have heard the scream, Tamina thought. She shifted into a defensive stance to prepare herself for the oncoming rush of violence the two large women likely intended.
The other woman snapped her hand up and waved them off with a sharp command. The two women stopped short in their tracks, and it didn't look like they approved, but they obeyed nonetheless.
“You try that shit again,” Tamina seethed. She really wished she'd been able to sneak her sidearm inside with her right about now. “And those two glamazons aren't going to be able to save you. I'll kill you were you stand. With my bare hands if I have to.”
The other woman collected herself. Wiped away the thin trail of blood streaking down from her nose with a pained wince. She waved her hand placatingly toward Tamina and took a deep, slow breath before speaking.
“Apologies,” she said. Her sibilant voice was calm and almost soothing in its soft tones. “I did not intend to do you harm.”
“Uh huh,” Tamina growled. “The fuck are you?”
“I am Kala,” the woman offered.
Tamina shook her head. It wasn't enough.
“That ain't what I asked,” she said fiercely. “What are you. You ain't a wolf like your two friends, and you ain't a vampire. Couldn't have broken whatever the hell you were doing to me just by cracking you in the face if you were.”
Kala looked hesitant and uncertain for a moment. Tamina could swear there was even a bit of fear in her eyes.
“Naga,” Kala whispered. Her voice turned urgent. “And I do sincerely apologize. I really meant no harm. I just need to see those pictures. Please, I have to!”
Tamina sucked in her breath, and stepped back away from the woman averting her gaze as fast as she could. A goddamn Naga, she swore to herself. How in the hell did one of those things even get into the country, she wondered. Naga were pretty high up on the list of creatures most countries killed on sight. No questions asked. Even rats didn't get as much attention as Naga did. For good reason too. Rats couldn't control you with just their eyes, Naga could.
Tamina felt the unease rising up inside her exponentially. A Naga in the Preserve, even one working in a sex club had to have some serious backing behind her. She'd have to be careful in how she handled this. Who knew which vampire House she'd piss off if she did anything to this woman.
“Alright. Kala is it?” Tamina asked as evenly as she could manage. “Back in the club you wanted nothing to do with me, but now you seem real intent on taking a look at the pictures I have. Why is that? You know something don't you?”
The other woman averted her eyes and kept silent, but there was a subtle tension that rippled through her body. Tamina gave her head a knowing nod. She was right, she thought. The Naga knew something, but it felt as if there was something else. She had a hunch that the other woman's fear wasn't for herself. She was worried about someone else, and that was interesting.
“What happened?” Tamina demanded. “Someone you know go missing? Someone you care about?”
Kala's hands tightened around her shoulders confirming Tamina's suspicions. This was personal to her. That was why she'd been willing to use her hypnotic abilities just to see the pictures on Tamina's phone.
“Okay,” Tamina said as she stepped up closer to the woman with her phone out in front of her. “I hope it's not who you think it is. I really do. But I also hope you can tell me who it is, so I can go back out there and find out who did this and why.”
She held out her phone with the crime scene pictures on full display. At first Kala didn't react. She kept her eyes averted as her body trembled beneath her own grip. Eventually it seemed as if she had to force herself to look at the pictures. Her eyes focused on the screen as if she was scrutinizing every detail. There was a look of uncertainty in her eyes that seemed as if she was unable to look away from the photos until she was absolutely sure. When she again averted her eyes, the tension in her body relaxed, and the breath she'd been holding sighed out from past her lips. She turned her head back away almost immediately and shook her head.
“I'm sorry,” she breathed. “I can't help you. I've never seen that woman before.”
Tamina swore under her breath.
“You sure?” she asked. “Does she look familiar at all?”
“Familiar yes,” Kala replied. “But yes I am sure. I don't know that woman. She's not one of the regulars. I'd know it if she was. I'm sorry.”
Tamina took a deep breath to calm herself. After all that, she'd come away with nothing. There had to be something, she told herself. Some bit of information that Kala could give her that would at least point her in the right direction. She'd take anything at this point. She'd been in the Preserve far too long as it was. The vampires were sure to be up and about by now. She needed to get what she could and get the hell out of here as fast as she could.
“Is there anything you can give me?” Tamina asked. “Anything. What about that mark on her arm. Do you recognize that? Does it look familiar at all?”
Kala shook her head.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “It doesn't look like any House sigil that I've ever seen.”
Tamina blinked in a bit of surprise. She hadn't even considered that
the mark might have been the insignia of one of the Preserve's vampire Houses. If it was, that would just bring all sorts of added complications to the case. Dealing with vampires was dangerous enough in general without adding on whatever machinations their ruling elite involved themselves in. She hoped it wasn't what Kala thought it was, while at the same time hoping that whoever in the Department she'd sent the pictures to earlier had considered the possibility. Supernatural Affairs had to have a list of all the Houses in the city, didn't they?
“Look, about whoever you thought this might have been,” Tamina started.
Kala turned her eyes back to Tamina and fixed her with a sharp and hardened gaze filled with a hint of rising anger tinged with suspicion. Definitely not the reaction Tamina was looking for, but it did provide a glimpse into the situation better than any other response could have. It was interesting. Maybe not relevant to the matter at hand, but interesting nonetheless.
“All I'm saying is, if you got a picture or something maybe I can take a look at it,” Tamina said. “If I come across anything I can let you know. That's all. All I'm trying to do is figure things out. Not trying to play any games or anything like that. Maybe I can help is all.”
Kala looked at her contemplatively for a moment. The suspicion never wavered, and it seemed as if indecision was warring within the woman's thoughts on whether her distrust of Tamina and what she represented was stronger than whatever concern she had for whoever it was she lost. Something had to give, Tamina thought to herself.
“Not on me,” Kala said glancing down at her barely clothed form meaningfully.
“Like I said, I'm just here to help and find out what's going on,” Tamina said. “Let me give you my number, and you can send me whatever you can when you get the chance.”
She rattled off her number, but neither Kala nor the two women behind her made a move to write it down or even acknowledge the information she'd just given them. It was worth a try, Tamina decided. They'd either trust her, or they wouldn't. Wasn't much she could do to sway them in either direction. She wasn't going to press the issue. She still had work to do.
Without another word, Kala and her two friends turned on their heels and returned through the doors that led into the club leaving Tamina once again alone and without any idea of what to do or where to go next. With no real leads to go on, the only thing she could think of was to go door to door searching for someone, anyone who might know who the victim was. Without knowing that, finding out any sort of motive or anything else about the killing was going to be nearly impossible.
Unfortunately, word about her had already spread throughout the area. At the first club she went to, Tamina found herself immediately swarmed by the establishment's security and denied entry. They wouldn't even talk to her. They all just stood there and glowered at her until she moved on. It happened again after that at the second club, then the third, the forth, and on and on until Tamina found herself frustrated enough that she was unable to contain the anger boiling up inside her. The last group of bouncers probably didn't really deserve all the things she'd said to them nor the blunt threats she'd tossed their way, but it made her feel better at the moment. That was kinda all that mattered to her by that point.
It left her wandering deeper and deeper into the Preserve looking for any opening she could find. She felt as if she was just wandering around aimlessly like a tourist looking at everything around her without any direction at all. She wasn't going to get anywhere there way, but for the life of her Tamina couldn't think of anything else to do at the moment. Thankfully there were quite a few vendors out on the streets that were able to provide her with enough coffee to keep her from violently forcing her way into any and all the places she'd been barred from entering. Maybe it was a good thing she hadn't been able to bring any weapons past the gate, she thought to herself. The night likely would have gone a lot worse if she had.
As she meandered down the crowded streets, she could feel the eyes on her. She got a few glimpses out of the corners of her eyes. They were hovering just on the periphery of her vision, but they were there. At first, she found the whole thing deeply concerning. Having vampires and shapeshifters stalking you inside their territory wasn't generally a good thing after all, but the longer it went on, the less worried about it she was. The fact that whoever sent them after her had sent people who really weren't all too good at it meant she wasn't really in any danger any more than anyone else on the street was. It just meant they were keeping an eye on her. Probably trying to figure out what the hell she was doing, she thought. They probably didn't get many, if any people like her around here.
After the fifth cup of coffee she'd bought, Tamina was about to give up when the glowing neon lights of a little shop tucked away in a corner almost out of view caught her eye. From what she could tell, there wasn't anything special about the place at first glance. What windows it had been all blacked out with either posters or paint so that she couldn't see inside. There didn't seem to be anyone outside the door to keep her out, and there wasn't a line of people waiting to get inside like almost all the other places all around her. Most people would have probably just passed the whole place by without a second thought. Even the neon lights were small and subdued. That was what made it stand out so much to her. Compared to all the glitz and darkly seductive glamour all around it, it was out of place.
“Sybarite,” Tamina said to herself reading the crimson neon sign above the door.
She moved in closer and realized from the posters on the windows just what kind of place it was. Images of men and women engaged in every kind of sex act imaginable were plastered all over the front of the building.
It was a porn shop, nothing more than that. The same type of place you could find downtown in about every city in the world. Though, judging by what was being depicted on the posters, you probably couldn't legally get the types of videos that this place was offering. Most of the world frowned on supernatural porn for various reason.
It wasn't anything special for the Preserve, though. It was just a waste of time, she thought to herself.
She'd almost turned around and given up on the rest of the night when one of the posters, quite a bit smaller than the rest, caught her attention. She would have missed it if she hadn't turned to walk away in just the right way. It was almost hidden by the larger more graphic images all around it. When she moved in for a closer look, Tamina found herself furiously digging into her back pocket for her phone. She pulled up the crime scene photos and held them next to the image on the window.
“You're goddamn kidding me,” she swore. “It's her!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
When she stepped inside, it was everything Tamina expected it would be. At least on the surface in any case. You never really knew what was just below the skin when you were dealing with anything supernatural related. Still, it looked like nothing more than a small little shop crowded with so many shelves that there was only a narrow walkway between. Every kind of deviance and debauchery that a person could want was on full display on those shelves. It was all right out in the open. The more depraved something was, the more front and center it was placed.
There was so much sex and perversion on display all around her that Tamina almost started to feel prudish about the whole thing. It was an odd feeling considering all the things she'd seen or personally experienced during her more adventuresome days. Some of what she was seeing though, was way beyond her comfort level. She couldn't even begin to imagine where the idea for some of what she was seeing even came from.
In spite of all that, the place was pretty much as she'd expected it to be. There was nothing about this place outside some content on the shelves that would have been out of place in any other city in the country outside the Preserve. It was just a place that sold porn. Really disturbing porn in her opinion, but porn nonetheless. She was fairly certain she wasn't going to get some of those images out of her mind for quite some time. No matter hard she tried.
Ther
e was an archway in the back that was partially obscured by a dark satiny curtain that was pulled back just enough that Tamina could catch small glimpses of what lay beyond. She couldn't see much from the doorway, and had to weave her way through the shelves in her way to get a closer look. Once she was close enough to get a better view, she could see there was a large circular bed in the center of the small room surrounded by an array of cameras. Lights had been set up in just such a way that they'd highlight and allow the cameras to catch every intimate detail imaginable. There were microphones on long booms that hung down from the ceiling directly over the bed expertly positioned to be able to pick up every bit of sound. It didn't take much for Tamina to realize she was looking at a well-used high quality professional film set. Everything she was seeing was high end and not intended for amateurs. Interesting, she thought. Weren't any other porn shops that she knew that made their own product.
There was only one other person in the little shop aside from Tamina that she could see. A waif-like girl with blue hair, tattoos and far to many piercings stood behind a counter with a bored expression on her face. The piercings were a good sign in spite of Tamina's opinions on them. There weren't very many shapeshifters that had piercings or tattoos in her experience. Piercings tended to heal over and close up when they went through the change. Tattoos lasted a bit longer, but they eventually faded from existence for the same reason, so most shapeshifters didn't bother with them. It meant the girl was, oddly enough for being in the middle of the Preserve, more than likely human.
The girl had barely acknowledged Tamina when she'd walked in, but the moment she started towards the back room, she perked up and offered a faint knowing smile in her direction.
“You ever been on film before?” the girl behind the counter asked. “It's an experience you'd never forget.”
Tamina turned to the girl and quirked a brow up as she chased memories from her thoughts.