I shook my head. “I’m sorry. This is how you make your living. I thought I’d just come over and flirt with you a little and get something for free. But that’s not how people treat their friends, is it? I’ll go.”
Whirling about, I headed for the door, tears half blinding me, and not understanding the feelings that suddenly washed over me.
Trevor caught me halfway across the living room, laying a hand on my shoulder and turning me around.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
I felt ashamed and refused to meet his eyes. Then I blurted, “Everyone has been so nice to me, and I’ve just been a stone-cold bitch, afraid to let anyone get close to me.”
My mind froze. I couldn’t believe I had said that out loud. I tried to pull away from him, but instead found myself pulled into a hug, pressed against him. He was warm, and solid, and felt safe. I didn’t know what to do, my arms hanging at my sides. I was afraid to return the hug. The only time I had ever hugged someone was during sex.
“You haven’t been a bitch,” he said, “except maybe to Josh, and he deserved it. You’re sweet and funny, and nice.”
“You’re lying to make me feel better.”
“A little bit, maybe.”
I looked up into his face and saw a soft smile and kind eyes.
“That’s what friends do,” Trevor said, “try to make you feel better. Now, come back and tell me why we’re concerned about the Columbia Club, okay?” He shrugged. “I’ve been paid a lot less than with a little harmless flirting.”
We went back into the computer room, and he pulled a chair up so I could watch what he did.
“Now, tell me what we’re looking for.”
I started by telling him about the Hunter and the vampire and the dead girl. “The thing is,” I said, “I’ve read a lot about Hunters, and they don’t just wander around killing vampires. Someone called him here for a reason.”
Trevor nodded. “And you think this Columbia Club might be the ones who contracted him.”
“Not the club itself, but one or two of its members. I think someone is making a power play, and those in the club are likely targets. Think about it. In any society, most of the money and power is held by a very small group. Now, if an even smaller group of paranormals was pulling the strings behind the scene, they could get almost anything they wanted.”
His eyes widened slightly at that. Based on my answers to his questions, he began a number of searches, turning up references across the country to people killed by beheading in the previous few weeks. He also cross-referenced other powerful and influential men all over North America who were connected to the Columbia Club members in one way or another.
Then he called up a program I’d never seen before and began searches using it, based on a number of keywords from our conversation.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s sometimes called the Dark Web,” he answered. “The underbelly of the internet that’s encrypted and carries traffic and information people don’t want the world, especially law enforcement, to see. You know, things like child pornography, criminal conspiracies, hacker websites with stolen data to sell, that sort of thing. Spies and secret societies like the Illuminati and the Ku Klux Klan use it, as well as drug dealers and arms merchants. If your Columbia Club members are communicating electronically, this is where they might go.”
“The Illuminati?”
“Yeah. A bunch of conspiracy nuts who have plans for taking over the world. There are a bunch of groups like that playing on the Dark Web.”
“Can you actually get into those kinds of sites, like the Illuminati?”
Trevor shook his head. “I can see them, but usually you have to have a key of some sort to get in. You know, like a password. That Illuminati site isn’t even in English. It’s like some kind of made-up language that looks a little like German but isn’t.”
He spent some time writing several short programs, then said, “It might take some time for these searches to run. If you have time tomorrow afternoon, we can look at the results then.”
“Sure, I can do that. Thanks.”
He looked at his watch. “Are you hungry? Want to go get a pizza and I’ll walk you to the train station?”
“Okay. I didn’t take the train, though.”
“You came by bus? That must have taken forever. Do you have a transit pass?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a train station one bus stop past your apartment. You can take the train from here to downtown, then switch to the train out to the west side. It takes me about half an hour, maybe forty minutes, to get to Rosie’s from here.”
When we got outside, I asked, “How far are we from the ocean here?”
“From the bay? About three blocks.”
“Bay, ocean—what’s the difference? It’s all the same thing, isn’t it?”
He laughed. “I guess so. Want to go see?”
We walked down the street until it ended in a park, then we followed a path that ended in a waist-high wall. A break in the wall revealed wooden steps leading down. About two hundred feet below us, I saw a narrow sandy beach stretching to our left. The night before, when Lizzy took me to the port, I had seen only rocks leading down to the water.
“I didn’t realize there were so many islands,” I said. Some of them were fairly large, others only a big rock sticking out of the water. “Is that a house?” I pointed at a small island off to our right.
“Yeah. Most of the larger islands are owned by someone.”
“I think it would be nice to live somewhere like that. It must be very quiet and peaceful.”
Trevor laughed. “Save up your tips. That place sold for twenty million a couple of years ago. Included the whole island, though.”
He took me to a restaurant a few blocks away that overlooked the bay.
“What do you like on your pizza?” he asked.
“What do they have?” I looked at the menu, trying to make sense of it. I had never had pizza, though I knew what it looked like. Food such as pizza and hamburgers wasn’t served in the City, and although I had traveled extensively on missions for Master Benedict and the Hunters’ Guild, my targets usually ate at fancy restaurants. I was comfortable with the food at Rosie’s because I’d spent several months in Ireland on a mission.
“The usual stuff.”
I glanced up at Trevor and realized he was looking at me strangely.
“Uh, whatever you like will be fine,” I said.
A sudden grin appeared on his face. “Have you ever had pizza before?”
I felt my face warm. “Well…”
He laughed. “That’s a first. Why don’t you tell me what kind of food you don’t like?”
With a shrug, my face suddenly feeling warm, I said, “I eat pretty much anything.”
The waitress came, and he ordered a large pizza, half pepperoni and green peppers, half ham and pineapple.
“We’ll give you a choice,” he said.
It turned out that I liked both of them.
When we were through eating, I excused myself to the restroom, found our waitress, and paid our tab. I figured I could at least do that much for the help I was getting from Trevor, and I didn’t want him to think we were on a date.
Chapter 13
Instead of running along the creek behind my apartment the following morning, I took the train to the station by Trevor’s house and jogged down to the beach. Running on sand was a pleasure compared with running on pavement.
High tide evidently swept the beach clean, because when I arrived at nine o’clock, mine were the first tracks on the sand. The beach curved out to a point of rock, and when I got to it, I found there was another sandy cove beyond, so I continued.
I had gone about half a mile when I smelled something that brought me to a stop. Scanning the area around me, I turned toward a silver-gray spot in the rocks above the beach. As I got closer, I could see the breeze causing a flutter in that silver spot.
&nbs
p; Three wolves lay among the rocks with their throats torn out. Although I wasn’t a wildlife expert, the wolves were very large, and I didn’t think wolves hung out in urban areas. With those assumptions in hand, the logical conclusion was that they were werewolves. There was very little blood.
The cause of their deaths was uncertain, but it certainly appeared as though someone wanted them to look like vampire kills. Whoever killed them had received the same training I had in misdirection kills, but he was sloppy—or maybe arrogant would be a better description.
Other than their throats, the wolves didn’t have a mark on them. There wasn’t any indication of a fight. A mage might freeze the wolves or pin them down while he killed them, but a vampire wouldn’t have that kind of power over a werewolf.
I turned and ran back to Trevor’s house.
“Well, what a pleasant surprise,” Trevor said when he opened the door.
“You have a thing for sweaty girls?” I asked. I had planned to go home and take a shower before coming back in the afternoon to check on his computer searches.
“If he doesn’t, I do,” I heard Josh’s voice from inside the house. I rolled my eyes and gave Trevor what I hoped was a vexed expression.
“Can you call Lieutenant Blair for me?” I asked. “I think there’s been a murder down on the beach.”
“Murder?” Trevor echoed.
“Well, it might be better described as a massacre. You don’t have any packs of real wolves here in the city, do you?”
He invited me in and made a call on his cell phone. After a few words, he handed the phone to me.
“Does he know where you live?” I whispered, holding my hand over the phone.
“He’s a cop. He knows where everyone lives.”
“Yes?” I said into the phone.
“What’s this about a murder?” I heard Blair’s voice.
“There are three very large, very dead wolves down by the beach near Trevor’s house,” I said. “I was running on the beach this morning and found them.”
Josh and Trevor accompanied me back to where I’d found the wolves. When we got close, Josh asked, “How did you find them?”
My tracks were quite visible just above the water line, then they swerved away from the ocean toward the rocks.
“Smell. Can’t you smell them?” I asked.
They both shook their heads. But when we got within about fifty feet, the breeze shifted directions, and Trevor said, “Oh, yeah. I smell them now.”
“You’ve got a hell of a nose. Why were you down here?” Josh asked.
“I wanted to run on the beach. Be near the ocean. Around my place, there’s just concrete and asphalt, and I might as well be in Kansas City. If I’m going to live near the ocean, then I ought to enjoy it occasionally, don’t you think?”
“That’s not the ocean. It’s the bay,” he said.
“Whatever.”
“Is that where you’re from?” Josh asked.
“Huh?”
“Kansas City.”
“Oh, I was there once. They have a river but no ocean.”
We waited for almost an hour for Blair and his people to show up. I spent the time looking for shells near the water. Trevor spent the time following me around, and Josh sat on the beach and watched us.
When the cops finally showed up, we met Blair at the entry point to the second beach. He gazed around at the area, then asked, “Did you disturb anything?”
I shook my head. “There weren’t any tracks at all when I got here this morning, so we’re responsible for all the ones you see.”
“There was a high tide last night,” Trevor said.
“You’re sure they’re werewolves and not coyotes?” Blair asked.
I shook my head. “You have a lot of coyotes the size of a St. Bernard or a Great Dane around here?”
Blair’s cop shoes weren’t the best thing for walking on loose sand, but he followed us, and a couple of detectives with his forensics team followed him.
“Yeah, those aren’t coyotes,” one of the detectives said. Blair drew his men aside, and I guessed he thought they were far enough away that I couldn’t hear them.
“I recognize one of them,” one detective said, “but they aren’t from either of our packs. There’s going to be hell to pay, though. Everyone’s on edge with Carleton gone.”
We watched the forensics team for about an hour, then the woman who seemed to be in charge came over to talk to Blair.
“Weirdest scene I’ve ever studied. No evidence of a fight, and other than the throat wounds, the wolves appear to be unharmed. There’s also no blood. It’s almost like they were killed somewhere else and teleported here. No tracks, either theirs or their killers’, and it doesn’t look like they were thrown from above. We’ll have to do autopsies and tests, of course.”
“Is teleportation even a thing?” Trevor asked.
Blair looked directly at me.
“I’ve never seen it,” I said with a shrug, “but I never claimed to know everything.” I winked at him. “It would really save on the transit passes though.”
I noticed that he never answered Trevor’s question. Thinking about it, levitation was something some mages could do. Aeromancers, like Frankie Jones.
The cops took our statements and let us go back to Trevor’s house. I asked about the computer runs, and he said he needed time to winnow through all the results and he’d bring them by Rosie’s that evening. I took the train back to my side of town and ran the last half mile to my apartment.
Chapter 14
Werewolves were known for being hot headed, and the slaughter of three young wolves—rumored to be victims of a gang of rogue vampires—touched off a night of open battles across the city. Tending bar at Rosie’s I heard a number of reports about it from customers coming in.
One of Blair’s shifters who had been at the crime scene came in just before I got off work and asked for Sam.
“Sam isn’t here,” I said. “There’s the shift manager and me.” I went to the kitchen door and said, “Steve, cop out here.”
Dworkin came out after a couple of minutes, wiping his hands on a towel. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Checking in to see if you’ve had any trouble,” the cop said. “And to warn you that it’s not a safe night to be on the streets.” He turned to survey the dining room, leaning back on the bar.
Steve looked at me.
“It’s been quiet,” I said. “There aren’t very many shifters who hang out at Rosie’s, and I’ve only seen that one vampire in here.”
“Yeah, but he died,” the cop said, turning around to look at me. “Don’t be surprised if the vampires remember that.”
Dworkin gave me a ride home, not just to the apartment complex, but to the front door of my building.
“You all warded inside?” he asked as I got out of his pickup truck. “You know, anytime you think you need any help, all you have to do is ask.”
“Yeah, I’m good.” I gave him a smile. “Thanks, Steve.”
I got a beer out of the fridge and stood out on my balcony, just enjoying the quiet of the night. It was cold, but I drew on the ley line for warmth. I stood out there for half an hour, and then I heard a wolf howl in the distance. It was answered by several more.
Shortly thereafter, I caught sight of three or four people walking down the path by the stream. They stopped when they came even with my building and looked up at me. Vampires. I smiled and silently toasted them with the beer bottle. After gathering in a circle and conversing a bit, they gave me another look and headed back in the direction they came from.
Supernaturals, as Sam called them, didn’t worry me when I was home. Vampires and shifters had their own kind of magic, but they couldn’t breach my wards. And since it was still light, I didn’t have to worry about vampires when I went to work. But winter was approaching, and it would get dark earlier. Still, it was good to know that I was being watched so I could take precautions.
I finishe
d off my beer and went inside to get ready for bed.
Blair and Frankie Jones were sitting at the bar talking to Sam when I showed up for work the following afternoon.
“You sure get around,” Frankie said as I hung up my coat.
“Luck of the Irish,” I responded. “How many dead shifters and vampires do you have on an average night?”
Neither she nor Blair answered. Blair squirmed a little.
“If you have to take off your shoes to count them,” I said, “then maybe I’m unique only because I’ve reported the murders I stumbled across.”
Sam gave me an appraising look, then smirked at Blair and Jones.
“What’s the mood like at the Wolf’s Den?” Sam asked. I knew that was one of the more popular shifter bars.
“Not good,” Blair said. “There was a mini-riot at Full Moon around closing time, and The Shaggy Gentleman closed early. The owner of Necropolis isn’t happy, either. She says business is way off because her regulars are sticking close to home.”
I had heard of Necropolis, a vampire-goth nightclub that sounded a little too real for my tastes. “The Shaggy Gentleman?” I asked.
“Shifter strip bar,” Sam said, motioning to the west. “About a mile that way on a dead end overlooking the river.”
I don’t know what my face looked like when he said that, but Frankie laughed. “Yeah, not a place I would hang out, either.”
One of our regular customers came in, and Sam called out to him. It was the shifter-accountant that Jenny had pointed out to me when I first took the job. He came over and joined the conversation. Half an hour later, Josh and Jolene came in, and soon I counted fifteen people discussing the paranormal state of affairs in the city. All that talk was thirsty work, and they kept me busy.
It surprised me how openly everyone discussed things with Blair and Frankie there. Especially Blair. I guess he hung out at Rosie’s often enough that people felt relatively comfortable with him.
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