by Lily Luchesi
Angelica sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Any more defectors can wait till I’ve caught the skin changer before I bludgeon some sense into them all.”
“That’s my girl,” Danny said. “Now, let’s see if these employee files tell us who our serial killer might be.”
“Yeah, before it kills again.”
Chapter Four
Research. Danny wasn’t a fan of research, never had been. He felt it stopped them from acting, when he was a detective. Needless to say, his superiors weren’t happy with his method of thinking, but it had gotten them a lot of closed cases.
Now, he was even more frustrated with the whole “research before action” deal because his own were being targeted. Just like all cops were brothers and sisters, so was the PID and all its agents. And here he was, stuck in an office, reading employee files. It didn’t feel right to him.
“I can feel you thinking,” Angelica said from her side of the desk, not looking up from her own research. The computer glare only made her porcelain skin seem lighter. “It’s annoying.”
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I feel useless here!”
“You must’ve been a joy to partner with in the CPD,” she said sarcastically. “Look, when have you known me to be complacent with inaction? This research is vital, and I don't trust anyone but you and Sean with it. Even the smallest similarity could be a clue. Because if there aren’t any, then every single agent in this place is a sitting duck until the killer decides to strike again.” She paused and added softly, “And I’d never be able to live with myself if more of my agents died on my watch.”
Danny reached over and placed his hand on hers. “You’re really a good person, Angie. No matter how hard you try to make people think otherwise.”
She chuckled and slapped at his hand. “Screw you....Hey, if you wanna be useful, can you go ask Sean to have Mahon Quinn search his files for anything relevant on skin changers?”
Danny nodded, standing up to head down the hall. Mahon was the director for the PID in England, and the director for MI:5. His younger brother, Brighton, had been a close friend of both his and Angie’s before he sacrificed himself against a vampire in London.
If anyone had information, it would be Mahon and his partner, Detective Inspector George Linwood. Both were ‘psychic vampires’, which meant that they lived on human energy, not blood, but were just as immortal as your regular vampires.
Danny had lost his precognitive powers when he turned into a vampire. Once upon a time, he had been a powerful psychic, due to his being a reincarnated soul. But being a vampire meant giving that ability up for eternity. Once, when he had just discovered his powers, he would’ve given anything to be rid of the frightening visions and sickening dreams. Now he found he sort of missed them.
Now, especially, he missed them. Because his detective’s instincts were still fully functional, and he had a really bad feeling that something was going on that he was missing. It was like red warning bells were ringing in his head, but there was no visible threat. He hated it. He never needed the speed and strength of a vampire. That wasn't his thing. It was Angelica’s. But it was a trade he’d needed to make, and while he missed his old powers, he didn’t regret his decision to leave everything behind for a moment.
He walked into Sean’s office to find the director messing around with the phone.
“What’s up?” Danny asked.
“Dunno. Some weird clicking on the other end. Piece of shit technology,” Sean muttered. “What’s up with you? Drive Angie so crazy she sent you to me?”
Danny was a little peeved that he’d hit the nail so close to the head. “No. She wants you to call Mahon Quinn and have him send over everything he’s got on skin changers.”
Sean smiled. “She could’ve text me. See? She wanted you out of her hair.”
“Keep talking. I’ll wrap your tongue around your throat,” Danny said, only half-joking. After living there for years, he knew that you didn’t joke about the Sicilian necktie.
Sean held up his hands. “Peace, Mancini....So are you guys any closer to finding any similarities?”
Danny shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. So far, the only thing they have in common is this place.”
The door opened suddenly and a young male agent walked in. “Hey, Mr. Wireman, you said you needed phone service? I’m one of the techs,” he explained.
“That was fast,” Sean commented, moving his chair aside so the kid could get at the phone line. “It keeps clicking, like someone’s on the other line but this line is secure, so that’s not possible.”
The kid nodded absently, fiddling with some wires. Meanwhile, Danny’s sense of unease was growing. Something is wrong, you know it, do something, his mind screamed. He’d had that same voice yelling at him over a century ago, when his human CPD partner Camille had gotten him kidnapped and shot.
“Sean,” Danny said quietly. The siren looked up at him. The kid did, too, glancing quickly between the director and the Emperor. What happened next seemed to happen in slow motion.
Danny’s already quick reflexes were enhanced by his Undead blood, and he pulled his gun just as the tech leapt up with his own weapon drawn. But as fast as Danny was, he still wasn’t quick enough. The kid missed his bullet and fired his own into Sean’s abdomen.
Sean fell against the wall, splattering blood on the pale green paint. Danny’s gut clenched, not knowing how to kill a siren.
Sean opened pained eyes and said to the kid, “Good shot, but not good enough. Now you’ve just made me mad.”
* * *
Angelica was starting to feel bad about sending Danny away, but his fidgeting was driving her batty...pun intended. Just as she was standing up to go get him and apologize, a gunshot rang out from somewhere on that floor.
Her heart in her throat, she dashed into the hall, following the sounds of a struggle. In Sean’s office. While a gun couldn’t kill her husband or the director, she was still concerned for their well-being.
In the office, Danny was holding his gun on a young PID agent whom Sean had in a military-style headlock. Sean was bloody, his black shirt torn where a bullet had gone through and through, embedding itself into the wall. Blood was splattered on the wall as well, and the smell was still strong in the air.
“Don’t shoot him,” she ordered Danny. “We need to have a little chat first. He’s human, so you can cuff him.”
Danny walked over to where Sean was holding the young man and yanked him away by the collar, cuffing him with practiced ease. Angelica thought it was extremely sexy. Danny tossed the man down into Sean’s chair like he was a ragdoll.
“All right, who is this fuckhead?” Angelica asked Sean.
“Kevin Jones. He works on our tech,” Sean replied. “Fairly new. I hired him after the skin changer killed one of our last technicians.”
“How convenient that he was available,” she said sarcastically. “All right. Cough up the information. You know you’re not making it out of here alive anyway.”
People had questioned her execution rules, but so far she’d never executed anyone who wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.
The kid smirked. “You think you’re so tough, don’t you, Empress? You can torture and kill me if you want. But it doesn’t matter. The skin changer is watching, always watching. I’m not its only ace in the hole.”
Angelica grabbed him by the lapel and shook him, just a little. “Who else? Who else is working for it?”
“I don’t know,” Kevin replied. “And I don’t give a damn.”
“Why did you agree to work for it? How did it contact you?” she asked.
He laughed. “Why did I agree? Because I don't like overlords like you and your lap dog over there. How did we get in contact? You’ll have to kill me, because I’ll never tell.”
Eye flashing red, Angelica held out her gun and said, “With pleasure.” She fired a bullet straight through his skull. “Call a cleanup crew and let’s get to my office. Now.”
>
Her breath was coming hard and she tried to control it. She didn’t want them to know how entirely freaked out she was over all this. Her company had been infiltrated by a serial killer’s minion. How many more were there, sitting innocuously, waiting for their turn to strike? Who else could be against her?
First the vampires, now this. Was the skin changer that good, or was Angelica losing her touch after so long out of the loop?
“Angie, why the Hell did you kill him? We could’ve interrogated him,” Danny said as they walked into her office, locking the door behind them.
“Because interrogating him would take just as long as looking for shit ourselves,” she replied. It was a lie, of course. She’d killed him because his very existence was a reminder that her world was being threatened, and maybe she wasn’t good enough to stop it. “I’m sure the SC made sure he’d never talk because, whether he did or not, I’d kill him in the end. Whoever this thing is, it isn’t stupid.” She sighed, plopping herself down in her chair. “What happened, exactly?”
Sean began to explain how the phone had been working oddly, and the tech came unusually fast while he was talking to Danny.
Her husband then took up the narrative, as he had seen the weapon being drawn before Sean did.
“I don’t know what he was hoping to achieve with that little pea shooter,” he said. “The bullets weren’t even silver.”
“He thought I was human,” Sean said, his dark eyes widening as he realized it. “I bet the SC asked him to assassinate me and then kill himself. As a message to you.”
Angelica shook her head, feeling overwhelmed. “Fuck. What was wrong with the phone?”
“It was clicking, like an unsecure line used to, way back when,” Sean replied. “I think it was either a signal for Kevin to kill me, or the SC has us tapped.”
“Get a tech you can trust — no one new — and have them look it over. Meanwhile, only communicate face to face. Unless this room is bugged, that’s a Hell of a lot safer for us right now,” she said. “Keep information about this case between us. No one inside this building can be told a thing, got it?”
She sighed again, rubbing her forehead. “One of those days I wish I was still a vamplet. I need whiskey, and lots of it. Okay, we can’t use the tech here anymore. It’s too dangerous. Everything has to be on paper, like we’re in the nineteen-eighties again.”
She rummaged through one of the drawers until she found a red pen and a legal pad. “And as little out loud as possible,” she said, writing on the paper. She showed it to the men.
The top line said, “Burner phones.” She wanted them to buy low-tech stuff at the local Walgreens, less chance of being hacked. Writing again, longer this time, she showed the pad once more, “Informants. We used them around 9-11 when some shifters took the side of the terrorists. See who’s still alive and pick one to case places out, get intel we can’t get ourselves.”
Danny took a while to read that and finally said, “Your handwriting sucks, Angie. But good idea. We did that a lot in the CPD when I was with Major Crimes.”
“I think we can go through the files on the computer. It’s not specifically marked,” Sean said.
“Good.” Angelica still turned off her computer and pulled out her laptop instead. She pulled up the confidential mole files, all people who had given or obtained helpful intel before. Scrolling through, she spotted a familiar face and smiled a little. “Got mine already.”
“Well? Don't keep us in suspense,” Danny said.
“We should keep them private. It’s not a good idea to know. In case we get captured and tortured,” she explained. “Sean, can you go get the three of us — ” she tapped the paper where it read ‘burner phones’ “ — as fast as you can so we can contact them?”
Sean nodded. “This investigation has knocked me down from director to gofer. How humiliating!”
Angelica chuckled. “Come on, drama queen.” She smiled as he left, glad that her friends could manage to keep her spirits up, even just a little. She did hope he changed out of his bloodied shirt before he left. Then again, it was Chicago. People might not even notice.
“Okay, your turn,” she said, turning the laptop toward Danny.
She watched him scroll through files, looking at credentials and his eyes lightened. She knew that he’d found his spy by that look and felt a little relief. Things were moving forward. This was nothing but a monkey wrench thrown into the works, and they were already getting ahead.
* * *
The next night, Angelica was waiting in the designated area, known as The Park, for her informant to arrive. She needed to debrief him and give him his assignment. It was still early enough that pre-Christmas shoppers were around, and it was easier for the two of them to remain incognito. Especially there, where a simple baseball cap could make one blend in with the crowd, even when one dressed as Gothic as Angelica did.
She stood in the grassy field in the center, and spotted her informant immediately. Six feet tall, olive skin, eyes that glittered like black diamonds, and curly black hair that was kept short, Hermes, the Greek god of thieves and athletes came striding toward her.
Angelica had befriended the Greek god in the early nineteenth century, and had helped him out of a tight spot at the end of twenty-sixteen when he broke a rule all minor deities had to live by — not to meddle in major human affairs — and incurred the wrath of his ex-lover, Hecate. It had been...interesting, to say the least.
He smiled when he saw her, holding his arms out for a hug. While Angelica never spent much time with him, he was still a trustworthy person. More so since he had been banished from the Underworld and now resided on Earth as a human, though he still retained his powers and immortality.
“Maybe we can start seeing each other sooner than once per century?” he asked after pleasantries were exchanged. She loved his accent. He was so ancient it was hard to pin down, somewhere between Greek and Spanish.
“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” she asked, smirking. “But then the novelty of you might wear off, and what would I do then?” She entwined her arm in his. “Walk with me?”
Seen by many as playful, a playboy, and mischievous, Hermes often got a bad rap of being ‘the stupid jock’ of the Grecians. On the contrary, he was intelligent and sharp as a whip.
“You being followed? Do I need to smite someone?” he asked sotto voce.
“Maybe, and no. But you can help me,” Angelica said.
“Like I said on the phone, anything you need, carina. You saved my ass, and I owe you my life.” They began to walk, both of them appearing in their mid-twenties, hopefully looking like a young couple to anyone who might be paying attention.
“I won’t go so far as to ask for your soul,” she said, smiling. “You heard about the serial killer? Targeting the PID?”
He nodded. “Yeah, kinda hard to avoid. People are saying you’re losing your touch. I set everyone straight that I could; told them that you’re fixing the issue.”
“Thanks. To be fair, this all started while I was in Sicily, so it’s not my fault. I’ve been called in to clean up the mess,” she explained.
“Oh yeah. I’ve been there. Bottom of the ninth. Playoff game. Manager was pissed at me so he didn’t let me play. The guy in my spot was so bad, we wound up tied because he missed so many ground balls. I came in and saved their asses. So I feel you.” He grinned.
“You shouldn’t be so proud. Your time in the MLB is what got you banished,” Angelica reminded him. “But yes, just like that. Reach into my bag.” She was carrying a black leather messenger bag, the kind schoolgirls used in Japan. “There is a case file. I need you to case out the places listed, places where the people either died or enjoyed frequenting. Get any information you can for me. Including people who seemed to be around more than usual around the time of the murders. Pictures and video would be great, but possibly not forthcoming at every place. It’s a skin changer, so it could be wearing anybody’s face. Trust no one except y
our gut. I killed one once, but that’s because it tripped itself up. This one’s pretty smart, and I got nothing to help me catch the bastard.”
Hermes stopped walking and snapped the fingers on his free hand. “I do know one thing about them that’s not widely available. Persephone told me. They have these crazy strong brainwaves. So a psychic would notice one right away, no matter whose face it was wearing.”
“Interesting. Too bad my psychic lost his powers,” she said.
He paused and asked, “This thing is serious about getting you, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “And everyone who sides with me.”
Squeezing her shoulder he said, “I’ll do what I can. Fucking people like this, they drive me crazy. Why can’t supervillains stay in comics where they belong?”
This time she laughed full blown. “Just do me one favor, Hermy: don’t get yourself killed.”
* * *
Danny waited on a bench before Lake Michigan, half wondering if he was going mad. The face he’d seen in the PID informant database had thrown him for a loop, and now he wondered if his mind had just exaggerated the woman’s features.
Frieda, the daughter of a former CIA spook and born witch, had an extremely similar face to his long-dead human wife.
He knew it was a bad idea to pick an informant based on her appearance, but he always thought it was best to go with one’s gut. And his gut had twisted when he saw Frieda’s picture. Her credentials did help, of course, but it was more human curiosity than anything.
He stared out at the lake, his senses on alert for anyone approaching. He’d chosen this spot because, in mid-November, no one went to the lake at night because it was freezing cold. As a vampire, the cold didn't bother him a bit, and the weather ensured some privacy.
He heard someone approach, and smelled human blood. In the cold, warm-blooded creatures smelled stronger to a vampire. It was a woman, her blood mixing with peach shampoo and some awful drugstore perfume. Just like his wife used to wear and he’d tease her about.
“Frieda Lorenzo,” he said without turning around. It was a bit of an intimidation tactic to get her off her guard, something Angelica had taught him to do when he was turned.