by K.N. Lee
Being a Numina detective wasn’t a lie. The rest is only half truths. And he had to get through it to get Ysbal back to his prison on his homeward and get back there. Get away from this. Get away from the lies.
Now to the rest.
“Elinor, I’ll be brief. The Brotherhood of the Sanguinary wants me to find the man that attacked you. We suspect he’s involved in a number of disappearances here on Westmeath. My job is to bring him back to justice on Numina. I don’t care much for the local constabulary here, as you said, they’re afraid of him. But you aren’t.”
“Hey, I’d be stupid if I wasn’t afraid. That’s a good way to get killed. But I’m not going to let my client down,” she said, still not revealing her real clients. She lied with ease and mixed in the truth with skill. And he almost believed her. That was the most disturbing part.
That and her scent. It was earthy and filled with forest and wild flowers; her lies came sweetly.
He couldn’t tell her the rest, not yet. It would terrify her.
“I’ll offer you a deal. Since I’m away from my home beat, and I’m unfamiliar with Westmeath, I’m going to need a guide. I’ll hire you as a private contractor to help with the case.” He leaned back and watched his words sink in.
Her lithe hands, with strong long fingers, gripped the teacup. The tea at Katrina’s was something he’d never tasted before, it tasted like citrus peels and something else...
Wild heatherdown? No, that was a new scent that was seeping from across the table. Feral. Invigorating. It was as though he was standing in the middle of a windy marsh. The light, musky aroma of heather blended with woodsmoke. Was he mixing up her scent and the tea? No. He caught a whiff of boggy peat that was not in his tea. He remembered the scent from before, in the alley.
Blaine looked up over the rim of his cup. He sipped and waited. This wasn’t going to be a hard sell but he let her give the pretense.
“And what exactly does that mean? Guide? Private contractor?” Elly asked and crossed her arms over her chest. Her little boots tapped the table’s central pedestal. Once. Twice. Three times. It stopped.
He realized she was waiting.
“Just that, you guide me around. You know where all of these places are that the perp has been. You know how to talk to the people here, some of them won’t talk to a…” he was about to say ‘Sanguinary’, “an official.”
“Right, so you want me to help you solve this case, get your guy. Stop him from killing anymore people here on Westmeath.” She poured another draught cup from the cozy covered teapot between them.
He watched as she placed it precisely in the center of the crocheted doily protecting the table. She was deliberately testing him, making him wait. This ex-cop was using interrogation tactics on him. Turning the tables turned so deftly he barely noticed it. When he did, he felt his tongue like dried leather in his mouth.
“What’s in it for me?” she asked.
“Closed case,” he said.
To that she wrinkled her nose and rubbed her fingers together, drawing her hand back like snatching a ball from the air.
“No bounty, but you’ll be compensated. Your usual rate. I assume you have a usual rate.”
He watched her mull it over. Both hands together, interlocking fingers forming a cradle as she swirled the tea.
“Ok, you got a deal.” She tilted her head at him. “But this guy’ll be hard to catch. You think you can take him down? Do we need some kind of special weapon to kill one of you vampire types?”
“Vampires are myth. You don’t need a religious symbol or some special water. You don’t need a wooden stake. You don’t even need silver bullets.”
“That’s werewolves,” she said.
“Also legend and myth.” At least he hoped it was. Nothing would surprise Blaine, now.
“Hmm.” She sat up, putting her teacup down. “Can you kill this guy with regular weapons. Why do I get the feeling this isn’t going to be that easy?”
“We’re not going to kill him. We have to capture him and bring him back to Numina for justice, or did you forget that part?”
She didn’t look like she’d forgotten. Not at all. Her perfectly plucked right eyebrow raised. Her voice turned from what he thought was a normal soprano into a husky sotto voce. “Uh-huh. So, you think you can get this guy trapped and back to your moon?”
“I know I can, but I think it’s better if we work this together. I can protect you,” said Blaine.
“Who says I need protecting?” she said with a half-smile on her face.
It was his turn to raise a brow. He waved a forefinger in a circle, pointing at her, and stopped.
She looked down at her second set of clothes that evening, and it was clear that she got the message. Elinor Morgan did not look happy about that. Not one bit.
“I don’t like working with a partner,” she said.
He shrugged at her. “I guess we’re going to have to figure it out. Let’s start the hunt.”
Elly’s shoulders straightened and her back elongated as she sat up. The transformation gave Blaine pause as he rose from the booth. In a split second, Elly exchanged victim for tracker. It looked more natural on her.
“Alright, where do you want to start?”
“How about the bar where you picked him up?”
4
Blood in the Alley
Elly knew the scent of a lie. It was cloying like a bouquet of crushed fermenting honey flowers after sitting too long in the sun. There wasn’t a truth telling soul in the city of Ballylock.
Truth felt uncomfortable. Sticky. Like tar on her fur, hard to hide and painful to remove. Her whole existence and that of her entire race was built on a carefully crafted lie. Secrets helped them stay hidden. She didn’t even know what the truth was, some days, like right now with Blaine Cornell. She wanted to know more. And that sticky tar of truth was going to get on her if she wasn’t careful. He was covered in good intentions.
While Cornell ambled over to pay for their tea and those sweet baked crumblies that Katrina’s was famous for, Elly let her mind work over the problem. How could she get enough information about the Sanguinary out of Cornell to kill that Seannach murdering bloodsucking creep?
It saw her. The thing knew what she was. Worse, he’d known what she was. Said it out loud, even. How did he find out about the kin? He had to die.
That—and he was making a cursed feast out of her people. She’d eaten tea and biccies but all she could taste was dread.
“Let’s go,” Detective Cornell said and jerked his chin towards the door. “Show me around, Miss Morgan.”
Elly slipped out of the booth and followed him out the door.
They left Katrina’s and headed back towards her skimmer and the nightclub that she’d picked up the perp in. “So,” she asked casually, “You have any idea of who this guy is? Did he do any killing on your homeworld?”
“He’s a wanted criminal,” he said. Detective Cornell wasn’t looking at her. His head moved in a practiced surveillance scan. She followed his tracking to the crowd flowing out onto the sidewalk across the street. At the same time, he offered a crumb, “His name is Ysbal.” Cornell pointed at the neon blue and green sign that said ‘Ladies Night’. “Is that the club?”
“That’s it.”
“How did you get him to follow you?”
“I’m not sure,” she said and stepped down into the road to cross. The boom-boom-boom of the dance music spilled out onto the street along with dozens of young people in various stages of inebriation or drug-induced titillation. Elly looked up and down the street before they crossed. “I didn’t have to try, he latched right onto me.”
“Hmmm.” He lifted a chin towards a pair of the young people. “That normal around here?” The bar scene was filled with Seannach, they sniffed the air and looked at her. The side glances at Cornell made her feel uneasy, traitorous. She caught their eyes but made no other attempt to communicate. Amery was there with his sassy good looks a
nd bushy hair, he twitched smirk at Elly and tilted his head over to Blaine then waggled his brows. For his part, the detective politely ignored him.
She couldn’t blame the foxkin for looking. Blaine was striking. Different. The blond looked back at his female partner and continued their lively conversation never missing a beat.
“Yeah, that’s normal.”
“Did Ysbal fit in? Blend in?”
She wanted to say, No, every single Seannach in the joint could smell something weird about him. Which was troubling since all of his victims were foxkin, why didn’t their hackles go up? They all smelled him. They all ignored him.
Another mystery.
“No. But somehow, everyone seemed oblivious to him. I’m still trying to work that out. He doesn’t even look like he’s from around here, like you, but paler. Easy to spot a foreigner.”
Stepping carefully around a shiny red skimmer, she led the detective into the bar. “This way… uh, what do you want me to call you?”
“Blaine,” he said. No hesitation. “Just Blaine.”
“I’m Elly.”
“Pleasure.” His voice was clipped, his shoulders rising. Elly saw him put his hand over his mouth and take a long breath. She smelled distress.
“We can come back…” she offered and put her hand out. He was going white as death. Even her skin, considered fair by Westmeath standards, was a contrast. She reached for his hand.
“No, I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Your face is white and your hand is starting to shake. Let’s go. Now.”
Though he shook his head, he followed her. “Let’s go to the alley where he turned into a berserker on me. You ok?” But Blaine’s foot stumbled. She caught him. “What in the name of the Forebearers.”
“It’s my inhibitor… ” Blaine said. “It had an odd reaction to the scent. I can’t identify it.”
“Can you make it to my skimmer? How did you get here? I’ll put you in a taxi and you can…”
“No, I’m better.” Blaine straightened up and looked at her. “There’s something not right in there. Something. It smelled so sweet it was almost putrefied. How did you not smell that?”
“I smelled hot sweaty bodies ready for…” Mating. “Good times,” she finished. Seannach in heat. A Vixen in heat had the very scent of blood on her. And nightclubs on this strip were filled with them.
“No.” He looked pensive before he admitted. “Blood urge, it was stronger than the inhibitor. Mind if we go back to the alley?”
They walked around the crowds, keeping as far from the scent as Blaine could handle. She watched him carefully, looking for signs of the weird behavior like Ysbal’s The glowing blue eyes and ecstatic arousal he’d shown right before he morphed into a fang-faced horror. But Blaine only seemed to return into his detective self.
They walked around the damp alley for a bit. It was as she had left it and the same as every other city alley in Ballylock. Ugly. Dirty. Full of garbage and scat. Westmeath’s rotation cycle was forty standard hours and provided twenty hours of sunlight and twenty of night as it turned on its axis on the trip around Ghael.
Blaine had Elly go through all the motions of the attack, step by step. She did it with clinical efficiency. It helped her work through her own reaction, to review, stay focused. Then, he had Elly stand back while he went to work, her heart squeezed with a twinge of jealousy of a life she gave up. Gave up because… the Westmeath constabulary force sucked scat.
He did all the right things, picked around the areas, swabbed the blood, placed it in an evidence bag.
Blood? That wasn’t her blood, was it? She did get a good swipe at this Ysbal guy. But he also got a good swipe at her. Seannach blood, when in human form, was easily human to the casual samples. But she was transmogrifying when he cut her. At least she was half in and half out of foxform.
The confusion of being in between and not knowing how reverberated, layered in her mind, until she realized that there was a piece of the puzzle missing.
“Can you give me a lift back to my hotel? I want to drop these off at the precinct on the way, for samples.”
“Sure…” she said. And after that, she would have to call the Assembly to fix the evidence.
He gave her a sideways glance, she shrugged. “Not like you’ll get a decent read.”
“Oh, this is going to Ghael’s forensics labs, not local,” he said.
“Wh-what?”
5
Teffia
The next morning Elly found herself on a ferry to Teffia with the wind blowing her hair, wild and free, in every direction as they crossed the water. She needed to know more about his race, the Sanguinary. There’d be books, somewhere in the main Seannach repository. And they’d know what to do about the blood samples.
So, she was headed to The Den. Before she departed, she left a message for Blaine at his hotel where she’d dropped him off the night before. It was at the posh end of Ballylock. In this part of the city, the scent was unmistakably human, unlike Blaine.
Blaine told her they’d prowl again tonight, so she took that to mean she had the day free.
The ferry ride, though short, always cheered Elly. The air smelled sweet and clean and full of salty kisses reminding her of beach parties with her kin. Oysters cracked open and eaten raw by impatient foxkin adolescents while the clams and shrimp steamed and awaited their post-swim exhaustion. Hot summer sand and innocence. All the scent memories flooded back. Happy memories. Smiling, she regarded the waves beneath as the boat chopped through the water, splashing a white wake. The morning sun bathed her in a dappled cloud soft light.
The Ghael detective brought the ideas of being offworld to her mind, a thought she had never entertained before today. The kin stuck close to home, to their den. There were four major cities on the moon of Westmeath and each had a hidden haven like this.
A thought, unbidden, wheedled its way to her consciousness. What would it feel like between the moons of Ghael, stuck in a shuttle, unable to smell the scents around you. Would there even be a scent? Anything? How would it be, without the use of her enhanced senses, in that sterile environment? Like being blind? Or deaf?
She shook the uncomfortable thought off. An unexpected chill sent a shiver shuddering down her spine. Even here on the sea Blaine’s presence in her life sent ripples across her smooth, uninvolved existence.
When she got to the dock, Elly’s feet kept moving in the rhythm of the sea. Her body rocked side to side as she walked the few steps from the passenger terminal.
The island retreat was where the Assembly had their main hall, disguised as a civic sports stadium. Deep under the ground, far beneath, the fox kindred had their lair.
Elly felt the delicious coolness of the earth surrounding her as she entered through the main tunnel. It smelled of earth and humus. There was the light sprinkling of baby smell. Someone must have just delivered a litter. The kit scent, soft like new green wild grasses, was overpowering as she passed the nursery. Compelled to stop in, Elly pushed the round door to the side. “Knock knock?”
“Hey, Elly,” said the caregiver who stood in her cartoon covered scrubs.
“Junebug, how are ya?” While the nurse was in human form, the vixen was not.
“Sandra?”
“Yes, last night, aren’t they adorable?” Junebug grinned at the vixen and her litter. “She’ll be in her canid form for at least a month while she nurses her new kits. They’re ravenous for quite some time.”
Elly knew that the kits would stay in canidiform for at least the first year of their lives before they would start to realize their human selves. Or maybe never. Most did figure out the transition but a few rare DNA strands remained and very rarely a full-blooded canid was born among the kit litters.
Elly nodded towards the nursing vixen. “Who’s the lucky father this time?”
“Amery,” Junebug said.
“That makes sense. Blond, bushy hair, I see a few of his line in there.”
&nb
sp; “Not exactly full-blooded this time, Sandra?” Elly said watching the vixen and not expecting an answer. “This is her second litter this year?”
Junebug nodded. “Too bad it was Amery. He’s a real hound, that fox.”
“Half-bloods don’t tend to mate for life.” Elly said with a shrug. “Catch you kits later.”
Elly closed the door quietly behind her. Her heart broke.
Amery was a jerk.
She’d dated him for fun. Everyone had. Last night at the bar she saw him with at least two other foxkin vixen. Reynard were, by their DNA, usually into more than one mate in a lifetime. But Amery was into more than one mate in a month. Still, he had the kind of charisma that made you not give a damn.
She’d almost succumbed. Almost gave way. Almost ended up like Sandra. Domestic. Common.
Elly wound her way through the alternating corridors, letting her nose guide her. She could first report into the Assembly. If she didn’t, would it matter? Besides, what would they do? Stop her? They hired her to track a killer that nearly killed her. Rebellion rose in her chest. Too many unanswered questions by the Assembly left a taste of distrust, dry and bitter. Why hadn’t they told her the lunar constabulary was sending someone? And that creature, it knew the Seannach. That could mean anyone else might know. No, there wasn’t a need now to tell them about Blaine.
The library then.
A Seannach library had the perfume of history. And dust. Yes, there were books, but there were also artifacts making it part museum and part library. It was her research lab. An old greying reynard, a maester of the library, was sitting in a comfy chair smoking a long white meerschaum pipe. The tendrils of smoke circled up from the bowl.
He looked like a fairy tale.
The maester’s ears were elongated with white tufts of hair, like clouds, sticking out on either side of his head. His face had grown more canid-like than human. Beady eyes, long nose, though still fleshy, pink lips curled around the stem while sharp yellow teeth bit down. “Come in child. I’ve been expecting you.”