A Warrant of Wyverns

by Michael Angel

  But they hadn’t. Removing the questionable human element made the answer clear.

  “These bones aren’t from human beings,” I said firmly. “They’re deer remains.”

  Esteban’s eyebrows shot up. “You sure about that, Dayna? We haven’t seen any hooves or antlers.”

  “I’ve seen and studied cervine joints and legs up close,” I said, thinking back to when I’d brought Liam’s sire, the former Protector of the Forest, directly into the morgue. “I recognize them. As far as the hooves and antlers, we’ve only found parts of the upper legs and mid-skeleton so far.”

  Dietrich let out a curse. “Well, the head’s the part people use for trophies. They’d take that for sure. Are you telling me that we just dug up a bunch of stuff left by poachers?”

  “Would poachers bury the remains of a hunt in shallow graves?” Vegas asked.

  “I’ve never seen it before, but yeah, I suppose they could.”

  “‘Could’ sounds pretty far-fetched. Particularly if this is the first time you’ve encountered a burial like this.”

  “This ain’t the inner city,” Dietrich shot back. “You might not be familiar with what’s out here.”

  Vega frowned. “You mean like actually stopping to think about what you’ve found?”

  Esteban stepped in to cool the two cops down and go over the possibilities again. I decided to take a closer look at the heap of bones and sinew piled in front of me. That same gone-off broccoli smell lay under everything, just as with the original disinterred bones. And there were more disturbing signs starting to tickle my brain.

  For starters, the long bones had each been methodically broken. The breaks were clean fractures, for the most part. Very little splintering. That said a lot right there. Bones didn’t do that under the high-speed impacts of bullets.

  “Lee,” I said quickly, as the heated discussion continued to swirl around us, “You did say that you got zero hits for metal, right?”

  She nodded her head. “There’s nothing but organic matter in these graves.”

  That confirmed what I was seeing here. The breaks were more or less centrally located on the long bones. There were compression marks at the ends, almost as if the bones had been squeezed in a gigantic vise. And when looking down a break, the insides of the long bones looked like they’d been hollowed out with a drill-shaped brush.

  Even more puzzling were the marks all along the flat surfaces, where the flesh had been flensed or pried off the bone. Rather, it was the lack of marks that disturbed me. If there had been poachers who were stripping the meat off deer carcasses, then there would have been tell-tale signs of butchering. Hook marks from hanging the meat and letting the blood drain. Saw marks from serrated cutting tools.

  It occurred to me that I’d just made the same mistake as Myun-Hee and the others. Sticking with the first story that came to mind and trying to fit the pieces together to make it work. All while I should have been letting the evidence speak for itself.

  Say that I wasn’t seeing evidence of deer poaching here. What else could it be?

  The scrapings, the compression fractures, the strange smell…

  The answer came with a clear and sharp click.

  I abruptly stood up. Dizziness hit me for a moment as the blood drained from my face. I glanced about wildly. My eyes darted back and forth across the tree line, searching for hidden figures.

  “Are you all right?” Esteban said sharply. “What’s wrong?”

  I forced myself to quit looking around before I spoke.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I just…I mean, the smell must have gotten to me. Happens sometimes. Excuse me, I’ve got to step away for a little bit.”

  The members of both the LAPD and the OME stared at me as if I’d grown wings and a horn as I stumbled off. I got back to where I’d laid out my crime scene gear under the shade of a sprawling velvet ash tree. I swapped out my gloves for a clean set and then leaned against the tree’s trunk.

  I forced myself to breathe. Focused on getting my heart beating at a normal pace. I also reached up and touched the weight of the gun in my shoulder holster. It was a pitiful weapon to defend myself against what I thought I’d discovered. But it was better than nothing.

  Soft footfalls approached, making me look up.

  Esteban stood next to me. His strong, stubble-jawed face shone with concern. He was here, and we were going to be okay, I reminded myself.

  Of course you are, my mind added. If what you suspected was correct, then you’d all be dead several times over already.

  “Dayna,” he said quietly, “I’m afraid that your reputation at the OME’s followed you. Nobody’s buying that you just got sick from the smell. Your nose is made of cast iron compared to us mere mortals.”

  I looked over his shoulder. He wasn’t joking. Everyone had gotten back to work digging or raking, but they all cast curious glances my way.

  “Seems like I just helped cement the other part of my reputation,” I said ruefully. “That I’m a crazy woman.”

  “Well, not crazy. Odd, sure. Maybe a little unstable.”

  “Sheesh. That makes me feel a lot better.”

  “It should,” Esteban said. I looked at him, and his face was poker-straight. “It’s helping to temper the dislike some of the cops have towards you right now. Better to be thought of as loco than just plain evil. It helps excuse some of the things that are still going around.”

  Yeah, don’t mind Little Miss Mush-for-Brains, I thought. She just can’t help herself, not when her elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor.

  I sighed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re probably right. And things are to the point that I’ll take that half-a-loaf.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he reassured me. “So. Care to tell me what just happened back there? If I had to guess, you just came to some major Holmes-style deduction. And I’ll bet that it wasn’t a nice one.”

  “You’d win the bet.” I drew him in towards me so that we faced away from the others. “The reason we’re only finding upper legs, ribs, and parts of the pelvis region is that those are from the ‘meatiest’ bits on a deer.”

  “That still sounds like poachers to me. Carve the meat off, take the head as a trophy. Then bury the remains so you can come back and hunt some more.”

  “What’s the main tool you’d use to dismember a deer carcass? And remove the flesh?”

  “A hunting knife, of course.”

  “Of course. And there’s no knife marks on any of those bones.”

  “No marks? None at all?”

  “Not from a serrated-edged knife. The gash marks on the bones are smoother, more rounded. You only get that one way. From jagged teeth.”

  That startled him. “You’re saying that an animal did this?”

  “I’m saying that a non-human entity did this. It got me thinking. Shelly went over the results of the examination of Maxwell Cohen’s remains with me. She said that there were marks on the tissue…marks that looked like they were from extremely sharp claws.”

  “Go on.”

  “There are compression indicators on the ends of the long bones, clean fractures towards the middle. It’s as if someone held the bones in their hands, bending them until they broke.”

  “That someone would have to be damned strong. And why do that?”

  “Looking at the hollows inside, I’d say they were after bone marrow,” I said. “And that odd smell…it’s from a trace amount of sulfur, mixed in with the rotting remains. I’ve smelled that before, when I was looking into Albess Thea’s ‘murder scene’ on Lord Talish’s lands. It points to just one conclusion.”

  His face took on a grave, pale look. “Tell me.”

  “A dragon ate these deer then buried the remains, like any smart animal.” I flashed back to Nagura for a moment before I went on. “And the reptiles I’ve met in Andeluvia…well, they could be a whole lot smarter than that.”

  “So you think we’ve got an Andeluvian drag
on on our hands? Right here, right now?”

  “Right here in this world, yes. Not here ‘right now’. Otherwise we’d all be dead.”

  A voice spoke crossly from behind us.

  “I guess we’re all lucky then that your ‘dragon’ didn’t pop out and gobble us up.”

  I whirled around. Isabel Vega stood behind us. We’d been so intent on our conversation that we hadn’t heard her approach. Her arms were crossed, and her face was a study in fury.

  Just my rotten luck.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Detective Isabel Vega had heard us discussing Andeluvia again. That was just great.

  The first time had been right after the assassination attempt on Police Chief Sims and Deputy Chief McClatchy. That had started driving the wedge. Then my insistence that I was being stalked by Damon Harrison had put more bad blood into the water. Things hadn’t exactly improved between the three of us since then.

  It got quiet for a moment. I felt a stirring in the air, a chill breeze blowing up my back, but I didn’t dare turn away.

  “What the hell are the two of you up to?” Vega demanded. Her exotic accent from the Dominican Republic had morphed into a voice hard enough to scratch glass.

  “Isabel, let me explain,” I tried to say.

  “Don’t you call me that again, Chrissie! I warned you!”

  Her expression was one part hurt, two parts anger. This wasn’t about something rational, not anymore. I’d learned from our conversation behind the Wainwright house that her anger went beyond a lack of trust from her partner. It went all the way back to a betrayal in her childhood.

  When Isabel Vega turned eight, her brothers claimed that they had found a magical place. A place where they could fly, where the colors spoke to them. A place only those with a spirit of adventure and purity of heart could come.

  They had lied to her. And that lie still smoldered, burning deep within her.

  She cut me off before I could say any more.

  “I told you that whatever you and Esteban are up to, that I’d end it.”

  “Dammit, if you’d just listen–”

  “No, you better do the listening. Internal Affairs has already been sniffing around the LAPD brass, and they’re coming over to the OME, sure as anything. You called out the sharks on McClatchy, and they’ll eat you too.”

  “You’re out of line, Detective,” Esteban snapped. “You want to make a charge against Dayna or me, then you damn well better make it.”

  Vega’s jaw moved slightly from one side to the other. I could hear the gears turn while her mind calculated the odds. If she initiated an Internal Affairs investigation against me or Esteban, it had to stick, and stick good. Otherwise, none of the other officers would want to work with her ever again. The promising career she’d built at the LAPD would be over.

  Esteban hadn’t backed down either. I knew how much this was costing him. He’d had a good partner in Vega until my problems had driven them apart. The darkness in Andeluvia had spread like a stain, blotting out their open and easy friendship.

  Finally, Myun-Hee’s voice broke the tense silence.

  “We’ve got something!” she called, from the farthest of the fire pits. “Bring a sample bag. Actually, a couple of them, please!”

  I rooted around in my case until I had a few bags in hand. On impulse, I grabbed a smaller plastic tie-bag of hand tools. When I stood up, items in hand, the two detectives hadn’t budged.

  “All right,” I said, making a dismissive gesture. “You’re both tough as nails, okay? We’ve got a case to focus on.”

  I pointedly walked between the two on my way to the far fire pit. I didn’t turn around, but by the sound of the footfalls, both Vega and Esteban were following in my wake. I did my best to put the drama out of my mind, but this day seemed determined to go from bad to awful, no matter what.

  Myun-Hee directed Dietrich to angle his rake to snag a small group of items that were caked in clinging ash the color of cheap cement. The sulfurous gone-off broccoli smell was lighter here, but it hung in the air, refusing to fade completely into the background. After a few more tugs on the rake and some choice expletives from the older cop, I was able to reach out and grab the three closest objects in my gloved palm.

  Each was a small, roughly oval clump of ash. I set my tie-bag down and opened it with my free hand. After a little fumbling, I brought out a stiff-fiber brush the exact size and shape of one used to put on makeup. I slowly moved it back and forth on the contents of my palm, brushing away the ash.

  “I was thinking,” Myun-Hee ventured. “About how ‘tacky’ this ash is.”

  I nodded. “So have I. No matter the type used, wood produces much lighter, friable ash.”

  “But there is something that can turn wood ash sticky,” she went on. Her voice dropped as if she didn’t want to say the next words. “Meat tallow. Fat, from any sort of muscle or viscera.”

  I stopped brushing. “I think you just hit the nail on the head there.”

  The cops and interns at the campsite gathered around as I held up my hand. Sitting in my palm were three blackened, but otherwise recognizable, molars. One of the interns put a hand to his mouth. Vega and Esteban just looked grim.

  “Can we be sure these are human?” the other intern asked.

  “Normally, I’d wait to confirm that,” I said, as I maneuvered one of the teeth so that it rolled on to one side. A little patch of yellow glinted back from the blackened surface. “But there’s no other species I know of that gets gold dental fillings.”

  “This would explain the hits for human remains,” Esteban remarked. “The ones that the K-9 unit got, at least.”

  “Then maybe we have two separate groups of people using this site,” Myun-Hee ventured.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The disturbed earth is from the poachers, who are burying the leftovers from skinning deer.” She paused to gather her breath before she went on. “And the fire pits were used by…well, someone who needed to dispose of a body.”

  I traded a quick glance with Esteban about the ‘poachers’ idea. The worst part was, I was starting to wonder if the two ‘groups’ were the same person. Creature. Monster.

  “Each of these items look to be in pretty good shape,” I said. “There’s a better than even chance that we’ll be able to get a match from dental records, even if we don’t find any more remains.”

  Right then a sinister sounding clink came from the fire pit. Sergeant Dietrich managed to pull the last object out of the layer of ash he’d been busying raking. I carefully put the three teeth in separate sample bags. Then I picked up the latest find and gave it a quick brush-down.

  A blackened layer of char slipped off to reveal a surface of burnished gold. Then a clod of ash fell away from the center, revealing a hole that went all the way through the item. A rectangular shape appeared at the top, and I recognized the object.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Myun-Hee asked. “It looks like a man’s ring.”

  I nodded, thinking of the piece of jewelry on my right hand as I continued my work. “Yes, you’re right. It’s a large one, at that.”

  “Wedding ring, you think?”

  “Could be, but I don’t think so. It doesn’t really resemble a wedding band.”

  I kept on brushing. A sudden hush had fallen on everyone present. Gold and blue gleamed back at me. Slowly, the slender form of a familiar tower appeared on the face. Then two sets of letters, followed by a four-digit number.

  I stood up, trying to get more light on the face of the ring. I didn’t recognize the number. The letters were a jumble for the moment. as they were still crusted with putrid-smelling ash from the pit. I focused on wiping away the last grains of soil until they were finally legible. They mocked and teased me with what they meant.

  The top line read: DETECTIVE.

  The bottom line spelled out LOS ANGELES POLICE.

  It was a police badge ring. I should have seen it earlier. The tower wa
s an Art Deco representation of the LAPD’s downtown headquarters. The exact same one that was printed on the organization’s badges, station doors, even on the sides of the police cruisers.

  Dietrich made a strangled sound. His face went beet red, as if he was having trouble breathing.

  “That number…” he gasped out. “That there is Max’s ring. It’s Maxwell Cohen’s badge number.”

  “How would you know that?” The question came out of my mouth reflexively.

  “How would I know?” The old officer turned on me. His wizened face flipped back and forth between rage and sorrow. “I know because I was his partner for ten years. Before you got him killed, you heartless bitch!”

  The insult didn’t stun me as much as the sudden fury sent in my direction. I quickly took a step back. The ring felt like a radioactive weight in my palm.

  Esteban’s voice came from behind me. “Calm down, Dietrich!”

  “Don’t you tell me to calm down! Not when you’re busy bangin’ this…this…”

  “You better pick your next words carefully,” Esteban gritted.

  “Cohen was a good man. One hell of a good officer. Worked every day to honestly earn his retirement. And then this…” A gnarled thumb jabbed in my direction. “She gets him killed by some psycho.”

  I swallowed hard. “I swear, I never thought that Cohen–”

  Dietrich brought his hands up. For a split second, I thought he’d punch me. Instead, he lunged forward with a roar and shoved me.

  The impact made my breath whistle out. Then with a wham, I landed in the dirt on my side. A blur crossed my vision as Esteban stepped over my prone form. I rolled and got to my knees. Esteban hit Dietrich twice, once in the gut and then on the jaw.

  The older man rocked back, but didn’t fall. He didn’t look all that sturdy, which told me that my boyfriend was holding back on his punches. And somehow, Dietrich knew it. He threw a hateful glance in my direction before turning to stalk away.

  Esteban lowered his fists. His voice was quiet and completely in control when he spoke.