“Seems we should be looking into this Marsha Derringer then,” Delarosa says.
Edith gives him a small nod. “I did already. That’s when I found out…”
“Found out what?” Ella presses.
“Harold Derringer’s f-father”—Edith takes a calming breath to steady her words—“was a man named Norton Derringer. And Norton Derringer’s wife was a woman named Eleanor Delos.”
Everyone in the room freezes at the word “Delos.”
My stomach rockets off into deep space, and a sense of vertigo washes through my head, not unlike the way it used to back when I still had my déjà vu power. The power that Delos inadvertently blew to pieces when he tried to brainwash me in his torture room during the curse epidemic scheme. I still have nightmares about that room, about Delos burrowing his magic into my brain. And for a moment, I have to close my eyes and take slow, deep breaths, my heart on the edge of panic, pulse pounding toward anxiety, the sense that the walls are closing in pecking at my skull. I never wanted to hear about Delos again, in any context other than his impending life imprisonment or straight-up execution.
Why does it have to be him? Why can’t it be someone—anyone—else?
Ella is the first to find her voice. “I’m guessing Eleanor Delos is related to Robert Delos?”
Edith says, “She was the daughter of his older brother, Franklin. She was Robert Delos’ niece.”
“So what you’re saying,” I mutter, “is that our two victims sit at the bottom of Iron Delos’ extended family tree? And Jeremy Fletcher was actually biologically related to Delos?”
Edith wrings her hands. “Distantly, yes.”
“If this was any other case,” Delarosa grumbles, “I would call such a tenuous connection a coincidence.”
“Me too.” Ella raps her fingers on the keyboard. “But Delos is in a league of his own.”
“Does Delos have any direct descendants?” Desmond skims through a few more pages of Edith’s handout. “Any living descendants?”
“That’s the thing.” Edith’s cheeks flush. “I can’t tell. I think it might be because of Delos’ status as an ICM wizard. If his children, or grandchildren, also have magic…”
“The ICM would’ve fudged their public records to make sure no one notices them living beyond the normal human lifespan.” Ella faces the screen and begins typing this new information into the file. “If that’s the case though, how did you confirm Franklin Delos was Robert Delos’ brother?”
Edith turns to the very back of her handout and holds up a printed black-and-white image. “I searched through some library archives and found this late 1920s newspaper article that mentions the Delos brothers opening a US branch of their family-owned manufacturing business in Detroit.”
She flips to the back of the photo, which has some sort of municipal record printed on it. “Looks like the factory went belly up during the Depression. After that, there are no more mentions of Robert Delos in the public records. As for Franklin Delos”—she points to a small photocopied paragraph underneath the municipal record—“I managed to locate a brief obituary, presumably written by his wife or daughter. Says he died sometime during World War II, in Austria. Exact date of death is unspecified.”
I clench my fist as I mull over this new information. “Delos told me the vampires wiped out most of his family during World War II. I’m guessing that’s what happened to Franklin.”
“Looks like someone is gunning for the rest,” says Zhane Carpenter without glancing my way. We haven’t been on the best of terms since I lied to her face last month in order to trick her into covering for me while I was ferrying Foley around town to save him from the Black Knights. I managed to plead Delarosa down from sustaining her serious punishments, but she’s still stuck doing all the team’s paperwork until Christmas as a consequence for deceiving her captain.
Personally, I think she’s milking the vendetta a bit too much. Considering my punishment is being frequently brutalized by Ella in the gym in front of a bunch of academy students. But I do still feel bad about roping her into my half-assed plan, so I make a mental note to do something to make it up to her as soon as this case wraps up.
If it wraps up, I think, more than a little bitterly. You never know when dealing with Delos.
“Could this be a revenge thing?” Delarosa asks. “Someone going after Delos’ relatives in retaliation for his defection to the Methuselah Group? Maybe someone who lost a family member during the curse epidemic? Or one of Delos’ old friends who feels betrayed?”
“That’s my line of thought as well.” Ella saves her case file updates and exits the document. “And if that is indeed the case, then any and all remaining members of Delos’ family, particularly the magically inclined members, may be next on the hit list.”
Desmond rubs his head, contemplative. “If Delos does have living relatives of the magic variety, we likely won’t be able to use public records to identify them, due to the ICM’s tampering to protect its assets from exposure.”
“But the ICM will have their own records, right?” Zhane says.
“Oh yeah, they’ll have awesome records.” Amy snorts. “But they aren’t going to give them to us.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Ella rolls her chair back. “Either way, it’s going to be an uphill battle. I’ll tell our dear commissioner to send a message to the High Court requesting access to Delos’ family records, a request they will likely refuse on principle. For past cases, that would be the end of the line right there. But unlike Bollinger, Nick doesn’t take being brushed off by bureaucrats in a particularly graceful manner. He’s been primed and ready to play hardball with those stuffy practitioners in their fancy European headquarters ever since he first sat down in his new office.”
“And today he’ll get his chance.” Delarosa chuckles dryly. “So what’s our play until Riker puts his foot down and squeezes the answers out of the ICM? How can we protect any of the potential victims if we don’t know who they are?”
Edith clears her throat.
Ella gestures toward her. “Yes?”
“Um, I may have a lead on one of the potential victims, but there’s no quick way to confirm if this person is, in fact, in the Delos family tree.” She tugs a folded piece of paper from between two pages of her handout. “When I was researching Jeremy Fletcher’s general background, I found that he ended a long-term relationship with a woman, Frances Wheeler, roughly two years ago. They’d been dating for almost three years, and at one point were engaged.”
“Well, she wouldn’t be on the hit list if they were never married, would she?” Zhane asks.
Edith shakes her head. “It’s not her. It’s her two-year-old daughter, Sadie. As far as I can tell from her social media, Frances Wheeler hasn’t been in a serious relationship with anyone since she broke it off with Fletcher, so unless she had some sort of short-lived tryst with a man around the time that she and Fletcher ended their relationship…”
“Then Sadie Wheeler is almost certainly Fletcher’s biological daughter.” Ella rises from her chair and crosses the room, taking the paper from Edith’s outstretched hand. She reviews the information for a few seconds, then says, “Is this address current?”
Edith worries her lip. “As far as I can tell, yes.”
“Who would know that Sadie Wheeler is Fletcher’s kid though?” Amy spins her chair around to face the door. “There’s no indication Fletcher was acting as the kid’s dad, is there?”
“There isn’t,” Edith admits, “but if I was able to put two and two together just from perusing Frances Wheeler’s public social media posts, then I would think a smart killer would be able to do the same. And if they’re attempting to inflict maximum damage to Robert Delos’ family tree, targeting Sadie Wheeler would be a natural step.” She swallows nervously. “In my opinion, of course.”
“I agree.” Desmond looks troubled. “Bear in mind that our perpetrator targeted Sarah-Jane Coble, who isn’t even a biological relative
of Delos. They’re going after anyone even peripherally associated with Delos’ family line.”
“Then we need to get Sadie Wheeler and her mother into protective custody. Immediately.” Ella strides toward the door. “Field teams, I want you in the garage and ready to roll out in five. Analysts, you’re dismissed. Do as much in-depth research on the Delos family as you can until we receive additional leads.” She hauls the door open, but pauses on the threshold. “Oh, and Edith?” The analyst stiffens at being singled out. “Good work.”
Edith relaxes slightly. “Thank you, Captain Dean.”
Ella swiftly exits the room while snapping her fingers at the rest of us. “Come on, people. Move! Fast! We have a baby to protect.”
Chapter Four
The SUVs screech to a stop outside a weathered five-story apartment building a quarter mile from Gloston Square. We exit the vehicles quickly and efficiently, Ella and Delarosa directing their respective teams to different entrances. My team takes the front entrance, a pair of glass doors beneath a drooping yellow awning that had been white when it was installed twenty years ago. Delarosa leads his people around to a side entrance that opens onto a pathetic excuse for a courtyard, nothing but some cracked brick paths and a concrete fountain that has seen its better days. Weapons drawn, we creep up to our respective doors and peer inside, checking to see if any residents need to be cleared from the communal areas before we head upstairs.
Ella speaks into her com mic, “Remember, there are two stairwells and one elevator. Our perp could use any of the three for ingress or egress. So keep a sharp eye out as we approach Wheeler’s apartment, and an even sharper one out when we’re leaving. I don’t want us to end up in a fight with an unknown Eververse entity in a confined space where we can’t effectively maneuver. Clear?”
A chorus of “yes, ma’am” sounds off through the com feed.
“All right,” Ella says. “On my mark.”
Amy and I take a position in front of the left-hand door, with Desmond and Ella on the right. Desmond and Amy take hold of the door handles, while Ella and I stand side by side so we can shuffle in and sweep both halves of the lobby at the same time. As I adjust my grip on my gun, my right hand aching at the sustained grip, Ella throws me a questioning glance to make sure I’m ready to fight if we encounter a hostile immediately upon entering. I reply with a nod.
Ella inhales deeply and shouts into the mic, “Go!”
Our teammates haul the two doors open. Ella and I enter the building. We turn in opposite directions as we hunt for any threats. On my side of the room is what must pass for a lounge in this neighborhood, a few arrangements of scratched tables and chairs with torn cushions sitting within a sunken area of the floor, whose awkwardly sized single step has probably caused more than a handful of injuries. None of the furniture seems out of place, except for a short wooden table set in front of a couch that someone must’ve used as a footrest. There’s an overturned stack of old magazines on the floor, and a phone charger somebody left plugged in, and what appears to be half a box of crayons lying under a love seat, some of the colors worn to nubs.
I complete my survey and face the front desk again just as Amy and Desmond bring up the rear. “Clear on my side,” I say.
Ella confirms, “Mine as well.” She taps her mic. “Juan?”
“We’re good,” Delarosa replies. “Clearing the laundry room now. No hostile activity. No residents either.”
“Then we head upstairs.” Ella directs us toward the main stairwell next to the rickety-looking elevator with a broken button panel. She looks through the grimy window cut into the stairwell door, and finding nothing, hauls the door open and ushers us upstairs. I point my gun down as I enter, per my instructions, in case something rushes us from the basement level. When Amy comes in behind me to take over covering the lower level, I drag my gun upward and shuffle around the landing at an angle so I can immediately shoot anything that comes at us from the upper floors.
Nothing does. The air is still.
Too still. As still as it was at Fletcher’s house.
A shudder slithers down my spine as a distinct sense of wrongness fills my every pore. As I ascend each step toward the next landing, the atmosphere grows heavier, a lead blanket of dread on my shoulders, and all the moisture in my mouth evaporates, leaving my tongue and throat as dry as sand. The urge to turn around and run far, far away sweeps through my veins, riding on the back of terror, and there’s a second where I almost do exactly that, a second where my stomach clenches and my muscles contract and my heart flutters in my chest. I resist the fear only because I’m trained to do so. Because my job is to push myself into life-threatening situations.
It’s not until my hands are shaking uncontrollably, the moment my boot touches the top step, the heavy metal door to the second floor looming like a phantom before me…that I realize something is manipulating my emotions. I’ve fought evil, ruthless vampires with penchants for tearing people limb from limb. I’ve been at the mercy of Etruscan Psychopomps and the god of a fucking underworld. I’ve battled an army of reanimated corpses on a field of death and suffering. I’ve been kidnapped and brutally tortured by werewolves, then chased through the woods in the dead of night. I shouldn’t be this scared of some random killer and an Eververse creature I’ve never seen before.
I stop with one foot on the landing. “It’s here. It’s in the building.”
Ella, on the next landing down, asks, “How do you know?”
Without looking back, I reply, “Are the rest of you feeling really freaked out right now?”
No one answers for a moment.
Then Amy swears. “I don’t have a reason to be this damn panicked, do I?”
“Manipulation of the amygdala,” Desmond adds, a slight quaver to his voice. “It’s stoking our fear centers to throw us off.”
Ella taps her com mic and relays this information to Delarosa’s team. “Proceed carefully, everyone. And unless you hear a civilian in distress, proceed slowly. Try not to engage with the creature or its summoner until we have a handle on the situation in and around Wheeler’s apartment.”
With that nudge, I force my other foot onto the second-floor landing and creep over to the door. The window is narrow and dirty, so I have to press my face close to the glass to see through into the hall. No movement on either end of the hall catches my attention, and nothing tugs at my magic sense. So I press the bar down with my hip and push forward into the hall, following the door all the way to the wall, where I press my back flush against the panel and sweep both ways with my gun. Amy and Desmond slip through into the hall after me, pointing their weapons in opposite directions. Ella comes last, gun held low, and examines the scene.
The misplaced fear inside my chest grows stronger, making it hard to breathe. But I shake it off the same way I shake off my panic attacks and move away from the stairwell door, slowing its swing with two fingers so it doesn’t slam shut. Once it clicks into place, I take my spot to Ella’s right and stand there until she gives the signal to head toward the Wheeler apartment. Amy and Desmond walk backward as we press on, trusting Ella and me to hold off anything that comes rushing out of the apartment’s door.
From ten feet away, I can see that the front door to apartment 208 isn’t latched. Homing in on the doorknob and locks, I find a faint smudge of that same dark-blue aura, indicating the summoner has already broken in. The edge of genuine fear—fear for two-year-old Sadie Wheeler—grips my stomach, and bile rises in my throat, threatening to choke me. But again, I force it back, reminding myself that I can’t help the girl if I’m too much of a nervous wreck to shoot straight. I take one hand off my gun and tug Ella’s coat sleeve; when she tears her steady gaze from the partially open door, I make the signal for “magic present.”
A grim expression on her face, she slinks over to the door and peers through the tiny gap. There’s a sharp intake of breath, before Ella reels back, kicks the door open, and charges into the apartment, yelling, “D
SI! Show yourselves.”
For a second, I’m too startled by her shift in behavior to move. Then my brain kicks back into gear—you’re her backup, idiot!—the unnatural fear flickering out, and I follow her into the living room of the Wheeler apartment. Only to come face to face with the graphic scene that made Ella abandon her “slow and careful” advancement plan.
Lying on an off-white carpet now stained a deep red, surrounded by a sea of broken furniture, is a large gray werewolf. At first, I think they’re dead, but then I spy the slight rise and fall of their chest, weak and stuttering. The Wolf is clinging to life despite grievous wounds all over their body. Round, deep puncture marks scattered across their stomach and back, one eye gouged out, two legs badly broken.
Werewolves can heal from an extreme amount of damage, but this might be too much.
Following Ella’s lead, I sweep the living room for hostiles, but I don’t find anything immediately alarming. Amy enters the apartment, leaving Desmond to guard the entryway, and Ella motions for her to help clear the rest of the rooms and for me to check on the Wolf. I only have basic field medic training, and I know nothing about werewolf anatomy, but I sink to my knees next to the fallen Wolf anyway and see if there’s anything I can do to slow the bleeding. With gentle touches, I examine the stab wounds, finding some of them partially healed while others are still raw and ragged.
There are almost fifty puncture wounds in all.
The creature kept stabbing until the Wolf went down.
As I’m removing some gauze from my belt pouch, the Wolf languidly opens their one remaining eye and rolls it toward me. A faint wheeze rumbles through their throat, like they’re trying to tell me something. The head moves slightly back, and at first, I think they’re pointing at the wall, the boards and beams cracked in several places from where the furniture was thrown around the room during the fight with the creature. But when the Wolf makes a distressed whimpering sound and cranes their neck back as far as it’ll go, I realize they’re trying to indicate something behind them. Something about the overturned couch the Wolf’s back is pressed against.
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