The Judah Black Novels: Boxed Set of books 1-3

by E. A. Copen

  I leaned on the table to drive the point home. “We need to find this killer and we need to find him fast before this can spiral out of control. With your help, I can close the case faster, with more efficiency. I’d like you to come aboard and work together to help me close this as part of a cooperative task force between civilians and the Paint Rock PD. So, what do you say?"”

  A few of them shifted in their seats. I wasn’t sure if my speech had gone over as well as I intended. I should have opted for the slideshow instead of crude drawings on the board.

  Daphne smoothed her hands over her yellow sundress and leaned forward, speaking first. “It’s not that I don’t want to help you, Judah. But between the volunteer counseling I’m doing at the hospital, my classes and the upcoming full moon, I really don’t think I can commit.”

  Tindall shook his head and lowered his hand onto the table from his chin. “I hate to say it but, with the election and everything, I’m just overloaded. I’ll help when I can but it’s just a fact. I can’t be here twenty-four-seven anymore.”

  “And, well, I’m about to take my vacation, see,” Quincy fumbled. “I can’t just cancel my reservations. They’d charge me anyway.”

  Jenkins, the young guy to Tindall’s right added, “I’d love to help but I’m not sure what me and Galloway can do on our own.”

  I sank down into my chair, feeling the lack of sleep catching up to me. “You’re right, Jenkins. Two cops, a priest and a federal agent doesn’t a task force make.”

  Father Reed cleared his throat.

  “Don’t tell me you’re backing out too, father,” I said.

  “I came because Detective Tindall indicated you had some papers for me to sign,” said the priest, folding his hands on the table. “Given our past history, I’m not sure working together would be of mutual benefit for either of us.”

  I locked eyes with Reed briefly before he turned his attention to the surface of the table. “I see how it is,” I said, addressing everyone in the room. “You guys all have your own lives and your own problems. I get it. But this is bigger than any vacation or personal vendetta. And Daphne, I’d only need a few hours of your time. Surely, you can spare a few hours.”

  Daphne refused to look at me. “I’m sorry, Judah. I just can’t.”

  And then it hit me. This wasn’t about vacations, elections or being overloaded with school and work. If things went south, they all wanted to be as far away from it as possible. Kim Kelly wasn’t the only one who would get ruined if she meddled in the ancient rites and customs of the Stryx. Standing between Crux and the target of his declared blood debt could be deadly. Like rabbits before a forest fire, they were all ready to turn tail and run.

  On some level, I’d expected their hesitance. I understood why Daphne didn’t want to. As an outsider with nothing at stake, her brother had helped me and almost lost the use of his legs. Quincy, he was just lazy and his reaction wasn’t unexpected. I had thought Tindall would spur him to action as he normally did. I certainly didn’t expect Tindall to back out. Until just a little while ago, he was as gung-ho as me to put this to bed. The detective owed me nothing. He’d helped me far more than he had to.

  Reed, his reluctance surprised me the most. All our differences aside, and even though he’d taken Zoe’s baby and hidden her away, I still believed him to be a good man at the core. All this time, I had reasoned he must have done it for a good reason. Reed was a good man in a bad situation, able to look past petty disagreements to pursue the greater good. No matter how I felt about Reed, he had to be a good man with good reasons. I just didn’t see them.

  I stood. “Alright. If you’re not available, I can understand. Thanks for coming. No hard feelings. You can all show yourselves out.” Reed stood and moved as if to bolt for the door. “Except for you, Father. You and I need to talk.”

  Reed remained beside the door as everyone else filed out. Once they were gone, he slid around to the end of the table opposite mine and said, “If you’re going to ask me again about the child, you know I can’t give you the answers you want.”

  “You could at least tell me why.”

  Reed shook his head.

  “Why the hell not? And don’t give me that greater good bullshit. I work for the government. I know a cop out when I hear it.”

  He wrapped his fingers around the top of the chair. “I’d think the answer would be straight forward. If I’d left the child in your care, what would have happened to her?”

  I didn’t answer him because it was a rhetorical question. He and I both knew the child would go into foster care. As a baby, she had a high chance for adoption. She also stood a high chance of inheriting her mother and father’s condition. She was going to grow up to be a flesh eating monster, a wendigo. The first time her hunger kicked in, someone would get hurt.

  “I could have taken her,” I volunteered. “Or placed her with someone who’d take care of her.”

  “We both know BSI would find out eventually, just as they’ll find out about Hunter.”

  I stood up and growled, “You leave my son out of this.”

  “I’m only stating a fact. The rules that BSI has set down for these people are wrong. It’s no life for a child, no good way for her to grow up. I know you know I’m right. Why else would you go to such great lengths to skirt the law for all the illegal things that go on around here?”

  I stared down at my hands. “I still believe in the fundamental good that the law stands for. Change takes time. It has to be done through the right channels. You can’t just start kidnapping babies and smuggling them beyond BSI reach because you think it’s the right thing to do. You think you’ve saved her. You’ve just put other people in danger.”

  “Believe me,” the priest said, rolling his shoulders back and standing straight again, “where she is, she’s in the safest possible place receiving the best possible care.”

  “You said you answer to a higher authority, there were certain truths you weren’t allowed to reveal. Who are you working for? Who’s behind this?”

  “Judah, why can’t you just accept that the child is safe, cared for and loved instead of being dissected in some BSI lab?”

  I slammed my hands down on the surface of the table. “I never would have let that happen to her!”

  “You wouldn’t have been given a choice!” Reed closed his eyes and let out a sigh. “I don’t want to fight with you. But I am a man of God. I cannot look the other way while anyone oppresses the weak. Perhaps BSI is doing so with a velvet glove but it doesn’t change what’s happening. If BSI had their way, they would eradicate every supernatural, herd them into more reservations like this, forcing them into poverty and sub-standard living. And whenever they discover something new, they will continue to deny its existence publicly while dissecting it privately. That is the truth and, like it or not, you’re a part of it.”

  I shook my head. “I’m trying to change things. I’m not the enemy, Reed.”

  “I know,” said Reed in a gentle tone. “You’re no more responsible for the damage here than the average German soldier in Nazi-occupied Germany. You mean well. I believe someday you’ll understand true change will only come with subversive intention. That’s why I came down here, Judah. I came to sign your affidavit. You need to do your job. I won’t stand in the way. But I won’t support the agency you work for. Not anymore.”

  I fished the affidavit out from my pile of papers, stormed down to the other end of the table and slammed the page down with a pen. “Do you know what I’m hunting, Reed?”

  Reed cautiously took the pen, glanced over the page and affixed his signature on the appropriate line. “I’m sorry, Judah. I don’t.”

  “I’m going to find her,” I said quietly to Reed.

  “No,” he said, clicking the pen and dropping it on the table. “You won’t.”

  Chapter Eight

  I stood in front of the precinct’s fax machine, angrily jamming Reed’s signed affidavit into its maw. There was somethi
ng gummy on the keypad of the machine and I picked up some of whatever it was on my fingers when I dialed in the number only to try to wipe it off on my jeans. The fax machine squealed, and an error came up on the screen. I looked around, searching for someone I could go to for help.

  The main floor was still crowded, officers answering ringing phones and exchanging reports across desks. A few cops chatted casually among each other. Tenor laughter resonated under the din.

  No one talked to me. No one offered to help.

  Frustrated, I gave the side of the machine a good smack. The strike didn’t fix the fax machine, so I gave it another... and then another. Each strike grew progressively harder, the noise echoing through the surrounding cubicles. When punching the machine didn’t make the error go away, I resorted to shaking the damn thing.

  “Why won’t you fucking work?” I screamed.

  It was only as I stood there with my hands on either side of the ancient fax machine, chest heaving with rage and effort, I realized the office had gone silent. The murmur of voices was completely absent. There was no more laughter, no more pecking away at keyboards. A solitary phone rang.

  I turned around to face an army of blank faces. “What the hell are you looking at?” I growled. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  The normal noise resumed without missing a beat. I turned back to the fax machine, which now sported two new dents. The error was still flashing on the screen. I sucked in a deep breath and let it out slow. Then, I deleted the job from the queue and tried to send the fax again. This time, it went through.

  I wonder if Robbie has a glamor to make technology cooperate, I found myself wondering as the machine sucked in the paper and spat it back out on the other side. I shouldn’t think things like that. Magick doesn’t fix everything.

  I put a hand to my head and briefly closed my eyes. I must be more tired than I thought if I’m even considering it, I thought. I knew the danger. Magick was a drug. A lot of young practitioners fell into a trap, thinking magick would fix whatever was bothering them at the time. I’d made the same mistake in the early days after embracing my gift.

  Granted, in my case, that didn’t happen until I was an adult. I’d been born into a different world, a world where magick was a sin. My world equated different with evil. Even at twelve, I understood how bad it was to be different. When the school bullies started picking on me and I put my tiny little fist through a concrete wall like the she-hulk, I knew better than to tell the truth about what happened. Adolescent hormone infused rage, the psychologists told my mother. Never mind I could suddenly outrun the entire track team when, before, I could barely cross the school parking lot without wheezing. Forget I could tell when people were lying or afraid because of the strange halo of colors surrounding their bodies. I was terrified, lost and alone with no one there to explain to me it was just my power waking up.

  Of course, my mother didn’t buy it. She took me to church and let the church elders anoint me with holy oil and pray over me, their hands pressing so hard against my forehead it hurt. The preacher and all the church ladies fell into speaking in tongues at such a frightening pace spittle flew from their mouths in a shower. After two exorcisms, an extended diet straight out of the Bible, and a month of being shielded from all demonic influence through music and TV, I learned only one thing: never tell an adult when you’re afraid.

  If something like BSI had existed back then, I would have had somewhere to go, people I could have confided in. I would have grown up knowing I was just accessing my magick instead of fighting off demonic possession. For all the organization’s faults, BSI helped more than it hurt. It wasn’t perfect, but what in the world was? I had to believe Reed was wrong. The alternative was my mother’s religious fervor, Alex’s murder, night upon night spent alone in tears believing I was evil. It was chaos. I couldn’t believe in chaos.

  That’s why I joined BSI and chose to specialize in demons and the occult. There were too many misconceptions out there on the topic. Occult didn’t mean evil. In fact, the word itself just meant secret. It was used by larger organized religions to refer to those driven underground for fear of persecution. Desperation turned occultists into offenders. Fear and marginalization forced their hands. Every practitioner I arrested could have been me if I hadn’t found BSI.

  I pulled the original paper out of the fax machine and trudged back to my office. With or without help, I still had to solve this case and do it quickly. I didn’t have any more time to sit in conference rooms making analogies. I had to hit the streets and start getting answers. I needed to know what I was hunting.

  There were a few people in Concho County who could help. Sal was a healer and a helper by nature, bound by the healer’s oath not to dabble in the dark arts. He and Chanter had a lot of combined knowledge concerning the world of spirits and supernatural bad things. But Chanter’s cancer had made him so weak I didn’t want to burden him with work for my sake.

  Mara could help, I thought, and then dismissed the thought. Mara was a spirit sensitive, able to let spirits possess and speak through her. If there was some kind of rogue spirit running around, killing things, I didn’t want her on its radar. While her abilities were useful, they didn’t translate to field work. She didn’t have the chops yet to defend herself from anything nasty. I’d seen her get a nosebleed from trying to read auras on her own.

  Kim has to be involved somehow. It did seem odd she’d pulled all her staff from the club the night of the attack. It was suspicious if nothing else. And, as a co-owner of the club, she had opportunity. The only thing I didn’t see her having was motive. Unless it has something to do with the debt she’s been paying off. Desperate people, desperate things and all that.

  I dropped the paper on my desk and checked the clock on my cell phone. It was edging toward midday. Daytime would be when any vampire was at their weakest and the safest time to challenge one. Still, I’d have to be careful with my questioning now since her dad had endorsed Tindall for sheriff. I didn’t want him filing a complaint with the department.

  After checking my files for an address and printing out a set of directions, I picked up my desk phone and dialed the number I had on file for Kim Kelley. A pleasant, masculine voice answered the phone. “Kelley residence. How may I direct your call?”

  “This is Special Agent Judah Black with BSI,” I said. “I’m looking into the murders at Aisling and I was hoping to arrange a time to meet with the co-owner, Kim Kelley.”

  “I’m sorry,” replied the man. “Mistress Kelley’s schedule is full this afternoon.”

  “Clear it,” I demanded. “Or I can get a subpoena and we can do this downtown after I call the press.”

  There was a brief pause on the other end. “Hold, please,” said the male secretary, and there was a click. Elevator music came over the line. I waited, tapping my fingers on the top of my desk. After a moment, he came back on. “Mistress Kelley is more than happy to meet with you over lunch, Agent Black. Is one o’clock too late?”

  I looked back at the clock. I had two hours to kill, and I hadn’t been out to the morgue yet. If traffic was with me, I could make that time without any trouble. “One is fine.”

  “She’d like to know if you’d like her to send a car or if you’ll be providing your own transportation?”

  “I can drive there just fine, provided all the addresses in her file are up to date.”

  “Of course. We’ll be expecting you.”

  I hung up without saying goodbye and reached for my keys, accidentally knocking them off the corner of my desk. With a sigh, I bent over to pick them up, pausing as my eyes fell on the lock of the top drawer. There was more than one way to get information out of the evidence in there. If I knew anything about vampires, I knew they prided themselves on being well informed. And it was Marcus Kelley who had supposedly moved several road blocks out of my way in my quest to take down LeDuc. There was no reason to assume his daughter wouldn’t help as well. After all, everyone did say nothin
g happened in Concho County without going through the Kelleys first.

  On a whim, I picked up the keys, unlocked the drawer, retrieved the evidence baggie and thrust it into my purse before heading out the door.

  ~

  To call the privately owned, for-profit Eden Memorial Medical Facility a hospital would be an understatement. Ten stories high and taking up a whole city block, the place was attached to one of the most up and coming research hospitals in the nation. It was the only hospital I knew of equipped to deal with the unique emergency needs of supernaturals, which meant it enjoyed a whole slew of extra government grants. It was also the only morgue in the tri-county area.

  I eased my old car into the parking garage and drove up six dark and dusty levels before I found any parking. Then, I took the garage elevator into the hospital proper. The reception floor was covered in modern circles of pastel tile breaking up the sea of blue between me and the smiling receptionist at the desk labeled Welcome Center.

  “Howdy, there,” said the blonde. “Can I direct you somewhere?”

  Her smile didn’t crack in the least when I showed her my badge and asked for the morgue.

  “Sure thing, sweetie. You’re going to follow the green tiles to elevator B. That’ll take you to corridor G where you’ll need to follow the orange path to the service elevator. You’ll want to ride that down to the sub-basement. That’s level BB. You can follow the signs from there.”

  I stared at her. Then, I looked around at the colored circles on the floor, trying to find a string of green ones and coming up empty. “Say what now?”

  I wound up with a map and got turned around three times before I finally found the damn service elevator. Hospitals should never be bigger than shopping malls.

  I’d rather be in a graveyard than a morgue any day of the week. Graveyards are peaceful. Even though I knew I was walking around on top of decay, there was comfort in knowing death was feeding life. Birds chirped. Wind blew. Somewhere off in the distance, someone was mowing grass or playing a stereo. When walking through a graveyard, I could maintain the illusion of life even though I was very much aware of death.