by C. M. Cevis
“Hey Amy,” Willow said, waving to the officer who moved the tape aside for her. She’d been downtown enough times to start to learn names.
Behind Amy, about fifty feet back, she caught sight of a covered person-shaped lump and a few officers. Nick’s height made him easy to pick out, and as she started walking toward him, he turned, saw her and strode to meet her. She made it about three feet before she hit the wall. Literally. This was as close as she could get to that scene. Well, wasn’t that interesting.
Nick slowed and looked at her in confusion. “You coming?”
She shrugged. “I can’t.”
Nick gave her a look and walked up to where she was. “If this is too much, too soon, it’s fine.”
Willow chuckled. “No, Nick. I mean that someone has cast something around this area that prevents me from moving past it.” Feeling like a mime, Willow held her hands up to the barrier and leaned into it, hoping that perhaps he would get what she was trying to tell him.
“That’s a new one.” He frowned and waved a hand through the invisible barrier. “I didn’t know that was possible. I guess that means they know that we have a witch working with us.”
“No, it means that they know that you have me. This barrier is specific. I can feel enough of it to know that it’s specifically for me,” she said, frowning.
“That’s not good,” Nick said, rubbing his head.
“What’s not good?” Alex said as he trotted up to the two of them talking. Willow had called him on her way across town, thinking that his eyes on the scene might help. Nick didn’t seem to bat an eye at his appearance.
“I can’t get any closer to the scene. Someone is keeping me out,” Willow explained.
Alex frowned. “Well hell, that’s not good,” he said, echoing Nick.
“Can you get me something from the victim? Anything of his or hers is fine,” she asked Alex.
“His. The victim is male,” Nick interjected. Alex nodded and trotted towards the body.
“I’m already sorry about whatever is about to happen to you,” Nick said once Alex was out of ear shot.
Willow smiled and bumped her hip gently against Nick’s. “Careful, Detective. I might start to think you like me,” she said, then turned to the returning Alex.
“I pinched his wallet,” he said with an amused grin. Willow snickered and reached out for the wallet without hesitation.
Her hand had barely grazed the leather when her eyes rolled back and her legs gave way. Alex caught her by the arm, and Nick grabbed her waist to help lower her to the ground. The men shared a look and released their hold on her.
Her body jerked and spasmed violently as the two men watched, neither of them sure what to do. Her lips parted, and unintelligible words spilled through them, some in a whisper, some in a scream. As the words seem to calm, her mouth opened wider than seemed possible, and she screamed as a wide gash opened, spanning her torso. Blood spilled down the front of her and bubbled up through her nose and out of her mouth. She gasped for air, her hands tearing at her throat as she coughed.
As soon as it had started, it was over. The wound closed, and smooth, unmarked skin shown through the rips in her bloodied clothes. Tears ran down her face as she struggled to catch her breath.
“There is no way that she could have known that the victim was ripped open that way. No way,” Nick muttered to himself.
“If you doubted before, I’m hoping you don’t anymore,” Alex said. He turned and slipped himself under Willow’s shoulder to help her shakily to her feet. Nick handed her a handkerchief from his pocket, and she used it to wipe away some of the blood on her face. Her eyes were red and tearing up, but she wasn’t paying that any mind.
“This is the place that I saw,” she said, her voice catching. “And I know what brought the new victim here as well.”
18
NICK HAD ASKED ALEX TO get Willow back to the precinct while he finished the scene, which was fine with her. She felt like shit after what she’d just gone through, and part of her really wanted a hot shower and maybe a nap. Willow had found Nina when she and Alex arrived back at the precinct and asked if she could use the gym women’s locker room showers. Nina had paled when she saw her and lent her a pair of her workout clothes to change into, after handing her the key to the locker room. Then she’d asked Alex to come back after he helped Willow get there without falling on her ass. Probably to ask what in the holy hell had happened to her. That was fine—Willow only wanted to talk about once. Today, at least. She might feel up to more later.
She was waiting in Nick’s office when he arrived, and Alex and Nina joined the two of them soon after. Then she started talking.
“The man was maybe twenty-five, twenty-six years old. He was out clubbing a few nights ago and met a guy who he thought was cute. The guy picked him up, invited him home for what the victim figured was a one-night stand. When he woke up the next morning, he was tied to the bed. His date walked into the bedroom, found him awake, and knocked him out. The next time he woke up, he was at the place where his body was found, and he was still restrained. Below him is a basin, and then I see a clawed hand of sorts his stomach open.”
Willow took a shuddering breath and closed her eyes. “I can tell you that I… I mean he, heard the man talking to himself. Something about efficiency, and doing it wrong, and that it’s not going to look like something that I couldn’t hear clearly.” Willow opened her eyes and looked at Nick. “I have no idea what that means, as the victim was slipping in and out of consciousness, but maybe it will make sense later.”
“I’ll note it in the file, just in case,” Nick said softly.
Willow nodded. “Anyway, the death was a combination of blood loss, judging by the lightheadedness, and choking. He was strangled at some point.” Willow frowned. She couldn’t quite pinpoint when that had happened, but the tightness around her neck had definitely been there.
“She is correct. The victim died of asphyxiation, not blood loss,” Patrick said from the doorway. Willow turned in surprise. She hadn’t heard him approach, though she probably shouldn’t have been surprised at her lack of observation skills. This type of clairvoyance work really drained her.
Pat looked at her. “Tell me, Miss Willow, can you tell what kind of claws you saw? Maybe that can give us a hint on what kind of shifter we’re looking for.” He walked further into the room.
Willow thought before she spoke. “Within a margin of error, sure. But another shifter could tell you better than I can.”
“Except we don’t know any shifters,” Nick responded. When Willow looked at him in surprise, she saw he was serious—and that her gaze made him uncomfortable. “Why are you staring at me like that?” he asked.
“You really don’t know?” she asked.
Nick shrugged, looking at the others for clues, but finding none.
Willow frowned, her expression suddenly deadly serious as she looked from Nick to Nina and back again. “How deep does shifter prejudice run in this department? Be honest.”
She could tell the question caught them by surprise, but Nick thought about it before he responded.
“It’s not prejudice so much as fear. If there were a shifter in the department, fear would probably cause that person to be ostracized.” He seemed a little ashamed of it, but it was the answer Willow expected.
“What about in this room? Is that true of you all as well?” she asked, looking around.
“No,” Nick answered immediately. “I have no problem with shifters.”
“Me either,” Patrick said.
“You know I don’t,” Alex responded.
“I don’t either,” Nina said.
Willow looked each of them in the eye as they spoke, weighing how much she thought they were telling the truth. Then, slowly, she nodded. She spoke, her words barely above a whisper, though everyone in the room heard her.
“We need one of you to scent a body. No one will out you, and only the people in this room with me wi
ll know what you are,” she said. Any shifter in the place knew who was in that room already. They could smell them.
The room sat in silence for a moment. No one so much as coughed. Nick frowned and opened his mouth to say something just as Lance, one of the rookies from DCS, walked into the room and closed the door behind him.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
~ ~
THE GROUP BEGAN THEIR COLLECTIVE trek down to the morgue together. Willow had grabbed Alex’s arm to hold him back a couple steps, allowing Nick and Nina to talk to their officer. He’d just outed himself in a big way to help them, and Willow felt that she owed all of them the space. But just because she walked a few steps behind didn’t mean Willow wouldn’t listen.
“So, you’re a…” Nina seemed to hesitate.
“I’m a tiger shifter, ma’am,” Lance said. “Hereditary bloodline, in my case.”
“And there are others in the department?” Nick asked.
Lance smiled. “Much like Miss Willow, I won’t betray their confidence by telling you about anyone other than me.”
Nick glance back at Willow, who simply smiled. He turned back to Lance. “So she knows who isn’t entirely human?”
“Everyone who isn’t human knows who isn’t human. We knew what she was as soon as she stepped into the building. Have you never noticed that she greets us when she arrives?” Lance asked.
Nina seemed to pause mid-step, then said, “I saw her come in, and look around. I thought she was just watching her own ass.”
Lance chuckled. “In a sense, we all watch our own ass, yes. But she was also letting us know that she knows what we are, just like we know what she is, and that our secrets are safe with her.”
It was Nina’s turn to look back at Willow.
“That’s part of the reason why no one bothers me when I walk through the office,” Willow said, catching up with the group. She and Lance shared a smile, and then she followed Pat into the examination room that contained the body.
Patrick pulled the sheet from the body of the last victim and took a step back, the look on his face saying that he had no idea what to expect. Willow didn’t say a word, not wanting to influence Lance’s scenting. The others stood at the edge of the room, waiting.
Lance inhaled sharply and frowned. He leaned down, close to the open wounds on the chest, and took a slower, deeper breath. Then he stood, the frown etching deeper lines onto his young face.
“That’s not a shifter,” he said.
Willow nodded. “My spell told me either magically altered or crazy.” She sort of looked forward to comparing notes.
“No, not crazy. Whoever this was wasn’t shifter at all. Magically altered is a possibility. I can’t tell you what the scent is, but it’s not an animal or a normal human. It’s something completely wrong.” Lance rubbed his chin, looking puzzled.
Nick walked around the gurney, looking down at the body. “I feel like we’re missing something,” he muttered.
“Quite the contrary,” Willow said, smiling as she crossed her arms.
Nick looked at her in surprise. “How so?”
“We know exactly what we’re looking for now.” She shared a look with Lance, and his eyes brightened in realization.
He finished her thought with one word: “Witches.”
19
NICK GRABBED THE CASE FILES from his office and made his way back down to the room Willow normally did her presentations in, except this time, it wasn’t for her to speak. He tacked up the pictures from each scene and then called for all of DCS to come down to the room ASAP. Once everyone had gathered, he quieted the room and took a deep breath.
“All right guys, we’ve got a serial murderer problem, and it’s a big one.” He pointed to the first murder that he’d been called to. The one that had been discovered the morning after his late-night streak. “You all remember this one where we spent half the day canvassing the neighborhood, only to return here with jack shit for leads and sore feet.” The room grumbled in response. Yeah, they remembered. “This is what we initially thought was a one-off. It was actually the third murder.”
Any whispers stopped as one by one, the officers began to see where this conversation was heading.
“Since this case, we’ve had two more, and nothing to go off of from any of them. As some of you know, our resident clairvoyant,” he smiled across the room at Willow, “has been helping us out at some of the scenes. I won’t tell you what that’s like to witness, because trust me, it’s a bit shocking, but the things that she has seen have helped us immensely.”
Willow smiled and nodded in response to the praise.
“Today, we received some help from a shifter friend of the force,” Nick continued, keeping his eyes moving so that he didn’t mistakenly focus on Lance. “It turns out that what we are looking for is a magically modified human being.” That started a questioning murmur, and someone finally asked the question that they all seemed to have.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that we are looking for a human who has been persuaded by a group of witches, who have given him the ability to shift and murder people. The witches are pulling the strings, but the one with the bloody hands is a target for us as well,” he explained, repeating the explanation Willow had given him earlier. The murmuring got louder, and Nick waited to let everyone get it out of their system.
“We’ve got some pictures of places that Willow gave us from her visions. We need to find these places, see what we can get from them. Keep your guard up, though. The last location from a vision that we found contained another body.” He looked somberly around the room.
Nina elbowed Willow gently, handing her a stack of copied of the drawings that the sketch artist had done from her descriptions, before moving to start handing them out. Willow followed suit.
“If you don’t recognize anything here, keep them with you and see if you stumble across something. If you do, don’t go in alone—call for back up. If you can’t get anyone, call me. I’ll come check it out with you. But I don’t want anyone going in alone. We’re up against unknowns here, and I’m not willing to put lives on the line needlessly,” Nick said, punctuating his words with a finger pokes in the air in front of him.
The officers all took time to study the sketches before putting them in pockets. Willow appreciated that her visions weren’t going to waste.
“Call me if you see anything out of the ordinary out there, all right, guys?” Nick repeated before dismissing the group with a wave of his hand. When the officers had filed out, he strode to where Nina, Willow and Alex stood at the rear of the room.
“Here’s hoping we find something,” he said.
~ ~
WILLOW MADE HER WAY THROUGH the precinct building and back to Nick’s office. She had a few thoughts that she wanted to run by him, but in front of his department seemed like a bad time to do so. The door to his office protested as she pushed it open, and she already had her mouth open to greet him when the sight of another man sitting in one of Nick’s chairs pulled her up short.
“Oh,” he said, clearly not expecting her to be who entered.
Willow eyed him carefully. He was a shifter, meaning he should have felt that she wasn’t human and therefore not Nick. Unless he was super new.
“I believe Detective Dukas should be up soon. He’s just finishing up with DCS downstairs,” she said, slowly pushing the door closed behind her. “That is who you’re waiting for, right?”
The man nodded, his smile friendly, though Willow still felt uneasy. Was he friend or foe?
“I should have called first. I know he’s always busy,” the shifter said. His voice betrayed a familiarity that most people wouldn’t have. And now that Willow took a good look at him, he favored Nick.
“Are you his brother, perhaps?” she asked, coming closer.
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Yeah, I’m his older brother, Chris. I’m surprised you know about me.” Pushing his chair back, he stood
and held out his hand for a shake.
Willow took it, not mentioning that Nick hadn’t said anything about a brother. “I see. And, do you know what I am?”
Chris watched her, pupils dilating as he inhaled slightly. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the action unless they were watching for it.
“Yeah, I do,” he said.
“I know what you are as well.” Something in his demeanor made her think this would be a reveal he wasn’t ready for. “And I won’t tell him if he doesn’t already know,” she added quickly. Chris sighed and sat back down. “Your secrets are safe with me, if you want to reveal them.”
Willow took a seat beside him. He seemed like he needed to talk, and believe it or not, a lot of what she was paid to do was listen. She was good at it, and exceptional at keeping people’s private lives private.
He stared at the opposite wall as he spoke. “I’ve been off the grid for the past few years with a pretty bad drug problem. Nick was the only person who never gave up on me, who answered when I called. He held on to the hope that I’d get clean one day. And I did.” He glanced at her with a smile.
“With help,” she said.
Chris nodded. “I caught it from some guy with a voracious habit. We shared needles a few too many times, I guess. I couldn’t figure out how the guy shot up that much and wasn’t braindead,” he said with a sad chuckle.
“His metabolism, and now yours, is so much faster than a human’s. The drug moves through your body at almost lightning speed,” she said, nodding.
“It made me get clean, whether I wanted to or not, initially. And being clean became something that I wanted to keep doing. I’ve got a job and place of my own, and I’m on my feet again. I wanted Nick to know, but not until I knew that I was okay.”
Willow smiled and put her hand over his. “That’s amazing. For what it’s worth from a total stranger, I’m proud of you,” she said.
“That actually does mean a lot.” He laughed.