E.V.I.E.: 13 Slayers, 13 Missions

by Lexi C. Foss

  A more blatant lie had never been told, maybe not in the history of the world. Yellow lines of crime scene tape unfurled around the perimeter. Spectators jockeyed for position. I looked for a way out. Caleb wouldn’t be among those who loitered at the scene—if he knew what was best for him, he’d be long gone by now. I had a lot of ground to make up if I wanted any hope of finding out the truth of what had happened.

  Getting out of the mess of people was harder than getting in had been. Mass confusion had set in, and I often pushed against a curious tide. At last, I stepped into a quiet alcove off the main street, closed my eyes, and searched for Caleb. He was out there; I could feel him. I just didn’t know where.

  Then, so suddenly it shocked my senses, I found him. He was headed north, away from Langley. Back toward Oak Harbor. And he was running like hell.

  4

  Alex

  I had only caught a glimpse of the victim, and I knew Rhys would probably be annoyed about that. There were no impromptu crime scene photos on my phone, sneaked before the police arrived. No preliminary assessment of evidence. Basically, I hadn’t managed to do a single piece of anything she’d trained me to do.

  But I thought I had a pretty good excuse. In the insanity of the aftermath, I noticed a single dark shape break away from the milling crowd and sprint off toward the northern end of Langley. Acting on an immediate hunch, I gave chase.

  The suspect was tall and lean, dressed in dark jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. From the back, he looked indistinguishable from the vamp I caught in the alley the day before, and at first I kicked myself for not apprehending him then. Imagine my surprise when the man I was chasing threw a glance over his shoulder and I realized he was, in fact, someone new. Still tall, still pale, still definitely of the nightwalking variety, but his eyes held more panic than arrogance, and his hair was cut short.

  “Stop!” I barked. The word leapt from my throat like a bullet from the barrel of a gun, but it wasn’t enough to slow him down, let alone halt him. On the contrary, he seemed to lean harder into his run, inching farther ahead. “Oh no you don’t,” I growled. My chest and legs burned, but the pain only fed the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

  The world flashed by in a swirl of colors. All I could hear was the cadence of my breath and my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I had him in my sights, the bastard. Locked and loaded. The only thing left to do was close the distance.

  But that was easier said than done. The way he bolted, vaulting over gates, fences, and flowerpots as though they were nothing, told me the guy was a pureblood. He moved with the supernatural grace of one who was directly touched by a dark force of the aether. A few more times, he shot looks back at me, growing increasingly vexed by the fact that I continued to keep pace. The last time, I smiled grimly.

  The thing that bothered me was, I couldn’t gain any ground. The vampire’s strides never faltered. Each step was as sure as the last. He might as well have been floating, for all the ground appeared to affect him. Despite his youthful features, he had plainly borne his abilities for a long time—so long that I wondered if I could keep up.

  He made a vague attempt to shake me off just outside of the heart of Langley, but gave up and veered inland, to the west. I assumed he was headed toward the forest to take shelter. It wasn’t a bad plan; Whidbey Island’s forests were dense and wild. He could get lost in there for days, or longer if he wasn’t afraid to swim.

  “Shit.” I scowled. The wind, made bitter by velocity, whipped through my hair, tugging it from its restraints. The loosened strands streamed across my eyes. I shook them away. Did I really have the time to be tracking an unconfirmed nobody into the woods? A murder had just taken place in Langley. What if this guy turned out to be a red herring? As much as I knew in my heart that it couldn’t be a simple coincidence, the fact remained that I wasn’t going to catch him. He was locked into his flight response, practically unstoppable, and he was ditching town pretty quick.

  With great reluctance, I let myself slow down. I did not, however, take my eyes off that cowardly, shrinking black speck in the distance until he was totally gone. The air rushed in and out of my lungs. I started the walk back slowly, giving my pulse time to return to normal. This time, Rhys got a text instead of a call. I knew if I spoke to him directly, he’d want to discuss things. I didn’t want to talk about it right then.

  I just wanted to get the hell back to Langley and hear what the police had to say.

  I arrived on an all but empty scene. The body had been removed, its position denoted by a white outline. Blood had soaked into the ground in great quantities, drying and flaking in pools. The scent lingered unpleasantly in the air.

  “I’m sorry, miss.” A uniformed officer came up to stop me from going any closer. “You can’t get through here. They’re still processing.”

  “Sorry.” I stepped back. “I’m a witness here, sort of. Saw a guy leaving the scene at high speed.”

  The cop furrowed his brow. “Really.” He pulled me to the side and motioned for a nearby colleague. “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “Pretty good, yeah.” I shrugged. “I just chased him for like, a mile. He’s moving inland.”

  They exchanged a look. “This is potentially valuable information,” the first one told me. “Would you be willing to come to the station and make a statement?”

  “Of course.” Did I want to? Absolutely not. I understood the fundamentals of the situation already, probably better than they did. A vamp had gone haywire in the middle of the day and taken down one of the festival actors. Giving a statement to help along their vastly underpowered investigation would only result in wasted time on my part.

  But all of us in the Org had been meticulously instructed in the art of maintaining a normal façade for the uninitiated. Keeping our little underworld a secret was as vital a part of the job as culling the vamp populations. No matter how tedious and unfulfilling, I had to do it. Otherwise, the risk of these cops stumbling into the midst of something they weren’t prepared for was just too great.

  “I appreciate it, miss.” The officer guided me toward a patrol car on the outskirts of the scene. As he opened the back door, I paused to take one final look around. “I’m sorry you had to see something like this,” he told me, genuine regret in his voice.

  I sighed. “Me too.” The streets were sad and empty now, save for the few stragglers still trying to capture a memento mori on camera. Shaking my head, I slipped into the car and stared through the cage behind the front seat. Not twenty feet behind me, an innocent man had bled out on the street, brought down by the very monster I’d sworn to defeat.

  The sting of failure made itself comfortably at home in my ribcage. I swallowed hard. Before this, my track record had been so good. Almost perfect, really. Not since my junior days had I suffered such a significant loss.

  Rhys was fond of reminding us never to take our losses personally. He’d tell me that yet again the next time I spoke to him. But this one? I couldn’t help taking it a little personally.

  “That’s what you get for overconfidence, Alex,” I whispered to myself.

  “You say something?” The cop’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.

  “No.” I sat back in the seat, eyes trained on what I could see of the spot where the poor man’s heart had stopped beating. I wanted to remember exactly where it was, what it looked like now with the scarlet staining on the pavers. I couldn’t forget until the case was over. And if my intuition was right, we still had a long way to go.

  The police station lay in the opposite direction the vamp had fled, next to the library and in the same building as City Hall. It was a small, nondescript brick building, more like a house than a station. A plain blue sign positioned between the two second story windows proclaimed it Langley City Hall. Not much to speak of, but Langley hardly had an army to provide for. Two of the three permanent officers were already with me, and both reserves had been called to the scene.

  The offic
er escorting me inside lifted his cap off his head and ran his fingers through thinning hair. He blew out his breath. “This whole thing is surreal. I don’t know what to say.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “Things like this don’t happen here.”

  I felt sorry for him. He had no idea, but I knew what a lie that was. Whidbey Island had long been a strange sort of hotspot for supernatural shenanigans. As tourism boomed on the shores of the Puget Sound, we battled monsters in the underbelly no one ever saw. The first thing I learned from the Org was never to lift that veil under any circumstances.

  “They sure don’t.” I continued the lie.

  The officer led me into their one interrogation room. It was a closet-sized space, and about as hospitable. The overhead light cast everything weirdly yellow.

  “You want anything?” he asked. “Coffee? Pop? Water?”

  “You know, a coffee would be awesome right about now.”

  The guy chuckled humorlessly. “I feel that. Coming right up.” He departed. I sat quietly in the shitty folding chair, breathing the stifling air of that room and thinking about how things had changed in just a few short hours. Rhys called me Thursday morning, and here I was at the police station just over forty-eight hours later.

  I checked my phone. He had texted me back, confirming his knowledge of the murder.

  “Do your duty, Alex. We’ll cover you until you can get back into the field.”

  Instead of replying right away, I took stock of my latest surroundings. The only camera was a box mounted in the corner that looked like it hadn’t been maintained in about a year. Still, I could see an LED blinking, and that meant I shouldn’t take the chance. I set my phone face down on the table, folded my hands, and waited.

  “All right, here we go.” The door swung open to admit the same officer, now wielding two Styrofoam cups. “Grabbed you some accoutrements so you can doctor it up however you like.” He placed a handful of single serving creamers and packets of sugar in front of me.

  “Thanks.” I smiled and looked at the badge on his chest. “Officer Randolph, is it?” Although my work was technically in the realm of law enforcement, my specific duties rarely brought me into close contact with the local branch. I liked this guy, but he was no match for an angry vamp, or even a regular one.

  “At your service.” He sat down in the other chair, ripped open a sugar packet, and poured it into his cup. “Now, it sounds like you’ve got a story to tell me.”

  I laughed slightly. Buddy, if you only knew. “I suppose that’s right.”

  “Mind if I keep it for the records?” An old recorder sat at the far end of the tabletop. He pulled it closer.

  “Go ahead.” I watched him check the tape. The buttons went down. Officer Randolph spoke the time and the date. “We have—what’s your name, young lady?”

  “Alex Brighton.”

  “We have Alex Brighton with us today. Start from the beginning, if you would, Alex.”

  I took a sip of my coffee, a deep breath, and then I started to talk. “I came downtown for the first day of the Mystery Weekend…”

  5

  Alex

  It took me a little over an hour to recount my day, up to the pursuit of the fleeing suspect, for Officer Randolph. He listened intently, his face a mask of serious consternation. After I was finished, he scribbled a final volley of notes and asked if I’d help them put together a composite photo of the man. Even though I knew they’d never find him, that they shouldn’t find him, I agreed. That took another three hours of leafing through a binder full of laminated pictures of eyes and ears and noses. A lot of work for a result that wouldn’t show.

  By the time they let me go, the sun had set over Whidbey Island. Somebody had brought my bike to the station and I walked it out, savoring the freshness of the cold night air. The close air of the interrogation room plus two or three more coffees had resulted in the beginnings of a headache. I needed desperately to shower and sleep. Things would look better in the morning.

  “Hey.”

  I stopped. The first wave of brand new tension ebbed the moment I realized the voice belonged to a woman, but my guard stayed up. She stepped into the pool of light beneath the overhang at the front of the building.

  “Can I help you?” She looked too young to be lurking around outside City Hall at night. Her hair, a voluminous overflow of loose, pale pink curls, gleamed softly. She was cute, a real girl-next-door type. I just didn’t have any patience or energy left for another round of weirdness.

  “I know it’s not an amazing time,” she began apologetically. “And forgive me for saying this, but you look exhausted.”

  “I had a long day.” I popped up the bike’s kickstand and leaned on the handlebars, looking at her. “Like, a really long day. And I would love to go home and take a shower.”

  She returned my gaze unflinchingly. I started to think that maybe I’d judged her wrong. “Can I walk you back to your place?” Her face turned from deadly serious to sunny and sweet with just the simple addition of a smile. “I think it’d be best for people to stick together for a while, don’t you? And, I want to talk to you about the murder.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” I held up a hand. “I think you gave me whiplash. I don’t even know your name. Let’s start with that.”

  “Oh, right.” She laughed, twirling a lock of hair around her fingers. Then she held out her hand for me to shake. “I’m Brina Adams. Criminal Justice undergraduate and free-agent slayer in the Pacific Northwest. Mostly Seattle right now. Sometimes I go down to Portland if they need a little extra help.”

  I frowned at her, leaving the skepticism evident on my face. “A free agent, you say? So you’re not with the Org?”

  “Oh God, no.” Brina looked at me as if I’d just sprouted a third head. “I’m not saying we need to fix what isn’t broken. People should do what works best for them. But I firmly believe there’s still room within the current slayer infrastructure for individual contractors. Freelancers, I guess you could say.”

  I raised an eyebrow, pushing my bike. “Some would just say opportunists.”

  She shot back immediately. “I don’t think that’s fair. I can hold onto my morals without wanting to be overseen by a whole board.”

  “It’s not a board here,” I reminded her. “It’s just one mainly, he’s generally pretty chill. He deals with anyone higher up, not us.”

  Brina was nonplussed. “Like I said, to each her own. I’m not comfortable with that level of close supervision.” Her luminescent hair bounced gently with every step.

  I wanted to tell her she wouldn’t get very far in the slayer ranks with that kind of attitude, but I bit my tongue. “Okay, fine. Show me your ID and we’ll call it even.”

  The girl gave me a sardonic, long-suffering look, but I stood firm. The incident at the festival had been too public not to be news. She could’ve easily faked her way through a couple waves of irrelevant tidbits. Eventually, she reached up and tugged her collar down to reveal the small crest tattooed in the crook between her neck and shoulder. I counted the symbols; a sword, a shield, a star.

  “Well, Coach?” she teased. “Did I pass? Will you put me in?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I barely had the energy to get snarky with her. “What do you want to know?” I expected her to think for a moment or two, but her first question came right away.

  “Tell me about the guy you were chasing. Did you get close enough to see his face?”

  “How do you know about that?” I hadn’t told anyone other than the police about that guy, and I didn’t think there were too many people who could have paid attention to me going after him. I had heard of slayers touched with clairvoyance, but never met one in person. Briefly, I wondered if all the hearsay could be true.

  “I saw you,” she declared. “Come on, you didn’t think that chase flew completely under the radar, did you?”

  I glanced away, irritated. “Well, I didn’t catch him, so I guess I kind of hoped it would.”

  B
rina pursed her lips. “Don’t feel bad. He was going like a bat out of hell. I don’t think I could’ve caught up to him either.” She patted my shoulder. “I thought you did really well. And I admire you for coming back to town instead of tracking him all over creation. A lot of folks I know wouldn’t have done the same.”

  “Langley has all of three permanent officers on staff. I’m not going on an impromptu road trip while there might be a murderer among them.”

  Brina’s eyes sharpened. “Okay. Then you’re saying you don’t think the perp you just chased out of town is the murderer.”

  “No. I’m acknowledging it’s possible he isn’t. Vamps don’t go out on the town one at a time, usually.”

  She conceded the point. “That’s true. Plus, I have to assume you got my pictures from your boss.”

  I blinked. “Those are yours?”

  “Yep!” A note of pride colored her voice. “I took ‘em with my phone. These new smart cameras are great, aren’t they?” Without waiting for me to answer, she continued. “Anyway, I sent them to your cell because I was hoping someone could come up with an ID for that last one.” She glanced sidelong at me. “You know the one I mean.”

  How could I not? “He’s not the one who ran out today,” I said automatically. “In case that’s what you’re thinking. The runner was younger. Shorter hair. And a whole different vibe.”

  “Huh.” Brina fell silent for a moment as she considered it. “That makes sense, actually. I don’t think a vamp who practically sat for his damn portrait would just turn tail and beat it once the pressure’s on.” Again, she gave me a look. “You’re sure you don’t know the guy in the picture?”

  I bristled. The way she phrased the question got under my skin. “Why would I lie about that? We don’t protect vamps. I mean, we don’t protect anything other than innocent people. But especially not vamps.”

  “I’m sorry. That was a little bold of me, huh?” Brina smiled ruefully. “Sometimes my mouth jumps ahead of my brain. I’ll work on it.”