Hearts of Darkness

by Kira Brady

  He drew another symbol on the book that looked like the letter M. “This is called Ehwaz. It should free her, if you get the chance.”

  “How will I know?”

  He shrugged. “If the Lady is willing, you’ll know.”

  “Trust my instincts, you mean?” They were still screaming, Run fast, run hard.

  “These things aren’t an exact science. Magic depends on the quality of soul. The power to manipulate the Aether. Even the weather. Dangerous stuff, magic.” He tossed the book on a shelf. “The ghost will be strongest at the death site. You know where that is?”

  “Not exactly, but I’ve been wanting to ask the officer who discovered the scene more questions,” Kayla said. “We can call him on our way to the hospital and ask him to show us the exact location where she died.”

  “The hospital?”

  “For a rape kit. I might trust you—”

  “You shouldn’t,” Hart growled.

  “—but I don’t trust Norgard. Come on, wolf man, let’s get this over with.”

  The hospital gave Kayla a clean bill of health—thank God. Hart had told her the truth. He might tell her not to trust him, but he hadn’t lied to her yet. They met Detective Cortez at Gas Works Park that afternoon. The old coal gasification plant was located on a spit of land that jutted into Lake Union. Gloom shrouded the park. Brown cylindrical towers rose from a sea of mist. A solitary seagull squawked overhead and flew off, abandoning them to the deserted factory. Yellow crime tape fluttered in the wind, the only cheery color amid the gray and brown.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” she said as Hart parked next to Cortez’s unmarked police cruiser.

  Hart got out of the car and sniffed the air. “Watch your back.”

  Cortez joined them. A younger officer with sandy brown hair, he had tired rings under his eyes and a persistent smoker’s cough.

  “I’m going to sniff around, see if I find anything.” Hart motioned to the water’s edge. “Yell if you need me.”

  “But—”

  “Scared, babe? He’ll take care of you, won’t ya, pal?” Hart’s black gaze seemed to pierce straight through Cortez. His smile showed all his teeth.

  Cortez swallowed. “She’s safe with me.”

  Hart took out a small brass spyglass and held it to his eye. He surveyed the park in a quick circle and came back to rest a beat on Cortez. “All clear.” He handed the glass to Kayla.

  She accepted the glass. “What is it?”

  “A nightlight of sorts. I search better alone.”

  He must need to change his shape, she realized. He didn’t want to do it in front of Cortez. She made herself smile. She didn’t need Hart to hold her hand. Really. She watched him fade into the mist and turned back to the policeman. “Ready when you are. This weather is weird. How did it get so dark so quickly?” She rubbed her arms.

  “Your guy’s a little intense, huh?”

  “He’s not mine.”

  Cortez made a noncommittal noise and motioned for Kayla to follow him into the park. They approached the main site of the factory: six rusty steel-plated towers connected by teetering walkways high in the air and numerous pipes. The stench of fish and salt blew in from Puget Sound. The wind passing between the towers howled.

  Kayla pulled her jacket tighter.

  “It’s always like this in the winter and early spring,” Cortez said. “Least we got sun breaks this morning. That’s pretty good for April. Anyway, two nights ago my partner and I got an anonymous tip that something big was going down at the Pump and Boiler Houses.” He pointed to two large wooden sheds to the left. Inside the shadowy doorways, pumps, steel-plated compressors and pipes huddled together against the dark. “Around dusk. Weather about like this. Low visibility. Damp. As soon as we parked, I got this twitch I get sometimes. You know, sixth-sense type of thing.” His tight expression dared her to disagree.

  She nodded. “I know what you mean.” She wouldn’t have, before. She would have discounted her instincts and convinced herself there was some other logical explanation.

  Cortez relaxed slightly. “Yeah, well, Sanders, he doesn’t hold with my twitches. Can’t file them in a report, see? He’s a good cop, but there isn’t enough manpower to follow up every time someone gets a feeling. My twitches, they’ve saved my ass more than once on the street. After the preliminary reports are in, though, most cases are locked tight.”

  “So, it’s not just my sister’s case. Your force doesn’t follow up any cases?”

  Cortez scowled. “Hey, there aren’t enough of us. Limited resources. Limited funds. We do our best. Dead people—they aren’t getting up anymore, no matter what we do. We focus on the murders we can prevent.”

  Kayla grudgingly admitted he had a point. She had seen the news reports. Worse than fictional Gotham. What could a bunch of half-crooked cops do against so much bloodshed?

  “I do my best with what I got, Ms. Friday,” Cortez said stiffly. “You people don’t hear about the ones we do save. The young girls in shipping containers we intercept before they disappear into the underground brothels. The perps so hyped up on drugs they got superhuman strength. For every one that slips through the cracks, we take down five more. But you only pay attention to the one that got away.”

  “I know. You do a great job. Thank you,” she said. A hostile Cortez could quickly turn into an unhelpful one.

  He led the way to the Pump and Boiler Houses. More rusty towers flanked the buildings to the right. “We found your sister in here.” The field light overhead sputtered and died, casting the industrial towers in gloom. He pulled a heavy flashlight out of his waist holder and switched it on. “I’ll tell you the truth: it looked like she was fleeing something. There were signs of a struggle. Scratches on her arms and neck, though my partner thought they were self-inflicted—”

  A shadow passed in the doorway of the Pump House, the silhouette of a woman. There and gone in the blink of an eye.

  Cortez froze with one hand on his holster. “Who’s there?”

  No one answered. There was no sound but the soft splash of water against the bulkhead and the whine of the wind through the towers.

  “I saw it too,” Kayla whispered.

  “Probably just a park-goer, but you never know. You stay here. I wouldn’t want your boyfriend on my case—”

  “He’s not mine,” she insisted. She wasn’t eager to follow Cortez. She didn’t want to be left alone in the mist, but Hart hadn’t returned. She didn’t have much choice. “I’ll be fine,” she said, more to herself than Cortez.

  “Sure, sure,” Cortez said.

  She heard a muffled clang. There was definitely someone—or something—out there.

  “Hello in there? This is a crime scene. You need to leave.” Cortez drew his weapon and, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other, ducked under the yellow police tape, entered the building and disappeared behind a fire engine red boiler.

  Minutes ticked by, but it felt like hours. A few drops of water fell from the sky onto Kayla’s face, startling her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Maybe if she ignored the fear creeping up her spine it would go away. She turned Hart’s spyglass over in her hand. A nightlight, he’d said. She held it to her eye and adjusted the small gears until her vision came into focus. Still, it was a little blurry. Lights and shadows played over the machinery of the park. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to see.

  A groan slid through the air. A scream should have been more alarming, but somehow that groan packed more terror.

  “Cortez?” It was too quiet. “Hart?” She looked around for Hart, but there was no sign of him. She called out again, but no one answered. If Cortez was injured, she could help. If Cortez was in danger, she couldn’t. If this were a horror movie, this is where the heroine would stupidly leave the house to investigate the strange noise outside. So many ifs.

  Her instincts said to wait, but her inner nurse said, “Get off your butt and go help the man.” If he was injured, ev
ery second counted. She tried calling again.

  Nothing.

  Crap.

  This was the moment that defined a person. It wasn’t enough to have the skills to save a life; you had to have the guts to act. She held up Hart’s spyglass one more time and peered into the Pump House. More flickering light was visible through the glass, but what did it mean? Pocketing it, she entered the doorway and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Cortez probably hadn’t heard her. Any minute now he would step back into view with a smile on his face and an all-clear. Nothing to be frightened of.

  “Cortez?” she called. Her voice echoed tinnily against the silent steel structures.

  Still nothing.

  The shed was a mausoleum of a bygone industrial age. The machines were silent sentries, fashioning aisles and rows the length of the building. The air felt heavy with dust and disuse, yet somehow alive. She could almost imagine energy crackling around her. She wiped her sweaty palms on her pants.

  Up ahead, a light bounced off a series of brass pipes. She circled around a massive boiler and found Cortez standing in the center of the aisle, flashlight hanging limply at his side, his back to her. He didn’t move, didn’t seem to hear Kayla coming up behind him.

  “Detective Cortez.” She reached out and touched the man on the shoulder.

  Cortez turned, slowly, awkwardly, as if his limbs weren’t quite coordinated with his brain. He stared at Kayla blankly.

  And she knew that something was hideously wrong.

  Chapter 7

  Cortez’s eyes were dead. Lifeless, and yet hungry. As if that made any sense. Christ, the man looked like he was in a waking coma. The edges of his mouth unfurled. There was a whole lot of scary in that smile. She swallowed.

  “Kayla,” he said.

  Detective Jake Cortez had never called her by her first name.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Cortez didn’t blink. “Come with me.” His voice was different. Hissing. Breathy.

  Then he spasmed. Groaned. His hands came up to his neck, scratching, clawing, trying to peel off his skin. “Get it out!” he cried, his voice normal once again. Angry red grooves appeared on his neck and face. Blood beneath his fingernails.

  Kayla rushed to help him. “Stop hurting yourself. Stop it!”

  He flicked her off like an ant, and she tumbled to the floor. The concrete scraped her palms and knees.

  “I can tassste your fear, sssissster,” he hissed. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

  This wasn’t Detective Cortez. Something else peered out at her. Kayla licked her lips. “Who are you? What have you done to Detective Cortez?”

  His eyes popped open so wide the whites showed all around. His legs moved, awkwardly, as if pulled by strings of an invisible puppeteer.

  He had called her sister.

  “Desi?” Kayla crawled backward. Desi wouldn’t hurt her.

  He lurched forward.

  She flipped to her feet and bolted toward the entrance. The semi-aisles had turned into a maze. She tripped over a lever and slid on a steel plate in the floor. Dead ends all around her. She glanced back and saw the creature reaching for her. Grabbing the spoke of a giant wheel, she let momentum swing her around the corner. Not fast enough. Hands gripped her legs. She clung to the wheel as she was yanked back. The cold metal cut into her skin. Her shoulder joints stretched painfully. No letting go. She kicked and felt her foot connect with a sickening snap.

  The creature hissed and raked its claws down her leg. Her sweatpants ripped.

  “Help!” she screamed. “Help, Hart!” The deserted shed soaked it up, played it back. No one could hear her. The creature squeezed, and pain radiated up her leg. Oh, Lord. Her eyes watered. Its grip was an iron vise, cutting off circulation to her foot, crushing the delicate bones until the verge of breaking.

  Her sweaty hands slipped free of the wheel. The world flipped. Gravity pulled at her head, her body suspended in air. The monster clutched her ankle and shook her upside down. Her hands raked the ground, but there was nothing to grab on to. She could only hang like meat in a butcher’s rack. Helpless.

  “Desi,” she pleaded, “if you’re in there, if you can hear me, please, let me go.”

  The thing didn’t answer. It dragged her as it marched back down the aisle. Its limbs were becoming more coordinated, as if with practice it was learning to use Cortez’s ligaments and muscles. Kayla’s head thumped against a brass pipe. Her vision blurred as pain shot through her skull. Something wet ran down her hairline.

  This was it. Twenty-five years of planning, saving, reasoning. All for nothing. Meticulous. Rational. Practical. She’d always been proud when those words were applied to her, but suddenly they lacked heat. She’d missed out, always playing it safe.

  She should have kissed Hart when she had the chance.

  The creature stopped at a giant engine. She closed her eyes and immediately sensed a blackness reaching toward her. It seemed to be attracted by her helplessness. Shadows rippled within Cortez’s body, down his arm to where he gripped her ankle. They pulsed against her skin, slimy and tainted.

  Hart’s medallion still hung from her neck. It banged against her forehead as she was jostled upside down. Now it heated. Light sparkled through it, like a thousand tiny stars. Reacting instinctively, she pulled at that light and reached deep inside herself to find more. A light that was her. Soul or essence or life force, she wasn’t sure. She only knew that she couldn’t let the blackness overtake her.

  She grabbed hold of that light and pushed against the shadows with all her might. The creature startled. It stumbled, and they fell together, hitting the metal pipes that fed the engine on the way down. She grabbed a pipe and felt skin scrape away. Her blood splattered the floor.

  Suddenly, a large timber wolf sailed over her and slammed into the creature. His black fur stood on end. A white stripe ran between his ears and down his neck. Hart had come for her. She’d never seen him shift before, but she knew it was him.

  The Wolf growled and snapped its jaws over Cortez’s arm. The thing in Cortez’s body roared. It swept its other arm around the Wolf’s throat and squeezed. The two rolled across the aisle, locked in combat.

  Kayla crawled out of the way. Her leg burned. She was pretty sure it was broken.

  The Wolf ripped out a chunk of skin, spraying his muzzle and the front of Cortez’s uniform with dark red blood. By all logic, the human should have fallen easily under the Wolf’s attack, but Cortez was no longer fully human. The thing possessing his body seemed to grow stronger on the pain. She imagined it would keep fighting until the Wolf severed every ligament, effectively cutting the strings of its puppet.

  A shot rang out and the Wolf stumbled. Somehow Cortez had managed to shoot his gun while partially holstered. Hart whimpered in pain, but dove again at Cortez, this time knocking the gun away. The weapon ricocheted off the engine and spun toward Kayla, stopping inches from her outstretched fingertips.

  She pushed forward and grabbed it. A gun. She didn’t know how to shoot a gun. It shouldn’t be hard—just aim and pull the trigger, right? Sweat dripped into her eyes, blurring her vision. The Wolf was in the way. Locked together, they moved too quickly. Blood flowed from the Wolf’s foreleg, leaving a trail crisscrossing the aisle.

  She abhorred violence. She aimed. The gun shook in her hand. Her finger squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  She was almost dizzy with relief. She hadn’t shot Hart or Cortez. Hadn’t taken anyone’s life, aptrgangr, werewolf, or whatever.

  The Wolf tore out Cortez’s throat. The fight was over in an instant. Blood coated the cement floor. Blood dripped from the brass boiler. Blood ran in rivulets down the pipes that fed the engine.

  She wanted to vomit.

  The Wolf collapsed in a pool of blood. She crawled forward until she could see his chest rise and fall in shallow breaths. Pain made her eyesight fuzzy. She thought she saw a firefly alight on his
nose, then another and another until he glowed. The glow flowed up his muzzle and fell down his back, a golden wave that dissolved fur and fang and left sun-kissed skin in its wake.

  When the glow faded, sprawled on the floor lay a thoroughly masculine, completely naked, gorgeously familiar man. His skin was rosy from cold and exertion. The gold armbands did nothing for modesty. If anything, they accentuated the godlike perfection of his muscled physique.

  “See anything you like?” Hart growled. His eyes were closed, but a smirk lurked in the corner of his mouth.

  Kayla had to swallow twice before her voice would work. “What took you so long?”

  He scowled, but instead of a snappy comeback he launched himself. One moment he was on the ground, and the next he was on top of her. His large, hot body pressed her into the floor. His hungry lips descended on hers, tasting of mint and pine.

  She couldn’t help herself. She needed reassurance that he was alive and whole. Her fingers searched for injuries, but all they found were the chiseled muscle and taut skin of his back. Adrenaline rushed through her veins, relief and madness all coiled together. The world narrowed to touch and taste. His tongue in her mouth. Mint and pine. His calloused hands on her breasts. Kneading and wanting. His leg pressing open her thighs. Wet heat and tingling need. The hard masculine part of him settled firmly there, where the heat centered, where the wanting built, like a puzzle piece falling into place.

  Touch me, she thought. She stroked his arms. Her fingers slid over those strange gold armbands that never seemed to leave him, even when he Changed. His left arm was wet and sticky. He jerked his arm away.

  “You’ve been shot,” she said, guilt swamping the heat in her belly. How could she forget he was injured? He made her lose all sense. Her own aches and pains rushed back to her. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t let me maul you like this. You must be in terrible pain.”

  Hart gave a wry smile. “Must have slipped my mind.” He rested his forehead against hers for a moment. His breath came as fast as her own. The sky peeked through a hole in the roof of the shed. He slowly pushed himself up and achingly stood, naked and proud in the gray light.