Hell's Belles (Damned Girl Book 3)

by Clare Kauter

  I peered into the goblin’s empty eye sockets, shining the light directly in so I could get a better view.

  “Oh, Nessa,” said Henry, sounding utterly repulsed.

  “I love it when you say my name in that tone, Henry. It makes me feel so wanted.” The remaining flesh and the bone of the sockets was damaged, obviously from the killer gouging out the eyeballs, but there was something peculiar about the injuries. Apart from the overall freakiness of removing someone’s eyeballs, I mean. (Not that I could talk, really, what with the disembowelling I’d already done that day.)

  “Pfft, don’t talk to me about feeling wanted,” said Henry.

  I sighed and turned to face him. “Is there something you want to say to me, Henry?”

  “Yeah, there is,” he said. “I’d get all up in your face right now but I’m worried if I get any closer I might vomit.”

  “Wow, Henry,” I said, genuinely shocked. “Rude.”

  “Not closer to you, you idiot. Closer to the corpse.”

  Oh. Right.

  “Oh,” I said. “OK, that’s noted. I’ll pretend you’re yelling in my face then.”

  “Not yelling,” said Henry. “I’d be speaking in a calm and measured manner, but close enough that you could tell I was really pissed.”

  I sighed. “Sure, Henry. I’ll pretend you’re being super tough.”

  “I am super tough!”

  “OK, tough guy! Tell me about your feelings like I know you want to.”

  He took a deep breath. “Well… I’m hurt.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “I’m not done!”

  “Oh, sorry. Please continue.”

  “You’re so annoying. Why did I ever like you?”

  My jaw dropped. “OK, that was definitely about me and not the corpse.”

  “Well spotted, genius.”

  “Don’t hold anything back, Henry. Tell me what you really think.” My voice had grown a little bit louder by this point. Alright, a lot louder.

  “You just kissed me to try and get your licence quicker! I thought we were friends!”

  “I did not!”

  “Did too!”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Then why did you kiss me?”

  “Because I wanted to kiss you!”

  He looked taken aback. “Oh,” he said.

  “What, it didn’t occur to you that that might be the reason?”

  He shrugged. “Not really. I mean, I thought that at the time, but you haven’t talked to me since I lost my job.”

  “Henry, every time I called you, you pretended to be your own voicemail.”

  “You say that like you tried it a lot.”

  “I called you thirty-eight times!”

  “Exactly! Is that all I’m worth to you?”

  I took a deep breath. “Henry, this is ridiculous. I thought you were just annoyed at me because kissing me meant you lost your job. I didn’t think you thought I was just using you.”

  “Wait, you thought I was that horrible that I’d blame you for me losing my job?”

  “You thought I was horrible enough to use you for a licence!”

  “I guess neither of us trust each other, then.”

  “I guess not.”

  That was becoming something of a pattern in my relationships. Well, I say ‘relationships’. Really I just meant ‘guys I had kissed a single time and then argued with’.

  Henry and I glared at each other in silence. Well, I assumed he was glaring too. It really was very dark in this alley.

  “We done?” I asked.

  “Oh, we’re more than done,” Henry responded. I was impressed with the comeback, but seeing as it was being used on me I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to congratulate him on it. Instead I turned back to the body to continue my examination. However, I was soon interrupted by the clip-clop of approaching hooves on cobblestones. I groaned loudly. That could only mean one thing.

  “There you are,” called Dick from the end of the alley, silhouetted by the light from the street behind him. “What are you doing?”

  Henry made a disgusted noise. “They replaced me with you?”

  Dick strode closer. “Ah, Henry. You’re looking a little worse for wear these days. I guess that’s what being chewed up and spat out by the person you’re supposed to be examining does to you.”

  “She didn’t chew me up and spit me out,” said Henry. “When people kiss, they usually just touch lips, maybe tongues. There’s very little tooth involved. Maybe one day when you finally find someone brave enough to willingly spend time with you, you’ll find that out.”

  “Henry, that was the single best thing I’ve ever heard you say,” I said. “I forgive you for calling me a heartless bitch.”

  “I never –”

  But Dick cut him off. Apparently his attention had been grabbed by the figure I was knelt beside. Well, I say ‘figure’. I mean ‘mangled corpse’.

  “What the hell have you done?”

  Chapter Five

  He was staring in horror at the goblin corpse I was kneeling beside. In all the excitement I’d almost forgotten about the whole murder thing.

  “It’s a dead guy,” I said. “I tripped over him in the dark.”

  “What, and that killed him?”

  “No! He was dead when I got here.”

  “You think after what I saw today I’m going to believe that?” he snarled.

  At that point, Henry chimed in. “What you saw today?”

  “She murdered a demon right in front of me.”

  “In self-defence,” I said. “Because you released him from his bonds. And Satan’s not even pressing charges, so –”

  “You’re dangerous. And not only that, but I could tell you enjoyed killing him.”

  “I did not enjoy killing him! It was the only way I could take him down and save those people, seeing as you weren’t helping out at all.”

  “I could see it in your eyes. The bloodlust. It was like you were possessed.”

  My vision had adjusted to the dim light now and I could see the glint in Dick’s eye as he told me this. I kept my expression intentionally neutral and tried to sound natural when I said, “Whatever, psycho.”

  “I will find out what you are,” said Dick. “Your magic is different. You aren’t human.”

  “I think you’ll find you’re the one who’s not human,” I said, hoping desperately that he’d shut up.

  “Purple…” Henry whispered, frowning at the ground. He flicked his eyes to me. “Your magic is purple, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly. “You’ve seen me use magic before.”

  “Not to attack someone.”

  Not that he remembered, at least.

  “No, at the moment that distinction belongs to Dick. A Dickstinction, you could call it.”

  Henry was back to frowning at the ground. Either he was fascinated by the cobblestones or he was trying very hard to figure something out. That was not a good sign. Henry could not be allowed to figure things out. That would be very bad.

  “Anyway, enough about me,” I said.

  “First time you’ve ever said that,” said Dick. I glared at him.

  “Back to the corpse. Henry, do you know how long –”

  “Nessa!” called a woman’s voice from down the end of the alley. I leaned to the side so I could see around Dick. At the mouth of the alley I could see two figures – one petite, shorter than me, and the other lanky and looming – running towards us. Hecate and Daisy had arrived.

  “Oh good,” said Dick when he saw them. “All the fuck ups have arrived.” He turned back to me. “Just in time for you to confess to murder.”

  I rolled my eyes, although the gesture was probably wasted in the almost pitch black alleyway.

  “She didn’t murder anyone,” said Daisy, immediately leaping to my defence. In fact, she almost seemed a little too defensive. She wasn’t starting to remember that incident in the forest, was she? If so, it seemed odd
that she’d lie to The Department about what I’d done – although with grabbers it was hard to know. Most magicals wouldn’t mind dishing out a bit of vigilante justice of their own when it came to grabbers.

  Maybe she was starting to remember – and maybe Henry was too. Henry’s question about the purple magic earlier had thrown me off. He’d been hit with a clouding spell, and a potent one as well, so he really shouldn’t have been able to recollect my… misdemeanours. Certainly not this soon after they’d happened. He should have still been going about his day in blissful ignorance, and yet here he was, seemingly struggling with a memory teetering on the brink of being remembered.

  Daisy was another matter. She was a police officer, but she’d hinted to me that she knew more about me than she’d let on to the others. I’d mentioned ‘the king’ to her – a title that seemed to follow me around like the plague, although I had no idea who it referred to – and she’d seemed to know what it meant. Trouble was, I hadn’t had a moment alone with her since to ask what that meaning was.

  And even if she was on my side now, I doubted she still would be if she found out that I was the one harbouring the Doomstone that she’d been put under investigation for losing.

  “Thank you, Daisy,” I said. “See? I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “I trust her even less than I trust you,” said Dick.

  “That was about the closest thing to a compliment you’ve ever given me,” I said, but he ignored me.

  “Three disgraced officials who couldn’t pick the thief out from right under their noses. Excuse me if I don’t trust their judgment when they proclaim your innocence. You could have murdered someone in front of them and still gotten away with it.”

  I was suddenly gripped by a nearly overwhelming urge to gulp, but I held it in. Gulp meant guilt. I had to play it cool.

  “Well, you can insult them however much you want, but it’s pretty obvious that I had nothing to do with this murder. I have no blood on me whatsoever – as far as I can see in this light – which is kind of what you’d expect with such a hands on murder.”

  “You could have changed your clothes. Had a shower.”

  “Do I look like I’ve showered?”

  They all wrinkled their noses, appraising me. Then they shook their heads and said, almost as one, “No.”

  “Wow, thanks guys,” I replied. “You’re doing wonders for my self confidence. Still, my point stands. Seeing as I’m not covered in blood and I’m a grubby little lass who obviously hasn’t bathed tonight, I can’t be the killer.”

  Dick didn’t say anything, which I took to mean that he knew I was right but didn’t want to admit it. Daisy and Hecate made their way over to examine the body. Daisy put her hands together over the body, almost as if praying (although obviously not doing so, because here in Hell that was like signing your own death warrant), and then pulled her palms apart, fingertips still touching. Between her hands a glowing white ball of energy had formed. She gradually pulled her hands completely apart and then with a gesture sent the glowing orb up above our heads so it would cast light down upon the scene like a magical floodlight.

  I watched in amazement as she did it. Faery magic was always impressive, or so I’d heard – I’d only ever encountered Daisy and some ice elves who were trying to kill me. (I’d met goblins too, but they were dark fae and tended to be shunned by the others of their kind because their magic was different.) Nevertheless, where Daisy was concerned, the stories about faery magic seemed to hold true. She was a nymph and her energy was beautiful.

  Now that there was a light bulb hanging above our heads, we had a much better view of the crime scene. The body was splayed out on the ground, arms outstretched and legs long, in the shape of a cross. Satan was going to love this one. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and marked all over with little cuts. I grimaced. The cause of death wasn’t immediately obvious, but I really hoped it wasn’t a) having his eyeballs gouged out, or b) death by a thousand paper-cuts. The poor guy. I didn’t know what he’d done to piss his murderer off, but nobody deserved this.

  Hecate and Daisy were also examining the body while Henry hung back, sipping the coffee they’d brought him and trying to avoid looking at the body. He was looking a little green at the gills (metaphorical gills – he was still in gorilla form) and was probably trying to fight back waves of nausea.

  Dick was also standing a little bit away from the body, but as far as I could tell it was not because he was nauseous. He was keeping a close eye on me, glaring at me and starting every time I moved even an inch. I held in a sigh to prevent Dick from tackling me to the ground or something. Ever since he’d seen me kill that demon he’d been super on edge. And the fact that I’d later found another body hadn’t helped. I still wasn’t sure if he believed that I’d found the body lying where it was and not put it there in the first place.

  Hecate, Daisy and Henry hadn’t even bothered questioning me as if I could be guilty. They all trusted me. I bit the inside of my lip, suddenly feeling my trademark guilt return. They trusted me even though I’d murdered people in front of them. They trusted me even though, after everything, I was the one who had the Doomstone. I was the one who’d cost Henry his job and caused the other two to be under investigation. By all accounts, I was the bad guy in this story. (OK, maybe not all accounts. I hadn’t killed the goblin, at least.) And yet despite everything they trusted me.

  I was no better than Ed.

  “Exsanguinated,” I heard Hecate say. That snapped me back to reality.

  “Vampire?” I asked.

  She shook her head gravely. “I’m afraid not. The cuts were used to bleed him out, as far as I can tell.”

  “And the eyes?”

  “We won’t know for sure if that was done pre- or post-mortem until the scene of crime officers arrive. They’re on their way.” Despite the gravity of what she was saying, I detected a hint of excitement in Hecate’s voice. She caught my quizzical expression and said, “Sorry, I know I should be more sombre. It’s just that we haven’t been allowed to handle a new case in a while. Since we’re here, though, The Department has allowed us to investigate.” She lowered her voice. “This is our chance to fix our reputations. It’s a high-profile one, too. No one wants to mess with the tourism industry in Hell.”

  “Because it’s so good for the economy?”

  “Because otherwise Satan might get angry. And when she gets angry…”

  I nodded. I knew how that sentence ended: not well.

  “Well, congratulations.” That guilt was still nibbling at my stomach.

  “May I offer my assistance?” asked Henry.

  “Pfft, you?” said Dick. “What have you got to offer, you drunk has-been?”

  “A lot more than you, Dick,” I said.

  “We all know that what he offered you got him fired,” Dick replied.

  “We’d love to have you on board, Henry,” said Daisy. “We were hoping you’d agree to assist us.”

  Hecate nodded. “Yes, we’ve actually already cleared it with The Department. At the moment you’re just working as our consultant, but if this goes well, they said there maybe an opportunity in it for you, too.”

  Dick looked unimpressed. “You realise that they’re throwing you under the bus, don’t you?”

  Hecate frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Cops don’t go down very well in Hell. They don’t want to send in anyone good in case it all goes pear shaped and you end up mauled to death by a pack of werewolves. They’re probably hoping the local criminal element will clean up all their disgraced officials.” He laughed maliciously. “Poor idiots.”

  “Well, they actually suggested that you help us, Richard,” said Daisy. “So make of that what you will.”

  His jaw dropped open. “Wha…”

  I laughed. “Brilliant,” I said. “If we do get attacked, at least we’ve got a spare to throw to the wolves while we make our getaway.”

  “What are you –”

/>   “I assume I’m invited?” I said, looking at Daisy and Hecate. They were in this mess because of me. Helping them find the murderer so they would be back in their bosses’ good books was the least I could do. (Like, really. There was a lot more I could do. Like hand in the stone.)

  “Of course,” they said.

  Henry walked over to join us by the body. “We’d better get to work.” He was looking a lot more sober and a lot less ill now. Amazing what a little bit of validation could do for a hangover.

  “First step is finding out who he is,” I said. “Daisy, do you recognise him?”

  She shook her head. “No. Ordinarily I’d suggest that we search his pockets, but that doesn’t seem to be an option here.” That seemed like fair reasoning. After all, the body was completely naked.

  “Unless he’s slipped it in one of his skin pockets,” I suggested, miming slipping something under his skin through one of the wounds.

  “Sometimes I wish you’d stop speaking,” said Henry, looking appalled with me.

  “She’s right, actually,” said Hecate. “If this was done as a ritual, the culprit may have put something significant somewhere on the body.”

  “It doesn’t look like any ritual I’ve ever seen,” said Dick. “Looks more like torture.” The others agreed. I suppressed an eye roll. Bloody creatures of the light. They never had any idea about dark magic. I wasn’t sure immediately what the ritual was for, but I could tell it was a ceremonial killing. The cuts were in a pattern. The eyes were gone. If the others weren’t here I’d have opened the deceased’s mouth and searched for herbs or paper covered in runes in his epiglottis. That seemed like the kind of thing I probably shouldn’t do before the SOCOs turned up, though, so I kept my hands off.

  Dick continued. “If it’s torture then we really should ask Satan about it.”

  My jaw dropped. “Are you serious, Dick?”

  Dick raised his eyebrows. “What?”

  “There are so many holes in that theory that it’s more not there than there!”