Song of Wishrock Harbor (The Invisible Entente Book 2)

by Krista Walsh

  A leviathan would explain the crack in the ice, but not why so many men had ended up in the snow, naked and dead. A leviathan also didn’t explain how the bodies had returned to shore in near-perfect condition. Leviathans weren’t known for tidy eating. If their victims surfaced at all, their partial remains usually looked as though they’d gone through a meat grinder.

  So what else could it be?

  The expression on the victim’s face, that look of spellbound awe, flitted through Gabe’s mind.

  Shaking his head, he leaned over and switched on the generator. The gas slogged through the lines until the power kicked in, and Gabe frowned. He’d have to get gas when he got food. If he rifted far enough to the edge of town, maybe he would find something open.

  The light beside the sofa turned on, and he booted up his laptop. Soon, Percy’s sleep-creased face and mussed hair filled the screen.

  “What time is it?” he asked, his eyes slitted open.

  “An hour you probably only see a couple times a year,” said Gabe. “You know I wouldn’t normally wake you from your beauty sleep — because, trust me, you need it — but I need more help.”

  “Sometimes I think you wouldn’t be able to wipe your ass without my help,” Percy grumbled.

  “There may come a time,” Gabe agreed. “But my current request is worth it, I promise.”

  “Gimme a minute.” Percy pushed back his chair and stumbled out of view. In the background, the coffee grinder wailed before abruptly shutting off. Then came the pops and hisses of the percolator, intermingled with the rumbles of Percy’s throat clearing and a rhythmic scraping noise as he brushed his teeth.

  He returned a few minutes later looking not much better than when he’d left, but his eyes were open, and he was clutching a coffee mug the size of one of Gabe’s cereal bowls between his palms.

  “Happy now?” Gabe asked.

  “Not yet,” Percy said, “so this better be as good as you say it is.”

  “I went out to the crime scene this morning, where the naked guys have turned up. There was another one.”

  Percy’s eyebrows rose and the bleariness faded from his eyes. “A good start.”

  “He drowned,” Gabe added, the foul taste of his horror blocking what would have been his usual amusement at Percy’s growing interest. “I walked out on the ice to see if I could learn what happened. Ice as thick as the length of your forearm had been snapped in half. From underneath.”

  Any sign of Percy’s fatigue disappeared. He sat up straight, set his coffee mug aside, and jumped to one of his other computer screens. Only the tapping of his fingers against the keyboard made it through Gabe’s speakers until, at last, Percy let out a low whistle.

  “Satellites show a heat change over the river,” he said. “Looks like something colder than the river was definitely out there as of an hour ago.”

  “Any idea on size?” Gabe asked.

  “What are you thinking?”

  He heard Percy take a gulp of his coffee as his other hand kept typing.

  “Leviathan was my first thought, but the longer I sit with it, the more I don’t like it. The condition of the bodies doesn’t match, the hole in the ice is too small, and if that weren’t enough, the river’s not deep enough to hide a leviathan of any size. Unless it unexpectedly washed in from the Atlantic after the storm came in. No one would be able to see it under all this ice and snow.”

  But that storm theory didn’t sit well with Gabe either. He’d been happy enough to accept the weather man’s explanation of a freak atmospheric event until Clare had brought these murders to his attention. The murders and the storm had started at the same time, and he wasn’t the sort of man to believe in coincidence.

  Unless whatever broke through the ice took advantage of the storm and we’re looking at two separate problems.

  “The image isn’t catching anything, but this is from a good distance, so I’m not getting as much detail as I could be.” Percy paused and wheeled his chair back into full view, one of his dark eyebrows arched high on his forehead. “If you went back out, we could get a better picture.”

  Gabe’s stomach lurched at the idea of returning to the gap in the ice, the water rushing beneath his feet.

  Nope. Not doin’ it.

  “There’s no other way to find this thing? You’re supposed to be my tech man, Perce. The one who keeps me out of trouble.”

  Percy held up his hands. “Keep you out of trouble? I can’t handle that kind of pressure. I’m not a god, even if my ancestors did come close once upon a time. I have all sorts of software programs that can help, but not from this distance.”

  Goosebumps broke out over Gabe’s skin, and he rubbed his face under his glasses. Rick’s terror-filled expression stared at him from his memories, crossed with the latest harbor victim’s wide-eyed wonder, and Gabe cursed under his breath.

  When he’d moved to New Haven, the city had wrapped itself around him like a security blanket. Not even in Boston had he felt so at home and safe. In anonymity, he’d thrived, and now he needed to return the favor the city had granted him. He’d sworn that he would protect New Haven from anything trying to tear it apart. River or not, he couldn’t afford the extra guilt on his shoulders if he backed down now and more men ended up dead.

  Swallowing the acidic taste of bile, Gabe rubbed the back of his neck. “You have a plan?”

  Percy clapped his hands and rubbed them together, his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth. “Do I ever. Do you still have that camera I made for you? The one with the little glass screen that snaps on to your glasses?”

  Gabe reached into the black plastic box under his coffee table and rifled through it to find the small gadget Percy had sent him a few months back. It tumbled down between the wires and various other bits of equipment of his trade. Percy winced.

  “Be careful with that screen, man. It wasn’t cheap.”

  “If you’re making this stuff for me, you should know to make it sturdy by now. Here.” He grabbed the black plastic gizmo with the small screen attached and blew off the dust that had accumulated on the lens. “It’s fine.”

  Percy groaned. “Do you remember how to use it?”

  Gabe turned the camera between his fingers and found the small clip on the inside. He fit it against the arm of his sunglasses and snapped it in place, the clear screen extending across his right eye. The tiny camera sat over his right ear, and he pressed in the earbud that allowed Percy to natter at him when Gabe wasn’t at his computer. “Did I get it right?”

  “I’m amazed you didn’t set yourself on fire somehow in the process, you Luddite.”

  Gabe didn’t bother to argue with him. In Percy’s eyes, everyone else in the world was a hundred years behind the times. Never mind the diploma Gabe had earned in information technology or all of his years doing remote technical support.

  “All right,” Percy said after a few more seconds of keyboard clacking. “I’ve had this software sitting around for ages, just waiting for a chance to test it out. Let’s boot her up and see if she works.”

  Gabe stared straight ahead and jumped when the screen in his vision turned blue. No matter how many times Percy demonstrated the use of the screen, he’d never adjusted to it. He loved technology as much as the next tech geek, but the direct connection to the internet brought the online world too close for comfort.

  The screen switched from blue to nothing, and Gabe worried it was broken, but Percy’s lack of reaction reassured him.

  “One more step,” Percy said, and hit another key on his keyboard. Then, with a grin, he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Now tell me what you see.”

  Gabe’s eyebrows rose as his apartment came into view, melted into a wash of purples and blues. He looked down at his hands, and his skin was red.

  “You created a thermal imaging app?” he asked.

  “Why not? When I designed the screen, I made sure to include thermal reading capabilities, but I only finished the softw
are a few months ago. Struck me as something that might come in handy. How does it look? Seems pretty wicked from where I’m sitting.”

  “You can see what I see?” Gabe swung his head around the apartment. The window was a dark purple. The temperature warmed as he looked farther into the room, but not by much.

  “Everything.” Percy’s grin widened. “Want it to get even cooler than that?”

  “Always,” said Gabe.

  Growing up, he and his brother had been obsessed with James Bond films. Rick had loved the fast cars and leggy women, but Gabe had always been more interested in the gadgets. Having Percy as a friend often made him feel as though he’d stepped into one of those movies.

  One day he’d probably find himself strapped to a table with the villain standing over him threatening to burn through his crotch with a laser, but it was worth it to have a chance to play with all the toys.

  Percy hit a few more keys. Nothing in Gabe’s vision changed.

  “Did it work?” Gabe asked.

  “We need to test it. Hold up your hands.”

  When he raised his fingers to his eyeline, faint blue lines were coursing through the red of the heat leaving his body. They reminded him of the biology textbooks Rick used to bring home from school, full of pictures of bacteria floating around inside a petri dish. “What is it?”

  “It’s you. A secret project I’ve been tackling lately. It picks up energies put off by you crazy folk.”

  Gabe frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Supernaturals. You give off a different kind of energy to everyone else. See? It looks like a current, or like little blue bugs crawling around and then exploding. If you checked out a human with this software, you wouldn’t see that.”

  An oily sensation snaked through Gabe’s stomach alongside the squirming anger he’d believed he’d quashed earlier. “I’m not sure how I feel about this.”

  “About giving off a different energy pattern than humans? You’ve lived that way your entire life and never known it. I don’t see how it changes anything now that you can see it.”

  “I mean that you’ve found a way to detect us,” Gabe said, twisting his mouth in distaste. Instead of being an interesting science experiment, the wiggling blue lines now struck him as invasive. Like he could feel them creeping around under his skin. Like if he stepped outside with the software turned on, anyone walking by would know exactly what he was. Most supernaturals who lived among humans, Gabe included, spent their lives hiding. They were outsiders trying to fit into a world that wouldn’t accept them otherwise.

  To have something so accessible that could pick them out just by scanning a room…. His stomach clenched and the edges of his vision turned red. He breathed deep to keep his rage confined.

  “It’s not for open use,” Percy said, and the seriousness in his tone assured Gabe he was being honest. “Just for me. And it’ll come in handy today, right? I promise, man, this is for research purposes only.”

  Gabe’s thoughts flew to the last man who’d assured him he was just “doing research.” Jermaine Hershel had destroyed so many lives in an effort to figure out what made supernaturals the way they were. His goal had been to steal their abilities and use them for his own gain, but regardless of his intentions, that information in any hands would be dangerous for the otherworld.

  No one should know everything. Not even Percy, the man who had the intelligence, money, and capability to learn whatever he wanted.

  But the program had already been created, so there was nothing Gabe could do now but keep an eye on it and make sure it didn’t go any further.

  He released his breath and his blood cooled as the anger washed away. “Let’s make sure it stays that way. How does it work?”

  “It reads energy signals,” Percy replied, sounding relieved. “I could get into the nuts and bolts, but are you really that curious?”

  Gabe glanced at the clock and accepted he didn’t have time for the lecture Percy would be prepared to give. One day he would take the time to learn all the ins and outs, but for now he was willing to trust that Percy knew what he was doing.

  An uncomfortable sense of hypocrisy washed over him. He hated using this software against the creature under the river when he had so much of an issue with it existing at all, but Percy was right: it would give them a much-needed advantage.

  For now, he allowed the rationalization to pad his conscience, accepting that he would have to give himself a long look in the mirror when this case wrapped up.

  “What do I need to do on my end?” he asked.

  Percy drummed his hands on his desk, and the audio shifted from the laptop speakers into Gabe’s ear. “I just switched on the sound, so from here on out, all you need to do is look around. I’m in your head, baby.”

  Gabe rolled his neck until it popped and pushed himself off the futon. The comforter fell from his shoulders, and a chill of anticipation puckered the skin between his shoulder blades. He had no idea what he would find when he went back out to the river, but intrigue had won over his fear.

  For now.

  Again, he wished he could transport himself directly to where he needed to be, but he didn’t want to run the risk of opening the rift right over that crack in the ice. Although it would add more time to his trip, the smarter choice would be to bring himself to the docks and make his way on foot. He pulled his boots back on, grabbed his coat, and rifted to the harbor.

  ***

  All Gabe saw through the small screen were varying shades of purple, but it was more than he could see with his regular vision. The wind had picked up and the snow was blinding.

  Every time he turned into the weather, snowflakes covered his glasses and froze into crystals. When he dodged his head, the snow was so thick he could barely make out his hands at arm’s length.

  “This is ridiculous,” he grumbled.

  “I’m glad you can’t see outside my window right now,” Percy said in his ear. “It’s downright balmy today. If you listen closely, you’ll hear the birds.”

  “Shut up.”

  Percy laughed and went quiet. Gabe heard the click of his friend’s fingers on the keyboard as he tracked what Gabe saw.

  Gabe slid his boots over the ice and made his way toward the crack. He couldn’t see how far the end of the dock was from where he stood, so he took it slow, preferring to spend an entire afternoon skating a few inches at a time if it meant not slipping into the water.

  In a dark corner of his mind he was already in the freezing river, the cold dragging him down, his lungs begging for air.

  He drew in a slow, deep breath.

  Across the screen, a line of darker purple, almost black, came into view, and he guessed it was the crack. As he moved toward it, his breath hitched. He braced his fists at his sides and edged closer, preparing himself for what he might find.

  It could be nothing. It’s possible whatever it is doesn’t want to come out to play today.

  “What’s that to your left?” Percy asked.

  Gabe twisted his head and followed the line of color, doing his best to keep the snow from striking his face directly. Within the dark purple streak, light blue lines of supernatural energy were running in zigzags and exploding like fireworks.

  “I think we’ve got him,” Percy crooned, his words trembling with excitement.

  Gabe wished he could join the celebration, but Percy was safe in his warm warehouse, not out in the middle of a frozen river in a horrible storm about to find whatever had killed seven men in ten days.

  His heartbeat rattled against his ribs and the wind cut into the clamminess of his palms.

  When he reached the gap in the ice, he paused at the edge and knelt down to stare into the water. The surface had begun to freeze over, but beneath the thin layer of frost, ripples danced along the current, as though something had moved under the surface. Recently.

  Gabe eased away from the gap. He rose to his feet and cautiously followed the trail of sparking blue lines along the
water’s edge. He stopped again when he found a hole in the thin layer of new ice. The hole was the same size as the one he’d spotted the day before, no wider than his own shoulders.

  “Whatever it is, it’s out,” he said.

  “And small,” said Percy. His voice sounded close, and Gabe imagined him leaning toward the screen to get a better view, bringing his mouth closer to the microphone. “That’s no leviathan.”

  Across the gap on the opposite slab of ice, more blue zigzags danced across the ground between the snowflakes.

  In the shape of footprints.

  “No, it’s not,” Gabe replied, and the words felt thick and cumbersome on his tongue.

  Without moving, he scanned his gaze over the ice. His eyes froze when a figure appeared beyond the swirling snow. It stood too far away from him to make it out clearly. Gabe’s blood rushed in his ears as the desire to learn what it was urged him to go closer to the gap. He closed his mind to the river’s existence and stepped over the water to the stretch of ice beyond.

  The footsteps were small, a woman’s or a child’s. Gabe stood six foot two and had the strength of the Gorgons in his blood. He could handle a woman or a child.

  So could the fire elemental.

  The reminder made him hesitate, but he pushed onward. Sam had been unaware that something was stalking him from the middle of the storm and would have been weakened by the cold. Gabe could hardly feel the frosty fingers of the wind as they brushed under his collar and looped through his hair. He would be fine. As long as he stayed away from the water, he would be fine.

  The wind picked up and called to him, a sweet song that carried through the flurry of snow, urging him closer to the figure who remained just out of reach.

  The closer he got, the deeper the purple of the temperature around the figure became, and the air around it grew more shadowed.

  “It’s like it’s absorbing the heat,” said Percy. “See how the colors are swirling around the center before they disappear? What would do something like that?”

  The blue zigzags cut through the purple, and Gabe took another step closer.