by K. F. Breene
“Noted. And Reagan?”
I sighed, keeping the door open a crack. “Yup?”
“I apologize in advance.”
“For what?” I asked, knowing there were eight hundred things he should probably apologize in advance for, and they all centered around that blood draw.
“I will find out who that vampire was, and kill him. I will not be able to live with the knowledge that another of my kind has consumed your blood.”
I blinked a few times. “I’m not sure what to say. Please don’t? That’s insane? You have lost it, my friend, and need professional help?”
“If it makes you feel any better, I will blame it on the shifters so it does not come back to you or me.”
“That does not make me feel better, no. Don’t do either of those things. That’s lunacy, Darius. Seriously, you’ve gone off the deep end, and it isn’t good news.” He winked at me and moved to close the door from his side. “Don’t you dare! We need to talk about this—”
I surged forward, and got a door shut in my face. The deadbolt clicked over.
“Are you serious?” I wiggled the handle on basic principle. I thought about forcing the issue, but I was tired, and it wouldn’t do much good anyway. Still, he should probably know what he was up against. “In the event that you don’t have a personality change, another personality change, I should say, I will most likely kick down this door before this case is resolved,” I yelled. “Know that.”
I paused, listening. There was a random buzzing noise from something electronic across the room, but that was it. He didn’t plan on yelling back at me through the door. I would say he was taking the high road, but he’d just informed me that he planned on killing a stranger just because one time, a while ago, I’d had a fling. Like…what?
He had definitely gone insane. That couldn’t be good.
I headed to the bathroom and took a shower. I needed some sleep, and then tomorrow, I needed to find a mage without alerting his demon friend to my presence in the Pacific Northwest. I’d certainly had worse ideas than taking this case, but at that moment I couldn’t think of one.
“A little late, Reagan,” I muttered to myself.
Chapter Thirteen
My boots squeaked on the floor of the police station. The large space was quiet, those with regular office shifts having likely gone home. A check-in desk spread out in front of Darius and me, and the woman sitting there had her eyes downcast at her work.
I’d decided Callie and Dizzy hadn’t needed to come along since I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I’d find on this first leg. This gave them time to accost that poor, untrained mage we’d found after the last battle a couple months before. That mage lived in a small town somewhere outside of Seattle, and little though she knew it, she would soon get two bullies on her doorstep. Dizzy might seem nice, but that was because he was the good cop.
Full night had fallen before we’d left the hotel. I’d had a long sleep, a large meal—charged to the room—and enough time to slip out of the blackout shades in order to sit on the small balcony and watch the setting sun. The weather was sublime, cool and moist without being humid, and the gentle lap of the water on the support beams under my section of the hotel had helped me relax.
Not long after sundown, Darius had engaged the mechanical mechanism to open the shades before stepping out to join me. Without a word, he’d sat down in the chair opposite me and looked out over the blackened waters, allowing me to enjoy the moment unmolested. Or maybe just enjoying it with me.
“Do you wish you could see the world in the sunlight again?” I’d asked quietly, letting my voice melt into the moment.
“That desire has reawakened for me recently. A new vampire misses the sun keenly. That sentiment goes away, however. In time. I do not have an explanation for the return of that desire, just as I do not have an explanation for how my primal side is reacting to your presence. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“How is your primal side reacting? Or is it just the constant desire for my blood?”
He gave me a sideways glance. Silence took up real estate between us, and I started to think he wouldn’t answer. I was probably better off not knowing. But a moment later, he did.
“For some reason I can’t identify, I feel an overwhelming need to protect you. The primal side of me views you as mine, solely. I cannot pinpoint when this need took hold, just that it continues to grow stronger. I crave you constantly. I dream of you when I haven’t dreamed in over five hundred years. I take blood from others, but nothing quenches my insufferable thirst. We are not tied through blood, and even if we were, the bond shouldn’t be this consuming. Yet I am powerless to absolve my desire for you. In addition—”
“Oh good, there’s more. I was worried the crazy was about to end.”
“—you are incredibly valuable to me. Your abilities and lineage ensure it. There has never been anything as precious to me as you, be it as my beloved or as a bartering chip. My primal side wishes to claim you, but worse, my logical side realizes I must do that as a man claims a woman, as a husband claims a wife, in order to sustain your happiness. It is absolutely unheard of, not to mention absurd, for an elder to feel this way, yet…”
“I can see that this is sitting with you about as well as it is sitting with me.”
He looked away. “Something is causing this, but I have no idea what. I would like to undo it, but I need to find the root. A vampire in my position needs to think strategically. Without emotion. You are making that impossible.”
“Well. As is often the case with you, I’m sorry I asked.” I stared out over the blackened waters.
“I wonder if it has something to do with what you are. I want to ask Vlad, since he has been around longer than most of us, but I fear it will give away your true identity.”
I nodded and let the silence fall between us, until a new thought occurred to me. “He’s been around longer than most of you? You mean, there are vampires older than Vlad?”
“Yes. A few. They don’t engage much in political maneuverings, choosing instead to stay quiet, mostly in the Brink, letting time pass. They’ve let their minds go to sleep, it seems. They are content to live within the flow of humans.”
“And you can’t ask them?”
“I could. And they might know—one of them, at least—but they are unpredictable. It is not rare for a vampire to take a hundred years off, but then come back with drive and ambition. I don’t want to create that problem. Vlad is bad enough.”
“Being a vampire sounds exhausting.”
“You are young and within your first lifetime. That sentiment is to be expected.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I stalled for a moment longer, letting the cool breeze ruffle my hair, before summoning up the gumption to go to work.
The policewoman’s eyes flicked up when I stopped in front of her. Her hard gaze took my full measure—what she could see from beyond the desk, anyway—pausing on my leather tank top. To her credit, she took my weird in stride without furrowing her brow or shaking her head. When she got to Darius, she only let slip a tiny moment of holy crap that guy is hot in the widening of her eyes and small smile before closing it down, resuming her hard, straight face. I was pret-ty impressed, I had to say.
“Hi, I’m Reagan Som—”
“Ms. Somerset. Hello.” A man with glossy black hair, slicked back on his head, hastened toward us from the side. When he reached me, he stuck out his hand. “I’m Detective Allen. You can call me Oscar.”
“Hi. I’m Reagan.” His shake was firm but didn’t last long. He glanced at Darius. “This is my…associate, Darius. He’ll be helping me.”
“Not likely,” Darius said, shaking Oscar’s hand before stepping back.
“He’s a real charmer.” I shrugged and threw up my hands comically. Apparently, despite what he’d said on the airplane, Darius would only be playing the completely unnecessary role of bodyguard. Whatever.
“Right, sur
e. Okay.” Oscar gestured back the way he’d come. “Please, come with me. I was coming out here to see if you were waiting for me. Good timing.”
The woman glanced after us for a moment, but went back to her work without comment.
“Just in here.” Oscar led us to a small office at the back of an open space littered with messy desks. In his mid-forties, he carried a little extra weight, the kind you’d expect from someone with a slower metabolism and a settled life. This guy wasn’t physically chasing magical people, that was certain.
“An office?” I asked, seeing him gesture toward a seat and choosing to stand instead. I hoped we’d be leaving soon.
“Yes. If you’ll have a seat, I have the pictures right here.” He picked up a folder from his desk.
“Pictures?” I stepped forward and put out my hand. He handed over the file. “What about the scene of the most recent crime? There have been two, correct?”
“Two, yes. With the recent one, the body was found in a dumpster in the Seattle port. We processed the evidence already. We’ve noted everything of value.”
“How long ago did the recent crime happen?”
“About a week ago now.”
I sighed. Even if I saw an actual crime scene instead of a body dump, there was no way I’d feel even earth-shaking magic a week later. Still, maybe I would find something the others missed.
I opened the file and immediately felt my brow furrow. Beyond the fact that it was disgusting, the picture didn’t mean anything to me. The next one was the same. It was the third one that I pushed away from my face. “Gross.”
Darius stepped forward to look.
I checked out the rest quickly before closing the file and handing it back. “You know what I do, right?”
Oscar hesitated, like I was asking a trick question. “We have an office here with a field of expertise similar to the one you’re associated with in NOLA,” he said slowly.
I shut his door, having to maneuver around Darius to do it.
“Magic,” I said bluntly. A wary smile curved Oscar’s lip. Like most humans “in the know,” his logical mind clearly tried to pass my talents off as a joke so it didn’t seem so utterly outlandish. “I suss out magic. To do that, I need to see the most recent body, where the body was dumped, and where the crime might’ve originally happened. Otherwise, there is no point in my being here.”
Oscar studied me for a moment before looking at Darius. “Is she always this pushy?”
“Questions such as those will likely insult her, and then she’ll assuredly hurt you in some way,” Darius said in a bored voice. “But by all means, waste our time. It will benefit me.”
He was, of course, referring to the promise I’d given him regarding my blood. “So that’s why you won’t actually help me, is it?” I asked.
“Yes. Next, he might ask if you are always this dim. I am starting to wonder myself.”
I took a deep breath and let it out noisily before hooking a thumb at Darius and directing my focus to Oscar. “He’s right about one thing. I feel a surge of violence coming on. Let’s get this done, or I’m going home now. Time’s a tickin’, man. I need to solve this quick-like.”
With a dark chuckle, Oscar came around the desk. “Have it your way, but I saw the way you looked at those pictures. The real thing is much worse.”
“And I will tell you that I’ve seen worse still, believe me. Usually it’s the smell that gets you. That doesn’t make this any less gross, though.”
A short car ride later, we arrived at a nondescript building without so much as a number indicating its address. Cameras pointed down at us as Oscar unlocked the door. No receptionist sat at this desk. He led us down a hall and to a back room, watched by various cameras the whole time, then unlocked the door and flicked on the lights.
I half expected a bare bulb swinging over a dirty, cracked concrete floor, and while the reality wasn’t much better, it was certainly cleaner. Harsh white light rained down on a viewing table in a sea of beige. Just one table dominated the three-hundred-square-foot space, with a few folding chairs positioned around the sides. On top of the table was a pile of ew.
“Cozy,” I said, walking up to the table. “So yeah, skin taken off. No bones broken in the process?”
Oscar leaned against the wall by the door. “No. His face was left alone. His expression, as you can see, was one of intense pain, but he didn’t have any abrasions that would suggest he’d been tied down or forced to endure the torture in any way. The skin has been put to rights in the next room.”
“Gross,” I muttered. That seemed to be the word du jour. I didn’t feel any residual magic, not that I would after so long.
I put my hands to my hips and turned away, biting my lip in thought, running through all the great many spells stored in my brain. I couldn’t do any of them, or, at least, hadn’t tried, but I’d either read about them or seen them in action. I could usually match a spell to the effects of said spell.
Usually.
“A freezing spell wouldn’t allow the mage to access the whole body.” I looked at Darius, since he collected magic for his faction of vampires, which meant he knew about freezing spells, too. “They could just do sections, I suppose. Maybe freeze his upper body and one leg while working on the other…but what would happen when they took the spell away to reapply?”
“It seems as though the torso was first.” Oscar pushed away from the wall and slowly made his way to the top of the body. He gestured near the neck. “You can see the cutting marks there. They’re rougher than the cuts on his legs. Like the assailant was rushed, or distracted.”
“Someone screaming would certainly be distracting.” I eyed the wounds. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve punched out so they’d shut up. So annoying.” I put my hands into the air. “I was not torturing them at the time, detective. It was all above board.” I paused. “Mostly.”
“Your humor would certainly torture them, if you lobbed jokes at them along the way,” Darius said, having stepped closer to see the body as well. Maybe part of him did want to prolong the case, but his natural urge to problem-solve wouldn’t let him leave this solely to me.
I grinned at him, despite his horrible put-down. I’d make a private investigator out of him yet. A grumpy, egotistical private investigator.
“Let’s look at the skin,” I said.
My stomach was already crawling when we entered the adjacent room. “Buffalo Bill would’ve had a field day with this.” I eyed the man’s form. “If he was the right size, he could just slip this skin suit on and go for a stroll.”
Oscar started laughing.
“I don’t know to what you are referring,” Darius said, his eyes moving down the torso, then the legs.
“It’s a movie. Never mind.” I noticed inconsistencies in the thickness of the removed skin, places where it was ripped. “Definitely looks like they used freezing spells. You can see where it was applied, plus the places where the spells overlapped. They probably had a couple going at once. I’d guess our mage was not alone in this. He had people casting the freezing spells for him, while he took care of the spell to capture the energy from the actual skinning.”
“They should’ve easily been able to peel the skin off the muscle,” Darius said, his arms crossed.
“Tell me you have never done this.” I shot him with a glare. “If you have done something like this, we cannot be friends. Even more than we already aren’t friends.”
“If you skin an animal, you cut the pelt away from certain areas, then pull it off the muscle. It comes free pretty easily. I don’t know if humans are the same, but one would think they should be, at least in some areas.”
“Maybe with how the spells were set up, they couldn’t tug it off.” I walked around to the back but didn’t see anything noteworthy. “This must’ve been done over a day, tops.”
“Why do you say that?” Oscar asked, the humor gone from his eyes now. He’d finally realized that we were no joke.
/> “The spell he used to capture the energy is complex. It takes great focus. Once in place, upsetting its balance would be quite easy. I’d have to ask some friends for more details, but I’ve read that the spell itself is fragile. You can’t touch it, no other spells can touch it, and the caster’s constant focus is needed to keep it in effect. Moreover, the caster is the one collecting the energy, so he’s the one who has to do the actual…crime. Clearly he couldn’t keep it up with all the commotion of the victim.” I ran my finger through the air, indicating the area where the thickness of the…removal mostly leveled out. “He went for the torso, probably because it’s right over the vital areas, in a place where the victim could see the whole thing. That would cause fear as well as pain. Limbs can be ignored to some degree, but it’s harder to ignore a knife over your heart. So then, the spell to collect the victim’s turmoil would have had to be—”
“Right around his head,” Darius finished for me.
“Yes, but it would need to extend in a sheet over the place our guy was cutting. Also a bit away so the other spells didn’t touch it, and our perp didn’t back into it… There was a lot going on. This was clearly not easy. So yes, he must’ve gotten whatever energy he could, but he couldn’t keep up, the victim died, and he had to rush to get the blood before it congealed. I’m not sure why he kept going with the skin after that, but blood would still hold the power, just not as purely. Putting it over the circle lines would help them call a stronger demon. Why they wanted to call a high level four, I do not know, but this probably let them do it.”
“It is hard to take any of this seriously,” Oscar said with a straight face.
“We’re just getting started, Oscar. Wait until I run into the guys who did this. You’ll see some fighting you didn’t think existed outside of TV.” I stepped back and turned toward the door. Now that we’d gotten the analysis portion out of the way, the gravity of what was in front of me would sink in again, and I’d have another ew moment.
“There isn’t much to see at the dump site,” Oscar said. “They were pretty clean in the drop-off. We have an imprint of a boot and some blood from the body. I don’t know how that would help you.”