Second Skin

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “But ma’am . . . ,” I started. She had to understand that Carla Runyon was most likely a were now, and that Bryson wouldn’t be able to get to her alone.

  “I think I’ve made my position clear, Luna,” said Morgan. Her tone was still even but her expression was fierce. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  “What’s up, Wilder?” said Bryson, plopping his lunch down on top of a stack of paper. Meatballs and sauce and delicately melted mozzarella cheese tickled my nostrils.

  “A were named Carla Runyon, from the Serpent Eye pack,” I said. “That’s who they’ll be after next.”

  “Hey, thanks,” Bryson exclaimed. “I’ll get a couple of uniforms on her pronto.”

  “No,” I started. “Her pack won’t allow—”

  “Bryson will investigate the lead in due time,” said Morgan, glaring at Bryson. “Good day, Officer Wilder.”

  “No,” I said. “No, it’s probably going to happen tonight. David, you have to get to her now, and make her pack understand what’s happening—”

  “Leave, Officer,” said Morgan, squeezing my elbow. “Do not make me call Captain Delahunt at the SWAT office,” she hissed in my ear as she propelled me toward the front entrance.

  “Find her, David!” I yelled over my shoulder. “Tomorrow will be too late!”

  CHAPTER 11

  Nocturne City’s morgue is straight out of a horror movie from the 1970s: down in a basement, past a set of barred metal doors, dimly lit with flickering fluorescents. Tailor-made for zombies, slashers, and Dr. Kronen, the only ME who never seemed to leave.

  “Hey, Doc,” I said, rapping gently on the open door of his office.

  “Officer Wilder.” He tilted down his glasses and gave me a small smile. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Anything for you, Doc,” I said. “What do you have for me?”

  Dr. Kronen pushed his chair away from his desk and stood up, fixing his tie so that it hung crookedly on the left instead of the right. “You know, Luna, I heard about what happened to you. If the DA gets wind that I allowed you access to the investigation of a crime you were a victim of . . .”

  Damn it. Damn it and double damn it and damn it again once more just for good measure.

  “Kronen, these guys threw me naked into a forest to get killed, and even though the methodology is different, I think they did the same thing to four other people,” I said. “I’m just helping Bryson out. Cut me a little slack here.”

  Kronen tapped his teeth. “Perhaps not so different as you think.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Kronen gave me a small smile. “Let me show you something.”

  He led me down the hall and through a set of swinging doors. The cold room within was silent, linoleum floor and steel walls giving off a soft glow as the overhead vents kept the room at Corpsicle. The cadavers here were John Does, overdoses, natural causes who died in state-funded nursing homes. Anyone the morgue couldn’t fit in the freezers down the hall went to the cold room.

  At least in here, the smell was bearable.

  “Full house tonight, huh, Bart?” I said when he hit the row of hanging lights dangling lopsidedly from the ceiling.

  The rows of bodies zipped into their bags were identical except for the white tags tucked into the windows on the front panel. Kronen led me down the center row and stopped at a form midway, slipping on gloves and zipping down the bag.

  The silent face of Bertrand Lautrec stared up at me and I flinched. “Jesus, Kronen. Don’t you even close their eyes?”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me.”

  Bertrand’s face was pristine except for the wide, dark bullet hole with the ring of powder burns in the center of his forehead.

  “Upon examining him, I thought the same thing you’re thinking now,” said Kronen. “Gunshot wound, yes?”

  “Close range,” I agreed. “Poor bastard.”

  “Notice anything?” said Kronen. When I examined the wound again and shrugged, he reached out and stuck his finger into the hole the bullet had carved.

  I jerked back. “That’s just creepy, Bart.”

  “Keep calm, Officer Wilder,” Kronen said. He pulled his finger out. “Now. Do you notice anything odd about this wound?”

  The skin around the bullet’s entry wound was still as pale and bloodless as ever. Pristine, almost, like someone had put out a cigarette on Lautrec’s forehead.

  “There’s no blood,” I said. “Not even clotted blood.”

  Kronen smiled at me and stripped off the gloves. “Which is logical, considering that Mr. Lautrec had lost nearly two-thirds of the blood in his body. The exsanguination is what killed him. The gunshot was an afterthought, or purely symbolic.”

  ”Uh, we may have reason to believe that the killer, um, drinks blood,” I admitted, remembering what Sunny had told me about the Wendigo. Was my pale, drained body next in line for a skull shot? “Seems like overkill,” I agreed aloud. “Not even a were is getting up from that kind of blood loss.”

  “Or perhaps not passion but precision,” Bart said. “Someone who cared to keep the true cause of death concealed.”

  “That could be anyone at this point,” I said, rubbing at my nose to expel the stench of old, dead flesh.

  “At any rate, I examined the bodies more closely,” said Bart, unzipping the bag next to Bertrand Lautrec. Jin Takehiko lay within. Fortunately, his eyes were closed. His chest was smooth and hard except for a stitched Y-incision, muscle ridges stark where the blood had pooled. The rough stitches bisected his tattoos of wolves racing through clouds, dragons wrapped around cherry trees. The meager—and magick—tattoo at the base of my spine was a shadow by comparison.

  Kronen took out a penlight and shone it down on a spot in the middle of Jin’s left pectoral. “All four of them are marked,” said Kronen. “I haven’t been able to discern the cause.”

  I leaned close and saw four oval bruises on Jin’s skin, so light that you’d have to almost be not looking to pick out the imperfections on his blue-white inked clouds. Death had paled him and brought them into sharper relief, which was the only reason I spotted them at all.

  “Kronen,” I said, spreading out my hand. My reach was smaller than whatever had made the mark, but the pattern was the same. Five fingers, pressed down over the dead man’s heart.

  “How extraordinary,” Kronen murmured. “Almost as if something compelled the life-force from the body . . .” He flicked off his light. “All four victims’ hearts are missing. That’s why I’m inclined to believe there is more to this than Captain Morgan is willing to admit.”

  “Yeah, I think you made a good call on that one, Bart,” I murmured. Missing? Sunny admitted the Wendigo drank blood, but nowhere was there a story about stealing hearts. “Their chests don’t seem . . . disturbed,” I said, my hand still overlaying the eerie marks.

  “Therein lies the mystery,” said Kronen, reaching out to zip up Jin Takehiko’s body bag.

  The next bag over rustled. I yelped and even Kronen jerked his hand away faster than I’d ever seen him move.

  “What in the . . . ,” he started.

  “Who’s bag is that?” I demanded. Louder, “Is someone playing a Hexed joke?”

  “That is Aleksandr Belodis,” said Kronen softly. “I know it. He has not moved from that spot since I completed his post.”

  “Call me crazy,” I said, “but aren’t dead bodies—especially dead bodies sans heart—supposed to, you know, stop moving?”

  The bag jerked again, more violently this time, and a hiss issued from within.

  “Dear gods,” said Kronen. I didn’t bother with gods, but I did jerk my sidearm out of my waistband and shove Kronen back with my free hand.

  “Get behind me.”

  A moan issued forth from the bag, a hungry, haunted sound that rattled up and down the length of the metal-lined cold room. The body of Aleksandr Belodis sat straight up inside its confinement, and inside the stiff black plastic I saw th
e outline of a head rotate to stare at Kronen and I.

  “New plan,” I told Kronen. “Run your ass off.”

  Bart, never one to ask a lot of questions when the dead were rising, turned around and made tracks for the swinging doors. I backed up slowly, keeping my gun trained on the writhing body on the steel table.

  There was a dry crackle like leaves underfoot, and a set of long claws, way too long to belong to anything were, tore quadruple slits down the front of the body bag. Aleksandr poked his head out and hissed at me. Most of his hair was gone, the rest falling off in patchy clumps, and his eyes were pure silver, gleaming under the lights with an oily life that sent a sharp icicle straight to where my fear lived.

  “Crap,” I whispered. All right, I squeaked. Perhaps even whimpered a little.

  Aleksandr slid off the table, the body bag falling around his feet. As I watched he took a step toward me, then another. His body began to change, smoothing and losing features, the stitches from his autopsy popping out and falling away. His nose flattened out and his teeth grew, fangs where none had been before appearing along his gums. He walked jerkily, but with a purpose, and the small slits he had left for nostrils flared when I felt sweat start all over my body. Cold, just like the rest of me.

  “Wolf . . . ,” he hissed.

  Aleksandr’s skin began to ripple and slough away, like he was phasing before my eyes, and I realized that the moisture on my exposed skin wasn’t sweat but a heavy, clinging sort of fog that felt as if I were standing next to a glacier.

  “Wolf,” Aleksandr hissed again, his foggy shape pulsing and re-forming every time he took another step. He paused and gathered himself in, his lips peeling away to reveal more silver teeth. Too many teeth. Way too many teeth.

  Then, terrifying as Aleksandr was in that moment, I saw something even worse. On his gurney, Jin Takehiko gave a great shuddering gasp and then sat bolt-upright.

  “Oh, fuck,” I snarled.

  Aleksandr returned my snarl, and I saw him crouch to spring. I turned and beat a retreat, slipping on the floor and going down hard. My gun spun away into a shadowed corner. The things behind me screamed, and I tried to pull myself up, but panic and the pain of falling made it a clumsy attempt at best.

  “Luna!” Kronen shouted from outside the swinging doors. I looked back, saw Aleksandr about to latch his teeth into some vital part of me, and then a shrieking sound started, so loud in the echoing cold room I swear my skull split in half.

  A moment later it began to rain from the ceiling sprinklers and an automated voice told me to proceed to the nearest emergency exit, this was not a drill. Kronen stared through the glass at me, his hand on the fire alarm.

  I got up and got my ass moving, skidding along the slick floor with Aleksandr snapping at my heels. He was fast, faster than me by a long shot, but the noise wasn’t doing him any favors, either.

  Falling again, I slid along on my side and hit the swinging doors, rolling out into the hallway. Kronen pushed the doors shut and twisted the latches behind me.

  “You all right?” he shouted over the Klaxons.

  I pulled myself to my feet. “I’ll probably live!”

  Behind me, Alexsandr hit the door, his claws leaving long flay marks on the security glass in the windows. “Holy gods!” Kronen yelped. “What is going on, Luna?”

  “I wish I knew, Bart, believe me,” I said. We were both pressed against the opposite wall, watching the four silvery shapes inside the cold room snarl and hurl themselves at the door.

  “How long do you think those locks will hold?” Kronen asked me conversationally.

  What used to be Jin Takehiko, and was now another walking-talking death masque with teeth, rammed into the door at full speed. A screw popped out of the hinges and rolled away into the stream from the sprinklers.

  “Not long enough,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Follow me,” said Bart. He hurried down the hall, and I backed away from the door after him. Before we’d gotten five steps, the door burst off its hinges and the two males fell into the hallway, followed by Priscilla’s shape and then slowly, as if he was in pain even in this gut-churning new form, Bertrand Lautrec.

  “Bart, move!” I shouted, grabbing him by the tie and pulling him into the nearest open door. I slammed and locked it after us. “Where are we?” The place was dark and I flinched as a body hit the other side of the door.

  “The autopsy bays.” Bart turned on the lights and the green tile floor and steel tables gleamed serenely at me.

  “Shit,” I said. “Is there another way out of here?”

  “No,” said Bart sadly. “Just the big freezer, there. That’s the only door.”

  Outside, the scrabbling and snarling abruptly stopped. Everything was so quiet I could hear the blood beating too hard through my veins, and Bart’s heart thudding underneath his soaked buttondown. At least in here there were no sprinklers and the shrieking alarms were muffled.

  “We can wait until the police and fire departments respond,” said Bart. “The door is very secure.”

  I started to answer him, but I was drowned out. From outside came a howl, a scream that cut through the metal, through my ears, and sent a cold, cold hand down my throat.

  The same sound I heard in the woods that night. But now it was closer, and I had seen its face.

  “Bart,” I said, as everything went quiet except for the echoes and our panicked breathing, “Is there any other way into this room?”

  “I can’t think of any offhand,” he said, but his lips compressed and the spots of color in his cheeks dimmed. “Are you suggesting we may have been flushed into our abattoir?”

  “I think that these things are smart,” I said, turning in a slow circle. “And that makes things pretty bleak for us.”

  From beyond a tiled archway, in a tiny room off the main bay, I heard hissing breath and the scrabbling of claws behind the wall. The only thing inside the small room was a plain metal door with a window in the center. I grabbed Bart’s shoulder.

  “That another freezer?”

  “No,” said Bart. “No, that is the incinerator.”

  “Where does the chimney vent to?” I demanded.

  “The main ventilation system, one floor up, but . . .”

  I saw a black shape drop into view inside the tiny window of the crematory furnace and my stomach dropped with it.

  “This night couldn’t just stop getting worse, could it?” Kronen was backed up against the wall near the banks of equipment used in routine autopsies, and I gestured at him to get down. The thing scraped at the inside of the door, fighting the latch with brute strength.

  “Where’s the switch?” I hissed. “For the furnace?”

  “On the wall next to it,” Kronen whispered back. Shit. There went my master plan.

  I cast around for anything I could use to defend us. Inside a tile-lined room one story below the earth, I couldn’t pull the trick of phasing like last time.

  The tray nearest to me was set up with a sterilized set of scalpels and surgical tools, but if the thing in the furnace could get up after a gunshot wound and massive blood loss I didn’t think sticking it with a knife was going to do much except piss it off.

  With a chank the glass in the window of the furnace shattered and the thing snaked out a long-clawed paw and slipped the latch on the door.

  It spilled into the room, re-forming into a cohesive shape with each movement, and stood upright, walking shakily, taking its time. Like the bastard child of the smoke creature in the woods and the corpse of a were that had been underground for a few months. Priscilla’s wiry frame and scraps of blond hair were all that the thing had left to recognize the former person by.

  Not-Priscilla took one tentative step, then another. It could afford to. Not like we were going anywhere.

  The drawers to my left were all closed and labeled, and I ripped open the one that seemed most likely to be helpful. I’d never used the machine within but I grabbed it in
a defensive position. “Plug me in!”

  Kronen obeyed, staying low, and the thing rotated its blank silver eyes to face him. Its nose-slits rippled as it scented the air and then with a hungry, guttural moan it started for Kronen, picking up speed. Its toenails clacked, digging chunks out of the tile.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Priscilla! You deal with me, you mutant bitch!” I let out the loudest, most territorial growl I could muster. Borne on my fear and my pain and rage, the were leapt to the forefront and I felt my eyes and teeth sting with the phase.

  The thing swiveled back toward me and screamed a challenge, crossing the space between us in two leaps, faster than I could process. Just smoke and shadow and hunger, coming straight for my throat.

  As the thing’s bony hands reached out for me, I lifted the bone saw and depressed the power button, driving the circular blade in and up along the thing’s sternum.

  Priscilla screeched, reeling away from me with her arms akimbo. One set of claws caught me across the cheek but I swiped back with the saw and caught her on the shoulder, hacking her collarbone in two.

  She retreated, mewling, one arm hanging useless from the socket and silver-black blood, like oil mixed dirty gray water, oozing from her wounds.

  I let out a long breath that I hadn’t really meant to hold, still brandishing the screaming bone saw between myself and the hunched thing that had been Priscilla Macleod.

  “Luna,” said Kronen, tugging at my pant leg. A booming started up outside the autopsy bay doors.

  “Not now, Bart!” I snapped.

  “Hey, anyone in there?” a voice bellowed from outside. I let my finger release the power switch on the saw.

  “Don’t come in!”

  “Fire department!” the voice shouted. “Can you open the door, miss?”

  “Meat . . . ,” Priscilla whined from her corner. I may have been imagining things, but her wounds were starting to close.

  “There’s a dangerous . . . er . . . person in here with me!” I shouted. “I’m a police officer! Stay away from the door!”

  “Miss, if you don’t open up we’re going to have to break the door down!” the firefighter shouted.