Stormrage

by Skye Knizley

  Raven nodded and started the car. "You wouldn't believe what I can smell, Rupe. Why do you think I hate the morgue?"

  She pulled into traffic and turned away from Riscassi and Levine, intending to drive around the block and pull into the garage that looked out onto the street in front of the office.

  Levac was still stuck on Raven's sense of smell. "So what if the guy in front of the elevators had just been some fat man with a sandwich?"

  Raven shrugged and pulled the car into a spot where they could see the street, but be hidden in the shadows of the garage. "He wouldn't have gotten punched."

  "Can you smell what I've been eating?" Levac asked.

  Raven turned to her partner. "Drop it Rupert, you're making me hungry."

  Levac paled slightly. "You can!"

  "Oh shut up and go get us some hotdogs. There's a vendor on the other side of the garage."

  "Yeah…yeah I think I need a walk," Levac replied. He climbed out of the car and headed across the garage toward the stairs. Raven watched him for a moment then turned her attention back to the street. She knew it was only a matter of time before DeGrey made an appearance or Riscassi made a move and she was prepared to wait as long as it took.

  * * *

  The afternoon waned and darkness began to fall bringing with it a cold, howling wind edged with flecks of crystalline snow. Raven and Levac watched the first flakes begin to fall and sipped coffee from a shop Levac had found a few blocks away. Streetlights began to flicker awake, bathing the falling snow in a dull yellow radiance and buildings began to come alive with logos, beacons and garish neon, the hallmarks of Chicago at night.

  "Maybe we missed her," Levac said, finishing his coffee and stuffing the cup in the plastic bag by his feet.

  Raven shook her head. "I don't think so. A bunch of guards just appeared in the lobby."

  She started the car and drove toward the nearest exit, keeping the Bass in the shadows. A few minutes later a limousine pulled up to the curb across the street and Riscassi exited the office with a squad of four armed men. They all boarded the limousine and headed north. Raven followed suit, keeping far enough back not to be spotted by Riscassi's guards.

  They cruised north for several blocks and then east, heading out of the city toward Lake Bluff. It was when they began the climb the on ramp to I-94 that Levac noticed the four motorcycles moving up behind them.

  "Raven, I think we have company," he said, watching them via the side mirror.

  Raven glanced at both side mirrors and pursed her lips in annoyance. Before she did anything rash she made a sedate lane change to see what the bikers would do. It was possible, however unlikely, that the bikers were simply out for a ride. In matching outfits. At night. When it was starting to snow.

  She watched them in the mirrors and was completely unsurprised when they changed lanes behind her and began to accelerate. "If they scratch the paint I am really going to hurt someone."

  "They're getting closer," Levac said, moving his mirror to keep them in view.

  Raven flicked on the police lights hoping it would drive the bikers off. Reds and blues began to flicker in the back window, but they seemed to make no difference to the oncoming bikers, who were pulling alongside the Bass. Raven spotted the H&K MP7's they were holding at the last second and yelled, "Down!"

  She and Levac scrunched as low as they could as five millimeter rounds smashed through the windows and punched holes in the leather seats. When the gunfire stopped, Raven sat up, her eyes glowing heated blue.

  "Rupert, take the wheel!" she yelled, already halfway out the shattered window.

  Levac yelled in surprise and grabbed the wheel, straightening the car. "Are you out of your mind?" he yelled. "Get back in the car!"

  But Raven was already gone. She braced herself on the window ledge and jumped, landing squarely on the motorcycle to the front and left of the Bass. She twisted the rider's neck until it cracked with a sound like a shattering walnut and pushed his lifeless body off the bike, letting it smash into the barrier at seventy miles per hour. She then leaned forward and jammed on the brakes. The Bass and the other two bikes roared past while the third skidded, nearly hitting her. Before it could get past she leapt from her current motorcycle, flipped backwards and landed behind the rider. Furious at the interference and the damage to her new car, Raven grabbed the rider by the throat and threw him bodily into the trailer of an eighteen wheel truck they were passing. The rider crashed into the back of the truck like a bug hitting a windshield and slowly collapsed to the ground, where he was run over by at least two more trucks driving in the convoy.

  Raven twisted the throttle and leaned low over the handlebars, rushing to catch up with the speeding Bass. She could see that Levac was trying to shake off the other two bikes, but they were being persistent, like two hungry flies buzzing around a picnic. Tears streamed from her eyes as wind and snow stung her face, but she kept going, getting closer and closer to the runaway vehicles. Suddenly, one of the bikers spotted her and started firing his weapon. Raven swerved the Kawasaki Ninja to the side, narrowly avoiding the bullets that chewed up pavement and kicked up sparks next to her. She veered behind the Bass and after the other bike, which also turned and fired. Again she swerved, weaving back and forth behind her car as she got closer and closer. When she was close enough she stood on the seat and jumped, flying through the air to land on the roof of her car, startling Levac who slammed on the brakes, causing her to slide forward onto the hood. She felt the impact of her stolen bike sliding into the back of the Bass and she tried not to get any angrier.

  "Don't stop!" she yelled, pointing at the fleeing bikes.

  Levac nodded, muttering, "She really is insane!"

  The Bass surged forward with Raven crouched on the hood, one hand gripping the trailing edge of the carbon fiber. The engine roared and the car neared one of the motorcycles that was stuck between blocking the Bass from following the limo and passing the limo in its effort to escape the raging police officer. As soon as he was within reach Raven grabbed the rider off his bike and slammed him bodily onto the hood of the car. She punched through the visor of his helmet and glared into his eyes.

  "You're under arrest for assaulting an officer, reckless endangerment and shooting the shit out of my car," she said, barely containing her rage. "You have the right to resist arrest. If you choose that right I will throw your ass off the next overpass!"

  "I surrender!" the man said in a thick Italian accent. "Please don't kill me!"

  "Rupert! Stop, slowly!" Raven yelled over the rumble of the engine and the roar of ninety mile an hour wind.

  The Bass slowly came to a stop, the red and blue lights guiding traffic around the bullet riddled car. Raven lifted the biker off the hood and dragged him to the back. On her way past the driver's door she said, "Pop the trunk, Rupe."

  Seeing the look on his partner's face, Levac complied without a word. The trunk opened and Raven lifted the biker and slammed him inside.

  "Where is Riscassi going?" she asked.

  The biker shook his head. "I don't know!"

  Raven shook the man again, and leaned closer. "Where!"

  "I really don't know," he said. "We were to escort them to Gill Park, that's all I know!"

  "Thank you," Raven said. "You'll get the rest of your rights later."

  She pulled out three sets of zip-cuffs and hogtied the man, then slammed the trunk lid. A second later she opened the passenger's door and flopped into the seat.

  "Gill Park, quick as you can," she said, her voice sounding weak.

  "Don't you want to drive?" Levac asked.

  "Can't, just go!" Raven replied.

  The car surged forward again and Raven leaned back, resting. She could hear her heartbeat slowing and knew she needed claret. She put it off as long as she could before opening the center console and, pulling out one of the bags of blood her mother, or more likely Dominique, had placed there. She bit into it and drained the contents, trying not to gag on th
e cloying, coppery taste. She dropped the empty bag back into the console a moment later and sat back, wiping her mouth on a corner of torn leather.

  "Was that what I think it was?" Levac asked.

  Raven nodded, not looking at him. "Blood from a blood bank. My mother owns several throughout the city. We're the city's largest source of clean blood and blood plasma."

  She could hear the disgust in Levac's voice when he said, "I didn't know you needed to feed on people."

  She turned back and glared at him. "I don't feed on people, Rupert! Was that a person? No. It was a plastic bag from a hospital. And in case you hadn't noticed my abilities just saved both our lives so instead of being grossed out that I drank a little blood you could try being grateful those gunmen didn't turn your ass into a coffee strainer!"

  Levac was silent for a moment, guiding the Bass through traffic with a careful hand.

  "I'm sorry, you're right. I'm grateful we're alive," he said after a while. "I just…didn't know you did that. Drank blood, I mean."

  "Yeah well, now you do. You can turn in your request for a new partner when we take the piece of garbage in the trunk to lockup. In the meantime, let's do our job, okay?"

  "Raven, I…" Levac started.

  "Shut up, Levac," Raven replied. "Just get us to the park."

  She turned and leaned her head against the torn seat, pretending it was the wind making her cry.

  * * *

  Levac approached Gill Park slowly, turning the lights off as they rounded the corner into the parking lot. The park itself was huge with a pool, gym and sauna all located inside a nearby building that looked like a sort of human aquarium. All of that was currently closed due to new construction, but the park itself and its many hiking trails were open to the public. In the middle of the large parking lot the last motorcycle rider was standing at the driver's window of the limo and Raven saw an envelope pass from the driver to the cyclist.

  Unsure what to do with Levac, Raven exited the car and pulled her Automag from its holster. She drew a bead on the cyclist and yelled, "Chicago Police, drop your weapon and put your hands up!"

  The cyclist immediately turned and raised the MP7 that was still hanging at his waist. Raven fired two shots through his helmet, dropping the biker like a brick. At the sound of gunfire the limo surged forward. Raven held her ground and watched, knowing the lumbering vehicle would have to turn around and come back toward her to get to the exit. While she watched the limo execute an elaborate K-turn, Levac appeared at her elbow, his 93R in his hands.

  "I thought we always went on three," he said.

  Raven frowned. "I wasn't sure you were coming at all."

  "Ray…that's not fair," Levac replied.

  Raven ignored him and kept her eyes on the limo. When it turned and accelerated toward them, she lowered her aim slightly and started firing, the thirty caliber bullets punching holes in the radiator, engine block and right front tire. The large Cadillac chugged to a smoking halt a few feet away and Raven could see the driver through the windshield.

  "Raise your hands where I can see them!" she ordered.

  The driver complied, raising his gloved hands from the wheel.

  "Cover him!" Raven said to Levac, who nodded and trained his weapon on the driver.

  Raven sidestepped around the vehicle, her weapon now aimed at the passenger door. When she was close enough she used her free hand to yank the door open. She was inside a heartbeat later, alone. Riscassi was gone.

  Ten minutes later Raven sat on the hood of the Bass. Levac had Mirandized the limo driver who had turned out to be from a service. He knew nothing more than that Riscassi had left in a Mercedes SLK with a woman fitting Rayne DeGrey's description. They put out an all points bulletin, but knew it would do little good. She had no SLK registered in her name or any family members that owned one. The odds of finding her in a city with so many SLK's were one in a million.

  A black and white had taken both the cyclist and the limo driver away though the limo driver would likely be released. They had nothing to hold him on. He hadn't actually tried to run the officers over and paying off a guy on a motorcycle wasn't a crime, even in Chicago. All of which left Raven and Levac alone in a parking lot with a bullet-riddled Bass 770 and a shortage of leads.

  "What now?" Levac asked.

  "We go home," Raven replied. "Our suspect got away and we have no clue where she is, there has been no real sign of DeGrey and I am in no mood to read an autopsy report."

  "That isn't exactly what I meant," Levac replied.

  Raven slid off the hood. "I don't know what else to say."

  She tossed him the keys to the Equus and walked toward the parked Ninja.

  "What's this for?" Levac asked.

  "Happy fucking birthday," Raven replied. "I'll get someone to fix it up for you."

  "But Ray…" Levac started. The rest of what he said was drowned out by the scream of the Ninja as Raven tore off through the park.

  * * *

  The night went from light snow to clear black sky as Raven guided the Ninja through the old alleys and dark streets she had frequented as a child. The darkness had never held any fear for her and she somehow found her old haunts comforting. Levac's response to her feeding had upset her more than she had expected it to. While she hated drinking blood and always would, she was learning that in the world she lived in and with the cases she seemed to attract, it was a necessary evil. A normal human had little chance against the things that went bump in the night. She did, if she used her vampiric side. Somehow she'd thought Rupert would understand that. Her half vampire side had saved his life more times than she could count. Surely he knew that?

  She brushed tears away at the next red traffic light and checked her phone. There were six texts from Levac that she deleted without even looking at them, one from her mother chiding her for the damage to the Bass 770 and a another from Aspen saying they'd completed the autopsy and had new information about the stiff they'd found that morning.

  The light changed. She slipped her phone back into her pocket and raced away, riding from the darkness part of her was yearning for and back toward the distant lights of home.

  She pulled into the morgue lot at just after ten p.m. She knew no one would be there except the night technician everyone called Sphinx even though he bore about as much resemblance to Vinnie Jones as she did to Angelina Jolie. She let herself in with her shiny new keycard and trotted down the stairs to the morgue. Sphinx was in his office playing some video game or other and he came out when he heard Raven on the stairs.

  Sphinx was a short, freckle-faced man with blond hair and blue eyes. His lab coat always seemed three sizes too big for him and he huddled in it like Mr. Rogers in a cardigan.

  "Hi, Detective Storm," he said, offering her a shy smile. "I wasn't expecting you. Technician Kincaid left a report for you with Mr. Innokentiy's remains.

  Raven frowned. "Innokentiy? I know that name. He's called Kenny because his name is too hard for the idiots he worked for to pronounce. His first name is Ivane."

  Sphinx looked surprised. "You know the vic?"

  "Yeah, I arrested him four years ago for drug running," Raven replied. "What drawer is he in?"

  Sphinx pulled a clipboard off the wall in his office and consulted the chart. "Uh…7B. Doctor Zhu sewed his head back on so he sort of looks like Frankenstein's monster."

  "I doubt that," Raven said darkly. "Thanks, Sphinx. You can go back to your game."

  Sphinx smiled and went back in his office. Raven watched him resume his game and then proceeded down the hall into the freezer. Her upset and anger was enough to block out all the scents and for the first time ever she pulled open a drawer like a normal police officer.

  Kenny lay on the tray, his milky eyes staring at the ceiling. The report Sphinx had mentioned was on his chest in a plastic sleeve. Raven picked it up and thumbed through it. Unlike Christina Shevlin and Cassidy Stryker, his cause of death had been a single blow with an extremely heavy a
nd sharp implement. His other wounds, though probably extremely painful were not immediately fatal. His liver temp indicated he had been dead approximately three hours before being found.

  "Three hours?" Raven asked the room. "And nobody noticed this guy hanging on meat hooks in plain view? Dawn was at least an hour before he was found."

  She finished the report, which didn't help much. There was still no explanation for the corneal decompensation and no trace of Thirst in the man's system.

  Her mind racing, Raven opened all the drawers and compared the four known victims side by side. They all had milky white eyes, traces of an unidentified red powder on their skin and cuts from some kind of metallic claws; they were clearly all connected, but what was the actual connection?

  She began tapping her fingers on Shevlin's chest and then realized what she was doing and pulled her hand away. But something didn't feel right. She touched the body again. It felt colder than it should. Way colder. So did Kenny and Christina. Cassidy, however, was slightly warmer. Still cold, but warmer than the other three.

  That's really weird, she thought.

  Out of curiosity she opened other drawers in the same banks as the victims. Their temperature was the same as Cassidy's. Warmer than the Shevlin's or Kenny.

  Raven closed her eyes tight. When she opened them again her thermographic vision lit the room up in shades of yellow, red and blue. As she suspected, the ones that felt colder really were, by as much as ten degrees.

  What would make some bodies colder than others? The freezers are all at the same temperature, she thought.

  She closed the drawers and blinked her thermographic vision away before heading back down the hallway to Sphinx's office. He was still playing his game. Raven knocked, startling him so bad he flipped his chair over with a crash. When he stood up he had a sheepish grin on his face. "Sorry, Detective Storm. What can I do for you?"

  "I need you to run another exam," Raven replied. "Pull Cassidy Stryker and run a microscopic search of the area over her carotid artery. You're looking for a puncture wound, probably about the size of an insulin needle."