by SM Reine
Anthony opened the glove box. He had two Bics, one red and one blue. She grabbed the red one.
“I think of everything,” he said, prompting her for thanks.
Elise made a noise of assent. That was about as good as it got.
The line of cars crept another ten feet forward.
Now that they were closer to the gate, Anthony could see that the police were crawling all over the Bloomfield house. They had turned off their lights and parked alongside the house, trying to be as discreet as possible for the sake of the neighborhood, but it was impossible to hide an entire fleet of vehicles. The coroner, the photographer, two state troopers—they couldn’t have hidden that much staff under a circus tent.
A toddler rode past on a red bicycle with training wheels, blissfully oblivious to the fact that her gated neighborhood was under occupation. She slowed to look at the cops before pedaling faster.
Three cars to go before it was their turn.
“For fuck’s sake,” Anthony said.
Elise stuck the cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “Like I said, we can leave.”
Anthony seemed tempted by the offer. He craned out his open window, twisting around so that he could look behind the car.
“We’re boxed in,” he groaned, flopping back against the chair.
“Hang on,” she said.
She kicked open the door and approached the gate on foot.
The sun was down, but the asphalt still scorched under Elise’s feet. The heat felt good. She could have walked on burning coals and only wished that it was a little warmer.
Elise tasted the annoyance of the others idling in their cars as she headed up the line. Their minds hummed with irritation. Not fear—just run of the mill exasperation. How inconvenient for someone to get murder-happy in the neighborhood.
Annoyance turned to curiosity and trepidation as people noticed her passage. She didn’t look like she belonged any more than Anthony did. Dressing up for business didn’t change that. The piercing and hair marked her as “other,” and the prejudice reeked.
As she approached the gate, the officer standing by turned his attention on her. His eyes traveled up her legs, her swaying hips, the press of her breasts against her shirt. It wasn’t a sexual look. It was wary.
Cops weren’t idiots. They always seemed to realize she was a predator the instant they saw her.
“Get back in your car, ma’am,” said the uniformed officer when she stopped in front of him. His skin was sallow, eyes shadowed. Overwork, or addiction?
“What’s the delay?” Elise asked. She flicked her Bic, cupping a hand around the flame as she lit the cigarette.
“You heard me. Back in your car.”
She glanced back at Anthony, who made an angry gesture over the wheel of the car. No, not an angry gesture—he was pointing at her pocket.
Elise pulled a crumpled letter out of her slacks and lifted it so the officer could see the letterhead. “Detective Gomez invited us,” she said. “I’m from the Hunting Club. Independent consultant.”
The officer took the letter and skimmed it. She could tell that he understood what it meant by the way he paled further, turning a peculiar shade of ashen gray. “Fuck,” he said, swiping the back of his hand over his sweating lip. “You’re Elise Kavanagh.”
When he moved, a pin on his lapel caught her eye. It was a gold disc with the imprint of a government seal: an arrow stamped over a shield. It was a sign of support for the Office of Preternatural Affairs—an office established in recent years to handle the “non-human citizens” of the USA. It was really an excuse for assholes to hide behind discriminatory laws. The show of support for the OPA did not improve Elise’s mood.
The officer must have heard that Detective Gomez had hired a non-human expert for the case. His heart was speeding, adrenaline dumping out of his pores into the air.
“We’re checking every car with the homeowner’s association’s registry to make sure they belong,” the officer said, a little more stiffly than before. “We want to get everyone home as soon as possible.” His fist balled on the letter, adding a few more creases to the page. “I’ll contact the detective and let you know when you can head in.”
“I’m going back to my car,” she said, plucking the letter out of his hand. He had dripped sweat on it. Delicious. “And I’m going to tell my friend to drive up that curb there, around the line, and go to the Bloomfield house. You can open the gate for us on the way or not. Either way, we’re not stopping between here and that front door.”
He spluttered protests, but Elise had already returned to the car, slamming the door hard enough to make the hula dancer on the dashboard rattle.
“Good to go?” Anthony asked.
Elise nodded once.
He twisted the wheel, pulling out of the line. He didn’t merely climb the curb; he drove up on the well-manicured lawn and chewed through a flowerbed. He smiled the satisfied smile of someone enjoying sweet justice.
Elise thought that the officer would call her on her threat and leave the gate closed. The Impala was getting old anyway. Might as well play battering ram.
“Keep going,” she said, buckling her seatbelt. Anthony’s eyes glimmered.
He accelerated.
The gate swung open before they could hit.
Detective Gomez didn’t look happy when Anthony parked on the lawn of the Bloomfield house, but Elise got the impression that he wasn’t the kind of man who would ever look happy. He had a Cro-Magnon forehead, a weak jaw, sagging jowls. Chunks of his cheeks looked like they had been bitten away by rodents. He could have been smiling and looked like a gargoyle.
He opened Elise’s car door and braced his hands against the side, leaning down so that his barrel-like body occupied the entire space.
“You’re late,” he said. The tang of his sweat smelled like stress. Exhaustion.
She leaned forward to look around his side, taking another drag on her cigarette. The Bloomfield house had vines creeping up the front wall, potted plants, well-trimmed grass. Solar lights lined the path. Something smelled like blood, and it wasn’t the petunias.
Elise ducked under the detective’s arm so that she could stand. “We were stopped at the gate. My colleague has been here for over an hour.”
“An hour? You’ve been here an hour?” Gomez’s face twisted with anger. “Dammit, Richardson…”
Anthony got out of the car, joining them on the front step.
“I’m here now. What can I do for you?” Elise asked.
Gomez rubbed a middle finger over his bushy eyebrows. “We needed an expert in demonic possession,” he said. “That’s why you’re here.” His eyes flicked to meet Elise’s, then dropped again. Like he wasn’t sure if it was safe to make eye contact.
“The Union has exorcists,” Anthony said.
“A few,” Gomez said.
“None as experienced as I am.” Elise took a last draw on her cigarette, then stubbed it out in the planter. “I’m the best.” She had only become better at exorcisms since becoming a demon. Knowing how it felt from the other side helped.
She stepped back to get a wide view of the house. The Bloomfields didn’t let a lot of personality show in their home. Nobody on the street did. All of the houses had uniform faces, dictated by an anal-retentive homeowner’s association. Every house was coffee-colored. The two-car garages had Spanish accents, brass-trimmed windows. The roofs were ceramic.
Two children had lived in this house, but there was no indication of their presence, either—no bicycles abandoned on the sidewalk, toy cars, or chalk drawings. It was eerily homogenous.
Except for the smell of blood.
Elise had known exactly what would be waiting for them inside as soon as she read the files. Or so she had thought. This smell of blood—this wasn’t right.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Detective Gomez said, drawing her attention back to him. “You used to be the greatest kopis. You’re infamous.”
It wa
s a title, not a compliment; she had earned the “privilege” by defeating the previous greatest kopis in hand-to-hand combat. Someone else held that name now. She had dropped off the radar, let most people think that she had died. It had been a long time since Elise was addressed as the greatest kopis rather than as one of the greatest demons on Earth.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about Gomez knowing that part of her history, but she was fairly certain her feelings were not positive.
“Do you want her autograph, or can we get to work?” Anthony asked.
“I’d heard that you went turncoat,” Gomez said, ignoring Anthony to stare intently at Elise. “I needed to know if it was true.”
Elise’s eyes narrowed. “How did you learn so much about me, detective?”
The question seemed to make Gomez uncomfortable. He shifted on his feet. Jammed his hands into his pockets. “Your reputation’s formidable.”
“Formidable. Nice word for it,” Anthony muttered.
Elise didn’t want to have a reputation at all. She and Anthony worked as private investigators and hired guns for what they had half-jokingly dubbed “The Hunting Club,” which was a collaboration between them and their kopis friend, Lucas McIntyre. They weren’t easy to locate and hire, and Elise was hardest of all to find. They did have a site on the deep web, which was only accessible by secure Tor network; if someone gave you the address, you could find their rates, a pitch, and brief profiles on McIntyre and Anthony without names attached. Elise’s affiliation was not mentioned on it.
She wasn’t in hiding. Not exactly. But she didn’t want anything to feed into a “reputation.”
“Let’s go inside,” Elise said.
“You reviewed the files,” Gomez said, not like it was a question.
“Yes.”
“You know what you’re going to see in there.”
Elise did. The mere mention of it was enough to bring the black and white photographs to mind again in startling detail, from the curled fist of the dead daughter to the pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs. The murderer had used that blood as ink. The walls were patterned with smeared, flaking runes.
She hadn’t looked at the photos for long. She didn’t need to.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Gomez shoved crinkly plastic into her hands. “Great. Put these on.”
They were like tiny garbage bags with elastic bands. Elise lifted an eyebrow.
“What’s that for?” Anthony asked.
“Your shoes,” Elise said, giving him two of them. She leaned against the wall to slip them over her loafers, rolling up the ankles of her slacks while she was at it.
Once their shoes were covered, Gomez put a hand on the doorknob. It was as homogenous as every other element of the front of the house. He paused before opening it. “You can leave,” he told Anthony. “You don’t need to be here for this.”
“We’re partners,” Anthony said. “I go where she does.”
It looked like Gomez wanted to say more, but he swallowed it down, the knot in his throat bobbing. He nodded once.
The detective opened the door.
Scents washed out of the house: the faint aroma of potpourri, leather furniture, and dinner going stale in the kitchen.
Elise didn’t smell blood.
She frowned, stepping around Gomez as he held the door for her. She had smelled blood while she was in front of the house—why couldn’t she smell it now that she was inside?
There was no sign of death in the entryway. It was a nice house. White carpet, wood accents, marble-topped tables, an elaborate mirror on the wall across from the front door. All of the lights were turned on. It washed out what little color remained in Elise’s face, turning her reflection ghostly.
Anthony entered behind her. Gomez shut the door.
An officer stepped through the archway, hand on his belt. The detective stopped him with a lifted hand. “They’re the consultants,” he said.
Elise stared hard at the officer. She could get a read on the mind signals of everyone else she had met that evening, but this man “sounded” like white noise to her, like his skull was filled with spinning fans instead of thoughts. Elise only knew of one type of human that she couldn’t read like that: kopides that had been bound to an aspis for protection.
He moved away before she could try to figure out why he was so unreadable. She watched his retreating back. He was young enough to be a kopis, but why would a bound kopis work for the police rather than the Union? Better pay?
Gomez escorted Elise and Anthony through an equally unremarkable living room. The TV had to be at least seventy inches, and they had a sound system with speakers as tall as Elise mounted on each wall. There was a dog crate in the corner. No dog. Glass doors led to the side yard. All of the furniture was spread out, leaving no room to hide.
There were evidence tags on a wall crack. The photographer who had been shooting it slipped out of the room, camera in hand, as they approached.
All of the officers were waiting in the living room. The people milling around looked as uncomfortable as Detective Gomez. Restless. Like they didn’t want to be there, and their muscles had been wound tighter than guitar strings. These weren’t men unfamiliar with horror. If any of them had been working in Sacramento in 2009, they would have seen much worse when the mother of all demons descended. Yet they were troubled. Deeply so.
If there had been only one man there, Elise could have read the electrical signals with the ease of reading a book, maybe even picked out a few thoughts. But with a dozen people at the investigation, their minds were a senseless tangle.
And at least one of them was a bound kopis, too.
Elise’s sense of paranoia quickly grew at the presence of those buzzing minds. She couldn’t tell if it was only the same kopis detective making that noise, or if there were more.
“In there,” Gomez said, nodding at the second archway at the rear of the room.
Uniformed bodies parted, allowing the detective to pass. Elise’s footsteps crinkled as they approached the archway. She watched the suspicious faces and couldn’t read any of them.
The flow of air through the house brought the scent of blood back to her nose. She stepped in front of Gomez and took the lead. Crimson slicked the wood floors, blackened the cracks between boards, shined glossy under the overhead lights. Blood usually dried tacky and brown, but in such huge quantities, with the air conditioner running, some of it was still wet. It looked like liquid cherries.
Elise stood in the doorway, scanning the puddle. There was a body on the second floor. Her arm was flopped onto the first step, forearms covered in scrapes, fingertips bloody. It was the mother—she had been trying to flee with her daughter and been caught at the top. Her throat hadn’t been merely slit. Her arteries had been opened. It was her blood that had waterfalled down the steps.
That was the last person to die at the scene. According to the files, her daughter had already died of her injuries by the time the mother had tried to carry her upstairs. Her tiny, broken body would be behind the mother, invisible from the first floor.
The father had died shortly before the mother. Elise could see his legs around the stairs. His soaked slacks clung to his legs. He had tried to hold off the attackers to no avail—they had been taken completely off-guard.
The photos Gomez had sent The Hunting Club had been of fresher bodies. People who had not yet cooled to room temperature. Blood that was still wet and fresh and in great quantities.
So much wasted meat. Elise’s stomach cramped.
Most of the work was done at this scene. Everything had been catalogued and photographed. Now the bodies needed to be removed, autopsied, and laid to rest. But the scene was held for Elise to see. It was immaculately preserved in the awful state that they had found it.
She glanced over her shoulder at the men gathered in the living room. Nobody was bantering or making inappropriate jokes to lighten the mood. And the looks Elise received weren’t merely unf
riendly. They were downright hostile.
“The runes,” Gomez said from behind her.
Elise hadn’t forgotten. She picked her way over the blood and angled herself so that she could see the wall.
They had sent Elise one photograph of this wall, and the picture had been enough for her to know what had happened at the Bloomfield house. Seeing it in reality still sent an unpleasant wash of shock down her spine.
The fingers that had painted the bloody runes were human-sized. A clumsy paintbrush. Each rune was as large as a dinner plate, with a dozen angry slashes in the center. They might have been beautiful if they had been drawn with more grace. But these bloody marks were clumsy, awkward, hastily scrawled in the arterial blood of a dying mother.
They were also familiar.
Elise had seen those kinds of runes flickering in the air, etched in blue fire by a witch so powerful that he could no longer contain his own magic. They weren’t quite ethereal in origin, nor were they infernal. They were a hybrid of a dozen different influences designed by one mortal man who was too damn talented for his own good.
“James,” Elise breathed. She was somehow standing on the third step of the stairs, and she didn’t remember climbing there.
Anthony gave her a sharp look. “This is James? He did this?”
“Who’s James?” Gomez asked.
Elise clenched her jaw. “What else is at the top?” she asked. “More runes?”
“Two bodies,” Gomez said. “The rest of it’s in the dining room.”
Which meant that she didn’t need to look at the mother and daughter. Elise stepped off the stairs again. Anthony grabbed her arm as if to steady her, though Elise was as sure on her feet as a serpent through grass. “If this was James…” he hissed.
“Don’t speak,” she said, barely moving her lips.
The police in the living room were restless. Half of them were gone. The ones that remained were gathered around the archway to watch Elise survey the scene. The buzzing mind signaling a bound kopis was gone. Everyone who remained was typical, mundane human, and it eased her nerves a fraction.