SONYA BATEMAN
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Copyright © 2016 by Sonya Bateman
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
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More books by Sonya Bateman
COMING SOON:
REALM OF MIRRORS
The DeathSpeaker Codex – Book 3
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WRONG SIDE OF HELL
The DeathSpeaker Codex – Book 1
Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited
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RED (Fairy Tale Reboot #1)
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EMBER (Fairy Tale Reboot #2)
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DEMON’S SONG (A Shade and Citadel novel)
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THE DEVIL WENT DOWN (A Shade and Citadel novella)
Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited
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MASTER OF NONE | MASTER AND APPRENTICE
The Gavyn Donatti series – Available for Kindle and wherever books are sold
THE GETAWAY (A Gavyn Donatti novella)
Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited
CHAPTER 1
From WRONG SIDE OF HELL
Manhattan, New York – The Hive –One month ago
The dead can’t lie…
I closed my eyes for a minute. This wasn’t going to work much longer. “How many Milus Dei people are in the warehouse?” I said.
Don’t know.
The words stabbed deep, and something hot and wet ran from my nose. Blood, falling in fat drops on my splayed hand. “How many do you think?”
Forty. Fifty. Doesn’t matter. More will come from the outside, all over.
“Forty or fifty. More from the outside,” I gasped. The blood was gushing now. “How many more? Who are they?”
“Gideon, stop!” Sadie said frantically.
“No, I’ve got this. How many more?”
Thousands more. Tens of thousands. I could feel the dead guy’s smug satisfaction. You’ll never win, freak.
Thousands? That was impossible. I opened my mouth, intending to make him clarify.
Then a huge, blinding flash went off in my head, and I knew nothing.
Manhattan, New York – Present Day
When Abe called me from a crime scene in the middle of the day, I knew something was about to go wrong—if it hadn’t already.
Detective Abraham Strauss had been unexpectedly promoted to captain last month, just after the Milus Dei disaster in the sub-station under Port Authority. The department had skipped him right over the lieutenant rank. They’d also somehow managed to make a few dozen dead bodies, a lot of them cops, slide way under the public radar. There hadn’t been a single peep about the Forty-Second Street Massacre in the papers, in the news, or even online.
I was suspicious at best. Milus Dei, the twisted cult with a mission to hunt down, capture and ruthlessly torture all non-human Others to death—including me—had been firmly entrenched in the NYPD, under the leadership of Chief Nigel Foley.
Now that Foley was dead, it should’ve been over.
But Abe had called me because of a certain distinctive mark on a fresh murder victim that suggested it wasn’t.
Traffic was a bitch. I generally avoided driving in Manhattan during the day, and up until recently, my job had been ideal for that. I was a body mover, a taxi driver for the dead. Life had been simple and quiet, at least for a few years. I’d pick up corpses wherever they dropped and bring them wherever they needed to go next—usually the hospital, the morgue, or a funeral home. I’d worked at night and kept to myself. Most of my conversations were one-sided rambles with dead people.
Until the dead started talking back. That’s when I found out that the Others existed. Werewolves, fairies, vampires—though I hadn’t seen one of those yet—even the bogeyman. They were all real. The creatures of the night.
And I was one of them. Still hadn’t gotten used to that.
It took me almost an hour to get to the crime scene. Of course, it was in Central Park, where everything truly horrible in my life seemed to start. I was beginning to hate the damned park. I pulled my van in alongside the handful of emergency vehicles still on scene, and hopped out to find Abe.
Didn’t take long. Unlike the gruesome deaths that had started the whole thing, where the bodies were found half-hidden in the wooded Ramble, this killer had left the victim right out in the open. On a popular public walking path, in broad daylight.
Abe stood over the bagged body, his tie loose and handkerchief in hand. That wasn’t a good sign. He only brought out the face rag when something bothered him enough to make him sweat, even on a brisk November day like this. He looked up with a frown as I approached. “What happened, you get lost?” he said.
I shrugged. “Hey, it’s ten in the morning. I’m not wired for this daylight stuff.”
“Tell me about it,” he muttered. As a detective, Abe worked all hours—most of them night hours, since crime preferred the dark. But the promotion had him pulling normal-people shifts, mostly in the office. He hated it. And it was another reason his call worried me. Technically, working the crime scene was no longer his job.
“So what’s the word, Detective? Sorry…Captain.” I grinned. Couldn’t help needling him a little. He deserved the promotion, even if he didn’t think so—Abe had always been one of the good guys. “Let me guess,” I said. “No witnesses.”
He grimaced. “Hell, there’s plenty of witnesses. Problem is they can’t agree on anything about the perp, except he was ‘a guy with a knife.’ Real damned helpful.” He glanced furtively at the nearest people, a pair of forensic techs sorting through evidence bags, and lowered his voice. “Like I said, the vic has that tattoo. The blue one.”
“Right.” Every member of the cult had their symbol tattooed on them somewhere. An ankh with the blade of a sword as the base, done in dark blue ink. Milus Dei was Latin for ‘soldiers of God,’ but the ankh wasn’t a traditional Christian symbol. Maybe the bastards just thought it looked cool or something.
“You think one of the…er, Others killed him?” Abe said, still hushed in case anyone was listening.
“Maybe. If it was, I can’t say I’d blame them too much.” I hadn’t given Abe a lot of detail about the unspeakably horrific things this cult had done to countless non-humans, but he knew enough. “Mind if I take a look at him?”
“Be my guest.”
I knelt on the ground and unzipped the body bag. The dark-haired, thin-faced dead man inside was in good shape compared to previous Milus Dei victims—he still had a face, and his guts weren’t on the outside. The last ones found in the park had been mauled by a werewolf. But she’d done that in self-defense.
I’d never seen Sadie as a bloodthirsty killer. Not even before I knew her, when she tried to steal my van, and then went wolf on a cop.
This victim was different. It was deliberate, almost ritualistic. He had an extra-wide red smile below his face, a gaping gash where his throat had been slit with a blade that must’ve been razor sharp. The edges of the wound were clean lines, no shredding.
And there was something carved on his chest. I couldn’t quite make it out, because his torn shirt was still in the way.
I looked up at Abe. “Got a pair of gloves on you?”
“Probably, somewhere.” He investigated various pockets until he came up with two severely wrinkled, blue latex gloves. “Don’t give ‘em back,” he said.
“What, the NYPD doesn’t recycle?”
He snorted. “Only stuff that’s not covered in dead people.”
“Got it.” Smirking, I pulled the gloves on and carefully lifted the dead man’s shirt. My stomach clenched when I saw what had been sliced into his flesh.
It was a rune. A Fae symbol…fairy writing. I’d just found out I was half Fae and still didn’t know much about them, especially their language and writing. But this was one of the few I could understand.
Vengeance.
“Jesus Christ on toast,” Abe blurted.
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s a new one,” I said. “You know, Abe, you could’ve mentioned the whole chest-carving thing.”
“Didn’t know. The forensics photographer called me about the tattoo because of the other cases, but this guy was already bagged when I got here.” The handkerchief went into motion, wiping a fresh sheen of sweat from his broad face. “You know what that thing means?” he said.
“Yeah. Means it wasn’t a werewolf.” I sighed, tugged the shirt back down and zipped the bag closed. “The symbol is Fae,” I said.
“Like your…er, friend with the metal arm?”
I nodded. “He didn’t do this, though.” Taeral, the Unseelie Fae who’d threatened to kill me the first time I met him, was actually my half-brother. I knew he wasn’t involved in this—he had plenty of other things to worry about right now. Wandering around and slitting people’s throats was definitely not on his to-do list. “I’ll look into this, find out what I can,” I said. “Can I take him?”
“Yeah, they’re done with him. Let me just go get the form.” Abe turned toward his car, paused and looked at me. “You all right, kid? Look like somebody nailed your cat to a tree.”
“I’m fine. I just…thought this was over,” I said.
He clapped me on the shoulder. “We’ll make sure it’s over, Gideon. Don’t worry.”
“Great,” I said, wishing I could believe that. As Abe headed for his car, I stared down at the body bag knowing what I had to do now—and not liking it one damned bit.
It was time to have a chat with the dead guy.
CHAPTER 2
After I signed the form and promised Abe I’d call him as soon as I found something out, I loaded the body into my van. This corpse, like most of the bodies involved in police investigations around here, was headed for Scruvener University Hospital—better known as Screw U by its overworked staff and underserved patients. But first, I had a few questions for the dead man.
And he’d answer them truthfully, because the dead can’t lie. At least, not to me.
That was something else I hadn’t shared with Abe. Mostly because I had no idea how to even begin to explain it. In addition to being half Fae, I was apparently the DeathSpeaker. I had the unique, and painful, ability to compel the dead to speak.
It wasn’t a talent I would’ve picked if I had a choice. In fact, I’d rather have the unique and preferably not painful ability to do just about anything else. Tie knots with my tongue. Clean toilets like a boss. Anything but this.
Milus Dei had wanted me because I could learn the secrets of the Others—like where they lived, how to find more of their kind, and how they could be killed. They’d planned to use me to annihilate every non-human in existence.
Being the potential instrument of mass genocide was not my idea of a good time.
I wheeled the stretcher in place beside the fold-down bed in the back of my van. Before the Others happened, I’d lived in here. Rented space in a parking garage, ran things like my laptop and phone charger off a jump pack generator. It wasn’t much, but it was home—the only kind of home I’d ever known. Cramped, lonely, and always on the move.
Sometimes I still slept out here, when the walls got to me and I felt like people were too close for comfort. None of my new sort-of-family really understood why, and I never tried to explain.
I didn’t talk about the past.
Once I had the stretcher locked down, I opened the body bag and hesitated. Hadn’t actually done this in a while. Most of the time it worked better when I was touching the dead person, but I wasn’t that eager to have my brain turned into a pincushion.
I took a deep breath and laid a hand on his shoulder.
Almost immediately, there was a tugging sensation in my head. The dead guy didn’t want to talk. Too bad, because I needed to know what the hell was going on. These guys were supposed to be finished. “Hey. Milus Dei asshole,” I said. “What’s your name?”
Peter. And you must be the DeathSpeaker.
“Yeah, I am. Shut up.” Every snarling word hurt, a quick stabbing sensation that flashed behind my eyes like a threatening migraine. I wished I knew how a voice in my head could cause physical pain. “Okay, Peter. Who killed you?”
You did.
The words chilled me. The dead couldn’t lie, but that sure as hell wasn’t the truth. I’d have remembered slitting a man’s throat in Central Park. “Bullshit I did,” I said. “Let’s try that again. Who killed you?”
You did, the voice repeated. When you released him. You’ve killed us all.
Christ, that was painful. And it didn’t make any sense. “Released who?”
The Fae.
Okay. That definitely made no sense. We’d rescued all the Others these bastards had captured, some who’d been held in that nightmare of a place for years. But only one of them was Fae, and there was no way he’d done this. After he’d been tortured for twenty-six years at Milus Dei’s hands, Taeral’s father—and mine, though we hadn’t been able to tell him that—was an empty shell, a mild-mannered lunatic with no memory of himself, his son, or anything that happened longer than ten minutes ago.
“Are you saying Daoin killed you?” I said.
No. The other Fae.
“Goddamn it, there was no other Fae!” I forced myself to calm down. One of the other Milus Dei dead guys had acted like this, answering with what was technically the truth—but not the truth I wanted to hear. I just had to ask the right questions. “What is the name of the Fae who killed you?” I said.
Reun.
No. That wasn’t right. I didn’t release him, because he hadn’t been a captive. In fact, I’d tried to kill him. Reun was a Seelie noble who’d been willingly working for Milus Dei. He’d used his magic on Sadie to help them track down the Hive, the underground camp where dozens of Others had lived for years. The bastards burned the place to the ground and captured most of them.
During the Port Authority thing, the bogeyman—whose name was Murdoch—had basically scared Reun into a drooling vegetable. Then we’d accidentally left him in a substation.
He’d vanished before we could get back down there to pick him up.
I didn’t have any problem believing Reun had killed this guy, but that didn’t make it my fault. “How did I release him?” I said.
You ended his promise. The words stung a lot worse now, the pain in my head graduating from needles to fishhooks. When you killed Mr. Foley, you released him. Now he’s free to—
“Shut the hell up,” I snapped, not thrilled to hear that I’d accidentally done Reun a favor. “That hurts.”
Oh, really. It hurts you, too? In that case, let’s sing a song. Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall. Feel free to join me, DeathSpeaker. Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall…
He kept going, and the pain flooded my head with a vengeance. My nose started drizzling blood. “Damn it, shut up! How many more of you bastards are there around here?”
There was a lot more tugging, but at
least he stopped speaking daggers for a few seconds. Don’t know. A handful. Maybe he killed them all, but not the rest. Have you heard this one? I’m Henry the Eighth I am, Hen-ry the Eighth I am, I am, I got married to the widow next door, she’s been married seven times before, and every ONE was a Henry, HENRY, she wouldn’t have a Willy or a Sam…
I could barely think through the pain. The blood poured freely now, and tremendous pressure was building in my ears. They’d pop and bleed soon, if I didn’t stop. But there was something really damned important in his last round of babbling. Something I had to know about.
I’d only asked how many were around here. He’d said a handful, “but not the rest”—like there were more of them somewhere else.
“The rest of what?” I gasped out between sharp-edged lines of Henry the Eighth. “How many people, total, are members of Milus Dei?”
Countless. Legions. We’re everywhere, DeathSpeaker. You will be caught, and all of you will die. I’ve memorized the entire Constitution. Want to hear it? We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure tranquility, provide for the common defense against monsters like you, filthy murderous creatures of the night, HOW DOES IT FEEL NOW YOU BASTARD PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE AND SECURE—
I let go of him with a startled shout, just before my brain could explode and leak out through my ears. Before I passed out like the last time. Blessed silence filled my head, and I gave an involuntary shudder.
It wasn’t over. Not even close.
The rest of them were just going to love this. I had to get back to the Castle and break the news, about Reun being awake and on the loose as much as Milus Dei. We’d barely put down the bunch we faced, and they had less than a hundred. I didn’t know how the hell we’d be able to deal with countless legions.
But I did know one thing. The next time I talked to a dead bad guy, I’d damned well keep my mouth shut about how much it hurt.
CHAPTER 3
I dropped off Peter the Singing Dead Man at Screw U, but I didn’t stick around to chat. Dr. Vivian Cavanaugh, my favorite medical examiner, worked the night shift. I hadn’t seen Viv in a few weeks, and I still owed her dinner.
Fields of Blood (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 2) Page 1