by A J Brahms
I realized at that moment, this guy was certifiable. Yeah, there were things that go bump and boom in the night in this city, and I was there to help stop them, to protect humans and non-humans from them. I put my camera back in my bag after turning it off. "We're done here, Conway."
But when I walked to him where he stood in front of the door, he didn't move. Instead he pulled something silver from inside his pocket and shoved it in below my rib cage. "Be gone foul damned of Satan!"
Son of a bitch—
Six
Silver is a curious metal. Not all that rare and not uncommon. And yet it possessed the power to bring both Night Walker, its creations, and Werewolves to their knees.
Luckily, whatever he'd just stabbed me with wasn't silver. Not even close. From the tang on my tongue resulting from the intrusion in my stomach…I figured tin…with a bit of aluminum.
Yeah, it hurt and it did bleed, but not much. I reached down, grabbed that wrist again, and pushed his hand back. The intruding object came out, and he gasped when I moved his arm and twisted it up so I could see the…letter opener?
"Conway," I said as I reached over with my other hand and plucked it out of his grasp. The blade was clean. "What exactly did you hope to prove with that? And you do know I could have you arrested for assault with a deadly weapon."
But Conway's gaze was on that clean letter opener. "Nothing…" He tried to pull his arm free, and when he failed, he moved his other hand and shoved his palm flat against my chest where he'd made a hole in my shirt. I let him. I mean…what was I gonna do? Grab his other hand and make this look like a weird version of Twister?
He took his hand away and it had blood on it, but then he stuck his fingers into the hole he'd made in my shirt. He wouldn't find a wound, but that tickled. I struck that wrist so he'd move his hand away.
"You bleed…but there's no wound." He looked at his hand. "I…I don't understand. I was so sure."
"Sure of what?"
He blinked at me, as if he'd forgotten I was a person and could communicate clearly. He jerked the hand with the letter opener away from me and stepped back. "Well…since there's no wound, you can call the police all you want. There was technically no assault."
"Is that what the surveillance cameras will show?" I gestured to the two globes hanging below the drop ceiling. "Mr. Conway, I'm no threat to you. To your…church…" Oh, that hurt calling these crazies a church. "Or to you physically. I'm here to find out who murdered that girl."
"You're here to find out who put her on Talmadge property." He narrowed his eyes at me. "We know that building belongs to them. And we know what they are. And you're linked to them…somehow."
I smiled at him. "I'm not a Night Walker, Mr. Conway."
"But you're not human."
Okay, I was done with this idiot. "If you would be so kind as to step away from the door, I'd like that ride back to the station please."
Conway moved and I walked out the door and headed to the front where a man stood by with keys in his hand. He wasn't one of the suits, but one of the members with the white shirt and black pants. I went out the door and the boy pointed to a white van with the church logo on the side. Before I could get to it, the side door opened and three more men in white shirts and black pants stepped out.
I glanced back at church door and saw Conway standing there with his smart phone held up and pointing at me. In a split second I figured out that he wanted to catch me on film either going up in flames because sun…which was stupid, since the sun was up when I got there, or he wanted to see me defend myself against a bunch of church bullies. He was testing me, measuring me. And if I died…
What the hell was this guy thinking? He was going to film his own people beating someone up? Perhaps even killing them? Didn't he learn his lesson when he tortured that prostitute?
I could take all of them, and I could do it faster than his camera could record, but that would be exposing more of my strengths to him and his flock. He might not know exactly what I was, but I'd piqued his curiosity. And I'd rather him keep guessing and not actually learning anything. Those who needed to know understood what I was. And that was as far as I wanted it to go.
I'd resigned myself to getting my ass kicked when a familiar white sedan pulled out of where it was parked behind a SUV. It came to a stop to my right with a skidding of dust as Julie threw it in park and Luke stepped out of the passenger side…with his phone in front of his face. "Well, well…" he said as he moved it to capture each face of the men who were going to pummel me into next year. "What do we have here? Ren, you okay?"
"I'm good." And I didn't hesitate in getting into the back of the sedan.
Luke turned his phone to face Conway. "We'll be seeing you on YouTube, Chancellor. Defender of God and beater upper of defenseless photographers."
Beater upper?
Defenseless photographers?
I am not defenseless.
Conway made a wave in the air and the guys all filed back into the van. Luke got in the car and Julie did a seriously impressive skidding U-turn to get us out of Crazyville. Once on the road, Luke turned around and asked me exactly what happened. And I told him. We had a sort of laugh back to the station where I gave an official statement and waffled over pressing charges. They hadn't attacked me, and I didn't think dragging someone into court for being assaulted with a cheap cross and letter opener was that big a deal. That and…well, I wasn't in the least bit injured. Except maybe my pride.
Their captain, someone who was not my biggest fan and knew what I was (so that's three people that knew I wasn't human, him, Julie and Luke), agreed, but decided to keep the incident fresh in case they needed to haul all those people in for questioning. He also warned caution against antagonizing Conway. He might be crazy, but he had a reputation for bulldogging his targets. And it was obvious I was now squarely in his sites. "It's hard enough keeping your…condition…under the radar and justifying you being on certain crime scenes. Only a few of my people even know Night Walkers exist. That kind of knowledge…not everyone can handle it. Just…give me a report and stay away from that loon. Let Meehan and Wallace handle him."
I wrote up a detailed blow-by-blow of what happened for the captain and Julie volunteered to drive me back to my place. On the way, I got a call from the captain. Apparently, Mr. Conway was going to press charges against me.
"For what?"
"He says you assaulted him with one of his crosses."
I did a facepalm and sighed. "I never touched him."
"He's insisting he's got photos of the beat down you gave him. But don't worry. Meehan sent me the video of you guys outside, and it clearly shows you leaving with them and Conway looks fine."
Still…having that kind of flag on my record was not good. Not for someone like me who liked to remain off the radar. Or, most radars.
I hung up and slumped into the seat. "That guy is nuts."
"Yes. Yes, he is." Julie smiled at me. "So what's on your schedule for the rest of the day?"
"Eh…cataloging the pictures from Cimitir Hall and writing up notes. And I think—" I held up my phone, checked my calendar, and made a rude noise. "Yeah, I do. I have a house shoot for Southern Living tomorrow morning."
"Southern Living…really?"
"Yeah. Means I'll be there early to make sure the designers have staged the rooms appropriately. You don't think those antebellum homes always look like that, do you?"
"I wouldn't know. I was born in South Georgia and we had a cow farm."
"Nice."
She paused. "Where did you grow up, Ren?"
I looked at her. "Why the interest?"
"I think it's because I realized I don't know anything about you. Luke's okay with it, but I like knowing where people started. I like knowing their history because it makes us who we are."
I licked my lips and drank half of a bottle of water. "That translates into you wanting to know why Conway was so interested in me."
She sighed. "Can y
ou blame me? That guy is a nut job, Ren. And it looked like he had a boner for you. Hell, when we saw that van pull up, we figure he was gonna kidnap you."
"I had similar thoughts myself. I am lucky you two didn't leave."
"We didn't leave because Conway gave me the creeps. He's fixated on you, and he should be more focused on finding out what happened to his church member." She was quiet again. "What was he going to do to you?"
I didn't have an answer for her because I'd never been honest with her or Luke, or anyone really, about my past. Jedediah and his people had worked me over to learn the truth, but it'd been painfully obvious they'd never dealt with Chevaliers before. It was possible to hide the truths of my past from them…not easy, but possible. My mind still bore their fresh scars…but nothing they could do could break through the deeper, thicker scars of what my Master did to me. I had been taught that when a secret is given, it is kept. Forever. Unless my Master decided it was safe. Now that she was no longer alive…I made those decisions.
I finally said, "I'm not a Night Walker, so the usual torture tactics his people probably got out of fiction books, TV and movies won't work. My guess is he wanted his boys to find out what I am. I'm pretty sure people like him pride themselves on knowing exactly what lives around them. He builds his principles and beliefs on that knowledge."
Julie laughed. "And then you come along and warp that knowledge."
"Something like that."
She was quiet for a few streets, then, "How not-human are you?"
Oh boy.
Twisting in the seat, I gave her my best happy face. Or what I thought was my best happy face. "I am anatomically the same as I was when I was born. My heart beats, I breathe, my hair grows." I rubbed my face. "Even my beard grows."
"Do you eat?"
I blinked at her. "What?"
"I never see you eat, and the way you go through water sometimes… You're very pale."
"My mother was Irish. I'm supposed to be pale."
She smirked. "You're never going to tell me about yourself, are you?"
"I don't ask about you, do I?"
"I'm easy to find." And I knew then she'd tried investigating me already. But I knew how to create identities. It was something my Master taught me. Moving from place to place, protecting our own, that was the way of the Herne Family.
"We'll see," was the only answer I could give her. And I wanted to give her so much more. But I just couldn't live with her revulsion once she knew I wasn't alive…and I wasn't dead. And eating…I just…that was not something she needed to see. Ever.
Her phone rang then and she put it to her ear as we sat at a red light. "Wallace…hey, yeah…sure…" She checked her watch. "How does half an hour sound? Good. Oh, did you call Luke? …Good. Thanks." She hung up and set the phone into a cave in the car's console. "Got anything planned right now?"
"Why?"
"Coroner's got something on the girl. Gonna meet Luke over there."
Coroner. Yes! I could pick up my order from Emmet. Only I wasn't sure if he'd be there, since it was so early in the day. Maybe he'd have it ready somewhere. After all, I always paid in advance.
We arrived at the medical examiner's office about forty-five minutes later. I brought my bag with me since this would be the first time I could see the actual body and not speak with the ghost. I asked about Emmet at the front, checking to see if he was in, but I got a strange response.
"Emmet Carson hasn't been in for three days. If he misses two more, he's fired."
Emmet hadn't been in to work? That wasn't like him at all. Unlike most people, he enjoyed his work. Sometimes a little too much. As I followed behind Julie to the examination room, I called Emmet on my cell. It went straight to voicemail. I then called his other cell phone. Same thing. That's when I called Aberdeen and left a message. "Emmet's missing." That was all I had to say. He would panic the same way I was panicking at the moment.
The dayshift ME was medium height, dark skin, short hair, and light colored eyes. She smiled when the detectives entered, but that smile dropped the moment I stepped in. "Who's he?"
"Sheila, this is Ren Grainger. He helps us out on cases sometimes. Ren, this is Sheila Elliston."
Her smiled didn't quite return, but she did offer me her hand and we shook. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Grainger. You're not the Grainger who did the gallery shots over in Wyndham Estates, are you?"
I nodded. "Same. But I also do crime scene work when I'm needed. Please…I'm not here to hinder…although…I hear Emmet Carson hasn't been in?"
Now her face showed a bit of something besides apprehension. Worry. "No one's been able to get ahold of him. I filed a missing person report yesterday and the police are supposed to come and open his locker today."
That bit of news alarmed me. His locker was where he usually hid the blood. Unlike human blood, Vampire blood didn't need to be refrigerated. But it did need darkness. "That's terrible," I managed to say.
"Hopefully Emmet's okay," Luke said. "You found something about the Cimitir Hall victim?"
"You get an ID yet?" Sheila asked.
"We believe her name is Tonya Mulberry. Latent hasn't called with a match yet."
"That could mean she's just not in the system. No driver's license yet."
"Damn…" Luke shook his head. "Didn't think about that."
Sheila pulled back the sheet on the victim. I was always amazed at the color the body turns when it dies. It no longer looked real to me, and I could sense nothing from it. Hell, the invisible spirit I sensed at Cimitir Hall was more alive than this body. From where I stood near the knees, I could see the puncture wounds on the neck. They looked real. "You were right about her not being killed there. This girl was actually killed by blunt force trauma to the skull. Here—" She moved to the head and turned it to reveal a gouged area where the hair had been shaved. "She was drained before her heart stopped pumping, cleaned up in bleach, and then left in the Hall. I got no fingerprints, not even a stray hair."
Luke sighed. "So we're not any further than we were before."
"Except for the reason I called you down here." Sheila went to a table and retrieved a small bag. She held it up. Inside was a small silver cross. I could tell it was real silver by the ping it left in the air between it and me. Like I said before, silver could do serious damage to Night Walkers, and their creations. I'd been lucky that Conway had relied more on his belief in the power of the cross itself, and not the purity of the metal.
"I don't remember her wearing jewelry," Luke said.
"Because she wasn't wearing it. I pulled this out of her stomach. Which was pretty much empty, I might add."
I stared at Tonya's face, remembering how it looked at me from the photos. The expression of pleading in her eyes. She either swallowed it voluntarily, or someone forced her. As to why? I didn't see any logical reason for putting a cross in her stomach.
"Luke…can I see that?"
He nodded and passed it to me, still in the bag. The plastic would protect me enough so it didn't burn…I hoped.
The moment I touched it, I regretted doing it. This was the reason I stuck to cameras, so I could distance myself from what I could see. I wasn't exactly a psychometrist, or I'd never touted this Chevalier Gift as being such. My Master never had a name for it, she just knew the spirits of the dead would talk to me. But since she wanted to see them too, the camera became my foci.
Except when I touched something…like this cross.
The images weren't as clear as the emotions, the overwhelming feeling of terror, frustration, anger, helplessness, and…betrayal. I felt unable to move, held down by many strong men, and I couldn't get away. One of them pried open my mouth and shoved something down my throat. I choked and sputtered and wanted to spit it out, but another hand covered my lips and held my nose.
Swallow it now or I'll kill your boyfriend, and your family! I will not allow you to ruin everything!
I fought until the pounding of my heart alarmed me and I swallowed
. Finally, they took their hand away from me and I gasped for air.
"Ren?"
All of this happened in a matter of seconds before I opened my eyes and looked at Luke. He was looking at me as Sheila and Julie were talking to each other across the room.
"I—"
He glanced back at them. "Did you get a reading off that cross? I mean, you saw something? Don't you have to use a camera for that?"
I glared at Luke.
He shook his head. "They didn't notice you'd tensed up. But I did. This is why you like to take pictures, isn't it? Why you never touch anything at a crime scene?"
After shoving the bagged cross into his hands, I stepped away. "Luke…not right now."
We'd made an agreement, Luke and I. We didn't tell everyone what I could do. What I was capable of. He'd never understood my unwillingness to share these Gifts, but the reasons were just as horrific as the place where they came from. The only explanation I'd given him was that there was a time when I was used, handed off, controlled by others to use my abilities, night after night. And that kind of usage wore me down, made me unable to care for a time. And I never wanted that to happen again.
And I just didn't want to weird Julie out any more than I already had. Especially after her little question and answer session in the car. "Julie already thinks you're weird, Ren. Just like I used to, before I saw…" And he made a face. He'd seen me eat once. The images never left him. And I have to admit, I'd been surprised when he'd offered to be a friend as long as I was straight with him.
"She can't ever see that," I said in a low whisper. "You might be able to handle it, but I don't think she could."
"She's a lot stronger than you give her credit. And in case you haven't noticed, she likes you."
"No, she doesn't."
"Ren." He put a hand on my shoulder. "Trust me. She really likes you."
I was surprised, and flattered, to know this. Even gave me the idea there could be something more between us. But I couldn't go through the heartbreak I'd already suffered when the women I cared for learned the truth and were horrified. No. Not with Julie. I had to keep her at a distance and I had to keep her safe. "There are reasons, Luke."