House Of Bones (Cast In Shadow Book 1)

by A J Brahms

  Badb turned and smiled at us, but I didn't like the smile. It was smug and self-assured. She handed me an envelope she procured from one of the staff behind the desk. "Here is your answer. Just remember the terms of your agreement."

  I took the envelope and nodded. "I will."

  She moved in close and put a finger along my jawline, tracing it with a black-lacquered nail. "I look forward to working with you in the future, Renwick."

  We made our way out of there, and once through the private door, found ourselves back on Peachtree Street. The sun was still rising and the streets still deserted.

  "We've stepped out at the same time we stepped in." Aberdeen put his hands on his hips. "Remarkable powers a Goddess has, wouldn't you agree?"

  "If I didn't know you better…which I'm thinking I don't, I'd say you like the Mórrígan."

  He shrugged. "Which face?"

  "Huh?" I started opening up the envelope. "What do you mean which face?"

  "Did you like her young and beautiful? Her old and harsh, or her centered and motherly? The Mórrígan is a three-faced Goddess, Ren. Those women were the same…entity."

  "You mean…she wasn't just the Queen Elizabeth up in the tower?"

  Aberdeen shook his head. "No. Her names are Badb, Macha and Anand, also known as Mórrígan." He looked up at the building again. "Just…ingenious."

  While Aberdeen praised this crazy ass Goddess for having three faces, I stared down at the single name written in black ink across the piece of paper.

  Beau Woodard.

  Who the hell was that?

  "Let's take a look." Aberdeen looked at it. "Who in the bloody hell is that?"

  "I don't know. I guess I assumed I'd have Conway's name."

  Aberdeen made a sour face. "Not so lucky. So, we have a name we can't ask about because you can't mention it to anyone. Thank Heavens for Google."

  We got back to Julie's house just in time to have coffee with her. I couldn't tell her what we'd been up to, and I didn't want to get her involved in anything relating to the Vampires or Fairies, so as far as she knew…we struck out.

  But once she left, I got on her computer and did some serious searching. Google let me down. There were at least fifty Beau Woodards listed and most of them were in the North and a few in Alaska. So I painstakingly went through each of their backgrounds, using my hacked access to a few databases, and came up with nothing. No ties to the Church of Paths. It was getting dark by the time I realized my stomach was growling. I hadn't actually eaten in two days. Other than blood. But I doubted Julie had what I would need.

  The door opened and Aberdeen came in. I hadn't realized he'd left.

  He loomed behind me where I stood looking into Julie's fridge. "Any luck?"

  "Nope. I think she gave me a bum name."

  "We might be looking at this the wrong way. I was thinking of that when I went out to procure your evening meal."

  Slamming the door to the fridge shut, I faced him. "You got food?"

  "It's in the car. And it's rather…feisty."

  Seeing a Ghoul eat is not something anyone of the faint of heart should do. Aberdeen's first viewing had been an eye opener for him. And he'd wanted to exorcise me that instant. And that was something he could do…if he really wanted to. But his scientific curiosity in all things weird got the better of him, as it did when he was cursed.

  He'd pulled the car into the garage so no one in the neighborhood could see. I opened the trunk to find a large cage, and in that cage… "A swan?"

  Aberdeen shrugged where he stood at the door into Julie's house. "It was the best I could do on short notice. There was half a dozen of them over in Piedmont Park. No one's going to care."

  It wasn't like I could give it up now. My senses had locked onto it and I needed to eat. The Vampire blood I drank fueled whatever it was in my Master's blood that changed me, but the monster it made me into demanded fresh, living flesh.

  I won't go into detail about my dinner because…gross. But I will say it took about an hour to clean up Julie's guest bathroom. Luckily Aberdeen was schooled in this kind of aftermath and had bleach, gloves and garbage bags in the car. Once I was sure I had all the feathers pulled from the room and everything looked as nice as I'd found it, Aberdeen left to dispose of the carcass and I took a long, hot shower and brushed my teeth about five times 'cause, blood breath?

  Nasty.

  Once I was changed and clean and had a moment, I realized it was after seven in the evening and Julie wasn't home. I still didn't have my phone, so I used her landline and called her phone. Straight to voicemail. No answer at her desk phone at the station, so I called Meehan's desk phone. No answer. So I called his cell, very pleased with myself that I remembered the number. "Julie?"

  "Uh no. It's Ren. And I take it from your voice you haven't seen her either?"

  Luke sighed. "No. We were investigating that house they took you to and she left to do a bit of casing. Haven't seen her since."

  "You mean she disappeared in that neighborhood?"

  I heard the front door and looked, but it was just Aberdeen returning.

  "Yep. We can't pick up her cell signal either. Goes straight to voicemail."

  As I'd learned two minutes earlier. "No one say anything? You talk to anyone?"

  "We got nothing. And I take it she didn't come home."

  "No."

  Luke paused, then, "When I went looking for her, I did some casing myself. Asking questions about you and a van. Shockingly enough, a local gas station's surveillance camera picked up a white van matching the description you gave when it pulled in for gas. We spotted one of the missing kids getting out and filling it with gas. Time stamp puts it about the time you went missing."

  "And it's probably fair to say I was in that van when it parked there to get gas."

  "Yeah. Which corroborates your story about the kids and the van, but it doesn't actually put them in that house you were held in. Just means they were in the vicinity. I ran the plates to find the registration and it came back with a name."

  "Conway? Church of Paths?"

  "Not even close. Some guy named Beauregard A. Woodard. No affiliation. I was going to follow up on the name. Pin down who that was."

  I stood completely still for a few seconds. I hadn't told them the name. They'd found it on their own, so it didn't violate my NDA. But how was I supposed to work with this? And how in the hell did those kids get a van from a man who hired Brownies to kill them?

  "Just a sec." I covered the receiver and quickly told Aberdeen.

  His brow arched and he chewed on his lower lip. "Don't say the name. Not even the name you got from her. Just call him…the perp. Or dirt bag. Some idiom that sounds good and cop-like."

  Cop-like?

  "Ren?"

  "Yeah…sorry, I was talking to Aberdeen. Any luck tracing this person?"

  "None. It all went back to a holding company in North Carolina, some umbrella corp called Boneyard Billet. Sound familiar?"

  "Nope."

  I could hear Luke's frustration. "Captain's sending a team over to Julie's house, so the two of you might want to vacate. You're still wanted for questioning about the three missing kids, especially since this van you were kidnapped in looks to be real."

  What, did he think I made that shit up? "Do they want to arrest me?"

  "No. Just to question you. And given evidence of this van…yeah I'd wait until you're ready to talk with them. You can get a lawyer and fend them off."

  "Can I get back into my apartment?"

  "Yes. They released it about an hour ago. But I'd still be careful."

  I said okay and hung up. "Boneyard Billet?" I looked at Aberdeen. "We have to go. They're on their way over to check out this house."

  We grabbed our things and stuffed them in the back. Aberdeen passed a few cop cars coming into the neighborhood as we left. They turned left; we turned right and headed back into town.

  I needed more Internet access. "Is this the same guy? Did
the Mórrígan give us a short name to reroute us?"

  "I had wondered if your contract would interfere with this person's contract. They made a deal with the Mórrígan, just as you did. And I am more than sure she's covered her own backside." He turned down Peachtree toward our apartment building.

  "And I think Julie's disappearance is related."

  "Are you worried?"

  I licked my lips. "I'm terrified." Especially after I'd seen what the Brownies could do.

  Once back in my apartment building, I was surprised by a few cameras and reporters. This was attention I did not want. So Aberdeen shielded me as best he could as we took the private elevator to our floor. There, I found the door unlocked and the place ransacked. One look at my office and darkroom bathroom and I realized they'd taken all my chemicals, all my pictures, even my books of shots I'd collected over the years. My portfolio. Everything Julie said they weren't allowed to take!

  They'd even taken my computer and my tablet.

  I called Luke, screaming at the top of my lungs and he assured me it'd all been tagged and would be returned once the investigation was over. I honestly didn't feel comforted by this. Luckily I still had three of my cameras…and I punched a hole through my wall when I realized they'd taken all that hard to find film as well.

  Aberdeen surprised me when he produced a laptop. "I hide things," he said. "An old habit from when I lived in a monastery and stashed some of my more forbidden reading there."

  Excited, I started my search on Boneyard Billet and found something immediately.

  What it meant.

  "Says boneyard is the slang term for a cemetery," Aberdeen read over my shoulder. "And even I know a billet is the term the military uses for a home, like where soldiers live."

  "Why would anyone name a company Cemetery House?" I started looking up the full name of Beauregard A. Woodard.

  "Why would you name a company Xerox?" Aberdeen said as he plopped down next to me with a shot of bourbon in his hand. "Seems an odd sort of name."

  "Most people, and I mean most, name a thing with a meaning behind it." I pursed my lips as the search results came up. There were two Beauregard A. Woodards, and one of them was located in Atlanta. I pulled up the address, cross-referenced it and… "Is that…a cemetery?"

  "Try Google Maps or satellite or something." Aberdeen gestured at the screen.

  I did, and yeah…it was a cemetery. And not a large one, but a private one. Sitting back on the couch, I scratched at my beard as I puzzled this out. "So, the name we got from three-face lady is tied to a company named Cemetery House, that just so happens to be the address of an actual…"

  "Cemetery," Aberdeen finished. "And no ties to the Church."

  "None."

  "I hate to say this, Ren, but the Church really may be innocent in all this."

  I pointed at the screen. "Not if the van is registered to this name. Why would Church members have a van that's linked to a cemetery?" And then I sort of saw something I didn't want to see but should have. Only…I wanted to make sure my brain wasn't filling in holes where it found them. "The original name of Cimitir Hall was L'Acre de Dieu?"

  Aberdeen groaned. "Your French is atrocious, Ren. We have to fix that."

  "Just yes or no."

  "Yes."

  "And that translates into God's Acre?"

  "Yes, why are you asking—oh."

  I'd pointed to the screen, where I'd searched for synonyms for cemetery. One of them was indeed, God's Acre. I Googled Cimitir, which was Romanian for cemetery. "This just can't be a coincidence, can it?"

  "It certainly could…but apparently, all roads keep leading back to Cimitir Hall."

  "And the Night Walkers, not the Church."

  My phone rang and scared the bejesus outta me. Not many knew my landline and I was shocked the police had left that phone. Digging the phone out from beneath an over-turned chair, Aberdeen answered it, "Grainger residence…yes, may I ask who's calling?"

  I was watching him and he looked at me with wide eyes. "Yes. Right away." He put the receiver to his chest and mouthed kidnappers.

  My kidnappers? They were all dead. I'd seen them rot away into dust. So they couldn't be mine.

  I grabbed the phone from Aberdeen and slammed it to my ear. "This is Ren Grainger."

  The voice that spoke had a thick Southern accent. "A pleasure to finally speak with you. I'm certain you are aware that Detective Julie Wallace hasn't been seen for some time."

  The blood in my veins ran cold as I recognized the voice from my vision in the morgue, when I touched the cross. I could hear Occam's call in my head. "If you hurt her—"

  "Well, well…a creature like you, caring so much for a human? You weren't taught as well as you think you were. Chevaliers were bred to be killing machines, willing to give up their lives to protect their Masters. Funny how no one knows what happened to your Master, Mr. Grainger. All we have is your word and no bones to bid the truth."

  "You killed Tonya Mulberry."

  "Unfortunately, we are not conversing about Miss Mulberry, Mr. Grainger. Our subject matter is tied to the living. Which she is not a part of now."

  I locked eyes with Aberdeen. I needed him to give me strength as my blood now turned to steam as it boiled at the thought of someone harming Julie. "What do you want?"

  "You're doing a lot of investigating, Mr. Grainger. That needs to stop."

  "I was hired."

  "Consider yourself fired. Miss Mulberry's death, though tragic, was necessary. And so will your nice friend's if you don't do exactly what I tell you."

  I didn't answer. I was too angry to speak.

  "I need you to meet me tonight—I'll let you know the time and place, Mr. Grainger. Alone. I would prefer you unfed, but I know that's impossible now." There was a pause. "How did my blood taste, Mr. Grainger? Did its power reawaken anything?"

  At first I didn't know what he was talking about. The only blood I'd had was what I'd found in Carson's locker. Carson always had the blood shipped a certain way to preserve freshness, and the vial I'd drank tasted as if it had been near its limit. I pointed to my bag and motioned for Aberdeen to bring it to me. I cradled the phone between my ear and my shoulder and dumped out the contents. Half of which I didn't really recognize, since Carson dealt in being someone who could acquire things.

  "Did I arouse something, Mr. Grainger? Does my blood sing?"

  Aberdeen started opening boxes, one of which contained a vial of what looked like blood and held it up. I touched it and then pulled my hand back. It was fresh, less than a week old. Maybe only a few days. "Oh, it sings," I said as I motioned for him to put it back in the box. "You planted your blood inside Carson's locker."

  "Wrong again. I planted it inside your bag after you emptied that fool's locker. I took your illegal blood out so you'd be forced to drink mine." The caller laughed. "You'll find a phone in your mail slot, Mr. Grainger."

  He disconnected.

  I put the phone on the coffee table next to the computer.

  "What's going on?" Aberdeen pointed to the box. "Was that someone else's order for blood?"

  "I think I'm the only Chevalier for miles who would need a Night Walker's blood," I said as my mind kicked into overdrive and I started putting some pieces together. "I'm more than sure I just spoke with Beau Woodard. He planted that blood in my bag while it was under the sink at the morgue. Which means he was there while I was there."

  Aberdeen put a finger to his lips. "But he didn't remove the blood you'd already purchased from Carson."

  "No, because Carson doesn't package black market blood as blood. He has them shipped in cigar shipments from South America. The blood I drank came out of one of those special cigar containers." I picked up the box. "But he thought I'd drink this. And he thought he removed my ordered blood."

  Aberdeen put his hands on his hips. "So if he didn't take your order, what did he take?"

  "No idea. But apparently, it was blood because I doubt this guy wouldn't have
looked inside the package."

  "Ren, why would he replace that blood with his own?"

  "Because he staged that kidnapping. My kidnapping." I stood and started moving around the trashed apartment, not even seeing the chaos anymore. "Don't you see? Woodard somehow convinced those kids that I was one of the Night Walkers—remember they had my feet in ice water, but one of them said it needed to be running water? Night Walkers can't cross swiftly running water—it's a myth, but it's out there for untrained and uneducated minds. I'm betting Woodard convinced them they needed to kidnap me and call their friend, Tonya's boyfriend, who wasn't going to let her death go. But it was a set up for the Brownies to kill two birds with one stone. Get rid of the Church people and wound me."

  "Wound you? I thought it tried to kill you."

  "Made it look like that. Those things were killing the other three with precise hits. I'm a good fighter, but I'm not the best. And my Ghoul powers against them wouldn't exactly have evened up my odds against things I couldn't touch. They could have killed me easily, but they didn't. No, they wounded me on purpose so I would have no choice but to drink Vampire blood."

  "And whoever sent them, this Beau Woodard, believed you'd drink their blood." Aberdeen shook his head. "All this proves is that this person is stupid and doesn't understand the way Ghouls work, or blood for that matter."

  I rubbed at my face again. "Elizabeth told me the art of making a Chevalier had been lost, erased from the history books and spells. It had been easy to just wipe us away since our creation had originally been relegated to the old and powerful. We were the force that kept the others in line." I ran my fingers through my hair as I tried to parse it all out to where it made sense. But it still had holes. "So whoever this is, isn't quite sure about the governing rules of a Ghoul. He apparently doesn't know that once the blood is separated from the Vampire, it loses control potency."

  "That unless you drink it right from the vein, you can't be controlled."

  I pointed at him. "Exactly. Also, it takes a specific ritual to create a Ghoul, a certain formation of lunar events and a number of drinks. Of which this idiot knows nada."

  "Yes." Aberdeen looked disgusted. It was a wonder he'd stuck with me all these years. "So he thinks he's Ghouling you."