by E. A. Copen
I got Hunter out to the truck at five minutes to nine and drove five over the speed limit all the way to the school.
There weren’t many school-aged children in Paint Rock, thirty or so spread across kindergarten and all twelve grades. The number went up every year and the school had been forced to compensate. It was now made up of two modular trailers instead of one. Hunter’s class was in Modular A where he learned with the rest of the seventh through twelfth-grade kids. I stopped the truck outside and turned to Hunter. He’d already popped open the door.
“Wait a second,” I said.
He rolled his eyes, groaned and closed the door. “What?”
I hesitated. Time was short but I needed to say the right thing. “Sal said you’re doing good.”
“Yeah,” was his impatient response. “Can I go now?”
“Your father would be proud to have seen you two getting along so well.”
Hunter glared at me for a minute, his big eyes growing a little wet. Then he blinked once and turned away. “Whatever. I’m going to be late.” He opened the door and hopped out before I could say anything else.
“Have a good day,” I called. “I love—” He slammed the door and I had to finish to an empty cab. “—you.”
For two minutes, I sat alone with my silence, wondering if I’d said the right thing. Sometimes, my own ineptitude as a parent amazed me. For twelve long years, Hunter and I had lived together, eaten together, laughed together. We’d fought and cried together. After all that, I couldn’t talk to him without feeling like a brick wall would be more responsive. But bring Sal or Chanter around and the kid was all ears. Somehow, the pack had replaced me and he wasn’t even a full member yet.
Ten long minutes later, I pulled into a parking spot at the precinct, more tired than ever. I scanned the other parked cars for any cars I hadn’t seen before only to come up empty.
I put the truck in park, engaged the brake and jumped out, running full speed for my office. In the station, I nearly knocked over the first few cops I ran by. The duty sergeant shot up from her desk when I passed, calling my name. I didn’t stop. Out of breath, I finally reached my office door and threw it open.
It was empty inside, the lights off, my desk a mess, exactly as I’d left it.
“Agent Black,” said the duty sergeant, jogging up to me. She brushed aside a short strand of black hair and held out a post it note with a hastily scribbled message on it. “I was told to tell you to go to this address.”
I took the note and glanced down at the address before looking back to her. My blood turned to ice water when I realized the address corresponded to Kim Kelley’s mansion. “Who gave this to you?”
She gave me a sour look. “What do I look like? Your damn secretary?” She turned her back to me, walking away while muttering to herself.
I pocketed the note and stormed back out of the station, scowling. Whoever they’d called in somehow already knew about the lead with Kim. Since they’d gone to the house, by now they also had some idea of what had happened yesterday, an incident I had yet to file paperwork on. Dammit. Another nail in my career coffin. It was just my luck they’d send someone who was relentlessly thorough. Hopefully, the guy was as good as he was irritating. I hadn’t even met him yet and, already, I was cursing at him.
I drove out to the Kelley estate and pulled up beside my car. She was still there, untouched. The gate, though, was wide open. From the road, I couldn’t see any signs someone else was in the house so I decided to just get back in the truck and drive it down the long, winding driveway.
The house looked like a twister had hit it. Most of the roof had fallen in, leaving gaping holes on top and on the side of the house where I could see into some of the rooms. They looked tossed, furniture and papers everywhere. All the windows were shattered, broken glass littering the ground.
I parked and got out, pulling my gun as soon as I did. I’d already seen what happened to the things the giant killed. If he hadn’t smashed all the security to pieces, a few of those draugr things could be wandering around. My gun pointed straight ahead, I closed on the front door, which looked intact. It had been unlatched and caught on a crosswind sweeping through the porch, slamming it rhythmically as the wind ebbed and flowed. Beyond, the inside of the house was impermeable darkness.
A deep sense of foreboding settled into my bones. Magick had scarred the ground and it would never be the same. The closer I came to the front door, the stronger the feeling became.
I thought I heard footsteps behind me and stopped, turning a full circle to survey the yard. The only sound was the door flapping against the frame and so I turned back around—and almost into one of Kim’s fleur-de-lis soldiers.
He didn’t look like any of the private security types I’d seen yesterday. One arm was twisted around the wrong way. His head fell low, chin resting against the bulletproof vest he was wearing. Blood matted on his head and I could see the entirety of one ear and half his face was gone, the white bone underneath exposed.
“Holy hell,” I breathed, unable to contain my surprise.
Slowly, his head lifted and I saw black, spidery veins pulsating in his neck and temples. There was no life in his eyes. They’d gone cloudy and white, the pupils dilated. He made a hungry, groaning sound, and the backward facing arm twitched as he flexed his jaw.
I took a step back. Something moved in my peripheral vision. I turned my head and saw several more draugr crawl out from behind cacti, palm trees, and lawn décor.
“So it’s like that, is it?” I said. “Figures. The one day I dress up.”
The draugr in front of me gave a gasping, rasping and barking call before loping toward me, unbalanced. I fired off a shot and hit it in the shoulder. The rounds I carried were silver jacketed in iron, guaranteed to slow down almost anything. But it didn’t faze the thing. It just kept coming. I sidestepped it, hoping it was as clumsy as it looked. I must’ve been in luck because it just stumbled on by for a few steps before it realized it had missed. It spun and threw its arms wildly just as I squeezed the trigger again. This time, the bullet found its mark between the eyes. The monster’s body jerked with the impact and he fell back, lying still.
I turned, aiming for the next closest one. There were four of them in the courtyard and, with the help of six more bullets, I put them down.
As I was about to congratulate myself, there was another rasping, barking call and a fifth one stumbled out from beside the house. I turned and took a step back as it charged me, trying to aim for its head. But I miscalculated my step because of those damn shoes and backed up against one of the ones I’d already shot, losing my balance.
I fell in slow motion, my feet flying out, the force of the impact combined with my surprise knocking me one way and the gun the other. My head hit the pavement and bounced. My vision spun. The undead soldier rasped and lunged, both arms outstretched. I brought my arms up defensively on instinct to hold it back while it tried to snap at me, gasping and rasping the whole time. For as strong as Annie had been, this one was even stronger. Numbness settled into my fingers and every breath I took was a struggle against the cold emanating from the draugr. I was losing ground quick. My arms started to buckle.
Just as I was about to lose my grip on his shoulders, there was the unmistakable click of a pump action shotgun and, a fraction of a second later, his head exploded all over me. The body slumped down on top of me and I was left lying face up with strings of gore and brain all over me…again.
A dark figure closed. I could make out the outline of a wide brimmed hat, a long leather coat and the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun pointed deadpan at my face. He shifted, blocking out the sun. The face behind the shotgun was unfamiliar. He had a crooked nose, chin length, wavy and dark hair, strong cheekbones and striking gray eyes. He lifted a prominent chin and offered in Russian, “Zdravstvujtye.”
I lowered my head back to the pavement. “Don’t tell me. You’re the new guy.”
One corner of his mouth curled, revealing a fang. Great, I thought. Just what this case needs. Another vampire.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“My name is Abraham Helsinki,” he offered, holding out a gloved hand.
I pushed the body off of me, wiped some blood out of my face and took it. The gloves were leather, and I could feel the light buzz of spellwork on them as they brushed against my aura.
“Well, Abe,” I said, spitting on the ground just in case some of the mess had gotten into my mouth. “Sorry I missed you at the station.”
“Abraham. And you missed some.” He pointed to my hair.
I brushed my hands through it and came away with a chunk of brain in my hand. “Did I get it?”
“Most of it.” Abe leveraged the shotgun against his shoulder and scanned the courtyard. “Do you know what these things are?”
“I think the right word is draugr.”
He reached down and pulled up one of the one’s I’d dropped. Lifting the big man one-handed without so much as a grunt, he flopped a dead arm to the side and poked at a large hole in the man’s gut. When he pressed a finger to it, black oozed out. “Well, they’re certainly dead.”
“So was the girl in the morgue,” I said, leaning in. “Didn’t stop Annie from trying to eat me.”
“What girl in the morgue?” He dropped the body and turned back to me.
“Uh…”
I stumbled into that one. How do you tell your superior you had to shoot a dead body and ruin all the potential evidence before handing it over to a zombie rights activist? Which reminded me, Doc should have had an update for me. If I hadn’t broken my phone, I would have gotten a call from him by then. I made a mental note to drop by the clinic after I explained myself to my new partner.
“Annie Cox. She and Harry Draft, AKA Harry Continelli, are the victims in this case.”
“Right,” said Abe and gestured for me to continue. “What happened to her in the morgue again?”
I relayed the story, leaving out the part where I thought forceps would make a decent zombie slaying weapon. After all, it wasn’t me that blew Annie’s face off and it wasn’t my fault she sat up and attacked me.
When I was finished, Abe cocked his head to the side. “Doctor Ramis. Why is that name familiar? Oh, yes. Some of your previous paperwork mentioned him from another case.” He shrugged and looked around, seeming to notice all the bodies for the first time. “It cannot be helped, I suppose. I am less concerned about Annie and more about Harry. I spoke to the Continelli family on my way here. They seemed unaware one of the prominent members of their family had been murdered at all.”
Oh. Shit. Abe had gone and done exactly what I was hoping no one would do. If the Stryx knew about Harry before I had a suspect in hand, it could spark retaliation killings on suspicion alone. With Crux here, all they had to do was relay the order and he’d be obligated to follow, killing whomever his higher ranking family members told him to.
“I was trying to keep it quiet until I had a suspect,” I growled at Abe.
He ignored my objection. “So, what killed all these men?”
“Uh…an ice giant?” Abe raised an eyebrow. I waved a hand at him. “I’ll explain once we get back to the office. There’s a lot for you to get caught up on.”
“I think it is important enough you should explain sooner rather than later, Agent Black.”
My gun was still a few yards away. I went to retrieve it, still picking bits of brain off of my best shirt. “Look, Abe—”
His face twitched. “Abraham.”
“Whatever. I’d love to stand out here and talk shop with you all day, but I need to know. Are there any more of those draugr lurking around? Have you been inside? You didn’t see any more of them, did you?”
“I have been inside,” he admitted. “I have not done a room to room sweep but I did find a sign-in roster at the security desk. Bevens, Trent and Cray were the only ones I could not account for.” He paused. “I think he was Bevins. Check his nametag, would you?”
I glared at Abe and stood there for a minute, hands on my hips, waiting for him to at least say please. He didn’t. After several moments of staring each other down, it became clear why. Abe thought he was in charge. In the end, I wound up kicking the body over and checking the ID tag clipped to his chest. Ethan Bevins.
“How many of these did you kill?” I asked.
Abe shrugged. “A baker’s dozen, perhaps? Does it matter?”
“How’d you even know to come here?”
“Oh, I have been to the scene of the crime as well. One of the owners pointed me here. Robin? Robert?”
“Robbie,” I filled in.
“That is it. He was worried about his co-owner. She had not come in for two nights and he indicated he had not heard back from you, either. I called the station and left a message there, should you come to meet me there, and then I drove here, expecting to find your corpse.”
I frowned. “I see how competent BSI thinks I am. Bust my phone and everyone thinks I’m dead.”
Abe shrugged.
“Okay, then,” I continued. “I assumed we’d get caught up. You know, sit and go over case notes and stuff? I can walk you through what happened here and my plan going forward to…” I trailed off when Abe started walking around the side of the house halfway through my sentence.
“I acknowledge your need to discuss the case, Agent Black,” Abe called back to me as I followed him. “And I am willing. But I am also very hungry. Perhaps this is a conversation best had over some breakfast?”
As we came around the side of the building, I saw a truck parked there, the make and model of which hadn’t seen production since the seventies. At one time, the truck was red or brown. It was too rusty to tell. He went to it and opened the driver’s side door, tossing the shotgun in behind the seat.
I stopped a few feet away, putting my hands on my hips. “What about the bodies here? We can’t just leave them to rot.”
“I have already called someone to come and clean up.” He left the door open as he sat in the seat, pulling out a pad of yellow legal paper and a pencil to log something. “There should be a team here momentarily. Until then, the local police can cordon the place off and keep any curious humans out.” He paused and looked up. “Well? Which vehicle belongs to you? The Firebird or the truck?”
“Both…sorta.”
Abe frowned at me. “Well, can you recommend a place with a good, rare steak?”
I looked down at my blood and gore stained clothes. You’d think by then I would have learned to keep a spare set in my trunk.
“Just follow me,” I told Abe and started the long hike back to Chanter’s truck.
*****
I took Abe to the McDonald’s down the street. They’d just switched over from serving breakfast to lunch, which was the worst time of day to go in there. The employees were grumpy and ordering took forever. Abe frowned when he saw fast food joint but I couldn’t care less. I couldn’t afford anything fancy and I wasn’t dressed for it.
I ordered myself a sandwich, some fries, and a coffee before I carried my tray over to a table in the corner. Abe joined me with a large coffee and a burger. He poked at the sandwich, tried to take a bite and then promptly pushed the box away.
“Do they not have quarter pounders where you come from?” I asked. “Wait, I saw this in a movie once. What do they call it in Europe? A Royale with Cheese?”
Abe frowned. “I prefer steak and a fine wine, not a lukewarm hamburger and a cup of fizzy sugar.”
I chewed on my sandwich. “Where are you from, anyway? You’re not American.”
“I have dual citizenship both here and in Russia, but I have lived in many other countries.”
“And which is your favorite?”
“There is something you should know about me.”
“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow as I chewed. “What’s that?”
“I
detest small talk.” He pushed the entire tray aside. “Let us get this over with. Tell me what it is you think I should know.”
I told Abe most of it. I left out I’d gotten some information from Mara and Chanter, saying instead I’d found the information on the internet. Abe took it like a champ, hands folded and face blank.
When I was finished, he asked, “Do you not have a single suspect, Agent Black?”
I stabbed a cold French fry into a paper soufflé cup full of stale ketchup and shoved it thoughtfully in my mouth. “Until the attack, I thought I was chasing a spirit and, after that, I was a little busy trying not to die so, no, Abe, I don’t.”
Abe pushed up his floppy hat to look at me. “Hmm. It is a good thing they called me in. It looks as if you could use some help after all.”
“I thought I would work it backwards.”
Abe snorted.
“What? Did you have a better idea? I’ve already talked to everyone who was at the club two nights ago, all the witnesses…The only people who had motive don’t have the means and the people who have the means had no motive. I’ve been chasing my tail.”
“Based on what I saw inside the house and what you are telling me,” Abe said, leaning on the table, “the most recent attack was focused on the owner of the property, Kim Kelley. She is at the center of this. Whoever is responsible believed she would be at Aisling two nights ago and thought they would get a two for one deal, killing Harry and Kim in one move.”
“I came to the same conclusion,” I said after pushing the half eaten fries away. “But neither of them shared any enemies that I know of.”