[Dominion 01.0] Dominion

by S. E. Lund

  Ed shakes his head. "You're there to look for physical evidence before Crime Scene Unit messes things up. Besides, dead bodies don't hold memories for very long due to decay. As soon as a person dies, their cells start to die and the neurons lose their structure at a quantum level. Solid objects retain theirs and so they're more useful to a telepath. In general, the lack of forensic evidence at the dump sites indicates that the victims were killed elsewhere and their bodies decapitated before being transported but even an extremely well-disciplined killer will touch objects and often leave something behind. As long as the kill was recent, anything a killer touches will hold traces of their memories of it."

  We drive along the streets to the docks. The floodlights of the forensic unit are visible from a block away and my pulse increases at the prospect of a real crime scene. Ed parks the sedan and the four of us walk the rest of the way. We stand on the periphery while Ed ducks under the police tape that cordons off the crime scene. He shows the detective in charge his credentials and speaks to the man in hushed voices, gesturing towards us.

  Mist rises off the Charles River, blocking the view of the Charlestown Bridge. The late May night is unusually cold. I shiver and it isn't just the fact that a real vampire stands beside me – one who shared a very intimate, almost sexual experience with me not so long ago.

  I try to block the memory from my mind.

  The waterfront bordering the dock area has become an industrial graveyard. In the harsh floodlights surrounding the dump site, the moss-covered ruins of the old piers rot in the tides and old float barges and crumbling docks decay along the shore.

  Michel stands beside me, his long hair tucked behind his ears as he reads messages on his Blackberry.

  I pull my collar up against the breeze off the water. "God, it's so cold."

  "Really?" he says without looking up. "I wouldn't know."

  I glance at him and he turns to me. Sure enough, there's that lopsided smile on his lips. I can't help but smile back. He looks at me and makes that throat sound, his smile fading, his eyes on my cheeks and I know he's doing it – making me smile on purpose so he can indulge himself and it sends a little jolt of something through me.

  He turns back to his phone.

  What is this? Torture? I thought he was going to be completely professional.

  As I gaze across the river, I try to imagine what it would be like to work with him on a daily basis and not go there – to 'us'. I can't imagine it. It will be hell.

  "I don't know if I can do this," I say softly. "Staying just professionals."

  He stops typing for a moment.

  "There are many things we don't choose in life," he says and glances at me, his bright blue eyes intense under the floodlights from the forensic unit. "The thing is, we need you. Personal desires must be denied."

  I say nothing in reply for what he said makes sense, as much as I hate it. I'm numb, uncertain how to feel. Instead, I watch the detectives from Homicide examine the body.

  While we're waiting, I see another figure arrive on scene. Another detective? Then I see his skin and I know it's Julien. He's wearing the same leather trench with a scarf tied around his neck and faded jeans.

  "Julien," Michel says. "What are you doing here?" Michel glances at me as if he already knows.

  "Ed called me. Said another Adept had been killed. I thought I'd drop by, see what you're up to." Julien turns to me and stuffs his hands in his pockets, giving me that lopsided grin. "Of course, I already know what you're up to."

  "Leave Eve alone," Michel says, his voice dark.

  "I'll do what I want. If Eve wants to talk to me, that's up to her. Eve has a lot of questions about her mother. It looks as if you're not much into answering them."

  "You won't be answering them either," Michel says, putting his phone away. "Eve only has to know so much. To tell her more would put her in danger."

  Julien laughs at that. "You mean put your little suicide mission in danger."

  Michel takes my arm and pulls me towards Ed, who's waiting at the shore.

  "Ignore him," Michel says. "He just likes to stir things up."

  We join Ed and stare down at the corpse, which has been photographed and removed from the water. Julien joins us as well and stands off to the side. The body's laid out on a plastic sheet in wait for the coroner to come and do his work, the severed head at an odd angle to the neck.

  "Check around, see if anything catches your eye."

  "What should I look for?"

  "Forensics hasn't swept the scene yet so whatever looks out of place. Most Adepts I've worked with before just feel around, hoping something they touch grabs their mind."

  "What about my prints?"

  "Forget about it. We have jurisdiction and your work is more valuable than their pitiful tests."

  I take a flashlight from Ed and walk along the shore, hoping something draws my attention. I look for something the killer might have dropped or touched but nothing pulls me closer. Pebbles and seaweed litter the mud between the stumps of wood that used to be part of a dock – nothing more. I bend down and run my hands over the dirt bordering the area where the body was found. A piece of green beach glass glints in the flashlight's beam and so I pick it up.

  For an instant, my world collapses away and I'm him. The killer -- whoever he is -- sat here. A strange sense of being out of time washes over me as I slip into his perspective and I feel an incredible dread. I try to focus, opening myself to the experience. I don't get much from it at first, except the knowledge that the killer touched the pebble.

  Then, I sense him. The killer was here scoping the place out a few nights earlier, staring out across the river, deciding where he'd dump the body. He picked up the glass and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers the way I do now, turning it over, admiring it. Then he dropped it. He had more important things to occupy him than an old bit of beach glass. Like when Evan . . . . I try to focus, squeezing my eyes shut. When Evan Cooper would die.

  "Evan Cooper," I say, clearing my throat, struggling to resurface long enough to communicate. For an instant, I see the victim as the killer saw him, stepping out the back door of a dry cleaners into the alley for a quick smoke break. In the vision, I look down from a window across the street. "He saw Cooper from a building across from the alley behind the dry cleaners." My voice is gravely. "Second floor window."

  Ed nods and gets on his cell, speaking into it in a soft voice.

  I return to the pebble. The killer has an emotional distance from the victim, a studied sense of purpose rather than one filled with passion and bloodlust Michel had when I was in his mind and he drained the woman. The killer doesn't hate Cooper, either the man himself or what he represents. The killer feels more like an executioner than a vampire searching for a blood feed. The killer has a sense of mission. Even a sense of religious fervor.

  I drop the glass as quickly as possible, for the longer I spend in his perspective, the dizzier I become. While Ed and the detective speak in quiet voices, I take in several deep breaths, trying to combat this vertigo.

  A light rain starts to fall, just a mist at first, the air cool on my cheeks. Michel comes to my side as I lean against the remains of the dock.

  "Are you all right?"

  I nod, embarrassed to show weakness. I'll have to get used to being in the mind of a killer and so I go back to the glass and touch it once more. Maybe if I fight the vertigo, something else will come to me – some detail that will lead us to the killer.

  I search through the sensations and impressions of the killer as he surveys his victim. Nothing comes to me at first. Then, a hint, just a fleeting image of a river in the middle of a desert. Tall reeds line the riverbank. A sense that he's protecting someone fills me, but who that someone is remains hidden. As I turn the shard over, I know that the manner of death is important. Decapitation is significant in some way.

  "He killed in this way and dumped him here to send a message." I swallow hard, fighting the nausea that ri
ses in me at the continued connection to the killer.

  O'Neil nods. "What does decapitation and dumping the body along the shore mean?"

  I shake my head. "No idea. I saw a river at nighttime," I say, remembering a momentary image of a river. "With tall reeds along the shore. But it was only very brief."

  "Nothing else?"

  I shake my head, getting nothing more from the glass. It's as silent as the now non-existent breeze.

  Once we're finished at the dump site, we walk back to the sedan and Julien joins us.

  "So, Eve, why don't you and I have a cup of coffee, talk about things," Julien says to me. "I'm sure you have more questions."

  "What things?" I say, but I think I know what he means.

  "Oh, your mother, being a blood witness," he says, smiling as if everything amuses him, as if he takes nothing seriously. "Training. The whole killing all vampires thing my brother's on."

  I look at Michel and he shakes his head quickly.

  I take in a breath. "I'd like that."

  Julien smiles broadly, glancing briefly at Michel as if he's scored some kind of point.

  "Great," he says. "How about tomorrow night? The coffee shop?"

  "Sure."

  "Great espresso."

  "Eve will be working tomorrow night," Michel says, his voice low.

  "We can meet before. Say, just after sundown?" Julien smiles.

  I smile back. "Sure. I'll be waiting."

  "Ooh, those dimples," he says and clucks his tongue. He just stares at me for a long moment, taking in a deep breath. "I'll come up and get you," Julien says. "What's your apartment number again? 3C?"

  Michel takes my arm. "You can meet her at the coffee shop," he says, pulling me along with him.

  Julien holds his hands up in mock surrender.

  "Ok, ok," he says, laughing. "I won't go in her apartment. Unless she invites me up, that is."

  I glance back at him as Michel opens the car door for me.

  "Until tomorrow night, then," Julien says, grinning.

  I get in the sedan and Michel gets in beside me, sitting closer to me than necessary as if he's trying to show Julien I'm his. He starts to do up my seatbelt, but I take it out of his hand.

  "I'm not a child."

  "Compared to us, you are. Don't forget it. Just because you can kill us, don't think you can manipulate us."

  "Oh, I'd never think that," I say, emotion welling up inside me. Does he really think I'm a child? I clip my seatbelt in place and turn my face away.

  "I'm sorry, Eve," Michel says after a moment. I turn back and he's rubbing his forehead. "He has that effect on me."

  "Was he always that cheeky?"

  "No," he says and shakes his head. "But when you're a vampire, everything about you is strengthened. You feel everything with ten times the intensity. Whatever cheek he had before is just that much stronger."

  "And you? What did becoming a vampire do for you? What did it intensify?"

  "Julien would tell you I've become boring, but I have fervor, Eve," he says, staring at me, his face close to mine. He touches my cheek with the backs of his fingers. "I'm fervent. More than ever."

  "About religion?" I say, hoping not. I don't want him to be a priest.

  "About everything."

  I hope so.

  "You don't want me to meet with him?"

  "No," he says. "I'm asking you to reconsider. I don't know what his motives are, but I can guess. He wants you for himself and will try to mess things up. But I can't force you not to."

  I turn away and look out the window at the passing scenery. I don't know if I'll meet Julien. Part of me wants to. Part of me wants to please Michel.

  From the front seat, Ed tells us we're going to the building I described in my vision, check out the second floor to see if the killer left some trace there.

  We arrive at the building across from the dry cleaners where Evan Cooper worked. Ed uses his key kit to break into the warehouse because it's empty and there's no security to admit us. Michel and I can see clearly even in the darkness but Ed doesn't have our advantage and follows us up with a flashlight. There are rows of empty offices overlooking the alley and we each go in and check. I enter a couple and then find one that has footsteps in the dust that are clearly visible in the light flooding in from the moon.

  I go to the window and can see the alley clearly, including the back of the dry cleaners where Evan Cooper must have been standing, having his cigarette. It's exactly as I saw it in my vision. I glance around the empty room and see a piece of paper folded up on the windowsill and pick it up. Immediately, I get a strong sense of familiarity – the killer held this and so I open it. In the darkness, I can just make out a careful script.

  Hello, Beautiful Eve.

  Love,

  Me

  I get very little from the piece of paper except that the killer was amused with himself when he wrote this and he knew we'd eventually find it. I hold it out when Michel comes in the room and he takes it, looking at me.

  "What's this?"

  "Just read it."

  He does and glances up at me, shaking his head.

  "Sacristy," he says, his breathing shaky. "Whoever it is knows you're working for us and that's only a very limited number of people."

  I feel as if my blood turns to ice. Michel, Terri, Ed, Julien… some techies at the SCU. Cecile – I emailed her to let her know I had this job, but there's no way she'd betray me.

  Ed joins us and Michel hands him the slip of paper. Ed reads it, rubbing his chin.

  "Fuck me," he says. "I hate bad guys with brains."

  The rain now falls in grey sheets between the buildings as we return to the car. Michel's silent for the rest of the trip and I don't interrupt his reverie. I know he doesn't want me to meet Julien, but now, I'm even more desperate to do so, see what else he can tell me about my mother.

  Ed stops in front of my apartment and I turn to Michel but he says nothing, just takes my hand for a brief moment and squeezes, then pulls his hand away. I want him to come up with me, I want to be with him, but this is something I have to leave up to him.

  When I get into my apartment, I stand at the window overlooking the street, the water running down gutters to the drains, and I wonder who it is who's out there, watching me.

  Chapter 11

  "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall drive you mad."

  Aldous Huxley

  I get up the next morning and dress and the first thing I think isn't about how nice it is that the sun is finally shining or that I love the smell of roasting coffee coming from the coffee shop on the street below my apartment.

  I think of reading more of Michel's story.

  What I read was upsetting, but I can't keep myself from the manuscript and pick it up after doing my usual routine of showering and dressing and munching down a bowl of bran flakes. I take it with me to the coffee shop and get my cup of Organic Medium roast coffee with cream and sit in the back corner – my usual spot for studying when I want to get out of the flat.

  Do I feel guilty reading this?

  Yes. Incredibly. This is so personal… It's the chronicle of a tragedy. It's the very emotional story of these brothers and their death and rebirth as vampires. It's a record of their enslavement to Marguerite and her murder. He hates it so much he wants to burn it.

  Will this guilt keep me from reading on?

  No. I'm as drawn to it as I can be and there is no force on this earth that could keep me from reading it.

  A sense of disquiet settles over me as I turn the pages to the next section. The section opens with a painting of a heart with a sword through it and I wonder what it represents. Is it the heart of Jesus? Or is it the heart of a man?

  "Michel can't resist visiting Danielle once more before we leave. He caught sight of her on the battleground at night as we made our way there in the hopes that we'd find a dying soldier or knight and give them a peaceful quick death instead of slow from some other cruelty.


  She was there nursing the dying and when Michel saw her, he hid in the shadows, unwilling for her to see him as he now was – a vampire, undead, having betrayed his vows and no longer a priest other than in his own mind.

  She was a lovely woman, even now, a decade after we both first met her, with long fair hair and hazel eyes that were fringed with thick lashes. A real beauty, with soft curves and softer lips.

  We were both infatuated with her when we were seventeen, and after a long courtship where she couldn’t choose between the two of us, she finally chose Michel – the soulful one – instead of me, the hot-headed and impetuous one. When I realized she loved him more, I gracefully moved aside. Michel and I would be starting seminary the following year and so this was our last few months of freedom. I didn't want any hard feelings between us over a girl, even one as pretty as Danielle. Besides I had lost my virginity several years earlier while Michel had planned to save his for God.

  I talked him out of it and there are times now that I blame myself for everything, for if he hadn't met Danielle, perhaps everything would be different today. But back when I was seventeen, I thought I was a man and knew my own mind and the ways of the world.

  "You have to make a sacrifice to become a priest. If you've never made love to a woman, how can you know the depth of your sacrifice? At least I know what I'll be giving up."

  Michel thought that was a reasonable argument for losing his virginity, but he was very picky, always looking for a woman who met his high standards of moral conduct. She had to be a virgin, like he was, and she had to be a good Catholic. One who would do her penance for having sex with him before being married. Oh, he was so idealistic! So wide-eyed and full of faith in the possibility of chastity, believing that God would be enough.

  He and Danielle met in a barn in the countryside and lost their virginity to each other in a hayloft, and spent the next few months in a heated romance, their youthful passion never completely slaked no matter how often they met. I thought it might make him change his mind about the priesthood, but I was wrong. While my commitment to it waxed and waned with every pretty girl I met and romanced, Michel's was steadfast.