Ruby Callaway: The Complete Collection

by D. N. Erikson

  Unblinking, he stared back. “Well, today looks like an exception. Detective Rebecca Pearl.”

  He’d overheard my fake name in the Little Black Dress. His tone was skeptical, like he didn’t buy it.

  “And you are?”

  “Benjamin Marks.” He held up the badge so I could inspect it. “But people call me Ben.”

  “I should warn you, Ben.”

  “About?”

  “Smoke and ash follows wherever I go,” I said.

  “Dramatic.” When I shook his hand, the wolf gripped it tight. In a whisper, he said, “But that’s not gonna happen here.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because this is my case,” the detective said. “And the only smoke and ash around here is gonna be coming from that goddamn vamp’s corpse.”

  3

  Detective Ben Marks led me down a set of winding, rickety stairs into the city morgue. I’d found it highly unusual that he’d picked the lock, but he’d brushed that off as simply a bureaucratic oversight. The air had an earthen feel, like the sub-basement had just been dug out a few years ago and never refinished. Clinical lights flickered on as I stepped across the tile, my ankle boots squeaking softly.

  Two bodies lay side by side on metal slabs, their chests cut open for the autopsy.

  We’d gone from investigating the first murder to the most recent ones.

  Full circle in under an hour.

  “I think you’re breaking protocol,” I said as I approached the closest body. Ben growled his response. Both victims were female. Mid-twenties, maybe, their skin still containing traces of the Lake Union shore—despite whatever bath they’d been given by the coroner. In death, it was almost impossible to read a creature’s aura unless you were a very talented spellcaster—which I was not. But there were no markings to indicate they possessed any supernatural abilities.

  Besides the coroner’s handiwork, I noticed a series of stab marks along the torso. But the blade work indicated these cuts were post-mortem. I was more focused on the slashes at the neck, which were to cover up the bite marks.

  “No thoughts on protocol, huh?” I asked, glancing away from the hatchet job.

  “Protocol doesn’t solve cases like this.”

  “How’d you end up on the force?”

  “I wanted to be a cop.” Ben answered the question like it was that simple. If only.

  “And I wanted to be a pop star.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “I’m just saying.” Certain career avenues weren’t exactly welcoming to creatures of essence.

  “Why’d you become a cop, then, Pearl?”

  “I, uh, just sort of fell into it.”

  Ben looked up at me, his few remaining hairs matted to his scalp. It looked strange with his youthful face. “I guess we’re both doing exactly what we want, then.”

  Now that was a sobering thought. One I didn’t have time to reflect on before I reached the gurney next to the second vic. Inside a metal bowl—where they usually dug out rounds, shards of glass, broken pieces of a knife, that sort of thing—was a tooth.

  Forget connecting dots on a map.

  A vamp fang was practically a homing beacon. I held it up, the sharp ivory glinting in the light.

  “Cracked the case,” I said.

  Ben glanced at me, thick eyebrows raised. “Toss it over.”

  I flipped it across the room, and he caught it with decidedly inhuman agility. One had to be careful about openly displaying that type of smoothness. Twist the wrong way, and mortals would start harboring suspicions.

  But then, werewolves were ballsy enough to be cops. Despite my whispered reputation, I remained insulated and unknown from the mortal world. Which worked well for business and even better for survival.

  I said, “Well?”

  “It’s definitely something.”

  “Why else did you bring me down here?”

  “Your aura is…strange, Detective Pearl.”

  From the tone of his voice, I didn’t like where this was going. “How so?”

  “Like something I’ve only read about in books.”

  My socks squished as I paced around the windowless room. “Don’t believe everything you read.”

  “Are you a Seer?”

  I stifled a snort. “No.”

  But it was the closest thing to a Realmfarer in existence—Diet Realmfarer, if you will. I understood, then, what Ben was asking: whether, from the bodies, I could channel the evidence into a cohesive vision of the future.

  I had one other trick up my sleeve—theoretically. Channeling the right energy and focus, I could trigger a vision. Seers could do it weakly; a Realmfarer could get something approximating the bend of reality. Many people didn’t know about it. The reason was simple: as rare as Realmfarers were, those who could pull off a vision were even rarer.

  To the point of nonexistence, in my experience.

  I certainly wasn’t one of them. Imagining possible scenarios in almost clairvoyant detail—glimpsing into the future—was beyond my rather basic supernatural abilities. Pearl—the real Pearl, my mentor—had been hounding me to get started with the studies.

  I’d thus far declined.

  “I’ve been looking for this son of a bitch Aland for three years.” Ben rolled the tooth over in his fingers, staring at it with an intense lupine gaze. “I need all the help I can get.”

  “Someone’s not very good at their job.” I glanced at the row of stainless steel body drawers taking up the wall behind him. All these lost souls, awaiting justice that might never come.

  “He’s a tricky bastard to catch.” Ben looked up from the fang. “You wouldn’t know that, being new and all.”

  I suddenly got the impression that, maybe, I hadn’t been brought here to help him. Instead, I’d been brought here to die, where clean-up would be less messy.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I said.

  “I need to guarantee that Aland dies.”

  “Oh, I can ensure that,” a voice said, its echo swallowed by the dead walls.

  Before I could respond, Ben let out a sharp gasp. I reached for the shotgun, whispering a phrase in Latin to break the cloaking ward. Pumping the slide, I scanned the cool room for the attacker.

  “My nestmates have been sloppy in their hunger,” came the whisper in my ear. I recognized the aura as a vampire. Before I could turn and fire, cold hands gripped my wrists with tremendous strength. The vampire easily pried the shotgun free.

  Humming a song like he was going through a glade, he called out, “The tooth, Detective Marks.” The humming stopped. “Or should I just call you Benjamin? Detective doesn’t seem very accurate.”

  “Fuck you, Aland,” Ben said, forcing the words out in pain.

  “I have no quarrel with one of you.” The shotgun pressed itself against the base of my spine. Goddamn wards. Things you had to do to keep out of mortal sight. “Only the wolf with the tooth.”

  “Bite me, blood bag,” Ben replied.

  “Be careful what you wish for.” I heard his fangs click out. The tips pressed themselves against the corner of my damp neck. They were like tiny little razors pushing into the skin. A thin thread of supernatural energy pulsed through them, hinting at their power to tear my throat open.

  I barely breathed, staring at the two dead girls on the table.

  “Catch,” Ben said.

  I heard the shotgun clatter to the ground from the vamp’s hands, the fangs retreat. Before I could blink, a pistol shot exploded over my head, and the vampire howled in anger. Cursing, he pounded up the stairs, stopping briefly at the top to yell, “Now I have a quarrel with you both.”

  I dove for the shotgun, but the door slammed shut.

  And then Aland was gone.

  Hurrying over to Ben, I found him doubled over in the corner, by the wall of refrigerated corpses.

  “Thanks,” I said, offering my hand.

  He shook off my help, letting out a growl as he p
ushed himself up. “Aland got the fucking fang.”

  “We’ll find him.”

  Ben’s eyes flashed with orange desperation. “Three years, Detective. Three years.”

  “What’s another day or two, then?” I asked as we headed toward the stairs.

  With a grunt, he replied, “The difference between life or death.”

  4

  Werewolves heal fast, but not instantly. And a cracked rib hurts a lot when you move. We could’ve waited for the cops to show up, but then the lord and savior of Seattle would have had to explain what the fuck I was doing down in the morgue.

  Or, rather, what both of us were doing. Which would have been very difficult indeed.

  Because, while we’d lost the tooth, I’d gained other important pieces of information from our encounter with Aland. Namely that I wasn’t the only one pretending to play detective.

  The only question, then, was what Ben’s true game was.

  Aland’s motives were far easier to discern. Biological matter, particularly those parts distinct to a species—a fang, a claw, a wing—were heavily imbued with their owner’s energy. As such, any semi-competent spellcaster could follow the tooth back to Aland’s overeager nestmate—and, thus, the nest itself.

  Of course, Aland’s blood—of which we now had plenty, thanks to him being shot—could also be used for such location purposes. But the casting required a much more skilled sorceress to get anything useful—and, preferably, a larger sample. Without time to stop and mop up all the residue, I’d simply torn Ben’s shirt and used it to soak up one of the small pools.

  Imperfect, but it would have to do. Sirens had already been roaring in the distance.

  Ben looked homeless, with the detective’s blazer draped over his bare skin. Only the glistening muscles—too primal and perfect to be human—displayed beneath the deep-V suggested he was fit. He drew in sharp breaths as we hobbled away from the morgue.

  I could see patches of Aland’s blood on the sidewalk, despite the torrential downpour.

  “The vamp’s still bleeding.”

  Grunting, Ben said, “Always pack your revolver with silver.”

  I would have wondered if anyone on the force gave him shit when they dug his rounds out of perps. But I knew that Ben wasn’t a cop; and I suspected that he knew I wasn’t one, either. No matter. He’d saved our ass with that shot—the vamper would have ripped us both to shreds right then and there.

  No quarrels. Don’t make me laugh. Like vamps killed out of vengeance, rather than for bloodsport. Especially ones who’d created a feeding nest in the middle of a metropolis.

  We reached Ben’s car, and I pushed him up against the door.

  “Keys.”

  “Like hell I’m gonna let you drive.”

  I held my hand out. With a big grimace, he reached into his pocket. The fabric crinkled open, lightning striking in the background. I saw, now, that this wound was far more than a busted rib. The entire side of his body was turning a dark, black shade of purple.

  Internal bleeding, if I had to guess. Colliding with an ancient vampire at high speed could do that.

  The keys jingled softly. “You don’t look so good, man.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  Still clutching the bloody shirt, I slid into the driver’s seat and unlocked the door. Graceful and smooth only an hour ago, Ben lurched into the passenger side like a drunk. With a great, tremendous heave, he managed to shut the door.

  I placed our most precious possession—the bloody, rain-soaked shirt—on the stick shift.

  “Now what?”

  “We catch the bastard.”

  “I don’t think that’s a—”

  His eyes flared up, hotter than hell, threatening to burn right through me. “We catch the bastard.”

  After the sudden exertion, Ben sighed, slumping into the vinyl. His staccato breaths were interspersed with the slightest, almost imperceptible sound of yipping.

  I started the engine with no intention of immediately pursuing Aland. He’d been older than I’d thought, quick and agile. I could track him with the shotgun, sure, and definitely draw a bead on him. But shooting to kill would be no better than fifty-fifty.

  Then again, he now had a hunk of silver in his shoulder. That would slow him down.

  I glanced at Ben, who had fallen asleep, whining softly with each exhale.

  A couple hours.

  That was all we needed.

  I helped Ben up the stairs to his dingy bachelor pad. It was the type of place where the pool had turned green with algae and the corroded guardrails no longer passed safety code. You put your foot in the wrong place, and you were liable to wrench your ankle in the pitted concrete.

  “Nice digs,” I said as I dragged him toward the bed, most of his fairly substantial frame leaning on me. The single bed shook and creaked as his weight crashed down on it. Ben groaned, but didn’t reply.

  Roaches scattered from the kitchen as I searched for a pot. From the looks of the cupboard, there weren’t any. No plates, either. The cracked, yellow walls were unadorned. All that I saw was an old police scanner in the corner and a few half-drank beers.

  I glanced at the digital clock on the stove. Our window for reaching Aland was probably less than twelve hours. By that point, his silver-infected wound would have healed. And the nest would probably move, knowing the cops were coming down on them.

  Or, if not the cops, two individuals they’d be better off avoiding.

  That didn’t give me much time to sort things out. I needed to find someone capable of creating a tracking spell. I fished in Ben’s jacket pocket, finding a memo book of addresses and names. Most of it was filled with names of police and other personnel, written in an ancient werewolf language. I peered at the strange lettering.

  If I needed any further confirmation that he wasn’t a police officer, this was the proverbial nail in the coffin. Thumbing through the entries, I saw dates going back at least three years ago. Just like he’d said—he’d been after the nest for three years.

  But the question remained: why?

  Reaching into his other jacket pocket, I found an Elysian Scroll. Not unlike the one I’d torched in the Realm rift, received from Cyril the Elven King himself. But unlike Ben, I made it a rule not to carry around supernatural documents. Good way to find yourself with too much explaining to do.

  This one, however, was old and well-travelled, judging from its crinkled corners and the yellowed paper. I spread it out on the bed next to Ben. A sharp gasp came from my lips as I read the instructions.

  Serenity is consorting with low creatures. You are to ensure that no longer happens by bringing her home.

  There was also musical notation, which I could read from the church hymns my mother had taught me as a girl. Humming the melody to myself, I recognized it as the official anthem of the Elven Cliffs.

  The king hadn’t given me this little nugget. And here I thought elves were trustworthy. But this job had been double-booked from the start—and Ben Marks was my competition.

  Almost on cue, his arm shot out and tightened around my wrist. “This contract’s mine.”

  “I’m not really good at sharing,” I said.

  I jerked against his grip, but a full-grown wolf is strong, even when it’s wounded. All the movies like to pretend that a girl can just karate chop her way through a four weight-class gap, but Pearl had taught me early on that this was a path to get dead.

  “What happened to partners?” I asked, trying to twist free from his fingers.

  “There are no partners in bounty hunting. Ruby Callaway.”

  Fuck. I knew the morgue was creepy and off. In a weird way, Aland had saved my life. Hope he didn’t expect a thank you note for that.

  Double-bookings were always dangerous, because you had two enemies: the mark and the rival hunter. Usually it was pretty damn hard to determine which would be the bigger problem.

  Ben’s lupine eyes flashed hot as his skin began to change.
This was dangerous, it not being full moon—or even any moon—but quite clearly Ben had made up his mind. As a fellow bounty hunter, I was a threat—and, wounded as he was, he couldn’t beat me to Aland any other way.

  I should’ve seen it, really. After all, we’d both gone for the fake cop routine. But there was a reason it worked, even on us: practice it long enough, and you had an easy con that gave you access to every damn piece of info you desired.

  And trust.

  Which was always in short supply.

  Fur bristled from his ears, a pointed snout forming where his human teeth had been moments before. Claws dug into the skin at my wrist, the transformation accelerating.

  I tried to bend my free hand back toward the shotgun, but that was too awkward a stretch. The wisps turned blood red around Ben’s waist, and I saw what they wanted me to do.

  Without hesitation, I reached for his sidearm. I drew it smoothly from the holster before he could stop me. Cocking the hammer back, I jabbed the gun in his face.

  The snout came forward, growling and spitting.

  I emptied the magazine, the silver rocketing through his skull and redecorating the apartment.

  5

  The one thing that dump of an apartment had had was a working phone. I used that to run through Ben’s memo book, searching for any enchanters or spellcasters in town. My ancient werewolf wasn’t great, but I could make out enough of the scribbles—plus a little English—to find a poultice crafter.

  A quick call had confirmed that, yes, she could create potions as well.

  For double the fee.

  There was always a price.

  As Ben’s rust-coated car rattled down the street, I looked at myself in the mirror. The rain had swept away most of the blood spatter, although a little remained on my cheeks. I passed a fire truck going the other way.