by E. A. Copen
“What about her?” I cringed when Moses pointed at Paula. “She was the girl’s aunt, right? Blood relation? I figure if the girl was fae, she probably is too. That sound about right?”
Damn him for being too smart for his own good. I nodded slowly. “But her niece just died, man. It’d be cold to ask her to come down and identify a bunch of other bodies.”
“Cold, but maybe necessary.” He sighed. “Well, I guess if your other contacts don’t work out, we can tap her, but we’ll save that for a last resort.”
“What the hell?” Emma Knight came stomping up, fire blazing in her eyes. She stopped between Moses and me, crossing her arms. “You call me and report the site of a body dump, which you won’t explain how or why you know about, and then you’re at the scene of another death? It’s like death is following you around, Lazarus. I don’t like it.”
“Then you’ll like what I’ve got to say next even less.”
I told her about my fae theory. I didn’t have much evidence to support it beyond knowing that Lexi was fae, but even she agreed it was worth checking out. She barely blinked when I mentioned fae and faeries being real. Maybe I’d already shocked her enough when she saw me rip the soul out of a goddess. Not much can surprise you after that, I suppose.
When I was finished, Emma uncrossed her arms and nodded. “I’ll tell D.J. we need another look at those bodies. All of them are still in cold storage, so it shouldn’t be hard. You get your contact and meet me down at the morgue at eight sharp.”
“Um…” I checked my watch. “What time is sunrise again?”
“Why?” She drummed her fingers on her hip loud enough that I could hear. “Don’t tell me you’ve got another appointment?”
“No, just the guy I need to talk to probably won’t answer before sunrise. It shouldn’t be a problem since it’s probably before eight.”
Emma sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. I hadn’t told her about the dark shadow I’d seen exiting the vehicle. I figured finding out that faeries were real would be enough to digest in one sitting, and I didn’t even have a name for what I’d seen. Whatever it was, I was sure it was connected to Lexi’s crash somehow. But so far no one had seen her organs go missing, so maybe the shadow wasn’t connected at all.
“We’ve got a group of officers keeping vigil on the body,” Emma said. Her gaze was focused on the body and the officers standing around it.
There were five officers in all, each one of them scanning the darkness with wary readiness. They were armed and ready to take on anyone or anything that came at them. Anything they could see, that was. Emma’s face said what I felt. Whatever was taking the organs might be too much for five regular officers to handle. Lexi needed something more if we were going to catch whatever was behind this.
I reached out to put a steadying hand on Emma’s shoulder. “I’ll go with them if you’d like. Just in case.”
She frowned. “We don’t even know for sure she’s the next victim in the cycle. It could be anyone. Just because this one was reported at midnight doesn’t mean it’s her. For all we know, no one’s even found the next victim.”
I shook my head. “Too much coincidence. Trust your gut, Emma. You’re doing the right thing here.”
“The chief is going to chew my ass if I waste departmental resources again. I can keep the guard on her until the body transport is complete, but once it’s at the morgue, the law considers it secure. I mean, she’ll be behind several locked doors and under surveillance cameras. The night shift coroner will be on duty, and there’s an armed guard that patrols the place during off hours.” She chewed on her bottom lip.
“That armed guard and night shift coroner aren’t any match for the supernatural,” Moses said, his voice gentle. “And if the chief gives you flack about letting a civilian in, you can pin it on me. He knows I’m a big softie anyway.”
Emma still looked apprehensive, but she nodded. “You sure you’re okay with that, Lazarus? The place is pretty full of bodies.”
As much as I was pretending that I was totally cool with spending the night in a morgue crawling with bodies, I was freaking out inside. Not that I expected to see any of the bodies. I happened to know from my trip there earlier in the day there was a nice little waiting area where I could pass the night. Still, I’d have to keep my mental shields locked up tight. The dead inside might not be totally at rest, and they’d happily claw at my defenses. Unlike a graveyard, I didn’t get an extra boost of power standing in a morgue. It’d be one hell of a miserable night, but I wasn’t going to die from it, so I nodded.
“I’ll let the driver know you’ll be going with the body,” Emma said and stepped off.
I turned to Moses. “When she said going with the body, she didn’t mean riding in the same vehicle as the body, did she?”
Moses grinned ear to ear and patted my back. “You’re a good egg, Lazarus, no matter what the rest of the precinct says about you.” He patted my back again and followed his partner to go speak with the driver.
With nothing left to do, I decided I should go check on Paula. She didn’t look like she was up for conversation, but sometimes just having someone friendly nearby was comfort enough. I sat down on the hard ground next to her and stuck my hands in my pockets to keep from fidgeting.
“Anything I can do for you?” I asked after a while.
Paula shook her head and wiped away some tears. Her makeup was smeared all over her face. “They said it’s an accident. The driver of the red truck didn’t see her. He’d barely had anything to drink, Lazarus, but they arrested him anyway. Vehicular homicide.” She was quiet for a long moment, her shoulders shaking. “It’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, Paula.”
“Yes, it is!” She turned on me, the look on her face enraged, even though she was still crying. “I should’ve sent her home earlier. Or I never should’ve let her work in the bar in the first place. If I hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been here to die tonight.”
“You couldn’t have known.” I placed a comforting hand on her back between the shoulder blades.
“And worse, no one will tell me why they’ve got five guys guarding her body.” She gestured forward toward where they were loading the gurney into the back of the coroner’s van. “Something isn’t right here, Lazarus.”
I debated telling her everything. After all, Lexi was her kin. She deserved to know what was going on. But no one really knew any concrete details yet. We didn’t know who or what was taking the organs or why, and we didn’t even know for sure that Lexi was their next target, only that she’d matched a limited pattern. There were a lot of assumptions going around, and not a lot of useful information.
“I’m sure everything is fine,” I lied. I’d been doing a lot of that lately. “But I’m going down to the coroner’s office with her. Emma asked me to keep an eye on the morgue tonight in case something weird happens.”
She looked at me, sniffling. “In case something weird…” She shook her head. “Something is going on, isn’t it?”
“There might be,” I confirmed with a nod, “but I’m not allowed to say until I know more, Paula. I swear, the minute we have some answers, you’ll be the first to know.”
“They haven’t figured out she’s…you know, not human?”
I shook my head and stood. “Detective Moses and Detective Knight know, but it won’t go beyond them. Lexi might be part of a larger problem, but no one knows for sure. We won’t know for a few hours. Until then, I’m going to stay with her. Make sure no one gets near her. If you’re okay with that, that is?”
Paula grabbed my hand and held it, looking up at me all teary-eyed. I’d never seen her like this, and something about seeing her vulnerable felt weird. “I’m glad it’s you,” she said, patting my hand. “You make sure nothing hurts my Lexi. I should’ve protected her better in life. The least I can do is let you protect her in death.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. It felt like Paula had just placed a
huge responsibility on my shoulders. Now, if something happened to Lexi, I’d have to take it personal. I pulled my hand away from hers and walked back to the coroner’s van.
The night shift coroner, a skinny guy with freckles and curly hair, gave me a look up and down, pausing to take in the staff in my hand. “You’re the, uh, specialist I was told to expect?”
“That’s me.” I pointed to the van. “Anybody call shotgun?”
A hint of a tired smile touched his face. “Not yet. All yours.”
I got into the front passenger seat as the other five cops crammed into the back, sliding along benches on either side of the gurney. The smell of blood was strong inside. A look back told me more blood had seeped onto the sheet than it had seemed in the dark. I was thankful for the sheet at least, but I felt guilty. My presence had played a part in how late Lexi had stayed. If I’d just gone upstairs like I’d been planning, she might’ve left early.
For a moment, I considered extending my senses to see if her ghost was still hanging around so I could apologize, but thought better of it once the coroner got in the van. Throwing magic around inside a moving van was probably a bad idea. Didn’t stop me from thinking an apology at her and adding, You deserved better.
Chapter Ten
The ride to the morgue was uneventful. I tried asking the coroner if he’d been to any other deaths that night, but quickly found I didn’t have the stomach for more details. That led to us just driving along in awkward silence while the cops in the back whispered to each other.
Once we reached the morgue, the van pulled around to a back entrance and the coroner shut off the van. He put a hand on the door handle but stopped when one of the officers in the back pulled his gun. “We’ll go check it out first, if you don’t mind.”
The assistant coroner blew out a breath through loose lips, sounding like a bored horse. “I guess. Just don’t take too long. I’ve got a full schedule tonight.”
I didn’t have to ask what had filled up his schedule. The morgue probably had a backlog of autopsies to get through.
As the cops filed out of the van through the double doors in the back, I turned to the assistant coroner—Nate was his name—and asked, “You do any of the autopsies on the accident victims?”
He shook his head. “There was a shooting on the east side day before yesterday, and I got stuck with that. Those bodies take precedence since the D.A. said so. He’s up for re-election this year.” Nate rolled his eyes. “Man, before I took this job, I never would’ve expected the coroner’s office to be so politicized. But there you have it. Election campaigns and deep pockets decide who gets an autopsy first. Of course, Captain Ross was supposed to be on the table about an hour ago. The other bodies weren’t marked high priority, but when a cop comes in, they move him up the list.” He jammed a thumb toward the back. “Probably won’t get to her tonight. That’ll be D.J.’s job tomorrow afternoon. He’s done all the other autopsies on the case anyway. He and the lady detective are pals.”
A loud crack made me turn away. It sounded like someone had smashed thick plastic. Before I could investigate, the screaming started. Gunshots followed, one ripping through the windshield of the van. Nate screamed and ducked under the dash with me close behind. I hit my staff on the way down, which sent the opposite end up intercepting another bullet.
“Why the hell are they shooting at us?” Nate screamed.
It was as I heard the wet thud against the side of the van and saw blood splatter on the window that I realized the escort cops weren’t shooting at us. Something else had spooked them. Something out in the loading bay.
I lifted my head enough to look the trembling assistant coroner in the eye. “Stay here.”
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t answer and instead grabbed my staff, sliding it into the back of the van. Crawling between the seats into the rear of the van was much more difficult. Bullets were still flying, but there were fewer and fewer shots as more wet thuds sounded against the pavement and around the van. My shoulder jostled the gurney, but the brakes were still on, so it didn’t roll out the back.
Pressed between the gurney and the bench seating on one side, I peered out the open back doors and tried to figure out what I was up against. Five cops with body armor and guns didn’t stand a chance against whatever was throwing them around, which meant it had to be something supernatural. I didn’t hear any roaring or hissing, so it wasn’t my flying crocodile from earlier. In fact, aside from the gunshots and the infrequent thuds and grunts of the police officers, I didn’t hear anything. Couldn’t see much of anything either, since my low vantage point didn’t give me much of a view unless someone happened to fly in front of the open doors.
Time to rely on a little supernatural ability of my own, I thought and activated my Soul Vision. Two human souls glowed through the sheet metal of the van on my side. One of them was low enough that I figured he must be lying on the ground, injured but not dead. Yet. The other bounced around with jerky movements as the officer searched for whatever was hunting him.
His quarry sat a few feet to his right. I couldn’t see the shape of it, but I recognized the brilliant gold coloring of a god’s soul. No wonder the officers were outclassed. Five cops, no matter how well-equipped and well-trained, were no match for a god. That was my department.
The hunting officer’s soul jerked to the right, tilted toward the god as if he’d just spotted him. I got a sick feeling in my stomach knowing the guy was about to get creamed over the pavement. If I was going to intervene, I had to do it now. But they were too far away. The best I could hope for was a distraction.
I looked to my right, where a bunch of levers kept the gurney stationed where it was. A big red lever marked the brake.
Sorry, Lexi. I flipped it and gave the gurney a push.
The gurney and the body on it tumbled out of the back of the van. With no ramp and no hands to help make the transition from the van to the ground easier, it tipped sideways and turned over. All I caught of Lexi’s body was an arm as one of the straps broke and it flailed loose.
The distraction must’ve worked because I didn’t hear a thud or a scream as I threw myself out of the van right behind the gurney. Staff in hand, I did an ungraceful roll that ended with me hitting my chin on the pavement and laying myself out flat.
“Get back in the vehicle, sir!” the officer shouted as I blinked away stars.
A miasmic black shifted behind him, red eyes peering out from inside where the thing’s head would be. I tried to call for him to watch out while I pulled myself up, but I was too late. Arms sprouted from the shadow, gripped the officer’s head on either side and gave it a hard twist. My stomach retched at the audible crack of vertebrae. The officer went down in a twitching puddle of limbs. The shadow being floated over the officer’s body toward me.
No, not toward me. Toward the gurney behind me. I could feel its attention locked on Lexi’s body. I had to get its attention on me first.
“Malevolent shadows,” I said, staggering to my feet. “Can you get any more cliché?”
To my surprise, the thing stopped moving. Muffled thunder rumbled somewhere nearby. It took me a minute to realize that meant the shadow monster was laughing. “We might have guessed you’d interfere,” said a voice from within the shadow. It was distorted and tinny, but it was definitely a recognizable voice. “Stand aside, necromancer. We have no quarrel with the living.”
I planted my staff in the pavement. “I might’ve hit my head pretty hard a minute ago, but I’m still pretty sure there’s only one of you. One shadowy god versus one pissed off Pale Horseman. I’ll take those odds any day of the week.”
The shadow monster didn’t have a mouth, at least not one I could see, but I had the distinct feeling it was smiling at me. “You have misjudged,” said the shadow. Then it stepped outside of itself, dividing like a cell in two. Two distinct shadowy gods with two golden souls. Shit. Suddenly, the odds weren’t in my favor.
B
oth shadows rushed me, blending into the night. I swung my staff at the first bit of movement I saw, but it passed straight through the shadow god as if he were made of smoke. Not fair. He reformed inside the reach of the staff as a solid mass, red eyes glowing right in front of my face. A shadowy hand gripped my arm. It felt like it was made of fire. I screamed and released the staff, falling to my knees as pain overloaded my brain.
Another shadowy hand thrust into my chest. Burning fingers wrapped around my heart, making me distinctly aware of how fast it was pounding. I found myself suddenly having flashbacks to various ridiculous horror flicks where some guy gets his still-beating heart ripped right out of his chest.
Just as I thought that was about to happen to me, a flash of light struck the god’s outstretched arm and everything below it evaporated, including the hand stuck inside my chest. He snarled and turned his head as the light danced over other parts of him, the shadowy bits disappearing as if run over by an eraser. The light was coming from the passenger side of the van as a panicked Nate used a flashlight to scan the alley.
The god in front of me jerked his head and the other one, who was presumably behind me the whole time, making sure I didn’t escape, darted toward the van. Nate’s flashlight ran over both of them, erasing parts. Unfortunately, the gods just reformed as soon as the light moved on, as if pulling their body straight from the shadows.
Light hurts them.
Nate screeched, and the flashlight moved back and forth faster, as the shadowy gods took their time closing the distance, apparently delighting in the poor guy’s terror.
“Nate! Headlights!” I shouted and charged again for the gods. This time, I was prepared. I pulled up my Soul Vision and reached straight for the closest one’s soul.
He and his pal spun on me, deciding I was the bigger threat. The one I’d been after slid to the right, barely avoiding my grab, while the other reached for me.
“Oh no, you don’t.” I threw myself to the pavement and swung the staff at him, pushing a little power through it. I’d hoped that magic would affect them but struck out. The force split the ground but left the god untouched.