“Yes,” Dean said, covering my slip-up. “Dahlia consults for them.”
“Consults? On what?” Mr. Denisov sneered at me.
“Weaponry,” Dean snarled but I heard the edge of pride in his voice nonetheless.
“Mr. Mayor,” I said, a smirk turning up the corner of my lips. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“Ms. Sabin.” He smiled, glancing over at Denisov. “I hope we do meet again. It has been fascinating.”
“Derek, what’s up,” I asked, trudging up to him. My heels sank into the soft earth of the cemetery with each awkward step and I cringed. I hate cemeteries. Hate graves. And I hate the eerie quiet that I’ve never experienced anywhere else other than a cemetery.
“It’s about damned time, Kid,” he said, shoving his notebook into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
“Sorry, I was working,” I growled back. It was a familiar game. He thought I was at his beck and call, and I didn’t. I hated to admit it but he was kinda right. When detective Hamlin called, I jumped. When Derek just wanted to hang out, he was much more flexible.
“Don’t let that happen again,” he said, grinning at me.
“Is that a joke?” I asked, taken aback. He never joked at crime scenes. Ever.
“I’ve been hard on you lately, Kid. I’m sorry.”
“Well, shit, Derek. I don’t know what to say.”
“You can tell me that we don’t have some horrible new creepy crawly thing lurking around the city. Tell me it’s just some crackpot killing people,” he said, sweat trickling down the side of his face along his hairline. “A crackpot would be nice. Less people die.”
“What’ve you got?” I asked, wiping the smile from my face.
“Three open graves, a lot of dirt and a dead girl a few feet away,” he said, leading me between the headstones. “They didn’t see the girl at first, she’d been partially hidden by that grouping of bushes.” Derek pointed at a copse of four large shrubs standing more than six feet high. They should have really been classified as tress but they were too full, too solid a barrier from what was hidden within the shadows.
Doing my best not to step on any of the graves, I made my way to the upturned earth. I’d had an image in my mind since I was little of a hand reaching out and grabbing me from beneath the dirt. It’s ludicrous but I avoided the graves just the same.
“Here we are,” he said.
The ground was disturbed which sent chills up my spine. Chunks of grass were strewn about and where the grave was marked, the grass was depressed as if it was a sink-hole instead of solid ground. A row back from the disturbed graves, a body lay, bound and discarded in the small clearing between the bushes. Heavy ropes wound around the woman’s wrists and drew her arms back behind her at an odd angle that would’ve been painful while alive.
There wasn’t much left of her. The ground and her clothing, a light-colored tank top that was now coated with the thick, brown stains of dried blood, was torn and shredded around her middle. The soft flesh of her midsection and her creamy skin were exposed and ripped apart. The skirt she’d been wearing was destroyed and exposed her waist and thighs.
The woman’s head was left intact which would make identification easier. Her thighs were free of flesh. The bones clean in spots as if they’d been bleached by the desert sun. She smelled fresh, too fresh.
The summer heat hadn’t had a chance to spoil the dead flesh yet but it was close to turning. In an hour, the humans would be able to smell the decomp. The muscles and tissue around her ribs were torn, dangling away from the bone leaving an empty cavity where her internal organs should have been.
Her throat had been slit and the ragged seam of flesh across her neck was stained a deep russet with her dried blood. At least that was something, she’d died quick.
Here’s hoping they’d slit her throat first.
I crouched beside her, attempting to keep my heels from sinking into the blood soaked ground. I liked these pumps and wanted to keep them. The smell of blood never comes out, especially when you live with people who have supersensitive olfactory senses.
The body still stank of fear. Her dark-black hair hung lifeless and tangled around her shoulders. Needles from the bushes, dirt, and grass tangled in the long strands. The strappy sandals she wore were still clasped tight around her ankles.
“You found her quick, especially at a cemetery,” I said, glancing around. Even with the police cars and crime scene techs, there were mourners. Visiting loved ones, in the middle of the morning on a weekday.
“Yeah,” Derek said, following my gaze. “This is mostly an African American cemetery. The traffic is heavier and more regular.”
Glancing down at his notebook, I wanted to snap at him and tell him not to be so fucking racist. But as I scanned the people on the outside of the tape, he was right.
“Did you find anything abnormal?” I asked, turning my attention back to the body. I had no idea what I was looking for or why he’d called me. I didn’t see any slashing or biting like in a werewolf attack and this body was so far out of a vampire’s realm of destruction that the possibility never even crossed my mind. I couldn’t even pick up any extraneous smells, other than death and dirt.
“Nothing solid. I’ll know more once the coroner performs the autopsy.” Derek’s eyes never left the dead girl’s body. His shoulders were stiff and his knuckles white from gripping the pen in his hand too tight.
Standing, I put some distance between me and the crime scene. The grass was too short and the ground too dry for footprints to stick. It hadn’t rained in over ten days and the winds had been hell over the last week, whipping through the trees and breaking branches all over town. The windstorms had blown away any trace of violence and any clue or scent that might linger in the shorn grass.
I canvassed back to the road winding through the cemetery. There had to be more. I must be missing something. Derek had pretty good instincts and he only called me when his hackles rose. He usually knew the difference between my world and the human world. So, what was I missing?
The cement of the road beneath the soles of my shoes was hot, soaking up the heat of the late morning. Searching about 25 yards in either direction, I scanned the ground and tombstones for anything that didn’t feel right. Anything that looked out of the ordinary. Maybe I was just nervous out of habit and this was some human monster. Wouldn’t that be nice for a change?
I stopped.
Breathing deep, I filled my nostrils with the hot, humid summer air, the smell of grass, distant exhaust fumes, and something else. Faint, but there on the breeze, something lingered. I crouched down and took a deep breath.
“Vampire.”
The scent of old death and magic rushed through my senses but it was different. Odd. My body tingled with the strength of the vampire’s magic still lingering in the air, on the trees, and on the tombstones. Following the faint trail into the grass, I lost it twice before I found it again. The smell was so weak, blown away by the wind and the flat, open spaces of the cemetery, but it was there. I needed a better nose or to learn how to use the one I already had.
Stepping up to the large mausoleum bordering between the old section of the cemetery where the girl had been found and the new section where the ground had been disturbed, I scanned the graves. The girl was being freed from her secluded hiding spot by the crime scene techs and one of the officers swore as his CPD windbreaker got caught on a branch. Something about the entire scene didn’t make sense. As I breathed in, the smell of vampire was minimally stronger but so was something else.
Salt.
“What is that?” Derek asked, approaching from the left. The thin white remnants of salt were haphazardly tossed into a circle on the grass just to the side, hidden beneath a mature tree. Only a scattering of the crystals remained, pressed down and b
roken into the hard earth but the clear visual of a circle remained. The rest, blown away by winds.
“Looks like what’s left of a salt circle,” I said.
From where I stood, I had a clear view of the graves and the girl. There was a dark edge to the air around the circle, giving me a sinking feeling that I couldn’t quite explain or shake. The only word that came to mind was . . . nefarious. I dug out my phone from my bag and took some pictures. Jade would want to see it from every angle.
“What are you thinking?” Derek’s voice was hard like stone.
“I don’t know yet but it doesn’t look good,” I said, snapping a few more pictures.
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
I glanced down at the scene as the coroner slipped the rope into an evidence bag and then zipped up the body bag on the gurney. A faint whisper of an image floated from the body. If I hadn’t been staring straight at her, I might’ve missed it. The remnants of the woman’s spirit hovered over her. Her translucent body glimmered in the summer sun, frozen in a silent scream. Her eyes met mine and like the pop of a gun, her screams filled my ears for a blood curdling moment before she disappeared into the ether.
“Shit!” I hissed with a shiver before I turned and stormed back to the company car. “I hate it when that happens.” I rubbed the chills from my arm in the humidity, leaving Derek in the grass behind me.
“Crackpot?” Derek asked with hope in his voice as he managed to chase me down.
“No such luck.”
Chapter 3
Ev and I strolled along the bar. I dodged grinding pelvises and grabby hands from men that should really know better. Ev dodged clingy women and roaming fingers that seemed forward, even for me.
“You want me to do something about that?” Ev asked.
“Nope,” I said, jamming two fingers into the ribs of the guy on my right with his hand currently sliding down my ass. He groaned and jerked away. “I got it.”
“This wouldn’t happen at one of Patrick’s clubs,” he grumbled, and I couldn’t keep the tiny grin from turning up the corner of my mouth. Even after so short a time, Ev was fitting in nicely as if he’d always been with me. He hadn’t of course. Just a few months, really, since we’d both left Las Vegas in a hail of blood and death.
Ev crowded me, shooing away stray hands and jostling men much bigger than him.
The club music thumped in my chest, and I moved through the crowd chasing something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. A vampire signature pressed up against me, a blistery winter wind inside an enclosed space that tightened my stomach. Unfamiliar to me, I fought to keep my heart rate down as the icy chill of winter licked across my skin. I didn’t want him to know I’d noticed but I had and now I just had to find him.
Power slammed against my being, making gooseflesh pimple my arms but it didn’t seep into my bones as others might. As Patrick’s power did. The vampire was old, male, and powerful but not the same power from the cemetery. This was just chilling. It stung.
Patrick was Liege of the Northwest Territory, including all of Ohio, most of Pennsylvania, as well as Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia. He was basically a King which had everyone riled up in the vampire world. The Lebensblut board in particular wasn’t happy. Patrick ruled over more territory than any other vampire liege in North America. This was reason enough to kill us but with each new territory and new immigrant that flocked to us, we moved closer to war.
In turbulent times like these, Patrick required visitors and new vampires to check in with his colony. It was only polite. These two bastards had waltzed into our territory like they owned the place. I wasn’t happy and I knew, just fucking KNEW, Patrick wouldn’t be happy either.
“Dahlia!” Ev called, catching my waning attention.
“What?” I hissed back at him.
“What are we doing here?” he asked, stopping and staring hard into my face. What were we doing here? Shit! I’d forgotten as the arctic wind blew through me and got closer.
I let the constant thump of the bass roll off me and breathed deeply of sweat, alcohol, and unrestrained sex. “While Jade is trolling through the occult stores and the internet, I thought we’d check out some of the other clubs to see if we can uncover anything.” I stalked through the crowd, ignoring the blast of cold air at my back. Scanning the hundreds of faces, slack with abandon, I made a pretense of losing myself in the throng.
“Here?” Ev balked. “What could we possibly find here?”
If only he knew. Patrick’s clubs weren’t the only places where preternatural beings hunted.
“Yeah, here,” I said, glancing at him over my shoulder. “Patrick and Dean are masters of the city, not just their own businesses.”
As the arctic wind rushed around me, I glanced up into the crowd and ignored everything but the bitter cyclone of power seeping into my bones.
“I smell weird dead people,” Ev said from above the noise.
“Yes, you do,” I confirmed.
“What do we do?” Ev asked, impatience making his voice an octave higher than it normally would have been.
The vampire strolled across the dance floor, glancing over at me with dark blue eyes the color of lapis lazuli. He was about my height, with black hair that hung full and thick to his shoulders. His skin was dark and bronzed as if the Mediterranean sun had been burned into his flesh. His features were jagged and his shoulders squared, matching his lean frame. Wearing a tailored suit the color of charred ash with a soft pink dress shirt and tie, he strutted, catching the eye of every woman and several men within sight. It took a confident man to wear pink. I’d give him that.
“Don’t,” I said, placing my hand on Ev’s stomach, keeping him behind me as he tried to move forward.
“But—” Ev started to protest. Scrunching his nose up, Ev growled softly at the vampire within striking distance.
“You heard me. You will do NOTHING!” I reiterated, making it an order for his submissive ears.
The vampire caught my eye again, cocking one eyebrow at me. He smirked as if he knew how much it was killing me to let him walk away. There were too many people, too much alcohol and testosterone in the air to start something that may end in the death of innocent bystanders.
Sauntering by me, close enough to see the quick upturn of his full lips, the vampire moved to the exit. Holding the heavy steel door for a couple of women giggling amongst themselves, he followed them out.
“Dahlia?” Ev questioned.
“Get his license plate number. He didn’t walk here,” I ordered with my own growl reverberating in my voice.
Ev took off like a shot, following the mystery vamp out and into the street. I walked up to the bar and ordered a club soda. The vamp was old, too old not to know better than to check in with the local Liege.
Ev came bounding back in through the doors and met me at the bar. I watched as heads turned, evaluating his more developed body moving easily through the crowd. He’d been lean, almost scrawny when I’d met him in Vegas. After months of eating regularly, training with Kurt, and steady exercise, he was putting some muscle on him. He would never be bulky like Kurt, but Ev had a lean quality to him that let him run for miles and miles without getting tired. As he made his way to me now, his eyes were shadowed by his furrowed brow and a somber expression hid the usually happy glint in his gaze.
“Did you get it?”
“Yeah, make and model too. It was a rental, though,” he answered, discouraged.
“Jade can track it.”
“Why’d we let him go?” Ev asked, sliding his arm out to clear a path for me.
There had been a time when that would have bothered me but not now. I knew Ev did it because I was his Eithina and that was his duty, not because he was a man and I was a woman. He’d do the same thing for Dean
. If I protested, I’d hurt his feelings. Allowing him do the little things made him feel useful so I didn’t argue.
Coming around the edge of the bar, I had an itch to make one more pass when something made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. My blood fired with a dark magic that should have been dormant outside of the Outer Realm. Simmering around the edges of my being, a purple haze of power that hadn’t been there before Faerie, radiated inside me. Beyond the licorice smell that had fused with my other scents, no one seemed to notice but me. I wasn’t sure if the shimmer of purple was visible but I sure as hell could feel it. The part about this magic that really worried me, was that it fit. The magic didn’t feel alien or foreign. It slipped into my being as if it had always been there, as if it belonged. And I knew that magic had come from Baba Yaga.
My blood had mixed with the dark magic of Baba Yaga in a sensation that could only be described as burning me from the inside out. She had been banished to the Outer Realm, as all Unseelie fae had been centuries ago. Did it matter that Saeran had been the one to banish them? That, I didn’t know. I was still on the fence about Saeran but from the magic now pulsing in my veins, making my eyes water, I couldn’t disagree with his decision.
Power. Pure, unfiltered power burned through my blood and I cringed with the pain of it. This couldn’t be happening. More importantly, why was it happening? Baba Yaga was banished to another plane of existence. Why was her dark magic active now?
“Dahlia?” Ev’s voice was small, meek almost. He could sense something was wrong through the Pack bonds. Hell, he could probably smell the magic firing in my blood. I took a few deep breaths, centering my mind on the peace I felt before I killed. I could conquer this. I could bury her magic deep until I was in control again. After a moment of rigid tension making my shoulders ache, my blood cooled and the prickle of magic that had set me on edge receded until everything in my body and mind was quiet again.
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