I scramble across the floor on one arm and my knees, zigzagging through workbenches, trying to put some space between us. My left arm is hanging uselessly. I can’t feel anything below my shoulder. I’m pretty sure the building is spinning in circles because I can’t seem to figure out which way is up. The blood thundering in my head drowns out Greystone’s continuing screams.
Finnegan rolls over on the ground and laughs. “That hurt, you dick!” He slowly stands up and dusts himself off. His gun is a few feet away from him. He reaches down, casually picks it up, and starts to walk towards me again. I duck around the corner of one of the large metal cases, blocking him from my view. I look down and see the smear of blood I’m leaving as I’m dragging my shoulder across the floor. Who knows what kinds of dirt and debris I’m grinding into my open wounds as I struggle to move.
He yells out at me from the other side of the machine, circling towards me from the other side. “I’m going to enjoy tearing you apart. I don’t normally eat mortals, Green, but for you, I’ll make an exception. You’re going to die watching me take a bite out of your throat, and you’ll never even know what you stumbled on.”
I lean my right shoulder on the ground, manage to barely lift the gun off the ground. I aim at where I expect him to come around the corner. As soon as I detect a flicker of motion, I pull the trigger again. The shot is loud enough it almost covers up Greystone’s unrelenting crying inside my head. The round tears a metal vice off the corner of a nearby table. Both the vice and my bullet glance off Finnegan’s shield, making him stagger but not stopping his advance. I really hate that smile on his face right now.
The blue sphere of light moves from behind him and flies over above my head, marking my location. He’s taking his time. I can see the blue light sparkling off the gleam of his teeth through his narrow grin. I try lifting my weapon to fire again, but I’m moving too slowly. Finnegan easily catches up and steps on my hand, pinning my gun to the ground.
This is not looking good. His smile widens, and he aims his gun at my head.
“Hey, Finnegan,” a deep voice snarls from the stairway. A gunshot explodes in the silence. The energy shield flares to life on Finnegan’s side as he is, again, lifted off his feet and thrown against a table, smashing into it with his stomach, grunting and cursing.
Marsh walks calmly out of the doorway, firing another shot that knocks the skinny detective down. Finnegan crashes to the floor a few feet away from me, his gun clattering off under a table. Marsh might be the one shooting him, but Finnegan glares murderously at me.
“I think you’ve got some explaining to do,” Marsh says smugly, advancing towards the both of us. Greystone is still in her cage, screaming in my head, and blackness is bleeding into the edges of my vision. Somehow, I muster the strength to push myself backward across the floor with my legs and try to put some distance between Finnegan and myself.
Marsh rounds the corner of the aisle of worktables we’re behind. The light cuts out for a second, until I shake my head and blink fiercely. The glowing blue ball is still there, so I guess I blacked out for a moment. Marsh is several strides closer now, gun pointed at Finnegan.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the blue sphere of energy starting to grow larger. I look at it more closely. Am I blacking out again? No, it really is getting bigger.
“Marsh,” I croak hoarsely.
The sphere explodes into a ball of blazing blue fire nearly ten feet across. It starts pulling in the air around it in a blazing vortex of heat and flame. I feel myself slide a few inches towards it before it rockets towards Marsh and detonates right in his face. My partner staggers back and drops to his knees. He is at the center of an inferno of blue flames. Licks of fire spit out in all directions, lighting up items on top of nearby tables. Some of the beakers start exploding from the heat, spraying boiling liquid out.
I can’t hear anything over the roaring of the fire. Finnegan gets up and turns to me. I can’t move out of the way as he takes three quick strides and kicks me as hard as he can in my stomach. Pain blazes in my midsection, and I try and curl up around the waves of agony. He kicks me again, and then a third time. I start vomiting after that one. I hear Marsh howling curses as his flesh sizzles away.
Somehow, I manage to hold on to my gun. This time I line him up squarely in my sights, and I pull the trigger. I don’t blow my own head off. Things go black again. After a few beats I manage to open my eyes enough to see Finnegan slumping against the table next to me. Fluid is leaking from a fist-sized hole in his side.
He takes a lurching step towards me, slips in my puke on the floor, and drops to one knee. My ears are ringing too loudly to hear what he says, but I see his lips mouth out, “This isn’t over.”
Finnegan stumbles away out the door and up the stairs.
I lay weakly on the floor. I feel blood on my body, vomit congealing on my face. Blue flames reach up from the mass of Marsh about twenty feet away. Flames are licking the ceiling. I can feel the heat. The smell threatens to make me vomit again. The mass in the center of the flames moves, shifts, and slowly stands up.
“Kid . . . you gotta get . . . outta here,” Marsh says with a tortured voice, staggering to the side. An arm grabs a table to steady himself and beakers explode from the heat. How is he still alive? I mean, not alive, but not dead. I can see bone underneath the flames.
I look over to the stairway. It’s a long way away. I’m pretty sure it has gotten farther away than when I entered the room.
“Can’t . . .” I whisper, blinking.
I open my eyes, realizing Marsh is yelling at me. “. . . up! Wake up, Green. I can’t grab you without frying you.” Some of the crystal rocks start exploding, either from the heat or the flames.
Suddenly, the room goes dark. This time I’m pretty sure my eyes are still open. The place is mercifully silent, just the occasional pop of something exploding or falling from a table tells me I haven’t gone deaf.
“Huh,” I hear Marsh grunt, the sound of his flesh sizzling loud in the sudden silence. “Guess his spell finally gave out.”
A dim glow gradually increases, lighting the room up with green radiance.
“Detective Green,” Greystone says, floating above me. She’s free from her cage, and she’s the source of the light. Her form is flickering slightly, like she isn’t tuned into the right channel. She looks positively distraught. “Detective Green, are you OK?”
I nod, waving away her concern. “Shurr . . .”
I see Marsh walk over to me, squatting down nearby. He’s a smoking, smoldering ruin. His flesh is charred black, burned and blistered. Every time he moves his flesh tears and oozes various fluids. His clothes are either gone or fused with his skin. He’s smiling though, and his eyes are clear. He doesn’t smell better cooked than normal.
“That was pretty badass, Green. Slowing down his feet with your stomach like that.”
“Shut . . .” I cough weakly. “Shut up.”
Chapter 26
A couple hours later and the squad is still crawling all over the warehouse. The forensics team is cataloging everything in the lab, taking notes, marking things in chalk, bagging vials, beakers, and chemicals into canvas bags. I say it’s a forensics team, but it’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before. Instead of magnifying glasses, digital cameras—I don’t know, actual science equipment—there are a couple guys who are unofficially called sniffers.
And yeah, that’s what they’re doing; they are smelling the area like hound dogs. One of them occasionally crouches down on all fours to get a closer sniff at something or other. I imagine he’s going to be high as a kite by the end of this, with all the powders and dust in the air.
A handful of others are walking around with their eyes closed while assistants take notes. Those are the scryers. They are talking about the things they “see” in their mind, impressions of the area. There are some photographers
, but they are using old cameras with powder-flare flashes, using honest-to-goodness single exposure plates of some kind. It’s something I’d expect to see in those Old West, turn-of-the-century shows. The place is crowded, with probably twenty folks or so in the lab with more upstairs and throughout the warehouse. Officers are upstairs going through all the offices, desks, and debris seeing if there is anything else of note here.
I’m not sure exactly when others got here; I passed out for about an hour. I’m barely coherent now.
Marsh and I are over in a corner while everything goes on around us. He’s healing rapidly, having stopped smoldering about thirty minutes ago. Thankfully, someone found a blanket he could wrap around himself, so I don’t have to watch his flesh reknit. He’s been eating nonstop to replenish his energy, and that’s a sight I can go without seeing again. But in between bites, Marsh is standing in front of me, guarding me. It turns out that actual human blood smeared all over the floor drives some of these guys crazy. One of the new officers went blood crazed and launched himself at me when he smelled me. Marsh caught him, and the officer is off healing broken bones while Marsh’s glower has been discouraging that from happening again.
As near as I can tell, this regeneration process Marsh is going through is fairly consistent. His skin and muscle actually writhe and twitch as they reform. Closing a single bullet hole will take roughly a minute, unless he has to go in and dig the bullet out. Something like a shotgun blast will take longer. The fire caused significantly more damage and will likely take several hours to fully heal.
And while he can recover from just about anything, it does nothing for the pain. He still feels everything; his brain still processes pain in the same way it did while he was alive. He’s just had decades of practice coping with it.
They had a “doctor” fuss over me, but frankly, he wasn’t much help. He wasn’t used to healing actual living bodies. He did some magic on me that got my arm moving and feeling again. My whole shoulder is bruised and sore, but I shouldn’t experience any permanent damage. Bandages were wrapped around the wound, and someone gave me a spare shirt to wear.
The room looks a lot different now, with gaslights and torches illuminating the space instead of that weird blue globe of energy Finnegan had. I almost don’t recognize the place. It looks smaller now. I can’t believe I almost died in this dump. A shadow somehow passes in front of all the light in the room, in all directions at once, and Captain Radu strides into the room from the stairway that was empty only seconds ago. He marches straight toward us. The other members of our squad gather around while everyone else quickly finds somewhere else to be.
“Update,” Radu orders. The command demands obedience.
Marsh absently scratches his scalp behind one ear, showering out flakes of burnt skin as he speaks. “Looks like Finnegan had a little side business going on.”
Meints steps forward, looking at his notepad. He has been taking copious notes, detailing every beaker, vial, glass or container—including sketching out complex chemical diagrams. “Alchemical-grade dust, refined and purified. Some of the strongest I’ve ever seen. We haven’t been able to break down the formula yet; it keeps shifting as we examine it. It’s the street drug Arcane. Also several vials of Daydream.”
Burchard stands next to him, hands in his pockets. He says, “Not surprising. Finnegan was always a shifty bastard.”
Clark nods, on the other side of Radu. “No telling how much of this stuff has hit the streets; judging by the scope of the setup here, I’d say he’s been peddling this crap for years.”
Marsh interjects, “It would explain a lot of things, actually. Some of the breaches into the mortal world, the increase of spirits in the Nursery. And, frankly, how Finnegan was displaying practitioner-level skill in magic without being registered. Who knows how much of this gunk he’s been taking himself.”
Radu glowers. It looks like he’s been sucking on something sour. Finally, “C’est tout? Is this all of it?”
Meints shrugs, looks at Burchard who shrugs as well, and says, “No way of knowing that, Captain. This could be one of several labs. I’d like to think it’s just this one, but nothing is ever easy with that guy.”
Radu turns to me. His eyes are blazing furiously, and the rest of the room seems to fade into darkness as the captain becomes the sole focus of attention.
“Messieurs, I am not pleased with your progress. Instead of tracking down this killer, we are no closer now than we were before, and we’re down a member of the squad. Merde! Detective Green, do you have any reason to suspect it was Finnegan who is behind these killings? Are his dealings with these drugs the cause of all this?”
That’s a damned good question. I frown. “No, I don’t think so. Finnegan seemed genuinely surprised I thought he might be behind it all. And since he was getting ready to kill me, I don’t have any reason to think he was lying.”
“Captain,” Kim interrupts bravely. Radu’s focus shifts to the detective. Kim tries not to look uncomfortable as he continues. “Why was Green following Finnegan in the first place? Are you investigating us? What’s going on?”
The captain stares expressionlessly. Everyone’s gaze, mine included, are on him.
Crap, I’m dead. I’m so dead, I think, not caring if Greystone overhears.
“Trust the captain,” Greystone thinks back reassuringly.
“Detective Green, tell them what you found.”
I hesitate. “But Captain . . .”
He turns back to me and arches an eyebrow threateningly. More danger is conveyed in that single movement than cocking a gun at me by anyone else. I spill.
“Ms. Greystone and I were digging through some old notes related to the murders and realized there were case files missing.” I pause, but no one says anything. Reluctantly, I continue. “We discovered that someone had removed files from storage.”
“But we’re the only ones that have access to storage,” Armstrong says. He opens his mouth to continue and then stops as realization hits. I see similar expressions around the group.
“Yeah.” I swallow nervously and force myself to continue. “Someone in this group removed those files. So, for whatever reason, one of us is blocking this investigation.”
Greystone speaks quietly, “I agreed to help Detective Green look into this. He was afraid, and rightly so. I believed that if his suspicions were made known, his life would be in jeopardy.”
“Did you know about this, Captain?” Marsh asks. All eyes move from me to the captain.
“Oui. Only after Green’s investigation exposed an undercover operation that Armstrong had been working on for a couple years.”
“Captain!” Armstrong protests, but Radu waves him into silence.
“No. No more secrets. I want everything out in the open. We find who is doing this; we uncover what is going on no, matter the cost; and we pick up the pieces later.”
Armstrong clenches his teeth but nods his assent. Then something else occurs to him. “Wait a minute. Green, you thought I was the murderer? What the hell for?”
I shift my feet uncomfortably. “I had to start somewhere. I just picked someone at random.”
“I thought you stumbled across me,” he accuses me heatedly. “But you were following me to see if I was out killing people?”
Radu cuts him off angrily. “Instead, he discovered your operation with crime figures you managed to keep hidden from the rest of the group for years. He then shifted his focus to Finnegan and discovered this.”
Marsh regards me thoughtfully. Maybe calculating is a better way to describe it because it’s not particularly friendly.
“Uh, I hate to point this out,” Burchard says. “But none of this has uncovered who took those files.”
“Sweet,” Clark grimaces. “That’s just great.”
“Alors, here is where we stand,” Radu summarizes. “One of us,
myself included, is suspect in, at the very least, trying to hinder the investigation into these murders. At worst, they are committing the murders themselves. Armstrong’s undercover work is blown. Finnegan is operating a drug ring that has been causing us headaches for who knows how long. And we still have no idea who is behind this.
“The only one of us we can rule out as a suspect,” Radu continues, “is Detective Green. He wasn’t here when the murders began.”
“That would be great if he weren’t so clueless,” Burchard grumbles.
“Or hopelessly incompetent,” Armstrong adds.
Meints stares at me suspiciously, writing notes down in his journal.
“I vote for useless,” Clark adds.
“Enough!” Radu whispers fiercely. “Inexperienced he may be, and yes, his results may have set us back more than they have helped thus far. But he has been getting results. I expect all of you to keep him alive. Let’s train him how to be competent and hope that can be accomplished in a single lifetime. I need results.”
Radu gives us all one last stern glance and then walks away. The rest of us stand silently, appraising each other. The look is the same on all of our faces: one of us is working against the rest; we just don’t know who.
“Go, team!” Clark says.
Chapter 27
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