Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book 1)

by Cristelle Comby

  Our world, the Mortal Realm, isn’t the only one. There’s another just across an invisible border that even I don’t understand: Alterum Mundum. Yeah, that’s Latin for “other world.” Don’t sue me—I didn’t come up with the name. No one knows how big Alterum Mundum is. Rumor has it that it could be infinite. What it does contain in the mapped regions is all the afterlives known to mankind: Heaven, Hell, Olympus, Elysium, Tartarus, Gehenna, Amenti, Sheol … you name it. If someone wrote a book about it, you’d find it there.

  Sounds crazy? Yeah, I know—I thought so too, when I first heard about it. Except I’d just been brought back from the dead, so that put things in perspective real quick.

  Now, I’ve never been to Alterum Mundum but, like anyone in the loop on this place, I’ve heard the stories and they’re not pretty. I’ve felt its presence a few times, and trust me when I tell you the mere aura of that place was enough to make me take a few steps back.

  The two realms are separated, but they do touch in certain spots. Usually, these are places that have something in common with each other, a strong resonance of complementary energies. The Vatican, for instance, is supposed to have one or two gateways to Heaven. Places like the Parthenon are connected with Olympus. Come at the right time of year and Stonehenge will give you a ticket straight to Arcadia. And from what I’ve heard, Daemons who manage to make it through to this world always seem to claim good old Las Vegas as their first port of call.

  So, yeah, travel between the two realms is a possibility, though it is technically forbidden. Of course, every rule has its exceptions—how else do you think I became Death’s errand boy?—but for a trip to be licensed, it has to be approved by both sides. Though the other side breaks that rule as often as people over here break traffic laws, our side hasn’t said yes to a major expedition in over two hundred years.

  That’s where the Conclave comes in. It’s the body responsible for the safekeeping of the border on our side. I’ve never met any of them, but from the whispers I have heard they’re not a fun bunch. I had no idea then how they handled breaches, but if they were as good at cleaning up as they were at keeping secrets … well, it looked like the next couple of days were going to be interesting. Only …

  I checked the clock on my phone. It’d been fifteen minutes since I’d made the call. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry to call me back. I mean, this was kinda urgent and what, they were just going to give me the cold shoulder?

  I dialed them up again and waited for the beep. “Okay, guys, you and I don’t know each other,” I began, feeling my patience growing thin, “but you may know the lady I work for … Lady McDeath? Pretty brunette—or stunning blonde when she feels like it—smoking body, low patience, tough as nails, zero sense of humor? Well, I work for her, and she asked me to look into this mess. I did, and trust me when I tell you something is rotten in the state of Denmark. What happened here wasn’t—”

  The damn beep cut me off again, making me curse. The couple in the next booth turned to look at me and I shrugged apologetically. “Bad day on the stock market.”

  My phone chirped with a text message an instant later: “Border status: safe. No recent fluctuation detected. Thank you for your concern. Please do not call again.”

  I stared at the screen in dismay. Hells … the authorities on that side of the great divide were every bit as useless as a stuffed, dead guard-dog. I know, shocker. I’d once heard a friend who was more in the know than me describe the Conclave as “a bunch of old jerks who couldn’t find their own backsides in a windstorm even if they were looking for it with both hands.” At the time, I’d thought Zian was exaggerating, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  “Thanks for nothing,” I muttered, leaving some cash on the table for the tea, plus a tip for the waitress. I winced when I realized that was the last of my cash. The payment for the Townsend job couldn’t get here soon enough.

  On my way out, I dialed up an old friend in the hope that the mortal authorities would maybe prove a little less useless.

  “Sergeant Ramirez,” a young, feminine voice with a Latino accent answered.

  Those two words alone were enough to make me smile. I always thought her voice was the sexiest thing about her. She had been born in the Dominican Republic, but her father had brought her and her mom back home to Cold City when she was about ten. Even though some twenty years had passed since then, she still had that accent.

  “Hi, Mel, it’s me,” I said.

  “What do you want, Bell?” she asked, on guard. “You promised you wouldn’t call.”

  I zipped my thick cotton jacket, pulled the collar up and headed out in the rain. Okay, so it was too early to talk to her like a normal human being as opposed to like an ex. It wasn’t that big a surprise, seeing as we were in the “off” period of our “on and off” relationship. We’d done this dance before. Twice.

  “It’s not like that, Melanie,” I said, trying to keep all emotion out of my voice. If she wanted us to go back to being professionals, I could do that. “I need your help. You know, for work.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Morgan would have my badge in a heartbeat if he heard a whisper about me giving you any help.”

  The lovely Melanie Ramirez was a CCPD Sergeant, working Homicide in Morgan’s division. I had no idea where she found the strength to put up with him. I’d once asked her about it and all she’d said was, “I put up with you, don’t I?” I didn’t have any snappy comebacks for that one.

  “Please, Mel, I’m working a case,” I said in a patient tone. “I just need to know if you’ve heard something. It’s the—”

  “Whatever it is, I don’t want to know,” she snapped, cutting me off. “Morgan was pretty specific about that at roll call this morning. You’re off limits.”

  Well, that was new. “What? And you’re just going to go with it? It’s your life, Mel. He doesn’t get to decide who you see.”

  “Professionally off limits,” she corrected in a tone that made it clear she was losing what little patience she had left. After a world-weary sigh I knew too well, she added, “Look, Bell … I don’t know what you did, but Morgan’s royally pissed this time. He ordered all of us”—she accentuated that part—“to stay away from you.”

  “Sunnofa…” I breathed. And I had thought my day couldn’t get any worse. “Please, Mel. I’m working on a case. Ethan Nicholls—the guy who was killed last night. I don’t give a damn what Morgan says. His family has a right to know what happened to him.”

  Come to think of it, did he have a family? I wondered.

  “Oh, don’t you dare, Bellamy Vale!” she said, turning up the anger in her voice. “Don’t play the sympathy card with me just so you can get a little inside info. I get on Morgan’s bad side, he’ll make my life a living hell and you know it.”

  “Please, Mel,” I pleaded. It was as pathetic as it sounds, but I was out of cards to play.

  I heard someone call out her name over the line. “Just a minute,” she hollered back. She probably had to turn her head away from the phone, because her voice was distant for a moment. “I’ve got to go, Bell. Nice talking to you.”

  I doubted the sincerity of that last part, but I rushed to stop her hanging up. “Wait, Mel … you have to give me something. Please, I’ll make it up to you … I promise.”

  “Fine,” she said, knowing it was the only way to keep me from calling her back. “Come to the corner of Main and Seventh. You’re going to want to see this.”

  A beep told me that the phone call was over … but my day was just getting started.

  Chapter four

  Ain’t no rest for the wicked

  The corner Sergeant Ramirez had given me was just two blocks away, but I was drenched by the time I got there. To my surprise, she had directed me to a crime scene. Prowl cars were parked near the curb, cops in and out of uniform swarming all over the place.

  As
you might expect, the street corner was off limits, yellow tape barring the way. The blockage was forcing the crowd of bystanders to stay at a reasonable distance from whatever had happened. Curious neighbors, sheltering under multicolored umbrellas, stood several deep in the street. Two officers in uniform had been dispatched to regulate traffic and make sure none of these yahoos got run over while they gawked.

  I moved in closer and tried to squeeze through without being poked in the eye by an umbrella. Peering over an old woman’s gray hair, I caught sight of bloodstains. No doubt about it, somebody had died here. It was impossible to lose that much blood and survive.

  I pushed past the old lady and walked further down the line of onlookers until I was squeezed between a teen in a baseball cap and the wall of a Chinese restaurant. I watched as the medical examiner zipped up a body bag at the foot of an office building.

  There was another pool of blood near the victim’s bagged corpse, twice the size of the one I’d seen on the way in. As near as I could tell, the victim had been killed by the building’s entrance, where the protruding rooftop had protected the scene from the elements. There were name plates beside the front door but I was too far away to make them out. On the other hand, the claw marks on the stone were clearly visible, even from where I was standing. Ditto the pieces of flesh that had been torn out of the victim’s body and that now littered the street like so much lint on a carpet. The whole scene left me with a deep sense of déjà vu.

  “You done here?” I heard a man call out to the ME. The basso voice was familiar. I ducked behind the teen standing next to me. Peering around his shoulder, I caught sight of Detective Lieutenant Morgan coming out of the building, notepad in hand. He was wearing the same clothes I’d seen him in last night, and he looked as tired as I felt myself. He was clearly in one of his characteristic bad moods.

  The ME nodded back to him, and Morgan gestured for two guys in uniform to come and take the corpse away. They hefted it up on a stretcher and wheeled it off. Ramirez came out of the building and stopped where Morgan was standing, right at the edge of the area sheltered from the rain. She’d tied her long brown hair up in a ponytail and wore a black raincoat over a beige blouse and jeans.

  “I’m going back to the station, Sergeant,” Morgan told Ramirez. “Stay here and monitor the scene until the cleaning team arrives.”

  Ramirez nodded and Morgan turned on his heel to head back to his car. He’d gotten two steps when he froze, frowned, and cursed. I followed his gaze and saw why: two news vans had just arrived. I smiled a little, knowing there was one thing Morgan hated even more than me—journalists.

  “Well, this ought to be good,” I muttered as I watched the first van’s door fly open. A young woman with wavy blonde hair stormed out, umbrella in one hand, smartphone in the other. She zeroed in on Morgan like a shark in a swimming pool.

  “Detective Lieutenant Morgan, care to make a comment?” she asked, and I recognized the Texan accent. It was Candice Kennedy, the Headliner correspondent from last night’s news.

  “No comment,” Morgan bit back, with all the grumpiness he could muster.

  While my nemesis was distracted, I transferred my focus back to the crime scene. The ME was gone, as were the guys who’d picked up what was left of the victim. One junior officer was keeping an eye on the massed civilians but he was standing at the other end of the street. Ramirez was by the building’s entrance, busy on her phone. Good a chance as any.

  I ducked beneath the yellow line. I was going to hate myself for it later, but I needed to take a closer look at the crime scene like I had at the last one. I jogged up the building’s front steps. Ramirez looked up as she saw me approaching and I could tell she was unhappy. She was about to say something but I shushed her with a finger to my lips.

  “Just give me one minute, Mel,” I whispered. “I won’t touch anything, I promise.”

  I didn’t give her time to answer and took two more steps further up, stopping a foot from the first bloodstains. I crouched down.

  “If Morgan sees you, you’re a dead man,” Ramirez told me, anxious eyes on her distracted boss. “And so am I.”

  “You’re going for a sex change? That’s a shame.”

  Ramirez gave me a well-deserved kick in the ass that only looked like it didn’t hurt. “Would you just hurry up?”

  “Who’s the vic?” I asked, using the pain of the kick to focus on what I needed to do.

  “Municipal worker, name of William Mallory … why do you care about this?”

  “Same as you, Mel,” I said, bracing myself for what I’d have to do next. “Just doing my job.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Who hired you?”

  “Can’t say,” I responded, with an apologetic shrug. “Client confidentiality.”

  Her brows knitted, a clear sign she didn’t like my answer. “Just get the hell out of here already.”

  “Can’t, Mel,” I repeated as I started to scan the scene. “I’ll be a minute. I have to do this.”

  “Whatever,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air.

  I knew the gesture all too well. It meant she was exasperated to the point of giving up the fight. She’d said the same thing when she left my flat three weeks ago when we were calling it quits yet again. That had been on the heels of a lengthy argument about my commitment issues, my roving eye, and my—and I quote—“damn job that takes all of the air out of the room. Seriously Bell, that’s not all there is to life.” I didn’t disagree with that last part, by the way, but how can you explain to your girlfriend my kind of situation in a way that didn’t land you in a straitjacket?

  “Remember those strange bruising I had on my back last week? I went up against a Golem, but no worries it’s been dealt with and the city will sleep safely tonight.” Yeah, that would go smoothly. At best she would swear me off her life, at worse she’d have me committed.

  Right now, she had turned her back on me and was walking away with tension in her shoulders. The uniformed cop at the other end of the scene had noticed the two of us talking and she headed his way. I felt sorry for the guy. If I knew my dear Sergeant Ramirez like I thought I did, he was about to get orders to keep his mouth shut, backed up with the threat that grievous bodily harm was not the worst thing that could happen to him.

  I moved closer to the crime scene, taking shelter from the rain. I felt dizzy just looking at it. I’d known from the start that a mere casual look wouldn’t cut it. To get my kind of answers, I’d have to chance a deeper look. I could feel my body tense up in anticipation. In my battered state, I had pushed my limits hard enough this morning already. I had no idea if there was enough energy left in me for round two.

  I passed a tired hand down my face and felt the stubble I hadn’t had the strength to shave grate against my fingertips. “Ain’t no rest for the wicked,” I murmured as I gathered my strength to activate “the sixth sense” one more time.

  I focused on what was left of the carnage and the blood assaulted my senses like a sledge to the face. It was barely congealed and bright carmine under the pale morning light. Even from a foot away, I could taste the iron particles on my tongue. Something churned inside of me at the mental impressions overwhelming me … I sensed something old and bestial with a thirst for death.

  Tremors ran through me and both of my hands started shaking. I willed my fists closed and felt the smell of my own blood in the air as my fingernails pierced the skin of my palms. It smelled delicious and I thirsted for more, like Dracula after a dry spell. I forced myself to focus, to get past this newfound morbid obsession with the macabre. Let me tell you, it took a real effort of will to get there. That was the biggest problem with using “the sixth sense”; the fresher the kill, the more intense the experience was.

  I squatted down and took in the many splatters of blood, picturing the way the droplets had flowed in the air before hitting the pavem
ent. I could see it happening, see the blurry shape of the victim and the red spray of blood suspended in the air as limbs got torn apart. The brutality of the crime was a dead match for what I’d seen at the Cinema Leone. The claw marks were the same size, the tactic used to corner the prey identical. Ditto the terror I felt from the vic in his last moments on this planet.

  I could feel a raw, primal instinct at work, but there was more to it. The sheer brutality of the attack wasn’t enough to overshadow the human intelligence that lay behind it. This attack had been planned and efficiently executed. This was obvious in the patterns. No time wasted, no chances left to the poor guy. Whoever he’d been in life, he’d been a dead man the minute the creature had shown up on this street. He just hadn’t known it until the last minute.

  I was about to back away when something got my attention—a faint shimmer in the rainwater that was making its way to the nearest sewer drain. It was faint, almost dissolved already, but not quite. I got up and moved closer.

  To the onlookers, I must have looked pretty silly. Try to imagine a tall, thirty-something guy drenched to the bone and crouched down by a storm drain, captivated by the sight of water coursing down the pavement to the sewer. I can’t imagine what they thought of me when I dipped my fingers in the running water and brought the drops in my hand up for closer inspection. If they could have seen what I was seeing, but then again …

  Here’s the thing. Otherworldly creatures often leave traces in our realm if you know what to look for. Now, I’m not talking about discarded bloody body parts or dazed mortals that wake up in the morning certain they’ve just spent the night with a siren. No, I’m talking about something much more subtle … Glitter.

  Ever wondered how strange-looking creatures like this thing I was tracking can drift through crowds undetected? Certainly, you’d think that a centaur or a dragon walking round Center Square at rush hour would turn a few heads, even in Cold City. Well, think again, because here comes Glitter, a rare and costly powder-like substance they make in Alterum Mundum. Cover yourself in it and everyone around you will think you look like you belong.