Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book 1)

by Cristelle Comby

  I wasn’t sure how it worked exactly. Maybe it reshaped the creature it covered or maybe it changed the perception of onlookers. The only thing I did know was that it worked. Vanilla mortals were one hundred percent oblivious to what might be going on around them when Glitter was around.

  With people from the other side of the border, it varied. Powerful god-like beings and actual gods could see right through Glitter like it was a light fog. Lesser beings like yours truly could only perceive the trickery when they were on the lookout for it. I’d once run into a six-foot-four quarterback who shimmered and glittered worse than one of those Twilight vampires. Once I’d knocked him off, he turned out to be a troll.

  I was lucky to have got to the crime scene so quickly. It took an effort of will from the person who wore the Glitter to activate it and, rain or no rain, left alone that powdery stuff would have dissolved into nothingness in a few hours.

  My fingers glistened in the pale morning sun, holding the proof that I’d been looking for. It was the undeniable neon sign that screamed “not of this world.” I shut off the sixth sense and stumbled away from the scene with a stagger that would have done credit to a drunk.

  Ramirez was still busy threatening the uniformed cop so I slipped away unnoticed and made my way through the crowd of men, women, and umbrellas, shivering from the cold and sweating from the exertion. My mind was on fire with the images I’d just taken in, to the point where my vision had turned as red as blood.

  It was one thing to look intently at a missing kid’s bedroom like I’d done for Marion. It was quite another to look upon a blood-splattered crime scene in such detail. The imprint left by that carnage would stay etched in my skull for a long time to come. I could feel my body protesting already, my insides churning and coiling from the strain I’d put them through. I’d have thrown up there and then if I’d had the energy.

  It’s probably why regular mortals can’t use their sixth sense or see things like Glitter. Our frail bodies just aren’t strong enough to handle it long term. The black-inked mark on my shoulder was burning like a white-hot brand and I wondered if I’d have been dead by then if I hadn’t been wearing it.

  I ambled away from the mayhem of curious bystanders and nosy journalists. I caught a glimpse of Morgan arguing with the blonde reporter. Her cameraman had joined the party, aiming his lens at the angry detective like a sniper lining up a shot on an enemy. It served him right … fine me for destroying public property, wouldja …

  I hailed a cab to get back home. I barely had the strength to stand, let alone drive. The car would just have to wait for another day. Maybe I could get somebody to pick it up before it got towed.

  The shakes subsided on the way home. Between moments spent fighting to stay conscious, I tried to make sense of the case but failed. Damn, but that hellspawn in a dress had played me once again. She had to know what I’d be up against, yet she’d still sent me into the fray, blind and unprepared. Try as I might, I couldn’t begin to make out the shape of what I was facing. All I did know was that she was swinging me left and right like a puppet, a feeling I hated. Well, this puppet wanted to know more about what he was being sent to do. Time to let her know how I felt.

  ***

  After I had got out of my wet clothes and snatched a few hours of much-needed sleep, I tried to get hold of her. She hadn’t left me her phone number—it wasn’t as if a being like her would ever stoop so low as to own a cell—but I had other means to reach her. The brand on my skin, which marked me as hers and protected me from death, was an energy link between us. And it was a two-way street.

  I didn’t possess any magic, so I had to resort to using some of earth’s power to make sure my long-distance call would go through. I got five white candles out, pushed my coffee table out of the way, and sat cross-legged on the carpet. I placed the candles around me at equal distance from each other, the positions marking out the shape of the Seal of Solomon, aka a pentagram. I lit the candles and shrugged off my shirt.

  Somehow I knew I would come to regret this. One doesn’t simply call up Lady McDeath and expect to live to tell the tale. But the manipulative bitch had left me with no other choice, as I saw it. She knew something I needed to hear. After all, if she wanted a mindless soldier who never questioned her orders, she’d made the wrong choice.

  I placed the palm of one hand over the black tattoo and thrust the other to the floor as I summoned her.

  And nothing happened.

  I blinked and tried again, pouring more of my will and desperation into the action. She had to come. I needed answers. I’d only tried this ritual once, but it had worked within minutes. I checked the position of the candles, and made an effort to clear my mind. I dug deep within myself, tried to reach that strength that allows me to use the sixth-sense.

  The candles brightened and the shadows in my flat lengthened as an acrid smell filled the air. I kept the summoning going and willed her to appear.

  The light wavered as the walls around me shifted and blurred. The room grew bigger, morphing into a long, rectangular marble hall. Candles adorned the walls, their pale light reflecting on the shiny black floor surface.

  Amazed, I stood up on shaking legs. “The hells?” I whispered, thinking I’d somehow taped too much into powers I understood nothing about. “This won’t end well.”

  I let my feet carry me away from the candles, crossing the hall and turning left into a smaller, narrower corridor. The energy link leading me was almost like a tangible rope to follow … like Theseus in the Labyrinth, but in reverse.

  The corridor opened into a large room with an impossibly high ceiling—at least, I assumed there was a ceiling up there, though I couldn’t make it out. Large bay windows stretched on one side, looking out on a black horizon. No—not black, not entirely. Faint hazes of red permeated the night, like the remnants of a sunset drowned in ink.

  There was a large couch in the center of the room and a fire was burning in a hearth set into the far wall. Two silhouettes stood in front of it. Lady McDeath was there, looking tense and so focused on the man facing her that I slipped into the room unnoticed, despite my special status as her pet flunky. Gone was the silk black dress. Instead, she wore black armor of iron and mail that gave the impression of being both light and sturdy, Joan of Arc gone goth. I’d never seen her in that kind of outfit before. But the worst part of it was the closed-up, almost contrived look she had on her face.

  The second person in the room was a man … tall, lean, and dark-haired, with locks that ran down the length of the back of his neck. He had his back to me and yet he noticed me before she did. With the swiftness of a snake, he whirled on me, his ink-black cape billowing and its edges slicing through the air like a knife.

  The man raised his right hand as fury danced in his eyes, and the world went white. One second I was standing in that strange room and the next I was back in my flat surrounded by the candles. I was still sitting, but now with the familiar side effect of wanting to heave and finding myself drenched in cold sweat. The foul smell was gone, replaced by the faint aroma of snuffed-out candles.

  The few times I’d called her, she had come to me, not the other way around. I raised a shaking hand to my face … that man … his eyes. I’d seen plenty of scary things in the course of working for my otherworldly mistress but that one left me terrified. I didn’t know who he was, but I’d somehow entered his home and I felt he didn’t take kindly to trespassers.

  Another one of my brilliant plans had backfired on me yet again. I couldn’t get those eyes out of my head, those two dark and unyielding black orbs that held no mercy in them …

  I dragged myself to the sofa and slumped down. I was screwed all right. But there was nothing for it. The blowback on that one would just have to find me later when I was better able to deal with it.

  I was getting desperate to find a way out of this mess. And as I hauled myself up to get the m
ilk from the fridge, I found myself hating what I was about to resort to. But after I had got a bit more rest, it would be time I had a chat with the late Mr. William Mallory.

  Chapter five

  Down the rabbit hole

  I woke up before midnight and took a shower to help wake me up the rest of the way. The morgue was too far out for me to make it on foot before sunup, so I went out to see if my car was still where I had left it. Miracle of miracles, my Corvette Stingray was just where I’d last seen it as if it had been a couple of hours rather than a couple of days since I’d parked it. I guess one of the custom features on this model was an ability to make people treat it like scenery no matter how long it had been parked.

  The sports car hadn’t been my first choice, believe it or not. I mean, Christ, I could never have afforded something like this in the first place, short of pulling a major heist. I just woke up one morning to find my battered old Honda gone and the Stingray in its place, keys in the ignition and registration with my name on it in the glove box. I suppose my boss had decided her envoy should drive something more becoming of her or something … who knows what went on in that psycho mind of hers?

  I drove to the city’s largest hospital, Hidden Falls Center, where I pulled up in the parking lot of a nearby diner. I made the rest of the way on foot. Rule number one—when you plan a break-in, don’t leave your car in the building’s parking facilities.

  Hidden Falls Center was a large, semi-circular structure that had been erected on a squared patch of grass. As hospitals went, it was pretty classy, all modern curves with glass windows and lean metallic structures. Some five years ago they’d blown up the old hospital and built a brand-new one on its cinders in the finest Cold City tradition.

  The Cold City Morgue wasn’t in the brand-new, secured hospital center, but in the old building next door. Actually, it wasn’t even in the old seven-floor concrete office building that, due to some cosmic oversight, was still standing at this late date. Underneath it would have been more correct.

  If you could see it, you’d understand why the people who work there aren’t friendly. Most of the rooms don’t have windows and the ones that do have only small rectangular-shaped thick glass excuses for windows that stand a few inches above the sidewalk. But for people such as yours truly, these rusty old openings are a godsend when it comes to a little B&E.

  I walked up the alleyway to the left of the building, stopped past a large dumpster and crouched down right behind it, beside a convenient window. It took me a grand total of four minutes to work the inside latch free with a piece of wire and a gentle push. I suppose it will come as no surprise to learn that I’d been here before.

  I squeezed through the opening and lowered myself inside. At this time of night most of the staff had gone home, with just two, maybe three people stuck with the graveyard shift. One of these three would be security officer Ray, a plump, middle-aged ex-cop whose retirement pension couldn’t keep up with his bills. He was no problem to me. I knew from previous experience how he liked to spend his nights watching pro wrestling on a portable TV by the entrance desk.

  I turned to my right, in the opposite direction to the front door, and made my way through the familiar, dimly lit corridors. I was aiming for the cold room where they kept the bodies, but I had to pass in front of the autopsy room first. With any luck, it’d be empty. Otherwise, I’d have to make sure to duck below the two large windows they had carved into the wall between the autopsy room and the corridor. But there wasn’t a soul in sight, so I crossed quickly.

  Like every other morgue in America, the bodies were kept in a large refrigerated room. All you had to do was follow the refrigeration system’s constant wheezing to find it. I slipped in and fumbled with the light switch.

  A bright white light came on, reflected by the white porcelain tiles on the floor and walls. I had to blink a few times to get used to the intensity of the glare, giving my sore eyelid a painful workout.

  There were several rows of metallic drawers embedded into the wall facing me. None of them had name tags, just barcodes and a series of numbers that meant nothing to me. Nothing for it … I set about opening each drawer until I found the one I was looking for. Third time was the charm … or rather the very uncharming, mauled, and torn-up face of the late Mr. Mallory.

  The body was clean but it was a long way from pretty. My brilliant detective skills saw a closed-casket ceremony in this corpse’s future. I pushed the white sheet covering the body down and discovered that they hadn’t performed an autopsy on the corpse, after all. It looked like the ME’s office was siding with the official theory.

  There were several large gashes on the torso, deep, angry red cuts that had torn the flesh beyond repair and to the point of exposing muscles and organs. On the side, two of them were so deep the white of the bones could be seen.

  I thought my time in war zones had prepared me for everything, but this was a new one. The savagery, the brutality … the wounds on this man confirmed my working theory that he had been killed with malice. The tears in his flesh had been inflicted with the clear intention of causing the maximum level of pain possible in a short amount of time. No animal kills like that, except the human kind.

  I could have looked for the ME report but I knew it wouldn’t tell me much. Like most human beings, they’d stopped looking the second they found an answer that suited what they wanted to believe. In truth, there was only one person who could help me now. Time we were introduced.

  I bent down and said, “Evening, Mr. Mallory. Sorry that we have to meet in such circumstances; my name’s Bellamy Vale.”

  There was no answer … not that I’d been expecting one. The guy was dead, after all. When it comes to my bag of tricks, nothing is that simple. No, it takes a little bit more effort to communicate with the dead.

  I reached into my jacket pocket and took out a small amulet. It was about three inches long, two inches wide, and shaped like a short tuning fork. The two-pronged implement, which I called a “bident” for its two prongs, as opposed to the trident’s three, was made from a black-and-red gemstone. I had taken it to a jeweler once and he had told me, in amazement, that it was painite—one of the rarest gemstones on the planet. God knows where she had gotten it.

  I swallowed as I held it between my fingers. I could feel energy emanating from the inert stone. This was one more tool that managed to function despite me not understanding how it worked. I think it’s safe to say the hell she was from would freeze over before she took the time to teach her errand boy how to use her fancy tools properly or, God forbid, give him an instruction manual.

  Previous experience had taught me that the stone came with a time limit in terms of contact: one complete revolution of the sun around our planet after the death of the body. Afterwards, the souls are over the Styx and out of reach.

  I took a breath and readied myself for the ride of a lifetime. Leaning forward, I pressed the prongs on the dead man’s brow. The moment the bident touched skin, I felt myself being sucked into a vortex of chaotic memories.

  Images were swirling all around me, key moments repeating on a loop and displayed in no particular order—a young boy licking a chocolate-coated spoon, a thirty-something man in a suit proudly signing a contract, a child with curly hair falling from a bicycle, two teenagers walking hand in hand in a park. This was the life of William Mallory, son, brother, boyfriend, husband, and father. All of what he was surrounded me, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

  It took me a while to sift through the jumble of recollections so I could find the more recent ones. They were a lot darker and more disjointed. I could feel the fear and the pain that was associated with these particular memories and I dreaded touching them. No one in his right mind would ever want to get close to that particular kind of memory. I soldiered on and reached out for them.

  The scene swallowed me whole and darkness surrounded me. Rain was pouring down
and I was drenched to the bone. The headlights of a sports car blinded me and I raised a hand to shield my eyes just as the car drove through me like a ghost. A second car was following the first and I moved out of the road before it too drove through the ethereal entity that I had become. I mean, I could have stayed there—a memory of a van couldn’t hurt me or anything—but I had some dignity left and I drew the line at standing in front of speeding soccer-mom wagons.

  William Mallory was on the sidewalk with me. He was wearing a suit beneath a long trench coat and balancing an umbrella in one hand and a briefcase and smartphone in the other. He rounded the corner of the street I’d been to yesterday afternoon and froze. I turned to see where his gaze was directed and felt a fear that bordered on panic rise in me. Mallory’s emotions were oozing out like a toxin and infecting me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I gulped down bile.

  Some kind of beast was waiting on the other side of the street, crouched in a darkened corner, massive despite the fact that it was on all fours. Its hindquarters were covered in thick, dark fur and its skull flashed white in the gloom. I glimpsed its canines, sharp and ready.

  Mallory screamed and made a run for the nearest door. He wasn’t fast enough. The beast pounced and ran him down, on him in an instant. Pain laced my back as the beast’s claw ripped Mallory’s skin. I screamed and forced myself to let go of the memory.

  When I reopened my eyes, I was on the tiled floor of the morgue, panting, and I could barely hold onto the bident with my shaking fingers. A metallic noise broke the silence and I clambered hastily to my feet. Someone was coming. I cursed and placed the sheet back over Mallory’s face before closing the drawer.

  I could hear the faint sound of heels on the cold, hard floor from the far side of the door. The sound was growing louder with each step and it could only mean one thing. That someone was coming this way.