Shadow's Messenger: An Aileen Travers Novel

by T. A. White

  I didn’t need to see his eyes to know he’d switched the high beams back on. Bastard was whammying them again. I sent a sharp elbow into the wound in his shoulder and smirked at his pained grunt.

  “Good news, your daughter has agreed to come visit my facility.”

  I jerked away from him, fully aware I only succeeded because he let me. I gave him a nasty glare that said exactly what I thought of his words.

  There was a way out of this. I just needed to find it. For now, I had a small reprieve because of the deal I’d made with the sorcerer.

  “Oh good,” Mom said, that vacant, Stepford wife look on her face.

  “Stop whatever it is you’re doing,” I said harshly.

  “I’ll do what needs to be done.”

  “Aileen, you know we love you right? If you truly don’t want to do this, you don’t have to,” Mom said softly.

  That right there was why I refused to give them up. Why I came home even knowing it would be difficult. Even with someone screwing with her head, she still fought for what she thought was right for me. Our family might be dysfunctional, and we almost never got along, but we loved each other. The kind of love that meant we’d fight for our family even if we spent the entire time cursing each other up one side and down another.

  “It’s okay, Mom. It’s just a visit. There’s no harm in checking it out.”

  “Oh good.” She gave me a relieved smile, a bit of her personality peeking through even under the weight of the vampire’s mind control.

  He took me by the arm. “Alright, enough. Time to go. I’ve wasted enough time chasing you all over the city.”

  “No one asked you to, asshole.”

  “If you had just stayed put, none of this would have been necessary.”

  “Not a dog.”

  He stopped, fixing me with heavy glare. “You are if I say you are.”

  I sneered. Not even if I lived to be a thousand.

  He snorted, obviously unimpressed by my sneer. “I do not envy whoever takes you under their banner.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to make all of your lives hell until you give me back my freedom.”

  He might as well know what he was dealing with from the start.

  “I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said, clicking a key fob. The lights on a black Lexus turned on. The car was from this year and top of the line from what I could see. “Our kind don’t take disrespect very lightly. If you’re not careful, your next hundred years will be very unpleasant.”

  Only if I got caught. There was more than one way to make your thoughts clear without ever giving the appearance of disobedience. Ask any newly minted lieutenant upon arriving at their first duty station. I’d seen some of the best at this game. If I couldn’t find a way out of this mess, I was going to be putting what I’d learned to the test.

  “Where are we going anyway? Thought I had until I resolved my debt to the sorcerer before you took me into custody.”

  “We’re going to work together to fix this mess you’ve found yourself in,” he said.

  “And how do you think we’re going to do that?”

  “You’re going in a safe house while I go hunting. Once I find the murderer, we can turn him over to the sorcerer, and you’ll be free.”

  That wouldn’t work for me. I needed to be out, working things to my advantage if I was going to figure out a way around his ultimatum, not sitting on my ass waiting while he did all the heavy lifting.

  Judging from how Liam and Brax were handling the problem, I wasn’t convinced either of them would be able to find their way to the bottom of this without my help. Power and strength they might have. The ability to find and decipher clues? Not so much. Neither struck me as having the patience to sift through details. They definitely weren’t able to get people outside their supernatural species to talk to them.

  “That would be great if that was the only condition for my release,” I said, seeing an opportunity.

  He stopped. “What do you mean?

  I shrugged with feigned nonchalance. “Nothing much. Just that the murderer’s capture wasn’t the only part of the deal.”

  He spun me to face him. I gave him a sweet smile, widening it when he flashed the tip of a fang. I’d discovered that fangs, for us, were a good indicator of mood. They could mean we were hungry, or angry, or horny. In this case, I was going with irritated.

  “That’s not what you said at the park.”

  He didn’t believe me. At least not entirely. He was right to be suspicious. I planned to take advantage of his ignorance as much as I could.

  “Well, excuse me for not laying out every aspect of my deal with the sorcerer right before your fight with the werewolf.” I wasn’t sure how developed a vampire’s truth sense was. The werewolves seemed able to accurately identify any lie I told, and I didn’t want to expose more than I needed to. Sticking as close to the truth and irritating the life out of him was my best smoke screen.

  He visibly struggled for patience. “Tell me everything about your deal with the sorcerer.”

  Thought he’d never ask.

  I went over what I could tell him and what could be twisted to my own purposes. There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room. I’d have to tread carefully.

  “Finding the murderer is part of it,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “But he also needs me to find certain items.”

  “What items?”

  I shrugged. “He didn’t tell me. I don’t think he knew.” That was true enough. “He just said I’d know them when I saw them.”

  “No. Absolutely not,” Liam said, seeing where I was going with this. “You’re not assisting. You’re going to the safe house where you’re going to wait like a good little girl until I can resolve this mess.”

  I rolled my eyes, not even trying to hide my amused scorn. I didn’t even know where to start with that antiquated, chivalrous male bullshit. Wait in the corner like a defenseless woman who needed saving? What century did he think this was?

  “Do you even hear yourself when the words come out of your mouth? You sound like you’re some ancient geezer who should have been retired about three decades ago. For that matter, do you have any idea what is doing all of this? No? Okay. So don’t tell me to go hide somewhere while the big boys pound their chests and stomp around like a herd of idiotic buffalo fucking everything up.”

  Liam glared at me with irritation. Guess he wasn’t used to people, especially women, challenging the edicts that fell from his lips.

  “If you don’t know what items are to be found, we will meet with the sorcerer, and he can tell us.”

  “Nope.”

  “Nope?”

  “Yup, nope.”

  Both fangs appeared as his lips curled back. He looked pretty mad. If he had a human’s circulatory system, I imagined he’d be turning bright red right about now. As it was, his pale skin flushed slightly as his eyes took on an otherworldly sheen.

  “And why not?”

  “He’s shy. He’ll only work with me.”

  I clamped down on the thrill of excitement at delivering my coup de grace. He was shy, but he wanted the items bad enough that he might consent to working with Liam, especially if he thought Liam was more likely to get him what he wanted. Right now, the fact that I was the only one who knew the identity and location of the sorcerer was my greatest trump card. I intended to use that to my advantage.

  “There is something you’re not telling me,” Liam said, narrowing his eyes.

  I went still, shoring up my mental defenses and projecting calm assurance in case he tried to force his way through to my thoughts. There was a lot I was keeping to myself and a lot of misleading distractions in the information I’d just given him.

  “Tell me why you think you know what is doing the killings.”

  I relaxed slightly, glad he was on a different topic. There was less risk in this line of questioning.

  “The thing came after me twice. The sorcerer and I were able to narrow down the culprit b
ased on my experiences.”

  “Tell me.”

  Seeing no harm, I told him what I’d seen and experienced. The smell of decay, the appearance of death, the dead dryad and the creature’s conviction that I had something of his.

  “It sounds similar to a draugr. They’re able to possess animals, which would explain the attack on the alpha and you, and the most recent death.” Seeing the question on my face, he explained, “Another werewolf was murdered last night.”

  “That means three wolves are dead.”

  “Three?” Liam’s eyes sharpened. “I’ve only heard of two.”

  “The first wolf was murdered before anybody put together the connection between the deaths. It was easy to overlook. There were also a few discrepancies between it and the following victims.” I hadn’t meant to give him all that. I rushed on, hoping to distract him from what I’d just said. “The sorcerer and I believe it’s a draugr as well. One thing I haven’t figured out is why it’s killing in all of these random places. Everything I’ve been able to dig up on them said they don’t usually leave their place of burial.”

  And how was it choosing its victims? There was no connection that I could see.

  “That’s a myth. In the old country, people would put salt in front of their doors and windows to keep the creature from entering in body or spirit. They used to bury their dead with iron scissors on their chest to keep them from rising.” He looked thoughtful. “Anything could drive a daugr out from its grave. I’m surprised one is here, though.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They’ve become rare in the past few centuries. This city isn’t old enough to have one of the ancients. The young these days are less likely to have the strength of will to cling to life after it has faded.”

  “Okay, grandpa. I get it. My generation is the source of all ills in the world.”

  “You are truly an irritating individual.”

  I grinned at the complement. His next words wiped the smile off my face.

  “Nothing you have said has convinced me of the need to have you help with my investigation.”

  “I never said I wanted to help you,” I said. “I want to conduct my own.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not really asking. This is my life and future you’re gambling with. No way am I going to sit quietly hoping you know what you’re doing. The sorcerer said he wanted me out looking.” I held up my arm up so he could see the mark. “He also said if I didn’t actively search for both the killer and the items, the mark would kill me.”

  He reached out and brushed one thumb along the vine of thorns. A tingle spread from where his fingers touched.

  He sighed, and I knew I had won.

  “Fine, but there are rules.”

  Instead of jumping up and down like a five year old on Christmas morning, I schooled my face to an alert attentiveness. No reason for him to know I planned to ditch his rules in favor of doing things my own way.

  “Give me your phone,” he said.

  I dug it out of my bag and handed it to him. He withdrew his and typed a few buttons into it. My phone rang. He clicked the ignore button, then typed a few more buttons into my phone. He handed it back to me.

  “I put my number in there. You’re to call every hour on the hour. You’re not to make a move unless I approve it and under no circumstances are you to confront the draugr on your own. You don’t have the strength or power to survive an encounter like that.”

  I slid my phone out of his hands. “Sure, Dad.”

  “Miss a check-in and I’ll yank you into the nearest safe house. You’ll just have to take your chances that I find the creature before that mark kills you. Remember, if you try to hide, I’ll-”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’ll kill my family,” I snapped, walking away. “Don’t worry. As aggravated as they make me, I wouldn’t put them in danger.”

  I felt the weight of his eyes on me as I walked to my car and drove away.

  I’d managed to get myself a temporary reprieve, but I doubted I could keep him at arm’s length for long. His patience was bound to dry up before too long. There was also the deal with the sorcerer to keep in mind. The noose around my neck kept tightening and there were no scissors in sight.

  I ended up back at my apartment. Now that the vampires had found my family, there was no point in hiding. They only had to threaten harm against the people I loved, and I’d folded like a cheap paper bag.

  The sun was still a long ways off as I let myself into my place. I threw my keys and bag on the coffee table then pulled out my laptop and a pad of paper. Time to review what I knew before something else happened, and I needed to go chasing around the city like a crazy person.

  I pulled up a map and sent it to the printer, printing sections of it on several pages and arranging them on the coffee table in front of me.

  Flipping on the TV, I let the news babble in the background as I grabbed the bowl of M&M’s off the end table next to me and placed a yellow candy at the site of the dryad’s death. Next I placed red ones at the site of the two werewolf murders. More and more M&M’s were added to the map where the murder sites were located that I could remember from Brax’s list. The vampire had interrupted us before we’d managed to visit every site. I couldn’t mark one of the earlier murders off since I couldn’t remember the exact location. I also couldn’t mark the most recent death.

  Finished, I sat back. No pattern emerged. It looked like someone had dumped the shell coated chocolates on the map and they had just scattered with no rhyme or reason.

  I threw myself back and looked up at my ceiling. I made a terrible detective. Couldn’t make sense of anything.

  I sat back up and hunched over the map. I was missing something.

  What? Think.

  Something should be here that wasn’t.

  “Another family has been reported missing,” the newscaster said in the background.

  I looked up.

  “This is the fourth family to go missing in this fashion. Columbus police are cautioning people to lock their doors at night.”

  That was it. The humans. There was an entire set of victims that Brax, Liam or myself hadn’t factored into the investigation.

  I pulled up news articles from the last few months, searching until I found the ones focusing on the missing. I marked the victims’ houses off using the green M&Ms. It took me an hour to be sure I found all references to the human victims.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  Where the colors marking the supernatural community’s victims were spread all over the city, the green was concentrated in one spot. Right next to one of the older parts of the city. Westgate.

  I typed the name into google and scrolled past anything that said apartment or real estate. I paused at a blurb that said “Westgate was partially constructed on a former civil war prison camp.” That seemed interesting. I hadn’t realized there were any confederate prison camps in Columbus.

  Looked like the only thing that remained was a cemetery.

  I consulted my map. The cemetery was smack dab in the middle of my green markers, as was Westgate Park and about a dozen other sites.

  It was worth checking the human victim’s houses out to see what I could find. My visits to the vampire victim’s house and the dryad’s murder scene hadn’t discovered anything, but I had nothing better to do and sitting in my house wasn’t going to help me solve anything. I had a good feeling about this.

  I grabbed my gun holster out of the bag and wrapped it around my waist, tucking it under my shirt and jacket. It hadn’t been very effective against Liam, but I wasn’t ready to give up on it yet. I’d used the Walther P22 on him. It was a good little gun but small rounds caused less damage than bigger rounds. In the hands of a professional, it was an extremely effective weapon, but if you didn’t know what you were doing, you were just as likely to get yourself killed after shooting someone. I knew what I was doing, but the rules of the game evidently changed when you brought supern
atural creatures into the mix. I needed a bigger gun. One that did a lot more damage.

  I headed back to my bedroom and grabbed The Judge. It was a .45 caliber long colt with a 410 round. You shoot someone with this and chances were they weren’t getting back up. It left a little hole, only about a half inch wide upon entering the body but ripped a hole the size of a fist when exiting the body. We’d see if this would work. Next time I’d make sure to aim for a head and hope it killed the thing. Or at least injure it long enough for me to get away.

  My phone rang as I was locking my door. I jogged down the steps as I fished it out of my pocket. The display said “Asshole Calling.”

  I hit the ignore button and tucked the phone back into my jacket. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. I had a feeling he’d try to stop me if he found out what I was planning.

  Cherry waited where I left her. I could get used to the luxury a nice set of wheels provided. Jerry was probably going crazy right about now. My one day job had dragged into day three with no end in sight. He was probably cursing my name.

  As if my thoughts had summoned him, his name appeared on my phone screen as it chimed with an incoming call. I clicked ignore on that one too. I was beginning to think I should have just left the phone behind. That way I’d at least have plausible deniability when I said I never saw their calls.

  I immediately discarded the thought as too dangerous. There was a possibility that I would need back up if I stumbled into something I couldn’t handle or found the draugr by accident.

  I compromised by turning the phone to silent as I ducked into the driver’s seat. I turned the car on and pulled into the street.

  Westgate wasn’t far from me. Filled primarily with lower middle class homes, the community was nicer than I expected for being in the middle of Hilltop. Most were better maintained than the shithole I lived in. I had never really driven through this part of town even as a Hermes courier. I thought I knew the city and its suburbs pretty well by now, but this was new.

  I was only a block off the park when I saw police vehicles and a house covered in yellow caution tape. My guess was this was the scene of the most recent disappearances. It’d be pointless trying to get in there right now with police crawling all over it. Maybe if I had Liam’s ability to influence minds, it’d be possible.