Tainted Blood: A Generation V Novel

by M. L. Brennan

  The parking lot of Kivela Mutual Insurance looked neat and orderly—all the spots were full, but no one was roaming around. The illusion of normalcy was gone the moment we walked through the swinging glass doors, where the fairly standard reception area was filled with a crowd of extremely anxious and stunned people, all dressed in various assortments of business casual. From the looks of it, some people had been more dressed than others when the news of the killing went out. One woman in a blouse and slacks was standing next to a man who had apparently just thrown his business jacket on over his pajamas. Whoever that guy was, he was the one who immediately stepped forward and led us through the crowd.

  “Rhoda does the cleaning in the morning, before the rest of us come in, so she was the one who found Peter,” the pajamas guy said as he led us through a large main room filled with an assortment of cubicles.

  “Bear or human?” Suze asked him. There was a glint in her eyes that was clearly assessing cover-up requirements.

  He caught on to what she was asking, and immediately shook his head. “No one works here who isn’t either metsän kunigas or one of our spouses. Rhoda married in forty years ago, so she’s no threat. She’s in the back.” There were three rooms with actual doors at the far end of the main area—one had Matias Kivela’s name on it, so I assumed that was the corner office. The other was the bathroom, the break room, or some unholy combination of the two, and the last was what pajamas guy gestured for us to enter before immediately turning and trotting back to the reception area.

  From floor to ceiling, the room was edged with tall metal file cabinets. Down the middle of the room was a long table, surrounded with chairs, so this probably served as a conference room when the company needed one. I immediately picked out Dahlia and Gil, standing side by side against one of the cabinets, their faces grim. A smaller, gray-haired woman was huddled in one of the chairs, crying—that was probably Rhoda, who had found much more to clean up than usual. The kitsune had beaten us here—Chiyo, Midori, and Takara all gave me small nods of recognition, and they were clearly waiting for us to finish up before they could make preparations for the police.

  And at the far end of the room, between the table and the farthest cabinet, was the body of a young man. I’d thought that Matias Kivela’s body had been tough to look at, but this one was worse—his face was a mass of bruises and cuts, his arms were covered in slices, and his chest was simply a mess.

  I looked over at Dahlia, and that coldly professional look on her face. I could see the cracks now; there was a haunted expression in her eyes. Looking at Gil, all I could see was barely contained anger.

  “What can you tell me about this man?” I asked, directing the question to Dahlia.

  “Peter Utrio,” she answered, rubbing her face. “He is”—she coughed, suddenly, and corrected herself—“was nineteen. He’s a college student, and no one can remember seeing him after the funeral last night.”

  Suze was crouching down next to the body, leaning close and poking around. “There’s a lot more damage here than Matias suffered.” She glanced over at the bears. “Did anyone examine him closely?”

  “I did,” Gil said. “When Rhoda found him, she locked the door and called Dahlia. I was already on my way in to get some paperwork done early, so I arrived first. He’s got at least half a dozen broken ribs, plus all those defensive wounds on his arms. He was definitely awake when whoever did this started stabbing him.” The bear paused as Suze leaned down close and sniffed. She scuffled in his pockets for a second, then tossed me something, which I automatically caught.

  It was the boy’s wallet, which I flipped open. I stared for a second at his college ID—I’d seen that face before, and recently. I tried picturing it with some more acne, then it hit me—this was the guy who’d been sent to fetch Gil yesterday at the church. I looked up and caught Suze’s eye. I nodded down to the wallet, and she gave a subtle tap on the body—we’d both found stuff. She tilted her head quickly at Dahlia, and I got the message.

  I looked over at the kitsune, who looked ready to go. “If Suzume has everything she needs, you get started,” I said, then paused. “Another heart attack? Won’t that be a little weird?”

  Midori shook her head. “He’s too young to be a clear candidate for a heart attack, so that isn’t what the police’s minds would naturally accept. There’s just been a tragedy in the death of Matias Kivela, someone he knew. We’ll have to work off that.”

  Chiyo reached into her purse and produced a bag of extremely illegal paraphernalia. “We’re going heroin overdose on this one,” the older woman explained.

  “Suze?” I looked over, and she was already getting up. I turned to the bears. “Gil, I’d like you to stay with Rhoda in the cubicle room while Suzume and I have a discussion with Dahlia, privately.” He opened his mouth, and I cut him off before he could even voice his inevitable protest. “She is the acting karhu.”

  He glowered at me, but there was nothing he could trump that with. Dahlia herself just gave a small nod and a murmured, “Of course,” as we all trooped out of the file room. Dahlia led us down to her uncle’s office. After seeing the inside of the man’s house, I was not surprised at the temple of beige that awaited us.

  Suze shut the door and produced a piece of fabric. “This was in his hand.” She passed it to me, and I looked. It was the cuff of a shirt, ripped off and spotted with blood. Suze looked over at the bear standing beside us. “It’s yours,” she said.

  Dahlia frowned. “What do you mean? How would Peter have something of mine?”

  “Someone has been working very hard to set you up for your uncle’s murder,” I told her. “The knife that was used to kill Matias was hidden in your laundry room, we found a shirt of yours that was going to be planted at the scene of an attack on us, and now here’s another piece of your clothing left with a second body.” As I spoke, Dahlia paled and wobbled on her feet, reaching one hand out to steady herself against the wall as she stared at me.

  “Given the state of his broken ribs, and the amount of oil, metal, and fuel that I smelled on him, I think I can safely say that Peter was the bear that attacked us last night,” Suze said.

  “He attacked you?” Dahlia shook her head, and I could see her struggling to follow everything we were throwing at her. “Why would he—no, Peter wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Believe me, it happened,” I said. “There were only two people who knew that Suze and I were going to do one last check of the Lincoln Woods for Ad-hene activity near your uncle’s house. Peter overheard it, but Gil was the one who told us to go there. Now Peter is dead, and someone is trying to lay evidence that points it toward you. Dahlia, we think that your brother is trying to frame you.”

  “No!” The color rushed back into Dahlia’s cheeks, and for the first time I saw her get mad. “That’s insane, and it’s not true.” At our expressions, she clearly tried to pull things back, but her voice was still shaking with anger when she spoke. “I know he wants to be karhu, I know he feels he could be the leader we need right now, but I know my brother. He wouldn’t do this.”

  “If not him, then who?” Suze asked. “If you’re taken out of the picture, then who benefits and becomes karhu? Your brother, your mother? Matias’s daughter?”

  Dahlia pressed the heels of her hands against her jaw, hard enough that I could see the skin whiten, and she shook her head. Her eyes pressed closed, and I could see her trying to run through what Suze was saying, trying to weigh things. “Mother is too old—the karhu is always from the generation in their prime. The new karhu would be either Gil or Carmen, but Gil would never do this to me, and Carmen wouldn’t kill her own father—her mother is dead, and Uncle Matias was all she had left.”

  “Someone is trying to frame you for murder, Dahlia,” I put in. “Try it from the other angle—what do you know about Peter? He was working with whoever is orchestrating this—who was he close to?”

  “None of us, not really,” she protested. “Peter is, was, an
only child, from the metsän kunigas community up in Maine. His mother was human, so he was going to have to marry bear, but he was never close with any of his peers in that community. He came down to go to college here because everyone hoped that he would meet one of our bear girls and form a natural attachment, that the matchmaker wouldn’t have to be brought in. He was sweet, but so awkward, and I can’t even think of a single one of us who he would’ve so much as talked with outside the general group meetings and business.”

  “Think, damn it,” Suze snapped at the bear. “Who would want you dead?”

  Dahlia just shook her head. “This is my family,” she insisted. “It has to be an outsider, someone trying to start an internal fight. The Ad-hene—”

  Suze was shaking her head and cutting Dahlia off before she could elaborate. “It’s not them, Dahlia. It’s someone you’ve been trusting. Now get with the not trusting, and give us some goddamn suspects!”

  Dahlia’s mouth thinned, and she was back to looking pissed. I sighed—Suze’s methods of interrogation sometimes ran into difficulty. “Listen,” I said, trying to inject some calm. “We’re not getting anywhere like this, and Dahlia clearly doesn’t have any ideas. So we need to figure out a way to flush our killer out.”

  Suze huffed, then said, “Give them what they want.”

  “What?” I stared at Suze. “I don’t think killing Dahlia is a good plan!”

  “I agree with that,” Dahlia said quickly, edging away from us. “That’s actually a very bad plan. Very, very bad.”

  “No, you idiots,” Suze said, looking disgusted. “We just let the killer think that the frame job has worked.” She paused, then added, “Admittedly, that is going to be tough to do without killing Dahlia.”

  “Wait a second,” I said, holding up a hand. “Am I correct in saying that I’ve gotten somewhat of a reputation as being a less murder-happy vampire?”

  “Do the metsän kunigas shit in the woods?” Suze asked rhetorically. I wondered how long exactly the kitsune had been sitting on that particular gem. Dahlia’s expression suggested that had the situation been any less fraught, those would’ve been fighting words.

  I pushed forward. “Okay, we can use that. We pretend that we believe that Dahlia is guilty, and we put her under house arrest.”

  “That might be tricky, Fort,” Suze said cautiously. “We’re not using my house. Dan would definitely not go for this, and Dahlia’s house is kind of baby central.”

  “No, no my house is empty today,” Dahlia said. “Gil and I were so sure that it had to be the Ad-hene. . . . We talked at dinner last night, and I agreed to send the girls somewhere safer until the situation was cleared up. Mom and I packed everything they needed, and she hit the road. They arrived in Greenville, Maine, at five thirty this morning.”

  “That makes things easier.” I actually felt a deep sense of relief. Not only was this going to clear up logistics, but I was glad that her daughters were well out of the line of fire. “Is there anyone out there in the reception area who you can say for sure, based only on logical proof, couldn’t have been involved in either of the murders? We need someone who we can say is your prison guard, so it would help if this was a bear.”

  Dahlia thought it through, then nodded. Clearly, trusting people was something she was a lot better at than coming up with possible suspects. “Alison could do it. She’s been backpacking in Australia for an entire month. Someone texted her, and she caught a plane home. She didn’t get in until the morning of the funeral.”

  “Then she’s your guard while you’re under house arrest.” I looked over at Suze. “Peter wasn’t killed until after I hit him with the car and he ran off, so the killer might’ve just acted quickly to cover some tracks. We’ll search Peter’s place, just in case he was helpful enough to leave karhu-murdering plans in writing. Then we’ll swing back to your house, and we’ll all sit tight and see what happens.”

  There was general agreement. Dahlia whipped out her iPhone and looked up Peter’s home information for me, while Suze went out and then returned a minute or two later with our recruited prison guard/bodyguard. From the expression on her face, Suze had probably had some fun with that “random” selection criteria. Fortunately Alison didn’t look like a strange pick for that job—she was tough, and solidly built, the kind of person who definitely looked like she could backpack solo around the Australian outback for kicks. She also looked like the kind of woman who I would call for help if I needed to move a fridge.

  While we filled her in on what her job was going to be, I removed a plastic bag full of industrial wire ties from my laptop case. Our original plan had been to use these as part of subduing Gil, but they now served as a way to help with our ploy. Suze fashioned a set of cuffs. “Too tight?” she asked solicitously.

  “Actually, yeah,” Dahlia replied.

  “Good.” I stared at Suze, and she gave a small shrug, explaining, “It’ll look more authentic. Oh, and we should punch her in the face to make it look like we roughed her up during questioning.”

  “I think the cuffs are enough,” I said. “Now, is the crowd gathered?”

  “Everyone’s in the cubicle room right now,” Alison said.

  “Good. On our marks . . . aaaaand, everyone acting!”

  * * *

  “Ladies, gentlemen, and bears—I am pleased to say that we have apprehended the murderer of Matias Kivela and Peter Utrio.” A huge gasp went through the room, and everyone looked stunned and horrified at the sight of Dahlia at my side, her hands bound with wire ties and a blank expression on her face. I continued, pressing my advantage. “Dahlia Kivela will be under house arrest while I discuss her punishment with my mother, but let me assure you, it will be severe.” People were already leaning over to talk with their neighbors, and many were pulling out cell phones to call or text the news to everyone else. I noticed how many people were shaking their heads, still looking amazed, while others wore smug I-knew-it-all-along expressions. Even when they could turn into bears, people were still people.

  Alison strong-armed Dahlia through the crowd, presumably out to her waiting car, followed by Suze, who, I noticed, snagged her cousin Takara’s sleeve and had a whispered conference. I would’ve been following closely, but halfway to the door, Gil finally shoved his way through the crowd and wrapped one huge hand around my arm, stopping me in my tracks.

  “What is wrong with you?” he bellowed in my face, attracting the fascinated attention of the entire crowd. “This is outrageous—my sister would never do that! What the hell did you do to her to make her say that she did that? Who did you threaten?” His other hand locked on my free arm, and I had a feeling that I would have a matching set of bruises in the shape of his fingers. I stepped back and broke his grip before he could deliver the teeth-snapping shaking that he clearly wanted to inflict, then grabbed him by the collar and towed him into the reception room and away from the crowd. I was not forgetting for a moment that, for all Dahlia’s protests, Gil remained my prime suspect.

  In the reception room, with no audience of his hopeful future subjects to play to, I got up in his face. “I didn’t need a confession,” I said loudly. “The evidence spoke for itself. The murder weapon was in her house, and there was a piece of your sister’s clothing on Peter’s body today.”

  Gil shook his head wildly. “That’s circumstantial evidence! Anyone could’ve put that knife in Dahlia’s house, and who the hell knows how Peter got a piece of her clothing? How are you even so sure it’s Dahlia’s clothing? None of this would be enough for a human court!”

  I was impressed—Gil was doing a great impression of a frantic and loyal brother, but I shook my head coldly and said, “It’s a good thing that the vampires don’t need courts, then,” and turned away. Suze had just come back into the building, and through the glass doors, I could see Alison loading Dahlia into her car.

  “Where are you going?” Gil demanded, grabbing a handful of my jacket.

  I looked over my shoulder. “To
finish my investigation.”

  “You’re going nowhere without me,” he snapped. “I’m not going to let you railroad my sister on shoddy evidence.”

  I shook him off me again and glanced over at Suze. She gave a small, curious look, then held open the door and gestured for Gil to precede us. He did, shooting us both extremely foul glares. I followed, pausing next to Suze to whisper in her ear. “Exactly what is this plan of yours now?”

  She leaned in close. “Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. Let him come along. We’ll see what he does, and if he makes one wrong move, I’ll slice him before he can shift to bear.”

  I glanced down to where I knew Suze’s knife was strapped to her leg, even though her fox magic forced my eyes away from it. “Agreed,” I said.

  We loaded into Suze’s Audi. I was driving, with Gil uncomfortably close in the passenger seat. Suze had clambered into the backseat (another reason to loathe two-door cars—even she was unable to make her entrance into the back look graceful), and was now sitting directly behind Gil. While he continued a loud soliloquy on the subject of his sister’s innocence, I glanced behind me and noticed the gleam of one of Suze’s smaller knives, held carefully in her hand. Apparently she was not taking any chances, because she looked ready to slit the bear’s throat at a moment’s notice. It seemed like a solid precaution to me, and I started the Audi up.

  Peter’s apartment turned out to be in the student area near Roger Williams University, in one of those tired but massive apartment buildings that are such a staple of off-campus housing that the owners have realized that they never have to do maintenance ever again, because naïve young students will continue forking over their parents’ money regardless of the size of the rat infestation. I remembered such living well—in my first off-campus apartment at Brown, the cockroaches had been so giant and aggressive that I had given up even trying to keep food in my cabinets, and had kept everything in my fridge.