by Debra Dunbar
I went into the kitchen, trying to turn my reluctance to share my wine into a proper sense of hostesslike graciousness. I’d scolded Tremelay for not sharing the cookies. I should be willing to let my own mother have a glass of Chianti.
In all honesty I was broke. I needed to face the fact that I couldn’t make it here in Baltimore on a part-time barista’s salary. The vampire money was down to a few hundred and I needed that for next month’s rent, not expensive wine. Sadly being Baltimore’s Templar didn’t come with donations from the city, and Tremelay had never offered any kind of payment for my supernatural advisory experience. Not that he could probably get that sort of thing past the city accounting office anyway.
I should just take the stipend money my parents deposited into a checking account for me. Heck, there had to be over ten grand in there by now since I hadn’t touched it in seven months. I hated sponging off my parents like that but I was doing Templar stuff here—just not stuff that any other Templar had done for hundreds of years.
Which is why I hadn’t taken my Oath. Oath equated to Knighthood which equated to a generous allowance commiserate with level. Sounded great until I read the fine print and realized that I’d be at the beck and call of the Elders, researching what they wanted me to research, guarding the Temple when they said so, going to retrieve artifacts with only a moment’s notice. I’d be owned, and I wasn’t about to be owned.
“Here you go.” I handed Mom a glass of wine and sat down beside her, curling my fingers around the fine crystal of my own glass. Silently I looked over to the window, across the rooftops to the north of the city. This one’s for us.
It might not be an hour after sunset, but it was the thought that counted, right?
“I see you’re looking into chupacabra,” Mom commented, looking down at the Peterson book. “I took one out in Puerto Rico a few years back. Nasty thing. Much taller and bulkier than the werewolves up in the Appalachian Mountains. They usually have a set of spikes that run from their shoulders to mid-back. Not always, though. There are a group in southern California that look more like overgrown coyotes with a bad case of mange.”
“That was a chupacabra in Puerto Rico?” I asked. “You never said.”
Mom was a Guardian and most of her responsibilities lay with the Temple and the Holy Lands, but every now and then a Guardian was sent off to dispatch a troublesome supernatural creature. Templars had become rather live-and-let-live about the monsters we would have killed centuries ago, but when one threatened a religious institution we stepped in.
Who was I kidding? It was all about the money. If a city or a Cardinal waved a bunch of “donations” in our face, we were happy to go kill chupacabra in Puerto Rico. Things hadn’t really changed all that much since the Crusades.
“Yeah. Nasty thing. Hope I don’t ever have to face a nest of them again. There was a moment in that fight when I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.” She sighed and took a sip of her wine. “Wow, this is really nice, Solaria. Excellent choice.”
And that was my mother, casually discussing her near-death experience at the claws of a violent goat-sucker, then praising my selection of wine in the next breath.
I loved her. I admired her and growing up I’d wanted to be just like her. I guess I kind of was, in my own not-a-Knight way. Same sword, different path.
“But I’m not here to discuss my adventures in Puerto Rico.” Mom set her wine down on the table.
No, of course she wasn’t. She was here to lecture me about taking my Oath. She was here to tell me my little juvenile tantrum needed to come to an end. She was here to inform me I needed to be a responsible adult and become a Knight as all my family had, as all my ancestors before me had. I took a big gulp of my Chianti, sending a silent apology to Dario who would have scowled to see me slugging down a quality wine like this.
Then I stiffened my spine. I might be a child having a rebellious tantrum in my mother’s eyes, but plenty of people saw me as an adult, as someone they could trust, as someone they could rely upon to protect them from the monsters of the world—human or otherwise. Tremelay didn’t see me as a child, neither did Dario. And Raven hadn’t either. I’d be polite. I’d be welcoming. But ultimately my mother was going to leave here disappointed.
“Well. Let me see it,” my mother demanded.
That hadn’t been what I expected at all. I gaped at her. “Huh?”
Mom actually looked hurt. “Solaria. Something this serious and you didn’t think to come to me? I’m your mother. Show me the demon mark.”
I was speechless that she knew. And speechless with anger that Athena had betrayed my confidence and told my secret. If she hadn’t been adjusting to motherhood, I would have been tempted to drive down to Virginia and punch her.
“Come on. Let’s see it.”
Things might have been strained between us, but she was still my mother. My Dad was brilliant. He was the best researcher, the best Librarian I’d ever known, but Mom…she was fierce. If anything had threatened Dad or us children, she would have moved the stars above to defend us. And she would die before seeing a demon take our soul.
I lifted the edge of my shirt, scooting over on the couch so she could see the round mark on my waist.
Her fingers brushed the mark and I told her everything—the innocent Goetic summoning gone wrong, the banishment with Athena, the summoning with Raven, and my suspicions that Balsur had sent one of his minions to masquerade as an angel to lead me to sin.
Not that I had needed his help. I thought of my sword slicing so easily through Dark Iron’s back and told my Mother about that, too. Then I cried, throwing my arms around her like a child looking for comfort.
She didn’t hesitate to put her arms around me and hold me close, murmuring soft words into my hair as she rocked me. It was then I realized that whatever I’d done, or not done, my mom would never forsake me. Never.
When I pulled back I saw the tears in her eyes, the grim determination in the set of her jaw. If Balsur had shown up in my apartment right now, I had no doubt that he’d meet his match. This was my mother, the woman who battled chupacabra, the woman who rammed her sword down an ahuizotl’s throat, the woman who wore the scars of garuda bites like a badge of honor.
My mom was badass. And if I became half the woman she was, I’d be so proud.
“I don’t know much about demons, Aria, but I’ll be damned before I let one of my children lose their soul to one.”
Crap, I was going to cry again. I sniffed, taking a second to get my emotions under control. No one since Raven had been so determined to help me. As much as I admired my Mom, Raven had probably been in a better position to assist. She at least had been a mage knowledgeable about demons. Mom was just good at killing things.
But then again, we had all the knowledge of the Templars at our disposal. Dad’s research ability combined with Mom’s warrior skills might just save my soul. But Dad… Oh he’d be so disappointed in me. I took the shortcuts he had always been so vocal in criticizing. I’d summoned Goetic demons. And this was what happened when you went to the underworld for knowledge instead of doing the proper legwork.
“Don’t tell Dad,” I pleaded.
Mom’s eyebrows arched upward. “I absolutely will tell your father. There are no secrets between partners. Someday you’ll understand that. There is nothing I can keep from him. Nothing. It would violate every bit of trust we share.”
Even though I hated the thought of Dad knowing I’d been demon-marked, it warmed my heart that my parents had such a bond. Polar opposites, they’d always had a passion between them that had been rather embarrassing as a child. Roman had found his match with Hilda. Athena had absolutely found her match with Pietras. I wished I could find the same kind of love.
My thoughts veered straight to Dario. There was something there—something beyond simple lust. There was respect. There was friendship. There was a connection, caring. At first it was all hormones, but somehow in the past month what we shared had dee
pened. Was it when he’d faced down his own Balaj to buy me time to negotiate with the necromancer? Was it when he’d chased me down outside a pub, leaving his date behind to ask me what I needed? Was it when he’d come, no questions asked, after I’d killed Dark Iron and was having a morality meltdown?
Or was it the last month of casual conversation each and every night over wine and Italian food? I got the feeling that I’d already found the kind of love my parents had, only with a vampire. Why couldn’t he have been a Templar? Why couldn’t he have at least been not undead?
“Your father and I will do everything within our power to help you, Solaria.” Mom’s hand stroked my hair. “In the meantime, do not summon any demons. Keep the channels between you and the underworld closed.”
“Six weeks until Halloween.” She knew, but I had to say it. Halloween meant three days when the veil between the worlds was thin. No summoning would be necessary for demons and other beings to cross over. I’d been surprised that there had been no visits from Balsur in the last month, but higher demons were known for their patience, and his minion had been banished hard by an experienced mage. Still, I’m sure the temptation to cross at Samhain would be more than any demon could bear. We already had a link. This would be the perfect opportunity to show up and push me right to the edge.
All he had to do was threated my family or those I loved. If Balsur got his claws on little Jet, on my nephews, on Dario or any of my family, I would bargain my soul away in an instant. I’m sure he knew that. And I was sure my mother knew it, too.
Again she brushed my hair with her hand, pulling her fingers gently through the dark snarls. We were so different in our physical appearance—her with wheat-colored, curly hair and dark-gray eyes, me with my sable-almost-black, straight-as-a-stick hair and bright blue eyes. My great-grandmother’s hair. My great-grandfather’s eyes. Could I ever live up to their legacy?
“I don’t care if he’s Satan himself, this demon will not take your soul,” my mother vowed.
And I believed her. Because nothing, nothing in the whole world, could prevail when my mother demanded otherwise.
Chapter 9
YES ON THE puncture. Yes on the broken neck. No on the defensive wounds. No on the dislocated hips.” Tremelay relayed the information as if he were checking things off a list. “The doc thinks the puncture is to drain as much blood as possible so the skinning process is cleaner. Of course that means there’s a whole bunch of blood somewhere near the museum. I can’t imagine that someone would haul a skinned corpse away from the kill and skinning site so that they could stuff the body in a broom closet, though. Makes me wonder if they didn’t want it to be discovered at the Walters. Like it’s part of his ritual or something.”
“Sicko.” I commented, thankful that at least the victims were dead before they’d been skinned. Although those dislocated hips of Amanda Lewis made me sick.
“Amanda Lewis wasn’t skinned, but the puncture and broken neck are a connection between the two murders. And get this. Ready? Ready?”
I smiled at his excitement. “Ready.”
“The boyfriend came in to give a description. He’s pretty sure the guy fleeing the scene was the brother, although he only saw him from the back. He also described a few friends of Bradley Lewis that had made him nervous—a man and a girl. The description he gave of the man sounded an awful lot like Brian Huang, so we showed him a group of pictures and he picked Huang out.”
Wait. Girl? I immediately thought of the scene in the police station parking lot, with Brian Huang hugging the girl from the Inner Harbor. “Was the girl like a little girl, or a teenager?”
“Teen. High school. Said she had brown hair with pink and blue streaks, and wore a ton of makeup.”
What would a forty-year-old museum employee, a high school girl with a heavy hand at the eyeliner, and a deadbeat college-age guy who liked a local band have in common? I could see Bradley maybe dating the high school girl, but what was up with Brian Huang?
Bradley was fleeing the murder scene. Was he the psychotic skinner, or had he just come upon his sister’s body and feared he’d be blamed? There was that skin in his backpack—that was damning. Either way, there was no denying the connection between the three, or Huang’s doppelganger victim in the museum closet.
I tapped my chin in thought. “So Brian Huang’s knee replacement and his working at the Walters that day wasn’t the coincidence we thought it was. I don’t know if he’s the killer or both he and Lewis are. Or the teenager, although somehow I doubt she has the strength to overpower either victim let alone dislocate Amanda Lewis’s legs.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking either Lewis or Huang or both. I’ve already got a warrant out on Lewis. And now have probable cause to go bring Huang in for additional questioning. I’ve got a car heading over there now.” Tremelay sounded smug. It was progress.
“How did Huang know Amanda and Bradley Lewis? Stock investments? Something with her work? Was she a frequent visitor to the Walters or a donor? Was Huang a Rabid Rabbit fan?”
“We’re trying to figure that out. Wait—who is Rabid Rabbit?”
I waved a hand even though Tremelay wasn’t there to see it. “A band. Bradley had one of their T-shirts on. I’m just throwing it out there.”
The detective made a grunting noise. “Serial killers usually work alone, so I’m thinking it’s probably Lewis with Huang as an accomplice. Although this could be drug or gang related and they’re doing the skinning thing to throw us off.”
I remembered how revolted Dario was about the whole skinning thing. It just didn’t seem like something a killer would do unless they really liked that sort of thing.
“That’s a whole lot of work when a drug gang could just toss the bodies over the bridge into the Patapsco River, or ditch them in an abandoned house in Southwest. And it’s a pretty gruesome thing to do to a body if you only want to throw off an investigation.”
“Yeah. I’ve prosecuted my share of murderers and as hard-core as some of them are, this kind of thing would probably have them vomiting in the trash can. A couple of bullets, a tire iron beating, or stabbing was about as horrific as they’d get. I can’t see any of them sitting down to meticulously take the skin off a body.”
So we were back to serial killer, only perhaps one with a buddy. I couldn’t imagine Bradley and a museum employee teaming up, but what did I know?
“Speaking of skin, any news yet on the corpse and skin you guys found in the garage?”
“Yeah. No ID on the body in the cooler yet, but the skin is a sixteen-year-old boy that went missing ten years ago in South Carolina. A Lawton King.”
“Ten years ago?” What had happened in the ten years between a child vanishing and his recent murder?
“I know. Kid vanished one night out of his bed. They never found him or his body, and now his skin turns up, ten years older, in a presumed murderer’s backpack.
“The killer preserved the skin somehow,” Tremelay continued. “The doc isn’t sure exactly how. No dried edges. No trace chemicals to suggest it’s been tanned. He’s got no idea how the guy did it, but somehow this killer managed to preserve the skin beautifully.”
Bleck. This was beginning to sound eerily like a horror movie I’d once watched. I wondered if the killer was intending to sew all these skins together to make a ghastly outfit.
Of course, that was assuming the killers were psychotic killer tailors. Who knows what they were doing with the skin from the guy in the museum closet? Whatever it was, the murderer had to be angry over the loss of the one in the backpack as well as not being able to take Amanda’s. Hopefully he’d be angry enough to slip up and get caught before any more people died.
“You get the most fascinating cases, Tremelay,” I told him. “I swear you need to write a book or something. Occult gang warfare and now this?”
He snorted. “Right. I’d be happy for a simple drive-by right about now. I’ll call you when we bring Huang in and let you know what happens.”<
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I hung up, kind of bummed that he hadn’t invited me down for the second interview. Not that I had anything to do with this case. It was interesting, though. And I really appreciated Tremelay keeping me in the loop.
Which reminded me that I should also keep Janice in the loop. I looked at my phone and I was filled with indecision. Tremelay would have a fit that I was telling the reporter this stuff, but I felt like she had a right to know. Her mental health human interest story had taken a deadly turn, and now she’d need to write about a brother who possibly teamed up with a museum employee to kill his sister and at least two other men.
If that’s what happened. Yeah, Brandley was positively ID’d as fleeing the scene of Amanda’s murder, and there was that skin in his backpack, but there could still be a reasonable, innocent explanation for that. Well, for fleeing the scene, probably not for the skin. Maybe Amanda was having a side relationship with Huang that she didn’t want her boyfriend to know about. And maybe he was the killer who murdered and tried to skin her, then planted a skin in the brother’s backpack?
Innocent until proven guilty. As I put down the phone, I was the one feeling somewhat guilty over leaving Janice out of the loop. She had another date tonight with her new man—actually we had a date tonight. I’d managed to wiggle out of the double date thing, but did promise to meet them for coffee after their dinner. I’d wait to hear what came of Huang’s interview and if the police managed to catch up with Bradley or not, then I’d fill Janice in on what was going on.
After her date, that is. Because the poor woman deserved a little romance without dead bodies ruining the mood.
Chapter 10
WE NEED TO go retrieve the scroll for this mage,” Brandi argued.
Actually she was arguing with me. The rest of the group was all on-board with this “quick” little side trip. Finishing up my shift at the coffee shop, I’d headed over to Zac’s for my eagerly anticipated Wednesday night Anderon game. We were supposed to be on our Grand Quest, heading out for a four-day hike through the mountains where we would most likely encounter orcs and ogres before making it to the other side, battered but alive. Instead we were debating heading off in a completely different direction. Out of the blue, some mage waved supplies and money at us and we were actually considering this fools’ journey.