Death Be Blue (The Terra Vane Series Book 1)

by Katie Epstein

  “I see you got hurt again?” Dan asked with a furrowed brow as he studied my bandaged wounds, but I waved him off.

  “Mayra saw to it. It’s superficial.”

  Dan shook his head in defeat and removed his own jacket of the smart blue suit he was wearing. It made me smile that he never changed. Cole had most likely summoned him out of bed, and he still turned up looking like this. I don’t think he even owned anything casual.

  “So what do we have so far?” he asked of us.

  Cole glanced over at me before addressing us all. “I’ve updated Dan on everything up to the point of receiving the call in from Terra tonight—including all we have on the wendigo. Terra can tell you the rest.”

  “Sure.” I went on to tell Dan everything from the moment I’d left Portis Forward Inc. with Rosie, to the vision that had me running after a rogue shifter with a blue ring around his eyes.

  “So you’re thinking drugs?” Dan asked Cole once I’d finished. I could tell that Cole wasn’t comfortable being so open with me and Kaleb in the room, but it looked like we were all he had right now.

  “Terra said she saw the wendigo pop something into his mouth before changing,” Cole explained. “My source confirmed the appearance and behavior of a wendigo, and it didn’t match Terra’s or Kaleb’s report.”

  “And the rogue shifter had the same markings around his eyes?” Dan asked me for confirmation.

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t see him take anything, or show any other unusual behavior?”

  “No. I didn’t see anything before engaging with him and distracting him from the victim. He didn’t move as fast as the wendigo though, and he seemed offended by my actions somehow. Hurt, even.”

  “He relented quickly enough when he saw I was more dominant than him,” said Kaleb. “That’s usual shifter behavior.”

  “And the wendigo showed a lot of sociopathic traits with how he chose his victims,” I added. “I think it’s safe to assume that the drug, or whatever he took, didn’t make him do that. I think that was his nature to begin with.”

  “So what does it do?” Cole wondered out loud and suddenly it occurred to me.

  “It made the wendigo faster. And maybe even stronger. He spoke that night as though he was a god, as if he was getting drunk on the power. Yet the rogue shifter didn’t portray the same actions. If it wasn’t for the ring around both of their irises, I would never have connected the two.”

  “But they are connected,” Cole said. He handed Dan a sheet of paper. “Test results off the wendigo came back as red flagged, and my instincts are telling me it’s not because they’re worried about a breakout.”

  “You think they’re hiding something?” Dan asked.

  “I think the Consilium may be trying to keep it under wraps while they privately dig deeper. The only question is why?”

  “Can’t you find out?” Kaleb asked his brother, and Cole turned to face him.

  “You know how it all works. Nez Pallaton and Seamus Cattus represent the shifters on the Consilium and they will have to keep quiet if told to do so. To go against their orders could mean risking their seat. None of the Consilium Senates want that.”

  Sixteen Senates, as they called themselves, made up Portiside Consilium. A group of Senates presided over a specific faction where they could represent the citizens of the different bandings. And there were six factions in total.

  The Magus Faction presided over the Sapphire Citizens, and then there was the Shifter Faction who managed all types of shifters. The Fey Faction had more Senates than anyone else because they had different representatives for each element. And the Human and Demon Factions had the least. It was a way to ensure everyone had representation in the Consilium, so every citizen’s interests were managed effectively and fairly. The Senates voted against laws and policies that protected Portiside kind, and they were an important part of our world. All of them were treated, and acted, like royalty. So I guess no one would want to give that up. Not even Nez and Seamus who were the mammal shifter representatives.

  “So, what do we do now?” Kaleb asked and Cole shared a concerned look with Dan.

  “We need to keep things quiet in regards to the connection between the two cases,” Cole replied. “All while you and Terra discreetly try and find a link that stays away from the path of the Enforcer Bio Agents. We don’t want any reason for them to escalate this to the Consilium.”

  I said nothing about Chris doing a little fishing of his own. That wouldn’t go down too well at all.

  “Do you want us to hit the streets now or first thing?” I asked Cole, eager to get going.

  “Go now. But keep it generic to the attack on the woman. Don’t release information about a rogue shifter if you can help it. And we might get something out of any potential witnesses before they’re influenced by the morning papers.”

  “Anything else we should know?”

  “Pick up your badge and weapon from Doreen. She’s working late tonight and can sign the weapon assignment register for you.”

  “Alright then.” I stood up and grabbed my jacket. It appeared that was all I was getting for the moment. “Let’s go, Kaleb.”

  “Agent Vane?” Cole asked and I turned to face him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember what I said about the desistance order.”

  My lips pressed together to stop a sarcastic retort from leaving from my mouth. “Yes, Sir.”

  His eyes twinkled at the address, and I held his gaze for a few seconds. It pulled me in like a vacuum—that blue eyed stare—and I mentally shook myself free of it.

  “Kaleb, come on,” I snapped as I hurried him along.

  It was time to get the hell out of there.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tormenting Treasures had a ‘Closed’ sign hanging in its window when we got there. But it was still late so we hadn’t expected it to be open. The cluttered window display wasn’t hard to miss—even with only a candlelit streetlamp hovering above us. The display was piled high with wrapped candy bars and chocolate treats, as if the aim of the chaos was to entice people into the store to buy the sweet merchandise.

  Noticing a small shield shaped plaque mounted on the wall next to the door, I leaned in closer. The letters, SQR sat above the words ‘Ground Patrol’ etched underneath.

  Ground Patrol were private firms who helped police and protect the city from petty crimes that didn’t fall on our radar. They each had territories they looked after, and the majority of their income came from the citizens they protected for a fee. There were a few disgruntled shifters who had ended up becoming a Ground Patrol Officer when they didn’t make it through the academy. But it was a free for all in regards to the species mix-up. The different firms operated similarly to the police who operated on Earthside, only the Ground Patrol firms were all privately owned and in competition with one another.

  One of the conditions of signing up to for protection was for the citizens to display a GP badge near their property. It was a way of letting those up to no good know that the area was protected by a member of the Ground Patrol. But it was also a subtle way to let other firms know that the territory was spoken for. It was interesting that this area in particular was signed up to such protection.

  After banging on the door several times, a man about five foot tall with a beer belly and bad attitude yanked the door open. Dark chest hair peeked out of his untied tunic and a gold chain hung around his neck. Irrelative that his window looked like an end of the world storage system for chocolate, it appeared the confectionery business was doing well enough. Gold was as precious over here as it was on Earthside.

  The owner, whose name we had discovered from the agency database as Dean Divine, glared at our sudden and unwelcome arrival.

  “What the f—” he broke off, noticing Kaleb standing behind me. He warily lifted his head and gulped at the size of my partner. Shifters always tended to put humans on edge.

  Dean’s eyes drew toward my
badge as I showed it him beneath the lamplight hovering above the store.

  “Mr Divine,” I told him, my voice firm, “we’re from the Portiside City Agency and we have a few questions for you.”

  “My licenses are up to date. I have nothing more to say to you.”

  “The PCA doesn’t look after licensing. And I’m only to here to ask you a few questions.”

  He went to close the door but I quickly put my foot in the way to stop him. Kaleb and I took a simultaneous step closer.

  “Are you trying to hide something from us, Mr. Divine?” I asked him as haughtily as I could manage.

  “Not hiding anything,” he said quickly, and an overeager smile appeared. “Nothing at all. How can I help you agents?”

  “Did you hear anything suspect outside your shop a couple of hours ago?” I asked, and his shift in body language confirmed that he had. His mouth, however, was telling a different story.

  “Heard nothing. I was in bed.”

  “You were in bed that early?”

  “I have a business to run. I open up shop early. So yeah, I was in bed.”

  “Enforcer Bio Agents aren’t exactly quiet. You had a few of them right outside your door cleaning up the mess of a woman who’d been attacked. Are you trying to claim you heard nothing?”

  “I don’t have my face up to the window like a lot of the busy bodies around here.” He glanced up to look at something behind my shoulder. “I keep my business clean and myself to myself. That’s all I can do.”

  He was blocking me—that was clear—so I tried a different tactic. “You pay for Ground Patrol protection?”

  The fear flitted over Dean’s face so quickly that I almost missed it. The scowl then returned.

  “I’ve got the badge near my door, don’t I? Of course I pay for it. We all do around here. It’s not exactly the safest of places. And the Ground Patrol do the job that you’re too far up your own asses to do. At least they do something. Never even seen you guys round here before. You only want to come around when there’s glory to be had; that’s what they say. EFAs are glory hounds. Well, I ain’t about to give you no glory.”

  Another three-sixty on his attitude. That really poked at my curiosity.

  “Wow. It sounds like the Ground Patrol Officers have been throwing a few slurs around, Kaleb. What do you think we should do about that?”

  Kaleb, who had been standing quietly behind me, replied, “I don’t know. Maybe we should go and have a word with them. We can tell them that our friend, Dean Divine here, has put us straight on what they think we do.”

  “W-what?” Dean stammered, his skin having paled a few shades. “I didn’t say anything. There’s no need to tell them that I said anything. I didn’t see anything earlier. I mean it. I heard a bit of a scuffle outside but we get that sometimes round here. The Ground Patrol Officers can’t be everywhere. And you know what they’re like about crossing territories. Not that it’s a bad thing. They just want to protect their own turf. That’s fine, right?” The fake laughter that escaped his mouth had me wondering what kind of business the Ground Patrol Officers ran around here.

  “Are there many occasions that this territory is left unmanned?”

  “No. Usually they’re around. Most nights they come to make themselves …” he hesitated. “Make themselves known to any wrongdoers, you know?”

  “Sure.” The picture he was building of Desire Street’s Ground Patrol wasn’t a pretty one. And it sounded a little suspicious that they’d chosen tonight of all nights to make themselves scarce. Thinking about it, there had been no officers by the park either. That was something we needed to confirm. And we also needed to find out if the same Ground Patrol firm looked after both areas.

  Glancing over at the Ground Patrol shield again, I realized I hadn’t heard of the SQR unit before.

  “Is that it?” Dean asked as leaned back. He pushed his door part-way closed. It was a strange way for him to behave from a few innocent questions.

  “Did you at any time happen to look out of the window while the ‘scuffle’ you heard was occurring?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” he snapped, his confidence having gone up a notch with the door now firmly between us. “If you want to speak to someone who pokes their nose into everything, then try Nosy Nable Weer over the way. She lives above her stupid knitting shop. She’s always on at me if I don’t put the trash cans out the right way or if the wrong type of customer is seen entering my shop. If anyone saw anything then that nosy old bat would have done so.”

  I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder to where he’d pointed, and it gave Dean the opportunity to slam the door in our faces.

  “Damn it.”

  “He wasn’t going to open up, Terra,” Kaleb told me. “You’ve got all you were going to get from him.”

  “None of this feels right.” I stepped back away from the door and assessed my partner. “You getting the same vibe?”

  “Ground Patrol Officers are usually all over their patch. They get hassled from their paying customers if they don’t.”

  “Do many of their customers get scared when they’re mentioned?”

  “None that I’ve seen. Many of them give the Ground Patrol Officers hell if they don’t deliver. They get a lot of crap on the ground.”

  “Interesting.” I thought back to our conversation with Cole and Dan. “And isn’t it interesting that an escaped rogue wolf shifter had no pack running after him to take him back home?”

  “That rogue was too far gone to have been with his pack. He’s either been kept hidden or he was living in the Territorial Shifter Hold.”

  “Just like the wendigo was.”

  “Are you thinking that they escaped together?”

  “I know we went with the rogue shifter angle with the wendigo killings, but we only considered it on the first couple of victims. We both knew we were grasping at straws with the rogue shifter after that because we’d found nothing. No trail. No reports on shifter activity. Nothing. But looking back, there would have been something if an escaped rogue shifter was out there somewhere.”

  Kaleb thought for a moment, then said, “You’re right. There’s no way a rogue shifter would have stayed hidden without help for that long. Their instincts are to hunt and eat.”

  “Yet this one has been somewhere. And, somehow, it managed to get hold of the same thing the wendigo presumably took. Now the wendigo has been red flagged to prevent anyone outside of the Enforcer Bio Agents who worked on it from investigating. This doesn’t feel like a simple escape, Kaleb.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “I’m beginning to think that, too. So, what next?”

  “You heard the man. Nosy Nable likes to have her nose pressed to the glass. Let’s go see what she has to say for herself.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “The growling was horrendous. Horrendous, I tell you,” Nosy Nable—or should I say, Nable Weer—said to us after we’d made our enquiries. “Teeth were bigger than you would ever imagine and he looked up at me. He looked up at me while I watched him attack that poor woman and he licked his lips, he did. He mouthed ‘You’re next’ and I quivered, then hid under the table. I shook forever, I can tell you. That’s why I didn’t call it in. And what’s the point? The Ground Patrol Officers warned me last time I called that they’d stop my services if I did so again. The one threatened to shove a knitting ball into my mouth if I dared to keep calling them.” Nable clutched the patterned scarf around her neck, a devious glint in her eye. “Are you going to arrest them for threatening me? I’m willing to give a statement. Do you need a pen?”

  The woman hadn’t taken a breath in between her sentences, so it took my head a minute to catch up with the conversation. “No. I don’t need a pen. Mrs. Weer …”

  “Miss. Miss Weer. Never married, or united, or whatever young ones do nowadays.”

  “Right. I apologize. Miss Weer, we’re here because of the woman who was attacked and left in a critical condition. If there is an
ything else you can tell us that will help—”

  “Am I next? Is that why you’re here? He’s coming for me, isn’t he?” She waved her hand in front of her. “Oh no. I’m going to die. I’m going to be eaten. Do you have witness protection? I would be happy to change my name.”

  I wanted to call her out there and then and tell her that we knew she was lying. The rogue’s cognitive behavior would have been too far gone at that point to have even managed such a threat. It made me question if she’d even seen anything at all.

  “The culprit has been apprehended, ma’am,” Kaleb intervened, oozing his usual charm. “You’re as safe as can be.”

  “Oh.” Her aging cheeks blushed a little as she finally noticed Kaleb behind me. “I wouldn’t mind you protecting me. Do you charge for your services?”

  Kaleb was wise enough to step away from the cougar in grandmother’s clothing, and I had to hold back my mirth.

  “Miss Weer,” I said, a little more firmly, turning her attention back to me, “what exactly did you see when you first looked out of the window?”

  “That furry thing attacking that poor woman. She was screaming for help and he just bit into her like a piece of meat. But then he looked at me. He wanted to eat me.”

  “I think we’ve got that part. Did you see anything before that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Was there anyone else around? Did the creature show any other strange behavior? Did he speak to anyone?”

  “No. There was no one. Just him and the woman.”

  “May I ask why you didn’t think this was enough to justify calling the Ground Patrol Officers? Or a Healer Hub?”

  She stood up straight and narrowed her eyes at me. “I told you they said they would quit my services. And I don’t have any numbers for the Healer Hubs. And anyway, I did try calling the GP Officers.”

  “You didn’t say that before.”

  “Well, I forgot,” she snapped. “I’m traumatized. But the comms were just ringing out. No answer.”