Under a Blood Moon

by Rachel Graves

  “What’s going on, Ben? You guys are making me nervous.”

  “There’s nothing to be nervous about any more. Someone just delivered our bad guys.”

  “Delivered?”

  “All they need is a bow, and it would be a Christmas present.” I could hear his disbelief through the phone.

  “Seriously, like you’re there and you can see them?” I didn’t believe that the werewolves who had been terrorizing the city for the last week were gone either.

  “Danny and I are on our way, but we got it from Officer White. She called us. Danny says we can trust her.”

  “Wait, Officer White? She’s with…”

  “Artman’s unit. It’s the only problem I have with the whole setup.”

  I agreed with him and got the address. If someone had caught our murderous trio, Artman would try to take credit for it. I gave Mark the directions. Then realized we were headed back to the industrial side of town. Before I had time to make any small talk, we pulled up to an unmarked car with Ben and Danny inside.

  We were in front of an empty warehouse, not far from where the car had been found this afternoon. At night the white painted metal pipes going into the ground and the high smoke stacks of the industrial district looked creepy and alien. I could tell the other cops felt it too. Even though I wasn’t overly fond of Mark, I was happy to walk next to the big strong vampire.

  “You didn’t give me any details. Which building?”

  “The one on the right,” Mark answered before Danny had a chance. “I’m sorry. The wolves are bleeding. I can smell it.”

  I let him lead the way. He got points for correcting himself, but telling me how he knew canceled them out. Oh well, at least he was trying. We fell in step behind him.

  “You tell him anything about Artman?” Ben asked.

  “No. I couldn’t think of what to say.”

  “Perfect,” Danny declared with a smile. “I can’t wait to see these two go at each other.” There was a chance they would be civil to each other. A slim chance that Artman would respect Mark’s authority as an FBI agent or that Mark wouldn’t cause trouble. That wasn’t what Danny was looking forward to seeing.

  We walked into the interior of a gutted warehouse. The floor was bare concrete. Above us heavy beams crisscrossed the ceiling where the other levels had once been. Dangling from a crossbeam like some sick Halloween decoration was a pair of lifeless werewolves.

  I’d never seen a body hung before. It was completely unlike the movies. Dark fluid dripped down from their clawed feet onto the floor. Even in wolf form, I could see the heads were at the wrong angles to the body. Beneath the coarse fur they were both naked.

  When the doors into the building opened the bodies swung, revealing that both had been gutted. I hoped they’d been hung with rope and not their own insides. As I walked closer I began to feel the tingle of magic. The death hadn’t been quiet, and the power was itching to tell me more. There was only one thing in my way: Artman.

  Officer White was in front of him getting a stern talking-to, probably for calling us. He called her some inappropriate names and shouted a bit before he saw us. By then we were close enough to see he hadn’t shaved that morning. Something about his complete contempt for the world went deeper than his sloppy clothes, but I didn’t care enough to want to find it.

  “Oh good, the Ghostbusters are here.” I wasn’t sure which was worse, Artman’s sour breath or his bad attitude. “Christ, is that a vampire?”

  “I’m a Federal Agent.” Mark flipped out a badge without breaking his walk toward the bodies.

  “Makes sense. Send a monster to catch a monster. Guess you weren’t weird enough, huh, Mors?”

  Before I could say anything, Mark was next to him, so close to his face they almost touched. I’d never been confronted by an angry vampire before but from where I stood the view of Mark’s red glowing eyes and sharp fangs was fairly impressive. From less than an inch away, it must have been breathtaking.

  “Mark, you don’t have to do this.” I hesitated. I very much wanted to see someone take on Artman, but I knew the rules: vampires didn’t get any more consideration in these things than witches did. If Artman reported Mark, it would end his career if not his life.

  “Obviously, someone has to.” At first I thought he said it just to me, whispering in my ear, but I realized Danny and Ben had heard him. Both men looked on with studied indifference. Mark went on back to Artman.

  “Look, I don’t know what your problem with this unit is, but it’s yours.” He emphasized the last word. “Handle it on your own because no one here cares. And if you can’t, I will.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Artman’s voice quaked with fear. His tone changed to a high-pitched whine. “You’re threatening me! I’ll have your badge, you can’t do that. He threatened me!”

  “Prove it,” Mark said, walking away.

  “You saw him, Auster, Gallagher? Right?” Artman turned to the two of them, his eyes bright with tears and need.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Ben shrugged.

  “He never touched you.” Danny walked away with a barely concealed grin.

  “Mors, you saw that?”

  “I guess weirdoes like me have bad eyesight.” I brushed by him with as much hardness as I could muster, when really I was fighting not to laugh. When the four of us met underneath the bodies, my fellow detectives wore satisfied smiles. I didn’t have to ask to know that Mark had gone up a notch in the eyes of the department. Officer White came over and offered to answer any questions.

  “Has anyone been up there?” Mark asked, pointing to the top of the beams.

  “There aren’t any steps up to that floor and we can’t trust the service elevator. Even if we could get up there, no one is willing to walk around two stories in the air on a thin piece of steel. We called for a bucket lift. There’s some trouble getting one here after dark, something about extra fees.”

  The litany of excuses made me bristle. If Artman had any idea how important this was, no one would have wasted time dickering with the rental company.

  “What do you think, Ben?” Danny asked with a grin.

  “If you could get me up there walking around wouldn’t be a problem, but flying up? I’m good, but I’m not that good,” Ben chuckled.

  I’d been the only one with abilities for so long it was a delight to hear someone else asked to do witchcraft.

  “I think I’ll be able to find a way up. Give me a second,” Mark said. He walked into one of the darker corners of the building. Ben’s eyes lost focus for a second. Officer White looked at him like he’d grown a second head.

  “Our FBI agent can fly,” Ben announced. I wondered if my face took on the same otherworldly look when I sensed things or if air witches looked one way while death witches looked another.

  “Makes sense. He’s a vampire.” I had to stop myself from staring when Ben literally shook off the look.

  “Wait. You did magic. And he, he flew up there?” White’s voice was equal parts awe and shock.

  “Does it bother you? Because I’m about to read these two bodies, so you might want to step back.” I stood close enough to the bodies that I could heard them whispering to me. It was hard to follow conversation and tune them out.

  “When you did it before we were hidden, I mean, away, we were away from everyone else. You guys do magic in the open?” Officer White asked still stunned.

  “All the time,” Danny told her. “You really should think about coming over.”

  I didn’t bother to listen to the rest of Danny’s recruitment speech. I stepped beside the bodies and focused in on the conversation only I could hear. Even without touching them, I could feel their hurt pushing at me. I centered myself, drawing the power up from the core of my being. Taking a deep breath, I reached out to the foot that dangled above my head.

  She died in pain. Terrible agony spread through my mind, and behind it, betrayal. A phrase rang inside my head, ‘not like before.�
�� The dead woman kept saying it to me over and over again. I tried to go deeper, to push past the pain and see more of the moment she had died. My mind reached that place where I couldn’t hear the people around me, where there was only witch and no more Mallory. I brushed the other body, and it came to me.

  Fur, claws, teeth, and blood. Images scattered and confused. They’d died as wolves, and I saw through their feral eyes. The warehouse changed to echoing sounds and old scents. I felt the presence of other wolves around them. Neither of the victims felt safe with the pack. When I concentrated on that, that feeling of mistrust, the images came too fast for me.

  I was overwhelmed by claws cutting into skin, sharp jaws snapping at faces and then, the worst, angry yellow eyes bearing down on them. There was nothing there that was human.

  I walked away from the bodies to lean against a wall. My mind kept turning the images over. There were too many sensations for me to process. I’d never been able to smell that finely, never been able to hear sounds echo through concrete walls. For a tiny moment I’d entered the world of a werewolf, but I couldn’t understand what I saw there.

  It was like reading a book printed on transparent pages, when I tried to focus on one thing, I saw a hundred other things. There was too much information for me to make sense of it.

  Danny found me a few minutes later. Everyone else had their eyes glued on Mark as he walked nimbly across the six-inch wide steel beams, never noticing how high he was. I guess when you can fly, you don’t have to be afraid of heights.

  Danny asked. “Your eyes are gone. Did you eat?”

  “Yeah, tons. Jakob made me dinner.”

  “Lucky girl.” He looked at me with concern. “Are you all right?”

  “I need…” there was no right way to say it, “…a minute.”

  “Take as much as you need, everyone else is itching to call this case closed.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I’m not a trusting kind of guy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I watched Mark walk the beam while I caught my breath. My stomach performed flip-flops thanks to my healthy fear of heights. I focused on the facts, hoping they would calm me. The wolves had been tied with thick rope, not intestine as I had feared. Mark bent at the waist to take a set of samples, and I had to look away. He might not have a single thought of losing his balance, but I had plenty. When he was done, he turned and walked off into the shadows. A few minutes later, he was standing next to me.

  “Are my eyes back?” I asked, trusting him not to be amazed.

  “Almost, you could pass.” He sounded like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I’m sorry I missed the floor show, what did you see?”

  “I’m not sure. It didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.” I raked my fingers through my hair, frustrated. Mark grinned at me. “What are you grinning at?”

  “That’s Jakob’s gesture. If you were him, I’d say you’re annoyed and slightly pissed.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “And that’s adorable.” He used his smug tone of voice that pissed me off so much, but somehow I couldn’t get angry this time. “Would you be willing to dream about what you saw?”

  “Oh, I think I’ll see it in nightmares for a good long time,” I said, hoping he could tell I wasn’t looking forward to it.

  “I meant with me. Would you be willing to share it with me in a dream?”

  My jaw dropped open. I knew some vampires could dreamwalk. When Jakob did it, I assumed it was because we were that close or he was that powerful. The idea of someone I barely knew stepping inside my head seemed wrong, overly intimate, and dangerous. “You can do that?”

  “Jakob’s a good teacher.” He looked down sheepishly. “Of course, I haven’t had much practice…”

  “But if it helps us catch whoever is doing this, I guess we should try.” I didn’t like the idea of opening my mind to him, but I saw the necessity.

  “So you don’t think those are the wolves we’ve been hunting?” His eyes revealed mirth as he asked me.

  “Nope. First, there’s only two of them. I saw three wolves at the college crime scene. Second, the wolves at the college sexually assaulted a girl. The one hanging on the right is a woman. While she could’ve taken part, it seems unlikely. And then…” I hesitated, wondering if I should trust him. “There’s something wrong about the way they felt when they died. It feels like betrayal.” Saying the words brought the images to mind, and I was once again lost in the sea of scents and sounds. I pushed the images away, shaking my head. “It doesn’t make sense for killer wolves to feel that way.”

  “I don’t think Artman agrees with you. I suspect his report will announce his ingenious apprehension of the dreaded killers. That’s why I want to see what you saw.”

  “How’s Jakob going to take that?”

  He looked away.

  “How’s your cheek?” I asked, remembering the thin line of blood dripping down Mark’s face. I searched for the scratch but couldn’t find it. Mark had fed, so it healed without a trace. That didn’t stop his hand from touching the spot where it had been.

  “Point taken. I’ll talk to him first.”

  It was a conversation I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. The bucket lift arrived. A pair of forensics officers climbed in and began taking samples from the wounds. Mark watched them for a second before he turned to me. “I could have flown up there and done the same thing.”

  “Freaking out everyone in the room and assuring none of these people would work with you in the future,” I reminded him. “You handled it well.”

  “The whole social grace thing is coming back to me. It’s been a while, you know. It takes effort.”

  “Does your sudden change have anything to do with Phoebe?”

  “In a way,” he admitted. “It’s strange to want to be around people again. Look, if I’m ever half the asshole that Artman is, feel free to smack me around.”

  It was my turn to laugh. Mark might only be a few inches taller than me, but I doubted I could hurt him even with all my strength. “I don’t think that would do any good.”

  “Then feel free to command me to stop. I never want to get that obnoxious.”

  His tone was casual, but it was a new concept for me. I’d been able to command a vampire to stop moving once when I was in fear of my life, but I didn’t realize that ability extended into emotions. “I could do that? Command you to feel or act a certain way? Like, I could say be nice, or be ecstatic, and you would be?”

  “Sure. Why do you think death witches are so enticing to us?”

  The minute he said it I blushed. He whistled lightly and walked away. He might be trying harder to be nice, but he hadn’t been able to miss the opportunity to tease me.

  I sat in on the interview with the security guard who’d discovered the scene. There wasn’t much to it. He’d heard something odd and, given the recent murders, thought it best to call it in. He couldn’t clearly describe what he’d heard, a scream maybe or a growl. His exact would were ‘an otherworldly noise’. It was a fairly useless description, but I felt for him.

  My head kept going back to images I couldn’t describe. I’d be happy to put them in a box labeled ‘otherworldly’ and never look at them again. After midnight I had done all I could do: I’d talked with the forensics guys, watched someone photograph the bodies, and walked the building. When Danny offered me a ride home, I happily took him up on it. We drove in silence for a while. I spent the time sorting through the images in my head again.

  “You doing any better with what you saw?” Danny asked, practically reading my mind.

  “I guess, it’s still a mess of scents and sounds to me.”

  “Try focusing on one sound or scent, getting everything you can out of it, and then moving on to the next one, like focusing on one part of a busy drawing.”

  “I’ll try, but I don’t think I have the right brain to process this stuff.”

  “It’s a catch-22. It’s easier t
o understand when you’re in form, but when you come back, you still have to use your brain to understand what you saw.”

  His face was normal, calm, but it seemed like he was revealing more to me that I could tell.

  “What makes you the expert? You a werewolf in your spare time and you never mentioned it to me?”

  “Do I look furry to you, Mal? Honestly.” He rolled his eyes at me. I wasn’t sure if his disdain was because I’d picked wolf. Before I had a chance to probe deeper, he’d dropped me off at the Eclipse. I rode the elevator up to my apartment exhausted but not ready to sleep. I took a hot shower wishing I could pour the water in my head and wash everything away. Mark might want to see what I saw, but I was tired of it.

  It was nearly one when I got out of the shower. If Jakob had been human he’d be ready for a lunch break after four hours of honest work. I knew he worked through but decided to disturb him anyway.

  I summed up false cheerfulness and asked, “How’s work?”

  “Tedious. I fail to see why no one can adhere to a schedule or a budget.” He sounded tired.

  “Construction woes?”

  “Exactly. I’d much rather work on chocolate. I’m thinking of getting Indigo together with Cali. What do you think of a chocolate party at Seductions?”

  “It depends on what shape the chocolates are in.” I could only imagine what the satyr and the sexy werejaguar would put together. When I thought about chocolate and our local upscale adult store well… “That would be a great girls’ night out.”

  “I hope the rest of the city agrees with you.”

  “I’m sure it will. We could all use a night like that in this town.” My voice lost its chipper tone.

  “Is everything all right, my love?”

  “We found another crime scene tonight, this time it was dead werewolves.”

  “That must have been interesting.”

  “If by ‘interesting’ you mean ‘dark and disturbing’, then yes, yes it was.” I fell back on my pillows. “I don’t think I ever want to see through werewolf eyes again. I’m quite happy with five normal human senses thank you very much.”