~~~
Clarke was dreaming of rats. They skittered in the darkness around him as he lay there as still as he could, hoping none of them would find him, but one of them did. He felt the creature climb up onto his chest, chittering in the manner rats tended to do in movies. Horror movies, obviously. And then it reared up onto its hind legs and began to jump up and down on Clarke’s chest…
And that was when Clarke woke up to find Jasmine jumping up and down on his chest while making the little chittering noises and squeals which seemed to mean something if you were another fairy.
‘Jasmine? What? What the Hell are you doing?’ The jumping stopped, but the urgent noises continued. Obviously there was something up. Still half asleep, but starting to function, Clarke pulled together the spell he needed to understand what Jasmine was trying to tell him, and the fairy relaxed more, but continued her urgent chittering. Clarke listened, feeling a little like those kids who used to figure out what Lassie was saying from the dog’s barking. ‘Someone’s trying to break in?’ Clarke reached for his nightstand and his gun, but that was not quite right. ‘Someone’s going to break in. How do you know–’
He cut off at a sound, Jasmine snapping around to face the bedroom door. The fairy chittered something which meant ‘He’s here.’ It had sounded like a window breaking. Jasmine bounced away from Clarke as he slid swiftly out from under his covers.
‘Stay here,’ Clarke snapped as he moved quickly to the door, listening again. He could hear nothing now, but there were limited locations the sound could have come from. Opening the door, he rushed out, quite aware that Jasmine had darted out around his feet. ‘Armed police officer,’ Clarke called out as he began sweeping the lounge for any signs of an intruder. He could feel cold air on his skin: the window had been broken. The one and only window in his flat, damn it. ‘I ought to shoot you for breaking my window! Remain where you are and prepare to be arrested.’
There was a sound from the general area of the window. Jasmine hissed, bouncing up onto the sofa back and baring claws and teeth even before Clarke had swung his pistol toward the sound. But there was another sound and Clarke figured out what it was this time: he was hearing someone running down the fire escape. He rushed over, finding the window to be open behind the curtains, and leaned out to look, but all he could see was a fire escape and then, a minute or so later, a figure running away under the street lights.
‘Damn,’ he muttered and then pulled the curtain back across the window. ‘You’d better go hide out in my bedroom,’ he said to Jasmine. ‘It’s going to get cold in here.’ He was going to have to wait to see whether anyone wanted to fingerprint the window frame. It would be a waste of time, he knew it, but someone might want to.
Sighing, he walked over to his phone. He had two calls to make: the local precinct first, but Sondra after that. Somehow, Clarke had a feeling that this had not been a bungled burglary.
26th February.
Sondra stalked into Clarke’s apartment with a scowl on her face, scanned over the crime scene officer at the window, and then immediately turned toward Clarke. ‘Are you alright?’
‘I’m fine,’ Clarke replied. ‘I can’t shut the window yet and it’s getting cold in here. Jasmine’s resorted to hiding in my bed.’ Clarke was actually a little embarrassed about having a tiny woman in his bed, and about having his partner turn up while he was wearing scruffy sweats and a T-shirt, even though he had had to resort to putting a jacket on over them for the warmth. Still, he could actually see Sondra’s legs poking out from under her coat, so she was not in one of her suits either. ‘Uh, it was Jasmine that alerted me. She seemed to know something was up before the guy broke the window.’
Sondra’s scowl shifted more toward curious frown. ‘She did say something about knowing her family was going to be attacked just before it happened.’ She shook her head. ‘Getting her to explain it is not going to go well. Be thankful you had an early warning. Any idea who tried to get in?’
‘Burglary seems the most obvious idea, but I’m not sure I buy it. Pretty sure he was human.’
‘You’re pretty sure it was a he too.’
‘I saw him running away. I mean, it’s not much to go on. Male. Tall. Six feet, maybe more. Maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. He was all in black, with a ski mask, and I saw him from behind, so the rest is conjecture. Looked well built. He was holding something in his right hand. Maybe a lever or something for the window. Wasn’t long.’
The frown shifted to a smirk. ‘Not much to go on at all. Something in his hand. Not long. Like, maybe, a short knife?’
Clarke sat up straighter, frowning deeply. ‘You think it was the killer? Why? I mean, why come after me? I don’t fit his usual targets.’
‘Neither did Grant Henderson, but this guy has taken… Let’s call them “targets of opportunity,” shall we? He’s killed people who don’t fit the usual mould, presumably because they fitted some other criteria. You’re linked to the case.’
‘So are you.’
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’ But Clarke fitted the idea that the killer was trying to impress Sondra, or clearing away obstacles to her. Was Clarke an obstacle?
‘I’m getting nothing here,’ the crime tech said. ‘Sorry, detective.’
‘I didn’t really think you would,’ Clarke replied. ‘Pretty sure I saw gloves. If it’s who Detective Blake thinks it was, he’s pretty much never left anything behind but a body.’
Which was true. Except for the one time he had wanted someone else taken out of the picture. Sondra considered her list of suspects and the description Clarke had given, and there was one person who fitted. Dillan Archer, even if he seemed the most unlikely of suspects, was well built and over six feet in height. And he had shown a lot of interest in Sondra.
‘You’re quiet,’ Clarke said.
‘Just thinking.’
‘Well, do you think I should report this to the feds?’
‘Up to you,’ Sondra replied. She was not going to mention her suspicions to anyone; there was no proof and only circumstantial evidence. ‘I don’t really think Issacs will believe it was the killer anyway.’
~~~
There was a knock on the office door and Philip Jefferson poked his head in, a grin on his face. Jefferson had been the most junior detective in Arcane until Clarke had joined, and he seemed to have the kind of face that was constantly grinning. Blonde, attractive, and fit, he had an active sex life, so maybe that was the reason for the smiles. Today, however, his smile seemed brighter than usual.
‘Jefferson,’ Sondra said, looking up from the search she was doing, ‘why are you smirking?’
‘I’m not smirking. I’m smiling warmly.’
‘Says you.’
‘A few of us are going out to a club tonight,’ Jefferson explained. ‘More the merrier.’ There was an implicit question in the statement.
Sondra came to a sudden decision, not entirely based on the memory of the last time Jefferson had invited her out with ‘the boys.’ ‘Can’t. I have a date, but you should go, Clarke. You haven’t really had a chance to bond with the rest of the unit. Between a serial killer and the riots, there hasn’t been the time, but now there is.’
‘Uh,’ Clarke began.
‘Go.’
Clarke looked at Jefferson. ‘I guess I’m in.’
‘Great,’ Jefferson said, his grin brightening to toothpaste-commercial levels. ‘I’ll let you know where we’re meeting up. This is kind of a “the riot’s over” thing anyway. Sure you can’t come, Sondra?’
‘Quite sure. I’ll be celebrating my own way, I assure you.’
‘Right.’ Jefferson gave her a smirk which suggested he knew exactly what she meant. ‘Enjoy yourself.’
Clarke looked around as soon as the door was closed. ‘You never mentioned a date. On a Sunday?’
‘Last-minute thing,’ Sondra replied, getting up from her seat. ‘Look, there’s not much going on and I used a lot of charms in the riot. Big ones that take
time to make. I’m going to go home and make a start. I’ll have my cell with me.’
‘Uh, okay. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She paused in the doorway. ‘Don’t let Jefferson get you too slammed tonight.’
‘Don’t worry. I know my limits.’
‘Yes, but Jefferson doesn’t.’
~~~
The group of cops from Arcane had met up in a sports bar on Tito Puente Way, just off Park Avenue. It was not far from the 110th Street subway station, easy enough for Clarke to get to. It was not an entirely male gathering – Hendricks had decided to tag along – which had Clarke wondering when he found out where they were going after a round at the bar.
Hendricks, however, showed no signs of caring as the group walked into the Green Woman Club about two thirds of the way up West 116th Street. It was, technically, part of Orctown, though the riots had never got down that far. The whole area had been closed down for the last few days, the club reopening the night before. Clarke was not exactly sure that a bunch of cops should be going there this soon after the riots, but no one batted an eyelid at them as they walked in to find a table.
The Green Woman was a strip club catering to an overlapping pair of select audiences. The clientele consisted of humans and some better-off orcs. The dancers were either orcs or humans with a lot of muscle development. Despite its eclectic nature, the place was relatively well known, and relatively busy, even on a Sunday night. The decoration was dark green: the walls were dark green, the leather on the seats was dark green, and the bar was dark green and made of plastic. The pole on the central runway stage was the traditional chrome, but the half-naked woman currently spinning around it was dark green.
‘This is… different,’ Clarke said, barely audible over the loud, throbbing music.
‘Never been?’ Hendricks asked.
‘Uh, no. You have?’
‘Couple of times.’ Hendricks developed a contemplative look. ‘Not sure I’d go to bed with an orc woman, I like kissing too much, but this lot sure can dance.’
The statement sort of made sense of Hendricks coming along, and the comments Clarke had heard that Jefferson had never tried it on with the woman. ‘I’ve, uh, never actually been to a strip club before.’
‘God! Don’t let Jefferson hear you say that. He’ll–’
‘Too late,’ Jefferson called out. ‘Let’s get the drinks in and we can worry over that later.’
Clarke grimaced. What had he let himself in for? No, thinking about it: what had Sondra let him in for?
~~~
The door opened and Archer paused, surprised, when he found Sondra standing outside it. ‘Uh, Sondra, I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘Surprise,’ Sondra said, widening her eyes a little and smiling. ‘I didn’t catch you with a starlet or something, did I?’
‘No… No, just me. Come in.’
He stepped aside and Sondra walked through into the suite’s lounge, unbuttoning her coat as she went. ‘It’s been kind of a bad week. I needed a little stress relief, and I thought of you.’
‘Really? Well, a man likes to be appreciated. Would you–’
He cut off as Sondra sloughed her coat and dropped it onto a chair. Beneath she was wearing a red latex tank dress. She turned to show off the low cut of the bodice. The rubber was semi-transparent and not hiding much – certainly not that there was nothing under it. Red, high-heeled pumps completed the outfit. It had taken her a good thirty minutes to carefully roll the dress on and then shine it up, but the effect was worth it. ‘I’d love a drink,’ she said, because she was sure that was what he had been about to ask.
‘That’s quite an outfit. Wine okay?’
‘Fine. Mind if I freshen up a little while you pour?’
‘Be my guest.’
Flashing a smile, Sondra headed for the bathroom off the lounge. Closing the door, she gave a sigh and focused herself on a spell. It was a relatively simple one with very modest energy requirements, but she drew the power in from around her rather than using her own reserve; she was not sure what she was going to need to do after she had cast this spell. If she was right, the night was likely to get complicated. If she was wrong, well, then Archer was going to deserve what she gave him, even if she had never voiced her suspicion outside her own head.
Because it seemed more and more likely that Archer was the killer, the man with the chest. He just fitted the profile too well. Physically, he was about right for the man Clarke had seen. He was handsome and charming, and so would have had no trouble luring young women to their deaths. His lifestyle was wild and he showed no sign of suffering for it, even at almost sixty. Of course, Sondra was older and still looked twenty-six, but no one had ever suggested that Archer was immortal. He had a reputation for walking away from accidents on set which should have left him in a hospital bed for months. And he was into Sondra.
There were some issues. There was the car issue, for example. How could Archer have moved the bodies without a car? It would have been really hard… Unless Archer had been the person who had stolen a car in Brooklyn the night Alice Toliver was killed. The car had been found in the East River yesterday, and the dump site was not that far from Archer’s hotel. Professionals would have kept it or stripped it, and joyriders would have dumped it faster. Someone had wanted that car for a purpose. It was circumstantial at best, but it tied a loose end.
Almost dreading what she would find, Sondra let her spell go. Almost immediately, it pinged and she turned toward the source. Not far away. She was guessing a little, but it looked to her like there was a source of demonic magic at the far side of Archer’s bedroom. She had spent a while in there and seen nothing, so he had it hidden, but it was there.
Sighing, she turned to the sink and began to run water. She had no legal reason for searching Archer’s suite, which meant she was going to have to do it illegally. And the easiest way she could think of to do that was going to be to give him what he was expecting and wait for him to fall asleep afterward.
~~~
The music changed as one dancer – a muscular, human woman with long, black hair – strutted off the stage wearing just a smile. Clarke was not paying a lot of attention; okay, so the point of a strip club was the strippers, but he was not really the kind of man who found the idea that wonderful. Hendricks was actually watching the floor show with more appreciation than Clarke was.
And then the next act came on. She strutted out in a red leather bikini and towering heels. The club had more height in the ceiling than might be expected, precisely because many of the dancers were very tall. She had a lot more assurance in her step than Clarke had ever seen before: SetaGan was really in her element here. Clarke was not. It did not look like she had noticed either him or the group of cops as a whole as she flashed a lascivious grin at the audience and then swung up onto the pole.
‘You know her?’ Hendricks asked. Damn woman was far too perceptive.
‘Uh, we met her when we were looking for KonTash.’
‘Quite a woman. This place has the best-looking orcs around.’
‘Yeah…’
Actually, Clarke thought SetaGan looked better without the overdone makeup, but there was no denying that she had some exotic good looks, and she could certainly dance. She had said she was a dancer and it should have occurred to him that there were not too many places for an orc to dance in New York.
‘That’s settled then,’ Jefferson said, and Clarke got a sinking feeling in his stomach.
~~~
Sondra lay in Archer’s bed, listening to his breathing. He had started out with his usual, macho, ‘I’m on top’ stuff, but tonight she had shifted it, taken control, and worked him hard. He had seemed surprised, maybe a little irritated, but she had given him little choice about going with it. Not giving him any time to rest between bouts, it had still taken her an hour to tire him out enough that ‘a short rest’ had drifted into sleep.
Being more careful than the last time
, she slipped out of bed and looked around the room at the dim light. The chest, assuming that was the source of the magic she had detected, had to be in one of the cupboards at the side of the room. There was a unit there with a couple of cupboards and two stacks of drawers. The drawers, she figured, were out: the chest was probably not that small.
Crouching beside the nearest doors, she opened them smoothly, hoping that the hinges were not going to squeak. The space within was empty aside from one of those useless hairdryers hotels always seemed to have somewhere. Then again, this was a VIP suite; maybe the dryer worked. She closed the doors and moved to the next ones.
The Chest of Gartrain was a fairly unassuming thing. Somehow, Sondra had expected something in obsidian with carved, demonic faces decorating it. Instead, she found herself looking at a simple, wooden box bound in thin strips of iron. It had a curved top, like the old sea chests you saw in pirate movies, though it was a lot smaller than one of those: maybe a foot across and ten inches in height. There was nothing about it which gave away what it did, exactly, but Sondra found herself shivering as she looked at the thing. It looked like a simple, wooden chest, but it felt like something irredeemably evil. She reached for one of the charms on her bracelet.
Pain lanced through her skull as someone grabbed her hair and pulled, twisting her and tossing her back, away from the cupboard and the chest. She bounced off the corner of the bed and tumbled onto the floor, rolling once before she got her arms into the right positions and vaulted to her feet in a crouch. Archer was standing between her and the chest with an odd expression on his face. Annoyance and regret warred with lust across his features. Reaching behind his back, he opened a drawer and took out an ornately carved knife with a short, triangular blade.
‘I really thought I’d fooled you,’ he said.
‘I’d say you’ve been fooling everyone for several decades,’ Sondra replied.
‘I also really hoped that you wouldn’t be the last victim.’
The Vanity Case (Sondra Blake Book 1) Page 17