I tagged one of the two remaining wolves in the side of the head with perfectly placed shots from Boomy.
The final wolf had taken off into the shadows, but while I was definitely interested in chasing him and ending his ability to consume oxygen, I couldn’t help but feel we’d just be running into another trap.
No, it was time to regroup, especially since I now had a little more information to go on.
“Aren’t we going to chase him, Chief?” Harvey asked, his voice a little deeper than usual. “He’ll get away.”
“No need,” I said as I tucked Boomy back into his holster. “We know what they want now and that means they’re not going to hurt Rachel until they get it.”
“You?” asked Leland with a nod as he worked to remove the saliva from his hair. His hands were cut up pretty bad. “They want you.”
“Yep,” I sighed as I also did my best to scrape the goop from my person.
Honestly, I should either choose a different line of work or I should start dressing like Warren. At least then I wouldn’t give a damn about getting covered in all this crap.
Chapter 15
We walked back out of the null zone and up the stairs that took us back to Craven Street.
I had enough information to go on at this point to make me believe that Rachel wasn’t going to be killed unless I was killed. While I had no intention of dying, I felt better knowing that these wolves all wanted to challenge me. Okay, maybe “felt better” isn’t the right way to to put it. The point was that I understood their perspective. They were always looking to see who was the top-dog in the bunch. If one of them bested me, he or she would be the alpha for some time to come. The dogs were smart about it, too. They knew I’d come to Rachel’s aid, which meant they were all in on this challenge game of theirs. It gave me little choice but to participate.
That made me raise an eyebrow at myself. Sometimes my self-talk was less than helpful.
Sniff.
The word came into my mind out of nowhere. It was another one of Gabe the Vampire’s little treats, just like Time and Flashes had been. Also like those, there was no user manual with this one.
Sniff, it came again.
“What do we do now, Chief?” asked Harvey.
We were just standing at the top of the stairs, staring down toward where The Sherlock Holmes restaurant sat.
“I say we go back to the PPD and gather our wits about us,” suggested Leland as he dabbed a handkerchief against his bloodied lip.
Harvey seemed to agree. “You guys got a vending machine there?”
“Quite a lovely one, in fact,” answered Leland.
I tuned the two of them out as I studied the area. There were flowers and bushes in little pots sitting on small wrought iron balconies along the two rows of flats on either side. To our right, anyway. A more industrial feel ran to our left.
Sniff.
Yes, I was fighting to ignore the command. However, I was starting to get the point that, on some cosmic level, these special abilities spoke to me. It was like they were telling me the best time to use them. How they knew that, I couldn’t say, but seeing that they’d been right every time, except for when I’d slowed the world to watch Dr. Vernon have an orgasm—and it should be noted that I thought it was exactly the right time to use that particular skill—I thought it may be wise to listen.
So as the two goobers continued blathering on about vending machines and their favorite detectives from the past, I rolled my eyes and sniffed.
Nothing happened.
Then I remembered that I had to think the word actively for it to work.
I sighed.
Sniff, I thought in that magical way that seemed to activate any of the skills Gabe provided.
The world suddenly became a haven of smells. Flowers, car fumes, colognes, perfumes, food, birds, buildings, the street, and Harvey. These were the things that stood out most. Especially Harvey. Werebears weren’t exactly known for smelling like roses.
Obviously I would need to focus this Sniff skill or I’d end up gagging.
I was looking for Rachel, so I needed to recall her scent.
As if I were seeing an aromatic photograph of my ex-partner, my nose picked up something. It was as clear as day, making me feel compelled to start running toward the source.
“Where’re you going, Chief?” Harvey called out, but I was too far gone to pay much attention to him. “Wait up!”
I chased the scent all the way down to the Strand, anxiously waited for a break in the traffic, and then bolted for Duncannon. If I had been an actual dog at this point, I’d be roadkill. I now understood why dogs didn’t pay much attention to anything else once they were on a scent trail. It was overwhelming.
To our right was St. Martin-in-the-Fields again. It was as if we’d come full circle.
But the scent wasn’t in the church. It was beside it somewhere.
I kept running, doing all I could not to throw people out of my way in the process. While my nose was going insane with the need to find the source of the smell, my forebrain had to keep my wits about it. If I didn’t, I’d probably cause a lot of injuries.
“Chief,” Harvey said raggedly, “what’s going on?”
I pushed his hand from my shoulder as we approached a statue.
This was where the trail ended. The Edith Cavell monument.
Like a man possessed, I jumped up and started climbing the front of it. It was tough to get a foothold, but I managed, scaring away a number of pigeons in the process.
“Chief?”
I looked down at him and snarled.
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “No need to bite my head off.”
Obviously having a nose like this made for a powerful animal response. But I didn’t feel bad about it. He could clearly see I was on to something, so why pester the shit out of me?
I pulled myself up until I was face to face with the namesake of the monument.
Sitting atop her head was a brown leather glove.
It was Rachel’s.
In fact, it was one of the gloves that I’d given to her on our first anniversary working together before I was the chief.
I dropped down and held it up to Harvey in an effort to explain why I’d been so focused on my running.
He squinted at it for a second and then took out his magnifying glass to give it a deeper study.
“Looks like a glove,” he said finally.
“Yes,” agreed Leland, “I would most definitely say that’s a glove.”
I just stood there staring back and forth between them.
“Obviously it’s a glove, you idiots,” I said with more heat than was necessary. “The point is that it’s Rachel’s glove.”
“Really?” Harvey pulled up his magnifying glass again.
“Honestly, Harvey,” I said while pulling the glove away, “how do you expect that your magnifying glass is going to help you determine the validity of my statement?”
He lowered the glass with a sad look.
“Sorry, Chief.”
Rookie or not, there was something known as common sense.
“I thought the use of the glass was a wise one,” Leland said, patting my partner on the shoulder. “There’s never enough detailed study one can do when seeking out answers, you know.”
I scoffed. “You two should partner up.”
“At least he wouldn’t yell at me as much,” Harvey more mumbled than said.
He was right, though. I was being kind of hard on him.
Wait—no, I wasn’t!
I was all about having fun, sharing laughs, and being zany, but there’s a time and place for actual work, too. Now, I knew that Harvey thought he was working while studying Rachel’s glove with his Sherlock Holmes fan kit, but the fact was that it wouldn’t help. He should know that. This wasn’t some cosplay convention we were at. This was real.
Still…
“I just need you to think, Harvey,” I said in as
calm a voice as I could manage at the moment. “May I see the glass, please?”
He tentatively handed it over.
“Now, I ask you if using this ancient piece of sleuthing technology would really help when studying this glove?” I held up the glove and looked through the glass at it as if to prove a point. That’s when I noticed a tiny stream of text that read, ‘The Chandos’ on it. “I’ll be damned.”
“What is it, Chief?” asked Harvey.
“What is The Chandos?” I said to Leland, ignoring Harvey’s question.
“It’s a pub,” our James Bond clone replied while pointing behind me.
I spun around and noted that the place was right on the corner. It had a wooden outside with columns framing the entryway, and it read “29 St. Martin’s Lane” in the center.
“Huh,” I said, casually handing the magnifying glass back to Harvey.
“So it came in useful, eh, Chief?” he said accusingly.
My shoulders dropped. “I suppose it did.”
“Uh huh.”
Chapter 16
It was your standard pub with lots of deep, dark wood that was shined and polished. There were mirrors lining the wall behind a fully stocked bar, and a number of seating areas where people could spend their nights drinking away their sorrows. Right now, though, all the patrons seemed to be having a pleasant time.
“It says they have a menu…” started Harvey, but he stopped when I gave him a dull look. “Sorry, Chief. Just hungry.”
“They’ve got nice fish and chips,” Leland noted.
I looked over them both. Seriously, they belonged together. I couldn’t even imagine how Rachel had managed to put up with Leland over these last couple of months. She probably arranged to have herself kidnapped in order to get away from the guy.
“Fine,” I said, throwing up my hands, “you two have a seat and get some food. I’m going to keep using this nose of mine to find more information.”
“You sure, Chief?”
“Oh, I’m sure.” I then cleared my throat at the realization that I’d said that quite pompously. “If anything happens, I’ll use the connector to reach you.”
Harvey was all smiles now.
“We’ll be here if you need us.” Then his smile turned to a serious look. “Do you want to bring my magnifying glass? Just in case?”
I didn’t, but damn if it hadn’t been useful back at the statue. It took everything I had not to roll my eyes as I swiped the glass from his hand and slipped it into my suit pocket.
“I’ll be back shortly.”
Without waiting, I moved smoothly through the tables and people until I spotted a null zone. Actually, it was a guess because everyone was giving it a wide berth as they walked by it. A deeper look showed that I was correct.
Behind it was a blank wall. There had to be something to it, though, because one didn’t just go around putting null zones in a building without there being some purpose to it. I grumbled and took out the magnifying glass and started going over every inch of the thing until I spotted two sets of contact points. One on each side. It was a door. My guess was that there was no knob because we were in a pub. Translation: If a drunkard happened by, they may not be as impacted by a null zone, and so they might just twist the knob and walk on in.
I tucked the glass away.
Another win for Mr. Holmes, and Harvey.
The door opened after I pressed the contacts at the same time.
Also at that moment, I felt the Sniff sense dissipate. But I no longer needed it to know I was on the right track. This was apparent because of the item sitting on a small table in the middle of the moderately-sized room I’d entered.
It was Rachel’s badge.
I picked it up and looked it over.
Instead of the “Las Vegas Paranormal Police Department,” this one just read “P.P.D.” along the top and a redundant “Paranormal Police Department” around the rest of it. All of the PPD stations had been going to the generalized form instead of employing the locale. My precinct hadn’t been forced down that path yet because we were too small and we rarely got new recruits. In fact, Harvey was the first since the last rookie had joined the Vegas PPD…which had been me.
“Welcome to your doom, Mr. Dex,” said the powerful voice of a woman who had stepped out of the shadows. It was an American accent, too. “Your capabilities are quite impressive, I must say.”
She was built like someone who spent a fair amount of time in the gym, compact and muscular with a hint of femininity that threatened to turn my frown upside down. Though she was a little shorter than I considered practical for playing a domineering role, her demeanor radiated strength and confidence.
In a nutshell, she was my kind of woman.
“When you welcome me to my doom,” I said, slowly placing Rachel’s badge back on the table, “do you mean that in a nefarious way or a naughty one?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Only in that naughty ends in our mutual pleasure while nefarious ends in only one of us feeling sated.”
She licked her lips as her teeth started to grow and her face began to elongate.
“Nefarious it is,” I said.
I backed toward the door while reaching out to see if she was alone.
Surprisingly, she was.
There were only moments left between her going full wolf and me having a shot at making a move.
So I changed tactics and lunged at her.
She tried to dive away, but being in the middle of her morphing phase made her as vulnerable as I got when trying to employ skills like Haste. Her changeover would be quicker than mine, in comparison, but it wasn’t quick enough.
I grabbed her shoulders and dumped a ton of amalgamite sexual energy into her, easily double the amount I’d filled the chick with back at McDonald’s.
She howled and stopped transitioning. It wouldn’t reverse her, but interrupting the process at all would at least keep her vulnerable.
Her eyes were wide with passion and her breathing was shallow and quick. If it weren’t for the fact that she currently looked like the love child of a pygmy and a giant wolf, I’d be really digging this at the moment.
She howled again, reminding me to let her go.
I was dumping way too much energy into her, which brought an entirely new meaning to the term “doggie style.”
Ew.
I backed away and she looked at me hungrily. Not in the way that werewolves usually looked at people either. I mean that other way.
“I underestimated you,” she said, drooling. It wasn’t attractive. “I had expected we would fight hand to hand, but you have ignited a fire in me that usually only happens when I’m in heat.”
Again, ew.
I pulled out Boomy and pointed it at her.
“Ah,” she growled seductively, “I guess it’s you who gets to play nefariously?”
“Considering that you’ve already had your happy ending,” I replied with a bit of swagger, “I’d argue naughty is more apropos, especially since I have no intention of killing you.”
She raised an eyebrow at my proclamation.
“Oh?”
“I will, if I have to, but I’m hoping you’ll be cooperative instead.”
Her response was a rumbling laugh and a shaking of her head. She then scratched her ear very fast. Fortunately, she used her hand for this. If she had used her foot, I’d have thought that far too silly.
“You have already conquered me, Mr. Dex,” she admitted without shame. “I am yours to do with as you please.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, realizing that I’d cheated in order to “conquer” her.
The saying that “all is fair in love and war” is great, but there’s something about taking advantage of a woman that never sat well with me. I just wasn’t that kind of guy. And, no, it didn’t matter that she’d originally been intent on ending my life, either. It was the principle of the thing.
“Then you’ll tell me anything I want
to know?”
“Hardly,” she replied. “I just meant that you could do anything you wanted to me in a sexual fashion.” She winked. “Maybe a little Fifty Furs of Gray action?”
“What?”
“Never mind.” She slithered up next to me. “So, what can I do for you…Master?”
“I…uh…”
“I’m very good at certain things,” she whispered while licking her lips.
“But…your teeth.”
She stood back for a moment and closed her eyes. It took longer than I would have expected, but within about thirty seconds she was back to full human.
“So you could have gone full wolf,” I stated, keeping Boomy at the ready. I wasn’t used to that being a possibility after I’d unleashed my energy into a werewolf. “Interesting.”
“Ah, you’d rather I do that before we get frisky?”
“What?” I said, grimacing. “No! I just meant that you would have been able to fight me better that way.”
Her eyes ran over my body.
“Why would I want to fight you, lover?”
Gulp.
The Admiral, which was the name Rachel had given to Little Ian, was starting to wake up. Again, this chick in human form was smokin’ hot.
But I couldn’t allow that. Still, I had to play this chick.
“Okay,” I said, tucking away Boomy. “So you want to play, do you?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.”
“Turn around, then.”
She complied without hesitation.
I whipped out a pair of handcuffs and cinched them around her wrists. She cooed in response.
Leaning in, I whispered, “Where is Rachel Cress?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
I sent a wave of energy through her. She jolted and yelped.
“Where is Rachel Cress?”
“I…” She swallowed hard. “I…can’t…”
Another wave dropped her to the ground, leaving her convulsing with pleasure. She was writhing and moaning.
Then I knelt beside her and began to reach out again.
This time I stopped.
Her eyes looked longingly at my hand.
“Please,” she hissed.
The Ian Dex Supernatural Thriller Series: Books 1 - 4 (Las Vegas Paranormal Police Department Box Sets) Page 53