Then I saw the cut on his left leg. Yellow blood was dribbling out over the sharp edge of his knee. My strike had cut him.
Grinning, I moved forward. “How did you get here, del-yun?”
Advancing as well, he answered with impatience. “Beneath.”
“Beneath where? Here? There’s an exit under the depot?”
Five feet apart, his stare was unwavering. “You may kill me, shifter, but more will come. They have to,” he said, desperate and raspy. “It is…necessity.”
“Yeah, you’re starving. I heard. I don’t care.” I pitched the railing at his face. As the del-yun turned his head to avoid the blow, I drew up my fire, dropped to a crouch, and slammed both hands, palms down, onto his blood trail. As the fluid ignited, I reached through the fire and gripped his legs. Pulling him into the burning stream, I dropped the creature with a thud and a surge of blinding flame.
Scrambling back, I sat a moment and caught my breath. I watched his body blister and his gray skin char and peel away. When the stench of his burning flesh became too much, I stood and moved off. It was time to clean up.
I burned the bodies of the del-yun’s human victims one at a time; cremating them with a high heat. Then I moved the few remaining planks covering the hole in the floor, and peered into the basement. It looked like an old maintenance room, but it smelled like an overflowing outhouse. The floor was crowded with busted machinery, rusted containers, dusty bottles, old paint cans, and del-yun waste. Their nest was in the center. Gathering what they could find, they’d built their temporary den from grass and garbage, and decorated it with half-chewed ribbons of human skin.
I dropped a shower of fire onto the nest. Another onto the paint cans. Whatever trace amounts of accelerants remained in the room sped things along, and the flames feasted quickly.
Moving on, walking the length of the old depot, I torched whatever junk and debris would burn the evidence fastest. I found my knife in a puddle of bubbling green. I wiped it off on a torn chair cushion, put the blade away, and set fire to the cushion. I couldn’t leave anything to be identified, any trace. The abandoned structure going up in flames needed to be an accident. The six had to forever remain missing persons.
I put my scales away as I walked outside. The summer night was hot and breezy on my human skin. It cooled some as I left the fire behind and veered off the tracks. Mindful of my bare feet, I jogged up a slight incline to the road. I’d left my jeep parked on the shoulder, far from the nearest street lamp. Having left the top off (in preparation for a quick getaway), I hopped up onto the running board and climbed inside. The second I hit the seat, my back pocket vibrated.
Lifting up, I pulled my phone out. I didn’t bother looking at who was calling. I’d been back in the city six weeks. It was a new phone, and only one person had the number.
“Oren,” I answered. “It’s done.”
“Excellent,” he replied, a slight smile in his voice. “Discreet, I hope.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the depot, blazing bright against the night sky. “Always.”
“Uh huh,” was all he said. But Oren knew better. The only one of my kind I kept in contact with, Oren Parish was my confidant, my mentor, and the unofficial source of my off-the-record, subcontracted assignments. He was also a centuries-old shifter who hadn’t established himself as an important figure in two worlds by shining light on his every move.
My actions weren’t that conspicuous, but he’d still lecture me later.
“I’m fine, by the way,” I said. “If that’s why you’re calling.”
“It’s not. You had one engorged del-yun to deal with. What’s there to worry about?”
“Right,” I muttered, frowning at my dirty feet and tattered jeans as I reached under the seat for my keys.
“Now go home, wash up, and change. I have something different for you.”
“Tonight?” It had been well after midnight when I walked into the depot. After the fight and the clean-up, all I wanted was a hot shower and a cold beer.
“I know it’s late,” he said, sensing my frustration. “And I know it puts a strain on your ability, going from one stain of violence to the next. If you don’t think you can handle it…”
Oren knew I wouldn’t say no. He also understood that being exposed to a succession of traumas didn’t lower the effectiveness of my empathic ability. What it wore down was my capacity for blocking it out. And what it gave me was headaches. “What’s the job?”
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Go home, take those pills I gave you, and get some rest.”
“The pills won’t help.”
“How do you know if you don’t take one? We’ve talked about this, Dahl. You have issues,” he said delicately.
“Thanks for pointing that out. Now tell me what the damn job is.”
Oren relented with a sigh. “I just hung up with the Chief of Police. He’s looking for an arson specialist to consult on a murder investigation.”
“Arson consultant? Interesting. I haven’t been one of those for a while.”
“He requested someone outside the department with discretion and an open mind. You have at least one of those qualifications,” he added dryly. “This isn’t a single consult. They want you on the case until it’s done. So you’ll have to play nice for a few days. Credentials are taken care of. I trust you have the equipment?”
Sirens were approaching. I started the engine and pulled onto the road. “Of course.”
“There might be some press around this one, Dahl. Treat it as a standard catch, clean, and cover, and get it done fast. I’ll text you the address.”
“Any details?”
“Only that it’s gruesome and unexplainable.”
I hung up and tossed the phone on the passenger seat. “Perfect.”
Two
We all have ghosts. Not the floating specters that rise from lonely gravestones on a moonlit night. Not the mischievous spirits that rattle chains or stomp their invisible feet across attic floors. Sparked by emotion, bred by trauma, these shadowy phantoms attach with sticky grips and a heavy weight, and they’re damn hard to shake. Dragging on every step, cleaving to souls like a stubborn wad of gum; they cling, embrace, pollute.
It took me a long time to understand that, to grasp the nature of what truly haunted the human race, and so many others: the remnants of their own pain. Longer, to accept that it wasn’t visible to anyone but me. That the faded wisps trailing like burnt breadcrumbs off their footsteps were the half-digested stress of past trauma. The slicks of oily sludge I saw fouling the ground were the scars their violence had left on the land
Only, I didn’t merely see humanity’s ghosts. I felt them.
When the residue of violence was fresh, it was a flash flood of emotion that struck with little to no warning. At other times, I could stand in a puddle of blood and get nothing. I could push it away, if I had to. I’d gotten good at that over the years, since my empathy first reared its head in a sudden, inexplicable, life-altering moment. Being suddenly steeped in the cruelty, depravity, and suffering of others—without warning or explanation—could have easily broken me. Instead, I learned to use it and to find a use for it.
Being empathic gave me an edge. It was an effective means of gathering evidence in hunting and disposing of the various off-world species that crossed illegally through the exits. Few who wandered into the human realm were simply innocent strays. Most were blatant rule-breakers who believed it was acceptable to use someone else’s home as their playground or dinner table. And that really pissed me off.
I didn’t care what crimes they committed on their own worlds. And though I hadn’t been back in nearly a hundred years, I never worried for Drimera. My homeland had been cared for by the dragons for eons. Only once, long before I was born, when the exits first opened and the reality of what was out there poured through, had Drimera faced a serious threat.
But here was different. Here was fragile.
Unlike so many oth
er species, humans were still innocent of the truth. They didn’t know what lurked in the dark, or how much they owed their safety to the vigilance of the elders. They were unaware monsters walked among them, including me.
A monster they’d unknowingly harbored when I had nowhere else to go.
The least I could do for their unknown kindness was help keep the worst of us in check. Of course, by doing so, I was protecting Drimera anyway. Because once the truth was revealed and humans discovered the plethora of diverse worlds to explore, worlds lush with untapped resources, begging to be raped and pillaged and conquered—they would do just that.
I didn’t blame them. It was in their nature. As was the elders’ obligation to fight back. Once they did, or perhaps even before, other worlds would join in. I didn’t want to know what any of them would look like when it was done. So I did what I could to keep the lie in place and the monsters in their place.
This time, though, I was too late. The monsters have already come and gone, I thought, scanning the residential neighborhood where Oren had sent me. It was one of the few outlying sections of the city that had managed to escape being over-developed. The homes were all at least seventy years old, some were pushing a hundred. All were in decent shape, though, with caring owners and fenced in yards. It was a quiet and charming community, vastly different from the densely populated urban sprawl of commerce and industry that lay only ten miles away: Sentinel City’s downtown district.
Filled with the staggeringly rich, the staggeringly poor, and the staggeringly crooked, long-term residents referred to it simply as ‘the Sentinel’. Anything outside that small nucleus was considered exactly that: outside. Including the sleepy cul-de-sac where I was standing—on the wrong side of the police barricade, staring at a street awash in newborn waves of black emotion. It hung like a low-lying fog, shiny and fresh on top, with a lighter, misty layer underneath.
New pain was overlapping the old.
Violence had come here before.
Not that I knew what had happened then or now to leave such an impact. Having arrived way before dawn, I’d bullied my way through a small gauntlet of uniformed officers only to watch the detectives, and the entire forensics department, come and go. It had been hours, and I still had no idea why I was here.
One more try, I thought, catching the eye of a young SCPD officer headed in my direction. The only one to even glance my way in the last fifteen minutes, as his scrutiny lingered, I took advantage of his curiosity and waved him over.
In his mid-twenties (a couple years younger than my apparent human age), his clean shaven, classic boy next door features fell flat as he approached. Sizing me up with brown eyes and a pensive frown, I could almost see his synapses firing as the officer made assumptions based on my appearance and body language. On the outside, I made it easy for him. A leggy red-head in white coveralls and no makeup, I stood with a black duffle bag on my shoulder and a hand of annoyance on my hip. Dark circles of exhaustion ringed my eyes. Clearly, I wasn’t a spectator, and I wasn’t press. Still, he slid a reflexive hand to his belt in case whatever he’d surmised about me was wrong—which it was. If only he knew how wrong.
What would he do? I wondered, looking past his mask of detached civility to the hint of mischief in his gaze. There was intelligence there, hidden in the background. Or was it merely overshadowed by what most would notice first: his toned six-foot frame and careless dirty-blond hair (thick strands that were likely pushing the department limit on a regular basis).
The man closed in. I unzipped my coveralls down to my waist and pulled a hairclip from the front pocket of my jeans. Gathering my unruly hair in a ponytail, I secured the mess of red waves on top of my head. As the officer stopped on the other side of the barricade, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my business card.
Smiling, I handed him the card. “Morning.”
With a neutral gaze, he held the small rectangle with my most recent contrived occupation between two fingers. He read aloud. “Dahlia Nite, Certified Consultant.”
“That’s me.”
“Nite?” he said again. Clearing his throat, he banished the dubious grin tugging at his lips. “Is that like an alias, or a stage name, or something?”
“Nope.” Not that one. “It’s the real thing. I’m not from around here.”
“Uh huh.”
As he continued staring at my business card like it held the secrets of the universe, I looked past him to the house; cordoned off with enough yellow crime-scene tape to make it glow in the dark. The windows were soot free and intact. The drawn curtains were white; pretty against pale gray siding. No visible charring stained the roof. The air on the street smelled of motor oil and mulch, not smoke. I peered to my right as the last fire truck pulled lazily away from the curb. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m not exactly sure why I’m here.”
His high forehead crinkled, and the man’s face lost a shade. “No one told you?”
“I heard arson and an address. At the time, the details didn’t matter. But from the looks of the house, I’m thinking I might be overdressed.” I plucked at the front of my coveralls. “If there’s anything you can tell me, I’d appreciate it, Officer…?”
“Evans,” he said, absently, his frown coming back, deeper than before. Memory glazed his expression. He twisted slightly, as if to look over his shoulder. Resisting the urge, he stopped.
I looked for him. There was nothing there.
That didn’t mean the ghost of whatever had rattled him wasn’t straggling at his heels. At the moment, I just couldn’t see it.
When I looked back at Officer Evans, his eyes were roaming over my attire. He wasn’t leering. My less-than-professional black tube top and faded jeans seemed to amuse him. “It gets hot in these things,” I said, zipping up my coveralls.
“Better you than me.” Evans stared down at my card again. He flipped it over to display the only thing printed on the back: my cell number. “Guess you really aren’t big on details.” It was a lame joke, but those were the kind people made when they were nervous. “What exactly are you a specialist in, Miss Nite?” he asked, with a quick confirming glance at my ring finger.
“Fires,” I said.
“Setting them or putting them out?”
“Both. But I didn’t think I should put that on my card. What you don’t know can’t kill you and all.”
His lips twitched. “I don’t think that’s how it goes.”
“Maybe it should be.”
Evans grunted. The tension left his face. Some of the mischief in his eyes surfaced and his front dropped a smidge. It was time to push. “I haven’t been to bed yet, Officer, so forgive me if I’m terse. But at the request of your Chief and the city’s Fire Marshall, I drove out here at an hour I try really hard never to see. If there’s no one here with the authority to let me in before the coroner takes the bodies, then—”
“Relax. The Chief said to let you have full access once the house was empty.” Evans waived to a thin dark-haired officer standing nearby. The man waved back with the clipboard in his hand and made his way over. Evans showed him my business card and he jotted my information down in the log book.
It was procedure to make note of everyone who entered the crime scene, but I’d been standing around long enough. I needed to act. “So is it empty?” I said.
Both officers looked up from the clipboard. Neither appeared thrilled with the impatience in my voice. Evans thanked the other man and waited for him to leave before answering me. “Let me find someone to take you in.”
As he slid my card in his pocket, Evans scanned the remaining police presence on the street. There were more uniforms than I’d seen in one place in a long time. Most were on sidewalks and in nearby doorways, interviewing pajama-clad neighbors with shock on their faces and coffee cups clutched in their hands. The rest of his fellow officers were on crowd control, keeping the growing number of onlookers and press back from the barricades. Not one of his coworkers seemed a
ble to pull away any time soon.
“And I guess that would be me,” he muttered.
I read the dread on his face. “Have you been inside yet?”
“My partner and I were first on the scene. I’ve been in. I’m just not anxious to go back.” Shoving away his reluctance, Evans inclined his head at the glut of news vans lined up down the street. Cameras were rolling. Microphones were being shoved across the barricades. Eager reporters were fixing their hair and straightening their ties, eyes bright with the prospect of opportunity. “It’ll be a feeding frenzy when this gets out.”
His trepidation catching, I said nothing. Evans moved the barricade aside and granted me admission to somewhere I was starting to think I didn’t want to be. As we crossed the street, I tried not to let his demeanor influence my assessment, and evaluated the house.
A gray one story dwelling on a shady corner lot, its construction was simple and far from new. Yet, aside from noisy, outdated air conditioners rattling in three of the windows, there were no obvious signs of neglect. The fenced-in yard was notably larger than any other in view. Inside the fence, both the grass and the yellow rose garden bordering the porch appeared well cared-for.
The structure itself was unremarkable. Visibly, nothing was amiss. It was a normal house, lacking any evidence of damage, fire or otherwise. Picture perfect.
Yet I knew. The more normal and perfect something appeared on the outside, the more messed up it was underneath where no one could see. I was proof of that.
I slowed and let Evans get a couple steps ahead. Looking down and away, I let my eyes widen and elongate. Irises changing, I scanned the lawn again. It took five seconds to find the prints the police hadn’t.
Couldn’t, I thought, being fair.
Analyzing the bends in the grass, I discounted those that were child-sized. Of the ones remaining, none were directly under the front windows or indicated any type of scuffle. An inordinate amount of prints were coming from the back of the house to the front, but hardly any went the other way. I made a mental note to check the indentations more carefully later and reclaimed my human eyes.
Nite Fire: Flash Point Page 3