Sin's Dark Caress

by Tracey O'Hara

  The pale witch ran out onto the balcony, straight past her, and leaned over the railing, calling her name.

  “BIANCA!” Myf screamed. “HELP ME!”

  But it didn’t do any good. She was invisible. No one could see her, no one could hear her, and no one could save her.

  I’m going to die.

  He . . . she . . . it . . . closed in. The malignant presence strangled the air, making it almost impossible to breathe. The chanting increased in volume and tempo. Fear churned her stomach, pushing burning bile into her esophagus. She bent over and let loose the sweet tea they had given her to calm her nerves.

  Jimmy. This is what got him. She raised her chin to look the dark presence in the face. Except there was no face. It lifted a bone-white hand, palm up, and she rose off the ground. She was no longer in touch with Mother Earth, but she had the feeling it wouldn’t have done her any good anyway. There were no plants nearby, the actual earth was buried beneath concrete, and even the air felt cut off to her. There was nothing from which to draw her powers.

  The hooded stranger turned the hand on its side and her arms went out wide. Her jeans were cut away and her T-shirt cut open, not with a blade, but with magic. She couldn’t move and was totally helpless to stop it.

  The figure pulled a brush from inside the robe and dipped it into the challis. Using thaumaturgy, the brush lifted from the cup, the tip in dark crimson paint, and disappeared into the swirling mist beneath her feet.

  She spat at the figure. “Go on, I’m not afraid of you. Do your worst.” But it was a lie. She was afraid. Terribly afraid. Hanging in midair, helpless, dressed only in her underwear and the tattered remnants of her shirt. It tipped the challis, and crimson flowed over the pale hand and onto the ground.

  Blood. Jimmy’s blood.

  The spilled blood twisted and flowed into some sort of symbol beneath her feet. Some fell onto the stranger and soaked into the cloth until it disappeared completely, leaving only the robe unmarked. The figure placed the bloody palm against her stomach, and the dark crimson print was absorbed into her skin like it had the robe.

  Her stomach grew heavy and started to swell. Her abdomen continued to expand, growing larger and heavier. And then it moved.

  A baby.

  Her baby.

  Hers and Jimmy’s.

  And then the tears came.

  22

  The Vanishing

  Bianca leaned over the balcony and searched the ground fifteen floors below. No sign of Myf, alive or dead. She leaned back with equal parts relief and confusion.

  The front door closed. “I’m back,” McManus yelled from inside the room.

  “McManus,” Bianca called. “Quick. She’s gone.”

  “How?” he asked, placing a bag on the sofa and joining her on the balcony.

  Bianca’s growing panic threatened to overwhelm her. “I don’t know. She came out for a cigarette.”

  “Do you think she just took off somehow?”

  “I don’t know, one minute she was standing there, smoking and then . . .” Bianca looked around, then it dawned on her. “Oh no—what about Jimmy?”

  McManus put his hands on her shoulders. “Tell me everything that happened.”

  “She asked if she could smoke and . . .” Bianca trailed off as an enormous wave of black energy washed over her and Myfanwy’s broken body appeared in a pool of blood a few feet away.

  She pushed past McManus and ran to the girl’s side, almost slipping in the blood. “Myf! Myfanwy.”

  Myfanwy’s chest rose and fell shallowly. Her breath rattled in her throat and her stomach lay open like all the other bodies they’d found so far. Bianca knelt and placed her fingertips against her throat to feel the faint, slow pulse.

  “She’s still alive,” she said.

  McManus talked on his cell. There was blood everywhere, and Bianca didn’t know what to do with the girl’s intestines. There was so much damage.

  “I’ve called the paramedics.” McManus took Myf’s hand and brushed her hair back from her forehead. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Blood gurgled in her throat and coated her lips with crimson bubbles as she shifted her head to look at him. “The mist was so cold.” She coughed and her eyes closed slowly and opened again. “So cold.”

  McManus looked at Bianca. His shoulders tensed and the skin around his eyes tightened. He was just as frustrated as her. He nodded at the ground under her knee. “It’s the same killer.”

  The symbol painted in blood was still wet.

  “How did he find her, how did they know where she was?” he asked. “I thought she’d be safe here.”

  “I don’t know.” The helplessness threatened to paralyze Bianca as she squeezed Myf’s other hand.

  “Our baby . . .” the girl croaked, and coughed again. “They took our baby girl . . .” Her eyes rolled and she licked her blood-smeared lips. Bianca’s heart sank. The girl was dying.

  “What baby?” McManus asked.

  “Our baby, mine and Jimmy’s,” she said, and stared into the air with a far-off smile. “She was so beautiful.”

  “Where did you go?” McManus’s voice took on a frantic edge. “Who took you?”

  Myf’s brow furrowed and she turned to Bianca. “I called for you.”

  Tears stung Bianca’s eyes. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t find you.”

  The girl shook her head. “I was here, I could see you, hear you.” She swallowed. “In the mist . . . it came in the . . .”

  Sirens wailed to a stop in the street far below. Bianca glanced away just for a moment toward the sound and Myf’s hand went limp in hers.

  Bianca sipped hot black coffee as paramedics and cops and Goddess knew who else moved around the hotel room. She placed the cup on the end table beside her and wrapped her arms around herself. Thank the Goddess they’d let her change out of that blood-covered robe and into some of the clothes McManus brought from her apartment.

  McManus sat down beside her on the sofa and she leaned her head against his shoulder. “How’re you feeling now?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I’m just going over and over it all in my head, trying to figure out what happened. How did they find her? I mean it happened right there and I couldn’t sense her or the black magic at all.”

  He put his arm around her shoulder and his heart thudded in a steady soothing rhythm under her ear.

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” he said gently against her hair. “There was nothing you could’ve done.”

  A tiny smudge of bright blue, no bigger than a raindrop, stained his shirt not far from the tip of her nose. Yet, she didn’t have the heart to take him to task. Hell, she could use a little something herself.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Agent Neil Roberts said from just inside the door of the hotel suite.

  McManus stood as Roberts sauntered into the room with a plaster across the bridge of his nose and lifted the shades he was wearing to the top of his head. “You were told to stay away from this case, not to mention you’ve been suspended. So why are you here at my crime scene?”

  “Because I sent them,” Oberon said from behind him.

  23

  Little White Lies

  McManus smiled as Oberon DuPrie filled the doorway. Agent Roberts spun on his heel toward the door. “You were also ordered to stay away from this case, DuPrie.”

  DuPrie crossed his large leather-jacketed arms and smiled. “What case are you talking about, Roberts? Since McManus knows Sin Town so well, I asked him to help Bianca look into drug a dealer suspected of supplying the campus. The murdered girl was the dealer’s girlfriend. ”

  “That’s right,” McManus lied. “When Jimmy was murdered in a Sin Town brothel, we took Myfanwy into protective custody.”

  DuPrie nodded. “It’s just a coincidence that she tur
ned up as one of your victims.”

  Roberts’s mouth opened and closed, and McManus could almost hear the wheels spinning in the man’s head.

  “So if you are quite finished—I will take my people now,” DuPrie said, crossing the floor and placing a protective arm around Bianca.

  Roberts whipped the sunglasses off the top of his head. “They’re still witnesses to a murder and need to be questioned.”

  “You know where to find them,” DuPrie said, steering Bianca toward the door. “They’ll be writing up the report on the dealer’s death.”

  “DuPrie, I could charge you with obstruction.” Roberts’s face took on a crimson and purple shade, making the white plaster on his nose even more conspicuous. McManus got a kind of perverse enjoyment out of it. He was starting to like Oberon DuPrie.

  “Do your worst.” DuPrie threw the words over his shoulder and disappeared out the door with Bianca.

  McManus turned to the beet-faced agent, shrugged and followed.

  McManus rubbed the needle prick from the facimorphic test as they entered DuPrie’s dingy little office. Bianca was still in shock and had hardly said two words the whole trip back to the campus.

  DuPrie stood behind his desk, arms crossed and thick black eyebrows creased in a deep scowl. “Tell me everything from start to finish,” he said Bianca.

  “Look, this is my fault,” McManus said. “I dragged her into it.”

  “I’ll deal with you in a minute,” Oberon snarled at him, and leaned his hands on the table. “Bianca, I went out on a limb and lied to Roberts. Now tell me why you ignored a direct order from VCU and continued to look into the case?”

  She just stood there looking at him dumbfounded.

  “Back off, man,” McManus said, moving between Bianca and her boss. “I told you, I’m to blame, not her. I talked her into it. There’s something about this case I just can’t let go of and—”

  “Good,” the huge ursian said.

  McManus was sure he’d heard incorrectly. “What?”

  “I said good.” DuPrie reached behind a plant. “I needed to hear how committed you are to this.”

  A panel slid open to reveal an alcove, with a spiral staircase leading downward.

  “Fuck me,” McManus said.

  “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.” DuPrie’s gruff tone lightened. “But thanks for the invitation.”

  DuPrie took Bianca by the hand. “Are you okay?”

  She smiled sadly. “I will be.”

  She descended the staircase first, and McManus followed her into a modern open plan office.

  “So this is your real base of operations,” he said to Oberon.

  “Welcome to the Bunker.” DuPrie placed his hands on his hips and beamed proudly.

  Tones stood up from behind a bank of computer screens. “Captain, our guests have arrived.”

  “Excellent, show them down. We’ll wait for them in the operations room.”

  The Aeternus bobbed his hairless head. “Right, Captain.”

  DuPrie’s enormous hand fell heavily on McManus’s shoulder. “Come on, we’ve a lot to discuss.”

  The ursian guided him to a room with a long table ringed by high-backed leather chairs. A computer screen, larger than McManus’s big screen television at home, dominated the wall at the far end of the room. The Department of Parahuman Services symbol turned lazily in the center of the screen.

  He said, walking down the table, “Sweet setup you have here. Is this the department’s doing?”

  “Not officially,” DuPrie said. “Let’s just say we’re an autonomous organization that answers directly to the Five of CHaPR.”

  McManus looked through the glass walls out into the office beyond. There were a couple of people talking and bending over notes. He recognized Cody with the former medical examiner, Kitt Jordan. The Incubus looked up at that second, as though he sensed McManus’s gaze, then headed into the room.

  “Dude. I see you’ve been invited into the bat cave,” Cody said, knocking knuckles with him, a grin splitting his suntanned face. Most cops got funny around Cody, but McManus didn’t mind him, as long as he kept that emotion shit to himself.

  McManus glanced at DuPrie. “And your boss is about to tell me why.”

  “All in good time, we’ll wait for our other guests to arrive,” the ursian said.

  Bianca entered the room with her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail and looking a little more together. She took a seat opposite McManus and glanced at him quickly before giving Cody a tight smile.

  Movement caught the corner of his eye as Tones returned with three others. McManus recognized the woman immediately and stood as she entered the room, followed closely by a man even larger than DuPrie, with skin like polished obsidian. The old man from the other day brought up the rear. Even DuPrie seemed a little awed by the elegant dark-skinned woman in a figure-hugging white ankle-length lace dress.

  “Princess Akentia,” he said with deference. “Welcome.”

  Everyone in the room bowed low to the oldest and most powerful living Aeternus.

  24

  Trouble in Paradise

  “Oberon DuPrie.” The princess held out a regal hand, which he bent and kissed. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me here. This is the one of the few places I feel will be safe for us to talk.”

  “Chancellor Rudolf, it’s good to see you again. Thanks for coming,” Oberon said, shaking the old man’s hand before turning back to the princess. “Your Highness, we appreciate you coming in daylight. Can we get you some refreshments?”

  “That won’t be necessary, I fed before I came.” She clicked her fingers toward the large bodyguard. “But I’m sure Keith could do with a bite.”

  Oberon straightened his shoulders and squared off against the other male. He couldn’t help it. Ursians were a territorial breed, and this one was invading his space. Keith’s dark skin shone under the lights and his muscles rippled under the tight T-shirt. Politeness won out. Keith inclined his large boulderlike head as he deferred to Oberon’s territorial right.

  “This way please.” Tones said, guiding the minder from the room while the princess sat at the head of the table with Chancellor Rudolf by her side.

  Bianca stood by her chair, open-mouthed. McManus scowled.

  “Sit,” Oberon said to them.

  That seemed to snap them out of it and they took their seats.

  “So,” the princess started. “There has been another murder.”

  “Yes, and this time right under our noses,” Oberon said, and looked pointedly at Bianca. “Not that there was anything we could’ve done about it.”

  “There are very powerful black thaumaturgies at work here,” Bianca said.

  “What I’m about to tell you,” Akentia said, “you did not hear from me. In fact, I’m not even here.” She leaned forward with her fingers splayed in front to her and looked at Rudolf, who gave her a slight nod. “Reports are coming in from all over the world of more sadistic killings bearing the Dark Brethren symbol. Most have been proven copycats. The thaumaturgists are using this as proof that those here in New York are also just another hoax.”

  Rudolf sat forward. “They’re using this to say the Five are incompetent and trying to shift the balance of power in the council.”

  “He’s smart—for a human.” The princess’s mask of aloofness slid for just a second as she smiled at the old man. “The thaumaturgists are blocking us at every turn. They object to Rudolf’s admission to the Five, saying all members have to be parahuman and they want their representative to be appointed instead.”

  McManus said, “Who’s the representative?”

  “Marcus Hilden,” the princess said.

  “The Domina’s son?” Oberon asked.

  “Actually it’s son-in-law,” Bianca said. “We’re a matriarchal socie
ty, the gifts are passed from mother to offspring and the male takes the family name of the female he marries.”

  Oberon scowled. “I’d bet a year’s salary I know who the real power is behind the scenes. Marcus wouldn’t have the balls to shit without his mother-in-law’s permission.”

  The princess inclined her head gracefully. “We have also come to the same conclusion. It was through his instigation that VCU was made the lead in the case. Apparently there was some objection to you, Detective.” She looked directly at McManus.

  “Yes, I um . . . I pissed off the head witch,” he said in his usually tactful manner.

  “As have I. Frequently.” Akentia’s smile was forgiving.

  McManus grinned. Akentia had that effect on people.

  “You must continue to work on this. Don’t stop. The Brethren are close; I can feel the corruption growing.” Rudolf stood up as she spoke. “We will try to block the magic users as much as we can. Now if you will all please forgive me,” the princess said as she rose to her feet. “I really must be going.”

  Everyone else stood.

  “Thanks for sharing this information with us,” Oberon said, taking her hand.

  “Oh.” She stopped at the door and turned. “There is one more surprising player in all this. He’s sticking pretty much under the radar, but has recently started making donations to the thaumaturgists’ campaign.” Again she looked at McManus. “I think you’ve already had dealings with a certain drug lord in Sin Town.”

  The detective’s frown deepened. “Corey O’Shea?”

  Akentia’s regal smile was all the acknowledgment any of them needed.

  “That slippery bastard is responsible for several murders and most of the drugs in Sin Town,” McManus said, “but I’ve never been able to pin anything on him. Not even so much as a parking ticket. I think it’s time you took him up on his invitation, Sin.”

  25

  Keep on Trucking

  Bianca held up her ID. “We’re here to see Mr. O’Shea.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the uniformed security guard asked.