by brett hicks
“Is iron really that much of a secret, because all the old lore has it plastered on basically every page as the universal kryptonite for all fae-kin?”
Reece wagged his hand back and forth.
“We have been very tightlipped about our actual weaknesses. Some of the fae are not affected by iron, so we have had them step forward and hold iron in public to dissuade humans shooting us all full of iron holes.”
Debby raised her hand and gave us a faux-offended look.
“I’m right here and I’m one0hundred-percent human. I feel as if you’re discussing me to my face.”
Reece rolled his eyes and sniffed.
“You lack the proper equipment to commit these crimes, so I am going to assume you’re not the person we are speaking of.”
Debby huffed in obvious annoyance.
“Even if I had a penis I certainly wouldn’t use it for this!”
She waved to the body with blackened veins and a myriad of slash marks across her torso. She had deep punctures as well, but the wounds seemed to be inflicted in a way that they damaged flesh, but didn’t pierce vital organs.
“This guy really seems to get off on causing pain, lots of pain. None of these wounds would kill a fae, considering the blade was clearly not iron.”
Debby frowned and studied the wounds.
“How do you know that the blade was not iron Thea?”
Reece growled lowly almost shifter-like.
“Because the flesh is not blackened around the slashes and punctures. The tissue is still pink in tint. Iron leaves black like her veins.”
I nodded in agreement.
“The iron blackening her veins like this would kill her for sure, but she could have healed through the damage if she was strong. Maybe the sheer brutality of the crimes is partially to ensure that the inhuman victims do not survive?”
Reece frowned and Skylar chimed in for the first time.
“If that were the case, then he could cut off their heads, but this bastard seems to want them to suffer and die miserably. He is a real sadist.”
None of us could argue with that point.
Nine:
Burning eyes protested to the constant glare of my computer monitor. I spent the entire morning looking for any leads in the department’s database checking against violent predators with any skills that might lend them to be capable of the precision and the calculated brutality of these two murders.
Normal girls do not sit in front of their PC looking for ways to find sexual deviants. Then again when the hell have I passed for “normal?” My partner—and I do use that term loosely—abandoned me to my research in favor of running down leads without me. Reece seemed about as excited to have me as a partner as a hooker is to be told she has syphilis.
Skylar was out on patrol with his TO—training officer—which is where I should be now as well! I’m brand-new to the NYPD, so I should be in blue on patrol, but I can’t even be a typical rookie.
Sight
I like being in the detective’s chair, but I just wish I had an actual life-line to the department. Everyone has a functioning partner or at least some buddies they have acquired over their service. I am just the odd vampire out stuck in my desk, abandoned.
“Excuse me, are you Princess Thea Salvo?”
A frail feminine voice asked meekly. The oddity of my inhuman title made me snap back to reality and out of my daydreaming state. I barely remembered to minimize the grizzly images on my screen before I turned to look at the woman.
A red-eyed young-ish looking dirty-blonde woman was peering at me with a mix of grief and skittishness. Looking at the woman’s features made her daughter’s grizzly bloodied corpse pop into my mind as if I had summoned the image. This woman looked very nearly like Jamie Herndon if only a little older, but not much. At least not in human terms of age.
“Mrs. Herndon?”
I asked in a calm tone. Her eyes widened a bit as if she was surprised that I knew her name.
“Yes, Princess.”
I looked around and I leaned in conspiratorially.
“Don’t call me Princess I am just Detective Salvo or Thea. Please, would you like a seat?”
She nibbled on her lip and nodded meekly. I could smell the musk of her animal, something soft and fury. She was not a predator. My instincts told me she was prey, something that I would have enjoyed hunting.
“Thank you for seeing me Prin… Detective Salvo.”
She corrected herself and I smiled warmly to her.
“Of course, I’m so sorry for your loss Mrs. Herndon. I’m going to do everything in my power to see that this bastard fries for all that he has done.”
Her lip quivered and she nodded, fresh tears began to leak through her eyes running down her cheeks. I remembered my grief counseling courses and I touched her right hand gently and I gave her a reassuring smile.
“Let me get you some tissues Mrs. Herndon, then we will sit down and talk about your daughter as much as you can.”
She nodded and she murmured a weak “thank you.”
I strode off and searched out the room for a box of tissues. Being that this was a department akin to homicide, I found some in a blue box on one of the other detective’s desks.
Now would be a good time to have a partner to ask, if it is ok to take his damn tissue box! Damn Reece!
I cursed my partner, not for the first time and I snatched the tissues. I made sure not to show my frustration as I approached Mrs. Herndon. She was slim and slender with a frail form wisp-like. She had light brown eyes and a very subtle type of beauty. Her daughter had been more obviously attractive, but both had their charms.
I still couldn’t place what that smell was. She smelled mammal, but not canine or feline. She was something else, something else that also had a lot of fur and did not hunt other creatures. Shifters did come in harmless shapes as well as predators. The Alchemists had apparently been very liberal with their creations.
Some shifters of weaker races had a long life but also had to look over their shoulders constantly, always being hunted. Being the immortal prey amongst a huge proverbial den of predators must suck! I would not know what to do with myself if I was not strong enough to defend myself.
“Thank you, you are very polite. Jamie said that she saw you a few months ago and that you were very easy to talk to.”
I furrowed my brows and I softly asked, “I don’t remember ever speaking to your daughter Mrs. Herndon.”
She shook her head and sighed lightly.
“Jamie watched you; she was working up the nerve to talk to you directly. We are the hunted you see, so we are not very comfortable around vampires, much less Necrovamps. She told me that you treated everyone fairly and did not flaunt your power. Jamie greatly admired you, Princess.”
My heart felt like it had been sent through a shredder. This girl was one of mine and I had failed her! This had bothered me before now, but her mother drove the point home. She was not accusing me of anything or placing blame on me. She spoke of me like I was Jamie’s superhero and that hurt ten-fold as bad as being blamed.
“I really wish I could have gotten to know Jamie. I have learned a lot about the type of girl she was while I have been trying to figure out what happened to her. Jamie was a marvelous young woman who seemed to give and give to those around her.”
Mrs. Herndon’s lip tremor in her obvious grief and I waited as she sniffled and blew into her tissues. I knew that I should be jumping into my questions, but I didn’t think she was ready yet. I just sat with Mrs. Herndon and I let her cry. She must have just come from the morgue because I could smell the fresh death clinging to her. She was raw with her grief and her shock.
None of my co-workers seemed to pay us any mind. Grieving relatives were just a part of the job here, not that I thought the cops around me were uncaring. So I just waited Mrs. Herndon’s crying out and did not crowd her space.
***
Eventually, Mrs. Herndon did calm down, but her c
alm was very fragile.
“If you’re ok, I would like to ask you some questions about Jamie. I need as much accurate information about her life as I can, so I can figure out what happened.”
Her light brown eyes looked up at me and I saw a steel firm itself in her will. She was a mother and she would not let her child down. Mrs. Herndon nodded and she cleared her throat.
“I am ready to begin Detective Salvo, please.”
I smiled politely to her and I opened my electronic file on Jamie. This section was for personal information and social habits.
“Did Jamie have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, any lovers?”
She bit her lip and seemed to think for a very long moment before shaking her head no.
“She would have told me, we were close and Jamie was a very shy girl. She was a lot like me in that regard.”
I nodded and I typed up single and introverted.
“Did she have anyone she was having problems with at all? Did she have any enemies or anyone who might have been giving her a hard time?”
She shook her head no.
“She would have mentioned that to me. I was planning to move her to be with her, but I was busy trying to close out my shop in North Carolina. We had a very rough time down there and Jamie’s dad was killed by a wolf shifter on a full-moon phasing. After that, we kept ourselves very closely guarded and we talked to each other about any possible threats. Being very keenly aware of the atmosphere of your area is essential to those of us who are not carnivorous.”
“Is there any reason to believe the wolf who killed her father would come here? Did he or she continue to harass your family?”
I typed up wolf-shifter killed father, as I waited for her response.
“No, he did not have any grudge with our family. Shifters get more animal and less human on the moon phases. He did not know that the rabbit he killed was a shifter until the next day. This happens sometimes amongst our kin.”
Rabbit now it all makes sense!
I quickly typed in that Jamie was a rabbit shifter, since her mother did not mention her husband being different from her or their child.
“You’re sure of this?”
She nodded vigorously.
“I am sure because I would have done anything to keep my child safe, even if that meant resorting to violence.”
Her resolve burned at my gut and my guilty heart clenched.
“Did Jamie have any trouble with co-workers or any of the inhumans in New York City?”
She shook her head no quickly.
“She had just started working as an editor for the new fairy ran new paper.”
I had learned as much, Jamie had a degree in English and she was a junior editor for the social column of the Fairy Flare News. With the exposure of inhumans to the mortal populace, we now started to openly form inhuman companies, or reveal the truth of inhuman ran companies. Most inhumans feel more comfortable working for and with one another.
“What did she think of Fairy Flare? Did she have any issues or any problems with a boss? Did they have any problems with any employees?”
She crinkled her brow in her deep focus.
“I don’t think so, nothing that Jamie had spoken of and she was very detailed about her accounts of her time here in New York. She was happy here like she finally found her home.”
I closed my eyes and I sucked down a deep breath. I had failed this young woman in my complacency. I have been brooding around and working through my police academy drama, while people were in danger. All I wanted to do was turn the clock back and give this woman her child back. Being a necromancer I could raise Jamie from the dead, but she would lose herself being unable to change shapes and answer nature’s call.
The sad thing was that the only way for me to do anything for Jamie would be to figure out who was killing young women and why. Nothing short of this would suffice, not with the ultimate price these two women have already paid.
I finished typing up the information Mrs. Herndon had given me and I allowed her time to clean up again. She was a very sweet natured woman and would have made any girl proud to call her mom.
“Mrs. Herndon, we have free apartments in several secured locations here on Manhattan Island. I promise you that no one on this island will harm you. I will not allow that, so you are free to stay here. I am just so sorry that I failed to protect your daughter.”
Her lips trembled and she nodded weakly.
“We are prey, so this is common to us. We do not hope to live the extended lives of the predators of the wilds, but we do cherish the time we are granted. I cannot blame you, not when you have a whole city to worry about.”
Her forgiveness seemed to burn me. I would have preferred if she had been raging at me, not being maternal.
“I’ll have to do better for now on. I cannot have this happening on my watch Mrs. Herndon.”
My resolve was firm and my determination to string this bastard up by his testicles was clear in my eyes.
“I’m Megan, Megan Herndon.”
She told me and I led her to the elevator. I would see her to Seri myself so that I knew that at least she was safe.
Ten:
Seri was still reeling from her kin bringing the grieving mother to her door. She had seen the rabbit and other various shifter prey animals torn apart over the years, but it had pricked her deeply this time. Thea was taking this case personally and Seri was beginning to see why. Thea was still only twenty-two, for all her powers and all her brains; she was a very young adult.
Thea had already wrangled all her shifter leaders and told them that they would have to figure out new methods of interaction with the prey animals so that inhumans were not lost. Seri admired how much the young woman cared about life, all life regardless of sect or creed. Thea Salvo loved life, which was ironic, considering she was attuned to the dead.
Seri’s reveries were cut short as she approached the scene of the second murdered girl. Bix had woven a tight glamor over Seri’s features to obscure her from public attention. These murders didn’t need more press! As things stood the murders were drawing all the wrong kinds of attention to the inhuman populace.
Radical human elements were commending the work of the depraved man behind the attacks. Inhumans were growing more hostile by the second. Shifters were up in arms and now so were the fairies. The fairies scarcely found a common cause to stand behind, but death by iron poisoning and exsanguination seemed to do the trick!
New York was a powder keg waiting for a match to fall on it. With the tenuous post-Dawning peace, this gave many elements a much-desired excuse to pursue their grievances. Seri had to forcibly restrain several of her more powerful fae soldiers from seeking out any blind retaliation they could. Considering the anti-inhuman rhetoric passing around the streets these days, she didn’t want her people giving the hate groups any ammunition to use against them.
Bix was miffed to say the very least, but she understood that discretion was the better part of valor. Liam was watching over the bulk of Manhattan’s immortals, which Seri had ordered to stay in-doors and behind wards.
Until they found the killer, she would not risk more of her people’s lives. For the first time in her long life, she missed the dead Ice Queen. At least she was the devil that Seri had known! She was a devil that had preferred to drown her victims than to commit such depraved acts and homicide. At least most deaths were quick and painless and none of them were particularly personal against the victims, rather a message to Seri herself.
She had never missed the former queen until this murder appeared. However, she knew that the old ways were no longer working with the post-Dawning world.
“Have the human authorities left any plain-clothes on this building to keep an eye out?”
Seri asked Bix, who was striding right beside her as they stepped into the elevator.
“They have, but I will cast one of my best Don’t-Look-Here spells once we step out of the elevator. Human eyes will not be able t
o spot us.”
Seri nodded her agreement. While Bix was torn between her love for Liam and her duty to Seri, she knew that Seri’s need of her magic and a keen deductive eye was more ardent right now. Besides, she wanted to cut a few bits out of the rapist and murder, before she ultimately shipped him to Thea gift-wrapped and ready for prison.
“I know this is stating the obvious, but a lot of people are not satisfied with your orders to turn over the murderer to the human justice system. Considering how they botched up Dean Sylvester’s arrest, I cannot say I blame their concerns.”
Seri considered her friend and trusted right-hand’s words carefully. Bix was not a woman of a temperament to complain or point out Seri’s faults. Bix was a ridged by-the-book kind of woman. She obeyed Seri without question or complains, so Seri understood the significance of Bix bringing such a topic to her attention.
“Normally, I would agree, but Thea is now inside the NYPD. I believe her boss, Inspector Johnson, will use this case as a precedent to prove human cooperation. I have met the man more than once and Liam dug deep into his history. He is clean and his motives seem genuine. Make sure that any party concerned are reassured that I will not let this ball be dropped and neither will Thea.”
Bix nodded curtly and she began to weave her spell and the scent of fresh roses and wildflowers tickled Seri’s nose. Bix was a nature-aligned light-elf and her magic over illusion was only eclipsed by her control and manipulation of the green and wild things of the world.
“I will convey your reassurances verbatim so that none are tempted to act out of turn.”
Bix’s ominous tone told how grave the consequences for disobeying the Crown Princess’ commands would be in this case. Bix and the dark elven rangers she was raised with had taken to Seri as their mistress due to her particular brand of equality and fair treatment of all species. Elves were loyal to a fault, but only if the ruler earned their loyalty. Seri had paid a steep blood-price to protect her elven subjects from great danger when they were fleeing the old-world. Like Bix’s kin Liam, most of the inhumans who settled the Americas had horror stories.