by brett hicks
They waved us through and several people tried to utilize this slight break information to slip inside. Several more uniform cops ran forward brandishing their batons to discourage people from further aggressive actions.
By the time we were safely inside the revolving glass doors, Skylar was panting lightly.
“I can’t say I’ve ever seen a crime scene this bad before now and I grew up here!”
I huffed and tipped my head in agreement. I had grown up in inner-city Boston, so I knew exactly what Skylar meant. There were plenty of times where horrible crimes set off the public, but nothing short of 9-11 could compare to this!
Skylar huffed a few deep breaths relishing the sweet oxygen of the nearly empty foyer.
“Let’s just get the hell up there and see what we can see dude.”
Skylar gave me a sardonic expression and murmured, “That’s Officer Dude to you miss!”
I quipped back, “Miss Detective to you, buddy!”
We burst into a fit of laughter as the doors closed and we began our quick ascent up to the eighth floor. CSU and police officers were milling about every square inch of the eighth floor when the doors opened for us.
Everyone was wearing suits to keep from contaminating the crime scene. One of the techs tried to stop me, but I flashed him my badge.
“I’m fine, just need some gloves. My people do not shed like humans.”
My tone was as polite as I could muster, considering the stampede I had just traveled through to get up here. He looked annoyed and cross but he flagged us through. Skylar had to stop in the next room and finish jumping into his white suit.
“You know, I am sort of jealous right now.”
He muttered to me and I smirked and spared him a side-long glance as we stepped into the bedroom. The blood had tickled at my nostrils since the elevator opened, but at this distance, it was much more potent and nearly distracting. My breath hitched and I closed my eyes and willed my senses back into order. I didn’t need the other detectives up here seeing my glowing red eyes, or my long pointed canines. I was not fool enough to believe all cops believed our co-existence was copasetic.
“Jesus, this smells way worse than the other two!”
I didn’t shout, but everyone in the room seemed to whip their heads around at my statement.
“What’s the matter, the vampire afraid she might lose her shit at the sight of a little blood?”
A taunting gruff voice asked with no shortage of hostility. I didn’t need to look up to confirm this was Captain Tomblin. I scowled at the man but nodded crisply.
“It is a pleasure to see you again Sir, even if it is under such circumstances.”
Skylar nodded and said, “Good day Captain Tomblin.”
Tomblin looked at me like I was some kind of flesh-eating fungus and I was about to make a leap onto his skin. He was as much disgusted as he was hostile. This didn’t really surprise me, considering I knew this Captain was a member in good standing of HSF.
“They shouldn’t have called you down here. This is a human victim.”
My temper was threatening to rise to the surface, but I felt Skylar squeeze my right hand as he passed me.
“Sir, if we might look at the body and determine if this is the work of the same killer or just a potential copy-cat, then we can be out of your way.”
The Captain sneered at me.
“You have the little rookie beat, Johnson, fighting your battles too now?!”
I took a deep breath and I counted to ten slowly in my head and when I opened my eyes, I leveled him with a frosty look. I was trying to channel my new girlfriend’s ice-princess look. I must have done something right, because everyone stopped moving, suddenly acutely aware of the predator in the room with them.
“With what respect is due to the rank of Captain of the NYPD, Sir, I am here to solve a crime. Your little racist antics will have to remain in the confines of your own precinct and your own basement when you host your little hate-group meeting. I do not answer to you Captain nor would I ever, even if you became Police Commissioner. Now, get out of my way and let me check this victim, please.”
My smile was something horrific, and probably worse than if I had hissed and flashed pearly fangs at them. Techs and detectives began to file out of the room with all the haste of a bomb threat.
The Captain was standing dumb-struck in place.
“Officer Johnson, please help the Captain find his way to the door. He seems to be lost.”
Skylar obeyed me since I was above him in rank and we were under the same chain-of-command. While a Captain vastly out-ranked me, so long as my boss did not throw me to the wolves, I knew that all the complaints he had against me would have to travel up my totem-pole. Because of the sensitive nature of our new ICD unit, our chain of command was simple, Inspector ran our show, and the Police Commissioner had the final verdict.
The Captain seemed to snap out of his trance of indignation and he snarled at Skylar.
“Touch me and I’ll have your badge boy!”
His bitter voice seeped with venom and promised physical violence. All the way out the door he muttered choice obscenities about hiring leeches and corpse fuckers being the downfall of our government.
I didn’t try to correct him about my kind, not fucking corpses, because we could raise revenants. Revenants were essentially like vampires, but their sun aversion was stronger and their abilities were vastly different, depending on the powers of the necromancer who raised them. Revenants also required fresh raw meat to survive. Most needed some level of human flesh in their diet, but generally, they could survive on animal meat. Revenants could procreate but their offspring were what people called Dhampires. Dhampires were day-walkers who craved blood but could survive on human food. They also had more traditional vampire abilities, including the canines.
Skylar swore lowly and he shot me an apologetic smile.
“Damn that man has for hate in him!”
I nodded in agreement.
“Indeed, he is not my favorite person to deal with. Why he was given this scene is anyone’s guess!”
Skylar nodded in agreement.
“Let’s just see what we can and get the hell out of her fast. I don’t like our chances of a clean escape if we linger too long.”
Skylar’s brow arched in question.
“You think he will try something? Thea, we are both police, same as him. We do not hurt our own.”
The “Blue Wall” as it was often called. The unspoken police code of the NYPD. Amongst many other things considered to be sacrosanct was the unwritten-law of not targeting another officer. Then there was the very literal law that made assault and murder illegal.
“Sky, just take pictures and start recording me. I will talk you through everything I see and sense on the body. I have a very bad feeling about this.”
He nodded and he cleared his throat as he whipped out his camera phone from beneath his white suit. Skylar was recording the scene with his phone now.
I stepped further into the room and a girl chalk-white lay naked and her body brutalized. I could smell the stench of male musk and semen on the body. I could smell something human, but the scent was tangy and blended with something other. Feint wafts of violent magic and starvation swirled around her body.
The wounds were similar, but then her abdomen seemed to have been chewed on, as if by a large predator—or an inhuman. I swore to myself.
“I smell human male, same as the trace scent on the first two scenes. This time he did not use a condom and I can make out something less human mixed into his scent. A single attacker, so whatever he is, he seemed to have jaws powerful enough to make this bite-marks and gnawing of flesh and bone. My nose and my magical sense tell me he is both mortal and not at the same time. I have not yet encountered this blend before. No known inhuman in my domain carries such a mix or I would have detected it when they all pledged themselves to me.”
“I’m going to take samples from the victim.
”
I reached into my leather jacket and pulled out a baggie of swabs and I plucked one free along with a loose baggie to seal it inside.
“Please keep recording as I swab the victim’s sex for DNA. I will then hand the sample over to you Officer Johnson, for safekeeping until we reach ICD headquarters.”
Skylar did not comment on how I was being so formal on the video record. I suspect the bright young man knew why I was covering our asses so hard right now. I was worried about potential evidence tampering allegations.
I leaned in and I began to work while Skylar recorded all my senses and findings. I handed him the sample and he then double-bagged it for safety. I nodded in approval and I took one more moment to burn this masculine scent into my mind. I wanted to figure out exactly what he was, even if that meant asking my kin to share this visceral memory.
Twenty-Five:
The uniforms barely looked at us as we were leaving the crime scene. Captain Tomblin was surprisingly smug and calm. My instincts were firing, telling me something was amiss. We took the elevator back down and when we were in the lobby of the apartment building; my spine seemed to tingle with the fresh rush of imminent danger.
My sword was materialized in a brilliant flare of blue-white and green magic within a split-second. Skylar was just stepping out of the elevator and I waved him back.
“No, something is wrong.”
Skylar’s eyes widened at my glowing blue-green katana. He had not yet seen my magic blade. Fresh human hostility surrounded us in all directions. Rage and contempt flared to nova and I pushed Skylar back and staggered as a metal object smacked into my lower back.
Grunting in pain, I pushed Skylar behind a column close to the elevator, just as a hail of gunfire began to roar to life. My left thigh was shredded open with a hollow-point round and the bone weakened, but not broken.
I yelped in pain and my vision was threatening to flash to red. I felt my fangs descending.
No, you can’t wig out in here! Skylar, you have to protect your partner! He’s only human!
My mental urging seemed to will my vampire half under control. Half a dozen more shots peppered the sandy colored stone walls and the column I was hiding behind. I swore to myself and my leg raged in protest and agony.
I snapped my jaw tightly shut. Skylar returned fire from the other side of the column and he was screaming into his shoulder-mounted radio unit. He called in our 20 and the code for officers in distress.
I heard those gathered shouting obscenities about me and my fanged nature. Skylar’s eyes were bug-wide now. This was a targeted assault on an inhuman and my mind flashed back to the smug look on Captain Tomblin’s face as we were leaving. I had zero proof that he was somehow the architect of this disaster, but I knew he had engineered this situation. I snarled in molten rage and vowed that if anything happened to my human partner because of that man’s bigoted blind hatred, then I would destroy him painfully and slowly.
“They’re going to rush us and try to over-run us!”
I heard myself tell Skylar, needed to raise my voice above the constant suppressive gunfire. My phone began to buzz in my left pocket and I crouched as bits of the stone column shattered above my head. Quickly I fished out the smartphone and I hit my green call button.
“This isn’t a good time!”
I said into the line without preamble.
“Thea, what on earth is going on? Did my son just call in a distress call?”
As if on cue, a bullet ricocheted past me and grazed my chin on its path, leaving an angry red line.
“Sir, we came down the elevator and we were ambushed by armed civilians. We are currently being pinned down behind a stone column near the elevator.”
“Skylar?”
The question was obvious.
“He’s ok, but if we are going to stay that way, we need to get the hell out of here!”
“Can’t you just use magic?”
I growled into the phone in anger.
“Not unless I want dead bodies and a lot of terrible press to go side-by-side with this new victim.”
The Inspector growled deeply in reluctant agreement.
“Let me see if I can get our computer tech to pull up the blueprints for that building. I’ve already dispatched the whole of our division to your location. Thea, why are the other officers on the scene not assisting you? You should have over a dozen personnel at the scene.”
I quickly recapped my encounter with Captain Tomblin. Inspector Johnson was growling through the like a wolf-shifter.
“Are you implying that you think an NYPD Captain set this up?!”
Several more bullets exploded near my head and I crouched down further. I was trying to hang myself as far out to the side as possible, so as to keep Skylar covered.
“I have no real idea! All I know is how everything looks to me! I might be a damn necromancer and a master vampire, but I just tell everything as it appears!”
Another round ripped into my wrist and I dropped my phone. Before I could pick it up again, by some stroke of luck, or by divine judgment, a bullet blew the black smartphone into two pieces.
I closed my eyes for a moment and I sucked down a deep calming breath. I rolled through my options, which felt like they were diminishing by the moment!
“Thea, we have to get the hell out of here! You need to draw your damn gun if you’re not going to use that sword!”
Something about being chided by Skylar snapped me out of my fog. I felt myself lose grip of the katana and the magic that bond the blade to my body sent it rushing back into its sheath, AKA my flesh and bone. Green magic sizzled and the blade was back to its resting state.
I pulled out my Smith and I exhaled a long breath once more before I twisted around the corner of the column. I began to squeeze off shots with my deft aim. I was the top marksman of my class for a good reason. I had a dead-eye and I was already accustomed to archery with Bix. Firing a nine-millimeter was a joke compared to the nuances of professional archery lessons with a dark ranger.
I fired a single shot before I was forced around the corner again. I could catch the surprised features of a large man with a revolver and the red blooming quickly in her chest. Skylar fired several more shouts and yells and barking could now be heard above the cacophony of gunfire.
I spun and fired another shot half-blindly and I saw a bullet explode into the upper thigh of one of the skinny men brandishing a shotgun. The next second I ducked and I leaped forward to cover Skylar, tackling him to the ground. Pellets rained down and shot peppered my side and my back muscles. I groaned in agony.
“Thea!”
Skylar shouted above the explosion of gunfire. Bullets bounced around us and I swore. Skylar’s cobalt gaze bore into me with a mix of hurt and gratitude, as well as a blend of fear and concern.
“It’s ok; they didn’t hit anything too vital.”
I groaned the words out in my agony. Skylar’s eyes were ablaze with wrath. He pulled me off him and he sat me down on my side, beside himself.
“Shit, don’t move Thea, stay there!”
I grunted and felt the pellets pressing against my raw muscles.
“I think I might need a minute.”
I agreed in a pained tone.
Skylar spun and opened up fire five times. I heard more screams and grunts. We were both marksmen, both amazingly in our respective classes. Skylar didn’t have my extra training or my natural reflexes. He was all human work and effort. He was a young man who spent his youth in gun-ranges with his father. As far as partners go, I couldn’t have asked for a better one!
His gun clicked, empty and he pressed the release on his magazine and slammed a new one from his belt into the Glock. He clicked his clip and locked his next round into the chamber before he spun and opened fire again.
“Get them now! The bitch is injured!”
A voice thundered and I swore to myself.
I don’t need to beat them, just buy enough time for the cavalr
y to arrive!
I didn’t want to use my magic against the humans, but I was unlikely to hold out until backup could arrive. My mind shot out and my magic unfolded around the entire building. I felt the chilly fingers of death brushing against my metaphysical mind.
Lowering my personal shields a bit, I felt the two dead men in the room. I had killed one and apparently, Skylar had as well. I felt all the living around us and I could sense the rooms to the back, I vaguely remembered noting a conference room and a manager’s office. We needed a distraction so we could make it to the back hall.
I pushed out my icy blue magic and I felt the dead reanimate, but I pushed further instead of just two zombies, I summoned them back as mindless ghouls.
‘Feed! Protect us!’
I commanded through my mind, into the ghouls. I sent images of myself and Skylar. The ghouls would not attack Skylar now; they would know he was mine. Death answered to me and it did not hesitate when I called.
I heard shrieks of horrors fill the room and the gunfire seemed to stop in our direction. I pulled myself up to my feet and I grabbed Skylar’s collar.
“Run, now!”
He didn’t need to be told twice, Skylar ran. Bullets trailed in our wake as I sprinted towards the back hallway. We were wide open to the rapid-fire of semi-auto weapons. I felt my back burn in renewed pain as I took a shot to the shoulder blade on my left side.
Another cut a divot in my right bicep glancing me.
“Hurry!”
The ghouls had distracted the men and were still devouring two men, but the gunfire was beginning to cut them apart. I hit the door with a massive crashing thud and I grabbed Skylar’s had and pulled him.
The world seemed to slow around me and time ceased to have any meaning. Our eyes connect and I saw the explosion of red in his gut as a twelve-gauge shotgun blast ripped his stomach open.
I screamed in abject horror and I pulled my magic tightly around myself on instinct, so I wouldn’t accidentally kill him and turn him into a ghoul. I pulled and Skylar staggered almost drunkenly into my arms and we hit inside the door as more fire began to open up behind us.