“What happened?”
Sam whined as Michael took the last step down. His designer shoes clicking on the failing hardwood. “The wolf grieves his friends,” Michael said.
I turned to look at him, my hands still in Sam’s fur. “How do you know that?”
“It’s there in his call. He mourns something. I don’t know who exactly.”
“Sam,” I whispered.
I glanced back over my shoulder, but Michael had disappeared. Hopefully somewhere that was not my bedroom. My legs buckled from the crouch, and I landed on my butt. Sam lay down, and I stretched my legs out too and held his head in my lap. Whimpers poured out of him until tears streamed down my own face. I had no idea who I cried for. Maybe myself at this point. No one ever cried for me when I died, be it hit by a random car or pure malicious murder.
“Sam, I don’t know how much you understand in this form, but please know I am here for you. Whatever you need when you come back. I’m here, and you’re not alone.” I curled up beside him and pressed my face into his fur. It smelled a little like pine cones with the slight metallic tang of blood. Not something I’d be able to think about, especially after what I found in the coven house.
If Sam’s people were dead, then that meant someone wasn’t just hunting witches. They were hunting supers. Or at the very least witches and shifters. I didn’t have widespread access to other reports that might be able to tell me more. For the first time, I wish I’d cultivated a contact with the police so I could be able to track that avenue.
I smacked my fist against my forehead. “You’re a damn hacker woman. Figure it out.”
When it came to hacking, the hardcore black hat stuff…well…I avoided it. That sort of thing can gain a person far more attention than I wanted in my life. But, I’m also a very good hacker. I could slip into the police systems and back out without detection. It would be so easy, a nine-year-old could handle it. Especially since police funding went more toward weapons and defense than the latest computer and technology upgrades. No Bruce Wayne here to keep Gotham up and running.
With Sam in this shape, though, I’d have to wait until tomorrow. I promised him I wouldn’t leave him, and I intended to keep that promise. He’d been there for me, in his own way, the last couple times I’d lost my life. And the other night when I got back, he’d done the same thing. It meant a lot to me to have him as a friend, and I wouldn’t jeopardize that to hunt down a hunch.
The night grew quiet, and Sam’s whimpers gave way to snoring. I curled up with him on the hard, cold floor. Angel came in at some point and stared down at us wide eyed. I didn’t think he’d ever seen Sam in shifter form before. And before tonight, I’d also never seen it. Shifters didn’t often show this side to people they didn’t intend to have a lifelong connection with. I supposed I should be worried about that, but, another task for tomorrow.
Angel brought me a pillow and blanket, and I spread the worn microfiber fleece over both Sam and I. No doubt in the morning when we woke up, I’d be hurting, but that didn’t matter.
After Angel went to bed, I stayed there, watching, waiting, doing nothing but monitor the rise and fall of Sam’s chest. He slept on, peacefully. It would seem that after decades of disavowing any friendships and connections outside of what was strictly necessary, I had let someone into my life whom I didn’t mind keeping around.
Sam meant more to me than I was ready to admit. Probably not the way he wanted me, considering our past activities, but it was all I’d be capable of offering. Friendship. A strange and almost foreign concept in a world where everyone was out for their own ends.
I rubbed the soft spot behind Sam’s ears, and as the early morning started to turn the sky gray outside the windows, I finally drifted off.
Chapter 8
I woke up to a feeling of weightlessness. When I opened my eyes, I stared up at Sam, his face drawn tight and fierce. I feared speaking, as I didn’t know if I could handle seeing him cry in this form. Now that the full moon was gone, he had changed back and wouldn’t shift again until next month.
He carried me to my bed and left. I thought he was gone for good until he returned with basketball shorts on. I hadn’t even noticed he walked out of my room still naked from his shift.
He curled up behind me and pulled my quilt to our chins.
“Are you okay?”
All I felt was his forehead shaking back and forth against my shoulder blade, and I stopped talking and let him use me for comfort. We’d done that for each other over the last few years, and I hoped last night hadn’t changed that.
Neither of us could sleep now, still thinking on the events of the night I supposed. “Did you want to talk about it?” I tried, definitely hoping he said no.
My relief was palpable in the room when he responded in a gruff and grumbly tone, his voice still ragged from the howling. After a shift, I didn’t see him for a day. I wondered if now was because I’d stayed with him or because he hadn’t gotten to run and be with his people
Either way, I racked my brain trying to think of anything I could do to help him. For right now, this seemed to be all he needed, so I lay there and let him hug me tight, and I prayed I didn’t feel the hot fall of tears, or else I wouldn’t be able to control my own again. I was not the type of woman to cry…ever. It happened maybe once every five years or so. I think after being brutally murdered this year, I got a pass for it.
The images of those girls in the house flashed through my mind like a broken movie reel, too big and too wide for real life. I wished I’d never seen it. Part of me wished I’d never even gone to that house.
If these people had left me alone, maybe I could have avoided all of this. Sam’s nose in between my shoulders told me that was a lie. One way or another, it would have eventually touched me, and then I would have felt obligated to help seek out the truth.
Why couldn’t I be one of those wall flowers who were content with other people doing the dirty work? It was safer and a lot easier on the wardrobe.
“Are you hungry?” I whispered. This time, I got a nod, and I fairly rolled over him to get out of the bed to find him something to eat. Sam always ate heavy on the day after a shift, so I started making him a bacon and egg sandwich. The house was quiet as the clock struck seven.
A ping came from somewhere. I ignored it. Then the follow up you-didn’t-answer-fast-enough ping came next. I headed into the living room to find the source of the noise. My phone lay on the floor by the staircase. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I held Sam.
I snagged it and went back to the kitchen while I checked the screen. Almost dead but the dating app was still open, and apparently, I had gotten a message. I opened it, and the image of Blake House filled the small device causing me to drop the phone. It smacked hard on the tile kitchen floor, and I cursed out loud. I bent and picked it up careful to move the screen so I didn’t see the slaughter again. The message came from the same hacker I had found yesterday. Quartrain.
Then the murderer had to be a super. No human could access my app. Only someone with magic in them were able to make an account. That spell cost me almost a pint of blood. I had to gain nearly five pounds to start feeling more like myself afterward. But that didn’t make sense to me. Why would a super be killing his own kind? There was the occasional human slaughter which started rumors of vampires or werewolves. It usually inspired some paranormal romance and then died back down for a few decades. The world had a cycle, and it liked to stick to it.
These murders broke the mold, and I was lost now. I’d though I had a bead on it, but as I flipped Sam’s eggs, I admitted to myself I might be in way over my head.
Then it hit me. The app. My app. The killer used my app to hunt down unsuspecting supers. I needed to take it down. Now.
I assembled Sam’s sandwiches and almost dropped them on him in my haste to hand them off and get to my computer. Instead of connecting to my own network, I used the Wi-Fi of our neighbors and hooked myself back into my own s
ystem. This way if the hacker gained access to my network, he wouldn’t be able to see what I was trying to do and circumvent me again. Also, this was my last laptop, and I doubt Angel would loan me his if there was a chance of it getting wrecked by a murderous super.
As I typed, my brain fired the opposite way, calming and trying to piece together what I knew about the entire situation. What I knew about the murders and the where the hell Michael fit in there.
He popped into my head unwelcome and a little alarmingly. It was the sheets. I’d been thinking about my bedsheets and then him making my bed.
“What are you thinking about?” Sam asked, gravelly.
I didn’t look at him while I answered. “Nothing, just a lead on this thing I’m trying to figure out.”
“Tell me,” he said, his voice now muffled by eggs and bacon and English muffin. “Let me help you. Let me help my people.”
I darted my gaze over to him for a second. He looked so much like my Sam, but something had changed in his eyes. That carefree man was gone. The world had hardened him now, and it hurt me to look at. Such a fast change. He must have seen something horrible for it to affect him that fast. It took me years to start looking the same on the outside as I did on the inside: jaded and tired as hell.
I stopped typing and swiveled in my chair to face him. “Someone is using the dating app I coded to hunt down supers and kill them brutally.”
He blinked his eyes flying wide. I waited while he finished chewing and then swallowing loudly. “Is that it?”
“You tell me.”
He stared down at his plate and the second sandwich and then set it aside on the table near my bed. “My people were killed. There are three Weres I run with on the full moon. A fox, another wolf, and an eagle. We go into the woods and hunt, play, whatever strikes up. Last night, I was running late, and when I got there…” He stopped and dropped his head into his hands. Then he rubbed his eyes carefully and sat back up. No tears, just darkened circles underneath. “The blood was the first thing I smelled. Then I saw them. They had shifted back to human after they died. I didn’t even know that happened to us. Now, that thought is haunting me. I’m sure I had a nightmare about it last night.”
He shuddered, and I resisted the urge to go to him and wrap him in my arms. If he wanted to help me on this, then he need to be able to handle it. “Was that it? Do you remember any other scents? Anything odd about it all that you can’t match up with your usual activities?”
He raised an eyebrow. “When did you become Nancy Drew?”
I spread my hands and let them drop. “I have no idea what I’m doing here. All I know about investigation I learned from Criminal Minds. The only thing I want to do is keep more of our kind from dying.”
He picked his sandwich back up and tore into the bread and chewed with renewed energy. Once he finished, he leaned forward and nodded. “What’s the plan, Boss?”
“No one in their right mind would want me as a boss.”
“It was an expression. Calm down.”
My defenses went up because I really didn’t have a proper plan. “So far, all I know I need to do is take down the app so it can’t be used against us anymore. Then I need to hack the police station to see if there might be something else I missed.”
“You’re going to hack the police station? That’s pretty bad ass.”
“Also probably a felony.”
He shrugged and lay back down on my bed, curling his hand under his face on the pillow. At moments like this, it struck me how young he was. How all of them were so damn young. Surrounded by them 24/7, it was easy to forget I’d lived through wars, revolutions, death, disease, and any other hardship a person could think of.
It was the main reason I could think of that Sam and I would never work. One day, he would die and I wouldn’t. It was a bad idea to invest in emotional relationships and entanglements when one partner is so very mortal.
“You’re looking at me funny,” Sam said.
I turned back to face my laptop. “Sorry.”
“What were you thinking about?”
I shook my head. “Nothing much. Just remembering how very ancient I am compared to well…everyone I know.”
“Sly is pretty old.”
I snorted. “He isn’t much older than me.”
Michael was on the tip of my tongue. But for some reason, I didn’t tell him about the fairy. Was it the date he asked me on, or maybe because he was one of the few creatures out there now that matched me in age? At least out of creatures that lived amongst humans. Some of the elementals were so much older. They tended to stick to the wilderness and wild places still left on Earth.
I glanced back at Sam. “Is it weird to you that I’m so old?” The need for validation from Sam worried me, but I couldn’t take the words back now.
He shook his head, his scruff scratching against my bargain bin sheet set. “No, you always look the same, and for some reason, I can picture you in sweatpants, a tank top, clutching a cup of coffee even a hundred years ago.”
I snorted. “Well, things were different then. Being a woman and with my features. It was hard to do much of anything until maybe about 40 or 50 years ago. I had to stay out of the way and off the radar. The world has changed so much since I first came to America.”
“With the colonists?” he joked.
I tossed a rolled up ball of socks at his face. “My family came over back then, sure.”
He let out a chuckle, my sarcastic tone apparent, and I stood and climbed up in the bed behind him. I pressed myself to his back and let his warmth sink into me. Yes, I was freaking old. And cursed. And a dark witch way too far indebted to the dark side. But I owned that part of me.
And this killer would have to take me out again if he planned on stopping me.
Chapter 9
Step One: Take out the dating app.
A lot harder in practice than in theory. For one, there was my clients to consider. But, If the damn thing didn’t come down soon, there might not be any clients left to think about.
The other problem to consider was my network. Nothing I could do with a compromised network. Even if I managed to clear my network of the intrusion, I didn’t know the extent of the damage the hack already created. Or if they wormed their way into my system, how much of the app itself was damaged or copied for their own nefarious purposes.
Staring at my computer keys, I didn’t know if I could dismantle it. It took a year to code and more blood than I planned to put into it, literally. It was one of the only things keeping the lights on, the other part being the rent money from the gangly crew I’d somehow amassed.
Sunlight filtered in the window, and I glanced around. It was awfully quiet in the house today. I hadn’t heard much of a stir from anyone. Not even the creaking of the floor boards from upstairs.
Angel hadn’t been in either, which wasn’t unlike him. He often disappeared for a couple days. Especially when he knew I was safe and he could leave without worrying about scrapping me off a highway or something.
Guess I had to get my own coffee today. I wandered to the kitchen in what I acknowledged as a procrastination attempt. Dismantling my code was going to be painful for me. I didn’t want anyone else to die, but I also didn’t want to rip apart my baby.
When I got to the kitchen, the coffee pot sat on the counter, cold and lifeless. “Heathens,” I whispered, before filling the pot and flipping the switch. I stared through the kitchen and down the long corridor which led to the foyer and front door.
The only sounds were the creaking of the floor board as I waffled back and forth waiting for my caffeine and the coffee pot percolating that liquid gold. Something felt off, but I had way too much to worry about at the moment. I didn’t need to go hunt down every one of my house mates.
I pulled the mug from the overhead cabinet and resolved they would come find me if they needed something that desperately. My brain injected, “If they aren’t dead, you mean.”
With a sigh
, I poured my coffee and took it back to my room to try and unravel my app. It needed to be done, and if my brain bounced to my friends being dead the moment I started to worry, then it needed to happen sooner rather than later.
I sat back down and angled my computer screen away from the light. Once I checked the connections and physical components to make sure I’d cleaned out any trace of the hacker, I jumped into the code.
The hackers had stripped my safety protocols and accessed the admin accounts for the app so they could see every single profile no matter the designation. On top of that, their incompetent hack job got into the location finding portion, and it looked like they tried to layer white magic into my code. Which was ridiculous, since you can’t really erase black magic with white magic.
That told me I was dealing with someone inexperienced with witch magic merging with technology. Or even just witch’s magic as any white witch would have been able to tell them she couldn’t do what they asked. Unless they tortured her into it, and she just tried to do what they wanted her to.
I swallowed against the gnawing roll of my gut and shook it off. It must have been the hot coffee on my empty stomach. I’d get food once I pulled the app offline.
I went through the code one more time and then backed it up to an external thumb drive just in case. I didn’t want to lose the work, and I wanted to keep the evidence for later just in case someone needed it. The magical world didn’t have a formal investigation squad. Most creatures took care of their own slights and problems. Which made this whole thing all the more difficult.
I couldn’t go to the police and explain the situation. They’d lock me up in an asylum and drop the key in the nearest river bed.
I stared at the creation I put so much energy into, and my fingers hovered over the keys I needed to punch in order to shut it down.
To the Grave Page 5