How anyone had known to bother with him and had the hubris to go after The Technician… Well, it made him wonder who the next target would be. If they even heard about it. A lot of beings would just clean the mess up and move on.
Then find themselves dissolved by pure hunger, a week later.
Probably in five or six days. He wouldn’t have waited to see what was going on that way, before attacking the last of three targets. If there was only three. They’d asked for eighteen chickens. That didn’t mean they might not have had twenty-four before that. Or that they hadn’t just planned to double up on one of them. Or… Possibly they’d just wanted a few dinners at the same time.
Tracking them made the most sense. He had two points that he could look into, using magic. Three, really. Except that he hadn’t gotten a good enough sense of who had done the work. Not while he was fighting the monster, trying to make it go away.
What he had was meeting Heidi, if that was her name and the scent of a woman, who was on her period. She might not be anymore. He should have tried to track her that way earlier. Still, he’d spoken to Heidi. Even if she’d been disguised at the time, or really a man, he might be able to use that. The trick there was that she wasn’t the one having her monthly. He would have gotten that at the time. So, it was the other woman.
Not any of the mages that he’d met yet.
Leslie was, as far as he could tell, what she seemed. The others were too. They hadn’t even been lying to him. At least if they were, they were pros on a level that no one but a greater demon really was. In hours of observation, they’d held to their acts, perfectly. That was hard to do, if you didn’t know you were being watched.
Unless they weren’t acting. People could, and did, manage that one pretty well. Most of the time, even.
So, it wasn’t going to be a simple trick, leading him back to them constantly. It was a bit odd that they were that worried though. Thinking about it, he wondered if he should get to know that part of the community better.
Really, all of them. The shifters, mages, the local vampires and any other groups. Even if they were public, he and Detective Tran needed to have an in with them. It wasn’t going to be easy, at a bet.
As he considered it, Tran’s phone rang. He could hear the whole thing, so went still, eavesdropping. It was different than he would have figured.
“Denise Tran?”
“That’s right. How can I help you?” She seemed a bit terse and suspicious, but the voice wasn’t really. The man seemed relaxed enough, at least on the surface.
“I have a file on my desk, about some missing people. Detective Grainger, by the way. Albuquerque P.D. Boyd Grainger. We have the reports and your data. That’s all we have. I was hoping I could pick your brain on this? Anything you can give us would help.”
That got a small smile from the woman across from him.
“We have more, since that went out. The people that did it, or at least part of that group, came over here for a bit. It seems to be linked to some rogue mages. They’re good. Making some kind of energy monster that eats people. The target first, then anyone that goes to the wrong place at the wrong time. You might want to keep those crime scenes closed down for now? We can shut down the monsters. I know, magic shit, but that’s what it looks like at this point.”
Nothing happened for a bit, then there was a sigh.
“We aren’t up on that. No one is. Well, you folks up there. Let me… I need to run some things past the higher ups here. Can I get back with you later? It might be tomorrow?”
“Sure. I can send you everything we have up here so far. Some of it is mind blowing, so be ready for that. It’s all true, as far as we can tell, so far. If that changes, we’ll update you.”
“Great. Thanks. I’ll… Later.” He sounded troubled. As if it couldn’t really be magic. That was fine enough. They didn’t need the other cops to believe it all. That part just made it easier for them to adapt to things.
The world had changed. Maybe too fast for some.
The next call was for him, and did get him to snort a little, if quietly.
After the second ring, he picked up, did his thing, giving his name and letting whoever was there know how helpful and kind he was. It could have been anyone in the world. Instead, it was Karen Benson. The Chief’s wife.
“Hello? Officer Lopez? Karen Benson. I… Came home to find a bunch of dead birds on a blood circle on our doorstep. I called you first, since Roy mentioned that you and Detective Tran were in charge of the strange things now? I don’t know if it’s anything. I mean, we’ve had raccoons, a dead skunk and a few cats before, but this is the first time anyone carefully arranged them like this.”
“Okay. We’ll be right over. Let me run this past the Chief first, then we’ll be right out. Try to leave everything alone? We’ll hurry, so the blood won’t be too hard to get out. I promise.”
He stood and hung up at the same time, moving out from behind his cheap plastic and metal desk.
“We have a third one. At Chief Benson’s house. His wife called us first. See, we really are important.”
Denise moved then, bustling a bit, her round behind a bit less so now, in green slacks that weren’t as tight as they had been, at a guess.
“Let’s get to it then. I’m getting an odd feeling that this is personal, you know that?”
He really did.
Chapter eleven
It was a funny thing but going directly after the Chief of Police was a great way to have an entire force mobilized in a rather short time span. As it was, Tran had to send people away. They wanted to put a twenty-four hour a day guard on the place, and remove the evidence first thing. Before even getting pictures of the crime scene.
Troy growled, meaning it, which got several people to go still and a bit wide eyed.
“Stop. This is a crime scene. Back the hell off and don’t touch anything. This is a ceremonial magic situation. It’s designed to create a killer construct in seven days. So, unless you’re up on how to handle that kind of thing, back the fuck off. Now.” He wasn’t directing it at anyone in particular. It got most of the people to step back. The ones that didn’t, interestingly, were Karen and Roy Benson.
It didn’t hurt that the head man himself waved people off. It was probably a good way to make friends with everyone else, pushing his weight around like that, but the guys were just flustered. They knew not to touch a crime scene. It had been covered in the academy.
The wife of the Chief was thin and surprisingly good looking. Not that Roy wasn’t handsome for a guy pushing fifty something, but the lady looked about twenty years younger than that. She wasn’t though. Something else was going on there. Focusing on her, he could feel the lines running outward. Away, into the distance. The Chief had that going on as well.
A thing that was familiar to him.
They were slaves. To a greater demon. He hadn’t known it at the time, but he’d had that going on for about a decade himself. Now he could sense it in others, it seemed. At least if he tried hard enough and paid attention. Given everything, that would mean they were enslaved to The Technician. She wouldn’t let them live in her territory otherwise. At least he figured that would be the way it happened.
Rather than rat them out, since he couldn’t do anything about it at the moment, he took a fake breath.
“I learned to break these things last night. The Technician taught me. It will probably take about eight hours, but it won’t hurt you now. It takes time to build. I’ll see who it was aimed at. It makes sense for it to be the Chief, but that isn’t written in stone. Is there a place I can work? I don’t want to wait until night, but…”
Karen made a face. At first, he figured that it would be about having a dirty undead vampire in her home, but her words were a lot more insightful than that.
“The sun? Maybe we should wait? Eve told us that it’s always like torture, during the day. Worse at noon?” That was correct. Totally in fact.
He nodded.
/>
“My hope is that I won’t notice it too much if I focus hard enough. I might have to try it later. It shouldn’t be needed, but I’ve only done this once.” He didn’t mention where that was.
Chief Benson nodded.
“Anything you need. Do we need to leave the blood here? The birds?”
“As soon as we have pictures, that can be cleaned up. We need to move fast or the blood will stain. Then we’ll be here all-night scrubbing. Let me…” He pointed at the closed door, getting Karen to move in that direction, leading him inside.
“Thank you. What will we owe you for the work?” She sounded very tentative, but also like it only made sense to ask.
“I’m on the clock, so the department is taking care of this. By paying me. Now, I should probably sit…” He was led to a big, soft seeming tan chair. It was probably comfortable, but he didn't notice that. To begin with he hurt too much for that, and after a moment of pure focus, he was able to sink into the darkness pretty totally.
First, he took away the sun from his attention. Then the pain from it. The house and each of the people. They were still there, but he set them aside. It was harder at first, to find the spell and the creature of thought being created.
It was just beginning, and hadn’t really taken shape as of yet. On the good side, he could catch the flavor of the man who had done the actual work on it, before removing the blood spell from existence. When he opened his eyes, it was dark outside. No one was sitting there watching him, either. He stood, silently, and called out. There were voices in the other room.
“Hello? It’s done. Safe now.”
He nearly lashed out when he was hit bodily. It was a vampire that grabbed him. Hugging him, instead of attacking. He managed to do it back smoothly enough that he didn’t seem like a total goon. Before he could speak, Eve did.
His pal, after a fashion. In a way, they were nearly as close as Zack and he were. They’d lived together for several years, after all.
“Troy-boy! So, I get a call that we were under attack here only to find you locked in a magical battle already. You won, too. That’s kind of impressive.”
Slowly, the Chief and Karen walked into the room, along with Denise. She looked at the scene, but didn't mention it. After all, she knew the score there. Possibly better than the Chief did. Troy hadn’t gone into how he’d banged the man’s daughter, anyway.
She wasn’t letting go for some reason. Probably to show the others that she owned him. That or how much she actually missed him. He had been gone for a year. They’d seen each other, but not that often in that time.
Letting go, she grinned, her right hand taking his left.
“Did you find anything, or was it all about an epic battle against the forces of the dark?” She was teasing, but that was close enough.
“Both. I have a link to the man who did most of the work, or at least the part where it was directed at a specific person. I didn’t get that one, until I saw you. I mean, I could tell but I wouldn’t have figured that it would work.” He was being a bit mysterious, but didn’t keep going with it. He glanced over at Chief Benson. “It was aimed at Eve. Not one of you. My guess had been Karen, but no, that wasn’t it. I didn’t think that you’d be called in on this. It was just some chickens. Hey, do you have video of the front stoop here?”
The expectation was that they wouldn’t, but Roy nodded.
“We have enough things dumped out there that we did put one in. The tape shows… Well, let me show you?”
That meant a trip into the other room. A small office. It was nice, and probably had a better computer system than what the man used at work. Really, the whole place was nice. A small mansion. On a Police Chief’s salary. Given he was also a demon’s slave, that probably indicated some kind of deal. One that Darla was actually bothering to keep.
The flat screen, which was large and had great pixel definition, showed what had happened in full color. It was silent, except some gentle murmuring. That was from one of the two masked people that they could see. The man was the wrong shape to be loser Lars, the speeding college kid. Too lumpy and broad in the wrong places.
The other, mask or not, was Heidi. Or whatever her real name was.
He pointed.
“There she is your honor, the woman that stood me up.”
That meant explaining the whole thing. It got a low, rather angry, sound from Eve.
“Bitch. Using my friend like that. Not that it was a bad idea, but still. Low class. So, who has it out for me, Darla and Troy? I could see me and either of them, but not both. I doubt it was some guy from high school with a broken heart.”
There was a nod from Detective Tran.
“It has to be someone that knows a lot. They were bold enough to go after powerful beings. That means… I don’t know. That they didn’t think it would work? That or… maybe that Troy here would buy it, bringing you to town? Are you close like that?”
He blinked, but nodded. So, did Eve, only a bit faster, without the batting eyelids first.
“Damn. That’s complex. I would though. Then, when I came here, which I would if I was in town… Blam. I get sucked up or whatever the creepy crawly would have done. Given that, the whole thing might be about me. Or…”
She shrugged then.
“It could be a lot of people. Take out you or Darla and Zack would run here faster than you might imagine. That could get Keeley in as well. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone tried to use other people to get to her like that. If I wasn’t in the mix, it might even be pointed at Finias.” She turned then, and looked at each of the others. “The Mind Taker. Darla’s father. Troy is…” She was silent on the topic, so Denise filled it in.
“Is that the greater demon that held you as a slave?”
Eve faked a wince as if a fight were about to start. Roy and Karen acted like it wasn’t even a real thing. So, he did the same thing. Pretended it wasn’t a big deal. To him it really hadn’t been, at the time.
“That’s the one. I don’t know that Eve is special to him, though. Not enough to get his attention. It… Who else? Bey, maybe. For me and you. Not The Technician.” He was trying to think, when Eve went still.
“Fram?”
Troy blinked.
“Sorry? An oil filter?”
That got a tongue stuck out at him. It was fake and meant to be playful. To lighten the mood.
“Fram the Bold. You’ve met him… Probably six or seven ways. He’s been all over your life, actually. I don’t see it though. He wouldn’t be that upset if I died, I don’t think. Maybe you. Darla, certainly. They’re close.”
“Worse. It could be something unrelated to anything we’d think of.” He wasn’t trying to be a pain, saying that. It was kind of obvious, if you thought about it at all. “We need to find these people and see about asking them about it.”
He had the fat man, in his head. As long as he wasn’t hiding behind some kind of mystical shield, that one would be possible. If not, then… He didn’t know.
Eve smiled, and patted him on the shoulder.
“Go to. I’ll back you up. With Detective Tran, here. If that’s all right, ma’am?” She didn’t look at anyone else, as if Denise had the final say in that part of things.
“Sure. You’re representing the vampires? Or do we call that in… I haven’t done anything like this before.”
Eve started to say something, but Roy spoke over her.
“Call it in. What Eve does might impact them. They deserve to choose if they’ll be involved or not.”
She made a sour face. It was really well done.
“Yeah. Yeah. Be all diplomatic and correct like that. Let me get in touch with…” She went to the land line, as if she knew where it was without asking and dialed a complex number from memory. She had a cell phone, so that choice meant she was doing it on purpose.
It took a few minutes for anyone to answer. When they did, it was Bey. He sounded a bit baffled.
“Hello. You have rea
ched the Vampire Council. This is Bey Transmorguire.”
“Hey, Bey. Eve Benson here. With Troy Lopez, Chief Roy Benson, Karen Benson, his wife and most importantly, Detective Denise Tran. She’s invited me into the investigation of the missing people. We kind of found them. Murdered and dissolved, basically. We know that the work is being done by mages so far. Troy thinks he might be able to track them but I need permission to act, since this is official, not just me being bossy, like normal.”
No one else in the room spoke. It was someone else, on the far side, that made themselves clear, at least to Troy and Eve. That sounded like Harland, the Manthori council member.
“How nice of them. I’m heartened to learn that the human authorities are being that open minded. This is in…” He paused.
Troy spoke up then.
“Lincoln, Arizona. The new program was put into action by the Chief here. Roy Benson. Eve Benson, The Snowflake, acted as the liaison for our side in this. Detective Tran is in charge of the unit. A very capable person. In the first few days we’ve managed to solve several crimes and uncover more, thanks to her guidance.” It was true enough.
Sure, he wasn’t going into the advanced world of graffiti or maligned school principals, but the rest of the situations were valid. Then, so was writing slurs on the walls. If that had been about Harland and one of the others there, instead of a school official, many would have probably died to wipe the stain of it from the world. Hundreds wouldn’t be unheard of. The Manthori wasn’t even known for being particularly bloodthirsty.
That one of his people had been raped and abusing others under her power would have also ended with deaths. Though, in this case it would have been the principal dying, most likely. It kind of depended on what the top vampire in the community said, as long as the Council didn't overrule them.
Technically, Troy should know who that was, but hadn’t been able to find anyone yet. There were, clearly, younger and weaker vamps in the area. None of them had come to shake him down or anything though, so he hadn’t worried about it too much. If they needed him to do something, they’d come find him. Then they’d see if whoever was the boss there wanted to fight him or not. At least if what was being asked was too much for him to bother with.
Troy Ounce (Lopez Time Book 1) Page 16