Again, I had a problem with something to wear. I could borrow something from Mom that fit me up top, but I was a little too hippy for her pants, and her taste in dresses was decidedly elven. I didn’t want to stand out that much in a backwater bar and grill.
In the end, I wore a wrap dress that had hung in the closet for the past ten years. As I studied myself in the mirror, I noted that I had been a lot more extroverted back then. The dress left no doubt that I had legs.
I had warned Aleks not to dress up too much, but his Magi concept of ‘dress casual’ was definitely a lot fancier than I expected. It was Saturday night, though, a lot of the locals were out on date night, and older couples tended to get dolled up for such things.
I think he was a little surprised at the quality of the food, but he shouldn’t have been. People who had lived by the water for generations had a pretty good idea what to do with food that came out of the water.
After dinner, he took me home, and after about five minutes of kissing and pawing each other, it seemed a little silly to stand outside in the cold, so I invited him in.
He was slow and gentle when I wanted him to be, hard and strong when I wanted that, and delightfully funny.
“You know that I’m not making or looking for any kind of commitment,” I said at one point. “Just fun, right?”
He smiled. His voice dropped into a deep purr that sent shivers down my spine. “Right. I always had you figured for a good-time girl. Love ‘em and leave ‘em Dani.” He licked me and the shivers ran wild. “That’s okay. I’m used to rejection. Just be gentle when you throw me out in the street.”
I found it difficult to believe that he got rejected very often. We didn’t get a lot of sleep, and I didn’t mind. Mom winked at me when we went downstairs around noon and fixed us breakfast without a word. Aleks stuck around all day, and we took a hike around the reservoir, then ate dinner with Mom. He stayed the night again, but took off very early on Monday morning.
“I have a meeting with Lady Olivia Findlay-James this morning,” he said as he kissed me goodbye, “and I really don’t want to have to explain why I’m late.”
“Coward.”
“I admit it. I’m booked up tonight, but I’ll call you tomorrow when I’m finished with work.”
“You don’t have to.”
He gave me a wicked grin. “Well, in that case, I’ll call you only if I want to.”
Chapter 18
Whittaker called me about ten o’clock. “Where are you?”
“Hiding out, like you told me to. Remember? I’m supposed to be dead.”
Silence, then, “Well, not any more. Someone knew that Domingo was still alive and tracked her to her friend’s house.”
“A leak?” I asked.
“Possibly. Anyway, I need you in here. We have a rash of murders that look like demons killing mages.”
Wonderful. “Okay, I can be there in about an hour.”
As I rode into the city, I thought about what Whittaker had said. Demon killings weren’t rare, but it was unusual for them to attack mages. Of course, with Ashvial gone, there wasn’t a central authority among the demons in the Mid-Atlantic.
No one really understood power relationships among demons, only that they were hierarchical. On the human side of the Rift, demon lords were the top level, but considering that the dozen of them we knew about on Earth weren’t at war with each other for supremacy raised the question of what was above them. Some type of demon we had never seen on our side of the Rift? Or a demon that we didn’t know about? If I were the demon king of Earth, I might prefer to stay anonymous rather than chance the combined power of the Hundred showing up on my doorstep.
And then there was that statuette Ashvial had in his office. A possibly living sculpture that looked exactly like a being I had seen in my dreams several times before ever seeing the statue. We knew that demons communicated across the Rift, and there was evidence from the traffic in cross-Rift drugs that they could travel both ways. Could that statue be a means of communication?
The second I set foot in the police station, people I ran into told me, “Whittaker is looking for you.” After the tenth person said that, I decided I should probably go see him before I did anything else.
“About time you showed up,” he greeted me.
“I usually do when I know I’m expected to.” I dropped into a chair in front of his desk. “Demons killing mages?”
His frown deepened. “Killing Magi. A rash of demon attacks all over the Metroplex, and it appears members of the Hundred are being targeted. They are too similar to brush off as random assaults.” He took a sip of his coffee. “That’s what I need you to concentrate on this morning, but you should also be aware that there has been another assassination similar to that of Justus Benning. Mavis Dressler was ambushed last night on her way home from the opera.”
Mary Sue’s grandmother. Not the head of the Dressler Family, but like my grandmother, the sister of the Family head. Benning was a Novak ally, and Dressler was a Findlay ally. I couldn’t remember an obvious assassination like that since I had joined the police force. If I counted the failed attempt on my grandmother, that would make three in a few weeks.
“Have there been any other such assassinations lately?” I asked, “Or assassination attempts?”
Whittaker stared at me, his mouth pursed in displeasure. Finally, he said, “A couple of attempts. One on my son, but we assumed that was because he’s a cop. An attempt on Liam Flanagan in Ireland last month. The murders at your cousin’s betrothal ball. Gunther Janik died in the POC bombing in Prague, but I wouldn’t put that in the same category. A lot of Magi died in the bombings here and in Prague.”
“Any deaths among the Akiyama or Moncrieff allies?”
He shook his head. “Not that I know of, nor among any of the Zhow alliance.”
There were ten member Families of the Magi Council. Akiyama and Zhow were headquartered in the Far East, Antonov and Morozov in Russia. The others were mainly of Western European descent. The virus that caused the magik mutations had not spread widely in Africa or Southern Asia. The Carvalho and Domingo Families controlled Central and South America.
“And the demon murders?” I asked.
Again he shook his head. “Mostly younger Family members. People who aren’t closely guarded, but again, allies of Novak, Carvalho, Findlay, Domingo, Gelner, or Kennedy.”
Those were the Families among the Ten known as the Western Alliance.
“If I had a suspicious nature, I might think someone was trying to shift the balance of power on the Council,” I said.
“If you didn’t have a suspicious nature, you wouldn’t be a very good cop. Now, get out of here and find the demons doing these killings and who is behind them. There is easier prey than mages.”
Whittaker gave me an address on the south side of the harbor where a demon-mage battle occurred earlier that morning. I took the bike and rode over there. The day had taken on a decided chill, and I made a mental note to ask my partner about building a magitek air shield.
The Federal Hill area had gentrified before the wars, and before the water in the harbor rose, and again afterward. The area had originally been row houses, and all of the restorations had attempted to keep the look of the old neighborhood. Lots of young professionals and younger Magi lived there, among the bars, restaurants, and trendy shops they attracted.
I had no trouble finding the murder scene. A two-block area was cordoned off, with crowds of curious people, news media, and so many drones flying around overhead that they were running into each other. I drove inside the police cordon and parked my bike.
“Sergeant,” I waved a uniformed cop over. “Tell the media types that they have five minutes to pull their drones out of the area, or I’m going to order you and your men to start shooting them down.”
He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
I stood there, in full view of several reporters, pulled a cube out of my pocket, and aimed a lightning bo
lt at a drone that was obviously in violation of several laws. It crashed to the ground about ten feet in front of me, and I kicked it aside as I walked past it.
It was obvious pretty quickly that I was late to the scene. The bodies had all been gathered up and transported to the morgue, but the blood and gore remained. I went looking for my partner.
“When?” I asked Novak when I found him.
“Last night, sometime after they left the bars, but before sunrise. We had the first report at about four o’clock, and the fighting was over by the time our people got here at four twenty-two.”
There were multiple outlines drawn in chalk that I could see, on both sidewalks and on the street.
“How many?”
Novak shook his head. “We found seventeen human bodies out here on the street. We’ve cordoned off a four-block area. There were also casualties inside several of the houses. Another three dead and five injured. Witnesses say some of the residents tried to help the people being attacked on the street.”
“And we’re sure the attackers were demons?”
“The five dead demons we found tend to support that assumption.”
I sucked in a deep breath. Novak took me around the area so I could see the aftermath of the carnage. We also examined the three houses the demons had attacked. I thought about those cops I overheard at the station who were gung-ho about fighting demons.
I let Novak deal with the crime scene and rode over to the morgue. The place was a madhouse, as the staff there tried to sort out the bodies and match body parts to their owners. I found Kelley Quinn, who looked like a woman who needed a stiff drink.
“I realize it’s a little early,” I said to her, “but what do you have so far?”
She stopped, looked around, and said, “What do you need?”
“Identifications if you have them. COD is pretty evident. But I need to try and piece together what happened. Preliminary information from the scene indicates the demons ambushed them as they left a bar.”
Kelley closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them, there was something haunted in her face. “Young mages. Some we’re going to identify only by DNA. The bodies are too mangled. The demons we recovered are all standard demons, and they were all killed with magik.”
She picked up a tablet and tapped on it, then turned it so I could see the screen. All five demons were registered as employees of Lucifer’s Lair, with Ashvial’s bar listed as their place of residence. Ashvial was dead and the bar was closed down. At least two hundred demons had lived there, and at least half of them had escaped his demise and the subsequent raid by the police that took possession of the premises.
“Do you have anything on the mages?” I asked.
She tapped on the tablet some more and showed me the screen.
“Thanks, Kelley,” I said. “Let me know when you have final results.”
“I do have some results on the other murders,” Quinn said.
“Other murders?”
“Yeah, that bar the demons took apart out in Columbia, the vampire rampage in Canton, and the three demons who busted up the bar in Annapolis. Fourteen dead, more than thirty in the hospital, and that’s not counting minor injuries.”
“When did all this happen?”
“Last night. Where have you been? It’s the only thing that’s been on the news.”
“In a different world. Send me everything you have.”
She nodded, then turned away to answer a question from one of her staff.
I headed back to the Federal Hill slaughter site and found Novak. He appeared as tired as I was beginning to feel.
“It looks as though we have five different groups who left a bar called the Devil’s Den when it closed.” He pointed to the bar at the end of the street. “That was about four o’clock this morning. As soon as they got out on the street, the demons attacked. A brawl ensued, and the humans got the worst of the deal.”
“All drunk and probably didn’t understand what was going on,” I said.
Mychal nodded. “Probably. Some of them fought back. There are scorch marks from fireballs and lightning on the walls of the houses and on the street.”
“How many survived?”
“We have five people in hospital, and seven who came out of the fight unharmed or with minor injuries.”
“You’ve talked to all of them?”
“Yeah. I sent you the interviews.”
“Any common denominators?”
He nodded. “Fairly predictable. The bar is a hangout for younger members of Novak and its allies. David Moncrieff and Joseph Johansson are the owners of the bar.”
“Have you talked to whoever runs the bar?”
“I was waiting for you.”
I gave him a raised eyebrow.
“Remember your experience at the Devil’s Reef?” he asked. “The Devil’s Den has the same ownership and a demon manager. I try to learn from my more experienced colleagues and not repeat their mistakes. Backup, ya know?”
My face flamed. I was lucky the manager at the Devil’s Reef was a bad shot.
“I’m glad to see you’re following procedure,” I said. “I’ll note it on your next performance evaluation.”
His smirk didn’t help my mood.
It turned out that the bar manager was a little more intimidating than the ifrit I had encountered at the Devil’s Reef. Silthraxith was a major demon. Seven-and-a-half feet tall, wide as a door, green, with curving horns, and hair covering her head and shanks. Fire demons were usually red, or at least a shade of pink. Frost demons were some shade of blue. I wasn’t sure what power a green demon wielded, but I wasn’t in a hurry to find out.
A female demon wasn’t something I expected. And since she wasn’t wearing any clothing, her sex was readily apparent. She had a sidekick who was a demon of the same race who she didn’t bother to introduce. He was about six inches shorter than she was, had less hair on his head and back, and was likewise green and naked.
To my knowledge, no one had ever determined if demons were mammalian and used their breasts to nurse. And if not, did they have breasts in their own world, or only in ours?
“Lieutenant Danica James, Metro Arcane Division,” I said, showing my badge. “This is Detective Sergeant Novak. We’re investigating the excitement outside this morning.”
Silthraxith smiled, displaying a remarkable set of dentition, complete with three-inch canines. “As you say, Lieutenant, it happened outside. I run a peaceful establishment. It is up to your human police to keep order on the street.” Her voice was remarkable, sibilant and rather melodious. Not at all what I normally associated with a demon.
“Well, in that case, I’m going to have to close all the bars in this area to assist our efforts to keep order. We can’t have any more incidents such as the one we had this morning.”
The grin slid off her face, and steam began rising from her. Literally steam. I had heard of water demons but never seen one. They were pretty rare in eastern North America.
“I don’t think my employers will be very happy about that.”
“Tell them to take their complaint to Deputy Police Commissioner Whittaker,” I said, handing her my business card along with Whittaker’s. “But until further notice, I’m declaring this place and every other drinking establishment in a four-block radius as part of a crime scene.”
She licked her lips with a foot-long forked tongue, and her eyes narrowed.
“I doubt you have the authority to do that,” she said.
I shrugged. “Ashvial had some doubts about my authority, too. In the end, his opinion didn’t matter very much. And as for David Moncrieff and Joseph Johansson, they aren’t in a position to say anything. Moncrieff is in protective custody, and Johansson is busy trying to distance himself from his father’s business dealings.” The third owner of record, Ashvial, wouldn’t be lodging any protests in Earth’s realm.
Novak and I walked out, and the demons didn’t try to stop us. When we got out
side, Novak took a couple of the little magitek boxes that all cops were issued, set them on either side of the door, and activated them. They didn’t require a mage to make them work, but they created a yellow barrier over the doorway. No entrance.
Of course, the demons could let customers in through the back door, and the city would pull their business license. Since they were demons, they would also be barred from ever working anywhere on Earth again. That would mean having to live in the Waste. It was part of the truce agreement that allowed demons to stay in our dimension.
Chapter 19
No sooner had Mychal and I finished dealing with the demon than we ran into Garland Novak, Mayor of the Baltimore-Washington Metroplex. Like me, Garland was a bastard, the son of Franklin Novak and an untalented human woman. For the first time, I realized that he was Mychal’s half-brother, although twenty or thirty years older.
“Mr. Mayor,” I said, stopping in my tracks. The alternative would have been to knock him down and walk on his body, and I doubted my boss would approve of that.
“What’s going on down here? Someone called my office and said you were shutting down all the businesses in the area.”
Bad news traveled faster than light, evidently. I had spoken to the demon only two minutes before, and hadn’t mentioned a shutdown to anyone else.
“This area is a crime scene,” I said, “and begging your pardon, but you shouldn’t be here either. You could be contaminating evidence.”
I heard Mychal snort behind me, followed by a coughing fit.
“You can’t just shut down all these businesses!”
“Excuse, me,” I said, and pointed down. “We might need that spleen to help identify a victim, and I’m sure his or her family would want to bury as much of the body as we can recover.”
The Mayor looked down and realized his foot was partially on a bloody body part. He stared at it and turned pale.
“Mychal! Can you get him out of here before he pukes?”
My partner brushed past me, grabbed his half-brother by the arms, and steered him toward an alley that seemed to be blood-free.
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