by Skye Knizley
Raven looked down the steps to the glassed-in entry. She’d lost count of how many times she’d been through those doors. In the past they’d represented merely the sickening aroma of old blood. Now, there was something else, something colder like the fingers of death stroking her spine. But she was damned if she was going to let that get to her.
“I’m good, let’s get this over with.”
She led the way down the steps and through the door to where a uniformed officer sat at the tiny desk. He signed them in and they descended another flight of steps to the morgue itself. The steps were old and creaked beneath their feet, the hallway below shaded in darkness lit only by the ancient fluorescents that sparked and spat no matter how many times the bulbs were changed.
The moment Raven’s heel touched carpet, she felt the chill again, the deep cold of the grave threatening to freeze her soul. Levac gripped her arm to steady her, his eyes full of concern. Raven smiled her thanks and continued to the main exam room. It hadn’t changed much over the years. Stainless steel counters and cupboards, two wide exam tables kept polished by Ming’s assistant Agnes, and lights with enough wattage to light the Sears Tower on a foggy day.
Zhu was bent over the body of Jensen Murphy, his face partially hidden behind a plastic shield that kept blood and other unsavory things off his face. Raven popped a strong cough drop into her mouth to fight the smell of blood that poured from the ancient floor drains and joined him. He had just finished cutting Murphy’s skull open and was examining his brain. Zhu looked up and smiled when Raven entered, a genuine and warm gesture that never failed to brighten Raven’s day.
“Ah, Agent Storm and Levac, right on time as usual,” he said.
“Hi doc, what have you found?” Raven asked
“Not much beyond the preliminaries, I’m afraid,” Zhu said. He held up a small glass jar and shook it. The bullet inside rattled and gave off a familiar metallic sound.
“Silver?” Levac asked.
“Indeed, yes,” Zhu said. “Twenty-five caliber, silver coated with what I believe was a hollow tip full of wood ash and garlic. I sent the rest up to Aspen for confirmation.”
Raven peered at the bullet. It was mashed from passing through the victim’s skull, but the runes on the outside were unmistakable.
“Fae runes?”
Zhu shrugged. “Not my department, I’m afraid. I was hoping you could shed some light on them.”
“They look Fae,” Raven said, “but I’m not the expert. Can we get this up to Aspen?”
Zhu took the jar and set it aside. “Of course, I’ll send Agnes when she comes back from lunch.”
Levac was looking at the corpse. “What else?”
“I know Mr. Murphy put up a fight, I found skin under his nails, as well as blood that I doubt was his,” Zhu said. He moved to the victim’s side and raised Murphy’s right hand, showing that his knuckles were bruised and torn. “These show signs of what you call regeneration, but are no more than a few hours old. His knuckles were broken as were some of the smaller bones in his hands. He hit someone hard more than once.”
Raven looked at the body. Under the lights it still looked juicy, as if he might rise at any moment. “Are we right about the cause of death?”
“I am uncertain, I’m ashamed to say. His healing abilities make it difficult to be certain. I found traces of silver nitrate in his blood, which I understand would have caused him great pain, in addition to the bullet,” Zhu said.
“But the bullet might not have killed him?” Levac pressed.
Zhu pointed to the victim’s brain with a silver probe. Raven saw where he was pointing, inside the brain tissue itself, and fought to keep her traitor stomach in check. It looked like blood-soaked oatmeal with a side of underdone pasta.
“I’m puzzled, because the damage to his brain shows signs of regrowth, as if he’d been healing after the shot,” Zhu said. “I’m no expert, but there is something strange about this young man’s death.”
He smiled and set the probe on the tray beside him. “Aside from the obvious, of course. I must admit, Raven, it is a breath of fresh air not having to pretend I have no clue what is going on.”
Raven was still staring at the brain tissue. She could swear it had moved. “You still have to keep it out of the file, doc.”
“Of course, and your Agent Van Helsing is sending a crew for the body once I’m done,” Zhu said.
“Special protocol for deceased preternaturals,” Levac said. “Sorry, doc.”
Zhu shrugged. “At least now I know why the body will vanish in the night.”
“Thanks, Ming. Let us know if you find anything else,” Raven said.
“Will do, Agent Storm.”
He bent back to his work and Raven led the way back into the hallway. Her eyes fell on the entrance to the old freezers, the one where she was found, and she paused. Her hand rose unbidden for the knob and she stopped herself. There was nothing in there she needed to see. With a glance at Levac’s worried face she turned away and hurried up the stairs.
Outside, it was snowing hard enough that the sidewalk was already covered in more than half an inch of snow. Raven crossed the lot with Levac in tow and slid behind the wheel of her Jaguar. The engine started at the touch of a button and she turned the heater on full, hoping it would chase away the cold.
“What’s next, boss?” Levac asked.
Raven put the car in gear. “Franklin Decker, night clerk of the motel. He was on duty when Murphy was killed and may have seen the woman he was with.”
“You still think it was Sable?” Levac asked.
“It makes sense, and you know how bad shit follows my family around. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Raven said.
Levac chewed his lip. “For her sake, I hope not.”
“Me too, Rupe. Sable deserves a little happiness and I hope this isn’t someone she cares about, I truly do,” Raven said.
“If it is?”
The light ahead changed to red and Raven slowed the Jag to a stop. “Then I have a hard call to make.”
1 East Delaware Place, Chicago, IL. Dec 22nd, 2:30 p.m.
Decker lived in a high-rise apartment in one of the most expensive buildings in the city. The white tower stood out against the winter sky like a beacon covered in glittering holiday lights. Raven parked the Jaguar on the street and looked up at the building distastefully. She and Aspen had looked at apartments here and found the atmosphere less than appealing.
“A little high rent for a hotel clerk,” Levac said.
“No kidding. A studio here costs more than we make in a month,” Raven said.
She led the way across the street and through the lobby, which was a white tile and brass rail affair with a single stairway leading up and a bank of four elevators with polished brass doors. A clerk sat behind a small desk watching security cameras and eating what smelled like noodle soup.
The ride to Decker’s floor was quick and blissfully silent. This had to be the only building not playing abusive versions of holiday songs at a painful volume.
Decker’s floor was decorated in what art magazines called “classic Chicago” and Raven called 20s chic. The carpet was blood red, the walls were flat white and the art was mob scenes and architecture from the Mob Era of the city’s past. Raven half expected Capone himself to be down the hall, just around the corner.
Raven led the way, glancing at the photos and the occasional passerby. A young man smiled and excused himself on his way by. He wasn’t dressed in the hotel’s uniform, but something about him made her pause.
“Franklin Decker?” she asked.
He turned and walked backwards. “Last apartment down the hall.”
His cocky smile made Raven’s fists itch, but she thanked him and turned away. She couldn’t punch everyone that pushed her buttons.
The door to th
e apartment at the end of the hall was open a few inches, and Raven’s sensitive nose detected the coppery scent of blood. She glanced at Levac and drew her Automag pistol from its holster beneath her jacket. When Levac raised his own weapon, Raven pushed the door open with her toe. A young man in a Waldorf uniform lay on the floor just inside, his neck twisted at an odd angle.
“Son of a bitch,” Raven snapped. “Call for back up!”
She turned and ran for the elevator. The cocky young man was just vanishing behind the door when she rounded the corner. Raven tried to stop the elevator, but it was already gone.
“Better luck next time!” echoed up the shaft.
Raven blinked and let her monster rise to the surface before grabbing the doors and forcing them apart to reveal the wide, empty shaft. Cool air blew in from the vents above and machinery whirred, a noise not unlike an electric toothbrush.
Raven looked at the rapidly descending car and jumped. She fell on top of the elevator with a resounding thud and ripped open the hatch. The suspect stood inside, not at all surprised. He was an attractive man, with black hair and a neat goatee. He wore a well-tailored charcoal suit beneath a flowing overcoat that looked like it had come from “Vampires R Us.”
“Impressive, Fürstin Storm,” he said with a smile.
“You’re under arrest,” Raven growled.
The suspect laughed, it had a musical quality Raven usually associated with fae.
“I think not, Fürstin.”
There was a noise, almost like fabric blowing in the wind, and the suspect vanished, leaving tendrils of smoke that trailed through the doors. Raven blinked in surprise and dropped into the car, kicking the emergency stop with her toe as she landed. The elevator stopped in an instant and she yanked the doors open to see the suspect walking casually down the hall, his coat trailing behind him. When he heard the doors open, he looked over his shoulder with a grin and began running. Raven followed until she had a clear shot, then slid to a stop, her weapon ready.
“Halt!”
The suspect didn’t even slow. Raven aimed and squeezed her pistol’s trigger, expecting to shoot him in the leg. Again there was the strange noise and the suspect vanished into tendrils of black ether, only to reappear a few feet to the side. Raven blinked in surprise and fired again, then again. Each time, the fleeing man dodged the bullets without apparent effort.
Growling low in her throat, Raven reloaded and followed, unleashing her monster’s full fury. The suspect vanished through the window at the end of the corridor and she followed, crashing through the glass ten stories above Chicago streets. Her momentum carried her across the alley and through the window of the building opposite, where she landed and rolled, burning off the impact. She could feel dozens of tiny cuts on her face and arms, and her jacket looked like she’d been two rounds with a rabid wolverine, but she was otherwise unharmed.
The suspect stood twenty feet away, his cocky smile still in place. “Extraordinary, Fürstin. I presume you’re chasing me for the death of Franklin Decker?”
Raven raised her weapon. “You’re under arrest. Kneel with your hands on your head!”
He looked disappointed. “Impressive, but a slow learner. You can’t harm me, Fürstin.”
He blurred again and was suddenly right in front of her. Raven gasped in surprise and his knee caught her in the face. She sprawled backwards and fired, but he was gone. His roundhouse slap left her ears ringing and her nose bleeding before she even hit the ground.
“I didn’t kill him, Fürstin, though I might have if he was still breathing when I arrived. You’re looking in the wrong place,” he said in a calm voice.
Raven wiped blood from her lip on the back of her hand. “Just bad luck, right? I’ve heard it before, pal. Innocent men don’t run.”
The suspect smiled. “I am neither a man, nor an innocent. Just not guilty of the crime for which you are chasing me.”
He stood and began walking away. “Don’t follow me, Fürstin. I’ve no desire to kill you, but if you push me, I will.”
He vanished again, and this time, did not reappear. Raven ejected her weapon’s magazine and reloaded before returning it to its holster, her focus still on the hallway. Who, or what, was he? How had he dodged bullets and vanished through solid glass without touching it? It smelled like magik, powerful magik. The tang hung in the air like ripe lemons, sweet and sour, but it was magik like nothing she’d seen before. Even Aspen couldn’t dodge bullets.
She dusted herself off and looked out the window behind her. Two Chicago squad cars sat in the street below, their lights reflecting off the snow, filling the sky with holiday lights.
“Swell. Mauser’s going to bitch again.”
An hour later, explanations had been offered, a Section Thirteen clean up team was on scene, and Raven was working with Levac in Decker’s apartment. He’d bled out onto the carpet, his neck had been cut neatly from ear to ear and his tongue pulled through the slit. Experience told Raven it had been a single powerful cut, most likely using a straight razor.
The apartment was everything advertised, a five star space with a wide living room, two above-average bedrooms and a galley kitchen with eat-in bar. The leather furnishings, glass tables and stainless steel cookware seemed out of place, not that they were cheap by any means, but they didn’t match a man who had comic books on his nightstand and still kept a condom in his wallet.
Levac looked up from his notebook. “This guy’s a nobody, until recently he was pulling down less than twenty grand a year, college dropout, no priors, no nothing. Just an average guy doing an average job.”
“Until recently?” Raven asked. She was rummaging in the kitchen junk drawer. She had a theory that every house in the universe had the same damn drawer full of old tools, cords that went to nothing and batteries that didn’t work.
“I just got off the phone with his bank. They were quite helpful when I explained Decker was dead. He’s made six deposits all over fifty thousand, all in the last three months, all cash,” Levac said.
“That’s big money, Decker was into something,” Raven said.
She found a flat cardboard box wedged in the back of the drawer. She didn’t recognize the stylized vampire fang logo, but the vials of glowing blue liquid inside were unmistakable.
Levac paled. “Is that..?”
“Thirst,” Raven said. “The bastard was dealing Thirst.”
“How is that connected to Murphy?” Levac asked.
Raven shrugged. “I have no idea, but I’m going to find out.”
She held one of the vials up to the light. In vampires, Thirst enhanced sensations, much like Ecstasy, if it could be supercharged and served directly to the central nervous system. In humans it caused vampiric blood lust, hunger and rage. Addicts either ripped themselves apart trying to get another hit or ended up blind and catatonic. Raven had spent her early years on the force trying to take down every Thirst dealer in the city. She thought she’d succeeded, but it kept cropping up like bad pennies and cheap cologne.
She bagged the vials, photographed the box and bagged it separately then continued checking for anything that might further the investigation. Decker hadn’t been in the apartment long, it was obvious the place had come furnished and he’d added very little. Comic books, the latest video game consoles and games, a collection of porn only a teenager could appreciate and enough take out cartons to keep the local delivery company in business was about all there was, aside from Thirst. She found a stack of boxes in the guest bathroom behind a pile of towels with the Waldorf logo sewn on one side. A total of two hundred vials, two hundred hits each worth a thousand dollars on the street, easy.
“No way this kid was pushing it by himself,” Levac said.
“I think he was just the source for the Waldorf,” Raven said. “I doubt he even knew what it was, other than easy money.”
She
tagged the boxes for the crime scene unit and returned to the living room. Decker was a dead end, and she still didn’t know if Murphy was involved with her sister. She pulled out her phone and considered dialing Sable, but again thought better of it. Instead she sent a simple “checking in” text and left it at that. They were both making an effort to be sisters, the one they hadn’t had as children.
“You called?” Harvey Pocock asked from the door.
“Hey Harvey,” Levac said. “We’ve started processing and Zhu has the body, so just need you and the guys to finish up. You’re looking for Thirst, primarily, and any hints as to where it came from.”
Harvey Pocock was a large man with greasy black hair and a tragic amount of acne. He sweated constantly and his jumpsuit was already stained with perspiration. If he hadn’t been the second best field technician Raven had ever worked with, she’d have avoided him like the plague. He was a nice guy, but no amount of deodorant in the world could protect her sensitive nose from his locker room odor.
He set his case down just inside the door and donned a fresh pair of gloves. “Anything else?”
“Use your instincts, Harvey. I have a hunch this kid was murdered to keep his mouth shut. Anything that can help us tie him to Murphy, collect, okay?” Raven asked.
“You got it, Agent Storm,” Pocock said.
“Thanks, Harvey,” Levac said. “We’ll catch up later.”
Raven was already in the hallway trying not to choke on the aroma of sweat. It wasn’t Harvey’s fault, he was a decent guy and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Levac joined her and they adjoined to the elevator, where two technicians were hard at work replacing the doors Raven had broken. She smiled at them and rang for the other car as if nothing had happened.
Inside the elevator, Levac leaned against the wall and rubbed his forehead. “Okay, now what?”
Raven checked her phone. It was almost four, the bar would be opening soon for happy hour, if it wasn’t already, and it was the only other lead they had until Aspen had time to go over the evidence.