by Skye Knizley
Fine, Aspen thought. She let her magik flow through her, warming her bones and pulsing in her head. A vine of blue energy wrapped around the bigger man and pinned him to the wall while she drew her pistol with her free hand. She pressed it against the other man’s forehead and let her magik show in her eyes.
“Why do you guys always choose the hard way? You’re both under arrest. If you want, we can go for dead, but I’d rather you just come quietly and tell me who your supplier is,” she said.
There was the click of a lighter snapping shut and a voice said, “Agent Kincaid, isn’t it? Married to Agent Storm? Those are my boys, let them down and let’s talk.”
Aspen half turned, keeping the two thugs covered. Damien Riscassi stood halfway down the alley, a cigar clenched in his teeth. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties with short black hair, a Fedora and a black suit beneath a white fur coat he wore like a shawl. Two men built like linebackers stood in the shadow behind him. Aspen didn’t have to be a genius to recognize them as lycans, their eyes glowed yellow in the darkness.
“Damien. I heard they let you out, tax evasion again wasn’t it?” she said.
Damien puffed his cigar, acting as if he thought he was Capone’s reincarnation. “Something like that. My boys?”
“Sorry, they assaulted a Federal officer after she’d identified herself, and they haven’t told me what I want to know,” Aspen said.
“Now, Agent Kincaid, I was standing right here. I saw no assault, I saw two men teasing you. Let them down and let’s talk like adults,” Damien said.
“Fuck,” Aspen swore. His word wouldn’t matter to King, but it could make things difficult when they couldn’t afford it. The thugs were human and mundane, she couldn’t just kill them. What would Raven do?
Easy, she would kill all of them and worry about it later. But that wasn’t Aspen’s style. Getting close to Damien was worth cutting two idiots loose. She could always come back for them later, it wasn’t like they were going anywhere. She let them go and lowered her weapon, ready for any retaliation, letting her magik twine through her fingers like strands of hair.
“Alright, Damien, lets talk. Your boys are pushing Thirst,” she said. “I want to know where they got it. Who is the supplier?”
Damien stepped closer, regarding the end of his cigar. “Thirst? What’s that?”
“I’m not as dumb as you look, Riscassi. Who’s the supplier? Give me the name and I won’t have narcotics down here wrecking the joint,” Aspen said.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Aspen,” Damien said. “I run a clean establishment here. No drugs, no bad blood. Just booze, food and music.”
“Thirst, Damien, one of the worst drugs ever created. You’re selling and I want to know where it’s coming from.”
He slipped closer and Aspen could smell the blood on his breath. “Prove it, Agent, or get the hell off my property. You wouldn’t want my boys to escort you off.”
“Are you threatening me, Damien?” Aspen asked.
“Promising, Agent Kincaid. You aren’t your wife and you don’t frighten me,” Damien replied. “Get the hell out of here before she finds you spread across six states.”
Aspen held her anger in check. It wouldn’t do to fireball all of them and go home for a nice cup of tea. It was a violation of the Totentanz, even if it did solve the problem in one roll of the dice. She wasn’t just Raven’s partner, she was the Magus of House Tempeste. But that didn’t mean she had to fold at the knees and play nice.
“No, Damien, I’m not my wife. My wife would kill you where you stand and go home for tacos,” she said. “Me? I’m more subtle.”
She let a fireball roll into her hand and tossed it casually through the door, where it caught the nearest case of alcohol on fire. It wouldn’t be long before the bar became an inferno, one contained only by the solid, heat-resistant bricks.
Damien’s eyes bulged and he waved madly at his men. “Put it out! Get in there, dammit, that’s six figures worth of tequila!”
Aspen dusted off her fingers and started walking. “Oops, sorry Damien. You probably should have just given me the name.”
“We’re not done, you faerie bitch!” Damien thundered.
Aspen paused. It was clear Riscassi knew about preternaturals. His whole family did, their bloodline included dark witches, a lycan or two and at least one ghoul. It’s why she hadn’t worried about casting in front of him. But how did he know she was a faerie? It wasn’t common knowledge, unless someone in the House had blabbed, and her ears were covered by her hair.
She turned and conjured another ball of flame. “Say that again, Damien?”
He didn’t. He merely stood in the snow, his cigar discarded at his feet. His lips were moving and Aspen realized he was grinding his teeth.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, turning away. “You know where to find me. Get me your supplier’s name or we’ll be having this conversation again soon.”
She walked to the end of the alley and turned back toward Old Town. Her hands were shaking and she felt flush, but it had felt good to face Damien. He was a slimy weasel, but he had power. It couldn’t have been easy to take over the drug trade in the most lucrative part of town, yet he’d done it in short order. She didn’t think he was working alone, though. Someone, a preternatural, was pulling the strings. She was certain of it, now she just had to find out who it was. That was the case, after all. Drug pushers were a dime a dozen, taking Damien out would just leave a vacuum for another to take his place.
She unlocked the Jeep and slid inside, grateful for the warmth and security. The engine came to life at the touch of a button and she put the heat on full. The city was starting to feel like a deep freeze at the heart of the apocalypse and Fae were warm-weather creatures.
The heat felt good on her hands and she pulled her gloves off, pondering her next move while the warm air spilled over her fingertips. When she could feel them again, she picked up her laptop and accessed the city-wide network. There was more than one way to get information and Thirst required a very specific and specialized list of magikal ingredients. Follow the ingredients, find the supplier.
If only it was ever that easy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Harm’s Woods, Niles, IL 5:00 p.m. Dec 23rd
Lieutenant Mauser hadn’t been happy about the FBI taking over one of his safe houses, but he’d given in with the minimum of fuss. Raven had escorted Davidson to the small house near Evanston herself and left him in the tender care of two of Chicago’s finest and a Section Thirteen agent named Justice that Raven had never met before.
Davidson had liked the set up, it was on the opposite side of town, a little two story house in the middle of a block. It was surrounded with life and people celebrating the holidays. That seemed to make him feel better, he was almost smiling when he closed the door behind him.
On the way, Davidson had coughed up the address where he’d found the house. It was an old mansion a few miles outside of Chicago at the edge of Harm’s Woods, a nature preserve off-limits to everyone not a member of the Harm Family Foundation, a wealthy group of investors who’d bought most of the area in the late 1800s.
The house sat at the end of an empty street, a white Victorian monstrosity with three floors, two towers and a wide porch surrounded by pillars. The lot was encircled by a sagging wrought iron fence and the windows were boarded shut to protect the glass from vandals and passerby.
Raven parked the Jaguar on the street and looked around. It was obvious the plows hadn’t made a pass in some time, the snow was almost up to the bottom of the SUV, and the street felt abandoned. Not just disused, it was worse than that. Living creatures left energy behind, a sort of mental aroma that lingered long after they’d left. It’s why people shopping for houses liked the ones that felt ‘lived in’ and realtors made a special effort to make long-empty houses
feel welcoming with the scent of cookies or baking pie. Abandoned places felt empty, as cold and lifeless as the vacuum of space.
“Not exactly getting into the holiday spirit, are they?” Levac asked.
“If what Harley said is true, no one lives here,” Raven replied.
She loosened her pistol in its holster and started up the path. The gate left furrows in the snow as she pushed it aside, and the creaking noise was enough to wake the dead, yet there was no movement or signs of life from the house.
“I don’t like this,” Levac said behind her.
Raven glanced at him. “Me either. The closer I get, the deader it feels.”
The front porch, once sweeping and grand, now sagged and was broken through in places, a casualty of time and neglect. The wide porch swing hung from one chain and swayed back and forth in the wind, the planters were cracked and empty and the welcome mat was anything but. It may as well have said ‘go away.’
Out of habit she checked the knob and, to her surprise, found it unlocked. She twisted it and pushed the door open with her fingertips. Beyond was a wide entry foyer that opened into a grand hallway. A staircase led to the second floor while three doors led deeper into the house. The foyer was empty save for a handful of leaves and a threadbare rug that might have once been a Scottish design.
Levac stepped inside and did a slow turn. “Harley said he found the skull here?”
Raven entered and kicked the door shut with her heel. “This is the address and it fits his description, a vacant house at the end of the street, backing up to Harm’s Woods. He said he found it attached to the Kerr name in city records.”
“Rosemary Kerr isn’t a real person though, is she? I mean, we can’t find her in the database,” Levac said.
Raven poked her head into one of the side rooms. It was largely empty, just an old rug and an empty bookshelf made from old timber. It might have once been a parlor or sitting room, but those days were long gone by.
“I don’t think Murphy or Davidson was on a wild goose chase,” she said. “She was real enough.”
Levac was rummaging in a closet that seemed to be full of old liquor bottles. “What’s her connection to the case?”
“We’ll know that when we find this coven Davidson is so afraid of,” Raven replied.
She pulled open the next door and looked down a dark, cobweb filled corridor. The scent of blood and death hung in the air, a cloying copper scent.
Levac’s nose wrinkled. “Dead guy? Again?”
Raven drew her weapon and crept down the hallway, letting her vampire senses guide her through the maze of cobwebs and corridors. The path ended at a slim pair of double doors that opened into a library, of sorts. Antique book cases lined the walls, each heavy with moldering books. In the middle of the room sat four leather-backed chairs, each with its own reading lamp and side table, atop a rug woven from what looked like violet silk. A human body, weeks dead, was curled up in the middle of the rug, hands to its face. Blood had seeped into the rug and floor beneath, along with yellowish ichor and bodily fluids.
Levac tried to snort the smell away. “Damn, I hate the smell of corpses in the morning.”
He stepped closer and shined his phone’s light on the body. “Especially ones leaking yellow goo from their eyes. Is that melted brain?”
Raven took a closer look. The woman’s eyes appeared to have burst and were leaking a trail of yellowish mucus mixed with blood and what could only be the grey of human brain. She felt bile rise in her throat at the smell and she turned away.
“We can ask Ming, she definitely didn’t die from natural causes. Can you check her for any identification?”
“You want me to…touch her?” Levac asked. “Maybe we should just leave her for the doc.”
The body did look juicer and somewhat more disgusting than others they’d dealt with. The only one that had been on the same level was the skinned and salted werewolf, their second big case. Raven looked at it distastefully and removed a fresh pair of gloves from her pocket.
“We need to at least write it up if we can, Rupe. See if anything else has been disturbed, any references to the coven or Rosemary Kerr, I’ll search her.”
Levac smiled his relief and donned his own gloves before beginning his search. Raven stepped past him and knelt on the rug beside the body. She hadn’t died easily, that much was certain. She was curled into a fetal position with her hands to her face…to her eyes. Whatever had happened, she’d felt it, the evidence was in her position and gaping, painful jaws. Raven guessed she’d been dead a few weeks, maybe closer to a month given the decomposition of her face, but a time of death would be almost impossible to calculate. Whatever had killed her had accelerated the deterioration of the body.
The victim had been dressed in leather pants and jacket that were so closely matched and fitted they were almost one piece. The jacket had form-fitting cups like the armor worn by women in super hero movies and a high mandarin collar that framed her neck. A silver chain hung around her slender throat and matched the low-slung belt of chain around her slim waist.
Raven paused and ran the woman’s long platinum hair through her fingers. There was something familiar about the victim’s clothes and towering heels. She knew who this was.
“Pandora,” she whispered.
Levac straightened. “Your sister? How is that possible, she should have regenerated, shouldn’t she?”
Raven unzipped the woman’s jacket and rolled her onto her back. The corpse cracked and stretched as it moved, a sound that made Raven’s skin crawl and her skin grow cold. Across the victim’s belly was a tattoo she knew all too well. She’d been there when Pandora, drunk and high on Thirst, had gotten it.
“Damn,” she muttered.
She felt Levac’s hand on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Ray. You didn’t kill her.”
“I banished her,” Raven replied.
“Because of choices she made. It’s not your fault, you did your job, like you always do,” Levac said.
“Duty,” Raven spat the word.
She looked back at Pandora’s body. There was no sign of any wound, no silver or wood, yet she was as dead as any other corpse. It shouldn’t have been possible.
“Call Ming. I want to know what killed her and I want to know now.”
Levac nodded and pulled away. “I’m on it.”
He moved to the door and Raven heard him speaking on the phone in a soft voice. She ignored him and looked back at her sister. Pandora had been the closest to her in age and was the one who acted as baby sitter and confidant growing up. Though she was much older, she was a teenager at heart and had understood Raven better than the rest of the family, except maybe Dominique. She was family in every sense of the word and Raven regretted she’d been banished.
She shook the feelings away and continued her search. Pandora wasn’t much for pockets, but there were items she always carried, including identification, lipstick and gloss and her phone. She found the driver’s license in an inside jacket pocket, along with a business card for Jensen Murphy. His hotel room number was written on the back in Pandora’s flowing, feminine hand. How had she known Murphy? Friend, lover, employee? There weren’t many options.
“Ming is on his way. It could take a while, the Governor has declared a state of emergency,” Levac said behind her. “The roads are being shut down.”
“At Yule time? I bet that’s going over well,” Raven said, continuing her search.
She located Pandora’s cherry red lipstick and cinnamon flavored gloss, but there was no sign of her phone, keys or any clue as to why she was here in the middle of nowhere.
“Ming said it was temporary to get the roads back open,” Levac said.
He paused and Raven could hear the sound of him rubbing the stubble on his chin. “Ray, where’s Ash?”
Raven blinked. Ash w
as Pandora’s familiar. He’d have known if Pandora was dead and should have come to the House. Even banished, he was family. Had the shock killed him?
“I don’t know,” she said, straightening and stripping off her gloves. She located his number in her phone and dialed. Immediately a nearby phone began to ring, a shrill cry in the darkness that made Levac jump.
Raven closed her phone. “I think we just found the answer.”
They found Ash’s remains in the next room. He’d been staked to the middle of a cryptic eye-shaped sigil that Raven didn’t recognize. His corpse was surrounded by a circle carved deep into the wood of the floor and candles, some still smoldering, were set at his five points.
Ash had once been an attractive man of apparent middle-age. He’d had long black hair pulled into a “man bun,” a short salt and pepper beard and a lazy smile that women adored and men wanted to punch…or kiss. Someone had taken their time carving sigils into that handsome face. They covered his forehead, cheeks, lips and the sides of his nose, each one a tiny, delicate work of hellish art. Raven could only imagine the pain Ash had suffered during the ritual. Was this why Pandora was here, had she come to rescue him? It made sense. She’d trained Pandora herself and the older vampire had become a competent fighter, even in the ridiculous heels she insisted on wearing. But why hadn’t she called for backup?
“Because she was banished,” Raven muttered.
“You think this is because she was banished?” Levac asked in surprise.
Raven glanced at him. “No, just thinking out loud.”
She took several photos of the scene and emailed them to Aspen, asking about the symbols. She then continued her examination of the scene. The room was almost empty save for the corpse and the trappings of the strange ritual. The wood paneled walls were spattered with blood, more than just Ash’s. She could smell multiple blood types as well as the scents of lycans, fae and vampires killed over at least the last century. The scents overlapped and ran down the wall tracing the rivulets of long-dried blood, as if someone had intentionally dribbled blood in places.