by E. A. Copen
A folder opened and then a subfolder before I could blink. The subfolder contained a list of files named after gibberish. “Looks like there are some spreadsheets and a couple of videos.”
“What about the videos? Those seem helpful.”
A blue-lined window opened containing a media player I wasn’t familiar with but the window remained black. The computer made a sound and a gray box with a red X popped up center-screen containing something technical. I didn’t need to understand the jargon to know what the red X meant. Error.
“Looks like some of the data is corrupted.” His voice sounded as if he were in physical pain.
I cursed and tightened my fingers on the back of his chair before asking. “Is there anything useful?”
The keyboard keys clicked loudly under Ed’s fingers. “Maybe, but that’s going to take some time. Let’s try another file.”
He clicked on another file, and a spreadsheet opened. Ed and I both leaned in, squinting at the numbers and letters on the screen. “What am I looking at?” Ed asked.
I pointed to the first column. Every line all the way down the screen in that column was filled with a ten-digit combination of letters and numbers. “This could be an identifying code, sort of like a name. Sometimes, agencies use them in place of names for security reasons. I can call into any precinct or BSI station house in the nation and give them my code to identify myself. This reminds me of that.”
“So, each row is a person?” Ed scrolled down through screen after screen, making me dizzy. “There must be a thousand people in this document.”
“Stop scrolling a second so I can look.” He did, and I glanced through the other columns. Most of it meant nothing to me, but it looked like several columns held different weights, measures, and dosages. “This looks like medical information. Scroll over.” He did and the text of the document changed colors in the last column, which either contained a bright red D or a blue A. There were notably fewer blue A’s.
I filed all the information away in the back of my head, knowing the document had to be important. Until I knew what all that information meant, however, it was useless to me.
“Do you think you can fix the video files, Ed? We need more information.”
Ed sighed and shrugged. “I’ll do what I can, but the guy who stole this probably knew more about it. I’d be asking him if he knew what he was looking for. At the very least, maybe he can tell you who wanted it and why.”
I pushed away from the chair and rubbed my forehead. “And maybe the crash scene isn’t guarded anymore.”
“If it was BSI hiding evidence, I doubt they left anything.” Ed swiveled the chair around and crossed his skinny arms. “Can they conceal magick stuff, or do you think you can find something?”
I stared at the clothes littering his bedroom floor, chewing my bottom lip. This was BSI, the federal government and my employer. I had no way of knowing everything they had up their sleeves. A good power washing of the site would disturb enough magickal energies that getting a good read on what happened there would be impossible. It would also wash away most of the physical evidence, or at least what little any fires might not have destroyed. Abe could have placed early warning runes there as well, which would notify him if anyone came snooping around. If I went to check it out, there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to do so without him knowing. Since I didn’t know whose side Abe was on or what he was doing, I couldn’t trust him.
But I was an officer of the law, dammit. It was my job to investigate accidents like that. If Abe wanted to stop me, I’d make him break a sweat doing it.
“I don’t know, Ed,” I answered after a long pause. “But I’m going to find out.”
I went to the door and stopped when Ed called, “Be careful out there, Judah. Two other BSI agents are dead, and you don’t have impenetrable skin.”
“Neither do you,” I said, putting my hand on the doorknob and turning around. “At the first sign of trouble, you fry that hard drive, Ed. I’ve got a feeling it’ll be better to destroy it than to get caught with it.”
Ed turned his chair around. I waited until I heard his fingers moving across the keys again to leave.
I sat at a crossroads. Turning left would take me to Eden and to the hospital to check on Creven. He was a good friend who had gone through hell with me earlier. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t even have the hard drive. It would have been lost in the fire, and I’d still be clueless.
To the right lay Four Corners Concho and an unexplored crime scene. Abe and his flunkies might have sterilized the scene and removed any evidence, but they might have missed something. Even the smallest clue might help me pick up Reed’s trail again, and I needed to find him before he hurt someone else. Going there meant waiting to check in on Creven. It meant putting the case before a friend, but if I went to the hospital first, I’d lose valuable time. Any metaphysical evidence at the crime scene was fading with every passing second and could be gone by the time I made it back.
Either way I turned, I gave something up. It didn’t seem like much of a choice, but that’s all life really is, a series of choices and consequences. It’s living with the consequences that’s tough.
Creven wasn’t in any danger of dying, and so the visit seemed less urgent. Reed was still out there, still dangerous.
I turned right and rationalized the decision by saying it made more sense in the long term. I was saving lives going right.
The barricade was gone, but I slowed at the spot where the roadblock had been, glancing around. No sign remained other than a little freshly overturned dirt to the side of the road. I could have gotten out of the car there to poke around, but the real interesting stuff would be down the road at the station itself, so I eased on the gas.
A quarter-mile down the road from where the roadblock had been sat the dead husk of an old gas station. The pumps had long ago been removed and the building vandalized. Jagged bits of broken glass marked the windows and spray-painted graffiti in both Spanish and English painted the walls. Chipping blue paint and sandstone served as the canvas for the graffiti.
I pulled the car up under the awning and next to where the pumps would have been. The scene was quiet, with no signs anyone was still there. There were also no signs an ambulance had crashed there earlier in the day, but I’d need a closer look. I left the car running, headlights on, when I exited. My shoes scraped over bare concrete. Not even rocks or sand remained. I knelt and squinted at a patch of cracked concrete in the headlights. Most of the rest of the parking area was covered in the fine reddish dust commonly found in the Texas desert. This circular patch, about ten feet in diameter, was a shade of bone-white. It gave off the slight burning chemical scent of bleach or something resembling it.
Dammit, I thought, leaning back. They’d scrubbed the crime scene. Not only would that remove all the physical evidence, but it would also destroy any real link to an impression that might have been left. Still, I had to try. If there was even one drop of blood left at the site, one hair they’d missed, I might be able to tap into the smallest of residual energies and find out something.
I carry a tape measure on my key ring for occasions like that. Magickal energies are stronger in the center of things. I’d need to stand in the center of the gas pumping platform to have any chance of locating that residual energy. Finding the mathematical center meant taking measurements. But I was in a loaner car with loaner keys, meaning I didn’t have my tape measurer. I had to wing it.
What looked like the center of the platform placed me between two columns that would have divided the station’s two gas pumps. I squeezed in between them and tried to triangulate the distance using my fingers to make sure it was the mathematical center. If it wasn’t, it was as close as I was going to get. Then, I closed my eyes, extended my hands, and focused.
Reading energies is more difficult in some places than in others. Homes, for example, are easy enough to read that I barely have to try. Anyone can do it. Walk into a h
appy home, and you know it. Stand in the center of a house in turmoil, and you’ll feel the broken or violent energies all around. Public places are harder because of the way people come and go. When someone passes through a space, they leave behind temporary energy like a footprint that fades with time. As days and months pass, though, that energy builds up and a place can take on its own energy based on what passes through.
The Four Corners Concho station had been derelict and abandoned for years. The only people who came out there were people up to no good. Vandals, underage kids with a case of Daddy’s beer… Anyone who didn’t want to have an audience. An energy of secrecy, lies, pain and loneliness lurked like a whisper in a canyon. With no walls to contain it, the energy dissipated out in all directions, making it weak, but there was no mistaking that had become the dominant energy of the place. It appeared to me in dark hues of blue and green fog, drifting lazily around the place.
The weak energy, however, had been overridden by something stronger, two energies at war with one another. No, not war. That wasn’t the right word. This didn’t have the violent, conquering feel of battle. It felt more like a hunt. The energy of a predator, large, black with jagged edges and the tiniest spark of iron blue hung like a pale shadow near the pole next to me, not far from the bleached area.
I turned and searched for some sign, anything that might tell me more. There was nothing on the pole that I could see. No splash of blood or other fluids that were visible. The only thing I saw was an old plastic bin, the kind that used to hold windshield washer fluid and a squeegee. Dirt and some unidentifiable sticky substance caked the edges of it. It was perhaps the one thing in the area that hadn’t been thoroughly scrubbed. Still, I couldn’t see anything on the outside. Whatever I was sensing might be on the inside.
My nose wrinkled, and my stomach protested at the idea of sticking my hand in there. I had no idea what might be inside.
“The things I do for this job,” I muttered and rolled up my sleeve.
It was full of what I hoped was slimy water, though the slight odor of stale beer or old piss—I couldn’t tell which—made me think otherwise. I gagged, fought back vomit, and felt around in the bin for something solid. My fingers brushed the bottom and something tiny but rock hard. At first, I passed it over, thinking it was just a rock, but in the absence of anything else, I pulled it out and held it to the light coming from the headlights.
“A tooth?” I said, turning it over.
More specifically, it was a human incisor. Well, it wasn’t a vampire incisor since it didn’t look like a fang, although I supposed it didn’t have to be human. Nevertheless, it was a body part, and nothing was better for a basic tracking spell than a piece of the person you want to track. If this was Reed’s tooth, I’d hit gold.
Pain lit up my ribs out of nowhere, the momentum of an unseen strike sending me sprawling backward. My only thought as I flew back was that I needed to hold onto that tooth. I closed my hand around it, and when I landed, curled up over it. Lights of pain flashed in my vision, and water threatened in the corners of my eyes. Whoever had hit me had gotten me good.
“You were told to leave it alone, Judah.”
I blinked tears away as a tall figure in a hat and long coat stepped between me and the headlights. Abe? What the hell was he doing here, and how had he gotten the drop on me?
Abe advanced to where I lay prone and adjusted the hem of his gloves, tugging them tighter. “The moment you showed up, I knew you would not. Stubbornness is both a strength and a weakness in your case, Judah. It would be to your advantage to learn to know when to quit.”
I sat up and scooted back, pocketing the tooth as soon as I got the chance. My ribs screamed in pain as I dragged myself backward. “Why don’t you tell me why you really came to Paint Rock, Abe? It wasn’t to evaluate my performance and check up on the Vanguard, was it?”
Abe stopped several paces away. “Contrary to what you might believe, I told you to stay out of this for your own protection. Sometimes only having a piece of the puzzle is more dangerous than having the whole thing.”
“Spare me the philosophical bullshit.” I staggered to my feet, clutching the aching spot in my ribs. “You can’t hit me and then pretend to be my friend.”
“I am not here to be your friend, Judah. I am not here to be your partner. I have...ulterior motives.”
“Kinda guessed that.”
His hands flexed. “It is not what you think.”
“I know about the BSI agents you guys were hiding in Doc’s clinic,” I shouted. “I know Han is involved. I know Reed is connected. I know everything!”
“You know nothing. Your ignorance is why they have left you alive. However…” Abe removed his hat and tossed it off to the side like a Frisbee. “Sometimes the only way to teach a stubborn dog to heel is to beat it into submission. If you will not leave this alone, then I have no choice but to incapacitate you to prevent you from throwing your life away.”
I tightened my hands into fists. I’d seen Abe fight. As a half-vampire, he was strong. His sucker punch to the ribs earlier had proven he could do the damage. But I could take it. I had magick aplenty, and I’d been training with Creven. I had moves he hadn’t seen yet. On an even playing field, I was pretty sure I could take Abe.
But we might not be on an even playing field. Vampires got stronger after dark. I didn’t know how much vampire Abe had retained, but I knew even if I walked away from this fight, I’d take a beating that’d slow me down.
I licked my lips and tried to gauge the distance to the car. If I could just get to it, I could get away.
I stepped to the side as if to circle Abe, but he didn’t take the bait. He charged me, moving so fast I didn’t have time to get my shield up. His left fist came in hard against my ribs, just opposite his earlier strike. The punch pushed air out of my lungs, and I gasped as heat and pain flooded my ribcage. My brain went blank as it got to the more important task of processing the pain and preventing more. Instinctually, I curled up, which might have been the worst thing I could do. He brought a fist down to strike the back of my head, which would have brought a quick end to the fight. If I’d stayed put, that is.
I dropped and tackled his legs, taking them from under him.
I’m not particularly strong without magick to back me up, nor am I an expert martial artist or trained brawler. I picked up some stuff in the academy that had seen more use recently fighting Creven, but Abe wasn’t like Creven. Abe was like the other guys at the academy: bigger, stronger, taller than me. Take the legs out from under a guy who relies on upper body strength to get the fighting done, and you take away the advantage. On the ground, I had knees, elbows, fists, and teeth if nothing else, and he’d be forced onto the defensive. In theory.
That had been a messy tackle, though, and done in a panic, which meant I threw myself along with him. Hitting the ground jarred us both, but he wasn’t suffering from bruised ribs. Abe kicked at me, a boot making contact with my side below the ribs. I sat up and scrambled to try to put myself over him, but there were too many limbs flying at me. I got in one good punch to his nose before the side of his palm struck the side of my head and the world spun. Dizziness and a flash of nausea overtook me, making it easy for Abe to push me off him.
I stumbled to the side and blindly tried to crawl away, fighting the ever-worsening pounding in my head. The headlights blinded me in hazy streaks of white, and I suddenly remembered the car. Get to the car. Escape. I crawled toward it.
Abe’s foot came down on my outstretched hand, the finer bones of my palm crunching under his weight. I screamed in pain, feeling the bones creak and shift.
“I am sorry for this,” he said and removed his foot. His long fingers curled around the back of my shirt and he dragged me back away from the car, away from safety.
“Sorry, my ass! Why are you doing this?”
“Bruises heal,” Abe said and dropped me on the far side of the pumps face-down. He lowered one knee on the center
of my back before I could crawl away. No matter how much I squirmed or fought, I couldn’t get free. Whatever he’d done to my head ensured I could barely move. “Broken bones mend. Any damage to the body can be repaired, but death…death is the point of no return. There is no coming back if they kill you, and you must live. Do you understand me, Judah? You. Must. Live.” Abe grabbed my right arm with both hands, placing one at the elbow and the other on the wrist.
“Who are they, Abe? Who’s out there?”
Abe paused, something in his posture changing. I thought maybe he wanted to tell me, but how could that make sense? He’d just spent the last few minutes beating the hell out of me for not backing off. Whoever they were, Abe was clearly on their side.
“I am truly sorry,” Abe said and twisted. One hand turned forward and the other back, wrenching my arm along with them either way. With all the strength of a vampire behind the movement, both bones in my forearm snapped.
I howled in pain and cursed.
Abe let me go and stood. “Hate me if you want, Judah. I would not blame you. But you must know there are some truths better left uncovered.”
I tried to breathe through the sudden pain. Broken bones are no small thing. You don’t just shrug them off. When Abe stepped back from me, I blinked through the tears and met his eyes. Rage shook in my voice as I asked, “Why? Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because if I did not stop you, not only do I believe you would uncover the truth, but my loyalty would be in question. I cannot allow that.” He raised his head, looking out over the desert before rising. The soles of his boots scraped as he walked to collect his hat, dusted it off, and placed it over his head.