by Lauren Dawes
The last time I’d come out of Wonderland, it felt like someone had pulled the plug on all my energy, and Sawyer had had to practically carry me into the restaurant and force-feed me liver and pancakes. Yeah, it was as disgusting as it sounded.
This time around, though, I felt okay. More than okay, actually. Shucking my bloody jacket, I threw it at Sawyer, then slid my arms into the fresh one. Lifting the collar to my nose, I inhaled, catching his dark chocolate and whisky scent in the fibers. After Sawyer shoved my jacket into one of the saddlebags on his motorcycle, we walked toward the front door.
He ushered me inside, and we took a seat near the window, pulling the greasy laminated menus from the holders at the end closest to the window.
“So, who’s our new ME?”
“His name’s Doctor Julian Lee. Skin-walker. For over thirty years, he worked as an ME in Buxton before retiring a few years ago. Wolfe managed to convince him to come back and work for PIG.”
“Go, Wolfe. But wait. What’s a skin-walker?”
“In Navajo culture, they’re a kind of witch doctor, who can disguise themselves as an animal. They’re believed to be evil, to be able to control someone completely by just making eye contact, but like most things supernatural, it’s all relative.”
“I’m Flo,” a bored-sounding waitress said, breaking into our conversation. “What’ll it be?”
Flo had to be in her early sixties, her aged face hard and unyielding like she’d worked at this burger place since she was in her teens and she didn’t take shit from anyone anymore—the punk-ass kid playing soda jerk behind the counter or the dicky deep fryer out back along with its short-order jockey.
“A cheeseburger with extra mustard and a soda,” I said, sliding my menu back into place.
“Just a coffee,” Sawyer replied.
I shifted my legs up onto the seat beside Sawyer. “So what happened in Wonderland? Where was Baba Yaga’s body found?”
“In, what I suppose, was her home.” He pulled out his phone and showed me some photos. “Markings are the same, but like with Rose, there was no raven or its feathers.”
I scrolled through the photos. “Maybe there are no ravens in Wonderland?”
“There are, but their feathers secrete a poison that kills in seconds. She must’ve known that. Stop on that photo.”
I did, enlarging the image with my thumb and index finger.
“See how deep that one is? Down to the bone.”
“What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know.”
“Coffee. Soda,” the waitress announced loudly, placing the coffee in front of me and my drink in front of Sawyer. “Burger’s coming.”
When Flo shuffled off, we swapped drinks, and I took a long drag of my soda. “All right, so deeper cuts and no ravens. Do you think she’s amassed so much power now that she doesn’t need to use all the elements of the spell?”
Sawyer stirred his coffee silently, placing the spoon down on the table. “It would explain why she’s changed her MO. Maybe she doesn’t need the sacrifice anymore.”
“And with each kill she’s gaining a power.”
“Cheeseburger,” Flo said, placing the red plastic basket that was acting as a plate in front of me. “Anything else?”
She wandered off before I could ask about the double mustard. With a shrug, I picked up the burger and took a bite, then chewed.
Sawyer took a sip of his coffee, staring at me over the rim. “What I want to know is what’s her motive for killing all these witches and stealing their power?”
Swallowing, I said, “Well, if I were her and my whole family had been destroyed, I’d be coming after the person who did it, but I’d make sure…”
Sawyer looked at me sharply. “What?”
“I’d make sure I was stronger than before,” I finished, thinking it all through. “I’d guarantee my victory.”
“Okay, let’s see if this theory has legs. Kseniya’s stealing the powers to go after the Morozovs in order to seek revenge? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, but nobody has heard from the Morozovs since the slaughter,” I pointed out, taking another bite of my burger. “Kseniya wouldn’t be doing all this now unless she knew where her quarry was. That’s why she killed Sharyn… to steal the ability to find someone. I bet she selectively stole those other powers, too. Maybe they’re more effective against whatever powers the Morozov she’s hunting has.”
“Do you have to speak with your mouth full?”
I grinned. “Yes, it helps me think.”
He let out a sigh.
“We need to find and warn the Morozovs… wherever they are.”
He threw me a speculative look. “We don’t even know they’re here. They could be anywhere in the world.”
“Why wouldn’t they be here? The entrance to freaking Wonderland is in Buxton. Why wouldn’t a member of a powerful witching family be here, too?” I took another bite of my burger, licking mustard from my fingers. “How hard do you think it’ll be to find them?”
“I think we’re in needle-in-a-haystack territory.”
“Be serious.”
“I am. They could be using aliases or be anywhere in the world right now, despite
your supposition that they’re here in Buxton.”
“I’m telling you, at least one of them is here. Why else would Kseniya be spending so much time in Buxton? We just have to get to them before she does.”
He drained the rest of his coffee. “Are you done?” He nodded at my half-eaten burger. “Lee is waiting for us.”
Shoving the last bite of the burger into my mouth, I washed it down with a sip of my soda and stood.
Sawyer dropped some cash onto the table. “As soon as we’re done with Baba Yaga and Lee, we can start tracking the other Morozov witches down.”
Twenty minutes later, Sawyer slowed the Ducati and pulled into the driveway of what looked like a very expensive private clinic, complete with an ambulance tucked neatly under an awning beside the building.
“This is the ME’s office?” I asked Sawyer through the comms in the helmet.
“Yeah. I don’t know how Wolfe pulled it off, but PIG finally has an ME of our own.”
Sliding into a parking spot opposite the entrance, Sawyer killed the engine, waiting for me to slide off the back before putting down the kickstand. After stowing the helmets, we walked through the steel and glass doors and into a modern office lobby.
A man walked out of a door beside the receptionist’s desk and asked, “Detective Taylor?”
Sawyer held out his hand to the guy. “Yes. Doctor Lee?”
“Please, call me Julian,” he replied, pushing his square glasses up his nose.
“This is my partner, Officer Cat McKenzie.”
Lee turned his attention to me, his brown eyes kind. I automatically dropped my gaze. “Please don’t worry about that, ma’am. I’ve never been good with mind control, and I have no interest in it either.” He held out his hand to me. “Doctor Julian Lee.”
Doctor Lee looked to be in his mid-thirties, even though his eyes hidden behind his glasses looked much older. It made me wonder what kind of lifespan skin-walkers had. However old he really was, it seemed puberty hadn’t left him yet—his cheeks and jaw were covered in acne.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m not a supe.”
His brow quirked up. “Well, I won’t hold that against you then.” He gestured to the door he’d come through. “Are you ready to see the body?”
“No,” I replied.
“Yes,” said Sawyer at the same time.
Lee looked between us, a nervous smile appearing on his face. “Right. This way, please.”
The skin-walker led us down a long hallway that ended with a set of double-doors. I let the other two go through first, needing a moment to collect myself.
“You all right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Yep. Just need a minute.”
“Take as long as you need
,” he replied, folding his arms and leaning back against the wall.
After letting out a breath, I nodded and followed him in, fighting the instinct to turn right back around and leave again. The smell was what got me—formaldehyde. It hung in the air pervasively, making my nose crinkle. The steel drawers along one wall, the wash-down white tile floor—complete with hose reels on the walls—and medical chandeliers hanging over two steel slabs in the center of the room only added to the creepiness.
Lee pushed the glasses up his nose. “I waited until you got here before I began the autop—”
I jumped when there was a loud bang from the wall of steel drawers. I looked at Sawyer, whispering, “What the hell was that?”
He frowned. “It sounded like it came from—”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I yelped, pressing myself against the opposite wall from the steel drawers, the tiles hard against my shoulder blades. My heart was in my throat, my pulse thumping out a tachycardic rhythm. “Sawyer?” I asked, my voice warbling. Fuck. Keep it together, Cat. I couldn’t act like a scared little woman in front of the new work associate. “What’s going on?”
He pulled out his Glock and stepped forward. I shuffled to the side, my foot bumping into something and knocking it to the floor. It landed with a clang, the echo bouncing around the white-tiled room.
Sawyer’s gaze flickered to me. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I looked down. “It’s Reaver.”
If the sword was here, I probably wasn’t going to like what was about to happen.
Scooping it up, I held it at the ready, ignoring the way Lee’s eyes widened when he saw it.
“Where did… You didn’t… How…” His mouth gaped.
“You get used to it,” I told him, my eyes still on the wall of stainless steel. I was extra creeped out because the banging had been shoved into horror-movie territory with the addition of nails scratching and clawing at the door.
I swear to God, my heart stopped beating in my chest when Sawyer approached the drawers.
“Lee, which drawer is the body in?”
The skin-walker hustled forward and placed his hand on the handle of the second drawer on the left, about halfway up.
“On the count of three, open it then get out of the way,” Sawyer told him, cocking his .22 and sliding his finger onto the trigger. With his free hand, he held up three fingers, then counted them down. When he made a fist, Lee opened up the drawer—immediately throwing himself to the side and out of range.
Sawyer fired three times, each hit making the corpse of Baba Yaga screech like a banshee. The slugs did nothing to slow the witch as she shoved herself out of the drawer and leaped at Sawyer. His grip on the gun loosened, falling out of his hand and sliding across the tile.
“Why isn’t she dead? You said she was dead!” I yelled at my partner who was wresting on the ground with a corpse.
Sure, it was clear that she wasn’t, but it was always good to talk these things out.
“She was.” He grunted, prying back her arm and twisting at the same time, forcing the frail-looking-not-a-woman-but-really-a-corpse onto the floor. The two aprons of her skin flapped open with an audible squelch as she landed hard on her back.
Sawyer straddled her waist, holding her down by her shoulders. The witch’s bloody abdomen was covered in the symbols Kseniya had carved into her body, but that wasn’t what bothered me. It was the fact that Baba Yaga’s throat had been cut open, leaving a gruesome carved smile in her gray, waxy skin.
“Cat,” Sawyer ground out, dodging the witch’s clawed hands, trying to peel off his face. “I need you to cut off her head.”
I shook my head. “If I go to my therapist and tell her I decapitated another person, she’s going to call the cops. And I am the cops. I’d have to arrest myself. Not cool.”
He glared at me, his dark hair flopping into his face. Damn, he was looking sexy right now. “She’s already dead. She’s a zombie.”
“A zombie?” I thought back to the cyclops I’d fought. “She doesn’t look like a zombie. Her skin isn’t all melty and foul.”
“She’s newly dead. The body hasn’t decomposed yet. Can you stop arguing with me and just do as I ask?”
Hitching my hands onto my hips, I retorted, “Would it kill you to ask nicely? Argh, never mind.”
As if it knew it was going to be used, Reaver heated in my palm, glowing a faint electric blue. Hoisting the sword above my head, I said a quick prayer then brought the blade down onto Baba Yaga’s neck. The scent of burning flesh immediately permeated through the room, and I had to resist the urge to let go of the pommel and run screaming from the room.
“Again,” Sawyer yelled at me, wrestling to keep the witch’s body… err, corpse… still.
Yanking hard, I freed Reaver, sending a stream of black blood arcing through the air. It spattered onto Sawyer’s shirt, Baby Yaga’s face, and my cheek. Wiping off what I could onto my jacket, I swung the blade again, bringing it down onto her neck—onto the same spot as my first strike.
This time I hit bone. There was a fizz and a pop, and her head separated from her body. Baba Yaga’s clawed fingers slackened. Her arms dropped from Sawyer’s shoulders, falling limply to the floor beside her.
Sawyer clambered off the body, blood coating his shirt and pants.
“D-d-detective Taylor, are you okay?” Lee asked in a stammer from behind us.
“Fine, Lee,” Sawyer replied, wiping the blood from his face.
Lee’s dark eyes darted to the dead-dead witch on the white tile. “I’m glad you two were here for this. I don’t think I could’ve handled that on my own.”
I saluted him with my bloody sword. “Anytime.”
“Cat, help me get her body back onto the slab,” Sawyer asked.
“Ooo, hard pass. Cadavers and I don’t mix. I should know. I’ve created enough of them in the last few weeks.”
He rolled his eyes at me and looked to Lee, who quickly took the shoulders while Sawyer grabbed Baba Yaga’s feet. Even though it squigged me out, I picked up her head by the hair and placed it gently at the top of the slab where it would’ve gone before her unfortunate post-mortem decapitation. Hey, it was the least I could do considering I’d been the one swinging the sword.
“Sorry about the mess, doc.” I gestured to the glossy black blood on the floor.
Lee only smiled, pushing his glasses up his nose. “No problem. That’s why the floors are tiled and we have hoses.”
Eww. “Okay. Great.”
“I think I’ll get the autopsy done tomorrow,” Lee said, pushing his glasses up again. “That is, unless you need a cause of death right now?”
COD – decapitation, I thought wryly.
Sawyer said, “Tomorrow will be fine. I just wanted to meet you and let Cat get a look at the body. Photographs are one thing… it’s quite different to see the injuries in person.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” the doctor said.
“I just wish I hadn’t had to see them in action, too,” I grouched. Turning to Sawyer, I raised my brows at him. “Can we go now?”
“Yeah.” Turning to Lee, he said, “Nobody will claim her body. After you’re finished with her, cremate the body, and I’ll collect the urn.”
As we left, I said, “Do you have a creepy collection of urns at your apartment I need to know about?”
He gave me a sideways look that could’ve meant so much. “Just get on the bike,” he growled, sitting astride and kicking the engine into life.
I did as he asked, trying to ignore the black blood that seemed to have soaked into every inch of his clothing.
“Where are we going?” I asked into the comms of the helmet.
“Home. I need to get showered and changed. You should probably do the same.”
Yeah, I guess he had a point.
Seventeen
“Cat? Cat, you need to wake up.”
I rolled over and swatted Sawyer away. “No sex right now,” I mumbled. �
��Too tired.”
“Jesus,” he muttered then hissed, “McKenzie.”
I bolted upright, almost headbutting Sawyer in the process. Blinking, I stared at the clock. Three in the morning. “Why am I awake at three in the morning?”
“I just had a phone call from Amy.”
“Well, good for you. Enjoy the booty call.” Yep, I sounded grouchy about that, but as I tried to roll back over and shut my eyes, Sawyer ripped the blanket from my body and hauled me out of bed. His heated eyes dropped to my silky unicorn print camisole before returning to my face.
“Amy Elliot,” he said. “The witch we spoke to on Monday. She said we needed to get over to her house right now.”
“A threesome is on my fantasy list, but not with someone in their fifties, and not a woman. Being the meat in a man sandwich is more my style.”
He shook me, my teeth clacking together. “This isn’t about sex or feeding,” he ground out. “She said she knows where Kseniya is.”
Suddenly awake, I scrambled from the bed, then quickly got changed, throwing on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved tee. Plucking my PIG jacket off the hanger, I slid my arms into it as I shoved my feet into my boots. Just as I was about to leave, I grabbed the warded cuffs––the ones that would stop and subdue almost any supe in their tracks. Sawyer always said I ran into situations without thinking. Well, I was thinking today.
Scooping my hair into a ponytail, I secured it at the top of my head and found Sawyer waiting for me by the door. We left without speaking, the reality of the situation finally settling over me. Sawyer pushed his motorcycle hard, speeding through the empty streets of Buxton on the way to Amy’s house. I didn’t want to think about how Sawyer knew where it was. Jealousy was sludge in my veins when I thought about him with any other women, but as I’d told myself a thousand times before, Sawyer wasn’t mine to own.
I’d done him a solid when he really needed it.
We had our one-time-only sex, and now it was done.
When he pulled the bike to a stop against the curb, I yanked off my helmet and looked at the house we’d parked in front of.
“There are no lights on,” I said.