Air of Darkness

by Rose O'Brien

  “And what did he give you?”

  “My turn,” Alayna said. “What’s the FBI’s interest in this when APD is still investigating, albeit half-heartedly?”

  Silence hung between them for a moment as he turned to stare at the tourists and shoppers on the street. He was going to have to trust her. He turned back and said, “I was checking into things off the books. I told you, Blanca Rodriguez was a friend.”

  “Wait, so this isn’t on the Bureau’s radar yet? That’s the first good news I’ve had all day,” she said.

  “No, APD is still handling it. I tried to get the Bureau to pick it up, but one murder doesn’t warrant FBI attention,” he said, disdain creeping into his voice.

  “It wasn’t just one murder,” Alayna said.

  That snapped his head around.

  “There’ve been six, so far. APD got to Blanca’s body before my team could get to the scene.”

  He cursed under his breath. Six people. Sweet Jesus.

  “So far, they’ve all been Hispanic, all undocumented, all recently crossed the border. Until Blanca. She’s the aberration. She was a war hero and a college student. Someone slipped up bad, and she’s the key to catching them,” she said, anger coming through her voice.

  For the first time since Blanca died, he felt like someone cared.

  Alayna hopped off the hood of the car, leaned her hip against the grill, and turned to him. Her dark blue eyes locked on his and she spoke softly. He could fall right into those eyes if he wasn’t careful.

  “So, the way I see it, we’ve got two options,” she said. “I can try that memory wipe again, but it might cause some serious brain damage.”

  Alex stiffened, moving backwards out of reflex.

  “Or we can work on this case together,” she said in the same soft voice. “You’ve got good instincts, and I could use a resource inside sapien law enforcement to let me know their next move.”

  “I really want to skip the part where you scramble my brains,” he said, his voice surprisingly steady. “But I just want to find the bastard who killed Blanca and put a bullet through him. And then I want to go back to my life.”

  He’d worked hard to put his life back together, picking through the pieces of his shattered dreams to do it. If he was what she said, he might have to run. Starting over was the last thing he wanted to do.

  Alayna was silent for a moment, her head down as she mulled his words.

  Her eyes met his. “Help me with this case and I’ll do everything I can to give you a shot at the killer. And I’ll teach you what you need to know to hide yourself. It’s no guarantee, but it might give both of us a fighting chance at making it through this intact.”

  He needed intel if he was going to get this target off his back. She was the one that had it. If he was ever going to get back to his life, she was the key.

  Alex looked back at the busy street, but he was really seeing Blanca’s autopsy photos. There was a nasty thing—or things—out there killing people. From what he’d seen, this woman and her team might be the only people that could stop the next murder and help him figure out what had happened to Blanca.

  “I’m in.”

  ***

  Alex looked down at the card Alayna had given him before they’d parted ways at the food truck park.

  A.Blackwell

  512-555-7649

  On the back, she had written an address on Red River Street and 11 p.m.

  Here he sat on a deserted Red River Street. The clock on his dashboard said 10:45.

  He’d spent the intervening hours since he’d spoken with Alayna processing how much his world had just changed.

  His Army training had taught him to identify threats and formulate strategies to eliminate those threats and he was falling back heavily on his training now.

  If what Alayna said was true, there were thousands of creatures in this city that would probably be able to spot him in a crowd, mostly because he’d likely betray himself by staring. Or cringing, gibbering, or screaming.

  He didn’t know exactly what this lìthseach thing was, but he understood that it made him a target and he was going to do everything he could to minimize his profile.

  Maybe with his help, they could catch Blanca’s killer. Maybe with her help, he could learn enough to keep himself alive. And when this case was over, he could go back to his real life, the one he’d scraped together from the ashes. Nothing was certain, but he had to try.

  With that decision, he checked one of his most pressing concerns off of his mental checklist. Mental checklists were his comforting old friends. As an Army medic in Afghanistan, his checklists had served him well, allowing him to clear his mind, think quickly, and act to save wounded soldiers and civilians when bullets and mortars were flying around him.

  Assess the situation for safety concerns, visually and verbally triage patients, establish treatment options in the field, stabilize, and evacuate.

  The checklists were so clean, emotionless and dispassionate. Just like he needed to be if he was going to survive more than five minutes in a world where movie monsters walked around like regular people.

  His next concern was Alayna’s request that he pass on information from the sapien law enforcement investigations—damn it, he was already starting to think in the terms she’d used—into the murder they knew about. But her team had slipped easily into the APD network, so he wasn’t providing them with any information they didn’t already have. And the FBI had yet to take an interest in the cases, so he wasn’t jeopardizing federal intel and putting his job in danger.

  He’d just be using his skills—and maybe some of the records, resources and search capabilities of the Bureau—to help an independent investigator locate a threat to public safety. The fact that the independent investigator in question could shoot lightning from her fingertips and heal a skull fracture with a few words was not relevant. Alayna and her team were probably the only ones that could handle this threat. His conscience was clear about helping them.

  He didn’t really know why, but he trusted Alayna. Maybe it was because she had probably saved his life. He didn’t even really hold the memory tampering against her. He sensed that she had just been trying to protect him. Maybe it was because she wanted to find Blanca’s killer as badly as he did.

  Bottom line, if he walked into this meeting tonight, he was all in. He opened the door and climbed out of his truck.

  Red River was one block off the freeway and ran north and south along the edge of the entertainment district. A few blocks north, Sixth Street was in full swing on a Saturday night. The glow of neon and the frantic motion of a spotlight spilled over the tops of the old buildings, bleeding into the night sky.

  But down on this end, it was dark and quiet.

  As he shut the door of the truck, the sound echoed down the empty street. Chilly moisture hung in the February air, shimmering as it condensed on the windshields of the empty cars that lined the street. Alex opted to keep his leather jacket on over his black T-shirt and heavy-cloth khakis. The leather offered some protection in a fight and hid a few surprises.

  He walked past shuttered shops, protected by metal roll-down doors and restaurants that were closing up for the night.

  When he arrived at the address he'd been given, he checked the map on his phone again. This couldn't be right.

  The building looked like it had seen better days before it was abandoned and left to rot. It was an old brick two-story and had probably once been a cotton or grain warehouse, like many of the buildings north of the river in the oldest part of the city. A long wooden porch, bowed in the middle with age, ran along the front of the building, and the steps on either end had holes big enough to break an ankle in each of the treads. The windows in the front of the building were spray painted black from the inside. There were no street numbers on the outside of the building, but the numbers on the buildings to either side confirmed this must be the place.

  Alex spotted a small brass plaque beside a bl
ack metal door. It was crusted over with green corrosion, so he hopped up on the porch to get a better look. A little rubbing revealed the words engraved in the metal.

  The Dusty Trail.

  He stepped back from the plaque and looked up and down the porch. This was the address, and this was the right place, but where was Alayna?

  Had he been set up?

  His hand went for the gun holstered under his arm, and that’s when he heard it, strains of music floating through the cool night air. It was like the chirp of a cricket, hard to pinpoint the direction of the music’s origin. It faded and then returned louder, like a failing speaker. He shook his head, trying to figure out if his ears were playing tricks on him.

  Alex looked back up at the building and his vision slid in and out focus, like a camera lens that couldn't quite find the sweet spot. His stomach rolled as a wave of nausea hit him and he closed his eyes, breathing deeply, desperate to find his center. His equilibrium shifted violently, and he felt like he was falling and spinning at the same time. He was about to toss his lunch all over the porch when he became aware of lights penetrating his closed eyelids. The music was getting louder.

  He opened his eyes slowly, and the first thing he saw was a strand of Christmas lights. They were the older style with the over-sized glass bulbs and they were wrapped around the posts of the porch and bordered the door. The black door remained, but he could see figures moving through the windows, which were no longer painted black. The building didn’t look abandoned anymore, the old stonework and brick looking as fresh as the day they were installed about a hundred fifty years ago.

  A brightly painted wooden sign—that sure as hell hadn’t been there before—hung above the porch.

  The Dusty Trail.

  Weird.

  Alex wasn’t sure why he was suddenly seeing a very different building from the one he had been standing in front of just a few seconds ago, but he was learning to save his questions until the end of the presentation.

  The door was locked. He knocked twice and wasn’t surprised when a hulking bouncer opened the door.

  The dude was easily over six and half feet tall and as wide as the door. His face looked like it had been slammed in a car door a few times, and his dark hair looked like it had been cut by a weed whacker.

  The human wall glared at him and Alex tipped his head back in order to meet his eyes.

  “Name?” the giant asked in a voice so gravely it sounded like two slabs of concrete grinding together.

  “Alex Martinez.”

  The Hulk lumbered to the side and Alex stepped inside the Dusty Trail.

  The place looked for all the world like an old-time saloon. A large wooden bar occupied the entirety of the right-hand wall, and a huge mirror behind it made the space look larger than it was. Unlabeled bottles of various sizes, shapes, and colors sat on shelves behind the bar. Twenty or so stools lined the bar and about twenty round wooden tables filled the room. The place was packed and growing warm from all the bodies, the chatter a mid-level din.

  As he searched for Alayna’s face in the crowd, he started to notice some details that quickly had his skin crawling and his breath coming fast. A group of men and women sitting near the door had delicately pointed ears. A woman at the bar had shimmering scales on her neck and the backs of her hands and hair as green as seaweed. A man in the corner had intense blue eyes that looked like they were—no, they couldn’t be—glowing.

  A black-gloved hand landed on his shoulder. With his nerves pulled as taut as a piano wire, Alex reacted on instinct and nearly had the man in an arm lock before the other man stepped away.

  “Whoa there,” said the dark-skinned man. Alex recognized him from the alley the night before. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “There are ghosts now?”

  The newcomer laughed.

  “She said you were smart, but even she’s wrong occasionally.”

  A high-pitched voice spoke up from the vicinity of Alex’s waist.

  “Stop being such a catty bitch, Dumeril.”

  A girl, who looked about six years old, pushed past him from the entrance and headed to the bar. A dark blue cloak covered her slender shoulders, but the hood had fallen back to reveal long brown hair woven in braids along the side of her face.

  “Why is there a kid in a bar?” Alex asked.

  The one she’d called Dumeril burst out laughing again.

  “I like him. He’s funny. Let me buy you a drink, funny man,” he said.

  The little girl had managed to scramble up on a bar stool and ordered a margarita from the bartender. In her tiny hands, it looked like a fishbowl. Dumeril soon had a dark, frothy draught in his hand and was pressing a glass of whiskey into Alex’s.

  “I think you’re going to need this,” he said.

  Oh, awesome, it was a double. Alex downed it and set the glass on the bar, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  That’s when his vision started to do that focus in and out thing again. The face of the little girl changed, blurred and slid back into focus. She smiled and showed two rows of pointed, shark-like teeth, both top and bottom. Her nose was much longer, larger, and hooked like a beak. Her eyes became bigger, the overly large irises and pupils ringed with a white starburst set in deep lapis blue.

  Alex felt his stomach drop as he stared at something out of the Grimm Brothers’ nightmares. Wrestling every fight or flight instinct he had, he turned away, trying to control his breathing.

  The girl wasn’t the only one whose appearance had changed. Dumeril had looked like a regular Black dude just a few seconds before. Now he was staring at a man with pointed ears peeking beneath white hair, violet eyes, and skin as dark as printers ink. He smiled, showing unnaturally long canines. Alex fought a wave of dizziness and gripped the edge of the bar to keep from falling on his ass.

  Dumeril moved up beside him. “It gets easier.” When Alex gave him a puzzled look, he added, “The glamour’s slipping, I mean. By the look on your face, I’m guessing they’re slipping right and left.”

  Alex nodded, signaling the bartender that another drink was desperately needed.

  “Pretty soon, you won’t see them to begin with.”

  The bartender set another double whiskey down in front of Alex. He took it carefully and downed half of it.

  “I don’t understand how any of this works. Glamours, vampires, witches, you, her.” He indicated the sharp-toothed creature that up until a minute ago had looked like a cute little girl. “One minute, this building looks abandoned, the next, it looks like a bar.”

  “Glamours are blankets of illusion. They let people see what they want to see. They work on the sapiens, and the more oblivious vampires and shifters. But if you look right at a glamour, and you know what to look for, it dissolves.”

  Alex nodded, finishing the rest of his drink.

  “Look, I don’t mean to be rude,” Alex said, keeping his voice low, “but what the hell is she?” He indicated the girl-creature who was pretending to be very interested in her drink.

  “Ellie,” he said, stressing her name, “is a gnome."

  This thing sure didn’t look like the cute little ceramic statue in his mother’s garden.

  In a softer voice Dumeril said, "She's small but fierce, so don't piss her off."

  Ellie eyed him from her seat further down the bar and lifted her chin sharply.

  “’Sup, dawg?”

  Alex closed his eyes and started rubbing the spot between his eyebrows with the knuckle of his index finger, a nervous gesture he’d picked up somewhere between Kabul and Baghdad. All of this was just un-fucking-real.

  “Over here,” Dumeril said in a raised voice, holding up his hand in the increasingly crowded bar.

  Alex glanced toward the entrance. The olive-skinned woman he had seen the night before was moving through the crowd, her bobbed black hair brushing her shoulders. There was no sickening blurring or sliding, and her appearance remained the same. Alex breathed
a sigh of relief.

  “Hey, it’s the pendejo from last night,” said the woman as they approached the bar. “How’s your head?”

  Alex didn’t appreciate being called a dumbass as a greeting.

  “Muy bien, gracias.” He was fine, thanks. He shot her a smile. That let her know he’d understood what she’d called him and that he could drop it.

  “Just kidding, dude,” she said, slapping him on the back. A distinctive Laredo accent touched her words. He could hear the street in her tone and would bet his last dollar there was a switchblade in her boot. “We’re glad to have you on the team. I hope the fuckwads,” she indicated Dumeril and Ellie, “haven’t been giving you too hard a time.”

  Ellie flipped her off and went back to her drink.

  “I’m Guadalupe Herrera, but everyone calls me Lu,” she said extending her hand. He shook it, noting the barely-leashed strength in her hands and arms. She wore a black tank top that showed off well-muscled shoulders. The way she held her body marked her as a fighter, but her hands and face carried none of the tell-tale scars.

  As he turned back toward the crowd, he was pretty sure there wasn’t a glamour left in the place that he wasn’t seeing right through. There were beings of every size in the crowded bar, from tiny flitting things that must have been fairies to the bouncer, who now looked something like a storybook troll, with green and black splotchy skin and small tusks jutting from beneath his lower lip.

  Alex took a deep breath and let his thoughts settle, found his center, like he’d done hundreds of times when the bullets were flying and a buddy’s blood was leaking through his fingers. It was all just training. And he could train himself not to freak every time he saw a freak.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the front door of the place swing open and the pale flash of platinum hair.

  Alayna breezed in and offered the troll/bouncer a kiss on the cheek, saying something that made the bruiser laugh. From the gravel in the creature’s rumbling chuckle, it didn’t do that very often.

  As she moved into the bar, the crowd parted for her, keeping their distance. Their stances said it was out of respect, not fear.