Sleeper_Google, page 6
part #3 of Hunter Series
I walked into the master bedroom and was assaulted by the stench of stale sex, fear, and death. I had to shut my senses down it was so overwhelming. It was nicer to concentrate on the body.
He’d been caught in mid shift, horns barely starting to penetrate his thick brown hair. His skin had begun to turn and still had a slightly reddish tone, despite the fact that death had settled in. He was on his back, his mouth slightly open to show the beginnings of a nasty set of curved fangs. The king was standing over the body and Jamie was talking to a pretty blonde with a laptop in front of her. Nicole had used the top of the dresser to set up an array of weird equipment that would break down the elements of the crime. Nicole would use that equipment to figure out his species and hopefully his clan, to find the mysteries of anything left behind—and there was always something left behind.
I personally was interested in that smell I couldn’t define. If Trent wasn’t sure about it, then I was interested in it. There weren’t many smells in the world Trent hadn’t gotten a whiff of. He’d been Special Forces for years, and then undercover for the king. He’d put paws on almost every continent and hunted every creature known to man.
But he didn’t know what this was.
“That’s a lot of blood.” I made sure I didn’t step in the congealing pool that coated the carpet around the body.
Nicole looked up from her laptop, a grin on her face. This was like Disneyland for the CSI. “It’s not all his. I’m super excited about that. I found some drops of blood near the door. I think Lester here nicked his assailant at some point and the dude bled a little, though it’s easy to see who was on the receiving end of this particular fight. But you should understand, it wasn’t much of a fight. It was more like a slaughter.”
“Why don’t you fill the Nex Apparatus in on what you’ve discovered,” the king said.
Nicole’s ponytail bobbed as she talked. “It’s cool to hear you called that. Like you’re a superhero or something. Anyway, here’s what I’ve got. Time of death can be super hard with a demon because liver temp tells you nothing. Everything cools quickly and I think we’re in the time that I can’t use body temp. If I don’t take it within about thirty minutes of death, the body hits room temperature and that tells me nothing. But what we do have is a police disturbance at two in the morning last night.”
“A disturbance?”
Jamie took over. “Yep. According to the reports, at two in the morning the nearest neighbor saw a flash of light and felt an earthquake. I checked with the ANSS and they did not register a quake at any time in the last twenty-four hours, so it had to be incredibly localized.”
North Texas had become a hotbed of minor quakes. Some people blamed fracking; others claimed we’d simply found new fault lines, previously undiscovered. Yeah, that was mostly from the gas companies.
I happened to know that certain demons kind of shook the earth when they departed or were forcibly exorcised from a host body. The effect was localized and most of the Metroplex wouldn’t even notice. The rest would probably think there had been a bad crash nearby or the city had blown up a bridge to make way for new traffic patterns.
“So we think the murder occurred around two? Did the police follow up?” I asked.
“DPD drove by, but the neighbor couldn’t tell them which house they thought it had happened at. According to the neighbor, it was a bright flash of light through his bedroom window and then he felt the earth shake,” Nicole explained. “It doesn’t help that the neighbor was absolutely certain it was an attempted alien abduction. The police weren’t going to go door to door looking for Reticulan Grays, if you know what I mean.”
“I do not.” I have enough weird shit in my world. I don’t need to know varieties of aliens. “Do we have any citizens in the area?”
“Yes.” Trent had his cell phone out, scrolling through a list of all known supernatural creatures. The Council kept meticulous records and they were all probably on Trent’s phone. “We have two listings within a mile radius. One is a Larissa Dymone, a halfling. She’s in a condo two blocks from here. The other is a werepanther family. Greg and Maria Garcia. We’ll also talk to the crazy alien man and see if he remembers anything that didn’t come from space.”
Sometimes my job is super fun. “Did we have any signs of forced entry?”
I glanced around the room. The bed was rumpled, the sheets askew. The pillows had fallen to the side and one corner of the fitted sheet had come undone. There were two glasses on the side table, a half drank bottle of some kind of wine there, too. Old Lester had been having a nice night it seemed. Right up until his murder.
“Not according to the police. The door was locked,” Nicole explained.
“Yeah, but look up there, sis.” Jamie was staring up at the wall over the French doors that led into the bedroom. The ceilings were vaulted, going up probably twelve feet high, but I could see the small disk that had been mounted about halfway between the ceiling and doorframe.
“I’m going to need a boost.” I could bet what that small circle was, but I needed to see it with my own two eyes. As it looked as though it was untouched, I definitely need to inspect it.
Trent was right by my side in a heartbeat, kneeling down and offering me a lift. He cupped his hands and I slid my boot between them. It was a simple act of Lycan strength that lifted me up and allowed me to grab the ward Lester the royal demon had used in a vain attempt to secure his home.
Trent brought me back down and then it was Donovan at my side, pushing his way in.
“Is that a ward?” Donovan pulled his glasses off, leaning over for a closer inspection.
In our world you can’t be too careful. Sure an alarm is awesome when it comes to scaring off the humans, and the high-pitched sounds will rattle most were creatures, but demons will blow right past one. A vampire doesn’t care that you have a triple reinforced door with dead bolts. They’ll punch right through the sucker. No, if you want to keep out supernatural creatures, magic is the way to go, and witches are your friendly neighborhood security advisors.
“It looks like a standard protection ward.” From what I could tell it was your typical keep-out-all-ye-who-would-do-me-harm kind of thing. They were all over Ether and the building that housed the Council. There were wards that protected against violence, wards that made it hard for a person to lie, wards that kept out certain ghosts and revenants, because damn they were hard to get rid of once those suckers dug in. I suspected that this was nothing more than a ward to keep out all the uninvited.
Lester obviously had some serious cash. That meant he would go to a serious witch and the ward should have held.
“It’s not broken.” I inspected the whole thing. It was completely intact. It was a lovely piece of work, made of what looked like onyx with an opal inlay. The incantation was laid in some kind of a lovely white paint with gold flecks. “Can you read this, professor?”
Donovan didn’t take the bait. He simply stared down at the ward. “Most of it’s in an archaic form of Latin.”
“Isn’t all Latin archaic?” Jamie asked.
Nicole chuckled, but looked at Jamie like he was lucky he was hot. “There have been many, many versions of Latin throughout time. Languages evolve. The king is right. I’m pretty sure this is one of the first forms. It would be powerful for use in a spell. And the symbology is interesting. Not that I know a ton about witchcraft, but I think some of these come from a demon language.”
“Yes.” Donovan ran his hand over the disk. “This part is a combination of old Latin and Demonish. I can’t read it entirely. And there’s a piece on the back that I don’t understand at all. Never seen that language before. I know this should have kept out anyone with bad intentions, but other than that, we’re going to need some research.”
Luckily, I knew some people.
Chapter Four
An hour later I found myself at the home of one Fred Mitchell Jackson, retired janitor. From what Trent had managed to pull up on him, his wife had died a few years back and they’d had no children. He lived alone in the tiny ranch house that seemed out of place amongst the mini mansions. The size alone made it incongruous. The fact that all the windows were covered in what looked like tinfoil was just a plus.
I bet he was hell on his HOA.
Unfortunately, I needed to talk to the dude because I’d noticed he had security cameras, and one of them was pointed at the street that ran in front of both his and Lester’s homes. If there was one security camera, there might be more. It was a long shot, but the king wanted to figure out who was killing his friends and it was sort of my job.
Naturally, though, I wasn’t allowed to do it alone.
“Should I ring the doorbell again?” Trent frowned at the door like his sheer will alone could force the thing open.
“Or you could show some patience.” Somehow I didn’t think that Trent’s continuous knocking would work out in the long run. It was more likely to get us peppered with buckshot than a nice long talk with the dude whose whole existence reeked of paranoia.
Then again, crazy Fred also lived next to the demon Hell lord equivalent of Prince Harry, if the number of condoms he went through were any indication of his lifestyle. So Fred kind of had a right to be paranoid.
I smiled at the camera and tried to give him my most harmless look, but my brain was working overtime. “I didn’t know demons wore condoms. I kind of thought they were all out to reproduce. Kind of like wolves.”
Vamps didn’t need condoms. Those swimmers died during the change. The rest of the body still functioned, but sperm didn’t survive the transition. Gray had been kind of baby crazy when we were together. Of course, he’d also only had like five years left on the Earth plane before he joined Papa Sloane in Hell. His biological clock had been ticking and hard.
“Lots of wolves wear condoms when they have sex.” Trent had gone still, sniffing the air in that way that let me know the sommelier of scents was in the house.
“That’s not what I’ve heard.” I rang the bell again and went back to showing the camera that I wasn’t any threat at all. “I’ve heard wolves fuck like bunnies trying to reproduce as fast as they can since they don’t actually reproduce the way bunnies do. Hey, why aren’t there werebunnies out there?”
It made me sad that almost all the werecreatures were predatory. Sure there were weredeer and some werepigs, but I’d never met a person who turned into a chicken on the full moon. Same with sweet little bunnies.
“Because we ate them all,” Trent replied with absolutely no shame tingeing his tone. “Not we, actually, but our forefathers. Apparently they were really tasty.”
“That’s horrible.” His ancestors should be damn glad there hadn’t been a werePETA organization back then.
My outrage didn’t faze him at all. “And plenty of wolves suit up for sex. I wouldn’t want a baby who didn’t come from my mate.”
“So wolves never have second marriages?” It seemed wrong that he would go through the rest of his life alone.
His eyes came open suddenly and he sent me what seemed like a suspicious stare. “Marriages, yes, true matings, no. A wolf only feels the mating call once in his life and then it’s done.”
And he’d already had his call. From what I understood, Trent had been just out of high school when he’d mated. He’d married a girl from his home pack and then joined the Army and served in the same unit my father had. There was a whole werewolf unit the government didn’t like to talk about.
I had to think Trent’s mating howl had shaken the ground.
I’d heard the mating howl once when I was with the Italian wolves. A male called out on a full moon for the female of his heart and she’d answered. It had been moving, in an emotional way. The idea of what Trent had lost made my heart kind of ache.
Sometimes I think my life was easier when I was numb. Before I’d met Gray and then Marcus, I had buried myself in a neat and tidy shell. Oh, sure sometimes my she-wolf scratched her way to the surface and I tried to murder people, but I didn’t have all these pesky feelings. I didn’t worry that Marcus was falling out of love with me and I wouldn’t have given a crap that Trent was lonely. I would have taken another shot of tequila and not cared.
“So you don’t think you’ll ever have a girlfriend again?” Why was I still standing here? This dude wasn’t opening the door. I reached into my bag to pull out a business card and ask him to call me, which he probably wouldn’t.
I might have to work some vampy mojo on him to get him to talk. If I could catch him outside, since vampy mojo only works in person.
“Why the sudden interest in my love life, Owens?” Trent closed his eyes again and breathed deep. “He’s coming and he’s alone. I do smell metal though. Gun oil. Get behind me. Now, Owens.”
I could handle a dude with a gun, but Trent was moving in front of me anyway.
“Who are you and what do you want?” The near shouted question came over what must be hidden speakers.
So he had the place wired for sound. Nice. I looked up and around and finally found the speaker. It was camouflaged against the dark bricks of the house. It had a nice sound, too. Very almighty powerful Oz of him.
I could play Dorothy. I waved from behind my muscular bulwark. “Hey, Mr. Jackson! I’m Kelsey Owens, a private investigator looking into the murder that happened across the street. I was wondering if you noticed anything odd last night. Maybe a bright light or a kind of booming sound, like a different plane opened up and spat out an assassin or something?”
I couldn’t see Trent’s eyes roll, but it was all there in his tone. “Could you try to act professional?”
I was. Mr. Jackson spoke crazy so I was giving it to him in his language. And honestly, he wasn’t truly crazy. Some humans see things they can’t handle and it breaks them in a way. When your eyes see something that can’t reconcile with your version of reality, often you end up warped. I didn’t know what had happened to the former janitor, but I was going to treat him with some respect, and that meant leveling with him where I could.
“And if I did see something? Who would believe me anyway?” There was a sorrow behind the bellow now.
“Me. I would believe you, Mr. Jackson. I’m not the cops. I’m something else entirely, and my only goal is to find out the truth of what happened, no matter how odd or surreal that truth turns out to be.” I should put that on my business cards.
“And what about that werewolf with you? What’s he here to do?” Jackson asked.
I heard a huff of surprise from Trent, but I felt like I’d scored. Yeah, life’s so much easier when I don’t have to play around. “The wolf’s here because no one ever believes I can do a job on my own. There’s sexism in the supernatural world, too, you know. It’s exhausting and I miss my alone time.”
“One day I will show you sexism,” Trent muttered.
The door came open and a balding head peeked through. “You can come in, but you should know I got silver bullets. I got all the bullets to deal with your kind.”
I doubted that, but I still gave him a sunny smile because I’ve learned that shoving down my morose side helps with twitchy clients. Like I said, even in my world it sucks to be female. If you don’t smile you have resting bitch face and some jerk tells you how much prettier you would be if you would flash him a flirty grin. That’s when he gets to see my active bitch face, which is way scarier.
Still, the smile seemed to work on the elderly Mr. Jackson. He let us both into his creepy hoarder house and stepped back, narrowly avoiding a stack of newspapers that looked like they went back to the 1950s. “You say you’re looking into what happened to Les?”
“First of all, how exactly do you know about wolves and why would you say I’m one?” Trent was still putting his body between us, though the other dude weighed all of a hundred pounds soaking wet.
“Caught you on camera. Wereanimals’ eyes shine a particular way in certain light,” Jackson explained. “And I know about wolves because my pappy was a hunter back in the old days. Know about demons, too. Les was one of the decent ones.”
“You aren’t known to the Council.” Trent managed to make that sound like the worst crime imaginable.
Jackson’s hand tightened on the rifle he was carrying like it was a security blanket. “You from the Council? I won’t go down easy, you know.”
I held out a hand. “No one’s trying to take you down, Mr. Jackson. I take it you don’t hunt like your grandfather?”
He shook his head. “No. Never wanted to. I met my Jane and I wanted a peaceful life. I left it all behind, so the Council’s got nothing on me.”
“Humans who know about the supernatural world need to be registered,” Trent insisted.
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Don’t listen to him. He’s a big old Council kiss ass. I, for one, don’t feel any need to tell anyone about the fact that you happen to know some crazy supernatural creatures exist. But I do need to know if you heard or saw anything last night. Your friend Lester wasn’t some nobody.”
Jackson’s jaw squared but his shoulders came down. “I know. He was one of the high-ups, but he was a half-blood. They ain’t all bad.”
Didn’t I know it? I nodded his way. “Half-bloods can go one of two ways. I have a royal blood friend and he’s one of the best men I’ve ever met. I know the king. He told me Lester was a friend of his.”
He hadn’t exactly, but I was willing to slip some soft lies by him. It was all for the greater good.
Jackson seemed to calm a bit. “That’s good to know. Les told me he was here to talk to the king about some changes he wanted to make that would help halflings and their families. The good ones.”
