21 Shades of Night, page 192
I nod. “So do you think that Jonas knew him? Or the others?”
“Doubtful. He's been asleep fifteen years. Too long to know the girl. Any clue how long Jonas or Krieger have been in the area?”
I shake my head.
“Well, if she didn't know him, why was he in her house when he died?”
“Fuck, I'd just like to know how he died.”
“You and me both. Hopefully the autopsy will give us something new.”
Chapter 11
The Ugly Mug, Gene
I FIND DIRECTIONS to the Ugly Mug, and make my way there. Abel's likely here ahead of me, trying to case the area. He can't ask about Owen directly; that would make him too memorable. But I should be able to. I am the guy's mom, after all. And if he's actually here, I have to hope I can play this part well enough to get him to forget her safe word, since I still don't have it.
I sit outside to collect myself. Tentacles of pain rattle my brain around, stemming from the gaping wound at the back of Loretta Jonas' neck. I discreetly stretch and itch the back of my neck, and sink my fingers into the torn flesh to see if there's any muscular spasms I can ease. But it just makes me feel like someone is fucking the stab wound, and throws me into a round of nausea.
Abel walks past me, into the coffee shop. I pause and sit down, both waiting out the nausea, and preventing us from being seen entering at the same time. Finally, I stand, and prepare to go in. Before my fingers touch the push-bar, the door flies open, knocking into my face and sending me onto my ass in a particularly muddy spot of ground.
Owen meets my eyes a split second as he flees, but it doesn't seem to have been long enough to recognize me. I detour to the car, keeping a careful note of which way he went. Abel appears by my side. “Bastard was watching for me.”
“Then you shouldn't get caught.” I rub my butt, both wiping what water I can off it, and trying to ease the new ache roaring through me.
“Smartass.”
I smile, and he vanishes as I pull out of the lot, and into the flow of traffic.
Owen only made it a few blocks on foot, but he knows his way through the alleys here. I take my best guess of where they'll come out, and manage to loop around quickly enough to note his twists and turns. But a spate of pedestrians dodge out in front of me, and I lose him in the chaos.
Goddamn college students. Acting like they're invincible, jaywalking like they own the place, and slowing all traffic to a crawl.
The thought of college touches a stream of ideas from Loretta, taking her children to see the U of M band practice and perform, and a host of other outdoor concerts.
It's worth a try.
I ditch the car in a no-parking zone. This rat warren is full of them, and I don't think Loretta's body will hold me much longer. I'm not going to be coming back to it.
The band is practicing in the field, with scattered bystanders in the bleachers. There's no way to move quickly here. But that works against Owen as well, and I'm far more used to moving in awkward environments.
He doesn't see me until it's too late for him to run, and he freezes. “Mom?”
I give him the best smile I can, and lean in for a hug. I don't have any weapons on hand, except for my knife, and I don't trust my reflexes right now. I need him to lower his guard. “You expecting someone else?”
“There was this asshole following me.” His face turns guarded. “Black eyes, too.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“I ran, like you told me to. The police think you're dead.” There's barely concealed tears in his eyes, but beyond that, is something else. I stare harder, trying to pin it down. I wish Abel was here, to pull the knowledge out of his mind.
“Well, I'm not. And I wanted to know you were okay.” He already knows about his siblings' deaths, and is looking for some reaction from me. I sniffle and start thinking through every sad thought I have to cry on command.
I think I have a more likely than not chance of successfully killing him, if I dig the knife out of my waistband and lunge. But he could be my only lead for locating the last one in the nest, his dad.
“I wasn't sure if you'd go to your dad's to—”
Wrong words. He tenses and backs away from me. “What the hell are you?”
I try to put hurt on my face. “What the hell does that mean?”
“What the fuck are you? How do you look like her?”
Tears well in my eyes, and pour down my cheeks. “You have no idea the kind of day I've had, how scared I've been. And you don't so much as pick up to tell me you're safe? And now this?” I sob, as convincingly as I can. “They're gone, Owen. And the least you could do would be to show me a little fucking compassion.”
His hand works out of his pocket with a flask. Even from here the holy water's tang burns my nose. I drop the act.
“Fine then. None of your business.” I let my usual mannerisms take over, and flip him off. His eyes widen. I brace myself for burning pain that never comes.
“Of course it's my business. What have you done to her?” His eyes search mine as though he's expecting to see Loretta in there, if he looks deep enough.
I wonder how much he knows about our world, what he thinks the options are. I put on my most gentle expression. “What do you think?”
He glares at me, and as he vocalizes it his voice breaks. “You killed her.” It's barely more than a whisper.
I keep silent, but watch him closely in case he attacks me.
“Why?” This is louder, more forceful. But it's the futile anger of a dog in a cage. Not an immediate threat.
An unexpected flash of pity washes over me. I lean over to pat his hand, grateful my scarf and hair covers the wound. “You hunt the biggest game, sometimes they fight back.”
“The biggest—” He stumbles over the words, and I roll my eyes.
“Demons. You hunt us, we fight back.”
His eyes widen. “What?”
I take a deep breath, roll my head around on my shoulders. I'm sure the movement doesn't look natural, not with my severed spine. “You think that flask is just full of champagne kisses? Who taught you?”
“My—my dad.”
“Then blame him. Because if he hadn't recruited you lot to hunt my kind, your mother—” I know I'm being mean, but can't help it. I scoot a little closer. “Your sister,” I bite my lip, tugging it between my teeth. “Your brother,” I lick my lip in a way that will probably take him years of therapy to get past. “Would still be alive.” I give him a wicked smile and lean close to him, dropping my forehead onto his shoulder.
He stares in confusion, brings his hand to the back of my neck, though I can't say whether it's to push me away, or respond to my touch. Then he sees the top of the wound as my hair falls away, and his hand starts trembling. I smile to myself as he presses his finger to it, hardly believing it. His reaction makes it worth the pain.
Maybe hitting your crush on the playground is an inappropriate way of expressing something, but the more on edge he is, the more information I can glean from him. And in the meantime, when he touches me, it makes it easier to probe him a little, look for anything in his bleed. If only Abel was here, I'd have everything, already.
“So tell me,” I whisper as I tilt my chin up to him, my lips inches from his. “Where is daddy dearest.”
His tears leak, and his finger pushes deeper into the wound. He wonders whether he can make it hurt enough to get an advantage, no doubt. But in the end, his trembling fingers stay where they are, not pressing further.
He knows he's already dead, if I so much as thought about seeing him so. His eyes widen, then harden. To throw a little more wood on the fire, I press my lips to his, and nick his lower lip with my teeth.
He shoves me back, but not before his barriers evaporate, unveiling a world of distress, confusion, and a very very keen urge to throw up at the feel of my lips on his. A moment of vulnerability that lowers his defenses. Bingo.
I drink in his bleed a moment more, but see nothing useful. And he's well on his way toward recovering, wondering whether he should attack me, but not quite being able to commit to that action. I stare at him, wondering what he's hiding, and how to pry it out.
His eyes flash black.
Well, shit.
The photos on the mantel make sense. His, and his father's effacing awkwardness, the averted eyes and coincidental blinks. Obviously, not a reborn inky, though, since he still has form, and doesn't need a host. He's a demon, not a demon hunter.
Someone fucked up. I knit my brows together, wait for his move. Now that I'm no longer in his personal space he's frozen. I take the time to think, curl around myself and breathe while I do.
I didn't see inky flashes in the rest of the Jonas family. Possibly the kids were weak, and it would have been missed. But the purifications I sketched on their bodies would have eradicated that essence, if it was there. It would mean that they never had a chance to develop into their full power. But I've never met an incubus able to fool me that they were human.
Owen sits down, still shaking.
I review my orders—Kill anyone in the house. Burn out the whole nest, even its runners.
And more than anything, I want to talk to Owen's dad, find out why the incubi think he's raising demon hunters. Did Abel mess his information up, or did someone else intentionally feed him bad information?
But it's possible Owen's deceiving me. I can't let myself get cocky. And that is the simpler answer. Still, if there's even the possibility that his family shouldn't have died, I can't compound the crime by adding him to the body count.
I look at him. “Run. If your dad contacts you, don't answer. I'll make sure they keep looking for him, not you.”
He looks at me, scared rabbit eyes clouded over. “What?”
“I don't repeat myself.” I roll my eyes, half in denial that I'm doing this. Reapers are already second-class citizens; they've dropped the hammer on us for less. Maybe they like the irony of it, but the incubi seem to enjoy giving a death sentence to a Reaper. “Run. Before I change my mind.”
No point in continuing this hunt. I can cut ties with the meatsuit, and tell Abel and our bosses that it was too injured to be sustainable, and he got away. Or, if I'm brave—or maybe suicidal—I can put them off the trail entirely, tell them he's dead. Unless they go out of their way to follow up and scry for him, that would ensure at least a period of peace for him.
I sever the first handful of mental ties, much stronger with the freshness of the stained marks. My control over Loretta's muscles goes, and she collapses, falling into her seat, then out of it.
Owen runs forward, sobbing. He takes his mother's hand, not knowing I'm still connected. I seize the next bundle of ties and pinch them shut. A panic seizes me, same as it always does when leaving a body unattached, in the mortal world. Only, without a mark to drag back home, my mind latches onto Owen.
I feel his breath sobbing through my lungs. And every bit of hurt holding his mother's dead body. Every memory, including those he can't consciously recall. London streets around the end of the 19th century. Moscow some time before that. Maybe those memories are a trust, some kind of time capsule left by an inkubus who really wanted to be remembered and transferred that knowledge to him through stories. Or maybe Owen isn't as young as he looks.
Finally, someone notices what's happening, and several people start yelling to Owen. He jumps, remembers my words, and runs. As I sever the last ties with Loretta, I get her chiming in with a barely remembered recollection, too.
The man in the pictures and Loretta, sitting across a table. “I've got a son, still an infant, really. His mom died, and it's so hard taking care of him on my own. My work doesn't really let me stay still.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Single parent households are hard, especially if the job involves travel.”
“Yeah. I want to visit him, want to know him, but I can't raise him.”
“What makes you think I will?”
His eyes are bottomless, pupil subsuming iris and leaving her with the idea that the whites of his eyes aren't exactly white either. But she can't see that, just sense it. He reaches across the table and touches her forehead. “Because I know who you are.”
She bows her head to conceal her expression. “What's his name?”
“Owen. I'll come find you, whenever I can.”
He leaves, and she sits at the table with the burbling infant for an hour before she leaves.
My mind reels and I grasp at the fabric of every alternate reality I encounter on my way back home.
Incubus, definitely.
Demon hunter, definitely not.
Why would they lie to us?
Chapter 12
Hide And Seek, John
“FUCK ME,” I mutter, and kneel to look at Loretta Jonas' corpse.
I'm not surprised that she is a corpse; twelve hours ago the blood-spatter specialist determined that enough of the blood in the carpets was hers that he didn't think she left that place alive.
But that doesn't explain how she ended up in the bleachers over here. We put up her picture, asked for anyone with any information to come forward. And got several calls saying they saw her walking around in Ypsi.
Then, an emergency call from the band's conductor, after one of the musicians saw a woman in the bleachers collapse. The EMT reported it, and that got me from the scene, to see this for myself.
Other officers found her car already—tried to ticket it, actually—and are dusting for prints, to see who had the body. There's got to be an actual, concrete lead there. Corpses don't just go chauffeuring themselves around.
That same paste is on the inside of her clothing, those same markings peeking out of her loose blouse. I make a note to get it tested, see if it's the same as any of the other samples I've collected. It has to be—the pattern is just too clear.
The only thing that's not is why someone is going through the effort of abducting corpses and leaving them around.
Loretta died by violence; that much is plain. There's a knife strapped to her waistband covered in dried gore. I vaguely remember seeing the wooden holder in her house missing a knife, and make a note to doublecheck that. It looks like it should match, though.
We've got no real cause of death so far. There's hand-shaped bruises on her throat, but not severe enough to indicate strangulation. Some evidence of blunt force trauma to her head. But not enough to do more than maybe concuss her. I grit my teeth as the medical examiner snaps a few more photographs, and finally nods at me to help turn her over.
From this view, it's only too clear. The flesh on her neck is mutilated, the spinal cord completely severed. But there's not enough blood on the body. Someone cleaned her up, changed her clothes. Why bother? Where are the clothes she died in?
I hope that a security camera around here has more for me. Because these witnesses are unreliable. The man with her when she collapsed was here before she got here. They swear she was walking around perfectly normally on her own—just like her neighbor.
But just like Krieger, there's no way in hell that's the truth.
My phone rings, and I nod apologetically and step back to answer the call.
“John?”
“Casey?”
“I only have a minute; I'm in between meetings right now. Wanted to check in, though.”
“Everything okay?”
“Fine. Just—I tested that stuff for you against some readily available henna, and while it's mostly henna, there was something else. You remember Annie, my college roommate?”
“Kinda? Should I?”
“To be fair, not really. Anyways, she's working for a green nonprofit, doing land surveys and such.”
“So?”
“So I showed it to her, and she tested it, too. The missing stuff is local clay and soil. Last time she saw it that dense she was a half hour outside Jackson. And there were some other particles in it that she determined were grass, a particular kind usually used in cemeteries.”
I lower my voice. “So our perp is marking his victims with henna and grave dirt? And might operate or commute from outside town?”
Her voice is tense and uneven, now that she's not talking hard science. “Looks like.”
I mentally slap myself for talking to her like a cop; she's probably upset enough about this without feeling like she has to stay in this rabbithole. “Thanks for running that down for me,” I say, and stall out trying to think of a way to comfort her. “That's a huge help.”
“How many?”
“What?”
“How many victims?”
“I don't know, yet—” and I don't want to upset her more. “I can't really talk about it. But we'll get the guy. I'm sorry I dragged you into this.”
Casey sniffs, as if wiping a tear away. “Happy to help. Just, please, take care of yourself.”
“I know, and I will.”
“Good. I love you. And Sammy does, too.”
“I love you, too, but you really don't need to worry.”
“I will anyways, though.”
I sigh. “If you insist.”
She hangs up, and I lower my phone.
I guess I'm spending my night canvassing graveyards, watching for someone to try collecting grave dirt.
But it's a lead.
Chapter 13
Weapon, Gene
I KNOW I should lay low, in case my bosses suspect that I let Owen live intentionally. But I have to know why we were sent there.
The father is my best bet. Inkies generally don't make friends outside of work, so she's probably a former mark of his. A woman he was assigned to impregnate. From the pictures, he stuck around somewhat, and helped raise her kids, and his. That's a big no-no of theirs. If I tell Abel, he'll know it's too important to keep to himself, and the incubi themselves could decide they want Owen's—and his anonymous father's—blood.
Out of all the inkies I know, who can I trust? It's a very short list, one that gets shorter as I cross the ones I parted on bad terms with from the list. I've only dealt with a handful of them over the years, and most of that hasn't involved any kind of mutual respect. In the end only one face comes to mind.
