Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon Read online

  It did all sorts of painful things to Ares. But he stayed right where he was like a good psychotic dragon and waited for her to put the pieces together.

  “He called you Mace,” she finally whispered.

  “He did.” He kept his voice low, his tone even. He kept his eyes on hers. Now that he knew it wasn’t her fault she’d forgotten him, now that he had confirmation that Sterling had steered her through her disappearance, Antares felt less angry desperation – and more desperation of an entirely different kind.

  “Well… are you?” she asked. He knew what she meant, but he wanted to hear her say it.

  “Am I what?” He knew his eyes were sparkling, especially under the light of his chandeliers. This was one of his many homes. This particular house was a modern villa in Greece. He was a dragon; as with all of his homes, there were a lot of shiny things in here.

  Some of the chandelier’s light shimmered off Leia’s rose-gold tresses and made her sun-tanned features look gilt in gold. She was a soft-lit gem, and he did so love treasure.

  “Are you him?” She croaked a little, and then touched her throat and at once blurted, “Are you Antares Mace?”

  He slowly smiled. “In the flesh,” he responded, mimicking Sterling’s response from earlier.

  For a few seconds, he thoroughly enjoyed the wash of emotion that crossed her beautiful sun-freckled features. But when she swooned a little, his pleasure was replaced with concern. “You should sit down, Raindrop.”

  But she looked away from him then, her hand slid from her throat to her chest, and she doubled over, bracing her other hand against her upper thigh as if she’d just run a race and needed to catch her breath. With tight shut eyes she said, “Don’t tell me what to do, Ares.”

  Chapter Twenty-one – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  The digital clock Detective James had placed on his dashboard flashed half past one in the otherwise dark car interior as he shut the engine down and sat back in the well-worn groove of the driver’s seat. He took a deep breath. Then he took another and opened his door, unfolding his long body to step into the dark chaos of another aftermath.

  As people in their varying official capacities milled around him and a few nodded in his direction in recognition, James gave his car door a good push with his hip. He listened for the tell-tale crank of age-warped metal catching in the latch before he turned away from the classic vehicle and scanned the area with keen brown eyes. Automatically, he pulled a small notebook and pen from his trench coat’s inner left pocket and began to scribble quickly on a fresh page, jotting down a series of license plate numbers and vehicle makes and models in clean, orderly columns. When he’d finished, he refolded the notebook and replaced it along with the pen in his pocket.

  Red and blue flashes reflected on the wet ground in front of him, painting the scene in familiar colors. He stayed where he was by his car door and drew in a slow breath, inhaling the layered notes of the damp street and alley and everything in them. The gasoline of the cars, body odor of cops who’d been on duty too long, the freshly laundered uniforms of those who’d just arrived, and a very faint perfume. He recognized the perfume; it was his partner’s.

  He found it pleasant. It was a fresh scent, with notes of green tea, ginger, grapefruit and neroli. Time Enough was what it was called. It smelled clean. But unfortunately it did nothing to disguise the metallic tang of the pavement with its rainbow slime potholes, red brick mold, and lots and lots of blood.

  James knew he was following in the hallmark footsteps of a thousand Hollywood stereotypes when he pulled a fresh rectangular cellophane pack from his other trench pocket and shook out a new white cylinder. He pinched the cigarette between his lips, put the pack away, and followed the ceremony up with a lighter. Because he’d already taken in what smells he could decipher, he exhaled easily and let the smoke from his first puff fill the space between him and the crime scene before him. It was his last make-shift shield, the final barrier he afforded himself before he started toward the yellow tape surrounding the building.

  He knew his partner was already on the scene and inside assessing the situation. The CSO team was already there too, waiting outside the building for the okay to head in. James took his time approaching, making sure he didn’t miss any details, any possible clues he would otherwise be sorry for overlooking later.

  When the department’s rookie stumbled out of the building’s front door and directly turned left to round toward the alley, James knew his intuition was right about what was waiting for him inside. His hunch was confirmed when his own partner came out a few seconds later. She was pale, despite her years of experience. But her brown eyes met his hard, and she shook her head at him just once before turning to speak with the forensics team.

  James stopped in his tracks and looked up at the edifice in front of him. It was a condemned apartment building built in the seventies, during architecture’s brutalism era. According to records, it had been abandoned for two and a half years. At this stage in the game, it played temporary shelter to squatters and transients, but there was no sign of either around the building at the moment; they’d fled when they’d heard the sirens. The single homeless woman remaining was the one who’d found the body. The apparently middle-aged woman now waited nervously on the other side of the police car barrier, a rolled-up tarp bound with string next to her worn sneakers. It probably contained everything she owned in this world.

  He was impressed with the woman’s tenacity; apparently she’d remained behind on the scene on the off chance that the police had any further questions. Not many people would do that these days, especially considering she most likely had drugs on her person. Not that he cared about the drugs, of course. No one on the squad really did. They each knew first-hand that life was hard enough without them, and for some more than others.

  At the entrance to the alley, a second uniformed officer approached the rookie who was still bent at the waist, one arm propped against the wall to hold him up as he tried not to retch. The second officer absentmindedly pushed her braid back over her shoulder and crouched until she was level with him. She said something to him and he nodded. She placed a gentle hand on his back and James could see his breathing change, slowing down.

  James pondered this exchange, shaking his head a little in wonder. They’d both been on the force the same amount of time. The female officer had been inside the building; she’d witnessed the crime scene just like the other guy. And James could see her back was a little too straight, her features drawn and pinched tight. She wasn’t unaffected. The death and the blood were as much a problem to her as they were to him. But James also knew she wouldn’t let it show if her life depended on it. That was the thing about being a woman in any work force, let alone the police. You were expected to be, not as strong as the guys, but stronger. There were no two ways about it; it was that much harder to be taken seriously as a female anything. And cops were expected to be extra tough.

  My ass, James thought to himself, recalling the first time he himself had stumbled off a particularly grisly scene just to lose his unfortunately large Mexican lunch on the greenery of a highway median. In one sick, sad way, he’d been lucky – it had been a car wreck and not a murder that mangled the bodies he’d had to count. It had been an accident, so at least he hadn’t been forced to contend with the idea that someone had willfully made that mess.

  These poor bastards in the alley didn’t have that luxury. This was a homicide scene; a murder had taken place. And the person inside had been purposefully subdued, broken, ruined, and finally ended by something evil. It was hard knowledge to swallow. As the rookie was clearly demonstrating.

  James sighed, crushing out his cigarette before he lifted a stretch of the yellow tape and ducked under. His partner immediately glanced over, her experienced radar activated to his presence. He nodded at her and she returned to her conversation then held up a finger. “Just one more minute, guys.”

  Then she turned back to him. “Sorry Hen
ry. I know you’re on sick leave.” She shrugged and offered him a wayward smile. “So don’t breathe on me.”

  Detective Hendrix James went by “Henry” to his partner. And only his partner. He liked the way it sounded when she said it.

  He smiled in return and took a step back to placate her. There was a new flu going around that was particularly bad this year. He’d taken the opportunity of a human excuse to use sick leave and get shit done for Katrielle and the sovereigns. Human flus were convenient that way. He had to admit this one was worse than years past though. He had a feeling he knew who was behind that.

  His partner tucked a lock of shining brown hair that had escaped her pony tail back behind her ear and gestured to the building. “I wouldn’t have called you in. It’s just that you need to take a look at this one. I’m pretty sure it’s the same guy responsible for the killings in Reading and Trenton, and this is going to turn into a federal circus any second now.”

  James happened to know of a few more murders, and one attempted murder, all discovered by the wardens. The sovereigns were now attributing them all to the same killer, but the attacks had been kept under wraps because of their association with Victor Maze. Just like the plane crashes, train wrecks, riots, forest fires, bad flu strain, and a dozen other unpleasant atrocities afflicting the human world with increased volatility, the serial killings were puppeted by the god of chaos. A supernatural influence, even for natural disasters, still called for supernatural intervention.

  She was right, though. Even in the mortal realm, this had spread across borders and was now a federal affair. It would make things messier and call for more cleaners.

  “Alright,” James said. He hadn’t even seen the body yet and his mind was spinning.

  He motioned for his partner to lead the way, and she nodded, re-entering the building in front of him. As they drew closer to the apartment where the body had been found, the smell of blood grew stronger. He knew which door it was before they reached it; the rusted iron reek permeated the walls. It was tinged with fear.

  The woman’s blood, probably everyone could smell to some degree, despite the fact that it had stopped flowing hours ago. To an animal like him, it smelled like a river. However, being able to differentiate the flood of fear that was dumped into the victim’s bloodstream just prior to her death was an ability unique to James.

  Because he was the only werewolf on duty that night.

  After so many years of approaching scenes like this, James probably should have grown accustomed to the stench by now.

  “Fair warning,” his partner said as they stepped inside and she gave the nod to the other two officers in the room. They left and she stopped a few feet in, turning to James. “Like the others…” she started, gesturing for James to go on ahead. “She was young.”

  James felt something unpleasant coil inside, like the curling fingers of a fist before a fight. His blood felt tepid in his veins. He nodded, keeping the emotion from his face, and left his partner there to follow the smell and the mess through the living room, into the hallway, and finally to the crime scene.

  His partner had been right. Enough of the body had been removed from its plastic casing by the body’s finder that James could see this murder showed signs of the same M.O. The victim had been a young human female, no older than twenty-five. The marks made on her body, most likely by a razor or scalpel, were plentiful. They were also located in the same places as they’d been on other victims, including the victims found by wardens. The same labyrinth of pain had been etched into her. Not close to the same – exactly the same. The precision within the chaos went beyond the unnatural.

  The victim had been wrapped in a shower curtain and left in the bathtub. Nothing else in the decrepit apartment had been touched; the killer had come here for disposal purposes alone. The dust and debris on the floor were barely disturbed and there was no blood anywhere but inside the plastic, where the amount was minimal. She’d clearly bled to death, but by the time she’d been disposed-of, she’d already stopped bleeding.

  The woman who’d found the body had been the one to disturb the corpse. She’d claimed she wanted to be certain the woman was not in the process of suffocating. Then she’d called the cops.

  James straightened from where he’d been leaning over the body, his keen eyes observing every minute detail of the victim’s remains. He sighed and turned away from it, scanning the small, filthy bathroom with the same thoroughness. Then he left the apartment complex and rejoined his partner, who handed him a piece of paper trapped inside a sealed plastic bag.

  “This was found taped to the plastic she’d been wrapped in.”

  James took the note while his partner switched on her flashlight and aimed it at the paper to afford him a better look. He didn’t need it, but she didn’t know that. He glanced up at her profile, admiring it for the thousandth time. One of these days… he was going to have to tell her everything.

  Or show her.

  When she looked up at him expectantly, James blinked, cleared his throat, and read the note:

  “Her blood is red,

  but her eyes are not purple.

  This will not do,

  nothing rhymes with purple.”

  James lowered the note and took a deep breath. “Our vic’s eyes are blue, right?”

  His partner nodded.

  “Then he’s referring to someone else here,” James said.

  “Which means he’s gotten close enough to whoever it is to see the color of her eyes,” his partner reasoned.

  “Someone he knows?” James thought out loud.

  The note meant two things. It meant the killer had someone specific in mind when he was mutilating these women. And it gave them something to go on in finding her. It was a lead, and a good one. If they could find the woman first, they would have leverage against this bastard.

  James recalled the photograph “VanGogh” had shown him. He remembered thinking the girl’s eyes were a strange color, but the photo had been in such poor shape, he couldn’t tell what that color was. Purple would fit the bill, even though purple eyes were supposed to be technically impossible.

  Impossible… for a human, anyway. Was the serial killer’s target actually a non-human? James knew of quite a few non-human species that could have purple eyes. And rainbow eyes. And yellow glowing eyes.

  Like his. Well, sometimes.

  “Excuse me for just a sec, I need to make a call,” he said.

  His partner nodded, taking the letter to a wheeled cart with sealable compartments for evidence. There, she met with other crime scene teams and James made his way back to his car. He made sure he was alone before retrieving his phone and tapping a number.

  He had to make the call quick; his partner was busy directing the investigation team and coroner’s office, but she’d be at his side within short minutes. They’d been a team for the better part of a decade, and there were few things he wasn’t forthcoming with her about. Sovereign business, warden business – and the supernatural in general – counted among those few things.

  “This is James,” he said when the usual person picked up. “I need to speak with the Nomad.”

  “Please hold,” came the response. They knew who he was and who he worked for.

  It was short seconds before a feminine voice with a soft, pleasant lilt was on the other end of the line. “Detective,” she greeted.

  He wasted no time. “I think there’s more going on here than we thought, Kat. This isn’t just Maze forcing someone to kill randomly. These bodies are all marked up the same. And I’m pretty sure now I know why.”

  James glanced up, making sure he still had time to divulge necessary information. His partner was still engaged with someone in conversation.

  James opened his car door and tucked inside, settling into the seat’s leather so he still had a clear view of the building’s front door. “A body just turned up in my own back yard, probably dead for twenty hours or so by the looks of her. Same marks as
the others, only this one came with a handy note courtesy of the killer.”

  The forensic team exited the building across the lot pushing what James had always referred to as a “corpse cart.” A semi-fresh body was laid out in half-zipped black plastic on top of it, and before they finished zipping it completely shut, James found his gaze lost in the silent face of the murder victim. “He’s after someone specific,” he said into his phone. “He refers to her as having purple eyes. But that’s not all. You recall that meeting I mentioned with the guy going by the name ‘VanGogh?’ The guy creeped the hell out of me. I know there was something or someone there with him in that warehouse. He showed me a photo of a woman who had strange colored eyes. I couldn’t tell what color from the picture, but it would make sense if they were some shade of purple. The photo had been well-used…. I don’t even want to imagine how it had been used,” he muttered, more to himself than into the phone.

  “But the important thing is,” he continued, “it’s possible they’re the same girl and our killer is indeed this guy VanGogh. It’s also possible the woman he’s after is actually one of us. Fae maybe or shifter – something. And if she is one of us, it’s more probable that Victor Maze is targeting her too, if for no other reason than to make things harder for you.”

  There was another pause, this one longer than the first.

  James was about to ask Kat if she was still there when she asked, “What color was the girl’s hair?”

  “Which girl?”

  “The one in the photograph.”

  “It looked like light brown or blonde with red highlights. She had lots of it.”

  There was a very faint exhalation on the other end of the line now, one that sounded remarkably like relief.

  Shit, thought James. That’s right. Evangeline has purple eyes. Evangeline was the dragon queen, and Katrielle’s daughter. But Eva had black hair like her father, Bantariax.

  “Thank you for keeping me in the loop, detective,” said Katrielle. “I’ll be in touch shortly.”