by Roxie Spears
Behind Logan, the red dragon stopped breathing flames only to release a scream so loud and pitchy that Emilie had to cover her ears. It was clearly furious, perhaps even anguished, that its companion was dead and for a second, Emilie remembered that both the dragons were men too. They knew each other as Emilie and Logan did. Logan seemed to be suffering too because he reared his head back and howled. It was as if he was releasing the inner wolf.
Once both beasts had finally quieted down, they faced each other. The dragon hovered off the ground, its wings batting strongly. It was just out of reach of Logan’s claws. He would have to leap once again if he wanted to bring the dragon down, but Emilie knew that he could if he wanted to. They moved from side to side in some kind of strange dance, as if they were testing one another, Logan growling savagely.
At long last, the dragon seemed to decide better of this battle. Its heavy wings took it higher and higher, further and further out of the wolf’s reach until it was above the narrow walls of the alley. It turned and flew away, coughing and spitting red embers onto the ground where Logan stood.
Once the dragon was out of sight, Logan let go of his massive form. He no longer looked like the strong wolf he’d been moments earlier. He swayed from side to side before falling over onto his side with an even heavier thud than the dragon before him. Emilie screamed as he fell and watched as he too shifted back into his human form before she ran across the alleyway to his side.
Logan was unconscious.
Ancient Secrecy
Rays of sunlight filtered through the open curtains, shining down on the bed where Logan Bane slept. Slowly, his eyes began to flutter open. He blinked sleep away as his eyes adjusted to the light in the room. The first thing he noticed was that his surroundings were unfamiliar; he had no idea where he was.
The covers were clean and crisp, the scent of fabric softener feminine and soft. The decorations in the room were lavish, from the fancy headboard behind his head to engraved mahogany bedside table. Everything in the room screamed lightness, cream colors, and pastel shades. Whoever chose the décor in the room wanted it to be bright and inviting, and they were successful. There were paintings of the sea hanging on the walls, placing Logan in a different place quite suddenly. For a moment, he didn’t feel as though he was in Quafin, but he could hear the sounds of the city from outside. They weren’t sounds that were easily forgettable, no matter how pretty and distracting his surroundings might have been.
Logan had never been a morning person. It always took him a while to wake up, to actually ready himself for the day ahead, and this time was no different, though Logan was fairly certain it was closer to noon than early morning if the brightness of the sun was any sort of judge. He narrowed his eyes and ran tired hands over his face, adjusting to the light.
After some time, once he was feeling more like himself, he attempted to sit up in the bed.
Big mistake. Logan yelped as sharp pains rang out through his back and sides. His neck was the worst, and Logan’s hand flew up to the back of it. He felt the soft tissue of a bandage and his brows furrowed together in confusion. Pulling back the covers, Logan looked down to find that he was bandaged in several places and that the bandages were fresh, covering wounds that had been recently cleaned. He was topless, but someone had dressed him in a clean pair of slacks. It wasn’t exactly his ideal form of attire, but Logan supposed he didn’t have much say in fashion at that point in time.
Logan barely had a chance to wonder who it was that had been taking care of him when the door flew open. Standing in the doorway was none other than Detective Emilie Hartford. She hesitated before entering the room. Soft, blonde curls fell in tendrils around her face and the sunshine shone off of them, making Emilie look as though she had a halo over her head as she walked toward the bed.
“Are you okay?” she asked nervously. “I heard you yell.”
“I… Uh…” Logan’s voice was scratchy from disuse. He stared at Emilie in confusion. “I moved wrong and… Where am I?”
“You’re in my apartment. I brought you here after the… fight,” Emilie murmured. “I’ve cleaned and bandaged all your wounds.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” Logan stared at the detective with surprise. “Thank you.”
Neither of them said anything for a while. This was the first interaction they’d had that didn’t involve either of them biting off the other’s head. They didn’t know how to be in the same room together without fighting, fueled by Logan’s hotheadedness and Emilie’s stubbornness.
Emilie gazed out of the window, down at Quafin. It was a dangerous city, though it didn’t look it from the outside. It was beautiful, what with its surrounding dense forestry and the river streaming through the center. The people were friendly, even if they did behave strangely. Emilie assumed that had something to do with the secrets. She never dreamed how many secrets the city might hold and she had barely begun to process the things she’d seen in the alleyway.
There was an undercurrent of deceit beneath Quafin and she was going to have to dig deep if she wanted to uncover it.
“How long have I been here?”
“Not long,” Emilie didn’t look at Logan, keeping her eyes on the busy street below. It was easier to speak to him that way, easier not to admit that Logan was even in her apartment at all. “I brought you back here yesterday. The uh… The bouncer helped me carry you to my car. He heard the noise.”
“Yeah, Damien’s a friend of the family,” Logan nodded, as if that alone would explain it.
“Do all friends of the family know your secret?” Emilie forced the question out.
Logan snorted and Emilie finally turned to look at him. He had a curious expression on his face as he took her in. “Some of them,” he conceded. “Most people suspect certain things, while others have been told for the sole purpose that they keep it quiet.”
Emilie stared at him, unsure of how to respond. “Does that mean there are other people who know about… well… about you? People like my partner?”
“Perhaps,” Logan said carefully. “And perhaps not. Quafin is an ancient city, Detective. It’s filled with many secrets.”
“Yeah, I’m beginning to notice that.”
“You might not want to get involved in them. In fact, if I were you, I’d forget all about yesterday.”
Emilie shook her head, giving a mirthless laugh, but it ended almost as soon as it began. “Do you really think anyone would be able to forget about that? Would you be able to?”
“No,” Logan said softly. “No, I don’t suppose I would.”
At that moment, Emilie’s phone started ringing, cutting their conversation short. Reluctantly, she tugged her phone out. Jack’s name flashed up at her and she left the room to answer it, excusing herself. Logan watched as she walked away, her hair still glowing. It was only after she left that Logan realized how exhausted he was. The previous day had taken a toll on him, as had the interaction with the detective. He barely knew the woman, but he was grateful to her for taking care of him. She had a kind heart. He didn’t think he would have done the same in her position, not after how rude he’d been.
It was with regrets weighing on him that he finally closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
Emilie, prone to taking work home with her, was poring over the files on Krystal Bane’s murder when Logan finally emerged from the guestroom. He’d found a shirt and she was grateful not to have to see the numerous bandages that covered his body. His dark hair was disheveled from sleep and Emilie was struck with the sudden urge to touch it, to run her fingers through it.
As he approached, she closed the files. The movement caught his eye and he raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. In spite of what happened and the strange shift in the dynamic between the two, police business had nothing to do with the Banes.
“It’s a nice place you got here,” Logan stated, looking around at the lavish decorations.
“Thank you,” Emilie murmured.
The apartmen
t was sizeable, but then, any place with more bedrooms than occupants had to be. It had been professionally decorated and with high windows, plant features, and light colors, it was a bright and lively space. Emilie’s favorite part about the apartment was her kitchen; it included a central marble island, modern finishes, and an old-school pantry. Not that she had much time to cook with Krystal’s case stealing every spare minute of her attention.
Emilie came from money too – though her wealth wasn’t quite as extravagant as that of the Bane family. There was no real reason for her to work, except for the fact that she wanted to. For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to be a cop. All those games of Cops and Robbers sunk in and she knew which side she wanted to be on.
Never in her wildest dreams had she expected to be caught in a case like this one.
Logan sat down on the armchair across from Emilie, clasping his hands in front of him. Under Emilie’s curious gaze, he shrugged his shoulders.
“Ask me what you want to ask,” Logan said plainly.
At first, Emilie didn’t know how to respond. She was shocked. Was Logan Bane really offering her a free interview? Rather than waste the opportunity, she figured she’d better grab onto its horns with both hands while she still could.
“Who are the Banes?”
“Couldn’t have picked a more vague question, could you?” Logan snorted. “My family has run this city for generations. We simply stepped back to let the humans do their thing while we did ours. They made it easier for us to take care of our own business, though we have always been a prominent part of Quafin’s community.” He tilted his head. “But then, I think you knew that already.”
Emilie gave a slow nod. She’d gathered as much from the research she’d done on the Banes.
“Then what you want to know is whether or not my family can shift too.” He paused, but Emilie didn’t say anything. She held her breath, waiting for him to continue. “We’re an ancient race of wolf shifters and, well, to be perfectly honest, Quafin was our turf.”
“Was?” Emilie asked. “Past tense?”
Logan sat back in his seat, pushing his tongue against the inside of his cheek. It looked like a tick of frustration. “A new race showed up a while back. They’re fighting for territory.”
“The dragons,” Emilie breathed. “Right?”
“Nice observation. Yeah, they’re dragon shifters.”
Emilie was burning with curiosity, but she didn’t know which question to ask. There were so many. Who were the dragons? Did they always attack in broad daylight? Was that why Logan traveled around Quafin in a suspicious dark car with tinted windows?
“You’re wondering why they attacked,” Logan murmured. He didn’t wait for her response. “We made a truce with the shifters. They can stick around. We don’t want to fight for the city.”
“Why not?” Her brows knitted together. That made no sense. From what she knew of the Banes, Quafin was their home.
Logan gritted his teeth and his eyes flashed. “I hate to say it, but we aren’t as powerful as we once were. Our numbers are lower than ever. Of course, it didn’t help when Krystal left.” Logan sighed, but Emilie could see the familiar muscle in his cheek. The one that twitched when he was angry. That was the Logan she was used to seeing. “But after Krystal’s murder, things will change.”
Emilie flinched at the implication. It sounded a lot like a threat as far as she was concerned, but she had a feeling that there was nothing she could say or do to change that. This fight wasn’t hers – it wasn’t a human’s fight.
Suddenly, it all started falling together, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. All the Banes were ancient wolf shifters, including Krystal Bane. The moment she saw the wounds on Logan’s skin, the telltale leathery burns, she knew how Krystal died and she knew how the John Doe had died too.
“That’s how your sister pulled off that kind of damage on her own, huh?” Emilie asked, repeating her question from the bar. “She’s a wolf shifter. You all are.”
Logan nodded. “And it was a dragon shifter that killed her. I’m just glad she didn’t let him get away with it.”
It wasn’t the type of thing anyone should say to a detective, but Emilie didn’t point that out. “Logan, could I ask you another question?”
He raised his eyebrows and met her eyes, sitting forward once more. “I’m listening.”
“Why was Krystal killed?”
Logan broke his gaze away from hers, looking down at the folders on the coffee table in the center of the living room. None of them were open, but Emilie felt the need to make sure anyway. Eventually, Logan simply shrugged his shoulders in response.
Well, Emilie thought. I guess I’m back to Square One.
The Makinen Family
When Emilie woke the following morning, it was to an empty apartment. Logan was gone, leaving without so much as a note, but she wasn’t surprised. The only thing that surprised her about Logan’s disappearance was the fact that when she walked into the guestroom, it was to find that he’d made the bed and left everything neat and tidy. If Emilie didn’t know any better, she could have believed that the events of the previous day were nothing more than a dream.
Unfortunately, Emilie did know better, and the sight of the three men shifting, as well as their subsequent fight, was not something she was going to forget any time soon.
The woman who stepped into the precinct that morning was a woman with a mission. There were one or two people who greeted Emilie, but in her haste to get to her office, she paid them no mind. She could see the dirty blonde spikes of her partner’s hair from the elevator. A part of her wanted to simply run over to his desk, but the last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to herself, especially when it seemed as though everyone else wanted her to drop the Krystal Bane case. It was better to take a brisk walk.
“I need to talk to you,” she said, popping her head into Jack’s cubicle.
Jack jumped, startled by her sudden arrival. He spilled some of the coffee in his hand onto his button-up blue shirt. “Jesus, Harford,” he muttered, grabbing a handful of tissues out of a box on his desk, rubbing at the mess.
“Sorry,” she walked into the small space. Unlike her own cubicle, this one was messy. Jack didn’t seem to have any sort of sense of organization. Even the pencil holder had a few random items sticking out of it, including a straw. Emilie shook her head at the disorganization and turned back to her partner. “It’s about the Bane family.”
Her partner heaved a sigh, already annoyed at having spilled his coffee. “I thought I told you to drop this, Hartford.”
“You did, but I witnessed something yesterday that makes turning a blind eye impossible.”
Jack froze, looking up at her. “What do you mean?”
“I know about the family. I know what they are.”
Suddenly, Jack stood up from his desk, glancing around the office over the separators of his cubicle. When he was certain no one was watching them or around to hear them, he ducked back down. In a hushed voice, he turned to Emilie. “Are you crazy?”
Emilie didn’t answer.
“You can’t go speaking about this stuff out in the open. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Well, then where can we speak about it?” Emilie asked in the same hushed voice.
Jack shook his head. There was a look on his face that she’d never seen him wear before. He was agitated and a hint of something that resembled fear. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
Emilie shook her head. “No. No, I’m not.”
With a sigh, Jack ran a hand through his spikes. “Fine. If that’s the way you want it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“You’re going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Meet me in the storage room in twenty minutes.”
With that, he walked past her and out of his own space. She was left standing there in shock. She was finally going to get some answers.
Emili
e didn’t know what to do with herself. Jack didn’t return to his desk and hers didn’t offer nearly enough distraction. She was tempted to go through the Krystal files again, but they wouldn’t do her any good. She’d already obtained all there was to know from the files; she needed some real answers. And there were only a few select people who were able to supply her with those.
The clock on Emilie’s computer seemed to tick by slower than any clock. The saying, a watched kettle never boils came to mind, but Emilie didn’t know what else to do. Usually, twenty minutes passed by quickly, particularly when the office was busy and it was a busy day, though not nearly as busy as the day Krystal Bane and the John Doe were discovered.
Emilie never got the chance to find out why the precinct was so busy. The second the clock ticked fifteen minutes, she used the last five to make her way to the storage room. Her heart raced and her paranoia that someone might be watching her raised as she neared the room, taking quick steps. It was down a hallway not unlike the one to the morgue, but the lights worked perfectly and the walls were freshly painted. If she kept walking past the storage room, Emilie would find herself in the ladies bathroom. It was the only reason she ever used this particular hallway.
This time, Emilie glanced around to make sure no one was around. The printing room was across the way, but it was empty, despite the low buzz of someone using the machines. Before whoever it was could come and collect their pages, Emilie opened the wooden door with a creak and slipped into the small space, shutting the door behind her.
The first thing about the storage room that hit the detective was the smell. It smelled like a combination of must and cleaning equipment. Her nose crinkled at the stench of bleach. It wasn’t dark. A switch hung from the ceiling and it cast a shadow of a line across her partner’s face.
