by Elicia Hyder
We all turned to look at him.
My mouth gaped. “Big fan, are you, Jonesy?”
“Hey, I have teenage girls,” Jones said.
Rivera laughed and crossed his arms. “Whatever you say, man.”
Essex shot us all a look, and the amusement died immediately.
“Stone checked in with Amber Stevens yesterday,” Ransom confirmed.
“Anybody seen them today?” Essex asked.
Ransom tipped his chin toward the blaze. “Heading straight for there.”
“Damn,” Jones said, looking at the fire again.
Two firefighters in full gear dragged a hose past us. “Essex!” a voice boomed.
We all looked back as the captain of the fire department waved him over. Essex winced as he limped in that direction, taking my napkin with him.
“You didn’t see anything?” Jones asked Rivera.
Rivera shook his head. “I was lakeside, checking the back of the unit when, boom! I hightailed it back around front and found Sarge lying against the rock wall.”
I followed the direction Rivera was pointing. The wall that lined the driveway was nowhere close to the front window.
“That’s more than five feet,” Jones said with a grimace. “No wonder he’s limping.”
“At least his first few days on night shift were calm,” I said, walking back to my car. Teek’s scruffy face was smushed against the back window, and his eyes looked like they might bug out of his head.
“Anybody hurt?” Everly asked.
“None of us.” An ambulance screamed into the lot. I leaned toward Teek’s window. “Teek, you good?”
His wild smile indicated he was just fine.
When he finished speaking with the firefighters, Essex joined us and looked in the back seat of my car. “You caught Butch Cassidy, huh?”
“Yeah. About halfway up Reyna Peak.”
“His dad wasn’t with him, was he?” he asked with a chuckle.
“No, you’re safe.” Borg Fleming was still in lockup last I heard, but that reminded me to ask, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I told you I’m fine.”
“You also said you were fine when Borg knocked a molar out of your jaw.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “You know me well.” With a grimace, he leaned to one side. “Might have a couple of broken ribs.”
I cringed. “God, I hope not.”
“I know, broken ribs are the worst. I’ll be fine though. Thanks for worrying.” His tone lightened. “You know whose fault this is?”
“Whose?”
“Rivera’s.”
My brow lifted in question.
“Back at the Mini Market, he said it was a quiet night.”
Our laughter was cut off by the roar of a powerful engine. A silver car with an emblem that boasted “I cost more than your condo” sped through the tidy golf-course grass to bypass the driveway clogged with emergency vehicles.
“Harlan’s here,” my brother announced.
Real-estate tycoon Harlan Drexler had almost single-handedly built the mountain town of Sapphire Lake. As the heir to the biggest lumber-mill fortune in Nevada’s history, Harlan and his late father had converted the family’s 20,000-acre estate between Lake Tahoe and Carson City into a booming economy. It all began with a golf-course resort built around the manmade blue lake that once supplied the silver mines with water and timber.
These days, Sapphire Lake was the seventh-largest city in the state. It now included ski slopes, two outdoor shopping villages, three schools, and the biggest casino between Las Vegas and Reno.
I’d never met Harlan Drexler in person, despite Sapphire Lake having been my home on and off for big chunks of my life. Ransom spoke highly of him, and he had the reputation of being as charitable as he was enterprising.
The sports car parked sideways on the imported sod, and Harlan tripped over his own slippers as he scrambled out of the driver’s seat. He caught himself on the door, staring in horror at the flaming chalet. “My god. Was anyone hurt?”
Essex and I walked to meet him. “Mr. Drexler, I’m Sergeant Tyler Essex. We’re waiting on the official word from the fire department, but I’m afraid this fire was deadly.”
This was news to me.
Harlan ran both hands back through his wild silver hair. “Oh no.”
Ransom began speaking to Harlan in a hushed, soothing tone.
I tugged on Essex’s sleeve an jerked my head to the side. We stepped away from them, toward our guys. “They found a body?” I asked quietly.
He scanned the area to make sure we were out of everyone’s earshot. “Two bodies so far. The fire captain thinks it might be arson to cover up a homicide.”
“Shit, really?” Jones asked.
“Yeah. The first body was charred so badly it was unrecognizable.”
“And the second?” Rivera asked.
“A female. Only partially burned, but—” Essex had to pause for a breath.
“But what?” I asked.
“Her torso was ripped in half.”
I took a small step back.
“Never seen a fire do that,” Jones said, his dark eyes dancing with the dying flames.
Unease stirred inside me. The whole situation felt eerily familiar.
Something caught Essex’s eyes behind us. “Shit.”
I turned to see a news van stopped by some of the hotel’s security guys.
“How the hell do they get here so fast?” Essex asked.
“I’m on it,” Jones said, starting in that direction. Rivera followed him.
Ransom walked over, passing Jones and Rivera. “The vultures are here.”
“We’ll handle it,” I said.
My brother offered his hand to Essex. “Good to see you, Corporal Essex.”
The two men shook hands.
“He’s a sergeant now,” I said.
“Congratulations. You two are on the same shift now?” Ransom looked down at me, the corners of his mouth fighting a smile. “Isn’t that convenient?”
I withered inside.
“As of Monday,” Essex answered. “But we won’t be for long. Your sister has a big promotion coming up.”
“So I hear,” Ransom said.
“It’s not for sure. I’m not even finished interviewing,” I told them.
“But we all know Nyx has it in the bag,” Essex said to Ransom. “There’s even a betting pool. I hear the pot is over five hundred now.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
Essex nodded. “That’s what McCollum said.”
“Sarge!” Rivera called from the news van.
Essex groaned. “Excuse me. Nice to see you, Ransom.”
“Hope to see more of you, Sergeant.”
I wanted to crawl under my patrol car. When my boss was out of earshot, I backhanded my brother’s chest. “You’re an asshole.”
My brother smiled. “I know.” He lowered his voice and looked toward the chalet. “What happened in there?”
“Not sure.”
“Did I hear someone say one of the bodies was torn in half?”
I nodded. “But you’re not supposed to know that.”
“Damn.” Ransom stared up the hill. “Mutilated bodies and a fire cover-up . . . You know what this looks like.”
I shook my head. “Don’t even say it.”
He looked at me with his lips pressed in a hard line. We were both thinking the same thing. I hated we were both thinking the same thing.
“Ransom!” a man yelled. Another car had pulled up behind Harlan Drexler, and a red faced bald man waved to my brother.
“That’s my boss. You gonna be here for a bit?” Ransom asked me.
I glanced toward my car. Teek was still smiling in the back seat. “Yeah. Gonna stay as long as I can.”
Half an hour later, the fire was almost out and hotel security had pushed all the media back to the hotel’s entrance. The guys and I were waiting around our patrol cars when a fireman walke
d toward us. He removed his helmet.
“What’s up, hose dragger?” Jones asked.
“Your momma’s risk factor for STDs,” the fire captain replied as he stopped in front of Essex. “You definitely want to get your investigators in here.”
“They’re on the way. Why?” Essex asked.
“We found a third body missing its throat. The bit of wall left standing in the living room is covered in blood.” He put his hands on his hips. “Whatever happened in there, it was brutal, man.”
Nausea churned in my stomach. This had absolutely happened before.
Harlan Drexler rushed toward us. “Is there an update?” He grabbed the fire captain’s arm.
“The coroner is on his way, Mr. Drexler. We’ve recovered three bodies.”
Harlan’s knees went out, and he would have fallen had I not been there to catch him. “Come with me, Mr. Drexler,” I said gently. “Let’s find you a seat.”
Harlan leaned heavily on me as we walked toward a bench on the golf course. “What am I going to do? What am I going to tell their poor families?”
I patted his back. “I don’t know. It’s a terrible thing that’s happened.”
“Do they know how the fire started?”
“There will be an investigation.”
“Do they have any suspects?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Who was in the back of the patrol car?”
I smiled. “No one relevant to what happened here tonight. He’s harmless, mostly, but he did try to hold up the Mini Market down the street with a zucchini.”
Harlan’s bubble of laughter seemed to surprise him, and he walked the rest of the way to the bench on his own. When we reached it, I held his hand until he sat down. Sweat drizzled from his hairline, and his face was freckled with soot.
He glanced at my name tag. Cpl. S. Nyx. “Nyx. Are you related to Ransom?”
“My brother, sir.”
“What does the S stand for?”
“Saphera, but my friends just call me Nyx.”
He grabbed my hand and squeezed my hand. “Thank you, Nyx.”
I really hadn’t done anything, but I smiled and said, “You’re welcome.”
Ransom’s boss joined us. I stepped out of his way and turned back toward the chalet. It was an eerie sight poised against the moonlit clouds over the lake, and another cold chill took my breath.
“It’s happening again,” someone whispered behind me.
I spun on my boot. “What was that?”
Ransom’s boss looked up from his smartphone. “Pardon?”
Harlan’s eyes were glazed over, looking past me at the chalet.
I blinked. “Sorry. Thought you said something.”
Maybe I was hearing things. Or maybe my imagination was making this into more than it really was. After all, my father was still safely behind bars. That much had been reconfirmed by the state penitentiary only days before.
But when I turned back toward the chalet, the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach returned like the recoil on a shotgun.
This wasn’t a coincidence.
And I knew it.
“Nyx!” Essex called from near my car. I walked to him, and he jerked his head toward Teek. “He says his wrists are starting to hurt. Better go book him in.”
“The guy’s harmless. Can’t we just call somebody to come get him?” Everly asked.
“Under some circumstances, sure, but he held up a store clerk. Made her fear for her life,” Essex said.
I opened my driver’s side door. “Don’t worry, Everly. I’ll make sure they call his brother or Gramma T.”
“Gramma T?” With worried eyes, Teek’s head whipped around like his grandmother might be in the parking lot.
Essex held onto my doorframe. “I’ll see you back at the station. We should wrap up here soon.”
“10-4.”
He stepped back and shut the door.
I wound through the labyrinth of emergency vehicles along the path to the exit. Seven different news vans had gathered at the closed front gate. One of them, I recognized. Sapphire Lake’s premier newswoman, Marianne Clarke, and her cameraman from News 4 ran toward my patrol car as I drove past. “Looks like you might make the news, Teek.”
Silence.
“Teek?”
The interior lights flickered, all the doors locked around me, and my surveillance cameras shut off.
From the back seat came a chilling voice that didn’t belong to Teek Fleming.
“Hello, Saphera.”
Chapter Two
With a loud gasp, I grabbed my heart to make sure it was still in my chest. Then I looked around to see if anyone had seen me freak out.
I drove away from the Drexler and stopped on the shoulder up the road. I turned all the way around in my seat and slid open the dividing window to the prisoner in the back. “You swore you wouldn’t do this to me anymore.”
In the back seat, Teek’s doe-eyed bewilderment had faded. His expression was soft and pleading. Teek’s mouth moved, but it was my father’s voice that came out of it. “You haven’t replied to any of my letters.”
“Because I haven’t opened them. What the hell are you doing here?”
It was no secret (at least to me) that Elias Nyx had the power to detach—to leave his body during REM sleep and travel. Like a ghost, his spirit could lurk undetected, taking eavesdropping and espionage to a whole new level. It was a small part of why he was in prison, even admitting that PIN numbers, safe combinations, and computer passwords were never safe with him around.
He could also commandeer the bodies of others to interact with the waking world, but at my insistence, we hadn’t seen each other like this in years. His control now over Teek Fleming was unnerving.
“I’m dying, Saphera.”
“I’m aware. Ransom called, and my work told me.”
“Your work?” He sounded surprised.
“Yes. They’ve kept tabs on you since I joined the department. A consequence of being the daughter of a cop killer.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve made your life difficult.”
“No, you’re not. I thought they were treating you.”
“They tried, but the disease won’t respond. I’m afraid my body already looks like a corpse.”
I’d heard he had some form of flesh-eating disease.
To anyone else, I might have said, “I’m sorry.” To Elias, I asked, “What do you want?”
“I haven’t been strong enough to detach on my own in quite some time. I’m using extreme measures to accomplish it now because it’s imperative that I speak with you and your brother.”
“Well, Ransom is about five minutes that way.” I pointed behind my car. “Go talk to him.”
“I plan to, but this directly affects you as well. Have you found the hypnox yet?”
I gritted my teeth. “I knew this whole thing reeked of you.”
“You also know those three humans were killed by a nightwalker tonight.”
“Elias, what did you do?”
“Nothing. When I got to the fire, you were already there.”
“You sure you didn’t cause that explosion? Because hypnox, fire, and dead people all sound a hell of a lot like you.”
“Saphera—”
“Did you start it?”
“I did not.”
“Then who did?”
“It might have been Orion, but there hasn’t been time for me to find him to ask.”
“Who’s Orion?”
“Someone I hope will help you when I’m gone. He left a letter in my cell stating he found a woman, Norina Grumley, detached inside the Boundary in Seneca Park. He confirmed she’d used hypnox. She didn’t die, nor was her body breached, because he returned her spirit in time.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
He looked away. “Hypnox grows in Earth’s fertile soil when magical blood is spilled within the Boundary.”
“So this is
your fault.”
Guilt flashed across Teek’s face. “I fear it was my blood that created this danger.”
I faced ahead. “I knew it.” Gripping the steering wheel, my knuckles turned white.
“I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t answer my calls or my letters.”
My eyes darted toward the mirror. “Warn me about what?”
“The necrosis began when I was attacked inside the Boundary. I was stabbed in the back with a shadow blade. It was a miracle I didn’t die then, but it’s clear now I won’t survive it.”
“So what is this? Some kind of deathbed confession?”
“No. I’m here to impress upon you the danger the whole world now faces.”
“The whole world,” I repeated with an eye roll so hard it hurt my head.
“Yes. The nightwalkers know there’s vulnerability here. One was killed in the fire tonight. And I have plans to kill another.”
“Nightwalkers,” I muttered.
He leaned toward my seat. “You may not believe me, but soon, I promise you’ll know the nightmares are real.”
If he was to be believed, Elias was a primordial scion, the direct descendant of the Goddess of Night, Nyx. Hence our unusual—and, it should be noted, legally fabricated—last name.
He said our bloodline was meant to protect the Boundary, the space between dreams and reality where nightmares were tangible, bloodsucking monsters called nightwalkers.
Elias had probably told me other things too, but I was just a kid when his wild stories were part of my life. To my young ears, the horror of nightwalkers had overshadowed anything else.
Now, despite my grown-up disbelief, goose bumps still rippled my skin.
“I’m no longer strong enough to fight this war. When I’m gone, you will have to—”
“I will have nothing to do with it,” I snapped.
Frustrated, he huffed. “Fine. Your brother will be thrown into this war soon. He’ll need your help. You must promise me you’ll take care of him.”
“I must do nothing for you. Ransom is a grown man, fully capable of looking out for himself.”
Elias snorted.
“Well, Ransom is a grown man, anyway. And he knows a hell of a lot more about your shit than I do.”
“That was your choice.”
“I’m sorry, did I give the impression I was upset about it? I can’t wait until all this is no longer part of my life.”
