Time Will Tell

by Chloe Garner

  Time Will Tell

  Tell, The Detective - Book 4

  Chloe Garner

  Copyright © 2020 Chloe Garner

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Skyla Dawn Cameron

  Published by A Horse Called Alpha

  Time Will Tell

  She still expected to get winded.

  Every single time.

  Running down the street, a block away from Tell, listening to his feet in his preposterous dress shoes as they clapped along the sidewalk, making sure that she kept pace.

  He was fast.

  She wasn’t quite as fast as he was - and the ankle boots certainly didn’t help anything - but he was sandbagging to make sure that they could see each other at intersections, make sure that they didn’t miss anything.

  Cova were quick.

  Really quick.

  Not fast, in the way that Tell was, but they could duck behind something and be gone if you blinked, and this particular Covum had something that didn’t belong to him.

  Marcus Calloway had turned up at Tell’s office looking for a security guard, and Tina had turned him down flat - Tell didn’t do that.

  He was much too bored by the idea of sitting and watching something not move.

  But Marcus had handed her a folder and told her to take it to him anyway, for old times’ sake, and he’d winked and left.

  And Tell had taken the job.

  More Tell-style secrets.

  Tina had been hoping for a glass box with a spotlight and a laser security system, but, no, it had been a poorly-taped, beat up cardboard box sitting in a hotel room with a single working lightbulb, and a dude to pick it up in the morning.

  It was the kind of thing you might expect to find a stray puppy in, left outside of a shelter, not something interesting enough to get Tell to spend a whole night sitting in a reeking motel watching not-quite-television.

  And then.

  Well.

  Heist didn’t quite shape the thing right, it was so complicated. It was like a Rube-Goldberg contraption of crime.

  And she’d been the unwitting security guard that the Cova were trying to snatch that infernal box out from under.

  And she wasn’t having that.

  This was her first real case since Tell had turned her, and she damned well wasn’t going to let her new capabilities be outwitted by a skinny chartreuse paranormal teenager.

  He was seriously green.

  It never did cease to amaze Tina that these people walked around in human society and no one had caught a clue.

  She looked down another cross-street, sniffing the air and waving a no to Tell. He had the kid’s scent - at least, she thought he did - and she was supposed to catch whether he had come this way.

  She was pretty sure that that was what Tell’s instructions had been.

  They’d kind of been rushed, as they’d gone running out of the hotel.

  She caught a glimpse of something in a reflection on a storefront and she came skidding to a halt, running back sideways to look at her face there where the display had a nice black box that gave her a good look at her reflection, and she narrowed her eyes.

  “What the heck?” she asked, picking bits of green fuzz out of her hair. They stuck to her hands with something that wasn’t quite static cling, but certainly wasn’t glue either, and she tried to fling them on the ground, but they wouldn’t go. She could wipe them on her clothes, but then they stuck to her clothes.

  Her hair was full of them.

  And it wouldn’t have caught her attention for more than the odd moment, except that when she started paying attention to them, she realized that they were buzzing.

  “Dang it,” she muttered, taking off running again.

  At the next intersection, Tell was waiting for her, and she turned to run toward him.

  There was still no sign of the Covum, but Tell waited for her.

  “We’re losing him,” he said, his head up, impatient.

  “What do I have… You have them, too,” Tina said, picking one of a dozen green fuzzes that he had on his shoulder. She walked a loop around him, shaking her head. “They’re all over your back. They’re like sticker seeds. You can’t get rid of them for anything.”

  “This is…” Tell started, then he stopped, picking one of the bits of green out of her hair and putting it to his ear. He touched it with his tongue, then held it up to the light.

  “Well,” he said. “Now we know how he’s keeping ahead of us.”

  “What are they?” Tina asked, pulling her fingers through her hair and finding them everywhere. It was like she’d dunked her head in a tank of them.

  “They’re bell pods,” Tell said. “Cova use them to feed their young, but if they energize them enough, they can use them as a sound beacon. Most races can’t hear them, but we can. I just didn’t notice.”

  “So he’s just… listening to us?” Tina asked. Tell shrugged.

  “Consider everything else he went through, with the rest of them, to get that box away from us,” he said. “Getting hold of these and setting them up so that he can hear us coming? This is the easy part.”

  “Too easy,” Tina agreed.

  “Too easy,” Tell said slowly, looking around. “Rats.”

  “What?” Tina asked.

  “Cova young tend to wander. A lot. So their parents put the bell pods on them to help keep track of them. The problem is that certain predators know exactly what a bell pod means and it brings them in like a homing device. We’ve got a fiend incoming, I’d lay big money on it.”

  Tina dropped an eyebrow.

  “You people with your Cova and your Kaija and your Drow and all that… You wouldn’t actually call something a fiend unless it was shaped like a wiener dog and tended to pee on itself when it saw you coming. I know you.”

  “Nope,” Tell said, still alert, turning a circle. “A fiend is every bit as bad as you’d think.”

  Tina looked around at the buildings.

  “I bet he’s watching,” she said. “I’d be up high, somewhere, so I got to watch everything as it happened, without being at risk of getting caught, myself.”

  “I’ve still got his scent,” Tell said. “He came through here. Not long ago.”

  “Think about how complicated that lift was,” Tina said. “How hard would it be to lay a false scent trail? Maybe on the back of a motorcycle, so that we never had a chance of catching up?”

  Tell paused, sniffing at the air. Tina kept her head up, now, watching for something that might answer to the name ‘fiend’.

  “He’s gone,” Tell said. “No way he went to that much trouble to get away and then just hangs out to watch us get whacked around by a fiend.”

  “Tell me again, was he or was he not as old as he looked?” Tina asked.

  “How old did you think he looked?” Tell asked.

  “Maybe eighteen. More like sixteen,” Tina said. Tell shrugged.

  “That’s about right.”

  They looked at each other and Tell nodded.

  “Yeah, he’s watching,” he agreed.

  “So where are we going to fight this thing?” Tina asked. “I assume not here.”

  He sighed and nodded, scouting around once more as he scratched the back of his head.

  “You pass anything notably abandoned?” he asked.

  “Few blocks back,” Tina said. “How long do we have?”

  There was a thud, and Tell shook his head.

  “Not that long. Come on this way. At least there’s an alley without any lights on it, down that way.”

  Tina nodded and followed him, ducking between a pair of buildings and climbing over a pile of trash bags to reach a more open space. She hoped that tomorrow was trash day.

&nbs
p; “You warm enough?” Tell asked her, and Tina bounced on her toes, feeling the way her body moved despite of how cold it was getting.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” she said, twisting her shoulders around and making sure that her arms still reacted as fast as she expected them to.

  “You sure?” he asked, and she nodded.

  “I’m good.”

  There was another thump and she went to stand behind Tell, off to the side, where he knew where she was, but he could spearhead whatever it was that was going to happen next.

  She wasn’t an original.

  She’d wanted to hope that she would be, but she was just another baby vampire, faster than she’d been as a human, stronger than she’d been as a human, more aware than she’d been as a human, but just a shade of what she’d been when the Djinn had turned her vampire, that first time.

  Even feeding almost every night, she was going to have to work a lot harder at learning the tricks of being a vampire, in order to be as effective as Tell was.

  He put an arm back as a figure blocked the head of the alley and Tina took out a knife.

  No guns.

  They attracted attention, and they hardly ever worked when you really needed them to, anyway.

  Tell didn’t like her using a knife because he swore that she was more like to hurt herself with it than anyone else, but she felt silly standing in front of a truly potent enemy with nothing but her bare hands and her teeth.

  Worse, she knew that she’d use her teeth, if she couldn’t come up with anything better, and she was really uncomfortable with the number of people her mouth touched any given day, already.

  So she held the knife out and away from Tell, waiting.

  The creature climbed through clinking, rustling bags of trash, grunting at them, then he turned his face up at the two vampires.

  “Nightwalkers,” he said.

  “Yup,” Tell said.

  “Why are you wearing bell pods?” he asked.

  “Long story,” Tell said.

  “You know where one of them is?” the fiend asked.

  “Not planning on telling you,” Tell said.

  The fiend sniffed the air, then tipped his head back.

  “They don’t go far from them,” he muttered.

  “He’s using them to keep away from us, actually,” Tell said.

  “Really?” the fiend asked. “Never heard of them doing that.”

  “First time for everything,” Tell said.

  The fiend looked from one to the other of them, scratching between his shoulder blades.

  “Awful cold for you ectotherms to be out on the street,” he said.

  “Only ectothermic if we need the heat to live,” Tina said reflexively. She heard Tell laugh quietly.

  “Oh, you need it, darling,” the fiend said, taking another step forward.

  He was built like a cartoon of a giant cat, all shoulders and thighs, barely any neck at all. Tina suspected that he wandered about shirtless for the greater portion of the year, but the extreme cold had driven him into a hoodie that was straining around his massive upper arms.

  He swung at Tell, a fist that might have broken through brick missing Tell’s face by a hair’s breadth - Tell’s reflexes - and the fiend rotated through, taking a new stance and aiming for the center of Tell’s body this time.

  He wasn’t slow.

  That was the wrong way of looking at it.

  This creature was, apparently, tuned for catching young Cova, who had to be much quicker than their parents. Just the nature of youth.

  There it was.

  As Tell dodged the balled fist, the other hand came up and around, nearly snagging Tell’s shoulder and plucking him off the ground. He missed, getting shirt and no more, and Tell jerked free, taking a step back.

  “Is this really necessary?” Tell asked.

  “You’re wearing them,” the fiend answered, spitting into his palm and rubbing his hands together, then crouching again. He put three fingers down onto the ground, looking from one to the other of them. “And she’s the weak link.”

  “You’d like to think that,” Tell said. “Believe me, I would. But that’s not how it is.”

  “Let’s just see,” the man said, springing forward.

  Tell wasn’t fast enough, this time, and the fiend threw him up the alley a ways, where he hit a wall and fell.

  It wasn’t enough to injure him, but it meant that there wasn’t anyone between Tina and the fiend.

  Nothing but a knife and her own teeth.

  Dang it.

  She didn’t let her fangs drop, though they wanted to, as she held the knife horizontal, other hand out for balance.

  Hunter had been emphatic - she needed to take care of her fangs. A lot of young vampires managed to get them knocked loose, or to lose them entirely, and it changed their feeding for the rest of their lives.

  Only drop fangs when she was ready to bite, and then pull them back in as soon as she was done.

  He grinned at her, circling slowly.

  Tell would be back very soon; they both knew that.

  He only had a moment to size her up, but he seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly.

  “Pretty little thing, aren’t you?” he asked. Tina winced her face to the side.

  “Really?” she asked. “I mean, no. I’m not. Pretty or little. I mean, I like how I look, but…”

  He sprang at her and she dodged, stabbing him once in the side with the knife as she got under his arm.

  He spun to face her and she held the knife out again.

  She was fast.

  She was strong.

  And he was playing with her, circling now to get her back to Tell so that he didn’t have to worry about the other vampire. Tell was on his feet and walking forward, unrushed.

  He wasn’t worried.

  That was affirming.

  The fiend opened his fists and Tina watched as his blocky fingernails grew out into proper claws, and she wrinkled her nose, standing slightly.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” she asked. “Why would you do that? Is it, like, battle mode or something? Surely it doesn’t help that much.”

  “Do your teeth hurt when they come in?” the fiend asked, not entirely playing.

  “Every time,” she said, putting one foot back again in a slight crouch and putting her arm out to the side once more.

  He swiped at her twice, a much faster motion, and Tina got out of range for the first one and then ducked for the second, springing sideways as he brought a fist down. He slammed the asphalt with a shattering force and he turned toward her again.

  “You’re quick,” he said.

  “Just quick enough,” she agreed. “I just can’t imagine you catching Cova like this.”

  “You don’t have to hit them but once,” he answered.

  This made her angry.

  She didn’t know why exactly. They were here because a Covum had set them up, but…

  It was the little-guy thing.

  She didn’t like the way this hulking beast would have behaved toward the skinny teenager she’d been chasing.

  Thief or not, he didn’t deserve to be pulverized into a thousand pieces and eaten.

  “You know they’re people, right?” Tina asked. “Like, not animals? Not meat?”

  The fiend snickered, pushing her toward the trash bags step after step.

  “Coming from a nightwalker, that’s rich.”

  She wanted to argue the finer points of the vampiric food chain with him, but that seemed like overkill. He’d stuck her pride, and she chose not to let it show.

  Yes.

  She was a predator, same as him.

  Not the same, but - seriously - her most fearsome weapon was literally her teeth.

  Barbs like that were going to hit home until she came to grips with it.

  As she analyzed her footing, making sure that she was ready to move when he came at her again, there was a swift motion, and the fiend flung Tell over his shoulder into the pile
of trash, following fast. He knocked Tina to the ground, pulling an arm up and back to punch her in the face and Tina stabbed him in the throat with the knife.

  How had he forgotten she had it?

  He blinked quickly, pulling it put and tossing it to the side.

  Tina squeezed her eyes shut as he covered the spot with his hand, then she sat up, scrabbling off to the side and getting back up to her feet.

  She kicked him in the side hard enough that she stumbled back into the wall, and Tell managed to get himself up out of the trash, shaking his hands off of the goo he’d acquired.

  “We done?” he asked. The fiend gargled and took two big steps back. Tell looked over at Tina.

  “You want to finish him, or are we still on the job?”

  She grimaced at the fiend, then shook her head.

  “I don’t feel like cleaning up a body tonight,” she said. “Begone.”

  He shuffled back another step and she went to get her knife, picking her way back through the trash again.

  Back in the street light, Tell motioned at his own face with his fingers.

  “You’ve got some… just… there.”

  “I know,” Tina said. “That’ll teach me to stab someone while they’re directly over me.”

  He snorted and offered her his sleeve.

  She hated getting bloodstains all over everything - it was so stereotypical - but at the same time, it was going to have to wash, anyway, after his plunge into the trash.

  She wiped her face on the inside of his arm, wondering if she hadn’t just made it all the more garish for having done it, then wiped her face hard with her hands.

  Blood didn’t come off easy. When it was wet, you needed water, and when it was dry, you needed soap.

  She was going to need soap.

  Tell tried not to laugh, but he didn’t have all that much luck.

  “So, I didn’t kill him?” Tina asked, indicating the fiend.

  “Nope,” Tell said. “They’re at least as hard to kill as we are. Hope the Covum had a good show, though. Fun to watch your enemies fight each other.”

  “Where is he?” Tina asked.

  Tell scanned the skyline, dark on dark that only a vampire’s eyes could make sense of, then he smiled wryly.

  “Race you.”

  Tina didn’t get the kid’s scent until the third floor, around the same time that she heard the door to the roof open and close, then open and close again.