by Liz Schulte
Amos.
I dropped the skin back onto my hood. The killer had to be close—the flesh was still warm. I turned in a circle. The windows were dark in all the buildings. Where in the hell were all the people?
“Hey! You can’t just cut me out of the investigation,” Dempsey yelled, stalking toward my car.
My eyes narrowed as they focused on his hands, looking for traces of blood. He was always around the bodies, he could see paranormals, and he knew an awful lot about loup-garous.
“Where have you been?” he said, coming to a stop in front of me, not looking at the hood or the chunk of skin.
I inhaled deeply. The blood wasn’t visible to my eyes, but I could smell it on him. The problem was that he had also been at the crime scene. That would have left similar traces on him. I tried to calculate if he had time to get from the crime scene to my hotel room and then kill Amos before bringing a piece of him back here. “I think the better question is where have you been?”
He scowled at me. “You know where I was. I was working the scene.”
“After that?”
“I came here. Just now.”
I folded my arms behind my back, reaching for my knives. “You left the scene of a mass murder to what? Chase someone down who was probably already gone? Try again.”
He shoved his hand through his hair. “I was sent home. Before I saw you. I was placed on leave this afternoon. I heard about the emergency and responded anyway. My commanding officer relieved me of duty because someone apparently heard me talking about the loup-garou.” His mouth pursed. “Are you satisfied?”
I stared at him, looking for the lie, but couldn’t see it. “Where did you go when I left?”
“An EMT stopped me on my way out and I helped him, then I came to find you. What’s with the questions? We’re partners. You can’t just cut me out. Those bodies are in my city. They are my responsibility, not yours. I’ll find them justice with or without you. Where are the vampires?” His stance was rigid and his jaw clenched.
I shook my head. He’d be dinner before he could say “you’re under arrest.” The last thing I needed to worry about was keeping this human alive in a vampire fight, but he had a point. It was his fight as much if not more than it was mine. I may have been outraged by what happened, but he was in the middle of it. “I found this.” I took a step back so he could see the chunk of skin. “It was under my windshield wiper. You’re the first person I have seen in this section of the street since I found it.”
He moved closer to the car and used my flashlight to see it more clearly. “Jesus, is that an arm?”
“Part of it,” I said. “It’s not completely cold yet.”
He looked up. “The killer is close.” Understanding dawned on him. “You think it’s me.”
“It could be anyone,” I said.
“I was at the scene,” he said again without the edge of anger, his eyes direct. I nodded and he turned back to the arm. “Have you found any more of the body? Maybe the tattoo is distinctive. It could help with identification.” He already had his phone out.
“What are you doing?” I asked, taking it from him. One human was enough trouble. I didn’t need multiple.
“Calling it in. We need forensics,” he said.
I shook my head. “It’s from my world. It’s a man named Amos. He was my contact here in the city. I just left him at my hotel, and by the time I got here, this was waiting. Whatever is doing this is following me.” He was in my hotel room, where I’d sent the vampires. Crap. “Secure the scene.”
I ran all the way back up to my hotel room. I didn’t need a key. The door was ajar and the room was dark. I pulled a knife and a gun, nudging the door open with my foot. The lights flickered to life. Three dead vampires were sprawled out in my room, cut into pieces, but lacking the precision of the others. This scene didn’t feel staged. It was hurried.
The soft click of the door behind me as I left was so final. I straightened my shoulders, chin tilting up slightly. I would find whoever was doing this. Dempsey was still standing next to my car, looking everywhere but at the skin.
“We have to assume the loup-garou wants something. If it is following you, but hasn’t attacked, isn’t it safe to assume it thinks you will lead it to whatever it wants?”
“The loup-garou isn’t our problem.” Thomas did some of the killings, but they were all his. “Something else is out there.”
“What else would do this?” he asked.
That was an excellent question. I had lived in the Abyss my whole life, but most of it was spent in the very small, exclusive confines of the Sekhmet society. We didn’t allow outsiders in, which meant so much of what I’d encountered or seen since I became a bounty hunter was new to me. I wasn’t the best person to identify most things. Honestly, that was Sy. His job with the council was his life. If he helped me and they took the Office away from him, he’d be lost. No matter what happened to me on this mission, we needed Sy to stay exactly where he was.
A light flipped on behind me. I whirled around and there was Quintus.
“I can answer that,” he said.
“Who the… Where did you come from?” Dempsey asked, eyes wide.
Quintus’s eyes went back and forth between us.
Leave it up to Quintus to eavesdrop. Such a guardian thing to do. “Quintus, this is Detective Dempsey. He’s been looking into the murders. Dempsey, this is Quintus. He’s…one of us. Don’t stare directly into the light. It will blind you.”
Dempsey quickly averted his eyes and I grinned at Quintus.
The concern didn’t leave his face. “Who is this man?”
“He’s a human detective. I didn’t open his eyes. He could already see me. He’s had the loup-garou curse.”
“I remember,” Quintus said, still frowning, eyebrows creased together as he stared at Dempsey. “I was there.”
Dempsey just stared back at him.
When it seemed like neither of them were never going to talk, I cleared my throat. “You said you know what the killer is?”
Quintus snapped back to attention. “Right. It’s a skinwalker. That’s why it’s leaving behind the man-made items. The skinwalker can’t transplant those pieces.”
I hadn’t hunted a skinwalker before. They could look like anyone. “That fits,” I said.
“What’s a skinwalker?” Dempsey asked at the same time.
“Most aren’t killers. Most settle into one body and live there their whole life, unless something happens that forces it out.” Quintus glanced back at Dempsey. “It’s a being without a form. It wears the skin of other creatures and attempts to blend into that creature’s life or make a new one for itself. Like a body snatcher.”
“Ten points for the movie reference,” I said.
Quintus smiled. Olivia had done a world of good bringing him out of the dark ages and into the present. “They have a metal allergy. Even in small doses like a tattoo, it can significantly weaken them. That’s why they leave those pieces behind when they take a body.”
“Where is the rest of the body going?” I asked.
“It’s probably consuming it. The skinwalker drains the blood and then consumes the flesh to gain the persona and memories of the person it takes.”
“You’re shitting me,” Dempsey said under his breath. “So I am looking for a cannibal that could basically look like anyone.”
“Yeah. Easy.” There had to be a way to track it apart from the bodies.
Quintus shook his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring better news.”
“No, it’s good.” I hugged him. “There’s a crisis a couple blocks away. I’m sure people there need your help more than we do. We’ll handle it from here.”
He nodded, shooting Dempsey one more perplexed look before he disappeared into a light flare.
Dempsey didn’t appear to have much fight left in him. “You can sit this one out,” I said. “I promise I will wrap this up.”
He shook his head. “How do we find this thing?
”
“We figure out how all the victims are connected. A skinwalker wouldn’t have taken these bodies without a reason, so it is obviously trying to get somewhere. If we can figure out where that is, then we’ll know what body it is targeting. That’s how we’ll find the skinwalker.”
“You said they were random. We couldn’t see how any of the human victims were linked. Now you think we can connect them?”
I nodded. “We didn’t know what we were looking for. They won’t all be connected. Some of them were the loup-garou. Each victim would have gotten him to the next victim. There has to be a chain, and most of them probably didn’t even put up a fight because almost all weapons are made out of metal, which says to me they knew their attacker. If I had a metal allergy like that, I would avoid fights.” I tossed the chunk of skin into a plastic bag from the backseat of my car and tied off the top. “Get in,” I said.
He closed the door behind him. “Where are we going?”
“Your cabin. The loup-garou and a vampire are waiting for us.”
“You found the loup-garou?”
I nodded. “It’s a long story. He’s contained.”
“In my house. Glad you made yourself at home.” He took a deep breath. “Stop by my apartment. I’ll get my case files.”
It only took him a few minutes to run inside and then back to the car with an armload of files. We headed back out to the cabin in the swamp. I tried to wrap my mind around finding a killer that could change his appearance and look like anyone. Exploiting the metal allergy would be the easiest way to make it reveal itself. If Quintus was right, it wouldn’t be able to stay in the form once corrupted by metal. What that meant, I wasn’t sure, but we’d find out.
All of this had started with the ghoul. Killing Gus must have gotten the skinwalker closer to whatever its target was. Dempsey mentioned that Gus was the official greeter. Which meant whoever the next person was would have gone to him for information, or maybe they were friends, and then Gus would have killed that person, eaten the body, and taken their skin, thus becoming them. But if he (or she) was leaving a trail of body parts behind, then the shelf life of the new body couldn’t be that high. If it were me, I wouldn’t leave behind the pieces of the body I was wearing. I’d keep them until I had disposed of that suit and moved on to a new one.
But Amos’s skin was still warm. So either the skinwalker was walking around right now as Amos, which meant he was pretty much connected to the whole city and the council, which would be a disaster, or he hadn’t switched to Amos at all and he just wanted me to know he was here. But why warn me instead of attacking? “Why leave the skin for me?” I mumbled to myself.
“Maybe he thinks you can help him,” Dempsey said.
I glanced over at him. “With what?”
He shrugged. “Whatever he wants. I don’t know.” He looked out the window. “So the vampire is at my cabin. And vampires killed those people tonight?”
“Different vampires, but yes. It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
I rehashed the vampire problem. The only reason I could think of why the skinwalker had avoided coming after me like it did the other bounty hunters was the vampire vendetta against me. However, once the vampires were off the table, there would be no reason it wouldn’t come for me, and then we’d have it. However, that meant it would target people I knew, which meant all of my friends were in danger. Unless it wasn’t after me at all.
It could have wanted Amos. Wearing Amos would get it to almost any place it wanted to go in the Abyss. It could probably even take over one of the council positions if that was what it wanted. Not only that, but it would then possess all of the information that member knew. Talk about a security leak. Then again, was a psychotic skinwalker really that much worse than a demanding dragon? Maybe not.
I shook my head. If it wanted someone on the council, then why would it make sure I found Amos’s tattoo? It was like it was begging to be caught.
We climbed in the boat, carrying my duffel bag and Falcon’s. I steered us out to the house. Dempsey looked tired, and he chewed on his bottom lip the whole ride to the cabin until he finally said, “Why did you bring them here?”
“It wasn’t safe anywhere else. The vampires are looking for us and the loup-garou could turn at any moment. I had to have somewhere to stash him.” That didn’t seem to ease his worry. “He’s restrained, and trust me, Corbin would have no problem killing him.”
Dempsey turned his head, staring out into the swamp. “I’m so out of my depth with all of this,” he said under his breath.
For a fairly green human, he was handling all of this better than most. Maybe it was the fact that he had been a loup-garou and he understood the horrors of life in a different way than most humans could. “Just don’t show any fear.”
He nodded, clutching the sides of the boat as I pulled up next to the dock—I was really getting the hang of this whole boat thing. Dempsey tied it off and we went inside.
Chapter 20
