Evading The Tempest (Tempest tales Book 1)

by Sandra Elsa

  "Somebody else you know?"

  "My client." I used the beam of light to circle the thick chestnut mane and the soft features sagging in death. "Looks like I won't be collecting that fee."

  "I'll need you to come down to the station and give us an account of the case."

  Anything but HQ and all their consulting mages, especially if this case had the interest to put this many people in the field. "I'll do you one better. Let me go back to my office and I'll give you my copy of the pics Mr. Self-Important picked up last week and my case notes."

  "Frankie--his name, please."

  Names weren't my style. "You know me better than that Wally. I'll recognize anybody I ever met when I'm eighty years old, but I could barely tell you my mother's name without consulting my notes."

  "Celeste." Wally snapped out. Mike snickered at Wally knowing my mother's name. "Fine, Frankie, I'll run you past your office. I assume you have his name written down somewhere."

  "His, hers, and the Movie-Star she was doing."

  "Movie-Star?"

  "I'd a watched anything he starred in. Guy was gorgeous. Only saw him once a week. Concluded he had a lot of other dates."

  Trooper Wallin reached under his bulletproof vest and came up with a slightly rumpled photograph. "This the guy?"

  Blond hair swept back into a ponytail, square cleft jaw, perfect greek nose, cheekbones a sculptor would love to copy; wide shoulders tapered to what would have been a narrow waist, if the picture had included his waist. The only difference between the man in the picture and the man I’d photographed through open drapes with Mrs. Self-Important were the red eyes. "When I saw him, his eyes were deep blue, almost purple, but yeah, that's the guy."

  "And you know where your client lived?"

  "Tailed his wife every morning as she left to go about her business."

  "Let's get back out where we can call this mess in, then get over to your office before somebody decides you may have something worth destroying. If your client's here, the suspect no doubt knows all about you. I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist you stay with us for a few days."

  "No way. Haven't done a damn thing wrong and you won't pay my bills. Once I give you all my info, there's nothing more he'll want from me. Besides for all you know, Rollick and the others could already have him pinned."

  "We'll discuss it later, Frankie." He turned and headed for the mouth of the walkway just as sounds grew louder overhead again. Whatever the creature was, it couldn't or wouldn't leave the general vicinity. This time the wolves were immediately on its heels. One of them grasped a bit of shadow as the thing tried to jump the gap. The wolf let go with a yelp of pain, but it distracted the creature. The thing turned as it tried to jump between buildings.

  I watched it fall, knowing five floors was nowhere near enough to kill something like that if three bullets center mass didn't do it. Rollick's forty-five jumped to my hand and I followed the tumbling black mass. When it landed, I didn't hesitate to squeeze the trigger. Four other weapons barked simultaneously so I guess it wasn't just me that didn't want to meet something that had been giving werewolves a run for their money up close and personal.

  Chapter 2

  We maintained our distance as the thing on the ground writhed. Shadows fell away revealing a scrawny human form. Gray hair grew in fits and spurts over an uneven scalp, protruded from his ears, and most thickly covered the backs of his knuckles. The flesh on his face and hands was covered in age spots. The hazel eyes turned to look at us. He snarled like a feral animal as his eyes lost the brilliance of life and his chest, which had struggled for each new breath, ceased its effort. More mage trickery, whatever that thing had become, it started life as a human being.

  The wolves came down the nearest fire-escape and transformed. Three men and two women stood naked in the tiny gap. They turned as one to examine the body on the ground and then the room behind us. The dark haired woman lifted a hand to her jaw. Even in the shadows I could see the blaze of singed flesh. Mike slung a pack to the ground and dug out clothes, weapons, and badges. Rollick turned back to where he'd left his under the fire-escape. I accompanied him back, and handed him his weapon. "Just so you know, it's been discharged."

  "Kinda expected it might be. Kept your head on straight. Thanks for calling for backup." He slid into his clothing as effortlessly as he'd leaped out of it.

  I tried not to watch as he dressed. He was married, but damn he had a fine bod. "Not a prob, Rollick. Sorry I wasn't better for the job myself."

  "You did fine. If you hadn't shot him, he might have taken us both out before we knew what hit us. So…your client or his wife back in that mess." Weapon went back in its holster. Nightstick slid into the belt around his waist.

  "Client. Hooker who told me to come investigate. Didn't look too closely. Might be more I recognize."

  "I'm sure they'll set up tables for relatives and friends of missing people to come investigate."

  The other four had dressed and Wally marshaled them up the narrow walkway. "Let's get to your office, Frankie. The guy back there looks more like a victim than a mass murderer which means our guy is still out there running around."

  He turned to the troops behind him. "Terry, take Bill and Mickey around to the street side of this building and post a guard. I'm calling it in so you should have plenty of company soon. Rollick, you're with me and Frankie. Annie, get yourself to the infirmary, get that jaw taken care of. Nice catch by the way. Sally, Gary, Mike, hit the street, start talking to people, see if anybody knows anything." Everybody nodded and went about their assigned tasks.

  “Sergeant?” Petite, blonde, Sally halted Wally’s flow of words.

  “What is it trooper?” Wally’s voice got a little gentler speaking to the young troop who had actually held it together pretty well considering she couldn’t have been on the force more than six months.

  She flipped her handheld around. “Ran facial recognition on him.” The top half of the screen showed a fresh picture of the shadow man. Below it was a picture of somebody’s kind and gentle grandfather with some similarities in the shape of the face. Proving that appearances lie. Below the second pic, the caption proclaimed--Walter Effron, wanted for questioning in regards to eight missing persons and illegal distribution of drugs. I knew the name, but from where? I glanced back at the handheld and noted the date. Holy mother, he’d been missing for sixty-seven years. Must have read about him in a criminology class. He looked over sixty in the pic, that put him at better than a hundred and twenty years. Had the spell kept him alive or had he been a mage?

  Wally interrupted my train of thought. “Research his kin. See if any of them are missing, and if they are, did they look like him. Good work trooper.” Wally didn’t want to discuss the possibility that we had just killed a hundred and twenty year old man.

  “Let’s go Francesca.“ He led the way back to his Hummer.

  "I'll follow you." I waved at my vehicle two blocks down on the opposite side of the road.

  "You'll ride with me. Give Trooper Rollick your keys."

  "I'm perfectly capable of driving my own car."

  Wally drummed his fingers on the hood of the Hummer; staring me down. "If I have to arrest you for impeding an investigation, I will, Francesca. You can sit in the front like we're acquaintances, or I can throw you in the back. Doesn't it seem the least bit odd to you that the person who told you about the odor was in that room? Or that your client was in that room? Give Rollick your keys and get in. Don't fight me on this."

  Curiosity killed April. She’d never been that bright and she’d been desperate about lost patrons. My client on the other hand… Reluctantly I handed my keys to Rollick. "Take care of her."

  "Check it carefully before you start it up," Wally ordered.

  "Will do." Rollick nodded and headed toward my car. The little toad green Celica had seen better days, but I hoped it wasn't about to blow up, as Wally seemed to think.

  I got in the Hummer and waited while Wally
called in the afternoon’s events and requested a refrigerated truck, forensics team, and more troopers. By the time we started moving, Rollick and my car were nowhere to be seen.

  No explosion. Funny how that works.

  Wally headed for District Eleven's gate, slowing to pass through the curtains that kept the toxic atmosphere outside the dome.

  In between curtains he flipped on the oxygen recycler. Once outside, we drove toward district two where my office was. "Why the hell do you take cases way down here in the slums, Frankie?"

  "Nobody else will help these folks out." I wasn't about to tell Wally my mother was a hooker who worked a street corner only three streets down from where the late April had plied her trade. There wasn't a record of that anywhere. We'd both changed our names a long time ago. Not to hide that fact, but to hide from the mage who sired me.

  "The guy you said was your client wasn't a local." He didn't even bother to make it sound like a question.

  "Nope. Didn't want to be recognized and Minale's has the best food anywhere outside District One." Gyros Minale didn't have children to raise in a healthier environment and his current location came with fringe benefits. For him, his customers were generally out on the town and willing to spend money. For me, it was a quiet little getaway where clients didn't too often worry about being seen.

  "If you're half as smart as you think you are. You'll eat somewhere else until we catch this guy."

  I recalled the room filled with bodies and shivered. Yeah, he was probably right.

  "You hear me?" Didn't think his comment warranted a response but he wasn't going to be happy until he had one. Wally worried too much.

  "I heard you, Wally. Is that an order?"

  "Do I have to make it an order?"

  As if he could. "No Wally. Where will they take the bodies?"

  "District Twenty-four. You'll be secure out there if you want to run through them."

  I considered volunteering to do a first pass as I knew a lot of people in Eleven. Unfortunately, this whole thing stank of mages and it was time to back away. "Stop worrying about me Wally. You're not my big brother. If you're taking them to Twenty-four, will you run public transportation to get the people from Eleven out to identify relatives?"

  "Shouldn't be a problem. Looking at that mess, I’d say there's probably more folk than Eleven can account for. Whoever this bastard is, he's been killing for a long time."

  I crinkled my brow, deep in thought. “Like sixty-seven years?”

  He caught his lower lip between his teeth and gave a curt nod. “Could be.”

  “Wouldn‘t that beat all. I read Effron‘s case file in my criminology course. General consensus was he found a plastic surgeon and a geneticist, and completely changed himself inside and out. Looks like maybe he went with a mage and maybe it wasn‘t voluntary.”

  Wally nodded again. “Wonder if his drugs killed a golden child from Seven…” He trailed off and looked at me, eyes wide. “You did not hear me say that!"

  I laughed at him. He was, per needs, as politically correct as anybody who had to from time to time work next to mages. Hearing him slip made him awesome in my book. “Seems like somebody's gonna be spending the weekend going through missing persons reports."

  He laughed. "From all of the founding two hundred domes for the last sixty-seven years. I guarantee it's not gonna be me." He was probably right about that. When we sat in the vehicle I’d finally relaxed enough to notice Wally sported a brand new set of sergeant’s stripes.

  "Yeah, well it's times like this, I'm really glad I'm my own boss." Wally slowed as we approached District Two. The picket just inside the second curtain, at the dome’s arched entry, looked inside the car, saluted Wally, nodded at my credentials and waved us through. On the other side of the airlock, I said, "Woohoo, aren't you the big man. Never saw anybody salute you before, Wally."

  "Comes with the promotion," Wally grumbled. "I like the pay but I could do without the folderol that comes with it."

  "You mean like responsibility? Do they expect you to earn your keep?" I knew it wasn't anything of the sort. Wally was nothing, if not hardworking, but it was fun to get a rise out of him.

  Except he rarely rose to my taunts. "Don't mind the responsibility, but I could do without the saluting."

  I laughed at him. "You'd be upset if you didn't have something to complain about. It's nice they respect you."

  "I'll thank you to call me Sergeant Wallin at the station."

  "Aww geeze Wally it's not like you don't haul me down for our little talks often enough for us to be on a first name basis."

  His expression announced his indecision, but his words were firm. "Sorry Frankie, if I let you slide, I let the next slide, then no one respects me and in a pinch they're more likely to listen if they respect me. I don't care for all the saluting and formality but I see its use."

  "All right Trooper Wally. If we're gonna be formal, you may call me Miss Leone. I don't much care what anybody calls me, but you want to be a prick, you can expect it back."

  Wally turned on Hillyard Street. "How many times I gotta tell you to watch your tongue around a gentleman, Frankie. Last time you were in the station, Chief about had a heart attack when you told him to go f himself."

  He knew better--not like we hadn't had similar arguments before. "Last time I checked, there weren't any laws against cussing. I can talk to you up here as good as I can in the station.”

  Two more turns and we pulled up in front of my high rise office complex. I was tucked away on the ninth floor at the end of a long hall, right next to the janitor's closet. Never big on spending my hard earned money, it was in the prestigious District Two and yet, inconspicuous and affordable, which was my ultimate goal. Trooper Rollick pulled in beside us, I wondered where he'd gotten off to. We got out to go up to the office.

  "See," I told Wally, "not a thing wrong with my car."

  Rollick popped the hatch and went around to the back. "Not unless you count this." He held up a detonator and a block of C4. "It was rigged to blow when you started it up."

  I closed my mouth and swallowed the lump in my throat.

  Trooper...excuse me...Sergeant Wallin smirked at me. "You can never be too careful, Frankie. Hell, I wanted to strangle you when you showed me those photographs of my wife, and I like you. Whatever this guy's doing, I don't think it has anything at all to do with your deceased client's wife, unless she's part of a bigger plan. You just happened to get in the middle of it, now we need to keep you safe." Wally's concern was disconcerting for the fact that it seemed genuine.

  Rollick put the C4 in a lockbox in the back of the Hummer. Who the hell would do something like that to me? I'd had spouses unjustly blame me for their woes, but never anybody who would have thought about killing me. Well there was the one time, but he was pretty damn direct about it. Car one - Frankie zip. A bomb was somebody who planned it out. Maybe I needed to be a little more cautious. Knew I should have dropped the last case like a ton of rocks when a Sevener showed up in the middle of it.

  "Fine," I huffed. "I don't need a babysitter." I turned around and headed for the front door of the office complex with them flanking me. I decided to take a swipe at Wally. "So how is your wife these days?"

  I failed to score. He looked completely relaxed as he said, "Hopefully living in torment somewhere out in district eighty-one with the bus mechanic she was screwing. Tossed her out that night." Guess three years gave him plenty of time to get over it.

  We took the elevator to the ninth floor. I knew something was wrong the moment the elevator opened. Faces peered around doors in the offices that housed shift workers, all of them staring at my office. The wards protecting the office against illegal entry were broken. Colorful green ribbons of energy snapped and swished against the currents generated in other offices. The janitor's room was open and the axe, stored in there in case anybody thought it might be needed in the event of a fire, was stuck in my office door, jutting out into the hallway.

/>   Had to look at the bright side. At least the walls weren't covered in gore, and the people in the other offices were brave enough to just be staring, not fleeing for their lives. Which either meant, the perp had already left, or it had seemed perfectly reasonable to them that somebody would open my office with a fireman's axe.

  Chapter 3

  The office was in shambles. Every drawer in the desk and the filing cabinet had been snatched out, its contents emptied on the floor. The desk had been shoved against the wall and the upholstered chair for clients lay on its side. Most disturbing, in my opinion was the safe. It weighed nearly six hundred pounds and had taken four men to push it in here. I kept weapons in it. Many weapons. And the door had been torn from its hinges.

  No powder burns to indicate the door had been blown off, but there it was, a heaping twisted pile of metal. I didn't know if I preferred to believe this had been done with magic and not brute force. Sergeant Wallin and Trooper Rollick examined the safe and its contents. You never knew where a case would take you. Some districts didn't allow guns. Every rifle, pistol, taser, dagger, sword, and bow appeared to be where they belonged.

  "Never knew you liked your weapons quite so much," Wally said. He picked up one of the swords.

  "Careful," I yelped as he jokingly swung it at Rollick. "That thing's blade is bonded with silver dust.

  Rollick scrambled backward, tripping over the upended chair, and Wally put the blade back where it belonged. "That might explain why they didn't get moved. Anything missing?"

  I picked up the second drawer of the filing cabinet and examined the heap underneath. After straightening out all the files and putting them back in the filing cabinets, I said, "My copy of the photos and notes I gave to the client."