Dragon Mated: Paranormal Romance

by Amy Faye

  Brianna Hunt's entire body relaxed itself. The most natural thing in the world, she thought. Coffee always did this to her, sooner or later. It just put her in a good mood. The only thing that got her up out of bed, with the house so dark she had to walk more by memory and feel than by sight, was the idea that she'd be able to go in and get a cup of the good stuff.

  The good stuff, in this case, was sold at Sophie's diner. Sophie was the kind of name that would have interested some men, but that was before they met Sophie.

  Sophie was an old woman who looked like she'd spent most of her life, before opening the little diner on the bad side of town, chewing tacks and then spitting them out again at anyone who talked back to her. Even in her old age, Brianna thought she had spunk. Spunk that Brianna found she really quite liked.

  The old woman stood, her lips pinched together like she had been sucking on a lemon, and watched Brianna take a deep drink of the coffee. She'd come here to celebrate the day she'd gotten her job on the force. She'd come here to celebrate when she'd made detective.

  In between, she came in to celebrate that she woke up that morning, and that there was another long day ahead of her. One where she'd need a strong, delicious cup to keep her going.

  Now that she'd made homicide, she was celebrating again. Celebrating that she hadn't been woken up by a phone call telling her to get her ass to a crime scene this morning. At least somewhere in this God-forsaken city, someone was alive. Someone other than her and Sophie, of course.

  Brianna finished the cup and left her usual tip. The cup was cheaper than you'd get if you went to Starbucks or some other big-name coffee shop. Three dollars for a little cup that moved around in her cup holders. She set the five-dollar bill down and Sophie's face twisted up into something that might have been a smile.

  Brianna smiled back at her. There was something charming about the old woman. She liked her. Like a rose with too many thorns. It was the thorns Brianna liked. It told her that maybe, some day, there would be another young woman, who looked at her the same way. There was hope for that much, at least. Assuming she hadn't been one of the bodies that some other poor sap got called out at three in the morning to come take a look at.

  Brianna took her time walking out. She had an hour or more to make it to the precinct. More than enough time. More than more than enough time. She'd be there thirty minutes early, and she suspected, if she wasn't there thirty minutes early there would be people suggesting that they send out a search party.

  But movement caught her eye, at the edge of her vision, and her hand naturally dropped to the pistol tucked into its pocket holster.

  She shouldn't have been suspicious, of course. Men walk through alleys all the time. It's their right as free citizens, even if she would recommend against it. But she recognized the face from some dim memory. That meant he was either a victim, or a crook, unless some other poor soul from back in Virginia had come up north so it could be a high-school classmate coming to meet up with her at four-thirty on the bad side of town.

  So she was suspicious. Maybe even paranoid. That was what kept her alive, in bad situations, and she had every intention of staying that way a little longer. She followed behind and tapped the cuffs, on the corner of her back, to make sure that they were still there. They were, same as always.

  The man was big. Taller than she had seen at first. That was the problem with forming first impressions out of the corner of your eye. He must have been slouching, but he wasn't slouching now. And her suspicion, her paranoia, seemed to pay off.

  A little woman, smaller than Brianna–the detective was petite on the best of days–was walking, her sneakers making no sound on the pavement, and the big man was catching up to her. The woman didn't turn, didn't look, didn't even seem to notice that she was joined by two others in the alley.

  Maybe she was being overly suspicious. Maybe she was being paranoid. Maybe they were friends, walking home together. Maybe they were walking to do something else entirely. Something that was illegal, but not so illegal that Brianna was going to interfere with it.

  When he caught her, though, the girl let out a yelp, and that was all Brianna needed.

  "Police! Freeze!" She drew her pistol and her flashlight in one easy motion. It had been hard to learn how to do it smoothly. It had taken a long time to get used to the whole thing, to get a sense for how to avoid little hitches, but she wasn't quick any more. She was smooth, and smooth was fast.

  She was wrong again, she saw. The man was still slouching. He drew up to his full height and she realized that he towered over her, not close to six feet. Well over. He frowned. The girl ran. Her sneakers made a sound this time. The sounds retreated as she stood, still and steady and waiting for the man to move, either to surrender or to open himself up.

  She saw a movement, and her finger pulled the trigger, but to her great surprise he'd already closed the distance by the time her finger had squeezed, and he smacked the gun aside like it was a toy, the shot going wild and smacking into the brick wall of one of the bordering buildings.

  Brianna hoped that Sophie heard the shot, hoped she was calling 9-1-1. Otherwise, they were going to need those search parties to get started soon.

  She saw the man's hand, jammed into the pocket of a coat, and when he pulled it free he had a pistol of his own. He didn't make the mistake she had. The mistake she'd seen many other men make, the one that cost them dearly. He jammed the barrel between her ribs hard enough that she couldn't move out of the way if she wanted to, and a loud 'bang' went off, so loud that it sounded as if it were coming from inside her own head and screaming out from there.

  But she didn't crumple to the ground. She didn't feel searing pain, the worst pain you've ever felt, kind of pain. Instead, the bang was followed up by a low shout, and when she opened her eyes the big man was on the ground in a heap.

  Another man, almost as big, glowered down at her attacker. He looked like an action movie hero, she thought. His jaw was square and set and powerful, and his body was covered in thick, ropy muscle that she guessed he couldn't have gotten without chemical enhancement. In his hands was a pistol, grabbed by the barrel that must have been scalding hot. He didn't move to drop it.

  "You ought to be more careful," he growled. And then he walked away, stripping the pistol easily and dropping its constituent pieces as she walked. The blood surging in Brianna's ears was too loud to hear a little voice in the back of her mind scream that she needed to chase him. So she didn't.

  Two

  Brianna's heart was still pounding in her ears when she finally pulled herself through the doors of the station. Daniels, at the front desk, noticed something was up right away. She could see it in the way he watched her. But he didn't say anything, and that was good because if he said one god damn thing then he was going to regret the hell out of it.

  Sure, she was shook up. Anyone would be. But if she let someone else talk about it, let someone else think about it for one fucking second, then it was all they were going to think about. That she was weak, that she was afraid.

  She wasn't weak and she wasn't afraid. It was a shock response from nearly getting fucking killed, and that was normal, not weak at all. She wasn't sure why she was trying so hard to convince herself. It ought to have been downright easy. But it still churned in her gut, and she still forced herself to calm down as best she could.

  By the time she was dressed and settling into her desk–not to mention the time she'd spent sitting on the bench in the locker room taking deep breaths and rubbing her eyes–she was almost feeling alright. Almost.

  Captain Broyles stepped out of his office and motioned for her to come inside. He was a big guy, and not in the way that her attacker had been big. She wondered how he managed to pass a physical with a body like that. If he ever left his office, he'd have given cops a bad name.

  On the desk he had a box of a half-dozen donuts, all but one of them eaten. He offered her one with a gesture. He was overweight, and he was out of shape, a
nd he was every bad stereotype about police officers–but he wasn't a prick. She waved her hand, and with a shrug closed the top on the box and pushed it out of the way.

  "Brianna. You're late."

  "No, I–"

  "I mean, for you. You're fine as far as the clock is concerned. Something wrong?"

  "Nothing at all," she lied. She hoped that he wouldn't mention her shakiness. If he did, then there were some people in the building she couldn't tear a new asshole, and Broyles was one of them. He grimaced and looked up at her but he didn't fight her, and that was all she could have asked for considering.

  "Well, then, you don't mind picking up a case for me, do you?"

  She blinked. It was unusual that she'd be asked like that. "Sir?"

  "I've got a crime scene, just came in, but if you're not comfortable–"

  "Of course I'm comfortable."

  "Let me finish, now," he said gently. "I don't want to give you the wrong impression. This is a pretty ugly one. Grisly. So if you–"

  "Sir, that's the job." She softened. "Thank you, though, for the warning. I'm sure that I'll be alright."

  He nodded. "Okay, then," he muttered, as he pulled a pen from the center drawer of his desk. "Here's the address."

  The address was in a place she recognized. Not far from Sophie's, she thought. It worried her a little. Was this–no, that would be too much of a coincidence. Besides that, it would take the uniforms a long time to get called, in a place like that.

  If the locals didn't call out for an hour or two, and the uniforms took their sweet time processing the scene, and she would be the last one there… it couldn't have been related to something that had happened twenty minutes ago.

  She reminded herself of that whenever the coincidence seemed a little too severe. Besides, bodies turned up in that area all the time. That was what made it the bad part of town.

  She took the address, pocketed it, and drove. It wasn't long. Ten minutes, if she was careful to follow the laws. Five with the cherry on top, if she hurried. But she didn't. The uniforms weren't in a hurry. She'd been the only one with a spring in her step when she wore the uniform, and it was because she had higher places to reach.

  Most of them didn't have that sort of motivation going for them. They wanted an easy job, and she would give it to them. Easy enough.

  Nine minutes later, she slipped back out of the car, closed the button on her jacket, and pulled her wallet well before she got to the police tape. She flipped it open for the uniform who came to roust her, and he pretended he hadn't been thinking about it.

  "Detective Hunt?"

  "What have we got?"

  "I'd uh… rather not go inside, if you don't mind."

  "Don't be a pussy, Officer, now let's go. Walk and talk, come on."

  That seemed to shock him back into reality. The reality, in this case, was that he wasn't in a position to be asking not to go near a crime scene that he was at. If he was that uncomfortable with it, once she was situated, he could wait outside. But not when she needed to be briefed.

  He took a deep breath through his nose, as if he were taking special effort to smell the sweet cold early-morning air. "Alright, this way, Detective."

  She followed him through a door that had been propped open. The door was heavy and metal. "One body," the uniform was telling her. "This place is abandoned, so I don't think he lives here. Doesn't look like a vagrant to me, so…"

  "Alright. I can take it from here," she said. She could smell it, now. That was a little unusual, she thought, but she ignored that. The body was ugly. They hadn't been lying about that, either. The air was wet with blood and sticky smell. And on the ground, a man who looked like he'd been drawn and quartered, and then left for the wolves.

  Only, none of that made any sense. Brianna allowed herself a sour expression, but she kept her eyes on the victim. "We got an ID?"

  She asked no one in particular, hoping someone would furnish a response. One of the techs handed her a wallet that she could feel, through her gloves, was sticky to the touch. It wasn't hard to figure out what was making it sticky, because it stained the dark brown wallet red.

  She forced it open, though the congealed blood had tried to stick it right closed. Inside was an ID, made to be extra-visible. Jeff Wilde. Like the writer, she thought sourly. She pulled through the rest of it. Three debit cards, a loyalty card for the local hardware store, a ten, three fives, and two ones in the cash pocket.

  She used her pinky, the only finger not sticky with blood, to root around in a tight pocket, and when she brought it out a folded-up photo came with it. The victim, as far as she could tell from his ID, was there. A lot of people were.

  But one in particular stood out, because she'd seen him before. With a jaw like granite and a hard smile, he towered over the others. He'd saved her life earlier that day, and she didn't have a name to match him. Not yet, anyway.

  Three

  The photo had names on the back. Names that didn't turn up much, she thought sourly. There was a short list of known associates for Mr. Wilde. He wasn't exactly a model citizen, but then again nobody who went to that part of town was. Brianna didn't have to wonder what that said about her.

  Mostly nicknames, which wasn't useful to anyone. Stupid shit. Street shit. The phrase 'White Eyes' turned up once or twice, but nobody in the gang units had heard the phrase before as far as they were willing to tell her, at least. On the back of the photo were twenty-odd first names.

  She counted them out carefully and put a name to each face. It was just a guess, but if she numbered them left to right, back to front, then 'Jeff' went right on the victim. So it was a guess, but it was a good guess. And right on her mystery man, her mystery savior, was 'Nick.'

  And as luck would have it, 'Nick' made the list. He was one of the few who didn't have some asinine street name. Nick Roe. She frowned. She was getting tired of these names. Roe was close enough to Poe. Poets weren't her thing, and the connection made her feel worse than she already had.

  Still, she had a short while to find out what had happened to this poor son of a bitch, and Nick Roe was a good lead. At least, he was as good a lead as she could figure. She made some calls and twenty minutes later, as the sun finally started to show over the tops of the buildings downtown, someone was going around the bars asking after a Nick Roe. If they turned anything up, she'd get a call.

  Still, after he'd seen her face once, he'd remember it the second time if she showed up again. If she showed up asking questions, even worse. So it was better to have someone else doing it for now.

  There was other work to be done, anyways. She took a deep breath and headed down to the morgue. That was the next step, and it would kill time and no doubt brain cells as well, with that awful bloody smell. There was work to be done and she'd do it but the more that this case went on the more Brianna wished she'd passed it on to someone else. Another junkie shot in a deal gone bad was probably more her speed today.

  Not a man literally torn apart at the seams, a task which, she reminded herself, ought to have been completely impossible. It was an abandoned building, so anything could have gone. The reality was, the room he was found in was bathed in that sickly-sweet, sticky blood. No way he was killed somewhere else and brought in, unless they'd killed him over a very large bucket and the blood was brought in with him.

  The room was not tiny. Not a broom closet, for which she was eternally grateful, but if he was pulled apart by some machine, well… it likely have been too big to fit through the door.

  On the other hand, what else could it have been? She tried to figure. Because right now, it wasn't making a whole lot of sense. There were strays everywhere, of course. Animals had a way of getting onto city streets and causing trouble there. It was the food that brought them in. Plentiful food, just left out for anyone to take.

  Or, in this case it seemed like any bear. There was so much blood, and the body was destroyed. Absolutely destroyed. She almost gagged just thinking about it. She'd
seen heads crushed in by bats, people with their skin sawn right through. All kinds of awful things that would have made her want to head right for the toilet to empty out her stomach on the first day.

  She knew how to deal with those things, now. It was bracing, but it was something she was used to, in a way. She could deal with it, at least.

  This was different, and Brianna wasn't sure that she could keep dealing with it. From now on, though, aside from a trip to the coroner's office to speak to the medical examiner, it was going to be dealing with photos and, for the most part, people who were still alive.

  Those things were easy. She could deal with photos. She'd seen so many of them, so impossibly unlikely, that she could deal with them. And there wouldn't be that awful metallic smell filling the air like someone had used a blood-scented air freshener through the whole building, clinging to everything.

  So the worst part was over, she reminded herself. The worst part was over. She stepped into the ME's office in time to find the man sitting at his desk writing notes with a shining brass pen. It was uniquely his, she thought, without enough interest to actually ask him about it.

  "Had a chance to take a look at my body yet?"

  "You're the one with the jigsaw puzzle?"

  Brianna raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, that's the one."

  "Yeah, I had a look."

  "And?"

  "I'll tell you one thing," the guy said as he stood up. He gave her a sardonic smile that left plenty of time to realize that he was going to drop some lame joke on her. She let him do it in spite of herself because she needed to know more about this guy, and fast. "He's dead."

  "I was beginning to suspect that might be the case," Brianna agreed, her expression grim. "Do you know what killed him?"

  "Well, I'll say this. He was torn apart first. And then, well. Then the rest of it. Where did you say you found this guy?"

  "We found him in a building off Seventeenth. Abandoned and empty as far as anyone knew."