The Apsara Chronicles Boxed Set

by T. G. Ayer

  The two detectives spent a minute hesitating until Vee sighed and turned away from them. As she stared at the victim, Vee said, “Do you need help finding the exit, boys? Monroe offered, but I need her advice on something, so we’ll get someone else to help.”

  Hasif sputtered. “She’s staying?” Looking over at him, Vee lifted an eyebrow and gave a sharp nod. She hadn’t looked at Monroe once, and now hoped the detective would play along. “This is our jurisdiction. You can’t toss us out of here and then allow Monroe to stay.” His voice held an almost whiny quality that set her nerves on edge.

  Vee forced herself to concentrate, then walked around the bed to inspect the feet of the woman who was currently splayed across the mattress, her guts ripped open. The fact that they were having a power struggle while this poor woman’s body cooled was distasteful.

  She glanced up at the two men. “I’ve worked with Monroe on Special Victims cases before. And if she looks at my tits and ass, she doesn’t make it as obvious as the two of you. Even if I had the power to keep you two on, I wouldn’t because you have disrespected me from the moment I walked into the room.”

  Vee paused to draw her camera from her pocket and take two photos, one of the woman’s neck which revealed strange bruises, and the other of the wound in her neck that confirmed Vee’s suspicion of the killer’s species.

  She still hadn’t heard them leave. “Oh, and this is a closed investigation. I’ve already subpoenaed all your files on the case going back however long you’ve had this killer on your radar.”

  Both men’s mouths opened, and Gianni’s jaw clenched as he launched himself at her. “Not a step closer, Gianni.” Monroe jerked her head at the door to the room. “If you know what’s best for you, you’ll leave now. You don’t want to take her on. She’s got balls the size of Texas.”

  “That much is clear.” Gianna spat the words and Vee glanced up at him. “Crime scene fellas. Please endeavor to keep your biological substances—sputum included—to yourselves. I’d ask for a mask for you but since you’re leaving...”

  Monroe ushered the two men outside, but Vee was no longer paying attention. The whole discussion and argument with them had been tiring. She encountered men like them all the time, the ones who believed women were mere possessions, who thought women to be beneath them, who refused to accept a female in charge of them.

  Good thing they were gone then.

  The outer door slammed closed, and seconds later Monroe returned, coming to Vee’s side. “Why’d you keep me on?” When Vee said nothing, Monroe huffed. “Even if it was just to stick it to those two dick-heads, I’m happy.”

  Vee shook her head. “It wasn’t.” Then she paused and grinned. “Well, it was, kinda. But I do need you.”

  Vee looked around at the crime scene techs. Monroe answered before Vee could ask the question. “They’re ours.”

  “Good. Then they’ll know where to send the evidence samples.”

  Monroe nodded, well used to Vee’s requests that half the evidence be sent on to Vee’s own lab at Shankar Industries so she could work on them herself—that was, of course, only when she hadn’t been able to obtain her own.

  Vee gave a short nod and turned away to study the body. “I’m going to need some space and privacy.”

  One of the forensics techs—most likely new—gasped. “We can’t leave the crime scene unattended. Not until everything is bagged and tagged.”

  Vee turned and waved them off. “Don’t worry. I just need space for a few minutes. You’ll have me in your sights the entire time.”

  Though still hesitant and sending her suspicious looks, the forensics techs got to their feet and walked over to the door. One stopped on the threshold. “This far enough?”

  Vee smiled. “Plenty. And I promise I won’t take too much of your time.” For a moment, Vee felt like an animal in a circus, about to do some amazing trick to impress the audience.

  Monroe stood a few feet back having settled into the pattern she and Vee had used over the last few months. Monroe now took up position about ten yards away, giving Vee enough space to work, to study the body and everything else that had happened. This was the part Vee dreaded.

  The part where she watched a murder happen in real time.

  The auras of the two cops, both a combination of dark green and brown, made a straight path to the position in which Vee had found them when she’d arrived. Neither of the men had been here before Monroe, so she’d been the one to secure the scene. Monroe’s aura showed her entering and studying the body from a million angles.

  As Vee stared at the aural patterns, she focused on those of the woman and one other person who, to Vee, appeared to be the intruder. The green-and-black aural image described a person of at least six-foot-five and of a large physique. Darker, almost red-black streaks within the image made her stomach tighten.

  Karan had been right. This was a demon attack. But even knowing what the perpetrator was, didn’t ease Vee’s concern. It was what had really happened to the victim that Vee had to watch. And knowing already that it was going to be bad made her want to turn and run off.

  Big bad FBI agent huh?

  Chapter 62

  Reading crime scenes had never been easy.

  In fact, it had always been tough, not that Vee had been doing this gig for so long. But watching a person’s death—however fractal the aural patterns could make the scene—had always made the experience painful. Over time, she’d learned to keep her emotions in check, to control her expression and be professional.

  The problem was, Vee was the type of person who disliked horror movies—she’d have to watch most of it with half-closed lids and shut her eyes whenever she thought something awful was about to happen.

  And she was also the person who would bawl her eyes out when watching a sad scene on TV.

  Her emotional reactions were at total odds with her job, and she knew it all too well.

  So, standing by and watching a person get ripped apart—even when the images were a lot like watching people on an infrared camera affected by bad static—was always painful and frustrating. It made Vee feel helpless, made her feel as though she needed to go find the killer right then and administer the same treatment to him.

  Now she took a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate, to put her emotions aside and focus.

  Vee stared at the body, her vision blurring for the briefest second. Soon the room shifted in color and was filled with patterns of auras all meshed into each other. Fresh aural imprints were intertwined with those from earlier in the day, and Vee had to spend a few moments sifting through them.

  One at a time, she studied an imprint then removed it from her vision. If she had to describe it in a physical way, it would be as if she’d lightened or erased a single person’s aura the way you’d adjust images in photo-manipulation software.

  The only problem was that Vee had to work backward, sifting through the intertwined strands, studying them and then lifting them away from her vision. She could still see them all, but somehow her brain had decided that she could switch that particular aura off until she was done studying the scene.

  She sifted through and ticked off the forensic people, then the policemen, Monroe and then Gianni and Hasif. Her vision was now less filled with auras, and she was able to concentrate better. She chose then to look at earlier in the day and remove those who were not suspects.

  The cleaning crew of three had come in mid-morning, and from what Vee saw the company needed a good raise. The three women were very thorough.

  At check-in time, the victim arrived alone, and had been brought up to the suite. Her aura was cool, revealing her confidence and unworried mood. She was levelheaded, not the kind of person prone to bursting out into song or profanity. She toured the rooms, guided by the porter.

  Not much later, she ordered a meal using the bedroom phone then changed into what Vee assumed were more comfortable clothing. The aura suggested soft, loose-fitting pants and an ov
ersized tee. Then she headed to the lounge and curled up to watch TV until her food arrived. While she ate, the demon appeared. He’d materialized near the windows and had hidden behind the long drapes, his position beyond Susie’s field of vision.

  Vee frowned, unsure now of how the man had gained access as her vision confirmed that the door to the hotel suite had remained locked. A sinking feeling filled her stomach, and Vee swallowed hard against it. The magical entrance meant only one thing. Karan had been right about the nature of the killer.

  He’d watched and waited until Susie finished her meal and headed for the bathroom where she drew a bath and undressed, removing something—perhaps a necklace—from around her neck, dropping it onto the countertop.

  The gold aura glinted again as the chain shifted; the victim had placed it too close to the edge of the counter. The chain moved again, unspooling as it was pulled over the edge and dropped inside something that sat beside the sink. Vee made a note to check that with Monroe.

  She focused on the demon now, whose aura shifted, edged with blues and whites which implied he’d pulled a glamor over his form, perhaps to make himself invisible.

  The intruder took a glance at those corners, then slipped inside the bathroom to stand beside the door as the victim readied herself for a night in. From the strength and size of the aura, Vee had to guess that it could belong to either a gigantic wrestler with a fever, or one of a powerful demon species.

  Vee waited as she watched the aura of the killer. He’d entered the bathroom, the gigantic space larger than some homes, with separate cubicles for two toilets and a double sink and counter almost two yards long. Much of the bathroom was carpeted, and from the bloodstains on white pile near the tub, Vee suspected his attack was imminent. The bedroom had begun to darken, providing plenty of shadows and dark corners within which to lurk.

  Susie’s aura shifted between colors which Vee guessed was her mood relaxing from the soak in the tub. To interpret the finer details of a person’s aura, Vee would have to spend a large amount of time with that person, to study their possible moods and make guesses as to the colors and how they related to the person’s mood and emotions. For now, she could only assume, but she was making educated guesses nonetheless.

  When Susie was done, she rose from the water and wrapped herself within a towel. She stepped from the bath and began to dry her body before pulling on a bathrobe. She faced the mirror, and was brushing out her wet hair when the demon’s aura shivered and changed, her aura darkened as she caught sight of his reflection in the mirror before her.

  The demon attacked, encircling her neck with his arm. She struggled, flailing and grabbing aimlessly at him but she had no power against him whatsoever.

  A flare of darker astral lines caught Vee’s attention as Susie grabbed onto the faucet—the only thing she could hold onto. The demon had pulled hard, and Susie’s desperate grip broke, ripping open a fingernail as well. The bleeding at the wound, though minor, had caused the glowing. Evidence that the forensics people had missed. Though it was likely that they hadn’t gotten to the bathroom yet to look for evidence.

  The demon dragged her back a few feet from the stain on the carpet—which Vee could see beyond her vision of the shifting auras.

  Susie’s struggles continued, and she managed to grab hold of the demon’s ear, pulling hard. Vee made a note to have forensics check beneath Susie’s fingernails for DNA—demon DNA of course, but Vee still needed to confirm.

  The demon’s aura changed suddenly, his imprint darkening with rage or pain or both. Much of Vee’s observations were left up to interpretation, and she supposed that the demon’s fluctuation in aural color could also have meant arousal or fear, but in the context of what she was witnessing, her gut told her it wasn’t.

  Reacting to Susie’s attack, the demon punched her in the head and swung her around. She flailed like a rag doll and hit the carpeted floor. But there was a strength in her that Vee admired, and she watched as the woman tried to get back onto her feet.

  Vee wasn’t sure what Susie had thought she could do against the attacking demon, but the woman must have been desperate to get away, to fend him off.

  It was hopeless.

  As Susie rose to her knees, preparing to boost herself to her feet, the demon swung a hand at her neck. And spilled her blood onto the floor.

  The aura of the lifeblood shimmered with white fractal patterns as it gushed, as Susie grabbed her throat. Blood seeped from her wound, dripping past her fingers and falling onto the carpet and matched up perfectly with the large stain.

  The demon wasn’t wasting time. He grabbed for an ankle and dragged Susie into the bedroom, stopping only when he reached the bed. Fluctuations in Susie’s aural patterns implied a range of emotions that Vee assumed ran from terror, anger, shame, and helplessness.

  Still, the woman didn’t just lie there waiting to die. She got to her feet, managing to stand despite the blood loss. But her attempt to flee failed as the demon smashed his fist onto the back of her head and she sank to the ground weakened by the blow. He didn’t give her time to move, just grabbed her and tossed her onto the bed where she moaned and tried to roll over. His blatant disregard for her made Vee wonder if he believed she was not worth the effort.

  The demon lunged for Susie who scrambled backward on the bed, but the demon was on her in half a second, moving so fast Vee suspected he’d done a partial jump. As he swiped at her, Vee confirmed his species.

  A pey.

  To encounter a second pey demon within the same twelve-hour period was highly unusual.

  Worse yet, here he was murdering a woman in a high-profile neighborhood. It was almost as if he was acting without forethought, without planning.

  Vee focused on his movements as he attacked the victim, shredding her abdomen and moving over her to feed at her neck. Fueled perhaps by adrenaline, the woman bucked against him hard and tried to move away. The movement brought her to the edge of the bed, but the demon was still in control, feeding on her until her strength began to wane. Vee swallowed as she watched Susie’s aural patterns fluctuate and fade at the point of her death.

  Vee had stiffened as the demon got to his feet and stalked into the front room. Her focus had been on the aural patterns in the bedroom during the attack, so when the demon exited the room to be confronted by another person, it was a surprise.

  Vee would have come across the aura of the newcomer eventually, but to now see that there was another victim in this crime was a shock. She’d suspected as much considering the attack had happened in the bathroom, and the woman had been dead on the bed within seconds, no time for the demon to take her out to the living room and attack her there—especially to justify the blood in the living room. Despite Susie’s best attempts at escape, she’d been overpowered with no hope of surviving.

  Now, Vee watched as the demon stared down the visitor who was much smaller in size than Susie, appearing to be another slight-built woman or a teenager.

  The person backed away, bumped into something, probably the central feature table that Vee had seen when she’d entered. This was how it was knocked over.

  The demon lunged at the victim, swiping hard at the neck area, likely using his long, curved claws. The trajectory of the swipe sent blood spurting in a wide arc resulting in the spatter patterns on the wall and picture window behind the victim.

  Still, it appeared that the attacker hadn’t killed the victim. Vee was about to forward through the aural pattern when she paused. Something was strange about the person’s aura, a strong glow of fractal patterns in the abdominal area. Vee concentrated on the looping swirls of color but already had a suspicion about the glow as she honed in on the shimmering pale blue and gold lines.

  The second victim was a woman, and she was carrying a child.

  Chapter 63

  Vee’s stomach churned.

  The demon paused, hovering over the woman and Vee had to wonder if he’d also realized that the woman was pregnant. His atta
ck stopped, and he knelt before the victim whose aura implied pure terror.

  Her hands lay over her abdomen, and Vee felt almost ill when she recalled that the pey had attacked Susie with a blow to the gut first. Had he done the same with this unknown victim, she’d have lost her child instantly.

  But the pey seemed to have ceased his attack, waving at her to get to her feet. She obeyed, seeming to not have the same ability to resist as Susie had, which again implied that the woman was much younger or probably just not as strong as Susie.

  It also explained what had given Susie such strength to fight back; she’d known the other woman was coming to see her. Vee had noticed that the second woman had entered the apartment alone, probably with a second key from the front desk. Which could mean Susie had had an arrangement with the hotel for a key for a second guest.

  The demon closed in on the woman and wrapped his arms around her. Then both the aural patterns vanished.

  In the second before the demon jumped the victim away, Vee caught the golden glint of something at the woman’s neck. It was possible that she too had worn some sort of gold jewelry, which from its aural patterns had a high chance of being made of the same metal as the one she’d seen Susie drop onto the bathroom counter.

  Vee took a shuddering breath and straightened. Looking up, she found herself standing in the living room a foot from the second bloodstain.

  Monroe was talking to a couple of cops nearby and from what Vee could tell the outer room had been emptied as she’d worked. She hadn’t realized that she’d moved into the living area and was grateful that Monroe had seen fit to preempt Vee’s need for privacy and had evacuated the outer suite.

  Monroe looked over at Vee, who jerked her head at the detective then walked back into the interior room.

  Vee beckoned Monroe to the bathroom even as the other woman asked, “What can you tell?”