by C. M. Cevis
“Do you have a pack?” Willow asked casually.
Chris shook his head. “No. I’ve been told that I should, that I’ll need the support since it’s only been a few months since I changed.”
Willow was fishing in her purse before Chris was done talking. She pulled out the business card for a bar several blocks away and slipped it into Chris’s palm with a smile.
“The owner is there most nights until close. His name is Max, and he’ll know what you are as soon as you walk in. Tell him that I sent you, and he’ll help you.”
Chris tucked the card into his inner jacket pocket, his gratitude written plainly on his face. “Thank you so much.” He leaned over and hugged Willow rather suddenly. She giggled and hugged him back, just as the door to the office opened.
Chris and Willow turned mid embrace to see Nick in the doorway. The confused look on his face was almost worth all the questions that would surely follow. Or would have been, had Willow stuck around.
“Did you need something?” Nick asked, looking between Willow and Chris, who had separated.
Willow smiled and stood. “It can wait,” she replied. “Why don’t you and your brother come down to the club tonight? Take some time and catch up with each other, hm?” With that, she strode out of the office, fairly confident both men were looking at her backside.
~ ~
NICK WATCHED HER GO AND then turned to face his brother, completely confused. “Do you know her?”
“Nope. I met her when she walked into your office a few minutes ago,” Chris said, chuckling at Nick’s narrowed eyes. “Why would it be bad if I knew her?”
“Do you know what she does for a living?” Nick asked.
Chris shrugged. “I assume that she runs a club, from what she said on her way out.”
Nick sighed and was halfway to his desk before he realized it. He spun around and grabbed his brother’s face in his hands, pulling it close.
“Your eyes aren’t red,” he said.
Chris nodded as much as he could, considering. “Because I’m clean.”
“Your clothes look new,” Nick said.
“Because I have a job now,” Chris replied.
“Your words aren’t all slurred together.” Nick’s voice seemed almost panicked, and Chris laughed.
“I told you, I’m clean.”
Nick let him go and watched him for a few moments. “You’re clean,” he repeated in wonder, as if he had just witnessed a miracle. And maybe he had.
“I’m clean,” Chris confirmed. “And I have something that I have to tell you. So maybe going somewhere with alcohol is a good idea.”
20
NICK HAD SPENT HALF THE time that he and Chris were at Willow’s wondering why he was so nervous, and the other half completely understanding the nerves. Chris’s news wasn’t really easy to tell someone, especially when you weren’t sure how they were going to react to finding out that sharing needles had given you lycanthropy. Was it still lycanthropy when you weren’t a wolf? Nick was going to have to ask someone about that, especially now that he had a personal interest.
Willow had come to greet them soon after they’d arrived, but she seemed to be giving them space, which Nick appreciated. She comped their drinks and sent them something to eat about an hour later, but that had been the extent of it. Nick and his brother had spent the entire evening catching up, laughing, and drinking. Since neither of them were plastered or sober, Nick suggested they leave his car and walk to his place without really thinking about how far of a walk it was.
The night was considerably cooler than the day had been, something that both men appreciated. The streets were relatively busy that time of night, so while they were talking to each other, there were also several happy drunks to talk to as well. The laughing almost drowned out the signs of struggle as the two of them strolled past a darkened alley. Almost.
Nick’s police instincts kicked in at the motion in his periphery, and he squinted down the alleyway, trying to see what was going on.
“Hey! What the hell is going on down there?” he yelled into the darkness.
“He’s dragging something,” Chris said. His eyes would be better than Nick’s, of course. Nick had almost forgotten, just that quick.
“Hey!” Nick yelled toward the grunting figure. He started walking toward the noise. Chris followed behind, taking a slight inhale of breath.
“Something down there is dead, Nick,” Chris said, his voice low and suddenly sober. Nick started running.
“BCPD! Don’t move!” Nick yelled, though of course, he might as well have said “Take off running like a bat out of hell.” That announcement was legally required, but it never made anyone stop what they were doing and stand still to wait for you to arrest them.
The shadowy figure dropped the large item it had been dragging and took off in the opposite direction. Nick felt his blood start racing through his veins as he picked up speed to give chase. Chris bounded ahead of him, faster than he’d ever been. Nick was not complaining. He kept running.
After only a minute, Chris stopped, turning back to wait for his brother to catch up.
“He’s gone,” he said with a frown when Nick got close enough. “His scent is completely gone.”
Nick stopped, trying to catch his breath. “How in the hell is he gone? You were right on him.” He realized too late that it sounded like he was blaming Chris for something.
“It’s not my fault. I didn’t lose him, he was just suddenly gone,” Chris said, defensive.
Nick sighed, his breathing rate and heartbeat finally calming. “It’s all right. Thanks for trying to catch him either way,” he said, clapping his brother on the back. “We need to get back to the alleyway. If this is related to the case that I think it is, I might know why he simply disappeared.”
Forty-five minutes later, the alley was blocked off by crime scene tape, police cars were everywhere, and officers were attempting to keep the public back. Nick and Chris stood on the inside of the tape, waiting as crime scene people took a look. Chris was giving a statement to one of the DCS guys, since they needed the practice and the statement anyway. Nick sighed and made a call that he didn’t like making.
“Well hello, handsome, calling for a little late-night fun?” Willow said in lieu of a greeting. Nick rolled his eyes to keep from being slightly uncomfortable.
“We’ve got another body,” he said. Maybe his lack of pretense would distract her from the whole sex thing she seemed to be considering.
“That’s not nearly as fun,” she said, her voice a bit flatter. “Where are you?”
“Four blocks from the club, in the opposite direction of the last body we found near you,” he said. There was a heartbeat of tense air on the line.
“Don’t start suspecting me, Nick. Why in the world would I volunteer to lose blood and have my psyche ripped apart on a regular basis just to throw you off? That’s not worth it.”
He had never heard her voice so cold. Nick sighed. “I don’t disagree. I’m just mentioning that it’s awful convenient that the bodies are so close to the club.”
Background noise on the line quieted, and he assumed Willow had walked out on to the street.
“Do I really strike you as someone dumb enough to commit murder so close to home? At least give me credit for having a brain,” she said, the chuckle in her words making Nick chuckle himself.
“That’s true, you do not strike me as an idiot when it comes to all of this. Which reminds me—”
“Don’t do that,” Willow interrupted.
“Do what?” There was no way that she’d know what he was going to ask.
“You were going to ask how I was able to run a high-class brothel in New York without any trouble, and how I am able to do the same here. You don’t want to know the answer to that, Nick. And more importantly, I can’t tell you.”
Nick sighed. Okay, maybe she had known what he was going to ask. “Why not?”
Willow laughed. “I am paid to be
discreet, Detective. To keep secrets. I am successful in business because I am very good at it, both fiscally and practically. I won’t tell you things that you need not know.”
“I could get a warrant,” Nick said, though he wasn’t entirely sure that he could. Knowing what she did was one thing, but proving it enough to get a judge to sign off on it was another.
“Doubtful,” Willow responded without an ounce of care. “I’ll make you a deal, Detective Dukas. If we both make it out of this without losing our lives or our sanity, I’ll show you why I am allowed to operate here. One time, on the house.” She was doing that purring thing with her voice again, and Nick was getting way more aroused than he was comfortable with while in public.
“Pass,” he said.
“Your words say no, but your pants say yes,” Willow said, laughing, and he heard her both in the phone and behind him. Nick turned in time to see her approaching, an almost scandalous look on her face as the two of them ended the call.
“I’m not going to be able to live this down, am I?” he said softly, adjusting things a bit.
“Nope,” Willow said with a wink, before brushing past him and moving farther into the alley. “Are you coming?” she called. Nick cleared nothing from his throat and followed.
The crime scene officers had blasted the alleyway with flood lights. Nick held up a hand to shield his eyes from the harsh light, but Willow seemed to be so focused on the body that she didn’t mind them.
Before touching the body, she turned to him. “You should probably turn those lights off,” she said softly.
“My guys know what you are and what you do,” Nick replied.
Willow nodded slowly. “That they do. But the people peeking through the gaps between them trying to get a look at the body, don’t.”
She had a point.
“Cut them off for a second, guys,” Nick called out. It would bring everything to a halt, but it was what was needed. The officers that worked with him had learned enough to know they needed to clear the area around the body first, since there was a good chance that Willow was going to contaminate the hell out of it.
This one was fresher than any other, since Chris and Nick had interrupted the killer in the process of dumping the body. By the time Nick’s brain had processed what that might mean for the woman in front of him, it was too late. She’d already touched the victim’s hand.
~ ~
WILLOW LOOKED AROUND. THE VICTIM was a woman, it seemed, though it had been hard to tell back in the alleyway. She took a quick moment to take stock of herself: blond, spray tanned, great rack squeezed into something sequined. Willow was pretty sure she hadn’t seen any sequins on the body, so the woman wasn’t wearing the same clothes as when she was taken. That was about the moment that Willow realized how much more she was seeing this time around, and how much clearer her surroundings were. That meant that this was going to suck.
A man approached, though is face was blurred so much that she couldn’t see anything about him. He was wearing a suit and seemed to speak politely to her. His words came out in a rather comical wah-wah-wah sound, like the adults in Peanuts cartoons, but she responded like she could understand him.
“Oh, that’s right, I remember. How have you been?” She knew him from somewhere.
“Hell yeah, let’s get out of here,” she said to the next set of indistinguishable sounds. That was when she noticed that she was somewhere crowded and busy. She and the man had leaned in so that they could hear each other over the din around them.
They left together, and that place inside of her where her instincts lived screamed for her to brace herself. They were maybe ten steps from the building that they'd left when a sharp pain in the back of her head stole her consciousness.
The vision began to race around her, showing her bits and pieces of what the victim experienced and information that she'd pulled from the man who had taken her. They'd tied her up onto something that almost looked like a crucifix. They sliced deep into the muscle of her thighs, causing her femoral arteries to spill her life down her legs and into the basin that had been placed under her body. The pain was almost blinding, and she used it to propel herself toward the man who held her captive there; she didn’t have much time before the finale of the victim’s life.
That was when she saw something that seemed helpful, and she held onto the image with everything that she had. It was of a house in an older suburb, not the new, fancy types of construction that were being thrown up all over the place. The house sat back from the curb a few hundred feet and had brick steps that led up to a front porch that spanned the entire front.
The door to the home opened, and the light inside illuminated a group of people. One held their hand out, and the thought was placed into Willow's mind that the man who had taken her returned to this house to bring the people who lived there something that they needed, though she didn't know why or what. The people who stood in the blinding light of the doorway to the house were the people controlling everything. They were the ones who were dangerous.
Willow found herself back in the body of the victim, the wet bloops of her blood dripping from the heels of her feet into the basin echoing around her. Her heartbeat slowed deafeningly inside of her head, and she could hear her breath coming in slow, ragged scrapes through her throat. She was dying, and there was nothing that she could do about it. The man had what he wanted from her and stood in front of her looking down at the basin of blood with a satisfied, albeit terrifying smile as her vision faded to black.
The city around her came roaring back into her senses as Willow found herself against the cold concrete wall of the alley, Nick’s arms wrapped around her. She was shaking like she was freezing, though she wasn’t, and her throat felt raw, as if she was just remembering that she needed to breathe again.
“I’m okay,” she whispered. To Nick, sure, since the concern was naked on his face, but to herself also. Sometimes she needed to remind herself that it wasn’t real, that her visions couldn’t actually kill her. That she was okay now.
“You’re bleeding,” Nick said softly, so that the others wouldn’t hear. He inclined his head toward Willows legs. She stood shakily and shook her head.
“The man severed the femoral arteries at her inner thighs. I’m okay,” she repeated. She was going to be telling herself that a lot tonight. “I have to tell you what I saw.” Her voice sounded worn down and dry.
“Tell me later. For now, let me get you out of here.” He turned her back toward the mouth of the alley
~ ~
THE NEXT MORNING THE INSISTENT ringing of his phone brought Nick out of his sleep several hours earlier than he wanted. Whoever it was kept calling and didn’t seem to have any intention of stopping until he answered.
He answered with a grunt, eyes closed.
“Nick, wake up. You’ve got to turn on the news,” Willow’s voice said on the other end of the call.
“What?” Nick said, rubbing his eyes. How the hell had she gotten his private number? He’d made sure to always call her from the police line.
“Turn on the morning news!” Willow said, her voice insistent.
Nick sighed and pushed himself out of bed, shuffled into the living room, and turned on the television against his better judgment.
A pretty blonde was standing in front of the alleyway from the night before, though it took Nick’s sleep-addled mind a second to realize that. She seemed to be animatedly giving the entire city a scoop that she just knew they’d want to hear.
“—sources tell me that last night was body number five in this spree of murders. The man or woman at large is apparently a vampire but is attempting to make the kills look like they were committed by someone from the shifter community. Understandably, both race representatives are up in arms. We’re working on getting a statement from both sides, as well as speaking to the police about why the presence of what appears to be a serial killer wasn’t released to the public before now…”
“What
the hell is this?” Nick almost screamed it.
“It’s bad, that’s what it is,” Willow responded softly.
“Yeah, now we look like we’ve been trying to hide something, when that’s not true at all.” Nick threw his free hand up for emphasis though no one was there to see it.
“There’s more at stake than your reputation, Nick. If this is the little push that the preternatural community needs to dissolve into a war between races, how the war started won’t matter in the least.” Willow’s voice was so serious that Nick felt his anger cooling into fear. “And while it sounds harsh to say it, normal humans are the ones with the greatest disadvantage in that situation. You need to be careful.”
Nick sunk down onto the couch, the warning ringing around in his head. Willow never sounded even slightly fearful about anything. Until now. That concerned him.
“Right. I’ll be careful.”
21
NICK EYED THE CROWD WARILY, noting that several people weren’t actually press. Some of them looked angry enough to do something stupid, which was why he’d insisted on being there. Nina had started speaking several minutes ago, but the shouts from the crowd were drowning out a lot of her points. She had attempted to deflect blame from both vampires and shifters, but it didn't seem to be working. The racists were out in full force, demanding that the beings be locked up or slaughtered "for the safety of the humans." Nick was damn near nauseated.
"We need something now, Nick," Nina said, once they were finally allowed to return to the relative safety of the inside of the precinct. "As in yesterday. This is going to get ugly."
"You did good, deflecting blame from the races. I hope that's enough," Willow said as she approached absently, her face in a hard frown. Nina and Nick stopped. She’d gotten to the office before Nick had, saying that she wanted to be there for whatever damage control was happening, in case she could help.
"Enough for what?" Nina asked.
