Down With Vamps: A Rockstar Urban Fantasy Romance (ICRA Files: Berlin Book 2)

by Gaja J. Kos

  After a quick scraping of chairs against the floor, Finn and I piled out into the corridor. I closed the door behind me, then slipped through the adjacent one into the observation room where we could speak without fear of Emilia’s werewolf ears catching the conversation.

  “What do you think?” Finn came to stand beside me as I stared through the thick one-way glass.

  Taken. Emilia had been fucking taken and held captive.

  Shit, I’d sensed no lie in her words, and the current struggle she was visibly going through struck me as genuine.

  I pushed out a long breath. “I admit I didn’t see that coming.”

  My thoughts climbed over one another in a race to feed me all the possibilities this new information brought to life. How was she kidnapped? When? Were they using her as a murder weapon? We hadn’t been able to establish any clear links between the vics to highlight a motive as to why they were targeted. Or were the bodies mere consequences of Emilia slipping from under her captors’ control? But, most of all, I burned to know why? Why any of it?

  Groaning, I rubbed my forehead to shush the mental cacophony. One step at a time was the only way to win cases like this unless you wanted to end up with no answers and a lingering migraine.

  “Did we have missing werewolf reports in June or early July?” I asked. Finn had a greater brain than me for remembering things like that.

  “Not to my knowledge.” He strode over to the cabinet bearing an old coffee mug and Emilia’s file. He grabbed the latter and held it open in his hands. “But I get why no one might have reported her missing.”

  He shifted the folder so I could peek at its contents alongside him.

  “She’s a currently packless werewolf,” I read out loud the details I’d previously just skimmed over, focused more on the victims than Emilia’s life. “No parents. No siblings.”

  Finn flipped a couple of pages. “There’s a report in here… She filed a restraining order against an ex-boyfriend she lived with in Vienna.”

  The pieces clicked together. I checked the dates, and although there was a gap as far as her exact movements were concerned during the particular time period, the sequence of events was more than telling on its own.

  “She came to Berlin not long after filing the order, more than likely to get away from it all, start fresh.” I let my thoughts run free. “If she was kidnapped, either her ex had something to do with it, or the people behind her kidnapping saw her as an easy target.”

  “Which means they were watching places where individuals with little affiliation might frequent.” Finn closed the folder and let it dangle from his hand.

  “The new youth center for supernaturals down by the Spree, maybe?” I glanced through the glass, seeing Emilia in a whole other light. “She’s still within their age range.”

  Finn’s forest eyes darkened. “Let’s go find out.”

  Stepping back into the warded interrogation room was like going from inhaling crisp mountain air to attempting to breathe with a giant Leshy perched on your chest. Unpleasant didn’t even begin to cover it. My body gradually acclimatizing to the heaviness, I slid into my seat while Finn claimed the one opposite Emilia, who kept staring at the crime scene reports. I put them away.

  We had another victim to focus on right now.

  “Emilia, we need to know everything,” I said. “From the start and in as much detail as possible.”

  She sucked in a shuddering breath, then exhaled loudly and lifted her gaze to mine. “I came to Berlin for work. I saw an ad—a single mom looking for a werewolf babysitter specifically. The requirements were…”—she pursed her lips, head slightly tilted to the side—“not what most people would agree to.”

  “What do you mean?” Finn dragged his pen and pad closer.

  Emilia shrugged. “Long hours, a whole lot of extracurricular activities, teaching her three kids the werewolf ways, organizing family trips you also had to attend, planning meals, cleaning… Basically you were a mom, a babysitter, and a teacher at once. But I didn’t really have many options, and the mother would provide me with a place to stay, all meals paid for, and a salary better than what most ground-level jobs had to offer.”

  I made a mental reminder to look into that ad. Judging by the hardness that had entered Finn’s eyes when he finished scribbling the details, I wasn’t the only one considering foul play.

  Finn flipped a page. “The mother’s name?”

  “Jutta Kirchler,” Emilia said. I had to give it to her, she was holding up well.

  The weight of the attacks her wolf had perpetrated, the weight of the whole fucked-up scenario her life had been these past months, persisted in her scent like a shadow she knew she couldn’t shake until she ran into it headfirst. But as much as I wanted to relieve her of that burden, we couldn’t risk skipping a single detail.

  Finn finished writing the name, his pen hovering over the next blank line. “And the listing? Where did you find it?”

  “On SupeAuPair.” A frown creased her forehead. “I think it was posted on another site, too, but that was the one I kept returning to.”

  I waited until Finn wrapped up, then said, “You decided to take the job.”

  Emilia nodded.

  “I kept looking at that ad for a month.” A broken laugh whisked from her. “A whole month of debating whether I should do it or not before I finally decided to leave Vienna.”

  “Because of your ex?” I asked gently.

  “Yeah.” She wetted her cracked lips. “The police weren’t doing anything about him, and I knew he wasn’t going to stop coming after me. So I packed my shit and took off. I contacted Frau Kirchler when I came to Berlin, and we set up an interview.”

  Finn clicked his pen. “When was this?”

  “I’m not sure when, exactly, we talked, but we were supposed to meet on June 21st. I just…” She dropped her gaze to the table. “I never made it.”

  I was liking the coincidences less and less.

  “The evening before,” Emilia continued, her scent twisting into something darker, “I went for a run in Treptower Park. I got jumped on the way back, and the next thing I know, I’m locked in some concrete room. No windows. One door. I guess I should be grateful I had running water and a hole in the floor for a toilet.”

  She closed her eyes.

  Seconds ticked by, the strain in the atmosphere growing until my skin wanted to pebble. Finn went utterly still in his seat, his full attention on Emilia.

  But the magic monitoring and restraining her didn’t react.

  Didn’t have to.

  “The two guys I killed this morning by the van,” Emilia’s sharp blue gaze sought me out, “they were the ones guarding my cell and delivering my meals.”

  Her anger flooded the air, as did her hatred for Junker and Hellwig, who’d held her prisoner, but beneath it all… There was no mistaking the deep-set remorse.

  Emilia wasn’t a killer.

  Even the deaths of two men who had been her captors for over two months, deaths most werewolves wouldn’t bat an eye over, pained her.

  “Do you have any idea why they took you?” Finn broke the silence.

  Emilia pulled herself together, although now that we’d reached the hard part of the interview, I could see some of the seams she’d been holding on to coming apart.

  “There was a witch. I never saw her face, but she…experimented on me.” A shudder rippled through her, and the wards pressed tighter.

  Finn waited a moment, then asked, “Can you tell us more about the experiments?”

  Emilia’s throat bobbed. She had something to share, but right now, it didn’t take a wolf’s nose dissecting her scent to know she was struggling.

  “Emilia, could you maybe describe the witch? Is there anything at all that you remember about her?” I asked, hoping this, at least, didn’t hit too close to the trauma.

  “I’m sorry.” She hiccupped on a sob. “All I have is her scent, but even that… I’m not sure if it’s the right
one. The magic was so thick around her, and when she worked it on me, it—it hurt so bad I blacked out.”

  Shit, I was hoping we’d be able to get more. With Hellwig and Junker dead, Emilia was our only direct link to this curse-wielding witch. The quick look Finn sent my way revealed he didn’t like this any more than I did.

  But at least Emilia had seemed to break through her inner barrier.

  “The magic always felt like an attack. I couldn’t tell what its purpose was, I just knew that the witch was…tweaking it somehow. Testing it on my body. Like I said, it never took me long to fall unconscious. Eventually, though,” she swallowed, looking far younger than her twenty-one, yet at the same time infinitely older, “I started blacking out even when the witch wasn’t in the room. I thought it was just some weird aftereffect of the magic. I didn’t know…” She looked at the now-closed folders. “I didn’t know I killed people until that final time.”

  “You mean today?” I asked.

  “No…” Emilia sniffed. “The one before.”

  Erik Beck, mauled to death in his backyard—just conveniently remote enough for no neighbors to overhear his struggle. Which was also the single thing all murders had in common. Up until tonight.

  The change in pattern once she broke free certainly supported the idea that Emilia’s captors had somehow been directing who she went after.

  I shifted in my seat, my inner wolf demanding action, justice for the girl who unintentionally saturated the air with equal parts of self-loathing, guilt, and pained rage. All for something she had no control over. Something she’d never wanted to do.

  There was no good way to put this, so I straight-up asked, “What happened that made you realize you were killing during your blackouts?”

  Mercifully, Emilia didn’t react negatively to the bluntness.

  “I smelled blood on me. Death.” She cast down her gaze, breathing for a moment before picking up again. “They cleaned me, but that last time, they didn’t get everything. That’s when I realized something bad had to have happened. That I did something bad. Probably had every time I woke up with my skin scrubbed and hair washed. Today…” She raked her teeth along her lip. “They were transporting me somewhere. I have no idea where or why. I just remember those two guys shooting me up with sedatives then throwing me in the back of the van. I should have been down for the count, but I was so pissed off…”

  Echoes of that rage touched the air, but neither Finn nor I reacted. Even the heavy blanket of wards seemed reluctant to stanch Emilia’s emotions.

  Her chains clanked as she rocked in the bolted-down chair, then shook her head and looked at both of us.

  “I was so pissed off that I started to change.” Her brows rose as if she had a hard time believing it—despite living through it. “They pulled to the side of the road. I heard shouting, then the wolf took over. But I didn’t black out. I just… It was like I was stuffed somewhere deep in the back of my brain and couldn’t break through. I killed those two bastards, then I ran.”

  Though Emilia’s words came out harsh, her voice caught a little by the end.

  “I tried to shift back. I tried to shift back so hard, but the power didn’t come to me. I couldn’t even control my body. Like, at all. I just hoped my wolf understood we needed to get far away, hide. I think that was what we were doing when I smelled those people. Drunk, fun prey.” Tears streamed freely down her cheeks now. “I was there, I was there, trapped inside my brain, when I slaughtered them all. Then the couple next door…

  “I killed them. I killed them and ran—then, I did pass out. But when I woke, I was still a wolf. I was sure that was it. That the magic somehow changed me permanently. I didn’t even know why I moved, just that I did. That last man”—she sobbed—“gods, I went into his house just because I could. Because he seemed like an easy target, ambling around the house, barely awake. But when I attacked, my wolf didn’t have full control any longer. It was like the shift was fading. Like nature was fighting back, trying to restore order. I pushed out of my cage with everything I had and got out of there.

  “I wasn’t sure where I was going, but when people started showing up on the street, I knew I had to get off it. So I ran into that building where you found me. I… I didn’t want to kill anyone else.”

  Caught in the gale-force winds of her recollection, it took me a moment to regain the ability to speak. “Our resident witch confirmed the magic you were exposed to was a curse designed to hijack your wolf. Emilia, it wasn’t you who killed those people. And the man you pulled away from, he survived. That was your doing. You saved him.”

  Her sob turned into a hiccup. “Will he be all right?”

  “Yes.” I reached out and touched her shoulder. “The medics patched him up, and our witches made sure he’ll walk away with barely a single scar. Emilia, look, we have to keep you here for your safety and that of others until we find a better solution, but know that we aren’t holding you responsible for those deaths.”

  She broke down crying, but what doused the space wasn’t just her guilt any longer. It was such vulnerable gratitude I had to get out before I’d lose my composure, too, and those old wounds would rip open.

  This was Dominik all over.

  And I—I wasn’t sure if I could handle that.

  Finn being Finn, he wasted no time escorting Emilia out of the room and to her holding cell. I rested my forehead on the table once they’d cleared the hallway, then just breathed for several long moments before I pulled myself together, gathered the folders, and walked up the flight of stairs to the bullpen.

  A thousand hooks seemed to yank at my brain, though none were as strong as the drive simmering in my gut.

  The witch who’d cursed Dominik was long dead. But the one who experimented on Emilia… She was very much alive.

  I just had to fucking find her.

  I flopped down behind my desk and opened the folder containing the reports on the two deceased kidnappers. Just the barest of personal details on Oliver Hellwig and Peter Junker stared back at me, the write-up more of an informative flashcard to know who the victims were before heading into the interview than an actual look into their lives. After scanning over the basics, I typed both names in our system and pulled up their records.

  Junker had some past felonies listed. Hellwig was clean. Well, at least clean as far as the authorities were concerned. People didn’t usually just decide to start kidnapping werewolves over their morning cup of coffee.

  I blew out an annoyed breath and mailed a request to the PD in case they had anything on the pair, then sent Junker’s record over to the printer. While the machine did its job, I clicked open a fresh search window to check that babysitting listing in case it had been a trap to weed out potential werewolves for the witch to perform magic on.

  The ad was still live. As I read through the entire thing, nothing malevolent popped up to stir my instincts. If anything, the listing seemed as legit as it got, if demanding. Still, I wrote down the number to call later, then did a preliminary check on Jutta Kirchler. A quick browse through social media revealed she was a real person with real kids—kids who, judging from her many posts, needed a nanny.

  That didn’t rule out that our witch had been impersonating Jutta Kirchler, but if that was the case, why leave the ad up? Was she looking to get more werewolves?

  I grimaced. No, that couldn’t be it. The witch had to have known something went wrong with Emilia’s transport by now. Even if she felt confident enough to leave the listing up while Emilia had been under her control, no kidnapper worth their salt would wait before taking down the ad if their captive broke free.

  I grabbed the phone and punched in Jutta Kirchler’s number.

  The call went straight to voicemail.

  Groaning, I ended the call without leaving a message, then focused on Junker and Hellwig once more. The intel on them was so sparse it was almost laughable. As I copied their addresses in my phone, determined to head out and scour their apartments for
any clues, the distinct smell of coffee—no, not just any coffee, but the good stuff—caressed my nostrils.

  I looked up to see Finn cross the bullpen and place a steaming cup on my desk.

  “Thanks.” I flicked the corners of my lips in a smile.

  He nudged his chin toward the unlocked phone in my hands. “Are those the addresses of our dead thug duo?”

  “Yeah.” I set the phone aside, grabbed the coffee, and took a tentative sip. Fucking delicious. “I thought I’d head over there now and check it out. I—”

  “I got this covered.”

  I quickly threw back another mouthful of the coffee. “I’m coming with.”

  But as soon as I started to rise, Finn cut me off.

  “No, you’re not,” he declared in a hard-ass agent voice I rarely heard him use and slammed a piece of paper on my desk.

  I scowled. “Finn, what the fuck?”

  Arching a brow high, he removed his hand.

  My gaze landed on a familiar rectangular paper, and as my mouth went dry and my heart crashed against my ribs, I really fucking wished I hadn’t looked at all.

  Chapter 4

  “What the absolute fuck, Finn?” I glared daggers at my partner.

  Precisely like the damned ticket I’d purposely avoided buying glared daggers at me.

  Finn shot me one of his no-nonsense, stop-bullshitting looks. “Don’t think I didn’t notice what you’re doing.”

  I bristled, but Finn just braced one hand against his hip, the fingers of the other touching the edge of my desk like shit was about to go down.

  “You’re off the clock, Gina. Which means you’re going home”—he tapped the desk—“getting that ass of yours dressed”—his index finger came down again—“and going to the damn concert.”

  “No. Nuh-uh.” I rolled my chair away from him, but Finn caught it by the armrest before I could actually make a run for safety.