by Lund, S. E.
"Welcome to the Special Cases Unit of the Council of Clairveaux, Boston Division. You're hired," he says. "Not that there was ever any doubt once you beat poor Michel." Ed grins at me. "I think his pride is still smarting."
"Not at all," Michel says, not meeting my eyes. "If she couldn't beat me, she couldn't work as a witness." Then he does meet my eyes. "We need you, Eve. You must be able to protect yourself from my kind. You're very valuable. Vampires will kill each other to get you on their side."
That's what Julien says. "Why?"
"You can kill us. Some want to use your kind as assassins against their enemies."
Terri speaks up. "Michel can fill you in on the politics of this unit and why it started some other time. For the next six months, you'll train to be a blood witness. You'll help on special cases – those that involve vampires killing outside the law. You'll gather evidence to help us find those they work for. When we get a suspect, you'll read them – see their kills. Judge if they were sanctioned or illegal."
I shake my head. "I thought I was going to do research."
"You will, but you need to train as a blood witness, because you're very rare. When we get one, we don't let go."
"I know it's a lot to take in," Ed says. "Come with me. I'll show you your new office." He leads me to a room at the back of the building. "The cubicle in the corner," he says and points to a small alcove by the window. I check it out. A small desk and filing cabinet. A laptop computer. A partition that separates me from the rest of the room. At least I have a window.
"The case files for each murder are there as well as background information on the SCU are in the filing cabinet," he says. "Everything you need to get up to speed. I trust your university courses have made you a quick study." He buttons his jacket. "We'd usually just let you do some reading on your first day, but we have a new murder to investigate."
I raise my eyebrows. This is a surprise and I turn to see Michel standing in the office, leaning against the wall. He's put on his cassock-coat and has his hands in his pockets. He looks like a blue-eyed long-haired very pale Neo and I can't shake the sense that I've truly swallowed the red pill and there's no going back.
O'Neil hands me the River Man case file. I opened it up once more, my hands shaking just a bit. I flip the pages, the crime scene photographs, autopsy diagrams, the witness testimony.
"Get your coat," Ed says and pulls on his trench. "We're going to the crime scene."
* * *
In the sedan, O'Neil reminds me to keep quiet around the Boston PD detectives and uniforms who are there on the scene. No mention of any special skills or of vampires.
"Hopefully, the killer left a bit of himself behind so you can get a better sense of him and what drives him."
"What should I look for?"
"Anything," he says, shrugging. "Could be a cigarette butt, a coffee cup. Who can tell? They often leave some trace. Trick is finding it."
"Do I touch the body?"
Ed shakes his head. "You're there to look for physical evidence before Crime Scene Unit messes things up. Besides, dead bodies don't hold memories for very long due to decay. As soon as a person dies, their cells start to die and the neurons lose their structure at a quantum level. Solid objects retain theirs and so they're more useful to a telepath. In general, the lack of forensic evidence at the dump sites indicates that the victims were killed elsewhere and their bodies decapitated before being transported but even an extremely well-disciplined killer will touch objects and often leave something behind. As long as the kill was recent, anything a killer touches will hold traces of their memories of it."
We drive along the streets to the docks. The floodlights of the forensic unit are visible from a block away and my pulse increases at the prospect of a real crime scene. Ed parks the sedan and the four of us walk the rest of the way. We stand on the periphery while Ed ducks under the police tape that cordons off the crime scene. He shows the detective in charge his credentials and speaks to the man in hushed voices, gesturing towards us.
Mist rises off the Charles River, blocking the view of the Charlestown Bridge. The late May night is unusually cold. I shiver and it isn't just the fact that a real vampire stands beside me – one who shared a very intimate, almost sexual experience with me not so long ago.
I try to block the memory from my mind.
The waterfront bordering the dock area has become an industrial graveyard. In the harsh floodlights surrounding the dump site, the moss-covered ruins of the old piers rot in the tides and old float barges and crumbling docks decay along the shore.
Michel stands beside me, his long hair tucked behind his ears as he reads messages on his Blackberry.
I pull my collar up against the breeze off the water. "God, it's so cold."
"Really?" he says without looking up. "I wouldn't know."
I glance at him and he turns to me. Sure enough, there's that lopsided smile on his lips. I can't help but smile back. He looks at me and makes that throat sound, his smile fading, his eyes on my cheeks and I know he's doing it – making me smile on purpose so he can indulge himself and it sends a little jolt of something through me.
He turns back to his phone.
What is this? Torture? I thought he was going to be completely professional.
As I gaze across the river, I try to imagine what it would be like to work with him on a daily basis and not go there – to 'us'. I can't imagine it. It will be hell.
"I don't know if I can do this," I say softly. "Staying just professionals."
He stops typing for a moment.
"There are many things we don't choose in life," he says and glances at me, his bright blue eyes intense under the floodlights from the forensic unit. "The thing is, we need you. Personal desires must be denied."
I say nothing in reply for what he said makes sense, as much as I hate it. I'm numb, uncertain how to feel. Instead, I watch the detectives from Homicide examine the body.
While we're waiting, I see another figure arrive on scene. Another detective? Then I see his skin and I know it's Julien. He's wearing the same leather trench with a scarf tied around his neck and faded jeans.
"Julien," Michel says. "What are you doing here?" Michel glances at me as if he already knows.
"Ed called me. Said another Adept had been killed. I thought I'd drop by, see what you're up to." Julien turns to me and stuffs his hands in his pockets, giving me that lopsided grin. "Of course, I already know what you're up to."
"Leave Eve alone," Michel says, his voice dark.
"I'll do what I want. If Eve wants to talk to me, that's up to her. Eve has a lot of questions about her mother. It looks as if you're not much into answering them."
"You won't be answering them either," Michel says, putting his phone away. "Eve only has to know so much. To tell her more would put her in danger."
Julien laughs at that. "You mean put your little suicide mission in danger."
Michel takes my arm and pulls me towards Ed, who's waiting at the shore.
"Ignore him," Michel says. "He just likes to stir things up."
We join Ed and stare down at the corpse, which has been photographed and removed from the water. Julien joins us as well and stands off to the side. The body's laid out on a plastic sheet in wait for the coroner to come and do his work, the severed head at an odd angle to the neck.
"Check around, see if anything catches your eye."
"What should I look for?"
"Forensics hasn't swept the scene yet so whatever looks out of place. Most Adepts I've worked with before just feel around, hoping something they touch grabs their mind."
"What about my prints?"
"Forget about it. We have jurisdiction and your work is more valuable than their pitiful tests."
I take a flashlight from Ed and walk along the shore, hoping something draws my attention. I look for something the killer might have dropped or touched but nothing pulls me closer. Pebbles and seaweed litter the mud between the s
tumps of wood that used to be part of a dock – nothing more. I bend down and run my hands over the dirt bordering the area where the body was found. A piece of green beach glass glints in the flashlight's beam and so I pick it up.
For an instant, my world collapses away and I'm him. The killer -- whoever he is -- sat here. A strange sense of being out of time washes over me as I slip into his perspective and I feel an incredible dread. I try to focus, opening myself to the experience. I don't get much from it at first, except the knowledge that the killer touched the pebble.
Then, I sense him. The killer was here scoping the place out a few nights earlier, staring out across the river, deciding where he'd dump the body. He picked up the glass and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers the way I do now, turning it over, admiring it. Then he dropped it. He had more important things to occupy him than an old bit of beach glass. Like when Evan . . . . I try to focus, squeezing my eyes shut. When Evan Cooper would die.
"Evan Cooper," I say, clearing my throat, struggling to resurface long enough to communicate. For an instant, I see the victim as the killer saw him, stepping out the back door of a dry cleaners into the alley for a quick smoke break. In the vision, I look down from a window across the street. "He saw Cooper from a building across from the alley behind the dry cleaners." My voice is gravely. "Second floor window."
Ed nods and gets on his cell, speaking into it in a soft voice.
I return to the pebble. The killer has an emotional distance from the victim, a studied sense of purpose rather than one filled with passion and bloodlust Michel had when I was in his mind and he drained the woman. The killer doesn't hate Cooper, either the man himself or what he represents. The killer feels more like an executioner than a vampire searching for a blood feed. The killer has a sense of mission. Even a sense of religious fervor.
I drop the glass as quickly as possible, for the longer I spend in his perspective, the dizzier I become. While Ed and the detective speak in quiet voices, I take in several deep breaths, trying to combat this vertigo.
A light rain starts to fall, just a mist at first, the air cool on my cheeks. Michel comes to my side as I lean against the remains of the dock.
"Are you all right?"
I nod, embarrassed to show weakness. I'll have to get used to being in the mind of a killer and so I go back to the glass and touch it once more. Maybe if I fight the vertigo, something else will come to me – some detail that will lead us to the killer.
I search through the sensations and impressions of the killer as he surveys his victim. Nothing comes to me at first. Then, a hint, just a fleeting image of a river in the middle of a desert. Tall reeds line the riverbank. A sense that he's protecting someone fills me, but who that someone is remains hidden. As I turn the shard over, I know that the manner of death is important. Decapitation is significant in some way.
"He killed in this way and dumped him here to send a message." I swallow hard, fighting the nausea that rises in me at the continued connection to the killer.
O'Neil nods. "What does decapitation and dumping the body along the shore mean?"
I shake my head. "No idea. I saw a river at nighttime," I say, remembering a momentary image of a river. "With tall reeds along the shore. But it was only very brief."
"Nothing else?"
I shake my head, getting nothing more from the glass. It's as silent as the now non-existent breeze.
* * *
Once we're finished at the dump site, we walk back to the sedan and Julien joins us.
"So, Eve, why don't you and I have a cup of coffee, talk about things," Julien says to me. "I'm sure you have more questions."
"What things?" I say, but I think I know what he means.
"Oh, your mother, being a blood witness," he says, smiling as if everything amuses him, as if he takes nothing seriously. "Training. The whole killing all vampires thing my brother's on."
I look at Michel and he shakes his head quickly.
I take in a breath. "I'd like that."
Julien smiles broadly, glancing briefly at Michel as if he's scored some kind of point.
"Great," he says. "How about tomorrow night? The coffee shop?"
"Sure."
"Great espresso."
"Eve will be working tomorrow night," Michel says, his voice low.
"We can meet before. Say, just after sundown?" Julien smiles.
I smile back. "Sure. I'll be waiting."
"Ooh, those dimples," he says and clucks his tongue. He just stares at me for a long moment, taking in a deep breath. "I'll come up and get you," Julien says. "What's your apartment number again? 3C?"
Michel takes my arm. "You can meet her at the coffee shop," he says, pulling me along with him.
Julien holds his hands up in mock surrender.
"Ok, ok," he says, laughing. "I won't go in her apartment. Unless she invites me up, that is."
I glance back at him as Michel opens the car door for me.
"Until tomorrow night, then," Julien says, grinning.
I get in the sedan and Michel gets in beside me, sitting closer to me than necessary as if he's trying to show Julien I'm his. He starts to do up my seatbelt, but I take it out of his hand.
"I'm not a child."
"Compared to us, you are. Don't forget it. Just because you can kill us, don't think you can manipulate us."
"Oh, I'd never think that," I say, emotion welling up inside me. Does he really think I'm a child? I clip my seatbelt in place and turn my face away.
"I'm sorry, Eve," Michel says after a moment. I turn back and he's rubbing his forehead. "He has that effect on me."
"Was he always that cheeky?"
"No," he says and shakes his head. "But when you're a vampire, everything about you is strengthened. You feel everything with ten times the intensity. Whatever cheek he had before is just that much stronger."
"And you? What did becoming a vampire do for you? What did it intensify?"
"Julien would tell you I've become boring, but I have fervor, Eve," he says, staring at me, his face close to mine. He touches my cheek with the backs of his fingers. "I'm fervent. More than ever."
"About religion?" I say, hoping not. I don't want him to be a priest.
"About everything."
I hope so.
"You don't want me to meet with him?"
"No," he says. "I'm asking you to reconsider. I don't know what his motives are, but I can guess. He wants you for himself and will try to mess things up. But I can't force you not to."
I turn away and look out the window at the passing scenery. I don't know if I'll meet Julien. Part of me wants to. Part of me wants to please Michel.
From the front seat, Ed tells us we're going to the building I described in my vision, check out the second floor to see if the killer left some trace there.
We arrive at the building across from the dry cleaners where Evan Cooper worked. Ed uses his key kit to break into the warehouse because it's empty and there's no security to admit us. Michel and I can see clearly even in the darkness but Ed doesn't have our advantage and follows us up with a flashlight. There are rows of empty offices overlooking the alley and we each go in and check. I enter a couple and then find one that has footsteps in the dust that are clearly visible in the light flooding in from the moon.
I go to the window and can see the alley clearly, including the back of the dry cleaners where Evan Cooper must have been standing, having his cigarette. It's exactly as I saw it in my vision. I glance around the empty room and see a piece of paper folded up on the windowsill and pick it up. Immediately, I get a strong sense of familiarity – the killer held this and so I open it. In the darkness, I can just make out a careful script.
Hello, Beautiful Eve.
Love,
Me
I get very little from the piece of paper except that the killer was amused with himself when he wrote this and he knew we'd eventually find it. I hold it out when Michel comes in the room and he takes it, l
ooking at me.
"What's this?"
"Just read it."
He does and glances up at me, shaking his head.
"Sacristy," he says, his breathing shaky. "Whoever it is knows you're working for us and that's only a very limited number of people."
I feel as if my blood turns to ice. Michel, Terri, Ed, Julien… some techies at the SCU. Cecile – I emailed her to let her know I had this job, but there's no way she'd betray me.
Ed joins us and Michel hands him the slip of paper. Ed reads it, rubbing his chin.
"Fuck me," he says. "I hate bad guys with brains."
* * *
The rain now falls in grey sheets between the buildings as we return to the car. Michel's silent for the rest of the trip and I don't interrupt his reverie. I know he doesn't want me to meet Julien, but now, I'm even more desperate to do so, see what else he can tell me about my mother.
Ed stops in front of my apartment and I turn to Michel but he says nothing, just takes my hand for a brief moment and squeezes, then pulls his hand away. I want him to come up with me, I want to be with him, but this is something I have to leave up to him.
When I get into my apartment, I stand at the window overlooking the street, the water running down gutters to the drains, and I wonder who it is who's out there, watching me.
Chapter 11
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall drive you mad."
Aldous Huxley
I get up the next morning and dress and the first thing I think isn't about how nice it is that the sun is finally shining or that I love the smell of roasting coffee coming from the coffee shop on the street below my apartment.
I think of reading more of Michel's story.
What I read was upsetting, but I can't keep myself from the manuscript and pick it up after doing my usual routine of showering and dressing and munching down a bowl of bran flakes. I take it with me to the coffee shop and get my cup of Organic Medium roast coffee with cream and sit in the back corner – my usual spot for studying when I want to get out of the flat.
