Wrong Side of Hell (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 1)

by Sonya Bateman

  SONYA BATEMAN

  Thank you for picking up Wrong Side of Hell. Please join my mailing list to find out about the latest new releases, book sales, and special subscriber-only offers.

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  Copyright © 2016 by Sonya Bateman

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Lou Harper, Harper By Design

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

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  More books by Sonya Bateman

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  PROLOGUE

  Manhattan, New York City — 26 years ago

  He’d tracked her this far, to the wooded northern end of Central Park. But here, the trail ran cold.

  He leaned against a tree to catch his breath. The stump of his left arm throbbed still—he’d exhausted his spark in escaping them, and he had been forced to sear the wound with fire to stop the bleeding. But it was night now, and a near-full moon worked to replenish his magic while it provided sufficient light to search this place.

  They were perhaps half a day behind him. He’d need his full strength to avoid being captured again.

  After a moment’s rest, he straightened slowly and scanned the woods. The area was thick with bramble and underbrush, fallen branches and tangled vegetation. The nearest structure was a stone bridge, perhaps a thousand paces to the northeast. There was no sign of human passage here.

  Yet he smelled blood nearby, and death.

  He followed the scent to a large evergreen tree. Its lowest branches had broken and the ends of them hung to the ground, creating a natural shelter from which the stench of decay emanated.

  When he moved carefully behind the branches, he saw the dead woman.

  It was her—his father’s human lover. The one he’d chosen to keep and defend, even though it led to the Unseelie Queen banishing him from Arcadia. And like a good son, he’d stayed at his father’s side. Left the realm with him and crossed the veil to the human world.

  His loyalty had gotten him tortured for eight long months, and his father killed.

  She’d been his only possible link to his father’s fate. Not the woman herself, but the child she carried. The halfling spawn of his father. Of course, they also wanted the child…and it appeared they’d gotten to her first. She was curled slightly to one side and naked from the waist down, her stomach deflated, dried blood caking her thighs. One arm was thrown over her head, the hand still pressed against the trunk of the great tree. The other arm curved at her side as if she were shielding something.

  He flinched as slight movement stirred and rustled near the body. Perhaps the animals had already begun to feast on her. He stepped closer, leaned down. And saw what she’d protected with her last breath.

  A tiny, dark-haired infant snuggled at her side, apparently not troubled by keeping company with a corpse.

  The child’s eyes were open and seemed to be watching him calmly. Blue like his own, like his father’s. Breathless with wonder, he stepped across the woman’s body and crouched beside the infant, who couldn’t have been more than a few hours old. The mother had managed to sever the birthing cord before she passed on, but the child was still smeared with the fluids of its passage to life.

  It was difficult to lift the babe one-handed. He managed by sliding a hand beneath its legs, cradling the head and bringing the child quickly to his chest.

  A boy. His half-brother—somehow, miraculously, healthy and unharmed.

  “Little one,” he murmured. “We can’t leave her like this, can we?”

  The baby cooed softly, as if he agreed.

  He sighed and set the infant gently aside on a bed of browned pine needles. Burying the woman would require magic. He’d no tools, and even if he had, only one arm to work with. The process would drain his spark further, and he hadn’t yet fully recovered. It would make him completely vulnerable to them.

  But leaving her exposed like this felt wrong. If they found her, they’d not respect her remains. They would find some twisted purpose to experiment on her dead flesh. A reason to take her apart, just as they’d done to his father.

  He’d no love for this woman. But no one, not even a human, deserved them.

  He found a branch with a jagged end and moved to her other side, away from the child. With the branch he scratched a large rectangle into the ground, and then traced runes inside the shape instructing the earth to crumble. The grave was too shallow, only around four feet, but it would have to serve.

  It was not easy to push her body into the hole. She landed at a drunken angle, and he did the best he could to straighten her before using the last of his spark to fill the grave and smooth the area, disguising the disturbed ground.

  Through it all, the child remained silent and watchful.

  He returned to the infant, awkwardly removing the coat he’d stolen the night he escaped to make his missing arm a bit less noticeable. It mattered little now. He wrapped the naked babe in the coat and lifted him, once again cradling him to his chest.

  The child sighed, and his eyes fluttered closed in sleep.

  His heart ached for the slight, warm weight in his arm who seemed to trust him so quickly. He couldn’t care for the infant—especially not in this city, with those bastards hunting him down. Hunting them both. The only chance this little one had for survival was to send him away.

  He’d seen a large human family earlier in the day, just outside the city near the start of the trail that had led him here. Travelers in a caravan of trucks and box-like vehicles. Hunters headed for the mountains, as they’d been eager to tell him when he stopped to stare at the heaps of animal skins that filled the backs of their trucks. They’d paused in the journey because one of their women had just given birth, and the babe was sickly.

  He would swap the child for the hunters’ infant, make him a changeling. The boy would be raised human and unaware of his Fae blood. And in his ignorance, he would be forever safe from them.

  Weary and aching for rest, longing for oblivion, he trudged through the brush determined to protect this tiny, fragile life. He’d failed to save his father, and the child’s mother, and himself. Even if they didn’t capture him again, they’d already destroyed him body and soul. He’d not make it much longer in this world.

  But the boy would survive. This, he vowed to ensure.

  His brother would live.

  CHAPTER 1

  Manhattan, New York City — Present Day

  The man on the ground wore what used to be an expensive suit. Presumably, he also used to wear a face.

  I didn’t say anything as I came up next to Detective Abraham Strauss,
who was standing a lone vigil over the body. He’d told me what to expect when he called, but it looked like he’d kept his description on the conservative side. Though the victim had been bagged and pulled to the side of the wooded walking path, I could see the blood staining the dirt where he’d lain, black and oily in the floodlight that transformed the trees above into skeletal shapes.

  There was a hell of a lot of blood.

  This was the second shredded man found in Central Park’s heavily wooded Ramble this week. The first one had also worn a suit, but he’d still had a face. What he’d lacked was guts—they’d fallen out of the gaping hole in his stomach.

  “Damn,” Abe finally said as he loosened his tie and stared skyward, like he was trying to track the gaze of the body’s single remaining eye. More likely he was trying not to vomit. This was nasty, even for a seasoned big-bad-city detective like him. “Worse’n the last one,” he muttered. “Two makes a serial killer, you know.”

  “Really? I thought you’d need at least three.” I crouched beside the corpse and tugged the zipper of the body bag a little further down. “All the rest of him in there? Except his face, I mean.”

  “Think so.” The detective grimaced. “Don’t know how you can get so close to that.”

  “He’s just dead.” I’d seen worse in my line of work—not many, but I’d transported a few corpses fished out of the river that weren’t even recognizably human. No matter what shape they were in, getting close to the dead never bothered me.

  That honor was reserved for the living.

  “We’re gonna have a hell of a time with this.” Abe pulled out an actual handkerchief and mopped his broad face and glistening brush-cut dome with it. He seemed to be sweating more than usual. It was a warm night for September, but the breeze was decent. This one was really getting to him. “How does a wolf manage to wander around Central Park without anybody seeing it, anyway?” he said. “The ME says the thing’s got to be as big as a horse.”

  I glanced up at him. I’d read Viv’s report too—and noticed the gigantic dash of skepticism in it. Hell, I shared it. The NYPD insisted on calling the first body an animal attack. But it couldn’t be. “Hate to tell you this, Abe, but this wasn’t a wolf,” I said. “Especially not a lone wolf. If it was a pack, maybe…and that’s still a big maybe. There’s too much of him left for a pack.”

  Abe cocked an eyebrow. “What, you’re an expert on wolves now?”

  I shrugged. My past wasn’t something I discussed. Ever. Abe didn’t know me before my foster folks took me in at sixteen—and even they didn’t know the story, because I couldn’t risk telling it. I settled for a bland lie. “Don’t you watch the nature channel?” I said. “Wolves kill for food. We’re the only animals with murder in our vocabulary.”

  “Yeah, right. Unless it’s rabid.” Abe heaved a sigh, and then looked around furtively, making sure no one was too close. The scene had been mostly cleared by the time I got there. It had to be, since what he wanted from me was decidedly unofficial. I was just a body mover, not a cop.

  Finally, he said, “So, uh, Gideon…you get anything from him?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  I had sort of a knack for death. Through observation and gut feeling, I could usually piece together the last few minutes of a person’s life—and sometimes pick out details that weren’t evident. Occasionally, these details helped solve a murder.

  Abe had started calling me The Corpse Whisperer. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  I hauled the body bag zipper the rest of the way down and spread it apart. The stench of blood wafted out stronger. Dirt and bits of leaves decorated the remains of the suit, and one hand had curled as if it was gripping something. “What was he holding?” I said.

  Though his back was turned now, I heard Abe’s answer clearly. “A gun.”

  Huh. Men in suits with guns were usually either law enforcement, or criminals. And if this guy had been local law enforcement, they’d probably have ID’d him already—even without a face. They’d have been looking for him.

  Sometimes contact helped, so I laid a palm on the dead man’s chest. I could practically feel the echoes of his heart pounding in fear—no, not fear. Anger. Somehow I knew, even though his face was gone, that this guy had been royally pissed off when he died.

  Bitch.

  The word swam up like a whisper, and it startled the hell out of me. It wasn’t the first time I’d “heard” a word or two from the dead—which was probably my subconscious trying to make sense out of the senseless. But it was the first time I understood what it meant right away. “Abe,” I said. “I’ve got a feeling, and you’re not going to like it.”

  He turned reluctantly. “I guess you’d better tell me anyway.”

  “I think you’re looking for a woman.”

  “What, the perp?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “If it actually was a wolf, this guy decided to check its private wolf bits while it attacked him. Otherwise, he was killed by a woman. One he knew.”

  “Jesus crispy-fried Christ.” His face had gone the color of moldy cottage cheese. “You sure?”

  “I’m never sure.” I zipped the bag closed and stood, brushing dirt off my knees. “But I think you should keep the possibility in mind, if you want the body count to stay at two.”

  “Right.”

  “You want me to take him now?”

  “Go for it,” Abe said. “And Gideon…thanks.”

  I grinned. “Is that sarcasm I sense, Detective?”

  “Could be.” His answering smirk was still troubled. “No offense, but I hope we don’t do this again anytime soon.”

  “Yeah. I’m with you on that.”

  He waved and wandered off, and I headed for the stretcher I’d parked just off the walking path. Mister Giant Wolf Attack had a date with the medical examiner.

  Viv would be thrilled to see me again so soon.

  CHAPTER 2

  Body movers are basically taxi drivers for the dead.

  My job was to shepherd corpses through their final round of earthly appointments. From residential homes to funeral homes, from hospices to hospitals, or from crime scenes to morgues—the dead had places to go and people to see, and they couldn’t exactly drive themselves.

  Not many wanted the role of a real-life Charon, endlessly ferrying the dead. But I didn’t mind. New York City was my River Styx, and there were plenty of souls ready to cross over every day.

  Charon probably got paid better than me, though. None of my fares came with pieces of silver.

  I pulled my delivery van behind Scruvener University Hospital and jumped out to retrieve my not-so-lively passenger. Aptly nicknamed Screw U by the staff and patients alike, the Upper East Side hospital was underfunded, understaffed, and overwhelmed. But it did have the best medical examiner in Manhattan.

  The double doors whooshed open when I buzzed, and I rolled No-Face the Angry Corpse Man down the hall toward the wire check-in cage, singing a few lines from “Alice’s Restaurant” in the echoing silence.

  As usual, Alice the security guard was not amused.

  “Mr. Black.” She didn’t even look up from her Popular Science magazine as she pushed the clipboard through the slot. “That’s three already tonight. Is there a full moon?”

  “Not for another week or so.” I’d already brought in a heart attack victim and an accidental overdose in the first hour—it really was a busy night for dying around here. “Let’s make a bet,” I said as I scrawled my signature. “How many times do you think I’ll be back tonight?”

  “Too many.”

  “Define too many.”

  Alice glared at me.

  “I’ll take that as a three.” I slid the clipboard back, turned the stretcher and headed for the morgue. “Goodnight again, Alice.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Black.”

  It was a short trip down the corridor and around a corner to the wide gray door of the morgue. I pushed the stretcher through without knocking, and
wasn’t surprised to see the ME still hard at work. Dr. Vivian Cavanaugh looked like a California tennis instructor—blonde hair, great tan, all long legs and firm arms smothered in hospital green.

  It wasn’t easy to pull off that look when you were elbow-deep in somebody’s chest cavity.

  “Hey, Viv,” I called.

  Her sigh was unmistakable. “You’re back again?”

  “Wow. I really love my job,” I said as I pushed the stretcher alongside an empty steel table. “Everyone’s always so happy to see me.”

  “Sorry, Gideon. It’s just that I already have three autopsies scheduled for tonight, and…well, you know how it goes.”

  “Better make that four.”

  “Really? Oh, man.” Viv pulled her arm out of the corpse in front of her and headed for the sink, stripping her gloves as she walked. I recognized the body as one I’d brought in two nights ago—Miss Delilah Halford, who’d died at a nursing home. Autopsies were routine in nursing home deaths. “What is it this time?” she said.

  “Another Central Park mangling.”

  “You’re kidding.” Viv shook her head, washed up with brisk efficiency and dried her hands with a wad of paper towels. “I’ll go ahead and guess this one’s a priority.”

  I nodded. “Abe says that two makes a serial killer.”

  “Huh. I thought they’d need at least three.”

  “That’s what I told him,” I said. “Come on, I’ll help you swing him over.”

  She grabbed her camera and approached the stretcher with just a hint of reluctance. “Is it as bad as the last one?” she said.

  “Worse.”

  “Great. Well, I didn’t want to eat tonight, anyway.” With a quick breath, she grasped the zipper and pulled it down. Then she stood there a moment. Finally, she said softly, “Maybe it is a wolf. I mean, how could any person…”

  I watched her blanch, close her eyes, and pull herself together. “All right,” she said under her breath. “Whoever or whatever you are, you’re going down.”