Royal Pride

by Zelda Knight

  I step closer to her, wary.

  “Careful,” Rex says.

  I nod, but don’t reply. I continue in silence until I reach her body. I kneel down to try and find some sort of heart beat. At that moment, her hand grips my throat and squeezes.

  “Your family took the only person I loved,” she seethed. It’s not just her fingers pressing into my flesh, but her magic. I can barely breathe. I reach for her, but her body is positioned too far away to touch. “And I’m going to do the same to you.”

  With her second hand, she reaches out and faces her palm in Rex’s direction. I know what she’s going to do. I can see the magic build up. She’s going to kill Rex, and I refuse to let that happen.

  Suddenly, a shot of adrenaline courses through my body. It’s not like the magic I know, it’s something different, animalistic. A roar emerges from the bowels of my throat and I unleash it. The force of it thrusts the witch’s hand from my throat. As fast as I’m able, I pull on the magic from before and channel it into her chest. I don’t let up until I know she’s gone.

  “Andrea,” Rex says from behind me. “Andrea.”

  I blink. This time, when I look at the witch, I know she’s dead. And she’s dead because of me.

  “Oh, my god,” I say, yanking my hand from her body and bringing both to my mouth. “I didn’t mean –“

  “Hey.” Rex steps closer to me and wraps his arms around me. “Hey. It’s over. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” I tell him. “Rex, I killed someone.” I look down at my hands. “I don’t even know how I did it. It’s like this animal was inside of me, taking control of me. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “It’s your wolf,” he says, looking down at me. “It saved you.”

  I swallow. Fated mates protects me, and in that way, I protect myself.

  Without warning, I wrap my arms around him and I kiss him. He is just trying to protect me by letting me protect myself.

  “I love you,” I tell him.

  “I love you too,” he says. “Let’s call your grandmother. I’m sure she’ll know what to do about her.”

  I nod. Warmth spreads through me. I know it’s going to be a hard road of learning, but I also know, with Rex by my side, I’ll figure this out.

  No matter what.

  The End

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  Wings

  © 2021 Sapphire Winters

  Edited by Sofia Aves

  About Wings

  When a dead body gets up and walks away under its own steam, Clarrissa has to investigate, but not without her trusty sidekick.

  * * *

  A trusty sidekick who just happens to be a talking bat and who moults stone, not fur. Clarissa loves her job as one of Cook country’s best detectives, but she only ever works alone – until she meets Dolion, a shape shifting mortician who is almost as old as her other gargoyle.

  * * *

  But her brief introduction into the paranormal community is the least of Clarissa’s worries, especially when she discovers time slipping away from all of them...

  Chapter One

  “Try that pile. Or that one,” Murch flapped leathery, stone encrusted wings in a gesture that was utterly unhelpful. His indolent stare might have had an impact if he was closer to me than his usual perch on the high-arched window of my bell tower home.

  “Why don’t you get down here and help, you geriatric pile of pebbles?” I offered, attempting not to snarl. I shook my head, pushing wayward brown strands off my head and tucking them back into my ponytail. “I’m sorry. That was mean.”

  “Yes, Clarissa. You should be kinder.” Murch ‘s sarcasm added inflection to his words. He took a last, suffering glance at me and stuck his head under his wing.

  I paused, studying him. Exasperation built and over flowed. This case was getting to me. “What in all the hells are you doing?”

  “Preening.” Much’s voice had a muffled-echoey quality.

  “You can’t preen. You don’t have feathers.”

  “Fine. I’m cleaning.” Murch poked his little, stone head out from beneath his dark wing, his customary grimace plastered across his face. “I am allowed to do that, I suppose?”

  I rolled my eyes at his theatrics. “No one would guess you’re so senile you forgot your own name. Grumpy bastard,” I added for good measure.

  “I’m not deaf, for a senile being,” he snorted, his stone head disappearing back inside the depths of his wing.

  “Careful, you’ll get snot on your clean wing. Do gargoyles have snot?” I asked, sorting through the files again. The pile on my jean clad knee grew taller, so I started a new one next to me, moving my leather jacket to an unused square of wooden flooring. The piece of evidence I needed was here. It had to be, or I’d wasted an awful amount of time I would have to explain to my superior. Murch didn’t reply. “Are you going to help me?”

  He huffed again, but returned to face me, all the same. “Fine, it’s fine. Not like I have another eon of life to live. Give me the facts again.” He waved a clawed foot in my direction in a grandiose gesture that fell flat, and stretched his wings idly.

  A smattering of dust filtered from then, and I noted a new hairline crack in the almost flexible stone form he was perpetually stuck in. Murch nudged it, and with an expression of supreme disdain plastered across his crumpled, bat-like face, he peered out at me.

  A grin crept across my face and I held it back with effort. The ancient gargoyle might be crotchety, but he was good company, and he enjoyed solving a crime as much as I did. Which made us a good pair.

  I’d extracted Murch from a dilapidated church purchased as my I’m–too–single/pre-midlife crisis fixer-upper project, thinking him to be a pretty statue. He scared the shit out of me when he had first spoken. The only or last of his kind — something he never was clear on — the tiny black stone beastie proclaimed to be so old he didn’t remember what he had been named.

  A statement I took with a large grain of salt.

  After visiting a meteor exhibit, I’d named him Murch, in lieu of the Murchison Meteorite, a piece of space rock estimated to be seven billion years old, which made it much older than the rest of the planet, give or take two billion years or so. Murch had pooh-poohed the idea, but it had stuck and eventually he’d taken it on with as good grace as I was ever likely to get from the little critter.

  Still, he was far too easy to bring to the bite, and I spent too many hours teasing him.

  I slid a file across the floor in his direction, flicking the cover open. He hopped down from his perch, scattered the pages expertly. A photo emerged from the pile, and he dipped his scrunched little head to peer at the details of one Malcolm Dallas. An amateur heavyweight, he had been killed by his drunken friend in a one-hit punch at the local bar the night before.

  It sounded like an open/closed case — except that the perp had screamed that the body bag was moving as it was taken away. Attending police disregarded the man as drunk and distraught. Naturally, CCTV footage was grainy as hell and whatever miniscule movement might have been there certainly wasn’t visible from my end.

  I wished for the umpteenth time for a way to be present at the scene — either at the t
ime of the crime occurred to study it as it happened, or at moments like these, where I was missing vital information and needed first hand knowledge. If it was the latter, of course, the crime would be preventable.

  But also, the urge to study how the crime occurred: criminal motivations, what emotions and other factors came into play. It was what had drawn me to detective work in the first place. I sighed, staring at the staticky print out of a paramedic leaning over a body bag that should have held a lifeless body.

  Two hour after delivery, the body bag was empty.

  So now it was an issue of body snatching. Unless, of course, the victim had simply gotten up and walked away under his own stream, in which case we were looking at battery, or some other violence charge. I couldn't honestly work out what to charge the perp with until I worked out what had actually happened. Until then, he waited in a holding cell at the precinct.

  “So, Mister Zombie walked away from his own death and it didn’t take more than a few hours. That’s a record on the guy who took three days to do it. Slacker,” Murch studied his talons idly.

  I rolled my eyes again. The ancient gargoyle claimed to have seen many things, but I couldn't get a straight answer out of him on that subject.

  “We’ll sort it. Let's go for a walk.” I rose, pressing my hands to my thighs and attempted to get up.

  Everything below my knees had gone to sleep. I stumbled about, while Murch flapped the little stone from his wings that faded as he flew, resembling nothing more than a very ugly rodent with wings. Albeit a seven thousand year old one, give or take. And there wasn’t a mark in sight.

  Preening indeed. Watch that pedestal doesn’t crumble out from underneath you.

  I glared at him as he messed up my files. “You missed a spot.”

  “You’re sure you checked the body before you left the crime scene?” I asked the skinny paramedic for the third time.

  I had arranged to meet the two men who had attended the scene and assisted the Medical Examiner, who, for the moment, was unavailable. In an unusual process, the paramedic in question had taken the body to the Robert J Stein Institute to process forensics and perform the autopsy, the latter of which had never happened.

  The paramedic’s blazing white EMS shirt looked out of place over his pale and lanky physique. Deep sunken eyes surveyed me from beneath a mass of greasy, dirty blonde hair that might have been white with a good shampoo.

  Aren’t all paramedics meant to be hot?

  Apparently this man had missed the memo. And his last shower. Or five.

  He exchanged looks with his driving partner, the latter’s face obscured by a cap, and turned back to me with folded arms. “Yes, ma’am.”

  His glare might have mattered to me, if the body he had brought in hadn’t gone walkabout from the Institutethe night before. I could just make out Mason on the ID lanyard strung around his neck.

  “Okay. How about you help me retrace your steps, so I don't miss anything?”

  The arms stayed crossed over his slight chest, maybe tightened a little. “The other cops said the body was stolen.” Mason’s frown turned into a smarmy smirk. I didn’t usually get into emotions with my investigations, but his expression hit all the wrong bells.

  I bit back the urge to snap. “What other cops?” I said, pretending to tap notes on my phone.

  More exchanged looks, and one glance to a wrist.

  I stifled a new urge.

  “The ones who took statements before you. Look, lady, you need to let us get on with our job.”

  “And you need to let me get on with mine. Then we can all have our lunch break when it comes around. That is what you’re worried about, right? Not that you could lose your jobs or be prosecuted for sending an undead man to the morgue?” I smiled sweetly, pocketing my phone.

  Grumbles filled the corridor behind me. I strode to the elevator, and hit the call button.

  The paramedic coughed not so discreetly behind me. I swivelled on my heel, my impatience wearing thin.

  “We take the service lift. No one wants a clay next to their nice lab coat,” the smirk remained, but something deadened deeper inside the man’s almost translucent grey eyes. A shiver tore through me with no small degree of violence as he passed, my stomach lurching. I reached for a wall that wasn’t quite where I expected it to be.

  Stumbling, I trotted along behind him, mentally cursing the man.

  “Of course.” I smiled again, letting my fake, well-used mask seep through. “After you.” I kept my footfalls light behind him, the heel of my boot barely echoing on the tiled surface, but his archaic usage bothered me on too many levels.

  This is what you get for hanging out with a timeless gargoyle as your only friend.

  Well, that last wasn’t by choice. The tiny stone bat lived with me; I’d found it difficult to either date or maintain friendships with a statue who could mimic my voice remarkably well on call, and maintained a shitful attitude.

  This would be a good time for Murch to reenter my world with a little snark, to rest my fraying patience and nerves, but the narcissist was currently perched on the usually bland and grey rendered entrance to the building, posing for photos.

  I followed Mason down the hall, realising with a start the other paramedic had disappeared.

  Where the hell is your head at, Clarissa?

  “Where did your friend go?” I tried to turn and keep my attention on both ends of the hall at once, but it wasn more difficult a feat that I had imagined. A mirror hung above a corner gave me as good a view in both directions as the CCTV footage of the murder scene.

  “Off for that lunch break I’m not going to get,” he grunted sourly, punching a button at the service elevator, which looked remarkably like the first one. I looked back up the hall, blurring before me. I need rest. The doors parted and Mason waved me inside the elevator. “If I’m lucky, he might even save me some.”

  Maybe I should have felt bad about it, but I’d missed enough meals over my career for the care factor to flatline. I walked to the back of the elevator and turned around, only to find Mason far too close to me. I hissed a sharp breath through my teeth by reflex, and his eyes lit up. I cursed my body for giving him the reaction he was looking for.

  Mason leaned past me to press the bottom button in a short row and pointed over my shoulder. “The doors open in that direction. They go in one way and out the other.” He grinned.

  Saliva dribbled down the back of my throat, feeling like it had legs. I repressed a shiver, the walls too close with two bodies in a seemingly airless space. Waiting until the lift halted at the bottom may have been the longest fifteen seconds of my life.

  I counted every one.

  But something inside me — paranoia, gut feels, too many years working my streets — told me not to turn my back to this man. I wasn’t sure what sort of predator he was yet, but he certainly was on my hell no list of men not to be set up with on a blind date.

  The doors dinged open. I stepped into the room, and halted.

  The wide, clinical space was empty, if you didn’t count the blanket of black moths carpeting the join where the wall met the ceiling at the opposite end of the room.

  “What are they?” I asked, taking small steps forward.

  “Swarm of Black Witches. Not meant to be here, but the bastards won't leave. Whaddaya do?” he stepped up beside me and shrugged.

  I nodded. “Fair enough. What’s your process after bringing the body down here?”

  “You didn’t say deceased,” he remarked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “Most people are bothered by the witches,” he said conversationally, no double looking for a rise.

  “I’m not the hygiene police, I’m the regular police. My job isn’t to report you, or get you in shit. Your process,” I said pointedly, sliding my phone out of my pocket and snapping off a few shots of the area.

  It wasn’t unlike any InstituteI had been inside. Green tinted whitewashed walls were lined with refrigerated drawers, tables line
d neatly against the far wall. A neat desk with a lit lamp occupied the far corner. Oddly, the moths didn’t cluster near the light, seeming to prefer the darkness of the roof, as though trying to escape…only to find that they couldn’t.

  Tiny circles at the ends of each wing watched me and I conducted my investigation under the surveillance of a false thousand eyes.

  Unease that had been circling at the base of my stomach like crows over carrion rose up a little to meet the saliva that had completed its wandering journey down my throat. The result was an unsettling urge to heave the scant contents of my stomach onto the pristine, albeit sterile, floor.

  I studied the room, but small details evaded me. Where was the Medical Examiner?

  Mason nodded, the smirk back on his face. “Happens to everyone.”

  I shook my head, the eyes on the moth’s wings swaying with me. “Not my first morgue.” Eyes followed me as I swayed; a hypnotising gesture. The hard surface of the floor hit my knees, though it could have been the wall that pulsed gently in time with the fluttering wings.

  My head quickly followed.

  Chapter Two

  “Come on, love. Up with you.” A warm voice flowed over me, followed by a cold shower in the face.

  “What– why are you–” I spluttered, my eyes springing open well before I was ready to take the world in again. My head spun as I blinked through a small waterfall cascading over my face, blearily trying to reconcile the place I’d passed out in and the room that looked similar, but wasn’t.

  “Told you the ice water would do it,” Murch pranced from one clawed foot to the other smugly, his stone tone only half faded. Not that a talking bat would make a difference to my version of normal.