“Inspector Demi Mondaine,” she said. “I’m with the Federal Aviation Administration.”
“Oh,” the deputy grunted, and Demi put her badge away. “What do the feds want with this?”
Demi took another look at the corpse. It was a young man, probably in his early twenties like all the others. Of course the locals would want to chalk this up as a skydiving accident and get it off the books—the body was certainly mangled enough to have been dropped from a high distance. But everything else was wrong.
“Third accident like this in two weeks,” Demi said, looking up from the bloody scene. “Why wouldn’t the FAA be investigating? We take safety in the sky seriously.”
“Got you a coffee, inspector,” Doug said, approaching from behind the deputy. His nearly-equestrian face was hidden behind a thick mass of stubble that hadn’t been there the last time Demi saw him. The creepy hypnosis girl they’d taken on back in California stood at his side, her brunette hair cropped short around her childlike features. They’d eventually determined her real name was Amy Shepherd, but since she and her family were all missing-persons, Demi had dropped a lot of cash to get her a new identity.
“This is my partner,” Demi said as she accepted the Styrofoam cup. “Inspector Doug McKnight. And our trainee, Adria Valdez.” The new name suited her better than Amy, and since she still couldn’t remember her old life, it was just as well.
“I’ve got to go take some witness statements,” the deputy said, eyeing the federal agents wearily. “Let us know if you need anything.”
“We take safety in the sky seriously?” Adria asked, arching an eyebrow at Demi. “Really?”
“Hey, I’ve never pretended to be FAA before,” Demi said. “Give me a break. FBI, DEA, ATF, those are easy. I don’t even know if the FAA has field agents. But we had the IDs, so I went with it.”
“Where have you been?” Doug asked. “You took off ten days ago, and then we get a text out of the blue telling us to drop everything and get to Seattle. We finished up that haunting outside of Boise, no thanks to you.”
“Hey, I met a boy,” Demi said with a half-smile. “Real hot and heavy kind of thing, you know? Then I found out he had a girlfriend—she was cool with it though, so that was kinda awesome. But then we both found out he had a wife, and she wasn’t. So back to reality.”
“Yeah, if you call impersonating the feds while we hunt monsters reality,” Adria said, shaking her head.
“You’re a lot mouthier than I remember,” Demi said, glaring at the younger girl.
“Yeah, someone had to step up while you were gone,” Doug said.
“And what happened to you?” Demi said, staring back at him and his unkempt beard. “Did your razor break? You look like a kumquat.”
“What?” Doug asked, blinking. “A kum… do you mean a sasquatch?”
“Yeah,” Demi said with a shrug. “What did I say?”
“Kumquat,” Doug said, still blinking. “It’s a… it’s a fruit—never mind. What are we looking at here?”
“Beats me,” Demi said. “They say skydiving accident, but his guts and organs were ripped out before he hit the ground, and his parachute is full of claw marks. I’m thinking one of those flying dinosaur things.”
“What makes you think the organs were removed before he hit the ground?” Adria asked.
“Watch this,” Demi said, whistling at a young Asian woman in blue forensic scrubs. “Hey,” she shouted at her. “You guys find any guts yet?”
“Nothing,” the tech called back, shaking her head.
“See?” Demi said. “We should be knee deep in large intestines right about now, but something squeezed all the stuffing out of him before he could go splat.”
“Makes sense to me,” Doug said. “So we’re looking for something that can fly. Maybe a harpy?”
“Nah,” Demi said. “Couldn’t be a harpy. Nothing but clear skies before all the attacks. Besides, after that job in Nashville I don’t want to see any of those ugly birds for a long time.”
“Let’s find the deputy and get a copy of those witness statements,” Doug said. “Then we can make some calls and see if we know anyone who’s dealt with this kind of thing before.”
Hours later, Demi sat alone at the bar down the road from their motel, nursing a glass of whiskey while she stared at her laptop. She’d been studying up on the kinds of creatures that could do the kind of damage she’d seen that morning, but there were too many possibilities. Griffin, hippogriff, thunderbird, sphynx—any one of them could have been responsible for the carnage she’d seen today. The trouble was sorting out what was real and what was legend. There were a lot of things out there that shouldn’t exist, but Demi couldn’t pretend to know them all after only doing this for five months.
“You’re one of the feds from this morning,” a voice said, and Demi turned to see a rail-thin Asian woman slide onto the stool next to her. “Buy you another round?”
“Won’t say no,” Demi said, closing her laptop.
“Don’t stop working on my account,” the woman said. She was young, in her mid-twenties perhaps, her pensive brown eyes studying Demi a little too discerningly for her taste.
“Work?” Demi said. The bartender brought her a fresh glass. “Nah, just a hobby.”
“Monsters are a dangerous hobby,” the woman said. “It reminds me of the stories my mom used to tell me about the Philippines. The minokawa—a giant bird just like you were looking at, with eyes like mirrors and feathers like knives. Its wings were as wide as an island and it flew into the sky and swallowed the moon itself. And when that wasn’t enough, it gobbled up the sun.”
“Right,” Demi said, her fingers sinking slowly towards her hip. “Who are you again?”
“Oh, sorry,” the woman said, grimacing as she held up a hand. “Rebecca Flores,” she said. “I’m with the county forensic lab. I saw you out in the field today. Messy one, am I right?”
“Aren’t they all?” Demi said, relaxing just a bit now that she recognized Rebecca as the tech she’d talked to that morning. “Probably just an accident though.”
“An accident?” Rebecca asked. “Didn’t you see the claw marks?”
“Scavengers,” Demi said. “I’ve seen coyotes do a helluva lot worse.”
“Uh-huh,” Rebecca said. “So the FAA sends a bunch of suits after a few wild dogs?”
“We just go where they send us,” Demi said. “Thanks for the drink, but I’d better get going.”
“Do you have an umbrella?” Rebecca asked suddenly, and Demi gave her a strange look.
“It’s not raining,” Demi said. She finished her drink and collected her computer.
“It’s not rain I’m worried about,” Rebecca said, standing up to block Demi in. “An FAA inspector shows up to investigate bodies ripped from the sky, and then spends her downtime researching flying monsters? You look like you can handle yourself.”
“I can,” Demi said through gritted teeth, forcing her way past the slimmer woman.
“On the ground maybe,” Rebecca agreed. “I bet nothing on two legs would mess with you. But the real threat?” She held a single finger up, pointing towards the ceiling. “Death from above.”
“Monsters aren’t real, lady,” Demi said. “Try to remember that.” She slipped out the front door, ducking around the back of the building to cut through a carwash to make sure Rebecca wasn’t following her. She stopped into a gas station to buy a slushy and a fifth of vodka to give it a little kick while she waited for the strange lab tech to leave.
An Asian man passed her, clipping her shoulder with his. “Sorry,” he muttered. His eyes were red and glossy, and he walked with an uneasy gait.
“Had a few too many?” Demi asked, arching one of her well-trimmed eyebrows at the poor drunk. He wore a wrinkled suit, his tie slung up over his shoulder and the top few buttons of his shirt open. He was young, probably only a few years out of school—handsome, if a little scrawny.
He turned slowly to
look at her. “Ha,” he scoffed. “More like a few too few.”
“Yeah,” Demi said, a smile tugging at the edge of her lips. “I know the feeling.”
The sun was a long way from rising when Demi’s eyes opened. She had no idea where she was, and she shot up, her hand diving for her sidearm. She blinked when she felt nothing but bare skin, and after a time she realized she was in her motel room, lying on the bed. Her mouth was so dry that even trying to swallow sent waves of pain down her throat, and she fumbled around the nightstand until her fingers clenched around a bottle.
“That’s vodka,” the boy groaned next to her in the dark. “Water’s on the dresser.”
“I know,” Demi said, taking a deep swig of the clear liquor. “I’m a professional.”
“I don’t really remember—”
“It was great,” Demi interrupted. “I was great. Always am. But time to get the hell out, kid.”
“You’re joking,” he mumbled, and Demi gently rolled him out of bed.
“Sorry, buddy,” Demi said, watching him totter wildly in search of his clothes. “Just cuz you can bang with me don’t mean you can hang with me. If this isn’t your first walk of shame, at least it’ll be your best.”
When he was gone, Demi sank back into the bed, tossing the empty vodka bottle into the darkness and doing her best to hide from the screams in the back of her mind. Sometimes she wasn’t sure this life was meant for her. She’d almost taken off for good, leaving Doug and Adria to hold the bag. But it had only made her remember that for her, there was no normal anymore. There was nothing to go back to.
Before all this, she’d been in the air force—a military police unit stationed in Khost. Some people played Eighties Easy Listening at work to help the time pass. She’d been assigned to the interrogation wing, and those screams had been the soundtrack to her life for a very long time. She’d descended into hell, and the most frightening part was how willingly she’d done so, how much pride she’d taken in her work. The Butcher of Khost, the inmates came to call her, and the moniker was well deserved. Until one day it all stopped making sense, and she’d been running from those memories ever since.
When she’d first been sucked into all this madness—ghosts, shapeshifters, and now apparently flying monsters—she thought she had finally found a way to move forward. She could do the dirty things no one else wanted to think about. All she’d ever wanted to do was protect her country, and her hands were already slick with blood and worse.
But she was still running from those screams, replaying those memories again and again from every angle wondering who was guilty and who had just told her what she wanted to hear to make the pain stop. If only it could be that easy for her. What crime, real or imagined, did she need to confess to in order to make the nightmares stop? The drinking helped, and so did the men, but only for a little while.
Demi dropped herself into the booth across from her partners in the motel diner and gave Adria a tired sneer, quickly assessing the teen’s perfect hair and makeup.
“You look like crap,” Adria said.
“Go easy on her,” Doug said, giving the younger girl a warning nudge. “Rough night?”
“Aren’t they all?” Demi said, grabbing his plateful of eggs and sausage and pulling it towards her. Doug just shrugged and flagged down the waitress to pour Demi a cup of coffee. This was why they got along. She could be herself—her miserable, drunken self—and he knew well enough not to take offense. Adria hadn’t gotten used to it yet, and Demi rode her harder anyway, but they were the closest things she had to friends. Sometimes she wished she could be a better person, someone deserving of a friend like Doug, but she was who she was.
“So? What was his name?” Adria asked, smirking as she slid a bit of egg between her lips.
“We didn’t get that far,” Demi said. She pulled a flask out of her purse and added just a dash of whiskey to her coffee.
“We had the room next door,” Adria said. “It sounded like things got pretty far.”
She gave Adria a noncommittal grunt. “You shaved,” Demi said through a mouthful of food, finally looking up long enough to make eye contact with Doug.
“I liked the beard,” Adria said. “You had that hot dad vibe going.”
“More like a kumquat,” Demi muttered, taking a sip of her coffee. Doug gripped his temples and groaned.
“It’s sasquatch,” he said. “We hunt monsters. How do you not know that?”
“It’s a stupid name,” she said. “They’re called Bigfoots… Bigfeet?”
“Who cares?” Adria asked. “Bigfoot didn’t rip a bunch of skydivers out of the sky. So let’s focus on what did.”
“Could have been a lot of things,” Demi said. “None of them sound pleasant. But, upside? Silver kills pretty much everything on the list.”
“Unless it’s a dragon,” Doug said. “What?” he asked when Demi glared at him. “They could exist.”
“The victims were eviscerated, not charbroiled,” Demi said. “Besides, for all the hunter talk about dragons, no one we know has ever seen one.”
“We might be the first then,” Doug said, looking down at his phone. “Local PD just sent me an alert. We got another one, just a mile down the road from yesterday’s.”
“At least we have an idea where this thing likes to hunt,” Demi said, shoveling more eggs into her mouth as Doug threw some cash on the table. “The other two attacks weren’t more than a couple miles away.”
“That’s nothing, as the crow flies,” Doug agreed, and they hurried out of the diner. The crime scene was only about a 25-minute drive from their motel, but by the time they arrived the locals had already cordoned off a grassy field marked with vibrant white death camas crowned with golden stamens. A wooden fence ran between the edge of the field and the side of the road, and a young woman’s body hung in the air, impaled through her throat on a fencepost.
“That’s a new one,” Demi said, nodding at the macabre sight.
“Like a shrike,” Doug said. “It’s a bird,” he added, when Demi and Adria both looked at him. “What? We all pass the downtime somehow. You drink, Adria plays with her computer, and I watch bird documentaries. They’re soothing.”
“Whatever, Trigger,” Demi said, shaking her head. She turned back to the mangled corpse.
“I do not look like a horse,” Doug said with a groan.
“Oh wow,” a woman’s voice said. “He kinda does, doesn’t he? I mean, I didn’t notice it yesterday because you had the whole manly-stubble thing going on, but I can totally see it now.”
The lab tech from the bar emerged from behind the body, hopping the fence to greet them. Demi clenched her fists in annoyance. “Rebecca Flores,” she said, holding out her hand to Doug. “Your partner and I had drinks last night, and now we’re basically best friends.”
“Something like that,” Demi said wearily. “Another skydiver?”
“No,” Rebecca said, shaking her head. “Nope. Jogger. Didn’t come home after her run last night, so her roommate got worried and tracked her phone. Not sure why they called the FAA in about that. But hey, you should call Ethan back.”
“Ethan?” Demi asked, pulling out her notepad and flipping through her scribbles from the day before. “Who’s that?”
“My brother!” Rebecca said, smiling widely. “He said you guys really hit it off last night.”
“I’ll say,” Adria muttered under her breath. “They hit something all right.”
“Yeah,” Demi said, her face perfectly still. “He’s a nice kid. You haven’t found any witnesses to whatever happened here, have you? Obviously she didn’t just impale herself on the fence.”
“Hard to say,” Rebecca said, chuckling. “People do a lot of crazy things. No witnesses though. It’s like she was just plucked up out of thin air. But I’ll give you a call if anything comes up. And I’ll tell Ethan you said hi.”
“Do that,” Demi said. “How do you like that?” she asked Doug and Adria once they
got back to the car. “Is it just me, or did this monster change up its pattern to throw us off our game?”
“What do you mean?” Doug asked.
“I mean we roll in with our FAA badges looking into skydiving accidents,” Demi said. “And then victim number four is taken from the ground? Not really the FAA’s business anymore, is it?”
“Monsters don’t change their patterns,” Doug said. “That’s part of being a monster. They’re slaves to their rituals. That’s how we catch them.”
“Yeah, well something isn’t right here,” Demi said. “That nosey tech saw me looking at lore last night, tells me some creepy story about a minokawa, and then apparently I hooked up with her brother? That’s all too much to be a coincidence. And something else she said. I didn’t think anything of it, but she warned me to watch out for death from above. Now it sorta feels like a threat.”
“Minokawa,” Adria mused. “Yeah, Doug and I were reading about those. No one’s ever seen one outside of the Philippines though. Giant birds—beaks, claws, the whole deal.”
“What’s the next move?” Doug asked. “If we can’t piggyback off the locals anymore, do we call in someone else to pose as FBI? Maybe we camp out here tonight, see what we see?”
“No,” Demi said, her stomach sinking as she realized what she needed to do. “This thing could strike anywhere. There’s no way we could get close enough out here. But Rebecca knows more than she’s telling.”
“And you’re pretty good at helping people talk,” Doug finished. “You want me to start scouting out abandoned buildings for you?”
“This isn’t going to be a snatch-and-grab,” Demi said. “She’s either the thing we’re looking for, in which case—boom—silver through the heart, shots are on me. Or she’s not, and the happy little lab girl spills her guts by the time I rip the first chipped-nail-polished fingernail off. Either way, we’ll be in and out.”
She wished the prospect of torturing a law enforcement employee could turn her stomach, but she had done this more times than she could count. She hadn’t earned her reputation in Khost just from interrogating insurgents and terrorists. She’d started there, but her specialty had quickly become local allies—and even her own comrades—the higher-ups suspected of mixed loyalties. Some were outright traitors, others just sympathizers or criminals, and the rest—well, they had confessed their guilt one way or another. The only thing about all this that made her feel uneasy was how much she knew she would enjoy it. However much the screams haunted her later, she had always relished them in the moment.
Demi Mondaine: Volume One Page 16
