The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1)

by A. J. Scudiere

  “Oh!”

  Donovan fought a laugh as he and Eleri were invited into the small front room. Everything was worn but clean, the TV cabinet closed. Knick-knacks adorned every surface, all dusted shiny.

  Mrs. Collier offered them a seat and called for her husband. As Eleri took a spot on the plaid couch, she gave him a soft nod. She was much better at this than either of the Colliers, who not only broadcast exactly what they were trying to hide, but completely missed every signal between Eleri and him. At least they were working well together, though he still felt the grinding of the gears.

  Slipping into work mode, he knew he needed to do the job first and worry about his personal concerns with Eleri later. He was grateful he still had the job. “We’ll need your guest to join us, too.”

  “Guest?” She tried to look confused, but honestly she sucked at it.

  “Yes ma’am. The young woman your husband brought home with him. From—”

  Just as Bernard came into the room, she interrupted Donovan. “I have no idea what you are talking about. My husband would never!”

  But Bernard looked between the two of them, his expression grim, accepting. So Donovan kept his focus on Carolyn as he pulled out his phone and showed her the picture taken just fifteen minutes earlier. “Her name is Tabitha. She’s from a cult nearby called the City of God. And she has been living with you for at least a week now. Would you like me to continue?”

  She wasn’t a pretty woman to start with, but her face had been kind. Now it was pinched, offended at being caught in her own lie.

  “Let it go, Mother.” He then turned and called down the hallway, “Tabby, you can come out. These people already know about you. They’re FBI agents.”

  As Donovan looked back and forth between the two older people, he realized that Bernard Collier had told his wife about the people he picked up—the escapees from the City—but that he had not informed her of his dealings with the FBI. Interesting.

  He glanced sideways to Eleri, who tipped her head only so slightly, indicating that she’d caught the same thing.

  As they waited for “Tabby” to appear, Donovan was pulled into a realization about his own stupidity. For the first time in his life he had a partner. Never married, never having a real girlfriend or anything that involved more than sex, the only person he’d ever had an ongoing relationship with was his father. His father had kept him clothed and fed—usually—and that was about all Donovan could say about it. Now he finally had someone who understood what it was like to be a freak, to hide the real you, and he’d almost fucked it away.

  Never again.

  If he and Eleri parted ways, if he left NightShade, it would be to pursue something better, because another offer had come along, but not because he screwed it up.

  Shaking the revelation away, he watched as Tabitha approached. Upright and walking tall, if scared, it became clear that she was pregnant. No wonder she risked all she had to leave.

  Another small nod from his senior partner and Donovan knew to back down—finesse now, not aggression. It was in Eleri’s court.

  Her opening shot was a wide smile. “We’re only here to talk. We are not going to take Tabitha away from you—” she looked pointedly at the Colliers, then directly to Tabitha, “—unless you want to leave.”

  “Oh, no! I like it here. They’re so nice—” the words gushed and probably would have gone on ad infinitum had Eleri not held up her hand to stop her. Of course, she smiled as she did it.

  “I’m not going to argue or try to sway you. I’m just going to give you the facts.” She nodded and waited for Tabitha to nod in return. “We have a safe house for you. Some of your fellow ‘escapees’ are staying with us. You’ll have agents guarding you at all times, and you can come back here whenever you like as long as it’s safe.” She held up her hand again, warding off another interruption. “However, it appears that you’re safe here, so the choice is yours. We don’t have any reason to believe anyone else knows you’re here, besides the FBI.”

  Tabitha finally sat on the edge of one of the two worn recliners. She twisted her hands together, asked first to stay with the Colliers, then asked after the others.

  Another subtle nod passed between him and Eleri and he told Tabitha what she wanted. “We have Grace and Mercy, they are in the hospital—but they’re both going to be fine.”

  White as a sheet now, Tabitha asked him directly, “What did Zeke do to her?”

  “Why do you think it was Zeke?” He knew it was a rude tactic, but he turned the question back on her.

  Tabitha looked away, her face angry now, her sigh one of pain. “I loved Zeke. Didn’t believe any of the rumors about his first wife.”

  Eleri interrupted her now, “What were those rumors?”

  “That he killed her. Beat her to death, buried her in the woods.”

  That sounded a little too plausible. Donovan wondered how they could find DNA to match a body.

  Tabitha went on. “I thought she just lost her faith and left. That’s what Zeke said. He was a good husband at first, heavy handed, but good. Then he wasn’t.” Another sigh punctuated a difficult story from any culture. “He just didn’t love me anymore. He said God wanted him to be with Mercy and then he said that God would find a way to make it happen.” She was scrambling now, the story bigger than herself, “I talked to Joseph and he said the same thing: if God wanted Zeke and Mercy together, then God would create that. I felt so scared. And they told me I shouldn’t be afraid of being called home. But it hurt so much when Zeke hit, and when I found out I was with child, I just knew.”

  Donovan waited.

  “God wouldn’t give me a child and then call us both before the child was even born. And I talked to Mercy . . . It turned out she didn’t even want Zeke. She was as afraid of him as I had become.” Tears were flowing freely down her face now, and as much as Donovan hated making her live it again, they needed the information. “I wanted Mercy to come with me. I went out one night, went to the hospital and got checked. They said my baby was fine, so I went back. I tried to convince Mercy to come with me.”

  It took her a moment to get herself together. While she did, Carolyn went over and put an arm around the woman. This didn’t appear to be a woman held against her will.

  “He only hit me in the face a few times before I cracked. I took the cooking pot and bashed him in the head and I ran. That’s when Mr. Collier found me the second time. I made it to Brady on my own, but I was watching for him, for the truck . . . Please, tell me about Mercy.”

  Donovan complied, give and take. Clearly she was distressed and was beyond relieved to know that it was not Zeke that put Mercy in the hospital, just the damage to her feet that needed healing.

  They questioned Tabitha about Joseph, about Isaac and the “Celebration.” They asked her about Jonah and Charity, recording her answers. Donovan noted that everything corroborated. If these people were lying, they all had stellar careers ahead of them in Hollywood.

  When they finally left, Tabitha’s stomach had been audibly growling and Carolyn Collier had begun fussing over “the girl and the baby.” Donovan was exhausted himself and ready for his own dinner.

  After they ate, he volunteered to drive. Both he and Eleri had been on edge all day, but she probably hadn’t slept much last night. It was his fault she was worn out anyway.

  Sure enough, as soon as it got dark, her head turned toward the window and she fell asleep. Donovan kept company only with his own thoughts as he drove the dark SUV and the strange “groundhog” machine back to Brownwood.

  ELERI FOUND some rest on the car ride from San Antonio back to Brownwood, but it wasn’t deep and it wasn’t enough. Though she woke up when they pulled into the parking lot at the hotel, she didn’t have enough juice in her to stay that way. Knowing she was about to crash and crash hard, she suggested they sleep while they could and reconvene around one a.m.

  If it took them several nights to complete their task, that was better than pushi
ng things and getting caught. “Caught” meant more than just trespassing charges. These people thought they were above the law or at least outside it and they clearly had no compunctions about putting people into the ground.

  While she needed the rest, Eleri didn’t want to sleep deeply. The hard sleeps were when things came, when she couldn’t wake up, when she would get trapped. She thought of this as she climbed out of the car, still groggy from her bent-necked nap as she carried their trash up to her room to throw away.

  But she only threw out her own paper cup. The other she handled more carefully, tossing the plastic lid and straw, then washing the cup itself, drying it and leaving it on the counter beside her while she brushed her teeth. It sat there, silently accusing her of what she was about to do.

  Eleri didn’t even know if it would work, but by the time she had her pajamas on and was sliding under the covers, she had the cup in hand. She told herself it was to find out more about him, that it wasn’t spying and that it wasn’t almost exactly what he’d done to her.

  Once for once, she thought as she felt her head hit the pillow and the darkness crashed in around her.

  It wasn’t long before her dream deposited her just outside a trailer, wind blowing cool against her skin, pajamas scant protection against the night. The loamy air and Spanish moss clinging to the trees told her she was in the Deep South. Shreds of toilet paper ensnared in the moss and the occasional old set of sneakers wrapped around a branch by the laces told her she wasn’t in the best section of town.

  An old brown Caddy careened down the street behind her. She no longer shied away, having learned that the people in these dreams couldn’t see her.

  Voices came from inside the trailer, or rather one voice did. It held a conversation though she couldn’t hear the other half. The voice sounded familiar—Donovan’s voice—though she’d never heard it like that. Full of gravel and hate, it tugged at her core, leaving her helpless against it. On a blink, she was inside the trailer, heart twisting, cold as an arctic storm. Her shoulders fought to stay low, to appear calm and unafraid.

  She shouldn’t have come. In her sleep, her hand twitched around the cup, and for a moment, in the trailer she could look down and see she still held it. Already she wanted to toss it away and though she tried, it seemed stuck.

  A young Donovan cowered before her, his feelings and fears sliding into her like knives.

  He’d told her that he didn’t begin to change until he was around nine or ten, several years after his mother died. Given his size, she guessed this was about that age. Though her logical brain functioned perfectly, it offered zero protection against the onslaught.

  His father pushed his anger into the night. He hated with all his might. He hated the boss who had fired him just a few hours earlier. He hated that he could still smell the blood on his own hands though he had scrubbed and scrubbed, though he had pounded back whiskey to blot the scent and the memory.

  Eleri nearly vomited as she saw what was in his mind. He’d been let go from yet another job, by yet another man who thought he was better than everyone else. Aidan Heath had had enough. Never a man in true control of his feelings or actions, he’d snapped. After work hours, it was just him and the boss in the old building. He’d given the man another good day’s labor and in return he was getting fired. He felt his chest contract, his shoulders shift and the burn across his skin as the fur stood on end.

  She could see the other man shrink suddenly in terror, his brain unable to process what he was seeing, and she felt Aidan’s jaw move forward, the sickening pop as bone clicked into place. The flex of his mandible as he stretched in his new space. Despite the fear that misted to him through the dank office air, Aidan couldn’t stop.

  He’d been fired—again. He’d been roused to certain anger. And now he’d been seen for what he truly was.

  She felt the odd stretch in triceps and quads as Aidan leaped, covering the distance to where his boss sat in his ripped swivel chair. She felt the soft give of flesh, the resistance of tendon beneath sharp teeth as Aidan tore into the man’s throat. Hot blood spurted into his mouth and onto his shirt as he jerked back—not fast enough, but suddenly aware of what he had done.

  His anger fled, the damage done. The heat that drove him was replaced by ice. He was folding back into himself even as he pulled away, still watching as the blood pumped, slower and slower, from the jagged hole in his boss’s neck. Shock still registered in the man’s eyes, but in another second, that too was gone as they clouded and lost focus.

  With a sharp snap Eleri was back in the trailer, the smell of mold replaced by stale beer and sweat. Donovan, cowering in the corner, smelled the cheap whiskey on his father but not the blood. He only knew that this was it. The end to another stay, he had barely moments to gather what little he had and follow this beast out the door and into yet another unknown.

  Though he needed to pack and pack quickly, he couldn’t move, because his father was venting.

  Aidan Heath, drunk and angry and in the company of only his son, was a sight to behold. He roared, he yelled, he growled. His tendons stretched as his muscles clenched. His eyes turned dark and foul and his jaw opened wide, a maw full of sharp teeth and acrid breath.

  Piece by piece he turned into wolf then back to man, as though the creature fought to come out and he couldn’t quite contain it. But that wasn’t what Donovan was afraid of, not the wolf trying to escape the boundary of his father. It was the man himself Donovan feared.

  Eleri turned to the boy, regretting her decision to come here, wishing she hadn’t looked beneath rocks. It accosted her, the turbulence in him he didn’t know he was sharing. Beneath the calm exterior, he was both frozen and frantic.

  To this day he didn’t know what his father had done.

  And there in the trailer in thick air of the Deep South, amid the night calls of birds and deep-throated anger of his father, Eleri saw that Donovan did not trust this man not to kill him.

  42

  Eleri met Donovan in the hotel hallway at one a.m.

  Staying quiet as they slipped out the back entryway, they headed toward the SUV waited in the far corner of the lot where Donovan had backed the car in earlier. It looked as though he was seeking shade, while in reality, he’d been aiming the tail of the car away from the lot, hoping to avoid people getting curious.

  There was a camera on the corner of the building, and Eleri figured the kid at the front desk—the lone employee on duty after midnight—probably wasn’t watching the feed anyway. While there would be a record of them leaving, it was better than parading by the front desk.

  Both of them were dressed in dark colors. Despite the fact that they weren’t in all black, they were still pretty conspicuous. Eleri had cuffed her sleeves and her pants in an effort to appear less like she was about to rob a bank, but mostly it looked stupid. Right now it was keeping her from drowning in a puddle of her own sweat, so she went with it. She kept telling herself it would be just a little cooler in the woods, under the trees, rather than out over the blacktop.

  The drive passed in silence and Eleri continued to regret her decision with the cup. Her sleep hadn’t been restful. More than that, she regretted what she’d seen. She’d been on herself all day long to forgive Donovan. He’d pushed her, and while he hadn’t outright lied, he did do something that could have had serious consequences for her.

  Now she’d gone behind his back, too. Once for once, she told herself, but she suffered for it. While she understood his loner mentality, she resented Donovan’s freakishness—his seemed easy. It didn’t sneak up on him; he changed at will. He seemed to know how to deal with it while hers came with something new and usually devastating each time. The way he spoke of running free, his oddity was a release, a pleasure; hers was harsh and had to be dealt with each time she woke from it.

  Today, she saw his oddity in a new light. It had less to do with the wolf and more to do with his upbringing. She shouldn’t have sneaked into his past, but it w
as done, and the knowledge clung like spider webs.

  As they bounced off the road and into the small turnout, Eleri looked sideways at her partner. She saw him now as a wild animal, a pet that only appeared tame and might turn back to its true character at any time. It was an unfair assessment, she knew.

  The thoughts crashed through her brain, unbidden, as she rolled down her sleeves and tucked the legs of her dark linen pants into her socks, just in case she hadn’t looked dorky enough before. Opening the car door into thick brush, she had to shove her way to the back of the vehicle before there was enough space to pull out the super-duty bug spray. Catching every bit of exposed skin, she liberally laced her hair with the stuff and tagged each possible entry point on her outfit. Across the car, Donovan suddenly launched into a severe coughing fit. She didn’t apologize.

  When she put it away and he managed to quit hacking, Eleri opened the trunk and together they lifted the machine out. It wasn’t that heavy, just a bit unwieldy and she already discovered during the training process that it would be easier to tow it through the woods than to push it.

  Knowing what they needed to do, the two stayed silent. They pulled equipment from the trunk, punctuating the songs of crickets and frogs with clicking and buckling noises until she and Donovan were covered in gear. Weapons were holstered but at the ready. The body armor was probably the worst—even as light as the engineers could make it, it was by its very nature restrictive. They tested batteries on night vision goggles and decked themselves out until they looked like they were ready for an art museum heist, but they didn’t speak.

  Closing and locking the car, they each pocketed a set of keys before Donovan motioned for the groundhog even though he already held the set of long poles that would click together then slide into the dirt, the pointed end boring a thin hole in whatever they wanted underground and pulling up a sample. Eleri gladly handed it over—he was taller, physically stronger and willing. Pacing behind, she watched the groundhog bounce along between them as he traced the path to the unmarked graveyard.