“That’s it.”
“What was his tone? Any inflections? Did he have an accent?”
“He had a silky voice. Kind of slimy, actually. Smug.” I thought for a moment. “No accent that I could tell.”
“Everyone has an accent.”
“If he had one, I don’t know what it was.”
“And you could only see the bottom half of his face?”
“Right. The—”
“How about his hands?”
“Gloves. I think.”
“You think?”
What little composure I had left went bye-bye. I felt like I was being interrogated all over again, this time by my own partner. “The first time he was sitting on the sidewalk in the dark. I couldn’t see his hands. The second time, I had a freakin’ vampire at my back.” I froze. Oh shit. “No offense, Mr. Moreau,” I quickly added.
“None taken, Agent Fraser. During the course of my lengthy life, I have been called many things, but ‘freakin’’ has never been one of them. I’ll consider it a novelty.”
Ian raked a hand through his dark hair and exhaled slowly. The tension level went down by a couple of notches. “I’m sorry I snapped.”
If he could make the effort, so could I. “Me, too.” I swallowed on a dry throat. “It’s been a shitty night.”
“Agreed.”
“About the guy’s face,” I said. “He had . . .” I hesitated. I had no idea how to describe what I’d seen. “He had more than one, if that makes any sense. They were like images, layered one on top of the other.”
That got everyone’s attention. Even the driver’s sunglass-covered eyes gave me a quick glance in the rearview mirror.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said.
“You’re sure it wasn’t an aura from a veil?” Moreau asked.
“Positive.”
“Were all the faces human?”
I thought back to the fun-house mirror images that I’d seen. “The top few layers were. The others weren’t as clear.”
“How many were there?” Ian asked quietly.
“Too many to count. I’m sorry I can’t give any more detail than—”
“That’s okay.” My partner’s expression seemed to soften. Maybe it was just a trick of the shadows between the streetlights. “You can only see what you see.”
I hesitated. “Do you know him?”
“No.” Ian gazed out the window, his eyes narrowing in concentration. His thoughts were his own, and he seemed determined to keep them that way.
I slumped back in my seat, dropped my head into my hands, and closed my eyes for a blissful three seconds.
I raised my head. “So does anyone know who the vampire might be?”
“I don’t know of any such individual personally,” Moreau replied. “However, I am on good terms with the mistress of the Manhattan coven. I will make inquiries until I locate him.”
“What about a man with multiple faces capable of scaring a vampire clear across the street?”
Alain Moreau almost smiled. “I especially look forward to meeting him.”
3
WHILE New York was the city that never sleeps, sometimes it at least closed one eye. It was the middle of the night and absurdly below freezing. The only people out driving were those who had to be, or people who were crazy enough to want to.
The driver pulled into a private parking garage on West Third Street a block from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, and began spiraling down to the lowest level. The garage was dimly lit, yet the driver kept his sunglasses on and seemed to have no trouble seeing where he was going. I chose to ignore anything that implied, concentrating instead on my fear of being squashed. Let’s just say I was prone to claustrophobia. Once we got to the bottom level, there couldn’t have been more than a few inches of clearance between the top of the SUV and the concrete slab above it.
The driver pulled into a parking space near the back of the garage between a pair of concrete columns, turned off the engine, flipped open a small panel on the SUV’s dash, and pressed a button. Almost immediately, the car began to sink, the only sound the low rumble of some serious hydraulics hidden in the columns and in the wall in front of us. I had been taken to SPI this way once before. I didn’t like it then, and I didn’t like it any better now. But when you had four people in a company SUV, there were only so many ways you could get to headquarters.
The elevator stopped with a disconcerting jerk, and a pair of steel doors ground open in front of us, opening into one of the city’s many abandoned subway tunnels. In this particular tunnel, the tracks had been removed, and the ground smoothed and paved. The driver pulled out of the elevator and turned down the former subway tunnel as if it were just another street. After about a hundred yards, we came to what looked like a dead end. At SPI, things and people were rarely what they appeared to be. Moreau pushed another button on the dash, and what looked like a wall of rock and construction debris lifted, revealing another parking garage with seven black SUVs identical to the one we were in, two troop transport trucks, and a limo. All of the SUVs had sunroofs that weren’t for admiring the view. They were for those occasions when our teams needed quick access to the big guns—and to get them back out of sight with equal speed. The NYPD frowned on rocket-powered grenade launchers or belt-fed machine guns being used in the five boroughs. I was glad to say that my presence hadn’t been needed on any of those missions.
I much preferred the entrance I used on a daily basis. I’d go into Saga Partners Investments through the front door, walk through the office into the back room, open the door to the cleaning supply closet and step inside. All I had to do was put my hand up to the hand scanner, and that closet became a pine-scented elevator down to SPI headquarters. A pleasant scent, minimal claustrophobia, and the elevator opened near the break room with its life-giving coffee and occasional cookies. What’s not to love?
Me, Ian, and Moreau got out of the SUV, but the driver stayed. Maybe he had more wayward agents to pick up at another police station. Moreau held his hand in front of what looked like a sheer concrete wall. There was an approving beep and a door-sized portion of the wall smoothly swung open. A short access tunnel and another hand-scan-activated door later, we were in what we called the bull pen.
SPI’s New York headquarters complex was located directly beneath Washington Square Park, and it was nearly as large as the park itself. Just the bull pen area was ringed with five stories of steel catwalks connecting offices, labs, and conference rooms. The main floor was filled with desks, computers, people, and not-people. We ran three shifts a day, and operated 24/7/365. Not surprisingly, the largest shift was on duty right now—the graveyard shift. Even supernatural baddies that weren’t nocturnal tended to do their thing at night. Humans were essentially the same, but without the fangs, claws, and paranormally bad attitudes.
I’d been introduced to Vivienne Sagadraco, the founder and CEO of SPI, at my final interview before being hired. Maybe she met with every new employee, or perhaps being the only seer in the New York office had earned me the special treatment. I’d heard that longtime agents referred to her as the dragon lady. I was slow on the uptake, so until I was face-to-uh-face with Vivienne Sagadraco, I didn’t realize that was meant literally.
My boss was a dragon.
She could morph in and out of human form; but as a seer, I got a clear view of what she really was.
I’d figured the meeting had been set up as a final test. At the tabloid, I’d interviewed some scary people, though at least most of them had been human. What had kept me from running out of the room screaming during my final SPI interview had been the utterly surreal setting and situation—that, and I really wanted the job. That single fact was not only motivational, but had effectively put the brakes on any potential hysterics. I think I might have even smiled at my new boss.
&nb
sp; So money and a chance to regain my professional self-respect had motivated me to sit and have a proper high tea with a proper—if scaly—British dragon.
To a normal person, Vivienne Sagadraco appeared to be an attractive and vital woman in her late sixties. My seer vision revealed a dragon with peacock blue and green iridescent scales, seated in a throne-like chair across from me, having just served me tea from an ornate silver tea service, now improbably holding a dainty teacup and saucer in her long, taloned fingers. A pair of sleek wings were folded like long shadows against her back. Definitely surreal. All that was missing was a nervous rabbit in a waistcoat running through the oak-paneled office with a giant watch freaking out about the time. Vivienne Sagadraco in her human form wasn’t much taller than I was. However, a faintly glowing aura surrounded her, telling me that in reality the creature before me was much larger than she appeared.
I’d decided right then that I could go through the rest of my career at SPI perfectly happy not knowing exactly how large of a dragon Vivienne Sagadraco actually was. It was bad enough that during our interview my future boss’s glittering eyes had looked at me much the same way as I had the finger sandwiches.
After what I’d done tonight, the boss might decide that her initial impulse was correct, and that I’d make a better snack than agent.
Being escorted to the boss’s office by her right-hand legal eagle/vampire meant that what Ian and I had stepped in tonight wasn’t just another crime scene with a monster perp.
We took an elevator up to the fifth floor and the executive suite. As Moreau escorted us into her office, Vivienne Sagadraco was standing with her back to us in front of a two-way glass wall—which bore an unsettling resemblance to an interrogation room’s—gazing down into the bull pen. It was about two hours until sunrise, yet her tailored gray suit looked as crisp as it would have at the start of the business day, and her short, silver hair was perfectly styled. Vivienne Sagadraco wasn’t nocturnal and she didn’t live at headquarters, though rumor had it she kept a small apartment here for emergencies. Home was a penthouse overlooking Central Park West. Dragons liked to be able to survey their domain. So if this wasn’t an emergency, that meant she’d made a special trip here just for us on a night with a subzero windchill.
I shot a quick glance at Ian. He didn’t look like he felt special or flattered, either. Then again, Ian always had any and all of his feelings securely locked up. The man of steel and stone.
Vivienne Sagadraco spoke without turning. “Good morning, Agents Byrne and Fraser.” Her British accent was cool and smooth, rather reminding me of Judi Dench’s M about to give James Bond some really bad news. “Please be seated.”
We hung our coats on the brass coatrack by the door, then did as told. I perched on the edge of the chair with the only part of my jeans that hadn’t been soaked in whiskey. They were relatively dry now, but the smell was still there. Moreau remained standing by the door.
“I will not waste any of our time,” she told us, “since so little remains of it. Last night the mutilated body of a goblin noble was discovered in Chinatown. Kanil Ghevari was one of our own, and was a strong advocate with his people for keeping the supernatural realm hidden from the general population. Certain elements of his murder bear disturbing similarities to the incident at Barrington Galleries earlier tonight.”
Detective Burton had homed in on me and Ollie, but only in connection with tonight’s murder. Chinatown was close enough to the First Precinct, so why hadn’t Burton grilled me about where I was last night?
“We have his remains here,” Sagadraco said, as if she could read my mind. “The human authorities do not know of Kanil’s murder, nor can they know.”
“After his death,” Ian told me, “any spells Kanil had been using to pass for human would’ve faded; within an hour, they would’ve been completely gone.”
That would have been a big surprise for someone down at the city morgue.
“Kanil was the sole voice of reason with the radicals among their aristocracy,” Sagadraco said. “They are rapidly growing weary of concealing themselves from humans. He will be sorely missed.” Her steely blue eyes took in both of us in turn. “Tell me precisely what happened this evening. Leave nothing out.”
We did. I started with Ollie asking me to catch the nachtgnome, included the run-in with the vampire and the multi-faced man who scared him away, and topped it off with the picture of me having been found on the dead man—a photo taken at SPI. Ian filled in his involvement as it came up.
Sagadraco scowled, then glanced past us at Moreau.
“I will locate the vampire and the man outside the liquor store,” he said.
She nodded once.
“And I will know the identity of the photographer before dawn,” Moreau promised.
“Notify me as soon as you do.”
“Of course, ma’am. Permission to begin now.”
“Granted.”
The door opened and closed, leaving us alone with Vivienne Sagadraco.
Now her full attention was on me. “Did you capture it?”
“Ma’am?”
“The nachtgnome, Agent Fraser. Did you capture it?”
“No, ma’am.”
I heard a distinctly draconic sniff of amusement. “Unfortunate.”
“Yes, ma’am, it was.”
“And this was after it had consumed two bottles of whiskey.” She almost sounded impressed. “It must have been a large specimen.”
“And a mean drunk,” Ian added.
She almost smiled. “Agent Fraser, when we are finished here, please avail yourself of our shower facilities and a change of clothes.”
There was nothing I’d like more. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Her smile vanished. “Our source in the city medical examiner’s office reported that there was a winged scarab tattoo on the dead man’s palm.”
“There was also a large, bloody handprint on the window frame,” I said.
“How large?”
“At least five times the size of Ian’s . . . uh, I mean Agent Byrne’s.”
Sagadraco nodded in acknowledgment as if that information wasn’t news to her.
“Two units arrived within minutes,” Ian said. “Someone knew there was going to be a murder, and called it in to make sure the police would arrive immediately after. I didn’t detect any surveillance around the shop, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there.”
“I’d told Ollie that I’d be there around ten o’clock,” I said. “Between the vampire and the icy sidewalks, I got there closer to ten twenty.”
“Given the photo of her found in the victim’s pocket, there is a chance that all this could have been a setup for Agent Fraser.” Ian continued, “Though I don’t know what the motive could have been. More likely would be that the caller wanted the police to find the body quickly; maybe even get a glimpse of the thing that did it. Though if they’d gotten themselves glimpsed, that thing would have probably added two more heads and arms to its collection.”
Both possibilities strongly suggested that the caller wanted the human authorities to discover an inhuman murder scene—and me. Combine that with the murder last night of a known and vocal advocate of keeping supernaturals secret from humans . . .
“Could this just have been an attempt to draw unwanted attention to SPI?” I ventured.
“Among other things,” Sagadraco said.
“Did our lab people find anything with Kanil’s body that’d give us a clue as to what we’re dealing with?” Ian asked.
“There were claw marks on his right shoulder consistent with a creature large and strong enough to tear an arm from its socket. The arm removal was done pre-mortem, yet there was very little blood found at the scene. The arm was not found with Kanil’s body.” She crossed the room to her desk and picked up a clear evidence bag like the one my blood
y photo had been in. “However, this was.” She gave it to Ian.
I leaned forward to get a better look. It was big enough that I didn’t really need to, but morbid fascination got the better of me. The object was black, curved, narrowed to a fine point, and was at least five inches long.
“It looks like a claw,” I said.
“That is precisely what it is, Agent Fraser. It was found caught on a rib adjacent to Kanil’s heart.”
My mouth went dry. “The thing that belonged to was on the other side of Ollie’s office door?”
“We have every reason to believe so. And our examination of Kanil’s remains confirms that all of his wounds—with the exception of the decapitation—were inflicted before he died.” Sagadraco’s eyes narrowed and a low rumbling briefly vibrated the air around me. I froze as I realized that Vivienne Sagadraco had just growled. Ian only saw and heard the human version; I got the full dragon experience in surround sound.
“There were five puncture wounds on Kanil’s chest,” she continued as if nothing had happened. “Our own medical examiner reported that they were indicative of a large clawed hand restraining him—also pre-mortem. She believes that Kanil’s attacker tore off his arm, then held him down until he bled out.”
There was dead silence.
Sagadraco scowled. “Measurements taken from the claw placement on Kanil’s chest and the downward angle of the gash at the . . . amputation site on his right shoulder suggest a heavily muscled creature at least three meters tall.”
Ian sat perfectly still. “A nine footer?”
“Probably closer to ten.”
“The man in Ollie’s office was torn limb from limb in less than a minute,” I said. “And his head was taken as well as his right arm.”
“The attack tonight displayed animal savagery. Kanil’s murder was more the work of a sadist. I received a letter this evening from an individual who is claiming credit for bringing the creatures to New York.”
“Creatures?” I blurted. “Plural?”
“Two, to be precise.” Sagadraco took a piece of paper from her desk and handed it to me. “The letter was delivered to me at home earlier this evening. I took the usual precautions before opening it, and deemed it not to be dangerous.” She scowled. “I was mistaken. Immediately after I read it, both the letter and the envelope it was in burst into flames. I wrote down the vital portions before it vanished from my memory.”
The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel Page 5
