These pills might save my life.
Behind us walked Gabe, his NYPD police badge dangling around his neck ahead of his necktie.
“For the record,” Gabe said when Emily and I faced him. “I didn’t use enchanted bullets on Donovan, because I wanted to know how Amethyst got him possessed.”
Amethyst. It took a while to remember that name. Desiree Amethyst, the sex worker, turned stripper possessed by a succubus that charmed and slept with Donovan, then contaminated his soul, which was supposed to be impossible. Donovan was a fae before he got possessed, and according to the rule book of possession that was impossible. Amethyst found a way to make it happen.
I still had fragmented pieces of her memory stuck in my head. I remember the sex she had with Donovan, I remember the things she did before that encounter, like putting on a sexy gown after she discarded an empty medication bottle. She also had a hard time using her magical talents after the sex, which was hilarious since she slept with him to recharge her Umbral energy in the first place.
“Right,” I said. “Since Donovan was fae before he was turned to a demon, it shouldn’t have happened.”
“Guess I can thank Charles for briefing you on that …” Gabe said with a touch of sarcasm.
“As soon as we find Amethyst’s body, we’ll have the answers,” I said.
Gabe’s lips twisted. “You got proof?”
“I got what remains of her memories.” I tapped my head, making a half smile. “Isamu attacked her, the Kitsune and Kojima. Amethyst used the last of her power to use a return ability and brought the body of the Kitsune with her. They ended up in some room, and things got blurry from there. We find that room and we’ll find their bodies and the evidence of how she got a fae possessed.”
Charles had whistled for the three of us to come over and thank fuck for that. The talk about Donovan and Amethyst was moving into the off-topic territory. We needed to focus on what was going on, the docks, the FBI cover-up, a batch of contaminated blood and weird flowers that could spawn zombies.
And why the fuck did Alice send me on a case that led to my discovery of this?
“That smirk says you got good news,” Emily said to Charles when we approached, he was standing ahead of a table with the rose under a microscope, and a lockbox full of potions, scrolls, crystals, and other Wiccan trinkets.
“I don’t,” Charles said. “Donovan wasn’t the one that did this or a demon for that matter. There’s no Umbral energy.”
“I could have told you that,” I spat. “It’s something else we couldn’t figure out, and it had a weird effect on me. That rose, the flowers, and the zombies all had that same energy.”
Charles held the rose up for the three of us to see. “This is full of Lux energy.”
My right eyebrow lifted. “What the fuck is Lux energy?”
“It’s what the fae use,” Charles explained. “The polar opposite of Umbral energy, which demons use, which is why it had an effect you, Reika. Lux is deadly to Umbral users, Umbral is deadly to Lux users.”
“Those zombies wouldn’t die when I tried to burn them with my flamethrower talent.”
“Some fae have been known to wield restorative magic.”
I didn’t understand a word of that. I folded my arms across my chest and asked. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“They could heal on the spot, if you gave them the chance to,” Charles replied. “Next time you conflict with them, make sure they’re dead, or they’ll cast a healing spell and make a quick recovery.”
“So, the zombies had Lux energy, as did the rose and the flowers,” Emily chimed in. “That makes them all product of the fae.”
“Who had the flowers again?” Charles asked.
“A man named Giovanni Mancini,” I said. “His sister Alice said he went missing and asked me to find him—”
“Wait,” Gabe cut in. “Mancini, you said?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding to him. He replied with his face going through the motions, lost in thought. The name Mancini meant something to Gabe, color me not surprised.
“Just her?” Charles said. “I heard there’s a lot of people going missing lately, so I figured you’d be overwhelmed with more missing person cases.”
“Is that so?” I asked.
“Yeah it’s true,” Gabe said. “I had a lot of those hit my desk lately, same with the other detectives. Every day dozens of people have been reported missing.”
“That tends to happen when zombies show up to play,” Emily said.
“Your five hundred years of experience tell you that,” I snorted to her.
“No, but The Walking Dead does,” Emily said shrugging. “Been binge watching that on Netflix.”
Not much else was said, other than Charles asking Emily’s opinion on the show. The silence gave me the chance to reorganize my head and put things together, a lot had just been discovered, the biggest thing being, the fae were involved here.
The strange energy turned out to be Lux energy. Lux magic was used to create the rose Alice had and used to make the flowers she was growing in the greenhouse. Some of those flowers ended up getting shipped to the docks, where her brother Giovanni, who was supposed to be missing, went to trade it to the Russians and their pet demons. Oh, and let’s not forget the people that ordered the flowers online, all at the same time to be delivered to their homes. Matthew Turner of the FBI was on that list too …
My guess was that the Russians wanted in. They wanted not only demonic musclemen, but fae ones too and saw the flowers as the source of that. Then, something went wrong, people turned into plant zombies and started killing everyone, meanwhile, Giovanni upped and left and now the FBI had control of the scene, keeping whatever they discovered a secret, making me shudder at the thought.
The criminals of New York were already doing a lot of damage by working the demonic forces and building alliances with them. And the FBI was nothing more than a legalized mafia. Yep, I went there.
Alice and Giovanni were either being used by the fae or were fae themselves—
“You’re planning something, aren’t you, Reika?” Gabe said, having taken notice of me standing there, lost in thought.
“I got to, Gabe,” I said, giving him a nod. “What else can we do? I don’t trust the FBI and neither do you. The news is not telling the truth, probably ‘cause of the FBI. This is a government cover-up, just like last year.”
And then we had Gabe. He knew about the fae living in secret in New York. Why he kept it a secret was an argument for later, but at least for now, he was coming clean. I needed to play the nice card, and hoped he’ll tell me more. Bad enough my lure and charm won’t work on him.
“I’ll do what I can on my end,” Gabe said. “But one thing is for sure, if this is the work of the fae, then they’re getting violent, on the same level as demons, as if they weren’t a big enough problem.”
The signs of a supernatural war brewing were becoming pretty damn evident. The fae just made the first strike in what might become a demon verses fae war. Suddenly, that crazy ass note we found didn’t seem so crazy. It was more like a warning, a vision of the future, and apparently, my death will be the water that will put out the fire created from the friction between the fae and demons.
Fuck that noise.
I’ll fuck up both the demonic and fae factions if they bring this shit into my city.
“Hey, Gabe, quick question,” I said. “Were you in the Marines?”
Gabe looked at me, nodding. “Yeah, three tours in Iraq.”
“You know Henry?”
“I do. He was a medic. Part of my unit,” he said. “We were also the only two that survived.”
“Just you two? That must have been tough.”
“I … had a little help,” he said with a touch of hesitation. “Let’s leave it at that.”
Chapter Sixteen
Emily and I made our way back to the greenhouse Alice worked at. The sun was still shining, meaning we won’t have
to break in, unlike last time. The news on the radio didn’t fill our ears with any useful information. It was just the same old shit about the docks and that it was still under investigation, the reason being that the Russian mob was trying to smuggle weapons into the city. Cute story bro. The other reports on the radio spoke about more people vanishing; families, honest, hard-working people with no connections to shady things.
I started to wonder what the gridlocked streets ahead of us would look like if New York’s population just upped and vanished tomorrow morning. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. I shot my family still living in one of Jim’s safe houses, a text message, asking them to stay put a while longer. People vanishing might just be the start of the fae and demonic wars. Maybe this was the reason my grandfather gave me my katana. He knew this was going to happen. He knew New York was going to need me as its protector.
We entered the greenhouse searching for more of the Lux forged flowers and plants. If more were found, the plan was to hit Gabe up and have his people check it out before the FBI moved in. No such luck on our part, after slinking about for fifteen minutes, we found nothing out of the norm, just the odd consumer shopping for plants, seeds, or flowers. There was nothing in the greenhouse spewing Umbral or Lux energy. It was legit as fuck as far as my scan talent went.
Naturally, Alice was nowhere to be found. She also didn’t pick up her phone when I called. She probably joined the dozens of people that went missing in the city. Or maybe, she was the ring leader of it.
I found one of the sales clerks tending to some plants and pulled them aside to ask a few questions as if I were a paying customer. “Excuse me,” I said, pulling out the rose we had, showing it to the clerk. “I was looking to buy a rose that looked exactly like this, any idea where I can find it here?”
“Sold out right now, ma’am,” said the clerk.
“Completely gone? There was a bunch here the other day,” I said.
“Yeah, but we also supply product to Central Park,” the clerk said. “They placed a last-minute emergency order, so we had to give them everything we had in stock.”
“Well, that sucks.”
“We do have these flowers here.” The clerk pointed to a table in the far corner of the greenhouse. “Though, there’s not much of them either since Central Park took a bunch as well.”
“Thanks,” I said, giving her nod, and putting the rose back in my backpack. “Oh, one last thing?”
“Shoot.”
“Is Alice Mancini in today?”
“Nope, in fact, I’m covering for her. She no-call, no-showed today.”
The table the clerk pointed us to had been sparsely decorated with pots of flowers. A quick use of my scanning talent revealed all. “These are the same, like the others,” I whispered to Emily at my side. “They have Lux energy.”
Emily looked behind us and saw no one. She then looked to the left and right, then behind, and rubbed her thieving hands together, giving the flowers a grin. “Let’s see what Charles can figure out about these,” she said.
She went to apply her five-finger discount coupon. I slapped her hands away from the flowers. “Seriously, Emily? With all these motherfuckers here watching?”
“Fortune favors the bold.”
Emily tried again. “Fuck off,” I blurted, dragging her ass outside, and probably getting a few glares from the shoppers in the process. Zero fucks were given.
“I get it,” I said once we were outside, embracing the chilly fall air. “You get off on stealing things, but can you not fucking do that while a store is still open, for the owners to call the fucking cops on you?”
Emily got all pissy at that point, crossing her arms. If her tail wasn’t tucked inside of her pants, I’d imagine it would have lifted up in frustration. “When was the last time I did that Reika?”
“Remember that creepy as fuck occult bookstore?”
“Yeah and?”
“You tried to steal that book! What was it called? Fae of the Lux or something—”
My lips stopped working, though my finger was still jammed in Emily’s face. I realized something critical. She did too, judging by the wide-eyed look she gave me, which looked a hell of a lot like the one I had.
“That book,” Emily said slowly.
I gave her a nod. “Holy fuck.”
“Maybe I should have yoinked it?”
Memories of that book flashed in my head when we discovered it with our last major case. Emily wanted to seal it, and just like the flowers she tried to pick up, I knocked it from her hands. Given what we’ve gone through recently, maybe having her steal it wouldn’t have been that bad of an idea. The book wasn’t just any old one, it was a summoning tome, one full of ancient knowledge, and it might give us some helpful clues.
Thinking back to it, that book did have weird energy coming from it. Probably Lux energy, just we didn’t know what it was at the time.
I reached into my trench coat pocket, pulling out my phone, and dialing the number of our local demonic summoner.
“Hey, Belyana, it’s me, Reika, you free?”
“Is that a new number?” Belyana said with that luscious Russian accent of hers.
“Yeah, I ruined the last phone. Hey, listen, I wanna check out that bookstore again.”
“I’m at work right now,” she said. “I’m free to go after I’m done, however.”
“Lit.”
That was one important call made, time for the next. I dialed a new number.
“Yo, Charles, let me know when you’re off,” I said before he had the chance to say hello.
“Sure thing, what’s up?”
“Gonna hook you up on another date buddy.”
“Uh, Reika, remember what happened the last time we tried that?”
“Don’t worry,” I said with a devious smirk. “She’s not possessed anymore.”
After that, I gave the heads up to Gabe on what we found, and the fact that the flowers had been shipped to Central Park. It was up to his people to do the rest and remove the last ones still remaining in the greenhouse.
Emily and I had some time to kill before Belyana and Charles were free. I took the time to retrieve my back up pictures off the cloud, searching for the recent pictures I snapped of the clipboard we found in the greenhouse, the first time we entered. We never did get back to whom and where the online-ordered flowers went to.
There were a lot of names and addresses to look up when the image appeared on my phone. Ended up killing that time by heading back to our office, firing up my laptop, and conducted a lengthy search. A steaming mug of coffee was my drink of choice, with some rum poured in it for an extra kick.
A map of the city was pinned to the wall next to my desk. I spent hours gazing at it, making red marks on it with a marker, the location of the addresses the flowers were sent. From there, the greenhouse and Central Park were all circled, as with the docks. I was looking at a giant puzzle board, one that won’t solve itself no matter how many hours I spent looking at it.
There was nothing special about the location of the homes, and after consulting with Google Maps, confirmed that they were places of residence and not some shady warehouse. Legit people lived there and ordered the flowers, ‘cause reasons. They did it online at the same time, and at least one of them was in the FBI.
A news brief played on the TV behind me. More people had been reported missing on top of the reported numbers from earlier this morning. The number kept increasing. The news went on to speak about a man named Gerald Luther, reported missing by his wife.
Gerald Luther.
I returned to my list of names found on the greenhouse’s clipboard. Guess who placed an order for flowers to be delivered to their home? Gerald Luther if you weren’t keeping up.
A deeper search of the names all turned up similar recently reported news articles online, regarding the wave of missing people in the city. Turns out, every name on that list was people that were reported missing recently. People ordered flowers onli
ne, not just any flowers, ones created by Lux talents, the magic of the fae. And then, they vanished when the delivery arrives, except that FBI guy, unless his situation changed recently.
Still doesn’t answer why the orders were placed at the exact same time. Of course not, those orders probably weren’t placed by the people that vanished. Someone in the greenhouse forced the flowers into those homes and had that clipboard doctored to make it look like legit orders were placed online. Let’s not forget the delivery to the docks, nobody that worked at the docks ordered any flowers, the flowers were sent there for Giovanni’s deal with the Russians. The paperwork done was to make it look like an order, if anyone came asking questions as to where the stock went.
I sat back on my chair, staring up at the map of the city on the wall, my eyes zeroing in on the big red circle I put over Central Park. I placed a handwritten sticky note next to it, a reminder that most of the remaining stock of the Lux flowers, from the greenhouse, was shipped to Central Park.
I stood up and looked out the window. Central Park wasn’t far from our office. In fact, I could see the early autumn touched grass and trees blowing in the wind. Nothing looked strange, though, something told me it was a bit late in the year to be doing some landscaping in the park, don’t you agree? Going inside the park would reveal more. I went to make plans to do that, the ringtone of my new phone told me to put it on hold.
Charles and Belyana got back to me. They were ready to visit out the occult bookstore. Fuck me, I can’t be in two places at once, and sending Emily alone to check out Central Park might be risky if bad things were brewing there.
I shot Gabe a follow-up text as Emily got ready to leave with me. I gave him the heads up of what I learned. The flowers and missing person cases were connected. Here’s hoping Gabe and his team didn’t end up on that list when they investigate Central Park and the greenhouse nearby, because of the fae and their mysterious flowers.
Chapter Seventeen
Deception of the Demon Girl Page 9
