Once Darkness Falls (Preternatural Affairs #7)

by SM Reine

  “Med bay,” I said weakly. I swallowed hard. “We got attacked on our way into town.”

  “Is Fritz okay?” Isobel asked, twirling dark hair around her finger. She was still wearing all those beads and feathers and braids. I used to think they were meant to make her look like a Native American shaman, but then I’d learned they were magical augmentation to hide her scars.

  Even without the magic, she was hot beyond all reason.

  I knew. I’d licked every inch of her.

  I’ll take “things I shouldn’t think about my kopis’s fiancée” for two hundred, Alex.

  She was looking at me, waiting for an answer. She hadn’t asked if Fritz was okay in a rhetorical kind of way. “I’d be going crazy if he was dead,” I said, which was true. Being kopis and aspis wasn’t all fun and games. In fact, it kinda wasn’t fun and games at all.

  “Point taken.” She folded her arms across her ample breasts. And then she said the thing that I wanted to hear less than anything else in the world at that moment. “We need to talk, Cèsar.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ISOBEL TOOK ME TO the one place in a crowded Union warehouse that we’d be guaranteed privacy.

  Unfortunately, that happened to be the morgue. The room with all the refrigerators where they kept the bodies that were still squishy—not the obsidian ones.

  There was one table at the center of the dark room, which held a body draped in white cloth. I could only see the outline of a female body with distinct breasts and hips. She didn’t look like my type, but then again, she was dead. I preferred women warm, animated, and engaged to marry my best friends.

  “Should you be here?” I glanced around for cameras and didn’t see any, but I knew that they were everywhere. The Union didn’t mess around with surveillance, especially on home territory.

  “I’m here as a consultant in an official capacity,” Isobel said, crossing to the other side of the shrouded body on the table.

  “Why do they need you?” I asked.

  “Anyone who got bitten by an infected demon turned into stone. It diminished the amount of evidence you guys can collect from the bodies, so I’ve been summoning the souls of witnesses to talk with them.”

  “Then who’s this? A witness you need to chat with?” I gestured at the winner of the Miss Cold and Dead 2009 pageant.

  Isobel leaned on the side of the table. “I’m hoping she’ll be the solution to our problem.”

  I had no idea how some dead woman was going to fix the unlucky lust triangle I’d ended up in with Fritz and Isobel, but okay. “I’m listening.”

  “You’re going to tell Lucrezia de Angelis that this individual is responsible for the MOAD incident,” Isobel said.

  Oh. She didn’t mean the lust triangle.

  Furthermore, Fritz had told her why I was in Los Angeles. My hand slipped into the inner pocket of my jacket again, extracting the Steno pad. “Is she responsible for the MOAD incident?” I asked.

  “Kind of.”

  “I don’t think ‘kind of’ is going to satisfy Lucrezia, especially since this woman is already dead. The Union and the OPA need someone living to punish in order to be satisfied.”

  “This is a kopis, and yes, she’s dead. But her aspis survived,” Isobel said. “He vanished from Union custody earlier in the month. According to the Union’s feed, they haven’t found him, and I doubt they will. That will give Lucrezia someone to chase so that you can conclude the investigation quickly, and so that they’ll forget about you and me.”

  “Wait. She is a kopis?” Kopides were demon hunters—a class of human with supernatural strength, healing, reflexes, and the innate ability to sense the preternatural. You know, guys like Fritz. And they were all guys. Women couldn’t be kopides. Y-chromosome thing.

  “There is one woman kopis,” Isobel said. “Until this one died in the MOAD incident, there were two. The surviving one is on-site at the base. You can meet her if you like.” She rapped her fingernails on the edge of the table. “You can meet both of them if you pull the sheet back.”

  I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t curious to see what a female kopis looked like.

  But I’d also have been lying if I said I wanted to look at a dead body.

  I hate dead bodies.

  “I’m good,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “The benefit of blaming a dead woman is that she can’t dispute your accusation,” Isobel said. “It cleans up our problem perfectly.”

  “It’s nice you want to help me get out of Reno and all, but it’s not so urgent that I should go around blaming random people.”

  Isobel gave a disbelieving laugh. “Don’t you know what happened, Cèsar? You realize we’re in Reno again, right?”

  “No, the lobotomy took away my sense of orientation,” I said.

  “We left Ann here.”

  Ann Friedman was a teenage necromancer who used to work in Helltown’s Temple of the Hand of Death. Isobel and I had done a good deed by getting the kid out of Helltown, away from demons, and into the University of Nevada, Reno.

  I must have had what Suzy called “that stupid idiot moron look” on my face, because Isobel’s tone went extremely patient. “I haven’t been able to contact her since the spring.”

  “She was, what, nineteen years old?” I asked. “I bet she dropped out of college and didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Lucrezia de Angelis will be here at the end of the month. If you don’t have a culprit for her by the time she arrives, she’ll use one of her own investigators—someone who isn’t as nice as you are. They’ll figure out that we were here most recently. And we’ll be connected to Ann.”

  “Who cares if we get connected to Ann? It’s not like she’s the one who killed all these people.”

  Isobel gnawed on the inside of her mouth. She didn’t meet my eyes.

  “She didn’t kill all these people, did she?” I asked.

  “There was a lot of infernal activity last spring, around the time that Ann disappeared. I don’t know what happened,” Isobel said.

  “That was in the spring. It’s winter now. That big time gap there means it’ll be a big stretch to decide you and I are responsible for everything that has happened.”

  “Do you think it will be big enough for Lucrezia?” She braced both arms on the table, letting her head hang. She sighed. “Do you want to know what Lucrezia will do if she gets her hands on me?”

  “I’d like to imagine it will involve bikinis and a kiddie pool filled with Jell-O.”

  She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. I liked Isobel for many of the same reasons I liked Malcolm. No matter how stupid my jokes got, she thought they were funny.

  Isobel looked way better naked, though.

  “God, Cèsar. I’ve missed you,” Isobel said.

  My throat felt all thick all of a sudden. “Yeah. Same.”

  We hadn’t talked in a long damn time. To be fair, we’d never exactly been best friends. Suzy and I spent many a Friday night cracking open beers—all of which she drank while I remained steadfastly sober—but Isobel had never been like that. She was elusive.

  The moments we’d been together were like the Fourth of July, all filled with fireworks and explosions. Might not have been something I got every day, but it sure was fucking special.

  Isobel came around the table. It was hard to ignore the swaying motions of her hips, the gentle clack of beads in her hair, the way she smelled—Jesus, that smell, like buckskin and perfume and all kinds of delicious womanly things.

  Don’t look at her tits, Hawke.

  I looked, of course.

  Isobel rested her hand on my arm. “The souls of the dead scream to me. This base froths with constant fury. Foul magic taints the air. There will be vengeance for what happened, things will get ugly, and we want to be out of here as quickly as possible so that we can get on with our lives.”

  “The wedding, you mean,” I said.

  Isobel’s smile faded. “Did he ask you?”
/>   “He asked.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t you think it’d be a little weird showing up at the wedding of a zombie I screwed?”

  “Not if you’re the zombie’s groom’s aspis and best friend.” Isobel reached up to pet my cheek. She had to reach high. I’m tall as hell, and instinct had me leaning far, far away.

  “Don’t do that, Izzy,” I said.

  She handed me a folder. “I hope you’ll tidy things up here so that there’s a wedding in the first place. It’s hard to get married after you’ve visited the guillotine.”

  Isobel walked away, and I couldn’t help it. I turned to watch her go.

  What’s the saying? Hate to see you go, love to watch you leave?

  Her skirt stretched over her ass in just the right ways, like lycra over bowling balls. Bowling balls filled with Jell-O. Or something like that. I couldn’t think of a better metaphor.

  Only when the door swung shut did I look down at the folder. The case number on the tab matched that of the MOAD incident. I flipped it open to find a picture of the woman kopis pinned on top.

  As I’d suspected, she wasn’t my type. Kinda masculine features. Redhead too—redheads were sure to be trouble.

  A few other supplementary images were included. Photos of a couple swords, a gold ring, and the seal of St. Benedict. No idea why that would have been included with the other photographs.

  I skimmed the notes. There was nothing real endearing in the information. The woman kopis had been an accountant, alumni of University of Nevada, single, no kids.

  Who cared if I told Lucrezia that the MOAD incident was this woman’s fault?

  Isobel was right about one thing: pinning it all on some dead person would end the investigation fast. I could get out of Reno, away from the demons, away from the lovebirds rubbing it in my fucking face.

  Had it been only the dead woman, I might have found that tempting…except for three things.

  First of all, she had an aspis somewhere. Even if he had escaped Union custody, we were really good at finding people.

  Second of all, if someone in the Union really was responsible for violating the Treaty of Dis, they’d walk free. The refrigerators were filled with a hell of a lot of bodies.

  Someone needed to pay for what had happened to Reno, and I was sure as shit gonna make sure it was the asshole who deserved retribution.

  Finally, there was that issue with our missing necromancer, Ann.

  What if she had caused the MOAD incident?

  Lucrezia wouldn’t have to stretch far to link me to her. I had put Ann in Reno. I’d relocated a death witch known to be mentally unhinged, hoping that she’d make a life for herself.

  I hoped it was a coincidence that the world had ended six months after Ann vanished.

  But if it wasn’t a coincidence…well, I didn’t want to wait for Lucrezia to find out.

  If I was the asshole who deserved retribution, I needed to know.

  The last thing I wanted to do was head back into town. But Ann wasn’t going to find herself. If a visit to Reno was necessary to clear my name—well, Reno couldn’t be any worse than Helltown.

  And if I could take a whole fucking tank with me on my visit to Reno, it would be a lot better than Helltown.

  Tank, a few guns, some hexes from the supply closet.

  The pickings in the supply closet were slim. Not a big surprise there. I got a few other premade spells—couple illusion charms that would make me harder to spot, some splattery potions to divert the attention of demons. Nothing I couldn’t have made on my own with enough time. I’d have expected better from the Union warehouse, especially since creeping up on it had given me such an allergy attack.

  Whoever was working such powerful magic on the base wasn’t sharing her techniques.

  No big deal. I didn’t plan on going into combat in Reno.

  Of course, I never did.

  That’s why I grabbed a Beretta, too. It was a little small for my hands, but I was more comfortable with it than a machine gun.

  I found my way back to the garage with a few detours. The warehouse was a maze. Like everything in a bureaucracy, the rooms were duplicated a million times. I must have walked through six armories to get back to the garage. Six armories. The Union wasn’t joking around about being the military arm of the OPA.

  When I entered, a woman stepped into my path to stop me. “Going somewhere?” She was a squash-faced witch with brick-red hair, continuing to prove that redheads were not my type.

  “Who do I see about the motor pool?” I asked.

  “You see me.” She said that so flatly, I had to think she had a grudge against me.

  I looked her over a second time. There was no way I would have hit on someone like her. But this witch looked like she loathed me, and I couldn’t remember if I’d ever given her a reason.

  “Do we know each other?” I asked.

  “Reno,” she said. “Last year.”

  Now I remembered. This angry orangutan of a witch had been in town investigating the Apple at the same time I had.

  Still couldn’t figure out why she was pissed at me. We hadn’t interacted much.

  “Could I get a car?” I ventured.

  “No,” she said.

  That was it: flat refusal with no details, nothing to negotiate, no chance to discuss.

  I squared my shoulders, stood up tall. Like I’ve said, I’m real tall. A good foot taller than the squash-faced witch. “Run it up to Director Friederling. I’m an aspis, and I need transportation.”

  “No,” she said again.

  I was just starting to wonder if I could use a splatter-bomb to distract her when I heard my name called.

  “Oi! Hawke!” It was Malcolm. He jogged over to join us.

  If the witch looked at me like I smelled bad, she looked at Malcolm more like he’d run over her dog with his tank.

  “Having trouble, Allyson?” Malcolm asked.

  The witch didn’t budge an inch. “Not at all, sir.”

  “I’m trying to get transportation for the investigation,” I said.

  “Investigation! In such a hurry all the bloody time. Gary says you haven’t even hit him up to see your bedroom,” Malcolm said. “You need some time off once in a while. Fancy a drink?”

  “Hell yes.” I didn’t do alcohol, but I was already missing the meet-ups at my office’s favorite bar. And the hot wings. Mostly the hot wings.

  “Great, hop in the car,” Malcolm said. “See you, Allyson.”

  She didn’t move. Didn’t respond.

  We were lucky she didn’t shoot us in the back when we walked away.

  Malcolm loped a row of vehicles over and climbed into a BearCat.

  “Where are we going for a drink, Syria?” I hung back by one of the Union-black pickups.

  “Even better,” Malcolm said with another of those blinks I assumed was meant to be a wink.

  We were going into Reno.

  My feelings on that were mixed. I’d been wanting to go to Reno, but not with Malcolm. Not for drinks. How was I supposed to secretly track down Ann if I had the commander following me around? Even a cool commander was still a commander. “Never mind,” I said. “Changed my mind.”

  He opened the door. “Don’t be a pussy, Hawke. Get in the car.” There was an edge to his voice I didn’t usually hear from him.

  This wasn’t an invitation from easy-going Malcolm Gallagher, the one-eyed alcoholic. This was an order from Commander Gallagher, leader of a Union unit.

  “All right,” I said.

  And so I got in the tank and we headed downtown.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHEN BELLAMY HAD TOLD me that Malcolm had been making false reports, I hadn’t thought much of it. Of all the impressions I’d gotten from my short time working with Malcolm, crazy wasn’t one of them. Not clinically crazy. Wild? Yes. Delusional? No.

  In the enclosed space of the BearCat, I could smell the liquor on Malcolm. He’d been knocking drinks back r
ecently.

  I watched him out of the corner of my eye as we headed back in. He drove badly when drunk.

  Good thing my seat in the BearCat had a five-point harness. I’d need it if he flipped us off the freeway.

  “Going somewhere good?” I asked.

  “Only one place to go in Reno when you want drinks these days,” he said.

  Had his words been slurring so much when he’d picked us up out of town?

  “Get a status update on the people in the med bay?” I asked, easing the Steno pad out of my pocket. I clicked the end of my pen. I’d taken a few notes on the woman kopis, just to help me remember later, so I wrote Malcolm’s name on top of the next page.

  “Your friends are fine.” Malcolm waved me off. Without both hands on the wheel, the slow, trundling assault vehicle drifted. “Everyone’s fucking fine.”

  I put the time, date, and noted his degree of inebriation. “You know that I’m here to collect information for Lucrezia de Angelis, right?” I hoped that dropping her name would make him sober up in a heartbeat. It would have worked for me.

  “Lucrezia de Angel-tits,” he said, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. He was drooling.

  “I’m not going to include that name in my report.”

  Malcolm laughed. “We haven’t fucked. I’m not her type. She likes them richer and more German-looking, like your kopis. And I like them more dangerous.”

  “There aren’t a lot of people more dangerous than Lucrezia de Angelis.”

  “I don’t send Little Malcolm pear-diving in any clams unless the owner can beat me at arm wrestling,” he said.

  That was a horrible visual. “Your relationship with her doesn’t matter. I just want you to know that she’s going to expect a comprehensive report when she arrives, and I might have to include anything I witness.”

  “You’re trying to warn me. How sweet. Nicest lad in Los Angeles, Agent Cèsar Hawke. You deserve better than the Office of Preternatural Affairs, you do.”

  “You were in town when everything happened,” I said. “What can you tell me about the Union involvement?”