Stormfront (The Storm Chronicles Book 9)

by Skye Knizley

  Storm folded his kerchief. “It’s stupid when my kid almost gets herself killed. It’s heroic when I do it.”

  Raven shook her head and turned back to the car. “It didn’t look heroic.”

  “It didn’t?”

  She couldn’t help it. “Indiana Jones you aren’t, Pops.”

  “Who is Indiana Jones?”

  “Something to look forward to,” Raven replied.

  She leaned against the car and tested her arm. The bone was healing, but she would need Claret or something to eat if this kept up.

  “Are you okay?” Storm asked, looking at the scratches on her face.

  “Just scratches, they will heal. What about the lycans?” Raven asked.

  Storm glanced at the mess behind him. “I’ll call Serafino, Archer’s cops can deal with it. We still have another stop to make.”

  “Fine, let’s get back on the road. Where are we going, anyway?”

  Storm moved to the car’s door and pulled it open. “The docks. The address is probably a warehouse, I want to see what Lash was picking up and why.”

  Raven settled into the car and checked the scratches on her face and chest. “I can hardly wait. Can we stop? My jacket got turned into Swiss cheese.”

  Storm sighed. “Between the two of us, we’re keeping Woolworth’s in business.”

  Cross Haven Shipping, Chicago, IL 1943

  Cross Haven shipping sat on the windward side of the Calumet River. The building was wide and squat, hiding a small fleet of ships that plied the lake and carried goods across to Canada. A handful of cheap automobiles were parked in the lot in front of the building. In the next lot, a sort of makeshift dry dock, some kind of Navy patrol boat was being worked on, sparks were flying from somewhere on the opposite side of her grey-green painted hull while two men in Navy uniforms looked on and shared a coffee as if they expected to be back on patrol in a matter of minutes.

  “Let me do the talking,” Storm said as they entered. “People aren’t used to women who−”

  “Can talk for themselves and don’t need men to open the door?”

  Storm stopped. “Can you just try to play nice? In this age, women defer to men. It’s nothing personal, it’s just how it is.”

  Raven cocked her head. “I always play nice, even with thugs trying to kill me.”

  Storm yanked the door open. “Tell that to the headless lycan on Michigan Avenue.”

  “That one wasn’t my fault, he was hit by a truck and was wearing silver. Besides, you’re the one who beheaded a werewolf on Michigan Avenue in broad daylight.”

  The inside of the warehouse was almost as spartan as the exterior. The lobby was small, with a pair of blue-print chairs, whitewashed walls and a low counter covered by copies of the Daily Telegraph. An older man in overalls and a white long-sleeved shirt appeared from somewhere in the room and moved some of the paper off the counter.

  “Sorry about that, we don’t get many customers off the street. What can I do you for? Got shipping to Canada? I have a ship going out in an hour,” he said. “We’re doing a special this week.”

  Storm held up his badge. “Detective Mack Mason, this is my partner, Miss Storm−”

  “Agent Storm,” Raven said.

  Storm closed his eyes and Raven could tell he wanted to say something else. “Agent, sorry, Storm. Are you holding a package for Mr. Napoleon Lash?”

  The man shook his head. “It doesn’t sound familiar, any idea what it looks like?”

  “You have a manifest, why not check?” Storm asked.

  The clerk shrugged and limped away. Raven peered around the corner and saw him rummaging on a desk that looked like the inside of Levac’s coat pockets. She hadn’t seen so many chocolate bar wrappers anywhere else.

  “Behave yourself, Raven,” Storm said, sotto voice.

  “I’m on my best behavior, this is weird to me!” Raven snapped.

  The clerk carried a manifest book back to the counter. “I’ll be damned. Napoleon Lash, right here in black and white. He was due to pick it up last night.”

  “Can we see the package, please?” Storm asked.

  The clerk closed his book. “Why isn’t Mr. Lash picking it up?”

  “Mr. Lash is dead,” Raven said. “Where’s the package?”

  “Missing.”

  “Missing? Define missing,” Storm said.

  The clerk looked embarrassed. “We had a break-in sometime during the night. It looks like the only thing taken was Mr. Lash’s delivery.”

  “Then why the act? Why not just tell us?” Raven asked.

  “I was hoping you would go away until we find out what happened,” the clerk said.

  “What’s your name?” Storm asked.

  “Francis. Francis Levac,” the clerk said. “I’m not in trouble, am I?”

  Raven couldn’t hide her smile. “Levac. You have a son named Rupert?”

  Francis smiled back. “Yes, he’s six-months-old. How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess. Can we see where the package was? Maybe we can help,” Raven said.

  Levac shrugged. “Not sure what you can do, but come on back.”

  He unlocked the door and Raven followed him with Storm beside her. He leaned close and asked, “You know his son?”

  “No, his grandson. Rupert is my partner’s father,” Raven said.

  “Your partner is Rupert junior?”

  “Technically,” Raven said. “Senior died when my Rupert was six.”

  “Your temporal anomalies are much stranger than mine,” Storm said.

  Raven stopped and grabbed his arm. “This has happened to you?”

  Storm shrugged. “I told you it wasn’t my first rodeo.”

  “How did you get home?”

  “The long way around, just like you. Come on,” Storm said.

  The warehouse was larger than it looked from the outside. The floor in the center was dug down and open to the river to allow small vessels to enter and be offloaded during any kind of weather. Two vessels were currently in the bay, one being unloaded. The other was riding high and appeared to be empty.

  Raven looked out at the river and shook her head. “This design wins the bloody stupid award for the year. You may as well have put out a revolving door and welcome mat.”

  Levac indicated a door on the other side of the bay. “Cargo is stored in there, nothing is left on the bay floor at night…”

  Storm jerked a thumb at a selection of storage drums not far away. “Unless it happens to be too big or heavy to move. What about Lash’s parcel?”

  Levac turned. “Look, this is the first time anything ever went missing, we have a night crew that guards the place, it’s secure!”

  “When do they come in? I want to talk to them,” Storm said.

  “Jimmy and Clyde will be in at six, Harry, well he’s down at Sisters of Mercy. He was beaten pretty bad,” Levac said.

  “Show me where this happened,” Raven said.

  Levac led the way between the two ships and stopped near a collection of oil drums and cables. Blood stained the concrete and wood dock and formed the outline of a large box. Raven could see that old tires lined the dock and a rusting old ladder bolted to the concrete led down to the water. It would have been child’s play for an experienced swimmer to climb up unobserved.

  “It was here, a crate about six feet long by two feet wide. It was too big and heavy for one man to carry, my boys think they brought a boat in around midnight and Harry caught them in the act,” Levac said.

  Raven squatted beside the blood. It was human without a hint of preternatural, which meant Harry was close to bleeding out before anyone found him. To the side of the outline was a bloody footprint. It looked as if some effort had been made to scrub it away; blood was notoriously hard to clean out of porous concrete.


  “Did you call the police?” Storm asked.

  Levac looked away. “Down here? Detective have you ever worked the docks? Police don’t come down here, they’re spread thin as it is. I’ll go down and make a report, but nothing will come of it.”

  “Does this print belong to one of your boys?” Raven asked.

  Levac shrugged. “I don’t think so, they took Harry to the hospital soon as they found him. You can ask when they come in.”

  Raven wished, for the hundredth time, she had her crime scene kit. “Can I get a ruler or tape measure or something?”

  Levac rummaged in a nearby tool box and handed Raven a well-used metal rule. “Here, yeah. Why?”

  “You can tell a lot about a man from his shoe size.”

  Raven placed the ruler alongside the imprint. “Based on this we are looking for someone with a size eleven, maybe eleven and a half boot. I don’t suppose you know what size your men wear?”

  Levac made a face that said, ‘Why would I know that?’

  “I thought not,” Raven said.

  Storm joined her. “That isn’t all, Raven. See this pattern?”

  He was pointing at the strange octagonal impressions that filled the sole of the print.

  “I’m not up on 40s men’s footwear, what am I looking at?” Raven asked.

  “The tread pattern of a size eleven boot made in Germany. That’s a German military boot.”

  Levac’s face darkened and he spat on the dock. “None of my boys would wear anything made by Krauts.”

  “I doubt most Americans would,” Storm said. “We stopped importing anything years ago.”

  Raven straightened. “More Nazis?”

  “Probably. Thank you for your time, Mr. Levac. One more thing, do you have any idea what was in the crate or where it came from?”

  “Jamaica. It came in on an old sailing vessel until it reached New York, then a Canadian shipper brought it to my boys. No idea what’s in it, though. The label said ‘valuables’, but that could mean anything,” Levac said. “It sounded like there was another container in the box, if that helps at all.”

  “Not really,” Raven said. “Needle, meet haystack.”

  Levac looked crestfallen. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Raven squeezed his arm. “Sorry, I’m just a little upset about the case. Thank you for your time.”

  Outside, she again noticed the PT boat next door. It was still under repair, the crewmen had commandeered a pair of chairs and were playing cards over an empty fuel drum while the repairman’s tools showered the dock with sparks.

  “I thought you liked girls,” Storm said, following her gaze.

  “I like both, but that isn’t what I see.”

  Raven approached the two men with her best smile in place. The one facing her smiled and poked his friend who turned and whistled appreciatively. They were both clean-shaven, wearing blue dungaree uniforms. Their white caps sat on the drum beside their cards. The way they spoke, Raven didn’t peg them as the shiniest apples. But sometimes not-so-bright was a good thing.

  “Can we help you, Miss?”

  Raven cringed inwardly. “I hope so. What happened to your boat?”

  “What, old Jinxie?”

  No, the other boat under repair, Raven thought.

  She kept her smile in place. “Yes, she looks pretty bad, can she get back into the fight?”

  Now she could see the far side, it was clear the boat had hit something at high speed. There was a gash in the hull just at the water line, just wide enough to take on water. The repair crew was hammering it into place and welding it shut, but it looked like slow going.

  “It’s not her first scar,” the other sailor piped up. “She’ll be right as rain in a few hours.”

  “What happened to her, though? Were you on patrol last night?”

  The first nodded. “Every night like clockwork. We were chasing a light on the lake when we hit something in the water. We searched for it with the spot, but couldn’t stay long.”

  Can you vague that up for me? “Was it a rock or something?”

  The second sailor shook his head. “Not out there, we weren’t that far from the docks. I’m thinking a piece of hull from that Nazi sub they sank a few months ago. Pieces come up every now and then.”

  “Would have to be a big piece,” the first sailor scoffed.

  “It could have been,” the second one snapped.

  The conversation devolved into speculation about what they’d hit. Raven watched them for a few moments before rejoining Storm, who was leaning against his car enjoying a cigarette and a cola from the machine outside the warehouse.

  “Did those two say anything useful?” he asked.

  Raven looked back. “I’m not sure. They said they hit something in the lake not too far from the docks.”

  Storm flicked away his cigarette. “I know that look, I’ve seen it on my own face. What are you thinking?”

  “They said there was a U-boat sunk on the lake, right?”

  “One in the Great War, another a few weeks ago. Listening posts still have no idea how they pulled that one off,” Storm said.

  “They probably never will. There is no record of a sub or subs sunk on the lake. But what if there was another one?”

  Storm made a face. “I wouldn’t be surprised after what we’ve seen, but what would Nazis want with an antiques dealer’s junk?”

  Raven took the bottle and drank that last sip of Storm’s cola. “I don’t know yet, but my gut tells me it’s all connected.”

  She sighed and leaned against the car. “I wish Rupert was here.”

  “Then you’d both be stuck, and he’s human, right?”

  “Technically he’s my familiar. He’s also the brains of our partnership. I’m good with my gut, but Rupe helps put it all together.”

  Storm looked offended. “What am I? Chopped liver? I was doing this before you were born.”

  Raven smiled. “You still are. But you’re my dad, not my partner.”

  “I’m not your dad, yet. For now, I’m your partner,” Storm said.

  Raven looked away again. “If you say so. We have a victim, burned from the inside out. We have the words Black Eon, vampires and lycans working with the Nazis and a missing box from Jamaica. Does any of that mean anything to you?”

  Storm scratched his cheek with two fingers. “Now you mention it, yes. Let’s go see Poole, I’ve got a hunch what was in the chest he bought.”

  “Are you going to share or wait until I develop psychic powers?” Raven asked.

  “Come on, I’ll tell you on the way.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Evanston, Chicago, IL, 1943

  The Packard cruised easily through afternoon traffic, which was lighter, but more confusing than what Raven was used to seeing. The only thing she could compare it to was the semester she spent in India, where traffic laws seemed to be merely a suggestion. It would be another decade before traffic lights were installed at many of the most dangerous intersections.

  Storm talked as he drove. “That name you gave last night, Gartside? It’s been rattling around in my head since you mentioned it, the missing crate from Jamaica jogged a memory loose.”

  “You know the name, then?” Raven asked.

  Storm fumbled for another cigarette. “It’s familiar, yes. I was wrong when I said I hadn’t heard it before. There was a pirate called Two-Fingers that plied the Caribbean toward the end of the pirate era. I believe his name was Gartside, his ship went down with all hands, or so we were told.”

  “You think the chest was pirate treasure? That seems a little far-fetched.”

  “I’m an immortal, you’re a half-vampire. Say that again with a straight face,” Storm said.

  Raven smiled. “Yeah, okay, point taken. But if it was pirate tr
easure, what do the Nazis want with it?”

  Storm lit his cigarette. “That’s the real question, Ray. It’s our job to find out.”

  “Ray…that’s what my friends call me.”

  “It’s a good nickname. Not exactly feminine, but neither are you.”

  Raven rolled her eyes and watched the city go by. “Not this shit again−”

  “See? Cursing. Since when do women curse?” Storm asked.

  “Since we started burning our bras.”

  Storm gave her side eye. “Do I even want to know?”

  Raven snorted. “Probably not. In mom’s case she torched a corset, but the symbolism was the same. Word is, she danced naked on the coals.”

  “I really can’t wait to meet this mother of yours.”

  Randolph Pool lived on the end of a cul-de-sac in a Victorian house painted in somber greys and blues. If there had been a rusting iron fence the Addams’ could have moved right into the sad, dilapidated looking building. A black Chevrolet was parked in the driveway next to a green bicycle and some sort of camping trailer Raven couldn’t identify. Storm parked on the street and Raven led the way through the wooden gate to the front door. She knocked and put on her best smile for whoever answered.

  A very short, middle-aged man with receding hair and narrow little glasses on his round face opened the door. He smelled of pipe tobacco, and Raven assumed he wasn’t very good at his habit because his brown tweed jacket was scorched in several places by pipe ash.

  He looked Raven up and down and then back up. “Can I help you, uh…Miss?”

  Storm flashed his badge. “Detectives Mason and Storm. Can we ask you a few questions?”

  The little man squinted at Storm. “What about?”

  “A wooden chest you bought from Napoleon Lash yesterday. What can you tell us about it?” Raven asked.

  “What chest?”

  Raven sighed and leaned against the wall. “Is that really the way you want to play it? I mean, does my partner look like a patient man?”

  On cue, Storm glowered and Poole blanched.

  “Oh, that chest, yes of course, do come in,” he said.

  The inside of the house was as somber and boring as the outside. Bare wood floors, beige walls, dark paneling, it was like walking through Poe’s imagination. The only decoration was a series of paintings depicting a forest and a series of caves near the seaside. They were done with great care and hung in neat, expensive frames.