City of Secrets (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 5)

by Sonya Bateman

  “I hear them in my head.” Except they did talk, when I was doing it the right way.

  That was something I’d make sure Gilmore and Frost never found out.

  I wasn’t about to touch that awful hole where his chest should’ve been, so I pressed a palm to his forehead. “Hey. Redfield,” I said roughly, not interested in being polite to the man who’d sent the Valentines back into my life. “Got some questions for you.”

  The familiar tugging in my head brought familiar pain. Then struggle. Finally, a voice said, DeathSpeaker. This is not how I planned to interrogate you.

  “Yeah, well, you’re dead. And I’m the one doing the interrogating.” I hated Special Agent Redfield already. “When’s your birthday?”

  September fourteenth. He answered immediately, with surprise in his tone. How are you doing that? We knew you were powerful, but … I can feel your influence. And I’m dead.

  “Never mind.” I wouldn’t explain how this worked with a couple of agents who could still exploit the information hanging around. “It’s September fourteenth,” I said to Frost, whose expression didn’t change. “What’s your badge number, Redfield?”

  This time he struggled, sending lances of pain through my head before he spit out, Eight-two-one-two-nine. How are you DOING that?

  I ignored him and looked at Frost. “Eight-two-one-two-nine.”

  She reacted with a snarl and a curled lip. “You could’ve looked up that information.”

  “Really. You mean while I was locked in the back of your car, or while I was locked in the conference room?” I said. “And when did I get clearance to access FBI personnel data?”

  “I still don’t believe you.”

  “And I don’t give a damn what you think.” I concentrated on Redfield again. “All right, you bastard. Who killed you?”

  A leopard.

  “Huh-what?” I said with a startled blink. I knew the dead couldn’t lie to me, but that sounded insane. There weren’t any leopards in New York. And even if there were, no big cat could’ve done that to even one person — let alone a dozen or more. Thanks to the Valentines dragging me all over creation on hunts, I’d seen plenty of kills from similar species. Mountain lions out west, jaguars down in Mexico. Not even tigers had the strength or dexterity for that kind of damage, and big cats sure as hell didn’t drain all the blood from their kills. They just weren’t capable of this.

  I must’ve heard him wrong. “Who killed you?” I repeated.

  A leopard! He screamed it this time, and it felt like a barbed hook tearing across my brain. It was a leopard! Or a fucking mountain lion, a hyena, a wolf, goddamn spotted tiger, I don’t fucking know! Huge bastard, big as a damned horse, gold eyes, bushy tail. Fur and claws and teeth. Bunch of half-naked crazy men in war paint following it around. A goddamn leopard in the graveyard, the thing was hunting me—

  “Shut up,” I gasped, staggering in place. My nose had started to bleed, and my head throbbed like someone was using it for a drum from the inside. This wasn’t going to work much longer. But I’d thought of a question I wanted answered before I had to break it off. “What were you doing there?”

  Trying to get the files in the church basement. Every word was a fresh spike of pain. Find out what freak of nature killed my dogs. And then it killed me.

  “Your dogs,” I repeated sourly. Suddenly I wondered why Orville hadn’t murdered this asshole outright. I’d seen him shoot people in cold blood, just for looking at him wrong, and Redfield obviously couldn’t hold back his contempt. “Did you find anything?”

  Never made it inside. Got ripped open by a goddamn leopard. He laughed, and the sound sliced at me, sending a hot gush of blood from my nose. I hope it finds you, DeathSpeaker, he said. I hope that beast guts you and plays with your intestines while you’re still alive. I hope you die screaming—

  I yanked my hand away before he could finish shredding my brain. “Son of a bitch,” I panted, trying to stem the crimson tide with a hand. “Little help, here?”

  Agent Gilmore, who’d been staring in horror, shook himself and walked away briskly. Frost said nothing until her partner came back with a small stack of folded hand towels. As I pressed one of them to my nose, she gave me a dry look. “So what did the corpse say, DeathSpeaker?” she drawled.

  “I’m fine, thanks.” Glaring at her, I wiped off as much of the blood as I could. “Oh … and he says a leopard killed him.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “A leopard.” Frost managed to make it sound like I’d just announced the man had been torn apart by a roving gang of marshmallows. “Are you happy now, Gilmore?” she said. “I told you, this is a waste of time. He’s full of shit.”

  “Hey, that’s what the dead guy said.” I held a fresh towel to my nose, trying to stem the last of the bleeding. “He wasn’t entirely sure. Could’ve been a puma or a hyena or a wolf or a spotted tiger. Probably not that last one. Something with fur and claws and teeth, he was sure about that much.”

  “There is no way a leopard could’ve—”

  “I know, goddamn it!” Shouting made my aching head worse, so I forced myself to throttle it back. “But the dead can’t lie to me,” I said. “Whatever it was, ‘leopard’ was the most sense he could make out of it.”

  I probably shouldn’t have told them even that much. Right now, my working theory was were-leopard, if such a thing existed. I’d have to ask Sadie if she’d ever heard of anything like that. Of course, the theory didn’t account for the ‘big as a horse’ part, or the half-naked guys with war paint. Hell, the whole thing was so crazy, I started to wonder if Agent Redfield had dropped a little acid before he went to the cemetery.

  “So, you’re saying our killer is a leopard,” Agent Gilmore said slowly.

  “I’m saying that’s what Redfield told me.” I looked around, spotted a small pedal-operated trash can near the head of the table, and dropped the bloody towels into it. “You wanted me to ask who killed him, and I did. That was the agreement,” I said. “So now I’m out of here.”

  I expected Frost to protest, and I wasn’t wrong. “Hold on a minute, Mr. Black,” she said. “That’s not all you asked him. You asked if he found anything. What did he say?”

  “Why should I tell you? I’m full of shit, remember? You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Fine,” I said. “He didn’t find anything, on account of being dead before he could look.”

  She snorted. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “No. I don’t.” Christ, this woman was exhausting. And predictable. “I did what I said, and I’m leaving now. I’ll show myself out.”

  “Gilmore, stop him.”

  The sheer fury in her voice left me cold. If words were physical, hers would’ve sliced me into a hundred pieces. And somehow I knew her rage didn’t have anything to do with Agent Redfield. I was right before — she had something personal against me.

  I would’ve put them both to sleep if Gilmore so much as twitched in a threatening way. But he only looked at Frost with something like sympathy, and then shook his head.

  “Damn it, I want him detained!” In a single, fast move, Frost pulled a gun. A standard SIG P226, not likely to contain anything more than jacketed lead. Her hands shook slightly as she pointed it at me.

  That last observation kept me from immediately throwing a spell at her. She wasn’t going to shoot.

  And she was absolutely furious about it.

  I raised my hands anyway, hoping it would calm her down a little. “You know, the NYPD has this thing called conflict of interest,” I said. “That means if you have a personal stake in a case—”

  “I know what it means, Mr. Black,” she ground out. “And I guarantee you have no idea what you’re talking about. You want to make this personal? Let’s talk about how you didn’t exist until you were sixteen years old and placed in foster care with Lou and Gina Bosco, by one Detective Abraham Strauss. Now a captain.”

  My gut wrenched.
“What about them?”

  “You’re a non-person, Mr. Black, and a danger to the innocent people around you,” she said. “And you have no legal standing. Your existence is thin as paper. I could make it extremely difficult, even impossible, for you to show your face in public.” She leered at me, and added, “I could make sure you never see them again.”

  If I wasn’t the decent sort, I would’ve crushed her right then. “You even think about touching them, and I will end you. Special agent or not. Understand?”

  Frost gave a hollow laugh. “You see, Knox? He’s a monster. Kill first, ask questions later.” She lowered the gun, but didn’t holster it. “I have no interest in Captain Strauss, or the Boscos. But you, I’ll be watching,” she said. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Black.”

  “No, you damned well won’t. I’m through cooperating with you,” I said. “I should’ve known you’d try to hold the people I care about over my head. That’s what Milus Dei does. Every. Single. Time.” I spun and headed for the door, then called over my shoulder, “Go ahead and shoot me in the back, if you feel like it. You people are good at that.”

  Neither of them said a word as I walked out of the room. But I knew Special Agent Frost wasn’t done with me yet.

  From now on, we’d all have to watch our backs.

  CHAPTER 7

  I finally got back to the Castle around fuck-me-o’clock. I’d had to take a cab back to the cemetery to get my van. On the way I’d called Abe to let him know I was a pissed-off free man, and to ask if we could have lunch tomorrow at the usual place. Well, today.

  Couldn’t tell him that his phone was bugged over the phone. That would kind of defeat the purpose of the warning.

  In the lobby, the official Castle guardian stood behind the desk, still wearing the Santa hat that Sadie gave him for Christmas. “Hey, Grygg,” I said as I walked past. “Looking festive, man.” Golems didn’t do change too quickly. I’d be surprised if he took the hat off before spring.

  “Thank you,” Grygg rumbled. “You also have … red.”

  I stopped halfway to the parlor off the back. Damn, my nose was probably still bleeding a little. “Yeah, guess I do,” I said. Maybe I should carry handkerchiefs around like Abe, for all those unexpected conversations with corpses. “Thanks.”

  He grunted.

  While Grygg was in a talking mood, I decided to deliver the potential Frost warning. “So the NSA may or may not be looking for me, and there might be a leopard or some other giant, furry thing around here murdering people,” I said. “Try not to let any angry brunettes or oversized zoo animals in the door, okay?”

  Before Grygg could muster the syllables for a response, a tight voice behind me said, “I heard that.”

  “Oh. Hey, Taeral.” I turned to find him wearing his patented big-brother expression. The one that basically said oh good, you’re alive, because now I’m going to kill you. Sadie was just coming out of the parlor to join him. She must’ve missed everything but the look, since she only seemed worried. “I would’ve called, but you don’t own a phone,” I said.

  “I do.” Sadie planted a hand on her hip and shook her head slowly. “Every time you come home with a bloody nose … you know what? I’m not even going to finish that sentence. Get in here, sit down, and tell us what happened.”

  I pulled a wry smirk. “Yes, Mother.”

  Taeral barely waited until I took a seat at the table by the window before he started hammering me with questions. “What is the NSA?” he demanded. “And what giant leopard? Which brunette is angry with you — the leopard? And why are you bleeding?”

  “Leopard?” Sadie blurted between his barrage. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Whoa. Just breathe,” I said. “Story first, questions after. Okay?”

  At least they stopped talking.

  I gave them the condensed version. Mangled, bloodless body, federal agents taking over and questioning me about the other bodies, turns out everyone is Milus Dei and oh, hey, they asked for my help. Dead guy claims a leopard killed him, Agent Pants-On-Fire doesn’t believe me, and somehow she knows everything. About all of us.

  It must’ve sounded just as crazy as I thought, because neither of them spoke for a full minute. Finally, Taeral said, “Milus Dei asked you to help them.”

  “Yeah. They’re kind of getting slaughtered, and they have no idea who’s doing it. Still don’t,” I said. “That Redfield prick wasn’t any help.”

  Sadie frowned. “And they just … let you go.”

  “Eventually. But Frost was extremely opposed to that idea. She’s the angry brunette.”

  “I got that impression,” Sadie said. “So there were other victims, all Milus Dei?”

  “More or less.” I closed my eyes as the progression of brutal death photos flashed through my mind. A small part of me that I didn’t really like enjoyed those images way too much — but I still never would’ve wished that on my worst enemy. Which, under the circumstances, was an accurate description. “Whoever or whatever it was killed the Valentines,” I said. “All of them.”

  Taeral blanched, but not in sympathy. “I believe the appropriate saying is ‘good riddance’,” he said in strained tones. “You’d let those foul, black-hearted, gutless sacks of bile away far too lightly, brother. If only I’d been there —”

  “I know. And maybe I wouldn’t have stopped you.” Taeral still felt guilty for leaving me with them all those years ago. But I was an infant, Milus Dei was hunting us both down — after he’d just cut off his own arm to escape them — and he had no way to protect me except to hide me with humans. He couldn’t have known the humans he’d picked were a bunch of ruthless scumbags. And I was still alive because of what Taeral had done. “You didn’t see what was done to them, though,” I said quietly. “It was … really, really bad.”

  “They deserved worse,” he snarled.

  Sadie reached out and squeezed my hand. “You didn’t have to talk to them, did you?” she said. “The Valentines, I mean.”

  “No. But maybe I should’ve,” I said, even though the idea made me sick. “At least Orville would’ve known the difference between a leopard and a mountain lion. Unfortunately, he’s — he was a lot smarter than he looked. Redfield was clueless, and too pissed to be useful.”

  She smiled a little and glanced at Taeral. “So what do we know?” she said. “An animal, or someone who can turn into an animal, is out there killing people who work for Milus Dei. And it’s big. Obviously strong and intelligent, with a recognizable pattern.”

  “Aye. Perhaps we should count our blessings and leave it alone,” Taeral said. “After all, this killer is doing our work for us.”

  “Yeah, until they decide to expand their targets and include anyone who’s had contact with Milus Dei. You know, like Abe. Or any of us.”

  Taeral raised an eyebrow. “You believe this is possible?”

  “Whatever the motive, this is a serial killer,” I said. “That makes it wrong. And if the killer is Other, which I’m pretty sure is the case, regular people are going to have a hard time stopping it. We’ve got a much better shot.”

  “So now you’ve a desire to save Milus Dei,” he drawled. “Gideon, have you gone mad?”

  I gave him a hard look. “No. I just don’t like bullies,” I said. “Especially lethal ones.”

  “Guys,” Sadie said in a harsh whisper. “You hear that?”

  We stopped fighting and listened. Taeral’s brow furrowed, and I looked slowly around the rest of the semi-dark room. At first I didn’t hear anything. Finally, I made out a faint scratch … almost like claws on wood.

  Sadie saw it first. Her eyes got big, and she nudged Taeral and pointed to the far end of the room, the shadowed corner next to the big-screen TV. It took me longer with my non-werewolf senses, but eventually my eyes adjusted and I made out the hunched shape.

  It was something big. With fur.

  CHAPTER 8

  “De’àrsahd!”

  I spoke the word
without thinking, almost before I remembered that I actually had the moonstone pendant back. Pale blue light flooded the room. Taeral was already on his feet, headed for the furry shape in the corner.

  Which was maybe four feet tall. And definitely not a leopard, or anything resembling a cat, wild or otherwise. It was pressed against the wall, trembling and scratching feebly at the faded wood paneling. A misshapen head turned slowly and caught sight of Taeral.

  The creature let out a fearful squeak — and spoke in a high, broken voice.

  “Sorry! Please, sorry! He said to!”

  “Taeral, don’t hurt … it,” I said as I stood and walked toward him, with Sadie right behind me. I felt bad saying it, but I had no idea what to make of the scrawny, fur-covered figure. I just knew this was no threat.

  Taeral slowed and stopped around five feet from the corner. His face said he realized there was no way this was a murderous beast. A slight frown creased his mouth, and the creature trembled even harder, turning back to the wall as if it could push through and disappear. “Please, sorry,” it repeated. “He said to.”

  “Hey,” I said carefully, moving in front of Taeral. Hopefully I was a little less terrifying than my seven-foot-tall, metal-arm-sporting, full Unseelie warrior brother. “It’s all right,” I said. “We won’t hurt you.”

  The figure shivered all over, and then shuffled around cautiously.

  It was a giant rat. Sort of.

  Wiry brown fur covered the entire body. Small, slightly pointed ears, dull black eyes that didn’t seem to focus on anything. The face was pointed, not quite a snout, with a misshapen mouth and crooked yellow fangs. Arms and legs, clawed hands and feet, but the limbs were badly formed — too long, and attached at drunken angles. A thick tail hung limp and curled slightly on the floor.

  The poor thing was half-wrapped in rags, and so thin I could count its ribs with every quick, shallow breath.