Death Be Blue (The Terra Vane Series Book 1)

by Katie Epstein

  “A what?” I snapped as I turned on him. I knew the word ‘human’ had been on the edge of his lips. And that damn near pissed me off.

  “You know what I mean.” He threw his arm up as if to chuck the poor choice of words aside. But I wasn’t going to let him off that easily.

  “You were going to say ‘human’, you pompous, egotistical—”

  “Beautiful, gorgeous specimen of a shifter,” he finished for me as he patted my shoulder.

  Ignoring his inflated assessment of himself, I clamped my lips together to try and avert the rage firing through me at his almost-insult. I may only have been a human, but I was a damn good agent. And I was also getting sick and tired of proving myself to those who thought themselves superior because they sprouted fur every now and again.

  “I have fourteen more arrests on my record than you do," I reiterated to him. "And I made half of those when I had to go out solo because no one would cover you during your absences. Don’t pull the human card on me."

  Kaleb sighed in defeat at my old argument. “I’m not pulling the human card on you. But look at it realistically. You don’t shift, you don’t grow fangs, you’re not supernaturally fast or strong, and this killer might be. Being alone with him is dangerous.”

  “I’ve held my own with you enough times in training. And you’re supposed to be, ‘the best, of the best, of the best.’” I dropped my voice lower to mimic his usual assessment of himself.

  “I can't help it if that's what I am.” He smiled innocently, but there was a twinkle in his eye. I threw up my hands in frustration.

  "I give up. But only in trying to reason with you. In regards to this case, right here, right now, we’re laying a trap.”

  “Cole will have my ass for breakfast if you have even one hair harmed on your head.”

  “You can’t harm my hair. It has no nerve endings.”

  “In your follicles it does.”

  “Then that’s not hair, is it?”

  “Fine.” He shook his head as if he was trying to shake away the confusion of our tangled conversation. “You can be the bait, but you run like hell if he comes at you. Don’t try to fight this guy. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I lied. I'd trained for this job as hard as the rest of them. If I needed to fight, I would fight.

  “Then let’s plan it out,” he told me on a resigned sigh. And I glanced back in the direction of the The Beer Barrel. My satisfied smile would have said it all if I hadn’t turned back around to see what he was up to. My partner, the man I had to trust with my life, was busy straightening his hair in the pocket mirror he’d just pulled out of his jacket.

  Please. Shoot me now.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was about half an hour later when the killer finally decided to make an appearance. Kaleb was ready to shift into his wolf form to track me, but he needed to act out his part first before he changed. We moved further down the street for a more natural entrance when we initiated our fake argument.

  When the killer finally left The Beer Barrel, his whistling floated down the road to where we were hiding. Taking that as our cue, we peered out from our hiding place, and I watched as the killer walked away in the opposite direction. The composed nature of his walk as he twirled the cane he was holding, sent shivers up my spine. Effectively, I had been inside this man’s head. And I knew him to be an external façade of calm that held a deep, fiery evil within.

  The whistling faded out at the same time the shadows of the night swallowed him up whole. It was time to make our move.

  “I’m sick of this, Kaleb,” I shouted as I walked out of the shadows of the building, “and I’m sick of you. You said it was over with her.”

  Marching with intent, I headed in the direction that the killer had left. Fists balled and head down I was the perfect image of anger incarnated.

  “Babe, please,” Kaleb implored as he came up behind me. “It is over with her. I can’t help the letters she sends me.”

  “Yeah, right,” I scoffed, stalking determinedly down the street. “Your face said it all when you were reading her damn letter. Go screw yourself!”

  “Babe, come on.” He grabbed my arm. Shrugging him off, I turned and slapped him across the cheek. That part wasn’t planned, but if there was an opportunity for me to slap Kaleb without any comeuppance, then I was all for it.

  “Damn it, babe,” Kaleb snapped as he glared at me. “What was that for?”

  “For being a pig!” I pushed him away and continued down the street.

  “I’m not walking you home! You need to come back here. Now!”

  “No!” I shouted back. “I’ll catch The Rail.”

  “Don’t be stupid! It’s too dangerous to get The Rail this time of the night! Terra!”

  Ignoring him, I heard him growl in frustration before he stormed off back into the shadows. I plowed on as part of our plan.

  A fog was starting to settle on the streets of the Victorian Quarter, making my intuition spike. As a psychic, I was very tuned into my instincts, and it grated me when I had to go against them—such as now. They were telling me to run, flee, to escape to safety. But we needed the killer to come after me so I had no choice but to ignore them.

  Walking faster, I wrapped my arms around myself and headed in the direction of The Rail. Part of me wanted to lower my shields slightly to try and tune into the killer, but that was too dangerous. I didn’t want him linking with me in any way—especially with Kaleb so far behind me. So it was simply a case of waiting to see whether the killer would show … and when.

  Strolling through the Victorian Quarter this time of night used to settle me, especially after I’d been on a case. It was a section of the city that felt like it had traveled back in time a hundred years ago with the brown buildings of the past, coming together like lovers with the copper innovations of the future. It often reminded me of the steampunk fashion I was used to seeing on Earthside.

  When I first arrived through the portal, the steampunk edge I’d seen only in magazines, had given me a level of familiarity to hold onto during the first few months of fitting in. With cobbled streets and candlelit street lamps, this part of the city held onto its antiquity with stubbornness.

  It was a nice place to live once you got used to managing with the bare essentials, but not this part of the quarter. This part had a bad rep, and it liked it.

  As the fog circled around me, I felt lost to my surroundings for a moment. It was as if the white mist was working in cahoots with the killer, separating me from the familiar. The silence was almost deafening as it became their accomplice in giving me the creeps, and I had to wonder if the killer was going to make an appearance anytime soon.

  It was near the monorail station when our plan came into fruition. The rolling of carriage wheels against the cobblestones reached my ears first, then a warning came in the form of tingles up and down my spine.

  As the carriage began to slow down behind me, I continued to walk ahead.

  “Miss?” I heard a voice shout as the carriage came to a complete stop. I was careful to keep my movements tentative when I finally stopped walking and turned around to face him. As I did so, I noticed that the driver looked bored and drunk. He was slumped over, his eyes bleary, but he paid me no heed.

  “Yeah?” I snapped in the killer’s direction to make it look like I didn’t appreciate his interference.

  “I heard you had a bit of trouble with your man back there. I would have to agree that taking The Rail so late isn’t wise for a young woman such as yourself. May I be of any assistance?”

  He was still wearing his top hat, and from this angle, I could see he was in his late thirties. He had light brown hair and freckles scattered across an innocent-looking face.

  When he flashed a smile at me, I could see a mouth filled with brilliant white teeth that looked a little too perfect.

  His polite accent sounded as if he’d been born in an earlier century, but that wasn’t unusual over in this end of town. A lot
of people preferred the structure of society from that time period and adopted it as the norm. There were also a few older citizens who’d actually lived through that period, so to them it was all they knew.

  “I’m good, thanks,” I told him, narrowing my eyes in his direction. It would have been too suspicious of me to jump straight into his carriage without a little resistance.

  “Please?” the killer pleaded when I went to walk away. “I must insist. There are horrors that no woman should behold this late at night.”

  Turning back around, I was greeted by a wide and friendly smile. I could understand how he had managed to lure in a lot of innocent women—and men—into his carriage. His victims had been of both genders.

  “Sure,” I shrugged after a moment’s pause. Staying close to the truth was always best when dealing with a predator. They could sometimes sense lies and, without knowing what species this guy was, I wasn’t risking it. “I live in the Crystal Quarter though. It’s a fair ride from here.”

  He opened his carriage door. “We can take you to the border. It will be a lot safer for you to walk on foot when you enter the Crystal Quarter than to do so here. It won’t take but a moment.”

  With my attitude firmly in place, I hoisted myself up into the carriage.

  “There we are.” He closed the door and knocked on the roof with his cane instructing the driver to move on. “Now, that wasn’t so hard. Was it?”

  Ignoring him, I looked out of the window as the street passed by, hoping Kaleb wasn’t far behind.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The tension in the carriage was palpable.

  I tried to project the persona of a naive, young woman who had just climbed into a stranger’s carriage because of an argument with her boyfriend. But I was struggling.

  The killer was smiling at me as if trying to put me at ease. But being so close to a man who was capable of such destruction was putting me on edge.

  “What were you and your boyfriend fighting about?” the man asked as he studied me from the opposite seat of the carriage. He was holding onto the handle to maintain his proper posture as the carriage jostled us around.

  “His ex,” I told him, making a point of looking out of the window to monitor our journey. I’d already noticed the herbs hanging in a nook of the carriage. They’d been tied together and hung with discretion, but the light scent of them couldn’t be missed. They made me feel even more uneasy. No wonder Kaleb hadn’t been able to scent a trail between the crime scenes and the Victorian Quarter. The killer was taking care to cover his tracks.

  This also meant that Kaleb’s nose wouldn’t do any good right now to help keep track of the carriage. All I could hope was that he’d had the foresight to turn furry so he could run quickly enough to keep us in sight.

  “I take it things aren’t over between them?”

  “What?” I asked, distracted as I tried to see if I could catch a glimpse of Kaleb in the distance.

  “Your boyfriend and his ex. I take it things aren’t over between them?”

  “Not when she’s still sending him love letters.” A purposeful sigh left my lips as I dragged my eyes away from the window. “He didn’t burn them as he should have done, and I saw his face when I caught him reading through them.”

  “Men are such fickle creatures,” the killer said and my skin crawled in response to his voice. “They never know how to handle a good thing when they’ve got it.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s a jerk.”

  “That he is. That he is. But you should not put all of your faith in one person during this lifetime. You should have faith in yourself and who you are. If you are not strong enough to stand alone when it’s needed, then you are not strong at all.”

  “I’m strong,” I told him, steadily meeting his eyes. It was both a personal response as well as one from the woman I was pretending to be.

  “I can see that. You shine, my dear. You truly do.”

  Retreating back into my seat suddenly caused him to chuckle. He started some random discussion regarding the clientele in the Victorian Quarter, chattering on about how he preferred the status of the Crystal Quarter but found it too sterile for his needs. There was no pause as he spoke about the sights across the city and his visit to the Consilium that sat in the center of it. His eyes were always on mine, staring intently, drawing my focus to him.

  It was about ten minutes later when I dared to look out of the window. Suddenly, I realized that we were venturing out away from the city. The different peaks of the bronze and brown buildings transformed into shadow as we left the cluster of them behind.

  “Wait a minute.” I put my hands on the carriage window’s ledge to lean out a little so Kaleb could see I was okay. “This isn’t the way to the Crystal Quarter.”

  “It’s a shortcut I know. It will take us right back around. Do not concern yourself.”

  Fear simmered within me as my intuition mimicked a friend trying to drag me out of a burning building. My body wanted out and it was responding to the natural reaction this man was evoking in me. Perspiration dampened my back. My heart raced hard against my chest. I knew he would sense a lie at this point because he was a predator, and any predator, from any species, could sense fear.

  “I’d like to get out now,” I said warily, but he just smiled at me as if I was making pleasantries. “I mean it.”

  “There is nothing to be scared of.” He tapped the ceiling of the carriage with his cane and I could feel it begin to slow. “But if you would like to stop here, then here it will have to be.”

  “What?”

  He alighted from the carriage first and gestured for me to do the same. I suppose I had no choice but to follow his instructions.

  “Thank you, driver,” the man said before throwing a small pouch into the man’s hands. The driver quickly glanced inside then gave us both a toothless smile. He held onto the peak of his cap as he nodded in appreciation toward the killer. Then it dawned on me then that the driver was about to leave me stranded in the grasslands bordering the city.

  “Wait!” I shouted, not wanting him to stay behind but intent on continuing my act. “You can’t leave me here. Don’t leave!”

  “He’s been paid enough to not listen to any pleas from my passengers. It’s a common theme with the drivers from the Victorian Quarter. Pay them enough and they’ll turn their backs to anything.”

  My anger for the driver increased when he didn’t falter in his exit. It made my blood run cold at how callous the move was. I made a mental note to ensure the description of the man was handed out to the officers on the ground to ensure he was charged as an accomplice to murder. He wasn’t getting away with this.

  “I want to go home,” I said, turning on the killer. He was removing his gloves, slowly and calmly, then, next, his hat. “What are you doing?” My voice quivered, and it wasn’t a hard act to achieve. Whatever species this guy was in front of me, it was sending my instincts into overdrive.

  “I love the hunt,” he drawled, his eyes never leaving mine. “The thrill of the chase. It makes me feel”—he took in a deep breath—“so alive.”

  He removed his jacket and laid it on the ground with his other belongings. I started to retreat, stepping out of his reach.

  “Don’t be scared,” he cooed. He threw something into his mouth and cringed slightly at the taste of it. “It will all be over soon enough.”

  “Soon enough?” I took another few steps back. Slowly at first and then faster as my senses screamed at me to run. “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly that.”

  After taking a few more deep breaths, he closed his eyes and sniffed the air. When he opened them again, I could see a tinge of bright blue around his irises, causing his eyes to shine vividly.

  “I feel so strong,” he murmured in a distorted voice. His face started to change shape. “I feel so powerful.”

  “What are you?” I dared to ask and he laughed at me.

  “Usually, I am your worst nightmare.”
A cracking sound broke the eerie silence of the night as a horn erupted from one side of his head. “Tonight, however …” Another horn appeared and both of them elongated to resemble some form of antlers. “Tonight, I am going to be your punisher, your god, and your destroyer.”

  He ripped off his shirt and his body distorted so much that I could hear bones breaking, I was certain of it. He wasn’t a shifter. Their change was swift and magical, allowing them to transform in the blink of an eye. But this guy looked in serious pain.

  Wide nostrils took place of his nose, as long hair sprouted out of his skin. An evil smile formed on a mouth that had grown to be twice the size of mine, with long fangs protruding over his bottom lip. His eyes shone red, but the blue tint around his irises remained. He ripped off his breeches with long, bony fingers, sharp claws extending from each of their tips.

  “Seriously. What are you?” I breathed.

  He was nothing like I’d ever seen before, and nothing like I’d ever want to see again. He continued to grow in height, towering above me until he was well over eight feet tall. Then he said one word that sent chills tap-dancing up my spine.

  “Wendigo,” he drew out with a cackling laugh. “And an evil one at that.”

  Wendigos weren’t known residents of Portiside. I knew that much. And even though there were many creatures over here who shouldn’t have existed according to human science, wendigos were still considered a myth. It all made sense from what little I knew about them though. And the little I did know, was that they had an insatiable appetite for human flesh.

  “Do me a favor?” the wendigo asked in a demon-like voice. Before I could blink he was standing right in front of me.

  “What’s that?” I asked breathlessly. The panic reared inside me so fast that it literally took my breath away. I had never seen anything other than a vampire move that quickly before.

  “Ruuuun.”

  That one word was like a jump-start to the adrenaline that had begun to pulse through my veins. I knew running would trigger the chase. But if I stood there for long enough, I had no doubt that he would take a bite out of me anyway.