Death Be Blue (The Terra Vane Series Book 1)

by Katie Epstein

  As I neared my partner, I jumped back when someone fell across my path. Not sure if he was friend or foe, I raised my weapon as the person leapt onto his feet with his back toward me. He drew his weapon and aimed it toward one of my colleagues so I yelled, “Put it down!” He didn’t respond, so I hit the warning button on my Pulsar. Hearing its buzz, he finally heeded my warning and dropped his weapon on the ground. He was hesitant to turn around to face me, but I raised my eyebrows the moment he did.

  “Officer Riland,” I sneered as soon as I recognized the slitted eyes and chiseled jaw. I shook my cuffs free from my belt. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

  The shouts and the sounds of fire around me dispersed as I fastened Riland’s hands together. When I was confident he was secure, I took a second to assess the area. Everything seemed to be under control.

  I noticed two rows of long, wooden tables at the center of the large space, surrounded by crates of different sizes. The crates had ‘Homewell Honey’ printed on the sides, so I assumed they’d been left behind by the previous owners. Trays of blue pills lined the tables, and I knew then that we’d hit home.

  Pulling Riland around, I pushed him up against the wall. But then something tugged at me, like a nagging at the back of my mind. Glancing instinctively back at Kaleb, my heart jumped into my throat as the shadow flickered among the crates once more.

  “Kaleb!” I yelled in warning as the shape formed into that of an attacker. Kaleb moved immediately upon my words, jumping to his right without hesitation. He narrowly avoided a machete blade in the shoulder by about two inches.

  “That was close,” I whispered in relief as Kaleb turned on his assailant. I slammed Riland harder against the wall as he tried to struggle out of my hold. Giving him a procedural kick on the back of his legs had him dropping to his knees.

  “Get down,” I ordered him as I kept my weapon aimed at his head for an added incentive. I watched Cole join Kaleb in the fight against the machete-wielding attacker, dropping the man in a few coordinated strikes.

  Cole was fierce as he defended his brother, and Kaleb was clearly pissed that he’d almost got attacked from behind. Shifters hated cowardice. They believed in fighting with honor. So a sneaky attack such as that one would have really annoyed the two siblings. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the one wielding the machete had been Officer Younan though. The popcorn catching dick from the SQR offices seemed the type to try and attack someone from behind.

  The next ten minutes was a chorus of angry defiance and desperate pleas while we rounded up those who’d been present in the warehouse and lined them up against the wall.

  Once he broke free from giving out orders, Cole sauntered over to where Kaleb and I were standing in guard against the main entrance.

  “Do you want us to take them in?” I asked. We already had proof that Riland and Younan were among some of the SQR officers involved in the set up. But then I caught sight of Officer Wiles looking sheepish as an EFA slammed him against the wall. Dathan Raynes appeared to be missing. He was nowhere to be seen. That left nine other assumed SQR officers to question.

  Cole shook his head and replied, “I’ve ordered solar cabs. They should be here in five minutes. The others can transport them back, aside from Agents Walker and Rocker. They’re going to help catalog what we find here and process the scene before the Consilium catch wind of this and shut it down.” He looked at me. “Can you do a walk around of the place? See if they were holding any rogues here at any point?”

  The sheepishness that graced his question was no doubt a result of him avoiding the words ‘use your gift’ when asking if I could check it out. It was something he’d never been comfortable with, even when he’d seen the results of my visions. He still used me though, and I suppose that was a credit to him. Many would have fought against hiring a Sapphire Citizen as an agent, irrelative of the result from the academy.

  “Alright.” I nodded in confirmation.

  “I’ll hang down here and make sure everything goes off without a hitch. Kaleb, stay with Terra and see if you can catch a whiff of anything that leads to a trail. If they were holding rogues here and moved them on, then you may catch a scent.”

  “Sure thing, Boss,” Kaleb replied, saluting. Cole glared at him for his childishness then gave me a brief glance before walking away.

  “You know,” Kaleb said as we watched Cole’s back, “if I didn’t know my brother better, I would say he’s got a thing for you.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I snapped, feeling uncomfortable at how close his statement was to my own secret feelings toward Cole. Visions of the almost-kiss flashed through my head, causing my cheeks to blush. Kaleb chuckled when I stalked off to assess the area, then he came up behind me and smacked me on the ass.

  “What the …?” I demanded, rounding on him to see a smug grin spread across his face. His eyes flickered to something behind me and his expression changed to one of satisfaction. When I turned to see what he was looking at, I saw Cole watching Kaleb with an angry fire in his eyes.

  “See?” Kaleb said to me, obviously pleased with himself, before passing by me to check out the warehouse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  After lowering my shields, the only emotions I could pick up from the warehouse were hints of excitement. No visions had come through. Nor had I sensed any extreme emotion or energies left behind. That meant no rogues had been held in captivity here because there would have been some remnants of emotion for me to trace. In my vision, I’d seen them held against their will. Tortured and suffering, that, in itself, would have been traumatic—especially for a rogue shifter—and it should have left a sensation of some sort.

  None of this was making any sense. We’d saved Jimmy from murder only moments after he’d collected the drugs, and the set up at the warehouse looked as if they were ready to make a business out of it. But why distribute the drugs then kill the dealer? And if the SQR or Rudolf wasn’t involved in Jimmy’s potential demise then who else had been lingering in the shadows to cut his throat? It didn’t make any sense.

  The designated agents all piled in the solar cabs with the shackled SQR officers, and headed off to the agency. An hour or so later, Cole let the Enforcer Bio Agents take over the crime scene. He then ordered us all back to the agency and shifted into his brown wolf to race off ahead. The other agents followed his lead and sprouted their shifter fur to head on back. I stood there, feeling like an idiot, before Kaleb saved the day and offered me a lift. It was at times like this I felt both grateful and resentful toward Kaleb. It was sweet of him to offer—to always be there. But it also highlighted that I wasn’t one of them. Not truly.

  Pushing my ego aside, I climbed on Kaleb’s wolf and held on as he raced back to the agency. Cole had wanted us to return as soon as possible so we could milk the SQR officers for any valuable information before the case was red flagged again.

  As soon as we walked through the agency doors we heard Cole’s roar. “What!” he demanded of someone, and we hurried along.

  “What’s going on?” Kaleb asked as we headed over to where Cole was speaking to Jonah Llanda, an Enforcer Administrator. The young man was trembling so much he looked like he was about to faint in fear.

  “I-I’m sorry, Sir,” Jonah stuttered, “but no agents, or their prisoners, have reported in y-yet.”

  Cole turned on us. “Where the hell are they?” he demanded. “They should have been here ages ago.”

  “The solar cabs aren’t back yet?” I asked in surprise.

  “No,” Cole snapped but he shared a worried look with me before pacing in front of us like a wild, caged animal.

  “This isn’t good,” I whispered, as my instincts screamed at me in warning. They’d left well before us. And even if they’d taken the longer route back to accommodate the cabs they should have arrived by now.

  “We could head out to the road they would have traveled?” I suggested. “See if they’ve had any issues.”

  “Do that.�
� Cole hesitated. “And contact me as soon as you see anything. I’ll try to reach their comms in the meantime.”

  He stalked off while Jonah raced back to his desk in retreat.

  I glanced over at Kaleb. “You going wolf again?”

  “It’s a pity I couldn’t wear a siren like you told me they do on Earthside with the real police.”

  “We are the real police.” I smiled as we headed back outside to make room for him to shift. “And I think people would automatically move out of the way when they see a huge wolf heading in their direction. There’s no need for a siren.”

  “You could do it. All you need to do is go, ‘Waaaah, waaaah.’”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, will you just change already?”

  He flashed a grin in my direction. Then, in the space of two seconds, he transformed from Kaleb into his wolf. A wolf that was eager to get going.

  “Alright.” I climbed onto his back. “Let’s go see if we can find us some agents.”

  Darkness had descended upon Portiside as we headed out. Only the moonlight combined with the soft glow of crystal and electric lamps guided our way out onto the main road. It gave a pretty effect of soft blues and bright yellows as the crystal energy replaced the electric ones. They would remain that way until an engineer turned up to manually recharge them in the morning.

  Irrelative of their color, they illuminated our path until we reached a section of the road that cut through a small forest. From then on, darkness swallowed us whole. This would have been the only route to accommodate the cabs with a man-made pathway created as a cut through. They shouldn’t have diverted from here.

  Kaleb kept a steady pace with me mounted on his back, and it made me realize how much his wolf had accepted me over the years. It had taken time for his inner animal to get used to me being so close after he’d attacked me in the ring all that time ago. But now that side of Kaleb was as almost as protective as he was. The wolf didn’t mind me riding him, or fighting by his side. And neither of them flinched now when I clung tightly onto Kaleb’s fur as an eerie feeling weaved its way down my spine. A coldness penetrated me from nowhere, and Kaleb slowed his pace as if he sensed something too.

  A gray mist slowly rose from the edge of my vision and I urged Kaleb to come to a complete stop. I climbed off him and felt the dizziness hit me.

  I’d had this feeling before, and it was a feeling of something attempting to enter the confines of my mind. The only issue was did I dare to lower my shields enough to let it do so?

  “What is it?” Kaleb asked once he had shifted back into a human.

  “I think something happened here. I just don’t know what.”

  “Do you want to check it out?”

  “Yeah. But let’s spread out. You take that side; I’ll take this one. Call if you see anything.” Briskly, I began to walk off in search of the disturbance before he could stop me.

  “Terra?” he called out in question.

  “What?” I turned to see a tender expression on his face beneath the moonlight.

  “Keep your weapon close,” he replied.

  “Will do,” I called back with a small smile on my lips. Then we parted ways to search the forest for any clues on where the agents could have gone.

  Whenever I watched a movie on Earthside with someone heading off into a dark, creepy forest on their own, I’d be the first to shout at the screen, claiming they were stupid. But Portiside always felt safer to me somehow. It was if as knowing such things as vampires, werewolves and creepy spider fairies existed, I was more equipped to deal with what might haunt me from the shadows. Ignorance was nobody’s friend, and I felt safe in the knowledge that I’d been trained to take down many different species who lived in our world. The academy hadn’t exactly been a tentative education that based itself on theory. It had been about proving yourself in training until they were certain you could make it. No matter the cost.

  The leaves crunched beneath my feet as I edged deeper into the forest. Suddenly, complete darkness descended, throwing me off track. I stilled for a moment, knowing there was no need for such darkness. Not when the moon still shone above us.

  I glanced around wildly, trying to find a crack of light in the dark as panic began to rise in my chest. But then a tugging at my mind reminded me that I was safe. The darkness wasn’t external. It was happening because something was trying to get through and my gift wanted me to shut down my other senses to focus purely on the invasion.

  Taking a few deep breaths allowed me to push away the fear of being blind in the middle of the unknown, keeping my focus.

  The shields I’d been taught to manipulate and form shimmered in what Mayra called my Third Eye. It had taken a lot of training and practice to break down the Earthside mainstream beliefs before I’d been able to connect with it. But once I had, it had transformed everything. The shields were a crystalline blue, almost transparent white, as I saw them in front of me. Molded around my person like a bubble of protection, all I needed to do was to imagine the outer layers of the shield dropping away.

  As I did so, one by one the layers fell away like the petals of a dying flower. But before I could work on lowering the next one, I heard a voice.

  “Help!” the voice shouted in my mind. “Help me!”

  “Damn it!” I recognized who that voice belonged to. It was Agent Gaines, a pain in the neck most days, but one of the few agents who would talk to me when others weren’t around. He’d also been one of the EFAs chosen to escort the captured SQR officers back to the agency.

  A string of silver formed around my eyes as I tried to focus on him, isolating him from the other senses clouding my mind. I chanted his name over and over in my head, keeping my mind focused, and then I saw him.

  An image rippled like water as it brought the pieces together like a puzzle, creating an image of where he was lying. I then saw him among long, green grass somewhere. He was badly hurt, and his panic was mixing with my own. I pushed the feeling away while focusing on the background, trying to strengthen the details of the image.

  Dark shadows and trees formed, but that wouldn’t help me right now, not in a forest. I needed something distinctive, something to look for. I focused harder on the image as it threatened to ripple away.

  Two trees. I could see two trees right on the edge of the vision. Bowed toward one another, the trees shaped the form of a heart. It was all I could define to try and seek him out.

  The image disappeared as fast as it had formed, and the darkness lifted like a veil. It took me a minute to adjust to my surroundings, as the world around me converged. I began shouting his name. “Gaines!” I started to run along the track of the road, searching desperately for the bowed trees. They must be here somewhere… “Gaines!” I yelled again with urgency.

  “Help!” I heard once more, but the reverberation in the sound told me it was still coming from my head.

  Flipping on my comms as I continued to run, I was grateful to hear Kaleb respond.

  “Kaleb, we’ve got a problem,” I said between heavy breaths.

  “What’s up?”

  “You need to stay on the lookout for two trees that look like they’re in the shape of a heart. Gaines!”

  “What have you seen?” Kaleb asked. He also sounded breathless and worried.

  “They’re hurt. Or at least Gaines is. We need to find them. Gaines!” I shouted into the night.

  “Alright,” he replied. “But stay on alert and watch your back. I’ll make my way over to you.”

  He signed off and I pelted further up the pathway. It was only when I felt something tug me in a different direction, a movement akin to someone pulling at my arm, did I move deeper into the forest.

  One of the solar cabs burst into view first, then I saw the two trees of my vision. My gift seemed to be helping me in a way that it had never done before, and I had no choice but to run with it.

  “Gaines!” I shouted again as I headed toward the heart-shaped trees. With a lurch, I tripped
over something, my face smacking into the mud beneath me. “What the …?”

  Turning over to see what I’d tripped on, I saw a still body. “Oh no.” I quickly turned the body over to see Agent Frobern’s face. Glassy eyes, no life to be seen, stared back at me. I checked for a pulse anyway, but it was fruitless having noticed the large hole in his chest as the reason he was now lying dead before me. But it was dark, and I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I didn’t want to acknowledge that a shifter I knew and worked with was dead.

  “Help!” I heard again, but it sounded croaky and barely audible. This time, it wasn’t in my mind.

  “Gaines?” I shouted once more, stumbling up to try and hear where it was coming from. “I’m here. Where are you? Help me find you?”

  “H-here!” I heard him as he attempted to shout, and I headed off toward my left, assessing the ground as I went.

  “Keep shouting. I’m close.”

  He did as I asked but his shouts were strained from obvious effort. Urgently, I scanned the ground. And then I saw it. I saw someone lying in the grass about six feet ahead of me. As I crept closer, the shadowed face of Gaines revealed itself.

  Racing to kneel down by his side, my hands began to shake when I saw the amount of blood pouring down his arm. It was coming from his saturated shirt by the looks of it. And then I saw the wound. Half of his stomach was missing from what appeared to be the result of a Pulsar weapon.

  “Damn it, Gaines,” I said, firmly applying pressure to where the blood was still pumping out. I had to ease the flow…

  The blood looked black in the moonlight as it pulsed through my fingers. Then I caught the stench of his injury when I leaned down to engage my comms with my chin. Pushing back the vomit that dared to rise in my throat, I barked my orders to Kaleb.

  “Kaleb, I’m here with Gaines. He’s hurt. Badly hurt. You need to call Cole and the healers to get here as soon as possible.”