A Mate Worse Than Death

by J. L. Ray

  “O-kay,” she drawled. “Necking in the front seat of a car is just as frustrating as I remember from high school.” She gave him a one-sided smile and murmured, “I think we better get in there and finish this.”

  Phil got very still. Then tentatively, he slid his hand from her head down her arm to her left hand and wrapped his slim, strong fingers around hers. He brought her hand up to his lips and turned it over, kissing her palm, tracing a little pattern on it with his tongue. Tony managed not to wiggle, but it was an odd combination of erotic and annoying. Erotic was winning. He lifted his mouth and looked up at her from below eyelids heavy with desire. “I would like to think that means I have more of a chance with you than I had believed.”

  Tony growled, then huffed out a breath. “Let’s get through this arrest, first. Then we’ll talk.”

  Phil gave her hand a much simpler kiss and let go. “Very well.”

  Tony’s f-light chimed a work tone, and she answered. “Hi, Officer Hiller. Your detail in place? Excellent. Remember, I have a civilian working with me, so don’t hit him with the NASH if you do have to use it. You need to catch the nymph if she starts to run.”

  She paused a moment to listen, her f-light sitting in her lap since the conversations were essentially brain-to-brain. She usually only talked out loud when using her f-light if she thought the person next to her needed to hear her side of the conversation. In fact, if the user indicated, the f-light could share conversations in a radius of hundreds of miles with an unlimited number of Beings if so desired, but in most cases, after smartphones went away, people went back to having their private phone conversations privately. The f-light system proved to be a huge aid not only for law enforcement and emergency crews, but also for those who preferred the olden days when people couldn’t walk around, talking out loud on their phones and sharing their lives with anyone unfortunate enough to be in listening distance.

  “No, Hiller, we don’t know for sure if the vampire is with this suspect or the one up near Skyline Drive. We have to assume the worst, so do you have what you need for that? Good. We’re going in two minutes from my mark. Mark.”

  She stashed her f-light and turned to Phil. “We’re up.” She exited the car as he followed, a little grin on his face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Cal and Azeem drove carefully down the forestry road that would take them to the turn-off to the Caster sisters’ cabin. The unpaved road had been graded recently, and the SATV, a Super All-Terrain Vehicle, handled it well. Knowing that fitting the two of them and their equipment into even a Super-sized police cruiser would be awkward, they had brought a larger vehicle to handle this job. Because they couldn’t be sure of Heraphina’s reaction or of whether or not she had the vampire with her, they had to be prepared for any eventuality, and in the middle of a mountain forest, “any eventuality” covered a fairly wide range of options for the witch.

  Once they had the charm in place to cover their approach, they had both gone silent. They didn’t have to be quiet for the charm to work, but each Being was caught up in his own thoughts. Azeem wondered if he had overestimated his old friend Mephistopheles. Phil had always kept his word; in fact, he had a record thousands of years long of keeping his word, much to the dismay of the clients with whom he had made deals. He had assured Azeem that he would die himself before letting anything happen to Detective Newman. No, Azeem didn’t worry about whether Phil would stand by his detective. Instead, he wondered if his old friend might die trying to prove himself to her. He shook his head. Natty/Super relationships had a way of going very, very wrong, if for no other reason than time. Supers lived such long life spans in this Realm, that some even thought they were immortal, and compared to Nattys, they were. Naturals, however, lived for so little time in comparison that it seemed cruel to encourage such a pairing. But if Phil died saving Detective Newman’s life, he thought it might end her career. She had a more tender heart than even she knew, and as her supervisor, he had seen it get the better of her. He couldn’t even count the number of times he had seen her slip some of the more unfortunate witnesses they questioned twenty dollars, Natty and Super alike. He sighed. He knew both of them well enough to know that the odd pairing could work, if it got a chance.

  Cal’s thoughts tended to go round and round on a hamster wheel and mostly involved worry about Tony, the vampire, and Serena’s duplicity, which led to musings on how beautiful Berthell looked when she held Newman, how beautiful all his spawn were, and his own chance of becoming a wart-covered freak in the next few hours. His hand kept sneaking up to his face now and again, though when he noticed, he ruthlessly slapped it back on the wheel.

  Both Beings surfaced from their musings when they saw the turnoff for the cabin. Scarafina had told them that it would be tricky to find, and she was right. But the posted “NO TRESPASSERS” sign essentially marked the spot.

  “Pull to the shoulder,” Azeem growled, then activated his f-light. “Have I got the Wilson County Sheriff’s Department?” he asked after he had indicated a mass call.

  Several confused and excited voices chimed in, indicating to Azeem and Cal that the Sheriff’s Department lacked any Supers and also lacked training in using f-lights. Azeem’s whiskers twitched in annoyance, but he continued. “We are on Forestry Road 112, just past mile marker 7. I have activated a charm to cover our car. Are you similarly equipped so that you can move into position?”

  A single voice spoke in a weirdly quick-paced Southern drawl, denoting its owner’s origins as a mountain local. “This is Sheriff MacMurray. About that charm. We’re aworkin’ on it, but the local law enforcement supplier had to open shop to make up some extras. Reckon they don’t git much call for them things. We’re supposed to git ‘em in about ten more minutes. Y’uns want to wait for us to git inta position? We’ll be quick once we git the charms.”

  Azeem sat for a moment, at a loss. Then he turned to Cal. “Did you get all that?”

  “Oh, yeah, let me take it.” Cal leaned closer to the f-light and said “Cal” to indicate speaker change to it since it wasn’t his f-light. “This is Detective Calvin Kelly. We’ll be awaitin’ here for y’uns to check back in with your charms. ”

  “Will do, son.” The light indicated that the other parties were off the transmission.

  “Is that English?” Azeem asked, a bit awestruck.

  “Surely, Lieutenant.” Cal shifted back to his normal speech patterns. “My parents lived up here for a while before we moved to the New York City. I went to grade school in the mountains for a year.”

  “What does y’un mean?”

  “It’s not y’un, it’s y’uns, always. Y’uns--it’s like y’all. It’s always plural. I mean, y’all is ‘you all’, which is plural, am I right? And ‘y’uns’ means you ones, which, well, I reckon,” Cal laughed then continued, “I guess it doesn’t make as much sense, but ones is considered plural. So it’s a mountain thing, right?”

  “Fascinating. It’s like going to a foreign country in our own backyard,” Azeem mused with a kind of wonder. “I have got to get out of the office more. I’ve been in D.C. for decades and never heard any of that.”

  “Sir, D.C. is a whole different world.”

  They both snorted.

  And then they sat, awaitin’.

  Phil and Tony walked into the foyer of the building housing Monster-Mate with arms wrapped around each other’s waists. Phil paused near the elevator and pressed Tony against the cool stone wall and kissed her. When he stopped, he whispered against her lips, “There is an M and M camera pointed at the elevator, so right now someone watching could read your lips, but not mine.”

  Tony laughed and rolled Phil around on the wall so that she was facing away from the camera. “You are enjoying this way too much,” she hissed through a smile. “Dial it down from 11, dude. And I’ve got a NASH gun tucked in the back of pants, so keep your hands away from that unless you want to blow this.”

  He grinned, “I am not sure I can keep my han
ds to myself when I have dating carte blanche, but I will do my humble best,” and then he pushed them both away from the wall and toward the elevator. He snapped his fingers and the doors opened to the manticore, still housed in the over-the-top decorations of the former directors. They stepped in and Phil mentioned, “There are no cameras in here, yet. I plan to install them in here when we” he paused and looked around the kitschy box, “upgrade the elevator’s interior. However, we have cameras in the lobby and in the offices.”

  “Which rooms don’t have cameras?”

  “Really, none, though I took all but one from my office. The director’s office had an excessive amount of cameras installed at a wide range of angles,” Phil’s nostrils flared in extreme distaste. “Most were set up to record Adonis’s ‘meetings’ with staff and clients. We have destroyed most of those recordings. They are quite...disturbing.”

  Tony’s nodded without comment. Even thinking about Adonis made her want to take a long, scouring shower. Maybe two.

  “We should go in as if we expect the place to be deserted,” Tony told Phil as she pulled her weapon, checked her clip, and then slapped it back into place and put it in her shoulder harness. She leaned down and checked her ankle holster, and the NASH tucked up under her leather jacket. She then pulled the Vuitton bag open and stuck her hand in, rummaging around.

  “Would a memory spell work here?” she asked Phil just as the elevator arrived at floor thirteen.

  “It would erase her memory,” he whispered desperately. “Don’t use it.”

  “Ah hell,” she said, both answering him and playing to their audience as the doors opened and she saw Serena sitting at the rose quartz desk in the front office. She turned to Phil and grabbed his hand. “I thought you said the office would be empty tonight?” she stage-whispered to him ending with a little pout, all for Serena’s benefit.

  Phil blinked and then turned to Serena, “Hello, Serena! Working overtime?” Serena sat for a moment looking at the two of them, no expression on her face. Just as Tony began to think that the whole charade was a bust, she broke into a wide-eyed smile.

  “Oh, boss!” she announced breathlessly, “You’re back! It’s so good to see you! I’m trying to keep things running, but it’s so confusing.” She sighed and put her hands together in supplication. “Can you help me with this spreadsheet?”

  Mephistopheles wondered if perhaps they had gotten it all wrong. Surely, this simple creature could not be the one behind engineering a vampire rising and two murders, all in an attempt to avenge a nasty piece of work like Adonis by getting Mephistopheles killed. She could not even seem to handle a simple Excel program. On the other hand, it had taken him a decade and a complete round of every curse word he had learned in 3,000 years to get comfortable with the program himself. He looked at Tony who gave him a shrug.

  “It’s okay if you need to work, Phil,” Tony told him in a low-pitched, sex-kitten voice that was so uncharacteristic of her and his dealings with her in the last four days that for a moment, he thought he was imagining it. His jaw dropped as she put a finger up and ran it slowly across his lips. “I can hang out until you’re...ready to go,” she added, her voice husky.

  He snapped his jaw shut and turned to Serena so quickly that he caught a look on her face that not only confirmed all their suspicions, but also made his blood run cold. The malice in her face made him tighten his hold on Tony’s hand. More worrisome was watching that vicious look shift to vacuous innocence almost between the blink of his eyes. He would have thought he’d imagined the initial malevolence except for the warning squeeze from Tony’s hand.

  “Tony can wait in your office while we work, right boss?” Serena suggested cheerfully.

  “Why don’t we all go to my office?” Phil suggested. “My desk is a bit larger and will give the two of us more room to look at the spreadsheet, and Tony can wait on the couch.”

  Serena’s lips seemed to whiten for moment before she broke into a sunny smile. “Thigh highs and garter belts, of course! What am I thinking? This desk is far too small to get much of anything done. Let’s get to it.” She giggled. “It looks like you two have very different spreadsheet work planned for later.”

  Tony choked a bit but managed to turn it to a cough.

  “Let me get you something to drink!” Serena skittered off to one of the newly reno’d doors, now cherry wood instead of cherry red, and disappeared through it.

  “If she’s gone more than five minutes, we go after her,” Tony leaned in to Phil as if whispering very different comments in his ear. She palmed her f-light, chose silent and sent a message to the uniforms in position to be on the look out.

  “Don’t drink any of whatever she gives you, please,” Phil pleaded.

  “Yeah, I saw that look, too. Not a chance.” She glanced back at the door and added, “I’m going to hover while you’re in there working with her and push her buttons. I think we should go ahead and bring her in, sooner rather than later, so I want to get her off-balance. She’s a little too good at masking her emotions.”

  “I agree.”

  Just as Tony was about to call Hiller and the rest of her back up to see if they had movement, Serena came back in carrying a tall, frosted glass. It seemed to hold lemon-aide, one of Tony’s childhood favorites. It looked so crisp and light and tasty that it took all her will power to keep her lips together as she pretended to take a sip.

  “Mmmm, this is really good. Thanks so much, Serena,” Tony smiled at the nymph as if she had not a care in the world.

  Serena smiled back at her as if she weren’t an evil mastermind attempting to kill her current boss to avenge her former boss and psychotic lover.

  Both women carried off their roles without a hitch. Too bad neither bought the other’s act.

  The three moved to Phil’s office, the dark basalt walls slick, as if they were wet. The overhead lamps in the room dispensed very little light, but the jagged edges of the walls bounced what light there was, giving it a sharp, textured feel, as if someone had used a knife’s edge to or a mirror to bounce light in from another source. Pockets of bright light were surrounded by pools of darkness that echoed the purple from the geode that made up the desk dominating the center of the room. Phil gestured for Serena to proceed both him and Tony, assuming it would be better to have her in front of them than at their backs. Unfortunately, that obscured his view of the interior of the office until the vampire was almost upon them.

  After twenty minutes of waiting instead of ten, the Wilson County Sheriff’s Department finally checked in with the news that the necessary spells had arrived and all three of the cruisers were now charmed and ready to move in.

  “About time,” Azeem growled, the weight of the lives of both of his detectives on his shoulders. He reminded himself that worrying about Tony and Mephistopheles might just distract him enough to get him, or worse, Cal killed. No one wanted to have to explain something like that to Berthell. With real effort, he tried to focus all his attention on the here and now. He did another mass call on the f-light. “The MGP coordinates indicate that the structure is one half mile down this road. We’ll drive a quarter mile, then we move in on foot. Cal and I take lead.”

  Sheriff MacMurray interrupted him. “MGP?”

  Azeem huffed, a leonine impatience in his voice, “Magic Global Positioning fairy-light. If you’re still using GPS, the coordinates will look the same. But MGP can track magic signatures under the right circumstances. We have Heraphina’s signature on the MMD, the Mundane Magical Deliquents database. She forfeited her right to magical privacy when she went to jail for a felony magic charge years ago. She can’t hide her signature when it’s singular, only if she is operating with her sisters. And she isn’t. So we know both the cabin’s and Heraphina’s location.”

  “That’s right handy,” the Sheriff mused. “Reckon I might need to send some o’ my folks up to you for some trainin’ when this mess is dished up. What’d you need us to take in the way o’ weapons, sir?
We got mostly plain ole guns and such, but we found a stash o’ things in the supply closet that might come in handy if things go a-might south out there.”

  Azeem shook his head. He was getting the hang of this dialect. “I want your officers to circle the cabin. Do you have the NASH guns?”

  “Are those them things that shoot out webs? Like Spiderman?”

  Azeem looked confused and was thinking that maybe he didn’t understand this dialect after all when Cal leaned over to his f-light. “Cal,” he told it, then added, “Yes, sir, Sheriff MacMurray, you got it. Those’ll do the trick.” He looked at the Lieutenant and said, “I’ll explain later. Plus, we get to watch some movies!”

  Azeem nodded far less enthusiastically. “Right. Well, Sheriff, those particular units are called NASH guns, which stands for Net-All Super Holder, and when they are shot, magic cannot affect them, so they are good general capture nets. They won’t harm the perpetrator, but they will hold anything up to twenty-five feet tall and three thousand pounds with an mpsi of fifty or lower.”

  “MPSI?”

  Azeem tried not to sigh. “Magic power per square inch. I’m afraid it will have to wait for your training session. Trust me when I say that no vampire can break it, and Heraphina does not rate that high on the Newtonian Power Scale.”

  “Lieutenant, when this is done, I want to buy you beer and have a good jawin’.”

  Azeem looked appalled, but Cal nodded enthusiastically and said, “This is good publicity for the department and Supers--go with it. I’ll explain later!”

  Azeem cautiously agreed to a “jawin’” later, though for a Sphinx that had some rather naughty connotations. He decided it wasn’t his job to explain that one to the Sheriff. Then he laid out his plan for Heraphina and the vampire’s capture.