Shift Work (Carus #4)

by J. C. McKenzie

  “No fair. Of course she’d side with you,” Patty muttered, his voice growing more distant until someone punctuated it with a door slam. He probably wouldn’t appreciate me pointing out I didn’t know whose side was whose when I answered.

  “I feel like there should be a tongue twister poem in here somewhere,” Ben said.

  “How many stamps can a vamp tramp stamp, if a vamp tramp could stamp stamps?”

  “Yeah, like that, but better,” he replied.

  “Ungrateful bastard.”

  “Good night to you, too, sweetheart,” Ben crooned.

  This time, I didn’t announced my intentions. I hung up on his laughter.

  After a bit of cursing, I managed to peel off the leather pants with minimal skin loss, and hopped into the shower. Unfortunately, the fifteen minute reprieve did little to slow my racing brain, or wipe away the feeling of grime from the clubs.

  After the shower, I dried my hair and checked the clock. Way too late to call Donny and ask about any SRD investigations into King’s Krank. While the VPD was the acting enforcement agency for the Lower Mainland, the SRD handled all supe on supe crimes and tended to act more behind the scenes. They sent out killers, like me, to take out the culprits. They were the judge, jury, and executioner all in one.

  My head hit the pillow, and my mind easily slid into slumber.

  Instead of sinking into nothingness, I walked through a moonlit path in the middle of a forest, clothed in some long translucent nightgown probably dating back to the 1800s. Fog blanketed the ground and parted majestically as I walked. Warning bells chimed in my head instead of birds. The forest had no scent. No pine aroma laden with summer flowers. No crunching of branches or snapping of twigs as animals roamed through the dense, moss-coated floor. No rustling leaves in the wind. My bare feet padded along the rough rock and grass path without a sound and without any pinched nerves.

  An artificial forest.

  Only one person…thing…would muck around with my mind like this.

  I rounded a large evergreen, and the path opened up into a large clearing. A man stood in the middle. Naked skin glowed in the moon light.

  Sid.

  “If this is how you seduce a girl, it’s not working.”

  His lips twitched and thankfully only that. I closed the distance between us and came to a stop three feet away. No need to get too close.

  “Relax Carus, I have no wish to make you mine.”

  “Good.”

  “No more than you already are…” Sid winked.

  I clenched the cotton material in my fists and squeezed. Attacking Sid in this realm, one under his control, would not be a good idea, and wouldn’t get me the answers I sought. Smashing my fist into his kidneys would feel pretty good though.

  “Are you still pissed?” Sid wiped at his washboard abs.

  “Of course I’m still pissed.” I crossed my arms. “And why do you have me dressed like a historical damsel in distress?”

  Sid’s eyebrow rose, but he didn’t snap his fingers and change my outfit. “Are you pissed about the bond or that night a week or two ago?”

  Although he didn’t trick or force me into the bond, it metaphysically dug into my heart like a bird of prey clutching a field mouse. In addition to this bond, he’d incited an intimate dream the other night with Tristan and Wick. What was I pissed off about? “Both, you sick pervert.”

  Sid tsked at me.

  Maybe I should attack him anyway. Get a few good shots in before he gained control and altered the world, or kicked my ass. The dream from the other night still made my blood boil. “Why the heck would you play with my mind like that? It was messed up.”

  “I was hungry.”

  I gaped at him. “Hungry?”

  “Haven’t you ever gone back for seconds?” He held his hands out in a supplicating gesture. Like it should make me hate him less.

  I pursed my lips. “That wasn’t going back for more, that was…a double helping.”

  The Demon’s smile grew. “Why, yes, that’s a fitting analogy.”

  “Again. What the fuck are you playing at?” The wind caressed my nightgown and rustled the leaves in the forest, but nothing could break my death stare on Sid.

  Sid held up both his hands and shifted his stance. “Calm down. I won’t do it again.”

  “Then what do you want?” I stomped on the path and the rocks dug into the sensitive skin on my sole. I winced. Now he decided to make the dream more realistic?

  “I want to warn you,” Sid said.

  “Warn me?”

  “Yes.”

  I tapped my foot.

  “The new moon is three nights away. Do you know what that means, little one?” He cocked his head and gave me a patronizing smile.

  “That you can count to three?”

  He grunted. “Guess again.”

  “All the feline Weres are forced to shift and will run rampant through the forests?” The wind picked up and wound around the dense tree trunks to press against my body.

  “They will, but that’s not what I’m getting at.”

  “Witches are at their strongest and will do a lot of hocus pocus bullcrap?”

  Sid sighed. “Are you really this naive?”

  “No. I’m still pissed. Get to your point, Demon. I’d like to get some normal sleep.”

  “In three days’ time, the new moon will bring the demonic realm closer to the mortal one, close enough for me to use a blood bond as an anchor.”

  Ice chilled my boiling blood, sending shivers of simmering warmth through my veins. What the hell did he mean by that? He could do more than invade my dreams? “Aren’t you using it now?”

  “Not to its fullest extent.”

  “There’s been one new moon since you got my blood. Why didn’t you use me as an anchor then?”

  Sid tilted his head. “I needed to test the strength of the tether first.”

  The warmth seeped from my body, replaced by a frigid stream of ice. “I thought you didn’t feed on fear.”

  “I don’t.” His dark browns furrowed.

  “Then why are you trying to scare me?”

  “I’m not.”

  I gave him a pointed look.

  Sid’s shoulders drooped, and he took a step forward. “I want you to be prepared. In three days’ time, I will use our bond to gain access to the mortal realm. You’re my little anchor, after all.”

  My scalp prickled, and my stomach clenched. His anchor? Fuck that. I didn’t want to be anything to the Seducer Demon. “Why tell me? Surely, you know I could try to set something up to harm you.”

  “You could try.”

  My pulse sped up as options flashed through my mind. Things I could do to hurt Sid, closely followed by things he could do to me in retaliation. My body tensed, and I balled my fists as heat flushed through my veins once more.

  “That’s why I wish to warn you,” Sid continued. “If I appear and scare you, and somehow you manage to smite me, which I highly doubt, I’ll return to the demonic realm.”

  “Good,” I spat.

  “And I’ll have a whole month in which to make you pay for your actions.”

  I gulped down my breath to stay quiet. Could he sense my thoughts? Did he know the deranged ideas running through my distraught brain? Could he read my mind like Allan?

  Sid cocked his head. “Although I prefer other emotions, if you cause me harm, I will exact payment of equal nature. I’d prefer to avoid those unpleasantries altogether.”

  “There’s another option.”

  “I’m using you as an anchor, Andy, so don’t suggest I don’t.”

  “That wasn’t it.”

  “What brilliant option have you concocted then?”

  With a deep breath, I turned my attention internal and sought the Demon’s bond. It centered in my chest with ferocious attachment, as if it drove steely talons into the tender muscles of my beating heart. I rounded up the Demon’s taint. “I dispel you.”

  Nothing happ
ened.

  I yanked harder and put a forcible command behind my voice, making it come out deeper, more gravelly, as if embedded with jib rock. “I dispel you.”

  Nothing happened.

  Sid tsked. “Silly Carus. I’m not a simple Vampire or fera for you to cast away. I’m a Demon.”

  A slice of ice shot up my spine as the hair on my arms lifted off prickled skin. Slowly, my unease faded, leaching out of my blood as my thoughts drifted. Sid no longer occupied my brain, and I drifted into true sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here.”

  ~Arthur C. Clarke

  My phone blared and shook me from my deep slumber. Last night’s conversation with Sid resurfaced as a distant memory, but true to his word, Sid had let me sleep the rest of the night without any more of his perverted influence. I reached out and snatched the phone from my nightstand on the third attempt. All the while the piece of plastic continued its shrill call. I’d given up assigning song ringtones to the people in my life. Too many weird dreams happened when I got a call during the “go-the-fuck-away” hours of the morning. I received these types of calls more often than I’d like.

  I tapped the phone and put it to my ear in time to hear Stan bark out, “Carleton and Frances.”

  Click.

  Well, I guess I should be a good doggy and come when called. Except, I wouldn’t show up as a wolf. With that form too painful to consider, I’d show up as a mountain lion again and sniff whatever Stan pointed out.

  Time to earn my government-sized paycheck.

  I scrolled through my phone. Still no message from Tristan. I sent him a quick text to let him know where I went, waited for a whole minute for a response, got none, ripped off my clothes and stalked to the nearest window. Then I paused. Carleton and Frances? Where the heck was that?

  I groaned, retrieved new clothes, grabbed my keys and phone, and stalked out the door.

  ****

  The blue dot on my GPS blinked back at me. Surely, I got the address wrong. Stan had rattled it off quickly, but his words had been crisp and clear. Carleton and Frances.

  When I turned the corner, the red and blue flashing lights of police cruisers beckoned me. In the middle of suburban Burnaby, where Italian families staked a claim in “Little Italy” a few blocks away, and large homes sat with two-point-five children and white picket fences, this area hardly hit the crime radar often.

  When I first started helping Stan out with crime scenes, we’d gone to other areas outside of the city of Vancouver as well. Around a decade ago, the local municipalities had merged, making two giant police departments, instead of numerous smaller ones. The provincial government tried to sell it as a way to “save on administration costs,” but everyone knew it was a last ditch effort by the local police forces to deal with the constant budget cuts and underfunding.

  Sadly, the treatment of law enforcement paled in comparison to how the government butchered public education.

  The VPD took everything north of the Fraser River and West of Coquitlam River, and the Surrey Police Department took everything else within the Lower Mainland. Things had changed a lot since the Purge.

  I pulled up to a two-story, terracotta Italian stucco house. Tuscan-style, or something. The brakes of my poor excuse of a car screeched, and the heads of the nearby police officers monitoring the taped line snapped in my direction. Squinting, wary eyes studied my movement as I put the car in park and clambered out. The rusty hinges groaned as I exited and a number of cops winced. Some snickered.

  Stan stalked out as I approached the yellow tape, clad in civvies with two other surly-looking detectives behind him.

  “Thought you’d come in animal,” he said when I drew close.

  “I was going to, but I had no idea where this place was and prefer driving to unknown locations. Easier to stop for directions, if needed.” Try asking a gas attendant for directions while naked…it doesn’t work. Been there, done that.

  Stan grunted. “Do you need to…”

  “Change? No. Not if it’s fresh.” I tapped my nose.

  Stan pursed his lips and exchanged looks with the nameless detectives at his side. Maybe I shouldn’t have said, “fresh.”

  “Homicide detectives Edwards and Liu,” Stan said, nodding at each detective. Edwards, middle-aged Caucasian norm with deeply embedded frown lines, and Liu, also middle-aged with graying hair at his temples, nodded at me.

  I dipped my chin and waited. When it appeared we’d stand around giving each other googly eyes, I let the tension flow from my body. “Shall we?”

  Stan grunted again and waved me forward. We left the detectives behind and walked into the immaculate house with freshly vacuumed carpet, smooth hardwood flooring, and Italian tiles. Death clung to the air and drifted to meet me at the entranceway.

  “What’s the story?” I asked Stan’s broad back as he continued forward.

  “Housewife’s habit gone bad.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Addicts come in all shapes and sizes. After twenty years on the force, nothing really surprises me anymore.” His tone came out even and matter of fact, but his scent spoke otherwise. Not a surprise. No lemon and pepper sprinkled the air around Stan. No. Simple sadness mired his scent with a stiff weight, and something else. Sickly sweet sweat called out to the predators cohabitating my mind. They liked Stan, but sensing fear brought forth their most primal nature.

  “Why do you smell off?” I leaned in and asked. I’d never accuse him of smelling like fear in front of his comrades, but something about this crime scene had spooked him.

  Must be why he called me in. I still awaited approval on my paperwork.

  “You’ll see,” Stan said.

  I huffed at his back, but he ignored me and kept leading me farther into the house until we turned a corner and walked into a large master bedroom with a king-sized bed. A door on the far side of the room let in more light from what must be the en suite bathroom.

  A woman in a white negligee lay sprawled on the rumpled covers of the bed, smelling of recent sex, vomit, death…and something else…something off. Not like Stan’s fear, something different. Like sour, burnt plastic, like the vial found near Loretta’s lifeless body.

  “King’s Krank,” I said as I walked up to stand beside Stan and observe the crime scene.

  Stan’s gaze flicked to me before he nodded. “We’re waiting on the tox screen and test results from the lab to confirm, but we found a vial similar to…”

  To the one found near his dead wife.

  “What about the lover?” I asked, cutting him off from the words he couldn’t say.

  He took little time to recover. “How’d you know?”

  “Everything leaves a trace. The husband’s scent is ingrained on every piece of furniture, flooring, wall, and ceiling in this place, but it’s not the one fresh on the bed or her skin.”

  Stan’s lips snarled up.

  “Not a surprise, either?”

  He shook his head.

  “We got anything on the lover?”

  “He’s the one who called it in.” Stan pulled out his notebook and leafed through the small pages. “Charles de Jong. No record. Not even a speeding ticket. Married. Two kids. Lives three streets over and met the victim at church over a year ago. They’ve been having an affair for the last five months. Says he came here around nineteen-hundred after the husband left for a work trip. He was intimate with the deceased and then Suzy…” Stan pointed at the dead woman with the butt of his pen, “Wanted to try something new. She drank from the vial first and apparently the effect was immediate. She started vomiting and foaming at the mouth. That’s when Charles called it in. Nine-one-one took the call at oh-two-hundred. She went into cardiac arrest shortly after and died before paramedics arrived. Liu and Edwards took the case, but called me in this morning due to the potential KK link.”

  “Who supplied them with th
e drug?”

  “That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” Stan snorted. “Charles claims Suzy supplied the drug, and he didn’t know what it was. She never said where she got it, and he never asked. He couldn’t even confirm whether it was KK.”

  I pursed my lips and thought about the details for a bit, trying to fit them together in a way that made sense. “If my lover pulled a vial of mystery drug out to share with me post-coital, I’d ask a lot of questions. Like what it was and where it came from.”

  “My take on it as well.”

  “And?”

  “And without his consent, or a warrant with just cause, we can’t strap a lie detector to him.”

  My lips curled up. “You don’t need to.”

  “Don’t need to…” He turned to me with pinched eyebrows, but understanding spread across his face, and his features relaxed. “Ah…I see. Let’s go question him, again, shall we?”

  “Let me finish in here first.” I approached the bed, careful to avoid disrupting the strewn clothes, a condom wrapper, and rumpled sheets. I leaned over the bed and started breathing through my mouth. Her scent up close couldn’t give me anything it hadn’t already ten feet away, save a nasty headache.

  And there it was, the reason this crime scene creeped out the veteran cop.

  Horns.

  Little nubby horns had punctured through Suzy’s forehead near the hairline. Blood had trickled down her face to dry in a cobweb pattern. The skin around the protrusions looked raw and fresh.

  Stan stepped up to the bed. “There’s no evidence she was a supe and lover-boy denies any knowledge. The husband is on a plane and won’t touchdown for another three hours, but once we get hold of him, we might get a better picture.”

  “She must’ve hid it well.” I sniffed her skin. “Doesn’t smell like a Were or Shifter, there’s no animal scent on her. Not sure what kind of supe she is…was… but she must’ve wanted it kept a secret. She probably masked her scent with a Witch charm. Her skin smells like a norm’s.”

  “Can you detect the charms?”

  I shook my head. “Not always. The really expensive ones will mask even the Witch’s scent. The one the dealer Aahil wore smelled faintly of Witches, more of a transfer scent, if anything. I can’t detect a Witch’s involvement with this deceased in any way.”