Stormrise

by Knizley, Skye

  “Sorry for the disturbance, folks,” she said. “Chicago Police; we just need to talk to our friend here. Please, enjoy the music and have a good time tonight!”

  She joined Levac and the two of them escorted the alpha out into the street.

  Outside, the line waiting to get into the club had dispersed, likely as a result of the chilling wind that was ripping through the alleyway. Even the hard-core bouncer had been forced to don a coat as protection from the cold night.

  Ignoring the biting wind, Raven pushed the alpha against the wall and stepped back. “Let’s make this quick. We’re looking for someone we think may be a friend of yours. Taylor Hellsey. Do you know her?”

  The alpha nodded. “Tay? Yeah, I know her. She’s a cage dancer; met her here at the club.”

  Levac shivered in his coat. “What was your relationship with Ms. Hellsey?”

  “Just a lay,” the alpha replied with a shrug. “She’s got an apartment not far from here where we used to hang out and have after-club parties. She had a thing for the rough stuff.”

  “Do you know the address?” Raven asked.

  “Do I look like I carry a rolodex, lady?” the alpha asked sarcastically. “It’s a brick building a few blocks north. The place smells of polish sausage and cabbage. Her apartment is on the seventh floor, number 7C.”

  “Can you be a little more specific?” Levac urged. “It’s freezing out here!”

  The alpha looked Levac up and down with a sneer and then returned his attention to Raven. “It’s called the Something-Arms. It’s the only occupied building on the street. You can’t miss it.”

  Raven pursed her lips, trying to appraise the lycan. He had no reason to lie. But if she was wrong, it was unlikely she would find him again. After a moment, she spun him around and unlocked his cuffs. Ignoring his incredulous look, Raven handed the cuffs back to Levac and said to the lycan, “Thank you for your help. We’ll overlook the assault charges for the time being, but if I have to find you again, I’ll put you in a cage for a very long time. Is that clear?”

  The lycan nodded again. “Crystal clear, detective. May I join my…gang?”

  “Fine. Good night,” Raven said.

  She and Levac watched him go back inside before returning to the parked Shelby to get out of the wind. When they were inside and the heat was blowing away the worst of the chill, Levac turned to Raven.

  “Okay, what the hell was that all about?” he asked, a mixture of anger and concern lacing his voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. All that crap about oak and silver, the way that guy tossed you across the room like a rag doll and then you letting him go,” Levac replied.

  Raven paused for a moment, trying to gauge her partner’s reaction and if she could tell him the truth. After a moment, she decided he wasn’t ready to learn about the preternatural world.

  “The people who hang out here are a little different,” she said at last. “Many of them like to pretend they’re vampires and werewolves and things. I was just playing into his fantasy so he would cooperate. It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Fantasy, huh? So how did he toss you a good ten feet and how come that slap didn’t snap your neck like a Popsicle stick?”

  “I hammed it up,” Raven said. “Come on, if he was really that strong he and his cronies would have mopped the floor with us.”

  Levac didn’t look convinced, but shrugged and leaned up against the window. “If that’s your story.”

  “And I am sticking with it,” Raven said. “Feel like going to interview another suspect?”

  Levac shrugged. “Why not? Maybe she’ll turn out to be the Wicked Witch of the West. I have a thing for Oz characters.”

  Ignoring him, Raven put the car in gear and drove through the alleys that led out of Old Town and into the semi-abandoned district beyond.

  Standing out in stark contrast to the variety of lights spread out across the city, the Dark, as it had come to be known, was a mostly abandoned cluster of buildings that had been seized by the city as a result of a sting operation against the Russian mafia a decade prior. The buildings had been sitting vacant for years while the city tried to scrape the money together to either have them demolished or refurbished. Raven’s personal opinion was that someone in city hall liked the area kept this way; vampires, lycans, and other predators used the area as a hunting reserve, seeing anyone caught in the off-limits area as being fair game. No police patrols, no streetlights, just a zone of darkness and decay that no one cared about.

  The building indicated by the alpha turned out to be on the very edge of the Dark; not actually a part of that shunned area, but close enough to be affected by it. No one wanted to live next to a cluster of burned-out abandoned buildings, slums and leaking sewers, so even buildings on the edge were occupied only by the poorest of the poor.

  Raven parked the Shelby on the street, unhappy to be leaving her treasured car exposed this close to such a crime-ridden part of the city, but she didn’t see any other choice. She locked the doors, set the alarm, and hoped that no one would be stupid enough to steal a Fürstin’s car. She joined Levac under the building’s overhang and looked up at the structure.

  At one time, it had been called The Fisher Arms, but it was now known simply as The Fisher; those were the only letters still left on the building.

  The front doors, once made of plate glass with brass fittings, were covered in wood planks to keep out the worst of the weather, the glass having been shattered and much of the brass stolen and probably sold to recyclers.

  The lobby beyond was choked with trash and dark as the grave.

  Levac opened the nearest door, which creaked loudly, echoing in the darkness. He bowed with a flourish. “After you, oh Raven, Mistress of the Macabre.”

  Raven ignored the quip and stepped through, working hard to keep the reek of old urine, rotting food and trash from overwhelming her heightened senses. Leading the way, she walked through the stacks of junk to the elevator, where she used the heel of her boot to press the call button.

  “Why would someone who works at Purgatory live here?” Levac asked. “I saw the tips that were exchanging hands back there; those girls make plenty of cash.”

  “I don’t know,” Raven said. “Victoria lived in an upscale place, but I have a feeling King helped her out with that.”

  “Seems odd to me,” Levac replied as the elevator doors opened.

  The two detectives stepped into the elevator car, careful not to disturb the old man who was snoring peacefully in the corner, a bottle of Jack clutched in one hand, a smoldering pipe in the other.

  They arrived at the seventh floor a few seconds later; the hallway here was not an improvement on the lobby, and was perhaps competing with it for the most noisome place Raven had ever been. They located Taylor’s apartment a few doors down and Levac knocked. It was a few moments before Raven knocked again and called out, “Ms. Hellsey, it’s Detectives Storm and Levac with the Chicago Police; we have some questions we’d like to ask you.”

  The silence in the hallway was broken only by the sounds of the rats climbing around in the wall and scuttling through the trash that choked the far end of the hallway. After several moments, Raven tried the knob and found the door unlocked. With a glance up at Levac, who pulled his pistol and nodded back, Raven pushed the door open, staying on one knee to give Levac a clear view of the room beyond.

  The door opened into a medium-sized loft apartment. An area to the right of the door had been divided into a kitchenette and dining area. An old refrigerator clinked in the corner next to a small kitchen counter that had probably come out of a flat-pack box. Opposite this were a three-burner gas stove and a small, stainless-steel sink. From their vantage in the doorway, Raven could see that the kitchenette was spotlessly clean in contrast to the foul hallway only a few feet and a wall away.

  Raven led the way through the door and into the living area with Levac following in a typical two-by-two cov
er pattern. A functional sofa from the pages of a mail-order catalog was pushed against the windows overlooking the Dark. A table made from pressed wood sat next to it, along with a collection of fashion and women’s magazines. A pair of red-soled Christian Louboutin stilettos sat discarded beneath the table.

  “Well, we know what she spends her money on,” Raven whispered, jerking her head towards the shoes. “Those cost seven hundred dollars a pair!”

  Levac nodded and motioned Raven to proceed toward the spiral staircase that led upward into darkness. The only other exit they could see was a narrow doorway that led into the water closet. Raven returned the nod and continued up the stairs, moving in a silent cross step that left her facing the top of the stairs.

  The bedroom at the top was decorated in a similar manner to the rest of the small apartment, with a queen-sized bed and two nightstands that looked like what would be found in a flat-pack store. There was also a large photo on canvas of an attractive woman who Raven could only assume was Taylor. She was caught in mid-dance, her hair spilling out over her unclothed body as she writhed inside an iron cage.

  A bureau of drawers stood in the corner, the bottom drawers still open and drooling clothing, while a narrow doorway led into a small, but stuffed closet. The floor of the room was strewn with clothing, including several pairs of very expensive shoes, a pair of leather pants Raven would have killed for, and piles of lingerie in a rainbow of colors. At first glance it looked as if the room had been ransacked by someone; however, after a moment, Raven came to the conclusion that somebody had hurriedly packed and left, probably taking only those items that meant the most to them. She said as much to Levac, who looked at her incredulously.

  “What makes you think that? It looks like a SWAT team tossed the room!”

  “But look at it for a second,” Raven replied. “If you were tossing the room in that much of a hurry, would you have bothered to push some of the dresser drawers back in or close the closet door? Would the bed still be neatly made? Probably not. Whoever did this was in a hurry, but knew what they wanted and what they were looking for.”

  “So maybe whoever was here knew what they were looking for, but still had to toss the room to find it,” Levac said, pulling a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket.

  Raven followed suit, donning a pair of nitrile gloves and opening the closet door all the way and turning on the overhead light. “Could be, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” Levac asked over his shoulder.

  “Because a thief wouldn’t take her suitcase and leave behind the carry-on bag."

  On the floor of the closet lay a small suitcase, another bag folded inside it. From where it was sitting, Raven could make the argument that the two bags on the floor had been inside a larger bag placed on the shelf above, where a space had been cleared among the clutter.

  “I still like the idea that someone ransacked the place and Hellsey is still around,” Levac said. “If she’s fled, we’ll probably never find her.”

  Raven glanced back at Levac, who was cautiously poking through the contents of one of the nightstands.

  “Well, as far as we know, she isn’t dead,” she said. “We can’t keep digging through her things without a warrant. I doubt any judge would give us a pass on searching her place just because our prime suspect told us to.”

  “You’re right,” Levac said, his voice distant, “but I think maybe you should come look at this anyway.”

  Levac was looking at a small packet of photographs, one of which he had set aside. Raven moved to join him, taking a seat on the bed by his side. The photograph in his hand showed the woman they assumed to be Taylor standing next to Nathan King on the deck of a yacht. She was holding up a very large engagement ring for the camera to see. The photo was dated August of the prior year.

  Raven took the photo from Levac’s fingers to look at it more closely. The yacht wasn’t the Witchcraft, but she was a similar sailing sloop with three masts and an antique finish.

  “I guess now we have a motive and a new suspect,” Levac said.

  “She was engaged to our vic and close friends with the prime suspect,” Raven replied. “What are the odds? I think we need to have Frost put the call out, canvas the hotels, pull her credit cards, the whole nine.”

  Levac gathered the rest of photos into an envelope. “I think you’re right.”

  VIII

  An hour and four phone calls later, and Chicago’s finest were on the lookout for Taylor Hellsey, prime suspect in the murder of Nathan King and Victoria Laveau. Frost had also wrangled a warrant from Judge Crater and had Ryan’s crew tearing Hellsey’s apartment up looking for clues.

  Raven had dropped Levac at his apartment and returned to her family’s estate, where she found that a party, of sorts, was underway. Many of the city’s vampire elite were at the house, judging by the number of high-end cars parked in the driveway. She sighed and shook her head. She must have forgotten another one of her mother’s soirée’s.

  “Swell. I really don’t need this shit tonight,” she muttered.

  Knowing she had missed Court and that another failed appearance would not go down well, Raven parked in her spot beneath the house and made her way to her chambers, where she was not entirely surprised to find a black sheath gown, lingerie designed to enhance her assets, and stiletto heels had been laid out for her. She sighed again and moved into her adjoining bath to get ready.

  Twenty minutes later, she was making her way down the stairs balanced perfectly in the six-inch heels she felt certain her mother had chosen for her. She was hardly noticed when she entered the ballroom, where her mother and three or four dozen of her mother's friends had gathered to listen to music and share rare alcohols and dine on willing victims, many of whom were wearing even fewer clothes than Valentina was.

  Trying not to show her annoyance at guests dripping blood on the antique sofas her father had spent three years restoring as a gift to her mother, Raven continued through the ballroom and moved like a ghost to her mother’s side.

  Valentina, who was seated comfortably on a chaise lounge with her courtesan Dominique standing behind her, was dressed in a flowing gown of dark red satin that looked like blood against the lighter-colored lounge. Her black hair cascaded down her side in a silken waterfall and delicate black sandals adorned her feet. She smiled up at her daughter, her eyes glittering in the candlelight. “Ah, Ravenel! I am so glad you could make an appearance this evening,” she said with just a hint of rebuke. “You look simply gorgeous in that gown!”

  Raven bowed from the waist. “Thank you, Mother. You look radiant this evening.”

  She then raised her eyes and nodded at Dominique, who, in contrast to Valentina’s dark hair and eyes, was blonde and had pale blue eyes. She was dressed in a light pink gown and, as was her way, was barefoot.

  “It is a pleasure to see you too, Dominique,” she said to the smaller woman. “You are well?"

  “Indeed, Fürstin Ravenel. I’m keeping quite well. It’s a pleasure to see you,” Dominique replied with a soft smile. “I’m pleased you’re home and safe with us.”

  Raven smiled again and turned to scan the crowd, looking for anyone she might distract herself with. She saw Francois chatting with another vampire across the room. He caught her eye and smiled, indicating with a look that he would be done in a moment. She nodded back and was moving toward a small alcove that overlooked the gardens below when something else caught her attention. A group of vampires she didn’t recognize was standing in a close group near the dining room. They were speaking Cant in hushed voices and casting meaningful glances towards Valentina, who seemed oblivious to their existence.

  Unwilling to ignore the instincts that were screaming at her, Raven stopped one of the household staff, a young woman named Didi whom she had known for several years.

  “Yes, Fürstin Ravenel?” the girl asked.

  “Do you know any of those gentlemen?” Raven replied, indicating the men near the dining
room with a bob of her head.

  Didi cast a glance in the small group’s direction. “No, Fürstin, I’ve never seen them before. I assume they’re friends of another invited guest. Is there a problem?”

  “I’m not sure,” Raven said, her eyes still on the group. “Please do me a favor: Go to my room and retrieve my Automag for me? It’s in the holster behind the door.”

  Didi bowed and replied, “Yes, milady,” before jogging towards the back stairs, her hair bouncing behind her.

  Still watching the group from the corner of her eye, Raven continued on to the alcove, where she opened one window so she could look out at the night. The wind was still strong and cool, cutting nicely into the warmth of the house and causing gooseflesh to rise on her arms.

  She was dividing her attention between admiring the gardens, which she hadn’t entered since her father was killed, and the strange group of vampires when Francois approached. He ran one gentle hand along her back and kissed her cheek before leaning against the windowsill opposite her.

  “Good evening, Ravenel,” he said with a smile. “The wound in your neck appears to have healed well; how are you feeling?”

  “Hello, Francois,” Raven replied. “I’m feeling much better, thank you. Did you rest well?”

  Francois inclined his head by way of reply and glanced at the vampires Raven had been watching. “I sense something about them is bothering you,” he said in a soft voice.

  Raven glanced up at Francois. “Very observant of you. Do you know any of them?”

  Francois looked again and then shook his head. “I am sorry, Ravenel. I am still very new to your city; I have not yet made their acquaintance. Is there something amiss?”

  “Maybe,” Raven replied. “I haven’t seen them before either, and my alarm bells are going off. So far they haven’t done anything, but give Mom dirty looks, but something about them isn’t right. They shouldn’t be here and shouldn’t be speaking Cant.”