Under a Blood Moon

by Rachel Graves

  “No bodies from Saturday night and none from last night, so the wolves are either eating them whole or we haven’t found them yet. Either way it gives us a nice break from the media blitz.” He gestured toward the department copy of the morning paper. A crime scene photo from the college had gotten out. Red-stained brick made me wish I had taken Jakob up on his offer to buy me the chocolate shop.

  “It’s also possible that we had two isolated incidents, right?” I tried.

  “Possible, but unlikely, especially given what happened that didn’t get in the case file.” He gave me a sober look before going on. “Actually that gave me an idea, how do you feel about a trip to missing persons?”

  “Missing persons?” I asked, completely confused.

  “The department of missing persons. Sometimes I forget how new you are. Didn’t anyone ever give you a tour of the building?”

  I shook my head. “I never had the pleasure.”

  “Lucky you, missing persons, two floors down, they aren’t morning people. We can work on reports for a while before we head down.”

  I didn’t smile as I dug into the stack of papers on my desk.

  ****

  The missing persons department didn’t look a thing like our office. The floor had a soft blue carpet and there were actual live plants in the corners of the reception room. We didn’t even have a reception room. Then again, we didn’t get many weeping parents in Supernatural Investigations so I guess that was fair. The large tray of breakfast pastries was not. A pretty staff sergeant with her ID hooked to her skirt greeted us.

  “Detectives Gallagher and Mors SIU,” Danny explained. Her smile dimmed a bit, I suspected it was meant for media. “We’d like to talk to someone about your unsolved cases.”

  She passed us off to a decidedly less attractive detective who walked us back into a squad room that looked more familiar. They still had better carpet and newer desks, but the layout of partners’ desks with a lieutenant’s office at the end of the room was comforting.

  “What kind of cases do you need? Got some fairy tale freak eating kiddies again?” The detective hadn’t bothered to give us his name.

  “No, thank God. Just werewolves this time.” When Danny said ‘just werewolves’ my anger rose, then I realized that the case the detective had mentioned must have been pretty brutal.

  “So the rumors are true. Nuts, I’ve got a brother-in-law that turns furry once a month, never causes a problem. Why does there always have to be one that ruins it for the rest of ’em?” Neither of us answered but he didn’t seem to notice. “What can MP do to help?”

  “We’d like your records of missing adults for the last ten full moons.” Danny didn’t smile or say please.

  “Got the dates? We don’t worry about lunar cycles down here.”

  Danny already had the dates written down. We decided to wait while the printer spit out pages. The stack of paper was depressing. Too many people went missing in our town. Upstairs we sorted through the pages, in the last full moon, six people had been reported missing. In the full moon before that, five. Before that, six again. Going back further, ten months ago two people were missing, and nine months ago only one.

  “The WPL shows up in town seven months ago, and there just happens to be a spike in the number of people missing on the full moon. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?” I said.

  “Amazing,” Danny agreed, his voice dripping with disdain.

  “Can I ask why no one has noticed this little coincidence before?” I tried my best not to sound critical.

  Danny sighed. “Around 200,000 adults go missing each year, it’s not like an extra five or six a month is going to make anyone notice. A kid goes missing, and we pull out all the stops. But with an adult, we wait and see. Unless there’s a family member raising hell, the system lets you down.”

  I frowned. I hated the things I knew now that I was on the force. I missed the innocence I had back when I was a social worker.

  “Mors, Gallagher, my office, now,” the lieutenant barked. I scrambled to get up, knocking over a pile of papers in the process. Danny grinned at my clumsiness but redeemed himself by helping me pick everything up.

  Lieutenant French was leaning back in his chair with his hands laced behind his shaved head when we got inside. “I swear to God, when I hired you, Mors, I did not expect you to work on cases this ugly.”

  It almost sounded like an apology. I didn’t know what to say. I had assumed I got my fair share of the good and the bad that paraded through our office.

  “I didn’t think you had, sir.”

  “And yet, when things get really bad, like they did on Saturday, I’m extraordinarily glad we have you.” He leaned forward and began tapping a pen on his desk. I glanced at Danny. His look confirmed that this was not normal behavior. “I just got a phone call that’s deeply disturbing, a phone call from the FBI.”

  “They want the case?” Danny asked.

  “Yes and no. They’re sending an expert to work with us. They want to share the case completely.” A smile wide enough to be seen beneath the lieutenant’s bushy mustache flashed across his face. “Before you get upset, I checked around on the expert. He’s good, but he can’t get along with anyone. No partners, no glowing recommendations, but if there’s a problem with a werewolf, he’s your man. The minute the problem is solved, he’s gone.”

  Danny let out the breath he’d been holding. “Could be worse.”

  “Could be a lot worse,” the lieutenant agreed. “The special agent has requested you assist him, Mors. I guess being a media darling pays off. The thing is, I’m not going to assign you full time to the FBI. We need you too much around here for that.”

  “So what do we do?” I asked. I liked Danny. I liked the way we worked together. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of following around a special agent.

  “We get creative. Gallagher, you’ll work the same set schedule you always do.”

  “I appreciate that.” Danny liked to be home with his family. It meant a lot to him to be there to put the girls to bed and take them to school in morning.

  “Mors, you’re going to work whenever the FBI needs you. This guy likes to work nights, don’t force yourself in here if you’re out showing him the town until three a.m. We’ll call you when there’s a crime scene we need you at. Otherwise come in when you can, the paperwork will be here. Does that work for you?”

  “Yes, sir.” I had sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I wasn’t going to have much of a normal life until the end of the full moon. “When do we expect him, sir?”

  “Special Agent Zollern should get in touch with us sometime today. Apparently, he drove here from his last assignment. One of his quirks, I guess.”

  Danny and I thanked him and went back to the stack of missing people. I tried to concentrate on the lost and forgotten victims but couldn’t.

  “Do you know any FBI agents?”

  “Just the ones on TV.” Trust Danny to be a smart ass.

  “Seriously, I’m wondering what this guy will be like. I’m not too happy about having to assist someone.”

  “Hopefully he’s good, we could use the help.” Danny pointed at the stack of pictures. “This has been happening for months, we’re late to the party, and we have no clue what’s going on.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “Let’s hope it helps them.” Danny pointed to the stack again. We spent the better part of the morning up to our elbows in missing people. We read and reread case reports that were spotty at times and indifferent at others. Many times there wasn’t anything to go on, someone moved to the city, took a job, and then didn’t show up to work one day. After a few weeks, a landlord would call or a relative from out of town would show up. By then any trail was cold, any information lost.

  We plotted out where the missing had last been seen each month on a big map. The earlier cases were next to the WPL offices. After that they didn’t follow any rhyme or reason. We looked
at heights, weights, hair colors, and a thousand other little details that might link any of the thirty-five people who had the misfortune to go out on a full moon night and never come home. We didn’t find anything.

  We took a break for lunch. Danny had one of Katie’s low-calorie lunches. I tormented him by getting a steak and cheese sub from the deli downstairs. I felt a little bit sorry for him and everyone else in the world who couldn’t flex a supernatural muscle and burn off an extra two thousand calories. Of course, Danny had or was a supernatural something. He hadn’t told me what. Whatever it was, he was jealous of my witch’s diet as I unpacked the brown bag. I wasn’t sure if it was the French fries or the brownie, but he insisted I hurry up so we could get back to work.

  After lunch, we plotted religion, schooling, and race. We came up with nothing on each count. I was beginning to think that these were truly random killings and said as much.

  “What about jobs?” Danny asked. We spent a while crawling through individual files pulling job information. Danny started reading the jobs to me so I could make a list. When we were finally done, he asked me what we had.

  “We’ve got an accountant, some lawyers, a school teacher, a doctor, and the list goes on. It’s like career day at an elementary school.” I threw my clipboard down in disgust. We were wasting time.

  “Like someone is trying to get one of everything. Any cops in there?”

  “One detective, I don’t know him. Let’s see what else.” I scanned it up and down a few times looking for other jobs. “No butcher, baker, or a candle stick maker, there isn’t even a nurse.”

  “The nurse was taken when they killed Madame Marie,” Danny pointed out.

  “Fine, but what does it all mean?” Danny didn’t bother to reply to my question. Any minute now the high and mighty FBI agent was going to waste my time as an errand girl. I wanted to find something before that happened. “What do you say we head back to the WPL? Maybe they have something to say about the odd spike in missing persons.”

  “We can’t trust anything they tell us.” Danny leaned back in his chair, staring at the map. Thirty-five dots and no way to connect them. I forced myself to focus, to see what I was missing.

  “Mors, my office, now.” It was the lieutenant, startling me out of my chair.

  This morning I had been assigned to be the FBI’s do girl. I didn’t think there was anything in that office that could shock me. I was wrong. Sitting across from the lieutenant’s desk was a man with short brown hair. It took me a minute to recognize him. The minute I did, my mind threw me back into my memories.

  The apartment had been a single room, and it looked like it had been swept by a tornado. All of the furniture, knickknacks, paper, all of the debris of life was piled up against the back wall. On the floor was four pointed summoning star, the man stood in the middle, blood dripping from each wrist. He’d drawn the star with salt for protection. When my toe brushed the edge of it, I felt the energy crackle over my skin. It was like walking outside before a lightning storm starts. Inside the circle, everything was absolutely quiet and absolutely calm. I remembered his eyes, opaque opal white, no pupils, no irises, just white as he warned me to leave, because death was coming. He didn’t realize then that I was the death he called. I wondered if he realized it now.

  “Sit down, Mors.”

  I didn’t think I’d been staring, but his command made it obvious I had.

  “What can I do for you, lieutenant?” I tried to sound polite and disinterested. The man sitting next to me was a spirit witch, a powerful one. I had been ready to give him the death he wanted when he broke that circle, ending the magic. It was the first time I’d been okay with my power and the closest I’d ever come to killing someone.

  “This is Simon Edwards, I think you recognize him,” the lieutenant said. My mind supplied a line from a report I barely remembered writing, twenty-five year old spirit witch, attempted suicide, expected to make a full recovery. Simon gave a weak ‘hi’.

  “Sure. How are the wrists?”

  He blushed furiously.

  “And that is exactly why you are in here, Mors. What happened between you and Simon is not going to be the talk of the office.”

  “Danny worked that case too. Why isn’t he in here?”

  “From what I understand he didn’t have as intimate a knowledge of things.”

  “Sir, I’ve haven’t talked about the case beyond the usual paperwork in the two months since it happened. Why are we even talking about it now?” I patently ignored Simon. If this was about his privacy rights, I didn’t even want to look at him.

  “Because you’ll be working with him on the werewolf killings.”

  My mouth gaped at the very idea.

  “His special skills will come in handy and with you going part time to the FBI, Gallagher will need the help.”

  “You’re a cop?” I turned to face him. His green eyes went wide with alarm over the question.

  “He’s no more of a cop then you were when you showed up six months ago, so be nice,” the lieutenant ordered.

  I felt the heat rise in my face remembering how I’d fled to the city with everything I owned packed in my car. I’d sat in this office, unsure of myself and skittish, running away from my old life and my newfound abilities. Shame washed over me, and I found could only focus on the dark skin of the lieutenant’s hands, not his face. “Yes, sir.”

  “In fact, be nice enough to show him where the cafeteria is. After a morning with HR, I’m sure he needs a cup of coffee.”

  Simon agreed that he did. I nodded and offered my most comforting smile as we left.

  Danny asked me what was up before the door the office even shut behind me. I told him there was a new guy on the case and that I was going to fill him in over coffee. I couldn’t tell if he heard me, his head was buried in reports before I finished.

  When Simon and I got into the elevator, I struggled for a way to not talk about the last time we stood this close. I didn’t want to be any ruder than I had been. He started to say something, but a pair of uniformed cops joined us, and he shut his mouth. Downstairs we grabbed a private table and sipped coffee.

  “I’m sorry I never had a chance to say thank you for stopping the magic that day. I went from the hospital to a care center. I got back in town a few days ago,” he said. So we were going to talk about it. Great.

  “I’m sorry, I know this sounds hateful, but I didn’t stop. When you broke the circle I lost the power.”

  “Oh,” he said softly, and then repeated the word again louder. “You’re stuck with it too? All this time I thought everyone else got off easy.”

  “Stuck with what?”

  “The power, the way you can’t turn it off. I constantly hear what people are feeling. It’s like a white noise in the background everywhere I go.” His enthusiasm fell. “That’s why I did it. I couldn’t handle hearing it any more. It was ruining my life.”

  “You can hear what I’m feeling? Right now?” I asked.

  “It’s impolite to read people.” He looked down, embarrassed, and I knew he had.

  “Humor me, read me.”

  “You were embarrassed, but now you’re excited.” He paused. “Why are you excited?”

  I brushed his question aside. “Could you tell if I was lying?”

  “Sure, but really it’s not something you should do, it can lead to trouble.”

  “Try it. Ask me something.” Finally, a way to know, to be positive if the WPL knew anything. If it worked I would drag him down to the WPL offices myself.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five,” I lied.

  He shook his head.

  “Try another, anything.”

  “Describe the lieutenant.”

  “Black, mid-fifties, hard-ass.”

  “Not lying. I’m sorry. This really feels awkward. I’ve tried my whole life not to read people.”

  “If this feels awkward, this afternoon is going to feel downright repulsive.”
I pulled him upstairs, anxious to tell Danny what I was thinking.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Danny came up with the same idea almost immediately, but it took the lieutenant to convince Simon to do it. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have wanted to go to the WPL on my first day either. Still, Simon’s talent meant we could tell whether the wolves at the WPL were hiding anything about the killings. It wouldn’t hold up in court, but knowing if we were up against the leader of a pack of werewolves or a trio of rogue wolves would really help. I tried to distract Simon on our ride out.

  “So tell me how much you know about witchcraft.”

  “Uh, not much,” he admitted. “I’m the only one in my family. What do I need to know?”

  Danny gave me a slight nod from the driver’s seat, so I launched into lecture mode. I’d given this speech to plenty of kids who just found out what they were the hard way.

  “There are four types of elemental witches: air, fire, water, and earth. Each of those is associated with a god or goddess. Those witches can channel the energy of their god to do big things. When that happens their eyes bleed out, but ultimately, they’re okay.”

  “And the rest of us…”

  “There are three type of life force witches: death, spirit, and sex. Those forces don’t have gods associated with them, so those witches don’t have anyone’s energy to channel, they have to do magic with their own energy. If you do too much magic, you’ll pass out.”

  “Good to know.” Simon looked ashen at the thought.

  “Don’t worry, we’ve got your back,” Danny said. “Fun trivia: the color of a witch’s eyes are an indicator of the type of magic, yellow for air, red for fire, blue for water, and green for earth. But the life force witches, go white with swirls of the other color supposedly because the life forces involve all of the other elements. Nifty, huh?”