“We think the coyote shifters used it to attack our friend. He had a pregnant fiancée. We found her dead today, before she could talk to us. We know the coyote shifters—the Koyanni—killed her to shut her up. They didn’t want her to tell us anything that might endanger their plans.” I decided to take the chance. “Will you help us? Will you show us where you smelled the Wolf Briar being used?”
She stared at us, unspeaking, for a moment. Then, with a single nod, she jumped off the boulder and motioned for us to follow her as the thick undergrowth next to her parted, revealing a hidden path.
The dryad led us through a winding trail until we came to a small field with a track in the center of it. She pointed. “He was there. I was watching him because he seemed odd, not human, and I watch all who wander the paths. He was alone, by the way. No friend came with him.”
“Nobody?”
She shook her head. “None. I was about to leave him be when a group of shifters came off that path across the way.” Gesturing, she pointed to one of the sidewalks. “They raced over to him, and I heard a noise and smelled the Wolf Briar. I hid, so I didn’t see what happened. When I returned some time later, there was no sign of the werewolf nor the shifters. The Wolf Briar was still drifting on the breeze.”
Camille and I headed over to the track. It didn’t look well-used, most likely due to the fact that we’d had rain for most of the past two weeks and the track was dirt. Most joggers seemed to prefer the city streets or park sidewalks when they ran in the rain, and Seattle joggers didn’t let rainstorms stop them from getting out on the streets.
As we circled the quarter-mile path, I stopped and pointed off to the side nearest the walkway that the dryad had pointed out. Something shiny lay in the grass. We headed over and knelt beside whatever it was.
“A watch,” Camille said, lifting it up. She turned it over. “It’s inexpensive, but look—an inscription. To Paulo, the love of my life.” She paled. “This was Paulo’s watch.” Standing up, she shaded her eyes and looked to the opposite tree line. I followed suit.
“Something must have been waiting here for him, come out, dragged him off. What’s over there?” I turned toward the dryad, who had followed us out onto the grassy meadow.
She frowned for a moment. “Parking lot,” she said after a pause. “Cursed machines. Tear up the ground, tear up the earth to lay pavement. Humans need to learn how to walk again.”
I didn’t say anything, not wanting to get her off on a tangent against cars. I rather liked my Jeep, even though it wasn’t the best thing for the environment, and by now, cars were an integral part of human society, although the new hybrids were winning my heart for their attempts to shift away from polluting the world.
“Coyote shifters got him here. Took him to the parking lot . . . this was Paulo’s last free stop, I’ll bet you.” Camille hung her head. “Poor guy. And poor Mary Mae and her baby.”
My cell rang, and the dryad jumped back as if she’d been burned. I moved out of her way to answer it. “Yeah?”
“Chase here. We found something you need to see. It’s not pleasant.”
“What is it?” I was getting tired of unpleasant. I could really go for something a little nicer right now. Maybe even downright fun.
“You mean, who was it. We think it’s the remains of one of your werewolves. I say think because what’s left isn’t in very good shape. Get over here ASAP.” And with that, he signed off.
I flipped my phone shut and turned to Camille. “We’ve been summoned. Chase’s men found something.” I motioned to the dryad. “We thank you for your help—we really appreciate it. If there’s anything you ever need, let us know, and we’ll see what we can do.”
She blinked. “You mean it?”
Oh great. Earthside Fae were notorious in the way they latched on to the words “thank you” as a promissory note. Usually, it was a good month or two before people called in their markers, and when we were lucky, they said, “Forget about it,” and let it go as a favor. But she was serious.
“Yeah. What are you thinking?”
She blinked, then broke into a sly smile. “I could use a new garden to tend. I’m tired of the space closing in on me here. Find me a place where the trees are still wild and free, and I’ll move.”
Wow. That was unexpected. I choked down my first thought, which was, Oh yeah, we’re great little Santa’s helpers, and forced a smile to my lips. “We’ll do our best. It may take a little time. Do you mind cold winters?”
The dryad gave me a look like I had just asked her if she encouraged strip mining. “No . . . does it look like the cold bothers me? You may call me Bluebell. I’ll be waiting here for you. Don’t take too long. Please.” And with that, she vanished into the undergrowth.
Camille shook her head, warning me not to speak. We hightailed it out to the parking lot, Paulo’s watch in hand. Once we were in the car, I told Camille what Chase had said. “I think we don’t have to look far to find one of our missing Weres.”
She grimaced. “Wonderful. Okay, let’s head out. This day just keeps getting worse and worse.”
I was all in agreement, though to be honest, after finding Mary Mae’s body, I didn’t think there’d be much of a worse coming, and I prayed I wouldn’t be wrong.
CHAPTER 15
The FH-CSI headquarters had become all-too-familiar territory the past couple of days. We pulled into the lot and hustled inside, heading for Chase’s office, but he cut us off before we could get there, meeting us near the door.
“Come on, we’re heading toward the morgue.”
We hit the elevator. The second floor of the building—heading underground—was the arsenal and included a number of weapons the Seattle government wasn’t aware Chase was stocking. They wouldn’t have understood most of them—silver bullets, garlic bombs, various and sundry custom tricked-out guns. The elevator glided past the second floor, down to the third—jail cells for offenders from Otherworld. The fourth floor was the lowest level as far as I knew, though Chase had hinted there might be another, but he wouldn’t tell me what for.
Fourth floor was the morgue, the in-house laboratory, and the archives. We stepped out of the car and onto the concrete floor. Camille let out a long breath. She hated enclosed spaces and only took the elevator under protest because nobody else would do the stairs with her, and in this case, the stairs required specialty clearance badges.
As we followed Chase down the hall, her heels clicked a staccato tattoo on the floor, and I found myself listening to them, counting away the steps. Chase and I’d been together more since we’d broken up than we had the past few weeks. Somehow, that didn’t seem like such a great thing now.
We stopped by a set of double doors leading into the morgue. During a rash of vampire risings last December, when Menolly’s sire had come over from Otherworld to destroy her, she’d made mincemeat of the morgue, putting fledglings down. Now, you couldn’t even tell that damage had been done.
We entered the antiseptic room, and I focused on quieting my suddenly churning stomach. I was still squeamish about some things, dead bodies included, although they didn’t bother me nearly so much as they used to. The shelves were lined with bottles containing rubbery, slippery looking organs and various chemical mixtures. Each was labeled, but I did my best to skip reading what they contained. My stomach couldn’t handle placing a name on the gruesome visuals.
Camille and I were facing a long metal table. Mallen was standing beside it, in full gown, mask, cap, and gloves. He looked like a mad elfin scientist, with something in his hands that had to be . . . oh crap, it was. A lung. I looked away.
“Have you determined what we’re dealing with?” Chase asked.
“Looks like it was a werewolf, all right.” His voice was muffled, but his words were clear enough.
I steeled myself and turned back to face the table. What was left of the body had been dissected—or at least it looked that way now. It had been opened up, cut expertly into thin laye
rs as if somebody had been butterflying a chicken breast, and the layers were folded back, held in place by clips.
“What shape was he in when you found him?”
“Like this—opened up like an envelope. Scent glands are missing. Pituitary gland is missing. Adrenals are gone. Testicles are gone. And the heart is gone. Whoever got to this poor guy is using more than just his scent glands, but I don’t know for what. They wouldn’t need the heart or testes to make Wolf Briar.” He slowly folded the face back over the skull, which had a large slice taken off the top so the brain was showing. “Do you recognize him?”
My stomach lurched, and I winced. “No, but Katrina would, if it’s one of her friends. Should we call her?”
“Please. But warn her. We can set it up so she won’t see the rest of the body, but there’s no way she’s going to miss the fact that he’s been sliced and diced like your local heifer on slaughtering day.” Chase shook his head. “I can’t imagine doing this to someone. Harvesting from them.”
“There’s more than that,” Mallen said as Camille stepped over to the landline on the wall to call Nerissa and ask her to contact Katrina. Cell phones didn’t work underground.
“What more could there be?” I asked, wondering just how far the coyote shifters would go.
“His arms and legs show signs of being manacled. He was bound by something hard, something tight that bit into his skin. The bruising is consistent with—I’d say, iron or steel manacles. Cuffs. And they were tight. Drug tests are due back in a few minutes. We’re specifically looking for steroids.”
“Can you imagine . . . you take a beta werewolf, hop him up on steroids till he’s in a fighting rage. Manacle him in a cage and intensify his desire to get out. The power and fury that would create is scary to think about.”
Unable to look at the remains any longer, I turned away. It wasn’t so much disgust or revulsion as imagining what his end had been like. Terrified, most likely cut open while alive to maximize his rage—it made me want to hunt down his murderers and rip them to shreds, slowly.
Camille rejoined the group. “Nerissa’s going to bring Katrina down. She’s tough—but this isn’t going to be easy for her. Maybe you should have some tea waiting for after? Up in the medic unit?”
“Good idea.” Chase punched a button on his walkie-talkie and gave orders. “I suppose you can head out now. Unless you want to wait to see what Katrina says about his identity.”
I slowly crossed to the table. His arm was to one side, his hand hanging off the edge. Quietly, I ran my fingers over the indentation—a band of pale skin that encircled his wrist, a startling contrast to the darker tone of his arm.
“It’s Paulo Franco,” I whispered, bringing the watch out of my pocket. The watchband matched perfectly with the markings on his skin. “And here’s his watch. We know where they got him; we know when they got him. We know what they did with him. Now we just find out who did this and hunt them down.”
Chase took the watch and glanced at the inscription, pressing his lips together as he read. He slid it onto the tray next to a gold ring and what looked like an earring. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I think you’re right.”
“Damn it!” I grabbed Camille by the arm. “Let’s get the hell over to that magic shop and demand a few answers.” As I dragged her to the door, I called back to Chase, “call me on my cell when you have the definite ID, please.”
We jogged out to the car. Camille had taken one look at my face, and I could tell she wasn’t even going to try to suggest anything else. She just motioned for me to get in and pulled out of the parking lot, making quick time.
As we parked in front of Madam Pompey’s Magical Emporium, Inc., she turned to me. “Before you head in there like a hothead, you listen to me,” she said. “Wilbur says they’re sorcerers. That means they’re dangerous and most assuredly more powerful than I am. Do not, under any circumstances, accuse them of Paulo’s death or of making the Wolf Briar. Not until we find out just who we’re up against.”
I stared ahead, sullen, not wanting to listen. “They practically flayed him alive. They killed his fiancée and their unborn child. They have Amber, who has one of the spirit seals. What would you have us do—just wander in and play nice?”
“Exactly. Kitten, I’m working death magic. I know my way around a shop like that. So don’t mess it up. We’ll find out far more if they don’t think we’re out to kill them. You got it?”
I knew she was right, though I didn’t want to admit it. But I nodded and followed her inside.
The shop was like one of those dark, cobwebby little holes-in-the-wall where you could find the most amazing things tucked away in corner baskets or under a table, or in the half-open drawer of some ancient dresser. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, filled with jars of herbs and odd bits of creatures and liquids that I didn’t dare speculate on.
In the center of the shop were the tables covered in bones—not human, I hoped—and wands made of metal, crystal, and wood. Decks of tarot cards bordered the tables, surrounding baskets of miniature scrolls radiating a strange light. And behind the front counter were large quart jars filled with powders, some glistening with sparkles, others black as powdered ink.
The scent of dark musk and night-blooming jasmine filtered through the air from long sticks of hand-rolled incense that burned on the counter.
We browsed, Camille turning over a bone here, a spell there, as she surveyed the shop. I tried to tune in to whatever she was listening to, but all I could feel was an annoying static that set me to gritting my teeth. After a while, she picked up what looked like a rib bone from a small animal and a deck of tarot cards, and we headed toward the counter.
The woman who slipped from the curtained room leading into the back was striking, especially for an FBH. A lot of FBH women were gorgeous, beautiful . . . but this woman—she had the spark of magic in her eyes, a dangerous fire that seemed barely contained, ready to lash out. Her hair was raven black, flowing long and straight down her back, and her features were delicate and yet chiseled in stone. She wore a long robe, navy in color and clinging to her body in a lewd way that none of Camille’s fetish gear ever did.
She glided to the counter. On one level, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. On another, I understood exactly what Wilbur had been talking about when he said the woman scared him shitless. Even as magic-blind as I could be, the woman was dark, and a shadow oozed out of her aura to permeate the shop.
“May I help you?” Her voice leeched across the counter, tendrils of that same shadowy energy. She stood near the cash register.
Camille sucked in a short breath. “I’d like to buy these, and I have a question. I’m in need of several components that most shops around here won’t prepare for me. Do you ever make custom-designed powders and potions?”
The woman blinked. “On occasion, when the price is right, if we have the interest. I can feel your energy, death-priestess. Why don’t you make them yourself?” She cocked her head, her gaze focused on Camille.
“I don’t have the setup in my home for it, and some of the ingredients are . . . shall we say . . . difficult to procure, and dangerous.” Camille let out her glamour fully, catching the woman unaware. “What name shall I call you by?”
“Jaycee,” she answered, now totally fixated on my sister. “What are you looking for? We might have it in stock. We keep a select inventory for a few of our regular customers.”
“Corpse reanimation powder and demonic sentinel oil.” Her voice smooth, Camille ticked off the components like she might be reciting a grocery list. “Snake slither, if you have it.”
Jaycee’s gaze flared. “I have all three, but we don’t keep them here. Not wise to keep substances like that in plain view. I can bring them for you when I come in to work tomorrow.”
Camille frowned. “That will work, although I’d rather have them today.” She pulled out her purse and paid the woman for the bone and deck. “I’ll see you tomorrow—I
need an ounce of each.”
“You know the snake slither’s going to run you a good hundred fifty for an ounce,” Jaycee said as we headed to the door.
“I’m not worried,” Camille called back over her shoulder.
As soon as we were outside, she hustled me to the car, stopping at a nearby garbage can to dump the tarot deck and bone. “I can’t stand having those in my hands. They reek as bad as Demonkin energy.”
The minute we were in the car, she turned to me. “We need to find their home address. Wilbur’s right. They’re the ones making Wolf Briar. I could smell some of the ingredients on her robe, but I’ll guarantee you they don’t keep it in the shop. And wherever they keep that crap, they’re going to be keeping a diary of who brought them the werewolves. Making Wolf Briar’s bad, but kidnapping werewolves to harvest their organs? So much worse.”
“What about Van?”
“I heard someone in the back and sensed an energy very similar to Jaycee’s. Ten to one it was Van. So if they are at work, there’s nobody at home to keep watch over things.”
“So we break into their house. They may still be holding Doug and Saz—the guys might still be alive. And if we can prove they’re making Wolf Briar, we shut them down. We also search for the records that will give us some idea where the coyote shifters live—and they have Amber.”
“Two birds with one stone, babe.” She started the car. “How do we find out where they live?”
“They have to have a business license, and there has to be a record of who owns that license. Simple enough. Stop at a coffee shop, and I’ll go online and look it up. That stuff’s all public knowledge.”
We pulled into a Starbucks, and while Camille bought cookies and a monster latte, I flipped open my laptop, jacked into the wireless service, and pulled up a browser. I had numerous sites bookmarked where I could dredge up all sorts of goodies on people. Some were pay-per-use, others I’d subscribed to, and still others were public domain. Within five minutes, I had the address of both president and treasurer of Madame Pompey’s Magical Emporium, Inc. Van and Jaycee Thomas, and they lived a few miles from our home in Belles-Faire.
Harvest Hunting Page 20
