“Oooh,” Brazen laughed. “Watch out, Kix, that girl might be more dangerous than she looks.”
“Oh, Brazen,” I said, pushing myself back up and holding my chest, “if you were only half the man your mother was.”
“Fuck you, Piper.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I prefer the company of the opposite sex.”
Brazen leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “I’ve got something here that’ll prove I’m all man.”
“Great,” I said with mock enthusiasm, “just let me go get my electron microscope and we’ll have a look.”
That shut him up.
I finally got to my desk and dropped off my coat before continuing down the hall to the elevators. I wanted to get with Dr. Hale to check on the status of the normal that Reaper had sent down earlier. After that, I’d pay Pecker a visit regarding those runes I’d seen.
Just as the elevator door was closing, a hand reached in and stopped it.
It was Reaper.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked, stepping inside and not waiting for an answer.
“Sure, why not?”
The elevator hit the lower level and then we stepped out and hit the doctor’s office, expecting to see the normal being worked on.
Instead we found an empty unit.
“Hello, Piper,” Dr. Hale said, coming up behind us. “Ah, good to see you, Reaper.”
“And you as well,” Reaper replied with a bow.
Dr. Hale was a middle-aged vampire who wore round-rimmed glasses that made her look studious. She was the grumpy type, too. We got along perfectly.
“Where is the normal?” I asked.
“She’s been reversed,” answered Hale while pointing back out the way we came, “but it wasn’t easy. I have the crew modifying her memories right now and then we’ll send her back. She’ll just think she was drinking too much and passed out.”
“What if she doesn’t drink?” I asked.
“Hmmm. Good point.” She shrugged. “Oh well, she does now.”
“Right.”
“Follow me for a second,” Dr. Hale instructed, turning and walking toward a small room off in the corner. “I’ve got some questions.”
We followed her and sat in the two chairs in front of her desk.
Dr. Hale sat down and clicked a few keys on her keyboard, causing her computer to come to life. She turned it around so it was facing us.
“This is the normal you sent me,” Dr. Hale said, staring at the screen. “Notice anything strange?”
“You mean besides the fact that she’s lying there like she’s just been bitten by a vampire?”
“Yes,” the answer was tight.
I looked at the picture more carefully. Everything seemed in order as far as I could tell. She had dark hair, a beige blouse, white skin, two little holes in her neck, black eyes, red nails, a gray skirt with—
“Black eyes,” I said with a jolt. “Why does she have black eyes?”
I’d seen many a normal get bitten by a vampire over my years and never once did they end up having black eyes. We’re not just talking the irises here, either. The entire eye was black.
“Her DNA had been altered beyond what vampires typically manage.” She tilted her head at me. “Did the others seem like average vampires?”
“Best I can tell, they were,” I answered and then glanced over at Reaper. “Reap?”
“I saw nothing unusual aside from the fact that they were carrying illegal weaponry and had runes assisting them.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “There was that.”
“So a wizard was helping them,” Dr. Hale more stated than asked. “That could have something to do with it, I suppose.”
“What do you mean, Doc?”
“Just that whoever bit her had something more to them than simple vampirism,” Dr. Hale said, tapping on the image of the normal on her screen. “I don’t know what, exactly, but it sure as hell isn’t just a vampire.”
Chapter 7
We took the elevator down another level and entered Pecker’s workshop. Where Dr. Hale’s place of work was clean and crisp, Pecker’s was a complete wreck. How the little goblin could find his way around in all this mess was a mystery.
“This place is just as filthy as the last time I was here,” jeered Reaper while holding up a hand to cover his mouth.
“Afraid you’re going to catch something deadly, Reap?” I asked as we padded across the sticky floor. “I wouldn’t have thought your kind could get sick.”
He lowered his hand but said nothing.
“Pecker?” I called out after a few moments of waiting. “Are you in here?”
“Yeah, yeah,” replied his heavily accented voice. “I’m comin’ already. Hold your panties.”
Okay, I wasn’t fond of that comment, but for whatever reason, I never held a grudge against him. Maybe it was because he was a goblin or maybe it was because he had given me more tech over the years than anyone else I knew, but he got away with a lot more than I was known to tolerate.
Papers were flying in the air, signaling the path the little guy was taking to get to us.
Finally, he burst through a set of boxes and looked up at me. He had a narrow, gray face that was littered with wrinkles and creases. His ears were long and pointed, and they had hair poking out of their holes. He wiped his nose on his dirty lab coat.
“Piper,” he said with a sigh, “what can I do ya for?” Then he paused and glanced at my new partner. “How’s the tat, Reaper?”
“It’s going very well, thank you,” he replied.
“It needs ice storms and lightning bolts added,” I interjected, thinking that if I was going to be saddled with this guy for the long haul, he needed some better firepower. “Also, if you can figure out a way to dim his high beams, that’d be great.”
“Tough broad” said Pecker as he leaned in toward Reaper. “Gotta love her.”
Reaper leaned back toward Pecker. “Must I?”
Great, so Reaper and Pecker were pals. He was probably also buddying up with Brazen and Kix. That’d have to stop.
“Actually,” Pecker said, holding up a finger, “I could probably add in an energy matrix. That’d give you some extra power.” He looked away for a few seconds while mumbling to himself. “Yeah, that should work.”
He pushed away some papers from a keyboard and started typing wildly. The speed of his fingers was insane.
“You should write books,” I suggested in awe. “You could release one a week at the speed you type.”
“Nah,” he said over his shoulder. “I’d drive reader teams insane if I did something like that!”
“Good point.”
Reaper was looking at his tattoo as Pecker continued his changes. It was an interesting light show as little glowing wisps moved around.
“Can you feel that?” I asked.
“It tingles a little bit,” Reaper answered.
A new line was beginning to form. This was the way tattoos were put on officers. You’d think we’d go through the old ink-and-needle method, but this was done through some means that tied magic and technology together.
“Annnnnnd done,” announced Pecker with a final slam of the keyboard. He turned back. “You’d just use three fingers there and—” He slapped Reaper’s hand away. “Not in here!”
“Oh, sorry.”
Pecker wiped his forehead and let out a relieved breath.
“Right, well, it’ll launch an energy pulse. You might want to be careful with it, though, because you’re pretty different than everyone else.” Pecker smiled. “It might be a big boom.”
A big boom would have been nice when we were facing down those vampires. Granted, they used a Shredder to cause their own big boom, but we could have used a preemptive strike.
“Anyway,” I said, “we were just topside dealing with a bunch of vampires and—”
“Assholes.”
“What?”
“Vampires,” he sp
at. “Most of them are assholes. Of course, so are werewolves and fae and pixies,”—he looked up at me again—“especially pixies, and djinn and mages and—”
“I get it,” I interrupted. “Everyone but goblins are assholes.”
“Oh, no, sister, we’re the worst.” He cracked a creepy smile at that. “Anyway, what about the vampires?”
“They had runes and I need to figure out if we can trace the mage or wizard who created them.”
“Sure,” he said, looking me over. “Are they in your pocket or something?”
I grimaced at him. I considered myself a pretty patient person, though I’m sure many now-deceased perps would disagree with that self-assessment, but sometimes I just wasn’t in the mood to play around.
But he had a point. I should have just broken the wall and carried them back with me. It’s not like the runes were that large, after all.
“I don’t,” I stated after a moment. “They were in a building that was burning down and the local fire department had just arrived.”
“We could probably have gotten them, if we—” Reaper started.
“Then why didn’t you?” I snarled at him before he could finish his sentence.
“Because I couldn’t see them, Piper.”
His reply was smooth and even.
It made my eye twitch.
“All I have is the memory of the damn things,” I said, turning back to face Pecker. “Is there anything we can do from that?”
“That depends on how solid your memory is,” he answered with a shrug. “Oh, and I’d also need you to recreate the magical signature exactly.”
“Seriously?” I scoffed. “There’s not some system that has a bunch of runes collected over the years that we can use as a comparison?”
“Sure there is,” Pecker replied with an arched eyebrow, “but it doesn’t work just from drawings.”
I wanted to jump into a long diatribe about how that made no sense. Hell, there were even handwriting experts in the Overworld who could figure out the identity of a person just by their scribbles. But Pecker wasn’t the type who responded well to having things like that pointed out to him. He’d just grumble something in response and I’d be on his shit list for a week.
Fortunately, there was a way to handle him that worked with nearly all engineers.
“I guess that makes sense,” I said coyly. “It’d be great if there were some way to detect them by their specific painting styles.”
“Hmmm,” he said, eying me dubiously.
I had to play it carefully or he’d catch on.
“You mean like handwriting specialists do?” Reaper asked.
“Huh?” I answered in mock surprise. “I hadn’t thought of that, actually.” Then I gazed down at Pecker. “Maybe that’s out of your area of expertise, though? I mean, you’re an engineer, not a—”
“I know what I am,” he sassed while giving me the evil eye. “And I know what you are, too, Piper. You’re a lousy, two-bit con artist who’s trying to get me to build a system that will run comparisons on runes based solely on whose hand built it.”
I batted my eyelashes at him. No, I wasn’t one of those who went in for using my feminine wiles, but now and then they came in handy.
“Bitch,” he said with a wink. “All right, all right. I’ll give you that it’s a decent enough idea, and I probably should have thought about it a long time ago, but there’s not much call for rune-checking these days.”
I smiled.
“Before you go getting all proud,” he continued, “it’s going to take some time to build this up, and it ain’t going to work on you sketching your recollection of it.” He wiped his nose again. “Your painting would have to be exactly like the wizard or mage who made that rune.” He stared into my eyes firmly. “Exactly, Piper.”
I sighed.
“Right.”
“Next time bring me the board it’s on and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Fair enough,” I conceded with a groan, knowing the rune would have undoubtedly been destroyed by now, but maybe not. “I doubt it’s still there at this point, but might be worth a look.”
Pecker twitched his nose. “Sorry.”
“Can’t be helped,” I replied. “Let’s go, Reap. We’ve got some sleuthing to do.”
We said our goodbyes and jumped back in the elevator. Chief Carter wanted answers; unfortunately, we had none.
“Don’t you just love Pecker?” Reaper said, all smiles.
I frowned at him. “Really might want to think through your phrasing before you speak, Reap.”
Chapter 8
Carter was just hanging up his phone when Reaper and I walked into his office.
“Okay,” he said, “what do we know?”
“Not much more, Chief,” I answered. “Dr. Hale found something weird with the normal that Reap sent down, but she’s not exactly sure what’s going on there.”
Carter just kept his eyes on me as if waiting for more.
“Right,” I continued, “we also met with Pecker to see if he could help us figure out who drew the runes.”
“And?”
“No dice. Says he’d need the physical copies in order to do it, but he’s also going to work on a way to piece it out just from images.”
“Wonderful,” Carter said as he rubbed his temples. “So we’ve got Gallien Cross running around town feeding, he’s got help, and he’s turning normals into something that our talented Dr. Hale doesn’t understand.”
I nodded. “That’s about the gist of it, yep.”
The room fell silent for a few minutes. Obviously the chief was thinking things through, as was I, but at least he wasn’t going off on a tangent regarding the fact that we didn’t have enough information. He sometimes did just that when he was fuming. Right now, he looked more concerned than angry.
As far as chiefs went, Carter had always been a good one. He’d get irritated from time to time, and he could be quite pushy when necessary, but for the most part he was fair and decent. In fact, were it not for him, I’d be in prison.
I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a model citizen, after all.
Before you go judging me, though, walk a few miles in my shoes. I was born a normal, my parents were killed by some mage who didn’t want them to testify against him, I was raised in the Netherworld due to my special abilities to see supernaturals, and I was somehow infused with immortality. Nobody had ever figured that one out, including me.
Anyway, getting bullied and shit on all my life made me “gritty,” at least that’s what Chief Carter said when he’d come to a holding cell I’d been in due to fighting. He asked me if I wanted to use my grit to work for the Paranormal Police Department. It was either that or spend time in jail.
Obviously, I took the job.
That was six years ago.
“We need to get Cross off the streets,” the chief breathed.
“Well,” I said, using that grit that got me this job in the first place, “if I didn’t have to keep an eye on junior here, that’d certainly help.” I then looked at Reaper. “No offense.”
“Some taken.”
“Fact is that he’s not ready and I can’t be worried about him the entire time.”
“If I recall correctly,” Reaper remarked, “I believe it was my shield that saved your life earlier, Piper.”
“I wouldn’t have died. I’m immortal, remember?”
“It still would have hurt a fair bit and you would have required time to heal.” I went to reply, but he held up a hand. “Also, Dr. Hale would never have had the chance to see how that woman’s eyes changed to black. And while we don’t understand yet what the blackness of that woman’s eyes signifies, it may be a clue that you would not have uncovered without me.”
I hated being wrong, but I was wrong.
Regardless, the fact was that I would be able to stop Gallien Cross by myself a hell of a lot easier without Reaper being around. I wouldn’t hesitate like I did with him there. His w
ellbeing held me up when it shouldn’t have been an issue. Truth was that he was just as immortal as I was, but that doesn’t matter when you’re in the thick of it. You don’t consider things like that. You just think that you have someone else to cover.
I worked best alone.
Alone.
“Chief—” I started emphatically.
“Reaper,” he said, cutting me off, “would you please give us the room?”
That wasn’t good. If Carter had been wearing a red suit with a black belt and white trimmings, I would have thought I was being put on the “naughty list.”
“Of course, Chief,” Reaper said after a moment of staring at me.
Once he was out the door, I wanted to lay into Carter for putting me in this situation in the first place, but his face told me that now wasn’t the time.
“Piper,” he said with a sigh, “you’re our best Retriever.”
Wasn’t expecting that.
Reverse psychology, maybe?
I’d have to keep my guard up.
“Okay,” I said with a squint.
“I’m not playing any games here,” he said, clearly catching my leery attitude. He motioned around at his paper-littered desk. “I’ve got twenty-seven Retrievers on staff, and most of them are very good at what they do. I’ve got over two hundred cops, too. Again, they’re solid. I mean, sure, some need a little work…”
“Brazen and Kix.”
“Among others,” he affirmed. “But you’re the only one I don’t worry about. You go out, you get the job done, and you report back in. No fuss, no muss. All business.”
“Thanks,” I said, still thinking he was trying to set a hook.
“It’s why I put you on the toughest cases,” he continued. “It’s also why I agreed to let you work alone after Officer Michaels left the force. You’re a rebel. That makes you dangerous and effective, which is precisely what it takes to be a good Retriever.”
There was no arguing that. I’d seen a few Retrievers over the years who seemed to be a shoo-in for the job, but when the action went down, they couldn’t handle it. It wasn’t enough to be willing to shoot people, you also had to watch out for the normals. Yes, there was collateral damage from time to time, but you avoided it where you could.
Blood Crossed Page 3
