Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

“She wants you at the Old Road Campus,” he said, his voice hollow. “Now. There have been deaths, two human boys, others are missing. Three students.”

  His eyes met mine as I took the phone gently from him. They were haunted.

  “One of them, Lieselotte, is my daughter,” he growled.

  I didn’t know what to say to him. He stood in the darkness of the plants in the glasshouse, looking vacant and pale. I watched his expression cycle through shock, fear and into anger. He bared his teeth as I raised the phone back to my ear. “I’ll tell her I’m on my way,” I said softly to him.

  “Tell her I am coming with you.”

  11.

  Our car was still waiting for us outside of the Botanical Gardens, and the driver did his best, and failed, not to stare as Griff and I piled in the back followed by the hulking figure of Kane. The Old Road Campus wasn’t a long drive, and we soon headed off Roosevelt Drive and into the campus proper.

  Unlike most of the old city, with its historic buildings and 10-a-penny architectural wonders, the Old Road Campus is relatively new-born. It opened in the early twenty-first century, not too long before the world went to hell in a hand basket. It's a purpose-built state of the art facility in Headington. I’d never had cause to come here before, and glanced out of the window as the car threaded us between the many sleek modern buildings, glass walls and minimal lines everywhere. We drove past the Kennedy Institute, the Henry Wellcome building for molecular physiology and others, dodging bike-riding students. I had colleagues working here, at the structural genetics consortium, busy determining the three dimensional structures of proteins, and others working at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. With today’s technology, however, I rarely had to leave the comfort of Blue Lab one to engage with them. I hadn’t met many of my peers in the flesh, but this was their haunting ground.

  It might seem odd that I’d never walked this campus before, but I’ve never been comfortable around people. I always preferred email and phone where possible. Laughable really, that despite my lack of basic social skills, I was rubbing elbows with all manner of odd creatures these days. Perhaps it was karma.

  It struck me that Cloves hadn’t told me where in the Old Road Campus the incident was. I hadn’t thought to ask, and it was a large site, incorporating the Churchill Hospital itself. As it turned out, we didn’t need any direction. The chaotic gaggle of rubberneckers, police, Cabal Ghosts, and news crews made it blatantly clear where the action was. We pulled up outside the Jenner Institute and climbed into the fray, holding my ID in front of me like a magical talisman to fight my way through the crowds to the black and yellow police tape.

  “The Jenner Institute?” Griff asked, as we were elbowed and jostled through the reporters and bystanders to be waved through the point of no public access set up by the frankly harassed-looking Cabal Ghosts.

  “They develop vaccines here,” I said for Kane’s benefit. “Against major global diseases. Pretty much everything they can, except for the Pale virus that is. That’s our baby over at BL1.”

  I scanned the crowd as we made our way inside, noting unhappily the many cameras pointing in our direction. We ignoring the frantic questions shouted at us by the free presses, who were pushing against the line like a horde of hungry zombies. This had not been a slow news day. I wondered if the charmless reporter in the red parka from this morning was somewhere in the crowd? I hoped not. He had already tried to assassinate my character once today. The last thing I wanted was for him to see me leading a Tribal pack leader into a crime scene.

  Cloves was waiting for us inside in the ultra-modern lobby. Ghost agents, police, and forensics milled about her like ants in a hive. She was wearing a sombre charcoal dress suit, remarkably conservative for Cloves, except that the lapels appeared to be shiny leather, making her look like a lawyer with a side-line in BDSM. There were spots of red on her skirt. Blood?

  My supervisor looked the three of us up and down as we made our way across the lobby, her eyes roaming over Kane. Her lips were very tight.

  “You brought…the Tribal…leader?” she spluttered. Hello to you too, I thought.

  “Yes, I told you I was,” I said.

  “I thought you were joking.” She was staring at Kane with undisguised contempt. “This may be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, Harkness. We are at the scene of what looks very much like a brutal Tribal bloodbath, and you bring one of them in here, with that crowd out there, recording every moment?”

  Kane loomed over her, dwarfing the small woman. “I have an interest here, woman,” he growled. He was tightly strung, which even in my limited experience was not ideal for someone who had a habit of changing into an oversized and very dangerous animal. Cloves gave him a withering look. She was not intimidated. She reminded me of one of those small dogs who don’t realise they are not Rottweilers.

  “I couldn’t give a shit,” she snapped waspishly. “Glower at me all you want, I’m not buying your alpha act. It will do you no good throwing your weight around here, Mr Kane, whatever kind of…creature…you are. I am the top of the food chain in this room, not you.” She actually reached up and jabbed him in the chest. For a moment, I thought he might rip her arm off, but he stood still, seething. “If you’re here, it’s on my sufferance, so shut up and don’t touch anything.” She looked past him to me. “Keep him on a tight leash, Harkness. He’s your damn responsibility, not mine.”

  “The crime scene?” I asked quietly, wanting more than anything to part these two before one of them attacked the other. Cloves nodded her head to the stairway, her black bob of hair dancing on her head. “Up here, follow the blood.”

  The bodies were in a second floor lab. It looked to me like a classroom laboratory. This was a learning institute after all. The place was a mess. Tables overturned, glass everywhere, several of the floor tiles were shattered. And, I noticed with interest, several of the acoustic ceiling tiles were broken. Someone or something had thrown itself, or others, around a lot in here.

  Blood was everywhere, as were forensics. Two bodies were present. One in the centre of the room, another slumped as though sitting drunk against the far wall. I took Cloves’ word that they were young students. It was hard to tell, they were mauled so badly you couldn’t make out features.

  “Jesus Christ,” Griff whispered, stopping at the door in shock. He stared around the room, his eyes following the splatters of gore and violence across the floor, desks and even on the ceiling, blooming spots like obscene roses. “You think this was a Tribal killing?” he said to Cloves.

  “You can’t smell?” she said, giving Kane a sidelong glare.

  The air was filled with foul smells I would normally associate with messy death. The metallic stench of blood, the sewer-like stench which comes from being disembowelled, as the corpse face down in the middle of the room had been, but above it all was a clear animal smell. Like the bottom of a lion’s cage. There was no denying it.

  “Plus of course, there’s this,” Cloves said, as I followed her into the lab, trying not to touch anything and stepping between the worst of the destruction. She pointed to one wall. A whiteboard was on it. As were several slashes. Long deep grooves scored deeply into the wall. “I don’t think that’s human fingernails, kiddo, do you?”

  It was clawing. Deep marks. I met Kane’s eyes. I hadn’t told Griff about the Tribal leader’s daughter, and I sure as hell wasn’t telling Cloves, not until I knew more. He looked back at me and shook his head. “She fought back,” he muttered to me. “And still they took her.”

  I nodded to him, although I was wondering if this was the case, or if Kane’s dear estranged daughter had killed everyone and run off. Was she our serial killer and he was in denial? Or had the attacker simply not been aware that one of them was a closet Tribal? If so, that must have been quite a surprise for it. Like attacking a herd of sheep only to discover one of them was a wolf in disguise. It hadn’t done her much good though, she was still gone. Overpowered along with her human
classmates?

  “What the hell happened here?” Griff looked very pale. Unlike the rest of us, he hadn’t entered the room, but stood frozen at the door. I had forgotten that he wasn’t in the loop about the previous murders. Cloves, who had stepped unceremoniously over the corpse of the boy in the middle of the room turned and leaned back against a desk.

  “That’s classified,” she said to him. “You shouldn’t even be here. You’re one of Harkness’ team, aren’t you? Why are you not at Blue Lab looking into…” Her eyes flicked to Kane and back to Griff, “…that other issue?”

  “Because you told me to take one of my team with me to meet the Tribals, remember?” I told her, kneeling by the body on the floor. It was horribly mauled. “You know, all of your touching concern from this morning when I almost exploded in a fireball.”

  Cloves blew air out of her nose. “Well, you’re here now for better or worse, so understand this, lab-rat: this is total blackout. Nothing in this room is talked about outside of it, unless you’re talking to me or the good doctor here, understood?”

  Griff nodded weakly.

  “What about him?” Cloves said. “Your new best friend? How much does he know?”

  I looked to Kane, who was still taking in the room carefully, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring, and back to Cloves. “More than we do actually, you don’t have to be careful what you say, Veronica. He knows about the others, and more beside. I’ll fill you in later.”

  Cloves folded her arms. “Well, you do have a talent at making new GO friends, don’t you,” she said. “What happened here is this: a group of biology students were working yesterday, through the night apparently.” She produced a flip notebook from inside her leather-lapelled pocket. “According to the sign in book, Jillian Snowden, Daniel Brown, Imran Nazir, Lieselotte Wolnosc and Lawrence Pickering.” She flipped the book closed with one hand. “Sometime between them clocking in at 6 PM yesterday and an hour ago, when this mess was discovered by the janitor…” Her eyes flicked up from her notes. “…Whom we have detained by the way.” She gave Kane a dark look here. “Someone or something broke in, killed two of them, Lawrence and Imran from what we can tell, tore the place up, and took the other three kids away.”

  “CCTV?” I asked. Cloves shook her head. “Disabled. For the entire campus. We’re looking into it. Nobody saw anything.”

  “Why would anyone kill or kidnap a group of students?” Griff asked, still horrified. “They’re just kids. They couldn’t even defend themselves.”

  Kane looked at him significantly. I could guess his thoughts. One of them could have defended themselves, or should have been able to anyway. If one of them was a Tribal, they would have put up a hell of a fight. Looking at the room, there had indeed been a struggle. But still, Lieselotte and two of her classmates were gone. Kane had been right to be worried. Who, or what, could do this?

  “What were they working on, do we know?” I asked Cloves.

  “No idea,” she said. “Nothing related to the curriculum, that’s for sure. Their datapads are gone, and any paperwork they might have had with them. There’s nothing here but the bodies and the mess, which is suspicious in itself. What is of particular interest is this.” She put her notepad away and gave me a grim look. “Five students, two dead, three missing, and all assigned to a study group under one tutor.” She gave me a humourless smile. “Any guesses who that might have been, Doctor?”

  Kane and Griff both looked at me, clueless. I stared at Cloves in surprise, my eyebrows disappearing into my hairline. She saw my understanding and nodded. “Bingo. Amanda Bishop,” she confirmed. “Our second victim. The high achieving biology major who is officially missing.”

  “Officially missing but actually dead, yes?” Kane grunted. Cloves looked at him sharply.

  “I told you he knew what we do, about the others.” I waved her attention back to me. “These kids were working under Bishop? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  She nodded.

  “Who’s Amanda Bishop?” Griff asked, confused. We all ignored him. He looked very lost, bless him. I wondered if he wished he’d stayed at the lab working on the faceless nosferatu corpse instead. See what happens when you insist on following me around.

  “There’s more,” Cloves said, ignoring him completely, beckoning me. More? I stood slowly and followed her with some trepidation to the second body, slumped against the wall. A standing flip board was propped next to him, leaning against the wall and splattered with gore. I have a strong stomach, but I tried not to look directly at the boy’s face. There wasn’t much of it left, but one eye remained undamaged, baby blue, wide with horror.

  “This chap was good enough to leave us a message.”

  She reached out and pulled the flipchart aside. Scrawled on the wall, bright and crimson against the magnolia paint, the dying boy had written in his own blood. The letters dripped down the wall like some Halloween sideshow display.

  Crescent Moon

  I stared in confusion. “Crescent Moon?” I said aloud. Cloves shook her head. “No fucking clue,” she said artlessly.

  “We have nothing more.” She looked at Kane. “Does this mean anything to you? Are moons significant to your kind? Crescent ones perhaps?” Her voice was more than a little sarcastic. Cloves might be all charm and diplomacy when being interviewed on screen, but in private her roots showed clearer than a crack whore’s. I knew she hated vampires. Clearly, she had equal disdain for Tribals.

  “I do not know what this is,” he said. “The boy was dying clearly. Perhaps his mind was running down. Look, see how his writing deteriorates as it goes along. He has written both of the ‘E’s backwards.”

  “He was dying,” Cloves said acidly. “And writing with his fingers in blood from his own open stomach. I hardly think it’s relevant to criticise his penmanship.” She looked to me. “Whatever Crescent Moon is, he used his last moments to tell us about it. I’ll get Cabal resources onto it now.”

  “We must find the other students,” Kane demanded. “The three not here. They may still be alive. Why else take them? If they were dead, why not just leave them here with this two?”

  “You are not in a position to tell me what we must do,” Cloves said. “This is Cabal business. I understand you tagging along if you think one of your people did this, which to my eyes is looking more and more likely, colour me obvious, but…”

  Kane growled loudly at her. His eyes were murderous. He wasn’t used to being shouted down. I doubted it happened much. Unfortunately, Cloves wasn’t used to it either. I actually laid a hand on Cloves’ forearm, warning her not to push him. She didn’t know his daughter was involved. I didn’t want more bodies in this room than were absolutely necessary.

  “This isn’t helping,” I said. “We’re all trying to get to the bottom of this, so let’s just…try and work together, okay?”

  Cloves glared disdainfully at me. I got the impression she thought I was taking my role as inter-species ambassador a little too seriously.

  “We had three deaths already, no culprits, no leads,” she ground out through gritted teeth. “A terrorist attack on Cabal HQ, something we cannot explain lying on a slab in Blue Lab, now two more deaths, fucking children no less, and three missing kids. The news are crawling all over the building, and not only is your dewy-eyed little sidekick now aware of what is supposed to be a black book operation, but you have also invited the Tribal leader to the party. Things couldn’t get any bloody worse.”

  Her phone rang. Not breaking murderous eye contact with me, she took it out of her pocket and flicked it open.

  “Cloves,” she snapped. I watched her expression change. Her angry face didn’t move, but the colour seemed to leech out from behind her expression. “I see,” she said quietly, closing the phone.

  “Things got worse,” she said thickly. “I’ve just been informed Director Coldwater has arrived on scene in person. She’s waiting for us both in the lobby.”

  “Shit.”

 
12.

  Cloves and I went to face the music. Griff and Kane made to follow us. I turned to Griff. “Better if you wait here,” I said. “Might get unpleasant.” I didn’t want Griff’s face familiar in higher Cabal circles. I might be under their spotlight, through no choice of my own, but if I could protect my team from the same fate, I would.

  “More unpleasant than this?” Griff asked incredulous, gesturing around at the carnage.

  I nodded. “Trust me. You too, Kane. I don’t want Cabal directors knowing that the diplomatic mission they sent me on this morning has turned into a gory show-and-tell field trip.”

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight.” Kane made to follow me out of the room. “You’re the only one who might be able to help me find…”

  “Not a chance!” I said firmly, wheeling to face him and holding up a finger in warning. Kane faltered, surprised, stopping dead in his tracks. He stared at me. I glared back seriously, my finger still held in mid-air, wobbling portentously.

  “I mean it,” I said. He wasn’t my alpha, and two dead teenagers had put me in rather a frayed mood. “Cabal bigwigs are here. The media are here. If anyone is looking to start a witch hunt down there, you are going to muddy some waters like nobody’s business. I know you want to help, but you can’t do that if you’re taken in for questioning. ‘Helping with enquiries’ in some windowless room in the Liver Complex is not going to get any missing students found. Griff will help you get out the back way, past the press, hopefully. Until then, you don’t want to meet my boss’ boss. Stay…here.”

  He folded his arms, leaning against the doorpost. Despite the situation, a corner of his mouth turned up a little in amusement. “Fine,” he rumbled. “Don’t be long.”

  I was surprised that had worked.

  “Good boy,” I said, pleased with myself, and followed Cloves out and down the stairs to meet Coldwater.

  The director was waiting for us in the lobby, wrapped in a long suede overcoat, fur lined at the collar, snug against the cold air. Her hair and makeup were perfect. She seemed to have stepped out of some high-end executive catalogue for over-performing seniors. It made me rather self-conscious that I was still a little smoke-stained and Cloves was dotted with blood.