Hunted Girls

by brett hicks

  Traffic was hell for the morning rush of busy commuters trying to make it to their cubicles, or to their local precinct in my case. I barely managed to make the elevator before my clock chimed seven. Thankfully I was already within view of my boss by the time he glanced at the clock.

  Inspector Johnson had managed to wrangle us an entire floor of the 25th precinct in East Harlem. Most of the cops transferring in were not at all impressed with the location. If they knew the real reason for this location choice, then I would be suffering from a lot more blood-whore comments and cold-shoulders.

  The Inspector knows where my seat of power is located and he figured that our safety was better ensured by setting up shop around my people. Harlem obeys my kin, but they will only bow to me, not that I go around making them bow like some puffed up egomaniac!

  Our precinct is located on 120 E 119 St in Harlem. This is very close to where I first met my core subjects. Most cops try to avoid getting placed in Harlem, so it was not hard for the Inspector to wrangle space for our new division. ICD was off the ground and skipping now. The move had been taking place over the past month. Before that, the Inspector had been working out of Manhattan south, so in my opinion, we traded up on locations!

  Johnson locked gazes with me and he flagged me with his large meaty hand. I bit the inside of my lip and tried to will the butterflies out of my gut. This is not school, this is my damn job! I would not look like a lost school girl on the job!

  Internal pep-talk complete, I stepped into his office and he motioned for me to shut the door.

  “Thea, take a seat.”

  I nodded and I studied his heavily lined features. He looked like he had less sleep than I did. His eyes had puffy grey-purple bags and his slightly wrinkled face seemed harder.

  Let’s hope his mood doesn’t match these looks!

  “Sir.”

  I said after I closed the door and I gave him a crisp salute. While I was not exactly a bastion of discipline and respect I had managed to improve my manners a bit over the past seven months. Besides, there are a lot of instructors at the NYPD academy that can attest to my restraint with them, because they still draw the breath to speak!

  “Take a seat, Thea.”

  I nodded and I pulled out one of the cheap wooden chairs and I plopped down. Yes, like I said, not a bastion of discipline and respect. I highly doubted anyone could possibly beat the street-rat out of me completely. A girl just gets used to her lot in life after a while and it has a heavy impact on her behavior and her posture. God knows my posture drove several of my instructors crazy!

  “We had another murder with a similar MO last night.”

  I blinked and barely caught myself. I was about to ask him why he hadn’t called me. As if he read my mind, he raised a large hand in a gesture of that pleaded for patience.

  “The murder occurred last night, but the case was not handed over until the ME later discovered the victim was a fae.”

  My heart leaped at the implications.

  “Sir, is the body here?”

  He nodded and he leaned back and scratched his silver-black mixed head.

  “After you see Officer Johnson and you both are fitted for your on-duty service weapons, you will both meet the lead detective down in the morgue. I assume you know how to find the dead bodies in this building?”

  I sassed before I could think better of it.

  “I just follow the stink, sir?”

  Johnson’s eyes narrowed slightly and he just snorted in amusement but his features hardened back into the “boss mask.”

  “I give you a little leeway Detective, but you had better mind your tongue a lot better with all your other superiors. So long as you do not cross the line I will not bust you down too hard about your smart-mouth, but do work on that issue.”

  Geeze message received!

  I bobbed my head quickly.

  “Yes sir, I will try to work on that, sir.”

  Why did it look like I caught a glimmer of disbelief from my boss? Did he think I was a wild animal? Then again, that was an insult to wild animals everywhere!

  “Well get to it, Detective. Why the hell are you still sitting here on your duff?!”

  I popped up and Saluted him crisply and I opened the door and left it open as-per his request as I walked away.

  Skylar—AKA the other Johnson—met me at the empty desk with my brand-new wooden nameplate. There was something simple but satisfying about seeing Detective Thea Salvo etched into the wood. Like the wood affirmed that this was reality and not some fantasy as I lay starving on the streets.

  “Morning Detective.”

  I nodded to Skylar and cut him a sly smile.

  “Morning Skylar and it’s just Thea between us unless we have to jump through the flaming hops of protocol while under scrutiny.”

  Skylar nodded in agreement and his lips turned up further into a wide easy smile. Skylar seemed to modulate between goofy and plain ole cheerful. If I did not know he was from Manhattan, a girl might think he came from Canada, the land of the nice people and lower medical costs.

  “Dad tell you that we have to go get our guns?”

  I nodded and I quirked my eye at him in question.

  “Why weren’t you already issued one?”

  He shrugged and waved his hand around the room in a sweeping gesture.

  “I was the new hire so I had to move all this crap over, well a lot of it anyway. I am the one who set up your desk too by the way.”

  My eyebrows rose higher and I said, ‘Oh, so I know who to punch if it’s cocked to one side and I keep having my pens roll down into the crack.”

  He chortled and he lightly pats my shoulder and directed me towards the elevator.

  “We have to go down to the armory. That’s on the first sublevel.”

  I frowned slightly.

  “Good to know that the corpses are higher security priority over the guns and ammo.”

  Skylar looked at me with a slightly gapping expression.

  “You know, I feel like I should have picked that out sooner and without help.”

  I waved him off.

  “You’re talking to the necromancer chick corpses are my jam apparently.”

  Skylar nodded in agreement.

  “Yeah, I really want to see you raise a zombie sometime! That is if that is not like disrespectful to you, or to the zombie, to say so.”

  I looked at his sincere discomfort and I just couldn’t bring myself to rub his nose in that statement.

  “New nick-name for you Sky, you’re now known as Canada.”

  He frowned deeply and bristled a bit at my light verbal jab.

  “What exactly does that mean Thea?!”

  A little bit of incredulity slipped into his tone and he sounded a little more like a New Yorker. Yep, piss us Yankees off and we sound like the raspier sounding city-dwellers we often are! I grinned at him and I relished teasing Skylar. He was very companionable and easy to get along with. Even when we are busting each other’s balls the entire way to the armory no feelings were hurt. Most guys seem to take everything I say personally, between the whole girl-power thing I have going on and the fact that I like girls. Skylar was more evolved and he just seemed to enjoy people as humans, even if they were sexually unavailable to him. A lot of guys don’t even realize they treat unavailable women like shit.

  “So, are you going to go with the 357 hand cannon?”

  I inquired and Skylar’s eyes twinkled in amusement.

  “I wish, but no, I’m going Glock 19. I do best with that model versus the other two available options.”

  I nodded my understanding. I had fired a lot of Glock 19’s in the academy.

  “What about you?”

  I shrugged slightly and said, “Smith and Wesson 5906 because I have girl-sized hands. I can shoot the 19 fine, but the Smith feels better in my grip.”

  Skylar nodded in agreement.

  “Yeah totally, almost all the female recruits opted to use the smith.
I doubt you have any issue with recoil, but the grip is still a thing.”

  “Yep, some things only God can fix.”

  He arched an eyebrow in question.

  “You’re religious?”

  I bit my lip and nodded.

  “I’m Roman Catholic and have been since I could remember.”

  Skylar started hedging for details.

  “I mean, I thought…”

  I snorted and waved him off.

  “That I would burst into flames if I came within spitting distance of God or one of his churches? Yeah, not how being a vampire or any inhuman works. Our differences are magical and simple genetic alterations made by a dead race. We were human once like over three-thousand years ago.”

  His eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas morning looking at all his toys. I hastily added, “None of what I just said is to be repeated. We do not go around advertising this fact, because our people are afraid humans will try to use us for science experiments if they think they can “fix” us, or if they think they can reverse-engineer the process.”

  Skylar made a gesture of zipping his lips sealed. Right before the doors opened he soberly said, “Thanks for sharing Thea.”

  I was sure I had made my first real friend in the NYPD now.

  Eight:

  After stopping off to get my gun and my holster for my gun we descended to where the crypts called my name. I felt the chill of the grave long before the elevator landed two floors down. Rot and death called to my magic and begged for me to latch on, begging for a second life. One of the bodies felt familiar to me, which was something new. I have never had a reason to walk back into range of the same corpse twice before. I never realized they each had their own signature and essence, which makes perfect sense now.

  With a deep breath, I fortify myself and I step out into the grey aging halls of the lowest level of 25th Precinct. Skylar shoots me a single questioning look and I wave my hand towards the morgue doors off to the back of the hall.

  “I can feel them calling to me from here. It just takes a lot of getting used to. I used to not feel the dead, not before last year.”

  Skylar clearly wanted to inquire further but he stops himself and just shrugs casually.

  “It’s fine to take your time. I might want to see a zombie but maybe not in our morgue during the first week where we both might get fired.”

  I snorted and I rolled my eyes.

  “I’m not that bad!”

  Skylar chuckled and kept moving. I growled lowly and took two long strides to catch up to the young man. Damn him and his long legs!

  An attractive older woman in her late thirties greeted us at the door into the cold room. She had a bright and chipper smile on her perfectly pink lips. She was dressed in what one could only describe as “doctor sheik.” She had a beautiful light purple skirt on and a matching silken dress shirt which was unbuttoned enough to show the signs of her robust cleavage just behind the fabric.

  She was dirty-blonde haired and not a single lock had silvered yet. She had on a light makeup, but not lathered on. Her eyes were smoky like she was expected at a local dance club right after this corpse. Her brown doe-eyes held deep intellect and just as much mischief. She stood nearly six-feet-tall in her three-inch pump heels.

  “Hello, I was told to expect you both and Detective Reece. I’m Doctor Debra Darling, so go ahead and get the laugh out of the way. I can already see you smiling young man.”

  Her tone was cultured and sassy. She thrummed her manicured nails against her clipboard in a staccato beat.

  “Hey, I’m Thea, err, Detective Third-grade Thea Salvo. This here is Officer Skylar Johnson, both from the ICD division, nice to meet you Doc.”

  Debra raised a brow high towards her hairline and looked me over again.

  “I must say, I was curious what a vampire would look like up close.”

  I grinned at her and shrugged my shoulder casually.

  “Mostly like a human, just with better skin in some cases nothing much changes.”

  She points with one long index nail.

  “Yes, Except for the canines that extend to razor-sharp fangs and injects venom to drug your prey while you feed and make their mind susceptible to your persuasion. Also, your cells regenerate so quickly that you can heal just about any injury while you sleep, did I miss anything?”

  Her tone was more clinical and her silent questioning eyes told me she was hoping for more data from our conversation. I bit my lip and shook my head. She might work with me, but I was not about to leak all our secrets. She had not mentioned that our muscle tissue if over four-times as dense as human muscle tissue, making us insanely strong. We also have a slower pulse and we conserve our energy a lot unless we are actively exerting our bodies.

  “Nope, sounds like you have had some good data Doctor Darling.”

  Her smile widened and she placed her palm to her busty chest.

  “Please, call me Debbie, everyone does.”

  I nodded and I said, “You can call me Thea, the same thing applies here.”

  “So, now that we have all the hugs and kisses out of the way. How about you show us the body Doctor Darling.”

  A rough masculine voice thick with New York in his raspy tone said from behind me. I spun and I had not felt or heard the man enter the room. He was a dark-skinned fae Sidhe of some obscure sort I did not recognize. His ears were wider and thicker as they pointed out. His eyes were lavender, which only set off his otherwise African-American appearance. He had densely curly hair that was cut short and trimmed to perfection. He had a square jaw and a wide nose. He was strikingly handsome, as were all Sidhe.

  The man looked no older than thirty on his worst day, but his scowling features seemed to tack on a few years to my observation. He was much older in all honesty, centuries; I could feel it in his magic. Bix had similar maturity in her power. I realized now that he had hidden his power wholly from me until he decided to announce himself.

  “Detective First Grade Reese Vassili meet Thea Salvo and Skylar Johnson. Both are fresh off the farm, so to speak.”

  Debby said in a cheerful voice and Reece huffed and rolled his eyes.

  “I’m here for answers; can you tell me what she was hit with? I also need to be brought up to speed on the corpse they let these rookies in on yesterday.”

  To say the very least, Reece was not a fan of mine. His body was tense and his muscles were coiled tight like a jack-in-the-box ready to spring free. His nerves seemed to flare and purple energy leaked free form him as his muscles flexed.

  On closer examination, I would rank Reece as all above average magically. What is most unnerving to me is his control. No one should be able to sneak up on me. His power seems to be intimately familiar to him, or so I felt on a cursory observation.

  Debby shook her head slowly and gave Reece a wan smile.

  “Well, this young fae was poisoned with iron. There is an injection mark behind her ear. The perp then raped her, same as the other victim. Also, same as the other victim in the brutality of the assault as well and the multitude of slashes across her torso.”

  Reece mulled this over for a moment and he was still, vampire-like in his deadly movements, or lack-there-of.

  “No fibers or DNA evidence?”

  He inquired and Debby shook her head again.

  “Sorry Detective, but this young woman was brutalized by a very tidy person. Hell, the CSU techs are claiming that they found some evidence of the rooms of both victims having been scrubbed down. The cleaning agents used were very mild of scent so they were not noticeable on a cursory inspection, even for people with an extremely sharp sense of smell.”

  That bothered me because I typically noticed cleaning products. Hell, most inhumans had to use special products so that we didn’t end up with red eyes and runny noses. Our heightened senses could work against us at times.

  “Why these two women?”

  I heard myself asking and everyone looked at me. Reece huffed and he wa
ved his hand in the general area of the corpse being uncovered now. She was a young white-blonde haired light elf and I could barely feel any tingles of magic from her body.

  “Obviously this was a hate crime.”

  Reece stated with a sharp edge to his coarse tone. I raised my hands in faux-surrender.

  “Hey, I mean besides them both being inhumans, do they share anything else in common? Like friends, workplaces, or hobbies? If this is a human, and that is how he smelt to me at the scene I was called to, then how is he selecting his victims?”

  Reece conceded my point and sighed in exasperation.

  “I’m afraid we are going to just have to start running down every angle we can think of. I recommend you start with the sex offenders’ database. We need to cross-reference that with potential suspects in the area. We are looking for someone who hates his victims and still has the rationality to control his rage as he brutalizes the victims.”

  I remembered the way the perp had entered the apartment of the young shifter and I added, “Also look for cat burglars because he seemed to be very comfortable with climbing on the side of a high-rise apartment building. He also seemed to be confident with his ability to subdue an immortal with more than human abilities.”

  Reece seemed to mull over my additions and he spared me a quick glance.

  “Not bad, it all fits with the second scene I was investigating. The other thing that is bugging me is how in the hell does this human perp know very well guarded secrets about inhumans? The drug he used on your vic was one of the only possible human drugs to affect shifters.”

  I raised my brows in surprise.

  “I thought that nothing affected shifters, or pretty much any full-fledged immortal—nothing human anyway.”

  Reece nodded and added, “Rohypnol affects shifters the same as it does humans. Don’t ask me why, but the shit is seriously illegal in our communities.”

  I bit my lip and I now realized I was failing my people by not knowing this. I didn’t even know to look for this shit! Hell, how would a girl go about keeping roofies away from her subjects?!