by C. T. Phipps
I picked up the photo and stared at it. “Well, that’s unexpected.”
With that, I heard a moaning from the unconscious security guard. I went to her side and checked to see if she was armed. She was, but only with a Taser.
I grimaced. “You’re going to hate me for this, I know it.”
I lifted up the Taser and aimed it at her semi-conscious form. I couldn’t bring myself to use it, though. I’d already attacked the woman out of the blue. What I really needed to do was finish up here. I needed to find the knife.
Putting the Taser in the back of my jeans, I headed over to the closet and slid the door open. Inside, I hit the jackpot, because it was shelf after shelf of occult bric-a-brac. There were books, knives, cups, wands, staves, card decks, powders, and more mundane items like keys. All of them vibrated with magical energy I could feel from a foot away, some more than others. There were drugs, too, mostly the kind that only affected Shifters, but a mini-fridge at the bottom I checked contained about six bags of vampire blood.
Woot.
“This is about fifteen to twenty,” I said, actually having no idea how much time trafficking in black-market magical items would get him. I started searching through the knives for the one I’d seen from my vision.
There were many knives I felt had been used in murders. Indeed, that was where most of them had gained their “power” as the anger, hatred, and bloodshed had been bound for harvesting. It made sick to touch them. I saw visions of stabbings in prisons, a woman killing her abusive husband, and even a man who got in a bar fight with a vampire. None of them had anything to do with Victoria, though, and I didn’t see the one I’d seen in my vision.
Dammit.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” Lucien’s voice spoke from behind me. “I confess, it takes balls to rob me.”
I didn’t turn around despite being terrified. “Right, open the conversation with a sexist remark. Real way of establishing your dominance.”
There was a deep, throaty chuckle behind me. “What are you doing here, Jane Doe?”
Oh hell. He knew who I was.
“Uh…” I started to say then trailed off.
“Right,” Lucien said.
Reluctantly turning around, I saw Lucien was standing there in a pair of blue jeans, a red jacket, and a white t-shirt that made him vaguely look like James Dean. He was over six feet tall and his hair was a stark white and he had eyes of cold steel gray. There was an aura of power to him that also caused me to take a step back as I could tell he was a shifter but didn’t know what kind was. I also felt magic from him.
Powerful magic.
Lucien was a handsome man, and I also found myself looking him up and down from a perspective as a woman too. All that feeling left me when I noticed his guard was waking up and looking extremely ticked off.
“I am going to kick her ass,” the woman guard said, getting up. She then lifted her right hand and a glowing ball of water was created inside it. “Drown her, knock her about, and crush her between the waves.”
“Down, Deana,” Lucien said. “Jane, you’ve broken into my office, broke my security camera, and assaulted my employees. Do you know what’s going to happen now?”
“What?” I said. “You’re going to kill me?”
“No,” Lucien said, pulling out his cellphone. “I’m going to call the police.”
“Ha!” I snapped, pointing to the closet’s contents behind me. “You can’t do that with this here.”
“Deana, please remove any contraband,” Lucien said. “I’ll escort Ms. Doe downstairs.”
I grimaced then decided to go for broke. “I know you were involved in killing Victoria O’Henry! I saw you trying to sell her the sacrificial dagger that killed her! You got involved in drug dealing and now someone is killing her as well as her friends!”
Both Lucien and Deana stared at me.
“Are you insane?” Deana said.
Lucien looked down at the floor, his shoulders slumping. “So the Lodge has claimed her too.”
My expression to this statement could best be summarized as a flat, What?
“Deana, leave us,” Lucien said.
“Wait, what?” Deana said, still holding a floating ball of water over her head. “I’m just about to waterboard the whitetail.”
“Go,” Lucien said, staring at her.
Deana caused the ball of water to vanish into a puff of steam as the humidity in the chamber rose by about twenty percent. “I’ll get to calling the police.”
“Don’t do anything without my permission. Understood?” Lucien said, frowning and gesturing to the door.
Deana looked between us and muttered about having severely misunderstood Lucien’s type and worrying about him looting kindergartens.
“I feel like I should be offended by that,” I said. “What is she, some kind of sea witch? A selkie?”
“Her mother was a sea goddess,” Lucien said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
“Uh-huh,” I said, staring at him. “What do you want to do here without any witnesses?”
Lucien frowned. “You’re the only criminal here, at least in this matter. I promise you I had nothing to do with the death of Victoria.”
“Your word,” I said, wondering why he thought that was worth anything.
“I’ve killed sixteen people. Fifteen of which were trying to kill me and one rapist,” Lucien said dryly. “If I killed Victoria, I’d admit it to you, but I didn’t.”
“Ha! I can take that to the cops and have you arrested!” I said, stunned that his defense was confessing to multiple murders.
“Your word against mine,” Lucien said, clearly not impressed.
“Ha, again! I had the foresight to record this conversation on my phone!” I was lying, but the conversation had gotten away from me.
“I always carry a charm on my person that makes all recordings of me pornographic. It comes from being raised by an FBI agent and mage. Your phone has only recorded you moaning in passion as we rut on the desk. It has an alternate non-sexual setting for someone underage, but I believe you just turned eighteen, yes?”
”Eww,” I said. “Wait, if I wasn’t actually recording it, is it still on my phone?”
“Yes,” Lucien said. “You can check it if you like.”
“Ugh!” I was not covering myself in glory here. Maybe because Lucien was distractingly sexy. He was bit as attractive to me as shapeshifter women were to men.
Lucien laughed then shook his head. “Victoria’s death is not on my hands or any of the others in her gang. Indeed, as they were working for me, it’s up to me to avenge them.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, shaking my head. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t buy all this honor and vengeance stuff. Did you know after The Godfather came out, the FBI noticed a marked change in the mafia? Wise guys who couldn’t normally string two sentences together were suddenly talking about honor, duty, and respect. I don’t believe in honor among thieves.”
“I did know that, actually,” Lucien said. “My stepfather was an FBI agent.”
Okay, that was an aside that deserved some clarification. “You still aren’t convincing me that you didn’t have anything to do with Victoria’s death. I’m also willing to tell everyone and their brother what I saw. So are all my friends and family. You can’t make us all disappear and—”
While I spoke, Lucien walked over to his computer bag and pulled out the sacrificial dagger from my vision in a plastic bag. He then handed it to me. I opened it up, felt it, and got only minor vibes from its creation.
It wasn’t the murder weapon.
“Oh,” I said, pausing. “Well, I guess you aren’t the murderer.”
“No,” Lucien said, sighing. “Victoria was my apprentice. I would never harm her.”
He was lying. I could tell.
“She wasn’t your apprentice at the end,” I said, making a guess. “Not after she asked for a dagger to commit human sacrifice.”
Luci
en paused. “You’re a lot more observant than I would have given you credit for. That can be a very dangerous quality.”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t buy this whole decent-crook thing, but maybe I’m willing to hear you out.”
Lucien chuckled. “How very gracious of you. However would I survive your wrath otherwise?”
Okay, yeah, I was kind of screwed here. “Is Agent Timmons your brother?”
“Alex is here, huh?” Lucien said, frowning. “Well, that’s going to make things complicated.”
Wow, I was just guessing. “Seriously?”
“The Special Cases Division of the FBI was long ago made of mages who dealt with the worst of the United States supernatural crimes,” Lucien said, frowning. “I ended up adopted by Jonathan Timmons after my family was slaughtered. The Timmons line of mages has long had contact with the shapeshifter world.”
“How do they feel about your line of work?” I asked.
“They disapprove,” Lucien said, softly. “I’ll tell you what I know about Victoria’s death but you’re right, she wasn’t my apprentice at the end. She became involved in black magic and the use of things better left forgotten by modern sorcerers. I should have never let her become involved in my business, particularly knowing she was an O’Henry, but I was arrogant.”
“Also, she’s beautiful,” I said.
“I don’t date children,” Lucien said. “My interests were only in the fact that she was passionate about the Craft. Also, perhaps, sticking it to the O’Henry family. All shifters should be able to learn magic. Not just deer.”
I stared at him. “Tell me what happened.”
“Say please,” Lucien said, his voice low and oh-so-sexy.
Wait, dammit, focus!
“Please,” I said.
Lucien nodded. “Two years ago, Victoria came to me with an offer. The High Shaman of the Cervid had already rejected her as an apprentice. That meant she had to learn magic from either a human or me. I’m the only non-deer sorcerer in town, or at least I was back then. There’ve been some more since then.”
“What was her offer?” I asked.
“The secret to making humans into shapeshifters.”
My eyes widened. “That’s impossible. We would have—”
“There’s one way,” Lucien said, taking the knife from my hands. “With the right rites and a sufficient source of power, it’s possible to create a skin of an animal and bestow the power of a shapeshifter on someone. It’s called skindancing.”
“That’s a myth,” I said, having heard of it. “A Native American legend.”
“So are deer women,” Lucien said, shrugging. “It’s not an unknown Gift. It’s just a mostly lost one. The requirements for it are antithetical to modern values.”
My blood ran cold. “You mean you have to commit a human sacrifice to do it.”
“Usually,” Lucien said, sighing. “Victoria claimed to have found a way around it by seeking the spirits in the woods. The Lodge in Bright Falls is a place where many powerful spirits could be entreated to get around normal magical laws. The tale she wove was an impressive one of wandering in the woods one day until finding the spirit of the wolf who blessed her.”
I shook my head. “And you believed her?”
“They’re real,” Lucien said. “The Spirits of the Lodge may not communicate with the shapeshifters of this land much anymore, but they’re blessed with powers beyond our reckoning. Victoria offered to share what she’d learned for what I did.”
“My brother and his group weren’t just drug dealers, were they?” I asked. “They were a magical study group. They wanted to become shapeshifters.”
Lucien nodded. “It was a possibility to change the balance of power in the United States. To make shifters able to stand up against the vampires. Humans will also be less inclined to hate us if they can become like us.”
“With, what, you as their king?” I asked, stunned by the implications.
“Just of Bright Falls,” Lucien said. “My price would be Marcus O’Henry’s head.”
“Why?” I suspected I knew.
“He killed my family.” Lucien’s voice was a low growl.
“You were part of the thirteenth clan,” I said. “The Lyons.”
“The Lyons were my mother’s clan,” Lucien said. “I am a dragon.”
Chapter Eleven
I listened to Lucien’s proclamation that he was the last of the thirteenth clan. That he was a dragon. Then I burst out laughing. Not just a little laugh, either, but a complete belly laugh that I couldn’t stop. It went on for almost fifteen seconds. Not even the fact that I was trapped in the office of a crime lord with him kept me from finding it ridiculous.
Lucien’s expression remained even. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t find this to be a laughing matter.”
“Dragons aren’t real!” I said, staring at him. “Certainly, weredragons aren’t real! I mean, I would have heard of them.”
He stared at her. “Are dragons really that much more difficult to believe in than werewolves and vampires?”
“Yes!” I said, unhesitatingly. “Because I’ve met werewolves and vampires. They are real. Dragons are—”
Lucien’s eyes began to glow, then his mouth with an infernal light. He proceeded to turn his head to one side and breathed out a torrent of flame that caused his desk to catch fire. It burned in a fiery blaze as the office smoke detector went off.
Lucien walked past me to the closet and pulled out a fire extinguisher before blowing the blaze out while I stood there, dumbfounded.
My eyes widened. “Um, okay. You can breathe fire.”
“Yes,” Lucien said, simply.
“Huh,” I said, blown away by this new revelation about the world I lived in.
“If it’s any consolation, we’re not that different from other shifters. We’re werecrocodiles and only those of my line have the power to breathe fire. Some of us could also grow to great lengths and heights. It’s just that stories of both abilities grew exaggerated over time.”
I shook my head. “Listen, this is amazing. Really, it is, but it doesn’t explain how Victoria went from being your apprentice to getting murdered.”
“Tenacious,” Lucien said, picking up the picture of him and Agent Timmons off the floor where it had fallen. “Victoria wanted more than just to master magic. She wanted power and wanted it quickly. Victoria also started teaching her abilities to her friends, your brother included, which I had forbidden. Then she said it was possible to perform a genuine miracle. Something we could use to make the entire world believe the shifters were creatures of God rather than monsters.”
“This is starting to sound like crap again,” I said.
“She said she could raise the dead,” Lucien said, not improving my opinion of his information. “It just required the sacrificial dagger.”
“Raise the dead,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Is that possible?”
“No,” Lucien said. “But the spirits in the Lodge may have said otherwise. The Manitou includes both good and bad spirits. Very often depending on what side of their wrath you are.”
Manitou was the Algonquian name for the life force of the universe and the spirits that inhabited this life force. In truth, there wasn’t that much of a difference between spirits in North America, Japan, or anywhere else in the universe. I didn’t know what this Lodge was, but I guessed it was the place the previous generations of Bright Falls had used to visit the Great Woods. It was hard to believe Victoria had somehow made herself a priestess of ancient animist gods, but the entirety of this case was one weird revelation after another.
“You turned her down for it,” I said, thinking back to my vision. “Not very forcibly, though.”
“I was tempted,” Lucien said. “I have people I’d like back myself.”
“We all do,” I said, thinking of three people I’d lost. “But I bet it’s easier for a murderer.”
Lucien didn’t respond.
&nbs
p; “So who is responsible?” I said, finally ready to crack the case.
“I have not the slightest idea,” Lucien said. “Sorry.”
“Oh come on!”
Lucien stretched out his arms as if in surrender. “If you’re actually looking for a mundane killer behind these murders, then I think you’re looking in the wrong direction. Victoria found something out in the woods and it made increasing demands of her. Demands that ultimately destroyed her and those who invoked it.”
I took a deep breath. “So let me get this straight: you think the crimes were committed by the Devil.”
“Or something as close to it as to not make a difference, yes,” Lucien said, shrugging. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yes!” I snapped at him. “Yes, it is! It is more ridiculous than Agent Timmons learning a fictional martial art from Doctor Who.”
“It’s the Doctor, not Doctor Who. Doctor Who is the show.” Lucien paused. “And no, my foster brother is completely insane. It’s just an insanity reality finds infectious.”
“I prefer differently rational,” Agent Alex Timmons said from the doorway, causing me to jump backwards and even Lucien do to do a double take. He was standing next to Deana, who was at his side muttering as Alex held by her by the arm.
“Nice of you to drop in while you’re in town,” Lucien said dryly. “I would have preferred for you to call ahead, but clearly you’re here to greet your beloved sibling.”
“I might have made time to visit if not for the fact I’m trying to solve the murder of a girl connected to you,” Alex said, his voice not having any of its usual amusement. “I had to request this assignment personally.”
“Isn’t that a conflict of interest?” Lucien asked.
Alex narrowed his eyes. “The director of the FBI is an appointee of the new administration. He doesn’t care about threats to shifters. I do.”
Ouch.
“He got past everyone and I can’t move,” Deana said, looking over at Lucien. “I used to be better at this.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lucien said, not even looking in her direction. “I’m sure you’ll get a chance to wash away your sins.”
