by A. J. Aalto
Copyright 2013 A.J. Aalto
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Cover Design by Greg Simanson
Edited by Rafe Brox
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.
PRINT ISBN 978-1-935961-78-9
EPUB ISBN 978-1-62015-100-6
For further information regarding permissions, please contact
[email protected].
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938337
For Rafe Brox
Personal trainer, editor, life coach, mentor, therapist, minister, muse, and general pain in my ass. This book could not exist without you, and so it is to you and your ridiculous cow slippers that I dedicate Death Rejoices. You are, in a word, magnificent.
But don't get a big head about it, eh?
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
MORE GREAT READS FROM BOOKTROPE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without Katherine Sears, Heather Ludviksson, Jennifer Markman, Wendy Logsdon, and Jesse James Freeman of Booktrope Editions, and all their hard work and support, I'd still be a crazy-haired lump in a ditch somewhere, muttering horrible-yet-creative swear words at strangers instead of putting them on paper-space where fine folks like you can enjoy them. Because of them, I am fully clothed, employed, and semi-sane. Okay, let's not be ridiculous, of course I'm not fully clothed. But I am employed, and that's a start.
I also want to thank those hearty souls who read the early editions of this book and sat patiently while I peppered them with a million stupid questions, or who offered opinions and help, especially my long-suffering Chief Beta Reader, Heather Goldie, and my always-supportive Guardian of Secrets and Tea and Stuff, Berenice “Machinery” Jones.
Writing is a solitary and sometimes lonely business, and I am always grateful to the people who tolerate my long absences and welcome me back when I'm ready to rejoin them. I am especially thankful for those who insert themselves into my headspace when I'm gone too long, to remind me that there's still a real world waiting outside my door. I'm lucky enough to have a large crew of assorted nutbars and weirdoes; you guys know who you are.
CHAPTER 1
“NUTTY SQUIRREL TO PURPLE PUSSY. Come in, Purple Pu-snuhhhhfffuckchoo!” I sneezed with gusto, spraying the microphone inside of the fursuit's helmet with a fine mist. With one fuzzy brown paw, I braced myself against the wall and tried to suck hot air into my lungs, letting it out in what could best be described as a death rattle.
“—the fuck?” Agent de Cabrera's Cuban accent pushed through my headphones.
If I hadn't been getting sick, the humidity inside the costume might merely have been annoying and gross, but I was brewing a fever and could barely breathe through one nostril. I hadn't been this physically miserable since the time an old lady tried to use me as a demon's sock puppet. My knee-jerk reaction was to complain heartily enough to make a Barbary pirate blush, but in exchange for flexible hours at the lab, I'd made some short-sighted promises to my new boss, Supervisory Special Agent Gary Chapel of the FBI's Preternatural Crimes Unit: less bitching, less swearing, less klutzery, and one poorly-thought-out commitment to something called “defensive tactics training” with Sheriff Rob Hood. All things considered, it was really hard not to lose my cool.
Instead of saying several un-squirrel-like things, I took a deep breath, coughed desultorily, and wished I'd been smart enough to bring some tissues. Squirrels have cheek pouches to store stuff, right? I didn't need a face full of nuts, but I'd have killed for a cough drop and a hankie.
My name's Marnie Baranuik, and I'm not usually a squirrel; I'm a recovering cookie addict, ex-forensic psychic, and head of the pre-ternatural biology department at the Boulder branch of Chapel's PCU. Mostly, I feed rat brains to zombie beetles and fail to solve Sudoku puzzles. Don't get me wrong, I've done dozens of super-serious stake-outs; this time, it was even for a real case.
“I've got a bit of a cold, but don't worry, I'm still badass.” I had a six-inch, hand-whittled rowan wood stake on my right calf, and Chapel's personal Columbia tactical folding knife sheathed above my jaunty red Keds on my left. The idea that I might need either was not reassuring. Trying to grab them with furry paws hadn't crossed my mind when I'd suited up, nor had the struggle to simply pull up the heavily-elasticized cuff of the suit's pants. At least I would die with well-armed ankles.
“Not that,” de Cabrera said. “Purple Pussy?”
“Code names,” I explained patiently. “This is a covert operation. You can't have a good covert op without code names, everybody knows that.”
“You don't need—,” he cut himself off with a sigh. “There are only two of you. If a man speaks, it's Chapel. If a woman speaks, it's you. And if you hear this sexy accent, it's me. And use your mute button when you sneeze. Were you raised in a technology-averse barn?”
I heard the implied duh right along with the telltale click of Chapel hitting his own mute button so I wouldn't hear him chuckle. “Elian, stop crying, and take some Midol.”
So, I was antsy; something about a suspected predator in a white unicorn costume is vaguely creeptastic, all the more so when you're waiting for him, dressed as a prey animal, in a vacant corridor outside a convention hall bathroom. Add to this that A) he wasn't alone in there, B) I could hear him grunting and panting in the stall, and C) I couldn't eat the black jellybeans in the glass bow
l on the table beside me because my hands were covered in yak fur, and I was not having the greatest night of my life. My misery had company, but it was just making things worse.
The female in the stall with him oinked enthusiastically — reeeek, reeeek! — followed by a squealing giggle. My shoulders bunched unhappily; I'd never be able to read Charlotte's Web again.
For the millionth time, I wondered why I wasn't home in bed. Officially, Chapel hadn't hired me yet. I wasn't on payroll. The lab in which I was squatting didn't have my name on the door; it had a pink sticky note on it that read UnBio in Chapel's blocky handwriting. The papers I filled out every morning had a conspicuous blank space where my employee code belonged. That bothered me. I should have numbers. Everyone else had numbers. The whole thing was tentative, uncommitted, up in the air.
Yet, here I was, an oversized rodent with stuffed breast mounds ten times the size of my own mammalian accoutrements, waiting for my mark to haul me away somewhere private and do Goddess knows what. Three people had gone missing from the convention yesterday; long enough to spook the other early-arriving Furries, but not long enough to be declared missing persons. A sympathetic sergeant at the Denver PD got a hunch and kicked the case over to Sheriff Hood, who'd made an unfortunate reputation in his neck of the woods by getting involved with the PCU's previous case. Hood made sure a copy landed on Chapel's desk at the PCU, along with formal invitations to check it out. We'd gotten a lead about some parties off-site, and rumors of something less human than the costumed creatures among whom Chapel and I mingled.
The LoDo Fur Con wasn't the place one would expect too much crime. In the sparsely populated ballroom, on the Thursday night before things really got started, there were only three artists set up at stations for me to pester: two dealers, and one author of a popular Manga-inspired comic series involving a busty anthropomorphic jaguar woman toting a pair of ray guns in a space cowboy theme, which sounded like a damn good read to me. The voices of the fifty-odd guests in attendance barely reached this end of the convention center's hallway. A solid half of the Furries were in full costume (fursuit friendly dance Friday ten P.M!), with most of the rest sporting cute little tails and ears; they were an amiable crowd, a herd that had no inkling it was being culled, instead congregating around the snacks table to top off cups of punch or nibble on several varieties of cookies.
Ah, cookies; I missed cookies like a dozen dead friends.
De Cabrera interrupted my thoughts. “What's taking so long? Are you bothering that author again?”
“No.”
“Because he doesn't need you hovering over his shoulder. Nobody does.”
“Elian, I shall give you an Emo haircut if you continue this dreadful whining,” I said, noting with some surprise that I sounded like Harry tonight. I brought back Genuine Marnie. “You wanna talk to this pig-fucker yourself? We can trade places. Slap on your jockstrap if you need one, and get your skinny Cuban ass in here.”
“What'd I tell you about the power of positive word choices?” de Cabrera said.
“I'm positively sweating my tits off while you're sitting in the van acting like your life's so—wa-chooo!” The mask caused a regrettable backwash, and I clamped my eyes and mouth shut, sputtering into silence.
“Just get the invite,” de Cabrera said, “and be positive.”
“Elian?”
“Yes?”
“I loooooove this stakeout,” I crooned. “This fursuit is the best thing I've ever worn.” After putting up with this much of my sass, the other partner in my life, Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt, would have been firing theatrical exclamations at me. I could nearly hear Harry's “God's bodkins!” and “stop arsing about!” in crisp Queen's English, the table-thumping demands “tire-toi, tire-toi!” exploding in my face like cannon blasts, and the irate “merde a la puissance treize!”, neither of which he'd ever translated for me. He hardly needed to;I knew when my Cold Company was exasperated long before the French started.
For a moment, I missed Harry with an ache that dragged through my midsection like a fistful of nails. He was one more week in England. I could manage one more week at home in Colorado without him, right? The psychic headache building in my skull begged to differ.
“Relax. We've got this,” I told de Cabrera, although there was no “we” at this point. I'd lost Chapel to the crowd a while back. He'd probably gone to scratch; his cat costume was sweaty as hell and the seam twisted his nuts: scrotation, my brain filled in helpfully. Special Agent Swampass. One more reason I wished I could keep Harry but ditch some of the ancillary psychic powers that the revenant's immortal presence granted me: knowing the state of my ostensible supervisor's junk.
De Cabrera clicked back, but what came over the com could barely be called communication: a doubtful half-grunt.
“Hey, where're your golden words, Mr. Positivity?” I teased. “Even I can track a six-foot-tall unicorn with a rainbow mane and a limp.”
And if I couldn't track our mark with my wits, I'd simply take off a squirrel paw, remove the leather glove from my hand, and Grope my way around the room, tracking him with one of my two psychic Talents, known as psychometry. I am, according to a media nickname that persisted like a bad rash, the “Great White Shark of Psychic Investigations.” More like the Great White Guppy if you asked me, but no one would take my word for it. Everyone loves a hero. Once a label like that is stuck, it doesn't easily peel off; no one wants to be wrong.
It's taking him forever to finish, I thought, tapping my foot to the fancy-pants ear-worm I had going on. Harry had procured an old violin and, having had it professionally restored, begun playing various pieces from Vivaldi's Four Seasons in heart-thudding, toe-tapping prestissimo; his hands flying, the bow a blur, his preternaturally-pale eyelids fluttering with pleasure as the music vibrated under his chin. It had been decades since he'd played, he protested modestly, but you'd never know it. Muscle memory spilled the music forth with perfect clarity. Now I waited, and I tapped, and I pictured Harry playing before a crackling fire, omitting the part of my memory where I sweated through my t-shirt in the mid-summer heat while my chilly revenant stayed comfortable in the glow of the wood stove.
Who is this guy, the Viagra Pony? Aloud, I told de Cabrera, “I hope the piglet he's nailing wasn't just down for the quick bizznasty. Miss Piggy's getting the full treatment.”
De Cabrera sounded like he might be choking on his tongue. “What kind of FBI squad hires someone like you?”
“The awesome kind,” I assured him. “Anyone ever told you, you do a bang-on Mark Batten impersonation?”
“Partner,” he said softly, “that's low.”
“Hey,” I heard the warmth in my own voice. “You finally called me your partner.”
“Don't get too excited, sweetheart, it's a one-time thing.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls. The guys? Sheep? I should have asked before assuming.”
He let my speculation pass unremarked. “So, the word is that Batten's a total asshole.”
The Blue Sense, the wave of psi upon which my psychic Talents ride, awoke with a tingle, offering up to my Empathy Elian's feelings of concern: he wasn't entirely sure how I'd respond.
“Asshole's pretty accurate,” I said. “Total might be an exaggeration.” I was surprised to find I missed Mark Batten, vampire hunter, ex-lover, and general pain in my ass; he'd been in South America for months with no contact and no ETA on his return. Most of the agents at the new Boulder PCU hadn't met him yet and rumors ran wild: he was a jerk, he was badass, he had a ninety-nine percent solve rate (the one that got away being my fault), he'd slain more revenants than anyone in North America, he was smokin’ fierce in the sack … Okay, I started that one. Black marker on the wall of the ladies’ room. The rumors, even the saucy ones, were all true.
“Is he worse than Agent Golden?” de Cabrera asked. “Or as I like to call her, the Frost Queen?”
“Oh, Elian Gutiérrez de Cabrera,” I purred, “you have n
o idea.”
“Goin’ all full-name on me, now,” he clicked back playfully. “Don't be like that.”
The door to the handicapped stall banged open without warning and a giggling pig spilled out, clutching behind her at the half-zipped unicorn. The unicorn's brilliant mane shook over enormous black plastic eyes as he laughed at something she'd said.
At my elbow, someone else inquired, “First time here?”
I jerked with an un-squirrel-like squeak and whirled, trying to steer my big head in the direction of the friendly voice. My mask offered practically no peripheral vision. There stood a second white unicorn with a rainbow sherbet mane and a name tag that said BEN, all caps. Did I have the wrong guy all along? The unicorn coming out of the bathroom was limping, but maybe he'd pulled something mid-tryst. Ben held a well-worn cane in one hand and leaned on it heavily.
“First time here,” I affirmed, quelling the urge to chase the other unicorn. Over the speaker's shoulders, I spotted Chapel's tall purple cat costume, and under my breath said: “Grey pig, two o'clock.”
“Sorry?” Ben's frozen, stitched-up smile tipped toward mine as he lowered his head. (All the better to hear you with, my dear.)
“I said, I should have come at two o'clock. I hear they had entertainment?”
“That's not until Saturday.”
“Oh. So, I'm not missing anything if I duck out early?”
He chuckled, the sound echoing hollowly inside his mask. “I wouldn't say that.”
If I hadn't been stuck in a squirrel, I'd have prompted him to continue that train of thought by lifting my brows. Instead, I was left with an exaggerated shrug of my shoulder pads. He gestured downward, dipping his chin with significance. The distinct rapid-fire of metal snaps made me not want to look; when I did, I stifled what almost came out as a horrified urk!
Bobbing out of a custom-designed slit in his fursuit was a mammoth, crooked penis with an urgent, spot-speckled head surrounded by billowing, untrimmed white pubic hair; a hungry snake with an allergy to yak fur. The cloud of pubes matched the costume almost to the shade. This wasn't the first time I'd been ambushed by unrequested schlong; it was my first costumed, anonymous, fairly elderly, and alarmingly brontosaurian version. What does one say? My etiquette training, limited as it was, failed me.
