by Rhys Ford
“You knew about the first one?” Xian asked when Jiro drew closer, his too-warm body leeching away some of the cold from Xian’s side. “What am I saying? Of course you did. The question is, do you know who put that man on my slab? And what are you going to do to stop it?”
Xian drew one foot up to rest it against the roof’s perimeter, keeping his eyes on the tall, dark-haired inspector who now carried his blood. The connection they shared at the moment would subside over the next few weeks, but for now, Xian found himself enjoying the delicious tingle of Spencer’s nearness. The inspector must have felt something, because as the divers bounced up and down beneath the surface, bright lights moving about under the water, he seemed to be discomforted, glancing about with the intensity of a hunter feeling something else was stalking the same prey.
“I don’t interfere,” Jiro murmured, finally choosing to perch on the conditioning unit next to Xian. “Human games are fun to watch. Plucking their strings changes things. I am not a puppet master. Not like—”
“You, of all of them, are more his heir than anyone else,” Xian spat back. “No one plays the master of puppets like you do. Don’t pretend between us. Someone is out there, trying to break through to reach what we are without… He’s close. Whoever is doing this is very close. There was still life in the man when his creator dismembered him. He’d been wrapped up for weeks, dead, and then dismembered. But still, there was a spark of life in him for long afterwards. I could smell it when I cut him apart.”
Jiro stared out at the water, lost in his own thoughts. Or, for all Xian knew, he was contemplating what type of cheese he preferred to eat at two in the morning. He hadn’t seen his… brother of sorts… in a few months. For all the threads and connections tangling them together, neither one of them sought the other out on a continuous basis. Even living in the same city was strange, an odd occurrence that often left Xian wondering what Jiro was up to.
Because Jiro was always up to something.
Their creator had a type. Despite their ethnic differences, they looked alike, down to their nearly white hair. Although Jiro had cut his into a short pageboy since the last time Xian saw him, and its violent purple strands only made Jiro’s pale skin startlingly translucent. Shorter and much more slender, Jiro appeared to be just out of puberty, but his intense black eyes and fierce vulpine features left no doubt that anyone meeting him was dealing with a dangerous, unpredictable force of nature.
Something Xian learned very quickly the first time he’d met Jiro and their creator tried to bring his older fanged pet back under control. The damage Jiro did had been enough for Xian to eventually break free of the old demon’s bindings, taking advantage of his weakened state. The next time he ran into Jiro, he’d given his older brother one of the ancient tick’s fangs as a thank you.
Jiro wore it strung on a gold chain around his neck, playing with the grisly trophy absently sometimes when he spoke.
Much like he was doing right now.
“You marked the Italian one,” he eventually murmured, nodding his head in the inspector’s general direction. “I can smell you on him. Even from here.”
“He was dying.” Xian shrugged. He didn’t owe Jiro any explanations, but there was a small tingle of pride, knowing he could be felt in Spencer’s blood. It was odd now, thinking of the man he’d brought back to life as anything other than Spencer. He would have to watch how he addressed the cop when they were together again. “I didn’t know why I did it at the time but—”
“You saw us in him.” Cocking his head, Jiro studied the chaotic scene below them. “He hunts. Not like we hunt, but it feeds him. Feeds some part of him. You can see it. Watch the others. Look how they keep apart from him. Like if they go too close, he’ll bite. He’s a good choice.”
“I’m not…” Shutting his mouth, Xian suppressed a sigh. Jiro was baiting him. Probably because he was bored. “Why are you here?”
“I saw you. Well, I saw the cat you. I was curious. You don’t normally wear that form. Not unless you’re trying to hide. And you, my dear baby brother, rarely try to hide anything.”
“You’re not normally on this side of the city.” He glanced over at his brother. “Tell me that’s not you doing this.”
“Wrapping up not-quite dead men in sheets and dumping them in the water? Or leaving them in restaurants that don’t use enough salt in their food?” Jiro scoffed. “I don’t play games. Not like that. There are better things to occupy my time, and it’s a waste of good blood. This isn’t me. And I know it’s not you.”
Xian turned Jiro’s words over in his head, prodding at the edges of what he knew about his brother and how the other man thought. As cruel as Jiro could be and as much as he enjoyed drawing out the thrill of a hunt, he never killed without reason. And unless he’d changed dramatically in the past few months, Xian didn’t see Jiro’s nature including a long, drawn-out murder spree. There was someone else behind the killings, and from what he’d gleaned from the first mummy the cops found, it wasn’t someone of their bloodline.
“If you find out who this is, will you tell me?” he asked softly. Xian didn’t mind pleading with Jiro. He’d begged and cajoled with greater evils and with far less satisfying results. “Even if you don’t meddle, which we both know is a lie, whoever is doing this will endanger not just the two of us but everyone like us. So far, he’s not left anything a human can track or see, but what happens when he does? What do we do then?”
“We hide, or we kill,” Jiro said, shrugging. “But yes, if I find out something, I’ll tell you. I like it here. There’s a lot to do—a lot to play with. But I can’t promise I won’t kill them first. I’ll tell you that too if that happens. So you know.”
“So long as he’s brought to some kind of justice,” Xian agreed.
“It’s not justice. I don’t care what he’s doing to the humans. I care he’s close to fucking up my life.” Jiro stood, then brushed off the back of his jeans, staring down at the cluster of cops near the water. “I don’t understand your need to keep things in balance for them. It’s a losing battle. They do horrible things to each other, worse than even what was done to us, and you keep trying to make their lives better. It makes no sense. Or maybe it does. Maybe that’s your game. Your puppet mastering. Like your thinking about bringing that one over to be with us, even when you deny wanting it.”
“Who the hell would want this?” Xian reached over to flick at the long canine dangling from its sparkling chain around Jiro’s neck. “Who wants to watch the world spin around over and over again and see things rise and fall back down into dust? We’re few and far between, and our only companions are the very creatures we feed on, creatures we used to be. We’ve got an eternity but no legacy. Even if we make more of our own, we don’t grow. We don’t change. We don’t become better. Who can blame me for wanting more for humanity and to protect them from someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing? Doesn’t know how dangerous it is to become one of us without any precautions.”
“Madness takes its toll,” Jiro murmured, turning to face Xian. “I hope that whenever I become too insane, you don’t hesitate, brother. You’re the only one I think is strong enough to kill me. Just like you killed the old man.”
“You weakened him for me,” he pointed out. “If you hadn’t, you and I wouldn’t be sitting on a rooftop in San Francisco watching a group of cops fish for a dead man wrapped up in torn sheets.”
“No, and the world would be on fire.” His brother nodded. “Maybe you should consider bringing that one over. If you think he can survive it. Maybe it’s time you start to look for someone who can kill you once the sickness takes over your mind.”
“Why do you think I have assistants?” Xian laughed at Jiro’s shocked expression, his brother’s eyebrows nearly lost beneath the fall of purple hair across his forehead. “Don’t look so surprised. I can’t trust you to do it. You might say it would be interfering with the natural order of things, and then where would we all be?”
/>
“I promise you, if ever the madness takes you, I’ll be happy to slit your throat,” Jiro promised, crossing his heart with an elegant sweep of a long index finger. “In fact, there are some days I might even contemplate not waiting for the blood to curdle in your brain. But then, who would kill me? So I guess you’re safe. For now.”
“Not safe enough.” Xian made a face when the cell phone in his pocket chimed. “The dead are calling. I have to go.”
“Jumping down or taking the stairs?” Jiro peered over the edge. “Ah, too many people. So the question is, cat or human? Because unlike you, brother, I have no dead calling me, but I’m hungry and it is time for me to hunt down some dinner.”
“Well, whatever you do, don’t terrorize any more little kids,” he warned, watching his brother sketch a pair of familiar sigils in the air to fold space and matter. A flash of dark and sparks rose, and the air grew smoky, curling around Jiro’s flesh. A whiff of sulfur and a heavy push of air hit Xian, and Jiro emerged from the ripples, an enormous sleek silver-point Siamese where his human form once stood. “Just be careful. You’re the only sort of family I have.”
Eight
THE BODY, or what the divers could find of it, beat Spencer to the medical examiner’s by nearly two hours. Driving through a light drizzle, he briefly pondered turning around and going home, worn down by not only the long day but by the incessant itch creeping across his side where he’d been injured. The headache he’d worn wrapped around his temples all day finally subsided when the last of the remains were being pulled out of the water, and he’d nearly wept in relief at the punch of energy he’d gotten from a strong hot cafe da someone fetched him from a food truck parked at the bottom of a nearby hill.
He also really wanted a burger. A nice thick, juicy, rare burger topped with a ripe tomato and slices of red onion. He didn’t even need the fries—just the meat and a not-too-sweet bun to soak up all of the runoff.
“Dinner’s going to have to wait,” he admonished his now grumbling stomach. “The dead come first. And shit, who knows if I’m even going to have an appetite after I get done here.”
The street was mostly empty of cars when Spencer pulled up to the gray-and-blue building taking up half a block near the end of the piers. The stink coming off the water chased him inside, a curious metallic stench mingled with rotten fish slapping him in the face every time the wind gusted through the narrow street. A storm was moving in, or at least the rain thickened enough for Spencer to duck his head down while he sprinted across the parking lot to the building’s front doors and into the icy lobby beyond.
“Carter’s waiting for you.” The guard at the front desk jerked a thumb toward the double doors leading to the bowels of the building where the examiners took apart their clients. “He’s itching to get started. Called up here at least three times.”
“Not like the guy’s going to go anywhere,” Spencer muttered back, shaking as much of the rain off his shoulders as he could. The burn in his side grew, stretching down across his belly. Rubbing at the spot, he nodded a thank-you at the guard buzzing him in.
“Hey, Ricci!” the guard called out from the desk. “Carter really patched you up at his place? Heard he kept you there a couple of days. That true?”
Something in the guard’s voice brought Spencer’s back up, and he stopped the door with his shoulder to look behind him. The guy was young, an over-muscled blond stuffed into a too-tight uniform probably meant to show off his body, but he looked more like a link of pork sausage packed hard into its casing. The smirk he shot Spencer only intensified the gnarl of barbed wire growing in the pit of Spencer’s guts. But if anything, the scowl he threw at the man only made the mocking curl on his lips deeper.
“We’ve got bets on what his place looks like.” He nodded at Spencer, the smirk turning into a leer. “Hell, some of us got bets about what he looks like under that lab coat.”
“He took care of me because I was injured and didn’t want to go to the ER.” Spencer flicked a few drops of rain from his hands. “Guy’s a doctor, even if he works with the dead. I owe him one. More than one even.”
The excuse felt like a lie, but he couldn’t argue with what Carter told him. He hated hospitals with a passion and avoided emergency rooms if he could. Faced with an angry, stabbed Italian cop with a temper, Carter did the reasonable thing—beyond reasonable, considering Spencer took up a hell of a lot of room—and left him to heal up on his couch.
“What about his place?” the guard shot back before Spencer could slip through the wide glass doors. “Creepy like he is? Like, 1950s serial killer? I’ve got bets on stuff like old grandma furniture. Crazy doilies and shit all over the place.”
Carter’s place remained a blur. Mostly because when Spencer came to his senses, he’d stumbled out of the brick building before doing something stupid like asking Carter out for a drink. There’d been books, seemingly thousands of them, and the furniture ran to large and comfortable, perfect for Spencer’s tired, beaten body to rest on. There’d been white walls with some art, brightly colored and provocative. But he hadn’t done more than grab his wallet, gun, and keys while mumbling a hasty thank-you after embarrassing himself over calling bullshit on Carter, who’d obviously been teasing him.
One of the few times the guy probably showed he had a sense of humor, and Spencer had to go and piss on it.
The image of Carter’s gorgeous face shutting down remained gouged into Spencer’s memory. He’d killed the playful slight smile and the sparkling light in the man’s burnt umber gaze. And it felt like he’d stabbed a bunny when Carter leaned back into his icy demeanor, telling Spencer about what happened that night and why he woke up in Carter’s living room.
“You talk to the doc like this?” Spencer cocked an eyebrow. “’Cause something tells me, if you did, you wouldn’t be here anymore.”
“Shit, he’s…” The man’s mental gymnastics were evident with his changing confused expressions. “He’s kind of a tight-ass. It’s just good fun. No one’s getting hurt. Shit, he should be glad people even talk about him. Not exactly the nicest guy. Says hi, and that’s about it.”
“All he needs to say,” he replied softly. “And what goes on in Carter’s life… his house… what he looks like? None of your damned business unless he tells you. Now, I’m going to see the man about a murder victim. Have a good night. Try not to get your dick stuck in a stapler or something.”
§
Xian motioned for Spencer to suit up, pointing with a pair of hemostats at the protective gear stacked up near the examining arena’s entrance. He hadn’t waited for the inspector to show up, wanting to get to the body before it dried out too much. Loose wrappings bound most of the limbs, and in the case of the head, a layer of duct tape kept the ends tight against the waterlogged skull. The few weeks the victim rested on the silt bed had done significant damage, but he hoped the duct tape had somehow protected the man’s face, because so far, fish and other scavengers already made quick work of the man’s flesh.
He’d been engrossed in his work when Spencer entered the room, but the quick flash of their shared blood pulled him out of his detangling some of the linens to get to the man’s right hand. The tug was loosening, something Xian regretted, but it was inevitable. He’d given the inspector enough to heal the damage done to him by his attacker’s blade. Any more and Xian would have opened up a Pandora’s Box of trouble.
And there was no guarantee Jiro wouldn’t have hunted Spencer down and killed him, just for the sport of it.
Because his blood brother was an asshole and very jealous of his territory.
“I feel like an idiot in this shit,” Spencer grumbled, shuffling into the room in a pair of paper booties. “And yeah, I get it, but I feel like one of these guys here. You started without me.”
“Had to,” Xian replied, nodding toward a small bucket where he’d put the wee black crabs he’d plucked off the victim’s body. The faint blue lenses in his glasses cut most of the harshne
ss from the overhead lights and brightened Spencer’s eyes, deepening their hue. “Your guy brought some unwanted guests with him. By the time I dug some of them out of the wrappings, he was already half-undone. X-rays were taken, but no wallet this time.”
“Witness said he was whole going in.” The inspector glanced up at the films plastered to the light screen behind Xian’s work table. “But they pulled up pieces. Figure he was cut up and held together by the fabric strips?”
“Probably. There’s signs of a rotary blade—and that’s a guess—along the joints. Some hesitation marks on the one exposed knee, more like our embalmer knew where to cut but wasn’t certain about how hard.” Bending over the limb he’d been working on, Xian continued to unravel the strips around the man’s crooked fingers. “How are you? It hasn’t been that long since you were injured. Are you sure you should be working?”
“Doctor said I was good to go,” Spencer teased, and despite himself, Xian smiled. “Course, the guy works with dead people, so he probably figured since I was breathing, it was fine.”
“Yeah, those dead docs are like that. Any sign of life and they’re calling it a good day.” He chanced a glance at Spencer, surprised to find the man’s attention fixed to his face instead of the victim on the table. “Seriously, are you feeling okay? No dizziness? Headache still? Side hurts still?”
He touched his side, rustling the protective material. Rubbing at the area, the inspector’s face sobered. “Seems okay. A bit of pulling, but not bad. Surprised the cuts didn’t go in deeper.”
“Dull knife. Pushed your shirt into the skin more than anything else. The infection and fever you got from what was on the knife or ground were worse than the cuts. I was more worried about your head. You took a big hit,” Xian lied smoothly. “I’d feel better if you went in for a scan. Just to be sure there’s nothing serious. Especially if you’ve still got headaches.”
“Those cleared up a little. Just tender at the back of my head. It’s hard back there. Like a turtle,” Spencer snorted. “Honestly, I feel okay. Sure as hell a lot better than this guy here. Talk to me about him. Think you can get an ID? And how are we doing on getting some prints off the other victim?”
