She found him down in the main reading room, a space he’d claimed as his own. The wooden table was littered with books and scrolls. Some were stacked so high the first things she saw was the top of his head. He was moving fast enough to make his hair flap in the resulting breeze.
Serin couldn’t help but track the vampire’s progress, her senses alert and battle ready.
Compared to her sisters Diana and Gia, Serin had always been viewed as the tolerant one. Being senior to Logan, most of the high-level vampire cases were thrown her way. She’d spent enough time around members of the major covens to be comfortable around vampires…after a fashion.
Nothing could ever prepare someone for the way vamps moved when they thought they were alone. Alec was darting all over the places, pausing intermittently to examine whatever scroll or paper he’d crossed the room to find. A human eye wouldn’t have been able to track him at all, but she could see the faint traces of moisture most beings possessed streaking across the room, like a comet’s trail.
She blinked, and the vampire was seated in one of the leather chairs situated between two large stacks of ledgers. His attention was fixed on the volume in front of him.
“Alec.”
Blinking, he glanced up before breaking into a warm smile. Fire from the torches hit his fangs, making them gleam disconcertingly in the light. “Serin! I was hoping you would stop by. Diana said you were eager for a fresh lead.”
Serin cocked her head at him, her mood lightening. “And you have something.”
He nodded, standing in his seat to reach for a notepad he’d left atop a pile of scrolls. “The archivists and I have begun a list of the missing objects. I’m sure you’ve heard through the grapevine about the more concerning ones.”
She nodded. “Yes, the gossip is everywhere.”
The island was a fishbowl. People couldn’t keep secrets here, so the news of which major artifacts had gone missing was known to all, even the island’s children. Unfortunately, most of the objects were dark, imbued with an innate self-protection magic. Despite the fact most burned magic like shooting stars, they weren’t trackable unless the tracker was very close.
Serin rubbed her face. “So which of the world-ending cursed objects do I have to worry about?”
The light in Alec’s eyes was a little manic. “None.”
She raised an eyebrow.
He beamed, waving a piece of parchment in the air. “Some of the items on the list are inert, meaning they don’t possess magical properties. Given their age or the materials they were made of, I’ve surmised they were stolen for profit.”
“Weren’t all the artifacts stolen for profit?”
Alec’s gaze softened. “Err…yes and no. Obviously, every item in this archive is priceless to a scholar like me and to the island’s community at large, but to an outside observer, their value would be subjective.”
He picked up the sketch of Feng Po Po’s staff, the missing artifact that had caused Logan so much grief a few months ago. “Take this for example. It was the staff of a legendary Air Elemental, as well as a vicious weapon in the right hands. But what if a human had come across it?”
He broke off, flashing back to the table, then returned and handed her a familiar weapon.
Serin breathed out slowly. The Sai, a handheld trident weapon, felt like an extension of her hand. It was one of a pair, and part of the archive collection she’d personally collected herself. Out of everything Alec could have used to demonstrate, that he’d chosen this…
“Only one of the Sai was taken. I think the thief dropped the other one.”
“Really?” Why would the thief have taken only one?
He nodded. “To a human, the staff and trident would still have had value because of their age and workmanship. Either would command a high price to the right buyer.”
“So you think this was about…money?” As her bonded mate, Jordan had no need for that. The Mother supplied whatever they needed—jewels and precious metals, whatever was on hand in the soil beneath their feet.
Alec expelled a breath with a little too much force. “I can’t speak to the thief’s motive. But after compiling the list, I noticed a pattern. Yes, some powerful artifacts are missing. To the right practitioner or gifted Supernatural, they can do a lot of damage. But both Gia and Logan have their ear to the ground. Aside from the staff, there is no hint of them. No doubt the thief or thieves are laying low after the recovery of the staff of Feng Po Po. However, I have my own sources and they extend beyond the Supernatural community.”
Serin was beginning to understand. “By that, you mean your background in archeology.”
Alec was a known collector of rare artifacts.
He beamed at her like a professor rewarding a prize pupil. “According to Noomi, these objects aren’t magical. Some of them are common, too—which, according to her definition, simply means they aren’t one of a kind. Doesn’t mean they aren’t rare or expensive. Take this piece for example.”
He dropped the pad for a ledger, pointing to the sketch. It was a figurine, a squat and ugly thing that vaguely resembled a toad. “The body is made entirely of jade. This indentation here is where the jewel is embedded. It’s a diamond.”
“A jade figurine could fetch a nice price, but jade isn’t that precious. Diamonds are also common enough these days. They can even grow them in labs.”
“Yes, but one this color and clarity is still beyond the scope of the current technology. It’s red. A dark and clear red. And this stone is bigger than the Hope Diamond, the latter which is supposedly cursed by the way.”
He shifted his weight, staring musingly at the ceiling. “I’ve never had the opportunity to test whether it was true, but there were some tantalizing hints. You see, the Hope Diamond has a very interesting history…”
Serin hadn’t spent all that much time with the vampire, but she recognized the start of a lengthy lecture when she heard one.
“Alec,” she interrupted. “Focus.”
His lips pressed together before he shrugged haplessly. “Right, of course. I surmised this artifact and the others on this list, the ones we consider innocuous, would be easier to trace than those imbued with magic. So I put out feelers to show interest in buying some of them—carefully. I didn’t describe these objects exactly, just gave loose descriptions of similar artifacts, things that wouldn’t be out of place in a collection as large as mine or the museums I’m a known patron of.”
It was her turn to smile. “And you received an offer.”
“Not exactly. It was a message from another collector, one I’ve competed with in the past. The man wanted to gloat about snagging a piece right out from under me.”
He handed her a piece of paper, showing the aforementioned piece and an address. “Here are his details.”
5
Daniel pulled his chair in to get a closer look at the footage. It was too grainy to be sure, but the female kicking the collective butt of an entire motorcycle gang did resemble his ghost—the woman who’d disappeared from the Reaper’s compound.
He’d been searching for her ever since. Until today, he’d had nothing. Not until Ray had waved him over to watch some old security footage.
“Where the hell did you find this?” Daniel asked his partner.
“In the archives. It was part of an earlier investigation. The Devil’s Hand was a motorcycle gang operating out of Detroit.”
“Was?”
“Yup, was. They’re defunct now. While they were operating, they were a nasty bunch—drugs, illegal gun sales, racketeering with a body count. We got wind of them three or four years ago. The FBI actually kicked their prelim case over to us. The group was originally flagged by their Behavioral Analysis Unit because of the bodies they were turning up. There were weird ritualistic aspects to the deaths.”
Daniel rubbed his chin as the tiny figure on the screen head-butted a man three times her size. Then she tossed him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
/> “Damn.” Ray whistled. “Did you see that?”
Daniel resisted the urge to grab the screen to bring it up to his face. “We can’t zoom this in?”
“Footage is from a liquor store down the street. It’s aimed at their back-alley entrance. This is as good as it gets.”
Daniel leaned back in his chair. “It’s a start.”
Ray sniffed. “You don’t really think it’s the same girl?”
“I do. Don’t you?” Why else was his partner showing him the footage if he didn’t agree?
“I just pulled it because Campbell said the suspect resembled the sketch you’ve been passing around. The entire office is aware of your hard-on for the woman in the white bikini. She pulled a Houdini under the noses of over two dozen law enforcement personnel. Her description is common knowledge around here. But, no, I don’t think this is the same person. The girl we saw was way too soft for something like this. She was just window dressing for a drug dealer, nothing more.”
The fight was over. Bikers littered the alley. The female was the last man standing, as it were.
Daniel squinted at the screen as the woman melted into the shadows at the far end of the alley. She didn’t reappear. He reached over to rewind the footage, pausing on a frontal shot—the clearest picture he could get of her.
“I disagree,” he said after a minute. “The woman on this video has been trained and trained well. I saw her use techniques from at least three different schools of martial arts in that fight. That kind of expertise doesn’t come cheap. Someone invested a lot to turn this girl into a killing machine. I think we’re dealing with a specialist.”
“Seriously?” Ray asked skeptically. “Are you sure you’re not reading too much into this?”
Daniel scowled. “Did we just watch the same video?”
“Of course we did. But you’re jumping to the conclusion that the woman who did a vanishing act at the Reaper’s is the same one here.” Ray swiveled to face him. “I’m not convinced. Far from it. The woman in the white bikini was probably some hooker. The circumstances of her disappearance aren’t a big mystery. She took advantage of someone’s inattention to slip away—that’s all. My guess is a local uni took a piss break and is too afraid to own up to it.”
Daniel didn’t buy that. He’d questioned every shield at the scene multiple times. As an experienced interrogator, he knew when someone was hiding something from him. None of the men present at the raid had even twitched. The woman had excused herself to go to the bathroom and then poof! She’d vanished, leaving the tap of the bathroom sink running.
“I’m going to search for more on the Devil’s Hand,” he said after a moment. “Maybe there’s a list of their rivals in the files. The fighter’s name, or at least her affiliation, might be there.”
Ray shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I’d keep it on the down low. If you go off track now, you’re gonna lose steam. We both know you want the D.C. job opening under Dallas Munroe next year.”
The post in the nation’s capital was Daniel’s dream job. He had been lobbying for it for the better part of the year, ever since he’d heard the current department head was taking early retirement due to a health issue. The superstar Agent Dallas Munroe would be taking over, and Daniel was on the shortlist for Munroe’s old spot.
He had a decent shot at it, but the competition was heavy. The shortlist was a who’s who of the agency’s rising stars. He was only one of many.
“You’d be better off fielding more grounders,” Ray pointed out. “Keep that closure rate climbing. It’s a numbers game.”
“It’s a not just a numbers game, and you know it. It’s the big cases that make or break a career.”
His partner snickered. “I know you pride yourself in sniffing out crime like some damn McGruff wannabe, but this girl isn’t going to be a big score. She didn’t even kill anyone in that alley. All of those guys are alive and doing hard time. They’re scattered in various supermax prisons across the country.”
Daniel picked up his sketch. “Which one is the closest?”
Tiny, a three-hundred-pound biker, was a former member of the Devil’s Hand. He sneered at the sketch from the other side of the smeared bulletproof plastic.
“It’s the same crazy bitch,” he marveled before smacking his lips. “You finally caught her.”
Daniel suppressed a smile. “Sorry, no. The girl who kicked your ass is still at large, but she is the reason I came to see you. Who is she?”
Tiny snorted. “Hell if I know. The bitch just showed up in the middle of the clubhouse one day—broke in and made it past two lookouts without any of us the wiser.”
He wiped his nose, staring at the sketch as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to lick it or tear it up. “I’ve been telling my lawyer he needs to find her. She’s the one who planted all those drugs and guns on us. When we tried to stop her, she went crazy, started beating us up with those fancy kicks and punches. But it was all her. I’m innocent of the charges they nailed me on. So are the other guys. The Devil’s Hand was just a club, an excuse to mess around with our bikes, nothing more.”
Daniel hid his skepticism. The FBI had been surveilling the Devil’s Hand long enough for him to know they’d been guilty of everything convicted of and then some. But he knew why Tiny was making this claim.
When the local cops had come in response to an anonymous tip, all the guns and drugs had been laid out in the open. Hundreds of pounds of pot and heroine had been stacked on the pool table. The men themselves were laid out on the floor in a neat little row. Combined with the earlier surveillance, the locals had been able to get convictions for almost everyone.
“I know the pot was yours at least,” Daniel said. “There’s footage of you getting it from a suspected cartel mule a week before. I also know it was well-hidden because a raid just a few days before failed to find anything. So tell me how a stranger knows your clubhouse layout well enough to have knowledge of your secret hiding places—the ones so good a squad of trained law enforcement missed them?”
Tiny scoffed. “I’m telling you none of that shit was ours.”
Daniel waited. “If that’s the story you want to stick to—fine. What do you have to tell me about the girl? Was she part of a rival club or perhaps contracted by one? Who was your biggest competition in Detroit?”
The tatted ex-biker pursed his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We were just a biker club. But I can tell you that girl didn’t come searching for drugs or guns. Setting us up was an afterthought.”
Daniel took out a notepad. “Then why did she target you? What was she in search of?
“Not what. Who.” Tiny leaned forward. “She only had one question—where was Luthien?”
“Who is Luthien?” Daniel hadn’t come across that name in the Devil’s Hand files.
“He was a former member of the Hand. We had to kick him out.”
Interesting. “Can I ask why?”
Tiny appeared to think over his answer. “I want to be clear…The Devil’s hand didn’t do anything illegal, but we sometimes get into disputes with folks in the area, especially in the beginning. Luthien joined us after we were established. He volunteered to go and handle some of these disputes. But we didn’t like the way he did it. So we ran him out of town. End of story.”
Hmm. Daniel had been over everything he could find on the club. Murder and mayhem had been par for the course. The stuff they’d been busted for wasn’t unusual for a gang like theirs. But those ritualistic deaths—the ones that had gotten them flagged by FBI profilers in the first place—had been different and creepy as fuck. Reading between the lines, he now knew Luthien had been responsible.
“Does Luthien have a last name?”
“If it was mentioned, I never heard it. He was on the fringe. The only thing he ever talked about was his bike and getting laid.”
“What did he look like?”
Tiny gave him an approximate description, although he couldn’t pinpoint
the man’s age.
Daniel jotted it all down, but it was all so generic. “There’s nothing else about Luthien? Nothing distinctive?”
The biker nodded as if something had just occurred to him. “He smelled funny.”
“Define funny.”
Tiny scratched his greasy head. “He smelled like those sticks you get in Chinatown.”
Daniel stared blankly at the man.
“They’re like spice sticks,” Tiny said, gesturing with his hands. “You burn them to cover up pot smoke.”
Daniel’s brows rose. “You mean incense? Luthien smelled like incense?”
Tiny nodded. “Big time. Hey, what do I get for telling you all this?”
“What do you mean?” Daniel began to pack up, putting the sketch back in his bag.
“For providing you with information. Are you going to talk to the DA or something? Put in a good word for me?”
“For a single name and not the one I wanted? No, I’m not.”
Tiny grew red in the face. “Hey, man, I helped you!”
Daniel stood to leave. “That remains to be seen.” He turned to the door, but paused at the threshold. “And a little tip—the time to broker a deal for information is before you start talking.”
A few hours later, he found out Tiny’s information was good, up to a point. He found Luthien easily. The man was buried in Woodmere Cemetery. He’d died shortly after the Devil’s Hand was shut down—a few days after they’d been visited by the woman in the white bikini.
Daniel threw himself into work after that, pouring over cold cases going back years. At first, he got nowhere. It took him a little while to make the obvious connection.
It wasn’t enough to examine the old drug cases. They needed to include murder, and not just plain old murder at that.
The deaths he needed to investigate were labeled as weird or occult by the authorities who landed the cases. Ritualistic was a word that came up often. When he checked, he found two more blurry photographs of his suspect in disparate cases. More than one detective remembered her in the periphery of their murder cases, although they didn’t have pictures or witness statements from her.
The Elementals Collection Page 61
