Cloak of Wolves

by Moeller, Jonathan

  “There is absolutely no evidence that Doyle or anyone in his family was involved with the Rebels or the Dark Ones cults,” said Owen.

  Nadia grunted. “You know about the Dark Ones cults, then?”

  “I’ve been a shadow agent of the High Queen of seventeen years now,” said Owen. “It’s hard not to have run into the Dark Ones cults during that time.”

  “Seventeen? God,” said Nadia. For the first time, an emotion other than anger or disdain went over her face. It might have been sympathy if he had squinted and looked at it in the right light. “It’s amazing that you still have all your hair.”

  “We may be grateful for small miracles,” said Owen. “But my working assumption is that someone summoned the wraithwolves from the Shadowlands and sent them after Doyle. There are a few other pieces of evidence to support that view.” He paged through the file and handed a few more pages to Nadia. “For one, both Ronald Doyle’s and Josephine Doyle’s phones were missing. We couldn’t find them anywhere in the condo. Their oldest had a phone, but the parents’ phones were missing. Second, Ronald’s wallet and Josephine’s purse are missing.”

  “Hell of a messy way to commit robbery,” said Nadia She read over the pages and handed them back. “I might have an idea on how to proceed.”

  “Please,” said Owen. He already had his investigation underway. As the head of Special Investigations, he could commandeer detectives from other departments, and Giles had given him some of his best, though Lieutenant Warren had already been assigned to another case. Owen had men digging through Doyle’s sketchy finances and the finances of his company. He had also assigned an investigator to sort through the backgrounds of the people currently suing Doyle for his defective concrete. Anyone who had a motive for revenge on Doyle was a suspect. Summoning wraithwolves to kill Doyle’s family seemed like an excessive response…but then so was taking an M-99 carbine and shooting up your workplace the day after you got fired.

  Both happened.

  “We need to narrow this down,” said Nadia. “I assume you’ve got guys going over Doyle’s money and everyone who’s suing him, right?” Owen nodded, impressed despite himself. “Okay. That’s a good start. But I might be able to determine whether or not the wraithwolves were summoned in the condo building.”

  Owen frowned. “How?” She had been able to sense the aurasight spell but detecting the traces of a summoning spell three days after the fact would be a lot harder.

  “Aetherometer,” said Nadia.

  “You have an aetherometer?” said Owen. “I thought only Elven nobles had those.”

  “It was a wedding gift,” said Nadia.

  Owen thought about that. He wondered what kind of man would voluntarily marry someone like Nadia MacCormac. Her husband either had to be a rich but soft man she dominated entirely or some sort of exceptionally dangerous killer.

  “You can use it to check for the traces of a summoning spell?” said Owen.

  “I think so,” said Nadia. “I want to have a look at the Doyles’ condo and the building. If there’s anything odd there, magically speaking, my aetherometer should pick it up.” She shrugged. “Maybe we’ll find that Doyle had a secret shrine to the Dark Ones hidden in the furnace room and accidentally conjured up wraithwolves that ate him.”

  “That would make things simpler,” said Owen. He stood. “Shall we go now?”

  “Yeah, let’s get on with it,” said Nadia. She threw back the rest of her coffee in a single gulp and stood. “We’re past the first seventy-two hours now. A lot harder to catch a murder suspect then.”

  “You did read my book,” said Owen, picking up his uniform jacket and shrugging into it.

  She smirked. “But the High Queen gave us this job, Colonel. We can’t just arrest some random guy off the street, pin the murder on him, kill him on a Punishment Day video, and then take a break for coffee and doughnuts. No, we actually have to get it right. Novel idea for Homeland Security, but here we are.”

  Something about her contempt for Homeland Security grated on him. Owen was used to hatred and fear, but icy contempt and disdain were unusual. He remembered the images he had seen in Dean Osmond’s mind, remembered his victims lying in their blood in that convenience store. A welter of other memories welled through his mind, of lives ended or broken by murder and assault. He was surprised by the urge to throw them into Nadia’s face, to wipe that smirk off her pretty face, to tell her that a woman who had no doubt been a career criminal had no right to judge the officers of the law.

  Owen forced aside the urge. For one, he doubted it would work. No doubt Nadia would just laugh in his face. More importantly, he had a job to do. Owen had worked with plenty of people he had disliked during his career. Nadia MacCormac would just be one more.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and opened the office door.

  ***

  Chapter 6: Bloodshed

  Owen offered to drive to the Doyles’ condo building, and I agreed. I told him to meet me at the entrance to the parking ramp after I had gotten my aetherometer out of my trunk. Before I did, Owen gave me a consultant’s ID card, which I clipped to the lapel of my coat. I strolled out of the lobby of the Central Office, enjoyed the surprised scowl from Kirby, and stepped into the November chill. It hit me like a slap, and I tugged my coat closed and took deep breaths, sucking the cold into my lungs.

  That was good. It would help clear my head.

  I had to stop provoking Owen Quell.

  A lot of things had changed about me during my century and a half in the Eternity Crucible, but my smart mouth definitely had stayed the same. When I was scared or angry, my mouth tended to run away with itself. I had gotten better about controlling it (maturity, yay!) but the tendency was still there. I hadn’t been frightened in the Central Office building or while talking to Owen. I knew enough about interrogation techniques to realize that opening crack about getting coffee had been a test to see how I would react. I hadn’t told him to shove his coffee cup sideways up his backside, so I decided to chalk that up as a win for self-control.

  But I was angry. Not furious, but low-level angry. It had started when Officer Kirby had tried to bully me at the security checkpoint. And that low-level anger seethed during my entire meeting with Owen. The bald fact was that I hated and distrusted both Homeland Security and its officers. That anger had kept bubbling out during the conversation in the form of snide remarks. I needed to work with Owen until we had figured out who had killed the Doyles. Deliberately provoking him was not a good way to do it.

  Damn it all, why had the High Queen told us to work together? Owen was a freaking Homeland Security Colonel. He had more resources and (official) authority than I did. Owen didn’t need my help. If Tarlia had wanted it resolved quietly, then why hadn’t she sent me alone?

  The answer suggested itself to me as I walked into the parking garage. Owen might have both magical skill and the resources of Homeland Security, but he wouldn’t be able to fight an entire pack of wraithwolves and their summoner. I could, though, and I had done that kind of thing in the past with great effectiveness. I wished she had sent the Inquisition to deal with it, but maybe the Inquisition was busy.

  Or maybe there was something weird going on.

  Like the business with Della Sarkany.

  “Shit,” I muttered as I walked back to my car and opened the trunk.

  The best way to deal with all of this was to solve the Doyles’ murders and report success to Tarlia. Then I could go back to ignoring Homeland Security and Colonel Owen Quell.

  So, suck it up, Nadia, and get on with it.

  I drew out a laptop bag and slung the strap diagonally across my chest. Inside was my aetherometer and a variety of other items that made a good toolkit for a high-end thief, but now that I was legitimate, I supposed they were my shadow agent’s toolkit.

  I walked back to the curb, and a minute later, a blue Homeland Security SUV pulled up. The passenger door opened, and I saw Owen sitting in the driver’s seat.
I took a deep breath, climbed into the SUV, and closed the door. The locks slamming shut as Owen put the SUV back into drive sounded like deadbolts being thrown. I consoled myself with the thought that I could blast my way out of the SUV with ease, if necessary.

  The interior of the SUV looked like a typical Homeland Security vehicle. A wire mesh cage sealed off the back seat and the cargo area, preventing “guests” from making trouble. A ruggedized laptop had been clipped to the dashboard, along with a radio communication and dispatch system. A holographic heads-up display showed notifications and messages on the dashboard since staring at a laptop was a great way to drive into a tree. I watched the HUD for a moment. Those weren’t available on the general market, and it was always a shock to see symbols and letters flashing across a windshield.

  Owen saw me staring. “Suppose you’re used to sitting in the back.”

  “I’m used to seeing Homeland Security SUVs in my rearview mirror, getting smaller,” I said. I started to add that it probably wasn’t necessary to outrun Homeland Security SUVs since the officers within were busy using the HUD to watch movies on the taxpayer’s dollar, but I remembered my resolution to get along with Owen Quell and stopped myself.

  Owen only grunted at that.

  We drove in silence to the building that had housed Ronald Doyle’s condo. It wasn’t far, only about three-quarters of a mile, but the numerous stoplights and heavy traffic slowed us down. At last, we came to a building of about thirty stories, with shops on the first floor, offices on the next nine, and condos on the rest. Doyle, if I remembered the file right, had lived on the twenty-fifth floor.

  I started to ask where we were going to park, but Owen simply pulled into the loading zone in front of the building and turned on the SUV’s flashers. Right. Homeland Security could park wherever they wanted.

  “Let’s go,” said Owen.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said, reaching into my bag. I pulled out my aetherometer. “I want a quick look at the building with this.”

  Owen peered at my aetherometer with frank curiosity. It looked like a big compass about the size of my palm, except there were a dozen different dials beneath the crystalline lens. I concentrated on the instrument, and I felt my telepathic link with it.

  “What do those dials mean?” said Owen.

  “It changes based on context,” I said. The dials spun and twitched as the aetherometer measured the local magical fields. “The interface is telepathic, so it tells me what the symbols mean. Don’t try to look into my head with the mindtouch spell. I know Homeland Security likes to break into places without a warrant, but it’d have bad effects on you.”

  I regretted saying that. Hadn’t I just promised myself I’d try to stop provoking him? But Owen’s attention was on the aetherometer, and he didn’t respond.

  “Can you tell me what the dials mean?” said Owen.

  “No. Well. Not yet,” I said, watching the aetherometer. “Like I said, it’s telepathically linked to me, so it will tell me what the dials mean in context. It changes depending on the strength of the local magical auras. Give it a minute or…wait, here we go.”

  I scrutinized the dials, the knowledge of what they meant appearing in my head through the telepathic link. The aetherometer was picking up my magical aura, and it was also registering Owen’s. It detected a cluster of magical auras across the street. I wondered why, and then remembered Duke Tamirlas had offices in the building across the street. I was picking up some minor Elven nobles and their retainers. I didn’t feel anything at all from Doyle’s condo building.

  Except…

  “Okay,” I said. “Doyle’s condo was on the twenty-fifth floor, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a…” I frowned, trying to describe what I sensed. “There’s a weird magical echo on the twenty-fifth floor. Like a resonance.”

  “Echo of what?” said Owen.

  “A summoning spell, I think,” I said.

  “Well.” He stared at the smooth glass and steel sides of the condo building. “If you’re right, that narrows it down a bit.”

  “But it doesn’t look right,” I said. “The echo of a summoning spell is obvious. This is…” I frowned, and the answer came to me. “This is like the echo of a magical device.”

  Owen’s brows furrowed. “Like someone used an enspelled object to summon the wraithwolves?”

  “Reads like it.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” said Owen. “That’s the last thing the city needs. Someone running around with a magical relic capable of summoning wraithwolves.”

  “I want to do a walkthrough of the building,” I said, tapping the aetherometer’s crystal face. “This thing is better at close range. We might pick something up.”

  Owen nodded. “Every floor?”

  “Nah, every fifth floor ought to do it,” I said. “Then we’ll need to do a walkthrough of the Doyles’ condo. I want to see it for myself.”

  “So do I,” said Owen. “I just took over the case from Warren, and haven’t seen the condo yet.”

  “Warren?” I said, slipping the aetherometer back into my bag as Owen opened the door.

  “Lieutenant Kyle Warren,” said Owen as we got out of the SUV. “Star of the homicide division.”

  I started to make a joke about faking evidence, stopped myself.

  “He did all the preliminaries?” I said, thinking of the copious amount of notes in the case file.

  “Yeah,” said Owen. “Did a good job of it, too.” The condo’s doorman saw Owen’s Homeland Security uniform and let us in. He also helpfully provided a key that would let us into the basement and the hallways, but not the individual condos. The lobby beyond the front doors had a lot of polished marble and steel. I was reasonably sure that none of Ronald Doyle’s concrete had gone into the construction of this building.

  “All right,” I said, watching the dials on the aetherometer. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  It took about ten minutes. We started in the basement and then climbed up the stairs in five-story intervals. I walked the hallways, keeping an eye on the aetherometer. In the corridors of the office floors, we drew odd looks, but since I was walking with a Homeland Security colonel, no one gave us a hard time. I didn’t detect any new anomalous readings, but my fix on the odd echo on the twenty-fifth floor grew sharper. It did indeed look like the echo of a summoning spell, though unlike one I had ever encountered before.

  “I’m not picking up anything but that summoning echo,” I said. “Let’s head up to Doyle’s condo and take a look.”

  Owen nodded. “You know the rules for visiting a crime scene?”

  I repressed the urge to sigh. “Don’t touch anything,” I was wearing gloves, so that would be fine, “don’t move anything, don’t leave anything, and note it in the case file in UNICORN.”

  “Good,” said Owen as we headed for the stairs.

  “But it’s been three days,” I said. “Your lab people have already gotten everything they’re going to get from the scene.”

  He gave me a sidelong glance as he opened the stairwell door.

  “Told you I read your book,” I said.

  “That you did,” said Owen.

  “Question,” I said, noting the security camera in the stairwell. “You’ve got people reviewing the camera footage?”

  “Yeah, Warren did that on the first day,” said Owen as we started up. “I’ve got people reviewing, but it looks like the only people in and out of the building during the time of death were residents and a few pizza deliverymen. All the entrances into the building are monitored.”

  I said nothing as we climbed to the twenty-fifth floor. That reinforced the idea that Doyle had been playing with summoning spells and gotten himself killed. Then again, it was still too early to say.

  We reached the twenty-fifth floor and started down a carpeted hallway towards Doyle’s corner. I went around the corner and froze in surprise for a half-second.

  Another Homeland Security o
fficer stood before the door to the condo. He was somewhere in his thirties, and strikingly handsome – strong jaw, clear skin, well-built beneath the uniform. Owen Quell looked like an aging bar brawler. This guy looked like he ought to have been playing the lead in a TV drama about Homeland Security, the sort of show where our heroic investigator realizes that the Rebel conspiracy goes All The Way To The Top or something while, of course, having a different girl every week.

  He smiled, and I immediately didn’t like him.

  “Sir,” said the lieutenant. I slipped my aetherometer back into my bag. “I heard you have taken over the case.” His eyes flicked to me again.

  “Yeah,” said Owen. “Sorry about that, Warren. Orders came from way up.” That was true. “Didn’t mean to step on your case, but orders are orders.”

  The lieutenant, presumably named Warren, shrugged. Then I realized who he was. He was the Lieutenant Kyle Warren who had started investigating the case. He’d taken good, detailed notes and documented everything he had done thoroughly, so at least he was competent.

  “Can’t do anything, so no sense in being sore over it,” said Warren. “And I knew in the first hour that someone else was going to get the case.” His expression hardened. “The bodies…it was pretty clear something from the Shadowlands had done it. Not the sort of thing you forget.”

  “No, this is the kind of case that stays with you,” said Owen.

  Warren looked at me. “Who’s your new friend?”

  “I’m a consultant,” I said. I tapped the badge clipped to the lapel of my coat. “See? It says so right there.”

  Warren smiled. I think he meant it to be charming. He did look very handsome, but his sudden shift from solemnity to smiling was grating. “What’s your field of expertise?”

  “Printer toner,” I said. “You’d be surprised how often it turns up at crime scenes.” A smart remark, I know, but I was really trying to dial it back.

  “I see,” said Warren, nonplussed.

  Owen sighed. “This is Nadia MacCormac. She’s a consultant, and she’s going to help Special Investigations with the case.” I resisted the urge to grimace. I didn’t want Warren to know my name.