Under a Blood Moon: Death Witch, Supernatural Investigative Unit, page 12
I felt something on my arm and looked down to brush off a bug, but my arm was bare. I took a deep breath and walked backward from the crime scene. “Officer White?” I called out.
Artmann was gone, so she came over to me without hesitating. “What do you keep in your car? For emergency food, what have you got?”
“Glucose packets, cherry flavor, I keep a six pack under the seat.” She looked at my eyes, trying to tell if I was about to pass out. “How many do you need?”
“All of them,” I answered grimly. She sprinted to the car and returned with the tiny packets of artificial cherry goop. Squeezed from the silver tube, it looked a little too close to the splatter around the crime scene. I closed my eyes and gulped. Beggars can’t be choosers. I should have been carrying my own supplies.
I finished three packets and felt the sugar pulse through my system. I handed the other three back to her. I wasn’t sure if I’d need them, but they shouldn’t go too close to the scene. There was too much dripping red there already.
As I walked up, the sensation came back, but on my other arm now, like a piece of lint or something I should brush away. As I got closer, my leg joined in, itching enough that I had to fight not to scratch it. I waved to one of the technicians working the crime scene.
“All right to put my hand down?”
“You can’t make it any worse.” He looked at me as if I was crazy. Kneeling in the mud created by blood and dirt, I realized he was right. As my hand hovered over the earth, I heard a shout behind me. I whipped my head around, bringing my hand up to where my gun would have been, and the sound stopped. The gore soaked bricks and lawn beneath me was screaming. I took a deep breath and shoved my hand on to the ground.
It felt like I plunged into icy cold water. My vision swam. When it cleared, I saw the death as the victim had felt it. Night, the full moon filtered by the oak tree. She was shoved up against the wall, assaulted so brutally her body shattered around him. Him. The wolf. He craned his neck down to her face, his snout inches from her lips. She flinched backward as he bit her face. His look was pure animal, and his lust was pure hate. He tore her in half, dislocating her legs.
Her attacker stepped back, while his companion grabbed one leg, and a third wolf grabbed the other leg. As they pulled, intense pain ripped up her body, and the world began to get dark. But this wasn’t death, only unconsciousness. While the mind of the victim retreated to safety, I was still there. I watched from above as the two wolves ate her limbs. The third, the leader, put his muzzle into the bloody pulp of her chest and ate his way to her heart. I watched him bite down on it, blood still pumping out the veins when, finally, death came.
“Detective?” The voice called me back, gentle and young. “I think you need to eat more.”
It was Officer White. Her clear green eyes looked down at me, filled with concern. I sat up slowly, the muscles in my legs screaming from kneeling so long. She caught my clean hand and helped me to stand. Pins and needles set in along my muscles. I’d never gone so deeply into a death, never had it feel so real.
“The sergeant thinks you passed out, he made a nasty comment. I know better.” She grinned sheepishly and handed me a glucose pack. “You were out for a while. Your eyes are still gone.”
“There was only one death here.” I blinked hard. There was no way for me to turn the power off, or switch eyes go back to normal from their otherworldly state. I could only hope they wouldn’t cause too many problems for the people around me. All that shopping and I hadn’t bought sunglasses.
“Really, De-tect-ive Mors? Is that so?” Artmann had walked up behind me. “Because I’m missing half a soccer team here. Not to mention there’s splatter from about six feet high to four feet out. But if the high and mighty death witch says ‘one person’, I guess that must be so.”
“It is.” My eyes were reflected in his dark sunglasses, solid white, no pupils, no iris, just occasional flashes of color. He flinched but didn’t reply.
I called out to the other officers, tired of waiting for him to do his job. “Everybody fan out, into the woods, there’s at least one other crime scene like this one. We need to find it.”
I grabbed Officer White and headed to the woods. Artmann took one look at us and stormed off. I didn’t care enough to wonder where he was going. When we were far enough away, I got the details from White. Three men and two women from the intramural soccer team were missing. They came back to the dorm through the woods, probably thinking they’d be safe because there were so many of them. No one had worried about them until lunchtime. No one had seen the blood because the building wasn’t used much on the weekends.
I waited until we were inside the tree line and opened myself to the woods. I’d never be an earth witch—I couldn’t even keep houseplants alive—but I was hoping something would pop out at me. Nothing did. The first crime scene had screamed, from here there wasn’t even a whisper. I focused my concentration and pulled the power into the core of my being, gathered it, then threw it out. Beside me, White gasped as my power hit her. She was too alive for me, solid but uninteresting. My ability moved on, finding something off to our right.
“This way,” I opened my eyes and pointed. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure, I won’t answer if it bothers me.”
“What’s your name?” Danny had invited her to join the SIU once. Lieutenant French would take her in a second. As far as I knew, she hadn’t done anything about it. She’d handed me food and helped me, I didn’t think knowing her name was an invasion of privacy.
“Everyone calls me Glenda.” Her voice was flip.
“I didn’t ask what they called you.” I stopped walking, turned slightly, and started again. “I asked your name.”
“Jess,” she said shyly. “Well, Jessa, actually, because my Mom is British.”
“I’m Mallory.” I thought about it for a minute. “I have no idea why or what it means.”
“Consider yourself lucky. With generations of witches, everything means something. I was supposed to be psychic, hence the name.”
“But you’re not?”
“Not enough to be called ‘she sees.’” She shrugged. “Sometimes the pressure to be a witch in my family is a bit much.”
I nodded, thinking about Anna’s vanity license plate, a gift from her father that proclaimed her a witch. I couldn’t imagine that kind of pressure.
“Detective? Over there.”
I followed the line of her finger to a sandy spot off the trail. It was a tiny drop of blood, enough to make me believe she really did see. I followed the trail until I found another. The pattern opened up, drops became splashes. I threw my power out again, looking for the body, but there wasn’t one. The blood had just enough energy left to tell me there was one death here. It still wasn’t enough.
I had Jess call the forensic guys over. Ten minutes later, her radio squeaked to life. The scientists had gotten lost on their way to us and stumbled onto another crime scene. Vomiting noises came from the other side of the radio. They had finally found a body. In a sick way, I was grateful. A body meant something the lab could process for evidence.
I handed the scene off to Officer White and stomped through the woods in my cute strappy sandals in search of answers. The third scene was the worst of all, a macabre piece of art done by a lunatic working with blood and body parts. An arm hung from a branch, ripped away from its shoulder. A leg was half hidden by a bush, the exposed flesh slashed into ribbons by claws. There was blood everywhere; the killers must have been covered in it. There was a face with eyes still wearing contacts and the skull half-missing. I tried my best not to touch anything. I didn’t want to feel whatever had done this. It was bad enough feeling my skin tingle and jump at the death surrounding me.
We worked on the crime scenes for hours. I jumped from one to the other, answering questions and making decisions. I issued orders like I was in charge. It was twilight before I realized I was the one in charge. I felt stupidly out of place in my going shopping outfit and furious that Artmann hadn’t bothered to come into the woods. Just when I decided to storm out and drag him in, Detective Auster showed up. As we greeted each other, he held up his hand.
“Don’t tell me what he did. If you do, I’ll have to tell you what he said on the phone, and you don’t want to know.” I swallowed my questions and all of the nasty comments I was going to make. He watched me, waiting for me to lose control. When I didn’t, he went on. “Brief me on the crime scene and then head home. We can bring up Artmann’s bullshit to the lieutenant on Monday morning.”
I stopped to call Jakob to pick me up, then as gracefully as I could, I led Auster through the crime scenes. We finished the circuit of the three and headed back to the collection of squad cars. I could see a media circus brewing on the other side of the street. It was fully dark, but the cameras had lights on them. The news never needed to sleep. The killings at Peaceful Rest had made the headlines. A second set of killings would drive the city into paranoia. I turned back to Detective Auster with a final thought.
“I saw three wolves attacking the victim by the building. All three ate her, but one raped her first. I don’t have any idea why, but that scene is psychically hot. Be careful of it. The rest of them are pretty quiet.”
“One of the girls was a spirit witch. Not that anyone would know, she wasn’t strong and she kept it hidden. She could project though, so when she was happy everyone in the room was happy, when she was sad everyone started crying. Apparently, she’d started to get it under control some, but her parents were worried it was why she went missing.” Auster looked over at the media circus behind us, his eyes narrowed in judgement, before he looked back at me. “Maybe her abilities are why you can feel so much of her death. Maybe she was projecting when she died.”
I shivered at the memory of the ground screaming at me. She’d left a memory for me, her magic pressing it into the spot of her gruesome death. “I will be so happy to get away from this crime scene.”
“Gee thanks, Mors,” he shook his head.
I heard Jakob whisper my name. I turned, expecting to find him next to me but he was fifty feet away standing next to the parked car. I smiled insanely at his ability to whisper to me from so far away.
“I have no idea what there is to smile about.”
“Oh, sorry, my ride is here.” I did my best to turn the grin off and say good night quickly. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough. Artmann beat me to Jakob by ten paces.
“Come to check up on a friend’s work, or are you looking for a snack?” he started.
“A vampire wouldn’t do this.” Jakob’s voice was cold, controlled fury.
“No, I guess your kind don’t waste that much food.”
“Are you attempting to provoke me?” Jakob tensed, and I wondered if Artmann was too stupid to see it.
“I wouldn’t stand a chance, would I? You sick bastards can rip people open and all the rest of us can do is pray. Godless freaks.” Artmann walked away, muttering under his breath.
Jakob could hear him, but I didn’t ask him what Artmann was saying. I grabbed him and kissed him, trying to chase the afternoon away. He watched Artmann over my shoulder.
“I do not like that man.”
“Neither do I,” I agreed. “Can we drive very, very fast with the top down, then eat something incredibly bad for us?”
“Of course.” He smiled and opened the car door.
11
Twenty minutes later, we were on a back highway with the wind pulling the thoughts of the crime scene out of me. I had no idea where we were going. Jakob took a rural highway that didn’t have street lights. Somehow he found a part in the trees and turned on to a dirt driveway. We pulled up to a shack made of rough timber with a tarpaper roof. The smell of hot oil and smoky barbecue greeted me when I got out of the car, then went up a notch when we went inside.
“Lord, Jakob, I haven’t seen you in an age! How’s my baby, Ronald?” The woman behind the counter was large, at least three hundred pounds, but all in proportion—a giant bronze mother goddess statue brought to life. She smiled at him like a long-lost friend.
“Delighted over his son’s first birthday,” he answered with a smile almost as wide.
“Oh hush, you’re making me feel old. Who’s this?” She turned the smile on me without taking the wattage down a notch. It warmed me like a sun.
“This is Mallory,” he said proudly. I got the feeling I had been introduced to someone important.
“I’m Momma.” Her grin didn’t ever seem to stop. “And what will you have, Mallory?”
I looked around but didn’t see a menu, she laughed at my confusion. Jakob didn’t laugh, but I could see it dancing in his eyes. It seemed the lack of a menu was an old joke.
“You have three options. Number one is chicken, number two is pork, and number three is ribs. What’ll you have?”
“A number one.”
“Number one!” She echoed me in a shout back to the kitchen. “Now you go sit outside. Jakob’ll show you the way.” She made a shooing motion with her hands.
A half dozen wooden picnic tables and benches were arranged underneath a wooden roof supported by wide round poles, each one coated with graffiti. Every table had a small container of condiments, including homemade barbecue sauce. It came in two flavors, sweet or spicy. I wondered aloud what the people who liked sweet and spicy did.
“I put a little bit of both together and mix it with a French fry,” a clear young voice answered, I looked behind me to find Emma, Danny’s youngest, looking as serious as only a five-year-old can. “And what are you doing at my restaurant?”
“I’m about to have dinner,” I gulped. I looked around her and saw her mother, Katie, waving in the doorway.
“What makes you think this is your restaurant, little one? I think it was mine first,” Jakob answered. I worried about being caught between a kid and a vampire. The possibility for temper tantrums was too high.
“It has my name on it!” Emma pointed to one of the wide round beams. “And I come here every time I have a dance competition.” Her evidence was compelling, but Jakob had her beat.
“Look above that, at the top.” He pointed high enough on the beam that Emma had to stand on the bench to see it. There was a very large carving of the name ‘Ronald’, underneath it a smaller ‘JM’. I suppressed a laugh.
“I’m JM,” Jakob said.
“Who’s Ronald?” Emma demanded.
“My son. When he wrote that, he was a little boy, and I had only been his father for a year.”
His explanation was sweet, but Emma rejected it. “How did that happen?”
“His father died in the war, and his mother had left him. His grandmother was a friend of mine. When she died, I adopted him.”
“When was that?”
“1978.”
Emma pondered the legitimacy of his claim for a moment, then looked slyly at him. “I think we should share Momma’s.”
“Fair enough,” Jakob agreed with a laugh.
Katie came over and wanted to know what was fair. Emma told her the whole story. By the time Danny came out, she was almost done, and the story had to be told a third time. Someone at the back door bellowed “Mallory” and “Miss Emma” at the same time, and we all got up to grab red plastic trays. Emma was distracted enough by the mixing of the sauce that I got a chance to introduce Jakob.
“We’ve talked on the phone, remember, Mors?” Danny said. I turned bright pink, remembering how Danny had called Jakob when I was hurt on the job. Katie chided him for teasing me, then calmly changed the subject. The way she handled him amazed me.
“How’d you discover Momma’s, Jakob?” she asked.
“When my son was younger, he was obsessed with all things historical. Momma’s was one of a thousand important places I was dragged to.” He smiled at the memory. “It was the only one good enough to come back to.”
“How old is your son now?” Emma put in.
“Thirty-six.”
“Wow.” Her eyes got big. “Then you must be really old.”
“Ancient,” he answered. His serious tone didn’t save the rest of the adults at the table from cracking up.
Emma provided the comedy for most of dinner. I was happy to let Jakob be her straight man while I devoured the juicy chicken, coating it with the dark brown sweet sauce. The French fries were hand cut. I shocked Emma by eating them with ketchup instead of barbecue sauce. She began a long story about her dance competition. Katie smiled while her daughter talked. She was small and round with wonderful coppery red hair. It was a shame all their daughters had Danny’s dark locks.
“Where are the other two hellions tonight?” I asked Katie.
“Nora is at a friend’s and Maeve is with my folks. We didn’t know how Emma would do, and we didn’t want to miss anything.”
Emma sighed and rolled her eyes. “She means we didn’t want to have to miss the awards ceremony. We had to last time, because Nora had a party to go to.” The much-wronged sister waited for expression of sympathy. Getting none, she went on. “This time I got my award. I had to leave it in the car, though, because it was too big to carry inside.” The last came with an evil glance at Danny.
“And because we practice humility and grace when we win, right?” Katie instructed. Emma developed a rapid interest in her dwindling dinner. Danny ruffled her hair and pulled her onto his lap.
“What’d you do with your day, Mal? Any trophies?” he asked.
“I,” I hesitated. He looked like such a dad holding her with her, step-dancing curls half covering his face. I hated to spoil it. “I got called in.”
Danny looked at me, asking the question I hadn’t wanted to answer. I glanced at Emma. “Like the case from Friday morning.”
Katie turned to Emma. “Come on, Em, let’s go see what Momma has for dessert today.” Emma climbed off Danny’s lap. The two of them walked off, hand in hand, Emma completely oblivious to what we were about to discuss. I was slightly jealous.
