Lover Unveiled, page 25
And that was when a stand of guards came unto the archway. They were a full flank’s worth, uniformed in the ribbon colors of Zxysis’s bloodline, armed with weapons of sword and gun.
As Sahvage placed his body between his charge and his now-sworn enemy, he took up the torch once more as the only defense he had outside of his physical form. Bracing himself, he orientated his position unto the exits, which were the stairs he had come up and the—
The guards stayed where they were, weapons poised, bodies prepared for attack, yet the violence remaining on the brink rather than called unto realization.
Fear marked their eyes.
As none moved, a strange sense of foreboding had Sahvage looking back at his cousin. She was staring at the guards with a concentration that seemed like something he could reach out and feel, like a rope or a set of chains such as those that fell from her wrists.
“I told your lord to leave me,” she said unto the males. “And he did not listen. I shall not give you such a choice of retreat.”
All at once, the scabbards and flint rifles lowered and then dropped unto the stone with a clattering. And then came the trembling. Those male bodies, so stout and strong in their protective leathers, began to shake. Every one of them. And then hands reached for throats, reached for temples, reached for chests. Panic flared eyes even wider—
Moans echoed about the great hall as mouths stretched to grab at air, and cheeks became florid from straining, and sweat coursed down faces and dripped upon chest coverings—
The head of the guard on the farthest right exploded first, a pumpkin kicked, fragments of skull and fluffy white pieces of brain flying off in a spray of bright red blood.
As the headless body flopped to the floor, landing upon the weapons once held by vital, fighting hands, the others screamed and flailed, but they were trees a-rooted, going nowhere. One by one, they followed the fate of the first, the bloody chaos overwhelming and inexplicable, for there were no hands upon them, no bludgeoning tools o’er their shoulders or afore their faces, no contact brought to bear upon them.
And yet it was real, for their airborne blood speckled Sahvage’s black robing, and the scent of their raw, meaty flesh was within his nose.
Turning around to Rahvyn, he took a step back from the female he’d thought he knew as he knew his own reflection.
“Who art thou,” he said roughly.
• • •
With a jerk, Sahvage came back to the present—and discovered that he had walked up close to the couch and was staring at the burst of blood and brains on the wall behind where Dave was sprawled in his perma-repose. Even now, even after all these years, and all the person-to-person fighting Sahvage had done . . . he had never gotten over what he had seen that night when Rahvyn had come ’round from a stupor and literally blown the heads off a stand of guards.
“Sleep well, asshole,” Sahvage muttered as he hitched the duffle bag full of guns up on his shoulder and hit the exit.
Out by the remaining truck, he was tempted to take it as well, but not for long. He’d never needed a car, and like he could fence the damn thing without someone tracking him back to this now-murder scene? Whatever. Best to keep things clean, even though he wasn’t going to be in Caldwell for much longer.
Although now? Given his persistent premonition of dying, he had a feeling he was leaving feetfirst. Death was going to be a relief, and if he could steer Mae away from making a mistake with that old female’s inevitable fate? Well, then he’d have done one thing right in this world.
Just before he dematerialized back to the cottage, he looked to the sky and thought of Rahvyn. It had been a while since he’d done that. A couple of decades.
And he felt no better now than he had before. She was his ultimate failure.
Shaking his head, he ghosted out. With any luck, he wouldn’t have to think of her ever again soon. He’d be in that black void that came after your last heartbeat, no more worries, no more cares, no more anything.
Although he had learned the hard way that magic existed in the world, he no longer believed in the Fade. Death was a full stop.
Nothing but lights-out.
Thank fuck.
No, no, no, no . . .
As Erika elbowed her way through a moving forest of half-dressed, fully drunken clubgoers, she was pissed off and on edge. Ahead of her, the bouncer who was leading the way parted most of the sea, but there were stragglers who got in her way—and she had to resist shoving them off. And then there were the lasers. And the buzzy music. It was like being in a hurricane, everything blasting her in the face, too much between her and where she needed to be.
Fortunately, the trek didn’t last forever. Even if it felt like a year and a half.
In the far corner of the club, outside a hallway that was the only thing properly lit anywhere, two plainclothes officers were arguing with a guy who had slicked his hair back with what had to be shellac and was wearing black jeans that had been surgically mounted onto his skinny legs. A minor kibitzing circle of partiers were playing peanut gallery, but most of the clientele were doing their thing at the bar, on the dance floor.
“. . . you can’t make me,” Mr. Smooth was saying to the officer. “You can’t tell me I have to shut down—”
Erika pushed past the argument and went to where a uni was standing outside the women’s bathroom.
“Ma’am,” he said as he opened the door for her. Then he flushed. “Sorry—I mean, Detective.”
Whatever, she had other things to worry about.
Jesus. The smell of the fresh blood was so thick that it overrode the vape stain in the air, and as she slipped on a pair of booties, the copper tang blooming in the back of her throat made her think about throwing up.
Stepping into the women’s facilities, she snapped on her nitrile gloves and looked around. Everything was either stainless steel or tile and she was willing to bet that the place got hosed down with a bleach wash at the end of every night. There weren’t even proper mirrors, but panels of polished metal, like the bathroom was in a public park. Blowers, not paper towels. No trash cans, which explained the condom wrappers, wads of tissue, and questionable flecks and specks all over the floor.
The stalls were on the right, four of them. On the other side of things, two sinks and more than enough counter space to have sex on.
The pool of blood was coming out from under where the last toilet was.
As she approached the stainless steel door, she watched from a distance as her hand went forward and pushed the panel wide—
“Shit,” she breathed.
Another heterosexual couple: The man was seated on the toilet with his pants around his knees, his shirtless torso sprawling back into the corner created by the tiled wall. The woman was straddling him face-to-face, short skirt up around her hips, the line of a thong that had no doubt been pushed aside barely visible between her buttocks area. Her remains were listing to the opposite side, her forehead on the partition that separated the stall from its next-door neighbor.
The blood loss for both was extensive, the red wash traveling down all sides of the toilet base, the pools joining and rivering toward the drain out in the center of the bathroom’s floor.
In the center of the man’s chest . . . a ragged wound that flashed white ribs in the midst of the red muscle and the now-graying skin.
Given the blood puddle under the woman’s torso? She’d been done like that, too.
Erika shook her head as she turned away and strode back out into the hallway. Marching up to the club’s manager and the plainclothes cops, she looked at Mr. Smooth.
“Close the music down right now, and no one leaves the premises.”
The guy threw his hands up. “We have another set of bathrooms! We’ll block this off—”
“This whole club is now a crime scene. You’re no longer in charge.”
He pointed over her shoulder. “There’s a fire exit right down there. If you need to take the bodies out, you can just—”
“Two people were murdered in that bathroom,” she snapped. “So the whole club and everyone in it has to be processed. Turn the lights on, and let us get to work.”
“Wait, you’re taking the staff ’s names?”
“I’m taking everyone’s name.”
Mr. Smooth crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “You are going to put us out of business, lady—”
“I also need your security feeds—inside and out. And don’t tell me you don’t have them.”
“I’m not giving you shit!”
Erika got up in the guy’s face and lowered her voice. “Two people just died in your business or your boss’s business, whichever this is. Two human beings. And someone in here did it. So you’re no longer calling the shots. We can do this nicely, or we can put you in handcuffs and you can enjoy paying a lawyer to defend you against the obstruction of justice charge that’s heading your way.”
Mr. Smooth deflated faster than she anticipated. “He’s going to fire me. I’m going to get fucking fired for this.”
“I can’t help you with that, but you can help us. By doing the right thing, right now.”
There was a pause, and then the guy glanced over his shoulder. “Tibby, shut it down.”
Erika turned around—and ran right into Deiondre Delorean’s big chest.
“Nicely handled, Detective,” the special agent murmured.
“Those charm school lessons haven’t completely worn off.”
The lights came on all at once, some kind of breaker thrown, and as the music was cut off as well, it was as if the illumination had chased the beats away. Naturally, the response from the crowd was immediate and drunkenly disgruntled.
Disdrunkled, Erika thought absently.
Corralling this bunch of intoxicated potential witnesses into any semblance of order was going to be fun, and like he read her mind, Delorean got on the phone to call in more agents. With the crime scene unit already dialed, Erika went back into the bathroom—and stared at the closed door of the stall. The congealing blood on the tile. The smudge of the man’s heel edge as he’d swept his leg from side to side, likely from pain, fear.
She also stared at everything that was not there.
No bloody footsteps on the flooring outside the stall. Or on the way to the exit.
No blood drops anywhere except inside the stall.
Erika pushed the metal panel open again. Plenty of blood underneath the bodies, but except for some flailing of the victims’ hands, nothing on the walls.
How in the hell did someone take out two hearts from two people in a public place and then leave without a trail or anybody noticing?
Maybe the club’s patrons could answer some of that, but she worried she was going to get more dead ends than leads.
As her phone went off, she answered it on a reflex, snapping the thing out of her jacket pocket to her ear. “Saunders—”
“Check your email.”
She rolled her eyes. “You could have just put your head in here, Delorean.”
“I’m on my way out of the club. HQ’s called me in, but I’ve got another four agents coming in to back you up. Check your email.”
The connection got cut, and she muttered as she called up her work account. She was still talking to herself as she opened what the special agent had sent. Talk about short and sweet. The email had an attachment . . . a video file . . . and Delorean had typed out three words without punctuation: “taken last night.”
Triggering the footage, she—
Dim lighting. Crowd of noisy people in a circle. Someone in the center—
Ralph DeMellio. Shirtless.
The camera was bouncing all around, like the cell phone’s owner was being knocked into, but she knew what Ralph was doing: Underground fight club. Erika was well aware they went down in town, and for the last couple of months, she’d been expecting to get called into the aftermath of one when someone died from a bare-knuckle punch—
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
The camera panned around to Ralph’s opponent, and Erika recoiled as she got a look at the guy. The muscularity of the man’s chest was that of a professional athlete, and the tattoo that covered every inch of the skin was gang-member-worthy, the black field setting off the bony hand of a skeleton reaching forward.
“Jesus, Ralph, what were you thinking,” she muttered.
DeMellio had clearly been a hobbyist fighter, based on his build and what she’d learned after speaking with his parents. But this opponent? She didn’t need his rap sheet to know he was a killer: He was staring forward with the cold, dead eyes of a predator who had no conscience.
For a split second, Erika felt a chill go through her. Then her professional grit came back online and she watched what happened as the fight started, the pair circling each other, Ralph’s hands up while his opponent’s arms hung in a relaxed way.
When the action finally got underway—Ralph doing an approach with fists that looked like a child’s in comparison to what he was going to try to hit—she put herself in his shoes, heart in her throat, knowing what was coming next and not just with whatever happened in this bare knuckle contest. These were among the last couple of hours of the kid’s life, and she couldn’t help but think of what it had been like to sit across from his mother and father and break the terrible news of his death to two perfectly nice people.
The father had cried more than the mom had.
Erika, meanwhile, had lost it later, when she’d been home alone—
It happened so fast that a replay was necessary: The opponent dominated Ralph quickly, but something caused the man to look up into the crowd—and Ralph outed a knife and sliced that thick throat clean through.
The file ended abruptly with a wild jostling, like whoever was filming had taken off in a run along with the rest of the audience. Lot of concrete underfoot. Then a jammed-up stairwell.
It could be a lot of places downtown, she thought. But maybe a parking garage? Or the arena?
Erika played the footage again and turned up the volume on her speaker. On the second trip through, she noted that Ralph was wearing the same jeans he’d been killed in; she recognized the designer-made rips and frays. And as for the girl he’d been found beside? It was difficult to see much in the crowd, but it wasn’t going to be hard to freeze-frame images and double-check for her presence.
They needed to know more about the source for this footage.
As the moment came for the opponent to look up and go still, Erika stopped the play and closed in on that harsh, cold face. Then she did the same just as the knife finished its arc.
Hard to believe that the man lived through that, and under normal circumstances, she might think that Ralph’s death was caused by one of the guy’s crew, as payback. But not with the track record of so many others with their lovers and no hearts in their chest.
But what happened to the opponent? she wondered.
There had to be a body associated with that arterial bleed, and it was going to show up, sooner or later.
Just another part of the mystery.
The following evening, after the sun had sunk below the horizon, the outside lights came on around Nate’s neighborhood, but not all of the humans were staying home. Friday night. Time for dinner and a movie. Topgolf. Comedy clubs, the theater, a poetry slam.
Nate was leaving, too. The moment First Meal was over.
He had his excuse to go to Luchas House all thought out: He was going to call the farmhouse and tell them that he was looking for a jacket that he might have left in the garage, and could he come take a look.
As he replayed his casual, no-big-deal request in his head—for like, the hundredth time—he was vaguely aware that his parents weren’t talking. Murhder and Sarah were in their regular spots at the table, and the eggs and bacon, bagels and fruit, were standard issue for this meal, but neither of them were saying a thing.
Whatever. Nate had to get his segue right. After he hit whoever answered the Luchas House’s landline with the jacket story, he needed to be prepared to walk into the farmhouse, check the garage for what he knew was not there—and casually bring up Elyn. Where she might be. Whether she was expected to turn up . . . anywhere. He was going to have to keep his tone light and his eyeballs neutral. Nothing nervous or shady.
Even though his true intent was not casual. In the slightest.
He’d gotten no phone calls during the day.
No, that wasn’t true. Shuli had called. Twice. And there had been work texts, assigning him to a job starting on Monday. Which meant he had the night and the weekend off with nothing to do but wait, and wonder, and jump every time Shuli called to ask him to go out.
What the hell was he going to do—
“Fine, I was the one who asked Shuli to watch over you.”
Nate froze in mid-chew as Murhder did the same with a forkful of scrambled egg on the way to his mouth.
“What?”
“What?”
As they both spoke at the same time, Sarah shoved her plate away and crossed her arms over her lab coat. Her honey-colored eyes were so upset as she smoothed her shoulder-length hair back.
“I just . . . I’m sorry, Nate. You were starting your first job. You were going out into the dangerous world. I was scared. I did the wrong thing, fine, but I won’t apologize for trying to keep you safe. You have had . . . well, trauma, you know? And I wasn’t sure how to help you, and sometimes parents do dumb stuff. But I certainly never intended for a gun to be involved.”
At that point, she burst into tears, grabbing a napkin and pressing it into her eyes. With sniffles rising up and her shoulders shaking, Nate looked to Murhder in a panic—but the Brother was already on it, scraping back his chair and going over to kneel by his shellan.
“I’m fine.” She batted at her mate. “I just hate that you two aren’t speaking! I can’t stand being in the same house with all this tension, and it’s my fault and, oh, shit, can I have your napkin, too.”
Nate slowly sat back as two of the syllables she spoke sank in. Same. House.
