Chapter 3
It wasn’t a bad area of the city, although it used to be better before the pandemics and subsequent wars. And it had seen an increase in drug trafficking in recent years. Probably because a lot of college students and single young professionals lived in the area. It was also fairly near the location where the Rift had opened a few years before. That always messed up a neighborhood.
I parked and flashed my badge at a uniformed cop, hoping he would keep my car from being broken into. As soon as I walked into the alley, I knew why Tompkins asked for Arcane. Blood was splashed everywhere, and the corpse barely resembled anything human. He—I assumed it was a man due to the short hair—had been shredded.
“It’s bad,” Tompkins said as he came to meet me. “The girl is over there, on the other side of the dumpster.” George Tompkins, with his craggy face, hair graying at the temples, and a long overcoat covering a cheap brown suit, looked like a cop, and he was a good one. He’d been working Homicide for more than ten years.
“Well, obviously not a vampire,” I said. “George, this is Mychal Novak, my new partner.”
Tompkins led me farther into the alley and stopped, pointing at a footprint in the blood. The print wasn’t close to human. I judged it at about size thirty-three, with six clawed toes, and it looked as though the thing that left it was hairy.
The girl had long blonde hair, and other than having been disemboweled and having her face bitten off, she hadn’t suffered as much damage as the man.
“Any idea why they were here in the alley?” I asked.
With a gesture to his right, Tompkins said, “We found drug works.”
I took a few steps in that direction and saw a syringe, a spoon, a lighter, and a small baggie with white powder lying on the ground next to the dumpster.
“I wonder if whatever ate them got high on the dope,” I said.
“Doesn’t look like they had a chance to shoot up,” Tompkins said. “I think whatever did this was back here waiting for them.”
“Ever seen something like this?” I asked.
“Dunno. Demon? Werewolf? Some kind of monster, but no, nothing quite like this. Doesn’t look like it was hungry.”
At that point, I noticed that Novak was looking a little green.
“Out! Go on, get out!” I pointed to the street where we’d parked and gave him a shove. “If you puke and contaminate the scene, I’ll kick your ass!”
He went, stumbling a little.
“New to major crimes?” Tompkins asked.
“Yeah. Came over from narcotics.”
“Novak? One of the Novaks?”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head. “No good deed goes unpunished. You know the brass has it in for you.” Luckily, the cops on the street respected me because they knew I took care of business.
I wandered around, checking the walls of the buildings, and especially the dead end. One way into the alley, one way out. I finally found blood stains that indicated where the killer climbed out. Holes in the brick wall that looked like claw marks and the distance between the holes weren’t encouraging. The being had to be at least six to eight feet long or tall, with claws on all four extremities. And it climbed a sheer brick wall, so not a werewolf. But demon didn’t make sense either. The damage to the victims didn’t match what I was used to seeing from the run-of-the-mill common demon. And it hadn’t fed.
The rest of the alley didn’t reveal anything interesting, so I talked to Tompkins until Novak came back. He still looked pale and shaky, but more like a man who had just puked than a man getting ready to.
“What’s your affinity?” I asked him.
“Aeromancy.”
“Really? Maybe Whittaker did me a solid after all. Come.”
I led him over to the wall where I suspected our monster had absconded. “I think that’s where our murderer escaped,” I said, pointing upward. “Let’s go.”
He looked at me like I had lost my mind.
“What?” I couldn’t figure out why he was hesitating. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“You want to follow that thing?”
I took a deep breath. “That’s what we do. Now, either you take me up to the top of that building, or we call DC Whittaker and have him send me another partner. Your choice, Mr. Novak.”
He looked like he didn’t know whether to cry or get angry, then he grabbed me by the upper arms, and we rose into the air. The problem was, my back was to the wall, and I wanted to face it so I could inspect it for further evidence. My new partner was going to be a chore to break in.
We passed the roof and stopped, hanging there like a couple of stationary targets. Cops, even if not in uniform, weren’t the most popular people in most parts of town.
“Can you see anything?” I asked in my sweetest voice. I knew the answer as we were face-to-face, staring at each other.
“Uh, no.”
“Then perhaps you could set us down on the roof before someone decides to use us as target practice.”
“Huh?”
“Put me down on the roof. Gently.”
We started to drop.
“Not there! Over to the left.” He had started to land right on top of the killer’s trail. Didn’t the boy understand anything about preserving evidence?
As soon as my feet hit the roof, I shook out of his grasp. “We need to have a long talk about proper procedure,” I muttered, turning to look at the deep scars in the bricks on the edge of the roof where our prey had pulled himself over the top.
We followed its trail, the amount of blood diminishing by the step, across the roof and onto that of the next building. It sort of tipped me off that none of the blood belonged to my quarry. I reached the edge and looked over, down five stories to the busy street below. No way it had gone that way unless it had wings. After a quick look around, I took off to my left, crossing several more roofs until I looked down on another alley three stories below.
Our monster was purple. It also had more muscles than a professional wrestler.
“Okay,” I said, “hold me from behind this time. You can do an air shield, right?”
“Yes.”
“I think it would be a good idea to have one in front of us before we touch down.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist and stepped off the roof, holding me to his chest. A small part of my mind noticed that it was a very nice chest, and that his arms were well-developed. Too bad he hadn’t spent as much time exercising his mind.
The creature didn’t notice us at first, but we drew its attention when we were about ten feet from the ground. It scrambled out of the dumpster it had been rummaging through and stood facing us when we landed. As soon as Mychal loosened his grip on me, I drew my pistol.
“Hold it right there! Metropolitan Police. Lie down on your face with your hands above your head.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shocked expression on Novak’s face. I think he expected me to blast the creature on sight, but one must observe the niceties. It might be someone’s pet, or someone’s brother. Besides, a cop never knew when a media drone might be recording from overhead.
“What for?” The creature’s mouth wasn’t really shaped for human speech, but its English was understandable. Its head was shaped a bit like a horse’s, and its mouth was filled with alligator teeth. At least seven feet tall, bipedal, and covered with long, silky fur, it had six fingers on its hands and six toes on its ape-like feet. From that close, and since it wore no clothes, it was obviously male. And purple. Did I mention purple?
“I’m arresting you on suspicion of murdering two humans this morning.”
“They interrupted my meal.” As if that was reason enough for murder. “I was just protecting my food.”
I prayed he hadn’t been eating another victim. Having to go through his belly to identify a person wasn’t my idea of a good time.
“What food?”
“The restaurant there puts out a box lunch for me every day. Tasty stuff.”
I envisioned the alley again and almost heaved. His idea of gourmet dining was the rotting food a pizza joint tossed into the dumpster.
“That’s not an excuse for murder. Now, lie down and give yourself up.”
He snarled and started toward me. I pulled the trigger, and the magikally enhanced explosive-incendiary round blew a hole in his chest the size of my fist. It rocked him but didn’t stop him. I heard Novak’s gun go off three times before I pulled the trigger again. My second round blew a large hole in the beast’s abdomen, and he stopped. He stood there swaying, then he snarled again, and his knees bent as he prepared to leap at me. My third bullet caught him between the eyes, and he fell in a heap.
“Call for forensics and have dispatch tell Tompkins that we got his murderer,” I said, holstering my sidearm and walking over to the monster crumpled on the ground. When I got closer, I found that it stunk like garbage, proving once again that we are what we eat.
I leaned closer. Novak was a pretty good shot. I could see where all three of his bullets had hit the creature in the chest, not that they had hurt it any.
Novak hung up his phone but didn’t seem to be inclined to inspect our kill any closer. I walked back to him.
“Let me see your gun.”
He handed it over. “Is this department issue?” I asked. It was a standard, unmodified nine-millimeter automatic with a twelve-cartridge magazine.
“Yes. It’s what I carried with narcotics.”
That didn’t make any sense to me at all. “I thought you were with narco in the Arcane Division.”
“That’s right.”
I was stunned. “What kind of cases did you work?”
“Drug trafficking. You know, people selling magikally enhanced drugs in schools and colleges. I helped break up that ring out in Howard County.”
Understanding dawned. He had worked upper-class cases. Humans dealing drugs to humans. Mages and witches enhancing drugs and peddling them to rich people’s kids. Soccer moms sharing magikal highs at the country club. That was a long way from the streets where I worked narcotics, and very different drugs. Not to mention very different drug dealers and mules.
“When we get back to the office, we’re going to trade this popgun in for something with some stopping power,” I said. “Carrying this will just get you killed.”
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