“This can’t be your first major case. It’s too close to you and to your family. I know you were hoping.”
“No.”I might have to kill someone on my land.“I don’t need to be lead on this case. I need to take care of me and mine.”
I stepped from the dirt. I wiped my feet on the towel he handed me and put on my socks and shoes. He held the door for me and followed me down the stairs. It was nearly nine p.m. when we began the end-of-shift debrief in the conference room, and Yummy wasn’t present.
JoJo was at comms. Tandy, being trained as an IT peep, was with her, and they were going through the shift-change sign-over protocols. They were a thing. JoJo glanced up at me for a moment, checking out my throat before returning her attention to the screens, pulling on the big gold hoops in her ears. She wore a single pair today that complemented the small braids with gold-ribbon weavings pulled tight in a bun on the top of her head. She was dressed in yoga pants and a tunic in the comfort of the conference room, the only room in HQ big enough to house the growing tech in our expanding regional headquarters.
A tinytingsounded and Jo returned her attention to a small screen and frowned. She flipped a switch and said into a mic, “If you try to get into the security system again, I’ll send FireWind to crush your tablet.”
Yummy laughed, an unaccustomed sound over the speakers. “Ming’s orders. Attempted and finished.”
“Your skills suck.”
I found the screen showing video of her. Yummy was sitting in an empty office, playing on her tablet, caught on the camera. She looked perfectly innocent until she looked at the camera and said, “Do they?” It sounded like a challenge.
Jo’s eyes narrowed and she started tapping keyboards, probably starting diagnostics.
Margot, the team’s truth-reader and a black wereleopard, entered and sat beside me. The probationary special agent was pulling a late-night shift, and for her this would be a start-of-shift briefing. She seemed quiet, though not peaceful, her dark skin catching highlights. She had supershort hair, nearly shaved, and the most perfectly shaped head I’d ever seen. She had also been an experienced field agent with another law enforcement agency before she was accidentally tainted with Rick’s blood ina shootout. She had willingly transferred to PsyLED, an agency that allowed were-creatures to serve, and she—being a probie only by transfer, not by training and expertise—had way more experience than I did. She intimidated me.
She interlaced her fingers on the table and her perfect skin and manicured nails made me curl my own fingers under, hiding my brown rootlike nails in my lap. Beneath the table, I pulled an errant leaf off my thumbnail and pocketed it. My leaves tended to grow when I was on soil from my land, and I hadn’t groomed myself after the time on the roof.
FireWind took his chair at the head of the table, Rick to his side, both facing the big screens over the windows, which were blacked out by mesh shades. Both men seemed amused at the tech contest between the vampire and the human IT person. I wasn’t. Yummy was devious. Part of me liked that about her; part of me distrusted it.
“Dyson,” FireWind said. “You are off shift.”
“Yeah. I am.” The unit’s empath patted Jo’s shoulder. “Don’t let the blood-sucker get into your head.”
Jo snorted. “As if she could.”
When Tandy left, it was just the five of us: Rick, Ayatas, Jo, Margot, and me.
JoJo ordered Clementine to record and transcribe the meeting. Clementine was the software that saved us from having to type meeting reports, but it was confined to HQ; reports entered in the field still had to be typed in, though JoJo was experimenting with transcribing encrypted cell phone recordings and voice mails, and I was hopeful she could use it to transcribe the audio from my meeting with wackadoodle Ming.
Our tech guru gave the time and date and the names of all present, plus Ming’s address, and turned the meeting over to FireWind. The boss summarized the events in Ming’s clan home and the fight afterward. I turned over the info from my cell, and each of us told our part of the tarot reading and the skirmish.
FireWind said, “We have a preliminary on the DB from Ming’s. Prelim cause of death is exsanguination, but there are no overt signs of vampire fangs at any of the usual locations.”
He meant neck, groin, wrist, and elbow. But a careful vampire could hide signs of willing and even forced feeding.And…there were other places a vampire could drink from, if the torture had been sexual in nature.
“Signs of torture have sent the ME back to textbooks for comparison data. External examination reveals a white male, age fifteen to twenty-two. Well-fed, no signs of recent weight loss, no signs of being on the streets—however, no signs of dental work ever. Worked with his hands. New tattoo of a bird in flight, possibly a crow. Not professionally done. Drug screen was negative for common classifications of street drugs. Detailed drug screen has been sent to a reference lab. Five-ten, one fifty-seven, muscular build. Patchy facial hair, blondish, blue eyes. Hair worn long in a ponytail. Postmortem will begin at eight a.m.”
“Do we have any indication that Ming or her people killed the man?” Jo asked.
“No,” FireWind said. “There was very little trace on the body. It had been washed liberally with bleach.”
When we were done, JoJo checked her screen. “It’s early and Alex Younger is a night owl. Suggest someone place a call for information.”
“Would the Dark Queen’s researcher and tech guy tellusanything?” Aya asked.
The boss-boss was her true brother, but the relationship was riddled with strife. And this was business, not personal, so I understood the question.
“Alex and I made nice-nice when we were at the coronation,” Rick said. He shrugged slightly, his white hair resting on his black-clad shoulders, the T-shirt stretched over his too-lean body. “We didn’t arrest anyone. Didn’t call anyone fanghead or suckhead. I have Alex Younger’s personal number.” He pulled his cell and placed a call.
Rick looked confident. But Rick had bled on my land. Through that bond, I knew his latent uncertainty. He and Jane Yellowrock, the Dark Queen, had been a thing. Then he had betrayed her.
FireWind said, “Clementine. Halt transcription.”
I had read my bosses’ report from the coronation. The vamps had been acting different at the big soiree following the crowning of the vampire emperor of Europe, but with so much blood and alcohol flowing, and considering the importance of theevent to the future survival of the vampires, no one had been surprised at out-of-character behavior. Not at first. Then scuttlebutt said the vampires had gotten back their souls, and the upheaval from that had only just begun.
