Chapter 4
4
I was more familiar with the police station than I cared to be. Mind you, the cells had been spruced up since the last time I’d been locked up for a murder I hadn’t committed. The ghosts were the same this time too, with the exception of Gran, who was a new addition.
“This is terrible, Bree! How are we going to get you out of here? You didn’t do it, but you were right, your fingerprints were all over the house and you’re covered in blood!”
The other three ghosts didn’t interact with me this time. The old woman ghost who’d been the chattiest with me on my previous visit to the cells stayed in her corner, far away from Gran. Or maybe far away from me, I wasn’t sure which. I found myself staring at the wall my friends had destroyed when they’d broken me out of this very cell not that long ago. The police had rebuilt it, only this time there was no window looking out. No potential for escape.
“Feels like a thousand years ago that I was last here.” I sat down on one of the benches bolted to the floor. “Gran, do stop pacing.”
“I can’t! This is terrible! Why is no one coming to bail you out? You get a call, don’t you?” She tossed her hands in the air and swung around to face the door, her back to me. “Where is everyone?”
Everyone, as in where was Eammon, or Sarge, or Eric? But I knew why—I’d not had my phone call yet. Hard to come in to rescue me when they didn’t even know I was in jail. Again.
As if in answer to Gran’s summons, hurried footsteps echoed down the hall. The adjoining door was made of bars, not solid wood as it had been previously. The guards must want a better view of things after my escape which was fair enough.
Officer Abigail Burke put a key card to the door, there was a beep, and then she pushed her way through, a thick yellow envelope in her hand. “O’Rylee.”
“Burke.” I gave her a nod. “It’s been a bit. Missed me?”
Her face had all the hallmarks of gloating from her smug smile to the way she was trying to look down on me. Literally looking down as she was several inches taller. “If you’d have come when I’d asked this morning, you wouldn’t be in this position now.” She put her key card to the cell door and then yanked it wide. “Come with me, we need to talk.”
My eyebrows climbed, but I followed her out the door, through the main door, and then into a small interview room. No handcuffs, so that was good at least.
She motioned for me to sit down across from her, and I did so, grimacing.
“Are you okay?” She tipped her head to the side. “Sore from fighting?”
I rolled my eyes. “My ankles and feet have been bothering me. Too much running, not any fighting though.”
“Not even fighting a much larger Stavros Wraughton?” Her eyes searched my face as if she thought she’d be able to tell whether I was lying.
I shook my head, thinking about how much I wanted to say. I mean, I could just tell her I’d gone there to see him, found him dead, and went into shock. But Abigail knew about the shadow world. I sighed. “I went over to ask him about finding a portal into hell. When I got there, the back door was broken open and I searched the house. He has children, a wife. I was worried, and then I found him barely alive. I tried to stop the blood flow, but I was too late. He died less than a minute later.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she sat down in the chair opposite me. “Anything you say can and will be used against—”
I waved a hand at her. “Abigail, you know about the shadow world. Stavros was a demon walking among us. Not a bad guy, all things considered. But there seems to be a threat that I was unaware of in the city. There were gouge marks throughout the house, huge and deep. I don’t know what made them. A monster, for sure, but what it is, I don’t know.” I was not about to tell her that a voodoo queen was hunting said monster and that I’d loosely agreed to help her.
She leaned back in her chair. “I cannot believe this.”
“Well, you know it’s been a bit of a shocking day for me too,” I muttered under my breath. “I didn’t kill him, Abigail. I tried to stop the bleeding.” I held up my hands, coated in dried demon blood, my throat tightening. “I couldn’t save him. There was no time to even call for help.”
Her lips thinned and she lifted that thick envelope on the table. “For what it’s worth, I believe you. An anonymous call came in that there had been a disturbance, but the caller said that there was, and I quote, ‘a monster in the house.’” She slid the envelope across to me. “Here. Please have a look.”
“I have blood on my hands.”
She tossed me a pack of wet wipes, which I used to take the worst of the blood off, though I could see it sticking under my fingernails. Another time that would have bothered me more. Maybe it was shock, or maybe it was just me getting used to the things that normal people don’t get used to.
Officer Burke waited until I was done, then motioned at the envelope again. “Open it.” She leaned back in her chair, watching me.
Gran ghosted through the door. “There you are. I got turned around. Found myself in the morgue.”
I raised both brows at her as I opened the envelope, not believing that she got turned around, not for an instant. “And what did you find?”
“Pardon me?” Officer Burke asked.
“They have a number of supernaturals in the freezers, Breena. All with huge gouges across their necks, just like Stavros. Some are even decapitated.” Gran floated to my side as I pulled the thick wad of pictures out.
“Bodies in the morgue that match Stavros’s wounds,” I muttered.
“What? How did you know that?” Officer Burke slid her chair back and stood up, her hand going to her side arm.
I barely lifted my eyes from the pictures. “Because my Gran is a ghost and she went for a wander. She saw what you didn’t want me to see before you gave me the pictures.”
Did I care if she believed me? Nope, I was too far gone to care. Honesty really was the best policy, even when people thought you were bonkers.
I spread the pictures out slowly, one by one. Crime scenes, all of them. The rooms were trashed, I could clearly see the deep gouge marks in the walls that matched the ones I’d just seen in Stavros’s home. Some blood spatters too, but not as much as I would have thought.
I laid them out, counting quickly. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven if I counted Stavros today. “How long has this been going on?” I asked quietly. “And I assume you think this has to do with the shadow world?” I mean, I knew it did, but I wanted to make sure Officer Burke knew what she was talking about.
“This has been happening for the last three weeks. One a day.” She leaned forward. “There are not that many bodies. But there are many people missing, O’Rylee. And the blood we are finding, it…is not human. We’re doing our best to keep things quiet, and the lab is on lockdown, but if we don’t get a hold on this soon, the DNA will leak. I can guarantee it. The gouge marks are made by some sort of bony structure that we have never encountered before. The closest material to a living animal is rhino horn, but even that’s not quite right.” She swallowed hard and as I looked at her face she began to sweat. “It’s an almost perfect match for an extinct animal.”
A mishmash of creatures, that’s what Marge had said. Even Gran had said the monster looked like a combination of parts from several supernatural creatures. But I still had no name for it.
I placed my hands carefully flat on the table, bracing myself. “What is it a match for?”
“I can’t,” Officer Burke said. “It doesn’t matter. The point is—”
I smacked my hand on the table, stopping her. “It might ducking matter if I have to face off with this wee beastie. What is it a match for, Abigail?”
“Saber-tooth tiger,” she said. “But that doesn’t make sense either because the reports said that the perp is walking on two feet. Two. Not four.”
Gran clutched at her chest. “Goddess, I just thought...it can’t be, though. Saber-tooth tiger…goddess above and below this is terrible!”
I twisted around. “Gran, what?”
“Seriously, are you talking to a ghost again?” Officer Burke snapped. I could understand her discomfort—it had to be unnerving—but I also needed information.
“She’s got more knowledge about the shadow world than me, even dead as she is,” I said over my shoulder. “Gran. What could it be? You think you know?”
Gran waved her hand at me. “Get more information. And let us hope that I don’t even have to breathe the word.”
Well, that was about as calming as a storm in Florida. “She says she hopes she’s wrong,” I explained quickly. “What else do we know?”
Officer Burke shook her head and began to pace the room. “Nothing. That’s the problem. There are only a few bodies, more people missing, an attack every day. Witnesses are confused and think they are seeing a monster, but then when we go back to talk to them it’s as if their memories are gone. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was related to…the…shadow world,” she choked a bit on that part. “But all the evidence points to it. The blood, the DNA we were finding is not human. Nothing fits. It’s like they are crime scenes out of a fantasy world. None of it is possible, and I have no way to explain it to my superiors.”
I tapped my fingers on the papers. Memories being altered spoke of our newest arrival, Bramble. I shot a look at Gran and tipped my head to the side, lifting my brows at her.
“Yes, I imagine that your superiors wouldn’t take kindly to you trying to explain what is to them, a serial killer type of situation, as a fantasy world come to life,” I said as I tucked the pictures back into the envelope.
She slumped in her seat. “This is insanity. All of it. We need your help, Breena. Do you understand? I want to bring you in on this case. You’re not a suspect. Your DNA, your blood was nowhere in any of these scenes. This is why I tried to talk to you this morning!”
I frowned. “Then why throw me in the cell?”
She blew out a heavy breath. “Because I had to convince the chief that I was right. You were also standing over a dead body, you idiot! We have a whole file on you, though, and we can’t match anything to you other than today. It was obviously a case of wrong time, wrong place.”
I looked at her. “Or right time, right place because it alerted me to what was going on in a way that would actually make me pay attention.”
A path away from Crash…was this it then? Should I trust my grandfather? He’d told me to get into the house, his voice had pushed me that last bit.
Officer Burke gave me a quick nod. “Fair. I need to know if you can help us stop this…thing, whatever it is.”
That was a good question. One that would start with figuring out what the beast was—or wasn’t. “I need to talk to my friends—my crew. See if they’ve noticed anything. It’s weird that this hasn’t popped onto our radar. We should have had some inkling that there was a new monster in town.”
What had been happening under my nose while I was so pre-occupied with finding the portal to hell? The monster’s killing spree didn't match up with any of the ingredients for the spell. This didn’t even look like the kind of attack the Council would put out on someone. They were usually far more subtle. They didn’t need to call down the wrath of the human world either.
Stavros had said that killing the witch who’d made the monster would end its life. Assuming that was Bramble, it would leave me facing off with a powerhouse of a witch like I’d never encountered before.
“The timing is right,” I whispered under my breath.
I didn’t whisper quietly enough.
“What timing?” Officer Burke barked out the question. “What do you know?”
She was on her feet and advancing on me in a matter of seconds. I picked up one of the pictures, one that had just a picture of the gouge marks close up. Because maybe I could use it to match it to what Marge saw. To be sure we were on the right track. “Can I take this with me?”
“Not until you tell me what you know,” she repeated, and I found myself looking at Gran.
“How much can I tell her?”
“Everything.” Officer Burke growled. “You tell me everything you know!”
“A little,” Gran said. “We don’t know for sure that your cousin’s involved—though perhaps that is wishful thinking that she isn’t. I know that logically it makes sense.”
Officer Burke was all but breathing down my neck. “Tell me what you know, O’Rylee. I was able to pull you off the suspect list, you owe me—”
I held up one of the pictures, one that had the gouge marks up close. “This looks like the work of a witch, a powerful witch. One that can make monsters like this. It’s not for certain, but my gran—”
“The ghost.”
I didn’t miss the sarcasm in her voice, but I just nodded. “My gran’s ghost warned me just today that there’s a new player in town. The most powerful witch of a generation. But we don’t know why she’s here, or if she’s the one taking the people or, if she is, why she would do it this way.”
Officer Burke stepped back and kind of slumped. “What about the claw marks?”
I frowned. “The claw marks belong to a monster, that maybe, maybe this new witch created. Because I’ve heard this new witch in town is as dark as they come.”
There was a knock on the door, and then it was opened and a woman in a plaid skirt suit, black-rimmed glasses and dark red hair swept up into a French roll stepped into the room. “I have the coffees, officer.”
“Oh. Emma, thank you. Just leave them on the table.”
Emma set the coffees on the table. Her eyes flicked up for just a split second. Bright blue green, and I could have sworn there was a glitter of something…more. But then she backed out of the room, the door snicking shut behind her before I could get a better look at her.
“She makes excellent coffee.” Officer Burke scooped up a cup, sipped it, hummed to herself for about three seconds, and then sighed and slumped in her seat. Asleep.
“What the hell?” I leaned over the table and shook Abigail’s arm. “Officer Burke? Abigail?”
She let out a soft snore and wrapped her arms under her head.
“Gran, go after that girl. Was it Bramble?”
Gran swept after the secretary, rushing, and stuck just her head out through the door. “She’s gone. What did she look like to you?”
I described the girl as I stuffed the pictures back into the yellow envelope. “Why, didn’t you recognize her?”
“I saw a dirty blond with curls,” Gran said. “She disguised herself from me and let you see her. Why?”
I looked at the cup that was supposed to be mine and tipped it over on the table with the edge of the envelope. The dark liquid spilled out and the table began to smoke, the ‘coffee’ eating through the material in a matter of seconds. “I guess so I knew who killed me? Or maybe because she knew I wouldn’t recognize her.”
“Goddess,” Gran clutched at her chest. “You need to get out of here. Back to Haven House, as quick as you can. Penny will need to make a disguise for you, that would be best.”
Right. Because anywhere would be safe now? I wasn’t sure it mattered. Not with a witch of a cousin on one side and some monster stealing and killing people on the other. Or maybe said witch and monster working together.
Awesome. What a day so far.
Outwardly calm, I checked Officer Burke again as I went past her. She was sleeping soundly, so I tipped her coffee over to check whether it would burn a hole through the table. Nope. Good enough, she was out cold, which was far better than she would have been if she’d drunk my coffee.
Letting myself out of the room, I paused. To the right was the way out, to the left was the way down to the morgue. I didn’t want to go there, not after the last little jaunt I’d had down in the basement. Zombies had crawled after me, out of their body bags. Not fun. Robert and I had barely made it out alive. Well, one of us was alive anyway.
“You don’t need to see the bodies,” Gran said. “They’re like Stavros. Cut up, and not by a witch.”
“But maybe the monster is controlled by one. As Stavros said, kill the witch, the monster dies,” I said as I turned right and headed out the front doors, flipping off the officer on duty.
I tried not to notice the way Gran closed her eyes, and touched her throat. She didn’t want to think about me and Bramble going up against each other. Fair enough.
The fresh air was welcome, but I paid it no attention, scanning right away for the secretary that was no secretary, but I didn’t see her anywhere.
“Bree!” Kinkly found me first, zipping down out of the trees across the street. “They let you go? What happened?”
Robert stood waiting to the side of the police station. “Robert, did you see a red head blast out of here? Glasses and a skirt suit?” I did a slow circle but didn’t see anyone who even remotely resembled my cousin. Then again, she’d been blonde to Gran. I swallowed hard. She could be anyone. That man across the street reading his newspaper. The woman pushing the stroller.
Shit, she could be the kid in the stroller.
“No,” Robert growled.
I ran a hand through my hair. “This is messed up. Kinkly, where’s Feish?”
“She went back to Haven House to get help.” Kinkly swept around my head, finally landing on my shoulder. “What should we do? She’s going to bring people back here.”
“Gran,” I said. “I want you to go back to the house. Tell Eric and Penny what we’ve found. Kinkly, Robert, and I are going to talk to Damian in the hopes that he can help. If he can’t…I promise to let the portal go until we deal with the monster and Bramble. Okay?”
Gran shot me a look. “Honey child—”
I lifted both hands. “I will be careful. We will be careful, right, Kink?”
“Careful as a virgin on her wedding night!” Kinkly laughed.
Gran blew me a kiss. “Be safe, and I will see you back at the Haven House.”
I blew her a kiss back and turned away, letting Kinkly lead me to a part of the city I’d never visited before.
The Bartow District.