CHAPTER THREE #2
“Yes, well, can’t say we’ve had much demon trouble here. But I did the required supplementals at the Citadel, so I recognize the signs.”
Oleander held his tongue, reserving judgement.
Sometimes people saw demons where none existed, afraid of every bump in the night or every shadow in the corner.
Confusing normal human depravity with demonic activity was often the case, too, and a dead nun – a murdered nun – might prompt those unused to regular human fiends to see something supernatural in the death.
He would be able to assess the truth quickly enough.
In his sharp-looking sash, and in the bandolier across his chest, were stashed vials and potions vital to his work, and his own instincts had been honed to razor sharpness.
If any demon had touched the dead woman, he would know.
And if any human was in thrall to demons, he would know soon enough through rigorous questioning and examination. First Rank DH Oleander Keen knew how to do his job.
Chief Dewey led him down a flight of narrow stairs at the end of a hallway lined with interrogation rooms, down into the cool depths of the building.
Moisture glistened on the exposed brick walls.
Oleander’s hackles rose, along with a bitter taste of bile as the contents of his stomach did a little dance.
Morgues were cold and grim places, sterilized and detached.
Better to deal with the corpses out in the open air, raw and real.
Even the most brutal of crime scenes was preferable to the chill finality of the morgue.
“Just to warn you,” Dewey said when they reached a door at the end of a long, ill-lit hallway, “you aren’t the only one I’ve called in to deal with this case.
Like I said, we are making this our top priority.
The entire town is on edge. Women are afraid to leave their homes.
The Highborn and the more affluent of our citizens are demanding action. Demanding answers.”
Oleander nodded, more distracted by his gurgling stomach than anything Dewey was saying. Goddess, you’d think he’d eaten rotten meat the way his body was reacting, not good bacon, eggs and grits.
Impatient to get this over with, he gestured at the chief – rather brusquely, he’d reflect upon later – to open the blasted door, grimacing at the rising sick he had to swallow.
Was it nerves? He felt some stress since this was his first assignment, but he didn’t consider himself a particularly high-strung man.
There was something in the air, some strange rankness he couldn’t place.
It wasn’t the proximity of dead bodies. The corpses were kept in iceboxes. There was no rot in PK morgues.
The room beyond the door was an examination room, a vast chamber with tables and medical equipment, a bank of coolers stretching along one wall with rows of innocuous latched doors no bigger than the one to Ma’s icebox at home.
It was shadowed in the far reaches, tables and instruments draped in sheets to keep off dust. Gas lamps blazed closer to the door, illuminating the immediate area, which contained a desk and wooden filing cabinets.
A person sat at the desk, or on it. Lounging, really, while they spun a sleek cane of ebony and silver.
A woman, by appearance. Slim and tall, hair as silver as the clouds slicked tight to a narrow skull.
She wore peculiar garb, a cream shirt with flared sleeves under a dark blue scapular and trousers that looked wide enough to be skirts, shimmering in a lovely emerald flecked with gold.
The outfit tugged at his recollection. Then it hit him – the stranger’s outfit was a mockery of a Celestial nun’s.
First Rank DH Oleander Keen made these observations – the strange woman, the clothes, the shrouded equipment, the lamps, the desk, the bank of coolers – in the space of a breath.
His gut flared angrily, and he understood at last that it wasn’t mere indigestion plaguing him.
He cursed himself even as he began to move, to leap and spin, his saber whispering from its scabbard, aimed for the stranger’s neck.
To kill a demon, one had to act fast and act first. Removing the head was the best way to start.
Demonhunters spent years honing their skills, their art.
It was a calling that required training almost as intense as that needed to join a religious order.
Your first and most important duty was to protect humankind from demonic influence.
Only a skilled demonhunter could spot demons through their glamour.
This one hadn’t even bothered to mask her demonic heritage. How had Chief Dewey not seen it himself?
A clang of steel against steel. The woman had barely moved, but she’d stopped his saber with her cane, to his great shock.
No, not the cane, but the slim sword hidden within it. She’d drawn and parried preternaturally fast.
The impact shuddered up his arm, into his shoulder.
Immediately, he drew back and countered with a backhand swing.
She parried effortlessly, showing her bright teeth at his useless efforts.
His eyes met hers through green-colored lenses as their blades met again – demon eyes behind a thin shield of tinted glass.
A pathetic attempt to appear normal. He sneered at her, and she landed a blow on his hip with the ebony half of her sword before shoving him back with it.
They faced off, and Oleander was vaguely aware of Dewey calling for them to cease their foolishness, but instinct and training drove him. His saber danced toward the woman, keeping her occupied while he slipped his other hand into his sash for a potion. An acid bomb would slow her down–
“Now, now,” she said, sounding irritated. Her teeth grew into fangs, and her sword-and-cane combo spun at him with lethal intent. “None of that nonsense.”
Her cane struck his elbow even as she countered his sleek saber with her blade. His hand went numb and he lost his grip on the glass vial in his sash. The demon-woman disarmed him with a twirl of her blade, sweeping a leg from beneath him at the same time.
First Rank DH Oleander Keen found himself on his right hip on the cold tile floor, his saber spinning away beneath a nearby exam table.
A needle-thin blade hovered between his brows, so close that looking at it made him cross-eyed.
His gaze traveled up the exquisite steel, swirling with the markings of the finest blademasters, to find the demon-woman staring down at him, looking consternated but unruffled.
“This is Inspector Hero Viridian,” Dewey proclaimed with peak exasperation, red-faced and flustered. “She is a level-one death speaker from New Savage City. She is here at my request, DH Keen!”
Hero Viridian. He knew the name. Everyone knew the name.
As many rumors as leaves on the trees surrounded her, the half-demon disgraced nun turned death speaker.
Some claimed she was full demon and tricking all of them.
Others thought she was barely clinging to sanity and would snap and commit rampant violence one day.
Speculations about her speed and strength and her uncanny nature were popular topics among the peacekeepers of the Realm.
Everyone was curious about the former nun who’d hidden her demonic nature from her order, tried to murder a priest of the Branch, then spent ten years in the pen for burning down her abbey.
“A little warning would have been nice,” Oleander snapped at his new chief, too flustered to be politic. “You do know what I am, what I do, don’t you?”
“Relax, kid,” the demon-woman purred. She disturbed his hair with a flip of her blade, sending a few locks across his eyes, then returned the bright sword to its ebony sheath.
He was too shocked by her speed to even flinch.
“Should have gone for the blunderbuss,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Even I can’t dodge a spray of shot at this range. ”
He sputtered, unable to come up with a decent retort. He swept his hair back from his forehead and scrambled to his feet. He was half tempted to pull his gun, but she was on alert now. It would be suicide. And even if he did manage to kill her, he’d be swinging from the end of a rope as a reward.
His cheeks grew red hot at her amused regard – or disregard, really. Lips pinched, his mouth filling with saliva, he smoothed his coiffure again, adjusted his sash, turned and politely vomited in the nearby wastebasket.