CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The station was in chaos when Keen burst through the door, the PKs on high alert yet shocked and grim. He shoved his way past stunned uniforms by the tea kettles and dashed down the hall to the detention cells, his heart thudding violently, as keyed up as he was before facing the worst of demons.
The copper stink of blood flooded his nostrils and he slowed his pace as he rounded the corner to the holding pens.
The cell doors were open and the cages full of PKs.
Smith stood in the hall, grim faced and angry, smoking a thin cigar.
Beside him, Coates was running a hand through his hair, eyes wide and trained on the sprawled figure in one cell.
Blood painted the prone man. His head was propped up against the bars to the next cell, his body stretched along the blood-soaked floor.
He stared at nothing, his mouth slack, chin on his chest, a limp ragdoll of a man, so obviously dead no one had even tried to help him.
Bile rose up Keen’s throat. He swallowed it down and entered the cell, careful to avoid the blood splattered across the dirty floor.
His drumming heart slowed as his training asserted itself and he separated his feelings from his intellect.
He gazed at the scene with analytical objectivity.
There was a jagged wound across Jerry’s neck and blood fanned down his shirt.
A fork lay incongruously beside him, a bloodstained rag covering its tines.
Keen’s gaze kept returning to the makeshift weapon. The handle of the fork had been honed to an edge, sharp but not enough for a clean cut. The attacker would have had to saw at Jerry’s flesh while holding him flush to the bars. It would have taken phenomenal strength.
His eyes flicked toward the other cell. There lay another body – the attacker, Father Kellan. Someone had put a bullet through his brain and he’d fallen beside the bars of Jerry’s cell, one arm still stretched through the bars. The sharpened fork lay close to his limp hand.
Immediately, he dismissed the conclusion his brain leapt to.
It was impossible. How could this weak, broken man have managed to seize Jerry and slice open his throat?
This had to have been planned, premeditated.
The fork was a weapon that would have taken days to prepare, yet Jerry hadn’t even been arrested until a day ago!
But every scrap of evidence – the blood, the wound, the weapon, the dead men sprawled so near the bars – led to the unavoidable conclusion that one had killed the other, then been killed himself when the PKs intervened.
Jealousy, passion, rage, despair. It was all so clear.
Bullshit. This is bullshit.
A presence entered the detention area, cold and darkly furious.
The PKs ceased their investigation, their careful marking of bloodstains and the handling of the weapon.
The fork clattered to the floor from a uniform’s numb grip.
Everyone turned to the source of this leashed anger: Inspector Death Speaker Hero Viridian.
“Out,” she spat, tall, imperious and uncompromising even with her torn and dirty clothes, mussed hair and reddened hands.
“Everyone out. Now. Do not touch the bodies!” She screamed this last at an overeager PK who had been reaching to pull Kellan’s arm from between the bars.
The woman froze, wide-eyed as a rabbit in a hunter’s sights.
Hero removed her tinted glasses, letting Hell roar from her gaze.
“Out,” she repeated in a voice as deep as eternity. “I must Speak with the dead.”
The PKs scattered hastily, all but Keen. He squatted beside his friend’s body, feeling a strange elation. Now, they would learn the truth. The dead could not hide from his partner. They could not lie to her. Hero would root out the truth; she’d chase it right into Hell.
“How did this happen?” he asked raggedly, turning to look at her. “Please, Hero, tell me this isn’t as simple as it appears.”
Eyes swirling pools of magma, Hero entered the cell. Bonelessly, she settled on the floor, careful to avoid the blood spatter, legs pretzeled. “Do not disturb me,” she warned, “no matter what, lest–”
“The fires of Hell consume me, yes, I know. I won’t interfere, and I won’t let anyone else interfere. On my life.”
“Yes. It is.”
And with that ominous statement, she opened the Gate to the Underworld.
A stillness settled. A deep calm. Keen froze, still crouched, watching his partner speak to the dead.
Her red tongue flicked across her lips, disturbingly lizard-like, but otherwise she didn’t move.
He held his breath until his chest ached, then hauled in a wheeze as quietly as possible.
The flames in her eyes grew torpid, hypnotic.
They drew him in, and for an eternal moment he was lost in the flames, burning–
A violent cramping in one of his calves brought him back to himself with a hiss. He flopped onto his ass and stretched out a leg to relieve the sharp ache. How long had he been squatting beside Jerry’s cooling corpse?
A wretched moan drew his attention. His partner was bent over her lap, groaning as if in horrible pain. Her pale hands were locked into fists on her knees and her lips were drawn back from her teeth.
“Dear Goddess,” she gasped. She rose to her feet and turned a baleful glare on poor Jerry. Her face was whiter than usual, her lips pale and pinched as if she might throw up. “Fuck me. Fuck us all. He did it, Keen. He fucking did it!”
“Did what? What do you mean? What did you see?”
She had her glasses in one hand and slapped them back on her face, hooking the wires over her elongated ears as if they offended her.
“Jerry killed her. He raped her. Tortured her for days. His pleasure…it tasted like tar.” She grimaced as if she might spit.
“Jerry bragged about it to Kellan. The priest went mad and attacked him.”
Keen couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She had to be wrong. “That’s impossible. It doesn’t match the forensics. And – and – come on, Viridian, ask yourself: How did Kellan have a weapon at the ready like that?”
“It was in his cell, left behind by some other prisoner. I watched it happen; the attack was spontaneous.”
He pressed, sensing her wavering. “A little convenient, don’t you think? Hero, please .”
“The dead can’t lie,” she said, no longer furious but deeply, deeply weary, shoulders sagging and cheeks sunken. She wiped her mouth. “How did I get this so wrong?” She heaved a wretched sigh. “I have to write my report before I forget anything.”
Finally, she looked at him. Guilt and shame played across her sharp features, confusion drawing a line between her brows.
“Goddess damn me. I’m sorry, Keen. For everything.
Perhaps I let my personal feelings get in our way.
I don’t know; I can’t explain it. I’ve never been so–” Her lips thinned. “Nevertheless, this case is over.”
There was no arguing with her. Viridian seemed lost in a fog of furious self-doubt, scribbling out her report with a manic hand.
Keen caught details that made his stomach shrivel: Jerry had held Catarine, using her cincture as a collar.
It hadn’t been a complex summoning, merely an offering to his demon overlord, an Aerial named Maelwind.
It had taken days to drain her essence, and in those days of captivity…
Keen thought he might vomit.
His mind jumped to those elemental demons that had chased him in the catacombs. Guards of a powerful entity? Or slaves of Maelwind?
Jerry had torn out her tongue in a fit of demonic fervor and fed it to a pack of feral dogs roaming the streets of Otherside. Appalling. Horrifying.
He reeled away and somehow found his side of their shared desk before his knees gave out. How could he have misread a man so completely? How could he have been so blind?
No. He didn’t believe it. He wouldn’t believe it.
A dark presence. Powerful, ageless, rising…
“What about the dead girl?” he said, trying hard to keep his voice low – difficult, as his emotions were running high.
The energy in the station was subdued now.
The coroner and his technicians were dealing with the dead, leaving the PKs to process their shock.
The righteous satisfaction of a job well done had been replaced by general horror at the resolution of this case.
With the murderer dead, there would be no trial, no justice for the families, no chance to confront the killer.
Even Smith’s supercilious pomposity had faded while he attempted to comfort his traumatized partner: Coates had fired the shot that killed Kellan and no PK suffered through the fallout of their first kill in a breezy manner.
His question made her pause. The scratch of the pen ceased and she held herself very still.
“What about the spectral chain?” he pushed. “The pit beneath the Academy? The Fog spell? Your ravaged hands, for the Goddess’s sake. You pulled me through that shield. It was real!”
“Yes. It was.” Her forehead wrinkled then cleared abruptly. The scratching of her pen resumed. “But…one might have nothing to do with the other. I was sent here to solve a murder, Keen. Not investigate a school. I did my job.”
Exasperated, he yanked his chair closer to the desk, dropping his elbows hard on its surface, which sent spears of pain up his injured arms. “Catarine’s chain led to that school. And we have two murders, Viridian. What about Cassie Graham?”
Another pause. Ink spread from her pen tip, pressed hard against the paper. “I wanted evidence that the girl was murdered even though everything pointed to suicide. I let my own personal demons” – she grimaced at the unfortunate word choice – “cloud my judgement.”
“Bull shit . Something is terribly wrong here. More distraction, more obfuscation!”
The tip of Hero’s pen snapped off and he found himself pinned by her flaming gaze, rendered only mildly less terrifying by the tinted glasses. “The dead can’t lie,” she said flatly.
He didn’t flinch. “And souls aren’t eaten , either.”
Finally, his words seemed to reach her, but not in the way he’d hoped.
She looked aside. “Perhaps this has all been a delusion I brought to life. Maybe my gifts failed me when I tried to commune with Catarine’s soul and I merely refused to admit it.
How else could I have gotten everything so wrong?
What I saw, what those two shades revealed…
Curse me, Keen, it matches our evidence.
I – I must come to the conclusion that I was wrong. ”
Her doubt in herself was disheartening to witness, especially when Keen didn’t think her gifts had failed. He refused to believe his old friend had committed such a brutal crime, and he refused to believe that everything they had uncovered meant nothing.
“Children are in danger,” he said, reaching for something to hold on to.
“That isn’t a lie or a distraction. Children who committed no sin except to be born with demon blood.
Right now, they are locked behind a powerful spectral shield.
For whatever nefarious reason. Do we forget about them now that we presumably have our murderer? ”
Hero pulled a handkerchief from her scapular and blotted at the ink splotch her broken pen nib had left on the report, her face smooth.
Keen held his breath, and at last her eyes flicked up to him, slow-burning pools of flame muted behind cool green glass.
“They have my niece at Bright Renewal Academy,” she said.
Shit. Keen let out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry,” was all he could think to say, but he couldn’t help the swelling of excitement in his gut.
Their case wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
“I’ll go to the Academy, Inspector. I’ll get inside and try and find her.
Just promise me you won’t sign your report yet. ”
She looked at her broken pen and then tossed it aside. “I suppose I can’t right now, can I?”
He ran his hands down his face. “Thank you–”
“Inspector Viridian.”
They both turned to find the diener approaching their desk wearing her medical whites, looking out of place in the room full of uniformed PKs.
Keen raised a hand in greeting. He’d watched her prepare Catarine’s body and had been impressed with her stoic efficiency.
Fresh-faced and freckled, she appeared barely old enough to be out of braids and knee socks, but she was a good five years older than he was and a consummate professional.
She and Dr Virchow made a good match, sharing a rather macabre obsession with unlocking the secrets of dead bodies.
“What is it, Miss Grace?” Hero asked tiredly.
“The doctor wants you down in the morgue, Inspector,” she said. “To discuss his findings.”
Hero sighed. “ I don’t know if it matters anymore.”
Miss Grace was unperturbed. She tipped her head like a curious crow and regarded Hero. “Now, please, Inspector.” Without waiting for a reply, she turned and began to thread her way back through the grim PKs.
Hero sighed again, then stood to follow her. “I’ll see what he found,” she said. “Most likely, the substance we collected from Catarine’s skin will link to the Aerial demon Braun was in cahoots with. If it does, I don’t see how I can justify holding back on my report.”
“I’ll go to Clementine and find Mrs Hollander in the meantime,” he said briskly, hoping she was wrong about Virchow’s findings. “I’ll take her up on her invitation. Don’t sign anything until I return,” he added firmly, daring to give her an order for a change.
Hero wavered. “You should proceed carefully, DH Keen,” she said, keeping her voice low. “If you are right, and I can no longer trust what the dead have to tell me, then we are in grave danger.” She lifted her lip, flashing a fang. “Distrust is your greatest asset right now.”
He swallowed the urge to defend Abby and instead gave her a stiff nod. “I’m always careful, Inspector Viridian. Always.”