Chapter Nine #2
Avoiding the blood, Walter bent close and studied the body.
So did EJ. There was no sound of demon possession on the night air.
Walter sniffed. “Myriad scents: blood, voided bowels and bladder, the products of a dying body. Also perfume, soap, milk, oranges. And oddly, the scent of salt. Perhaps someone brined the walkway before the storm.”
EJ focused on her wounds. From the soft intake of breath, so did Angie. Their client’s throat had been torn open, appearing to have been ripped through by claws or fangs. Except—“Do you smell vampire saliva in the wound?” he asked.
The cam was motionless for a moment, the quiet sound of an indrawn breath.
“Oddly, no. There is a hint of something toxic on the wounds—gun oil, perhaps Rem Oil or Ballistol used to clean guns, swords, and blades.” He bent lower, breathing several times, giving them a close-up of the wound.
“No vampire saliva clings to the edges of the tissue. From the blood spatter, no blood was consumed. And…” His head turned, giving EJ a good look at the spatter.
“The blood-free area indicates where the killer was standing, and it wasn’t close enough to have bitten your client. I don’t understand.”
“I do,” EJ said. He felt Angie lean closer, felt her eyes on his face.
“The killer used a very specific weapon, a Razryvayushchiy Kogot, devised by the Rus witches in the war to make it look as though fangs had killed. Most Kogots look like a double-bladed sickle, two eight-inch-long blades with slightly serrated, wickedly sharp, hooked ends. The hooked part can be three to six inches long, and the wounds they cause are devastating. When applied with force, they mimic a killing vampire bite, like you see here. But the wounds from a Razryvayushchiy Kogot don’t smell like a vampire bite. ”
“I see.” Walter’s eyes followed droplets out of the garage into the icy dark.
EJ said, “We need to see where the droplets lead before the sleet covers it all. Before we have to call in Villetti.”
Angie muttered something under her breath.
Walter turned to move outside, but stopped, as if listening. “Did you hear that?”
EJ looked at Angie, who shook her head. “No,” he said.
Walter’s head cocked and the view tilted. He walked deeper into the garage, toward the entrance to the house. “I hear it again. Indistinct weeping. Terror. My God. Children.”
Before they could react, Walter sped into the open door, into a mudroom. Stopped. He clutched the musical key in his fingers, held out in front of him, like a talisman, and walked on.
EJ got out of the car. Angie stayed in, moving to his seat, listening, watching on the big screen.
Walter’s steps were silent. All the lights were off inside.
He said, “The scents of the two vampires, one familiar to me, ride the air, much more recent than the other scents. Dogs, the odors of family, food, traces of laundry. The house smells empty of the living or the undead. But I hear weeping.”
The short hallway led to a kitchen. EJ caught a glimpse of dishes in the sink. A half-full coffeepot.
EJ heard nothing over comms, but Walter whispered, “Children crying.”
The camera moved up and down, side to side, as he stepped slowly toward the center of the house, to the bottom of a staircase. Six feet from the bottom of the stairwell a green light blinked. He paused. “The weeping stopped.”
“Trap?” EJ asked. “Is this what the killers want? You inside?”
“The sounds come and go, intermittent, barely heard. I cannot pinpoint their location.”
Walter tapped his unicom and whispered, “Alex Younger. Urgent.”
Alex answered. “You’re not letting me get my beauty sleep.”
“The home of Cennet A. Campbell-Baines. Two dead. According to EJ, they used a Razryvayushchiy Kogot on the woman.”
Over the connection, Uncle Alex transformed into Alex, the head of the queen’s comms. He snapped, “Details.”
Walter quickly filled him in and said, “No alarms were sounded, but I hear the muted wails of children.”
“Safe room?” Alex asked.
“Not according to the information on file at the codes department.”
“You’re inside the house, aren’t you?” Alex accused.
“Of course.”
“Well, Fu—phooey.”
Angie laughed. EJ smiled.
“Gimme a pic of the security system’s home base.”
Walter pulled his unicom from his arm and snapped it flat.
He activated its camera and approached the blinking light at the bottom of the stairs.
Each step careful. Each step potentially fatal.
“There are two. One at the back door, which I’ve already passed.
This one at the bottom of the stairwell.
” He snapped a photograph and sent it. Walked back to the garage entrance.
Took a second photograph and sent it. “Second photograph is from the door entering from the garage.”
“Got ’em. Working. Get out of there.”
“Roger that.” Walter left the house, following the blood droplets left by the Kogot. They ended near the oil stains where a car had been parked.
Angie joined EJ, standing in the sleet.
Walter walked up to them—stalked, more like. Vamps were the apex predators of the night. He said, “Vampire male and your human client, are dead, each at an entrance. Presumptive use of Razryvayushchiy Kogot. The dogs were shot.”
EJ pulled Delta close to him. Waiting for the need to unfold it. So far as he knew, no one ever won against a Kogot in a fight. The only viable option was to shoot to kill, vamp rounds, silver-lead designed to explode inside them. If you had time to take the shot.
Walter continued, to Alex, “Prewar vehicle was on the drive. Gone now. Neither vehicle in the garage has been used recently and both are plugged in for recharging. The two other vampires came later, hours after the deaths.”
EJ glanced at his sister. She was wet to the scalp and her clothes clung to her. The tiara glowed and sang softly, fighting her headache. EJ said, “Get back in the car.”
She ignored him, her eyes on Walter. “Who? The fangheads. Who?”
“One was your ex-husband,” Walter said. “The other was unfamiliar. They walked the grounds and went inside, though they were not the killers.”
“The crying from inside,” Angie asked. “A recording?”
“I do not know. I could not locate them. The queen’s people are trying to get inside the security system and see if there is a safe room. We need to call Villetti.”
“That’ll make his night,” EJ said.
“You left the apartment woefully underdressed for the weather,” Walter said to Angie.
“Usually, you plan much better.” Walter opened the back car door and gestured her inside.
Without waiting for her to move, he opened the driver’s door and sat, closing it against the cold.
He activated the heater and turned on the seat warmers for them.
When she didn’t get in, Walter said softly, “Angelina. We will wait.”
“But there are children in there.”
When he didn’t reply she swore, “Son of a witch.” But she got in the vehicle. EJ walked to the side of the vehicle and slid into the front passenger seat. He made the call for Villetti and backup. The cop was justifiably pissed.
“ETA?” Angie demanded.
“As long as it takes,” EJ said.
EJ was younger, but the war had made him more patient than Angie. Angie took after their mother and their aunt, the queen—rushing in where angels fear to tread.
Villetti’s voice sounded and EJ tapped his ear-patch. Listened. He said, “Copy that.”
To his sister, EJ said, “Villetti and a small team will be here in twenty minutes, weather permitting, to secure the premises. We need to make certain there aren’t any magical traps or problems.”
He turned to Walter and said, “The people who used Razryvayushchiy Kogots in the war were the Rus, specifically Prince Oleg and his sons, all of whom are supposed to be dead in combat.”
Walter shrugged. “I am aware, though I never encountered such a wound. Perhaps the entire vampire witch coven begun by Prince Oleg were indeed killed true-dead. Perhaps not. Or perhaps someone wants us to think of them and ignore evidence of other things. A distraction.”
“Chase our tails like a dog. Yeah. That too,” EJ said.
Angie’s fingers fluttered as her precog tried to rise.
“Killing a human means death at the hands of the queen’s assassins, and when you consider the attack at the club, Londyn’s longtime involvement, our dead client, and the missing Ivyanna, that’s a lot of risk for a distraction.
Someone’s making a play against the queen, and at the same time showing her no one she protects is safe.
Yeah. That feels right. Layers and layers and multiple goals.
And possibly betrayal inside their own ranks. ”
Angie’s eyes went from the false na?veté they usually wore to something much harder and colder, the expression she displayed when she thought of her ex-husband.
“This should be fun.” She tapped her handset and synced it to the car’s unicom.
“Alex, old buddy, old pal,” she said. “Tell me about the shenanigans in Asshat’s bedroom.
I’m assuming you brought in a lip reader. ”
“Affirmative,” Alex said over the speaker system in the car. “From the vid alone, we’re getting some interesting alliances and some even more interesting betrayals. The lip reading will take a while, and we’ll only get partials, but you did good facing the medallion across the room from a mirror.”
“Has Asshat called the queen to whine about me videoing his bedroom antics yet?”
“No.” Alex laughed. “He called your grandfather.”
“Even better,” she said.
“You are cold,” Walter said to Angie, voice too flat to be anything but irritation. “Henceforth, you will dress warmer.”
Angie gave him the side-eye, almost as if she were saying, Make me.
EJ shook his head. His big sister wasn’t that stupid.
Angie
I pulled off my soaked shirt and tossed it to the car’s floor before I pulled the T-shirt EJ gave me over my wet hair and the stupid tiara. My brain boomed inside my skull like a bass drum and I had a feeling the workings in the jeweled crown needed to be recharged.