Centaur of the Crime: Book One of 'Fantasy and Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 1) (37 page)

“Sire,” he intoned.

“Sturmgalen,” his father replied. “My business here is concluded. You will join us for the evening’s boar hunt, will you not?”

“Of course, father. I’ve had a special lance made for the occasion.”

“So long as you haven’t enchanted the damned thing. Say, to spear vegetables instead of meat for the table.”

Angbor gave Galen a friendly cuff to the flank as he went by and slowly picked his way back down to the courtyard. The wizard watched Angbor depart, a bemused expression on his face.

“Just when I thought I had puzzled out my sire,” Galen observed, scratching his head. “He continues to develop new behaviors to baffle and astound me.”

“It’s called ‘fatherly pride’,” I observed. “And while I’m not your father, I think I know a little how he feels.”

And with that, I went up on tip-toe and hugged Galen as hard as I could. My cheek brushed the soft folds of his jacket. The scent of a dozen spices wafted from his pockets, woodsy and exotic. The wizard bent slightly and leaned into me, returning my hug. It was more than just an embrace between a woman and a centaur.

It was a silent affirmation. We did it, we survived, we
triumphed!

“You know, I am curious about something,” I said, once I’d finally let Galen go. “Did you give Angbor the kingship back because you didn’t want the position? Or because you really did want to teach your sire a lesson?”

Galen looked at me. “I had an even better reason.”

“Oh?”

“Do you not recall what Master Seer Zenos once told me? He said I would ascend to the centaur throne…but that I would only hold it for a few days.”

My jaw dropped. Indeed, that was exactly what Galen had described to me, after we’d brushed the Master Seer off to head for the Fayleene woods.

“Consider that to date, every single one of Zenos’ prophecies have been correct.” Galen said, with an air of mock seriousness. “Also, consider the man’s advanced age! Were I not to ensure that his track record remained perfect, who knows what the poor man might do?”

“Why, one could but wonder,” I replied, also with mock seriousness. “Drop dead of apoplexy, maybe?”

That did it. We cracked up, badly. I even got a small case of the hiccups before all was said and done. Galen gave me a drink of water from a pocket flask and had me sit on one of the stones along the outer edge of the battlement until the hiccups subsided.

“Dayna, I need to thank you for all that has taken place,” Galen said, as the breeze tousled his long, wavy hair.

“I keep hearing that from people,” I sighed. “A lot of it was just me trying to keep from getting killed.”

“True, true. But I’m talking about what you taught me. About dealing with my father.” He pursed his lips for a moment, and then went on. “You were right. Even though I broke his nose, even though I ‘humiliated’ him by giving the kingship back…for a moment there, I behaved in just the way he’d always wanted. In a very strange way, he’s treasuring that right now.”

I chewed on that for a little bit as well. Amazing, what a well-placed right hook could do for family harmony.

“Speaking of dealing with difficult people,” Galen continued, “did you manage to settle your differences with Esteban and McClatchy?”

I chuckled. “Esteban and I have our first date this Saturday. He’s been sending me little ‘keep your chin up!’ cards so that I wouldn’t get depressed over McClatchy’s board hearing.”

“What came of that ‘hearing’?”

“I’m on ‘probation’. McClatchy can’t fire me, at least for now. And truth be told, that didn’t bother me so much. It was all the footage of you, me, and Shaw down at Grauman’s. And let’s not forget that little shoot-em-up in the Hollywood hills. I reported that someone had stolen the SUV out of my garage. The gang-crimes division of the LAPD thinks it was used in a hit that went bad. But even so, my friend’s SUV has been well and truly totaled.”

“Ouch,” Galen said, wincing. “I’m not sure what can be done there.”

“Ah, but that’s where some of Liam’s Fayleene luck must have rubbed off. I got a call from the head of a major studio. She demanded to know which of her competitors had financed ‘Griffin’s Galore 3’, and how we did the special effects.”

“Praytell, what did you inform her?”

“The truth, sort of. I told her that I wasn’t with a major studio, and that the ‘special effects’ were proprietary. Trade secret.” I spread my hands. “Since I refused to budge, she offered me a nice fat check if I could convince my backers to hold off on releasing our film for one year.”

“And you decided to abscond with the money?”

“Elementary, my dear centaur. I’m still going to have to explain the loss of the SUV, but at least I have the funds to replace it.”

We were quiet for a moment. The smell of rain grew stronger as a couple clouds blew across the sun’s face. Finally, Galen broke the silence.

“Dayna, I came to converse with you for one other reason. King Fitzwilliam wants to offer you a position. As Andeluvia’s official Court Forensics Examiner.”

“Really?” I said, startled.

“I daresay that it would be the perfect job for you. And speaking personally, I’d like it very much…if you’d consider staying.”

I crossed my arms. Let out a breath and looked at the expanse of wet flagstone at my feet. Galen shifted uncomfortably from one hoof to the other.

“You don’t have to answer right away,” he cautioned. “But... what do you think of the idea?”

“I think…” I paused, and looked him squarely in the eyes. “That I’m flattered. And I’m going to consider it. Very seriously.”

Galen put his hand out to me in his now-familiar gesture. I felt the warmth of his palm on my shoulder. The wizard looked relieved, lighter somehow.

“Good. I will tell the king, then. And hope that you decide in our favor.”

The sound of hooves on stone echoed along the battlement, and then faded away as Galen departed. I looked out over the expansive sweep of the emerald green valley below. The sun came out from behind one of the clouds, lighting up the landscape with a glorious golden glow.

A cry from far overhead. I craned my neck, made out a flight of young griffins as they rode one of the warm, moist thermals.

It made me consider everything that could lay ahead.

I still had a career to go back to in Los Angeles. A brand new guy in my life there. One who was going to be taking me out for the first time.

Here, in a brand new world, one where griffins soared the skies and centaurs worked magic, I’d been offered a job. A good one, too.

And most importantly, I’d found a trio of true friends.

So many wonderful things I had to choose from, for once in my life.

Just my rotten luck, I guess.

Try as I might, I couldn’t keep the grin from my face. I turned away from the view and carefully descended the battlement steps, returning to the joyous crowd below.

The End

# # #

A Quick Word from the Author

Hello, and thank you for reading one of my
Fantasy and Forensics
novels. I’ve felt like a part-time alchemist mixing Dayna’s world with that of Andeluvia, and I hope you’re enjoying the experience as well.

If you’d like to know when I have new books out, please consider clicking the link below to join the Michael Angel Quarterly Update. Nobody likes email clutter, so I promise not to send you more than 4 messages per year.

Click here to sign up for Michael Angel’s Quarterly Update.

A sincere thanks for your support,

Michael Angel

And now, a sneak preview of

the second fantasy novel in the

‘Fantasy & Forensics’ series,

The Deer Prince’s Murder,

also by Michael Angel.

She solved the murder of a king.
The day Dayna Chrissie, the leading Crime Scene Analyst for the LAPD, was magically transported to the land of Andeluvia, her skills were put to the ultimate test. With war about to break out between the Human and Centaur Kingdom, her forensic skill was all that stopped a conflict that would have devastated both lands.

But now she faces a new challenge.
The magical deer of the Fayleene have tasked her friend Prince Liam with proving his worth – by protecting them from Sirrahon, an ancient stone dragon with the nastiest disposition in all recorded history.

She’ll put her life on the line for a friend.
  So will a centaur wizard, a griffin warrior, and a nightmare delivering pooka.  But with a bloodthirsty dragon, hostile medieval lords, and a deranged police chief stacked against her, the odds don’t look promising.

Especially when an older, mysterious enemy threatens to resurface and engulf everyone in a cycle of killing and vengeance!

The Deer Prince’s Murder

Book Two of ‘Fantasy & Forensics’

By Michael Angel

The circlet of fire rose up from the centaur’s fingertips. Then it flattened and shot towards me. I flinched, squeezed my eyes shut and felt my skin crawling, rippling, as the magical energy coursed along my arms, my legs, my belly.

A black nova of sensation burst in my brain. The tangy smell of pine-wood sawdust. Taste of bitter salad greens. A flash of colors behind my eyes. I felt my legs give way, felt myself falling forward onto my long, long forearms.

Felt myself pitch onto all fours. But I was still standing, somehow. My eyelids were still squeezed tightly shut. Breath whistling out of my lungs like I’d just run the fifty-yard dash.

“Dayna,” Liam’s voice called, “are you all right?”

I raised my head. Opened my eyes.

Gasped at what I saw. What I heard. What I smelled!

It snapped me all the way back to when I had been in seventh grade. When I got to do my very first dissection. The frogs my class worked on had been packaged in a formalin solution that smelled hair-curling awful. Since then, I’ve built up a tolerance for the worst scents. But the fact remained that I had an exquisitely tuned sense of smell, one that I had to tame and discipline myself to use.

Right now, deep in the Andeluvian woods and inside a Fayleene body, all my self-taught mojo vanished. For a few seconds, my head reeled with sensory overload, as if I were deep-sniffing a fistful of permanent markers while staring directly into a strobe flash.

“Glah!” I exclaimed coherently.

“Dayna, I think you need to give it a moment.” Liam’s voice sounded richer, fuller, like someone had just gotten around to turning on the center channel on the speakers. His words rippled down my ears, making them flicker like a rabbit’s. Strange sensation, that.

“I…wow,” I said, sounding like a half-baked stoner. “This is wild. Is this how…you Fayleene see the world?”

“I suppose so. I mean, I really don’t know anything different.”

My eyeballs finally stopped with their visual tap dance and settled down. The colors didn’t, though. Everything around me looked super-saturated, as if someone had turned up the gamma correction on an old computer monitor to maximum. The single dark green of the forest had split into multiple shades and hues. The golden sunlight gleamed brighter, making my eyes water. And my friends looked different as well. Different, in the sense that someone had liberally smeared each one of them with fluorescent blue ink.

Shaw’s wings were outlined in a fuzzy aquamarine glow. Galen’s jacket and forelegs were a blur of blue-white daubs. Bright cyan lines shone from across Liam’s flank, like racing stripes done up in black-light paint.

“I’m not sure,” I remarked, as I tried to steady my voice. “But I think that Fayleene see further into the color spectrum than humans. And the smells…”

I took a few more breaths, working and tasting the air that circulated up my new, longer nasal passages. The Fayleene’s forest had a distinctive, peppermint scent that lay over the usual woodsy smells of bark, moist earth, and decaying leaves. At least that was the way it smelled to my poor human nose.

But now, it was like I’d wandered onto the manufacturing floor of a candy-cane factory. I had to force myself to focus. Envisioned grasping a dial in my brain, turning down the sensory impact with a
click-click-click
until I could cope. It took a few moments, but I finally got things under control. My friends looked relieved, meaning that my facial expressions must have finally gotten beyond the oh-so-fashionable ‘brink of a nervous breakdown’ look.

I managed to stand up straight. Felt the long, ruler-straight bones of my legs move into place. A slight tickling along my torso. I shook off my human underwear from where it dangled, uselessly, from my torso with a little shimmy and took a step or two forward. My head felt a little unbalanced from the weight of my antlers. Like reindeer, both Fayleene genders had horns perched atop their skulls.

I half-turned to look at myself. Saw my spotted flank, my powerful hindquarters that tapered to slim, hooved legs, and a powder-puff white tail.

“What do you guys think?” I asked.

“It appears that my transformation spell has been an unqualified success,” Galen said, with a note of pride.

“I agree. Wholeheartedly!” Liam breathed.

Shaw grunted. “Meh. ‘Tis a look that makes one appear…of lesser intelligence.”

Liam shot a glance at Shaw and let out the closest thing to a growl I’d ever heard from a deer creature.

“But the form is extremely…tasteful!” Shaw added hurriedly.

“That’s enough, you two,” I said, as I minced forward a few steps on my new legs. “Prince Liam, we’d best be off before we miss the ceremony.”

“That much is true,” he agreed, and his annoyed look was replaced with one of anticipation. “If you would be so kind as to follow at my flank?”

I went to Liam’s side as Galen declared, “Shaw and I shall abide here until your return. Best of luck to you both!”

Yeah,
I thought,
Something tells me we’re going to need it.

Liam set off into the underbrush, and I followed him. In a few moments, our companions faded from view behind us.

The woods pressed in around us more closely, wreathing us in a combination of tall piney trees and a tangle of low-lying scrub. And yet, even with the antlers projecting from my head, I was able to follow Liam between, under, and through anything that could have caught us or tripped us up. Our hooves drummed out a muffled beat as we wended our way along miniscule forest paths carpeted with mint-scented pine needles.

“You’ve managed to figure out our gaits quite easily,” Liam complimented me.

“That’s because I’m not thinking about it,” I explained. On cue, I stumbled a little and mumbled a curse under my breath before continuing. “I’m just letting the body do the work. If I think about it,
then
it becomes a problem.”

“Ah. Well, then. Keep on ‘not thinking’ about it. We’re about to join the others. Remember what I told you about my people’s customs.”

A dull thrumming reached my scoop-shaped ears. The sound of many other hooves trotting on the needle-cushioned earth around us. Our path abruptly merged with that of others, and the underbrush fell away to reveal a multitude of Fayleene couples, each travelling in the same direction. The males were pretty much quiet, eyes fixed on their goal ahead, while the females chatted amongst themselves.

At first glance, the does all looked roughly the same. Each had delicate muzzles, dense, fawn-colored coats spotted with white, and sharp black hooves. But upon closer inspection, I noticed small but telling differences. The larger does, ones with eight or more points on their antlers, did all the talking, while the younger ones remained silent. My mind cast back to what Liam had told me, of the matriarchal structure of his kind:
do not speak unless spoken to.

Maybe it was for the better. The chatter that I did hear, as soon as the more mature does caught sight of me, was as bad as a bunch of catty women looking to take a new arrival down a few pegs. The fact that we were on the move didn’t seem to matter in the slightest. The old biddies just tore in with the subtlety of a school of piranha.

“Oh, look,” one said, “Prince Liam managed to bag himself a stand-in for the event.”

“Bag? More like ‘beg’! I don’t recognize her,” another observed.

“She’s probably the one who begged to come,” a third
tsked
. “I can see why someone drove her out of the herd. Pitiful choice really. Not fit for a princeling.”

“Even as one as wee and broken as Liam!”

A chorus of strange, bleating laughs. Liam’s jaw set firm and he ignored the comments. Of course, they immediately started back in on me. Yeah, the Fayleene might have been beautiful magical deer, but up close, they were a bunch of harpies with cloven hooves.

“Oh, this one thinks she’s a pretty flower, does she not?”

“Puh-leze. Just look at those antlers! It’s obvious that she’s had some work done.”

“And I bet those white spots on her flank wash right off after sunset!”

Another titter of laughter. One which was drowned out by a male voice, one that was smooth as silk and yet carried the unmistakably arrogant tone of command.

“Ladies,” said the voice, “Let us be kind to our newcomers. I, for one, am genuinely curious as to who Liam managed to corral for this function.”

A new pair of figures emerged from the brush beside the trail to join us. The slighter figure was a young doe, who threw me a glance laden with a clear ‘keep your hooves off my man’ warning. As to the larger figure…

Liam let out a resigned sigh. “Hello, Prince Wyeth.”

Wyeth didn’t so much as acknowledge the greeting as he came into view. I wasn’t into Fayleene, no matter the body I wore, but this specimen was enough to put a hitch in a girl’s breath. I’d said once before that Liam looked more than a little like Bambi. But Wyeth looked
exactly
like the Disney character – the version from the last act of the film, when the fawn had grown up into a handsome stag. His body was a lean slab of dun-colored muscle, perfectly proportioned, and crowned with a glorious twelve-point rack of antlers.

I could see someone sculpting this creature’s form into the hood ornament for a Rolls Royce. Or sketching his likeness to put on a wine bottle’s label. But once I’d listened to him for a few minutes, I’d have preferred that some hunter had shot him and mounted his head on a wall.

“Well, now,” Wyeth pronounced, as he craned his neck to look at us. “I am surprised. Not only does little Prince Liam have a pretty doe following in his wake, I can’t make out the leash he’s using to drag her along!”

“Leave us be,” Liam said flatly. “We’re not bothering you, are we?”

“As if you ever had a choice in the matter.” The large stag fell in beside me, and I abruptly became aware of his muscular bulk. Liam was only a little bigger than me, in this form. But Wyeth’s barrel chest was easily double the width of mine, and my eyes only came up to the middle third of his neck. He stared at me for a moment, and let out an amazed snort.

“Now it all makes sense,” he muttered under his breath. “I should have known...”

“Wyeth,” Liam gritted in a frosty tone, “I’m warning you. Leave my consort alone and attend to your own.”

Again, the large stag ignored Liam’s words. He continued to stare at me in amazement.

And I’d had just about enough of this.

“Look,” I appealed to Liam, “that’s got to count as ‘being spoken to’. Because I’m getting tired of this nonsense.”

“Ah,” Wyeth announced, his voice thick with sarcasm. “You do speak, pretty little doe.”

“Well, that last bit definitely counts as being spoken to,” Liam grumped.