Cursed by Fire (Blood & Magic Book 1) (8 page)

“No, not exactly. You’re a pyrokinetic, I’m a telekinetic. Our abilities are different in how they work and what we can do with them, but we’re
Psykers.
That buzzing in your head you hear,” he said, “you hear that because I’m close to you. Anytime a Psyker is near, a faint buzzing persists, alerting you that another is close.”

Well that certainly would have been good information to know. I could have avoided ever meeting this guy in the first place.

I heard James call my name in the distance.

“Look I a….” I throw a glance over my shoulder. “I need to get back,” I told him, slowly backing away from the alley. He laughed.

“Go ahead, run away.”

“I’m not running,” I snapped.

“Sure you’re not.” I glared at him. Maybe I was running but what was I supposed to do? A stranger just told me he had psychic powers. I didn’t know who he was or what organization he belonged to, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. My father had warned me when I was a girl to avoid Psykers and I was going to head that advice.

“Look I’m not running and it was nice meeting—” Wait, I didn’t even know his name?

“Inarus,” he said. Wait, what? I stared at him in confusion. “You were wondering what my name was, it’s Inarus.”

Okay, that was creepy. Was he a mind reader or something?

“And to answer your next question, no. I can’t read your mind. I just figured you’d want to know.”

“Right,” I said, skepticism heavy in my tone as I turned to leave.

“Look, if you’re up for it, why don’t we grab coffee sometime? We can talk.”

“Sure,” I said, waving him off. “Sometime.” I needed to get far away from him, not closer. There was no way in hell I’d be meeting him anywhere in the foreseeable future. I made a hasty retreat, leaving Inarus back in the darkened alley. The more steps I took, the fainter the buzzing in my head became until finally it ceased.

“Anything?” I asked James as I came closer. James shook his head in irritation, his entire focus on the scene before us. I wasn’t surprised he’d missed my brief absence. When he was on a hunt, he was wholly focused.

“No, the entire area is coated in a fine layer wolfsbane, I can’t smell anything.” I considered telling him about my strange encounter when his words sunk in.

“Wolfsbane?” I asked, needing the confirmation. James nodded again. “Why would there be wolfsbane here?”

“Your guess is as good as mine but someone added it and made sure to cover not only the bodies but a perimeter extending thirty feet in each direction. This is smelling more and more like a set-up, Ari,” he said in a grim tone.

I pondered everything I knew for a moment. Daniel Blackmore had gone missing a little over two weeks ago. When we found his body, he had had twin fang marks on his wrist, a slit throat, and his mutilated body had been dumped not far from the invisible border separating the Pack and the Coven territories. Emma’s death looked similar: a slit throat, fang marks, but hers were caused by a different vampire and her body was in much better condition than Daniel’s had been. Aside from the slit throat and fang marks, her body was unblemished. No broken bones or ripped-open flesh.

Fangs also don’t widen in a vamp’s mouth so the likelihood that Daniel’s murderer was the same as Emma’s was doubtful. Our third victim we didn’t have much on. Aside from being a female vampire, age unknown, name unknown. And cause of death was consistent with an animal or shifter attack. The final thought gave me pause.

“Hey James.”

“What?” he asked, not bothering to look up from his crouch on the ground.

“Could Emma maintain warrior form?” I asked. I wasn’t an expert on shifters by any means but I did know that if a shifter died in animal form, they didn’t revert back to human; they remained animals. If a shifter died while in warrior form though, they did revert back to human. If Emma couldn’t maintain a warrior form, then it was doubtful that she’d been able to cause our other victim’s injuries.

James shook his head. “No, she was too young to have acquired the skill. She could only shift to her full beast.”

“Is there a way for you to tell if Emma had gone, you know, furry or not? And whether she shifted back before her death?”

James quirked a brow. “What are you thinking, Ari?”

I began pacing in the street, letting my thoughts tumble out of my mouth. “I’m thinking this was all a set-up. That maybe Emma and whoever our unknown vamp is over there didn’t actually have any sort of altercation. Jackson showed me the photos of the body before it turned to ash, it has claw marks without a doubt and the heart had been ripped from the victim’s chest, but what if Emma wasn’t the one that did it? What if our unknown vamp didn’t kill Emma either?”

James’s eyes lit up. He was following my train of thought.

“Don’t you see?” I continued. “Why else would someone sprinkle the area with wolfsbane? Someone is trying to cover their tracks, but this,” I said, waving my arms in the direction of the two bodies. “This screams set-up, and if Emma can’t maintain a warrior form, how did she kill our vampire victim and then die in human form?”

James was nodding his head and the gears in my mind were spinning. The sound of vehicle motors starting up caught my attention and James and I each watched the HPED begin moving out.

What the hell?

“What’s going on?” I asked Jackson, jogging over to him as he climbed into his black SUV.

“We’ve been called off. This isn’t a human problem so we’re pulling out,” he said.

You have got to be kidding me. “What about the bodies?” I asked, indicating the scene. Jackson shrugged his shoulders.

“Half the vamp is already gone, the rest will float away in the breeze by morning and your friend there,” he said, indicating James, “will take care of the shifter girl.”

I gritted my teeth. This was so like the HPED. They’d come to scope things out and then, if it wasn’t a quick and easy job, they bailed and moved on. This was why crime was so high in our city, why things had yet to stabilize after the Awakening. No one wanted to get their hands dirty.

Stomping back to James I filled him in. On a curse filled with disgust he pulled out his cell and dialed a number. I assumed he was calling the Pack to have Emma’s body picked up. Still frustrated over the situation I went and pulled my HAZMAT kit out of my trunk. The four-by-three-foot steel case housed virtually everything needed to collect evidence. In addition to the case I pulled out a gallon-sized glass container and a battery-operated mini vac. You could never be too prepared. With my items in hand I lugged them over to the vampire remains and started opening up my case and unscrewing the glass jar container.

“What are you doing?” James asked over my shoulder, having ended his call.

“Cleaning up,” I said as I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. He eyed my mini vac skeptically. It was probably in poor taste to vacuum up the dead but well, it isn’t like I had many options and frankly, a vacuum was going to be much more effective compared to a broom and dustpan.

“What did the Pack say?” I asked, pulling several chemical light sticks from my case and cracking them until they offered a faint glow. I placed one inside of the glass jar and placed the other two near the pile of ash-coated remains. The glow sticks did little to illuminate the space, forcing me to rely on the dim street lights but what they did do was cast the vampire remains in a blue glow separating them from typical dirt and debris so nothing was missed.

“Devin and Brock are five minutes out. They’ll be here to pick up the body and then I’m supposed to go and report to Declan.”

I nodded my head as I used a small wooden stick to poke around at the remains. James made a coughing noise mixed with a gag and I turned around to look at him, a wry grin on my face.

“You doing okay there, buddy?” I mocked.

“That’s disgusting,” he said.

“It’s all part of the job,” I told him. James wrinkled his face and took a few steps back. Small particles of the vampire’s body had risen and hovered eerily in the air. Sifting through the remains I pulled out several pieces of bone too large for my vacuum to suck up and tossed them into the glass container. The fact that large remnants remained meant the vampire wasn’t that old. No more than fifty undead years. As I continued sifting, the roar of a vehicle sounded and James and I looked in the direction of the approaching Hummer. The vehicle parked a few yards from us and two large men exited.

The driver wore formfitting jeans that hugged his thighs and a navy blue t-shirt showing off his massive bulk and broad shoulders. Wearing a grim expression, he made his way towards us and if I had to guess, he looked to be in his mid-thirties. The passenger was younger, maybe mid-twenties at the latest, with boyish features, a full mouth, and long limbs that had yet to fill out completely. The two men approached on silent feet. James inclined his head towards both men, offering a small greeting before leading them to Emma’s body.

I continued my work, watching the three men from the corner of my eye as they lifted the body and placed her gently into a blue body bag before placing her in the rear of the Hummer. The younger of the two newcomers poured a white fluid where the body had been that sizzled upon contact. White bubbles formed as it destroyed any part of the blood or bodily fluids that may have remained.

The lycanthropy virus was highly contagious and one of the many reasons that the human population feared the shifters and why several of the HPED members had been avoiding the body. Humans didn’t realize that it wasn’t a shifter bite that would turn them, it was blood-to-blood contamination. One of the reasons why you’d never find a shifter donating blood. Because of the possibility of infection, every time shifter blood spilled, they did their best to kill the potential spread of the virus. LVP was a liquid substance that killed the virus outside of the host. Lycanthropy had an hour window of infection. Once the blood expired, the virus died, but since James wasn’t sticking around, the Pack was making sure no one stumbled by while it was still active.

With his task complete, the driver went back to his vehicle and headed out as James walked once more in my direction.

“Brock’s going to ride back with me since I’m going back to the Compound, how much longer will you be?” he asked.

“A while,” I told him. “You two go ahead, I’ll be fine.”

James looked conflicted for a moment. “Go,” I told him again, waving him away, “I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself.”

He sighed. “Fine, but call me when you head out okay?”

“Yes mom,” I said with a snicker.

“Haha, very funny.”

I watched as James and Brock went towards the Mustang and after fishing the last bit of bone from the pile, pulled my mini vac out and began vacuuming up the ashy remains. The sound of the vacuum drowned out the city as I hummed along to a silent tune, making sure to catch all of the particles. I had to empty the vacuum canister into the glass jar three times before I finally had it all. James was long gone by now and the streets were quiet, the area vacant in the early morning hours. I took a quick peek at my watch, it was only three hours till sunrise and a yawn reminded me that I’d gotten barely any sleep. I pulled out a small bottle of bleach and poured it over the concrete where the body had once been making sure to coat the area evenly and cover a slightly larger perimeter just in case. Vampirism wasn’t contagious the way lycanthropy was, you did in fact have to be bitten, multiples times actually, but dead-body particles were still dead-body particles. As I screwed the cap back onto the container I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I tossed my supplies back into the metal case, allowing instinct to guide me.

I wasn’t alone.

Without being too obvious I tried to scan my surroundings as I busied myself with the case. Everything back in its place I quickly shut it, grabbed my vacuum, and hauled it back to my little Civic, all the while keeping my eyes peeled for trouble.

My Honda wasn’t anything spectacular on the outside but I’d customized the thing to survive almost any kind of assault. The windows were quarter-inch-thick bulletproof glass, and the frame had been reinforced, encased in high mobility armor, even the underside, leaving it virtually indestructible. My little Civic could take on a tank, and while the tank would probably win, my car would put up one hell of a fight. You couldn’t get a tougher car. If I could just make it to my car, whoever was stalking me through the night wouldn’t get the chance to take a shot at me. The feeling of being exposed increased and I nearly dropped the metal case in my rush to get to my car. I tried to shake off the feeling of unease as I increased my pace. I finally made it and quickly unlocked the trunk, tossing the case and vacuum in before jogging to the driver side. My hand was on the door handle, a wave of relief washing over me right before…

Crack!

My head felt as if it exploded. My skull connected with the top of my car and my vision blurred. I struggled to hold myself upright as the world started to spin around me. I leaned against the Civic trying to regain my balance when another blow to my head had me stumbling backwards, away from the safety of my vehicle.