Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 (12 page)

"Yeah. Two detectives from Montreal
have been at the station since last night. They had a meeting with
her, and they were in the briefing with us."

Oh. Lovely. Lemme guess. Alfred Carter
and Mae Theotokos.

When Mastiff repeated their names, I
nearly groaned out loud.

Mastiff's phone beeped. He pulled it
out of his pocket, looked at the face, and answered it.
"Mastiff."

Joe looked in our direction with a
seriously angry face on. Yikes. What did I do? He might be
irritated because of what looked like a new power for Daniel, and
not one Revenants readily had.

"Okay," Mastiff said before he
disconnected and slipped the phone back in his jacket. "Two more
bodies found. Grant Park this time." He slipped the DVD back in its
case and into his pocket. "Keep the picture. I have copies." He
stopped in front of Joe. "I don't want you to quit—and I understand
your aversion to doing anything against your heart's desire—but
this is serious, Joe. People are dying. It has to stop. The captain
said as long as you showed up at the scene, she won't submit your
resignation yet."

With that, he looked around the room,
patted Joe on the shoulder, and left the apartment.

TC and I became corporeal
again just as Joe whirled and pointed a finger at me. "Not
here
."

Chapter Twelve

At first I wasn't sure if Joe was mad
at me and TC, or just me. Although I couldn't for the life of me
figure out why.

Then it dawned on me as he started
gathering his cop gear quietly—he still didn't trust his apartment.
Something to do with Mastiff's visit had him unnerved. I already
suspected Mastiff assumed I was there since he knew about my rather
peculiar abilities, and it was irritating having to wait 'til we
were outside before I could ask.

So, I retreated to the balcony outside
to wait for Joe to leave.

TC joined me there. And if we had
actually been visible to the world, I'm pretty sure we'd have
looked like rejects from some dark fantasy movie set.

Me all dark and ashy with folded wings
and a pissed-off expression, and TC looking—

Okay. Well. Normal in a business suit
and calm face.

So I looked like a Comic-Con
refugee.

Sue me.

"What was—" I started to say, but TC
held up a hand. His expression became distant, as if he were
listening to something I couldn't hear. Which, having been in the
position he was in now, seated in the Abysmal Throne as the
Phantasm, I could relate.

I waited, tapping my talons against
the iron railing while I kept one eye on Joe moving about in the
apartment. And I sort of noticed how cute he was when he was upset.
He wasn't as smarmy looking. Just…normal. Determined.

"I have to go," TC said as he
refocused on me. "There's something I have to attend
to."

"Abysmal disturbances?"

"You could say that." He looked…what
was the word…distracted. Like he was paying attention to me, but
not really.

"TC, what's wrong?"

He focused on me,
and
now
he looked
worried. "I'm not really sure. I'm getting reports that several
regions of the Abysmal have shut down."

I made a confused face. "Shut down?
You make it sound like a power grid."

"Well, it is, in a way. All regions
exist on the Plane when the power's on. If they go dark, then it
means they cease to exist. It becomes empty space."

That didn't sound good. "Uh, TC…what
does that mean?"

"I don't know." He put a
hand on my shoulder. His touch was warm. "You go with Joe. Keep an
eye on him and see what's up with this rapist. There's a lot riding
on figuring out what the Ethereals are planning. And on what's
happening. The fact they haven't acted on the
Grimoire
yet is starting to worry
me—and I just found out the Seraphim's cut off all
communication."

"I thought you said you shut the door
on each other."

"Well, yeah, but Geist still went back
and forth."

"Not now?"

TC's eyebrows arched. "No.
In fact, I'm having trouble finding Geist. A few of my brothers and
sisters think the
Grimoire
's magic is interfering with
that. I don't know. I just don't have all the answers yet, but I
will." He gave me a quick kiss on the lips and vanished.

I stood still on the terrace even as
my wings unfurled in reaction to what my body felt at his touch. TC
would always confuse the hell out of me, same as Joe. When I
thought of TC, I could remember things like soft touching, ecstasy,
pleasure and pain, being bound and binding—but not in a kinky,
sexual way. More in a brotherly way.

Yeesh…that sounded even worse than
when I thought about it. Maybe "brotherly" wasn't a good
word.

"Old lover" kind of feel?

I trusted TC, and that's not something
I would have done nearly a year ago. Back then, I'd tried to kill
him on several occasions. He was somehow a part of me in ways I
don't think my wee human brain was ever going to
understand.

And Joe?

Well…

I'm not sure I was ready to go there.
Not when thinking of him brought up anxiety about Dags and where he
was. And what he was going through.

Which, of course, led to thoughts of
Rhonda, and then my thinking descended into all the mean things I
could do to her with—

"Hey, you coming?"

I blinked a few times and realized I
was perched on the railing like some big exotic bird and Joe was
standing in the opening of the sliding glass door, looking a little
worried.

"Yeah, sure." I hopped down and
followed him back inside.

"Where's TC?"

"He had to leave. Abysmal
stuff."

"Poor guy. He's like the CEO of a
corporation now and getting nitpicked to death." He slipped a
leather peacoat on and turned to look at me. "Is it weird that I
like you looking like that?"

I glanced down at myself. When I used
to go out of body to be Wraith, my residual appearance in astral
form had pretty much been me—only dressed in the black pants,
turtleneck, and bunny slippers I wore when I rested on the bed in
my old office. But somehow or somewhen after the Horror incident,
when I split in two and smushed back together, that all changed.
Now when I shifted while still in body, my clothing covered all the
right parts in this swirly, black, lacy stuff, and my skin was the
color of ash. My hair—I don't even want to talk about what it does
since there was no product in the Physical Plane that could tame it
like this. My hands had a sort of look all their own, with talons
instead of nails. And my feet…think very angry black bunny
slippers.

To me, I looked like a goth's idea of
a some kind of confused superhero. Complete with gravity-defying
boobies.

"I think you need therapy." I beamed
and followed him out the door.

For December, it was pretty damned
cold in Atlanta. Almost as cold as last year. Only this time a year
ago, Daniel was waking up in the hospital, TC was pretty much
nonexistent, and I'd vowed to stop going OOB so I could protect my
cop.

Now…I was in the truck of another cop,
Daniel was a Revenant that could somehow walk through walls, Rhonda
and Dags were somehow prisoners of the Ethereals, and Mom—Mom was
somehow responsible for my rape and Barry's death. I hadn't wanted
to believe that last part, but after hearing what Mastiff
discovered about Gibbons's and my mom's friendship… .

If I wasn't already a blithering
idiot, I'd have hidden in the closet a long time ago. I just had to
believe that, somehow, this was all going to get better.

Once we were on our way to Grant Park,
I finally spoke. Yeah, me quiet. Go figure. "Why not in your
apartment?"

"I think it's bugged."

"But you zapped it."

"I don't mean
bugged
in the
conventional way. I mean
bugged
in another way." He glanced at me but generally
kept his eyes on the road. "Ever heard of a Fetch?"

Oh yeah, I'd heard of them. In fact,
one of my lessons with TC had involved chasing one through an
office building after I realized I could become Wraith without
going out of body. The former Symbiont had taught me how to control
a good bit of my power as well as instilled confidence in me. "I
know they're constructs that can be created from either side of the
Outer Plane. And they tend to absorb whatever's around them so they
can hide."

"Mmhm… good job." He signaled a turn.
"While Mastiff was talking, I noticed a fruit bowl on the coffee
table."

I frowned. "So?"

"I don't keep fruit bowls on the
coffee table. Who does? Fruit spoils. And as often as I'm actually
home, you think I want to grow hairy fruit?"

Oh hell. "You think that was a
Fetch?"

"Yep. And the fact that it moved to
get a better view of the video Mastiff had."

That was just creepy. But I also
started wondering why I hadn't even sensed it. TC had taught me how
to detect their Abysmal essence…. "Holy hell, it was
Ethereal."

"Yep. I didn't think anyone would send
an Abysmal creature there, not with the Phantasm right in my living
room."

"That explains why I didn't know it
was there. I wasn't looking for Ethereal energy."

"Might want to fine-tune that, babe."
He made his turn and continued on toward the park. "We're dealing
with the opposite Plane now. And from what I've been gathering,
they do not play fair."

He was right about that. I thought
about my dad and how he'd used my own need for him as a weapon. But
he'd also used it one too many times. I didn't trust Adiran
Martinique anymore.

Dad or not, if he tried shit again, I
was sooo gonna hurt him.

Floodlights and flashing blues and
reds greeted us as we approached the park.

Grant Park was sandwiched between
Boulevard Avenue and Cherokee Avenue, just below Interstate 20. It
was also home to the Atlanta Zoo and the Cyclorama. Not as large as
Piedmont Park, Grant Park was better known for its less crowded
paths, its pool and tennis courts. I'd always wanted to live in
this area, but couldn't ever afford it. And as Joe moved his truck
up close and popped a flashing blue light on his dashboard and
flashed his badge, I looked over at the zoo entrance.

When was the last time I'd even
visited the zoo? And I'd never even been in the
Cyclorama.

One of the uniformed officers motioned
for Joe to park. He did, and got out as I slipped through the car
to follow just above them. My wings were pretty much quiet and only
stirred up a slight current of air.

The bodies were near the pool, a good
bit away from the zoo, closer to the tennis courts. More
floodlights were set up around them, and I hovered nearby to watch
as Joe approached Mastiff and a small, no-nonsense-looking woman.
She was dark-skinned and her hair was pulled back tight at the base
of her skull. Her features were exotic, but her expression was
hard.

"Ah, is it Mr. Halloran or Detective
Halloran?" Her tone was even less friendly.

But it didn't seem to phase Joe. He
walked past her to look down at the bodies. Something I hadn't
really wanted to do.

And when I did, I wished I
hadn't.

Moments as horrific as rape, or being
robbed or mugged, incidents of violence committed against oneself,
are hard to deal with. If you've never been confronted with your
own mortality, it's difficult to describe.

I could remember every moment of my
rape in nasty detail if I let myself. Which is why I remembered the
guy's face and was pretty damn sure he hadn't been a Power when he
did what he did.

Joe knelt down beside them as he
pulled gloves on and a woman with a big camera took pictures. "So,
what do we have?"

Mastiff glanced at his iPhone and
thumbed the screen up. "Juan Esteves, Latino male, twenty-two,
lives nearby according to his ID. The female is Tina Burton,
Caucasian, lives over in Morning Side." He looked up from his phone
and down at the victims. "The rest is pretty obvious. Mr. Esteves
was killed with a knife to his throat, slitting his jugular. Ms.
Burton was stabbed repeatedly and gagged with her own
underwear."

I didn't have to see it to know that
was the same scene they'd found with my body and Barry's. I closed
my eyes and let myself drift back. I did not want to actually see
this at all.

Until I heard a familiar
voice.

"So…this is Detective
Halloran?"

I zeroed in on him.

Constable Alfred Carter. He looked
pretty much the same as he had in Montreal. I wondered if he'd even
bothered to change. Constable Mae Theotokos stood beside him as Joe
rose and turned to face them.