She's No Faerie Princess (20 page)

Walker's scowl deepened. "Annie already told us all of

that. I was hoping you'd be able to give us something

more."

"Well…"

The young man hesitated, and Fiona had to bite hertongue to keep from murmuring something reassuringand reaching out to pat his hand.

"What is it?"

Adam pulled the sheet back up over the girl. "Anniementioned that there was a theory about the demontrying to make the kill look like a Lupine or a Felineattack."

"There were some symbols that seemed to indicate it

was possible."

"Then I think you ought to see this." Frowning, Adam walked over to the far wall of the morgue with its rows of metal drawers and pulled one open. "He came in this morning just before dawn. I didn't find out until I came on shift, and even then I didn't think much of it until I talked to Annie again."

Walker and Fiona moved closer and looked down at asecond body. This one topped the girl from the park by acouple of decades and had a lot less hair. About fifty,balding, slightly overweight around the middle, the manlooked pale and still and oddly peaceful. His chestsported the same autopsy Y incision as the girl, but otherthan that, Fiona could see no obvious wounds. Certainlynothing to indicate this was another death meant to looklike a werebeast had done it.

Then Adam turned the man's head to display a ring of

mottled bruising and two neat, symmetrical puncture wounds on the side of his neck. Walker swore softly but creatively.

"I was going to just go with standard procedure on this," Adam continued, looking up at the beta, his face serious. "You know, when a death comes in that looks Other related, we make sure an Other on staff does the autopsy, and then we report it to the Council for investigation so that they can take care of it without causing a panic among the humans. But this seemed odd."

"Why?" Fiona asked. "Are the fang marks the wrong

size? Because it looks like a vampire bite to me."

"No, it looks just like a vampire attack, and the body had

less than a pint of blood in it at autopsy."

"But?"

"But look at the bruising." Adam pointed to the discolored skin and traced the uneven edge of the mark. "Vampires rarely leave contusions around the bite. There are theories that the same properties in their saliva that help seal the wounds when they're done feeding on a living donor also help to prevent bruises. And even in the few instances when bruising has been recorded, it didn't look like this. This is too irregular. It doesn't look like it was caused by a human-shaped mouth. If it were, it would look more like a hickey. This almost looks like the guy was punched and then bitten."

Fiona thought of the love bites she carried beneath herclothes and had to agree. The bruising around the deadman's bite wound looked nothing like a hickey.

"Are you saying this wasn't a vamp kill?" Walker asked, looking very unhappy. "What else could it have been? If it were a demon kill, the heart would be missing. Demons always consume the hearts of their human victims."

"No, the heart is there," Adam said. "That's why I was going to treat it like a vamp kill. Some fanged idiot got carried away and had a little too much to drink. But the heart isn't… normal."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the average human heart weighs about three hundred twenty-five grams at autopsy. That can vary depending on disease, age, and weight of the decedent, but it's a round number. This guy's heart weighed seventeen grams."

Fiona's stomach jumped. "How is that possible?"

"I have no idea. It was like a shell that had all the contents removed. At first I thought it might be a side effect of the blood loss, but it's just not possible. Heart is all muscle. Even with all the blood gone, there should still have been more than seventeen grams' worth of water and fiber and solid tissue."

"Why the hell didn't you report this to the Council the

second you discovered it?" Walker roared.

"I was going to report it at the end of my shift along with any other suspicious deaths or injuries the way we always do. There are diseases and conditions that can result in decreased heart weight, so the idea that a demon had sucked it dry wasn't really the first thing that occurred to me."

Damn it. It might not have occurred to Adam, but it wasdefinitely occurring to Fiona. She sighed and tugged on Walker's arm. "Step back."

He scowled down at her. "What? Why?"

"Step back," she repeated. "You, too, Adam. I'm going to see if there's any demon taint on the body. He's been gone a lot longer than the girl was when I checked her, but we might get lucky."

Walker didn't look happy, but he did take a step back,and better yet, he ordered the young doctor to do the

same.

With all the energy Fiona had gathered up in Walker'sbed, she didn't need to tap into anything else to repeatthe revealing spell she had used on the girl's body. Onceagain, Fiona brushed a layer of magic over the still formand held her breath.

This time she didn't see the bright glow of sigils andmarks but a faint, sickly shimmer like a cobweb of slimewrapped around the dead man's neck and chest. Thedemon's taint had faded too much for her to make out thesigils with any clarity, but she didn't need to read them toknow that a demon had killed this human as well.

She considered using one of Walker's curses but optedfor a traditional Fae one instead and stepped away fromthe drawer. "It was a demon. I can't tell if it was the sameone that killed the girl, but I'm inclined to think no. Themodes of death were too different. Even if the summonerwere to order a demon to make a death look like it wascaused by something other than a demon, you can'tmake a demon that attacks that savagely go so

completely against its nature that it won't at least take a

few swipes."

Adam looked at her for the first time since Walker'searlier unspoken threat. "You mean there are twodemons out there killing humans and trying to make itlook like Others are doing it?"

"That's what it looks like."

"Holy shit!"

"You might say that." She glanced at Walker, who looked like he either had just swallowed a mouthful of arsenic or was planning on forcing it down someone else's throat. "I definitely think it's more than one demon, but that doesn't necessarily mean more than one summoner. I haven't heard of one magic user strong enough to control multiple demons anytime since the Wars, but it is possible. And somehow it makes more sense than multiple demons
 
and
 
multiple summoners. That just smacks of conspiracy theory."

"Whatever it smacks of is irrelevant," Walker said, his voice low and tight and vibrating with anger. "We need to tell the Council about this." He took Fiona by the elbow and began guiding her from the room, still speaking to Adam. "If anything else comes through these doors that has so much as a hair out of place, call me immediately, you understand? Otherwise I'll be doing a few autopsies of my own, but I can't guarantee I'll wait for you to be all the way dead. The princess and I are going back to the club."

"Vircolac?" Fiona sighed. "My home away from home.

Let's hope that this time I don't get abandoned or

lectured. It would make a nice change of pace."

Graham took the news about as well as Walker expected,which meant that his bellow would have the policedepartment in Albany fielding noise-disturbance calls forthe rest of the night. Even the normally stabilizinginfluence of his luna didn't seem to be helping keep himcalm. Walker had to wait until the walls stopped shakingbefore he managed to get the rest of the story out, andeven then, Graham jumped in swinging before the lastsyllable fell.

"What the hell was the puppy waiting for?" he roared, his expression dark as storm clouds. "Did there have to be a fucking massacre before he thought we'd be interested in what was going on?"

"Walker already explained that," Missy said. Her voice stayed serene and quiet, but no one could mistake the steel in it. "He didn't think it was that unusual, and you need to calm down."

"I'm about as fucking calm as I'm likely to get in the

middle of a goddamned crisis."

"Which makes it a particular relief that you passed on the opportunity to head the Council," Rafael said. He and Tess sat on the sofa in Graham's office at Vircolac. They had rushed over in response to Walker's succinct and urgent cell-phone call and arrived at the club hot on Walker's and Fiona's heels. "The last thing they need to hear at the moment is your panicked rantings."

"No," snarled the alpha, "the last thing they need to hear

is that Others around the city are slaughtering defenseless humans. That should make our negotiations really pleasant."

"They won't hear any such thing, because no one is

going to tell them."

Graham shoved a hand through his hair and lookedabout half a step away from yanking it all out by the roots. Just to keep his mind off his pain. "Right, because aseries of gruesome and suspicious deaths will be so easyto keep out of the human public's eye. Damn it, theoccasional death we can handle. We have our bad seedsthe same as the humans, and the fact that we choose todeal with them ourselves rather than turning them over tothe human authorities doesn't mean we're any moretolerant of murder. But a series of deaths isn't occasional,and it couldn't come at a worse time. If the humandelegation hears about this, the talks are over."

Tess snorted. "Why would they get suspicious? This is New York City. People die in gruesome and unexplainedways at least five times every day."

"Not at the hands of Others, they don't."

"And they didn't this time, either," Rafe pointed out calmly and decidedly. "Thanks to Fiona, we already know that these humans died at the hands of a demon. Others aren't to blame, and we can say that with certainty to anyone who might become concerned. You're right that alerting the human delegation would lead to nothing more than broken negotiations and a frenzied witch hunt. But that fails to solve our problem. We need to find the demon."

"Demons. Plural." Fiona stepped out from behind Walker's shoulders. He hadn't realized that he'd put himself between her and Graham when the other Lupine had begun shouting. It was a reflex to protect his mate. "I'm pretty certain we're looking for more than one demon. The drastically different manners of death make a single demon unlikely. They're too much creatures of instinct for one to show such a lack of restraint with one victim and such a great deal of it with the other."

Graham swore again, earning a stern glare from his wifeand a resigned sigh from the head of the Council.

"If that is true, then the situation is doubly urgent," Rafe

said. "What have you been able to find out so far?"

Walker watched a blush stain Fiona's cheeks. Theyhadn't exactly spent a lot of time working the last day orso, but Fiona had done what she could. Bemoaning herlack of Faerie's rich store of materials on demonology,she had wrestled her way out of his bed every so often totry different spells to help her decipher the sigils she'drecorded or to analyze the demon's energy. She hadn'thad much luck, but she'd persisted. Which led to Walkerfeeling obliged to help her recharge the energy she usedin her continued attempts.

"I haven't found much," she admitted, and her voice dragged him out of his fond memories with a jolt. "Whoever designed the sigils didn't want to be traced. He did a good job covering his tracks. I might have better luck if I had my aunt's library to refer to, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. I'm going to have to start asking around summoners here in the city, and I was trying to avoid that. If I ask the wrong person, word might

get back to the one we're looking for. And then he could either bolt and do a disappearing act, or escalate the attacks."

Rafe looked at his mate. "The only one of us who hasdealt directly with a demon and come out smiling is mylovely wife."

Tess shook her head. "I don't think I'm going to be muchhelp on this one. The stuff I know about demons is justadhesive-bandage witchery. Self-defense stuff and prettyuseless against all but the minor characters. The fact thatthe one in Connecticut responded to the binding I casthad more to do with luck than anything else." She offeredher astonished mate a sweet, disarming grin. "Sorry Iforgot to mention that to you, baby."

Rafe growled something in return and Walker saw hisfuture of confronting a reckless and charming mate flashbefore his eyes. The disturbing thing was that he didn'tfind the concept unappealing.

"Yeah, well, you can yell at me about that later." Tess dropped her endearing expression and turned back to Fiona. "The good news is that while I can't help you trace the demon with magic, I think there might be a way to get the information you need from Faerie."

Fiona's eyes widened. "The gate has reopened?"

"Not quite. I said get something
 
from
 
Faerie, not get you

to
 
Faerie."

"What do you mean? If the gate is sealed, I won't be able

to send so much as a split pea through it."

"No, but we do have other contact with your people than