The Brimstone Deception (10 page)

I'VE
had some strange things added to my job description since joining SPI, but I never imagined body snatcher would be one of them. Though technically it would be ambulance robber, or if we were going to get picky, ambulance hijacker.

Regardless of the semantics, I hadn't signed up for any of it.

So I was more than relieved when we didn't have to do it.

This was the NYPD we were talking about. Getting arrested—at least for me—wouldn't be
if
it would happen, but how fast. I didn't want Alain Moreau having to come down to whatever precinct they dragged me to and bail me out. It'd happened once, and I didn't want it to happen again.

Ian had just gotten the call from one of our dispatchers that the medical examiner had taken care of extending the victim's glamour for another few hours.

Dr. Anika Van Daal was the medical examiner. She was also a vampire and mage who had arrived in the city soon after it'd been taken from the Dutch by the British and the name changed from New Amsterdam to New York. That'd
been in 1625. At that time, two-thirds of the island was still wilderness.

She'd begun her medical career as a midwife, and had become the first licensed female doctor in the city. Every few decades, she “retired” from one position and took another. She'd been in her mid-twenties when she'd been turned, so she didn't stand out when she went back to school after a retirement to catch up on the latest medical advances. She'd learned to glamour and glamour well. As a result, she'd never had problems blending in or being found out.

Vivienne Sagadraco had a lot of pull in this town, and one of the ways she used it was getting supernaturals placed in strategic jobs. In addition to supernaturals in the NYPD, there were mages who, like Dr. Van Daal, could replace a glamour on a dead supernatural and hold it there until the body was turned over to the family. Or if no one claimed the body, until it was cremated or buried by the city. These mages were in the homicide divisions, medical examiner's office, and CSI teams.

The boss had covered all the bases she could, but occasionally a corpse tried to steal home. When that happened, there was a lot of scrambling and improvising by whichever agents were closest.

Thankfully today, no one needed to scramble.

We watched from a parking spot on the street that by some miracle of maneuvering, Yasha had managed to wedge the Suburban into, without turning either the car in front or the one behind us into an accordion. I'd turned to look at something totally fascinating out my window, so Yasha wouldn't see me cringing the entire time.

Our cozy spot was half a block from the murder scene. Ian wanted to stake it out for a while to see if any of the curious onlookers behind the police crime scene tape looked a little too curious—or pleased with themselves.

“Dr. Van Daal will get a copy of her report to Moreau, but the preliminary is the same MO as Gedeon's murder.”

“Portal stink?” I asked.

“Including portal stink.”

“Bert won't get a shot at this body,” I noted with no small measure of relief. “And I'm perfectly fine being half a block away from where there was a portal.” I spotted a familiar face trying to act casual as he exited the building. It was a ten-story building, and hundreds of people would have a reason to be there, but it was too much of coincidence that this individual would be one of them.

Jesin Nadisu. The apartment building manager of the Murwood, aka murder scene number one.

“Do you see—?”

Ian was out the door before I could finish.

Since Yasha was legally parked for once, he joined us.

The young goblin's day was about to take a turn for the worse.

My day was going to be just fine. Not only did Ian not tell me to wait in the SUV, but if Jesin Nadisu ran for the closest parking garage and getaway portal, I'd have plenty of qualified backup this time.

The goblin didn't run for the nearest parking garage. When he saw us, he just ran. Fast. If Yasha could have gone wolf, he could have been on our Olympic wannabe in three bounds and a leap. It was the middle of the day in Midtown, going furry wasn't an option, so we had to do it the old-fashioned way.

Ian had missed out on snagging the assassin yesterday, and he wasn't going to take second place today. Jesin Nadisu didn't want to be caught, so he was motivated. Ian was just pissed. People were being killed, a coworker was attacked, and his partner was damned near dragged to Hell—excuse me, an anteroom—by a squid demon. As a motivating factor, anger topped fear anytime.

Shots rang out that weren't ours, and the goblin went down.

People screamed.

We instantly went from pursuit to protect.

“Police!” Ian yelled. “Get inside.”

It wasn't a lie; he was the police, just not the NYPD, at least not anymore.

Regardless, when Ian ordered, people obeyed.

Soon we had the section of street to ourselves—until the NYPD investigating the murder came out to join us. We needed to be gone before that happened.

With bullets flying around, I would have liked to have been one of the people obeying Ian's order and getting the heck off the street, but instead I ran with Yasha to where the young goblin had pulled himself to the protection of a building doorway before he collapsed.

Ian ran in pursuit of the shooter, with a sharp wave to Yasha to get the car.

“Go,” I told him. “I've got this.”

Yasha didn't like it, but he went. The quicker he got back, the less chance that we'd all get arrested, and it wouldn't be for stealing a dead body; it be for taking a wounded murder suspect.

When I got to Nadisu, he was still conscious. He saw me and tried to drag himself farther away.

“Hey, we're the good guys here.
You
were running from
us
.”

Pain kept him from talking, but from the dread in his eyes, being caught was worse than being shot.

Despite his presence at two murder scenes, I didn't think Jesin Nadisu was a murderer, at least not the kind of murderer who'd eat souls and be partnered with a demon lord.

I'd been wrong before, but I knew I wasn't wrong about this.

For one, other than the small magics needed for a glamour, I didn't sense any power coming from him. The only thing a demon lord would want him for was a snack.

Blood was spreading under his suit coat on his white shirt. His hands weakly fought me as I pulled the coat back to see the damage.

A package fell out of the inner pocket. The bullet must have nicked it. An orange powder from inside dusted my hand. I highly doubted it was Tang.

I glanced at Nadisu's face to see his reaction, but he'd passed out.

Tires screeched as the Suburban arrived, and Yasha leapt out and picked up the goblin like he weighed next to nothing, laying him out on the middle seat. I jumped up beside him and started buckling him in, and Yasha shut the door behind us. The Suburban had a second set of seat belts mounted like on a stretcher.

The passenger door opened and Ian all but dove into his seat. His face was flushed and grim, and looked about as angry as I'd ever seen him.

“Get us home,” was all he said.

JESIN
Nadisu was going to be in surgery for at least two hours.

In addition to an infirmary, SPI had a fully staffed and equipped trauma center and ER, albeit on a much smaller scale than most New York hospitals. When you fought monsters and powerful mages and supernatural criminals, your people could get injuries that would do more than raise eyebrows at the neighborhood ER. Vivienne Sagadraco valued her employees, and made sure that we had only the best medical care available to us.

Jesin Nadisu was presently on the receiving end of that expertise.

We couldn't question him until he was out of recovery, and then it would be up to the trauma surgeon as to when and for how long. Not that we thought the young goblin was guilty of anything other than having a kilo of Brimstone on him. Heck, we were grateful that he had.

While the doctors were working on Jesin Nadisu, the lab down the hall was working on the Brimstone. The analysis would probably take longer than the surgery. But we wanted to be close to get word on both.

I was standing in the hall outside the main lab, looking through the glass wall.

I'd never asked the reason for a glass wall in a lab, but I guessed that privacy was less important than someone outside seeing if something went very wrong inside—and then getting help. Fast.

After hanging out in the ER waiting room for a while, I'd walked down the hall to the lab. Ian had gone to make a few phone calls. I hadn't asked him about what had happened in the chase to catch Jesin Nadisu's shooter. All that Ian had volunteered was that he'd gotten away. Something important was going on here, but I'd learned that when my partner needed me to know, he'd tell me. I was learning to tamp my curiosity down until that happened. I didn't say it was easy; I said I was learning.

The elevator door dinged.

Ian.

“Anything?” he asked, indicating the lab.

“If so, they're not acting like it.” I glanced back into the lab to make sure none of the white-coats had gone all giddy in the past ten seconds. “Nope, no high fives or group hugs.”

My partner sat in one of the chairs lining this section of wall and put his head in his hands.

I sat next to him. “Want to tell me about it yet?”

Ian didn't move for another handful of seconds, then he sat up, thunked the back of his head against the wall, and stared at the ceiling with an expression of “Why me?”

I didn't take any of that as an indictment on my curiosity, but rather frustration at the situation we were neck deep in, so I leaned my head back and helped my partner look at the ceiling.

“Nightshades,” he finally said.

“I'm assuming you're not talking about the plant.”

“I wish I was. You could get rid of those with weed killer. We rarely see these, let alone get a chance to eradicate them. They just come back. Then again, maybe they are like the plants.”

“Then they're a who, not a what.”

“Nightshades are basically elven black ops mercenaries. They'll do whatever they're paid enough to do. Today one of them was paid to get Jesin Nadisu.”

“He didn't do a very good job.”

“It's lucky we were here so he couldn't finish the job. If we hadn't been watching—”

“He wouldn't be here and alive getting stitched up.”

“Yeah.”

“But you saw the shooter, and I take it you recognized him.”

“He's one of their best marksmen.”

“And he only got Jesin in the side?”

Ian gave me a flat look.

“He didn't kill him on purpose?” I guessed.

Ian nodded once. “There was an ambulance parked around the corner.”

I knew where this was going and it wasn't anywhere good. “A fake ambulance to fool anyone who saw them. They wanted him alive.”

“And afraid and in pain. They hired Nightshades to make it happen. And if he had died . . . there are necromancers who sell their services to the highest bidder. The Nightshades keep two on retainer.”

Cripes.

“Jesin doesn't look like the drug-runner type.”

“The best runners arouse the least suspicion, and neither one of us would have suspected the manager of an exclusive, high-rent apartment building to be running drugs.”

“He does dress well,” I admitted. “Do you think he knew who was gunning for him?”

“Maybe, maybe not. We won't know until we can talk to him. In the meantime, I'm having Ord Larcwyde brought in for questioning, though the agents picking him up have been told to go with ‘protective custody.'”

I grinned. “Ord does value his safety.”

“I thought it'd go over better. Whoever was pulling that demon lord's strings was worried enough that Ord had damaging information to send a demon assassin after him. I want to know what that information is.”

“When he gets here, you might want to let me do the chatting. He likes me more than he does you.” I thought of something and chuckled. “I wonder if he's come out of his freezer yet.”

“If not, the agents are taking a blowtorch with them, just in case. Either he comes out on his own, or the boys go to work on his cube.”

A door opened down the hall in the hospital wing and Dr. Stephens gestured for us to come down there.

Our patient was awake.

*   *   *

“I'll let you do the talking,” I told Ian.

He gave me a bemused glance. “Really. You're sure about that.” Neither was a question, at least not real ones.

“Hey, I've never questioned a shooting victim fresh out of surgery. I take it you have.”

“I have.”

“Then this one's all yours.”

“I'll believe it when I don't hear it.”

We went into the recovery room.

Jesin Nadisu looked like hell.

Though he didn't look nearly as bad as Sar Gedeon had. Thanks to the skill of our surgical team, Jesin at least had all his pieces and parts. Most of them probably hurt right now, but at least he still had them. Considering all that he'd been through in the past few hours, I thought I should keep that comparison to myself. The young goblin had gotten off
lucky. For the sake of his continued emotional well-being, I'd keep that to myself, too.

SPI's chief trauma surgeon had told us not to stay for longer than five minutes. The only reason she wasn't in the room with us was that she didn't need to be. There was a two-way mirror next to the door that would let her see and hear everything that went on. At the first sign of fatigue or distress from her patient, I was certain she'd be in here with us a split second later, telling us to leave. Nicely the first time, then not so nice. SPI agent, suspect, or caught-red-handed clawed criminal, her patients were her top priority. One of the things we learned in new-agent training was not to argue with Dr. Barbara Carey.

“Mr. Nadisu?” Ian said quietly, but loud enough to be heard. “Mr. Nadisu, I need to ask you just a few questions, and then you can continue to rest.”

The goblin's eyes fluttered open. Large, dark, and long lashed, he looked even younger than he had when he'd met us in the lobby of the Murwood. If he'd been human, he wouldn't have looked old enough to buy a beer, let alone manage an exclusive apartment building.

“Agent Byrne.” His voice was rough from the breathing tube we'd been told they'd had to use during surgery. Apparently the bullet had nicked the bottom of his lung and a not-so-minor blood vessel or two. He blinked a few times and focused on me. “And Agent Fraser.” He tried a weak smile that didn't quite make it. “I can explain about the Brimstone.”

At least we had confirmation that what the lab was analyzing was Brimstone. Though right now, a plastic-wrapped, brick-shaped block of glowing orange powder taken from a demonic murder scene couldn't be much else.

“Do you know who shot you?” Ian asked.

Nadisu didn't answer.

“If you're worried about them getting to you, don't,” I told him. “You're safe here.”

Ian cleared his throat.

Oops. So much for letting him do the talking.

“Do you know where you are?” Ian asked.

“No.”

My partner was silent for a moment. “How long have you been in our dimension?”

I refrained from doing a double take. Ian's voice was actually gentle. He clearly knew something that I didn't.

“If you're here illegally, we won't send you back,” he continued.

Oh, okay, now I got it.

Both goblins and elves were very selective over who they let come through the permanent dimensional portal between our world and theirs. Though like humans, if you wanted to get here badly enough, you'd find a way. For supernaturals, that meant paying a small fortune in bribes to mercenaries with access to an illegal portal.

Both races operated under a controlling monarchy supported by a powerful aristocracy. Unless you were related to an influential family or had a magical talent that the nobility were interested in, you might as well not exist. No rights, no hope of a better life, and if you pissed off the wrong noble or mage—no life at all.

Humans weren't the only species who came to New York looking for a better life.

Unless they could afford papers to let them pass as a legal citizen of the good ol' U S of A, and could afford to have a mage fit them with a glamour to let them pass as human, they were just like the thousands of undocumented human immigrants in the city, but with goblins and elves, the term “alien” was literal.

In such an environment, it wasn't a surprise to anyone that organizations emerged to “govern” their people, to resolve differences without human interference, to serve up justice when it was needed, and to execute whoever they decided should be.

Police, judge, jury, and executioner.

Any attempt by SPI to intervene was called interference in a “goblin matter” or “elven business.”

We saw them as the criminal families they were.

And Jesin Nadisu was apparently scared to death of one of them.

“You're at SPI headquarters,” Ian told him. “So whoever it is that you're afraid of can't get to you here.”

The goblin sighed. “Would you like to bet on that?”

“We know about Nightshades,” Ian said. “You're completely safe from them or anyone else you may have reason to fear.”

Including demons opening portals. Then I had another thought.

“Your employer, maybe?” I asked.

The goblin turned even pastier, if that was possible.

The door immediately opened.

“That's all, Agents Byrne and Fraser.” Dr. Barbara Carey wasn't going to accept any response other than us getting away from her patient.

Within seconds, we were in the hall with the door firmly closed behind us.

If I could've kicked myself in the ass, I would've. “Dammit, I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry about it. Our time was almost up. Dr. Carey wouldn't have let us have a second more. Sounds like the kid's afraid of his boss.”

“Do we know who owns the Murwood?”

“No, but Kenji has a database of buildings owned by supernaturals. Murwood is the name of a forest in the goblin and elf dimension, so chances are good that a supernatural owns the building.”

“I have a couple of follow-ups I need to do, so I'll check in with Kenji on that.”

Ian nodded. “I'll wait for Dr. Carey to come out and see when she might let us talk to Jesin Nadisu again, though I'm not holding my breath for it being anytime soon.”

I tilted my head down the hall. “And if you could listen out for any celebrations erupting in the lab.”

“Will do.”

I headed down to the bull pen and to my desk.

Only to find Alain Moreau sitting in my chair.

Aw crap.

Being called into your manager's office was stress inducing enough. But to have your manager camp out in your chair to wait for you?

I'd stepped in something serious. Even worse, I'd stepped in so much lately, I had no clue which pile this could be about. At least he hadn't had to come down to one of the NYPD's precincts to bail me out. Regardless, I was sure I looked like a kid with their hand in the cookie jar, even though I didn't know what I'd done.

Alain Moreau looked like a man about to fire someone.

He'd hired me. He could fire me.

“I can explain,” I told him. That is, as soon as I knew what he was here for. “Or . . . do I just need to pack a box?”

Moreau looked baffled—baffled and tired. “I beg your pardon?”

“A box. To clean out my desk.”

More bafflement as he regarded the surface of my desk. “It appears to be acceptably tidy. Why would you need to clean—?”

“You're not firing me?”

“You're not going anywhere, Agent Fraser.”

I took an involuntary step backward. Maybe SPI management considered firing to be wasteful. If I was a failure as an agent, maybe I'd be a rousing success as a meal in the employee cafeteria. After all, I wouldn't actually have to do anything. I couldn't screw that up.

“Unless you wish to leave,” he continued, still sounding tired.

Now I was confused.

He had the same expression as Ian had upstairs—too
much bad news and no idea how to deal with it. But instead of thunking his head against a wall, Moreau ran his hand through his perfect hair. Hair that was still perfect. I wasn't sure if it'd even moved. Maybe it was a vampire thing.

“We have questioned both Agent Filarion and Mr. Sadler, and neither have experienced any effects—ill or otherwise—from being exposed to the ley line convergence.”

“Dang it.”

One of Moreau's silvery eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“Okay, that didn't come out right. Sorry, sir. It's just that that wasn't what I wanted to hear. I mean, I'm glad that Caera and Ben didn't get zapped with some kind of mutant power, but it'd be nice not to have the only explanation left being a bizarre mind-meld, power-transfer thing with Viktor Kain. I'm not exactly enthused about catching anything from a multi-millennia-old, psychotic criminal mastermind.” I paused for breath and sighed. “At least I don't have an urge to take over the world,” I muttered. “Yet.”