The earthquake hit almost as soon as we stepped out of the corners office. I was jolted forward as the wave passed, snagged my foot on the curb, and hit the ground in a solid collision that left me reeling. By the time I was done groaning, it’d already passed the world was calm once more. Calm except for the cacophony of crying birds and dogs barking far off.
The people of Ashen were so used to the quakes that no one even bothered running out into the streets. Mine was likely the most serious injury in the whole city, and that was saying something. I’d scraped the skin and some flesh off one elbow, leaving it quite a bit bloody. Kaiten came up from behind, grabbed my uninjured arm and hauled me up none too gently.
“Oww!” I cried, jerking out of his grip. “Did I ask for your help, Iceman? I think you hurt me even more.”
Kaiten looked at me without a shadow of sympathy. “How the hell have you survived all these years? You didn’t even stop walking.”
“I thought I could get to car in time.”
“The car is all the way across the parking lot,” he snapped. “What were you afraid of? They sky falling on your head?”
“Damn Typhon and his tricks. This is him you know,” I replied, ignoring his obvious inquiry. Everyone knew the sky couldn’t fall. What an idiot. “Some prenaturals think he’s causing the earthquakes.”
Kaiten answered my blatant attempt to misdirect his attention with a deadpan stare that left me biting my lip and trying to employ dimple-power. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what happened inside,” he said. “You knew Leela Snow was a werewolf. I checked her file—her other file. There’s no mention of her mutation anywhere.”
“Fine. Fine, I’ll tell you. Promise this stays between us?”
“If it pertains to the case, I’ll follow the trail wherever it leads,” he said. “The most I can promise is to keep your name out of it.”
A sigh escaped my lips. “Alright…Schuler called me yesterday night. He told me everything he knew about the case, as a way to mend bridges between-”
Kaiten was suddenly beside me, and I could feel the anger washing off him in sweeping waves. His aura burst out in a kaleidoscope of spinning colors, and I felt something lurking deep behind it. A beast that wanted to be free.
“Bullshit,” he spat. “That is a damned lie, detective, and I’m not buying it. The truth in ten seconds or I’m going to look into every inch of your past until I find something to use against you.”
Normally I’d back away. I wasn’t the kind to jump into a confrontation unless I was certain I could win. I’m the dog who slinks away with her tail between her legs, only to return during the night to tear out my enemies’ eyes while they’re sleeping. However, this wasn’t the time to give ground. I’d shown Kaiten a certain amount of leniency that I wouldn’t others, and it’d taught him not to fear me.
“Use against me?” I asked slowly. “Are you suggesting blackmail, detective inspector? As you likely know, I’m having dinner with my father tonight. Perhaps you’ve heard of him: Chief Commissioner Danthir Rohin, aka the man who has your balls in his fist?”
To his credit, Kaiten didn’t even react. Not so much as a twitch. “I’m an honest and decorated officer. The Commissioner has a reputation for fairness, and the fact that you’re still sitting at a desk is proof of that.”
“Fine, you called my bluff and I came up empty,” I replied, stepping almost right into him, “but you spent three years in Deadtown, undercover in a gang no less. What did they make you do? It probably wasn’t pretty; I know a great deal about their rites of passage and some of my friends from Deadtown still keep in touch.”
This time, he paled. I saw some of the fight leave his eyes.
“What?” I demanded. “Afraid? Afraid of what I’m going to find if I make a few calls? I know there must be something you’re hiding from those days. Maybe you even a killed a person or two. What’s one more murdered gang member, right?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw, contracting and loosening. “You’ll never find anything. Deadtown is where secrets go to die.”
“Only for those who don’t know where to look,” I replied unwaveringly. “If you dig a grave for me, make sure you dig on for yourself too, because I’m going to drag you down to hell with me.”
“I’m glad we understand each other,” he said. “You stay out of my way and I stay out of yours.”
“Fuck, Iceman. Sometimes you’re actually smart,” I laughed, but the laugh was more a biting threat than anything else. “Another day, another place and we might’ve been friends.”
“Perhaps. Will you need a ride to the station?”
The question came with such suddenness that I didn’t have time to keep my surprise bottled. Of course, that was all a part of the game. He’d managed to crack my poker face, the bastard had. Whatever he was, Iceman played a good game of ‘don’t back down’. I seriously didn’t want to know how he was in hand-to-hand or with a pistol in his fist.
“I may need a ride, yes,” I replied. “Are you offering?”
Kaiten sighed. “Get in the car.”
Great. I’d just had a fight with the one guy willing to drive me around, and I had a whole day behind a desk ahead of me and nothing to do.
♦ ♦ ♦
If anything, my life was brimming with excitement, and I figured that out five minutes after Kaiten and I pulled out of the coroner’s office. We idled at a red light, separated by a thousand miles of awkward silence, and the morning traffic was just beginning to swell. Early birds going to office. This was Codo, of course, the busiest district in Ashe and the center of its business arena.
A beige sedan pulled up alongside the Camaro, and man wearing a durag leaned out to say something to me. He wasn’t a man, really. The illusion of being human was firmly in place, so anyone who saw him wouldn’t look twice, but his attempt to seem like an ordinary person couldn’t fool me. I was a glamourist, and a mediocre prenatural didn’t have a chance of fooling me.
Under it all, the man was a riphead. They were mercenaries of the prenatural world who would do about anything for the right price, and the right price was decided entirely on the morals and stupidity of the riphead in question. Considering they had no morals and they were a step above ogres in their decision making abilities, even preschoolers could hire one with their day’s lunch money.
The riphead in question was rather low on the mercenary ladder, which I could tell by the vertical, yellow mark that painted his dappled forehead. If there were two marks, I might’ve watched out for him. Three marks, I’d start getting nervous. Four, I’d probably just draw my FN Five-Seven and shoot him dead. I’d wonder what the fuck happened afterward. Five vertical marks meant shit had hit the fan, and I needed to find a place to hide and possibly stay hidden for a long while. To my knowledge, ripheads never went above five marks on their head, but I couldn’t be sure. In any event, I didn’t want to know.
They were rather ordinary seeming people, these, but not ordinary enough to walk around without illusions. Mottled colors spread across their flesh, almost like they’d been dipped in paint and left to soak. I had it on good authority that it was all natural, and it made them one of the prettier breed of monsters I’d crossed paths with. They came in all shapes, but most were long limbed and extremely determined to succeed in their job.
The guy in the driver’s seat was a riphead as well and he watched me, a smile on his face. It was one of those cold, threatening smiles that Kaiten threw at me every five or ten seconds, as it fancied him. It was one of those smiles that made me glad I had a weapon pressed up against the side of my chest.
“You get our message, sweet thing?” asked the guy, showing a line of serrated, tobacco stained teeth. Probably a coward, I guessed, and seriously high on something.
I watched the riphead for a long moment, perfectly calm. The moment they had drawn up, I’d known something was wrong. Kaiten reacted to my coldness almost instantly, assuming a flat expression of nothing and nothing. The pair of us probably looked like bisque dolls ready to go to war, just that I had really big eyes and dimples while he was a wall of unbreakable ice.
“Message?” I asked. One word; massive impact; learn from the master. “Why would a riphead deliver a message to me?”
That hit him—those last words. His flesh changed colors almost, and his aura flared with a flash of yellow fear. “How’d you know-?”
“You mentioned a message,” I reminded him. “I’m waiting.”
A blue tongue darted out of his mouth, flicking out over his lips in a gesture of uncertainty. “Yeah, the message. An old friend sent us,” he replied, stressing the two words. “We said we’d be in touch, remember?”
The message from last night leapt to my mind. The one left on my kitchen counter with my sister’s picture in it. I doubted seriously these two were fuckers behind it, but they’d most likely been employed by the mastermind of the plot. If he was careful, which I knew he was, he wouldn’t have told them who he was, but I wasn’t entirely rational at the moment. Someone had threatened my sister, and I finally had a target to take all my anger out on.
“You’re dead,” I said without inflection, “both of you. Run, because you’re fucking dead.”
Something in my voice must’ve rung true, because they were roaring out of the intersection a second later with rubber burning in their wake. I don’t remember shouting my head off at Kaiten to follow them or grabbing him by the collar, but I found us in quick pursuit without even realizing we’d taken off.
The Camaro danced through traffic, catching up and tailing the sedan under Kaiten’s expert hand. He veered into them twice, causing them to sway erratically and slow their car in fear. He finally drew abreast of the pair, flashed his silver badge, and then forced them to give up by racing ahead and blocking their way. With oncoming traffic to one side and nowhere to go, they braked rapidly and came to a still.
I was out of the Camaro before it even stopped, feet pounding the asphalt. I came alongside the passenger side, face fixed in a mask of fury. “Open the fucking door!” I shouted, but the riphead had rolled his window up and locked the car. They were single-markers, and they knew they couldn’t take me. Call it instinct. “Open it or I’m going to hurt you!”
I saw him shake his head, and I just snapped. My hand went into my jacket, and I drew the FN Five-Seven. Gripping it by the slide, I swung backhanded and smashed the window amidst a cascade of glass. Shards cut his face and hands, and great deal of them just fell into his lap. The riphead tried to scramble away, but I gripped him by the throat and drew him almost clear out of the window.
My blood burned hot, giving strength to my muscles. I’d never really known my parents, so I wasn’t sure where I got my strength, but it helped in situations like this. The asshole’s eyes widened when he realized he couldn’t fight me, and that shock turned to pain when I drew my fist back and rammed it against the bridge of his nose.
“Fuck!” he shouted, blood spewing from his nostrils and down across his lips in a gush of dark red. “Fuck, lady!”
I gripped him by the collar, perfectly aware of my surroundings and even Kaiten’s rapid approach from behind me. In this heightened killing state, nothing escaped my attention. “Who hired you? A name or you die here and now.”
“We just got paid to deliver a message!” he howled, voice thick with pain. “It was all over the phone. An envelope came to our door, I swear!”
Kaiten’s hand wrapped around my upper arm. “Azadana,” he whispered urgently, “people are watching. There are cameras everywhere. Don’t do this; you know better.”
I hesitated, but that moment of indecision robbed me of the will to murder. He was right, and I was a stupid bitch for losing control in public. This went against everything I knew. Everything I’d taught myself and been taught over the years. Shit, but this was just clean stupid. What would I have done? Killed the man in broad daylight?
“Azadana,” he repeated, and this time it was said much more firmly. He pulled my arm, and I felt myself go with his strength. He was strong. Not just strong. Stronger than he had any reason to be. Stronger than a human. “Come willingly or I’ll drag you away. Don’t make me do that.”
I jerked out of his grip and strode to the Camaro. I should’ve been shaking, and years ago something like this would have me doing exactly that, but I was perfectly in control of my body. Not my emotions, but certainly my body. That was the difference between a professional and an amateur. Professionals were always at top form, even if they lost their minds.
I noticed Kaiten’s hands were steady on the steering wheel as we drove away, and there was nothing but emptiness in his eyes. I knew what to expect. Anger, questions, answers and then a lecture. That’s how it was with him. It was surprising I knew so much about the man despite the fact that I’d met him less than twenty-four hours ago.
The ripheads would be long gone by now. Their car was probably stolen and untraceable, and it didn’t matter anyways. They knew nothing, a fact that hurt me to admit. How easy would it have been if two low-level grunts could give me the name of their employer? It was never that easy, not when you were dealing veterans of the game.
Kaiten parked finally along the side of the road and killed the engine with a sharp twist of his wrist. Scary. He angled his body slightly so that we were facing each other, and I pressed myself back against the door almost without thinking. It would give me time to draw my weapon if I had to, which was an odd event to consider since I wasn’t afraid of Kaiten. I was afraid of what he could do if he wanted, but the man was too stable to lose control. Just wasn’t the kind.
“Would it help if I said you looked absolutely tasty in that shirt?” I asked innocently. “The color really brings out your eyes.”
“Stop that,” he said without wavering, “it isn’t endearing to make light of what just happened.”
“Kaiten…”
“I risked everything back there, detective,” he replied. “My career; my reputation. I honestly believe you had no idea how much danger you put us both in. Imagine if they had killed an innocent bystander during the chase or pulled a gun on you and started firing.”
“I would’ve killed them if they did.”
“I believe that. In fact, I believe that if I hadn’t stopped you, it you would have killed them anyways,” he replied, but it wasn’t said as an accusation or criticism. He was telling me he’d seen the darkness on the surface, ready to break out. “I want an explanation, and in this you owe me one. Who were those men?”
My mouth tightened into a grim line of refusal. I was acting like a child, sure, but I think I had a goddamned right to. Someone was killing people in a way I’d only seen on other person do—me. Someone else was sending me late night messages—breaking into my apartment to do so—with pictures of sister along with them. On top of all that, everyone thought I was mole for Deadtown gangsters and couldn’t be trusted. It was all one, colossal clusterfuck of bad luck.
I blame it on the Puppet Master.
“Who were those men, detective?”
Oh, he was throwing the detective card around. No more first names. “No idea. Wanna go back and ask them?”
“Allow me to rephrase: why were you chasing them?”
“That’s not rephrasing. That’s an entirely different question.”
“You’re not even remotely amusing. I want an answer from you.”
Not even remotely amusing? Well, I never!
“No idea,” I repeated, prolonging the words as if they’d make more sense that way. “No idea. No idea. Go the message, detective?”
“You expect me to believe you chased down two men, broke their car window and smashed one of them across the nose without any reason?”
I raised my hands in resignation. “Alright, allow me to rephrase: it’s none of your fucking business.”
“You made it mine the moment I saved your ass back there,” he snapped. “So you had better give me an excellent damned reason not to bring criminal charges against you.”
“Criminal charges?” I laughed mockingly. “Yeah, for what? I could easily argue I had reason to believe the men were dangerous. They were fleeing, even, which just makes it all that easier.”
“I won’t do it based on what you did to them,” he replied. “Are you forgetting something? The moment you grabbed my shirt and told me to chase them, that was assault. I feared for my safety, so I was forced to obey. Placing an officer of the law under duress isn’t taken lightly, and considering how everyone hates you, I won’t have to work all that hard to have you removed from the force.”
If only I’d been stuck with an idiot, things would’ve so much easier. “You’d lie under oath just to get at me?”
“I wouldn’t lie; I would state the facts as they were, and their implication would be clear. Decide now. I’m done playing your roundabout games and dealing with your childish tantrums.”
We just stared at each other for a long while, and I couldn’t help but admire the shape of his lips and the straight cast of his jaw. That’s me: noticing inappropriate deals at all the wrong times. I just couldn’t help it; anger made everything so much sharper and beautiful. I’d certainly seen better than Kaiten, but his appeal was in the fact that he didn’t care. He wasn’t even trying to impress anyone. The question, however, was if I could I trust him.
A breath slipped past my lips, and I leaned my head back. “This is my problem, so you let me deal with it however I want. This stays between us,” I said. “Just us.”
“It stays between us,” he agreed with a nod.
“Sure about that?”
“I keep my promises.”
Suggesting I don’t, huh? Tricky bastard. Well, here goes. “After you dropped me off last night, I found a note in my kitchen,” I said heavily. “It had a recent picture of my sister in it and a threat to harm my family. That’s about all I know about any of this, and if you want me to tell you more, I can come up with some fictional shit to please you.”
Kaiten smiled slightly, but there was also a shadow of worry on his chiseled features. “For once, I think you’re telling the truth,” he murmured almost absently. “Wasn’t there a demand of some sort? They must want you to do something.”
“Oh, they want me to do something, but they just haven’t gotten around to telling me yet. These guys are the kinds who scare the shit out of you long before they start talking,” I replied. “I’m not sure it has anything to do with me, really. I don’t have any access to sensitive information. I mean, a rookie could find out just as much as I could by using the police database.”
“That leaves only one option: your father.”
“My uncle.”
“Yes, your father,” he repeated. “He’s a powerful man, perhaps they hope to use you somehow. You need to report-”
My eyes hardened. “What did I say? I’m handling this my way, and you have no right to interfere. You keep your promises, remember? Or was that all crap to get me talking?”
“It wasn’t,” answered Kaiten stiffly. “You can expect me to stay out of it…if that’s what you would prefer.”
“It’s what I would prefer, so let’s not talk about this again.”
Kaiten turned and started the car, but he paused before doing anything else. “How did you know they were ripheads? I didn’t see anything to give them away.”
I shrugged and looked away. “I’ve learned some tricks, detective. Nothing hides from me…at least not for long.”
And on that note. Goodbye.
Glamourist Extraordinaire 