Catastrophe (8 page)

He finished his beer and exhaled, leaning back in his chair. “Your turn. What do you know about the others and how do you know it?”

“The others?” I hadn’t lied. I would answer his questions, but I needed him to be more specific in what he asked. I didn’t want to volunteer information about things he had no idea existed. The man had already been through too much.

He caught the waitress’s eye and motioned at his drink before looking back to me. “Don’t play dumb. I bared my soul to you. The least you can do is tell me what I want to know.”

The front door opened and a gust of wind carried through the restaurant. I could smell some sort of fae in the air: sweet with faint traces of cinnamon. I glanced around the restaurant trying to pinpoint where it was, but I couldn’t find it. The fae race was large and varied. There were species small enough to fit in my pocket and ones that were the size of small houses. The smell, though, was too familiar to ignore. It was definitely the same one I caught a whiff of in the Office.

Sy always seemed to know everything that was happening around Chicago, and as a half-elf he would have plenty of fae connections. He could have potentially recruited something like a pixie—they would be small enough and could hide almost anywhere and find out whatever he needed to know…

I stood up and walked slowly toward the front of the room, looking for the fae.

Of course, on the other hand, the council could have done the same thing. While I knew they sent Amos to spy on me, that didn’t mean that they didn’t have other methods as well. People openly stared at me as I walked around their tables sniffing the air, but I didn’t care. Somewhere in here was a faery, and I was going to find it. I spotted it behind the bar, blending into the bottles. Gotcha.

“What are you doing?” Dempsey asked, taking hold of my arm.

There was no way I would get back there without being noticed, so I let him lead me back to the table.

“Are you okay?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

I leaned in close to his ear before I took my seat. “We’re not alone.”

He nodded slowly, holding out my chair for me. “Right,” he said as he took his seat and another drink, casually glancing around the room. “Where are you from?”

“Chicago.” If I concentrated hard enough, I could hear the flutter of its wings as it maneuvered closer.

The pleasant expression on Dempsey’s face looked forced, but he held it well. “Is this your first time in New Orleans?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re a private detective?”

I nodded, waiting for the flutter to get close enough I could snatch the little snitch. “How about you? Are you from here? Have you always lived here? What made you become a detective?” I asked, keeping my voice very low to lure it closer.

A smile haunted his lips, but it was sad. “Born and raised. Never moved away.”

I waved over the waitress, pretending the fae wasn’t nearly within my grasp. “Can we have another round and four shots of tequila?” I watched her walk away before I looked back at him. “I don’t care about your past any more than you care about mine. We’re both here for one reason only. We had a shitty day.”

“You have no idea,” he said, but his eyes traveled to my head. “Or maybe you do.”

I nodded. “Let’s just drink and eat and fucking laugh while the world burns.”

The waitress set our drinks on the table. He picked up a shot and held it out to me. I clinked my glass against his.

“I knew I liked you.” He shot it back, and I did the same as my hand darted out, capturing the nosy little pest and pinning her to the table.

The night was already looking better. “Who do you work for?” I said. Her wings fluttered and she bit me, but I kept a firm grasp on her. “Bite me again and I’ll pluck off your wings and leave you here.”

She went still, arms dropped to the side. “How did you find me?”

“Who do you work for?” I asked slowly.

“Sy was worried about you,” she said.

My hand loosened for just a moment before I tightened it again. “Why should I believe you?”

She crossed her tiny arms. “Because it’s true. Ask him yourself… Oh wait, you can’t. That’s why I’m here.” She promptly sank her tiny teeth into my hand again.

It was just like Sy to find a way to communicate with me, when the council had otherwise blocked our channels of communication. I released the faery. “Tell him I am fine, but the vampire situation needs to be looked into.”

With one sharp nod, she took off from the table. I looked back up, and Dempsey was staring at me with the shot glass paused right before his lips. “What the fuck was that?” he asked.

I grimaced. “You should probably have all of these.” I gave him my last shot. I didn’t have much choice now, especially if he could already see the faery.

****

It was late enough and I was numb enough that suddenly everything felt like a good idea. Though walking was a bit troublesome, especially for Dempsey, who bumped against me again.

“You’re weaving,” I told him.

“I think it’s you,” he said with a slur. “I can fix it.” He put his arm around me, pressing my hip tight against his. “Better?”

“Mmm.” The alcohol did a pretty good job shutting up the internal voice that sounded a lot like my mother telling me that I was being irresponsible and I had a job to do. “I’ll do my job,” I mumbled as we slowly went back to the hotel.

“What job?” he asked.

“Find the killer and bring him to justice, no matter who he is.” And that was the crux of the problem. It appeared we had two different killers. Dempsey was chasing a loup-garou, but what I was chasing definitely wasn’t. There was a cold, calculated killer who wanted something, though I couldn’t see what that was. Then we also had the vampires who wanted me to give them Thomas and Corbin, who had betrayed and then attempted to save me, which only confused matters more.

Despite everything, I liked Corbin and I didn’t hate Thomas. I didn’t always approve of their methods—okay, I never liked their actions, but we all made mistakes. I had made plenty of them in my life. As far as I was concerned, we could all happily live out our lives not being assholes to each other or using one another, but I couldn’t say the same for either of them. For the first time, I kind of wished I had listened to Sy and kept my mouth shut. That way I wouldn’t have to ruin Dempsey’s life further by telling him what he only thought he wanted to know. I wouldn’t be in this mess with the damn vampires, and this case would be Frost’s problem and not mine.

I grabbed Dempsey by the front of the shirt and pressed my lips hard against his. It only took a split second for him to respond. He shifted his body so we fit together better, and his tongue brushed against the seam of my lips. I smiled against him. It wasn’t like kissing Sy, but it wasn’t bad either. I couldn’t feel myself falling and I certainly wasn’t worried about falling in love with him, but it served the purpose I needed it to. My mind was once again blissfully blank as he backed me up against the building behind us.

I lightly ran my nails down his chest until I got to the waistband of his pants. He pulled back slightly, his hypnotic brown eyes hooded as he brushed his hand against the side of my head and I sucked in a breath. “Are you okay?” he said, instantly pulling away. “Did I hurt you?” He leaned in closer to look at my head. “You’re bleeding again,” he said. “You need to go to the hospital. I think you need stitches.”

And the moment was broken. I brushed his hand away. “I’m fine.”

A sound down the street and laughter somewhere in the distance sobered me almost instantly. We were on the street at night in a city filled with vampires. Not the smartest decision I had ever made. I started back down the sidewalk with more purpose. Providing Corbin wasn’t lying, it probably wasn’t safe for either of us to be out here now.

“Femi, stop. Talk to me. What are you doing? What happened to you tonight?”

“I don’t have time for twenty questions.” I walked a little faster. “Sorry, but this was a mistake.” Humans were so fragile. The vampires could break him like a twig. “You should stay away from me. Like you said, I’m trouble.”

He caught my arm. “You still haven’t told me—”

I shook my head. “Not here. Let’s get off the street.”

Finally back at my hotel room, he spoke again. “No more stalling. Tell me everything.”

There was an envelope on the desk that hadn’t been there before. I went over picked it up, sitting down on the chair. “There are people watching me. The more you are seen with me, the greater the risk to your life. Right now, that’s what you need to know. I promise before I leave this city, I will tell you all about the Abyss. I can’t be responsible for you too.”

His mouth fell open. “I’m a police officer—”

“Your laws don’t matter to them.” There was a note on it from Amos, basically saying he must have missed me and that he was heading out to look for me. How had he gotten into my room? I opened the envelope and looked inside. It was filled with police reports. “Close the door behind you,” I said without looking up.

Dempsey didn’t budge. “No. I have waited this long. I have no life outside of the loup-garou curse. I deserve to know the truth.”

“I don’t know anything about the curse. I had never even heard of it until I met you. What do you want me to say? Magic is real. Curses are real. And there are plenty of things in this world that hunt humans for food.” I crossed my legs. “The more you know, the worse it will get. I have watched another human go through this.”

“I don’t want your help,” he said, coming closer. “I want answers.”

I gave him a helpless gesture.

He pulled out his handcuffs and dangled them in front of me.

Judging by his face, he didn’t intend to use them in a fun way. “Do you believe in vampires?”

His teeth clicked together a few times. “I think we both do. For all I know, you are one, because you aren’t human.”

I rolled my eyes. “So if I’m not human, I must be a vampire? That’s ridiculous.”

“Then enlighten me. Why are you here?” He sat on the edge of my bed, resting his elbows against his knees. “Did you follow the curse back here from Chicago? Is that how I lost it?” He waited for me to respond, but I couldn’t. The lies I should have said stuck in my throat. He closed his eyes.

“That’s possible,” I said softly. “But that isn’t why I am here.”

“Then why? If you aren’t a vampire, what are you?”

I reached up around my neck and touched the clasp of the necklace the coven charmed to make me appear more human. One of two things would happen next: either I would disappear and Dempsey wouldn’t be able to see me, or he’d see me as I truly was. This was exactly the sort of revelation I should have avoided, but looking at him so haunted and tired, I couldn’t keep up the charade. No one deserved to live with a burden like he carried. With a deep breath, I took it off.

His head pulled back then he squinted at me and his mouth fell open slightly. “How much did we have to drink?” he asked, reaching out toward me then pulling back almost immediately without touching me. “You—” He shook his head.

I pressed my fingers to his lips and he flinched slightly. It wasn’t like I was a monster, even by human standards. I just wasn’t exactly like them. I was a descendant of the goddess Sekhmet. He should be happy I didn’t look like her. We had evolved over the years to fit into the world around us better. My race no longer had the head of a lion, but we did retain many catlike features, including our eyes and vertically contracting pupils, claw-like fingernails, slightly pointed teeth, an excellent sense of balance, skin flecked with gold, and nine lives. Thankfully, the mane, the whiskers, and the tail fell victims to evolution.

“You can see me,” I whispered in his ear. “That means you can see the others too. That puts you in a very dangerous situation. Humans aren’t supposed to know about us.”

He slowly moved his head up and down.

“Did you see the faery in the restaurant?” I raised an eyebrow and he looked confused. Obviously he didn’t. If that was the case, why could he see me now? “There was a creak outside my hotel room door.” I looked through the peephole but nothing was there, at least not anything I could see. Amos could obviously come and go from my room freely. Talking here probably wasn’t any better than talking at the restaurant.

“I have to go,” he said, sliding by me, careful not to touch me or look directly at me.

“Watch your back, Dempsey,” I said.

“How do I know you aren’t the killer?” he asked, still looking at the door.

His question stung, but I’d suspected him earlier of the same thing. “I don’t kill people,” I said, raising my chin ever so slightly. “I save them.”

The door softly clicked behind him.

I slept for a couple hours to help my body heal before I really gave the envelope Amos had left for me attention. There were eight known human cases, but he’d left a note inside that mentioned there were many more disappearances, so it was hard to say if any could have been this killer or typical vampire hunting. Given the vampire population in the area, it was very possible none of the disappearances were the loup-garou. And that was the problem with looking into the human cases, and probably why none of the other bounty hunters did it. It opened a can of worms. Too many species targeted humans, and we definitely couldn’t save them all. No one expected us to.

While I didn’t have pictures, most of the crime scenes sounded about on par with the one scene I had been to: messy and chaotic. Basically, exactly what I would expect from the attack of a rage-filled man-beast. However, three of the scenes did mention that most of the body was gone and only pieces remained. That was promising. I also didn’t miss Dempsey’s name on all the reports. A voice in my mind pointed out more than once that if I were the killer, making sure I was investigating the crimes would be a great way to cover them up. He’d already admitted to killing his family—why not complete strangers too?

However, his story was good and heartfelt. I believed him, cautiously. I had learned with Thomas that sometimes it was all too easy to miss what should have been obvious because I didn’t want to see the truth. Emotion had no part in bounty hunting or investigations. Despite how much pain he carried with him, Dempsey had to be a suspect in the killings—at least the human ones. While they weren’t my case officially, they were the closest thing to wolf attacks happening down here, so maybe it was part of Leilah’s test for me. Which meant I would find out everything I could about the loup-garou curse—for Leilah, of course, not Dempsey.

There was a knock on my door. I glanced out the window. The sun was already coming up, so at least it wasn’t a vampire.

“Femi,” Amos called from the other side. “Are you in there?”

I let him in.

His face was pale. “I looked for you all night. Where did you go? I thought you were coming to meet me here. I was worried that…” He looked away.

“That I was chopped into bits like the other bounty hunters? Not likely.” I patted his shoulder. “Thanks for the files.”

“So what happened?” he asked.

“I was delayed.” The council didn’t need to know about the vampires, not until I heard back from Sy. There were simply too many coincidences to trust anyone else. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

He frowned, but nodded. “You all right, then?”

I gave him a questioning look. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He looked past me to the human cases strewn over my floor with the paranormal cases. “I still don’t understand what the human cases will tell you,” he said. “They appear to be completely different.”

“Mostly,” I said, “but there is something off about them too. Why does the council care about this case in particular? Why exactly was I sent here?”

“Werewolf attacks are never taken lightly,” he said, seriously.

“Right,” I said. So they were still going with the werewolf story. “I guess not.”

“What are you thinking?” he asked, looking back up. “You see something, don’t you?”

I shook my head. “That’s just it. I don’t see anything. It looks perfectly random. The victims don’t seem to connect, the humans were killed differently, and nothing about them actually says werewolf to me, except the bite marks. But why they do everything so purposefully and then leave blatant bite marks?”

“No one ever accused a werewolf of having a higher sense of reasoning.” He shrugged. “Honestly, I think it is stranger how long it took the council to respond to my requests for help.”

That was new. “You asked for help?”

He nodded. “I petitioned them several times, but never even got a phone call. Sure, Sy sent hunters down here, but the council didn’t care at all.”

“So what made them care? What case changed that?”

“The last bounty hunter before you, I guess. A couple days after he was found, Leilah called me and said she would send someone to take care of my problem.” He shook his head. “And here you are.”

So Mace had changed their mind. I guessed it was possible, but it didn’t sound right to me. My eyes went back over the pictures. “Why is there no blood at the scenes?”

“Must have killed them somewhere else.”

“Then why place them in these spots? What do the places mean to you?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

I stopped on Gus’s picture. He was the first. He was also a ghoul. Everyone else that had been killed was more alive than him. There was an elf, four bounty hunters who must have been potential threats, and possibly three humans, but Gus was the one who stuck out the most. So why was he killed?

“I wonder why it isn’t building its pack,” I said, casually poking holes in the wolf theory Amos refused to give up. “Usually the wolf leaves at least a couple survivors to get that nasty, hairy surprise on the first full moon.”

His head tilted and his lips pursed. “I guess we won’t know for certain for a few more days.”

“All the better reason to have this wrapped up by then.” I smiled and walked away from the pictures, stretching my arms. “You know, I have been trying all night to think of anything else this could be, but nothing is coming to mind. I just can’t believe it is a werewolf. Do you have any ideas?”

He was from this area—surely he knew about loup-garous. They were the closest thing to a werewolf that I had ever heard about in the Abyss, so why hadn’t he mentioned them yet? Why was no one considering them, unless Dempsey was lying about the whole thing?

“I guess it could be a vampire trying to make it look like a werewolf,” he said, squatting down and pointing at one of the pictures. “They look like bite marks around the edges, but the lines are fairly clean and surgical. I don’t know why the vampires would want to draw attention to themselves, though. There’s always the rougarou.” He laughed.

“What’s that?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Local human legend. Complete nonsense. It is about a werewolf-like creature who kills bad Catholics.”

“Humans are an imaginative group, aren’t they?”

He laughed again. “They believe nothing and yet will believe everything. Have you had much vampire contact since you arrived?”

I touched the spot on my head, which was completely healed now. “No. Why?” Bringing up vampires twice in connection with my case—Amos knew something. I took in the pictures with new eyes. Were the vampires manipulating the council the same way Corbin had manipulated me? My phone rang, jarring me from my thoughts. “Hello?”

“It’s Dempsey. There’s been another,” he said, with a hoarse voice. “I’m not inviting you to the crime scene.” I felt my eyebrows pull together. Then why did he call me? “I want to meet. I have more questions.”

“Yeah, last night was fun,” I said in an overly chipper voice, smiling at Amos. “We should do it again. We can eat at the same restaurant.”

He didn’t say anything for long enough that I wasn’t sure he understood. Finally, he spoke. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

Amos was watching me with a thoughtful expression as I hung up the phone. “I thought you didn’t know anyone here.”

I waved my hand. “I wasn’t sure you could get me the information I wanted about the humans, so I made friends with the human detective last night. I thought it would be good to keep track of their progress. Never know where a break in the case might come from.”

Amos shrugged. “It seems like a waste of time to me, but I’m not the bounty hunter.”

“Well, I am going to hit the showers, because I stink, and then I think I want to sleep for a while.” I punctuated the sentence with a yawn that started off as fake, but turned real. “Unless you need me for anything, I’ll talk to you in a couple hours.”

“What did the detective want?”

“To ask me out again.” I winked at him. “I guess I left an impression.”

Amos nodded and headed for the door. “I’ll talk to my contact at the police department and make sure he tells me if anything new comes in that might interest you. Get some rest. We have a werewolf to catch.”

I locked and chained the door behind him. I went to my bag and dug around in it until I produced a roll of duct tape. I tore off the end and placed it at the base of the door, making sure both sides were perfectly smoothed down before I really did take a shower.

When I was dressed and all the pictures and police reports were once again in the safe, I slipped off the necklace and went to the interior connecting door to the next room. I pressed my ear to the door and listened. I didn’t hear anything on the other side. I squatted down and picked the lock without much trouble, then eased the door open. The other room looked just like mine, only empty. I watched out of its peephole for a moment. No one was in the hallway. I opened the door quickly and walked toward the stairwell with my head down and hood up.

I trotted down the stairs, pausing occasionally to listen, making sure no one was following me. Between the council and the vampires, paranoia was the order of the day. I snuck out of the hotel through the kitchen delivery door and stayed off the main roads all the way to my car. It was the one place I felt was probably safe from prying eyes. The only two people connected to the council who even knew what car I drove were Sy and Holden. They had both earned my trust over the years. Corbin also knew what I drove, but had he wanted me dead, he would have tried harder the day before. He wanted Thomas, not me. I hopped in and the engine roared to life. I slipped the necklace back on and took off.

I drove to Alfios. Dempsey stood on the street with his hands jammed into his pockets and sunglasses on. I tapped my horn when he didn’t see me right away. He tried to open the passenger door, but it didn’t budge. “It sticks,” I yelled. “Put your back into it.”

He yanked on it harder and it popped open. He climbed in. “You take this on the water too?”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.” I scrunched my nose as I patted the steering wheel. “Don’t listen to him, baby. You’re perfect just the way you are.” I pulled away from the curb and back into traffic.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Moving targets are harder to spy on,” I said.

“Who’s watching you?” he asked.

“Vampires and others. It’s not important. I just have to be careful. What did you want to talk about?”

He sighed. “If you trust me, I know somewhere we can go.”

I glanced over at him. “I think I have shown you quite a bit of trust. You’re the one who appears to suddenly be afraid of me.”

His mouth settled into a firm line. “It was just a shock.”

He directed me out of the city and deeper into the bayou. At the end of a dirt road, we got out. Dempsey headed directly to the water and climbed onto a small boat. I didn’t venture far from my car.

“What are you waiting for?” he called out.

“You to come to your senses and get out of that water coffin,” I said, tempted to get back in my car.

His real and honest laughter rang out. “You want a private place to talk. Can’t get more private than where I am taking you.”

I walked slowly toward him. “If your plan is to drown me in the swamp, I just want to warn you that I’ll likely take you with me. And that would be a shame. I sort of like you.”

He shrugged. “You’ll never know.”

I climbed in the boat and it rocked. This was such a bad idea.