9
New York City
The bodies lay beneath white sheets. Harvey made no move to walk her over there and lift up the covers, and Trina didn’t insist. Frankly, just the shapes of them under the drapes was enough to give her the cold chills. The silhouettes weren’t quite…right. Pieces missing. Pieces in the wrong place.
Harvey, drawn and tired, flipped through her notes and stared down at them as she said, “Webb’s not joining us?”
“No,” Trina said, and left it at that. She could have pretended he was still hungover and his stomach too jumpy for the post-mortem, but she didn’t feel like lying to Harvey any more than necessary.
The ME looked up, finally, expression pinched. “You were at the scene. You saw. Cause of death was exsanguination. The victims were hacked apart. Eviscerated. Parts are missing – fingers, mostly, like they were trying to fend off their attackers.” She paused a moment, allowing Trina a brief shudder. “They looked like they were killed by a bear, Trina.”
Not far off. “I–”
“Now look,” Harvey continued, voice hardening. “I know it’s a leap to go from missing bodies to chewed on bodies – oh yeah, there are teeth marks, animal teeth marks – but lots of weird shit is going on around here and you? You’re not even questioning it. Just standing there looking like you’ve got a stomach ache. So this is me asking, unofficially, off the record – as a friend – what you know about all this.”
For a moment, Trina almost caved. In part because Harvey was a competent ally in her day-to-day job, who worked tirelessly to help them catch criminals. And also in part because she was starting to feel like a shaken soda, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to confide in someone? My great-grandfather’s not only alive, but ageless, and also a vampire, and the former tsarevich of Russia turned Lanny into one, too.
‘Cause that would go over well.
Trina waited a beat too long. Swallowed. “Christine–”
“Forget it.” Harvey turned away, disgusted. “Get out of my morgue.”
And yeah. That was fair.
She found Lanny outside, sitting on a low concrete retaining wall that had been backfilled with dirt and planted with St. John’s wort. He looked almost serene, with his shirtsleeves pushed up and his head tipped back, eyes closed. The sun fell full on his face – that rich, hot, baking late summer sun that always felt so good when you’d been trapped in air-conditioned buildings all day – and Trina was struck by the difference in him. Gone were the bruise-dark circles around his eyes, the grayish pallor of his skin. His face seemed fuller, too; the face of a man with healthy eating habits and a regular workout routine. It was only now, when faced with the stark contrast, that she realized that he’d been sliding down for a long time; she should have noticed. She hated herself for not.
His eyes cracked open a slit. “How’d it go?”
“Better that you weren’t in there trying to lick the dried blood off the bodies.”
“That’s fucking disgusting,” he said, and shut his eyes again.
Trina sat down next to him on the wall, forcing herself to push past the prickling unease that told her not to sit too close, getting in tight enough that their shoulders brushed. His arm felt warm through both their sleeves, and she wondered why she’d expected it to feel any different.
Lanny hummed a little sound that was mostly content. “Who’d’ve thought vampires could sit in the sun, huh? Betcha I can eat garlic, too, which is a damn good thing, ‘cause my ma wouldn’t understand if I suddenly stopped coming by for pasta night.”
“Guess most of the old myths were wrong,” Trina said, hearing a hollowness in her voice.
“Hey, do you think I can walk into a church without lighting on fire? Maybe I can still go to Mass.”
She didn’t answer right away, turned to glance at him, and found that he was smiling at her, the expression more than a little bitter.
“These are the kinda questions I gotta ask myself, you know?” he said, voice bitter, too. “Can I still pray? Can I see my reflection to shave in the mornings? Can I still” – his breath hitched – “be with you without wanting to drink your damn blood?”
She sucked in a breath.
His smile twitched, fell, and he glanced away.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “It’s hard for you to even wanna sit here with me, isn’t it?”
Her pulse throbbed in her temples, caught painfully in her ears, like they needed to pop. They were valid questions, all of them. But she thought of Nikita, of how he was nothing like Rasputin. Thought of Alexei, the entitled prince. And poor sweet Jamie, who hadn’t asked for any of this.
She took another breath, this one deep and measured. “I can see your reflection in the grill of that car right there,” she said, pointing to the Cadillac parked in front of them, “so that answers that question. And for the rest of it. Lanny, the thing that happened to you was physical. It changed the way your body works – maybe even what your body needs – but it didn’t change your mind. Or your heart. You’re still you. Just…healthy.”
“And required to drink blood.”
“Think of it as medicine. Like insulin for a diabetic.”
He barked a short, startled laugh. “Holy shit.”
“Maybe it’s even something you can inject. We can ask Nikita. Then you wouldn’t have to feel like it was actually blood.”
“You’re serious?”
She shrugged. “Why not?”
“Because it’s fucking weird,” he said, frustration bleeding through.
“Yeah, but it’s your life now.”
He sighed.
“We’ll figure it out.”
He gave her a sideways look from the corner of his eye, expression hard to read. He shook his head and glanced out toward the parking lot – and bumped her shoulder with his. “So feral werewolves are a thing and they’re in New York eating people.”
It was a relief to change the subject. “Apparently.”
“What’re we gonna tell the captain?”
Trina glanced over, startled. “We.”
He shrugged. “You said I was still me, right? So I’m still a cop. Just, maybe…” He curled his hand into a fist in his lap, turning it over, examining it with sudden, intense focus, brows tucking low. “Maybe a cop who’s a lot stronger.”
~*~
Jamie was an only child, but he thought this must be what it felt like to be someone’s younger brother, tagging along for the ride, no one asking for his opinion about anything. It was annoying, sure, but he wasn’t the sort of person who liked to make a fuss. He was generally content to go with the flow and deviate when he had the chance.
Except right now he was a brand-new vampire with a lot of fucking questions, and was apparently sitting next to a member of the long-dead Russian royal family.
Okay.
“They’re hunting us,” Nikita said, grimly, on the other side of the booth.
“Who is?” Jamie asked.
Alexei scoffed. “Coincidence.” But when Jamie glanced over at him, he looked pale. His lower lip trembled, fractionally, as he took a breath.
“No,” Nikita said, voice hard. “It’s not. Your little protégé” – he spat the word – “decided to go on a turning binge.” He gestured to Jamie, and Jamie felt his stomach grab unpleasantly. He wanted to be offended, but he certainly hadn’t asked to be turned.
As if sensing his distress – and didn’t dogs, wolves, sense that sort of thing? – Sasha sent Jamie a fleeting smile.
“The video of Chad walking out of the morgue is all over the Internet,” Nikita went on, scowling. “And then feral wolves try to find Lanny? That’s not a coincidence, and you know it.”
Alexei shrugged and sipped his coffee, eyes a little wild.
Around them, the restaurant hosted a modest afternoon crowd, a mix of students and businesspeople eating craft burgers. (Sasha had picked the place, saying it was one of his favorites.) There was local art on the walls, and James Brown playing softly over the sound system, and Jamie might have enjoyed it if they weren’t discussing being hunted by werewolves who ate people.
It was all too much, suddenly. The absurd turn his quiet life had taken.
“Okay.” He slapped his hand down on the table, harder then he’d ever been able; all their water glasses jumped. Whatever. He wasn’t sorry. “What are we going to do? What am I–” He broke off, throat tightening. “What am I going to do?”
Sasha looked sympathetic.
Nikita looked like an asshole – because he was one.
“We’ll find somewhere for you to lay low,” he said, dismissive. “Until we figure out–”
“No,” Jamie said, through his teeth this time. “What am I going to do? With my life? I’m legally dead, and I…” Oh shit, he was breathing too hard, loud and rough enough to attract a concerned glance from the next table. “I…”
Alexei laid his hand over top of Jamie’s, and Jamie jerked out from under it, almost dumping his plate in his lap.
Alexei sighed. “You should calm down.”
“I can’t. My roommate saw me getting coffee this morning, and she screamed. And I can never go home…”
When he was thirteen, and weighed no more than a wet cat, according to his grandmother, Brent Hardman had taken a box cutter to the oil painting he’d spent three months painstakingly perfecting in hopes of entering it into a local youth art show. He’d left it in the art room at school, and went in early one morning, flipped on the lights. The canvas in tatters. The yellow-handled box cutter – the same one Brent had been flipping over and over on the bus yesterday, the one he’d tucked in his pocket before the driver could see – on the table beside it. No painting; no entry for the contest; no chance to get into the exclusive May-Thorough summer program for gifted young artists…
He’d tilted the box cutter under the harsh lights, watched the light catch its blade. And he’d wondered. He’d almost…thought about the way his blood would look, welling against his too-white skin. Running off his wrist, dripping onto the tile. An art piece all its own.
He’d wondered, as a kid, what it would like to no longer be alive. Simpler, he’d always thought. Being dead wasn’t complicated.
Except now he was dead, on paper, and blood was something he had to drink, and everything, everything was complicated and awful.
He put his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t want this,” he whispered. “None of it. And I don’t know what to do.”
Alexei laid a consoling hand in the middle of his back, and this time he didn’t try to avoid the touch. It was a measure of small comfort, if nothing else, genuine or not.
“Jamie,” Nikita said. “Look at me.”
He did, through the gaps in his fingers, hating him.
“It doesn’t matter if you want this. It happened.” His voice lowered a fraction; a tiny note of sympathy crept in. “It won’t be easy, learning to live this way. But you can’t collapse. If your life before was worth something, then this one has to be as well.”
Sasha turned to smile at his friend, expression almost proud.
Nikita ignored him, staring steadily at Jamie. “We can help you. And right now, we need your help, too. Someone’s abusing immortality in this city, and I’m not going to let that happen.”
Jamie let his hands fall slowly down to the table. “But – but I’m an artist.” And it sounded like Nikita was asking something of him he’d never contemplated before.
He nodded. “Not just. Not anymore.”
~*~
“I don’t even know what to think anymore,” Captain Abbot fumed. “Something ate them? Ate them?”
Lanny tossed his stress ball from one hand to the other and said, “Wouldn’t be the first time a dealer had a buncha riled up pits.”
Abbot stopped his pacing, spun, and pinned his glare on Lanny. “And you. The vics were your neighbors.”
“Yes, sir,” Lanny said, blandly. They’d all learned it was best not to respond in kind when the captain got like this.
“We’re working on some possible leads,” Trina said.
He swung his glare to her – long enough to make her want to wriggle down into her shirt collar – then muttered something unintelligible and stormed toward his office.
“That went well,” Lanny said.
She sighed. “Speaking of leads…”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Jesus, don’t pull a muscle.”
“What if we go back to the scene, and I” – he tapped the end of his nose – “tried to follow them?”
Something about the gesture, and the offer, struck her as unbearably cute, so she hated to burst his bubble. “Sasha already sniffed it out, though. Said the trail ends. They must have gotten in a car.”
“Oh. Right. I knew that.” He covered his disappointment poorly. “Well–”
“Trina,” someone said, and she glanced up to find one of the young patrols walking toward her desk, a man in an expensive suit following along behind. “You’ve got a visitor.”
She hitched up straighter in her chair. “I can see that.”
The man in the suit – iron-haired, but well-preserved, upright and fit for this age – stepped forward and offered a large, tan hand for her to shake. “Detective Baskin? I’m Dr. Fowler with the Ingraham Institute of Medical Technology.”
She broke out in goosebumps. If she closed her eyes, she could see Dr. Charles Ingraham’s smiling face, hear his stumbling Russian.
She swallowed and pulled her hand back, hoping Dr. Fowler didn’t notice that it had gone suddenly clammy. “Hello.”
Lanny gave her a sharp look from behind his desk.
“May I sit?” Dr. Fowler asked, motioning to the chair angled toward their pushed-together desks.
Trina had to clear her throat. “Sure.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, doc,” Lanny drawled, his running-interference voice. “But we weren’t expecting a house call.”
The doctor arranged himself in the chair and favored Lanny with a smile that was polite, but cold. “My apologies. I’m sure you’re both very busy, and I hate to disturb” – his gaze returned to Trina – “but I think we might be able to help each other.”
Trina lifted her brows. “That doesn’t exactly sound cop-kosher, Dr. Fowler.”
He chuckled. “No, I guess it doesn’t. I’m sorry, let me try again.” He settled deeper into his chair, hands clasped together on his knee. “At the Ingraham Institute, we’re working on improving health in a number of areas,–”
Sales pitch, Lanny mouthed.
“–working on breakthrough drug studies that would treat both physical ailments…and mental ones. I’m afraid that’s why I’m here.” He looked troubled, regretful. “Several murder cases have made the news recently, all fielded by this precinct – by you and your partner – and, well – I believe I may know who’s responsible for these horrible crimes.”
Lanny held up a piece of paper where the doctor couldn’t see it, holy fucking shit scrawled across it in the blue ink of his favorite pen.
“Friends of yours?” Trina asked.
“Patients,” he said firmly. “Patients who are, to put it bluntly, not in their right minds. They’ve been undergoing extensive psychological evaluation and treatment at our facility in Queens.”
“Treatment?” Lanny said. “What’s that like? Electroshock?”
Dr. Fowler grimaced. “No, Detective Webb. We’ve come a long way since the days of sanatoriums. The patients I’m referring to are in the midst of a drug trial for a new antipsychotic medication. They’re staying at the facility – a safety measure for them and those around them. And, regretfully, they slipped out.”
“So they escaped,” Trina said, voice flat. It was taking every ounce of composure not to betray her mounting panic.
“Yes.”
“Do you have photos?”
“Well,” he hedged. “I’d hoped you’d allow me and my people to try to apprehend them so that they can return to the Institute and get the treatment they need.”
She took a quick, constricted breath. “Doctor Fowler, if this is the work of your patients, this is murder. Whether they’re sent to jail or remanded to your custody is up to a judge, maybe a jury. But it’s not up to me. It’s my job to arrest them and take them into custody.”
“Of course.” He dipped his head. “I understand. Only…”
“What?”
“I hope you’ll be careful.” Something dark flashed in his eyes, there and gone, that left her stomach clenching. “These men are very dangerous. Especially when cornered.” He pulled a white business card from his breast pocket and set it on the edge of her desk. “Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything. I’d like us to work together to rectify this situation.”
“Right,” she said.
He stood. “Pleasure meeting you. I wish it had been under different circumstances.”
“Yeah.”
When he was gone, Lanny said, “Why do you look like you wanna throw up?”
She swallowed hard. “Because I do. The Ingraham Institute? That was founded in 1942, by a doctor who was studying Sasha.”
He blinked. “Let me say it out loud this time. Holy fucking shit.”
“The people who sent feral werewolves to track you,” she said, gasping a little, “are fucking government funded.”