“It’s okay,” Rune told her. “Tiago knows what he’s doing. He won’t mess with your results.”
She nodded although she looked uncertain. They both fell silent and watched as Tiago examined the bodies. The visual inspection didn’t tell him anything he did not already know. Inspecting them by scent was more complicated, as the bodies had accumulated layers of different scents. No matter how tightly a crime scene might be processed, a certain amount of scent contamination occurred. Aside from their individual scents, these bodies carried scents from the last places they had been, including the scene where they had died, along with residue from the plastics and rubber gloves that had been used in transporting, storing and examining them.
He could detect the faintest hint of cigarette smoke on all three. He checked the teeth and gums of each dead guy. None of them had smoked, which didn’t surprise him. Wyr, with their greater sense of smell, tended not to. Did that offer a clue to where they might have been, or had some police officer fucked up and taken a smoke break at the scene of the attack? Frowning, Tiago moved from the Wyr themselves to their clothing and possessions, which were sitting bagged and tagged on a nearby table.
None of the guys had carried an ID. All they had carried were weapons and cash, and one of them had a half-empty packet of Chiclets. Still, their possessions helped to solidify scent impressions much better. Confident now, Tiago said, “They met at a bar. Someplace that serves draft beer, greasy food, and allows smoking, because none of these guys smoked.”
“That’s certainly consistent with the contents of their stomachs,” said the medusa. She gave Tiago a look of surprised approval. “Two of them ate a meal of fish and chips, and the other one had a large cheeseburger with jalapenos. All three had consumed a certain amount of alcohol, maybe some form of Dutch courage as they were gearing themselves up to fight. I don’t have a tox report back yet, but at a guess I don’t think they would have imbibed enough to impair driving or motor skills. That takes some heavy drinking for Wyr, and there’s no other evidence to support it.”
Tiago looked at Rune. “There are other scents of Elder Races on their things, but no one scent stands out. I just keep getting hints. We need to have someone canvass the bars in the area that are frequented by the Elder Races.”
Rune nodded. “Somebody served dinner and drinks to these fuckers. We might get lucky and get a positive ID on one or all of them, which would mean we could look for where they lived and check to see if any of them received any large amounts of money recently. They had some motive for the attack. Maybe they got paid to do it.”
“We might also get a description of somebody they met,” Tiago said.
The two sentinels exchanged hard-edged predatory smiles. They didn’t have to ask what the other one was thinking. In that moment both Wyr were of one accord. It felt good to go on the hunt and not stay stuck in a position where they were forced to react to a situation beyond their control.
“Skeert of the both of you,” muttered Dr. Telemar.
A cold voice spoke from the doorway. “Or maybe you’re hoping to plant evidence that leads other investigators away from the Wyr,” said Dark Fae Commander Arethusa. The tall female stepped into the room. “I should not be surprised to see you here contaminating the autopsy results on the three bodies.”
The beast in Tiago lunged to the end of its chain and clawed at the air. Everything dropped away except the sight of the Commander’s anger-filled face. Growling, Tiago started forward. Arethusa drew the two short swords she had strapped to her back.
A Mack truck slammed into Tiago. He crashed back into a wall. The truck turned into Rune, who pinned him with a muscled forearm across his neck. Dragos’s First went nose-to-nose with him, his fierce golden lion’s eyes blazing. “No, Tiago.”
Tiago swore and tried to heave Rune off him. He was heavier than the other sentinel and stronger, but Rune was faster than shit and had the weight of his long, lean body distributed too well for Tiago to shake off. He said, “She’s been asking for an ass-kicking for a while now.” His voice had changed, turned more guttural.
“My give-a-shit button’s broken. You’re my boy, and I say no.” Rune slapped him in a controlled flat-handed blow. It dislodged the sunglasses on Tiago’s face. They fell to the floor with a clatter. “Snap out of it.”
Dr. Telemar backed into a far corner. Arethusa stared at them, her face whitening.
Tiago snarled at Rune and heaved again. He gripped Rune’s imprisoning arm with taloned hands and shoved as hard as he could, but he could get no leverage with which to break the other sentinel’s hold.
Rune stared point-blank into Tiago’s gaze, his handsome face hard and unflinching. The First said in a calm voice, “I know you’re in there. You can hear me or you would have drawn blood by now. Think for a minute. Who needs us?”
Tiago sucked in a deep breath that shuddered through his frame as he fought to contain the beast. He turned his head to one side and growled, “Niniane.”
“That’s right.” Rune lowered his voice to a barely audible murmur. “You better listen to me. You fuck things up now and you can’t go back. They’ll never let you get near her again. Got it?”
That snapped Tiago’s head back into place like nothing else could have. He stopped straining against the other sentinel’s hold and said, “Got it.”
Rune’s tawny eyebrows rose. He lessened the pressure he had been exerting against Tiago’s clavicle. Tiago remained quiescent, as he maintained a hard grip on his beast. Rune nodded, let go and clapped him on the shoulder.
Rune turned to face the Dark Fae Commander. He said, “Okay, first, you’ve been harshing my good friend’s chi. I’m not liking you so much right now.”
“I’ll add a second point to that,” said Dr. Telemar, who stepped out of her corner. All her head snakes were looking at the Dark Fae Commander. “I’m not into inter-demesne politics, but you just maligned the integrity of my office and I’ll not stand for it. There’s not one damn thing out of place with my autopsy procedures, up to and including how the bodies of these Wyr are being processed.”
Despite getting her ass chewed on two different fronts, the cold anger in the Commander’s angular face dissipated. She straightened out of her defensive fighting crouch and looked thoughtful as she sheathed her swords. A couple of the medusa’s head snakes turned to blink at Rune. He gave them a whatthe-fuck shrug.
Arethusa looked from Rune to Tiago. She said, “I heard what you said.”
Tiago might have gotten a grip on his beast’s leash again, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. The muscle in his jaw jumped. He bent to pick up his Ray-Bans and slid them back on his nose.
Rune was the one who replied. “To which bit are you referring, Commander?”
Arethusa looked at Tiago. He noticed she took care to remain on the other side of the room, but the scent of aggression had faded from her pheromones. She said to him, “Whatever else the Wyr could be involved in, it really does matter to you that the Dark Fae heir might need your help.”
“You think?” Tiago said from between his teeth. Sometime he wanted to get just one good shot at the Commander’s face. One of these days, Alice, he thought as he stared at her. Straight to the goddamn moon.
Rune said, “I have to ask you, Commander. What part of this”—he made an all-encompassing gesture that included the three dead Wyr, and Tiago and himself—“makes any kind of sense to you? Why would we send Tiago to find and protect Niniane and then send these bozos after her too? There are a lot easier and more straightforward ways to execute a couple of guys.”
Arethusa sucked a tooth as she considered them. “When I came in, you were talking about trying to get a positive ID on these three so you could look for a money trail. That’s what we did for Geril,” she said. “We looked for a money trail. You know what we found? He had a new Bank of America account in which he had received a substantial deposit this week from an Illinois company owned by Cuelebre Enterprises.”
/> Tiago’s eyes narrowed. “Which company?” he asked.
“Tri-State Financial Services,” Arethusa said.
Tiago looked at Rune, and they both started to smile.
Dr. Telemar spoke up. “I missed something. What is there to smile about in that?”
Tiago crossed his arms as he leaned back against one of the autopsy tables. He told Arethusa and the medusa, “Somebody made another mistake. Cuelebre Enterprises doesn’t own a company named Tri-State Financial Services.”
The Dark Fae Commander’s eyes narrowed, her expression full of skepticism. “And you know this so conveniently how?”
Tiago said, “Cuelebre Enterprises owns six companies that are based in Illinois. Thanks to Urien’s and Dragos’s recent fight over Urien’s attempt to secure a U.S. defense contract, those companies have come under a great deal of scrutiny at the head office in New York. Stocks have taken a dip, and Dragos is tired of fucking around with them. He’s working on getting them stabilized so that he can sell them off. If you dig deeper into your information, I think what you’re going to find is that you’ve got a dummy corporation on your hands.”
Arethusa stepped forward. She gripped the edge of an autopsy table and leaned on her hands, her mouth pursed as she regarded the corpse in front of her without appearing to really see it. “Okay,” she said after a few minutes. “I’ll check it out. Now what do you mean, somebody made another mistake?”
“Whoever set Geril and his buddies on Niniane didn’t know how much self-defense training the sentinels had given her,” Tiago said.
“Which was a lot,” Rune added. “She was not exactly an easy study. That’s simple enough to verify. Just ask her. We had to keep going over and over some things. That training was what saved Niniane’s life.”
Tiago continued, “They also didn’t know how much scrutiny Cuelebre Enterprises’ Illinois companies have been under recently in New York, or they might have chosen a different, less easily verified way to frame the Wyr. They also didn’t know that I had come to Chicago, or they would never have sent these guys after her. And that’s not all. We’ve now got two attempts to frame the Wyr. What do you have when you have the same MO in two different crimes?”
This time Dr. Telemar stepped forward to join the circle around the autopsy table. She cradled a snake head in her hands and pet it, her eyes wide with fascination. She said, “You’ve either got a copycat or you’ve got the same perp.”
Rune smiled at the medusa. He said, “It’s possible we could have a copycat, but unlikely. A copycat would have to know some pretty obscure information that we’re only just now piecing together, which would indicate some intimate knowledge of the perpetrator of the first attack. He would also have to have the means with which to act very fast in setting up the second attempt. The odds are we’re looking at the same perp for both attempts.”
Tiago buried his chin in the heel of one hand as he regarded the Dark Fae Commander from under his brows. Arethusa cocked her head at him and said, “What.”
“Something else occurs to me,” he said. “We’re only talking now by accident. And if we hadn’t talked, we wouldn’t all know what we know.”
Arethusa said, “Are you thinking someone has been counting on that lack of communication between the Dark Fae and the Wyr?”
Tiago nodded. “Maybe if we start sharing more on our investigations, we should keep it quiet. That might give our perp the opportunity to make another mistake.”
The Dark Fae Commander’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, nobody’s going to see me chatting up you guys in public,” said Arethusa. “Everybody knows I think you’re all a bunch of rat bastards.”
More blah-fucking-blah happened. Other people called it pleasantries. Polite chitchat. Tiago called it agonizing. The beast crouched inside him and waited, and its silence took over his mind.
He watched the slight rhythmic flutter of the pulse at the Dark Fae Commander’s neck, and took note of the increasing flicker of the medusa’s nictitating membrane. The medusa did not look at him directly again, but half a dozen of her head snakes peered at him from around her waist and shoulders. They tasted the air as they watched him with their tiny jeweled eyes glittering.
Tiago’s sharp hearing caught a slight buzz, and his entire attention focused on tracking it. The tiny sound emitted from the front pocket of Rune’s jeans. He watched as Rune dragged out his iPhone, checked the screen and frowned. Rune started to put the cell back in his pocket while he began uttering good-bye blah-fucking-blahs.
Tiago’s breath stilled, and every muscle in his body tightened. He knew in his bones that the message Rune had received was about Niniane. And Rune didn’t appear to be inclined to share.
Before the instinct had the chance to fully form in his mind, Tiago sprang forward and snatched the iPhone out of Rune’s hands. The Dark Fae Commander grabbed one of her swords and the medusa made a high-pitched sound and leaped back two feet. All her head snakes whipped around to hiss at Tiago as Rune swore and spun to snatch at his phone. The other sentinel might be famous for his speed, but Tiago caught him by surprise and he was too late.
“Goddammit, Tiago!” Rune swore. His lion’s eyes blazed. “GIVE IT BACK!”
Tiago drove the heel of his hand into Rune’s chest and knocked him backward as he tilted the phone to read the screen.
It was a text from Aryal: OUT 4 BEERS + SHOTS. PD CHICK > BIG RED’S = GD COP BAR. FARY NEEDS STRSS RLIEF BAD. GNNA TRY 2 GT HR LAID.
Tiago’s beast snapped its leash.
ELEVEN
The thunderstorm rolled over Chicago in a matter of minutes. It blanketed the city with heavy, sulfurous black clouds, a deluge of lashing rain and flashes of jagged lightning that split the sky, followed by rolling sonic booms that rattled skyscrapers.
The predator hurtled through the storm. When his huge wings rose and hammered down, the sky roared in response and the earth shook.
He ignored his pursuer. In flight, he was the one who was faster, his powerful body streamlined for slicing through the air. He was also the creator of the storm. It fulminated around him while hurricane-force winds buffeted the one who fought to follow. The storm blew that one behind.
The predator was one of the world’s best trackers. Locating his prey was child’s play. She was too innocent. She had not known to hide from him. As he fell to earth, he changed to wear his human skin, but the beast that raged inside him was far older and much more dangerous than a human being. His clothing, absorbed when he took his Wyr form, settled into place again on his body.
He slammed open the doors of the Big Red bar and stalked inside.
The predator paused for a heartbeat as human sights, sounds and smells assaulted him. Laughter, music, liquor and food. Perfume, perspiration and aftershave. He ignored the fragile humans. He noted the location of the real possible threats, the harpy and the Vampyre. They leaned against one end of the bar while they talked and watched a crowded dance floor, their alert, watchful, roaming gazes belying their bodies’ casual posture.
Then he caught sight of her, his prey, on the packed dance floor and she was—
He gave his head a sharp, disbelieving shake. The beast inside him roared.
She was a small, exquisitely boned, deliciously curved, raven-haired beauty who shimmered with so much molten light as she danced, she looked like she was a creature made of sunlight and lightning. Enormous gray eyes glittered under sultry lids, and her soft, glistening lips were painted the intoxicating color of poppies. Her slender, curved white legs with those narrow delicate knees were naked, and her tiny feet arched in four-inch fuck-me silver high-heeled shoes. She was a teacup temptress, undulating in that silvery light slip of scandalous something that she wore—
Dress, it was a dress—
That depraved piece of skintight luminescence wasn’t a dress. It was a heart attack waiting to happen. It was covered with so many tiny, sparkly silver dangling sequins, and it was so low in the neck and so high in the hem, it
barely covered her nipples and her sweet little round ass. With every graceful flirtatious dance move she made, the neckline and the hem hovered on the edge of unveiling the treasures they were intended to guard.
And didn’t every red-blooded male in the building know it. The room reeked of sexual interest. Hot interested males from all over the room watched as she danced, undressing her with their eyes. He growled low in his throat.
Mine.
The predator bared his teeth and promised them all murder as he advanced across the room.
Normally Niniane loved to go out. But tonight, no matter how she threw herself into the effort, she couldn’t relax and enjoy the moment.
The whole thing started when Aubrey and Kellen stepped out on the patio to protest the harpy’s presence. Heaven only knew where Arethusa had gone, or Niniane had no doubt the Commander would have joined them. Then Carling had strolled out to take a seat at the table, listening without comment to the argument.
Not that it was much of an argument for long. Niniane told them all, “I know that Dragos and his sentinels had nothing to do with the attack.”
Deep lines bracketed Kellen’s mouth. They scored his face from fine-molded nostrils to the sides of his mouth, evidencing his displeasure. He said, “Your highness, please.”
“Try not to be more of an idiot than you can help,” Aryal told him. The Justice glared at her, his expression full of offense. The harpy clicked her tongue at him, looking remarkably avian despite being in her human form.
Niniane swallowed a bubble of hysterical laughter. Carling met her gaze. “Never send a harpy on a mission of diplomacy,” the Vampyre murmured. “Are you sure about this?”
“I have examined the facts, and yes, I am sure,” she replied in a firm voice. She looked hard at Aubrey and Kellen to make sure they heard her.