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Compared to that, London was fortunate that aside from a Rogue problem that had just been neutralized, the only war taking place in the city was a recent spate of gang violence that had fed half a dozen bodies into the murky water of the Thames last week.
As the Rover rolled through Southwark’s Bankside area, Mathias noticed a cluster of law enforcement vehicles down at the river’s edge. “Christ,” he muttered. “Looks like JUSTIS is fishing another floater out of the drink.”
“You want to head down there and have a look?” Thane asked.
At his nod, the big warrior turned off the road and drove toward the small gathering of human and Breed officers who served the Joint Urban Security Taskforce Initiative Squad.
They parked at the periphery of the action and walked over to the crime scene. Triangulated headlight beams pierced the darkness from the shoreline, shining out over the water where a small power boat was approaching. A pair of officers in diving gear sat at the stern, a large, unmoving object draped in a pale tarp at their feet.
Even from several yards away, Mathias’s keen Breed senses allowed him to see--and smell--the dead human they had retrieved from the water.
“I’d have thought the Order’s got better things to do than slum it down in Southwark.”
Mathias turned his head in the direction of the booming, baritone British voice of the JUSTIS officer in charge.
Gavin Sloane was Breed, a towering, wide-shouldered male with sandy blond hair and piercing blue eyes. He came over to greet Mathias and his team with a nod and a ready grin. “If we weren’t friends from way back, I might have to remind you that we got here first, so it’s our party.”
While the relationship between the Order and JUSTIS around the globe was guarded at best, Sloane seemed to understand, as Mathias did, the value of having allies across territory lines. They’d shared case intel from time to time over the past decade or so, and had developed a respect for each other that went beyond their jobs.
Last year, when Sloane finally conceded to settle down and take a mate, he invited Mathias to the reception that followed at the family Darkhaven. Mathias didn’t know who’d been more unnerved by the presence of an Order member at the celebration--Sloane’s highborn Breedmate, Katherine, or his JUSTIS officer brethren.
Sloane’s broad smile didn’t falter as he clapped Mathias’s shoulder in greeting and glanced at the array of titanium blades and semiautomatic firearms holstered on the warriors’ weapon belts from the night’s raid. “Anything JUSTIS needs to be concerned about?”
“Not anymore,” Mathias said. He gestured to the floater being unloaded onto the riverbank. “Anything the Order needs to be concerned about?”
Sloane shook his head. “Just another dead scarab.”
The remark referred to the tattoo each of the recent gang war victims had in common. This death brought the body count to seven. Although it wasn’t unusual to find a corpse in the 213-mile river that spat them out at an impressive average of one a week, the Thames was suddenly choking on members of an unknown, but apparently lethal, new gang.
Mathias and his squad followed Sloane over to the recovery in process. Three JUSTIS officers hoisted the tarp-wrapped body onto the concrete riverbank. As the corpse settled on the ground, the plastic fell away, revealing a large human male.
“No ID on the body,” Sloane said. “We’ll run his prints, but it if this case follows the other six we’re processing, this guy isn’t likely to pop a criminal record either. Aside from the common tattoo on all of the victims, we don’t have much to go on.”
The dead man was dressed in dark, sodden clothing, his harsh, ugly face blanched white in death, contrasting sharply against the russet color of his full beard and shaggy red hair. On his biceps, under the short sleeves of his blood-stained T-shirt, an array of tattoos ran the length of both his beefy arms. The scarab rode the back of his right hand, the same mark and placement as on the six other murdered men.
Sloane dismissed his fellow JUSTIS officers with a curt wave as Mathias stepped closer to the corpse, studying its damage. Multiple wounds peppered the thick neck and barrel chest--deep punctures, many of them concentrated in tight clusters.
He frowned. “The other victims were pulled out of the river with bullets in their heads. This guy was stabbed with something. Repeatedly, and with a hell of a lot of force. Or passion.”
“Dead is dead,” Callahan murmured from beside Mathias and the rest of the team. “Maybe his killing was meant to send a stronger message than the others.”
Sloane shrugged. “It’s possible.”
“The last body surfaced two days ago,” Mathias recalled. Despite the obvious connection to the others, something didn’t feel right about this victim. He looked out at the black water of the Thames, still churning from the earlier storm. The current was pulling hard in the scant moonlight, which barely penetrated the heavy cloud cover overhead. “Which way is the tide running?”
“Out,” Deacon replied.
Away from London, then, toward the North Sea.
Thane’s pensive glance said he was following Mathias’s line of thinking too. “A couple more turns and the tide would have carried this corpse out to open water. He hasn’t been in the river as long as the others had been.”
“Based on the condition of the body,” Sloane interjected, “we don’t expect this poor bastard’s been dead for even twenty-four hours.” He met Mathias’s gaze with one of concern. “You sensing anything out of the ordinary down here?”
His friend wasn’t talking about investigator hunches or forensic evidence. Sloane was familiar with Mathias’s extrasensory ability.
Every Breed vampire and every half-human Breedmate female was born with a unique ESP or telekinetic gift, some of them more useful than others. Some of those gifts were very dark, more of a curse.
Mathias’s fell somewhere in the middle, though given his choice of occupation, the ability to pick up the psychic traces of violence left behind at a scene where harm was done to someone gave him an edge over most other law enforcement officials.
