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“Never easy,” Chase said, finishing my thought. “Trust me, I understand and if I didn’t think you’d be a helpful influence, I’d never ask you to join me for this. I wish we’d brought Nerissa, too. This is part of her job. She’s a wonderful grief counselor.”
I pulled out my cell phone. “Let me give her a call and see how she’s doing.” The phone rang three times before Iris picked up. I ran down what we’d learned and where we were going. “Is Nerissa in any shape to drag herself out of the house and down to HQ?”
“Hold on.” Iris set the phone down, and as I waited, I thought about how entangled we’d all become in each others’ lives. After a moment, Iris returned. “She’s sober. I’ll have Bruce’s driver take her down to headquarters in the limo. If you could see that she gets home when necessary…”
“No problem. Bless you and bless Bruce. Tell her we’ll see her when she gets there.” I punched the End Call button. “Nerissa’s coming down.”
Chase grunted a thank-you. “Odd…how this has all worked out.” He didn’t say anything more, but I knew he’d picked up on my mood—I’d been around him long enough to tell.
We’d been involved, after he struck out with Camille, and we’d made a good stab at a relationship, but the rocks on that ocean were just too sharp to navigate. Now he was involved with Sharah, the elfin medic, and they seemed to be a more compatible couple. He’d hired Nerissa as a crisis counselor, and she and Menolly were promised to each other. One by one, our extended family kept growing involved in ways we’d never have been able to predict. It kind of made up for the isolation we’d first felt when we came over Earthside.
By the time we arrived at the FH-CSI headquarters, Morio was fully sober. Apparently alcohol sped through his system quickly. Camille looked vaguely ill, as did Shamas, and I was starting to feel as rough as they looked. But we were all clearheaded as we followed Chase and Sharah into the building.
The Faerie-Human Crime Scene Investigation building took up at least four floors, though there was a rumor of a hidden level. The top floor housed the police headquarters and medical unit. First floor down was a highly secure arsenal. Second floor down—the OW offender jails. And on the bottom floor were the laboratory, morgue, and archives. Tonight, we were headed for the morgue—a place we had been all too often.
As the elevator descended with a silent rush, a somber mood settled over the group and I stared at my feet, Shade’s hand on my shoulder. I didn’t want to go in—didn’t want to look at the faces of my fallen friends. The Supe Community was tight-knit; everybody knew everybody else.
The doors opened with a swish and we stepped out onto the hard tiled floor, our boots leaving a series of staccato tattoos echoing in our wake. The walls here had been recently painted sterile white. Whether they thought the color made the atmosphere brighter than the pale blue had, I didn’t know, but now the complex felt cold and hollow. As Chase pushed through the doors, Sharah right behind him, I watched them go in.
They fit together…they really fit. Both of them had to deal with the leavings of society—the aftermath of battle. Whereas I was on the front lines, Chase was better suited to picking up the pieces and making sense of it all, of organizing the back lines. We’d never found our niche together. And yet we both had our place in the battles we were facing. And we’d become blood brother and sister. No matter what, we had each other’s back.
Chase glanced back at me, his eyes shimmering, and he blinked, then slowly smiled and inclined his head, as if he’d heard me speaking. He was changing, evolving, and none of us knew what he was becoming. Not even him.
He stood back, holding the morgue doors open for us. Sharah headed over to examine the bodies and talk to Mallen, her right-hand man, who was also an elf. He handed her a series of charts and she flipped through them.
I slowly approached the tables—five of them, each covered with a snow white sheet. Or what had started as snow white. Blossoms of blood spread across them, petals staining the undersides of the sheets, and as I watched, the patterns seemed to form the silhouettes of flowers. Or perhaps it was my imagination—like some gruesome Rorschach test.
The bodies were still, no breath, no movement. No fear they’d turn into vampires, like when Menolly had come here to identify victims. Just…dead. Cold, forever gone. I took a deep breath and looked up at Mallen.
“How bad are they?” Swallowing my fear, I tried to remind myself that I was a Death Maiden. I escorted—or would soon escort—souls over through the veil as part of my duties. I would be leaving the empty bodies of not just my enemies, but anybody whom the Autumn Lord ordered me to take.
He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They aren’t good. It’s not…it’s bloody. But the faces are fairly intact. I think they’re recognizable enough. The bodies were pretty mangled and burned. Four of them were right near the blast. The fifth…he never made it through the ride to the hospital.”
Menolly and Camille joined me. I reached for Camille’s hand as Mallen pulled back the first sheet. I flinched. I knew the face. “Tom. Thomas Creia. He’s a member of the Verde Canis Clan. They were a group of Weres working for environmental causes. He’s married. Two children.”
Sharah jotted down the information as we moved to the second table. Again, the sheet came down. Again, a familiar face.
“Crap. Trixie Jones. One of Marion’s sisters. Coyote shifter. Single. I think she might have been engaged, but I’m not sure.” The fire in my belly began to burn brighter. Whoever did this, I wanted to find them. Now.
The third sheet. Another man. This one, I knew by name but not to call friend. But his death had not been pleasant, and the grimace on his face told me he’d died in pain.
“Salvatore Tienes. Werewolf. He recently moved up from Arizona. I don’t know what pack he was with, but he’s been staying with a werewolf family up in Shoreline.” I bit my lip, wanting to stop. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t want to see who was left—an irrational fear took hold, that it would be someone even closer. Mallen drew back the fourth sheet.
I stared. Menolly and Camille squeezed my hands, and Camille let out a little gasp. Even Chase moved closer, hanging his head.
“Exo Reed,” he said quietly.
Everybody in the Supe community knew Exo. He ran the Halcyon Hotel, catering to Supes. He’d called us in on several jobs and was an upstanding member of the NRA and a member of the chamber of commerce for the greater Seattle area. And now, he was so much fodder for worms. Bloody…gone to whatever afterlife awaited werewolves when they died.
Tears threatened, but I sucked them back, holding myself rigid. Camille was doing the same, and Menolly had one of those horrific looks on her face that told me she wanted to do nothing less than hunt down the scum who did this and rip them to shreds.
“Show us the last, Mallen. Then we should talk to the survivors.” Chase glanced over at the elf but paused when Mallen held up his hand.
Mallen barely looked old enough to be in high school, but he was far older than most of us. “They aren’t in any condition to talk. They may not be for a long time. But I’ll do my best to have them conscious by tomorrow.”
“Crap. We need to know everything we can about this blast.” Chase looked flummoxed but then shrugged. “Whatever…we’ll play it as we go. So, who’s our last victim?”
We were all afraid that it was going to be someone else we knew, but this time it wasn’t a Were, but an elf, unfamiliar to any of us. Neither Mallen nor Sharah recognized him, either.
