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His path led him on a northwesterly course back into Crescent Territory closer to Amado Bridge than to his home at the east end. She never traveled to Rotten Row on her own and the Tribunal had refused to send TPS officers to any of the crime scenes located in that area of Crescent.
Rotten Row was run by several gangster types, each into drug-running, human trafficking and prostitution. The three main drug-lords had numerous establishments there as well.
She felt Connor slow his speed, though he remained at least forty feet up in the air. She realized she’d gained confidence in his flying ability and was able to look down all the time now.
Gaudy lights flashed from nearly every venue down a street that extended a full four miles. A variety of music pulsed in the air, most of it loud. Hundreds of young women, a good number of them human and dressed in next to nothing, strolled the sidewalk.
Cars cruised, pulling over often. Women would get in and maybe they’d never be seen again. Or they’d be dumped in No Man’s Land, a desolate place in the middle of Five Bridges also called the Graveyard. None of the five species lived in that pitted, barren area.
“You keep sighing.”
“I do? I hadn’t realized I was. But this is so hard to take, this part of our world. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever make progress.”
“I know what you mean.” Connor cruised at a slow pace now, but still well above the lights.
“Did you know that when the Tribunal clean-up squads go out to the Graveyard at dawn, they cart off as many as twenty bodies every night, most of them women? And oftentimes a couple of them aren’t even dead.”
“I know. We’ve got a tragedy on our hands.”
Early on, before becoming a TPS officer, she’d gotten a job at the Tribunal. She’d been assigned to the missing persons desk. Residents of Phoenix would call to report that a loved one had disappeared and her job would be to locate them if possible, which was rarely.
There’d been one case that had shredded her heart. She’d worked with a young husband named Evan, who’d been a talented tax accountant for a powerful Paradise Valley mover-and-shaker. Evan had gone to a Christmas party with his pregnant wife, Heather, and from that expensive home, she’d had been abducted.
Evan had called the Tribunal, desperate to find his wife. With a Trib passport, Iris had left Five Bridges to meet Evan at his Phoenix home so that she could get a picture of Heather as well as to take some personal things with her to be used in casting a spell.
For the first few weeks, she’d made progress, and her spell seemed to be having a strong effect. She would locate someone who had seen Heather and who was willing to talk. She’d gain some information then learn of another person who would share with her as well.
Evan called several times a night for a progress report. The Tribunal wouldn’t allow him to search for his wife on his own because of the risk the cartels posed to his own life if he started asking questions. Iris knew he was frantic with worry.
She followed up quickly on each lead. She’d been able to confirm that Heather had been taken into Five Bridges, specifically into Crescent Territory. She was being used as a prostitute, which was terrible all on its own. But Iris had known it was the best possible news because Heather hadn’t been given an alter serum, which meant she was alive and still human. Her captors, however, were keeping her strung out on blood flame and the drug would be hard on her baby.
Iris had kept nothing back from Evan. She’d been up front from the beginning, especially about his wife’s odds of survival as well as the child she carried.
At the two-month mark, however, when her investigation led her way-too-close to one of the drug-lords, Donaldson had told her to close the file.
Iris had begged to be allowed to continue. She’d been so hopeful of a positive outcome. But Donaldson had insisted; she wasn’t to spend another second on Heather’s case.
One of the hardest things she’d ever done was to pay Evan a final visit. She’d wept when she told him that her superior had shut the investigation down.
Evan had grown very calm and Iris knew he’d begun the process of acceptance, that he would probably never see his wife again.
A week later, Iris had received a report that included a picture of a very pregnant woman shot down in a drug raid. She knew at once the woman was Evan’s wife since she had a photo of her. Besides, every witch instinct she had told Iris who the woman was. For whatever reason, Heather’s captors had decided to use her to run drugs.
Evan had confirmed the woman’s identity. He’d taken Heather back to Phoenix, buried his wife and their unborn son, and she’d never seen him again.
But the way Evan had been so desperate to recover Heather during those early days and weeks now burned as Iris’s prime motivation. Somehow, she would be part of the process, no matter how long it took, to create a decent society within Five Bridges.
Her own unfortunate path to becoming an alter witch might not have been something she’d asked for. But she’d come to accept her fate and intended to make the most of it.
Even if it meant heading into the worst part of Crescent, into a place known as home to several death squads.
~ ~ ~
A few minutes later, Connor descended in stages down to the street, though he remained levitating. The noise was almost deafening from the constant honking of cars, to women shouting and music exploding from one establishment to the next.
Several vampires were in the air, levitating in a drunk way. One of them slammed into the running lights of a one-hour hotel, sending sparks flashing as he tumbled to the sidewalk. Hard.
“Oh, dear God,” Iris murmured.
