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Iris shut off her com with a heavy eye-roll and put on some speed.
“Well, Violet, what do you think?” She tended to talk to her sister when she was out on patrol.
But the spontaneous question, took her straight back to the wind that had blown through her workroom and hearing Violet’s voice in her head. Tears burned her eyes. Violet had been buried a long time ago, but for Iris, the memory was as sharp as yesterday.
Thinking about her sister, however, brought the past surging forward. Several months after their shared alter, Violet had gone to work at a sandwich shop in downtown Elegance. Without warning, she and a dozen other witches had been abducted by a number of drugged out vampires. They’d been hauled out to a place called No Man’s Land, also known as the Graveyard.
The vampires had been out of control and hyped up on blood flame. The witches’ hands had been bound to prevent the witch death touch. The women had been stabbed, choked, raped and drained to death.
The Tribunal investigation had gone on for years but died its own death some time later. It had been buried in the Trib’s paperwork morgue, no doubt at the request of one of the drug-lords.
No closure for nine years, just pain.
She traversed yet another small bridge, the bike thump-thumping at the entrance and exit.
The world of Five Bridges had about a hundred bridges scattered throughout the ripped up territory of north-central Phoenix, most of them short and only one lane wide. Long ditches crisscrossed the land, a final containment solution to the ongoing drug and human trafficking problem that had accompanied the flame revolution. The hundreds of ditches were as difficult to traverse as they were completely ineffective in stemming the export of flame drugs to the human world.
Many of the original homes in this part of Phoenix now served the citizens of Five Bridges. But at least half had been blasted away and the pits left to grow whatever the desert could manage. Or they’d been dozed out even more to create rows of ditches hard to navigate on foot. A lot of cactus took root in these places. Rattlesnakes and vermin set up camp in droves. Coyotes, too. More bridges were built, some as short as seven feet.
Five Bridges essentially had the look of a war zone, especially with barbed wire separating each of the five territories from each other as well as from Phoenix. There were a few beauty spots in some of the renovated areas or in backyards like her own. Otherwise, it was a place that looked like bombs were detonated on a regular basis and the rubble left to sprout any weed or grass that would survive without much water.
There were, however, five main bridges, hence the name for the cesspool she lived in. Sentinel was one of them, the bridge she was headed to now. It was the long, main bridge connecting Crescent with her witch world of Elegance. It also intersected with the human world as all five bridges did, in a T layout. It still amazed Iris that any human would want to come to Five Bridges. But then most who did were looking for drugs or sex, the latter the second most important source of revenue for the poorer residents.
Now there was an unspecified incident on Sentinel Bridge.
So much for being off duty.
~ ~ ~
At the clinic, Connor leaned over Tammy, who proved to be an un-altered human female, working the sex trade in Five Bridges. He was trying to catch her words. She mumbled a lot and slipped in and out of consciousness since she was still tangled up with blood flame.
“What were you doing out there, Tammy? I could tell you had no idea where you were going.”
“He told me to go out there or he’d kill me.”
“Who?”
“The man who gave me the drugs. I owed him.”
The baby was hooked up to a fetal heart monitor and its heart beat fast and steady. The nurse stood nearby and scowled. Working in a clinic like this, she’d no doubt seen it all. The baby, if it survived, would have to go through withdrawal.
“Tammy, focus. What did the man look like?”
She lifted a weak hand to her right shoulder. “Skull tattoo, here, the kind with the mouth wide open like it’s screaming.”
“Bald head with tats?”
“Yes. And a really big nose. And super tight pants.”
Connor held back a curse. He knew the small-time player. His name was Gary Smith and he owned the House of Big Sex in Rotten Row. Connor and his crew called him Big Nuts because he wore tight pants to display an oversized scrotum, an unfortunate look on any man.
But why had the owner of a sex club sent a woman out in a fake runner jacket? What game was he playing at?
“You need to leave.” The nurse’s voice blasted through the room like it came out of a sawed off shotgun. “We’re going to put her under. There’s too much stress on her heart because of the drug. The baby’s at risk.”
Connor dipped his chin in response. He had what he needed anyway, the name of the man who’d set him up. He picked up the runner jacket loaded with nothing but fake bricks and vials, another indication someone was messing with him.
When he reached the admitting desk, he talked to a lovely vampire he knew well, a woman he’d slept with a few months ago. She’d already touched his hand a couple of times and had a look in her eye he knew well. His gaze slipped to her throat where she was not-so-subtly stroking her fingers ove
