Cause of Death: Unnatural (The Cause of Death Series) (5 page)

Em felt around inside Jarek's thoughts.
Memories of lovers since her, politics at her father's hall, the orgies of a
recent cull,
the
precision of Jarek's mind, his
determination, his ambition. It was a thrill to be with him again, a dark,
guilty pleasure to be so carefree in
her own
form
again.

But she stopped. There was a noise, far, far
away. It was a familiar sound, but for a second she couldn't figure out what it
meant.

Her cell phone was ringing.

She snapped back into her body, coming down
from her higher energy field with a jerk that threw her head back. Beside her
Jarek's black smoke coalesced into human form with a decidedly irritated
expression on his face.

"What?" he said, impatiently.

Em ignored him and answered the phone. She
realized she was relieved to hear it ring. She'd gone too far with Jarek just
then.

It was Robert.

"Sorry to spoil your evening Em,"
he said.
"Four bodies.
You're never going to
guess where."

Em shook her head to clear the last remaining
affects of her fling with Jarek. She needed to concentrate.
A
crime scene.
Work.
Four
victims.

"Where?"
she said.

"The club," said Robert. "The
burlesque club we only left a few hours ago. I can't believe it myself."

"I'll be there," said Em.
"Will you call Nick, or shall I?"

When she hung up she looked back at Jarek and
smiled a tight lipped smile. He growled.

"Thanks for the ride, lover," Em
said, "but mama has to work now."

She was angry at herself for letting Jarek
pull her back into her old life so quickly. She hadn't even put up the
slightest resistance. What a tart, what a tramp, she berated herself.

She bustled together her phone, her handbag
and then looked down at her dress. She ran into her room and tore off her coat
and her dress. Jarek's black smoke flashed past her and her reformed lying down
on her bed, propped up on one elbow. He looked amused, but resigned.

"Your master calls and you run," he
said.
"How endearing.
Now if I could only get you
to obey me in that manner."

"Shut up, Jarek," said Em pulling
on jeans and a sweater. "There's something else killing down near the
harbor, and it's not Alina. Haven't you noticed it? It's not one of the
Family
, it's not one of the other clans either. I don't know
what it is."

Jarek sat up and looked suddenly interested.
"You don't know what it is?" he exclaimed, "But that's your
gift, that's what you do. You know everyone, everything." He sounded
intrigued.

"Tell me about it," said Em.
"And whatever it is, it's been giving me the most vicious headaches."

Jarek's eyebrows shot up again.

"I think it's just killed again, down
near Alina's club. No, Jarek, no," she said, as Jarek stood up and rippled
with a fierce black energy. "I think Alina might have something to do with
it, but I also think she's scared. If you spook Alina, we might lose our chance
of finding out whatever this thing is."

He grunted.

"You mean you want me to sit here like a
good boy, while you dash off and have all the fun," he said grumpily.

"Yes. Yes, that's exactly what I want
you to," said Em, heading back out into the kitchen to grab her bag.
"You might fix me some dinner while you're waiting. And there's a vacuum
cleaner in the cupboard," she yelled over her shoulder as she headed out
the door.

As she closed the door to her apartment, it
flew out of her hand as if a storm had blown it and slammed with noise loud
enough to wake the dead. A flicker of darkness punched her hard in the stomach,
then
brushed up past her face like a caress.

"Bitch," it whispered.

Em grinned.

In a laneway not far from
the burlesque club Robert and Nick stood over the bodies and began the process
of collecting evidence. A photographer snapped the scene from every angle and a
few police stood around waiting for someone from the coroner's office to
arrive.

Em took a cop with her and went into the club
to talk to Alina. After all the routine questions, she sent the policeman out
and stood facing Alina as the older woman sat sulking on a lounge in her office.

"Just tonight, just a few short hours
ago, Alina, you told me no harm was going to come from this little charade of
yours." Em was fuming, and Alina seemed more interested in examining her
nails. "You promised me nothing like this was going to happen."

"And you have no proof that any of my
clientele
are
responsible. Or my staff," whined
Alina.

"There are four dead humans on your
doorstep, and your club is full of vampires. Don't try to tell me that's a
coincidence."

"Four
dead humans."
Alina tossed her head.
"As if that
matters.
And besides, did you see the state of that meat? Those bites
were positively crude. You know I don't cater to riffraff."

Em sighed. That was probably true, she
thought, wondering why it was her headache was back again. The mind itch in the
back of her head was pounding. Maybe it was this place, thought Em. Maybe there
was something here Alina was hiding.
But no.
Her head
was killing her last week at the docks, hell, it had been hurting on and off
for three weeks now. It wasn't Alina.

But Alina was definitely part of the problem
here, and the headache was not putting Em in a good mood. She decided to pull a
bit of law over the woman and see how that went.

"Alina, if you don't cooperate with our
investigation, I'll have your club shut down until you do."

Alina was on her feet in a blink, teeth
bared, breathing ice just inches from Em's face. Her skin was so pale it was
almost white, her eyelids a pearly shade of blue, her eyes wide and black as
night. Ah, this was the Alina she remembered. This was the Alina she'd sparred
with for centuries. So she was still here, underneath all that fat, those
vibrant colours, those garish earrings. Why the ruse?

"You wouldn't dare," hissed Alina.

Em gathered a small handful of energy and
pushed it at Alina. As before, when Alina tried to meet the challenge with a
thrust of her own dark power, it was weaker, far weaker than Em remembered it.

"What has happened to you, Alina?"
whispered Em.

Alina breathed out suddenly, her shoulders
slumped and she sat back down on the lounge. The last glimmerings of the power
she'd just shown evaporated away and Alina raised a hand to her face and
pinched the bridge of her nose. She sighed.

"What
would you care, Emilia?
Why haven't you turned me over to your father yet? Go on, that's
what you're here for, isn't it?"

Em frowned. There was something here she was
missing. Alina fled from her father's side, and sort refuge in a
divey
club that, out of all the cities to choose from, just
happened to be in the same town as her master's only daughter. Her power seemed
to be gone, she was plainly running for her life, and yet she settled in a
place that made her only too easy to find.

Em watched her holding her face like that. Em
recognized the gesture. She'd done it herself often enough these past few weeks
with these shrieking headaches. Was Alina feeling the same thing?

"I'll have to tell him eventually,"
Em said softly. "Jarek's here."

Alina looked up quickly in fear. She masked
it clumsily with a sneer and said, "I don't need your protection, Emilia.
I don't need anything from you."

Em exploded. "Well, for heaven's sake
Alina, you need to sort this shit out. I'm not going to protect you. I want to
know what's going on here. Who is killing these humans if it isn't you and your
little posse? I want some answers
Alina,
or I'll send
Jarek in to tear you apart."

Alina's smarmy attitude was back. She smiled.
"It's still so easy to push your buttons, Em. You have no self control, my
dear, never have."

"Talk, Alina."

"I don't know who's messing up my
neighborhood
, all right? If I did, I'd ask them move along.
I'm a businesswoman, darling.
Bloodless bodies on the
doorstep isn't
good for anyone, though I don't mind the free
publicity." She waved a hand airily and smirked.

"You don't know
who's
killing?"

"No, my dear, I do not."

But Em noticed a shadow flick over Alina's
face, a tightening around her eyes. Either she was lying, or she was scared,
and neither of those options was good news.

The door to the office opened and the girl
Alina had introduced her to earlier
walked
in.
Red head.
What was her name?
Raeisa.
She was still wearing that same green dress with the snake print. She looked
annoyed.

"Ah, Raeisa my dearest," cooed
Alina. "Thank you for rescuing me from this boring woman and her tedious
investigation. Look at all those people out there. All this fuss over four
silly little bodies."

Raeisa climbed onto the lounge chair and sat
on the back of it. She hooked one bare leg over Alina's shoulder and buried her
toes in between the larger woman's thighs. She looked over Alina's head at Em
and arched an eyebrow. The look was a challenge, the same brazen trumpeting
she'd pulled earlier that evening.

Em ignored her. "We'll talk,
Alina," she said and walked out.

She couldn't help but think the fear in
Alina's eyes has just grown a little deeper.

* * *

It took until sunrise to get the crime scene properly
processed. Robert was leading the team, as usual, with Em working as senior
technician. Nick and Poll were doing photography and recording, and their usual
medical examiner was late to the scene. They hadn't wanted to wait any longer
and had started working the scene without him, but they couldn't move the
bodies until he showed.

The victims were rather literally on Alina's
doorstep, just a few yards down the adjacent alleyway. Em bent over the bodies
and sniffed. She got nothing but the sickly sweet smell of sweat and cologne.
It was too cold to smell even the beginnings of decay. The absence of any scent
of blood was particularly obvious - the bodies were so pale Em was sure there
wasn't a drop in them.

Despite everything Alina had said, all the
signs were pointing her way. Four boys out for a good time getting a whole lot
more than they'd bargained for.

And that was odd, when Em thought about it.
Most vampires she knew preferred their victims to be female. Sure, they took
the odd male every now and then, but on the whole, testosterone was considered
a rather tasteless dressing. It was like the difference between hamburger and
prime fillet steak. Vampires preferred the more expensive cuts. It was rare to
find four males bled dry so soon after the last batch of lads met a similar end
down at the docks last week.

"They're practically blue," said
Nick. "But it doesn't look like they have a scratch on them otherwise. Why
do we keep getting weird homicides down here near the harbor? Give me a simple
shooting any day."

He'd just about finished photography and
starting to bag evidence, not that there was much.

"Three Hispanics, one Caucasian,"
said Robert thoughtfully, talking to himself as much as to anyone else.
"No known gang associations, no signs of a struggle, no major
trauma and no blood either.
There are no tracks, no marks, they've not
been dragged here, but they didn't die here either. What the hell is this? And
where is our medical examiner, for heaven's sake?"

Em put a soothing hand on his shoulder as she
walked past him to examine the fourth body. "I can't even remember who was
on tonight. He'll be here," she said.

Nick noticed the hand and said nothing, but
gave Em a look. As soon as Robert was out of earshot he said to Em, "I
know it's a bit early in the morning for something like this but, my sister's
having a family barbecue on the weekend. Everyone's dying to meet you, and I
promised I'd force you to come along."

He stopped as he saw Em sigh. "Of
course, you don't have to," he said quickly, but Em interrupted him.

"I'd love to Nick, of course I
would." Em was groaning on the inside. Dating Nick and flirting with
Robert seemed even
more crazy
now that Jarek was here
to complicate things. She cursed herself. You should have listened to Jennifer,
she thought to herself wryly. Look at the mess you've got yourself into now.

Nick was looking at her with a worried
expression. "You haven't still got that headache, have you babe?" he
asked. "I think you're working too hard. Come on, come along on the
weekend. It'll do you good to relax for a bit, take your mind off all
this." He walked around behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. Em
leaned into his strong fingers as he massaged the muscles in her neck. Oh he
was good, this one. She remembered why she liked him so much.