Dragon Justice (17 page)

I hadn’t seen death, no, but kenning was like tarot cards—what
you thought you saw might not be what it actually meant. I did know that
something was coming. Something dangerous, probably bad—because the kenning
never bothered to bring me good news—and soon. Near me. Involving me. Did this
qualify?

“You had a kenning? What did you see?” Sharon practically
quivered to attention, and even Venec leaned forward. I hadn’t told him the
details, had brushed it off as not belonging on this time away from the job. I
wouldn’t make that mistake again, ever.

“Dragons.” I closed my eyes and the visuals returned fresh as
new. “Three dragons, circling. Fire, dark and deep, like a forge, like the core
of the earth. A splattering of red…blood? Thick and heavy, dripping down slowly,
drying in impossible shapes, pulsing off the wall…and it said something.”

“What?”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember. I wrote it down, though.
Something…some warning, but really vague. But I remember—whatever it was, it
knew me.”

I’d been, in that split second, terrified.

“You’ve seen dragons before,” Venec said.

In visions and in person. But the dragon I’d seen in my vision
hadn’t been like anything else, and certainly not like Madame…

I opened my eyes. Madame, the Great Worm of Manhattan. Ancient,
magnificent, an old family friend and terrible gossip. She claimed Manhattan as
her territory, so if another dragon, great or minor, had been looking for me,
Madame would know. Would she tell me, if I didn’t ask her directly?

I didn’t know.

“It might not have anything to do with this case.” It might
involve Stosser and Wren—the fatae weren’t always friendly to them. I wasn’t
sure that thought made me feel any better. No, it definitely didn’t make me feel
better. On the other hand, I hadn’t had the kenning—

“You had the kenning on the way down here.” And there was
Venec, sharing my thoughts in his own brain. “Once you left New York?”

“Yeah.” Damn. If there was a dragon down here looking for me,
Madame might take no interest in it at all.

“Proximity could be a trigger—there was nothing to worry about
until you came down here. That would suggest it was tied to this case.”

“Wren’s down here,” I pointed out. “And I was coming down to
interact with the museum.”

“But Ian isn’t here and has nothing to do with the museum,” he
countered. “But since you have connections to both Ian and Valere, your point’s
taken. And dragons are never anything to ignore. Pietr.”

Pietr’s eyes remained unfocused, but he lifted his head and
nodded, indicating he was still transmitting to the main office.

“Have Lou run a search for anything involving dragons, greater
or lesser, in the past thirty—no, fifty years. North America only. Don’t let’s
get the Old World involved in this unless we have cause to.”

Asian dragons were a different sort from the European ones,
anyway, and Americans different again. No less dangerous, just…different. This
had felt Western, at least: all dry air and ice and brimstone.

“Keep the focus on the cities we know about, once you have a
baseline,” I added, speaking directly to Lou rather than the formality of
addressing Pietr. “That should narrow it down.” If nothing came up, then we’d
worry about metaphorical dragons.

“You really think there’s that much dragon activity in North
America?” Pietr asked; it could have been him or Lou with the actual
question.

I remembered the feel of being trapped with a cave dragon when
I was a teenager, and shrugged. “I think…we’d be surprised how much goes on that
we don’t know about. The Council—hell, nobody wants to talk about the bad stuff.
You know that.”

Most of our cases, especially the early ones, had been cleaning
up messes nobody wanted to talk about, finding culprits nobody wanted to
acknowledge. If human beings were ostriches, the
Cosa
Nostradamus
was right there with their heads in the sand.

The Decade Killer was human; we’d ascertained that much. Did he
or she have a connection to a greater or lesser worm? If it was just a metaphor,
for what? That was the damnable thing about kennings: no way to know for certain
until after the fact.

The phone rang then, the sharp noise startling us enough that
we all jumped. Nobody even tried to pretend they hadn’t.

“Room’s in your name,” I said to Venec, when nobody went to
pick it up. It might be Sergei, with news about Wren…but I didn’t think so.

He gave me a look, then walked across the room and picked up
the plastic receiver like it was a snake that might bite him. “Hello? Yeah, this
is…Okay. What’s…Oh, hell.”

It was a resigned, annoyed “oh, hell,” not an alarmed one. But
the look on his face was of an incoming headache, so we waited until he’d
finished mmm-hmming and scribbling notes on the pad of paper the hotel had left
by the phone, and placed the receiver back into the cradle.

“Whatever’s going on with Ian—and The Wren—is officially
back-burnered. Someone talked. Word’s out on the current that we’ve got a killer
and that he’s targeting Talent.”

“Details?” Sharon meant if details of the killings had gotten
out: how they were done specifically.

“None yet, but it’s just a matter of time. And god help us if
they discover he’s done it before. There will be a damned panic that won’t be
restricted to this city.”

* * *

“Screw you.”

He wasn’t pleading; he’d stopped pleading the moment he read
his killer’s intention. It didn’t take magic: the eyes said it all. Not dead,
the way you’d think, but filled with a dreadful vigor, the pupils enlarged over
the white mask, the breathing too quick, but controlled. Those eyes, that
breathing, all filled with an overwhelming, possessive sense of
wanting.
Of
greed.

He had seen those eyes, brighter then, come out of the shadows.
It had been so swift—a blitz attack, the cop shows called it, he thought—all the
karate he’d taken, that had made him feel secure walking through even the
dubious neighborhoods, had been utterly useless. He’d tried to fight, tried to
run, and then something sickly sweet, like sugared sulfur, like garbage had
filled his nostrils, and he’d passed out.

Now there was a weight on his shoulders, pinning him to the
table, the metal cold against his skin, chafing his buttocks. No clothing, not
even his underwear. His left knee ached where he’d been hit with a stick of some
kind that sent him facedown on the pavement; his ribs a mass of sharp bruises
where he’d been kicked, when he tried to get up; his throat and nose itchy from
whatever they’d held over his mouth.

Stripped bare, his skin was pebbled with goose bumps, his balls
so far withdrawn he might as well be neutered, sweat cold and clammy even though
the room they were in was comfortably warm, with the occasional whirring noise
of an air conditioner working somewhere.

“Screw you,” he said again. Not “I don’t want to die” because
he knew he was going to, eventually, inevitably. Not even “please don’t hurt me”
because he knew it was going to hurt. “Screw you” for his daughters, who would
never hug him again, and his partner, who would remember the fights, and not the
good times, and his clients, who would be cast onto some other lawyer’s mercy,
without warning.

The killer moved forward, his breath rising like steam, his
skin rough and blotched over the mask. Near-hallucinating from the pain, for a
moment the skin looked like scales.

A shadow passed over him, cast from behind: something else in
the room, watching. Waiting. He could feel the greedy hunger, sliding like hot
fingers through his brain, demanding entrance.

“Screw you,” he whispered, as the knife touched the skin of his
shoulder, scoring the flesh like claws, opening him like a wallet, sliding
inside.

“Give it to me,” the killer said, his voice hot, flat, hissing
like a flame. “Give it to me, and you can live.”

Even if he knew what they wanted, he’d seen killers’ eyes
before. He knew when they lied.

Chapter 13

We’d called it a day around ten Tuesday night, and
extra hotel rooms had been hustled up, the keys handed around. Sharon took one,
Pietr took the other, and everyone looked at me. Standard would be for the girls
to bunk together, but it wasn’t a secret that Pietr and I had shared sheets a
few times. I rolled my eyes and told them both to get the hell out of my
room.

“That was subtle.”

“My stuff’s already in the bathroom.” And subtle had never
really been my thing. I’d never apologized for my sexual behavior before. I sure
as hell wasn’t going to start now.

“You want me to sleep in the armchair?” It was comfortable
enough, and I’d done worse. I knew he was standing just behind me; what I didn’t
know was what he was going to say. His walls were up, and his breathing was too
calm to read.

Then his hand touched my shoulder, slid down my arm, and
covered my hand, turning so that our fingers tangled. It was kind of awkward,
but I didn’t mind. We just stood there, breathing together.

“I’m glad you stayed.”

That was it, that was all he said, and then he let go of my
hand and walked past me into the bathroom, shutting the door carefully.

As sweet nothings went, it wasn’t all that. Good thing I’d
never been a traditional sort of girl.

The next morning when we met up for breakfast, neither Sharon
nor Pietr were giving me the side-eye. They might have been giving Venec the
side-eye, but if so, that was his problem.

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that, once again, we’d
curled up together in bed, spooned together just enough to let the usual sparks
of current crackle and pop between us…and gone to sleep. Neither of us was going
anywhere; we had time. And right now, with everything on our minds…wasn’t the
time.

“Did anyone have any brilliant revelations or flashes of
insight overnight?”

“Not a thing,” Pietr said. “You?”

“Venec snores.” It honestly was all I had, but the stunned
silence—and then faint snickers—were worth the dirty look Venec gave me.

And he really did snore. It didn’t take kenning to foresee a
pair of earplugs for me in my near future.

Once the coffee was consumed and plates cleared, we went back
upstairs and went back to work. Thankfully, the housekeeping staff had already
been through. I did catch Sharon giving the bed a side-eye once or twice, then
they got over it—the way they’d promised me, months ago, they would—and we
settled back into harness.

“Recap,” Venec said, taking up his usual position holding up
the wall with his shoulders.

I let Sharon do the honors, sitting on the desk with my legs
dangling, letting the information flow over me. Sometimes, if I just let myself
drift and the right key word hit… Not this time, though. The kenning had
apparently given me everything it had, already.

I supposed that was good: it meant nothing had changed, and by
changed I meant gotten worse.

Lacking the whiteboard we usually used, we laid out sheets of
hotel stationery to chart the things we knew, versus the things we suspected. It
took us about an hour and was a pretty sad display. But, unlike a normal case,
we had no idea where to even start looking.

And Sergei hadn’t called, so Wren was still in the wind. He and
Ellen were checking out off-the-path hotels and rooms, trying to figure out
where she holed up.

The rest of the morning was spent moving those slips of paper
around, arguing over theories, and trying not to think about the fact that every
minute that went by, someone got closer to another vivisection

“Enough, people. You’ve been at this all day, and breakfast
alone does not a pup feed. Go down to the restaurant, get some decent food in
you. A salad, Bonnie. Protein, Sharon.”

“What about you, boss?” Pietr asked. And how come his eating
habits didn’t get critiqued?

“I want to check in with the museum, make sure everything’s
okay there. I’ll join you later.”

I should have known he wouldn’t—couldn’t—let that go.

The same waitress from my first meal there was back again. She
didn’t seem to recognize me. I passed on the sandwich this time and went for a
bowl of chicken noodle soup with a green salad, instead. It came with a short
loaf of French bread, and I spent the entire meal dunking the end into my bowl
and then eating that, rather than actually putting a spoon into the soup. I ate
the salad, though. Sharon had a salad, too, and one of the most disgustingly
juicy hamburgers I’d ever seen, while Pietr ordered the sandwich special and,
unlike me, finished every scrap.

I toyed with my spoon and looked around, letting myself scan
for entrances, exits, possible ambush points—all the things Venec was constantly
trying to hammer into our heads. It was hard, though: the restaurant and the
lobby had taken on the air of odd familiarity you get when you’re someplace new
that looks like places you’ve been before. Had I really first eaten here just
the day before—surely it had been a week, already? No, it was only
Wednesday.

Venec joined us just as I was scraping the bottom of my bowl,
sliding in next to me. There wasn’t the usual sharp snap of a spark that
happened when we touched, just a warm sparkle, like fairy dust tingling on my
skin. Weird. Interesting. I filed that away for further investigation—later.
When we weren’t on the job.

He didn’t say anything about Ian, either success or failure, or
about the museum break-in. “I spoke with the hotel management. They have a space
downstairs we can use, while we’re here.”

That was good, because it had been starting to get a little
close in that hotel room. What seems like a lovely, large space when it’s just
two of you becomes damned crowded when it’s suddenly four, and the detritus of
an investigation piles up fast. If we were on the case, we needed proper space
to work.

“A conference room?” This wasn’t a business hotel; they didn’t
seem to have a lot of event space advertised.

Venec snorted. “Not exactly.”

“Not exactly” turned out to be an understatement. We found
ourselves—using the service elevator—in a cheerless, dingily lit room near the
boiler room. With a single rickety table and plastic chairs, this was clearly
the place they lectured incoming chambermaids. That said, it was larger than the
hotel room, and the AC worked, and there was a bank of vending machines in the
hallway outside, so if the walls were reminiscent of a down-at-its-heels high
school and my nose kept picking up trails of chlorine and bleach and a nastier
undertone of what might have been mold, we could live with that.

Sharon kept sneezing, so it probably was mold.

Lacking a whiteboard, someone on staff had dragged out a
rickety chalkboard on wheels, like the kind they used to use in classrooms, and
half leaned it against the wall. It wobbled, but it didn’t fall over, and there
was chalk, so we were in business.

Proper tools at hand, we got back to work.

There were two timelines: Schultz and Brock. Time of
disappearance, time of estimated death, time of discovery. A side chart listed
their various attributes, as we knew them: hair, height, weight, age, marital
status, etc. There were a few overlaps, but nothing that Sharon, our stats
expert, said were notable.

“And there’s absolutely nothing in their personal or work lives
that overlaps. Brock is—was—an associate at a law firm—Kale, Whittier and
Stovel. I don’t know anyone there, but I’ve put out feelers for anyone who
does.” Sharon had worked as a paralegal at a Talent-heavy law firm before she
joined PUPI and still kept her contacts shiny. “Someone will have the dirt on
him, if there’s dirt to be found.

“Schultz, on the other hand, was a soloist. Older, more
established. He left a group practice about five years ago and had his own
storefront.”

“He’s a CPA?”

“He was, anyway.”

“Right. Was.”

I flipped through the folder marked San Diego. “The previous
victims, ten years ago, were all over the place. A dockworker, a nurse, a grad
student—philosophy, a carpenter, a dentist, a livery car driver, two
stay-at-home dads, a retired teacher, and an airline pilot.”

“A nurse? I thought you said all the victims were guys.”

Pietr got there before I could: “And the winner of the Nifty
Award for Shameless Sexism goes to…”

Sharon looked startled, then held up her hands in a gesture of
surrender. “All right, point made. But is there any hundred-percent overlap at
all, with those ten?”

“Other than male, middle-aged, Talent, and living in the same
city?” I shook my head. “Nothing that is in these records. No idea if they were
Council or lonejack, though. That might be useful.”

“Any chance we could get that out of their local Councils?”

My laugh was answer enough, I guess, because Sharon made a face
and went back to work.

The records we had were piled in the center of the table, for
somewhat scattered definitions of a pile. Andrulis had sent a car over with the
boxes while we were eating. It was only fair, I thought, since he’d been the one
to drag us into this. But that was probably all the official help we were going
to get.

Venec had disappeared an hour or so ago, muttering something
about using his contacts to track down our missing cats, by which I assumed he
meant both Stosser and Wren. I’d suggested that he include Sergei in his search,
but he’d just given me A Look and left.

Ben could work with Stosser, but apparently any other alpha
male was right out. Good to know.

“They were all… No, damn, one lefty in Montreal, and Brock is a
lefty, too. Damn. I thought I had something.” I stared at the scratchpad in
front of me, then glared at the chalkboard like it was somehow at fault.

“We’re starting with more information than we usually
have—actual bodies, historical evidence, cooperation, kinda, of the local
cops…so why does it feel like we’ve got nothing?”

“Because we’ve got nothing,” Sharon said. “Nothing useful. And
because we’re waiting for the word to come that they’ve found another body.”

The three of us all turned to look at the door, expecting
someone to burst in and say “wait no longer.”

The door stayed closed. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or
not.

“Talent.” Sharon got up and swung the chalkboard around,
top-to-bottom, with a dramatic gesture, and wrote the word on the clean surface
with large, slanting letters.

“That’s what we know, that’s the consistent pattern. All three
cities, all twenty-two men. Male, middle-aged, and Talent. Everything else, for
now, is unimportant.”

Pietr shoved the file he was looking through back onto the pile
and leaned back in his chair, making it creak in an unnerving fashion.

“Okay,” he said. “So…which do we deal with first?”

“Gender.” It was instinct, but I’d always trusted my instincts.
“Talent is a broader category, with both genders. And the age range is too wide
for specifics, except that he wanted them strong and healthy. So why only
male?”

“You might as well ask why Talent.” Sharon shrugged. “Six of
one, six of another. Gender it is. Why would a killer focus on men, as opposed
to women, or both?”

“Machismo.” Pietr spoke first. “A real man, someone secure,
doesn’t hurt a woman, and a guy who has something to prove isn’t going to attack
someone obviously weaker. That’s the opposite of proving something.”

“Weaker?” I raised an eyebrow at that.

“Bonnie, I don’t care how strong you are or how dirty you
fight—and I know you fight plenty dirty. Pound for pound even an out-of-shape
guy can probably take down the average female. It’s just genetics.”

I hated the fact that he was right.

“So which is it?” Sharon asked. “Secure or looking for a
challenge?”

“Secure,” Pietr and I both said at the same time. I looked at
him, and he made a “go ahead” gesture.

“The victims were bruised, but not showing any abrasions that
would indicate that they were tied down. The records from earlier deaths didn’t
mention any bruising at all. However he’s catching them or restraining them
while he…does what he does, it’s not violent.”

I stopped and cocked my head, considering that statement.
“Right. You know what I mean. They’re not fighting back, so either he’s drugging
them or somehow convincing them to stay put. No violence is suggested by the
evidence. It’s not about the thrill of the victory or about taking down more
powerful prey—the act of cutting into them is what our guy’s after. Causing very
specific, controlled pain.”

I swallowed, aware of how clinical I was being and how
uncomfortable I was with that. This guy was a monster, and I…

“We need a profiler,” I said. “Somebody who actually knows what
they’re doing. We’re just guessing here. He could be doing this for a thousand
reasons, half of which we can’t even begin to guess.”

“We don’t have a profiler.” Yet, I could hear Sharon thinking.
“So we’re all we’ve got. We’re all his next victim has.”

I shoved away from the table, the chair’s wheels squeaking
against the floor, and started to pace.

“Male. All strong guys, none of them injured or handicapped
prior to the attack. So, yeah, he’s not cutting out the weakest, and he’s not
going after athletes or professional fighters, either. Ordinary Joes. Cutting
into them. Vivisecting them. Ugh.” I clenched my toes inside my stompy boots and
reached instinctively for my current. Despite my emotional upset, the pool of
current coiled inside me was smooth and calm.

*ben*

It was instinctive, not even a mental vocalization, and I felt
the touch of his core against mine, a cat’s whisker of a touch, and then he was
gone. I was on my own.

“What if we’re looking at this the wrong way?” Sharon said
suddenly, her blue eyes bright, and while her body might do a centerfold
justice, it was her mind that had gotten hired. She had something.