Nightbred: Lords of the Darkyn (4 page)

So to them we’re like dogs,
she’d said.
Except we talk, take care of the house, and balance their checking accounts.

Her analogy had startled a laugh out of Burke.
Something like that.

Herbert Burke’s office lay tucked in the corner of the club, and once Chris made her way through the thinning crowd of patrons, she took out her key card to release the electronic lock and let herself inside.

Although Lucan had a reputation for being arrogant and lofty, no doubt reinforced by the languid contempt with which he treated most people, the suzerain on his own handled a good deal of the
jardin
’s business concerns. Chris knew he had an active interest in the hundred or so businesses he had purchased since taking charge of Alenfar, and often came up with clever ways to make them more profitable.

He also invested in the very latest in computer mainframes, which controlled satellite terminals stretching from Jupiter to the Keys and constantly monitored his various investments. Everyone who worked for him in the stronghold had been networked with the mainframe. It also served as the central command center for his stronghold, and his massive wall of surveillance monitors kept watch over the club’s interior as well as every inch of the properties surrounding the building. Concealed behind an Alan Pollack painting at the far end of Burke’s office, a vault held enough weapons for the suzerain to stage a respectable coup.

Should Castro’s brother decide to invade, we must have the means with which to blow him back to hell,
Lucan had told her once.
Besides, one can never have too many AK-47s.

Chris went to the desk, gingerly lowering herself into Burke’s chair before she faced his teleconferencing terminal, on which he still had the Darth Vader screen saver she’d installed for his birthday. When Lucan had seen it for the first time, Burke had told him—with a perfectly straight face, no less—what a huge fan of the Star Wars movies he was.

This was no time for joking around now, though. Chris straightened her jacket, smoothed a hand over her hair, and reached out to input the access code on the terminal’s keyboard.

Her hand shook as it hovered over the keys.
I can do this,
she told herself.
It’s the only way Jamys and I can be together, and I can make something of myself.

Vader dissolved, re-forming into the deeply lined face of a gray-haired man in a beautiful Italian suit.

“Good evening, Padrone Ramas,” Chris said, silently thanking Burke for making her memorize the faces of all the men on the
tresoran
council. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.” Lord, she was already apologizing.
Be professional. Show him that you’re already a
tresora
in attitude if not name.
“How may I be of service?”

“The council has deliberated over your request to be granted official status within Suzerain Lucan’s household,” Ramas said. “Is it still your desire to attain the rank of
tresora
?”

“Yes, sir.” Under the keyboard shelf she crossed her fingers. “I want that more than anything.”

“We appreciate your service to the suzerain, Miss Lang. The letters of recommendation you sent from Mr. Burke and Lady Samantha were most persuasive. Burke indicates that you have successfully completed your training in all aspects of protocol and household management.” He steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “However, attaining the rank of
tresora
is no small thing. Only a very few humans are trusted with our masters’ secrets and livelihood. Your service would be for the duration of your lifetime, and you would be expected to attend to and protect your lord’s well-being and safety, even at the cost of your own. Once you embark on this path, Miss Lang, there is no turning back or changing your mind. If you have any uncertainty, now is the time to act on it.”

He made it sound as if she was selling herself into slavery, which in a sense she was. “I understand, Padrone, and I don’t have any doubt about this decision. The Darkyn are my family. I’d do anything for them.”

“I am glad to hear it, for the council has decided to set you one final task with which to prove your loyalty and resourcefulness.” He held up a page of parchment filled with calligraphic writing. “The high lord has sent out this summons to every stronghold in the Americas; it will be delivered by private courier to your master within the next several days. In short, it presents a challenge to every Kyn warrior under rule to recover three jewels known as the Emeralds of Eternity. He who delivers the gems to Lord Tremayne is to be given rule of Ireland.”

Chris frowned. Should she tell him that the summons had already arrived, and had nearly started a small war between the garrison and the visitors? Burke had always advised her that whatever happened in the stronghold stayed in the stronghold. “That’s very generous of the high lord.”

“Were these common emeralds, I would agree with you. But these particular jewels are very rare, and quite lethal.” He put down the summons. “While the council appreciates the high lord’s . . . enthusiasm for this treasure hunt he commands, he is unaware of the grievous threat these gems present. Were they to fall into the hands of our enemies, I assure you, their enormous power would be used to exterminate mortal kind. That is something we cannot permit, so your task will be to prevent it.”

What he was saying made no sense to her. “Sir, how can I stop the Kyn from looking for the gems?”

“You cannot,” Ramas agreed. “But you can find the jewels before the Kyn do, and bring them to the council for safekeeping. I am now transmitting all the data we have about the emeralds; we know that they were stolen from Jamaica in the seventeenth century, possibly by pirates.”

“Pirates.” This was just getting more bizarre by the minute. “Right.”

“I suggest you also make use of the extensive research that has been done by Americans on piracy, shipwrecks, and lost treasure troves,” Ramas said. “Of course you cannot tell any of the Darkyn about this, as it could strain relations between the high lord and the council. It could also result in unpleasant repercussions for you.”

“Unpleasant.” Chris loved Lucan, and was pretty sure he liked having her around, but the former master assassin had a very bad temper. He could also make any living thing he touched literally explode. “Yeah.” A sudden flood of resentment surged through her. There was no way she could outwit the Kyn, and when she failed, the council would blow off her petition. “With all due respect, Padrone, I’d like to request another task to prove myself.
Any
other task.”

“For
tresori
, no sacrifice is too great, and no task impossible.” He looked down his nose at her. “Find the emeralds before the Kyn do, Miss Lang, and you will be made one of us. Fail, and you will not.”

The monitor went dark.

Chapter 4

S
am borrowed Lucan’s Porsche and drove to the address sent by dispatch, at the same time calling the station to check in with her boss.

“Sounds like a robbery that got ugly,” Captain Garcia told her. “Do you want me to send Massey down to work the scene with you?”

Jonah Massey was one of the newest detectives assigned to homicide, and unlike her boss, he wasn’t one of the Kyn’s human allies. “That’s okay, I’ll use the uniforms for the canvass.” She pulled up and parked behind the medical examiner’s van. “I’m here. I’ll report in as soon as I have something.”

Sam showed her ID to the patrolman before she ducked under the tape and entered the brightly lit shop. The coppery, sewer-pipe smell of death washed over her as she approached the slight, balding man crouching next to a body sprawled on the expensive carpeting in front of an empty, smashed display case. “What have you got, Evan?”

“Dead guy, multiple contusions, broken bones, stab wounds, impact wounds, defensive wounds, you name it.” The medical examiner straightened and shook his head. “Your basic fucking mess.”

Sam inspected the body. “Any of them cause of death?”

“Pending autopsy, my bet is exsanguination. Throat’s been slashed from ear to ear. Liver temp puts time of death around seven p.m.” He frowned down at the battered body. “Not as much blood as you’d expect. The perp worked on him somewhere else; maybe sliced him there and then dumped the body here.”

Sam pulled on a pair of latex gloves and removed a wallet from the dead man’s front trouser pocket. “The ID reads Noel Coburn, sixty-eight.” She looked up at the small, chiseled golden letters mounted on the wall behind the trashed, empty display cases that spelled out
COBURN FINE JEWELERS
. “He’s probably the owner.”

“Robbery is checking on it,” Tenderson said. “The killer cleaned out the place. He even emptied the safe in the office.”

“No keys.” Sam stood up and gestured for one of the patrolmen standing watch at the entrance. When he came to her, she bagged the wallet and handed it to him. “Ask dispatch to send a unit to the address on the license. This guy may try to hit the victim’s house, too.”

Sam performed a brief walk-through of the rest of the shop. Coburn’s office had been wrecked, and the floor-to-ceiling vault at the far end stood open. Inside she found empty storage racks and ten large wooden shipping crates filled with straw.

Sam spotted a small, strangely shaped plastic knob on the floor and bent to pick it up. “A trigger guard.” She bagged it before she went to the crates. Becoming Darkyn had turbocharged her senses; her nose was particularly sensitive to smells most humans couldn’t detect. She picked up a few pieces of the straw and sniffed them, instantly detecting very faint odors of oil and burnt gunpowder.

“Detective.” Tenderson appeared outside the vault. “You’d better take another look at the body before we remove it.”

Sam dropped the straw and walked out of the vault. “Did you find something else?”

The ME grimaced. “No, it’s what’s missing.”

Out in the showroom the body of Noel Coburn had been rolled over, displaying the ragged remains of his jacket, which had been pulled away from his back on either side. Raw muscle and bone, scored by deep, jagged grooves, gleamed from neck to waist.

“Holy shit.” Sam walked around the body. “Where’s his skin?”

“It’s not here. About half the muscle is gone, too.” Tenderson came to stand beside her, looking down at the pitiful sight. “It’s almost like the perp ran a lawn mower over him. And it gets worse.”

Sam stared at him. “How?”

“I’ll have to confirm with histamine tests, but from the appearance of these wounds they’re antemortem.” Tenderson stepped back as two of his techs arrived with a gurney for the body. “He was alive when this was done to him, Sam.”

Now Sam spotted the deep scarlet abrasions around the wrists. “Ligature marks. He was restrained for a long time.” As the body was moved, something lodged in the shoulder blade caught her eye. “Hang on a second, guys. Evan, you got some tweezers?”

The ME handed her a pair, and she used them to extract a broken piece of barbed, rusty metal from the victim’s tissue. She stood and held it up, studying it. “Looks like the end of an old hook.” She passed it to Tenderson.

“Too big for fish. Meat hook, maybe.” He bagged it. “I’ll have the lab run it against the database of weapons for comparison, but this”—he gestured at the victim’s mutilated back—“wasn’t done with a hook. He was subjected to prolonged torture by something that ground his back into hamburger.”

“But what?” Sam murmured. “And why?”

* * *

Once Sam left the homicide scene, she drove to headquarters, where she found an enormous bouquet of four dozen roses in a beribboned crystal vase sitting on her desk. At first glance she thought the blooms were black, but on closer inspection she saw they were a deep dark red.

“What’s the occasion, Brown?” Jonah Massey called from his desk. “Anniversary, birthday, or smoking-hot first date?”

“None of the above.” Sam inspected the fragrant blooms for the card but found none. “They probably aren’t even for me.”

“You looking for this?” Massey held up a small envelope decorated around the edges with scrolls of gold. “I thought I’d hang on to it for you. You know, so it wouldn’t get lost.”

Being the only female detective assigned to homicide meant putting up with the usual amount of gender bias and relentless ribbing, and Sam had learned long ago not to make anything an issue unless absolutely necessary.

“So who sent them?”

“No name or sig, just a sweet little message the florist typed in.” Massey grinned and pulled out the card to read it out loud. “‘You make my heart burn.’” He chuckled. “Sounds like the guy needs some antacid.”

Sam tucked a stack of case files under her arm, walked over, and took the card from him. Lucan generally saved his sweet nothings for when he could deliver them in person, but after the minor standoff earlier maybe he’d thought she needed a reminder.

“Nice.” She shoved the card in her jacket. “Thanks for taking care of it. Since you’re so interested in being my personal assistant, you can type these up.” She dropped the files in front of him.

His smirk disappeared. “Why should I do your grunt work?”

“Because I’m the senior ranking detective in this department, and I just pulled a major case. That makes you my grunt.” She smiled. “I’ll expect them back by the end of your shift. Tonight.”

“Yeah.” He eyed the stack. “Thanks. A lot.”

“My pleasure.” She headed for the captain’s office.

Captain Ernesto Garcia was on the phone but gestured for Sam to come in as soon as he saw her. She closed the door and sat down in the visitor’s chair.

He ended the call and jotted down some notes before he regarded her. “That was Morales over at ATF. They had Coburn under surveillance for a few months last year, but were never able to put together a case. The man was very careful.”

“Not tonight.” She related the facts she had so far, and added, “From the tossed office and the excessive torture of the vic, the perp wanted more than diamonds. I don’t think he got it, either.”

He gave her a narrow look. “You didn’t read the blood.”

“I wanted to, but the techs weren’t finished.” She often used her psychic ability to see the last moments of a victim’s life through contact with his or her blood, but not in front of others. “I’ll stop by the morgue later.”

“That’s not necessary.” Garcia leaned forward. “We already know the last moments of this man’s life were horrendous. Don’t subject yourself to that.”

Her boss had never before balked at using her talent to help solve a case. “I’ve seen plenty worse, Captain, and I’m not squeamish.”

“I never implied that you were.” Garcia put on his poker face. “I’m thinking of your welfare.”

Suddenly Sam understood why the techs had been dragging their feet collecting evidence. “Lucan told you to keep me from reading the vic, so you had the techs stay until I left.” When he said nothing, her temper boiled over. “We agreed that when I’m on the job, I’m a cop, and I work for you. Not him.”

“Are you finished?” When she nodded, Garcia said, “You know I have to do what the man says, especially when you’re involved. So have this conversation with him, because if you get hurt, he won’t fire me or transfer me. He’ll splatter me over the nearest flat surface.”

Sam sank back down in the chair. “Sorry, Captain.”

“For the record, I don’t agree with him,” Garcia assured her. “Your talent has helped close dozens of cases, and it’s never caused you any harm, either. But he was adamant.”

“All right. I agree not to use my talent on this vic,” she told Garcia, giving him a direct look. “When I go to the morgue, it’ll just be to get the autopsy results from Tenderson. And that’s exactly what you should tell anyone who asks.”

He understood. “Be careful, my lady.”

As Sam passed her desk on the way out, she scooped up the vase of roses and dropped it in the big trash can by the coffee machine.

From headquarters Sam drove to the county morgue, where she found Evan Tenderson still working on Coburn’s remains. After pulling on a protective shroud, she joined him at the dissection table, and glanced at a particularly vile-smelling collection of fish heads, tails, and innards occupying one of the hanging scales. “I hope that’s not your dinner.”

“It was his. Two pounds of fish parts.” He began suturing together the Y-incision. “Someone force-fed it to him. If he hadn’t bled out so quickly, he might have choked to death.”

She glanced at the rack of vials next to the table. “Were you able to recover any blood for toxicology?”

“Nothing left in the body. I’ll use whatever the techs mopped up from the scene.” He nodded at the gaping throat wound. “There’s a three-inch section of skin and tissue missing from around the carotid. Whoever did him might have taken it as a trophy.”

Or to cover up the first wound, which Sam now guessed had been two puncture marks. “Anything else in the wounds on his back?”

“I found salt residue on his clothing. He was hosed down with seawater, probably to intensify the torture, or maybe revive him when he passed out.” He tied off the suture thread between the collarbones.

She released enough of her scent to make his eyes glaze over. “Reserve a vial of the victim’s blood for me. Call me when it’s ready for pickup.”

He nodded and repeated in a monotone an abbreviated echo of her command. “Reserve. Vial. Call.”

On her way out of the morgue Sam mentally reviewed what Tenderson had told her. The Brethren liked to torture humans almost as much as they did the Kyn, but they always got rid of the bodies. Coburn’s murder, vicious as it was, had been very public, as if the killer wanted to make an example of the victim. If the jeweler had been selling arms, his clientele could be anyone from revolutionaries to cartel bosses.

She smelled Lucan before she saw him leaning against the hood of her car, and glanced at her watch.

“It’s one twenty a.m.,” he informed her.

“So it is.” She noted the scowl on his face, and recalled her promise. “You didn’t have to come after me for being late. I’ve got a case—”

“You forever have a case, Samantha.” He sniffed. “Why do you come here? The place reeks of death. I’ll have to direct Burke to burn your clothes again. Perhaps I’ll have him incinerate the entire contents of your wardrobe.”

“The garrison should enjoy that.” He sounded seriously annoyed, borderline angry, which posed a direct threat to windows of the morgue, the surrounding buildings, and every car in the parking lot. “If I say that I’m sorry for losing track of time, do I get to keep my clothes?”

His expression thawed a few degrees. “You wouldn’t mean it.”

She thought of the horror that had been Noel Coburn. “Tonight I would.”

Lucan extended a gloved hand. “Come here.” When she reached him, he folded her into his arms. “Now I shall have to burn
my
clothes,” he grumbled against the top of her head. “And have the Ferrari sterilized.”

She glanced past him at his gleaming red sports car, which he loved almost as much as sex. “I’ll drive back in the Porsche.”

“I think not.” He plucked the keys from her hand and pocketed them. “Burke can collect it in the morning.”

She drew back a little. “Why are you in such a rush to get me back to the den of iniquity?”

“Why are you reluctant to return?” he countered. “Have I given you cause?” When she didn’t answer, he sighed. “Samantha, my patience does have very well-defined limits with which you are intimately acquainted. Now tell me what is the matter before windshields commence exploding.”

Confronting him about interfering in her investigation might result in the same, so she tabled that for now. “Nothing is wrong, really. The flowers were beautiful, and very romantic, but having them delivered to the squad room was a bit over-the-top.”

“Flowers.” He frowned.

“If I were a secretary, I’d love to find four dozen roses in a crystal vase sitting on my desk every day,” she assured him as she watched his face. “But I’m a cop, and it’s not a cop thing, and you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Not in the slightest,” he agreed. “Someone using my name sent roses to your work?”

“There was no name on the card,” she admitted, “just a note.”

He nodded. “What color were they?”

“The roses? Red, I guess. Look, it was probably Burke,” she lied. “Why don’t we head back to the club?”

“We will,” he said pleasantly, “as soon as you tell me what the note said.”

“It said ‘Have a nice day.’” She heard her windshield crack, and winced. “Fine. Whoever sent them thinks I make their heart burn. So I guess I have a new secret admirer.”

His eyes turned to chrome. “Not for long.” He took out his mobile and pressed one number before lifting it to his ear. “Garcia? Roses were delivered to my
sygkenis
at the station. Contact the florist; I want the name and address of the man who paid for them. Yes. By sunset.” He switched off the phone and gazed down at her. “You will leave this to me.”