Shift Work (Carus #4) (21 page)

I screeched into the night and let the cool wind carry me away to heal.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I’d be a drug addict if cocaine was as delicious as sugar.”

~Mindy, The Mindy Project

“How many times can someone get shot in the ass?” Stan asked as he handed me a new bandage.

We sat in his cheap hotel room surrounded by a dozen empty liquor bottles as I waited for my sluggish Shifter healing to kick in and take some of the pain away. Not as fast at healing as a Were, and certainly not as fast at healing when I was blood bound to a Master Vampire, this wound would take a while to mend.

As I’d beat my wings in the strengthening winds, I realized I had few places to turn. I didn’t trust going home. Tristan was away, and shooting the shit with Angie in his absence had as much appeal as shooting my other butt cheek. Ben and his denmates were also away, and Wick’s place was definitely off-limits. That left Stan.

Holed up in a VPD-paid room at a hotel near the downtown Vancouver precinct, this wouldn’t have been my first choice. I liked Stan, but the room reeked of misery and despair. With no solution to make his suffering go away, his emotions cut deep. Even if I helped find Loretta’s killer, Stan’s healing process would be a long, lonely road.

Well, I’d seen his pain, maybe it was only fair he got to see mine, even though it paled in comparison and was a completely different type.

He hadn’t been phased when I’d tapped on his balcony screen door at way-too-fucking-early in the morning, butt-naked and gushing blood.

How many times can someone shoot me in the ass? Two too many.

“Yeah, this time it hurts way more.” I snatched the bandage from his hand and pulled up the towel to apply it to my cheek. With a few successive changes, the bullet dislodged and the wound had begun to heal, but the frequency of shifting had left me drained and short on patience. With the new moon in less than twenty-four hours and Sid’s promise to visit looming in the back of my mind, I cursed the timing of events.

Last time I’d been shot in the ass, I’d been blood bonded to a Master Vampire and the wound had healed in under an hour. The time before that, it had been a shot to the arm and took a couple weeks. This time, the injury appeared to heal with a rate somewhere in between.

Huh.

Did my bond to Sid have something to do with that? Or was it because I’d embraced my beast recently? Why would that make a difference?

Again, I wished for a Carus Operating Manual—
Beast for Dummies
. Maybe I should write one for the next Carus. Five hundred years in the future, they might appreciate my effort. Or maybe my manuscript would prove useless as future generations might only speak in hashtags.

“Here.” Stan handed me another bar-fridge beverage.

I took it, we silently saluted each other, and I drank the burning fluid in one swallow. Ugh. I glanced at the label. Sherry. Who even drank this stuff anymore? An image of me and Stan, gray and wrinkled, sitting around a doily-covered table as we sipped sherry and played cribbage flashed in my mind. Total nonsense. Stan would be long in his grave before I saw a gray hair.

My heart sank. An extended lifetime kind of sucked sometimes.

I cleared my throat and blinked back unexpected tears. Before Stan noticed, I flapped my open palm in the air. “Can I use your phone?”

Stan scrunched his face.

“So I can text Tristan and warn him about my place? Even if you called it in, I don’t want him there.”

“No sexting.” Stan slapped his phone into my open palm. “Anything else?”

“Got any clothes I can wear?” I asked, clutching my towel outfit around me.

“Yeah. Hang on.” Stan stumbled to his feet and shuffled to the bedroom.

While he rummaged through his dresser, I sent a quick text to Tristan explaining the attack and warning him off my place. No immediate response. Stan would mock the crap out of me if I clutched the phone all night waiting for my boyfriend’s response, so I placed it on the coffee table where I could see the screen if a message popped up.

When Stan walked back out, he threw a ratty pair of jogging pants and an old T-shirt at me. They smelled of Stan. “This do?”

“Perfect.”

Stan nodded and sat down, sprawling his legs out as he leaned back and reached for the remote control. “What do you want to do?”

“Let’s get our drink on,” I said. Alcohol metabolized fast in a Shifter body, but it helped to momentarily numb the pain radiating from my butt.

“Perfect.”

Before Stan could grab us another round of disgusting and expensive liquor, his phone rang. I glanced at the screen as it vibrated on the coffee table beside me. “The Flower,” I said.

“Sergeant Lafleur?”

“Yeah, him.” I yanked on the jogging pants under the towel and pulled the drawstring tight before they could slip down my ass.

“What’s your problem with him?”

“Problem? None.”

Stan’s eyebrows pinched in as he grabbed his phone and hit the accept button. “Stevens,” he grumbled.

“Got another one,” Lafleur’s low voice carried through the speakers to my sensitive ears.

Stan nodded. “Where?”

“At 109
th
Avenue and 130
th
Street.”

“Isn’t that Surrey?”

“Yeah, the SPD is letting us view the scene as a courtesy.”

Stan checked his cheap wristwatch. “Be there in thirty minutes.”

“Bring the Shifter,” Lafleur gruffed before hanging up.

I pulled the shirt on and threw the bloody towel on the bathroom floor. Maybe I did have a problem with Lafleur. He’d just spoiled a night of bonding with Stan. Nothing said besties better than projectile vomiting over the same toilet.

****

When we arrived at 109
th
Avenue and 130
th
Street, it took little time for my nose to tell me why we got the call. Sour, burnt plastic and decaying flesh clung to the air and barrelled down the street to where I parked Stan’s car. King’s Krank and death.

With only one drink in my system, and a supernatural metabolism, I drove. Each bump and jiggle of the vehicle on the uneven roads sent a little power punch of pain through my body.

Looking down 130
th
Street gave a glimpse of the Fraser River and the mountains behind it as the sun peeked over the horizon. Such a beautiful dawn landscape scene. It contrasted sharply with the death in the air.

“Here.” Stan slapped a pair of gloves in my hand, grunted and turned toward the crime scene. I hadn’t told him what I’d discovered at the tattoo shop or from Westman yet. I liked to verify things before I acted, and if I told Stan anything, he’d jump on it. His body vibrated beside me, the alcohol long gone from his breath. His hands balled into fists as he adjusted his shirt. Even though he mostly walked around in plain clothes now, I still envisioned him in his uniform and marked police cruiser. Couldn’t break the habit.

Stan got us past the yellow tape by signing in with the officer in charge of maintaining the crime scene. They exchanged stiff nodes and
voila
, we were in. We entered a standard Surrey home. With at least three floors and more than two suites, this place either housed a multiple generation family or the home owners had tenants to help with their exorbitant mortgage.

We walked into one of two basement suites. Well, Stan walked, I hobbled and tried not to wince with each step.

The door separating this place from the rest of the house was open and voices carried from the main floor upstairs. Waves of grief carried in the flowing air, along with unconditional love. Multiple generations, then.

A couple lay on the queen-sized bed in the main bedroom. Surrounded by framed pictures of family and minimal furnishings, they remained sprawled on their backs, blank eyes staring at the ceiling. Dried foam laid a path from their mouths to the sheets beneath them.

Another overdose. Two victims this time.

The sour, burnt plastic hit my face right away, but also something else. Something different. Something “other.” I limped forward, ignoring the alarm bells in my head chiming along with my feras.

Wrong
, growled my mountain lion.

Leave
, my falcon screeched.

Destroy
, rumbled the beast.

Shut up, all of you!
I hissed at the feras and leaned over the female victim. East-Indian, mid-twenties, beautiful. With horns. I pulled on the gloves Stan gave me. I reached out and gently pushed the tip of the horn on the left side of the woman’s temple. Solid, cold. Yup. Horns.

Repeating the gesture for the other horn didn’t give me any more information, but my OCD kicked in, and I couldn’t prod one and not the other.

I moved to the male victim. Also East Indian, mid-twenties, attractive, and sadly, also very dead. No horns.

The medical examiner finished taking notes on his observations, or lack thereof, and turned to me. His eyebrows pinched in as his gaze travelled down my body to take in Stan’s old clothes and probably my limp. His mouth scrunched up before he nodded at the victim. “Check his mouth.”

With a steady finger belying the unease flittering around in my stomach, I lifted the deceased’s full upper lip. His canines were considerably longer than the rest of his teeth. Long and pointy. I pushed his upper lip farther to look at the gums. Dried blood crusted around the base of both canines.

“See anything?” The ME asked.

“He was left handed?”

The ME grunted.

I grunted.

He left me alone after that. I had the cop lingo down thanks to Stan.

I straightened and turned to my partner. He raised his shoulders and ducked his head as if to ask, “Anything?” He kept his hands deep in his pockets.

I tilted my head toward the exit. Stan nodded, and we walked out together into the fresh night air. My limp drew the attention of a few officers, but they wisely chose not to comment. The pain continued to radiate down my leg, but knowing it would go away acted like a calming salve for my mind.

Upwind from the house, I inhaled long drags of the cool air and let it flow through my system as a natural cleanser.

Stan stood beside me and remained silent until I opened my eyes.

“So?” Stan asked.

“Horns and fangs. Definitely Kings Krank. No other familiar scents. No one else had recently been in the room, other than family members.” Takkenmann’s words replayed through my head. One percent of trials experienced extraordinary supernatural abilities. Had Loretta made the connection between her employer and the new street drug? Is that where the KK came from? Is that why someone took her out?

Stan nodded. “Doesn’t really give us anything new, does it?”

“No, but…” Should I tell him? How much should I disclose? Stan might go off the deep end or off the grid.

“But?” Stan’s gaze narrowed.

“Was Loretta doing any research?”

“For the company? Not that I know of.”

“She might’ve been doing it on the side. Maybe she didn’t want you to know. Like the storage compartment. Was she on the computer a lot? Acting secretive at all?”

Stan stilled. “She’d been spending a lot of time on the computer, lately.”

I waited.

Stan cursed. “I thought she was online shopping again.”

I nodded.

Stan reached out and gripped my upper arm. “You think she was researching King’s Krank?”

The man had a grip. I tried to shrug out of his hold, but he tightened his grasp and pulled. I had a choice of fighting Stan or turning to face him. I turned. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think her employer may have a connection to KK. Your wife worked for a pharmaceutical company that spent a majority of its profits on drug research, and your wife’s death is connected somehow to King’s Krank, a new drug that has some super freaky-deaky side effects. Yeah, I think there’s a connection.”

Stan released my arm as if I’d burned him. His face contorted as his lips twisted, and his jaw clenched. “Any proof?” he whispered.

“Not yet.”

Stan’s body stiffened and he turned half-away before spinning back. He leaned in, close, so close the mouthwash he’d used earlier to rinse away the sherry wafted against my face. “We need to find proof.”

“I know.”

His skin glistened, and he licked his lips. “We need to be sure.”

“I know.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.”

~Franklin P. Jones

Later that day, after a short morning cat-nap, I found myself sitting at “our coffee shop” with Mel. She’d shown up twenty minutes late, so I held my second cup of coffee, and the caffeine rushing through my veins left me jittery. As much as I tried to blink away the images, I couldn’t get the memory of the dead couple from this morning out of my mind. At least the ache from my bullet wound had abated to a dull, somewhat annoying, throb.

Mel’s knowing blue gaze, surrounded by a halo of big blonde hair, studied me from across the wrought iron table. I’d wanted to talk over the phone, but my old friend knew me better than that. My ability to dodge the truth decreased, and her perceptiveness increased drastically face to face.

With a perfectly French-manicured hand, she reached forward and plucked her latté off the table. After a long silent sip, she placed it gently back on the table. “How are things?”

“Well, I work for the VPD now, and I’m helping my cop friend find his wife’s murderer. You may have seen some coverage on the news.”

No point telling her about my little date with Sid tonight. Since I couldn’t change the inevitable, she’d worry for no reason. After thinking on the whole Sid thing, the fear I’d experienced dissipated. He wouldn’t harm his anchor. He didn’t feed off pain or fear, and he’d manipulated and schemed too hard to get me just to throw me away.

“Is that why you’re nursing one butt cheek and smell of dried blood?” Mel asked, gaze narrowed.

Dang it!
I tried to hide that. “Yeah, sort of.”

Her face scrunched up, obviously unimpressed with my answer, but after a moment, she relaxed back into her chair. “How’s the investigation going?”