Chapter 17 pt. 1

Leo’s phone rang while the sun was still up. I rolled over and looked at him looking at me before he finally reached behind him to get his phone from the nightstand. Uninterested in the one-sided conversation, I returned to my original position and waited to fall back to sleep. When I was nearly unconscious, Leo’s phone fell to the floor with a hard thud and he pulled me against him as he kissed the back of my head.

“What did they want?” I moaned.

“Kris wants me to come investigate a crime scene. You’re going to be my shadow,” he returned.

“It’s too early to be up. Can’t he wait?”

He hugged me close then sighed. “We have to go before the humans ruin the evidence we need.”

We got up after a few minutes more and left the house not long after that. We were silent in the car the entire ride across the city to what looked to me like a ghetto.
All around us stood the high-rise towers of slum living with our crime scene around the only single-story, stone-walled building. It felt like an odd place to put a building like that but as we got closer I began to wonder if maybe this building was the last hold out of an older time before the high-rise towers. Either way, it stood out against the cold iron and concrete that surrounded it.

Someone had sectioned off the whole block and road around the stone building with yellow tape. Uniformed statues eyed the humans milling about the outside of this makeshift partition, trying to bully them into not looking at whatever was inside the tape and on the other side of a bus.

“What took you guys so long?” Kris demanded, meeting us at the yellow-lined perimeter. “Get in here before they take over.”

“What are we looking at?” Leo asked in a serious tone that made me wonder if I was following the same person or if I had accidentally followed someone else while I was gawking at the destruction just beyond the bus.

Stones as large as reclining chairs had made up the walls of the building; neatly stacked on one another creating a sort of bespeckled mural with a picture that I couldn’t quite make out. One wall, facing the road, held a gaping hole lined with shattered wood, glass and crushed bits of rock. A wooden name plate was swinging over it, held precariously by only one of its original thin and rusting chains. In front of this hole, on the street, a city bus had gone from rectangle to horseshoe, leaving a trail of black marks where it had tried to hold on to the pavement. A bearded black man sat on the curb to the left of all the wreckage, being inspected by the hummingbirds who I assumed were medical in some aspect because of the blood on the front of his white t-shirt.

“Bar fight,” Kris returned flatly.

I was about to comment about how I had never seen a bar fight take out the side of a building and a bus but realized how stupid I would sound and swallowed it.

“Is that our victim over there?” Leo wondered, pointing with his chin.

“We found him unconscious on the sidewalk bleeding everywhere. There is a bite mark on his neck,” Kris explained.

“What are we doing here then?” Leo grunted.

“I need a mercenary to bring in the biter. She needs to see what Warren will do if he discovers her,” Kris explained.

Leo nodded then they both looked back at me. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights because Leo took my hand to reassure me. I had been listening but not really paying attention. The details of the crime scene I was standing in were too fascinating.

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you on this one but it should come back to you quickly,” Leo whispered, leaning toward me.

The wind changed direction, slowly bringing me the scent of the victim’s blood. My nostrils flared, filling with the tantalizing smell, and my muscles clenched, readying for a move to get to the flavor that I wanted to fill my mouth with. I looked over at him and watched a trail of red slide between his fingers and down his forearm. Angry hunger was climbing up from the pit of my stomach.

“Raven!” Kris hissed through his teeth, putting his face in mine. “Control yourself or I’ll be forced to remove you.”

I gave him a dark look then looked away to compose myself. Leo still held my hand.

“Have you questioned him yet?” Leo tried.

Kris must have replied with a nod or something because there wasn’t a verbal response.

“Go to the car, Raven. I’ll meet you there and we’ll go hunting together.”

“I’m not a child,” I growled, throwing his hand away from me.

“If you can’t act normal then you will wait in the car in handcuffs,” Kris spat, getting in my face again.

“Don’t start here. She can come do training with you later and you can beat the shit out of each other there,” Leo continued to try.

I didn’t turn away from Kris. I held my ground until he turned away, making me feel as if I had won a small edge over him.

In reality, he was taking the high road and began typing information on his phone. After a moment, both Leo’s and my phone noted that he had sent us information.

“That’s the guy our victim remembers fighting with. He won’t tell us why they were fighting but we need to bring in this guy before he bites someone else and Warren gets word of it.”

“Doesn’t this guy have ties to the humans that Warren exploits? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him before,” Leo wondered looking at the picture of a pudgy white man in a police uniform.

“He’s still on the human police force,” Kris replied.

“That’ll be fun,” I grumbled as I hiked up the tube dress I was wearing.

“Kyle has his patrol jacket in evidence. See what you can get from it and go from there. I’ll handle this part,” Kris finished before he walked away.

Leo sighed next to me. “You’re in for some tough training later. Let’s find Kyle and head out.”

“It’s not my fault we had to get up early for this and it’s not my fault that I can smell the guy’s blood. It’s not like I went over and licked him. I have more control than that.”

“Yes, but with everything that’s happened, can you blame us for being cautious about it?” he asked quietly as he led the way to an unmarked van and the bouncer from Nyctophilia.

Kyle stiffened when he saw me. “I thought she wasn’t allowed on crime scenes yet.”

“She passed his test a couple of days ago. Now she’s waiting on her placement,” Leo explained.

Kyle shrugged,”I guess I’m the last to hear the gossip then.” Then he handed Leo a paper bag with the opening rolled over haphazardly.

“Don’t worry Kyle, I’m sure he’ll put me somewhere I can make messes and you won’t have to clean them up,” I teased.

“Yeah, it’d be nice to contain your mess somewhere that’s not Nyctophilia for a change. I’m not sure anymore blood will come out of the carpet up there.”

I smiled, “You’re just jealous that I get to have all the fun.”

Leo looked at me confused for a moment then shook it off. “Leave Kyle alone, we have work to do. You can tease him later.”

I sighed and let him lead me away back towards the car where he opened the bag.

The open bag sent a wave of oder into the air. It hit my nose and made me cough as if I had opened a pungent spice jar.

“Are you okay?”

“You can’t smell that?” I grumbled covering my nose and mouth.

He shook his head.

“It’s so strong that it hurts my nose.”

“Can you smell it away from the bag to follow it?”

“Close the bag and walk away with it. I’m getting a headache from the smell but I’ll try,” I complained.

He obeyed and put the bag in the trunk of his car. I took a couple deep breaths to clear my nose but then found the smell and my feet started to move without my consent.