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A Devil’s Bargain

FROM THE CASEFILES OF KAMARI HICKS

Steve Diamond


“I need your help.”

Those four words. I’d wager those four words have caused more harm in this world than any others.

Well, perhaps they ran a close second to “I love you.”

Johana Fust sat across from me, a used, crumped tissue clutched in one hand. The other grasped a small, framed photo. The frame, cheap and cracked at the edges, held a picture of Fust’s daughter. Her missing daughter. It was an older photo, from when the young woman had been a younger girl. Back when the girl likely still didn’t understand how the world—how this city—could chew you up and spit you out.

“Mr. Hicks?”

I let out a long breath, and wished I still smoked. Ever since my . . . change . . . I couldn’t stand the things. It wasn’t that the cigarettes were bad for my health—the way my body regenerated these days meant I could probably smoke three packs a day and never get a whiff of cancer.

No, it was the smell. My sense of smell was far too sensitive for them these days.

“Ms. Fust,” I said. I tried to choose my words carefully. “Have you called the police about your missing daughter?”

“But . . . but you are the police. Aubrey said—”

With an upheld hand I interrupted her. I felt a little bad about it, but I was hardly in a position to waste her time. “Ma’am, I don’t know what Aubrey—what Ms. Knight told you, but I can’t really help you right now.”

“She said you’re a cop. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t . . . I don’t understand why you won’t help me find my daughter.”

“It isn’t that I won’t, it’s that I can’t. You spoke with Ms. Knight, yes? Then surely she told I’m currently on paid leave pending an investigation. I’m not really supposed to be investigating anything at the moment.”

“She told me. But she also told me you were the only one who is equipped to help me.”

“Ms. Fust—”

“She also said you owed her. And this was how you could pay the debt.”

There it was. Aubrey saves my life once, and suddenly I’m indebted. To be fair, she was right. Without Aubrey showing up when she had several weeks ago, I’d be the resident of a shallow grave. Aubrey was FBI, but beyond that she was some sort of fae. I still didn’t know what exactly. But again, she’d saved my life.

But what really bothered me was why she thought I was the best person to solve this problem.

“Okay. Tell me about your daughter.”

Johana looked down at the picture and smiled. A look of pure love. “Her name is Luna. She’s all I have left, and she’s missing.”

Luna. If that wasn’t a bad omen, I don’t know what was.

“How old?”

“She just turned eighteen. This picture is from her twelfth birthday.”

“Do you have a more recent photo?”

She nodded, stood and took the framed picture to a small altar in the corner of her living room. The shrine was just a simple end table with a few photos, and several sticks of burning incense. Before picking up an unframed picture, she picked up a fresh stick of incense and lit it with one of the others. Religious. I respected it. Hated the incense—the odor through my heightened sense of smell made my head swim—but I respected people who believed in something bigger than themselves. Who strived to do good.

They made up for those of us who sometimes wondered if we were actually on the Devil’s side without even knowing it. At least, I hoped people like Ms. Fust balanced the scales. Hope was all I had these days.

Johana brought me the recent picture. It showed a smiling Luna, now more mature. Long, dark hair. A face that should be on the cover of a pop album for teenagers with no taste in music. There was something in the girl’s eyes. Gone was the innocence of the prior photo. This one held . . . I wasn’t sure. Weight. A burden.

“Can I keep this?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think she’s missing?”

“She’s been gone two days.”

“Luna is over eighteen. Maybe she just went out with friends?”

“No.”

The word was so emphatically spoken, I almost laughed. “No?”

Johana shook her head. “Luna isn’t like . . . that. She’s a good girl. If she was going to be gone, she would tell me. She has plans. School.”

“Kids get sick of school. Kids get tired of plans.”

“Not Luna. She wants to be a medical researcher. Cure cancer. She has a . . . a drive.”

“All right. Boyfriend?”

She hesitated, then said, “No.” The word didn’t have even half the conviction of the previous “no.” I didn’t need my amped-up senses to tell me she was lying. Fifteen years as a cop, and nearly a decade as a soldier before that gave me all the education I needed in lying.

“What aren’t you saying?” I didn’t say it unkindly, but my tone was firm. “I need information to find your daughter. Tell me what you know.”

“I’m not sure it matters.”

I went to the old standby cliché. “Every detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can potentially be important.”

“I . . . heard her talking on the phone. She said something like, ‘You promised it would work!’ Then she got angry and yelled at the guy on the phone.”

“How do you know it was a guy?”

“She used his name. Said, ‘Go screw yourself, Niko. I’m coming over tomorrow, and you’re gonna make it right.’” My face must have shown disbelief, because Johana quickly said, “She never argues. I was so shocked to hear her yelling at someone that it left an impression.”

“All right. I believe you. When was this?”

“Three days ago. The day before she disappeared. Do you think this has something to do with why she’s gone?”

I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, but normal people didn’t act normally when put in stressful situations. Instead, I nodded calmly. “I think it likely. Did you get a last name for this Niko?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’d never heard the name before that day.”

“Any friends I can talk to?”

“Yes.” She pulled out her phone, tapped on it a few times, and said, “Her best friend is Marina Castro. I have her contact info right here. Do you want me to send it to you?”

“That would be great.” I gave her my cell number, and she texted over the information.

I thanked her and got up to leave. When I was nearly at the door Ms. Fust said, “Mr. Hicks? How are you going to find her?”

I opened the door to let myself out and said, “Don’t worry, Ms. Fust. I’ve got a sense for these things. I’ll be in touch.”

The door closed behind me. A sense indeed. Several of them.

Some of the few benefits to having been turned into a werewolf.

✧ ✧ ✧

Sacramento wasn’t the type of city most people thought of when it came to crime. But it had its dark underbelly. It didn’t have the rampant homelessness of San Francisco—nor the open, anti-cop propaganda pushed by the city’s top political officials. Neither did Sacramento have the facade of glitz covering corruption like Los Angeles.

This city was a strange mix. A melting pot of cultures and people, and a strange congruence of geography. After I’d been turned into a werewolf following a domestic gone south, I’d met Aubrey. When she’d finally decided I wasn’t the danger to the world that most werewolves were, she’d told me in passing that Sacramento’s location was right on top of a confluence of ley lines. She made it sound important, and that these ley lines made the city a natural gathering spot for creatures from other realms.

After some of the stuff I’d seen since being turned, I didn’t really have a choice but to believe her. While I still wasn’t quite sure what she was, I wasn’t about to pry. A good detective knows how to find the truth, even when it goes down roads best left untraveled. A great detective knows when not to ask a woman about her past.

On my way to meet with Marina, I called up Aubrey. She picked up after the first ring.

“Kamari. How’d the meeting with Johana go?”

“I shouldn’t be looking into this. I’m on leave, remember?”

“You were voluntold to take some time off. You weren’t suspended. Though a few more moments, and you would have thrown that IA sergeant through a car window. He should be thanking whatever god he worships that you didn’t disembowel him or eat his heart. Anyway. What’s the problem? She needed help. You can give it.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Sure, it is.”

“What did you mean when you told her I was the best person to solve this? What do you know?”

“A lot. I’ve forgotten more about investigating things like this than you have ever learned.”

“‘Things like this’? What does that mean? Has this happened before?”

“Yes. Just not here in Sacramento. I need you to check it out. I’ve got a feeling things are about to get messy.”

“You gonna back me up on this one?”

“Can’t. The Bureau is sending me to Quantico to teach a firearms course to their new recruits. I’ll be lucky if they don’t all shoot themselves or each other.”

“Okay. Well, then, how—”

“Kamari, just trust me on this one. I’d handle it myself if I weren’t leaving town tonight. And maybe it’s nothing. Just . . . just watch your six.”

Aubrey hung up. I looked down at the phone, confused. She was always a little cagey, but this was just her way. She’d told me before she wasn’t allowed to give me information. Not because she was FBI, but because of her connections to the other realms she said were linked to this one. I’d pressed her and gotten exactly nowhere.

I set the phone down and focused on driving to Marina’s apartment downtown.

On cue, the clouds overhead darkened, and the first drops of rain hit my windshield. A single stab of lightning lit the sky, followed by a rumble of thunder that sounded like it was warning me of trouble to come.

✧ ✧ ✧

Marina lived in a complex of one-bedroom apartments off Twenty-forth and J downtown. From the outside the place looked nice enough, but I knew bones this building had been built on. All cops did. Nearly every patrolman for the Sacramento Police Department had been called here or to a complex just like it in the neighborhood.

The current mayor thought if he threw money at the problems, and said all the right political buzzwords, people wouldn’t notice all his solutions were just a thick coat of paint on crumbling bricks. Trouble was, down here, too many were struggling just to make ends meet, and so the voters took the politician at his word.

Every cop and soldier knew the kind of mistake that was.

Rain fell in a steady drizzle, like it always did in October. Sacramento had two seasons: rain with fog, and scorching heat. It was as if the city knew how to torture its residents. And yet it retained an allure for a guy like me.

The sun had set, leaving only flickering streetlights to hold the dark at bay. In a prior life, before being turned, the dark and the rain would have put my nerves on edge. Now? Well, the night was hardly an impediment. The world lost its vibrant colors, turning everything to my eyes into shades of grey. A part of me missed the color. The life.

But the new part . . . the new part of me lived for the dark. The new me was born in these shadows. Lived here. Thrived here.

I took a deep breath. The rain had kicked up a layer of dust and grime from the stagnant streets, then washed it away. It left the air smelling peculiarly fresh. This wasn’t the first time I’d found solace in the rain. Since becoming a werewolf, I’d often found myself standing outside in the dark, raindrops as my only company.

I wanted to stay.

Knew I couldn’t.

The night was still young enough that the front door to the apartment building’s lobby was unlocked. I pushed in from the rain, and the grey of the darkness bloomed into color. Inside was nothing special. The outside had indeed been a nicely painted facade. Inside, the building was clean enough. Spartan in design. Generic, thrift store abstracts hung on the walls to fool those who lived here into thinking their building was cultured.

Marina lived on the third floor, apartment 3E. I took the stairs. Three flights hardly winded me anymore. I still liked testing myself.

No heads poked out from rooms as I climbed. I didn’t hear any loud music. No screaming children. No arguing couples, either. Something was off.

At apartment 3E, I rapped my knuckles on the door. My right hand strayed to my custom SIG 320 under my suit jacket. I didn’t spend much of my salary on myself, but the pistol was the one exception. The beauty was a Greyguns Spectre Comp. For most people it would have felt too heavy, but for me it was perfect, and the grip felt like it was molded for my hand. I never went anywhere without it. My fingers brushed the grip. I was a second from drawing when I heard a voice from inside.

“Hold on! One sec!”

I straightened up, pulled the suit jacket over the holstered pistol. The door opened, and a young Latina woman filled the space. She reminded me of Selma Hayek before her break in Desperado.

“Uh, hi? What can I do for you?”

The badge came out, automatic. She didn’t know I was on leave.

“Detective Kamari Hicks. Sacramento Sheriff’s Department.” Handed her my card. “I’d like to talk to you about your friend Luna Fust. May I come in?”

Marina’s expression went from curious at my arrival to guarded within a fraction of a second. She was about to shut the door in my face, so I pulled out the photo Johana gave me.

“I just came from Johana Fust’s home. She reported her daughter missing.” Technically true. She’d made that report directly to me. “Look, I’ll only need a minute.”

Marina’s eyes went to the photo, and she relaxed a little. With a nod she opened the door wider to let me in. The apartment was almost bare. She had two of those beanbag chairs instead of a couch. A small TV. A quick look at the kitchen showed the basics. But the apartment was clean. A cross hung on the wall, the only decoration except for a small table with burning incense. The fumes clawed at my nose. I just couldn’t catch a break.

“You religious?” I pointed at the cross. “That how you know the Fusts?”

“Yeah. That’s sorta how our families met.”

“Same church?”

“No, we met in a hospital chapel. Similar circumstances. Luna’s been my friend for a while now. How is Ms. Fust?”

“Worried. Said Luna’s been gone for a couple days. You happen to know anything about that?”

“I . . . I don’t think so.”

Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine for more than a fraction of a second, and she kept fidgeting with a bracelet. I could smell the nervous sweat on her.

I smiled as best I could. “Ms. Fust was pretty adamant her daughter was a straight arrow. That true? No drugs?”

Marina recoiled at the suggestion, eyebrows coming together and nose wrinkling in disgust. “No way. She never touched the stuff. Said she hated the thought of not having control.” She sighed, and I watched her shoulders slump as she relaxed after her outburst. “Is Luna really missing?”

“You tell me.” I leaned against the wall right next to the cross. “She mention going anywhere?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“When did you last hear from her?”

“I dunno. Maybe . . . three days? She called me a few nights ago. She just wanted to talk.”

“About?”

“That’s the thing. Nothing. She just rambled for a while. She does that when she’s trying to work up courage to ask for a favor. Or . . . or . . . ”

“Or what?”

A shimmer of a tear appeared at the corner of one of Marina’s eyes. “Or help.”

“Listen, I’m sure she’s fine. I’m just trying to piece together where she could possibly be. She probably took a trip to clear her head. Or went out with her boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?” Marina shook her head. “Luna doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

Feigning confusion I said, “Oh really? Her mom told me she was seeing someone. Some guy named Niko?”

“Niko? You mean Nikolay? That guy isn’t her boyfriend. He’s some Russian kid who she said she met at college.”

“You didn’t believe her?”

“No way. But . . . ”

“But?”

“Luna was spending a lot of time with him lately. It doesn’t make any sense. The guy’s a creep.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I dunno. Something about him. He just creeped me out. I met him once when I ran into Marina and him at the store a couple weeks ago. She seemed . . . I dunno . . . embarrassed that I’d found them together.”

“Nikolay have a last name?”

“Popov. He introduced himself to me. I think he might be in a gang or something. Had lots of weird tattoos and was wearing flashy jewelry.”

This Niko kid being in a gang made sense. Especially if he was Russian. They were all over the place in Sacramento. I opened my mouth to ask another question, but the words died. A shiver ran down my spine. My ears picked up the faintest of creaks from the floorboards outside in the hallway. The racking of a pistol—quick and aggressive—following the creaking. The old me never would have heard those sounds.

“Marina,” I kept my voice low, almost a whisper. “Is your apartment building usually this quiet?”

“I guess? They just opened it up to rent a month ago. Why?”

“I need you to go to your room and hide in a closet. Stay as low as you can.”

I could hear her heart begin to thump. “What’s going on? What are you—”

We didn’t have time for this. I grabbed her arm and propelled her to the back room. When she looked back at me from the doorway to her room, I put a finger to my lips then pointed at the door. She nodded and ran into the room, closing the door behind her.

I could smell whoever—whatever—was behind the door. I’d never smelled anything like it before. A smell of death, but also of . . . power. This wasn’t like any fae I’d dealt with before. The violent beast in me stirred, started to wake up. I glanced back at the closed door. I couldn’t risk a full change here.

The door crashed open as the frame exploded inward in a shower of splinters. Two men came in hot, the first with a gun drawn, the second with a huge knife of some sort.

My 320 appeared in my hand like a magic trick, and I put two rounds into the gunman before he’d even registered I was there. The gunshots boomed in the small apartment, making my ears ring. I began moving to acquire the one with the knife as my second target, but the gunman hadn’t even slowed.

My brain suddenly realized that these men didn’t look like men.

The gunman was dressed in a cheap-looking pinstriped suit, complete with equally cheap gold chains around his neck. That wasn’t the weird part. The guy—at least I assumed the thing was a guy—had ram’s horns curling out from his temples. His face was covered in scales, and I could see jagged teeth as he snarled at me. The other guy holding the knife looked equally demonic, but his horns formed a boney mohawk.

I put five more rounds into the gunman’s chest. He staggered, dropped the gun, but didn’t go down.

And he kept coming at me.

Ram Horns’s fingers stretched into claws, and he began to chant as he continued walking at me. I could have sworn his fingertips were beginning to glow red. I could feel it. Magic. But not like the limited amounts of fae magic I’d felt before. This felt dark, full of despair and corruption.

I snarled and pulled the trigger as fast as its reset would allow. I could feel the monster inside me clawing to the surface. I couldn’t let it out. Not here. Too many potential witnesses in the other apartments. Someone was bound to be calling 911 by now.

The slide on my 320 locked back, not that it mattered. Both the demons were on me before I could reload.

Both had smug smiles on their faces as they grabbed at me. Had I still been human, they would have seemed otherworldly fast. But they weren’t quite as fast as the fae. Ram Horns swiped at me with claws, but I caught his wrist and twisted with everything I had. The wet snap of the bones seemed oddly loud, but not as loud as his scream of pain. Mohawk’s eyes widened in surprise. He hadn’t been expecting someone to move like I did.

I got distracted and missed Ram Horns’s other clawed hand. It raked across my chest, cutting easily through my suit and shirt. I roared in pain, and Mohawk used the moment to grab me by the throat and throw me across the small living room into the kitchen. I lost my gun as my head bounced off the cabinets.

They were both on top of me. Ram Horns swiping at me with claws, and Mohawk stabbing at me with the knife. I was quick enough to block the attacks, but I couldn’t do much else.

Rage bubbled up in me, and I felt the beast begin to rip its way out of me. I tried to shove it back down. I couldn’t kill these . . . things . . . without drawing too much unwanted attention. But the wolf pushed through. I felt the bones in my face crack and shift, and from the pain in my mouth and the taste of blood, I knew my teeth had turned into fangs. When Mohawk’s knife slipped through my defenses and cut a line up my forearm, I let out a roar and a howl.

Mohawk fell back with a cry of fear, and said something in Russian. He made the sign of the cross and bolted from the apartment. When Ram Horns looked back at his fleeing companion and began to yell after him, I grabbed a boning knife from the kitchen counter. One slice across his gut, then I stabbed up under his chin and buried the blade in his brain.

Ram Horns twitched, then slumped down. I collapsed next to him.

I blinked away the sweat and blood from my eyes—I didn’t know if it was my blood or his—and when I looked back down at my assailant, he looked like an average Russian mafioso. He took one shuddering breath, and went completely still.

Protocol took over. I flipped the body over, pulled out my handcuffs and locked them around his wrists. I heard the last beat of his heart.

I was still sitting there on the kitchen floor when Marina came out of her room. She held a baseball bat in front of her in trembling hands. My heart still raced from the adrenaline pumping though me. The wolf still wanted out, but I had been able to pull it back. Having fangs when Marina came out of her room wouldn’t have been the best look.

I pointed down at the body. “This Niko?”

She shook her head.

With a nod I pushed myself to my feet and collected my pistol, then reloaded it with my only spare mag. For all the good it would do me if Mohawk came back with friends.

“What happened? Why did that guy break into my apartment?”

“Not sure.” I took out my phone and dialed 911. “Either they were here for you, or they followed me from Ms. Fust’s place. Maybe both.” I held up a finger then spoke into the phone as the 911 operator answered. “This is Detective Kamari Hicks from the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department. Badge 0054. I’ve been involved in a shooting at 3857 J Street, Apartment 3E. The residence belongs to a Marina Castro.

“I’ve got one suspect dead at the scene. I’m fine, and so is the civilian.” Marina was pale, and looked to be crashing. “Send an ambulance. I think the civilian is going into shock. I’m a black guy wearing a gray suit. Do you need me to stay on the line?”

The operator said no, so I hung up.

Sacramento PD had jurisdiction over this part of town, and their guys arrived a few minutes later, pushing past the few residents of the complex who had finally become brave enough to leave their apartments. They taped off the entrance and waved me over.

“Officer Phelps,” I said looking at his nametag.

“Detective Kamari Hicks?”

“That’s right.”

“Can you give me an idea what happened?”

“I was here doing a favor for a friend of a friend, looking into a possible missing person. I’d only been here a few minutes, asking routine questions, when I heard a sound outside the apartment. I told Ms. Castro to hide in the room. Two men broke in a few moments later. I killed one, and the other fled. I called 911 right after that.”

“How many shots did you fire?”

“All of them.”

When he frowned at me, I handed him the empty magazine. “Seventeen rounds?”

“Twenty-two,” I corrected. I’d had just enough time to think through how I was going to spin this. “Larger magazine, and I’m not dumb enough to carry with an empty chamber. Phelps, I’m not sure what that guy was on. I put round after round into him, and I swear he barely flinched. He dropped his gun over there. I didn’t touch it.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“He came at me, swinging. The other guy had some sort of knife-thing.”

“I don’t understand.”

I pointed down at the four, even slashes across my chest. “Some knife-claw-thing. Got me here and on my arm. Threw me into the cabinets like I was nothing. Like I said, they had to have been on something.”

“How’d you take out the one on the floor?”

“Got lucky. When they threw me in the kitchen, I got a knife. Slashed him, then stabbed him. The other one ran at that point. I cuffed the guy I put down, checked his pulse, and called you all.”

On the other side of the room, another officer was chatting with Marina. I could barely pick up what she was saying, but she didn’t really have much to say. She’d just heard a lot of yelling and crashing.

“All right, Detective. There’s an ambulance downstairs. Paramedics will come up and give Ms. Castro a quick look and take away the body once they are given the all-clear by an investigative team. You’ll be escorted to Sutter General to—”

“I know the drill, Officer. Thank you. I’ll head down.”

As I walked to the door, Marina stopped me. “Thank you, Detective,” she said. She looked so young. Fragile. Lost. “I, uh. Where . . . ” She waved around the room.

“One of these officers will take you somewhere else. You won’t be able to stay here for a while. Do you have a place? Parents?”

She shook her head. “My parents have been gone a few years. I’ll figure something out.”

“Hang in there, Marina. Let me know where you end up, and I’ll drop by and check in on you.”

“Detective? You’ll find Luna, right? She’ll be okay?”

I didn’t answer, but instead smiled and reached out a hand to squeeze her shoulder.

That wasn’t a promise I could make.

✧ ✧ ✧

Both IA and my SCSDA rep waited for me at the hospital. Both men I recognized. Sgt. Frank Williams from IA, and Peter Sayers from the SCDSA. They shared a glance, and I could read it like a book. I couldn’t exactly be upset with them. After all, it’s bad optics to be part of an officer-involved shooting while on paid leave for a separate officer-involved shooting.

“Thank you, Detective Hicks, for the wonderful optics,” Williams deadpanned. I should have been a mind reader.

“Easy, Sgt. Williams,” Sayers said. “Hicks, you know the drill. Not a word.”

I kept my mouth shut.

I was escorted back to see a doc of some sort. They all looked the same to me. A few vials of blood, and several bandages later, I felt properly probed and examined. I hated hospitals. Hadn’t liked them before being attacked and turned into a werewolf, and I certainly didn’t like them now. All hospitals and clinics smelled the same. Sickness, death, and antiseptic. Most people only smelled the latter. I could tell it was poorly covering up the prior two. It all made my skin crawl, and I wanted nothing more than to get out.

After becoming a werewolf, I’d had my blood tested more than a few times. Somehow, nothing ever showed. My blood, thankfully, looked totally normal to the docs.

While I was getting checked out and having my blood pressure monitored—all standard procedure following a tussle like the one I’d just been involved in—a Sergeant Hu from Sacramento PD dropped by with Williams and Sayers to do a quick review of the statement I’d given at the scene. I waved off their concerns about the “knife” wounds I’d sustained, pointed to the already healing slashes as proof that I’d barely been touched—anyway they weren’t even worth really discussing. In truth, they’d probably be healed completely in a day or two. Then I’d changed the subject.

I looked at my phone and saw it was a little after two a.m. I’d been here for four hours already. That was five hours too many in a hospital.

“We’ll do a full interview later tonight. Five p.m. work for you, Detective?” Hu asked, but it wasn’t really a question. I nodded like I was actually agreeing.

“All right, Hicks,” Sayers said. “Get out of here. Go home and get some rest. Try not to cause me anymore paperwork on your way home, all right?” I gave him a wordless thumbs-up, and he slapped me on the shoulder before all three left.

I gathered all my belongings and made my way to the parking lot. My phone buzzed with a text from Marina saying she’d gone to crash at Ms. Fust’s.

A sense of foreboding settled over me.

I drove back to Marina’s apartment building. Fog covered the streets like a smothering blanket. Maybe it was my nerves, but the fog didn’t feel natural. It never really did. Something about the way it dampened sound, vision, and smell made me feel like the city was out to cover up its sins. Maybe it was. Or maybe someone was using the city against people like me. I couldn’t rule out anything anymore. At least the rain had stopped.

The fog swirled around my feet as I hunted around the front and sides of the apartment complex. I didn’t want to go inside, figuring that sort of thing wouldn’t look too good for me in the pending investigation. Between the earlier rain, and the fog thickening by the second, picking up the trail of the demon-looking guy with the mohawk proved difficult. It was like the scent was trying to hide from me. I’d get a whiff, then it’d jump away.

My phone buzzed again. Another message from Marina.

Thx for sending the car to watch out front. It just got here.

I stared at the message for a few moments, my earlier sense of foreboding shifting into dread. I hadn’t sent anyone, and I doubted SPD would have done so either. Within moments, I was back in my car, driving back to Ms. Fust’s.

Frustration bubbled up in me. I should have seen this coming. Whether or not the demon-things had come for me or for Marina was irrelevant. Either they had followed me from Ms. Fust’s, or they had come to Marina’s independently. And now . . . well, I felt a tenuous thread beginning to connect them all.

Driving back to Johana’s home took far longer than it should have. Visibility was near zero. Streams of fog slithered against my windows, like they wanted to get in and grab ahold of me.

No car greeted me out front of the Fusts’, cop or otherwise. No lights from the home shone through the mist. I popped open my glovebox, pulled out a box of 9mm, and reloaded the empty magazine to my 320. I wish I had brought a third mag, but I’d have settled for my AR-15.

When I reached the front door, it was already open a crack. Pistol in hand, I pushed the door open the rest of the way. Fog leaked into the living room like it was stalking its prey. The house felt empty, and my nose wasn’t picking up the scents of anyone. I flipped up the nearest light switch and closed the door. A few knocked-over chairs greeted me. A suitcase stood in the corner. I crossed the room and lifted a baggage tag hanging from the handle, which confirmed it belonged to Marina. The incense in the corner had long since gone out.

Which was how I smelled the sickness.

The rot was light here, in the living room and kitchen. I took the stairs up to the second floor. The home was a simple two-floor deal. Three bedrooms upstairs: two on the left, and a third on the right. The smell of decay led me to the one on the right. This wasn’t the smell of a corpse—an odor you never forgot after your first. No, this was the smell of someone who was knocking on death’s door.

The room obviously belonged to Johana Fust. The decorations were sparse, but not inelegant. Simple, but maintained, furniture. Clean. But I could smell the rot here. I checked the bedside tables, already knowing what I would find. I found the prescription bottles, all with Ms. Fust’s name on them. I typed a few of the medication names into my phone. Just like I thought, all for cancer treatment.

If not for the incense, I likely would have smelled the cancer on her. She hadn’t looked sick, but I didn’t suppose that meant much. I placed the meds back in the drawer.

Back downstairs, I was about to leave when my eyes settled on Marina’s suitcase again.

She’d had the same incense burning in her apartment.

I crossed the room quickly and unzipped the bag. Right on top of the girl’s clothes was a medicine bag. Inside I found prescriptions in Marina’s name. The same ones as upstairs.

The family connection locked into place. Marina had said something about how they’d all met in a hospital chapel, but I’d been too focused on finding Luna that I hadn’t asked the obvious questions. It happened to the best of us. This sort of thing was lamented by detectives everywhere. If we always knew the right questions to ask, and asked them at the right times, we’d likely save a lot more lives. Instead, we almost always fell a step behind. And we all had cases that haunted us.

The question now—maybe the right question, maybe the wrong one—was how did this all connect with Luna’s disappearance? All three of these women seemed aboveboard to me. But the demons—or whatever they were—had come and taken both Marina and Johana. I was now fairly confident Marina had been the original target at her apartment. I thought back to what Ms. Fust had overheard.

You promised it would work.

My mind immediately went to Luna making a deal for something. A drug, maybe? Something foreign and experimental?

The lights in the house went out.

My eyes adjusted automatically to the gloom. When I turned around, the front door was open again, and a flood of fog rolled into the living room. Its movement wasn’t natural. It enveloped me, clawed its way in my nose and mouth when I took a breath. My lungs seized, and I couldn’t breathe.

I stumbled out the door and into the night, looking for whoever—whatever—was causing this. I felt the magic in the miasma. Since I couldn’t see anything, anyway, I closed my eyes and let myself be drawn in the direction of the most powerful magic. I could feel the connection to it from the fog in my chest. To my right, down the street. I sprinted that direction, feeling the source of the magic grow rapidly stronger. Suddenly the pressure in my lungs dissipated, and I felt the person using the magic against me begin to flee.

I opened my eyes and gasped a breath, but never stopped moving. A shadow flickered ahead, ducking between two homes. I chased after, feeling my blood rising as the hunt took over. The gasping of breath ahead gave my quarry away. I was so much faster than a normal human, and my agility—even without being in wolf-form—was better than any star athlete on the planet.

The person fleeing must have felt me gaining so he tipped over a garbage can to trip me up. I leapt over it easily and launched myself at the figure. In the gloom the person had a hideous visage. Huge tusks jutted up from its lower jaw, and the whole face looked to be covered in scales. It hissed at me like a snake and tried to claw at me like the others had in the apartment. I lifted the snake demon by its neck and body-slammed it. I followed up with several quick punches to the face. The monster’s hands began glowing blue, but I grabbed one and snapped all the fingers back, breaking every finger. The creature let loose a very human scream, which I cut off with another brutal fist to the jaw, breaking it.

I dragged the demon back into the street, and to my car. It was then that I noticed the demon’s body was female. She whimpered as I stood over her.

“What the hell are you?” When she didn’t answer, I pulled my SIG and placed the barrel under her scaled chin. “Don’t make me ask again. I’ve had a very bad day. What are you?”

“A witch,” she slurred through a broken jaw.

This made no sense. Though I suppose my only experience with witches was from movies. I had a feeling brooms and warts weren’t part of the equation.

“Why do you look like a demon?”

“You can see it?”

I was losing patience, so for my answer I pressed the gun up harder.

“We make pacts with demons for our power,” she spoke as quickly as the broken jaw allowed. She must have had her own little bit of supernatural healing going on to even speak as well as she did. “The longer we have it, the more visible it is. But normal humans can almost never see it. How can—”

“I’m not normal. Where are the women your people took from this house?”

“I can’t . . . I can’t . . . they’ll kill me.”

I remembered the expression on the mohawk demon’s—no, witch’s—face when I’d partially changed in front of him. I put the pistol away. She actually sighed in relief until she heard the bones in my face cracking. Bone plates shifted, and my jaw jutted out. Sharp teeth ripped out from my gums, and I tasted my own blood. I felt every crack, every shift. Even a small, partial change was agony. But in reality, this was nothing compared to fully wolfing out. It was mainly for effect. The witch’s face became a study in terror as she saw me begin to change.

“No . . . no . . . please! I’ll tell you!”

Apparently werewolves were feared more than I realized. Aubrey and I were going to have a conversation about that.

I pulled my own demon back, letting my face return to normal. My hands shook from the effort. It took a lot of energy to shift back and forth, and I was in desperate need of food and rest.

“Enough games. Tell me now.”

“You promise to let me live?” The question, somehow, took me by surprise. I cocked my head to the side and stared. Something in my expression made her go pale. “I promise. Look . . . whatever you want. I’ll tell you anything. I won’t ever use my magic to hurt anyone again. Please. Anything!”

I couldn’t very well kill the witch here. I leaned in close and breathed in deeply. I had her scent, and I wouldn’t ever forget it.

“All right. But you’re gonna help me from now on. When I call, you’ll answer. And I’ll have a lot of questions. If I need your help, you’ll give it. And if you ever go near other witches again, I’ll end you. I can find you anywhere, now.” I tapped my nose. “Do you understand?”

She nodded quickly.

“What’s your name? And can you drop the . . . ” I waved at her face.

The demon melted away. Aside from the broken jaw, she was attractive. Her features were almost delicate. Dark hair and eyes to match.

“Katrina Smyth.”

“Okay. Katrina, you’re going to tell me where they took the women, and why.”

“The other girl, Luna, made a deal for them. We can make them better.”

“The cancer?”

She nodded, and put a hand to her jaw in pain. “We can make them better. In a way.”

“You have magic that can get rid of cancer? Seems too good to be true.”

“It is. I don’t think Luna knows what she is doing. What the cost is.”

“The cost? What do you mean?” I could tell she didn’t mean money. Something far more valuable was the cost of doing this sort of business.

“We can’t cure cancer. No magic can that we know of. But . . . but having a demon inside of you can.”

It all made sense now. The deal Luna had made for her mother and friend. “What did Luna agree to?”

“Demons needed vessels. She agreed to let one into herself and to letting them into the other two. Cancer cured.”

“The catch?”

Katrina laughed, then winced. “Besides a demon that eventually takes control? My boss owns them. It won’t be pretty. Just . . . just trust me on that one.”

“Your boss is some sort of Russian mobster?” She nodded. “Okay. Where are they, and what should I expect when I get there?”

✧ ✧ ✧

My watch showed half past three in the morning when I arrived at a warehouse south of the old Mather Air Force Base. I wasn’t too far from the Sacramento Sheriff’s Evidence Warehouse. How much of what I was about to do would end up collected and stored there? How would the investigating officers even rationalize what they’d find?

Their problem.

My problem was getting the women out before they were turned.

I ditched my car a few miles away, off the main roads, and made my way on foot. The closer I got to the warehouse, the worse the fog got. It was a good plan. Most people would turn around when it got too thick. This fog preserved their hideout, or whatever witches called their occult clubhouse. Inside, they’d be trying to summon demons somehow.

Instead, they were getting me. A devil of another sort.

When the fog was at its thickest, I changed.

This wasn’t the partial change for effect. I let the beast come all the way out. The pain doubled me over as my spine broke and mended itself. While my shoulder blades cracked in half, shifted, and mended, each of my fingers snapped, then their skin split open as longer, clawed ones emerged. The skin across my chest felt too tight, and my ribcage like a literal prison. I dug my claws into the useless skin and ripped it outward. Blood flew, and so did pieces of my ribs as I tore into myself. Through the rending flesh, the monster emerged. Lean, long-limbed. With those limbs I clawed at the human flesh, tearing it away piece by piece. In the end, I let the change break and reform my skull. I ripped the skin until the wolf was free, steaming in the cool night air.

My own gore surrounded me, but it would degrade in a few hours. I’d tested it. Couldn’t leave that much biological evidence just laying around.

The self-inflicted gashes from my claws healed. And as the last of my fangs pierced through my gums, and my bones settled in place, the relief from the vanishing pain tore from my chest in a howl that broke through even the unnatural fog around me. My howl called out to the dark, letting it and anyone in it know that I feared nothing. That I was to be feared.

For the first time in weeks, I felt complete.

With a swish of my tail, I bounded forward through the murk. I easily leapt the first fence, topped by razor wire. When I landed, it was next to my old friend, the startled demon with horns that formed a mohawk on his head. He’d been carrying a rifle, but dropped it in terror. I grinned at him, the demon he wished he was. When Mohawk tried to back away from me, he tripped and fell. He was too scared to even cry out.

Good.

On all fours I stalked over his body and leveled my snout with his face. He opened his mouth—whether to beg, scream, or cry, I’ll never know. I snapped down hard with my jaws on either side of his face and bit as hard as I could. His skull didn’t resist, and I took in a small measure of sustenance to make up for some of the energy expended from the change.

Ahead, I scampered up the outer wall of the warehouse and to the roof. At the top, near an access door, I slashed at every electrical panel I saw, causing the lights in the building to blink out. I didn’t know how well the witches could see in the dark, but I knew I could easily. The darkness was my ally now. My weapon. My home.

I pulled the rooftop access door off its hinges and entered the dark stairway. I latched on to the wall and clawed my way to the ceiling. Most people, inhabited with demons or not, didn’t usually look above them.

I didn’t immediately go on the hunt, but instead waited for the first of my prey. They came up the stairs, two men waving flashlights around without any real direction. Never once did they point them high enough to spot me. When they’d both passed underneath me, I dropped down behind the trailing witch. I drove my claws through his back, ripping though muscle and bone. He gurgled from the blood in his lungs, causing the leading witch to turn around.

Which was when I ripped my witch in half. Blood sprayed out and the witch’s organs slopped to the floor. I threw the half of the twitching corpse in my right hand at the other, petrified witch. He fell hard against the concrete stairs. I reached out and grabbed his foot, pulled him to me, and ripped out his throat.

The stairs took me to a warehouse littered with scaffolding, pallets of wrapped and stolen electronics, and a floor filled with lit candles. I didn’t need the dim light given off by the tiny flames to see a massive symbol had been painted on the warehouse floor. Something about the rune made my skin crawl. The middle looked a bit like an open eye, but the scrawls around it put ice in my heart. Nothing good ever came from this sort of evil. Whatever deal Luna had made to save her mother and her friend . . . it wasn’t worth it. She’d made a devil’s bargain.

In the circle were the three women, each tied to a chair. Both Johana and Marina looked unconscious, but Luna screamed against her gag. Shadows stuttered in the wavering candlelight making it hard to get a good look at the faces of the men surrounding the circle. Some wore cheap suits that actually reflected the dim light. Others wore track suits. All had a gun of some sort. I recognized a few Desert Eagles—the gun choice of pathetic thugs across the world. At least none of them looked gold-plated.

One of the men entered the circle and approached the two unconscious women. Luna jerked against her restraints again, causing the witches to laugh.

The man who had entered the circle drew a knife from under his suit jacket, then dragged the edge of the blade across his forearm. The blood shimmered in magical blue flame as it dripped to the floor. He walked inside the rune and let his blood fall onto the drawn lines. Where blood hit them, they flared in momentary incandescence.

The man seemed too important to be Niko. From Johana and Marina’s descriptions, Niko’d sounded more like a low-level yes-man. I could tell from the way the other witches stood that they held this man in respect.

And fear.

The sigil began to pulse in an eerie blue light. Their leader crossed quickly to the unconscious form of Johana Fust and ripped open the front of her shirt. He took his knife and began carving the same sigil form the ground into her skin.

I leapt from the mouth of the stairwell onto the scaffolding behind the nearest of the witches, then from there dropped down onto the back of the rearmost in their ranks. I shredded his throat before he could make a sound.

Three more died before anyone even knew something was remotely wrong. Thick blood dripped from my clawed hands.

When I twisted the head of one of the witches completely around, he dropped his pistol. The clattering of the metal hitting the concrete turned every eye in the place to me. I didn’t give them a chance to react. I let loose a howl and launched myself into the thickest knot of witches. What little of their features I took in showed a variety of demonic features.

But no matter how frightening their features, they all bled the same.

I ripped the arm out of the socket of the first witch while disemboweling a second with the claws on my feet. I threw the arm into the face of a witch behind me, then backhanded another so hard that I felt his face cave in.

I heard the racking of a dozen slides, so I grabbed a witch whose face was only about half-changed. He must have been new. I crushed his throat and held him up in the path of six other witches who opened fire. A few rounds went clean through my meat shield and hit me, but to little effect. None of them were silver.

One of the witches tripped over the corpse of his companion, and I stomped down hard on his chest, collapsing it.

I dropped my shield and charged the six gunmen that had gathered together. They thought they were safer together.

Alone. Together. It wouldn’t matter for them. To me, they were just meat.

I hit them like a cyclone of death and fury. Blood and limbs flew. After seeing me rip the head from one, and tear another in half at the waist, a couple of them dropped their guns and fell to their knees.

The cop in me—that human named Kamari Hicks that rode in the backseat of my mind—would have shown them mercy. Would have handed them over to the authorities to eventually see their day in court. But these weren’t humans anymore. They were here, participating in something so evil that even as a wolf I felt a measure of fear. They would continue their unholy acts. They thought they owned this city.

They were wrong.

I grabbed them each by the head and slammed them together like rotting pumpkins.

When I turned around, blood and brain matter slowly dripping off me, the remaining witches were fleeing. All except for the leader. He had carved his sigil on Marina and Johana, and was beginning to do the same onto a screaming Luna. The witch was in a hurry, and some animal instinct in me knew if he finished cutting into Luna, not only would they die, but something otherworldly would come here and end everything. Not just the people in this room, but every man, woman, and child in this city—in my city—would be lost.

I threw myself across the room and into the glowing sigil. As soon as I crossed into it, I felt like my body was on fire. The dark magic being channeled threatened to rip me into pieces. Only my momentum saved me. I crashed into the witch, and together we slid across the lines of the sigil, blurring them. The blue light blinked out of existence, leaving only the candlelight.

And two small blue flames. One each in the chests of Marina and Johana.

With the pain of the magic gone, I lifted the head witch off the ground.

“Fix them,” I snarled.

He laughed, a face that looked like that of a gargoyle. “It’s too late. I couldn’t summon our Lord completely, but a small piece of Him is in them.”

“End the summoning. Now.”

“I can’t. They are shells now. Their souls are gone. If my Lord had come, they would at least have something in them to keep them alive. Now? They will be nothing more than rabid dogs. Just like you.”

He laughed maniacally, and continued to do so until foam and spittle covered his mouth and chin. I jabbed the claws of one of my hands under his chin and up into his skull. He stopped laughing. I grabbed the back of his head with my other hand and ripped the entire front of his skull off in a crack of bone and splatter of gore.

Luna had passed out. It was for the best. She didn’t need to see what happened next.

Marina and Johana were awake, but only in the clinical sense. They thrashed against their bonds, eyes rolled back so far that all I could see were the whites. I put one of my hands on Johana Fust’s shoulder. All I felt was a growing demonic presence. Her humanity was gone.

I covered her eyes with my left hand, and quickly and cleanly cut her throat with a single claw. I held her until she went still.

Marina followed her into the afterlife a few minutes later.

I hoped when they found each other in that heaven they both believed in, they wouldn’t think too unkindly of me. But more than that, I hoped they would forgive Luna.

Because I knew she would never forgive herself.

✧ ✧ ✧

When Luna woke up in her hospital bed, I was sitting at her side. Her eyes blinked several times, trying to focus on me.

“Who . . . who . . . ”

“Detective Kamari Hicks. Your mother hired me to find you. I’m . . . Luna, I’m sorry.”

“Mom? Marina?”

I shook my head.

“I saw you.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you—”

“At the warehouse. That was you. You tore into them . . . you—”

I took her hand in my own. “What if I was?”

Tears spilled from her eyes. “Did you get them all?”

“Yes.”

She wiped her eyes with her free hand. “I just wanted to make them better. I couldn’t lose them both. The doctors told them—”

“I know. I found their meds.” I squeezed her hand and told her the lie I knew I needed to tell. “This wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was.”

She pulled her hand away from mine, and I knew it was time to leave.

It was just after seven in the morning when I left the hospital. Dawn had broken over the Sierra Nevadas to the east, and the warm, yellow light burned the clouds and the fog away.

This city was a strange beast. Some days it treated the people living in it with respect. Some days it took those with the best intentions, chewed them up, and spat them into the river.

Today was a new day.

I’d failed today. Some people would likely say I’d done a good job. That maybe I’d saved this city. Maybe they were right.

Today I clung to those maybes.


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Framed