Page 14 of Mystic Justice
His smile widened. ‘Inspector, we’re neither at a crime scene nor are we anywhere near canoodling. I look forward to teaching you the difference.’
Why did that whispered promise get me so hot under the collar? Because he was sexy, that was why, ridiculously, mouth-wateringly sexy. And I had to keep my brain focused on work even though it was unhappy at the idea.
I told my hormones to sit down and shut up, but I didn’t tell Krieg off when his hand brushed mine a second time. He was taking liberties and, God help me, I loved it. Six hundred and eighty-two days and counting. At that stage in my celibacy, I’d have moaned even if a mosquito sucked on my neck.
The Palm House was busy, Common realmer visitors were walking in the glass house, admiring the fauna and flora with no idea as to truly how exotic – and dangerous – some of them were.
‘Psssst,’ a female pixie whispered. ‘Over here.’ Despite the shimmering butterfly wings extending from her back, the foot-tall pixie remained flat on the ground because of all the humans around her. If the Common realmers saw her, the Other realm would protect itself and instead of arealpixie they’d see a statueof one. Or maybe a cute, painted gnome – the Other realm had an odd sense of humour at times. Obviously it was harder to come up with an alternative explanation for something a foot tall and flying. A drone, maybe? Modern technology had its uses.
The pixie opened a side door by pressing a discreet door-release button at her height and ushered us in. Loki swooped in before it closed with a clang. She didn’t take us to the general area but deep into the building, into Peter’s den itself. I’d never been in a dragon’s hoard and wasn’t keen to enter one now, but nevertheless I pressed on. The job came first.
Dragons were fiercely protective of their hoards – whatever form they came in – and I was conscious that doing or saying the wrong thing could lead to me being cooked flambé style. Since I was keen on living, I stepped very carefully, making sure to avoid the tendrils of the plants that reached out to touch me.
We made it to the heart of the building where a small female imp was whimpering on a metal potting table that had been thoroughly cleaned. Amber DeLea was bent over her, painstakingly painting teeny-tiny runes on the imp’s red skin. Even from this distance I could see the bloody ruined stump of her tail and I winced in sympathy.
Amber’s ever-present protector, the griffin Bastion, whirled around as we entered the room. Some of the tension eased from his shoulders when he saw our Connection uniform but it returned when he saw Krieg. ‘Your Excellence,’ he greeted him tightly. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m assisting the Connection with an investigation.’
Bastion’s eyes flicked to me and a small smile curved up his usually firm lips. ‘Are you, now?’ he said mildly. ‘How interesting. Wise,’ he greeted me. We’d dealt with each other on a couple of occasions but he’d never sounded quite so friendly before.
‘Good to see you,’ I said gruffly. ‘This is my partner, Detective Channing. Channing, this is Bastion.’
Channing’s jaw dropped and he stepped back. ‘The assassin?’
‘That’s the one.’ I suppressed a smile. Bastion was a griffin and, like Krieg, he fell onto the creature side of the fence, but unlike the ogres the griffins were born with the powerful urge to kill. To channel that urge more … productively, the Connection had agreed that the guild of griffins could form their own assassination business. For the right price you could get a sanctioned hit on virtually anyone, though the price was incredibly steep.
Despite their wealth, griffin numbers were at an all-time low. According to our records there were fewer than fifty of them worldwide. They each carried a life-saving potion that could bring them back from the brink of death, but the potion’s ingredients were incredibly rare and expensive and the witches brewed only one batch every decade or so. If you received a mortal injury and you’d already used your final-defence potion, you were shit out of luck. Consequently, the griffins’ numbers continued to dwindle.
‘Can you all stop your chattering?’ Amber said sharply. ‘I’m trying to save a life here, and I don’t need you nattering around me like a vapid harem.’
We fell silent: the Crone wasn’t a woman to piss off. She held the only lifetime role in witch society and was one of the most powerful females around, even on her worst days.
We honoured the requested silence for a full fifteen minutes while Amber worked with painstaking care then, with a subtle motion, she called forward her magic. The little imp lit up like a Christmas tree, golden light surging through the runes as each one sparked to life. She gave a blood-curdling scream and promptly passed out.
‘Is she okay?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’ Tension slid out of Amber’s shoulders as she watched the imp with an analytical eye. Finally she gave a satisfied nod, set down her paintbrush, tightened the lid on the potion she’d been using and removed her purple gloves. ‘She was supposed to do that.’
Amazed, we watched as the imp’s tail started to grow.
‘Excellent,’ Amber murmured. A moment later she put her hands on her hips. ‘Why the hell do we have another imp with its tail sliced off?’ she asked Bastion. ‘We sent the details of the vampyr responsible for the other attacks to Wokeshire, didn’t we?’
‘Yes. He said the vampyr had been identified but not apprehended.’
Amber fixed me with a look. ‘Apprehend him.’
‘I’ll certainly do my best, Crone. Can you give me a description of their appearance?’
‘I can do better than that.’ She waved a hand at Bastion, who pulled out his phone and showed us an image floating in a bowl. ‘If it’s the same vampyr – and I can’t imagine there are many others running around collecting imp tails – I scried their image from one of the other victims.’
The vampyr the image revealed was male, handsome – as all vampyrs were – and pretty young, eighteen maybe. The problem was that vampyrs could choose to appear any age they wished, eighteen one moment, eighty the next. That made it inordinately difficult to apprehend them.
The Connection had a database of captured images of various vampyrs at various ages so with luck we could scan the scried image and our system would identify him. Still, the water had been rippling, and whoever’s memory it was may not have accurately recalled his features. I had to hope it would be enough, though experience had taught me it might well not be.
‘How many victims have there been?’ Channing asked.
‘Too many!’ said another imp scuttling out of the bushes and swinging his way up to the top of the table. ‘Snicklesnack!’ he cried when he saw the unconscious female.
