Authors: Naomi Clark
Tags: #mystery, #detective, #Naomi Clark, #demon, #dark fantasy, #PI, #Damnation Books, #urban fantasy
“
Kill it
,” the Voice suggested. I ignored it.
“You need a vet and a few good meals.” I decided. Mutt wagged his tail in agreement and wandered through to the kitchen. I fixed him a bowl of water, and after some mental debate, gave him a bowlful of leftovers from last night’s Indian takeout. Yeah, he’d probably crap it all over the nice, beige carpet later, but I could always throw a rug over it.
While Mutt chowed down on his lamb balti, I slumped on the couch and pulled my cell phone from my jeans pocket. Turning the TV on, I dialed my client and flicked through the home shopping channels while I waited for him to pick up.
“Mr. Banning? You’ve found her?” Doug Baxter, Rhian’s ex-fiancé, sounded painfully eager, desperate for news. The Voice liked it. I could almost feel it licking up Baxter’s misery.
I rubbed the back of my neck. I hated this part of the job. “Yeah, Mr. Baxter, I found her, but there’s bad news, I’m afraid.”
Baxter was silent, already knowing what I’d say. His breathing sounded heavy and slow, like he tried not to hyperventilate or cry. It made me itchy. I see a lot of grief in my job, and it always makes me itchy, uncomfortable. Like I’m seeing the person naked. I don’t like it. Didn’t like it, until a demon jumped inside me, anyway. Since then... Well, I still don’t like it, but the misery keeps the demon quiet, keeps it from pushing me to create some mayhem for it.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Baxter said finally, all the life sapped from his voice.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Baxter. There will be a full police investigation, so I need your permission to pass the details of the case along.”
“Investigation? Rhian... She...She was murdered, wasn’t she? Someone killed her.” Now I heard fire in his voice, a bit of pepper and fight. The Voice didn’t like that as much, but I privately saluted Baxter for it. Anger was much more productive than depression.
“I’m afraid she was. I’ve already spoken to the officer in charge, and she’ll do all she can to bring Rhian’s killer to justice, Mr. Baxter. I promise that.” I knew Anna would. She was a one-woman crusade, that lady, a blonde hurricane of justice and righteous indignation.
“Okay.” Baxter paused. “Okay, fine. I guess we should meet to discuss your fee and the…all the…details.”
“Sure.” I checked my watch. It was too late to take Mutt to a vet, but too early to give up on life for the day and go to bed. “You want to meet this evening? We can meet up in the Coburg Bar.”
“Sounds fine,” Baxter said, meaning
sounds horrific.
I got that. He’d just found out the love of his life was dead. I wouldn’t want to spend the evening talking to me either. Hell, I wouldn’t want that on a good day.
We agreed on a time and I hung up, turning my attention fully to the shopping channels. Some blonde chick and a bald guy extolled the virtues of some kitchen gadget that made mountains and mountains of coleslaw, saving time and money. I wanted one. I mean, I didn’t eat coleslaw–or cook, if I could avoid it, but I wanted one anyway. I kept buying shit like that and telling myself I’ll use it, get healthy, start eating properly, and then left it to gather dust in the kitchen cupboard.
I should probably get laid more.
I ordered the coleslaw thing and checked on Mutt. He’d cleaned up the curry and was pawing at the back door.
Smart dog
. I let him out into the rain, and he ran around happily in my tiny, pathetic garden, barked at the wall, then came back inside again and stood there giving me that goofy dog-face.
“Tomorrow we’re going to the vet,” I told him, scratching him behind the ears. “I bet you’re crawling with fleas and parasites, aren’t you? Yeah, you are.”
He lolled his tongue in agreement and padded through to the lounge. I left him asleep on the couch, while I changed into dry clothes for my meeting with Baxter. If I was lucky it would be a short one. I’d offer my condolences, he’d write me a check, and we’d move on with our lives. I could move on to the next case, if I’d had one lined up.
I didn’t have one lined up. I didn’t have anything lined up except more stupid kitchen gadgets, coffee, and listening to the Voice. Oh, and cleaning up Mutt, I guess.
See, this was why I became a PI. The glamour.
Chapter Two
Actually, the Coburg Bar was pretty glamorous. For me, anyway. All red paint, black wood, and brass. A piano player performed in the corner by the bar, and an open fire crackled away like it was midwinter, not the height of summer. I shrugged out of my leather jacket as soon as I stepped inside.
Baxter sat at the bar, nursing a bottle of beer and looking as miserable as sin. Which was fair enough, I guess. The guy bled despair and it stirred the Voice. The piece of demon lurking in my head loved that Baxter felt so fucking depressed. It wanted to curl up with that depression and wallow in it. I clenched my hands into fists as I approached Baxter, hoping I didn’t look happy or hungry, or whatever.
Why couldn’t I have been possessed by an incubus
? I could live with a constant hard-on, but this need for other people’s suffering just felt fucking nasty.
“Mr. Baxter, good to see you again,” I said, leaning on the bar next to him. “Mine’s a whiskey.”
Baxter jumped, but recovered quickly. He was an investment banker, all sharp-creased shirts and tasteful ties. A man bent on climbing the career ladder all the way to the top. I figured he’d probably have a breakdown in his mid-thirties and end up feeding cats to ATMs or something.
“Mr. Banning.” He returned my greeting and ordered me a whiskey. Drinks in hand, we retreated to a booth at the back of the bar so we could talk in private about dead hookers.
Sitting opposite the guy, the sense of gloom and hopelessness felt powerful enough to choke me, and it fired up the Voice and sent it skittering around my head like it was high.
“So,” Baxter said, clearing his throat and staring at his beer. “How did it happen?”
“I can’t give you any details,” I said. “With the cops involved, it could get messy. I’m sure they’ll be in touch with you themselves anyway.”
He nodded. “She was beautiful, you know. A beautiful person, I mean.”
God, I wanted a cigarette. I tapped my foot on the floor nervously, soaking up his grief, tasting it at the back of my throat. It was like molasses, too thick to swallow. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Baxter,” I said, meaning it. “I wish I could have done more.”
He nodded again, not really hearing me. “I just don’t get who would want to hurt her. Rhian is…was…so sweet.”
The puzzlement on his face made the Voice laugh. “
The sweet ones die easiest.”
“
What did you say?” Baxter’s head jerked up with confusion in his eyes.
Did I say that out loud? Shit
. “I said, I’m sure the police will find whoever did it.”
“They’d better,” he said grimly. A wave of anger hit me and the Voice lapped that up too, buzzing with the heat of it. “Mr. Banning, you didn’t find out about the… the stripping, did you? How she ended up doing something like that?”
I shook my head. I’d tracked Rhian to Hush, confirmed with the girls there that she’d worked there, but never asked them what a sweet girl like her was doing in a place like that. Rhian’s reasons hadn’t been my problem. Her whereabouts had been.
“I’d like to know. For closure. I mean…” Baxter waved his hands, flashing his designer watch at me. Probably not on purpose. “We were happy. We were engaged, talking about kids… We had a kitten, for Christ’s sake! And then one day she just breaks it off and disappears, and next thing I know, she’s stripping and…and dead. And I don’t know why.” He ran his hands through his hair, clutching at the carefully gelled dark spikes. “I don’t understand why.”
More misery, mixed with guilt and anger. The Voice chuckled. I took a swig of whiskey to stop the sound emerging from my mouth. “You want me to dig around, see what happened?” I asked. “I don’t know if that’s going to help you.”
“I need to know,” he grated. “Money’s not an issue.”
With a watch and haircut like his, I was sure it wasn’t. I shrugged. I needed the cash and he needed the closure. Win-win, except his fiancée was still dead. “Fair enough. I’ll see what I can find out for you. You should probably expect it to be ugly, though,” I warned.
“I can handle it,” he said. “I just need to know.”
* * * *
Mutt greeted me enthusiastically when I got home, all wet dog-kisses and excited yaps. I scratched his ears and told him he was a good boy, figuring his affection for me must mean I was still basically okay.
I mean, animals are supposed to sense evil, aren’t they? If the Voice was making me a bad person, an evil person, Mutt wouldn’t be so pleased to see me, right?
“Or maybe it’s just cupboard love?” I mused, rubbing the dog’s ribs. “I’m gonna fatten you up for Christmas, you know that?”
Mutt licked my face and returned to the couch, settling down in one corner. I rolled a cigarette and switched on the TV. A muscle-bound beefcake was selling vitamin shakes guaranteed to turn you from zero to hero in six weeks. I doubted that, but the guy looked so fucking excited about it all, I ordered a case anyway.
I put off going to bed, even though I felt exhausted. My eyes burned with it, and the heat of the night didn’t help. I felt limp, wrung out; but the longer I stayed awake, the longer I could avoid the nightmares the Voice fed me. I hoped the mix of coffee, nicotine, and whiskey would keep me awake a while longer, but I got too comfy and the exertions of the day caught up with me. I drifted off while the beefcake shrieked like the drill sergeant from
Full Metal Jacket
about his glorious abs.
* * * *
I jerked awake much later, sweating and terrified. Mutt whined and jumped off the couch, coming around to my head to lick my ear. I released the breath I’d been holding as the room righted itself around me. My dream faded back into reality.
I didn’t know what I dreamed about, exactly. The images always disappeared as soon as I woke up. I know they’re bloody, violent, cruel, and vicious. I knew the Voice reveled in my night-terrors, laughing inside my skull like a psychotic clown. I was pretty sure the Voice caused the dreams, giving itself fresh fear and pain to feed off.
I sat up, running my hands through my hair and shivering in the dark, fighting to get a grip. “Just dreams,” I whispered to Mutt. “I don’t even remember them, so why the hell am I so scared of them?”
I’m not fazed by much, really. In Shoregrave I faced down vampires, ghouls, and necromancers, and I came out pretty okay, relatively speaking, anyway. Sure, the undead population of the city shook me up a little, but I adapted. I’d seen enough human violence working as a PI to have become mostly immune to that too.
The Voice? The Voice scared the shit out of me. In the dead of night, when it was just me and the nightmares, me and the manic laughter rattling around my head, was when I freaked the fuck out, because I didn’t want to go crazy. Didn’t want to wind up strapped up in a padded room screaming about bugs eating my face off or whatever.
I was fine with vampires and ghosts, but being crazy scared me, and the Voice could drive me crazy.
I got up and went to the kitchen to brew coffee. Mutt followed, pressing close to my legs. His warmth felt comforting, and I fed him a biscuit to show him my appreciation. He chomped that down, while I stared out the kitchen window at the shadowed garden and contemplated madness.
My old man went crazy. Drink, you know? Couldn’t stay off the stuff, and honestly, he was such a fucking bastard when he was sober, it was better to have him drunk. It broke him in the end, and they carted him off to one of those padded rooms when I was sixteen. I visited him once. He had no idea who I was, and thought I’d come to steal his bone marrow.
I guess he’s probably still there, if he’s still alive
. The image of him haunted me. Wild-eyed, red-faced, a screaming stranger who threatened to rip my throat out if I touched him.
Fuck, I don’t want to end up like that
.
I poured myself a black coffee and went to find my cell phone. I’d sat around moping for long enough. It was time to take some affirmative action. I rang the wraith.
I hadn’t spoken to Yasmin Stoker since leaving Shoregrave. After all, it was more or less her fault I’d ended up with a demon in me. Sort of. She’d sucked most of it out and everything, but if I hadn’t met her, I wouldn’t have been possessed in the first place. Plus, I’d helped her out against some nasty, undead critters at great personal risk. She owed me.
The phone rang and rang. I glanced at the digital clock on my microwave: three am. Well, the dead didn’t really sleep, did they? Stoker might be out decapitating zombies or whatever she did in her down time.
Just as I was about to hang up, she picked up. “Hello?” She sounded groggy and pissed off. Maybe the dead did sleep after all.
“Stoker, don’t tell me I disturbed your beauty sleep.”
“Ethan? What the hell?” Now she just sounded pissed off. “It’s the middle of the night!”
“I had you figured for a night owl, Stoker. Roaming the cemeteries and streets looking for lost souls and stray spirits to snack on.”
“Are you drunk, Ethan?”