Tainted Blood: A Generation V Novel (29 page)

Suze walked into the room. Her hair was still wet from the shower, and she was wearing my Doctor Who T-shirt, which hit her around midthigh, and apparently nothing else. I looked at her and blinked a few times, feeling my brain shudder to a full stop. It completely tented her in a swath of Dalek-emblazoned fabric, covering her arms down to the elbow, and I knew that logically I’d seen her in outfits that showed more skin (and, technically, that I’d also actually seen her naked multiple times pre- and post-shifting), but somehow this just seemed
naked-er
. And really sexy.

“So, what are we talking about?” she asked.

“How I’m going straight to bed, and you kids have fun catching a killer tomorrow,” Dan said, clearly able to read a room. He grabbed his ice cream and retreated.

“Watch out for bear assassins climbing up the fire escape,” Suze called after him, and he gave a wave of
acknowledgment before closing his door firmly behind him. She looked over at me and gave a small smile. “Subtle of him.”

“Screw subtle—he just won best roommate of the year,” I said, watching her closely.

At that, she grinned widely, and sauntered over to the couch before tucking in beside me comfortably and reaching over to confiscate my ice cream. I let her have it, enjoying the feeling of her soft body pressed against my side. Until that moment, I’d felt ready to conk out and sleep for a week, but with her here, I decided that plan could wait a bit.

“So, are we all set for tomorrow?” she asked, snuggling close and spooning some ice cream into her mouth.

I watched as she swiped her tongue over her bottom lip. “We catch a few hours of sleep, then wait until Kivela Mutual Insurance is open for the day. We head down there and corner Gil at work, with lots of superior firepower, and beat a confession out of him,” I recited, then paused. “Not that I want to move right now, or possibly ever again, but are you sure it’s not a good idea to do it tonight?”

She shook her head, her wet hair flicking me with water droplets. “He sent that bear after us, but right now he doesn’t know that we know he’s trying to frame Dahlia, so he won’t be trying to run. We wait, and then we can get him when we’re surrounded by other bears, rather than at his house where we won’t have backup.”

I nodded. “Okay, seems like it would work.” I looked down at her, feeling my pulse pound in my ears, then said slowly, feeling the heaviness of the possibilities in the room, “So now we just go to sleep.”

Suzume’s eyelids dropped down slowly, nearly shutting, and she gave a very slow nod. “That’s the plan.” Her voice was low and throaty. She stood up smoothly, then handed me back the now-empty bowl. “Guess we should head to bed, then.” She turned and strolled into my
bedroom. I stared for a long second, then hurried to rinse out the bowl and set it in the drying rack. I ran my hands over my hair, wishing that it wasn’t drying in weird little shapes and cowlicks, but definitely not willing to make a pit stop in the bathroom to make a styling attempt. I breathed experimentally into my palm, but all I could smell was chocolate ice cream, which I believed would count rather firmly in my favor. I carefully straightened my T-shirt and adjusted my sweatpants, and followed Suze into my bedroom.

She was lying naked on my bed.

Well, naked except for her fur. The black fox wagged the snow-white tip of her tail in greeting.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the foxy look of amusement on her face. I walked over and leaned down to rub the soft fur behind her ears, watching as her fluffy tail twitched with enjoyment.

“Trickster,” I whispered affectionately, then turned off the light and slid under the covers. After a moment, I felt her get up, turn around a few times, then settle down again, this time with her furry body pressed against my arm. In the soft glow coming through my window from the streetlights, I could see the prick of her furry ears and the glint of her eyes, and I knew that she would be on guard in case bear assassins actually did break through the door. Feeling safe and comforted, I slipped into a dreamless sleep.

By seven in the
morning, Suze and I were both dressed, fed, and engaged in the serious business of figuring out exactly what the line was between concealing weapons in winter clothing yet also keeping them accessible. Parkas were turning out to be problematic, so I’d had to break out my zip-up hoodie. It had enough bagginess and drape to conceal the Colt when I wore it in a belt holster, but it also was easier to flip up and maneuver than my parka. For the Ithaca, I’d been a bit flummoxed, until Suze told me to just calm down and stuff it in my laptop bag. Well, actually she’d used the term
man purse
, but the outcome was the same.

As for Suze, she’d turned out to have an impressive array of knife sheaths in her car, which she could strap to her forearms, lower legs, and various other spots in addition to the traditional ones at her waist, or the near-scabbard that she strapped to her leg to contain the twelve-inch single-edged terror that was Arlene. Her fox tricks would enable her to walk around without anyone suspecting her of being a one-woman alternative to a Cuisinart, but the sleeves on her corded sweater from yesterday had been a little too tight for the fast access to all of her knives that she apparently preferred, so I’d lent her one of my button-down flannel shirts. When I’d asked whether she’d be cold, since after all it was still
November, and she only had a long-sleeved cotton shirt under the flannel, she just shook her head and looked amused, commenting that any woman who wore evening attire on New Year’s Eve got used to being chilly for the sake of fashion, and that if she got really uncomfortable, she could at least stab someone to make herself feel better.

I’d just tucked the last few boxes of extra ammo into my laptop case (which had not been what I’d had in mind when I purchased it, but I was suddenly appreciating its roomy and convenient pockets in a whole new way) when Suze’s phone rang. She looked down at the number, raised her eyebrows, and handed it to me.

It was a Newport area code, and I flipped it open. “Hello?”

“Good, Fortitude, I was hoping I’d reach you at this number.” Loren Noka’s voice echoed in my ear, and she sounded relieved. “You aren’t picking up your phone”—the phone I had destroyed the other day, I suddenly remembered—“and the
metsän kunigas
just called in an emergency.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, my heartbeat picking up significantly. Maybe Gil Kivela had figured out that we were on his trail and had made a break for it.

“An early-morning employee at Kivela Mutual Insurance found the body of a young man in their office. It’s one of the bears, and they think it looks like the same type of attack that their
karhu
suffered.”

“Give me the address, Loren,” I said, grabbing my laptop bag and heading for the door, Suze following in my wake. “We’ll be heading over there immediately.” I rattled off the address to Suze as we pounded down the stairs—she had an incredible memory for those kinds of things, and ended the call to Loren.

“Why would Gil Kivela kill again?” I asked Suze as we jumped into her Audi Coupe. I missed the Fiesta almost viscerally as I tucked my laptop bag at my feet.
There was little that the Fiesta could boast, but at least it had had four doors and a sense of scruffy comfort. The interior of Suze’s car was nothing but immaculate leather, and I was terrified to so much as think of bringing a soda into it.

It was also an automatic. As Suze merged into traffic and began an extremely aggressive style of driving, I couldn’t help but think about how much better her gas mileage would’ve been with a manual transmission.

Meanwhile, Suzume was actually answering my question. “Maybe the kid got close and saw something Gil didn’t want him to see. Maybe he was actually involved, and got scared, and Gil had to eliminate him. But after what happened yesterday, I can tell you what I’m sure we’ll find.” She looked over at me as she merged across two lanes of traffic with a single turn-signal. “Something of Dahlia’s.”

“You think he’ll still be trying to pin this on her?” I asked, one hand automatically wrapping itself around the “oh shit” handle of the car as Suze blew completely through a red light.

“With a second body on the ground? I’d say he’s pretty committed.” Suze’s speedometer was flirting with ninety, and I decided to let her concentrate on driving.

The parking lot of Kivela Mutual Insurance looked neat and orderly—all the spots were full, but no one was roaming around. The illusion of normalcy was gone the moment we walked through the swinging glass doors, where the fairly standard reception area was filled with a crowd of extremely anxious and stunned people, all dressed in various assortments of business casual. From the looks of it, some people had been more dressed than others when the news of the killing went out. One woman in a blouse and slacks was standing next to a man who had apparently just thrown his business jacket on over his pajamas. Whoever that guy was, he was the one who immediately stepped forward and led us through the crowd.

“Rhoda does the cleaning in the morning, before the rest of us come in, so she was the one who found Peter,” the pajamas guy said as he led us through a large main room filled with an assortment of cubicles.

“Bear or human?” Suze asked him. There was a glint in her eyes that was clearly assessing cover-up requirements.

He caught on to what she was asking, and immediately shook his head. “No one works here who isn’t either
metsän kunigas
or one of our spouses. Rhoda married in forty years ago, so she’s no threat. She’s in the back.” There were three rooms with actual doors at the far end of the main area—one had Matias Kivela’s name on it, so I assumed that was the corner office. The other was the bathroom, the break room, or some unholy combination of the two, and the last was what pajamas guy gestured for us to enter before immediately turning and trotting back to the reception area.

From floor to ceiling, the room was edged with tall metal file cabinets. Down the middle of the room was a long table, surrounded with chairs, so this probably served as a conference room when the company needed one. I immediately picked out Dahlia and Gil, standing side by side against one of the cabinets, their faces grim. A smaller, gray-haired woman was huddled in one of the chairs, crying—that was probably Rhoda, who had found much more to clean up than usual. The kitsune had beaten us here—Chiyo, Midori, and Takara all gave me small nods of recognition, and they were clearly waiting for us to finish up before they could make preparations for the police.

And at the far end of the room, between the table and the farthest cabinet, was the body of a young man. I’d thought that Matias Kivela’s body had been tough to look at, but this one was worse—his face was a mass of bruises and cuts, his arms were covered in slices, and his chest was simply a mess.

I looked over at Dahlia, and that coldly professional look on her face. I could see the cracks now; there was a haunted expression in her eyes. Looking at Gil, all I could see was barely contained anger.

“What can you tell me about this man?” I asked, directing the question to Dahlia.

“Peter Utrio,” she answered, rubbing her face. “He is”—she coughed, suddenly, and corrected herself—“
was
nineteen. He’s a college student, and no one can remember seeing him after the funeral last night.”

Suze was crouching down next to the body, leaning close and poking around. “There’s a lot more damage here than Matias suffered.” She glanced over at the bears. “Did anyone examine him closely?”

“I did,” Gil said. “When Rhoda found him, she locked the door and called Dahlia. I was already on my way in to get some paperwork done early, so I arrived first. He’s got at least half a dozen broken ribs, plus all those defensive wounds on his arms. He was definitely awake when whoever did this started stabbing him.” The bear paused as Suze leaned down close and sniffed. She scuffled in his pockets for a second, then tossed me something, which I automatically caught.

It was the boy’s wallet, which I flipped open. I stared for a second at his college ID—I’d seen that face before, and recently. I tried picturing it with some more acne, then it hit me—this was the guy who’d been sent to fetch Gil yesterday at the church. I looked up and caught Suze’s eye. I nodded down to the wallet, and she gave a subtle tap on the body—we’d both found stuff. She tilted her head quickly at Dahlia, and I got the message.

I looked over at the kitsune, who looked ready to go. “If Suzume has everything she needs, you get started,” I said, then paused. “Another heart attack? Won’t that be a little weird?”

Midori shook her head. “He’s too young to be a clear candidate for a heart attack, so that isn’t what the
police’s minds would naturally accept. There’s just been a tragedy in the death of Matias Kivela, someone he knew. We’ll have to work off that.”

Chiyo reached into her purse and produced a bag of extremely illegal paraphernalia. “We’re going heroin overdose on this one,” the older woman explained.

“Suze?” I looked over, and she was already getting up. I turned to the bears. “Gil, I’d like you to stay with Rhoda in the cubicle room while Suzume and I have a discussion with Dahlia, privately.” He opened his mouth, and I cut him off before he could even voice his inevitable protest. “
She
is the acting
karhu
.”

He glowered at me, but there was nothing he could trump that with. Dahlia herself just gave a small nod and a murmured, “Of course,” as we all trooped out of the file room. Dahlia led us down to her uncle’s office. After seeing the inside of the man’s house, I was not surprised at the temple of beige that awaited us.

Suze shut the door and produced a piece of fabric. “This was in his hand.” She passed it to me, and I looked. It was the cuff of a shirt, ripped off and spotted with blood. Suze looked over at the bear standing beside us. “It’s yours,” she said.

Dahlia frowned. “What do you mean? How would Peter have something of mine?”

“Someone has been working very hard to set you up for your uncle’s murder,” I told her. “The knife that was used to kill Matias was hidden in your laundry room, we found a shirt of yours that was going to be planted at the scene of an attack on us, and now here’s another piece of your clothing left with a second body.” As I spoke, Dahlia paled and wobbled on her feet, reaching one hand out to steady herself against the wall as she stared at me.

“Given the state of his broken ribs, and the amount of oil, metal, and fuel that I smelled on him, I think I can safely say that Peter was the bear that attacked us last night,” Suze said.

“He attacked you?” Dahlia shook her head, and I could see her struggling to follow everything we were throwing at her. “Why would he—no, Peter wouldn’t have done that.”

“Believe me, it happened,” I said. “There were only two people who knew that Suze and I were going to do one last check of the Lincoln Woods for Ad-hene activity near your uncle’s house. Peter overheard it, but Gil was the one who told us to go there. Now Peter is dead, and someone is trying to lay evidence that points it toward you. Dahlia, we think that your brother is trying to frame you.”

“No!” The color rushed back into Dahlia’s cheeks, and for the first time I saw her get mad. “That’s insane, and it’s not true.” At our expressions, she clearly tried to pull things back, but her voice was still shaking with anger when she spoke. “I know he wants to be
karhu
, I know he feels he could be the leader we need right now, but I
know
my brother. He wouldn’t do this.”

“If not him, then who?” Suze asked. “If you’re taken out of the picture, then who benefits and becomes
karhu
? Your brother, your mother? Matias’s daughter?”

Dahlia pressed the heels of her hands against her jaw, hard enough that I could see the skin whiten, and she shook her head. Her eyes pressed closed, and I could see her trying to run through what Suze was saying, trying to weigh things. “Mother is too old—the
karhu
is always from the generation in their prime. The new
karhu
would be either Gil or Carmen, but Gil would never do this to me, and Carmen wouldn’t kill her own father—her mother is dead, and Uncle Matias was all she had left.”

“
Someone
is trying to frame you for murder, Dahlia,” I put in. “Try it from the other angle—what do you know about Peter? He was working with whoever is orchestrating this—who was he close to?”

“None of us, not really,” she protested. “Peter is,
was
, an only child, from the
metsän kunigas
community up in
Maine. His mother was human, so he was going to have to marry bear, but he was never close with any of his peers in that community. He came down to go to college here because everyone hoped that he would meet one of our bear girls and form a natural attachment, that the matchmaker wouldn’t have to be brought in. He was sweet, but so awkward, and I can’t even think of a single one of us who he would’ve so much as talked with outside the general group meetings and business.”

“Think, damn it,” Suze snapped at the bear. “Who would want you dead?”

Dahlia just shook her head. “This is my family,” she insisted. “It has to be an outsider, someone trying to start an internal fight. The Ad-hene—”

Suze was shaking her head and cutting Dahlia off before she could elaborate. “It’s not them, Dahlia. It’s someone you’ve been trusting. Now get with the
not
trusting, and give us some goddamn suspects!”

Dahlia’s mouth thinned, and she was back to looking pissed. I sighed—Suze’s methods of interrogation sometimes ran into difficulty. “Listen,” I said, trying to inject some calm. “We’re not getting anywhere like this, and Dahlia clearly doesn’t have any ideas. So we need to figure out a way to flush our killer out.”

Suze huffed, then said, “Give them what they want.”

“What?” I stared at Suze. “I don’t think killing Dahlia is a good plan!”

“I agree with that,” Dahlia said quickly, edging away from us. “That’s actually a very bad plan. Very, very bad.”

“No, you idiots,” Suze said, looking disgusted. “We just let the killer think that the frame job has worked.” She paused, then added, “Admittedly, that is going to be tough to do without killing Dahlia.”