Chapter Fifteen

Griffin

The call had waited until seven in the morning this time. It had been obvious from the get go that the victim's body had lain undiscovered for at least a couple of days, which probably dated it to when we were in Manchester. Not that where we were made the slightest bit of difference when no one had happened across it until now. I continued with the procedure, regardless. There was only a slim chance of resurrection, but it wasn't impossible.

By the time I finally admitted defeat, Ben had already seen the writing on the wall—or the bloody symbols if you wanted to be pedantic—and left the bedroom. I sat back on my haunches and studied the body, the sunlight streaming in through the windows making the crime scene seem that much more horrific. Which was a ridiculous thought to have when I saw dead bodies in daylight all the time. However, I usually saw dead bodies tucked up under flowered eiderdowns, not sprawled on the floor, leaving bloody stains on the pale blue carpet from their missing digits. Stains that would never come out. A testament to the violence that one human had done to another. And all because the perpetrator wanted to raise a demon if Professor Rafferty Hart was to be believed.

Footsteps sounded at my back and I braced myself for whatever the forensic pathologist had to say, the room having been cleared once more for me to do my thing. "I did tell you," he said, his voice bristling with derision, "that he'd been dead for some time."

Safe in the knowledge that I had my back to him, I rolled my eyes. "'Some time' means nothing when you're in my line of work. I get you don't want us here." In Ben's absence, I decided it was okay to speak for him. "But we have a job to do the same as you. And while I understand that us doing our job makes yours more difficult, there's nothing either of us can do about that when we're just following orders."

Patrick let out a snort. "I might buy that for Ben, but you don't even work for them. You could have told them where to stick their job."

I climbed wearily to my feet to face the indignant pathologist, his cheeks flushed. "If it wasn't me, it would be someone else." While he was still thinking of a suitably cutting response, I gathered up my candles, doing my best now that I'd torn my gaze away not to look at the body, the victim this time far too young and fresh-faced.

Even though I knew nothing about him, I knew he deserved better. Everyone deserved better than to die alone on their bedroom floor simply for the crime of picking someone up. At the start of this case, I might have possessed an emotional detachment, but the longer I spent on it, the angrier I became. I wanted to see what Satanic Romeo looked like—a man apparently charming enough to have his pick of young gay men and get them to invite him home, but vicious enough to murder and mutilate them.

"You should probably know that I've made a complaint," Patrick said.

"Good for you." I picked up my bag and threw it over my shoulder. "I'm sure they'll give it the consideration it deserves." He could take that whatever way he wanted. I shouldered my way past him, Patrick forced to step aside. I paused before answering the door to look back at him. "It's a good job you don't fit the physical description."

Patrick's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that you've been obstructive enough that people might ask questions about what you were trying to hide if you were fifteen years younger and good looking enough to get men to go home with you."

Patrick's eyes narrowed. "That's—"

I didn't wait around to see what it was, flinging the door open and exiting the bedroom into the circus that lay beyond it, half of those people barely waiting until I was out of the way before they pushed their way back into the room. Word had spread about who I was since the first time I'd tagged along with Ben to a crime scene. I could tell from the way they looked at me and the constant whispers behind my back. No doubt at least some of that information had come from Patrick in the form of a rant about the desecration of his crime scene.

The whispers followed me down the stairs, the murder having taken place in a four-bedroomed house in Shepherd's Bush. "DCI Weaver?" I enquired to a group of uniformed officers, all of them shaking their heads. Which could have meant they didn't know who he was, or that they knew and they didn't know where he was. Either way, they were no help.

My search for Ben took me to the living room, the pair of wine glasses on the coffee table capturing everyone's attention, with photos taken and the forensic team meticulously fingerprinting every available surface. I doubted they'd find anything. Satanic Romeo had already proved he wasn't that stupid. Either he wore gloves or he carefully wiped down anything he'd touched before leaving. Common sense would dictate that the latter was true. Even Satanic Romeo couldn't be so charming that his prey would look past him wearing gloves. "DCI Weaver?" I asked again.

A dark-haired police woman jerked her head toward the back door standing open. "Out there."

I thanked her and headed in the direction she'd indicated. It led into a small enclosed yard, the press of bodies in the house not extending to out here. Which was presumably why Ben had found his way here, my lover sitting on an ornate garden bench and staring morosely into the distance. He didn't turn his head as I joined him, the bench giving beneath my weight. "I assume I didn't miss anything?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No. I kept trying for a while, but he'd been dead too long to bring back."

Ben nodded, his jaw tight. "I should have stayed."

Once a quick glance to the still open door reassured me that no one was the least bit interested in us, I reached out and placed my hand on Ben's thigh, warmth leaching through his trousers to my palm. "The result would have been the same whether or not you were there. You stayed long enough to realize how fruitless the whole endeavor was. I was just more stubborn. "

Ben gave a quiet laugh. "You, being more stubborn. Surely not? I feel like there's a lesson about life in there if we look hard enough for it."

"Probably. Anyway… surprise, surprise, my stubbornness didn't make the slightest bit of difference."

"Two-zero to him so far," Ben said bitterly. "And yes, I am only counting the murders since you came on board. Going back any further than that is way too depressing to even contemplate."

"Yeah." Although neither of us voiced it, I knew we were both thinking the same thing. How many murders did it take to raise a demon, and had Satanic Romeo reached that total yet? Was there a demon running around London at this very moment? Would we even know? So many questions and zero answers to be had to any of them.

"Eighteen," Ben said with a shake of his head. "They're getting younger."

A PC had already briefed us on the victim before we'd set foot in the bedroom. Adam Freeman, only two months past his eighteenth birthday. A trainee bricklayer. Someone who had only come out when he was seventeen and had spent the past year celebrating that fact by hitting the gay clubs regularly at the weekend. He shared a house with four other housemates, two male, two female, two of them working for the same construction business he did, while the other two were trainee hairdressers.

In a twist of fate, all of Adam's housemates had been away this weekend, one on a training course, two visiting parents, and the other spending it with his girlfriend. That twist of fate left Adam as the perfect victim and ensured his body would lie undiscovered for the best part of two days, until one of his housemates returned home to a sight that would no doubt scar her for the rest of her life. I'd passed her on the way in, the young woman only able to stop sobbing for a couple of minutes before she started again, the police constable interviewing her passing tissues across more often than he asked questions.

"He'll slip up eventually," I said. "Nobody is perfect."

Ben heaved out a sigh, the responsibility resting on his shoulders weighing heavily on him. "That's not good enough. I can't say that to Adam's parents. Or the parents of the other victims. I can't tell them we'll catch him eventually, that they just need to wait. Not when it won't bring any of their sons back." He turned his head my way. "And what if we don't catch him? What if he achieves what he's set out to do and just stops? Everything we've heard… all the profiling done on him… what the professor had to say… all those things point toward this being a means to an end rather than someone who can't control himself. Those people we catch because they can't stop even if they want to. They have a compulsion to kill. Urges that won't go away. But this is colder, more clinical. He's trying to raise a fucking demon, for Christ's sake, Griff."

I knew not to take Ben's antagonism personally, that it was simply his way of letting off steam. "You'll get him."

Ben heaved out another sigh. "Not sat out here feeling sorry for myself, I won't. I should be in there asking questions, overseeing the interview with that poor girl who can't stop crying."

I shuffled closer to him along the bench. It didn't happen often, but when it did, I hated to see Ben be so hard on himself. Especially when he was the most dedicated person I knew, that dedication having provoked a fair few arguments when we'd been together and he'd had to cancel something because of work. "Everyone's entitled to a wobble every now and again. Even you."

Ben tried for a smile, but it only stayed on his lips for a few seconds before disappearing altogether. "I just want to look into his eyes and see what kind of man can do this. I've seen evil before, but I've never seen anything like this. Whoever he is, he must be a monster."

"Do you think?"

Ben turned his head. "You don't?"

"I don't think a monster could get these men to take him home."

Ben's lip curled. "Ted Bundy springs to mind."

"The name rings a bell, but I'm not familiar with who he is."

"American serial killer who raped and murdered at least thirty women in the 1970s. His modus operandi was to use charm to lure them to their deaths. He'd often pretend to be in trouble so they'd take pity on him."

"He got caught in the end, though, right?"

"Yeah, but he was a suspect for a long time before they finally had enough evidence to convict him. Of course, it was America, so the murders taking place over several states complicated it. That's how they caught him in the end. They ran payroll records and out of thousands of people, only fourteen, including him, came up on the lists. Every list they ran, his name would pop up. He was a suspect, though. We don't even have that."

"We will."

Ben leaned back on the bench and took a deep breath in. "They think Bundy had been killing for many years before they caught him. It was well before the days of DNA profiling, and he was clever."

"What happened to him? "

"He finally went to the electric chair in 1989 after a few stays of execution." Ben smiled. "Shame we can't do that to this guy."

"You don't mean that." Ben had never been a supporter of the death penalty. He'd always claimed there were too many miscarriages of justice.

"I'd make an exception for Satanic Romeo." He grimaced. "God, I hate that name. You'd think someone would have been able to come up with something better."

"Maybe. It fits, though." I cast another glance at the open door, checking no one had come outside while we'd been talking, before leaning across and dropping a soft kiss on Ben's lips. I'd prepared myself for any reaction to the kiss from him wrenching his head away to turning it into something more. As it was, he didn't seem to know how to react, several emotions crossing his face as I pulled back. This was still new, this being able to touch him again. So yeah, maybe I should be able to exercise more restraint, but now I'd stopped fighting it, I was remembering how the two of us felt together, how right fate had been to bring us into each other's stratosphere. "Not here, I know," I said, before he could say it himself. "It's just that you looked sad."

He rolled his eyes, but it was half-hearted at best. "And you're what, Prince Charming? Able to solve all the world's problems with a single kiss? Tell me who you need to kiss to work out this bastard's identity, and I'll push you in his direction."

I widened my eyes in mock outrage. "Wow! We've been back together for two minutes and you're already pimping me out to someone else."

A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of Ben's lips. "Shows you how desperate I am." He turned sideways on the bench to face me, one arm hooked over the back of it. "I thought you agreed to keeping your hands off me when we're at work."

"I did. But I didn't count on how difficult that would be. Don't worry, though…" I jerked my head toward the back door. "I checked that no one's interested in us."

Ben's gaze strayed that way. "Hardly the most romantic setting, is it?"

No, it wasn't. But then I was a necromancer and Ben was a homicide detective, so our ideas about what was normal were already pretty skewed. Ben seemed to come to the same conclusion, giving a little laugh before closing the gap to bring our lips together once more. Despite the brevity of the kiss, this one was far better, far less one-sided. We might have risked discovery and continued for longer if my phone hadn't rung, Ben drawing back and looking at me enquiringly while I fumbled it out of my pocket.

Ben's eyebrow arched as I turned the phone so he could see the name on the screen: Professor Rafferty Hart .

"You added his number to your phone," he said tartly.

"For work purposes." Which was the truth. I had zero interest in the professor beyond what insight he might bring to the case. In a weird way, Ben and I probably had him to thank for our reconciliation. After all, it was his flirting that had riled Ben up enough to confront me and refuse to take no for an answer. Without the professor, we'd probably still be existing in that same space between enemies and lovers.

"Then you should probably answer it for work purposes ."

Biting down on the urge to meet fire with fire—old habits die hard—I brought the phone to my ear. "Hello."

"Griffin Caldwell? "

"Speaking." Ben had wandered over to examine a rose bush, his pretense of not listening less than convincing.

"I hope you don't mind. I got your number from the station." My number. Not Ben's. When I neither confirmed nor denied whether I minded, he carried on regardless. "Only, I took it upon myself to do more research on which demon your murderer might be trying to raise. I'm almost certain now that it's Gezgomar. You see, if all the ancient tomes are correct, Bizith is just too bloodthirsty to accept something as inconsequential as fingers. Whereas for Gezgomar, it's simply about death. He is, after all, the demon of death."

"Which means what? Hang on, Ben should hear this, too." I put my phone on speaker, Ben giving up on his pretense of not listening and coming to stand next to me.

"They say Gezgomar patrols the space beyond the veil. I'm guessing as a necromancer you know a bit about that?"

"A bit." I wasn't downplaying my role. There were necromancers who wanted to understand as much as they could about their gift, and then there were the ones like me, who were far happier just getting it done without wasting brainpower on the how and why. People spoke to me from beyond the veil, and they did what I asked. End of story.

"What do you mean, patrol?" Ben asked. "Like a guard."

"Exactly." The professor's voice had an edge of excitement to it. "He has control of the dead that exist in that space. Possibly all dead."

"Like Hell?" Ben asked.

Rafe made a noise in his throat. "Not really. It's more complicated than that. And it's not like anyone has been there, so it's all theoretical. I've spoken to a few people this week on your behalf. Experts in different fields of demonology, and they all came to the same conclusion. Whatever your murderer wants… Obviously, I didn't reveal why I was asking to maintain confidentiality."

"What does he want?" Ben interrupted, his patience growing visibly thin.

"My best guess would be to bring someone or something back from the other side. And not temporarily."

"Someone or something?" I questioned. "What could the something be?"

"I don't know." Frustration bled into Rafe's voice. "Like I said, this is all theoretical. I hoped, though, that it might still prove useful. The more you know about the murderer's motives, the easier it should be to catch him."

When Ben didn't speak, I nudged him. He offered me a glare. "Thanks. We appreciate it."

"We do," I agreed.

"I have sketches," Rafe said. "Of what Gezgomar's believed to look like from all the information collated about him. I've taken photographs of the sketches. Would you like me to send them to you?"

"Please." I brought the conversation to an end at that point, Rafe staying true to his word and sending the photos in a message. Both Ben and I stared at the first photo, taking in the eight-foot demon with various spiked protuberances and jagged teeth and claws without speaking.

"Well…" Ben finally said. "We won't have to worry about him blending in should Satanic Romeo succeed in making him appear. And he shouldn't be too hard to find. We can just follow the screams."