Chapter Nine

Lydia

It wasn't Taliyah who turned up on the doorstep five minutes after Angelo's call ended.

It was a man of immense height, who sported an attitude so sour that it would have made a lemon cry ‘uncle'. In spite of, or maybe due to that attitude, he was gratingly handsome. He settled that bad attitude like a cloak around his broad shoulders and curled his lean frame beneath it to ward off any emotional gut punches. It made me suspect there was a softer heart beneath the scathing image he put out to the world, but his psychic armor was so thick that even my seasoned gift couldn't penetrate it.

There was one good thing about him, though. His aura helped me tune out the suffering that clung to the walls of this place. The second I'd stepped inside the house, the walls had screamed at me, burrowing like mites into my skin, until I'd had the desire to itch myself raw. I was pretty sure Indigo's magic was augmenting my natural empathy because I'd never actually sensed suffering in acute detail, the way I had been and was still now.

The man folded his long, lean frame over the man on the floor. ‘Ivan', Angelo had called him. From what I could understand, Ivan worked with Angelo—as a realtor at Hallowed Homes. Now that I thought of it, I could remember seeing Ivan's smiling face on the Hallowed Homes webpage. That face wasn't smiling now, though. Instead, it was slicked with blood and twisted out of shape by claws. He was still breathing, but his breath was worryingly shallow.

"How long has he been like this?" the man asked.

"How the hell should I know?" Angelo returned the question. "You're supposed to be the expert here, Maverick, not me."

"I'm not a fucking psychic," Maverick responded, giving Angelo a look that probably could have reduced a lesser man to tears.

"What the hell does the Council pay you for then?" Angelo continued, seemingly completely unimpressed with the glare Maverick was giving him. "Do your warlock thing."

"The Council doesn't pay me," Maverick said mildly. "And you, of all people, should know that magic can't do everything." Then he paused and looked back at Ivan. "Give me your best guess as to how long he's been down for the count." Then he turned to face Angelo again. "You told Tally her deputy was dead. And she'd sent him out hours ago to settle a domestic disturbance and never came back."

"Okay," Angelo said like he was mimicking ‘what's your point'?

"Was the deputy in rigor when you found him?"

Angelo seemed to consider it. "Um... no. He still looked pretty floppy to me."

"So, the deputy's been dead for less than three hours," Maverick announced, like he'd just solved a math equation. "That gives us a time frame to work with." He nodded as he glanced back down at Ivan. "The blood hasn't congealed on Ivan yet, so I'd say you missed the attack on him by around a half hour. That probably means that the thing that did this still is in or near town."

"Thanks, Mr. CSI, but I would really rather hear that from the actual policewoman, instead of her glorified bounty hunter."

Maverick's stare was icy when he lifted it from Ivan's body. "Taliyah wouldn't have sent me if she didn't trust my deductive skills."

"Why exactly did she send you?" Angelo asked.

"She wanted to know if this was something she could call the mortal authorities to help with or if we were going to need to conceal evidence."

"We always have to conceal evidence," Angelo argued.

Maverick nodded, then shrugged. "She just hates doing it. Best case scenario, she could call the authorities and get Ivan medical attention. Worse case, he was half-shifted and we'd have to smuggle him out. Thankfully, there isn't a dragon on the floor."

"No, instead there's a dying man in front of you," I interjected. "Could you maybe do something about that? Call an ambulance or magic him better or something?"

I had my hands pressed to Ivan's chest, my shirt stuffed into his chest wound to stop the bleeding. If I'd been willing to risk going into one of the other rooms, I could have probably found something better to use, but I was too much of a coward to explore the place. It was probably that hellhound dream making me twitchy, but I just didn't want to take the chance I'd come face-to-face with something that thought my eyes looked like hors d'oeuvres. I kept expecting Angelo to make some inappropriate comment about the blue satin bra I was now sporting, but he hadn't. Apparently, there were lows that even incubi wouldn't stoop to. Good to know.

Both men had the grace to look sheepish. Maverick sent Angelo outside to call for an ambulance while he hunkered down, extending a hand over Ivan's wounds. Then he closed his eyes and started moving his lips like he was chanting something.

"What are you doing? A healing spell?" I asked.

"Of course not," he griped at me with a frown as he opened his eyes to glare at me. "Not even witch or, in my case, warlock magic can instantly heal someone."

"Then what are you doing?"

"I'm encouraging his own healing factor, giving him a blessing, slowing his bleeding, but I'm not going to attempt a spell on him."

"Why not?" I demanded, throwing my hands up into the air because it didn't seem like Maverick was fully digesting the urgency of the situation. "He's dying!"

"Because I could do worse than kill him," Maverick muttered darkly.

"How could you do worse?"

He shrugged. "I'm a blood warlock. Do you know what that means?"

I'd heard of blood witches and warlocks, but I couldn't say I really understood what either meant. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but paused when I felt Indie's reaction to his words. And it was a big reaction. In fact, her mental presence recoiled like she'd been faced with a large and particularly ugly cockroach. The fact that he was a warlock had already earned him her distaste. Now that contempt deepened to actual disgust.

What's the big deal about a blood warlock? I asked.

A blood witch is a witch who has her magic tainted by vampire blood. And that vampire blood makes a witch's power dark, unpredictable, and capable of violating the laws of nature. A blood warlock has been unheard of until now. There have been very few warlocks in the history of our people, and none of them were what you'd call stable. A warlock's power is already dark and possibly bent towards madness. Now his is tainted with undead blood which makes him infinitely more powerful and more liable to go ape shit crazy. I'm surprised he's even still alive—that he wasn't condemned to death by his coven. We usually purge our lines with fire when something like this happens.

I swallowed thickly, hoping that I was hearing her wrong. Are you saying you burn blood witches and warlocks at the stake?

Immolation is the only way to ensure the purge is successful.

Oh my God.

Hey, we don't like it any better than you, trust me, but ask any sane witch and she'll tell you she'd rather burn than become a half-vampire or allow herself to be tied to one.

Well then, most witches were stupid. There shouldn't be a situation in the world that would necessitate burning someone at the stake. What kind of Spanish Inquisition shit was that?

I didn't say anything, but Maverick could guess the answer to my question from my expression. He gave me a knowing look before lowering his hand to the wound.

"So, if you're not healing him, what are you doing?" I asked.

"Trying to get a reading on what did this to him."

"A reading?" I repeated.

He nodded. "Some races leave magical signatures behind. This was the work of something supernatural, not a mundane with a hockey mask and a machete. It's hard to hurt a dragon, even in human form. Whatever did this is dangerous—dangerous and big and powerful and not something we're going to want to tussle with." He took a deep breath, then gave me another pronounced glare. "Now hush. Let me get a reading and then I'll do what I can to help him."

Maverick's eyes closed, and he began mouthing words under his breath again. I wasn't sure what he was doing or saying, but I could feel his magic like smoke wafting over my skin. The hairs on my arms stood on end when his aura collided with me. I didn't have to have any magical know-how to realize that Maverick was powerful.

Which just makes this more of a nightmare, Indie grumbled. All the better to kill us with.

You have no room to throw stones about killing things. After what I just learned about you… yeah, I'd shut up if I were you.

She did.

Angelo returned a few minutes later. "I searched the house and there's no sign of Florence anywhere."

"She's the zombie who lives here?" I double-checked.

Angelo looked at me and nodded. "The bedroom is trashed, so I think whatever did this to Ivan dragged Florence from there. If I had to guess, it attacked Ivan and Florence, they fought back, and the neighbors mistook the fight for a husband beating on his wife. The unlucky deputy found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time. He probably tried to shoot the thing and only managed to piss it off."

That sounded depressingly likely. Maverick opened his eyes, then turned his attention to Ivan. He whispered Ivan's name and tapped his face a few times, obviously trying to wake the dragon shifter up. It took a frighteningly long time to rouse him. But then Ivan sucked in a long, gurgling breath.

"An... Ang..."

"I'm here, Ivan," Angelo said, and for once there was no glibness in his voice. "Hang on. An ambulance is coming."

"Flo… or… e..."

"Florence," I finished for him. "We know. We'll find her. Save your strength. You can tell us more when you're stable."

Maverick touched a spot on Ivan's stomach, and the dragon hissed in pain. His speech was slurred, but I thought he said something nasty about Maverick's mother. Maverick actually grinned, and agreed with him. Ivan tried to speak again as Maverick slung a pack off his back, rummaged through it, and produced a first aid kit. Maverick gave him a halting look.

"You should talk less."

Ivan gave him a rude one-finger reply, which Maverick seemed to find amusing as hell. He was smirking when he began treating the wounds he could while putting pressure dressings on the ones he couldn't. He cut away some of the dragon's shirt to get at the rest of his injuries. The more skin that was exposed, the worse Ivan looked. The skin of one of his legs was thoroughly minced. His shoulder had been ripped open like a paper bag. Blood pulsed from deep gouges in his now exposed stomach, framed by already yellowing and purpling bruises.

"What happened?" I asked, thoroughly unsettled.

Maverick shrugged. "Some kind of animal. Big."

"How big?"

He cocked his head to the side as he studied Ivan. "I'd say it's at least human-man sized if not larger and possibly bipedal, given the spacing of the claw marks."

"The spacing of the claw marks?" I repeated.

Maverick nodded. "You'd see a different pattern if the creature was smaller or in its complete animal form."

"Any guesses as to what it could be?" I asked.

"It could be a werewolf, I guess. A male, though. The females are too timid."

"N... No..." Ivan tried.

"No?" I asked. "As in, it's not a werewolf?"

He nodded. Okay, so it wasn't a werewolf. That just left pretty much everything else in this town.

"Do we need to call someone?" Angelo asked. "After Ivan's carted away to the hospital, I mean? Do we need to convene the Council?"

"We'd be crazy not to," Maverick replied. "This is huge. The mundanes will be spooked. That's dangerous for all of us. Taliyah can do damage control, but she can't sweep all of this under the rug."

"I knew we should have stayed inside," Angelo muttered. "How do I keep getting tangled up in this shit? I just want to be a realtor again. No rescues, no bloodshed, no drama. Just good old-fashioned sex and selling. Is that so much to ask for?" He sighed as I mentally cringed at his comment about ‘sex and selling'. "And speaking of your boss, Maverick, where the hell is she? I left a message on her phone, not yours."

"She was called out to Libby's house. There was a disturbance at the duplex a half hour ago. I don't think it's a coincidence that both places have zombies in residence."

"Okay and?" Angelo continued.

"And I think revenants are the targets here, and the rest of the victims were just… cannon fodder. Wrong place, wrong time sort of thing."

"Fuck," Angelo swore.

Maverick looked up at him. "My sentiment exactly. Anyway, Taliyah's going to meet us at the hospital."

Ivan groped for my hand. His palm was slick with blood, and his fingers were stiff when he tried to give my hand a squeeze. The tips of his fingers were blackened like he'd suffered severe frostbite. That seemed wrong. The elements were blowing into the house, but the furnace was still running. He wasn't in sub-zero temperatures and he hadn't been down long enough to develop that level of frostbite, even if we'd found him in a snow drift.

"I'm here," I whispered as I smiled down at him. "You're going to be just fine, I promise. I'm not going anywhere until you're safe," I continued. "We're going to find who did this to you," I continued, squeezing his hand back. "We're going to find Florence and we're going to make that thing pay. I promise."

Ivan's eyes fluttered closed at the same time that a distant wail of an ambulance split the night air.