36

THERE WAS A STIRRING in his gut that wouldn’t quit. Jude’s bloodstream was changing, and he could anticipate even more things redefined beneath his skin, adjusting to his shell. The jittery hands, the heat that swelled, causing the back of his neck to glisten, was draining enough.

Being in this mortuary brought back thoughts of Haiti. The mortician dragged out a dead man from within one of the wall’s chambers. Jude’s hearing became more acute, more precise than it had ever been. He was able to focus his attention on the sounds of metal sliding against metal, a screeching, almost ill noise he wasn’t used to. It was loud in his ears. What else would come?

The fact that pink sweat dripped from his fingertips when he scratched his eyes drew some attention from his partner; unfortunately, Rachel wasn’t missing a thing. She spent most of the afternoon eyeballing him like some hungry lioness in search of meat to devour. But he sensed that, behind that fortress of unsubtle fury, lay a deeper sadness, maybe even sympathy. But sympathy for what? He didn’t need it. He didn’t need her.

Did he?

Once the cloth had been lifted off the body’s face, Rachel made the formal introduction. “This greasy sack of meat is—”

“—Chubb,” Jude finished, identifying the victim immediately. “Real name: Herman Brown.”

“You knew him?”

“Crime lords are like the skeletons in city closets.” Jude’s fury took root again, his consciousness wandering. All the times he should have brought this animal down and didn’t. Couldn’t. The several undercover operations that yielded nothing but further bloodshed. “I tried to bring him down a half a dozen times. Got pretty close but never managed to put him away. He was good. I’m just pissed at myself for not being able to bring him down.”

Rachel arched her eyebrow. “Story of your life.”

She was still bent on reminding him that she didn’t approve of his recent exodus. The bitterness flowed out in comments like that. But Jude wasn’t prepared to get into a war with her, not here.

As she stood there, arms locked tightly, face lost in a grimace, Jude slid his fingers down the corpse’s frame. His damp fingertips traced the outline of the cross supernaturally tattooed across Chubb’s belly. Jude imagined Chubb’s fat neck bobbing as some new drink slipped down. But no, it wasn’t a drink he wanted to imagine now, not at all. It was black blood, as dark and eerie as a moonlit street. He perceived drops of it spilling down this horror’s chest, oozing from a wound Jude himself had inflicted. All the nasty things he could do to a man like Chubb. He wanted to see Chubb beg for his life.

But he wasn’t that good.

Here he remained, trapped in the routine of checking a body for wounds, tags, and now, crosses sketched into flesh. Any minute now, Agents Mulder and Scully would be barging through the mortuary doors, flashing their badges with bad attitudes and shoving the mortician aside to better examine the corpse themselves. No baby steps. No whisper of approval necessary. They would search. They could find. They’d unravel the mysteries.

But you can’t. You’re far too gone. Far too lost in your own darkness, sonny.

Who was that speaking? Was it his subconscious? His own perverted will beating him with a bat that had the word TRUTH scribbled out in big, bold letters?

Jude put the thoughts to bed and stepped away from the body, ignoring the awkward glances his partner exchanged with him when she noticed he’d touched the body without using a latex glove.

“They worshiped Chubb like a god,” he said.

“If you keep the insects content, it is quite simple for a giant to become like a god.” Until now, the mortician hadn’t spoken. His name was Quipley. His face had a juvenile structure to it. Oversized frames sat uncomfortably over the ridge of a long nose. He kept his long, straight hair unimaginatively tied in a ponytail.

“You know, for the longest time I thought I’d be the one to send this dirtbag to hell.” Jude’s jaw flexed. “Morgan beat me to it. He’s separating the wheat from the chaff. Creating his own sick kingdom and putting himself on the throne.”

Rachel added, “By killing El Gordo here, looks like your ex-partner just climbed a level on the food chain.”

Quipley continued to study the oversized corpse. “How is this possible? No lacerations. No bullet wounds. No sign of struggle. Like the life was just completely ripped out of him, or sucked dry. Miraculous!”

“Miraculous?” Rachel asked, high pitched and near furious. “You think this is miraculous? This sick freak has made a mockery of our department and a mockery of this city. It’s become his own personal playground.”

“Spare me the dramatics, Detective. I know the bad that crawls from alley to street corner. Ever since I was a small boy. Villains like the one you’re after are a dime a dozen.”

“No, not like this,” Rachel argued.

“My analysis is that whoever did this is extremely dangerous. Capable of robbing the one thing no one should be able to take—a man’s soul. Am I close?”

“Think you read one too many comic books as a teenager,” Jude snapped, trying to divert the mortician from creating a case all his own, penciled in with speculations and incomplete details.

Rachel was crestfallen, provoked, and blinking heavily. “There is no telling how many more he’ll kill.”

“Well, then perhaps the two of you need to step up your game.” Quipley went back to swooning over the corpse, grateful for its company.

“Back off, buddy,” Jude said, grabbing Quipley’s lapel and feeling a splash of rage blister in his eyes. His emotions were hitting extremes, and no matter how hard he fought it, the creature inside him was thirsty and wanted out.

“Whoa,” Quipley started, frightened but amazed also. “Your eyes. What is that?”

Jude released him immediately. The last thing he needed at a time like this was Rachel stabbing him with questions he didn’t have the patience or the stomach to answer.

“What’s with you, Jude?” Rachel said, touching his shoulder.

He shook her hand off. “Nerves, that’s all. Seeing this creep dead after all these years…I’m just a little tense.”

“I saw something else,” the edgy mortician said. “Your eyes went red.”

“Yeah, that’s generally what happens when you pinch a man’s last nerve. I wonder…must get pretty cozy down here with all this company. Secondhand pleasure, that about right?” The flickering lights of the morgue left dancing pastel shapes floating in front of Jude’s vision. Quipley was right, and Jude had been careless to show his rage in such an unprotected manner. He had too much to lose this time around.

“Right,” Quipley weakly agreed, adjusting his collar. “Perhaps my mind was playing a trick on me.”

“Guess so.” Jude defiantly held his position.

“Are you through examining the body, Detectives?” Quipley asked after Jude stepped away from the steel bed on which Chubb so ungracefully lay. Two disgruntled nods were assurance enough that the examination was complete, at least for the time being.

After closing Chubb’s box, the mortician opened another. This second subject came from a lower spot in the wall, far left. “Paul Ramirez,” Quipley said, eventually lifting the white veil and exposing the tortured corpse underneath. “He’s a young one. Not even thirty.”

The three of them focused on the cross seared into the victim’s foot. This time, Quipley pressed his hand against the mark, afterward smelling his fingers as if to see if any kind of energy had transferred during the intimate moment between the corpse and himself.

“Found this one while you were out too,” Rachel started.

“I know I should’ve been here,” Jude returned, crunching his knuckles into a fist. The guilt was working on him.

“You take your work awful serious, don’t you? I can admire that. But do you genuinely believe you could’ve prevented this guy’s death?” Quipley asked.

No answer.

“Exiling yourself into the past isn’t going to rectify the present. My relationship with my son has taught me that much.”

The room seemed to get tighter. Jude didn’t like the quasi-advice he had just received. Quipley somehow became Dr. Irons in that moment. Rigid. Rough around the edges. And annoying.

“We know he was connected to Morgan; we’re just not sure how,” Rachel said.

“They were all part of Chubb’s crew. I thought I recognized some of ’em. Probably busted him once or twice too. Morgan’s making them afraid.”

“And taking out some of the competition, apparently.”

“With Chubb out of the way, and the top members of his crew, they’ll have no choice but to fall to their knees. For now, he controls the money and the lives of these people.”

Rachel’s hand went cold all of a sudden, stiff. His wrist briefly grazed it. “What?” Jude asked.

“Nothing.”

“It’s something.”

“I said nothing, all right?”

Jude bit his tongue, and since Dr. Quipley seemed to be getting excited from watching them bicker, he reasoned it was best to pick up the conversation another time.

“I’ve seen enough,” she said, wiping the rim of her lips. “Just gotta get some fresh air. Feeling a little cramped in here.”

Jude and Quipley were left alone for a moment. Quipley leaned down and sniffed the corpse slowly, whispering, “It’s like she’s never seen a stiff before. Dames. They all get queasy around this stuff.”

Jude finally exited the room as well, shutting the door behind him.

Rachel was outside near the edge of the sidewalk when he found her, hands shoved tightly in her pockets, hair tossed by the night breeze. She stared into nothingness. “I never took you for one with a weak stomach.”

“I just had to get out of there. I couldn’t really think. Get my head straight.”

He got closer to her, unsure if he should console her or give her space. Jude kept flexing his hand muscles, wondering if the snakelike intimation worming its way through him would go away. It didn’t. Still, he didn’t like the distance between them. He could tell she wanted to say something but was wondering if he was ready. He was.

“Jude, when you left, it made me think a lot about things. About everything.”

Jude noticed a siren going off several blocks down. He could hear the footsteps of people from what seemed like a hundred feet behind him. And the duplex to their left, eerily placed between a morgue and a convenience store, played loud music in one of the bedrooms. He could almost hum along.

But Rachel’s words, however faint and fragile, pierced through all of it, even the bitterness of the night closing in.

“Do you remember our first conversation? That god-awful car ride?”

“Yeah.”

“You asked me if I got my heart broken. Well…Don’t do it, Rachel. Big mistake.” Her whispering under her breath in the third person wasn’t calming him down. “Okay. Here goes. When I was seventeen, my boyfriend…” A tear slowly moved down her cheek. “He forced me to do things with him. I fought it. A lot. But I eventually stopped fighting. No matter what I did, didn’t make him stop. Guess you never forget your first love, huh?”

Her sarcasm hid her anger and fear. Jude knew how good a mask sarcasm could be.

“I can still feel his hot breath on the back of my neck. If I close my eyes, I can picture his face. I can hear him whisper, no, growl, into my ear as he finishes and leaves me cold. And my lame fiancé, he had a method or two of getting under my skin. What is it with me?” She screamed into the dark. Jude didn’t know what to do. He stood rigid, heart racing, as she birthed her anger into the city street. Her dark story collapsed there, in the road. It was like Jude could see it, rolling on the pavement, like some kind of animal twisted and mutilated by a truck’s tires. A sad, small life he couldn’t put back together. He imagined how terrible the memory must’ve been as her screams carried his mind back to several of his own.

“They told me they loved me,” Rachel said. “I was pretty stupid.”

“Why are you telling me this now? Here?” he asked.

“When you were gone, I wasn’t sure if you were going to come back. I couldn’t tell you this that day we met. I just couldn’t. Wasn’t strong enough, and you wouldn’t have listened. You were acting like a jackass. But right now, I don’t know. I just felt like I had to tell you.” She wiped her eyes then her nose. “I had to tell someone. It sounds stupid.”

Jude reached out his hand.

“No. Please don’t touch me. Not right now.” Her voice was strained and tired from screaming. “I never told anyone. Until this moment. Seeing those bodies again tonight was just another brutal reminder of how fast everything can change. Death doesn’t care that you or I are cops, or that we’ve been hurt. I was looking down at the bodies, and I couldn’t help but think about what this case means to me.”

She cried but only for a short while.

He remained silent.

“Say something. Please,” she asked.

“You’re right. I was kind of a jackass,” he offered with a slight smirk.

Rachel shoved him, ignoring the glow behind his eyes. He watched her blink again, as if to be sure there was nothing there, and the demon blood rushed back into his veins.

For the first time, Rachel wasn’t this cold fish who was hell bent on judging him. She was a girl with wounds to call her own. She was lost, like he was. Cheeks red, eyes ready to spill again, he felt a compulsion to kiss her.

A few strands of her brown hair danced in front of her eyes as he looked at her, seeing her not as his partner but as a breathtaking painting. He stepped closer, and she didn’t fight his presence. He took another step toward her. Rachel’s mouth, her sweet breath, and most of all, those young, wounded eyes, called to him. He raised his hand to her cheek and rubbed a tear away then kissed her. He tasted her anger, her brokenness, everything he knew she wanted to release.

Take her now, sonny. While she trusts you, while she’s so…fragile.

Jude pulled away from her as Azrael’s voice vibrated in his mind. His lips would remember the taste of her. They’d have to in order to war against the regret that was beginning to filter through. Perhaps he shouldn’t have acted upon his emotions. Perhaps it was far too human of him. Far too irresponsible. The demon’s grip was choking.

“I knew it. That was stupid of us, wasn’t it?” Rachel said, wiping her mouth.

Jude grinded his teeth. “No.”

Don’t be coy. Take her. Play a little with that pretty soul.

He grabbed her and held her, at peace with her body against his chest. He liked it. Suddenly the night didn’t feel so frigid. It didn’t feel so empty or hopeless. Jude could keep the filthy thoughts at bay. His human will was strong enough, for now.