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I COULD SMELL A VARIETY of supernatural creatures when we reached the house. One of them was pungent and familiar. “Pierre is in there,” I said with a grimace.
“I know,” Ruen said just as glumly as he pushed the door open.
The theme was dark red as I swept my gaze around the foyer. The carpet was deep and plush. Long drapes hung on either side of the openings that led to rooms to the left and right. A staircase leading to the upper floors was at the far end of the room. The reception desk was to the left, just inside the door. It was unmanned at the moment. I sensed most of the patrons and staff were on the third floor.
Speaking of the wereweasel, he was sitting on a loveseat in the foyer. “Fancy seeing you two here,” Pierre said as he lounged on the fancy sofa. Thankfully, he was fully clothed. I’d seen his skinny naked body twice now, which had been twice too often for my liking.
“Why am I not surprised to find you here?” I said dryly as he eyed my body and tattoos in appreciation. “You’re probably a VIP member.”
He smirked and managed to shift his eyes from my boobs to my face. “You could make a fortune working in a fine establishment like this. I’d be willing to pay a hefty price for one night in your arms.”
Ruen made a gagging noise and I scowled at him. “Did you see the murderer come this way?” he asked to change the topic.
Pierre shook his head. “I just got here myself and I’m waiting for my appointment.”
“You didn’t see anyone leaving as you arrived?” I asked.
“Nope, but I smelled a faint scent of something strange.”
“What was strange about it?” Ruen queried.
“It smelled like aniseed, but was more pungent.”
“Aniseed?” I asked with a frown. “Isn’t that the stuff that smells like liquorish?”
“It’s used in some drinks,” my partner said, then sniffed the air. “It’s fading, but I can still detect it.”
“We should get upstairs to the dryad’s room and see if you can pick up the killer’s scent,” I suggested.
Ruen nodded at Pierre and I forced myself to smile at the weasel. He winked lecherously and I suppressed a shudder. I felt his eyes on my butt as we walked to the staircase and climbed upwards.
“Make way,” Ruen said to the crowd that had gathered on the third floor.
No one listened to him, so I took matters into my own hands. “Get the hell out of our way before I start shooting!” I growled. Heads turned, then recognition set in when they saw me.
“It’s Lord Gilden’s bounty hunters!” someone gasped.
“Oh, my God, they sent the crazy one with purple hair,” another said in dread.
“I’m not crazy,” I denied hotly. “I just have zero patience for idiots. You’ve got five seconds to clear the room before I pull a random weapon out of my kill-bag and start using it. Don’t leave the building until we’ve had a chance to speak to you all.”
Shifters, vampires, a few demons, a couple of fairies, several dryads and other beings fled past us. Only one person was left after the exodus was over. I assumed she was the owner of the establishment. Not much taller than Aurora, she had fine blonde hair and big brown eyes. She was delicately beautiful and I sensed she was a wood nymph. Her body was slender and perfectly proportioned beneath her almost sheer green dress.
“Who would do this?” she asked brokenly, standing next to the bed of her deceased employee. The red theme was predominant upstairs as well. The carpet, wallpaper and furniture were in various shades of the color.
Ruen pushed me ahead of him and I entered the bedroom. It smelled like sex, perfume and sweat. The escort lay on her back, facing the doorway. Her eyes were glassy and unseeing. Her throat was a bloody ruin and her bed was soaked red. Someone had drawn a sheet over her body. It was also soaked in blood.
“Do you know who her last client was?” I asked gently.
The dryad nodded and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “He was a werehyena.” My gut clenched that yet another hyena had gone rogue. She went on before I could ask for his name. “He left ten minutes before I discovered her body. I saw him out myself and didn’t see or smell any blood on him.”
“Too many people have been in here after her death,” Ruen said in disapproval. “It’ll be impossible for me to determine who killed her now.”
“Do you have security cameras set up outside?” I asked.
The madam shook her head. “My establishment is popular because we’re discreet. No one is going to be spied on and blackmailed under my watch.”
From her tone, that was a common occurrence in her line of work. I figured she probably had some rich and influential clients. Some of the customers had been wearing masks to attempt to hide their identities.
“Did she have any enemies?” Ruen asked. “Was she being threatened or stalked by a client?”
“No,” the dryad denied. “Everyone loves our kind. I can’t think of anyone who would kill a wood nymph.”
“There are a lot of sick, twisted people out there,” I said.
Ruen gave me a sharp look, but I wasn’t referring to him. Sure, he enjoyed murdering people, but he couldn’t act out his secret fantasies on our world. “We should question the others and see if they saw or heard anything,” he suggested.
We split up to question the staff and clients. No one had seen anyone unusual or had heard the murderer strike. The killer would have had at least some blood on their clothes after making such a big mess.
I met Ruen in the foyer to see he was on his hands and knees. Pierre was upstairs with one of the girls. I refused to picture what he was doing to the poor escort. “Do I even want to know what you’re doing?” I asked my partner.
“I’m attempting to follow the killer’s trail,” he said as he rose to his feet. “He definitely came this way.”
“How do you know that if you couldn’t identify his scent?”
“I can smell the dryad’s blood even though it’s been trampled into the carpet.”
“Your nose is even sharper than a bloodhound’s,” I said in admiration as I followed him through the door.
Ruen spotted tiny drops of blood leading down the sidewalk that we hadn’t noticed on the way in. They petered out after a block, but he took a deep whiff of air. “I can smell a faint trace of aniseed,” he murmured.
“Maybe Pierre was right and it really is the killer’s scent,” I mused.
“I hope not,” the vamp said unhappily.
“Why?” I asked, studying his uneasy expression. “You know who killed her,” I realized.
“I have a suspicion of what killed her,” he corrected me. “I won’t know for sure until after I’ve checked its breath.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” I said in exasperation. “If you know what this thing is, tell me.”
He glanced up and scanned the sky before he replied. “I believe it was a vampire bat shifter.”
I could feel an incredulous look on my face at his statement. “Is that some kind of joke? If so, I’m not stupid enough to fall for it.”
“They’re very rare and I wasn’t aware that any of them lived in Nexus,” he said. His tone was grave and he continually scanned the sky.
“Why would it target the dryad?” I asked.
“Who knows?” he replied with a shrug. “Maybe it became obsessed with her. Rogues don’t exactly think clearly once they’ve lost control of their minds.”
“Vampire bat shifters,” I said in disbelief. “I didn’t even know they existed.”
“They’re loners and tend to roost somewhere up high,” my sidekick said. “They also choose a territory and stick to it. It’ll be around here somewhere. We just need to find it.”
“Why are you referring to it as an it?” I asked, wincing at the politically incorrect terminology.
“They’re androgenous and that’s how most species refer to them,” he replied. “Once they’re turned, they lose their original genders and become sexless. They still have human forms, but their shifter forms are a sight to behold.”
“Are they usually such messy eaters?” I asked. “It can’t have a full stomach after splashing so much of the dryad’s blood all over the place.”
“They don’t just have two fangs like normal vampires,” he said. “Their teeth resemble my kind when we’re in our true forms. They don’t need to drink much blood to sustain themselves, so at least it won’t strike again tonight.”
I’d have to ask mom if she’d ever heard of vampire bat shifters. Surely, one of our ancestors must have run into them at some stage over the past two thousand years.
