The shock propelled me out of Mercy’s body. The last sight I had through her eyes was of blood and gore as Sean’s head simply seemed to be vaporised. Then I was crashing back into my prone body on the hard floor of the stakeout room. The screams of the other customers echoed in my ears. Through it, I could hear Erin’s frantic shouts.
“Matt? Hawkins? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” I croaked, rolling over. My body felt cold and numb, too heavy after Mercy’s slender frame, too big. Lifting my head, I blinked my eyes into focus.
Erin was still crouched by the window, peering down at the street, but she jerked when my voice came from behind her. Dropping the binoculars, she spun around.
“What the hell?” she demanded very eloquently.
“I don’t know. What did you see?” I pushed myself up to my knees, feeling like I had the flu.
“Nothing.” Erin turned back to the window. “Maybe something. I’m not sure. What did you see?”
“Something that’s going to give me nightmares for a long time.” Even now, the image of skin and bone just disintegrating right in front of me made my stomach churn. “What’s happening down there?”
“A lot of panic,” she reported, shoving a strand of her long, auburn hair back behind her ear. There was a glistening of sweat on her brow, probably a combination of the lovely humidity of Brisbane in summer and shock. “Sean’s on the ground, everyone else is running. So much blood,” she breathed, then pulled back suddenly, hand pressed to her mouth.
I let Erin scramble away from the window, her shoulders heaving, and took her place. She was right. A lot of panic but it was quickly dispersing as people scattered. It seemed once they got a bit of distance between themselves and the horrifically mangled body, they got some sense back and stopped. A wide empty space had opened up around Sean. The waitress who’d asked us about our meals was paralysed in the door to the bistro, staring in complete shock. A man hustled her out of the way and came out. He rushed toward the body, then stopped half way, as if realising he didn’t need to check for a pulse.
“Call the cops,” he called to no one in particular but it didn’t matter. A dozen people were already on their mobiles, at least half of them to the police, surely. The rest were probably feeding live footage to YouTube or something.
I scanned the crowd. “Mercy’s not there.” A fist of ice formed in my gut.
Mercy had been in my life almost three years now. Two of which we’d worked together as Night Call, helping the residents of Brisbane with their supernatural problems. Trolls, werewolves, demons, wild vampires, ghouls, whatever Old World—or otherworld—nasty reared its ugly mug and made a nuisance of itself. As a competent partner in our odd little team, Mercy was the bee’s absolute knees. As a lone entity, she was scary. Without my humanity to hold down her vampiric side, she was a wild card. Unpredictable and, naturally, hungry for human blood.
Erin pushed back in beside me. “Where is she?” There was a very understandable tremor in Erin’s voice. She’d been on the wrong side of Mercy’s nature a time or two and, like any rationally thinking person, didn’t want to be there again. Or want anyone else there.
I closed my eyes and reached for Mercy. Our link was only growing stronger the longer we were together, and the more things we did with it. It was hardly an effort to find her at the end of it.
She was already three blocks away and still running. Her mind was a twisted mess of anger and shock and freak-out. She’d agreed to my hijacking of her body but like any mentally-challenged person, I don’t think she fully understood what I’d been proposing. Now I was gone and she was back in the driver’s seat, she was seething, and yeah, all of that vampire powered angst was directed at me.
Sensing my touch, Mercy snarled internally, snapping at me down the link until I backed off.
“Go home,” I commanded, then pulled away.
Coming back to my body, I resigned myself to days, if not weeks, of temper tantrums and sulking. At least she’d fed sufficiently before we’d come out. No one was going to find a cute, pint-sized leech attached to their neck.
“She’s okay,” I said to Erin. “Freaked, but heading home.”
Erin considered me for a moment, as if questioning the certainty of my tone.
“She is,” I repeated, more firmly.
Keeping her opinion to herself, Erin leaned on the windowsill, looking morosely down at our dead thief. “He was about to tell us everything. A couple more seconds and we would have had the name of the buyer. What am I going to tell my client?”
“Clearly, someone didn’t want Sean talking.” I frowned. “Seems awfully extreme for a bunch of monkeys. What do you think? Sniper?”
“No sniper rifle would cause that much damage,” Erin said. “And the monkeys were valuable to the zoo. Part of an inter-zoo breeding program.” She stood and gathered up her surveillance equipment, which didn’t include any form of junk food, sadly. “Let’s go down, see if we can pick anything up from crowd chatter.”
Muscles slowly warming up, I followed Erin out of the room and down the stairs. We were in an office building, most of the businesses closed for the night. The office we’d been in was one kept by Sol Investigations for just these purposes. Over the past couple of months I’d learned a lot about being a private eye, but Erin assured me not every PI had the resources she did. Sol, her boss, was some sort of international super-sleuth who’d opened officers all over the world. Erin’s budget for individual cases was enough to keep me and Mercy in house and food for months. Of course, the invoices she handed over to her clients more than compensated for it, but still, business was booming.
I watched Erin skipping down the stairs ahead of me, appreciating the fit of her jeans and reminding myself she was off bounds. Married, but also, pretty honest in admitting that while she liked me as a friend—now, and it had been a tough road to get that far—that was it. We had a professional relationship. She helped me with some of my jobs and I ‘consulted’ for her occasionally. Very occasionally. Ever since that little fiasco with a Demon Lord a couple months back, Erin had been wary about taking cases that might impinge on my area of expertise. I got a few referrals out of it, so it wasn’t all that bad. Erin didn’t even charge a percentage of my fee for the referrals.
Erin keyed us out of the building, we crossed the road and mingled in the growing crowd around the bistro. Ever the investigator, Erin moved amongst the people, asking awed and stunned questions as she went. I didn’t. There was something about me that just didn’t inspire casual chatting in a lot of people. Whether it was the hint of my dark side—a berserker rage that could overwhelm me in times of great stress—a touch of otherness—partner with a vampire, remember—or just my own reluctance to be in a crowd—I didn’t like big mobs of people, don’t ask why, just accept it and move on—most people tended to get out of my way pretty quick and not meet my gaze.
So while Erin gathered stories, I sauntered as close to the scene of the crime as I could. Sirens were blaring in the near distance, getting closer. The bistro staff had begun to take charge, keeping people back and asking for witnesses. I pushed through to the front of the crowd and studied the sight.
Our table had been on the edge of the footpath, next to the barrier advertising the bistro’s coffee brand. It was knocked over, Sean’s body sprawled across it. If it had still been there, his head would have been in the gutter. As it was, it was splattered across the table and ground. Despite the protests from my dinner, I studied the body. Yup. Head completely gone, just a ragged stump of bloody neck, a few chunky hunks of hairy skull dangling from ragged skin still attached.
Looking a bit further afield, I found a lump of stone or concrete resting in the gutter. It was about the size of my two fists together, and painted in dark red splashes and little gobbets of what could only be brains. Just beyond it, another hunk, smaller and also bloody. This one looked like a face, though. A portion of a head, a cheek and huge eye, corner of a wide mouth and ear.
“Hey, did you see what happened?”
I focused on the woman in front of me. It was the waitress who’d spoken to us. Well, to Mercy and Sean.
“No. What happened?” I asked with appropriate amounts of morbid curiosity. “Was he shot?”
The young woman shivered, arms wrapped around herself in spite of the warm night air. “No. Something fell on him. A brick or something. I saw it fall, then…” She swallowed hard. “Poor man. I think he was on a date. Have you seen her? They’ll need to talk to her, I reckon. Small, black curls? Very pale.”
I shook my head and peered upward. The building the bistro was in was a fairly stock-standard affair for inner-city Brisbane. Four storeys, brick, utilitarian, unmarked but for a few adverts hanging under windows. Nothing looked damaged on the facade, no missing bricks, no cracked stone-work around the windows or roof. But then, I didn’t think it was a brick that had killed Sean.
The police arrived with a blurt of sirens and lights to get through the cars slowing on the street for a stickybeak. There was an ambulance behind the two patrol cars and a fire-truck came up from the opposite direction.
The bistro owner called the waitress over and I slipped back through the crowd, not wanting to be seen by the cops. I mean, it wasn’t like I was known to every cop in the city, but I’d been in a few scrapes and altercations in my time. It was best I not be seen around this one if I could manage it.
Erin had the same idea, meeting up with me on the outskirts of the fracas. We fell into step side by side, just folks on their way home, nothing to see here.
“Find anything out?” I asked, hands shoved in my jeans pockets.
“Not a lot. Some people think a brick fell on him. I guess something that heavy, dropped from a height, would cause significant damage.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think it was a brick.”
She cocked a pale brow at me.
“I think I saw it. Looked more like a statue or something. It was broken, but there was a definite face on it.” I described it.
Erin shuddered. “Reminds me of that ghoul you introduced me to.”
“Kermit? Yeah, could have looked a bit like him, but less odd. Not human, but not weird, either.”
“A statue. Could it have been something like a gargoyle? Come loose from the building’s roof?”
Although the building in question was well behind us now, I couldn’t help but look up. “Not many gargoyles in Brisbane, I don’t think. And I’m pretty sure there weren’t any on that building.”
“I guess.” She sighed. “Whatever it was, it was obviously deliberate. Someone didn’t want him talking.”
“Again, I have to ask. Monkeys? Who would go to this much trouble about monkeys? Even the cops don’t care about who took them anymore.”
“The cops aren’t my client. As long as Thistlethwaite keeps paying me, I’ll keep looking.”
We walked in silence for a while. I enjoyed it. It wasn’t often I spent significant amounts of time with other humans. Usually, it was just me and Mercy against whatever creature of the week someone paid us to kill. My friend, Roberts, occasionally tagged along, when he had nothing better to do and had forgotten the sorts of trouble we could get into. He, however, was currently embroiled in a passionate love hate relationship with a woman whose name I’d forgotten almost as soon as he’d told me, and didn’t have a lot of spare time to socialise. There was Jacob Whyte, owner of Vogon Books and local contact for the resident supernatural enthusiasts in town, but he actually had real friends, a proper life and didn’t often have room for a socially inept berserker. After I’d knocked back a few too many invitations he’d stopped asking me.
The only other relationship in my life that could be mistaken for a friendship was with a succubus from Hell. But even she had more of a life than I did, sailing the southern seas with her boyfriend. We exchanged occasional emails but that was all.
We’d covered a couple of blocks before I thought to break the comfortable silence.
“What next?”
“Follow up on who wanted Sean dead,” Erin said, not sounding enthusiastic about the prospect. “Could you get Mercy up to the top of that building? Maybe she could find a scent and follow it.”
“I’ll try.”
Again, I reached down the link. This time, I didn’t even come close to touching Mercy’s mind. She’d put up a wall. A serious, don’t come near me wall. The sulking had kicked in and kicked in hard.
“Um, not right now,” I muttered. “I’ll try again later.”
“Is she... all right?”
“Yeah, just pissed off with me for taking over her body like that.”
“I thought she said it would be okay.”
“She did. But now she’s not okay with it. Just like a bloody typical—” I cut myself off before I could say it.
Erin, however, wanted it said. “A bloody typical what, Hawkins?” She had the tone of voice that announced it would have an answer, and have it now.
I scowled. “All right. A bloody typical teenage girl. There, I said it. Now get your sexist-pig rant on and have at me.”
But she didn’t. “Actually, I can see it. But don’t forget she witnessed a horrific thing tonight, Matt. If she’s freaking out, that probably had something to do with it as well.”
Snorting, I muttered, “Most nights, she’s the horrific thing that happens to others.”
“Just don’t discount it, okay?” Erin dug in her pocket and pulled out her phone, pulling up a number and hitting connect.
“Who are you calling?” Why, yes, I am a nosy-parker, thank you for enquiring.
“Courey. See if he can help me with anything about Sean’s death.”
I carefully didn’t say anything. Detective Miles Courey was Erin’s contact with the police and he helped her out where he could. I suppose most people would find him a decent guy. He was Erin’s friend and very protective of her. I personally could attest to his protective bent. I had the brick-wall imprint in my back to prove it. We didn’t like each other, but we both liked Erin and that was all that mattered.
While Erin waited for Courey to pick up, I scanned the streets around us. It wasn’t late, but it wasn’t early, either. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic in this part of town but the street was busy. Through the passing cars, I glimpsed two guys on the opposite footpath. One was rather average in height, weight, looks, while the other was big, solidly muscled with huge arms, barrel chest and thick thighs. He was of Maori or Samoan stock and had a few streaks of silver through his short, otherwise dark hair. He shoved the other guy hard enough to push him into a wall. Seemingly stunned, the guy against the wall stayed there, hands held up as he clearly tried to reason with the bigger man. Big Guy wasn’t listening, bearing up for another go.
As I watched, he stepped up and slammed a huge, hard knuckled fist into the second man’s stomach.
I was dashing across the road before the thought of not doing anything even occurred to me.