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ANOTHER WEEKEND GONE. Zan stood in the elevator holding her giant coffee, glancing at the grim faces of the people around her. Normal Monday faces. She wished she could still be sour about a Monday. Now it was her lifeline. Anything to keep her mind off Rainer.
What I need is a nice, juicy case. Reports don’t cut it.
Mel hadn’t arrived yet, and Zan’s voicemail was already flashing with a message. She set down her coffee, threw her bag on the desk and grabbed the receiver as she plopped into her chair. The voicemail was from Inspecteur Général Marie Joselet, the French police officer helping Zan track down the daggers used in a ritual murder. Some sick fucks had burned the body parts of a homeless man named Emanuel Morales inside Independence National Historical Park. The FBI’s legal attaché in Paris had managed to track the daggers to an artisan in Aix in Provence. Then he’d connected Zan with Joselet.
Joselet’s normally lilting French accent had a decided edge in the message. She asked Zan to call her as soon as possible. Zan turned on her computer, impatiently glaring at the screen as it booted up. She found the number and dialed, slurping her too-hot coffee. She whipped out her French phrases to ask for Joselet. While on hold, Zan slid into a memory of a French lesson from Rainer. The way his lips had wrapped around the syllables made her want to kiss him. The lesson hadn’t lasted long.
Christ. What is wrong with you?
“Agent O’Gara. Thank you for calling.”
“You’re very welcome, but maybe I should be thanking you, Inspecteur Joselet. I assume you have information for me.”
“Yes. We’ve been searching locations in the Camargue based on the information we received from Monsieur Archibaud. We think we found where they live this morning, these men who bought the daggers. These men, they are, they are monstres mauvais! Les méchants horribles!”
“Monsters, did you say? Please, go on.”
“Um, ah, we located their old ranch. They have disappeared, Agent O’Gara, but we found terrible things there.”
Shifting in her seat, Zan clutched the arm of her chair with her free hand.
Disappeared? Oh, no, no, no.
“What terrible things?”
“Snuff films and photographs, Agent O’Gara. Disgusting portrayals of women being raped and tortured. Maybe killed. We do not think these things were staged.”
“My god.”
“We found hundreds of films and photographs in this house. We think these men are trafiquants. Certainly, they buy and sell these images. Maybe they also buy and sell the women.” Joselet delicately cleared her throat. “We also found something strange, Agent O’Gara. Some kind of chapel. I feel foolish to say this, but we think these men, they worship Satan.”
No, not foolish. They worship Lucifer.
Zan gripped the telephone receiver, barely able to stop herself from pounding it on the desk. She took a deep breath. She had to act like an agent.
“Uh, yes, I, uh, I guess nothing should surprise us about them. Such evil men.” She flicked her head, trying to clear her mind. “How do you know they’ve disappeared?”
“Food was left to rot on the dining room table and in the kitchen. The house was overrun with insects and vermin, so whatever happened must have been weeks ago. There were signs of a struggle in a few of the smaller outbuildings.”
Zan nearly hyperventilated. When Joselet asked her if she was all right, she requested a moment and covered the mouthpiece. She rocked back and forth.
Rainer. And Pellus. They did this. I know it.
When her breathing had calmed, Zan spoke, but her voice betrayed her upheaval.
“I, uh, I apologize, Inspecteur Joselet. I didn’t expect anything like this.”
“I understand. It’s very upsetting. I’ll send you the materials we’ve found, but make sure you prepare yourself before you view them. They’re disturbing.”
“I will, thank you. Did you find any information that might tell us where these men have gone?”
As if they aren’t dead.
“No. Unfortunately not. We haven’t finished our examination of their computers, but so far, we haven’t found anything to help us trace the films or photographs. We suspect they keep their business information elsewhere. I’m very frustrated. We found nothing about these women and girls. Judging from the photographs, I would guess most are from Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia.”
“Common hunting grounds for human traffickers,” Zan said.
Rainer, you idiot. These men alive would have been our best chance to help those women.
“I share your frustration,” Zan continued. “I hope you know the FBI’s full resources will be dedicated to this. It seems likely that Philadelphia is a point of entry into the United States for these materials, but it might not be the only one.”
“No.”
“Are the materials digital? Can you send them right away?”
“Yes. I’ll send them, along with our report. Some of the media is older. I’ll ship off samples of that as well. I’ve called Interpol. I’ll email you the contact information of the gentleman in the human trafficking division. We need to act on this quickly.”
“I’ll act on it immediately. And Inspecteur Joselet? I’m extremely grateful. Thanks to your efforts, maybe we can put a stop to this.”
“Thank you for your persistence, Agent O’Gara. All of this began with you.”
After she dropped the phone in its cradle, Zan stared at the device like she no longer knew what it was.
You killed them. I should be afraid of you.
Mel didn’t even put down her bag when she came in before she asked her partner what was wrong. Zan filled her in, hoping that the ugliness of the crimes was enough of an explanation for the fact she must look like she was about to vomit.
“Holy shit.” Mel sat down and put her hand over her mouth. She stayed silent for a full thirty seconds. “Good thing we’re slow these days,” she said. “We need to sink everything into this and we don’t have much to go on. I’ll get you the name of the right person to call in D.C. and I’ll make an appointment with Nguyen. He needs to hear this right away.”
Zan wanted to kiss her. Mel would do what she did. Take care of things with reassuring efficiency. This made Zan feel more in control.
Maybe, just maybe, I won’t start bawling.
A whirlwind of activity got Zan through the day. First, she had to brief Nguyen. Then review the repulsive materials Joselet emailed. Then, after an hour or two of extremely disturbing research, she, Mel and Nguyen held a video conference with the agents in D.C. who had expertise in human trafficking and snuff pornography. They scheduled a conference call with Interpol the next morning.
The research made her feel better equipped to handle all this. At its base, it was still the same murder investigation she had been working on for months. But the images were horrific. This time she didn’t just look like she was going to vomit. She slipped into the ladies’ room and chucked up her guts. Mel seemed surprised she was taking it so hard considering Zan had been to war, but her partner had no idea what she was planning to do that night.
She needed to confront Rainer. To find out for certain if he was responsible for the disappearance of the men in France. To find out if the information he had was useful. She was terrified but damned if she knew why. She couldn’t make herself believe Rainer would hurt her.
I guess part of me was pretending none of this crazy shit was real.
As Zan walked home to get her car, she passed a lively bar, filled with golden light and hip music and sophisticated people enjoying Happy Hour. She wished she could stop in and down a couple shots of Irish whiskey. She decided she’d better hit a meeting the next day. Thoughts like that were floating her way with alarming frequency.
When she’d texted Rainer, he’d said he would be home. She doubted he would tell her the truth.
The rankest bullshit sounds like the angels singing coming out of that mouth. An angel’s mouth.
She laughed raucously. People frowned at her.
Great. Now I’m the kind of person you cross the street to avoid.
All too soon, Zan pulled her little Mazda into Rainer’s compound as she’d done so many times before. She walked slowly to his door, admiring the alder trees that ran along the stone wall, their leaves like burnished copper in the waning light. She told herself she’d done plenty of difficult things in her life. This was just one more. This wasn’t even the hardest. She rang the bell.
When Rainer opened the door, he looked like he was about to face a firing squad. She walked past him, toward the massive carved table in the kitchen. Only Rainer would have a museum piece fit for a medieval banquet in his kitchen. She rested her bag on its surface. She withdrew a powder-blue box and a flash drive.
“This is your cherry-blossom pin,” she said, putting the blue box on the table. “I won’t accept it.” Rainer was about to say something but she held up her hand. “Do not say a word. That’s not why I’m here. I need to show you something. May I use your computer?”
“Of course.”
They both sat in front of the monitor after Rainer pulled up another chair. In a minute, a photograph appeared of a naked young woman, her limbs crisscrossed with streaks of blood, her knobby, protruding shoulders obviously dislocated, her eyes staring and empty.
“Do you remember I told you about Archibaud, that craftsman in France who told us where to find the men who bought the daggers?”
“Yes.” Rainer had not taken his eyes off the photograph. Zan searched his face as he stared. She could see it, under his nervousness and sorrow. He was capable of killing the men who did this without hesitation.
“The French police found their compound. The house contained hundreds of photographs and videos like this one.”
Rainer faced her.
“I know. Pellus and I found them months ago.”
Zan’s vision grayed at the edges. Her palms got sweaty and her heart thumped. She couldn’t look at him. She closed the photograph and stared down at her hand on the mouse.
“The compound was deserted. Food left to rot on the table, the house overrun with insects.”
I will look at him, goddammit.
“Do you know what happened to them?” she asked.
“Yes. That’s why I wanted to see you. To tell you. And offer you information on their accomplices here in Philadelphia.”
“Do not muddy the issue!” Zan rose abruptly from her chair. “What happened to the people in the Camargue?”
“They are dead. I killed them.”
Despite being all but certain of this fact when she walked in the door, Zan ran into the bathroom. She thought she might vomit again, but she felt a little better after she splashed cool water on her face. She grabbed the edge of the porcelain sink and put her head down, stretching her back, breathing deeply.
My ex slaughters people. How am I going to tell Mel? Nguyen? God help me, I don’t want to. Why the fuck don’t I want to?
She had to go back out. She had to find something inside herself that would allow her to go back out.
Rainer was standing when she emerged from the bathroom.
“You’re a murderer,” she said. He stared at her until his studied expression began to fray around the edges. He looked up at the ceiling. When he met her eyes again what she saw was beyond anger. Beyond rage.
“Those pieces of filth worshiped my father. They brutalized and murdered women. They killed Emanuel Morales and other innocent people. To slaughter them was not murder,” he said. “It was justice. Look me in the eye and tell me you do not think those men deserved to die.”
“My emotions are not the point! That’s not how we do things. We have laws. A system. We could’ve caught them if you’d helped me instead of lying to me. And do you know what you’ve done?” Zan took a step towards him. “The women in those images are most likely victims of human trafficking. How are we going to find them now? Those men could have given us valuable information if we’d arrested them. You fucked everything up. We have no one to question.”
“Oh, but you do. Did you not hear me tell you I have information on their accomplices here in Philadelphia?”
“Well, my stars! You mean you didn’t murder them yet? What? Just didn’t have time?”
Rainer laughed.
This motherfucker actually laughed.
“I want to kill them,” he said. “The demons that attacked you? These men helped them. They put you in danger.” He looked at her with such passion that it ran through her chest like a spear.
“I would love to rip out their spines, but I cannot,” he continued. “My Covalent system will not allow me to kill humans without paying a price. Weak humans are not worthy adversaries. When I killed the men in the Camargue I lost Balance. I became weak. I would have died in battle if Pellus had not saved me.” He ran his hand through his hair. “My loss of Balance was evident to you as well.”
“My god. Your weird depression. That’s what it was?”
“Yes.”
Zan shook her head. She couldn’t let these revelations derail her. He had information and she needed it. She rocked back on her heels.
“So, your solution of choice is to murder people, but since you can’t do that, you want me to care take of it, hmmmm?”
“Why do you have to say it with such viciousness?’
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Rainer lowered his eyes. His face crumpled and reddened. When he looked at her, she turned away.
“I’m sorry, Zan. I’m sorry for what I am.”
Her mouth fell open. “No, Rainer, I didn’t—” She bit off her words with a string of expletives.
Do your fucking job, O’Gara.
“What information do you have for me?”
He removed a pouch from a drawer of the computer desk. “Pellus collected this evidence.” He explained that the pouch held media with images like the one she’d shown him. It also contained photographs the FBI could use to identify the houses from which Pellus had collected the evidence and the men he had seen. There were photographs of the last four daggers Archibaud had made, as well as photographs of carved wooden medallions similar to those that had been found with the body and the spleen of Emanuel Morales. Rainer reached into another drawer. “And these flash drives and memories cards came from the compound in France.”
Zan took a seat and reviewed the evidence on the computer. The pictures of the daggers and the medallions made her feel better than she had since this whole nightmare began. The men and the houses made her smile. The ledger made her grin.
“This is fantastic. How in god’s name did Pellus manage to get all this?”
“Pellus is a traveler adept, a being who can manipulate the properties of matter and energy with his mind. He can do much more than pass through the rifts to come here. Locked doors cannot stop him. If he needed to dissolve a brick wall he could do so. To observe these men, he concealed himself under a curtain of refracted light.”
She gaped at him.
No one is capable of arresting these two, even if I could bring myself to identify them.
“By the way,” Rainer added. “You don’t have to worry about your 911 call from the night the demons attacked you. Pellus got rid of it. No record of that call exists.”
“What? I thought I got lucky. How?”
“Human information systems are an open book to Pellus.”
“Christ, almighty.” Zan sat so still her eyes dried out. She had an attack of rapid blinking. “Even if it’s encrypted?”
“Yes. All child’s play.”
“I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me any more, oh god.” She hid her face in her hands then peered over at Rainer from between her thumb and forefinger.
“Does Pellus fight, too?”
“No. He’s not a warrior. That’s my job.”
“But you said he saved you.”
“He saved me by forming an energy barrier, a shield for me. My father’s Corrupted warriors could not reach me with their blades. Then he burned them where they stood. It was an act of such power the Covalent did not think it was possible. It was also against our laws. Pellus was punished. He was stripped of his rank.”
“He loves you, doesn’t he?”
“I believe he does. Very much. As I love him.”
Zan hid her face in her hands again.
And now, I’m thinking about love when I should be thinking about murder.
When she spoke, her voice was fragile. “If you’d died, I never would have known what happened to you,” she said. “Didn’t you care what that would’ve done to me?”
“I must always fulfill my purpose, Zan. It’s what I am. I wrote you a letter before I left for battle. If I had died it would have been delivered. In the letter, I told you my enemies had finally succeeded in killing me. I told you I had deceived you. Part of it was a desire to keep you safe. Part of it was my own cowardice.”
Rainer brought his chair closer to her. “Look at me, Zan.”
She faced him. He took her hand and she let him.
“I was so afraid, so desperate not to lose you. I wanted to give you my strength. I wanted to give you everything. I planned to reveal myself to you after my battle with the demons at the equinox, but they attacked you, and you—” He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. “You left me.”
Zan felt paralyzed. His intensity hypnotized her. She was hyperaware of his huge hands as they pressed hers between them, gently rubbing. She felt it in every part of her body.
I miss you.
“What I said in that letter, it’s still true.” Rainer leaned close to her face. “I have never loved anyone the way I love you. I have chosen you. You are my mate. I will never take another.”
With a sob, Zan reached for him. Rainer snatched her onto his lap. He covered her mouth with his. Zan sucked on his tongue and clutched at his clothing, his earthy scent lighting her brain with memories of pleasure and belonging. Her hands reached under his shirt. She ran them over his abs, his chest, drunk in the contours, desperate, drowning in fire. She whimpered. She felt his hardness beneath her and threw herself onto the floor, pulling him with her. She took his hand and placed it where the blood pounded between her legs. Every part of her screamed, screamed to have him fuck her. Now, now, right that second.
I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. Love me, Rainer. Love me.
When they had struggled out of their clothing, Rainer slowed his hectic movements. He stroked her cheek. Lying beside her, he pressed his face to hers. He ran his hand slowly down her length in small curves, murmuring, “Zan, oh Zan, to touch you. My love, my life.”
When he slid his fingers into her wetness she arched her back and gasped. He pressed and stroked while she purred like a kitten, writhing on the floor. She couldn’t stand it anymore. She pulled at him, trying to move him on top of her. He obliged and her hand found his fabulous cock. She guided it inside her and thrust her hips forward with animal need.
He fucked her, slowly, smoothly, forcefully, the rhythmic groove of his hips sending her into a frenzy of acceptance. She took him. Each stroke he made along her flesh brought her closer to something primal that she perceived without thought. Then the power came, like the crashing of seas, and she yelled, yelled to split the ceiling. Her body flew into a paroxysm, rippling and convulsing. Rainer roared and came inside her. She felt his heat fill her like a solar flare.
When her body’s fever had subsided she lay still with her eyes shut tight, stunned. She struggled to form thoughts. Rainer sought her mouth, sucking gently on her lower lip, pressing his length against her, his leg draped over hers.
“Stay with me,” he whispered.
As Zan’s mind began to reassemble, it automatically tried to put what had just happened to her in some coherent mental place like any other memory, but the experience defied it. Fear rushed in.
I shouldn’t feel like this. It isn’t normal. This isn’t love.
Rainer kissed her eyes, now filled with tears. “Why are you crying, my love?”
“I’m not your love.” Zan rolled away and curled up. “I’m your, I’m your, oh god, I couldn’t stop myself.” A sob overtook her. “A mistake. This was a horrible mistake.” She scrambled to her feet and began to dress with trembling hands, repeatedly dropping her shirt in her haste.
“What?” Rainer stood. “How can you call this a mistake? I felt your joy. You were filled with joy.”
God help me, I was.
Zan couldn’t meet his gaze. She fixed her eyes on the window behind him.
“I was filled with your magic cock. It makes me stupid.”
Rainer made a low sound, something between a groan and a growl. She glanced at him. He was staring at her, his hands balled into fists at his sides. Part of her wanted to go to him, to smooth the tension from his brow the way she knew she could. A part of her that banged on the spongy walls of her brain, clamoring to get out.
Are you so different from the voice that used to call to me from the inside of a bottle?
A siren wailed somewhere off in the neighborhood. Zan seized on the sound, so mundane, so human. She took a deep breath and met Rainer’s eyes.
“Your history said the Covalent misbehaved in the Earthly Realm, and that’s why most of you are forbidden to come here now. Is this what you did? Get us addicted to your touch so you could control us? Make us think we loved you? Played with us, then tossed us aside when our skin shriveled and our flesh sagged? Laughed while we pined for you? Is that what you did?”
“That has nothing to do with me!” Rainer shouted. “You don’t understand. I love you. I will never leave you.”
“Bullshit.” She headed for the door. Rainer made a noise so extraordinary she stopped with her hand on the knob.
“Why would you let me touch you, only to leave me?” he asked, his voice moving in fits. “Give me that hope, then yank it away? It is cruel.”
Zan snatched her hand from the door. She wheeled on him. At that moment, she wanted to stab him.
“I’m cruel?! Me, cruel to you?!” She laughed crazily. “You made me think I loved you. You pried me open. I told you my terrible secrets, shared my most painful memories, and you wouldn’t even tell me what you are. You did nothing but lie to me. You said you would heal me, and I believed you. Like an idiot weakling, I believed you. Well, I’m putting down the drug now, Rainer. Go dazzle someone else with your fabulous cock.”
The disbelief faded from Rainer’s face, leaving only pain that grew more layered as she watched. Old pain like the worn surfaces of mountains. New pain spilling like blood.
“You love me, Zan,” he whispered. “Do you not love me?”
That other part of Zan was still clamoring to get out, trying to find its way to Rainer’s arms.
I would die for you I would die for you I would die for you.
She wouldn’t have it.
“I’ve got to get away from you right now, but you’re going to help me catch those pieces of shit. You owe me that much.” She walked out the door.