Night Shift

Chapter Five

False dawn gathered gray in the east, veils of fog from the river reaching up like fat white fingers as I gunned the engine. I winced as my orange Impala's full-throated purr took on a subtle knocking. Need to get that fixed. Should change the oil soon too.

The interstate—or the Drag, if you're a local—comes up out of the well of the city in slight curves north through Ridgefield toward the capital, striking for the heart of desert and sagebrush once it's out of the low-lying area watered by the river. Coming down into the city it veers through suburbs, taking advantage of the high ground and flying over deep gullies and concrete washes built to siphon off flash floods. Once it hits the actual city limits it becomes three lanes in either direction, jammed during rush hour and perfect for illegal races once normal people are in bed.

Just south of downtown there's a stretch with hills on either side, thick with trees and trashwood, the green belt going up to chain-link fences facing the blank backs of businesses and warehouses. The scene was still crawling with forensic techs, and when I parked at the periphery a thin, nervous traffic cop came bustling up to tell me to move along—and retreated as I rose out of the Impala, meeting his eyes and keeping my silence. He recognized me, of course.

They all do.

I've heard they have a pool on where I'm going to show up and when, and the betting is fierce; there is a whole arcane system of verifying sightings left over from Mikhail's tenure. Hunter sightings are comforting for them; lets them know I'm still on the job.

It's when I disappear for a while that they get nervous.

Two lanes of southbound traffic were blocked off, and traffic was extremely light. Still, the infrequent cars were slowing down to gawk, and the scene was being trampled.

I couldn't blame them. Cops never like to lose one of their own. Most of them were observing a respectful silence. Quite a few of them looked like they'd been rousted from bed, too. I saw Sullivan, his red hair catching fire on top of his lanky frame as the sun began its work in earnest. His partner, a short motherly woman in a sweater-coat and knit leggings, stood beside him staring at one of the long garish streaks of wetness on the road. The streaks everyone was hypnotized by.

Blood doesn't dry as quickly as everyone thinks, even out here at the edge of the desert. It stays tacky-wet for a long time before it turns into a crust. A flat iron tang rose to my nose, like a banner through the stew of humans milling around and the sharp dual stink of hellbreed and something else, something I'd never smelled before.

Mikhail would have mentioned something like this if he'd ever come across it, wouldn't he? I caught myself. Concentrate on the job, Jesus, you're getting punchy.

Too bad I wasn't going to get any rest anytime soon.

I threaded my way through the milling crowd. As fast as people arrived others left, to go back to work or home after paying their respects. It was eerily quiet, and the scar throbbed on my wrist, tension and frustration in the air plucking at it. Got to cover that goddamn thing up.

Word of my appearance spread quickly, a murmur through the crowd. Foster, his sleek dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, was the only one brave enough to approach. Of course, he was my Forensics liaison this month since Pepper was out on maternity leave. He ducked carefully under the yellow tape keeping everyone back—in this crowd, there was no shoving. The mannerly silence was almost as eerie as the palpable grief.

"Hey, Jill." Dark circles bloomed under Foster's blue eyes, and the silver stud in his right ear glittered. "How you?"

I don't often use the Forensics liaison; most hunters don't. We work most closely with Homicide detectives and next with Vice; they do the grunt work in getting files ready. Most of the time a hunt goes so quickly we don't have time for that type of legwork, and we don't want the human law enforcement getting close to the nightside anyway. They're our eyes and ears, since a hunter can't be everywhere at once.

Nobody wants their eyes catching flak.

"Hi, Mike. Monty called me in." I pitched my voice low, my hands thrust deep in my coat pockets. Leather creaked as I shifted. "What do we have?"

He was pale under the even caramel of his skin. "A total goddamn mess, that's what. Five goddamn bodies and that rookie bleeding all over everything. The main scene is up in the woods, there." He pointed to the ordered commotion on the hillside. "They didn't get more than twenty feet before something leapt on 'em. Just like shooting fish in a fucking barrel."

I winced at the mental image. And why would cops get out of their cars and pursue something up a hillside? "Any body parts you can't find?"

He shrugged. "Too soon to tell. Come up the hill. If Monty hadn't called you I would've. This is grade-A weirdness, just your type."

"I hate to be pigeonholed." I followed him, skirting the three traffic units parked in standard pattern on the shoulder, inside the cordon of yellow tape. Their lights still revolved, running off the batteries.

The last car in line had been shredded, its windshield broken and the roof ripped open, jagged metal edges exploding. Bits of broken colored plastic and glass from the lights were smashed to the side.

Christ. My blue eye didn't see any sparking and smoking of etheric energy, though the whole scene reeked of hellbreed. They are stronger and faster than humans, but a 'breed that could do something like this without sorcerous help…

What the hell is this?

The rapidly lightening sky triggered another idea. I glanced overhead. No circling copters yet. "The press?"

"Captain Bolton's putting together a release about a car bomb or something. We've been able to keep the goddamn vultures quiet so far, but it's only a matter of time." Foster snorted, as if he wanted to spit but couldn't bring himself to do so. The two wide lanes of pavement were streaked and spattered with gore.

I was surprised the vultures hadn't scented it yet. Last thing we need is footage of this getting out We crossed the ditch, me in a single leap and Mike over a piece of plywood someone had laid down, and plunged uphill into the bushes. The sharp smell of sage and pine stung my nose, mixed with the belching tang of death and that horrible stink of hellbreed and something else.

Dry fur. Dandruff clotted in drifts. Desiccated, exhaled sickness, as if a dog had crept into a hole to die.

What is that? I wished I could find something to cover the scar up. Preternaturally acute senses are useful, but it stank.

There was a clearing ringed with pine trees, their bark tinder-dry and needles crunching underfoot. Silence broken only by the shuffling of the techs' booted feet and occasional muttered directions. Flashes popped, taking merciless pictures, drenching the scene in brief shutter-clicks of light.

There was so much blood. I've seen plenty of butchery, but this was… The stench of a battlefield hung over the small clearing, cut bowel and wet red iron, as well as the heatless fume of violence. The smell of hellbreed and something else was so deep and thunderous my eyes watered.

The spindly tree trunks were shredded, and I stopped to examine the deep furrows carved in them. They were all vertical, and my eyes caught a thin reddish glint.

"What the hell?" I leaned closer, examining the long strands. Red-gold, and with a springy curl unlike anything I'd seen. It was all over, in the scratched furrows and rough bark. "Mike?"

"What, that shit? Hair. We don't know if it's human or animal yet."

"Where is it? All over?"

"All over. On the… the victims too." His voice didn't break, but it was close. "There's even some out on the road, in the blood. Patches of it."

Weird. "What about the scratches?"

"Just on the trees around this clearing."

"Huh." I thought about this, circling the clearing as Mike peeled off to exchange low words with a woman from the medical examiner's office, her dark hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. I took care not to disturb the techs at their work, and they took care not to get in my way. We're all happier that way.

You'd think a hunter wouldn't have to worry about evidentiary procedure and the like, but it always pays not to piss off the techs. And you never can tell when something small and insignificant they find is going to turn a whole case on its head, or spin it so you can see the pattern behind the events.

The stench was deep and dark enough I had trouble finding a trail. My nose stung and my eyes prickled with tears. One slid hot down my cheek and I palmed it away, silver chiming in my hair. The creaking of my boots and coat was very loud in the predawn hush.

I had unusual difficulty making a coherent pattern out of the scuffed and blood-soaked dirt. The chaos must have been intense at night with nothing but handheld flashlights—not even the current illumination of false dawn and the portable floodlights at the periphery of the clearing, mixing a throat-coating wash of diesel into the equation. I finally gave up on trying to reconstruct the fight. There simply wasn't enough on the hard-packed dirt scattered with pine needles.

For a moment I imagined being out here in the dark, something chasing me and nothing but a human's reflexes and one police-issue Glock to fight it off with, and my skin chilled.

I finally zeroed in on a usable trail, but it was a bust. The scent led away from the scene at a sharp angle, back down to the cars; I followed. Then I picked it up again at the edge of yellow tape down on the freeway, and pursued it across the open lane and the meridian before it vanished into thin air. One moment, nose-watering stink, the next, nothing but the smell of damp wiry grass in sandy soil and the scent of morning.

Dammit. If it's hellbreed it might be able to mask. A hellbreed and something working in concert? What would work with one of them? Even their own kind don't trust them.

Still, that's what the evidence points to. Hellbreed plus something else. In other words, a big fucking problem.

I let out a sharp frustrated breath. Traffic was beginning to pick up, and dawn was well under way. I heard the distinctive thrupping of a chopper and looked up. Channel Twelve had arrived.

Dammit.