Deadtown d-3 Read online

  I folded my arms and put on my best stubborn look. (It’s a good one, if I do say so myself.) “I’ll go with you. I’ll answer your questions. But I won’t be treated like a criminal. Put the gun away, and forget about any handcuffs.”

  Norden’s mouth was a grim line. “I’m not messing around, freak. This thing’s loaded with silver bullets.”

  I laughed. “What, Norden, you skip the chapter on shapeshifters in the monster manual? I’m not a werewolf. Silver isn’t lethal to me.”

  At least, it wasn’t any more lethal than any other kind of bullet. Put a big enough hole in me, and whether you made that hole with silver, lead, steel—whatever—I’d bleed, then die. I didn’t have a werewolf’s miraculous healing powers or the undead advantage of a vampire or zombie.

  Sykes picked up the handcuffs from the floor and dangled them from one massive finger. “I used the silver-plated cuffs,” he remarked.

  “See? If I had a problem with silver, I couldn’t have gotten out of them.”

  The gun didn’t move, but Norden’s face was all red and puffed up; he looked like a volcano ready to explode. I could see I’d gained maybe a millimeter of an advantage, so I pressed it. “You liked that trick? Put the gun away, and I’ll go with you. But if you keep threatening me, I’ll shift into a wisp of smoke. Try putting handcuffs on that.”

  It was another bluff, of course. I couldn’t turn into smoke. Shapeshifters can only change into animate creatures. But it was clear that Norden didn’t know squat about my kind. Besides, whether I turned into a mosquito or an elephant, I didn’t much like my chances against Sykes’s strength and Norden’s gun.

  I closed my eyes and tried to look like someone about to vanish in a wisp of smoke.

  “Goddamn it!” Norden stomped his foot. But he holstered the pistol.

  “Okay, boys,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I led the way through my living room. Sykes held my left arm in a near-crushing grip. Norden followed so close behind us I could feel his onion-and-cigar breath on my neck. I was in the clutches of the Goon Squad, but I was walking out of here on my own.

  IN THE LOBBY, CLYDE SHOOK HIS HEAD LIKE HE’D EXPECTED to see something like this. He probably thought they were hauling me in for public indecency. But his face creased into a frown when his gaze shifted to Norden, who stuck as close as he could without actually touching me. Nobody in Deadtown liked the Goons, and most felt that norm cops had no business inside our borders. “Is everything all right, Miss Vaughn?” he asked, still staring at the cop.

  “Just peachy, Clyde. Would you mind giving Kane a call? Tell him to meet me at Goon Squad headquarters ASAP.”

  “Very good, Miss Vaughn.” He reached for the phone.

  “Goddamn monster with a goddamn lawyer,” Norden grumbled. “And the lawyer’s a monster, too. What next?”

  The big zombie growled, and the human half turned in his direction. “Shut up, Sykes.”

  Sykes gave his partner a look that would reduce most norms to a quaking puddle of fear. The two stared at each other, tense, fists clenched on both sides. Then Sykes pulled up his hood, put on his sunglasses, and shambled out the door, sorting his fingers into gloves.

  Norden watched him go, his lip curled in pure hatred. Odd. Most norm cops joined the Goon Squad because they thought hanging out with the monsters made them tough. This one seemed to be here because he hated us. Wasn’t I lucky the lucky one, drawing him as my dance partner.

  Poor Norden, though. It just wasn’t his day. I wasn’t playing nice, his partner was snarling at him, and he couldn’t even have the fun of dragging me into headquarters in handcuffs. The guy was mad, and he was looking for someone to take it out on. He picked me, shoving me hard toward the door.

  “Mr. Kane is out of the office, Miss Vaughn,” Clyde said, putting the phone down. Damn, I’d forgotten about the press conference. “But I left an urgent message.”

  “Thanks, Clyde. And could you send someone up to fix my front door? The Goons kicked it in. The lock’s busted, and Juliet’s asleep in her coffin.”

  Clyde picked up the phone again as Norden hustled me out the door. Good old Clyde. He’d have the door fixed before Juliet woke up. Good thing, too, I thought, looking at Norden. In this neighborhood, you couldn’t be too careful.

  5

  THE GOON SQUAD WAS HEADQUARTERED IN THE BASEMENT of a rundown building in the New Combat Zone, down one flight of rickety stairs. Sykes gripped my arm as we marched down a featureless hallway with gray metal doors lining each side. The sound of our footsteps ricocheted off the anonymous walls, and I tried not to wonder what lurked behind the doors. Offices, probably, but the place had an eerie sense of despair, as though people were trapped and forgotten behind those blank doors. We stopped in front of one, seemingly at random. Norden rapped once, then turned the knob and went inside. Sykes propelled me in behind him.

  “Here’s your freak,” Norden said. He spun around, shot me one of his piggy-eyed frowns, then pushed past me and out the door. “C’mon, Sykes,” he said from the hallway.

  Sykes regarded me over the top of his sunglasses, looking like he wanted to say something. Instead of tender farewells, though, he settled for a nod. Then he shambled into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

  The room was small, with scuffed, white, windowless walls. Two people sat at a banged-up metal table—a woman directly across from me, and a man to my left. There was no third chair, no place for me to sit down.

  I glared at the woman, who cringed, then I turned my evil eye on the man. At least, I tried to. It’s hard to glare into a pair of astonishingly blue eyes with a hint of a smile crinkling the edges. I blinked and took in the rest of the view: a headful of curly blond hair—half an inch too long for a cop—high cheekbones, and a strong jaw. He wore a suit, not a uniform, so I must have been looking at a detective. I didn’t know they made detectives that good-looking. The guy should’ve been modeling Armani suits instead of having me hauled in by the Goon Squad. I looked him over again. Nah, he wasn’t pretty enough to be a model. More like the kind of actor who makes a gazillion bucks playing tough-but-sensitive action heroes. Whatever. He still looked damn good.

  He stood and picked up his chair, carrying it around to my side of the table. “Here, why don’t you sit down?” he asked. “I’ll find us another seat.”

  I sat, and he actually held the chair for me as I did. Wow. A gentleman. Under other circumstances, I’d enjoy meeting this guy. Circumstances that didn’t involve my being pulled out of my bed and dragged here in my pj’s by the Goon Squad.

  Suddenly I realized I hadn’t even had time to comb my hair. I must look like a total mess. Thank God the interrogation room, or whatever it was, didn’t have one of those one-way mirrors. I didn’t want to see.

  The detective disappeared through the door, which shut with a bang but no click. Was it unlocked? Norden hadn’t used a key to get in. I thought of reaching over to try the knob and glanced at the female detective. She sat across from me, silent, blinking like a startled owl. She was on the far side of forty, with frizzy hair, scanty eyebrows, and saucer-sized dark circles under her eyes. Her jacket, green plaid with linebacker shoulder pads, could’ve been an exhibit in a 1980s museum. She swallowed, looking terrified. I thought about how easy it would be to walk out of there—stand up, open the unlocked door, waltz down that hallway and up the rickety stairs. She’d be too paralyzed to stop me.

  But they’d just send the Goon Squad again to haul me right back.

  The door opened, and the good-looking detective wrestled a metal folding chair into the room. He hefted it over my head to place it at the end of the table, then sat and gave me a dazzling smile.

  Suddenly, everything about him annoyed me: the good manners, the even better looks, the two-hundred-watt smile. Who the hell was he to look so attractive and friendly and . . . attractive? This was the guy who’d sicced the Goons on me.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but I beat him to it.<
br />
  “I have no clue why you dragged me out of bed and brought me here against my will. But you’d better know right now that I’m not saying a word until my lawyer arrives.”

  The two detectives exchanged a look, increasing my annoyance factor. “My attorney, by the way, is Alexander Kane. Ever heard of him?”

  “I—” the good-looking detective began.

  “Kane will be most interested in the civil rights aspect of my treatment today. I’m a demi-human, you know.” You’d think that would give me half the rights of a human, but it didn’t work that way. Shapeshifters were either active, like me, or inactive, like my sister, Gwen, a suburban wife and mom. Inactive demi-humans had the same rights as humans; we active ones had no rights at all. Kane had several civil rights cases grinding their way through the courts, trying to get such issues in front of the Supreme Court. He wouldn’t rest until all the monsters had rights.

  “But—” the detective tried again.

  “But nothing. That’s what you’ll get from me without my attorney present—nothing. Do you understand that? Not a word.” I sat back in the chair and folded my arms across my chest. Hah. That told them.

  The female detective looked suitably bludgeoned by my words. I glanced at her partner. He was biting his lip, trying to suppress a smile.

  “Something amusing you, Detective?” His smile broadened to a grin. “What the hell is so damn funny?”

  “It’s just that, well, for someone determined not to say anything, you haven’t let me get a word in edgewise.”

  Heat rose in my cheeks as I realized he was right. He gave me a look that might have included a wink—it was too fast to know for sure—then angled his chair toward me.

  “Listen,” he said, leaning forward, “I promise we won’t ask you any questions until you feel comfortable answering them. We’ll certainly wait for your attorney. In the meantime, do you mind if my colleague and I introduce ourselves?”

  I sat there staring at the scuffed tabletop, feeling—and probably looking—like a sulking child.

  He laughed and held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry, sorry. That was a question.” He shrugged and sat back.

  “Go ahead,” I said, trying to sound like I was doing them some huge favor. “Introduce away.”

  “Great. I’m Daniel Costello, Boston PD,” he said. “And this is Detective Stephanie Hagopian. She works in Concord.” He nodded toward the frizzy-haired woman, who blinked again.

  “I thought you both were from out of town,” I said.

  Costello shook his head. “Concord requested our assistance.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they believe the case has paranormal elements.”

  “You’re on the Goon Squad?” He sure didn’t look like one of the goons. And why hadn’t he come to pick me up? I almost wouldn’t have minded waking up to find him in my bedroom. Almost.

  He shook his head. “I’m in Homicide.”

  Homicide? Now we were getting down to it. I leaned forward to hear what this was all about.

  But Costello chose that moment to stop talking. He sat back, gazed somewhere over Hagopian’s head, and drummed his fingers on the table.

  My mind started putting the pieces together. Costello was a Homicide detective. Hagopian was from Concord. I’d been in Concord last night. My God. As soon as the thought struck me, I blurted it out. “Is it George? George Funderburk—you’re not saying he’s dead?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not saying anything yet, Ms. Vaughn. I think we’d better wait for Mr. Kane before we proceed,” he said. He checked his watch. “Would you like to call and see what’s delaying him?” He unclipped a cell phone from his belt and slid it toward me.

  I stared at the phone, not really seeing it while my mind whirred at two hundred miles a minute. It couldn’t be true. George had been fine when I left. But Concord, homicide—it had to be. Oh, God. What if Tina had caused more damage to his dreamscape than I’d realized? But that was ridiculous—no one ever died from a damaged dreamscape. Or did they? Just because I’d never heard of it didn’t mean it was impossible.

  But then maybe it wasn’t George. I’d left the guy snoozing happily just a few hours ago. Everything had been normal, routine. Everything except—A chill swept over me as I remembered. Everything except that weird feeling, that sense of evil, that had passed through the room. God, I wished Kane was here—maybe he could help me make sense of this. Fingers trembling, I reached for Costello’s phone.

  At that moment, the door opened and Kane strode in. “Vicky,” he said, breathless, “I got here as soon as I could.”

  Seeing him, his silver hair gleaming, his expression both worried and determined, was like seeing the sun break through the clouds. In his immaculate gray suit and steel-blue tie, he looked like the ultimate power broker. Definitely not someone to mess with. And he was on my side. I wanted to jump up and throw my arms around his neck, but I merely nodded.

  Introductions were made. Kane’s nostrils flared as he shook hands with Costello, his werewolf senses working overtime to sniff out an opinion of the guy. They seemed to have a couple of acquaintances in common—not unusual for a police detective and a lawyer. Hagopian still didn’t say anything. Kane glanced at her, and I could see him decide that Costello was the one to deal with. He leaned on the table with both hands and gave Costello a smile that straddled the line between camaraderie and aggression: be a pal or get your throat torn out—your call.

  “I may need a private conference with my client before she can answer any questions, Detective. But it would be helpful to have some idea of what this is all about.” He stood and spread his hands, reprising that chummy, sharp-toothed smile.

  “Certainly. As Ms. Vaughn already suspects, we’re investigating the death of one of her clients. George Funderburk.”

  I slumped in my chair, chilled all the way through by fear and guilt. I shouldn’t have left him alone. I should have cleared out that horrible presence, whatever the hell it was. But the truth was I’d been afraid, even then. I’d been in a hurry to go. “He was fine when I left,” I said, my voice barely a whimper.

  “Are you bringing charges against her?” Kane asked.

  Costello shook his head, but he was looking at me, not at Kane. His blue eyes regarded me with something I could’ve sworn was concern.

  “We’re not questioning you as a suspect, Ms. Vaughn,” Costello said. “We’re consulting you as an expert.”

  “Then why the hell did you have her dragged in here like some kind of criminal?”

  “I’m sorry about that.” Costello never shifted his gaze from me. He looked like he meant it about being sorry, a shadow deepening the blue of his eyes. “I haven’t had a lot of experience with . . . with Paranormal Americans. I was following standard procedure.” I started to look away, but something in those eyes held me, that and a note of urgency in his voice. “I’ll know better next time.”

  Kane stepped between us. “Let’s make sure there won’t be any next time, Detective.” He crouched beside my chair, his hand brushing my thigh. “Are you willing to talk to them, Vicky?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Costello let out his breath as though he’d been holding it for an hour. “Thank you,” he said, once more seeking and holding my gaze. Then he glanced at Detective Hagopian. To be honest, with all the testosterone floating around, I’d forgotten she was in the room. “Stephanie?”

  Hagopian jumped. Then she nodded and opened a notebook. She cleared her throat twice. “The death was . . . well, it wasn’t normal,” she said. “We know from documents found at the scene that you were there last night in your, ah, professional capacity. We’d like your opinion on whether Funderburk died as the result of a demon attack.”

  I shook my head. “I exterminated the whole pod. Besides, demons don’t kill. They torment. That’s how they feed. If the victim dies, the party’s over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Demons
are conjured entities. They don’t exist until someone invokes them. That someone can be a sorcerer out to hurt someone—that’s where Harpies come from—or it can be the victim himself.” Hagopian flinched, and I added, “Or herself.”

  “People conjure demons against themselves?” She raised a plucked-half-to-death eyebrow.

  “Not on purpose. But strong feelings of guilt or shame or fear can bring demons swarming to a victim like honeybees to a rose garden. Eidolons are personal demons that feed on guilt. Drudes feed on fear. They’re pretty similar, except Eidolons attack while you’re lying awake at night and Drudes invade your dreams.”

  Hagopian shuddered, and I got the feeling she’d had a personal encounter with a demon or two. Too bad that now wasn’t the time to make my sales pitch. Not that she’d be buying, seeing as how my last client turned up dead. I remembered his happy, off-key humming after the extermination. Poor old George.

  “Harpies,” I continued, “are revenge demons. Eidolons and Drudes can take many forms, but Harpies always look the same: They’ve got vulture bodies and Medusa heads, with snakes for hair and a beak for a mouth. They smell like garbage that’s baked in the sun for a week. Their screeching”—I tried to find a way to describe the brain-shredding noise Harpies made, but there were no words for it—“well, their screeching alone can drive a person insane.”

  Both detectives were watching me openmouthed, like kids listening to a scary campfire story they didn’t want to hear. Too bad. They’d dragged me here; they deserved all the juicy details. “Harpies attack from the outside. You’re lying in bed, and suddenly you can’t move. These hideous things—worse than any nightmare—fly through the wall and land on you, tearing into you with their talons. Then they begin to feed. It feels like they’re ripping out your vital organs. The agony lasts all night. The next morning, there’s no physical damage. But you can count on them returning night after night after night.”