Chapter 1
Alberton, Maryland
Monotony was the grease that made the wheels of the world turn which was a damn unattractive idea when you thought about it. Seven months’ worth of medical leave and Special Agent Richard Donovan was seriously considering breaking the law just to shake things up.
At 5:45 in the morning, the summer-laced heat of the city was already pounding against his bedroom window. He rolled over in his single bed, a layer of sweat sticking to his back. The upstairs neighbor to his single bedroom apartment was already doing her morning cardio routine. During those first few groggy moments of hearing an 80-year-old woman sweating to the oldies, Donovan caught the last of the early morning news, and went through a series of doctor-prescribed stretches designed to be therapeutic.
Apparently, therapy and torture were cousins.
Steadfastly ignoring the pangs of his healing body, he slid a weighted wrap around his wrist and began to lift and lower one arm, counting slowly to fifteen. He repeated it until his arm started to shake. It was ten more than he'd been able to do last week. Next week he'd do ten more.
Donovan appreciated the stretch and strain of the muscle that hadn't been there weeks before. He didn't appreciate how weak all that sinew still was. He wanted to be strong again.
A sharp sensation stabbed through his side, and he shoved the weights back into place. Four months after the fact and his body was still bugging him. It was a kick while he was down, and Donovan didn't much appreciate it. At least he wasn‘t taking thirty pills a day anymore. A man could only choke down so many prescriptions before he felt like a doctor-approved junky.
With shaking arms he made his bed, military style, and heard old Mrs. Abernathy from upstairs wander to her kitchen. That meant that it was time for the treadmill.
The television was telling him it was late November in southern Maryland. It rambled on in a white noise of pop culture stories, political shenanigans, local and national crime, and weather.
He hit the one-and-a-half mile mark when the newscasters signed off with cheery smiles. His side was beginning to pulse in time with his breathing.
“Good Morning, Maryland!”
Donovan glanced up. A thirty-something woman with trim legs and carefully styled blond hair was greeting a live studio audience with a smile that blazed out of the screen. “I’m Veronica Johnson and this...” She paused dramatically, her smile becoming a touch brighter. “…is your wake up call.” She crossed her stilts flashing a long line of country club tan skin.
Talk shows. Worse, early morning talk shows.
Donovan was eyeing his bedroom for the remote as the woman went on.
“It’s no surprise that the topic of today’s discussion is the newly elected Senator from New York. He’s about to celebrate his 317th birthday and doesn’t look a day over thirty! You all know who I am talking about. Our very first Vampiric statesman, Kohleman Weiss.” The crowd applauded with unbridled enthusiasm. The little screen attached to his treadmill was blaring at him for slowing down.
Screw the remote. Donovan looked for his gun.
The pretty blond held up her hands, “Now, now. It’s still too early in the day for the good Senator from New York to be with us, but he was darling enough to grant me an interview last evening…”
She trailed off dramatically as the screen flashed to a different room, sparsely decorated in muted tones of gray and mauve. The lights were dim. The hostess was sitting in a plush gray chair wearing a conservative business suit matched with a nice little scarf to cover up her neck. Donovan wondered if she was trying to look professional or just hiding the goods.
Regally perched across from her in a second chair was a man thick with Germanic heritage, complete with heavy brows and a wave of shoulder-length hair.
“Senator Weiss, first let me congratulate you on your landslide election.”
“Danke, Miss Johnson.” The Senator bowed his head with liquid grace. His cultured voice held only the barest touch of an accent. His skin was ruddy tan, and his hair was the fragile yellow of someone who didn't get out much. The senator’s upper lip sported a thick mustache several generations out of style. “You are far too kind.”
The bastard could have passed for human if it hadn't been for the way he moved. It was too smooth for a human, and too still. A person moved. They twitched. They Sweat. They gave all these small signs that they were alive. Vampires, no matter how much they interacted with the still-breathing, didn't. Weiss sat rigidly straight, puffed up with all the pride 317 years of power gave you.
“Senator,” Miss Johnson began, “you were the proverbial face of the Mythos Act.”
He gave a small incline of his head, “From its infancy.”
“Seventeen years, wasn't it?”
He pressed a finger to his lip, tapping twice. “Closer to twenty, if my memory serves.”
“It has been the subject of some rather zealous controversy, what with its demand for anyone, paranormal and supernatural heritage or abilities, to be granted U.S. citizenship en masse.”
He took the finger away from his lip and gave an elegant shrug. “True enough, Ms. Johnson, true enough. But what great changes in this country haven't come with their share of controversy?”
She plowed on. “Now that it has passed, the U.S. government is obligated to make certain concessions to the supernatural community. Ones that are being carried out as we speak.” She sifted through some notes in her lap. “The integration of shape shifter youths into schools, the ending of mandatory service requirements for orcs. A plethora of others…”
“I do not believe I am hearing a question, Ms. Johnson.” Senator Weiss linked his fingers in his lap and smiled pleasantly.
“Well, Senator, of these numerous concessions, which do you think will be the most difficult to implement?”
Donovan was pretty sure all of them. The entire Act and its amendments to what citizenship was and how the U.S. would treat the monsters, or paranormal citizens if you wanted to be politically correct about it, was going to set the whole damn system on end. It had raised a lot of questions and even more debate. Parents screamed about sending werewolf or feyish or orcish children to school with their human children. As far as Donovan was concerned, they had a good point.
Yeah, all right, the nonhumans made up less than nine percent of the nation's populace, but it really wasn't about numbers. What was the point of any regular human kid trying out for track or football anymore? When should a Vampire get Social Security? What were the rights of Hunters? How did you police a mage? For that matter how did you bring down a raging werewolf? Would you? Should you?
At nearly seven miles on his treadmill, Donovan had soaked his shirt and was breathing deep. He knew a werewolf could run flat out for hours without breaking a sweat. Christ.
Kohlman Weiss sat back in the plush gray chair. His tailored suit settling around him in that smooth way only high quality fabric would.
“It is a difficult question, Miss Johnson, and you do your vocation credit by asking it. Many people aren't happy with the changes and still others are calling for more changes to be made. But if one was obliged to choose, I believe incorporating ourselves into government jobs will be the most difficult.”
She pounced on that answer with the bright smile and steely gaze of a blooded reporter.
“A lot of the mundane community feels that paranormal citizens haven’t earned these positions. They are just being given jobs.” She motioned widely with her hands.
“You are right. They are being given these jobs.”
“So you understa-”
He held up his hands and neatly cut her off. “But to say they have not earned them is a stretch at the very least.” His hands gripped the arm rests, and his lips thinned into a wide line.
“Please, tell the lycanthrope to ignore the deaths of his lunar brothers at a Hunter's silver bullet. Inform the fey who were slaughtered in rituals of beauty transference that th
eir deaths should be ignored. The vampires accused of blood stealing, a multitude of others. Trust me, Miss Johnson, they have earned these chances. The important thing to remember here is that the paranormal class is not asking for handouts. We are asking for a chance to prove ourselves. A chance we have not been previously offered.”
“But you got to your previous positions without the Mythos Act.” She pointed out, undeterred by his dramatic speech.
“True enough. But not everyone has been granted 250 years in a state with an active night life to do so.”
Donovan didn’t bother to listen to more. He snatched the remote and flipped the television off, continuing his run in silence.
It all left a bad taste in his mouth. It had been simple not so long ago. Monsters were the bad guys, and Humans were the good guys...most of the time. But, oh wait, they didn't even get to be called 'human' anymore. They were 'mundane humanoids'.
Utterly disgusted, Donovan turned off his treadmill and broke pattern by ignoring his second round of weights. Suddenly what he really wanted was a shower. His doctor would wag a finger at him. His doctor could go to hell.
Twenty-seven weeks since Richard Donovan had been put on medical leave to heal from injuries received in the line of duty. Yeah, that’s how they put it. Injuries. Apparently, nearly having your entire left side ripped away was just, you know, an injury. Like a splinter.
He flipped on the water and sat on the tub’s edge while steam filled up his little bathroom. He was tired, and it had nothing to do with his workout.
The blaze of scalding water blasted away the sweat. It was a miracle that he had survived at all, they said. He must have quite the constitution, healthy as a horse, and a lot of other clichés revolving around his physical state. Screw that nonsense. Donovan just hadn't felt like giving up. Irish spring soap lathered away the anamnesis of the intensive care unit. He went through the motions of soaping up as his mind wandered.
He turned in the shower and let the hot water run over a thick patch of pink and white scar tissue. He stretched his left arm up as high as it would let him, wrapping his hand around the nozzle. Just the feel of it conjured up images of month-old bodies and putrid bile. Teeth caked with blackened blood gnashed in the dark recesses of his memory.
Screw that.
He shut off the water and with it the memory he couldn’t change.
Donovan ignored his razor for the fifth day in a row. He paused to glance in the mirror and wonder what he might look like with a beard. It was, after all, the only place hair seemed to want to grow anymore. He’d traded in pimples for wrinkles somewhere during his forty years, and he wasn’t sure the transaction was a fair one. Maybe he could make up for it by having some hair on his face. Maybe it would distract from the jagged scar that wound its way over his left eyebrow.
Screw it, Donovan thought as he left the bathroom behind him. He hadn't ever thought of himself as a GQ boy anyway. Truthfully, he was deceptively average looking. His face was made of hard chiseled lines that he'd inherited from his mother’s Roman background, but his build was all middle-of-nowhere European, stocky without a lot of definition. Passable, but he missed his hair.
Rumor had it that there were a couple of studies that were thinking about using the regenerative cells of lycanthropes to help with male-patterned baldness. Uh-huh. He’d be the first to jump on that particular truck.
What he wanted more than a full head of hair was to go back to work. He never thought about this crap when he had a good case to pour himself into.
Donovan was pulling on a pair of worn corduroys when his phone began to rumble through Walk the Line. It must be Tuesday. Moreover, it must be Momma.
Rebecca “Momma” Donovan had been married to an admiral in the Navy and been known to order him about. She liked titles, schedules, and politeness. She had survived polio, cancer, and giving birth to nine boys and one girl. The woman was an industry unto herself. Momma Donovan called every Tuesday. If she hadn't had such an active social life down at the retirement community five states over, she would be here making sure her third son ate right and got better. Donovan was happy to pay to keep her there.
“Hi, Momma.”
“There’s my boy. You doing your exercises?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” He wandered towards the kitchen, knowing she'd ask about food soon. “I was just finishing up when you called.”
“Good boy. Are you eating right?”
He pulled some eggs out of the fridge. “I am.”
“They letting you come back to work?”
God he hoped so. “Soon, Momma, have a few more tests I have to go through.”
“Tests? What kind of tests?” She sounded worried. No doubt she was picturing all sorts of movie-inspired horrors.
“Gotta make sure I have full use of my arm. Then I have to have a psych test. Make sure I’m not crazy.”
He heard his mother tsk haughtily through the phone. “My boy isn’t crazy. You went through something. Happens to men in your line of work. They shouldn’t hold it against you.”
Donovan silently agreed. “They aren’t holding it against me, Momma. They're just making sure I’m ready. It’s protocol. They need me to be healthy.”
“Oh bah! What do they know about it? Healthy. They don't know anything. It isn’t healthy to keep a man out of work this long. Men are supposed to work. It’s their way. Your father died just two years after he retired because he had nothing to do. You would get better if you could do something. Maybe I should talk to your boss.”
Donovan resisted the urge to thwack his head against something hard. He couldn’t hate his mother. She meant the best. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m fine, really I am.”
“Well, you just let me know.” She didn't sound entirely convinced.
“Of course, Momma.” No way in hell.
“I spoke to Melody today.”
“Mom…I have to go,” he said, grasping for the only excuse she would appreciate. “I need to eat.”
“One of these days we are going to talk about this. You know that right?”
“Not today.”
“Alright dear, I’ll talk to you soon. I love you.”
“Love you, too.” He said and clicked the phone shut before she could drop any more drama on his shoulders. He had no desire to talk to or about Melody. He needed food.
Donovan had just cracked the eggs into a pan when his cell phone was ringing again. This happened rather often, too. Ten or twenty minutes after he hung up with his mother, she would call again to remind him of something he was already aware of.
He flipped it open, “Mom, I…”
“S.A. Donovan, I am not your mother.”
The voice was female, crisp and concise. It was definitely not the warm, somewhat flighty, tone of his mother. Though the cadence was similar. “Well, who is it then?”
There was the tiniest of pauses. “Constance Gray.”
Donovan felt his stomach sink a few inches. “Assistant Director?”