Blood Flame

  “Who do you think it was? Were we followed?”

  Connor shook his head. “I haven’t a clue on either count. But he was probably connected to all the other events tonight.”

  “I have an idea.” She put her hand on his chest. “Take me into the air right now. I want to try something.”

  “Is this a witch thing?”

  She nodded. “Yes. You okay with that?”

  He offered a half-smile. “With you, I am.”

  Iris’s heart swelled, loving that he trusted her.

  Connor moved her to his left side, then lifted her onto his boot. When she had one arm wrapped around his neck, he drew her tight against his side. “Do you feel secure like this?”

  She ignored her racing heart. “I’ll get used to it.”

  With his right hand, he palmed his Glock once more, then rose slowly into the air. “Let me know what you want me to do.”

  She put her free hand on his chest for balance, but forced herself to watch her garden recede. “Keep going,” she murmured. “Higher, until I tell you to stop.”

  She said nothing more for thirty feet, then forty. But another few yards and she could feel the disturbed quality of the air. He must have felt it as well because he halted at about the same time she told him they’d gone far enough.

  “You feel it too?” she whispered.

  “I do.”

  She closed her eyes and focused on all the sensations still floating in the air. After a few seconds, she shivered.

  “What?”

  “I feel him, Connor. Though he’s gone, he’s left behind a sense of himself. He’s very dark and angry and there seems to be a kind of madness in him. And he’s powerful. But there’s something more. He feels familiar to me. Someone I met, but not recently. I just can’t quite figure out who.”

  A moment later, she shook her head. “It’s gone. You can take me back to the garden. Also, there’s something critical I feel I must do before we leave.”

  Connor lowered her swiftly.

  Once on solid ground, she went into her workroom where earlier she had almost employed a spell to get rid of her desire for Connor. Her efforts this time, however, had nothing to do with him.

  Using pestle and mortar, she quickly pulverized the resin of dragon’s blood into a powder. When she had a sufficient quantity, she moved into the house then headed straight to the front door. Bending down, she spread a thin line next to the entire threshold for security.

  She did the same at the French doors that opened onto her garden. Her plants swayed and moved with her as she silently invoked an incantation of protection. Not in all her years in Five Bridges had she felt the need to shield her home.

  Then she’d been called to Amado Bridge and everything had changed.

  She spread a final line inside her bedroom French doors and felt the protection lock into place.

  When she turned toward Connor, she saw that he watched her with a concerned frown pulling his brows together. “What did you just do? Because I felt as though your garden was ready to start a riot.”

  She explained about the spell. “I’ve just never had to worry before. Connor, what’s happening here? I don’t know what I’ve done to have brought this down on my head.”

  Connor drew close. “That’s what we need to find out and remember, you’re not alone here. I’m in this as much as you are.”

  “Right. Well, then we need to get to Rotten Row and see what Big Nuts has to say.”

  Connor was a fast flyer, which indicated his basic power level as a vampire as well as his age.

  His path led him on a northwesterly course back into Crescent Territory closer to Amado Bridge than to his home at the east end. She never traveled to Rotten Row on her own and the Tribunal had refused to send TPS officers to any of the crime scenes located in that area of Crescent.

  Rotten Row was run by several gangster types, each into drug-running, human trafficking and prostitution. The three main drug-lords had numerous establishments there as well.

  She felt Connor slow his speed, though he remained at least forty feet up in the air. She realized she’d gained confidence in his flying ability and was able to look down all the time now.

  Gaudy lights flashed from nearly every venue down a street that extended a full four miles. A variety of music pulsed in the air, most of it loud. Hundreds of young women, a good number of them human and dressed in next to nothing, strolled the sidewalk.

  Cars cruised, pulling over often. Women would get in and maybe they’d never be seen again. Or they’d be dumped in No Man’s Land, a desolate place in the middle of Five Bridges also called the Graveyard. None of the five species lived in that pitted, barren area.

  “You keep sighing.”

  “I do? I hadn’t realized I was. But this is so hard to take, this part of our world. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever make progress.”

  “I know what you mean.” Connor cruised at a slow pace now, but still well above the lights.

  “Did you know that when the Tribunal clean-up squads go out to the Graveyard at dawn, they cart off as many as twenty bodies every night, most of them women? And oftentimes a couple of them aren’t even dead.”

  “I know. We’ve got a tragedy on our hands.”

  Early on, before becoming a TPS officer, she’d gotten a job at the Tribunal. She’d been assigned to the missing persons desk. Residents of Phoenix would call to report that a loved one had disappeared and her job would be to locate them if possible, which was rarely.

  There’d been one case that had shredded her heart. She’d worked with a young husband named Evan, who’d been a talented tax accountant for a powerful Paradise Valley mover-and-shaker. Evan had gone to a Christmas party with his pregnant wife, Heather, and from that expensive home, she’d had been abducted.

  Evan had called the Tribunal, desperate to find his wife. With a Trib passport, Iris had left Five Bridges to meet Evan at his Phoenix home so that she could get a picture of Heather as well as to take some personal things with her to be used in casting a spell.

  For the first few weeks, she’d made progress, and her spell seemed to be having a strong effect. She would locate someone who had seen Heather and who was willing to talk. She’d gain some information then learn of another person who would share with her as well.

  Evan called several times a night for a progress report. The Tribunal wouldn’t allow him to search for his wife on his own because of the risk the cartels posed to his own life if he started asking questions. Iris knew he was frantic with worry.

  She followed up quickly on each lead. She’d been able to confirm that Heather had been taken into Five Bridges, specifically into Crescent Territory. She was being used as a prostitute, which was terrible all on its own. But Iris had known it was the best possible news because Heather hadn’t been given an alter serum, which meant she was alive and still human. Her captors, however, were keeping her strung out on blood flame and the drug would be hard on her baby.

  Iris had kept nothing back from Evan. She’d been up front from the beginning, especially about his wife’s odds of survival as well as the child she carried.

  At the two-month mark, however, when her investigation led her way-too-close to one of the drug-lords, Donaldson had told her to close the file.

  Iris had begged to be allowed to continue. She’d been so hopeful of a positive outcome. But Donaldson had insisted; she wasn’t to spend another second on Heather’s case.

  One of the hardest things she’d ever done was to pay Evan a final visit. She’d wept when she told him that her superior had shut the investigation down.

  Evan had grown very calm and Iris knew he’d begun the process of acceptance, that he would probably never see his wife again.

  A week later, Iris had received a report that included a picture of a very pregnant woman shot down in a drug raid. She knew at once the woman was Evan’s wife since she had a photo of her. Besides, every witch instinct she had told Iris who the woman was
. For whatever reason, Heather’s captors had decided to use her to run drugs.

  Evan had confirmed the woman’s identity. He’d taken Heather back to Phoenix, buried his wife and their unborn son, and she’d never seen him again.

  But the way Evan had been so desperate to recover Heather during those early days and weeks now burned as Iris’s prime motivation. Somehow, she would be part of the process, no matter how long it took, to create a decent society within Five Bridges.

  Her own unfortunate path to becoming an alter witch might not have been something she’d asked for. But she’d come to accept her fate and intended to make the most of it.

  Even if it meant heading into the worst part of Crescent, into a place known as home to several death squads.

  ~ ~ ~

  A few minutes later, Connor descended in stages down to the street, though he remained levitating. The noise was almost deafening from the constant honking of cars, to women shouting and music exploding from one establishment to the next.

  Several vampires were in the air, levitating in a drunk way. One of them slammed into the running lights of a one-hour hotel, sending sparks flashing as he tumbled to the sidewalk. Hard.

  “Oh, dear God,” Iris murmured.

  Connor followed the line of Iris’s sight and saw why she sounded distressed. The vampire’s skull had cracked open and blood poured onto the cement.

  He turned her away from the carnage, levitated above the traffic and flew across to the entrance of the House of Big Sex. A red sign flashed steadily, ‘Big-Women-All-the-Time’.

  Connor knew better than to try to enter the establishment once he touched down on concrete. He slowly moved Iris off his boot, but kept his arm around her waist, holding her tight.

  He hadn’t discussed strategy with her, which meant on some level he trusted her instincts to go with the flow. He knew she’d been a TPS officer for over nine years and he relied on her experience to help see this encounter with Gary through.

  Big Nuts had some of the meanest shifter bouncers and bodyguards of anyone on the Row. Two of them approached him now, mouths in tight, grim lines, eyes small and feral, noses sniffing the air. Very shifter.

  He addressed the taller one, meeting his gaze dead on. “Alejandro. We need to see your boss.” He knew by long habit how to read the hierarchy among the fur-beasts and Alejandro, with the sides of his head shaved clean and heavy tattoos running from his scalp down the sides of his neck, was an alpha.

  He ran Gary’s entire security force.

  Alejandro met his gaze, nostrils flaring as he swept his dark, beady eyes to Iris. “No fucking witches allowed. Bosses orders.”

  “He’ll want to see this one. She knew the bridge would blow and we’re both alive because of it.”

  Connor had a decent working relationship with Big Nuts, primarily because Gary only accepted willing workers and never killed them off. Of course, by the time each came to him, they were strung out on flame, which made it easy to control the women who worked for him.

  Alejandro shifted his gaze several times between the two of them. He didn’t look convinced and gestured for his partner to form a barrier between Connor and the door. He disappeared inside for a moment.

  When he reappeared, he signaled for them to follow.

  “Here we go,” he whispered to Iris.

  To her credit, Iris moved right with him, not hesitating once, though he did notice she kept her palm on the butt of her Sig.

  Once inside, he slowed his pace, needing a moment to adjust. The women in Big Nuts’s stable were all large women, some even super-sized with narrow strips of silk tucked between erotic rolls. Several were actively engaged in a variety of sex acts with various patrons. The club hummed, moaned, and screamed with activity.

  “Do you see that?” Iris whispered. She was doing a good job of keeping pace with him since Alejandro was moving fast across the expansive club, heading to the hallway beyond.

  “You mean the women?” Was she referring to the obvious? Or was it something else?

  “Several of them are pregnant.”

  He took a couple of seconds to do a deeper search of the room and she was right. Not only were there large women serving the clientele but several average-sized women who were with child.

  He’d only been inside Gary’s club a few times, but he’d never noticed pregnant women before. Of course, he hadn’t been looking, either. Connor’s work was centered on drug-running, not sex-for-sale enterprises. Any business he’d had with Big Nuts would have involved seeking information about a runner.

  ~ ~ ~

  Iris tried to ignore the smells assaulting her from within the oh-so-fine establishment. She smelled sex and a variety of body odors, a cigar stench and somewhere a layering of beer and vomit.

  Having reached the opposite side of the room and passed down a narrow hall, Alejandro stood outside a doorway. Two plump, naked beauties held back a pair of blue velvet curtains. Iris half-expected Big Nuts to be reclining on pillows with several women servicing him.

  Instead, he sat behind a desk, smoking a cigar, his eyes narrowed as if in some discomfort. Four bodyguards, in addition to Alejandro, were stationed around the room.

  She forced herself to take deep breaths, not because she was frightened, but because the wood-paneling of the room was trying to talk to her, screaming at her.

  Violence was part of night-life in the Row. So of course the organic elements of the room would try to gain her attention, to warn her away. She even thought about attempting a calming spell. But she knew the moment she lit up her witch skills, one of the vampires present would probably cut her throat.

  Big Nuts looked her up and down. He was bald, had a wide nose, and wore a black tank like Connor that showcased his shoulder tattoos, one of them a screaming skull. “You’re pretty for a witch. Too skinny, though.” As an alter species, he could tell she was a witch just as she knew he was a vampire.

  He rose from his chair, then rounded the desk to plant his ass on the corner, legs wide. He wore snug, leopard print pants.

  Okay, she couldn’t help herself. Her gaze dropped to the bulge across his groin and there they were, about the size of softballs, which was probably the most accurate description possible in every respect. There was nothing sexy in the display, however. Rather, she felt like she was standing next to a cage at the zoo, looking at an animal she’d never seen before.

  Gary’s nickname suited him extremely well.

  When she could finally lift her gaze to his face, he wore a satisfied smile and took a drag on his fat cigar. It was as though God had given him a single outstanding asset and he worked it like a one-ring circus.

  “So you knew the bridge would blow. That a witch thing?”

  “My witch thing. Yes.”

  “Yeah, you witches have a complete panorama of gifts. I lose track. And I never use one of your kind in my club, in case you’re offering.”

  “I’m not.”

  Big Nuts’s gaze slid to Connor. “What d’you want, anyway, Officer?”

  Connor’s deep voice rolled through the room. “Heard a rumor you sent a runner my way tonight. A woman with a fake jacket. I need to know why.”

  Iris felt the tenor of the room change, like a first strike of lightning in a thunder storm. It was a warning from a spiritual plane and she knew she couldn’t ignore it.

  She drew her gun, whirled, then settled her back against Connor’s arm. She was essentially at a right-angle to him. He didn’t move, yet she could feel his body had drawn up into a single tense line, ready for action as well.

  Big Nuts’s bodyguard force came to attention during the same split-second of movement. Blades came out and a couple of hand guns.

  “Back-off,” Iris cried out, “or I’ll start shooting because I don’t give a damn who dies here tonight. Not me, not Connor, not any of you.”

  There was a joint intake of breath. A few of the bodyguards muttered a string of expletives. A witch making threats in a Crescent T
erritory establishment was something to be feared.

  Gary waved a hand. “Put your weapons away.”

  Big Nuts’s force obeyed immediately, though all eyes were on her.

  “What are you doing?” Connor asked, nudging her gently with his arm from behind.

  “Protecting your ass.”

  For some reason, this made Connor chuckle. “Thanks, but I got this.”

  “You sure? Because I felt a premonition glide through the room. I think maybe you need to ask Big Nuts here who paid him to set you up?” Iris didn’t shift position. The warning still registered with her like an itch on her skin. She kept her gaze moving from the shifters she could see back to the velvet curtains and the two women ready to reopen them on command. Each stood with eyes wide and panicked.

  Connor’s voice once more rolled through the space. “So, Gary, why did you set me up?”

  “It was all in fun. I sent Tammy out there myself just to give you a hard time. No one else had a hand in it. This is on me.”

  Iris didn’t hesitate to share her thoughts. “He’s lying.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Connor loved that Iris was as deeply engaged in the process as he was and he could feel her witchness as she stayed connected to his arm. She’d also brought the real issue to the forefront, exactly where it needed to be.

  He began again, holding Gary’s gaze tight. “Now, why do you want to lie to me? Haven’t I always been fair with you? When was the last time I raided your establishment?”

  “Never.”

  “Exactly. So, why the runner?”

  Big Nuts released a heavy sigh. “All right. Someone wanted you to kill her. He was sure you would. Said you had a habit of putting innocent women in the grave.”

  Clearly, whoever was after him knew the worst parts of his history.

  “And how did you know Tammy? She was too thin to be one of your big women.”

  “She came to me pregnant and knew I hired a few women who could sport the belly. She did good for a while but she pounded down blood flame like you wouldn’t believe and I had to let her go. When I was approached with a boatload of cash, I knew Tammy would do whatever I asked. I was right.”