Banshee Charmer (Files from the Otherworlder Enforcement Agency, #1) Read online

  I scrolled down the list, and saw too many species to go through. Nothing other than the wraiths, baku, incubi, and succubi were known for being powerful enough to actually kill something through draining. I clicked in the “search within results” box and typed “sex.” The enter key made a loud click in my otherwise silent house. Rather than pull my hair out watching the page load, I went and grabbed another beer. When I got back to the laptop, there were only two species left on the list.

  I rubbed my eyes, not surprised, but I’d hoped for some beastie out there I hadn’t heard of that fit the bill. Nothing else even came close. Not a creature anyone knew about, anyway. Every otherworlder species that existed, now or in the past, claimed its share of space in the OWID. As the words “incubus” and “succubus” flashed at me from the screen, I wondered how I was going to convince anyone that a succubus was running around killing women while making it look like her victims had been killed by a man, or that incubi weren’t extinct after all.

  A loud knock startled me. I snapped the laptop shut and made my way to the door. The vision through the peephole made me sigh.

  “Well hello, beautiful,” Aidan said when I pulled the door open. He held up a six-pack of beer and waved the bottles hypnotically at me. “Can I come in?”

  I waved him inside, grabbing a bottle as he passed, and then followed him to the dining room.

  “Did you find anything we missed?” I asked, already knowing the answer. The paranormal unit ran a tight ship.

  “No, your team was very thorough. What did you find out?” He picked up the bottle opener I’d left on the table, and held his palm out. I gave him my beer and he flipped the lid off, then handed it back to me before opening his own.

  “Our local sensitive checked out the most recent vic. She was drained of her life force. Astrid’s calling that COD.” I gestured at the laptop. “I’m seeing a few things that can kill that way, but only a couple fit.”

  “Let me guess: succubi and their incubi cousins.”

  I took a sip of my beer. “Yup.”

  He hesitated. “Look, I know this is a little rude to ask, but…your banshee powers, do they extend to the visions?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “No. Why is that relevant?”

  “It might come in handy if they did.”

  “Do you really think that if I got visions of people dying before it happened that I’d be in this line of work? Hell, if I was a true banshee, do you think I’d be living with humans?”

  He shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. “I knew it was a long shot, but I had to ask.”

  “Do you know how banshee society operates?”

  “Probably not as well as you. I know that they can usually see when someone near them is going to die. And their screams are fatal.”

  “That’s true—to a certain extent. Their screams can kill and, unfortunately, most banshees scream when they’re hit with a vision. That’s why they live away from humans.”

  “But all banshees are women, right?” He grinned. “How do they, you know, make little banshees?”

  “Some journey out to mate with humans. They only produce female children, and only keep the ones who inherit their full range of abilities. The rest are discarded as half-breeds.”

  “Discarded?”

  “Oh yes,” I said bitterly. “Literally. Like trash.”

  “I’m surprised law enforcement around their reservations allows them to journey into human territories, let alone toss out their young.”

  “It’s not legal, but they’re difficult to police. I mean, I wouldn’t want to try to stop a full-blooded banshee. Plus, they look like humans. So unless you catch one crossing the reservation line, they can be hard to ID.” I rested the cold beer against my cheek. What was this? My third? No wonder I was so chatty.

  “So what happened with you?” Aidan murmured.

  I shrugged. “My dad was in Ireland for the summer. He’d just graduated high school and wanted to see his homeland or some such nonsense before college. He met my mom in a small village. He stayed, and so did she. He doesn’t talk about it much, but I guess they cared for each other. She cared enough to leave me with him after I was born instead of tossing me into the ocean.”

  “Well, you seem to have turned out okay without her in your life.” He leaned toward me, forearms resting against the table in front of him. “Gotta be kind of lonely, though. I don’t think I’ve ever met a half-banshee before. I’ve met a couple full-blooded ones. Well, fully powered ones, really. But never what they call half-bloods. I’ve never met anyone quite like you.”

  Well, wasn’t I special? I cleared my throat. “Yeah, well, I was raised by a good man.” I had to get the subject off my parentage before I got weepy. Damn, definitely too many beers. “Did you get along with your family?”

  Pain flared behind his eyes, gone as quickly as it had appeared. “I never knew my dad. He…wasn’t exactly the marrying kind.”

  I opened my mouth to press him for more information, but stopped. An angry Aidan I could push, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to deal with a troubled one.

  “Look,” I said, finally. “Let’s get back to the case. The only OWs I can figure for it are succubi and incubi. Have you come across anything else in your investigation that might fit?”

  “Nope.”

  …

  The headache pressing against the back of my eyes hadn’t improved much with my first cup of coffee, and neither had my mood. I leaned against the wall in front of the office door, holding my second cup in one hand and an open book on succubi in the other, with a file tucked tenuously between my arm and chest. I didn’t have high hopes that a headache would be the worst of my problems today.

  The door clicked open and a man who appeared to be in his late twenties stepped out wearing a dark suit, sans tie. The tailored outfit looked too pricey for a cop, and I could have ID’d him from that alone. “Mac,” Detective Claude Desmarais said as he walked past.

  “Claude,” I muttered to the detective, and headed into the office he’d just vacated.

  “Sit down, Mac.” Lieutenant Vasquez, the Hispanic man behind the desk, was only an inch or two taller than me, but made up for his lack of height with broad shoulders and large biceps, although his rounding midsection revealed that his job now required him to work from a desk every day. A full head of dark hair belied his age—I knew for a fact he was in his mid-fifties. I often wondered if he dyed his hair, but that wasn’t something I was willing to ask him even if I’d had a few beers.

  “Lieutenant,” I said, sitting on the chair across from him. I set my coffee and book on the desk, gripping the file in my hands.

  After signing the paper he’d been reading, he looked up at me. “Okay, what do you got?”

  “I think we’ve got an incubus. Possibly a succubus.” No one would ever call me indirect.

  He leaned back in his chair and studied me. I stared right back at him, tempering my usual glare to a solid cop face.

  He let out a muttered string of expletives, his voice low enough that I couldn’t make out any word but “freaks.” Then he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face. “Aren’t incubi supposed to be extinct?”

  “They’re supposed to be, yes.”

  The muscles in his jaw tensed and he crossed his arms. “Okay, tell me.”

  “We’ve got two victims here, and several more who could be connected in other jurisdictions. I’m looking into it. All the vics are women. All dead with no physical cause. All had sex before they died. I’ve got oh-dubs going on the latest vic this week. Oh, and Astrid called last night and confirmed the woman had been drained of her life force and that’s likely what killed her.”

  “You think the killer isn’t a succubus because?”

  “Did Whitman tell you it was?”

  “She de
nied it, but Amanda said it was a possibility when she called me from the scene.”

  I frowned. Could Marisol really say a succubus hadn’t killed her? “Spermicide from a condom was found in our first vic. Once they get around to the autopsy I’m sure they’ll find it in the second, too.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t a succubus, or some other kind of copycat freak who’s worked out a way to mimic an incubus’s M.O. Would be a good way to throw us off the trail.”

  “Could be. I haven’t ruled anything out—especially not the possibility that it’s a succubus. The only other OWers I’ve found that could psychically drain someone to the point of death are wraiths and baku. But neither fit the sex angle. If we had a wraith on our hands we’d see several victims every night, all clumped together. Baku feed off dreams, slowly driving their victims insane. There wasn’t anything slow about this. A succubus or incubus is the only thing that fits.” I paused, trying to figure out the right wording that wouldn’t make Vasquez laugh his ass off at a cop being so convinced by her feelings. “My gut says incubus,” I said, finally.

  Vasquez didn’t agree or disagree with my gut, or with my analysis of the freaks capable of the murders. Instead he said, “So what’re we looking at if it is an incubus?”

  “Database seems to indicate they have pretty much the same powers as a succubus. They exude sex appeal, probably varies how much from incubus to incubus, just like with succubi. They can drain energy from their victims, which probably gives them additional power.” I shrugged. “But one hopped up on the energy of so many victims? Hell, who knows what kind of power that could give him? There are stories of powerful incubi being able to control their victims with their power, but it’s hard to separate fact from fiction when the latest info is over one hundred years old.”

  He held out his hand and I passed him the paperwork on the first victim, Claire Simons. While he perused the file, I nursed my second cup of coffee. The caffeine was finally kicking in against my headache. It wasn’t winning yet but I had hope.

  “All right,” he said a few minutes later. Flipping the file closed, he passed it back to me over the table. “Let me know what else you find out. We need to nab this guy. And don’t screw this up, Mac. If the killer really is an incubus then this case will make the news every-damn-where. We don’t want to be the department that botches the takedown. We’ll have to look into a contracted witch in a few days if you and Amanda don’t make any headway. And while you’re at it, tell her to call me. I haven’t heard from her since her initial report after you guys left Rebecca Anderson’s.”

  Dread swirled in my stomach, making me suddenly nauseous. It wasn’t like Amanda to go this long without talking to me. Then again, it wasn’t entirely unlike her either. But if Vasquez wanted me to pull her in, she hadn’t been reporting to him either. Chances were she was fine, just doing a little undercover witchcraft that wasn’t fully sanctioned, and rightfully laying low. I told that to my stomach, but it ignored me.

  “Will do.”

  “You’ve got a suspect to question,” he said. I got up from my chair. I raised an eyebrow and he added, “Desmarais will fill you in.”

  “Claude? Why’s he involved?”

  “It’s a vamp lead.”

  “What the hell? There’s no indication that these are vamp kills.” I leaned toward him and lowered my voice. “Seriously, Vasquez. I don’t have time to follow a wild goose chase just because you don’t like vamps.”

  Vasquez pushed away from his desk and leaned toward me. Redness crawled up his neck and his face tightened. “Don’t push me, Mac. You’ll follow up on this lead, or you’ll find your ass behind a desk before you can say bloodsucker.”

  Chapter Three

  Claude Desmarais stood in front of Interview Room Two with a folder tucked under one arm and a Styrofoam coffee cup in the opposite hand. At just over six feet tall, with light brown hair long enough to tuck behind his ears, the man looked more like a surfer or snowboarder than a dead man. Even with Claude’s slightly pale skin, most would never guess he was a vampire. He didn’t exude the aura of fear that rolled off most vamps.

  He handed me the coffee when I approached and I nodded in thanks, placing the Styrofoam cup into the now-empty one I held in my hand. Vampires were the only type of undead who were classified as people, which meant they couldn’t be discriminated against at work—though I’d never seen one working as a doctor or elementary school teacher. But laws were laws, so Vasquez had no choice but to keep Claude on the squad. Despite old lore to the contrary, banshees weren’t undead, just people with an extra powerful set of lungs. I’d worked with Claude before and he was pretty decent, for a man who ate blood to stay alive.

  “I’m perfectly capable of questioning a vampire on my own. Why is Vasquez insisting on your involvement?” I asked, shooting Claude a small smile to take the edge off my tone. I was still pissed at Vasquez, but that didn’t mean I had to take it out on Claude. I concentrated on calming down and repeated my mantra in my head. You’re a fucking professional. You’re a professional.

  “Because the suspect Vasquez has invited to join us is a Chevalier.”

  “There’s a member of the Chevalier family in our interview room?” I gestured to the door next to him, trying to keep my voice even.

  He barked out a laugh. “I’m afraid Monsieur Chevalier has declined our invitation to speak with us at the station. We are going to him.” A slight French accent touched his lips when he spoke the French word and name, but otherwise he sounded like he’d been born and raised in the Midwest.

  “And why are we interviewing a member of the Magister’s family?”

  “His son, Nicolas, worked with your first victim.” He pulled the folder out from under his arm and flipped it open. “Claire Simons. Vasquez believes we need to interview him.” Claude’s tone left little doubt about his feelings on the subject.

  “I take it you think we’re wasting our time?”

  “Were your victims missing a significant amount of blood? Did you find any bite marks?”

  It wasn’t a question, not really. He’d read the reports. “And you’re stuck on this wild-goose chase because?” I asked.

  “The Chevalier family has requested my presence.”

  Of course they had. Despite laws protecting them, vampires had suffered more than most species since all otherworlders had been forced to come out into the public eye, because of all the new scientific advances—particularly in forensics. They were dead, after all, and powerful. Both of those traits scared people. Oh, they’d concealed how powerful they really were when they revealed themselves to humanity, and continued to do so, I suspected. It was understandable that the Chevaliers would want a vampire police officer present during any questioning. And Claude was the highest-ranking vampire on the force.

  “All right, then. Let’s get this done.” I downed the rest of the coffee, happy to find it had cooled a bit during our discussion. The dark liquid had the perfect amount of sugar. Trust Claude to remember such a small detail.

  I followed him, shrugging away his offer to give me a ride in his shiny new hot rod. I didn’t want to linger at the Chevalier house or end up stuck with another to-do from the lieutenant when we got back to the station. I had my own priorities. Ones that didn’t involve catering to Vasquez’s pet prejudices.

  …

  I followed Claude to an estate tucked into a close suburb. It was near the forest preserve and mostly out of sight behind vegetation cleverly planted to hide a tall fence running the full length of the property. The gloomy morning fit the place, or maybe it only seemed to because of the occupants. I’d been to the Magister’s home only once before, although I hadn’t met the Magister himself. Amanda and I had accompanied Claude and his partner—the unit’s sensitive, Astrid—to arrest a young vampire for murder. The Magister himself informed the police, and
his people held the murderer until we arrived.

  But that murderer hadn’t been a member of Lucas Chevalier’s family.

  The heavy smell of unshed rain and the sound of cicadas filled the air as we walked up to the large double doors in the front of what could only be called a mansion. Large block stonework formed imposing walls to create a building that looked hundreds of years older than it could have been. Columns—some architectural features, others standing firm to hold large eaves—lined the structure. The columns and building were a light grayish color, with just a hint of cream to the tone. Tall windows were sectioned off by pieces of metal that formed geometric designs with the glass. Standing proudly on balconies and at the dark gray rooftop were small statues of indiscernible people in flowing robes. It was so grand and unfamiliar, it had to be a style Chevalier had brought with him from France.

  Claude walked up to me and opened his mouth to speak, but he stopped when a Jeep rolled down the driveway behind us.

  My stomach dropped. I recognized that Jeep.

  Aidan parked next to my Rav4 and stepped out of his car. His dark hair and jacket matched the gloomy setting. And for that matter, my mood.

  “Did you follow us here?” I asked, pushing down my sudden urge to smile at him like an idiot. I was not happy to see him, dammit.

  “I’m helping, remember? And I was coming to the station to talk to you and saw you head out. I decided to follow.” He held his hand to Claude and the vampire shook it.

  “This is Aidan from the OWEA,” I explained. “He’s investigating the murders too, but it’s kind of off the radar.”

  “Agent.” Claude nodded to Aidan. “Give us a sec, will you?”