Deadly Desire (18 page)

The aroma of fried food snagged my attention, and I headed that way. Lots of people tended to get careless in cafeterias. Some flung their purses over the side of the chairs, others shoved their wallets casually in a side pocket while carrying trays of food. Either one was easy pickings for an experienced thief.

And Joe was obviously that.

Most of the tables in the cafeteria were empty, with only a few near the serving counter currently occupied. The kitchen itself seemed to be packing up, the clang of metal and rush of steam as hot trays were cleaned mingling easily with the murmur of conversation.

I walked farther into the room, just in case there was a section I wasn't seeing, and caught a trace of Joe's scent. My heart rate quickened, the wolf within eager for the chase. I followed my nose, weaving my way through the tables, moving through the cafeteria and out into a wide hall. There were more people here, but most of them were moving toward the exit. Joe's scent was fainter, getting lost in the myriad other smells.

I walked through the doors and back out onto the street. Joe's scent headed off to the left. I followed, hoping like hell he hadn't jumped onto a tram or a bus; if he had, then I'd lost him.

His scent got stronger rather than weaker, but twined within it was another. Only it wasn't a feminine scent, but rather one that was all too familiar.

Decaying flesh.

The sorcerer might have risked talking to Mike, but she was canny enough to realize she'd never keep up with a fleet-footed street kid. Not when she was in a
wheelchair, anyway. And in her crow form, she'd hardly be a threat.

But why send a zombie when she had the hellhounds at her disposal?

And what had Joe seen that warranted such an action in the first place?

The scent swung left, into a side street. I was running now, my footsteps light, mingling with the noise of the surrounding night. A mix of warehouses and housing loomed. Maybe Joe was hoping to lose his pursuer in the maze that was the Richmond landscape.

The trail swung left again, heading back up toward the hospital, then sharpened abruptly. I slowed and dug my laser out from my pocket. The building was weatherworn and rusted, its windows cracked and roofline sagging. Obviously not a warehouse currently in use—and the scents of age and mold coming from it seemed to confirm that.

I pushed the metal door open with my fingertips. Wind rushed past me, scattering the rubbish lining the floor. I stepped inside and flicked to infrared. Two blurs of heat became visible down at the far end of the factory, the brighter of the two half hidden by something large and black, the other creeping ever so slowly toward it. Joe obviously didn't realize the zombie knew exactly where he was.

I broke into a run, moving as quickly as the maze of corridors and the rubbish would allow. Ahead, the dark red blur that was the zombie had drawn closer to Joe. I was running out of time.

A door stood between me and them. I hit it shoulder
first and the thing gave way, tearing away from the hinges before clattering to the floor.

The brighter blur that was Joe jumped. The zombie didn't react. It had its orders and its prey in sight, and nothing was going to stop it from achieving its goal.

I raised the laser, the weapon humming at the pressure of my finger. At that moment, a crow squawked and the zombie instantly threw itself forward. As Joe yelped and scrambled backward, I fired the laser. The bright beam gave the darkness a red edge as it cut through the metal sides of the bin the teenager was hiding behind and sliced the zombie in half. As its body flopped to the floor in separate pieces, I raised the laser and fired a shot toward the ceiling and the shifter I couldn't see or feel.

The bright beam cut through wood and metal roofing, sending dust and rust flying. A second later, wings rustled and air stirred.

The bitch was taking off.

I shoved the laser into my back pocket and reached down inside myself for my seagull shape. “Joe,” I shouted, as the magic swept through across my torso and down my limbs. “Wait here. I'll be back.”

Then I was flying through the hole in the rusted roof and out into the starry sky. Luckily, a seagull's eyesight was keener than a human's, even at night, and I spotted my quarry within half a turn.

With a flick of my wings, I flew after her. The night was bright, filled with lights and bugs that teased the hungers of the gull even as the rest of me shuddered at the thought. I concentrated on the big black bird ahead,
flying faster than I'd ever flown in my life and rapidly gaining ground. The flying lessons were paying off, even if I'd once despaired of ever enjoying the freedom of the skies.

I flexed my feet and wished I had something a little more deadly than webbing. Something like an eagle's talons would have been handy right now, because short of dropping down on top of her, I wasn't sure how I was going to force the sorceress to ground.

I was only several yards behind her when she suddenly looked around and spotted me. How she actually knew I was chasing her I have no idea—shifters could sense other shifters, but that shouldn't instantly tell her I was pursuing her.

With a harsh squawk, she twisted her wings and dove downward, the air almost screaming with the speed of her descent. I tipped my wings and followed, seeing sand and surf and a crowded foreshore below us. St. Kilda, I thought, and wondered if she was going to try and lose me among the myriad backstreets and trees.

She didn't sweep toward the streets as I'd half expected, but rather toward the beach. A second later I realized why. A flock of seagulls erupted from the sand, stirred to life by the swooping crow. It was all I could do to check my speed and not hit any of them, and as blinds went, it was pretty damn effective. By the time I flew free of the tangle, she was gone.

I swore under my breath, the sound coming out as little more than a harsh squawk, then headed back to the warehouse. I landed outside the main door, and adjusted
my torn shirt and bra before grabbing my phone from my back pocket and heading inside.

“Sal,” I said when she answered. “I need a safe house for a street kid. Nothing fancy, because he may well end up stripping the joint of anything valuable.”

“Then why the hell are we bothering to protect him?”

“That's what I like about you, Sal. You're such a sweetheart.” Although she probably would have been, if it had been a dog I'd been wanting to protect.

She snorted softly. “And you are a bitch. I'll send an address to your onboard. You going to be there to meet the team?”

“Ta. And no.” I glanced at my watch. I was already ten minutes late for my meal with Ben and I still had to get the kid to the safe house. “And I'll need a magi team at my current location. I had to laser a zombie to stop him getting the kid, but he's still alive.”

“Half a zombie isn't much threat to anyone.”

“When there's magic involved, I'm not taking a chance.”

She grunted. “I'll send Marg and her team.”

“Thanks, Sal.” I pocketed my phone and walked on through the warehouse. Joe was still hiding in the shadows of the large bin that seemed to be leaking an oily liquid everywhere. The zombie lay near his feet, lifeless but maybe not entirely dead. We wouldn't know for sure until the magi got here to take care of him.

Joe rose as I approached, and his relief was evident.

“You got her?” he asked, wiping oil-stained hands across his already grubby jeans.

“No, she escaped.” I stopped and crossed my arms. “You want to tell me why she was chasing you?”

“I don't know.” His gaze suddenly wouldn't meet mine as he brushed sweaty strands of hair away from his forehead.

“Fine.” I turned on my heels and walked away.

“Hey,” he said, voice confused. “Where you going?”

“If you can't be bothered telling me the truth, I can't be bothered helping you.”

“But she'll come after me again!”

“That's your problem, not mine.”

“Wait!”

I didn't. There was a pause, then footsteps as he ran after me. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I think I might have called her.”

I stopped and turned to look at him. Fear and defiance mingled in his eyes. “You
called
her?”

“Yeah. The first woman gave Kaz a business card, just in case something happened and she wasn't able to do the job.”

“And you stole the card?”

He looked indignant, but the quick flick of guilt in his eyes suggested I wasn't far off the mark. It seemed the old adage of honor among thieves didn't always apply around street kids. “No. Or at least, only once she'd done the job. Thought it might be handy to keep if the job turned out to be real and Kaz made a lot of money.”

Which she probably did, but she didn't live long
enough to spend it. “So, after our little chat, you decided to ring the woman and tell her what, exactly?”

Again defiance sparked in his eyes. “That I'd seen her, like, and I wanted money or I'd go to the cops.”

“And did Mike know about this phone call?”

He snorted. “No. He would have asked for his cut, wouldn't he?”

“He saved your life by calling me, Joe. Next time, take that into consideration when you're thinking about cheating him.”

“It ain't cheating—”

“It is when he's keeping you all fed and safe, isn't it?”

“I guess so,” he muttered.

I smiled at his sullen expression. “So what did the woman say?”

“She agreed, like, and said she'd meet me at the cricket ground, near Vale street, at eleven. But that thing came after me before then.”

And why would he not have expected that? Honestly, anyone intent on a little blackmail ought to be prepared for the fact that the recipient of said blackmail
wasn't
going to be happy about it, and just might be inclined to react. But then, I guess Joe was still a kid and somewhat green to the foibles of others, even if he had lived on the streets and learned his lessons the hard way.

“You said the first woman—does that mean the woman you talked to on the phone wasn't the same woman?”

He frowned. “I don't think it was, but that sort of thing is easy to fake, isn't it?”

It was, but I very much suspected it meant we had two different women involved in these murders. Joe obviously thought the same, given his choice of words.

“How did she find you?”

“I don't know. I was scouting possible marks and heard footsteps behind me. I look around and saw that thing coming toward me.”

“How did you know it was after you?”

“Well, there was only me and the marks in the café, and when I ran, it followed. So I kept running.”

So how did the zombie find him? The sorceress couldn't have gotten into the hospital in crow form, and even if she had been there somewhere in human form, how had she pinned his position so accurately? The only possible answer was magic. “Where's the card the first woman gave Kaz?”

“Here.” He reached down into his pocket and withdrew a business card.

The minute my fingers touched it, I felt the magic. It wasn't strong—more a faint residue that made my fingertips tingle than anything dark and nasty. Perhaps the magic was fading.

The card itself was black, with a single staked heart sitting in the middle of it. On the back was a phone number, and a set of times. Those times suggested—to me, at least—that it wasn't even a manned phone, but one that was simply checked remotely. Whoever these women were, they were playing a cautious game.

I wondered if the other murdered teenagers had
held similar cards, although it would have been easy enough for the sorceress to direct her creature to destroy it. Maybe this one was still in one piece only because Joe had stolen it.

“She was probably using this to track you,” I said, waving the card lightly. “Which means we can't take it with us. Come on.”

I walked back to the zombie and dropped the card next to the top half of his body, then left the building with Joe in tow.

Once we were on the road, I started the onboard computer and got the address for the safe house.

“Why we going there?” Joe said, as I switched over to the nav-computer.

“We need to keep you safe. The sorceress will keep coming after you until she kills you.”

“But she can't find me now that I no longer have the card.”

“We can't know that. And she seems to have found Kaz all right without the card.” I frowned at the thought. Maybe the magic on the card somehow transferred to whoever was touching it, which meant both Joe and I would have to “disinfect” ourselves from its trace.

“I guess.” His face suddenly brightened. “Will this place have a TV and a fridge and a bath?”

“Yes, and we want all three to be there after we've caught this bitch and you're able to leave.”

“I wouldn't steal—”

“Yeah,” I said blandly. “Tell it to someone who is going to believe you.”

He grinned and settled back in the seat, watching
the road and probably contemplating his next thieving exploit. I got him to the safe house, and was relieved to see that Sal had lived up to her usual efficient ways and had gotten one of the night-shift guys. I handed over my charge, rang the Directorate to tell them my suspicions about the business card, then headed off to my dinner with Ben.

Of course, I was
way
late, so I grabbed a nice bottle of wine from a nearby shop then headed up to his office.

Nonpareil—the stripper business Ben managed—was situated on the first floor of a nondescript brick building in the middle of old North Melbourne. It was surrounded by factories that looked to be carrying the dirt of centuries on their facades, and the air was thick with the scent of oil, metal, and humans.

Not the nicest of places to visit, but I knew from experience that the inside more than made up for any outside ugliness.

I pushed open the glass door and stepped through. The air was warm and rich with the scent of vanilla and wolf, the latter stronger than the former. I couldn't help a happy sigh. There was nothing nicer than the musky scent of a man—whether or not the moon was on the rise. I climbed the stairs, one hand on the shiny gold railing and my feet sinking into plush red carpets.