Requiem for the Dead (2 page)

"I can finish this up," he whispered.

"I'm fine, I just need a second."

I could hear all of the things he wasn't saying:
You shouldn't have come in here with me, I should have brought Milo, I hate that you're reliving this, goddamn fucking goblins
. It was all in the way his arms tightened, as though he could hug away all the painful memories. And I loved him for it. I loved him for a lot of reasons.

"There's more than enough proof that this was a goblin attack," I said, opening my eyes and straightening up.

Wyatt let go and shifted to stand next to me, the concern still plain on his face. "Agreed," he said. "The goblins are getting bolder. Estimated time of death was five o'clock this evening."

And considering it was late August, that meant broad daylight. Goblins used to only come out at night, preferring to spend the day down in the sewers. This was seriously bad news.

He reached for the zipper and started tugging it up. Just past the dead boy's knees he stopped. Leaned down to peer at something. "Evy, look at this."

I stepped around him and followed his gaze to a spot on the body's inner thigh. At first, all I saw were a bunch of deep cuts, like razor slices. But as I stared, they turned into letters. And then a word.

Kelsa.

"Fuck me," I said.

Kelsa was the goblin Queen who'd ordered me captured, tortured, raped and left to die, all at the orders of an elf whose grand plan included stealing Wyatt's free will. I killed her a few months ago, at the same time the rest of the goblins went underground. Seeing her name carved on the leg of a dead human said one clear thing to me: this was fucking personal.

#

After Wyatt took a few pictures of the carved name with his phone, we put the body back and then got the hell out of there. I texted Milo and Marcus that we were leaving, so they'd meet us at the arranged location.

They were already waiting when we arrived, leaning against the metal barrier that protected one side of the sidewalk from a steep drop into the Anjean River, as though they had every right to be loitering there at one-thirty in the morning. The rush of the river below us was the only real sound as Wyatt and I made our way toward them.

I was still a little shaky after our morgue trip and had broken a sweat the instant we stepped outside into the humid late-summer air. Usually I'm better at hiding my immediate need to vomit, but I must not have been doing a very good job on approach because Milo stood up straight as soon as he got a good look.

"Evy?" he said.

"I'm okay," I replied.

"That bad?"

"Worse, but it was definitely goblins."

"This behavior is extremely unusual," Marcus said. He hadn't moved from his casual lean against the rail, and the female in me appreciated the way he could make such a simple stance look sexy. Marcus was tall and muscular (but not muscle bound), with tan skin and long, black hair he liked to wear in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. A little bit of scruff on his chin—not quite a goatee, but more than a soul patch—gave him a look I could only describe as "pirate."

Contrast to Milo Gant, who was about my height of five-foot-seven, and lean enough to occasionally appear scrawny, despite his speed and strength. He had sandy brown hair and brown eyes that, once upon a time, I'd have described as kind. Nowadays they were mostly cold. Mostly, depending on the company he kept. Lately Marcus was one of the only people who could make Milo smile.

"There was more," Wyatt said and held out his phone. "They're making this personal for Evy."

Marcus studied the image, while Milo blanched and looked away—the photo did have an unfortunate angle of the dead man's mangled testicles. "What's your assessment?" Marcus asked.

"That whatever's happening isn't random," Wyatt replied. "We know the goblin warriors can't plan for shit, so at least one of the Queens has been cooking this up for a while. Maybe since Kelsa died."

"Could it be tied to the Fey?"

"Possibly. They followed orders from an elf once, so it isn't outside the realm of possibility for them to follow the orders of a sprite."

My temper began a slow burn, as it always did when I thought about Amalie and how the Fey Council had betrayed and lied to us since first contact more than ten years ago. The Triads had been duped and manipulated to serve their whims, and while the Fey were pacifists who couldn't attack us directly, they'd put a lot of other enemies directly into our path. Sending the goblins against us was not beneath them.

"It definitely gives them a more controllable way to hit us than with the Halfies," Milo said. "Even the Halfies that are still partly sane." He said the word "Halfies" like it was a vile taste in his mouth—the way he'd said it for the last five weeks. Since Felix died.

Instead of dropping off with the death of Walter Thackery and the loss of his Happy Serum—meant to make typically deranged half-Bloods act in a rational manner—the Halfie population had seemed to increase. It was as if the handful of sane Halfies we hadn't managed to execute had gone forth and multiplied, and created more sane Halfies.

You might think sane Halfies would be preferable to crazy ones, but not for me. Crazy means they don't plan ahead, and they almost always screw up in some way or another. Sane means higher thought and the ability to formulate a plan of action. Halfies with plans scared the hell out of me.

"I just wish they'd man up and come at us head on," I said, referring to the Fey. "All of this puppeteer bullshit is getting old."

"Agreed," Marcus said. "The Fey are irritating and cowardly. Therians fight for what they want. We don't have the luxury of living for millennia, as the Fey do."

Milo glanced at Marcus, and the pair shared a look I couldn't decipher. They'd become good friends in the last few weeks, and they spent a lot of their free time sparring in the Watchtower gym. Physically, Marcus looked like he was in his mid-thirties, but he was only ten calendar years old—which put him at the halfway point of his life. And even though I'd seen a were-osprey grow from newborn to toddler in only a few months, a twenty-year life expectancy wasn't an easy thing to remember daily.

"The Fey are cowards," Wyatt said in a deadly voice. "We'll find a way to make Amalie accountable for the things she's done and the suffering she's caused." Including his own suffering. Putting every betrayal of the Triads aside, Amalie had protected the Lupa pups who'd infected Wyatt, which made her responsible for his change. Every time I saw Wyatt struggling to control his wolf, to maintain his humanity when the animal seemed stronger, I renewed my vow to be there the day Amalie paid her dues.

Unless we all died before that happened, which was entirely possible.

"So we got what we needed on the body," Milo said after a moment of awkward silence. "Assignment complete?"

"Assignment complete," I said. "Can we hit a drive-thru on the way back? I need a burger."

"It's one-thirty in the morning."

"So?" After inheriting a new, untrained body and then suffering three weeks of hideous torture (and a fifteen pound weight loss) less than two months after that, I was now finally (finally!) at a healthy weight and had some pretty awesome muscle tone going on. I deserved a big, greasy burger once in a while.

"I could eat," Wyatt said. "We'll swing by that place on Tenth. It's open all night, I think."

We split up for the walk back to the car, making two potential targets instead of one. Wyatt and I went west up the block, toward the hospital, while Marcus and Milo went east. We'd all turn north at the next respective street, go up a block and double back to where we'd parked.

It was a short, quiet walk. Wyatt and I had gotten to a place in our evolving relationship where we didn't need to fill silences with idle chatter. He knew that if I wanted to talk about the body we'd seen tonight, I'd bring it up in my own time. Forcing me to do anything only made me kick back in the opposite direction. It was a fatal flaw that had gotten me in trouble almost as much as it had saved my life.

We reached the car first, which set off internal alarms immediately. Marcus and Milo should have at least been visible on this side street, with its random parked cars and overflowing trash cans waiting for an early morning dump.

Somewhere down the block a large cat snarled. Wyatt and I took off running.

1:55 a.m.

We were too late.

Or right on time, depending on who you asked. It must have been a brief battle, because when Wyatt and I raced around the corner and spotted our friends, the fight was over. Halfway down the block, three torn and bleeding bodies were scattered on the sidewalk, limbs askew (one of them separated from the rest of itself), and very much dead. Halfies from the look of them—and the way they were slowly starting to shrivel.

Milo was sitting against the bumper of a parked car, with a naked Marcus crouched in front of him. He slapped away Marcus's hands with a sharp, "I'm fine, okay?"

"You went headfirst into the car," Marcus replied.

"Not my first time, believe me. I'm fine." He spotted us, then rolled his eyes. At what or who, exactly, I wasn't sure.

"What happened?" I asked, even though it was pretty obvious.

"The half-Bloods were well-hidden," Marcus said. "We didn't realize we were being stalked until they attacked."

He hadn't turned to look at us, so I stared blankly at the back of his head. It wasn't like Marcus to be unaware of his surroundings, or to fall victim to a sneak attack. What the hell had them both so distracted that they hadn't seen the Halfies coming?

"One of them latched onto my back like a fucking tick," Milo said, rubbing at the side of his neck with one hand. "Tried to bite me, so I ran us both hard into the side of the car. Knocked myself silly for it, too." He sounded like he'd rather chew glass than admit such a thing.

"I shifted and took care of the problem," Marcus added. He finally turned his head and angled to look up at us, and I saw the blood streaking his chin and neck like grotesque war paint. "Will you tell him—"

"Oh, for Christ's sake." Milo pushed sideways and stood up with perfect ease. Not a single wobble. He stepped around Marcus and presented himself to me and Wyatt. "I'm fine, see?"

He looked fine. Pupils normal size for the darkness of the alley, no blood in his hair or on his face. Except for an expression stuck somewhere between anger and mortification, he seemed normal enough. "You got a knot?" I asked.

Milo touched the side of his head. "No, it's barely sore. I did not lose consciousness, either."

I pulled his other hand away from the side of his neck, where he'd been rubbing. The skin was red, but not broken. "What's that?"

"It's where the fucker tried to bite me."

As he said the words, I finally saw how hard Milo was working to keep it together. He'd been one good lunge away from getting infected and ending up a half-Blood—all because the pair of them hadn't been paying attention. Almost two months ago, he'd seen his best friend Felix bitten and infected, and two weeks later had witnessed Felix's final death. And even though he'd never revealed his feelings to Felix, Milo had been in love with him. The loss had been devastating and had placed a near-permanent coldness in Milo's eyes.

I gave his hand a squeeze before letting go. "He didn't bite you."

"No." He squared his shoulders, then glanced at Marcus. "Thanks for the save."

"It was my error as well," Marcus replied. He walked a few feet away and grabbed his discarded jeans.

The more I worked with Therians, the less their frequent nudity bothered me. Not that most of them (especially the men) had anything to be modest about, but us humans still had some hang-ups about wandering around in our birthday suits. Not so much with shape-shifters.

"Did they say anything at all?" Wyatt asked, waving his hand to indicate the bodies.

"One of them had a few choice words when I ripped his arm off," Marcus said. "Other than that, no. Nothing of consequence."

"They were probably hungry and looking for dinner," Milo said.

I crouched next to one—a teenager, with a buzz cut and lots of silver rings in his left ear. Pulled back his upper lip to take a look at his teeth. "Young, too, or they would have smelled that Marcus wasn't human," I said. It took several weeks for a half-Blood's fangs to develop to full length, which made it easy to pick out the fresh ones. And this kid's teeth were barely pointed.

"Let's clean this up so we can get out of here," Milo said.

"Good idea." I stood up, then noticed Wyatt staring intently at the roof of a building down the block. "Wyatt?"

He didn't reply. I took a step closer and tracked his gaze, but didn't see anything amiss. Not that I had his werewolf vision, but still.

"Wyatt?"

"What?" He blinked hard, then looked at me.

"Did you see something?"

"I thought I did."

His confusion made me uneasy, and even more eager to get this scene clean and get back to the Watchtower. I didn't like the idea of being watched. None of us did.

It never led anywhere pleasant.

#

The burger joint, it turned out, closed at two, so we settled on invading the cafeteria as soon as we got back to the Watchtower. Wyatt made our report over the phone during the drive back, including the little Halfie skirmish. He rode shotgun, while Marcus drove. That left me and Milo in the backseat, him slumped against the passenger side door and me biting my tongue to keep from bugging him with questions. Milo had become my best friend in the last month or so, and the only thing that kept me quiet was knowing he wouldn't tell me anything with Wyatt and Marcus in the car.

So I kept my questions and my glances to myself until we were alone, glad to have something other than our most recent goblin victim to think about.

The Watchtower was a somewhat deceptive name, since our headquarters was built inside the skeleton of the old Capital City Mall. Shaped like a long, wide U with department stores on both ends and a magic glamour that kept straying eyes from noticing our activity there, the mall was the perfect place to house a hundred humans and Therians. Living quarters and bathrooms had been built inside old storefronts, as well as a gymnasium, a weapons locker, a refurbished jail (our first jail got blown up), and the sprawling Operations center.