Hellforged

By the time I emerged from the storage room, rubbing my hair with a bar towel, the Goons had arrived. Norden and Sykes—damn, I’d hoped their shift had ended—stood talking to Axel as Sykes scribbled in a notebook. All around them, crime scene technicians wearing gloves, surgical masks, and bags over their shoes, swabbed samples of black slime and tweezered up scraps of what used to be T.J., depositing them in plastic bags.

Norden poked Axel with his finger, but the big bartender didn’t seem to notice. He looked over Norden’s head, staring with glassy eyes at the mess. As I came down the hallway, Norden’s head snapped around and he stopped in mid-poke. “I’m not kidding,” he said to Axel, while he kept his beady eyes on me. “This is a murder scene now. You’re going to let us through that door, or I’m going to send for a battering ram and bash it off its hinges.”

Norden stepped in front of me. “You,” he sneered. “I should’ve known. How come whenever something bad happens, you’re right in the middle of it?”

I wasn’t going to bother answering that. “Do you want me to make a statement or not? Because I’d rather be home in bed than hanging around waiting for you to decide if you want to talk to me.” Not that I’d be able to sleep, not after what I’d found here.

“Sykes will take your statement.” Norden shot Axel a significant look. “I’ve gotta make a phone call.”

One booth in the back of the room was relatively slime-free. Sykes and I made our way there and sat down facing each other. Across the room, Norden finished his phone call and went back to poking Axel.

“Why on earth do you put up with that jerk?” I asked.

Sykes shrugged. “We were partners before the plague. After this happened”—he gestured to indicate his zombified self—“my choices were join the Goon Squad or quit the force. Elmer could’ve transferred, but he stuck with me.”

I didn’t know which was more of a shock, the fact that Norden had a first name—and it was Elmer—or that he’d taken a job he obviously hated to stay with his partner. If I had to list Norden’s good qualities, I’d say he was rude, annoying, and an all-around prick. Somehow, “loyal” wouldn’t have come to mind.

“Yeah, he’s loyal,” Sykes said, like he’d read my mind. “And he’s braver than you’d think. But you’re right; the guy’s a jerk. Always has been. Even his own mother couldn’t stand him. He swore the feeling was mutual, but he went to visit her at the nursing home twice a week. I don’t know, maybe they enjoyed getting on each other’s nerves. Then she caught pneumonia and died a couple of days before the plague hit.” Sykes tapped his pen on the table. “I’m no psychiatrist, but I always thought he got mad at us zombies for coming back to life while his ma stayed dead.”

I watched Norden poking Axel, to make sure I’d stay mad at the guy. I did not want to come down with a case of the warm fuzzies for Elmer Norden. The less I knew about what made him tick, the better.

Sykes flipped a page in his notebook. “So tell me what happened.” He fished a pair of half-moon reading glasses from his pocket and perched them on his nose.

“I found …” I was going to say the body, but there was no body. “I found this.” I swept my arm to encompass the horror of the room.

“Start from the beginning. What time did you leave here this morning?”

“Right around closing time. Six, maybe a little before.” As Sykes took notes, I described how I’d realized I’d left my watch at Creature Comforts and how T.J. had promised to drop it off at my building.

“If you expected him to leave it with your doorman, why did you come back here?”

I didn’t feel like explaining that Difethwr had invaded my dream and spooked me. I was already spooked enough by whatever had happened here, so I settled for a half-truth. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s a valuable watch, and I was worried. Since I was awake anyway, I figured I’d save T.J. the trouble. I thought once I had my watch back, I’d quit obsessing about it and be able to sleep.”

Sykes nodded as he wrote, then peered over his glasses with crimson eyes. “May I see it?”

“What, my watch?” Until that moment, I hadn’t thought to look for my watch. “I don’t have it. T.J. said he’d put it behind the bar.”

We went to the far side of the bar and looked around. On a shelf beneath the cash register was a cardboard box with LOST & FOUND written in thick black marker on the side. I rummaged through it. There were baseball caps, sunglasses, umbrellas, a black lace bra (I’d have to ask Axel about that one), a set of keys, and two watches—neither one was mine.

“It’s not here.” Queasiness clenched my gut as I flashed back to Difethwr in my dream, taunting me with the watch and then destroying it. It couldn’t have been my actual watch; it must have been a dream-image. Boston was protected by a magic shield, maintained by witches from every coven in the city, whose sole purpose was to keep Hellions out. There’d been a breach in the shield last fall, but since then the witches had strengthened the spell. No way Difethwr could’ve waltzed into town to steal my watch.

So where was it?

Axel stood guard in front of his apartment’s door. I called his name and he turned to me, shaggy eyebrows raised. “I left a watch here last night. If T.J. put it aside for me, where would it be? It’s not in the lost-and-found box.”

After a glance at Norden, who was talking to one of the techs, Axel joined us behind the bar. He looked in a couple of cupboards, opened the cash register drawer, and then stood there scratching his beard. “Dunno,” he finally said.

“T.J. was going to bring it to your building,” Sykes pointed out. “Maybe he stuck it in his pocket.”

Without wanting to, I turned to look at the mess that spattered the room. The goo was everywhere, along with scraps of fabric and lumps of … stuff. If T.J. had pocketed my watch, I doubted we’d find so much as a gear.

“Stuck what in whose pocket?” Norden heaved himself onto a bar stool.

“Ms. Vaughn’s watch,” Sykes said. “The victim said—”

“We’ve got a murder investigation and you’re back there trying to solve the Mystery of the Missing Watch? Jesus, Sykes, are you kidding me?”

He turned to Axel. “A SWAT team is on the way. They’re gonna smash that damned door wide open. When they do, I’m gonna take a dozen cops downstairs—whatever’s down there, we’re gonna tear it apart. And I’ll bet you a month’s pay we find something.”

“Oh, come on, Norden,” I said. “You don’t believe Axel murdered T.J.”

“Who said anything about murder? All kinds of illegal crap could be down there. Drugs, weapons, stolen property. Hell, if I find so much as an expired driver’s license, I’m shutting the place down.”

For the first time, Axel looked worried. Whether that was because he had something to hide or he thought Norden would plant something downstairs, I couldn’t tell. Maybe he just didn’t want a team of cops invading his privacy. Axel was big on privacy.

The front door opened. “Must be the SWAT guys.” Norden grinned malevolently. “I’m looking forward to this.”

The smile dropped from his face, and Sykes swore under his breath. I looked over to see what the Goons were scowling at. Two men, humans, stood inside the door, unwinding their scarves. Their I-own-the-place attitude broadcast they were detectives.

That would explain the Goons’ scowls. Boston PD and the Goon Squad shared an unfriendly rivalry, and Creature Comforts, in the middle of the New Combat Zone, was definitely on Goon Squad turf. These norm cops were overstepping a boundary.

I braced for the inevitable conflict that would erupt when the new detectives came over to confront Norden and Sykes. But instead, each went to a different member of the CSI team, drawing them aside and speaking in low voices. Within a minute, the team was packing its equipment.

Sykes and Norden exchanged a look and rushed over to one of the detectives, a bald guy in a camel coat. “What’s going on?” Sykes demanded. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The norm didn’t even glance at the zombie; he answered to Norden instead. “I’m commandeering this forensic team. We need them at a crime scene.”

“This is a crime scene,” Sykes said.

The norm kept his eyes on Norden, his gaze cool. “I don’t see any evidence of a crime.”

“Are you kidding?” Norden said. “A PDH was killed.”

“PDH? Oh, you mean a zombie. Like I said, no evidence of a crime.” He smirked. “You can’t murder something that’s already dead.”

Sykes gaped, like he couldn’t believe the norm had actually said that. Norden puffed himself up and took a step toward the detective, fists clenched. “You can’t blow this off. PDHs have rights in this state.”

“Our authorization comes from Hampson.” Fred Hampson, Boston’s police commissioner, was not a friend to paranormals. Given the chance, he’d be leading the torch-and-pitchfork crowd himself. “Anyway, show me a zombie who’s had his rights violated. I don’t see anything here but a big, stinking mess.” He gave his partner a look. “See? This is why I never go out in the Zone. Filthy goddamn monsters.”

“Who are you calling a monster, blood bag?” Sykes launched himself at the cop, who crashed to the floor. Sykes kneeled on the norm’s chest, his arms pumping like pistons. He landed a couple of good punches—zombie-strength punches—before Axel ran over and, with help from Norden, dragged him off the guy.

The norm detective sat up, pressing both hands to his face. Blood gushed from his nose, pouring through his fingers and staining his coat.

Uh-oh. Not good. If you’re a human and there’s a zombie around, bleeding is definitely a bad idea. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">