No Humans Involved by Kelley Armstrong

  I met his gaze. "I'm willing to take them. Whether you are is, I suspect, another matter."

  He hesitated, and I knew I'd guessed right.

  "It's not--" he began.

  "Okay, it looks like--" Hope's voice, across the lot. "Uh, sorry. I thought I heard voices."

  "You did," I said, stepping away from Jeremy. "We should get inside while it's clear."

  GETTING INSIDE wasn't the only thing made more difficult by daylight. Although the windows were smoked glass, anyone peering in could see us. But the alternative was to wait five hours.

  Hope had contacted Karl earlier and hinted that his skills might be needed, but she'd pretended the occult case was her work assignment, not mentioning Jeremy or me. Jeremy seemed reluctant to get Karl involved. I could chalk this up to Jeremy enjoying the "challenges" of doing it himself, but knowing his feelings about Karl, I suspected there was more to it.

  "I'll start in the office," Jeremy whispered as he adjusted his gloves.

  "Can--?" Hope began, then pulled a face and reached for her cell phone. "Sorry. I'm supposed to be investigating crop circles. Thankfully, I can write a crop circle story in my sleep." A glance at the phone. "Oh, it's Rona Grant. Should I--?" She glanced at us.

  "Go ahead," Jeremy said. "Perhaps she has something."

  She didn't. Hope kept the phone a half-inch from her ear, volume jacked, so even without werewolf hearing, I could listen in.

  Seemed May had asked Rona to follow up on whether any of those contact names had panned out. Hope strung her a story with the ease of a professional huckster, insinuating that we were indeed making use of those contacts, when we'd dismissed the lot of them yesterday. She probed around the subject of Botnick--nothing overt, just leading questions that might have gotten Rona talking about the cult leader, but obviously the woman had no interest in steering us down that seedy path. So Hope promised to keep her in the loop and hung up.

  "As I was going to say, can you spare Jaime to show me those dissected bits?" Hope asked. "Not that I have a prurient interest in seeing dried-up body parts, but you were wondering whether they were taken from someone who was already dead...or someone they helped get that way."

  "And you'll be able to tell. Jaime? Would you rather take the office?"

  "Dried bits don't bother me."

  WE CREPT to the storage room. Just inside the door, Hope stumbled. I went to catch her, but she brushed me off, regaining her balance herself. She turned, hands out, fumbling, as if dazed. Her face was white, her eyes wide and unseeing.

  Having a vision. I knew better than to interfere--it's like shaking a sleepwalker awake. Instead, I stayed there, ready to grab her if she fell.

  Her hands found the curtain and she grabbed it, as if for support. For a moment, she clung to it, head dropped forward, eyes closed, breaths coming deep and fast. Then her head whipped back and she gasped, eyes flying open.

  "What's in here?" she asked hoarsely.

  Before I could answer, she threw open the curtain. A sharp intake of breath as she stared at the bondage gear. Then a shaky laugh. "Well, that explains it."

  A pause, then she glanced at me. "I have to--I can't do this here. Too strong. Can you get the...stuff and bring it out to me?"

  I nodded.

  A COUPLE of minutes later, I slipped into the cleaning closet and found Hope there, rubbing the back of her neck.

  "Sorry about that," she said. "It was just--"

  "Too much."

  A wry smile. "Yeah. Asking me to get a sense of those--" she waved at the bags in my hand, "--while I was in that room, would be like asking a bloodhound to pick out a month-old trail in an airport terminal. Way too much else going on."

  "Are you okay?"

  Nodding, she took a bag from my hand. She stared at it, but I could tell she was still watching the movie playing in her mind. A sharp shake of her head.

  "Maybe you should get some air," I said. "I know whatever you saw couldn't have been very pleasant."

  "I'm okay. It's not...They don't disturb me." She lifted the bag. "Nothing here. Let's try another."

  She went through three of the half-dozen bags, then stopped on the fourth, eyes closing, eyelids flickering, like someone in the throes of a vivid dream. Her breathing accelerated. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Then her eyes flew open and she handed the bag back to me.

  "Car accident."

  The next two gave her nothing.

  "One accidental death, five chaos-free deaths. My sensors aren't perfect, but if all those folks were murdered for their body parts, I should have picked up something from at least one. All I got was a car accident--single-vehicle collision. Not pretty, but normal enough."

  "So they're likely morgue or cemetery pickings. Like necromancers use."

  "You guys use...?"

  I nodded. "Only we don't get the nice protective wrapping. Physical contact is a must."

  "Ah."

  "We get used to it. Like you and your visions--a nasty part of life."

  She glanced at the bags. "So could this guy have been selling to necromancers?"

  "Only without knowing it. More likely, he was just selling to humans wanting the stuff for medicine or magic. We use our own black markets, but even those are iffy. If I want quality goods, I have to go to the source."

  "You mean..."

  "Grave digging. Fortunately, it's not something I have to do very often."

  Hope found one more violent death in the next batch--electrocution--but again it seemed accidental.

  "So this cult draws the line at murder?" she said. "That surprises me. You'd think if you're going to kidnap and torture your victims, you'd kill them, if only to cover your tracks."

  "Kidnap and torture?" I shook my head. "It may seem hard to believe, but they don't need unwilling victims. That bondage stuff is for the cult members. Consenting adults."

  "Maybe that's what you saw. What I saw was definitely nonconsensual. And it was recent. I've been working on distinguishing past and current images and I have no doubt about that one."

  "What did you see?"

  "Not much. I was watching it from the victim's point of view, and his or her head was covered. Not just a blindfold or leather mask either. This thing was heavy."

  "Like a metal helmet?"

  She nodded. "But it was solid--or almost solid. The person inside could barely breathe."

  I hurried back to the storage room and checked the shelf. The helmet was missing.

  SUPERNATURAL CSI

  HOPE PACED FROM ONE END of the storage room to the other. "No, it's not helping. I just keep seeing the same scene. That's usually how it is. If there's some way to see more, I haven't figured it out yet. I just get a snippet, playing over and over."

  "Go through it again," Jeremy said. "In case I'm missing something."

  From the frustration in Hope's face, I knew she thought he meant in case she'd missed something, but she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  "Scene starts. Blackness. Can't breathe. Struggling. Restrained. First by hands, then those are gone but he still can't get away. There's a voice, but it echoes inside the helmet. Can't make out the words. Can't even tell whether it's a man or woman. Trying to scream, but can't, as if gagged, but..."

  Hope opened her eyes. "It's like the person is gagged, but I don't feel one. Same with the restraints."

  "A binding spell," Jeremy said.

  "No, I've been caught in one of those before. It's not the same. This is..." She struggled for a comparison, then said, "Here, I'll try again."

  Eyes closed. Back into the vision.

  "Not a binding spell. Not restraints. The person wants to fight, but can't. Like his body won't respond. No--" She lifted a finger. "One more time. I'm getting it." Eyes closed. Deep breath. "The person is struggling. Screaming. But he's so weak, it doesn't matter." She opened her eyes. "That's it. Weakened. Like sedated but there's no feeling of being tired or sleepy. Just...drained."

  "Magically drained," Jerem
y said.

  "I'd say so."

  "If it happened here, let's see whether I can find a trail."

  I TOOK Hope to the office, saying we should take a look, see whether fresh eyes found anything new, but really, I was just giving Jeremy privacy. There's something very undignified about getting down on your hands and knees to snuffle the ground.

  After about ten minutes, Jeremy called us back. The room was thick with trails. From our excursion the night before, he had a good idea which trails belonged to group members, but picking out "which of these doesn't belong" in the tiny closet was probably close to Hope's analogy of a bloodhound in a busy airport terminal. He'd sorted out three, maybe four scents he didn't recognize. One of them, presumably, was the victim.

  "The others are probably cult members who missed last night's meeting. All the trails, though, eventually lead there." He pointed down at the trap door, having rolled back the carpet.

  "Not surprising," I said. "If they're going to kill someone, that's where they'd do it."

  "I'm not sure we have a murder victim. That was my first thought--that Botnick made contact with the group and they demanded proof of his loyalty."

  "Human sacrifice," Hope said.

  "But for all of the trails that go down, there's one coming back."

  "Maybe Botnick lost his nerve," I said. "Or it was just a test to see whether he'd go through with it. In either case--" I pulled open the hatch, "--that means I'm not going to stumble across a corpse or a ghost screaming for vengeance, so I'm good."

  "Hope?" Jeremy said. "A lack of a corpse won't make this any easier for you."

  "I'll be fine."

  HOPE STOPPED at the bottom of the ladder, rigid, as if she'd known this vision was coming, and braced for it. When it finished, she gave a soft sigh of relief.

  "Same old, same old," she said. "He or she is in the helmet, can't see, can barely breathe, can't fight or scream. For chaos, it ranks about a four. Terror, but it's just fear of the unknown."

  We looked around. The cavernous, crate-lined room looked exactly as we'd left it.

  "Flecks of blood," Hope said, walking to the middle.

  I followed her. "They're from last night. The meeting."

  Her face scrunched in distaste. "In other words, as you said, it was consensual. Which explains why I'm not getting much in the way of chaos vibes."

  Jeremy hadn't said a word. Not unusual. But when I looked over, I saw him staring out across the room, nostrils flared. He turned his head slowly, inhaling, as if trying to get a fix on a scent. Then his gaze came to rest on a wall of boxes along the wall--the wall with the embedded hooks.

  "Those boxes weren't like that last night," I said, walking toward it.

  Jeremy called to me, but I was only a few feet away and by the time I realized he was trying to stop me, I could see a foot protruding from behind the stack. I backpedaled to avoid an attack. Then I saw the hook, and the chain pulled taut and, without thinking, I stepped sideways for a better view.

  A man hung suspended from the hook by the chain. His feet touched the ground, knees bent, dangling. My first thought was How do you hang yourself if you can touch the ground? Then I saw the choke chain around his neck.

  Jeremy put his hand on my shoulder, but didn't pull me away. If I wanted to look, that was my choice. He moved past me to examine the body.

  The man's head drooped, but even before I saw his face, I knew it was Botnick. His eyes were bulging. His fingers were wrapped around the chain at his neck, as if he'd tried to pull it free.

  "He couldn't get it loose," said a soft voice behind me. Hope's. "They took off the helmet and kicked his legs out from under him, and the chain tightened, but something kept it from loosening, even after he got his footing."

  Jeremy moved alongside the body, looking without touching. Watching him, my gaze moved down Botnick for the first time, and noticed something...unexpected.

  "He's not wearing any pants. Did they...rape him?"

  "Doesn't appear so," Jeremy said. "There's no sign of struggle. I think that was intentional--using a spell to restrain him--so there wouldn't be any marks. Nothing to indicate he didn't do this to himself. As for the pants, though..."

  "That's intentional," Hope said. "They've set the scene for autoerotic asphyxiation."

  I explained to Jeremy.

  "Ah," he said. "And, given the nature of this room and the equipment upstairs, that's exactly the sort of thing the authorities would expect someone like Botnick to do."

  SO WE did have a murder. Jeremy had found a return trail because Botnick had been in and out of this basement several times in the last twenty-four hours.

  Had he made contact with the group? Gotten in touch with his former lover, who'd called her former lover and they'd set up a meeting with Botnick? It wasn't the only possibility. Maybe that cult member he'd whipped last night had her "I'm not going to take it anymore" epiphany, and had come back to kill him. Or maybe it was a customer, furious that his "ground rhino penis" hadn't outperformed Viagra, as advertised. Guys like Botnick had their share of enemies--not all the most stable individuals.

  But that would be mighty coincidental and wouldn't explain the magical weakening Hope had picked up. So we set to work playing CSI. The supernatural version. The werewolf untangled and followed scent trails. The half-demon reviewed the death vision. And the necromancer tried to contact the spirit of the deceased.

  I summoned Botnick repeatedly, with no luck. Not surprising really. Rigor mortis had set in and the body had cooled, meaning he'd been dead for hours.

  Newly dead spirits don't hang around long before someone whisks them off to the afterlife, and once they're gone, necromancers can't make contact until the powers-that-be decide they're ready to receive visitors. Still, I tried, in case Botnick hadn't been scooped up yet. I was about to give up when I spotted a shape slipping through a stack of boxes across the room.

  "You!"

  I advanced on the ghost. It was the voyeur from the night before. He started to fade.

  "Don't you dare," I said. "Unless you want to be reported for loitering at the scene of an unauthorized occult gathering, I'd suggest you tell me what you saw."

  "I didn't--"

  "Yes, you did. You're the only witness to a murder and you'd better tell me what you saw or you'll add 'failing to remain at the scene' to those charges."

  He peered at me, his eyes narrowing. I tried to look severe. Even fierce. I think I blew it when I went for fierce.

  "Pfft," he said, and started to fade.

  A bolt of energy sliced through the boxes and hit him in the stomach. He yelped and stumbled. Eve strode from the crate pile and kicked the man's legs out from under him. When he fell, she planted her boot on his throat.

  "Feel more like talking now?" she asked.

  He yowled as she ground her foot into his neck.

  "Oh, stuff it. You can't feel pain, remember?" She leaned back and fixed him with a look. "Or, considering your 'proclivities,' I'm guessing that's the tragedy of your afterlife, huh?"

  His eyes narrowed to slits. "I deliver pain, bitch. I don't receive."

  "Right. So that convention in Hawaii...eighty-nine, wasn't it? So that's not you I see wearing the grass skirt and getting...Eww. Let's stop right there."

  His face went slack and his lips parted, as if to ask how she'd known that. Then he settled for spewing invective.

  "Oh, quit your bitching," Eve said. "I'm not here to discuss your sex life--much rather not, thank you. You're going to tell the nice lady--"

  "I'm not telling either of you anything."

  She began again, in the same calm tone. "You're going to tell--"

  "You've already admitted you can't hurt me, so how are you going to--"

  "Hold that thought." Eve lifted a finger, then looked at me. "Could you...?" She motioned with her still-raised finger, telling me to turn around.

  So she didn't want me seeing how she was going to persuade the ghost to speak. I could have
protested that I wasn't skittish--I'd just found a dead body and hadn't run screaming from the room. An old argument, and not worth rehashing now. So I settled for a glare, and turned my back, resisting the urge to cross my arms.

  Jeremy and Hope had already figured out that I wasn't talking to myself. From behind me came a commotion of muffled cries, most of it "bleeped" out, the rest incoherent babbling.

  "--sorry, very sorry--didn't understand the situation--no offense intended--none at all--"

  I waited. More babbled apologies.

  Then, Eve, impatiently, "Are you done? Because we really need to get on with this, preferably before the cops show up."

  "Yes, yes, but I just want you to know, I meant no disrespect. I--"

  "--didn't understand the situation. Well, now you do. So shut up and answer our questions. Jaime?"

  I started to turn around.

  "Uh-uh," Eve said. "Gotta keep looking that way or we aren't going to get the truth out of this bastard."

  The ghost yelped in protest. "I will. I assure you, now that I understand--"

  "--the situation. Got that part. As for telling the truth, let's just say I like to be thorough. So the--" her next word was bleeped, "--stays. Got it?"

  "Whatever you say, ma'am. Or, er, is there a proper form of address? I've never met--"

  "Ma'am is fine. Jaime?"

  The ghost--Stan, as he finally introduced himself--had been hanging around the basement last night, hoping for further excitement after our hasty exit. The cult members had followed us a little ways into the tunnel, but retreated once they hit the drop-off. Upstairs, Botnick convinced them that nothing had been touched, no doors left unlocked, and, had anyone broken into the basement, it had probably just been some vagrant or addict who came in through the tunnel looking for shelter.

  The man had left then, but the woman had hung around, obviously suspecting something was up, and only left when Botnick went with her. Stan stayed. Jeremy returned and wandered around, picking up Botnick's trail, then left. Twenty minutes or so later, Botnick came back alone, probably hoping we'd show up again. He'd stayed for an hour, then made a phone call on his cell. He'd had to go upstairs to get decent reception. Stan hadn't followed, so he hadn't heard the content of that call. Botnick had then done some wandering of his own, nervously pacing as he waited.

  A couple of hours passed. Then Stan heard a cry and a thump. He'd gone up to find Botnick facedown on the floor, unconscious, surrounded by three dark-clad figures. They seemed to have come up on Botnick from behind and knocked him out before he could say a word.