Gunmetal Magic

“Yes,” Julie said, her voice flat.

“Good.” I hung up.

My metabolism was probably twice as fast as that of a normal human. The faster the metabolism, the faster the spread of venom through the body. I had to keep calm. The more I worried, the more I moved and the faster I would die.

I lay flat. Below me snakes slid around on the floor, their scales making the faintest of whispers against the floorboards. My arm burned. My forehead felt clammy. Sweat broke out along my hairline. Nausea came, squirming from my stomach into my throat.

I concentrated on breathing. In and out. Calm.

In.

Out.

I would survive this. No final thoughts, no regrets, no worrying about things I should’ve said and done. I would survive this.

In.

Out.

I wanted to run outside, to jump into my car, and drive myself to the emergency room. I would be riding to my death.

In.

Out.

I tasted metal in my mouth.

In.

Out.

A fever started, burning slowly just under my skin.

In.

Out.

I can do this. I will survive this. I will get justice for the four families. I will resolve things with Raphael. I have too much to live for.

I just had to not move.

My breath was coming in short gasps. So much for my calm breathing. I didn’t want to die.

The pain pierced my chest. My heart fluttered. I was hot, so very hot…

A man in firefighter yellow busted through the door and swore. “Snakes! There are fucking snakes in here!”

I closed my eyes.

“Run that by me again?” Detective Collins, a tall, fit, Caucasian man in his early forties, leaned toward me. “She jumped at you and you shot her four times in half a second?”

“Yes.” I shifted inside the blanket the paramedics had wrapped me in. I was sitting in the chair, by the counter from which Gloria had leaped at me. The first responders sank fifteen vials of antivenom into my body and when that didn’t quite do the trick gave me five more. My head swam and I felt cold and clammy. Any other time I’d be miserable, but now being sick and woozy just confirmed that I was alive.

“What happened next?”

“She grew fangs and bit me.”

“With her fangs?”

“Yes.”

Detective Tsoi, a dark-haired Asian female in her late thirties, arched her pretty eyebrows at me. “So would you say she was like a snake?”

I looked at her. Behind Tsoi, Animal Control packed the last of the snakes into bins.

“I just want to be sure that we’re on the same page,” Tsoi said. “Are we talking about snake people?”

“Yes.”

Tsoi and Collins looked at each other.

“Everybody knows there is no such thing as reptilian shapeshifters,” Collins said.

“I didn’t say she was a shapeshifter.” And that wasn’t strictly true either. There were reptilian shapeshifters; they just weren’t the product of Lyc-V.

Tsoi pondered me. “Your file says you were discharged from the Order due to post-traumatic stress. You failed your psych eval?”

“I’m not crazy.” My head hurt and I still wanted to vomit. Every word was like a hammer to my head.

“Nobody says you are,” Collins said. “Nobody even mentioned the c-word.”

I took a deep breath, trying to keep what little liquid was left in my stomach from geysering out. They knew I was weak and they were trying to squeeze everything they could out of me, hoping I’d slip up. I didn’t blame them. In their place, I would’ve done the same thing. Get as much as you can while you can. They’d Mirandized me the moment I was conscious, which meant I was detained and this wasn’t a routine conversation.

“She isn’t crazy,” the ME said, straightening from where he was examining the corpse. “Got two retractable fangs here. Also something going on with her temporomandibular joint. Look at this.” He pulled Gloria’s lower jaw down. Her mouth gaped, not quite as wide as the maw of a snake, but far wider than any human skull had a right to open.

“Snake people.” Collins stared at him. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

The ME spread his arms. “Hey, I call them like I see them. I tell you fangs and a jaw that opens one hundred degrees. You can draw your own conclusions from there.”

“Isn’t there some sort of a cult who thinks there are secret snake people?” Tsoi said.

“No, those are Reptilians,” the ME said. “They’re supposed to be more like lizards.”

“I shot her four times,” I said. “It didn’t even faze her.”

“EnGarde Deluxe,” the ME said. “Tactical concealed bulletproof vest. She was wearing one under her jacket.”

Well. That explained a few things.

Collins heaved a sigh and turned to me. “What are you doing here?”

Three days ago I would have cooperated, out of habit, and because I was hardwired by the Order to play nice with the PAD. But now I was playing for the Pack’s team and I would sit here and keep my mouth shut, until they sent in my backup, hopefully in the form of a lawyer. “No comment.”

Collins fixed me with a heavy stare. “Don’t tell me you drove all the way to White Street to go shopping.”

“No comment.”

“Seriously? You’re seriously going to do this?” He sounded personally offended.

“Yes.”

Collins shook his head. Tsoi arranged her face into a sympathetic expression. “Listen, all of us here know that this is connected to the four murders on your ex-boyfriend’s reclamation site. Level with us. We’re all good guys here. We’re all on the same side.”

These two were good. It had been less than two hours since the PAD uniformed cops, who had shown up right after the paramedics, had detained me at the crime scene. Collins and Tsoi, who had appeared half an hour ago, already knew who I was. They knew my job history, they knew my connection to Raphael, and they were obviously sore about losing the case of Raphael’s crew to the Pack’s jurisdiction. I bet they were the responding detectives to that crime scene.

I understood their frustration. Four murders in the middle of the city—of shapeshifters, no less, who were stronger and faster than most—didn’t sit well with the general public. It’s not that we were popular, but if this unknown threat could take on four shapeshifters at once, an average Joe didn’t stand a chance. People tended to panic easily nowadays, and the PAD was feeling less than pleased about being locked out of the investigation.

“Come on, Nash,” Collins said. “Help us out here. What were you doing here?”

“No comment.”

They stared at me. I knew that stare. I had given it myself a few times. It said, “We got you and you’re not leaving, but we’re willing to listen and if you just talk to us, all of this will go away.”

Laymen think cops are stupid. They see some guy with a bulldog face and assume that he’s dumb and they can talk their way out of whatever trouble they got themselves into. But that bulldog-faced cop has a degree, three hundred homicide investigations under his belt, and over three thousand hours in the interrogation room. You’re not winning that fight. If you just stopped and thought about it, you’d keep your mouth shut. But when you’re put on the spot, you want to explain your side of the story. You want someone to understand, you want sympathy, and you want to get out from under that stare.

Explaining yourself is a powerful urge. I’d seen people who knew better, attorneys, experienced cops, and even knights of the Order crack under pressure and say stupid things just to explain themselves. I would not be following their example.

“Nash, don’t bullshit me. Do I need to define obstruction of justice to you?”

“No comment.”

“Andrea, not another word.” A lithe, muscular man shouldered his way to us, moving like an acrobat: graceful, sure, and weightless. He was on the near side of thirty, handsome, with green eyes and sharp features. His short hair, bright orange-red, had been brushed straight up and spiked, standing up like needles on a frightened hedgehog. Barabas. Technically, he was a member of Clan Nimble, but he’d grown up in Clan Bouda. He was Kate’s adviser on the Pack’s law and from what Raphael had told me, nasty and vicious in a fight.

“Perhaps I need to define obstruction of justice for you, Detective.” Barabas’s face took on a dangerously focused expression. “‘Obstruction of justice’ is an attempt to interfere with administration and due process of the law. To be guilty of obstruction of justice, a person must knowingly and willfully obstruct or hinder a law enforcement officer in the lawful discharge of his official duties by violence, destruction of evidence, bribery, corruption, or deceit. Note the emphasis on deceit. Therefore, to charge my client with ‘obstruction,’ you must prove that my client has been deceitful. My client isn’t lying. She’s refusing to answer, as is her right under the Constitution, which, the last time I checked, was still the supreme law of this land. But nice try.”

Wow. I had hoped for some backup, but Jim had sent the big guns and Air Support.

The ME waved at Barabas. Barabas waved back. “Hey, Mitchell. Long time, no see.”

“Who are you?” Tsoi demanded.

“Barabas Gilliam.” A business card materialized in Barabas’s long elegant fingers. “I’m her attorney.”

Tsoi glanced at the card. “You’re a Pack lawyer. What are you doing here?”

“Working.” Barabas grinned, displaying sharp white teeth. “You see, even us dirty Pack lawyers have to pass the bar just like everyone else. If you check, you’ll find that I’m a member in good standing. I’m licensed to practice law in the lovely State of Georgia and several of her illustrious neighbor states, which means Ms. Nash can hire me to represent her.”

Tsoi pointed at me. “Is she a member of the Pack?”

“No, Ms. Nash is a private citizen, who has retained my services. Now I do make it a point to keep up with current legislation, but perhaps I missed something—is there a new law that states a Pack attorney can’t practice outside the Pack? If so, thank you ever so much for bringing it to my attention, Detective.”