Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(37)
Author: Kim Harrison

Fixing her face into a bland expression to hide her disgust, she removed her helmet and took a deep breath of the night air, feeling the humidity of the unseen river settle deep in her lungs. The man in the back of the cruiser was yelling, trying to get her attention.

"I didn’t mean to hurt her!" he cried, muffled through the glass. "It wasn’t me. I love Ellie. I love Ellie! You gotta believe me!"

Ivy got off her cycle. Clipping her ID to her short leather jacket, she took a moment to collect herself, concentrating on the damp night. The man’s fear, not his girlfriend’s blood he was smearing on the windows, pulled a faint rise of bloodlust into existence. His face was scratched, and the welts were bleeding. The man was terrified. Locking him in the cruiser until the FIB picked him up was for his own safety.

Her boot heels making a slow, seductive cadence to draw attention, Ivy walked to the front door and the pool of light that held two officers. Spotting a familiar face, Ivy let some of the tension slip from her and her arms swing free. "Hi, Rat," she said, halting on the apartment complex’s six-by-eight common porch. "Haven’t you died yet?"

"It’s not for lack of trying," the older vamp said, his wrinkles deepening as he smiled. "Where’s Art?"

"Biting himself," she said, and his partner, a slight woman, laughed. The living vamp looked right out of high school, but Ivy knew it was a witch charm that kept her that way. The woman was pushing fifty, but the disguise was tax deductible since she used her looks to pacify those who needed . . . pacifying. Ivy nodded warily to her, and got the same in return.

The faint scent of blood coming from the hallway sifted through her brain. It wasn’t much, but after Art’s play for her, her senses were running in overdrive. "Is the body still in there?" she asked, thinking the situation could be useful. Art hadn’t been up long and his resistance would be lower. With a little planning, she might tip him into making a mistake tonight, and she stifled a shudder of anticipation for what that actually meant.

Rat shrugged, eyeing her speculatively. "Body’s in the ambulance. You okay?"

His teeth sinking deep into her, the salt of his dusty blood on her tongue, the rush of adrenaline as he drew from her what made her alive . . . "I’m fine," she said. "Vampire?" she questioned, since they usually left bodies for the morgue unless there was a chance it might decide it was well enough to get up.

Rat’s expressive face went hard. "No." His voice was soft, and she took a pair of slip-on booties that his partner extended to her. "Witch. Pretty, too. But since her staked-excuse of a husband was encouraged to ignore his rights and confessed to beating her up and strangling her, they moved her out. He’s a paint job, Ivy. Only good for draining and painting the walls."

Ivy frowned, not following his gaze to the man shouting in the cruiser. They moved her?

Rat saw her annoyance and added, "Shit, Ivy. He confessed. We got pictures. There’s nothing here."

"There’s nothing here when I say there’s nothing here," she said, stiffening when the recognizable rumble of Art’s late-model Jaguar came through the damp night. Damn it, she had wanted to be in there first.

Ivy’s exposed skin tingled, and she felt a wash of self-disgust. God help her, she was going to use a crime scene to get Art off her back. Someone had died, and she was going to use that to seduce Art into biting her against her will. How depraved could she be? But it was an old feeling, quickly repressed like all the other ugly things in her life.

Handing her purse to Rat, she got a packet of evidence bags and wax pencil in return. "I want the collection van here," she said, not caring that Rat had just told her to collect any evidence she thought pertinent herself. "I want the place vacuumed as soon as I’m out. And I want you to stop doing my job."

"Sorry, Ivy." Rat grinned. "Hey, there’s a poll started about you and Art-"

Ivy stepped forward, coiled arm extending. Rat blocked it, grabbing her wrist and pulling her off balance and into him. She fell into his chest, his weight twice hers. His partner snicked. Ivy had known the strike would never land, but it had burned off a little frustration.

"You know," Rat breathed, the scent of his partner’s blood fresh on his breath from an earlier tryst, "you really shouldn’t wear those high-heeled boots. They make your balance suck."

Ivy twisted and broke from him. "I hear they hurt more when I crotch-kick bastards like you," she said, the fading adrenaline making her head hurt. "Who else has been in there?" she asked, thinking a room stinking of fear would be just the thing to tip Art into a mistake. He was currently standing by the cruiser, looking at the human and letting his blood-ardor grow. Idiot.

Rat was rubbing his lower neck in invitation. God, it had started already. By sunup, they’d all think she was in the market to build up the IOUs necessary to reach the lower basement and she’d be mobbed. Imagining the coming innuendos, suggestions, and unwanted offers, Ivy stifled a sigh. Like the pheromones weren’t bad enough already? Maybe she should start a rumor she had an STD.

"The ambulance crew," the vampire was saying. "Tia and me to get him out. He was crying over her as usual. A neighbor called it in as a domestic disturbance. Third one this month, but when it got quiet, she got scared and made the call."

Frowning, Ivy took a last breath of clean night air, and stepped into the hall. Not too many people to confuse things, and Rat knew not to touch anything. The room would be as clean as could be expected. And she wasn’t going to sully it.

The tang of blood strengthened, and after slipping on the blue booties, she bent to duck under the tape across the open door. She stopped inside, taking in someone else’s life: low ceilings, matted carpet, old drapes, new couch, big but cheap TV, even cheaper stereo, and hundreds of CDs. There were self-framed pictures of people on the walls and arranged on the pressboard entertainment shelves. The feminine touches were spotty, like paint splatters. The victim hadn’t lived here very long.

Ivy breathed deeply, tasting the anger left in the air, invisible signposts that would fade with the sun. Blue booties scuffing, she followed the scent of blood to the bathroom. A red handprint gripped the rim of the toilet, and there were several smears on the tub and curtain. Someone had cut his scalp on the tub. The pink bulb gave an unreal cast, and Ivy shut off the exhaust fan with the end of her wax pencil, making a mental note to tell Rat that she had.

The soft hum stopped. In the new silence, she heard the soft conversation and laugh track of a sitcom coming from a nearby apartment. Art’s satisfied voice filtered in from the hallway, and Ivy’s blood pressure rose. Rat had said the man had strangled his wife. She’d seen worse. And though he hadn’t said where they found the body, an almost palpable anger flowed over the bedroom’s doorjamb, broken about the latch with newly painted-over cracks.