Second Skin Part 24

"Okay then," I murmured, staring at the old elevator dial as we descended into the bowels of the building.

The car took us to the sterile, fluorescent hallways of the morgue, where an attendant sat at the battered metal reception desk playing a handheld game that buzzed and chirped. A stark sign behind his head proclaimed NOCTURNE CITY MORGUE-NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT. "We're here to identify the John Doe," I said.

"Room five," he replied, never breaking concentration from the screen.

"Come on," I said to Lucas, taking his elbow and leading him into the viewing room. The drab salmon-pink curtains were pulled across the small window, and I hit the intercom b.u.t.ton on the wall. "Are you ready for us?"

"Ready," said the morgue attendant. I turned to Lucas. "I want to prepare you-falls don't leave the body in the best condition."

"Just open the curtains," Lucas snarled.

"Fine, fine," I said, and pulled back the curtains. Jason Kennuka had the blue paper sheet pulled up to his chin, covering the worst of the damage from his fall. One side of his face was misshapen and bruised, as if a sculptor had brushed up against his medium and thrown all the lines out of joint. Jason's hair was matted with blood where his scalp had caved in, but thankfully the attendant had arranged what remained over the fractures.

Lucas stared at the body, his eyes silvering and his nostrils opening, fluttering like wings as he drew in a long breath. He put one hand on the gla.s.s, his sprouted claws screeching down the divider between us and the body.

I took a step back, unconsciously, the were putting me at optimum striking distance. "Lucas?"

"That's him," said Lucas. His voice was flat, like a long hot highway when you run out of gas alongside. "That's my brother Jason."

"Thank you," I said quietly into the intercom, and the attendant hurried in and covered up Jason's face with the sheet.

"We're done," I said to Lucas. "You holding up all right?"

"I need some air," he whispered. His teeth were all silver fang as he spun and ran from the room.

"s.h.i.+t," I said to the empty s.p.a.ce and the flapping door. "Lucas!" I shouted at his retreating back. "Lucas, wait!"

He made it to the wide entryway where ambulances and hea.r.s.es backed up to deposit or receive their particular brand of cargo, and was bent over, hands on knees, shaking and coughing. "I could smell his blood . . . ," he ground out.

"No," I said. "You smelled a lot of blood. It's hard for people . . . like us . . . in there. You did well." I held out a hand to rub his back, and then hesitated. Dmitri would go ballistic if I suggested with actions or words that he wasn't tough enough to cope without any sort of support.

But this was Lucas. I gasped as a little bit of black blood hit the loading dock from his coughing fit. "You're not all right. I'd better take you somewhere." I touched him gingerly between the shoulder blades and he let out a cry, just a single dry sound that was all he allowed himself. Then his eyes were his own again, and his cough subsided.

"Do you know once, when I was a dumb kid, I was in a bar over the state line, and I got into it with this gang of neo-n.a.z.i a.s.sholes. I figured no big deal, I'll s.h.i.+ft if they get to be too much of a problem. But Jason came in and he stood next to me and he said, 'If you show yourself now, think of what will happen to the clan. Think what will come down if the secret gets out.' "

Lucas swiped at his eyes. "And then he turned to the biker sons of b.i.t.c.hes and said, 'If you want to take him on, you take me on, too, and a pair of Kennuka brothers is something no pig's a.s.shole wants ruining his day.' " He sighed. "Until he went off, there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't see him. He was my brother."

I crouched down next to Lucas and put my arms around him. "I know," I murmured. "And he was a good brother." Then, because I'm neither a coward or a completely heartless b.i.t.c.h, I said, "Lucas, there are some things that have come up about Jason. I need to talk to you."

"All right," he said.

I let go of his solid form and reached into my jean pocket for a tissue. "Here."

Lucas wiped the blood off his chin. "I'll be fine in a little while. Must have a bug."

"If you say so," I said. "Do you like Mexican food?"

"I'm hungry," he murmured, and his eyes flared silver again. "I mean, yes. I eat Mexican. What's wrong that you need to take me somewhere I won't cause a scene to hear it?"

I closed my eyes and sighed. "Just . . . some things I think you need to hear from me. From someone who understands your situation. You take my meaning?"

Lucas nodded silently. "Yeah, okay. I have to deal with the funeral arrangements . . . can we meet this evening?"

"I'll wait," I said. "Not letting you out of my sight, remember?" That got me a small smile.

The coroner gave Lucas a metric ton of forms for funeral a.s.sistance, and it was dusk by the time he finished. "Let's get out of here."

I offered him a hand, which turned into me keeping my arm around his shoulder. Lucas didn't say he was grateful or not, but from the way he leaned against me I think he was just glad to have someone prop him up. I know that if our situations were reversed, if it had been Sunny or Mac under the blue sheet, that my body would have been a useless bag, unable to contain my grief.

Lucas was handling it a lot better than I would have. I just tried not to think about how I was going to explain the scent of him on me to Dmitri. If he came back.

CHAPTER 17.

I took Lucas to El Gato y Raton, a Mexican burrito joint tucked away down an alley off Magnolia. The neighborhood mostly caters to winos buying Ripple from the liquor store that took up the front half of the building, neon beer signs pus.h.i.+ng against the smudgy fog that had drifted in over the course of the day, and methheads using the sidewalk for a mattress.

"Spare change?" one of them bleated at me, flas.h.i.+ng dirty fingers and a mouth with more gaps than teeth.

I showed my badge. "Get lost."

"b.i.t.c.h," he spat.

Lucas turned on him. "Another word and I'll pick your bones clean."

The speed freak backed off, and I nudged Lucas. "The chivalry really isn't a big thing with me. I've been called a lot worse by guys that weren't weren't out of their minds on meth." out of their minds on meth."

"No excuse for human filth," said Lucas. "I was doing the world in general a favor."

"Fair enough," I said, pus.h.i.+ng open the door of El Gato. The sensor over the jamb played an electronica version of the Mexican Hat Dance. The decor ran to light-up cacti, beer signs with coyotes and XX symbols on them, and chili-shaped Christmas lights dangling from the ceiling, but it smelled like pico de gallo and warm tortillas and caramel, the burritos served were as big as my forearm, and the beer was kept frosty cold.

Lucas slid into a sticky blue vinyl booth and I followed him, picking the side that let me see the door and the kitchen with relative ease.

"What did you want to tell me about Jason?" said Lucas, after he had waved off a beer and settled on plain iced water.

"Well," I hedged. G.o.ds, how much did I not not want to have this conversation with Lucas? About as much as I wanted a walk-in vault full of designer shoes and vintage purses. As much as I wanted to go back home and find Dmitri and an un-Hexed life waiting for me. want to have this conversation with Lucas? About as much as I wanted a walk-in vault full of designer shoes and vintage purses. As much as I wanted to go back home and find Dmitri and an un-Hexed life waiting for me.

"Well . . . ?" Lucas prompted. "Luna, I'm not going to get violent. Jason dying is what it is. If you think I should know something, spit it out."

Luna. My name sounded so soft-edged, so dark when it rolled off his tongue. My name sounded so soft-edged, so dark when it rolled off his tongue.

Okay, Wilder. Focus.

"There's some indication that your brother had become involved with the wild Wendigo shaman," I said, letting it all out in a rush. Lucas carefully set his water gla.s.s down in the center of a coaster advertising a telenovela telenovela and met my eyes. and met my eyes.

"So?"

Perspiration stippled my skin and matched the water droplets on my beer bottle. El Gato wasn't air-conditioned and the humidity outside was still making the temperature climb. Nearly dark, and still the city cooked at a slow boil.

"I went to his apartment with the lead detective in the murder case," I said. "And we found certain . . . things . . . that made me believe Jason might not have been entirely forthcoming with you, Lucas."

His face shut down, into that planar sh.e.l.l I was beginning to recognize as Lucas's carefully neutral expression to hide some form of rage or hunger. "Things. Like objects?"

"Yes," I said, shredding my napkin and not realizing it until I dropped my eyes to see my upper thighs covered with paper snow. "A fetish statue, specifically, for some kind of Wendigo G.o.d?"

Lucas rubbed his forehead, his fingers creasing the wrinkles that hid there and releasing them. "Those f.u.c.king things aren't real. Jason couldn't have believed in any of our G.o.ds." He slapped his palm down on the table. "My G.o.ds are all dead."

"Even so, there was magick there," I told him, backing up a fraction in my seat. Lucas's moods were changeable as his eyes. "I felt it."

"Then what you felt was a fraud," said Lucas. "Blood magick, or even caster magick, worked by someone who thinks it's funny to prey on the guillible savages. Where's this fetish now?"

"I left it with a friend," I said. "Lucas . . . did it occur to you that the shaman might have caused Jason's death?"

"No. Jason wouldn't have been into all of that religious junk," said Lucas. "And you can't compel somebody who doesn't believe. Isn't that the principle of casters and vaudun vaudun and all the rest of the bulls.h.i.+t artists?" and all the rest of the bulls.h.i.+t artists?"

"It's amazing what someone charismatic can influence a good man to do," I said, putting my hand over Lucas's. "I think you know it's possible. You must, or you wouldn't have let me speculate this far."

After a long, long silence when the only sound was an old Los Lonely Boys track on the restaurant's tinny PA, Lucas moved his hand out from under mine, folded them in his lap, and said, "I do know. Jason had been gone for a long time. I knew something had gone wrong-wronger than him running wild-but I didn't want to bring it up to the clan and have it get back to our mother."

"Any idea at all why Jason and these wild Wendigo might be ritualizing their kills?" I said. "It doesn't make sense from what you've told me about your people."

"That's just it," Lucas snarled. "The wild ones don't do what we do. They only obey hunger. I'm not like them, so don't ask me to get inside their head."

A waiter set down our steak burritos, giving Lucas a glance when he raised his voice. "No te precoupes," "No te precoupes," I said to him with an apologetic smile. He rolled his eyes and went back to the kitchen. I said to him with an apologetic smile. He rolled his eyes and went back to the kitchen.

"I'm sorry," I told Lucas. "But I've got a job to do here, and I'm trying to stop this before it gets bigger than either of us can handle."

Lucas stopped in mid-bite, sniffed, and his head rotated toward the door like he was a missile locked on to a target. "I think it already has."

Over the pleasant combination of scents from my beer and my burrito, something drifted to my nostrils that was too familiar and very, very unwanted. The distinctive wet-dog scent was different for every were pack, but it meant the same thing: Lucas and I were screwed.

I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and threw it down, standing up and unsnapping the strap on my holster. "Come on," I said to Lucas. "Stay behind me."

He flowed up from his chair, his speed displacing my eye, but he refocused just behind me. "Is that what I think it is?"

"I'm afraid so," I said, pus.h.i.+ng open the door of El Gato with my free hand. The other one was welded to the b.u.t.t of my service weapon. Not that a regular bullet would do much good if the weres outside were good and p.i.s.sed off.

The strains of the music cut off as the door swung shut behind Lucas and me.

Five figures stood in the alley, arms crossed, knowing that eventually we'd have to come outside. I recognized Donal, and the four with him all sported the green knot tattoo and the surly expression of were muscle.

"Evening," I said, trying hard not to let the s.h.i.+ver in my gut work its way into my voice. Five weres against the two of us, and not a full moon in sight.

That was it. We were freaking dead.

"You are in direct violation of the treaty, you Wendigo filth," Donal snarled.

"Hold on there," I held up a hand. "I know I didn't just hear you threaten someone's life right in front of a Nocturne City law officer."

The other four growled at me and Donal remained unamused, his face like a stone. "Stay out of our way, Insoli. You're interfering in pack business. Leave now, or I will put you down."

"Dude," I said, staring into his eyes, "threatening me is a really bad idea. Especially right after you've interrupted dinner at my second-favorite restaurant. By the time I deal with you, the whole thing is going to be cold. Do you have any idea how much a cold burrito upsets me?"

"Is she serious?" his tallest goon muttered to Donal.

"You have no idea how much," I told him, slipping my gun out of holster and holding it down at my side. "Dead serious would be an accurate expression to use." would be an accurate expression to use."

"Missy, you're involved in something that you can't possibly understand," said Donal. "I don't know what this filth has told you, but I guarantee he's a liar."

"Mauthka ye," Lucas spat at Donal. "You're the filth, dog. Go scratch your fleas." Lucas spat at Donal. "You're the filth, dog. Go scratch your fleas."

"Aye, I'll scratch my fleas here at home in my own bed while your people squat in the dirt and chew on the bones of what we weres decide to throw at you!" Donal bellowed.

"Let's peel his skin off," a goon giggled.

"There won't be a death, but there will be apology for what he did to my poor niece," Donal growled. "I'm in charge here. You made a bad mistake coming this close, you Wendigo coward."

The tall Warwolf made a move toward us, claws sprouting from his hands, long and deep red. That was new. Also sort of creepy. The were let out a roar, his lips pulling back.

I fired my gun straight up into the air, the report rolling away like a miniature thunderclap down the alley and back from the stone walls all around us. "Everybody settle the f.u.c.k down!"

Donal stepped closer, arms crossed. "Stand aside, girl. There's more to this than your little mind can handle. Last warning you're going to get."

"Just go, Luna," Lucas said, smiling at Donal the way a psychopath smiles at a pretty blond. "I can handle this. I want want to." His tongue flicked out, rose-pink. "I'm still hungry." to." His tongue flicked out, rose-pink. "I'm still hungry."

"No," I said. "I won't. I'm not a member of your pack, Macleod. The treaty doesn't apply to me, and I offered Lucas my protection. Lucas is here to help help me find the person who killed Priscilla, so if anyone has a problem with that, then you can go Hex yourselves." me find the person who killed Priscilla, so if anyone has a problem with that, then you can go Hex yourselves."

Donal smiled and tilted his head. "So be it, Insoli." He grabbed me by the shoulders, lifted me off the ground, and tossed me in one smooth movement that I never would have seen coming from someone his age, were or not.

I spun, my vision turning into a blur of neon and grinning were faces, and then I hit the brick wall next to the door of El Gato, splitting my lip and b.l.o.o.d.ying my nose. My gun slid away underneath a Dumpster, and I was paralyzed for a few seconds as flashbulbs went off in my brain.

"Set yourselves on him!" Donal howled, and the Warwolves closed in on Lucas, the tall one catching him in the gut with a kick that doubled him over. I saw Donal pull out a short steel baton from his pocket and close in on the group. It may not have been the full moon, but that didn't mean five rage-fueled weres couldn't damage Lucas and me beyond recognition.

"Get up, Luna," I muttered, making it to my knees. My mouth tasted of hot iron, my blood and the scent of Lucas's fear mingling hotly on my tongue. I went for Donal, since he was the skinniest and totally involved in hitting Lucas's hunched back with a baton.

Donal had a mess of s.h.a.ggy red hair hanging beyond his collar, and that was what I grabbed for, jerking his head backward and ruining his balance. I put my foot between his, exerting backward pressure on his knee while I used the reins of his hair to push his head forward. When my sweep had doubled Donal over, I brought my other knee up and into his face with enough force to make his nose crunch like someone had just stepped on a box of crackers.

Donal grunted and dropped the baton, holding his nose and hissing invective at me.

A blow caught me low in the back and I got spun around, going down on one knee and wheezing as flames spread up and down my left side. "Back off," said the tall goon. "I don't want to hurt you. You're a waste of my time."

He moved into a stance that was far more formal and trained than the Thai boxing I employed to beat on punching bags and thugs, watching me intently as I tried to think of something witty and biting to retort. Ow Ow was all that sprang to mind, so I just got up and went for him, trying to duck his defenses. was all that sprang to mind, so I just got up and went for him, trying to duck his defenses.

I got a hit in the jaw and in the gut for my trouble. Goonie was faster than me, and I was willing to bet he actually worked at his arts instead of relying on punching harder than the other guy. I blocked one of his blows with my forearm but he dipped and got me in the midsection again, and down I went, on the ground eye level with Lucas. His eyes were wide and tinged with silver as two Warwolves. .h.i.t him.