I parked and flashed my badge at a uniformed cop, hoping he would keep my car from being broken into. As soon as I walked into the alley, I knew why Tompkins asked for Arcane. Blood was splashed everywhere, and the corpse barely resembled anything human. He—I assumed it was a man due to the short hair—had been shredded.
“It’s bad,” Tompkins said as he came to meet me. “The girl is over there, on the other side of the dumpster.” George Tompkins, with his craggy face, hair graying at the temples, and a long overcoat covering a cheap brown suit, looked like a cop, and he was a good one. He’d been working Homicide for more than ten years.
“Well, obviously not a vampire,” I said. “George, this is Mychal Novak, my new partner.”
Tompkins led me farther into the alley and stopped, pointing at a footprint in the blood. The print wasn’t close to human. I judged it at about size thirty-three, with six clawed toes, and it looked as though the thing that left it was hairy.
The girl had long blonde hair, and other than having been disemboweled and having her face bitten off, she hadn’t suffered as much damage as the man.
“Any idea why they were here in the alley?” I asked.
With a gesture to his right, Tompkins said, “We found drug works.”
I took a few steps in that direction and saw a syringe, a spoon, a lighter, and a small baggie with white powder lying on the ground next to the dumpster.
“I wonder if whatever ate them got high on the dope,” I said.
“Doesn’t look like they had a chance to shoot up,” Tompkins said. “I think whatever did this was back here waiting for them.”
“Ever seen something like this?” I asked.
“Dunno. Demon? Werewolf? Some kind of monster, but no, nothing quite like this. Doesn’t look like it was hungry.”
At that point, I noticed that Novak was looking a little green.
“Out! Go on, get out!” I pointed to the street where we’d parked and gave him a shove. “If you puke and contaminate the scene, I’ll kick your ass!”
He went, stumbling a little.
“New to major crimes?” Tompkins asked.
“Yeah. Came over from narcotics.”
“Novak? One of the Novaks?”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head. “No good deed goes unpunished. You know the brass has it in for you.” Luckily, the cops on the street respected me because they knew I took care of business.
I wandered around, checking the walls of the buildings, and especially the dead end. One way into the alley, one way out. I finally found blood stains that indicated where the killer climbed out. Holes in the brick wall that looked like claw marks and the distance between the holes weren’t encouraging. The being had to be at least six to eight feet long or tall, with claws on all four extremities. And it climbed a sheer brick wall, so not a werewolf. But demon didn’t make sense either. The damage to the victims didn’t match what I was used to seeing from the run-of-the-mill common demon. And it hadn’t fed.
The rest of the alley didn’t reveal anything interesting, so I talked to Tompkins until Novak came back. He still looked pale and shaky, but more like a man who had just puked than a man getting ready to.
“What’s your affinity?” I asked him.
“Aeromancy.”
“Really? Maybe Whittaker did me a solid after all. Come.”
I led him over to the wall where I suspected our monster had absconded. “I think that’s where our murderer escaped,” I said, pointing upward. “Let’s go.”
He looked at me like I had lost my mind.
“What?” I couldn’t figure out why he was hesitating. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“You want to follow that thing?”
I took a deep breath. “That’s what we do. Now, either you take me up to the top of that building, or we call DC Whittaker and have him send me another partner. Your choice, Mr. Novak.”
He looked like he didn’t know whether to cry or get angry, then he grabbed me by the upper arms, and we rose into the air. The problem was, my back was to the wall, and I wanted to face it so I could inspect it for further evidence. My new partner was going to be a chore to break in.
We passed the roof and stopped, hanging there like a couple of stationary targets. Cops, even if not in uniform, weren’t the most popular people in most parts of town.
“Can you see anything?” I asked in my sweetest voice. I knew the answer as we were face-to-face, staring at each other.
“Uh, no.”
“Then perhaps you could set us down on the roof before someone decides to use us as target practice.”
“Huh?”
“Put me down on the roof. Gently.”
We started to drop.
“Not there! Over to the left.” He had started to land right on top of the killer’s trail. Didn’t the boy understand anything about preserving evidence?
As soon as my feet hit the roof, I shook out of his grasp. “We need to have a long talk about proper procedure,” I muttered, turning to look at the deep scars in the bricks on the edge of the roof where our prey had pulled himself over the top.
We followed its trail, the amount of blood diminishing by the step, across the roof and onto that of the next building. It sort of tipped me off that none of the blood belonged to my quarry. I reached the edge and looked over, down five stories to the busy street below. No way it had gone that way unless it had wings. After a quick look around, I took off to my left, crossing several more roofs until I looked down on another alley three stories below.
Our monster was purple. It also had more muscles than a professional wrestler.
“Okay,” I said, “hold me from behind this time. You can do an air shield, right?”
“Yes.”
“I think it
