“Who’s alive?”
“This guy. One of his carotid arteries is intact, so the heart on that side is still supplying blood to the brain. If we can get him a transfusion in time, he might survive.”
They loaded him on a gurney, and I got out of the way as they hurried him out to the ambulance parked in front of the bar. I knew demons were damned hard to kill—having two hearts was obviously a survival trait—but I was sure Gecid had bit the dust.
After they were gone, I went into his office, pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, and started going through his paper records. There was an awful lot of blood in the vicinity of his desk, but it was clean inside the drawers and filing cabinets.
“So, you never did tell me why you shot him?” Whittaker’s voice came from the office doorway.
“He pulled a gun and tried to shoot me. I asked if he hired anyone to kill me, and his response was to reach into his desk drawer for a weapon.” I gestured to the hole in the wall by the door. “He just happens to be a lousy shot.”
“Lucky you.”
“I’m trying not to think too hard about that, if you don’t mind.”
A piece of paper in one of the desk drawers caught my attention. Fine stationary with a delicate flowered border. When I picked it up, I discovered it had a faint floral scent. Not at all like the other paper I’d found, and not something I would associate with a demon. In their world, the flora was as voraciously carnivorous as the fauna.
An address was written on it in a woman’s hand. My address. I held it up for Whittaker to see.
“Well, I guess that explains his happy trigger finger,” my boss said.
“Yeah. Guilty as hell. Hey!” I called to one of the forensics guys. I held out the page. “Bag this and see if you can find any fingerprints or DNA on it.”
He held up a plastic bag, and I slipped the piece of paper in.
“Find anything else interesting?” Whittaker asked.
“I knew from a records search before I came down here that Johansson and David Moncrieff actually own this place. The main thing I’ve learned since I got here is how lucrative owning a bar is. They are raking it in.”
Whittaker grinned. “Better investment than the stock market, and more secure. They’ll hire a new manager before the end of the week, and the patrons will show back up as soon as they reopen.”
He sobered. “Johansson was dead when you were attacked. This puts Ashvial right back in the frame.”
“Yeah, but if you were him, would you hire vampires and mages to carry out a hit?” I asked. “Think of all the creepy, crawly, nasty creatures he could sic on me. Did you know, the demon world has a snake that can spit a corrosive poison fifteen feet? Almost instantly lethal.”
“Yeah,” he said, scratching his neck, “I had a case once where that was the murder weapon. Their version of vampire bats are pretty nasty, too, although sex demon assassins seems to be their method of choice. Not an option to use on mages, though.”
“Don’t bet on it. There are a lot of kinky mages out there. You don’t have to be lured to be stupidly horny.”
Chapter 36
The lab tests on the paper with my address came back before I went home that evening. I went down to the lab on my way out of the office.
“Partial prints, but nothing definitive,” the technician told me. “DNA shows one human and the ifrit you shot.”
“Is the human DNA in our database?” I prompted.
“Not exactly. I found some family ties.” She seemed very tentative, holding a page of paper as if it was too precious to show me.
“Hell, let me see that,” I said, snatching the printout from her hand. There were more than a dozen names on the list. I was one of them. The DNA analysis of the note writer included gene sequences from the Findlay and Benoit Families. My Great-grandmother Genevieve was a Benoit. Someone in my extended family was trying to kill me. Of course, that narrowed it down only to about two or three dozen people. To my surprise, I discovered that I wasn’t surprised. It was kind of a relief to know that my paranoia about my family was justified.
I compared the analysis of my DNA and the woman’s who wrote the address. We shared some Findlay genes. She was an electrokinetic, but that wasn’t surprising. Electrokinesis was the major Family talent.
“I have a lot more relatives than this,” I said.
“Our records are incomplete. We don’t have samples for most of the Hundred,” the tech said, “especially the older generations. More of the younger people have been arrested or had their DNA taken in hospital at one time or another.”
Mine was on file because I was a cop, and it was required. I couldn’t imagine my grandmother’s reaction to anyone asking her for a DNA sample. Personally, I wasn’t in the mood to get fried.
Of course, there was a database of the Findlay Family DNA, and that of all the other Families. It just wasn’t public. The Families kept scrupulous breeding records. The physical deformities of our great-great-grandparents’ generation still cropped up occasionally, and they tried to avoid that. Enhancing or combining talents was also a priority, and any marriage negotiation included the exchange of genetic profiles.
Lurid rumors circulated about the Families’ breeding programs, and I knew that artificial insemination using carefully selected fertilized ovum was common. The biggest scandal inside the Findlay clan had been the unplanned pregnancy of my single cousin Karolyn and her refusal to divulge the name of the father.
As to the note writer, the obvious candidate was my Aunt Courtney, but she was a little
