Cause of Death: Unnatural (The Cause of Death Series) (10 page)

She grinned.
"Nothing."
She reached across and brushed it off for him. He smiled goofily and kissed the
inside of her wrist as she drew her hand back.

"It's past midnight, Em. I hadn't
realized. I totally lost track of the time. Sorry if I've spoiled your evening.
You should have said no. We can always check it out tomorrow."

"It's fine. I wasn't doing
anything."

"That family do I mentioned is on
tomorrow - I mean, today. You still want to come with me?"

That puppy dog look was back on his face, Em
noticed. She loved it. He really wanted her to go.

"Sure," she said lightly. "Of
course I do."

After the pizza, they'd set off for the
harborside
again, passing Alina's club with a line out the
door.

The warehouse was the one they were looking
for, the one
Will
had 'told' her about. Em was
impressed with Nick's sleuthing. Nice work, given he had so little to go off.
She wondered what this 'random criminal vibe' was he was going on about.

The building was tucked away at the end of a
battleaxe block, nearly wall to wall with the surrounding buildings except for
one narrow, dirty alley running along its south side. Whoever was using it
certainly didn't have to worry about visibility.

They found a door padlocked with a lock that
looked so old Em was certain it would fall apart if she breathed on it. She dug
a pick out of her handbag, and reached out to grab the lock. The instant her
hand made contact with the metal, the all-too-familiar headache roared to the
front of her mind. Em immediately pulled back her hand as if she'd been burnt.
She stumbled back a little.

"You okay?" Nick peered at her in
the dim light.

"Yeah," said Em, pushing back the
hair that had fallen into her face. The headache had retreated as soon as she
pulled her hand away. It was still
there,
throbbing in
the back of her head, but the sudden flare up seemed to be over. "Yeah, it
just ... there was a sharp bit, that's all."

Nick looked dubious. Em didn't want to touch
it again and she held the
pick up
for Nick. He
ignored it, took a few steps back and then gave the door a good hard kick. It
swung open.

"
Urgh
!"
Em immediately covered her nose. The stench
that washed over them was almost unbearable. It was like a hot wave, the air
thick with decay. In the back of her head, the headache pulsed and then bloomed
like a rose, full and ripe all through her mind.

Em stepped up behind Nick and buried her face
in his shoulder in an attempt to filter the air. He turned to her and they
stood there, one hand over their faces, their other arms around each other,
surveying the carnage in front of them. They could both handle a few corpses,
but this, this was much, much more...

The warehouse floor was lined with bodies.
Every single one of them was
male,
every single one of
them was drained dry to an ashen grey pallor. Em shivered. No one vampire would
ever have an appetite this large.

'A bit of a mess' Jarek had said.
A bit of a mess?
Surely even the Family's commander in chief
would have thought this worth mentioning. At the very least it was a gross
violation of the Family's cull protocols.

But this wasn't vampire...

"What does this mean?" said Nick,
appalled.

Em could only shake her head. This wasn't a
cull. This was mass murder.

The next twenty four hours were hell.

Nick called it in - it was his research that
had found them the crime scene after all. Em stood with her back to the carnage
and listened to him
speak
.

"It's a warehouse. Back of Darkes Lane,
the northern end," he said into the phone.

There was a silence then which stretched out
for longer than Em thought was normal. She looked at him. He had stepped out of
the warehouse door to make the call, but was now staring in at the bodies with
his eyes a little wider than usual and his expression blank.

"I don't know how many," he said.
"No," he was shaking his head, "no, I don't
know
how many, okay? We're going to need a few teams..." He
trailed off.
"Sorry, Robert.
I haven't seen
anything like this before. It's big. It's a mess. You'll see what I mean."

Em felt sorry for him. She guessed this
evening hadn't turned out the way he'd expected. He'd had a little triumph at
the research, called Em and expected to have a fun-filled evening with a tinge
of adrenaline as their little excursion confirmed his theories. Em hadn't
expected this either. She'd thought they'd end up having some drinks together
and moving onto bed and a different kind of adrenaline. The remains of the
psycho killing spree spread out on the warehouse floor in front of them was not
on either of their
wishlists
for the evening, she
thought dryly.

They waited outside the crime scene and
watched for the first of the professionals to arrive. Nick paced back and
forward across the narrow alley way. Em sat on the edge of the gutter tucking
her coat up behind her knees. Her head was pounding. It was the same headache
of old, but it seemed brighter here. The bodies in the warehouse were
amplifying it. Like a heady perfume that sets off a migraine, the bodies
carried the scent of whatever it was that was causing Em's pain. Now there were
so many bodies, the pain was all the stronger.

She sighed and pressed both her palms into
the side of her head.

Nick saw her and came to sit next to her,
putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close.

"You okay?" he asked.

His voice was gentle and caring and all of a
sudden Em wanted to dive into it. She didn't care
any more
about anything. Let Jarek take Alina back to the Family, let her father descend
in all his fiery rage, let whoever was draining the city's most gorgeous young
men dry drink their fill. She didn't care, so long as she had Nick's arms
around her and the warmth of his chest to lean against.

She wanted to run away with him and spend the
rest of her life in bed with him. She wanted to take his hand and fly like fury
through the dimensions and show him the chaos and wonder of the universe. She
wanted to wake up every morning to coffee and bagels and him. She wanted the
both of them to live together.
Forever.

"I'm okay," she said, slipping her
arm around his waist and smiling up at him. "I'm fine."

And then the first of the squad cars arrived.

Things got busy after that. The entire scene,
the warehouse, the alleyway, all the approaches, had to be researched,
sketched, photographed, tagged and bagged. There were thirty seven bodies
altogether. Robert had to assign three pathology teams to the job, never his
favourite way of doing things, but they needed to get these bodies to a morgue
as soon as possible. Some of them had been there for quite a while.

When Robert
arrived
he saw Em and Nick working side by side as two professionals should, but when
Em looked up to greet him, she saw that Robert had noticed something else as
well. His eyes flicked from one to the other and he frowned slightly. Em
couldn't help being impressed. She'd hidden her relationships with both the men
from the other, and she'd always thought she'd done a good job of that. But
something had just given her away. She wondered what it was.

They worked through the rest of that night
and most of the next day as well. By lunchtime the last of the bodies had left
the scene and Robert looked at his watch.

"Okay," he said, calling the teams
around him. "We still have a lot to do here, but I need some of you back
at the lab to start processing what's back there. You, Nick, and you, Em -
you're out. Go home." He looked down at his notepad and turned to some of
the others.

"I don't need a break," said Em,
interrupting him. "I'm fine. I can keep going here..."

Robert stepped closer to her, gestured for
Nick to come over and lowered his voice. Em thought he'd been annoyed at them -
his tone had certainly been curt - but now she could see he was concerned for
them.

"You've both been here since midnight
last night. And you pulled long shifts the day before."

"So?" said Nick. "It's not
like we haven't worked long hours before."

Robert put a hand on his arm. "I mean
it, Nick. This scene hasn't been easy on any of us today. We're all going to
need a break at some point, and you two have been here the longest. We've got a
long way to go on it still, and they'll be plenty to do back here tomorrow in
the light." He nodded quickly as Nick began to interrupt again. "Go
home and get some rest, both of you. I'll need you refreshed and on the ball
tomorrow."

"Come on, Nick," said Em, looking
closely at Robert. Robert looked back at her, his face inscrutable. Em had the
strangest feeling Robert was letting her know he was okay with her and Nick. Em
let one of her eyebrows twitch a question at Robert, and in return Robert gave
the smallest of nods. Interesting, thought Em.

Robert turned back to the rest of the
pathology team and Em took Nick by the hand and
lead
him out of the warehouse.

Naturally, they were late to Nick's family barbecue.

The event was a tentative celebration. Nick's
sister Lucy's youngest son had passed some milestone in his treatment. With
luck it meant
fewer long-term hospital
stays in the
future - and that meant everyone in the family could relax a little. It also
meant Nick had more time to spend with Em, he had whispered to her in the car
on the way. No more taking the other kids to little league on a Saturday
morning for Lucy when she was stuck in hospital.

"So, little Jack being home from
hospital means I get to spend more time in bed with you?" said Em as Nick
grinned at her. "Well then, this really is a celebration, isn't it?"

But Em found the atmosphere at the gathering
a little curious. Most human parties she'd attended had been wild celebrations
of life. There'd been alcohol, party drugs, laugher, loud music,
the
usual. Here there was an almost melancholy tone. This
was a family celebrating one small life that clung on precariously.
Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and kids all smiled and laughed but with a
certain wariness, and weariness, the
adults
in
particular not sure if they should relax completely. Em was intrigued, and the
slight tiredness about the mood suited her current state of mind completely.

Lucy came by with a small boy in her arms and
a careful smile on her face. She kissed Nick on the cheek and turned her smile
to Em. Em could see she looked older than her years with an age old fear
dancing close behind her eyes.

"Nick, I'm so glad you could come,"
she said. "Jack was asking after his '
Nunkle
Nick'.
Busy day?"

Em raised her eyebrows at Nick over Lucy's
shoulder as the woman leant close to her brother to allow the kid in her arms
to kiss his uncle. '
Nunkle
Nick?' she mouthed with a
grin.

"I wouldn't have missed it," said
Nick, taking Jack out of Lucy's arms and tossing the boy high in the air.

Jack squealed, but Em noticed it was a
subdued little squeal. She looked at the boy again. He was about three, bald as
a button, with eyes older than time. Em looked deeper and saw the death lurking
inside the child's blood. She realized in a second how pointless this
celebration was. No, not pointless, she corrected herself, there was love here
and that should always be celebrated. She sighed. She was surrounded by death
today. Thirty seven pointless deaths in the
warehouse,
and one sweet little death still to come in front of her now. How did humans
cope with this?

“And you must be Em," Lucy was saying.
"I'm so pleased to finally meet you. Nick's told me so much about
you." The smile Lucy gave Em was warm and genuinely happy. Em's insides
twisted as she thought of how that smile would shrivel and die when the death
in Jack's blood finally won the battle. Lucy seemed like such a nice person, Em
thought. She doesn't deserve this.

Em allowed herself to be introduced to the
whole family. She was a little surprised at the generous welcome she received -
what had Nick been telling them all - but she was touched as well. Of course
they would greet her so kindly. If this was the family that had produced Nick
then of course they were good people. The comparison between this beautiful
kind-hearted group of humans and the cut-throat competition of
her own
Family didn't even bear thinking about.

Em watched Nick. He'd dived in to play a
complicated game of tag with his nieces and nephews in the back garden, and the
kids yelled and laughed around him. The smaller ones simply climbed him like a
tree and at one point she noticed four children hanging off him, from his arms,
from his shoulders, wrapped around his legs. He looked like a boy himself. Em
could feel his happiness from where she watched inside the house with a gaggle
of sisters and aunts who scoffed thick slices of desserts and sweet tea.