Cerulean Sins - Chapters 16-21
Anita emphatically does not want to be in a car driving along the wilderness-bounded winding roads that lead to St. Louis' newest haven of the newly rich, Wildwood. Unfortunately, that happens to be exactly where she is. And Jason's assurances that if Asher hadn't taken so much blood, she wouldn't feel sick do very little to ease the growing nausea.
It takes some metaphorical dick-waving to get past the officers on the scene, but when you have a Federal Marshal badge, you've got the bigger one, hands down. Zerbrowski meets her halfway up the steep driveway, which also helps to fend off some of the... less enlightened members of the local law enforcement. Turns out that he's been promoted to Sergeant, following Dolph's push to Lieutenant, so bully for him.
Jason has to stay outside of course, but Zerbrowski escorts her inside, catching her when she almost passes out. He tries to get her to go home, but since she's already here, she might as well see the crime scene.
When she does, she wishes that she'd taken his advice. Someone had taken an industrial-strength nail gun and crucified a man against the wall. When she gets closer, she sees that, no, there are more than just those few nails. The victim had wounds through palms, wrists, forearms, shoulders, shins, ankles, and feet. And he'd been shot behind the ear first. Not a ritual killing, most likely, then.
Of course, the pentagrams and Nordic runes scrawled on the walls and floor said something else. But anyone who wants to throw the police off by faking a ritual murder would know enough to throw up some pentagrams. And a closer look at the runes shows that they're just drawn up in order, like someone copying from a textbook. And anyway, the room is a dud, magically speaking. Any kind of spellworking would have left a psychic residue that Anita would pick up, and there's nothing of the kind here.
When she informs Zerbrowski of this, he tells her that Detective Tammy Reynolds -- the department's resident witch -- had come to the same conclusion, but that Dolph had wanted "confirmation". Which only serves to piss Anita off. After all the pissing and moaning he'd done to get her up here knowing she was sick, and it was just because he didn't trust Tammy because she's a witch. She's even a Christian witch, for God's sake, but Dolph has been on this anti-nonstandard-human kick for some time now, it seems.
She decides to blow off the second crime scene, but Zerbrowski assures her that it's not a question of sensing magic, but something that Anita's a much better expert on: identifying kills by preternatural creatures.
Chesterfield area this time, once home to the heavy hitters until Wildwood opened up and they could escape the cookie cutter houses and perfectly manicured identical lawns. Anita groans as they approach the scene because the reporters have already descended like vultures. She'd been starting to feel better until that moment, too.
She and Jason almost make it, too. But as luck would have it, one of the reporters recognizes her, and before she knows it, there are microphones and cameras and lights and a dozen people shouting the same questions at her in an unintelligible cacophony. Thankfully, the uniformed officer nearby also recognizes her and waves her through the tape, pushing back the crush of press who try to follow.
Most of the cops at the house are RPIT and so there's no question about if she's allowed. Jason even gets a pass to come inside to get away from the piranha tank of media outside.
At least, until Dolph shows up, bristling at the fact that Anita doesn't seem to have any "human" friends left. He insists that Jason get out of the crime scene area, and no amount of reason or logic seems to get through to him. Anita has no idea what had crawled up Dolph's ass and died recently, but when he threatens to throw her out of the scene as well, she reaches her limit and actually has to pull rank on someone she considered a friend and colleague to get him to agree to show her the scene. It makes her sick to her stomach, but she is really getting tired of Dolph's "humans first" attitude.
It pisses him off so much that he literally grabs Anita by the arm and physically drags her through the house and up the stairs. By the time they reach the room, the world is spinning, her head is pounding, and only Dolph's bruising grip on her upper arms are keeping her standing. Which is when the smell of blood and meat assaults her. She turns her head to look into the room Dolph stopped her at.
It's a horror show. The first thing Anita thinks is that a woman simply exploded on her bed. Blood and gore everywhere. Coating the sheets, soaking into the carpet. There is most of a head and shoulders still on the pillow, but the rest of the body is spread across the room in mostly unidentifiable chunks.
Dolph screams in her face that one of her "friends" did this, and as proof, drags her into the room and shoves her face into the headboard to show her a claw mark cut into the wood. He continues to scream "What do you think made this?" and shake her until one of the other detectives comes in and tries to get him to let her go.
And when Dolph still refuses to let her go, Anita does something else she never thought she'd have to do. She stomps on his instep and punches him in the stomach hard enough to double him over. She backs away, slips on a patch of blood, and drops into a pool of something that might once have been intestines.
Something breaks in her head then. It's too much to hold in her head all at once. Her resolve shatters, and she's screaming. She doesn't stop screaming until she makes it through the door, at which point she falls to all fours, vomits until she's empty, crawls all of five feet away, and passes out.
When she opens her eyes again, Detective Tammy Reynolds is kneeling beside her in the bathroom, admitting that she threw up and passed out, too. The only two women at the scene. Then again, Tammy admits that it's because she's pregnant. The problem is, she thinks Anita must be pregnant, too, and gets angry when she denies it, calling her a liar.
It's just one more thing she does not need right now, so when Jason appears and offers to carry her back to the car and drive her home so she doesn't have to walk, she's just exhausted enough to accept. The press swarms them again, but they have a police escort keeping them back. Ordinarily, this would feel humiliating, but at the moment, Anita just doesn't give a damn.
By the time Jason gets her to the car, she's shivering so badly she can't talk. Jason rushes to get her home so she can get into a warm tub and the touch of pard to help her recover. Anita tries to protest that she's not a wounded shapeshifter, but before she can get anything out, her ears start to ring, and the world goes black again.
It takes some metaphorical dick-waving to get past the officers on the scene, but when you have a Federal Marshal badge, you've got the bigger one, hands down. Zerbrowski meets her halfway up the steep driveway, which also helps to fend off some of the... less enlightened members of the local law enforcement. Turns out that he's been promoted to Sergeant, following Dolph's push to Lieutenant, so bully for him.
Jason has to stay outside of course, but Zerbrowski escorts her inside, catching her when she almost passes out. He tries to get her to go home, but since she's already here, she might as well see the crime scene.
When she does, she wishes that she'd taken his advice. Someone had taken an industrial-strength nail gun and crucified a man against the wall. When she gets closer, she sees that, no, there are more than just those few nails. The victim had wounds through palms, wrists, forearms, shoulders, shins, ankles, and feet. And he'd been shot behind the ear first. Not a ritual killing, most likely, then.
Of course, the pentagrams and Nordic runes scrawled on the walls and floor said something else. But anyone who wants to throw the police off by faking a ritual murder would know enough to throw up some pentagrams. And a closer look at the runes shows that they're just drawn up in order, like someone copying from a textbook. And anyway, the room is a dud, magically speaking. Any kind of spellworking would have left a psychic residue that Anita would pick up, and there's nothing of the kind here.
When she informs Zerbrowski of this, he tells her that Detective Tammy Reynolds -- the department's resident witch -- had come to the same conclusion, but that Dolph had wanted "confirmation". Which only serves to piss Anita off. After all the pissing and moaning he'd done to get her up here knowing she was sick, and it was just because he didn't trust Tammy because she's a witch. She's even a Christian witch, for God's sake, but Dolph has been on this anti-nonstandard-human kick for some time now, it seems.
She decides to blow off the second crime scene, but Zerbrowski assures her that it's not a question of sensing magic, but something that Anita's a much better expert on: identifying kills by preternatural creatures.
Chesterfield area this time, once home to the heavy hitters until Wildwood opened up and they could escape the cookie cutter houses and perfectly manicured identical lawns. Anita groans as they approach the scene because the reporters have already descended like vultures. She'd been starting to feel better until that moment, too.
She and Jason almost make it, too. But as luck would have it, one of the reporters recognizes her, and before she knows it, there are microphones and cameras and lights and a dozen people shouting the same questions at her in an unintelligible cacophony. Thankfully, the uniformed officer nearby also recognizes her and waves her through the tape, pushing back the crush of press who try to follow.
Most of the cops at the house are RPIT and so there's no question about if she's allowed. Jason even gets a pass to come inside to get away from the piranha tank of media outside.
At least, until Dolph shows up, bristling at the fact that Anita doesn't seem to have any "human" friends left. He insists that Jason get out of the crime scene area, and no amount of reason or logic seems to get through to him. Anita has no idea what had crawled up Dolph's ass and died recently, but when he threatens to throw her out of the scene as well, she reaches her limit and actually has to pull rank on someone she considered a friend and colleague to get him to agree to show her the scene. It makes her sick to her stomach, but she is really getting tired of Dolph's "humans first" attitude.
It pisses him off so much that he literally grabs Anita by the arm and physically drags her through the house and up the stairs. By the time they reach the room, the world is spinning, her head is pounding, and only Dolph's bruising grip on her upper arms are keeping her standing. Which is when the smell of blood and meat assaults her. She turns her head to look into the room Dolph stopped her at.
It's a horror show. The first thing Anita thinks is that a woman simply exploded on her bed. Blood and gore everywhere. Coating the sheets, soaking into the carpet. There is most of a head and shoulders still on the pillow, but the rest of the body is spread across the room in mostly unidentifiable chunks.
Dolph screams in her face that one of her "friends" did this, and as proof, drags her into the room and shoves her face into the headboard to show her a claw mark cut into the wood. He continues to scream "What do you think made this?" and shake her until one of the other detectives comes in and tries to get him to let her go.
And when Dolph still refuses to let her go, Anita does something else she never thought she'd have to do. She stomps on his instep and punches him in the stomach hard enough to double him over. She backs away, slips on a patch of blood, and drops into a pool of something that might once have been intestines.
Something breaks in her head then. It's too much to hold in her head all at once. Her resolve shatters, and she's screaming. She doesn't stop screaming until she makes it through the door, at which point she falls to all fours, vomits until she's empty, crawls all of five feet away, and passes out.
When she opens her eyes again, Detective Tammy Reynolds is kneeling beside her in the bathroom, admitting that she threw up and passed out, too. The only two women at the scene. Then again, Tammy admits that it's because she's pregnant. The problem is, she thinks Anita must be pregnant, too, and gets angry when she denies it, calling her a liar.
It's just one more thing she does not need right now, so when Jason appears and offers to carry her back to the car and drive her home so she doesn't have to walk, she's just exhausted enough to accept. The press swarms them again, but they have a police escort keeping them back. Ordinarily, this would feel humiliating, but at the moment, Anita just doesn't give a damn.
By the time Jason gets her to the car, she's shivering so badly she can't talk. Jason rushes to get her home so she can get into a warm tub and the touch of pard to help her recover. Anita tries to protest that she's not a wounded shapeshifter, but before she can get anything out, her ears start to ring, and the world goes black again.