“Yeah?” Beauchamp’s deep-set eyes were very close to the bridge of his nose. They turned crafty. “How come?”
“I was writing about them,” Gray said wearily.
“Oh, yeah. You quit the force to be a reporter.”
Why bother to explain himself? “Right.”
“Take a look then,” Beauchamp said.
Nat and Bucky fell in with Gray when he approached the cage and the cameras were quiet.
“She’s stacked,” Beauchamp said in a loud voice.
Gray resisted an urge to turn back and punch the guy out. He didn’t miss some snickers, but there were more muffled exclamations of disgust.
“There was no hurry to cut her down,” a tech said to Nat. “The photos could be invaluable, sir.”
The woman was obviously as dead as she would get. “Yeah,” Nat said.
“There was a bag over her head,” the same tech said. “We cut it off, so we could see…”
“Her face,” Nat said.
“What’s left of it,” Gray said.
He stood close enough to the cage to touch it if he wanted to. The woman might as well be naked. She had been reduced to a crude parody of sadistic sexuality, her dress torn from her shoulders to reveal naked breasts cross-hatched with welts. Blood had dried—a long time ago—on her belly and thighs. The patterns resembled those on Shirley Cooper’s body.
Slowly, Gray looked past a sizable puncture wound in her neck, and back at her face. Where her eyes should have been, two holes gaped. Her cheekbones and nose were crushed and black hair stuck to wounds in the skin.
Only the mouth, slack but untouched, was as Gray remembered it, that and a small black birthmark just above the right side of the upper lip.
Nat touched his arm. “It’s—”
“Liza Soaper,” Gray said. “She was special. She could belt out a foot-stomping number or sing lyrics that made you want to cry, and she was decent. I’m going to find the bastard who did that to her and—”
Bucky whistled loudly, drowning out the rest of Gray’s sentence.
Nat waited until he could be heard and said, “I’ll help you.”
“A word?” Dr. Blades sidled near and kept on moving toward the front of the building.
Nat and Gray glanced at one another and followed quickly and quietly.
Blades left the club and walked to the opposite side of the street.
“You aren’t leaving now, are you?” Nat said. “Won’t you stick around until she’s taken down?”
“Yes,” Blades said shortly. “I don’t want to talk in that zoo. I’ll go back after we’ve spoken. She’s been kept frozen.”
Gray stared at the man.
“She’s still fairly solid so it’ll make establishing time of death more difficult,” Blades continued. “That much I’ll share with that fool, Beauchamp.”
“What won’t you share with him?” Nat bounced onto his toes.
“Did you notice the stench?” Blades asked.
“Yes,” Nat and Gray said in unison.
“Shirley Cooper’s body has the same odor—although it’s faded a lot.”
“We noticed.” Gray shoved his hands into his pockets and kept his peace.
“We jumped to conclusions about this thing being some sort of alligatorlike monster,” Blades said.
“But from another planet,” Nat said, perfectly serious.
“From somewhere we’ve never been,” Blades said. “I’ve got to get back now, but did you notice there are scratches and bites—it’s the bites that drew blood. I did the sniff test, and that’s also where the smell of very old rotting flesh is hanging around. Not the scratches. It’s the teeth that do the real damage.”
Gray swallowed.
“Okay,” Nat said slowly.
“I think our particular monster may be a pretty impressive copy of something we know all about these days. Except for the obvious differences. Varanus komodoensis.”
Gray shrugged and shook his head. “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Or me,” Nat said.
Blades nodded. “I don’t have time for a lecture now. Take a look at what the experts say about the Komodo dragon.”
Chapter 44
Gray watched Nat follow Blades back across the street. Agitation pounded at his nerves. He glanced around, expecting to find onlookers staring at him.
“Hey, Gray,” Nat called to him. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Nah. I think I’ll go catch up on a few things.”
Nat raised his brows questioningly, then shrugged and carried on toward the club.
Gray hovered, thinking his way through his next steps and trying to order the sensations battering at his brain. He tried to quiet down. Marley had communicated with him before. True, they had been in the same place, but he didn’t know if she might be able to reach him from just about anywhere by now. He had felt their connection getting stronger.
Royal Street was the only place he could go. He was panicking for no reason. She was the kind of woman who got immersed in her work and probably turned her phone off.
She was there.
“Remember me, Gray?” Sykes Millet seemed to appear from nowhere, just to loom up in front of Gray. “We met here once before and—”
“I remember you. Have you seen Marley recently?”
The man’s face went still, except for his intensely blue eyes. They changed shades and expressions, and Gray didn’t like any of what he saw there. Sykes was unsettled.
“Just answer a few questions for me,” Sykes said. “No, no, don’t try to interrupt. We don’t have time.”
Gray scrubbed at his forehead. “Ask.”
“Do you know anything about a book? I think it’s called The Book of Way. That doesn’t have to be the actual title but I think it is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The guy turned heads. You couldn’t avoid looking at him, but apart from the good looks even Gray could appreciate there was some undefinable quality about him.
“Why are you asking me?” Gray said.
Sykes didn’t flinch or blink. He gave Gray a long dark blue stare, an unnerving stare. “I think you’re mentioned in the book.”
“What book?”
Sykes made an impatient sound. “Just call it the book of the Millets’ lives. Our history—and to some degree, our future. At least, that’s what I think it is. I haven’t actually…I’ve only seen it, not touched it.”
“So how do you know what’s in it?”
Sykes took a while to say, “The pages have turned in my mind.”
Gray kept on watching the other man’s face.
“Willow told me to come to you. She’s our sister the skeptic, but I couldn’t find anyone else to ask and she said you know things if you want to share.”
“I don’t know,” Gray said.
They were jostled by passersby trying to get a better look at Caged Birds.
Gray moved nearer to the buildings leaving the sidewalk for the gawkers, and Sykes followed him. “Did Willow say why she thought you should talk to me?”
“I read a page in The Book of Way. It tells of a man harmed on the inside where most can’t see. He’s a man sent to slay dragons.”
“Slay dragons?” Gray felt the need to move, fast, only he didn’t know where to go. “If you couldn’t touch the book, how could you read so much?”
“I told you. The pages were turned for me. I saw them in my mind.” Sykes raised his hands and they were curled into fists. “If you understand at all, let go of unbelief and tell me. I have to find the book, but that can wait. It has already waited for centuries. Now I have to find Marley.”
“Dragons,” Gray said softly, hearing Blades’s detached Komodo Dragon announcement. “They kill with their teeth.”
“You do know something,” Sykes said, taking him by the shoulders. “Help me to help her.”
“I can’t. I have to follow where I’m led.” He wasn’t sure where his words came from.
Looking at the sidewalk, Gray seemed to see small sparks fire. A force field closed around him, closed him in with Sykes. “She’s in danger,” he said.
“You are Bonded to her?”
He raised his face and nodded. “Yes.”