The Night Dahlia Read online

  And he did. I stood there and listened to a litany of the things this guy was doing in his life he wasn’t proud of. By my standards, it was pretty benign—cheating on his wife by doing this and other things, petty theft at work, lying, some drug use—but to this guy it was grade-A, straight-to-hell, evil. It made me almost laugh, but a quick glance from Anna told me doing that would get my ass kicked, so I didn’t.

  “Is that everything?” Anna asked, keeping her voice even and authoritative. There was no judgment, no approval in her tone. It was masterful, no pun intended.

  “Yes, mistress … I think,” he said, eyes locked on her.

  “You sound uncertain,” Anna said and stepped over to a table where various tools and implements were laid out in meticulous order. “Let me help you obtain … clarity.” She selected some nipple clamps. She lowered her face to his chest and teased his nipples to hardness with her lips and tongue. He moaned a little but tried to maintain his composure; he hadn’t been given permission to enjoy this. Anna applied the clamps and tightened them to her satisfaction. Her sub paled a little as he struggled in the throes of pain and ecstasy. Next, she applied a Velcro band with a small black plastic box to the base of his hard penis and made sure it was snug against his balls. I spotted two squat metal fangs inside the strap, like the terminal leads on a Taser or stun gun. Once it was fitted to her liking, Anna picked up a small black box and pulled open a telescoping antennae from it. The sub looked apprehensive. Anna stood in front of him again.

  “I want you to meditate on your transgressions,” she said. “Make sure every corner of your mind is free of uncertainty and doubt. We will scour your mind until it’s pristine, won’t we?”

  “Yes, mistress,” he croaked. His voice was raspy with ache, desire, and fear. Anna pushed a button on the small box in her hand, and there was an electrical snap as a current went through the collar. The sub’s eyes rolled again as they had when I had first entered, and his mouth went slack as current burned through his most sensitive places.

  “Good boy,” she said, releasing the button. Her sub slumped, jerking mildly. Anna adjusted the power of the shock by a dial on the box and then switched it on to a lower, continuous charge. The sub grunted and thrashed a little, but he remained quiet, obedient. “Meditate. I’ll come back, and we can discuss what you have found within yourself and what you have cast away.”

  Anna walked to another door in the room next to a large black-silvered mirror fitted into the stonework of the wall. She walked through the door, and I followed, closing it behind me. The room we were in was like any small office you’d find behind the scenes at a business. A computer on the desk, stacks of papers, a whiteboard with scribbled notes by employees needing days off or to switch shifts, and a fucking OSHA safety poster. The mirror was two-way, like an interrogation room, so Anna could keep an eye on her charge as he wrestled with his karmic dilemmas as his junk crackled. Anna rested on the edge of the desk and crossed her arms as she looked at me.

  “Still the sin-eater, I see,” I said. “It’s good to see you, Anna. You look great.”

  “Damn it, Laytham,” she said in a very low voice. Anna’s voice got lower the more serious, the more emotional the subject. It was another beautiful thing about her. “Did you just decide that enough time had passed, that we had worked our way through enough of the pain you left us with, that it was time to come back and inflict some more?” I could tell she wanted to say more, but she didn’t. We locked eyes, and I looked away. “What do you want?”

  “I’m on a job,” I began. I saw the shields of understanding crash down behind those beautiful, open eyes. “I need Dragon’s help.”

  “Of course,” she said, nodding. Her voice remained calm, even, but I could hear the sharp barbs of pain and anger come into her inflection. “That makes perfect sense to you, doesn’t it? You need, you want, so of course that makes coming here okay, logical even. She’s a resource to you. We both are. Another asset to use and then forget until the next time you need us.”

  “Look,” I said, finding a cigarette and slipping it between my lips, “you want me to say I’m sorry, I will, but you and I both know that doesn’t change a goddamned thing. I was spiraling down here, and if I had stayed, I would have dragged you two with me. I didn’t want to go, but I needed to. At least I had a long enough binge of clarity to see that, to do something about it.”

  “So that was you being noble?” Anna said. “That was you taking a hit for us? Laytham, you are so full of shit. I have never met anyone as afraid of letting someone inside them, of pain, of loss. You are selfish, and you’re scared, and that’s why you invent ways to keep everyone who loves you away. It wasn’t about us, it was about you. It’s always about you. You hide from everyone, and you lie to everyone, yourself most of all.” I raised my lighter and prepared to flick it. “You light up that cigarette in here,” she said, “and I will put it out in your eye.” I put the lighter and the cigarette away.

  “Where’s Lauren, Anna?” I asked. Anna sighed and shook her head.

  “Do you know how long it took her to get over you?” she said. “Her kind feel everything more intensely; they don’t have the bullshit filters we humans build up from birth. Every day for her is the first day: every emotion is the first emotion, the only emotion. She defended you when everyone else thought you had lost your mind, had gone dirty, she never once considered that. And you never even had the courage, the decency, to say good-bye.”

  “Where, Anna? Please, I’m trying to—”

  “I’m sure whatever it is it will sound terribly noble,” she interrupted. “But that’s not you anymore. That hasn’t been you in a very long time.” I waited, and I took it, every word, let them burn me like brands, let them unchain every ugly monster in my head, because I deserved it, I deserved a lot worse. Finally, she said, “The roof, she’s on the roof.”

  “Thank you, Anna,” I said. “You may not remember this, but I did try to warn you, both of you. I told you what I am from the beginning. I’m sorry I hurt you and Lauren, I truly am.”

  “I believe you, Laytham,” Anna said, walking past me, reaching for the door back to her sub. “I just didn’t believe you back then. I had faith in you. Please don’t hurt her again.” She walked through the door and closed it behind her.

  The cargo elevator to the roof had been refurbished like the rest of the Hard Limit, so now it was more like a moving parlor with a love seat and shaded lamps in the elevator. They hadn’t changed my code from the days when I lived here with Anna and Dragon. I punched it into the keypad, and the elevator obeyed and carried me past the private living quarters and up to the observation deck on the roof. I stepped out of the cool interior into the heat of the L.A. night. The darkness was sticky, like hot tar, and all the dying animal noises of the city shouted at me as I left the womb of the elevator. Dragon was there, one hand and one booted foot propped on the observation deck’s rail. She didn’t turn; she just kept looking out into the gray haze of the counterfeit day the city brandished to keep shadows at bay.

  “You’re getting old,” Dragon said. “I could hear the dust creaking in your joints as you came up in the elevator, and you reek of those cigarettes, that poison you enjoy so much. I could smell you coming from a mile away.”

  “You, of all people, are not going to jump my ass about smoking,” I said, sliding my cigarette from earlier back to my lips.

  That dry noise in the back of her throat, which passed for a chuckle. “Still have your sense of humor, I see,” she said. A jet of brilliant orange flame lanced out from the shadows that clung to Dragon and lit the tip of my smoke.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Lauren Hawthorne regarded me as ash-gray smoke trailed from her thin lips and nostrils. She exhaled it, but she had no cigarette in hand. She was five-ten and had a light build that had always made me think of tumblers or jugglers and Robert Plant in the seventies with no shirt, strutting across the stage. Rock and cock, baby, rock and cock. She al
ways had been thin, as long as I had known her, which was over thirty years.

  Her hair was dark brown with some gray, thick and straight, falling to the middle of her back and covering her trim breasts. She had a scar on her upper lip, which made her look like she had perhaps been born with a cleft palate. That was the usual story Lauren gave for the scar, but the truth was, as best as Lauren could recollect, it was a memento of a tussle back in the tenth century with an enchanted blade that almost took her face off.

  Her eyes were brown and could be warm, overflowing with love and compassion, or darken when full of wrath and fury. Few got to see past those eyes to the secret country that existed within, and fewer still had ever seen those brown eyes suddenly vein with burning gold, as Lauren shook off her mortal guise. She wore a faded T-shirt with the logo of the band Clutch, a well-worn pair of jeans, slightly flared at the feet, and Dr. Martens boots. On the streets, in the Life, they called her Dragon, and she had a fearsome rep, every bit as dangerous as mine. We had been a deadly pairing, she and I. She had been my partner, my lover, and my best friend. Now I was given access to none of it; the brown eyes were a wall, the wall reserved for strangers and skells.

  “I figured you’d turn up when you heard,” she said. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I played it straight. Never give anyone a solid idea of what you know or don’t know. “Have you seen Anna?” she asked, walking away from the edge of the roof, striding toward me. “You hurt her terribly, you know. She wasn’t used to how much of a bastard you really are, not like me. It surprised her, wounded her. She didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “I did see her,” I said. “I know I hurt … her. I told her I was sorry.” Dragon smiled. It wasn’t a thing of pleasure; it was the opening volley in an assault. I had seen that smile enough times to know.

  “Well, I’m sure she’s already halfway to forgiving you,” she said. Her hand flashed out as she punched me hard in the side of the face. The force of the punch almost knocked me out cold. I flew across the deck, hit the rail, and flipped over it, landing with a crunch on the tar and gravel of the unfinished roof, near a grimy skylight. If she had hit me with all her might, my head would have popped like a Rice Krispy, but she didn’t want to kill me. I oddly counted that as a win.

  I groaned and pulled myself up to my feet. My jaw was numb. I spit some blood and slipped under the rail back onto the deck. “That the beginning of the healing process?” I asked. Lauren shook her head.

  “That’s a long time coming,” she said, “and it’s a damn sight gentler than you deserve, Ballard.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “I need your help, Lauren.” There were couches and chairs and a few love seats set up around the deck, and Dragon sat in one of the larger chairs. She tucked her legs up under herself and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

  “Nice to see some things never change,” she said. “I figured sooner or later, one of the more recent ones would leak, and I’d have you sniffing around my city and my case again.”

  “Dragon, what are you talking about?” I said, and I saw something shift behind her eyes.

  “Why are you here, Laytham?” she asked.

  “I’m tracking a runaway,” I said. “Fae nobility. It’s a cold case, and the last lead I could stir up says she came to L.A.” Lauren looked genuinely troubled. “Now, your turn,” I said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The girl,” Dragon said, “the little Jane Doe from 1984, the case that got Nico killed. And then the second one…”

  “In 1989,” I said. My hands were shaking a little as I pulled the cigarette away from my lips and let the smoke stream from my mouth. Dragon nodded.

  “The one that got you dismissed…”

  “I quit,” I said. “What are you telling me, Lauren. I fucking deserve to know, more than goddamn anyone.” I felt my control slipping, a rainbow of chakra energy spilling out of me like I was a novice. The power swirling about me, vomiting out of me, was enough to level this city, turn the desert to a sea of liquid glass.

  “Laytham,” Dragon said, her eyes widening as she perceived what was happening. “Get your fucking shit together!”

  “You … tell … me,” I growled, and I saw genuine fear on the face of one of the most powerful beings I know. “There were more? More fucking murders?”

  “Yes!” she said. “Goddamn it, yes! Now get it under control, before you kill everyone for miles with your goddamn temper tantrum!”

  I blinked and realized that I was at the center of a maelstrom of me. All the hype, all the ego and legends and bullshit aside, I am that powerful. I can move mountains with faith, faith in me, in my power. It was what my granny saw in me when she tried to put my feet on the path to become a Wisdom, like her. It’s what had terrified, enticed, or threatened most of my teachers over the years. It was the hungry, horny, angry god at the fractured core of me, and I tried to keep it in check, not out of some selfless lie, not to protect others, but because it scared the hell out of me too, scared me to think what I could do if I ever completely let go of it, scared I would lose my comfortable, mortal self in all that mindless power. And as much as I fucking hate me, at the end of the day, I’m all I have.

  Breathing, it was the key to everything. It was the first lesson and the last. It’s remarkable how much we control, focus, increase, and diminish through the keyhole of breath alone. Breathing is the music of life; it is the throttle to our power and our health. If one does not breathe well, one does not live well, and a wizard who cannot control his breath cannot control his magic. Primary lessons, first principles. I fell back on them, and I let go of the self, as much as a selfish S.O.B. like me is capable. I let the meat and the bone, the blood and the breath drive. The mind slipped back and away, and slowly, slowly, I felt the jagged edges of the storm-tossed sea that was my power. I let the thinnest sliver of my consciousness enter the awareness and I, with aching care, spread my will over the raging force of my aura, like oil on water. The energy smoothed, calmed, and then finally retreated back to the recesses of my mortal shell.

  I was back on the deck, back on the roof, back in my body. I was shaking, like the aftermath of an adrenal high. My hands clutched the rail I had tumbled over a few moments ago when Dragon had punched me. I looked down at my hands; the knuckles were white from my grip. Steam was curling up from the metal of the deck around my hands. My vision refocused, and I saw the millions of lights burning across the city. I had almost snuffed them all out. I exhaled carefully, an even stream of air. My heartbeat was even, I was even.

  “How many?” I asked. My voice sounded weird to me, small and fake. “How many dead the same as the other two?”

  “Seven,” Dragon said. “Jesus, Ballard, it’s like before—you lose your shit too much over this.”

  “So nine total,” I said, ignoring her. “Including my two girls. When was the last one, Dragon?”

  “A month ago,” Dragon said, “before that 2013.”

  “All killed the same as my girls?” I asked. My old partner nodded.

  “All young and pretty, all Jane Doe, all tortured and drugged, sexually assaulted, violated,” she said.

  “All mutilated horribly except for their heads, their faces. Those parts of the body were all pristine.” I didn’t need her to verify it, I knew it. “And the symbol, the brand? They all have it, don’t they?”

  “At different places on their body, but yes, all marked the same,” she said.

  “And the other part,” I said, bitterness and anger seeping into my voice, “the other part was the same too, wasn’t it, Dragon? Otherwise the fucking Nightwise wouldn’t give any of these murders a second fucking look, would they?”

  “Ballard,” Dragon said, “I know you bled for this case. I know how much Nico meant to you. I know he was the one who brought you up, but…”

  “It’s a simple fucking question, Lauren,” I said. “Were they all the same as the two I worked, as my two girls?”

  “Yes,” Dra
gon said. “All the victims had their souls ripped out of them.”

  NINE

  It was after one in the morning when I left Dragon at the Hard Limit. The excuse I’d given myself for seeing Lauren and Anna again was that if anyone in this city would know where I could find Dwayne and could give me an idea of where MS-13 would have Luis Demir stashed, it would be Dragon. It was a lie and a thin one. The real reason I came to see them was because I missed them and I was too damn close geographically, and too fucking sober, to get my own humanity to shut the hell up. Once upon a time the three of us had loved one another, had shared everything. Anna and Dragon had given me a sense of love and belonging I never had as a kid, except when I was with Torri Lyn.

  I loved them, but I had never told them that. Mages knew words carry power, power over yourself, power over others, and over the world. “I love you” was a pact, stronger than any you could make with a demon, more potent than any hex, any curse. It was higher order magic and it left the powerful and mighty helpless in its thrall. I never told them, even when I walked away.

  As a compromise to my inner bastard, I had tried to hustle Lauren into helping me and that worked. It was an awful feeling to emotionally manipulate someone you loved and who trusted you in spite of yourself. However, you do it enough and you can distance yourself from the shame and the guilt. I could teach a class on how to do it.

  She had agreed to help me and to try to keep the Nightwise out of it as much as she could. She had even promised to give me more info on the murdered girls, but I was pushing her on that one, because even if it was a cold case and technically my cold case, it was still in the jurisdiction of the Nightwise and I wasn’t one of them anymore. Dragon was at heart a creature of order. I often wondered if all of her kind were like that. Lauren was born to be a cop, and being a cop, being Nightwise, was at the core of who she was. It made her a steadfast friend, a loyal lover, but it also made her a pain in the ass when it came to circumventing the rules, so that left her out of my direct involvement in picking a fight with one of the largest and most dangerous street gangs in L.A. I was going to need muscle to get next to Demir, the mica maker that had acquired Caern Ankou’s identity data, somehow. He was cozied up next to MS-13, and I had ditched my bodyguard-nanny, left his untrustworthy ass playing slap and tickle with a bunch of flying Cambodian ogres. I was going to need Dwayne. Dragon told me she had no idea where he was these days, so I started looking.