Buch lesen: «Keeper of the Shadows»

Mick Townsend.

A newbie on the paper, and a thorn in Barrie’s side from the instant he showed up. For one thing, jobs were scarce enough without extra competition. But that wasn’t even the start of it.

There was something almost preternaturally beautiful about him. Dark gold hair and green eyes, cheekbones you could cut glass with. The way he held himself, that casually aristocratic elegance that was the territory of actors and, well, aristocrats…He moved like a cat, strong as a panther and just as lithe.

Mick Townsend stopped right in her path, towering over her in an alarmingly commanding way. “Gryffald.”

Barrie put up all her defenses as she coolly replied, “Townsend,” and was proud that she didn’t blush.

“You’re looking very Audrey Hepburn tonight,” he said lazily, and looked her over, a direct look that managed to be slow and sexy and aloof all at the same time, which didn’t help her state of mind at all.

About the Author

ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF is a California native and the daughter of scientist and educator parents, which drove her into musical theater at an early age.

At UC Berkeley (a paranormal experience all on its own) she majored in theatre. After college, Alex moved to Los Angeles, where she has made an interesting living writing novel adaptations, and original suspense and horror scripts, for numerous Hollywood studios.

The Harrowing, her debut ghost story, was nominated for both a Bram Stoker Award (horror) and an Anthony Award (mystery) as Best First Novel. She is the author of the paranormal mystery/thrillers The Price, The Unseen and Book of Shadows, and is the winner of a Thriller Award for her story The Edge of Seventeen.

Alex is also the author of Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, a workbook based on her internationally acclaimed blog and writing workshops.

Keeper of the Shadows

Alexandra Sokoloff

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This one’s for my beautiful and wildly talented

co-authors. Sisters, cousins, whatever you are,

Heather and Harley, I love you forever.

Chapter 1

There is nothing more beautiful than the city at night, thought Rosalind Barrymore Gryffald as she hit the freeway toward downtown.

Being that the city was Los Angeles, it was easier to feel that way late at night, the later at night the better, because traffic did let up eventually, even if it was sometimes well after midnight. But then, oh, then, the city Was all hers, in all its shimmering glory.

L.A. Lotus Land. The dream machine, the end of the rainbow. Was there anything in the world more romantic

And Rosalind Barrymore Gryffald—Barrie for short, which unfortunately she was; pixieish, people tended to say, to her eternal exasperation…a copper-eyed, copperhaired sprite of a girl—loved her town.

Oh, she knew L.A. had its detractors, the ones who were always joking that there was no there there. But those people just didn’t know where to look. She knew where to look. In fact it was her job to look.

Not only did she live in the most exciting city in the world, she also knew its most secret excitements: there was a world within the world, even more magical than the movies. And that world was her job.

Her day job…well, her day job was actually a night job, the night shift on the Los Angeles Courier where she worked as a crime beat reporter. But her secret job, her all-the-time job, her passion, her calling, was Canyon Keeper of the shape-shifters of Los Angeles.

She was startled out of her thoughts when the digital billboard on the Wilshire Grand Building suddenly loomed up in the dark, a twenty-story-high architectural lighting tour de force featuring car-size butterflies flitting across a rainbow landscape. She was at the downtown turnoffs already.

She steered her vintage Peugeot—which she’d wheedled out of her father when he’d left the country—to the right and took the Third Street exit into the island of glittering skyscrapers that was downtown. L.A. was made up of those dense clusters of tall buildings sticking up in the middle of the relatively flat residential neighborhoods around them, a landscape that was never so apparent as at night.

Downtown L.A. was the oldest and most decrepitly grand of those islands, and the Courier building was right in the middle of it.

It was always a thrill to drive up to the historic Art Deco building in the heart of downtown, lit up like a wedding cake at night, to drive under the building using her very own official parking card.

Barrie charged up the escalator from the garage and breezed past the huge decorative globe in the center of the domed lobby. Ten-foot-high murals towered above her—her cousins would say everything towered above her, but she had a long history of ignoring them.

She rode the decadent Deco elevator up to the sixth floor and felt her heart lurch a little as the ancient contraption jerked, then settled.

Something was up; she could tell from the second she stepped into the newsroom. The entire floor was buzzing.

Her reporter’s mind scrolled through the possibilities. Terrorist attack? Stock market crash? Assassination?

Or, seeing as this was L.A… .Celebrity death?

She grabbed the sleeve of the nearest scrambling reporter, tall, thin, redheaded Steve from Metro.

“What’s going on?”

“Saul Mayo,” Steve said breathlessly, and yanked his arm away.

Saul Mayo, head of World International Pictures, one of the town’s six major movie studios.

“What about him?” Barrie demanded, turning to yell after him.

“Dead!” he called over his shoulder, and skittered away.

Barrie relaxed, at least as much as she ever relaxed. Not that it wasn’t big news; in an industry town, a studio head in his relative prime dying was not just big news, it was huge.

But it wasn’t the kind of news that she was in journalism to pursue. There was only one kind of story that interested her, and that was anything concerning the Others and the Otherworld.

Because Barrie, along with her cousins Rhiannon and Sailor Ann Gryffald, was a very new member of a very old tradition. They were Keepers, from a long line of Keepers, charged with an ancestral duty to guard and keep peace among the communities of vampires, shape-shifters, werewolves, Elven and all non-human beings—the Others, who lived all over the world, hiding in plain sight among mortal populations.

As anyone who knows anything about paranormal beings might guess, there was a large population of Others in Los Angeles. Just as mortals were lured by the shining promises of the city, so, too, were Others drawn here, some hoping to exercise their talents and find the spotlight as actors, musicians and other artists, some seeking protective camouflage in this famously eccentric town. There was a saying that “Everyone in California is from somewhere else.” So not true; Barrie herself was a proud native Californian. But in a community of outsiders, no one looked twice at someone different, and that made Others relatively safe in their conspicuousness.

And almost since the first appearance of an Other, there had also been families born with the mark of certain beings, indicating their potential as Keepers: mortals with some of the powers of the beings they were marked with who could communicate and facilitate between the worlds.

Keepers were sworn to uphold the Code of Silence: to keep the secret of the existence of the Otherworld. And to that end, if there was trouble or outright crime in the Otherworld that threatened to spill over into the human world and expose the existence of the Others, it was the Keepers’ duty to keep the peace—quietly.

Barrie had been waiting to take on that duty all her life. Even so, it had been a shock when it happened so quickly, just months ago, when her father and his two brothers, Keepers of the shifters, vampires and Elven of the L.A. canyon districts, were called to the newly established international Council of Keepers in the Netherlands. Barrie, Rhiannon and Sailor had suddenly been thrust into the Keeping of the Canyon.

Now, instead of the endless waiting and training, it was all real. Rhiannon and Sailor had already been instrumental in solving two recent cases, a series of murders committed by a power-mad vampire and the mystery of a rare blood disease killing off Elven.

Every morning—well, some days more like afternoon—since Barrie had taken the oath in front of the local Keepers’ Council, she’d woken up with a fluttery feeling of exhilaration, almost like that feeling you get when you know you’re going to meet…someone. It wasn’t that she wanted trouble, or crime, of course not, but trouble was inevitable, and when it came, she would be ready for it.

Until just recently she’d been struggling along doing “filler” stories on the Courier, and in the current journalistic climate, with newspapers shutting down all over the country, she’d felt lucky to get those. But a piece she’d done on the string of vampire murders that her cousin Rhiannon and Rhiannon’s now-fiancé, LAPD homicide detective Brodie McKay, had solved, had not just solidified her job but moved her up to the crime beat.

Barrie’s job on the paper perfectly complemented her Keeper duties. As a crime beat reporter—well, actually, crime beat stringer, but she would get there eventually—she was able to get a first look at police reports to scan them for Other-related crimes that needed immediate attention or intervention, to ensure that: 1) humans were not harmed by out-of-control Others, and 2) the Others and the Otherworld remained a secret from the human population of the city.

So, Saul Mayo the movie mogul, being a human, or formerly human, didn’t interest her.

Good riddance, anyway, she thought uncharitably. Mayo hadn’t been known for his humanitarian efforts.

She steered away from the swarm of her colleagues and was headed for the local crime editor’s desk when she saw the one person she didn’t want to see coming toward her.

Mick Townsend.

A newbie on the paper, and a thorn in Barrie’s side from the instant he’d shown up. For one thing, jobs were scarce enough without extra competition. But that was only the start of it.

Townsend was waaay too good-looking to be a journalist, and too stylish, too. In a city of surreally gorgeous people, he was truly heart-stopping, if you liked men who were a combination of all the best parts of young Leo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman.

Only movie stars were supposed to look like that; there was something almost preternaturally beautiful about him. Dark gold hair and green eyes under perfectly arched eyebrows, cheekbones that could cut glass. The way he held himself, that casually aristocratic elegance that was the territory of actors and, well, aristocrats. …He moved like a cat, strong as a panther and just as lithe. He was tall, too, which made Barrie glad she was wearing some serious heels—tonight, Chanel pumps to go with the little Balenciaga number she’d found in her favorite thrift store in Echo Park. Vintage was a particularly good look for her. People were smaller then, too.

Mick Townsend stopped right in her path, blocking her way and towering over her in an alarmingly commanding way. “Gryffald.”

She put up all her defenses as she coolly replied, “Townsend,” and was proud that she didn’t blush.

“You’re looking very Audrey Hepburn tonight,” he said lazily, and looked her over, a direct examination that managed to be slow and sexy and aloof all at the same time, which didn’t help her state of mind at all.

She sidestepped him and kept walking toward the crime editor’s desk. Unfortunately, he turned and walked with her.

“A lady on the scent of a story, if I ever saw one.”

“Looks like there’s only one story tonight,” she said, glancing at their huddled coworkers.

“Ah, yes. The Prince of Darkness. Requiescat in pace,” Townsend added. Rest in peace.

But there was a bitter quality to his voice that belied his words, and made Barrie stop and look at him for a moment; it seemed more than mere journalistic cynicism, but some deeper feeling.

Interesting, she thought. I wonder what that’s about?

“But that’s not a story you’re interested in,” he said.

“No point. Even if he was murdered, they’re not going to give it to a rookie like me,” she answered innocently. “Enjoy your night.”

She sidestepped him and continued to her boss’s desk where she snagged the police blotter while he paced and talked on the phone a few desks down. She caught his eye and held up the blotter, and he nodded at her distractedly. Now that she’d checked in, her time was hers for the rest of the night.

She had a desk of her own in an anonymous row of desks, and she settled down at it with the blotter while her coworkers swarmed on the Mayo story.

Unfortunately, her hormones didn’t settle down with her; her pulse was racing out of control from that brief encounter with Townsend.

What kind of name is Mick Townsend for a journalist, anyway? she thought irritably. It sounded more like a rock star. And she had a rule: no musicians, no actors. In L.A., that was simple survival.

But she didn’t really think Townsend was an actor. She had darker suspicions: he was a spy from corporate, skulking around to find more people to give the ax. The newspaper would be all of three pages long by the time the suits were through with the bloodbath; it seemed never-ending these days, the worst time in the world to be a journalist. She’d had to fight tooth and nail for the tiny bit of turf she had on the paper.

Fortunately, as a Keeper, she had more than a passing acquaintance with tooth and nail, or fang and claw, or just about any variation on the above. And bloodbaths, come to that. When a person dealt daily—or at least weekly—with the loves, lives, deaths and turf wars of vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, Elven and whatever supernatural creatures happened to present themselves, a little backbiting among journalists was small potatoes.

Well, okay, it wasn’t the backbiting that was the problem this time, it was Townsend’s charm.

Barrie really hated the fact that he made her uncomfortably aware that she hadn’t had sex in…she didn’t even want to think about it. Except that she was being forced to think of it—constantly. With Rhiannon engaged to Brodie McKay and Sailor newly engaged to nightclub owner Declan Wainwright, the House of the Rising Sun was a literal hotbed, licit though it might be. Barrie frowned and thought darkly, Might as well rename it House of the Rising—

All right, enough of that, she told herself, and forced herself to stare down at the police blotter.

The list of the night’s crimes was already long: Burglary/Theft from Motor Vehicle. Grand Theft. Vandalism. Battery. And the usual collection of oddities: the owner of a La Brea Avenue business reported that someone tipped over a Porta Potty and attempted to break into a storage barn; a Vista Street woman reported a female who had delivered pizza to the address the night before had shown up at 2:00 a.m. with blood dripping from her nose and asking for money; a resident of Orange Grove Avenue reported an unknown person stole four solar lights and a garden gnome from his yard.

Barrie knew how to scan for potentially Other-related crimes; you developed a kind of sixth sense about it. But tonight it didn’t take any special skill to find the case that she would need to look into; it jumped out at her from the reports as if it were lit up in neon:

Dead body in alley off Hollywood and Gower. Mixed race, late teens, street name Tiger. Sus- pected OD.

Barrie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach.

She knew Tiger. Had known him. He was a street kid, a runaway, one of the eternal hopefuls who left their small towns and got on buses to Hollywood with big dreams of fame, fortune, love—and ended up turning tricks on the Boulevard instead.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams, they called it. You got that right, she thought, feeling a flare of anger and grief.

The Boulevard was part of her Keeper jurisdiction, so she spent a lot of time with the street kids. She was drawn to them, she ached for them, most of them running away from exploitation at home only to fall into the hands of the same kind of predator on the streets.

Tiger was a shape-shifter, and like so many others, he’d thought he could use that talent to make his fortune.

But it was a sad fact that despite their incredible talents, shifters were rarely productive members of society. Their sense of self was too amorphous. After all, they could and would subtly alter their physical form to match other people’s fantasies. And because of that inconstancy and lack of center, they tended toward indulgence of all kinds, which too often turned to addiction.

Along with that ability to create fantasy, they were also some of the most manipulative creatures on the planet. And they far too often got caught in their own manipulative traps.

Tiger was smart, and he was manipulative. Just sixteen or seventeen years old—Barrie had never been able to pin him down about his age—but already he was an expert hustler. He had been using his shifter talents to attract an upscale clientele. She had been sure he was also stealing as well as conducting any number of other illicit activities.

It had taken some time for him to trust her, but Barrie blended in well with the street waifs; at her height and weight she could easily look like no more than a kid herself.

She’d worked on Tiger, bought him meals, flattered him, joked with him, chided him, and time after time had hammered him that he could be using his talents for anything he chose, no dream too big. And she’d thought she’d gotten through to him. She’d persuaded him to check in to a local shelter, Out of the Shadows, that specialized in getting young prostitutes off the street and out of the life.

Not out far enough, as it turned out.

“Damn it,” she said softly.

Someone spoke behind her, startling her. “Gryffald?”

She whirled in her chair—and saw Mick Townsend looking down at her with an odd expression. She suddenly realized she was crying.

Townsend was staring at the tears running down her cheeks. “What is it?” he asked gruffly.

She swiped at her face. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

He was about to speak again when she pushed her chair back, stood abruptly and walked out past him, willing herself not to break into tears again.

She made it across the newsroom and out without crying, but broke down again in the elevator.

Damn Townsend, anyway; he seemed to have a radar for every vulnerability. She hit the side of the elevator with her fist, pounding in frustration, and the concrete pain of it brought her back to herself. Somewhat.

She wasn’t being fair, she knew. Townsend couldn’t help the way he looked. Maybe he had come to L.A. to be an actor, as so many people did. And most came to their senses and realized the competition was hopeless and the ruthlessness required to act soul-killing, and wisely chose other professions.

But some were not so wise or so lucky. Those were the ones who clung to the desperate delusion that they would “make it,” that stardom was just around that next corner. Instead they ended up used-up in their twenties…

Or like Tiger. Dead.

And most likely with no one even to claim his body.

She could do that for him, at least. So she swiped away her tears and stood straighter, resolved.

Chapter 2

Barrie wasn’t exactly dressed for the morgue, so she changed in the car in the parking lot. She never knew where the job would take her, so she always carried several changes of clothes in her trunk. She chose old jeans and a tank top and hoodie, washable and discardable in case she got into an autopsy room. You never could quite get out the smell of the morgue.

Then she drove east, toward the L.A. County Cor-oner’s Office, just minutes from downtown in Boyle Heights.

Her purpose was layered. She had to make sure the right medical examiner got assigned Tiger’s autopsy; it wouldn’t do to have a mortal cutting into a shifter. Too many questions could come up that were better avoided. Then she needed to see if there was anything unusual about the death, and whether there might be some danger for other shifters: a bad batch of meth, for example. Also with the recent scare of a blood disease affecting one species, she had to make sure there was nothing just plain bizarre going on. But mostly, she wanted to make arrangements for Tiger’s funeral.

The coroner’s office was in a gorgeous Baroque building, red with cream trim, dramatic steep front steps lit by streetlamps that cast eerie shadows as Barrie climbed the stairs toward the House of Death.

She signed in with the attendant on duty, telling him she had an appointment with Dr. Antony Brandt, and proceeded down the chilly hallways, trying not to look in through the doors where dozens of bodies in various stages of investigation and storage were laid out.

She reached an office with a plate on the door reading Dr. Antony Brandt, Senior Pathologist. Almost as soon as she’d knocked, Brandt was opening it. Tony Brandt looked every bit the werewolf, even if you didn’t know he actually was one. He had a head full of thick, bushy hair, a powerful barrel torso, shaggy eyebrows over watchful eyes and an ever-present five-o’clock shadow.

He acknowledged Barrie with an ambiguous smile. “I knew you’d be here. Everyone else is lining up for a look-see at the Prince of Darkness.”

Exactly what Mick Townsend had called him, Barrie thought. And, of course, it made sense that the coroner’s office would be expediting Mayo’s autopsy. In death, as in life, celebrities got the spotlight in Hollywood.

“Just as well,” Brandt continued. “No one will bother with this kid.”

So, already a main part of her mission was taken care of. Brandt was taking Tiger’s autopsy, and he was not about to reveal that Tiger had been a shifter. Any Others who worked in criminal justice were experts at hiding the existence of their fellows.

“Can I see him?” she asked.

Brandt led the way down the hall to one of the autopsy suites. In the observation room he handed her a white gown, mask and gloves, which she slipped on before they entered the cutting room.

It was a large space; several procedures could take place at one time. Now, however, the room was quiet and dim, and a single body lay on a single gurney on the far left.

Barrie was startled to see that Tiger was already laid out, not to mention that he had the room to himself. L.A.’s crime rate being what it was, it was about as hard to get a table at the morgue as it was to get one at the town’s latest, hippest restaurant. But Brandt had his own priorities, and they were much like hers, namely to keep the existence of the Otherworld community a secret from the mortal one.

Brandt spoke, as if in answer to her silent thoughts. “Moved him to the head of the list. No one’s going to notice while Mayo is lying in state.”

Barrie thought that a revealingly cynical remark. Even for a studio head, Mayo had a lot of ill will swirling around him.

She approached the table and looked down at the young shifter, so pale on the slab. They always looked so much smaller in death. She felt tears prickling her eyes again. Such a smart, cheeky kid. Such a waste. Such a crime.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him, and touched his hand. It was cold, and she shivered. If she’d only tried harder, followed up sooner…

Brandt was watching her. “You knew him, then.”

She set her jaw, trying to compose herself. She wasn’t going to do Tiger any good by falling apart now.

“Who caught the call?” she asked Brandt.

He named a couple of homicide detectives in the Hollywood Division. “They didn’t think it was important enough to involve Robbery Homicide,” he added.

Robbery Homicide was a special division in the LAPD, the most coveted assignment. It handled the highest-profile murders. Certainly Mayo would have been moved there instantly. The haves and have-nots again.

“Is there any chance it was suicide?” Barrie didn’t think so, but she had to ask.

“Oh, this was no suicide.” She tensed up in every muscle. “Why?”

“He didn’t die in that alley. the body was moved. That’s clear from the patterns of livor mortis.”

Barrie knew that livor mortis meant the settling of the blood after death due to gravity. It appeared as bluish, blotchy discoloration of the skin where the blood had pooled. She listened closely as Brandt continued, indicating regions of Tiger’s body with a short metal pointer as he spoke.

“Lividity does not appear anywhere that the body has been in direct contact with the ground. He was found sitting up, slumped against a wall, but if you look at the pattern here, you’ll see there is no lividity in the relevant parts of his legs. He died lying down on his back. He was positioned sitting up at some later time.”

Brandt loved to expound, and she was grateful for it; she picked up all kinds of useful information from his mini-lectures.

“Now ask me what else is interesting about this,” he said.

Barrie tensed up. “What else is interesting about this?” she asked softly.

He held her eyes with his piercing ones. “I’m not entirely sure, but it looks to me like the unfortunate young man may have had some help.”

“Some help dying?” Barrie stammered. “So, he was murdered?”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, fair Rosalind.” There weren’t many people Barrie allowed to call her by her real name, but Brandt was one. It was his Shakespearean quality; everything he said sounded vaguely Elizabethan. “But these bother me.” He aimed the pointer at some faint purple circles at the top of Tiger’s arm. They looked almost like—

“Fingerprints?” she asked, feeling a prickling at the back of her neck. “You think he was held? Forced?”

“Could be. On the other hand, it’s common for addicts to help each other shoot up. And an addict bruises easily, so it may mean nothing. I am merely pointing it out as an anomaly, and in fact…I never said it. But it’s something to keep in mind.”

“Now, moving a body is a crime, but it’s not necessarily murder. If he was shooting up in a gallery and someone didn’t want the cops around, they may just have dumped him. But I don’t think so. I think someone wanted this kid dead. He definitely didn’t stick that needle in his own arm.”

“Murder…” Barrie said, her thoughts far away. And she knew exactly where to go to find out what she needed to know. “I have to go,” she mumbled.

Brandt raised his impressive eyebrows. “I’m cutting him in a half hour. You don’t want to stay?”

Barrie shuddered. True, she regularly worked with the undead, but the actual dead were a different story. And she had no desire at all to see Brandt slice into Tiger.

“I need to get out to Hollywood to see someone. Can I check back with you about the tox screen and whatever else you find?”

“Of course. And I’ll make sure your soon-to-be-cousin knows.”

Barrie had to blink to understand that Brandt was referring to Brodie McKay.

“Thanks. And, Tony…” She had to swallow to get the words out. “I’ll claim the body if no one else does. I’ll make sure the Council gives him a proper burial.”

He smiled at her sadly. “You’re a good kid, kid.”

Barrie was both buzzed and depressed as she left the coroner’s building. She could feel the adrenaline rush of a mystery, the thrill of the hunt; at the same time she was grieving Tiger’s death and the possibility of evil intent behind it, which kicked her protective Keeper instincts into high gear.

If a shifter had been murdered on her turf, there was going to be hell to pay.