Hi!
So, things are starting to get interesting. Slowly, but surely, this story is developing and moving forward. Please let me know what you think and don't forget to vote! Surreal as it may sound: I'm competing in the Watty Awards! :-)
Lara
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Chapter 2
Patience paid off. It took me two days to get this far in my 'investigations.' I had been meandering through this part of the city for two hours, waiting for Jonah to show up. I spotted him, picked him out of the crowd like a ripe fruit out of a budding cherry tree. Yeah, he fit the description Tamurè's barmaid gave me perfectly. Turned out she didn't lie about this one. I still wasn't sure how much she told the Circle's Force. Maybe she sold them the same story. Then again, in all likelihood the Force hadn't threatened to choke her. Not that I would really have done it, but that was valuable background information the barmaid didn't have.
Though I didn't know many details, I knew that Maria was involved in a drug case, and that she was working undercover in Tamuré. The consequential conclusion was that there was drug traffic in the club.
Jonah was one of the punk kids that used to linger around the East side of the river, at the very end of the Crimson District. They were junkies – junkies that used to frequent Tamurè. I caught him alone. He was fishing for a pack of cigarettes.
"Hey!"
He jerked, but relaxed when he saw me. I guess nobody in his right mind would have been intimidated by my looks. My eyes narrowed as I walked up to him, enthralling him with the brainy one-liner I came up with on my way there.
"Hey, you got a cig?"
"For you sure, babe," Jonah said, words coming out in a slurred heap, and gave me a boyish grin.
His dark brown eyes were black-rimmed, while his black hair was streaked with green and blue highlights. The style made him look like an anime character gone Goth.
I visually raided our surroundings. Apart from the people at the liquor store further down the street – presumably his drug buddies – the place was deserted. I grabbed him by the collar of his leather jacket and pushed him against the brick wall.
"Hey, no need to get rough," he yelled, grabbing my wrist. I stepped back in time, reaching for my magic and my element. I gathered the air and arrested it in front of me so that he couldn't move an inch.
"You're Jonah?"
"What the fuck?" He looked at me with big eyes in a motion that made him even more anime-characterish.
"You want me to repeat the question? Spell it out for you? Fine with me, I'm in a bad mood already. Trust me, you don't want it to get worse. So, are you Jonah?"
He nodded and swallowed. There was too much white in his eyes showing. Looked like I finally had his attention.
"You talked to a girl named Maria in Club Tamurè about a week ago? Tall, blue eyes, black shoulder-long hair?"
I shook him once more. After a moment of wide-eyed hesitation he finally talked.
"She didn't say her name, but there was a girl like that I talked to... Who the fuck are you anyway?"
"What did you talk about, Jonah?" Silence. "What did you talk about? Tell me, or I'll make going for another cig a virtual impossibility for you!"
The emotion had been brimming under the surface for long. It was hot and ready. I was unfamiliar with it, but I embraced it freely. I handed over the reins because it felt good to blame someone and direct this anger, this hatred. I heightened the air pressure and didn't care if Jonah felt like being pinned down by a bulldozer. I was too far gone, driven into red-sheeted and hungry anger.
"She wanted to know about my dealer. And I, I told her that there was a new one. He's been supplying me and my boys for about two months now. She wanted to know what and to who he was selling. I told her that I didn't know much about that, but that he once bragged about having vampires as clients. He even claimed to be working for a powerful one. Said he'd come into this...uh territory because the one he was working for wanted to come here soon too. Said he'd attend some sort of big meeting. He was such a show off! Bragged about having stuff that would blow our minds away. As if we couldn't get it from anywhere! Then he talked about renting a big house for the bad guy."
"You mean a vampire?"
"Yes. That is ... I don't know. The guy was totally wasted when he told me."
I narrowed my eyes. His description was more than sketchy. For all I knew Jonah could be giving me a song and a dance about how he met the vampiric godfather in person, and I none the wiser.
"Where did that dealer want to rent a house?"
Jonah shook his head. "Don't know ... Wait a sec. He tried talking us into buying more of his shit, said he wouldn't be in the city for a while. There was some kind of big thing goin' on somewhere in Philadelphia. He said we'd have to wait if we wanted more of his shit."
"How long? When was this big thing supposed to happen?" I raised the air pressure by another level when he didn't answer, causing him to wince.
His eyes widened. "I... next week. The dude didn't say anythin' else bout it, I swear."
"What did he look like?" I demanded impatiently. I wasn't ready to let him go. Not yet.
"He ... he had blond hair, shoulder length, but it was all greasy, really gross. He was quite tall, the guy I mean... taller than me."
"Well, anything else?"
"Yeah, he was wearing a leather coat, really pathetic, if you ask me."
I tensed while my pulse started to speed up. Now that was some quality information.
"And he was playing with a silver ring all the time. I noticed it 'cause it had this strange sign on it. Think it was a circle or something. I can't remember exactly. Look, that's all I know. I was wasted myself when I talked to him, okay?"
I looked at him a few seconds before I released him, letting go of my magic. I turned to walk away.
"Nice talking to you, Jonah."
"Hey, you got some bucks for me? Hey!"
* * *
I stared at the mug of coffee in front of me and stifled the urge to start pacing. The false sense of normalcy and the faked coziness of the apartment seemed perverse and obscene to me. My system vibrated with spent adrenaline and the need for action. I went back home simply out of the need for sleep. The scent of blood and death was still prominent on the tip of my tongue. There. I thought it. And back were the images. Maria on the cold asphalt; a lifeless shape of flesh.
I pressed my eyes shut. There was that part of me, that nagging conviction of the self-hatred we all tended to keep inside of us, that would insist it was my fault. No, drowning in emotions too dark to name wouldn't help me find the one responsible for Maria's death. No matter how painful it was, I couldn't give in. Not yet.
It felt like I was running through an endless maze of questions and dead ends. My forte had always been the books and my magic. I never conducted an investigation. I lacked training, skills and knowledge. I didn't really know what I was doing, led and guided by instincts I couldn't trust.
Finally I had a starting point, maybe even a primary suspect. Assuming that both the bartender and punk kid hadn't told a pack of lies, there was a connection to at least one powerful vampire. Vampires selling drugs to humans? Was that what she found out? Was that the reason why she was killed?
And then there was something else: the amulet. I only saw it flashing up twice and only for a few seconds. Everything went so fast, I... I shook my head. The Circle's Force took me away from Maria's body after their arrival, by force.
Yes, they would investigate like the good police soldiers they were. Not only because protocol demanded it, no. They'd lost a Force member, one of their own.
I, however, wasn't in their good books after the incident. Me relating the story of a mysterious red amulet had half of the Force thinking I was nuts, while the other half suspected that this was simply a snack-and-grab case. I had to prove that I was telling the truth. I knew I hadn't imagined the amulet and I had a hunch that it was important in some way. What if Maria wanted me to identify it for her? Why else would Maria call in the middle of the night, demanding I come to her instantly?
The amulet was a symbol. I was familiar with ancient witch lines and had come across hundreds of different symbols of powerful families. It was my job, and I was good at it. If somebody wanted information on the ancestry of a particular witch lineage, I was one of their prime addresses.
Technically speaking, I was a civilian and an eye witness. Then again police protocol wasn't as rigid as in the human forces. Brown could still assign me to the case. He was the head of the Circle and his word was law. If he didn't, I had no chances solving the mystery myself – at least not legally.
What now? I stared at the mug of coffee, expecting some sort of revelation to happen. I shook my head. I'd try to figure it out. I'd do what it took, no matter what. I'd find out why Maria was murdered and hunt down the undead bastard that killed her.
No matter what.
I kept repeating the words to myself silently, never questioning their sincerity for one single moment. I don't know what I would have done, had I known what I would get myself into back then. Maybe pack and run? Take on a new identity and go back to live in Italy for good? Knowing myself, I would have done the stupid thing and stayed. Yeah, that sounded like me.