Magitek (The Rift Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  “Not your cup of tea?” she asked as I sat down, drained my glass, and held up my hand for our waitress.

  “He’s nice enough, but he didn’t ask for my phone number, and I’m not going home with a stranger after a couple of drinks. One of us has to have some standards.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me and circled her finger in the air when the waitress approached our table, signaling for another round.

  “That’s why you should branch out a little,” Kirsten said. “You can’t catch anything from a non-human. A non-lethal non-human, of course.”

  “For some reason, brownies just aren’t my thing.”

  She laughed. Brownies were cute but only as tall as my knees, and I doubted they considered humans attractive.

  Shortly after the waitress brought our drinks, a devil asked me to dance, and I said yes. The top of his head only reached my chin, but he was built like a workout warrior, and he danced like a professional. Lots of fun and great exercise keeping up with him. He escorted me back to my seat and then took Kirsten out for a spin.

  While I was watching them, a demon slipped into Kirsten’s chair, taking me by surprise. His tailor obviously catered to the upper class. He wasn’t wearing a jacket. Creased black slacks hugged his butt and legs, and a wide-collared black shirt opened to reveal his muscled chest. His skin was red, his horns were black, and his eyes were yellow with cat-slit pupils. He was well over seven feet tall, and massively built. I pegged him as a major demon, probably a fire demon, but I didn’t feel any excess heat radiating from him.

  “I’ve been watching you,” he said, “and would like to get to know you better.”

  “I normally don’t date demons.” Polite, but firm. Even if I had been carrying my Raider, pissing off a major demon was an exercise in poor judgement.

  “You have an unusual ability to express your emotions.”

  “Oh? I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Yes.” He licked his lips. “You would be a very delicious companion.”

  He was making me increasingly uncomfortable. “I have a standard policy against being dinner.”

  He chuckled. “Oh, I’m not interested in anything so crude.” He sent a burst of lust energy that enveloped me and settled between my legs, heating me up in a way his presence hadn’t. He inhaled deeply, and said, “Yes, we could make each other very happy.” He sent another burst of magik, this time flavored with joy, exhilaration and well-being that filled my chest and brought a smile to my face. “And in addition to the intangible benefits, I would reward you very well.”

  I managed to maintain enough control to ask, “Why am I so special? There are lots of other women here.”

  He breathed in deeply through his nose. “The Fae experience emotions far more deeply than humans. But they have such strong and unfortunate prejudices. Half-breeds tend to be more liberally-minded.”

  I glanced over at the table with the elf and the lilith.

  “Yes, he is a half-breed,” the demon said, “and only playing with her. I would be surprised if he took her home, but they get what they need from each other. It’s a symbiotic relationship that fulfills each of their needs for an evening.”

  My mother’s father was an elf, but my elven heritage was far enough in the past that most people weren’t aware of it. A slight cast to my features and my height were the only hints that my maternal grandfather wasn’t human. Even if my hair didn’t cover my ears, they weren’t pointed, just a little large.

  “I’m not a half-breed,” I said. “I don’t even look elven.”

  He inhaled deeply again, and I realized he was smelling me. “Not close enough for the elves to acknowledge you, perhaps, but I can smell your blood and the pheromones you’re releasing. I can also sense your reaction to me. Think about it.” He pushed a business card across the table and stood up.

  “I’m proposing a mutually pleasurable relationship. An occasional interaction, and you won’t be harmed in any way.” He hit me with another burst of mixed lust and joy, and inhaled again. “You can’t deny the pleasure you feel, and I have enjoyed our short time together as much as you have.” He turned and walked away. When he moved out of the way, I saw Kirsten walking toward us.

  “What did he want?” she asked as she sat down.

  “What does a demon always want?” I looked down at his card and gasped.

  “What is it?” She reached over and snatched the card from my hand, then she gasped when she read it.

  I took it back and read it again. I had been a little bit off the mark when I judged him to be a major demon. The name on the card was Ashvial—the demon lord who owned the club. The effects of the magik he had laid on me didn’t dissipate after he left, either. I was horny as hell and incredibly happy about it. What he hadn’t provided me was any kind of satisfaction or relief. Damned demon.

  Chapter 14

  I woke up thinking about dungeons. The trip to Lucifer’s Lair had me wondering about how Sarah Benning was doing a dominatrix gig without costumes and paraphernalia. I was fairly certain she wasn’t keeping a rack and cat-o-nine-tails in her bedroom at home, although I hadn’t searched the room myself. And she certainly wasn’t hauling BDSM furniture around in her two-seat sports car.

  So, where was she holding her sessions? Did all of her clients have their own dungeons? I knew there were other places than Lucifer’s where people who enjoyed that sort of thing could rent a place to play by the hour. A quick online search brought up two locations an easy distance from her house and school.

  A search for escorts offering dominatrix services didn’t turn up any girls who looked remotely like Sarah. It was always possible that Jeri was pulling my leg, but I didn’t think so. It usually took someone like Ashvial to nail my gullible side, not a sixteen-year-old, no matter how smart she might be.

  I rode my bike over to a neighborhood on the edge of the Roland Park area where Sarah lived and parked across the street from Ronald Crofton’s house. Crofton was the professor Jeri told me about. When I had questioned her further, she said Crofton was a ‘friend’ of her mother’s, and that Jeri had introduced him to Sarah. I bit my tongue when she told me that, but I wondered if she realized that in most social circles, pimping her teenage friends to older men wasn’t considered acceptable behavior.

  Crofton emerged from his house mid-morning and extracted his rider lawnmower from his garage. Before he could start the thing up, I walked up his front path.

  “Professor Crofton?” I asked, flashing my badge too quickly for him to get more than a glimpse of it. “I’d like to talk to you about Sarah Benning.”

  He immediately got that rabbit-in-the-headlights look that married men get when asked about their female acquaintances.

  “What about her?”

  “I understand that you had an assignation with her the night she disappeared.” I lied a little. According to Jeri, their date had been the following afternoon.

  “Uhh. Who?”

  “C’mon, you know who I’m talking about. The sweet little underage dominatrix you were having an illicit affair with.”

  At that point, he threw a panicked look toward his house, letting me know that his wife was at home.

  “If you like, we could go inside to talk,” I said. “Or, you could meet me at the Old World Café in half an hour.”

  “I don’t know anything about her, or her disappearance.”

  “Okay.” I turned and started toward the house.

  “Wait! Where are you going?”

  “To talk to your wife. If you don’t know anything about the girl, maybe she does.”

  “No! Look, yeah, the Old World Café? Yeah, I can meet you in half an hour.”

  “I think that will work.” I held out my phone for him to see. “That is your wife’s mobile number, isn’t it?”

  His eyes widened even further.

  “Half an hour, Professor Crofton.”

  I rode over to the café and ordered coffee and a sweet roll, congratulating myself
on my subtle interrogation techniques. Although Jeri hadn’t said so, I had assumed that Crofton was a mage. The upper-echelon of mage society didn’t interact with norms very much, except for those who were their employees or servants. Getting close to Crofton confirmed it. Not from one of the Families, but most mages weren’t.

  Precisely on time, Crofton entered the café, looked around, spotted me, and came over.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are,” he started.

  I cut him off. “I’m the cop assigned to find Justus Benning’s daughter. That’s my only concern, not who she associates with, or how she associates with them. If I don’t find her, then I’ll file a report detailing everyone I talked to and whether I think they had anything to do with her disappearance. Do you understand?”

  I figured the threat of revealing his activities to one of the Hundred would get his attention. It would certainly get mine.

  Over the next hour, I browbeat him into admitting that he was meeting with Sarah weekly, and that he bought her costumes, whips, and other paraphernalia. He said she kept them in a gym bag in her car. They met at a private dungeon where he rented a room by the hour. He adamantly denied that he ever had sex with her, although he admitted to “orally pleasuring” her. He broke down and revealed that he was a classic submissive, and his wife wanted a “real man” in her bed, so indulging his desires with her was out of the question. Thus his long string of dominatrices over the twenty-year course of his marriage, including Jerilyn Novak’s mother.

  But the ultimate—to hear him tell it—was being bullied by a young girl. It evidently took him back to his youth when his twin sister tortured him on a regular basis. That made me curious about the sister, but I was just naturally nosy, and I couldn’t see how she might have anything to do with Sarah.

  He was home with his wife the night Sarah disappeared. But he did provide me with three names of other men he had introduced her to. All were mages, one a younger son of a Hundred family. Crofton swore he didn’t know if any of the men ever met with Sarah after their introductions.

  I took pity on him and sent him away. Kirsten sold a truth potion, although it was extremely expensive and illegal for a cop to use. But I wondered why more wives didn’t purchase it. Maybe they didn’t want to know.

  From my meeting with Crofton, I rode over to the dungeon he used. The neighborhood wasn’t too bad, but if you knew the signs, it was very evident that a lot of vampires lived in the area. All of the streetlights were broken, all of the windows were boarded up, and no one was out on the streets. At first glance one might think it was deserted, except for the cars in the driveways, the well-kept lawns, and the fresh paint on the houses.

  Chapter 15

  The building housing Dorothy’s Dungeon was an old warehouse that looked like an old warehouse from the outside. Inside, there was a nice lobby with doors on either side, with gender signs on them, and a third door marked ‘Employees Only’.

  The pleasant-looking vampire woman at the front desk smiled at me. Since I was a new customer, she led me through their menu of offerings, those activities available if I brought my own partner, and those activities available if I needed some help indulging my perversions. Her picture in a red teddy was among those of the helpful staff. Nice body. There was also a program for matching people with “others who might share your interests.”

  It was very educational. Her smile slipped, however, when I pulled out my badge and asked to speak with the owner. He showed up very quickly after she called him on an intercom.

  “How can I help you, officer?” he asked. Thin, with short blond hair and very pale complexion, he didn’t strike me as very attractive, but I was rarely attracted to vampires. He also had a picture in their book of partners that I could hire to help me with my fantasies. To each their own.

  I showed him a picture of Sarah. “I’m interested in a list of dates and times this girl was here, and who she was with.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never seen her. Besides, we have a confidentiality pledge to our customers. I can’t tell you anything about them.”

  I smiled and batted my eyes. “I’ll have a search warrant and a team of forensic accountants here tomorrow. This girl is underage, and I have a witness who will swear he was here with her. Now, shall we start over? I want a list of dates and times this girl was here, and who she was with. I’ll also take any CCTV footage you have of her.” There was a camera in the lobby, and I was betting there were cameras in the action rooms as well, although probably better hidden.

  His eyes narrowed. “What did you say your name is?”

  “I didn’t. But since you asked, I’m Sergeant Danica James with the Arcane Division.”

  Maybe I was infamous, as Jeri said. The vamp’s face froze, and he stared at me. I met his stare even as I felt him try to exert influence on me.

  I smiled. “Coercion carries a ten-year sentence, you know? And it’s a particular hot button for me. Don’t you think it would be easier to cooperate? Or was she killed here? I can understand that covering up a murder would be important enough to risk pissing me off.”

  “Killed here?”

  “She’s missing. I would like to think I’m simply looking for a runaway teenager, but a murder case would be far more interesting. And more sensational. Career building, you know?”

  He continued to stare at me for another minute, then broke off. “Come on back.”

  We went through the employees’ door into a narrow hallway, then up a narrow set of stairs to the second floor. Passing a room with a lot of monitors, he led me into an office. The vamp sat down behind the desk and started tapping on his computer keyboard while I settled into one of the chairs in front of the desk.

  His office had a few monitors, including one for the camera in the lobby and one each for the men’s and women’s changing rooms.

  After about five minutes, his printer started spitting out paper. He pulled a memory card from the computer and handed it to me.

  “I didn’t know she was underage,” he said.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  He gave me a half-hearted shrug. “She walked in of her own free will, and there was never a sign she was drugged or spelled. You humans have a lot of strange rules, especially when it comes to your young.”

  “Our young are ill-equipped to defend themselves. We have societal norms to help them survive to adulthood.”

  He snorted. “That one is well able to protect herself. I could smell the magik in her blood from across the room.”

  I stood. “I would suggest you be a little more diligent in checking the age of your customers. I’ll drop a word to Vice that you’ve been lax in that department.”

  “Oh, you can be assured I’ll mention you and my new diligence to the Vice detective I deal with,” he answered with a smirk.

  I couldn’t believe he was that stupid and smirked right back. “I would suggest you check out my background a little more thoroughly.”

  His expression froze, and I could tell he was unsure about what I meant.

  More than thirty ex-cops, including a police captain, were serving prison sentences because of me. The fool had just cut his own throat, and that of at least one cop in the Vice Division.

  No matter what other issues Whittaker and I might have between us, we were on the same page about corruption. Hard to corrupt a cop who was a multi-multi-millionaire before he joined the force, and Whittaker was among the Hundred. He also was ambitious. He joined the force because he had some of the same weird ideas about law and order that I did, and he thought he would make a great police commissioner. I had always been aware that helping his career wouldn’t hurt mine.

  When I reached my bike, I stuffed the memory card and the list of Sarah’s visits in my saddle bag and drove home to view the card on my computer.

  Plugging it in confirmed my suspicions as to cameras in the action rooms. And considering the quality of the video, I wondered if the vamp was selling the vids. Sarah was quite enthus
iastic in her interactions with Crofton and the other man the vamp had recorded her with. Those two men were the only ones shown on the list of her visits. So, assuming the vamp had been straight with me, I only had one man I needed to identify.

  A search on the names Crofton had given me turned up pictures of Jordan Walker that matched Sarah’s other partner. That didn’t mean she hadn’t been involved with the other men Crofton told me about, only that they hadn’t used the vamp’s hospitality.

  Walker was another professor at Hopkins and lived two doors down from Crofton. It made me glad I didn’t live in that neighborhood and have kids.

  The other two men Crofton had introduced her to included a mage with a membership at the Benning’s country club and a mage with business connections to Johansson. He kept popping up. There were three top-end country clubs in the metro area, and most of the Hundred who lived in the area were members of one of them.

  It didn’t necessarily mean anything, since the Hundred tended to socialize and do business with each other. When they weren’t trying to stab each other in the back, of course. I had investigated two murders involving members of the Families, and it was like walking into a snake pit draped in silk.

  I rode over to Walker’s house after calling to make sure he was home.

  “May I speak to Jordan Walker?” I asked when a girl picked up the phone.

  “Just a minute. Dad! Phone!”

  I hung up.

  But on the way there, I took a slight detour to check the address of Johansson’s mistress. The apartment building wasn’t fancy, but it wasn’t a dump either. Five stories tall, and all the apartments had an outside entrance. I had the apartment number but didn’t know the girl’s name. No problem, I didn’t plan to interrogate her. But I was curious, so I rang the doorbell.

  “Yes?” The girl who opened the door looked about fourteen or fifteen and was dressed very nicely. Very pretty, dark hair and eyes. Maybe a touch too much makeup for someone so young.

  “Is your mother home?” I asked.