It was 5am by the time I dragged myself back to the apartment and collapsed into bed. Visiting the hotels had been a bust. Some people had recognized the woman in the photo, but no one had seen her recently. If we didn’t find someone through the dating profiles, this was going to be a long case. This succubus was very cautious, not the out-of-control impulse killers I usually tracked, but a methodical hunter. A true rogue. And rogues were exceedingly dangerous. Most ubarae were actually very empathetic. Their nature leant itself to understanding the feeling of others, and most wanted to make their companions happy, to feed off the love, desire, and passion they poured into their partner. No human really knew the details of how they fed, as any study of ubarae physiology was expressly forbidden by the Pact, but the gist was that the more energy and emotion you put into them, the more they could draw from you. The usual killer I went after was like a junkie, they had lost control of their need to feed; they just couldn’t stop themselves once they started. Couldn’t stop until the human was a lifeless husk with nothing left to offer them. They may not enjoy killing, but they couldn’t resist feeding. Rogues were different. Rather than empathize with their companions, sharing their positive emotions, they craved the negative feelings. Fear, pain, helplessness. And they loved draining the life from a person, slowly enough that they could feel their death coming, feel the fear. Addicts were sad, but rogues were monsters. And, like human serial killers, they never stopped killing. Not until somebody stopped them. I needed to find this one fast, before the body count got any higher. I checked my phone, Tom had texted me the times of 2 rendezvous I was supposed to be making tomorrow. Well, today, technically. Apparently, there was something appealing about Henry Carpenter. The meetings were in the late afternoon, spaced out enough that they wouldn’t run into each other, but only if I actually cancelled the dates once I made my determination. Clever guy, Tom. Of course, if they did run into each other, it wasn’t much skin off my nose, I wasn’t even planning on talking to them, and they had no idea who I was. But it was probably best not to make a scene, so I would do it his way. But first, sleep.
I woke unsettled. Bad dreams, but nothing I could remember. Today was going to be a tough day. I had two leads to follow, but they were both likely dead ends. I had checked the two women's profiles and they seemed very ordinary, but not quite ordinary enough to be prosaic. If I were making a dozen fake profiles, they would likely be very generic. These had a touch of creativity, of the genuine, to them. I didn’t think that these meetings were going to go anywhere. But I had to be sure, so I was in for another waste of an afternoon. Maybe I should bring a book. Or an autopsy report. I checked my watch. I had enough time to visit the morgue first, if I hurried. So, I grabbed some clothes and a packet of pop-tarts and headed to the office. I rode down to the basement from the 11th floor with clenched fists, and passed through the firing range and into the brightly lit hallway that led to the morgue. I shivered, pulling my jacket back on. It was cool back here, much cooler than the rest of the building. I pushed through the stainless-steel doors, into the tiny autopsy suite. The room was small, because they didn’t get many corpses here at any one time. Usually, the autopsies were already done by the time they tracked a new case down, so our medical examiner just reviewed the existing information and retrieved the samples from the official autopsy. It was cleaner than trying to transfer a body here, which tended to raise a lot of questions. But, since the deaths often looked natural, the regular medical examiners didn’t always go do a thorough job. So, for the tough cases our people got the bodies transferred. I didn’t ask how. Hearing me enter, a middle-aged woman with strawberry blonde hair, pulled back in a tight bun, looked up from her work and smiled.
“Hello, Ray. How are you today?”
“That depends, you have anything good for me, Jess?”
“Do you have so little faith in me?” Jessica hovered a hand over her heart, as if pained, but she was careful not to smear blood from her gloves onto her scrubs.
“It’s just been that kind of case, Jess. I’m having no luck so far. And this one is going to kill again, soon.”
“Well, maybe Greg here will be able to help you,” she gestured to the body on her table. “There is something I thought you would want to see.”
“What do you have?”
Jessica returned her glasses to the bridge of her nose with a shake of her head and turned back to his body,
“Well, Mr. MacNeil, what do you think? Shall we tell her?”
I smiled. I liked Jessica Collins. She was a funny, clever and an excellent medical examiner. She could probably have worked anywhere she wanted, been the head of a medical examiner’s office somewhere by now. Instead, she toiled in anonymity, working long hours with no recognition. People who willingly made sacrifices like that for the greater good were alright in my book.
“You know he can’t actually talk, right?”
“Now you sound like my husband. And you’re both wrong.”
Not too many people in the Organization were married, but it wasn’t unheard of. Some agents married for romantic reasons, some to fit in, or due to family pressure, or because they wanted to share spousal benefits with a friend, or even simply because they were lonely. But Jessica was an unusual case, she was one of the very few employees in the Organization who wasn’t actually Immune. As hard as it was to find and train suitable agents, it was all but impossible to find someone who also happened to have years of medical training and experience. So, because of her specialized skill set and the fact that she would only be dealing with the dead, an exception had been made for Jessica. I wondered what it was like, finding out that ubarae existed, knowing that they could be anyone, and also knowing that, if one wanted to do you harm, you would be basically powerless to stop them. At least for most of us, learning that there were predators in our midst was cushioned by the knowledge that they had no real power over us. Jessica, on the other hand, had no such comfort, but if it bothered her, she never let on. A consummate scientist, she always seemed more fascinated than afraid. It kind of reminded me of those shark researchers from the Discovery channel, who were always just a little too interested in dangerous marine predators for their own safety.
“Anyway, the first good news I can give you is that your succubus definitely left her DNA. I sent several samples to the lab and they have reported that if you bring someone in, they can easily make the confirmation.”
“I take it that she isn’t in our databases already, eh?”
“Afraid not. This is why we should have a complete database with information from all ubarae. It would also be excellent for research purposes.”
“Perhaps. But no one wants to be lined up and sampled like criminals when they have done nothing wrong. And no one wants their privacy invaded. Which is exactly why the Pact specifies no research or experimentation on ubarae subjects by humans.”
“Which is…”
“Ridiculous,” I finished her thought. We had had this conversation before. “I know that you feel that way. But I suspect that the ubarae were not too keen to be treated like guinea pigs, or worse, by humans. You can’t really blame them for that.”
“But there is so much about them, their biology, development and feeding, that we don’t understand. We could learn so much, about them and about ourselves. What signals are they using to attract people? Why are some people immune to them? How do they draw energy directly from humans? It could revolutionize the understanding of human behaviour. It could…”
I raised a hand to stop her. Jessica would go on about this all day if I let her, and my time was limited.
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“That is a sacrifice we made to maintain the tenuous peace between our people. If you want to change things, take it up with the ubarae Council.”
“Those stuffy, pompous, out of touch…”
“Jessica,” I interrupted again. “I really need to get going. Can you just tell me what you know?”
I should have known better than to let her get started on this. Honestly, while I could see her point, I didn’t exactly agree with her. I wouldn’t want to be experimented on either.
“Right, of course,” the ME turned back to the body on the table. “This case keeping you busy?”
“You could say that,” I checked my watch again. “I have a date in about an hour, so I can’t be late.”
Jessica turned back to me and arched a delicate eyebrow, questioning.
“The killer is meeting her targets through a dating app; I am hoping to flush her out. But she is cautious and meticulous, which makes this is a bit of a longshot, to be honest. So, if you have a better lead for me, I am all over it.”
“She’s a rogue, then?”
“Definitely.”
“I suspected as much. It explains the torture.”
“Torture? How could the civilian medical examiner miss that?”
“We never let this one go to the civs. Because this seemed very similar to the last two victims, James wanted Greg brought here right away, no waiting.”
“What about the first two victims? Were they tortured?”
“No.”
“So, she is getting bolder. Worrying less about being caught. Or she just needs more pain from them to satisfy her. Either way, not an encouraging sign. What did she do to him?”
“Nothing immediately apparent, externally. But there were burns inside the mouth, likely from a cigarette,” as she spoke, she opened the victim’s mouth and pointed to several circular red welts. “Burns on the palate, gums and cheeks. There are no signs he fought it, though. No bruising, or cuts, no signs of restraint. No evidence that he bit whoever was shoving cigarettes into his mount. He just laid there and took it, even though he would have been in a lot of pain.”
“Hmm, she is skilled, then.”
It wasn’t easy to convince a person to allow that kind of agony, to make them want it. Most succubae wouldn’t be able to force someone into it. This one was very good. Even then, this guy likely had a proclivity for pain to begin with, something she could enhance.
“I suspect that the torture was an impulse, not something she went into this planning to do. So, she is also probably a smoker, because Greg here wasn’t.”
“Anything else you noticed?”
“Nothing I can think of. But here are the detailed reports for all three victims,” she handed me a thick folder. “Maybe you will find something that can help you.”
“Thanks, Jess.”
Jessica removed her glasses again, a serious look on her face.
“Be careful with this one, Ray. Anyone who could do this to a person… she is sick, twisted. Partial or not, she will hurt you, if she can.”
“I know. I’ll watch my back.”
I left the morgue and headed to the parking garage to drive over to the Hilton and meet my dates. If I was lucky, one of them was going to try and kill me. Painfully. Fingers crossed.
The lobby of the Hilton was busy. It was late afternoon on a Friday, so there were plenty of people checking in for their weekend stays. I was dressed casually, tourist chic. The exterminators gear would do more harm than good here, hotels didn’t like their pest control people to show up in sight of the guests, bad for their image. So, for loitering in the lobby, it was best to stick to civilian clothes and blend in. I sat on an easy chair, a piece of luggage at my side, watching the door as people came and went. The woman I was waiting for claimed her name was Greta Harrow, and she was supposed to be wearing a red dress, with a white pattern. I hadn’t seen her come in yet, but it was still a few minutes before the time she was to meet Henry. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I looked down. Tom, asking if my date was here yet and telling me that he had added another ten women to our matches. I sent back a request that he move any people who appeared to be smokers to the top of the list. I looked up from my phone to see a hotel employee hovering over me, all smiles and obsequiousness.
“Have you been helped, ma’am?”
I sighed,
“Yes. I am just waiting for someone. Thank you.”
“Of course. If there is anything you need, just ask for Annette,” she tapped her name badge brightly before she turned and walked away. And not a moment too soon, my date was here. She looked a fair bit like her picture, though she was probably 15 pounds heavier and a few years older. As far as online dating went, she was a paragon of honesty. I rose from my seat and moved closer. I didn’t really need to be in close proximity to someone to tell if they were ubarae, but it never hurt to be cautious. I approached her from the left, bumped into her shoulder. She was wearing perfume that smelled like peaches and vanilla. Not a smoker, though, nothing ever seemed to get rid of that smell. It didn’t matter anyway, she wasn’t a succubus, either. I mumbled an apology and made a circuit of the lobby before returning to my seat. I pulled out my phone and sent a quick message to Tom,
She’s here, but she isn’t the one. Cut her loose.
A moment later, I watched Greta check her phone and frown deeply. She looked around for a moment, probably searching for Henry in the crowd. She wasn’t going to find him. After a few minutes, she turned and walked out of the lobby. I made a mental note to ask Tom what he’d told her, later. In the meantime, I had about 30 minutes before my next appointment. I opened the autopsy report for the first victim, Steven Perry. Just as Jessica had said, there was nothing remarkable about the death. No marks on the body, no signs of struggle. His heart had simply stopped beating. The second report, on Roger Smith, was more of the same. Except for one detail. There was an injury to his tongue. The medical examiner had noted it and posited that the man must have bitten his tongue around the time of his death. To him, it meant nothing. Just one of the thousands of pointless minutiae he needed to document. To me, however, it explained a great deal. That could have been the triggering incident. While the succubus was killing Smith, he had either bitten his own tongue or she had bitten him. And she found that she had a taste for pain. The fact that she had escalated so quickly, from a minor bite to multiple serious burns, was not a good sign. If I didn’t find her first, the next person to hook up with her was in for a world of suffering. And then death, of course. I tucked the papers back into my bag. I could look at the photos later, somewhere less public. Words were one thing, but pictures of corpses might be a bit conspicuous. My next appointment would be here soon, anyway. I checked her details, Anita, no last name. She was supposed to be wearing a yellow sun dress with a matching hat. That seemed a little attention grabbing for someone who didn’t want to give her last name, but I was no fashion expert either, so who was I to judge? I scanned the crowd, a family of tourists, a few tired looking business travelers, no one in yellow here, yet. I got up and paced the room. A couple of kids were playing tag in the lobby, I sidestepped them as they ran past. There were a few men in the easy chairs along the wall, some doing work on tablets or laptops. One was watching porn; he should probably save that for the privacy of his room, but at least he had headphones in. I circled towards the main desk. Smiling employees, Annette was helping a harried looking woman with a pet carrier in her hands.
“You told me you allowed pets!” she shrieked, borderline hysterical. “You can’t turn Marvin away!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Annette’s smile never wavered. “We do allow cats and small dogs. Ball pythons, however, may make our other guests uncomfortable. If you read the relevant section of our website…”
I chuckled to myself as I walked back out of earshot. The hotel business must get very interesting. Not that my job was boring. I completed my circuit and arrived back at my seat just in time to see a woman in a yellow sundress enter. She was young, pretty, more nervous than Greta had been. She clutched her bag to her chest and scanned the hotel anxiously. It didn’t look like she did this kind of thing often. She certainly didn’t look like a hardened killer. But appearances didn’t mean anything, so I took a moment to study her. Then, I grabbed my things and headed for the door, brushing past her on the way out. She wasn’t who I was looking for either. I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed. Now I needed to decide what to do next. I could hit a few more hotels, see if they had seen anyone. I wasn’t liking my odds. It was starting to look like another body would drop before I found her. I got behind the wheel, put on my Bluetooth and dialed Tom.
“Hey.”
“Any luck?”
“Nope. Just ordinary women.”
“I’ll send her home, then.”
“Thanks. What did you tell them, anyway?”
“Henry was detained at a work function, couldn’t get away.”
“No explanation as to why he waited so long to cancel?”
“Better to keep it simple. They won’t ask, not a man they never met. Either they will assume he didn’t like what he saw when they walked in and decided to cancel, or they will think he was telling the truth. Nothing much I can do about which they pick. So, what are you going to do now?”
“I’m not sure. This one is being very careful. Few people see her, no one remembers much about her, she doesn’t hunt in the open and she doesn’t stay in the same place for long. She knows we will be coming for her, and she isn’t taking any chances.”
“The junkies are a lot simpler.”
“Yeah,” in every sense of the word. “Good thing rogues are rare.”
“Not rare enough for these guys.”
“I guess I will go visit some more hotels. You’ll let me know if there are any more hits on the profile, eh?”
“Yeah. I’ll be in touch.”
I pulled out onto the street and went to go interview some more hotel staff. Hopefully it would turn out to be less futile than yesterday.