I took my time swanning to the chair and taking a seat. Placing the manila folder on the table with precision.
“Do you know why you're here?” Harrison grunted, crossing his arms over his chest. The fabric around his shoulders tightened around his muscular chest.
I opened the folder. “The Council told me you had information.”
Harrison chewed on my words for a few seconds, then jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the whiteboard behind him. “The Rose brothers.”
I glanced at the board and back to him. “Yes?”
“We’ve been investigating the Rose brothers for years. Human trafficking. Drugs. Fraud.” Harrison rubbed his thumb over his knuckle. “A dead woman turns up in Knightsbridge with a rose branded on the back of her neck. It’s the first thing we've been able to tie to them in years without it being a fishing exhibition.”
I stayed silent. “Did the Council mention anything else?”
“That the Rose brothers are goddamn Sex Demons?” Harrison laughed lightly and rested his chin on his chest for a second. “Yeah. They mentioned that.”
“Daemons.” I corrected his pronunciation. De-yay-mons. “They used to be human. They are not Pureblooded.”
Harrison digested the information before he reached for a dry-white marker, popped the cap, and made a note on the board.
“I know I asked you at the crime scene about the brand,” Harrison said. “But I need to know. Does the mark belong to the Rose brothers?”
I knitted my fingers together on top of the file in front of me. “Yes. They use it to mark their human cattle.”
Harrison's eyes widened minutely. “Right.” He repeated the word a few times to himself.
“What about the others?” I asked, flipping open the file. “The Council mentioned that this wasn’t the first.”
“I don’t know about that,” Harrison replied. “But we're investigating the Rose brothers. If there are others, they haven’t been reported.”
“Do you work for the Council?” I asked, digesting his words. There seemed to be a disconnect that made it hard to tell how much Harrison actually knew about the Demon world.
He shook his head. “I’ve worked with them before. London is teeming with Hellspawn. We get the odd murder.”
“Like this?” I spread out the photos with my index and middle finger.
Harrison scratched the back of his neck, uncomfortably. “No. The autopsy couldn’t confirm the cause of death, but she'd been running for at least ten miles if the condition of her feet were anything to go by.”
“On concrete or grass?” I wondered.
“Why do you ask?” His baby blue eyes sharpened.
“Bramble cuts on her legs.”
Harrison reached over and plucked the photo from between my fingers. “Queens Wood is nearest to where the victim was found judging by decomp, but the woods aren’t large enough to account for the distance covered.” Harrison stared down at the photo, his brows folded in concern. “She could have left the woods and taken some of the distance on foot.”
“People would have noticed if a naked woman was running through the streets.” I agreed.
“You’d think.” He slid the photo back to me. “But you never know around here.”
“What about the meat in her stomach?” I asked. “A Hound wouldn’t eat poor quality meat like that unless they were desperate. I can put some feelers out to find out who her master was, but it’s unlikely that they'll know much.”
Harrison's entire body had frozen. Alert. “Hound?” He repeated slowly.
“A Hell Hound.” I clarified, placing the photo of Esther Duke’s injured shins back into the folder.
Harrison swore.
I cocked my head to the side.
A few seconds passed; a myriad of emotions crossed Harrison’s face. “The only murder that I can tie to the Rose brothers, and she's a Hell Hound?”
I did not understand the issue. “What’s the problem?”
Harrison grabbed the laptop and opened it. He typed for a seconds before turning the screen to me. “Demon deaths don’t go through Scotland Yard.” His words were clipped. “The computer record of her case has already been wiped.”
“What does that mean?” My stomach churned.
“I can’t help you,” Harrison explained, his eyes downcast.
“The Council said—”
Harrison's baby blue eyes met mine, but they were icy instead of professionally detached. “Our investigation is with the Rose brothers. I can’t help with your Jane Doe.”
I stood up, grabbing the files. I hesitated for a few seconds, unwilling to stomp away like a drama queen when I was a grown man.
“Her name was Esther Duke,” I said, unable to keep the acid out of my sweet tone. “Thank you for your time.”
I did not wait for his reply before I marched from the room.
I stood with one elbow on the sticky bar, illuminated in the glow of the fairy lights that surrounded the bar.
The Botanical Lounge was a floral themed bar, located on the roof of a Shoreditch building—overlooking the multiple lanes of traffic below.
The lounge was surrounded in flora, with every type of succulent and topiary sticking out of bone-white planters. The drinks were organic. Vegan.
I sipped my Agave and Peach Daiquiri, as I eyed the human crowd. I sat alone. As always. Part of the crowd but never involved. Straddling two worlds but belonging to neither. The Human Realities and Hell.
I had been invited to the launch party of a product that an old client was launching. A dating or social media app of some sort.
I looked down to my drink, my feet rooted firmly on the ground. I used to love events and parties, but I was going through the new moon of my immortal existence.
Petra was gone. My adopted daughter had passed away, and I had never even gotten to say goodbye.
Speaking of new moons, I narrowed my eyes at the orange horizon and smoggy light pollution of the city—I would have to hunt soon.
The new moon was only a few days away. It felt like a hot and vibrating needle against my spinal cord. Reminding me, every second, of what I was.
My vision had gone fuzzy from staring at the lip of my cocktail glass for so long. When I looked up, I saw the shaggy copper hair of Vincent Rose.
I blinked away the splotches of my vision. Taking in the scar that ran from the corner of his left eye until the edge of his lip. The self-assured smirk. The hair-raising chill that caused all of my hairs to prickle. Not Vincent; his brother Samuel.
Samuel Rose's girlfriend/BDSM slave/paramour/shadow sat on the stood behind him, scrolling through her phone as she leant on the bar.
Nora Bleu was a strange woman. Long poker-straight hair and vividly innocent eyes, despite cavorting with Daemons. Ethnically ambiguous, but she definitely had some East Asian in there somewhere. Judging by the Yokai tattoo sleeve on her right arm, I would guess Japanese.
I had barely said two words to Nora Bleu since I had met her years ago. I did not know if she was aloof or shy. It was hard to tell.
My attention pulled back to Samuel; his smirk had not slipped an inch. The straight brother—it was debatable if he was the more fucked-up one.