“Thanks, Theo, but it’s not the pain. Really. I appreciate your concern though.”
It is best to cut Theo off before he demands outright whether it is me who is having the problem. I’d told the lie before I really knew him, and now that we are friends it has been bothering me immensely. I don’t want to lie to him. If only it had been a simple possession I would have gone to him in a heartbeat. But how can I tell him that I’ve got a murderous little entity inside my head that calls herself Nemesis, who may or may not be the Angel of Death?
A car crash at age fifteen had left me with amnesia and no memory of my life before that. All I know is that since I was fifteen I have had a little voice in my head that had protected me from dangers I’d been too scared to face alone. She’d told me I was the Angel of Death, and I hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry about it. I’d just accepted it as the truth.
It hadn’t been so bad. I was human and ‘Angel of Death’ had just been meaningless words to me. So I had a weird navelstone. So my wounds healed overnight in my sleep. It meant nothing. I’d gotten used to thinking of the little voice as my angry little friend. But that was before she’d taken over my body three weeks ago and attempted to murder someone.
The amulet Theo had given me had had the blessed effect of shutting her up for good. I haven’t heard a peep out of her these past three weeks. It has been such a relief to no longer worry about her taking over my body when I am too tired or emotionally overwrought to stop her.
The only problem is that Theo’s amulet seems to have cut off my psychic powers too. It can’t be a coincidence. It has to be the amulet. And I need those psychic powers back.
“Where are you?” Theo asks suddenly.
“Walking home.”
“And talking on the phone at the same time?” His voice has risen an octave in dismay. “You’d better get off and keep your wits about you.”
Chapter 3
STORM
Special Agent Constantine Storm crouches over the dismembered hand, scrutinizing the cut marks at the severed wrist. He is in a narrow road, little more than an alleyway, off a main commercial street in Shoreditch, a stone’s throw from the city’s banking and financial district. The alleyway stinks of urine from late-night drunkards staggering home after a night out.
It is Sunday evening and this part of the city is like a ghost town on the weekends. Come Monday the main roads will be thriving again. The cleaning crew that had arrived to clean up the streets today before the weekly influx of the working population tomorrow had made the gruesome find.
The hand is small. Storm judges it belonged to a young female going by the smoothness of the skin and the shimmering gold polish on the freshly manicured nails.
Agent Leo Kane, a member of Storm’s team, is standing next to him. “Smells like it was dismembered a couple of days ago,” Leo says.
“The coroner needs to confirm that,” says Detective Inspector Brynden Zael somewhat tetchily.
Ten minutes ago DI Zael of the London Metropolitan Police had been the Senior Investigation Officer in charge of this new case. That had changed the minute Storm arrived at the scene. Zael did not seem to be taking the shift in authority kindly, particularly since Storm is clearly the younger of the two by several years.
DI Zael appears in his early thirties, and whatever vigor got him promoted to his current rank seems to have left him already. His clothes are slightly disheveled as if he hadn’t expected to need to get dressed for work on a Sunday.
Storm is aware that the only reason DI Zael had called in the Agency of Otherkind Investigations was the worry of this possibly being another Wolf-Claw Killer victim. Wolf-Claw is in the Agency’s jurisdiction and the case had been assigned to Storm’s team.
Storm and Leo exchange a glance but neither of them responds to DI Zael’s comment. Leo is Storm’s trusted second-in-command, an experienced agent and a werewolf to boot. If he says the hand smells a couple of days old, Storm believes him.
The cut on the wrist looks too clean, certainly compared to the savagery of the Wolf-Claw Killer’s other attacks. But then again, to strike a blow capable of taking a hand off like that would require a lot of strength. The kind of strength a werewolf has even in human form.
“Werewolf?” Storm asks Leo.
Leo shakes his head. “Cleaning crew’s chemicals have washed any scent markers away.”
DI Zael huffs grumpily. “Where the hell is the rest of her is what I want to know,” he says. “You don’t just walk off leaving your hand behind. We’ve called the nearest hospitals but they haven't had anyone turn up handless. The girl must be dead somewhere.”
“This hand was found two hours ago, shortly after 6:30 pm, is that right?” says Storm.
DI Zael nods.
“And the cleaning vehicle came from a northerly direction down this street?” Storm gestures at the truck which is parked in the middle of the road and facing him.
DI Zael glances at the truck and shrugs his shoulder. “Sure, I guess.”
Storm walks past the truck, thinking out loud. “So the truck came from over there and gathered up the hand in its cleaning brushes somewhere along the way.”
Storm glances behind him. Some distance down the alleyway is the back entrance of a pub called The Half Moon that is popular with city types. “Let’s assume she was at that pub on Friday night, at the end of a working week. She walked in this direction before being attacked.” Storm keeps walking, retracing what may have been the girl’s route. Leo and DI Zael follow him.