Connor lowered her swiftly.
Once on solid ground, she went into her workroom where earlier she had almost employed a spell to get rid of her desire for Connor. Her efforts this time, however, had nothing to do with him.
Using pestle and mortar, she quickly pulverized the resin of dragon’s blood into a powder. When she had a sufficient quantity, she moved into the house then headed straight to the front door. Bending down, she spread a thin line next to the entire threshold for security.
She did the same at the French doors that opened onto her garden. Her plants swayed and moved with her as she silently invoked an incantation of protection. Not in all her years in Five Bridges had she felt the need to shield her home.
Then she’d been called to Amado Bridge and everything had changed.
She spread a final line inside her bedroom French doors and felt the protection lock into place.
When she turned toward Connor, she saw that he watched her with a concerned frown pulling his brows together. “What did you just do? Because I felt as though your garden was ready to start a riot.”
She explained about the spell. “I’ve just never had to worry before. Connor, what’s happening here? I don’t know what I’ve done to have brought this down on my head.”
Connor drew close. “That’s what we need to find out and remember, you’re not alone here. I’m in this as much as you are.”
“Right. Well, then we need to get to Rotten Row and see what Big Nuts has to say.”
Connor was a fast flyer, which indicated his basic power level as a vampire as well as his age.
His path led him on a northwesterly course back into Crescent Territory closer to Amado Bridge than to his home at the east end. She never traveled to Rotten Row on her own and the Tribunal had refused to send TPS officers to any of the crime scenes located in that area of Crescent.
Rotten Row was run by several gangster types, each into drug-running, human trafficking and prostitution. The three main drug-lords had numerous establishments there as well.
She felt Connor slow his speed, though he remained at least forty feet up in the air. She realized she’d gained confidence in his flying ability and was able to look down all the time now.
Gaudy lights flashed from nearly every venue down a street that extended a full four miles. A variety of music pulsed in the air, most of it loud. Hundreds of young women, a good number of them human and dressed in next to nothing, strolled the sidewalk.
Cars cruised, pulling over often. Women would get in and maybe they’d never be seen again. Or they’d be dumped in No Man’s Land, a desolate place in the middle of Five Bridges also called the Graveyard. None of the five species lived in that pitted, barren area.
“You keep sighing.”
“I do? I hadn’t realized I was. But this is so hard to take, this part of our world. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever make progress.”
“I know what you mean.” Connor cruised at a slow pace now, but still well above the lights.
“Did you know that when the Tribunal clean-up squads go out to the Graveyard at dawn, they cart off as many as twenty bodies every night, most of them women? And oftentimes a couple of them aren’t even dead.”
“I know. We’ve got a tragedy on our hands.”
Early on, before becoming a TPS officer, she’d gotten a job at the Tribunal. She’d been assigned to the missing persons desk. Residents of Phoenix would call to report that a loved one had disappeared and her job would be to locate them if possible, which was rarely.
There’d been one case that had shredded her heart. She’d worked with a young husband named Evan, who’d been a talented tax accountant for a powerful Paradise Valley mover-and-shaker. Evan had gone to a Christmas party with his pregnant wife, Heather, and from that expensive home, she’d had been abducted.
Evan had called the Tribunal, desperate to find his wife. With a Trib passport, Iris had left Five Bridges to meet Evan at his Phoenix home so that she could get a picture of Heather as well as to take some personal things with her to be used in casting a spell.
For the first few weeks, she’d made progress, and her spell seemed to be having a strong effect. She would locate someone who had seen Heather and who was willing to talk. She’d gain some information then learn of another person who would share with her as well.
Evan called several times a night for a progress report. The Tribunal wouldn’t allow him to search for his wife on his own because of the risk the cartels posed to his own life if he started asking questions. Iris knew he was frantic with worry.
She followed up quickly on each lead. She’d been able to confirm that Heather had been taken into Five Bridges, specifically into Crescent Territory. She was being used as a prostitute, which was terrible all on its own. But Iris had known it was the best possible news because Heather hadn’t been given an alter serum, which meant she was alive and still human. Her captors, however, were keeping her strung out on blood flame and the drug would be hard on her baby.
Iris had kept nothing back from Evan. She’d been up front from the beginning, especially about his wife’s odds of survival as well as the child she carried.
At the two-month mark, however, when her investigation led her way-too-close to one of the drug-lords, Donaldson had told her to close the file.
Iris had begged to be allowed to continue. She’d been so hopeful of a positive outcome. But Donaldson had insisted; she wasn’t to spend another second on Heather’s case.