“Butt out, cop.” Ignoring his proffered hand, Gaby pulled Mort’s limp arm over her bony shoulders, put her arm around his waist, and stood. “We don’t need your kind of help.”

  Like acid through his veins, the rejection burned. Luther didn’t move, didn’t retract his offer or his arm. “You will take my hand right now, Gaby, or so help me you won’t like the consequences.”

  Morty stirred from his horror-induced trance. Lips trembling, he whispered, “Thanks, Luther.” And he reached out.

  “Fine.” Gaby let him go with a slight shove. “But try not to track it all over the place, will you. It’s going to be a bitch to clean up.”

  Rather than pamper Mort, Luther did the expedient thing and slung him over his shoulder, bounded down the remaining steps, and put him back on his feet. “You all right?”

  Morty shuddered. “Just grossed out. I mean…” He spared one fitful, fleeting peek at the bloody stairwell. “There’s so much of it, and there are chunks of things in it, too. And I can…” He gagged. “Smell it.”

  Frowning, Luther looked again at the blood.

  Gaby crouched down on one of the steps and she, too, took a better study. “He’s right. Looks like hunks of flesh and skin and stuff. Maybe some bone.” She made a face. “And hair.”

  “This is too much.” Luther pulled out his radio. “Try not to disturb things too much until the forensics guys can get here.”

  “No.”

  He stabbed a glare at Gaby. She leaned over the rail and slid down on her belly to keep her feet out of the blood. When she reached the bottom, Luther automatically helped her down around the broken wood finial at the front post.

  Again, she brushed him off. “Put the radio away, Columbo. There’s nothing here worth bothering the specialists.”

  She amazed him at every turn. “You don’t think a gallon of blood warrants inspection?”

  “Why? It’s just another damned prank. Likely from a slaughtered pig. If you want to do some investigating, start at the butcher’s around the block. You can find it by the raunchy stench.”

  Luther looked at the blood again. “You think that’s from an animal?”

  Her light blue eyes rolled up in annoyance. “No, it’s from the president’s wife.”

  Luther didn’t appreciate her sarcasm.

  “What? You thought it was human?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She shook her head, as positive as a person could be. But how? “It’s not.”

  “No?”

  “It’s an animal. And unless you know something about cult worshipping and sacrifices taking place in the area, which wouldn’t surprise me, it’d almost have to come from a place with lots of spare blood.”

  She held out her hands, encouraging him, and Luther dutifully replied, “The butcher.”

  “Exactly. If there was another murder, you’d already know about it, right? If anyone was slaughtering house pets, you’d probably know about that, too.” She gave him a superior look. “Or am I wrong?”

  If he replied to her at all, Luther knew he’d lose the fragile thread on his temper. He directed his questions at Mort. “Have you pissed off anyone lately?”

  “I don’t think so.” Folding his arms around himself, Morty turned his back on the gore. “People come into the comic book store to sell stuff or buy stuff, and sometimes I don’t need what they have, or don’t have what they want. It makes people pissy, but I don’t think I’ve made any real enemies because of it.”

  Gaby lounged back on the wall. “I bet I know what it is.”

  Both men looked at her.

  “You.” She held Luther in her pointed gaze. “Look around the neighborhood, Detective. This isn’t Sesame Street. Around here, cops are the bad guys, especially the kind who wear suits instead of uniforms. And yet old Mort has played nicey-nice with you, chatting you up, inviting you in. That can’t be good for his social standing.” Her lip curled. “Do us both a favor and go solve some real crimes, will you?”

  Shit. She could be right about that. He disregarded her last dose of disparagement and said, “So you think someone managed to throw in a bucket of pig’s blood without Mort noticing?”

  Gaby slanted her attention at Mort, who wore a blank, befuddled expression, then back to Luther. “Hardly seems possible, huh?”

  Her wisecracking added to his tension. Luther rubbed the back of his neck, undecided. “Maybe. But I still need to have this checked out—”

  “So you can get even more people hating Mort? Sure, why not. He’s got that coming.”

  Morty started to panic. “Now wait a minute. I don’t want more stuff like this to happen.” He grabbed at Luther’s sleeve. “C’mon, Luther. Do you really have to make a fuss about it? What if I promise to keep the entry doors locked from now on? Only Gaby and I will have keys. Will that be okay?”

  Something in Gaby’s expression convinced Luther. Though she tried to conceal it, and from most, she succeeded, he still saw that she didn’t want the cops there.

  In fact, she was outright rigid about it.

  Somehow, Luther knew that if he pushed her, she’d disappear. He couldn’t chance that. Not until he got everything neatly resolved.

  “Yeah, all right, Mort. That’ll be fine.”

  Gaby left her slouched position on the wall. “What are you asking him for? You own the damn building.” As she walked between them, she gave Morty’s chest an arrogant shove. “If you want the front doors locked, then lock them.”

  “Where are you going?” Luther demanded.

  “To the storage closet to see if Mort has any cleaning supplies. Someone’s got to get this mess cleaned up, and I’m afraid if he does it, he’ll pass out.”

  Morty nodded. “She’s probably right.” Then in an attempt to be stronger, he said, “But I’ll help, Gaby.”

  Turning his wrist, Luther looked at his watch. What the hell. “I’ll help, but I can’t stay too long. I do plan to go by this butcher’s you mentioned, just to look around. I’ll say a few choice words to anyone there, and hopefully that’ll put an end to it.”

  “Yeah sure.” Gaby returned. With one hand she dragged along an industrial-sized mop and bucket, and in the other she held a large plastic garbage bag and a bundle of old rags. “Knock yourself out.”

  It took more than an hour to get the worst of the mess cleaned up. Luther looked around, and decided it was time for him to go.

  Gaby, still behaving like a prune, walked off to dump the bag of blood-soaked rags in the basement near the washer and dryer.

  Mort changed the mop water for the fifth time and prepared to go over the stairs again. He’d promised to have a new lock put on the doors first thing tomorrow morning.

  That made Luther feel marginally better, but he still didn’t like it. Something was up.

  He felt it.

  Just as Gaby had said, he caught a whiff of the meat market long before he reached it. The unique smell of a fresh kill hung in the air like sweat in a closed locker room.

  It wasn’t far from her apartment, just a few blocks over. Rather than announce himself, he parked at the curb half a block away and started in that direction. But before he’d reached the butcher shop, he heard a soft, mewling noise.

  Luther glanced around but saw no one. Still, he felt the attention directed at him, and knew he was being watched. Gaby? Maybe she wanted to make sure he checked out the butcher, as she’d suggested.

  But he didn’t think so.

  She was far too pissed at him right now to be dogging his heels for any reason. Hell, if he didn’t keep going to her, ignoring her rapid-fire insults, he’d probably never get to see her again.

  He knew without doubt, she’d never come to him.

  Eyes narrowed and temper soured, Luther scanned the area, peering at the closed businesses, the dark doorways, the overflowing garbage cans.

  One empty building, boarded up and darker than sin, caught and held his attention. Drawn to it, Luther approached the front but found it locked up tight. He tried a side door.

  No one answered his knocks.

  He heard another low-pitched whine and moved closer to investigate.

  Jaws snapping, a muscular dog lunged out from the shadows. Blood hung from the animal’s mouth and mottled the fur around its face.

  Luther stumbled back and cracked his spine on a metal railing by the side door. “Damn it.” His feet slipped in something wet and he barely caught his balance.

  Fur on end, muzzle undulating, the dog continued to menace him. It circled, licked its chops, and inched forward.

  Unwilling to shoot the animal, Luther stomped a foot and said with his own mean snarl, “Git. Go on, go. Get lost.” He slapped his hands together, all but attacking.

  The beast turned and ran.

  Heart still thumping, Luther caught his breath, rubbed the bruise on his back, and then turned a semicircle to get his bearings. The partially blocked alley led to a back entrance and, on alert, he moved in that direction.

  He heard another, barely audible whine.

  The dog was gone, so where…He looked, but saw nothing.

  No one.

  After releasing the leather latch on his holster so he could get to his gun quickly, he said, “Who’s there?”

  No one answered.

  Drawn deeper into the alley, beyond where the illumination of streetlights could reach, he withdrew a penlight and scanned the area. There on the ground, a large black stain caught his attention. Moving closer to investigate, he stepped around discarded crates and cartons and a few sealed-up bins that didn’t warrant investigation.

  A fat rat scuttled by, barely missing his right shoe.

  Glistening with evening dew, a web stretched from brick to brick. The black stain looked like oil.

  Or blood.

  Luther bent to touch it, but stopped before making contact. A foul stench reached him, rank enough to make his stomach flinch. With one hand he covered his mouth and nose, and with the other, he shone the penlight.

  The black stain trailed away toward a large metal garbage container, and beside that, what looked like…guts, bones, intestines.

  Forgetting the smell, Luther shot to his feet and dropped his hand. The narrow beam of light bounced around as he moved closer and closer.

  So many possibilities worked through his brain that it took him a moment to recognize the remains as discards from the butcher next door.

  Damn dog. So that’s what he’d wanted to protect, why his mouth had been bloody?

  There was nothing here. No one.

  Luther had no reason to be so suspicious. He let out a breath and headed back for the street.

  Maybe if his thoughts hadn’t veered to Gaby, remembering how she slung that heavy mop, her obstinate attitude and her take-charge manner, things might have gone differently.

  He might have had a chance.

  But he did have Gaby on his mind, and because of that, he heard the odd wet, scraping, dragging noise a moment too late. He turned and barely had time to catch sight of the nightmarish apparition pitching toward him. The odor intensified.

  The body, missing an eye, dragging one useless leg, drenched in a gel-like substance, moaned a complaint, an entreaty, and fell toward him.

  Shocked and sickened, Luther lurched to the side, hit the brick wall, and scuttled back into the alley to avoid the grasping arms. “Fuck.”

  It reached for him again, slavering from a gaping maw that might have been a mouth, and he stumbled away, unwilling to be touched. “Hang on,” he said to the malodorous creature. “Just…hang on.”

  He jerked his radio free to call for help—and something solid hit against his temple. Pain ruptured, bowing his back, blocking his vision. “Oh shit.”

  As he slipped down, down, down, he realized his error and cursed his own stupidity. He had one single moment of cognizance, one second to know he’d failed not only himself, but Gaby, too.

  And then cold blackness snuffed out all thought.

  Gaby pulled the chain hanging from the low ceiling in the basement. The bare light fixture clicked, but no light came on.

  A prickling of unease raised the short hairs on her neck.

  She dropped the bag of blood-soaked rags and, using the dim light from the stairs, looked around. Casting thick shadows, the mismatched washer and dryer were to her right, connected to a laundry tub. Piled high with discarded clothes that Morty never wore anymore, a rickety table sat to her left.

  A subtle shift in the air assaulted her, and Gaby looked above the table at the small slider window.

  Wide open.

  Things came together in a snap. How the perpetrator had gotten in with the bucket of blood, and earlier, the dead carcass. Had the person left? Or had he been around when Gaby sent Luther to the butcher?

  What if…?

  The pain seized her suddenly, clutching Gaby in a suffocating lock.

  It was so severe that it dropped her against the moldy wall with a groan of agony. “Oh no.” Not here, not now, with Mort only a few feet away. No, it had never happened this way before.

  It couldn’t happen now.

  But she had no means to stop it. What usually crept up on her with adequate warning now struck with blinding trauma. Weakness pervaded and she slid down the wall until her tush connected with the dingy, dank concrete floor.

  “Gaby?” Mort called down the stairs.

  Go away, she screamed silently, but she knew he wouldn’t, and she couldn’t find the breath to tell him to.

  He slunk down the steps in nervous trepidation. “Gaby, you still down here?” When he spotted her, he froze on the bottom step. Voice shaking, he asked, “Hey. What are you doing?”

  When she couldn’t reply, he hurried to her side. “Gaby, are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” The word emerged as a gasp of agony. Summoning lost reserves, she squeezed her eyes shut and slowly straightened, crawling her way up the wall until she had her feet under her. Her stomach burned and her muscles knotted. “I have to go.”

  “What?” Mort fluttered around her as she tested the strength in her legs. “Gaby, no, you’re hurt, or, or something. Let me call an ambulance. Let me…”

  At his sudden silence, Gaby got her eyes open. The pain was so strong she could barely see, but she sensed Mort’s fear. Fuck. “Go upstairs, Mort.”

  An audible swallow broke the silence. “What’s wrong with you?” he whispered.

  She couldn’t speak, couldn’t explain. Seldom had the calling taken her so viciously. It crippled with its measure of urgency, driving her to haste.

  Something was very, very wrong. “Go to your apartment, Goddamn it!”

  He turned and ran up the stairs, leaving Gaby free to do what she must.

  She stumbled up behind him, went through the door and outside into the sizzling evening air. Free of Mort’s scrutiny, she allowed the summons to guide her down the block toward where Luther had left…

  And realization hit her.

  Luther.

  The moment the thought exploded in her brain, she understood the extreme urgency, the grinding pain.

  Luther was in trouble.

  Chapter 10

  With a cry of denial at the inevitable, Gaby gave the summons free rein. If someone saw her, fuck it. This was no time for subterfuge, not with Luther at risk.

  Strength surged through her body. Her legs took over, racing her through the night, past two drugged whores, a homeless man passed out on the sidewalk. She went between parked cars, down an alley…and there it was, blinding in its dominance, crawling black and blistering red, popping and crackling.

  Through the veiling hues of evil, trouble, and illness, Gaby made out the piles of refuse and the pipe on the ground. She smelled the acrid scent of evil as it raped her nostrils and her brain.

  And she saw the large slumped body, partially draped over plastic garbage bags and cardboard boxes. Blood oozed from a head wound. A rat investigated.

  She recognized the clothes. Luther. Lying so still and bloody and…

  No. Not dead, Gaby silently screamed.

  “Not that,” she whimpered.

  He groaned, one hand twitching, and so much relief flooded her system that for once, she could see clearly. Even with the auras dancing in frenetic discourse, Gaby knew that she wasn’t too late—and that she was being used.

  The cardboard box rustled, revealing her target, filling her with glee…

  “Gaby?”

  She whirled around, and there stood Mort.

  Before she could deal with him, he looked beyond her—and fell back in revulsion.

  Gaby didn’t need to know what he saw. She knew it wouldn’t be pretty.

  “Go home, Mort.” She couldn’t waste time seeing if he obeyed.

  She faced the discarnate.

  This one stunk of fear and sickness. Naked, it lumbered toward her, giant tumors bulging around the middle, the breasts, and under the throat. The growths pulsed with a life of their own, like a heartbeat, like living masses of sickness.

  As old as the other one, but smaller, this evil mewled, stretched its toothless mouth wide, and vociferated in earsplitting measure.

  Closer and closer it got—until, with divine help, Gaby saw what others couldn’t.

  This being had once been selfish and manipulative enough to poison three husbands to death. Each time she profited from her murders. Each time she took satisfaction in the suffering she caused.

  Pure evil. Rank with it. Alive with it.

  Rightfully, the torments of hell waged on her cumbersome body in the form of unsightly and life-draining tumors. She deserved no less, but had also been given a life sentence of loneliness. Like the first evil, this body had been without friend or family.

  Unfortunately for her, she hadn’t been content to suffer her misery alone.

  Behind her, lying in his own blood, Luther gave evidence of further misdeeds. Evil bitch.

  Gaby didn’t back step at the ghoulish approach. Luther needed medical attention, and the sooner she dispatched the ghoul, the sooner he could get it.

  Smiling in relish, Gaby slid the knife free of the sheath. The naked being fell forward, and Gaby went with the momentum, rolling to the ground and in the process sinking the knife deep in several key places, twisting in the stomach, grinding it across the throat, and lastly cutting through the perineum. One sharp turn of her blade—and the body began bleeding out.