Forged in Fire: An Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 4) Read online

  "Oh, Jesus," I breathed, when I realized what they were.

  This might not look like the horror movie I'd been expecting, but it held horror all the same.

  I took my non-goodies from Lucky and then banished him for now. I didn't feel threatened at the moment, just grossed out and definitely queasy. I sent Vale a sickly smile when he climbed up the ladder and joined me on the pelt.

  "This place is not good," I told him and Melanie as they looked around.

  Vale figured it out right away, his face growing grim. Disgust thinned his lips. Melanie took a little longer to make the connection but when she did, she gasped loudly and then clapped both hands over her mouth.

  "If I were sensitive, I'd be offended by your reactions," spoke up a woman's voice.

  She rose up smoothly from the middle of the room as though she had ridden up on some kind of pneumatic lever. Apparently the floor here was riddled with trapdoors. Fun.

  "Do you run this place?" I asked the woman.

  She looked to be about fifty, heavily freckled, with brown hair streaked heavily with gray that she'd braided into a long plait that reached her hips. She wore a white lab coat over loose balloon pants covered with elephants that people wore when they wanted to get in touch with their chakras. Fur-lined boots covered her feet and a pale yellow scarf puffed up from the throat of her lab coat. The coat itself had seen better days and it retained the faint splatters of fluids that I didn't want identified.

  Her hazel eyes watched us steadily from behind her thick-lensed goggles. I would have said she reminded me of an owl except I'd never seen a nature documentary where an owl looked as obsessively focused as she did. She stared at us as though she'd never seen human beings before.

  "This is my breeding center," she agreed. She spoke softly, as though she were spooked. Her eyes didn't blink.

  "My name is Anne Moody. I run Moonlight Pawn just down the street."

  "I know it and I know you. You're the epicenter of curses."

  I was caught aback. "I wouldn't have put it that way but, uh, yes, there are a lot of curses at Moonlight. They're contained, though. They don't attack anyone outside of the shop." What a claim to boast about…

  The woman nodded, but tightened her hold on an implement that looked like a long-handled, metal iced tea spoon. It had an antenna coming out of the back end: two rings of metal encircling the center rod. She held the implement against her cheek, spoon side down, as though it were a pet hamster. In another minute I expected her to begin crooning to it.

  I exchanged looks with Melanie and Vale but they didn't know how to read her, either.

  "And you are?" I prompted the woman.

  "Dr. Morrow," she said and spelled out her name for us. That was helpful, because she'd placed the emphasis on the last syllable, making me think she'd said Dr. Moreau, like the demented character in the book by H.G. Wells. That would have been a ridiculous coincidence.

  Or would it have been? The statues that cluttered up the back end of the room weren't, after all, merely statues.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked. Her head twitched from side to side, bird-like. "Did you come to breed?"

  I can't accurately describe how hard I flinched at that. Melanie made a sound like she'd just thrown up in her mouth.

  "No," I said with a hoarse, incredulous laugh. "We didn't come here to breed. But that's what you do here, isn't it? You combine different species." I waved in the general direction of the statues, hoping she'd just spit it out and save me the tooth pulling.

  She looked at the statues, too, and a strange, wistful expression crossed her freckled face. "I do what I can. But the results don't always meet expectations. Science and magick—they aren't the bed partners they should be. So I give them a little nudge." She looked back at us, still owl-eyed. "Sometimes they need more than a nudge."

  Not only was I creeped out, I was a little bit scared. Vale didn't look much happier. He seemed on the verge of demanding that we blow this Popsicle stand. But we couldn't. Not until I got my answers.

  "I was hoping, since you're an expert on biology and probably shifters, too," I said with a smile that wobbled when I realized that I was likely standing not on an animal pelt, but on a shifter's skin, "that you could help me identify these." I held up the bag and Tupperware container.

  Her mouth rounded into an O. "What do you have there?"

  I began picking my way carefully across the floor, from pelt to pelt even though I wanted to scream inside. But if I'd stepped on the ice floor in my sandals I would have fallen flat onto my butt and maybe cracked my skull open.

  Finally we reached her and I held out the containers. Dr. Morrow bit her lip as if debating with herself, and then hastily shoved the spoon-antenna thing into the pocket of her coat and thrust her hands out to grab the items.

  I pulled them just out of her reach. "What exactly is it you do here, Doctor? What do you breed together?"

  Her fingers curled needfully in the air. "I perform recombination for genetic and magickal improvement. 'Breed' is a misnomer. No animal husbandry or zygote manipulation is involved. My process utilizes sorcery."

  "Are you saying you combine magickal beings together using magick?" Melanie looked ready to burst. "You make magickal Frankensteins?!"

  "Frankenstein was a scientist. His creation is Frankenstein's monster," Dr. Morrow corrected her. Her bug eyes zoomed in on Melanie as if considering whether she'd make a good next subject. "I utilize various treatments on shapeshifters for the purpose of improvement, not for the sake of experimentation or reanimation."

  While she was truthful about the reanimation, she was a liar about the rest. She had been experimenting. And failing. The proof stood at the other side of the room, pale faces frozen in anguish or horror.

  "And people come to you asking for this to be done—to who?" I asked, just barely managing to keep my voice level. "To themselves? To enemies?"

  "My work is not a weapon, Miss Moody."

  But it can be a punishment, isn't that right, Doctor?

  "So people ask you to make them more…exotic. Do you succeed?"

  "Of course." She tried to snatch the Tupperware box but I jerked it just beyond reach. "How do you think I stay in business?"

  Honestly, I thought she did what she did for the sheer perverse joy of it. Mad scientists typically didn't need anyone to pay them money to play in their twisted little sandboxes.

  "Do you work alone?" Vale asked softly.

  Dr. Morrow stilled, her goggled eyes settling on him as if just realizing he wasn't completely human. "I could make you better," she said to him, just as softly.

  Every single hair on my body, even the ones on my big toe that I pretended didn't exist, stood on end.

  Vale didn't appear fazed, though I knew better. "What could you do for me? To me?"

  Dr. Morrow gave up playing grabby hands with me to focus on Vale. Never mind that he had a look and attitude about him that had stolen my heart the moment I'd laid eyes on him. He was a gargoyle. A rarity. His blood alone must be worth a fortune to some whacko somewhere. Dr. Morrow had seemed mostly asexual up until this moment. Now, she began trying to channel Jessica Rabbit.

  "I could make all your dreams come true," she told Vale. She licked her lips. She finally blinked and kept her lashes lowered over her eyes. "I could make you the most powerful being on this planet, with my improvements."

  "Gross," I whispered to myself. I saw Vale's lips twitch as though he'd heard me.

  "You'd achieve this by yourself?" he asked the doctor. "That's impressive."

  She laughed breathlessly, awkwardly, like she had asthma but was trying to cover it up by sounding like Marilyn Monroe.

  "I perform all of my sorcery by myself. As well as all the lab work. I'm quite…educated."

  Vale nodded, and then he turned around and walked away.

  He didn't go far, just to the silver vats to inspect them, but Dr. Morrow looked after him like he'd just thrown her promise ring back in
her face and left the state.

  I couldn't stand her pity party. I thrust the box and bag at her. "I'll pay you to analyze these and tell me what they are. Immediately."

  She looked down at the items dumbly, and then she gasped with evident excitement and hustled to the line of metal slabs on the wall. Just as she reached them, the nearest one descended from the wall like I'd guessed it might, becoming an examining table on which she set the box and bag.

  The white ball of light that zoomed out of nowhere made Melanie and me duck, but the orb, about the size of a grapefruit, hovered above the table, providing light for Dr. Morrow to see by as she opened the sandwich bag and peered in at its contents.

  "Hmm," she said. She pulled her spoon-antenna from her pocket and dipped the spoon end into the black charcoal of Raker. She waited a moment, then said, "Hmm," again and removed the spoon.

  She repeated the process—"Hmms" and all—with the Tupperware box containing the remains of the dead Eastsiders shifter.

  "What's that one?" I asked, pointing at the Tupperware box. "It started out as a wolf shifter but then it deteriorated into what you see now."

  "It remains a wolf shifter. It's now also something else." She reached into the other pocket of her lab coat and withdrew a glass sphere that was colored a pale pink. She cracked the sphere into two equal pieces along a centerline and then snapped the hemispheres into place over the lenses of her goggles. She bent further over the box and stirred its contents with the antenna-spoon, whose rings began to rotate.

  "Is that your wand?" I asked, realization hitting me belatedly.

  She looked up at me, her eyes made enormous through the rosy spheres. She bit her lip and then bent over the box again. "It's my genetic sensitivity corroborator."

  "So it's your wand."

  Melanie giggled.

  Dr. Morrow removed her "genetic sensitivity corroborator" from the box and sealed it shut again. "Very unusual and so very fascinating," she said, as if talking to herself. "Sorcery was used to turn this shifter into a genetic explosive."

  I looked over at Vale, but he was still studying the vats as if he was considering going into the beer brewing business.

  "Even more special," Dr. Morrow went on, "is that this bomb was designed to target one specific individual and that individual only." She waved her wand over the sandwich bag. "The target was this wolf shifter here, who has been transformed quite impressively. I'd like to take some samples."

  I snapped the bag closed. "No experiments, Doc. This guy's going back to his pack for a proper burial."

  She slumped and actually pouted.

  "Can you tell me anything about who turned the dead shifter into a 'genetic explosive'?" I asked her.

  Still staring longingly at the sandwich bag, she nodded. "Yes, sorcery leaves traces, even though the creator of this attempted to hide his tracks. He chose an inconsistent method, however. There are much better ways to disguise what you've done—" She broke off and turned her enlarged eyes on me while she nibbled her lip. "That's what I've heard from colleagues, that is."

  "Uh huh." I just smiled like I hadn't noticed her slip-up. "So who did this?"

  "Another wolf shifter. I would assume that he's the alpha of his pack."

  The statement caught me by surprise. "Why would you assume that?"

  "Because I saw him." She tapped the side of her goggles before reaching up with both hands and unsnapping the rose hemispheres from the lenses. "My ocular retro-seiso—"

  "Your X-ray goggles, got it," I cut in impatiently.

  She stared at me. Again with the unblinking owl eyes.

  "Sorry," I mumbled. "You were saying you saw him? What does he look like?"

  "I saw him in his human form. He's quite large, though not unduly large for one of his species. Many alphas can grow to be over seven feet tall. Judging by the length of his limbs I would say he is just over six feet tall. Two hundred pounds. Blond hair and a thick, trim beard. His eyes appear to be dark brown or black, which is unusual for a blond."

  I smacked the heel of my hand against my forehead as Melanie said, "Hey, that sounds like the bike cop we ran into!"

  "That's exactly who it was," I growled. "I'm betting he made himself handy for those three Good Samaritans to find. Even if we'd been caught barbequing the body he wouldn't have arrested us because he couldn't. He's the alpha of Eastsiders, not a real policeman."

  Boy, did it irk me when someone got one over on me. This alpha had used me to bring the body back home, probably anonymously called Raker and told him the body was at Celestina's, and then sat back and laughed as he remotely murdered Raker. To make matters worse, the new alpha of the Black Die Pack was a jerk and would probably spread the rumor that I'd been the one to kill Raker. While the rumor about Xaran was necessary and gave me a rep I could live with, albeit reluctantly, I absolutely would not stand for being falsely accused of a genuine murder.

  "It's a good thing I already have a boyfriend because it's going to be impossible to get a date at this point," I said to myself.

  "As you said, dating is no longer a concern of yours." I turned to look at Vale, whose dark gaze gripped me. "We need to go now, Moody. We have things to fix and make right."

  "Yeah, no kidding," Melanie murmured, but she kept glancing over at the frozen statues.

  I could tell she was torn between wanting to get away from this unnerving place and needing some kind of satisfaction.

  "One question before we go, Dr. Morrow," I said as I picked up my goodies and tucked them under my arms. "That fountain in the backyard. Where did you get it?"

  She bit her lip again. "That's Pauline."

  I shuddered. From near the vats, Vale cursed beneath his breath.

  "Pauline was once a living person wasn't she?" I asked, my tongue curling with disgust.

  "Her mother wanted to help her. Improve her." The doctor tilted her head to one side as she studied me. "Why are you so upset? The sorcery was sound. It was her constitution that failed."

  I began walking back to the trapdoor. "Come on, Melly."

  She fell into step with me, but glanced back over her shoulder. "What about Vale? He's still over there."

  Grim, I said, "Vale has business to attend to."

  "There's something in here, isn't there?" I heard him ask Dr. Morrow in the deceptively soft tone he'd used earlier, the one she'd responded to so well. "Inside this vat."

  "Your hearing is excellent. It's a hallmark of your species."

  "The vat, Dr. Morrow?"

  "Oh, yes. There's a subject in there. I'm soaking him in a special non-corrosive acid I've developed. I'm trying to loosen his limbs so they'll stretch the way I want them to. He's no longer viable, but his body retains value as a test subject. I'm trying out a new curvature of the spine."

  At the trapdoor, I sent Melanie down. Then, without looking back, I called up Lucky and had him blast the warehouse with fire. The ice walls instantly melted, flooding the room with water.

  Dr. Morrow shouted with anger, but Vale's voice soothed her.

  I climbed quickly down the ladder, singing "la-la-la" to myself, to drown out his final words to her.

  ~~~~~

  Melanie and I waited in the front yard of Darwin's Exotics for Vale to join us. I marveled at how innocent and unassuming the house looked from the exterior. Even now, there was no hint of the waterworks occurring inside. Not a drop of water leaked out of the doors or windows, nor a wisp of steam. Magick. It was a hell of a thing.

  Vale rejoined us about fifteen minutes later, his jeans soaking wet but a look on his face that said he didn't mind in the slightest. He looked to me first, and what I saw in his dark gaze settled the awful anxiousness that had been winding up inside me ever since I saw the frozen statues inside.

  Vale hadn't killed Dr. Morrow. I knew that without asking him. Some would say she deserved such a punishment for using her sorcery to not only create abominations but to cause suffering, which all legitimate doctors strove to avoid.
<
br />   But we weren't judge and jury. Maybe someday there'd be a fair body of magickal beings to help determine justice, but there wasn't one now. So no fatal punishments. Unlike the Oddsmakers, we needed to sleep at night.

  "What are we going to do about what she told us?" Melanie asked as the three of us walked back toward Moonlight, our collective mood pretty much in the toilet.

  "Well—" I began.

  "I hope you're going to say we're going to lie low," she cut me off in a rush, "because that's what we should do, Anne. All sorts of people are going to be after you now that they think you might have something to do with killing Raker!"

  "Yes, that's true," I said slowly. The memory of Dr. Morrow's lab still clogged my mind like a dirty cobweb but I shook it out to concentrate. "But laying low just invites attacks on the shop. I can't be passive and wait for trouble to come to me, which we all know it definitely will. I need to clear my name, and I need to figure out why I was targeted by the Eastsiders alpha."

  "It's because you're already an easy target," Vale pointed out. "The city already believes you're a killer so it's simple to blame you for another death. There's no hurdle of disbelief to clear."

  "I've already been vetted, is that it? Then I want to meet the guy who did the vetting. I want this wannabe cop-alpha to tell me to my face that it was a good idea to frame me. Ten bucks says that with Lucky's fangs around his throat he won't be able to say any such thing."

  "Surely you don't think it's as simple as one bad guy, though." Vale's arched brow hinted at what I'd been trying not to think about, actually.

  "The new, jerkwad alpha of Black Die," I said, recalling the stocky guy with the bad attitude and worse facial hair. "You think he's in on it, too."

  "In the mystery novels I've read, the detective always considers who had something to gain by the victim's death."

  I thought it was adorable that he read mystery novels, but I kept that to myself. Vale was a pretty self-confident guy—more so than any man I knew, in fact—but even he had a limit on how many times he wanted to be called "adorable". I suspected I was dancing around that limit.