Cause of Death: Unnatural

Cause of Death: Unnatural-By Eliza Ford

The Cause of Death Series – Book 1

Em's head had been killing her all day. The three bodies lying on the ground in front of her weren't making it any better.

There was an itch at the back of her head, in a corner of her mind actually. A niggling, digging mental whine that had been growing in intensity all day. She knew what it was, she knew what it meant, and she sighed at the thought of what had to be done about it. But she couldn't deal with it now. These bodies needed sorting out first. It was nearly sunrise.

“Em!” Robert barked. “Get yourself over here.”

Em rolled her eyes. Robert was trying to be stern today.

Robert was head of pathology, a man who had worked with dead bodies for most of his career. Late nights in the chill of the morgue prising bodies apart for their secrets was all part of the job for Robert. He was an expert forensic pathologist with an insight that bordered on brilliance - and he was a sensitive soul. Em liked him. His fine taste in wine, the vintage cuff links in his shirts, the champagne they drank when he took her to the symphony, the dog-eared copy of War and Peace he kept by his bedside - all these things pointed to a man who knew who he was and what he liked. It was rare, Em thought, to find a man in this business who had managed to find the balance between the violence and ugliness of his work, and his own ideals. She admired that.

And she wasn't at all surprised to see that Robert had taken a step away from the bodies and had turned his back to them. He was talking to the cop who'd called it in, who was looking a bit green too. Even the most experienced crime scene technician would find this scene confronting. Perhaps that accounted for the sternness in Robert's tone - this had shocked him, and he was trying to find refuge in some officious rank-pulling. She nodded and decided to respect his little charade. The gore here was horrific.

Robert put his hand on the shoulder of the cop as the man finished his report and turned away. “Sit down for while,” Robert said to him, as Em stood at his side.

Robert looked at her with his eyebrows raised. It was a silent question that asked her if she was okay with all this. It was his only admission that what had happened here had upset him and he wanted to show his concern for Em without stepping over the professional line he respected so much. She loved him for it. He was such a gentleman. If only he knew... Em gave him a tight little smile.

“What do you think?” Robert asked her.

This was the question she hated. She turned back to look at the bodies again. It was a way of avoiding his glance. What did she think? Well, she knew it wasn't human, of course. Whoever, or whatever, made this mess it wasn't a gang, or a drug killing, it wasn't some prank gone wrong, it wasn't even some serial psychopath having a bit of fun. Nothing human had killed those boys. The perpetrator was more likely to have come from Em's realm, and probably had something to do with the whining noise still going on in the back of her head. But how could she tell Robert that?

Generally she had a standard answer to this question - for those cases where the victim had plainly been killed by a vampire or a wolf. She hated lying to him, but she was good at her job, and what he didn't know...

“I don't know what to think,” she said eventually. That sounded innocuous enough, didn't it? Surely this case was so violent that even with people like Robert turning away a comment like that wouldn't seem out of place. “I've never seen anything like it.”

That much, she thought, was true.

“Are we nearly done?” asked Robert. “It would be good to get them inside before daylight.”

“Yes,” said Em. “Poll has a few more photos and samples to do, but we're good. It would have been much quicker if Nick had been here,” she added.

Robert let out an explosive breath, more like a snort, and threw a hand up in the air in disgust. “Where the hell is he?” he said. “Did you call him?” Em stayed silent. This was all part of the officious rank-pulling, she thought. The bodies must have really bothered him. “I called him two hours ago,” Robert grumbled. “You think he might pay some attention to his boss.” He tugged at the cuffs of his jacket. “I'm heading back to the lab, Em. If you see him, tell him I'm going to kick his ass.”

He stalked off. Em watched him go and admired the elegance that Robert seemed to bring to everything he did. Even tantrums.

She sighed. There goes the weekend.

The pounding in her head seemed to kick up a beat as she turned back to the bodies. She pressed three fingers of one hand to the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes.

This was the problem with being partly composed of dark matter. The dark energy that flowed through Em's being didn't mind inhabiting human space, it didn't mind that she enjoyed hanging out with humans more than her own kind, it didn't even mind that she was half human herself, that she ate food and drank vodka and loved salsa dancing with a dozen drunken mates. What it did mind was sharing this town with the new dark matter being who had caused this mess in front of her. The being who was trespassing on her patch.

It wasn't one of the clan, this newcomer, that much was clear. Em was just over a thousand years old, and her father was lord of the clan. Em knew everyone in the Family despite it stretching over half the northern hemisphere, and she could recognize any member's signature mental touch. Like a fingerprint, or a pheromone, every dark matter being had an individual pattern of energy, a shape that defined their existence in the plane they preferred to inhabit. It was only Em who preferred to live in human space.

The Family, the clan, were the oldest beings on Earth, and their dark matter proclaimed their superiority over all other creatures both dark and human. Sure, there were plenty of common vampires, werefolk, other creatures half dark matter, half mortal, but the Family looked down on them all.

Em, being part human, had learned to live with the contempt of the clan, although with her father as lord, no one had ever dared show that contempt in front of him. Em had a unique position in the Family - honored and slightly feared for her father's sake, sneered at for her human mother's sake, held in awe for her ability to manipulate dark matter and often forgotten for her habit of living in the mortal world.

She'd found a place in one of the mortals' crowded cities. Humans had amused her at first, but a few hundred years later she had learned to love them. They had an endearing way of evoking feelings in her, feelings like love and hope and determination, and other delicious things like fear and suspicion and hate. A human soul was delectable, but Em had learned to live on more mundane flavours these days, with an occasional pint of blood, of course.

Forensics had seemed the perfect way for her to live in a human city. She could clean up the little messes made by the lower vampires before the authorities found them, and when she couldn't get there quick enough, in the lab she could hide those tell tale signs and make a blood killing look like a regular shooting. Whenever she felt the urge, a cull of the lower vampires provided some exercize, some entertainment, and kept her senses keen. And living surrounded by so much human death she felt she had learned a lot about human life, and she liked what she'd found there. Humans had a strength she admired.

The three dead men on the road in front of her hadn't been killed by any of the lower vampires, that much was clear. The common vamps were messy and ate like animals, but they certainly lacked the imagination for a kill like this. These victims looked like they had been mauled by a company of pit bulls. Pit bulls with talons like knives and teeth like ten inch daggers. But the energy signature said there was just one killer at work here.

Em was confused. She'd felt a new presence in town a few weeks ago, and she'd thought she'd known exactly who it was - one of her father's consorts, a ghastly woman known as Alina, someone Em had hated for a few hundred years or more. Em had felt Alina's arrival and almost shivered with a ghoulish joy. She was certain Alina had left her father's side without his permission. She grinned again at the thought. He would eat Alina alive as soon as he found her. And she completely deserved it. Em had just been waiting for the right moment to report back to the lord of the clan. She was biding her time, waiting to see what Alina was up to, and besides, she'd found she was reluctant to see her father again, hesitant about sinking back into her own realm. Too much time with the humans, she thought wryly.

She hadn't thought for a second Alina was doing something like this. And this throbbing in her head wasn't Alina either. It couldn't be.

She sighed again at the mess in front of her. They were such young men - fit, beautiful, full of energy. Whoever had done this had wasted them.

“Not pretty, is it?” said a voice behind her.

Nick.

Em looked at him. He looked crumpled, with a five o'clock shadow, like he hadn't slept at all. Anyone who looked at his rakish smile, his tussled hair, the way his upper arms so completely filled his shirt would think he'd spent the night at a club wooing some gorgeous young thing, but Em knew better.

Nick's sister had three young kids and the youngest was sick, really sick. When the littlest one and his mum were in hospital for days on end, Nick and the rest of his siblings took care of the other two, sleeping on the sofa, packing school lunches and delivering the pair to school and after school activities. Nick had obviously pulled the night shift tonight.

“Sorry I couldn't get here any quicker,” he said. “It was 3am. I couldn't get anyone else over to Lucy's to care for the kids.” He ran his hand through his hair and grimaced. “Is Robert mad?”

“Only a bit,” Em said. “I'll protect you.” She smiled, and Nick rolled his eyes.

“What the hell happened here?” he said. Em saw his expression tighten a little as he completely took in the scene. So, the violence here upset him too. In a way, the notion that both her men found this repulsive pleased her. She'd chosen them well. She just wondered who she'd choose if she had to choose between them.

“Something new,” Em said. “We'll figure it out. Can you work with Poll please, Nick. Robert wants us off the street by sunrise.”

Nick raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged into his crime scene jacket. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, with a slight smirk on his face. Em remembered how Nick enjoyed the dynamic of her being his superior in the workplace, how he enjoyed it in other locations too, but with this mental itch still tugging at her brain she wasn't in the mood to play along.

“Just do it, Nick,” she said. “I need to...”

Her phone rang. Em glanced at the screen and frowned. Jennifer? At five in the morning? What the hell?

“I've got to take this,” she said, and turned her back on Nick. She felt rather than saw him throw a hand in the air, in much the same way as Robert had done earlier, and stalk off towards Poll. At least he'd get some work done.

“Jenn?” Em said into the phone. “What's up?”

Her best friend was in an impressive state of hysterics. Through the sobbing Em heard, “We broke up. He dumped me. He said he never even loved me.”

“Who?” said Em, and then caught herself. She couldn't think with this pounding in her head. “He's a jerk, Jennifer. You're better off without him. Where are you? Jenn?”

There was more wailing on the other end of the phone. “We were at the Harbor Bar. It was supposed to be our anniversary.” She sobbed again and Em held her forehead again with her spare hand. “He's driven off and left me here. And...”

“What Jenn?”

“I haven't got any money for a cab.” Jennifer dissolved into tears again.

Em groaned. She told Jennifer to stay where she was and hung up. She'd take Jenn home, tuck her in and leave her to sleep it off. A gentle psychic nudge would set the girl up to sleep all day and Em would get a good day's work in at the lab. Now, how did the rest of routine go? Sometime in the afternoon, Em would take a tub of ice cream and a bottle of red wine over to Jenn's place. They'd watch Titanic and weep pathetically when Leonardo died (again), bitch and talk trash about whoever it was this time who had dumped Jennifer, and by the end of the night the girl would be as good as new.

“Gotta go,” Em called over to Nick. “Girlfriend duty.” Nick's expression asked the question, and Em's exasperated face gave him the answer. “I'll just get her home and safe, and I'll be in at the office soon,” she said. “Can you finish this one up without me?”

Nick looked affronted and Em cursed herself for stepping on his feelings. Men and their egos.

She checked to see if Poll was watching, then quickly dropped an apologetic kiss on Nick's cheek. “Sorry babe,” she said. “I'm not thinking clearly. This ...” She waved a hand at the mangled bodies. She saw that Nick thought she meant the carnage, and his expression turned from insulted to concerned. She kissed him again and then left for her car. “I'll see you later,” she called back.

She hadn't meant the carnage, she'd meant the whining pain in her head. Funny, it did seem to grow a little less intense the further she moved from the bodies. Almost like the entity who had committed the horrors had left the mental siren there like a calling card, a blazing trumpet of defiance. A psychic f*ck you. Obviously not one of the Family, then. Alina? No, Em didn't think so. But what did that leave?

Em pointed her car toward the Harbor Bar and tried to remember the name of the ninth boy this year Jennifer was now calling a jerk.