THE CITY MORGUE STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE downtown district. Directly across from it, past the wide expanse of the Unnamed Square, rose the golden dome of the Capitol Building. The old morgue had been leveled twice, first by a rogue Master of the Dead, and second by a golem, the same one that created the Unnamed Square when it reduced the five city blocks to rubble in its failed attempt to break through the Capitol's wards.
Even now, six years later, the city council refused to rename the empty space surrounding the Capitol, reasoning that as long as it had no name, nobody could summon anything there.
The new morgue was constructed on the principle of "third time's the charm." A state-of-the-art facility, it looked like the bastard offspring of a prison and a fortress, with a bit of medieval castle thrown in for good measure. The locals joked that if the Capitol Building came under attack again, the State Legislature could just run across the square and hide in the morgue. Looking at it, I could believe it, too. A severe, forbidding building, the morgue loomed among the dolled-up facades of the corporation headquarters like the Grim Reaper at a tea party. Its mercantile neighbors had to be unhappy about its presence in their midst, but could do nothing about it. The morgue got more traffic than all of them. Another sign of the times.
I walked up the wide staircase, between granite columns, and moved through the revolving door into a wide hall. The high windows admitted plenty of light, but failed to banish the gloom completely. It pooled in the corners and along the walls, lying in wait to clutch at the ankles of an unwary passerby. Polished tiles of gray granite covered the floor. Two hallways radiated from the opposite wall, both flooded by blue feylantern light. The tiles ended there, replaced by yellowish linoleum.
The air smelled of death. It wasn't the actual nauseating odor of the rotting flesh, but a different kind of stench, one of chlorine and formaldehyde and bitter medicines, reminiscent of a hospital smell, but nobody would confuse the two. In the hospital, life left its sure signs. Here only its absence could be felt.
There was an information desk between the two hallways. I made my way to it and introduced myself to a clerk in green scrubs. He glanced at my ID and nodded. "He's in seven C. You know where it is?"
"Yes. I've been here before."
"Good. Go ahead, I'll get someone to open it for you."
I took the right hallway to a flight of stairs and went down, into the basement level. I passed section B and came to a stop at its end, where a steel gate barred my progress.
After five minutes or so, hurried steps echoed through the hallway and a woman wearing green scrubs and a stained apron came rushing around the corner. She carried a thick three-ring binder in one hand and a jingling key chain in the other. A few thin wisps of blond hair had escaped her sterile hair net. Dark circles surrounded her eyes and the skin on her face sagged a little.
"Sorry," I said.
"Nahh, don't worry about it," she said, fumbling with the keys. "It didn't hurt to take a walk."
She unlocked the gate and swept past me. I followed her to a reinforced steel door. She opened two locks, stepped back, and barked, "It is I, Julianne, who commands you, and you shall do my bidding. Open!" The magic shifted subtly as the spell released the door. Julianne swung it open. Inside, on a metal table riveted to the floor, lay a nude body. Stark against the stainless steel, it was a queer shade of pale, whitish pink, as if it had been bleached. A silver-steel harness enclosed the cadaver's chest. A chain as thick as my arm stretched from the harness to a ring in the floor.
"We usually just collar them, but with this one…" Julianne waved her hand.
"Yeah." I glanced at the stump of the neck.
"Not that he'll rise or anything. Not without a head. Still, if anything…" She nodded toward the blue circle of a panic button on the nearest wall. "You armed?"
I unsheathed Slayer. Julianne jerked back from the shimmering blade. "Whoa. Okay, that'll work."
I slid the saber back into its sheath. "There was a second body brought in with this one."
"Yeah. Kind of hard to forget that one."
"Any trace evidence?"
"Nice try." Julianne smirked. "That's classified."
"I see," I said. "What about an m-scan?"
"That's classified, too."
I sighed. Greg with his dark eyes and perfect face, mangled and broken, locked away in some cubicle in this lonely, sterile place. I fought the urge to double over and cradle the empty space in my chest.
Julianne touched my shoulder. "Who was he to you?" she asked.
"My guardian," I told her. Apparently my efforts to appear impartial had suffered a spectacular failure.
"You were close?"
"No. We used to be."
"What happened?"
I shrugged. "I grew up and he forgot to notice."
"Did he have any kids?"
"No. No wife, no children. Just me."
Julianne glanced at the vampire's corpse with obvious disgust. "You'd think the Order would have enough sensitivity to assign someone not related to this mess."
"I volunteered."