It was a cool but bright morning in the city. The sidewalks were busy with shoppers and people hurrying to work, but traffic had yet to reach its peak. Chris smiled her approval and drove fast.

She beat a tattoo on the steering wheel and sang along happily to a song she’d heard that morning on the radio. “Hmmm, Hmmm…”

Her partner of four years, John Warner, was quiet but that was okay. They had been together long enough to be comfortable with each other’s silences—

“Why don’t you put a sock in it?” John growled irritably.

—and bad moods, she grinned and drove faster. She swerved around a car pulling out of a side turning, and with tyres squealing, she floored it. The car surged ahead.

“And slow down for the goddess’ sake!” John yelled clutching the oh-shit handle on his side of the roof. “They can’t get away, Chris, they’re already dead. Remember?”

“Yeah, but it’s so much fun. I love this job!” she said and laughed at his growls. When John drove, he almost always put the car on autopilot, but she rarely did. She was a control freak and knew that about herself. It was one of her best qualities. “I have a need for speed!”

John grinned for a moment but then got serious. “Yeah, but you’re going to get that pretty butt of yours in a sling if Stokes hears.”

She sighed and slowed down. Stokes was her captain and he didn’t like her idea of fun. She got along with most people in her department, she even got along with Cappy most days, but he could be a pain about certain things. Things like speeding to a scene, or damaging public property, or pressuring a suspect. He was the perfect captain, always ready to protect his people against outsiders, but at the same time, he would be reaming her over the methods she used to take down the bad guys.

“I’ll be good.”

John looked at her sideways. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she said and grinned. “Scout’s honour!”

John sighed. “What’s with all the uniforms?” he said nodding at the street up ahead. The street was jammed with people. Cops and newsies didn’t mix well usually, but here they were, one big happy family.

Chris manoeuvred as far as she could into the chaos of cars and vans before parking. Hundreds of onlookers were trying to see the poor devils that had been stupid enough to walk through an alley in Monster Central without a stunner in each fist. They climbed out of the car and looked around.

“It’s a real zoo down here,” she said looking at all the reporters clamouring for a look-see at the city’s latest morbid offering. “They make me want to hit something.”

“You told Cappy you’d cut down on that sort of thing,” John warned.

She shrugged checking that her badge was in place on her belt. Her police issue stunner in its holster rode the opposite hip, while her backup pressed into the small of her back; it was reassuring but illegal as hell. “I did and I am, but I haven’t hit anything for over a week now. It’s getting to me.”

The uniforms were holding the line against the media, but unfortunately keeping the reporters back from the alley didn’t stop them from reporting their bullshit. Their remote cameras, rotors buzzing like dentist drills were in the air over the scene recording everything in its gory detail. She heard the same old recycled and generic news spewing from the reporter’s lips as she swept by. Channel 5 was doing its worst to trash the department as usual. How many times had she heard the like? Hundreds. Of course, they had no choice as yet. Later the stories would flesh out with names of the victims, and speculation on how, why, and when the murders had occurred as the department slowly released details. It was always the same.

She ignored the shouted questions just as she ignored the cameras overhead, hovering on their blurring rotors. Why ask her what was going on anyway, she thought grumpily. Couldn’t they see that she had just arrived? Of course they could, the cameras were capturing video of her arrival right now and feeding it to the editors in the vans. No doubt, she would catch sight of herself on screen later.

John put on the headset they shared—it was his turn—but he didn’t activate it. “What about the coffee machine you killed the other day?”

“That doesn’t count, it had it coming trying to stiff me like that,” she said absently as she flashed her badge at the uniforms guarding the entrance to the alley. She ducked under the tape with John at her side and made her way to where the action was. The severed head was the first thing that caught her attention. She crouched down to examine it better. John indicated he was going to have a look at the other corpse, turning on the headset to record the scene as he walked.

“I’ll stay with this one,” she said to his back.

The head had a face she remembered. Four years ago, she had been in uniform assigned to twelfth precinct, which included 104^th street and the scum who owned it.

“Well, well, well. Fancy meeting you here, Willie,” Chris said conversationally to the head. “How’s it going?”

Someone coughed nearby covering laughter. She looked up to see a faintly sick looking young man in uniform, but behind him was another face she knew.

“I think ol’ Slick Willie slipped on the sidewalk de-tec-tive,” Sergeant Jacob Baines drawled.

Slick Willie was, or had been anyway, Willie Danvers’ nickname on the streets. Back in the day, she had known him as a small-time thief—picking pockets was his main gig, but even then he had diversified from time to time. She wondered what he had been into lately, and whether it was big enough to lose his head over.

She stood to confront the sergeant. “Well shit, Baines, why didn’t I think of that? Oh yeah! Now I remember, his head came off!”

Baines grinned. “I heard he was shaving at the time.”

She laughed and continued their game. “Yeah? Witnesses?”

“Give me a minute and I’ll find you a couple of dozen.”

She laughed again. He probably could too. Willie was scum, and like all scum, he had plenty of people who hated his guts. Or rather, he used to have. Now he was less than scum. He was dead scum.

She stepped over the head and shook hands with her old sergeant. “How are you Jacob?” she asked looking up at him where he towered over her and his huge gut.

“I’m doing real good,” he wheezed and shook her hand.

He was an enormous mountain of a man. He had been her trainer and inspiration at one time—her obsidian giant; not literally a giant. He was human enough and swore there were no giants in his ancestry. She still wasn’t sure about that.

“Glad to hear that, Jacob. Who is your friend?”

“Let me introduce a new soldier in our fight against the bad guys. Patrolman Kevin Goodchilde, this is one of my old apprentices, Detective Chris Humber.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” the patrolman said and shook her hand.

Chris liked him straight away, the way you couldn’t help liking a puppy. “Same here,” she said and turned her attention back to Baines. “Who’s the other stiff?”

“One Leonard Joseph Lambe. That’s Lambe with an E. He went by Lenny, not Leo, sometimes Whitey... the hair I guess.”

Lenny had white hair then. Chris pursed her lips. “Never heard of him.”

“Nah, he’s new on the block. Well after your time.”

“Let’s go have a look.”

Baines escorted her over just like old times. John was having a word with a guy wearing a vest and leather trousers and not much else; a witness maybe, though if he were, Baines would surely have said right off. John saw her coming but continued his questioning.

The second headless corpse was lying on the ground near a fire escape. Two decapitations in one day had to be some kind of record for the department, but then again, maybe not. This was Monster Central after all, and most non-humans used other weapons than boomers and stunners. Claws and teeth were usually preferred, but swords and other edged weapons were popular too especially with vamps. She frowned at the open door of the fire escape. If memory served it led into a club called Zero Gee; an apt name for a place where most of the customers spent their time flying high. Zero Gee sold more chemicals than Colombia.

“Someone chase him?”

“Not that we can tell,” Baines said. “Take a look at his neck.”

She crouched to have a closer look and frowned at what she saw. Something had taken a big bite out of him before taking his head off. Possibly a vamp, but they couldn’t eat meat and didn’t usually worry at a wound like this when feeding. They were fussy eaters, most of them; very finicky, and there was meat missing from the neck. This was looking more like a shifter attack, but they rarely used weapons. They preferred the home-grown variety—their own claws and teeth.

“An animal attack?” she said looking up with a grin.

Baines rolled his eyes. “Yeah, good one... not.”

“You’re thinking wolf. They are the most common shifter type.”

Baines shrugged. “Maybe, but what about Willie? No way did a shifter do that. The wound is too clean, a big knife not teeth. We have someone who says he saw Willie pushed out of this door by another guy. Then a minute or two later, Lenny here goes to take a look and wham—he’s dead too. Considering your other case… the certain high profile case that no one is supposed to talk about,” he stressed. “I figured you’d be interested.”

Interested? Hell yes she was, but she couldn’t see a connection between this scene and the Ghost. The Ghost was a serial killer with a bent for ripping the throats out of women with his teeth, not men. That kind of attack automatically shouted vampire to many people, her included, but Willie’s head had been removed with some kind of weapon—a big knife like a bowie, maybe even an honest to goddess sword. As Baines just said, the cut was too neat for it to be anything else. The coroner would have to confirm. Whitey apparently did have his throat torn out, but the wound didn’t match the others she had seen in the Ghost case.

“Anyone know who this mysterious fire escape user is?”

“The witness says no,” Jacob said, hooking a thumb at the man talking to John. “He knows all right. He just ain’t saying.”

“No murder weapon and no witness to the killing,” she said, thinking aloud. Without either one she had nothing to go on. “We can ask around, maybe come back tonight when Zero Gee fills up again, and see if anyone remembers seeing Willie last night. Other than that, I don’t think I can do much until we have the autopsy report.”

Jacob nodded. Chris noted a knife lying nearby and untouched. She bent to examine it but kept her hands well away from it. It was clean of blood and was obviously not the murder weapon. A butterfly knife like this one couldn’t take someone’s head, not without a lot of sawing.

“I’ll track down the third guy and see what he has to say, but without the murder weapon…” she shrugged, leaving the obvious unsaid. The case would go cold quickly and end in the archives with so many other unsolved cases.

Jacob nodded unhappily and led his apprentice patrolman away. Chris watched him go remembering tagging along behind Baines as Goodchilde was doing. She had learned a lot from him.

She left the knife where it was for the CSI guys and their robotic probes to investigate, and went back to Lenny. She frowned at the wound. What type of animal could do that with a single munch? Could a wolf really do that much damage with a single neat bite? She needed to look into bite radius and pressure. There were reference texts for that sort of thing. A cat shifter of some kind might be a better fit. Lion? She had never heard of one in this state, but there was a first time for everything in this crazy town. Other cities had them, tigers too; she knew that.

“Anything?” John said coming back from the witness.

“Nah. Just a butterfly knife, but there’s no blood and it’s too small to have done this. What did you get?”

“Nothing that’s worth anything. He works in the club behind the bar. Says he saw the victims going out the fire exit separately. He swears he doesn’t know who the third guy is.”

“You believe him?”

“Do I look stupid?” John with brows raised. “Don’t answer that!” he finished quickly.

Chris shut her mouth with a smirk. “Want me to have a word?”

“Can’t hurt, but I doubt you’ll get much.”

“We’ll see,” she said heading over to speak with the man. “What’s his name?”

“Jones, if you can believe it. Jason Jones.”

She nodded and cornered Jones just as he was about to leave. Things were winding down in the alley now. White clad men and women from CSI were setting up their gear ready to vacuum up any evidence. It was an exacting task but one they were adept at. She watched the sniffers and droids get underway then turned to the witness.

“You Jones? They call you JJ?”

“Some do. I guess you’re supposed to be the good cop, huh?”

“I’m the bad cop,” she said with a fist full of his crotch.

Jones’ eyes popped and he made to yell, but a gentle squeeze told him that it wasn’t a good idea. “You... can’t... do... this!” he gasped at the pressure she applied.

“No?” she asked, squeezing his privates again. John nudged her and flicked his eyes up the alley to where some of the guys were starting to take an interest. She eased off. He was no fun.

“Give me the name.”

“I don’t... all right!” Jones hissed as she tweaked his privates again. “Anton.”

“Anton who?”

“Anton is all I know… come on! It’s all I know I swear on my mother!”

“You don’t have a mother,” she said and let him go.

“Bitch,” Jones hissed as he slid by her.

“What was that?” She made to grab him and laughed when he took to his heels through the open door and back into the club.

John shook his head in amusement. “Cappy is going to have a seizure.”

“Nah, old JJ won’t make a complaint.”

“Don’t be too sure, you got him where it hurts.”

“Yeah I did didn’t I?” she said happily.

“I don’t mean them!” John said with a snort of laughter. “I meant his pride.”

“Oh.”

They made their way back along the alley to the car. The street had pretty much returned to normal while they chatted with JJ. It was surprising how quickly people lost interest when the bodies left a scene.

“So we have a first name for the missing guy, unless it’s a nickname, in which case we have nothing,” John said. “Any idea who he is?”

“No, but I’ll get him.”

“Confidence is good. Just how did you plan on finding him without a surname or murder weapon?

Chris climbed into the car and was about to lay out her plan when they received another call. John raised an eyebrow and answered it. “This is Warner, what’s up?”

“What’s up?” she whispered. “That’s hardly good radio procedure.”

John flipped her off while they listened to the dispatcher.

Possible homicide. Sutton Hotel, one-zero-two-four Greenwich Avenue. Officers on scene.

“Five-Alison-twenty-three on route,” John said as Chris started the car. “Looks to be a busy day.”

“Seems like,” she agreed and pulled into traffic. “You know, we might get somewhere with this Anton character by pulling Jacob in on it.”

John turned to her with a frown. “Okay, what the hell are you up to now?”

“Who me? I just thought that as he knows everyone around here he could help us out.”

“Yeah, and what else? It wouldn’t have anything to do with that puppy he was leading around would it?”

“Look, if Jacob chose Goodchilde to train, he must be something special.”

John nodded grudgingly. “He does seem to know who to pick. You were one of his weren’t you?”

“Yeah, he pulled me off traffic one day. He said he liked my look and needed some help. We worked together for two years. I swear I’ve never sweated so much in my life. He had me working beside him on every kind of case you can think of. I didn’t figure it out until later, but he was taking jobs no one else wanted just to give me experience—he took on stuff that must have bored him silly just to help me. I would really like to make a start on paying off what I owe him.”

“And you think pulling him and Goodchilde into an open and shut homicide will do that?”

“It’s a start, and it’s not open and shut until the case is closed,” she said a little defensively. “Besides, a homicide is a homicide. It will look really good on Goodchilde’s record.”

John shrugged. “It’s okay by me, but you’ll have to get Cappy to sign off on it.”

“I can handle Cappy. I’ll say that Jacob has unique knowledge vital to the case.”

John snorted.

She grinned. “I’ll fix everything.”

What John didn’t know was that Cappy had worked with Jacob many years ago. They hadn’t been mentor and trainee. They had been partners.

Chris pulled up outside the Sutton Hotel and shut off the motor. “You know, I’m getting a little tired of this place. Why can’t they kill people somewhere else for a change?”

John snorted as he climbed out of the car. “I like it here.”

“Yeah?”

“Seriously,” he said as they entered the lobby. “Joseph and me go back quite a way. We do birthdays and everything!”

Chris eyed him uncertainly. “You’re shitting me, right?”

“Would I do that?”

Joseph Sollis was the manager of the Sutton Hotel. He was talking to the uniforms when he saw John. He raised a hand, “Hey John! How’s it going?”

“Good Joseph, and you?”

“Not so good my friend. You heard?”

“Yeah,” John said grinning at Chris’ stunned expression. “That’s why we’re here.”

She shook off her surprise. “What have we got?”

“Dead hooker,” Officer Chaney said.

“Hey!” Joseph said in outrage. “She had a name you know!”

Chaney had the decency to look embarrassed. He was new on the job. Chris turned her attention to the manager. He was a clean-shaven, balding white male approximately forty to forty-five years of age. He was wearing a shirt and tie with a sweater and no jacket.

Chris indicated that John should begin recording and he nodded he was ready. “How well did you know her?”

Joseph’s eyes narrowed. “I knew her, but not the way you mean. I’m very married and happy about it.” He turned to John. “Where the hell did you pick her up?”

“Around. Answer her questions Joseph. She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

“That’s right. I don’t,” she said, getting ready to be angry.

“I knew her pretty well,” Joseph said grudgingly. “She was a regular. I know all my guests.”

“Her name?”

“Jenny Lovett. She came in with her man at around three last night.”

“Describe him.”

Joseph shrugged. “Just a guy. White, pretty tall I guess—”

“How tall? As big as Chaney?” Chris said.

“Nah bigger. About your size, John.”

John nodded. “Six-two. Build?”

“Muscular. Brown hair kinda curly and almost to his shoulders. He hadn’t shaved, but it wasn’t a beard, just stubble. There was something off with him. I noticed it when they came in. Usually the guys hang back as if they’re embarrassed to be paying a lot lizard, you know what I mean? Not this guy. He was different.”

Chris frowned. “Different like how?”

“Like how he stood behind Jenny, kind of hovering over her. It was as if he thought she might get away or something. She wasn’t scared,” he hastened to add. “It was business as usual as far as she was concerned.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!” Joseph said hotly. “You don’t think I’d let her go up with a guy if I thought he’d hurt her do you?”

“I don’t know what you would do. There are all kinds of hurting.”

Joseph fumed.

John stepped into the silence. “Anything else you remember?”

“Yeah, there was something wrong with his eyes. They were too pale, almost colourless. You know them people who are all white?”

“Albinos?”

“That’s it. His eyes were like that, and he was pale, but his hair was brown so he couldn’t have been one could he? I mean not like that guy… you know the Ghost that everyone’s talking about? Shit, it couldn’t have been him could it?”

Chris glanced sideways at John and he nodded. “Did you hear a name?”

Joseph shook his head. “He didn’t speak.”

“Did you see him leave?” she asked intently.

“Yeah. It was around four. I know because I was watching some vid and the news was on.”

“Didn’t you think it was odd when she didn’t come down?”

“Why would I? They don’t always leave together. Sometimes they stay the night. It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On how much the guy paid I guess. Look, I don’t ask the details. I don’t want to know the details!”

She snorted. “Okay. I guess that’s enough to start with. Officer Chaney will take your statement again.” She turned to Chaney. “Make sure he signs it, and do the seal up right. I want no mistakes on this one. Got me?”

Chaney wasn’t upset with her extra instructions. He had caught the Ghost reference. “I don’t make mistakes on the job. Ever.”

She nodded. “Let’s go see Jenny.”

“Right,” John agreed.

They called the elevator and rode it up to the third floor. The apartment was already the centre of attention when they entered. Forensics was already doing its thing and the photographers were busy documenting every inch of the scene. As usual, there were many more people hanging around than was strictly necessary.

“All right! Who was first on scene?” Chris yelled taking charge.

“I was,” a voice called from another room.

She followed pointing fingers into the bedroom and a scene out of nightmares. Blood had splashed over the walls and the carpet was sodden with it. She clamped her jaw shut and fought not to toss her cookies.

“It’s him,” John hissed under his breath. “The albino thing, the eyes. It’s him.”

“We don’t know that.”

One of the police officers in the room approached her. Officer Dwight Fiscus was a veteran. He had seen all there was to see both off and on the streets, yet this one had even him spooked. He looked a little white around the gills as he squelched his way across the carpet toward them.

“Who called you in?” Chris said.

“The manager. He said one of his employees, a guy named Tim Granger, came up to check on one of the regular hookers they get in here named Jenny Lovett around half eight this morning. When she didn’t answer he used his master key to get in.”

Chris dug at the carpet experimentally with the toe of her boot. It squished. The blood hadn’t dried yet, and that told her the time was probably about right. The forensics people would have to verify to be certain, but so far she couldn’t fault what they’d been told.

“What does Granger do for Joseph?”

“Security,” John said before Officer Fiscus could answer. “Joseph has a couple of guys to keep an eye on his regular guests. If you know what I mean?”

Chris did. Joseph might seem an okay kind of guy, but when it came right down to it, his hotel was just a flophouse used as a brothel. He had Tim to keep the girls and himself from being ripped off. Why John had let himself become friendly with Joseph Sollis she would never know.

“Where’s Granger now?”

“Downstairs making his statement,” Officer Fiscus said.

“Okay, let’s have a look at her.”

Chris stepped up to the bed. She kept her eyes locked on the headboard. Only reluctantly did she lower her gaze until she saw the... thing that had been Jenny Lovett.

“Holy goddess,” John hissed in shock. “Merciful goddess, bless us and hold us safe from evil.”

“Fuckin A,” Chris said faintly. “Are you telling me no one heard anything—no one?”

“Not a thing,” Officer Fiscus said.

John shuffled his feet as if they wanted to take him far away from here. “She’s number eight, she must be. I’ll call Raz.”

“Yeah,” she said faintly.

John left the room to make the call. Something he could have done right here, but she didn’t blame him for wanting an excuse to get out. She wanted one too, but Jenny needed her.

The albino thing was too much of a coincidence for it not to be the Ghost, but the blood all over the place here and wasted—from a vampire’s point of view—made little sense. The blood suckers needed it; why waste it this way? And what about the hair thing? Maybe he dyed it brown to throw off pursuit. If so, he needed bigger changes in his MO than just hair colour. If he was getting nervous, why kill Jenny like this and put himself firmly back in her sights as the Ghost? It didn’t make a lot of sense.

As with most serial killers, this one rated a task force and Cappy had put her in charge of it. John remained, as always, her partner and an invaluable aide. Raz and his partner Matt Silvis were the third and fourth part of their little task force quartet. They all had other cases to run, like this morning’s murders of Slick Willie and Whitey, but Jenny Lovett and the other victims of the so-called South Central Ghost took precedence. On the Chief’s orders, she could ask for any kind of assistance and it would be forthcoming. The media had lit a fire under the Mayor’s butt and he in turn had lit one under the Chief to make it happen. It was frustrating as hell, but without a suspect, she couldn’t begin to make use of the Chief’s generosity. She had unlimited resources and it didn’t mean squat.

“She had to be dead before he did it right?” Fiscus said. “I mean, she had to be dead, right?”

“Goddess I hope so,” she said, hating the doubt Fiscus had just managed to stir in her brain.

“Yeah.”

She pulled her eyes away from what was left of Jenny Lovett to study the walls. The sick bastard had tortured and killed eight women in the past three weeks. He always left a message of some kind as his calling card. This time he had painted the walls with Jenny’s blood. Chris had never seen graffiti anything like this, and she hoped she never saw it again.

“Could be he’s trying to prophecy or something. Maybe he used the blood in a ritual. He’s never done it before though.”

Fiscus paled further. “You don’t think he’s magi—”

“No,” Chris snapped, cutting him off before he could say it. “Absolutely not, and I better not suddenly hear that