Page 1

Chapter 1

Gunnar and I stood over the cold corpse in the morgue. It was the body of a middle-aged man; despite his age, he lacked the usual rotund tummy and had a full head of chestnut-brown hair. He was handsome, too; if he hadn’t been lying dead on a metal table, I’d have said he’d been lucky in life.

Helmud Henderson had apparently died in the Chrome Mine during a routine inspection. The miners were in an uproar, insisting that he’d been murdered by the hag that supposedly resided there. I knew a little about hags from my time at the academy: they were earth elementals – and they had metal claws instead of fingernails.

What was notable about the body was that it had no marks of any kind, no vicious claw marks, no slashes across the stomach, nothing. From what we could see, there was no sign that he’d been murdered. When he’d been found, his eyes had been wide, pupils blown in the darkness, his expression shocked. He looked like he’d just KO’d, surprised by a heart attack he hadn’t seen coming. It happens.

Gunnar turned to me. ‘Well, Officer Barrington, do you have any thoughts?’

I had plenty, but none of them were particularly helpful. ‘Heart attack?’ I said. It was pure conjecture on my part because I had nothing. I’d looked over the body thoroughly and seen nothing except a little excess body hair and that his generous penis had been circumcised. Yep, he’d been a lucky man in life. Not so much in death.

Gunnar grunted agreement. ‘We’ll know more after the autopsy, but I thought you’d want to see the body before it got carved up.’

‘Absolutely.’ I took one last look. Using a gloved finger, I lifted up an eyelid that had frozen at half-mast and peered in to see if there was anything unusual. The pupils were dilated in death but there was no extra redness or anything that looked unusual. Everything pointed to a natural death – only this was Portlock and there was always the possibility that magic was the culprit. I turned to face my boss. ‘Can we see where he died?’

Gunnar grinned. ‘Great minds think alike.’

‘And fools seldom differ,’ I shot back with a smirk.

He laughed. ‘I’ve already got a trip to the mines approved. We have an appointment there in—’ he checked the time on his phone ‘—an hour and forty-five minutes.’ He eyed my clothes dubiously. ‘You’ll need to dress warm. The mines can be cold as hell.’

‘Isn’t hell warm?’ I sassed.

He gave me a flat look. ‘You know what I meant, Bunny Rabbit.’

‘Dress warm.’ I sent him a mock salute. ‘Layers. You got it, boss.’

We filled out the paperwork for the autopsy, left the hospital basement and drove back to the office in the Nomo SUV. It was a cold day, though to be fair it always felt like it was a cold day. Today it was cold and snowy, but I was grateful that it was only light for six hours a day this close to the winter solstice. Vampire heaven. Darkness ruled supreme and all the vampires in town were delighted and strutting around like peacocks.

Following Gunnar’s orders to dress warmly, I slid home – I’d forgotten my cleats again. Luckily there weren’t too many witnesses around to see my comedic foot-slipping routine. When I opened the front door, Shadow and Fluffy were waiting impatiently for me. I gave them each a fuss and checked their water and food bowls.

My German Shepherd dog, Fluffy, was actually a werewolf shifter called Reggie. He had been cursed to become a dog by my mum, and though the local shamans had broken the curse it was fair to say that Reggie was struggling to acclimatise to being human. Given a choice, he always chose to be a dog. I feared that if I didn’t act soon his humanity would slip away forever and he would be left as nothing more than my furry best friend.

I loved him as Fluffy but I valued him as Reggie, and I wanted him to strive for more. I couldn’t force him into anything, though; I could only be there for him the way he was there for me. Feeling wistful, I gave him an extra-long cuddle as I looked into his warm eyes. Happy to see me, he tapped his tail.

Home was delightfully cosy after the cold outside. I had to keep the house warm for my animal companions; it wouldn’t do to leave my lynx kitten Shadow shivering. Cats loved their warm spots.

I needed something to heat me from the inside so I microwaved a cup of blood and made a glorious cup of tea to savour with a couple of yummy buttery biscuits, the type Mum wouldn’t have approved of because of the high fat content. That was why I had two.

By the time I’d finished my tea, found my coat and switched to my insulated boots complete with cleats, Gunnar was waiting for me outside in the SUV. Fluffy whined at the door and looked at me hopefully. He wanted to go with us and I knew his nose could be very useful .

‘Wait here, I’ll run out and ask,’ I told him. I jogged to the vehicle. ‘Gunnar, I think we should bring Fluffy. Will they allow him inside the mine?’

‘Thomas is meeting us and taking us down. The other miners can be – touchy.’ Just as I thought he was going to say no, he flashed a mischievous grin. ‘So let’s bring him. You never know what he’ll pick up.’ He paused. ‘But Shadow stays home this time.’

He didn’t need to tell me that my cat could be a liability sometimes with his wild and wilful nature – and that reminded me that Gunnar still didn’t know the half of it. I nodded. ‘Yeah, good call. Shadow has been … stranger than usual. I’ll tell you about it in the car.’

Gunnar quirked an eyebrow but waited patiently whilst I dashed back to the house for Fluffy. ‘You can come,’ I said, and he gave a pleased bark and chased his tail for a moment. A smile pulled at my lips. ‘I’m glad you’re happy, but can you hold still for half a minute so I can get this vest on you?’

He stopped his zoomies and stood still while I kitted him out. Shadow padded up and looked at me appealingly. ‘You can’t come. You won’t wear your vest.’ I held up the new one that Connor had ordered for him after the last one had been melted off him .

Shadow gave a vehement hiss then turned and walked towards the bathroom to sulk, making sure to show me his asshole as he went. Cats.

Fluffy and I climbed into the SUV and we set off. I was excited to see the mine; I’d never been to that part of Portlock and I was keen to explore. Besides, I knew nothing about chromite and rectifying that seemed like a good idea. A quick Google search taught me that it was the prime ingredient in chromium and used in the manufacture of steel, glass, copper and cement. It had a tonne of uses and I guessed that made it profitable.

‘Penny for your thoughts, doc.’ Gunnar interrupted my thoughts with a Bugs Bunny reference. He thought he was being funny, which was adorable. For that reason, I let it slide.

‘I don’t think they’re worth that,’ I said wryly. ‘I’m just looking up chromite and plugging a hole in my knowledge before we get there.’

He gave a noncommittal grunt and left me to my internet search. I Googled ‘mining in Portlock’ and discovered that there used to be two mines: the Reef Mine and the Chrome Mine. Only the latter was still running.

Gunnar interrupted my search. ‘Tell me about Shadow,’ he demanded. ‘What happened? You said he was stranger than usual? ’

I put down my phone and thought back to the incident in the basement of the State Trooper Academy. Rogue MIB agents had captured Connor, Sidnee and me, planning to send us to a black ops site to experiment on us. The pricks were a secretive subset of the MIB and were behind the deadly drug, fisheye. We’d turned the tables on them, kicking ass and taking names. Shadow had stepped up and stopped one of them from fleeing the scene.

‘Shadow raced ahead of the agent who was escaping and transformed into a two-hundred-kilo version of himself. His smoky coat vanished and he looked like a regular silvery lynx in colouring – though not in size. He was huge! It was crazy.’ Shadow’s transformation had been helpful for sure, but a little unnerving.

‘He what?’ Gunnar asked, aghast.

I leaned against the car door and twisted to look at him. ‘After we cuffed the MIB bastard, Shadow shrank back to his regular size. And get this – when he did, his shadow seeped back until his coat was smoky again.’ I gave a heavy sigh. ‘Gunnar, what the fuck is my cat?’

Gunnar grimaced. ‘I’ve got no idea, Bunny, but I sure am glad he’s on our team.’

‘Me too.’ I sat in silence a while, my anxieties stewing inside me. ‘Gunnar, what if—’

‘Stop there. I know what you’re going to say. ’

‘You do?’

It was my boss’s turn to sigh. ‘It hasn’t escaped any of us that Shadow has a lot of powers like the beast beyond the barrier. You even told us about seeing a giant lynx behind the beast’s smoke.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I think they’re related somehow, but everything I’ve seen of Shadow makes me think he’s good people. Maybe the beast started out the same a long time ago but something happened to change it. I don’t have any answers, just theories, but I don’t think that we should tar Shadow with the beast’s brush. We all have the opportunity to be more than our parents were.’

I nodded solemnly; I certainly hoped so, because my parents sucked. My mum had even shoved me in front of a bus once to try and make my magic manifest; it hadn’t and I’d broken some bones instead. That was something I didn’t think I could ever forgive, no matter the rash of apologies she’d made of late. Maybe with time, I could rise past it. And Gunnar was right: we each carved our way in life. Even if we used the imperfect tools our parents had given us, we could still build something spectacular. Shadow deserved that chance, too.

Gunnar might be right, but we were both wilfully ignoring the alternative: Shadow was only a juvenile right now, but there was a real risk that he might grow up to become exactly like the beast beyond the barrier.

There was a distinct possibility that we might have already invited the enemy in.