off.”
“No unusual scents. Just blood and decay and old moldy warehouse.” Dio gave her report from a distance, and Andy knew she was keeping a broad perspective and paying close attention to everything. While the rest of them worked, Dio would make sure nothing snuck up on them. Even with the OCU presence, Dio would never trust the safety of her fighting group to outsiders. She was the broom, and she’d be the one sweeping up—or planting a throwing knife between the eyes of—any threat.
Bela put her palm over the copper crescent moon charm Camille had forged especially to enhance her awareness of earth energy, and Andy sensed Bela’s power flowing into the sand and rock making up the concrete floor. Her eyebrows immediately came together. “Something came into the building and made contact with the ground there.” She pointed to a spot under a smashed window around the three-story level.
Andy stared at the window, then at the floor. “Whatever it was scaled the building or climbed down its façade from the roof, broke through, and what—rappelled to the floor? Jumped?”
“I think it jumped,” Bela said. “The trace is much stronger where it hit the ground.”
“Great. Just what we need.” Andy touched her dart pistol again for comfort and checked the ceiling one more time. “A homicidal Spider-Man.”
“I can’t get a read on the energy, but it moves from there to the taped-off office.” Bela closed her eyes. “Then back out, but only once.”
“To move the body into view and do the damage?” Camille asked, and Andy realized she was addressing the question to her.
She turned her gaze back to the body parts and the area around them. “Kristo Foucci was already dead when the thing tore him apart. No blood spatter, just a lot of pooling. His heart wasn’t beating.”
Camille knelt over the body’s torso and closed her left hand over her gold crescent moon pendant. Tiny beams of blue fire left the fingers of her outstretched right hand, probing the pieces of the body from its detached head to its discarded feet.
Andy heard the outer door open and close. Footsteps came toward them, but Andy didn’t turn around because she didn’t want to see Jack Blackmore. Knowing he was in the warehouse threw her insides into a jumble of irritation and curiosity.
She fidgeted with her iron crescent moon charm, hoping the metal would help her focus her own awareness, but even after long hours of intense training from Elana, she felt leery of using her aquasentience to explore the crime scene. Projective elemental energy could be extremely powerful and dangerous, and that’s what the charm most enhanced—and what she most needed in order to examine the body. When Andy tapped her projective abilities, she became a conduit for the power of water, letting it flow through her essence instead of summoning and controlling its course. She could gain so much valuable information by searching through what the water could tell her, but one mistake, one slip in concentration, and she could flood the building or, worse, most of Manhattan.
Her pulse picked up as she sensed Jack getting closer to her, and damn it, her body started responding again. He was staying quiet, staying out of her way, but his presence felt like hot geysers firing through her from her toes to her cheeks. The bastard was making her sweat.
Worse than that, she was sensing something from him. Something like concern. Or maybe … protectiveness?
Oh, that pissed her off.
She didn’t need his protection. She didn’t need anything from that man—and why the hell was she picking up his emotions, anyway? She barely had a handle on her own, or her quad’s, and she was supposed to be reading theirs.
This was stupid. She had work to do.
She strode forward and knelt beside Camille, studying the mangled corpse with a detachment she had cultivated during nearly a decade of working homicides. She gripped her charm and made herself breathe, slowly,
“No unusual scents. Just blood and decay and old moldy warehouse.” Dio gave her report from a distance, and Andy knew she was keeping a broad perspective and paying close attention to everything. While the rest of them worked, Dio would make sure nothing snuck up on them. Even with the OCU presence, Dio would never trust the safety of her fighting group to outsiders. She was the broom, and she’d be the one sweeping up—or planting a throwing knife between the eyes of—any threat.
Bela put her palm over the copper crescent moon charm Camille had forged especially to enhance her awareness of earth energy, and Andy sensed Bela’s power flowing into the sand and rock making up the concrete floor. Her eyebrows immediately came together. “Something came into the building and made contact with the ground there.” She pointed to a spot under a smashed window around the three-story level.
Andy stared at the window, then at the floor. “Whatever it was scaled the building or climbed down its façade from the roof, broke through, and what—rappelled to the floor? Jumped?”
“I think it jumped,” Bela said. “The trace is much stronger where it hit the ground.”
“Great. Just what we need.” Andy touched her dart pistol again for comfort and checked the ceiling one more time. “A homicidal Spider-Man.”
“I can’t get a read on the energy, but it moves from there to the taped-off office.” Bela closed her eyes. “Then back out, but only once.”
“To move the body into view and do the damage?” Camille asked, and Andy realized she was addressing the question to her.
She turned her gaze back to the body parts and the area around them. “Kristo Foucci was already dead when the thing tore him apart. No blood spatter, just a lot of pooling. His heart wasn’t beating.”
Camille knelt over the body’s torso and closed her left hand over her gold crescent moon pendant. Tiny beams of blue fire left the fingers of her outstretched right hand, probing the pieces of the body from its detached head to its discarded feet.
Andy heard the outer door open and close. Footsteps came toward them, but Andy didn’t turn around because she didn’t want to see Jack Blackmore. Knowing he was in the warehouse threw her insides into a jumble of irritation and curiosity.
She fidgeted with her iron crescent moon charm, hoping the metal would help her focus her own awareness, but even after long hours of intense training from Elana, she felt leery of using her aquasentience to explore the crime scene. Projective elemental energy could be extremely powerful and dangerous, and that’s what the charm most enhanced—and what she most needed in order to examine the body. When Andy tapped her projective abilities, she became a conduit for the power of water, letting it flow through her essence instead of summoning and controlling its course. She could gain so much valuable information by searching through what the water could tell her, but one mistake, one slip in concentration, and she could flood the building or, worse, most of Manhattan.
Her pulse picked up as she sensed Jack getting closer to her, and damn it, her body started responding again. He was staying quiet, staying out of her way, but his presence felt like hot geysers firing through her from her toes to her cheeks. The bastard was making her sweat.
Worse than that, she was sensing something from him. Something like concern. Or maybe … protectiveness?
Oh, that pissed her off.
She didn’t need his protection. She didn’t need anything from that man—and why the hell was she picking up his emotions, anyway? She barely had a handle on her own, or her quad’s, and she was supposed to be reading theirs.
This was stupid. She had work to do.
She strode forward and knelt beside Camille, studying the mangled corpse with a detachment she had cultivated during nearly a decade of working homicides. She gripped her charm and made herself breathe, slowly,
Similar Books
