The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,11

cloth and metal.

I kept my shirt over my nose and ventured over to the mess, which was filled with pieces of hair and bone. I couldn’t look for long.

When I raised my head, I was surprised to see stars. There was a hole in the roof. A huge one. Half the ceiling had been smashed away. Whatever battle had gone on here, it had actually blown the roof off the storeroom.

One strong support beam remained, and there were two chains wrapped around it, right above the mysterious puddle. Lying in the liquid was a sharpened metal pole as big as a man, the purpose of which I couldn’t determine. It was polished smooth with no markings, plain steel that came to an imperfect but deadly point.

The sand was a fine brown ash, split into two separate piles. The breeze from the open door had already scattered it around the room, revealing something white and shiny buried beneath. I dipped my fingers into the soft grains and retrieved the object. A pebble? No. I held it lengthways and moved it to the light.

It was a sharp and hollow, perfectly pointed tooth.

The cops had beef with me for all kinds of reasons. In particular, they didn’t like the fact that I called them to a crime only after I’d scoured every corner of it for my own means. For once, I did the right thing and sent word to Richie straight away. He swore at me for waking him up till I told him about the scene I’d stumbled into.

“Don’t touch anything.”

“I haven’t. As soon as I realized what I’d found, I left and called you.”

“Bullshit.”

The line went dead. So much for trying to do the guy a favor.

I waited patiently on the curb for him to arrive. I’d hoped that by playing ball with the police, I would learn more than if I went treasure-hunting in the teahouse on my own. Those hopes were cut into confetti when the scaled face of Detective Simms arrived on the scene.

I preferred her in the old days when she was just an angry beat cop with a chip on her shoulder. She made detective right before the world fell apart. Being a member of the Reptilia, her heightened senses helped her solve crimes faster than any other member of the force. Now, her bright green skin was a faded brown and patches of scales had broken off, letting pale pink flesh shine through. She covered herself in a black trench coat, scarf, gloves and weathered trilby, wearing the same outfit no matter the weather. Her thin eyes glistened from the darkness like the last hot coals of a campfire. She hated me. Always had. I shouldn’t have had those cocktails.

I waited in the alley while they made their examination. Three other cops accompanied the senior officers, dutifully bagging, tagging and lagging behind. It wasn’t long before they came out into the night air to catch their breath.

Simms lurched over to me, pulled the scarf down from her mouth and held out a gloved hand.

“Tooth,” she said. I pulled the fang out of my pocket and dropped it into her palm. She lifted it up to her torch. “Vampiric. Put it with the others.”

One of the grunts dropped the tooth into a clear bag and wrote out the details on a label.

“Two dead Vamps,” mused Richie. “You think it’s a Nail Gang, Detective?”

Simms didn’t look up. “Maybe. First, we need to find out who got liquefied, and how.”

“What’s a Nail Gang?” I asked. Every cop threw me a look that was sourer than the smell inside.

“As if you don’t know,” Simms hissed, and moved away to continue her notes. Richie came and stood close enough for me to guess that he’d had fish for dinner.

“Human gangs that move through the land wiping out ex-magic folk. We’ve just started getting word about them. They believe they were mistreated in the old days and think it’s their job to give Humans their time in the sun. When the population of a species gets low enough, they strike. Try to put the last nail in the coffin.”

I could have said what I was thinking, but it wouldn’t have been worth the breath. Nobody wanted to hear how sick it made me to be part of the same race as those monsters. A Human complaining about Humans was as boring as bilge-water. It didn’t matter to anyone. No one cared. I didn’t care. A Clayfield found its way from