Chapter 6

Callie growled for the third time, feeling her wolf badly wanting to emerge. She wanted to let it, find Shadow and bite his stubborn ass for him. Instead she took a deep breath, grabbing her cup of coffee and taking a sip of the caffeine laden murky brew. Setting it down, she picked up the next pile of pictures that Shadow had paper clipped together, spreading them out on the table and studying each one minutely.

He'd been young, not much older than eighteen. If he'd been wolf, they'd have thought him no more than a pup. He'd have been watched, cared for, mothered, taught to take care of himself. But the humans, she shook her head. As a human, he was considered adult. How could someone that age care for themselves.

He'd been searching. Callie could see it in his eyes. Glancing at the yellow post it, she found his name in Shadow's broad scrawl. Rudolph Brosnick, nineteen years old and full of promise. He'd been found in a back alley behind his home. He'd been torn apart, his promise ripped from him.

Carefully, she picked up the pictures, starting at the top of the board and affixing them in order, fussily straightening each one. Under them, she wrote the pertinent facts of name, age, dob, and date of death. She gave time of death and a quick run down of what their coroner, Dr. Gams, had listed as cause of death and important wounds.

She looked around the room, gazing at each of the seven boards she'd already set up, leaving spaces under the facts for any additional information that might come in. Death boards, each one told a story, not of life but of death. What they told was important. It was necessary if they were to find the killers.

Something caught her eye in one of the pictures and she stepped closer, staring not at the body in the picture but off to the side. "Shit," she whispered. Pulling it off the board, she looked around the room then headed for the door. Daniels had to see this.

"Angel!" Marcus grabbed her as she started to fall, her eyes, even as they looked up at him were wide with surprised pain. "No baby," he crooned, lifting her into his arms.

Another shot came from the darkness of the study, clipping Marcus in the arm, though he acted as if he hadn't felt it. Turning, he laid her on the floor out of range of the bullets. Grabbing a table cloth, he tore it off the side table, uncaring of the items upon it. "Angel, you've got to stay conscious. I need you to keep pressure on this," he ordered her, seeing her biting her lip. "Come on, baby, stay awake." He watched as she pressed down on the folded up fabric.

Then he turned and headed back to where Shadow was trying to return fire. Concentrating, he held out his hand and a sound like thunder filled the room. When it was done, a sword almost as tall as Angel was in his hand. "I'm going in. Angel's wounded."

"Marcus, you can't..." Shadow found himself staring at the ancient warrior's back. "You goddamn fool!" He got up, ducking as another volley of shots came from the darkened doorway. He saw Marcus stagger back before recovering and rushing into the room.

Shadow saw glints of fire and then heard the swish of Marcus's broad sword. He ducked inside, taking aim at a vamp who was trying to sneak up behind Marcus. The bullet sped true and took the vamp in the back. He burst into a quick ball of flames. "Marcus, leave one alive," he yelled just as Marcus was about to decapitate the last of them.

He stayed his hand, barely. Lifting the Vamp in one iron fist, he slammed him back against the wall, hearing his head crack against the wall. Letting him fall from his hand, he watched for a second as the man slowly slid to the floor, his ass against the wall, his head hanging down. "He's still alive," Marcus said. Then he turned and raced out to where he'd left Angel.

She was conscious, but barely, her blood sluggishly pouring out the hole in her stomach. "What do you need to heal baby?" he asked her.

"B-blood," she whispered.

Ignoring his own wounds, he picked up his sword and, after wiping the vampire blood off of it, he let it cut deep into his wrist, lifting her head so that she could drink from him. "Take it, Angel," he ordered when she tried to turn her head away.

"Y-you're h-hurt," she argued weakly.

Marcus's eyes narrowed. "Quit being so fucking stubborn and do as you're told." He held his wrist to her mouth, the first few drops of his warrior blood dripping onto her lips. She licked them once, her eyes going wild at the taste. Her mouth opened and fastened upon his wrist and he could feel her suckling on the wound.

Shadow stood behind them, watching as Angel fed off of Marcus, seeing the frenzy of concern and anger on Marcus's face. His green eyes were hard, full of concern for Angel.

"Did you see Rand in there?" Shadow asked quietly, putting his hand on Marcus's shoulder.

"No, he wasn't there, just his henchmen. You can mark three off of the tally as well as the one I left alive."

"Your wounds?" Shadow asked, knowing that Angel would be fine as long as she got blood. Marcus was an unknown. He was supposedly immortal.

"What wounds?" Marcus asked. Looking down, he saw the pink flesh of the healing bullet wounds, drying blood trailing down to thicken in the waistband of his leather pants. "I'm healed, don't worry about me."

"I'm going to call this in." He walked back into Armand Rand's study, drawing out a couple of zip ties and hog tying the last of the vampires. Then he pulled his communicator. "Shadow to ASP," he said, waiting a few seconds before repeating himself.

"Go ahead, Shadow," a woman's voice said.

"We were jumped at Minstrels. We have one prisoner to bring in."

"Was anyone hurt?"

"Not permanently," Shadow replied. "I want to close this place down. Armand Rand is an unknown entity."

"Sending three units. Return to base with prisoner."

Shadow could hear noise behind the steady voice of the female operator. Then a male voice came on the line. "Daniels to Shadow."

"Go," he said shortly.

"Raven found something you need to see. Return to base as soon as possible."

"On our way." He pushed the communicator back into his pocket and grabbed the Vamp by the arms, dragging him behind him. Angel was sitting up, wrapping a ripped piece of fabric around Marcus's wrist.

"You okay?" he asked, concerned.

"Fine. Wings here has some super blood. It makes me kind of feel punch drunk."

"Good, when we get back, go get checked out at the med unit. Raven found something that we all need to see."

"Wait, Shadow," Angel got up with a grimace and a little help from Marcus. "My father? Marcus said he wasn't in there. Do you know where he is?"

"No, we don't. I'm having the club shut down and we're going to bring some of his employees into ASP to question them. If you want to be in on that, head down to the med unit as soon as we get back to the house."

"I do," she said.

Callie was standing outside the darkroom, staring at the red light in front of the door. She couldn't go in, not until the light was off. "Come on," she muttered, pacing back and forth in the hall.

When the light went off she was in front of the door, her fist raised to knock on it. It opened before she could touch it, their photo specialist, a Vampire named Ralph Friendly, holding it open for her. "Come on in, Callie. I knew you couldn't wait for it."

Callie glared at him while he chuckled, showing off a gleaming white set of fangs. "Was I right?" she asked.

"Yeah," Ralph said, reaching out and plucking a picture off a drying rack. "Big eyes and curly hair, you've got a witness to the murder."

"A child," Callie mused. "A little girl saw this woman killed. She wasn't found with the body. They could have her." She glanced down at the picture, shaking her head. "Shadow's going to give the CS unit a piece of his mind for missing this." Grabbing the original picture, she headed out of the dark room. "Thanks Ralph," she threw over her shoulder, turning just in time to run into someone coming toward her.

She scented him before she lifted her head and her heart jumped into her throat. Shadow. He held onto her arms for a second then let her go like she was something foul. He stepped back, his eyes cold and hard, an icy blue that went through her like a knife.

The look on his face was harsh, worse than anything she'd seen from him before. Her stomach dropped at that look and she managed to stutter an apology. "I-I didn't s-see you.

"It's fine. I was actually looking for you. What was in this picture that you had to call us back in?" Shadow dropped his hands, feeling the tingle of awareness that he always felt. It pissed him off even more.

"Here," Callie said roughly. "See for yourself."

"Fuck," he hissed, staring at the heart shaped face and big brown eyes of the six or seven year old girl. She was hidden behind some garbage cans, her face pale, staring right into the camera. "Do we know what happened to her?"

"Do you think I'd have been so anxious about the picture if we did?" she snapped.

"Raven, I can do without your comments. Go to the med unit and check on Angel. When you're done, come and find me and I'll have your next task ready for you."

"Check on Angel? What happened to her?"

Callie grabbed his arm when he started to turn without answering her questions. "Wait a minute. I know you think I've done something to you. But Angel is my friend and I am an accredited Agent in this team."

"Angel was shot at her father's club when we were heading into his office to talk with him. I have no say in anything you do." He grabbed her hand, holding it up so that the big yellow diamond shimmered in the light in the hallway. "Your fiancé has that say. The fiancé I didn't know anything about until just a few hours ago. Now, if there isn't anything more, please do as I've asked."

He dropped her hand, ignoring her startled and hurt look and headed back the way he came, the pictures in his hands.

A tear formed in Callie's eye, one that she angrily wiped away. Turning the other way, she headed down to the med unit. If Angel was hurt, she would need blood and a lot of it to heal.

"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm fine?!" Angel almost shouted, reaching for the zipper to her uniform to pull it back up.

"Stop it," Dr. Chanteuse hummed, her fingers gracefully working over the skin of Angel's stomach. There was a small dimple in the skin where she'd been shot, but that was the only evidence that anything had happened to her. "What happened to the bullet?"

Angel stared at the small woman whose long blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun. She lay on one of the med unit's gurneys, her uniform half off of her while the creepy doctor poked and prodded at her. "My body will either absorb it or it'll be flushed out of me. Come on, doc, sign the form and let me go back to work. You didn't keep the big butterfly in here this long."

"If you are referring to Marcus, he's immortal. There really isn't much that I need to do for him. You on the other hand, aren't quite so lucky. I think we need to retrieve that bullet. A vampire with lead poisoning wouldn't be a good thing." She turned and picked up a tray, going to a small cupboard and opening it with a key. Pulling out a vial, she got a syringe and started to fill it.

"You ain't touching me with that, no way, no how. I got work to do." Angel tried to get up but the doctor grabbed her arms calmly and held her down despite how Angel struggled against her. "What the fuck are you?"

"Demon and doctor. You won't win, my dear. Just stay still and I'll have that bullet out of you in no time."

Callie pushed open the swinging door to the med unit surprised to hear Angel's voice and the panic that was in it. "Let me go!"