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Carpe Noctem Book Three
Never the Twain Chapter Ten
by Lianne Burwell
February 2002
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There was a parking space right behind Vic's car, conveniently 
enough, and Jackie pulled into it. Vic and Mac were waiting for 
her, and Vic didn't look happy. He was leaning against the side 
of his car, his arms folded over his chest and a dark expression 
on his face. Mac looked pretty grim too. She'd known this moment 
would be coming, but she'd really hoped to have more to tell him 
when it came.

"Hey guys," she said brightly, getting out of her car. She got 
along well with Vic, and Mac was kind of like the brother she'd 
never had, assuming you forgot about little details like the time 
she'd slept with him. Incest was definitely not her thing. 
"What's up?"

"Other than another death?" Vic said in a calm tone that was 
setting off her flight instincts.

"Um, yeah?"

"We asked around at the club that the victim was at last night. 
He was looking for an oriental woman. When we showed them a 
picture of LiAnn, the bartender recognized it."

Jackie straightened up. "He'd seen LiAnn?"

But Vic was shaking his head. "No, but he'd seen a stacked blonde 
with a picture looking for the same woman. So, Jackie. Why are 
you looking for LiAnn?"

Busted. Jackie sighed, and sat down on the still warm hood of her 
car. "Because I've seen her."

She spent the next ten minutes telling them everything, starting 
with the sighting of someone she thought was LiAnn long before 
the killings ever started. She then went on to describe her 
attempts to locate the woman, the mysterious phone message, the 
security system failures, the suspicious Sanji, and her run-in 
with LiAnn the previous night.

"You had sex with LiAnn?" Mac said in disbelief, unsurprisingly 
focusing in on the last part.

"The best I've ever had," Jackie teased. And it had been, which 
was pretty damned weird in itself.

Mac seemed to think so too. "But... LiAnn is *straight*," he 
protested. "She told me once that two women together was... 
icky."

"Are you sure it was LiAnn?" Vic broke in.

Jackie shrugged. "It looked like her, sounded like her, smelled 
like her. Sort of. I mean, she didn't smell exactly the same, but 
close enough. But she sure didn't act like her. And what she was 
wearing--" Jackie waved a hand to fan herself. "I mean, she was 
dressed totally hot. Leather, and not much of it."

"Which *really* doesn't sound like LiAnn," Mac said, a stunned 
expression on his face.

"Tell me about it," Jackie said. "But I'm sure it was her. Don't 
ask me to pin down why, but I'm sure."

Vic was frowning, but this time he was thinking, not pissed. "But 
if you saw her for the first time a couple months ago, then she 
wasn't in the other cities when the killings happened. At least, 
not the last few."

"Unless she's commuting," Mac pointed out. The look that Vic shot 
him said he wasn't in the mood to joke around. "Fine. Well then, 
maybe she was in the cities, but the killer followed her."

"We've got several of the victims linked to her, possibly 
sexually," Vic said thoughtfully. "If she didn't kill them," he 
ignored the protest from Mac, "and someone else did, then that 
someone is following her, targeting people she encounters."

"There was a theory about shape-shifters," Mac said, making 
Jackie's ear prick up. "Maybe the killer wants to make people 
*think* it's LiAnn?"

"Stalking and a frame job?" Vic said. "It's a working theory. 
It's certainly as good as we've got so far. Of course, it still 
leaves us in the same position: Looking for LiAnn and for the 
killer."

"Hello," Jackie said, raising her hand. "And what about Sanji?"

"What about him?"

"Well, duh. He's really weird, I don't remember what happened 
while we were together, although I apparently told him I was a 
secret agent, he wanted me to go off with him, and no one at the 
club remembered seeing him with me. It's all just a little too 
weird for a coincidence," she said.

Vic looked a little dubious, and Mac... Jackie stared at Mac. For 
a moment it looked like he was having a seizure or something. His 
entire body went stiff and his eyes rolled back in his head. Then 
the moment passed and he sagged against the side of the car. In 
fact, he might have hit the ground if Vic hadn't caught him.

"You okay, Mac?" Jackie asked, moving forward. Vic was asking pretty much the same thing.

"Yeah, I'm fine. And she's right. This Sanji guy is key."

"Huh?" Jackie was just as puzzled as Vic by the statement.

Mac straightened up, adjusting his clothing. He looked a little 
pained, but at least he was steady on his feet. Jackie couldn't 
remember ever having seen the man that shaken for no apparent 
reason. Hell, even when he did have reason, he tried to keep from 
showing it.

"Please, trust me on this," Mac said to Vic. He was rubbing his 
collarbone with one hand, like he'd been hit or something.

Vic looked hesitant, then nodded. "Fine. Jackie, you go back to 
the Agency and do up a description of this guy. I think we've 
gotten to the point where we need more bodies on this. We'll get 
Dobrinsky to assign a few operatives to go around, see if they 
can find this Sanji person." He still didn't sound sure, but at 
least he was going to do it.

>>>~~~<<<

"What's going on, Mac?" Vic whispered hoarsely to his partner. 
Mac still looked like a strong breeze could blow him over.

"I..." Mac stopped and shook his head. "It's hard to explain."

"Will you try?" Vic felt a little guilty about asking, but Mac 
was behaving very strangely. Of course he wasn't the only one. 
LiAnn definitely wasn't acting like herself, from the sound of 
it, and Jackie was looking a little strange too. In a way, he was 
still in shock at the idea of the Jackie and LiAnn...

"I'll do my best." But Mac still sounded hesitant.

Vic used Mac's cell phone to call Dobrinsky to ask for the extra 
manpower. The Director's right hand man was a little reluctant to 
agree, but the fourth death was upping the pressure. If they were 
going to find LiAnn or this Sanji, they needed more bodies. As 
well, there was the other matter, and the answer had been better 
than he could have hoped for.

After he hung up, one thought finally occurred to him. "You slept 
with LiAnn."

Jackie rolled her eyes. "Like, can we get over that? Yes. I did." 
Vic's eyebrows went up. He could almost swear Jackie was 
blushing, and Kindred didn't blush.

"And from what we know, so did at least three of the victims," he 
pointed out.

Mac, at least, was picking up on what he was saying. "If the 
killer is going after LiAnn's... um..." He looked as 
uncomfortable about the idea as Vic was. "Well, that kind of 
paints a target on Jackie's back, so to speak."

The shocked expression on Jackie's face said that she hadn't 
considered that possibility. "So, what? I'm a target now?"

"It's a possibility," Vic told her.

She seemed to be thinking it over. Finally she nodded. "Good," 
she said decisively.

"Good?" Mac said, his eyebrows just about hitting his hairline. 
"You call being next in line for... that," he waved in the rough 
direction of where the latest victim had been found, "good?"

"Yes, I do," she shot back. "Because if nothing else, I can be 
bait."

It wasn't an idea that Vic was comfortable with, but she was 
right. "Starting as soon as you get back to the Agency, you wear 
a locator and a wire, twenty-four, seven. Got it?"

"Hello. If LiAnn can muck with the Agency security systems, what 
makes you think those will do any good?"

"Maybe they won't, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I mean 
it, Jackie. No unnecessary risks. Got it?"

She looked like she was going to protest, but she finally sighed, 
and nodded. "All right. No unnecessary risks. I wear the wire. I 
wear the locator."

"And if you get any more phone calls, you let me know. None of 
this keeping secrets anymore, right?"

"Right."

"Good. That gives us a backup plan. In the meantime, I had a 
thought last night. If the killings take place in the alleys 
where the bodies are found, then why don't we stake them out?"

Both Jackie and Mac were looking at him as if he'd lost his mind. 
Mac was the first one to put the thought into words. "Staking 
them out would take a lot of people. Really obvious people."

"Unless you did it with cameras. I told Dobrinsky to set cameras 
in every alley in the area. Apparently, they actually made it as 
far as this particular alley *before* the kid's body was found, 
so we might actually have the killing on tape."

"Cameras..." Mac muttered to himself, then smacked his forehead. 
"Why the hell didn't we think of cameras before?" he said a 
little louder.

Vic shrugged. He'd done all his self-recriminating the night 
before when the idea had occurred to him. What really surprised 
him was that their camera-happy boss hadn't thought of it first. 
Of course, the Director was also acting a little strange, when 
they could find her, that is. The whole bit with Cash showing up, 
and giving Vic permission, sort of, just to leave, was weird. 
Sure, she would have known that Vic would say no, but still, it 
was a risk. And now she was refusing to even see them. In fact, 
right now, that was his biggest question.

Where the hell was the Director?

>>>~~~<<<

Two men and one woman climbed into their cars and drove away, and 
McKenzie emerged from the shadows. As soon as he'd heard that 
another body had been found, he'd known that Mansfield would show 
up on the scene, so he'd waited. The only thing that surprised 
him was that he'd had to wait until after dark for the man to 
show up. He should have expected that, though. Scum only came out 
at night

The woman was a surprise, though. The pretty boy who'd been with 
Mansfield before was obviously the man's bitch, so why the woman? 
Of course, the way she'd dressed, she was probably a whore too. 
He'd heard about the types Mansfield prefer to associate with. He 
was going to enjoy taking care of both the sluts out. Them first, 
then Mansfield.

McKenzie turned and walked away, heading for his own car. All he 
needed was the opportunity to strike. And when the time came, he 
knew a few others who would love to be in on it.

Oh, yeah. Mansfield was going down, going down hard. And this 
time he wasn't going to be going to jail just to get out again.

That gleeful thought was so distracting as he walked that he 
didn't even notice when a piece of shadow detached and followed 
him.

>>>~~~<<<

The three of them were clustered around the TV set in one of the 
media rooms, watching the feed from the security recorders. The 
image on the screen was black and white, grainy the way that all 
footage from security cameras tended to be. The angle was also 
awkward, and Mac distracted himself for a moment by trying to 
figure out where the camera had been placed. He also couldn't 
help wondering just *who* had placed the cameras so quickly if 
Dobrinsky was bitching and complaining on putting more agents to 
work canvassing the bars for their two targets.

But the mental exercise didn't distract him for long. Vic was 
still giving him strange looks, and he wasn't sure what to tell 
the man. His hand snuck up to touch the pendant tucked safely 
inside his clothing. He wasn't sure what the hell Sofia had done 
to it, but he was sure it was the cause of what had happened.

His skin still twitched at the memory. Vic and Jackie had been 
arguing over whether or not finding the Sanji guy she'd met was 
important to the case, when he'd felt like he'd been hit by 
lightning, or something. He'd barely managed to keep from 
collapsing.

And the shock had been accompanied by a flood of images, short 
and disjointed, most of them gone before he could even take them 
in. A few stood out, though. Jackie and LiAnn, Jackie and some 
Indian looking guy, LiAnn and a kid -- their victim, he guessed. 
And then a final lingering image of the Indian guy, blood 
dripping from his hands and mouth, eyes glowing an eerie red, 
bodies at his feet, and something hovering behind him that made 
Mac think of all the stories he'd ever heard of hell.

Mac shuddered at the memory. The man had stared straight at him, 
then smiled before reaching down and picking up one of the 
bodies. The kid had turned out to still be alive, and had 
screamed as he was tossed towards the... thing behind the man and 
vanished. The guy's face had wavered, first Cash, then Vic, then 
the Indian face again. Then the man, Sanji for lack of a better 
name, had walked towards him, his body shifting and twisting 
until it was LiAnn reaching for him, dragging him towards the 
vortex.

Then Vic had touched him and he had sagged. Jackie and Vic had 
been hovering over him, looking concerned. All he knew was that 
this Sanji person was the key, but the last thing he wanted to do 
was to find him.

And he still hadn't a clue what the juiced up pendant had done. 
Was it a vision of the future? Was it even right? Maybe it was 
just picking up on Jackie's certainty and translating it. He just 
didn't know, which was going to make explaining it to Vic tricky. 
And he wanted to do it alone with the man, since he was going to 
have to explain everything else to him as well, especially if he 
was going to beat Dobrinsky to the punch. Hell, he was a little 
surprised that Dobey hadn't already told Vic -- the bastard was 
always making life hell for him -- but Vic would have said 
*something* if that was the case.

"Okay, here we go."

His partner's voice pulled him out of thoughts that were getting 
darker and darker, drawing his attention back to the screen. 
There was a figure moving, but it was hard to make out in the 
shadows. There was something about the way it moved that didn't 
seem quite right.

Then it seemed to... shift. The vaguely human shape became more 
distinct, and definitely female.

"What time is this?" Mac asked.

Vic checked the index. "About a half-hour after the clubs 
closed," he said.

Then a stray bit of light from the mouth of the alley fell on the 
woman, and they all leaned forward.

"Okay, it *looks* like LiAnn, but there's no way she could have 
made it to where I was after killing the guy," Jackie said.

"Shape-shifter," Vic said confidently.

For a brief moment, Mac was hit by a wave of vertigo. It wasn't 
the pendant, or anything like that. Instead, it suddenly hit him 
that just a year ago, the thought of shape-shifters would have 
had him rolling on the floor in hysterical laughter. Now, it was 
just a fact of life.

Then the world steadied and he was able to concentrate on the 
screen again.

A little more than a minute after the LiAnn look-alike appeared, 
someone stopped at the mouth of the alleyway, just barely in the 
view of the camera. "Our victim?" Jackie asked.

"I assume so," was the reply.

The newcomer, a young man, probably still a teenager, stepped 
into the alley. The brief shot of his face before he was out of 
the light told them that he was Arab. Since the victim's name was 
Khalil, it seemed pretty likely that it was him.

If there were audio pickups, they weren't working, since they 
could see the kid's mouth moving, but there was no way to tell 
what he was saying, and the picture wasn't clear enough to get 
someone to read his lips, especially with his face partially 
shadowed. But the expression on his face said volumes: Confusion, 
hope, elation, and more confusion. Whatever the shifter said, it 
obviously reassured him. A moment later, the kid was in her arms, 
kissing her passionately.

Even knowing that it couldn't be LiAnn -- at least, he kept 
telling himself it wasn't her -- it was still weird seeing what 
looked to be his ex in a clinch with a complete stranger, 
especially one that was about to end up dead. Hell, it had been 
weird seeing her in clinches with Vic, and she'd been engaged to 
the man at the time.

Then there was another one of those weird shifts, and Khalil's 
head fell back, a horrified expression on his face, his mouth 
open in a silent scream. No one came rushing to see what was 
wrong, even though he had to be making enough noise to be heard 
out on the street.

Then, thankfully, the boy slumped in a boneless way that implied 
death. The... thing holding him followed him down. For the next 
two minutes, they watched as something that *looked* like their 
partner calmly dismembered the kid, pausing from time to time 
to... Ewwww.

Finally, she stood again, slowly and very deliberately turned to 
look at the camera, and smiled. Mac recoiled at the expression on 
her face. The image was so much like his earlier vision that he 
was dizzy for a moment. Blood dripped from her mouth, which was 
twisted into terrible, gleeful expression. It was hard to tell, 
but her eyes definitely seemed to be glowing, and he didn't want 
to even try to identify what she was holding in her hand.

Then she dropped it, and there was a twisting, almost a vortex, 
around her. A burst of static obscured the picture and when it 
cleared, she was gone, although they had a brief glimpse of 
something feathered disappearing from view.

For a moment there was dead silence. "Okay, that was special," 
Jackie finally said in a shaky voice.

"That's one way of putting it," Vic said, sounding almost as off-
balance. In a way, it was almost reassuring that the man wasn't 
as casual about this world of darkness they'd been dropped into 
as he seemed.

"So, you think that was the Sanji guy you told us about?" Vic 
said, shaking his head as if to clear it.

"It is," Mac said, drawing their attention.

"How can you be sure?" Jackie asked, more in curiosity than 
disagreement.

Mac chewed on his lower lip for a moment, then turned and rifled 
through the drawers of the room's one desk. There wasn't a lot to 
find, but he did finally find a few sheets of paper in the back 
of one drawer, and a pencil in definite need of sharpening.

Art had always been a hobby with him, one that was useful for a 
thief to develop, and after a couple minutes' work, he handed the 
sheet over to Jackie. She looked down at the drawing, and 
flinched.

Vic looked over her shoulder, then back at Mac. "What is *that*?" 
he asked.

"When Jackie was telling us about this Sanji, earlier -- You 
know, when I nearly collapsed? -- I saw that." Mac looked around 
the room, anywhere but at the quick drawing. It was crude, but 
very definitely recognizable. The image from his vision. "That's 
him, isn't it?"

"It's not exactly a photograph, but yeah, that looks too much 
like him to be a coincidence."

"You saw it?" Vic pressed.

Mac glanced around the room, easily picking out the locations 
where cameras would be hidden. "Later?" he suggested.

"Count on it," Vic said ominously, although his expression was 
concerned.

"So, we've got a shape-shifting assassin running around town 
killing anyone that slept with LiAnn. Only thing is, we aren't 
any closer to catching him. Her. It. Whatever," Jackie said, her 
eyes still fixed on the screen. Despite her earlier calm 
suggestion that she be bait, she looked a little more nervous 
now. Mac was glad to see that. Based on what they'd seen, she'd 
have to be crazy not to be nervous. Well, crazier than the rest 
of her clan, and they tended to be pretty wacko from what he'd 
heard.

"Sanji. LiAnn. We hunt for them. And not just in the clubs. If 
they aren't human, then they probably need someplace to stay 
during the day. We need to find that."

"Shit, that could be anywhere," Mac said. "It's not like they 
have to stick to hotels."

"Yeah, but we're running out of options, other than waiting for 
one of them to find us," Vic pointed out.

Mac sighed, then frowned. "That might work too. I mean, Sanji's 
going after LiAnn's... you know."

Jackie snorted. "That word isn't going to bite you, you know. 
Lover. Come on, say it."

Mac reached over and smacked her on the shoulder. "Whatever. 
Anyway, you're not the only one who fits into that category. We 
split up and go trolling for a few nights. Ask lots of obvious 
questions, show pictures, and generally try to attract as much 
attention as possible."

"Sounds dangerous," Vic said reluctantly, although he looked like 
he was considering it.

"Of course it's dangerous," Mac said, rolling his eyes, even 
though his stomach was tying itself into knots. "But the three of 
us are better prepared to defend ourselves that the next poor 
shmuck who gets caught up in this."

"Earpieces, mics, and tracers," Jackie suggested, almost 
pleadingly.

Vic looked back and forth between them, then finally sighed. 
"Constant contact," he said in capitulation. "But not until 
tomorrow night."

Mac didn't like that, but Vic was right. Between everything, it 
was only a few hours until the clubs closed. Not enough time to 
do much. "So what do we do in the meantime?" he asked. "Check the 
vic's apartment?" Not that it had done them much good up until 
now.

Vic shook his head. "The cops will be watching it. No point in 
going tonight. We'd just attract the wrong sort of attention."

"McKenzie," Mac said sourly. Vic shuddered lightly, while Jackie 
just looked confused. "So, what do we do?"

"I check the police database to see what they found at the crime 
scene, while the two of you collaborate on a more detailed 
drawing of this Sanji person. We'll fax it to the police 
departments in the other cities there were killings, see if there 
are any sightings. We'll also send it to the Agency office in 
Vancouver, have them do some checking," Vic said, glancing at Mac 
with a wry expression that Mac returned. They'd met for the first 
time, just after Mac was 'recruited' by the Director, in 
Vancouver. More to the point, they'd met in LiAnn's apartment, 
after Mac broke in, and they'd tried to beat the crap out of each 
other.

Mac still wasn't sure why they'd been moved back to Toronto, 
though. It would have made more sense to keep them in Vancouver, 
far from Vic's ex-brothers in blue and closer to his and LiAnn's 
Asian field of expertise. Instead, even though both Vic and LiAnn 
had been in Vancouver since their respective recruitments, the 
moment Mac had been added to the team, they'd been shipped east. 
Almost like they'd been waiting for him.

Maybe he'd ask the Director the next time he saw her. She might 
even answer.

In the meantime, if he was going to be doing a portrait, he 
wanted some better supplies for it, and even after nearly three 
years he didn't have a clue where the stationary cabinet was in 
this place.

END CHAPTER TEN