Out of the Blue Read online

  Out of the Blue

  Lyra Evans

  Copyright © 2018 Lyra Evans

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Twitter: @WriterLyraEvans

  Cover design by designacover

  This book contains scenes of explicit sexual content, violence, coarse language, and instances of questionable consent. Trigger warnings for mentions of sexual assault, dubious consent, edgeplay, discussions of past physical and sexual abuse, and some gore. The BDSM interactions are not necessarily healthy, and they are not necessarily meant to illustrate healthy BDSM relationships. No instances of sexual assault are described in detail. This book is not suitable for readers under 18 years of age.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Niko heard the key turn in the lock of the front door. His shoulders fell slightly, a sigh escaping him before he could stop it. Eyes shutting against what was coming, he finished packing the bag with his clothing and set it atop the box filled with his odds and ends. He thought he’d managed to be quick, but apparently not quick enough. Hoisting the box in both hands, he took a steadying breath and walked out of the bedroom.

  “Ash and Oak, Niko!” Uriah cried out, pulling his earphones from his ears, one hand dramatically clutching his chest. A thin sheen of sweat covered his face and arms, soaking through his thin tank top to create a valley of darkness across his chest. His chartreuse hair was cropped short enough now that the sweat made it stick up in tiny spikes all over his head. “What are you doing here?” he asked, before his eyes found their way to the contents of the box in Niko’s arms. When they did, he visibly deflated.

  Niko braced, his expression neutral. There was a time when seeing Uri deflate the way he did would have sent a pang through Niko’s chest. There was a time when the way Uri looked at him was significant to Niko. That time had passed.

  “I thought you were on a run,” Niko said. He couldn’t help the detachment in his voice. He couldn’t help the minute flinch in Uri’s eyes either. But maybe he could have tried.

  “I was,” he answered. His jaw was tightening before Niko’s eyes, his expression searching. Niko’s expression gave nothing away. He was good at that now.

  With a glance at the clock on the far kitchen wall, Niko said, “You’re ten minutes early.”

  Uriah narrowed his eyes slightly. “I did my usual Wednesday run…” Niko chastised himself internally. He should have checked the timing for every week day, not just three of the five. As though almost reading Niko’s thoughts, Uri said, “Wait, were you watching me?”

  Niko’s jaw flexed momentarily. He shifted with the box and tried to get around Uri. “I thought it best to do this while you were out,” Niko said, finally sliding past Uri in the cramped hallway. He’d always thought this place had a poor layout. As he moved, though, Uri caught his arm and stopped him. His hand was warm and damp against Niko’s skin, probably from the run. Despite the sweatiness, he didn’t smell bad. Not like regular body odour. Just like his usual musk. Sweet and lightly spiced with a woodsy scent. Too sweet for Niko.

  Frozen by Uri’s hand, Niko stared straight ahead as Uri whispered, “Don’t do this, Nik. Please.”

  The please nearly got through to him. It nearly pierced through the implacable surface. But Niko wouldn’t cave. This was the only way.

  “Let me go, Uri,” Niko said, his voice even. Uri’s grip tightened slightly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. And it sounded like he meant it. But words and actions were different things. “I’ll never not be sorry. I’ll spend every minute of every day making it up to you. Please. You don’t have to leave.”

  There was pain behind his eyes, and Niko shut them again. He tried to fight the wave that threatened to overtake him. He’d had enough practice by now; it came more easily. He had no desire to hurt Uri, but the part of him that would once have held back to spare Uri’s feelings was gone now.

  “You didn’t have to fuck that guy at the club while I was in the hospital, but we all do things, don’t we?”

  The reaction was instant. Uriah released him and pulled back as though Niko was burning hotter than a star. His eyebrows knitted together, his mouth falling open, Uri looked at Niko as though he was a different man altogether. And he was. Uri couldn’t even know how much he was.

  Taking his chance, Niko pushed forward through the living room toward the front door of the apartment. But the edge of his comment only stayed Uri for a moment. And he was on Niko again, grabbing his arm and spinning him around. A tiny spark flared in Niko’s chest, but it was quickly doused by the pained, desperate look on Uri’s face. His black eyes pooled with barely controlled tears, his cheeks turning redder with every passing second. Niko’s detachment grew. There was a moment where he felt as though he was watching from faraway, behind a two-way mirror.

  “I fucked up. I know that!” Uri said, his grip on Niko’s arm almost vise-like. Niko barely noticed. “But I apologized and I will continue to. I told you, I will work every day to make amends for what I did. You just need to let me.”

  Unmoved, Niko said, “I can’t.”

  He didn’t say that it wouldn’t matter, that it would only make things worse. The cheating wasn’t the primary reason Niko was leaving, but it made for an easy answer. An understandable one.

  Except to Uriah, apparently. His expression morphed from pain and desperation to anger and desperation, which made a dangerous combination. “Why can’t you? If I can forgive what you did, why can’t you forgive what I did?”

  Niko stilled, like water suddenly going flat amid a hurricane. “What I did?”

  If Uriah noticed the ice in Niko’s words, he ignored it, favouring the double-down method of arguing. “I know you slept with that guy when you were—”

  “I was undercover,” Niko snapped, the wave of rage rearing beneath the surface of his carefully curated mask. He leaned forward, pressing the edge of the box in his arms against Uri’s chest to get in his face. Uri, slightly shorter than Niko, only then realized the mistake he’d made. But it was too late. “I did what I needed to survive.”

  Without another word, Niko spun and flung the door open. As he passed over the threshold, he tossed his key to the apartment back over his shoulder behind him. The rage bubbled still, his mind racing with flashes of what he’d done, actions barely old enough to be memories. Even as he reminded himself what he’d done was necessary, he didn’t necessarily believe it himself. He didn’t know for sure there was no other alternative. He had no solid evidence. But there was no going back now. No undoing what had been done.

  Throwing his belongings into the trunk of his car with more violence than was necessary, he shut the top and got into the front seat, still fu
ming. The taste of acid stung his tongue, followed by another flavour he didn’t think he’d ever forget. It was bitter and chalky and no matter how many times he washed out his mouth, brushing his tongue until it bled, the taste wouldn’t leave him.

  Hands gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white, Niko stared out the windshield and began counting out his breaths. The department shrink had come to see him in hospital to go over some techniques for dealing with what had happened. She’d suggested the breath-counting. Said it would help bring him back from the edge. And it did. Most of the time. And for the times it didn’t, well—he wasn’t about to go back to her for more tips. No way that was happening.

  A low buzzing drew his attention away from breathing. He pulled out his cellphone and stared at the number on the screen. Taking only another moment to ensure his breathing was back to normal, he swiped the screen and answered.

  “Spruce,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Hope you haven’t eaten yet,” his captain’s voice said through the receiver. Captain Baobab was usually relatively easy-going and pleasant in demeanour, and his tone told Niko all he needed to know about how bad what was coming was.

  “Where and what?” Niko asked.

  After a deep sigh, Baobab said, “Get down to Sickle Beach. We’ve got a body, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

  Chapter 2

  By the time Niko arrived at the parking lot nearest Sickle Beach, the city around him was properly awake. The sun glared down from a cloudless sky, and tourists and would-be beach-goers were already being turned back at the entrance. They flip-flopped their way back across the already searing asphalt, their inflatable beach toys and sand umbrellas poking out at odd angles from beneath their arms like unlikely extra limbs. The scent of sunscreen—coconut and vanilla and just a hint of jasmine—wafted on the ocean air, sticking in Niko’s throat.

  He adjusted his navy t-shirt and jeans, pulled out his black sunglasses, and slid them over his eyes. The world immediately took on a dark blue shading. Having lived his entire life in Maeve’s Court would normally have been enough to acclimatize him to the constant brightness, but Niko’s cornflower blue eyes were so pale he found he could never get by without the shades. It did give him an added protection from tourists, though. They tended to avoid asking him for directions, and he thought it might have something to do with the rarity of seeing Fae in sunglasses. Of course, the ‘get the fuck out of my way’ expression constantly on his face might have been the more likely culprit.

  His black leather boots were much too heavy for the beach, and though they were worn enough to move silently over the asphalt, he braced himself for the shifting sands ahead of him. A uniformed officer, sweating a small monsoon in his traditional blues, stopped Niko at the yellow-tape barrier. He made to wave Niko off, as though he looked like a tourist. Pulling his badge from his pocket, Niko flashed it at the officer. It took only a moment of dumb embarrassment for him to then lift the tape enough for Niko to pass by.

  Sickle Beach was so called because of its shape on a map. Cut off from the city’s main beach attraction by a sliver of a bluff rising straight out of nothing at one end, the beach slowly curls and thins to a near point at the opposite end. The sharpened point is crested by more bluffs, creating almost more of a cove than a regular beach. Despite the beach’s placement off the main strip and just beyond the hotel district, tourists still flocked to Sickle Beach for the strange behaviour of the waters. Surfers and swimmers and sailors all inevitably found their way to Sickle Beach to test their mettle against the bizarre currents and waves. Niko had seen professional surfers flail and fall into the waters of Sickle Beach, as though they’d never surfed before at all. There was a competition every year, in mid-Fall when the water was at its most erratic, to see who could last the longest at simple ocean athletics. It was popular with gamblers for the freakish odds.

  Predictably, Niko’s boots slid and slipped on the loose sand as he made his way across the beach toward the gathered group in the distance. A large wave crashed roughly against the sand to his left, reaching far higher on the beach than it should have at this tide and spraying Niko with seawater. The taste of salt speckled his lips, and Niko spat minutely to clear his mouth of it.

  Captain Baobab stood a striking figure against the blazing horizon, his almost perfectly black skin giving him the look of living shadow. He wore a dark, well-tailored suit that did not fit his personality at all. Niko narrowed his eyes, searching the others gathered in the group to answer his question. When he found Dipa Banyan, Chief of Police for Maeve’s Court, standing in her crisp white skirt-suit to Captain Baobab’s other side, the Captain’s clothing choices were explained. Niko sighed to himself, wondering whether Chief Banyan would bother to comment on his attire or not.

  “Detective Spruce,” Captain Baobab said, spotting him as he approached the gathered officers and forensic techs.

  “Captain, Chief,” Niko said, nodding his head in deference to each of them in turn. “What do we have?” He took up a position next to the Captain, keeping himself out of the perimeter created by the forensics team. He wouldn’t have access to the actual body until they had completed their sweep of the scene. But beyond the crouched photographer and evidence collectors, in front of the alarmed medical examiner, lay the body of a young man. Or what had been a young man, once. From his position, Niko could only see the man’s face and legs, the techs blocking the rest of him. His face was that of someone in the prime of their youth, maybe his very early twenties, maybe not even that. His hair was cropped unevenly, though in a stylized way, and was full of sand and dirt and—it took Niko a moment to realize—a wash of blood. His actual hair colour was somewhat unclear beneath the mess, but a few locks stood out as very pale. Maybe blond, maybe white or silver.

  Niko reluctantly removed his sunglasses to get a clearer picture of the scene. The victim’s eyes were half-closed, staring blankly toward the water, the irises a startling aquamarine. He was quite beautiful, if Niko were honest, though his features were perhaps more delicate than Niko usually found attractive on men. His lips were parted slightly, slack from death, and they were ringed inside with blue speckled with red. His legs showed mostly clear, pale-ish skin tinged only slightly with blue, as though he’d been in cold weather rather than hot. Blood splattered against his bare legs as well, but Niko could not yet see where the wound might be.

  “Unidentified male victim, case name John Alder One, approximately twenty years of age,” Captain Baobab said, his arms crossed over his chest. He stood a few inches taller than Niko, his bulky frame somehow diminished slightly beneath the suit. Niko nodded along with each detail. “Not much else to go on. Found early this morning by a beach-cleaner. Already interviewed. He didn’t have any relevant information. Was his usual shift and confirmed working his other job during our approximate time of death window.” The Captain exhaled low and slow, staring blandly out to the scene. “Not much to go on until the techs have finished.”

  “And why is top brass here?” Niko asked, pulling no punches. Chief Banyan’s perfectly manicured eyebrows raised very slightly at the question, but her painted lips remained pursed as she looked him up and down.

  “This beach is a public space and very popular tourist destination,” she responded primly, having decided, he supposed, that his appearance was either satisfactory or—more likely—so dissatisfactory it didn’t bear remarking on. “It is also the first time in fifty-four years there has been a death connected to one of our public beaches. And the first time in more than three hundred years said death is the result of murder. Why wouldn’t I be here?”

  Niko considered this. “So it’s been confirmed murder then?”

  “Absolutely not,” the medical examiner piped in, her expression cross. Her long pink hair was tied back in a simple ponytail and her glasses—used more for magnification than to aid sight—sat far down her pale nose. “I can’t even confirm cause of death yet, much less whether or not it a
mounts to murder.”

  Captain Baobab pressed his hand to his face. Chief Banyan’s lips pursed to the point of nearly disappearing.

  “Oh, really, Dr. Aspen,” the Chief responded, “and what would you call it when your victim’s had a hole blown clean through his chest?”

  Aspen opened her mouth a moment, then immediately shut it, her white cheeks colouring like her hair. “Well, it could have been accidental—”

  But Niko stopped paying attention, his mind on the more relevant detail. “Blown clean through?” he asked, just as the crouching techs moved out of the way. The victim was completely naked, lying open to the world and the sun. A curling line of black and dark blue tattoos, like some kind of permanent livery collar, wove from his shoulders toward his collarbone. At the collarbone was a diamond-like pattern in his skin, tinted a much darker blue than the rest of his flesh. From where he stood, Niko had the impression of scar tissue, though he couldn’t say why. One arm extended out to his side while the other was bent over his chest, his hand hanging limply into a very large and bloodied hole at his centre. As though instinct had him trying to put pressure on the wound, to stem the flow of blood. But the blood was—minimal.

  Niko paused, staring at the scene. The sight of the massive hole in the victim, with layers of skin and muscle and organs breached and destroyed by some unknown force, was so jarring, it was almost possible to overlook the lack of blood evidence present. Most of what was there had seeped directly into the sand beneath and around the victim’s body. But where Niko would have expected a bloodbath with this level of injury, there was barely enough for a spritzing.

  “He wasn’t killed here,” Niko said, more to himself than anyone else. “That would suggest a murder, wouldn’t it?” He cocked a navy eyebrow up at Aspen. She blinked at him behind her glasses, looking somewhat flustered.

  “As I said, I have not completed—” But she abruptly cut herself off, rolling her eyes and hanging her head. “Okay, it’s like ninety percent certain he was murdered. But I will not claim that officially until I finish my examination and write my report!”