Irregulars, page 21
Deven nodded.
“So I assume they wouldn’t leave something that valuable behind,” Klakow said.
“If you know all this, then why did you hire me?”
Klakow smirked. “We know some things about the Aztaw, but you’re the only one who’s actually lived with them for an extended period of time and has practiced their magic. Hopefully you’ll catch details we’d otherwise miss.”
The streets narrowed and the buildings grew more dilapid-ated. Bright yellow tarps stretched over stalls erected on sidewalks selling piles of cheap clothing and household goods. The sidewalks were packed with bustling people. Deven stared, amazed by their sheer numbers. He’d never seen so many human beings crowded in one place.
“Where are we?” Deven asked.
“Tepito barrio. Beatriz Rodriguez’s house is a few blocks away.”
The buildings looked impoverished, with rusted metal awnings and chipped plaster corners. Power lines drooped down nearly at street level and formed webs across the skyline. Piles of shiny litter clustered over the broken pavement. Dark blue corrugated garage doors shuttered closed blocks of shops.
Deven concentrated on a building corner, finally realizing he was staring at peeling, colorful posters layered upon each other. Deven felt triumph at finally comprehending what he saw, and then confusion. Why would anyone want to look at that mess?
They turned onto Republica de Paraguay. Agent Klakow maneuvered the car to a stop along the sidewalk in front of a two-story, persimmon-colored plaster building. There was little outward sign that a murder investigation was underway—no police tape, no crowds of onlookers as Deven had come to expect based on the television shows he watched. The street appeared nearly vacant.
But as Deven glanced around, he saw other things. Two men in suits down at the end of an alleyway. A dog that watched closely as they got out of the car. There was a smell here too, barely detectable above the overwhelming odor of roasting pork. The sizzling odor of the supernatural world, a smell of sulfur and ozone, pervaded the air like a nearly forgotten memory. It burned Deven’s nostrils.
It made him homesick.
Klakow led them to a crooked red wooden door, held open by a man in a suit and sunglasses. Following Klakow, Deven climbed a narrow set of stairs up to the second floor.
“The good news is, you have a great magical forensics team working with you,” Klakow said, breathing harder as he climbed the steep staircase.
“You aren’t leading this investigation?” Deven asked.
Klakow turned and smirked. “No, though you’re going to wish I was.”
“Why?”
“Because the bad news is, you’re working with Agent Silas August.”
“Bad news? Why?”
“August is a complete prick. The only agent who could ever stand working with him was Rodriguez. He was August’s partner for the last six years, so needless to say Rodriguez’s murder hasn’t sunnied August’s disposition.” Klakow pushed the door open.
Inside the small room were half a dozen people, some in business suits, others in personal protection gear, collecting evidence. Klakow stepped carefully over the chalked outlines of two bodies and pointed Deven toward a tall man standing near the window, speaking on a cell phone.
He was thin and handsome and dressed as if planning to attend an awards ceremony. He wore a tailored charcoal suit and a fitted white dress shirt with the collar open. His black, wavy hair accentuated the distinct angles of his pale face—sharp cheekbones, long nose, and piercing blue eyes.
The man turned and gave Deven a cold, cursory glance without bothering to interrupt his telephone conversation. Deven found himself looking away from the intensity of the man’s stare and that’s when he noticed the stains on the floor.
Bloodstains formed sprayed haloes around the heads of the body outlines. Dark, serpent-like soot stains marred the floor-to-ceiling mirrored wall. Deven noted the cracked glass in the framed photographs; the burned paper, matches, and a copper bowl dented inward with great force; and shattered pieces of jade ground into the carpet, glinting in the low apartment light.
And covering every surface, hundreds of them, the tiny, broken bodies of dead quail.
Deven’s heart began to race.
The sharp clap of a phone snapping shut startled Deven’s attention back to the agent.
“I’m Agent Silas August. You the Aztaw expert?” August asked.
Deven felt nervous under such scrutiny. “Yes. I’m Deven—”
“About goddamn time you got here.”
“No spell on earth can make the traffic in this city any better,” Klakow said. He patted Deven on the back. Deven tensed at the contact. “He’s all yours.”
August fixed Deven once more with his steely glare. “First impression?”
For a second, Deven thought the agent meant himself. Deven caught up quickly. “This isn’t a murder,” he said.
“The hell it isn’t.”
“This isn’t just a murder,” Deven amended. “It’s a message.”
Chapter Two
Agent August pocketed his cell phone and stared. His glance traveled up Deven’s body, eyes locking with his. “The report I got said your eyesight is shit.”
“It’s better.”
“Well then, why don’t you use those pretty green eyes and take a look around?”
“I don’t need to. I already know most of what I need.”
August’s mouth formed a hard line. “Explain.”
Deven felt inexplicably nervous. He picked up a leather cord threaded with thorns that had fallen near a body outline and held it out to the agent. “Do you know what this is?”
“You’re the Aztaw expert. You tell me.”
“It’s a ritual bloodletting cord. It means someone here performed an Aztaw spell.”
“No shit. The question is, what for?”
“The smoke patterns on the walls make me think someone summoned a vision serpent.” Deven started moving around the room and August followed him. “You see these snake-shaped scorch marks? The vision serpent isn’t really a conscious organism, more a force, and it burns its will into everything—surfaces and beings. The ritual bloodletting with the cord could be for numerous spells, but these markings are the clue that they wanted to see something hidden.” He crouched and picked up a shard of jade. Turning it in the faint apartment light, Deven was able to make out the broken image of a serpent glyph. “And this was a token to break the spell and send the serpent back into hiding.” He handed this to August as well.
Deven felt self-conscious because he’d spent so much time in the last year being told how things worked. It was rare for him to be the expert in anything. He had to remind himself that this was what he was being paid to do—advise the Irregulars on a culture and magical system they knew next to nothing about.
“Are there ways to end the spell other than breaking this token?” August asked.
Deven nodded. “The spell itself can run its course. The duration of the vision is dependent on the amount of blood used to conjure it. They initiated the curse by pouring their blood in here—” He bent down and retrieved the dented copper bowl. “—and then soaked a paper offering, which they burned to send to the underworld.”
August frowned at the jade in his hand but didn’t respond. He looked at the other pieces of jade on the carpet.
The silence stretched. Deven felt he needed to continue. “The quail worry me,” he admitted. “Quail are watchbirds for certain lords of the Aztaw. Common Aztaw citizens, the soldiers, they don’t have magical powers of their own, and they don’t control watchbirds. The quail suggest the perpetrator was watched by a lord. And the fact that the birds are dead means the murderer doesn’t want his actions carried back to the Aztaw lord who dispatched them.”
“Who would the message go to?” August asked. He still stared intently at the shards on the carpet.
Deven shrugged. “I can’t say. There used to be nearly a hundred lords of Aztaw. But now most of them are dead. The few remaining lords have had their house powers broken and live in hiding.”
Deven realized he’d just summarized over five years of complex Aztaw political history in three sentences, but August seemed not to notice.
He picked up another shard of jade. “Do you know which lords use quail as watchbirds?”
“Not anymore. I’ve been away from Aztaw for nearly a year. It might help, though, if we took a look to see what happened here,” Deven suggested.
August’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
Deven shrugged. “I brought my mirror. We could see the last few seconds of their lives, at least.”
Now everyone in the room watched him. Deven swallowed. He was slowly readjusting to human culture but often became nervous in public situations. He set his duffel bag down on the blue carpet and rooted around until he found the cloth-wrapped shard of his obsidian mirror.
As he held the shard in his hand, a pang of deep regret filled him. He thought of Jaguar, the Aztaw lord who had given this to him, along with his greatest power. Now Lord Jaguar was dead and Deven had done nothing about it. Reflected in the mirror, Deven saw the pen he kept wrapped tightly in his black hair and reached up to touch it as if that would make everything better.
“Hey, Narcissus,” August called from behind. “Care to explain what the hell you are talking about? How would we see what happened?”
“Can we turn off the lights?” Deven asked. August closed the window shades as another agent hit the light switch, but it was still too damn bright. Pure darkness was nearly impossible in this world, but at least curbing the sunlight cut down reflections. Deven noticed that August carefully avoided stepping on the outlines of the dead bodies. He’d seen this done on television as well. He wasn’t sure if this was common crime-scene caution or a human gesture of respect for the dead, but he mimicked the actions anyway.
“This is an obsidian mirror,” Deven explained, holding it in his right hand and tilting it up so both he and August could see. The shard was slightly bigger than his hand and about seven inches in length, unevenly edged where the mirror had been broken during a battle with Lord Jade Shield’s soldiers. The surface, at the moment, was nearly opaque, revealing nothing but the reflection of those looking into it.
“It refracts time,” Deven said. “We can catch a glimpse of the last few moments of Agent Rodriguez’s life, assuming we’re able to pull a clear image from an object in the room.”
There was a muscle in August’s pale jaw, Deven noticed, that pulsed when he ground his teeth. “What do you need?”
“Blood would be best.”
“Does it have to be fresh?”
“No.”
August crouched beside the large chalked outline. He touched the shape almost reverently. “This is Carlos’s blood.” His voice sounded rough. “This is where he died.”
Deven nodded. He knelt beside August and the outline, then reached in his back pocket for his knife.
He switched open the blade and scraped chunks of crusted blood out of the carpet fibers. He piled these in his palm. When he glanced up, everyone was staring at him again.
Maybe it wasn’t normal to collect blood in your hand?
“Uh...here,” someone said, handing him a plastic specimen cup.
“Thanks.” Deven poured the flakes of blood inside. It was too dry to spread so he spat in the cup and stirred the mixture with his fingers, forming a thick, chunky paste. Deven smeared this on the mirror shard, then crouched in the darkest part of the room, in the corner near the bathroom door.
Even the whispers in the room ceased as everyone watched him intently. August’s hard expression faltered and he looked almost anxious. “Should I stand by you?”
“If you want to see,” Deven said. He held out the mirror.
August crouched beside him, his long legs making him resemble a crane at the edge of a pool of water. He smelled like leather and some sort of pine soap. His thigh brushed against Deven’s as they huddled to look into the mirror.
Deven spat on the mirror. The cloudy haze cleared and through the glass emerged an image, as seen from Carlos Rodriguez’s eyes.
The first image that arose was the smoky contours of a vision serpent looming against the apartment window. Smoke trailed from its coiling body, but even through the dirty mirror Deven saw the serpent’s two distinct heads, one looking into the real world, and the other fixed on the supernatural.
But before the serpent even turned to reveal what it saw, something distracted Agent Rodriguez’s attention and he spun to face the apartment door.
Several unnatural, flying female creatures burst into the apartment, bodies dark with sagging skin. They looked identical—skeletal spines and skulls with living, shining eyes, bright as stars, set inside deep eye sockets. The paper-thin, bluish-hued flesh that hung off their limbs like wrinkled shawls ended in clawed limbs more resembling the talons of birds than any human hand or foot. Their breasts sagged above thin grass skirts and serpents slithered like writhing phalluses from between each creature’s legs.
Behind them, Rodriguez quickly glimpsed the tiny quail following the creatures, but then he crumpled. The vision clouded over and disappeared.
Deven sat back, feeling a little shaky. He’d expected to see Aztaws, which look nearly human, other than their visible, glowing bones and skull faces.
But these female spirits were new to him. He’d never seen the like, but he had heard descriptions of such malevolent creatures and who they worked for.
It’s not possible, Deven thought. Even in Aztaw, everyone knows he’s gone.
Deven spat on the mirror again. He wiped the blood off its surface with the hem of his T-shirt before remembering that wasn’t acceptable here. He turned to see if August had noticed, but August was frozen, staring straight ahead with a look of shock.
“Agent August?” Deven asked.
The man didn’t speak. He hung his head for a moment. It seemed like he was gathering strength. When he finally did collect himself together and turn to Deven, his look hardened.
“What the fuck were those?” His voice was rough, angry.
“I’m not sure,” Deven said. He wasn’t going to voice his suspicion until he had more proof.
August didn’t ask for clarification. He stood, quickly wiping at his eyes, before he turned to bark orders at the others in the room. The folks who had been watching in silence burst into activity, collecting the remains of the ritual and tossing the broken birds into a large plastic bag.
Deven leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. The journey from Seattle had taken over ten hours of flying and he was hungry and thirsty. But he pushed these sensations from his thoughts and instead concentrated on the legends he remembered hearing regarding tzimimi, taloned night spirits.
They came at the bidding of the Trickster. They served his needs and hunted at night, feeding on the bones of children.
And they had been exiled over a thousand years ago.
So what were they doing in the human world? And what had they prevented the vision serpent from revealing to Carlos and Beatriz Rodriguez?
“Wake up, sunshine,” Agent August snapped, yanking on Deven’s arm. “Time to go to the funeral home.”
“What for?”
“I want to look at Carlos’s body.”
Chapter Three
The sunlight outside seemed even more powerful after hunkering in the shadows of Beatriz’s apartment and Deven had to pause at the curb and shut his eyes. He fumbled in his duffel bag for his sunglasses. Someone yanked the bag from him and, a moment later, slipped the glasses into his hand.
“Here.” August sounded annoyed. “Hurry up.”
“Is the body likely to walk off somewhere?” Deven snapped. Once he had the sunglasses on he opened his eyes. He turned and followed August’s long legs up to his face. He didn’t wear sunglasses. His pale blue eyes stared down at Deven.
“Okay?” August asked. He sounded as if he’d prefer the answer to be no.
“I’m fine.” Deven yanked his duffel back over his shoulder.
August walked briskly to another black sedan, a few cars down the road. He slid into the backseat. Deven followed him.
“Morgue,” August told the driver.
The man said nothing as he pulled the car into the street. Agent August sank back against the cold leather and rubbed his eyes.
“So that vision serpent,” August asked. “It was to see those flying things?”
“No, they were sent to stop whatever it was Agent Rodriguez and his sister were trying to see. The vision serpent shows you hidden layers of the world, things made invisible by magic.”
August didn’t ask any further questions.
“You were friends with Agent Rodriguez?” Deven asked after a moment.
August stared out the window and didn’t answer.
That was Deven’s one attempt at conversation, he decided. He leaned back and closed his own eyes, hoping to get some rest.
After several minutes of silence, August spoke. “You have knives in your pockets.”
“Yes.”
“What for? You’re a consultant.”
“Habit.” Deven wondered how much the Inter-Realm Refugees Office had told the agent. “If we’re dealing with Aztaw magic, there are going to be Aztaw lords.”
“So?”
“Aztaw lords and I don’t get along.” Understatement of the century, really, but it seemed to sate August’s curiosity and he let the subject drop.
The car eventually pulled up in front of the funeral home. Despite the central location in the city, the building had a lov-ely garden in the front, which Deven assumed was supposed to soothe grieving souls.
He didn’t understand why flowers were supposed to make death less painful, but he didn’t voice this thought out loud.
Inside, Agent August spoke quietly with the mortician, who then led them down to the morgue, where two corpses were laid out, covered in white sheets. Deven wondered why the dead needed sheets to cover them—were they cold?
Deven glanced at the mortician, unsure if he knew why they were there. Very few people were privy to the operations of the Irregular Affairs Division, let alone the presence of other realms and extra-human beings. It was one of the reasons Deven found himself a reluctant employee of NIAD—regardless of his feelings toward the agency, they alone had an inkling of his past experiences. He found himself drawn to those who knew the truth and now wondered how much information this guardian of the dead was privy to.
