Outcast, page 4
part #1 of The Grey Gates Series
And Max knew him. Bryce. No last name, or not one that she knew. He might look human, but she was quite sure there was something else in his heritage. That was relatively common in the city, with its mix of peoples. He did not seem to have aged a day since she had last seen him, about ten years before. He had been one of the toughest instructors in the Order and had thrown her across the training room in practice the one time she had been in his hand-to-hand combat class, dismissing her as entirely useless when she could not master the moves that he was trying to teach her. Moves that every other student in the class seemed to adapt to with no difficulty. And when she had tried to attend his class the following day, he had not let her into the room. The humiliation still stung, ten years later.
Apart from those brief encounters, she could not remember exchanging any words with him. It was possible he might not recognise her. She had changed since then. Grown up, in more ways than one, her appearance quite different now.
“What’s going on here?” Bryce asked, breaking into Max’s tumbled thoughts. It was said with the quiet authority of someone used to getting the answers he sought.
“As I told your junior, the Marshal was wounded on duty,” Glenda said, facing the warrior. “And our doors are open to those who need us. You agreed to let us work without hindrance. That includes having guns pointed at us.”
“We did agree. But she didn’t come in through reception,” the man said, glancing at Max. She stiffened, wondering if he would recognise her. His brows lifted and he took a longer look, eyes tracing the evidence of venom down her arm. “Crow spider?” he asked.
“Yes,” Max said, voice clipped.
“Perhaps she didn’t feel like being interrogated by all the armed muscle you have hanging around the reception area?” Glenda suggested, her calm tone edged with a touch of acid that made Max bite back a smile.
Bryce’s brows lifted, but he didn’t seem offended. And Max realised that although he was armed, he was not holding a weapon. He was dangerous enough without one in his hands, though. She had the urge to huddle into her jacket, as if the old leather would protect her from the warrior. She held herself still. Bryce could be lethal, but he was not threatening her.
“A fair point,” he conceded. “She came through the back door?”
“Yes,” Glenda said. “Marshal, you’ll need to change that dressing twice a day, and the instructions for the antibiotics are on the bottle. Come back if it looks infected or doesn’t start to heal soon.”
“Thank you,” Max said. She made it to her feet and picked up her jacket and the paper bag. She thought about putting the jacket on and decided against it. The numbness was wearing off and she didn’t want to pass out from pain in front of Bryce.
He was frowning now, taking a closer look at her.
“Have we met before?” he asked.
“No,” Max said, forcing the word out, trying not to make it sound like a lie.
He was still frowning. Not entirely convinced. But he didn’t press her further.
“I’ll walk you out,” he said, stepping back from the doorway, clearly meaning for her to go through the reception area.
“I’ll go out the back,” Max said.
He lifted his chin, clearly displeased at not being obeyed.
“I’ll walk you out,” Glenda said, just as more noise erupted from one of the other rooms. To Max’s ears, it sounded like a spoiled child having a tantrum. It was probably the Guardian. For people who were supposed to be the most powerful magicians in the world, some of them were notoriously afraid of pain. “It sounds like you are needed elsewhere,” the nurse pointed out to Bryce.
With a frowning glance between Max and Glenda, Bryce nodded, then turned and left, heading out into the reception area.
Max found she had to lock her knees to steady herself before she could walk with Glenda back along the corridor to the back door, shivering slightly in reaction. He had not recognised her. She felt light and almost giddy with relief. He had not recognised her. She was safe for a little while longer at least.
On that happy thought, she left, stomach growling in protest, reminding her once again that she needed food.
Chapter four
Having food in the house was a rare luxury. Max had forced herself to stop at an all-night grocery store on the way home and spend a few minutes picking up some essential supplies, including some snacks to keep in the pick-up for both her and the dogs. She was glad of it when she opened her fridge door the next morning and marvelled at the shelves full of things she could eat, trying to focus on that bit of wonder rather than the remnants of the nightmare she had woken from. Nightmares were common. Fresh and edible food in her house was not.
She made a mug of tea with her only clean mug, and settled at the kitchen table, eyeing her surroundings. The fridge might be tidy and full of goodness. It was far more than could be said of the rest of the room. She had worked more days without a break than she cared to remember, and it showed. The place was filthy. Dirty dishes piled high, takeaway containers and used mugs and glasses scattered here and there. It was enough to make her want to crawl back into bed. But she’d had some sleep now, and knew that all that waited for her between her sheets were more nightmares. Besides, if she went close to the bedroom it would just remind her that she needed to tidy up in there, too, and do some laundry.
In the meantime, there was the miracle of actual food in her house, and she opened the bag of chocolate-chip banana bread she had bought the night before. It would do for breakfast. Besides, she didn’t have a single clean plate or cooking utensil to make anything more complicated.
The banana bread was perfectly fine as a fuel source, washed down nicely with two mugs of tea. She managed to ignore the untidiness around her by staring out the kitchen window. She was close to the Wild here, the great forested edge of it visible from her kitchen, on the other side of a band of grass that was almost waist high on Max. If she concentrated, she could feel the magic that formed the barrier between the city and the Wild, keeping the worst of the Wild at bay and allowing the residents of the city, particularly those who lived in the more central areas, the illusion of safety. Closer in, she could feel the pattern of her own wards, the spells she had renewed the day before strong and clear in her mind. A very necessary precaution this far out from the city centre, even if it the effort of maintaining the wards had left her with a magic hangover that had only just faded.
Within the protective wards, her garden was so overgrown it could almost pass for the Wild with its varied shades of green, a few vivid splashes of pink and red here and there the only hints it was actually a garden. Even the Lady’s altar had been neglected, and Max usually tried to ensure that, at least, was tended. The simple wooden bench with the metal bowl of water on the top of it didn’t look like much, but the Lady’s priests and priestesses taught that it was the intent that counted. Max could only hope they were right, as she needed all the goodwill she could get from the Lady.
There were plants overgrowing the bench and the water was choked with leaves and insects, as neglected as the rest of the garden. There had been no time to tend to it for weeks, and unlike in the central city, there was no one around to help out with chores. Even if she paid them well above the rates charged in the inner city, very few people wanted to come this close to the Wild, let alone live or work here. It suited Max. There were no neighbours to keep an eye on her, or for her to be responsible for if the worst should happen and the Wild should breach or surge forward again.
Some people might find the place lonely. Hers was the last house at the end of a dirt road, but she loved the space and the quiet. Her earliest memories were of being crammed with other children into a dormitory room at one of the city orphanages. There had been no privacy or quiet spaces there. She hadn’t understood why it had been so difficult, not then. Moving into the Order’s buildings had been marginally better - at least she had been given her own room, barely big enough for a bed and a desk to study. But even there, the building had always been full of people. It hadn’t been until she came back to the world and found this house outside the city that she had been able to truly relax and breathe freely and realised just how much she needed space to herself and quiet to think. She might have to deal with crowded spaces and people all day in her work, but she always had this place to come back to. There were no street lights, and almost no services operated this far out of the city centre. Just driving up the road to the gates soothed her.
She dug into the packet and frowned as her searching fingers met empty air, realising that she had finished the banana bread. And her second mug of tea.
Just as she was facing the awful prospect she would actually have to do some housework, her phone rang. She picked it up, brows lifting at the caller ID. It seemed that Therese was interrupting another day off. All Marshals were required to answer even on their days off and Max reminded herself, once again, that she would have hated an office job as she brought the phone to her ear.
“Yes,” Max answered the phone. She had long since learned that Therese’s reactions didn’t change whether Max was friendly or polite or not. The woman simply did her job.
“You’re needed at a crime scene in the Barrows,” Therese said.
“I was just there last night,” Max observed.
“This is a different address.” Therese gave Max the address in the same flat tone.
Max memorised the address out of long habit. Therese hated to repeat herself. Then asked the obvious questions, “What crime scene? Why am I needed?”
Max waited, half expecting Therese to simply hang up.
To her surprise, the woman answered. With a loud, put-upon sigh, but she did answer. “Some dead body. The local cops think there might be something strange. And you’re the only one available. Again.”
Max glared at the phone as Therese simply hung up. Then she looked at the disaster that was her kitchen and decided that viewing a dead body might not be the worst thing she had to face today.
Cas and Pol were more than happy to get into the back of the pick-up and go for a drive. Then again, Max thought, they were generally happy whatever she asked them to do, whether it was chasing a crow spider or keeping watch on the house and grounds whilst she re-set the wards. They were the easiest companions she had ever had, and she gave them extra pats before she settled into the driver’s seat.
She arrived at the address, which turned out to be the remains of a garden next to the local community centre. The garden had not been tended for some time, the beds of what might have been vegetables overgrown with stinging plants. The fruit trees that must have been planted in better times, when the Wild had been further away, were growing into each other now as no one had trimmed them for several years.
There were a few police vehicles parked around the garden’s perimeter. The nearest one had a familiar-looking rookie cop standing next to it. There were no lights this time, which Max was thankful for.
“Ma’am,” the rookie said as Max approached. “Sergeant Williams is over there, with the medical examiner.” Her blonde hair was in the same sleek bun as it had been the night before, the dark blue uniform just as crisp and new, even in daylight, making Max realise just how battered and worn she looked by comparison. The rookie had her thumbs out of her belt this time and managed to turn and point without stumbling.
“Thank you,” Max said, making her way between the cars and heading across the garden to where the Sergeant was standing next to a tiny woman in white coveralls.
“Max Ortis, as I live and breathe,” the woman said, a grin splitting her face. She was barely taller than Cas and Pol, but had a force of personality that made her seem much larger. She was also one of the oldest beings that Max had ever come across, the weight of her years a burden she generally carried so lightly they were almost invisible. She looked to be a human woman somewhere in her thirties with mid-brown, riotous hair scraped back into a haphazard knot at the back of her head, pale brown eyes bright as she looked up at Max. “I haven’t seen you for ages, honey. How are you?”
“I’m well. And you?” Max asked. The last time she had seen Audhilde had been at least a year before, when someone had decided it was a good idea to bring a predator to a birthday party. Audhilde and her team had collected the human bodies. Max had been there to deal with the predator.
“Oh, can’t complain. Did Sean call you in?” Audhilde asked.
“I think so,” Max said, and nodded to Sergeant Williams by way of greeting, not surprised that Audhilde would refer to the square-jawed young man by his first name, not his rank. “At least, I had a call to come here.”
“That was her idea,” Sergeant Williams said, in clipped tones. He was standing in a rigid posture, clearly unhappy about something.
“Alright,” Max said. “Why don’t you tell me what you found?” she asked the Sergeant. She knew Audhilde well enough to know that she was not going to be offended by the man’s rudeness. She was probably finding it quite amusing. Max wondered if the Sergeant had realised just who he was dealing with, or even if the woman standing next to him was not human. Audhilde was legendary among the city’s law enforcement as the longest-serving medical examiner. She had served through the careers of better men than Sean Williams would ever be. And she was almost always right.
“Some kind of a knife fight. We have one dead body and a lot of blood,” Sergeant Williams said, jaw tightening. He glanced down at Audhilde. “It’s definitely a murder. But it looked gang-related to me.” Max’s brows lifted. The city had its fair share of violent humans, which the police kept watch on, and fighting between gangs who had claimed different territories was reasonably common, as far as she knew. But they were far out of the city’s main streets here, far away from any areas which Max thought were claimed by any particular gangs.
“Let’s take a look,” Max suggested. From the tightening of Audhilde’s face, she was quite confident there was nothing gang-related about this murder. And confident, too, that Audhilde had already expressed that to the Sergeant and been ignored.
Sean Williams turned on his heel and stalked a few paces away. There was a crime scene technician already there, who scuttled out of his way in a manner that suggested the Sergeant had already shouted at the tech once today. Max frowned. While he seemed impatient and had been rude, she had not realised he was also quite that stupid. The techs were there for a reason, after all, and if he trampled over evidence, he would be held accountable for it.
Still, this was not her jurisdiction and catching human killers was not her job, so she stayed quiet and followed the Sergeant to a narrow band of vivid yellow tape that marked off a large area of the garden.
In the middle of the tangled undergrowth there was a body lying on its back. What looked like a human man, somewhere between thirty and fifty, with long brown hair tangled around his head, eyes open and staring up at nothing. He had been stripped to his waist, and there were knife wounds across his bare chest and stomach. A series of straight cuts that did not form any pattern that Max could recognise.
“See, some kind of knife fight. There’s no need for you to be here,” Sean Williams said.
Max decided that she did not like the man. She glanced at Audhilde. “I’m assuming you’ve told him this wasn’t a knife fight?” she asked.
“Several times.” The petite woman drew her lips back from teeth that, if Sergeant Williams had cared to look closely, would seem far more pointed than they had a few moments ago.
“You can’t possibly know that,” Sergeant Williams said, his prominent chin set.
“Well, all the wounds are on his front. There are no defensive wounds on his hands or arms that I can see. I don’t know anyone who would just lie there and let someone carve them up like that,” Max said. Those were all remarkably obvious signs, and she couldn’t help but wonder how the Sergeant had got to his current rank. He may well have connections within the Five Families that had helped him get to Sergeant. However, unless his conduct improved, he wasn’t likely to advance further. Even the Five Families liked their police to be competent.
“We’ll do a tox screen,” Audhilde said, “but I’m thinking some kind of drug was used to keep him still.”
“Definitely not a fight. This was a murder,” Max said. She moved sideways, to view the body from a different angle. “I don’t understand the purpose, though.” She looked at Audhilde and lifted a brow.
“Very good,” Audhilde said, the hint of a dimple showing. “That’s why you are here.”
“Alright,” Max said, continuing to walk around the outside of the tape, keeping an eye on where her feet were going, then glancing back to the body. “The body is crossways with the sun’s path,” she noted, not knowing if it was significant or not, but the body was lined up straight north to south, and amid the chaos of the garden that did not seem an accident. “Some kind of ritual, I am guessing,” Max said slowly. It had been a long time since she had taken classes in dark magic, and she had tried to forget them entirely, along with everything else about the Order and the Guardians.
“That was my guess, too,” Audhilde confirmed.
“There’s nothing here to suggest it was anything other than a human killing another,” Max said, and looked across at Audhilde. The medical examiner knew, as well as Max did, that human crimes were outside the Marshal’s jurisdiction. Which made Max wonder just why she had asked for a Marshal.
“If it is a murder, that’s our job,” Sergeant Williams said, sounding thoroughly annoyed by the idea.
“That’s true,” Max said cheerfully. “I’m sure that Audhilde will give you her usual detailed report and you’ll have plenty to work on from that. Do we know who the man was?” she asked.
