Outcast, page 7
part #1 of The Grey Gates Series
There were differences. The wounds on this man were far more extensive. Whoever the killer was, he had taken his time. There were deep and shallow cuts on the man’s legs and arms, and more symbols carved into his chest. Max didn’t know enough about dark magic to even guess at the purpose for the cuts, or in what order they had been made. She still hadn’t heard from Malik with the promised information.
The worst part was his face, frozen in an expression of horror, eyes staring up at the tent above them. There were traces of tears on his cheeks.
“He was alive when this was done,” Max concluded, her stomach turning. She would never get used to the awful things that people did to each other.
“Yes. Our medical examiner thinks he died of blood loss. Or a heart attack brought on by blood loss. At any rate, none of the wounds themselves actually killed him.”
“Not Audhilde?” Max asked, knowing the answer before Ruutti shook her head.
“It’s her day off,” Ruutti said, baring her teeth in a smile.
“And no one wants to disturb her,” Max concluded. She did not blame them. Even though Audhilde exuded charm, even humans could sense the core of steel will in her. Max wouldn’t want to irritate the ancient vampire, either.
Max tilted her head, looking at Ruutti. The woman sounded rattled. And Max still wasn’t sure why. This would hardly be the first awful death the detective had seen. And it wouldn’t be the last. There was something else. Something that Max was missing.
She turned back to the body, looking at the symbols on his chest and on the ground around him, and saw what she had missed earlier. Tucked into the symbols on either side of his shoulders was a pair of stylised doors, a glyph that Max was all too familiar with.
“A follower of Arkus did this,” Max concluded, voice flat and grim. She could not imagine anyone else using that symbol. Not even foolish children. Most people would not even speak His name, but Max was not one of them. She didn’t believe the old superstition that simply speaking the word would draw His attention, no more than she believed calling on the Lady would draw Her attention. One was dark, one was light, and they were both immensely powerful, with far better things to concern themselves than someone speaking their names, Max was sure.
But whoever had set this ritual out on the hard surface, whoever had cut into the victim, had wanted to draw the dark lord’s attention. And had generated forceful magic to do so, if the after-effect was anything to go by. Enough to penetrate the barrier between the daylight world and Arkus’ underworld? Max hoped not. A phantom trail of scorching fire seared across her skin along with the ghostly, acrid stench of burning. She could not imagine why anyone would want to draw Arkus’ attention. But there were plenty of foolish people in the world.
“Yes,” Ruutti said, the tension leaving her body along with the trail of heat on Max’s skin. “Now do you see why I wanted you here?”
Max held her words in for a moment, touching two fingers to her forehead and bowing her head to the dead man in a mark of respect. “I’m not sure what help I can give you,” Max said, moving back to join Ruutti. “Unless you think something non-human did this, it’s outside the Marshal’s jurisdiction. Dark magic is the provenance of the Order,” she reminded the detective. Not that Ruutti would need reminding, as she was perfectly well aware of the separate jurisdictions that the police, Marshals’ division and Order held within the city. From the stubborn expression on Ruutti’s face, Max guessed that she didn’t want to turn the matter over to the Order. And Max had no intention of speaking to them, either. But there was something else she could do. “You need to get Audhilde to see the body, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was another death in the Barrows a few days ago. Similar knife wounds, but no markings around the body.”
Ruutti’s attention had sharpened to a knife edge. “I didn’t know about this.”
“The Sergeant at the scene thought it had been a knife fight,” Max said, keeping her voice neutral.
Ruutti snorted. “Idiot. Alright. Did you get an identity for the other victim?”
“No. Not my case,” Max said, jaw set. “And neither is this.” The dark magic wasn’t enough on its own to pull in a Marshal. There were humans who dabbled in dark magic, and they were definitely a concern for the Order and not her.
“Too bad,” Ruutti said. Whatever unease and tension she had been carrying had been bottled up again and she was back to her forthright, blunt manner. “My boss has agreed with your boss that this is going to be your case.”
“Oh, really?” Max asked, brows lifting. “Just me?”
“I’m to be your liaison,” Ruutti said smoothly. Max did not believe her. The woman lied as easily as breathing, and it was often hard to tell. But in this case, she had overplayed her hand. There was no possible world in which the human law enforcement would simply hand over the death of one of their own to the Marshal’s service without wanting to keep track of the investigation. And if Max did eventually find the killer, Ruutti would want credit for the arrest.
“I’ll need to check with the head Marshal,” Max said. It was a stalling tactic. Assigning her to work on something like this would be just like him. The head Marshal, Faddei Lobanov, might have reluctantly agreed to let Max work alone, but he had made no secret of the fact he did not like it at all. Working with Ruutti wasn’t the same as another Marshal, of course. Which meant that it didn’t technically breach the agreement Max and Faddei had reached when she had joined the Marshals’ service.
“Of course. Do you want to use my phone?” Ruutti asked.
“No,” Max said, glancing back at the body. She hesitated a moment. It really wasn’t her business. But there were those ritual markings, a hint that the killer had been trying to achieve something far more dark and twisted than a simple murder. The memory of heat and smoke crossed her skin and her breath again, along with a sense of obligation to the dead. The killer needed to be found. Max wanted him found. And whatever else Ruutti was, she was a good detective, who would also want to catch the killer. “What have you learned so far?”
“Less than I would like,” the woman answered, taking a step so she was shoulder-to-shoulder with Max, arms folded across her stomach as she stared down at the dead man. “There was nothing on him to give him a name. No one local recognised his photo.”
“You woke up the neighbourhood to show a head shot of him to the neighbours?” Max asked, startled. “I’m not sure his own mother would recognise him like that.”
“We made him look a bit less dead,” Ruutti said, a sparkle in her eye. “But he wasn’t carrying any photos from when he was alive, so that was all we had.”
“Alright,” Max said. “So, none of the neighbours recognised him. Anyone not answer the door?”
“Only one. But she’s eighty-five, and, according to the neighbourhood gossip, she’s is in hospital for a hip replacement,” Ruutti said. “So I don’t think she’s our dead man.”
“No,” Max agreed.
“And she doesn’t have any young male relatives, either. Not as far as we can tell, anyway,” Ruutti added, perhaps anticipating Max’s next question.
“So if he’s not local, then why here?” Max asked, mostly to herself.
“Is the death being on a crossroads significant?” Ruutti asked. It was a sensible question.
Max paused, a flood of memories rising. Other crossroads, in other places and other times. “It might be,” she forced herself to say over the memories. “If you believe the old legends that there’s power in crossroads.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. It’s what the killer believes,” Ruutti said. A piece of wisdom that sounded like she had learned it from someone else and was repeating it.
Max made a non-committal sound and began walking slowly around the tent, mapping out the symbols as she went. “The ritual was not complete,” she observed.
“It was complete enough to shatter the road,” Ruutti threw back.
“I don’t think that was the intent,” Max said, remembering those doors drawn in blood. “Of course, it’s possible there was no ritual at all and the killer just drew a bunch of random things on the road.”
“You don’t believe that for a moment,” the detective said. She was still standing by the body, watching Max pace around the room. “More like the killer made a mistake somewhere.”
“It’s possible. But you don’t just start with a human at the middle,” Max said, half to herself.
“No?”
“No,” Max said, shaking her head, crouching down again where she could see the line of the body, the man’s dark, curling hair drifting slightly in an unseen breeze.
“You know something about rituals,” Ruutti said.
“I am a Marshal,” Max answered. It was as much as she was prepared to say. The Marshals got a lot of training and knowledge that regular law enforcement did not. It went with the territory. If a Marshal was expected to hunt down a supernatural, they had better have some understanding of how their prey operated and how to stop them.
The badge gleamed, silver flaring in the shadows under the tent.
“What is it?” Ruutti asked. It would be easy to forget she was intelligent and ruthless underneath the carefully arranged hair and big blue eyes. Perhaps she had seen a Marshal’s badge flare before. Or perhaps she was just very observant.
“There’s residual magic in this space. You need to get your magician to clean the space before you try and move the body,” Max said. She glanced at Ruutti and saw an unusually serious expression on the detective’s face. Satisfied that her warning had been taken to heart, Max turned back to the body. “This was not a quiet death. Did none of the neighbours hear anything?”
“No,” Ruutti said, in a way which told Max that the detective had already thought of that particular issue. “Hardly anyone uses these streets, though, so they would have been deserted. And there was some kind of a party happening further down the block. A lot of noise from that.”
Even a party wouldn’t have covered the sound of the man’s screams, Max knew. The killer must have used some kind of spell to mask the sound.
Which brought her back to the question of why here? The killer seemed to have brought his victim here, to this particular spot in the middle of one of the city’s nicer districts, with the risk of being seen. She glanced up, as if the sky could give her some answers, and saw only the stretch of canvas from the tent.
“We have pictures before the tent went up,” Ruutti said, following Max’s gaze. “But now that the neighbours know there’s a body here, they don’t want to see it.” Her nose wrinkled. “Apparently they’ve already been calling their representative, demanding that the rubbish be removed.”
Max lifted a brow.
“Well, perhaps not those exact words, but that’s what they meant,” Ruutti said. “So, what do you think?”
“I think this is going to be a difficult case to solve,” Max said slowly, taking another look around the space. “Do we know the orientation of the body?”
“No. Is that important?”
“The first body was oriented north-south,” Max said. “Quite deliberately placed. It would be helpful to know if this body is the same. They might not be connected.”
“I’ll find out,” Ruutti promised.
“And I think we should wake up the neighbours again,” Max said.
“They didn’t see or hear anything,” Ruutti repeated, frowning. “My team know their jobs.”
“The victim might not be local, but the killer might,” Max said.
“People don’t usually kill close to their homes,” Ruutti objected.
“I’m sure that’s true. But this place has some meaning for the killer. We should rule out the neighbours,” Max said.
“Fair point. Alright. Let’s go,” Ruutti said, striding out of the tent.
Left alone in the space, Max took a final, long look around, opening her senses a little. Just a little. Places of violent death could be overwhelming. She could see the remnants of the spell in the air above the symbols, the air coated with the residue of death. And something older. Much older. There was too much on top of it for her to get a clear picture, but she made a mental note to research the history of this place. Crossroads of themselves might not have power, but certain places did, depending on their past. And she would put good money on there being some dark history to this particular point in the road which had led the killer to bring his victim here. Finding out that history might help find the killer. She hoped.
Chapter seven
Questioning the neighbours with Ruutti was at once frustrating and amusing. Despite having law enforcement at their door for the second time in the space of a few hours, everyone - man, woman, young and old - seemed dazzled by the detective, focusing almost exclusively on her, and all but ignoring Max and her silver badge. Which left Max free to observe the neighbours’ reactions, but also meant that if she wanted to ask anything, she had to get Ruutti to repeat the question before anyone would answer. Max could not work out how the detective managed it. There was no obvious magic in the air around her, and yet everyone practically fell over themselves to help.
It didn’t take long to work out that, despite their proximity to the crime, none of the neighbours had anything to do with it. Or at least, as far as Max could tell. The neighbours all seemed both horrified and fascinated that such violence had happened close to them. And none of them had enough magic in their houses to suggest they would know one end of a magic ritual from the other.
Max also took note that none of the neighbours to the crime scene seemed to find it odd that questions were being asked by a police detective and a Marshal. Of course that might have been Ruutti’s influence. Max wasn’t sure that any of the neighbours would even remember that there had been a Marshal there. But in normal circumstances, if the neighbours had possessed any sensitivity to magic, they would have felt something wrong with the killing and would surely have expected one of the police’s magicians to be on the scene rather than a Marshal.
By that point, Max was tired and hungry and her dogs were bored. One of them - most likely Cas - had found a piece of old rope from somewhere and they were playing tug and chase with each other along the street, weaving in between passing cars and the crime scene vans that had arrived to remove the body and take down the tent. Max envied her dogs their ability to live in the moment, to forget about the grim reason they were all here.
There was a slender, black-clad figure among the white coveralls of the crime techs, walking beside a quartet of people carrying a stretcher with a zipped-up body bag. The duty magician, Max assumed. She wasn’t sure why most human magic users seemed to feel the need to wear head-to-toe black, but it was almost a uniform. She wondered if this one had a crystal on a string around his neck as well, like the last magician she had come across.
Even as her mind provided a sarcastic critique of the magician and his outfit, Max had to hold back a sigh. Doubtless the magician was far more competent and practised in his craft than she would ever be. It always felt to Max as if magic should be so much easier than it was, that she should be able to wield power much more easily, but she struggled, every single time, with the formal magic that the Order had taught her.
“There’s nothing more for us to do here,” Ruutti said, breaking through Max’s unhappy thoughts. “Unless you want to wait for the tent to be removed?”
“No,” Max said. She needed to come back after dark, when there was no one else around. Not with Ruutti at her shoulder and over a dozen witnesses. Before then, she needed to visit Malik again. He had promised to look into dark magic users for her, and it wasn’t like him to stay silent.
“Where to next?” Ruutti asked.
Before Max could answer, one of the white-clad crime scene techs approached, carrying what looked like a clipboard and a bundle of papers. “You wanted a copy of the inventory, ma’am?” he said to Ruutti.
“Yes. Thank you.” Ruutti nodded, taking the papers from him. She flipped through the pages, brows lifting. “This is comprehensive. Good work.”
“Thank you,” the tech said, a faint smile on his mouth, before he left. Max suppressed an urge to roll her eyes. Even the crime scene techs were not immune from Ruutti’s influence.
The detective lifted a brow at Max. “Well, where are we going?”
“Don’t you have reports to write?” Max asked, waving to the papers Ruutti was holding.
“Not just now,” the detective said, grinning. “You’re not going to get rid of me that easily.”
Max glared down at the petite woman, and wondered just what it would take to shake off the detective. Even as she pondered various scenarios, her phone rang. She checked the caller ID and her brows lifted. Malik.
“Hey, what’s up?” she said as she answered the phone.
“Can you stop by the Tooth?” Malik asked.
“Of course.” Max paused and eyed her unwanted companion. “I might have company with me.”
“All are welcome,” Malik reminded her, a smile in his voice.
“We’re on our way,” Max promised.
“Who was that?” Ruutti asked, as Max headed for her pick-up. “His voice sounded delicious.” She had far sharper hearing than she should, Max noted.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Max promised. “Come on, we’re going to the Hunter’s Tooth.”
“Really?” Ruutti’s nose wrinkled. “Is that your idea of a classy place to hang out?”
“Or you can go and write your reports,” Max said.
“I suppose I could rough it for one day,” Ruutti said, still sounding appalled at the idea. Doubtless Ruutti preferred places with white tablecloths and fresh flowers on the tables, and where uniformed waiters would bring her order across on a silver tray. Max had seen those places from the outside, and never been tempted to go inside. Always assuming that the staff would let her inside, and not call the police to have her thrown out onto the street.
