Shadow Magic, page 13
During the course of my time with the Crown Magika I had seen a lot of dead bodies and investigated a lot of murders. While I never had gotten used to it, I had come to a quiet acceptance. Not that I accepted the murderers, but there was a certain solemnity and ritual when approaching a murder victim—with a respect that wasn’t exactly voiced, but put into action.
Usually during the first few moments, people talked in hushed whispers, almost as if trying not to disturb the dead. As the work continued, the volume of the voices grew louder, but—at least in my experience—there were no jokes, no laughter, merely respectful and methodical communication as needed.
But when the victims were children…well, children were different. The mood shifted to a somber brooding—a thin veneer over anger that smoldered beneath the surface.
I paused, watching Dagda as he stared down into a pile of undergrowth. He was surrounded by what I assumed were emergency techs, and it was then that I saw the ME’s car to one side. A woman was talking to Dagda, and I assumed it was Canes.
I sucked in a deep breath and headed their way, steeling myself. Dominique was right beside me. As we approached, Dagda turned around. He looked resigned.
“Hey, Marquette. Thank you for coming.” He paused. “This is Amanda Canes, our medical examiner. Amanda, this is Marquette Sanders. She was an agent with the Crown Magika and I’ve pulled her in as a special investigator for the case.”
Amanda nodded and sighed, but didn’t offer her hand. She was wearing gloves, which had all sorts of muck on them. “We’re about ready to take her in. But I looked her over and sure enough, there are bite marks on her thigh.”
“Was she killed here?” I asked.
Canes hesitated, glancing at Dagda, who gave her the go-ahead.
“No,” she said. “She’s been dead for at least twenty-four hours. Less than seven hours ago, a group of students from the Alpine Lakes Academy was here, holding a ritual. There was no body here at that time. They left by three p.m., and so the body had to be dumped here between then and six, when it was discovered.”
A three-hour window wasn’t long. “That means that the killer was here a few hours ago.” I paused, looking around. “Can you excuse me for a moment? I won’t disturb anything.” I moved to the side where I wouldn’t be heard. “Dominique? Are you here?”
I’m here, she said. What do you need?
“Can you look around to see if the girl’s spirit is anywhere nearby? Or any other spirit who might have seen her body being disposed of?” I waited while Dominique began searching. A moment later, Dagda joined me.
“I saw you talking to…the air,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “Poor kid.”
“Have you told her family yet?” I asked.
He shook his head. “When I leave here, I’ll go directly to tell them. I know her father—we went to school together. This isn’t going to be easy. Her name is Thea Smith. She was planning on becoming a teacher.”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Listen, I have something to tell you. I was going to call you tomorrow, but now’s as good a time as any. I took Dominique, our house ghost, out with me to the park where you found Patricia. She was able to contact a ghost there who saw Patricia’s body being dumped. I’m planning on taking a friend of mine who’s an artist out there tomorrow evening. With Dominique’s help, we plan on having Ernest give Verity a description of the person he saw carrying Patricia’s body.”
Dagda stared at me. “What?”
“You heard me. And by the way, Dominique is here. She’s out searching to see if Thea’s ghost is anywhere around. Patricia wasn’t in the park, by the way.”
“Why didn’t I think of doing that? I never in the world thought of calling on help from the spirit world. You’re brilliant!” His eyes lit up and for the first time in days, I saw hope there.
“It didn’t occur to me till yesterday, actually.” I frowned. Dominique still wasn’t back. “I’ll let you know when she returns.”
“So, the ghost in the park saw someone dumping Patricia’s body?”
I nodded. “He couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, and whoever it was, was cloaked up and short. But he’ll do his best.”
The techs began to lift Thea’s body out of the undergrowth. My stomach lurched as I stared at the young girl. She would never grow up, never become a teacher, never experience her first date or her first kiss, never go on to accomplish whatever great successes she might have been fated to. Her skin was waxen, so pale that it was almost blue. The rosy life in her cheeks was gone, and she looked almost vampiric, with her lips still stained bright pink. A sudden thought broke through my morose thoughts.
“Dagda.” I tapped him on the shoulder. “Have any of the victims turned? Have any risen as a vampire?”
“No, they didn’t. Isn’t there a three-day window before they rise?”
“Yeah, there is. And since they haven’t, I can almost guarantee we’re not dealing with a rogue vampire. Most of them like siring new vamps. That’s one of the few ways we get new vampires anymore. Unless a vamp and their potential sireling file an ironclad contract with the state, a vampire can be staked for siring someone.”
In fact, the world population of vampires was slowly decreasing. As accidents and suicide eventually claimed vampires’ lives, not that many volunteers were lining up to be turned.
The latest statistics I had read theorized that within the next few hundred years, the vampire population would be limited to vamps three hundred years and older. There was a strict limit on how many vampires could be coined each year, and only so many licenses were available.
“Why would someone try to imitate a vampire, though?” He frowned, shaking his head. “What would it get them?”
I tried to run through potential scenarios. “Well, remember Elizabeth Bathory? Maybe we’re dealing with a psycho who wants to bathe in blood, or…I’m not sure. Imitating a vampire would throw the cops off the real trail.”
“They’d have to find a way to drain the blood from two puncture wounds. That could take a long time.” Dagda motioned to Canes. “Is there a way to quickly drain every drop of blood from someone through two puncture wounds, without being a vampire?”
“As far as I know, it would have to be done magically,” Canes said. “If there’s internal bleeding, death may come quickly, but extracting the blood through such minuscule holes would take time.”
“How long was Thea missing?” I asked.
Dagda checked his notes. “Three days. Apparently, her parents thought she was staying with a friend named Kenya. So the family didn’t worry because she wasn’t supposed to be home until today. They couldn’t get in touch with Thea, so her mother called Kenya’s parents to see when they should pick her up. According to them, Thea had never arrived, but Kenya had received a text message telling her that Thea had canceled to go to her grandmother’s.”
“Then someone had to know that she was going to stay over.” I jumped as Dominique appeared next to me. “Hey, did you find anything?”
Dominique had an expression on her face that told me she had, and whatever it was had scared her shitless. Yes, I found something. I don’t know what the hell it is. I think it’s magical, though, so you should take a look at it. I don’t know if someone who isn’t witchblood can see it.
“Let me tell Dagda. I want him to come with us, even if he can’t see whatever we’re looking at. How far away is it?”
A few minutes’ walk into the forest. It’s not exactly in Hell’s Thicket, but it’s close. The energy from that part of the woods extends over here, though I don’t know if you knew that.
Dagda was staring at me as I was having my one-way conversation with the air. “Did she find anything?” A faint note of hope filled his voice.
“Yeah. We need to go check it out. You may not be able to see it. Dominique says she thinks it’s magical and that possibly only those of witchblood can see it. I want you to come with me, though.”
He turned to Canes. “Wait here. Don’t take her away yet.”
As we headed into the undergrowth, Dominique leading the way, my pulse raced. But I wasn’t exactly afraid. I was on the job, and while I was downhearted about Thea, I was feeling a spark that I hadn’t felt since I left the agency. And then I realized: I felt useful again.
The undergrowth thickened, making it difficult to push through, and there was a subtle pulse that ran through the foliage. It wasn’t normal earth energy, but something dark and foreboding. I shivered as I tried to pinpoint exactly what it was. I wasn’t being watched, but a resounding current was definitely running through the ground and the trees, a current that felt almost sentient.
“Can you sense it, Dagda? The energy that’s running around this area? If it’s like this here, I dread to think of what it’s like in Hell’s Thicket.” I had to monitor my breath, to keep myself calm. I kept telling myself, There’s nothing to be afraid of here, but then I realized that was far from the truth. I changed my inner mantra to Panic will do you no good, so remember your training.
As I felt the subtle easing of tension, I was able to think clearer. I stopped for a minute to take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“What is it?” Dagda asked.
“I was starting to hyperventilate from the energy, so I called on my training to calm down.”
Dagda stopped in his tracks, closing his eyes. After a moment, he opened them and, in a shaky voice, said, “It’s taking everything I have to force myself to stand here. I’ve never felt anything that filled me with so much dread, and I’ve been in Hell’s Thicket before. This is something different—it reminds me of Hell’s Thicket, but it’s more dangerous than anything I’ve encountered before.”
“Isn’t there supposed to be a portal in Hell’s Thicket somewhere?”
“Yes, though we’ve never been able to pinpoint the location. Why?”
“Suppose something came through it—something dangerous and different than anything we’ve encountered. Since we’re both certain that we aren’t dealing with a rogue vampire, what if there’s a creature who can mimic the vampire’s bite and drain the blood out of the victims?”
We’re almost there, Dominique said. You might want to be quiet. I’m almost positive there’s something out there in the woods that can hear us.
“Dominique said we should quiet down, that something is listening. We’re almost there—wherever there is.”
We fell silent as we followed Dominique, and not two minutes later, she stopped. I held my hand up to Dagda and he stopped behind me.
There, over there on the ground. Can you see the marking?
I slowly moved forward, stopping when Dominique held up her hand. She pointed toward the ground and I knelt, staring at the markings that were pressed into the dirt. On the ground in front of me was a wide circle, almost five feet across. There were various runic markings all the way through it and the entire sigil glowed with a pale green light. A faint mist hovered over it, making me queasy. I couldn’t read the markings, but Dominique was right. Whatever this was, it was magical, and it hadn’t been placed here by anyone with good intent.
I turned back to Dagda. “Can you see it?”
He stared to where I was pointing. “No, I can’t see anything. But something’s giving me the creeps. What are you looking at?”
“It’s a sigil. It’s magical, all right, but whoever created it…my gut tells me it’s not of witchblood-make. I think it comes from some creature with a natural magical ability.” I stared down at the markings. The runes looked like nothing that I had ever seen before. I knew that if I took a picture it wouldn’t show up, so I turned back to Dagda. “Do you have a notebook and a pen or pencil? I want to draw this so that I can look it up when I get home.”
While he retrieved a notebook and a pen from his jacket pocket, I turned to Dominique. “Have you seen any sign of Thea’s spirit? Is she around here at all?”
Dominique shook her head. No, I’m sorry. I don’t see any sign of her. I do find it strange that I couldn’t find any sign of Patricia, either. With violent deaths, there’s almost always some residue, at least.
Dagda gave me a questioning look. “Well?”
“There’s no sign of Thea’s spirit anywhere. In fact, there wasn’t any residue with Patricia either. I wonder about the other victims. It’s been a while, but we should take a look at their murder sites. That’s not to say that the spirits aren’t hanging out where they were actually killed, but a lot of times they stick around the site where the body was dumped.” I took the pen and paper and began to sketch out the sigil, taking pains to make it as accurate as possible. Maybe Granny would have some idea of what this was.
“What could account for that? Could they have gone through the Veil?”
I bit my lip, thinking about his question. “It’s possible, but honestly? I would expect to find some residue left here, in the spirit world. Some sign that they had been murdered violently. My guess is that the bite mark was strategically placed to throw us off track, which means whoever our murderer is, they’re smart. Maybe not smart enough to know the truth about rogue vampires, but smart enough to figure out a potential scapegoat.”
I finished up with the drawing and then stepped back, carefully tearing the page out of the notebook and putting it in my pocket before returning the notebook and pen to Dagda. I turned to Dominique. “Is there anything else we should know? And did you by any chance see any sign of a sigil over in Tiger’s Eye Park, near Patricia’s dropsite?”
No, but I can go back and look again. I don’t tend to wander off site, remember? Plus, we were talking to Ernest there.
“Why don’t we do that tomorrow morning? I don’t want to go there at night alone.”
“Go where?” Dagda said.
“Back to the park where Patricia was found. I’m now wondering if there was a similar sigil somewhere back in the copse of trees there.”
“I can go with you if you want to drop over there tonight. That way, you’ll have some protection.” He ran his hand through his wavy hair, shaking his head. “I can tell you, I don’t like cases like this. And I hate it when kids are killed. It’s so…cruel. Adults are a tragedy, yes. But when you kill a child, you kill the future. You wipe out hope.”
“All right.” I glanced at the time on my phone. Jillian was probably gone already. “Let’s stop over there now, and get it over with.”
Without a word, Dagda and I headed to our cars, Dominique following me. Part of me wanted to destroy the sigil before leaving, but I didn’t know what the ramifications would be. It was better off to leave it alone until we knew what it was. I thought about asking Dagda to put some crime tape around it or post a guard, but that might be asking for trouble. Hopefully, we’d figure out what to do before anybody else stumbled on it.
The medical examiner was ready to leave with Thea’s body. Dagda spoke to his men for a moment, then to Canes, and then he got in his patrol car and headed out of the turnout. I followed him onto the road, on to Tiger’s Eye Park.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As we reached the outskirts of the park, I found myself hoping that we wouldn’t have to deal with a similar sigil. The energy had been so disruptive and concerning that I really didn’t want to know what had created it. Dominique had little to say on the way there, although at one point she turned to me.
Have you ever seen anything like that before?
I turned into the park entrance and parked next to Dagda.
“No. Not in all my years with the Crown Magika. But remember, I’m used to dealing with vampires and the occasional rogue witch, especially from the Covenant of Chaos. I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with creatures that are from another realm. And I seldom ever dealt with ghosts. In a sense, my job was far more mundane than what I’m doing right this moment. Granted, it was dangerous, but given what this creature is doing, I’d rather deal with a rogue vampire.”
Vampires are more familiar, they’re common. I suppose to a lot of humans they seem exotic, but really, they’re not. Not when you compare them to some of the hidden things in the shadows.
She waited till I put the car in park and then stepped out, directly through the car door. It was disconcerting to watch her walk through, but then again, I’d seen all sorts of things. And Dominique was turning out to be far more help than I ever expected.
“Thank you, by the way.” As we headed over to Dagda, I turned to her. “We appreciate everything you’re doing for us. I hope that we’re not inconveniencing you.”
She snorted. And exactly what else do I have on my schedule? Oh, there are things that I do besides hang around the house with you and Granny. But I stayed here to help. I wasn’t sure what I would need to do in order to make that happen, but apparently after all these years—well—now it’s actually happening. I have a purpose again.
I wondered if everybody felt the need to be useful. I hadn’t realized ghosts needed that, too. “I actually thought when you died, you just moved on to doing something else.”
Some do, but as I said, I felt the need to stick around and I had no clue why. I mean, I did help when that man was about to grab you, but other than that, all I’ve done is wander around the house, and occasionally go outside. I’ve been questioning whether I was deluded when I decided to stay. But now I realize that I wasn’t. I can actually make some sort of a difference here.
As we approached Dagda he turned around. “All right, show me where you met this Ernest.”
I groaned. “I don’t look forward to walking up that slope again.” I turned to Dominique. “Can you go up and take a look around? If you find something, we’ll head on up. If not, then I’m taking my tired body home. By the way, if you run into Ernest would you tell him that I found out his wife is dead. She died ten years after he did.”
I will, Dominique said. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
As she took off, speeding away faster than I could follow in the darkness, I motioned for Dagda to join me over on one of the benches. The park was closed, since it was after dark, but there was no way to actually gate it off. As we sat there, the fog rolled in as mist swept across the sidewalks, as though out of some witch’s bubbling cauldron.
