Dirty Magic (2 page)

If he understood my command he didn’t show it. That intense yellow gaze focused on my right forearm where a large gash oozed blood. His too-red lips curled back into a snarl.

I aimed the canister of salt-and-pepper spray. The burning mixture of saline and capsicum hit him between the eyes. He blinked, sneezed. Wiped a casual hand across his face. No screaming. No red, watery eyes or swollen mucus glands.

His nostrils flared and he lowered his face to sniff the air closer to me. His yellow eyes stayed focused on my wound. An eager red tongue caressed those sharp teeth in anticipation.

For the first time, actual fear crept like ice tendrils up the back of my neck. What kind of fucked-up potion was this guy on?

I don’t remember removing the Glock from my belt. I don’t remember pointing it at the perp’s snarling face. But I remember shouting, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

One second the world was still except for the pounding of my heart and the cold fear clawing my gut. The next, his wrecking-ball weight punched my body to the ground. My legs flew up and my back crashed into the metal gate. Hot breath escaped my panicked lungs. His body pinned me to the metal bars.

Acrid breath on my face. Body odor and unwashed skin everywhere. An erect penis pressed into my hip. But my attacker wasn’t interested in sex. He was aroused by something else altogether—blood. My blood.

My fear.

The next instant, his teeth clamped over the bleeding wound. Pain blasted up my arm like lightning. Sickening sucking sounds filled the night air. Fear burst like a blinding light in my brain. “Fuck!”

The perp pulled me toward the ground and pinned me. The impact knocked the weapon from my hand, but it only lay a couple feet away. I reached for it with my left hand. But fingers can stretch only so far no matter how much you yearn and curse and pray.

The pain was like needles stabbing my vein. My vision swam. If I didn’t stop him soon, I’d pass out. If that happened he’d drag me into those tunnels and no one would see me again.

Fortunately, elbows make excellent motivators. Especially when they’re rammed into soft temples. At least they usually are. In this case, my bloodthirsty opponent was too busy feasting on my flesh and blood to react. Finally, in a desperate move, I bucked my hips like a wild thing. He lost contact with my arm just long enough for me to roll a few centimeters closer to my target.

I reared up, grabbed the gun, and pivoted.

The pistol’s mouth kissed his cheek a split second before it removed his face.

Backup arrived thirty seconds too late.

I
limped into the precinct a couple hours later. A huge white bandage glared from my right forearm and a black eye throbbed on my face. My blood-soaked uniform had been confiscated by the team that arrived shortly after my tardy backup to investigate the shooting. They’d also taken my service weapon, salt flare, S&P spray canister, and shoes. Which left me feeling naked despite the blue scrubs I’d been issued by the wizard medics.

After sewing up my arm in the back of an ambulance while I’d answered the shoot team’s questions, the wizard had slammed a syringe full of saline and antibiotics into my ass. The shoot team had waited until they’d gotten a good eyeful of my rear bumper before they declared me free to go. I knew better than to believe I wouldn’t be hearing from them again. Especially after they’d warned me to stay within Babylon city limits.

I’d just dropped by the precinct to grab my things before heading home. I’d called my neighbor, Baba, from the ambulance to let her know I’d be later than usual. She’d said it was no problem staying late to keep an eye on Danny. Luckily, she’d been too wrapped up in the show she’d been watching to question me about the reason for the overtime. If I were even luckier neither she nor my brother would notice the bandage on my arm when they saw me, but it would take a miracle to miss the black eye.

My feet felt like they were encased in lead boots instead of flip-flops as I made my way toward the locker room. I caught my reflection in the glass of one of the interrogation rooms and cringed. My one good eye looked unnaturally blue next to its swollen purple twin. I’d managed to get all the smears off my face, but my brunette hair was still matted in spots with Speedy’s blood. I needed a hot shower and a stiff drink—preferably at the same time. But first—

“Prospero, get your ass in here!” Captain Eldritch yelled from his doorway. The entire squad room went silent as cops paused to gape at the unfolding drama.

With a heavy sigh, I dropped my duffel bag at my desk and performed the walk of shame. My colleagues didn’t bother to cover their curious stares and smirks. For the next few hours, this scene would be replayed and analyzed around the watercooler along with the leaked details of the shooting. Cops were worse than housewives when it came to gossip.

“Sit down.” Stress lines permanently bracketed Eldritch’s mouth. His baldpate glowed dully under the harsh fluorescent lights. The desk hid a paunch that betrayed a lifelong love affair with fried dough, but one would be unwise to mistake his generous midsection for a sign of weakness. He’d maneuvered his way up from patrolman to captain in a criminal justice system rife with political intrigue and bureaucratic red tape. For his efforts, he was rumored to be next in line for chief of the entire BPD. In other words, he was not a man to piss off.

“I won’t bother asking if you’re all right because I can see you are. Instead, I’ll begin by asking what the fuck you thought you were doing?”

“Sir, I—”

He slashed a hand through the air. “Don’t bother. You weren’t thinking. Not a damned thing. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Because I know you were trained better than to enter a dangerous confrontation with a hexed-out suspect without backup.”

“If I’d waited for backup that bastard would be running free through the Arteries.”

“Thanks to you he’s not going to be running anywhere ever again.”

I leaned forward, my hands up in a pleading gesture. “It was a clean kill, sir.” If you could call blowing someone’s face off “clean.”

He sat back and crossed his arms over his gut. He hit me with his best cop glare—the same one I used on suspects until they broke under the oppressive weight of silence. But I wasn’t a criminal—not anymore, anyway—and I knew I’d done the right thing. In fact, if I had to do it over again I would have made the same call.

“Even if I’d waited for backup the outcome would have been the same.” I looked right in his eyes. “He was immune to every defensive charm I tried. There was no stopping him without lethal force.”

The captain scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up. His chair creaked in protest. “Christ, Prospero. Damned if I wouldn’t have done the same thing.” I opened my mouth to ask why I was getting the riot act if that was the case, but he held up a hand to stall my arguments. “Be that as it may, since this case involved deadly force, the rules dictate that I put you on suspension pending an investigation of the incident.”

My mouth dropped open. “But—”

“There’s not a damned thing I can do about it, so don’t waste your breath. We got bigger issues to discuss.”

I shook my head at him. Forcing a cop to take leave after the use of deadly force was standard procedure, but I wasn’t about to sit on the sidelines with a new lethal potion on the streets. Still, the look in his eyes told me arguing would only prolong the suspension.

“The ME identified your perp.” The lightning-fast change in topic nearly gave me whiplash.

“And?” I frowned.

“His name was Ferris Harkins.” The female voice surprised me from the doorway.

I swiveled to see a tall woman in a smart navy pantsuit. Her brown hair was cut in a no-nonsense bob. The lines between her brows told me they were used to frowning, and the steel in her gaze hinted at a razor-blade tongue. She wore her watch on her right wrist and her briefcase was clutched in that same hand. Whoever she was, she was definitely a Lefty—just like me.

I glanced back at Eldritch. He didn’t look surprised by the new arrival so much as resigned to it. He pasted his best politician smile on his lips and rose to shake her hand. “I was about to inform Officer Prospero of your interest in the case.”

“That’s a diplomatic way to phrase it, Captain.” She turned to me. “Special Agent Miranda Gardner.”

I frowned at her. “Which agency?”

She smiled tightly. “MEA.”

Something heavy bounced off the base of my stomach. If the Magic Enforcement Agency was involved, things were about to get … complicated.

After a moment’s hesitation, I rose and offered her my left hand. I usually offered my right to Mundanes to avoid awkwardness, but she offered me her left, which confirmed she was an Adept.

Her handclasp was brief but firm enough to tell me she meant business. When I looked down at our hands, I noticed a cabochon ring on her middle finger.

“Nice ring,” I said. “Tigereye?”

She nodded and pulled her hand away. “The stone of truth and logic.”

And she wore it on her Saturn finger—the finger of responsibility and security—which meant she wanted a boost in those areas. Interesting.

She tipped her chin at my wrist. “And your tattoo—Ouroboros?”

I placed my right hand over my wrist, as if the snake might jump off my skin otherwise. “A youthful transgression,” I said in a flippant tone that disguised the massive understatement it really was.

Eldritch cleared his throat. I looked up to see Gardner watching me with a too-wise gaze. Either she already knew the snake swallowing its own tail was the emblem of the Votary Coven or she merely smelled the lie on me. Time to change the subject.

“Why is the MEA interested in Ferris Harkins?” I glanced at Eldritch, but he looked away.

“What your captain was about to tell you before I interrupted,” Gardner said, “is that the man you killed tonight was an MEA informant.”

I closed my eyes. “Fuck. Me.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what I said when his name popped up on ACD two hours ago as deceased.”

ACD stood for the Arcane Crime Database, a federal clearinghouse of all magic-related criminal activity in the country. Actually, that’s not entirely true. ACD just kept track of the illegal dirty magic. The corporate labs that produced legal, “clean” magical products, aka Big Magic, bought their legitimacy through lobbyist bribes and the generous tax revenue they generated for Uncle Sam.

I opened my eyes. “Were you aware when you recruited him that he was a hexhead with a hard-on for murder?”

“He wasn’t a hexhead when we recruited him.” She handed over a picture of a male. Mid-twenties, scruffy with a hardness to his gaze that hinted at life on the street, but no noticeable signs of magic use—dilated pupils, scabs, etc. A far cry from the gaunt, savage creature I’d killed. A scribbled date at the bottom told me the picture had been taken a week earlier.

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?”

“Positive. I’ve just come from IDing the body.”

Usually potions took several months—sometimes years—of heavy use to transform normal people into freaks and monsters. “You expect me to believe a potion turned this guy”—I held up the picture—“into the beast I shot in less than a week?”

She removed her cell from her briefcase and flashed another picture. This one was taken at the morgue. There wasn’t enough face left to compare so it was impossible to use that to verify whether the identity matched the first shot. But then Gardner tapped the image to indicate a tattoo of a skull with the words
Et in Arcadia ego
underneath on the dead man’s left wrist.

Frowning, I lifted the old picture again. Sure enough, the same tattoo was on Ferris Harkins’s “before” picture. “The tattoo’s the same. But that’s hardly conclusive.”

“True. However, as you’ll see in the file, the identity was also confirmed through fingerprints.”

I blew out a deep sigh. “Okay, so how did this guy”—I held up the first shot—“end up like this?” I held up a screen shot from the file that had been taken from my vest cam. In it Harkins looked like something from hell: a wild-eyed hellhound with bloodstained teeth.

“Four days ago, we sent Harkins to do a buy,” explained Gardner. “He was supposed to meet up with one of my agents an hour later but never showed. We’ve been looking for him since. At first we figured he ran off with the buy money, but then this.” She motioned vaguely at me as if I was the
this
in question.

My mouth fell open. “You gave a CI cash and then set him loose in the Cauldron? What the fuck did you think was going to happen?”

“Prospero,” Eldritch warned.

“Sorry,” I grumbled. “But what was the MEA doing setting up a buy in the Cauldron to begin with? And why didn’t we know about it?”

“Forgive me, Officer,” Gardner said, laughing. “I wasn’t aware the federal government had to ask your permission to run investigations in Babylon.”

I crossed my arms and sucked at my teeth to prevent more expletives from escaping. Eldritch wouldn’t meet my eyes at all—so much for support from that quarter.

“Your actions tonight have complicated the shit out of my case,” Gardner continued.