Magic Bleeds (10 page)

He circled the puddle, carrying several small sacks, the chant rolling from his lips.

The puddle made a beeline for the drain. Somehow Ronnie got there first, reached into his sack, and lowered something to the floor. A scorpion. The arachnid danced in place, curling its tail. The puddle shrank away.

Ronnie dropped the sack on the floor and moved on. A few more steps, and he reached into another sack, and deposited a large toad.

Flanked on three sides by animals, the puddle reversed its course and almost ran into the fourth creature, a long twisting millipede, just as Ronnie dropped her on the ground. A few more steps, and the old man emptied the last sack on the floor, revealing a large spider.

The creatures swayed in tandem with his voice. The puddle hovered in the center, caught. Ronnie took a small canister from his waist and walked up to the puddle. His fingers flickered, very fast, and he pulled a small yellow piece of paper from his sleeve. The paper fluttered onto the puddle, a small Chinese symbol written in red lying faceup. Ronnie uncorked the canister and poured its contents onto the paper in a vermillion stream.

A dark miasma surged up from the puddle and vanished, as if burned off. The nasty fluid lay placid.

Ronnie Ma smiled.

“IT’S AN ANCIENT CHINESE RITUAL,” PATRICE SAID as two medtechs fumigated me with mugwort smoke while I stood behind the salt line drawn on the floor. “Five poisonous creatures to hold the disease at bay. We know it because it was part of the Fifth Moon Festival. The Festival fell over summer solstice and coincided with hot, humid weather and a spike in infections.”

“What did he pour on the cholera?”

“If I had to take a guess, wine with cinnabar.” Patrice glanced at Ronnie Ma, still smiling serenely as two techs unsuccessfully tried to get him to exhale at the diagnostic flower. “We’ve been looking forever for someone who knows how to perform it. Do you think he would come to work for me?”

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“I’d say yes. Mr. Ma enjoys being useful. Can I go? I feel fine, no pain, no discomfort.”

Patrice put her hand onto my forehead. Magic struck me. Circles swam in my eyes. My skin felt on fire.

I sucked in a breath and shook my head, trying to clear it.

“Now you can go,” Patrice told me.

“Was I infected?”

“No. Just a precautionary measure. Five poisonous creatures,” she said, nodding at the five animals still sitting in their places. “They put all disease to sleep. But once away from them, it will wake up and I don’t want to take chances.”

Good to know.

I stepped over the chalk line. Around me a controlled chaos reigned as the Biohazard team swept the scene, examining two dozen mercs and taking samples of the puddle.

I leaned toward Patrice. “That puddle went straight for the drain. That implies intelligence or instinct.

Either it knew the drain would lead to water or it sensed the moisture. How can a disease sense anything?”

Patrice shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not suggesting you’re wrong. I just have no answers. I can tell you that it’s instinct rather than intellect. The organisms that caused both diseases are simply too primitive to develop intelligence. There are limits even to magic. And in this case, my guess would be physics.” She pointed to the floor. “It slopes toward the drain. The puddle may have simply tried to take the path of least resistance.”

IT TOOK ME FIFTEEN MINUTES OF QUESTIONING TO ascertain that nobody in the hall had actually seen how the attack on Solomon started. Two men saw the Steel Mary enter. He kept his face hidden. In the hall full of street bravos, nobody paid him any mind. The man crossed the floor and took the stairs up to the fourth story, where Solomon Red made his quarters. The altercation ensued there; my present pool of witnesses became aware of it only when the stranger and Solomon stumbled out of his
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rooms into the hallway and took a dive over the railing into the inner hall. According to Bob Carver, the man landed on his feet, holding Solomon Red by his throat. That got everyone’s attention in a hurry, given that Solomon Red was six feet two inches tall and weighed close to two hundred and forty pounds.

The fight itself was short and brutal.

“Did any of you wade into it?”

The four mercs at the table shook their heads, all except Ivera, who still had gauze up her nose. Bob Carver had twelve years in the Guild, Ivera and Ken both had seven, and Juke was coming up on her fifth. All four were trained, seasoned, tough, and worked well as a team. In the Guild they were known as the Four Horsemen. Most mercs were loners, occasionally working with a partner when they had no choice about it. The Horsemen worked the jobs that required more than two bodies and they were damn good at it.

“He’s good,” Bob said. “I stayed clear of him.”

“He didn’t do any fancy shit,” Juke added, rubbing her hand through her spiked black hair. She was probably going for frightening, with black hair and smoky eyes, but her features were too sharp and delicate and she ended up looking like a pissed-off Goth Tinker Bell. “None of the spinning whirlwind or whip qiang stuff. He slammed Solomon against the elevator and stuck the spear into his throat. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. That was it for the fearless leader.”

“It was a practiced thrust,” Ivera added. “No hesitation, didn’t aim, nothing.”

“What happened after he added Solomon to his butterfly collection?”

“The magic hit,” Ivera answered.

Did the Steel Mary sense the magic coming? That would be a hell of a trick. “And then?”

Bob looked to Ken. The tall, lean Hungarian was the group’s magic expert. Ken had a habit of sitting very still, so quiet you forgot he was there. His motions were small, in direct contrast with his lanky body, and he rationed out words like they were made of gold. “Extraction.”

“Could you explain that, please?”

Ken mulled it over, weighing the benefit to mankind against the terribly taxing effort of producing a few more words. “The man placed his hand over Solomon’s mouth.” He held his long fingers apart to show
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me. “He said a word and pulled his essence out of him.”

What the hell did that mean? “Define essence.”

Ken regarded me for a long minute. “The glow of his magic.” That made no sense. “Can you describe the glow?”

Ken halted, puzzled.

“It looked like a wad of bright red cotton candy,” Juke supplied.

“Glowing with Solomon’s magic. I felt it. Powerful.” Ken nodded. “The man held his essence in his hand, and then he left.”

“He just walked out of here?”

“Nobody was dumb enough to stop him,” Juke said.

And that was the difference between the Guild and the Order in a nutshell. If the cloak-man walked into the Order’s Chapter, every single knight would have to be dead before he came out.

“Her,” Ivera said.

Bob looked at her. “Iv, it was a man.”

She shook her head. “It was a woman.”

Bob leaned forward. “I saw the hands. They were man-hands. The guy was six and a half feet tall.”

“Nope, about six eight,” Juke said.

“It was a woman,” Ivera said.

I glanced at Juke. She raised her arms. “Don’t look at me. I only saw him from the side. Looked like a man to me.”

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“Ken?”

The mage folded his long fingers in front of him, pondered them for a long moment, and met my gaze. “I don’t know.”

I rubbed my face. Eyewitness accounts were supposed to narrow the pool of suspects, not make it wider.

“Thanks,” I said, snapping my notepad closed. I had taken to carrying it, because it was necessary. It made me feel stupid. I could duck in a room for half a second and tell you how many people were in it, which of them were a threat, and what weapons they carried. But when it came to interviewing witnesses, if I didn’t write it down, it was gone in a couple of hours. Gene, a knight-inquisitor with the Order and a former Georgia Bureau of Investigations detective, whom I strove to emulate because he knew what he was doing and I didn’t, could listen to a witness or a suspect once and recall what they said with perfect accuracy. But I had to write it down. It made me feel like I had a hole in my head.

It was time to wrap it up. “On behalf of the Order, I appreciate your cooperation and all that.”

Juke gave me the evil eye. She was trying hard for an early version of me, but although Juke was good, by her age I had already dropped out of the Order’s Academy. I’d eat Juke for breakfast, and she knew it, but kept at it anyway.

“So you’re in the big leagues now. Investigating for the Order and all that. I feel like bowing or something.”

I fixed her with my little deranged smile. “Bowing not necessary. Don’t leave town.”

Juke’s eyes went wide. “Why? Are we under arrest and shit?”

I kept smiling. We stared at each other for a long moment and Juke glanced into her cup before tipping it down to her mouth. “Screw you!”

“Now come on, sugar, you know I don’t swing that way.”

“Whatever!”

Curran’s alpha-staring habits must’ve rubbed off on me. Curran. Of all the people, why did I think of him? It’s like I couldn’t shrug him off.

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“It comes,” Ivera murmured.

Mark trotted through the crowd toward me, looking well put together in a navy business suit.

The Four Horsemen glowered in unison.

Mark had a last name, but nobody remembered it. When someone condescended to add some moniker to his first name, it was usually “corporate asshole” or “that bastard,” and if the speaker was particularly displeased,

“massa.” At least he got to keep one name, unlike the Clerk.

Officially the Guild’s secretary, Mark was more of an operations manager than an admin. Solomon Red had created the Guild and earned the lion’s share of its profits, but it was Mark who solved day-to-day problems and the way he went about that didn’t make him any friends. The universe created him with his

“understanding”

setting stuck permanently on zero. No emergency or tragedy, real or fabricated, made a dent in his armor as he raced to a better bottom line.

Part of it was his appearance, too. His skin was unstained by the sun and probably generously moisturized. His toned body marked him as a well-off man who paid attention to his appearance, rather than a fighter who used his body to make a living. His face was meticulously groomed. In a crowd of blue-collar thugs, he stood out like a prissy lily in a flower bed full of weeds, and he broadcasted “I’m better than you” loud and clear.

He came to an abrupt stop in front of me. “Kate, I need to talk to you.”

“Is this regarding Solomon’s death?”

He grimaced. “It’s regarding its consequences.”

“If it doesn’t directly relate to the investigation, it will have to wait.”

Bob narrowed his eyes. “Moving fast, are you, Mark? Wasting no time.”

Mark ignored him. “Do I have to make an appointment?”

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“Yes. Give the Order a call tomorrow and they’ll make sure to coordinate something with you.” I headed toward the stairs to examine Solomon’s quarters.

Behind me, Bob said, “Tomorrow the front page of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
will be screaming all about how Solomon Red voided his bowels and then his mercs had to chase the puddle of his blood and shit across the floor. Shouldn’t you get on that?”

“Mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine,” Mark said.

Solomon’s death created a power vacuum. Something had to fill it and they were already drawing the battle lines. They could draw all they wanted. You couldn’t pay me to get involved in it.

I walked up the stairs, past a desiccated Solomon. The Guild leader sagged on the spear shaft, reduced to a sack of dried-out skin over the skeletal frame. The man who’d built himself into a living legend had died with great indignity. The universe had a razor-sharp sense of humor.

The Biohazard team was filing out without Solomon. All of the disease had ended up in the puddle, which Biohazard took into custody. Solomon’s corpse was now a mere inert shell. Mark must’ve convinced them to let the Guild have the body for burial.

I climbed up to the third floor and entered the internal stair leading to Solomon’s quarters. A variety of weapons decorated the walls: bearded axes, slick Japanese blades, simple elegant European swords, modern tactical weapons . . . I came to an empty space between two bare iron hooks. Just large enough for a spear. My hope that the spear in Solomon’s neck belonged to the Steel Mary just went up in flames.

He could have anything he wanted, but he chose the spear. Why a spear?

The stairs led me to a hallway bordered by a balcony. Four floors below, in the main hallway, mercs mulled about, still shell-shocked. The front door of Solomon’s quarters hung ajar, its left side splintered.