World of Lupi 10 - Ritual Magic (13 page)

Karonski met her. His face didn’t tell her much. The lines were grooved deeper than usual, but that might be fatigue from the spell.

“Well?” she said.

“We’ll share notes after you’ve checked things out your way. Stay back as far as you can. Don’t cross the circle.”

“It’s not active, is it?”

“No, but don’t touch it. Just touch one of his hands for now.”

She nodded, slipped booties on over her shoes, and advanced carefully. She’d already mapped out her route from above.

The circle around the victim had been drawn with a thick line of powder the color of unburned charcoal. It was scuffed in several places. Inside it—in addition to the body—were simple runes sand-painted on the earth. They were a pale, chalky yellow. It looked like there’d been nine of them, though several had been obscured by the arterial blood that had fountained up and out, covering a large swath of the ground . . . except in one spot, near the victim’s head. The place where his killer had squatted to cut his throat.

Blood splatter doesn’t show up as starkly on dirt and rocks as it does on a white wall, but from above Lily had been able to map out a fairly clear path to one staked hand. She sniffed as she drew near and frowned. She’d expected the sour, butcher-shop stink. There was a lot of blood. Some had soaked into the ground, but the ravine was rocky. Not enough soil to absorb however many quarts he’d lost before his heart quit pumping it out.

She had not expected the faint stink of decay. Visually, the body seemed fresh. Some lividity, sure, but while that didn’t hit maximum for six to twelve hours, it set in pretty early. No signs of animal depredation, and while the day was warm, it wasn’t hot enough to speed decomposition. Last night had been cool.

Well, figuring out time of death was the ME’s job, not hers. She stopped and crouched. Someone had a very sharp knife, she observed. They’d sliced his neck open with a single stroke. No false starts. Took a good blade and some strength to do that. Might take some practice, too. Had they used the same blade to carve that rune on his chest? If so, it was fairly narrow.

She could reach one of the staked hands without crossing the scuffed circle. She did that, pressing her fingers to one mutilated hand.

And fell back on her butt.

FOURTEEN

“L
ILY?”

“I’m okay.” Embarrassed, but okay. Lily put both palms flat on the ground, patted around, and felt nothing but dirt and rocks. So she pushed back into her crouch, steeled herself, and stretched out her right hand to touch dead flesh again.

When she’d learned everything she could, she stood and walked back to Karonski, digging in her purse with her left hand for a wipe.

“Obviously you felt something. Death magic?”

“I don’t know. That first touch . . .” She repressed a shudder and started scrubbing her right hand with the wipe. She wished she had some holy water like Cynna used sometimes. Clorox didn’t seem like enough. “Maybe it’s a variation on death magic. Is there such a thing? This stuff is every bit as repellent, and the sensation is similar, but not quite the same. Mushier. Whatever it is, there’s a lot of it, and it . . . it’s in motion. It’s crawling around on that body.” This time she couldn’t keep from shuddering. “It tried to crawl up my hand.”

“Son of a—Lily, are you—”

“I’m okay. It couldn’t stick to me. It tried, but it couldn’t. Take my hand.” She held it out.

“I didn’t touch the body,” he said, but he let her check anyway. His palm was firm and slightly moist, and the only magic she felt was the kind he’d been born with. Karonski’s Gift was a variant of Earth magic called psychometry—the ability to read emotions from objects. A strong psychometor could pick up images and thoughts if they were connected to strong emotion. Karonski’s Gift wasn’t that strong, but he was exceptionally well trained. When Lily touched him, she felt moss-covered stones. Stones were Earth; the mossy sensation was how her Gift interpreted both his particular variant and his years of training.

When she dropped his hand he asked, “Is this stuff anything like what you touched on the amnesia victims?”

“I don’t know. What I’m aware of touching is magic—nasty, icky magic, and lots of it. Trying to find some
arguai
mixed in with that would be like trying to spot the Big Dipper when the sun’s up. I can’t do it. Karonski, we need to make sure no one touched that body. The first-on-scene said he didn’t, since the vic was obviously dead, and I shook hands with him. I didn’t feel any trace of magic. But the boys and Hardy—the boys say they didn’t touch him, but we need to know for sure.”

“Shit. You don’t feel any magic in the air, do you?”

“No, and I checked the ground. The dry ground, that is. Nothing there. I can’t say about the blood-soaked area. I didn’t think I should touch it.”

“You’ll probably need to, but later. Let’s go.”

She tucked the wipe in a pocket and started up out of the gully. Up was harder than down, and she needed both hands for the first part. The paramedics were going to have a fun time getting the body up if they used this route . . . if the body could be safely handled. “How do we keep the icky magic from crawling on people?”

“Silk, maybe. It’s worth a try. I’ll need you to check to see if it can get through silk.”

That was going to be fun. “What did your spell tell you?”

“Two spells, actually. The first one should have let me see if there was any death magic in the area.”

“Should have?”

“The results didn’t make sense.” He was huffing a bit from the climb. “You want the long version? It’s technical.”

“Later. What was the other spell for?”

“It’s a way to contact the vic’s ghost, if there’s one around. Nonverbal, since ghosts mostly aren’t good with words. That spell would have let me see what the ghost remembered about his death.”

“It didn’t work?”

“No ghost this time. Speaking of ghosts . . .” He paused to catch his breath. “Have you heard from yours?”

Lily scrambled up the last bit and saw Officer Crown waiting. He looked very curious. She grimaced. She hated it when people referred to Drummond as her ghost. “Not since last night. I could try calling him. He said that wouldn’t work as well this time, but I could try.”

That was too much for Officer Crown. “You’ve got a ghost?”

“I have occasional contact with one. Karonski? Should I call Drummond?”

He heaved himself up onto level ground. “Probably, but you need to check out the kids and Hardy first. Officer, I’d like you to stay here, where you can keep on eye on the scene. We’ve got a serious magical contamination problem. No one can approach that body but me or Agent Yu for now. No one. The mayor shows up, you keep him away.”

Crown’s eyebrows lifted. “Yes, sir.”

Lily and Karonski set off at a quick jog. “I’m betting on at least two perps. You?”

“Probably. The vic looks to weigh around one eighty. He could have been unconscious or drugged, so one person isn’t impossible, but it’s unlikely.”

“The gag suggests they wanted him alive and aware when they started hurting him.”

“Yeah.” His words started getting spaced between breaths. “Theoretically one guy . . . might have done the staking . . . if the vic was unconscious. But they had to get him down there first. Hard for . . . one person . . . to do that.”

“No drag marks.”

“Exactly.”

“Why here, do you think? Plenty of dogs, bikers, runners in this park. They performed their little ritual as far from the trails as they could, but still. Why not head outside the city altogether?”

“Ley line. Might be some other . . . significant factor but . . . the body’s smack on a whopping big ley line that’s . . . close to the surface. That isn’t . . . as easy to find as you might . . . look, you go on. I can’t talk and run, and I need to . . . call our people about . . . the contagion.”

They weren’t running. They were jogging. “You okay?”

“I’m pathetic, is what I am. Go.” He flapped a hand at her as she stopped. “I’ll call your Detective Erskine, too.”

She gave Karonski one more dubious look, but he didn’t seem to be having a heart attack. He was just really out of shape. She nodded and set off. The ground was too rough for real speed, but she could pick up the pace.

Lily had started running in college because it was a cheap, quick way to get in a workout. When crunched for time, she could get in a run, shower, and dress in thirty-five minutes. Forty-five, if she dried her hair.

She’d discovered she liked it. Needed it. Running cleared her brain better than anything, with the possible exception of the kind of cardio that took two people. She’d run in exactly one marathon, and while her time hadn’t sucked, she’d decided she wouldn’t do it again. It brought out her competitive instincts, and that messed up the experience. Made her think about the wrong things. This turned out to be a good decision, because these days she usually ran with Rule or one or more of the guards. No way a human could compete with lupi, so it was just as well she hadn’t built her runs around the idea of winning.

She wasn’t winded when she slowed as she neared the bike trail. A uniform was stationed there, making sure no one wandered toward the scene. She told Lily that a van from a local TV station had shown up at the parking lot.

No doubt more reporters were on their way. Lily grimaced and picked up her pace again. The trail wasn’t paved, but it was a lot smoother than the ground. She didn’t have to pay such close attention to where her feet landed. She could think about other things . . . like how many perps were involved.

It would have taken at least two people to carry the victim down into the ravine, all right. Or one lupus. Lily hadn’t mentioned that possibility. She gave it less than one chance in a hundred. Lupi were as capable of wrongdoing as humans, but no lupus would knowingly help the Great Bitch, and if Friar was involved, the Big B was, too. Of course, Lily didn’t know for certain that this victim was connected to the amnesia victims. She had a strong suspicion, yeah. If you have two creepy-freaky things happen close together, you suspect they’re connected. But suspicion is not fact.

Rule would be able to tell. As soon as he got here—and a quick check of the mate-sense told her he was close and getting closer. Good. He’d be able to sniff out how many perps were involved and if they were all human. Or not. No point in raising that particular issue unless she had to.

Black-and-whites with their strobing red lights were clustered at one end of the parking lot. They’d used the cars to section it off, keep the civilians away. A thin woman trailing a cameraman was arguing with one of the uniforms on the civilian side of the patrol-car fence. Lily had no trouble picking out Erskine in the crowd of cops on the near side of that barrier. He looked like a pudgy, faded leprechaun in black-framed glasses. He frowned when he spotted her.

Erskine was a good cop. Lily had worked with him sometimes back when she was in Homicide, so she knew this. More by-the-book than brilliant, maybe, but competent and thorough. She hadn’t liked him back then, but that was mainly because he hadn’t liked her. She’d never been sure what about her rubbed him the wrong way, but from day one it was clear something did. They’d put up with each other for the sake of the job.

These days he couldn’t stand her. He blamed her for Mech’s death.

Sergeant Homer Mechtle had been a good cop, too. And a friend. He’d committed suicide last year. When Lily killed a telepath named Helen, the psychic backlash had killed or damaged a number of the people she’d been controlling, aided by an ancient staff. Mech had been one of them.

Sometimes Lily blamed herself for Mech’s death, too.

The uniforms parted to allow her to jog up to the detective. “I need to—”

“Your boss told me,” Erskine said curtly. “I talked to Springer. He okayed you checking out his boys. The boys don’t know about any possible contagion. Keep it that way.”

Well, darn. And there she’d been looking forward to scaring the snot out of them. “My consultant will be here soon. Rule Turner. Karonski told you about him.”

“Is that what you call him? Your consultant?” Erskine could sneer without moving a muscle on his face. It was a good trick, especially on a face like his. Erskine had one of those round faces that look boyish no matter how old its wearer gets. “Yeah, Karonski mentioned him. You want to keep chatting with me, or would you like to find out if those boys are okay?”

Her lips tightened
.
She turned without a word.

“Agent Yu!” a woman called. “What can you tell me about the murder?”

That was the reporter. Lily ignored her with the ease of long practice.

Samuel Springer and his sons stood near a large oak, well away from the patrol-car fence and the eager reporter. He was a tall, skinny man with dark hair, a luxuriant mustache, and glasses. One of the boys looked exactly like him, done smaller and without the mustache. The other was sandy haired and lacked glasses, but had the same sharp features. Springer had his arms around both boys. He watched warily as she approached.

“Special Agent Lily Yu,” she said, holding out her hand. “You’re Samuel Springer?”

The man eyed her hand a moment, then turned loose of one of his sons to accept the handshake she was silently insisting on. “I am.”

No magic. Lily released his hand and looked at the taller of the boys. The dark-haired one. “Are you Ryan? I’ve got a friend named Ryan.” She held out her hand to him, too.

He glanced up at his father uncertainly. Springer nodded. “Go on.”

Ryan took her hand. She shook with him solemnly, but inside all kinds of knots relaxed. No magic. Not a trace. “Good to meet you, Ryan. You’ve had a really rough day.” She turned to the younger boy, the one with sandy hair. “And you’re Pat, right? Again she held out her hand.

This one didn’t hesitate. He put his hand in hers and pumped it like a politician. “Yeah, and you’re an FBI agent? For real? I guess you’re investigating the dead guy, huh?”

“I am.” No magic here, either. At least none to worry about. He had a tiny trace of a charisma Gift, but that was all.

“Cool.”

“I didn’t let him see . . . it.” That was the dark-haired Ryan, assuring her that he’d done his duty by his younger brother. “I got him away from there.”

“I did, too, see! You kept getting in the way, then you dragged me back to the bikes, but I saw the singing man and—and the other man.”

And maybe now he wished he hadn’t, but pride would not let him admit this. Lily looked from one young face to the other, then up at their dad. She gave him a small, reassuring smile and a nod to let him know his sons were okay. His face sagged a little in relief. “Mr. Springer, boys, I think we’ll be able to let you go home pretty soon. I’ll need to talk to you first, but before I can do that, I have to have a word with the man who was singing.”

“‘The Old Rugged Cross,’” Ryan said.

“Pardon?”

“That’s what he was singing, which was pretty gross. Considering.”

He was right. It was pretty gross, considering. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. You need anything?”

“They said they didn’t have any Coke,” Pat said hopefully. “The police officers, I mean. Just water. Do you . . .”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any Coke, either.”

“Stupid,” Ryan informed his brother as Lily turned away. “As if FBI agents carry Cokes around with them everywhere.”

His brother said hotly, “You know who’s really stupid? People who don’t even bother to ask!” Their father was shushing them as Lily reached Erskine.