Torchlighters

by Megan R Miller

  “I’m not playing around here, Logan, you—”

  The sound of her shot reverberated off of the brick walls around them as the man’s brains decorated the alley floor. He fell in a heap when his legs gave out. Martin, his pale face and soda-bottle glasses spattered in blood, started shrieking.

  Calmly, Ely engaged the safety and pocketed Callum’s revolver. She could feel the heat of the barrel through her trousers; it probably would have burned if she hadn’t been Seraph-blooded.

  “Martin,” she said, putting a hand on his arm and as much kindness as she could manage into her voice. “Breathe. You’re safe, I’ve got you.”

  “Ah, ah…Elysia?” he asked. He swallowed and she could hear how dry his throat was.

  “Yes, it’s me,” she said, cocking her head. “Look at my eyes. Good. Right. You have to calm down. That shot was loud, someone is going to be around here soon. When they arrive, we cannot be here.”

  They could. She could simply switch guns with the man and tell them he shot himself. Callum could be ostentatious but he was never impractical; his gun was as basic as it got. The man was dressed in rags and looked half mad anyway. If she did that, though, they would take the body, and if they did that the entire point of her taking Callum’s gun in the first place would be for nothing.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’m going to need you to take his feet and help me carry him around the corner.”

  She looked at the brains on the brick road. There was nowhere convenient to move them to. No convenient way to clean them up, completely. Unfortunate.

  “Martin?”

  “Yes?” he asked, blinking at her.

  “If this is bothering you, take your glasses off. Clip them to your shirt. Don’t look. Whatever you have to do to stay calm for this, because we have to do it,” she said. “I’m sorry. He was going to shoot you.”

  The dead man had cocked his gun. Martin had reacted like someone who had never had one trained on him before. He had no reason not to believe that.

  “So tell them that. Explain it. You were protecting me, they’ll understand,” he said. It came out in a rush. He was probably even right, but she really wanted that cadaver.

  “Martin,” she said again, in the slow cadence of a schoolteacher, “What’s my name?”

  “Elysia,” he said, and when she raised a brow, he paled and added, “Trezza. You’re The Flame’s daughter.”

  “They’re not going to give me the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “So take your glasses off and help me move this body.”

  She pulled a handkerchief out of her bag and swiped at the cranial mess, pocketing what she could of it before returning to the shoulders of the body. There was still gray matter between the bricks and even on some of them. It was the best she could manage. She crouched, ready to lift with her legs.

  “On three,” she said. “One. Two. Three.”

  The words were a proper cadence and Martin helped her lift. She murmured words of encouragement to him as they carried the body first around the corner into an adjacent alleyway and then into an alcove where the archive liked to stack the empty crates from their vellum shipments.

  Ely nodded Martin around with her and that is where they set the body down.

  “You work in the archive, right?” she asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said. He sounded like he was calming down. Now that it was only a body, and not a murder as well, the steadiness was coming back to his voice.

  That’s right. He was a mortician.

  “Are you holding up okay? I have to assume it was the gun and not the body,” Ely said.

  “I’ve seen a lot of bodies,” Martin admitted. “I’ve never seen someone die.”

  That was enough for her.

  “Do you work here often enough to know when they come to bring the boxes out?” Ely asked.

  “Once daily,” Martin said, “but…um…they only move them from here once a month and you have about a week before they do that.”

  “Assuming they don’t see the body dragged back here,” Elysia said. She glanced at the boxes, sagging under the weight of snow, and gave a nod. “Alright, we’ll just have to stack them like a cairn, hide him as well as we can.”

  Martin made a little face but he didn’t pale or complain this time as the pair of them began to move boxes. Ely made it a point to stand in several places in the alley as they worked to make sure the body couldn’t be seen.

  “What are you planning on doing with the body?” Martin asked. “I’d offer to take it back to the morgue but I’m just a technician. If there’s suddenly an extra dead person in there with a wound like that my boss is going to notice.”

  “Rest assured, I have a plan,” Ely said, looking up at him. She made eye contact as he put his glasses back on his face. “And consider whether or not you really want to know what it is.”

  He hesitated and finally shook his head.

  “Just take care of it,” he said. “And…and thank you…”

  “Do you want to tell me why there was a man here waving a gun in your face?” Ely asked, folding her arms.

  “No,” Martin said, “but I will if you need me to.”

  “Need is a strong word,” Ely said, “but I do want to know.”

  There was a long pause between them. Martin’s eyes trailed away and she knew in that moment he was about to lie to her.

  “I owed him money,” Martin said.

  “What does someone like you borrow money for?” Ely asked.

  “Tuition,” Martin said, dropping his gaze. He cleared his throat. “It’s very high. I say the morgue pays high and the archive pays the rest but it’s really only about three quarters. The rest is commission work.”

  “Commission work,” Ely repeated, gesturing for him to go on. “Like the file I asked you to bring me? I never got it.”

  “I still have it,” Martin said. He offered a hand, bare and pinked in the cool autumn air. Elysia took it with hers, gloved in supple kidskin. Martin took off walking and she followed.

  Once they turned the corner into the yard where people could see them, she put a beatific smile on her face and a little bit of a spring in her step. She swung his hand in hers. To any onlooker, she’d be another student trying to flirt her way to a good grade. She would be exuberant and enthusiastic to be out here and he would be nervous, not because they just moved a body or because of what he was about to show her, but because he liked her and wasn’t used to being this close to a girl.

  She wasn’t entirely surprised when he led her off campus, but his place wasn’t far. He drew his finger down a sigil laid into the double doors and they opened to reveal a small elevator car. The roof was painted glass and behind a casting circle, she could see an imp being pulled into place and looking rather put out about it before she began to pull the chain that brought the elevator up.

  “I took the liberty of studying it already,” Martin said. “If I had to take a guess I’d say that the Gate Street Players were using the old catacombs to get around. They were sealed off years ago, but there are ways to get through a brick wall unheard, especially under Brimstone Row.”

  “Alright,” Ely said. “I’m following so far.”

  The elevator slowed to a stop on the third floor. The imp chattered impatiently as the doors opened again with a flick of its hand and a rude gesture of its fingers.

  Martin stepped into the apartment and she followed. The doors shut behind her and there was a sucking sound followed by a jerk of a rope; once upon a time, they had to keep an operator in the elevator at all times so the imp wouldn’t just let it crash to the ground, but ingenuity had brought them to the point that a modified pulley allowed the elevator to be lifted easily but fall more slowly. Much to the ire of the imps who operated them.

  The apartment was converted factory space, like many of the ones around the Summoner’s Academy. The floor and walls were metal with big open beams overhead leaving the gap clear with only mesh chain separating the rooms from abov
e. It was enough to stop people from climbing up and breaking into one another’s apartments, but sound privacy simply wasn’t possible in facilities like this.

  The elevator let them out on the mezzanine and Martin walked three doors down to his own apartment. He pressed the key into the lock. There was a click and it slid aside. Ely followed him into the room.

  She expected this place to be at least a partial mess. It was a factory apartment, after all. She was not expecting the conditions she actually found there.

  The bed was shoved up against the corner between the exterior wall and one of the metal interior ones that they simply installed to divide the rooms. The floor was bare treaded metal. There was a toilet crammed into the corner and a rusty sink beside it, and the windows were all barred on the outside.

  He picked up the file from the edge of the sink.

  “Promise you won’t tell anyone I took this for you?” he asked.

  “You have my word,” she said, but she hadn’t decided yet if she was lying or not.

  “There are extra pages between the archives. I made notes and I didn’t want to write on the archive’s copy,” he said. He passed her the folder and she held it to her chest with a nod.

  “Thanks, Marty,” she said. “Be careful, alright?”

  He nodded. For a moment, he looked like he might say something else, but he dropped his gaze before he managed that. It was fine. Let him believe she hadn’t caught it; he’d tell her eventually or he wouldn’t.

  She’d find out anyway.

  The two cathedrals stood on each end of Daelan City, with the Orthodox branch on the eastern side, near the train station. Barghest had been in here before, though never for worship. Even so, it was impossible to grow up in the city without learning the traditions and conduct of the church for yourself.

  “…holding fast to our principals even as the world spirals into damnation,” the priest at the front of the room said. His voice was loud. He was good at projecting it.

  A few eyes even stayed on him as Barghest and Augury entered the room. The custom was to anoint your hands with holy water on the way in, but because Augury couldn’t, Barghest didn’t bother. A good number of eyes turned to look at him, skimmed over him once they saw his breastplate and familiar features, and that was enough for many of them who returned their attentions to the priest.

  Several others, however, fixed their eyes on Augury as she passed the basin. To her credit, she didn’t allow herself to pay them any mind. She and Barghest were respectful; they took a seat in the back of the room, on one of the benches reserved for latecomers.

  “It’s an undeniable trend that the people here debase themselves to lie with demons and defile angels in their pursuit of power,” the priest continued. His eyes fell on Augury for an instant and lingered too long to have been an accident. “In answer to that we must do the best we can to preserve our own lines, not to give up on our own people. There are those who are so sure humanity is coming to a messy end here. Let their demons have their places. Like our Sainted Iaric Kernaghan we are to be tested every day. Even our failures may be forgiven, but he stands as a testament to remain strong. The last vestige memorial of the old way.”

  The words were a closing of sorts, and a chorus of something that became jumbled by the speaking congregation filled the room as they began to stand. Several stood around to speak with one another. One or two approached the priest. Barghest picked out several people in the crowd that stopped to study the stained glass windows along the outside of the cathedral with expressions that indicated far too much interest for them to really care about what they were looking at.

  Barghest got to his feet. Augury moved along with him as if she were his shadow. He noticed her pointedly not making eye contact with anyone else here.

  “Reverend Blackwater,” Barghest said. “A word if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Surely,” he said. His eyes were unusually pale, an off white eggshell against the milk white of his sclera, as he pinned Barghest with pupils that would have seemed only to float in his eyes had Barghest not been so close. “Once you send your mongrel outside.”

  Barghest took an exaggerated look around the room and made eye contact with the priest again.

  “Funny,” he said, “the only dogs I see around are Hellhounds.”

  “I see you’re going to make this difficult,” the Reverend said, sighing. “The Cathedral has a strict rule against cambion inside doors. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask your companion to leave.”

  “Oh,” Augury said, lifting a hand, “if you were worried you were going to have to talk to me, don’t. I’m about to go take a look around and leave Tin Can to ask the questions. We’re playing nice today.”

  She took a couple of steps toward the back of the church. The Reverend turned to grab for her arm, presumably to stop her.

  “Touch the girl and I’ll have you brought in for impeding an investigation,” Barghest said. That stopped him cold. “People are dead, Reverend.”

  Augury turned around, continuing to walk backwards a couple of paces.

  “That was suitably intimidating, but just so you know, I’m an adult, not a girl,” Augury said, giving a little wave before she continued to walk.

  The Reverend turned his eyes back on Barghest’s, a new more stiff note coming into his expression.

  “People are dead and you expect I was involved?” he asked, incredulously.

  “Some sort of ceremonial dagger was involved,” Barghest said. “We’re not sure of the exact details, but we figured someone here might be.”

  “And do you have this dagger?” the Reverend asked, raising a brow.

  “Unfortunately no,” Barghest said, “but we do have the dagger wounds present on every victim.”

  “So people have been stabbed and you come to the church,” the Reverend said, folding his arms. “No. There’s something you’re not telling me, you wouldn’t have barged into my congregation just because of that.”

  “Well, as it so happens, all the victims so far have been the cambion that you seem to love so much,” Barghest said.

  The Reverend scoffed.

  “Oh. Is that all? You said people were dead,” the Reverend said.

  “Given the particulars of the situation, Reverend, I would be a bit more cautious with my choice of words,” Barghest said.

  “Am I under arrest?” the Reverend asked.

  “You’re under investigation,” Barghest said. “You can be under arrest, if that’s necessary.”

  “In the middle of my own sanctum,” the Reverend said, dryly. “How indicative of the downward spiral our city is in, that you would dare. I’ve done nothing wrong. Not all of us are willing to sit down and shut up about the travesty Daelan City has become in recent years.”

  “The only travesty that I see is people hating each other and riling up that hate to the point that some are willing to kill,” Barghest said.

  “I have killed no one,” the Reverend said, “and I highly doubt anyone in my congregation has. Though if that were the case, I still wouldn’t be responsible for what they did once they left these doors.”

  The door at the back of the sanctum opened and Augury emerged, holding a knife by the handle in one gloved hand.

  “This fits the dimensions of the wounds,” she said. “We could be looking at our murder weapon.”

  “That is an athame,” the Reverend said, “and your unholy hands have no right to touch it.”

  “Cute that you think I’d pick up your waste bare-handed,” Augury said, moving over to Barghest and offering it to him hilt-first.

  Barghest took the dagger and weighed it in his hands. He pressed his thumbs against the flat of the blade, and the little bit of give was enough. He handed it back to the Reverend.

  “I’d watch your back if I were you, Reverend,” he said. “It looks like someone is trying to get you in trouble.”

  “This house was built in honor of the ancients,” the Reverend said. “Ther
e are always those who fear their power and always those who are so threatened by their light that they would come into a holy place and start raising chaos.”

  Barghest glanced about the sanctum.

  “And what about before you got here?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure I follow,” the Reverend said.

  “Yeah, something told me you wouldn’t,” Barghest said. “Come on, Augury, I think we’re done here.”

  He turned and walked. Augury took an extra step to catch up with him and he caught her turning her head to look at the Reverend out of his peripheral vision. From the sound of it, he had to guess she was sticking her tongue out at him.

  He pretended he didn’t notice.

  Callum wasn’t sure what he expected as he walked up the metal observatory steps. He threw open the door and strode into the room with his shoulders back, only to come up short at the sight of the woman sitting by the telescope with a notebook open and star charts propped up around her.

  He would know Tess Cassander anywhere. Her curly black hair that fell around her shoulders in a loose tumble. Her dark blue eyes set in a freckled face reminded him of the night sky.

  Everyone in the city knew her. She was too nice a girl to be caught up in something like this. She’d also been right there when it had happened in the first place, and his heart ached to know that it had to have hurt her in the first place.

  “I take it you’re the one investigating the cambion murders?” Tess asked. She was looking into the telescope and making notes, and hadn’t turned to look at him yet.

  “Yes,” he said, taking a step forward. His throat was dry and so he already didn’t sound like himself. The door shut quietly behind him. He watched her cautiously from behind his mask as he approached, and almost didn’t realize her words. When they sunk in, it brought him up short. “Murders? As in more than one?”

  She turned on her stool to face him with her back straight. For a second, he was sure she had to know who he was. She was there when he’d been stabbed. She was there at his funeral, after all. No recognition crossed her face and he let himself start to relax by inches.