Trafficking in Demons

by Michael Angel

  “Shall we begin with the murder scene?” Galen asked.

  I shook my head. “Let’s hold up for a second. I want to make sure that the house’s security cameras don’t catch us in the process. Liam, the last time you were in my world, do remember how you were able to, ah, work with my world’s ‘lightning’?”

  “Certainly,” the fayleene stag acknowledged. “Your world channels that force into little snake-like lines that are easy for me to sense and manipulate.”

  As it happened, a little outdoor electrical box had been installed right next to the driveway. I knelt and flipped open the clamshell lid to expose a pair of three-pronged outlets. I called Liam over.

  “If you can do it safely, I want to know if there’s power running, either to the interior or exterior of the house.”

  Liam lowered his head until the very tip of one of his antlers touched the box. His eyes and antlers glowed for a split second like the sun as it peeked over the morning’s horizon. Then he raised his head, backed up a step, and motioned off to one side.

  “There’s no power going to that dwelling at all,” he declared. “The lightning has been dammed up at that thicket over there.”

  Curious, I went over to the area Liam pointed out. The ‘thicket’ in question was a huge bush of chaparral broom, a seriously drought-resistant shrub that a lot of Southern California gardeners used to fill out a landscape. I walked around the woody body of the plant until I spotted a second, larger gray box and flipped it open.

  As I expected, it was the house’s main circuit breaker. The two columns of shiny black switches had been labeled ‘Interior’ and ‘Exterior’. That included four separate switches between the columns marked as ‘Security System’. All the switches had been set to the ‘OFF’ position.

  It made sense, I realized. Once Detective Vega had been told about my discovery of a security camera system, she’d have had the power shut off. That way, her officers could search for additional cameras without either getting shocked or setting off additional alarms. And given the homeowner’s profession, she might have been worried about active booby-traps.

  At least it made my job easier for a change.

  “Let’s start in the backyard.”

  My friends followed me as I hiked up the slope and around to the house’s side yard. Galen’s hooves made a muffled clop-clop as we crossed the thick turf. Liam’s lighter step made no noise by comparison. Neither did Shaw’s furry paws, though the griffin’s eyes darted back and forth, alert for any danger we might encounter.

  I brought us up to the spot on the back lawn where I’d first spotted the markings in the underbrush. Both Liam and Galen bent forward and squinted at the white lines. Shaw reared up on his hind paws for a moment, peering through the tree line with a leonine scowl.

  “This part of thy world is sparse in vegetation and people,” the griffin remarked, as he came back down on all fours with a thump. “Dayna, my nose says there is naught but death here. If there is no threat upon the ground, I would serve thee best if I watched for danger whilst aloft.”

  “I like the idea,” I said. “But ‘sparse’ isn’t the same as ‘uninhabited’. I don’t want you seen, and the movie banner trick we used before isn’t going to work all the way out here.”

  “Fear not, yon Wizard and I have prepared for this.”

  Galen looked up for a moment. “That is correct. I have created an illusion charm specifically for Grimshaw. So long as he wears it around his neck, he will appear as no more than a common house sparrow.”

  Liam chuckled as Galen dug into one of his jacket pockets, looking for the item. “Our warrior drake, turned into a common house sparrow? That is a rather amusing turn of fate, is it not?”

  “I shall only look like a sparrow, knave!” Grimshaw growled. “Lest thou forget, I still retain my talons and beak, enough to turn any cervine into a welcome and long-delayed side dish!”

  “Now, now,” I quickly reassured the griffin. “None of us doubt your power, Shaw.”

  Galen finally came up with what he’d been looking for. The Wizard draped a sturdy leather cord over the drake’s neck. A polished bronze amulet dangled from the cord, shimmering with barely-contained magical charge.

  “I have already taken the liberty of activating the charm,” Galen said. “Be aware that it only works when you are at least twenty yards distant from an observer, so don’t be tempted to investigate things too closely.”

  Shaw snorted. “Mine own eyes are keen, not watery. I need not peer at things up close like a freshly whelped deerling.”

  With that parting shot, the griffin spread his mighty wings. A couple of massive beats later, he launched himself into the air. I watched as he ascended into the blue sky. With a shimmer of light, his massive, golden leonine form suddenly shrank in size and changed to the shape of any common wren or sparrow. No one would look twice at it, not even a professional birdwatcher.

  I let out a whistle of appreciation. “You do good work, Wizard.”

  “Why, thank you,” Galen said, allowing a smile to cross his face for a moment. “Now, as for the first mystery of the day, I believe that I have an answer. The pair of white markings in the underbrush are made of a singularly unremarkable, and yet highly indicative substance: salt.”

  “Salt?” I repeated, in disbelief. “That’s it?”

  “Not quite. There are definite signs of enchantment. For example, each line has been made to be resistant to water, wind, and scuffing.”

  “But why salt? It just seems so…I don’t know, commonplace.”

  “Salt’s a substance that is very magically useful,” Liam said, from where he was busy lining up his antlers along one of the lines. “Not to mention extremely tasty.”

  “To be precise, it is extremely magically malleable,” Galen corrected him. “Salt is a crystalline substance, meaning that it can easily retain magical energy. Or disrupt it.”

  “Which purpose was the salt used for here?” I asked.

  In answer, Galen turned to his companion. “Liam, your senses are keener than mine in this area. What say you as to the nature of the magic in this demesne?”

  The Protector of the Forest closed his eyes and murmured a couplet of Gaelic-sounding words. His antlers glowed for a second time. And yet, when Liam opened his eyes, his expression was slightly troubled and confused.

  “It is strange,” Liam murmured. His mouth moved as if literally chewing over what to tell us. “This demesne…it is bounded by human magic. The spells in place are quite old, but extremely strong. But the magic laid upon the lines of salt was cast recently. Very recently, in fact.”

  “By ‘recent’,” I asked, “do you mean within the last month? Last week?”

  “No. If I had to guess, these lines have been laid down within the last two or three days.”

  The news settled in my stomach with a little ‘thump’. No way was that a coincidence. Whoever had put these lines in place had done so within forty-eight hours of Mose Wainwright’s horrific murder.

  And my unsettled feeling only got worse with Galen’s next question.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The centaur shifted his weight between his hooves as he asked, “By chance, would this newer magic be of human origin?”

  The confused look on Liam’s cute deer face only deepened. “That’s just it, Wizard. I can’t tell. At first, it seems human…but then it is not. It seems to me quite familiar, like a taste or scent from one’s days as a fawn, but it eludes me for now.”

  I folded my arms and let out a breath.

  “None of this really tells us all that much,” I remarked. “What do either of you think we should look at next?”

  Galen spoke up immediately. “I have, as you put it, a ‘hunch’. If you would hand me your medallion, perhaps we can investigate this magical boundary.”

  “And I will follow this strange spoor in the opposite direction,” Liam declared. “It leads towards that large human dwelling. I would like to see where
it ends.”

  I threw a glance towards the Wainwright house. The back door remained propped open on its doorstop. If this had been anyone else outside of the LAPD, I’d have ruled the intrusion out as a matter of course. But the crime scene had been thoroughly examined and cleaned, and I did need more information.

  “All right,” I said, as Galen’s hooves crunched their way through the underbrush in the direction of the tree line. “Just be careful.”

  Liam bobbed his antlers to me and set off as I moved to Galen’s side. I hurriedly took off my medallion and handed it to the big centaur. His brow furrowed as we drew close to the spot where I’d been hit with the liquid nitrogen blast of cold.

  The Wizard sidestepped until he stood between the two lines of salt. Holding my medallion out in the palm of one hand he slowly leaned forward. I found myself grimacing, anticipating the explosion of icy agony Galen would soon feel.

  He stepped forward a pace and repeated his gesture. I moved to the centaur’s flank and confirmed that his hand had passed the tree line. Galen threw me a glance. My frown spoke volumes.

  “I don’t understand,” I muttered. “I didn’t imagine what happened with that medallion.”

  “Rest assured that I would never doubt your veracity,” Galen said. “Rather, this conflates perfectly with my hunch.”

  “That being?”

  “These two lines represent a passageway. Specifically, a passageway meant to breach the protective wall of spells that surround this place.” The Wizard took a breath as if he were about to jump into water of unknown depth. “I require only one more test to see if my hunch is one of reasonably high accuracy.”

  “What do you–” I began.

  Still holding the medallion in his outstretched palm, Galen sidestepped to the right, just outside the two lines of salt. A crackle that reminded me of a moth meeting a bug zapper rent the air. The centaur’s face contorted as he gasped for breath.

  “Galen!” I cried.

  With a convulsive movement, he threw the medallion from his hand. The Wizard staggered back a step, cradling one hand in the other. He carefully turned his palm back over and examined it, as if expecting to find a burn mark. I knew exactly how he felt.

  “I am undamaged,” he reassured me. “That reaction was…quite remarkable.”

  “I told you it wasn’t a pleasant experience.”

  “Indubitably. And now I believe that I have solved this part of the puzzle in front of us.”

  He paused for a moment and reached overhead, snapping off a three-foot section of branch. Then he leaned forward again and managed to hook the medallion’s chain with it, dragging it back across the border marked by the trees. I did my best not to flinch as I knelt and touched the medallion. When nothing painful happened, I scooped it up.

  “You have my attention,” I said truthfully. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Someone possessing the power of a wizard created these wards. Even given how old these are, they possess quite a sting.”

  “Understatement of the year, Galen. But what exactly are these wards?”

  “Magical barriers, designed to prevent the passage of any magic not allowed by the creator. I have been working on a variant of these for your protection,” the Wizard said, as he patted his chest pocket meaningfully. “I still need to place the magical charge, but elected to wait until we saw what might await us here.”

  “Not a bad idea.” I craned my neck to look up and down the property line as best I could. “So, these wrap around the entire property?”

  “It appears so. I will likely ask Liam to verify my findings. A fayleene nose is much more precise than my wizard’s eye.”

  I irritably kicked at a bare spot of dirt by the base of one tree. “This just replaces one question with another. Why would Wainwright have these damned things up? Unless he’s the one casting wizard-level spells.”

  “Alas, my mind has not penetrated that mystery as of yet. Nor can I yet speculate as to the identity of the second high-powered wizard present.”

  “Wait, what was that?” I asked, startled. “Now you’re saying that we have two Andeluvian wizards poking around in Los Angeles?”

  “That would be in accordance with the evidence. Only someone of equivalent magical strength could foil the spellcraft already in place. Whoever this was, they were able to breach the wards and use the salt crystals to nullify and hold open a passageway through them.”

  “Maybe they wanted access to the Wainwright house. Or the missing weapon based on your Andeluvian cannon.”

  Galen considered that for a moment. “That would accord with the evidence. Our mystery person breached the magical wards around this property. They slip through, grab a hold of this version of my weapon, and use it to eliminate Mose Wainwright.”

  “Possibly,” I said, though my voice still carried an irritated tone. “It doesn’t explain the mojitos, though.”

  “Pray tell, what is a ‘moh-hee-toes?’”

  “It’s a kind of drink. It was clear that before he was shot, Wainwright was busy entertaining the person who shot him.” I squinted back towards the trees. Then back at the two lines. A quiet click resounded in my head as a couple things fell into place. “All right. I know one thing for sure now.”

  “Might I inquire as to your insight?”

  I slipped my medallion back around my neck. My involvement with Andeluvia had gotten so personal that it felt strange when I didn’t have it on. Almost as if I were naked, somehow. Vulnerable.

  “Whoever used these lines of salt to hold open the breach in the magical wards was human.”

  “Liam sounded like he was unsure of that,” Galen objected.

  “I misspoke. What I meant to say was, whoever made these lines was either human, or at least in human form. Look at the precise way the salt lines were made. Manipulating a fine, sandy substance like that requires human-like hands. A fayleene’s hooves couldn’t have made these. Even a griffin would find it difficult to handle multiple handfuls of sand without spilling any. And there’s one more thing.”

  I moved to stand between the two straight lines before I went on.

  “See how there’s only a few inches of clearance on either side of my shoulders? There’s no way that the equine portion of a centaur would fit through a breach this narrow.”

  “Your observations are astute as always,” Galen admitted. “This was definitely a human-sized passageway.”

  “If you and I agree, then I need to ask for a magical favor while we’re out here. Remember the spell you used to locate the bullets that killed Good King Benedict?”

  The Wizard nodded. “Of course. I employed it at the Grove of the Willows.”

  “That’s the one. I still want to find a slug from our missing weapon. It has to be somewhere among these trees.”

  “I shall endeavor to locate at least one,” Galen said, as he rubbed his chin in thought. “This shall take a little more work. I’ll have to be careful not to trip the magic wards from this side. Dayna, to be on the safe side, I must ask you to maintain some distance from me as I work.”

  “No problem. I need to check and see how Liam is faring.”

  The Wizard immediately turned to face the tree line, murmuring magical incantations under his breath. I let him be and started to pick my way back down the slope of tangled roots and vines. I didn’t spot the Protector of the Forest up ahead of me, but maybe the fayleene had followed a lead around to the side yard.

  Just as I began angling my path that way, my phone rang. I dug it out of my jacket pocket and checked the display. For the first time in a while, the name shown brought a smile to my face as I tapped ‘Answer’.

  “Hey there cariño,” I said. Esteban let out that throaty laugh that still managed to give me a warm thrill when I heard it.

  “Hey there yourself,” he replied. Judging by the sound of his breathing and the noise in the background, he was somewhere bustling with people, and he was on the move. “I know you’re off duty today, b
ut do you have a spare minute?”

  I finally stepped out of the underbrush and back onto the manicured lawn. “I’m, uh, not exactly ‘off duty’, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think I do.” His voice dropped a bit as he added, “Wainwright case, am I right?”

  “As my friends from faraway might say, you just ‘struck in the gold’.”

  “You’ll probably appreciate this, then,” he said. I waited a moment as I heard him push through a set of doors. The sounds of a busy office were replaced by that of street traffic. “I’m downtown at HQ. Just got out of a roundtable with several of our guys, and heard some things I don’t think Vega has shared with you yet.”

  Alanzo couldn’t have baited the hook for me any better.

  “I’m all ears, Alanzo.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Okay,” Esteban said. “For starters, they finally ran a full background check on your murder victim. Turns out that Wainwright has an interesting background. Very interesting.

  “Mose Wainwright’s been deployed multiple times in Germany and the Middle East, as part of a special weapons deployment group attached to the USMC. He also racked up multiple disciplinary actions, but nothing serious enough to warrant a court martial. Bar fights, mostly. He finished his active duty service twelve years ago. Left with an honorable discharge.”

  I paused to brush away dirt and stray pine needles from my clothes. “Okay, so he was a bit of a scrapper during his enlistment. Doesn’t sound all that out of the ordinary to me.”

  “Ah, but this is where it gets good. Shortly after his discharge, he was nailed by the FBI and sentenced to eight years up in Pelican Bay.”

  “Maximum security? What did our guy do?”

  “Shot and wounded a federal agent while resisting arrest. And what, you might ask, were the federales originally bringing him in for? Illegal arms trafficking.”

  That stopped me. “You think he’s back in the game?”

  “It’s what Vega suspects, but the truth may be less than black-and-white here. On the surface, it looks like he went clean and left the biz. Someone managed to wrangle him the proper permits, so he’s been operating legally as an exotic weapons dealer and appraiser. Care to guess who his main client has been since he left prison?”