Myths and Magic: An Epic Fantasy and Speculative Fiction Boxed Set

by K.N. Lee

  Yes, that was it. She’d been rattled, shot, and kidnapped. That would mess with anyone’s head. Their love was strong and steady. It would return. She locked onto that thought, repeating it over and over, as he stepped out of his boxers, rolled on a condom, and thrust into her.

  34

  The phone rang, dragging Rowan out of a restless sleep. She’d been dreaming of Seth and mutilated girls with glowing eyes. The sky had yet to lighten and she didn’t bother looking at the clock on Ben’s side of the bed. It was still night. The phone rang again, and she picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “We’ve got another one,” Brown said, curt and to the point, which could only mean another dead girl. “The Sister is on her way to pick you up.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  The line went dead, and for a moment she wondered if she’d dreamt the call.

  “Who was that?” Ben asked, rolling over to face her, his eyes only half open.

  “The FBI.” She sat up, suddenly awake. Brown had never called in the middle of the night, and a third body was bad. She should have stayed up and worked on deciphering that scrap of text or reading the victim profiles. Maybe she’d have seen something, stopped the guy, and saved this girl. “I have to go.”

  “It’s three in the morning.”

  She leaned over and kissed him, lingering over the taste of his lips. The memory of their lovemaking flashed through her. She’d been disconnected and her heart ached at that. A part of her regretted having sex with Ben while in that state of mind, while another part flashed to the angry, tantalizing kiss with Shannon then to Seth and the sexually charged electricity that snapped through her. No, think of Ben and how having sex last night was the first step to reconnecting.

  Everything had somehow become so complicated.

  She eased from the bed. “I have to go. It’s my job.”

  “Right.” Ben rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Their conversation was done.

  Rowan slipped into the closet, closed the door, and turned on the light. As much as they’d just had sex, her two-day absence and their previous argument over her job had cut a wound in his spirit that couldn’t be healed in one night. And her leaving right now only made it worse.

  She dressed and gave Ben one last look. He refused to make eye contact, so she went into the living room to her desk. She packed the case files and the books she thought could offer a lead in identifying the text, then left.

  Sister Joe waited for her on the street in her old tan Chevy. It belonged to the school, for those few sisters who still lived and taught on campus, and was likely only driven by Sister Joe when the FBI called.

  The small nun with her ebony skin and her tight salt-and-pepper curls glanced at Rowan as she got in. The nun’s mouth was set in a grim line and she pulled into the street with ease, since the day’s congestion wouldn’t peak for hours.

  “So,” Joe said, “how was your time off?”

  Which was Joe’s way of asking where Rowan had been. Ben had said everyone had called for her. That had to include the school as well. She hadn’t missed any classes, but she usually saw Joe every day, and while the Sister would never admit it — at least not directly — she had probably been worried.

  “It was…” Stressful? Insane? Bizarre? Joe might be able to handle the thought of an alternate reality better than Ben, but Rowan didn’t want to press her luck. If anything slipped out to Brown, he’d be forced to pull her off the case and demand she take a psychological evaluation. Her career as an occult criminologist would be over before it began. Who wanted a crazy criminologist?

  Besides, in the car, looking out at buildings that were normal and people who appeared human, the alternate reality seemed more like a dream or a hallucination that she wanted to put behind her. “It was thoughtful.”

  “Have you had any more bad dreams?”

  “No.” She said it too fast. Joe didn’t react, but she was too observant not to have noticed. She was also too polite to comment. She would, however, insinuate it into conversation in the future.

  They turned in to a park, passing through a massive wrought-iron arch. Trees stretched above their heads, creating splotchy moonlight that flickered in the car as they drove. Ahead, emergency lights flashed off cars and trees and the road. Rowan couldn’t deny the small thrill of going to her first crime scene — at least in this world. In a way, it was inappropriate, but it confirmed to her that this was what she was supposed to do.

  And maybe, just maybe, she’d see something that the crime scene photographers had missed in previous scenes and help catch this guy.

  There were things she wanted to look at that she couldn’t with the photos. Not that the photographer had missed anything, but she knew what to focus on. A mark, rock, bush, flower, or tree — unnoticed or believed to be part of the natural surroundings — that might be significant from an occult perspective. It wasn’t always possible to determine those things from reports and photos. The average investigator didn’t think to notice things like tree and plant species.

  Joe stopped behind an unmarked black car. It looked like FBI issue, but could conceivably belong to any number of people at the scene. The M.E.’s van was still on site, which meant the body might not have been removed yet.

  Brown knocked on the driver’s side window and Sister Joe rolled it down.

  “The M.E. arrived later than expected, and CSU is still working on their preliminaries. Just sit tight.” He walked away.

  Rowan rushed from the car after him. “The body’s still here? If the murders are ritualistic, it would be nice to see the scene the way the murderer intended it.”

  “It would be nice?” Brown crossed his arms. His expression remained neutral and she couldn’t tell if he was considering her request or not.

  “You know what I mean.” She matched his crossed arms.

  As a contractor, she wasn’t even supposed to be at a crime scene. He was obviously planning on breaking protocol. The question was, by how much?

  “Photographs can’t completely capture the sense of a scene,” she said.

  He stepped close, giving her the look, which in the dark was more effective even with him being half a head shorter than her. “Sense? As much as the FBI thinks the OCU investigates frou-frou crimes, there will be no frou-frou investigation techniques. Not from my agents and particularly not from my contractors.”

  She wanted to ask if he really thought ritual mutilations were frou-frou but bit her tongue. She knew what he meant. It was loud and clear. He wanted an investigation beyond reproach so his project — his baby — would continue to get funding.

  Fine, no sensing anything. A specialist’s perspective then, one that the photographers didn’t have.

  “Not another word,” he said before she could even open her mouth with a renewed argument. “You can see the scene once the body is removed, CSU gives the okay, and everyone is gone. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Swell.” She headed back to the car. It stung that he had to sneak her into a crime scene, but she understood office politics enough to appreciate his efforts.

  “So?” Josephine asked as she got back into the car.

  “Hurry up and wait.” She settled back in her seat. She didn’t look to see the Sister’s expression. It would be calm and impassive, as it always was when she disagreed with her.

  Joe had told her before that she thought Rowan was impulsive and headstrong, traits not to be encouraged in an investigator, especially an occult investigator. The little nun wouldn’t go into details about why, but Rowan got the impression this was a lesson learned from personal and painful experience.

  “I just want to catch this guy,” she said into the quiet of the car.

  Joe took her hand and squeezed it. “I know.”

  Outside, she could hear the rumble of idling engines, scraps of muted conversations, and the periodic rustle of leaves as a breeze swept through the trees.

  Sighing, Rowan eased a book a
nd a flashlight from her satchel. She didn’t care which one. The probability that any of them contained the scrap of information she needed to break the case was equal for all of them. She’d already gone through the books she thought most likely and was now down to desperately searching for something to strike her memory.

  The table of contents of this one told her the book was a history of occult practices. Not promising.

  Her gaze wandered to the park and the flashing lights dancing along the ancient trunks. Leaves covered the ground. That would make it difficult for crime scene investigators to collect evidence. A wind gust could toss them around then resettle them. Cops moved back and forth from the crime scene to the road, hard at work. Somewhere between a row of massive trees and beyond a slight rise, another girl lay dead, mutilated.

  Rowan didn’t really want to see the body. She’d made herself go to the morgue before she began her Ph.D., just to see if she could handle a corpse, and hadn’t found it too bad. It was the smell that bothered her the most. It clung to the back of her throat and the inside of her mouth, making her want to gargle all the time. But there was a distinct difference between a body processed and washed in a sterile environment — even one in the middle of an autopsy — and one still at the scene.

  As much as Brown didn’t believe in senses and instinct, they were real, and even with the crime scene photos, she could feel the violence that clung to the victims.

  Her thoughts wandered to Ben, the memory of his hands on her body making her smile. But the next thought was of Seth and the electricity between them.

  She shivered.

  Seth invaded her thoughts and emotions, swarming her. Everything was connected to him, her job, her life, and she couldn’t figure out how it had happened so fast. She’d just met him, didn’t even know him, but had enough of an idea to know he was trouble.

  It was a crush. Nothing more.

  Ben was dedicated and true, and she was in it for the long haul.

  Seth was merely a distraction. He and his temptation would pass and, life would go back to normal.

  But a part of her didn’t believe that. A decision would have to be made and, in her gut, she knew eventually she was going to have to pick between Ben and her career. Seth had to have sensed her dilemma. It was the only way he could have insinuated himself into her thoughts and made her doubt her relationship.

  “Deep thoughts?” Joe asked.

  Rowan glanced over and realized the sky was beginning to lighten. Hurry up and wait hadn’t been an exaggeration. They’d been sitting in the car for hours, and she’d spent her time thinking about Ben and Seth. Some investigator she was. She could have gone over the victim profiles and half of her books in that time.

  “What are your speculations?” Joe asked.

  “I’m not certain.” She couldn’t very well say that a man from another reality was killing the girls. She had no proof and she had no motive. All she had was crazy Manny sort of describing Seth and a bad feeling. How very frou-frou.

  “I’m pretty sure we’re not looking at an attempted exorcism,” Joe said.

  The mutilated bodies made that clear. Not that crazy people — misguided, she corrected herself — didn’t mutilate in an attempt at what they believed was banishing a demon from its host, but the nature of the mutilation suggested otherwise. With the chests ripped open and some of the organs damaged or missing, it was more likely a ritual sacrifice or even black market organ theft.

  “Perhaps this person is particularly zealous.” Rowan was playing devil’s advocate, but they needed to eliminate the obvious before moving to the bizarre. Which was ironic. Most people would consider exorcism, even ritual sacrifice, to be bizarre.

  That, however, was commonplace compared to the directions they could go, and after possibly traveling to an alternate reality, she wondered how strange things could really get.

  “I doubt an exorcism of any degree would cause mutilation to this extent. I would also like to rule out demon worship.”

  Rowan sat forward. “Why?”

  “Again, too violent. Besides, there are only a few cases in all of recorded history of human sacrifice by a satanic or demonic cult.”

  Through the side mirror, she saw Brown march toward them.

  “And as far as the American public is concerned, there has never been a ritual sacrifice on American soil.”

  “And I’d like to keep it that way,” Brown said. He leaned in the driver’s side window. “How about witchcraft? It’s a month from Halloween, and we’re just a hop, skip, and a jump from Salem.”

  “It would be a serious perversion of the Wiccan religion,” Rowan said. “Wicca is non-violent. Most perversions of it involve sacrificing chickens or goats.”

  “Not a far cry from human,” Brown said.

  “Sure, and there are verses in the Bible that talk about burnt offerings.” Rowan struggled to not roll her eyes at him. “We could just as easily say that this is a perversion of Leviticus.”

  “Actually, dear,” Joe said, “Leviticus only asks for creatures that are male and perfect.”

  “Well, that rules out most of the human male population.”

  Brown rolled his eyes at them. “So what have we got?”

  “It could be Aztec. They believed in human sacrifice and the removal or mutilation of organs,” Rowan said, getting out of the car. “There are other occult practices that involve human sacrifice or mutilation. Or it could be someone who’s psychologically imbalanced.”

  “Crazy.” Brown opened the car door for Joe.

  “However,” Joe said as she, too, stepped from the car, “since the text on the paper hasn’t been recognized as any known language, I still believe we’re looking at an ancient or mystic text.”

  “I concur,” Rowan said.

  “You concur.” Brown snorted. “Well, concur yourself into a clue. The press is all over this one.”

  Rowan sighed. “It was bound to happen sometime.”

  “Doesn’t mean I like it. Come on. CSU is done.” He headed toward the rise where she had watched everyone come and go. “It’s your turn to come up with something.”

  35

  Brown led Sister Joe and Rowan through the trees and over the rise to the crime scene. Although after watching cops and the M.E. tramp back and forth all night, she didn’t really need the escort.

  Their footsteps crunched in the fallen leaves, loud against the soft voices of those few who were still around. From her vantage at the top, she could see a police line around a grove of cedars. Beyond were a few reporters, but since the body had been removed, the spectacle was over. They had their sound bites, got their thirty seconds of footage, and had moved on to tell their story.

  She doubted they’d tell the real story. They couldn’t. No one knew the real story yet.

  She drew her attention to the grove, trying to remember the significance of cedar, except she couldn’t think of anything. Not about cedar, or anything else.

  The chilly air bit her cheeks, yet she sweated under her coat. Her heart thumped with slow, enunciated beats.

  The body wasn’t there.

  It was not there.

  There was nothing to be nervous about. This was what she wanted. There would be little blood, little of anything in fact. The girls were always dumped after their murders and the killer was either forensics savvy or very lucky.

  Still, she could sense the violence.

  Damn it. It was just her imagination. She sucked in a breath. The air smelled of crushed cedar. It reminded her of home and playing in the Gorge, a provincial park on the outskirts of town.

  That thought grounded her, brought her back to herself. She was an occult criminologist. She’d worked cases before, and at the moment it didn’t matter that she couldn’t remember any specifics. There were books to remind her of those things later. All she had to do was concentrate on remembering the details, something that told her why the killer picked this location to dispose of the body. Aside from its obvious
seclusion.

  A grove of dense cedars was a pretty good place to hide a body. However, a grove in a park in the center of town wasn’t so great. If the city hadn’t already been on high alert, a dog could have accidentally found the body. If one didn’t, then the smell of decomposition would have drawn someone’s attention sooner rather than later. All the other girls were dumped in parks as well. They were all close to St. Anne’s, presumably close to where the killer had abducted them.

  “You all right?” Brown asked.

  Rowan shook her head more to clear her thoughts and bring her back to the scene than communicate with her boss. “Just thinking.”

  “Unhun.” His tone was clear that he thought she was afraid to see the scene.

  He wasn’t all that wrong. But she wasn’t going to admit it. She eased between the branches and stepped into the grove, into partial artificial daylight. Work lights, set up around the perimeter, showed everything in glaring fluorescent detail. The smell of cedar was more intense from all the people tromping about. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and didn’t move from the edge, letting her eyes do the work.

  Nothing out of the ordinary. Not a thing that would suggest a girl had been tossed here and left like garbage, save for the work lights and the dozens of footprints in the moist earth.

  “So?” Brown asked.

  “I don’t see anything.” She hated to admit it. Brown might never let her see another crime scene again save for in photos, but there just wasn’t anything to note, not mundane and certainly not occult.

  She glanced at Joe, who shook her head.

  “I don’t think CSU got much from this one, either,” Brown said.

  Well, at least she was just as helpful as CSU. Maybe she’d notice something in the photos. How ironic. Now she was wishing for photos.

  Joe patted her shoulder. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  “Sure.”

  They left Brown at the scene and got back into Joe’s beat-up tan Chevy. She pulled out of the park, and the thrill Rowan had felt when she’d first arrived was replaced with a heavy weight.