Magic Bites

by Ilona Andrews

  “Not for long.”

  He thought about that for a while. “So happens I could use you,” he said.

  That was unexpected. “Why the hell would you want me?”

  He gave me what he must have considered his cryptic smile. It reminded me of a grizzly awakened in midwinter. “I have my reasons. Here’s what I’ll do for you. You get a Mutual Aid sticker on your ID, which should open you some doors. You get to use Greg’s office. You get to look at the open file and police report.”

  Open file meant I would get the case as it came to Greg: bare facts and no or little findings. I would have to retrace Greg’s steps. It was bloody more than I expected.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “The file doesn’t leave the building,” he said. “No copies, no quotes. You’ll make a complete report to me and only to me.”

  “I’m bound by the Guild’s disclosure of information act,” I said.

  He waved it aside. “It’s taken care of.”

  Since when? This knight-protector was going far out of his way to help a worthless merc. Why? People who did me favors made me nervous. On the other hand, it was bad manners to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if you’re getting it from an overweight cracker in a fringe shirt.

  “Officially you have no status with me,” he said. “Screw up and you’re persona non grata.”

  “Understood.”

  “We’re done,” he said.

  Outside the receptionist waved me over and asked for my ID. I gave it to her and watched as she affixed a small metallic Mutual Aid sticker to it, an official “stamp” of the Order’s interest in my humble work. Some doors would open to me and more would slam in my face. Oh, well.

  “Don’t mind Ted,” the receptionist said, returning my ID. “He’s harsh sometimes. My name’s Maxine.”

  “My name’s Kate. Would you point out the late knight-diviner’s office to me?”

  “I’d be glad to. The last one on the right.”

  “Thank you.”

  She smiled and went back to her work. Peachy keen.

  I reached Greg’s office and stood in the doorway. It didn’t look right.

  A square window spilled daylight onto the floor, a narrow desk, and two old chairs. To the left, a deep bookshelf ran the length of the wall, threatening to collapse under the weight of meticulously arranged volumes. Four metal file cabinets as tall as me towered at the opposite wall. Stacks of files and papers crowded in the corners, occupied the chairs, and choked the desk.

  Someone had gone through Greg’s papers. They’d done it carefully. The place wasn’t ransacked, but someone had looked at each of Greg’s files and didn’t return them to their proper place, instead choosing to stack them on the first horizontal surface available. These were Greg’s private papers. For some reason, the idea of someone touching Greg’s things, going over them, reading his thoughts after his death bothered me.

  I stepped through the doorway and felt a protective spell close behind me. Arcane symbols ignited with a pale orange glow, forming complex patterns on the gray carpet. Long twisted lines connected the symbols, crisscrossing and winding about the room, their intersections marked by radiant red dots. Greg had sealed the room with his own blood, and more, he had keyed it to me, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see the spell. Now any magic I did in this room would stay in it, leaving no echo beyond the door. A spell of this complexity would take weeks to set up. Judging by the intensity of the glowing lines, it would absorb one hell of an echo. Why would he do that?

  I walked between the files to the bookshelf. It held an old edition of the Almanac of Mystic Creatures, an even older version of the Arcane Dictionary, a Bible, a beautiful edition of the Koran bound in leather and engraved with gold, several other religious volumes, and a thin copy of Spenser’s Faerie Queene.

  I made my way to the metal cabinets. As expected, they were empty. The shelves were marked in Greg’s own unique code, which I couldn’t read. It didn’t matter really. I picked up the closest stack and carefully slid the first file onto the metal frame.

  Two hours later, I finished with the papers on the floor and the chairs and was ready to start on the stacks covering the desk when a large manila envelope stopped me. It lay on top of the central stack, so my name, written with black marker in Greg’s cursive, was plainly visible.

  I lowered the stacks to the floor, pulled up a chair, and emptied the envelope onto the desk’s surface. Two photographs and a letter. In the first photo two couples stood side by side. I recognized my father, a hulking, red-haired man, enormous shoulders spread wide, one arm around a woman who had to be my mother. Some children retain memories of their deceased parents, a shadow of a voice, a hint of a scent, an image. I recalled nothing of her, as if she had never existed. My father kept no photographs of her—it must have been too painful for him—and I knew only what he told me. She was pretty, he had said, and she had long blond hair. I stared at the woman in the photograph. She was short and petite. Her features matched her build, well-formed, delicate, but devoid of fragility. She stood assured, with easy, natural poise, clothed in a kind of magical allure and perfectly aware of her power. She was beautiful.

  Both he and Greg told me I resembled her, but no matter how hard I studied her image, I could see no resemblance. My features were bolder. My mouth was larger and not pouting by any stretch of the imagination. I did manage to inherit her eye color, dark brown, but my eyes had an odd cut, almond-shaped, slightly elongated. And my skin was a shade darker. If I overloaded on eyeliner and mascara, I could easily pass for a gypsy.

  There was more to it than that—my mother’s face had feminine gentleness. Mine didn’t, at least not when compared to hers. If we were to stand side by side in a room full of people, I wouldn’t get a single glance. And if someone had stopped to chat me up, she could’ve stolen him with a single smile.

  Pretty . . . Yeah. Nice understatement, Dad.

  On the other hand, if the same people had to pick one of us to kick a bad guy in the kneecap, I’d get the vote, no problem.

  Next to my mother and father, Greg stood by a lovely Asian woman. Anna. His first wife. Unlike my parents, those two stood a little apart, each maintaining a barely perceptible distance as if their individualities would strike a spark if they reached for one another. Greg’s eyes were mournful.

  I put the photograph face down on the desk.

  The other photo was of me, about nine or ten years old, diving into a lake from the branches of a giant poplar. I didn’t know he had it or even when it was taken.

  I read the letter, a few sparse lines on the white piece of paper, a part of Spenser’s poem.

  “One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

  But came the waves and washed it away:

  Again I wrote it with a second hand,

  But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.”

  Below four words were written in Greg’s blood.

  Amehe

  Tervan

  Senehe

  Ud

  The words blazed with red fire. A powerful spasm gripped me. My lungs constricted, the room blurred, and through the dense fog the beating of my heart sounded loud like the toll of a church bell. A tangle of forces swirled around me, catching me in a twisted mess of slippery, elastic power currents. I reached out, and gripped them, and they carried me forth, far into the amalgam of light and sound. The light permeated me and burst within my mind, sending a myriad of sparks through my skin. The blood in my veins luminesced like molten metal.

  Lost. Lost in the whirlwind of light.

  My mouth opened, struggling to release a word. It wouldn’t come and I thought I would die, and then I said it, pouring my power into the weak sound.

  “Hesaad.” Mine.

  The world stopped spinning and I found my place in it. The four words towered before me. I had to say them. I held my power and said the words, willing them, forcing them to become mine.

  “Amehe. Tervan. Senehe.
Ud.”

  The flow of power ebbed. I was staring at the white piece of paper. The words were gone and a small puddle of crimson spread across the sheet. I touched it and felt the prickling of magic. My blood. My nose was bleeding.

  Pulling a dressing from my pocket, where I always carried some, I pressed it against my nose and leaned back. I’d burn the bandages later. The watch on my wrist said 12:17 p.m. Somehow within those few instants I had lost almost an hour and a half.

  The four words of power. Obey, Kill, Protect, and Die. Words so primal, so dangerous, so powerful that they commanded the raw magic itself. Nobody knew how many of them there were, where they came from, or why they held such enormous hold over magic. Even people who had never used magic recognized their meaning and were subject to their power, as if the words were a part of some ancient racial memory we all carried.

  It wasn’t enough to merely know them; one had to own them. When it came to acquiring power words, there were no second chances. You either conquered them or you died trying, which explained why so few among the magic workers could wield them. Once you made them yours, they belonged to you forever. They had to be wielded with great precision and using them took a chunk of power that left the caster near exhaustion. Greg and my father both warned me that the power words could be resisted, but so far I hadn’t had a chance to use them against an opponent that did. They were the last resort, when all else failed.

  Now I had six words. Four given to me by Greg and two others: Mine and Release. My father taught them to me long ago. I was twelve and I almost died making them mine. This time it had been too easy.

  Maybe the power of the blood grew with age. I wished Greg was alive so I could ask him.

  I glanced to the floor. The orange lines of Greg’s ward had grown so dim, I could barely see them. They had absorbed everything they could.

  The words clamored in my head, shifting and tossing, trying to find their place. Greg’s last gift. More precious than anything he could have given me.

  Gradually I became aware of someone watching me. I looked up and saw a lean black man in the doorway. He had smiled at me when I passed by his office some three hours earlier.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “Tripped a residual ward,” I mumbled, the rag still covering my nose. “Happens. I’m okay.”

  He eyed me. “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” Okay, I’m an incompetent moron, go away now.

  “I brought you Greg’s file.” He made no move to enter the room. Smart. If I had tripped a trap set up by Greg, it could hit him as well. “Sorry it’s so late. One of our knights had it.”

  I walked to him and took the file from his hands. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He regarded me for a moment and walked away.

  I rummaged through Greg’s desk for a mirror. Every self-respecting mage had a mirror close to hand. Too many spells required it. Greg’s was a rectangle set in a plain wooden frame. I caught my image in it and almost dropped the rag. My hair glowed. It radiated a weak burgundy luminescence, which shifted when I ran my hands through it, as if each individual strand of hair was coated with fluorescent paint. I shook my head, but the radiance didn’t dim. Growling at it didn’t help either and I had not the faintest idea how I could get rid of it.

  I hid in the farthest corner of the room, invisible from the door, and opened the file. If you can’t make it go away, wait it out.

  The last time I assimilated words of power, I was exhausted. Now I felt exhilarated, high on magic. The energy filled me, and I struggled to contain it. I wanted to jump, to run, to do something. Instead I had to hide in a corner and concentrate on the file before me.

  The file contained a coroner’s report, a summary of a police report, some hurried notes, and several photos of a crime scene. A wide shot showed two bodies sprawled on the asphalt, one corpse stark, pale, and nude and the other a bloody mess of mauled, shredded tissue. I found the close-up of the mauled corpse first. The cadaver lay spread-eagled upon a blood-soaked cloth. Something had ripped into its chest, snapped the breastbone, and tore it away with unbelievable force. The chest cavity lay exposed, the wet, glistening mass of the smashed heart dark against the spongy remains of lungs and the yellow white of the broken ribs. The left arm, wrenched clear of its socket, hung by a thin, bloodied filament.

  The next shot showed the close-up of the head. Sad eyes I knew so well looked up into the camera and straight at me. Oh God. I read the caption. This battered piece of human meat was all that remained of Greg.

  A lump rose in my throat. I struggled with it for a few agonizing seconds and forced it down. This was not Greg. It was only his corpse.

  The next photo provided me with a close look at the other body. This one appeared untouched, all except for the head, which was missing. A broken shard of the spine jutted from the neck stump framed by limp shreds of torn tissue. No other evidence of the head ever being there remained. There was hardly any blood. There should have been pints of it. The body lay at an angle and both carotid and jugular were cleanly severed, so where did all the blood go?

  I found four more shots of the corpse and arranged them next to each other on the floor. The smooth marble-white skin of the cadaver stretched tightly over his musculature, as if the body had no fat at all, only lean muscle. Not a single hair marred the epidermis. The scrotum looked shriveled and unusually small in size. I needed a close-up of the hand but there was not one. Somebody had dropped the ball. It did not matter too much, since all of the other telltale signs were there. Even without the nails, the conclusion was plain. I was looking at a dead vampire.

  Vampires are dead by definition, but this one had ceased its undead existence. Not even Ghastek, with all of his necromantic powers, could fix a vampire without a head. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was who did this vampire belong to? Most People branded their vampires. If this one was branded, it didn’t show in any of the shots the moron photographer had taken.

  What could wipe out a vampire and a knight-diviner? The vampire, super fast and able to take out a SWAT team unaided, would prove hard prey by itself. The vampire plus Greg made for near impossible kill. Yet there they were, both dead.

  I leaned back, thinking. The killer would have to possess great power. He would have to be faster than a vampire, strong enough to tear the head off a body, and able to shield himself from Greg’s magic and his mace. Off the top of my head the list of possible murderers was rather short.

  First, the People could have sought to kill Greg and used one of their vamps as bait. An aged vampire in the hands of an experienced and able Master of the Dead was a weapon like no other. If there was more than one, they could’ve taken out Greg and their own bloodsucker. It was expensive and improbable, since Greg was particularly effective against vampires, but it wasn’t impossible.

  Second, the condition of Greg’s ravaged corpse pointed to the shapechangers. That kind of damage had to be done with claws and teeth and by more than one set of them. Perhaps it was a loup, a deranged shapechanger. The bodies of those afflicted with Lycos Virus, or Lyc-V for short, yearned to slaughter without discrimination while their minds sought to restrain the bloodlust. If the mind won over the body, a shapechanger became a Free Man of the Code, existing within a well-structured and highly disciplined Pack. If the body conquered the mind, a shapechanger became a loup, a cannibalistic murderer driven mad by hormones, hunting everything and hunted by everyone.

  The loup theory was even less probable than the People theory. For one, the beheaded vamp was untouched except for its neck, and loups tore into everything with maniacal frenzy. Next, Greg would’ve killed more than one of them, and no other bodies littered the scene. Third, if the murderer was a loup, or more likely, several of them, they would’ve left a ton of evidence at the scene, everything from saliva and hair to their own blood. The medical examiner’s office had genetic profiles on almost all known shapechanger types. As far as I could discern, the file contained no p
aper showing that any shapechanger DNA had been found at the scene.

  Rubbing my face didn’t give me any special insights into the situation. Most likely, the murders had been committed by none of the above and for the time being I had to leave it at that.

  The autopsy report confirmed the beheaded cadaver as Homo sapiens immortuus, a vampire. An ironic name since the mind of a human died the moment vampirism took hold. The vampires knew no pity and no fear; they couldn’t be trained; they had no ego. On a developmental level they stood close to insects, possessing a nervous system and yet incapable of forming thoughts. An insatiable hunger for blood ruled them and they slaughtered everything in their path in their urge to quench it.

  I frowned. The file contained no m-scan. All crime scenes involving death or assault were routinely scanned for magic. Technically both the police and MSDU could demand access to this file and be granted such access by a court order. The fact that an m-scan was missing meant that it showed something the Order didn’t wish to reveal to the general public. Unless the same cretin that took the photographs somehow managed to drop the scan in the trash.

  The only remaining page in the file listed several female names. Sandra Molot, Angelina Gomez, Jennifer Ying, Alisa Konova. None of them sounded familiar, and no explanation of the list was offered.

  A fresh examination of my hair revealed that it was no longer glowing. I made a quick dash to the desk and dialed the number listed in the police report.

  A gruff voice answered the phone. I introduced myself and asked for the lead detective. “I’m looking into the murder of the knight-diviner.”

  “We’ve spoken to you people,” the man on the other end said. “Read the goddamned report.”

  “You haven’t spoken to me, sir. I would very much appreciate any time you could find for me. Any time at all.”

  The phone clanged and I was greeted by a disconnect signal. So much for interagency cooperation.

  The watch on my wrist showed 12:58 p.m. I’d have time to hit the morgue. The mandatory one-month waiting period for the dead vampires was nowhere close to running out and the MA sticker would ensure that I’d have no problem taking a look at the bloodsucker’s body.