Magic Bites

by Ilona Andrews

  I closed the file, placed it into the closest filing cabinet, and made my escape.

  THE CITY MORGUE STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE downtown district. Directly across from it, past the wide expanse of the Unnamed Square, rose the golden dome of the Capitol Building. The old morgue had been leveled twice, first by a rogue Master of the Dead, and second by a golem, the same one that created the Unnamed Square when it reduced the five city blocks to rubble in its failed attempt to break through the Capitol’s wards.

  Even now, six years later, the city council refused to rename the empty space surrounding the Capitol, reasoning that as long as it had no name, nobody could summon anything there.

  The new morgue was constructed on the principle of “third time’s the charm.” A state-of-the-art facility, it looked like the bastard offspring of a prison and a fortress, with a bit of medieval castle thrown in for good measure. The locals joked that if the Capitol Building came under attack again, the State Legislature could just run across the square and hide in the morgue. Looking at it, I could believe it, too. A severe, forbidding building, the morgue loomed among the dolled-up facades of the corporation headquarters like the Grim Reaper at a tea party. Its mercantile neighbors had to be unhappy about its presence in their midst, but could do nothing about it. The morgue got more traffic than all of them. Another sign of the times.

  I walked up the wide staircase, between granite columns, and moved through the revolving door into a wide hall. The high windows admitted plenty of light, but failed to banish the gloom completely. It pooled in the corners and along the walls, lying in wait to clutch at the ankles of an unwary passerby. Polished tiles of gray granite covered the floor. Two hallways radiated from the opposite wall, both flooded by blue feylantern light. The tiles ended there, replaced by yellowish linoleum.

  The air smelled of death. It wasn’t the actual nauseating odor of the rotting flesh, but a different kind of stench, one of chlorine and formaldehyde and bitter medicines, reminiscent of a hospital smell, but nobody would confuse the two. In the hospital, life left its sure signs. Here only its absence could be felt.

  There was an information desk between the two hallways. I made my way to it and introduced myself to a clerk in green scrubs. He glanced at my ID and nodded. “He’s in seven C. You know where it is?”

  “Yes. I’ve been here before.”

  “Good. Go ahead, I’ll get someone to open it for you.”

  I took the right hallway to a flight of stairs and went down, into the basement level. I passed section B and came to a stop at its end, where a steel gate barred my progress.

  After five minutes or so, hurried steps echoed through the hallway and a woman wearing green scrubs and a stained apron came rushing around the corner. She carried a thick three-ring binder in one hand and a jingling key chain in the other. A few thin wisps of blond hair had escaped her sterile hair net. Dark circles surrounded her eyes and the skin on her face sagged a little.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Nahh, don’t worry about it,” she said, fumbling with the keys. “It didn’t hurt to take a walk.”

  She unlocked the gate and swept past me. I followed her to a reinforced steel door. She opened two locks, stepped back, and barked, “It is I, Julianne, who commands you, and you shall do my bidding. Open!” The magic shifted subtly as the spell released the door. Julianne swung it open. Inside, on a metal table riveted to the floor, lay a nude body. Stark against the stainless steel, it was a queer shade of pale, whitish pink, as if it had been bleached. A silver-steel harness enclosed the cadaver’s chest. A chain as thick as my arm stretched from the harness to a ring in the floor.

  “We usually just collar them, but with this one . . .” Julianne waved her hand.

  “Yeah.” I glanced at the stump of the neck.

  “Not that he’ll rise or anything. Not without a head. Still, if anything . . .” She nodded toward the blue circle of a panic button on the nearest wall. “You armed?”

  I unsheathed Slayer. Julianne jerked back from the shimmering blade. “Whoa. Okay, that’ll work.”

  I slid the saber back into its sheath. “There was a second body brought in with this one.”

  “Yeah. Kind of hard to forget that one.”

  “Any trace evidence?”

  “Nice try.” Julianne smirked. “That’s classified.”

  “I see,” I said. “What about an m-scan?”

  “That’s classified, too.”

  I sighed. Greg with his dark eyes and perfect face, mangled and broken, locked away in some cubicle in this lonely, sterile place. I fought the urge to double over and cradle the empty space in my chest.

  Julianne touched my shoulder. “Who was he to you?” she asked.

  “My guardian,” I told her. Apparently my efforts to appear impartial had suffered a spectacular failure.

  “You were close?”

  “No. We used to be.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “I grew up and he forgot to notice.”

  “Did he have any kids?”

  “No. No wife, no children. Just me.”

  Julianne glanced at the vampire’s corpse with obvious disgust. “You’d think the Order would have enough sensitivity to assign someone not related to this mess.”

  “I volunteered.”

  She gave me an odd look. “How about that. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “So do I. There is no chance you’d let me glance at the m-scan?”

  She pursued her lips, thinking. “Did you hear that?”

  I shook my head.

  “I think someone’s at the gate. I’m going to go and check on it. I’m putting my binder right here. Now, these are confidential reports. I don’t want you looking at them. In particular, I don’t want you looking at the reports from the third of this month. Or taking any copies out of this file.” She turned and marched out of the room.

  I flipped through the notebook. There were eight autopsies on the third. Finding Greg’s didn’t prove to be a problem.

  The trace evidence consisted of four hairs. In the origin column someone penciled Un. Psb Feline der. Unidentified, possibly a feline derivative. Not a feline shapeshifter. They would’ve pegged it as Homo sapiens with a specific felidae genus.

  The long folded sheet of the m-scan came next. Obeying the shake of my hand, it unfolded to its full three feet, presenting a graph drawn by the delicate needles of the magic-scanner. The faint colored lines on the graph wavered, a sure sign of many magic influences colliding in one spot. It was inconclusive by the most lax of standards and no court would have permitted it into evidence. The small header in the top corner identified it as a copy. Oh, goodie.

  I squinted, trying to make sense of it. Greg’s body had continued to release its magic even after his death and the scanner recorded it as a sloping gray line, sometimes an inch wide, sometimes almost invisible. The deep jagged purple cutting across it had to be the vampire’s magic. I looked harder. There was a third line, actually a series of lines, faint and dashing at irregular intervals through the reading. The longest was about a quarter of an inch long and the color was undeterminable. I raised the graph so the light of the ceiling bulb shone through it. The ink stood out. Yellow. What the hell registered yellow?

  I tugged at the graph, tearing it along the perforated lines and slid it into my folder. Julianne returned shortly. “Nobody there. Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

  She took the binder and walked out, leaving me with the vampire’s corpse. I slipped on a pair of medical gloves and approached the body. The placement of brands depended on the personality of the Master of the Dead. Phillian marked his with a big Eye of Horus smack in the middle of the forehead. Constance marked hers in the left armpit. Since the forehead on this one was conveniently missing, it could have belonged to Phillian. Theoretically. I set about finding the brand.

  The armpits were clean, so was the chest, the spine, the back, the buttocks, the inside of the
thighs and ankles. The only place remaining was the scrotum, so I spread the vampire’s legs. The testicles diminished immediately after the human’s death and continued to shrink during the vampire’s life. There was a whole study on dating the bloodsuckers based on the size of the reproductive organs. I didn’t care how old this one was, but judging by the signs he had to be pushing fifty. And he was clean. No brand. There was a scar, however, cleaving the scrotum at the base on the left side. It looked like it had been stitched together.

  A quick glance about told me I would find no scalpel in this room. I took Slayer from its sheath. It smoked, sensing the undead. Thin tendrils of pale haze curved from the blade.

  “Don’t start dripping,” I murmured and pressed the very tip of the edge against the scar.

  The undead tissue hissed as the blade sank into the flesh. I let it cut about a quarter of an inch and withdrew the saber, leaving a neat incision. Taking the flap of the skin, I pulled on it lightly, and it came away from the groin, revealing a smooth burn scar about an inch wide and three quarters of an inch long. In the middle of the burned scar sat a neat scorch mark, an arrow tipped with a circle instead of an arrowhead. Ghastek’s brand. Why wasn’t I surprised?

  “You do know there are penalties for mutilating corpses?” said a male voice.

  I spun around, blade in my hand. A tall man stood leaning against the doorway. He wore scrubs, which meant he had more right to be here than I did.

  “Watch out there,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I lowered the saber. “I don’t like being startled.”

  “Neither do I. Except by young attractive women.” He looked to be in his mid-thirties. The colored stripe on his shoulder shone bright orange. Third-level clearance. The tag clipped to his suit confirmed it: I’d gotten a bloody unit supervisor.

  A unit supervisor could make a person non grata in the morgue faster than I could blink.

  The man waited until I finished staring at his tag and held out his left hand. “My name’s Crest.”

  I peeled off my left glove without putting down Slayer and shook his hand. “Kate. Is there a first name that goes with Crest?”

  “Yes, but I don’t like it.”

  A funny guy. Perhaps I would get away without a black eye for dicing a corpse.

  “It’s a vampire,” I said. “I was looking for the brand.”

  “Find it?”

  “Yes.”

  He approached the table to examine my handiwork. I moved to stand across from him. Dr. Crest was actually on the appealing side. Auburn-haired, tall, and quite muscular, judging by the forearms. A pleasant face, open and honest, with large, well-defined features and nice eyes, honey brown and warm. The full mouth was downright sensuous. Attractive fellow, not strictly handsome in a classical sense, but still . . . He looked up from the body, smiled, and became handsome.

  I smiled back, trying to radiate integrity and decency of character. That’s right, I’ll be very nice to you, sir, just please don’t bar me from the morgue.

  “Interesting,” he said. “I’ve never seen one concealed in this way.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “You see a lot of vampires in your line of work?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  I caught him glancing at me and he lowered his gaze back to the body.

  “Dr. Crest?”

  He blinked. “Yes?”

  “Do I need to let Julianne know about the brand?” It was the least I could do.

  “No. I can tell her myself if you have to run.”

  A little warning bell went off in my head. The good doctor was a little too accommodating. I would have to make sure that Julianne got my message.

  Crest was frowning at the corpse. “A devious place to put a brand.”

  Ghastek was a devious fellow. “Indeed.”

  Another pause issued. “Let me walk you upstairs,” he said.

  How charming. He was trying to make sure that I didn’t go on a mutilating rampage. I gave him my knockout smile. “Sure.”

  He didn’t look dazzled. Damn it, that’s the second time today my smile had misfired.

  We left, walking side by side. I waited while he locked the grate behind us. “So what do you do here, Dr. Crest?”

  He grimaced. “I suppose one can call it charity work.”

  I made the appropriate noise, “Charity?”

  “Yes. I perform reconstructive surgery.” He glanced at me as if afraid I would demand a nose job. “I make corpses presentable. Not everyone can afford it, so twice a week I do it here pro bono.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s kids mostly,” he said. “Torn up and mauled. Not a pretty sight. Such a waste.”

  We reached the upper floor. He waited while I checked out with the clerk and wrote down Julianne’s number, and then walked me to the door.

  “So I’ll see you again sometime?” he said.

  “Hopefully not on the operating table,” I said and left the building. As I walked away to where Karmelion waited for me, I could feel Crest watching my back.

  A man was leaning against my truck. He wore a dark gray shirt, black jeans, tucked in soft boots, and a black cloak that wanted very much to be a cape. While I was in the morgue, the sun had broken through the clouds, flooding the streets with sunshine. He seemed to shrug off the sun’s rays—not a man, but a rectangle of darkness cut in the shroud of sunlight.

  The human current streaming up the street bent away from him. People didn’t eye him; in fact, they concentrated so hard on ignoring his presence, one could have dropped a twenty dollar bill on the ground and it might have gone unnoticed.

  The man’s eyes tracked my movement. I stopped a few feet away and looked at him.

  He reached into an inside pocket of his cloak and flicked what looked like a long yellow ribbon at me. I caught it in midflight. The smooth, cold body coiled about my wrist, and the serpentine head reared to strike at my face. I clamped its neck with fingers of my left hand and stopped it three inches from my cheek. The snake’s tongue danced between the scaly lips. Blood red membranes tinged with brilliant purple flared on both sides of the head, spreading like the wings of an enormous butterfly. The baby winged snake shuddered, trying to take flight, but I held it in check.

  “I’m sorry, Jim.”

  He held up his arms, indicating something about three feet wide. The cloak parted enough to show muscle roll across his chest under the fabric of his shirt. “The nest was this big, Kate.” His voice had the smooth, almost melodious tone of a less dangerous, much prettier man. It clashed badly with his bulldog-ugly mug. “You owe me and you stood me up. I had to do the gig single-handed.”

  The snake twisted in a feeble attempt to sink its fangs into my arm. The long triangular teeth contained no poison but the bite hurt like hell.

  “Greg’s dead,” I said.

  There was a tiny pause before he asked, “When?”

  “Two days ago. He was murdered.”

  “You on it?”

  “Yeah.”

  We stood for a while, caught in a painful silence. He peeled himself from my truck, moving with the liquid, animal grace that only a master shapechanger could achieve.

  “You need anything, you know where to find me.”

  I nodded and watched him walk up the stairs to the morgue.

  “Jim?”

  He scowled at me over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing at the morgue?”

  “Pack business,” he said and moved on.

  Everyone had business in the morgue these days. Even Jim. I still owed him for this winter when he pulled me out of a mud pit full of melted snow and hydra. He was the closest thing to a partner I had. Once in a while we shared merc jobs from the Guild. This time I had stood him up. I’d have to make it up to him. But first, I’d have to find out who killed Greg. To do that I would have to figure out what Ghastek’s vampire was doing at the murder scene.

  I eased the pressure on the snake’s n
eck and gently tossed it into the air. The serpent plummeted and suddenly took flight. It soared higher and higher, far above the rooftops into the sunshine, until it finally disappeared from sight.

  WHEN IN DOUBT AND IN NEED OF INFORMATION, find a snitch and squeeze him. That was one of the very few investigative techniques I was aware of. As a matter of fact, that and the “annoy principals involved until the guilty party decides to kill you” pretty much summed it up for me. Move over, Sherlock.

  I was definitely in doubt and in need of information concerning Ghastek’s dead vampire, and I knew just the person to squeeze. He had spiky hair, wore black leather, and called himself Bono after some long-forgotten singer. He was also Ghastek’s journeyman.

  If you had a talent for necromancy or necronavigation, the care and piloting of the dead, you qualified as an apprentice. Once you added a bit of knowledge to that, you became a journeyman. To move higher required a genuine power and a drive to succeed. Most People never graduated from journeymanship. Bono was on his second year. His knowledge of the dead was almost encyclopedic. The last time we met, he gave me a cut-out article to put into my Almanac—something about some Slavic corpse-eater creature called an upir. But I had a feeling his expertise ended with theory. My guess was he would not grow into a Master of the Dead any time soon.

  Bono was easy to find. He frequented Andriano’s, a peaceful joint as bars went, unlike the newly redesigned establishments of Atlanta Underground, where bars leaned toward the rowdy and most clubs had the word “pain” in their name. Andriano’s occupied a nice little spot on Euclid Avenue in Little Five Points and catered to an almost middle-class crowd.

  Bono’s pretty face, his hair, and his jacket made sure he was noticed. Women enjoyed his company. He enjoyed them too, but his focus was on quantity. I’d never seen him with the same woman twice. Once in a while someone tried to kick his ass and left a few smears of their blood on the floor and furniture. Anyone who spent his formative years tending to a stable of vampires proved a hard person to fight.