by Steve McHugh
"Fucking hell," Tommy whispered when the mass of purple that used to be Amber's ribcage was exposed.
"Yes, this is quite bad," Doctor Grayson said in the same tone as you would ask someone if they wanted milk in their coffee. "The throat was slit from ear to ear, that was the killing stroke, so to speak, but she had a multitude of injuries sustained before that."
"We'll start from the head." Doctor Grayson reached into his blue lab coat, also adorned with red runes, and removed a small metallic pointer, extending it. He rested the tip of the pointer against the ear closest to us. "The skull was fractured, just above the ear, and her ear drum was burst. Not done at the same time, in fact the ear drum rupture was probably two months old."
He moved the pointer. "She had a broken nose. It had been broken twice, one several months ago, and again a few weeks ago. Three teeth knocked out, and a broken jaw that was several months old."
"What about recent injuries?" Olivia asked, a slight nervousness to her voice.
"Okay," Doctor Grayson said without any hint of irritation at being hurried along. "Within the last month, her sternum was broken, along with eight ribs, and her collarbone. The last time I saw an injury like this, they'd been hit by a truck. The pain must have been immense.” The doctor pulled back the sheet completely, exposing all of Amber's naked body. "Her left femur was snapped, as was her left ankle. She was also raped. Repeatedly."
Sara darted from the room.
"I'm sorry, should I stop?"
Olivia shook her head as Tommy left the room to check on Sara.
"Anyway, that's the last of the injuries. Any questions?"
"I have one," I said. "Any evidence of runes either applied or removed from her body?"
Doctor Grayson appeared taken aback. "How did—"
"Educated guess."
"You probably want to see this for yourself." The doctor switched off the room's lights and ignited a dark light.
I couldn't help but gasp. "Fuck," I said softly.
Amber's body was covered, from her neck to her knees, in runes, only visible under UV light. Despite the fact that the rune used appeared to be the same one each time, the runes covered so much of her body and were invisible to the naked eye meant that the power used must have been immense. It explained why I’d felt so much magic back at the farmhouse.
"What do they do?" Olivia asked.
The doctor shrugged. "No idea, we've never seen anything like it before."
"Any idea how old they are?" I asked.
"Four weeks, almost to the day," Doctor Grayson said. "We have an enchanter on staff who did the time measurements."
"Did the enchanter know what these runes meant?" Olivia asked.
"It's an old Celtic word. It means safe," I said before Grayson could speak, to Olivia's obvious shock. "Amber wasn't in any pain during all of this, because Vicki etched runes into her girlfriend's skin with enough power to ensure she would feel nothing for the horrific things that were happening to her."
"How do you know that?" Doctor Grayson asked.
"When I was young, the Celts were the enemy for a long time. I was taught their language in case I needed it. Vicki had to listen to Amber scream in pain or whimper in some drug crazed stupor until the runes could be finished. This took more effort and work than I've ever seen from an enchanter."
"You still think Amber was the first victim?"
"The first taken, yes. She was taken to prove a point, probably to Vicki."
"I still don't think Vicki did this," Olivia told me.
"Doctor, can you give us a minute?" I asked.
Grayson walked away, leaving Olivia and me alone. "The truth," I said. "You know about those old injuries. Where did they come from?"
"No idea what—"
I slammed my hand onto the metal table, causing Olivia to look down at Amber's body. "If you want my help, then you'd better be damn honest with me."
"Vicki had a temper. About five months ago, she punched Amber in the mouth, busting her jaw and breaking her nose. I forced Vicki to take counselling and they seemed to be back on track."
"So Amber's girlfriend, Vicki, was violent and she's nowhere to be found. Not exactly the best impression. But I agree with you, I don't think she did this. There’s no reason why she take the time and effort to do the enchantments if she wanted to inflict pain on her. And if someone else had put the runes there, Vicki would have known."
"Which means Vicki is still out there, somewhere."
"Were the subsequent victims raped?"
Olivia shook her head. "No sexual injuries, nor did they have the level of torture used here."
I was silent for a moment as thoughts and ideas bubbled away inside me.
"You care to share?" Olivia asked.
"This was personal," I said. "Amber was targeted for a reason and, as Vicki is still missing, I'm almost certain that it has something to do with her. Did those other victims have a link with Amber?"
"We're looking into that now."
"Okay, I'll leave that to you all. You got anyone at Vicki's place?"
Olivia shook her head. "We've had no need."
"Then that's my next port of call. I'll wait for you upstairs."
I thanked the doctor on my way out, passing Tommy as he re-entered the room. "Sara's waiting upstairs," he said.
"I think it'd be best to keep her out of it from now on."
"I've already told her to go back to the office,” Tommy said. “Where you off to?"
"I'll check on Sara, and then I'm going to take a look at Vicki's place."
"Wait for me, I'll join you. I'm certain that some of Olivia's people won't want me hanging around."
I told him I would and left to go back to the ground floor. I was glad that Tommy had offered his help. A bad feeling about where everything was going had begun to settle in my mind, but for the life of me I couldn't dig it free.
Chapter 12
"How're you feeling?" I asked Sara who was stood outside the LOA headquarters drinking a coke.
"I was fine until he started talking about what had been done to her," Sara said and took a long swig of her drink. "That fucked with my head a little."
"Can't say I blame you," I said, and sat on the low wall beside her, staring down the drive to the heavily guarded entrance.
"Your world is amazing," she said after a few heartbeats of silence. "The magic, the wonder and awe I feel just knowing that I'm in the company of a sorcerer and a werewolf. That King Arthur, Merlin and the Olympians are all real is something I don't think my brain has quite managed to process. But alongside all of that, I've seen and heard of violence that I'd never been subjected to before I started working for Tommy."
"It's a violent world," I said. "You get enough species with enough power, a lot of whom consider humans to be little more than a nuisance at best, and at worst prey, and bad things are bound to start happening. Power corrupts."
"It hasn't corrupted you."
I couldn't help but laugh which, from the expression on Sara's face, wasn't what she'd expected. "Power corrupts everyone who wields it. Those who realise this are the same ones who try to use it to help. The trick is realising it before it's too late."
"So it corrupted you?"
"It corrupts everyone," I repeated, with no wish to elaborate.
Sara took the hint and changed the conversation. "What was it like when you saw your first dead body?"
"I was eight," I said, my voice soft as I remembered the day. Sorcerers were blessed, and cursed, with fantastic recall. I could pick out events with ease, but sometimes names and faces didn’t come so easily. So, even though the day was over sixteen-hundred years earlier, I pulled the memory back to the present. It was as if I'd selected a book from a huge library in my mind, each one containing a different year, and then found the correct page. My memories started at the age of eight when I found myself waking up in a field in the south-west of England. Before then... nothing but an empty void.
"Ei
ght! Seriously?"
"Yeah. And to answer your question, I'd been in Camelot for about six months, and used to sneak out of the castle and into the town itself." I smiled at the memory. I'd loved the bustle of the streets, the fact that I could become anonymous and not just Merlin's protégé, which was how many in the castle saw me.
"One time there was an argument between two men, something to do with one sleeping with the other man's wife." My memory might be perfect, but it was only in the context of what my eight-year-old self had seen and heard. "A guard decided the best way to deal with it was to let the two of them fight. The man whose wife had cheated defeated his opponent quite easily, but as he turned to celebrate, the first man stabbed him in the heart with a blade passed by one of the crowd.
"I remember the man staring at his chest as the blade was removed. He fell backwards, dying before he hit the ground. There were cheers from some of the crowd, and silence from others. The guards rounded up the killer and his friends and Arthur had them executed a few days later." I stopped there, not willing to talk about how I'd felt at the time. I wasn't angry with the killer for cheating, one look at him and I'd known that he would. I was angry with the dead man for allowing himself to be killed by such deceitful bastard.
Later that day, Merlin had spoken to me about what had happened and asked how I'd have handled it differently if it had been my wife. At night, sneak into the house of the man who had cheated with my wife, and kill him in his sleep. If my answer had upset Merlin, he'd showed no outward signs and within the week I was learning the ways of silent death.
"I thought Arthur was a benevolent man," Sara said, after hearing that he had people put to death.
"To people who deserved it, he was benevolent. But not to cowards who thought they could flaunt the rules as they liked. If the man had decided on armed combat, the end result would have probably been the same, but it would have been just. Arthur saw things in black and white. You were either right or wrong."
"You don't sound like you agreed with him."
"No, I saw things differently, more pragmatic. Still do for the most part. But Arthur was stubborn and incapable of being flexible when it came to honour. It caused a few arguments between the knights."
"The knights?" Sara asked, eyes wide. "As in, the round table?"
"I don't remember a round table. Merlin made that up to make Arthur seem more impressive. But they were still knights, and all of equal rank, so in that regard the stories are right. Not the knights you think of today, though, with their suits of armour. This was a few centuries before plate armour. They were more along the lines elite warriors. And not all of them got on with Arthur. In fact, most argued on a regular basis."
"Were you a knight?"
"No, I was never afforded that privilege."
"Why?"
Because I had to be kept separate to ensure that whatever Merlin had me do would never tarnish Arthur's name or legend. But more than anything, because I was never knight material and never wished to be. But I kept that to myself, instead going with, "Many reasons."
Sara seemed to accept my answer and finished her drink, throwing the can into a nearby wooden bin, before sitting next to me, her fingers brushing against mine. "Why did that girl have so many horrible things done to her? What did the killer gain from it?"
I'd been wondering when she was going to get round to asking me about what she'd witnessed and heard in the morgue. "No idea," I said. "But her death was different from the other victims. Everything done to her was to make a point, probably to Vicki, since they were a couple."
"It must have been horrific." Sara's voice was soft, barely above a whisper, her distress obvious.
"We'll find him and stop him."
"Do you think you can?"
Before I could answer Olivia and Tommy emerged from out of the building, almost running in their haste. "Olivia had a call, there's been another body found," Tommy said as the hurried past.
"This is where your involvement ends," I said. "I'm sorry, but it's too dangerous."
"I know," Sara said, with a nod. "Just go stop him. Don't let anyone else go through what Amber did."
The journey took nearly half an hour. Tommy stopped beside two LOA agents who directed us onto dirt track which took us deep into the New Forest.
It was pitch black under the trees. I didn't have time to stop and use magic to allow me to see in the dark, so I turned on the headlights and continued to follow Tommy at a low speed – my bike was not made for off road use and the vibrations felt like they were crushing the bottom of my spine.
A few hundred yards into the forest and the dirt path opened into a large clearing with a dozen more agents milling around. Huge floodlights had been erected at one side, bathing the entire area in an almost daylight level of illumination.
I stopped the bike next to Tommy's truck, switched off the engine and removed my helmet, as a man I recognised as the one who'd pointed a gun at me back at the farmhouse walked toward us. His name popped into my head, Agent Greaves.
"Oh good, the P.I," he said when he saw Tommy get out of the truck. Without a gun pointed at me, I was afforded a proper look at the agent. Greaves was a tall, thin man with a nasty scar along his chin. His hair was long and flowed freely over his shoulders, and mud splattered against the trousers of his expensive suit. He didn't look happy to be searching the woods, and even less so to see Tommy and me.
"We're here to help," Tommy said.
"Here to get in the fucking way," Greaves snarled. "You're only here because--"
"Because of what?" Olivia called, accompanied by the sound of a car door slamming shut. No one spoke as she made her way toward the gent. "Please, Agent Greaves, feel free to enlighten us with your in-depth knowledge of why Tommy is employed on a recurring basis."
If Agent Greaves was wise, he'd have said sorry and then shut up. Unfortunately, Agent Greaves was an idiot. "All I meant, Ma'am, was that Tommy-"
"Agent, if you don't shut up and do your job, I will personally have you shipped somewhere very unpleasant for the next century. Are we clear?"
Agent Greaves darted from view like a deer given reprieve by a hunter's wayward bullet.
"I want your opinion on this crime scene," Olivia said to me.
"Okay, so where's the body?"
Another agent - this one about my height, but without my stocky build, pointed toward the woods behind him and went back to talking to someone in blue scrubs with blood on his sleeves.
I grabbed some latex gloves and Tommy joined me in my trek across the muddy ground, as drenched ferns brushed against my jeans. "You sure Sara will be okay?" I asked.
Tommy stopped and looked at me, we were alone. No one could hear us unless they really wanted to. "If she was anyone else would you ask me that?"
I didn't need to say anything for Tommy to know the answer. "She reminds you of her, doesn't she?"
"Okay, moving on," I said and walked further into the forest.
"Nate," Tommy said as he caught me up.
I spun on him, unwilling to have the conversation go any further. "No, drop it. Now."
Tommy sighed, leaving the rest of the walk in silence. As we got further from the clearing, I noticed that someone was sitting against a tree, her bare legs all that showed. The rest of the body was masked in darkness.
I breathed out and continued to the body, unsure of exactly what we would find.
At one point the girl had been beautiful. But as I looked down on her blood-soaked form, I saw that her beauty had been contorted with pain and fear, until there was no beauty left. The back of her head rested against the tree's trunk. Her bare arms were tied behind the trunk with black plastic ties. Her skin was scratched and torn as she'd tried to fight her way free. There were no marks on her face, but her clothes were soaked through with blood. Leaves had stuck to her as the wind picked up.
"Untie her," I said softly.
"We can't until the LOA have finished."
I knelt in f
ront of her and moved her blouse, which had once been light blue and was now a dark red, up from her stomach. The ragged wound it had hidden looked like her abdomen had been ripped open. I took a deep breath and lifted the blouse higher, exposing the entirety of what had been done to her.
The gash in her stomach stretched from one side to the other. Some intestine fell out with a wet noise and landed on the ground. I allowed the blouse to drop once more and got back to my feet. "I'm going to put money on her liver and kidneys being missing," I said.
"Like the others," Tommy said.
"Let's go," I said.
Tommy stared at the young woman a moment, then mimicked my nod before we walked away in silence, neither of us wishing to say anything until we reached Olivia.
We found her talking to the agent who had pointed us in the direction of the body. He saw me and smiled, offering his hand. "Martin Reid," he said.
"Nate," I said. "Nice to meet you." I removed the latex gloves and shook his hand. "Shame it had to be tonight."
He nodded his agreement as Olivia gathered more agents, including Greaves, over to her. "So, Mister Garrett, please tell us what you found."
"Trial by fire," I said and looked around the dozen agents, most of whom certainly weren't that interested in knowing what I'd found. "Fair enough, but are you sure you want the audience?"
"I've explained to my agents that you will be helping with the investigation. And I'd rather you ask questions here than trying to find people at a later time."
"I do have a few questions, first," I said and Olivia motioned for me to continue. "The woman's car."
"It's the blue piece of shit in the corner," Greaves said.
I turned to follow his directions and spotted the small blue Chevrolet something or other, their version of the Mini. I ignored Greaves' glare which followed me as I walked over to the car and examined it, checking the interior and doors. The keys were still in the ignition, the driver's side door was open and her purse visible under the seat. "Well, it wasn't a robbery," I said as I rejoined the group.
