by Ashley Meira
I wrapped my arms around myself and repressed a shiver, wishing I’d worn a heavier jacket. There were four men in the small clearing, gathered around what I assumed was the body. Wright pointed out a steep cliff high enough for me to consider a mountain, saying that the Protean lived further past it.
The men narrowed their eyes as I conjured up some ghost lights to give us more visibility and their brows raised at the ball of fire I produced in my cupped hands. Screw them, I was freezing my ass off over here. They could burn me at the cross if they wanted – at least I’d be warm.
There were maybe a little over one hundred magic users that served as hunters for the Order, so their reactions weren’t unexpected. Most witches, sorcerers, warlocks – whichever term you preferred, they’re all basically the same – tended to prefer the company of their peers. The Order held them in the same regard as any supernatural entity: acceptable until they started fucking shit, and people, up. While there were more of us in the Order than demons, we weren’t anywhere near the norm. It did, however, mean that I might be able to pick up something they couldn’t.
“Let us through,” Sullivan ordered.
The men parted faster than the Red Sea to reveal the body.
It was a shifter. A female lion from what I overheard one of the men telling Wright, though how he could tell was beyond me. There was barely anything left to identify her. In accordance to what we were told, the body was missing all of its skin. Parts of her were pink, naked like a Sphinx cat, and other parts showed muscle reminiscent of those giant hunks of meat they kept hanging in the back of butcher shops. There was a long incision from beneath her chin down to her tail. She looked deflated, and I knew if we looked inside that most, if not all, of her organs would be gone, along with her bones. There were holes where her eyes had been and her mouth, stretched wide in what was either a roar or a scream of agony – I really hoped it was the former – was devoid of teeth, leaving nothing but rows of deep gouges along her gums.
The cold, dry weather had preserved the body well enough, but there’s no way this was a fresh kill. I wasn’t an expert on animals, but I’d say she’s been out here for at least two days. In that time frame, I wasn't sure what had been taken by the killers, and what the wildlife had scavenged.
I knelt in front of her, covering my nose as the smell of rot mixed with the cold air. From here, the stagnant air carried a hint of iron from blood the rain somehow failed to wash away, underpinned with the scent of dirt and dead leaves. The damp earth under her was discolored. Blood. She’d been killed and “harvested” here.
My eyes scanned over her ruined form, taking in every detail while trying to find any anomalies. The luminescence of the ghost lights bathed her in an eerie glow, and I was tempted to put them out and ask for a flashlight when I noticed her legs.
“Alex,” I called. He knelt by me, and I gestured to the angry red welts above her paws. “Binding marks around her limbs.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “It’s hard to kill a Protean or Garou. Usually, at least three well-trained hunters are needed to take down even one.”
“Hunters,” I repeated. “Humans. A werewolf – or shifter – wouldn’t have such a hard time. They wouldn’t need binds. Besides, why tie her up if you’re going to kill her?”
Alex looked over her body, his face handsome even under the ethereal light. “When I was younger, my adoptive father took me camping. Once, a horrible screech caught our attention and we came across a group of people. They were skinning a deer alive, and needed at least two men to hold the animal’s limbs down so it wouldn’t flail around.
“That’s…” I covered my mouth and gazed sadly into the lioness’ hollowed eye sockets. “That’s really fucked up. Why would they do that? Do you think that’s what happened here?”
“My dad said some people don’t like to wait until the animal dies–”
“Then slit its damn throat,” I said. “Don’t fucking skin it alive.”
He gave a sympathetic look but didn’t touch me, which made me feel worse. “Others just enjoy seeing the animal suffer. It would explain the marks, though.” He reached for her paw and held it up, gesturing around the marks. “See how raw it looks? The rest of her legs are clean, which means the killers didn’t touch them, yet the skin here is all ripped up. She struggled hard enough against whatever was here that it tore through her flesh.”
Pretty sure I would struggle just as hard if I was being skinned alive. He was right, though, the wounds looked similar to the wrists of humanoids when they struggled against rope, but that just brought up another problem.
“There is no way any type of rope could hold a shifter,” I said. “Even their youngest can rip through that. And by the time they’re adults, the only things that can hold them are shackles made of orichalcum or pure iron.”
“Neither of which leave these kind of marks,” he said. “Is there anything magical that could do this?”
I shook my head. Both shifters and werewolves had a high resistance towards magic. The magic user would have to be quite powerful to be able to take on a creature like that, and there would be residual magical energy all around this place, which there wasn’t.
Alex ran his hand across her carcass. “Something else doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing about this makes sense,” I said, my lips curling at his action.
“She was skinned with a knife. Don’t the tribes condemn the use of weaponry?”
“I think so. Then again, I’m pretty sure claws aren’t the best tool for skinning things. Not well, at least. Are you sure it was a knife?”
“Look at her mouth, there’s a stab wound through the top. Why use a knife to stab her but not skin her?” Alex stood up and turned to the others. “Were all the bodies like this? Same parts missing, the marks, everything?
“I think so,” said one of the men. “We don’t really get a chance to ‘take inventory.’ The tribes get really pissed when we desecrate the bodies and stuff. The stabbing of the mouth is new, though.”
So, all we had was that whoever was doing this was strong – or a skilled group – and had enough knowledge to skin an animal and remove its organs, presumably without damaging anything. Oh, and they had a mysterious item that could bind their victims. That narrowed our list down to…
Almost every supernatural creature or hunter in existence. Awesome.
Well, I guess that means it’s time for me to use my womanly wiles. And by that I mean magic.
It was ridiculous, but I was afraid touching the body would cause her extreme pain. I couldn't even imagine what being skinned alive must have felt like. To die in such agony…
I would find whoever did this and make them pay.
She was dry but smooth where I touched her, kind of like worn leather. My fingers tingled as I moved them across her. There were faint traces of magic along her body, though not the kind to suggest the presence of a caster – the patterns were too sterile to be from anything animate – but merely a magical item. Was she skinned with something magical? How hard was it to skin a supernatural creature, anyway?
My fingers grazed against the welts around her ankles and I frowned. Magic. One hundred percent. Holy shit, magical feedback. Pinpricks spread through my hand, weighing it down as if I’d spent the last hour sitting on it. Whatever was used to bind her was definitely magical, and for it to leave such a strong impression after all this time meant it had to be powerful. Of course it did, the damn things were able to restrain a shifter who was trying to escape being skinned alive – pretty sure that would make anyone give two hundred percent, which in shifter terms was the physical equivalent of the Hulk on PCP.
The knife must have been magical, too, in order for her entire body to still have traces of magic. I wasn’t a math genius, but a powerful magic knife plus powerful magic bindings usually equated to a whole lot of bad.
Closing my eyes, I laid both my hands on her and concentrated on the magic. A shiver ran through me, and I had
to resist the urge to pull away. She was frozen; the chill ran up my arms and deep into my bones. Why did I think joining the Order was a good thing? I could be in some comfy little potion shop working on the world’s newest brand of magical Viagra instead of feeling up the carcass of a torture victim.
The cold was making it hard to focus. I pulled back. Magic could be a tricky, volatile thing, especially when it was foreign. You never knew what you could be walking into. I had no idea what was used on this body except for the fact that it had been very powerful. As in, not something I wanted to mess with all willy-nilly. It could backlash, fry my mind, or any other bunch of nasty things that would leave me catatonic or dead.
I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders before trying again. Things went better this time, but it wasn’t the magic I picked up on. It was her.
Glimpses of the forest rushed by. Nervousness, regret – she shouldn’t be out here this late, but she needed to gather herbs. She needed to. A fall. The trees were sideways now. She’s surrounded by shadows. Confusion. Panic. Rage.
Terror.
Stray pebbles cut into my hand as I jerked back, kicking myself away from her. There was a warm presence I immediately recognized as Alex behind me. His chest was firm when I sagged against him, my eyelids fluttering as I tried to regain control over my senses. I turned, clutching Alex’s shoulder for dear life as bile rose up and coated my tongue. The cold didn't register anymore, the only thing I could feel was my heart thudding against my chest. My legs felt numb. I had to–
“Morgan.” Alex held me by the shoulders. “Morgan, breathe. What happened?”
I shook my head, covering his hands with my frozen, trembling ones. “She was terrified.”
“I’d imagine so,” he whispered. “Did you see anything else?”
“Nothing useful. The binds were magical. Powerful. The knife, too.”
“Could they have been bought or custom ordered? You said you didn’t sense a magic user – is it possible they were around but didn’t use any magic?”
“Custom job, probably,” I said, standing up with shaky legs. “I’m not sure. As for a caster, it’s possible. But anyone who can use magic finds it hard not to. Even if they actively repress it, that stuff is reflexive.” I focused on his soothing blue eyes, trying to dispel the bad touch in my head. “There was pleasure. Whoever did this enjoyed seeing her suffer. She–”
“I understand.” He rubbed his hands over my arms, giving me warmth. I may have felt like shit, but the fact that he was touching me again made things a little better. “Maybe you should lie down. I’ll see if I can contact the spirit.”
“I’m fine, just a little dazed.” That was a lie. I felt like I was drowning. Returning to the place where my childhood died, seeing the man who killed it, getting yelled at by Alex, then experiencing the last few feelings of a woman who’d been hunted down and skinned alive wasn’t exactly the recipe for a good time.
“Why don’t I take you back to the car?” Wright said, guiding me by the elbow. The pressure of his hand brought back the feeling from when I first met him and made me feel like I was being dragged down even more. When we were near the car, he spoke up again. “Listen, Miss Wallace–”
“Max– Morgan.”
“Morgan, it may not be my place to say anything, but maybe you’d like it if I tried to convince your father you two aren’t needed here?”
“Excuse me?”
Wright’s small eyes shifted around. “This is a problem we can handle on our own. Plus, you don’t really seem too happy to be back here, especially after this.”
Well, this was embarrassing. It made perfect sense to me why I reacted that way after scanning the body, but most people would just see a woman freaking out over a mutilated corpse. Regardless, I did need to get my act together. Just because being around Sullivan felt like I was rolling around naked on sandpaper, it didn’t mean I could just bite his head off. He was a prominent figure in our society. Besides, I had plenty of experience being around people I didn’t like, though I usually got to shoot them in the end.
“I appreciate your concern,” I said, “but I’m a professional. I can handle myself, and I have every intention of finding out who is behind these killings. If a war does break out, it could spread past these tribes; no one wants that to happen.”
“Yeah, cats and dogs at each other’s throats – no one wants that,” Wright muttered under his breath as he opened the door for me.
I ignored his comment and slid in, shivering as I touched the frigid leather seats. A conjured flame, nearly blinding in this darkness, warmed me up as I held it in my hand and pondered my findings. Dead shifters and werewolves, magical torture items, harvested body parts, and uncooperative tribes. Put them all together and you’ve got…a cold witch who had no idea what the fuck was going on.
This didn’t seem like the work of a Garou, of that I was certain. It just didn’t make sense. Why kill for parts? The tribes were self-sufficient – they traded with common goods. Money wasn’t necessary to them, so they had no need to sell pieces on the black market, which is pretty much the only thing those parts could be used for. Not to mention that both the Garou and Protean were too spiritual to condone such desecration of the dead. There was no reason for them to harvest body parts, unless the victims were targeted specifically and the mutilation was just to throw us off the scent. Didn’t they hold meetings to settle disputes, though? I couldn’t see the point in killing people and tossing the bodies like this. The tribe leaders wouldn’t approve of pointless killing either. And with this many deaths, someone must’ve noticed something, right? There must be some kind of clue as to who the perpetrators are.
Too Many Questions, Not Enough Answers: the Autobiography of Morgan Maxwell.
“Are you feeling better?” Alex asked as he slid in next to me. His hand reached for mine instantly, his skin still cold from the forest air.
“We need to catch whoever is doing this,” I said with a fire in my voice. “There’s no excuse for what they’ve done. It’s torture, plain and simple.”
He nodded, reaching over to tuck a few stands of hair behind my ear. “We will. We’ll find them, and we’ll bring them to justice.”
His thigh brushed against mine, and I leaned fully against him to press a kiss to his lips. All my stress seemed to vanish with that one kiss. Screw Hawaii, we could just stay in this car.
Apparently not. Someone cleared their throat, and we pulled apart. It physically hurt to stop from snorting at Sullivan’s expression. He looked like he was about to swallow his tongue, which was ironic, considering I was sort of about to do the same to Alex’s, whose cheeks were the cutest shade of red.
“I hope you were able to find something useful from your examination of the body,” Sullivan said, pursing his lips as he sat behind the wheel. There was way too much disapproval in his gaze for one rearview mirror to handle; I half expected the glass to crack under such intense scrutiny.
“I couldn’t get much from her spirit,” said Alex. “She suffered too much to remain coherent.”
“You’re a medium?” asked Sullivan.
“Yes, sir.”
“I see,” he said. “We’ll head back now. Wright will return with the others when he’s done here. Tell me more about what you found.”
Sullivan started the car, and the two men discussed our findings as he drove. From what Alex had told me before – through some very un-sexy pillow talk – mediums could only speak to spirits that were willing. Ethically speaking, of course. They could always force a spirit to pay attention, as long as they didn’t mind the possibility of venomous rebuttal. Ghosts could be really mean if pushed against the wall, especially those that died violent deaths.
Generally, mediums tried to be considerate and didn’t do more than reach out and ask for permission to speak with the ghost they were looking for. This applied to spirits in this world, too, though reapers did a really good job sending souls along. It took a lot of willpower, and re
gular power, for a ghost to force themselves back into the world of the living.
“All I heard was this sound mixed between a roar and a scream when I asked about her death,” said Alex. “The last memory she had that didn’t upset her was leaving her husband to sneak off and gather herbs.” He let out a heavy sigh, running a hand through his hair. “Her name was Alice. She has a two year old son.”
“I’m sure a lot of the victims had families,” Sullivan said flatly. “All the more reason for this whole affair to be settled.”
Look, everyone, it’s Mister Considerate.
Could Fake-Corrigan – seriously, I needed a better name for him – really be behind this? He certainly seemed powerful enough to create magical objects that could leave such a lasting impression, and he obviously didn’t give a shit about pissing in Order territory. Hell, he probably got off on it. Oh God, no, that is not an image I ever needed to see.
I tried to recall the feel of his magic from that night at the factory. He only cast two spells: a binding spell on Ipos and a barrier. I’d been too busy fighting off robed henchmen to notice the former, and the barrier had been too far away for me to glean anything off it. A ritual circle – like the one he set up to break the Spire’s first lock – gave off magical energy based on its nature, not the caster’s, so that couldn’t help me.
It occurred to me that I really knew nothing about the mysterious vampire, besides the fact he wanted to unleash creatures so bad they had to create a special prison for them. In Hell. Like, even Lucifer got better digs than them, and he rebelled against God. So, besides the fact that Fake-Corrigan was a crazy bitch, I had nothing. I should be back on duty, back in New York where I could work some contacts. There’s a big vampire presence there, not to mention plenty of visitors, and someone always knew something about somebody, even if they were an insane, demon worshipping vampire mage.
I wonder if he had that written on his resume.
“Sir Wallace,” I said, “is there any chance you could arrange a meeting with the tribes?”
“I’ve already told you they’ve closed ranks,” he said, pulling into the driveway. “No one is allowed in or out. Not unless they sneak around, like the latest victim.”
