The Witchkin Murders

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  In the meantime, Ray scooted around the bed and into the bathroom. It contained a sink, toilet, a large tiled shower stall, and most importantly a door into the hallway. Angie held up her hand for him to stand back, before cracking the door open. She peered out and then motioned for Ray to follow her as she slipped out into the hallway.

  Luckily, the main door into the room was just around the corner, putting them well out of sight of Dix.

  Angie pushed Ray through a staff-only doorway and led him down another hallway into a break room. Another doorway took them into a small locker room with bunk beds running along one wall. A cupboard at one end held stacks of clean scrubs. She pulled him down a pair of dark-purple pants and a purple shirt.

  “You’ll have to put these on,” she said. “Your clothes and shoes went into the incinerator. Biohazard. I’ll go fetch your personal belongings and see if I can find some shoes that will fit you.”

  Ray yanked off the hospital gown and donned the scrubs. Going commando was going to be a little awkward, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  He returned to the break room and grabbed a carton of yogurt from the refrigerator. He ate it quickly with a spoon he found in a drawer. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but knew that after a healing and a blood transfusion, he needed the calories. He tossed the container and eyed a roast beef sandwich. With a silent apology to the owner, he ate that, too.

  Angie returned a few minutes later carrying a plastic tote bag with his things. Inside he found his wallet, gun, badge, pocket knife, handcuffs, and a few other things.

  “Shoes?”

  She grimaced. “These are the best I could find on short notice.”

  She held out a pair of beat-up Birkenstocks, the soles worn thin. Ray slid his feet into them. His toes hung over the front and his heels sat on the back edge. Better than barefoot, he told himself.

  “This way,” Angie said. She guided him down to the employee-only elevators.

  “Good luck,” she said. “Find her. Don’t get killed while doing it. Call me when you’ve got her and I’ll come help.”

  He pulled her into a quick hug, startling them both. “Thanks, Angie. I owe you big.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said, waving away his thanks. “You’re one of the good ones, and so is Reese.”

  He nodded grimly and stepped onto the elevator as it arrived. “Check the lab,” he said before the doors closed. “Kayla had a backpack with a plastic box inside. I’m going to need that box.”

  “Technomages have everything under quarantine right now,” Angie said. “I’ll have Zach get a hold of it for you.”

  “Thanks. When this is over, I’ll buy you dinner.”

  Raven’s warning that Kayla had to stop whatever bad was coming echoed in his brain. Hopefully when this is over didn’t mean the end of the world.

  RAY’S FIRST ORDER of business had to be clothing. His place wasn’t far, but he wasn’t willing to waste time going out of his way. Instead, while following Kayla’s trail to the river, he stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall salvage shop where he found jeans, a long-sleeved cotton shirt, socks, and a pair of boots a half-size too big. He paid the shriveled old man behind the counter, then changed in the tiny curtained fitting room, leaving the scrubs behind along with the now-empty bag.

  Back on the street, he broke into a jog, but quickly found his body wasn’t going to cooperate. He dropped to a walk, panting, cursing himself for his body’s weakness.

  He saw plenty of evidence of Kayla’s passing. Broken bushes and windows, crumpled fenders and dented doors, deep gouges in the asphalt, and blood. A whole lot of blood.

  Ray refused to contemplate how much blood Kayla might’ve lost, or how much she could afford to lose. He’d shunted his worry and fear into a separate box in his brain, throwing all his attention into the hunt. Losing his cool wouldn’t help find her.

  He also noticed the way plants and trees drooped as if starving for nutrients. The normally verdant foliage wrapping buildings and vines and thriving in parks and walkways was now spotted with black and yellow splotches. Even people looked washed out and tired.

  Was that because of Kayla? Was this what Sarah had meant when she said the city thrived because of her presence here? The concept was hard to wrap his head around. That this one woman, his former partner and friend, could be the living heart of the city. What would happen if she died?

  Just thinking of the possibility ripped open the box of his emotions and turned his chest inside out. Let me find her. Let her be okay.

  When he got to the river, he found gouges in the grassy verge overhanging the water, but no sign of Kayla. The bank dropped away in a sheer drop. Mounds of boulders piled up at the bottom to protect against erosion. Just below, the river eddied, the water muddy.

  Ray scanned up and down the river for any signs of her. Nothing.

  He needed a boat if he hoped to do a decent search. He wasn’t far from a community dock. He broke into a jog again despite the tight constriction around his lungs. He must’ve been in really shitty shape if a witch’s healing had left him this weak. Thank goodness for Sarah and her willingness to help when he’d been such an ass to her kind. To his kind. He had to start accepting the change in himself. He wasn’t human anymore; he was a witch. For the first time ever, he didn’t cringe away from the knowledge.

  A quarter of a mile away, he staggered onto the busy dock. The sun had started to slide lower in the west, and people were tying up for the night.

  He flashed his badge at a pair of women who’d just pulled into a slip. They piloted a twenty-six-foot Duckworth Offshore rig that had seen better days.

  “I need your boat,” Ray said. “Police business. It’s an emergency.”

  The woman who jumped to the dock to tie up scowled at him. “Go to hell. You can’t just take our boat.”

  “Actually, I can,” Ray said, shoving his badge folder into his back pocket. The look he gave her made her step back. “And I am. If you ladies will just step off. Now.”

  “The hell we will,” the driver said. She was older, probably in her sixties, with ropey muscles and short gray hair. Scars and callouses covered her hands as if she had been working with them a long time. “We aren’t giving you our boat just for the asking. Go get yourself a court order.”

  Ray smiled in a not particularly friendly way. “Get off the damned boat,” he said. “This is a matter of life and death for the whole city.”

  The woman on the dock folded her arms, her anger turning worried and curious. “What does that mean?”

  “It means he’s blowing smoke up our asses, Annette,” said the driver. “Ignore him.”

  Ray couldn’t see the driver’s right hand. It had dropped out of sight. He was pretty sure she’d reached for a gun, or some sort of magical weapon.

  He drew his .45, raising it to eye level and sighting in on the driver. “You want to keep breathing, let me see your hands,” he ordered.

  Both women blanched, and both lifted their hands up.

  “Good. Now, step off.”

  “This tub is keyed to both of us and no one else,” the older woman said defiantly. “You want to go somewhere, then we’ve got to take you.”

  Ray didn’t know whether to believe her or not, but he didn’t have time to care. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  He jumped from the dock onto the boat. A canopy at the bow end housed two seats and the steering console. A bench ran across the stern, with the deck between loaded with cargo containers. The seals and the markings on the exteriors indicated that they carried fresh meat from one of the farms near Lincoln City and Newport. A lot of the area out there had become ranch land after Magicfall. Boats like this one made daily trips to haul meat back to feed the city.

  Ray confiscated the shotgun the older woman had reached for, setting it on
the stern bench. He waited until they’d cast off and Annette boarded before he holstered his gun again.

  “Where we going?” asked the gray-haired driver.

  “We’re doing a search,” Ray said. “Head downriver first.”

  She activated the boat’s rotors and turned out into the current. “Who are we looking for?”

  Ray hesitated, but three sets of eyes were better than one. “A kind of water dragon.”

  Both women whipped their heads around to look at him.

  “A what?” Annette demanded.

  She appeared to be about half the age of the driver. She wore her brown hair in a military-style buzz cut, a little longer on top than the sides. She stood taller than the driver, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, her arms and face tanned, her nose peeling from a burn. She slipped on a pair of sunglasses.

  “A water dragon,” Ray repeated without batting an eyelash. “She’s about thirty-five feet long nose to tail, and stands between five and six feet at the shoulder. She’s got cobalt-blue scales edged in gold.”

  “You’re serious,” the older woman said, sounding as if she thought Ray had lost a few marbles.

  “She’s badly wounded,” Ray added. “She needs medical attention, or she could very well die.” He managed to get the last sentence out without his voice cracking.

  “Why do you want to find a dragon?” asked Annette

  Ray shook his head, turning to watch the banks rush past. “It’s an ongoing investigation, but it’s crucial we find her as soon as possible.”

  “How long since she went in the water?” the driver asked.

  “In the neighborhood of four or five hours.” In which time Kayla could easily have been washed out to sea. He might never find her. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment against the deluge of emotion that slammed through him.

  No. He would not let that happen. Ray opened his eyes, scrutinizing the shoreline.

  “She dangerous?” asked the driver.

  “Only to her enemies.”

  “How come you’re the only cop out looking for her?”

  Ray’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile full of self-loathing. “Because if I told my boss what she is and what she means to the city, he’d have me locked up in a rubber room.”

  “What does she mean to the city?” Annette again.

  “See those blackberry bushes there?” He pointed to an inlet where the bushes mounded up from the shore. “See how the leaves have gone yellow and crisp, like they’ve got some sort of fungus?”

  “Sure,” the driver said, sounding confused at his apparent change of subject.

  “Before she got hurt, they were healthy and green. Same as those oaks.” He pointed.

  Both women stared at him as if he’d lost his ever-loving mind. Ray couldn’t blame them. He sounded like a lunatic, and they had to wonder if he had gone insane. Except in a world of full of magic, everything he’d said was not only bizarrely logical if you knew the facts, but also entirely possible.

  The two exchanged a look and then turned back to him.

  “Are you high? Been drinking maybe?” asked Annette.

  He could only wish. Then the beasts in the lab, the attack, and Kayla’s disappearance might just be a bad drug trip. “Afraid not.”

  Ray kept his attention fixed on the water, scanning from the near bank across as far as he could see to the other side. He swept his gaze back and forth along an invisible grid, but could see nothing of Kayla or any hint that she’d passed by.

  “That’s a pretty tall tale,” said the driver. “You really expect us to believe it?”

  “I expect you to drive the boat. I don’t give a fuck what you believe.”

  “What if you don’t find her?”

  Then the bottom fell out of his world. Again.

  “I don’t plan to find out. Put on some speed.”

  “What happened to her?” asked the younger one as the older woman increased their speed. The hull lifted slightly out of the water, and a small rooster tail rainbowed up behind them.

  “We were attacked. She stayed behind while the rest of us escaped, but the creatures that attacked her poisoned her.”

  He shoved the words through gritted teeth, trying not to let his fear for her overwhelm him. He had to compartmentalize. It was a trick of the trade and one he was good at. But having Kayla’s life on the line screwed his emotional control all to hell. All his walls, all his carefully cultivated perspective, had gone into the toilet.

  “What kind of creatures?”

  Clearly the unspoken question was whether she and Annette should be worried.

  Ray thought about them. He had never seen anything like them before. A cross between a monkey, a wolf, a pangolin, and an alligator. They’d had wolf-shaped heads with stubby alligator jaws, monkey arms in place of legs and monkey hands in place of feet, each tipped with vicious claws. Pangolin armor wrapped their bodies, and as an added bonus, they’d had a fifth clawed monkey arm in place of a tail.

  Sarah had called them god killers. Someone had summoned them to the city to hunt a god, and Kayla clearly wasn’t their target. So, who was? Raven had talked about something bad coming. Hunting a god qualified. Hell, having an actual god living in town qualified. Two, if Kayla really was one, too. Or at least an aspect of one, according to Sarah. What the hell did that mean?

  He didn’t want to think about it. It didn’t matter anyway. Nothing did but finding Kayla and getting her healed up.

  “They were like armored wolves with clawed hands and an extra claw hand on their tails,” he said finally, aware they were waiting for his answer.

  Neither woman said anything, and Ray could hardly blame them. His response wasn’t comforting.

  Finally, Annette spoke. “Cops don’t like witchkin,” she said. “Fact is, most cops say the only good witchkin is a dead one.”

  Ray nodded grimly. The truth sucked. If he hadn’t had a wake-up call, he’d still be ignoring every one of them he could, and killing the ones he couldn’t.

  “I had myself a come-to-Jesus moment,” he said sardonically. They were getting close to St. Johns Bridge, or what was left of it. Only the uprights on either side remained standing. Between them, and spanning the broad width of the river, was a mass of greenery. Vines the width of tree trunks tangled together, their roots crawling over the uprights and digging deep into the soil on either side.

  Most of the locals called it Snake Bridge anymore. And not because the vines looked like giant serpents, but because the damned canopy writhed with the things. They dropped into the river and slithered through the water, sometimes knotting together in giant wriggling masses. Most were poisonous and very unfriendly.

  The older woman slowed the boat as they approached the bridge.

  “Don’t push it, Leslie,” Annette said warningly. “Put up the shield. I don’t want to give the screw-snakes a chance to burrow through the hull.”

  The driver—Leslie—activated something on the console, and magic prickled over Ray’s skin. His own stirred in response. He clamped down on it.

  The boat motored slowly through the masses of snakes. Overhead dozens dripped down from the canopy, some thirty or forty feet long. Many bore the normal colors Ray usually associated with them, but others were brightly colored and patterned. The screw-snakes looked more like lampreys, but with long snouts studded with flexible teeth. Those, combined with their natural twisting way they had of moving, let them burrow through stone, steel, and wood like nobody’s business.

  The snake venom from the magical snakes tended to have magical consequences, making their bites dangerous in whole new ways. Most people avoided the area, and those who traveled the river used magic shields to protect themselves.

  As they passed through, snakes lunged at the boat,
some launching up into the air almost as if they had wings. They struck viciously at the boat. Several landed on top of the boat shield, slithering in midair above and snapping their ire at the intruders. Ray couldn’t help but watch them warily, even knowing they could not break through.

  “Sometimes I wonder if they have their own witches,” Annette said as she watched them slither and slide off the shield and drop back into the water. “If some of them can do spells.”

  “That’s comforting,” Ray said.

  Just then, dizziness swept over him. He dropped down onto the bench straddling the stern of the boat. Black-and-gray splotches danced through his brain, reminding him of when he’d gotten clocked by a suspect with a beer bottle.

  Annette grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back up as he started to slide sideways.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Ray rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes to clear the fuzziness. “I got attacked, too. I may have left the hospital a little earlier than I should have.”

  “Because this water dragon is in trouble and if you don’t save her the city suffers,” Leslie said.

  Ray couldn’t tell if she was mocking him or not. “That’s right.”

  “How far out do you want to search?” she asked, not commenting on his sanity or lack of it. “She could have washed out to the ocean. If so, she could be just about anywhere by now.”

  That was Ray’s second greatest fear, the first one being Kayla hadn’t survived. “We’ll turn around at the Columbia,” he said. “We’ll take the search upstream if we haven’t found her by then.”

  “If she’s as hurt as you say, she couldn’t have swum upstream,” Leslie pointed out with irritating logic.

  He refused to concede that she might be right. Kayla wouldn’t give up, and she would know that the only place she could get help was the Island. He gritted his teeth, wanting to slap himself for missing the obvious.

  “The Island,” he said urgently. “We need to go to the island. Now.”