Grim Rites

by Bilinda Sheehan

  Leaning closer, Victoria held a pair of gloves out to me and I took them without a word, sliding my hands into them before taking the arm in my hands. Focusing on the mark, I ignored the feel of the bones as they slipped around beneath the skin, lending the arm a jelly-like consistency that made the hairs on the back my neck stand to attention.

  My heart lurched in my chest and my breath caught in the back of my throat as I stared down at the tattoo. I’d seen it before. In fact, I’d seen it a few hours before, scored into the wall of Nic’s bathroom.

  Dropping the arm, I jerked backwards and barely kept my balance as my booted foot slipped on one of the many bloody trails leading away from the body.

  “What’s wrong?” Nic asked, peering over my shoulder at the body.

  “So it’s true, then?” Victoria asked, and from the expression in her eyes, I could tell she knew exactly what the tattoo meant.

  “You’ve seen it before?” I said, my breaths coming hard and fast, making it sound as though I’d just run a marathon.

  “Yes, but not in a very long time…” she said, and turned her gaze from me, but I’d seen the sorrowful look in her eyes before she’d gotten the chance to look away.

  “What’s wrong,” Nic repeated, a little more impatiently.

  “It’s a witch hunter,” I said, dropping my voice to stop the other Elite officers and forensic guys from picking up on what I was saying.

  “You said they were all gone, wiped out,” Nic said, moving around me to get a closer look at the body.

  “Yeah, I thought that right up until I found the mark in your bathroom.”

  Victoria raised an eyebrow in my direction and I shook my head. Now was not the time to go explaining the complication that was Nic’s murdered older brother who happened to be a witch hunter.

  “So what does this mean, then?” Nic said, studying the mark on the body.

  “I don’t know … beyond the obvious,” I said, my stomach sinking into my boots.

  “They know you’re here,” Victoria said, voicing the words I was too afraid to speak aloud myself. “The Saga Venatione have come to King City.”

  I nodded and Nic shot me a look filled with fear. “Have they come for you?”

  I shrugged, “Me or Lily; either way, having them here is really bad news….”

  As though today couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  Chapter 10

  “Do they know what happened yet, what could have caused something like this?” I asked.

  If the witch hunters were in King City, there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t exactly make them leave. In fact, the best I could hope for was the ability to fly beneath their radar so they didn’t ever find out I was here in the first place.

  So far, I was doing a wonderful job, if the pile of dead shifters outside my apartment was anything to go by. The demon mark stung me and I cringed, rubbing my hand across it almost instinctively.

  “At first they thought it was a jumper, but as you can see, there aren’t exactly any buildings in this part of town tall enough to create this kind of mess,” Victoria said, gesturing to the surrounding shop fronts.

  She was right; the only body I’d ever seen that looked vaguely similar had come off a forty-storey drop. There was nothing in this part of town that even remotely resembled that. Downtown maybe, but here, definitely not.

  “The body wasn’t moved. Where we found him is where he died,” she continued.

  “Yeah, way too much blood for him to have been moved. I don’t suppose they’ll know actual cause of death until they do the autopsy?”

  She shook her head and turned back towards the scene as the forensic guys slipped the victim into the black body bag. Every time I thought of him as a victim, I felt an overwhelming swell of pity. Even now, knowing he was a witch hunter, knowing that given the opportunity he would do this and perhaps worse to me, I still couldn’t help but feel it was a cruel way to die.

  “It’s possible Lily caught up to him,” I said, the words aloud without thinking about it.

  “What makes you think that?” Victoria asked.

  “Because of the way he died. It had to have been painful; he went out in agony. Lily is the only witch I know with that kind of power and temperament.”

  “Could it have been a shifter, or a vamp?” Nic suggested.

  I shook my head. Of course, I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain, but it didn’t stop me from having a hunch, and a hunch wasn’t something I was going to ignore.

  “Shouldn’t you walk the scene?” Victoria interjected, the look in her eyes unreadable.

  “Uh, I’ve been suspended, remember? Anything you find won’t be admissible in court.”

  “Is that the only reason you don’t want to do it?” she needled, and I clenched my fists at my sides.

  It wasn’t the only reason—it was a damn good one, but I certainly had a better one. Of course, that one made me look like a giant wimp, but it was bound to when I was discussing it with two people who didn’t understand it from my point of view.

  “No, and if you’ve met a witch hunter before, you should have a pretty clear idea of why I don’t want to,” I said, gritting my teeth.

  “Well, I can’t do it,” Victoria said, the matter-of-factness of her statement catching me by surprise. She may as well have declared that she enjoyed ice cream, or long walks on the beach.

  “What do you mean, you can’t do it? You’re an Elite officer, it’s your job,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

  “Amber, I’m a Changeling. The dead aren’t our thing—we cling to the living. Put us that close to death and it tends to get fatal….”

  “Why?” I asked, unable to stop the word before it erupted from my mouth.

  She sighed and shook her head. “Considering you work for the Elite—and who you are, the gifts you possess—you’re unbelievably innocent of the world you live in.”

  I opened my mouth to answer her but she held her hand up in a gesture of silence, and I found myself unable to speak. The smile that crept across her lips told me she was the cause of my sudden loss of words.

  “Look, faeries are immortal. Death doesn’t concern them, and why should it? However, just because they can live forever doesn’t mean they can’t be killed. Changelings, on the other hand—when we are born, our very existence hangs in the balance. If we are we not given the chance to thrive, we wither and die.”

  “And if you thrive?” Nic chipped in.

  Victoria’s smile broadened and she did a small spin on the spot. “If we thrive, then you end up with something like me. What will kill a faerie won’t even hurt me; our life spans run a thousand years, and if we spend too much time around death, it rubs off on us…. Banshees are definitely not on the friends list.”

  “If you can’t walk the scene, then you’ll need someone else down here to do it for you,” I said, my voice coming back with a squeak.

  “Not if you want the whole world knowing what happened to that guy up there and what he was. Do you really want to take that risk?”

  Her words made sense and I hated her a little for it. I didn’t want the world finding out about me. And if the threat of the witch hunters and their existence could be kept under wraps, then the better it would be for everyone involved. The second the Elite found out he was a witch hunter, it wouldn’t take them long to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  “Fine, but like I said, it’s not going to be admissible in court,” I said from between gritted teeth.

  Victoria shrugged and the urge to punch her washed over me. Why was she so cold about everything? What was the point of working for the Elite if she simply didn’t care about those who died? I’d seen her form of justice and it wasn’t my kind, or at least I’d been certain it wasn’t. After what I’d done to the shifters, I wasn’t certain about anything anymore.

  “I’ll walk the scene but I’m not sure it’s a good idea with so many others milling around. I’m not sure how I’m
going to react to him and it could get nasty,” I said.

  The thought of what I was going to do made me nauseous. I’d simply touched the mark in Nic’s bathroom and it had been enough to blister my finger, plus the visions had been the kind of things that would give me nightmares for months to come. Actually getting up close and personal with a witch hunter … well, it didn’t bear thinking about, but I was going to do a hell of a lot more than just think about it.

  “I’ll have the guys clear out of here, give us some space so you can do your thing…” she said, turning on her heel and making her way back up the alley to the small huddle that made up the forensics crew.

  Nic caught my arm, and the touch of his fingers against my bare skin sent a shiver of electricity racing over my skin. I bit back a sigh.

  “Amber, you don’t need to do this, there are other ways. She could get someone else in here to do it—hell, if you teach me, I’ll do it.”

  I shook my head. “Victoria’s right, we don’t have time for that. We need to find out if it was Lily or not, and if it was, then we need to be prepared to deal with the consequences.”

  “Which are?” Nic asked.

  What was I supposed to tell him? I didn’t have the answers any more than he did; it was going to be one of those situations where you were forced to fly by the seat of your pants until something turned up or went right. Not that things ever worked out like that—life had this awful habit of screwing things up irreparably.

  “It’s clear,” Victoria called to us, and I sucked in a deep breath before squaring my shoulders.

  “Well, we’re going to find out about the consequences now, aren’t we?” I said, with a small smile that I hoped made me look braver than I actually felt.

  Chapter 11

  The forensic guys had been busy while we were chatting at the mouth of the alley. The body had been bagged, as much of the evidence as was possible collected and boxed in little plastic containers, ready for shipping back to the main lab. Not that any of that mattered to me; even if they’d taken the body back to the lab, I could still have walked the scene. There was enough traumatic energy left over for me to walk the scene even if this case had been cold for the last ten years.

  I paused at the edge of the scene, keeping my feet clear of the pooled blood, and closed my eyes. My magic was coiled in my centre and as I reached for it, Nic spoke.

  “Don’t you need to touch the body or something? I thought they had to actually touch the corpse to get the best picture.”

  Rolling my shoulders, I let out a sigh, “I’m not exactly following protocol here,” I said.

  Keeping my eyes closed, I reached out with my magic. I imagined drawing it out from my core, letting a thin cord of it flow from my hands, out across the scene laid before me.

  The jolt as I hit the brick wall that was the witch hunter’s body sent me stumbling backwards, and my foot slipped on the wet cobbles. I went down, my hands instinctively bracing against the fall. The moment my magic connected with the witch hunter’s blood, my body contorted. Magic so strong I choked on it poured in through my mouth and down my throat.

  Dark eyes stared back at me, peering into my soul, but I didn’t recognise them. Demonic energy flowed thick and heavy in the air, making me lightheaded as I drank it down.

  “Amber, you need to step back. You’re safe here with me.” Nic’s voice came from very far away. But I wasn’t the only one who heard him. The demon stared past me to something only it could see, hunger filling its soulless eyes.

  “You know what he is. If you don’t kill him, he will destroy you, Amber,” It spoke to me, and I jolted, staring down at hands that weren’t my own.

  How was it doing this? How could it possibly speak to me through a vision of something that had already occurred?

  “Amber, listen to me, you’re using too much magic,” Nic said, his voice wrapping around me.

  “He’s right, you know; if you keep this up, you’ll bleed out….”

  The demon was gone and I stared down at the gaping wound in my chest, blood quickly soaking out through the black shirt.

  This isn’t me. I’m Amber Morgan, Elite Officer. I am not a witch hunter…

  I closed my eyes against the blood spilling forth. It was almost hypnotising and I needed to find myself once more. It was easier with my eyes closed; I could feel Nic, his chest against my back, his arms around my body as he held me close.

  Power surged through my body and I opened my eyes once more. The alley was empty, the body bag and little plastic containers gone. Peering into the darkness, I could make out a dumpster sitting against the back wall of one of the buildings, and a chain link fence closed off the other end of the alley, making it a dead end.

  Something moved in the darkness and I turned to see the witch hunter creeping over the cobbles towards me. He moved past me, and I watched as he slipped his hand inside his jacket, pulling out a wicked looking blade that sent a shiver of fear rolling down my spine.

  Something tall slithered out of the darkness, grabbing the arm that held the knife. The demon bent his arm backwards; the sound of the witch hunter’s bones snapping and popping brought tears to my eyes.

  With its other arm, it thrust forward, punching a hole as large as my head straight through the centre of the witch hunter. The urge to close my eyes was almost unbearable as I watched the demon pull the man’s guts out through the hole. Reality flowed in around me, erasing the look of surprise on the witch hunter’s face.

  Nic’s grip on me tightened and he pulled me back onto my feet. The second he went to move his hand from mine, I tightened my hold on him and he stared at me in surprise. I wasn’t going to let something the demon said hold me back. Pure evil didn’t deserve a voice or an opinion.

  “Was it her?” Victoria asked, stepped forward.

  “No,” I said, straightening myself, “all demon. A type I don’t recognise off the top of my head, but he’s definitely a pure breed.”

  “A demon?” Victoria repeated, sounding surprised.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t really expecting it myself. I think the guy had been hunting it for a while and then it just caught him unawares….”

  I left out the rest of it; I wasn’t going to tell them that the demon had spoken to me as though it could see me in the vision. It was too weird, even for me.

  “If that’s the case, then the witch hunter must have been here for the demon and not for you,” Victoria said, her expression grim as she stalked across the space towards the body.

  “Could you have said that any louder?” I said furiously.

  “I could, but I don’t see how it would help?” she said, shooting me a confused look. “We can’t let them find the witch hunter symbol.”

  “Victoria, what are you doing…?” I didn’t get to finish my sentence, her intentions becoming all too clear the second she bent down and pressed her hand against the body bag.

  Flames licked across its surface, spreading rapidly before I could even open my mouth to protest.

  “What have you done?” I said, meeting her gaze, the blue flame reflected in her eyes.

  Heat stung my face, forcing me to step back, and Victoria hopped to her feet and followed us back to a safe distance. “I’ve done what needed to be done. If the Elite figure this out, Amber, there will be Hell to pay, in more ways than one.”

  “You can’t just burn evidence!” I said, watching as the body was quickly engulfed, reducing the body bag and its contents to so much ash.

  “You can’t, but accidents happen,” she said.

  People dressed in forensic overalls swarmed onto the scene, their voices muffled by the surgical masks they wore, but I didn’t need to know what they were saying to hear the anger and surprise in their voices. Someone appeared with a fire extinguisher, the foamy spray dampening the flames as it reduced what was left of the remains to a wet, sopping mess. Jon was not going to be impressed with the mess, but then, I was still on suspension, so what he thought wasn’t really
my problem anymore. Victoria would have to explain to him what happened and part of me that agreed with her over the witch hunter symbol, and couldn’t wait to find out what she would come up with.

  However, her destroying the body did create one problem. The medical examiner wouldn’t be able to get any evidence from the remains now, there would be no picture to paint for us, no background information, especially as identifying the body would be impossible.

  How could she in one fell swoop both save my ass and screw us over so utterly and completely? I stared down at the smouldering mess that was left. At least I knew what was to blame for all of this; the demon had killed him for a reason. It’d lured him into the alley and murdered him. It was entirely possible it had done it just because it could. Nothing was beyond the capabilities of a demon as far as I was concerned, but a gnawing feeling in my gut told me there was more to it than just simple murder. It had some sort of a plan, and if it had a plan, there was a pretty good chance that it was bad news for everyone else.

  All I needed to do was figure out the plan and stop it.

  Simple.

  My stomach rumbled noisily and I groaned. My body was constantly letting me down at the most inopportune times.

  “Go and get something to eat, or you’re going to pass out like last time,” Victoria said, but there was no malice in her voice.

  “I didn’t pass out…” I said churlishly.

  “Could have fooled me,” she answered with a smile. When I made no effort to move, she sighed. “I’ll come and find you afterwards, then we can plan our next move.”

  My stomach grumbled in agreement and I nodded. I didn’t need to be told twice. I hadn’t passed out the last time, but I’d come damn close to it and it wasn’t an experience I wanted to repeat, at least not if I could help it.

  Chapter 12