A Flash of Hex

by Battis, Jes

  “Interference?”

  “Just step inside.” She lifted the tape. “And keep it together. This is as bad as it gets around here.”

  I swallowed around a lump in my throat. If Selena was spooked, then something incredibly horrifying had gone down in this room. I could sense it myself even as I stood in the doorway—the hairs on my arms and neck stood on end, and I felt a coldness in my lungs that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning. In our line of work, there were demons and necromancers, and then there were . . . other things. Older things without names, things you didn’t ever want to meet. And I knew, without even having to confirm the feeling with Derrick, that I was in the presence of evil.

  I ducked under the tape. A quick examination of the door revealed that it was intact, without any sign of forced entry. The room was dark, save for a lamp on the bedside table, and the glowing lights of the street. The sliding glass door was open, and the air in the living room had the tang of cold. We walked through it into the bedroom. The bed was undisturbed. The plush duvet was neatly folded down, and the sheets were so tight that I almost expected to see hospital corners. Nothing but straight, precise edges.

  “Bed hasn’t been used,” I said. “Or the killer cleaned up.”

  The coppery smell of blood was stuck in my throat. I examined the wall adjacent to the bed, which was streaked with rising and falling lines of red, like sine waves.

  “Arterial spray,” I said. “Selena said that the victim’s throat was slashed, but the arc isn’t very high.”

  “Maybe the victim was prone? On the bed?”

  “Or the cut was shallow.” I glanced at the intersecting arcs. The blood was so vivid that it looked like spray paint, and I could see a smattering of tiny white dots mixed among the crusting edges. “Vacuoles in the blood,” I said. “Air bubbles. Consistent with a throat wound—the victim was gasping for air.”

  Derrick was looking at the floor. “There’s no blood pool. If the killer slashed through the carotid or the jugular here”—he pointed to the wall—“then the victim should have fallen to the floor. There should be blood on the bedspread and on the carpet, but there’s none.”

  I nodded, frowning. “The edges of the blood on the wall are skeletonized—partially dried. But there’s no swipes, no disturbance. The directionality is wrong. As if the blood only hit the wall at high velocity, but didn’t drip or pool anywhere else.”

  “So where’s the rest of it?”

  I could hear something dripping. I made my way carefully around the bed, to the far side of the room, and my eyes widened.

  Someone had placed a vessel on the floor. It was a cauldron—cast iron, incredibly heavy. Like something you’d expect to see the witches from Macbeth stirring on a barren heath. The surface of the cauldron was smooth and black, unmarked. It had four clawed feet that sank slightly into the sodden carpeting. I watched, transfixed, as a drop of blood shimmered in the air for a moment, as if hovering, and then fell into the cauldron with an audible sound. A leaking pipe, or a clogged sink.

  Derrick’s face went ashen as he looked up. “Oh my God.”

  I followed the drop of blood in reverse. I followed Derrick’s eyes, and at first, I didn’t even register what I was seeing. It didn’t seem possible, even when I see the impossible just about every night. But this was different. This was—unspeakable. And I understood, grimly, what Selena had meant by “a twist.”

  The boy’s body was on the ceiling.

  He was suspended there, completely still, by a series of complex materia flows that I could now feel itching underneath my skin, like a trapped sneeze. He floated. His skin was milk white, since all or at least most of the blood had drained out, slowly but steadily, into the cauldron on the floor. It took precision to arrange that kind of placement. It took trigonometry, and an incredibly warped mind. The cut to his throat, as I’d suspected, was shallow—a dark red comma that traced the edge of his left carotid artery, while the right side of his neck was clean, untouched. The killer had given him a wound that would take a while to bleed out. Not too long, probably less than ten minutes given the pressure in that particular artery, but it would have seemed like a million years if you were dying.

  “He couldn’t have screamed,” I said, swallowing. “Not with that wound. All he could do was—wait.”

  Derrick shook his head. “Jesus.”

  The energy holding him in place, fueled by magic, was similar to the capillary force that pushed blood upward through the veins. The same force that made a drop of blood pause, perfectly still, on the surface of your skin, bending into the concave shape called “meniscus,” before it fell to the ground, splashing with scalloped edges.

  “We’ll have to wait for the materia to wear off.” Selena had appeared behind me. I had to consciously will myself not to jump out of my skin. “If we try to neutralize it, we’ll eliminate any useful traces that might linger.”

  “You think we can run it through a biometric database?”

  Selena shrugged. “I doubt anything will come up, but it’s worth a shot. Unless he’s been aura-printed from a previous crime, or he works for us, the pattern won’t be on file. Or it might be too degraded for a match.”

  I let my eyes move over the surface of the boy’s body, trying to stay impassive. He was thin—gaunt, really. The planes of his shoulders were clearly visible, and his belly was slightly distended, probably from lack of food. There were old track marks on his arms, and one new mark, a puckered red hole on his tricep, just above his brachial artery. I pointed to it. “You got a picture of this?”

  Selena nodded. “It’s obviously fresh. The veins in the arms and wrists are usually the first to collapse from shooting up. His veins don’t look so bad.”

  “He couldn’t have been using for long, then.”

  She shook her head. “Just a baby.”

  Ugly bruises were starting to show on his wrists, and a purple band was slowly appearing across his chest.

  “Huh.” I traced the long bruise with my fingertip. “Check this out. Almost looks like a seat belt mark. The kind of thing you’d see in a high-speed collision.”

  “Could materia do that?” Derrick asked. “I mean, if the killer used magic to restrain the kid, might it appear like that on his body?”

  “Hard to say.” Selena shrugged. “But with enough pounds per square inch, a burst of energy could probably leave a mark like that.”

  “So he was alive when he was restrained.” I followed the path of the bruise, which started at his left clavicle and ended at his waist, just above the pubis. “The bruising tells us that much. And look at the rest of his body.”

  Derrick leaned forward. He didn’t usually get this involved in the forensic aspects of cases, since his skill was in psychic profiling. But the past six months had changed him as well. Getting attacked by a Vailoid demon, watching me self-destruct, having to protect Mia and then seeing Marcus die right in front of him—I didn’t know how deeply he’d been changed, but I could certainly feel it. Even his powers seemed different. Almost sharper. I couldn’t describe it.

  “Some minor bruising on the wrists and feet,” he said, “again, something indicative of restraints. But no other marks. And his face is untouched.” He looked at me with a kind of sick realization. “The killer didn’t want to damage his face. He wanted us to see it, or wanted someone else to see it— maybe a loved one. He wanted him to die but stay completely recognizable.”

  “Someone’s been doing extra credit reading.” Selena gave him an approving look. “Maybe we should make you a forensic tech, Siegel.”

  He blushed slightly, then looked away.

  “Why the cauldron?” I asked. “What’s the significance?”

  Derrick shrugged. “Sadism? The victim has to watch himself die, drop by drop. He can’t look away.”

  “It’s a coire,” Selena replied grimly. “A traditional witch’s cauldron. Centuries ago, some of them were rumored to be so powerful that they granted immortality.
”

  “Wasn’t the hero Taliesen born out of a cauldron?” Derrick said.

  Their conversation faded away as I stared at the boy’s face. Dark lines under his eyes from lack of sleep. Sunken cheekbones, cracked and bloodless lips. He didn’t have the sores that suggested heavy crystal meth use, but he definitely got high. A faint trace of stubble that ended, abruptly, with the incised wound to his throat. Like a slashed photograph. His eyes were open. I’d seen dead eyes that were still wide with fear, and eyes that didn’t see anything at all, but these eyes were different. They were just—tired. Glassy and dark. No thin black line—tache noir, caused by the sclerotic tissue drying out—had appeared yet. The boy’s eyes still radiated feeling, but also a terrifying numbness. A sadness that was larger than my ability to witness it, too vast to contain through notation, photography, videography.

  “The killer’s a traditionalist,” Selena continued. “He’s telling us that he knows us, that he knows our past and our mythology. He’s mocking us. This is a reverse baptism, an aborted birth. A desecration.”

  Most dead bodies create a black hole, sucking up everything in the room. This boy’s body seemed to glow with a crushing sadness, an indescribable and softly haptic sense of grief, that made my hands shake.

  “Tess?” Derrick gave me a funny look. “You all right?”

  I nodded, dropping my hands to my sides, but not before Selena noticed the tremor. “Fine. Just tired. And confused. I mean, why him? What did this kid do? He must weigh ninety pounds soaking wet, he’s not a hardcore user. And look at his hands. His cuticles aren’t bitten down, and his nails are healthy. Even if he cruised the street, it must have been a recent thing. This kid has a home, a family.”

  “He should be playing Guitar Hero in the basement,” Derrick said.

  “The apartment’s registered to some overseas landlord—I doubt they’ve been here in the past six months, but they’re not renting out the unit either. It’s been empty and unlisted for quite some time.”

  “You think this kid was a rent boy?”

  “It’s possible,” Selena said. “There’s no pattern, though. The two other victims from Hamilton and Scarborough were both girls. Their parents are mages—high-society types. Powerful and rich. Well connected to the CORE division in Ontario.”

  “Both white?”

  She shook her head. “The first, Tamara Davies, was First Nations. Métis. Parents involved in occult research and theory. The second”—she glanced at her notebook—“Andrea Simms, was white. Her mother, Lyrae Simms, was the senior advisory for practically the whole East Coast, until she died of breast cancer last year. Andrea had a full scholarship to York. All of them had dark hair, but other than that, the killer doesn’t seem to discriminate. We’ve got two trust fund teenagers, and now possibly a street kid. All killed in the same way. Until now, we didn’t think the first two were connected.”

  “What about the coire? Were there cauldrons at the other sites?”

  “No. This is the first time this element has appeared. The killer’s perfecting some kind of new ritual. Testing out a new game.”

  “But why would he kill in three different cities?” Derrick asked. “And then cross over into a totally different province? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But we’ve got a ridiculously large sample pool to draw from. In our world, half of the population—hell, two thirds—could be considered killers. Vampires, demons, necromancers . . . all of them kill without discrimination or remorse. All of them fit the classic profile of a psychopath. But this killer is different. He, or she, is using materia to aid in the killing.”

  “But it’s not necroid materia. There’s no trace of necromancy here, or at least none that I can detect.”

  Saying the word “necromancy” made me think of Lucian Agrado, which was something I’d been doing a lot of lately. Even though he scared the hell out of me, I still wanted to see him. Possibly because he scared the hell out of me. Possibly because I never got to finish what we started that night, six months ago. Before the gates of hell opened up and sucked my whole life into them.

  Lucian also knew the dark side of this city like nobody else. He didn’t frequent the Downtown Eastside, but he must have known people who did. People, creatures, and things without names. I was going to have to talk to him eventually.

  I could still hear Selena’s last words to me on the subject:

  Stay away from him. The CORE would never tolerate anything more than a friendship between the two of you. If they get wind of a developing relationship, they’ll absolutely destroy both your lives. They won’t hesitate.

  “So this wasn’t done by a necromancer,” Derrick was saying.

  I looked once more at the boy, still floating before me, like some foul and twisted parody of the Lady of Shallot. His sad eyes were the blue of lapis lazuli, the blue of a single vein thrown into relief. Flashbulbs lit up his body, silvering the edges of his skin until he drifted, molten, like clustered lightning or a shimmering piece of quartz.

  I had to look away.

  2

  Security at the lab was pretty relaxed at 7 a.m. I swiped in at the first checkpoint, submitted my palm print, and within moments I was wandering through the glass-partitioned world of the Mystical Crimes Division. It looked like any other well-funded crime lab, but if you peered closer, you might see a few unusual pieces of evidence. Like a cursed amulet, or an enchanted shotgun capable of firing itself. There was a secure evidence locker for items like that, placed alongside the regular archive and drying room for more terrestrial samples. I passed the firearms lab to my right, where an intern was awkwardly trying to carry a lump of yellow ballistics gel as it wobbled on a plastic tray. By the end of the day, it would be obliterated by all sorts of different ammunition—blossoming Hydra-Shok bullets, Glazer Rounds that mushroomed on impact, Black Talons that could shred through human tissue at incredible speed, and even tracer bullets loaded with mandrake that reacted to mage’s blood.

  People waved to me as I walked, and I smiled back, but my heart wasn’t in it. I felt drained, both physically and mentally. My arms and legs were moving, I wasn’t tripping over things or running into walls, but for the most part I was on automatic pilot. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened six months ago. Derrick tried, but I always evaded. Selena was too busy to ask about my health, and I was too busy to really think about it. So I showed up for work, I did my job, and at night I stared at the ceiling.

  I got into the oversized service elevator and pushed the button—it only went down, so there wasn’t much of a choice involved. The hydraulics groaned, and within a few seconds I was in my favorite place: the morgue.

  Tasha Lieu, our medical examiner, was leaning over the autopsy table, dressed in green scrubs with a full apron. Blood spatter on the apron made her look like a curious parody of a Christmas tree. Happy Holidays.

  I could hear music: the faint strains of hip-hop, Tasha’s obsession. This time it was Aesop Rock, and his manic lyrics tumbled over each other, sharp and powerful, as they filled the air:Must not sleep.

  Must warn others.

  Trust blocks creep where the dust storm hovers;

  I milk my habitat for almost everything I want,

  Sometimes I take it all and still can’t fill

  This pitfall in my gut.

  It was a fitting anthem, especially for a pathologist who rarely seemed to sleep herself. I thought of the Latin plaque on Tasha’s desk: Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. “This is the place where death rejoices to teach those who live.”

  I started to push the door open, then paused. I suddenly found myself breathing hard. Autopsies freaked me out on a regular basis, but this one was worse than usual. I inched forward, peering through the glass. The boy was laid out on the stainless steel table, looking even smaller than before. His eyes were closed, but I could still feel them on me, looking through me. I shuddered.

  Tasha had only partially finishe
d stitching him up, and the top half of his chest cavity was still open, as if a zipper had been pulled down and then stopped at the line of his breastbone. I was always amazed by the vivid coloration of organs, the pale yellow of fat tissue lining the walls of the chest, like foam insulation spilling out. It mingled with the rust-colored red of the muscle, purple in spots, yielding to the prosector’s scalpel with such shocking ease. It takes only eight pounds of pressure for a knife to cut skin. Barely a touch. I’d felt the pressure of fangs sinking into my neck before—the betrayal of my skin as it was torn and macerated. Not such a tough exterior after all. If only I could have Kevlar instead.

  In order to get to the heart and lungs, you first have to break through the ribcage—I’d seen Tasha do it before with a pair of large pruning shears. The snap always made me shudder. Not a careful sound, like tearing fabric, but the awkward crack-snap of bone as it was sheared through and broken up. She’d replaced the chest plate, but even though I couldn’t see the fractures, I knew they were there. We broke up his insides and then put them back, barely held together, leaving our mark. It always seemed like a desecration. I couldn’t stomach the thought of someone reaching into my body, prodding and weighing and breaking things, only to replace them all lopsided, like when your suitcase spills over at the airport, and you have to just shove everything back in—shirts, shoes, socks, toothpaste, keepsakes—until it’s all mixed up.

  Tasha’s foot tapped the pedal that activated the digital recorder, and she began giving her post report. I strained to listen.

  “Subject is a young white male, height five feet nine inches, weight one-hundred-twenty pounds, age indeterminate—judging from molar eruption and fusion of the pubic symphisus bone, I would place him between nineteen and twenty-one years old. Signs of malnutrition and possible eating disorder, including stomach swelling, acid damage to the teeth, and severely receding gum line. Stomach contents are largely liquid, suggesting that the subject hadn’t eaten for a day, possibly two. Blood in the stomach suggests a peptic ulcer, with black, ‘coffee ground emesis’ consistency, but no abscess was found during the post examination.”