by Jes Battis
“I wouldn’t know.”
“But you saw things, right? You dreamt. You saw your father.”
I see my father practically every night. Whenever I close my eyes. That dream was no different from the hundreds of others I’ve had since I was a child.
“Yes,” I said. “My mother, too. And the Iblis. It was a party.”
The elevator stopped. The doors opened, and I stepped into the hallway. The air-conditioning made me shiver.
“Sorry,” Lucian said. “I’ve done other drugs, but never Hex. I’ve often wondered what it would be like.”
“Ask Corvid. He can hook you up, and the first bump’s always free.”
“Look at you. Talking street.”
“That’s me. The essence of hard-core.”
The hallway ended in a single door, since Corvid’s suite took up the entire top floor of the building. It was ajar. That wasn’t odd, since he usually left it open when he was expecting visitors. What did he have to be afraid of?
We stepped inside. Lucian surveyed the living room, taking in the antiques and strange objets d’art in glass cabinets.
“How old did you say he was again?”
“I’m not sure. He scares the shit out of me, though.”
I walked down the hallway that led to Corvid’s study. Last time I was here, he’d told me about something that he was working on. Some kind of technology. I think he owned a few different companies operating in Silicon Valley. He was always trying to streamline the distribution and delivery of his products. In a perfect world, I imagined, he could deal drugs that were purely made of energy. Little capsules of light that went straight to your soul when you swallowed them.
I smelled something. It was a familiar smell, and not something that I’d ever associated with Corvid’s hermetically sealed apartment. I paused.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. Something’s wrong.”
“Can you define ‘wrong’?”
“Not yet. Just—” My eyes widened as I stepped into the office. “Don’t move.”
Corvid’s head was sitting on top of his desk.
Even in death, his expression hadn’t changed. He was still wearing the same black pearl earring. His long white hair was braided in tight dreads, and his mouth was bared, revealing a row of sharp teeth. Blood pooled around the base of his ruined neck. It was black, like Basuram’s blood.
The rest of his body was lying a few meters away. Slowly, I approached his blood-spattered trunk and legs. One of his arms had been removed, but I didn’t see it anywhere. Maybe the killer had absconded with it as a souvenir.
I stared at the headless body. Part of his spine was visible, gleaming as it protruded from the hole where his neck used to be. I was amazed to see that his bones were coated in a translucent material, almost like tempered glass. The overhead lights made the osseous material shimmer in prismatic patterns.
“His head was torn clean off,” I said. “It wasn’t a weapon. This was done by somebody’s bare hands.”
“What sort of thing could do that?” Lucian asked.
“I don’t know. Until tonight, I’d say that Corvid himself was the only thing capable of doing something like this.”
“He must have a lot of enemies.”
“Of course. But not a lot of creatures would be bold enough to walk into his home and do this. He also has a lot of allies. Powerful allies who won’t take something like this lightly.”
“What do we do now?”
“I’m calling Selena. All you have to do is—” I stopped. I could feel something in the pit of my stomach. Something very wrong.
“What is it?”
I held a finger to my lips. I tried to quiet my thoughts, but they were all smashing into one another. My senses weren’t telling me anything useful. I could feel Lucian’s power next to me, and the residual power that still clung to Corvid’s body, which was slowly disintegrating. But there was something else.
I looked more closely at the blood around his severed head. It was a passive blood pool, formed by gravity. The edges of the pool were only partially skeletonized. That meant that it was fresh. But I didn’t know how fresh.
“Whatever did this could still be here,” I whispered. “We need to leave, carefully and quietly. I can call Selena from the parking lot.”
“Tess—” Lucian’s eyes widened. “Are you feeling that?”
I swallowed. “I think so. Maybe it’s just Corvid’s ghost.”
“No. It’s different.”
I took a step back into the hallway. “All right. Keep your defenses up. All we need to do is—”
Something flashed across my vision. A shadow. I reacted instinctively. Both blades were already in my hands. Meredith’s athame was cold in my grasp, so cold that it almost burned. I held on tighter.
“Where did you get that?” Lucian asked.
“It was a gift. I’ll explain later.”
I heard something. A kind of shuffling. I took another step forward, and Lucian followed me. Great. Why was I always the one in front?
“If the killer was still here,” Lucian murmured, “I feel like we’d already be dead. Anything that could do this to a pureblood would make short work of us.”
“Maybe it’s playing with us. Maybe it’s a bastard.”
I felt it again. A shadow presence. Not a demon, but something else. Where had I felt it before? It was driving me crazy.
Bang!
Something flung the closet door open.
I jumped back. Lucian yelled something, and I saw a nimbus of green energy swirl to life around his right hand. Then I heard another voice. No, no, wait.
What?
I blinked.
A man was standing in front of me. It looked as if he was about to collapse, and he was holding on to the edge of the closet for dear life. His eyes were wild, and he kept saying, Wait, wait, wait. He was staring at Lucian’s hand. The necroid materia made a crackling noise, like bacon in a pan.
The man finally looked at me. He was unshaven, and it looked as if he hadn’t slept for days. He was trembling slightly. But I recognized him.
I lowered both of the blades. I gestured for Lucian to do the same, but the green light had already dimmed.
“Dr. Rashid?” I asked.
He stared at me. He looked at Lucian, and then at me again. He seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
“What are you doing here, Dr. Rashid?”
“I—I live here. This is my building. I heard something. I called the police, but nobody came. So I went upstairs—and—” His eyes seemed to take me in for the very first time. They were all pupil. “You were there. Both of you—at the morgue. I remember. Who are you people? What’s going on here? What is that—” He pointed in the direction of the office. “What is that? In there? It’s not human. You’re not human, either. I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“You’re not,” I said. “You need to calm down. We can explain everything, but first, we have to get out of this building.”
He blinked. “Are you the police?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what are you?”
Lucian put a hand on his shoulder. “Come with us,” he said. “It’s going to be a long night. But you’re safe. For now.”
“I don’t feel safe.”
“Yeah. Join the club.”
I dialed Selena’s number. “It’s Tess. I’m at Corvid’s. We need a forensic team and a veil, right away. We’ve got a code seven.”
I hung up.
Rashid looked at me, still dazed. “What does that mean? Code seven?”
I sighed. “It means that you’ve got a lot of paperwork to fill out. And I’m not getting any sleep tonight.”
16
Photographers were taking pictures of Corvid’s head from every angle. I tried not to look at it, but I felt as if its eyes were following me. The rest of his body was scattered like a smashed marionette, but his head seemed oddly intact. Someone ha
d dusted his earring for prints and then left a numbered evidence placard beneath it. The blood around it had been swabbed, hair samples taken, buccal texture scraped from the inside of the mouth, and now the head was just another piece of the scene.
I watched the forensic crew as they swept over Corvid’s home, dusting, lifting, and taping off areas in grid patterns. They silently measured everything before placing it in a sealed and labeled envelope. In some cases, it was easiest to simply cut out and remove pieces of the wall and floor. In this way, the room was dissected bit by bit, while its surfaces were sprayed down with chemicals in the hopes of revealing spectral blood. We kept peeling back to reveal the flesh of the scene underneath, and the whole while, Corvid’s sightless head watched us.
Nobody was mourning the pureblood’s death. He’d be replaced by another aristocratic dealer, probably a younger one. But you also had to think that, over the span of a few millennia, you’d pick up a lot of interesting stories. You’d make friends, crash parties, do stupid things, have sex in strange places. Or was that just for the bottom-dwelling demons who aped human behavior? Maybe for a pureblood, it was all business. Maybe Corvid’s whole life had been nothing but a nightmare of scheduling.
I guess a part of me wanted to see him as a teenager. Not that Corvid was his real name. It was just a moniker. It made me think about him as an ancient crow patrician, looking down on the activity of the smaller demons below.
Selena was talking to Dr. Rashid near the entrance to the study. Her voice was a shade softer than usual. He was in a minor state of shock, but his professional training had already kicked in. He calmly answered her questions about his medical research areas and proficiencies.
Tasha Lieu, our chief medical examiner, crossed the room to where we stood. She looked at Lucian. “Hello again.”
He nodded and smiled. “Tasha. I haven’t seen you since the Ordeño case.”
“It’s been too long.”
“We really must stop meeting at crime scenes.”
She gave him a long look. “You want lunch? I could do lunch.”
“What kind of lunch?”
“Yogurt and apple slices. On a wild morning, I bring Grape-Nuts.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Could you do this elsewhere?” I asked. “We have a head waiting for us. I’m not saying it’s going anywhere, but I’d still like to get this over with.”
Tasha took a step closer to the head. “Has it been moved?”
“No. There’s a passive blood pool underneath.”
“Was the blood still circulating when you found the head? Purebloods have been known to regulate their vital functions at the level of the spinal cord for up to several hours after death. Both the head and the trunk may have survived for quite some time following their disarticulation.”
“That’s really kind of horrifying,” I replied. “But the blood pool had partially skeletonized when I arrived. I think he was dead.”
“I won’t be able to tell until I examine the borders of the wound. There may be hemorrhagic tissue.”
“You go right ahead.”
“We’ll have to wait until he’s on the table.” She leaned in closer, squinting at the lacerated flesh of Corvid’s neck. “It looks like a traffic accident. The head was separated at the level of the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae, with ragged and contused margins. I’m not sure what kind of weapon would do this. Tractor, maybe?”
“You can ask Dr. Rashid what he thinks. He’s a pathologist.”
Her eyes widened. “The code seven? I wasn’t sure if that was just a rumor.” She looked at Rashid. “Huh. Cute.”
Lucian sighed. “I guess I should be devastated.”
“What’s his specialty?” Tasha asked.
“It’s not analyzing demon heads; I can tell you that. He’s scared shitless. But so far he’s doing pretty well.”
Before I could stop her, Tasha walked over to Selena. “Hi. Can we borrow Dr. Rashid for a moment?”
Selena shrugged. “That’s up to him. Dr. Rashid—”
“You can call me Falih.”
“Falih, I’m Tasha Lieu.” She extended her hand. “I’m the chief medical examiner for—” She frowned at Selena. “What are we calling ourselves?”
“The organization.”
“Fine. I’m the CME for the organization, and I could use your eyes. Would you mind taking a look at this head?”
“Of course. I’d love to.”
The odd thing was, I believed him. Rashid and Lieu were both anatomists to the core, and it was clear that they enjoyed their jobs. I looked at Selena, but she just shrugged. At this point, we were so early into the “situation”—the intrusion of a normate—that everything was still very flexible. No rash decisions had been made, and Selena was still testing the waters. We needed to find out how much he knew, and how much he only thought he knew.
They examined the head together.
“It resembles railway interference,” Tasha said. “Don’t you think? The borders of the wound are avulsed. I suspect that the organs will be blanched from rapid blood loss. Both carotids transected along a jagged line.”
“I had a decedent once,” Rashid said. “Her head had blown through the windscreen of an automobile window. Snapped at the fifth cervical, and contusions all over the face. The head bounced off a tree and landed fifteen meters away.”
“I had a decapitation by aluminum fence pole.”
“Automobile accident?”
“No. It involved—” She frowned. “Well, let’s just call them ‘shearing forces,’ for lack of a more descriptive term.”
“Sharp-edged wound margins?”
“Yes. With tissue bridging. The epiglottis and hyoid were still intact, though.”
Rashid looked again at Corvid’s head. “Are you taking vitreous fluid? I mean—” He blinked. “I suppose I can ask, does he have vitreous fluid?”
Tasha smiled. “His species does. Usually. It’s much harder to extract.”
“How do you do it?”
“I think that falls under ‘classified.’ But trust me when I say that it’s a giant electric needle, and quite fun to use.”
“I believe it.”
“What’s your specialty, Falih?”
He blushed slightly. Only slightly, but I saw it. The effect was just a shade above adorable. Then he smiled and said: “Forensic pathology with an emphasis on osteological trauma. I graduated from the Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford.”
“Did you work with Athanasou?”
“I did.”
I half expected Tasha to offer up the spare room in her house to Rashid. She just nodded slightly, looking him up and down while still examining the head. I wasn’t entirely sure which one of them she was more interested in.
“We were never introduced,” Lucian said suddenly. “I’m Lucian Agrado. I work in a sort of consulting capacity.”
Rashid shook his hand. “And what area do you consult in?”
“You could call it pathology.”
Selena walked over to us. “Has anyone seen Sedgwick? I need him to keep an eye on the border situation.”
“Which border is that?” Rashid asked.
“Not any of the ones you’re thinking of.” She looked at Tasha. “We’re going to transport the head in a magnetic crucible. We’ll move it extra slowly and try to preserve the more fragile tissue.”
“I think the brain stem may be intact. Try not to touch it.” Tasha walked away.
Selena turned to Rashid. “Dr.—”
“Really, Falih is fine.”
“All right. Falih, we’ve got a bit of a situation here, and that’s putting it lightly. We need to continue our interview at a more secure location.”
“Secure, like an underground bunker?”
“No. An aboveground facility. Well, mostly aboveground.”
“The best parts are underneath the basement,” I volunteered.
“Who’s going to be representing me
when we get there?” Rashid asked. “Do you employ a public defender?”
“We employ an entire court of law.”
“Then I’d like counsel present at my interview.”
“We can get you someone.”
“Good. Then I have no problem coming with you. I’d like to make one phone call first, if that’s possible.”
“It’s not.”
“That’s a violation of my rights.”
“True. But we’ve deactivated the transmission function on your cell. For now, you’ll have to trust us and come along.”
“Are you taking me across state lines? To some kind of facility?”
“No. Our building’s downtown. West Pender.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s nice. Air-conditioning, panic rooms, and a sweet little cafeteria. You won’t suffer while you’re there.”
“I’m to take your word on that?”
“It would seem so.”
They both stared at each other for a few seconds. Then Rashid nodded.
“All right. I don’t trust you, but I don’t have much of a choice, either. I do expect some form of counsel to be waiting for me, though.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t be disappointed.”
He shrugged. “Fine. Am I driving?”
“You’re in no condition to drive. We’ll transport you.”
“I’m going with her, if that’s the case.” He pointed at me. “She can drive me.”
“I call shotgun,” Lucian said.
“No. Just her. No offense, Mr. Agrado.”
I looked at Selena. “I don’t care. We can swing by 7-Eleven if he wants, and he can ride in the front seat. Let’s go.”
“I’d rather be there,” Lucian said.
“It’s fine.” I resisted the urge to touch him. “I don’t mind. It’s a short drive.”
“I’ll be tailgating you the whole way.”
“If it makes you feel better.”
“Flash your lights if anything happens.”
“I will.”
“There’s a tracking device in your SUV,” Selena said. “We’ll be monitoring you the whole time.”
“That’s a real comfort. Where did they put the fiberoptic camera this time?”
