by D. R. Rosier
Chapter Three
The next morning the five of us were in a morning meeting. Scott was there as well, and he looked distinguished in his flawless suit. Lisa and I kind of shared the head of the table, Jeris and Cerise were on the other end across from each other, and Tony sat across from Scott in the middle of the conference room table.
Tony said, “I’m sure you’ll be surprised, but there’s more wards today for Jeris and Cerise to take care of.”
Jeris looked at Tony sourly. Eventually, demand would lower. Either our customers that could afford our lower priced wards would run out, or when our special opening prices were ramped up it would slow things down. Regardless, they’d been on a few government contracted jobs as well, so it wasn’t quite as bad as all that. Jeris also liked magic, and his job here, but anyone would get in a rut doing two wards every day for weeks.
Perhaps it would be strange to most that Lisa and I, the owners, weren’t running the meeting. But Tony was the manager, and he took care of arranging all the jobs with Lisa and I in the field more and more. We still went over the books to make sure he was doing a good job, and so far we had nothing to complain about.
Tony looked at Scott, and then nodded.
Scott said, “Thanks for letting me sit in on your meeting this morning. I’ve got your first execution job, and it’s a very high-profile case so I thought I’d come and talk about it in person.”
He nodded at Tony, who brought up the case on the large flat screen. A middle-aged mage with greasy dark hair, and beady brown eyes appeared in a mug shot. He had thin lips, and unusually pale skin for his hair and eye color.
“This is Jace Milner. He was tried and convicted over five years ago for multiple first-degree murders in Oklahoma City. He escaped shortly after the trial, and all attempts at finding him had been unsuccessful. His case file was eventually marked cold.”
Lisa asked, “He’s been seen in the area?”
Scott frowned, “Not exactly. You see, his murders were sacrifices, to summon demons for power and knowledge. The demons usually tore apart the sacrificial bodies after being raised. The MO matches the serial killer in town, who’s been leaving behind a trail of dead bodies. The detective who was in charge of the case figured out that our current serial killer was really the convicted and escaped Jace. He made a mistake at the last sacrifice and left some DNA behind which flagged in the system. We need you to find and end this threat to the city.”
Wow, no pressure, and calling it high profile was an understatement.
I asked, “Do we have anything on where he could be, who he spends time with, or where?”
Scott shook his head.
That wouldn’t be easy to do. Usually when chasing a skip or execution we checked their known associates and haunts. He was in a new city, and we had no way of getting any of that information. He could be anywhere. He was also an evil bastard.
“How about that DNA? Jeris may be able to scry for him.”
Scott said, “We can provide that, but he’ll have to go down to the station.”
Jeris nodded, “I’ll take care of it, and let you know. He’ll probably be protected from scrying though.”
True, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.
I said, “We need to see all the case notes, victims, crime scene photos, locations.”
Maybe we’d be able to figure out a pattern, or maybe narrow down where this guy called home in the city. I also wondered why he was here, was there a reason he chose this city, or was it just random chance?
Scott nodded, “All that’s been provided, and should be in the system. There’s one more thing.”
Lisa raised an eyebrow.
Scott said, “Due to the high profile of the case, and the fugitive’s success at evading authorities, this case has also been given to Carol Martin. If Martin security catches him first, you’ll be paid the standard hourly rates for the time spent on the case, but you won’t get any of the wanted reward.”
That… was new. It wasn’t odd for security companies to bid on the same jobs, all the government jobs were that way, but it was very odd for the government to put two teams on it. I supposed I couldn’t blame them, the mayor was under a lot of pressure on this very visible case. But… that didn’t mean I liked it. I really didn’t like Carol Martin, which made it worse. There was no way I wanted that bitch to beat us to the punch.
Scott stood up, and so did Lisa and me.
Scott said, “I’ll be going, and I’ll let the precinct know you’ll be by to check out evidence Jeris.”
We nodded, and I said, “You’re welcome, anytime.”
He smiled, and then walked out.
Lisa and I exchanged a glance as we sat down.
Lisa said, “Alright, Jeris and Cerise, get started on your day. Tony, stay with us while we go over the cases. You might see something we miss.”
Jeris and Cerise looked both jealous, and relieved, that they weren’t and wouldn’t be on our case, respectively.
The crime scene photos were gruesome, but I tried to ignore the gore of the torn-up body at each location, and I studied the ritual itself. It was a circle of glyphs around the dead body that was identical in each case.
“Any clue what he’s trying to do Tony? Raise power and demons, sure, but to what end?”
Tony shook his head, “I’ll have to research it, but I’d guess power and knowledge is the ends.”
I nodded, and then started to look at the data. We spent the rest of the morning on it. There were no common points between the cases, except all the victims were young and in their early twenties. That seemed to be the only similarity, the people had no connections to each other at all, either where they worked, shopped, or their daily commute. That made a certain amount of sense, the killer’s only concern was their relative youth, the younger a sacrifice was the more potential life and power that could be extracted. That was the only commonality that would matter, and Jace seemed to be choosing at random otherwise.
We spent hours in the room going over the cases, and I had very little idea where to start when we were finished. I wasn’t much of a detective outside my usual experience with skips and executions. Tony was a great help in some areas, but he didn’t have much of a clue either, and had left earlier to start researching exactly what those glyphs would do.
Jeris had called, and he hadn’t been able to scry him either, and even if I had the ability to push through a ward, I couldn’t, not without giving myself away. I couldn’t help anyone, if I was dead.
“Anything?” I asked.
Lisa said, “Look at the distribution, all the murders were in a mile radius of each other. That might suggest he’s living somewhere in the middle. Being wanted, he won’t have a job, or a driver’s license, so he’s probably living with someone else in this area. Either squatting, or maybe holding someone hostage. He may be somewhere in these four-square blocks.”
I frowned, “That’s a lot of area, where do we start?”
Lisa replied, “Pizza or Chinese food.”
“For lunch?”
She replied, “That too.”
The police probably could have done what we did, but once Jace was identified they’d turned over the case and hadn’t gone any farther with it. A human detective wouldn’t have stood a chance against a mage. At least, not one as powerful as the one we were chasing.
Jerry’s pizza was in the middle of the red dots on the map, or close enough to the middle. The lunch crowd filled the place, and I was eating a slice of pepperoni, while Lisa was chatting up the manager and delivery drivers. Her idea was simple enough, Jace was probably laying low wherever he was holed up, and evil mage or not, he’d probably ordered pizza at one time or another since arriving in the city.
If this idea didn’t pan out, we’d be hitting the closest Chinese place that delivered next.
I ignored the men checking me out, as I polished off the slice and picked up the next. I looked up as Lisa walked back to the table with a smug look on
her face.
She said, “I’ve got an address. Two of the drivers recognized our guy, he’s holed up in an efficiency apartment just two blocks from here. Better news, no one else has asked about him.”
Oh good, I’d hate to get there only to see Carol take the bastard down.
I stood up, and ate my second slice fast on the go, as we headed back out to the car.
“Good job, this wouldn’t have occurred to me.”
She shrugged, “I’m a predator, and I’ve had to lay low more than once in my life. Once you’ve been both the hunter and the hunted so many times, you realize people do the same tired things over and over.”
Lisa started the car, and then pulled out into traffic. We didn’t go all that far, just a block and a half before we pulled back over about a half block from the apartment building. It was time enough for me to inhale the rest of my lunch though.
“How do you want to approach it?”
Lisa said, “Let’s go in, you should be able to tell if he’s home, even if he has wards?”
I nodded, “That won’t stop me from hearing his song.”
As a rule, mage magic and siren magic, hearing songs, didn’t interact at all. The only exception to that I knew about was fire dragons, they could block me from hearing their song.
She nodded, “If he’s home we breach, if not we’ll head back to the car and wait for him.”
“Sounds good.”
I took a look around and listened to the songs around me as we got out. Nothing stood out, so we entered the building.
“I’ve got a mage on the third floor, and I can feel wards. They’re very faint, might just be detection wards.”
She smirked, “Three oh two is the apartment I have, let’s see if it matches up.”
I nodded, and we opened up the stairwell door and headed up the stairs. This seemed a lot easier than I’d expected, but I wasn’t going to complain. Sure, we’d put in a few hours work, but we’d found him awfully fast. We made it up to the third floor, and I turned left and went down the corridor almost to the end and looked at the room number, it matched.
Lisa’s eyes were full of anticipation of violence, as I gave her a nod and mouthed bedroom. He was home, and this was our guy. His song was recognizable as a male mage, but it was also… off. It sounded almost familiar, in a discordant and shocking way, but I couldn’t put my finger on why that was or where I’d heard it before. All life on Earth and the Earth itself, nature, gave off a song that Sirens could hear. The song of the world was beautiful, but his was discordant. Not all of it, just a few notes that were out of tune and discordant, the rest sounded fine. Like a piano with a single string out of tune. I was missing something, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.
Lisa pulled her sword, and then kicked in the door. I drew my sword with my right hand, and a gun loaded with silver in my left, as she breached the ward boundary and I followed.
Chapter Four
The apartment was torn up. The furniture was all pushed up against one wall, and the rug was pulled up and rolled against another. The floor held six identical circle designs with runes that sent a shiver down my spine, and not in a good way. They looked to be written in blood.
Since my dragon had woken, I’d been able to feel magic. That didn’t mean I could read its intent though, or even get anything but a general feeling about it. I’d known before we breached that the wards weren’t typical protective wards to prevent violence, but that was about the extent of it. It turned out the wards were much more different than I expected.
They reached out and touched the both of us, and then there was a large surge of magic as the wards drained… right into the circles activating their magic.
“Shit.”
Lisa moved for the bedroom, we’d both heard one of the windows being opened, but she only made it a couple of steps before the six circles flashed and became inky circles. Six creatures rose up out of the circles, and they were just… wrong. For one, their songs were completely discordant, every note sounded wrong, and I knew my siren power of song would be worthless against them.
At the same time, it finally triggered the unease in the back of my mind, and I remembered the ancient prison for the half spider half humanoid race that had been locked within. Their songs sounded very similar, but not exactly the same either, as if they came from a different hell or evil world, or... whatever. That’s what Jace Milner’s song had been trying to remind me of, somehow, he’d partially twisted himself into something unnatural. Something that didn’t belong on our world.
The creatures themselves looked like humanoid beetles, as a rough description. Their bodies were chitinous, red and black, and clearly exoskeleton in nature. They had six legs just like a beetle, the rear four were larger, and had long sharp spines for traction, and killing I supposed. The front legs, or arms, actually had clawed hands with smaller spines on them, and were gripping short swords. Their heads were grotesque, and they were covered in black chitin like a helmet. Their eyes were compound and set almost on the sides of their head, which probably gave them almost a full three sixty degrees of awareness. The rest of their head looked like one big mouth that opened the wrong way, horizontally instead of vertically.
My heart started to race like a jack rabbit, and while I still felt the excitement of battle, a part of me was horrified and off-balance. I let out my magic, just a whisper of it, to feel the air.
Lisa’s curse echoed my own, and we both went on the offensive.
I opened up with my weapon, and felt some relief as the silver bullets aerated the closest beetle… beetle demon’s head? Aerated the closest beetle demon’s head. Yellow blood, brains, and black chitin went flying, and it collapsed. The horrid and putrid scent was making me wish I wasn’t a dragon shifter.
Lisa’s attack had a similar effect on another, but the other four made a sound that filled my hind brain with dread, and they lunged forward to engage us. They were fast, not as fast as we were, but too fast to easily put down. Especially as they had us both surrounded two to one while we desperately dodged and parried four different swords.
I messed up, dodging and parrying four swords at once wasn’t easy, and I was too focused on them. I’d forgotten they had six legs. One of the middle legs struck out, and it nailed me in the chest. I had a horrible mental picture of it stabbing through my body and straight through my heart, but Tony’s enchantment held against the sharp spines and instead I went flying across the room and was punched into a wall.
It hurt like a son of a bitch, but at the same time it gave me a second free from their attacks. Before they could chase me down to reengage, I double tapped both their heads in less than a second. I pushed myself out of the wall, and my head was ringing and my back felt like it’d been run over by a truck. I was having trouble breathing as well.
Lisa was doing better than I was, dodging four swords and four legs with a speed and grace that would have normally turned me on, but the beetles and their smell were just too disgusting to possibly be turned on in that moment. Sure, my fight was over, but only because my opponents had inadvertently given me the space and time to shoot them.
I felt my ribs creak and crunch as they snapped back in place, and I could breathe normally again. I also felt bruises and aches start to heal, but even my shifter healing would take a minute after that strike, so I’d have to ignore the pain.
Jace’s song was close to the ground, and I didn’t want to let that fucker get away.
I ran toward the bedroom at the same time I double tapped one of Lisa’s opponents. The last one spit at me, just a second before Lisa’s sword took his head, and I dove into a roll barely dodging the pale-yellow spit and rolled back up to my feet. I heard the sizzle of acid, as the spit hit the floor behind me. I shivered in disgust, and I raced into the bedroom and over to the window.
As if they weren’t bad enough already, they spat acid too? I was lucky they didn’t do it from close range, or those two might have killed me. Maybe they
weren’t immune to their own acid?
“Four to two, bitch!” I announced, as I went out the window and started to run full speed down the fire escape. I knew it would tweak her good, that I was up on the kill count. It was more of a controlled fall than a climb down the steep metal stairs.
Lisa’s annoyed snort reached me from above, and I saw her fall past me. Crazy vampire was falling a floor at a time, slowing herself down just a bit by grabbing the railing for a split second at every level. Still, it was only three floors, and I’d had a head start, so she barely hit the ground a second or two before me.
Jace was already out of the alley, and in the street.
We both ran in that direction, as long as he stayed within range there’s no way he could evade me. Not only because of the mage in his song, but those few discordant notes made him stand out even further.
The street was full of traffic, and pedestrians.
He didn’t get very far, mages were essentially human when it came to strength and running speed. I was a siren, and Lisa was a vampire, two of the fastest people in the city. Unfortunately, Jace had come to that realization as well and was facing in our direction and casting a spell.
Lisa raised her gun and emptied her magazine. She pulled the trigger so fast it sounded like automatic weapons fire, and the bullets bounced harmlessly against the mage’s shields.
I sang.
My song might not have been able to impact the beetle demons, but even with the slight discordance in his song, it worked just fine on him. Jace Milner stopped casting as a scream of agony left his throat, and he collapsed to the ground. The pain song wasn’t something I liked to use, I hadn’t used it again since that day on the container ship. But… if there was someone that deserved a little torture, it was Jace Milner, a man who dealt with, summoned, and sacrificed people to demons. Unlike on the container ship, without non-violence wards I didn’t have to glow blue to do it, no dragon magic for me.
Lisa didn’t waste any time, and she dashed forward in a spit second and started to strike Jace’s shield enchantment with blurring sword strikes that even I had trouble following. My own enchanted body armor might take a few sword strokes, a few bullets, or strikes from demons, but no more than that, and certainly less than ten. Jace’s shield was stronger, but he was out of options.
