Last Breath

by Debra Dunbar

  “Can you tell me exactly what happened, starting with what brought you here to when you discovered the deceased?”

  Oh yeah. Story time. I took my license back and stashed it in my pocket, feeling the outline of the bone I’d taken from the sage pot as I did.

  “There was a guy, a customer on my shift today, who ask me to meet him and gave me this address. I came here, went in, and looked for him. That’s when I found the body.”

  Did I mention how I was the worst storyteller ever? I think my Latin is slightly worse, but making crap up is a close second. It’s why I was always in trouble as a child. I could never concoct anything plausible enough to cast a hint of doubt on what naughtiness I’d actually been up to.

  “So a man asked you to meet him after dark in an abandoned store in a bad part of town—a store you needed to climb through a window to enter.”

  I produced the slip of paper with the address on it and gave it to the cop. Or detective. Whatever he was.

  He looked at it and slid it between the pages of his notebook. “And how hot was this guy? I mean, he had to have been a total Adonis for you to show up here. You do know who Adonis is, do you?”

  Jerk. “My history degree did include basic Greek and Roman mythology, but I may be a bit rusty.”

  “Well, you don’t seem to be high, but I’ve got to say I doubt your ‘cute guy’ story. I really don’t care if you were meeting a dealer here. I’m not in Vice, I’m in Homicide, and I’m trying to investigate a murder. And I really need to check out this dealer of yours if he’s selling drugs in a building where a gruesome murder has taken place.

  Gruesome. He hadn’t even been in there yet, hadn’t seen the tub of blood and the symbols around the floor. Just wait ’til he got an eyeful of that one. Unless there was a magician moonlighting by dealing smack, he wouldn’t find the killer by roughing up the local drug lords.

  “I don’t do drugs, although I do enjoy an occasional alcoholic beverage. Look, I’m still fairly new in town. The guy said it was a mall, so I figured we were going to hook-up in the parking lot outside a Sears or something. I’ll admit this wasn’t what I expected, but I figured after driving down here I’d see if he was inside.”

  His eyes shot to mine. “And you weren’t afraid? A young, beautiful woman in a bad part of town casually leaves her car, walks down a dark pathway flanked on either side by abandoned buildings, and climbs through the window of a boarded up store. Seems rather reckless.”

  Beautiful? I’d been sometimes called pretty, but no one outside of my parents had ever claimed I was beautiful. I held the detective’s gaze and smiled. “I assure you that I am completely capable of defending myself against any attacker.”

  Well, almost any. And the detective didn’t realize that at the time I’d been clutching the sword, now in my car, with a panicked grasp. Yeah I was afraid, but I’d been taught that fear was a good thing. It kept you from doing stupid stuff. Sometimes it kept you alive.

  “Okay, ninja girl from Middleburg, Virginia. I’ll buy that. Now why were you in the building across the street from the address on this slip of paper?”

  Oops. Yeah, that. I shrugged, giving him another vacuous look. “I couldn’t read the numbers very well in the dark.”

  I was blowing this whole thing. I couldn’t act like a ditz one moment, antagonize the cop another, then go on to give him “I’m a badass” vibes. If I didn’t get my act together, I was going to wind up in jail, or at the very least down at the station for a very long night of questioning.

  “What’s in the building across the street? The address on the paper?”

  Wrinkled clothing or not, this guy was sharp. “Nothing. The door was unlocked and I went in but there was nothing there except a pot by the back doorway with some ashes in it. I figured I had the wrong building, so I checked this one out.”

  He shook his head. “A pot? With ashes?”

  I sucked at lying, and I was really wanting to go back to my apartment and do a little research before going go to bed so I figured it was time to try the truth.

  “Burnt sage. In a saucepan.” No way I was telling him about the bone. At least, not until I’d figured out what it was.

  “Sage.”

  Okay. The one word responses were getting on my nerves, especially now that he’d started repeating me.

  “Sage. Sage sticks are sold in bundles in new age or magical supply stores, and sometimes at craft fairs. They’re often burned with lemon verbena or prairie grass to sanctify a holy space or to protect against malevolent spirits.”

  He blinked. “Malev… malevolent?”

  “Malevolent. You do know that word? I don’t have a dictionary on hand, but I’m sure you can Google it on your phone.”

  Oh, I was being very bad. It would serve me right if I spent the night in jail.

  Detective Crumpled Pants didn’t seem offended by my slight. “So you believe that someone was practicing a spiritual something or another across the street? And I guess it’s an amazing coincidence that there was a murder in this building, here?”

  Might as well get this over with and get to bed, whether that be in my apartment or in a jail cell.

  “It’s not just your run-of-the-mill murder in there,” I told him. “It was a ritualistic sacrifice. I won’t know exactly to what purpose until I do some research, but there was some bad juju going on in there, and the sage across the street was to make sure dark fae, gremlins, hellhounds, or demon avatars didn’t interfere.”

  He stared at me open mouthed. “I’m rethinking my drug dealer theory. What exactly did you take and why did it have such a delayed reaction?”

  I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the pictures. “These aren’t the best quality. I’m sure your CSI dudes in there will have much better shots.”

  “You took pictures?” He voice rose in volume. “You encounter a dead body with blood everywhere, and you snap selfies?”

  “I did not take selfies! And I didn’t see what had been sacrificed until after I’d taken the pictures. For all I knew it could have been a dog or a hundred rats.”

  The man drew himself up. It was then that I realized he was quite a bit taller than me, and that in spite of his slim build, he was fairly buff. I might have given him the bravado speech earlier, but I wasn’t sure that this guy couldn’t pummel me to a bloody smear. Especially if I didn’t have my sword. Although if I tried to skewer him, he’d probably just shoot me. My eyes went to the gun in the holster at his shoulder.

  “History major. History of what? The idea of a slaughtered dog or a hundred rat corpses doesn’t faze you? You sneak into an abandoned building for a romantic tryst, find a tub of blood with some kind of satanic symbols around it, and you take pictures first and call the cops later?”

  There was a lot to refute in his statement, but I seized on the most egregious. “Black magic has nothing to do with Satan. Well, it might depending on if they were summoning demons or not. But beyond that, those who follow Satanism as it exists today don’t truly worship Satan as defined by the Christian church.”

  I saw several police exit the building out of the corner of my eye, and saw a team enter with a collapsible stretcher. The man in front of me tilted his head, as if he wasn’t sure whether to charge me with murder or not.

  “I didn’t kill her,” I argued. “I came to the address on that paper, and I’ll admit that I got nosy. And I know a lot about this stuff. I’ve spent my whole life studying this. My father has a library full of old manuscripts, and I’ve had access to some of the oldest texts in Europe. I’m going to find out what’s going on here because that’s what I do. That’s my calling. It’s what I was born to do. I’m happy to share information with you as long as you keep an open mind, and as long as you don’t lock me in a cell. Or shoot me. I’d really like it if you didn’t shoot me.”

  He looked over my shoulder, then dug a business card out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Stay here until I speak with the techs. But just in c
ase the dark fae spirit you away in the next five minutes, I’d like it if you call me in the morning, once you complete your research.”

  Now it was my turn to stare at him in astonishment. The man walked past me, brushing my shoulder lightly with his arm on the way. I held the card between my thumb and forefinger, watching as he spoke with the white suited, booted people. Then I tore my gaze away and looked at the card.

  Detective Justin Tremelay. My mind screeched a one-eighty. Tremelay. Bernard of Tremelay had been the Grand Master of The Temple in 1153. It was a weird coincidence that the very detective investigating this case had a last name that harkened back to our Order’s roots.

  So many of the Templar families had been exterminated after that black Friday when the King of France demanded the Pope denounce us as heretics. Our family had survived, as had many of the English and German families. Areas where the King of France had scant hold hadn’t suffered as badly as those within his reach. A few of the Italian families had also survived, sheltered by the decentralized power structure of the duchy system in that country. But the Tremelays had been wiped out—at least we’d thought. Not that it mattered. The guy thought I was high, or a crazy academic who saw the occult in everything.

  Or not. I watched as he jerked his head to look over at me, his mouth a tight line. Just as quickly he turned to face the tech and continued speaking with him. Told you so.

  A few seconds later he was jogging back over to me. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that we don’t want details of this murder to be made public at this time.”

  Or at any time, I thought. I’d promised Janice that I’d clue her in on any goings-on, but I wasn’t sure how she’d run a story like this. Breaking the news of an occult murder that police were keeping under wraps would be a huge scoop and it would also send the public into a tailspin of terror. Gang violence was a daily occurrence in this town. Ritualistic human sacrifice was not. That would be up to Janice to spin how she needed, though. A promise was a promise, and I couldn’t hold this sort of thing back from her. Especially when I might need her help. These two murders were somehow linked—Ronald Stull’s demon-related death, and this ritual. It could be a coincidence that one of the mages involved in this ritual got sloppy with a demon summoning, or it could be something more.

  And that got my brain working. Maybe Ronald hadn’t screwed up a summoning and got himself killed. Maybe the demon had been a supernatural hit man. Mages who worked death magic, especially death magic using human sacrifice, had to have secrets. If Ronald had been widely reviled as an asshole, perhaps one of his buddies had killed him.

  There might not be a direct cause and effect from one murder to the other. Not that anything I had right now was more than just theory. I needed to figure out what the bone was, what the symbols and magical parameters told me the death ritual was for, and what the sigil under a very dead Ronald indicated. Lots of unknowns.

  “What do you think about all this?”

  I jerked my attention back to the detective. He was asking my opinion? Well, that was quite the change from stupid-girl-looking-to-buy-drugs label I’d had previously.

  “I’ll let you know what I think once I do some research. I’ve got an early shift at the coffee shop, but hopefully I can get a few hours in before I head off to sleep.” There was no need to tell him I’d probably pull an all-nighter on this one. I’d been pulling a lot of those in the last few weeks. It’s not like I’d be able to sleep with all this running around in my brain. I was one of those people that couldn’t rest until I got the answers I was looking for.

  “The coffee shop on Pratt.” The detective consulted his notes. “What is your current home address?”

  I told him, then gave an exaggerated yawn. “Well, better get back home if I’m going to be digging through books before bed.”

  I headed toward my car, with the detective keeping pace beside me. “Books? Wouldn’t the internet be easier?”

  “Yeah, if I wanted to sort through millions of wacky, fake-magic sites and video game references. Most of the real stuff isn’t on the internet.”

  “Isn’t everything on the internet nowadays?” He’d stuffed the little notebook in his back pocket.

  “No magic user is going to put his carefully crafted spells up on the internet for a bored Goth teen in Cleveland to perform. Would you want some novice trying to summon a lesser demon, or in this case performing death magic? It’s irresponsible to throw stuff like that out there for the uninitiated to mangle with potentially deadly consequences.”

  He paused by my car as I fumbled in my pocket for my keys.

  “So you really do know how to do this stuff? You’re a wizard who just happened to stumble upon this because she was meeting a hot guy?”

  I unlocked the car. “I’m not a wizard, I’m a Templar with minor skills in certain areas of magical practice.”

  I knew enough to be dangerous. And based upon my last attempt at summoning, dangerous was exactly what magic was in the hands of anyone below an adept level. Which included me. Simple wards and illusion, that’s what I was going to stick to from now on. No more demonology for me, and definitely not anything remotely close to death magic.

  “You’ve got a sword in your car.”

  Crap. I did. Trusty was on the front seat, close enough for me to grab if I needed it. And I thought it very interesting that Detective Tremelay noticed the sword even with the look-away spell. Very interesting.

  “I… I do reenactments.” I did. Sort of.

  He leaned in and squinted at the foam sword and plastic armor still in the back seat of my car. “You wouldn’t have happened to have been at the park this afternoon where that reenactor guy got hit by lightning, were you?”

  Double crap. My name was on the police report, so there was no sense lying about that one. “Yes. I was with another person during the storm and we were the ones who found him.”

  “What an amazing coincidence.” His eyes met mine, and I felt like a bug pinned to a board. “I look forward to your call tomorrow morning to update me about the results of your research, Miss Ainsworth.”

  I started my car. “Aria. I’ll call you. And in the meantime you might want to see if there are any photos from the crime scene of the lightning strike death this afternoon. You might be very interested in the burn pattern under the body.”

  I pulled away before he could respond, a smirk curling up one corner of my mouth. This was fun, taunting the somewhat slovenly Detective Justin Tremelay. He might still think I was a bit off my rocker, but at least he was willing to consider information from all sources when faced with a ritual murder. And he hadn’t hauled me off to jail.

  And he was interesting, in a rumpled, middle-aged sort of way.

  Chapter 8

  IN SPITE OF my poo-pooing the internet, that’s exactly where I went to try to identify the bone. I might have a library’s worth of books on mythology, various supernatural beings, and magical spells, but when it came to naturalistic pursuits, it was a big fat zero. Edible plants, mushrooms, butterflies, birds, and animal bones all were subjects I’d never explored beyond the bare basics. Templars weren’t expected to forage for food, survive the zombie apocalypse, or track wild animals, thus I couldn’t tell an oriole from a robin. For all I knew, this bone was from someone’s chicken lunch.

  Three hours later I knew what the bone wasn’t. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t a skull or vertebrae. And it wasn’t from a bird.

  That was about it. All the long bones looked the same, in spite of expert instruction to look for ball ends, notches and curves. If this was a long bone, then it was from a fairly small animal—a squirrel or maybe a rabbit or cat. Heck if I knew. Luckily one university site offered an identification service, so I took the best pictures I could with my phone and sent them off with the fifty dollar fee, wincing at the expenditure. There were no vampires bankrolling this investigation, and I doubted Detective Sleeps-in-his-Clothes would chip in to cover my expenses. I’d need to start
watching my funds, or I’d be right back where I started two weeks ago—behind on rent and living on a Ramen noodle diet.

  Then I turned my attention to the symbols at the death magic ritual. Most of them I quickly crossed off as the usual runes a mage would use when delineating a protective space for spell-work. Slowly I made my way through the remaining symbols until I’d identified all but one. They’d performed a type of protection spell, one used to keep the casters safe as well as to contain… something. That something was the remaining symbol.

  I wasn’t all that worried in spite of the fact the mages had poured an obscene amount of power into this spell. The symbol wasn’t the sigil of a Goetic demon, and I was fairly certain it wasn’t any of the major demons either. It didn’t follow the same lines of the sigils indicating higher spirits. This one seemed home-grown.

  A lot of magic was. This symbol could represent a rival mage. To keep them safe from a magical hit, such as what I suspected happened to Ronald. It could be to contain an actual person—to keep another wizard in his hometown, or to hold his magical working back.

  If the latter, that would require a huge amount of magical energy. Restricting someone’s movements was more difficult than a charm to win a scratch-off. If the spell also acted as a magical shield… well, no wonder the human sacrifice. It would take me forever to puzzle out who or what the target of this spell was, and I didn’t have forever. The specifics of whatever the mages were containing would have to wait because I had only a few hours left before I needed to get ready for work.

  I eyed the clock and started in on the research I should be able to finish before my shift began—the sigil under Ronald’s body. Enlarging the pictures from my phone, I copied the sigil onto paper, drawing the blurred sections in red. There were several possibilities that I noted as I poured over my reference books, but as the sun was beginning to lighten the eastern sky, I hit pay dirt. Even with the blurred sections from rain and the shifting of the body on the grass, the sigil burned into the ground under Ronald’s body could be none other than Araziel.