Last Breath

by Debra Dunbar

  I wasn’t a lawyer and didn’t play one on TV, but I was still going to try and argue my way out of this. “It’s not a dangerous weapon, it’s a tool. Gutting fish, skinning deer, lopping the heads off vampires, creating a holy space to protect the both of us against undead. Same stuff. It’s a tool.”

  The detective tilted his head, one eyebrow raised. “Sorry. Not buying that one. Crazy women who think that they’re Templar Knights and are on a mission to protect the world from vampires and Satanists don’t get a pass on concealed carry law.”

  “It’s not concealed,” I argued. “Plain sight in the car and strapped to my back. There’s no intent to harm humans.”

  “It’s a sword.” Tremelay’s voice was getting louder. I wondered what my neighbors were thinking about this discussion. “You’re not bringing an illegal weapon to a crime scene.”

  “A sword is totally legal. There’s nothing in Maryland law that indicates a restriction on blade length. It’s not a switchblade or a throwing star. I’ve got no intent to harm someone. Case law shows the definition of dangerous weapon outside named illegal weapons hinges on the utility purposes of the knife and intent.”

  “It’s not a knife, it’s a sword.”

  And now the detective was shouting. Stupid Maryland. I wished I was still in Virginia where these things were so much easier.

  “It’s a religious object.” This was my last ditch effort, and it was a long shot.

  He rolled his eyes. “Get a rosary. You’re not carrying around a sword the size of a first-grader just so you can pray.”

  I hesitated. There was my keychain crucifix as well as my spelled butter knife. That couldn’t be considered a weapon by any stretch of the imagination. Still, it bothered me to be heading out without my sword strapped to my back. Funny how I’d lived here six months with it hidden under my mattress and now I wanted it everywhere I went. My sudden attachment to the weapon, and yes it was a weapon, hadn’t anything to do with being a Templar. None of my family went grocery shopping wearing their swords. I couldn’t think of any other Templar who had their sword constantly with them.

  Maybe I was going crazy, but I felt like I needed it. I felt naked without it. Even locking it in the car while I worked bothered me.

  “Then I’m going to drive separately from you. There’s nothing you can do about my bringing the sword in my own car. It will be in plain sight and it’s in the sheath.”

  The detective sighed then glared at the weapon. “Fine. You can bring it with us in my car, but it stays in the car. I don’t want to see you wearing it around. Got it?”

  I hid a smirk and gathered up the sword. Whatever. We’d continue this argument when we got there, and if I lost, then at least my sword would be nearby in the car. And if things went wrong… well, from what I’d read the most he could charge me with was a misdemeanor.

  Chapter 12

  I DID LOSE that argument, and Trusty remained in the car as the detective and I walked the dark pathway of the Mall. There wasn’t that heavy, menacing feel that I’d gotten from the area the night before. Some of that could have been that the sun was still up and there were a few people milling about the streets. Some of it could have been that I was with someone instead completely alone, and that someone had a gun. Not that his forty cal would do him any good against a demon, or really even a skilled magic user. Some of it could have been that I broke the smudge barrier, and whatever had been pacing the edges had left. Either way, the area felt cleaner, lighter. Well, as clean and light as a row of abandoned stores could feel.

  We went to the house where I’d found the smudge stick and dog bone and I watched while Tremelay surveyed the outside of the building. For what, I had no idea. The whole time he walked around, taking note of every tag of graffiti and visually checking with me to make sure it wasn’t part of a magical symbol. I wondered whether I should tell him about my meeting with Shade. He’d been pretty accepting of the whole Templar and magic thing so far, but I think it was more about gaining information into the killer’s mind-set than any belief in what I did.

  Shade. How could I tell Tremelay that an angel had killed his prime suspect, and that I’d met with an illusion who’d not given me any other names or valuable information before disappearing into thin air? Yeah. Better keep my mouth shut on that one.

  Done with his graffiti surveillance, the detective made his way around the building, inspecting the entrances and windows. The old store wasn’t public property, and Tremelay informed me he couldn’t officially break into the building. He could, however, go inside to investigate when there was a clear sign that someone else had been doing the breaking and entering. So we walked around to the rear of the building and I pointed out the broken boards and windows. Evidently that was enough for the detective to wiggle himself through the window.

  Yeah. I’m bad. I didn’t tell him the front door was unlocked and open. It was much more fun watching him crawl through a window.

  “Here.” I showed him the saucepan and the burned remains of the sage by the back door of the building.

  “Doesn’t smell like it’s been burned recently,” he said leaning down to sniff at the sage bits.

  “It would have been burned Friday night during the ritual,” I explained. And here’s where I confessed to more illegal activity. “I found a bone in this pot which turned out to be from a dog.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Dog? Is the rest of the dog somewhere else?”

  Oh God, I hoped not. “It’s not a sacrifice like what happened to Bethany Scarborough. Practitioners can get dog bones either from roadkill, pet crematoriums, or if they’re the squeamish sort, from magical supply shops.”

  I pulled the dog bone out of my pocket and showed it to Tremelay. He turned it over in his hand a few times then stared up at me. “They sell these on the internet, too?”

  “Yeah, if you know where to go. There are lots of magical rituals that involve the use of animal bones, feathers, snake skins, etc. It’s not powering the ritual, so there’s no need to have a sacrifice of the animal. The bones are used to channel the energy or to create a barrier. Their use is symbolic.”

  He slipped the dog bone into his pocket. “So you’re expecting to see this at four locations equidistant from the crime scene?”

  I nodded. “I haven’t been to the other buildings. You may need to take a little walk around while I discover clear signs of illegal entry, if you know what I mean.”

  The detective gave me a stern look. “Ainsworth, you are a whole lot of trouble. And I’m still thinking that you might just be a crazy woman.”

  I was trouble, and I probably was crazy too, but I was the only one he knew that had any idea of what was going on here.

  There was a vacant lot next to the building where Bethany had been sacrificed. Knowing the need for the spell perimeter to be a circle rather than an oval or a polygon, we walked the weed-infested lot, Tremelay taking one side and me the other. These types of magical circles didn’t have to be perfectly round, but the further they got from an ideal shape, the less effective they were at holding out, or in, energy.

  It was slow going. The weeds hid huge chunks of concrete and rock from whatever structure had once stood here. The mages wouldn’t have wanted to set the place on fire, but it only took a small clearing of weeds, or a space between two pieces of rock to set up the smudge pot. After the fifth time nearly twisting my ankle in the debris, I heard Tremelay give a shout.

  Getting to him was an exercise in agility. Once again I was glad at my choice of sensible footwear over sexy heels. The saucepot was on top of a flat piece of concrete, wedged between two pieces of rusted, jutting rebar. Inside were burnt pieces of sage, and a bone.

  Tremelay handed me a pair of latex gloves and I slipped them on. Then I held my breath as I picked up the bone to examine it. We were in the east quarter, and the bone I held wasn’t the hollow bone of a bird. “I think it’s another dog bone.” My heart sank, but I wanted to check the other two quarters
just to make sure.

  The detective held out a plastic bag and I slipped the bone inside, noting that he closed it and wrote the details of where we found it on the outside of the bag before pocketing it. “Okay. Onward.”

  We prowled the dilapidated building at the south corner and again I pulled a bone out of the smudge pot. “Well, this isn’t a scorpion, so I think I know what we’re dealing with,” I told Tremelay.

  “I’ll admit I’m a little weirded out that you just shoved your hand in there with the possibility that a scorpion was under those ashes. Honestly this whole thing is beginning to weird me out. What are we dealing with? You can tell me later what your theory would have been if you’d yanked a scorpion out of that pot.”

  “Dog bone in four quarters is meant to keep something out of the ritual. When you’re conducting magic, it’s a waste to have energy flying around all over the place, so a circle is primarily meant to concentrate the energy inside for the greatest effect. Likewise, you don’t want to broadcast what you’re doing all over the natural and supernatural world—that’s the second purpose of a circle. All the magic for the ritual would have been going on inside the line of symbols surrounding the tub with the body. That was the circle holding the energy in. This one.” I waved my hand at the smudge pot. “Was meant to keep something out.”

  “Keep what out? I notice you didn’t say keep ‘someone’ out.”

  I fingered the smooth edges of the bone then plopped it into the outstretched bag. Shade had said they’d warded against this, and I’d suspected he was telling the truth, but it was good to have it all confirmed by physical evidence. “Dogs are psychopomps. They separate the soul from the body and allow it to move on to the afterlife. Birds and other animals can be psychopomps too, but dogs are the traditionally symbolic animal.”

  Shade had particularly mentioned psychopomps and the need to keep them out. I was guessing that was a common practice when doing sacrificial magic. No one needed a reaper showing up to screw up your ritual, and especially no one needed a psychopomp snatching the soul you were about to use to power your spell. It was all so horrid, so dark. It made sense from a logic point of view, but made my skin crawl as a member of the human race.

  “Psychopomps? Wait, you said they separate the soul from the body at death, like that angel Azrael you mentioned today.”

  I winced. “Araziel. It’s really important not to mix those two up. And yes, Araziel is considered a psychopomp. He’s an angel, so he’d be the ultimate psychopomp.”

  This detective wasn’t slow on the uptake. I was honestly thrilled to be partnering with someone who didn’t discount my knowledge and who was catching on so quickly. Normally I wouldn’t have thought about teaming up with a non-Templar, let alone a cop who wouldn’t let me carry my sword around, but there was a human behind these murders. I could do my best to take care of a demon or angel, and I certainly would come down heavy on any magician abusing his power, but it would be beyond my Templar responsibilities to bring a human to justice. We’d done plenty of that during the Crusades with horrible consequences and centuries of what I could only call bad karma. Nowadays we left that sort of judgement to the civil legal system.

  Tremelay frowned. “So the angel that killed the gamer in the park might have been drawn to this ritual? If the people who killed Bethany Scarborough took steps to keep the angel out, that means it was around before it killed the man in the park.”

  I was thinking so. The presence Slade had mentioned that had scared them into leaving before cleaning up post-ritual? The unlikely coincidence that the mage who’d done the soul magic, who’d wielded the knife, was the one killed the next morning by Araziel? I had no idea how the angel had arrived here and why, but clearly he took exception to soul magic as an usurpation of his psychopomp duties.

  But that was my theory, and I had nothing concrete right now to back it up.

  “I’m thinking yes, but I’m not positive. Araziel might have been around back then or not. Death magic can be just about the energy of taking a life, or it can be about the soul. Either way the mages wouldn’t want a psychopomp of any kind to release Bethany’s soul.”

  The detective looked horrified at my words. “So her soul is still stuck in her body? What does that mean?”

  It was time for Death 101. “No, if her soul had still been in her body it would have been released when the runes were smudged by me and your crime scene guys. Animal psychopomps are mainly symbolic. Sometimes an actual animal arrives, an avatar that releases the soul. Sometimes they remain in the spirit world, invisible to our eye. I doubt the mages went to all this trouble to keep a psychopomp out just to leave Bethany’s soul in her body. They would have used it in their ritual.”

  The detective stared at me a moment, his hand brushing the top of his gun. “You’re scaring me, Ainsworth. You should be doing those séances and ghost tours down in Fells Point.”

  It scared me, too, but I wasn’t about to admit it to this guy. “I need to research death magic that involves the soul. This all seems excessive for a protection and containment ritual. It makes me a little worried about what they’re holding back.”

  What Shade had said made me more than uneasy. He seemed genuinely fearful about whatever they were protecting the city from. Maybe they were holding back a high level demon, although banishment would have been a more appropriate response. An angel? A crazy mage with an artifact? A vampire Balaj with an artifact? I’d taken the scepter but who’s to say Leonora or another group didn’t have something else in their treasure chests.

  “I need to figure out what they were doing,” I mused.

  Tremelay shook his head. “I know what they were doing, they were killing a woman. I don’t care about their mumbo jumbo, I just want to find out who they are and gather enough evidence to put them away. Especially if you’re right and this wasn’t their only murder.”

  This was the nature of our partnership. Tremelay gets the mages. I take care of whatever magical fallout their death magic ritual produced. And the angel. I shivered, thinking I’d rather swap with the detective.

  “I’m not well connected enough with the magical community for them to give me any information on this, and they’re certainly not going to communicate with the police.”

  I went on to tell the detective about the magical shop in Ellicott City, and my hope that between the pair of us we could pressure/convince them into telling us who bought dog bones, a blood sacrifice crucible, and whatever the heck someone needed to trap a soul.

  “I take it this store isn’t open past six at night?”

  “Actually it’s a twenty-four-seven kind of place. Are you proposing a road trip?” I smiled, thinking if we hurried, I could still catch up with Dario before midnight, before he was likely to have picked his dinner for the evening and headed off to enjoy a meal.

  Tremelay nodded. “I’ll drive, but the sword stays in the trunk. No bringing it into the store.”

  I snorted. “No problem.” I could hardly trot into a magical supply shop with a Templar sword strapped to my back. In fact, I was going to need the leather cuff I’d thrown in my bag to cover my tattoo. Hopefully word hadn’t spread about me and my dismissal from Haul Du. I was banking that the magical group hadn’t wanted to admit they’d allowed one of my Order admittance. Otherwise I was going to find that door shut firmly in my face.

  Tremelay looked down at the dog bone in the bag, pulling it out to examine it carefully in his gloved hand. With a smooth flick of his wrist, he rolled the bone up and over each finger. “So one more quarter to check then we head to this magical shop?”

  I was eager to get going. Magic shop, meet up with Dario, then the research that was going to take most of the rest of my evening. Plus I was determined to actually get some sleep tonight. “There’s really no need. Dog bone in three quarters pretty much guarantees there will be a dog bone in the fourth.”

  The bone made one more rotation around his fingers. The guy was pretty good at this. I’
ll bet with some practice he could do sleight of hand magic. Or be mighty lethal with a knife. I wondered how he’d do with a sword.

  “Let’s check anyway, just to be thorough.” He grinned. “If there winds up being a scorpion when you stick your hand in that pot, I want to see it.”

  “Fine. Let’s hurry though. I’ve got stuff to do and if I don’t get some sleep I’m going to start hallucinating.” We climbed through the broken window and replaced the splintered wooden slat. “That’s a thing, you know. Sleep deprivation and all that.”

  “How could you tell they were hallucinations? I mean, you see wizards and demons on a regular basis.”

  “Yes but they’re not dancing in tutus across the rooftops.”

  We crossed the street to where the west quarter of the circle would be. “Do you need to take a walk while I magically unlock this door? I mean while I discover where the vagrants have broken into the building?”

  “No need.” Tremelay nudged the door with his toe and it swung inward.

  The downstairs of the small dilapidated brownstone had probably been some sort of retail establishment with separate entrances to the apartments upstairs. The door opened to a large room with several stained mattresses on the floor. Garbage bags lined the walls. Sprawled across the filthy floor at the end of the mattresses were two dead bodies.

  I knew they were dead because they lay on their backs, white ribs pointing toward the sky.

  “I’m guessing we’re not going to find those two guy’s lungs or hearts?” Tremelay asked.

  “Or livers, or kidneys, or anything else.” I tilted my head to see the mess of splattered blood that coated the mattress underneath the corpses. Araziel. I doubted there was more than one being running around Baltimore ripping the insides out of people.

  But why? Had the angel been drawn here to collect Bethany’s soul only to find his path blocked? And if so, why kill these two… junkies?