Demon Hunts wp-5

by C. E. Murphy

  “She was my mother,” I said tiredly, “and she died a year ago tomorrow.”

  I didn’t typically think of myself as an emotional lightweight. I didn’t tear up at Hallmark commercials, although extreme vehicle makeover shows could get me. I had a secret stash of romance novels that didn’t fit my girl-mechanic image, but even when they got angsty I didn’t sniffle over them. I had not, in fact, cried when my mother died. I’d barely known her, and I hadn’t liked her very much. But for some reason my throat got painfully tight and my nose stuffed up as I made my announcement.

  Billy and Sonata were conspicuously silent, for which I was grateful. After a couple deep breaths I regained enough equilibrium to say, “She gave me to my dad when I was just a baby, because she had to keep fighting the Master.” That was so inaccurate as to be an outright lie, but I didn’t feel like getting into the complex time-slip that had happened both nine months and almost thirty years ago in my personal timeline. “Would her death be enough to start messing up the balance? Was she that big a gun?”

  Sonata’s eyes were dark. “What’s your calling, Joanne? What are you, in adept terms? What are we?”

  “Me? I’m a shaman. You two are mediums. Melinda’s, I don’t know, a witch or something. Why?”

  “And what do you suppose a mage is?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a wizard. A sorc…” Except sorcerer, in my experience, connotated bad guy, and I was pretty damned sure Sheila MacNamarra hadn’t been a bad guy. I fell silent, staring at Sonata and working through the rankings I was aware of.

  Mage didn’t fit anywhere on the scale. It suggested major mojo, skills on a level that beggared the rest of us. Which, from what little I’d seen, summed up my mother nicely. I said, “Phenomenal cosmic powers?” in a small voice.

  Sonata nodded. “If she’s dead, then our side has lost a great warrior.”

  I snorted loudly enough to make my ears pop. “Our side? So far I haven’t seen a lot of us versus them, Sonata. I’ve mostly seen badly screwed-up people in need of help.” Where “people” sometimes meant “gods of unimaginable power,” but who was counting?

  “And yet you just said your mother spent her life engaged in battle against this ‘Master.’ Is he not the other side?”

  Anybody who commanded banshees-or anything else-to ritual murder in order to feed on the blood and souls of the dead was, I had to admit, pretty much inherently on the other side of where I stood. “All right, point taken. So her death could’ve been the catalyst. Or a catalyst.” I didn’t like the idea of that much hanging on my mother’s life.

  She probably hadn’t liked the idea, either.

  I put my face in my hands. “Basically what you’re telling me is that never mind the cannibal, I have much larger problems looming. Only I can’t never mind the cannibal, so I’m just going to have to figure out a way to make it all work. Which is what I’ve been doing all along.”

  God, I missed Coyote. He was only moderately helpful, mostly by way of kicking me in the ass until I did, in fact, figure it out myself, but having him there to kick my ass would have made me feel a lot better. I exhaled into my palms, then looked up at Billy. “Okay. Sonata was the likable idea. Now for the one you’re going to hate.”

  He sighed. “All right. What do I hate?”

  I put on what I hoped was a convincing, cheerful smile. “I’m going to use myself as bait.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Billy said, “Excuse us,” and hustled me out of Sonata’s house so fast it could have been magic. I warded off his outrage with raised palms, or tried to, and opted to explain rather than wait for him to stop telling me what a bad idea it was.

  It wasn’t that I thought it was a particularly great idea myself. It was just better than setting somebody else out as bait, which argument didn’t slow Billy down at all. “Look, I’m going to head up to the Space Needle and have a look around the city first,” I said in my best reasonable tone. “I’ll see if I can pull up any residue like I saw from Melinda’s circle-”

  That, at least, got his attention. “You saw something? Why the hell didn’t you say so earlier?”

  “Because I took a cab from your house to the coroner’s instead of you picking me up, and I forgot while we were examining decomposing bodies and talking to mediums, okay? I’m sorry.” Billy had the grace to look apologetic, and I charged onward. “Anyway, yes, I saw residue from Mel’s circle, so I thought I could at least try picking up someone else’s. If we’re lucky it’ll turn out there’s some lunatic controlling a…” I had no idea what, really. A cannibal, clearly, but beyond that I didn’t know. “A flesh-eating monster. And then we can bag the guy and be done.”

  Billy gave me a look that said when have we ever been lucky? and I shrugged it off. “And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll try the bait thing.”

  “Need I point out that this thing is going after outdoorsy types, which you’re not?”

  It was true. I was more the grease monkey type. I said, “Still,” like I’d presented that comment aloud, then leaned heavily on the hood of his minivan. “Ravenna Park isn’t exactly a great outdoors kind of landscape, either, Billy.”

  “You know, I’m pretty sure I hate where this is going, too.”

  “She was found in Ravenna Park. She lived in my apartment building. What if-”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  A tiny rush of relieved laughter escaped me. “You didn’t let me finish.”

  “You were going to say, what if this thing that eats souls was after you. What if it’s circling around to you, and Karin Newcomb just got in the way. Joanne, do you know any of the others who died? Is there any kind of connection at all?”

  “No…” Even I knew the apartment building connection was tenuous, but my life had been one unpleasant coincidence after another all year long. Stranger things could, and had, happened.

  “Then don’t do that to yourself. This is bad enough as it is.”

  “On the other hand, if it’s not coincidence,” which I really wanted it to be, “I’d make good bait. So unless you’ve got a better idea, let’s try scoping out the city from the Needle, and then…” I shrugged. “Then we’ll see.”

  Billy ground his teeth, got in the minivan, and drove us to the Space Needle. Normally he might’ve proposed we do something crazy like actual detective work, but there were about a hundred cops on the cannibal case and so far no one had gotten a break. Every crime scene had been utterly bereft of DNA evidence. We hadn’t been able to pinpoint an area the killer might be in, because the victims were from all over the city. In my grumpier moments I suspected our cannibal had watched too many crime shows and knew better than to hunt in a six-block radius around his home. Or a six-mile radius, for that matter.

  The total lack of DNA was part of why Morrison had called Billy and me in. It wasn’t like chewed meat could be licked clean, and there were streaks of blood on the bodies, if not puddles under them, which suggested they hadn’t been thoroughly washed before being dumped. But even if they had been washed, even in the unlikely event that someone could scrub every last bit of their own genetic markers out of the body they’d just snacked on, that would’ve left residue, too. The absolute nothing was impossible, and impossible was supposed to be our department.

  Billy, who would’ve scolded me for doing the same thing, came down Broad Street, parked the van in a taxi zone about a hundred feet from the Needle’s foot and hung a police vehicle tag in it. We waved our badges at security and hopped the “only going to the restaurant, don’t need the tour guide” elevator to the fiftieth floor. It wasn’t as much fun, but it was faster.

  The police badges also meant we didn’t have to buy the restaurant’s overpriced lunch, although my stomach rumbled when the scent of food hit my nostrils. “Think we can expense it to the department?”

  “I’m writing off filling up the minivan’s tank. Might as well try expensing filling up mine.” We got a table at the room’s outer edge and ordered lu
nch while I turned the Sight on the city.

  It looked healthier than it had the last time I’d done this. Then there’d been a malaise spreading over Seattle, one that eventually awakened the dead. Today there was nothing so appalling, and, as the room turned and I drifted through the surreal, brilliant colors of the shamanic world, I thought there were worse ways to spend a lunch hour. Maybe I could come up here once a week to make sure all was well, though the pragmatic part of me suggested I’d better get an annual pass if I wanted to do that. They’d probably notice if I kept dropping by and cheating my way in with a police badge.

  Billy, diffidently, asked, “Getting anything?”

  I shook off my musings enough to answer. Our seats had rotated far enough to the north that I could now see down Aurora Avenue. Billy’s house, off to the west, lit up with the remains of the circle Melinda’d drawn for me. I glanced farther east, toward Lake Washington, and caught a glimmer of brightness at the corner of my eye. “Nothing I don’t recognize. I can see your house, but it’s almost straight on to us now. I might need line of sight to really pick things up.”

  “You didn’t with the cauldron.”

  “The cauldron was spilling gook all over the city,” I said irritably. “I’ve never tried looking for the remnants of somebody’s power before. I can see a glimmer over at Matthews Beach, but I-oh. I guess I don’t have to wait for the restaurant to turn that far before I get a straight look at it, huh?” Embarrassed, I got up and walked around the restaurant until I could see the lake.

  Matthews Beach was where the thunderbird had fallen six months ago, and where my prize idiocy had torn the landscape into a new shape. There was a waterfall there now, and almost no one in Seattle remembered how it got its name. Some of those who did, though-people who belonged, like it or not, to Magic Seattle, like me and Billy-came together there daily, greeting the sunrise, waking the world and generally pouring goodwill and power into a place they saw as mystically significant.

  The result was a glow that beggared the light from the Holliday’s home. It was like a miniature nuclear warhead had gone off, that much purity of white. I rubbed one eye and went back to the table. “I can definitely see power spots if I’m looking for them. Thunderbird Falls is brimming over. It kind of makes me wonder how things can get out of kilter here, if there’s that much basically positive energy being poured out.”

  “Watched the news lately?”

  I sagged and didn’t even perk up when the waitress brought my onion-and-cheese-tart appetizer. Hey, if I was expensing the meal, I figured I should enjoy it. And if I wasn’t able to expense it, I’d definitely better enjoy it. “Yeah. It’s all Laurie Corvallis, Talking Head, Spreading the Bad Word. Why doesn’t anybody ever report on the good stuff?”

  “Disaster’s good for the oligarchy. Ha,” Billy said to my goggle-eyes. “Fair’s fair. You pull out ‘exsanguinate,’ I pull out ‘oligarchy.’”

  “I’m in awe. There’s nothing sexier than a guy with a big vocabulary. Don’t tell your wife I said that.” I glanced back at the view, searching for telltale shimmers of power. There were flashes here and there, tiny bright spots that didn’t have enough strength to hold my attention, much less to represent a power circle. “I wonder…”

  My gaze drifted back to the Hollidays’ distant house. The power emanating there was the good kind, full of life, rather than anything that would harness a killer and send it to do its bidding. I’d never looked for something darker. “Ritual murder probably leaves a different kind of mark than happy fluffy-bunny magic, huh?” I held my breath a moment, working myself up to it, then reached for the magic inside me.

  I’d been depending on auras, and on the brilliant light and dark of a world viewed through shamanistic eyes. There was no healing component to that, nothing that required a wakening of the particular magic I commanded. But that magic was life-magic, so attuned to preservation and healing that the one time I’d used it as a weapon against a living thing, it had nearly wiped me out. It rebelled against death, and in so doing, might help me See places in Seattle where darkness had prevailed.

  After one glance, I wished I’d never thought of it.

  A couple hundred people died every year in Seattle through homicide or suicide. I knew the statistics; I’d worked some of the cases. But I’d never thought about what kind of mark that might leave on the psychic landscape, or how long it might last. There were jagged spots all over the place, far more than could be accounted for over the course of a single year. Dizziness caught me and I widened my eyes, trying to See more clearly. Trying, mostly, to See when the world itself started to heal from the wounds cut in it by violent deaths. There were places where healing was obviously happening, the mark of murder fading but not yet gone, but from the sheer number of still-vicious slashes, recovery time looked to be in the decades or even centuries, rather than months or years. My stomach seized up, making me regret the onion tart appetizer, and I put my hand on the curved window in front of me, ostensibly for balance.

  Really, though, the greater part of me was trying to reach through the glass into the city. I wanted to soothe the damage it had taken; the damage the dead themselves felt, though it was much too late for that. Billy said, “Joanie?” worriedly, and I dredged up a wan smile to accompany a whispered, “It’s so sad.”

  Murders looked different from suicides. I stared across the city, both fascinated and horrified that I could tell the difference. They all bled black and red and spilled out to leave dark gashes in the lives around them, but murders had an external violence to them, leaving behind a spray that reminded me of a blood spatter. Suicides were more internal, wrapped up tight with sharp edges pointing inward. Nauseated, I jerked toward the north, searching for the Quinleys’ home.

  Its mark was no worse than any of the other murders I’d just studied. Incomprehension swam between my ears, then cleared up as I struggled to link thoughts through the bleak chaos of the dead’s world.

  Rachel and David Quinley hadn’t died in ritual murder. They’d just been slaughtered by a madman who wanted to steal their daughter. A warning had been left written in their blood, but sick as that was, it wasn’t ritualized. My hand turned to a fist against the glass, then dropped to my side. I could think-dismayingly-of at least three places where actual ritual murder had been attempted or achieved, and one of them was still in my line of sight: Billy’s home.

  I badly did not want to see what Faye Kirkland’s death looked like, splashed across Billy’s lawn. On the other hand, maybe recognizing it would give me a hint as to how to heal that space a little faster, so there were no malingering effects to distress his family. I actually held my breath, trying to pull the bright shamanistic world into conjunction with the darker, murderous version I was looking at now. A headache spiked in my right eye as two opposing world views fought for domination, then finally settled down like a cat and dog determined to ignore each other. The Hollidays’ home came into focus, a beacon in the dark.

  For long seconds I wasn’t at all sure I was actually seeing their house, because all I really Saw was the brightness, same as I’d seen earlier. Faye’s death came into slow focus, but it was a shadow, with nothing of the strength or horror I expected it to have. I felt Melinda there, full of love and confidence and determination. Full of serenity, greater by a considerable margin than the terrible things that had happened that summer.

  Relief and delight bubbled in my chest and made my eyes sting enough to threaten the Sight. Apparently a deliberate application of positive energy could make a difference, which gave me an uplifting spark of hope for the whole wide world. “Your wife is something else, you know that, Billy?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a note of pride that fell just short of smug. “Yeah, I do.”

  Buoyed by the knowledge that it was possible to fight back against marks left by abominations, I turned toward the next-nearest site of ritual murder that I knew about: Woodland Park.

  Dark power sledgehammered me alongside
the skull.

  I dropped into my chair like I’d had my strings cut. Nausea rose up, hurrying to find an escape route, and I ducked my head between my knees, classic crash position as I gasped for air. Billy’s worried “Joanie?” was louder this time, and I barely managed to get fingertips above the table’s edge to give him a semi-reassuring wave.

  “I’m okay. I’m…” I fumbled for my glass of water and took a few tiny sips while still in crash position, which wasn’t the easiest of tasks. “Oogh. Okay. I’m…” I’d said that once already. I got my elbow onto the table and cranked myself up inch by inch, neck stiff as I made myself peek outside again.

  Three points of a diamond raged with malevolence, pouring sick purple-gray power into the sky. I couldn’t imagine what kind of whammy that field would’ve had if the last murder, the last point on the diamond, had been completed. As it was, if I hadn’t been heartened by what the Hollidays had accomplished just before looking at the diamond, I would’ve been down for the count. It was so astonishingly strong and so utterly desolate that I had no idea how I’d failed to notice it earlier.

  Two answers came to mind: one, I hadn’t been looking for it, and two, on a subconscious level I suspected I’d been trying hard to ignore it. Seeing the world in shades of sick and well was supposed to be my purview, but right here, right now, I was just barely able to handle it. Six months ago it would’ve sent me running for the hills.

  Billy came around the table and caught my hand. His fingers felt scalding, which slowly resolved itself into an awareness that mine were icy. “You all right, Joanie?”

  “All right” covered a host of sins. I nodded, pressed my eyes closed and nodded again. “Yeah. I just got…an idea of what I should be looking for.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse.”

  An uncomfortable shuffle behind us made us both turn to find our waitress, plates in hand, looking concerned. “Is everything okay? Did the tart not agree with you?”