by N. P. Martin
When I gingerly crossed to the center of the room, my worst fears were confirmed when I saw that it was a dead body lying on the floor. A young woman with her throat slit. Glyphs were carved into the naked flesh of her spreadeagled body, with ropes leading from her wrists and ankles to rusty metal spikes hammered into the floor. I marveled at the force required to drive the nails into the concrete, a feat that surely could only have been achieved through magic.
Along the circumference of a magic circle painted around the victim was what looked like blood-drawn glyphs. The sheer detail of them unnerved me as I took in a quality that could've only come from a well-practiced hand. The tingling in my spine from all these factors combined with a vague recognition, one inhibited by whatever spell I’d absorbed.
I breathed out slowly as I reluctantly took in the callous butchery on display. The dead woman looked to be in her early thirties, though it was difficult to tell because both her eyes were missing; cut out with the knife used to slice her throat, no doubt. I shook my head as I looked around for a few seconds in an effort to locate the dead woman’s eyeballs. Not finding them, I surmised the killer probably took them; or worse, used them in some way. Sick bastard.
Staring down at the woman again, I noticed she looked underweight for her size. She was around the same height as me at six feet, but there was very little meat on her bones, as if she were a stranger to regular meals. I also noted the needle marks on her feet, and the bruises around her thighs. This, coupled with how she had been dressed—in a leather mini skirt and short top, both items discarded on the floor nearby—made me almost certain the woman had been a prostitute. A convenient, easy victim for whoever had killed her.
If the symbols carved into her pale flesh were anything to go by, it would seem the woman wasn't so much murdered as ritually sacrificed. At a guess, I would have said she was an offering to one of the Dimension Lords, which the glyphs seemed to point to. The glyphs themselves were not only complex, but also carved with surgical precision. The clarity of the symbols against the woman’s pale flesh made it possible for me to make out certain ones that I recognized as being signifiers to alternate dimensions, though which dimension exactly, I couldn’t be sure, at least not until I had studied the glyphs further. Glyphs such as the ones I was looking at were always uniquely different in some way. No two people drew glyphs the same, with each person etching their own personality into every one, which can often make it hard to work out their precise meanings. One thing I could be certain of, however, was that the glyphs carved into the woman’s body resonated only evil intent; an intent so strong, I felt it in my gut, gnawing at me like a parasite seeking access to my insides, as if drawn to my magic power. Not a pleasant feeling, but I was used to it, having been exposed to enough dark magic in my time.
After taking in the scene as a whole, I soon came to the conclusion that the woman wasn't the killer’s first victim; not by a long stretch, given the precision and clear competency of the work on display.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, annoyed now that I couldn’t recall any details about the case I had so obviously been working on. It was no coincidence that I had ended up where I was, a place that happened to reek of black magic, and which housed a murder that had occult written all over it…quite literally, in the victim’s case. I had been on the hunt, and I had gotten close to the killer, which was the likeliest reason for the dark magic booby trap I happened to carelessly spring like some bloody rookie.
Whoever the killer was, they wielded profoundly powerful magic. A spell that managed to wipe all my memories of the person in question wouldn't have been an easy spell to cast, or even to come by for that matter. The killer was also an adept of some kind, of that that there was no doubt. And given the depth of power to their magic, it also felt to me like they had channeled magic from some other source, most likely from whatever Dimension Lord they were sacrificing to.
Whatever the case, the killer’s spell had worked. Getting back the memories they had stolen from me wasn’t going to be easy, and that’s if I could get them back at all, which depressingly, I feared might just be the case.
After shaking my head at how messed up the situation was, I suddenly froze upon hearing a commanding voice booming in the room like thunder.
“Don’t move, motherfucker!”
**The Sorcerer’s Creed Series is available from Amazon.**
Books By N. P. Martin
SORCERER’S CREED SERIES
CRIMSON CROW
BLOOD SACRIFICE
BLOOD DEBT
BLOOD CULT
BLOOD DEMON
About The Author
I’m N.P. Martin and I’m a lover of dark fantasy and horror. Writing stories about magick, the occult, monsters and kickass characters has always been my idea of a dream job, and these days, I get to live that dream. I have tried many things in my life (professional martial arts instructor, bouncer, plasterer, salesman…to name a few), but only the writing hat seems to fit. When I’m not writing, I’m spending time with my wife and daughters at our home in Northern Ireland.
Be sure to sign up to my mailing list:
http://www.npmartin.com/email-sign/
And connect with me on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/npmartinauthor/
