by Unknown
The result was the feds had yet to hear about the death, even though it had taken place outside a private residence. All the same, they needed to keep from drawing the attention of the feds and other mystics alike.
Sam and Amber followed Mr. Newberry and Chad into the slaughter house, keeping a safe distance behind the men while staying close enough to know how to get to the right part of the warehouse. Sam glanced over at Amber to find her friend staring resolutely at the stained floor. Sam hadn’t spent much time in the slaughter house, but the sights, smells, and sounds had never bothered her much. Now, as the place sat quiet, the leftover odors of cow intestine and blood didn’t trouble her at all. Glancing at Amber, Sam realized even these slight odors were enough to bother the gentler empath.
As they turned the corner and came upon the small crowd, Sam rethought her nonchalance to the slaughterhouse.
Chapter Fifteen
Sam took one look at the bodies and averted her eyes, as though she had no say in where her eyes looked, but the image of what she had just seen remained etched on her conscious. At least three bodies, maybe more, hung on display, their limbs arrayed over concrete left slippery with more blood than she thought possible.
She absently noticed that Amber had already clamped a hand over her mouth. In fact, most of the small mob had their eyes on the floor and hands over their mouths. No one was handling the row of bodies well, and for very good reason.
Sam steadied herself and forced her eyes back on the first body as she walked through the hastily-formed walkway made for Mr. Newberry and herself. She absently noticed Chad staying near the back, his gaze latched onto the backs of the fae making up the small crowd.
Sam didn’t much want to draw nearer to the bodies, but if she was the fae’s unofficial investigator—ironically working for their lead suspect—then she had to look closely at each body. Besides, she wasn’t going to be as pathetic as Chad, or at least that was what she was telling herself.
Before she could give them a close examination, the whole room seemed to fill with panic as a wave of horror washed through each person. Sam felt it too, almost drowning in it. The all-encompassing emotion nearly brought her to her knees before she realized its source.
Sam jerked her gaze to where Amber stood, her gaze fixed on the macabre scene laid out before them, her bottom lip trembling and tears dribbling down her cheeks unheeded. The crowd was quickly losing control, the powers of each individual fae coming out as they fought the overpowering emotions spreading out from the empath.
One fae was already creating fire where none should be. Thankfully, he was standing next to a water elemental who accidentally put him out. Next to them a man with tentacles was tripping his neighbors. Beyond them, stone spikes were appearing in the ceiling. Electricity jumped from one rack of hooks to the next, released by a one extremely scared fae. A fae with the power of speed raced in circles, weaving through the group and knocking over those unfortunate enough to step in her way. The results were quickly shifting from comical to dangerous.
Sam stumbled forward, landing hard on her knee, her magically-healed ankle barely taking her weight as she pushed her way to where Amber stood, her eyes still fixed on the repulsion scene. Sam gave Amber’s arm a jerk, trying to drag her attention away from the bodies. It didn’t work. In desperation, Sam slapped her friend across the cheek.
Amber blinked, her eyes focusing in on Sam’s face. Sam tore her beanie off and shoved it on Amber’s head, pulling it down until it covered Amber’s eyes from the sights surrounding them.
“Focus one me Amber. You’re safe. You’re loved. No one can hurt you. I’m going to have someone take you to Jason. Do you want to go to Jason?”
She nodded emphatically.
“Will Jason make you feel better?”
The nod only increased in speed.
Sam could feel Amber’s emotions ease away from the crowd, but the mayhem did not cease. Sam could still feel her gift raging against her own defenses. No doubt the others had no idea how to control their own gifts after Amber’s emotions had drawn them all up into a frenzy.
Foolish humans, she thought. Didn’t they realize how stupid it was to cram all these powerful fae into a tiny space, like cattle?—all pun intended.
“Can you stay calm a few more minutes? I need to get these guys under control.”
Amber nodded again.
“Can you calm them down yourself?” asked Sam hopefully.
Amber hesitated a moment, her eyes still covered by Sam’s beanie. Finally she shook her head. Whatever Amber had done to galvanize them in the first place had left her spent. She had no magic left to use on them.
Sam, on the other hand, had a gift ready and rearing to go.
She took Amber’s hand and closed her eyes. Slowly she focused on each fae’s magic that raged around the slaughter house, sparking off the various contraptions. There were as numerous and as different as they could be. Sam had no idea what this many different types of powers would do to her, but she had to try something.
With all the concentration she could muster, and Amber’s stabilizing touch, Sam gave each power the tiniest jerk. It was just enough to knock them off their feet, so to speak. The various fae stopped their antics and stared at her.
“The moment has passed. Stop this, all of you. If you can’t handle the scene, then find some corner of the warehouse to rest,” she said, forcing her voice to rise above their grumbling.
She had just done what they all feared. She had taken their powers, but she had taken so little and done it so carefully they couldn’t be angry however much they might want to be.
They stared at her, and her at them, waiting to see what the other would do.
Once again Mr. Newberry came to her rescue.
“Yes, please. I think we can all admit we are a little high strung under so much stress. We cannot have workers leave the slaughter house, but if you will all find a quiet corner away from the… um…victims to rest, I think that might be best.”
Slowly, the crowd dispersed.
“Now,” Mr. Newberry said as he turned back to Sam. “Shall we get back to work?”
Sam stayed with her back to the crime scene. “Amber, I know I said you could go rest with Jason, but I need you to go get him and bring him back here. Now. Fast.”
“What’s wrong?” asked one of the clan leaders.
“You want a mage here?” asked one of the other leaders.
“Sam?” was all Amber said as she lifted the beanie enough to peek at Sam.
“Now,” whispered Sam as she raised a hand to forestall any further questions from the clan leaders.
Her flingers crackled with power—electricity, fire, and droplets of water all trying to jump between them at the same time while the digits faded to invisibility. The world began to spin as Sam grappled with her reality. She knew it might be a mistake to take from various fae at the same time, but the effects were proving to be more than she could handle. She needed help.
And Jason seemed to know the most about Voids.
“Get the mage,” she repeated as she stumbled to her knees, the worried thoughts of the others fading in and out of her consciousness.
Slowly, the world around her went black, and she slumped to the bloody floor.
It felt as though the world had been dark for only a second, maybe a second and a half, before a large, hot hand was cupping her cheek. Sam’s eyes fluttered open to find Jason filling her vision, his face so close that his beard tickled her chin. She jerked back enough to see Amber leaning over his shoulder to stare at her friend.
“What did you do?” he whispered as soon as he saw the whites of her eyes.
Sam flicked her eyes up at the other fae, standing a few feet away in a tight huddle.
“Did Amber tell you?” Sam whispered back.
“As much as she knew.”
“I took from them all. Just a tiny bit. Then I collapsed.”
An angry fire lit his eyes before they scann
ed down her prone body. Sam tried to look at her own body too without sitting up. Even at her disadvantage she could see sparks flying off her chest and fire crackling on her finger tips. A pool of water was forming around her ankles, while portions of her body faded through brief spells of invisibility.
The room was still wobbling around her, and the smell of the corpses wasn’t helping her unsettled stomach. Sam felt as though a battle raged within her, one for which she had not chosen a side. Half of her rooted for one side while the other rooted for another, all the while her left foot remained resolutely neutral.
“You fool. Didn’t anyone teach you anything?” he demanded in a hoarse undertone.
“No,” she said, happy to talk in order to distract herself from the ice and fire running through her veins. “No one ever taught me anything about my gift. Everything I know I learned through trial and error.”
This brought Jason to a stop in his examination. He glanced up at her from where he had stopped near her torso.
“You never had a teacher?”
“Voids don’t get teachers in the Res. We just get rejected.”
“Dumbasses,” muttered Jason as he went back to scanning her crackling body with his hands. “Kliedēt maǵija.”
Sam breathed a sigh of relief as some of the magic faded. It wasn’t all gone, but enough that the world stabilized and she no longer felt at risk of setting the world on fire, or worse. Sam eased herself up into a sitting position. Jason reached out, ready to stabilize her if needed. She waved him off.
“I’m okay. What did you do?”
Jason glanced at the others. “I’ll explain later, when you begin coming to me for lessons,” he murmured. “I’ll not live in a Res with an untrained Void. There is nothing more dangerous.”
Sam glanced at Amber and, to her amazement, the other girl’s face was once again a mask of jealousy. At least she wasn’t focused on the victims again. Sam nodded to Jason before climbing to her feet.
“You better get going,” Sam said as an aside. “Thank you for the help. Sorry about that, gentlemen.”
“What happened?” demanded the clan leader who seemed to be their spokesperson.
“When the crowd lost control, I confess I took a little power from everyone to get their attention in an effort to stop them from tearing the place apart. It was a mistake. I admit it. Jason was able to settle the power I took, for the most part,” she said as a small sizzle of lightning jumped from on finger to the next. “Let us get back to work. When Amber found me she did not tell me there were multiple victims,” Sam said, mostly to distract herself from the carnage laid out for all to see as she turned back to the piles of meat.
“As far as we can tell, there are four bodies, but we can’t exactly be sure.”
Sam scanned the various layers of butchery, trying her best to look at it as she would if it were cow meat. “I only see three heads.”
“There’s a fourth in the freezer,” said one of the clan leaders she recognized from the last murder scene, his bright red hair hard to miss.
Sam nodded, not wanting to look in the large walk-in freezer.
The various bodies were hung from meat hooks, just like the cows would be, each one in various stages of processing. The first was still dressed, skin intact, with nothing more than a metal bolt projecting from its skull—the metal rod used to brain the cows so that they didn’t feel it when they were truly killed. This body also showed vampire bite marks and the occasional bruise from where their attackers had subdued the fae.
“Who is this?” Sam asked to distract herself from the next two hooks.
“Justin Johnson. He’s part of the Túz Clan.”
“And the others?” Sam asked, still not looking at the other forms.
The other two bodies were also hanging from hooks, further along in the butchering process. Just like the workers did with the cattle, their heads, arms, and legs had been removed and set aside. They were completely drained of blood, their skin removed and draped over the railing in graphic postures. The third, and most completed body had its gut slit, and work done inside. At a glance, Sam couldn’t tell how professional the work was. Then again, if she had the stomach to look closer she wouldn’t be able to tell if the work was well-done or not. This wasn’t her field of expertise. She had never worked in the slaughter house.
“You said there’s another body in the freezer?”
“Yes. Completely packaged, as though it’s ready to be shipped out,” said the clan leader.
“Who found them?” asked Sam.
The leader waved over one of the workers who had found a place to rest near the crime scene. The worker arrived, hard hat in hand.
“You touch anything?”
“No,” he said, not looking her in the eye.
“Can you tell me, the work they did in this third body, is it done like one would do in a cow?”
The man’s gaze jerked up at her, his face turning green.
“I know the idea is sickening, but I need you to look and give me your expert opinion. I need to know if the person who did this was a worker in the slaughter house or some idiot with a knife.”
The man hesitated a moment before taking a step up to the hanging corpse, careful not to slip in the puddle of blood, and examined the body with the long slit running down it’s chest, most of its organs removed. The man didn’t look long before pulling back.
“Aside from the fact that a man’s body is vastly different than a cow’s body, yes I would say the person who did this knew what we do here at the slaughter house. They knew that we leave the kidneys in for example, but that we cut out the anus.”
Sam swallowed as more bile rose up to expose her nausea to the world.
“Thank you,” she whispered through clenched teeth before turning to the leaders. “I think I’ve seen enough.”
“So the vampires did this, right?” asked the clan leader that had pointed out the forth body in the freezer.
Sam shrugged her shoulders as she moved to exit the slaughterhouse. “Could be.”
“What do you mean could be? There are bite marks.”
She shrugged again.
“Is there some rush?” another leader demanded.
“We need to get out of here so that the shift leader can report this to the feds before the timing becomes suspicious. After all, the morning shift started half an hour ago. Much longer and it will seem odd that it took them so long to contact the feds.”
Mr. Newberry nodded at this and raced off to find the shift leader. Sam made tracks for the exit, followed by the clan leaders.
“Why don’t you think it’s the vampires? Just ‘cause you work for one?”
Sam reached the fresh air before turning on them.
“I don’t take anything at face value. What I do know, gentlemen, is that what I saw in there was not a murder, or at least not just a murder. It was designed to make the feds sit up and take notice. It said ‘look at me!’ Whoever did that wants the feds taking action. And based on the bite marks plainly visible on the first body, it wants that action to be taken out against the vampires.
“Now think about,” she continued. “The vampires, like us fae, have spent centuries learning to hide from the humans. Vampires know better than to create a scene like that and then leave bite marks. That scene was staged. And anyone with half a brain is going to realize the last person to leave obvious clues is the person who actually did the staging.”
The leaders glared at her, unsatisfied with the answers she had given them.
Sam didn’t wait for them to reply, but turned on her heels, sending up a wave of mystical fire that sent them scurrying back, and trotted off.
She was officially done for the day and it was only seven-thirty in the morning.
Chapter Sixteen
Sam trudged away from the slaughter house. She needed to hurry, but the magical war still raging in her veins meant her feet wouldn’t be rushed.
Two feds rushed past her, causing h
er to stumble again to her knees, bruising the already battered flesh. She stayed down as another fed rushed to catch up, his walky-talky spouting a series of codes she didn’t understand.
“What about the thing just called in?” panted a rookie as three more feds jogged by, taking no notice of Sam.
“You go check it out. Come get us if it pans out. The fae can be a little jumpy. It’s probably nothing,” said the older fed before picking up his pace and following the others.
Sam hesitated for a short second, feeling torn. She wanted to follow the rookie to see his expression when he found the gruesome scene at the slaughter house, but she already knew what lay in waiting for him there. The real mystery was what could possibly be drawing so many feds southward toward the port.
Sam climbed back to her feet, ignoring the sting in her knee, and hobbled after the feds, while trying not to draw attention to herself as her fingers still sparked with the borrowed power of the other fae. Sam slipped up to the corner of the building nearest the port and peered around the corner. From her vantage point, she could see the heads of the officers clumped together.
Had there been another murder during the night?
“Sam?” asked a voice from behind.
Sam jumped, sending a bolt of borrowed lightning out in all directions. She turned, worried the power had hurt someone, to find Carl standing behind her, his hands cradling a glob of crackling electricity. He curled his long, skinny fingers as if he was molding the electricity until the glob collapsed in on itself and disappeared.
“Where did you get that power?” he asked, judgement keen in his tired eyes.
“Kind of a long story. What are you doing here this early?”
“I live in this building,” he said, the judgement still visible though his shoulders had relaxed as he waved towards the structure she was hiding behind.
