Hired Luck

by Mel Todd

  Ruby wasn't too far from Centennial, but the route required surface streets, and that meant people. It took an agonizing ten minutes, even with sirens and lights blaring, to get there. What really set my nerves aflame were all the other sirens I heard. As we approached, I saw ambulances from various companies and hospitals, along with police and fire all headed toward the park.

  "Dear Merlin, what happened?" I whispered. Even at the bus crash there had only been a tenth of what I saw approaching here. I clenched my jaw, hoping it was all just an over-reaction, but deep down, that part of me that knew when bad things had happened pulled up into a tight, hard ball. We screeched to a halt at the border of the park and jumped out. We grabbed our bags from the back. We didn't want to get the gurney until we knew what we were dealing with. I swallowed hard as Jorge grabbed SMART tags and we headed to where police were waving. It was a stream of jumpsuits, uniforms, and people running towards the center of the park.

  We came to a halt, along with just about everyone else, at the fountain of rings. The fountain was the center of the park. Five Olympic rings were embedded into the ground as part of a huge fountain. In the summer it was popular and lots of people used the area, which made what lay in front of me even more confusing.

  At least thirty people, maybe more, lay crumpled on the surface of the fountain. They all lay unmoving with blood leaking from them into the water. The air around felt weird and thin, as if the sky itself was about to rip in two. The clouds above looked like they were seconds from dumping, and even with the heat, I felt cold seeping into me. We stood, frozen, as we looked at the enormity of the situation.

  Where do we start? Which direction?

  A man with a police uniform jumped up on one of the two walls surrounding the fountain with a bullhorn. "Everyone, listen up. We don't know what happened or how. Start triage, tag if you need to. We have enough ambulances that if you get a red, get them to the hospital and move on. Ruby gets reds first, then Piedmont, then we'll move to Emory. VA said they can take some if we need them, after that…" he looked around, his face white. "After that we'll figure it out. If you see something that might give us clues as to who did this, try to preserve it but the people are the first priority. Go."

  His command cut the string that had been holding us and as one we moved forward. Jorge and I headed to the first victim directly ahead of us. Young male, Hispanic, maybe early twenties. I dropped to my knees, but I knew even as I touched his throat what the answer would be. His neck had been slit, and the blood ran into the fountain, creating patterns of red in the flowing water.

  "Black, tag and move." I pushed my worries and doubts to the side even as I rose and headed to the next a few steps away. I saw the symbols carved into her skin, but what registered more was the sluggish pulse under my skin.

  "Red!" I yelled as Jorge finished tying the tag. He dove over to me as I was ripping open the woman's shirt. I realized most of them were young, though there were a few that looked older - by that I meant in their thirties or forties. None of them were obviously older than that. That struck me as weird in the part of my brain that watched for this. Mostly I focused on her and not the two areas in the sky that felt raw and torn and the odd feeling that there should be three.

  There was a lump on the back of her head that worried me, especially as one of her eyes bulged out, implying pressure behind it. But her pupils reacted, and she had a pulse in all her extremities. Under her shirt I found the real wounds. Her light green tank top had been pulled up and then back down, which also seemed off. It meant she hadn't fought when someone cut her. That same someone carved, or cut, a pattern into her chest. It looked vaguely familiar, but off. A circle with small circles surrounding it. At each small circle a deep wound went straight into her abdomen made with something like an ice pick I thought. None of them were gushing blood, but her belly had already distended.

  "Abdominal wounds, probable perforated spleen, liver, possibly her intestines." That last part depended on the angle of the weapon, and if she had been lying down or standing. If her intestines had been perforated, she probably wouldn't make it. If they hadn't, she had a better chance but either way, it didn't matter.

  "I'll get the gurney, stabilize her and call it in," said Jorge.

  I nodded, already starting to brace her, wanting to make sure she didn't move as we got her onto the gurney. By the time I had her ready to transport, IV installed, and all her vitals recorded, Jorge was back. In a quick move we lifted her onto the gurney and strapped her down. We headed back to our rig moving as fast as we could without endangering her. All around me I saw other people doing the same, and all too many black tags around the wrists of others.

  "Did you hear anything?" I asked as we jumped in, me staying in the back to watch her as he sped to Ruby. At this point they had blocked off the streets to give us quick, clear access, so the drive there should be much faster.

  "Not really. All they said was one minute the fountain was fenced off as if it was under repair, the next, there were bodies everywhere and people started screaming."

  He drove through the street like he was in a race car. Normal hand off procedures would be truncated today. We didn't have time, and even seconds might make the difference between someone being a red or a black tag.

  Magic. Someone used magic to kill these people, or at least they used it hide their deaths.

  I knew illusions were possible for an Air mage. You could make people see or not see something by bending the air to reflect light, or something like that. Another thing I didn't know enough about.

  We slammed to a halt in the emergency bay just as another bus pulled out. We jumped out and handed over the woman to the people running out to greet us. In five minutes, we transferred her vitals and we were back racing towards the scene. And scene it was. By this time the place swarmed with people. We headed out to an area no one had hit yet, or else they were all dead. From a distance sometimes it was hard to tell. Again, I glanced up at the areas of the sky, but the raw tears didn't seem as bad. No one else looked up at them, so maybe it was just me being weird.

  "There," Jorge said. A young man—his skin was so dark in the gloomy light that I worried about being able to see his wounds. I dropped next to him, my fingers searching for a pulse.

  "Got one, he's alive," I said, my voice was purposefully loud over the noise of sirens, people, radios, and just the sound of the city. It surrounded us like a dense wall, and I pushed it all away to focus.

  A hand grabbed my arm as I was about to slide in the IV for saline, shattering my concentration. Whoever had grabbed me lifted me up and dragged me away from my patient.

  I twisted to stare at the man who had just grabbed my arm, my body tight and heart racing.

  "You! You fucking did this. What the hell did you do? And where, by Merlins' balls are your tattoos? And why in the world did you cut off your hair? You need that and you're going to need to do more to answer for your part in all this."

  A man wearing a dark suit and who looked vaguely familiar, had my upper left arm raised up above my head, almost pulling it out of the socket as he had to be at least six foot three inches of imposing mass. The dark shock of hair and aquiline features in a suit worth more than my monthly salary glared at me. His merlin tattoo gleamed in the light made of blues, reds, and greens that seemed to be more than just tattoo ink.

  "Let me go!" I ripped my arm away. "I don't have time for you." Jorge had stood, and looked at the man with alarm and anger.

  "You did this, and you're coming with me now!" He growled.

  "I had nothing to do with this. Get out of my way, you're risking my patient."

  "No. You're coming with me now and I'll damn well figure out why you aren't marked." He reached for my arm and I reacted. I knew we were lucky the young man was still alive and this yahoo was taking up time my patient didn't have. I pulled away, rotated and put all of my weight in the punch into his jaw. He didn't see it coming and I hit him hard, with a buzz of static elec
tricity rattling down my arm.

  Blasted clouds have everything all electricky.

  He fell to the ground in a heap and I spun back to the boy, getting the IV in this time. His blood pressure was too low due to blood loss. He, like the others I'd seen so far, had things carved into his body, though this pattern was different. But the deep puncture marks were similar. The symbols clicked into my mind as we got him onto the gurney and blood seeped through the bandages.

  "By Merlin, the person doing this is carving the magic symbols into their bodies. Look!" With Jorge looking at me, and the idiot on the ground, I traced the symbol, realizing this one was Spirit, while the other had been Order. The deep marks at the points of the design made a weird sort of sense.

  "What about him?" he asked, nodding at the idiot.

  "Leave him. He's just unconscious."

  "Do you know him?" Jorge looked worried as we headed back to the ambulance.

  "Never met him before," I said, but at the back of my mind something niggled. The patient moaned and I cast it aside. Later, when I had time to process this, I would. This day would live in my mind, and I couldn't help but feel that it was connected to the girl I found.

  Chapter 12

  While mages are often described as Time or Air or Earth - this only indicates their strength in a specific branch. It doesn't always indicate that they can use everything in that branch. For example, there are usually six or seven spells or areas of magic within each branch. But that doesn't mean that any mage can use all of them expertly. At least one of them is only available to someone strong in that branch. College teaches you how to use them and tips and tricks about using the spells, however it takes decades of practice to be able to use them the way most people think. It is one reason why many mages rarely use magic. ~ Magic Explained

  By four-thirty, all that were left were the black tags. That meant we had to stand back and let the forensic teams do their best. Jorge and I were one of the groups that stayed. We couldn't take them to the morgue until after they had been examined, but it felt wrong to just walk away and leave them there like so much garbage. We stood silently, near our rig, watching the techs swarm the scene. By the time we got back, the man I'd decked had left. I couldn't find it in myself to care.

  There were three groups of us and none of us spoke, just watched. The last count had been twelve dead, a total of twenty-seven victims. There had been another fifteen people with panic attacks, heart attacks, or other issues not related to the dead. Even the police had stopped their chatter and the GBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, had taken over the scene. They had Order mages out there trying to reconstruct what had happened.

  It reminds me so much of that girl. But why didn't they know this was coming?

  I had no illusions as to the omnipotence of the police, but how did you hide planning to kill twenty-seven people? And why twenty-seven? So many questions, and for a long bleak moment I regretted not going for the police academy. I wanted to be out there trying to figure out the answer to what happened. But I couldn't. So I stood and watched and waited.

  A stir of motion on the other side of the fountain drew my attention. Five people, all men from the way they walked, though at this distance it was hard to tell, were storming into the area. They were arguing with the GBI, or at least that was who I thought they were. I could have been wrong, but it looked for all the world like a territorial dispute. I amused myself, imagining this as a gang war and almost laughed at the idea of them wearing stuff from West Side Story. After all, the love of a Merlin for a norm was always good story fodder.

  "Hey, Cori?" I looked at Jorge, my mind pulled from my weird musings. "Isn't that the dude you decked earlier today?" He pointed over at the people I'd been imagining as modern-day gang bangers. His comment made me focus on the people, not just the general actions of all of them. Sure enough, the lead man had the dark hair I remembered and the pale skin. Even from here the colors of his tattoo were shocking.

  "I think so. Ugh. So how much trouble am I going to get in for decking him?"

  Great. First month on the job and I'm going to get arrested. With my luck he's with the GBI or something.

  I fought back a groan. I really didn't need this in my life. At this point, I just wanted to go test tomorrow morning and then go from there.

  "Eh. He was interfering with your efforts and I'm pretty sure that is illegal. Besides, all his rambling made no sense. I know where you were all morning. I don't think you had time to dart out, kill or try to kill twenty-seven people, and get back to the bay before I noticed you were gone." His amused sarcasm made me feel better. But still, what had the man been going on about?

  "Well if I get arrested, I'm going to be pissed."

  Jorge shrugged. "It happens, but don't worry about it until they file charges." He grinned. "Aren't you glad you have the next two days off?"

  We had kept our voices low but even the spurt of amusement felt wrong, looking at this grizzly scene.

  "Yeah, think I need to decompress after today." There was a bit of fear in admitting that, like I was failing. But Jorge nodded.

  "I agree. This is not normal. If this didn't affect you, I might be even more worried about you than I am by anyone that does well in this job." He trailed off as we watched the Order mage create a replica of the body at his feet. It stood and looked blankly out at the world, and then flinched as blood appeared on his torso, but the created image didn't react other than that initial flinch.

  "Okay, that is creepy as hell," one of the other techs muttered. I agreed, but what bugged me was the lack of reaction, not the recreation. I hadn't realized there was a way to control people like that magically. The idea made my skin crawl. That you could control anyone to the point they would let you do that, much less so many, was scary. I swallowed hard as bile churned at the back of my throat.

  "Oh fuck," another tech said, and the tone in her voice had all of us turning to look at her. She was a pretty black woman, strength in her stance with long hair in elaborate braids that were all twisted together into one braid down her back. She had brown eyes that I suspected normally sparked with joy. Now she looked washed out and her mouth had lines around it as she swallowed hard, trying to speak. Her hand clenched around her cellphone hard enough that her fingers had blanched out.

  "Marjorie? What's wrong?" We had all turned towards her, even the cops had drifted over. Her skin had gone gray and for a moment I thought she'd be sick or pass out. Her partner put his hand on her shoulder and to my surprise, she leaned into it; she had come across as tough and no nonsense all day, but now she looked like she might shatter. "Marj?"

  "One of my friends is an OR nurse at Piedmont. She texted me, saying she just got out of surgery on one of the vics," Marj's voice shook, but I didn't know why. We knew a lot of them wouldn't survive. "She said they figured out why they didn't fight or do anything." A sob caught and she swallowed. The sound made a lump form in my own throat as my skin tightened, preparing for something I knew I would not like.

  "Well?" someone else asked impatiently and her hands shook as she tried to put her phone away, her eyes staring at the park not seeing anything.

  "Marj? What did they find out?"

  Her eyes focused in on us, and I wanted to take a step back at the anguished and hollow look in them. "They have an archmage on staff as a neurosurgeon. He wanted to watch the operation and was checking her pain stimulus response, as they couldn't get her to respond to anything. He realized the patient didn't have any brain activity outside of low autonomous activity. Her brain looks like someone let loose lightning in it. The brain stem is untouched, but her brain is fried. There is no one there to save. They're all walking corpses."

  Her words fell with a power I'd never felt, and I locked my jaw to prevent myself from crying. A few people gasped and at least one person made a retching sound. I turned and looked at the bodies still left. With the brain stem untouched, they would breath and pump blood, but only for a while longer. With m
ost everything else fried, they were organ donors, nothing more.

  Looking at the scene, I filled in the bodies we had removed, and the symbols carved into their chests. All of it pointed to a mage and the deaths must be some sort of ritual. But what? Why?

  "So we didn't save anyone. They were all dead. We just preserved organs." My words echoed in the strange heavy atmosphere and people turned to look at me.

  "Pretty much," Jorge muttered. He didn't look at me, still watching the group of people arguing.

  "Is it just me?” I said. “Or do you want to go over there and tell them to be more respectful? All these people just died, and they are over there arguing about what? Who is in charge? Who cares?"

  "Welcome to big city politics. But I don't know who that guy is." It was one of the cops that had stayed near us. "And why does he have grass and water on his suit coat?"

  "That would be because Cori punched him. It was a beautiful sight, and he went right down," Jorge said with way too much glee, in my opinion.

  "Ouch. That's not going to make him happy. He's got to be from the GBI or something, from how they are kowtowing to him."

  "He's a merlin. He's arrogant," I muttered.

  I really shouldn't have punched him. It isn't like it made any difference. I'll hold on to the thought that maybe some people will get the transplants they needed because of this. It's the only thing I have. The thought didn't help but maybe it would later.

  "Great, here they come. Maybe they'll tell us they're releasing the bodies and we can get them to the morgue," one of the other paramedics said. At this point it was a forgone conclusion the GBI would be doing autopsies on all the bodies. I'd have to see about grabbing the report when it was all done.