by E. A. Copen
Josiah crossed his arms to suppress a shiver and turned to look out the window. “Where are we?”
I glanced at the empty gas station on my left and then checked both ways before turning right. “Brooklyn, about as far east as you can go without hitting the water.”
We passed a fenced-in, empty playground. Benches lined the sidewalk, some occupied by sleeping bodies shielded from the rain by trash bags and raincoats. On the other side of the street, multi-story houses rose. Pastel walls lit up under passing headlights. Big picture windows were all shuttered against the threatening storm, the balcony doors likely sealed tight. Further down, we passed a baseball field. White picket fences stood guard over sleepy brick apartments on the other side of a cross street, right next to a sign promising top dollar for junk cars.
I turned down the narrow side street, thankful that hardly anyone was out in the storm. “Petra said it was urgent that we get to the crime scene. Specifically said you should see it.”
Josiah’s seat creaked. He popped the lid off the coffee and gulped down a mouthful. “She’ll be tickled to see me, will she?”
The road spilled into a divided four-lane road with shallow cement islands between. Josiah leaned forward, looking left and right, trying to guess at our destination. Houses stretched off into the darkness to my left, while the darkened outfield lay to the right. I left them both behind, pulled across all four lanes of traffic in the narrow opening and took the first left into an industrial parking lot.
“Crime scene,” Josiah repeated as if he were just hearing it. “What kind of crime takes place in an empty warehouse in Brooklyn, I wonder?”
Petra and her people were already at the warehouse, a towering four-story building of white cement. Giant smokestacks jutted from the roof, curling like fingers without a thumb. A big white sign with red lettering announced the property was available, though the lettering was faded, indicating it had been available for some time. The Manus Dei crew stood by an open receiving door, all spotless suits and judgmental glares.
Petra herself wasn’t so big and scary if you didn’t account for the angel hiding inside the meat suit. A little over five feet tall, short blonde hair, flat chest, a darling, heart-shaped face…She looked like the angry second-best friend of the popular girl in middle school.
“I thought you said you’d be right over,” she said, crossing her arms. When she did, the front of the blue blazer she wore flared open slightly.
I shut the car door and didn’t bother with the umbrella. It wasn’t a far walk, and I was already half-soaked from helping Josiah to the car earlier. “I told you I had to pick up Josiah. Traffic sucks.”
Petra’s nostrils flared as she watched Josiah fumble with a cigarette. “Is he drunk?”
“Not drunk enough,” Josiah replied, grabbing his bag out of the back seat. “It’s not easy, you know. Takes effort to maintain alcoholism with this metabolism.” He sparked a small blue flame on his fingertips to light the cigarette.
Petra started to say something, paused, and swallowed whatever she was about to spit out. Even she knew it’d do no good to comment on Josiah’s behavior. It’d just piss him off more. So, she uncrossed her arms and gestured for us to follow her.
It started out as a warehouse like any other. It had a poured concrete floor that gently sloped in places, leading to covered drains. Shuttered windows let in tiny strips of moonlight here and there, but the main light sources were flickering torches of angel fire placed strategically around the room, attached to the metal supports.
Then the smell hit me. There was no mistaking the smell of human viscera. Once you’ve smelled it, the scent gets stored in a primal part of your brain, ready to jump out with a burst of adrenaline to remind you you’re nothing but a bag of meat. It stung my nose, strong enough to threaten to choke off my air. I raised a hand to cover my nose and mouth.
Josiah coughed, removed his cigarette and did the same.
The body stood in the center of the room, strung up for all to see on a length of cable wire. She was young, dark-haired, and about five foot five. Beyond that, I couldn’t tell much about her other than that her death had been brutal and prolonged. Her torso was open, ribcage splayed wide, guts on the floor in a pile. Flies buzzed around it, already busy laying their eggs.
The disembowelment, however, wasn’t even the strangest part of the crime scene. That honor belonged to the tall rectangular wooden frame in front of her and the shattered silver shards of glass all around. Bits crunched under my boots as we approached.
I’d seen a lot of heinous crimes and committed more than a few murders myself over the years, but none compared to this. This was the awful torture I would have expected to see in the deepest pits of Hell.
Bile surged up from my stomach, and I turned away.
“You think it’s a ritual murder,” Josiah said. It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact aimed at Petra. “Something some scary occultists got up to.”
Petra said nothing.
Josiah took a drag on his cigarette and held the smoke for a moment before letting it out in a long, noisy breath. “You’re wrong.”
Petra scowled at him. “Explain.”
“Where to begin?” Josiah walked up to a chalk circle I’d initially missed and nudged it with his shoe before squatting next to it. “How about here?” Josiah drew his finger through the chalk line and rubbed it against his thumb. “What do you see?”
“Chalk,” I answered.
“Wrong. This is gypsum, which often passes for chalk because it looks the same and it’s cheaper to produce. Anyone who’d be into ritual human sacrifice at this level would know you don’t close a circle with gypsum. You spring for the good stuff. Whoever drew this circle is a moron not used to doing magic, probably some fuckwit with a grocery list and instructions scribbled on the back of his receipt.”
“Are you saying the killer wasn’t using magic?” Petra asked.
Josiah stood and paced around the body. “I’m saying whoever performed the ritual was a cat’s paw for someone who did know magic. A middleman working for someone else. Look here.”
I chanced a look back at the dismembered girl hanging on the steel pole. She was naked, her throat slit. There was a lot of blood on the floor, but most of it was concentrated directly under where she hung, not in any sort of spray pattern. “They cut her throat post-mortem. No arterial spray. Her heart had stopped by the time they did that.”
Josiah came around the side. He squatted next to the body and folded his hands almost as if he were in prayer. “Why? Why mutilate her living and then deliver the death blow after it’s too late?”
“It’s no ritual you’re familiar with?” Petra crossed her arms and canted her hip, waiting impatiently.
Josiah shook his head and stood. “There’s most certainly a ritual component to the killing. Likely a dedicated order the killer had to follow. The bits that have been cut away, those are no small feat to achieve. Even with her nailed down, she’d have struggled. You’re dealing with someone who’s used to killing, but not used to magic. This killer is more familiar with a gun than a spell.”
“The disembowelment could be post-mortem too.” I stepped over to join Josiah, standing a little further back.
“Could be.” He didn’t sound convinced. The only way we’d know for certain would be with an autopsy.
He stopped in front of the wooden frame and tipped it with a finger. “A mirror.”
Petra sighed, impatient. “Does that mean something?”
“Mirrors are important. For some spells, you cover them up. For others, you gather several mirrors at once.” Josiah squatted to pick up one of the larger remaining pieces, turning it so it would catch the dim light. “Mirrors are doorways. Question is whether they shattered the mirror to keep something from coming through or to let whatever was inside out.”
Petra’s heels clicked as she walked across the floor to stand in front of Josiah. “Could such a ritual be used to summon a
demon?”
“A demon? No. Don’t need this type of complicated magic for one of them.” He was still looking at the mirror as if the tiny shard could replay the events for him.
Petra seized the hunk of glass and tossed it aside. “I need to know what we’re dealing with here, Josiah. Try to focus.”
He met Petra’s eyes and then stood, his nose less than an inch from hers. “Then get out of my way so I can work.”
They stared at each other for a long moment before Petra eventually took a hesitant step backward.
Josiah turned away from her, unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them up, a determined look on his face. I moved out of his way. I’d seen that look enough times to know he was about to throw around a few spells and I didn’t want to get caught in the crosshairs of any angelic magic.
He extended one hand toward the hanging body, fingers curled like claws, and began a chant in the language he often used for spells, murmuring the words in the familiar fast and heavy cadence. The spell built to a crescendo along with his voice.
Magic tugged at my skin, pulling like heavy-duty magnets. I hugged myself tightly against it and cringed at the icy touch of angelic power brushing against me.
With a dramatic slash through the air, he released the spell. I expected fireworks or at least some fizzle, but nothing seemed to happen. Then, slowly, marks appeared on the girl’s skin. Swirling, intersecting black lines and curling script faded into existence on her chest, arms, stomach, legs. Everywhere that would’ve normally been covered by clothing, this girl had hidden tattoos.
I uncrossed my arms, my mouth suddenly dry. “Josiah…”
He lowered his hand slowly, blinking in shock. “Did anyone touch the body?”
Silence answered.
Josiah spun and grabbed Petra by the jacket. “Did anyone touch her?”
Petra pushed his hands away and dusted off her blazer as if he’d soiled it. Maybe he had. It’d serve her right. “None of us did, no. Why?”
Josiah pointed at the body hanging from the beam. “Because we’ve all just been exposed to a death curse.”
Chapter Three
JOSIAH
I knelt gingerly next to my bag and opened it. There was no telling how long we had before the first effects of the curse would appear, or what form they’d take. If I’d wanted to decode the spell, I could’ve. We just didn’t have the time. Not if we all wanted to live anyway.
Petra and hers might’ve been able to zap out of their human hosts and live to fight another day. Me and Khaleda, however, were dead on our feet until I got the magic shut down.
I knew I’d made a mistake the moment I triggered it and saw the scrawling spell work over her skin, but it took the magic hitting my skin, buzzing and biting like horse flies, before I realized what it was supposed to be.
Death curses were the magical equivalent of a bomb. Normally, they triggered upon the death of whoever cast the spell. One last hurrah from a pissed-off and dying mage. But not always. Some death curses, like the one I’d triggered, weren’t laid by the dying person, but by some other party who’d hoped to destroy any witnesses hanging about.
“What kind of death curse?” Petra folded her arms and stood firm, trying to appear unperturbed. The waiver in her voice betrayed her nerves.
“I don’t aim to find out. If you don’t want to know either, I suggest you stay where you are. Attempting too much movement could trigger whatever it’s supposed to do.” I finally found what I was looking for and stood, the plastic container in my hands.
Milly wasn’t happy to be bothered. I could practically feel her displeasure at being interrupted as I carefully opened her container. She’d molted about a week ago, and didn’t like to be handled for about twelve or thirteen days after. It always left her in a foul mood, overprotective, and generally uncooperative, but I needed her if I wanted to shut down such a complicated spell.
“Up and at ’em, old girl. Give us a little help.” I slowly reached into the container.
She didn’t immediately strike, which was an improvement on the last time I’d tried to interact with her, but it took some convincing to get her to come to me. Tiny, sharp hairs pricked at my skin as her legs moved, carrying her up over my wrist. She hesitated when she reached my elbow, refusing to climb any higher and onto the damp parts of my shirt. I nudged one of her rear legs, urging her forward, but she wouldn’t budge. Bloody drama queen didn’t want to get her feet wet. Fine.
“No time for a warm-up,” I advised her, turning around.
Milly tapped out a quick warning rhythm against my bicep.
I know, I know. I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and extended both hands toward the body. It was the source of the spell, which meant it was as good a place as any to begin. To diffuse the magic, we’d have to first reveal the hold it had on everyone.
The curse lurked out in front of me, cold, a stiff cord of steel encased in writhing skin. I flexed my magic against it and fought the urge to recoil at the invasion of death into living space. Power slithered over the back of my hand, wet and ropy like intestines. With a twist of my wrist, I seized the wriggling spell between two fingers and held it. A faint pulse of my magic worked into it, a drop of water on a downed powerline. The curse sparked, flashing briefly into the visible plane, revealing five faint lines stretching from the woman’s stomach to become nooses around each of our necks, each vibrating at a different frequency.
At my best, I could do a lot of things with magic, but detecting the frequency of it wasn’t one of them. For that, I needed Milly. The fine gray hair on her spider legs was perfect for the job. All I had to do was keep hold of the living lightning I’d grabbed onto earlier.
Milly’s legs shifted, tiny feet carefully picking their way down my arm while sweat formed on the back of my neck. My chest was suddenly heavy, heart fluttering with the familiar euphoria of working magic, despite the dire circumstances. The back of my throat itched for a cigarette, a drink, anything to calm the pounding in my veins, but I had to hold still and let her work. She crawled down onto my fingers where she perched a moment, considering.
“Well?” Petra asked, impatient.
“Stuff it,” I hissed in a whisper.
Josiah, this magic…
So, she recognized it, too. It wasn’t the kind of spell just anyone could work.
“Later,” I encouraged and closed my eyes, focused entirely on the pattern Milly was tapping out on the sensitive skin of the back of my hand. Pulse thumped in my neck, pounded in my chest. I did my best to mute it. Breathe in, out. Calm and quiet. Nothing existed but the bristling of spider hairs against my skin.
Milly dropped suddenly from my hand, the dull thud of her body striking cement registering on a distant level. The spell may have been intricate, but the actual binding was relatively simple. The best spells often were. Once I could sense the threads connecting us to the dead woman, it was only a matter of knowing which order to sever them in, and Milly had been kind enough to provide the order for me, even if she’d run off when the work was done.
I turned to face Petra first, one hand outstretched toward her. The noose had already tightened around her neck, threatening to cut into the soft skin like razor wire.
She wrinkled her nose as I began the chant to break her bonds. “I don’t want your magic tainting me, half-breed.”
Normally, I’d have told her she could shove what she wanted halfway up her ass sideways, and twice on Sunday. But the spell took too much concentration to hold, so I focused all my energy into it. The bonds had to be broken in a specific order. Deviate, or make a mistake, and we were all dead.
Power swirled in a vortex around Petra’s feet, the soft golden glow of it as pleasant to me as the sunrise. If Petra’s face was anything to judge by, it was far less pleasant for her. She looked at her feet, horrified, and lifted one as if to step away.
“Don’t!” Khaleda called, but it was too late.
Petra’s foot came down outside the circle and
triggered a chain reaction, but instead of the noose tightening around her own neck, it snapped closed around one of her men. He pawed at his neck, making a gasping gurgling sound for a moment before a thin line of blood beaded across his Adam’s apple. Blood spurted a moment later and his head rolled to one side, severed cleanly from the body.
All the while, I held what power I could on Petra, still working to unravel the spell around her neck. It popped free from her just a moment after the first man fell dead. A second soldier screamed, and his hands went to this throat.
“Stop it!” Petra put her hands over her mouth. “You’re killing them!”
I sped up the chant and moved on, focusing on a third soldier while the death curse took the head of Petra’s second man. I wasn’t fast enough, and the curse jumped to Khaleda while I was in the middle of undoing the final member of the God Squad from it. She fell to her knees beside me, hands tightening around her neck, panic in her eyes. Even if I worked my fastest, I couldn’t stop the magic from cutting off her head in time, but if I undid the bindings out of order….
Fuck me, I didn’t owe the God Squad anything, but Khaleda… She was actually growing on me.
I spun and swept the spell I’d been working on away from the Manus Dei soldier, surrounding Khaleda with light instead and chanting at a breakneck pace. The light swelled and cut the noose attached to her in two. Behind me, Petra’s men started screaming. Once the curse worked through them all, it’d have nowhere to go but to me.
Come at me, then. I lifted both hands in front of me and called on the blood flowing over the concrete, creeping into the cracks, sinking deep into the drain to drip into the sewers and feed the algae. Blood was power, and there was enough of it in that warehouse to make me near drunk with it. I called on the blood to fuel my spell, make it stronger, lend me the power to cheat death one more time. It heeded my call. Magic surged around me in a great, spinning vortex of light, disintegrating the black magic noose to dust. Then, with a sweep of my hands, I cast the fury of the magic storm back at the body hanging upside down on the makeshift cross. The spell struck it and set the corpse alight in blinding, white fire.
