Blood Magic

by N. P. Martin

“Screw you.”

  “How was it? Was it long, hot and wet, you know... just how you like it?”

  Leona punched me in the shoulder and was about utter a stream of expletives when my phone rang. The caller ID said, Forsyth. I answered, still smiling at Leona while rubbing my sore shoulder. “Forsyth. What can I do for you?”

  Forsyth was a vampire lieutenant who ran the neighborhood in which I lived. He was one of the few vamps I have any real dealings with. By their nature, vamps liked to keep their business in-house, and as such, rarely required the services of a wizard like myself. As I lived in Forsyth's neighborhood, however, our paths often crossed, usually when trouble of some sort brewed.

  “I just had the strangest experience,” Forsyth said. “You suddenly popped into my head for no reason, like I just remembered who you are. It’s hard to explain…and weird. Did something happen to you?”

  “You could say that. It’s sorted now, though.”

  "Well, that's good. So tell me, Creed, when are you planning on doing that job I asked you to do…last week, was it? See, there it is again, the weirdness. How come I completely forgot that I asked you to do that? It's like some freaky mind trick. I don't like it."

  “I didn’t either,” I said, looking at Leona, who was texting on her own phone now. “Listen, I’ll find your man, vampire, whatever for you. There’s just someone else I have to find first. You heard of the recent murders that were more like sacrifices?”

  "I heard something," Forsyth said in his overly theatrical voice. "I heard they were strange and brutal. I don't know much else, though, before you ask. If you want I could look further into it, but you must promise to soon come over and have a drink. That way I can also admire that tremendous ass of yours. And who knows, with the right amount of social lubricant we might also be able to do a little coming ourselves?"

  I shook my head, used to Forsyth's shamelessly flirtatious behavior by now. "Sure. I'll wear my tightest jeans." I raised my eyebrows at Leona who shook her head as she threw me a look.

  “Super. See you soon, Creed. I’m still weirded out, you know, by the fact that I feel like I’d forgotten you. I could never forget you, Creed, that’s what’s so weird. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t—”

  "Bye, Forsyth. If I ever need an ego boost or start batting for the other team, you'll be the first person I call.” I hung up the phone, knowing he was tittering to himself right then.

  “You finished your flirting now?” Leona asked.

  “Forsyth. You’ve met him. You know how he is.”

  “Yeah. We gotta go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Take a wild guess.”

  “More murders?”

  Leona nodded. “In Lafayette. It’s worse this time apparently.”

  She began to move out of the basement, and I followed behind her. Blaze stared at me from the living room as I came out. “It’s okay, Blaze," I told him. "I'm back." I crouched down as Blaze approached, ruffling his dark fur. Then I looked up at Leona. “How many victims this time?”

  She gave me a grave look. “Too many to count.”

  38

  The Roundhouse

  I WAS QUIET on the drive from the Sanctum to the crime scene, which was over on Lafayette. Now that I'd gotten my mojo back (mostly anyway…my magic power was still in the process of replenishing itself) it was time to concentrate all of my energies on tracking down Mr. Black. The evil son of a bitch was stepping things up with every murder (although he wouldn't have seen his heinous acts as murder, but as sacrifices, a means to a nefarious end). He was getting close to whatever endgame he had planned, which meant we had to go at him with everything we had. The only problem was that I didn't have a single goddamn lead on the guy. Aside from the spectral form that ambushed me a couple of days ago, I had no clue as to the killer's real identity. It was even more frustrating that just a few days ago I knew exactly who Mr. Black was. But thanks to the spell cast by the killer, all former traces of his identity had been wiped out.

  Maybe the demon will come across with a lead.

  Something else I wasn’t comfortable with. Did I really want to be in debt to a demon?

  Yes, if it helps to catch this killer, not to mention stop Rloth’s planned apocalypse…which is no small thing in itself.

  Looks like I don’t have a choice then.

  A small sigh escaped my lips, and I looked at Leona, who was driving as erratically as ever as she headed for the expressway exit up ahead. “You all right?” I asked, settling back into my relationship with her, enjoying the deeper connection between us again.

  "I just want to catch this creep before he kills any more people," she said, yanking hard on the steering wheel to overtake the car in front. "This is my town, and I don't like motherfucker's painting it with innocent blood."

  “I get you.”

  Leona hated Blackham City when she first arrived. Coming from West Virginia, she was used to wide open spaces and expansive skylines. City life got to her. In case you haven’t guessed, Leona is not a people person. Although she could interact quite expertly with others when she needed to, she preferred her own company. So being around so many people in a packed city like Blackham was a struggle for her, as it was for me at first as well. You get used to it, though, and if you hung around the city long enough, you even grew attached to the place; as both Leona and I had done. Despite our backgrounds, Blackham is where we call home, for better or worse. Most people are wont to protect the places they call home, we two being no different, and especially Leona who has a sense of self-determined responsibility to keep it safe from the creatures that call the night their own; say nothing for my particular peers and brethren who are susceptible to allowing the magic to control them instead of their own self’s.

  “Thanks, by the way,” I said to her. “For helping me. For trusting me when you didn’t even know who I was. Knowing you as I do, I can fully comprehend how out of the ordinary that was and is for you.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Yet you did. Why?”

  She turned the SUV off the main road and into the Lafayette neighborhood. Lafayette is a shithole. That’s about the only way to describe the place. A sprawling rats nest of low rent housing and rundown tenement buildings that spilt over into nearby Little Haiti. Not a place I had visited very often in the past. Not too many magical goings on there. Gang-related activity was the only thing that happened in Lafayette. Once upon a time the place was up and coming, but something happened during its development, and most of the investment got pulled. Of the businesses that were built in that development stage, only a few survived, mainly just essential services like corner stores and a gas station. And a cinema, believe it or not. Which is exactly where we were heading to.

  “You seemed to be telling the truth,” Leona said. “You knew things. That was enough for me.”

  "Admit it," I said smiling. "You just couldn't resist my Irish charm again, could you?"

  A smirk creased her lips. “Wise up.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  As Leona negotiated the narrow streets while we headed for our destination, I stared out the window at the dilapidation all around us and the human detritus in the form of gangs, bums and drug addicts that littered every street. I used to think that parts of Ireland were bad until I came to the States and saw what real poverty and degradation looked like.

  “Can you believe there’s a cinema in this dump?” Leona said. “Why would this place need a cinema of all things?”

  “It’s a relic from times past that shows mostly classic movies. Even these people need a bit of escapism, you know.”

  “I thought that’s what the drugs were for.”

  I shook my head. “You have a dim view of people sometimes.”

  "Hey, I just think people need to help themselves, because sure as shit, no one else is going to do it for them. If they want to remain in their filthy origins, then I have no sympathy for them."

  "Not everyon
e wants to join the military," I said, well aware of Leona's convictions when it came to personal development, which the Army only strengthened.

  "I get that, but look at them." She gestured out the window at the people lining the streets, nearly all of them staring hard at us as we drove by. "They don't even try."

  “Maybe they’re happy where they are. You ever think of that?”

  “I doubt it, but more fool them if they are.”

  I shook my head as we came upon the roadblock that cut off the street near the cinema. Leona put her window down and flashed her ID at one of the uniformed cops manning the barriers. The cop nodded at her and signaled for the barriers to be moved so we could drive through. Down the street was the cinema, flanked on either side by empty tenements and a corner store across the street. As expected, the street was full of dark-suited government agents and parked SUVs. I also noticed the black trucks, three of them, which I knew were meat wagons there to transport the dead to Division HQ in the Highlands. Leona parked the SUV in the first free spot she found, and we both got out, heading grimly toward the cinema building.

  The Roundhouse Cinema was an incongruous looking building made out of white stone, with two thick pillars manning the steps to the entrance. When it was first built, I was sure the Roundhouse was a grand building, but after years of abuse by the Lafayette residents, it looked more like something that might be used as a drug den, with nearly every inch of stone covered in old and new graffiti. Chunks were missing from some of the stone blocks as well, almost as if bullets had struck off them, which, to be honest, was probably the case. It amazed me that a place such as the Roundhouse had stayed open for so long and I couldn't imagine how hard it must have been for the owners to have maintained the place in such a hostile environment over the years.

  Leona flashed her ID at a couple of dark suits who tried to stop us on the way into the cinema (which as always it came down to me and the way I appear). Once inside, we stood for a moment and looked around as the intense activity of the crime scene agents continued around us, with forensics teams and investigators scurrying back and forth or hovering to talk in small groups. A few of them gave me dirty looks, as our paths had crossed before, and not in a good way. There were no cops inside the building, only Brentwood’s people. As always, Brentwood was keeping the scene locked down tight.

  The foyer was an open square space with marble floors. Tattered red curtains hung down the whitewashed walls. To our left was the ticket booth, the owners having learned from experience to protect the booth with bulletproof glass. Above the circular hole at the bottom of the glass was another less symmetrical hole at about head height, the impact clearly caused by a bullet. I shook my head at the surreality of the place and headed toward the door to the central screen up ahead, Leona falling in beside me. The two agents guarding the door moved aside as Leona showed them her ID. “He in there?” she asked one of the guards, a tall man with a goatee.

  “Yep,” the agent said. “I should warn you. It’s rough in there.”

  Leona shook her head. “Is it ever anything else?”

  39

  Green Fire

  THE FIRST THING that hit me as I walked into the screening room was the smell. On closer inspection, the putrid stench of blood, offal, and urine mixed with the excrement of loosened bowels could be identified as the primary sources; secondaries being the underlying layers of smoke, dust, mold and christ only knows what other smells associated with a cinema of its age and location. Something you might get if you put the worst toilet in the world inside an abattoir. As horrible as the smell was, though, I was used to it, having come across too many dead bodies over the years. What disturbed me more was the acrid smell underneath all the death. The smell of black magic had become so thick and cloying in the stuffy air of the cinema, making it feel like you could reach out and grab a handful of molasses or treacle, such was the thickness of the permeated essence.

  And speaking of treacle, black stuff slowly oozed down the red walls like they were bleeding, only with a much thicker substance like that of tar. A forensics guy was going around scraping samples of the stuff into Petri dishes. Which horrified me slightly, because if he knew exactly what he was dealing with, the technician wouldn't be going anywhere it.

  "Mr. Black," I uttered to myself.

  "What?" Leona asked, too preoccupied with trying to process the carnage all around her to pay me much attention.

  "Mr. Black was here."

  "No shit." She pointed to the dirty white cinema screen and the words written there in blood in large letters: RLOTH, EATER OF WORLDS, IS COMING.

  "At least he bothered with punctuation. Most serial killers don't, I find. Usually too worked up and in too much of a rush to even think about it."

  Leona gave me a hard look. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? All these bodies and you’re talking about fucking punctuation?”

  A scowl came over my face as anger set in. “Now hold on a damn minute there. Remember it's me who you asked assistance from, and who'll be the poor suicidal bastard who inevitably goes up against this insanely powerful crackpot. Remember, I could just portal to Babylon and leave all your disrespectful asses here. Next to me you have diddly squat chances of stopping this guy, and might as well all go home this minute to spend your last remaining hours with your loved ones. So why don't you all just step aside and allow me to point out what you're not seeing because you're to consumed with the obvious. I'd suggest you all back-the-fuck-off and remember that without me you're all dead inside of a few days.”

  Leona looked shocked by my outburst for a moment, then she nodded as if she understood. “I’m sorry, Creed, I didn’t mean…”

  “Forget it,” I said, only wanting to get on with examining the scene. “What I said before about the punctuation…I just mean the killer was calm and collected enough to use it. He was in no hurry. It also obviously mattered to him, otherwise, why bother?"

  Shaking her head, Leona stared around the room at the dead bodies that seemed to be in every seat. “Well, he’s hurrying up his body count, that’s for sure. How many would you say are in here?”

  “Sixty-seven.”

  I turned to catch the owner of the spoken answer that'd come from over my shoulder, to catch an even grimmer-faced than usual Brentwood, who now stood beside Leona, having finished his approach from the top of the centre aisle.

  "Jesus," Leona said like she had a foul taste in her mouth, sickened by the extent of the horror in the room. And she wasn't the only one. Everyone that was here—the forensics people and the investigators—all had the same grave looks on their faces like they were being forced to drink their own piss. Clearly they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of bodies they had to deal with. I couldn't blame them. Sixty-seven bodies was a lot to process. It was mind-boggling, in fact, that someone could kill so many people. And for what? So some fucking Dimension Lord with a barely pronounceable name could come along and eat the fucking world up? I swear these nutjobs confound me sometimes.

  "What's up with you, Creed?" Brentwood asked though he didn't wait for an answer. "A while ago I had a sudden recollection of our history. I can't tell you what an unpleasant experience that was."

  "I'm sure," I said, unsurprised by Brentwood's sudden frostiness toward me. It's as Leona said, Brentwood considered me something of a liability and a downright pain in the ass, mainly because I did what I did alone and I rarely informed him about anything. He seemed to think that since I worked magic-related cases that I should, therefore, be working under him. And while our paths did often cross (largely due to Leona), he knew I would never consider working for him or any other government agency, just so they could control what I did and how I did it, which more often than not, wasn't exactly in line with how they did things. Brentwood and those like him were all about containment and coverup. That was their main priority. They didn't care who they railroaded or hurt in the process, and they certainly didn't care about helping people. That was the diff
erence between Brentwood and me. I used my power to help people (whenever possible anyway), whereas he used the power he had (which wasn't inconsiderable) to shut people up and bring people down; at least those involved in nefarious occult and supernatural activities. Of course, I found myself having to bring people down as well from time to time, but it wasn't policy for me. To do the right thing, sometimes you had to do the wrong thing, a fact I was less comfortable with than Brentwood was. Or Leona for that matter, who shared Brentwood's military callousness, though to a lesser degree.

  "Now that you're burned back into in my memory again," Brentwood said. "It doesn't surprise me that you ended up involved in this, Creed. Or that you ended up on that island. Wherever there's trouble, you always seem to be in the thick of it."

  "You would never have known about that island if I hadn't led you there," I pointed out, tearing my eyes away from the body of a middle-aged man whose face was frozen in terror, his throat slit to the bone. “And by the way, I wouldn’t always have to be in the thick of things, as you put it, if official policing were different.”

  Brentwood tutted and shook his head. It was an old argument he obviously had no wish to revisit, even if I did. “Think what you like. And we did know about that place."

  “So why didn’t you do anything about it?”

  “Because there was no one crazy enough to take on Hans Belger. Until you, that is.”

  “I did you a favor then.”

  “That remains to be seen. A lot of powerful people were connected to that island, some of whom run the damn government.”

  I nodded with sickening understanding. "Which is the real reason why you never tackled Belger. Why he's been so protected all these years." I shook my head in disgust. “That puts the blood of all those people on your hands as much as Belger’s. You should be ashamed.”

  Brentwood looked away for a second. "I just follow orders. The government is what it is and no one's going to change that. Not even you, Creed, with your self-righteous bullshit."