Blood Rite

by E.J. Stevens

  Being a P.I. had taught me a lot, including the importance of recon and surveillance. We needed to follow the clues and gather more intel. There would be time for blades and fireballs later.

  “Because there aren’t many places to bury a body within the Green Lady’s territory,” I said.

  “Former territory,” Torn said.

  “Sure, whatever,” I said. “The point is, if those zombie clowns that Brandy saw were the animated corpses of carnival fae, they had to come from somewhere.”

  “And the most likely place was within the carnival grounds,” Ceff.

  “Yeppers,” I said. “I think we can all agree that, for good or ill, there are some faeries who can’t be buried within the city’s human graveyards or pet cemeteries.”

  “And the sea refuses those she does not deem worthy,” Ceff said.

  I’d worried about death plenty, but I never thought much about what happened after. About the arrangements that the survivors were left to make. Cremation, becoming worm food, or burial at sea had all seemed like trivial details when we were fighting for our lives. But Ceff’s words rang with the importance of such a decision.

  That was probably a conversation that Ceff and I needed to have. Until now, I hadn’t bothered to research water fae funeral rights and customs. I fidgeted with the straps of the wrist sheaths that held my blades and licked my lips. I kind of sucked at this betrothal thing.

  “But why here, at this odiferous loading dock,” Torn asked. “Why not stroll through the front gates?”

  “That would be foolhardy,” Ceff said. “And dangerous.”

  “Exactly,” Torn said, licking his lips.

  “We’re not strolling through the front gates without doing some recon first, so we know exactly what we’re facing,” I said.

  “I suppose we could use the element of surprise,” Torn said, bouncing on his toes and eyeing the service entrance. “Pouncing from the shadows is fun too.”

  “The element of surprise and the possibility of danger aside, I think this is our best bet for finding where the carnival fae buried their dead,” I said. “Think about it. Most of the carnival grounds are on top of the pier, sitting above water. There’s very little actual land for burying corpses.”

  “Please tell me we’re not here to go dumpster diving,” Torn said. “I may hold court in an alley, but our trashcans are filled only with delicious kibble, not rotting corpses.”

  I eyed the flies buzzing around the overflowing dumpster and frowned. Could it be filled with decomposing bodies? Now that was a cheery thought.

  “Do you believe their dead could be discarded in that dumpster?” Ceff asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” I said.

  Chapter 12

  “I’ll let you do the honors, fish breath,” Torn said, gesturing toward the putrescent, malodorous dumpster.

  “And how did you come to the conclusion that I should receive such an…honor?” Ceff asked, voice dripping with derision.

  “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe totally should have caught a cat sidhe by the toe,” I said, nodding knowingly at Torn.

  While I was relieved that they weren’t insisting that I be the one to touch the dumpster, it seemed unfair not to at least draw straws or something. Torn was just being spiteful.

  “Wouldn’t you like to try, princess?” he said, waggling his foot.

  I mock shuddered. It didn’t take much effort since touching his toe would probably drag me down in the psychic muck and mire to drown in centuries of visions of Torn’s exploits.

  Deep down, I knew we were all just stalling. Nobody wanted to get up close and personal with a pile of reeking garbage. It was obvious that no deliveries or garbage pickups had occurred since the glaistig’s departure. That was plenty of time for refuse to become a fetid pool of nasty inside of a dumpster.

  There were also the flies and maggots to consider. I didn’t think they’d give me visions, but they were certainly disgusting. Too bad the back lot of the carnival was our best option for getting answers.

  “Rock, paper, scissors?” I asked.

  “No,” Ceff said. “Not this time. We are in a hurry and it is just a receptacle for waste, after all. Ready?”

  “Okay, sure,” I said, taking a step back and raising an arm across my face.

  Ceff flung the lid of the dumpster back and blanched. Even Torn shook his head and hissed. Great. Just swell.

  I stepped forward and lifted myself up on tiptoes, immediately regretting the clear view. I made it a few seconds before I lurched toward the chain link fence. I wanted to run.

  I hadn’t really expected a dumpster filled with body parts. I’d been a naïve fool.

  “Is that…are those?” I asked, unable to finish the question.

  Some things just shouldn’t be said out loud. Too bad Torn didn’t have such reservations.

  “If you were going to say a jig-saw puzzle of rotting body parts from various carnival fae, then yes, princess,” Torn said. “That’s exactly what that is.”

  I swallowed bile and took small, shallow breaths.

  “Not helping,” I said, tamping down the urge to be sick.

  I lifted myself up onto the balls of my feet and took another look inside the dumpster. This time, I tried to pretend the dead people were movie props or Halloween decorations. My brain wasn’t totally convinced, but it helped enough for me to take a visual inventory.

  “There’s at least a dozen people in there, probably more,” I said, breathing shallowly through my mouth.

  “Maybe the Green Lady ran out of burial space?” Torn asked. He stepped back and rolled his eyes. “What? It’s a legitimate question. We know their territory didn’t include a lot of land for burials, and I never heard of the carnival fae burning their dead.”

  “This is not a burial,” Ceff said, horror written in the planes of his face. “This is sacrifice.”

  “Like, as in blood rituals?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” he said, nodding. “Though what could bring a leader to do this to their own people is beyond my comprehension.”

  “Perhaps, fish breath?” Torn asked, a scornful smirk tugging at his scarred face. “I’d say the chances of these faeries being part of a blood sacrifice is a pretty sure thing, what with the complete absence of blood, like, anywhere.”

  He swaggered over to the dumpster, gesturing smugly at the clue we’d missed. I’m sure we would have noticed eventually, when I was less busy trying to pretend the body parts were from inanimate mannequins instead of from formerly living, breathing faeries. But Torn had a point.

  “They were exsanguinated,” I said, shaking my head. “But how? I don’t see any bite marks.”

  “Which rules out vampires,” Torn said. “I know. Unless you want to go in there and examine each piece, I’d say the top layer is a good enough sample to theorize we’re not dealing with vampires.”

  Was it wrong that I was searching for puncture wounds, hoping that these were vampire kills? Vampires were strong and deadly, but I knew how to kill them. An unknown threat was much scarier. Better the enemy you know.

  “Their throats were slit,” Ceff said, voice low and weary. He drew his trident and used it to gently move what was left of a faerie’s arm, tilting it for a better look. “Wrists too.”

  “Definitely sacrificed then,” I said, studying the scene.

  “If this is where they stuffed the sacrifices, what’s left of them anyway, where’s the blood-soaked magic circle?” Torn asked, tilting his head to the side, pondering the question like it wasn’t all kinds of wrong covered in wrong sauce. “And where’s the vessel?”

  “Vessel?” I asked. It was the only part of this conversation my brain didn’t shy away from.

  Unless he was talking about blood vessels. I really hoped he wasn’t still talking about blood.

  “Like the batteries we talked about, princess,” Torn said. “Normally, I’d expect slaughtered goats, a necromancer’s bloody magic circle, and a virgin or some
artifact or reliquary for the magic to be contained within.”

  “We’ve got more than slaughtered goats,” I said, frowning.

  “But no vessels,” Torn said.

  “So, the question remains, where did the magic go?” Ceff asked.

  My knee jerk reaction was to make a “remains” joke, but I was too busy swatting flies and trying to keep my stomach contents on the inside.

  “I don’t know,” I said, absently. “But these were people, faeries, like us. Should we say something? A prayer?”

  Ceff bowed his head, looking more tired than when I’d first saved him from the each uisge. He’d survived captivity and enslavement, his immortal body carrying the marks from those iron chains forever. But that had been his own suffering. This was the loss and desecration of loyal subjects whose leader had left them behind.

  If Ceff needed a moment, I’d grant it to him. Torn, however, was less reticent.

  “It’s no use, princess,” Torn said.

  “They are gone,” Ceff said, nodding in agreement. It was rare for these two to agree on anything, but this was no time to celebrate, not while presented with a dumpster filled with body parts. “The part of them you call people, what you think of as a soul, is gone, returned to Faerie.”

  “And the residual magic?” I asked.

  “Stolen by a necromancer,” Torn said. “Do we get to go and kill him now?”

  “First, we have to find out where this necromancer is,” I said.

  “How do you propose we do that?” he asked.

  I stared at the dead bodies, forcing myself to see them as faeries, as people. If any of my family was in there, I’d do what needed to be done. If any piece of my friends were in that horrific pile, I would reach out and touch them. There would be no hesitation. I would seek out a vision and I would do whatever it takes to find the person who killed them and desecrated their bodies.

  My friends weren’t in that dumpster, thank Mab. And although I did hesitate, I knew what I needed to do. I was a hero, after all.

  “The worst way imaginable,” I said.

  “Are you going to read their entrails?” he asked.

  Scratch that, the second worst way imaginable. Leave it to Torn to think of something even worse than being pulled into a vision by the victim of a blood sacrifice.

  “No, I’m going to touch something belonging to one of the victims and try to find a lead in this case,” I said.

  “I will watch your back,” Ceff said, looking at me intently.

  “Pull me out if it gets bad?” I asked, ignoring how small and weak my voice was.

  “I have seen Jinx do this for you many times,” he said. “I know what to do.”

  I nodded, giving him a brittle smile. I was a hero. I had to do this, but I didn’t have to like it.

  I took a deep breath, immediately regretting it due to the pervasive stench of rotting meat. I grimaced and dug around in my jacket pockets for the sports mouthguard I kept for times like these. I might choke on it, especially if I barfed, but that was preferable to biting off my own tongue. With a quick, practiced motion, I shoved the mouthguard over my front teeth and rolled my shoulders, trying to rid myself of some of the tension there.

  Next, I closed my eyes and said a prayer that this wouldn’t go goblin fruit-shaped. Visions are tricky at best, an eternal nightmare prison at worst. Probably better not to dwell on the horrific possibilities and get this over with.

  I tugged off my leather gloves and shoved them into my jacket pockets. I sure as heck wasn’t setting them anywhere near that dumpster. That would be like putting vipers in your own armor. I tried not to flinch as fetid air touched my naked hands. I cocked my head, looking for the least disgusting thing to touch. Not an easy choice under the circumstances.

  I reached for the most innocuous item, a discarded shoe. It wasn’t a clown shoe, thank Mab. It was a simple, ruby red slipper with no heel and one elasticized strap across the arch, similar to a ballet shoe.

  My fingers rested on the shoe and I stiffened, every muscle in my body going rigid. The world spun upside down. That wasn’t unusual for a vision, but this one left me teetering on a razor-wire high above a crowd of gaping humans—directly over a tank of shark-like creatures with too many teeth.

  Mab’s bloody bones. Of course, I had to go and pick an item belonging to a tightrope walker. Oh, and here come the throwing knives and flaming hoops. Great. Just great.

  But while I wasn’t thrilled about the situation, the faerie whose vision I was riding was totally loving it. She was completely in her element, thriving under the spotlight.

  Actually, that might be a little too accurate. It was a good memory, sure, but the faerie really was receiving sustenance from the bright light. It was some kind of ultraviolet lamp, granting her, us, the extra power to perform a flawless high-wire routine.

  If I’d had any doubt about that logic, it was banished when I caught sight of our leg as we wrapped it behind our neck with ease, hopping gracefully along the wire on one foot. That leg was covered with bark, and when a strand of our hair slipped in front of my face, it was tipped with small, green, heart-shaped leaves that rustled as I spun in a perfect pirouette.

  I could have watched the dryad’s hair for hours. Too bad my psychometry had other ideas.

  If I thought the heights, shark creatures, and deadly flames were scary, I was sadly mistaken. That had been a happy memory for the faerie, a proud moment of accomplishment in service to the Green Lady. What came next was more than terrifying. It was downright disturbing.

  Knowing the glaistig’s feudal-like rule over the carnival fae, I expected that if I caught sight of the dryad’s killer, the blade that bled her would be held by a cloven-hooved woman cloaked in green. I hadn’t been prepared for the spinning gateway of swirling blue light or the horrifying creature who stepped out of it.

  The monster wasn’t quite a vampire or a zombie, although his hands were skeletal and his face little more than a corpse. I didn’t know who or what he was.

  What I did know was that the creature was powerful. He wore black robes and a silver crown, and magic radiated off him like decomposing uranium.

  His fingerbones danced and twisted with strange, arcane gestures and where they slid through the air magic skittered. Beneath our feet the dead stirred, responding to the necromancer’s power.

  His voice, like the bastard offspring of a death rattle and a rattlesnake, slithered through the circle, whispering in the dryad’s ears even as he slashed her wrists to drip-drip-drip onto the ground.

  “Flesh and bone.”

  “Bone and blood.”

  “Blood and ash.”

  “Let it be done.”

  He slashed with blade and bone. Death came swiftly. At least that was one mercy. The faerie never experienced the necromancer’s full depravity or the disarticulation of her body. I only caught flashes of those foul deeds as I clawed myself to the surface, struggling to escape a sea of hot, coppery blood, gasping for air.

  I spit out my mouthpiece, ran for a tangle of weeds at the edge of the parking lot, and barfed up my breakfast. It was mostly coffee, thank Mab.

  I strode back to Ceff and Torn, running a hand through hair damp with sweat. Crap, I was still bare-handed. I hastily pulled on my gloves and took a shaky breath.

  “Are you well?” Ceff asked.

  The dryad’s ruby red shoe was nowhere in sight, for which I was grateful.

  “Mmm hmm,” I said. “Never better.”

  “We going to kill something now?” Torn asked. “I’m feeling the need to stab something.”

  “You and me both,” I said. “But there’s one more place we need to search.”

  Torn sighed and rolled his eyes.

  “And where would that be, princess?”

  “The carnival fae’s graveyard,” I said, nodding toward the maintenance building. “Over there. On the other side of this building.”

  “Perhaps, we should all rest for a moment,” Ceff sai
d, the skin around his eyes tight with worry.

  “No,” I said, glaring at him.

  I played a good game, but I couldn’t hide my feelings from Ceff. He knew what a vision like the one I’d just had cost me. He also knew enough about bargains to know that I was beginning to feel the side-effects of headache and fatigue. Projectile vomiting and holding my head like it was going to fall off were probably also dead giveaways that I wasn’t at my best.

  Screw my best. We weren’t just dealing with zombies—which, for the record, was bad enough—we were dealing with a necromancer who didn’t hesitate to murder, bleed, and dismember innocent people. So, I stared down my betrothed, daring him to tell me what I couldn’t do, all the while knowing that his suggestion to rest was the same advice that I would give him under the circumstances.

  A sound like a combination of someone dragging something heavy and drunken footsteps interrupted the silence. I held my breath, eyes going wide. Ceff’s trident was suddenly in his hand, fully extended, and Torn flexed his claws. While I knew they were both formidable in a fight, I wasn’t ready to reveal our presence here. Not yet. We needed more information about the necromancer and his bloody rituals. I had a feeling we’d get those answers if only we could examine the nearby graveyard, preferably uninterrupted by shambling zombies.

  I glanced around, looking for cover. The only place to hide was either inside of or behind the dumpster. It wasn’t a difficult choice. We were stuck between a rock and an extremely disgusting, nightmare vision inducing, stinky place.

  I dove behind the dumpster.

  “I hate you,” I muttered, scowling at Torn who managed to hide in a much less odiferous shadow.

  “You’re the one who wanted to skulk around and collect evidence,” he whispered. “If we’d stormed the front gates, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”