Chariots of Wrath

by R. L. King

  Behind me, Twyla moans and drops back. The light spell flickers and disappears, plunging the office back into darkness.

  “Bron…”

  “Shh…” I whisper, almost like I expect to draw the attention of whatever did…that…to Arthur DeVries. “It’s okay…”

  But of course it’s not okay.

  It’s so far from okay that okay might as well be on the opposite coast.

  “Bron…”

  I don’t want to turn on the light. I don’t want to see what’s in there. If it was up to me, I’d be booking it out of this office so fast I’d leave burn marks on the carpet.

  But this is why we came in here, isn’t it?

  I wanted to find something incriminating.

  Be careful what you wish for…

  Instead of asking Twyla to re-cast the light spell, I cover my hand again and flip the switch just inside the door. A trendy halogen pole lamp behind the desk comes on, bathing the area in harsh, bright light.

  “Oh, God…” Twyla moans.

  Somebody is sitting behind the desk—if you can call it sitting. It’s a man, that much I can tell, but not much else. I think he’s wearing a suit coat. He’s leaning back in his chair, his head lolling down, his hands splayed out in front of him in a position that has to have been posed. The entire desktop is covered in thick, sticky blood.

  That’s not the worst of it, though. Once again, I have to pause a moment to send a harsh message to my dinner that it needs to stay put.

  I don’t want to look at what’s in front of me. Nobody should have to look at what’s in front of me. This isn’t just death. I’ve seen death before, but whoever had done this to this man hadn’t just wanted to kill him.

  There’s a lot more to it than that.

  The middle of his chest is in complete ruin. The only thing that relieves the solid red from all the blood is the even more grotesque pink of his lungs and his guts, and the occasional stained white where a rib juts out. His heart had been ripped clear of his chest and hangs free of the cavity, attached by only a couple of remaining veins. I can’t see his face because his head is bowed.

  “Twy…” I whisper. “Is that…DeVries?”

  She swallows hard. “Yeah.”

  I don’t have an answer for that. Somehow, “holy shit” doesn’t begin to cover it. I look down at the carpet under my feet, checking to make sure I haven’t stepped in any of the blood. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”

  She’s not moving. She stands there in front of the desk, her whole posture tense, staring down at the remains of the man she’d met with, had lunch with—hell, had sex with—only a few hours earlier.

  I touch her arm. “Twy, we need to go. What if whoever did this to him is still around here somewhere?”

  I don’t have any forensics knowledge; I can’t look at a puddle of blood and tell you how long it’s been there by how fast it’s dried or how far it’s spread. And I don’t want to spend another minute in that room with that heavy, coppery smell. I think humans are wired not to react well to that smell—it’s a survival instinct. People who have to work with blood probably learn to deal with that feeling, but I run a bookstore and paint stupid pictures for tourists. Not the same skill set.

  “Who…could have done this?” she whispers. She’s staring down at DeVries’s bloody, ruined corpse like she’s trying to read the answer in the jumble of his guts.

  “Whoever they were, I don’t want to meet them—do you?” I go back to the door and poke my head out, checking to make sure nobody’s coming. The hall is quiet and dim, just like we left it. If this was a movie, the suspenseful music would be swelling up right about now, as the elevator door begins to slowly open. But this isn’t a movie.

  “I don’t think they’re here,” she says, almost idly. “But Bron—you don’t get it. Whoever did this—I don’t think they were human.”

  That gets me back inside fast. I gape at the corpse and then at Twyla. “What do you mean, not human?”

  She spreads her hands. “I don’t know. But look what they did. It’s almost like somebody punched their hand through his chest and ripped his heart out. I don’t see any knife wounds or anything, do you?”

  “I haven’t looked that close.” Come on, tacos. Stay put for just a few more minutes and we’ll be out of here.

  “Well…I don’t.” Her voice shakes, but her posture is steadier. “And I don’t see how a human—even a really strong one—could punch through somebody’s chest, through their ribs—”

  She has a point. I don’t want to admit it, but she does. “Okay. But what difference does it make? We’re not going to do anything about it. We can’t stop whoever did this. I sure as hell don’t want to try tracking it down. I’m sorry, Twy, but just because you had a little afternoon delight with this guy—”

  “Yeah. I know. I get it. But—”

  Something occurs to me, forcing me to look closer at DeVries’s corpse. “Hey…do you think one of those cannibal zombie things got him?”

  Surprisingly, she shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? They have claws, and they’re sure as hell stronger than a normal human.”

  “It doesn’t feel right, for one thing. Once Nick…put me back to normal back there at the strip mall, I looked around with magical sight. There was definitely magic there—duh, right?—but it was a different kind of magic.” She ponders a moment. “I’ve only ever heard of one thing that can do something like this without leaving any normal traces behind.”

  “What’s that?” I’m not sure I want to know.

  “Demons.”

  I feel like somebody just poured a cold bucket of water over me. Even my tacos stop clamoring for release. I stare hard at her. “Demons?”

  She nods soberly. “I’ve never actually seen any, or heard of anyone who has, but I studied them a little during my apprenticeship. That part was after the first summoning,” she adds, almost apologetically.

  Yeah, I know. After I got your mom killed, bailed on my studies, and ran for the hills. “But…”

  “I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “Maybe I’m wrong. Like I said, I’m not exactly an expert on this kind of thing. There’s a lot of magic out here, so maybe somebody figured out how to do it with a spell that doesn’t read like a normal one. Not exactly the kind of stuff our family teaches, you know, so it’s completely possible I’ve just never heard about it. I don’t—what?”

  She stops because she’s finally realized I’m not listening anymore. I’d been scanning the body, letting my gaze skate over it without looking at anything too closely, when I thought I spotted something. “Do you see that?”

  “See what?”

  “I think there’s something in his mouth.”

  She leans in closer. It’s really hard to see, between all the blood and the angle of his head. But I’m sure I see a corner of something poking out.

  “You sure that’s not just a tooth?”

  “Not completely. Can you see if you can use magic to pull it out?”

  “Bron, I don’t think we should touch him—what about the police?”

  “What about them? If something magical killed him, do you really think they’re going to get anywhere? If you find something, you can put it back after we look at it if you want. But hurry up. I want to get out of here before somebody else shows up.”

  She looks reluctant, and I feel a little guilty about prodding her, but now my curiosity is overcoming my nausea.

  “Okay…” she murmurs. “Stand back. We don’t want to get any blood on us.”

  I take a few steps back and watch as she raises her hand and points it at DeVries’s head. Her face scrunches up with her careful effort—sometimes delicate magic like this is harder than the more brute-force stuff—and after a few seconds she works something free of his mouth.

  I still can’t tell what it is, except that it’s definitely not a tooth. “Bring it closer.”

  “Wait a minute. Let
’s make sure it’s not…dripping.” She holds it there for a few more seconds, waiting to see if it’s going to drip any blood on the desk, and then floats it over toward us. “Don’t touch it.”

  “No problem.” I lean in closer, but now that it’s hovering inches away from me, I have no trouble identifying it. “It’s…a Tarot card.”

  “You’re right…” she says in wonder. “The Wheel of Fortune, right?”

  “Yeah.” It looks like a bone-standard, folded Tarot card, the kind you’d see in any pack you buy at a head shop or mystic-items store. Hell, I sell them at Aurora’s Attic. “Turn it over so we can see the back.”

  She unfolds the card and flips it over. It’s hard to make out the design because of all the blood, but it seems to have some kind of Celtic knotwork pattern on it. I squint harder. “There’s a letter there, too. Is that an ‘I’?”

  “Looks like an ‘L’,” she says. “Yeah, I’m sure of it. Does it mean anything to you?”

  “Not a damn thing.” I look away, hating myself for my next words. “I think we should take it with us.”

  “What? Why? That’s tampering with evidence, Bron.”

  “When did you ever care about that?”

  She doesn’t answer, and I know I’ve scored a point. My family back in New York is law-abiding as far as they can be, but they’re also both close-knit and highly magical. They don’t go out of their way to ignore mundane law, but neither do they go out of their way to follow it, either, when it gets in the way of their interests.

  Now, though, Twyla’s looking uncomfortable. “So…if you want to take this with us, why? Are you planning on trying to solve what happened here?”

  That’s a damned good question, and one I’m not entirely ready to answer yet. “I…don’t know. Maybe not solve it, but I do want to know more about it. We’re connected with this, Twy, or at least you are. Selene is. And if your dream is real, maybe I am too. I don’t want to let that go. Are you with me?”

  She hesitates. I know she could just as easily fold the card up, stuff it back in DeVries’s mouth and tell me to mind my own business. I can’t do anything about it if she does—not without getting blood all over me and taking a big risk. It’s probably safer that way, and I won’t blame her if she makes that decision. But as I watch her, waiting, her resolve seems to firm up.

  “Okay,” she says. “Okay, fine. But only on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have to tell me what your next steps are. I’m not going to do this if you don’t even know what you’ve got planned.”

  I let my breath out. Damn. I was hoping she wouldn’t say that, because I don’t have any next steps yet. Seeing a body with its guts hanging out all over his fancy-ass, carved-driftwood desk is enough to make your rational thoughts join forces with your tacos and get the hell out of the area.

  I know she’s serious, though. If I want her help, I’ve got to show her something. “Uh…” I clench my fists and close my eyes, trying to force my thoughts to play along. “Okay,” I say at last, “what about a ritual? Can you trace the card to who left it?”

  “Maybe. That’s dangerous magic, though. Not my first choice. Especially if Selene’s involved somehow, and it’s sure looking like she might be. Got anything else?”

  “No, I don’t have anything else!” I snap, more frustrated than angry. “Come on, Twy—I’ve been doing my best to avoid magic out here, not track it down. I—”

  I stop.

  “What?” she demands.

  The thought that pops into my head whirls around and flies out my mouth before I can run it through my ‘this is a stupid idea’ filters. “Nick.”

  “What about Nick? If there’s any magic around it, he’ll mess it up, right?”

  “Yeah. But that’s not what I mean. Come on—let’s get out of here. This place is giving me the creeps.” On a whim, I pull out my phone and snap photos of both the card, still floating in mid-air, and DeVries’s body.

  “Bron, tell me. Why Nick? You said he knows even less than you do about magic.” She snatches the card from the air, shoves it in a baggie she pulls out of her purse, and hurries to follow me.

  “Yeah. He does. But his job is reading Tarot. He’s a fake, but he knows the business. And more importantly, he knows people who know a hell of a lot more about it than any of us do.”

  That’s absolutely true. Quentin Happenstance and his syndicate probably have their fingers on the pulse of magical goings-on more than just about anybody else in the Los Angeles area.

  The trouble is going to be convincing Nick to take this to him.

  Chapter Eleven

  I wait until Twyla and I are on the freeway before I pull out my phone to call Nick. There are a lot of reasons for that: I’m still not sure I want to drag him into this, I want to sleep on it before we make a decision, and I’m halfway wondering if a ritual might be a better option. But the biggest reason is because I’m scared shitless somebody’s going to see us leaving DeVries’s office and follow us. I spend the first twenty minutes looking around constantly, checking to make sure nobody’s on our tail.

  As well as I can, anyway. I think I mentioned before that I’m a bookstore owner, not some kind of secret agent. But I’m reasonably sure we’ve gotten away without anyone noticing. With any luck, nobody will even realize DeVries is dead before the next morning.

  Hell of a thing for his assistant to stumble on to when she comes in to drop off his morning coffee.

  “You gonna call him?” Twyla asks from the driver’s seat. She’s been tense the whole drive, her hands clutching the steering wheel. I wonder if she hasn’t been doing the same thing I’m doing.

  I glance at her purse, nestled between us, with the baggie inside. I want to pull the card out of the baggie and look at it again, but I figure that’s probably a bad idea. Blood and rental cars are a bad combination. “Do you think I should?”

  “I don’t know. I just want this whole thing to go away, but that’s not going to happen. We have to do something, and the other alternatives aren’t looking too appealing right now.”

  I don’t have to ask her what “the other alternatives” are. The way I see it, we have three. We can call the police, tell them what we found, and let them handle it. But that means either making an anonymous report or admitting we not only broke into someplace we shouldn’t have, but we also removed what’s probably a key piece of evidence from a crime scene.

  In other words: bad idea number one.

  We can try to do this ourselves, using a ritual. Twyla’s passed her apprenticeship, which means she’s a fully trained mage now. I’m sure she can perform a tracking ritual, and a playing card covered with blood is probably a great tether object. The closer an item is emotionally to the target of the ritual, the easier it is to track them, and I’m guessing whoever left that card was sending a message with it. The only problem is, if the murderer is magical—and if Twyla’s right and demons might be involved, it kind of goes without saying they are—tracking spells become much less effective. The other bad part is that when you use a tether object for a tracking ritual, even if you don’t find the target, you run a big risk of destroying the object, even if you’re taking special precautions not to. So if the ritual fizzles, we’ve lost our best clue.

  In other words: bad idea number two.

  Our third option is to bring the family into it: call my mother, Nana, or somebody else Twyla trusts, explain the whole situation to them, and see what they say. Maybe there’s more going on here than we know about, and if we get involved with it we might be messing up plans way above our pay grade. Hell, we could even contact Selene and ask her what she’s up to, why she’s paying fifty grand in secret cash to some small-time Hollywood producer whose guts are now decorating his tasteful and probably very expensive desk. The risk there, of course, is that Selene is up to something, and won’t take kindly to a couple of junior snoops sticking their noses in the middle of it. Not to mention that we have
no idea who else in the family is involved. If this goes all the way up to Nana, getting turned into a zombie cannibal rage monster might be the best thing that happens to us.

  In other words, Lord God King Bad Idea.

  So that leaves us with Nick Morgan, aka Nicholas Happenstance, unwitting and unwilling long-lost scion of the Happenstance Family. And I really don’t want to get that bunch involved.

  We may not have a choice, though. Of all the bad ideas we’ve got, that one seems the least bad.

  Which is really saying something.

  “So…” Twyla ventures, glancing at me as I stare down at my phone in my lap. “I think maybe it might be time for you to spill the beans on Nick. He seems pretty clueless about magic all the way around—who does he know who might be able to help us?”

  I consider the answer to that question. “He’s not clueless. He actually knows quite a lot about magic and the occult—the problem is, up until a month or so ago, he didn’t believe any of it was real.”

  “What?” Another glance. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “You got that right. But it’s true. I’m not going to give away all his secrets—that’s for him to do, if he wants to. But the short answer is, he grew up thinking he was mundane, but he always had an interest in magic. He has a huge collection of books about it, most of which are bullshit, but some of which aren’t. Recently he found out that he not only has this weird glitch talent he can’t control, but also that he’s related to one of the biggest magical crime families in the L.A. area.”

  She gives me a seriously? look. “That sounds like the plot of a movie.”

  “It kind of does, but it’s not. His grandfather is actually the head of the family—sort of like their Nana, only younger and better looking.”

  “And you think if we get Nick to agree, we can take this to his grandfather? That sounds…dangerous.”

  “It does. Why do you think I haven’t called yet? But out of all the options we have, can you think of a better one?”

  She returns her attention to the freeway, and I can almost see the wheels turning as she thinks it all through. “I can’t,” she finally admits. “Have you met this guy? Do you trust him?”