“Is there something under the couch?” I say.
The Wolf makes another raspy sound, and their eye starts to droop. They’re fading.
I crawl around the Wolf and squeeze past a broken chair so I can bend down far enough to see underneath the couch. The top of the couch is set against the floor, the bottom up in the air, so there’s a gap between the couch cushions and the floor. In this gap, I find what looks like a crocheted blue blanket bundled up in the middle of the blood puddle slowly spreading across the floorboards, but as I reach out to grab it, the bundle moves.
I freeze, heart stuttering, then scrabble for my penlight. Ripping it free, I click it on and point it at the blanket. A tiny hand pokes out from a gap in the folds, grasping for air.
Oh god.
“We’ve got a survivor!” I yell.
I shove my penlight back onto my belt and push myself as far into the gap as I can, wrapping both my arms around the blanket and the small body tucked inside. Then, using my knees, I wriggle out from underneath the couch, bundle secure in my gentle embrace. I set it on my knees and begin unwrapping the large blanket, careful not to jostle the precious package within. A small foot wearing a bloodstained sock appears, follow by another a moment later. Then the second hand is revealed, desperately clutching a tiny teddy bear to a rapidly moving chest. Finally, I tug the last fold of the blanket back—to reveal Sadie Wheeler, whole and healthy.
She has only one scratch on her, a tiny cut on her forehead above her left eye. The rest of the blood came from the shallow red pond on the floor. Her mother’s blood, I realize with growing horror. Frances Wheeler’s a werewolf, and she changed into her animal form to protect her daughter from the attack.
“Christ almighty,” whispers Amy.
I look up to find her and Ella hanging behind me, both of them stricken.
“Is she okay?” Ella whispers.
Sadie’s eyes are screwed shut, her body curled into a tight, quaking ball. Her puffy red cheeks are streaked with tears, and more hang from her eyelids, caught in her delicate lashes. Her blond ringlets are a tangled mess of blood and debris from the broken furniture, plastered to her face and neck. And her clothing is torn in several places. At least one of those tears is a familiar round shape. Close call. Too close.
I lean toward her and speak in a soft voice, “Sadie? Are you all right?”
She doesn’t answer. She curls up even more and tightens her hold on her bear.
“Shit,” Amy mutters, “she’s terrified. She must’ve seen most of it.”
“And heard all of it.” Ella presses her fist to her mouth. “Amy, Desmond, take her and go back to the office, now. Have two members of Delarosa’s team accompany you for backup. Get her inside the fence, behind the wards, and put a round-the-clock detail on her, a full team. Have one of our child advocates take custody of her for the time being. After we neutralize the threat, we’ll hand her over to CPS. But not a moment before. We’re not letting her out of DSI’s protection until I’m satisfied she’s safe.”
“Understood,” says Desmond.
Amy advances to take Sadie from me.
I grip the soiled blanket in my fist. “Is there something clean we can wrap her in? It’s cold outside.”
Amy looks around. “Yeah, hold on.” She peels off and enters a dark bedroom, reemerging about ten seconds later with another crocheted blanket, this one much larger but made of the same blue yarn. Frances Wheeler must’ve made or had someone make a matching set, one for her and one for her daughter. As I hand off the small trembling child to Amy, who wraps her in the blanket and makes her best attempt at comfortingly rocking the girl back and forth, I shift my focus to the werewolf in front of the couch.
She’s not an animal anymore.
Frances Wheeler’s human body lies prone on the floor, already cooling.
We all stand there for a quiet moment, honoring Frances’ sacrifice in silence.
Then the world starts moving again. Amy trails Desmond out of the apartment, and they meet up with Zhane and one other agent from Delarosa’s team, who were called over via com. The four of them exit through the main stairwell, Sadie as safe as she can possibly be in the arms of a seasoned warrior like Amy Sugawara. When the sound of an SUV engine revving carries up to the apartment, indicating a clean getaway, Ella and I begin the somber task of picking through the rest of the apartment to search for any clues the perp or their creature left behind.
Delarosa and his other two agents join us about ten minutes in, with the news they didn’t find anything suspicious beyond the Wheeler apartment. Even the canvass of the other apartments in the building turned up bupkis, the residents in this not-so-great neighborhood either too scared of law enforcement or too skeptical of the Kooks to field any questions. All they got was a bunch of suspicious looks and a bunch of doors slammed in their faces. Typical.
“Even if the residents had been more accommodating, I doubt we’d have found anything useful in their apartments,” Delarosa says, gaze cast at the floor. “Perp probably made a quick entrance and exit, just like at the other two scenes. This is a meticulous killer, not the sort who lets the details slide on the third go-around. Not the sort who gets overconfident and sloppy.”
“I agree.” Ella leans against the scuffed wall. “I’m getting the same vibes from this perp’s behavior, specifically from the lack of evidence left at any of the scenes. This is not some undisciplined killer on a vengeance quest. This is someone who knows how to target people, who knows how to flawlessly plan an attack. Someone who approaches murder with strategy. Someone for whom killing is a science.”
“Some kind of magic hitman, you think?” Delarosa rubs his chin.
“Maybe.” Ella grounds her boot into the floor. “It really irks me that we missed them again.”
“We didn’t miss them. We interrupted the attack. That’s why Sadie’s still alive.” I slam my palms on the kitchen counter, rattling a few dishes in the sink. “That heightened sense of fear we all felt was some kind of psychic attack, maybe a natural defense mechanism, meant to slow us down until the creature and its master had time to escape. But what I don’t understand is how we didn’t catch them leaving the building. We were blocking both stairwells.”
“And the elevator wasn’t used while we were in the stairwell,” Delarosa muses. “We’d have heard it.”
“The roof, maybe?” Ella glances at the ceiling. “They did enter Fletcher’s place through the attic. Maybe they’re a fan of heights.”
“Might as well check it out.” I curl my fingers inward, putting pressure on my fake beggar rings, driving them into my skin. “Since we don’t know the identities of any other potential victims, we don’t have anything better to do than go through the building with a fine-tooth comb, until we receive yet another homicide report.”
“That is unfortunately true.” Ella pulls away from the wall. “Hopefully Edith can dig up something else for us. But until then…”
Ella directs the remaining agents from Delarosa’s team to guard the apartment and wait for the crime scene unit to arrive. Then she leads Delarosa and me back to the stairwell, and we head up, up, up the steps, until we reach what is supposed to be a locked door that lets out onto the roof.
But the padlock, I find, has been given the same treatment as the one at Fletcher’s house. The faint blue glow inside the lock mechanism tells me exactly how the perp escaped. Probably took the fire escape down to the alley while we were busy being shocked at the murder scene. Annoyed, I grab the lock and yank it all the way open, make to shove it into another evidence bag. Delarosa, however, grabs my arm and drags it toward his face so he can get a better look at the padlock.
“This isn’t right,” he says, unease clawing its way through his words. “I came up here during the canvass of the building. I checked this door. It was sealed. I grabbed the padlock and tested it myself to make sure it wasn’t the perp’s access point.”
“When was this?” Ella says sharply.
>
“Not more than ten minutes ago.”
Ella looks at both of us in turn. “Weapons ready. Fan out in three directions. Cal, you’re on the left. Juan, you’re on the right.” She puts one hand on the doorknob and quietly turns it. “In three, two, one…”
She throws the door open, and as a brisk wind tumbles into the stairwell, the three of us march out onto the rooftop. I move off to the left and sweep my gun in a wide arc, but come across nothing suspicious on my side of the rooftop. Neither Ella nor Delarosa give any indication they stumble upon a hostile, so I inch toward the edge of the concrete housing for the stairwell and then spin around to face the other half of the roof. Several tall vents and fans partially block my view of one corner—the corner where the top of the fire escape just so happens to let out—and I shuffle forward quickly to check behind all the equipment.
As I’m coming around the backside of the stairwell housing, a warm tickle of air brushes my neck, drifting down from above. Warm air on a cold day.
I reflexively dive forward a split second before something slams straight down into the spot where I was standing. Landing in a hard roll, I spring up, spin around, and point my gun at…nothing. No. Not nothing.
A scattered cloud of roofing material blasted upward by the impact reveals a faint outline of a long, transparent tentacle, a round tentacle, extending down from something perched on the top of the stairwell housing. And crouching next to the seemingly empty place where that creature must be is a man in a porcelain mask and a billowing black cloak.
“Practitioner!” I raise my gun.
The man’s summoned creature doesn’t let me get a shot off. The tentacle that nearly struck me down rips free from the rooftop and shoots toward me. I duck beneath it, the underside skimming my hair, cutting clean through like a knife, and fire off three shots at the practitioner. But the man evades the shots with a couple well-timed steps and leaps off the top of the stairwell housing before making a break for the fire escape. I attempt to swivel around and pursue him, but suddenly, the tentacle retracts like a spring and wraps around my neck. It clamps down so hard I can’t breathe, and I drop my gun in a panic as I scrabble at the leathery appendage.
The creature tumbles off the housing and comes to a stop in the air a couple feet from the rooftop, bobbing up and down. It’s visible only because there are still particles of debris floating through the air and bouncing off its lumpy edges. Otherwise, it’s totally undetectable to my normal human eyes, and my magically enhanced ones. There are no sounds either, not even the faintest pulse in the air. There aren’t even scents, at least none strong enough for the human nose to pick up. The only thing it’s emitting that a human might register is heat—a moderate amount of warmth is emanating from its bulk—but I can only feel that because the outside temperature is so much colder.
Indoors, no one can sense it coming, I think as I desperately tug at the virtual snake wrapped around my neck, trying to strangle its prey. That’s how it kills so easily.
Gunshots break the air, and several rounds strike the creature roughly center mass. There’s a slight ripple where they hit, like pond water disturbed by a rock, but no blood emerges, and the creature doesn’t cry out. Instead, another tentacles whips toward the source of the shots—Ella and Delarosa, standing side by side about ten feet away from me. They duck under the tentacle, which smacks the concrete of the stairwell housing, throwing yet more debris into the air and defining the creature’s shape all the more.
Somewhere behind me, near the fire escape, the practitioner lets out a high-pitched whistle.
And the next thing I know, I’m flying.
The creature zips off toward the fire escape, toward its master waiting at the top, and takes me along for the ride. Choking and gasping and clawing at the tentacle locked around my throat. Stars in my vision. Lungs screaming for oxygen. I miss slamming into a big metal vent shaft by about two inches before the creature jerks me so hard to the left it’s a miracle my neck doesn’t snap.
Then, like a slingshot, the tentacle springs forward, dragging me with it, faster and faster and faster, until finally, it lets me go. Just as I pass upside down over the head of the squatting practitioner, who stares up at me through the blacked-out holes of his painted porcelain mask as I tumble right over the edge of the roof. The street zooms past underneath me, my trajectory shallow, which gives me enough time to reorient myself in the air as my body begins to descend toward the asphalt that would love to break me into a thousand pieces.
Ignoring that primordial fear of falling that makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs, I point my hands at the ground and call up as much magic energy as my suppression rings will allow, and funnel it into a simple wind cushion I mastered in my first few days as a new and eager practitioner.
The wind slows me down enough to prevent me from becoming road kill, and I land in a hard but controlled slide that tears up my pants and skins my knees but does little else. I come to a stop about two feet away from the back end of a pickup truck, which I use to hoist myself up. Heart pounding, stomach in knots, legs shaking so hard my knees knock together, I lean heavily on the truck for a few seconds, until I have my breathing under control. As I push away and right myself, I gingerly prod my aching throat and wince as the pain flares around my fingertips.
“Christ,” I wheeze out. “That could’ve ended so much worse.”
A distant clang of metal catches my ear, and I spin around to face the apartment building, now almost two blocks away. The practitioner is racing down the fire escape, only two landings left to go, while Ella and Delarosa are still up on the fourth story, struggling to catch up. I can’t see the creature anymore, but I assume it’s hovering near its master, ready to strike in case either of the DSI agents on the practitioner’s tail get too close.
Shit. There’s a major intersection six blocks north of here, and another four blocks west. If the practitioner reaches street level and hightails it either direction, he’ll end up surrounded by civilians. We won’t be able to pursue him without risking mass casualties. And exposure.
I draw my spare gun and spring back down the street. When I’m thirty feet away from the apartment building, I take aim and pop off four shots. Two of them clang against the bars of the escape, one of them hits the creature, marked only by another ripple of air, and the last one clips the practitioner’s mask as he’s coming around the last landing.
But the bastard doesn’t even hesitate before he drops onto his knees and comes right off the edge of the landing, swinging around to grab the top of the ladder that leads to the alley. He holds the ladder by the outer bars and slides down, only to brace his feet against a rung halfway to the ground and kick away from the escape. At the perfect moment to completely evade my next volley of gunfire, which harmlessly eats into the brick exterior of the building.
The guy lands in a graceful tuck and roll, and rises to his feet before I have time to adjust my aim. There’s a quick flutter of movement, where the guy’s hand drops to his belt, and from behind the folds of the cloak, a knife comes flying toward my face. I dodge to the right, but the edge of the knife swipes my left cheek, drawing blood, and then keeps on going until it drives itself into a metal lamp post behind me.
What astonishes me about it is that I don’t sense any magic on the knife. The guy just threw it that hard. This is an extremely well-trained warrior.
I pass the fire escape as Ella and Delarosa are stomping down the last story, and pursue the practitioner down the block, praying that no residents of the neighborhood step out for a smoke or an afternoon walk. The practitioner clears the end of the apartment building, and to my relief, turns into the alley beside it, giving me the cover I need to engage him with magic without creating an overly public spectacle. Got you, bitch.
I push my legs hard to catch up, but notice that they don’t seem to be moving nearly as fast as I know they can. In fact, my body as a whole seems to be sluggish, the aim of my gun flagging as my arms droop
, my head struggling to stay upright on my neck, my abdomen laboring much harder than it should be to force air in and out, my diaphragm weak. As I turn into the alley, I rack my brain for what the heck might be happening—I know the practitioner didn’t cast a spell on me because I didn’t sense any magic—when the feeling of warm blood running down my neck and soaking into my collar reminds me that I was nicked by that knife.
Oh crap.
The knife was coated in poison.
At that realization, I toss my gun aside, knowing I won’t be able to shoot straight, skid to a stop, drop to one knee, and raise my right hand. I brace it with my left to hold it steady, dredge up my magic energy until I bump against the suppression limit, and take aim at the back of the fleeing practitioner, who’s closing in on the end of the alley. Electricity arcs between my knuckles as I compress all my energy into a concentrated ball around my hand. And then, with a rough internal kick of will, I fire off a violet lightning bolt.
It should hit the practitioner, but it doesn’t. The creature shields its master with its own body and takes the full brunt of the blast, its entire outline lighting up to reveal a misshapen figure, that, I realize in horror, is vaguely shaped like a person. It’s a hunched humanoid being curled into a ball, with shriveled limbs and a head that’s screwed on backward, a gaping hole of a mouth looking far too much like a perpetual silent scream. The tentacles that the creature uses to kill are actually extensions from its hands and feet, eight wormlike wriggling appendages branching off from wilted stumps, where fingers would normally be.
The lightning strike stuns the creature, and it falls to the pavement with a thud. But it shakes off the damage in a matter of seconds, and as the glow of its outline fades, the creature rendered invisible once again, I can only act on instinct—and experience—as I yank myself to the right, anticipating a counterattack.
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