Forgery of the Phoenix

by Michael Angel

  “That brings us back to the problem now grasped within our talons,” Korr stated. “Whether the stories of the Hearts of the Mother are true or not, they are lost somewhere in the sea of time in which the Seraphine swim, and the sparks fizzle out. We must find sustenance elsewhere.”

  “You do possess the Great Northern Forest,” Galen pointed out. “That is the forest beyond the pass, with the more delectable trees.”

  “But the forest is only part of what we need, and the lesser part. For the past few waking-times, there has been less and less of what we need to burn to survive. Jett and I were the only ones with enough left to consume in order to find what the Seraphine need. And my mate remains at a quarter the strength of her prime. She cannot fly, or use magic.”

  At this, Jett nodded sadly.

  “And so we were told to summon you as our Quester. The Quondam Seraphine...she thought our plight so desperate that we must turn to a spark for our salvation,” Korr concluded. “Unless we find a new source to power our flames, we of those who Burn and Rise Again shall sputter out and return to the ash from whence we came.”

  “All right,” I said slowly. “This is all very interesting, but I have a question. If you and Jett are the two ‘First to Wake’ or whatever, then one of you must have awakened Pirr.”

  The two phoenix didn’t trade glances this time, but they looked more and more uncomfortable as I went on.

  “So, if Pirr left a note telling you to summon me, where is she? Why leave all the ‘ancient stories’ and problem solving to you? I want answers, and frankly, I’m getting tired of all the misdirection.”

  Korr’s eyes blazed. “Very well, Little Spark. Our Quondam is dead.”

  I held out my arms, frustrated. “From what I’m hearing of your ‘glorious people’, this shouldn’t be much of an issue. Kindly ‘activate’ her, or whatever, so I can get to work.”

  “That is just what we wish you to do,” Jett said, cutting off Korr before he could reply. “The Quondam expired just after writing us her message. She expired in such a way that she shall not rise again.”

  A terrible suspicion began to blossom in my mind. “Did Pirr lack the fuel to burn?”

  “No, Dame Chrissie.” Jett appeared to be struggling with what to say next. “Her expiration...was one that did not come from Her own wishes.”

  I paused, trying to work out what she meant. Shaw clacked his stout eagle beak and whispered to me urgently, his voice only a notch above a growl.

  “Mine own ears scarcely believe it,” he said. “Thy Seraphine...they lack a word for murder!”

  It did make sense. I turned back to Jett and Korr. “So what you’re saying is that someone else made Pirr ‘expire’, and then changed things so that Pirr could not, ah, become Active ever again?”

  The phoenix both nodded their heads vigorously.

  “That is correct,” Korr confirmed. “It is why ones such as we Seraphine have allowed you to come into our most hallowed space.”

  Well, at least my life had a few moments of consistency. No matter my social rank in this world, I still wasn’t invited anywhere for my charming personality.

  Chapter Twenty

  Korr dimmed his fire to a dull, flickering red as he led us over to the base of the cliff, close to where his mate had emerged. We came to a cave opening with a wide passage leading deep into the basalt. The phoenix stepped back from the entrance and pointed the way inside with one outstretched wingtip.

  My friends and I stepped inside, letting our eyes adjust to the light. A dim, pumpkin-colored shimmer came from deep inside. It cast a Halloween-esque illumination over the remains of the Quondam Seraphine.

  “Behold,” Korr said somberly. “The eldest of our Line of the Flame lies before you.”

  The ghostly shape of a huge, fallen bird lay outlined in ash on the floor. At first glance it looked like a portrait study of a giant raptor. One drawn up by a graduate art student using charcoal, pencils, and handfuls of silver and orange glitter. And yet the figure’s outline had a blurred quality, either scoured by the wind or disturbed by other forces.

  I still couldn’t help but pause for a second and gaze at it. This was all that was left of a being that had lived for thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of years. A being that had been the eldest of a species of raptors made of living fire.

  Carefully, I knelt by the outstretched curve that delineated a wing. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the figure was surprisingly three-dimensional. The lines of ash lay in miniature little berms or mounds that were at least two fingers high.

  “It is a sad sight, to see where someone made Pirr fall Inert,” Korr stated. “And done so in a way that she could not rise to be Active ever again.”

  “It’s always a sad sight to see someone murdered,” I agreed.

  Korr looked puzzled. “That is the term you sparks use?”

  I still wasn’t sure if the Seraphine knew that they were getting on everyone’s nerves with that term. But I put it aside for now. “Yes, that’s the term we sparks use. Murder. I’m sorry if I’m being blunt, but time may be of the essence here.”

  “Time?” The raptor looked down at me with strangely guileless eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  “The sooner I can glean some clues here, the sooner I can catch whoever committed Pirr’s murder.”

  “That is not our concern. We don’t care who did this ‘murder’.”

  Now it was my turn to stare. “You don’t care? I mean, isn’t that why you asked me here?”

  Korr made a sound halfway between a sizzle and a sigh. “The Quondam did not summon you here to solve her murder. She summoned you here to help the remaining Seraphine’s survival as a species.”

  “But...she was your leader, correct? Don’t you want to know who killed her?”

  “The Quondam held the well-being of all the Seraphine in her care. We deem it sufficient to know one thing: that you are clearly the right spark to be our Quester.”

  “Clear as mud,” I muttered. “So tell me then. Why?”

  “Because you can examine Pirr...and tell us where she has been.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. All I could think of was that there was some serious interspecies miscommunication going on. I’d thought that the Hoohan were hard to understand. But that was only due to a quirk in their linguistics. A quirk caused by their serious, and probably innate, devotion to a communal identity.

  By contrast, the Seraphine were truly alien. These raptors didn’t view time, life, death, even murder in the same way as other beings. Perhaps their viewpoint was one shared by all exceptionally long-lived, unconventional species.

  A shiver ran down my back as I thought of other beings the Seraphine reminded me of. Reveé, the nightmare-delivering Dream Speaker of the pouquelaye. Sirrahon, the ancient stone dragon. Or even Rocky, the insane demon spirit bound to his stone prison.

  I pushed those thoughts out of my mind. The Seraphine might be alien, but that didn’t make them evil. They hadn’t harmed or threatened anyone that I’d seen. Up until now, they’d done nothing worse than come across as condescending. And the phoenix didn’t have a monopoly on that type of attitude. As a matter of fact, they’d been more respectful to me than the fayleene had been when I’d first met Liam’s people.

  So, I did want to look over Pirr’s corpse.

  That made me consider for a moment. The nature of my work often led to what some might call ‘intrusive’ examination. Intrusive meaning taking samples or poking through remains. And while Pirr’s remains looked less like a corpse and more like a very thorough cremation, I didn’t want the remaining Seraphine to stop me from doing any part of my investigation.

  “Korr,” I said. “My team and I need room to do our work. Would you please remain outside with Jett?”

  I expected some push-back, but Korr surprised me in his easy acquiescence. “Of course. Neither Jett nor I shall interfere with your quest.”

  “Thanks. Oh, and don’t fly off
anywhere, either. I’ll probably need to ask you some more questions.”

  The phoenix nodded and retreated to rejoin his mate. Liam and Shaw came to crouch at either side of me. Galen stood close behind, his face lost in thought. I looked up at the wizard once Korr’s glow had faded away.

  “Caution might be the best path right now,” I said casually. “Given how the Seraphine communicate, is there a way to keep our thoughts private?”

  “Oh, quite. I possess just the thing,” Galen said. He gestured, muttered the words ‘ebí ciúin’. A soundless flash, and he lowered his hands. “Though I never mistrusted Destry, I thought it prudent to have a spell handy in case we needed to work with creatures who spoke mind-to-mind.”

  With that out of the way, I turned back to the body at hand, leaning back on my heels. Where was I to start? Most of my training involved examining biological structures and fluid. I didn’t see anything that even approximated something ‘meaty’. On top of that, everything looked bone dry and burned to a crisp.

  That settled it. I was going to have to think outside the morgue and off the autopsy table.

  I took a breath to steady myself. My training was adamant about guarding against contamination, but I needed to know more, and wearing gloves wasn’t going to tell me what I needed to know.

  I cautiously put my bare hand out and grabbed a pinch of the closest little mound. To my amazement, the dry material felt gummy. Gummy or tacky, like molding sand. I took the pinch of material between my fingers and turned to offer it to Galen. He bent down to take it from my hand, then stirred the dust around in his palm with his thumb.

  Liam and Shaw cautiously sniffed the outmost boundary of the fallen phoenix.

  “Nothing I would recognize as charred flesh or bone,” Liam pronounced. “There’s charcoal. Sulfur. Metal. Something else...something I have only smelled elsewhere.”

  “Elsewhere?” I asked.

  “Yes. Outside the Fayleene Woods, that much is certain. But I’m not sure where.”

  “Thou hast a better nose than I,” Shaw admitted. “I smell nothing but forged metal.”

  I looked at the drake. “How do you figure that it’s been forged?”

  He shrugged. “One cannot wear armor, or remain for long around the knights of the Air Cavalry, without being aware of the scent of worked metal.”

  “You have a point.”

  I closed my eyes and sniffed my fingers. Yes, there was something familiar buried within the complex of scents. Ironically, it made it tougher for me to identify. I’d picked up on the wintergreen berry smell off of what turned out to be King Benedict’s corpse because it wasn’t familiar at all. It had stuck out for that very reason and made me look harder for the scent’s origin.

  “I’m afraid nothing strikes me a particularly discordant about this sample of sand, save its texture,” Galen remarked. As if following some of my darker thoughts, he added, “One thing I can say for sure. It is different than the material I found in the palace courtyard after Captain Vazura’s assassination by the dust-demon.”

  “Well, that confirms that the phoenix are different sorts of creatures than the Old Man of the Mountain. It’s something, anyway.”

  “Alas, a rather small thing.” Galen cocked his head at me, and his voice held a bit of worry. “I realize that you can read a great many things from a deceased person’s body. But what about bodies made of ash and stone?”

  The wizard’s remark actually helped snap me out of my little mental cul-de-sac. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t much I could do with a body made of ash and stone. But I could get a heck of a lot of information from a crime scene that had ash and stone as part of the surroundings. There was a reason that my field was called Crime Scene Analysis. Any technique I would normally employ on dust, clay, loam, or mud would be just as useful here.

  “You’d be surprised what I can read from it,” I said, as I pulled a set of gloves, a couple plastic bags, and some tools for gathering up soil samples from my case.

  Once I had the gloves on, I began taking samples of ash from a couple of spots along the fallen Seraphine’s body. I worked my way up until I got to an area near the upper part of the torso. Pirr’s neck had been outstretched at the moment of death, which allowed me to move in and crouch close to the juncture of shoulder and head.

  “‘Tis interesting,” Shaw remarked. “The orange and silver sparkles cluster near to where thou art sitting.”

  “Could they be from some type of mineral that Pirr had ingested?” Galen asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s possible, I guess.”

  “If the phoenix ingested the mineral,” Liam asked, “wouldn’t the colored sparkles be near its stomach, not its chest and head?”

  Galen pursed his lips. “Mayhap. Yet that is assuming that the Seraphine possess stomachs. I see no indication of internal organs at all.”

  “Aye,” Shaw added. “There are none. I am more convinced that the Seraphine are something different. Something that only mimics the look of an avian creature.”

  “It might be that the sparkles indicate some kind of special internal structure,” I wondered aloud, as I got another sample bag ready. “If you look at it carefully, there is a pattern repeating throughout the area.”

  “What dost thou mean?”

  “The silver sparkles are larger, and fewer,” I explained, as I dug into the closest silvery point with a forensics tool resembling a spoon-sized trowel. “They form a kind of core, and the orange sparkles radiate out from each–”

  I paused as a silvery something popped out from the ash and landed with a clink on my tool’s spade. I managed to get hold of it in my gloved fingers. Puzzled, I held it up to get a better look.

  It was a small blob of silvery-grey metal. Tiny flakes of orange came off and landed on my glove like shavings from an old penny. I frowned.

  “What is it, Dayna?” Liam asked, his voice just above a whisper.

  I shook my head as I bagged both the blob and the surrounding flakes. Then I began probing at another spot. And another, and another. I didn’t stop until I’d excavated at least a dozen different pieces of metal. Most were shapeless splotches like the first one. All were surrounded by orangey flakes. I came across two more pieces that weren’t irregular in form. These pieces were roughly starfish shaped, with the arms curled back around a cylindrical base as if they’d exploded from the inside.

  Finally, my brain made one of its strange clicks, and it all came together.

  The blob-shaped metal bits were melted bullets. Bullets that had lodged and then melted in the amazing body heat of the phoenix. That was where the smell of ‘worked metal’ had come from.

  And that wasn’t all.

  I’d seen the starfish-shaped slugs before as well. These were spent hollowpoint bullets. Only that kind of ammunition peeled back on impact into multiple ‘petals’ upon impact. My mind reeled at the implications.

  Someone must have come here from my world and assassinated the Quondam Seraphine. Whoever had shot Pirr had done it multiple times, while the phoenix was still in her ‘Active’ mode. Any bullet that found its target had melted upon impact.

  Which meant that the assassin had waited until Pirr had become weak, perhaps from her wounds. Then they’d used the same type of bullets to finish her off, while her flames died down to the point that they stopped melting the metal. Yet, the shooting explanation didn’t quite wash, so far as I was concerned. I didn’t see how mere bullets, even a large number of them, could do more than inconvenience a Seraphine.

  Then my next thought made my blood run cold.

  Someone had just tried to murder Robert McClatchy as well. And I was pretty sure whoever the shooter was, he or she had used magic. Either to set up the assassination attempt itself, or to get away before the LAPD could react in time.

  It couldn’t be coincidence. As much as I might try to convince myself otherwise, it wasn’t going to happen. That left one question above all else.

  What exactly
was I up against here?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Abruptly, I stood up and turned away from Pirr’s body. My mind was awhirl with what all of this might mean. Ever since we’d put the centaur wizard, Magnus Killsheven, away for good, I’d always been able to keep the two world’s threats separate. Magic was part of the opposition in Andeluvia, not in Los Angeles.

  Only it wasn’t going to be that easy anymore.

  “What’s the matter?” Liam asked, concerned.

  I had to tell them. “These silvery metal pieces we’re finding inside of the Quondam’s body...they’re from my world. They’re bullets.”

  “From thy world...” Shaw shook his head. “Yet another centaur or pooka, methinks. And the pooka do not wield guns.”

  “Neither do centaurs,” Galen pointed out, nettled. “Magnus only relied on weapons from Dayna’s world when he wished to occlude his true origin.”

  The drake looked abashed. “Thou art right. I ask for thy pardon.”

  “Granted, and think no more on it. As for these ‘bullets’, are they similar to yours, Dayna? I have seen the marks your weapon makes, and I have never seen the carrot-colored dust that surrounds these wounds.”

  “They’re definitely different from the kind I use,” I admitted. “And the dust is puzzling, to say the least. My lab should be able to figure out what it is, but that’s not what worries me. I’m thinking that Pirr’s murder by firearm comes awfully close on the heels of a similar attempt on McClatchy.”

  “Is it similar?” Liam asked. “I mean, was the murder committed with the firearm? Because I’ve seen you use that type of weapon against a dragon. It only irritated them. I don’t see how they would affect a creature like a phoenix.”

  “I suppose a gun’s bullets could...disrupt their energy field or something.” I turned back around and surveyed the remaining silver spots. “It’s a stretch, though. It took more than twenty shots to bring Pirr down. That means a Seraphine’s pretty darned hard to kill.”