“Leave,” Gideon said in a cold emotionless voice.
“B-b-but . . .” Curtis started to say as if he meant to argue with the warlock. Gideon only had to arch one eyebrow in question. “S-sorry. Yes-s-sir.” And then Curtis was running as fast as his legs would carry him back to his car.
It was like an official’s starter pistol had been fired into the air. Anyone who had lingered was now running toward their cars and fighting to get them started. Even I took an unconscious step backward but Gideon’s hand snaked out in a vicious flash and he grabbed the front of my coat before slamming me against the nearest wall.
“You’re with me, potion stirrer,” he said, leaning close enough that I could see that he had his teeth clenched.
“No!” Serah screamed and then clamped both her hands over her mouth as if she had meant to catch the words before they flew free of her lips.
Gideon ignored her as he proceeded to drag me down the alley with him so that we were now standing in front of the poor dead woman. Twisting my coat in his fist, he shoved me against the wall.
“Thanks for the wake-up call,” Gideon grumbled, keeping his back to where the cops were still scrambling to leave the immediate area.
“I couldn’t try to do a tracking spell with an audience. It would kind of blow my cover,” I replied, remaining pressed against the wall even though my expression wasn’t what you’d call fearful. Most people would have called it irritated, but then I’d spent the better part of a lifetime getting roughed up by this asshole. It was getting really old.
“Your cover?”
“You know, mild-mannered tattoo artist.”
Gideon said nothing, just rolled his eyes at me before returning his attention back to the problem at hand. “It looks like she was killed last night. Probably grabbed off the street and dragged back here, judging by the marks in the asphalt.”
“Shifter, right?”
Gideon nodded at my question.
“The attacker had to have been strong to take on a shifter and win, particularly a scared and desperate one,” I continued.
“And you said the attacker was a woman?”
“Human female from what I’ve been able to tell. It’s from an Alpha Conversion tattoo.” The warlock turned to me, looking a little confused, and I frowned. “It’s based on the fuoco selvaggio spell.”
“What!” Gideon shouted. Now he was angry and in my face with all his Tower-inducing terror. “Are you responsible for this mess?”
“Hell no!” I shouted back, no longer worried about keeping up any pretenses. I gave him a hard shove, pushing him away from me so that I had a little breathing room. “Tattoo artists have been doing a potion and symbol version of fuoco selvaggio for centuries. It’s not quite as strong as the spell and it’s a hell of a lot harder to control the results.”
The warlock just shook his head in horror as he looked back at the dead woman. “What the hell,” he whispered.
“The Towers are in for an ugly wake-up call if they keep thinking they’re the only ones who know how to do some scary magic shit,” I snarled.
Gideon stepped close, his hands balled into fists. “Is that a threat?”
“No, it’s a statement of fact.” I was more than ready to go a few rounds with the bastard.
Gideon froze. “We still have an audience,” he said in a low voice.
“How many?”
“One. It’s the woman.”
“Serah?”
Gideon paused as he quickly searched her mind. “Yes.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s okay. She knows.” Pushing away from the wall, I walked to the center of the alley and looked back toward the street. “You can come down, Serah.”
“She knows?” Gideon demanded, though I noted that the earlier heat had left his words. “What happened to your earlier complaint? Your precious cover?”
“It’s a long story,” I muttered, watching as Serah poked her head around the edge of the building before slowly making her way toward us. Now that we weren’t snapping at each other I was starting to feel like an ass. But then, short tempers were to be expected from two men standing over the body of a dead pregnant woman. No matter how hard we tried, we were each thinking of someone else who could too easily become a target. “I’m sorry . . . about earlier.”
“Yeah,” Gideon grunted softly.
Which I took more to mean: You’re right, Gage. I’m sorry I acted like such a total dick. Please forgive me.
“Gage?” Serah said as she reached me, pulling my thoughts back to the issue at hand.
“It’s okay. He’s not going to kill us right now,” I said, flashing her a weak smile. “He came to scare your old buddies away so we could get some work done.”
“Wish I could do that trick,” she said, trying to sound friendly, but there was still a lot of fear in eyes.
“I wouldn’t advise it. Warlocks don’t like mornings.”
“Shut up, Gage,” Gideon muttered and I closed my mouth. While Gideon was a good warlock, I didn’t want Serah to get the idea that she could just give him shit anytime she wanted. If anyone else saw, he’d have to peel off a few layers of skin just to prove to the world that he wasn’t going soft.
We stood back and watched as Gideon looked over the dead woman from a distance. There was a slight tingle in the air from the warlock, using some smaller spells as if he were trying to rewind time to see the crime as it happened. After more than a minute, he shook his head as if to clear it and sighed.
“I’m not getting much,” he said with more than a little frustration.
“What about a tracking spell? The aura is still strong in the air,” I suggested.
“The aura? From the killer?” Serah quickly asked. She took a small step forward, her curiosity finally overcoming her fear.
“Gage isn’t referring to a person’s aura, but rather the energy left behind by the violent event,” Gideon responded evenly and I bit back a smile. There was just something in him that was a natural teacher. He couldn’t help himself. He had done it with me and now with Serah. It made me wish the man could get away from the guardians and mentor an apprentice or two.
“Really?” she said, sounding a little skeptical.
“The theory is that violent events, particularly those that lead to death create ripples in the magical energy around us,” Gideon explained. “With the right spell, that disruption, or aura, can be read to reveal what happened.” The warlock started to pat down his pockets as if he was looking for something.
With a smirk, I unzipped my coat and reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a handful of multicolored chalk. Gideon just stopped and stared at it for a moment in shock before looking up at me, his expression turning grim. “It’s a wonder you weren’t executed years ago.”
“You’re welcome,” I said as he picked up a purple chalk from the palm of my hand. He was right in so many ways, but now was not the time to get into it. I had a long habit of carrying chalk around for spells I wasn’t supposed to be doing in the first place, but it had gotten considerably worse since I’d been sucked into the guardians. Now I was doing magic whether I wanted to or not.
The warlock started drawing symbols on the sides of the buildings around where the woman had been killed. I wasn’t familiar with the spell, but I had heard of it. Gideon was attempting to create a type of magic bubble in which to rewind time. Within the bubble, he would replay the events, putting us solidly on the trail of the attacker. Judging by the symbols he was drawing, it was a complicated spell—one that certainly didn’t have a chance of replicating without a lot of help.
And yet, aspects of it looked similar to other things I had done and seen before. A part of me was dying to ask him about it, to pick his brain about this spell until I understood its every aspect, but I swallowed back the words and tamped down
the excitement. Where Gideon was a natural teacher, I felt born to be a student of magic for the rest of my life. I wanted to learn everything I could about magic, but it wasn’t meant to be. For now, I had to content myself with picking up scraps of information any chance I could.
When he was finished, the warlock pushed a large chunk of energy into the symbols as he spoke the invocation. The air shimmered like fine diamond dust had been caught on the wind and was now reflecting the sunlight. Yet, as it clarified, everything within the bubble took on a slightly red hue. I turned back toward the mouth of the alley as I glimpsed movement out of the corner of my eye in time to see the outline of the killer walking toward the street. It looked like she had been leaning up against the wall, waiting for her prey. The center of the figure was completely transparent so that her face was only a vague impression of features, but she looked to be the same shape and size as the creature that had appeared in my basement.
“What are you looking at?” Serah whispered, jerking my gaze back to her.
I frowned. Apparently only magic users could see the results of the spell. “Gideon has recreated a shadowy image of what happened. I’ll fill you in if I see anything helpful.”
“Well, this sucks,” Serah muttered, folding her arms over her chest as she leaned back against the wall closest to her.
Turning my attention back to the scene unfolding in front of me, I still found myself flinching when the killer lunged forward, wrapping her arms around her prey from behind. The pregnant woman struggled as she was dragged backward into the alley. Her movements were awkward with the heavy winter coat and extremely large stomach. The attacker held her victim with one arm so she could pull a long knife from somewhere on her person. Raising the knife high, the killer drove it down into the victim’s chest in one swift motion. Gideon and I stepped back, moving out of the way as the shadowy images swept past us. The killer tossed the woman down behind the Dumpster and stood unmoving over her for a second before slashing her across the abdomen with the same blade.
I was glad that Serah couldn’t see this. No one should have to witness such a thing, let alone have to go through it. Horror and rage pumped through my body, leaving me trapped between the need to puke my guts up and rip this murderous bitch apart.
The killer stepped back, tucking the knife back into the holder as she looked down at the pregnant woman, watching the life slowly drain out of her. The werewolf’s last bit of strength was used to hold her child inside of her, trying to protect the baby a little while longer in the desperate hope that someone would come.
Cars passed by the mouth of the alley, not more than a few yards away, but no one saw her. No one came to her rescue. The snow fell and the seconds ticked by slowly as her blood drained from her body to pool on the frozen asphalt. The mother and child died in a freezing, dirty alley with only the murderer standing watch.
The tattooed woman turned and started to walk back down the alley as if she was heading for the main street, but she paused just across from Serah. Was there something on the wall behind the TAPSS investigator that we hadn’t seen before?
“What?” Serah nervously demanded as both Gideon and I stared at her. “What do you see?”
Before either one of us could speak, the eyes of the shadowy killer glowed bright red and she lunged at Serah, wrapping her hands around the woman’s neck. Serah gasped, her hands jumping to her throat as if she were truly being strangled. Her lips formed my name, her feet slipping along the ground as she struggled to escape her invisible attacker.
Lunging forward, I tried to grab the shadow figure’s hands to pull them off Serah’s throat, but there was nothing to grab. “Gideon!” I screamed. “Kill the spell.”
“This shouldn’t be happening,” the warlock said in wonder from where he stood just behind me.
“No shit! Stop the spell before it crushes her throat!”
I felt a rush of energy from Gideon, but the shadowy killer didn’t stop attacking Serah and disappear. “I can’t kill the spell. The residual aura is still feeding it.”
Swearing under my breath, I shoved away from Serah, whose face was now bright red from her struggles, and palmed a piece of black chalk. Racing back down the alley to where Gideon had created the spell, I let my eyes dance over the symbols that Gideon had drawn just seconds ago. Without a thought in my head beyond saving Serah’s life, I started drawing on several of the original symbols, warping them, linking them in ways they should never have been. As I drew the last line, a dark energy jumped from inside of me and tore through the shadowy killer. When Serah sucked in her first gasping breath, I changed a symbol, closing off the power I had summoned so that it couldn’t return to prey on anything else in this alley.
“What did you do?” Gideon snarled at me as he knelt down next to Serah. She sat on the cold dirty ground, coughing and wheezing as she tried to fill her lungs with air.
“I’m not sure,” I whispered. That wasn’t true. I knew what I had done. I had summoned up a sliver of the power from my new friend watching Simon’s old rooms. What had me scared shitless was that I had no idea where that knowledge came from. With a wave of my hand, I pulled the bits of chalk from the wall and ground, causing the little particles to dance in a small black and purple cyclone in front of me before sending it off into the air. No one needed to see what I’d drawn.
“What the hell did you do?” Serah rasped, pinning Gideon with an angry glare.
“Sorry,” the warlock said, looking a bit sheepish. “That should never have happened.”
“I should have warned you,” I said, walking over to help Serah back to her feet. “We had a similar experience when we did a blood spell. The tattoo potion has given the energy surrounding the killer an unexpected level of awareness.”
“That would have been helpful to know!” Gideon snapped, appearing a little more shaken that I would have expected.
It was my turn to look sheepish, as I muttered a quick apology to the warlock. Honestly, I hadn’t thought of it until the image attacked Serah and then it was simply too late. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Magic had been acting strange with this killer since we started the investigation and I just chalked it up to the potion the person had flowing through her veins. What if the other killer making his slow way north to Low Town was also having an impact?
“Is there any way you can track this psycho bitch?” I asked as I zipped my coat up again. “I haven’t had any luck and we need to catch her for more than one reason.”
“I agree,” Gideon murmured. He turned and looked back at the dead woman in the alley, a brief sadness passing through his eyes. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Here,” Serah said. Reaching into her coat pocket, she pulled out a clear evidence bag that had a small piece of a bloody paper towel. “I took another small piece of the killer’s blood from the evidence lockup. I was going to see if Gage had another spell he could try.”
Gideon accepted it with a nod. And then he was simply gone.
“Geez!” Serah said, releasing an enormous sigh as she slumped against the wall. “I hope I’m never that close to one of them again.”
A loud bark of laughter jumped from me, nearly knocking me back against the wall with her. There was some part of my brain that knew Gideon was intimidating, but it was hard to remember when I was up to my armpits in other crazy shit and the warlock was keeping me alive through it all.
“You’re pretty damn close to one right now,” I reminded her with a smirk.
Serah blushed and gave my shoulder a shove as she pushed back to her feet. “Yeah, well, you don’t count because you don’t act like them.”
“Or look like them. Or sound like them. Or slaughter huge swaths of innocent bystanders like them,” I listed, getting a giggle out of my companion.
“Yeah, that too.” She started to walk down the alley back toward her car when she stopped and looked back
. The amusement was gone from her expression and the dire seriousness of our situation had crept back in. “What about her?”
“Call Curtis. Tell him he can crawl out from whatever rock he is hiding under. The Towers have retreated.”
Serah gave me a quelling look, but there was still a sparkle of laughter in her eye. She was going to enjoy this conversation whether she wanted to admit it or not. Tossing me her keys, she stood on the street and called the detective while I walked over and started her car, allowing it to warm up.
A few minutes later, she was driving me back to my apartment, where I was hoping to catch just a couple more hours of sleep before dragging my sorry carcass into the shop. I had half a dozen appointments scheduled for the day and I couldn’t cancel them because they were all appointments I had been forced to reschedule once already due to Towers bullshit.
I was dividing my time among the Towers, the parlor, and freelancing for TAPSS. Sadly only one of them was paying my bills, which meant either someone else needed to start forking over some cash or I was going to drop one of my non-paying obligations very soon. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the Towers offering me an hourly wage. Their argument would be that I should just be grateful that I was still alive. Damn warlocks. Fucking witches.
I missed my girlfriend.
Chapter 7
Upon arriving at my apartment, I discovered that I was not going back to bed anytime soon. Sofie was curled up in the middle cushion of my couch, looking for all the world as if she slept there every day. She did not. The witch-turned-cat lived with Trixie.
“Where’s Trixie?” I demanded, slamming the door shut behind me.
The cat blinked wide greenish-yellow eyes at me and yawned. I was ready to shake the answer out of her when she finally spoke. “At home in bed.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here? You scared the shit out of me!” I snarled, collapsing on the sofa beside her with my coat still on. As the adrenaline rushed out of my system, I found that I was so tired my body had begun to shake. The world had become a nonstop roller coaster and I longed for nothing more than a turn on the merry-go-round. Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes, willing my body to relax just a bit before I dragged myself back to my nice dark bedroom.
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