by Eileen Wilks
“You’re afraid we’re dealing with the plague version.”
“I don’t know what we’re dealing with. That’s why I’m pestering you to talk about whatever is bothering you.” She squeezed his arm again. “It’s like lancing a boil. If you can’t talk about it with me, then find someone else.”
Lily. He wanted to talk to Lily. Unfortunately, she was the one person he couldn’t discuss this with.
He hadn’t known there was anything wrong until this morning, when jealousy reared its snaky head. Lily had told Rule to go tend to his clan business. She wanted to be alone, she’d said. He’d caught himself thinking that she’d arranged to be alone with Abel.
That was so absurd it got his attention. Why would he think that, even for a moment? The answer had come immediately: because she was shutting him out. It wasn’t just that she hadn’t wanted him with her this morning. It was how she felt when she was with him. Closed down. Shut down. Shutting him out. And he resented it.
And that was a nice bit of irony, wasn’t it? Lily had pointed out how often he shut her out when he was troubled. She didn’t like it. Now he knew how she felt. He didn’t like it, either, but he wasn’t going to whine to her about it now. Not when she was dealing with very real grief. In effect, Lily had lost her mother. Julia was still around, but the twelve-year-old version of her was not anyone’s mother.
Unlike with most deaths, however, there was a chance Lily could get her mother back. A slim chance, maybe vanishingly small. But Lily being Lily, she would believe it was up to her to put things right. This had to push her anxiety into the stratosphere, and he worried about how hard she’d be hit if they weren’t able to—
His phone rippled through the violin music he used for Lily’s ring tone. He grabbed it. “Yes?”
“The press conference is postponed. Karonski and I are on our way to Balboa Park. Can you meet us there?”
“Of course. What’s up?”
“The locals found Hardy for me. He was crooning over a dead body.”
* * *
BALBOA Park was a big place—roughly twelve hundred acres—but it was an urban park, not a wilderness area. The zoo took up a big chunk of those acres, as did the Naval Medical Center and the Morley Field Sports Complex. There was a history center, a science center, fourteen museums, assorted other buildings, and the pavilion. The Old Globe theater complex. The amphitheater. Multiple gardens, running from Alcazar to Zoro.
In spite of all the cultivation, there were also hiking and biking trails. Lily squatted on a rocky outcrop about a hundred yards from one of those trails, looking down into a ravine. It was a blue-sky day, the air soft with early spring. Birds called each other, gossiping about the two-legged intruders in their midst.
Off to her left, mostly hidden by scrub, she could hear the city’s CSI team. They were working on what was probably the path the perps had taken. Below her, in the ravine, were two men. One was alive. One wasn’t.
The living man stood with his back to the dead one, chanting softly as he studied a small mirror he kept tilting this way and that. The dead man ignored him as thoroughly as only the dead can.
He’d been fifty-five or sixty. Caucasian, and a really pale one now, with so much of his blood gone. What she could see of his features looked regular; the lower half of his face was hidden by the black cloth they’d gagged him with. Blond hair going gray, a bit of a paunch . . . which she could see because his killers had stripped him before staking him to the ground with four big iron spikes. One through each hand, one through each foot.
He’d still been alive when they did that. Alive, too, when they drew some kind of rune on his chest with a knife. They hadn’t cut his throat until after they pinned him to the earth like a human bug. He’d struggled. Damn near pulled one of his hands free in spite of the spike, which spoke of strength and desperation and guts. It took guts to do that to yourself. He’d ripped his hand apart, trying to get loose.
Lily’s gut cramped. Whoever he was, he’d been a fighter.
“What’s your buddy doing?” the cop behind her asked.
“Investigating,” Lily said. That came out too terse. Angry. She tried again. “I don’t know any more than what he told Detective Erskine. I don’t know spellwork myself.”
“Huh. I thought all you Unit types did the woo-woo stuff.”
Lily sighed. You’d think she’d be better at waiting. She did enough of it. “We all have different areas of expertise. I’m a touch sensitive. I can’t work magic, so I never learned spellwork. I’ll be checking for death magic after he’s finished.” There were special protocols for dealing with a body and a scene involving death magic, so they needed to know for sure before the Bureau’s CSI team got started.
When Lily and Karonski got here, the city’s crime scene team had started working the scene, though they hadn’t gotten beyond taking pictures and video. Karonski had set them to working on the path and relegated the rest of the SDPD to searching the nearby area, maintaining the perimeter, and watching Hardy and the boys. The guy with the lead, Detective Erskine, was not happy about that.
It would have to be Erskine, Lily thought glumly as she rose. Not T.J. or Brady or even Laurell, but Erskine. She turned to face the patrol officer. Officer Daryl Crown wasn’t middle-aged yet, but if he stood on tiptoe he’d bump his head on it. He was Caucasian, brown and brown, with tired eyes and, from the smell, a nicotine habit. He’d been first on-scene, and Lily had wanted to question him while Karonski did his thing, so she’d asked him to escort her here.
She cocked her head. “The boys who found the body—Ryan and Patrick, right?”
“He likes to be called Pat.”
She made a mental note of that. “They said they were on the bike trail and heard Hardy singing.”
“If Hardy’s the guy who doesn’t talk, then yeah. They also said they never take their bikes off the marked paths, but they made an exception this time.”
“I guess they don’t usually cut school, either.” She exchanged a look with him. “They’re brothers. The parents here yet?”
“I’ll check.” He clicked his mike and asked someone about that. “The dad just arrived. Mr. Samuel Springer.”
“If Karonski doesn’t finish up pretty soon, I’ll—”
“I’m done,” called a voice from below. “Come on down. Carefully.”
Lily didn’t waste any time following that order.
The ravine wasn’t deep, but it was steep and covered in bushy growth. Only one good way down, so they weren’t using it. The perps probably had. The next-best access was about ten feet to Lily’s right. She headed there, sliding the strap of her purse across her chest messenger-bag style so she’d have both hands free. That let her scramble down quickly, hitting the bottom of the ravine several yards from the body.
Karonski met her. His face didn’t tell her much. The lines were grooved deeper than usual, but that might be fatigue from the spell.
“Well?” she said.
“We’ll share notes after you’ve checked things out your way. Stay back as far as you can. Don’t cross the circle.”
“It’s not active, is it?”
“No, but don’t touch it. Just touch one of his hands for now.”
She nodded, slipped booties on over her shoes, and advanced carefully. She’d already mapped out her route from above.
The circle around the victim had been drawn with a thick line of powder the color of unburned charcoal. It was scuffed in several places. Inside it—in addition to the body—were simple runes sand-painted on the earth. They were a pale, chalky yellow. It looked like there’d been nine of them, though several had been obscured by the arterial blood that had fountained up and out, covering a large swath of the ground . . . except in one spot, near the victim’s head. The place where his killer had squatted to cut his throat.
Blood splatter doesn’t
show up as starkly on dirt and rocks as it does on a white wall, but from above Lily had been able to map out a fairly clear path to one staked hand. She sniffed as she drew near and frowned. She’d expected the sour, butcher-shop stink. There was a lot of blood. Some had soaked into the ground, but the ravine was rocky. Not enough soil to absorb however many quarts he’d lost before his heart quit pumping it out.
She had not expected the faint stink of decay. Visually, the body seemed fresh. Some lividity, sure, but while that didn’t hit maximum for six to twelve hours, it set in pretty early. No signs of animal depredation, and while the day was warm, it wasn’t hot enough to speed decomposition. Last night had been cool.
Well, figuring out time of death was the ME’s job, not hers. She stopped and crouched. Someone had a very sharp knife, she observed. They’d sliced his neck open with a single stroke. No false starts. Took a good blade and some strength to do that. Might take some practice, too. Had they used the same blade to carve that rune on his chest? If so, it was fairly narrow.
She could reach one of the staked hands without crossing the scuffed circle. She did that, pressing her fingers to one mutilated hand.
And fell back on her butt.
FOURTEEN
“LILY?”
“I’m okay.” Embarrassed, but okay. Lily put both palms flat on the ground, patted around, and felt nothing but dirt and rocks. So she pushed back into her crouch, steeled herself, and stretched out her right hand to touch dead flesh again.
When she’d learned everything she could, she stood and walked back to Karonski, digging in her purse with her left hand for a wipe.
“Obviously you felt something. Death magic?”
“I don’t know. That first touch . . .” She repressed a shudder and started scrubbing her right hand with the wipe. She wished she had some holy water like Cynna used sometimes. Clorox didn’t seem like enough. “Maybe it’s a variation on death magic. Is there such a thing? This stuff is every bit as repellent, and the sensation is similar, but not quite the same. Mushier. Whatever it is, there’s a lot of it, and it . . . it’s in motion. It’s crawling around on that body.” This time she couldn’t keep from shuddering. “It tried to crawl up my hand.”
“Son of a—Lily, are you—”
“I’m okay. It couldn’t stick to me. It tried, but it couldn’t. Take my hand.” She held it out.
“I didn’t touch the body,” he said, but he let her check anyway. His palm was firm and slightly moist, and the only magic she felt was the kind he’d been born with. Karonski’s Gift was a variant of Earth magic called psychometry—the ability to read emotions from objects. A strong psychometor could pick up images and thoughts if they were connected to strong emotion. Karonski’s Gift wasn’t that strong, but he was exceptionally well trained. When Lily touched him, she felt moss-covered stones. Stones were Earth; the mossy sensation was how her Gift interpreted both his particular variant and his years of training.
When she dropped his hand he asked, “Is this stuff anything like what you touched on the amnesia victims?”
“I don’t know. What I’m aware of touching is magic—nasty, icky magic, and lots of it. Trying to find some arguai mixed in with that would be like trying to spot the Big Dipper when the sun’s up. I can’t do it. Karonski, we need to make sure no one touched that body. The first-on-scene said he didn’t, since the vic was obviously dead, and I shook hands with him. I didn’t feel any trace of magic. But the boys and Hardy—the boys say they didn’t touch him, but we need to know for sure.”
“Shit. You don’t feel any magic in the air, do you?”
“No, and I checked the ground. The dry ground, that is. Nothing there. I can’t say about the blood-soaked area. I didn’t think I should touch it.”
“You’ll probably need to, but later. Let’s go.”
She tucked the wipe in a pocket and started up out of the gully. Up was harder than down, and she needed both hands for the first part. The paramedics were going to have a fun time getting the body up if they used this route . . . if the body could be safely handled. “How do we keep the icky magic from crawling on people?”
“Silk, maybe. It’s worth a try. I’ll need you to check to see if it can get through silk.”
That was going to be fun. “What did your spell tell you?”
“Two spells, actually. The first one should have let me see if there was any death magic in the area.”
“Should have?”
“The results didn’t make sense.” He was huffing a bit from the climb. “You want the long version? It’s technical.”
“Later. What was the other spell for?”
“It’s a way to contact the vic’s ghost, if there’s one around. Nonverbal, since ghosts mostly aren’t good with words. That spell would have let me see what the ghost remembered about his death.”
“It didn’t work?”
“No ghost this time. Speaking of ghosts . . .” He paused to catch his breath. “Have you heard from yours?”
Lily scrambled up the last bit and saw Officer Crown waiting. He looked very curious. She grimaced. She hated it when people referred to Drummond as her ghost. “Not since last night. I could try calling him. He said that wouldn’t work as well this time, but I could try.”
That was too much for Officer Crown. “You’ve got a ghost?”
“I have occasional contact with one. Karonski? Should I call Drummond?”
He heaved himself up onto level ground. “Probably, but you need to check out the kids and Hardy first. Officer, I’d like you to stay here, where you can keep on eye on the scene. We’ve got a serious magical contamination problem. No one can approach that body but me or Agent Yu for now. No one. The mayor shows up, you keep him away.”
Crown’s eyebrows lifted. “Yes, sir.”
Lily and Karonski set off at a quick jog. “I’m betting on at least two perps. You?”
“Probably. The vic looks to weigh around one eighty. He could have been unconscious or drugged, so one person isn’t impossible, but it’s unlikely.”
“The gag suggests they wanted him alive and aware when they started hurting him.”
“Yeah.” His words started getting spaced between breaths. “Theoretically one guy . . . might have done the staking . . . if the vic was unconscious. But they had to get him down there first. Hard for . . . one person . . . to do that.”
“No drag marks.”
“Exactly.”
“Why here, do you think? Plenty of dogs, bikers, runners in this park. They performed their little ritual as far from the trails as they could, but still. Why not head outside the city altogether?”
“Ley line. Might be some other . . . significant factor but . . . the body’s smack on a whopping big ley line that’s . . . close to the surface. That isn’t . . . as easy to find as you might . . . look, you go on. I can’t talk and run, and I need to . . . call our people about . . . the contagion.”
They weren’t running. They were jogging. “You okay?”
“I’m pathetic, is what I am. Go.” He flapped a hand at her as she stopped. “I’ll call your Detective Erskine, too.”
She gave Karonski one more dubious look, but he didn’t seem to be having a heart attack. He was just really out of shape. She nodded and set off. The ground was too rough for real speed, but she could pick up the pace.
Lily had started running in college because it was a cheap, quick way to get in a workout. When crunched for time, she could get in a run, shower, and dress in thirty-five minutes. Forty-five, if she dried her hair.
She’d discovered she liked it. Needed it. Running cleared her brain better than anything, with the possible exception of the kind of cardio that took two people. She’d run in exactly one marathon, and while her time hadn’t sucked, she’d decided she wouldn’t do it again. It brought out her competitive instincts, and that messe
d up the experience. Made her think about the wrong things. This turned out to be a good decision, because these days she usually ran with Rule or one or more of the guards. No way a human could compete with lupi, so it was just as well she hadn’t built her runs around the idea of winning.
She wasn’t winded when she slowed as she neared the bike trail. A uniform was stationed there, making sure no one wandered toward the scene. She told Lily that a van from a local TV station had shown up at the parking lot.
No doubt more reporters were on their way. Lily grimaced and picked up her pace again. The trail wasn’t paved, but it was a lot smoother than the ground. She didn’t have to pay such close attention to where her feet landed. She could think about other things . . . like how many perps were involved.
It would have taken at least two people to carry the victim down into the ravine, all right. Or one lupus. Lily hadn’t mentioned that possibility. She gave it less than one chance in a hundred. Lupi were as capable of wrongdoing as humans, but no lupus would knowingly help the Great Bitch, and if Friar was involved, the Big B was, too. Of course, Lily didn’t know for certain that this victim was connected to the amnesia victims. She had a strong suspicion, yeah. If you have two creepy-freaky things happen close together, you suspect they’re connected. But suspicion is not fact.
Rule would be able to tell. As soon as he got here—and a quick check of the mate-sense told her he was close and getting closer. Good. He’d be able to sniff out how many perps were involved and if they were all human. Or not. No point in raising that particular issue unless she had to.
Black-and-whites with their strobing red lights were clustered at one end of the parking lot. They’d used the cars to section it off, keep the civilians away. A thin woman trailing a cameraman was arguing with one of the uniforms on the civilian side of the patrol-car fence. Lily had no trouble picking out Erskine in the crowd of cops on the near side of that barrier. He looked like a pudgy, faded leprechaun in black-framed glasses. He frowned when he spotted her.