Liz shook her head. "Thank you for doing this willingly."
"Well, how would it look if I didn't?" I ran my hand through my hair and tried to remember to breathe. "I have a feeling someone is trying to frame me or draw me out."
She motioned to the room. "Let's go talk."
I followed her in and sat down at the table. It was strange to be on the suspect's side of things. I folded my hands on top of the cold table and looked at Liz. "I was at PIB the night before Clarissa was killed, and I was at PIB that morning too. Clarissa and I haven't seen each other since she dropped off a potion for me a few months back. And even then I didn't get to talk to her. She dropped it off and ran."
"Do you know why someone would say you were at the scene?"
I shook my head. "I've made a lot of enemies with this job, and because of my connections to the territory's vampire, some people just don't like me."
"I can check the scans of your badge at PIB and the security footage, but you and I both know someone could tamper with the footage." She met my gaze. "Would you be willing to submit to a truth spell."
She was a lot nicer than I was. I'd used the truth spell several times without asking the suspect. Mostly because I was tired of bull shit. I nodded and reached behind my neck to remove the pentagram I'd started to wear more often. My mother had given it to me a long time ago, but I hadn't started wearing it all the time until more recently.
I set it on the table. "I wouldn't want it to interfere with your spell."
"Good."
She drew the rune on the table. I was familiar with it, which gave me a little bit of peace that she wasn't trying to screw me over with an unknown spell. I took a deep breath and put my hand on it. The magic shot through my arm leaving a burning trail behind it as it crashed over me.
"Describe to me what you did the night before Clarissa died."
The magic flared a little bit around me reminding me that if I tried to lie, it'd be beyond painful. "I worked at PIB looking into some cases concerning Ira and Life Magic, per your permission from a few months ago. After dark, Mario came to escort me home. We went home, watched some movies and the news. I went to bed about midnight. He left somewhere around dawn; I'm not sure exactly when because I was sleeping."
I was a little worried she'd ask me to expand on Mario, but she nodded slightly. "Do you know who would want to kill Clarissa?"
My heart fell as I realized I didn't have an answer. That would have made it so much easier. "I don't. If it were a personal thing against me, then she would have just been an easy target. There's not a bad bone in her body." The tears started to gather in the corners of my eyes. "Why are you wasting your time? You know it wasn't me. We need to figure out who murdered my best friend."
I snapped my lips shut as I realized what I had said. "I'm sorry."
She chuckled a little bit. "Truth spell and all that. Don't worry Abby; I'm just following up on this so-called lead so that I have all my ducks in a row." She swiped a finger over the rune, and the spell deactivated. "I wish I could bring you in on this. You know Clarissa's life so much better than I do, and I think it would have been easier to navigate it."
I shook my head. "I trust you, but I can't be that close to the case, not just because of protocol, but because I would lose my mind trying to solve it without bias." I stood. "Besides, I have a demon summoning that I'm working on."
"Okay, let me know if you make progress with the runes I sent you."
I paused. "I've traced them back to a PIB training book of PIBs case study. I'm following up on some things that I found after that."
"A PIB training book?" She wrote something down in her little notebook. "Thanks for that. It might be helpful."
"I'll shoot you the name of the course and the book."
"Thanks." She opened the door and motioned for me to leave. "You're free to go." And then with her best possible movie cop voice added, "just don't be leaving town."
I cracked a smile and shook my head. "Really, Liz, that's the best you've got?"
Mason was chuckling when he handed me back my gun. "Glad to see the interview went well. I've got something for you on the demon summoning case."
"Oh?" I turned to him. "What?"
He pulled out his little notebook. "Someone spotted a humanoid, black, leather-skinned creature downtown."
"I feel like the demon would make an effort to blend in, especially if it's as powerful as I think, but let's go check it out." I glanced at Liz. "Keep me updated?"
"I will with what I can." She nodded. "Go figure out your demon."
There was just something about her that I knew I could trust. "Okay, I'm driving."
"No, you're not. I'm afraid your car might fall apart." Mason shook his head. "We'll take the cruiser."
I rolled my eyes. Everyone was worried about my car, but looks weren't everything. The thing ran and had yet to blow up. I was calling it a win.
I followed Mason out of the station and to his car. We both got in, and he started the engine. "Does PIB have a demon team?"
"Not really? Our containment teams are trained to deal with them. Some of us know how to send them back to Hell." I shrugged. "It's one of those special skills."
"Do I want to know where you acquired this special skill?"
I smirked. "Demon hunting class?"
"I'm going to take that as a no." He put the car in gear and headed towards the highway to get downtown quickly.
I laughed. "It's an acquired skill that's come in handy. Don't worry; it's not dark magic. It's just not an easy spell." I shook my head. "That's why there's not a lot of us who know how to do it."
He drove through the downtown streets, taking us to an older part full of cheap motels. I knew this area. I'd once tracked a drug-dealing vampire down here. The drug dealer was now dead, truly dead, thanks to Merick.
"Go to the park," I said out of instinct.
He didn't question me and took a left to the park. It wasn't night time, so I wasn't expecting to see a vampire, but there was something that was drawing me to the location. I couldn't explain it.
Mason threw the car into park and got out. He ran his hands up his arms like he felt something. When I stepped out, I knew what it was. It felt like sludge was dripping down my body and bogging me down. Magic. Black Magic.
"Stay here." I ran toward the center of the park, the little round fountain bubbled, and I half expected the water to be blood just because of the feeling surrounding the park. I drew my gun and held it at my side. The last demon I dealt with hopped bodies, so shooting it wasn't an option. But if someone was reporting a leather-skinned creature, I didn't have to worry about hurting a host.
I slowly moved through the park. The playground equipment was empty except for someone swinging. It wasn't a child. Judging by the tall, lean frame, I would say adult. I walked closer, keeping my gun at my side, not wanting to spook the person if they weren't the demon.
As I got closer, I noticed rope tying the lean frame of the person to the swing by the wrists and around the waist. Blood soaked through the clothes and had dripped down below them, creating a line where the feet had once dragged while the swing had been moving.
Around the swing set was another upside down pentagram burnt into the ground, the source of the nasty feeling in the air. Fuck.
I pulled out my phone and started making the appropriate phone calls to get the people on the scene. It wasn't long before Detective Mason jogged up behind me.
"Another one?"
I looked at the runes; they were the same as the other scene. "Either another demon or someone summoned the same one. This though…" I motioned to the scene. "This is someone setting things up for theatrics, not like the apartment where things were out of sight of the general public."
Sirens sounded, and I could see the lights of the emergency vehicles from where I stood. "I don't know i
f this is the same person summoning this demon or not."
"I hope we don't have a group of demon-summoning people." Mason sighed. "But I wouldn't put it past this town." He raised his voice a little bit as the sirens became louder.
It wasn't long before they became deafening. I tried not to flinch at the loud sounds. They cut out and then the playground was filled with personnel shouting orders. I pulled a pair of gloves out of my bag. "Time to get to work."
Mason nodded and turned to talk to some of the officers that had arrived, instructing them to isolate the scene. I stepped up to the circle; there was no magic pushing against my magic to warn me off, telling me that it was most likely deactivated. I tapped it with my toe just to be safe. Nothing shocked me, confirming that it wasn't active. A forensics person stepped up and looked at me for permission. I nodded to let him know that it was safe and he stepped in.
I moved closer to the body and looked at the bloodied ropes around the wrists. The fibers had cut into the skin, but there wasn't enough blood there to be the cause of death. Same with the rope around the waist. I moved the clothing to take a look. The rope had caused damage to the skin, but the clothing had protected the skin from actual breakage.
I pressed my lips together as I examined the blood below. The dried substance coated the rubber seat of the swing, but there didn't seem to be enough to assume that he was killed here. I stepped back and caught the attention of one of the forensic members. "When you're done, I need him laid out."
They nodded, and I stepped away so they could do their job. This was different than the last scene; someone would be able to identify our victim without needing to have dental records because their face was still intact. I had a bad feeling that we were dealing with a second person and possibly a different demon. I didn't know if demons had MOs that they followed or not.
"Agent Collins," Mason said, and I turned around.
"What's up?"
"Any thoughts right off the bat?"
I nodded. "I think we might be dealing with a different person or at the very least a different demon."
"Do you think that there's another demon running around?"
"I hope not. This body was still in the circle; they might have been the sacrifice, but I'm not sure because of the amount of blood."
"The other guy was found outside the circle, meaning he died after?"
"Yeah, according to the damage done." I watched as forensics moved the body carefully and laid it outside the circle. The amount of blood on the inside of thighs and the absence of blood on his torso told me that the wound was somewhere around his waist.
I blinked a few times, trying to process what kind of injury could be between the legs. A few came to mind, and I cringed. I walked over to the body and bent down by it. Judging by the wrists, he'd been tied to the swing postmortem. I wasn't going to remove the pants to look at the injury there. No other wounds were on his body, which made me curious. Was he the sacrifice or the target?
I sighed and stood. "Make sure Jason gets me the cause of death."
Mason nodded.
I looked over at the inverted pentagram on the ground. A perfectly burned circle without even a hairline fracture just like the one in the apartment, but currently that was the only thing I could think of that connected the two deaths by details. My mind turned to Clarissa, the upside down pentagram, but hers wasn't burnt into the ground. I pushed the grief away; there wasn't enough similar here to assume they were related.
"I've got everything I need from here. Once we have the ID of the victim, let me know as well." I peeled off my gloves and threw them in a trash can that was set up. "I'm going to head into the office."
Mason laughed. "And how are you going to get there? I drove."
I grumbled. "Okay then, I guess I'm going to walk to a coffee shop and do some research there. I have my computer with me."
"In your big bag of everything." He smirked. "I'll be there in a couple hours, as soon as I can get away from here."
I nodded. "I'll see you then." I started down the road where I knew there was a coffee shop about a mile down.
I probably could have called someone for a ride, but I didn't really want to see Simon today while dealing with demons, and Clarissa, well…that was just impossible now.
∞
I arrived at the coffee shop and ordered myself a coffee with lots of cream and sugar. Thanks to modern technology I'd be able to access the databases I needed for PIB and do a little bit of research while I was enjoying my coffee and waiting for Mason.
I knew I should have driven. I pulled my laptop out and powered it up. I had a couple other things I could look at in regards to demons and other cases that might have involved them. I opened up the database and typed in recent demon cases. To my surprise, there were very few that classified as a demon case. Some of them had been written off as just unexplained black magic because no one was able to locate an actual demon.
Which was a little bit terrifying when I thought about it. I shook my head and started with the first file. Clicking on it, I wondered how someone lost a demon. Normally, a trail of chaos followed it. In our case the trail was murder, and we could hope that it'd lead us to the demon before any more bodies showed up.
Pictures came up on file, and the body looked identical to the first victim in my case. Shredded to nothing but raw strips of human flesh. I put the back of my hand to my mouth and tried not to throw up. The colors on the screen were vivid, and it brought back memories of what was at the first crime scene.
The body was hanging from the shower bar too; everything was almost exactly the same. I jotted down some notes. This murder had taken place just over five years ago. The detective listed was a Steven Lance, and a quick click on his name told me that he was retired.
I wrote down his phone number and address so that I could call him. The file in the system seemed pretty complete, except no one was able to identify who summoned the demon. The only difference in the two cases was that the demon hadn't been set loose.
I scrolled down and saw a picture of the creature in question. Humanoid in the fact that it had two legs and two arms, but they were both lengthy, and it hunched over, stretching the black leathery skin over a large skeleton, and spikes on its back.
I let out a whistle. It was an ugly creature, and I'm sure whoever came upon it was happy that it was in a circle. Another scroll of the mouse and the end of the file showed a picture of a woman standing in the circle. She wore a business suit, no-nonsense flat shoes, and had her hair tied up.
It took me a moment to realize that I was looking at the human form the demon chose to take. I tilted my head to the side and wondered for a moment if this could be the same demon. If it was, why wasn't it taking a human form? Was the summoner trying to draw PIB out? Something wasn't adding up.
I scrolled back up and looked through the details again. There was a goat for a sacrifice, so why was the person in the bathroom shredded? I had assumed that it was the demon that had killed the man in the shower. Maybe I was wrong on that assumption. I looked closer at the picture, clicking on it to enlarge it.
Under the circle the demon stood in, was a vague shadow of the curves of another circle and the vague swooshes of old runes. What the hell? Did someone summon two demons? Was the second one a decoy?
I shook my head and closed out the file. I looked at the number for the detective on the case so I could call him when I got a moment.
Mason sat down across from me. "Find anything interesting?"
"Yeah, there was a case almost exactly like this about five years ago. Detective Steven Lance handled the case, looks like it closed up nicely except for they don't know who summoned the demon." I closed the computer and looked at Mason over the table. "Know anything about it?"
He shook his head. "I don't know anything about the case, Steven Lance I know by reputation. I'm as
suming the case was local?"
"Yeah. Maybe before you moved here?"
"Yeah, I was still out east if it was five years ago. It obviously wasn't a big enough case to hit national news."
I shook my head. "No we try to keep cases like this out of the media because it can cause a mass panic, we don't want that. Especially over demons. Then people start throwing salt and holy water on each other, or people start killing other humans saying that they swear the other one was a demon. It's just not a very good thing to happen."
I folded my hands on the computer. "So tell me, what did forensics turn up?"
"Well, it looks like the guy was impaled."
That would explain all the blood. I raised a brow. "With what?"
"From what Jason can tell, a rusty spike, old school style. Think Vlad the Impellor, slowly."
I cringed. "Do we know if it was done at the scene?"
"Nothing was found near the scene, and judging by the amount of blood and lack of evidence of any sort of clean up, I'd say no. What we don't know is if that's what caused his death."
I didn't want to imagine what else could have caused his death. "Okay, what else?"
"Anything else will come back in Jason's report. We're working on getting an ID on him; he didn't have a wallet or anything with him, so we're hoping to canvas the area and turn something up."
I nodded. "Do I need to call someone for a ride?"
"No, I can take you back to the office, if you're ready?"
I put my computer back in my bag and downed the last few sips of my coffee. "Yep, let's get going."
I tossed my cup in the trash on the way out and followed Mason to his car. A shiver went down my back, and I turned to see someone standing outside the coffee shop staring at me. I tried to take in their appearance but it seemed to shift ever so slightly with each detail I tried to drink in. A subtle change of color to the hair, or the shirt. An odd change in height. Nothing was the same after a moment.
Everyone has Their Demons Page 6