Odd, yes, and another poke in the depths of her brain, another fuzzy image she couldn’t bring clear.
“Cause of death?” Mel asked.
“No guesses.” The doctor shook his head. “Not until I take a closer look. We’re ready to transport, if you’re done.”
“Yes. Thank you, very much, for talking to me.” She might be a Fed, but she had no jurisdiction over a local murder. The sheriff and his team had allowed her this much out of professional courtesy.
Mel stood and made herself turn away. Her hands were shaking. She jammed them into her pockets.
The deputy offered her a cup of water. She took it with a word of thanks. She hadn’t realized he’d gone to get it.
“Can you help us find next of kin?” he asked.
“She doesn’t have any family left. I’m her executor.” Knowing what that might imply, she looked the deputy straight in the eye. “Aside from small personal bequests to friends—including me, unless she changed that—she left everything to the North Carolina School of the Arts.”
“But she lived here in Georgia?”
“She liked the atmosphere in Wayfarer.” Until lately. “She had a friend down here. Hettie…something with a T.”
“Miss Hettie Telfair?” The young man’s brows rose.
“That sounds right. I’d have to see Cinda’s address book to know for sure.”
“I guess that’s it for now, ma—uh, Special Agent.”
“‘Ma’am’ is fine.” Any term of respect would do. At age thirty, Mel had been on the job long enough to lose the insecurity that came with being young, female, and a law enforcement officer. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else, of course.”
“We’d appreciate that.”
As the deputy pocketed his pad, Sheriff Dan Burton walked over to her.
“Odd case,” the short, burly man said.
“Yes. Worse when it’s a friend.” Mel kept her back to the bagging and lifting going on behind her. The idea of Cinda in that bag clawed at her heart. She tried to focus, convince herself this was a routine investigation. “Any witnesses?”
“The woman who called 911 was driving by when her headlights hit a white male bending over Miss Cinda. He ran right in front of the car. Description puts his age as midtwenties, height around five six, blond hair.”
He paused, frowning. “She said his eyes were purple, swore to it, but I’m thinking that’s a trick of the light.”
“Or contact lenses,” Mel said. “Some people try hard to look freakish.” Even murderers.
The sheriff eyed her speculatively, his face tense in the eerie light. “Seein’ as the deceased was a friend, you gonna try to pull the Bureau in on this case?”
Mel shook her head. “No grounds, and we both know it. I want in, though.” She met his narrowed eyes with a level stare. “Unofficially. I’m on leave from the Bureau for the next two weeks. When I saw you all here…I’m not too proud to do legwork, and I know how to take orders from the officer in charge.”
He studied her for another few seconds. “I’ll need to get a look at that will, of course. If you’re clear, I got no problem with you helping out.”
Clear meant not only that she inherited too little to be a motive for murder but also that she hadn’t had time to come here from Atlanta after work, kill Cinda, and then pretend to drive up after the sheriff’s crew arrived. That was okay. That was procedure.
Mel nodded. “Thank you, Sheriff Burton. You’ve been very kind. If you can suggest a motel nearby, I’ll write down my work and travel schedule for today and get out of your way.”
She’d planned to stay with Cinda, but that would never happen again. Mel set her jaw against a rush of grief.
Sometimes justice wasn’t enough. This was going to be one of those times, damn it, but seeing the killer punished was the only thing she could still do for Cinda.
* * *
Every turn of the chopper’s rotors, every breath Dr. Stefan Harper’s badly wounded comrade drew brought them closer to the Collegium, the mages’ base near Brunswick, and its state-of-the-art operating suite. The equipment there would give Stefan’s patient, his friend, a chance to live. If they reached the OR fast enough.
“Stay with me, Javier,” he murmured, praying the unconscious man would hear him. Stefan knelt by the stretcher, both hands over Javier’s heart. His magic infused the slight, dark-haired mage’s chest, sealing the damaged blood vessels as best he could, keeping the heart beating and the lungs pumping.
“Blood pressure,” he rapped out. He couldn’t check it himself without losing focus on his task.
“Seventy-two over forty-eight and dropping,” Ellie Ferris, the petite, blond medic kneeling across from him reported.
Hell. That was way below the bottom of normal. Over his shoulder, he called, “Someone get an ETA from the pilot.”
The shrapnel wounds in Javier’s chest were too numerous for Stefan to stop all the bleeding. They had to reach the OR fast.
“Josh says thirteen minutes, give or take,” Tasha Murdock reported grimly. Her boy-short auburn hair and long bangs were tangled, matted with sweat from the morning’s battle, but she didn’t seem to notice. “What can I do? Do you need a power boost?”
Stefan shook his head. More power wouldn’t block the leaks, and the shrapnel would wreak further havoc if he simply summoned the little bits of metal out. A sword wound would’ve been so much simpler to heal.
At least he could use magical CPR, not drive the shrapnel deeper with chest compressions and make things worse. That was too dangerous to try until they were at the OR. Unless Javier died. If that happened, magic wouldn’t work anymore, but the Mundane, or normal human, technique might.
Damn it, he could feel the BP dropping. He glanced at Ellie, who pumped air into the cuff on Javier’s arm.
“Fifty-one over thirty,” she said, her voice flat.
Hell. They weren’t going to make it. Only one very dangerous strategy might push the chopper home in time. “Get us a tailwind.”
“On it.” Tasha sprang toward the front. “Batten down, everybody, now,” she shouted over the rotor noise. “Darren, with me. Leslie, Max, open the doors.”
Stefan heard her as though from a distance, his attention still focused on the pale, unconscious father of two. But he couldn’t think about Javier’s kids now. Better to focus on the vitals while Tasha and Darren hooked up safety harnesses, leaned out the doors, and raised the wind.
Stefan and Ellie braced themselves while holding onto Javier’s stretcher. At least the other wounded were stable. Their injuries, various venom-tainted slashes from ghoul talons, needed more treatment but weren’t likely to be fatal.
The three others on stretchers were strapped in. By now, as the doors ground open and wind rushed through the chopper, the eleven who were uninjured or walking wounded were buckled in or hanging onto something. None objected to the risky maneuver, not when Javier’s life hung in the balance.
Midmorning sunlight streamed into the cabin. The whoosh of the rising breeze drowned the chukka-chukka of the rotors. The helo leaped forward, canted sharply to one side and jerked before the pilot mastered it again. Good. They weren’t going to crash, but would they gain enough speed?
The weather workers had to limit the power they poured into the atmosphere. If they didn’t, they could screw up area conditions and cause a tornado or worse. Destroying Mundane homes to save a mage was not an option.
“Someone get me our ETA,” Stefan shouted over his shoulder.
A few moments later, Max James’s deep voice said, “Ten minutes out, Doc.”
Shit. “Keep me posted on the time,” Stefan ordered.
Their dawn raid on the ghoul nest had better be worth it. They’d wiped it out completely, seized all documentation, but didn’t yet know whether those records contained any useful information. Like whether the ghouls’ allies, demons from the Void between worlds, still meant to open a gateway to Earth. They’d tried l
ast month without much success and at a high cost to the mages.
“ETA, eight minutes,” Max reported.
Not fast enough. “Stay with me,” Stefan murmured. Maybe they’d get lucky and nature would boost their tail wind.
Ghoul use of dark magic left them unable to eat anything other than fresh kill or to breed among themselves, so they kidnapped mages and Mundanes as breeders. And occasionally as snacks, though they usually kept animals for food. The raiding party Javier led had liberated nine humans, two mages, and assorted livestock. It was damn good work, no matter what the captured records did or didn’t reveal.
“BP forty-six over twenty-three,” Ellie said.
Max added, “ETA, five minutes.”
Too much time.
“Radio ahead,” Stefan said. “Order a surgical team to assist me and have a suite prepped. I want the elevator on the ground floor, doors open, and a crash cart by the landing pad. When we land, this stretcher goes on a gurney, stat.”
Too bad they couldn’t translocate to the infirmary. Every building on the property was warded against such incursions. Or excursions, for that matter. Even if that weren’t so, the systemic shock of the maneuver would likely kill someone in Javier’s condition.
“ETA, three minutes.”
“Forty over—no reading.”
“Come on, Javy,” Stefan ground out. Steeling himself for the worst, preparing to fight it, he heard the landing gear come down. Felt the chopper descend.
Javier’s heart faltered, then stopped.
Stefan managed not to flinch at the final gurgling wheeze, the trickle of blood on his friend’s lips. The still silence of his chest.
The chopper touched down. Staffers in scrubs scrambled through the open doors, grabbing for the stretcher, pulling it onto a waiting gurney.
“Crash cart,” Stefan shouted, leaping out. Electricity plus shrapnel would cause burns, but those were easy to heal. He grabbed the paddles from a tall orderly, checked the charge, and snapped, “Clear.”
The jolt of electricity succeeded. Javier’s heart restarted.
“Bag him,” Stefan ordered as the heartbeat faltered again. He vaulted onto the gurney to straddle his patient.
Orderlies flanked them, ready to roll as soon as the respiratory bag mask was in place. Stefan started chest compressions while Susan Miller, one of his staff doctors, applied the mask.
“Go,” she said. She ran beside the gurney, pumping air into Javier’s lungs to Stefan’s count as the orderlies rushed them into the building, down the corridor to the elevator. They dropped one level for the OR and shot down the hall to it.
Dr. John Parkhurst waited there, his dark face grim in the fluorescent lights. “Callie has a team waiting in the OR. How bad?”
Stefan gave him a quick summary, too aware this all might be in vain. “Take over while I scrub.” He hopped off the gurney as John picked up the CPR.
The organic damage it caused could be corrected easily now that they were home. If only Javier’s system hadn’t endured more than it could withstand.
Stefan ran into the locker room. Yanking off his bloody fatigues, grabbing clean scrubs, he couldn’t help remembering more was at stake than one mage’s life.
The Void demons didn’t have a portal to this world. So how were they communicating with the ghouls? There had to be some method.
Maybe the demons have evolved, said the unpleasant voice of logic in his brain. We have. Why shouldn’t they?
Because stopping them was hard enough without their gaining new powers. They’d never given up easily. Odds were, they’d try to open a portal again in order to bring Void demons to Earth, bringing plague, terror and death.
If that happened, the world was seriously and totally fucked.
* * *
Three hours after landing, Stefan stuffed his bloody surgical gown and gloves into the disposal bin. Javier had survived the surgery. Now all they could do was wait. At least magic could speed healing, and Stefan’s very competent staff would take over that part.
Stefan had called Javier’s wife, Karen, and caught her en route from Athens. When she arrived, she would want an update, so no use trying to rest. He couldn’t anyway, not after surgery.
Instead, he wandered down to his office and through the door marked DR. STEFAN HARPER, CHIEF PHYSICIAN. The anteroom was empty. His assistant was out, probably at lunch.
Stefan glanced at the wall clock. Was it really just one thirty? His mind might still be keyed up, but his body felt as though he’d put in a full day’s work.
Visitors didn’t see this part of the building. They were only allowed in an area rigged to look like a paranormal research lab. The Georgia Institute for Paranormal Research was the cover identity for the mages’ Collegium, the headquarters for the Southeastern U.S. Shire. And wouldn’t there be hell to pay if Mundanes ever learned about that?
The Burning Times, the witch hunts of the seventeenth century, had provided a salutary lesson. Some humans could be trusted with the truth but only a small, almost minuscule, few. Open practice of magic was dangerous, and not only to magekind.
As Stefan had more reason than most to know.
He shoved the memory aside and sat at his desk, punching the button for voicemail. Nothing much interesting there, a couple of speaking invitations, an offer to cowrite a paper.
“Stefan,” the fourth message began in the Wayfarer sheriff’s familiar, gravelly tone, “it’s Dan Burton. We got an odd murder case here, could use some help. Deceased is missing a lot of blood and has an unknown toxin in what’s left of it.”
Now, that was intriguing. Stefan focused as the sheriff continued, “I know you’ve done some consulting. Cathy Lamb at GBI recommended you for this. If you’re interested, give me a call. Word’s out about the wounds somehow, so I’ve set up a press conference for late this afternoon. You can get an idea what they’re talking about in the Oracle.”
Weird wounds and strange toxins sounded ghoul-related. Stefan turned to the computer and pulled up the Wayfarer weekly Oracle newspaper’s site. The murder was splashed across the homepage. The victim was an elderly woman, a retired music teacher.
The sheriff’s department was withholding details. Of course they were, or at least they were trying to, but there was a reference to a purple-eyed suspect and a description of deep, curving wounds, as though made from talons.
Cold prickles rose on Stefan’s neck. Purple eyes as in Void demon host? Talons as in ghouls?
The article said the woman had moved to Wayfarer from Essex, North Carolina. That was Camellia Wray’s hometown.
He could still see Cami’s face, pale, gray eyes wide with hurt and fear as she accused him of cheating on her.
“Marry me,” he’d said in desperation, “and I’ll tell you where I go on those missing weekends.” If she would commit to him, he’d thought, maybe he could trust her with the truth. Maybe she loved him enough not to freak out if he told her he was a mage, that he went away to study magical healing techniques with a mage physician.
“Tell me,” she’d flung back at him, “and maybe I’ll marry you.”
Maybe hadn’t been enough for him to take the risk. Instead he’d kept his silence and lost her.
Stefan frowned at the screen. He’d been over her for years, of course, but he still remembered that kick in the gut she’d delivered, first by doubting him and then by leaving him.
He’d bet there weren’t many music teachers in a town the size of Essex.
So what if this woman had taught Cami Wray? Cami had nothing to do with this case. Even if she came to the funeral—likely with a husband and kids in tow—he wouldn’t see her because he wouldn’t attend. Thinking of her shouldn’t make his gut clench. That had to be tension from the hard day he’d had, one that was far from over.
The picture accompanying the article showed the victim’s bright eyes and kind smile. She’d lived a quiet, ordinary life but died with a weird toxin in her blood, a toxin whose nature St
efan could probably guess without seeing the labs. A toxin he needed to sample, one no Mundane doctor could properly identify.
If Stefan was right, Dan Burton and his crew would be up against a foe they couldn’t hope to beat. Stefan picked up the phone.
* * *
“Thanks for clearing me so quickly, Sheriff Burton.” Considering the suspicion many local cops nursed toward any and all Feds, Mel wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d sat on her request. Instead, here she was, midafternoon, the very next day. “I appreciate your bringing me in on this.”
They stood beside the corner desk he’d assigned to her, the only uncluttered one of eight in the room. With deputies serving as courtroom bailiffs, patrolling the county, and managing the press out front, she and the sheriff had only the dispatcher and clerk at the front counter for company.
“I’m glad to have the help,” Burton said. “I ran that wound pattern through the National Crime Information Center and got a match with a case up near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina. Another one down in the Everglades, although not identical to ours, has similarities.”
So they couldn’t know yet whether they were hunting a serial killer. Mel nodded. “I knew the wound pattern seemed familiar. I can’t access NCIC from my laptop, so I left a message asking a colleague to do it, but he hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”
Frowning, the burly man shook his head. “Damnedest thing. Anyway, I asked the Atlanta office to bring you in on this. Brunswick office is our usual contact, but you’re already here.”
“I appreciate that, Sheriff.”
He laid a manila folder on the desk. “Copies of the reports are in here. Bottom line, we found nothin’ new.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What can I do?”
“For starters, you can back me up at the press conference. I guess you noticed the mob out front. Dr. Milledge did the autopsy first thing this morning. I’m thinking somebody at the hospital just couldn’t help flapping their lips.”
Mel and the sheriff exchanged a glance of mutual frustration. She said, “Judging by the chatter at lunch, I’d say you’re right.”
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