The Witchkin Murders

by Diana Pharaoh Francis

  “Good morning, Professor Lyle,” Ray said, adopting his professionally conciliatory tone. “We are sorry to bother you at this time of morning, but we have an emergency that requires your expertise. Lives are at stake, and time is of the essence.”

  The woman blinked and visibly shifted gears. She swung the door wider and motioned inside. “Better come in then.”

  She led them into a comfortable living room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined three of the walls with a wood fireplace dominating the last. The beige rug had seen better days, as had the well-worn couch, loveseat, and easy chair. Two scarred wooden chairs bracketed the fireplace.

  “Please sit,” she said, settling into the easy chair. She waited until they’d arranged themselves on the couch and love seat. “How can I help you?” she asked.

  Kayla dug in the box she brought in with her and spread the witchkin crime-scene pictures of the symbols out on the coffee table. Zach added pictures from the fountain murders and ones taken at the kidnapping site from the folder he carried. He added the earring photo last.

  “We are hoping you can help us identify the language in these photos and what it says,” Kayla said.

  The professor’s demeanor had shifted from irritated to interested as soon she saw the pictures. She scooted forward, leaning down to see them more closely. She picked them up one by one.

  “Do you recognize anything?” Kayla asked.

  “They bear a resemblance to some of the South American early civilization writings,” the professor said. “But none used cartouches, and the symbols aren’t anything I’ve seen before. But if I were going to place it in part of the world, I would definitely pick South America.”

  The others exchanged looks. That piece fit with the plant traces the lab had found.

  “Is there any way to narrow this further?” Ray asked.

  “I could ask some colleagues with expertise in South American languages and civilizations,” the professor said. Then she frowned, tapping the side of her nose thoughtfully. She stood up. “Wait a minute.”

  She went to her bookshelves and started scanning the spines. At last she found what she was looking for on one of the bottom shelves. She pulled out a thin leather book. The cover was plain with no title and no author.

  She opened it carefully, holding it in one hand and using the other hand to carefully turn pages. Her eyes scanned up and down the pages as she searched for something.

  Kayla tapped her fingers on her thigh trying not to squirm in her seat. But she was too antsy. She glanced at the clock on the far wall. Nearly two. She stood and paced behind the couch.

  “This might be something,” the professor said at last. “This isn’t my field, you understand,” she said looking up. “This journal belonged to an associate of my wife. He gave it to Maggie shortly before he died back in the late eighties.”

  She looked down at the open book again and then came to sit back down.

  “This was long before Magicfall you understand, and most everyone considered his theories ludicrous. Prestigious journals wouldn’t even consider publishing him. His theories went counter to the generally accepted account of history.”

  “What did he say?” Zach asked.

  “He was certain that the early Egyptians—Pharaohs—had communicated with the Olmecs and Zapotecs—even visited them. In fact, he posited that the Egyptians may have strongly influenced the Olmecs in the building of their civilization. Among other proofs, he argued that the pyramid constructions were too similar to have evolved separately. But what cemented his conclusions were some writings he discovered in a lost pyramid he found between Oaxaca and Veracruz.

  “He said that the writing showed that Egyptians really had visited and look—” She turned the journal to show them.

  Inscribed on the yellowed pages were lines of text very similar to what they’d discovered at the crime scenes, including cartouches.

  “So, our killers are what? Egyptian? Olmec? Zapotec?” Kayla asked. And how did that help?

  “Did he translate any of this?”

  She shook her head. “He died in a fire, which destroyed most of his research. He’d given the journals to Maggie for her to read, hoping that she’d help him find funding to continue, which is why they survived. But because his work wasn’t believed, no one kept track of the pyramid after he died. It was lost again. When Magicfall happened, it became clear that his theory was more feasible than previously believed. The Egyptians may well have had the magical capability to travel to South America. Certainly we can’t rule it out, but there’s been no research on that subject since Hima died.”

  “Would your wife know what these could mean?” Ray asked.

  “Maybe, but—” The professor sighed. “She’s been sick and I gave her something to sleep. Even your pounding on the door didn’t wake her up. She’s down for the count.”

  “Would you try?” Ray said, and it came out more like the order it was than a request. “We don’t have much time. Lives are at stake.”

  Professor Lyle hesitated and then nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “If you’re willing, I could help,” Raven said. “I’m a witch. I have healing skills.”

  The professor’s face went from pinched concern to sudden hope. “Would you? She’s not been well for months, and the doctors don’t know what’s wrong. Nothing we’ve tried has helped.”

  “Show me,” Raven said as she stood.

  The two women disappeared up the stairs on the other side of the entry.

  “So how does all this help us?” Kayla wondered, turning pages in the journal. “We know our bad guys are probably from South America, and they use a language that has been found in precisely one place in the world, and may be a combination of Ancient Egyptian and Olmec or . . . what was the other one?”

  “Zapotec,” Ray said.

  “Right. We still don’t know anything about who they are hunting and why, except that it’s likely a god of some kind.” She pushed the journal away in disgust. “It’s not written in English. Or Spanish. I don’t even know what sort of language or code the archaeologist used.”

  “Professor Lyle said that he gave the journals to her wife to read. Presumably that means she can read them,” Ray said.

  More waiting.

  Frustration sent Kayla pacing again. They were fast arriving at the point she hated most in any murder case—waiting for the next body and hoping it pointed them to the killer. Only with this case, the next murder could very well bring on the Portland Apocalypse.

  “We’ve got to be missing something,” she muttered. She stopped and looked at Zach. “Can’t you do anything? With your magic? Track them in some way?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “What good is magic if it can’t do the stuff that can’t be done normally?” she complained.

  “It can do that stuff. Just not for every practitioner,” Zach said with annoying reason. “Maybe Raven can, though I expect if she could have, she would have.”

  “But I bet it can give a guy a hard-on for days on end,” she muttered as she resumed pacing.

  Tension boiled and tumbled inside her, and the beast part of her clawed to get out. Thunder pounded against her skull and skin, sending shockwaves rippling through her bones. A rush of darkness surged into relentless momentum, dragging at her like heavy gravity. Every fiber of her being warned her something bad was about to happen, and she needed to stop it. Needed to, on a level she couldn’t understand. It was biological, down in the nucleus of every cell. It wasn’t just her job; it was an imperative rooted in her very being.

  She didn’t realize she’d made a sound until Ray’s voice cut through the tornado of razor wire whipping through her brain.

  “What?”

  “I asked if you’re okay.”

 
“Don’t I look okay?”

  His jaw hardened. “No.”

  She tried to rein back the firestorm growing hotter inside her even as her pacing became frenetic, her movements jerky. Something began to tear inside her, a slow separation, ripping apart with fiery agony. Her breath caught in her chest, and her heart thumped like a jackhammer.

  “How do I look?” Her words came out sharper than she intended, but she couldn’t seem to care.

  “Feverish. Wired for sound,” Ray shot back.

  She fought to calm herself. “I’m antsy. I feel like we’re out of time.” She shook her head. “It’s probably too little sleep. I’ll go splash some water on my face.”

  She fled out into the foyer as the pressure inside her ballooned and pain tore at her insides. No, deeper than that. Down in a place beyond the physical.

  She staggered along the hallway into the back of the house where she found a bathroom just off the kitchen. She locked the door behind her and leaned against it, gasping for breath. The pain had eased slightly. Or maybe she was just adjusting to it. At least it wasn’t getting worse.

  She straightened and went to look in the mirror. She’d told Ray she was going to splash water on her face. She snorted. As if. The way she was feeling, a couple drops would trigger a shift. She glanced around the small half bath, barely four feet across. If she transformed, she’d have to tear her way out.

  Her gaze caught on the window above the toilet. She started moving before she knew what she was doing. Kayla pried up the window, then crawled through, landing in a hydrangea bush. It caught her and set her gently upright.

  She turned to look at it. “Thank you.” The purple-blue flowers bobbed in the moonlight as if to say, “You’re welcome.” The leaves started rustling, traveling down the bushes running the length of the wall. They urged her to hurry.

  Kayla turned and ran back to the front of the house, down the driveway and up the street. Far off in the back corner of her mind, guilt scraped at her. She shouldn’t be going alone. But they needed to wait for the information, and the rest of her had gone on autopilot as she raced into the night, pulled by some inexplicable beacon.

  Her skin was alive with movement, as if the city had imprinted itself on her flesh. She could feel cars running down her sides, cats climbing up her arms, the breath and heartbeat of every living soul tapping against her heart. But in the middle of it, a poisonous boil swelled and strained like a volcano racing toward eruption. Inside it bubbled death. She had to stop it.

  Her territory, her city, her people, were under attack.

  Anger exploded. Brutal savagery peeled the humanity from her soul, leaving behind only single-minded resolve.

  Whatever it took, she would protect them or die trying.

  Chapter 22

  Ray

  “SHE’LL BE OKAY,” Logan said to Ray as Kayla disappeared. “She’s been off the force a while. Plus, this whole business is pretty strange. She’s probably just jittery.”

  Ray stood behind a chair, gripping the top to keep himself from going after her.

  “She doesn’t get jittery,” he said. “Kayla’s always had nerves of stone.”

  “Well, like she said, she hasn’t been getting a lot of sleep and all that’s been happening has to be pretty hard to take. She’s got to be overwhelmed, not to mention still recovering from the attack. I mean, there’s that, plus her grandmother and aunt getting kidnapped, seeing you again, and finding out you’re a witch—” He broke off, cocking his head at Ray. “That’s a hell of a secret you’ve been keeping.”

  Ray had stopped paying attention to the technomage. Professor Lyle and her wife descended the stairs, followed by Raven. Lyle had her arm around her wife, who blinked and stared around owlishly, as if not completely awake.

  Lyle settled her wife on the couch, pulling a brown-and-pink knit throw over her legs.

  “I’d better make coffee,” Lyle said, and disappeared.

  Raven leaned in the doorway while Ray went to sit on the coffee table facing Maggie. “Ma’am,” he said. “We’ve got some questions we need you to answer.”

  She gave him a distant look and nodded slowly. “Natalie told me,” she said, her words slow and a little slurred. She frowned and gave her head a little shake. “I’m sorry. I’m very tired. I can’t seem to wake up.”

  Ray darted a questioning glance at Raven.

  “They used a potion,” she said in a low voice. “A good one. I countered what I could, but she’ll have to work her way through the rest. She’s in rough shape. Whatever disease she has, it’s eating her alive.”

  Shit. Ray examined Maggie. She was taller than her wife, with curly brown hair and a round face that appeared gaunt. Her brown eyes appeared glassy. She sat slumped as if she carried a heavy burden. Purple circles surrounded her eyes, and her wrist bones jutted beneath her skin. She looked as though she’d lost substantial weight and very quickly.

  He flicked another look at Raven. She shrugged.

  “We’ll try to help her. She’s very weak. Even if we can cure her, we may not be in time.”

  Ray nodded and turned his attention back to Maggie, who sat with her thin hands clasped in her lap as she listed slightly to the side.

  “Professor Lyle said you might be able to understand what these mean,” he said, holding up a picture of some of the symbols. He let her get a good look, and then held up another.

  “Do they seem familiar to you? Can you tell me what they say?”

  She opened her mouth and yawned. Ray clamped his teeth together, forcing himself to be patient. Getting testy with her wouldn’t help, and he didn’t want to do anything to shut her down or divert her attention from the task at hand.

  Maggie reached for one of the pictures, and he let her take it. She held it on her lap and stared. Seconds ticked passed. Ray’s leg bounced as he waited.

  “It’s familiar,” she said at last, speaking slowly. “My colleague—Hima Mubarak. A brilliant man, but his ideas were on the fringe. He showed me writings like these. And his journals. You’ll want to read those. He explains.”

  She spoke in short, disjointed sentences.

  “We can’t read them. Could you tell us what’s inside? Perhaps translate these symbols?”

  She blinked at him as she sorted through his questions.

  “I don’t know how good at them I am. After Hima died, I read the journals and studied them—it got to be a sort of game. Relaxing, you know? But it’s been quite a while, and the truth is that few agree on how to translate Olmec writing. Whether to read it right to left or vertically even.”

  Ray was glad to see that she was scraping her wits together a little and becoming coherent, even though she didn’t offer a lot of hope for translation.

  Just then, Professor Lyle returned and handed her wife a mug of milky coffee.

  “It’s single serve,” she said apologetically to Ray and his companions. “I’ve started another cup.”

  “Thank you,” Zach said.

  Maggie sipped the hot liquid, and it helped clear some of the glassiness from her expression. She focused back on the photograph.

  “These are definitely similar to those in Hima’s journals,” she said.

  Ray tamped down his impatience and kept his voice calm. “Do you have any idea what they say?”

  “The cartouche says the images are meant to be read together,” she murmured as if to herself. “But generally those are used with pictograph and hieroglyph types of languages. The symbols here are representational already in a more advanced way of language, beyond hieroglyphs, and obviously Olmec in nature. Now these”—she pointed to several—”group together symbols for strength—the kind that bends and burrows and conquers—and one for connection or binding together, and another for digging a well, or maybe a spring.”


  She tapped her fingers against her lips, and Ray had to clamp his teeth together to make himself wait.

  “I just can’t say with any kind of certainty what these symbols might mean together, particularly without more context.”

  “Guess,” Ray said.

  She narrowed her eyes in disapproval, but acquiesced. “If I’m just guessing, then I would say that together they are a kind of command to tie two things together, possibly against their natures, or against their wills.”

  “And the others?”

  Before she could answer, Ray’s phone rang. He contemplated ignoring it, but it could be an update on the search.

  “Garza,” he barked, standing and moving off to the side in an attempt at privacy. He gave Zach a sharp look as the technomage’s phone rang.

  “We’ve got a bloodbath,” said Captain Crice with no preamble. “Down in Sherwood-Tualatin. The Mound. Hundreds killed and—what?” he demanded, obviously not talking to Ray, who heard a rumble of voices, and then Crice returned. “We’ve got a magical event underway. Sending for tactical teams of technomages now, and evacuating around the area. Get your ass down there with your reinforcements and shut this down. Now.”

  The line cut off. Ray stared at his phone. Shut it down? How? They still didn’t know what the hell they were up against.

  “You heard?” he asked Logan as the technomage pocketed his cell.

  Logan nodded, his expression thunderous and cold. An expression Ray knew was mirrored on his own face. They’d both worn it often during the war.

  “Get Kayla. I’ll meet you at the car. You, too,” he told Raven.

  Ray looked at Angie as they disappeared. “Stay here and see if you can get anything more from the professor or her wife. Any details may give us something to go on. See if they know anything about the creatures or the plants. Call me the minute you learn anything.”