A Flash of Hex

by Battis, Jes

  “Nice.” I tried to keep my tone neutral. “Did you hang out with that guy today—what’s his name again? Patrick?”

  She snorted. “Way to go, Inspector Gadget. I totally didn’t see that one coming. And no, I didn’t see Patrick today. We’re not even friends. We just, like, run into each other sometimes. In the hallways, or out in the courtyard, or whatever.”

  “Just curious,” I said.

  “I mean, sure, we’re sleeping together. But it’s not like he’s my first.”

  I glared at her.

  “God, Tess! Unwind that crazy-ass nerve of yours. I’m not sleeping with anyone. I’m not going to raves or smoking crack. Every day, I eat a veggie wrap, do my homework, and take pictures for the photography club. Not exactly Paris Hilton.”

  “You joined a club?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t have a heart attack. I can interact with other humans my age. When they’re not completely lame.”

  “I didn’t even know you liked photography.” I took a hard left onto First, cutting off an SUV. “Do you need a digital camera? We can go shopping for one.”

  “Oh, can we please go to Best Buy? I love chatting with awkward, skinny dudes wearing yellow shirts.”

  “We could go somewhere else.”

  “They lend us cameras to use. Besides, you can’t afford to spend four hundred bucks for a good SLR camera.”

  “Don’t worry about our finances.” She was absolutely right, though. “I could always sign out one of the super-cameras from the lab. They’ve got this sweet Nikon D200 with a CCD image sensor. Four-thousand-pixel resolution. I’m sure Becka wouldn’t mind if I borrowed one.”

  Selena would flay me alive if I lost a two-thousand-dollar SLR camera. But seeing the gleam in Mia’s eye was worth it.

  “That is a sweet camera,” she murmured. “Maybe—”

  My cell started ringing. I glanced down. It was a CORE internal number. Great.

  “Speaking of the lab,” I said, flipping open the phone. “Tess.”

  “Hey, it’s Tasha. Sorry to call you on your day off.”

  I felt a chill. Tasha didn’t make casual phone calls from the morgue. “Hi, Tash. What’s going on?”

  “I just finished the post on the kid from the park. Henry, I think you said his name was. He’s still listed as a John Doe.”

  “Nobody’s come forward? No family?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  I sighed. “What did you find? Do you want me to swing by?”

  “If you could—there are a few anomalies you might be able to clear up.”

  I didn’t like the word “anomalies.” “Okay. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, if traffic cooperates. I’m in East Van now.”

  “I’ll see you in forty-five,” Tasha said dryly. Then she hung up.

  “Are we going to the lab?” Mia asked.

  “I’m going to the lab. You’re going home.”

  “But Derrick’s still at work.” I saw a mischievous glint in her eyes. “You can’t leave me alone, right? I mean, someone could break down the door, or come through the window, or, like, materialize out of smoke in the kitchen or something. Like Gary Oldman in Dracula. Wouldn’t it be safer if I stayed with you?”

  She had a point. I exhaled.

  Mia knew exactly what that meant.

  “I wouldn’t have to go anywhere near the morgue,” she pressed. “I could just hang out with Derrick in the psi-tank. Or in Selena’s office.”

  I was already making a U-turn on First.

  “If I see you anywhere near the morgue,” I told her, “something very, very bad will happen. Much worse than anything the forces of darkness could throw at you.”

  Mia only grinned.

  Tasha had been right. Forty-five minutes, two traffic jams, and one accident (not related to us) later, we pulled into the lab’s underground parking. I swiped us in. The security guard applied a stick-on visitor’s pass to Mia’s jacket, which she seemed quite proud of. I dutifully slung my CORE ID around my neck. It felt like an albatross.

  Derrick managed to smile and look confused at the same time when he saw us. He was in the middle of filling out a work order for something called a cortical stimulator. It looked expensive.

  “Hey! What are you two doing—”

  I unceremoniously pushed Mia toward him. “This one’s your responsibility for the next twenty minutes. Don’t let her out of your sight. If she escapes, I want this entire place on lockdown.”

  “Geez, overreact much?” She rolled her eyes at me, then turned to Derrick. “Can I fire a gun? A Luger or a Glock, maybe?”

  Derrick grabbed her firmly by the shoulders. “Operation Evil MiMi is in full effect. She’s not going anywhere near live ammo.”

  “I hate when you call me that.”

  “But it’s Mariah’s nickname.”

  “That’s why I hate it.” She sighed. “Can I at least play with one of the telekinetics? It’s fun to watch them break stuff.”

  “I have a great activity for you,” Derrick said, already leading her down the hallway. “It’s called learning to forge Selena’s signature.”

  “Oh, that might be fun—”

  “You’re driving her home!” I called back.

  Derrick made a thumbs-up sign. Mia walked two steps ahead, pretending that she didn’t know him, but glancing back discreetly to make sure he was still there. I smiled once, then headed for the elevator.

  The morgue was cold and smelled like steel. Among other things. Tasha was leaning over the autopsy table and wearing a Tyvek suit. She’d just put her tape recorder away and was scribbling a few notes when she looked up and saw me.

  “Hey, Tess. Thanks for coming in. What’s the weather like?”

  I glanced at the table, which was slanted to allow for the drainage of various fluids into a copper basin on the floor. A detachable shower spigot lay on the counter, and pink water swirled into the drain like some gruesome version of a child’s finger painting. I swallowed. Henry’s body was half-covered by a white sheet. His head was propped up on a rubber block, and his arms lay still at his sides. They were so small and white, like the arms of a porcelain doll.

  “It’s sunny,” I said. “Not too hot.”

  “I’ve heard about sunlight. The descriptions sound lovely.”

  I chuckled without much humor. “We should go out for a drink sometime. There’s this pub that Derrick and I like in the West End. Great patio.”

  She smiled, obviously caught off guard. “I’d like that. Speaking of Derrick, there’s someone I’d like to set him up with—”

  “Oh God. Please not another cousin, Tash. The last one was a mortgage specialist. He tried to convince Derrick to open a mutual fund, and I had to hear about it for days afterward.”

  “It’s not my fault that he has such high standards.” She sniffed. “I mean, you can only date artists and creative types for so long, right? He’s getting older. He needs to think about settling down and finding himself a nice, stable husband.”

  “He’s twenty-five.”

  “Trust me—in this city, that’s long in the tooth. His party days are behind him. And this guy’s so nice . . .”

  My eyes narrowed. “Is he a relation of yours?”

  She could tell that I was cracking. “Not at all. He’s a friend. Great job. And cute. I heard him talking the other day about how he’s tired of going out to clubs, and how he wants to find a nice guy. And I said, I’ve got the perfect one for you.” She winked. “And don’t worry, I didn’t mention all of that boy’s neurotic tics, or the fact that he’s living in a crazy alternative marriage with you. I figured that’s more of a date-with-dinner revelation. Right? By that time, it’ll be too late for George to back out.”

  “His name is George?”

  “He’s so cute, Tess—”

  “You mentioned that already. And what does he do for a living?”

  “Well, he’s a computer programmer—”

  “Noooo . . .”
r />   “But not a loser type! He’s hip! He has a Mac.”

  I shook my head. “No programmers. Besides, I think Derrick’s got a crush on someone right now.”

  “Well, a crush is one thing, but this guy’s actually serious. A crush isn’t going to put a down payment on a house for you.”

  “We already have a house.”

  “But wouldn’t you like an even nicer one?”

  I sighed. “Just give me the guy’s card. I’ll pass it on.” I had no intention of doing so, but I also knew that Tasha wouldn’t give up.

  She smiled triumphantly. “I’ll put it in your mailbox.”

  “Awesome.” I returned my attention to Henry. “Now what can you tell me about this poor kid? Did the tox panel come back yet?”

  Her expression instantly shifted, and I was talking to the chief medical examiner again, a board-certified professional who’d completed a graduate medical degree in clinical pathology. A woman who took apart demons for a living. Part of working for the CORE involved becoming accustomed to gallows humor, as well as learning how to let a bit of light, a bit of boring old regular life, into the darkest of situations. It was how we held on to being human. Or maybe as close as we ever got to being human.

  “This little one’s body tells a horror story,” she said. “Plenty of old breaks and fractures, some still healing.” She pointed to his films on the light box. “You can see a focal fracture on his right ulna. Showed up as some deep bruising. Might have been caused by a pipe or a baseball bat.”

  I shook my head, staring at the spiderweb pattern on the clean white bone. “I heard he had a rough client or two.”

  “Well, that’s just the beginning.” She pointed to a frontal view of his skull. “Look at the jaw. This is what we call a Le-Fort fracture: a glancing blow to the mandible and zygomatic arch of the face. Theoretically, a fist could cause this. But I’d say there was some unnatural power behind the blow. You can see how the cracks extend to the maxilla and down the jawline. This would have incapacitated him.”

  “Isn’t the bruising a bit light for a serious fracture like that? I saw him the day before he died, and he looked like he’d been in a scuffle. Nothing as bad as that.”

  “Just stay with me. I’ll explain in a moment.” She pointed to the next film. “Here you’ve got a spiral fracture to the fibula. That’s caused by violent torsion, or twisting. We often see it in child abuse cases, when a parent grabs on to a child’s arm with too much force. I took this X-ray about two hours ago.” She took it down and replaced it with a new film. “But look at this.”

  I glanced at the same bone. The spiderweb fracture was much smaller. “Is this the same X-ray?”

  Tasha nodded. “Taken fifteen minutes ago. Just before you got here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She turned off the light box. “It does stretch the mind a bit. This kid’s body is like an osteology textbook—he’s got just about every kind of fracture that we have a name for. But they barely show up on the dermal layer. And they’re fading.”

  “I can see that. So, what”—I blinked—“are you saying this kid’s like Wolverine? He’s got a healing factor?”

  “This isn’t a comic book,” she replied. “It’s very real. Every fracture in a human being—even someone who’s a little more than human, like you—heals in the same way. It’s just how your body works. First, there’s a hemorrhage at the point of the fracture. Then the ruptured blood vessels produce a substance called fusiform, which joins the ends of the broken bone together, like a quick fix. Cells called fibroblasts accumulate at the point of contact, and they produce more cells—macrophages—that eat away at the dead tissue. It’s the same principle as clotting, really, except on a larger scale.”

  “But it works differently with vampires and some demons, right? They produce more fibrin, or they produce it more quickly.”

  She nodded. “Vampire bone marrow produces osteoblasts and other cells almost immediately to facilitate the healing process. But this kid isn’t a vampire—he tested negative for the viral plasmids. In fact, he heals faster than most vampires.”

  I stared at her. “Seriously?”

  “You have no idea.” She pointed to the cap of the bone—the epiphysis—which gleamed on the X-ray, like a perfect new golf ball. “In humans, something called a periosteal cap gets produced by the bone cells. Its job is to separate the necrotic bone from the new bone tissue. But this kid’s healing factor bypasses that completely. When I took a sample of the bone, I could already see new capillaries beginning to grow out of the hematoma. His body produces new bone matrix at an incredible rate—postmortem. I’d say he heals twice as fast as a vampire. If it wasn’t for the blood loss, he might have even survived, given the proper medical attention.”

  I looked down at Henry. He didn’t look especially like a demon or a superhero.

  “So he’s a healer,” I said. “That’s rare. All I know is that it has something to do with organic materia and genetic mutation.”

  She nodded. “That’s not the whole story, though. Like I said, many of these fractures were in various states of healing or regeneration. The oldest was probably sustained about three weeks ago.”

  I looked down at her gloved hand. It was hovering less than an inch above Henry’s head, almost touching him. I’d never seen Tasha act this way before.

  “So he was obviously abused,” I said. “Repeatedly. Was he raped?”

  She nodded slowly. “Hard. Many times over. There was scar tissue and heavy tunneling in the anus. There was even a pelvic fracture. You don’t usually see that in males—not even hustlers.”

  “But this couldn’t have all been from the same client. Or if it was . . .”

  “Tess.” I felt like she was trying gently to lead me somewhere, like a doctor who didn’t want to say “cancer.” “This boy suffered repeated trauma that should have killed someone his size. If it wasn’t for the genetic anomaly that allows him to heal, I imagine he would have been dead several times over. And I can’t help but wonder . . .”

  Her eyes were dark. I swallowed. My stomach gave a great lurch as I finally understood what she was telling me. Or trying not to tell me.

  “You think that was the attraction,” I said numbly. “That clients picked him because they knew he could withstand—punishment.”

  She said nothing, but held my gaze.

  “He was a human punching bag,” I said. “Kicked, smashed, raped, again and again. And he let it happen, because he was desperate for the money. He was literally killing himself, over and over again. Until last night. When it finally stuck.”

  “The Hex may have had something to do with it,” Tash added quietly. “As you know, it does speed up the clotting process. But with all that fibrin and platelet material rushing to his neck wound, there wouldn’t be anything left to fuel his healing factor so that he could repair the broken bones. All of those fractures may very well have put him into cardiac arrest before he ever bled out. But we can’t know for sure.”

  I closed my eyes. “I’m glad we can’t find a relative.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t know how to fucking tell some poor aunt that her nephew was beaten, broken, and raped to death. Or that it might have been worse if he’d survived.”

  I took one last look at Henry. I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell Duessa, or Wolfie for that matter. Not this. I looked at his face. The bruise was almost completely gone, and the swelling had vanished. Even now, his body was slowly knitting itself back together, without any brain activity. He’d be brand new when we buried him. New and empty, like a building without any furniture.

  I turned around and headed for the exit. “Thanks, Tash. I’ll let Selena know.”

  “Where are you going?”

  I pushed open the doors. “To find a drug dealer named Patches. You might be seeing him on your table in a few hours.”

  14

  It was quiet on the corner of Hastings and Columbi
a, where Duessa had told me I might be able to find a loose community of hoppers, slingers, scammers, and other undesirables who hung out with Patches the Hex dealer. You could get anything on this corner from crystal meth to black tar heroin and joints dipped in embalming fluid (not a smart choice, even for vampires). Hex was still a bit tricky, though. As a hybrid drug, it was a thorn in the CORE’s side, and our vice division patrolled the neighborhood ruthlessly looking for buyers and dealers. I marked more than a few agents under cover, dressed in grubby clothes and carrying bulging wallets with flash rolls: wads of cash that seemed authentic at first glance, but were actually fake once you got past the first couple hundreds on the top. Sometimes, if the operation was particularly involved, an agent would get authorization to carry scads of real money. Enchanted, of course. We may deal in occult crime, but we’re still a business, and the CEOs like to make sure that their money always comes back to them.

  Duessa had coached me a bit on my story, reminding me that Patches wasn’t exactly a valedictorian, so it couldn’t be too complicated. Obviously, if I managed to reach the supplier, the story would have to change. He (or it) was apt to be a lot smarter, and far more dangerous.

  A diverse group was milling around the entrance to a run-down apartment building. Slingers, soldiers—the muscle—kids, sex workers, and various other hangers-on who didn’t have anyplace else to go. I heard a variety of calls:

  “Spider bags! Spider bags for twenty!”

  “Cabello!”

  “Mosquitoes! Got Mosquitoes!”

  “Real tops!”

  “Blue bags! Looking for Blue bags?”

  “Bin Laden! Bin Laden hey!”

  “DOA!”

  “Elbows!”

  “Christmas tree baby!”

  “Scootie! Shabu!”

  It was like eavesdropping on a kindergarten playground with its own bizarre slang, only these kids weren’t talking about G.I. Joes and Transformers. The one thing I’d learned about drugs over the years was that people will eat, drink, smoke, snort, or inject just about anything if they think it’s going to get them high. You can make crystal meth in a dirty bathtub with starch and Drano. You can grind up heroin with children’s cough medicine, or mix it with ketamine (which makes you puke like Linda Blair in The Exorcist), or drink it with Strawberry Quik. People will do anything to get high, because when you’re high, you don’t have to think about how shit-caked and fucked up your life really is. At least for a little while.