A Flash of Hex

by Battis, Jes

  Derrick leaned in, placing his cool fingers on my brow. I felt him concentrate. His presence brushed my mind: a tickling feather.

  “You’re not broken,” he pronounced. “That’s good.”

  “Breathe in slow,” Wolfie said. “And don’t talk too much. You’ll be sick for a while yet. Around midnight, you’ll probably want to kill yourself. But it’ll pass in a day or so, if you’re lucky.”

  “Great,” I said thickly. “Sounds like . . . one of my last relationships.”

  Derrick laughed softly. “How do you feel?”

  My underwear was damp. I realized that I’d wet myself. I was also certain that I needed to throw up again.

  “Been better,” I told him.

  “Can you remember anything you saw?”

  I thought of the creature with no eyes, sniffing me.

  “I remember—a name,” I said.

  “The killer’s name?”

  “No.” I grabbed the bucket. “My father’s.”

  I dimly heard my cell ringing as I puked again. It smelled like blood and ashes. The color was—indescribable. Like something radioactive. It was still happening in slow motion, so every turn of my gut felt like it would last forever. A symphony to reverse peristalsis. I closed my eyes.

  Derrick answered my cell. There was some back and forth talk, and then silence. I felt him settle next to me.

  Wolfie brought me a towel. I wiped off my face and looked up.

  “That was Selena, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded slowly.

  I knew why she was calling. I knew almost everything now.

  17

  I barely had time to wash my face and change into the fresh clothes that Derrick had brought me—thank God—before we were driving back down Hastings toward Nanaimo. I’d managed to keep myself from throwing up long enough to pop four extra-strength Motrin and a Gravol from my purse, draining a bottle of water in the process and still feeling like I could drink the Pacific Ocean. My insides were still hot from Wolfie’s fire, and I could feel the residual Hextacy in my muscle, bone, and blood, like a parasite that wouldn’t quite die. I lay curled up in the backseat, knees drawn to my chest, breathing hard—a wounded animal. Derrick concentrated on the road, but his eyes would flick to the rearview mirror every minute or so, checking on me. Wolfie leaned against the passenger window, silent, watching the dark street go by.

  The car was either moving very fast or very slowly. I couldn’t tell anymore. Gravity and distance didn’t seem to make sense like they used to.

  She’s beyond your reach now. My mother’s voice echoed through the smashed-in corridors of my brain. You won’t see her. As long as I live, you won’t ever know her.

  My mother. Angry. Holding a ritual dagger.

  Had she borrowed it from someone? No, I’d seen the sparks. I’d felt her power. She was like me.

  Diane Corday was a mage.

  I thought of what Derrick must have felt when he first realized that he was adopted. Like turning to a familiar photo album and finding that all the pictures had suddenly changed or gone fuzzy and blank. My life wasn’t my life anymore. Everything I’d always known, everything I’d worked so hard to protect for twelve years—it was all twisted and mauled and broken apart now, as if someone had tossed a Molotov cocktail into my archive of memories.

  The whole time. She’d always known. The whole time.

  I had to tell Derrick, but I couldn’t even articulate it. And there wasn’t time. First we had to manage the latest crime scene, which I could already see in my mind. I should have seen it coming. It made a perverse kind of sense.

  “Tess?” Derrick’s voice still sounded a bit far away. “We’re almost there—I’m going to look for parking now. If you can’t manage this—”

  “No, no.” I swallowed. Each word tasted like bile. “As long as we don’t have to walk very far. I can’t possibly puke again. There’s nothing left in my stomach, and the headache isn’t as bad.”

  Earlier, it had been a sun going nova behind my eyes. Now it had settled down to a spreading, fiery ache. And beneath the pain haze, all I could think of was Mia, sitting in my mother’s living room, laughing and chatting and having no idea that she was in the presence of a mage.

  Had my mother known about Mia all along? She always called her different, “special.” Did she know that the girl was VR-positive, that she carried the vampiric retrovirus? Maybe she even knew what had really happened with Marcus Tremblay.

  I reached slowly for my phone. Gritting my teeth, I managed to text a short message for Mia and hit Send: Coming to visit tonight.

  Damn right I was coming to visit tonight. I was coming with every ounce of fury left in my body, and I was going to get some answers.

  Derrick parked in the same space by the church on Penticton Street. Caution tape surrounded the yard of the old Victorian house. I wondered what the neighbors thought. At least the CORE didn’t have sirens and flashing lights—only a lot of folks dressed in black who seemed to be in twelve different places at once. Eventually, I imagined, to cut costs, they’d employ one shape-shifter to cover the whole scene.

  The occlusion field washed over me, bringing with it another spasm of nausea. I closed my eyes tight and counted to five. Cool air hit me in the face as Derrick opened the car door. I looked at him and smiled weakly.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said.

  Groaning, I untangled myself from the backseat. My legs were shaky, but they held as I leaned against the car.

  “I really do,” I said. “Selena and I have to talk. And we’re bound to find something here. We tried so hard to get into this place before, and now it’s like an open house. Feels weird.”

  “Like a violation, almost.”

  I nodded. “But it’s our job, right? We invade people’s lives—and deaths.”

  He took my hand. “Can you walk?”

  “If I get to lean on you. Let’s try to keep it inconspicuous, though. Selena doesn’t need to know that I’m coming down from a flash of Hex.”

  “Your pupils are still the size of dinner plates. I think she’s going to notice.”

  “Damn.” I rubbed my forehead. “Oh well, I guess it’s time for the truth anyways. What’s the worst that could happen? If she demotes me back to OSI-1, at least I’ll have less paperwork and I can work the swing shift.”

  “Or she’ll eject us both from the CORE, and demonic assassins will make sure that we’ve been ‘retired.’ ”

  “You always look on the sunny side of the street, don’t you?”

  “It’s a special gift.”

  Wolfie appeared next to us, looking nervous. “Should I be here?”

  I nodded. “It’s fine. You’re kind of involved now.”

  “In a bad way?”

  “There’s really no good way left.”

  I took a long breath. Then, leaning on Derrick, I walked to the front door.

  One of the photo techs recognized me, and looked on the verge of saying hello until she saw my face. Then she gave me a wide berth, stooping to get more reference shots of the front yard with her macro lens. I must have looked like the devil’s ass. Funny how caked-on concealer still couldn’t hide the fact that you’d been puking yourself inside out for a full half hour. Why did they even call it “concealer”? I needed something more powerful. Sephora must make some kind of demonic cover-up treatment, and I made a mental note to ask Cindeé about it.

  The stairs were old and covered with an ugly plastic runner. I made my way up to the main floor, which was its own contained suite. There was a tray of latex gloves and shoe covers at the entrance, along with extra flashlights and a generator for the ALS and Cyalume filters. I turned to Wolfie.

  “If you’re going to come with us, you’ll have to put on protective gear first. Otherwise, you can stay in the hallway, but don’t touch anything.”

  “I can chill out here,” he said, looking a little queasy. I’m sure he could detect the bitter, coppery smell
coming from the next room, like rusting nails. Blood. Strange that he could stick a needle into my arm like an expert, but the smell of blood made him queasy. Everyone had different triggers.

  “Don’t talk to anyone,” I told him, “unless a tall, scary-looking black lady with great hair asks you a question. Then tell her anything she needs to know.”

  “Scary lady. Great hair.” He nodded. “Got it.”

  I slipped on a pair of gloves and shoe covers, quickly sweeping my hair back from my shoulders and tying it in a ponytail. It would be more efficient to get a shorter haircut, but what was the use of having red hair unless you were going to show it off? Besides, it always gave me an excuse to be late, since I had to wrap my head in a towel turban after every shower and wait an hour for it to dry. Sure, I could use my Conair to blow-dry it faster if I was on my way to work, but nobody had to know that. And with short hair I looked too much like a boy. My dating life was suffering already without adding gender confusion to the mix.

  I ducked under the second line of caution tape—and stopped.

  “Shit,” I murmured. It was the only thing I could think to say.

  I could imagine that this living room had once been comfortable and elegant, with classic furniture and beautifully refinished hardwood floors. Someone had put love and attention into making this the focal point of the suite. But it no longer resembled anything close to a home. It was completely destroyed from floor to ceiling. A dark green sofa lay in pieces in the middle of the room, shredded, as if a giant beast had savagely clawed it. Splintered wood and pieces of metal littered the floor around it, along with a fan of broken glass, like someone had waved a nightmarish wand to create random arcs of destruction. Shelves were overturned, spewing out shattered decorations, pictures, books, CDs, and other things that were now unrecognizable. An overturned chair had been snapped neatly in two. A plasma screen television was on its side, somehow still miraculously plugged in, cord stretched across the ground. The screen itself was cracked and showed nothing but a plane of shifting colors.

  I glanced down and saw an eight-inch gouge in the wooden floor. It looked like a restless dinosaur had twitched its foot, shearing through wood and underlay as easily as a cat might crumple a foil ball. A yellow evidence placard next to the claw mark indicated that it had already been photographed. I stepped over it carefully.

  “Tess.” Derrick touched my shoulder, pointing to a broken frame lying amid the glass fragments. Reaching down, I used the base of my flashlight to flip it over. A familiar face smiled at me from the cracked glass.

  Patrick. Caitlin Siobhan’s official successor to the title of vampire magnate. He looked happy in the photo, at ease, more like the cute, messy-haired kid I’d seen hanging around Mia than the wasted boy I’d once seen lying in a hospital bed. A million-dollar question formed in my brain as I reached into my kit, pulling out brushes and black dusting powder for the gilt edge of the frame.

  Where was Patrick?

  I gently twirled the brush over the frame, letting the black powder fall like radioactive dust, or reverse snow. A few different prints rose to the surface. I doubted that any of them belonged to the killer—it didn’t seem like the kind of creature that perspired or produced natural oils—but I tape-lifted them anyway, numbering and initialing each sample before I stowed it in my kit. The only real fingerprint we had so far in this case had been planted, and I still didn’t know why.

  I stood up too fast, and the room spun a bit. Derrick must have noticed my expression, because he gave me his arm to lean on.

  “Thanks,” I whispered. “My head still feels like a snare drum.”

  “Wolfie said it might be that way for a while.”

  “Guess it’s my karmic punishment.”

  He gave me a long look. “I think you did the right thing. I didn’t agree with it at first, and I sure don’t feel good about it. But maybe it had to be done.”

  “We’ll see,” I said, picking my way through the rubble of the living room. “The night’s still young. There’s a whole pile of laws and regulations I could break before the sun comes up.”

  “I promise to bail you out.”

  “If you don’t die from the paperwork first.”

  We made our way down a narrow hallway, keeping to the edge of the walls. I hadn’t seen any blood yet, and I got the impression that—despite the carnage in the front room—things hadn’t gotten really crazy until the struggle reached the master bedroom. It always ended in the bedrooms. They were liminal sites—places where blood, sex, and murder all converged.

  The hallway had three doors. The first was small, presumably leading to a bathroom. It was shut. It didn’t look like it had been disturbed, and there was no yellow tape to mark it as a point of interest. I walked past it. The second door was slightly ajar, and I caught sight of a neat room with midnight blue carpeting and white walls. Posters of bands and sports teams were tacked above a computer desk, and an unmade bed sat in the corner. Definitely Patrick’s room. It looked virtually untouched as well. Either he ran into the master bedroom right away, or he hadn’t actually been present when all hell broke loose. I was voting for the latter. Patrick was AWOL.

  The door at the end of the hallway was open. As I got closer to it, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up. A tremor passed through my gut, and for a moment, I was afraid I might spew bile and undigested bits of Motrin onto the floor. But the feeling subsided. I took a deep breath and stepped carefully into the room.

  Even before my eyes registered the scene before me, I knew, sharply and with the sting of horror, that something cataclysmic had happened here.

  Immortals didn’t die easily, and they released a cascade of overwhelming power when their brains and bodies finally collapsed, like a circuit board exploding. Fragments of materia floated like ash in the air, dancing slowly in front of my eyes. Time operated differently past this doorway. The shockwaves of death had left a jagged impression at the temporal-spatial level, and everything seemed a few seconds too slow, as if the whole world had been ripped off its tracks and then redubbed out of sync. I moved my hand, and a faint afterimage trailed in its wake. This was going to wreak holy hell with our forensic tests.

  Selena was standing by the window, examining the glass. A few other technicians were spraying the rug with Amido Black formula to make the blood stand out, stabilizing it so that it would photograph better. No one was standing by the bed, which gave me an unobscured view of what lay on it.

  The other scenes had been so controlled and sanitary, arranged with surgical precision and laid out for us, like insane dioramas. Those edges and boundaries were nowhere to be seen this time. There was no elegant cut to the carotid artery, no blood pool collecting on the ground. This was pure savagery. It was lustful and apocalyptic. I almost couldn’t look—but I didn’t have a choice. Fuck if I ever had one.

  The body was in pieces.

  Someone had shuffled it like a deck of cards and then put it back out of order, with parts missing. A sheared-off arm ended at the elbow, and I could see strands of bloody tissue wrapped around the matrix of a shattered ulna, shockingly smooth and white against the avulsed skin and muscle. I didn’t know where the rest of the arm was. I couldn’t see it anywhere. The right leg was mauled with deep lacerations going down to the femur, which blossomed through holes in the flesh like a startling white shell, dotted with islands of bridging tissue and bloody detritus. The foot, weirdly enough, was untouched. It dangled off the side of the bed, perfect, with a pronounced arch that could only come from decades of wearing high heels. Such small toes. Almost like a child’s. A single dot of blood lay stark on the pinkie toe, like a stray drop of nail polish. Otherwise, it could have been a catalog photo.

  The other leg was twisted violently out from the body. Sharp edges of white peered obscenely through the skin of the distended ankle, revealing it to be an acute comminuted fracture—the closest you could come to having your foot twisted off without actually forcing the tal
us bone loose from the tibia. Deep bruising flowered across the shin and thigh—massive internal bleeding from the fracture, among other things.

  A tattered dress just barely covered the torso, shredded in places and revealing the curve of the left breast. I wondered if the genitalia had been left unscathed, but I was afraid to look. This was a crime of unimaginable rage, a death rape, and I couldn’t imagine that any part of the body had been left completely intact. A slim white arm lay draped across the abdomen, partially obscuring the space where the pubic arch ended and the stomach began. It looked artificial. Posed. Your limbs didn’t fall gracefully like that while you were dying. They flailed and thrashed and clawed, spasmodic, as you voided your bladder and bowels. No control. Just the press of darkness, and then—I didn’t know what. I’d never known.

  Unlike the artisanal slash across the necks of the previous victims, this wound was messy and deep. The carotid artery hadn’t just been transected—it was mauled. Bits of flesh and cricoid cartilage hung from the stellate gash, and even from a distance I could see the pulverized ribbons of what had once been the trachea. No doubt the hyoid bone would be in fragments somewhere beneath, although Tasha would have to search for it with a pair of forceps.

  “What happened to her head?” Derrick whispered. His voice was dull, as if his mind had already checked out and left the room. It was a good question.

  Her head—or what remained of it—looked like one of those anatomical models with the detachable plates that you find in a doctor’s office. Whole segments were missing. Her jawbone was gone, the mandible completely ripped away from the coronoid process, and the surrounding musculature was ground hamburger. Part of her skull had disappeared, leaving the parietal bone only partially intact and looking like a startled comma, slick with blood. Her right eye was missing, and it had taken part of the ethmoid bone and orbital ridge with it, leaving a patchwork mess of macerated bone and muscle behind. The frayed edge of the optical nerve dangled from her eye socket like an abandoned speaker wire.