Royal Blood

by Debra Dunbar

  Chuck shifted forward. “So I’ve kept my end of the bargain. I’ve more than kept my end of the bargain. Tell me about what’s going on in the outside world.”

  I told him all about the ritual to rid myself of my demon mark, choking a little when I got to the part where Balsur destroyed the resin fox that had housed Raven’s spirit.

  “Demons.” Chuck shook his head. “Good thing he was busy dealing with you and the other mage or he might have grabbed her spirit and taken it to hell.”

  I blinked in surprise. “How are you so sure he didn’t? Wouldn’t the demon have done that when he broke the fox figurine?”

  I didn’t mention that I wasn’t sure about Raven’s destination in the afterlife. I’d always considered her to be my best friend, a kind and ethical person, but Raven did what she needed to do and I honestly didn’t know how that would stack up when it came to who went up and who went down after death.

  “Spirits are slippery. I’d be willing to bet he was more worried about what you were doing in that ritual than snatching up some wayward spirit.”

  “Then where would she have gone if Balsur didn’t get her?” Russell had said Raven was no longer here, but I had no idea what lay beyond the veil other than my Sunday School classes had told me as a child.

  “Probably purgatory, although that’s really a question for a mage that specializes in spirit work.”

  Purgatory. But I’d been certain I’d seen her in Fulk’s eyes at the animal shelter. Could a spirit still slip through the openings in the veil if they were in purgatory?

  Maybe Russell had been wrong and Raven was still this side of the veil.

  “Do you think it’s possible she might have remained here? Like…I don’t know, floating around somewhere and looking for a host? She hasn’t inhabited any of my other lelek raktarban, but I could have sworn she was possessing my dog at one point.”

  “There are ways through the veil.” He shrugged again. “Again, that’s something you should ask a medium or a necromancer. People with strong wills can come through for brief moments before they are pulled back. And there are ways of bringing spirits across the veil on a long-term or even permanent basis, just as there are ways of bringing demons and angels across the veil.”

  I was seeing Russell tomorrow for our séance, hoping he could contact Raven. As much as I would love to have her back again, I wasn’t sure it was fair to have her stuck in a resin animal or a dog just because I missed my friend. She’d done what she’d promised she’d do before she’d died—she’d gotten me the ritual to release my demon mark. She’d helped with the ritual. I was free, and I owed all that to her. As much as I wanted her back in my life, I would be happy just to know she was okay, and in some sort of wonderful afterlife.

  But what if she wasn’t? What if Chuck was wrong and Balsur had her? What if she was in hell? Or purgatory?

  “So what else is going on in Baltimore?” Chuck asked, eyeing the clock as if the guards were actually going to enforce some sort of time limit.

  “Nothing as far as paranormal or magical stuff goes. I tripped over a deceased man while jogging Tuesday morning.”

  Chuck made a “tsk” noise. “Drug addiction is a serious problem, and not just in Baltimore either.”

  “I agree, but it looks like this might actually be murder,” I told him. “The guy’s got some rare blood, and the police think he might have been killed for it.”

  Oops. That was probably supposed to be confidential. I was so used to telling Chuck about the supernatural stuff in the city, that this just sort of came out. I couldn’t imagine that he’d be in a position to impede the case, though. I doubted he knew a rich guy needing heart surgery that happened to have Rh-null blood and was willing to pay big for it.

  “That’s almost as weird as the Boo Hag,” Chuck commented. “Why kill the man when you can just pay him for a vial? Blood magic is so much easier than death magic. Doesn’t pack quite the energy punch, but it’s got subtleties that death magic doesn’t have. In some ways I prefer it.”

  I didn’t correct him, instead letting him think the motive was magic and not medical.

  “Should be easy enough to find the killer,” Chuck continued. “There was a reason that individual was targeted. He was either a mage himself, or from a line of mages. Or perhaps a convicted criminal on death row. Or a virgin. The life experiences and lineage of the human are far more important than basic factors about his blood.”

  All magic I’d done had only ever used my own blood, so this little lecture on Chuck’s part was somewhat interesting.

  “Would there be a reason to need more than a few drops of blood for this kind of magic?” I frowned in thought. “If someone needed a specific mage’s blood for a ritual, would it be better to take a pint or two and save some for later?”

  Chuck laughed. “Uh, no. A fresh drop right from the person during the ritual is ideal. Blood degrades quickly, and unlike for medical use, you can’t freeze it if you are using it in a ritual. You’ve got two weeks max to use it, and each day that goes by after collection lessens the effectiveness. And a drop or three is all you need. There’s absolutely no reason to go taking a pint of blood, unless you’re stealing it from a blood bank. And that’s far from optimal. Unless you can steal it right after collection, that is.”

  Huh. Well, this just confirmed that Tremelay was most likely on the right track with his blood-for-money theory. Nothing supernatural about this one. No mage would risk kidnapping and murder charges when he could just offer someone a couple hundred for a fingerstick collection.

  “Anything else happening?” Chuck asked. “Have you done any magic besides ridding yourself of the demon mark lately?”

  I shrugged. “Just some charms. I haven’t had much time, what with moving into my new place and my increased hours at the coffee shop.”

  I didn’t want to let him know that a major part of that was my lack of a mentor and my fear that I was going to screw something up. I’d been overconfident, and gotten myself marked by a demon while trying to do a basic Goetic summoning. Without Raven to guide me, I was reluctant to do more than basic charms and illusions. I would have been willing to learn under Reynard, even though I didn’t completely trust the guy, but he’d left after the ritual where Balsur had destroyed Raven’s vessel, and hadn’t returned my calls.

  It sucked. No one in Haul Du would have anything to do with me. And I wasn’t about to have a death mage as my mentor. Or a necromancer, no matter how friendly I was with Russell. It left me with few options. Should I stay where I was magically speaking, and not progress in those skills? Take a chance and try to learn on my own? Or accept a mentor who kinda made my skin crawl?

  I eyed Chuck. He knew about demons and Goetic magic. He knew blood magic. He knew death magic. I got the feeling he was far more advanced than the others in Fiore Noir, more advanced than Reynard, more advanced than Raven. I got the feeling he was far more knowledgeable than he’d ever let on.

  The mage shook his head. “That’s a darned shame. You’ve got talent and you’re a decent, if a bit sloppy, mage. You should be doing more than simple charms.”

  Temptation, just as beguiling as what Satan offered on the mountain.

  “I’m a Templar. Magic is an accessory to my sword, not the sword itself. When I need more than charms, I’ll do more than charms.” It was a bold statement, hiding my fear and insecurity behind the armor of my heritage.

  “Just in case you change your mind.” Chuck fanned his fingers, then made a fist and slid a spoon across the table to me.

  I looked around, expecting guards to descend on us any moment with guns drawn, but no one paid one bit of attention to us or the fact that a prisoner had just passed me a piece of cutlery.

  “Taken to petty theft now, have you?” The spoon was a cheap hunk of stainless steel with a nondescript pattern on the handle. From the odd twist to the business end, I assumed the puddings or cereal here required significant force to scoop up.

 
“I’ve paid a lot in taxes over the years. Let’s just say a spoon is the least I feel the state owes me.”

  I reached out to touch the dulled surface, still expecting a guard to come racing over. None did, but I did feel the thrum of magic along what looked to be a plain old spoon.

  “It gets a little boring here,” Chuck told me. “Yes, I can do some limited magic if I can manage to accumulate the correct spell materials. What would really bring me joy would be to spread my wings a bit outside of these walls.”

  Picking up the spoon, I looked into the curved surface and saw Chuck looking back at me.

  “When you’re ready to do more than just simple charms,” the spoon-Chuck said to me, “just pull this from your drawer and we’ll get started.”

  I should have pushed the spoon back across the table to him. I should have left it on the table, or thrown it in the trash, or heaved it at the wall. Instead I stood and put it in my pocket as I said goodbye to the mage and made my way out of the prison.

  Chapter 11

  It was around seven o’clock when I got back from Jessup with a whole lot whirling around in my brain. What was this thing whose shadow loomed over Baltimore, waiting to strike? Should I accept Chuck’s offer to mentor me or not? Would Dario cancel on dinner again tonight?

  As for the latter, I hoped not. The sun had gone down an hour ago, and the joy of early winter nights was supposed to mean that we were no longer eating dinner at nine or ten o’clock at night, but that hadn’t been the case. Dario always had a lot to deal with upon his awakening, and the first two to three hours after sunset were usually taken up with Balaj business. I wasn’t about to be that girlfriend who texted him every evening demanding to know if we were on or not for tonight. I’d just assume we were on, and wait for his text or call.

  So I stuck Chuck’s spoon in the kitchen drawer, pulled a handful of books off my shelf, and got to work. Curled up on the couch with Fulk snuggled next to me on one side and Gaia purring against my thigh on the other, I paged through the huge, heavy book on my lap.

  I skimmed past the water-based creatures, figuring they’d hardly be living underground even if they’d been magically confined. Suspecting the Big Bad might possibly be an undead or spirit-type monster, I focused on those. I also honed in on those creatures native to the east coast of the continent, thinking that the group who had previously kept the creature at bay had possibly been Native Americans.

  I was just starting to get into my research when I heard a knock on the door. Dario? He hadn’t called or texted me yet, but I’d be thrilled to have him just swing by like this. Putting the book aside, I scooted my two animals over and made my way around the couch. I swung open the door to find not the vampire, but Kyra Tremelay on the stoop.

  The detective’s daughter was roughly my age, a third year medical student doing her residency at Hopkins. Kyra was gorgeous, strongly resembling her mother from the pictures I’d seen of her at the detective’s house. Her black hair was in a shiny straight bob. Her dark eyes with their thick lashes were wide-set and slightly tilted upward. Her cheekbones and jawline were feminine but chiseled, and her mouth soft and full. Even with the scrubs visible under her thick winter coat, she was beautifully elegant.

  And there I stood in jeans and a worn t-shirt, with snarled hair and no makeup.

  “Come on in,” I told her, standing aside. “Can I get you a soda? Glass of wine? Coffee?”

  We weren’t exactly what I’d call best friends, although because of the plague demon issue last month, I’d gotten to know Kyra on a friendly professional basis. She’d helped me out with the bite wound on my neck, but after that I hadn’t seen or spoken to her. Maybe this was a social visit? I would have thought a phone call inviting me to coffee or lunch would be the way to initiate a friendship, not an impromptu visit, but I wasn’t going to say no to a new friend.

  “Actually, I can’t stay.” She gave me a quick smile. “I’ve got a case over at the hospital I wanted to talk to you about. Totally off the record because of patient confidentiality, you know.”

  Ah. Business then. I nodded and motioned her over to the couch. I knew Kyra didn’t like to bend the rules about patient confidentiality, but after last month, she’d discovered I could be a significant help when her medical cases had a possible supernatural component to them.

  I sat across from her, a bit worried. Was this about the “animal attacks” in the north part of the city? The dead addicts who’d been mysteriously anemic? Or had the Big Bad that Chuck was hinting about arrived earlier than expected?

  Kyra fidgeted on the couch a few seconds before speaking. “I had a man come into the emergency room today saying that he’d been kidnapped and had some sort of medical experiments done on him.”

  That was not at all what I’d expected. “Like alien probes, medical experiments?”

  “He says they were human, and the medical experiments are why he has track marks, not because he’s been shooting up.” She shook her head. “We put him under psych observation, but the guy claims he has no history of mental illness. He’s from out of town. Says he’s here for business.”

  I grimaced, waiting for her to go on. Clearly there was more to this. Kyra wouldn’t be coming to a Templar for help with someone who’d had a bad trip and needed a referral to either a mental health facility or a drug treatment program.

  “He did have needle marks in both arms, but he claims he’s never used drugs.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know a lot of drug users, but I’m betting they all deny using drugs.”

  “Exactly. And many people with serious mental health issues deny that as well. The guy did have some bruising around his wrists and ankles and chest consistent with being strapped down.”

  I stared at her in surprise. “You know what bruising from being strapped down looks like?”

  “I work in the emergency room. We get people who are combative, either coming down off of street drugs or having a mental health crisis, and sometimes they need to be temporarily restrained for their own as well as our safety. This guy might have been into kinky stuff, or the marks could have been from a hospital or an inpatient psychiatric facility.”

  I had a whole new respect for what Kyra did. “So he’s a drug user and has a mental health problem, and he’s a John Doe in a hospital?”

  “He’s not a John Doe. He knows his name, where he lives. Honestly, he seems perfectly normal outside of his claims that he was subjected to medical experiments. Oh, and he also claims that he’s possessed.”

  “So you’re thinking he escaped some psychiatric facility? Maybe the track marks are from sedation, or an IV line for a medical condition?”

  “I wondered about that too. I checked all the local hospitals and in patient centers and no one had him or a man of his description there in the last week days.”

  “You really think he was possessed? That he was subjected to medical experimentation?”

  I didn’t think I could do much about the medical experimentation thing. Honestly it sounded like the guy had a mental condition and needed help that was outside my abilities as a Templar. Heck, even if it was demonic possession, there wasn’t too much I could do about it. The guy needed a priest. Luckily I had one I could recommend.

  “Heck if I know.” Kyra lifted her hands. “We ran some blood tests thinking we might find a trace of a hallucinogenic or sedative, or something that would explain this.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing drug wise, although there was a trace of a drug used to help people with organ transplants avoid rejection. He says he’s had no organ transplants or even major surgery in his life, but when we asked, he kind of freaked out on us, panicking that the guys who experimented on him might have done something beyond poking and prodding. He had no signs of recent surgery. The guy is healthy. There’s nothing wrong with him beyond his really odd claims. And he checks out as far as where he lives, what business he’s in, where he was staying in town.”

  “S
o you’re thinking demon possession? And maybe the demon put these ideas of medical experimentation in his head?”

  “I really don’t know. It’s just a whole bundle of weirdness, Aria.” Kyra ran a hand through her hair. “The restraint marks, the track marks, the trace drug. And his story is really odd. He said the last few days are a blur, but he remembers being hooked up to a whole bunch of IV lines. He said he was there for a long time, maybe days but he couldn’t really tell. At one point he said a group of guys who looked like they were wearing surgical robes and masks came in and chanted over him, and that’s when he was possessed.”

  I frowned. “I’ve been at a lot of demon summonings and no one has ever summoned a demon into a human body. Of course, Goetic demons are never let out of the circle and the times I attended, they didn’t summon any of the higher demons. I guess if someone was really crazy, they would invite a demon to possess themselves, but not somebody else.”

  “Not even if they hated someone? Like revenge?” Kyra asked. “Your wife cheats on you, and you summon a demon to possess her lover?”

  “There are far better ways of getting back at someone than bringing a powerful demon across the veil, letting him outside of a circle, and giving him a human body to possess.” I thought for a second. “Did he say he was possessed by a demon, or just possessed? Lots of spirit workers channel the dead, and there are many non-practitioners that have the innate talent. Maybe he’s gifted and was channeling a spirit?”

  She shrugged. “I just assumed he meant demon. He said he was possessed, and that was my first thought. I didn’t think to get into any detail about who or what had possessed him. I was more concerned with checking his physical health, thinking I’d need to refer him to psych for the possession thing.”

  “But something made you think he might be telling the truth?” I asked.

  Kyra sighed. “I don’t know, Aria. After what happened with the plague demon and the vampires, and then there were those killer mages…I just figured I should run it by you and see if it was something I needed to worry about—beyond mental health, I mean. Sorry, I’m probably wasting your time.”