by brett hicks
I shook my head and said, “It is much more complicated than being a witch detective. Let me tell you what I have found on this body, then you can play twenty questions with me.”
He nodded and said, “Ok that is fair enough.”
I let go of a breath I had been holding and began to explain everything I thought.
“So the vampire spelled her with his glamor. She was completely out of it when she was drained. The neck wound could not have come from accidental cause, during a feed. She was much too still for that to happen. The feeding was much too clean and only a single bite point. She was down and out when this happened to her. She was killed with the break to her neck after the feeding and the magical ritual that was conducted on her body, I assume, before the feeding. I am not sure what kind of ritual, it was black and purple and I texted my mom to come. She is much more knowledgeable than I am in exact types of magic, I just have better senses then she does. She might not be able to see the trace magic either, that is why the good doctor missed them too. The corpse is covered in bleach as I am sure you both know. I believe this was done to cover up the magic ritual done on her body. This is either very dark witchy magic, or it is voodoo. That would lead me to believe that she was killed by a vampire and a magical practitioner.”
Jon looked like he had a hundred questions, but he kept focused on the body. “Kayla why do you say it was a male vampire by the way?”
I shrugged and said, “Bite size looks too big to be a female to me.”
“How many vampire bites have you seen in your life time Kayla?”
I thought about it for a long moment and said, “Over two hundred cases that I can think of at the moment, but I am sure that is a very low estimate.”
“Do you need to have me go up to fetch my mom? She said that she is already in the Quarter now. She will be down here in about five minutes.”
“I’ll go get her detective; I have not seen the young mistress in a very long time. Sorry I did not recognize you Miss Kayla.”
I shrugged and said, “Not like I go out and talk to any of the local witches anyway doc.”
“Why don’t you if you’re apparently some kind of witch royalty?”
“Because Jon, they do not like me, or my mom, since she did not kill me at birth.”
I saw his eyes flare and he looked to the doctor and said, “Is that true?” The doctor looked very grim and he looked at me for a very pregnant moment, and then nodded.
“It is not my story to tell detective, I will leave it up to the young lady here, if she wants you to know the truth. She is treated poorly by the whole community.”
Jon looked at me for a long moment, trying to piece this information together in his mind, in the most logical way. “You called yourself a monster, what do you mean?”
“That she should stop calling herself a monster detective. Jake so good to see you again, how is the coven treating you these days?”
Everyone whipped their heads around to see my mid-thirties looking blonde haired mother standing there. I had not heard her enter the room. I rolled my eyes at her ghost antics and waved to her sheepishly.
“Hey mom, um how did you get down here?” She looked insulted and rolled her eyes.
“Please you think you’re the only one in our family to make a habit of consulting on murders? I practically lived down here for decades. That was before Jake here became M.E.”
“Detective Jon Divichi, this is my mother, Jenny McQueen. Mom this is Detective Jon Divichi.”
She extended her slender hand to him and smirked. Her eyes held depths of amusement in them now. Jon shook her hand and said, “It is a pleasure to meet you ma’am. You hardly look more than an older sister to Kayla here.”
She rolled her eyes and said, “Detective I am ninety seven years old, but thanks. He is delicious, now I see why Sally was texting me about it earlier.”
I planted my hand over my face and massaged my eye lids. “Mom can we focus on the dead body please?”
“Sure, sure, just trying to fulfill my role in properly embarrassing you hon.”
“Mom can you see the blackish purple haze around this body?”
She walked in close and studied the corpse for a very long moment. “I can see just the tiniest bits of magic, but I am going to need you to describe all the shades you see Kayla. I will try to figure out what it is, if you be my seeing eye daughter.”
I groaned and said, “Remind me why I had you come down here?” She gave me a sassy smirk and her eyes twinkled in amusement. “Because I am a damn genius baby girl.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at Jon and said, “She is modest about it too.”
He snorted in agreement, but he put his blank cop face back into place quickly. “Madam please tell us what you can about this magic.”
I cut in and said, “Wait didn’t you say you had like six bodies?”
He nodded and said, “Yeah we just got so caught up on this one, which I did not think to open the others yet. Doc open two of the other drawers for us please. I want to see if the magic is more noticeable for Kayla. That is what you are thinking, right cheri?”
I nodded and said, “Yes, exactly what I am thinking. I also need to know where they were each killed. I need to check the bite patterns and all that vampire CSI stuff.”
“You know you could be a damn good detective yourself, if you spent a little time studying and training.”
“Please don’t give her more ideas, and then I have to try to beat out of her as it is. She is practically running around like she is fucking Buffy.”
Jon looked at me with an amused smirk and said, “Yes I have seen little Buffy running around graveyards. She really does seem to know how to track vampires better than I do. I spent two years training in tracking supernatural creatures. She just seemed to sniff one out like it was nothing.”
“Well of course she did, but I really do not like the fact that she involved herself in this shit. She should just be enjoying her youth.”
“Not like I am gonna get much older mom, besides you still act like a teenager and you’re a century old.”
I ducked before she could smack me in the head. She gave me a very playfully agitated look, and then Job cleared his throat.
“As much as this amuses me, can we inspect the bodies?”
……
Three more bodies had the exact same causes of death. One was more recent and mom could see the colors better. I filled in the gaps in her sight and she had Jake fetch her herbs and a small Wiccan alter.
We were able to determine the four victims were all killed by the same two supernatural beings. Mom confirmed that it was Voodoo and not witchcraft.
“Detective I believe I know what they were trying to cover up now.”
I came to study the body she was watching like a hawk now. She muttered some words and a scare opened up and it shown a huge chunk of flesh missing above the heart. Jake sucked in a deep breath, because he seemed to know what this meant now.
“How could I miss this?”
“The killer fused the ends of the tissue together, and then channeled magic until it appeared to be an old knife wound. I almost missed it too, but I did not find it to be a very likely coincidence that each victim had a similar scare in the exact same part of their chest, particularly right above the heart.”
“So what does this mean to the only non-magical being in the room?”
“It means that they used the victims to make gris-gris magical charms. Human flesh charms to be more exact. They funneled the death magic into the skin they sectioned off. They could close the tissue up once the victims were all dead, with necromancy.”
“What the hell is a gris-gris?”
My mom gave Jon a grim look and said, “This is forbidden magic. To make human death charms is against all the pacts of peace among our kinds. Someone is not satisfied with the potency of their spells and they are making human sacrifices to their Loa. They are basically summoning powerful spirits and letting
them ride the victims into death, then harvesting the power into these charms. The tissue above the heart is considered to be a common point to focus the magic you plan to store.”
Jon ruffled his hair and cursed vividly. “So we have a crazy voodoo practitioner working with vampires and they are summoning fucking loa?”
“I take it you know what loa are Detective?” He gave my mother a look of annoyance and said, “I am Cajun of course I know what a fucking loa is. They should not be on our plane of existence anymore!”
“Oh I agree detective, they should not be here, but they are and they are fueling these beings with more power, not counting the charms or hexes they have harvested from these dead.”
Chapter: 16
We ended up spending five hours in the morgue. I helped my mom run her magical rituals to test the spells, but we could not get much more, because of the damn bleach. Apparently I was only able to clearly see the magic traces, because of the power behind invoking a loa. Mom said the bleach would have nearly blinded her to the magic traces, without me already telling her what to look for.
Jon and I stopped for some dinner at a local Cajun restaurant. He insisted that he owed me at least that much for all the help. I knew what he wanted to do and I was trying to pretend like I did not know that he was about to drop all his stored up questions on me. I knew that by the time we were finished with dinner he might very well try to shoot me.
With me in my school cloths and Jon dressed casually, we looked like a college age couple. He was not much older than me, but he had been a police officer for almost four years now. He was a very young detective, but he was a good one. He already had a medal of commendation for his service on the job. He closed a lot of murder cases, for human investigating supernatural crimes.
I ordered a spicy Cajun bacon cheese burger and chili cheese fries. Jon ordered some gumbo and I started giving him shit for eating gumbo at the wrong place. I saw him staring at me now, like he was trying to find a way to ask.
“Ok Detective, you have been patient, so I will tell you my story, but I advise you not pull your damn gun on me in this public ass place.”
He tilted his head a little and nodded. “I did not plan on drawing my weapon cheri, you have never threatened me, well much.”
I sighed and said, “You might change your mind when you know what I really am.”
“Look just talk to me, I will just listen ok cheri?”
I sighed and nodded. “So my mom is the daughter of the witch queen type person in this city. My mom was born more powerful than any witch in the past several hundred years. Whole covens are needed to do the types of rituals we could do by ourselves. My father was a witch too, but he was killed by a vampire. My mom was grieving and basically he came to our house after he rose as a vampire. She was so sick with grief that she did not really pay attention or care what he was. Vampires that are newly raised are still very much able to have children. The product of such unions of mortals and vampires are immortals called dyamphyrs. In my case I am a Dyamphyr of a witch and a vampire. I have all my mother’s powers, hence why I can see magic better than the most powerful witch in the city. My vampire DNA makes me stronger and faster. I can use glamor too, that is why I am able to sneak into crime scenes. My grandmother disowned my mother and sealed my witch powers, with a hidden spell that would kill me on my eighteenth birthday, to insure I never came into my full power. No one wants a dyamphyr of my power running around. It is apparently the only thing anyone seems to agree on these days in the sup community. My mom said something about me and the three new heirs all coming to our full power together like she did with Sally’s dad almost a hundred years ago. That is somehow connected to all your murders.”
I saw the edge of his concern now. He did not look comfortable with this discovery.
Our food came a minute later and I ravaged my bacon cheese burger and its drippy Cajun hot sauce. It was just this side of heaven.
“So you’re a dyamphyr and a witch at the same time? Do you drink blood like a vampire?”
I grimaced and swallowed my burger down and chased it with a very sweet tea. I let out a breath and nodded.
“Yeah I have had to drink some blood my whole life, but now it is more like I drink a damn pint a day now. I have lived on bagged blood and pigs blood from the butchers my whole life, but the pig blood does nothing for me now.”
“So that is why you were able to track down all those vampires, because you basically have the same level of senses as them?”
I nodded and said, “I am a living vampire, a day walker if you will. I can smell their rotten asses’ miles away, literally sometimes. That is also why that female vamp we found would exchange a blood oath of honesty to me, because I have vampire blood too. They do not give those oaths to any other sect of sup.”
I felt very insecure and I just focused on eating my chili cheese fries. I loved the food here; I had never been here before. Jon clearly knew some good eats. I would probably never see him again after this. I pulled out my wallet and I sat down my half of the bill on the table and I turned to leave.
“Where are you going cheri?”
I arched an eye and said, “I am going home, I can find my own way.”
He furrowed his brow, before he could say anything else I walked out into the night air. It was colder than normal tonight and I had been dressed for the afternoon temperature this morning. I dialed Sally and waited, it picked up on the third ring.
“Hey there skanky girl, you finished with your hottie yet? Did he give you a full body cavity search?”
I sighed and said, “Sal could you come pick me up, I am down near Royal in the Quarter.”
“Sure I can, I have your Civic anyways, but why isn’t your cute detective driving you home?”
“Because I told him what I am when he took me to dinner. I doubt anyone would want to talk to me again after that, so I left. Will you please just come get me before the damn vampires are out in full force tonight?”
“Ok I will be there in about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, go wait inside somewhere. You may be hard to kill, but you are not invincible Kay. They are pretty pissed with you, so are the damn wolves.”
“Ok I will go hang out in the hotel lobby across the street. You know the one up here past the Star Bucks?”
“Leave it to you to give directions based on coffee joints, but yes I know which one little witch. Later hun!”
“See ya Sal.”
I made my way across the packed streets of Royal to the century old hotel building. I walked in and I put up a slight glamor to look a little older, so I could avoid any unnecessary attention. I slipped out my fake ID and ordered a draft beer. I did not really want to get drunk, but slight tingly buzz would pass quickly enough. I needed something to offset my nerves, because I had never told anyone about my secret, besides Sally. She could basically smell that I was not human in the first place; she just did not know what a dyamphyr smelt like, before me.
I felt like I was drowning in the anxiety of living my life. I was pretty sure that was the last time I would ever get to work with the police, or for them. I wanted so badly to be able to solve crime and put the bad guys away, because I believed in justice. I did not bite living people, because I refused to ever think of them as my food source. I hated that I was born with this blood hunger. I hated everything about myself and I loathed that I would probably die alone.
I was lost in thoughts, but I still smelt the ripe odor of death wash over the bar. I forced myself not to tense up and I focused on keeping my calm. I only had two daggers on me tonight, so I was going to have to fly under the radar as much as I could. My glamor should make me appear to be more like a vampire passing for human. I was not sure how well it would fool another vampire though. They tended to see through each other’s bull shit pretty well.
I kept nursing my beer and I would do subtle sweeps of the room with my eyes. I noticed a dark crimson aura hanging about a bearded tall man. I cursed under my breat
h and recognized him. He was the damn Scott that stabbed me a few nights ago.
He was not too close to me, but he was within reach, if I made for the door at human speed. I quickly texted Sally and told her to hurry and that he was here. She should still have his scent, like every other wolf did now. Wolves never forget scent memory.
I opt to wait until he settles in, before I leave, let him drop his guard a bit. He can believe he is the big bad in this little hotel bar, thus untouchable. He walks right up to my table, as though he is the lover I was waiting on to arrive. I let my emotions chill to the point where I am basically void of anything, but calculation and death. I let that very vampiric side of myself surface fully now. I feel my magics mix and vibrate coldly in my blood. I realized that even my magic could change temperature on my moods. It was something I would have to ask my mother about later, but I felt like ice water flowed through all of my veins, but it was not unpleasant to me. The cold felt oddly right to me and so did my lack of mood.
The brown bearded Scott sat down a tall glass of dark amber beer and said, “Well I did not expect to see ye out here tonight little lass. You know I almost missed your glamor, but ye just so much prettier than the humans in here, so I ended up looking thrice at ye. Real hard to keep the illusion in place against one my age, if you are our focus lass, so what are ye doing here?”
I gave him a blank look and said, “I am having a beer and waiting on my friend, you know the apex female wolf friend?”
“So ye not hunting me tonight little slayer?”
I glared icy daggers at him and my face was void. “It was not planned, but we can step outside and I can finish what we started at the bar.”
I felt him shiver just a little under the icy tendrils of my magic. He looked at me with a puzzling expression on his face now.
“Lass you have some new tricks since the last time I saw ye. I had heard ye were a bloody witch, but I never felt magic coming from you like this, until now.”
I shrugged and said nothing, just kept drinking my beer, like a murdering vampire was not in front of me now. He drank his dark ale and just enjoyed this little game of magical chicken we were playing with each other. His glamor tried to find an open place into my mind, into my emotions, but I was like winter incarnate.