Chapter 15
It said something about my life when a heavily armed official accused me of causing magical havoc and I had to wonder which incident she meant. That being the case, I didn’t bother to guess. If being the daughter of the most devious manipulator I’d ever met had taught me anything, it was when to keep my mouth shut. I wasn’t about to volunteer information she might not already have.
I’m not sure what response Briar Darque expected, probably that I’d deny involvement before I even knew what I was being accused of, or perhaps she thought I’d throw myself at her feet and beg the OMIH and MCIB’s mercy. Whatever she anticipated, silence clearly didn’t fit. Or impress.
Scowling, she stalked to the edge of my desk, and putting her palms flat on the surface, loomed as she leaned into my personal space. “You have nothing to say?”
She was so close I either had to lean back or crane my neck to look at her. If I leaned back she’d see the dagger in my lap, so I didn’t have much choice but to meet her challenging stare head-on. So that’s what I did—besides, I hated when people loomed. I’d guess Darque was on the tall side of average and her biker boots gave her another inch or two, but if I stood up, I’d be taller. Not by much, and I had no doubt she could kick my ass from this side of the Quarter to the other, but I still hated the cheap intimidation tactic.
“Are you charging me with something, Inspector?” My tone was flat, neutral. I think even my father would have been proud.
Darque’s lip curled as she straightened and reached into her jacket. She pulled free a folded manila packet and flipped through the contents before dropping a sheet of paper in front of me.
I glanced at it. A good half dozen newspaper clippings had been taped to the page, dates scrawled in a quick hand beside each. The oldest was from a little over three weeks ago and was a very short report about graves being disturbed in the graveyard south of Nekros. The writer dismissed the event as a juvenile prank. The clippings proceeded chronologically and mentioned disturbed graves in other cemeteries across Nekros. The most recent was from last week. Several bodies had gone missing from the Fairmount, a small cemetery I’d visited only once or twice as the suburban area around it—and thus most of the graveyard’s tenants—were of the Humans First persuasion. A reward was being offered for information that led to the return of the bodies and the capture of those responsible.
I looked up at Darque. “Grave robbing? You think I have something to do with this?”
She cocked an eyebrow and dropped another piece of paper in front of me. It was another newspaper article, but not a back-page piece, this one was the lead article from yesterday. I was vaguely familiar with the story—I’d seen it earlier when I was looking for information on Richard Kirkwood. Now I read it more carefully.
A pair of teenagers had driven off the road just south of the city. The car had been found wrapped around a tree, but most of the couple’s injuries appeared to be from an animal attack, not the accident. The girl had been DOA, but the article listed the boy as being in intensive care.
“I don’t get the connection,” I said, handing the pages back to Darque.
“Do you know what kind of animal causes this type of injury?” she asked, dropping several photos in front of me.
After examining Kirkwood earlier, I was already beyond my daily threshold for brutalized bodies. Hell, between Kingly and Kirkwood, I’d like to think I’d hit my cap for the month, especially since John had made it clear the NCPD wouldn’t be calling anytime soon. I didn’t want to look at any more bodies, even in photographs.
Not that Briar was giving me a choice.
I glanced at the array of photos, glad I hadn’t stopped for lunch on the way back from the morgue. Of course, the burn of stomach acid at the back of my throat wasn’t much better. The photos were of the two teens and at first, all I saw was the color red and a lot of pale flesh, then I started picking out details. When my gaze landed on a close-up of flesh torn away to expose bone, my stomach clenched tight enough to knock the air out of me. I tore my gaze away.
“I don’t know what kind of animal did it.”
“Look at them.” She pushed the photos closer to me.
I glared at her, and she crossed her arms over her chest, tapping the folder against her elbow in an impatient rhythm. Oh, I really didn’t want to study those pictures. Of course, if my stomach gave another heave, I’d add a different color to the photos. And look like a weakling. Which I couldn’t do in front of this woman.
I picked up the nearest photo. It had been taken while the couple was still in the car. The boy had been driving, and he hung forward, limp against the restraint of his seat belt, the deflated air bag in front of him. There was so much blood it obscured the actual wounds. The girl had been in the backseat, and not wearing a seat belt. The wreak had thrown her forward, so she was caught with her lower half still in the back and her upper body wedged between the front seats at an unnatural angle.
I put the photo down.
The next two were of the car itself. The first was from the outside, and was a close-up of the car door covered in dried smears of blood around the door handle. The next was of deep blood stains on the backseat—presumably where the girl had been before the wreck. She must have been lying down and bleeding heavily based on the size of the blood pool covering the seat. I stared at the photos, imagining the teens, injured and frightened, clawing at the door to get it open. The girl might not even have been conscious, her boyfriend laying her in the back before sliding behind the wheel. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I pushed the pictures to the side.
The rest of the photos were from the girl’s autopsy. I couldn’t decide if the cleaned and clinical close-ups of her wounds were better or worse than the bloody accident scene. I reached the picture I’d first seen where skin and muscle were stripped away to show white bone behind the flayed flesh, and I was proud that my stomach didn’t heave this time, at least, not hard enough that my body betrayed me to the watching MCIB inspector.
I forced myself to make sense of the image, and decided I was looking at the femur bone in her leg. My stomach gave another painful lurch. Having identified the injury, I shuffled the photo to the bottom of the stack. The next image was of her back. Claw marks crisscrossed over her shoulders, one set ending in deep puncture marks where the creature had dug in its claws. I couldn’t tell the actual depth from the photos, but judging by the location, I’d have been shocked if her lung wasn’t perforated.
Was she even alive when she reached the car?
I stared at the carnage that had been her back and shivered. Then I shut my eyes and forced myself to take a deep breath. I needed to be analytical right now, not emotional. Opening my eyes, I counted the claw marks. They were in rows of five. Not a cougar then, or there would have been rows of no more than four.
“My best guess would be a bear,” I said, looking up from the pictures and hoping I’d never see them again. “There are black bears in this region.”
“Look at the pictures of her arm.”
I gritted my teeth, but shuffled the stack of photos until I found the two Darque wanted me to look at. One was of the outside of the girl’s arm and showed four deep lacerations. The other was of the inside of the same arm. I could see the tips of the gashes from the previous image, but what the photographer had been trying to capture was a single laceration on the inside of her arm that was almost perfectly centered with the outer gashes. The blood drained from my face as I looked from one photo to the other.
Apparently I’d finally given Darque a response she wanted, because she leaned forward and tapped the picture of the girl’s inner arm. “Ever seen a bear with an opposable thumb?”
Crap. Definitely not an animal. Not a mundane one at least. Wild beasts of legend were occasionally spotted roaming the wilderness outside the city. And not just around Nekros, they were appearing in all the previously folded spaces that had opened after the Magical Awakening. I assumed it was
only a matter of time before they started appearing in the few remaining undomesticated areas from the pre-Awakening period as well.
But if it was some unnatural or magical beast, why come to me? Or did they suspect a fae? There were any number of fae who sported talons or claws. But again, if they suspected fae, there was no reason for Briar to be here. For one thing, I obviously didn’t have claws, and for another, if the OMIH had any inkling of my heritage, this would be a very different conversation. I was a card carrying, OMIH certified witch, but I had the feeling if Tamara put my DNA sample into the RMC reader that I wouldn’t register human. Not that I was advertising that fact. So why the hell did the MCIB send a militant investigator to grill me?
I gathered the photos into a stack and pushed them across my desk toward Briar. “I don’t see the connection.”
She stared at me, her hard gaze searching my face. Her expression screamed that she expected to find deceit in my features. Fat chance.
Darque glanced at her wrist, and a flicker of surprise crossed her face. “You really don’t get it,” she said as if she couldn’t believe it.
I followed her gaze to a small charm pressed flat against her wrist. A lie detector charm? I tried to focus on the one charm, but she had so much magic on her, picking such a small spell out of the mess was impossible. But I’d put money on a lie detector.
She looked up and opened her folder again. “I have your file. You’re certified to work as both a grave witch and a sensitive, and are ranked exceptional in both. You opted out of attempting to certify in any division of spell-crafting.” That fact earned a note of disbelief, as if she couldn’t understand why any witch wouldn’t certify in at least low-level spell-crafting. I wasn’t about to tell her that I wouldn’t have passed. Not that I needed to say anything as she’d already moved on. “Yes, I thought so. You were trained at a wyrd academy. You must have been taught this. Reports of grave robbing and grave desecration? Victims attacked during the night, and found with wounds consistent with a humanoid not two miles down the road from where some of the reports of nighttime disturbances in a graveyard occurred?”
I hadn’t known they’d been anywhere near the south graveyard. The article had only said the car had been found south of the city. But now that I knew, and she presented it all together…“You think we have ghouls?”
“And she proves she’s not a complete idiot. Yes, ghouls—in at least four different graveyards. Which means you, Ms. Craft, are being charged with murder.”
Chapter 16
Murder. The word ricocheted around my head and then rattled down my spine, making my whole body shake.
“I didn’t—” I wanted to say I hadn’t killed anyone, but I had. The fact it was only in defense of myself and those I cared about didn’t change that I’d killed. Nor did it stop the nightmares.
But I hadn’t murdered anyone. And that I could say.
“Really? What do you call what happened to this girl?” Briar tossed the photos across the desk again. “You created a prime ghoul and allowed it to kill, more than once, judging by the fact at least three cemeteries are infested. That’s murder by magical proxy.”
“No.” I’d had quite a few magical issues in the last few months, but creating a prime ghoul—the first that would bridge the way for more of the creatures to cross over from the land of the dead—wasn’t on the list. There were only two ways to create a prime, one involved a grave witch who was actively in contact with the grave to die and her body be possessed. The other was for a grave witch to, either by accident or design, allow a creature from the land of the dead to cross through her and into a dead body, turning it into an animated cannibalistic corpse. I’d felt the dark things in the land of the dead before and I stayed the hell away from them.
“Ms. Craft, I’ll be honest. While seeing you locked away for your crimes is important, what is on the top of my to-do list right now is finding and destroying the prime. Tell me where to find it and I’ll let my superiors know you cooperated. You want that, trust me, because I’m in a hurry, which means I won’t hesitate to dose you with a compulsion spell and then ask my questions.” She fingered a vial on her belt, just in case I doubted she’d use such a spell. “A lot of paperwork goes with compulsion spells, and paperwork pisses me off. I suggest you cooperate, because you won’t like me pissed.”
That I believe. Unfortunately I didn’t have the answers she wanted.
“You have the wrong person,” I said, trying to keep my voice level and not provoke her.
“Like hell I do. Your file speaks for itself, and besides, not only are you the practicing grave witch in the area, but there is witness testimony.”
“That’s impossible,” I sputtered, any semblance of calm evaporating. I’d never even seen a ghoul, let alone created a prime—and creating monsters was the type of thing a girl wouldn’t forget. “Who’s your witness?”
“I won’t reveal my sources, but the story was corroborated. Or do you deny using the dead to attack a group of witches?”
I blinked at her dumbly, waiting for my brain to scale the wall of shock and give me a clue. No use. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I would never do something as stupid as tangle with the creatures on the other side of the chasm. Except ghosts of course, but they hardly counted as they were souls not meant to exist in the land of the dead.
I stopped. Ghosts.
A month ago I’d been kidnapped by a group of magic drunk skimmers who’d wanted me to rip a hole into the Aetheric for them. I’d manifested every haunt in the graveyard as a distraction.
“I’m assuming your sources are either in the mental ward or jail,” I said and Briar glowered.
“So you don’t deny it.”
“I don’t deny utilizing a handful of ghosts to escape armed kidnappers, who, by the way, had recently attacked a unit of ABMU officers after going mad from direct contact with the Aetheric. No, I don’t deny that. But they were ghosts. Ghosts. And ghosts can’t become ghouls.”
Briar frowned, but it had an edge of justification in it. “So you did, in fact, use your grave magic to utilize the dead as a weapon.”
“No, I created a distraction. And I did it only so I didn’t get my head blown off.”
“And I’m sure you have an excuse you find equally justifiable for why you created the ghoul. Now where is it? For so many graveyards to have ghouls it must not be trapped behind cemetery gates.”
“I told you, I didn’t—” I started to say, but paused as Briar reached into her jacket. I braced to dive out of the way if she followed through on her threat to hit me with a compulsion spell. But it wasn’t a potion or charm she pulled free but another photo.
“Look at this boy,” she said, dropping the photo in front of me. “He’s already transitioning. In a couple of hours he’ll pass beyond saving. Then there are only two paths for him. One, the transition finishes, he dies and rises as a ghoul, or two, he’s terminated before he finishes changing and his body is destroyed so he can’t come back. And that would be my job.”
She tapped the photo, forcing me to look at the boy and all the machines hooked up to his body.
“I hate terminating kids,” she said, fixing me with a dark stare. “So prove something decent exists in you and tell me where the damn prime is because there are only two ways to save this boy. One is to kill every ghoul that so much as scratched him—not an easy task as they don’t come out in the day and tonight will be too late for him. Or I can cut the chain from the top. Kill the prime and all the other ghouls lose their anchor and lay still like good corpses. Which do you think I prefer?”
“I didn’t create the prime. Check your lie detector. I’m telling you the truth.”
Her lips curled back, revealing gritted teeth, but she lifted her wrist to check the charm. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. “Either you’re pathological or using a counter charm. Hand over your bracelet and any other magical items you have on your person.”
This couldn’t
be happening.
When I didn’t immediately comply, Briar fingered something in her pouch and said, “Remember, Ms. Craft, I wield the full authority of the MCIB in this investigation. If I think you are actively hindering my investigation or pose a threat to me, the OMIH, or the general population”—in one swift movement she swung the crossbow off her back and leveled it at my chest—“I can disable you by any means necessary.”
I gulped hard enough that I felt the movement all the way to my pounding temples. For the second time in an hour, I was on the wrong side of a crossbow. At least it wasn’t loaded with a steal-tipped incendiary round this time. I hadn’t seen her make the change, but the crossbow was now loaded with a bright blue foam bolt that carried a nasty concoction that felt like an immobilizer, a sleeping spell, and a draught that could temporarily block a witch’s ability to channel Aetheric energy. The last was a heavily regulated spell, and I had no idea who or what she thought she’d face that she’d need to combine all three. After all, a witch who can’t move and is unconscious wasn’t going to be casting any spells. But I guess I had to give Briar Darque one thing—she was certainly thorough with her overkill.
She twitched the crossbow, just the smallest jerk of a motion, but I got the message loud and clear. She would shoot me if I didn’t comply, and quickly.
I needed no additional prompting.
The obsidian ring where I stored Aetheric energy went on the desk first. Then I unclasped my bracelet as directed, and tossed it on the desk. As soon as it broke skin contact, I lost the benefit of my extra shields. I almost never took off the bracelet unless I was inside a circle. Even this morning, when I’d used my meditation charm on Nina Kingly, I’d never lost skin contact with the shields. Well, at least I’m not on the street. Then I’d really be in trouble. Inside, the building’s wards kept grave essence from assaulting me, but the wards couldn’t do anything about the fact I was a living, breathing, nexus in which the planes of reality converged. My personal mental shields kept my psyche grounded in mortal reality, but there was always a little slippage, tendrils of my mind that tied parts of me to the other planes. The shield bracelet helped me ignore those other planes. Without the added barrier, my psyche’s favorite two planes, the Aetheric and the land of the dead, stopped just hovering in my peripheral and swam across my vision.
Grave Memory: An Alex Craft Novel Page 14