She felt tears running down her cheeks and cursed inwardly. She wasn't crying. She wasn't. She choked back an audible sob. ::I will. I won't do this to you.::
::Thank you. I'm sorry. You were the first one I've met I thought I could fall in love with, Jaz. I wish we could have had the chance to find out.::
She was crying openly now, kneeling in a spreading pool of blood, talking to his ghost. ::I don't know if I could have loved you. I'm sorry.::
::Don't be sorry. I have a gift for you. The eternal part of my soul should be sent on to whatever comes next—but rather than leave a part of myself behind as a ghost or spirit, I want you to make use of that energy.::
She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. ::What? I don't understand.::
::I don't have a lot of time left. It's time for me to leave...
::Listen ... the soul is made up of three distinct parts. The Ka, or oversoul, is the part that remembers every incarnation. It exists separate from the body, outside of both time and space. The middlesoul, or what we know as the soul, inhabits the body and returns to the oversoul upon death. The undersoul, or life force, sometimes known as chi, couples with the middlesoul to animate the body. If a person dies by violence, before the chi is used up, the undersoul often lingers, manifesting itself as a ghost or some other kind of haunting until it is finally used up.
::My middlesoul is ready to fly this realm, but my undersoul will remain. It is not me, but will retain some of my knowledge and feelings. I want you to weave my chi into a new kind of spirit—a guardian of sorts for your dimension of mirrors. That way, in some manner, I can still be of help to you in your quest. Promise me.::
::I promise.::
::Good. Take care of yourself, Jaz. I'll miss you.::
"I'll miss you too,” she murmured aloud. Using magesight, she saw a portion of the energy trapped within her mana net pull free and vanish into the ether. Satisfied that the part of him that made him him had fled, she slowly picked apart the net and wove a whole new pattern, incorporating the undersoul into the matrix.
Before this new spirit could completely coalesce, she grabbed a loose thread and used it to propel it into her mirrorgate. For a split second she saw the image of what looked to be an empty gray robe staring out at her, then it vanished.
She stood, wrapped her own arms around herself, and sniffled a couple of times. “Someone get rid of that body,” she said, jerking her thumb at the dead immortal. “What kind of funeral services do you people use around here?” she asked Johnny.
"We have a few,” he replied. “It doesn't matter, though. He was a Trader. They have their own ceremonies."
"Fine. Point me in the right direction and we'll take care of that as soon as possible. We've got a lot of cleaning up to do before I head back to Earth."
Eighteen
Tacoma, WA
September 5th, 2018
1:30 AM
The ‘gate flickered and died. Jaz took a look around, fingers itching to feel the weight of her katana while her brain told her the last thing she needed to do would be to attract too much attention. They'd been gone for quite some time—longer than she'd expected. She found that out almost immediately.
One of the first things she'd done after stepping out of the ‘gate was to retrieve the previous day's copy of the News-Tribune from a nearby vending machine. The date had surprised her a little. She wasn't sure if it was that time ran differently on Starhaven, or that the lack of any sort of natural phenomenon to measure time just made it feel that way.
They weren't alone—of that much she was certain. Orcas and Cecil had their swords out and were scanning the surrounding shadows suspiciously, while Raven stood beneath a street lamp and casually cleaned his fingernails while she considered their next step. Bonedance gave her an unreadable look and disappeared from view before she could say anything. Back to his lab, most likely. He wasn't happy that Chaz had elected to remain behind and insisted that he return to Earth in his place.
She sighed. Not her business. She had plenty of her own with which to contend.
She needed to talk to either Shea or Athena, though Nemesis Breed would do in a pinch, she decided. The distinct air of menace that hung over the city dug its way into her consciousness, though, and she didn't like it one bit.
Had something happened while they were gone? “Quickfingers!"
The imp popped in. “Yeah, boss?"
"Find Deryk or Athena for me, will you? Tell them we're back and we need to meet."
She was still trying to figure out why the ‘gate had formed here rather than in its original location in Loki's Lab, or the secondary site in the Shea Building sub-basement. They shouldn't have emerged out in the open like this.
Something just wasn't adding up. She wanted to know what it was before they proceeded any farther.
Quickfingers sketched a hasty salute and vanished with a loud pop.
"What's going on?” Orcus asked in his basso rumble.
"I'm still trying to figure that out,” Jaz told him. She heard a faint rustling, turned, and realized Raven was gone. He'd taken to the rooftops. Predictable. That was where both of them felt more comfortable. The two ‘thropes, on the other hand, were pretty much ground-pounders. She needed to stay with them until they had some answers.
Suddenly she found herself caught in a spotlight. A police car, appearing seemingly from nowhere, pinned them like flies in amber. “You! Stay where you are! Throw down your weapons."
Orcus and Cecil looked at Jaz, who shrugged. “Do what he says,” she told them.
The swords hit the pavement with a clang. The two cops emerged from the squad car, pistols already in hand. “Kneel down and put your hands behind your heads!” one shouted.
"Not going to happen,” she said, knowing the two lycanthropes could hear her. She went to magesight and casually swept up two mana strands.
"Down on your knees!"
"Hold on!” she said. Dammit, Raven—this is a really bad time for the only one of us with official ID to be taking a sightseeing tour. “We're with the P-A-C!"
"Sure you are. How ‘bout we let the lawyers sort that out?"
"How ‘bout we don't?” Jaz growled. “I don't have time for this shit."
"Down on your knees!” the other officer snapped, seeing that his partner was starting to waver. Even the mention of PAC status was enough to make him think twice about arresting them. She almost felt sorry for the guy—he had no way of knowing who was or was not a real agent.
"Sorry, guys. It's not that I don't trust you, but I'm not going to put me and my men in danger by surrendering to you."
The first uniformed officer, the one who'd first called for them to kneel, came a little closer, squinting slightly. “Hey, aren't you Jasmine Tashae?"
She nodded. It wasn't as though she could honestly deny it. She wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but she thought it best to answer honestly. “Yes."
"She's on the list,” the officer said, holstering his pistol. “Let ‘em go."
The other cop, obviously the senior partner, looked a little hesitant, but he did as his partner suggested. “Can't be too careful these days,” he murmured.
"What's so different about these days?” Jaz asked him.
He gave his partner a dark look and leaned against the hood of the patrol car. “We've had a rash of unexplained murders lately. We thought it was vampires at first, but the boss says it isn't."
By ‘the boss,’ Jaz assumed he meant Nemesis Breed, Tacoma's Chief of Police, one of Athena's best friend. “So who—or what—does she think is doing it?"
He snorted. “Nobody knows. Just told us it wasn't vampires."
That doesn't sound good, she thought. “I appreciate it. Can you guys give us a ride to the Shea Building?"
They both shifted their gaze to Orcus, who grinned down at them. “Sorry, guys. This is the only size I come in."
"Too big for the car,” the younger cop sighed. “We'd've had to call for a van
if we'd actually managed to arrest them. And even that would've been a tight fit."
The older cop grunted something profane and climbed back in the car. “C'mon!” he yelled out the window. “We've got bad guys to chase."
"More like donuts,” the young cop said with a smirk. “The bad guys are as scared as everyone else. Almost no one comes outside after dark anymore. Except us and other emergency personnel.” He shrugged and turned back toward the car. He paused, one hand on the door handle. “So far whatever's killing people hasn't come after us yet."
He climbed into the car, put it in gear, and pulled away from the curb. They stood there in silence as the car turned the next corner and disappeared from sight.
"Is it just me, or was that a bit weird?” Orcus asked.
"No—that was weird,” Cecil answered. “Those guys are really scared."
"I noticed that too,” Jaz murmured. Makes me wonder how these people they talk about are being killed. Anything that has cops that freaked out is something to be concerned about. “I'll make sure it's the first question I ask Athena,” she told them. “Let's get moving. If we stand around waiting for Quickfingers, we'll probably end up standing here till the sun comes up."
* * * *
She glanced up at the clock and groaned. A quarter to five in the morning. Jaz inexplicably wanted nothing more than to find a bed and curl up for a while. That was out of the question at this point. She had more important things to do.
Her lycanthropes had already found someplace to den—most likely her under-utilized suite only a couple floors away—while she dealt with Athena and all the headaches that interaction usually brought with it.
Jaz hated crime scenes. Especially nasty, bloody crime scenes. Even if she was only viewing them through photographs.
She slid the eight by ten glossy back across the table and shrugged. “Quite a mess. Any idea what happened?"
Athena fixed her with a cold, single-eyed glare and shook her head. “None. Five dead citizens. Same horrendous physical trauma. No physical evidence."
"Is that what you're calling it? People are ripped into bloody gobbets and you're calling it ‘horrendous trauma'?"
"What else should we call it?” Athena asked her. “It's as though all these people were fed into a chipping machine in their own living rooms."
"No evidence of preternatural activity, I take it,” Jaz mused aloud. “No bite marks on the flesh, no sign of anything vampiric?"
"One of the incidents happened in broad daylight, we're pretty sure, which rules out ninety-nine point nine percent of all vampires. And even if some crazy bastard was turned into a lycanthrope, there's still no real motive for doing this to the victims."
Jaz had to agree. It was probably the most gruesome thing she'd ever seen. Not that she was particularly squeamish, but the photo was damn hard to look at. She was just glad she hadn't been forced to check out the scene in person. She took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. “This tastes like crap."
"I'd be a little more concerned about it if it wasn't your third cup,” Athena told her. “Stop drinking it and I might reconsider sending someone to get us some real coffee."
"We live in what's arguably the coffee capital of the western world and you insist on serving these rodent squeezings to your guests? That's truly awful."
"You're hardly a guest, Jaz. More like a semi-permanent irritant—like a reoccurring cockroach infestation."
"Gee, thanks. I'm sure I love you, too. Oh, wait. That's someone else entirely."
Athena rolled her single eye. “Nice to see you haven't lost your sense of humor—such as it is."
"It's hard to be humorous when you're looking at something as gory as this picture,” Jaz said with a fake smile. “Sarcastic is the best I have to offer."
"I was hoping you could offer some insight."
"I've got insight, but you're not going to want to hear it."
"Try me."
"Rogue mage."
Athena glanced back at the photo and visibly shuddered. “Are you telling me we have a psychopathic mage out there?"
"It's the only explanation that fits,” Jaz told her. “Unless you have a better one you're just not sharing."
"Maybe it's another creature like Malice,” she said, referring to the first of the Enemy's immortal creations sent to Earth. He'd been powerful and quite insane. A sadist and wanton killer intent on spreading fear through the populace. They still didn't know who was responsible for ending his reign of terror.
"Maybe. Actually, I'm hoping it is. Judging by both Malice and Armageddon,” she said, referring to the second such immortal operative as well, “the immortals the Centians create don't seem to be screwed together all that tight."
Athena nodded. “It's definitely a better case scenario than an insane mage would be."
"Speaking of insane mages ... whatever happened with Thoth? Did you guys finally confront him after I'd left?"
Athena shook her head. “He went to ground. We don't know where he ended up. Bast has taken over administration at the Academy and we have all our operatives looking for Thoth right now."
"It might be Thoth, then."
"What? Why would he do this?” She tapped the photo by way of illustration.
"Hell, Athena, I don't know. Why did he teach all of us only half of what we needed to know? Maybe he's working for the enemy. Maybe he's just an asshole."
"Perhaps. I do know one thing—Loki wants to rip his head off."
Thoth and Loki had once been the best of friends. It was Loki's intervention that allowed him his position at the Academy in the first place. Now that he'd learned Thoth had been fooling them all, Jaz had no doubts Loki would be out for blood.
So to speak.
"All the victims were adults?” Jaz asked.
Athena nodded.
"And there's nothing up to this point to tie them all together?"
"Other than the manner of their death—no."
"So without a link between them, we have no motive to work from."
"Unless the motive is only to spread terror."
Jaz nodded. “That's a possibility. Is it working?"
"So far we've managed to keep the worst of it out of the news, but we're running out of time on it. We've tried to reconstruct the crime scene with necromancy, but came up with nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Absolutely nothing."
"That almost guarantees that the killer is a mage. Using necromancy to destroy or devour the undersouls of the victims."
Athena frowned at this. “Undersouls?"
"Something I learned about while I was gone—they're the life energy of a person that's left behind when they die a violent death. They occasionally manifest as ghosts. They're almost—but not quite—mindless."
"Damn. Then it's almost definite—we're dealing with a rogue mage."
"As I said from the beginning."
"Any other ideas?"
"Off-hand? No. But we have to do something."
Athena looked almost ready to scream from frustration. Her fingers clawed at the table top, leaving grooves in the treated wood. “We can't stop this guy because we can't determine who's likely to be the next victim. He's just going to go on killing."
"It looks that way."
"That's not what I wanted to hear, Jaz. You're good at thinking outside the box. I need some of that thinking now. If you can help with this, I'll reinstate your PAC credentials."
Jaz snorted. “Who said I wanted you to?"
Athena stiffened. “Now you're just being stubborn."
Jaz smiled thinly. “Who says? You tell me that if I can help—not just be willing to help—you'll reinstate my credentials? What kind of crap is that?"
"You have to prove yourself again. You have to show that you'd be an asset to the team and not still just another loose cannon."
Jaz stood, her chair toppling to the floor behind her. “Fuck you, Athena. If you think I'm going to kiss your ass just to be a part of the �
��team’ you'd better think again."
"Dammit, Jasmine—you don't have to be so difficult."
"And you don't have to be such a manipulative, controlling bitch, Athena."
She grabbed a mana thread and jumped out, leaving Athena sitting there cursing silently. She reached out and hit the comm button on the table. “Deryk—your wayward charge has returned."
The harsh voice of the world's richest immortal emerged from a hidden speaker. “Has she? Is she all right?"
"She's still stubborn and touchy, if that's what you mean."
Shea laughed at that. “You pissed her off, didn't you?"
"How'd you guess?"
"I have pretty much given up any hope that you two will ever get along. You are far too authoritarian for her tastes."
"And for yours as well, I presume."
"I'll leave that one alone, Athena. Suffice to say I think both of you are at fault for this pattern of disagreement between you."
"Gee—thanks for the vote of confidence."
"You're very welcome. Did she have any insight into the murders?"
"Just that they were most likely done by a mage."
"So we're at the rogue mage scenario in truth, then?"
"So it appears."
"Was she willing to help track down the culprit?"
"She was—not so much anymore, though."
"What did you say to her?"
"I offered to reinstate her PAC credentials if she helped us catch the killer."
"And she took offense to that?" His voice took on a dubious note.
"Well—I indicated that we'd reinstate her if she actually helped us catch the killer, not if she just pitched in."
"You're kidding, right?"
"No. When have you ever known me to kid about something this important, Deryk?"
"You'd have been better off if you were kidding, Athena. No wonder she's pissed off. She may be a wild card, but she gets results. That in itself is worthy of note."
"Don't be getting down on me, Deryk. I'm not in the mood for your bullshit."
"You could have simply asked for her help. But you had to put conditions on it. That's where you screwed up. There is absolutely no way Jaz would stand for that."
"She's unreasonably stubborn."
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