Magic Triumphs

by Ilona Andrews

  “Someone boiled two hundred people and dumped the liquid and their remains near Serenbe at a Walmart distribution center.”

  Silence.

  “Did you say ‘boiled’?”

  “I did.”

  Luther swore.

  “The mass grave is unsecured and magically potent. There are no bugs in it, Luther. No insect activity anywhere for approximately a quarter mile. I’ve got a basic chalk ward around it now, and Teddy Jo’s watching it. The sheriff’s department is coming today to process the scene, so if you want to get here before them, you have to hurry. It’s off South Fulton Parkway heading west. I’ll mark the turnoff for you.”

  “I’m on my way. Do not leave that grave site, Kate. You do whatever you have to do to keep anything from spawning in there.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll sit on it.”

  I hung up and dialed home. No answer. Figured. Curran was still out.

  I called George. Conlan was down for a nap. He had eaten some cereal and successfully run away from her twice.

  I hung up and dug through the kitchen of the dead house for salt. A big bag waited for me in the pantry. I carried it outside to the Jeep just in time to see Derek hefting four forty-pound bags like they weighed nothing.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Found a communal hunters’ shed,” he said. “They must’ve used this for a deer salt lick. There is more.”

  “We’ll need it.”

  We headed toward the shed.

  “Talk to me about scent trails,” I asked.

  “Human,” he said. “But there’s something else with it. A screwed-up scent. When you smell a loup, it smells wrong. Toxic. You know there will be no talking. Either you kill it or it will kill you. These things stink like that. Loup but no loup.”

  “Corrupted?” I guessed.

  “Yeah. That’s a good word for it. They took the people out to the mouth of the subdivision.”

  I waited but he didn’t say anything else.

  “And then?”

  “The scent stops,” he said. “It reappears by the puddle.”

  “Stops like they teleported?”

  “Pretty much.”

  I’d run up against teleportation a couple of times. Teleporting a single human being took a staggering amount of power. The first time, a gathering of very powerful volhvs, Russian pagan priests, had done one, but it had taken a sacrifice to do it. The second time had been a djinn. Djinn were elder beings, extremely powerful and very rare. There simply wasn’t enough magic in the world to support the continuous existence of one. That particular djinn had been imprisoned inside a jewel. It was a sophisticated prison that sustained him between magic waves, when technology was at its highest. Even so, he’d required a human with a significant reservoir of magic whom he’d possessed in order to do his tricks, and then he’d hidden in Unicorn Lane, where some magic flowed even during the tech, for his final act.

  How the hell did whoever this was disappear two hundred people?

  I really didn’t want to deal with another djinn. I’d had a stroke, well, several small strokes simultaneously, and almost died the last time.

  I turned to Derek. “Could you tell from the scents if all of the people disappeared at the same time?”

  “Yes, and they did.”

  “Two hundred people and whatever herded them,” I thought out loud. “Teleportation is right out. Too much magic. It has to be a pocket reality.”

  Derek glanced at me.

  “Remember during the last flare when Bran appeared? He spent most of his time in the mist outside of our reality.”

  “I remember the rakshasas and their flying palace in a magical jungle.”

  Of course he did. After what they’d done to his face, he would never forget them. “This is probably similar. Someone came out, grabbed a bunch of people, and took them somewhere.” Which would imply the presence of an elder power, which meant we were all screwed.

  The elder powers—gods, djinn, dragons, the great, the powerful, the legendary—required too much magic to exist in our reality. They did exist somewhere, in the mists, in other realms or dimensions, loosely connected to us. Nobody quite knew how it all worked. Nobody knew what would happen if one of them manifested and was caught by a tech wave. Conventional wisdom said they would cease to exist, which was why the only time we saw any elder beings was during a flare, a magic tsunami that came every seven years. During the flare, the magic stayed for at least three days, sometimes longer.

  This area wasn’t particularly saturated with magic. If we were dealing with an elder power, this one had balls. Normally, my knee-jerk response was to blame every odd, powerfully magical thing on my father, but it didn’t feel like him. I hadn’t sensed any familiar magic, and there was nothing elegant or refined about dumping the remains like that in some forgotten parking lot. My father’s magic shocked you with beauty before it killed you.

  “It took two hundred people to its lair to boil them?” Derek asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did they want the bones?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure if the bones were incidental to this. There are worse interpretations.”

  Derek stopped and looked at me.

  “They may have boiled them slowly while they were alive to torture them,” I said.

  He turned to the shed.

  “The world is a fucked-up place,” I told him. “That’s why I’m glad I have Conlan.”

  He gave me a sharp look.

  “The world needs more good people in it, and my son will be a good person.”

  * * *

  • • •

  IT TOOK OVER two hours before the loud snarling of enchanted car engines announced Biohazard’s arrival. Two SUVs fought their way up the road, growling and spitting. Behind them a heavy armored truck brought in a cistern. Behind that came two more SUVs. The vehicles spat out people and containers of orange safety suits. They took one whiff of the air rising from the puddle fifty yards behind us and got masks on.

  Luther strode toward us. Stocky and dark-haired, he was wearing boots, a pair of stained shorts, and a T-shirt that said KNIGHT IN THE STREETS, WIZARD IN THE SHEETS.

  “I like the T-shirt,” I told him. “Very professional.”

  He didn’t rise to the bait. He just stared at the jellied mass grave. We’d made a basic salt circle around it. The pavement was too broken for the chalk lines.

  “I’ll need a statement,” he said. “From the werewolf and Thanatos, too. Where is he?”

  I nodded. Teddy Jo had taken a spot on top of the warehouse roof, looking down at the grave. Black smoke curled from him, swirling around his body. If he’d had the power, he would’ve plucked the remains of a young couple from that grave and resurrected them. But he didn’t. None of us did. Only gods brought people back from the dead, and the results were usually mixed, to put it kindly.

  “He’s grieving,” I told Luther. “One of his people is in that. He can’t shepherd his soul to the afterlife. To do that, he would have to perform rites over the body, and there is no way to separate it. He can’t bring the body back to the family. He is very angry, so I would be gentle in my questioning.”

  Luther nodded.

  I told him about the scent trail disappearing. The more I talked, the deeper his frown grew.

  “An elder power?” he asked.

  “I hope not.”

  He stared at the grave again. “Whole families, even the children?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why?”

  I wished I knew why. “The bones are missing.”

  He grimaced. “The highest concentration of magic is in human bones. That’s why ghouls chew on them. Do we know for sure that they extracted the bones and kept them?”

  “No, but sta
tistically there should’ve been at least some bones in there. A skull, a femur, something. I only saw soft tissue.”

  He sighed and for a moment he seemed older, his eyes haunted. “I’ll let you know after we excavate and go through it.”

  We stood for a long moment, united by outrage and grief. We would both dig into that, he from his end and I from mine. Eventually we would find the one responsible. But it would do nothing for the families whose remains lay in the parking lot, dumped like garbage.

  Finally, Luther nodded and went to get into his orange suit while I went to give my statement.

  * * *

  • • •

  HELL WAS BEING stuck behind a teamster convoy driving across Magnolia Bridge. Normally I would’ve turned off onto the side street, but Magnolia was one of those new bridges that spanned the rubble of collapsed overpasses and fallen buildings and was the fastest way back to the office, and my head was still full of boiled people. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late.

  It cost us a solid half hour, and when we pulled up to Cutting Edge, the afternoon was in full swing. Derek got out, unlocked our parking lot chain, and I drove into my spot and parked.

  The street was relatively quiet today, the heat having chased off most of the customers normally frequenting Bill Horn’s tinker shop and Nicole’s car repair place. Only Mr. Tucker lingered. Time and age had whittled his once broad-shouldered and probably muscular body to a thin, slightly frail frame. It had also stolen most of his hair, so he kept it so short, it looked like white fuzz floating over his dark-brown scalp. But the years hadn’t destroyed his spirit. He walked our street twice in the morning and at least once in the afternoon, carrying a large placard. The placard said, ATTENTION! THE END OF THE WORLD IS HERE! OPEN YOUR EYES!

  As I climbed out of the Jeep, Mr. Tucker delivered the same message at the top of his voice, just as he’d done countless times before. But, being Southern, Mr. Tucker also believed in politeness.

  “Repent! The end is here! How you folks doing today?”

  “Can’t complain,” I lied. “Would you like some iced tea? It’s hot out.”

  Mr. Tucker raised a metal canteen at me. “Got some tea at Bill’s. Thank you. I’ll see you around.”

  “Okay, Mr. Tucker.”

  A car went by slowly, obviously looking for something. Mr. Tucker lunged toward it, shaking his placard. “Repent! Open your eyes! You’re living in the Apocalypse!”

  I sighed, unlocked the side door, and went inside. Derek followed me, grimacing. “He’s going to get hit by a car one day.”

  “And when he does, we’ll take him to the hospital.”

  Mr. Tucker was right. We were living in the Apocalypse. Slowly, with each magic wave, a little more of the old technological world died, and the new world and its powers and monsters grew a little stronger. Being one of the monsters, I supposed I shouldn’t complain.

  We needed to clear our caseload. Serenbe had to take precedence. I checked the large chalkboard hanging on the wall. Three cases active: a ghoul in Oakland Cemetery, a mysterious “critter” with shiny eyes scaring the students at the Art Institute and eating expensive paint, and a report of an abnormally large glowing wolf in a suburb off Dunwoody Road. Derek approached the board and wiped the wolf off.

  “Got it last night.”

  “What was it?”

  “Desandra.”

  I blinked at him. “The alpha of Clan Wolf?”

  Derek nodded.

  “What is she doing in Dunwoody Heights?”

  “She tried to enroll her boys in gymnastics class in the city, and one of the other parents threw a giant fit, so they asked her to leave. She’s been rolling in glow-in-the-dark powder and menacing that woman’s house for the last three nights.”

  “Did you explain to her that intimidation isn’t in the Pack’s best interests?”

  “I did. She told me that she would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for me, a meddling kid.”

  I stoically kept a straight face. “Good job on closing the case.”

  “Sure.”

  “So where did you put the Scooby Snacks?”

  “Hilarious,” he said dryly.

  I pondered the board. A year ago, I would’ve tossed the paint case at Ascanio and forgotten about it. But Ascanio was scarce lately. He barely came in anymore. The last couple of times I had to call him instead of him bugging me for jobs nonstop. School had taken up a lot of his time, but he’d graduated last year.

  He was still nominally on the books. I picked up the phone and dialed the Bouda House.

  Miranda answered with a breathy “Hello.”

  “It’s me.”

  The sexy breathiness vanished. “Oh, hi, Kate.”

  “Is the evil spawn around?”

  “He’s helping Raphael with something.”

  That was the answer I’d gotten the last time I’d called, too. “Okay. Would you let him know that I have a job if he’s interested?”

  “Sure.”

  I was Ascanio’s employer, but Raphael and Andrea were his alphas, and Clan Bouda valued loyalty to the clan above all else. Raphael trumped me. “On second thought, never mind. We’ll handle it.”

  “Okay,” Miranda said.

  I hung up. With Ascanio MIA and Julie off with Curran on his hunting adventure, we were down to just me and Derek.

  “You want me to take it?” he asked.

  “No, I need you for Serenbe. We’ll have to pass it on to the Guild.” I hated passing gigs to the Guild. I promised to do the job when I took it, and I took pride in making sure we got it done. Now I would have to explain to the clients that we were too busy. It was bad business and it made me feel lousy. But sometimes I had no choice.

  I dialed Barabas at the Guild. I could’ve gone to the Clerk, but since Barabas was the head admin, it would be faster. Besides, the mercs walked into dangerous situations all the time. They needed to know about Serenbe. The more people who knew, the better our chances of figuring this out were.

  He picked up on the first ring. “Yes?”

  “I have to send you two gigs. One is a nuisance job, but the ghoul extraction will need someone good on it.”

  “Is your father invading?”

  “No, but something bad happened.” I brought him up to date on Serenbe. “Whoever did this got away clean. I have a feeling it won’t be a onetime thing.”

  There was a long tense silence.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I am. I’m trying to think of a way to notify the mercs that also won’t cause a panic.”

  “If you figure that out, call me back.” I could use some pointers in the notifying etiquette department.

  “I will. We’ll take care of the gigs.”

  “Thanks.”

  I hung up, pulled the two files on the ghoul and the paint eater, and put them on my desk. I’d pass them on to Barabas when I got home today. Being neighbors had its advantages.

  “You really think this will happen again?” Derek asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I leaned against the table. “They killed the dogs, got two hundred people out, and made them disappear. Nobody escaped. None of the attackers died, or at least we didn’t find any of their bodies or large pools of their blood. Nothing went wrong. They had no screwups. You don’t get that good at controlling large numbers of people unless you practice.”

  “You think they’ve done it before.”

  “I know they’ve done it before, and more than once. If they’ve done it more than once, it’s likely they need a continuous supply of humans for something, so they’ll do it again. I need to be there to stop them. This city is not going to be their hunting ground if I can help it. So, you and I are going to call the Pack, the People, the Order, and every other
person in charge we know and notify them that this happened.” Biohazard would be sending its own notifications, but I wanted to put the net out as wide as I could.

  Derek moved to his desk. “Dibs on the Pack.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “KATE?” DEREK’S FACE blocked my view.

  I rubbed my forehead. “Yes?”

  “Food?” he asked.

  Food? I hadn’t eaten at all today. “Food would be amazing.”

  He nodded and went out the door.

  In the past two hours, I’d talked to the three county sheriff’s offices where people knew me: Douglas, Gwinnett, and Milton. Beau Clayton, the Milton County sheriff, and I went way back. He didn’t like hearing about the disappeared people.

  I called the Order and asked to speak to Nick Feldman and was told by Maxine, the Order’s telepathic secretary, that he was in the city but out at the moment, so I had to leave a message with her. I kept it short.

  If the Order knew anything, they wouldn’t share it with me, and they didn’t trust my information. In the eight months I’d been back at work, we’d had to cooperate on a few cases, and every time working with Nick Feldman, the current knight-protector, was like pulling teeth. My mother breaking up his parents’ marriage was bad enough, but Nick also spent some time undercover in Hugh d’Ambray’s inner circle, and he got to see firsthand how my father operated. He hated our whole family with the passion of a thousand suns and had made it his life’s mission to make sure we didn’t exist.

  Derek had taken the city’s law enforcement, the Pack, and some of the street contacts he’d been building. Between us, we’d pretty much covered it. Only the People were left.

  I dialed the number.

  “You’ve reached the Casino Help Desk,” a young man said into the phone. “This is Noah. How can we make your day wonderful?”

  That would take a miracle. “Put me through to Ghastek or Rowena, please.”

  “May I ask who is calling?”

  “Kate.”

  “Are they expecting your call?”

  Great. I’d gotten a new apprentice or journeyman. “No.”