A Brush With Death

by Stokes, S. C.

  A Brush With Death

  S.C. Stokes

  Contents

  A Welcome From The Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Thanks For Being Here

  Half-Blood’s Hex Preview

  A Welcome From The Author

  Welcome to A Brush With Death, the eighth title in my Conjuring a Coroner series.

  New York City has been struggling with a vampire infestation and the city is far from safe. As her enemies multiply Kasey is giving it her all and coming up short. What’s more she hasn’t seen a vision in months.

  In A Brush With Death, Kasey will be forced to confront the truth of who she is, but what she does with that truth will determine her destiny.

  So dive on in. Join Kasey as she finds her way in this new world.

  This year will see the next arc in Kasey’s journey as well as my new Urban Arcanology series set in this same world. How and where they will intersect I’m keeping a secret…for now.

  Some heroes are born. Others like Kasey, choose the path themselves. Not for glory, or fame, but because it is needed. Buckle up. It’s going to be a wild ride.

  Sincerely,

  S.C. Stokes

  P.S. Come join my VIP’s we’ve got cookies…I mean books.

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  Chapter One

  Casimir's Rare Book Emporium seemed an unlikely place for a murder. The worn brick facade and glass windows spoke of a building that had seen little maintenance in the last decade. From the outside, there wasn’t a lot to set it apart from a dozen other used bookstores just like it throughout New York. Unlike other vendors, however, Casimir’s specialized in rare books whose subject matter would have been considered ludicrous a decade ago, but in the wake of the attack on New York City, the supernatural and any evidence of it was becoming incredibly popular.

  The revelation of the existence of magic had turned Casimir’s Brooklyn based book store into a high-end luxury commodity. Instead of the occasional wizard seeking out some old tome, the wealthy elite of New York city were clamoring for his wares. People with more money than sense were buying up every hint of the supernatural that they could lay their hands on. Magic, it seemed, was in.

  Casimir appeared to have been doing a roaring trade in recent times, but this morning it seemed someone had wanted a discount. Or at least that was what Kasey thought as she stared at the shopfront’s shattered windows and the steel anti-theft grill that lay in a mangled heap on the sidewalk beside her. The entire reinforced security fitting looked like it had been torn off by the Incredible Hulk.

  “Why do we get all the weird ones?” Kasey asked.

  “That's what happens when you're famous, dear,” Detective Bishop replied. “After that incident with the Shinigami, any supernatural silliness that occurs in the city seems to find its way down to the Ninth Precinct. A year ago, UFOs and Bigfoot sightings would have been dismissed out of hand, but now dispatch is logging every single one of them. Part of the governor's new protocol to protect the city. Unfortunately, that means someone's gotta do the legwork, and sift the supernatural from the stupid, and whether by happy coincidence or willful punishment on his part, the police chief has decided that the Ninth Precinct will be the ones to do it.”

  “Lucky you,” Kasey said, crouching down in the snow to look at the steel grill.

  The metal had literally been torn free from its fittings. The amount of strength required to carry out such a feat was terrifying. Perhaps the thieves had used a pickup and a chain to tear it off its mount. Brazen smash and grabs were becoming increasingly popular as of late. If the thieves hadn’t used a machine, Kasey hesitated to think what manner of beast might have done it.

  “There is even talk about forming a special division. The Supernatural Response Unit or SRU,” Bishop said as she stood beside Kasey.

  “SRU? I like that,” Kasey said, trying to lift the steel grill with a gloved hand. The thing had to weigh three hundred pounds.

  “Yeah, Chief West was kinda hoping you'd come back to the Ninth. We could really use your help running things down,” Bishop replied, an air of hope in her voice.

  Kasey let out a sigh. “You know I'd love to, Bishop, but with everything that’s going on in the city, I’d never get a chance to search for the Brotherhood. I'm already working full-time for the Council. I can’t do both, and I need access to their resources if I'm going to track them down.”

  “Yeah, I know. Can’t blame a girl for trying though,” Bishop said, staring down at the grill. “You think that's weird, wait till you see the victim.”

  Bishop led the way over to a plastic sheet resting about six paces in front of the entrance to the store, her shoes crunching through the icy frost as she went. Reaching the sheet, Bishop peeled it back. Kasey’s stomach did an unpleasant somersault inside her.

  “Holy mother of…” Kasey began.

  Bishop shook her head. “I know, right?”

  “I take it this is why you called me?” Kasey asked, studying the ragged mess. “If you’re looking for cause of death, I’d have to say that most of what should be inside his head, is now on the outside. The human body doesn’t work very well like that.”

  “Ha, ha,” Bishop replied. “What would we do without you?”

  “I don’t know but I’d definitely get a solid night’s sleep once in a while,” Kasey answered as she looked over the body.

  “Ignoring the obvious head trauma, what do you make of the rest of him?” Bishop asked, pointing at the swollen musculature of the man’s chest. “No one has ever seen anything like this. Figured we'd run it by you just in case.”

  Kasey bent down over the body, her white Tyvek jumpsuit bunching up around her knees as she knelt in the snow. “I haven’t either. I’m going to need a few minutes here.”

  “Take all the time you need,” Bishop replied. “I'm going to work the scene. Someone has to have seen what happened here.”

  “The store owner doesn't have a camera?” Kasey asked. “Seems a little unusual.”

  “Nope,” Bishop replied, “said his customers prefer discretion.”

  “Probably because he's dealing with crooks,” Kasey replied. “Anyone foolish enough to be selling stolen supernatural artifacts, isn’t going to want their face on camera. Angry wizards tend to hold a grudge.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Bishop replied. “I’m going to see if we can’t find a witness to shed some light on things here.”

  Bishop wandered off and Kasey set about examining the body. It was times like this that she was grateful for the jumpsuit. February could be bitter cold in Manhattan and the sun had yet to make an appearance. It seemed content to hide out behind a dense layer of clouds, and the wind whistling off the bay was sharp enough to cut to the bone, and that was without the few inches of crusty ice beneath her knees.

  Pushing her discomfort aside, Kasey bent over the body and went to work.

  The body belonged to a man who was somewhere between his late thirties and early forties, but with his head shaved bald it was difficult to tell for certain. No wallet m
eant he’d be difficult to identify unless he matched a missing persons or his prints were in the system.

  The man was laying on his back, his chest bare and showing signs of hypothermia. By the look of him, the man had spent his entire life in the gym or had consumed an unfathomable quantity of steroids. There was something wrong with his circulatory system though; the blood vessels running through his arms and torso were discolored. Black lines crisscrossed his body in a spiderweb, as if a tattoo artist had traced them in ink. A closer examination showed that the blood vessels themselves were discolored. Some type of poison, perhaps? It seemed a little superfluous with the gunshot wound though. He’d taken the round just below his left eye. The back of his head was scattered about in the snow beyond him, as was a substantial portion of his brain.

  Kasey was pretty glad she hadn't had breakfast yet. Her years as a medical examiner had given her a staunch stomach but she wasn’t completely immune to the grisly scene.

  The man had black stains beneath his eyes as if he had cried ink-stained tears. The patterns were irregular in length and ran about an inch below the eye at the longest point. The man's hands were bruised, and the ligaments and musculature of his right wrist were damaged and showed purple bruising as well as swelling around the wrist joint. He was also bleeding from his right elbow, a wound that seemed to have clotted, leaving only a small puddle of frozen blood in the snow beneath his arm.

  The man's chest seemed swollen beyond its natural dimensions. It was almost grotesquely disfigured but the cause was difficult to discern. Bishop would need an autopsy.

  Fortunately, the Ninth Precinct was home to Vida Khatri, an exceptional medical examiner who was more than capable of uncovering what had happened inside this unfortunate soul.

  While the cause of death was obvious enough—clearly massive trauma to the head—it was the rest of the examination Kasey was interested in. It was almost as if the man had taken something and suffered from some sort of adverse reaction to it. If there was a dangerous new drug floating around the city, Kasey wanted to know about it.

  She stood up and made her way over to where Bishop was speaking to a man by the entrance to the store.

  The man was shorter than average and wore a suit with a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. His black hair was combed poorly in an attempt to cover a receding hairline, but it was not getting the job done.

  As Kasey approached him, the man looked down at the pavement, studying a spot between his feet.

  “Casimir, this is Kasey Chase. She assists the Ninth Precinct with unusual cases.”

  The man gave a small nod and looked up. “Ah yes, of course. Everybody knows you, Miss Chase.”

  Casimir's accent was native to somewhere in Eastern Europe, but it was impossible to place exactly.

  “Don't believe everything you read in the papers,” Kasey replied. “I'm just doing what I can to help out.”

  “I appreciate your interest. As I was telling the detective here, the store was trashed but nothing was taken. I don’t know how I can help.”

  Kasey pulled off the Tyvek hood. “You think somebody went through your front door like the Incredible Hulk, trashed your store, and took nothing? Seems like a lot of effort to go to and leave empty-handed.”

  “I agree,” Casimir replied. “Perhaps they thought I had something they wanted but were ill informed.”

  Kasey wasn't convinced. If her information on Casimir was good, he ran a roaring trade in stolen antiquities, particularly literary works and ancient texts. The thieves had to have come looking for something illegal and he simply didn’t want to own up to being in possession of it.

  “Are you sure?” Kasey asked. “I don't suppose we could see a list of your stock and check it ourselves, just to be certain?”

  Casimir shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I would be happy to put something together, but I would need to tidy up first. I’ll be sure to let you know what I find.”

  “It’s still an active scene,” Bishop said. “You might want to get yourself a coffee from the cart on the corner. We’re going to be a while yet.”

  Casimir looked at his store longingly and then nodded. “I guess I can do that. I’ll be right back.”

  As Casimir trudged down the street, Bishop signaled a pair of officers to keep an eye on him.

  “You don't believe him either?” Bishop asked.

  “Of course not,” Kasey replied. “You're the one who taught me that everybody lies.”

  Bishop laughed. “You can't blame me for turning you into a cynic. You were like this before I met you.”

  The door to the store had almost been ripped off its hinges as it had been forced open.

  Kasey pulled it aside and turned to Bishop. “Nope, before you, I was a beacon of optimism. A few weeks working with you, and the Ninth sucked it right out of me.”

  Her time at the Ninth had been rough, but it wasn’t really their fault. Kasey had brought the trouble with her.

  After Danilo, the Ninth Precinct had gone to war with the Shinigami, and then the Night Crew. The precinct had paid a heavy price and was still struggling to rebuild itself. The building itself had been repaired, but many of its officers had paid the ultimate price to defend the city.

  Those who had survived still bore the scars. Even now Kasey could see the change in Bishop as she put on a brave face to confront a dangerous new world she was still struggling to understand.

  Kasey wished she could do more, but right now her hands were tied. It was all she could do to help out on cases from time to time.

  Inside Casimir’s, the shelves were ransacked, their contents spread across the floor. A number of glass cabinets remained in an L-shape, forming a desk. A till sat on a wooden table at the end of one cabinet. The glass-paneled cabinets had been shattered and their contents, a few old tomes, book stands, and a few hand-written placards, lay strewn across the floor.

  “They really did a number on this place,” Bishop began. “Whatever they wanted, they weren’t leaving without it.”

  Kasey nodded as she examined a glass case with a small pool of blood drying inside it. “This must be where our John Doe cut his arm. Sliced open his elbow breaking through the case.”

  She walked around the counter. Her foot snagged, and she staggered forward and almost slammed her head into the wall behind the counter. Recovering her balance, she turned around and found a torn section of the carpet coming away from the floor. Bending down, she grabbed it and peeled the carpet back.

  “Check this out, Bishop.”

  Beneath the carpet was a small cavity sunk into the concrete floor of the store. Inside it was a floor safe that had been wrenched open like a sardine can.

  “What on Earth?” Bishop muttered, standing next to Kasey.

  “I think our friend outside was the muscle,” Kasey replied. “I think he did this, and the door too.”

  “You really think he could have done this?” Bishop asked. “No one is that strong.”

  “I didn’t want to believe it either,” Kasey replied. “I figured they used a truck or something on the door, but look at that safe. You can see how it has been shaped to the hand that tore it open. A human just shouldn't be physically capable of this.”

  “Any chance it could be something from your side of the fence?” Bishop asked. “A werewolf, or maybe a vampire or some other kind of supernatural creature?”

  “Not that I can see.” Kasey ran a hand over the edge of the safe’s door. “But we’ll know more once Vida gets a good look at him. There is definitely something unnatural about him, that's for sure. I didn’t get any trace of the arcane off him, but tracing residual magic isn’t really my strong suit.”

  A werewolf might have the strength for something like that, but she was far from an expert on a werewolf’s limitations. She made a note to ask Cal about it.

  Cal was the only other member of her task force. Much to the council’s dismay, her recruiting efforts had yielded little result. In fairness, sh
e hadn’t been trying hard. After everything she had been through, trust was hard to come by and Kasey didn’t want anyone she didn’t know and trust watching her back.

  Cal was different, though. He’d had his own reasons for siding with her. The vampires had come for him and his family, so when Kasey had taken the fight to them and their faux medical center, he’d added his considerable strength to hers. He was part of the reason Vida had made it out alive.

  At her invitation, he’d become the first member of her task force. Together, they operated under the Arcane Council’s mandate to thwart supernatural threats to New York City.

  Working under the Council's authority, they had been trying to root out the vampire infestation that had taken hold in the city. Cal had his pack patrolling for any sign of the undead. When vampires congregated, they tended to leave a trail the werewolves could identify and track, but things had gone quiet after the destruction of the medical center. The vampires had made a mistake when they had taken Vida and now they were licking their wounds.

  Kasey still remembered the fight in the bowels of the concrete structure. She had never seen anything like the twisted vampire thralls or any being as powerful as their master. He had almost crushed the life out of Kasey with his bare hands. If it wasn’t for her friends, she would have died down there.

  They had survived the vampire master’s ambush, but in truth his own arrogance had played a part in his fall. With his death, both the vampires and their human followers had gone to ground, and no one had seen or heard from them since.

  Kasey pointed at the empty safe. “Pretty sure Casimir didn’t want us to find that. Thieves wouldn’t have gone to the effort of covering it back up.”