Wanderers: Ragnarök

by Richard A Bamberg

  Interesting, and not something I’d ever seen it do before.

  “Okay, so you’re here to teach my ride to come. Can you make it fetch?” I asked.

  He smiled again, “Oh yes, and so much more.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Blue and red lights glittered through the trees, casting a surreal glow over the glade. We’d escorted the first-responders through the cattle gate and across the pasture to where the enormous field was separated from the crime scene by a three-strand barbed wire fence. One of the officers stayed back at the gate to direct the others; fifteen minutes later the headlights of four police vehicles and an ambulance lit up the scene. The last vehicle, a large SUV, off-loaded klieg lights. A portable generator roared to life, and the last of the curious cattle moved off to find a quieter location. The klieg lights made the glade as bright as noon on a sunny day.

  It didn’t help the appearance of the murder victim.

  One of the technicians opened a stepladder and set it over the fence. Abigail, most of her coven, Cynthia, and I stood in a little group at the far side of the clearing while the police marked off the area. Strobes flashed as the crime scene photographer found interesting things to shoot.

  The first policeman took a quick look at the body and moved back to the fence, directing us to follow. After that, he only allowed the photographer and a single crime scene investigator to approach the body.

  Over the rumble of the generator, I heard additional vehicles driving across the field following the tracks of the previous vehicles through the tall grass. The first, an unmarked Ford disgorged a man, the second, a black SUV with federal plates, contained a woman. Neither newcomer wore a uniform.

  The detectives had arrived, but who was the Fed?

  I eased over to Cynthia’s opposite side and watched the detectives stop to talk to the first uniformed officer they reached. After a moment, the officer nodded toward our little group. The investigators followed his gaze. The man, mid-thirties with close-cropped hair, olive skin, and a neat mustache, nodded toward us, and then turned back to the uniform. They talked for another minute before the detectives crossed the fence; the woman used the ladder while the man pressed down the middle strand of barbwire and slipped between it and the top strand as if he crossed barbwire every day. They went to the body.

  “Do you know either of them?” I murmured.

  Cynthia frowned. “Why should I?”

  “It’s a small town.”

  “Huntsville? Small? Are you from New York or something?” Cynthia asked.

  “All right, it’s not small, but you’ve lived here a while, and you work in the middle of town. Isn’t that where the police headquarters are?”

  “I’m not sure where it is. I’ve never needed to know where they were.”

  “Don’t be so testy,” I said.

  “If you two are going to argue, you can return to the house,” Abigail said without turning.

  Which was where I wanted to go in the first place, I turned to go. “Okay, I’ll see you there.”

  “He can’t leave. He found the body,” Cynthia tattled.

  “He’s not going anywhere, dear.” Abigail gave me a look that said I’d better not be leaving; no matter what she’d just told me.

  “Of course not, Abigail, but I thought that since Cynthia actually found the body, the police wouldn’t need to talk to me.”

  “That’s not right. It was you,” Cynthia said.

  “I was first on the scene, but you found the body,” I answered.

  “Enough. Don’t squabble at the murder scene,” Abigail scolded.

  Cynthia glowered at me and I kept my mouth shut.

  Abigail continued, “Raphael, you were the first on the scene, whether you found the body or not.”

  Abigail had realized I didn’t want to talk to the police but was making sure I stayed. Why? I was new in town and a young male with no connection to the city, in other words, just the sort of suspect the police like.

  Since the advent of electronic databases, local police can rapidly search for anyone. I try to keep my name out of police reports, but my name has been in far too many reports. I didn’t want to change my name, but I was going to have to find a way to modify the databases or…

  Changing my name would be easier, but then I’m old and set in my ways. You wear a name for sixty plus years and it sticks. Any other name would not be me. Besides, I’m a Wanderer, not some fugitive that has to use fake identities to hide from the law.

  The detectives spent just enough time to talk to the crime scene investigators and take a good look at the victim and her surroundings. Then they approached our little group, purposefully, without hesitation.

  The Fed was about the same age as the local detective, somewhere between thirty and forty, and easily as tall as him, maybe a full six feet or better. Her brown hair was pulled back and up in a bun that gave her a more formal atmosphere than I expected to find in a police officer. She had nearly flawless caramel skin with only a faint layer of makeup, but her eyelids glistened with a greenish cast of shadow. Her dress was long, too long for walking about in a field where burrs and seeds would catch on it. The dress was tight enough to show off the figure of a woman who took good care of herself. I expected to see evening shoes, but she wore a pair of walking shoes that didn’t go with the dress.

  She stopped near Abigail and I suddenly realized that I had seen the woman before. Where? Better yet, why had I seen her before?

  The Fed extended her had toward Abigail. “Good evening, Ma’am. I’m Special Agent Angelica Biers; this is Detective Esam Agrinzoni of Huntsville.”

  “Good evening, I am Abigail von Norris,” Abigail said taking Biers’ hand.

  Agrinzoni nodded to Abigail but didn’t offer his hand. He took a pad and a pen from a jacket pocket. “The officers tell me you discovered the body.”

  “Yes, we did,” Abigail said.

  “What were you doing in the woods at this time of night?” Biers asked.

  “We were looking at the stars,” Abigail said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s a lovely clear night, and some of us thought we’d leave the party to get away from the house lights and see the stars. On the other side of the mountain, Huntsville’s lights block most of them.”

  Biers glanced up, but since the police had set up the klieg lights, the view was no longer what it had been when we’d found the body. It was a good story, especially coming from Abigail unless the authorities were wondering why we’d been looking at the stars under a nearly full moon.

  “And while you were star gazing, you chanced across the body.”

  “Her name was Jessica Spelling,” Abigail said.

  “You knew her?” Biers asked.

  “Certainly, most of us knew her. She was invited to the party tonight.”

  “And Mister Nichols organized the party? He’d have a guest list?” Agrinzoni asked.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Abigail said.

  “Then how would you know she was invited?” Biers asked.

  “She attended many similar parties,” Abigail responded without hesitation.

  “Was this a regular group?” Agrinzoni asked.

  “Roughly speaking, a lot of us know each other and usually show up at the same events; however, I didn’t recognize all of the guests.”

  “Did Ms. Spelling come with anyone in particular tonight?”

  Biers looked at each of us, waiting for a response. There were several headshakes and a couple of muted “no’s.”

  Biers eyes stopped on me and something flickered across her face. Her eyes dilated until her pupils were nearly all black. For the briefest of moments, her breath held in her lungs. Recognition, she recognized me. A moment later she said, “And you are?”

  “This is Raphael Semmes,” Abigail said. “He works for me.”

  Biers didn’t take her eyes off me, but at the sound of my name her right hand twitched toward her weapon, coming to rest on t
he butt.

  Where the hell had I encountered this woman? She definitely recognized both my face and my name, but if so, why didn’t she just admit she’d seen me before? If I’d run into her in the past, it was probably in my line of work, but I was certain she hadn’t been a participant in any of my recent activities. She was in her mid-thirties, so she couldn’t have been an agent more than a decade or so. That limited when I could have encountered her. Damn, even changing my name wouldn’t help if I were going to start running into people I’d already met.

  “I’d prefer him to answer for himself if you don’t mind Mrs. von Norris,” Biers said. Her hand remained cocked as if waiting for a threat that would draw it closer to her weapon.

  I said, “I didn’t know Ms. Spelling. I don’t remember seeing her earlier at all.”

  “You’re the only man out here. It’s kind of odd for there to be one man with this many women and you’re a little young to be an escort.” She had not relaxed and now I saw that Agrinzoni had picked up on the tenseness in her stance. He had stepped away from Biers, apparently to have a clear line of fire toward me.

  “Was there a question in there?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

  “Yes, there was. What are you doing alone in the woods with these women?” Biers asked.

  I glanced around, Marcus and Warren had both left while Cynthia and I were at the house. Why? I smiled at Biers. “Excuse me, Agent, but we’re hardly in the woods…”

  Cynthia moved closer to me and encircled my arm with hers. “He’s with me, Agent Biers.”

  Biers stared at Cynthia for a moment and then her stance eased; a moment later so did Agrinzoni’s.

  “And you are?” Biers asked.

  “Cynthia Ronue.”

  “And the two of you were out here star gazing with the rest of these women?”

  Cynthia hesitated and then nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Hmmm. All right. Who actually found the body?” Biers asked, her attention going back to Abigail.

  “That would be Cynthia.”

  “Cynthia?” Biers gaze swung back to us. “Interesting, do I take it that you two were together, a little off from the rest of the party?”

  I said nothing.

  Cynthia gave my arm a little squeeze and pulled me closer to her. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I, Ms. Ronue?” Agrinzoni asked.

  “It’s possible. Have you visited Abigail’s shop?”

  “Mrs. von Norris’s shop?” Agrinzoni glanced at Abigail. “Wait. Is it in the basement of O’Brian’s, across from the courthouse?”

  “That’s right,” Cynthia agreed.

  “Yeah, I’ve been there. It’s a bookstore, but...” He turned back to Abigail. “Mrs. von Norris, your shop, Nuevo Retro, right? You sell books and stuff on witchcraft, right?”

  “That’s right, Detective Agrinzoni.”

  “Strange, isn’t it?” Biers said with a thoughtful glance toward Agrinzoni.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Agrinzoni said.

  “What’s strange?” Abigail asked.

  “That your shop sells witchcraft paraphernalia and then you find a nude young woman with her throat cut inside a circle of rope,” Biers added.

  Abigail expressed a mild shock that left me with the impression that she could have been an actor. “You think there’s a connection?”

  “Mrs. von Norris, I would be surprised if there weren't a connection,” Biers said.

  Abigail’s voice chilled. “If that’s so, Agent Biers, then you should know the Wiccan faith does not practice any type of blood sacrifice, be it animal or human.”

  “I seem to recall that Wiccans sometimes use blood in their rituals,” Biers said.

  Ah, a Fed with a little learning, that raised another question. What kind of federal agent knew about Wiccans?

  “That may be, but Wiccan’s use their own blood if it’s required, never another’s.”

  Agrinzoni pointed with his pen. “Still, yours is the sort of shop that would attract the darker side of witchcraft. Special Agent Biers is right; there must be a connection between your store and this body.”

  “I can’t imagine what that would be,” Abigail said.

  “No, I don’t imagine so. But still...Mr. Semmes, you and Ms. Ronue both work for Mrs. Norris?” Agrinzoni turned toward us.

  “That’s correct,” I answered.

  “I haven’t seen you there,” he said.

  “You go there that often?” I asked.

  “I’ll ask the questions,” Agrinzoni said. “How long have you worked for Mrs. Norris?”

  “A couple of days.”

  Biers jumped in. “Where’d you work before then?”

  “Someplace else,” I said. Damn it, where had I seen her before? I couldn’t ask and if I said anything it would probably just help trigger her memories of me.

  She gave me a hard glare. “Are you trying to be difficult, Mr. Semmes?”

  “I just got into town this week,” I said, trying to remain elusive in my responses.

  “Perhaps I wasn’t precise enough. What city did you work in before here?”

  “Austin. That’s in Texas,” I said and mentally berated myself for the way it’d come out.

  “I know where Austin is. Did you go to school there?”

  “No, I bartended at J. Patrick O’Malley’s. It’s a student hangout, across from the campus.”

  She studied me for a moment and appeared to come to a decision. “Perhaps tomorrow afternoon, you and Ms. Ronue could come down to the police station on Bailey Cove and give a full statement.”

  “We’d be happy to,” Cynthia said.

  “Excellent. Now, Ms. Ronue, what time did you find the body?”

  Cynthia glanced at her watch. “Well, we went straight back to the house and called 911, that was about twenty minutes ago. I guess you can get the time off the call, but it was probably ten minutes earlier than that, say a half hour ago?”

  Biers glanced at her watch, a little gold thing with an analog dial. It didn’t glow, but the light from the kliegs was enough to read by. “Ms. von Norris, are there any other new people in your group?”

  “Not just now,” Abigail said.

  “How about Ms. Spelling, did she have a boyfriend?”

  “I’m sure she did, but I don’t know who,” Abigail glanced at Evelyn, who gave a brief shake of her head.

  “How about family? Was she a local?” Biers asked.

  “Certainly, her family has been in Huntsville for nearly two hundred years. It’s not a large family these days, but her father is on the city council.”

  “Aw, geez, not that Spelling,” Agrinzoni said.

  “I’m afraid so,” Abigail said.

  “I going to hate this case,” Agrinzoni said.

  CHAPTER 10

  Walt and I had been together for close to a month before he decided it was time I learned to burn my own tattoos. I faced the prospect with a mixture of excited anticipation mingled with trepidation. So far, I’d learned to focus energy (which was a cool way to get a fire started) and maintain a basic ward that would wake me if something moved in our proximity. I spent most of my time concentrating on focusing energy, which Walt assured me led to all other magic use. I’d seen Walt use several of his own tats by then and I was anxious to have one of my own.

  We were camped somewhere west of Rapid City, South Dakota, in the Black Hills. It was a pretty location and only a few miles from where my father had taken me fly fishing on several occasions. Dad had been dead less than a year and passing our old fishing holes had been depressing.

  I was resisting the glow of sunlight against my eyelids when I felt Walt kick the side of my blanket. He stood above me with four good sized trout, impaled through the gills on a stick.

  “You’ve been fishing already?” I know; it was a dumb question, but I don’t always wake fully alert and ready to greet the day.

  Walt set the fish on a r
ock. His fire tat glowed and an intense flame flowed from his fist and across the smoldering remains of last night’s campfire. “I caught them, you clean them.”

  I mumbled something I didn’t really want him to hear and threw back my blanket. The sky was crystal clear and the temperature had to be in the teens. Walt had set a ward around us for the night and I’d been comfortable under my single blanket. He must have left the ward up until he returned with the fish because the cold was now reaching me.

  “Don’t you know a spell that will clean fish?” I asked.

  He gave me the evil eye. “Seriously?”

  “Why not?” I shrugged. “What’s the point of knowing magic if it won’t help you with the mundane?”

  “For one thing, mundane, by definition, is everything non-magical. For another, while Wanderers are damned powerful, we don’t treat magic as an expedient for everyday chores.”

  I glanced toward the fire and cocked an eyebrow.

  “That’s different. Creating fire is one of the basic functions, cleaning fish is not something I’d want a tat for and I’m not going to bother to learn a spell just to save you from having to gut a few trout.”

  “You know, Walt, it seems that when it’s something that you want, the magic is there, but when—”

  “Raphael, just clean the fish.” Walt turned his back to me and walked toward the stream.

  I wasn’t really upset with him, but sometimes I couldn’t resist jerking his chain. “Hey, I need a filleting knife. I don’t guess you happen to have one?”

  Walt stopped and turned back toward me. He bent and took his boot knife from its sheath and tossed it, underhand, toward me. I caught it by the hilt; it’s not as difficult as you might think, but tricky. I managed to not lose a finger. I eyed the heavy, single-edged blade with a bone handle. “This isn’t exactly a filleting knife.”

  Walt spoke a control word and the blade lengthened and narrowed. It still wasn’t a fillet knife, but it’d do.

  “Nifty spell,” I said. “How big can you make it?”

  “It’s a katana. Its true size is a bit longer than two feet.”