Blood and Magick

by James R. Tuck

  My fingers closed on the sticky glass.

  Deep breath in.

  Let it out.

  Yank.

  The glass slid free, slick and smooth, leaving behind a hollow ache. Blood pulsed to the surface, bubbling out of the gash. I let the shard fall from my fingers. It shattered on the metal floor of the ambulance.

  Special Agent Heck pushed off the door. “Patch him up, Doc. I’ll be right outside.” He turned and walked away.

  The EMT shook his head at me.

  “You are crazy.”

  I waved my hand. “Not me. Just busy. Got shit to do.” Like track down some damn witches. “So suture me up and get me moving.”

  “You sure you don’t want to do it yourself ? I can give you the stuff.”

  “Don’t be a smartass. Nobody likes a smartass.”

  9

  A few minutes later, I stepped out of the ambulance. My shirt had been ruined, so I was bare chested. The hole in my shoulder was tight, pulled closed by a haphazard row of sutures. They stitched in and out like the EMT was drunk when he did them.

  Maybe I should have done my own.

  There were people everywhere, moving in and around a wall of flashing lights. Reds and blues popped on and off, rolling around light bars attached to marked and unmarked police cars and emergency response vehicles. The people were in uniforms and plainclothes, all of them darting around the hole that had been blown in the side of the restaurant.

  I had been caught in the blast and even I was a little overwhelmed at the amount of damage it had caused. The entire facade of the restaurant was scorched, bricks painted in dark streaks of charred stone. The hole was twice as tall as I am and probably ten feet across. A steady line of EMTs, police, and firefighters carried out streams of stretchers. I had apparently been out for a little bit because the stretchers held black body bags which means the injured had been removed from the scene and taken to medical attention.

  Or there hadn’t been any injured except us.

  Special Agent Heck waved me over to the car he was standing by. Next to him was the man from my flashback. Detective John Longyard looked like he always did, dressed for a business meeting or a date. Hell, for all I knew, he could have been at either before this. Slick, wearing a tailored suit, this one was a dark color. It could have been blue or gray, impossible for me to tell in the flashing lights. His silk tie was pulled out, the knot hanging loose like it had tumbled free from his collar. It was unlike him. Normally, Detective Longyard is buttoned up tight. He turned as I walked up, flicking a cigarette butt to the ground.

  Looking me over, he nodded up. “Deacon.”

  “John.”

  “Glad to see you dressed up for the occasion.”

  “You should give me your jacket. It’s cool out tonight.”

  “I noticed that your nipples were hard.”

  “I’m just happy to see you.”

  Longyard flicked me off as he lit another cigarette.

  Special Agent Heck looked at us both, lips pulled into a hard, unamused line. “If you two gentlemen are done screwing around, we can get to business.”

  I was all for that. I stood there in my tattered dress slacks wishing for a shirt, but I quit talking and waited. Longyard sucked on his cancerstick, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. Special Agent Heck opened up a laptop that was sitting on the hood of the police cruiser. He began typing and clicking as he talked over his shoulder at me.

  “Mr. Chalk, we are going to skip the part of this where you play dumb and act like you don’t know what happened here tonight.”

  “Call me Deacon, and that’s nice, but I don’t know what the hell happened here.”

  Special Agent Heck turned away from the computer as a screen opened. It was a wide shot of the restaurant from earlier in the evening. I stepped closer, studying the moving images. The film was black and white and crystal clear. There was no sound, but I could follow what was going on.

  Hell, I should be able to, the film was of me.

  There I was, with my friends, in the center of the screen. I watched as Larson wheeled away from the table. After a moment he wheeled back into the frame, just in time for the wall to explode. The image wavered and blinked, screen filling with black static for a split second.

  The image popped back with startling clarity to the restaurant. The room was wrecked. Tables and chairs smashed into pieces and scattered over people who had been smashed to pieces and scattered over the floor. Special Agent Heck pushed a button on the laptop, freezing the screen.

  “So what the hell is this? You can see I was just eating with some friends when the place blew to hell and back. I don’t know anything.” I looked at the man in the black suit with a cold eye. “You’re not implying that I had anything to do with this.”

  Special Agent Heck kept watching the computer as he began fast forwarding. Figures zipped by in a blur. “This is the feed from the security camera inside the restaurant. It was recovered a few minutes ago. You are now the third person to see it besides Detective Longyard and myself.” His finger pushed the button again. “Watch this part and then we will talk.”

  The images snapped back to regular speed. I was closer to the camera, my back to it. I was standing with Tiff, Kat, and Larson, guns out and in our hands. The witches were distant and fuzzy at the edge of the camera angle, but I could see Ahriman gesturing.

  It was weird watching him from this angle. Disconnected. I could still remember all the stuff I felt when he was casting his spell, but none of it showed on-screen. The magick was invisible to the naked eye. He flung his hands apart. Nothing happened for a second.

  Then the bodies started to rise.

  My stomach clenched.

  Special Agent Heck didn’t say anything as we watched the film version of me step toward the risen victims. Onscreen they didn’t look like the walking dead. They shuffled, arms reaching out, moving in herky-jerky motions. They didn’t look dead. They looked like injured people reaching out for help.

  And I began to shoot them all. In the head.

  It went quickly. Movie-me strode through them, dropping them with an efficiency of motion. The film painted the blood black, making it stark as it splashed around. The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds.

  Movie-me stood from shooting the bodybuilder in the mouth. Special Agent Heck hit the Pause button. The screen froze as I turned toward the camera, blood and gore spattered over me, face snarled from the adrenaline of battle.

  I looked like a mad-dog killer.

  “Twelve,” Special Agent Heck said.

  I looked over, judging the distance between me and him. About an arm’s length. I must have made some small movement, something that indicated what I was thinking, because he stepped back, then stepped back again. My voice was hollow in my ears, hearing screwed from the tightness of my neck. “Twelve what?”

  He took another step back, hand wavering dangerously close to his hip. Close to his gun. “Twelve bodies with bullets from your gun in them.”

  Tension pulled the muscles at the base of my neck tighter, like a pullstring drawn through my throat. “You don’t know what is really going on here.”

  “That’s where you are wrong, Mr. Chalk. I know exactly what is going on here, and that’s why I am not going to arrest you if you are willing to help me.”

  Wait. What?

  Longyard reached out, stopping before his hand actually touched me. “Hear him out, Deacon.”

  I looked at the detective I had known for years. He was the man who helped me keep the wall of secrecy up between monsters and humans. The man who kept me out of trouble with his fellow police officers when things got out of hand. The man who had been there at the beginning, investigating the deaths of my family. I trusted him.

  At least enough to listen.

  “Go ahead and talk.”

  The man in the black suit leaned back against the fender of the car. Crossing his arms bunched up his skinny tie. “Okay, Mr. Chalk, not
only am I willing to not arrest you for the murder of twelve citizens, but I am prepared to not even investigate you for possible collusion in a terrorist act. In fact, if you help me, I can make all of this”—he waved a hand at the frozen computer screen—“go away.”

  “Look, Heck, the best thing you can do is walk away and let me handle this. You have no idea what you are dealing with.”

  “Three witches known as the Wrath of Baphomet blew up the side of a building that you were having dinner in.” His sunglasses slid down. Watered-down brown eyes, almost the color of old paper, looked over them. “I know the who and the what, Mr. Chalk. I want your help to find out the why and the how to stop them from the next thing they have planned.”

  I was stunned.

  Monsters are not public knowledge. Say the word witch to a regular person and they think you are talking about a woman with a mean streak. This man was standing in front of me telling me that not only did he know, but that the government knew.

  The whole world tilted.

  My eyes narrowed. “Who the hell did you say you were with?”

  “O.C.I.D. Occult Crimes Investigation Division. We are an interjurisdictional bureau specializing in stopping supernatural terrorism on American soil.” He said it with a straight face.

  I turned to Longyard. “Did you know about this?”

  He raised his hands, cigarette still in his mouth. “Until tonight I had never heard of O.C.I.D. He was on the scene when we arrived.”

  “Mr. Chalk, if I may.” Special Agent Heck’s hand slid into his jacket. My hand automatically jerked, going for my gun. A gun that wasn’t there. Dammit. I forced it down by my side, clenching it into a fist. His hand came out holding a small cell phone.

  My cell phone.

  I knew it was mine by the custom cover on it. Electric blue with a picture of Muddy Waters, legendary Chicago blues singer, on the back. Tiff had gotten it for me as a present for my birthday. He held it out to me. I did not reach for it.

  “I’d rather have my guns back.”

  “Not just yet. You should make a call first; then we can discuss what your options are.”

  “Who the hell do you think I should call?”

  “We have a mutual friend, Mr. Chalk. You should call him. Ask his opinion of me.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “You know him as Longinus. Call him and ask about me.”

  I took my phone from his hand. My fingers touched the small screen in a dance, unlocking it. I scrolled through the contacts until I found the one labeled “Spearchucker” and pushed the button. The phone began to ring on the other side and I thought back a year in time.

  Longinus. I’ll be damned. Holder of the Spear of Destiny, cursed with immortality by God for his part in the Crucifixion, and progenitor of vampires. He walks the earth now, seeking redemption, using the Spear to hunt vampires. I get that, atonement for your sins. It’s a hard gig, but it’s what some of us do.

  We had gotten into some shit together a while ago dealing with Appollonia. Yes. The same hell-bitch who had cost Larson his legs. She had taken the Spear and was using it to boost her powers to control other vampires. It had been a shitstorm of a night. We had come out the other side as allies. I could trust Longinus. Which made sense because, technically, the man was a saint.

  The line connected and a man’s voice came on. The accent was similar to an Irish lilt but more guttural, older, the words almost chewed off. It was an accent that the man was born with over two thousand years ago somewhere in what is now England. “Deacon Chalk, what can I do for you?”

  Stepping away from the other two men, I kept my voice low. “Have you ever heard of someone named Heck who works for something called the O.C.I.D.?”

  The line went quiet.

  After a long moment, Longinus answered, “I have.”

  “He said you would vouch for him.”

  “I will vouch for Agent Heck. He is a good man and will deal honorably with you. If he tells you something, you can trust it as long as it is in his power.”

  “He’s trying to blackmail me into helping him. That doesn’t feel very fucking trustworthy to me.”

  Longinus chuckled. “If he just asked for your help, would you give it or would you tell him to piss off, bully on, and try to solve the problem yourself?”

  I thought about it. I didn’t want to work with Heck. I had a few people in this world I trusted to back me up and he wasn’t one of them. Dammit. Longinus knew me well enough to know that, and apparently so did Special Agent Heck. I didn’t like that. Not one bit.

  Longinus chuckled again. “I see I made my point.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I am hard to work with. Forgive me for trying to keep people out of the line of fire.” I looked over at the two men by the police cruiser. Longyard was still smoking, could have been the same cigarette or a new one, stepping from one foot to another in a little dance of agitation. Special Agent Heck leaned against the police car. I couldn’t see him watch me through those sunglasses he had on, but I could feel it. He looked calm and collected against a backdrop of activity as policemen and rescue workers continued to work at the building.

  Longinus’s voice pulled me back to the conversation. “What is the problem he’s trying to get your help with?”

  “Witches.”

  “I see. Need me to come your way?”

  “Immortal warrior with a holy relic as a weapon? Sure, can’t hurt. Where’re you at?”

  “Denver. I just cleared out a kiss of vampires posing as rock musicians, draining the blood of groupies.” He chuckled. “You should have heard them. They were fookin’ awful onstage.”

  Shit. Denver was hours away by plane. “You won’t make it in time. I plan to button this up quickly so I can send Special Agent Heck on his merry way.”

  Longinus’s voice became somber. “Deacon, you can trust him, but watch your back with anyone else from O.C.I.D. Remember what I told you before I left.”

  I remembered. He had warned me that there were people who knew about me and were talking about me. I was on the radar, which is not where I ever wanted to be.

  No, I liked working the shadows, keeping to the edges. Staying the hell out of sight.

  “I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks.”

  “You know where to find me if you need my help.”

  “Same to you.”

  The call disappeared. The phone slipped into my pocket, I didn’t offer to give it back to Special Agent Heck. It was a small victory. I still wanted my guns back.

  Special Agent Heck pushed off the car. Slender hands slid deep into his pockets. “Satisfied?”

  “Enough to listen to your offer.”

  The man in the black suit nodded. “Right now we are looking at twelve bodies with fatal gunshot wounds from your firearms and video evidence to confirm you as the shooter. I can make this inconsequential if you cooperate with my investigation into tonight’s attack.”

  My hands clenched into fists. “I don’t like being blackmailed.”

  “It’s not blackmail as such. More a reward for your assistance.”

  “If you have the swing to clear the evidence, then why do you need my help?”

  “That’s a valid question, Mr. Chalk.” His hands jingled something in his pockets, a set of keys or something. “You have to understand that I am a field agent for the O.C.I.D. I have the authority to command resources, but because of the specialized and clandestine nature of what the O.C.I.D covers, agents like myself are sparse. We make due by utilizing resources outside the agency itself. It means that I need your assistance to uncover and stop the next thing these Wrath of Baphomet people have planned.”

  “Why don’t you use the cops?”

  A smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “The same reason you don’t.”

  I understood. The police are good at what they do, I have a lot of respect for them, but taking care of criminals is nothing like dealing with monsters. The police are simply unprepared for this level of
danger. Gangbangers and bank robbers? Yes. People who could reanimate corpses and destroy buildings with a word? Not even in your dreams. That’s why I worked with Longyard to keep them out of the line of fire.

  Turning, I found him studiously not looking at me, eyes tracking the rescue workers still clearing the scene. “Do you have any other options for me, John?”

  The homicide detective sucked on his cigarette. It took him a second to think it over. With a big sigh, he stubbed out the cancerstick and shoved his hands in his pockets. His face was sour when he looked at me. “No, dammit. I can’t do anything about all this. This is too fucking much for me to sweep away. Especially after the Pinetop Motel.”

  The Pinetop. Sonnuvabitch.

  A few months back, when I had gotten tangled up in that feud between Were-lion brothers and a bunch of other lycanthropes, things had gotten bad. Especially the night we clashed at the Pinetop Motel. Bodies had been left on the ground.

  A lot of bodies.

  Longyard had covered it up, spinning the investigation off to a sex-ring drug deal gone tits up. He had come to me afterward. When he showed up, he implied that his help was hanging by a thin strand and about to break.

  Apparently this was the breaking point.

  So the choice was go to prison for multiple homicides or help Special Agent Heck. The witches were still out there. They had power. A lot of power. And they had proved that they had no problem killing people.

  EMTs rolled out the last of the covered stretchers. The black bag on it was small, probably not a whole person. They carried it over to a row of body bags stretched on the asphalt of the parking lot side by side. Gently, they lifted it up and placed it next to the others. The body bag was much smaller than the one next to it.

  It was child sized.

  Dammit.

  “Sign me up. I’m in.”

  “Good call, Mr. Chalk.” He turned and looked at Longyard. “Please have your medical examiner transport any casualties from tonight to the morgue, but they are to leave them unexamined. An O.C.I.D. agent will come to perform the autopsies and gather any evidence needed.”