by Holly Rutan
"Is it Tuesday already?" Irwin wondered, drifting over to sit on the couch. Pyggie squeaked a confirmation, and the mage nodded. "Yeah, that would be good. I'm not going to be able to go much longer, am I?"
"Don't be stupid," Charles rebutted.
I left the two of them to sort out their differences and went to brew more coffee. Voneshi had made enough for two people, not four, so I cleaned out the pot and threw in more grounds. While that percolated, I poked around in my cupboards.
It was definitely time to do some grocery shopping; someone had been snacking in the night. Well, I could hardly throw stones at that. Smiling, I got some bacon from the fridge and set it to frying while I made myself some toast.
"What are you doing in there?" Charles called after a few minutes.
"Making myself a snack," I answered. "Do you really want a hungry were in your car for the forty minutes or so it's going to take to get to Hollywood during the morning rush hour?"
"It wouldn't be morning rush hour if you weren't taking so long making yourself a four-course meal for a snack," he answered.
A bubbly feeling inside let me know he was teasing, and I smiled. When he peered around the corner and into the kitchen, I popped a slice of still-sizzling bacon in his mouth and kissed him while he chewed.
High-pitched gagging noises from the kitchen reminded me that we had an audience. A proudly displayed middle finger behind Charles's back was my only retort.
"You're going to burn your breakfast," Charles whispered in my ear, his breath tickling.
I yelped and went to save the rest of the bacon while the chipmunk laughed.
Chapter Thirteen
We were sitting in unmoving traffic on the 405 freeway when it happened. Under us, the ground lurched and heaved. I was staring out the closed car window at the city when I spotted a plume of black smoke. Sweeping my gaze from left to right, I spotted another. And another. Charles tensed and looked up, mirroring my anxiety.
"Well, shit," Charles muttered, looking out the window. "Why do I think we're canceling breakfast?"
Irwin leaned down and flicked on the news. The radio hissed static, so he flipped through the stations until he hit one that was live. We listened tensely through the emergency broadcast.
The news announcer's voice shook as he relayed status reports and updates. The earthquake hadn't been large by our standards; initial estimates had it at 5.5. However, six sites around Los Angeles had fallen victim to devastating explosions at the same time, and no one was sure how or why. Hundreds were missing and feared dead. They switched live to a scene at a San Fernando Valley post office where a strange melody was being deactivated.
As the newscaster blathered on, my phone rang. I picked it up and switched it to speaker phone. "Samantha."
"Agent Davis, have Charles head to San Fernando. It’s one of yours. I'm pulling in additional teams under my direction. Your cult has turned terrorist. What updates do you have for me?" Voneshi's voice crackled in the car, fighting to be heard until Irwin turned off the radio.
"Nothing new." I spoke tersely, unhappy with our lack of progress. "You already know about Tim, and he was the most recent development. The puppeteer gave a hint that something bad was going to happen. You get the report from Forensics?"
Voneshi grunted affirmative. "God only knows what a necromancer is going to do with this mess. Get over to that post office and have a sniff. Listen to that tune and report your findings," he ordered, then disconnected.
Charles tightened his lips into a line. "Irwin, put the light on, would you?" he asked, turning his blinker on. Irwin flicked on the lights, and Charles muscled our vehicle over to the shoulder, cars struggling in the tight traffic to get out of our way. Then we were bypassing the jam and heading over to San Fernando.
The situation on the streets was ugly. In some places, there were no people at all, but in others, people had taken advantage of others' fear to partake in looting and robbery. The police were out in force and in riot gear to keep order. Broken glass crunched under our tires at least twice.
We had to park nearly a block away and walk through the police cordon to get to the San Fernando post office. Everyone had to flash their badges three or four times before we were allowed in; the law enforcement present was a mix of both the police and the DMA, and not everyone recognized our faces.
I stared at the federal building, well back from the Department mage who was standing in front. His voice was raised in song, his melody blocking the partially live magic that sputtered and twanged in a strange, discordant melody. Unlike the previous songs, this one was clearly audible—and visible, which was a new experience for me. A blue vortex was spinning in the air between the mage and the wall. The mage was sweating and gritting his teeth. I felt the song pulling and shuddered.
A black-clad body was collapsed at the mage’s feet, limp and unmoving.
The wall itself was covered in red runes. They glistened wetly and glowed even in the bright sunlight. The runes were laid out in a familiar spiderweb pattern, and my stomach sank. I wouldn't have been surprised if I'd caught the putrid stench of the necromancer nearby, but I did not. The welter of scents on the scene would take me time to untangle, and it didn't appear that we had any time to spare.
Irwin stood next to me and squinted, then removed his spectacles, wiped off the lenses, and put them back on to have another look at the vortex. "So strange," he murmured, staring at the swirling, discordant magic. "Compelling, how it pulls at you. Like especially strong current."
Pyggie squeaked, his whiskers drooping.
"We're calling them rifts," a female voice behind me said. "It's drawing magic into itself, including from all of you mages. It's all Paul can do to hold himself together."
"We'd better deactivate it then. What did they do at that one milking site? Wash the walls clean, right?" I said, answering myself.
Irwin nodded confirmation, his eyes still on the spinning distortion.
Charles grabbed a likely looking official. "Get everyone clear except that mage and have the fire department bring out the hoses. We're going to have to wash the whole thing down at once." The official ran off.
While the engines connected their hoses, I took a few minutes to, as Voneshi had so eloquently put it, sniff around. I could smell nothing once I got close to the scene. Literally, nothing. It was as though my nose had gone numb, and I backed away quickly, shuddering and wiping at my face.
"There's a masking song in place, I can't pick anything up," I reported.
"Some song," Irwin muttered. Then, louder, "Have a listen. It sounds like this fellow's just pulling random notes from a hat."
I tilted my head to the side and half closed my eyes, listening for the song. "No, there's a pattern. It makes no sense, musically, but it's a pattern. It sounds like...hm. What are those silly instruments that guys who can't sing use that just makes them sound like electronic guys who can't sing?"
Irwin stared at me and shook his head.
"I think you mean Auto-Tune," the other agent commented. My gaze flickered over to her. There was something familiar about the young woman, but for the life of me, it wasn't coming. I'd figure it out later.
I shrugged. "Anyway, it sounds like someone using that."
Charles interjected, "You're saying it sounds like someone verbalizing?"
I nodded to my mate. "Most mages sing to cast their magic. That's why we call spells songs. What's important is the sequence of notes, though, not words. They might have a focus of some sort—usually a musical instrument—but the song is essentially wordless even if the melody they are using is from an old, popular composition that originally had lyrics. This sounds more like someone is using... Oh, I don't know, the best analogy I have is beat poetry. There's no real melodic line, but somehow it works."
"Except beat poetry is actually good," Irwin said.
I snorted. "What gets me is that I can hear this one. Couldn't hear the damn siphoning song, or the language one, so what's t
he difference?"
"The siphoning song is passive, quiet. This is something else. It's aggressive! Of course you can hear it," Pyggie squeaked, poking his head out of Irwin's pocket.
"Hmm. Or maybe they aren't hiding anymore." I pulled out my phone and dialed Madeline. "Hey, we're going to deactivate this thing. I need my magic." At the affirmative from the other side, I slipped off my bracelet and handed it to Charles. The scar on my wrist was still purple, and I rubbed it, feeling an ache all the way to my bones.
After brushing my cheek with his fingers, Charles backed off and let me shift. Irwin and I moved to support the sweating mage who was holding the magic at bay. Irwin fed him power, the sudden onslaught of raw magic enough to make the stranger's eyes widen, and I howled a supporting framework to channel the melody and keep it from tearing the stranger's efforts apart.
The fire crew came with their hoses, two of them aimed at separate sections of the runic song. At my signal, they turned them on and blasted the red paint simultaneously. Ink shimmered and then dissolved under the torrent of water.
The song expanded suddenly and then fizzled as the strange mage pounced on it. Irwin's strength, augmented by Pyggie, was incredible. He fed the other mage power like it was candy. My melodic support was in place, so I backed off and listened. The swirling vortex unraveled like a ball of yarn once its underlying structure was removed. Under my feet, the earth trembled, and I snarled a response, my fur bristling at the coincidence.
I motioned to the firefighters, and they turned off the water. We all breathed a sigh of relief. All that we could hear for the next few moments was the sound of dripping. Then someone whooped, and people started clapping and cheering and jumping around.
The smell of blood and death hit my nostrils. I grimaced and spat. Sparky and Max need to find that blood farm soon, I signed to Charles. Irwin was busy having a drink of water with the other mage. This was composed from several individuals.
Charles joined me and handed me a bottle. "How many?"
I unscrewed the cap and took a sip, then handed it back. Shifting all the way down to beast form, I padded forward and scented the concrete carefully, lips curled back from my teeth. I stood, bracing my paws against the wall, and analyzed the bomb site. There were a few flecks of blood still stuck in the mortar. Then I paced along the crack between the wall and the sidewalk. I sneezed to clear my nose and huffed at the ground, grateful that the scent of nonhuman corpses didn’t trigger my conditioning.
A paramedic knelt, his hands hovering over the body on the ground, and then he turned it over to lay face up. The paramedic shook his head, telling the rest of us what we already knew. It was too dangerous to resuscitate a mage—if they woke, they almost always drowned within moments.
Charles watched me as I padded back to him and frowned. "You're limping," he said. "That should have healed by now, love."
I shifted and sat down on the curb, taking the bottle of water back and letting him caress the back of my neck. "I crushed the bone last night. A simple fracture would heal pretty quickly, but crushing, with silver no less, will take a few more days to heal. As for the blood... I am not sure. More than six people involved, less than twelve?"
He swore, his hand tightening on my shoulder. I held the cool bottle against my face, then poured a little over the top of my head and shook vigorously. Droplets sprayed everywhere. My hair stood up like the quills of a hedgehog, and Charles got wet but I felt better. Then I looked over at the woman agent. The young woman was hustling over to her partner, the mage who'd been holding the song at bay. Our eyes met for a long moment, and she mouthed, "Later."
Charles reached down and pulled me to my feet. "Irwin is pumping the emergency crew for information now. Come on; let's get the witness interviews over with so people can leave."
"Fine," I said.
Chapter Fourteen
The two of us strolled over to a knot of observers clustered on the far side of the crime scene tape that had already been put up. A plainclothes officer was already talking to the small crowd, notebook in hand. At that moment, I loved the LAPD. He might not know all of the right questions, but I'd put five bucks down that he'd already compiled a list of names and addresses.
He had. The officer was more than happy to surrender his information to us. The norm police, as they were often called within the DMA, did not enjoy getting mixed up in paranormal crime. It required an entirely different education of criminal methods and lab tests they could not order, and they were always so overwhelmed with criminals of a more mundane nature that lightening their caseload was viewed with a mixture of territorial irritation and relief. The feeling was mutual.
That did not mean, however, that they would keep out of the affair entirely. We'd already circulated our composite sketch of the cultists through the local police in every area of Los Angeles County, including the jails. If one of them was picked up for, say, a traffic ticket, we'd nab them in a heartbeat. That just wasn't terribly likely to happen.
We had a list of around fifty witnesses, most of whom had already left the scene.
"The people who have waited are positive they saw something, even if they aren't sure what it was," Detective Morales said, offering me his notes.
I took the notebook. "If I weren't already mated, I'd kiss you for this," I commented, squinting at his neat penmanship.
"My wife would crack my head open like an egg," Detective Morales said and laughed, running a hand over his clean-shaven dome.
"And my mate would probably bite me. Oh well," I said with a chuckle, and then handed the notebook over to Charles.
He looked it over and nodded. We moved over to the clutch of people, and Charles lifted a hand.
"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience during this stressful event. We understand you want to get home to your loved ones. Please be patient a little longer. I and my associates"—he motioned toward me and the other female agent, who had drifted over—"need to understand exactly what each of you witnessed. We will call you one by one and ask you some questions. When you have finished, you may go home. Each of you will receive a card with a number to call if you think of anything not included in your interview."
We called each witness up, reassuring them and gently relieving them of their stories. Behind us, Irwin was circulating through the emergency personnel, using a similar routine. Charles explained to me that Irwin got the professionals because they required less tact. Mages were not big on tact.
Our first witness was fairly representative of the whole group, at least as far as their account went. Physically, she was average. Middle-aged, overweight, and white with a beakish nose. Her hands shook, and she kept glancing from Charles to me. Her white sundress with pink polka dots and wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off hurt my brain.
Charles conducted the actual interviews, while I took laborious notes. It would probably have been more efficient to switch—I have long been told my handwriting is terrible. However, these people had seen me shape-shift and sing with the mages. One of those might have been bearable, but both made for a very nervous audience. It was only good for the witness to be afraid of you if you wanted him to confess to something.
Charles smiled at the woman, all charm. "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Artunian. That is your name, correct? Mrs. Gail Artunian?"
"Yes, that's right." The woman nodded, clutching at her purse with white-knuckled fingers. It was a truly impressive purse, made of fake pink alligator skin. It could probably hold supplies for the next apocalypse, it was so big.
"All right, Mrs. Artunian. Why don't you tell us, in your own words, what happened here this morning?" Charles's voice was soothing, broadcasting calm and kindness.
"Well," the woman began, her voice quavering, "I had come to the post office to send some letters. The parking lot was full, and I was waiting in my car for a space to open up. I had to go inside to have my letters weighed because some of them I thought might need more than one stamp."
"So
you were in this parking lot here?" Charles asked.
"Yes. I was right there, near the driveway." She let go of her purse long enough to point, then resumed her death grip on the pink monstrosity.
Charles nodded. "So you were waiting for a parking space. Did you ever find a place to park?"
"No! I was waiting for several minutes, but every time a spot opened up, someone would take it before I could move." Her voice rose querulously.
Given that her car was probably the monstrous pink Cadillac pulled over to the curb nearby, I wasn't surprised.
"And then what happened, Mrs. Artunian?" Charles asked.
"I was sitting right there, in my car, and looking at the parking lot. A man appeared. I know he appeared because I was looking right at him, and first he was not there, and then he was there." She slapped her purse for emphasis.
Charles's tone left no doubt he believed her assertion. "What place did he appear, exactly?"
The woman pointed. "Right under where that fire truck is now."
Charles paused and looked at me, tilting his head to the side. I shook my head. "No, I won't be able to pick up a scent from there, not now. The exhaust from the truck will have wiped away any trace he might have left behind."
He grimaced, and I shrugged.
"All right. A man appeared, right there. What did he look like?" Charles hid his disappointment and resumed the interview.
"He was tall and muscular, with a bald head. He was red like he'd been sunburned, which I could tell because he was not wearing a shirt. There were tattoos all over his body," Mrs. Artunian answered after darting me a nervous glance. I bent back down over my notebook.
"What color were the tattoos? Could you see what they looked like?"
"They looked kind of like that Oriental writing, the pictures instead of letters?" At Charles's nod, she continued. "And they were brown, I think. Or maybe red."
"Did you see what happened next?" Charles prodded.
"A truck passed between us right then, and I did not see what happened. When it was gone, the man had disappeared, and there was this big design on the building and then everyone was running away, and the ground was shaking. I could feel it even with my car running," she answered.