Witch Hunt, A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy (The Maurin Kincaide Series)

by Rawlings, Rachel

  “I need to see the hands,” I said. My tongue suddenly felt thick and dry in my mouth, like a piece of dentist’s cotton that no longer belonged there.

  Matthison winced. “I’ll get Norm.”

  A couple of minutes later he came back in with Dr. Norman Walters. They were complete opposites. Matthison is tall, fit and well dressed, while Dr. Walters looked like an overweight Columbo. I could see the looks Normal - I mean Norman - Walters was giving me. Guess I can’t blame him, though. I’d think the same thing about someone asking to hold a dead girl’s amputated hands if I were him. He put a metal bin on one of those implement stands and rolled it over. And then he left, but not before giving me one last look. Suspicion and fear flickered in his eyes briefly, and then disappeared. Walters closed the door gently behind him, as if the dead girl were simply napping on the cold, hard table.

  “He didn’t say that I could touch them. He didn’t say anything, actually. Did you tell him what I needed to do? Of course you did. That’s why he didn’t say anything.” I was stalling.

  “Yes, that’s why he was looking at you like you had six heads. Do you what you need to do, Maurin, so we can get out of here. Twenty years of practice does not make this place any more pleasant.” He pushed the tray a little closer.

  The delicate hands were palm up in the bin, thankfully. I didn’t want to touch them anymore than I had to. I reached into the bin, my fingertips barely grazing hers. I was immediately overwhelmed with pain, excruciating, crippling pain. I couldn’t see anything beyond it.

  I bit back the scream building in my throat. If I let it out, then the pain would completely overtake me. Every muscle in my body was suddenly exhausted. My fingers, lacking the strength to hold the connection to the dismembered hands, slipped away. The pain pulled back a little, but I could feel my knees start to give out, with no way to stop them. I was about to hit the floor when Matthison reached out to hold me up. He helped me over to a stool against the wall. Thank god for the wall, or I would have been headed for the floor again. I could barely find the strength to hold my head up.

  Matthison grabbed my face with both hands, forcing me to focus on him. “Maurin, what the hell just happened? What did you see?”

  I didn’t answer him. I had no idea what had just happened. And I wasn’t ready to tell him that I hadn’t seen anything. “Mahalia, I think I did something wrong. It isn’t supposed to hurt like that, is it?”

  She looked at the body on the table, her fledgling coven member, then back to me. “Perhaps this was not the best candidate for your first time.”

  I was starting to get my second wind. “Perhaps we could have a little more instruction next time.”

  She let out a somber laugh. “Perhaps. Dare I ask if you saw anything?”

  “Nothing. Except for some flashes of light, like the pain was coming through as color, but I saw nothing useful at all.” I was frustrated. It didn’t matter if this was my first time trying to read the dead and I wasn’t a traditional medium. Everyone expected me to perform with my ever-growing powers and I couldn’t. I felt like a hack.

  “Let’s try the old-fashioned method for a change. My guys are working the evidence as we speak. We’ll be chasing down every lead. Just out of curiosity, is there a time limit on this new ability of hers, or can we come back to it if we need to?” Matthison thinks of everything, no wonder he’s Captain.

  “We have some time. Maurin, let’s get you something to eat. You need to regain your strength.” Mahalia was already leaving.

  “What I need is a real cup of coffee,” I said, as I followed them out the door to the hallway.

  3

  The three of us sat in Matthison’s office, each with a cup of sludge and a stale Danish. It was a far cry from my favorite chair and perfectly-brewed cup of coffee at the Daily Grind, but it would have to do. This wasn’t a conversation we should be having anywhere besides his office.

  Matthison was drumming his fingers on the mug his kids had made for him a couple of Christmases ago. It had ‘Number One Dad’ on one side, and a family photo on the other. The mug certainly didn’t match the man sitting across from me right now.

  “I feel confident in saying that this perpetrator targeted the Salem Coven. Unless something happens or some other evidence comes to light, we’ll proceed as such. The other arms of the Council don’t appear to be under threat, so that narrows down our list of suspects,” he said.

  “Captain, surely you know the history of the Salem Coven? The witch hunts? The pointless persecution? The list of suspects is longer than you might think. There are too many to name off the top of my head actually, though we do keep a thorough database on the extremists. I’ll get a copy of our files for you immediately.” Mahalia got her cell phone out of a small velvet bag that hung from the rope belt around her waist.

  I sat there, still recuperating. I heard her give instructions to someone on the phone to copy everything that they had in their database and get it over here immediately. Matthison thanked her as she hung up the phone. He said something about how it would save them a lot of time; their time was better spent on evidence, rather than chasing witch hunters on the Internet.

  I gulped the rest of my coffee and fought the shiver that made its way up my spine from the bitterness of it. I got up to get a refill. I asked if anyone else needed one and, when neither of them raised a mug, I made my way over to the coffee pot.

  The room outside Matthison’s office was pretty quiet, despite the brutal murder that had occurred. Salem didn’t have a high murder rate and a case like this, involving any faction of the Council, didn’t usually hit a detective’s desk. I would have expected more of a commotion. Someone slammed a phone down. I looked around to see who it was. I saw Masarelli grab his coat off the back of his chair and sprint for the door. The only problem was that I was in his way. He could have gone to his right - around another desk - but chose instead to barrel straight into me. I tried to move out of his way, but he still managed to clip me with his shoulder. My hip hit the desk next to me and my mug crashed to the floor.

  “You’re an asshole!” I shouted to his back. He gave me the finger and was out the door. I looked down at the broken pieces of my coffee mug; half the witch on a broomstick that made up SPTF’s badge stared back at me from the shards of ceramic. And then it clicked. Masarelli was going to another crime scene. I looked up to find Matthison standing in his doorway.

  “You and Mahalia are coming with me.” He pulled his keys out of his pocket and walked out.

  Mahalia and I were right behind him. I was hoping that she was going to speak up and say that it wasn’t necessary for us to go to the crime scene. They weren’t really my thing. You’d think after the Triad and the whole demon army thing that a little crime scene wouldn’t bother me, but it still did. In the heat of battle, everyone feels invincible; crime scenes have the opposite effect. It’s like they remind you of your mortality, even for those of us who are supposed to be immortal. Nothing is truly immortal, there is always a way to kill it. Even the immortals. Ironic.

  There were at least half a dozen police cars, all with their lights still flashing, by the time we pulled up to the Witch History Museum. I can’t recall the last time we had a serial killer in Salem. Matthison parked behind Masarelli’s unmarked Impala. Yellow police tape was everywhere. Barriers were already set up to keep the media and onlookers back. We got out and followed Matthison, since he was the only one of us with the credentials to get behind the tape.

  The body was sprawled out across the front steps of the museum. Flashes from the crime scene photographer’s camera lit up the darkening evening sky. I rubbed my eyes to get the flash burn out. As the body came back into focus, its delicate curves and small frame told me that the second victim was also a woman. Shit. A pattern was forming. My heart skipped a beat as I wondered if this time it would be a witch that I knew. ‘Please don’t let it be Amalie,’ I thought.

  Matthison was bent over the body. He looked up a
nd waved me over. I held my breath, not because of the smell, it was too soon and too cold for that, but because I was afraid of whom it would be. As I got closer, I saw the hair and relief washed over me. Jet-black hair with red tips fanned out from the pale face. I examined her fine yet striking features, trying to figure out if I had ever met her before. I fought the urge to look away when I realized that her eyes had been sewn shut. Matthison drew my attention to her exposed chest and the carving across her stomach.

  ‘Witches deserve the heaviest punishments above all criminals of the world’. The letters were small and neat, as if the killer had used a scalpel or something similar.

  I was struggling with the killer’s logic. Witches deserved the harshest punishment? Really? I could think of several people, the killer included, who were capable of worse things than any witch that I knew had done.

  Whatever the logic, the point of these messages was crystal clear. The person who was doing this hated witches. The choice in victims so far meant that the killer was attacking the coven from the bottom up. We were dealing with a fanatic - an extremist - and that worried me more than having a murderer running loose in Salem. This was like a terrifying mix of suicide bomber and serial killer. You can’t rationalize with a fanatic. You can never explain away their belief systems. Their hatred is ingrained in every fiber of their being.

  Matthison brought my attention back to the dead girl on the steps. There’d be time to profile the killer after we evaluated the latest crime scene.

  “Who is she, Mahalia?” he asked.

  “Julienne Blanc.” Mahalia’s stoic façade was starting to crack. “Julienne was a pure blood. She was stronger than Laura, but not as strong as any of the witches you know, Maurin.”

  “Okay, so that pretty much confirms what I was thinking. Whoever is doing this is eliminating the weakest members first,” Matthison said.

  “Well, of course they are. That’s what serial killers do, right? It’s about power for them – it’s about preying upon people. And predators go after the easiest prey. I can’t recall a case in history where the murder victims were all your size, for example” I said.

  If we weren’t standing over a dead girl then that kind of logic might actually have earned a smile from Matthison. Right now, it just had him staring at me like I was nuts.

  “What? You know it’s true,” I said, in my typical defensive mode.

  He waved it off. “No, no. You said ‘they’. Why did you say ‘they’?”

  “I didn’t even realize that I had,” I replied, suddenly confused.

  He was pacing. “These two murders were too close together for just one person to have committed them.”

  “Um, I hate to break it to you, Captain, but Jack the Ripper was one person and two of his murders were very close together.” At least I thought I read somewhere that they were.

  “You’re missing my point. It’s not that there are two murders this close together, but it’s the way that the murders were committed. If you consider the lack of blood around the body, then she obviously wasn’t killed here. The words are meticulously carved into her abdomen. Her eyes were sewn shut and I’m willing to bet if we opened her mouth we’d find her tongue is missing just like the other victim. This wasn’t rushed, but rather relished.” He paused.

  There was something different about Julienne. “Why weren’t her hands cut off?” I asked.

  Matthison turned Julienne’s hand over with as much care as if she could still feel him touching her.

  “Not cut off, but cut deep enough to be useless. See it all the time with attempted suicides.”

  “Why?” I wondered out loud.

  “They don’t mean to, they just cut too deep. So-”

  “No. Why did they take their time with her and not with the other victim?”

  “That’s a question for Mahalia, but if I had to guess then I’d say that there’s a difference for the killer between half-blooded and full-blooded witches. It’s like they wanted it to last longer with her.” He turned to Mahalia.

  Mahalia went white as a ghost. Which isn’t really an accurate comparison in real life; I’ve seen ghosts and they’re a lot more lifelike than you’d think. Something had her scared and I’ve never seen her scared. I reached out and touched her arm. She jumped. It was small, but I felt it.

  Matthison noticed too, except he mistook it for shock. “My apologies, Mahalia. I don’t mean to be inconsiderate. This must be disturbing for you - seeing two of your coven members like this in a matter of hours. I can have one of the officers take you home if you like.”

  “Don’t let the grey hair and wrinkled body fool you, Captain. I am not that frail and I have seen far worse than this in all my years. Maurin simply caught me deep in thought,” Mahalia replied tartly.

  I started to say that it felt like more than deep thought to me, but decided not to interrupt her. What she said next made my jaw drop, however.

  “There is no difference in half-blood or full-blood to them, Captain. Any trace of witch blood is too much. I know who did this,” she said quietly.

  “What?” Matthison and I asked in unison.

  “I know who is attacking us,” she said louder.

  “Okay, would you like to share that bit of information with the rest of us?” Matthison asked.

  I was getting the feeling that she had suspected someone before we even got here, and now I was starting to get pissed off that she hadn’t said anything sooner.

  “Inquisitors.” She practically choked on the name.

  “Inquisitors? I’ve never heard of them before,” I said, still stunned that it had taken her this long to fill us in on her thoughts.

  “Well, you wouldn’t; you’re not a witch!” she snapped.

  I could feel myself shrink back from her. She’d never spoken to me like that before - like I was an outsider.

  “I’m sorry, Maurin. I didn’t mean to take my anger out on you.” She sighed.

  “Mahalia, how can you be so certain that it is this group, these Inquisitors?” Matthison asked. “We’re not even finished here, we need to compare all the evidence that we’re collecting from both crime scenes. There could be more than what we see on the surface.”

  “Well, of course I can’t be one-hundred percent certain, but we have been fighting groups like this - the Inquisitors specifically, for centuries. I’ll know more after I complete a recollection,” she said.

  “A what?” Matthison asked the question that was on the tip of my tongue.

  “Normally a recollection is a simple spell that is commonly used to draw out suppressed memories or to heal amnesiacs. This one will be more difficult, since I won’t be using it on the living. Hopefully we will have the same results, though I may need to consult with a necromancer,” Mahalia said.

  “What?” I felt like I was saying that a lot tonight. “A necromancer, isn’t that a little on the darker side of things?”

  “Like all things mystical, necromancy has gotten a bad name. They don’t raise legions of the dead. Well, some have tried, but most help the dead find their way to the other side. It’s a lot more shamanic than demonic. I have a friend I can call if need be.” She sounded tired.

  “Why didn’t you try this back at the morgue?” I asked, trying to hide the anger and confusion in my voice.

  “I can understand why my decision would bother you, but the outcome would be the same. Julienne and Laura would still be dead. I am certain the Captain’s forensics will tell him the same thing,” she said.

  “But why did you make me go through the whole failed reading if you could have just done a casting?” I asked, irritated.

  “I believe I mentioned that this was a much stronger version of the recollection. And by stronger, I mean harder to accomplish with a much larger power drain. I had hoped that your reading would be a success and I wouldn’t have to drain the coven’s power base only to find out that my suspicions were wrong.”

  "But they aren’t wrong. We could be chasing
these guys down already!” I was practically shouting.

  I was pissed off and she knew why. There were people that mattered to me in her coven. If it had been Amalie on those steps, then I would have completely lost it. The only thing keeping me from total panic about Oberon was that the Inquisitors seemed to be going after women. This only seemed to prove my earlier theory about serial killers.

  “I get it. Calculated risks. Why unnecessarily drain your power base? If it weren’t the Inquisitors, than you’d be left weak and possibly unable to defend yourselves against a different enemy. At least this way, now that we’re all on the same page, we can help protect you until you recharge,” Matthison piped in.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I almost laughed. “The Council still exists for a reason, Matthison. You can’t protect them any more than you can protect yourself from them.”

  I didn’t say anything else. I just walked back to the car. It was pretty obvious to me that we were done here.

  4

  I was already sitting shotgun in Matthison’s car by the time that they caught up to me. Mahalia was on the phone, hopefully with Roul or Agrona. The scowl on Matthison’s face said that he didn’t like the half of the conversation that he was listening to. He got in the car and slammed the door shut. Mahalia ended her call and got in the back seat.

  “If you could drop us off at Toil and Trouble, I would appreciate it,” she said, as her seat belt clicked into place.

  “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m dropping you off alone anywhere. I’m coming with you,” Matthison replied.

  He obviously wasn’t concerned about her emotional state anymore. He was irritated now.

  “The meetings are private. There hasn’t been a Norm at a Council meeting in centuries. Our liaison will be happy to debrief you. Won’t you, Maurin?” Mahalia replied.