“Yeah, well, things have changed. Matthison’s still in a coma and I’m in charge, so we’ll be doing things my way from now on,” he asserted.
“Ooh, tough words big guy but you're just a stand in. Now tell me which warehouse it is,” I retorted.
“Right, like I’m going to let you and Broomhilda over there go traipsing around. You think you can contaminate the whole crime scene and make any evidence that we find inadmissible? I don’t think so. Even Matthison wouldn’t tolerate suspects poking around our investigation,” he said, jerking his thumb in Mahalia’s direction.
“Suspects? We have been attacked and victimized by this group of zealots. They killed innocent people!” Mahalia said in stunned disbelief.
“Right, you’re all a bunch of innocents. Like I’m supposed to believe that a group of witches could be victims of anything. That line of bullshit might work with the press, but I’m not buying into it,” he said.
“You know, just the other day I thought that you actually had a shred of humanity,” I said.
“I’m more human than you’ll ever be,” he responded.
“That’s it! I’m not listening to any more of this bullshit!” Oberon said. “You don’t have a warrant, so get out.”
Masarelli got up, smoothed his suit jacket and grabbed his trench coat off of the back of the kitchen chair. I stifled a laugh. He was certainly taking his temporary position seriously. I hadn’t seen him in full suit and tie once in the four years that I’d known him. I didn’t think that he owned a suit jacket, let alone a dress coat. I followed him to the front door just to be sure that he didn’t try to plant some evidence on his way out. At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past him.
“I thought that you wanted to see the crime scene?” he asked, just as I was about to shut the door in his face.
I just stared at him.
“I’ll take you, but only you,” he added.
“Wait here,” I said, closing the door.
Oberon was right behind me.
“I don’t want you going with him. I don’t trust him,” he said.
“Masarelli and I have been having this pissing contest for the last four years. He’s a first-class jerk and a little power drunk with his new authority, but he’s harmless. I can handle him,” I said.
“You don’t look good, Maurin, you didn’t get much sleep,” Oberon said. I could see the compassion in his face, and it sent an inexplicable jolt of pain through me. I steeled myself as he continued. “You’re not yourself. You’re pale, and you look drawn out, like you’ve got the flu.”
“Why darling, you say the sweetest things,” I said, raising my arm to my forehead and pretending to swoon.
“I’m serious, Maurin. Don’t go by yourself. I’ll come with you. Tell him that according to the rules that Matthison and the Council agreed upon, you’re required to bring one member of the Council Guard with you,” he suggested.
“I don’t want to press my luck,” I replied, and Oberon gave me a questioning look. “I may have exaggerated a bit about how much he actually had to share. In truth, the language in the agreement is a little one-sided. I’m supposed to share with them, but they don’t really have to share with me, since we always know before them anyway. I’ve never had to worry about the specific language before, since I always worked with Matthison.”
“So Masarelli was right; things are going to change,” Oberon clarified.
“No. Matthison will be back,” I stated, unwilling to believe otherwise. “If he’s going to take me to the warehouse, then I’m going. I don’t care if he has ulterior motives. We need to know what’s going on. If the Inquisitors really are dead, then who killed them? And why?”
I walked past Oberon and went upstairs to grab my coat. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the dresser. I leaned in closer to get a better look. Oberon was right. I didn’t look good. I had the amulet, but I still felt like there was a hole in my defenses and I was leaking energy. I’d probably feel a little better if I could just get some decent sleep and a hot meal, but I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t feel one-hundred percent until lachadiel was gone. I just wished that I knew how to make that happen. I put my coat on and went back downstairs.
Oberon was back in the kitchen, pleading his case to Mahalia. It was understandable that he wanted to come with me, but I could handle myself. Besides, with the way that Masarelli was behaving, things would go a lot smoother without any witches coming along. From the looks of it, Mahalia agreed with me. I slipped out the front door while Mahalia and Amalie kept Oberon distracted.
Masarelli was waiting in his car. Actually it wasn’t his car, it was Matthison’s. It was probably full of wrappers from his drive-thru addiction already. Seeing Masarelli sitting behind the wheel of Matthison’s car got my blood boiling. He thought he’d have an easy time climbing the ladder now with Matthison in the hospital. I’d have to knock him down a few rungs.
I opened the car door and brushed the burger wrappers onto the floor before getting in. After I buckled my seatbelt, Masarelli backed out of the driveway.
“Having fun playing pretend?” I asked.
“Who’s pretending? The Commissioner put me in charge of SPTF himself, and he made the right choice,” he said.
“He made the only choice. No one else has been there as long as you have. As soon as he’s healthy enough, Matthison will be back behind his desk and you’ll be back writing parking tickets,” I taunted.
“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m about to make my career with this case and I have it on good authority that they’re going to offer Matthison an early retirement with full benefits. His wife will make him take it. It looks like you’ll be dealing with me from now on,” he said confidently.
“I’ll make a deal with you. You shut your offensive mouth for the rest of the drive and I won’t file a complaint for racially-motivated harassment,” I said.
“Witchcraft is still classified as a religion - not a race. And you’re not even a witch,” he said.
“Just shut up and drive,” I told him.
Masarelli was actually quiet the rest of the ride. I stared out the window, watching the houses and people as we passed them, but my thoughts kept going back to what he had said about Matthison. Would he retire after he got out of the hospital? I couldn’t blame his wife for making him do so; they had kids and bigger plans. SPTF wouldn’t be the same without him. If Masarelli were at the helm, then the entire purpose of the department would change. And not for the better. Matthison and I worked well together. I couldn’t work with Masarelli at all, especially now. He just wanted things back to the way they were before the Shift.
My stomach and my mood soured as the residential area turned into an industrial area and the warehouses came into view. It wasn’t hard to figure out which building it was. Masarelli might as well have put up a neon sign with big flashing arrows that said ‘something bad happened here.’ Black and whites lined the chain link fence. A young beat cop pulled the gate open; he closed it again as soon as our rear bumper was clear.
Masarelli parked off to the side of the lot. We both got out and walked over to the warehouse. He slid the large metal door open and we went in. Halogen lights were set up throughout the warehouse, because the windows had been blacked out. I saw a few familiar faces from SPTF milling about. I waved and said hello as I followed Masarelli to the far end of the space.
We passed a makeshift office, a couple of tables with computers, GPS, COMM units and more technical gear. There were some more folding tables with maps and papers strewn across them as well. Farther to the left was an old school chalkboard on wheels with what looked like a family tree drawn on it. There were two easels with flip charts on them in front of two rows of five folding chairs. I couldn’t see anything else yet, but judging by the number of people working back here, we were getting closer to the bodies.
“Did they move the bodies already?” I asked, trying to figure out what I was looking for exactly.
“There weren’t any bodies,” Masarelli replied.
“Then how do you know that ten people were murdered?” I asked, confused.
“There weren’t any actual bodies, but there were enough pieces left for us to figure it out. See for yourself.” He pointed to the right rear corner.
I headed in that direction. Masarelli pulled me back.
“Watch where you’re going. Just stay behind me,” he ordered.
I looked down to see that the cement floor about two feet in front of me was covered with blood. I fell in behind Matthison and followed him along the back wall. He snapped his fingers and one of the officers turned the lights so that they lit up the corner. There were small white numbered flags everywhere, marking different bone shards and pieces of flesh. The walls and floor were covered with blood. It looked like someone had thrown open cans of red paint all over the place.
“And you seriously thought witches did this?” I asked Masarelli in disbelief.
“You seriously think they didn’t?” he asked.
“It looks like a Pollock painting back here. If the coven was going to send out its best witches to kill the Inquisitors, do you honestly think that they would leave it looking like this?” I asked.
“If they were trying to throw us off and make us think that someone else did it, then yes,” he said.
“You’ve been watching the Sleuth channel again, haven’t you?” I asked, getting a few chuckles from some of the other officers.
“I know you know something. You say the witches wouldn’t have done this, but maybe they sent their dogs in to do the dirty work for them; maybe they came in here and tore them all to bits,” he said, grasping at straws.
“Okay, a werewolf is strong enough to take down a Norm. I’ll give you that. But why would they?” I asked, trying to follow his desperate logic.
He didn’t have an answer.
“You haven’t found anything to connect what happened here to the coven or to the wolves. And you won’t, because the Council has been cleaning up after the Others in Salem for centuries,” I told him.
“Thanks for proving my point,” he said.
“You damned well know what I meant! Did you know about the Others before the Shift? Of course not, because they didn’t leave shit like this for you to find. The only reason you know about them now is because they want you to. They would have made the Inquisitors disappear - not splatter them all over the walls,” I said.
“Wasn’t hard to win you over, was it? Just had to get a hot guy to make some magic in your pants and you’d say anything they told you to,” Masarelli said, trying to degrade me.
“You think he’s hot?” I said, turning his insult back on him.
There was an immediate eruption of exaggerated coughing and throat-clearing in an effort to cover up the laughter of some of the officers who were within earshot. I walked away from Masarelli, careful not to step in any of the tacky blood on the floor. I took my phone out of my coat pocket and started taking pictures. Ignoring Masarelli’s protests, I continued to walk around taking more pictures at different angles, making sure to stay out of the way of the crime scene photographer.
I got a pair of gloves from one of the detectives and started looking at the papers on one of the tables. There were maps of Salem and Winter Island, a file on me that I know Masarelli read more than once, and more photos of coven members. I moved to another table. There were some papers that looked like they were torn out of a really old book, in a language that I couldn’t read. It looked like the Inquisitors were trying to translate them. I wanted to take them back to Mahalia, but I’d never make it out of here with them. I could feel Masarelli’s eyes on me. I took a few pictures of the papers, hoping that the zoom feature on my phone’s camera was good enough to glean some details.
They had enough evidence to prove that the Inquisitors murdered those girls, but that wouldn’t help us now. Masarelli saw it as a motive here and I had to admit that it looked pretty bad for Mahalia and the rest of the coven. I couldn’t believe that the Inquisitors might actually succeed in their plan to take down the Salem Coven, albeit ironically. Masarelli was going to try to take this case all the way to the courthouse. He genuinely believed that the coven was guilty and that this proved that all of his prejudices were accurate.
There had to be something here that would prove the coven’s innocence and I was hoping to find it. I had to find it.
Masarelli was through letting me play in his sandbox. I could see him talking to a couple of uniforms and pointing in my direction. I decided not to wait for my escort and walked out of the dark warehouse and out into the bright winter sun. The same officer who looked like he couldn’t be older than twelve was at the gate. He gave the chain link gate a pull and opened it just enough for me to slip out. I walked about a block and called Oberon for a ride.
I was on the verge of turning into a popsicle by the time he arrived. I climbed into his truck and started turning all of the vents toward me. Oberon kicked the heat on high, so I put my hands in front of one of the vents to thaw them out. I needed to invest in some gloves.
“How are you with bolt cutters?” I asked.
“Why?” Oberon groaned.
“We might need to come back here tonight,” I said.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. There were too many people in there for me to touch anything, so I couldn’t get a reading,” I responded.
“You might want to figure that out before we go committing a felony at a place that’s crawling with cops,” he said.
“I’m hoping that the pictures I managed to take will help. We’ll skip over the areas that Masarelli’s team has been through. That should help narrow it down,” I said.
“I’m not sure I follow. Why are we skipping the places that SPTF looked?” he asked.
“Anything Masarelli’s tagged as evidence will be pointing toward the coven. If we look at everything else we’re bound to find the real killer.” I explained.
“We’d be less likely to get caught if we had a vampire with us. They can cloak themselves in shadows better than I can with any spell.” He said.
“Perfect. Agrona’s due back tonight. We’ll ask her for a volunteer.” I said.
12
I sat on the floor in Mahalia’s study surrounded by the pictures of the warehouse. It took forever to get them off of my phone and onto the computer, and even longer to print them out. I used Photoshop to zoom in and enhance the pictures of the book’s pages, but they still looked like cell phone quality. I shuffled the enlarged prints around, fitting them together like a puzzle. I lined them up to match the originals to the best of my ability. Out of everything that the Inquisitors were working on, these pages seemed the most important. Hopefully someone here would be able to read them.
Oberon moved the couch back to open up more floor space and I started laying out more pictures. I stood back up and looked down at the whole bloody scene on the floor.
“Now what?” I thought out loud.
“Now you have to eat something. You haven’t actually sat down to eat in days,” Oberon prompted.
“Not true. Amalie brought me pancakes at my apartment and I sat down to eat those,” I said.
“Maurin, I’m serious. You can’t keep up this pace. You’re using up valuable energy just so you can keep going on a few hours sleep and a couple of snacks,” he said.
“What are you? Are you my dad now? We’re running out of time! We don’t know who or what did this and we’ve got to figure it out before Masarelli starts convincing people that it was the coven. Food isn’t high on my list of priorities right now,” I replied.
“Well, it needs to be or you’ll be no good to anyone. I’m going to go fix you a sandwich and you’re going to eat it,” he ordered, as he headed to the kitchen.
I didn’t move. I just stood there staring at the photos spread out all over the floor. I was missing something. I could feel it. But w
hat?
“I don’t think you have them in the right order,” a man’s voice said.
I jumped, startled by the unexpected sound. I turned around to see who was behind me.
“Damn it, Kedehern, I hate it when you all do that!” I said.
“Forgive me, centuries-old habit,” he said, smirking.
“Save it. You enjoy sneaking up on people. What makes you say they’re out of order?” I asked.
“I’ve become quite the expert on blood over the years,” he said with a chuckle.
His laughter rolled over me, giving me goose bumps. The untucked white dress shirt, perfectly distressed jeans and boots made his light brown hair and eyes stand out. I could see how women would have been lured in by his fashion model appearance. The danger was so well hidden beneath the surface.
“Right. That certainly makes sense - in a disturbing kind of way. Go ahead, Mr. Expert, put them in order,” I said, stepping to the side.
Kedehern bent down and slid some of the photos around. Before I knew it, he had everything in order; all of the pictures were in their correct place. It looked identical to how it was in the warehouse. He stood up, admiring his work.
“How did you - you weren’t even there! Never mind, I probably don’t want to know,” I said, stopping myself.
“There was a time when we weren’t bound by the rules that we have now. My queen and I did as we pleased. This is a finger painting compared to the masterpieces we created,” he said wistfully, reminiscing of the days when vampires weren’t romanticized and were still at the top of the food chain.
I tried to block out the images of Agrona and Kedehern slaughtering town after town, driven by their insatiable thirst for blood. I looked at Kedehern and wondered: could a vampire have done this? It was unlikely. No vampire would risk the wrath of Agrona and Kedehern. And it’s not like the vampires were short on blood donors. Not to mention that Agrona had basically said that the coven was on their own in ridding themselves of the Inquisitors. There’s no logical reason for a vampire to do this. Not that anything about this situation was logical.
Witch Hunt, A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy (The Maurin Kincaide Series) Page 12