by Skye Knizley
“You can choke to death on your own larynx,” Raven said. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine by morning. But you’re sidelined till you can breathe without wheezing.”
Levac didn’t look happy, but nodded his agreement.
“Cheer up,” Aspen said. “You can order whatever you want from room service, the food will help you recover.”
Levac looked at Raven. “Really?”
Raven laughed. “Sure. Just keep the lobsters in your own room.”
Levac thought about the weird dream he’d had and shook his head. “I think I’ll stick to cheeseburgers.”
“Okay so Rupe is overeating and taking a nap, I’m guessing you’re going to the morgue to confirm Quinn is missing, then what?” Aspen asked.
Raven opened the door. “I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go.”
CITY MORGUE
BOSTON, MA. 12:06 P.M.
RAVEN PUSHED THROUGH THE DOOR of the morgue and walked straight toward the cooler. The clerk on duty stood up and followed after.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
“Det— I mean Special Agent Storm. I’m looking for the body of Monsignor Quinn,” Raven said. “Is he still cooling his heels in the freezer like a good boy?”
“What? Of course he is.” the clerk said. “Maybe I should get the coroner…”
“Whatever floats your boat,” Raven said. “You might want to get whatever paperwork you have to report a missing body, too.”
“Why? Are you taking him somewhere?” the clerk asked.
Raven scanned the drawers and reached for the one that had once held Quinn. She stopped a hair’s breadth from touching the handle. With any luck, anyone helping Quinn out of the freezer would have left fingerprints. She knelt and looked at the handle. A thumb and two fingerprints stood out clearly on the cold chrome.
“Has anyone touched this drawer recently?” she asked.
The clerk looked at the clipboard she was holding like a shield. “Um, it looks like the last person to touch it was you.”
“That’s not my print,” Raven said. “Whoever touched this thing had serious man hands.”
She pulled out her phone and touched the keys. It rang twice before being picked up.
“Asp? Are you and Bobbi still in the hospital?”
“Yeah, why? Did you find zombies rising in the morgue? Cause that would be cool,” Aspen said.
“Nothing that exciting,” Raven replied. “Grab something that will lift prints off an icebox and get down here.”
“On my way, babes.”
Raven could hear the smile in her voice.
The call ended and Raven swapped her phone for a stick pen that she used to open the door. It slid open easily to reveal an empty drawer. The sheet that had once covered the victim now lay in a bundle at the foot of the container.
“They’re rising from the dead and someone knows it.”
“He’s gone?” the clerk asked.
“Yep.”
The clerk paled. “Where did he go? He’s dead, it isn’t like he got up and left!”
Raven shrugged. “He got better.”
The door squeaked open. “Who got better?”
“Ronen Quinn,” Raven said. “He’s wandered off.”
“Very Night of the Walking Dead,” Aspen said.
“More than likely someone borrowed him. Do you think you can lift a print off this thing?”
“No sweat, boss,” Aspen said with a grin.
Raven stepped out of the way to let Aspen work and turned back to the clerk who looked like she was on the verge of crying. “Has anyone else signed in since I was here last?”
The clerk consulted the clipboard. “Yes ma’am, Dr. John Smith signed in last night around two in the morning.”
“John Smith. That didn’t raise any eyebrows?” Raven asked. “What about identification?”
“We don’t have a night shift,” the clerk said. “Admittance is for staff only after hours, so doctors just sign in and out when they come in.”
Raven rolled her eyes. “Swell. I could have pretended to be Dr. Ruth and come in whenever I wanted. Any luck with the prints, Asp?”
“I got a thumb and what I’m pretty sure is an index finger from the Jolly Giant,” Aspen said. “I emailed photos to the lab in Virginia, but I’ll probably have to upload them to the system for a positive match.”
“Which is going to take forever,” Raven growled. “Okay, you, clerk person, what about security? Any cameras near here?”
“Of course, we have twenty-four hour surveillance,” the woman replied. “I’m sure the security department can help you.”
“Where’s the security department located?” Raven asked.
The clerk pointed in the general direction of the front door. “On this floor, behind the main lobby.”
“Great. Aspen, are we done here?”
Aspen looked up from the police tape she was putting over the drawer. “Yep, all set.”
She stood and looked at the clerk. “Nobody touches that drawer until I can get someone down here to grab it. If I find out anyone messed with it I’ll have them on tampering charges so fast their head will explode.”
The clerk blinked at the smaller woman. “Yes ma’am.”
Raven shook her head and led the way down the hall toward the lobby. She spotted the security sign and walked toward it. At the end of a short corridor was a single steel reinforced door with a narrow window off to one side. She knocked and held her badge up to the window. The door opened a few second later. In the gap was a tall man who looked like he took his job way too seriously. Biceps to rival The Rock, chest muscles that could crack walnuts and a uniform three sizes too small made up the package that was Security Officer Curtis, as proclaimed by his nametag.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
His voice sounded as if it was having some trouble escaping from his chest.
“I’m Agent Storm, this is my associate Aspen Kincaid. We need to take a look at a surveillance tape. May we come in?”
“Do you have a warrant?” Curtis asked.
Raven looked blank. “You really want me to get a warrant to look at a surveillance tape? What part of Security Officer don’t you understand? You record things so people like me can see them.”
Curtis seemed to think about this for a minute before opening the door wider and letting the two women through. The hospital’s security office was oblong, with a row of computer monitors down the far wall. A two way mirror made up most of the wall opposite while filing cabinets all but covered the narrowest part of the room. A female officer sat in front of the monitors, a Cup O’Noodles cup on the glass counter in front of her.
“Hey Curt,” the woman said. “What’s up?”
“Agents Storm and Kincaid need to look at some tapes. I’ll cover the monitors if you can help them out,” Curtis said.
The woman stood with her cup and motioned toward the cabinets. “I’m Julie and I’ll be happy to help you. What date and timeframe do you need?”
“Last night around two in the morning, whatever cameras show the morgue and the hallway outside,” Raven said.
“Cameras eighteen, nineteen and twenty,” Aspen added.
“How do you know that?” Raven asked.
Aspen grinned like an imp. “They’re labeled. Duh.”
“No problem,” Julie said. “Have a seat and give me a few minutes to get it cued up for you.”
Aspen dropped into a nearby chair while Raven leaned against the wall next to her.
“The cameras are really labeled?” Raven asked.
“Some detective,” Aspen replied with a smile. “They usually are. I just happened to see one of the numbers and counted backwards.”
Raven smiled back. “I learn something new every day.”
Julie pulled a DVD case out of the file drawer and slipped it into a nearby computer that looked to have been set up for video review. It was an older machine and had no connection to the hospital network. She then becko
ned Raven and Aspen to join her.
“That section will come up as four separate squares on the screen,” she said. “I’ll fast wind to the time you asked and then play at normal speeds. Most of the cameras in that section are set on continuous feed, so it will be sort of like watching a grainy black and white movie.”
“Fine. Play it,” Raven said.
She leaned on the back of Julie’s chair and watched the minutes tick by. The corridor was silent, as was to be expected at two in the morning. At a little after two in the morning a tall, thin man dressed in a white lab coat over a black shirt and pants walked into view. He moved straight to the morgue door, unlocked it with a key from his pocket and stepped through. Ten minutes later Quinn stepped out naked, naked as a jaybird with the man behind him.
“Nobody noticed a naked old man wandering through the hospital?” Aspen asked.
Julie frowned at her. “Somebody should have. We have two guards on the cameras for a reason.”
“Play that guy back,” Raven said.
“What, the naked dude? Creepy, Ray,” Aspen said.
“Play it back!”
Julie rewound the video and played the scene back and they watched the naked man and the doctor walk down the hallway for everyone to see.
“Again, slower,” Raven said.
The video started playing again, this time at half speed. When the doctor’s face appeared, Raven stabbed out a finger and pressed the pause key.
“Klien,” she muttered.
“Who?” Aspen asked.
“Dr. Klien. He was Quinn’s Archaeology advisor. Kole and I spoke to him a few days ago about the victims,” Raven replied.
“And your Fürstin radar didn’t go off?” Aspen asked.
Raven frowned. “No. He gave off nothing at all, which should have been a damn clue.”
She turned to Julie. “Get me a copy of that, and find out who was on the cameras last night, I want to know who dropped the ball.”
“Can do, Agent.”
Julie pressed a combination of keys and the computer began to whir. A few seconds later a DVD popped out of the computer’s secondary slot. Julie slipped it into a case and handed it over. Raven handed it to Aspen who labeled it and taped it shut.
“It will take a little bit to get you a name,” Julie said. “Can I call you with the info?”
Raven pulled a card out of her pocket and handed it to her. “Get it to me as soon as you can. Come on, Asp. Let’s go pay the good doctor a visit.”
151 COMMONWEALTH AVENUE
BOSTON, MA. 2:24 P.M.
IT WAS RAINING WHEN THEY arrived at Bridgewater High School, a cold hard rain that ran down Raven’s neck and chilled her spine. She ignored the cold and led Aspen up the steps and into the school. They were almost to Klien’s office next to J22 when Aspen touched Raven’s arm.
“Slow down, honey,” she said. “Do you feel that?”
Raven stopped and looked at Aspen, whose eyes were glowing with cerulean light.
“Feel what?” she asked.
“Magik,” Raven said. “Black magik. Someone cooked up some bad mojo recently. In there.”
Raven drew her pistol. “What kind of bad mojo?”
Aspen spread her hands and Raven could see energy crackling between her fingers. “I don’t know, but it was powerful.”
“I’ll bet my badge it was Klien.”
Raven kicked open the door to Klien’s office and followed through with her pistol held in front of her in a Weaver stance.
The room was a mess. All of Klien’s carefully stacked books and artifacts lay strewn across the floor and his desk had been cleared of anything normal. In the middle was a large piece of cloth that looked a hundred years old if it was a day. On the cloth was a cup made out of a human skull, a collection of finger bones carved into unfamiliar shapes and five candles made from foul-smelling tallow Raven suspected was human. There was no sign of Klien.
“Shit,” Aspen said. “It’s a summoning spell of some kind.”
“What kind of summoning?” Raven asked.
“The bad kind, love,” Aspen said. “Something from the pit.”
She approached the cloth and reached out, her eyes partially closed as if she expected an electric shock. More energy erupted along her fingers and Aspen winced. A moment later the candles went out and she sighed.
“I stopped it, but whatever he was doing was in full force when we got here,” she said. “I’m sure something came through.”
“Marvelous,” Raven muttered.
Less than a heartbeat later she could hear screams coming from somewhere down the hall. She turned and ran toward the noise with Aspen just a few paces behind her. They passed through more than a dozen fleeing high school students all dressed in blue and khaki uniforms before they reached a large open space that contained rows of antique wooden lockers. In the middle was a circle of green flame surrounding a winged skeleton dressed in tatters. It glared at Raven with fiery eyes and raised the obsidian sword it clutched in one hand.
Raven took a breath and squeezed her pistol’s trigger twice in quick succession. Both shots hit home, sending chunks of fiery skull into the distant wall. The creature shook its head with a sound like dice rolling around in a cup and the two crushed slugs fell out of its mouth. It then turned and swung at Raven with the sword. She pushed Aspen to the side and dodged the other way, narrowly missing being sliced in half by the massive blade. She came up on one knee and fired again. Again the shot was clean and again another chunk was blown out of its skull to reveal the fire that burned within.
“Damn. You give new meaning to the term hothead, pal,” Raven said.
The creature raised its sword and took a step toward Raven. If it could have smiled she just knew it would have been grinning from ear to ear. As it swung, Raven ducked into the opening and placed the Automag against its chin. She fired twice more, knocking the skull from its spine. It staggered away and Raven reloaded, not surprised to see the skull vanish before it could hit the floor, leaving only a pillar of flame atop the skeleton’s neck.
Before she could squeeze the trigger again it swung its sword. She dodged to the side a moment too late and felt the bone-numbing pain as the obsidian blade bit deep into her arm and sent her tumbling face-first into the wooden lockers. She shook her head to clear the stars and looked up to see the creature’s sword descending toward her. She started to raise her pistol, but knew she would never make it in time.
“Get away from her, you bastard!” Aspen yelled.
The creature half turned toward her and was yanked off its feet to smash into the wall with enough force to shatter two of its ribs. When it turned, Raven opened fire, blasting chunks out of its arms and legs, trying to find anything that was vulnerable. Her last shot destroyed two of the damaged ribs and she could see a fire-enshrouded heart beating within its chest.
“Shoot the heart!” Aspen yelled.
Raven reloaded the Automag. “Way ahead of you, love.”
She opened fire, but the skeleton used its bony hand to cover the hole. Raven’s bullets bounced away and vanished into the walls. When she paused to reload once more, the skeleton threw its sword. The blade sailed end over end toward Raven, who stepped aside and let it slam into the wall behind her.
“Nice try, bub. Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.”
The skeleton extended a hand and Raven could hear the blade pulling itself out of the wall with a screech like the very hounds of hell. She charged, an angry roar rising from her throat. The skeleton raised its hands in front of it like it was waiting and Raven crashed into it with all her strength. The skeleton’s claws raked through her arms and torso and the two combatants staggered into the wall. The Automag spat death straight into the creature’s chest, turning its emaciated heart into so much flaming goo. The skeleton vanished a beat later, leaving Raven on her knees, gasping for breath.
Aspen helped her up and hugged her. “Are you okay?”
Raven extricated h
erself from the bear hug and smiled. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for the assist, Asp.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sure Klien used his little friend as a distraction to keep us out of his hair and he’s long gone. What’s next?”
Raven looked at the teachers and students gathering in the hall and peering out of classroom doors.
“Damage control,” she said with a sigh. “Get King on the phone and hope we have someone to deal with this sort of thing.”
“Oh, we do. I’m sure they’ll say it was some kind of hallucination caused by a gas leak,” Aspen said.
Raven glared at her.
“What were you doing at Quantico? Didn’t you at least read the manual?” Aspen asked.
“It was boring,” Raven groused. “They could have just told me.”
Aspen patted her arm. “This is why you have me.”
TWO HOURS LATER RAVEN SAT on the school steps sipping from a cup of coffee from the convenience store around the corner. Abraham King descended the steps behind her.
“Agent Storm,” he said.
“Agent King,” Raven said without looking. “You could have told me you were in town.”
“I wasn’t, until this morning,” he said.
Raven finished her coffee and tossed the cup into a trash bin at the bottom of the stairs. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“No. You don’t,” King replied. “Good job with that soul harvester, there were no casualties. Our team is spreading the story that it was a poisonous gas leak that caused hallucinations.”
Raven nodded. “Aspen said it would be something like that. I’m sorry about the mess.”
“It happens,” King said. “You should have seen the one your father left for me to clean up.”
“Someday you’re going to have to tell me about that.”
“Tell you about what?” Aspen said. She was carrying a plate loaded with nachos and microwave burritos.
“My dad,” Raven said. “He did a little work for King on the side.”
Aspen set the plate on a nearby pillar and offered a burrito to King, who made a face like she’d offered him an old cigar wrapped in maggots.
“No thank you, I prefer food I can identify,” he said.