“Uhn,” Nic grunted. He kept his chin down, scanning the docks. “What happened? I can smell it from here.”
“I am hoping we can work that out.” Lev glanced at me, and he did meet and hold my gaze. Thieves are a superstitious lot, and even though I can’t actually read minds, nearly everyone in the Organizatsiya thought I could—except Lev. “Someone was left here for us to find. We don't know why, or who he is. He's not from the Organization.”
“Has anyone disturbed the body?” Too much interference didn’t only destroy physical evidence, it also disturbed any spectral evidence I might be able to sense.
“Minimally.” Lev frowned, lips pursing. “And if you can tell us who or... what did it, that would be even better.”
“That bad, is it?” I had probably seen worse and, in all honesty, had probably done worse. Deal with enough dead bodies, and the shock wears off.
“You’ll have to see for yourself.” Lev motioned with a hand as he swept off towards the waterfront.
My self-assured cynicism began to fade as we came up on the corpse. It was a decidedly long way from where we started, and the stench slowly thickened to a skin-prickling, sinus-clogging cloud of unnatural filth. I felt sick by the time Lev stopped and turned back to look at us.
The body had been left in a ring of shipping crates in the stacking yard, under the container cranes near the threshold of land and sea. Our Ivan Ivanovich was crucified, nailed spread-eagled to the planking with thick iron spikes longer than my hands. The skin of his face was torn away to expose the meat and bone beneath. One eye was sewn shut over the eyeball, while the other socket was empty, gaping up at the gunmetal sky. He was shirtless, barefoot, his fly torn open. The front of his jeans was crusted with blood.
But the mutilation was not the focus of the ritualized pose. A large symbol was carved into the corpse’s chest. It was one of the demonic seals found in the Key of Solomon, a common grimoire often abused by novice Occultists with the hankering to dabble in “black” magic. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t a random guy somebody had thrown out the back of a van. His killers had turned him into a display. A sacrifice.
Nicolai went around the other side of the body, hands jammed in the pockets of his cargoes. A cigarette hung listlessly from one chapped lip. “Jesus.”
“No. Aamon,” I said. The smell was curdling the air in my lungs. It was not natural. The heavy, leaden sensation of rotten magic is difficult to describe. It is as if the air itself was cut up, as if this patch of reality was molding, full of holes. It sucked the light out of the immediate area. The associated color of the scent was an intense, vibrant violet, the sickly color of a fresh bruise.
“What?”
“The sigil is the seal of Aamon.” I took a penlight from my pocket and set it between my teeth, trying not to breathe through my nose as I crouched beside the body. I searched under his dead weight for the telltale outline of a wallet, mildly surprised when I actually found one. The money was missing, but there were half a dozen cards with different names. I flipped the penlight over to use the blacklight end, scanning them for government seals. Even the best fakes always get the seals wrong. “Here we are. Frank Nacari?”
I waited for a response. When none was forthcoming, I looked back to see that Nic had joined Lev, and they were standing shoulder to shoulder in grim silence. They were both pale. As the pregnant pause stretched on, Nic tapped a new cigarette from his case, lit up, and drew a quarter inch off the end.
“Well. We’re fucked,” he said on the exhale. He blew a plume of smoke down into the metallic sea wind. “Not as fucked as Nacari here, but still pretty fucked.”
“Nacari is John Manelli’s Consigliere[1].” Lev sighed, reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose. “My god. I didn’t even recognize him.”
Now that I thought about it, the name was vaguely familiar. My stomach flinched. That he was dead hardly bothered me, but the stench was painful, and my head was beginning to throb. "Well... that's no good."
Nic’s lip had curled from the smell. He was fighting not to bring his hand to his face. “You know anybody who could do this? Any spooks who could pull something like this off?”
I did not because, unfortunately, that class of mage did not include me. My sorcerous ability had hit a hard wall in my teens and never advanced any further. I was moderately good at a very few things, and there was no way I could know which mage had done it. All I knew was that I didn’t like the way the air around this body felt. It was toxic, unnatural. Frank didn’t smell like rotten meat. He smelled oily, like kerosene or turpentine. “I’m sure there are, but I don’t know them. If they needed a human sacrifice like this, they are either a powerful mage trying to do a very bad thing with a common ritual or a weak mage who needs the intense energy generated by a death to properly summon at all. All I know is that his death was probably used to fuel the summoning of Aamon, who is a moderately powerful demon from the Goetia. But that doesn't make much sense to me, either.”
“What the fuck is an Aamon?” Nic crossed his arms over his chest.
“Marquis of Hell, the ruler of the creation and resolution of feuds. He is summoned for questions pertaining to finding people or causing and resolving arguments. What confuses me is that the rite to summon Aamon doesn’t require a human sacrifice, and Aamon, by and large, is not a violent demon.”
“There’s violent demons and nonviolent demons?” Nic squinted, the lines around his eyes deepening, and moved around to stand by Nacari’s feet. Lev did not say a word, but he was listening intently.
“Yes. The demons of the Goetia are teachers and tricksters, and they reflect parts of human nature. They're not... corrupt like this.” Nic’s ignorance was irritating me. The Goetia was easy to find, and even Blanks—non-magical people—could pick up a book and read it. We needed to change the subject before I said something inappropriate. “Was there security footage? Anyone working late who might have seen anything?”
Lev finally spoke up. “Someone took out the camera. The nightshift shipwrights were all at Number Two. This dock was cleared for the night.”
My frown deepened, and I touched a gloved finger to the head of the huge nail that had been driven through Nacari’s hand. Pushed it. It didn’t budge. “These are dog spikes. Railroad spikes. They either brought a borer and pre-bored the holes, or they found a spike driver. It would have made a lot of noise. In any case, whoever did this must have a connection with the construction industry, probably rail.”
Nic said nothing for several seconds, lighting his next cigarette from the tip of the old one. “You know Georgie, right? The new Laguetta Don?”
“Of course.” The Manelli and Laguetta family war—with the accompanying body count—had been the start of our troubles with the Manellis in the first place. “Not personally.”
“Laguetta has a hand in the Concrete Club. Man of his is in charge of Pinnacle. Skyscraper developer.”
“No, no, I can’t believe he’d contract this and leave the body here. They’ve been with us for years.” Lev shook his head, but he sounded uncertain.
The Laguettas were the second largest of the four big Italian Families, the Manellis being the largest. Affording a ritual like this one was out of reach for most people on the street. At the highest levels of power, spooks on the payroll battled a cold war in gridlock, ensuring their own Don or Avtoritet or King was untouchable while others tried to pick away at their defenses—but this was something else.
I crouched down and leaned in. In the center of the seal of Aamon was a deep, festering puncture. The flesh around it was fragile and pallid, laced with branching trees of black veins. Carefully, I lifted the edge of Nacari’s fly. What little flesh remained was torn, blackened at the edges. He was completely emasculated, and the amputation looked to be older than the stab wound that killed him. Awful, but in that train wreck-kind of way.
Nic grunted and shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. If this is Laguetta’s dirty laundry, it don’t make no sense.
No reason for any of his crews to take a dump on our turf.”
While they debated, I turned my attention to the dead man’s face, leaning in with my hand clasped over my nose. His one remaining eyelid was distended and dark, the nearly transparent skin bulging over something underneath. I took a knife from my pocket and popped it open with a small click. Balanced on the balls of my feet, I stretched out and flicked the tip of the blade up under the stitches.
Frank Nacari’s eye had been replaced with a large lead caster. The dawn light reflected dully off its surface, and with a soft sound under my breath, I reached forward to push it out. The caster was roughened on the underside and rasped against my gloves when I rubbed the blood away. It was only slightly smaller than an eyeball, roughly polished, and etched with a symbol:
On the ground and facing away from Nicolai, I could conceal the moment of shock and vague recognition. It was an Occult sigil, and I should have known it. I knew I had seen it before. I stared at it, fighting with half-memories of planetary tables and pages from very old books on ceremonial summoning. At a loss to remember which books held what, I held out the caster to Lev. He took it, puzzled, and his nose wrinkled.
“The hell is that?” Nic said.
“I have no idea. But it is deeply idiosyncratic.” I shrugged.
Nicolai stared at it. “Idio-what?”
“Unique. Singular,” Lev replied.
“And honestly confusing,” I added.
“Huh.” Nic glanced past me, looking over at the entry gate. “Looks like... whatddya call ’em? The swinging tick-tock things. Not clocks.”
“Pendula.” Lev turned it around and held it back out to me. Absently, I accepted its hot weight as I looked down at the gaping sockets, now empty, and frowned. The other socket was a blank, but now that I was up close, I could see where the skin had been stitched together, just like the one with the caster. The stitches were torn, with a foamy residue crusting the socket.
From behind us came the roar of a large truck. The cleanup crew. While Nic, Vanya, and Mikhail turned in distraction, I bent down and sniffed, then snorted. Even blunted by the scent of decay, Nacari’s face smelled like wet dog.
Lev watched me curiously. “Anything else?”
“Nothing definite, Avtoritet. This symbol is possibly a calling card.” I picked up the caster with careful fingers, wrapped it in a tissue, and pocketed it with a certain reverence. “I’ll research this symbol and find out. Ask around, as well—it might be turning up with other hits around the city.”
“Could be the Zetas. They’ve been getting real up themselves lately.” Nicolai shook his head. “Don’t know who else’d cut a man’s dick off. You can’t tell us what did it?”
I shook my head. “There's literally nothing here. Nothing at all.”
Lev exhaled thinly and pushed his glasses up along his nose. “If Manelli finds out what happened to Nacari, he’s going to be very, very angry. It must be kept under wraps. No discussion. Am I understood?”
I nodded. Six years ago, the Manellis hadn’t been a large Mafia. Back before the crack boom, they’d been scraping by under their old protectorate, the Scappetis. The Manelli-Scappeti coalition spent their time scrapping with the other three big Families, mostly the Laguettas. The Laguettas were an old, old Family who ran all of Brooklyn and a good part of Manhattan out of Queens. After John Manelli arranged for Don Scappeti to have a premature heart attack, he took over his op and played the hand he'd been building for years. John Manelli was young and willing to bend the 'code of honor' he theoretically embodied to deal in drugs directly. While the old Mafioso clung to their ways, John was running the crack boom in the Eastern United States, taking over gay bars and discos and cutting into our much older and well-established party drug business. That wasn't enough for him, either. Young Dons like John were inevitably aggressive, ambitious, eager to fight. He wanted us bought under heel. For all we knew, he’d ground up his own Consigliere and thrown him over the wall, so to speak, just so he could point in our direction and get his men fired up to wage open war on us.
“I say this must’ve been a pro-team job. Three or four guys.” Nicolai watched me, his hands restless. He patted down his khakis as if looking for something. He was nervous. I’d never seen him nervous before.
“Can I let Vassily in on this?” I had to get up and back away, as the first waves of real, unstoppable nausea swept up and rolled me. I felt dizzy. Everything smelled like rotting peaches and meat. “I’ll be picking him up in five hours or so. He will want to know.”
“I will tell him, at my discretion.” Lev drew his coat around his arms. Even though it was still in the low seventies, he looked as cold as I felt. “Nicolai, could you leave us for a moment? Alexi and I need to take a walk.”
“Sure. We’ll get him loaded up.” Nic jerked his face to one side and sloped back off across the yard, disappearing into the shadows beyond the beam of the truck lights. I jammed my hands in my pockets, suddenly stranded in the presence of authority.
“Come, Alexi. I need to talk to you about something which no one else needs to hear.” Lev motioned with his head. He looked greenish, as ill as I felt.
“As you say, Avtoritet.” Was it the question of involving Vassily? I followed warily. Being alone with your Avtoritet was never particularly safe. “Is this about the money I owe Nicolai?”
Lev waited until we were some distance away before speaking. “No. I want to know how Semyon died. Did he admit that he wronged me?”
I looked down. “I regret to say it, Avtoritet, but no. I asked him, as you ordered. He died a coward.”
Lev heaved a deep sigh. “Did he confess anything? Anything about his magical activities or about the FBI?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Though regarding the latter, he implied they'd forced him into a deal.”
“I don’t doubt it. But he shouldn't have accepted.” Lev was very, very unhappy. The tendons of his shoulders and wrists were taut under his skin. Even so, his face was as placid as Lake Baikal in the summer, and just as deep. “You will not tell Vassily what happened between Semyon and yourself. I don’t want anyone knowing what happened up there. I trust you’ll obey; Vassily is a good man, but he is as gossipy as a gypsy grandmother.”
I let the insult slide. “Of course.”
“I’ll take your word.” Lev stopped, and I halted mid-step so I didn’t pass him by. “There aren’t many men in this organization like you left. Loyal, quiet, sensible.”
“Thank you, Avtoritet,” I said, cautiously.
“You’re wasted on this grunt work, Alexi. Once you clear Vassily’s debt, you should finish your degree. Come and work for the firm.” Lev’s mouth lifted at the corners, but it never reached his eyes. “And speaking of Vassily, please do pass along my regards when you pick him up. He is welcome to take one of the Sirens lounges for a private session with the women of his choice. As are you, of course.”
The very notion turned my stomach. Lev’s voice was as pleasant as ever, but it raised the hackles on the back of my neck. Some instinct nagged at me, telling me to tread carefully. The Organizatsiya had given Vassily and me everything, but our benefactors—Lev, Nic, Sergei—kept a fistful of strings tied to every offered gift.
I forced a brief smile. “Of course, Avtoritet. I am sure he will take up your offer at the earliest opportunity.”
“I hope he does. No matter how well we handle the events of the night, I fear we are all soon going to have to turn our energies to war.” Lev dipped his head slightly, turned, and left me to stand there in the middle of the yard, watching him disappear into the humid night.
The lead caster was cold through the leather of my glove, colder than the overripe air. My fingers clenched in the moment before I started after him, boots ringing out against the hard ground. The only certain thing about the mess had been left largely unsaid. Someone had summoned a demon: Aamon, the lord of feuds, and was driving my small Organizatsiya from skirmishing with the largest Mafia f
amily in New York to outright war. Nacari’s murder transcended brutality and moved well into the realm of horror, and Lev was right. If John Manelli ever found out what had happened to his favorite Captain, he was going to give us Hell.
Chapter 3
By the time I arrived at my apartment block, my head was a little clearer. It was a temporary reprieve: it was close to five in the morning, and I was exhausted, weary, blood-spattered, and looking forward to a cold shower before the grueling three-hour drive to Fishkill.
Binah hung placidly along the length of my forearm on the way up the stairwell, which smelled of old urine and cigarettes. My door was on the third floor, near the exit to the roof. There’s a stereotype of wizards locked in ivory towers, but my apartment was a meat locker with balconies, Spartan and uncluttered save for the Tetris-like mass of bookshelves lining the walls: Row after row of books, neatly filed in floor-to-ceiling shelves by color, height, and subject. The shelves spanned most of the rooms and over some of the doorways. There was even a small one in the bathroom.
Enfolded in the papery silence of the hall, I shucked my shoes, unbuttoned my cuffs, and rolled them up to the elbow. Binah leaped from my arms and wandered off into the house to explore. I lost track of her on my way to the kitchen. The lead caster with the sigil was burning a hole in my pocket, but when I extended my senses towards it, feeling for any imprinted magical residue, it came up blank.
Still, Alexi Grigoriovich Sokolsky is not known for being an incautious man, so before anything else, I got a clean tin chalice and filled it with coarse rock salt and water, burying the caster in the center. Tin is the metal of Jupiter, the Greater Benefic who oversees abstracts such as justice, purification, and good fortune. Salt and water are to magical effects what containment pools are to spent nuclear fuel rods. They don’t fix the problem, but they keep it confined and—temporarily—safe.
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