Chapter 31

Chapter

Thirty-One

By driving like the proverbial werewolf out of hell, Matthias and I arrived at the south lot of Fields Park three minutes before the two-hour mark.

I'd let Matthias drive because I remained wary of possible aftereffects from having Valas dragged out of me. If a day or two went by and I didn't have any dizziness, I'd call myself okay, but for now I trusted a highly trained and very pissed-off werewolf to be my chauffeur and backup.

He backed into a spot well away from the single camera that pointed at the gate into the city's largest park. From here, I could easily see the hill in the park where late one night almost a year ago I'd killed a half-demon serial killer who'd preyed on young women he picked up in bars. When I'd set myself up as the killer's next victim to trap him, I'd certainly had no idea how fateful that night would be.

"Alice?" Matthias asked. "Are you all right?"

Oops. I might have been staring into space a little too long. I tore my gaze away from the otherwise utterly unremarkable hill. "Yeah, sorry. I had a nasty case once that ended in this park. It brings back memories." I craned my neck with a grimace. I was still sore from…well, everything. I had no idea what vehicle Diaz would be driving to our clandestine meeting, other than I doubted it would be his official car.

"Do you think he'll have the knives?" Matthias asked. "That's a big ask. If he gets caught, that's his job, his pension, and probably prison time."

"I know. All I could do was ask. If he can't do it, or won't, then we'll have to work with what we have."

A dark blue SUV with tinted windows backed into the spot next to us. The window rolled down a few inches, enough for me to recognize Diaz in the driver's seat.

"I'll be back," I said to Matthias. "Honk if you see trouble."

He glanced at me. "I will do more than honk."

I slipped out my door, hurried around to the passenger side of Diaz's SUV, and hopped in.

Diaz gripped his steering wheel, staring straight ahead as I shut my door. No, he hadn't slept since I'd seen him last. Nor had he showered, though he'd changed his shirt and maybe splashed his face with water. He looked exactly like who he was: a homicide detective trying to catch a spree killer, whose partner and superiors probably thought these cases weren't connected at all, much less committed by something supernatural. A detective forced to demand a mage private investigator's help, only to be asked to commit a felony.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He finally looked at me. "For what?" he asked gruffly.

"Everything."

"Not your fault."

"I'm still sorry, though. Why did you want to meet?"

He scrubbed his bristly face. "I want to know what you think is going on. No bullshit, no evasiveness, no ‘You'll be the first person I call.' I want to know ."

If I were in his shoes, I'd do anything to know—to have some kind of facts to hang onto instead of guesses and evidence that made no sense.

"I'm almost certain it's a necromancer and a very evil spirit they are controlling," I said. "The spirit possesses a victim, who then commits the crimes like a kind of puppet, with no memory of what they've done. The necromancer may choose the target, or maybe the spirit does. That I'm not sure of yet. But it's deliberate and very controlled."

Diaz sat with that for well over a minute. "What evidence do you have?" he asked finally.

I explained why I thought a necromancer was involved. And then I showed him the still images from the two videos where the spirit could be seen. He stared at those for a long time, moving my phone to different angles and zooming in and out.

"How'd you get footage?" he asked as he handed me my phone back. "Ferguson said he'd done his damnedest to keep you from getting your hands on any."

"I'm going to choose to dodge that question," I said. "I know Ferguson really despises me for some reason, but even for him, that was a shitty move."

"I know. I told him not to do that again. Our time needs to be spent investigating, not on playground bullshit."

"I appreciate that. And one more thing about the spirit…I met him in person. Well, sort of. You remember when you saw me fall out of my SUV yesterday?"

"Yeah." He studied me. "It possessed you too?"

I waggled my hand. "Only kinda. It got partial control, created some unpleasant illusions, and threatened me. Then it disappeared. What you saw was the aftermath. I was a little freaked out."

"Understandable. But how do I know it's not possessing you right now?"

"Well, that's a fair question." I frowned. "I'm not sure what to tell you, other than it's not possessing me and I've recently been checked for possessions. "

Now it was his turn to frown. "Is that a common problem for you?"

I snorted. "Usually no, but the last couple of days have been kinda wild."

"You're telling me."

We shared a sigh.

I thought the news about the necromancer might freak him out, but Diaz actually looked a little better now. No less haggard, but he had more energy, and his gaze seemed sharper instead of tired and dull.

"What do you plan to do about this necromancer?" he asked.

"I'm putting together a team to track them and trap the spirit. We're meeting tonight. That's what I meant when I said you'd be the first person I'd call, and I still mean that. The moment I have a name for you, I will tell you. But you can't go up against the necromancer yourself. You will die, and then it'll get worse."

"Worse than death, huh?" He processed that. "So, what do you intend to do? This person, whoever they are, has to face justice."

"And they will," I promised. "But their pet spirit has to be trapped first or it will be free to kill at will. Then I have to lock the strongest pair of spell cuffs I have on the necromancer before I drop them on the steps of the jail, along with all the evidence."

"That sounds like a goddamn mess."

"Yep. It's going to be. But that's the best-case scenario."

He reached behind me, to the floor behind the passenger seat, and put a gym bag in my lap along with a pair of latex gloves. "Glove up," he said.

I let out a breath and grabbed the gloves. Skin contact with the murder weapons themselves would have been worth its weight in gold, but that was simply not an option.

Diaz had risked everything to let me touch these evidence tubes, even with gloves on. That was even more pressure not to fail in our mission.

Inside the bag were four knives, each in its own clear evidence tube marked with an orange biohazard sticker because of the dried blood on the blades. Red SEALED EVIDENCE—DO NOT TAMPER tape secured the lids, initialed and dated by a crime scene tech. Each knife was secured in place with its point in a foam block at the bottom of the tube.

I immediately noticed two of the knives appeared identical. While the other two were the type of generic, mid-range tactical knives that would have caused Arkady to roll her eyes, the matching set were expensive daggers—the kind favored by occult practitioners.

"Those are from last night," Diaz said, indicating the daggers. "Two simultaneous and nearly identical murders six blocks apart. Each involved a couple. The male partner killed his female companion. Both couples were walking to their cars after leaving the same bar at closing time, but they walked basically in opposite directions. In both cases, bystanders intervened, but too late to save the female victims. Several good Samaritans got minor injuries trying to subdue the killers. The killers cut their own throats immediately after."

"There were witnesses?"

"About a dozen between both scenes." He ran his hands through his hair, making it stick out before he self-consciously smoothed it down. "The statements vary because not one of them was sober, but several of them reported the killers acted ‘like robots.'" He put air quotes around the words. "I'm not sure any of them will remember saying that once they sobered up, so they'll be useless as witnesses at trial, but I'm inclined to believe them—especially given what you just told me."

I eyed the daggers, turning them this way and that, as I thought about Diaz's description of the crimes.

"This is another serious escalation," I said. "Yesterday afternoon it was a nurse at a busy, exclusive hospital with lots of security, killed by an endocrinologist in broad daylight. Last night, two couples in the bar district." I waved the daggers in their tubes. "Now four victims, matching weapons, and the murders happened at the same time?"

"As far as we can tell, if not the same second, the same minute."

I pondered that. "The necromancer wants us to know these crimes are connected and related to black magic. These knives are commonly used in occult rituals, while the other two are generic and practically untraceable. The only thing they could have done to make it more obvious was to leave a note."

"But how could they commit two murders at the same time?" Diaz demanded. He glared at the daggers. "If you're right and this is a necromancer and their ‘pet spirit,' how did they kill two—no, four—people at the same time?"

I could think of only one possible explanation, and it meant I needed to text Carly right the hell now. "There might be two spirits," I said. "I've never known a necromancer to be able to control two at the same time, but I think that's what we're supposed to figure out from this evidence."

"Are you saying this asshole wants us to know he's got two murdering ghosts?"

"He or she," I corrected. "Yes, I do. In fact, I think they've gone to great lengths to let us know, with these matching daggers and murder-suicides. They're not trying to hide it. They're flaunting it."

"Son of an ever-loving bitch ." His face turned bright red. "They're taunting us."

"Yeah, I think so."

"But why? "

He wasn't going to like my answer.

"If I had to guess," I said, "it's because they can."

The longer these knives were missing from the evidence room, the more chance their absence would be noticed.

So while Diaz processed his rage, I set my own anger aside and took a good, close look at the daggers, as if I could find the answers on the blades.

They appeared handmade, as most ritual blades tended to be. That made them unique and easier to identify than the mass-produced knives used in the first two murders—if we found more made by the same hand. Most practitioners had a signature style as well as magic. I'd never encountered someone whose handmade implements weren't consistent in design, regardless of their purpose.

The difference between these daggers and Carly's lovely handmade athames, which weren't designed for bloodletting, much less killing, was jarring.

"I hear your wheels turning," Diaz said. "What are you seeing when you look at those knives? I know what my evidence techs say about them, but I need your thoughts."

Maybe Malcolm had a point about Diaz liking how my mind worked. I decided to take the compliment this time.

I told him my thoughts on the making of the daggers.

"These knives have characteristics that make them easily identifiable as black magic implements," I added. "Look at the wavy and irregularly shaped blade with twin razor-thin edges. The hilts have four spines facing away from the person wielding the knife, which could be dipped in poison."

"They weren't," Diaz interjected. "At least as far as our techs could tell."

"Good to know. Also, notice the three black crystals inlaid into the handles. Three is an important number in many forms of magical practice. What if anything these crystals hold, I'm not sure, and I don't know that I'll be able to tell without touching them. And I wouldn't do that anyway without serious precautions."

"This is all good information." He jerked his chin at the daggers. "Anything else?"

"Even in their tubes, they feel perfectly balanced in my hands, so their maker is meticulous and highly skilled." I demonstrated by balancing a tube on my index finger. "I'd say these daggers took months to make."

"That's patience, too," he mused. "Focus and discipline. Cold-blooded. "

"Yep."

Since they had far more potential as clues than the mass-produced knives, I studied the daggers from all angles and in the sunlight. I wanted to wring every last drop of information from them I could from sight alone before I got to magic-related clues.

Then I saw it.

I squinted and held each of the tubes one at a time at an angle a few inches from my eyes. Was I seeing what I thought I was seeing?

Holy shit…maybe the answers were written on the blades.

"Diaz," I said slowly, "I see words on these blades."

"What? Something the techs missed?" He practically snatched one of the tubes from my hand. "Show me," he demanded.

"You won't be able to see it. It's written in magic. The trace has already faded to almost nothing. In a few hours, it will be gone."

With a curse, he handed it back. "What the hell does it say?"

"Big," I said.

"What the fuck does that mean? Big what?"

"This one says Little ." I showed him the other blade. " Big and Little . Does that mean anything to you?"

"Not a damn thing." He pounded his fist on his steering wheel. "Not a goddamn thing. What kind of game is the necromancer playing with this?"

"I don't know. Those words have no significance in any practice I'm familiar with."

He held the tube at arm's length between his thumb and index finger. "What if they're, what do you call it, magic words?"

The situation was too grave for me to chuckle. "Invocation words," I corrected. "No, those would be terrible invocation words. The idea is to choose words to invoke spells that aren't commonly used. To invoke a spell requires intent as well as magic and the ‘magic word,' but that doesn't mean spells can't be accidentally triggered. That's one of the reasons practitioners use Latin or other rarely spoken words as invocation words."

"Good to know." Diaz looked thoughtful. "Do you think the necromancer made these daggers expressly for these murders, or adapt them for it?"

"Good question. I'm not sure if I can tell you that from the daggers themselves."

"Just trying to get a handle on this asshole's mentality. How long they've been planning this bullshit."

"I get that," I said. "Here's my two cents. Profile this necromancer as a serial killer with an extremely short cool-down period between crimes. They get off on power, and the ultimate form of power is control over life and death."

"That tracks."

"They also crave notoriety. They want their crimes talked about in headlines and hushed voices. They want the fear to be palpable. And now they've killed six people and the police department still claims the murders are unrelated. The police spokesperson denies there's supernatural involvement, even after what happened last night. If you know how this kind of person's mind works, you know what's about to happen if those denials continue."

"They'll have to up the ante again." He tried to drink from his take-out coffee cup, but it was empty. With a curse, he crumpled it and threw it into the back seat. "They'll have to make it so obvious and public the department can't deny it any longer. There might be a bloodbath."

"I'm afraid that's the next move. Unless…" I swallowed. "Okay, hear me out. What if someone leaked what we just figured out?"

"Let the public know a homicidal occult practitioner is killing random targets using equally random targets?" He looked horrified. "The city would panic."

"Which feeds the necromancer's ego," I pointed out. "Fear is what they want. Maybe it keeps them from killing again for a while."

His mouth twisted like he'd just bitten into something sour.

"Look, I'm not saying you should do it," I said. "It might be the worst idea I've ever had, and believe me, I've had some doozies. I understand what happens when people panic. "

"Last year's anti-vampire riots. Cincinnati two years before that."

"Yes. But the mayor could order a curfew. The feds could get involved, like they did last year. Authorities could try to control the panic. Meanwhile, the necromancer basks in the fear, and my friends and I try to spring our trap while their guard is down."

He'd seemed better for a while, once he knew what was going on, but now Diaz looked worse than when I got into the vehicle. Malcolm would have said that was one of my many gifts.

"I'll think about it," Diaz grated. "Meantime, what are you going to do with those knives?"

"I've been handling them all while we've been sitting here." I held up the one that had apparently killed Madison Fernell. "This one has nothing on it. It's been too long since it was used. No inscriptions on it that I can see. The knife from the nurse's murder yesterday has some trace. The daggers from last night have the most. I'm going to try to draw the trace from them."

"Is that dangerous?"

"Not for you."

"What do I need to do?"

"Just stay where you are. You don't have to do anything."

As he watched, I trailed my fingertips back and forth along the length of the tube containing the doctor's murder weapon, gently pulling the magic on the handle toward me. Through the gloves and the tube, it felt like trying to draw nails to a weak magnet that was just a little too far away. It would work—it would just take time.

After nearly five minutes, I had it.

It was the spirit who'd licked my face yesterday; no doubt about that. And entwined with that faint trace was that of the necromancer. Both were too faded to be useful for tracking, but at least I had confirmation of who'd forced the doctor to use the knife. Only one spirit's trace, too, not two.

I repeated the process on the dagger marked Big . This trace was much fresher and cut my fingertips when I drew it from the dagger. Diaz grimaced at the sight of my sliced fingers. I sensed the necromancer again, plus the same spirit trace as the nurse's murder. It didn't feel any less revolting today than it did yesterday.

On the second dagger, however, I sensed the same necromancer, but a different spirit. And this one contained even more vileness and hate than the first. Another set of slices drew blood from my fingers.

As soon as I started bleeding, I let Diaz handle the tubes so I didn't get any blood on them. While he put them back in the bag and zipped it up, I wrapped my hand in a bandage I'd stuck in my pocket for exactly this purpose.

"Dangerous work you do," he said, returning the bag to the back seat.

"Yes, it is—and more often than you'd probably think."

"What did all that tell you?"

I let out a breath. "I sense one necromancer and two very malevolent spirits who must be acting under their control."

"You're sure?"

"One hundred percent."

"Okay." He tapped a zipped document holder on the floor at my feet. "Take that. Burn it when you're done. No one sees what's in there but you."

"Understood." I picked up the folder with my good hand. "I'll keep you in the loop. If you decide to engineer the leak, I'd appreciate a heads-up so I can ensure all my people are gathered before any kind of curfew goes into effect. Give me at least a couple hours to get organized."

"Roger that." He touched my arm. "Thank you, Ms. Worth. I don't know how all this will work out, but I want you to know I respect you."

"Back at you, Detective." I opened my door and hopped out with the document holder. "Stay safe."

"I fully intend to."

As I shut the door, I thought of the old saying about what paved the road to Hell .

I certainly hoped our collective good intentions would pave the road back to Hell tonight for those two spirits—and not for any of us.