Magic Bleeds kd-4 Read online

  The fuzz shivered. Thin tendrils stretched toward Patrice.

  I wondered who’d called Biohazard. Somebody called. Maybe it was just a good Samaritan passing by.

  And maybe I would sprout wings and fly.

  Maggie leaned over to me. “How can she enter but the disease can’t leave?”

  “Because of the way I made the ward. Wards both keep things in and keep them out. It’s basically a barrier and you can rig it several ways. This one has a high magic threshold. The disease that killed Joshua is very potent. It’s heavily saturated with magic, so it can’t cross. Patrice is a human, which makes her less magical by definition, and so she can go back and forth as she pleases.”

  “So couldn’t we just wait it out until the magic wave falls and the disease dies?”

  “Nobody knows what will happen to the disease once the magic falls. It might die or it might mutate and turn into a plague. Don’t worry. Patrice will nuke it.”

  In the circle, Patrice raised her hands. “It is I, Patrice, who commands you, it is I who demands obedience. Show yourself to me!”

  A dark shadow rolled over the fleshy fur, spreading into a mottled patina over the pole and the remnants of the body. Patrice stepped back out of the circle. The techs swarmed her with smoke and flowers.

  “Syphilis,” I heard her say. “Lots and lots of magically delicious syphilis. It’s alive and hungry. We’re going to need napalm.”

  Maggie glanced at the still untouched whiskey in my glass. I raised it to my lips and took a sip to make her happy. Fire rolled down my throat. A few seconds later, I could feel my fingertips again. Woo, back in business.

  “Did they clear all of you?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Nobody was infected. A few guys had broken bones, but that’s all. They let everyone go.”

  Thank the Universe for small favors.

  Maggie shuddered. “I don’t understand. Why us? What did we ever do to anybody?”

  She was looking for comfort in the wrong place. I was numb and exhausted, and the stone in my chest hurt.

  Maggie shook her head. Her shoulders hunched.

  “Sometimes there is no reason,” I said. “Just a bad roll of the dice.”

  Her face was drained of all expression. I knew what she was thinking: broken furniture, busted wall, and a bad reputation. The Steel Horse would forever be known as the joint where the plague almost started.

  “Look over there.”

  She glanced in the direction of my nod. Inside the bar, Cash pulled apart a broken table.

  “You’re alive. He’s alive. You’re together. Everything else can be fixed. It can always be worse. Much, much worse.” Trust me on this.

  “You’re right.”

  For a while we sat in silence and then Maggie took a deep breath as if she was going to say something and clamped her mouth shut.

  “What is it?”

  “The thing in the cellar,” she said.

  “Ah.” I pushed upright. I’d rested enough. “Let’s go take care of that.”

  We went in through the hole in the wall. The techs had evaluated and released most of the patrons, who were only too happy to clear off. The tavern lay virtually empty. Most of the furniture hadn’t survived the brawl. An icy draft swept through the open doors and windows to blow out of the ruined wall. Despite the unplanned but vigorous ventilation, the place stank of vomit.

  Cash leaned against the bar. Long shadows lined his haggard face. He looked worn out, like he’d aged a year overnight. Maggie paused by him. He took her hand into his. It must’ve twisted them into knots to sit there for hours, watching each other’s faces for the first signs of infection.

  They were killing me. If I could’ve gotten a hold of Curran right now, I would have punched him in the face for making me think I could have that and then taking it away from me.

  At the door, two Biohazard techs packed away an m-scanner. The m-scanner registered residual magic at the scene and spat it out in various colors: purple for vampire, blue for human, green for shapeshifter. It was imprecise and finicky, but it was the best tool for magic analysis we had. I stopped by the team and flashed my Order ID. “Anything?”

  The female tech offered me a stack of printouts. “Patrice said for you to have a copy.”

  “Thanks.” I flipped through them. Every single one showed a bright blue slice streaking across the paper like a lightning bolt, cutting across pale traces of green. The green were the shapeshifters, and judging by the watered-down color of the signatures, they had taken off at the beginning of the fight, leaving behind only weak residual magic. Not surprising. The Pack had a strict policy regarding unlawful behavior, and nothing good ever came from a drunken brawl in a border bar.

  I studied the blue. Human mundane, basic human magic. Mages registered blue, healers, empaths . . . I registered blue. Unless you had a really good scanner.

  “Maggie, how many people would you say were here when this happened?”

  She shrugged at the bar. “About fifty.”

  Fifty. But only one human magic signature.

  I glanced at Cash. “I need to talk to your people.”

  He headed behind the bar to a narrow stairway leading down. I followed. At the bottom of the stairway Vik and the bigger bouncer guarded the door secured by a large deadbolt.

  I sat at the top of the stairs. “My name’s Kate.”

  “Vik.”

  “Toby.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I know it had to be hell to keep everyone put for this long and I appreciate how you’ve handled it.”

  “We had a good crowd tonight,” Cash said. “Most of them were regulars.”

  “Yeah,” Vik said. “If we’d gotten a lot of out-of-towners, there would’ve been blood.”

  “Can you tell me how it started?”

  “Someone hit me with a chair,” Vik said. “That’s when I got into it.”

  “A man came into the bar,” Toby said.

  “What did he look like?”

  “Tall. Big guy.”

  Tall was a given. I’d gotten a good look at Joshua’s body while I was crawling around the parking lot. Joshua had been five-ten and his feet were about six inches off the ground. Whoever nailed him to that pole probably held him at his own eye level, which made our guy close to six and a half feet tall.

  Cash disappeared for a minute and returned with five glasses. More whiskey.

  “What did the big guy wear?”

  The three men and Maggie knocked back their glasses. There was collective grimacing and clearing of throats. I sipped mine a bit. Like drinking fire spiced with crushed glass.

  “A cloak,” Toby offered.

  “Like this?” I fingered my own long plain dark gray affair. Most fighters wore cloaks. Used properly, the cloak could confuse the attacker by obscuring your movements. It could shield, smother, and kill. It doubled as a blanket in a pinch for the person or for the mule. Unfortunately it also made a dramatic fashion statement and was easy to make. Every two-bit bravo had one.

  “His was one of those hooded cloaks, long and brown. And torn up at the bottom,” Toby said.

  “Did you get a look at his face?”

  Toby shook his head. “He kept the hood on the whole time. Didn’t see the face or the hair.”

  Great. I was looking for the proverbial “guy in a cloak.” He was as elusive as the legendary “white truck” had been when cars still filled the roadways. All sorts of crazy driving accidents had been blamed on the mysterious white truck, just as all sorts of random crimes had been perpetrated by “some guy in a cloak” with his hood pulled over his face.

  Toby cleared his throat again. “Like I said, I didn’t see his face. I saw his hands, though—they were dark. About this color.” He nodded at the whiskey in my glass. “He came in, stood at the bar, sized up the crowd for a while, and then came up next to Joshua. They said a few words.”

  “Did you hear what he said?”

  “I did,” Cash said.
“He whispered. He said, ‘Do you want to be a god? I have room for two more.’ ”

  Oh boy. “What did Joshua say?”

  Cash’s eyes were mournful. “He said, ‘Hell yeah.’ And then the man punched him off his feet and the whole place went to hell.”

  Hell yeah. Famous last words. Some guy sidles up to you in a bar and offers you godhood. And you say yes. Dumb. Over thirty years had passed since the Shift. By now every moron should know to watch their mouth and not accept bargains with random strangers, because when you said yes to magic, your word was binding, whether you meant it or not. A life wasted. All I could do now was to find the killer and punish him. Just once I would’ve liked to be there before this sort of shit happened so I could nip it in the bud.

  “That’s when all the shapeshifters left,” Maggie said.

  “That’s right.” Cash nodded. “They ran out of here like their tails were on fire.”

  “These shapeshifters, do they come often?”

  “Once a week for about a year now,” Cash said.

  “They drink a lot?”

  “One beer each,” Maggie said. “They don’t drink much, but they don’t cause any trouble either. They just sit by themselves in the corner and eat barrels of peanuts. We started charging them for it. They don’t seem to care. I think they all work together, because they come in at the same time.”

  In times of trouble, shapeshifters snapped into an us-versus-them mentality. The world fractured into Pack and Not Pack. They would fight to the death for one of their own or to protect their territory. This was their hangout, their place. They should have waded into this fight, and in this case, the Pack Law would be on their side. Instead they took off. Odd. Maybe Curran had come up with some new order forbidding fights. No, that didn’t make sense either. They were shapeshifters, not nuns. If they didn’t blow their steam off once in a while, they’d self-destruct. Curran knew that better than anyone.

  I filed this tidbit to puzzle over in the future. Right now the guy in the cloak was my primary concern.

  Joshua was killed for a specific purpose. The guy had gone through a lot of trouble, starting a fight, busting walls, arranging Joshua to impersonate a human butterfly, and infecting him. It was unlikely he’d done it just for kicks, which meant he had some sort of a plan and he wouldn’t stop until he followed through with it. Nothing good could possibly come from a plan that involved turning a man into a syphilis incubator.

  “We run a quiet tavern,” Maggie said. “Usually guys don’t want to fight here. They just want to get a drink, shoot some pool, and go home. If there is a fight brewing, they’ll talk shit for a while and wait for Toby and Vik to break them up. But this . . . I’ve never seen anything like this. That man threw one punch, and the whole crowd exploded. People were screaming and fighting, and growling like wild animals.”

  I looked at Vik. “Did you fight?”

  “I did.”

  “And you?” I turned to Toby.

  “Yeah.”

  I glanced to Cash. He nodded. I could tell by their faces they weren’t proud of it. The bouncers were paid to keep a cool head, and Cash was the owner.

  “Why did you fight?”

  They stared at me.

  “I was mad,” Vik offered. “Real mad.”

  “Angry,” Toby said.

  “Why?”

  “Hell if I know.” Vik shrugged.

  Interesting. “How long did the fight last?”

  “Forever,” Toby said.

  “About ten minutes,” Maggie answered.

  That’s a long time for a fight. Most bar fights were over in a couple of minutes. “Did it get worse with time?”

  She nodded.

  “Did anybody see Joshua die?”

  “It was all a blur,” Toby said. “I remember hitting somebody’s head against the wall and . . . I don’t even know why I did it. It’s like I couldn’t stop.”

  “I saw it.” Maggie hugged herself. “The fight broke out.

  Joshua was in the middle of it. He was a big man and he knew what he was doing. I was screaming for them to stop fighting. I was afraid they’d bust up the place. Nobody listened to me. Joshua was mowing people down with his fists and then that man grabbed him and they hit the wall. The man dragged Joshua to the pole, grabbed a crowbar, and stabbed. Joshua was wriggling on the crowbar like a fish. That bastard put his hand on Joshua’s face. A red light flashed and then he walked away. I saw Joshua’s eyes. He was gone.”

  This just got better and better.

  Maggie hugged herself. Cash put his hand on her shoulder. Neither said anything but I watched the haunted expression ease from Maggie’s face, as if she drew strength from him.

  One day I’d find someone to lean on as well. It just wouldn’t be Curran. And I really had to stop thinking about him, because it hurt.

  “Did you see any part of the man during the fight? Anything at all?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Just the cloak.”

  Biohazard’s techs would’ve taken statements before they let the brawlers go. I’d bet a chocolate bar nobody had gotten a look at the John Doe in the cloak.

  A ten-minute fight, fifty eyewitnesses, and no description. That had to be some kind of record.

  “Okay.” I sighed. “What about the critter in the cellar? What do we know about it?”

  “Big,” Vik said. “Hairy. Big teeth.” He held his hands apart, demonstrating teeth with his fingers. “He was like the spawn of hell.”

  “How did this spawn get into the cellar?”

  The smaller bouncer shrugged. “I was trying to make my way to the bar, where the shotgun was, and then some asswipe hits me with a pool cue and I take a tumble down this stair and hit my head a bit. Once the room stops spinning, I try to get up and I see this huge thing coming down. Wicked fangs, eyes glowing. I’m thinking I was done for. It jumps right over me and into the cellar. I slam the door shut and that’s that.”

  “Did anybody see this beast come in with the man who killed Joshua?”

  Nobody said anything. I took it as a no.

  “Did it try to get out?”

  Both bouncers shook their head.

  I rose to my feet and pulled Slayer from my back sheath. The opaque saber caught the blue light of feylanterns. A light mother-of-pearl shimmer ran along the blade. Everybody took a step back.

  “Lock the door behind me,” I told them.

  “What if you don’t come out?” Maggie asked.

  “I’ll come out.” I unlatched the heavy wooden door, opened it, and ducked inside.

  Darkness mugged me. I waited, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom.

  The cellar lay quiet, steeped in shadows and the thick odor of hops and liquor. Dark curves of large beer kegs defined a narrow path. I moved forward, ready to dodge at any second. My back and knees hurt. The last thing I wanted was something big with teeth the size of Vik’s fingers jumping at me from above.

  Nothing but moonlight, crawling through the narrow slit of a high window to my right.

  A black shadow stirred against the far wall.

  “Hi there.” I shifted my stance.

  A low throaty whine answered me. A very plaintive whine, followed by heavy wet panting.

  I took another step and paused. No flash of teeth. No glowing eyes.

  My nose caught a whiff of fur. Interesting.

  I put a bit of excitement in my voice. “Here, boy!”

  The dark shadow whined.

  “Who’s a good boy? Are you scared? I’m scared.”

  A faint sound of a tail sweeping the floor echoed the panting.

  I slapped my leg with my palm. “Come here, boy! Let’s be scared together. Come on!”

  The shadow rose and trotted over to me. A wet tongue licked my hand. Apparently he was a friendly kind of demonic beast.

  I reached into my belt and clicked a lighter. A shaggy canine muzzle greeted me, complete with big black nose and infinitely sad dog eyes. I reached over and slowly patte
d the dark fur. The dog panted and flopped on the side, exposing his stomach. Wicked fangs and glowing eyes, right. I sighed, flicked the lighter off, and went to rap my knuckles on the door. “It’s me, don’t shoot.”

  “Okay,” Cash called out.

  A metallic sound announced the deadbolt being slid open. I cracked the door slowly to find myself staring at the business end of the machete. “I’ve got the spawn of hell cornered,” I said. “Can you get me some rope?”

  In ten seconds I had a length of chain in my hand thick enough to hold a bear in check. I felt the dog’s neck—no collar. Big surprise. I looped the chain and slid it around his head, and opened the door. The beast docilely followed me into the light.

  It stood about thirty inches at the shoulder. Its fur was a mess of dark brown and tan, in a classic Doberman pattern, except his coat wasn’t sleek and shiny but rather a shaggy dense mass of rank curls. Some sort of mongrel, part Doberman, part sheepdog or something long-haired.

  Vik turned the color of a ripe apple.

  Cash stared at it. “It’s a damn mutt.”

  I shrugged. “Probably got scared during the fight and just ran blindly through the bar. He seems friendly enough.”

  The dog pressed against my legs, rubbing a small army of fetid bacteria into my jeans.

  “We should kill it,” Vik said. “Who knows, it might turn into something nasty.”

  I gave him my best version of a deranged stare. “The dog’s evidence. Don’t touch the dog.”

  Vik decided he liked his teeth in his mouth and not on the floor and beat a strategic retreat. “Right.”

  I’d kill a dog in self-defense. I’d done it and I felt bad about it afterward, but at the time there was no way around it. Killing a mutt who just licked my hand was beyond me. Besides, the dog was evidence. Ten to one, he was a local mongrel who had a panicked reaction to whatever magic John Doe in the cloak had been throwing around. Of course, he could also sprout tentacles in the night and try to murder me. Only time would tell. Until I’d watched him for a few days, the spawn of hell and I were joined at the hip. Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, considering he tried his best to singe away the lining of my nose with his stink.

  I took the dog to the medtechs to get cleared of the plague—he passed with flying colors. They drew some blood for further analysis and advised me that he had fleas and smelled bad, just in case I’d failed to notice. Then I took paper and pen from Marigold’s saddlebag and sat down at one of the tables to write out my report.