Chapter 5
Five
DI Michaels flashed his warrant card at the receptionist as he walked into the pathology lab at Westminster. The woman gave it a cursory glance. Michaels could see her heart wasn’t in her job. She was far more interested in scrolling through her Instagram feed than protecting the dead.
He didn’t blame her. There were very few parts of his police work Michaels could say he actually enjoyed, but visiting the mortuary was amongst the worst of his duties. The aura of death permeated the very fabric of the building. It leached what little joy there was from his soul.
The temperature fell as he walked down the steps to the basement and by the time he’d reached the morgue, his skin prickled with goosebumps. The lab technician was a pale man with a hollow expression. Michaels knew the look well. He’d seen too much. Spent too long among them.
“I’m here about the Hammersmith Bridge murder,” Michaels said, putting away his warrant card and shaking the man’s cold, skeletal hand. “Has the autopsy been performed?”
“Not yet,” the man replied sharply, as if it were a criticism. “He only came in this morning.”
Good, thought Michaels, the distraction of the girl hasn’t blown the capture. There was still time.
“I was just about to go on my break,” the technician added, obviously unhappy with the unannounced visit.
“I can handle it,” said Michaels. His voice deepened reassuringly. “I just need to verify his identity.”
The man’s expression softened slightly. Michaels could see the idea forming in his mind and nurtured it. He’s a senior detective. He doesn’t need supervision. You can leave him with the victim.
The technician smiled and held open the door. “He’s in drawer six.”
Michaels waited until he heard the man’s footsteps on the metal stairs before he pulled open the drawer and unzipping the body bag. The smell of decay made him grimace. No matter how many times he had done this, it never failed to disgust him.
He took a small crystalline jar etched with runes from his pocket and placed it by the head of the corpse, along with a candle which he lit with a whisper, “ Inferni incantus .”
The flame popped into being and threw a globe of faint gold around their grisly tableaux. This was the final step. The extraction. A process that followed an ancient ritual set down thousands of years ago. He murmured the first of the litanies and placed his hands on the victim’s pallid chest.
“ Verum nomen tuum revela ,” he whispered and closed his eyes to summon the power.
A faint blue glow appeared at his fingertips. Wisps of energy curled away to drift over the corpse’s skin like ribbons of fire.
The body trembled and lifted from the metal bed as lines of light flowed through its empty veins. Shaking increased as the dybbuk locked inside tried to evade capture.
“ Veram revela te ipsum ,” Michaels said through gritted teeth, “Reveal your true self.”
A series of red welts rose on the man’s chest and darkened to form an archaic glyph. This symbol was the true name of the dybbuk. The killer had scored it just beneath the surface for Michaels to find, just as he had so many times before.
“ Ego te absolvo de peccato tuo . I absolve you of your sin.”
Michaels had learned that forgiveness of the human helped to prise the dybbuk away. A low groan rumbled through the body and its jaw slackened. Dark tendrils of smoke snaked from its throat. The lights in the morgue flickered, and the temperature dropped dramatically. Michaels’ breath misted in the air as darkness pressed against the candlelight. He took the stopper from the reliquary jar and uttered the last words of containment.
“Show yourself Belial! I command thee.”
The darkness coalesced into its demonic spirit form: a dybbuk with a horned head, horned spine, and spindly clawed limbs that thrashed against thin air. Held at bay, the dybbuk was weak—diminished by the ritual. Michaels sneered and held up the reliquary jar to draw it in.
It screamed and cursed in an ancient tongue, promising Michaels death, knowledge, and pleasure in turn in its rasping voice. All to no avail.
Michaels ignored it. “By the decree of the Eternal Light, I compel thee to be still,” he hissed. “Thy darkness is bound within this vessel, sealed by the power of the celestial. Thou shalt not escape.”
He snapped the stopper closed and dripped wax from the candle around it as a seal. Extra made a spot where he could etch the name rune of the dybbuk into the wax with his thumbnail.
Darkness and electricity rolled around inside the jar like storm clouds, now trapped for eternity.
Michaels sucked in a satisfied breath and put the jar in his pocket.
It was done.