Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Waking was a slow and painful process, but at least I did wake, and the relief that came with that realization had tears seeping past closed eyelids.
I tried to blink them away but couldn’t, because something seemed to be gluing my eyelids shut.
Until I was more certain of my situation, I wasn’t about to move.
I was lying on my side, my face resting on my arm while the other lay limply across my breasts. My head pounded like a bitch, and my left hip and shoulder were chorusing in sympathy, but for the moment at least, it seemed I’d escaped major injury.
As consciousness sharpened to full awareness, I realized my handbag no longer lay around my shoulders.
I had no idea where it was, but more importantly, no idea if my attacker remained in the room.
There was no sound other than the odd wheeze of pain coming from my lips, and there was no sense of life.
But then, there hadn’t been before it had hit me with something hard and heavy, either.
I cracked open a small section of my inner shields and let the darkness creep forward.
The melody of life was absent in the air.
I was alone in this room. Whether that applied to the rest of the house, I couldn’t actually say, and never in my life had I been more annoyed by the native restrictions on my inner darkness.
I lightly rubbed at the shit coating my eyes.
It was blood, I realized, once I opened them and saw the smear of red across my fingers.
I gently probed the right side of my head, discovering a mat of stickiness in my hair and a gash that was several inches long.
That was probably going to need stitches or, at the very least, that scalp glue they used these days.
I shifted to get a better look at the room and instantly, a dozen different muscles began chiming in on the song my head and my hip were singing.
I swore long and fluently, but nevertheless pushed up into a sitting position.
The first thing I saw—once the tears of pain had cleared enough—was my handbag and purse.
They lay next to each other several feet away, their contents strewn all around them like forlorn islands.
My phone lay several feet further on, its screen smashed.
My keys were missing but the gloved USB I’d gotten from Tane remained.
Thank heavens I’d followed instinct and not brought the shard along with me. It might have ended up as smashed as my phone.
I raised a hand to tap the earwig and realized it was gone.
I carefully looked around and spotted it behind me, once again totally smashed yards away.
But if they’d thought destroying it would delay the arrival of help, they were sadly wrong.
The minute the earwig had gone offline without me tapping out first, an alert would have sounded and a call been placed to my phone.
When I didn’t pick up that, the cavalry would have been called and surely couldn’t be too far away now.
I took a deep breath, then slowly pushed to my feet.
The room whirled briefly, and my stomach heaved in protest, suggesting I might have a concussion.
Of course, I didn’t do what I’d insisted Tane do, and instead walked—limped—over to my bag.
After grabbing a pair of gloves from the halo of mess, I tugged them on and continued to the far end of the room and Levi’s beaten remains.
They really had done a number on him.
Stripped him, strapped him down, beat him up, and gutted him—and likely nicked the bowel in the process, which would explain the smell of shit, given he didn’t appear to have soiled himself even though he’d had every reason to.
And then, finally, they’d sliced his wrists open and bled him out.
The indents on the carpet said they’d had buckets under his fingers to collect it.
Why?
Why do this to him?
Why do something similar to Francesca and Marnee?
I didn’t know a lot about blood magic, but these murders really did seem to fall into that category. Did that mean they planned the same fate for Monica? Or did they need her for something else?
I had no idea, and my gut wasn’t throwing up any suggestions.
Though it certainly did want to throw up.
I wearily scrubbed a hand across my eyes, which only sharpened the pounding in my head. I half thought about going back to grab the painkillers I kept in my handbag, but the distant sound of approaching sirens told me I didn’t have all that much time left alone to examine the scene.
I rubbed my eyes again and did my best to concentrate on what I was seeing when all I wanted to do was sit down and let unconsciousness claim me.
Levi’s attackers hadn’t gagged him, which meant they must have used a magical means to silence his screams even if they’d used common old rope to bind him to the chair....
I blinked and narrowed my gaze. The chair was silver.
Or at least, silver coated. And while silver was more often used to contain werewolves and some shifters, it could also restrict the ability to spell if you were in direct, skin-on-skin contact with it.
Maybe that was why he was naked. I might not have sensed any great witch power in Levi when I’d done the reading on him, but I’d been concentrating more on intent than who or what he was.
He did have silver eyes, after all, so there was witch in his bloodline somewhere.
But why would his tormentors have left the chair here?
Surely that in itself was a clue as to who they were? Or were silver chairs so commonly used amongst blood witches that it didn’t matter?
As the sirens drew closer, I moved around Levi’s bound form, looking for any signs of the black spell stones I’d found in Francesca’s room.
There were no stones, but there were five faint patches of black dust. Odd numbers, it seemed, were the go for the darker arts, whereas regular witches tended to use even.
I bent next to the patch that had disintegrated less than the others, hissing lightly as my bruised hip protested the movement, then tugged off a glove and pressed a finger into the dust. Probably not my wisest move, but given the time that had passed between this murder and me finding the body, it was likely the only way I was going to find even the faintest caress of magic.
The spell stone remnants felt gritty against my skin, and so damn foul a chill crawled through me, but enough magic remained to confirm whoever had butchered Levi had also murdered Francesca and Marnee.
The sharp wail of sirens entered the court.
I pushed to my feet, walked back down to my handbag, and studied my phone.
It was bent out of shape and the screen shattered beyond repair; I could understand thumping a heel onto it to shut it up if its ringing had perhaps pissed them off, but this destruction looked more deliberate.
Like they wanted to ensure nothing could be retrieved from the thing.
If that were the case, then they were out of luck.
Like most people, I had it set to back everything up daily to the cloud.
Of course, it didn’t mean I wasn’t pissed off by their wanton destruction... and not just of my phone.
I didn’t touch or move anything, as I knew forensics would want to dust and take photos first. As the sirens cut out and the slamming of doors echoed, I finally gave in to the desire to sit and slithered down the nearby wall.
I didn’t, however, let the ongoing tide of pain sweep me away, if only because there was no damn time for unconsciousness right now.
“Agent Kang?” an unknown voice said. “You here?”
“In the rumpus room just behind that living room. You Society or ambulance?”
“Tony Grant, here with Leonie Spark, both Society. Sienna and Janice are outside grabbing their gear, and the ambos are five to ten away.”
A big man with gray hair came into the room. He showed me his badge, but his gaze swept past me to the body, and his shock reverberated, strong enough that I could both sense and see it.
“Damn, that’s not something we see too often around these parts.”
“It’s not something you see all too often anywhere.”
Leonie, who I presumed was his partner, walked into the room, followed by Sienna and Janice. All three of them paused, their looks of horror almost identical.
“Well, you did warn us it was a bad idea to put that statement out in the ether,” Sienna said grimly. “Next time, we shall listen.”
Hopefully there wouldn’t be a next time, but I kept that little nugget to myself. Fate had already had enough sport for one day. “Can one of you dust my handbag, purse, and the rest of its contents as a matter of priority? I really want to take it with me when the ambos whisk me off to hospital.”
“I’ll do that now.” Janice handed Sienna one of the cases she was carrying, then grabbed her camera out of the other and took some photos. She added, without looking up, “You okay?”
“I’m certainly better than Levi down the other end.”
“Yes, though his sorry condition does beg the question as to why they left you alive.” She exchanged the camera for the fingerprint kit. “It would have been easier to kill you, surely, and it’s not like they’ve shown any reluctance to spill blood.”
“Maybe they realized killing an operative would bring the full force of the Society down on them.”
“That’s presuming they’re aware the Society is involved.”
“I’ve no reason to believe they’re not.” Though I did have to wonder again why they’d upended my handbag and smashed my phone.
They obviously weren’t after the gloved USB...
unless, of course, they hadn’t realized it was a USB, given it was so well wrapped in the glove that it wasn’t actually visible.
If they had been searching for something in my handbag, then the next logical step would be to check my car—and the USB Viceroy had given me had been left sitting in open view in the front console.