Chapter 4 Wesson #2
“It hasn’t failed us so far,” I said. “Though now that you’ve mentioned it, we’ll probably get held up.”
“It’s just…” She pursed her lips, crossing her arms.
“What?” I looked back at her.
“You don’t look like Feds,” she said. “Neither of you. Not even in the cheap suits.”
“And how do you propose we get past the red tape, huh?” Atlas said in a biting tone. “Just wave your magic fingers and do a Jedi mind-trick on them?”
She shrugged. “There’s an idea.”
“Can you do that?” It surprised and intrigued me. What must it be like to wander through life, knowing you could manipulate anyone you wanted?
“I could,” she said. “But I won’t. The memory charm rarely lasts for very long, and I don’t want to waste my energy if I don’t have to.”
“So, we’re back to square one,” Atlas said. “Wes and I play the Feds, you play the nosy, uptight assistant. That shouldn’t be too hard for you.”
She glared and gave him the finger, but I only snorted and shook my head, facing the front for the rest of the ride.
As it turned out, we barely needed the disguise. The ME was all too eager to have a second set of eyes on her work.
“I’ve honestly been waiting for someone to show up,” she said as she led us to the morgue. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
These rooms always gave me the creeps, but I swallowed it down as the chill washed over me, raising the hair on the back of my neck. Marta and Atlas went first as Dr. Ballard gestured to the six bodies on separate gurneys, each with a white blanket draped over it.
“We read that the cause of death was blood loss,” Atlas said. “Is that your opinion?”
Marta walked to the first body and peeled the sheet back, revealing an older woman with deep gashes up and down her torso. Big chunks had been taken out of her arms and neck, the unmistakable curve of teeth marks indicating how it had been done.
“Technically, yes,” Dr. Ballard said, nodding toward the bodies at the far wall.
“Blood loss for some of them, missing vital organs for others.” She pulled open the sheet on a tall male with worse lacerations than the first person.
“As you can see, they took bites out of each other while they were engaged in intercourse. They didn’t stop until they were dead, and even then… ”
I raised my eyebrows, anticipating her answer even as I suspected what it might be.
“The ones left alive kept eating.” Ballard pointed at the wall of cadaver freezers to my right. “I’ve got four more skeletons in there, nearly picked clean.”
Nausea rolled through my gut, but it wasn’t mine.
Marta had gone pale, and, try as she might to hide it, her throat convulsed and she swallowed hard to keep down her breakfast. Of all the missions Atlas and I had ever run, this was by far the most gruesome.
Normally, we investigated demon rituals gone awry or some reckless vampire who’d invaded the wrong territory.
But this? These were humans with an insatiable appetite for each other.
Admittedly, I’d never seen anything so violent.
“I’m still waiting on the tox screen,” Ballard said. “But my guess is some kind of ecstasy laced with a neurotoxin.”
“Do you know of any kind of neurotoxin that could do this?” Marta asked.
Ballard shook her head. “But new stuff shows up on the drug market all the time.”
“Fair,” I said, stepping closer to the older cadaver. “What about strange markings? Notice anything during the autopsy? Any kind of tattoo or brand?”
“Brand?” Ballard raised her eyebrows. “Are you thinking a cult ritual?”
I shrugged. “Weirder things have happened.”
She shook her head. “The only thing I’ll add is that they were all missing their hearts.”
“Hearts?” That got Marta’s attention. “All of them? Even the ones at the end?”
Ballard nodded.
“Did you find evidence of their hearts in their stomachs?” I asked, watching as Atlas ran his gaze over a young woman, the last in the row. He inspected her arms and eventually her legs, looking for signs of a demon mark.
“It’s difficult to tell,” Ballard said. “By the time they dropped dead, they’d been at it for hours. Some of it was partially digested.”
Marta nodded.
“The PD didn’t find anything at the crime scenes,” Ballard continued. “But you can’t live without your heart, so my guess is once everyone else was dead, the last one standing ripped their own out to eat that, too.”
“What about the survivors?” I asked. “Do you notice any commonalities?”
“Well, they’re certainly not missing any vital organs,” Ballard said. “But other than that, I wouldn’t know. I’d have to see their medical reports to be sure.”
“But based on what you’ve heard?” Marta pressed.
Ballard shrugged. “Could be related. If they got the same bad dose or maybe ran into the same rotten dealer? I heard they went at it until they were raw, until they bled and peeled the skin away.”
It sounded horrific, and I wondered again what type of monster we were working with. Certainly a demon. Maybe an incubus?
“But I have no clue why they didn’t progress this far or what would have stopped them from feasting.” Ballard raised an eyebrow. “If you want to see the full workup, I can send it over as soon as I have the toxicology results.”
“Thank you, doctor,” I said.
A bell rang from the front desk, and Ballard sighed. “Feel free to examine the rest of the bodies, if you’d like. I’ll be right back.”
She walked out of the examination room, leaving us alone to speak freely.
“I don’t know of any demon that is capable of this,” Marta said as she walked to the body next to the older woman.
“What about an incubus?” Atlas asked, damn near reading my mind.
“Incubi want to impregnate. They’re the ones doing the fucking,” Marta explained, glancing over her shoulder.
When she confirmed we really were alone, she rubbed her hands together and placed them over the chest of another young woman, right above the Y-incision.
Marta closed her eyes and mumbled to herself as a white light emanated from her palms and fingertips.
I held my breath, half expecting the corpse to sit up and start talking, but when Marta gasped and the energy dissipated, she only shook her head and sighed.
“There’s something there, but it’s…” She rubbed the space between her eyebrows and went to another body, eventually performing the same spell on all of them. “It’s like…I’m being blocked.”
“Is it because they’re dead?” I asked. “Maybe Isobel will get something from the survivors?”
She hummed and hugged her midsection, a sudden wave of deep dread sinking into my gut as it flew across our newly formed bond.
“What is it?” I asked, taking a step closer.
“Whatever did this is more powerful than anything I’ve come across,” she said. “The magical residue left behind is sickening. Vile.”
“Well, they’re all vile,” Atlas said. “I’ve never met a demon I liked.”
I understood what she meant, maybe even better than Atlas, based on his nonchalant response to her explanation. It rankled under my veins. Whatever darkness had permeated into our reality coasted down the space between Marta and me in a truly despicable way.
“We should get back,” she said. “There’s nothing else we can do here.”
Atlas glanced at me, raising his eyebrow as if to suggest her input wasn’t remarkable. I disagreed. Marta might not be the most powerful witch in the Harlots, but I’d been bonded to her for a reason. So had my brother. The sooner he accepted that, the stronger we would be.