Chapter Three #4
I dropped to one knee on the platform and stretched out a hand, reaching with my magical senses, trying one more time to detect the killer’s magic. There was nothing, not even the faint traces of magic that should linger around a dead immortal.
“Don’t bother,” the mayor told me. “There’s no magic in him at all. My senses for that are even more acute than yours, and there’s nada. Not on the body or anywhere in the whole damn house.”
I dropped the hand to my thigh and stood. “Where the hell did the magic go?”
“I suspect the killer ate it. Gotta be some kind of magic phage.” She leaned close and said in a low voice, “What’s with the Big Bad Wolf? He’s pacing like someone caffeinated his kibble.”
“His sword’s mad at him. He didn’t feed it the assassin and it’s giving him hell.
” I gestured, sending my power rolling out to lift two thousand pounds of centaur off the bloody cushion.
The bed clung a moment before its soaked weight peeled it off the body.
The slice across Baareo’s jugular gaped, dried blood splattering his neck and the underside of his jaw, sticking his long hair together in clumps.
More blood had dried in long trails down his bare chest and over the thick muscle of his biceps, matting his coat and equine front legs.
“He’s been gone at least twelve hours -- that’s maximum rigor, and the livor mortis is just as far advanced.
” I gestured, and the body rotated, suspended securely in my power as I stepped closer to study it, focusing on those powerful arms, bent in the same position they’d been in when we arrived.
I gestured, sending a wave of magic to clear away the blood so I could see any cuts or scrapes. “There are no defensive wounds at all.”
Vildra frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. No matter how harmless he was, Baareo was still a centaur. You try to kill a ‘taur, they don’t just lie down and die.”
I decided not to ask how she knew that.
“Whoever it was took him by surprise,” Dearg said, walking toward us over his own glowing bridge.
“The killer was probably hiding behind an invisibility spell that kept Baareo from sensing him.” He frowned and bent his head back, staring at the ceiling.
“Though I supposed the assassin could simply have dropped on him from the ceiling. People never look up.”
I didn’t want to know how he came by that knowledge either. Besides, I’d been a homicide detective long enough to know he was right.
“The body’s not the only thing here that has no magic.” He gestured at a rough set of plywood bookshelves that had been exquisitely carved oak the last time I’d been here. The ‘taur’s death had broken the spell and the embellishments had vanished. “The centaur statue on that shelf…”
I followed his pointing finger. My magic told me it was solid gold, and its ruby eyes were genuine.
Not a conjured object -- it would have disappeared with the carvings otherwise.
Somebody had made it by hand with an attention to detail that suggested its creation was an act of passion, maybe even worship.
“That’s a ‘taur clan ancestor god,” Dearg said thoughtfully.
“There are layers and layers of faded centaur scents there from skin oils -- hundreds, maybe thousands of years’ worth.
It should be radiating magic like Cachamwri’s Holy Egg.
Generations of Centauri prayers accrete a hell of a lot of magic, yet it’s been completely drained.
” Dearg started toward the shelf as Vildra and I followed.
He knelt, pointing at a scabbarded sword in a stand carved with centaurs battling dragons.
“That’s a magical weapon, but it’s just as dead as the god.
Whatever spell the killer worked sucked the whole house dry. ”
“And we didn’t know any of it was happening.” I really wanted to kick something. “If I or one of my cops had done a drive by, we’d have known something was wrong just by the way the house was stripped to plywood.” A thought hit me, and I straightened. “Maybe the killer isn’t a centaur.”
“Glamour?” Vildra lifted an interested eyebrow.
I remembered the bruises from his huge hooves. “Illusions don’t break ribs.”
“Depends on the illusion.” Vildra grinned, her teeth visibly sharpening in a reminder that her true form was bigger than a bus and covered in scales. She loved creeping people out.
I was used to her schtick, though, and I ignored her. “That centaur would have killed me if not for my vest and shield,” I told her.
“I thought you were dead,” Dearg growled. He opened his mouth as if to rant, then apparently thought better of restarting the argument and closed it again.
“Good thinking, Big Bad,” the dragon told him.
“Back to my question. What if the killer wasn’t a centaur?” I asked, thinking of some of the more impressive magic I’d seen Maeve work. “Maybe he was Sidhe and used the power he absorbed to shift into Baareo’s doppelg?nger. That would explain both the murder and draining the house magic.”
The mayor nodded slowly, frowning. “So a death magic spell?”
“If it had been death magic, I’d smell it,” Dearg said.
The mayor snorted. “We’d all smell it, Big Bad. Those spells reek.” She frowned. “It’s certainly possible. It would have taken a hell of a lot of power to create a magical clone so identical even I didn’t realize he was an imposter. Sacrificing Baareo in a ritual would deliver that kind of juice.”
“But where are the sigils?” I objected. “Spells like that require magical symbols to control and direct the magic, and they tend to burn right into the floor.”
“Could have cleaned it all up, then replaced the flooring,” Dearg suggested.
“Yeah, but…” Vildra pursed her lips. “Turning a two-hundred-pound biped into a two-thousand-pound quadruped would require the sacrifice of multiple victims simultaneously. There’s only one here. If there were others, why didn’t he leave them?”
“To throw us off?” It was an interesting possibility, but… “No, if he wanted to do that, he could have destroyed the entire house. Then we’d have even less to go on than we do now.”
A thoughtful wreath of smoke slowly orbited the mayor’s head.
“I don’t think any of those possibilities are quite right.
This feels like something else, perhaps some one-off being with this ability.
If an immortal species made a habit of killing their victims and taking their places, I’d have heard of them by now.
The murderer must have absorbed at least some of Baareo’s memory and magic, since he knew the dialogue for the scene today.
His supposed screwup with the choreography could have been a deliberate attempt to kill me. ”
I stared. “What kind of creature would be dumb enough to try to kill you? If he failed, you’d eat him.”
“Yeah, he’d have to be pretty confident he could do it. Between the transformation and the raw power of his blasts?” She pursed her lips. “It sounds like a demigod.”
We both stared at her in horror. Dearg said exactly what I was thinking. “Oh, gods and demons…”