CHAPTER FOUR
While her new partner noisily emptied his stomach, Hero approached Chief Dewey.
The aroma of sick made her nostrils curl, and she imagined the young Hunter was regretting the bacon and grits he’d had for breakfast. It certainly was a dramatic reaction to her presence, and she wasn’t sure why a queasy stomach made for good demon detection.
It had to be why they fed their cadets such sparse fare at the Citadel.
His youth probably didn’t help, either – fresh out of the Citadel, she had no doubt, all nerves and eagerness. A fucking squirrel.
“He’s shiny new, isn’t he?” she said to Dewey as she sauntered past him to the coolers. “I guess I’m lead then, hey?”
“You are the senior on this case, Inspector. But please understand, a Citadel-trained demonhunter is always required when demonic activity is suspected. I made the request, and this is who they sent me,” he added, waving in the youth’s general direction.
It almost sounded like an apology. Ouch. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
She paused before the bank of coolers and tapped her cane against the tiles, waiting. Dewey cleared his throat, tossed a grimace toward the retching officer and then joined her. “Let’s allow DH Keen a moment to compose himself, shall we?” he said.
“Certainly. I don’t need him for this part anyway.” I don’t need him at all.
Dewey nodded, chose an icebox door at waist height, yanked on its metal latch and opened it.
Solemnly, he grasped the table within and eased it out.
The rollers beneath it were well oiled and the shrouded corpse glided soundlessly free along with a blast of chill air.
Hero approved. The body would be well preserved.
By the description she’d read, the nun couldn’t have died too long before her body was discovered.
It would explain the lack of decomposition, even given the cool weather, and the absence of signs of animal predation.
“The coroner preformed only a cursory examination at the scene, and the diener hasn’t been at her yet for autopsy preparation,” Dewey said. “We were waiting for you to see her first.”
“Hmm, yes, very wise. Once the autopsy begins, the soul tends to become confused. I’ve lost a number to overeager coroners, let me tell you.
Poor devils just wander off into Hell never to be seen or heard from again.
” She gave him a quick smile, seeing how her words had left him a bit pale-faced.
Even dedicated PKs didn’t like discussing Hell.
The flash of her canines didn’t seem to put him much at ease.
“Uh…yes, well. We tried to do our best and preserve as much as we could for you, though the killer left little behind for us unfortunately.”
“Have you determined cause of death?” Hero asked, gesturing for him to draw back the sheet. So far, she hadn’t felt much spiritual resonance lingering about the corpse. Had this woman even died by violence?
At first sight of the murdered nun, Hero let out a very uncharacteristic gasp. It wasn’t often she was confounded, but by the Branch, she was about as flabbergasted as she’d ever been.
The girl beneath the shroud was pristine, her face plump and pink, eyes closed as if in peaceful slumber, pale lashes against flawless cheeks.
Her blonde hair fanned out beneath her head, held steady by a stiff riser which might as well have been a pillow in a four-poster bed going by how serene she looked.
The only observable marks were around her throat, a strange ring which caught the light in glittering flashes and raw scrapes on her knees, revealed as Dewey stripped away the sheet entirely.
A single trickle of blood had leaked from the corner of her slightly parted lips.
Hero was tempted to pull down the chin and observe the gaping hole where Catarine’s tongue had been, but it would only further compromise the body.
And right now, it was an empty vessel. Hero sensed nothing from it, not even the slight residue of a soul torn too soon from its home. That was what had prompted her gasp.
She drew her lips back from her teeth and sucked in a breath, trying to taste the death in the air, to filter out the nun’s soul from the general malaise of the cadaver-filled room. Where was it?
Every other dead person stored in the bank of coolers possessed a shade of themselves, the glimmer of a soul.
Most had died slowly, from age or illness, or quite suddenly in various accidents, yet Sister Catarine had no shade hovering near, no obvious sign of a soul.
If she had been killed the day she’d disappeared, she must have been dead for six days at most, yet her soul had fled completely? Impossible.
“She has the stink of demons upon her.”
Hero started, letting out an unintended hiss. The wretched boy had snuck up on her. She whipped her head toward him, glaring through her tinted glasses, but he wasn’t watching her. His eyes, full of sadness and revulsion, were on the dead nun.
“Obviously,” she snapped. “The marks on her neck are spectral in nature, a sure sign of Pandemonium involvement. And her soul…” Her lips pinched closed in frustration. Sometimes when a trauma was so great, a soul might become snarled in the halls of Hell. Possibly, she could chase it down.
“What of her soul?” DH Keen asked, the words seemingly dragged from him as if he had no desire to engage her in conversation.
He kept his eyes on the body, moving around the table, examining every inch of it in a methodical fashion.
Not touching it yet. Good. At least he understood the assignment.
Too many hands on a corpse confused the situation, left residue and echoes.
“It is lost, I suspect. Confused. Demonic influence might have sent her screaming into the void. Nuns can be touchy about such things.”
“You mean immortal evil? Yes, most people are touchy about such things. ”
His wry tone made Hero chuckle, and he glanced at her, eyebrows pinched as if he thought she was mocking him. She blinked at him innocently. He’d made a joke, hadn’t he? At times, humor went right over her head.
“Can you find her, Speaker?” Dewey asked, a bit plaintively. “It would help if the girl knew her killer, or at least got a good look at him. Right now, our suspect pool is shallow and our evidence suboptimal.”
Suboptimal. Hero clucked her tongue. That meant nonexistent. “This will require concentration,” she announced abruptly. “I must open the Gate. I must delve into Hell.”
Keen started and stepped away, his hands twitching, as if he wanted to go for his weapons.
Hero ignored him and removed her tinted glasses, hoping briefly that she’d made a mistake and all would be revealed under her true Sight. But alas, the situation remained the same: the girl’s shade was gone.
She focused. The real world faded into grays and browns.
Lifeless. Ripples of flame ate at the edges of the room.
She stood still, relaxed but alert, letting her mind open.
Letting Hell leak into her perceptions. It was always there, the Underworld, just beneath the surface.
It was dangerous for her to open the Gate, to stand at the doorway, the edge of the river.
There was always a risk she might be pulled inside and swept straight to Pandemonium, never to escape.
But the risk was the reward – the elation of escaping, the taunting power in her blood.
She was of Hell, but free. Free to roam among the angels, among the pure souled.
The flames grew, eager as always to consume her.
Her body didn’t move, but her mind took a step.
Her disembodied spirit delved into chaos, searching corridors of flame and ash, of blood and rot.
The clinging miasma of demon stink became more apparent as she let Hell surround her.
To demons, Hell was a passageway and their playground.
She had no doubt a demon had had a hand in this nun’s murder, had laid its chains upon her. But what demon?
The stench of sulfur filled her nostrils.
She sucked it in through bared teeth, tasting, discerning.
Did she know this particular demon? She doubted it; there were too many to count.
They all knew her, unfortunately. She chased the smell, dashing through the shadows, searching for the source.
Would she find the nun’s shade hidden beneath it?
It wouldn’t be the first time a demon had tried to hide their victim from her.
The heat and fury of Pandemonium roared around her the deeper she delved, the closer she ventured to that particular Sphere.
Hatred and need beat at her. She was not welcome here, even if the place wanted desperately to consume her.
She held on to her human half with a tenuous thread of psychic silver, keeping herself grounded in the morgue, in reality.
Even as she roamed through a twisted Hellscape, she was aware of the cold tiles beneath her feet, the nearness of the demonhunter and his pulsing dislike of her, the stolid presence of Chief Dewey, whose alarm and worry for her was actually a bit touching.
But nowhere did she feel the aura of a dead, confused, frightened nun, the thing which should be most apparent.
A tremor shook Hero, both in the real world and in the Hellscape. Unease. There was no sign of Sister Catarine. Not even an echo. Just a blankness. A hole in the Underworld. As if… as if everything which had made up this person’s entire being had been consumed.
She’s been eaten.