CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was indeed a long ride to the crime scene high in a lonely meadow.
Havenside lay in a valley flanking the broad estuary which gave it such rich fishing grounds and sheltered harbors, surrounded by picturesque hills covered in maples, elms and sweetgums. Usually, the autumn turning encouraged hordes of daytime hikers to seek the hills, but not today.
This morning had brought colder weather and an unpleasant mist. Dreary and wet and cold as it was, Hero and Keen were the only two souls climbing the twisting path through the trees.
Their horses clopped along the steep pathway, hooves muffled by the hard-packed loam, ringing against the occasional stone. A murder of crows kept them company as they progressed, mocking them with shrieking caws, fluttering between the branches, in and out of the colorful leaves.
Hero lowered her glasses a few times to check on the infernal birds, making sure they didn’t bear the silver glint of demonic energy.
A few gleamed suspiciously, but the thick leaves kept her from being certain.
There was a presence on the hill, one she felt as a mere glimmer but growing stronger as they climbed.
She was on the right path. Finally. She could kick herself for not coming here right away, but she was so used to getting her information from shades.
Her death speaking had never failed her so thoroughly before now.
They left their horses well outside the perimeter of the crime scene, which the PKs had marked out with twine and wooden stakes in a careful grid.
Hero didn’t like the onerous procedures of traditional police work, but she was a Goddess-damned professional.
She wasn’t about to contaminate a crime scene, unless it was absolutely necessary.
“I don’t know what you hope to find up here,” Keen grumbled as they made their way to the edge of the cordoned-off area.
“I tested all the collected samples for demonic activity, hunted for any residue with every technique I could think of. Only Dr Virchow’s findings had a demonic taint.
” Defensiveness oozed from him like an unpleasant odor, and it was Hero’s turn to flare her nostrils.
“I’m not questioning your skills, DH Keen,” she said. “Mine are merely superior. I meant no offense.”
He rolled his eyes. “Why would I take offense?”
Hero sighed. Moving away from him, she stepped over the first line of string, no higher than her shin.
The grass was half dead and had been thoroughly combed by PK technicians.
That was fine; she wasn’t here for physical traces.
Off with the glasses – her shield against the world, a thin, transparent shield of green-tinted glass. The world sharpened.
She Saw the faint outline where the dead nun’s body had lain.
A vague shimmer across the grass, woman-shaped and shockingly small.
No blood anywhere. No trace of any living person at the scene – no footprints, disturbed earth or broken plant stems – yet someone had carried her here, dumped her here.
Someone had ripped out Catarine’s tongue and left only a slight trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth.
Dr Virchow had confirmed it had been removed peri-mortem, so by the time she was dumped here she’d stopped bleeding.
Catarine had been held somewhere else. Tortured, murdered, then dumped like garbage.
Hero’s eyes landed on the sad, pale outline of Sister Catarine. An explosion of crows erupted from a nearby forest giant, an ancient oak standing proud among the showy maples. Startled, she spun toward the flurry of dark wings.
“Damnable birds,” Keen exclaimed. “What’s got them in a tizzy?”
Eyes aflame, Hero zeroed in on the oak. There it was, plain as day to her enhanced vision – a glimmering substance etched into the thick bark, faint and spectral but very real, as if something had scraped the tree as it passed.
She focused on it and it became more solid, formed links.
A chain. She felt a surge of triumph. The glimmer – the chain – arrowed down the hill, in and out of the trees, toward Havenside.
“Get the horses,” she ordered, leaving her glasses tucked in the pocket of her long, brown oilskin duster.
Keen recoiled when she turned to him, but she didn’t have time for his sensitivities.
She shed her jacket and tossed it to him.
Her muscles were already bulging beneath her spare, cream-colored shirt, straining the seams. Her deep blue scapular and emerald trousers were loose enough to accommodate her modified form – they’d been designed that way, of course – but she liked a fitted shirt, even if she sacrificed far too many of them.
Keen stared up at her, eyes wide in horror, clutching her jacket to his chest. Her mouth opened in a snarl, revealing fangs as long as a wolf’s. “And try and keep up,” she growled. Then she turned, dropped to her clawed hands and bounded down the hillside.
Oleander scrambled for the horses, shaken to the core.
He shouldn’t have been, he castigated himself – he was a demonhunter, a sacred huntsman of hellspawn!
He’d witnessed the transformation of human into demon firsthand many times before.
His very presence drove most of them to reveal themselves, dropping the mortal masks they hid behind.
And every time, he had attacked, not stared meekly in stunned horror. What had him so unnerved this time?
This demon is my partner .
Frantically, he bundled Hero’s long jacket on the back of her horse, untied both beasts and flung himself on his mount.
A jab of his heels and they were off. Thundering hooves kicked up soft earth and leaves, tore through the flimsy string and stakes marking off the crime scene – regrettable, but they’d found what they’d come for. Hadn’t they?
Oleander didn’t know. He didn’t know anything! Except he had been ordered to follow. And one thing he was exceptionally good at was following orders.
Ordered around by hellspawn. Oleander’s knees tightened on his horse, and he bent low over its neck. The Goddess was laughing at him.
Hero’s path was easy to follow. In her beast-like state, far larger than her human one, she was barreling through the woods and leaving a trail of destruction in her wake.
What was she chasing? He couldn’t even speculate beyond the fleeting thought, focused as he was on staying atop his horse.
Well trained, a fine hunter, the sturdy mare took the rough terrain in stride.
Its partner followed – Oleander could hear its hoofbeats and the crashing of underbrush – not wanting to be left behind. He hoped the beast didn’t break a leg.
The pommel of the saddle dug into his stomach after a particularly startling drop, and he lost a stirrup for a moment. It was a miracle he kept his seat at all, and he stopped worrying about the horses’ legs and prayed fiercely he didn’t break his own neck.
Coming down the hill took far less time than going up.
They burst from the woods into cultivated land.
Cornfields, stalks shriveled and dry and ready for harvest. Even more treacherous ground than the hillside.
His horse jumped a split-rail fence, huffing and sweating but primed for the hunt and game for the chase.
He glanced back to see Hero’s horse balk at the fence.
It didn’t matter now. They were close enough to home for the steed to wander back to the PK stables.
Its livery would deter anyone from absconding with it.
Even the degenerates in Otherside would hesitate before stealing a police horse.
He winced. Technically, he was a degenerate from Otherside.
A slash of flattened cornstalks sent him toward the outskirts of town.
The path led out of the cornfield and on to a road of crushed stone.
A rural road, winding up another hill, this one mostly shorn of trees and brambles.
Oleander had no idea where it led, yet felt he should have.
He’d grown up here, and even though he’d been away at training, he’d come home every holiday.
Last time he’d been home, this hilltop had been a wilderness.
The strangeness was enough to break through his singular focus on staying astride his galloping horse.
Then, shocked, he heaved back on the reins and slowed his horse to a swift trot.
How in all the great wide world had this hill been cleared and that been built?
That was nothing less than a mansion and its accompanying grounds.
A brick wall encircled it, reminding him of the wall around Clementine Prep.
It looked old, covered in ivy in some places, moss and lichen in others.
Well beyond the wall, the mansion rose in ominous towers and cupolas.
The iron arch spanning a gateway announced the place as “Bright Renewal Academy.”
Stunned, he could only stare. This was the Academy Molly Franke had mentioned? It looked a hundred years old, but he swore, swore to the Goddess and the Branch, this place hadn’t been here a year ago!
His gawping amazement ended when his eyes landed on a crumpled figure ahead of him on the road, a figure dressed in green and blue, cream-colored shirt torn and tattered around the sleeves and neck.
“Shit!” he muttered, yanking his horse to a stop. He jumped to the road and dashed to his partner. “Inspector!”
She had returned to her human aspect, skin whiter than normal, face slack and eyes closed.
It looked like she’d been clobbered, but there was nothing and no one anywhere near her.
Oleander took her by the shoulder and rolled her onto her back.
A groan told him she was alive, at least. He called to her again and eased her up from the cold, hard ground to settle her against his knee.
A few light slaps to her cheeks made her eyelids flutter.
Then he was staring into the flames of Hell.