Chapter 14
Three Murders and a Bag of Money
Three hours is not enough sleep, Mal thought, as he ambled his way along the cobbled pavement.
Yu and Hala were equally pleased with their awakening, but seemed to be handling their weariness better, even with Yu threatening to make a run for it.
Mal’s feet fell with heavy steps as he dragged his body along after Des.
She was on the hunt, and Mal was very much trying to be on the hunt with her.
He just wished the hunt started at a more convenient hour.
Darkness blanketed the cobbles and crooked buildings as they made their way deeper into Skelmir Alley.
No rowdy crowds could be heard, no funky smells or odd shops.
Just silence, silence of all senses. Other questionable individuals were around on the street, but all understood at this hour, you keep to your own business.
Mal wanted his business to be bed. Well, sofa.
Des, of course, was to blame for this excursion; while on watch she’d spotted someone who warranted following: a short man with blond hair, the same man who had alerted everyone to the break-in at the Order’s headquarters after the attack.
Mal had recognized him from the files but hadn’t placed him.
He, like the rest of the Order, was meant to be on lockdown, and yet here he was: walking down Skelmir, checking over his shoulder, carrying a duffle bag.
Upon hearing his description, Yu reeled off several lines from the man’s file, as if reading it verbatim:
Mal wondered what exemplary work could possibly mean in this context, or what an underground liaison was. Either way, Mal heard the order straight from Amrit: the headquarters was on lockdown, which meant this guy was up to something. Like a failing podiatrist, Mal knew something here was afoot.
“Will you be quiet back there,” Des whispered.
As she turned around to look at them, Mal couldn’t help up but stare at her eyes—they were glowing gold.
Her divination, or tracking magic as Mal had taken to calling it, required this small transformation to function.
It certainly wasn’t subtle, but she made up for it with a pair of sunglasses she had on hand, which also wasn’t subtle, but was better than two glowing headlights.
Des walked with practically no noise at all.
Mal wondered if that was practice from being a cop, or one of the perks of vampirism.
He amused himself with the thought of a group of cops taking a training seminar called “How to Stealth.” He shook off the sleep and tried carefully to match her steps.
This seemed to please Des, but Mal found it hard to read her expression through the dark and the sunglasses.
He had to focus; this felt like a real, actual lead.
Someone from the Order, up to no good. Someone who had access to the vault, who, for all they knew, could have released Mazino himself and be working with a necromancer the Order wasn’t aware of. This could be it.
Des had followed the short, blond Erik down several streets and back alleys.
What she was following confused the group as they weren’t even in eyeshot of their target.
Des tried to explain to them that she was following a kind of glowing trail Erik had left behind.
Des was a veritable bloodhound. Mal thought he should keep that comparison to himself and try to think of a better one; women tended not to like being compared to dogs.
Mal had found that one out the hard way, which in this case meant being completely inept when talking to women.
Eventually, Erik’s trail led them to an old, redbrick, Victorian apartment building. It seemed abandoned, but there were faint lights glowing on one of the upper floors.
“What do we do?” Hala said, concern filling her face. It hadn’t occurred to any of them, except Des, what they would do once they found him.
“You follow me, slowly and quietly,” Des said, “and if anything happens, you three run and call Walters.” The group nodded.
Mal protested slightly, but even he had to admit Des was the expert here.
Des led them along a short path and up to the apartment building.
She pushed gently on the painted wooden door and it crept open.
There was no light except for the tiny glow of a dust-covered exit sign above their heads.
For a moment, there was a golden flash as Des lifted her sunglasses.
Des gestured for them to follow her as she headed for the stairs.
Mal felt the anticipation in his chest, a nervous, anxious excitement; the feeling merged with dread as the steps creaked beneath his feet.
The building was old, but had been retrofitted as flats before being abandoned, which gave it a cold energy; like the building was trying too hard to be presentable.
They made it to the first floor, but there was nothing but dust and rats.
Des nodded upward, and they made for the next set of stairs.
Again, they creaked as Mal placed his weight on them.
Gods, he wished his magic were more useful; he would be of absolutely no help here if anything went wrong.
No electronics or dead people here to manipulate.
He caught the thought as it left his mind, as if he’d heard himself speak it, and it gave him the creeps.
He shouldn’t be thinking about dead people like that.
Like tools. A pang of frustration winced within him.
At least he was recording everything for posterity; he could watch all this again later from his hard drive and see if he’d missed anything.
As his head came level with the landing, he saw lights shining out from under a nearby door.
He heard voices talking from behind it; they were muffled, but as Des and Mal continued upward, they became clearer.
“So, we’re all good?”
“No one knows I’m here, but we’ll have to slow down drops for a while.”
“Slow down? No, we have clients.”
“They’ll have to wait. The whole Order is on lockdown; it’s only a matter of time before they start investigating me. We need to put this on pause …”
“We’ll speak to Cosimo, but he won’t be happy,”
“That’s your problem. Now send in the money.”
Mal couldn’t tell who was speaking, or how many of them there were. There was a sudden zapping, then a thump, like someone dropped a heavy bag on the floor.
“Thanks, boys.”
There were two shooting noises, like puffs of air, then two heavy thuds as something hit the floor one after the other.
Mal’s head exploded with pain. Once, then again, nearly knocking him down the stairs.
He held on for dear life as the flashes of pain scraped his mind.
Des looked down to him with concern; he could barely breathe, let alone explain what was happening to him.
More noise came from inside the room: heavy steps moved on wood, then a noise like a zip, then a rustling …
BANG.
A loud pop came from the room, not quite an explosion, but louder than a gunshot.
The group had been stuck on the stairs up until this point, scared to move, in case they alerted anyone.
However, at the sound of the bang, Des kicked into cop mode.
She barreled toward the door, yelling, “Police!” Before she could open it there was another flash of pain in Mal’s mind.
Mal heard a scrambling from within the room and he forced himself up after Des as she kicked down the door.
A man faced away from them, standing still. Then, like a large domino, he fell backward, revealing two corpses in front of him and a dagger sticking out of his ear.
From top to bottom, the room was a mess.
The floor and walls were covered with blast marks from some kind of explosion; they weren’t black, but purple, like that of a spell.
It had emanated out from the center, leaving a strange outline of a bag, and had knocked or jolted near everything else in the room out of place.
A desk sat pushed into the far corner, its toppings all scattered violently.
Several chairs lay strewn across the floor.
A tall lamp stood upright, switched off, near the window on the left.
A fireplace filled the room’s back wall, and to the right, opposite the window, was a closed door that probably led to the rest of the apartment.
A singed, open bag of money lay on the ground near the window.
It had clearly been moved from the center, as the bag was identical to the outline left by the blast marks.
On the floor surrounding the center of the blast were three bodies.
Two had been facing the door when they fell; the third (the one they’d seen fall) faced the fireplace.
The two facing the door had burnt, blackened eye sockets and the soles of their feet were scorched by the blast. The one facing the fireplace was coated in purple blast marks all up and down his person.
He must have taken the brunt of the explosion.
He seemed stiff, as if frozen, and the dagger in his ear was unusual, long and thin with a short cross-guard.
Blood and brain slowly leaked out past his blond hair and onto the floor.
Mal recognized this man as Erik Lind; the other two, however, the men with burned-out eyes, Mal didn’t recognize at all.