Last Breath (12 page)

“Keep what out? I notice you didn’t say keep ‘someone’ out.”

I fingered the smooth edges of the bone then plopped it into the outstretched bag. Shade had said they’d warded against this, and I’d suspected he was telling the truth, but it was good to have it all confirmed by physical evidence. “Dogs are psychopomps. They separate the soul from the body and allow it to move on to the afterlife. Birds and other animals can be psychopomps too, but dogs are the traditionally symbolic animal.”

Shade had particularly mentioned psychopomps and the need to keep them out. I was guessing that was a common practice when doing sacrificial magic. No one needed a reaper showing up to screw up your ritual, and especially no one needed a psychopomp snatching the soul you were about to use to power your spell. It was all so horrid, so dark. It made sense from a logic point of view, but made my skin crawl as a member of the human race.

“Psychopomps? Wait, you said they separate the soul from the body at death, like that angel Azrael you mentioned today.”

I winced. “Araziel. It’s really important not to mix those two up. And yes, Araziel is considered a psychopomp. He’s an angel, so he’d be the ultimate psychopomp.”

This detective wasn’t slow on the uptake. I was honestly thrilled to be partnering with someone who didn’t discount my knowledge and who was catching on so quickly. Normally I wouldn’t have thought about teaming up with a non-Templar, let alone a cop who wouldn’t let me carry my sword around, but there was a human behind these murders. I could do my best to take care of a demon or angel, and I certainly would come down heavy on any magician abusing his power, but it would be beyond my Templar responsibilities to bring a human to justice. We’d done plenty of that during the Crusades with horrible consequences and centuries of what I could only call bad karma. Nowadays we left that sort of judgement to the civil legal system.

Tremelay frowned. “So the angel that killed the gamer in the park might have been drawn to this ritual? If the people who killed Bethany Scarborough took steps to keep the angel out, that means it was around
before
it killed the man in the park.”

I was thinking so. The presence Slade had mentioned that had scared them into leaving before cleaning up post-ritual? The unlikely coincidence that the mage who’d done the soul magic, who’d wielded the knife, was the one killed the next morning by Araziel? I had no idea how the angel had arrived here and why, but clearly he took exception to soul magic as an usurpation of his psychopomp duties.

But that was my theory, and I had nothing concrete right now to back it up.

“I’m thinking yes, but I’m not positive. Araziel might have been around back then or not. Death magic can be just about the energy of taking a life, or it can be about the soul. Either way the mages wouldn’t want a psychopomp of any kind to release Bethany’s soul.”

The detective looked horrified at my words. “So her soul is still stuck in her body? What does that mean?”

It was time for Death 101. “No, if her soul had still been in her body it would have been released when the runes were smudged by me and your crime scene guys. Animal psychopomps are mainly symbolic. Sometimes an actual animal arrives, an avatar that releases the soul. Sometimes they remain in the spirit world, invisible to our eye. I doubt the mages went to all this trouble to keep a psychopomp out just to leave Bethany’s soul in her body. They would have used it in their ritual.”

The detective stared at me a moment, his hand brushing the top of his gun. “You’re scaring me, Ainsworth. You should be doing those séances and ghost tours down in Fells Point.”

It scared me, too, but I wasn’t about to admit it to this guy. “I need to research death magic that involves the soul. This all seems excessive for a protection and containment ritual. It makes me a little worried about what they’re holding back.”

What Shade had said made me more than uneasy. He seemed genuinely fearful about whatever they were protecting the city from. Maybe they were holding back a high level demon, although banishment would have been a more appropriate response. An angel? A crazy mage with an artifact? A vampire
Balaj
with an artifact? I’d taken the scepter but who’s to say Leonora or another group didn’t have something else in their treasure chests.

“I need to figure out what they were doing,” I mused.

Tremelay shook his head. “I know what they were doing, they were killing a woman. I don’t care about their mumbo jumbo, I just want to find out who they are and gather enough evidence to put them away. Especially if you’re right and this wasn’t their only murder.”

This was the nature of our partnership. Tremelay gets the mages. I take care of whatever magical fallout their death magic ritual produced. And the angel. I shivered, thinking I’d rather swap with the detective.

“I’m not well connected enough with the magical community for them to give me any information on this, and they’re certainly not going to communicate with the police.”

I went on to tell the detective about the magical shop in Ellicott City, and my hope that between the pair of us we could pressure/convince them into telling us who bought dog bones, a blood sacrifice crucible, and whatever the heck someone needed to trap a soul.

“I take it this store isn’t open past six at night?”

“Actually it’s a twenty-four-seven kind of place. Are you proposing a road trip?” I smiled, thinking if we hurried, I could still catch up with Dario before midnight, before he was likely to have picked his dinner for the evening and headed off to enjoy a meal.

Tremelay nodded. “I’ll drive, but the sword stays in the trunk. No bringing it into the store.”

I snorted. “No problem.” I could hardly trot into a magical supply shop with a Templar sword strapped to my back. In fact, I was going to need the leather cuff I’d thrown in my bag to cover my tattoo. Hopefully word hadn’t spread about me and my dismissal from Haul Du. I was banking that the magical group hadn’t wanted to admit they’d allowed one of my Order admittance. Otherwise I was going to find that door shut firmly in my face.

Tremelay looked down at the dog bone in the bag, pulling it out to examine it carefully in his gloved hand. With a smooth flick of his wrist, he rolled the bone up and over each finger. “So one more quarter to check then we head to this magical shop?”

I was eager to get going. Magic shop, meet up with Dario, then the research that was going to take most of the rest of my evening. Plus I was determined to actually get some sleep tonight. “There’s really no need. Dog bone in three quarters pretty much guarantees there will be a dog bone in the fourth.”

The bone made one more rotation around his fingers. The guy was pretty good at this. I’ll bet with some practice he could do sleight of hand magic. Or be mighty lethal with a knife. I wondered how he’d do with a sword.

“Let’s check anyway, just to be thorough.” He grinned. “If there winds up being a scorpion when you stick your hand in that pot, I want to see it.”

“Fine. Let’s hurry though. I’ve got stuff to do and if I don’t get some sleep I’m going to start hallucinating.” We climbed through the broken window and replaced the splintered wooden slat. “That’s a thing, you know. Sleep deprivation and all that.”

“How could you tell they were hallucinations? I mean, you see wizards and demons on a regular basis.”

“Yes but they’re not dancing in tutus across the rooftops.”

We crossed the street to where the west quarter of the circle would be. “Do you need to take a walk while I magically unlock this door? I mean while I discover where the vagrants have broken into the building?”

“No need.” Tremelay nudged the door with his toe and it swung inward.

The downstairs of the small dilapidated brownstone had probably been some sort of retail establishment with separate entrances to the apartments upstairs. The door opened to a large room with several stained mattresses on the floor. Garbage bags lined the walls. Sprawled across the filthy floor at the end of the mattresses were two dead bodies.

I knew they were dead because they lay on their backs, white ribs pointing toward the sky.

“I’m guessing we’re not going to find those two guy’s lungs or hearts?” Tremelay asked.

“Or livers, or kidneys, or anything else.” I tilted my head to see the mess of splattered blood that coated the mattress underneath the corpses. Araziel. I doubted there was more than one being running around Baltimore ripping the insides out of people.

But why? Had the angel been drawn here to collect Bethany’s soul only to find his path blocked? And if so, why kill these two… junkies?

“Hey,” I asked Tremelay who was on his phone. “Did you get anything from the coroner on exactly when Bethany Scarborough died?”

He pulled the phone from his ear. “Friday night around midnight.”

If these two had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, shooting up while Bethany died, then that put their deaths at the same time—nearly two nights ago. But this was late August. I might be a layman when it came to the intricacies of decomposition, but I doubted these two had been dead that long.

One more thing to research. I just didn’t know enough about psychopomps, let alone an angelic one. If Araziel had been unable to perform his duties, had that caused the shift from assisting a soul to actually killing people? Was this a normal side effect of death magic that practitioners had to account for? If so, these mages neglected to take care of this little detail.

F
OR THE SECOND
time in two nights Old Town Mall was lit up with blue and red lights, as well as the sound of police radios and running engines that dispelled the eerie quiet which had previously blanketed the area. My presence was being explained alternately as an unpaid consultant and a witness. Unpaid. Story of my life.

There had been no storms or lightning in the area to blame these deaths on, yet this clearly linked Ronald Stull’s death to the area of Bethany Scarborough’s murder. Everyone stared at the two dead junkies, gagging and conjecturing about the “sick fuck” who could do such a thing. And everyone was bandying around the terms Satanist and occult. This brought the death toll to four. Araziel three, death mages one.

“I’ve asked for a list of missing persons’ reports in the last two months, concentrating on any reports in the last forty-eight hours. I agree with you that there have to be bodies we haven’t found that are connected to this.”

I blinked at Tremelay’s words. Forty-eight hours meant they were doing a sacrifice each night, but I’d figured no more than once a week. Unless he didn’t mean the sacrificial victims but the angel. Did he think Araziel had become some sort of angelic spree murderer? “Which crime? Do you mean these death-by-angel murders, or the sacrifice?”

His mouth set in a grim line. “Both, but let’s look at these first. Let’s say I do believe you and there’s an angel running, or flying, around killing people. Why the guy in the park? Dude was minding his own business and wham, his chest gets ripped out. I can see these two may have stumbled upon some bad shit and got taken out, either by killers who didn’t want witnesses or a killer angel, but why the guy in the park?”

I winced, wondering how to tell him this. “I have a rather secretive source that led me to believe that Ronald Stull, the guy in the park, was involved in Bethany’s murder. That’s why he was killed. Although I don’t see why Araziel would kill these junkies.”

Tremelay glared. “Who is this source?”

Shit. “It’s all very Watergate. I don’t know him. I never actually met him. He claims to have been in the group and actually witnessed Bethany’s murder. He says Ronald Stull did it, and that he organized other murders that my source did not have direct knowledge of or exposure to. He also claims that there is an unknown person outside the magical group that facilitated and participated in the murders.”

There was a moment when I thought Tremelay’s eyeballs were going to burn holes through me. “And of course this guy has vanished to Mexico or somewhere with a new identity, never to be seen again?” I nodded. “Well if a miracle occurs and you hear from him, please let me know next time.”

I swallowed and nodded again.

Tremelay sighed. “Okay back to the angel. Why is one here? You’re my expert, so tell me your theories.”

That, I could do. “When I was thinking it was a demon, I’d assumed it was either a botched summoning where the mage didn’t banish or bind properly, or that it was a hit. It’s dangerous and could cost you your soul, but a skilled mage can summon a higher level demon as a sort of hit man.”

He shook his head. “But an angel doesn’t fit in those categories?”

“No. First off, no one summons an angel. You can’t bind or banish them, and they don’t perform services like demons. They’re way too dangerous. And they don’t do assassination jobs either.”

“So why did an angel kill your mage in the park? And why did an angel kill these two?”

“Well, Ronald Stull could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Araziel senses a death, comes to collect a soul, and can’t get in because of the smudge circle. The angel goes bonkers, and maybe kills these two by accident? Then tracks down Ronald the next morning and takes revenge?” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe the angel is on a cleansing mission, killing those who practice dark arts… and addicts.”

It sounded lame. Even I didn’t believe it. But I really had no idea why Araziel was here, and why the angel had killed those he had.

“Let’s say someone is directing this angel, using it as a weapon. I know you said they weren’t assassins, but if a well-meaning mage—a vigilante of sorts—summoned Araziel, then perhaps he, or she, convinced the angel these murders would serve a greater good.”

“Maybe.” I shrugged.

“So, concentrating on the angel killings, if we think about these three victims, what ties them together beyond proximity to a place where soul magic and an occult murder occurred? What can help us predict this angel, or the angel’s puppetmaster’s, next move? And how does an angel tie in with mages sacrificing people to power their magic?”