Magick Rising (3 page)

town was overflowing and under-funded. The soup kitchen ran out of food

before the last in line reached the door. Who would miss one or two—or

nine—homeless men in that chaos?

She did. Kelly did. So had Nic.

Oh, there were goodhearted folks in town, but none with much clout.

Miko had real access to the media; she could do something about the

invisibility. But her editor stood in her way.

“Damn the man!”

She closed the laptop with a sigh. Tomorrow—no, later today—she’d

go to St. Michael’s for her weekly ritual of lighting a candle for each victim.

Nine candles. Nine victims in need of justice. Nine men who’d been

husbands, fathers, sons.

Uncles.

“MIKO, YOU GOTTA get over here quick.” Kelly’s voice on the phone

was way too excited for a wakeup call.

Miko dragged the pillow off her head as she fumbled with the handset.

“This better be good.”

“Better than good,” Kelly answered. “Think
X-Files
. Think
Men in

Black
.”

She opened her eyes and rolled onto her back. “It better be

earth-shattering. I didn’t get to bed until after six.”

“Hope he was good,” Kelly said with her dirty-minded chuckle.

“I wish, but I was working on the latest Butcher story.”
The story, Jones.

Get the story.
Miko shoved her hair out of her eyes. “Okay, I’m awake. Give.”

“You know John Doe number nine from last night? He’s got some

wonky internals.”

“Wonky?” In spite of the headache building from lack of sleep, Miko

sat up. “You been sniffing the formaldehyde, girlfriend?”

“No, really. He’s not . . . normal.”

“You wouldn’t be normal if someone sliced and diced you either.” Still,

Miko headed for the bathroom, phone in hand.

“Just get here soon. Garm says he can’t make it until lunchtime. Gives

us a couple hours.”

“Be there in ten minutes,” Miko said, her reporter’s nose twitching.

THIRTY MINUTES later, Miko firmly instructed her stomach to remain in

position. “Ewww, yuk.”

“Wuss.” Kelly, dressed in surgical gown, gloves, face shield, and mask,

reached into a basin and lifted something vaguely resembling liver onto the

scale. She turned it over. “See all these things coming off here?”

“Mm-hmm.” Miko gritted her teeth and wished she hadn’t grabbed that

donut on the way over. Even so, she turned her camera on Kelly’s

examination of the bloody mass.

“I’ve got years of surgical experience including five on this job, and I’ve

never seen anything like this. The previous Skid Row victims had unusual

findings in the same region. But nothing
this
strange.” She pointed to

another lump. “And on this side here I found some small growths in the

same area in the previous victims, but nothing this large. At first I thought it

was a germinal carcinoma, but I’ve never seen a tumor like this.”

In spite of herself, Miko lowered the camera and studied the

baseball-sized thing. “Where was it in the body? In English, not medical.”

“I waited to close because I knew you’d ask that.” Kelly turned to John

Doe number nine on the table and put her hand in the Y-incision to lift his

ribcage. “Right here, under the ribs and heart, directly in line with the fatal

wound. Whatever weapon killed him went into this thing before hitting the

heart.”

Miko gulped to keep her donut down and put the camera to her eye.

Better to view this through the distance of a lens.

Carefully lowering the ribcage, Kelly asked, “Do you want to leave or

stick around for more details?”

“I’ll stick.” Miko stifled a groan.
Why couldn’t I have chosen a nice normal

profession like flipping burgers? Or sheep shearing? No blood, no wonky internal organs.

Just nice fluffy sheep.
Still, she came in closer when Kelly started opening the

unknown tumor thingy.

“Wh—?” Kelly stepped back before she gave the thing a poke with her

tweezers.

Miko zoomed in on the opening and gasped. “It’s charred inside.”

Kelly pulled a magnifying light over it. “Burnt to a crisp.” She

continued the cut several more inches around, revealing the same burnt

tissue. “Never seen anything like this.” Glancing away, she reached for more

swabs and stuff.

“Butt ugly, whatever it is.” Teeth still clenched, Miko moved in a little

closer.

Black ash erupted into her face as the organ collapsed like a punctured

balloon.

Miko yelped, tumbling backwards into the other autopsy table and

scrabbling to wipe the stuff off her face. She dropped her camera to use

both hands. Oh God, it burned. “Help!”

“What th—?” Cutting her question short, Kelly wrestled Miko to a

sink.

“What is it, Kelly? What is it?” Pain. So much pain. Like beestings all

over her face, in her eyes, her nose, and mouth.

Kelly flushed Miko’s eyes and her whole face over and over, calmly

shushing her. Minutes passed before the stinging eased. “Better now?” she

asked, holding each eye open while she shined a bright light into it.

Only after Miko was drying her face with a scratchy blue towel did Kelly

ask, “What the hell happened? I just turned away for a second, and then you

yelled and . . .”

Miko shook her head. “That thing just collapsed and spewed out ash or

whatever that black stuff is. I thought for sure I wasn’t going to have any

skin left.” She shuddered and glanced in the mirror. Just a reddish tinge and

phantom itching remained. “Are you sure I’m okay?”

Kelly pulled Miko’s eyelids down then turned Miko’s head from one

side to the other, inspecting her like one of her corpses. “Looks okay, but let

me know if you experience anything unusual.”

She returned with the charred organ. “I have no idea what this thing is

or what it does, but I’m going to find out.” She added several other items to

her equipment then adjusted her face shield and mask. “I want a copy of

your video. But for now, roll it. This sucker’s gonna tell me its secrets.”

Miko picked up her camera, wiped it off, and pulled on a face shield

before joining her friend. Carefully, she zoomed in on the structure where it

rested, dark and . . . wrong. The thought lodged in her mind that it was not

of this world. That it didn’t belong here.

“I KNOW THE WAY,” Detective Garm boomed down the hall. “Let’s see

what the corpse cutter’s found. Probably just another drunk.”

Miko and Kelly glanced at each other, then at the clock. A couple of

blocks away, St. Michael’s church bells chimed noon.

“Uh-oh,” Miko squeaked and ran for the office door behind her, sliding

through as Garm swung through the double doors into autopsy. Much as

she wanted to watch his reaction to the strange charred whatever-it-was,

common sense won out over curiosity.

She slipped out the office’s hallway door, relieved to miss another

run-in with him. He made her all itchy, and apparently she irritated him as

well. She made her way out the office’s hallway door and to her Jeep. After

putting several blocks between her and the morgue, she pulled up to the

light by St. Michael’s. A few elderly faithful exited from noon mass, drawing

their jackets close in the gusty winds.

Attending mass wasn’t her thing, but she entered the dim interior to

kneel at the candle-lit altar of the Madonna. She touched a flame to the first

of nine votives, crossed herself, and began, “Hail, Mary, full of grace . . .”

DARK CLOUDS scudded across the early afternoon sky, muttering to

themselves like discontented giants as they descended the foothills. Miko

opened the church door only to have it ripped from her hand to bang

against the wall.

“Damn it, come back here.”

From the side aisle, the priest gave a censorious harrumph. Miko

chuckled. She’d heard him swear a blue streak more than once. Over her

shoulder, she called, “Sorry, Father Dan.”

She pushed the door closed and headed down the steps. Halfway down,

a gust caught her coat and plastered it across her face. Although temporarily

blinded, she kept going.

Suddenly she connected with something solid that gave a muffled

“
Whumpf.
”

Miko looked up and gasped. Tall, dark, and serial stood there, bare

inches away.

Okay, so she couldn’t prove he was the Skid Row Butcher, but Brendan

had placed him at the murder scene. What more could a reporter want?

Facts
. Motive, opportunity, and means . . . as in some sort of wicked knife.

So she wouldn’t convict him yet. Or turn her back on him.

She flashed him the smile that had weaseled her into a mountain’s

worth of journalistic dirt. She stuck out her hand. “Miko Jones. Sorry for

running you over. “

“A pleasure, Miss Jones.” The roughness of his palm surprised her. She

wouldn’t have guessed that Mr. GQ would work with his hands. Or that

he’d have a British accent.

The smell of incense wafted by, bringing with it memories, indistinct

and somehow associated with metal striking metal. With blood and chants

in Japanese.

Her hair slapped her face, bringing her mind back to the present. She

still held his hand. “Sorry.”

His shrug told her nothing as she pulled her hand free, trying not to

notice the loss of his warmth and strength.

Not the time for this, Jones! The wrong time never stopped me before
. “British

accent, right? Been here long?”

“Not long enough if I have not met such an extraordinary beauty as

yourself before now.” His dark eyes danced. “But then again, I feel as if I

know you from your newspaper articles.”

She gave the guy points for smooth, but she still didn’t know his name

while he knew not only her name but that she was a reporter.

The wind churned up from the river. He lifted his face to it, nostrils

dilated as if catching an unpleasant scent.

Miko had to agree. It smelled like a trash dump with a dash of abattoir.

She stepped back, using a parked SUV to shield herself from the wind, and

plastered on another smile. “So you’re from . . . ?”

His earlier amusement faded and something like wistfulness ghosted

behind his eyes. “Glastonbury.”

“You mean like King Arthur and the Round Table?”
Why don’t I just carry

a sign announcing Geek Alert
?

“You’d know it by the Camelot myth, yes.” The wind whipped his coat

like a black sail behind him. He scraped a hand over his chin with a soft rasp.

“By its power.”

A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold coursed up Miko’s back.

At that moment, she could have believed him a dark knight on a quest. A

marauding pirate.

A murderer even?

Instinct moved her another step away from him before her mind could

formally agree to the action.

The man took a step back as well. He turned into the wind and touched

his fingertips to his brow in a salute. “I have business that cannot wait.

Farewell, Miko Jones.”

Desperate to maintain some connection—whether as a reporter or as a

woman—she called, “I didn’t catch your name.”

He paused, head down for a few seconds, and she wondered if he’d

answer. At last, as if each fraction of an inch of movement gave him pain, he

turned. Shadows haunted his eyes. “Hadrian Hawken. And again, farewell,

Miko Jones.”

His coat flapping like the wings of a massive raven, he strode away.

Unsettled, she hurried to her car then glanced back.

Gone.

Fast like Spiderman, as Brendan said. Except Spiderman was one of the

good guys.

“Get a grip. He just turned the corner or got into a car.”

From under the bridge a few hundred yards away, an unearthly shriek

echoed. Her heart raced up her throat, but Miko forced it down as she

sprinted toward the sound. She didn’t hesitate. Someone needed help. It

could be one of the guys from the riverside homeless encampment. Bert!

It could even be—please, no, not Nic.

Dialing 911 while pelting down a sidewalk wasn’t easy, but she

connected and made sure the dispatcher understood where to send a squad

car.

“And an ambulance.” No one would scream like that, that long, if they

weren’t hurt. All she could think was to help whoever was in so much agony.

The screams became inhuman, animalistic. Then they ceased as quickly

as they started, leaving only the rush of the river.

“Damn damn damn.” She scrambled down the embankment to the

riverside footpath, barely avoiding tumbling headlong into the icy river.

Maybe the victim had fallen. Maybe he was drowning while she floundered

around.

Maybe he was being attacked.

Or maybe . . .

“Damn damn damn.”

ANOTHER DEATH. Another cleansing. The blade now sheathed at his

back waist pulsed with its recent feasting.

Hadrian Hawken watched the policemen scurry around behind the