Devon Monk - Magic In the Blood

Trager fell back in the chair behind the desk, breathing hard. He wasn’t moving. The gun clattered to the floor.

I pulled myself together and strode across the room, boots slapping in the blood of dead men. I walked around the desk and stopped in front of Trager. He watched me but did nothing more than breathe hard and hold still.

“You killed Pike,” I said.

Trager, the bastard, smiled. “Won’t be my last.”

With a strength I didn’t think he had, he lunged at me, a wicked knife in his hand.

Oh, hells, no. He wasn’t the only person with a knife in the room.

I gripped the dagger in both hands and thrust all my weight behind it.

Pain rattled through me again. Trager had aimed low, stabbing my thigh.

I, however, hadn’t. The dagger sank into his belly, catching against a scrape of rib on the way in. Trager went limp, heavy, his body dead weight against me, until all that held him up was my grip on the dagger in his gut.

“Yes,” I said, “it will.”

He gurgled and stank. I stepped back, pulling the dagger out as hard as I could. Then I watched him fall to the floor and move no more.

I was covered in blood. My blood, Trager’s blood, Pike’s blood.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was still screaming and screaming. This was a nightmare, and I wanted out. There was a dead man on my shoes. A man I had killed.

Killed.

But in the front of my mind, I was too furious to care.

I pulled my feet out from beneath Trager’s dead weight and then knelt and shoved him over so I could see his face. The dagger wound added to the blood already on his shirt. I was no expert, but it looked like Pike’s bullets, which had left three clean holes through his shirt directly over his heart, had done just as much damage-maybe more-as my knife in his gut.

I swore. Killing Trager, feeling him die in my hands, hadn’t changed my anger. And it hadn’t done a damn thing to bring Pike back. I stood and stared down at Trager, trying to make sense of it all. Pike had come to kill Trager, who had been waiting for him. Pike said Anthony had Pike’s blood-probably sold it to Trager in exchange for blood magic and drugs.

But Pike had said something else. The girls and a doctor. A doctor had my blood. I didn’t know which doctor. But I knew how to Hound. And I sure as hell knew what my own blood smelled like. All I had to do was track it-track the magic in it-and I’d have the last piece in this puzzle.

“Jesus Christ,” a voice said behind me.

I swung around, dagger at the ready.

Davy Silvers, the hangover kid, stood in the doorway.

His eyes and nose were red, his cheeks splotchy. He’d been crying. He smelled faintly of alcohol and puke. He’d obviously been following me.

“You’re up early,” I said.

“Not early enough. Lon Trager?”

“Dead.”

He glanced down at the bloody knife in my bloody hand and then looked me up from shoe to face.

“Did you kill him?”

I wiped the blade across the least gory leg of my jeans, staring Davy straight in the eye as I did so. “He was dead when I got here,” I lied.

I had to give the kid credit. He didn’t look away. He shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, as if every inch of him wanted to turn and run from what he saw in my gaze. Still, he stood his ground.

“Good.” His voice caught. “Wish I was here to see it.”

Boy had a vengeful streak. That would probably serve him well in this business.

“Pike?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

He just shook his head. “I called 911.”

I nodded. “When the police arrive, tell them I was here. Tell them I didn’t see everything, but I’ll give them my statement. If Detective Stotts shows up, tell him I’m Hounding a lead on the case I worked for him, but tell only Stotts that, got it?”

“Yeah.”

“And if you follow me, Davy Silvers, I will kick your ass. Even if I have to come back from the dead to do it. Understand?”

He swallowed and nodded, and then moved out of my way.

Smart boy.

I strode out of that damn room, out into air that smelled too much like blood. I pulled a small amount of magic into my sense of sight and smell. And strode off toward the trail of magic in my blood that hung like a ghostly fire in the air.

Anger does wonders for all sorts of things. My pain-twice-wounded thigh, headache, fever, and every damn inch of my ghost-burned skin-didn’t hurt so much. Walking-even if it meant all the way across Portland-seemed like a completely sane and reasonable thing to do.

And whoever was important enough that Pike had tried to tell me about them with his dying words was going to get a visit from me, whether they were girls, a doctor, or something else. And Pike said whoever that was had my blood.

No one stopped me as I made my way north and west, heading toward the heart of town. Maybe it was because it was icy and there weren’t many people out. Or maybe I didn’t see anyone because I was covered in blood and carrying a knife. Or it could be because the trail of magic in my blood led me down little-used alleys and footpaths hidden from traffic.

Whatever it was, I stopped at an old warehouse without anyone getting in my way. The old brick building’s windows were boarded and broken. Red, black, and white graffiti twice as tall as me turned the crumbling brick and sagging doors into one flat canvas.

There. I knew my blood was there, inside that building. I didn’t pull on magic, didn’t want to draw the Veiled forward again, didn’t want to alert whoever was in there with my blood that I was near.

A wave of dizziness washed over me. No, not now. I didn’t have time to fall apart. I put one hand on the brick wall next to the only door on ground level and breathed until the world stopped rocking beneath my feet. When the dizzy spell passed, I tasted wintergreen on the back of my throat and I smelled leather.

My dad.

The last thing I needed right now was for him to show up and screw with me. I looked around the filthy alley, the dim light of morning glinting against the dark, ragged-toothed windows above me.

No ghost. No father. Good.

I lifted the latch on the door with my left hand, expecting it to be locked, rusted, welded shut. The latch released. I nudged the door inward on silent hinges. The warehouse might look abandoned, but someone had been using it enough to bother with oiling the door. The door swung open just enough that I could see into the shadows and wide-open space beyond.

Light filtered through grimy windows high on the wall to my left, illuminating the decaying brick and plaster wall in the back. Arcs of graffiti stained the wall, and in one slant of light someone had painted a face twisted in a scream, teeth crooked and white around a gaping black mouth.

The floor shone with a layer of water. The stink of pigeon, rat, blood, and rot filled my nose. I paused but heard nothing but the traffic in the distance and my own uneven breathing.

I opened the door a little wider, put a little too much weight on my left thigh, and went dizzy with pain again. Damn.

In the light from the last window, I could see someone slumped in a chair, so near the screaming face that for a moment I wondered if the chair and person were part of the art on the wall. But then the person twitched, the head swinging back and forth at a strange angle.

I toed the door open a little farther, and my eyes, more adjusted to the light now, could make out the person: a man. No, a boy, head hanging forward, body and arms tied to the plain wooden chair with wide leather straps. I could smell his sweat, his pain, and his blood.

Anthony. The Hound kid Pike said had cast those spells to kidnap the girls with Pike’s blood.