Chapter Thirteen
Skella didn’t hang around after we stepped out into the empty lobby of the motel. Qindra’s ubiquitous white vans blocked one of the entrances to the parking lot, and a sheriff’s cruiser blocked the other.
“For your services,” Qindra said, walking toward us and handing Skella an envelope. Skella nodded and Qindra turned away. “This way, Sarah. Please take out your sword.”
Skella scrunched up her face and shrugged. “I’ll see ya?”
I nodded, and she stepped into the mirror. How long before she told the Hamsters? Qindra didn’t swear her to secrecy or anything. It was a gray area.
I sat my case on the lobby counter, flipped the latches, and opened the lid. Gram lay in her crushed velvet lining, throbbing with power. I grabbed her by the pommel and lifted her from the case. As soon as I made contact, the world shifted ever so slightly and my runes, scalp and calf, flared just as those along the blade began to glow a deep red.
“That’s what I suspected,” Qindra said. I glanced at her and saw that she looked exhausted.
“You okay?”
She gave me a tentative smile. “Long couple of days.”
She motioned and I followed her out of the lobby and down the west wing of the motel. All the doors faced the main road, but Qindra was not bothering to hide when she pulled out her wand, wove a few intricate sigils in the air, and pointed to the second door from the lobby.
There is a lot wrong with the world. I’ve seen some pretty heavy magic of various kinds, but necromancy stands out for me in a big way. Gram pulsed with a mixture of rage and fear, which was a tad unsettling.
The doorway glowed with the color of black blood and yellowing bruises. Pain and death. As I glanced around the area, I saw where someone had thrown up. As I kept looking, I’d say several someones threw up.
Qindra followed my gaze. “Suicides are never pretty,” she said, “but this goes far beyond that.”
I stepped over a puddle of sick and approached the door. The runes along Gram flared into flames. “Murder?” I asked.
Qindra remained back, her face impassive. “I want your assessment before we talk.”
I nodded and pushed the door open with my boot.
The body was still in the room. That was odd. Skella knew about the suicide. The Hamsters knew. But who told them?
All the furniture in the room had been shoved and piled against one wall. The carpet had been pulled up, exposing the raw concrete underneath. In the middle of the room a summoning circle had been drawn in blood and salt. The pentagram in the middle had burned-out candle stubs where the points intersected with the circle. At one corner a foot had scuffed the circle, breaking it, freeing whatever had been trapped inside. Blood spattered the walls in a few spots, but the blood in the circle had been artfully used as both a binding and a summoning.
Gram sang in my head. The runes along my scalp raged at the vileness of the black magic used here. My head began to ache with the cognitive dissonance.
I squatted at the edge, looking for additional clues. I’d seen something like this before, the first time I’d visited Circle Q. The day I met Charlie Hague. The necromancer, Justin, had sacrificed Mary Campbell’s best horse, a high-stepper named Blue Thunder. Justin had used the animal’s blood and spirit to fuel his magic. He’d been looking for me, funny enough. Wanted revenge for me killing his dragon patron, Jean-Paul.
I froze. He’d also set a few nasty traps for those who came along behind.
I gripped Gram and let my vision relax. Some bits of magic are best found by not looking at them directly. As my eyes unfocused and I let my mind go blank, I spotted a blurry shape to my left. When I tried to focus on it, it disappeared, but the second I looked away, I could just catch it out of my peripheral vision.
I spent nearly ten minutes hunched down, scanning the room and finding two more such spots. Two were loaded for bear, the magic in them throbbing. The one closest to the door only had a bit of residual magic left, like it had been triggered.
“Qindra?” I asked, without moving.
“Here,” she answered me from just outside the room.
I explained about what I’d found, and where each of the nearly hidden sigils were.
“Close your eyes.”
I didn’t have to be told twice.
Qindra had been dressed for war. Each of her fingernails had a sigil painted on them, but now that I thought about it, two on her left hand had been scratched. Funny how that image came to me as I heard her voice mutter behind me.
Gram throbbed as power swept across the room and I squeezed my eyes even tighter. She disabled the first sigil with a woompf, like a small fire erupting and then failing for lack of fuel. That was to my left. The second expired with a scream like someone had been tortured. The third, which I had thought to be expended, pulsed three times before expiring with a whimper like a kicked dog.
“You can open your eyes.”
The room looked no different, but I could feel the negative energy had been dissipated. I stood and Qindra beckoned me out of the room.
“My people can handle it from here. Let’s talk.”
“Where is everyone?” I asked when we sat in the lobby. The couch looked iffy, so we opted for two of the wooden chairs that sat at the one sad little breakfast table near an ancient coffee maker and a rack of very stale bagels.
“Someone cast a sort of look-away spell on the whole place. It’s been empty for the last three nights.”
“And the suicide?” There hadn’t been a body in the room Not until this morning.
“That was a puzzle it took us a bit to work out. Turns out two sheriffs and a coroner went missing two nights ago. All we learned was someone called in screaming from this address. The police called in the coroner, saying it was an obvious suicide, then they all disappeared. Found them this morning out on Highway 2, near Monroe. All three of them dumped in a ditch with their throats cut.”
“Jesus.”
“But no body ‘til now.”
I waited. She’d tell this at her own pace.
“It was definitely a suicide. We’ve taken the body for further examination. We’ve been able to determine that he was dead before the ritual in that room occurred.”
“Then why?”
Qindra twisted her wand in her hands. I noticed that actually four of the runes were gone on one hand, and all of them on the other.
“I came out here the morning after your attack at Circle Q,” she said, her voice low and dangerous. “Twice the next day, and again this morning. Each of the other times I found myself somewhere else, unable to remember where I’d been for the last hour or more.” She looked at me, her gaze scared and angry. “I don’t like that kind of magic used against me, Sarah.” She sat back with a huff. “I like it less that you could enter that room and not wander off. Though you could be more immune to this particular branch of magic due to your previous encounters.”
“Necromancy.” The answer was obvious. “I killed a whole bunch of those bastards back at the winter solstice.”
“It’s my belief that by fighting them with Gram, the sword has absorbed some of the power, giving it both a feel for the nuances and an immunity to the obfuscation.” I lay the sword across my knees and stroked the pommel. More reason to love this blade. “This place still creeps me out.”
She smiled. “I’ve expended four of my runes just to keep focus enough to remain within a hundred yards of this place. You finding those sigils has helped immensely.”
“I think the kid was already dead when the necromancer showed up.”
She looked up. “Singular?”
It felt right. “Based on how the magic felt, yeah. A single practitioner. I think they were trying to speak to the dead kid’s ghost.” I wasn’t sure how I knew that; other than the way the room had felt. “What could be so important to go to all this trouble?”
She stood up and left the room. I made to follow, but she paused. “I want to check something. If you see me wander off, stop me.” Then she went out to one of the trucks and spoke with her crew.
I watched as four people in moon suits carried several pieces of equipment into the room. I leaned against the doorway watching Qindra pace back and forth in front of the room where her people worked. Twice, I saw her break one of the runes on her fingernails as her crew tried to wander away. She was pretty pissed off.
It took them so long to get their readings, or whatever they were doing, that the sun began to fall toward the horizon. This time of year the days grew longer. It was getting late, and I was ready to prop my feet up after some dinner.
When another hour passed, I decided to call Katie, but I made sure to watch Qindra while the phone rang. She cast her glance back at me a few times but waved to assure me she was okay. She was down to a final rune. I had no idea what would happen when that was expended.
Katie answered, a bit pissy, but she knew what was going on, mostly, because Julie had filled her in.
I filled Katie in on what was going on, which didn’t really take too long. Once she was up to speed, we chatted about the punk show next Friday. She was still out at Black Briar, which was good. I agreed to get a ride out that way when I was done here and we’d crash there overnight. I filled her in about meeting with Skella, which intrigued her and brought us back around to what was going on here at the motel. It’s a bad sign that we could brush this kind of crazy off and talk about the bands we were going to see. At least she got pretty excited about the bands.
“Besides,” she said. “The last concert we went to was filking, it’s only fair we hit a punk show for you.”
I didn’t have the heart to mention how Ari had been kidnapped by dwarves after that last concert. Hopefully Brian wasn’t that good a singer. I didn’t want to see him get snatched by the next batch of crazies to come down the pike. Maybe we should just stop making friends altogether. Safer for everyone else.
Hell, at this pace, we’d be living in a cabin in Montana just to keep those we knew and loved out of harm’s way.
That was no way to live.