Chapter 5: Chapter 5
After some time, I awoke, and as I did, I gradually became aware of someone watching me from the doorway. I looked up and saw a black man in a suit waiting outside the door. He was the one in his office I passed by in the hallway some hours earlier.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"Tripped a magic ward," I mumbled. "Happens. I'm okay."
He eyed me. "You sure?"
"Yeah." Okay, I'm an incompetent wizard, go away now.
"I brought you Angelo's file." making no move to enter the room. Smart guy. If I had tripped a curse set up by Angelo, it could hit him as well. "Sorry, it's so late. One of the other paladins were using it."
I walked to the door and took the file from him. "Thank you."
"No problem." He strangely regarded me for a moment and walked away.
'Something strange in the way he looked at me.'
I rummaged through Angelo's desk for a mirror. Every self-respecting mage had one close to hand, too many rituals required it.
I caught my image in the mirror and almost dropped it. I am fucking glowing. Like some third rate vampire novel, as if glitter was spread on my entire skin. My hair from its original black was pulsing in silver as if each individual strand of hair was coated with radioactive paint. I tried some generic dispel spells, and it didn't do anything. Growling at it didn't help either, I shook my head, there was no change, now I had not the faintest idea I would get rid of it.
I went to the desk in search of the letter, but it was no more. Its as if the letter and envelope didn't even exist in the first place. Only the photograph remained, but near it stood a grimoire that wasn't there in the first place.
'Not opening another one for now.'
First, I went and closed the office door, then with an elementary spell, I controlled a rag to clear my blood on the floor and then burned it, leaving its ashes in the trash. After everything was over, I hid in the leftmost corner of the room, invisible from the door. If you can't make the glow go away, wait it out, no magic lasts forever.
Glancing at Angelo's seal, the glow from the symbols were fading away, it's still holding up, but they had already absorbed everything they could, so my secret is safe for now, and know only to me.
I took a deep breath and opened the file.
It contained the legist doctor report, a summary of a police report, and several photos of a crime scene. A wide shot showed three bodies sprawled on the sidewalk, two corpses nude, stark and pale, and the other corpse a bloody mess of mauled meat.
I found the close-up of the mauled body first. The cadaver was resting upon blood-soaked clothes. Something had ripped into its chest, snapped its breastbone, and tore it away with enough force to snap it. His chest cavity lay exposed, the wet, glistening mass of the smashed heart stood darkly against the spongy remains of its lungs and the white of the broken ribs. Both his arms were wrenched clear of its sockets, laying near the corpse.
The next photo showed the close-up of the head, half of it smashed against the floor. As I read the caption, I put the photos down. All that remained of Angelo was this battered piece of human meat.
I closed my eyes as a lump formed in my throat. Struggling with it for a few agonizing seconds, I forced it down.
This was not Angelo. It was only his corpse.
Picking them up again, the next photo provided me with a close look at the other two bodies. Both of them appeared untouched, all except for the head, which both of them were missing. The corpses had only a broken shard of the spine jutted from the neck stump framed by limp shreds of torn tissue. One of the heads lay smashed near the body, the other no evidence remained of the head ever being there. Strangely enough, with both these bodies, there was hardly any blood. There should have been pints of it. Since in both corpses, the carotid and jugular were cleanly severed, so where did all the blood go?
I found four more shots of the corpses and arranged them next to each other on the floor. The smooth marble-white skin of each cadaver stretched tightly over their musculature as if the body had only lean muscle. Not a single hair marred its skin. I needed a close-up of the hand to be sure, but there was no photo of it. The photographer had dropped the ball. How does someone forget to take a shot at the claws?
'Well, It does not matter, since all of the other telltale signs were there. Even without the nails, the conclusion is plain to see. I am looking at two dead vampires.'
Vampires are already dead by definition, but this one had ceased its undeath. Not even Inna, with all of her necromantic powers, could fix a vampire without its head. The question was, who did these vampires belong to? Most Masters branded their vampires. Strangely, If this one was branded, it didn't show in any of the shots the inexperienced photographer had taken.
What could wipe out two vampires and a paladin-venator? A vampire was super fast and able to take out a typical Army squad unaided, it would prove hard prey by itself, two controlled vampires be it by one or two Masters is a force to reckon. The vampires plus Angelo made for near impossible kill. Yet there they were, dead.
I leaned back, thinking. The killer would have to possess high power, and he would have to be faster than a vampire, experienced enough to best two of them in a close-up fight, strong enough to tear its head off a body, and able to shield himself from Angelo's magic and shots with his bow or pistol. The list of suspects I knew of was rather short.
'Also, Angelo's weapons were missing, Why?'
First, the Lair could have sought to kill Angelo and used the dead vampires as bait. An old vampire in the hands of an able and experienced Necromancer was a weapon like no other. Angelo could survive two and escape, but three or more, He'd only take one down. They could've taken him down and then killed the other one to avoid suspicion. It was expensive and highly improbable, since Angelo is particularly effective against vampires, but not impossible.
Second, the condition of Angelo's corpse pointed to something more wild, that kind of damage had to be done using claws and teeth and by more than one set of them. Maybe a loup? The loup is a deranged shapechanger. Those affected by the lycanthrope virus yearned to slaughter without discrimination while the mind fought to restrain these desires. If the mind won over the body, the shapechanger became a free man, bound by their Code into an existing Pack. If the body conquered the mid, the loup was born, a cannibalistic murder machine driven by hormones, hunting everything and hunted by everyone.
'That's even more unlikely, the vampire bodies are too pristine for a loup, and Angelo could kill more than one of them.'
Sitting my butt inside this office won't give me any insights into the situation.
I took the autopsy report, and it confirmed that both the beheaded cadaver as vampires, or Homo Immortus as they liked to call it. A bit of an ironic name since the mind of a human died the moment vampirism took hold, they knew no pity and no fear, couldn't be trained and had no ego. On an evolution level, they stood closer to insects, possessing a nervous system and yet incapable of forming thoughts, they're only ruled by an insatiable hunger for blood and will slaughter anything in their urge to quench their thirst.
I frowned. The file contained no magical-scan. All crime scenes, be it involving death or assault, were routinely scanned for magic. Technically both the police and military could demand access to this file and be granted such access by a court order. The fact that a scan was missing meant that it showed something the Order didn't wish to reveal to the general public. Unless the same fucker that took the photographs somehow managed to drop the scan in the trash.
Looking again in the mirror revealed that my hair was back to its usual black. I went to the desk and dialed the number listed in the police report.
A girly voice answered the police phone.
I introduced myself as a collaborator of the Order and asked for the lead detective. "I'm looking into the murder of the paladin-venator."
"We've spoken to you people," the woman on the other end said. "Read the report."
"You haven't spoken to me, madam. I would really appreciate any time you could slot on his agenda for me."
The answer I got was the disconnect signal. So much for interagency cooperation.
The watch in the office showed 07:00 a.m. I'd have to wait about three hours to hit the morgue.
'I'm not really in a hurry anymore since the mandatory four weeks of waiting for the vampires was nowhere close to running out, and the Order sticker on my ID would ensure that I'd have no problem taking a look at their body.' I thought.
The four weeks period ensured that they could still save the vampire, it was how long the corpse could be without its head.
I closed the file, placed it on the closest cabinet, and looked at the grimoire on the desk.
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