Death Blows: The Bloodhound Files-2 (24 page)

“Actually, you stormed off.”

“Well, I was angry. And you didn’t seem inclined to give me any useful information.”

He hesitates. “All right. Barbarossa is—was—more than just a smuggler. She was actually the leader of a gang of international criminals, who dabble in everything from kidnapping to piracy. They have chapters in many countries, not always large but well respected—it’s a sign of prestige to be asked to join, a sort of criminal elite. They’re known as the Crooked Shadows.”

“How about assassination?”

He considers that before answering. “Doubtful. The Shadows reserve killing for self-defense or revenge—they believe in stealing as an art form, one that’s above murder. That being said, they’ve been known to go to extreme lengths to punish anyone who hurts one of their members—there’s a story about a Mafia captain that robbed and killed one of them. The robbery they didn’t mind, but they felt the killing was unjust. They imposed what they call the Beggar’s Curse.”

I’ve run into a lot of variations on magic since I’ve been here, but not actual curses. “How does that work?”

“It’s not a curse per se—it’s a condition. The victim has everything stolen from him, and I mean
everything
. His family and friends are driven away, everything he owns is stolen, he’s made to lose his home and his job—and then, when he’s broke and on the street, they take his sight, his mobility, his speech . . . you get the idea. They leave only his hearing.”

“Why?”

“So that he can still hear music.” He doesn’t elaborate, and he doesn’t have to; music is one of the most powerful touchstones we have for memories, and the victim of the Beggar’s Curse would have only his memories left—memories of everything he had lost. It’s one of the grimmest fates I can think of.

“If the Crooked Shadows are professional thieves, wouldn’t they find the Brigade’s weaponry an irresistible target?” I drum my fingers on the dashboard, thinking. “And if they’re the artists you say they are, maybe this is all part of an elaborate scam. Maybe the Sword of Midnight isn’t as dead as we thought.”

Cassius shakes his head. “I thought of that. DNA tests on the brain material confirm it’s her, and forensic animism shows that the only magic used was whatever changed her body into bronze.”

“That’s another thing. Transe’s bones were turned into copper, presumably to better hold the electrical charge. What kind of magic is that?”

“Alchemy—the transmutation of one substance into another.”

“No one’s ever mentioned that one to me before.”

“That’s because it doesn’t exist. You can’t really change one thing into another—its basic nature will resist. All you can do is introduce a new element and persuade it to become dominant for a while; that’s the basic principle behind lycanthropy.”

“So the victims’ bodies were infected with metalthropy?”

“Essentially. Like most transformations, it’s temporary; Eisfanger tells me that the remains will revert, probably in a few days’ time. He’s going to do another autopsy then, see if we learn anything new.”

I think back to the dream meeting I’d had with Neil, and the Sword of Midnight comic I’d read. Something rises up in my brain, dancing around like a drunken butterfly I can’t quite catch; all I can pin down is a sense of doomed romance. “What do you know about Barbarossa’s love life?”

“That depends.”

It’s not the answer I expect; I thought he’d either make a joke or deny any knowledge, not hand me an immediate equivocation. “On what?”

“On what you mean by love. Barbarossa was notorious for rarely having an empty bed, but she refused to get serious about any of them.”

“I suppose the life of an international thief doesn’t leave a lot of room for a husband or kids.”

“No.”

There’s something he isn’t telling me. “Cassius, were you and Barbarossa involved?”

He laughs and shakes his head. “No, absolutely not. She wasn’t interested in pires, and I wasn’t interested in her. I had the feeling she was involved with someone while she was with the Bravos, but I never found out who.”

Lems were sexless, and the only other thrope on the team was female. “Any possibility her and the African Queen had something going?”

“Unlikely. They didn’t particularly get along, and in any case both seemed to prefer men of their own species.”

“How about betrayal? Could this be a plot on part of someone close to the Sword—another member of her gang, maybe?”

“I just don’t know, Jace.” He sounds frustrated, an emotion I rarely see from Cassius. “Despite what you may think, I don’t have all the answers—and the ones I
do
have I’m not withholding out of spite. I’m telling you everything I can, all right? If I
can’t
tell you something, I’ll tell you
that
.”

“You’ll be honest about your dishonesty?”

He gives me a rueful smile. “I’ll avoid telling outright lies. Can you work with that?”

“Guess I’ll have to.”

“Good enough.” He pauses, then says, “The Shadows have a code of absolute loyalty to their members. Even if one of them did break it and kill Barbarossa, she would never have betrayed the Bravos—and the killer clearly knows our secrets. Considering the Shadows’ commitment to retribution, I find it hard to believe she was targeted at all, let alone by one of their own.”

So now we have a gang of über-criminals out for blood to compete with, too. “Well, it does lend credence to the
mentally unbalanced
theory. The killer either thinks he’s invincible, or he’s working toward some goal so important to him that consequences have become irrelevant or secondary.”

“Any idea what that might be?”

“When you’re dealing with someone living in their own reality, the possibilities can be literally infinite—but I think I can narrow it down a little.”

I lean back in my seat, close my eyes, and concentrate. “We’ll refer to him as
he
simply because most serial murderers are male. He’s not killing for sexual gratification, but to accumulate power. That’s not all that uncommon, even on my world; many killers believe that each murder makes them stronger in some mystical way. It’s just that here, it’s actually true . . .

“He’s organized. He stages elaborate scenes and leaves few traces behind. The killings appear almost dispassionate, with little evidence of frenzy or anger—Transe was killed by a single well-placed thrust. The staging of the scenes is important to him, but Eisfanger hasn’t been able to find any trace of magic energy that would suggest this is part of some elaborate spell. The comic book references point to a number of different concepts: alternate universes, transformation, the interface between the imaginary and the real.”

My voice is steady, the words coming almost without conscious thought. This is my own ritual, my way of connecting to the case when my brain is crammed full of facts and frustration. Some part of me already knows the answer; I just have to let it find its voice. “He’s intelligent. Driven. The crime scenes are messages in a language only he speaks, full of symbols he thinks are deeply relevant.”

“What’s the point to that? A message that can’t be understood?”

I open my eyes, annoyed, the spell broken. “He
wants
to be understood—but on his own terms, in his own world. I’ve seen this before; the killer believes that if he can just make us view the universe the way he does, we’ll agree with him. In his eyes, he’s completely justified—we’re the ones who aren’t sane.”

“And he thinks he can do that with cryptic messages?”

“Our language shapes how we think. The position of a verb relative to a noun, the way we use pronouns or assign gender to some words and not to others. He may be the only one who speaks his language, but understand it and you understand how he thinks. The problem is that he’s clearly immersed himself in a subculture I have virtually no access to.”

“The Four Color Club contact didn’t work out?”

“Sure, if I want to spend all my time asleep—and it’s all secondary information, anyway. I need to dig through this stuff on my own, do hands-on research where I can physically connect with the material.”

“Sounds very old-fashioned.”

“Well, I’d settle for a cross-universe high-speed broadband portal with full archival access to every comic book database in existence, but nobody’s offered me one.”

“Sorry. Cross-universe magic tends to be highly specific, very dangerous, and extremely limited. Not exactly what you need.”

I sigh. “No. I guess I’ll have to settle for whatever information I can collect on this side. Tell me about the African Queen.”

“She’s an actual queen, and she’s from Africa.”

“Great, thanks for filling me in.”

“I thought I should start with the essentials. Her name is Catharine Shaka, and she’s Zulu royalty—in fact, some would argue her bloodline places her on the throne itself. Politics in her country tend to be bloodthirsty, a mix of warring thrope tribes and shamanistic intrigues. She herself was the victim of an assassination attempt at an early age, which led to her being raised in secret by a powerful witch doctor.”

“Which doctor?”

He gives me a look. “Anyway, the shaman taught her how to be a powerful warrior and gave her the sky-shield, a magical artifact that lets her fly and protects anyone using it from all harm. She’s one of the best archers in the world, and a master of the thrope martial art
isilwane ukulwa
.”

“If she’s African royalty, what’s she doing here?”

“Living in exile. The current faction in power is not exactly friendly to her family or her politics—

which is why she keeps her true identity a secret.”

“What are her politics?”

“She’s a revolutionary. She’d like to raise an army, overthrow the ruling military junta, and establish a democracy.”

“And how does the NSA feel about that?”

“Ambivalent. The White House would like to see a democracy in place, but they’re not willing to commit significant military or political resources.”

“Maybe she’s decided to gather a few of her own.”

“A possibility,” he admits. “Though my sources haven’t heard anything about preparations for a military action.”

“The Brigade’s weapons might be all the preparation she needs.”

I think about it as we drive into the darkening twilight. A one-woman coup—a single warrior taking on an entire country. Is it possible? Not in my world, but here it just might be. Even if the idea is crazy, that doesn’t eliminate Shaka as a suspect.

In fact, it makes her a more viable one.

The place Shaka is using as her retreat is called the Serengeti Safari Reserve. It’s a game park for thropes, where they can experience the firsthand thrill of pulling down an antelope, gazelle, or zebra, either solo or as part of a group. Cassius tells me it’s popular as a corporate team-building exercise.

There’s a double-gated entryway through a high razor-wire-topped chain link fence. Once we’re in, there are no signs warning us to stay inside the vehicle or not to roll down our windows; we’re the predators here. I let in some of the night air, and to my surprise it smells dry, dusty, and much warmer than I expected for Oregon at this time of year.

“Magic,” Cassius tells me. “They use animism to convince the entire area and everything in it—plants, earth, insects, air—that they’re on another continent. Adds to the realism.”

“Must be expensive.”

Charlie’s voice from the backseat makes me jump a little. He’s so still at times it’s easy to forget he’s even there. “The people who come here don’t care much about money. They’re after something else.”

“True,” Cassius says. “They want to experience life as it used to be—or at least how they think it used to be. The thrill of the hunt.”

“Commercialized and romanticized,” Charlie growls. “I tried it once. Didn’t do much for me.” I sometimes forget that the life force that animates Charlie is that of a seven-ton carnivore that last walked the Earth sixty-five million years ago; when I do, he does something to remind me.

“Commercialized is right,” I mutter as we get to the parking lot. It looks more like Disneyland in high season than a nature park—there are hundreds of vehicles here and a steady stream of people coming and going, mostly groups of young men but some families and couples, too. We park, get out, and join the lineup. Everything’s lit by torches—gas or propane, though something’s been added to make it smell like wood smoke—and the atmosphere’s both quieter and more charged than I expected. It takes me a second to recognize the feeling—it’s like lining up for a haunted-house ride on Halloween, that same combination of nervous excitement and morbid celebration, candy coating over a heart of darkness. Grinning in the face of death, and realizing he’s grinning right back.

Even with Cassius and Charlie beside me, I don’t feel at ease here. I don’t even eat meat—well, the occasional piece of sushi—and this place more or less worships the practice of killing and eating animals. Not that I have a moral leg to stand on, of course; thropes are carnivores, pure and simple, and I can no more condemn them for that than I can pires for drinking blood. As long as it’s not my own.

But I still feel like a cashew in a room full of squirrels, and hope I remembered to apply enough fake wolf pheromone this morning. I have visions of being taken down by an overenthusiastic family from Des Moines who didn’t read the brochure. “Look, Martha! They got free-range humans here!”

I expect Cassius to flash his NSA credentials and bypass the line, but that doesn’t happen—I guess he wants to keep as low a profile as possible. Instead, he pays for a deluxe package for all three of us, and specifies the guide he wants.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the woman at the wicket says. “Cath’s booked solid right now, she won’t be available for at least a week. If you’d like to try one of our other guides—”

“Tell her it’s Ray Burnwell,” Cassius says. “I have a standing reservation.”

The woman frowns, but checks her computer. Her expression changes immediately. “Ah, Mr. Burnwell. I’m
so
sorry about the mixup. I’ll have her meet you in the Hunter’s Lodge right away—

she’s out in the field, but can be back here in about, say, twenty minutes?”