Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle) (27 page)

“What are you doing, Alexandra?” I said, wary.

“There is a great freedom in speaking about how I truly feel,” she said. “Even if you can’t reciprocate. So let’s get back to work, shall we?”

“Very well,” I said, her sudden easiness with me almost contagious, relaxing me. “So what next?”

“I’m thinking a fresh set of eyes—
yours
—might prove useful in rechecking the last known whereabouts of the medallion,” she said. “How do you feel about a trip up to Central Park?”

I leapt into the air and shot off into the night sky, heading north.

“It would seem you have already answered that question for me,” I said, allowing myself to enjoy the collaborative effort for once. It reminded me of the old days, which was not the worst thing in the world.

Alexandra

I
can sleep when I’m dead. I can sleep when I’m dead.

The words repeated over and over in my head like my own personal mantra as Stanis and I flew across the night sky.

Although I had caught up on sleep the night before, since then it had been nonstop research, a break for the most cardio-driven cult classic movie ever made, and an evening almost exploding my brain while summoning a pavement wall to escape a mob engineered by gargoyles. Why not add an emotional breakdown with the creature whose arms I flew in as we headed up to Central Park at three a.m.?

The only thing keeping me awake right now was the cool night air in my face and an adrenaline rush as we darted across the night sky.

“Who are you taking us to?” Stanis asked.

“His name’s Fletcher,” I said. “He’s . . . I don’t know what he is, really, but he
did
get me into the secret cemetery last time. He’s . . . special.”

I guided Stanis up Central Park West until we hit the Seventies and I had him bring us down just beyond the tree line along the wall. Stanis stood still, taking in the area as I jumped down out of his arms.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “The park is empty. I think it technically closes at one, but few stragglers are out and about now.”

The big guy seemed to relax a little, folding his wings in close to him.

“Come on,” I said, heading for the path.

Stanis looked down at the sign with its arrow. “Strawberry Fields,” he read.

I stopped and turned to him. “Have you not been before?”

“I do not believe so,” he said.

“It’s a monument to John Lennon.”

Stanis’s face didn’t move.

“Of the Beatles . . . ?” I added. “Come on now!”

Stanis’s face lit up. “Ah, yes,” he said. “I know of this particular group.”

“I should hope so,” I said, starting up the path. “They’re only one of the biggest rock-and-roll bands of all time.”

“Yes,” he said. “I have seen them perform.”

I stopped and spun around on the cobblestones. “I’m sorry; what?”

“Out in Queens County, there once stood a public arena. Some nights I heard music coming from there and I would go see what was going on. Perhaps a handful of decades ago I heard so grand a commotion I could not pass up a visit. It was there I saw the ones you call the Beatles.”

“Unbelievable,” I said. “You saw the Beatles at Shea.”

“You know of this performance, then?” he asked.

“
Everyone
knows about it,” I said, laughing. “It’s a huge part of America’s music history.” I turned and headed back up the path. “You’re going to love this, I think. Come on.”

“As you wish,” Stanis said.

I
hoped
Fletcher was here. I mean, as a spirit of the forest, or whatever he was, that appeared bound to the park itself, where the hell else would he be? If I couldn’t find him, maybe I could use the mosaic with “Imagine” across it as some sort of a summoning circle. It seemed to make decent sense to check there first. After all, this was where Caleb had brought me to first meet the guy.

“Fletcher . . . ?” I said as the clearing opened up in front of me onto Strawberry Fields.

Fletcher was there at the center of the circle. In fact, he was all around the circle. There were pieces of him everywhere.

Immediately Stanis’s wings were up and out as he dashed forward into the open area. I stayed in place, examining the situation before daring to move farther into it.

The space was devoid of any other people or creatures save for the fallen form of Fletcher. Once I felt confident there was no one lurking, I moved forward with great hesitation. The figure was so lifeless, his body broken, torn apart.

“Is this . . .
Was
this your friend?” Stanis asked.

I nodded, still unable to speak with the sudden shock of finding him like this.

Stanis walked around the edge of the mosaic, looking at the murder scene from every angle.

“There’s so much blood,” I said when I could finally find my voice once more.

“There is a pattern to this,” Stanis said from the other side of the circle.

“What?” I said, forcing myself to look back down at Fletcher.

Fletcher’s body was laid out like da Vinci’s
Vitruvian Man
and circled by his own blood. His form was barely recognizable with so much damage to it, what was left barely torn bits of flesh.

“Whoever did this must have great power at their disposal,” I said, trying to take in the terrifying scene. “I’m not sure what Fletcher was exactly, but he wasn’t just human. He was long-lived and there was a force of nature to him. If something took him down like this, we’ve got serious trouble.”

Stanis kneeled down along the edge of the circle, examining the body. “This was done by a gargoyle,” he said. “Or several.”

“You sure?”

“I know the claw marks of my own kind,” he said, “having inflicted some of my own over the years.”

“I need to call Caleb,” I said, my hands shaking as I pulled out my phone. “He needs to know what’s been done to his friend.”

•   •   •

By the time Caleb arrived, I had taken the time to write most of the symbols drawn in Fletcher’s blood down in my notebook. The gruesome nature of the task had me trying to pretend it was some macabre art project, if only to keep me from throwing up.

Stanis had gone silent while waiting, looking more like a statue in the park than anything. Caleb hugged me and I let him. When his eyes met mine, I couldn’t help but tremble a little as the stress of the evening caught up with me.

“Jesus,” Caleb said as he walked around the circle. “This is ritualistic in an arcane way, all right.”

“That would be my guess,” I said, “but this is so far out of my league I wanted you here to check it out. And I thought you should be the first to know.”

“Thank you for that,” he said, and got down close to the ground to examine the scene better. “Whoever did this didn’t just want him dead. They wanted his power for their ritual.”

“To what purpose?” I asked.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he said, “although a few of the symbols look familiar. This is some strong blood magic.”

“Warren said that the Butcher was into that, right?”

Caleb nodded.

“And these marks,” I said, pointing out the different claw marks on what remained of Fletcher’s body. “Stanis said they were made by a gargoyle.”

Caleb hunkered down over a particularly bloody part of the circle, hovering his hands over the area. “From the feel of it, the spell isn’t that old.”

“From the feel of it?” I asked.

Caleb waved me over. I got down on my knees next to him, and he took my hands. “Hold your hands over these two marks,” he said, easing my hands forward into the circle.

Below my hands were two distinct claw patterns, as if someone like Stanis had pressed them into the blood itself. At about six inches over them, the dull crackle of power rose up from the prints.

“Feel that?” he said, letting go of my wrists.

I nodded.

“That’s blood magic,” he said, standing. “That’s the power of life, twisted to arcane use.”

I looked up at him. “If you had to guess, what do you make of it?” I asked.

“As I said, some of the symbols are familiar,” he said, “and that major one at the top of the circle is the one for ‘seek.’ It’s some form of detection spell.”

“Maybe he
doesn’t
have the Cagliostro Medallion yet,” I said.

“But I thought you said he got it when he desecrated the tomb of the O’Sheas?”

“What if someone beat him to the punch?” I asked. “What if someone took possession of the medallion before he could get his claws on it?”

Caleb considered it as he looked down at the remains of his friend. “Either way, Fletcher died to power this spell of the Butcher.”

“And it’s my fault,” I said. “For not having acted against the Butcher when Stanis and I had a chance to. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“And how do you plan to go about doing that?” Caleb asked.

“Like
this
,” I said, and before I could overthink it, I slammed my hands down on the two claw prints. The dull tingle of arcane energy crackled to life like lightning running up my arms, shotgunning to right behind my eyes, and my neck snapped back. Although I knew I was looking straight up into the night sky over Manhattan, that was not what I saw.

My brain felt like it was being pulled in all directions at the same time and my mind’s eye filled with visions of the streets of Manhattan. I wasn’t anyone or anything that I could identify, but my vision was moving at a breakneck speed. I passed through cars, trucks, buildings. It was all I could do to try to keep my bearings, but it wouldn’t have mattered. A familiar sight where I had been hours earlier filled my vision—Madison Square Garden.

My jaw clenched tight, the muscles in my neck clenching harder the longer I was in the vision. I phased straight through the glass doors we had entered through earlier, only this time passing through the walls and seating beyond. The arena was in a greater display of raw power than before. Explosions, sprays of color, and lightning filled the entire arena, much of the earlier fighting seeming to have escalated to larger conflicts.

The vision became frantic, darting around the room from conflict to conflict, searching. The volume of arcane activity only confused me, the motion too much for my head, and just as quick as it had come upon me, the image of Madison Square Garden slipped back down a tunnel of darkness like the end shot of a movie.

My head spun as I returned to the real world, and I was falling. I would have ended up facedown in the circle of blood if Stanis had not swooped low across it to catch me. He arched his back and brought me to stand, letting go as he opened his wings and dropped back to the ground in front of me.

“Are you okay?” Stanis asked.

Caleb was by my side a second later, throwing an arm around my shoulder, steadying me on my still-shaking legs.

“I think so,” I said. “Although I feel like my head might split open or I might throw up. Or both.”

“Good,” Caleb said, and there was an anger to it.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“You’re lucky that’s all that happened,” he said. “What were you thinking, jamming your hands down on those claw prints?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, not letting up. “
This
time. Tell me, Lexi, what do you know about blood magic?”

“What did you want me to do?” I said, getting testy myself. “I took a chance. You said yourself the magic wasn’t that old. I wanted to try it before it faded any further.”

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with!” he shouted. “You don’t know what power you’re channeling or what the consequences of that will be. For Christ’s sake, Lexi, look at your hands.”

I looked at my own hands, dizziness overcoming me when I saw they were coated with blood. Fletcher’s blood.

Hot tears poured uncontrollably down my face. I couldn’t stop looking at my hands. They looked positively black and shimmering out here in the dark.

Caleb kept his arm around me and reached into his coat with his free hand. He pulled out one of the more fragile vials he kept rolled in cloth, undid the wrapping, and slid the vial back into his coat. Using the rag, he wiped at both my hands until the blood was gone.

By the time he was done, I had pulled myself together, or at least as together as I was bound to get this time of night.

“What did you see?” Stanis asked when he saw I had calmed down.

“I was back at Madison Square Garden,” I said. “That spell was actively trying to seek something or
someone
out. Whatever it was, it was there at the Convocation, but there was too much magical interference for it to zero in on what it was looking for.” I turned and looked down at the circle once more, my heart aching for the person who had once been Fletcher. “I’m not sorry I risked doing that. I’ll research the symbols in the morning.”

I picked up my notebook and slid it into my backpack.

“I have seen this before,” Stanis said. “This sort of circle.”

Caleb and I both looked up at him.

“You have?” I asked. “Where?”

“These markings are similar to the ones used in Emily’s murder.”

“Is that what you’ve been investigating with Detectives Rowland and Maron?” I asked.

Stanis nodded.

“Great,” I said. “Then I can call them in on this.”

“You sure you want to do that?” Caleb asked. “You bring in the police and who knows what they’re going to make of this. Fletcher wasn’t even
human
as far as I can tell. They bring in the coroner on this, we may be opening up a whole brand-new can of worms, anatomically speaking. They’ll cart Fletcher off to Area Fifty-one, and next we’ll be seeing photos of him on conspiracy theory websites alongside alien autopsies.”

“Loath though I am to admit it,” Stanis said, “Caleb does have a point.”

“Like it or not,” I said, “the world
is
changing. We all already bear the heavy burden of responsibility for that. Maron and Rowland are just the tip of the iceberg as far as the regular world absorbing what they’ve being exposed to more and more every day. I think it’s time we got the rest of the force off their back treating them as a laughingstock and gave them something like this to deal with. It may be a paranormal murder scene, but it’s
still
a murder scene. I’m calling it in to them.”