Magi Saga 1: Epic Calling (18 page)

Vito felt a little annoyed that she hadn’t read his report yet, it had everything in there that she needed to know, but he knew he would end up repeating it all anyway, so this was just getting it over and done with he supposed. ‘Well okay. There’s lots of detail in the report though so I will give you the gist of what happened and my conclusions.

‘After arriving in Manhattan and sleeping a night there, I went straight to the alleyway where the attack happened, which was in a very seedy part of town and right in the middle of a red light district, the street it led off from was swarming with whores. So I headed into the alleyway and using the Divine Gift I tried to see if I could find out what happened during the attack for myself. I did get the impression of a hurt and terrified girl, but there’d been a presence there that seemed to be blocking my attempts see what happened. The presence I felt, I believe was the after image of the Demon which had been there. I actually returned to the alleyway a few times, and each time I tried, I got the same thing. This dark presence would fill my vision and I would see a desert, and an Egyptian tomb, or at least I believe it to be Egyptian, and the aftermath of some kind of massacre. Dead bodies were everywhere in this tomb, which I presume must have been committed by this creature, but that is conjecture at this time.’ Vito waved his hand, dismissing his conclusion.

‘Within the tomb, I noticed two sets of graffiti, one of which I believe was written by the Demon. There was,
she will pay
, which had been written in blood, by the Demon I think. Carved into the same wall,
Do not lift the Slab. Horlack Lies within.
Had been written, I think Horlack is the Demon in question.’

‘So the creature’s presence, this Horlack’s presence, stopped you from looking back in time to see the girl?’

‘Indeed,’ Vito commented, raising his eyebrow at the same time.

‘That’s interesting,’ Mary Mused, looking off into space, before returning her gaze to Vito and gesturing towards him as she said, ‘This would mean it’s a very powerful Demon, as few would be strong enough to stop you from looking back and seeing things for yourself.’

‘Again I agree, but I also think that it could be bypassed by someone who was powerful enough to do so. That’s the feeling I got from it anyway.’

‘Interesting, if need be I can find someone who might be strong enough to counter this presence in the alleyway for us. But I take it this wasn’t the end of your investigation Vito?’

‘That’s correct, I figured I would be able to find out more from the girls on the street, so I used a fake I.D. to pose as a Private Investigator  and see if some questioning would work better.’

Mary smiled at Vito’s dedication and inventiveness. ‘So how did that go?’

‘Well, I began by introducing myself around and doing my best to gain their trust, Getting them to believe I wasn’t out to arrest them or hand them over to the police.’ Vito remembered the fairly hostile first encounters with the girls, although he had expected nothing less going into this line of inquiry. ‘They were really not happy to speak to me at first and I found myself having to deal with a few pimps in the process,’ Vito rubbed at his knuckles as he said it, remembering the scuffles he had been in, ‘but after a while I found myself able to narrow it down and soon found the group of ladies who had been friends with the girl that was attacked.’

‘Excellent,’ Mary said.

‘Thank you. After speaking to all four of them I started to get a feel for the group, and who would talk and who would know the most. It was the youngest who gave up the most without much questioning, however the oldest of the group seemed to know more than the others, but she was very cagy and protective of her friends.

‘So I made sure I approached the youngest, Renée, when Jade, the eldest was with a client. After a while I was able to find out some of what I wanted to know. The girl knew the victim as AJ and I did get an impression of the girls appearance, the red hair and so on, which matched the description from the Witness. Otherwise, Renée’s information had run dry, and I believed Jade was the one with the answers I needed.’

‘Jade was clever though, and seemed to hide her thoughts from me somewhat, not reminiscing about her friends whatever I did. So I thought it was about time to try another tactic. I followed her home and we had a little time alone. She took a little convincing, but she soon gave me what I needed.’

Vito remembered these few hours quite vividly as he spoke to Mary, he felt quite dispassionate about them. Years ago he had done very well in his interrogation training and seemed to have the dedication and temperament to use whatever methods were necessary to find out the truth from the heretics and heathens of the world that the Inquisition would run into time and again. Vito only needed to get Jade to think about the things he needed to know as he could read thoughts through his Divine Power. He wasn’t able to reach into some one’s mind and find them himself yet, but he could read any surface thoughts that someone was thinking about as if he was watching the television set of their mind, getting mainly flashes of things they had seen and hearing the words they were thinking, as they were thinking them.

Jade had been a tough nut to crack and forcing her to think the thoughts he wanted to know was the only way he could see to get what he wanted quickly, and after pulling out a few toe and finger nails, it’s amazing how quickly people come round. Soon enough Jade told Vito whatever he wanted to know and Vito listened while picking out extra details from her thoughts at the same time.

‘So, what did you find out then?’ Mary asked.

‘Firstly, the name of the girl that was supposedly attacked in the alleyway was Amanda-Jane Page, although they all called her AJ as I mentioned.’

‘Amanda,’ Mary said, dragging the word out slightly and letting it simmer in her mind for a moment. ‘I’ve not heard of her before. Please, continue.’

‘Well, Amanda had been a part of their group since before Renée had joined, and hung out with a girl called Georgina who was older then all of them. Both Georgina and Amanda were protected by a Pimp called Stuart who protected all six of them. Georgina and Amanda knew these four girls I spoke with, but they didn’t hang out with them much, they just knew them because of the link through their Pimp.

‘Renee had mentioned that Georgina had left for some reason and Amanda was due to follow her until Amanda disappeared the night Stuart had been killed in the alleyway, a few days before her flight. It was only upon interrogating Jade that I found out why the pair left New York. It seems that Georgina had left because she had contracted AIDS and it was only discovered in its late stages.’

‘Whores! Serves her right. She deserves everything she gets,’ Mary Spat.

‘My thoughts exactly.’

‘So where did she go to?’

‘Well, Jade wasn’t so sure, it seems that Georgina was quite secretive about it, but Jade thought it was in Europe somewhere. Amanda was Irish, an illegal immigrant apparently, which is why she worked the streets, she couldn’t find legitimate work. I guessed the pair might have gone back to Ireland, but having no proof of this, I wondered if any of the other girls might know. So I headed back onto the street, keeping Jade bound and tied for the moment so she couldn’t interfere, and found the girls again to speak to them. I spun them a line about following up some other leads and finding out that Georgina had headed to Europe somewhere and asked if they knew where. I picked up Ireland, England and France as possible places from their mixed thoughts, that and the fact that Renée didn’t seem to know where Europe was, but that was all’

‘Heh, Americans, typical,’ Mary scoffed.

‘I know,’ Vito Replied. ‘But it narrows things down a little, just not far enough.’

‘Did you try to track her on the airlines etcetera using Amanda’s name?’

‘Yes, I called up the team here and asked for a trace, but her name didn’t come up which leads me to suspect she either used a fake passport, which wouldn’t surprise me seeing as she was in the country illegally, or she travelled some other way, Magically perhaps.’

‘Either way I think it’s a dead end,’ Mary said, ‘she could be anywhere by now, and she just isn’t a high enough priority to justify committing the resources to in order to find her. It’s one more Magi who got away, but if she is a Magi, then she may well show up in the future anyway, and we can bring her in then’

‘I agree, is there anything else?’

‘Well, in the end I let Jade go a day or so later just before I left the country, but I doubt she’ll go to the police about any of this. I had one more line of inquiry to follow up so I did some quick research about Egypt and the massacre in the tomb I had seen there. It took some time in some Internet Café’s but I did find out that there was a report of just such an event a few months ago now. The explanation was an attack by a militant group of some sort, but after seeing the vision from the presence in the alleyway, I think that was a cover up.’

‘Any more information on that dig?’

‘I little bit. From the report I was able to find an online Blog written by one of the Archaeologists on the dig, it contained some interesting information. Apparently it was an investigation into a tomb in the deep desert, which was dogged by superstition from the start with the local guide and his team having left early on, they were scared apparently.’

‘Interesting,’ said Mary.

‘The Archaeologists had been privately contracted to do the job with a representative of the investor on site with them. It seems from the Blog that the Archaeologists we’re unhappy with their investor as they were in secretive discussions with the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to provide them with whatever finds they got from the dig. Documentation of the finds were only just starting to come through when the massacre happened. Whoever did it looks to have stolen some of the finds from the camp, including one which the Egyptian Museum of Cairo had expressed an interest in. There was a photo of that artefact on the web which I printed out and is in my report. The photo was found at the dig site and has the Archaeologists at the Museum in Cairo excited as it’s like nothing they have seen before.’

Mary pulled out the photo from the report and looked at the picture of the intricately carved slab of sand stone that was on it. It was badly pixelated from being of such a small size on the internet, but it was clear from its markings that it would be of some significance to the Witches and Warlocks of the world.

‘But that’s not the most interesting part of this.’ Vito said, waiting for Mary to bite.

‘Oh no?’

‘Nope, you see, the Blog mentioned a name, Amy Bergman, who was the representative of the private investor.’ Mary looked blank, waiting for Vito to fill in the information she was missing. Apparently she didn’t know the name by heart. ‘Amy is a Magi,’ Vito said.

‘But of course, and what do we know about her?’

‘Well, she’s only been a Magi for a couple of years, but the reason we know of her is because her Mentor is Yasmin the Dark. Whom I’m guessing is the investor of the dig.’

Mary Smiled. ‘Really. Well this is interesting.’

‘I thought so,’ Vito said satisfactorily.

‘OK, Vito, so what’s your conclusion to all this then?’

‘Well Inquisitor, the way I see the New York side of things, is that this friend of Amanda’s, Georgina contracted AIDS, and left the country, although we don’t know where, I think its clear she wanted to get away from life as a whore and thought that going abroad was a good idea. Amanda was hurt by this turn of events and figured the only way to stop her friend from dying was to ask Satan for help, maybe asking for the power to cure her friend. The Demon appeared and gave her this power. Then Amanda killed her Pimp with her new Magical Powers for making Georgina work the streets. I don’t think Amanda killed the Demon, although this could be possible, the power perhaps going to her head, and we have seen Warlocks killing Demons before despite serving them. However, I think it’s more likely that the witness was confused, it was late and dark after all and it’s not every day you see a Demon on the other side of the street. Whatever the case, Amanda then left the scene of the dead Pimp Stuart and left for Europe, if that’s where they went.’

‘As for the Egypt side of things, I think that the Demon had been imprisoned in that tomb and the dig was just unlucky in waking it up. I’m not sure how the Sand Stone Artefact ties in, but at a guess, maybe it has some sort of binding spell on it and it was that which bound the Demon to that tomb. When it was removed from the tomb, the Demon was freed.’

‘OK, that sounds reasonable, so what would you suggest as the next line of investigation?’

‘I think we should follow up the Egypt dig line a little further at least. I think there’s more to find out there yet and the missing Artefact might prove to be important in some way. The link to Yasmin alone makes it worth a little more attention. So with your approval I will continue with that for the time being, but I will also keep an eye on the Amanda angle just in case she surfaces again. I get the feeling we haven’t seen the last of her yet.’

Mary nodded slowly. ‘I agree. I don’t think this Amanda is a high priority and if she is then I’m sure she will turn up. This Artefact interests me though and might be useful to the Vatican. Follow it up and see if you can’t get hold of it somehow. Thank you Vito.’

I don’t believe a word of this girls story. She says these injuries were an accident and self-inflicted, but she just doesn’t seem the type to do this. The psych evaluation came back healthy and she seems in good spirits, although a little scared of something. I’m pretty sure she’s a regular drug user, and I wonder if she missed a payment or something.

I think these wounds were done to her, as punishment or torture maybe, I don’t know, but you would need to be pretty insane to pull out most of your own nails with a pair of pliers.

- Doctors personal notes on Jades medical evaluation