Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice Book 2) (9 page)

A guy in a blue jumpsuit was taking pictures of something on the ground, and in the flash, I caught sight of a crimson beret on the ground. The photographer stepped back and motioned to a uniformed officer, who covered something on the ground with a white sheet.

The camera's flash went off again, this time lighting up a section of the concrete retaining wall, and my blood froze in my veins. Sigils in an ancient language crawled across the wall in a circle that almost seemed to move in the micro-second burst of light from the camera.

“Damn,” I muttered as we kept walking. I could see red starting to stain the sheet on the ground.

“Who d'you think it is?” Steve asked as he got a better look at the scene.

“I'd bet it's . . . it
was
Julian.”

“Well, then, that solves most of our problems,” Steve said flatly. “With him dead, the spell he put on Dani's friend will be broken, and things can get back to normal.”

“It's Dani's girlfriend, man, and I don't think it's that simple.”

“Her . . . girlfriend? As in, you know,
girlfriend
girlfriend?” Steve's eyes went a little wider as I gave him a nod to confirm what he was putting together.

“Yeah, but the thing is, someone had to give Julian that Despair Deck, and I'm betting that same someone's behind both Crystal's disappearing act and Julian suddenly getting a bad case of dead. So, no, our problems are
sooooo
not solved.”

We got closer to the scene, and I saw a knot of black trenchcoats gathered near one of the cruisers. There were a couple of faces I recognized from the night before, and it looked like one of them recognized me. His hand came up with a finger pointed right at me. Collins looked over his shoulder and I could see his face fall as he reached for his belt with his left hand.

“So, what do we do now?” Steve asked.

“Well, you need to look surprised.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm about to run,” I told him before I turned and broke into a sprint. Several voices yelled for me to stop, and I could hear shoes slapping pavement behind me as I rounded the corner of the nearest building. Dr. Corwyn had started me on a training regimen almost as soon as I became his apprentice. Aside from a rep-heavy weight routine, he had me run every morning and after five months of it, I was pretty fast. More importantly, I could keep up a sprint for several hundred yards.

As I poured on the speed on the straightaway, I risked a look back over my shoulder. Collins was pulling ahead of four cops and he was gaining on me. I hurdled a low brick wall and put on a last burst of desperate speed before I got to the end of the building. There was a slap as leather soles hit pavement, then the crunch of someone running across gravel, and only one someone. All I had was a split second to look over my shoulder before I was around the corner. It was Collins, looking pissed, with the group of cops nearly a hundred yards behind him shaking their heads.

With the building blocking the view of the rest of the cops, I took a few more steps and shucked my pack off. My fingers found the zipper for the small outer pocket and yanked it open. Inside was a
neglinom
charm that I'd taken from a necromancer a few months ago. I slipped the cord through the carrying loop at the top of the pack and threaded the amulet through the free loop to secure it as Collins rounded the corner.

He never broke stride as he tackled me, and we went spilling into the dirt.

“Damn it, kid, now I
have
to arrest you!” he snarled as he grabbed an arm and pushed my face into the gravel. “You just had to make it harder on yourself, didn't you?”

“Yeah, it's a teen thing,” I said into the ground.

He yanked my right arm out and planted a knee in my back.

“Need to ask you a big favor, Collins.”

“Now ain't the time, kid,” he told me as the handcuffs ratcheted around my right wrist.

“Need you to take my backpack and hold on to it, man.”

He grabbed my left wrist and pulled it behind my back.

“Why the hell would I do somethin' stupid like that?” he demanded.

I felt the steel of the cuff start to close around my wrist and I knew I only had a couple more seconds left to convince him.

“Because it's got everything you need to convict me of Julian's murder in it.”

My left hand stayed free for another heartbeat.

“Aw, shit,” he cursed. “Did you do this?”

“Hell, no!” I said indignantly.

“Had to ask, kid. Last son of a bitch you killed really needed it.” His knee came away from my back, and he hauled me to my feet. “That whole savin' my ass part didn't hurt either.”

“Kind of worked out good for both of us.” It only took a couple of steps to grab the pack and hand it to him. “The amulet'll keep anyone from noticing it, but it doesn't work on video cameras.”

“Like in an interrogation room. What if I lose track of it?”

“It only works on one sense: sight. You've held it, so it's real to other senses for you.”

“I still have to arrest you.” He took my left wrist and hauled it back behind me again. The harsh scrape of the cuff closing echoed in my ears.

“Yeah, I know. And Collins? We gotta stop meeting like this.”

“Can it. You have that whole right to remain silent thing goin' on. I suggest you exercise it, because anything you say can be held against you. You've got the right to an attorney. If you can't afford one, one will be provided for you. You got all that?”

“I got it.”

“Good, now shut up and act like a troubled teenager.”

Chapter 8

~ Never underestimate the power of the occasional good deed.  ~

Sammael & Berith employee manual.

“It doesn't look good for you, kid,” the guy playing bad cop said. His I.D. card read 'Simms, D.' “Lots of witnesses saying you and the victim got into an argument the night before he died. We got the victim telling all of his buddies about this, um,” he flipped through his notes, “whaddya call it?”

“A notebook?” I asked, pointing at the battered little pad he was holding. What was it about cops and mangled notepads? I wondered if there was a hidden closet somewhere that had them already half beat up and bent.

“You think you're smart, don't you, boy?” he asked. I gave him a level look.

“I think I'm innocent. Well, not guilty, at least.” I leaned back and studied my reflection in the two-way mirror that took up most of the wall behind Simms. Collins had given me a couple of scrapes down the right side of my face when he'd tackled me, and the ripple in the mirror made them look pretty crooked.

The interrogation room was the same shade of gray it had been since the first time I'd been hauled in when I was ten, probably even the same paint. Only the door broke up the wall on my right, and the video camera in the black plastic bulb over my left shoulder gave the only other detail to the room.

“All right, so your buddy Julian was talking about something called a mage war going on between you two. For something like this, you're probably going to be tried as an adult. And with your rap sheet, there ain't a jury on the planet that won't convict you in ten seconds flat.”

“Except for the part where I didn't do it.”

“Yeah, why am I having a hard time buying that?” He gave me a smile that dared me to convince him.

“Probably because that'd mean you'd have to think.” I saw him move, and willed myself not to flinch when he lunged to his feet and slammed his fist down on the table. As it was, I still jumped. Just a little. Purely for dramatic effect.

“Dave, chill,” Collins said over my left shoulder. He stepped up beside me and hitched himself up to sit half on the table's corner where he could face me. It was time for the good cop to give me a little hope, stand up for me and show me how I could salvage things.

“Look, kid, make it easy on yourself. If you did this, 'fess up, and we'll try to keep this in the juvenile court. If you didn't, you're going to need a damn good alibi. Word is, you're big into magic, and your files full of some pretty weird stuff. Stealing medical waste, grave robbery, animal sacrifices, you name it. My partner's right, it's looking pretty bad for you right now. You can help yourself out—” he was interrupted by the door swinging open.

“I gather that I haven't missed the actual custodial interrogation?” a smooth, cultured voice said from the hallway. My eyes went to the open door, and went wide.

“Well, well, well,” Simms sneered. “You got Kyle Vortigern representing you, boy? Now I know you did it.”

Vortigern stepped into the room like he owned it. His charcoal-colored suit even matched the paint. If I was any judge, it was handmade, probably by someone on Savile Row, and it probably cost more than half the salary of most of the cops in the building. He was the kind of lawyer who won, and won big. The kind of guy guilty people with lots of money hired to make their problems go away. People like my father. Usually, he wouldn't have been caught within a hundred miles of an interrogation room. His black hair was slicked back against his head, and his eyes, a cold sapphire blue, took in the room with all of the disdain of a prince in a pigsty.

“Your assumption of my client's guilt warms my heart, gentlemen,” he said with a frosty smile.

Another man came in behind him and gave me a dark look. Where Vortigern commanded the eye, Tad Zucherman just tried to fill it. The word that always came to my mind when I saw him was beefy. He might have been someone's All-American Boy once, but now, he looked like he'd been living on a steady diet of lemons and salt. His mouth puckered in a permanent scowl, and I had never seen his eyebrows separate. It looked like two caterpillars had a head-on collision over his nose.

“Well, Fortunato, I'd wondered when you'd turn up again,” he said, by way of greeting. Zucherman had been my juvenile officer. Between my father and Dulka, he'd never been able to get anything to stick on me.

“Good to see you again, too, Mr. Zucherman.”

“Gentlemen,” Vortigern said. “I'd like a word with my client.”

All three cops trooped out of the room like guilty children.

“What in the Nine Hells are you doing here!” I said as soon as the door closed. I had to keep my hands under the table to keep him from seeing them shake. I already owed him enough for helping me get free from Dulka and work things so that my mom had custody of me.

“Protecting my investment, Mister Fortunato. You still owe me a favor, and you cannot repay it to me if you are serving twenty five to life for the murder of a pissant warlock.” He sat across from me in the chair Simms had just vacated. “We should start by establishing your alibi for the time of the murder, which I can do for you well beyond a reasonable doubt. All I need to know is where you were at the time, and I'm sure multiple witnesses can be found to establish your presence there.”

“I was asleep at home until about seven. My mom and my friends can vouch for that. After that, my friends and I went to a girl's house, then I went to the Square to find Julian.”

“We'll leave out that last, but I think that once we've established your alibi, you'll do well to keep a somewhat higher profile than you normally do. You'll need to avoid your usual haunts and practices, anything that could link you to this.” He stood and went to the door before I could say anything.

“You done?” Simms asked from the hallway. “Good, cuz we got us some more questions. Now that you're all lawyered up, kid, I hope you're ready for a long haul.” He stepped in past Vortigern and took his chair back.

Collins and Zucherman followed him in, and Simms laid a thick file folder on the table and smiled at me like he was about to eat me. Kyle closed the door slowly and paced to my side with measured, tightly controlled steps.

“My client has an alibi for the entirety of this evening, Detective Simms. I will produce witnesses who will testify to his whereabouts. Including several of your own officers, if need be.”

“That's great, I'm sure he does. But you know, there's one thing I was hoping you could tell us. Where were you on December sixth? How about February second? Or January seventeenth?”

“I fail to see the relevance of this line of questioning, officer, and must therefore advise my client not to answer.”

“You want relevance, counselor?” Simms said. “How's this for relevance?”

He pulled a photo from the file and slid it across the table at me. Another followed it, and a third. Each one showed a circle of Lemurian runes. The first one was done on a linoleum floor, the second against a brick wall, and the third, against a concrete surface.

I felt the blood drain from my face as I looked them over. The photos were in black and white, but I knew that the rune circles would have been the dark brown of dried blood.

“Circles of unusual-looking symbols? Really, Detective Simms, is the rank of detective so easily earned these days that any simpleton can achieve it?” Vortigern put his index finger against one of the pictures and turned it so he had a better look, then tilted his head to give Simms a condescending glance.

Simms didn't glare back at him. Instead, he looked to Collins, who had taken his usual place in the corner under the video camera. He shook his head and came around to stand beside his partner.

“Each of these was found around the same time these kids went missing,” Collins said. He slid three more pictures across the table at us.

The first thing I noticed was the fact that they were all different races. An Asian boy, one black girl, and a round-faced Hispanic girl with a sweet smile looked back at me from yearbook and family photos. I recognized two of them as former clients of mine from when I worked for Dulka. One was a wanna-be sorcerer who’d never given me his real name, and the other was a girl named Monique Dawes who had an abusive ex with a talent for violence. I'd done a handful of protection charms for her back before I’d escaped. The third girl I didn't recognize.

“Each of these was found within half a mile of the last place they were seen,” Collins continued. “Your client was seen with two of them on several occasions. His email address was on both their computers, attached to messages about magic spells and charms. We have a consultant on the occult who verifies that these things are legit, and they're the kind of thing your client is known to have dabbled in.”

He was lying about the last part. Very few people might have been able to place Lemurian sigils, but no one, short of my father or Dulka, could have associated me with them.

“These look like the markings I saw next to Julian,” I said. My voice didn't carry far, but it didn't have to.

Simms grinned like a loon.

“So, you recognize them, don't you? You didn't think we'd catch on to you, did you boy?”

“My client has admitted to no such thing. He is merely making an observation based on things he saw at a crime scene earlier this evening. The connection was made by you, Detective, by laying down information in front of him in a case he is not a part of.”

“Bullshit!” Simms barked. “Your boy here as good as confessed to doing this when he saw those pictures!”

“It's the same reaction you'd get if someone handed you a bottle with a bio-hazard label on it and told you to be
reallllll
careful with it. If you know what these symbols mean. I didn't do any of this . . . but I can help you find whoever did.”

Simms and Vortigern both tried to talk over each other.

“No deals, you little son of a bitch!”

“Mister Fortunato, I must ask you to reconsider!”

“Both of you! SHUT! THE HELL! UP!” I screamed. Dead silence fell. I pointed to Collins. “I'll talk to him, off the record.”

“Your lawyer stays, too,” Collins said. I didn't like it, but I nodded. Simms and Zucherman headed for the door after he gave them a nod.

“Captain Cronkite's gonna hear about this,” Simms muttered.

“Call him,” Collins said. His voice was level and cool, and I saw Simms' face lose a little of the bravado.

The door shut, and Collins turned and looked over his shoulder at the mirror. A couple of moments later, I saw a light go on behind it, revealing a video camera on a tripod, and an otherwise empty room.

“What about that one?” I asked with a gesture over my shoulder at the black bulb near the ceiling.

“Video only, no sound. It's the best you're gonna get.”

“Are you quite sure this is prudent Mister Fortunato?” Vortigern asked.

“Prudent? Probably not, but it's the least stupid choice I figure I can make.”

“I tremble in anticipation at the prospect of hearing your logic in this decision,” Vortigern said.

“Sarcastic much? All right, here's the deal. I don't know who your occult expert is, but I can bet that they haven't seen these before. They're from the
G'Honn
Fragments, and they're written in ancient Lemurian.”

“How can you be sure?” Collins asked.

“There are only thirty one of the G'Honn Fragments known. I've seen four of them, and I know for a fact that only one of them has ever been in human hands. It was recovered during the Crusades. The rest of them are either accounted for or lost.”

“Who has these things?”

“I highly recommend you not answer that, my boy. You may commit more egregious offenses in the process,” Vortigern said.

“Can it, he already knows. Mostly demons, a couple of vampires. I think a drake has a couple, too.”

“A drake?” Collins asked.

“A young dragon,” I said.

“So, how do you know how to read this forgotten language?”

“Demon's apprentice, remember? Besides, it's not forgotten. You just
really
don't want to meet anything that speaks it.”

“So, what's the deal with these? I need details, kid, something to impress the captain with and get you off the hook for this. Something I can verify.”

“Okay, first off, these outer rings would have been done in blood, but not the blood of the victims. The victims' blood would only be in this little circle here,” I pointed to a spot to the lower right of the central sigil.

Collins scribbled on his note pad.

“The rest of it is animal's blood. Probably pig or something else unclean.” I looked closely at the three pictures and started noting details.

“I fail to grasp how giving the police details only the person who performed these rituals would know amounts to being the least stupid choice you can make,” my Infernal lawyer commented.

“Shows I know what I'm talking about,” I muttered as I went from photo to photo. “If I offer to help, and tell them things even their occult expert missed, they know I’m the real deal.”

“Thereby establishing your credentials beyond a reasonable doubt and proving that you are acting in good faith,” Vortigern said with something like approval. “A bit more generous than I prefer, but somewhat more effective in the long term.”