Raised in Fire (Fire and Ice Trilogy 2)

Darius stepped forward to look.

I checked out the rest quickly before closing the file and handing it back. “You know what I do, right?”

Oscar hesitated, like I was asking a trick question. “We have an office here with a field of expertise similar to the one you’re associated with in NOLA,” he said slowly.

I shut his door, having to maneuver around Darius to do it.

“Magic,” I said bluntly. A wary smile curved Oscar’s lip. Like most humans “in the know,” his logical mind clearly tried to pass my talents off as a joke so it didn’t seem so utterly outlandish. “I suss out magic. To do that, I need to see the most recent body, where the body was dumped, and where the crime might’ve originally happened. Otherwise, there is no point in my being here.”

Oscar studied me for a moment before looking at Darius. “Is she always this pushy?”

“Questions such as those will likely insult her, and then she’ll assuredly hurt you in some way,” Darius said in a bored voice. “But by all means, waste our time. It will benefit me.”

He was, of course, referring to the promise I’d given him regarding my blood. “So that’s why you won’t actually help me, is it?” I asked.

“Yes. Next, he might ask if you are always this dim. I am starting to wonder myself.”

I took a deep breath and let it out noisily before hooking a thumb at Darius and directing my focus to Oscar. “He’s right about one thing. I feel a surge of violence coming on. Let’s get this done, or I’m going home now. Time’s a tickin’, man. I need to solve this quick-like.”

With a dark chuckle, Oscar came around the desk. “Have it your way, but I saw the way you looked at those pictures. The real thing is much worse.”

“And I will tell you that I’ve seen worse still, believe me. Usually it’s the smell that gets you. That doesn’t make this any less gross, though.”

A short car ride later, we arrived at a nondescript building without so much as a number indicating its address. Cameras pointed down at us as Oscar unlocked the door. No receptionist sat at this desk. He led us down a hall and to a back room, watched by various cameras the whole time, then unlocked the door and flicked on the lights.

I half expected a bare bulb swinging over a dirty, cracked concrete floor, and while the reality wasn’t much better, it was certainly cleaner. Harsh white light rained down on a viewing table in a sea of beige. Just one table dominated the three-hundred-square-foot space, with a few folding chairs positioned around the sides. On top of the table was a pile of ew.

“Cozy,” I said, walking up to the table. “So yeah, skin taken off. No bones broken in the process?”

Oscar leaned against the wall by the door. “No. His face was left alone. His expression, as you can see, was one of intense pain, but he didn’t have any abrasions that would suggest he’d been tied down or forced to endure the torture in any way. The skin has been put to rights in the next room.”

“Gross,” I muttered. That seemed to be the word du jour. I didn’t feel any residual magic, not that I would after so long.

I put my hands to my hips and turned away, biting my lip in thought, running through all the great many spells stored in my brain. I couldn’t do any of them, or, at least, hadn’t tried, but I’d either read about them or seen them in action. I could usually match a spell to the effects of said spell.

Usually.

“A freezing spell wouldn’t allow the mage to access the whole body.” I looked at Darius, since he collected magic for his faction of vampires, which meant he knew about freezing spells, too. “They could just do sections, I suppose. Maybe freeze his upper body and one leg while working on the other…but what would happen when they took the spell away to reapply?”

“It seems as though the torso was first.” Oscar pushed away from the wall and slowly made his way to the top of the body. He gestured near the neck. “You can see the cutting marks there. They’re rougher than the cuts on his legs. Like the assailant was rushed, or distracted.”

“Someone screaming would certainly be distracting.” I eyed the wounds. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve punched out so they’d shut up. So annoying.” I put my hands into the air. “I was not torturing them at the time, detective. It was all above board.” I paused. “Mostly.”

“Your humor would certainly torture them, if you lobbed jokes at them along the way,” Darius said, having stepped closer to see the body as well. Maybe part of him did want to prolong the case, but his natural urge to problem-solve wouldn’t let him leave this solely to me.

I grinned at him, despite his horrible put-down. I’d make a private investigator out of him yet. A grumpy, egotistical private investigator.

“Let’s look at the skin,” I said.

My stomach was already crawling when we entered the adjacent room. “Buffalo Bill would’ve had a field day with this.” I eyed the man’s form. “If he was the right size, he could just slip this skin suit on and go for a stroll.”

Oscar started laughing.

“I don’t know to what you are referring,” Darius said, his eyes moving down the torso, then the legs.

“It’s a movie. Never mind.” I noticed inconsistencies in the thickness of the removed skin, places where it was ripped. “Definitely looks like they used freezing spells. You can see where it was applied, plus the places where the spells overlapped. They probably had a couple going at once. I’d guess our mage was not alone in this. He had people casting the freezing spells for him, while he took care of the spell to capture the energy from the actual skinning.”

“They should’ve easily been able to peel the skin off the muscle,” Darius said, his arms crossed.

“Tell me you have never done this.” I shot him with a glare. “If you have done something like this, we cannot be friends. Even more than we already aren’t friends.”

“If you skin an animal, you cut the pelt away from certain areas, then pull it off the muscle. It comes free pretty easily. I don’t know if humans are the same, but one would think they should be, at least in some areas.”

“Maybe with how the spells were set up, they couldn’t tug it off.” I walked around to the back but didn’t see anything noteworthy. “This must’ve been done over a day, tops.”

“Why do you say that?” Oscar asked, the humor gone from his eyes now. He’d finally realized that we were no joke.

“The spell he used to capture the energy is complex. It takes great focus. Once in place, upsetting its balance would be quite easy. I’d have to ask some friends for more details, but I’ve read that the spell itself is fragile. You can’t touch it, no other spells can touch it, and the caster’s constant focus is needed to keep it in effect. Moreover, the caster is the one collecting the energy, so he’s the one who has to do the actual…crime. Clearly he couldn’t keep it up with all the commotion of the victim.” I ran my finger through the air, indicating the area where the thickness of the…removal mostly leveled out. “He went for the torso, probably because it’s right over the vital areas, in a place where the victim could see the whole thing. That would cause fear as well as pain. Limbs can be ignored to some degree, but it’s harder to ignore a knife over your heart. So then, the spell to collect the victim’s turmoil would have had to be—”

“Right around his head,” Darius finished for me.

“Yes, but it would need to extend in a sheet over the place our guy was cutting. Also a bit away so the other spells didn’t touch it, and our perp didn’t back into it… There was a lot going on. This was clearly not easy. So yes, he must’ve gotten whatever energy he could, but he couldn’t keep up, the victim died, and he had to rush to get the blood before it congealed. I’m not sure why he kept going with the skin after that, but blood would still hold the power, just not as purely. Putting it over the circle lines would help them call a stronger demon. Why they wanted to call a high level four, I do not know, but this probably let them do it.”