Mark of the Demon (Kara Gillian 1)

“Hey, Kristoff. Check this out.” I showed him my phone.

He looked at the screen, a faintly bemused expression on his face. “You have all the phases of the moon on your calendar?”

“Yeah, like, duh. And now it’s finally useful. Doc and the entomologist think that these victims were killed between the last two full moons.”

He looked at me with a So what? expression.

I gestured to the row of black body bags at the bottom of the ridge. “I think these are last month’s victims.” I took a steadying breath. “I think he attempted the summoning last month and it didn’t work.” I rubbed my palms on my jeans, unnerved. I didn’t want to think about what we’d be facing right now if he’d been successful.

Ryan blew out his breath. “Fucking lucky for us. I wonder what went wrong.”

“I don’t know, but he’s not giving up. He’s trying again this month.”

A sickened expression passed over his face. “And he’s going to keep doing this until he succeeds in this summoning.”

I chewed my lip. “The convergence will begin to taper after this month. It’ll still be enough to summon higher demons, but my bet is that pulling an unwilling Demonic Lord through will be damn near impossible after this next full moon and for about another eighteen months or so.”

“So, we have just this month to catch him,” Ryan said.

I nodded. “And he’s going to throw everything he has into this summoning. He knows it’s his last chance for a while.”

Ryan moved to the top of the slope, looking down at the scene of the body dump, anger and dismay in his eyes. “I guess there’s no doubt that these are Symbol Man murders?”

I shook my head. “They all have the symbol, all have signs of torture, all killed by ligature strangulation.”

He was silent for several heartbeats as he looked at the activity at the bottom of the slope. “I wonder why he’s killing all his victims the same way now. The Series One victims were killed in different ways.”

“Well, I have a theory about that.”

“Share?”

I took a deep breath. “I think that the first murders were practice. It explains why those victims were killed in a variety of ways and had varying amounts of torture and damage done to them. The last two were strangled.”

Ryan scowled. “He was trying to see what kind of death would give him the most zing and found that strangulation worked the best.”

“That’s right. And I think he was probably also figuring out how to store that potency for later use. To build his little Demonic Lord prison.”

“And then he had to stop for three years …”

“Because the sphere that holds the demon world diverged from ours …” I trailed off, looking away from the lake.

“What’s wrong?” Ryan followed the direction of my gaze.

“The victim at the wastewater plant. I think that was from last month’s attempt as well.”

Ryan frowned. “What makes you say that? And what are you looking at?”

“See that fence?” I pointed at a tall wooden fence barely visible through the trees. It was probably about a mile away, and only the fact that we were standing on a slight rise allowed us to see it at all. “That’s the back of the wastewater plant.”

I watched his face as comprehension flashed across it. “The broken bones … She wasn’t dropped from the top of a vat. The demon was flying her body here and dropped her.”

I nodded. “You’re pretty smart for a Fed.”

“I missed a bunch of questions on the entrance exam on purpose so that I could get into the agency,” he retorted, smile flickering at the corners of his mouth.

“So it was an accident that the body was found so quickly.”

“But the others …” His expression grew more serious. “He’s been trying to find out what he can about you. He knows you’re a summoner.”