Black Arts, White Craft (Black Hat Bureau 2)

5

Chattanooga was a reasonable distance away, so it made sense for us to drive. That, and it spared Colby from spending hours pretending to be my hair bow on a plane. She sat hip to hip with Clay, both decked out in noise cancelling headphones. Asa drove, as usual, and I rode shotgun.

The platinum-blond wig Clay wore was a perfect match for Colby’s soft fuzz. That he wanted to give her a safe perch for when we stopped for gas and food was another example of his thoughtfulness.

Plus, it gave him an excuse to buy a new wig. For him, it was a win/win. For us too, really.

The wig promised she could hang with her new BFF in public instead of always being stuck with me.

Once confident little ears wouldn’t overhear, I opened the case file, ready to quiz Asa on a few points.

Before crawling into bed, I had read everything Clay sent me, but I preferred the hard copy for skimming.

“The wendigo killed seven people before you arrived. Three after.” I flipped through the stack of missing persons reports filed by victims’ families at four local police departments. “That qualifies as a massacre.”

The director must be working around the clock to suppress the details, given the high-collateral damage. No wonder he called Clay and Asa away so soon after the copycat case. This case had all the earmarks of breaking human news in the making. Wendigo attacks were often blamed on mountain lions, but no one would buy a single cat had eaten ten people without being hunted down with its head mounted by now.

“We have reason to believe there are more victims. We found several caches in various states of decay.” He switched lanes as storm clouds rolled in overhead. “There will be hikers from out of state who haven’t been reported missing yet. There always are in cases like these.”

Chattanooga wasn’t our destination, sadly, but we would pass through it to find our remote rental.

Flipping to the photo of the decapitated wendigo, I mused, “There wasn’t much blood, was there?”

Lightning illuminated Asa’s features as it forked across the sky. “I noticed that too.”

“Do you think it was already dead?” I thumbed through more photos. “You just…killed it some more?”

“I’m not sure.” Asa switched on the windshield wipers as light drizzle hit us. “It’s possible.”

A reanimated wendigo would be easier to control, subject to its master’s whims, not dissimilar to Clay.

Necromancers were the only supernatural faction able to fashion new life from an existing creature who rose with their own free will. Even then, their vampires were clannish and could be subdued by their own masters. But those masters were vampires, leaders of their clans, not the necromancer who resuscitated them. That autonomy might explain why humans were resuscitated but everything else was reanimated.

Still mulling that over, I asked him, “Any signs of other wendigos in the area?”

“The scat smelled the same, but that could be credited to a shared food source. The territorial markings, what few we located, were left at identical heights on trees. Only an alpha claiming land for their clan or a loner protecting their cache would scent-mark an area, so it’s not unusual for them to be uniform.”

Closing the file on my lap, I watched the swish and flick of the wipers. “What did you do with the body?”

“Another team was staying in Chattanooga. We buried the remains, since it’s a high-traffic area this time of year, then called in the coordinates to them. They were to cremate it and clean up the noted caches.”

Fire was the go-to method for destroying paranormal bodies, evidence, and dangerous objects of power.

Ideally, each team was assigned a witch to reduce documented evidence to ash, eliminating the need for clean up later. Except in cases, like the copycat, where large-scale exposure to humans or para lives were at risk. Then the preservation of evidence became a top priority. This case, thanks to its high body count, was fast becoming the latter.

“If it was alive to start,” I mused, “the witch could have followed you, dug it up, and reanimated it.”

The idea of them following him unnoticed caused his eyes to flash from green to burnt crimson.

“For her to exert control over such a primal creature, she must have spelled it into compliance. If, as you say, it was alive when Clay and I arrived. She could have tracked a vestige of her magic to locate it either way.” His eyes returned to their natural color. “The traceries would be stronger if it were already dead?”

“The more magic you sink into a person, place, or thing, the stronger your bond to it grows.”

The use of mind control magic on sentient creatures was big magic, and a huge no-no.

I skirted the edge with the teas I brewed for the girls. I had learned from my own experience with having memories erased where the line was drawn and how to avoid crossing it. Thanks, Gramps! But true mind control magic, where a person’s thoughts and actions were wrested away from them, was taboo.

So, of course, black witches had elevated the practice to an artform.