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“Not a machine,” Phoenix says, bending down in the center of the room to examine everything more closely. “Someone would have heard a buzzsaw if that had been used. More like an ax or surgical tools. Although…” she says, parting the entrails with a pen she either pulled from her pocket or got off a policeman to examine something more closely, “these bone fragments don’t show any tool marks.”
“What do they show then?” I ask, still keeping my distance at the edge of the room. I don’t know what help I’ll be here. But I’m glad that Phoenix isn’t alone in facing such a gory tableau. She’s cold and stoic, and if she feels anything as she pokes and prods through the remains of what was once a person, she doesn’t show it on her face. The carpet is drenched in blood so thick that her boots squelch with every step.
She crouches down again and prods another bone, making a disconcerted noise.
“What?” I ask.
“No, no machine marks. It’s almost as if the bones have been…” She trails off.
“What?”
She looks up at me, a line in between her brows. “Sliced with something that burned as it cut.”
“What could do that?”
She stands up, dropping the pen and wiping her hands back and forth across each other. “I don’t know.”
“Is that a good idea?” I point at the dropped pen. “Could it be used as evidence?”
She waves away my concern. “Vlad owns the police. And it’s not as if they’d be of any use in this anyway. No human could have done this.”
Shit. That was what I was afraid of. “Because of the bones?”
She points at the center of the room. “The body’s been laid out like a ritual sacrifice, and the heart’s missing. It’s not any of my family trying to fuck with Vlad because the blood’s all here. Vlad’s sons wouldn’t have been able to help themselves from at least having a little taste. And the timing’s too coincidental.”
I shake my head, not understanding.
Her face is pale as she looks at the floor. “I was afraid of this. Last month with the circle, everything got out of control with it getting so supercharged.”
“What does that have to do with any—”
“We obviously let other things through!” she hisses, looking back up at me furiously. “It was us. We’re the reason for the crack. Sabra’s mother’s prophecy was about us, don’t you get it? What we did to stop the Devourers has also let other spirits through.”
I start to shake my head but pause to actually think about it. Because a lot of the conspiracy sites I’ve been tracking online have been mentioning other disturbances. Strange things, like monsters made out of rock who disappear into the shadows at night. Or evil women who seduce men’s soul out of their bodies and leave them as shriveled husks. But I just assumed it was woman-hating incel shit taken to the next level with people’s heightened paranoia since the Devourers came.
I look around the room at the uncanny precision of the dismembering. I can’t imagine anything human strong enough to pull a body apart with such disturbing exactitude. “What does the missing heart mean? Is there anything you know of from another plane that would do that?”
“The mages have barely mapped any of the other planes, much less used their instruments to look through to the other side to see what lives there. You know that.”
I nod, but I’d hoped… I don’t know what I hoped. I just hate seeing Phoenix so distressed, and I hate even more that she’s blaming herself. “You were trying to stop the end of the world,” I say, reaching out a hand to help her as she tiptoes among the body parts back to the doorway. She ignores my outstretched hand.
“I should have found a better way.”
“There was no time. And it wasn’t all up to you, if you’ll remember. The danger came from the angels. If anyone’s at fault, it’s someone from my plane.”
“Well,” she hunches her shoulders, “then I went and got a hero complex about it and fucked things up even worse.”
I scoff, holding my arms out. “The planet’s still here. How is that worse?”
Her eyes squint shut, and briefly, I see emotion cross her face. Pain and self-judgment and a thousand other things she never usually lets me see. I want to pull her in my arms and let her know that, for once, someone else is here to help shoulder her burdens. Dangerous to want, but I don’t like seeing her pain all the same. I try words instead.
“You aren’t alone,” I whisper.
But that only makes her eyes flash open, burning with a fury I can’t understand. “You have no idea what I am.” She shoulders her way past me. “I have to fix this.”
I follow her. “How exactly are you going to do that?”
“I’m going to find whatever did this.”
