It was so tempting to use the magic now. To call down a ferocious storm or a thick fog to blanket the city. Yet, if these bastards were hunting people suspected of wielding magic, he didn’t want to give them an additional reason to pursue him.
Another shot rang out, and the bullet hit the bricks to his left, narrowly missing his shoulder. Shey turned right and cursed himself. Were they herding him?
He needed to get back to the busy thoroughfare. To find a place where people gathered, rushing about to complete their daily routines. He could hide in the crowd. At the very least, they wouldn’t keep shooting and risk causing a panic.Right?
At the next intersection, Shey took a left, praying it would lead him out of the cramped alleys. Bright lights dazzled his eyes only a hundred yards away. People passed on the sidewalk, carrying shopping bags of groceries and talking loudly to their companions. Civilization. Sanctuary.
A laugh of relief bubbled up in his throat, but it stopped there as sharp pain pierced his right shoulder blade. His breath caught, and his knees turned to water. With his next step, he was sinking. Sinking, darkness swallowing him up like a giant mouth eating the entire world. His foot never touched the wet, broken pavement.
It was too late.
CHAPTER 1
Adrian Westergren
Gods, he hated morgues.
The shitty lighting, the cracked stone floors, and the piercing scent of disinfectant and other chemicals that burned his nose didn’t come close to masking the lingering scent of death and decay. Life as a soldier had brought Adrian to a morgue once or twice. Training accidents and the occasional deadly fights with things that crawled out of the Ordas meant identifying comrades and saying last good-byes in the morgue.
It was a tradition in Erya for every person to be cremated, their remains planted into flowers and trees to continue the cycle of life and giving back to the planet. If you wanted to pay respects one last time to something with a face, you needed to do it at the morgue. Funerals were spent at the family’s home with the deceased in an urn. Afterward, the family and friends took the urn to where the ashes would be buried along with a sapling for the planting ceremony.
But this trip to the District #5 Bellcairn Morgue had no hope of being a tolerable experience. He and Haru had already visited the morgues for Districts #3 and #7 with no luck, for which he was grateful.
However, District #5 was another story. This morgue served the neighborhoods of Little Stip Garden District and Black Water Gate. From his early glimpses, these were not nice, affluent neighborhoods. These were places overflowing with desperate people barely scratching out a living. They were forgotten and perpetually marginalized. No funding. No support. No relief.
And that meant desperate people doing desperate things.
As a short, round man in a white coat escorted them past the front reception to the main examination room, Adrian winced to see the twin rows of corpses on metal gurneys, half-covered in white sheets. Small, rectangular metal doors lined two of the four walls, where bodies would be slid into refrigerated units until they could be dealt with permanently.
In the center of the room was a single metal table under a bright light. A man with thinning gray hair, in a white coat and a clear plastic protective face shield, was digging into the body of a deceased woman.
“There. That’s the medical examiner, Dr. Kohn. He can help you,” their guide said with a wave of his hand at the ghoul. With nothing more to resemble an introduction, he beat a hasty retreat out of the examination room, the double swinging doors shifting wildly behind him as he exited.
Well, at least they were in the building.
“Dr. Kohn, I’m Detective Sanders. This is Detective White,” Adrian launched into his spiel. As he spoke, he flashed a detective’s badge he might have boosted from an off-duty detective in a bar three nights earlier. So long as no one looked too closely, the ruse would succeed. “I’m hoping you can help us with our investigation.”
This was his third trip to the morgue as a “cop,” and no one had bothered to report him to the actual police because he’ddone nothing more than sneak into some morgues in search of a possible dead body.
A long, irritated sigh escaped the medical examiner, and his shoulders slumped. However, the man didn’t lift his gaze from where he was digging into the dead woman’s organs, let alone glance at Adrian’s borrowed credentials. “As you can see, I am up to my elbows in work and can’t provide any kind of help at the moment.”
Adrian fought a smirk. A distracted and harried ME might work to his advantage here. He shoved his stolen badge into the pocket of his jeans and pulled a worn picture from a different pocket.
“You don’t even have to remove your hands from your current…er…guest,” Adrian said as he stepped closer. He fought to keep his eyes on the medical examiner while holding the picture up at eye level for him. “Has this guy passed through here recently? Possibly as a John Doe. Large scar on his left cheek, stretching from eye to jaw. Late twenties to early thirties.”
The ME frowned and squinted at the grainy, poorly printed picture of a man in profile. Adrian’s heart squeezed, barely sneaking out a beat as he held his breath, waiting for the ME to end his search in the worst way.
After a second, Dr. Kohn shook his head. “Not recently. Haven’t worked on him. However, you can see my backlog. Those in the fridge have been autopsied and are waiting for pickup. You can check out those still on my docket.” He jerked his chin at the two rows of corpses on gurneys.
“You receive that many bodies in a week?” Adrian gasped without thinking.
“Ha!” Dr. Kohn barked out. “You must be new to the fifth district.”
Adrian cleared his throat and moved away from where the man was working. “Uh, yeah. Just transferred from the third.”
The ME hummed and returned to his work. “That explains it. Quieter over there. This is from the past two days.”
“Fuck,” Adrian whispered.
