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I approached the body, surprised that it had even been noticed. Probably more than one car had passed the bloody lump on the side of the road and assumed it to be an animal that had lost its battle with a vehicle. My throat tightened as I got closer. Her death would have likely been far more pleasant if she’d merely been hit by a car. The coppery smell of blood mingled sickeningly with the dank stench of stagnant water and composting vegetation from the nearby swamp.
It was definitely Belle, the girl in the picture—ugly gashes marred the young cheeks beneath the slanted eyes, piercings in her brow and lip still in place. The body flowed and flickered with arcane markings and, unlike the last body, I could easily read these runes. I stood a few feet away, eyes narrowed and fists clenched.
“What do they say?” Ryan asked softly from beside me.
“Taunts and threats,” I said, voice tight. “Some indication of what was done to her, runes of suffering and torment.” And a glyph that included my own name wound through the others, but I wasn’t sure I was going to share that with Ryan. The killer knew I was a summoner, and now he was telling me that it didn’t matter, that I wasn’t strong enough to stop him.
“He’s baiting you,” Zack murmured.
I glanced sharply at him, unaware that he’d been standing right behind us. But then I realized that Ryan had probably brought him completely up to speed, including all of the arcane aspects. “He’s an asshole,” I growled in reply, then crouched by the body, ignoring the buzz and bite of mosquitoes. I noticed immediately that the injuries were markedly different from those of the other victims. Cruder, more savage. No precise slices or burns. Instead, she’d been nearly ripped apart. My stomach clenched as I took in the parallel slices across the girl’s torso that had disemboweled her. I recognized them easily as claw marks, but I wondered what Dr. Lanza would make of them. The symbol had been slashed messily into her thigh, like an afterthought.
“They didn’t take their time with this one,” I said, voice hoarse. “This was a slaughter.”
Ryan growled something under his breath, and I didn’t need to hear the words to be able to agree with the meaning. I shuddered, then narrowed my eyes at the tracks and impressions in the dirt that surrounded the body. “The demon brought her here.” I stood. “See those tracks?” I pointed out the deep indentations in the ground. “It landed there and then pushed off again to take flight, just dumping her body here.” But then I looked more closely at the tracks, bothered.
“What is it?” Zack asked.
“It… doesn’t make sense,” I said. The tracks were clear—most certainly not made by any manner of human. “A kehza wouldn’t be strong enough to fly all the way here with a burden like a body. Hell, they’re barely strong enough to fly at all. They can only do short flights.”
“Like when it was swooping down at us?” Ryan asked with a scowl.
“Exactly. So there’s just no way it could have flown here to dump the body.”
Ryan glanced around to make sure no one else was close enough to overhear our conversation. Fortunately, Harris was still pontificating to his own people. “And I guess it’s pretty silly to think that the killer drove the demon and his victim to someplace close, just so that it could fly over and deposit the body.”
“Right. It doesn’t make any sense. And the timing doesn’t work either. We were at the diner barely fifteen minutes after Belle called. Even if she’d already been brought out here, there’s no way that the kehza could have flown back to town in time to attack us. And it couldn’t have killed her and dumped her afterward, because it had been sent back to its own plane.” I cursed softly. “That must mean that there’s a second demon, a higher-level demon—probably a syraza or a reyza. Either of those would be more than strong enough to snatch her from that street and fly her all the way out here to kill her. The kehza was just there to find out more about me.”
“And using that syraza or reyza gives the killer an alibi,” Zack pointed out. “If he lets the demon snatch his victims and take care of the bodies, he can be anywhere else.”
That was an unpleasant thought.
“How could he have sent the kehza after you and also had this other demon to take care of this body? I thought you said that it was almost impossible to summon and hold two demons?” Ryan asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I did. It is. Crap. There must be another explanation.” There was one, but it was one that deepened the feeling of dread within me.
“I don’t like the look on your face, Detective,” Ryan said.
“Damn. It’s possible—possible—that he has formally allied with the higher-level demon, which would mean it wouldn’t require the same level of effort to summon.”
Kind of like what you could have with Rhyzkahl, the thought crept in. But, no, this was different. This was an indication of a degree of cooperation that was rarely seen between summoners and the beings they summoned. The thought of a demon and a summoner working together to summon and control a Demonic Lord spoke of conflicts that ranged far beyond this sphere. In fact, having a higher demon as an ally would probably be the only way a summoner could ever hope to succeed in summoning and binding a Demonic Lord.
“Okay, this is starting to feel really, really bad,” I said, as I stepped away from the body.
“Care to share?” Ryan said. “I mean, besides the obvious stuff that even I can figure out.”
Harris chose that moment to wonder what the three of us were up to. He huffed up to us, shirt straining.
“I’ll take care of this,” Zack murmured. “Ryan can fill me in later.”
I gave him a look of relief as he neatly intercepted Harris and deftly guided him away from us. I could hear him asking the rotund detective about the traffic that usually traveled the highway and then could hear Harris eagerly launching into a story about drug trafficking and bike gangs.
Damn. Talk about taking one for the team! I motioned with my head for Ryan to follow, walking well away from the others to a point near where the ground turned soft and the swamp began. “If he’s allied with a demon,” I said, speaking low and quickly, “it’s almost definitely a syraza or a reyza—eleventh- or twelfth-level demons—since the lowers don’t have enough control or power to be capable of a worthwhile alliance. And the only reason one would ally with a human, even a summoner, would be if it was worth his while. If he was going to get something out of it.” I frowned and stuffed my hands down into my pockets. “In every summoning, a summoner has to give the summoned creature something in return. It’s totally a power struggle, and the creature is bound, but only a small portion of that binding is arcane in nature. It’s all about the honor. During the summoning, after the initial binding, the summoner offers the demon something that would be considered valuable to the demon—enough to satisfy their bruised honor—and what it is depends on the demon.”
“What sort of something are we talking about?”
“Like I said, it depends on the demon. Some of the smaller ones like chocolate or beer. Others like books. Some want information. Others merely want the summoner to spill his or her blood to show their commitment to the summoning. It depends on the demon.”
“Okay,” Ryan drawled. “And what could our Symbol Man have offered this demon in exchange for his help?”
