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And so they were. The crowd, the bouncers, hell, even the musicians in Mona’s band were dripping blood steadily from every visible orifice, bleeding from their eyes and ears and nostrils.
Something in Mona’s song was killing them. Whatever that something was didn’t affect the three of us from the Boneyard. I looked around for the source of the attack. Psionic, probably, considering we couldn’t see any telltale flashes of light or energy that would’ve given away the traces of a magical spell. But what if – the silver light on stage. Was that magic after all? Was Mona doing this? Why would she kill her own fans? What the fuck was going on?
People were dying. That was clear enough. I dashed through the mosh pit, negotiating the writhing, agonized bodies. There weren’t any spots to shadowstep into on Mona’s stage. Wherever the light was coming from, it was doing a great job of blotting out any visible shadows. I vaulted over the railing separating the crowd from the stage – no security to stop me, because even the bouncers were flailing on the ground, bleeding to death. But before I could climb up onto the stage, Mona’s singing stopped.
And without her song, the only sound filling the warehouse was that of a hundred or so of the pop star’s fans screaming, dying, as they hemorrhaged from every hole in their body. I watched as Mona’s face went from blissful serenity to abject terror. She covered her mouth with trembling hands as she surveyed the destruction, her cheeks already wet with tears. This wasn’t the face of a girl who had done any of this on purpose. Maybe it was some kind of freak accident. Was Mona a mage? Why hadn’t Sterling mentioned that?
“No,” Mona stammered, her voice tumbling around the warehouse. Her mic was still on. No one had cut it, because the sound guys were dead, too. “God, no. What’s happening?”
Carnage. That’s what was happening. Someone had thrown on the lights, and it only made things that much worse. The warehouse was flooded in red. Sterling and Asher were nowhere to be seen. I had a feeling that Asher had very responsibly whisked our vampire friend away, to avoid anything unseemly. I should have done the same, gotten out of there fast – but the Lorica moved faster.
The first of the Wings turned up before the last body even hit the ground. Truly, at this point, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see them anymore, except that I never recalled the Wings showing up quite that quickly.
Either the massive number of dead bodies – over a hundred of them – had raised some significant flag for the Lorica’s Eyes, or the event that triggered this wide-scale slaughter had created an energy flare that they simply couldn’t ignore. One thing was for sure. Whatever had killed all these people was bad, bad magic.
About twelve men and women popped into existence around the premises. None of them were faces I recognized from the short time I’d spent working for the Lorica. As the organization that governed North American magic and mages, they were the people responsible for policing magical activity, and especially magical crime. They dedicated their tremendous resources to keeping up the Veil, the barrier of secrecy that protected our world from the regular one – from the civilians.
The normals, as we called them. The Lorica were fully staffed and equipped to take care of business, too. The Wings were teleporters tasked with bringing in the rest of the team. Hands were arcane combatants, mages gifted with deadly magic that made them ideal for blasting and burning things. I spotted four of them break off from their transport escorts and spread through the warehouse, combing for threats.
The faint pop that heralded the arrival of another teleporter sounded off behind me, and I whirled to see another man appear on stage. Mona’s shocked shriek bounded around the warehouse when she caught sight of the man, or rather, when he caught her by the shoulder. His voice carried across the speakers, caught by Mona’s microphone.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Take it easy.”
He placed two fingers on her temple. Mona’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she collapsed into his arms. The man laid her gently on the stage, then snapped his fingers, calling for the others to assist. Then his eyes settled on me. My muscles tensed, and again I fought the urge to dart into the Dark Room. The man frowned, snapped his fingers again, then reappeared mere inches from my face. I yelped and stumbled backwards.
“We haven’t met,” he growled.
“I, um, hello,” I said. Something about the man unsettled me, and it wasn’t just the way his eyes were boring into me with the intensity of someone who seemed morbidly interested in studying my insides. “Dustin Graves. My name.” I held out my hand.
“I know who you are.” He didn’t take my hand. “Name’s Royce.”
“Royce?”
“Just Royce.”
I didn’t push any further. The guy looked about ready to rip my head off. He was kind of shabby, smothered in exhaustion, his flannel shirt buttoned in the wrong holes, his coat pulled on hastily, his laces half-tied. He had the look of a Wing who had been on one too many night shifts, or, alternately, had just rolled out of bed. It was easy to tell from his disheveled hair, and his eye bags, which were big enough to carry cigarettes in. Which he smelled of, honestly. Also whiskey.
“Listen, Royce. I know this looks bad, but I swear I had nothing to – ”
“I know you had nothing to do with this,” he snapped. “Don’t patronize me. I don’t see any holes in their bodies. You might not have evolved to the fullest of your abilities, but this isn’t something you can do with your shadow blades.”
“Oh.” He knew about the blades I could summon from the Dark Room. “So you’ve, um, heard about me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. We keep records on everyone at the Lorica. You know that. You used to work there. Remember?”
I raised my hands. “So I’m off the hook, right?”
Royce walked very, very close to me, so close I could smell his breath. It was laced with the minty-freshness of someone who had leapt out of bed, thrown on yesterday’s clothes, and hurriedly brushed his teeth, all in the rush to cover up the scene of a magical massacre. I tried not to gulp.
“Look around you,” he growled, deep and low. “This place is a blood bath. I have questions, and until you provide answers, you aren’t going anywhere.”
I did look around, as he told me to, and I couldn’t ignore how the Lorica was already hard at work eradicating all of the blood. A cleanup crew used focused spells of disintegration to scrub away all traces of organic matter, to make the warehouse look exactly as it did before Mona’s song caused everyone to leak their brains out of their skulls.
But I noticed that they hadn’t done anything about the corpses just yet. It was awe-inspiring, and in that moment, I realized, terrifying to watch how efficient and how brutally skillful the Lorica was at preserving the Veil, at throwing a sheet over the realities of the arcane underground.
“Wherever you are, carnage follows. Do you know how much time my people are going to spend making this look like an accident? God, we’re probably going to have to set this entire place on fire. No way we can explain over a hundred disappearances in one night.” He raked through his hair, his eyelids squeezing hard together, the very picture of a migraine medication commercial. “If you know anything – anything at all about this incident – now’s the time to talk.”
“I swear I don’t know anything. I was just here to watch the concert. There was a light show. The stage looked all silver, and then she did her last song, and everyone just started bleeding from all of their face-holes.”
