In the Contagion of Blood Read online

  #three

  There was no way “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Helene asked as we approached.

  We peered down at the ragged body of the dead shifter. There were three massive black streaks down his back, not open wounds, but almost as if someone had drawn three dark charcoal lines, like a tattoo, just under his skin.

  “Are they anywhere else on the body?” I asked, kneeling down to inspect them closely. They looked like blood welts.

  Helene shook her head, motioning to the rest of the shifter’s body with her gloved hands.

  “No, he just has red splotchy sores everywhere. They remind me a bit of that thing I read in grandpa’s book about the mermaid infection.”

  The merfolk disease was what really skyrocketed my dad into the limelight of the Fantom. The merfolk we’re dying. He had asked the mer king if he could have some of the bodies for testing and was absolutely refused. It was completely against their beliefs. The body of a dead merperson had to be placed in a rock cairn in the lowest valley of Neptune’s Trench within eighteen hours of death. Without this ritual, it would be impossible for the spirit to be reunited with the water divinities. The superstitions of the merfolk never ceased to amaze me.

  But my dad needed more time to do tests. It wasn’t until over one hundred of the merfolk had died that the king finally allowed my dad to take three bodies. There was a riot of the merfolk at this and it was almost thought the king would be deposed, but within seventy-two hours my dad had identified the cause of the disease. It was some mutant algae at the lower depths of the burial cairn itself. It infected every merperson who went down to the cairns, and they had brought it back to infect everybody else. Thankfully, my dad also came up with a vaccine.

  My dad’s vaccination not only cured the merfolk, but it made a huge shift in the way the Fantom saw the rest of us blood mages. Typically referred to as the spawn of demons, we weren’t much appreciated because our power over blood tended to frighten those whose lives depended on it. But when they realized we could and would actually save their lives, Suddenly, blood mages weren’t the bane of Fantom anymore, we were just the slightest inch up from being the bottom of the barrel.

  Tracing my fingers along the black welts on the dead shifter’s back, I agreed with my niece’s analysis. My first look at the red sores had also led me to believe it might be something similar to the algae that poisoned the merfolk, but that wouldn’t explain the appearance of these dark streaky tattoos down his back.

  The lines moved! My heart raced and I rubbed my eyes quickly with the back of my wrists. Could it be lack of sleep? Had the marks on his back really just moved? I must have let out a gasp, because Helene looked up at me. But I only saw her out of the corner my eye, because I was staring at the black streaks that were starting to writhe. Then the rotten skin off the dead shifter’s back whipped around suddenly, peeling itself off the corpse and reaching up towards Helene’s wrist.

  “No!” I screamed lunging forward, but I was too far away. In the split-second it took to react, the black dead flesh curled itself around Helene’s arm.

  But Turin interceded. With the speed of a vampire he grabbed Helene by the waist and yanked her out of the leprous grip of dead flesh. A blast went off as Inspector Bernard aimed a Charger 368, the gargoyle’s weapon of choice, at the snake-like thing and a fiery explosion engulfed it. When the blast faded, the black writhing ropes of lifeless skin were still there, moving threateningly as if they would attack again. But as suddenly as they had struck, the black tendrils braided together and pressed their way down into the earth, disappearing from our sight.

  “What the fuck was that?” Inspector Bernard asked.

  “Can you put me down?” Helene asked, kicking her feet a little.

  “Oh, terribly sorry,” Turin said, placing her on the ground behind him. We all stared warily at the body.

  “Maybe we should burn it?” Turin asked.

  “Hell no!” I said. “We’re going to bag this thing. Where is your nearest medical around here? I need a sterile environment.”

  “About ten miles away,” Inspector Bernard said. “Though who the hell is going to touch that thing?”

  Helene deposited our transport kit on the ground in front of us. I kneeled down, pulling out our transfer suits and the corpse bag. “We are,” I said. “Now, get back. There’s no way we’re going to risk anyone else.”

  The gargoyle stepped back happily and motioned his people to follow in retreat. But Turin didn’t move.

  “I think you might need a little bit of support,” he said, his smile dipping as he chose his words carefully. “I’m pretty sure you’ve never dealt with anything like this, either.”

  I took a deep breath to calm my shaking hands and pulled on the reflective suit to protect my body. My gaze fell on Helene, wanting to tell her to not put the suit on or get anywhere near this thing, to go home, back to Melbourne, and let me handle it. But I needed her help. And I had never seen anything like this before. I was in the CDC, so I’d seen some pretty disgusting things. I sighed. If she wanted into this field, she was going to have to get used to it.

  She bit her lip, fingers trembling as they ran up the front of the suit. We didn’t use zippers; the material recognized our DNA, the touch of blood magic running in our fingertips, and closed itself automatically. Once the suit was on, it shrank to fit, a tight, modern shield of armor fitting snug against our bodies.

  “Okay,” I said to Turin, not a little relieved he was actually standing near us. “The suits will protect us from whatever that thing is, if it comes back. It’s made up of micro-woven metal and thick plastic with a healthy dose of blood magic. Nothing can get through it, not the most corrosive chemicals, poisonous venom, or microscopic disease.”

  “Right,” Turin said. “So, it just gets in your face?”

  My fingers reached up and touched the collar of the suit. Immediately the hood unfurled. I pulled it over my face, traced my finger up the front, and it sealed shut with a thick, see-through visor that molded to our faces.

  “That’s actually pretty impressive,” Turin said.

  I looked over at Helene, but her hands were shaking too much to close the face piece. I walked over to her, reaching up and sealing it shut as I leaned forward, my other hand on her shoulder.

  “We are untouchable in these suits,” I said. “And whatever we saw is just a type of animation. My guess is he’s infected with some bacteria that somehow was in his body and when he died it came together in a single location trying to reform and find another host. The organism is gone and what we will be looking for on his body are the traces of those black streaks.”

  “I’m fine,” Helene said loudly, to make sure everybody heard. “The suit just stuck a little bit.”

  “Of course,” I smoothed out my tone to one of clipped professionalism, gave a brief nod and took a step back. Helene always was a bit mature for her age. She had to be, with her parents dying. It’s like she never really had a chance to be a kid. “All I want you to do is go down by his feet. Just slip the bag down there and I’ll reach over and pull it up.”

  “You might want to be careful reaching over the back,” Turin interjected.

  I frowned, because I wanted to tell him the shifter was dead. Anything living under its skin had evaporated or been shot to shit by whatever fire blaster the gargoyle used.

  But it never pays to get a vampire on your bad side. So, I just ignored him.

  We were on for the bag and Helene held his feet as I pulled the rest of the bag underneath the body. Turin moved to the head when he saw me angling for a better grip and tilted the body up. In one fell swoop the body bag was over the subject and Turin tilted it towards me so I could use blood magic to seal up the bag.

  “I could’ve done that,” I muttered.

  “I know,” he said, with a gallant smile. “But now it’s done and everyone is the safer for it.”

  “Your people can remove the corpse now,” I said to Inspec
tor Bernard. It already looked bad enough we hadn’t sealed the body into a bag immediately. My niece had almost been infected. But sometimes it was better to look at the body where it died, without disturbing it too much. I sure hope that decision paid off, because from the looks on everybody’s faces, they were all pretty creeped out. I blanked my mind from the squirming black flesh that had tried to go after Helene. Thinking about crap like that never helped.

  “Let’s look under the body,” I said, pointing to the ground. Helene nodded and immediately went in with tweezers and a light, looking for any piece of diseased evidence that might’ve dropped off the dead shifter.

  #four

  Bruta owned a massive brownstone in Brooklyn. That’s one thing I had to give the fae. We knew how to live stylishly among the humans. I bounded up the stairs, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder. No one had followed me. If they had, I would have known. I would have I watched as the gargoyles loaded the body into the back of the truck. As I reached to the door handle to follow them in, Inspector Bernard put out his hand. “Nothing’s going to be done with the body tonight,” he said. “My people are tired and there’s plenty of time to look at it tomorrow.”

  “It’s best to inspect the body before the decay sets in,” I insisted.

  But the gargoyle shook his head, his face stony. “It’s not going to happen.” His eyes turning towards Helene, who stood to the side of the van a massive yawn stretching out her face. “You might want to get some rest so you’re fresh in the morning. The lab will be open at eight in the morning. I trust that’s early enough for you?”

  I didn’t like the way he spoke to me, condescending as if a blood mage were a second-class citizen. Compared to what? Gargoyles? The treaty with the gargoyles wasn’t so long ago that I couldn’t remember the wars in the Wildelands. Those were fought in my father’s time. But still it didn’t bode well to get the chief inspector on my bad side day one. I didn’t need bureaucracy. I needed to figure out what could possibly have made that biological reaction on the shifter corpse.

  “Do you want to come look at the altar before you take off?” Turin asked.

  “I wouldn’t mind going with you.” I glanced back at the ruins of the church, thinking about what could animate dead flash. There are many biological and scientific reasons for diseases even in our Fantom world, but spells and magic still abound and it was completely reasonable the corpse’s reaction was caused by some sort of magic. Unfortunately, the necromancy, or corpse animation, was, well, it was usually done by a blood mage. We were the only ones around now the dark fae were gone with this kind of power. If there was something weird in the ruins, it might help me figure out whatever killed the lion shifter.

  Another massive yawn from Helene had me whipping my head around to look at her. She immediately snapped her mouth shut. “No, I’m fine! Let’s go look at the altar,” she said. But her eyes were practically half closed.

  “You’re almost asleep on your feet. Hey!” I called out to Inspector Bernard who was almost back to his tiny vehicle. “Can you take my niece back to the B&B?”

  “I’ll make sure she gets there safely,” the gargoyle said.

  Helene nodded appreciatively. “I’ll text you when I’m back safely in the room.” Then the impertinent girl gave me a wink and nodded towards Turin. I stopped myself before I rolled my eyes…but seriously. My niece still had notions of “love at first sight” and “happily ever afters” things I just don’t have time for. Despite boyfriends I had in the past, none of them ever stuck around. I was always too busy looking into microscopes and talking about diseases. Somehow, guys didn’t find that very sexy.

  Whatever.

  I focused my life on raising my niece, helping the blood mages, and protecting the Fantom. At thirty, I kind of thing that is a better way to spend a life.

  #five

  Our feet crunched across the gravel and dead grass as we walk towards Glastonbury Abbey.

  “The church has been in ruins since the fires of 1753,” Turin said. “There were rumors for quite a while this was the burial place of King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere.”

  “Right,” I nod. “Didn’t they find their tomb a number of years back?”

  “Well they found the tomb of some exceptionally tall people, a man and a woman.” There’s something about the way he says, “man and woman” and his eyes shift over me that makes me inhale sharply. My fingers go to the athame on my belt and worry the red jeweled handle.

  It’s weird. I just met this guy. And he just gave me…a look, like I might be his prey.

  Vampires.

  I haven’t had a lot of exposure to them in Australia. They don’t tend to like the heat and the sun. They primarily lived in the northern countries, but on my cases, I’ve met a few, and they all gave you the same look, like you might be their next meal. Of course, as a blood mage I was perfectly safe. No vampire would dare taste my blood. They would want to, but the stories around blood mages were way to fierce. Our blood carried the magic of our ancestors since time immemorial. But it was a dark, dangerous magic, which even the rest of the Fantom world wanted nothing to do with. Our magic could control blood and cells inside the body. It could create disease with just the flick of a finger and rot out your insides. In the old days that’s exactly what we used to do. Walk the earth creating death and destruction. We would infect the blood of the vampire victims so even the vamps would die if they fed. There had long been concrete lines drawn between vampires and blood mages. We hated them for taking the blood we believed was ours by right, the blood we controlled. They hated us for destroying their food.

  And vampires were no use to us. They had no blood of their own, so we could never control them. We could never make their blood sing. We could never make it scream.

  They had long been our aloof enemies.

  But Turin didn’t look at me like he was aloof. He looked at me like I might be his next meal.

  “So, why does this place holds its shape fascination for you?” I asked, tapping my fingers against my athame hilt trying to calm the blood in my veins. It was full of a nervous heat like I wanted to reach out and touch the man walking next to me, but it was the last thing in the world I should do.

  Why suddenly was a vampire holding such fascination for me? As a blood mage, I wanted to feel the pulse of the man I’m with. I wanted to feel the blood rushing through their veins, their heart pumping in and out to every part of their body. I wanted to feel it flood into their cock as I grabbed it with my hands and teased it forward. Vampires are different. Since they have no blood they only get an erection when they’ve fed. So, if you were going to have sex with a vampire, you’re calling forward the blood of some hapless victim. You would basically be having sex with a stranger, one that’s probably dead.

  I was horrified by how the thought of that was making my pulse race and my loins ache. My short intake of breath startled me back to the present. My hand clenched around my athame handle, nails digging into my palm on the other side.

  What the hell? Was I seriously walking next to this guy and thinking of having sex with him?

  He looked down his eyes mirror the heat of my body, but his words were smooth and calm. “They say she was crucified and then burned at the stake.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re not paying attention to a single thing I’m telling you,” Turin said.

  “No. I was thinking about Helene.” I lied.

  The piercing look in his eyes and the slight amusement in his mouth told me he didn’t buy a word of it. “Well, I was talking about Morgan Le Fae.”

  “The sister of King Arthur?” I asked.

  “Half-sister,” Turin raised his shoulders. “They said her father was King Orian. But in my studies, I found a hidden manuscript that spoke of a romantic relationship between her mother and one of the courtiers. He was, apparently, a visiting emissary no one really trusted, but the queen seemed to fall under his spell completely. Eventually the king had him banis
hed. But not until the damage had been done to her reputation.”

  “Great. So, you basically spent your dissertation trying to figure out if some evil woman had had an affair?” I asked. “Nice form. I bet her husband was just a real bastard.”

  Turin raised his eyebrows as he glanced down at me. “That’s an interesting conclusion,” he said. “And there’s no historical evidence pointing to that at all. In fact, he was considered to be one of the Renaissance kings of the medieval period, a patron of the arts and sciences who tried to heal his people and elevate them.”

  My cheeks flushed a little bit. Clearly, I’d given him a few too many clues about my opinion. I didn’t actually dislike men, I just found them to be a weakness. Life was all normal and good and you were going along, trying to solve cases and do good in the world, until suddenly you met some guy and you ended up making stupid decisions and ignoring the people who matter the most.

  Or maybe that was just me.

  “Once the emissary from Ireland was removed,” Turin continued, “things went back to normal. But shortly thereafter, the queen was found to be pregnant. Rumors were rife through the entire kingdom that it was the emissary, not the king, who was the father of the girl child who was born.”

  “Morgan Le Fae.”

  “None other.”

  “So, did you figure out who her father was?” I asked.

  “All traces of the emissary disappeared when he returned to Ireland. I have my suspicions, though, that he was not simply an emissary.”

  “You believe these ancient rumors are true?” I asked.

  “I believe she earned her name, Morgan Le Fae, fairly,” Turin said. “And not only was she fae, but my dissertation worked to prove she was dark fae. A child of prince Lutien of the Unseelie Court.”

  “But they had been banished and kept from this realm for millennia. How could it even be possible that a prince from their court could enter our domain?”