Gift of Curses, page 1
Gift of Curses
A Barrier Witch Story
Amir Lane
Contents
Also by Amir Lane
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Gift of Shadows Preview
Also by Amir Lane
About the Author
Gift of Curses
Copyright © 2019 by Amir Lane
* * *
All rights reserved.
* * *
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form by any means without prior written permission of the author.
* * *
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real events, places, or characters is completely coincidental.
* * *
Cover by Covers by Combs
www.coversbycombs.com
Formatting by Keyminor Publishing Services
www.keyminorpublishing.com
Three bodies. Three murders. One connection.
The Special Crimes Division is an elite task force that handles magic and parahuman related crimes. Witch and detective Fairuz Arshad welcomes the change from the grisly demands of Homicide... until she’s given her first case.
A witch, siren, and dryad are found dead from causes that can’t be explained. Each victim visited the same magic shop prior to their death. The evidence suggest there’s something far more dangerous at work than simple spells gone wrong.
A djinni is to blame for the rising body count, and his reign of terror is far from over. Fearing her magic is no match for his is the least of of Fairuz’s concerns. Someone is controlling the djinni and using his power for their own twisted agenda.
Can Fairuz stop this murderous rampage? Or will hers be the next body?
Also by Amir Lane
Barrier Witch
Gift of Curses (#0)
Gift of Shadows (#1)
Gift of Ashes (#1.5)
Gift of Secrets (#2)
Gift of Darkness (#3)
Morrighan House Witches
Rise (#0)
Shadow Maker (#1)
Bad Omen (#2)
Panther Queen (#3)
Visit amirlane.com for all their books
To Courtney,
My perpetual lab partner, who put up with more of my shit than any human being should have to.
Chapter One
What happened to being done with bodies, I asked myself. I took a sip of homemade Turkish coffee from a travel mug as I looked over the corpse on the floor.
“Oh yeah, that's a dead body.”
I had been working with Special Crimes Detective Rowan Oak for all of two-and-a-half hours, and I'd learned that sarcasm was a language of its own to him. It didn't bother me much. It might have been a coping mechanism. As long as it wasn’t directed at me, I didn’t mind it. Most people weren't as used to dead bodies as I was. I didn't know him well enough to know how to deal with him, especially in the presence of a corpse. The best approach seemed to be to answer in kind.
“Is it? I couldn't tell,” I said.
He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it as he presumably realized I was being sarcastic, too. His lip twitched in what might have been his version of a smile. There were actual trees who showed more emotion than he did. He removed the black beanie sitting on top of his head to run his fingers through his dark hair, then put it back.
“All right, Arshad, you're the Homicide detective. You tell me what we're looking at.”
“You can call me Fairuz,” I said for the third time today.
I didn't bother pointing out I wasn't a Homicide detective anymore. It didn’t surprise me that the first body case that came through the Special Crimes Division since I’d officially started with them that morning got passed to me. Of the four of us — five including our Staff Sergeant, Sabine Beaupré — I was the only one with Homicide experience. I had three years of it. It was only natural that this would fall on my new desk.
I wasn't sure if this was a homicide yet. It was unusual, though.
I walked a circle around the body, careful not to disturb any possible evidence. The short heels of my flats clicked against the dirty tile floor. Off to the side of the room, a few uniformed officers and crime scene technicians watched and whispered amongst themselves. Rowan pushed the sleeves of his black hoodie up and folded his bare arms across his chest as he scrutinized my process with a raised eyebrow.
The body was strange. It was beyond strange. I had seen my share of strange bodies in this city, but this was almost definitely one of the strangest.
The woman’s floral-print dress hung off her shriveled body as if was several sizes too big. It could have been a blanket. That made no sense, though. It was a wrap dress, which meant she would have adjusted it to her size before she’d died. Sometime between when this woman got dressed and when the addicts found her a few hours ago, her body had become literal skin and bones. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on her. Her skin, so dry it cracked in places, clung to atrophied muscles.
It made no sense.
Yes, if she’d been there long enough, the fluid could have drained and evaporated from her body, but that couldn't have been what happened here. Her dress was too clean. Nothing had chewed through either the fabric or her skin. Even when I crouched down, handing my mug back to Rowan, I saw no signs of insect activity. The woman couldn't have been dead for more than a few hours, but she looked like she’d been dead for decades.
I fished a hair elastic from one of my pockets and used it to tie back my unruly black curls. The protective energies of my rings left me as I pulled them off. The absence made me feel exposed and unprotected, even with my own magic flowing through my blood. With Rowan standing behind me, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled a little. It would take some getting used to his uncanny dryad stillness. I slipped my rings into my pockets.
“Can you pass me gloves?” I asked.
Rowan grunted by way of response. The floor creaked, and he dropped a pair of latex gloves into my outstretched hand. I thanked him and pulled the gloves on slowly to avoid ripping them on my short acrylic nails. The powdered insides were soft against my skin.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
I was thinking a lot of things. I was thinking that even her shoes, a pair of black sling back heels, were too big. I was thinking that somebody with this little fat or muscle wouldn't be able to get to this floor alone. The elevator was out and even though I was in decent shape, the stairs were steep enough that my thighs were still burning. I was thinking how odd it was that somebody so well-dressed ended up dead in the middle of an abandoned office building, one that had been unused for years. Had she been meeting somebody here? This was a popular spot for drug addicts. Just because she was well-dressed didn’t mean she wasn’t one herself.
The general state of the body masked the usual physical signs of it. I checked her nostrils for any inflammation, but I couldn’t tell if the cracking of her skin was from snorting something or from the dehydration. I checked her arms for track marks. When I couldn’t see anything in the crook of her elbow, I did my best to peek between her toes. They were so stiff, I was afraid one would break off when I nudged it with my finger.
I was calling it inconclusive. The autopsy would tell us more.
There was no purse in the room. It might have been stolen. Her high heels had no space to hide a phone or driver’s license. I sometimes kept things in my bra, but there were too many people staring to leave me comfortable enough to check. Even a corpse deserved some decency.
Mostly, I was thinking about how sad it was to die in a place like this.
I reached back toward Rowan again.
“Do you have a pen?”
“What do you want, my blood?” Rowan muttered.
“No, I want a pen.”
Why couldn’t have Staff Sergeant Beaupré have sent me with one of the other men in our department? I would have much rather been here with the fatherly Kieron Harper or animated Indira Krishnamurthy-King. I would have even preferred my old partner or Staff Sergeant Beaupré herself over Rowan’s constantly sour mood.
Rowan dropped a pen into my hand with as much ceremony as he had with the gloves. I used the end of it to push the woman’s upper lip. Her skin stuck to her teeth.
“I’ve never seen somebody so dehydrated,” I said.
“No kidding. I’ve never even seen a dryad get that dehydrated, and we dehydrate quick.”
Oh, so he did have something useful to say. Rowan came to crouch next to me, cursing under his breath and covering his nose with his arm. I touched the pen to her gums and pressed. A second canine extended from her gum above the first.
“She’s a siren,” I said.
“How does a siren end up completely dehydrated in an abandoned office building in Weston?” he asked.
“Isn’t that our job to find out?”
He snorted. “It is unless those assholes in Homicide decide they want it back. No offence. Hope you weren’t banking on a quiet first day.”
Actually, I’d been hoping for the opposite. I didn’t like quiet days. They made me feel useless. That said, a slow day in Homicide wasn’t always a bad thing. There were always cold cases to dig back into.
I stood and walke d the room again, Rowan at my heels. There wasn’t much here. Clean patches between the spots of dust suggested there were enough people coming through to keep the entire floor from being coated, but not enough to keep it clean. Cigarette butts were piled into a corner. I had a uniformed officer collect them all. I doubted the lab would be able to get any viable DNA from them, but they might tell us how often this room was visited or how recently.
Layers of magic clung to the room. Drugs might not have been the only thing changing hands here; there was a whole black market for illegal and off-the-books spells.
For the most part, the room was empty. It was the worst kind of crime scene.
“I don’t think there’s anything more we can do here until the lab reports and autopsy are done,” I said.
Rowan nodded in silent agreement.
We were barely half-way back to the precinct when a female voice through the radio requested backup. The address was only a block away. We might have ignored it to leave it to uniformed officers if not for the words hostile witch and all available units.
“Hold on,” Rowan said.
He flipped on the light sitting on top of his car and siren, though it wasn’t necessary with the minimal traffic on the road, and turned around in the middle of the street. The tires squealed against the asphalt. My shoulder hit the side of the door. I dug my nails into the worn leather to brace myself. He sped through the single intersection without slowing down, and parked half-way on the curb. I was out of the car before the engine was off.
Officers surrounded the storm witch. Electricity crackled around him. A TAZER lay uselessly at his feet. The pins were still embedded in his skin.
Honestly, the responding officers should have known better than to try electrocuting a storm witch. It was better than shooting him on sight, I would give them that, but the first move should have been to call in the Emergency Task Force to talk him down or get in that close.
“Has anybody called the ETF yet?” I asked one of the uniformed officers aiming her gun right at the witch’s chest.
The tag on the front of her uniform said Velasquez.
“Not yet, Detective.”
“Call them. Now.”
I stepped toward the witch.
“Just stay the fuck away from me,” he shouted.
With the electricity crackling around his hands, I didn’t plan on getting much closer than this if I didn’t have to.
“I promise, I will not hurt you,” I said.
My words might have held more weight if not for Rowan standing behind me with his gun drawn. My own gun was still secured firmly in the holster sitting on my hip. I was really hoping nobody would get shot today. Considering the witch in front of me was probably more out of control now than he had been before being hit with three milliamperes and 50,000 volts of electricity, a shooting might have been inevitable.
I didn't have much experience with this. From Rowan’s overly rigid stance, I assumed he didn’t either.
If the witch didn’t calm down soon, I would have to do something drastic. I was really hoping to avoid that today. The last thing I needed was Internal Affairs breathing down my neck on my first shift in a new department. We’d had words a few times over me ‘harassing’ murder suspects and, most recently, breaking an alleged serial killer’s nose. Hitting civilians in the face was highly frowned upon, even when those civilians were ‘alleged’ serial killers. My lawyer had argued me down to a sharp scowl by pointing out that I hadn’t actually hit the guy, I’d simply formed a barrier two inches in front of where he was running.
As much as I respected what Internal Affairs did, I preferred to do it from a distance.
An instinct beneath my skin itched for me to move forward to comfort the witch. He couldn’t have been older than sixteen or seventeen. Was I really going to let my partner shoot someone who was practically still a child?
I looked at Rowan. His eyes were locked on the witch, leaving no room for any kind of silent conversation.
“I just want to talk,” I said. “Look, I don’t even have my gun out.”
Not only did I not have my gun out, I wasn’t even wearing a bulletproof vest. What I was wearing was far too much metal to be near the equivalent of a living electrical socket. I’d heard of people getting struck by lightning and having their jewelry melt to their skin. The thought was almost enough to make me start pulling my many rings, earrings, and necklaces off. Only the knowledge that it might make the witch panic more kept me from reacting.
Where the hell was the Emergency Task Force? They should have been on their way by now.
The witch’s eyes flew open at my words. I wasn’t sure he could see me with the electricity sparking from his eyes. Still, I held my hands up with my palms open so he could see I was unarmed. The motion lifted my blazer enough to show that my gun was, in fact, still in its holster. I was fast enough to draw it out if I needed to, but I had something even faster up my sleeve.
That wasn’t just a metaphor.
The barriers that sat under my skin hummed as the magic moved through my veins in preparation.
The witch grabbed a handful of his hair and doubled over, screaming in pain. Streetlights flickered around us. I jumped to avoid a line of electricity that ran through the pavement. Rowan didn’t move. Did dryads have some kind of natural grounding I didn't know about, or was he just that focused? The uniformed officers behind me weren’t so put together. They raised their guns again.
“Hold fire!” I shouted.
“It’s too much!” the witch screamed.
My heart bled for him. People always said I was too sympathetic to be a cop. The truth was, I’d been too sympathetic to become a lawyer. I belonged on the front lines like this, not behind a desk drafting a defense for the officer who might shoot the poor boy.
I took a steadying breath and slid my foot forward across the pavement. The witch didn’t seem to notice.
“Arshad,” Rowan said, a low warning in his voice.
I ignored him. My only priority was keeping the boy from hurting anybody, and to keep anybody from hurting him.
“Listen to me,” I said gently. “I need you to focus on my voice. Can you do that? Can you hear me?”
The witch nodded. I might not have known much about dealing with out of control witches, but I knew plenty about dealing with shaken witnesses. It couldn’t have been that different.
“Good. My name is Fairuz Arshad. I’m with the Special Crimes department. My job is to help people like you. Do you understand me? Good. What’s your name?”
His only response was to drop to his knees with another scream. I whirled around to see who had shot him, but nobody had. That was his own powers overwhelming him. Talking wasn’t going to work. It might have worked before the officer tasered him. Now, it was time for that something drastic.
“Arshad,” Rowan warned again, more firmly this time.
The witch was becoming volatile. Electricity ran over his skin in glowing white lines. His body trembled with the force of keeping it all inside himself. Static crept over my arms, raising the fine hairs. We were out of time, and I didn’t see the Emergency Task Force anywhere. It was just us.
I moved toward the witch.
“Arshad!”
It wasn’t so much a warning this time as a startled cry that I tuned out.
“Hold fire!” I shouted.
“Are you out of your fucking mind, Arshad? Stay back!”
Nobody would shoot with me getting in so close to the witch. I had no idea if this would pay off. I could have been throwing myself on top of a grenade, but I could not just stand by and watch a kid be gunned down in the street. I would not. If this didn’t work, there was still the chance to shoot him. If the officers behind me filled the witch with bullets, there was no coming back from that.
