A Breath, Dying - 2
Most of the time, Dave Broussard found research to be a cathartic activity, but today, he wished he could simply put the book in his hands down, close the cover, and never pick it up again.
Or burn it. Burning would be good.
It was his passion for information that had landed him his spot with the police department and given him the income to retire from teaching, but he’d never missed the classroom before. He’d take two hundred hormone-charged undergrads over the facts he was learning in a heartbeat; there was some knowledge that shouldn’t be allowed to exist, simply for the good of all.
Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d seen the tattoo on Grent’s phone wrong. Maybe it just been a unique tribal design, or perhaps the artist had seen the mark of the Twisted Air somewhere; it was unlikely, but not impossible.
He shook his head and took another sip of his tea. The rose ruled out that possibility. Items kept alive past their time, especially flora, indicated the presence of an Air spirit, and even if it were one of the more minor varieties, it had enough power to not only brutally murder the woman who’d invoked it, but would grow in strength as it killed again.
The Air cult had been all but suppressed in North American, but Dave knew that several African and European chapters persisted. Even communication with the spirits was dangerous, and he’d seen first-hand a number of devotees that had made communed with one of the lesser spirits, only to be robbed of the powers of speech and hearing.
Summoning any of the spirits was expressly forbidden except for grand masters in the order, and only a few of those remained; most having died under “suspicious circumstances”. Based on the tattoo on the woman’s shoulder, she had been a low-level functionality at best, and had no business knowing – let alone using – the words required to bring an Air spirit to this dimension.Dave forced his eyes back to the book in front of him. He was one of only three people in the world that had an unabridged copy of the information; while laymen could still find the basics in occult book stores and online, the pertinent information – and more importantly, diagrams – had been removed.
He had been almost certain on seeing the rose what the woman had done wrong, but needed to verify with the text before moving further. Grent and his colleagues would have to be told something about the killer that was on the loose, but Dave would have to make sure it was something they could handle.
It was the lack of an African wasp that had caused the trouble; he had found the remains of a large bumblebee in the dead woman’s room, but crushed against the inside of the window it was hardly out of the ordinary, especially from the perspective of investigators. He hadn’t thought it was relevant either, until the rose caught his eye.
The trouble came in finding a live African wasp in North America – the woman would have had no chance to find one, and substituted a bee thinking it was “good enough”. Unfortunately, those of the Twisted Air were very particular, and the compacts they made with ancient humans were exacting. One small misstep, one ingredient missed and the Spirit would no longer be bound to the will of the summoner. They were always pleased to arrive on earth; humans made excellent energy sources for their kind, but they were always looking for a way out, a way to break the bonds that held them.
He sighed. Had she been able to find the necessary ingredients, the spirit would have done her bidding until it became strong enough and then killed her, but would have been forced to return to its own realm. Now she’d opened the door for it, and allowed it to roam free.
Flipping forward, Dave found the list of spirits she could have brought down. Only three responded to the African wasp, and even though she had used the wrong insect, none of the others would have arrived.
Kandrals were large and slow-moving, but required at least one male summoner in order to be properly bound. Though the woman could have had a male assistant that escaped unharmed, the lack of any destruction around the property pointed away from a Kandral.
Opeis were the right size; they could easily fit into and swarm around a house with little effect, and could be summoned by either a male or female. The trouble lay in their aura, as they desiccated environments rather than encouraging them.
Jthraks fit the bill. Small and mobile, they had a preference for female summoners and exuded a moist air energy that left plants in their path healthier than they had any right to be – an unintended side effect of their wet and swirling nature.
Reading further brought a cold tightness to Dave’s chest. Jthraks were heart-touched, which meant that they not only killed but would siphon a small amount of blood from their victims, blood that would lead them to their next kill. A single Jthrak could destroy entire family trees in a matter of days or weeks, depending on the purity of the sample the obtained.
He hadn’t asked Grent about the tox screen, but he was betting that she had at least a few narcotics in her system; it took a great deal of courage to even consider summoning one of the Twisted Air. Hopefully, that would give them enough time to find her next of kin.
Reaching for his phone, Dave began to work out the story he was going to have to tell Grent. The man was a blunt instrument, but effective enough at sniffing out information once the basics were given to him. So long as he could plant the notion that this was a family-related killing firmly in Grent’s mind, the details wouldn’t matter. He could plead the need for more time while the police found the woman’s nearest relative.
But found relative or not, the Jthrak was coming for them, and that meant he had to find a way to deal with it.
- D
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