Page 12 of Filthy Little Witch
I shrugged. “Weirder things have happened.”
She shook her head. “The only thing I’ll add is that they were all missing their hearts.”
“Hearts?” That got Marta’s attention. “All of them? Even the ones at the end?”
Ballard nodded.
“Did you find evidence of their hearts in their stomachs?” I asked, watching as Atlas ran his gaze over a young woman, the last in the row. He inspected her arms and eventually her legs, looking for signs of a demon mark.
“It’s difficult to tell,” Ballard said. “By the time they dropped dead, they’d been at it for hours. Some of it was partially digested.”
Marta nodded.
“The PD didn’t find anything at the crime scenes,” Ballard continued. “But you can’t live without your heart, so my guess is once everyone else was dead, the last one standing ripped their own out to eat that, too.”
“What about the survivors?” I asked. “Do you notice any commonalities?”
“Well, they’re certainly not missing any vital organs,” Ballard said. “But other than that, I wouldn’t know. I’d have to see their medical reports to be sure.”
“But based on what you’ve heard?” Marta pressed.
Ballard shrugged. “Could be related. If they got the same bad dose or maybe ran into the same rotten dealer? I heard they went at it until they were raw, until they bled and peeled the skin away.”
It sounded horrific, and I wondered again what type of monster we were working with. Certainly a demon. Maybe an incubus?
“But I have no clue why they didn’t progress this far or what would have stopped them from feasting.” Ballard raised an eyebrow. “If you want to see the full workup, I can send it over as soon as I have the toxicology results.”
“Thank you, doctor,” I said.
A bell rang from the front desk, and Ballard sighed. “Feel free to examine the rest of the bodies, if you’d like. I’ll be right back.”
She walked out of the examination room, leaving us alone to speak freely.
“I don’t know of any demon that is capable of this,” Marta said as she walked to the body next to the older woman.
“What about an incubus?” Atlas asked, damn near reading my mind.
“Incubi want to impregnate. They’re the ones doing the fucking,” Marta explained, glancing over her shoulder. When she confirmed we really were alone, she rubbed her hands together and placed them over the chest of another young woman, right above the Y-incision. Marta closed her eyes and mumbled to herself as a white light emanated from her palms and fingertips. I held my breath, half expecting the corpse to sit up and start talking, but when Marta gasped and the energy dissipated, she only shook her head and sighed.
“There’s something there, but it’s…” She rubbed the space between her eyebrows and went to another body, eventually performing the same spell on all of them. “It’s like…I’m being blocked.”
“Is it because they’re dead?” I asked. “Maybe Isobel will get something from the survivors?”
She hummed and hugged her midsection, a sudden wave of deep dread sinking into my gut as it flew across our newly formed bond.
“What is it?” I asked, taking a step closer.
“Whatever did this is more powerful than anything I’ve come across,” she said. “The magical residue left behind is sickening. Vile.”
“Well, they’re all vile,” Atlas said. “I’ve never met a demon I liked.”
I understood what she meant, maybe even better than Atlas, based on his nonchalant response to her explanation. It rankled under my veins. Whatever darkness had permeated into our reality coasted down the space between Marta and me in a truly despicable way.
“We should get back,” she said. “There’s nothing else we can do here.”
Atlas glanced at me, raising his eyebrow as if to suggest her input wasn’t remarkable. I disagreed. Marta might not be the most powerful witch in the Harlots, but I’d been bonded to her for a reason. So had my brother. The sooner he accepted that, the stronger we would be.
CHAPTER 5
