The Year of the Knife Read online

  Sully almost laughed at the superstitious nonsense. “They only come if you call them by their own name, sergeant. You can say ‘demons’ until the cows come home, and it won’t do any harm.”

  He flinched when she said the word but went on, “We’ve managed to piece together a time line from witnesses, scrying, and the family’s social media. Mister”—he checked his clipboard—“Mister Underwood left work at about eight, got home just before nine. The family had already had dinner. He ate some leftovers. They all watched TV together for half an hour. That was about the time that our alarms started and the family went silent. We were on the scene about half an hour later.”

  Sully blew her frustration out between her teeth. “So they have been in there with whatever came through for nearly three hours? What shape is your badge sergeant?”

  He scowled at her and said nothing. The other men seemed to be intently studying their own folders or examining the barrier. She spat on the ground.

  “How many kids are in there?”

  He grunted. “Two girls. Teenagers.”

  She stepped closer to him, breaking up the circle. “Your badge is in the shape of a shield. It is in the shape of a shield because you’re meant to put yourself between innocent people and harm. You had better hope that it killed those girls, sergeant. You had better hope that it was quick. Because if I go in there and have to see what it has done to them, and it has kept them alive for three hours because you were too chicken-shit to send in the redcoats, I will be coming for you. Do you hear me?”

  The sergeant tried to posture, tried to answer back, but the weight of Sully’s power was behind her emerald stare. He was pinned like a butterfly to a board. Legally she couldn’t just kill him for following procedure. They were both agents of the Imperial law in their own ways. But then again, magicians were a law unto themselves. All magicians got a bit strange with time, and rules like “wear clothes” and “don’t kill people” seemed to fade in significance when you spent your days trying to puzzle out the equations to create your own miniature star or a cat with a human face. He nodded nervously and backed away.

  Sully rolled her shoulders and took off her overcoat, handing it to some poor hapless boy in uniform. She trusted the NAPD as far as she could throw them, so she scooped up one of the Schrödinger units to check the readings herself.

  The Schrödinger’s Box was a clever piece of equipment. They were originally used to detect when wishes were being made. When the laws of probability were getting skewed, the randomness of the breakdown of radioactive material inside their lead-lined core became a lot less random, but with a bit of time the technology was refined, and they could detect practically any magic nowadays. Sully saw that the readings were off the charts, so high that she was surprised white rabbits weren’t spontaneously appearing in people’s hats.

  She found the exhausted redcoat and tapped him on the shoulder. He was still glassy-eyed when he turned to face her, and it was with some sadness she realized that in her report, he was going to be hammered just as hard as the bitch who left him holding the barrier so long it had lobotomized him. Assuming Sully lived long enough to write a report.

  She held out a hand. “Give me your sword kid.”

  He barely responded—whatever channels had been carved into his mind by the spell were cutting through the language centers of his brain—so Sully reached inside his jacket and drew his sword out herself. She strode over to the barrier, casting spells on herself as she walked. The middle-aged redcoat who’d taken over for him couldn’t do much more than glance sideways as Sully whispered an incantation, punched through the barrier, then stepped right through, letting it close behind her.

  The house was lit up in a pulsing purple tone, and it took Sully a moment to realize that it was the red and blue lights outside being twisted by the barrier. There was no sign of damage to the structure, which gave Sully some hope. Demons were many things, but subtle wasn’t one of them. If there had really been one set loose in here, it would have demolished the place and been throwing itself at the barrier long before now.

  Even so, something was going on, and Sully, never the quiet and retiring type, was about to find out what. There was an old industrial spell—primarily used in glass work and in the last century for making light bulbs—that Sully had tweaked slightly to create the effect of a grenade explosion. She whispered it then and every window in the house exploded outward. Spellfire was drifting off her fingertips and dancing around her, overflowing and getting caught in the currents of the spells she’d already cast on herself. At that moment, her sight, strength and speed were bordering on inhuman. Demons could swallow even the strongest of spells, so she armed herself with whatever advantages she could.

  She kicked the front door off its hinges, and for the first time that night, Sully felt tired. All of the spells operating at the same time drained her reserves faster than usual. Magical exhaustion was serious business—the idiot outside was proof enough of that. Sully needed to make this quick. Whatever monster was in the house couldn’t have missed all of the noise she was making. To her heightened senses, even her footsteps seemed deafening.

  Nothing looked out of place as she made her way into the home. The hallway walls were pristine and white; the only decorations were a woven wall hanging and a rug from the United Nations. Naughty Mr Underwood, dodging the trade embargo with the Native Americans, he was going to get a slap on the wrist for that, if he still had wrists.

  It looked normal. But the smell—she knew that smell far too intimately to relax. There was a metallic tinge to it, like raw meat mingled with the unique sickly-sweet stench of a punctured bowel. The smell was coming from the doorway to the right. Glancing through, Sully took in an equally pristine dining room and a doorway hung with a beaded curtain that appeared to lead to the kitchen. She did not want to go into the kitchen—that was where the corpse stink was strongest.

  Sully startled at the sound of a footstep above her—a leather soled shoe squeaking against polished wood. She readied her borrowed sword and crept up the stairs. Straining her ears to catch any sound of movement, any warning of what she was about to encounter, she heard something completely unexpected. First a little sob and, just at the edge of her senses, two heartbeats. Then the unmistakable sound of steel biting into wood.

  Sully ran up the remaining stairs, her sword at the ready, the glow of spellfire lighting her way. There was a corridor at the top of the stairs, and some remnant of sanity made her creep along it instead of running. She came to a corner and halted. There was ragged breathing just around it and the regular thumping of metal into wood that gradually ground to a halt.

  Sully had heard demons speak before. They rarely had anything smart to say, being more interested in screeching elaborate threats, but when they did speak it sort of sounded like a squid gargling rocks. The voice from around the corner didn’t sound like a demon’s—it sounded like a chorus of screaming voices all trying to squeeze through one mouth. “WE cAN SMELL YoU litTLE WITcH.” There was a staggering footstep. “COMe out anD PLAy.”

  Whatever this was, Sully had never heard anything like it before. She took a steadying breath then stepped around the corner. It was a man, presumably Mr. Underwood. His clothes hung loosely on his body, everything slightly out of place. His thinning hair had fallen out of its greasy comb-over and was dangling off the side of his lolling head. He moved in a series of twitches; the overall impression was of a broken toy. In his hand was a kitchen knife, a big steely one that was stained with blood. The door behind him was covered in wild slashes, but he had not managed to break through. Sully took another deep breath and his head jerked around to follow the sound. Although his eyes didn’t seem to lock onto her, his mouth flapped open and that noise came out again, “TELL yoUR MASters. TELL them thaT WE aRE COMING BacK.”

  Sully leveled her sword at him and hoarsely whispered, “Drop the weapon.”

  His head rolled on his shoulders and his face twisted into an almo
st comical rictus, like he was noticing the bloody knife in his hand for the first time. Sully heard a sound like the wind rustling leaves and slowly realized it was meant to be a laugh. He took one staggering step forward, arms dangling limp at his sides. That was all the provocation that Sully needed. She darted forward and thrust the sword into his chest—close to the heart, if not straight through it. She felt the blade glance off a rib and lodge solidly in one of the bones in his back. When she couldn’t tug it free and he wasn’t falling, she leapt back, freeing her hands in case she needed them.

  The man looked down at the sword sticking out of his chest with all signs of amusement. He took another dragging step toward her and hissed, “It IS tHE YEAR oF the KNIfe.”

  Then he collapsed. He wasn’t bleeding properly yet—it was pooling under him but it wasn’t gushing out the way that it should be. Sully shuddered and quickly let all of her spells unwind before they knocked her out.

  She heard a loud sob from behind the door, then the screaming cry of someone descending into hysterics. With a barely remembered incantation from her college days, Sully melted the lock then nudged the door open with the toe of her boot. The girls were inside, huddled around each other behind a barricade of towels, cowering under the torn shower curtain. They wailed as she leaned inside, so she had to shout to be heard, “You can come out. He’s dead.” Sully was talented in a lot of areas, but comforting the children of a man she’d just killed was a bit beyond her, so she beat a hasty retreat back downstairs.

  Sully was about to head out the front door when she remembered the smell in the kitchen. She knew she didn’t have to go and look. She had done her part—killed the monster, saved the damsels in distress. She could leave now feeling pride in her work. But that treacherous part of her, the part that made her a good investigator instead of just muscle, wouldn’t let her go. It called leaving without looking cowardice, and if there was a spell to silence that voice in her head, Sully had never found it.

  She walked to the kitchen. It was a modern looking room, all stainless steel and brickwork, but now it was accented with the very old-fashioned decoration of blood on every surface. There was arterial spray up over the hood above the oven, crusted on where the electric stovetop had been left running. The mother of the kids upstairs had been a classy looking soccer mum wearing a union jack dress from some weirdly patriotic but trendy designer. She was pinned to the kitchen counter by a couple of the kitchen knives. The husband had obviously gone to work on her. The coroner was going to have a hell of a time counting the number of stab wounds involved. The smell caught in the back of Sully’s throat again—she’d taste this woman’s death for days.

  The shimmering barrier was still in place, the lights from outside the dome writhing purple on its surface like oil on a pond. With one well-placed spell and a bit of spite, Sully tore it down. There were screams and shouts and the sound of a dozen shotguns being cocked. The police were going to go down swinging if a demon came running out. She gave them all a smile. The backlash from the barrier going down had knocked the remaining redcoat unconscious. That was for the best, a hedge witch with a badge could start asking all sorts of awkward questions about now.

  Sully saw the Detective-Sergeant making a hasty retreat and caught him by the back of his collar. He shook her hand off and turned to face her and take his lumps like a man. Sully leaned in close, her face twisted into a mask of rage, and whispered, “The girls are still alive”—he paled before she finished—“and unharmed.”

  He let out a groan. “Jesus fucking Christ lady, my heart ain’t that good. Don’t do that to me.”

  She gave him a pat on the shoulder. “You got lucky today. No demons. Something weird. But no demons. Do me a favor, I was meant to be off duty about a day ago, could you get the bodies shipped over to the IBI offices? I want my coroner to have a poke at them. There was something odd going on with the guy.”

  He was nearly giggling with relief, “Yeah, sure, no problem sweetheart.”

  She raised an eyebrow at the last word, and he coughed and corrected himself. “Sir?”

  Sully went home to do her paperwork.

  July 4, 2015

  Sully woke up to the sound of her cellphone buzzing on the bedside table. She didn’t have a hangover; she’d been too tired to drink last night, which was probably a good thing. Regardless, a headache pounded behind her eyes, although she couldn’t tell if it was because of magical exhaustion or just the lack of sleep. She fumbled the phone to her ear and managed to hit the answer button by mashing it against the side of her face. She attempted to say “hello” but the sound that came out of her mouth was closer to the one a cat makes when choking up a hairball. She coughed and tried again. “This is Sully?”

  The crisp voice of Deputy Director Colcross jerked her awake and into an upright position.

  “Good morning Agent Sullivan. Could you visit me in my office at your earliest convenience? I would like to discuss last night’s activities, and I believe that Doctor Sharma would like you to shed some light on the ambulance full of bodies that were delivered to him in the early hours.”

  Sully coughed again but managed to splutter out, “Sure, sir. I’ll head over now.”

  “That would be just perfect. Thank you, Agent Sullivan.”

  The phone made a beeping noise when it disconnected, and Sully was left sitting bolt upright in her bed. What had she done this time? She let out a long and steady groan as she flopped back down.

  Eventually, she stopped groaning and rolled out of bed. Her apartment was right by the Black Bay, and the ambient magic of the place made anyone who didn’t have magic of their own feel uncomfortable; hence, the rent being so cheap. That, and the fact that the apartment only had one room—well, two if you counted the little sectioned off area that hid the shower and toilet—and it rested below street level. There were windows along one wall just beneath the low ceiling that were perfect for watching people’s feet go by. In addition to Sully’s bed, there was a little breakfast bar which doubled as her desk, a wardrobe stuffed with various iterations of her unofficial uniform, blue jeans and Hawaiian shirts, and a whiteboard with the Dante’s Inferno spell written out in longhand.

  Sully worked a lot, so the apartment was really just somewhere to sleep, but if she had anything like a hobby, this spell was it. She tinkered with it whenever she needed to keep her mind occupied; whenever she didn’t want her attention drawn to the little cupboard under the sink that she knew held a halfway decent bottle of gin. The spell was widely considered to be an abject failure. Any magic involving fire had the risk of getting out of control, and Dante’s Inferno was the poster child for that problem. It had been cast a few times over the years, and each time it had proven lethal to the person casting it, draining all of the magician’s reserves to fuel the flames.

  Dante Alighieri was a vampire hunter over in the Roman Empire before the Great War, and this was his big contribution to the world. A spell that burnt so hot and so powerful that it had practically turned him inside out. Sully was starting to think that she had cracked it. The runes and words on the board were a tangled mix of Enochian, algebra, Old English, trigonometry and Norse runes. They made perfect sense to Sully, but her professors back at the Royal College would have rolled their eyes at her obstinate refusal to use standardized Latin. She stared at the spell for a moment while she waited for the worst of the throbbing in her head to clear. Not that she really needed to look at it when she could recite it, with all of her modifications over the last decade, by rote. When the ache in her head eased into more of a gentle fizzing sensation, she headed for the shower.

  A towel hung over the mirror and it was only on dazed mornings like this one, when Sully couldn’t be bothered to search her laundry pile for another towel, that she removed it. Mirrors were a risk. Sure, they could be helpful for scrying and for casting glamors, but they could also be used to spy on you just as easily. She had considered throwing out the mirror at one point, but she couldn’t b
ecause it was a gift from Marie—one of the few gifts she’d ever given Sully. Like most of Marie’s gifts, it had really been for Marie’s use when she stayed over, but the sentiment was the same. So Sully had found what she considered to be the optimal balance—a covered mirror.

  Only this morning it wasn’t covered, so Sully, still pink from the shower, took a moment to survey the damage. There were no cuts or bruises that she could see; just the usual freckles and assorted scars, which was a miracle given the night she’d had. Her head was shaved at the back and sides, a throwback to her navy days, and the tumble of red hair on the top was tousled as usual. She blessed her luck that short hair on women was fashionable again and could even pass as professional. Sully still got asked to prove her age at bars sometimes—not bad for a girl pushing forty. The towel could go back on the mirror later.

  Sully dressed in the closest thing she had to business casual: a suit jacket tossed on over one of her Hawaiian shirts, but with the slight modification of black jeans, rather than blue. She had the exact calculations for transporting herself from home to the office scribbled in the front of her notebook. Now she would find out if the headache was from throwing too much magic around. The papers on the breakfast bar rustled as she vanished, then the apartment fell back into silence.

  It wasn’t a straight jump from her apartment to the foyer of the IBI building on Staten Island. That would have had her passing over the edge of the Black Bay and, while it was quite possible to travel over a body of water with a slight modification to the spell and an extra push of power, nobody in their right mind would try it over the Bay. Something had happened there at some point in history that had left the place throbbing with magic. Perhaps some rite performed by the natives or some naturally occurring phenomenon that had gone awry.