“It wasn’t an animal,” the mage said. “Animals would’ve left more evidence. It wasn’t an undead and the scene isn’t indicative of a loup attack.”
When shapeshifters failed to keep their inner beasts at bay, they turned loup. Loups weren’t playing with a full deck. When they attacked a settlement, they tore humans apart, usually while fucking them, they boiled children alive, and generally had a great time indulging in every perversion they could think of until someone put them out of their misery. The only cure for loupism was a bullet to the brain or a blade to the neck.
Armstrong sighed again. “Any idea at all?”
“No.”
“Something comes into this place, takes sixteen people out, and leaves no trace of itself.”
“In a nutshell.” The mage shrugged.
Armstrong looked at him for a long moment.
“What do you want, Will?” The mage spread his arms. “The scene is three weeks old. I don’t work miracles.”
“Perhaps we could try?” Elara asked, her tone gentle.
“Are you done with the scene?” Armstrong asked.
The mage nodded. “Can’t hurt. We’re not going to get anything more from it at this point.”
Armstrong looked to Elara. “It’s all yours.”
“Thank you.”
She walked toward the gates. When she wanted to, she moved like she was gliding. Mostly she stomped like a pissed off goat.
The eight people followed her and formed a rough semicircle.
“Come on,” Hugh said to Armstrong. “We’ll want a front row seat for this.”
They walked through the gates. The mage followed them.
Elara’s people pulled the hoods of their robes over their faces, so only their chins were visible. A low chant rose from them, insistent and suffused with power.
She stood with her back to them, seemingly oblivious to the magic gathering behind her.
The chant sped up. They poured out an awful lot of magic, but it felt inert.
Time to see what you really are. Hugh grounded himself, focusing through the prism of his own power. The world rushed at him, crystal clear, the magic a simmering lake submerging the eight chanters. Feeling magic was one of the first things he learned under Roland. Show me what you’ve got, darling.
Elara raised her arms to her sides and waited, her eyes closed.
The magic streamed toward her, as if a dam suddenly opened.
It drenched her.
She didn’t touch it. She didn’t absorb it, didn’t use it, didn’t channel it. It just sat there around her.
Elara opened her eyes. Magic whipped inside her, and to his enhanced vision she almost glowed from within.
They were treated to a show, he realized. The chanters were there to make it look as if she channeled their power. She didn’t need them. Whatever was about to happen was hers alone.
His lovely wife didn’t want anyone to know how powerful she was. Smart girl.
Elara knelt, scooped a handful of dirt, and let it crumble from her fingers, each soil particle glowing gently.
The chant rose with a new intensity, rapid and sharp.
A pulse of magic burst from Elara, drowning the palisade. For half a second every blade of grass within stood perfectly straight and still. She’d poured a shitload of power into that pulse.
Silver mist rose from the ground in thin tendrils, thickening in the middle of the clearing, flowing together into a human shape, translucent, tattered, but visible. A man, six feet tall, broad shoulders. Big bastard. Long blond hair braided away from his face. Pale skin. A tattoo in a geometric design marked his right cheek, a tight spiral with a sharp blade on the end. He wore dark scale armor with a spark of gold on one shoulder. Hugh rifled through his mental catalogue of scale mail, everything from Roman lorica squamata to Japanese gyorin kozane.
He’d never seen anything like it.
The dark metal scales lay close to the man’s body, not uniform, but varying in size, smaller on the waist where the body had to bend, wider on the chest. This wasn’t made with the ease of manufacture in mind. It was created from life. Whoever made this was looking at a snake for inspiration.
The man’s eyes flashed with gold fire. He thrust his left hand forward. Mist spiraled up in five different spots, melding into the outline of creatures, barely visible. They stood on two legs, hunched forward, big owl eyes unblinking, their mouths slashes across their faces.
He felt a small remnant of humanity buried deep within the brown bodies, a barely perceptible hint of the familiar. They were once human.
The beasts darted forward into the nearest house. A ghostly door swung open and the first beast dragged out a body, a woman, her head hanging down from her twisted neck.
Another beast carrying a man followed. The man was large, at least two hundred pounds. The creature had slung him over its shoulder like he was weightless.
A scuffle, then a beast emerged with an adolescent girl, her long hair sweeping the ground. Blood dripped down her hand. The owner of the torn nail.
Another beast followed, one carrying a boy of about five, another a baby. Both dead.
The beasts laid them in a row and darted into the next house. The man watched, impassive.
“Sonovabitch,” Armstrong ground out.
The neat line of corpses grew. Sixteen people lay in a row, their ghostly bodies shimmering and fading into the mist.
Hugh studied the corpses. Quick and efficient. It only took a moment to snap a human neck. He’d done it enough times to recognize the practiced skill. That’s why nobody raised the alarm. The beasts killed them almost instantly.
The man turned toward the open gates and walked out, vanishing at the edge of Elara’s spell. The beasts grabbed the corpses and scuttled after him, darting back and forth until all were gone.
“Can you bring him back?” Hugh asked.
“I can hold him still for a bit.” Elara concentrated. This time he felt the power sink into the ground in a controlled burst. The armored man returned, frozen in mid-move.
Hugh circled him. The scales of the armor lacked polished shine, and the metal wasn’t black, but blue and brown with flecks of green, like tortoiseshell. Scuffs on the armor. That’s what he’d thought.
The mage grabbed a sketchpad and frantically drew. Hugh glanced to make sure his own people were sketching. They were.
“Who is this guy?” Dillard growled, her face contorted. “Does he look familiar to anyone?”
Armstrong grunted. “The question is, is he some random nutjob, or is he a part of something larger?”
Hugh would have to explain it. They didn’t see it on their own. Hugh pulled his sword out, stepped back, and swung. The blade lined up perfectly with a barely perceptible scratch across the scales.
Armstrong crouched next to him, so his face was inches from the sword and tilted his head. “He took a swing.”
“And survived.” Bad news. The cut didn’t angle enough to be a glancing blow. No, someone had slashed across this asshole’s middle straight on and probably dulled his sword.
“How do you know he survived?” Chambers asked. “Maybe he took the armor off a dead man.”
“The armor isn’t broken,” Sam said quietly. “And it was custom made for him.”
The kid was learning.
Hugh kept his voice low. “You see the gold on the shoulder?”
Armstrong studied the gold star etched into the armor, eight rays emanating from the center with a bright gold stripe underneath.
“Insignia?” he guessed.
“There is no other reason to put it on armor.”
Armstrong glanced at him. “You think there are more of them.”
“He’s a soldier. Soldiers belong in an army.” Hugh sheathed his sword. “The insignia is a rank, an identification. He’s clean-shaven, his hair is put away, the armor isn’t ornate. This is a uniform. Put him in the woods, and he’ll be near invisible. He’s part of a unit. If we’re really lucky, it’s just a unit and not an army.”
Armstrong rose and surveyed the woods around them. “We’re done here,” he said. “Let’s go back before something else shows up.”
The mist dissolved. Elara stood on the other side. She looked … in pain. No, not pain. Worry.