All living things generated magic, and humans were no exception. The magic was in the blood, in the saliva, in tears, and in urine. Body liquids could be used in any number of ways. I sealed wards with my blood. Roland made weapons and armor out of his. But urine usually pointed to a more primal magic.
Shamans, witches, and some neo-pagan cult practitioners all used urine. People who considered themselves close to nature. It tied in with animals marking their territory and a number of other primal things.
The cayenne line looked like some sort of ward to me, and the presence of urine confirmed it.
Someone had marked a boundary on the floor and sealed it with their body fluid, probably to contain something. What was anybody’s guess at this point. With the magic down I sensed nothing, not a drop of power.
I stepped over the cayenne line and padded forward, pulling Slayer from the back sheath and staying to the right to give Andrea a clear shot.
The camera clicked. A moment and the Polaroid slid from it with a faint whirr. “One more . . .” Andrea murmured.
“All that glassware and the delicate instruments on the counters and nothing is broken. You’d think with all his training Laurent would’ve put up a fight.”
“Maybe he knew his attacker and didn’t view him as a threat until it was too late.”
That would make Adam Kamen or another guard the prime suspect. A bodyguard wouldn’t expect to be assaulted by a man he guarded or his own buddies. Everybody else would’ve been met with violence.
Laurent’s corpse showed no wounds except for a long black scar that cut his body from his chest down to his groin: a vertical line that split into three at the navel, like an upside-down imprint of a crow foot or like some perverse peace symbol torn out of its circle. Unusual cut. Looked almost like a rune.
The camera clicked, flashing, once, twice . . .
The magic hit, rolling over us like an invisible tsunami. Andrea raised the camera and pushed the button. No flash. Not even a click. She glanced at the camera in disgust. “Damn it.”
The black scar shivered.
I took a step back.
A faint shudder ran through the body. The black line trembled, its edges rising, and boiled into movement. Oh shit.
“Kate!”
“I see it.”
The body swayed. The chains creaked, louder and louder. Power swelled, straining within the corpse.
I backed away to the ward.
The corpse’s stomach bulged, the black line swelling.
I stepped over the cayenne pepper line. Magic sparked on my skin.
The black scar burst.
Tiny bodies shot at us and fell harmlessly on the other side of the line, drenching the floor in a dark torrent. Not a single speck of black made it over to us.
Behind us, Henderson exhaled. “What the hell is that?”
“Ants,” I said.
The black flood swirled, twisting, slower and slower. One by one the small bodies stopped moving. A moment and the floor was completely still.
Dead ants. A five-gallon bucket full of them strewn all over the floor.
The body rocked back and forth. All of the man’s flesh had vanished. His skeleton was stripped bare and the skin hung on the bone frame like a deflated balloon.
“Oookay,” Andrea said. “That’s one of the freakiest things I’ve ever seen.”