Page 36 of The Dark Hiss of Magic
‘Barricaded,’ he said between shoulder slams.
That figured. ‘Magic?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Something’s in the way – a heavy wardrobe, maybe.’ He shoved the door again and it gave an inch.
‘Knox!’ I called. ‘Knox Thunderstick! Are you in there? Are you alright?’ There was no answer.
Thane rammed the door again and it yielded another fraction. ‘I can smell blood,’ he said. ‘A lot of blood.’
I grimaced then joined in Thane’s efforts. Knox might still be breathing – stranger things had happened. ‘Ready?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘On a count of three. One. Two. Three.’
We both threw ourselves at the door. It didn’t exactly spring open, but our combined efforts did what was needed and there was a gap large enough for me to squeeze through.
I elbowed Thane aside. It would be tight but I’d manage. Expelling all the air from my lungs, I pushed my way in. When the room was revealed to me, I gave a tiny gasp. Damn.
Even with all my years’ experience of death, this was something else. I’d seen a lot of blood in my time but the scene in Thunderstick’s bedroom felt mockingly gratuitous. Knox lay spreadeagled on the bed, his wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts. The sheets beneath his body might once have been white but were now bright red, and his eyes were wide and staring.
I knew he was dead but I checked anyway, edging up to his body and pressing my fingers against his sticky neck. No pulse. His body was still warm to the touch so he’d not been dead for long; the gunshot we’d heard only moments earlier had probably killed him, though there was no obvious sign of a bullet wound. Unfortunately, though, his hadn’t been a quick death.
The window by the bed was wide open. I cleaned my fingers of Knox’s blood and peered out, but the murderer appeared to have fled in the same manner that Knox had successfully fled the mortuary. The heavy barricade had been a simple but effective trick. I hissed under my breath, genuinely angry.
There was a loud thud as Thane, too large to slip throughthe gap, shoved at the wardrobe. ‘Kit!’ he yelled. ‘What’s going on?’
I grabbed the sides of the wardrobe and tugged, gaining enough purchase to slide it far enough for Thane to come in. He staggered through, took one look at Knox’s body and paled. ‘Oh.’
I motioned towards the window. ‘Whoever did this is gone,’ I bit out.
Thane’s expression hardened. ‘No. Not with the amount of blood that’s in here. I’m a fucking werewolf, Kit. I can track them down.’
I bared my teeth in an angry smile. ‘That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say. But we’ll have to hurry – they’ll find a way to hide their tracks before too long.’
Thane cast another quick glance at Knox’s body before he leapt out of the window. ‘Fuck!’ he spluttered as he landed badly. He righted himself and inhaled, searching for the killer’s scent, while I clambered carefully out of the first-floor window then dropped onto the ground beside him. A sprained ankle would not have been helpful.
‘Have you got it?’ I asked.
Thane pointed. ‘This way.’
He took off down the alleyway and I sprinted after him, calculating how much of a head start the killer had and which streets they’d be likely to take. An amateur’s instincts would tell them to head for somewhere busy where they could lose themselves in crowds; that had its merits – and its dangers.
You could never account for what members of the public might do if you were pointed out to them as a fleeing criminal, and the blood would be hard to hide even on dark clothes. If I’d been the killer, I’d have run somewhere quiet where I could hide, clean myself off, then turn the tables on my pursuers by taking them out for good – or at least identify who was on mytrail. I’d learn a great deal about whoever had murdered Knox Thunderstick by the choices they made and the direction they took.
Thane paused when he reached the end of the alley and I caught up with him. He swung his head from left to right to establish which way the blood-covered killer had gone. When he turned to the left, my eyes narrowed a fraction. Interesting: the killer had chosen the crowds, most likely opting for the chaos of Hirsel Street. They might even pass Pork Pies. I sighed. Poor Harriet.
‘The scent of blood is still incredibly strong,’ Thane said. ‘Our killer will attract attention – and not just from us.’
Good point. I glanced up at the sky. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon but this was Scotland in mid-winter; the sun would set in less than thirty minutes and the vampires would come out to play, making the most of the long nights before the long days of summer began. There wasn’t a vamp in Coldstream who wouldn’t be drawn to that amount of blood. Surely the killer, whoever they were, realised that and knew that time was not on their side.
We sprinted towards Hirsel Street. Although my sense of smell was nothing compared to Thane’s, I fancied I could also smell the iron-rich tang of Knox Thunderstick’s blood. For obvious reasons I was reasonably inured to death, but the druid drummer had been tortured and that made me sick to my stomach.
Our feet pounded the cobblestones, our speed and determined expressions causing consternation on the faces of passersby as we reached the busier streets. We swung right and then left. I’d expected Thane’s nose to lead us onto Hirsel Street itself, but instead he bypassed that junction and ran on. Maybe the killer was making a beeline for their home; if that were the case, we’d have them cornered.
But then Thane’s feet came to a stuttering halt.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘The scent has gone,’ he growled. He backtracked five metres to the crossroads then looked left and right. ‘They were here.’ He frowned. ‘Shit! They circled around this entire area.’ He waved a frustrated hand at the tightly packed shops and business premises. ‘They could have gone into any of these buildings.’
