Once I finished the report, I cracked open the first labeled pack of photographs and was confronted by a scene of slaughter. The photographer had started at the end of the bed where Lily and Dru had been found. Lily had been a fair-skinned, wavy haired woman, her face black with gore and obscured by wheat-brown locks that clung crazily across her eyes and neck. The man was swarthier. His mouth was open, his skull split, his face compressed into the waxy, slug-like pallor of death. They were lying side by side on the bed, as if they’d been deliberately arranged, and their bodies bristled with impaling spears of glass. Large shards, small shards, shards through their hands and the sockets of their eyes. The sheets were rumpled, the heavy iron rails of the bed scuffed and dented. Pictures had been torn off the wall for the killer to leave their message. It was the sigil of Beelzebub, easily recognizable, but it was surrounded by an incredible piece of geometry: a nineteen-pointed star within a circle, rendered with near perfection with nothing more than blood and patience. It was nearly five feet around. A ring of tiny flies were drawn around the ring – a hundred and fifty-eight of them, according to the accompanying notes.
“Pretty impressive shit, huh?” Ayashe swung back around at my gasp. “They think it must have taken them a couple of hours, at least.”
“You’re convinced it was multiple people?” I continued to browse. The close up images of the body weren’t so relevant to my work, but I studied them all the same. To my amateur’s eye, the corpses looked like they’d been hacked apart, not cut. Hacked… or just torn.
“Had to have been. All the kids are missing, and there were footprints everywhere.” Ayashe rocked back onto her heels, leaning against the edge of the table. “I was called in because some of them were footprints from animals.”
I glanced up at her.
“My theory is maybe a bunch of the kids slipped their skins from stress and started running around in panic. The people that did this rounded them up.” She drummed her fingers rapidly, nails clicking on wood. “None of those kids were Elders. No control after the change.”
I found a picture of the second symbol. It was just basic text: ‘SOLDIER 557’. Someone had sketched it on the mirror over the bathroom sink, which was spattered with blood and shredded flesh. My first impression was that something had vomited there.
“Were there any flies in the house?” I compared it with the larger design in the bedroom, frowning.
“Nothing alive that anyone found. Pets and plants were dead.”
I still had vivid memories of shooting Yuri Beretzniy in my apartment kitchen. When his blood spilled, every one of the plants on the kitchen sill had died. The smell of the magical corruption that animated his corpse had never quite left the room. “What about the smell? Was there a weird sugary sweet smell around the place?”
“Yeah. Now that you mention it.”
“Well…” I licked my bottom lip, leaning back on the stool. “The numbers they’ve used are very specific. Did your expert look into gematria?”
Ayashe’s nose twitched. “No idea. If it’s not in the report, probably not.”
“What is his area of expertise?”
“He’s a priest. Part of the Order of Saint Benedict,” she replied. “One of those Catholic exorcist types. He identified all of the symbols for us and is chasing up the religious persecution angle… he thinks the kids were kidnapped by some dead serious Helter-Skelter cultists. He says they were juiced up on some kind of summoning magic. Maybe one of the perps was possessed. He thinks the symbol means that they’re tied up in Satanism… they might have hit Wolf Grove because of their church involvement.”
“No, no…” I stared at the big symbol, the one that could have been rendered by an architect with tools. “No, this has nothing to do with religious persecution. There are many umbrellas of ‘Satanism’, but the majority of Satanists in America are either LaVeyan, who are atheists, or eclectic occultists. The latter tend to be young and poor… they become interested in Satanism because they’re disempowered, not because they have money for an op like this. This is the work of well-funded, well-trained people.”
“Alright. I’ll take it on board.”
“I think this is a message from someone who knew and maybe even shared their faith. Beelzebub’s number is one-hundred and nineteen. He is Lord of the Flies, Prince of Flesh, Satan’s most loyal lieutenant. One hundred and fifty-eight… one-nineteen, one-fifty-eight… what’s Psalm 119:158?”
Ayashe turned on me, eyes wide. “Uhh…”
“Wait.” I closed my eyes and turned away from her, sifting through some fifteen years of memories. When I was concentrating, the sight of other humans made me nauseous. I turned the coffee cup around in my hands, focusing on each precise twist. “‘Psalm 119:158: I behold the treacherous and loathe them, because they do not keep their word.’”
Ayashe’s narrow features drew in. She chewed her lip for a moment. “Not persecution. Retribution, revenge.”
“I believe your murderer was aiming for irony,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Well, count me impressed. And a little creeped out. What about ‘Soldier 557’?”
“Nothing immediately comes to mind,” I replied. “I suspect it has to do with gematria or numerology, but I need the books from my apartment to figure it out.”
She scowled at mention of the apartment, but nodded curtly and crossed to the window. I watched her out of the corner of my eye: she waved to someone outside, and then briefly smiled. Her kids were still in the car? Must be.
“Five-five seven.” I ran my tongue over my teeth. “Hmm. Did they ever work out what the murder weapon was? The report says it was still being assessed.”
“Yeah.” Ayashe looked back to me. She seemed a little more relaxed while camped out by the window. “Shards of broken glass. All the cuts and everything were done with glass. They found it everywhere. The bodies were full of it. Carpet was full of it. Walking around the crime scene was a damn nightmare.”
“What about the children? The report doesn’t cover them.”
She sighed, reaching up to adjust her collar. Ayashe wore a fine silver chain that disappeared under her clothes: a crucifix, I could guess. “The bedrooms were trashed. No one took anything.”
“No older kids?”
She shook her head. “Lily and Dru homeschooled them with other Elders until they were twelve, and then they get sent to this boarding school place in Texas. The center was sponsored by this big old church.”
“What denomination were they?”
“Pentecostal-Charismatic.” She jerked her shoulders. “The Church of the Voice of the Lord. They’re—”
“A big deal in Chicago and the north Mid-West, I hear.” I set the photos down, and absently skimmed the first page of the report again. “And wealthy, if they can afford to host their congregation in a theater downtown, run a group home in a mansion, and a school. One of a few, I imagine.”
“Yeah. It’s a big money church. They’re into that whole ‘prosperity gospel’ thing, but I mean, there ain’t nothing wrong with believing what you want.” Ayashe didn’t sound like she bought it.
“Have the Vigiles looked into the Church?”
“You bet.” She nodded. “Interviews with their pastor, friends of theirs – norms, not other shifters. The Church is well established in every major city and it checks out. If you want my opinion, that kind of Christianity is kooky, but Lily and Dru were very good people. They never did wrong by anyone that didn’t believe what they believed.”
I studied the names of the agents in charge of the case. Adept Lance McClaine, Agent Diana Moss. The Vigiles partnered their mages with a Blank agent? I hadn’t known that. “What’s McClaine like?”