Devin Sanstrom had come personally to see if he could find any signs of dark magic or ritual sacrifice. His acolytes and the younger priests of the church wouldn’t have the experience necessary, so Kari was glad to have the elder priest along. The marshal, too, seemed glad for the priest’s assistance, so why had he never asked for the church’s assistance before? It revived a little of the doubt she’d felt over his allegiances, but perhaps he deferred to Kaelin Black’s distrust of Zalkar’s church.
The scene was somewhat familiar: A lone shopkeeper stabbed to death after hours in his own establishment. The shop was narrow and simple, and Kari moved to an open corner of the room to take the scene in as a whole. With only one body, it wasn’t the same as the scene in Charlie’s Boarding House.
Kari took careful note of the body’s placement in the room and the fact that there were no signs of struggle whatsoever. The body was far from the front door, located toward the back of the shop, but not behind the counter. Unlike the mess in Charlie’s Boarding House, this had been an actual assassination: no struggle, no hesitation, just strike and run. Once she was done studying the setting, Kari moved over to the body.
Devin was using divinations to detect magic or ritual, but Kari saw little in his expression that suggested he sensed anything yet. She crouched across from Marshal Saracht and noted the single wound under the body’s sternum, an exit wound from being backstabbed with one of the assassin’s straight blades. There were no signs of burns—or, more accurately, rot—around the wound to suggest she’d bothered using that necrotic venom, but then death had been a certainty regardless, considering where the poor soul had been stabbed.
Kari looked at the victim’s face. Human, probably mid-thirties and well off, but hard-working. She sighed; it was such a waste, and she couldn’t see anything on the surface that suggested killing this man had served any demonic purpose. It was a dry goods store, and Kari assumed the marshal’s men had already scoured the scene to determine if anything was stolen. She figured she knew the answer: The succubus had committed the murder, but she wasn’t doing it for material gain. She checked the body’s neck for bite wounds, but there were none; the succubus hadn’t even bothered draining the man’s life force. Grasping for some explanation, Kari looked to Devin as he completed his divinations.
The elder priest sighed but offered a quiet prayer for the deceased before he rose and met Kari’s stare. “Nothing in my divinations suggests there was anything mystical to this killing,” he said, and Kari straightened out before him. “A strike through the heart could suggest a ritual sacrifice, though what sacrifices I am familiar with always involve removing the heart, not simply destroying it. My apologies, Lady Vanador, but if this is some sort of ritual, it is something I am unfamiliar with.”
“It does seem to be the work of our assassin,” Kari said, as much to the marshal as to the priest. “This seems more… controlled, though. When she killed the assassins in DarkWind, they were butchered. This man was killed by a single thrust I don’t think he ever saw coming.”
“Any thoughts on why?” Saracht asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Kari returned with a slight shrug. “There’s got to be something that connects all the victims—even the ones in DarkWind, unless they were just in her way trying to get to… Lord Black. This man was just killed, not bitten or drained of his life force. What can you tell us about the other victims?”
“As I mentioned yesterday, they don’t fit with the typical pattern of serial killing,” the marshal answered. “The victims have been of both genders, several different races, and with no connections in creed, occupation, or anything else we have noticed. Whatever it is about these folks that causes the assassin to target them, we cannot figure it out.”
“What about… I mean, were they all virgins?”
Devin swung his gaze to the marshal. “That could be the one clue you missed,” the priest said. “Virgin sacrifice has long been a part of dark magic.”
“I have no idea,” Saracht muttered, glancing down at the victim. “I know Mr. Haddris here was unmarried, but whether or not he or the other victims were virgins… I do not even know how I could find that out with any certainty. Perhaps, for the moment, we should assume they all were; how does that affect our investigation? What are we looking for?”
To Devin, the marshal added, “The lady was asking if Lord Black had anything built in recent months, like a portal or, I suppose, an altar. What say you on this?”
Kari knelt down before the priest could answer, and she pulled the collar of the victim’s shirt away from his neck. There were no bite marks, which said that the succubus wasn’t trying to steal the man’s essence; Kari assumed that meant there was no magical connection between the victims. She’d wondered if the succubus was siphoning magical power from her victims and then killing them, but that was clearly not the case—at least, not with all of them. Kari sensed the men were waiting for her attention before they resumed their conversation, so she rose.
“Portal magic?” Devin queried toward Kari. “Why would this be a consideration?”
“Eli told me a tale about some work he did for the Order before the Apocalypse,” Kari explained. “He described a portal that was built to try to usher demons from the underworld onto Citaria, and said they were sacrificing people to power it. I thought maybe that’s what the succubus is doing here.”
“I have never heard of such a thing. Are you certain he was telling you the truth?” the priest asked, his arms folded across his chest. There was doubt in his expression, but Kari could see it was less about the portal magic and more about Eli.
She blew out a short sigh to keep from getting defensive on Eli’s behalf. “Something happened during Bosimar’s tenure that was kept secret from just about everyone,” she answered. “I know he’s half-corlyps, but I’ve found no reason not to trust Eli.”
“I was not suggesting that,” Devin assured her, but he stopped himself at Kari’s cool-eyed gaze. He bowed his head somewhat apologetically and continued, “I must confess, I am not overly familiar with portal magic; you would need to speak with a wizard about such things, I think. However, my divinations suggest that there was little done to our victim here other than a simple murder. I do not detect any traces of his lifeforce or soul being pulled away toward anything unnatural, such as a portal.”
“This is maddening!” Kari spat. “From what I’ve been told, the death toll is up to about twenty-nine now? What’s her game?”
“I cannot say,” Devin answered, and the marshal waited to let the priest finish. “Perhaps she is simply an agent of chaos and death. Such hardly seems out of place, even for a succubus.”
“No,” Marshal Saracht said evenly. “If her intent was to draw Lady Vanador to this city, directly or indirectly, then there is a definitive purpose to her actions. If she were simply bent on chaos and death, she would not have allowed one of the Order’s senior-most demonhunters to pry into her affairs. That was a calculated risk, which now leads me to believe that Lady Vanador is not the target—she’s the bait.”