This was only the second time Patrick had been assigned to take over a case from the PCB. June had been a clusterfuck of epic proportions, but he’d come away from it having earned a little of Bureau Chief Giovanni Casale’s respect. The people under his command were less antagonistic when dealing with Patrick this time around, which he appreciated. Usually local police didn’t much like it when federal agencies took over their cases.
Allison gestured at the body. “Victim’s state in death is similar to the murders in June, but they don’t seem related. No heavenly signs sliced on his eyes. Body was chewed on for dinner though. Considering the amount of demonic cases the PCB has wedged in its pipeline, I’m inclined to add this one to the list.”
“The wards down here should’ve prevented any demonic incursion. Any magic user on the MTA’s payroll should know what to look for when it comes to damage while checking the lines.”
“Maybe they missed something.”
“It’s possible. Sometimes the damage doesn’t show right away and you get holes later on. The London Underground had a basilisk incursion about thirty years ago. Things ate their way through a weakened section at a switch point. Made a meal out of the morning commute.”
“I read about that. Not a fun way to start your morning.”
New York City had seen an increase in demon activity ever since the veil had torn over Central Park. Patrick had closed the hole between worlds at the end of that fight, but demons and monsters had still slipped through. It was possible the subway wards had taken some unnoticed damage.
Since June, the homicide rate had gone up in the city, faith in the SOA’s ability to handle the problem was in the gutters, and Patrick was still the House Committee on Supernatural Oversight’s favorite whipping boy at the moment.
Thinking about politics made Patrick want to drink.
The kid lying dead on the subway platform was never going to learn the joys of the legal drinking age. He was your typical troublemaker because it was usually troublemakers who decided to ruin public property. Cans of spray paint were scattered over the platform, each one tagged with an evidence number. Strangely enough, there wasn’t any graffiti on the walls.
“Maybe it’s a dump job,” Patrick said.
“Hard to dump a body in the subway, especially in this spot. Access isn’t easy on tracks with trains running, even for MTA workers,” Dwayne pointed out.
Patrick approached the body and the woman crouched down taking notes on a clipboard. He was mindful of the numbered evidence tags in the area and made sure not to knock any over. “We have a time of death yet?”
“Sometime this morning, but it has to be verified back at the lab,” the woman said. Her jacket had Medical Examiner written across the back, and her brown hair was twisted into a messy bun at the base of her neck. The identification dangling around her neck had her photo ID and the name Catherine Margolin printed on it beneath the medical examiner’s logo.
“No chance of getting a more accurate time frame?”
Catherine shook her head, looking up at him. “Wards in the tunnel are messing with my equipment. Think you can stop the interference?”
Patrick pulled out a pair of black nitrile gloves from her work case. “No. Anchored protective wards on this scale aren’t something you mess with. Besides, I don’t really have an affinity for defensive magic.”
“Then you’re stuck waiting until I get back to the morgue for a more precise answer.”
Magic users made up a quarter of the world’s population, but everyone born with magic had a different affinity. Patrick excelled in offensive spells, and the damage done to his soul as a child meant he was better at recognizing threats from all the hells than most other magic users. That unwanted talent had come in handy throughout his nine years in the Mage Corps under the US Department of the Preternatural, and the past three with the SOA, usually at the expense of his health.
Crouching down, Patrick frowned at the corpse. “Trains were running during his time of death and all day today. The body would’ve been seen before now. It has to be a dump job.”
Catherine waved her pen in the general vicinity of the crime scene. “Killed here or somewhere else, no one saw the victim until the train operator spotted the body. You’d be surprised at the things people don’t see.”
“No, I wouldn’t. You already got your pictures?”
“Lots. Feel free to poke around. The PCB is starting to bag up evidence. We were waiting on you before we bagged the body.”
The victim was missing the left arm up to the elbow, and the left leg was barely hanging on at the knee. The right arm lay mangled about a meter away, as if tossed there. The tears weren’t clean, nor did they have the pulverized look to them that would’ve indicated being run over by a train before being laid out on the platform.
His head looked strangely misshapen until Patrick realized it wasn’t damage, but most likely the body caught in the middle of a shift. He prodded at the stiff, cold lips, managing to get a look at the too-sharp, large teeth in the corpse’s mouth.
“Werecreature,” Patrick said.
Catherine nodded, still taking down notes. “Yeah. We’re going to need to bring a hazmat crew down here to clean up the crime scene. Judging by his eye color, he’s not god pack, so we can rule out that strain of the werevirus.”
“Can’t rule out dealing with the god pack.”
Patrick wished he could.
The two strains of the werevirus had segregated the werecreature community into packs that were able to hide their status and god packs who couldn’t. Those infected with the god strain of the werevirus were visual scapegoats for society, and the New York City god pack was hostile to anyone who didn’t share their disease.
