Magic Bleeds Read Online Free PDF Page B

of that.”
    We went in through the hole in the wall. The techs had evaluated and released most of the patrons, who were only too happy to clear off. The tavern lay virtually empty. Most of the furniture hadn’t survived the brawl. An icy draft swept through the open doors and windows to blow out of the ruined wall. Despite the unplanned but vigorous ventilation, the place stank of vomit.
    Cash leaned against the bar. Long shadows lined his haggard face. He looked worn out, like he’d aged a year overnight. Maggie paused by him. He took her hand into his. It must’ve twisted them into knots to sit there for hours, watching each other’s faces for the first signs of infection.
    They were killing me. If I could’ve gotten a hold of Curran right now, I would have punched him in the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    face for making me think I could have that and then taking it away from me.
    At the door, two Biohazard techs packed away an m-scanner. The m-scanner registered residual magic at the scene and spat it out in various colors: purple for vampire, blue for human, green for shapeshifter. It was imprecise and finicky, but it was the best tool for magic analysis we had. I stopped by the team and flashed my Order ID. “Anything?”
    The female tech offered me a stack of printouts. “Patrice said for you to have a copy.”
    “Thanks.” I flipped through them. Every single one showed a bright blue slice streaking across the paper like a lightning bolt, cutting across pale traces of green. The green were the shapeshifters, and judging by the watereddown color of the signatures, they had taken off at the beginning of the fight, leaving behind only weak residual magic. Not surprising. The Pack had a strict policy regarding unlawful behavior, and nothing good ever came from a drunken brawl in a border bar.
    I studied the blue. Human mundane , basic human magic. Mages registered blue, healers, empaths . . . I registered blue. Unless you had a really good scanner.
    “Maggie, how many people would you say were here when this happened?”
    She shrugged at the bar. “About fifty.”
    Fifty. But only one human magic signature.
    I glanced at Cash. “I need to talk to your people.”
    He headed behind the bar to a narrow stairway leading down. I followed. At the bottom of the stairway Vik and the bigger bouncer guarded the door secured by a large deadbolt.
    I sat at the top of the stairs. “My name’s Kate.”
    “Vik.”
    “Toby.”
    “Thank you,” I said. “I know it had to be hell to keep everyone put for this long and I appreciate how you’ve handled it.”

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    “We had a good crowd tonight,” Cash said. “Most of them were regulars.”
    “Yeah,” Vik said. “If we’d gotten a lot of out-of-towners, there would’ve been blood.”
    “Can you tell me how it started?”
    “Someone hit me with a chair,” Vik said. “That’s when I got into it.”
    “A man came into the bar,” Toby said.
    “What did he look like?”
    “Tall. Big guy.”
    Tall was a given. I’d gotten a good look at Joshua’s body while I was crawling around the parking lot.
    Joshua had been five-ten and his feet were about six inches off the ground. Whoever nailed him to that pole probably held him at his own eye level, which made our guy close to six and a half feet tall.
    Cash disappeared for a minute and returned with five glasses. More whiskey.
    “What did the big guy wear?”
    The three men and Maggie knocked back their glasses. There was collective grimacing and clearing of throats. I sipped mine a bit. Like drinking fire spiced with crushed glass.
    “A cloak,” Toby offered.
    “Like this?” I fingered my own long plain dark gray affair. Most fighters wore cloaks. Used properly, the cloak could confuse the attacker by obscuring your movements. It could shield, smother, and kill. It doubled as a blanket in a