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Maybe by Tuesday, I would have time to come to terms with having been my worst enemy all along.
NINETEEN
After meeting Monster, I’d learned a bitter truth: I knew very little about necromancy.
Monday, April 27, 2167
The Gray Ward
Dragon Heights, Wyoming
If I wanted to succeed at investigating either case, I needed to determine the true beginning of the attacks and murders. While access to police records might help, I wanted to get an independent view of the issue. While the internet could lead me astray, it might help as well.
I began with the brothel workers; humanity liked to show its ass, and people were willing to gossip and speculate about women at the earliest sign of trouble. With growing dismay, I realized Dragon Heights had its fair share of problems. Violence happened daily, and the various news outlets delighted in sharing the tales of turmoil and suffering within the city.
Any time someone attacked a pretty woman, the reporters speculated if she’d sold her body for money. Humans, dragon-kin, and dragon alike faced the same scrutiny. Whenever possible, the reporters spun it so the woman held responsibility for the actions of others.
In the past five years, there had been twenty-seven successful lawsuits of news reporting outlets over their defamation of women. Even the compensation, which ranged from several hundred thousand to over a million dollars, did little to deter reporters from adding a spin to the reporting.
When I limited my searches to only women injured with small blades, I found a long trail of attacks.
Most cases were reported as either unarmed or with a firearm, and very few made no mention of how the victim had been attacked.
The first victim, Marie Selbanno, had been cut with a scalpel seven years ago, resulting in a six inch scar along the length of her arm. The wound had hospitalized her for three days, as her attacker had managed to sever an important artery. Only the quick work of a nearby paramedic had saved her life.
According to the article, following her recovery, Marie had left the city, afraid of being attacked again.
Unlike a lot of women, the reporter did not indicate she had been a sex worker or selling her body. I suspected her work as a nurse played some role in that. The next attack, taking place a month later in the Gray Ward, had involved a single mother of three.
Like Marie, Theresa had almost died from her injuries, and she’d packed her bags and left the city with her children.
In the following six months, there had been eight other small blade attacks in Dragon Heights, and like Marie and Theresa, the women had been described as beautiful. They’d also been cut in the arms, but the attacker had either learned how to control his blade or someone else held responsibility.
Like the cases plaguing Cecilia and her brothel workers, those women had escaped with a few stitches.
The articles described the attacker as a larger man carrying a short blade, a close enough match to the individual hunting brothel workers that I took the time to save the originating news reports on all of them for later review.
Over the course of the next few years, the pattern held; every month or two, a woman would be attacked by a large person believed to be male, leaving her with a cut or two along with a hefty dose of trauma. Until six months ago, none of the women had been associated with brothels.
Six months ago, the frequency had changed, with several attacks a week being scattered across the city. Every article I found indicated the reporter believed the woman to be involved with the sex trade in some fashion or another.
Copycat? Changed motives? The method appeared to be the same, involving superficial injuries meant to scare more than harm, with only one woman dying from a pre-existing condition and one having been at any risk of death—and like the woman who had died, she’d only been at risk due to complications from a pre-existing condition.
Why would someone want to scare women? Did Marie and Theresa hold some secret as to why they’d suffered such severe injuries compared to the other women stabbed in a similar fashion? Had the killer learned what not to do when attacking them, assuming he’d wanted to scare more than harm?
Why might someone want to inflict such an injury on someone else?
Magic worked in mysterious ways. However, my own magic provided a clue of sorts. My purple heritage allowed me to see the past through wounds, even old ones. Could the killer have a similar ability? Was there a way someone might be able to harvest pain or fear through a cut?
After meeting Monster, I’d learned a bitter truth: I knew very little about necromancy. Could a necromancer do such a thing? And if they could, why would they want to?
I checked the time, decided my parents would be awake, and picked my father as my target. I dialed his cell number, held the phone to my ear, and waited.
“I’m about three minutes from knocking on your door. Can it wait that long?” he answered.
I got up, unlocked the front door, and went to check on the animals to determine the pair slept off yesterday’s excitement. “I suppose. Don’t knock, just sneak in. The beasts are asleep. They had a busy day yesterday.”
“Observing you getting escorted away by police if the rumor mill is to be believed.”