~~
Trinity
~~
After we napped, it was time to get back to work. The good thing is, that even with the time difference, and the massive distance between us, it was still easy to work with everyone back home. We ended up sleeping until two in the afternoon and that left us with a lot of time to work on the case. And back home it was only about ten in the evening. We may be giving the crew back home some last minute work to do tonight, but they could at least get the ball rolling.
We all knew what it was like to work this kind of job. It was demanding and it was going to be hard. There wasn't much else for us to do at the moment though. We just needed to get as much evidence that we could and start working on figuring out the answers.
After waking up, before eating anything else or doing anything for myself, I called Rawlynne and Jackson.
“Hey Trinity, what's up?” Rawlynne sounded like she had a hopeful air to her voice. “Did you find anything that we can use?”
.....
“As a matter of fact, yes. We've got a manifesto of sorts. And on top of that, we have some samples that we need tested. They need to be tested in more than one way. There is some writing on these samples, but it can't be seen with human eyes. Or even wolf eyes. Talia and I needed magic to see these words. You will not see them at all, but you might be able to smell the substance that is on these samples.”
“What are the words? Is it that manifesto?” She was missing a beat here, she was following along and already figured that out.
“Yes. That is exactly what it is. And we have found these words at every scene that we have been to so far. The killers want us to see their message and to fear it. Well, some of them want it found. Most of them were hidden in a way that magic needed to be used to find them. And that makes me think that these people planned that too. They knew that someone with magic was going to be investigating these murders.”
“Then we're dealing with smart psychopaths. That is a shame, since normal psychopaths are hard enough to catch sometimes. If they know that people that aren't human are after them, they might be taking extra special care not to mess up at all.”
“Well, Rawlynne, I think that most killers are going to try not to mess up, but that is just my opinion. Still, most of them do and that leads me to the next thing that we need to have tested. One of the killers didn't subdue their victim completely. The victim fought back enough to tear away some of their robes and to draw blood.” I was so proud of the fact that this person had put up a fight. I was sad that someone had died, and that was never going to change, but at least they had gotten us a clue. They had provided us with something that we needed to possibly catch these people.
“I will take the blood to the lab right away. I will have Harris get it to the right tech. We will keep all of this evidence out of the human's hands.” I knew that Harris, the director that Rawlynne and Jackson answered to, was a Djinn. He was one of my people and he wanted to stop these killings as much as I did. He also knew how to keep a secret and to move things to the right people that could help.
“Good. That will help. And I need to also make sure that the Sentinelle checks their archives. We need to know if anything like this has ever happened before. Oh, and Rawlynne, you all need to be careful when checking these samples. The words are dangerous.”
“Trinity, haven't you ever heard that old adage? Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. I don't care how mean and ugly the words are, they won't get to me.” She was confident, and I hated that I needed to cut that confidence down right now.
“That is not what I mean. These words were written with a runed type of water. Think of it like movie grade holy water being used against a Hollywood vampire. It burns, even when it is dried. Just touching the words with your finger can burn you.”
As I thought about that, I looked over at Reece. He had been burned by the words earlier, and I hadn't even checked on his finger after it had happened. In my defense, I was more worried about Talia at the time. I was more of a mom than a wife at the moment that it had happened. Now though, I was worried about him. I wanted to see if the letters were still there.
“What are you doing?” Reece asked me as I took his hand in mine.
“Checking.” I looked at the finger that I remember had been burned, and there was nothing. Wanting to be sure, I checked all of his fingers before I was satisfied. Thankfully, there was no permanent scar.
“Trinity?” I heard Rawlynne on the other side of the line. “Is something wrong?”
“I was just checking the state of the burns that Reece received. Thankfully, they are gone now. No scar or anything left behind. Since it was a magical injury, I wasn't sure if he would heal from that.”
“Oh.” She sounded shocked, about as shocked as Reece was as he looked at his hand. He hadn't thought that the wound would be permanent and was clearly relieved that it wasn't.
“I am going to open a door for you. I want you to take the evidence that we have collected so far, please do your best to make sure that they are checked as soon as possible. I want to stop more people from being killed, and we only have four days before they strike again.”
“Understood.” She was just as angry about this case as I was. At least we had that going for us.
The door was opened, the evidence was passed along, and that was the end of it. They were free to sleep or to get back to work. For the time being, the rest of us were going to keep investigating. We had a lot more crime scenes to visit and we had a lot more souls to, hopefully, rescue from their bodies.
There was nothing for us to do here in this pack still, but there had been six other murders that had happened in Australia. They just happened in more rural parts of the country. There had even been one in New Zealand that we needed to check out as well.
Once we left this Alpha's home, we needed to start the investigation at full speed. We packed our things and started to contact the other Alphas. There were only three that we needed to notify that we were on our way. And this time I told them, out of courtesy, that I would be opening magic doors for the purpose of quick travel.
I decided that we needed to retrieve the luggage from the private plane and send the pilot home. I felt bad about bringing him along when we ended up not needing to use the plane. Hey, he was paid at least, and he had basically been vacationing in Wales free of charge. I don't think that he was all that upset about it.
At one point, I had intended to hide my identity from the Alphas and other clan leaders as I traveled. I had made that decision after Reece pointed out that the others would be intimidated by me. Well, that wasn't an option anymore. I needed to use my magic for the investigation. What I could do though, was make sure that I wasn't the one to interview the witnesses. They wouldn't have to worry about me, only their leaders would.
Before leaving to investigate more we did take the time to eat a quick lunch. Well, a second lunch really since the other meal that we ate here was like a lunch for us. The food was good, but its quality was diminished by the conversation.
All of us were talking about the case. We were wondering what the others might discover about the items that I gave them. They were curious to know if there was something more magical about that water than we expected, or if it was just a powerful faith in ancient runes.
That was something that we needed to get to the bottom of. And there was one person that I wanted to talk to about that. Well, sitting here at the dining room table of another wolf pack's Alpha seemed like as good of a place to start that conversation as any.
I looked around the table, taking in the scene before me. I didn't want to dampen their moods more, but I didn't really think that it was likely to happen. They were all stressed and ready to put an end to this case as soon as possible. And they would be just as interested in this talk as I would.
“Ahem.” I cleared my throat to get their attention. Well, it worked, everyone in the room stopped eating and looked at me. “There is something about the case that I want to discuss.” They were all on the edge of their seats, waiting for me to continue.
