Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews Read Free Book Online

saddlebag and sat down at one of the tables to write out my report.
    In the parking lot the inside of my ward circle blazed with orange flames. Three guys in heat-retardant suits waved their arms, chanting the fire into a white-hot rage. I couldn’t even see the pole or Joshua’s body inside the inferno.
    The magic crashed. It simply vanished from the world in a single blink. The inferno in the parking lot began to die down. The guys in flame-retardant suits switched to flamethrowers and went on burning.
    Patrice came up. “Nice dog.”
    “He’s evidence,” I told her.
    “What’s his name?”
    I looked at the mutt, who promptly licked my hand. “No clue.”
    “You should name him Watson,” Patrice said. “Then you can tell him ‘Elementary, Watson,’ when you solve a case in a blaze of intellectual glory.”
    Intellectual glory. Yeah, right. I waved my write-up at her. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
    “Deal.”
    I handed her my notes. “The perpetrator is male, olive complexion, approximately six feet six inches tall, wears a long, sweeping cloak with a tattered hem, and likes to keep his hood on.”

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    She grimaced. “Don’t tell me. A guy in a cloak did it.”
    I nodded. “Looks that way. Other fun characteristics are preternaturally hardy constitution and superhuman strength. There were roughly fifty people in the bar, but the m-scanner registered only one magic signature, probably our murderer. Fifty violent guys and nobody used magic.”
    “Sounds unlikely,” Patrice said.
    “It was a big brutal brawl. Nobody can explain to me why they started fighting, but apparently they went from zero to sixty in three seconds. I think our dude in a cloak emanates something that hits people on a very basic level. Makes them really aggressive. It’s also possible that animals run away from him, but we only have one test subject.” I petted the demon dog. “Your turn.”
    Patrice sighed. “He’s a Mary.”
    I nodded. Marys, so named after Typhoid Mary, were disease vectors—individuals who either spread or induced disease.
    “A very, very strong one,” Patrice said. “Our guy didn’t just infect—and we can’t say for sure that he did, since the victim could have been syphilitic prior to the fight—but he actually gave the disease life, making it more potent and almost self-aware. The last time I saw this was during a flare. It takes a great deal of power to make a disease into an entity.”
    Godlike power, to be exact. Except that no gods were prowling Atlanta’s streets. They only came out to play during a flare, which occurred roughly every seven years, and we had just gotten over the latest one.
    Besides, if he’d been a god, the m-scan would’ve registered silver, not blue.
    “We have to find him now.” Patrice’s face was grim. “He has pandemic potential. The man’s a catastrophe in progress.”
    We both knew that the trail had gone cold. I’d missed the chance to go after him, because I was busy crawling around and trying to keep his handiwork from infecting the city. He would strike again and he would kill. It wasn’t a question of if, but a question of how many.
    “I’ll put an alert out,” Patrice said.
    Find a guy in a cloak without any eyewitness sketches and apprehend him before he contaminates the whole city. Piece of cake.

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    “Can you find out more about the Good Samaritan who called it in as well?” I asked.
    “Why?”
    “You’re Joe Blow. You walk by and see me crawl around the fuzzy pole drawing shit on the pavement.
    Are you going to figure out immediately that I’m trying to contain a virulent plague?”
    Patrice pursed her lips. “Not likely.”
    “Whoever called it in knew what I was doing and knew enough to call Biohazard, but didn’t stick around. I’d like to know why.”
    Half an