Eldritch Exorcist

I managed to replenish around half of my mana before I felt it. My curse started moving once again. As the cat suggested, after a few hours, as the sky turned grey with the first light of the dawn, our target was on his way.

I stopped meditating and tuned back in to what was happening around me.

"So why were the veins shattered?" asked Ophelia, who was getting the basic rundown of magic society.

"They were shattered because of a war, a massive one that gave birth to one of the most feared organizations in existence and took an unimaginable death toll on the world. Like a world war but for mages."

"Why did it start? And how does the rest of the world not know about it?" Ophelia's confusion was only growing.

"No one can know. The 'et abscondere legem' law was passed and it forbids anyone from-"

"He's on the move," I said, interrupting their conversation. "We should get going."

The cat nodded as I started to give directions to the driver. The drive took us around half an hour, a bit deeper into the city. We were nearing some apartment complexes as I felt something was wrong.

Before I could figure out what was going on, the spell broke.

"Fuck," I swore. "The spell is gone."

"Someone counter-cursed you?" asked Q'Shar, clearly surprised.

"No." I scrunched my eyebrows, trying to remember the sensation. "I don't think so. It was too sudden. I think someone killed the guy."

"Did they find out about the curse?" the cat asked, clearly more and more worried.

"Most likely. The magic should stay in the body for some time after death. But just now, it simply broke, so someone must have cut off or pulverized his head. So the likelihood of them somehow finding out is high." I clicked my tongue.

How would they sense something that well hidden? With the broken nose and the injuries, did he tell them the whole fight, and did someone figure it out by me grabbing his bleeding nose? That would be a stretch. Or was it as prevention, as they knew I was proficient in curses? But to go for the head that quickly…

I was deep in thought when the cat asked loudly, "Did you get the location?"

"I remember the general direction. It's somewhere there," I said, pointing toward our left. "A bit off the ground, I think, so an apartment on higher floors, but that's all I got."

"That's not much info. But fine. The cleanup crew should have finished with the motorcycle guys. I'll call some of them to help. Whoever it was, they shouldn't be able to disappear that fast."

The cat started making phone calls as we sat in the moving van. The remaining three cats that were with us left to help with the search. It took another half an hour as we finally got a lead.

Q'Shar got off the phone. "Some of the cats smell blood from one of the apartments in the direction you pointed. The scent is strong too."

By then, we were all quite frustrated, as we were sure they had gotten away.

"Should have tortured the information out of him," I grumbled as we parked next to the apartment complex. It was a large, brick building with around six floors.

"And what would have happened if he had mental techniques to prevent that? Or a suicide spell, or simply poisoned himself? You have a reputation. I doubt they didn't have a backup. If you knew tracking spells, it would be better. Or you could have attached the curse to his mind or soul," the cat countered.

"Fine, fine. You had a good plan. And attaching curses to mind or soul is not that easy, I'll have you know. All I could get was his blood, which is a conduit for the body. You want me to attach something to someone's mind over distance? Then next time, bring me their childhood toy, or family photo, or something with an emotional connection."

We argued a bit as the car finally stopped.

"So what do we do about the tiger?" I asked, pointing out the obvious issue here.

"Oh, don't worry," said Q'Shar. "I got this." His tail danced in patterns as he cast some sort of illusion on the massive feline. The tiger then lay down like a sphinx, stopping its movements. The moment I looked at him, the spell wanted to show me something different.

I resisted it on instinct, but got curious. The cat was in the second circle. He should not have magic powerful enough to make the tiger look like a human or make him invisible, and allow him to move at the same time.

I allowed the spell to influence me, checking what it would show. And then I almost choked. It was a simple illusion, only slightly less complicated than the distortion I had used earlier in the fight. It did only two things. It gave the fur an unnatural, plastic-like shine and changed the lively eyes to all black with an artificial shine similar to the fur.

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"Really. A stuffed animal? That's what you are going for?" I asked with my eyebrows raised, looking at the cat in disbelief.

"Only to get him into the apartment in case someone opens their door. There won't be much of a fight. They probably managed to run."

"Right, someone still has to carry him," I said, and immediately realized there was only me as the possible option. "So the driver?" I said in a sure voice.

Q'Shar smiled. "The driver stays in case we need to bolt or move the car, also to watch Ophelia. You get the honors."

I groaned.

The massive cat was heavy. I was carrying him against my chest. I first attempted to just lift the tiger, but quickly found out that I was nowhere strong enough. Now it sat still, its paws on my shoulders helping me with the weight as I stumbled in, face buried in fur.

"You are doing great. If you could look more like you are carrying a plush toy and not fighting for your life, it would be great," snickered Q'Shar.

"Fck yu," I managed to say through the thick fur. The words didn't come out perfectly, but the meaning got across, I hoped.

Finally, we arrived in front of the apartment the cats reported as having a strong smell of blood. I put the tiger on the floor after thanking the abyss for the invention of an elevator. The tiger gave me an apologetic look.

"We will need to be careful, the doors could be booby trapped," my broker stated as he looked at the keyhole. "We have a specialist, he will be here so—"

I cast Muffle and then fired Force into the lock, the mechanism breaking with a crack thankfully silenced by the spell. "I can even sense the spells on your doors, and here I pick up nothing. If they didn't prepare this specially to kill us, then we can go in," I explained as the cat looked at me with a mixture of anger and disbelief.

We slowly entered the apartment. It was empty. But one thing immediately hit us. A strong scent of iron, the metallic odor of blood. It assaulted our noses the moment the doors opened.

It looked like a larger one-bedroom apartment. There was a door to a small kitchen to our right, a small bathroom in front, and one closed door to our left, from behind which the smell of blood came.

The doors in the apartment had non-see-through glass through which you could only see vague shapes. The one to the left was clearly smeared in blood.

We slowly approached it. I prepared my spells, casting basic Armor just in case. The tiger walked slightly in front, ready to get into a close-quarter fight if needed. I used my staff to push the doors. As they creaked and rotated on the hinges, we were met with a rather unpleasant sight.

The whole room was covered in blood, like a murder scene from a cheap horror movie. On the right wall were three paintings depicting some medieval battles, all smeared in red. In front was a massive desk, with two more paintings behind it depicting some people in expensive clothes, looking important.

The desk was bare bones with only a few pens remaining on top of it. There were two chairs, one behind it and one in front, both fallen over.

To the left were windows looking out onto the street from which we came. As we stood in the doorway, I could also see the legs of a body.

We entered the room, walking on the sticky floor. I looked to the left, towards the wall that separated us from the hall from which we came.

There was a dead man there, whom I recognized as the driver for the red car team. The body was propped up against the wall. It was propped upright, its head, or what was left of it, tilted forward. Everything above the neck was practically pulverized, and only some parts of the lower jawbone were still present.

It was dressed only in its underwear, exposing the rest of its skin, and the sight was also not pleasant. The entirety of the torso was covered in wounds.

I heard the cats gag a little bit. I was thankful we did not take Ophelia, as she would probably have issues after seeing that.

But most of all, there was no one else in the room. The entire place looked like a slaughterhouse with the blood everywhere, some in natural splashes, others clearly smeared by hand.

And then there was the note and the bottle. Next to the body in the corner stood a small table. On it lay an elegant silver tray with one glass, a bottle of whiskey, and a small note. "For your enjoyment," was written on the piece of paper.

"Well, fuck," swore Q'Shar. "We were too late. They took everything identifying the family and left."

I did not answer as my eyes were stuck on the mutilated body. My eyebrows furrowed. The whole scene seemed weird.

"I will notify the cats. The people should be on the move. Maybe we will catch them, we should get at least some possible suspects." The cat was talking, half to me and half to himself, to calm down.

The tiger was looking around with a frown on his face, clearly taking sporadic breaths. I imagine with a sense of smell that strong, it must have been extremely unpleasant, as even I was getting a bit dizzy.

The few smaller cats went to the other rooms, but after a while, they came back, shaking their heads. "Nothing," was the report. Other than some furniture and basic medications, there was almost nothing. Even the rest of the alcohol probably used in meetings was taken with them.

"We should get going," finally sighed Q'Shar. "Nothing for us here. We can try to get some local surveillance footage, but we don't even know what to look for. Sorry, Sam, we should—"

"Something's not right here," I interrupted my clearly bothered broker, stopping his whining.

"What do you mean? Aside from a room covered in blood and all the other shit?"

"Yes, aside from that, something doesn't line up," I said, finally looking from the body to the rest of the room.

"Please do clarify," the cat said, realizing I was not going to continue my thought.

I approached the table with the tray and crouched down, examining the wood more closely. It was the only thing in the room not smeared in blood, making it stand out, clearly drawing attention.

"Hello?!" He was getting a bit annoyed with me. "Earth to Sam, can you give us the explanation so we can be out of here faster?"

I looked up and saw that now even the tiger was looking at me with interest. "Well, first things first, look at this." I pointed at the scene of the massacre. "It's way over the top."

"Shock value. I thought you, of all people, would understand that," said the cat.

"Yes, but that's the problem. It's poorly done. Like asking a child to describe something scary. They'd just say 'lots of blood, bodies, death, and torture.'" I now pointed at the corpse. "But this? That's just bad craftsmanship."