Arcane Entanglement (The Mage and His Brute #1)

Chapter 2

Evander met the inspector’s gaze steadily. He had been on his way back from a business luncheon when he’d received an urgent message from Rufus requesting his assistance. Since he knew his friend was more than capable of handling a murder, Evander had gathered something about the case was unusual enough to warrant his involvement, even on his official rest day.

He’d proceeded to the address Rufus had given him without stopping at his townhouse to change clothes, something Hargrove would no doubt grouse about when he returned to his home in Mayfair.

One look at the scene of the crime had made it instantly clear why Rufus had sought him out.

The victim had arcane symbols carved into the back of his neck.

Evander frowned as he studied the cryptic marks once more. Judging from the appearance of the skin, they had been made postmortem.

His immediate reaction upon seeing them had been a near visceral response to the foul energy they emitted.

The symbols reeked of dark magic.

Few people could detect its presence. He wasn’t sure whether it was a gift or a curse that he was particularly sensitive to the dratted thing.

The power the marks emitted was akin to a vile and insidious heaviness, one that pressed in on all sides, leeching the warmth from the air and leaving an oily residue in its wake he could almost feel on his skin.

That a dark mage was involved in this crime was undeniable.

And dealing with rogue mages, especially those who went around killing people and engraving runes into their flesh, fell squarely under Evander’s duties as a Special Arcane Investigator. It might not be official yet, but Evander had little doubt Rufus would soon be handing the case over to him.

“All I can tell you is this was definitely the work of a dark mage. Beyond that, these symbols…don’t really make any sense.”

Confusion clouded Rufus’s slate-blue eyes. “What do you mean, your Grace?”

“It is just as I say.” Evander gestured at the marks. “This is either a coded message of some sort, or whoever engraved them into his skin was in a rush.” He paused. “I am pretty certain I am correct in my conjecture, but we should ask Mr. Inkwell to take a look, just in case.”

Quentin Inkwell was the chief Occult Researcher in the AFD. He was, in fact, the only Occult Researcher in the division.

It was, unsurprisingly, a field of study few pursued with academic enthusiasm.

A muscle jumped in Rufus’s cheek as he observed the dead man’s remains. “The shopkeeper doesn’t recognise him. Neither do the proprietors of the businesses that back onto this alley.” He glanced at the few worn-out doors lining the derelict passage. They were being guarded by constables to prevent the owners of the establishments from spying on the crime scene. “Whoever he is, he wasn’t from around here.”

Evander furrowed his brow.

Yet another mystery to add to the bag it seems .

Something about this case was already giving him a bad feeling. It had started when he’d walked into the alleyway and gotten his first hint that it involved dark magic. His misgivings had only gotten worse after he’d examined the scene of the crime with his associates from the AFD.

Evander couldn’t quite put a finger on the why. Murder was never straightforward. There was an entire library full of cold cases in Scotland Yard that attested to its complexity.

It was just that his instincts were warning him to be extra vigilant. And Evander’s instincts had saved his skin one too many times for him to ignore them.

He locked eyes with Rufus. “There’s something you should know.” Evander rose to his feet and scrutinised the roofline of the shop beside them. “I am almost certain he wasn’t killed here. And he wasn’t pushed off that building.”

Rufus startled. Brown lowered his brows.

Shaw straightened to her full five foot three. The mage was frowning. “Is it the lack of splashdown that makes you say that, your Grace?”

“For God’s sake Miss Shaw, will you stop using that damn word?!” Griffiths groaned while the constable under his wing turned a nasty shade of green once more.

“Sorry,” Shaw muttered as the young man was led stumbling towards the mouth of the alley by another colleague. She turned to Evander, her expression keen and her role in the poor man’s unfortunate state all but forgotten. “So?” She fidgeted from foot to foot, her excitement clear. “Go on, spill it, your Grace.”

Evander saw Rufus’s cheeks flush with ire at her tone. He replied before the inspector could utter a cutting remark.

“It’s not just the lack of—blood around the body. A fall from that height would have broken his bones for sure, but it would not have splattered his brain in a fifteen-foot radius around the point of impact.”

Rufus, Shaw, Brown, and even Griffiths stared up and down the alley at the small red flags the alchemist had planted in the ground to indicate where he had collected the various fragments of the contents of the victim’s skull.

Shaw’s face cleared. She slammed a fist into her palm. “By Jove, you’re right, your Grace!” She beamed at Evander like he’d performed a miracle.

“Wait.” Rufus cut his eyes to the roofline before aiming a probing stare at Evander. “If he wasn’t pushed off that building, then how did he get here and in such a state too?”

Evander faltered before voicing the words that had been at the forefront of his mind for the past ten minutes. The words that had raised goosebumps on his skin when he’d first thought them.

“He was dropped from at least a hundred feet above the ground.”

Shock widened Rufus’s eyes. Brown drew a sharp breath.

Shaw crossed her arms and started pacing the alley, her face focused. “That makes sense. Which means our dark mage…” She trailed off, realisation striking her like lightning and drawing a gasp from her lips. Her head tilted jerkily as she met Evander’s steadfast gaze.

“The murderer may be able to wield wind magic too.”

Rufus licked his lips in the tense hush that followed Evander’s statement. “So, we could be dealing with a dual elemental mage?”

Evander could hazard a guess as to what everyone was thinking from the unease growing on their faces.

Mages were powerful enough as it was, ranking highest in the hierarchy of magic users above healers, Charm Weavers, enchanters, alchemists, and casters. A dual elemental mage was rare, a tri-elemental mage rarer still. As for a quadri-elemental mage, that was the stuff of legends.

Because a mage who could wield four elements or more qualified for the title of Archmage. And of those, a mere handful were born each century.

Formidable figures that had shaped mankind’s history since magic flourished in the mid-1500s, Archmages had enjoyed vast privileges and power over the centuries, putting them on par with royalty.

Evander masked a frown.

Or at least they used to.

Though still glorified and revered the world over by nobles as symbols of the purest form of magic, the reputation of Archmages suffered a severe setback after the War of Subjugation. They came to be feared and reviled by the common man and the masses, especially the magicless thralls who formed the lowest class of society and who were often treated as little more than property. Many thralls who survived the war and the illegal purges that followed still bore ugly marks that had been branded into their flesh to denote their status as quasi slaves. Cattle to be used and disposed of at the will of those possessing magic.

An all too familiar wave of bitterness swept through Evander at the thought of the thousands of innocent men, women, and children who perished during the misbegotten conflict that ripped through the British Empire and the continent in the first quarter of this century.

Though the war began and ended well before his birth, he could not allay the anger, shame, and remorse he’d carried deep inside him ever since the day his brother John first told him the true facts of the matter.

It was never a war to begin with. It was genocide.

Evander clenched his jaw. Now was not the time to dwell on a subject that had long haunted his thoughts and dreams.

Rufus’s voice brought him back to the present moment.

“Wouldn’t such an individual have to be registered with the Mage Council?”

The Mage Council was the governing body for mages in the British Empire. All mages, regardless of their status in society, had to be on their official records, their powers carefully documented so as to satisfy the rules and regulations set by the council.

Similar guilds existed for other types of magic users.

“Not if he is a rogue mage who chooses to hide his abilities,” Evander muttered.

Shaw and Brown traded a troubled look.

A loud crash made them all jump. Evander’s shoulders knotted as they stared towards the mouth of the alley. Cuss words and shouts clouded the air somewhere on the thoroughfare.

“What in the blazes?” Rufus mumbled.

The crowd beyond the cordon began dispersing, a swarm migrating towards the next source of gruesome entertainment. A constable rushed into the passage a moment later.

Evander stiffened at the sight of the crimson stains on his clothes.