Feeling the Way, CH 12 (Patreon)

Brewster Nebraska is a village of thirty people, and six hundred quad bovines. Go back sixty years and it was probably just a lone farm. How it became a village was beyond my desire to investigate.

I had never heard of it until receiving GPS coordinates from a number even my apps couldn’t trace and signed by a name that had never led me wrong, even if I hated every time I got something from them. Obsidian Black.

Stories were that he was Emerald Code’s successor. When she sacrificed herself to save Denver, her talisman went to a young hacker who then vanished after the Diamond Incident. The big problem with that story was that the incident destroyed all the Children of Merlin’s talisman, so there was no way he could be him.

Or maybe there was.

The Children of Merlin could still do magic through the item they crafted, they simply no longer had that individual talisman that could do way too much. Now they had to craft individual items for specific results. So it was possible that guy was doing something to that effect with code, or that he’d cobbled up a phone that did that.

Or they were just that great at slicing and sifting through security. The bottom line was that no matter how hard Aiden worked at keeping them out, they always found a way into our servers, and that they had a habit of dropping news on us, more often me, since I was the mobile one, and that it usually led to a problem that needed resolving.

The coordinates led to a farmhouse ten miles out of the village proper. My map said I rode through it, but I didn’t see anything there. I wasn’t the only one here. There were three police cars, well a sheriff and two deputies, six unmarked cars that were definitively government, a dozen pickups that had to be the totality of the resident, and two news site vans.

Those I didn’t expect. It meant Obsidian hadn’t been as on the ball as they normally were. They only bothered me with family matters or magic, and this far from California, I couldn’t see this being family related. I parked and locked my bike, carrying my helmet.

The perimeter was five hundred feet from the house and I saw the forensic set up on the porch. That meant no room inside the house was free of evidence. The suits were FBI, of course. If something was so big it took over an entire farmhouse, the local authorities would call them in. One of the deputies had probably alerted the news in an attempt to what? Put Brewster on the map? Only someone who’d never dealt with the notoriety that came with being the place a big crime happened wanted that.

I listened in on the plump and older newswoman, a porcupine, in the powder blue suit, and tried to work out what had happened here, but it was the end of her recording. A death was all I got before her assistant holding the phone nodded and told her it was uploaded.

How to approach this? Her site didn’t consider this a big story or they would have sent someone younger, more in demand. Until she learned something new, she wouldn’t have much to do.

“Have they released any details?” I asked her as she took the jacket her assistant handed her. Spring was here, but Nebraska didn’t seem to have gotten the message.

She looked at me, then looked me over critically. I didn’t fit in with my bike leathers. “And you are?” she was cautious, worried I might be a competitor.

“Wyatt.” I offered my hand. “I was in Broken Bow when I got the news alert from your site.” I nodded toward the vans. “I’m a big fan. It only said the FBI had been called in. I figured I’d drop by.” All of it was a risk since I didn’t know any of that for sure, but it was an educated guess. Her clothing was crumpled, but not soiled, so she hadn’t been here too long, but had been on the road for a while, probably returning from reporting on another story in the area. She would have been too busy figuring out the scope and angle for her report to pay attention to what her news site put out and the FBI was just finishing setting up their gear, so an hour made sense for that alert to have gone out.

“One of the deputies said bodies, but wouldn’t give me a number,” she said. “He looked pretty sick, so I figure there’s a few. I was about to get him to give me details, but the agent in charge showed up to silence him. The FBI hasn’t said anything yet.”

Agent in charge.

There were only six of those in the country who dealt with magic. That meant the odds were good I’d be dealing with Mortis, Loomis or Briton. The first two I could charm into giving me what I needed, Jen I couldn’t offer a good time to, but she was fun to talk with, and in exchange for some insider information she’d answer my questions. Harkman was Green Man, so I’d have to hope for mutual respect, Filion, well, after Omaha, she couldn’t stand me, so if it was her, I was out of luck. McLaren was an unknown, but a woman, so she could be the toughest one to deal with.

“Here he comes, maybe he’ll answer my question.”

Man was a good start. I turn to see who was approaching, and my heart sank. Sunset red suit, sun yellow tie, and charcoal shirt. I didn’t need to see the antlers to know all my hopes of easy answers were fucked.

“Special Agent Bodenman,” she called to him, as he strode toward me. “Fatsani Georgeson, from Nebraska State News Site, what can you tell me about the crime scene?”

Special Agent in Charge Zikabar Malhotra Bodenman leveled his gaze on her. “It’s an ongoing investigation, I have nothing to say.” He looked good for a man in his late sixties, and that was without Anakin’s gift. When he fixed me with his gaze, I had to lock my knees in place to keep them from folding. The man had personality to spare from years of life, from the loss of his husband at the hand of one of my relatives, of having to reinvent part of the FBI so it could handle the existence of magic.

If the man had one sexually dominant bone in his body, I’d let him do anything to me.

Fuck, I was hard just from that glare.

“Mister Orr, how about you come with me?” he said, his face hard. As far as I knew, the man hadn’t smiled in thirty years. Fatsani stared at me as Zikabar led me away toward my bike. 

“Special Agent,” I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking.

“Wyatt Orr,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “Family empath and borderline reject.”

“Hey, I am not a reject, I chose to distance myself.” I could say this for the man. He knew how to turn me off.

“Right. Because your family is so nice and understanding.”

“If I tell you I’m done wanting you to bend me over my bike, will you stop bad-mouthing my family?”

He rubbed his face. “My statements still stand, not that it was my intent to shut down your sexual desires.”

“Does that mean you want to bend me over my bike and fuck me?” I asked hopefully.

“No,” he stated. “What are you doing here, Mister Orr? If you are here to clean up one of your messes, you are too late.”

“Hey, we have nothing to do with that, as far as I know.”

He tilted an ear. “And yet, here you are.”

I took out my phone and showed him Obsidian Black’s message.

The deer let out a curse and placed a call. “Harrison, I need you to get the servers offline and wipe any and all intruding program. Yes, again. Black’s back in.” He put it away and scowled at me. “Who is he?”

“If I knew, we’d have them under control.”

“Right, and you wouldn’t have told me he sent you the message.”

I smiled. “If you’d asked nicely, I would.”

“Do not even try to influence me, Mister Orr. I’m not simply protected, my amulet will tell me and I will arrest you regardless of who you are, am I clear?”

His anger hit hard. “Fuck, you’d think you have gotten over that one incident,” I said, turning bitchy in self-defense and sighing as his eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry. I had no right to say that.”

His expression softened fractionally. “So the stories are true. You can actually have some manners.”

I kept my muzzle shut with effort at the tone. I was better than my brothers, than my fathers. I understood why he was angry. I got that he had a right to be. That what I’d said was like pulling the fur out around his wound. 

I was in the wrong here.

It didn’t mean keeping my replies to myself was easy.

“If Black told you about this, then it is definitely magic related.”

I shrugged. “What can you tell me?”

“I shouldn’t tell you anything,” the deer replied. “You aren’t law enforcement. Not even within your Society.” I waited as he worked things out. That was the nice thing about empathy; when I didn’t put my foot in my mouth, I knew when to press and when to let them work things out on their own. “But, you’re going to trample over this no matter what I say, so I should at least make sure you don’t get in our way.”

“And I do have access to people who won’t talk to you, being FBI and all that.” Even within the magical communities, not everyone liked that the law was around.

“If you’ll report to me what you find out, it would go a long way toward me justifying providing the information.”

I thought about it, then straight out lied. “I can’t promise that everything I learn will be something I can tell you, but anything that isn’t an outright secret I will.” I am a great liar when I want to.

He nodded. “Six boys, raped multiple times, then killed.” He took out his phone. “Filiny? I need you to transfer the feed to my phone, then do a slow pass on the basement. I will be recording it, so note that.” He looked at his phone for a minute then turned it so I could see.

The person holding the other one walked downstairs and I could already see blood, handprints on the handrail, adult size. The first body had been a cat of some sort, at that age, without seeing the fur pattern, it was difficult to tell the exact species. The only way I knew he’d been a boy was because Zikabar told me, his cock and balls had been removed, it had been messy. The boy’s throat had been cut, as had his chest. His rib cage was broken, the heart removed. Around the small body, markings had been made in blood.

Sacred Balls, he couldn’t have been older than eight.

The next one looked younger, a cervid by the shape of the muzzle and the thick nails on the feet. He too had been desecrated in the same way, with bloody marking around the body. They were all like that. All below eight, all massacred, and they’d been raped on top of that.

I knew what monsters were like. The magical community has its fair share of them, and magic only made them worse. I’d had to handle some of them. Now I knew why Obsidian Black had brought me here.

“Those markings are sigils,” the deer said, which froze my cum.

I’d thought one of Damian’s followers. “What’s the resolution on the phone?”

“It’s a forensic model,” Zikabar answered.

“Can I rewind and look it over again?”

He handed it to me and I paused it on a good view of the markings around one of the boys, vulpine, I thought. I zoomed and studied them. I could see the resemblance, and without having consulted their database, I could understand why he through this was Society magic.

“It’s not ours,” I said, looking at another section. “I don’t think it’s anyone’s.” I should have kept my mouth shut.

“What makes you say that?”

“This looks like someone imitating sigils. They’re good, but they don’t say anything. It’s just random sigils and connectors. If you have anyone on call who can sense magic, they’ll confirm it. I’m sure of it.”

“Not going to offer yourself and get a chance for a close-up view?”

I handed him his phone. “I’m not that sick. The video was more than enough. I’m going to have to find a club and dance the images away since I can’t drink them to oblivion.”

“Very well. I’ll await your report,” the deer said, turning and heading toward the house.

The porcupine was hurrying for me and I seriously considered getting on my bike and leaving her in my dust, but that would just make her work harder to find and corner me. Letting her think she got what she wanted would make her leave me alone.

“Miss Georgeson,” I greeted her with a smile.

“Mister Orr,” she replied, taken aback but catching herself quickly. “What’s your family’s interest in what happened here?”

“Nothing, as I said, I got the alert and—”

“That hasn’t gone out yet.”

“Ah.” I really hadn’t counted on being around if she looked into it.

“Is this a magical crime?”

“I’m not a law enforcement person, Miss Georgeson. The FBI would have my b—throat if I said anything about what I might know about this.”

“So you do know something. Why did Agent Bodenman want to talk to you?”

“My family is acquainted with him and he wanted to know how we were doing.”

“And he didn’t ask you for your input on what took place here?”

“If he had, Miss Georgeson, I really wouldn’t be able to tell you, now would I?”

“Alright, what are your thoughts on President Clancy’s push to force the enlistment of magical people?”

I rolled my eyes. “Even in times of war, the draft had to be a lottery, if, in time of peace, she tries to enforce something like that, I can’t see it ending well for her. It’s not a threat,” I said, cutting off the comment she was about to make. “It would be the same if she tried to force any other citizen. If there’s a war, and the US decides to participate, I have no doubt that the American magical community will do its part. Until then, we prefer going about our lives in private.”

“And who is the magical community, Mister Orr? Your family is well known to be involved with it; but what exactly can you do, magically speaking?”

I eyed her assistant, a slim antelope whose eyes grew wide as I smiled. I was tempted. I really was. Offer him an exclusive, bring him to a motel room, show him what I did, and then see if he’d tell her. If not for the shit storm that would start, I’d do it just to show her there were things she might not want to know, especially considering I was one of the better guys in this.

“We don’t do anything, Miss Georgeson. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to hit the road.” I put my helmet on, cutting off her question, and climbed on my bike. I slotted my phone in and as it started, she walked away.

I called up my text messaging app and entered a random recipient. “Obsidian,” I dictated. “I’ll look into this, but two things. One, a Miss Fatsani Georgeson just recorded me answering her questions, I need that destroyed.” As amusing as it would be, my comments about the president and her desire to force us into her army would get my dads pissed. “Second, what aren’t you telling me? This is just some wannabe. It’s horrible, but that should be the FBI’s job, not mine.”

The return was instant. Handled. I am telling you what you need to know.

How the fuck were they that fast? And why did they have to always be cryptic? I didn’t bother with a reply. They’d said what they wanted. I wouldn’t be able to force anything else out. I turned and headed back the way I came.

From here, my choices for center of fun were Denver or Omaha.

As much fun as seeing Edward would be, I didn’t feel like dealing with his father, so I headed east and made calls while I rode.