“Pastor Haywood never took any money or credit for what he did. His magic was faith-based, so it only worked on those who shared his beliefs, but when it worked, it was extraordinary. He was a good man, who thought he had no magic of his own and saw himself as an instrument of a higher power. Do you know how this kind miracle worker died?”

“No.”

“Look in the file.”

I opened the file. A colored photograph stared back at me. A stump of a body sprawled in a puddle of blood on the floor. The head was missing, torn off, judging by the ragged shreds of skin around the neck. His chest was a gory mess. Something with vicious claws had ripped him open, breaking his ribs, and their shards jutted out of the red-smeared flesh. Thick, dark blood pooled inside the chest cavity where vital organs used to be.

“It took his heart,” I said.

“Yes.” Nick sat back in his chair. “It’s too early to say if the culprit is an ‘it.’ The force and the claws required to open a human being like that could indicate a shapeshifter or a vampire or half a dozen magical beasts seen recently within the city limits. Your guess is as good as mine.”

He sounded bored. Nick didn’t know how to be apathetic about his job. He never phoned anything in, but here was a holy man, a pastor he personally knew and clearly admired, murdered in a horrifying way and Nick was pretending not to care. He wasn’t giving me any details either.

Why so indifferent, Uncle? What are you hiding?

“Did he have any enemies? Do you have any leads or suspects?”

“No and no. Pastor Haywood was beloved by his congregation and respected by his peers. The murder was announced in the paper two days ago, and there are still hundreds of mourners standing vigil at the church where he was a deacon.”

I studied the photograph and slid it back into the file gently. I had seen plenty of dead bodies. I had made a lot of bodies dead, and sometimes my handiwork looked worse than this. But there was something profoundly sad about Pastor Haywood’s murder. The brutality of it, the sheer savagery of it made you want to punch something. He was a man with a kind heart, and someone had literally ripped it out. He was a light in the world. We had so few lights.

I traced the body with my fingertips. You won’t be forgotten. I promise you I will find the one responsible and stop them from hurting anyone else.

I realized Nick was watching me and closed the file.

“The Order was asked by the Methodist Bishop of North Georgia to step in because the manner of death makes this case a political time bomb. The PAD was overjoyed to send it over. It landed on my desk this morning. Everything we know is in that file and now it’s yours.”

Nick opened a drawer in his desk, took out a form, wrote on it in indecipherable cursive, and held it out.

“For the purposes of this investigation, we’re going to make you a Knight-Defender.”

Rank and file member of the Order. Perfect.

“Go down the hall, take a left, second door on the right, give them this paper, and they will make you your very own junior detective badge. While in possession of said badge, you represent the Order of Merciful Aid. Should you fuck up, you’ll find me less than merciful, and no matter what favor your superior thinks they’re owed, I’ll kick your ass right out of Atlanta. Understood?”

Right. That’s all he was going to give me. “Understood. Any advice?”

Nick grinned like a wolf baring his fangs. “Have fun, don’t offend anybody, and try not to die.”

4

Three minutes after I left the Order’s chapter, I realized I’d picked up a tail. To be fair, the tail was almost painfully obvious, so it wasn’t that much of an achievement.

I shifted in the saddle, turning my head slightly. The female knight who’d escorted me to Nick’s office was following me on foot, making no effort to hide herself. She must’ve decided that even if I knew she was there, I couldn’t do much about it.

I let her follow me down Magnum, across the post-Shift bridge that spanned the railroad tracks, and down the narrow Packard Street. Normally I would’ve just ignored her and let her merrily tail me wherever, but I was going to the murder scene, and I had a feeling there were things there I didn’t want her to see.

Packard brought me to Ted Turner Drive, lined with reclamation shops and construction offices. Turner ran next to the ruined Downtown. Scavenging the ruins for metal and other usable materials was a big business. The traffic went from nonexistent to heavy, as the street channeled carts with supplies, craftsmen, and laborers. Both of my parents used to work here.

I should’ve turned south, to the right. Instead I turned north. The buildings at the intersection blocked me from the knight’s view. I nudged Tulip into a trot. She picked up the pace, nimbly dodging the crowds. A collapsed building loomed on the left, pure white, its four remaining floors rising from the rubble. We reached it, I dismounted, and tapped Tulip’s neck. “Around the block.”

She took off down the street.

I ducked into a hole in a former office building. From the outside it looked like the interior had completely collapsed there, but there was a narrow gap on the right, if you knew where to look. I squeezed through it, into the gloom, jogged a dozen feet to the inner wall, and jumped up. My hands caught the familiar handholds on pure muscle memory, and I scrambled up, all the way to the exposed third floor. I padded to the half-wrecked wall and glanced out of the gap, keeping myself hidden.

The female knight jogged out of the traffic and halted below. If she was tracking me by magic, she would have no problem finding me. If she tracked by scent, she would likely follow Tulip. A horse’s scent was stronger and easier to track than the rider’s.

She looked left. She looked right. She looked confused.

Lost something?

The knight turned in a slow circle, scanning the streets, and went right, down Trinity Avenue. Neither magic nor scent then, just plain old eyesight. She’d lost me, and she correctly figured out that I would be going to the crime scene, so instead of wasting time on finding me, she decided to go to the crime scene as well and wait.

On paper, Trinity Avenue would be a good way to get to Pastor Haywood’s church. But Trinity Avenue ran into Wolf Bridge, which spanned the rubble and crossed over I-85. This time of day the reclamation teams would be bringing in the first loads of salvage from Downtown. At the same time, the teamsters would be transferring this morning’s freight from the north ley line to the west. Wolf Bridge would be packed hoof to bumper. It would cost her at least half an hour, forty-five minutes if it was a busy shipping day. She was likely a capable knight. Nick didn’t tolerate incompetency. But she spoke with a touch of Upper Midwest, and I’d been running away from monsters on these streets for as long as I could walk. Atlanta was my city.