Blood Pressure

By Joseph L. Kellogg

Exsanguinated. Not a word any cop wants showing up in his report. But when a drained body falls from a skyscraper across national borders, the case lands on the desk of Agent Reylic Antali at the Trans-Metro Police, and it's up to him and his team to figure out who the killer is, and what they're after.

In a city where four magical races coexist under an uneasy unity, tensions flare up as more bodies land in the morgue. The city seems on the verge of tearing itself apart as Reylic and his Old Magic Task Force race to find the culprit. But what they find may change change the nature of magic as they know it…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph L. Kellogg
• Release date: Jun 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985472707

Book preview

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Sample Chapter from Life Support: Secret Operations

Book Cover Joseph Kellog final with text_ResizedJPG

Blood Pressure

Joseph L. Kellogg

Joseph L. Kellogg is a chemist living in Tennessee with his wife and two corgis.

You can see more of his stories at www.JosephLKellogg.com

Cover art by Zachary Tullsen. Visit him at www.ZacharyTullsen.com

This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons or events are purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2022 by Joseph L. Kellogg

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 979-8-9854727-0-7

To Julie

CHAPTER ONE

When I walked in the office, everybody's eyes were glued to the television up in the corner. I walked past them to my desk and shrugged off my jacket, carefully working the back slits around my gnarled, diaphanous wings, and tossed it on the back of my chair before turning to my partner to see why.

What’s going on? I half-whispered to Sarka, who stroked the dark red scales of his reptilian snout as he sat transfixed by the screen at the neighboring desk. It was some kind of news broadcast, but I couldn't hear the sound from where I was.

A body fell from somewhere in the Consolidated Auto Tower, he replied, not turning his attention away. His forked tongue darted in and out of his mouth with excitement. Fell at least a few dozen stories. I’m hoping they get a shot of the impact.

They’re not going to show that on TV, I said, sitting down and booting up my computer. Then it hit me. Wait. Consolidated Auto? That’s… did it…?

Yeah, Sarka said, turning to face me with a devilish grin. "It fell out of Demyran airspace, crossed the border, and landed on Korkan soil. So it’s coming to somewhere in the department."

Well, he was right about that. Andaloss is unique among cities. It spills across the borders of four separate nations, with a few handfuls of enclaves and exclaves scattered around to keep you on your toes, left over from wars a couple of hundred years old. The city functions autonomously in a lot of ways to minimize the administrative headaches, and most of the city-wide government is headquartered in our building. That includes the Trans-Metro Police, where I work.

Now, a lot of the tallest skyscrapers rise above the Cliff Line, which marks the boundary of Demyran territory, so the uppermost floors constitute little territorial islands of glass and steel floating above the territory of the Ulums and the landwalkers.

We’re not getting the case, I said. "It’s weird, but not our kind of weird. Tell him, Lompolla."

My other partner shrugged, and signed at Sarka with her blue webbed hands. He’s right. Her fish-like face twisted in mock sympathy for a second, before she turned back to the computer and resumed typing.

The door on the far end of the room swung open, and a woman walked in with a furrowed brow that suggested she was searching for someone. She was an Aver, like me. Sort of, anyway. We shared the pinkish skin tone, but where my wings were twisted and useless, hers were delicate and symmetric. And where my arms were wreathed in thick strands of muscle, hers were slender and refined. In other words, I was a misshapen freak, and she was the image of physical perfection for our species.

Sarka straightened up in his chair when he saw her, half standing up for a better vantage point. That’s got to be it, he said. He closed his eyes, clasped his hands together and chanted, Please get referred to us, please get referred to us, please get referred to us…

Her eyes flashed with some kind of recognition, and she quickly weaved her way through the desks and chairs, and ended up standing in front of our trio.

Agent Antali? she asked, tentatively, looking at me.

Sarka pounded his fist on his desk, and stood up in his chair. Yes!

Oh, the woman said, her eyes darting between the two of us. You’re a Kakla? From the name, I assumed you were an Aver.

"No, I’m Agent Antali, I said. But you can call me Reylic. That’s Agent Jarn. He just loves his work."

I see. I’m Detective Mantessa Fremel from the Demyra PD. I have a case for the Old Magic Task Force.

Sarka tensed up. Lompolla pushed her computer screen down for a better view.

What is it? I asked.

She glanced back at the television, where the tiny limp figure was still falling, over and over, on the screen. I’m guessing you heard about it already. The body that fell from the Consolidated Auto Tower?

We’re on the case! Sarka exclaimed, jumping from his chair and grabbing his jacket.

Wait, wait, wait, I said, waving him back down. I turned back to the detective. What makes this a case for us?

You’d better just have a look at the body. It should be in your morgue already. Care to lead the way?

People used to think magic was all one thing. In those pre-industrial ages, they couldn’t see a difference between a Kakla artillery mage launching a fireball and a wood faerie cursing your firstborn. I know it seems silly now, but people just didn’t know better back then. But when the first batteries and electric generators were built, the development of EMM Theory provided a way to describe, measure, and predict the energy of that fireball (or that ice shield, or growth spell, and so on). The firstborn curse? Not so much. So we ended up with a split between genetic magic and old magic.

It’s that old magic my team deals with. Regular cops can handle your average spell-slinging punk, but when creatures on the edge of civilization start hexing the railways, or death cults call on the powers of things crudely called gods, we get called in. We also get called in for cases requiring a highly technical background knowledge of genetic magic and EMM Theory, but we couldn’t figure out how to work that into the name.

Selucah always kept the morgue just a little too cold, but this time I remembered to put my jacket on before going downstairs. Brushed stainless steel glowed with bluish fluorescent light, and the coroner stood over one in a row of half a dozen shrouded bodies. The faint odor of disinfectant and formaldehyde turned my stomach a little.

I knew this had to be one of yours, Selucah said as the four of us walked in. She was a Rilli woman in her early forties, and the fur of her rodent-like face had a few gray streaks that testified to the stress of her job. Every time one of your victims comes in, I end up behind for days. Why can’t you ever have bodies with nice clean gunshot wounds?

Nice to see you too, Selly, I said. What do you have for us?

She shook her head, and pulled back the sheet. I take back what I said about Selucah looking stressed; next to this body, she looked positively vibrant. It was another Rilli, this one a man, but it was hard to judge his age. His body was withered, the muscles likely atrophied, and his skin was visibly pale in eight shaved patches in the fur on his torso. His cheeks were sunken in, and his eyes didn’t even look real anymore.

Lompolla scrunched up her face in disgust, but waved a hand in the air to conjure up a thin sheet of water in front of her face to act as a substrate for her sensory spells as she took a closer look.

Have you established a cause of death? I asked.

Selucah nodded. Remarkably, it wasn’t the fall. God knows it would have been plenty. Although from the report on the scene, it seems it hit a couple of awnings on the way down, and landed in a tree. If it hadn’t, I’d be doing this autopsy with a spatula.

So if it wasn’t the fall, what was it?

Exsanguination. Don't get to use that word in my reports much. There’s not a drop of blood left in him. If you look close, you can see puncture wounds in the middle of the shaved patches. Someone was drawing large amounts of blood from him.

Sounds like vampires, Sarka said.

Vampires are a myth, I replied.

So are humans.

Shut up.

Lompolla snapped her divination screen closed, and the water vanished with a slight sparkle in the middle of the air. Bones are shattered. All of his organs are present, she signed.

What did she say? Detective Fremel asked.

The organs are all still there, I translated.

So? What does that mean?

It means it probably isn’t ritualistic in nature, Sarka said. There’s a lot of bad stuff you can get up to with blood, but even more with a heart, liver, eyeballs, and so on. If someone was harvesting ritual materials, they’re either wasteful, incompetent, or have a very specific and narrow purpose in mind.

Have you identified the victim? I asked.

She shook her head. Not yet. No ID, no clothes, no distinguishing scars or dye jobs. He doesn’t match any missing person reports from the last three months, either.

Homeless? asked Lompolla.

Likely, I said. I turned to Fremel. What’s up on the top of Consolidated Auto?

Her eyes rolled up a bit while she recited from memory. Based on videos, we know the body dropped from at least floor 47. Above that is a couple of souvenir shops, some nice restaurants, a bank, three floors of apartments, one empty floor being renovated, grocery and home supply stores, and a club.

We’ll need to canvass the business and homes, find out if they saw anything.

Already started, Fremel said.

Sarka, can you coordinate with her on the legwork? Lom and I are going to stick around and take a closer look at the body.

Sure thing, Sarka said with a grin. He ushered Detective Fremel out of the morgue, and when the door shuddered closed, Lompolla and Selucah backed away from the body. They knew the routine, and I stepped closer, shut my eyes, and concentrated.

Everybody can do some magic. Even if it’s as basic as an Aver flying, or an Ulum like Lompolla staying hydrated out of water. I’m the exception. The same birth defect that mangled my wings left me with absolutely no magical faculties whatsoever. The upside was that it left me extremely sensitive to the magical fields around me. I felt it, almost like a faint buzzing, with different tones and timbres for the different types of magic, like smelling the difference between fresh paint and permanent markers.

The magic on this body had a strange quality to it. Earthy: Rilli magic to be sure. But it was deep, layered, and rich. I caught lingering whiffs of Lompolla’s divination spell as well, but this was something more intense, and more sustained.

I looked up. There’s healing magic left on him. Deep too.

Someone tried to save him? Lompolla signed.

No, more than that. I think he was on some kind of life support before he died. Maybe for a month or more. Powerful stuff too, and it was working hard.

What does that mean? Selucah asked.

Someone was harvesting him, Lompolla said. They were sustaining him long-term to keep drawing blood.

That’s a lot of trouble to go to, I said, "just to keep one homeless guy alive. There are enough drifters on the street that they could have kept snatching more bodies. Something must be special about this man’s blood in particular. Which means we need to identify him to know what’s going on."

I can run dental records and see if I get a match, Selucah said. There’s no central database, so it’ll be a slog.

Thanks. We’ll see what we can do to narrow it down.

Good, because I’m not paid by the hour.

CHAPTER TWO

I spent most of the rest of the day on paperwork to wrap up other cases, then took a break in the afternoon to hit the gym on the fifth floor. Today was upper body, high weight and low reps, plus ten minutes of my routine swinging the meel clubs. Halfway through my set on the bench press, I got a call from Fremel.

Antali, I said, adjusting my earpiece and sitting up. What’s the news?

It’s Detective Fremel… Why are you breathing so hard?

I’m at the gym. What have you found out?

No breakthroughs, I’m afraid. No one saw anything leading up to the drop, but I’ve got eyewitnesses on some upper levels, who saw it fall. That leaves only the top three floors it could have come from.

What are on those floors? I asked.

Here’s the fun part. The top two floors are completely taken up by Twenty Plus. You know it?

Uh… some kind of retail outlet?

She paused a couple of seconds before answering. No. It’s one of the hotter nightclubs in the Arch district.

That’s saying something. The Archipelago is the highest-status neighborhood in Demyran territory, so this place had to be Snob Central. Not really my scene, I’m afraid.

Well it’s certainly mine, she replied. And by that I mean our Vice squad has been in and out of there more than the employees. Rumors say they can provide any kind of contraband good or service you want, but we’ve never collared more than some freelance spike dealers on the dance floor.

You think that includes ritual components?

Nothing we ever thought to look for, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

So let’s get a writ of investigation and tear the place apart, I said. I spotted a paunch-bellied office drone of a Rilli giving me the stink eye for sitting on the bench without using it. I laid back down and started the rest of my set; no way was I going to let him shed all over the bench before I was finished using it.

It’s no good, Fremel said. They’re too smart to leave stashes of anything lying around. They deal with connections and introductions. It’s the people we need, not the building, and they’ll scatter at the first sign of a uniform.

So, I grunted out, we go without uniforms. The bar clanked as I dropped it back down on the rack after my last rep. I’m not usually this forward, Detective, but would you care to join me for a night on the town?

The line was silent for a moment, and I immediately regretted the flirtatious tone. I didn’t mean... I just meant undercover. A couple of people gave me weird looks, but I’m used to that. I hurried off the bench, wiped it down, and moved to an empty corner.

Yeah, yeah, I got that. Let’s set it up when you get back to your desk.

I finished my workout, showered, changed clothes, then worked out the details with Fremel and passed the information on to my team. I left the office a bit early, and grabbed a quick dinner of noodles and horse meat on the way home, because now came the hard part: finding something to wear.

My apartment is perfect for a single, career-focused guy like me, which is to say that it has the bare minimum of space and furnishings necessary to sleep, change clothes, and give the food delivery guys somewhere to find me. Decorations largely consisted of case files on the desk and a movie poster the last tenant left behind to cover a patch in the wall. After I entered and flipped on the light, I