JК
Cerulean Sins :: Гамильтон Лорел
Страница: 108 из 352"It's been awhile since I studied runes in college, but the perps used all the runes in a pretty standard order. If you're really doing ritual, you have a specific purpose. You don't use all the Norse runes, because some of them are contradictory. I mean, you don't want to use a rune for chaos and a rune for order. I can't think of a true ritual where you would use them all. Even if you were doing a working where you wanted to invoke polarity, healing, harming, chaos, order, god, goddess, you still wouldn't. Some of them aren't easily made to fit any true polarity/opposite sort of thing. And they're also in a pretty standard textbook order."
I backed up, taking him with me, because he was still holding on to my elbow. I pointed to the left side of the body as we looked at it. "It starts with Fehu here and descends straight through, ending with Dagaz at the other side. Someone just copied this, Zerbrowski."
"I know this sounds funky, but do you feel any magic?" he asked.
I thought about that. "Do you mean was this a spell?"
He nodded. "Yeah, can you feel a spell?"
"No, there's been nothing of power in this room."
"How can you be so sure?" he asked.
"Magic, power of any kind of a metaphysical nature, leaves a residue behind. Sometimes it's just a tingling at the back of your neck, goosebumps on your skin, but sometimes it's like a slap in the face, or even a wall that you run into. But this room is dead, Zerbrowski. I'm not psychically gifted enough to pick up emotions from what happened here, and I'm glad. But if this had been some big spell, there'd been something left of it, and the room is just a crime scene, nothing else."
"So if no spell, why all the symbols?" he asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. From the looks of things he was shot behind the ear and nailed to the wall. The body isn't arranged to imitate any mystical or religious symbolism that I'm familiar with. Then they threw some pentagrams around and copied runes out of a book."
"Which book?"
"There are a lot of books on the runes, everything from college textbooks to the occult to New Age. You'd probably have to go to a college store or one of the New Age shops, or you could probably special order it through any bookstore."
"So this isn't a ritual murder," he said.
"There may be ritual to it from the killer's point of view, but was it done with magical purpose? No."
He let out a deep breath. "Good, that's what Reynolds told Dolph."
"Detective Tammy Reynolds, your one and only witch on staff?" I asked.
He nodded.
I backed up, taking him with me, because he was still holding on to my elbow. I pointed to the left side of the body as we looked at it. "It starts with Fehu here and descends straight through, ending with Dagaz at the other side. Someone just copied this, Zerbrowski."
"I know this sounds funky, but do you feel any magic?" he asked.
I thought about that. "Do you mean was this a spell?"
He nodded. "Yeah, can you feel a spell?"
"No, there's been nothing of power in this room."
"How can you be so sure?" he asked.
"Magic, power of any kind of a metaphysical nature, leaves a residue behind. Sometimes it's just a tingling at the back of your neck, goosebumps on your skin, but sometimes it's like a slap in the face, or even a wall that you run into. But this room is dead, Zerbrowski. I'm not psychically gifted enough to pick up emotions from what happened here, and I'm glad. But if this had been some big spell, there'd been something left of it, and the room is just a crime scene, nothing else."
"So if no spell, why all the symbols?" he asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. From the looks of things he was shot behind the ear and nailed to the wall. The body isn't arranged to imitate any mystical or religious symbolism that I'm familiar with. Then they threw some pentagrams around and copied runes out of a book."
"Which book?"
"There are a lot of books on the runes, everything from college textbooks to the occult to New Age. You'd probably have to go to a college store or one of the New Age shops, or you could probably special order it through any bookstore."
"So this isn't a ritual murder," he said.
"There may be ritual to it from the killer's point of view, but was it done with magical purpose? No."
He let out a deep breath. "Good, that's what Reynolds told Dolph."
"Detective Tammy Reynolds, your one and only witch on staff?" I asked.
He nodded.