At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(102)

Tommy pulled out another piece of paper and placed it on top of the first one. Evan scanned Tommy’s transliteration, did a quick cross-check with the runes Tommy had written down, then pulled his journal from his satchel and recopied the lines, adding punctuation, trying to make sense of the poem.

He wrote:

1 O! This hoarder caused my fall with his fall, his fall caused by the fallen.

2 Thus from my bothy I came, homeland’s ward for first of five

3 to sacrifice the innocent at night. She takes back her sons and daughters

4 who rived and tholed and peeled her flesh like ripe fruit.

5 No tall tale this, for he will be mine. One day, hawk will take sparrow

6 to be born in a new place. Then I will have vengeance against

7 the evil horde-guard who shaped this shaper

8 and fashioned this long-clawed wolf into the

9 blessing giver. My blood-feud stillbirths your further crimes

Evan leaned back and frowned. Then leaned forward again. Scowled.

“Is it supposed to mean something?” Tommy asked.

“I believe so, yes.”

“Then, what?”

“That,” Evan said as he scratched his chin, “is a very good question.”



Addie stared, her eyes struggling to understand what she was seeing.

This part of the vast roof of the old silos was scattered with dead birds—most of them pigeons or starlings, although some of the birds were so desiccated, she couldn’t be sure. Others looked as fresh as the day they’d first taken wing. As she and the lieutenant walked forward, stepping gingerly, the beam of her headlamp picked out what might be a pair of mute swans.

All of them had been affixed to the roof in some fashion. Tied to cables, pinned under cinderblocks, caught in nets. The cables were the source of the creaking she’d heard all the way in the basement.

Their feathers fluttered in the wind, as if the birds longed to rise as one and burst into the heavens. Addie’s heart tore at the sight of so many helpless feathered things, forever kept from the sky.

In the center of the slaughter, a man lay spread-eagle. The SWAT officers had already approached the corpse before returning to inform Addie and the lieutenant that the man was, most definitely, dead.

As they drew nearer, she fanned her light quickly over the body, then zeroed in on the face.

The tattoo of a raven darkened the man’s forehead.

“It’s almost certainly David Hayne,” she told the lieutenant. “Our suspect.”

He frowned. “But not our killer.”

“Not unless he did this to himself as some kind of final performance. His swan song, in a manner of speaking.”

Next to the body, the feathers of a crow trembled in the wind sheeting across the rooftop.

Beyond the corpse was a wheeled metal hand truck, the kind used to move appliances. She pointed it out to Criver. “At least we know how he relocated his victims. He’d get them compliant through drugs, then strap them to that.”

Criver nodded. “That’s why he raked over the mud on the path leading to Talfour’s corpse.”

She knelt a few feet from the corpse and trained her light down along Hayne’s face and naked body. His right eye was gone. A noose had been tightened around his neck. Carved on his chest were the words NOT ?.

Not third. Not thorn of riding.

Lieutenant Criver crouched beside her. He reached out a hand, as if to offer solace or reprieve to the dead man.

Raven’s eyes snapped open.

Addie and the lieutenant yanked back. One of the SWAT guys cried out, “Shit!” at the same time the other yelled, “I checked his vitals! The dude was dead.”

Raven blinked and opened his mouth, sucking in a breath. His single eye searched wildly about.

“Draugr,” he whispered in a cavernous voice.

“What’s that mean?” asked Criver. “Drow-gur?”

She shook her head. “David, who did this to you?”

He coughed. His tongue licked out and wetted his lips. “Draugr. Killer is . . . Draugr.”

Addie yanked out her phone, typed in DROWGUR. Google helpfully responded, DID YOU MEAN DRAUGR? “He’s saying that the killer is an undead Viking. A Viking zombie.”

The coughing grew worse, then stopped abruptly. His single eye rolled back in his head. Addie grabbed his wrist, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. She backed away as one of the SWAT men knelt next to Raven and began CPR.

“Damn,” Criver said. “Was that our only suspect, Detective?”

Addie turned toward the distant city, brilliant in the darkness.

“I’ve lost him,” said the medic.

Criver got on the radio. “The guy’s still out there.”

Evan, she thought.



Tommy had lost interest in the poem and sat hunkered in his chair, scrolling through something on his phone.

Evan finished the last of his mint tea. The barista came by to clear their table.

“Anything else?” she asked Tommy. She was smiling.

He didn’t look up or speak. She glanced at Evan, who shrugged.

“That’s it, thank you,” he said.

He returned to the poem and its enigmatic tangle of words. There was the reference to a wolf in line eight, adding to his theory that their killer was Blakesley: the evil horde-guard who . . . fashioned this long-clawed wolf into the blessing giver.