Witch Hunt, A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy (The Maurin Kincaide Series) Read Online Free

running loose in Salem. This was like a terrifying mix of suicide bomber and serial killer. You can’t rationalize with a fanatic. You can never explain away their belief systems. Their hatred is ingrained in every fiber of their being.
    Matthison brought my attention back to the dead girl on the steps. There’d be time to profile the killer after we evaluated the latest crime scene.
    “Who is she, Mahalia?” he asked.
    “Julienne Blanc.” Mahalia’s stoic façade was starting to crack. “Julienne was a pure blood. She was stronger than Laura, but not as strong as any of the witches you know, Maurin.”
    “Okay, so that pretty much confirms what I was thinking. Whoever is doing this is eliminating the weakest members first,” Matthison said.
    “Well, of course they are. That’s what serial killers do, right? It’s about power for them – it’s about preying upon people. And predators go after the easiest prey. I can’t recall a case in history where the murder victims were all your size, for example” I said.
    If we weren’t standing over a dead girl then that kind of logic might actually have earned a smile from Matthison. Right now, it just had him staring at me like I was nuts.
    “What? You know it’s true,” I said, in my typical defensive mode.
    He waved it off. “No, no. You said ‘they’. Why did you say ‘they’?”
    “I didn’t even realize that I had,” I replied, suddenly confused.
    He was pacing. “These two murders were too close together for just one person to have committed them.”
    “Um, I hate to break it to you, Captain, but Jack the Ripper was one person and two of his murders were very close together.” At least I thought I read somewhere that they were.
    “You’re missing my point. It’s not that there are two murders this close together, but it’s the way that the murders were committed. If you consider the lack of blood around the body, then she obviously wasn’t killed here. The words are meticulously carved into her abdomen. Her eyes were sewn shut and I’m willing to bet if we opened her mouth we’d find her tongue is missing just like the other victim. This wasn’t rushed, but rather relished.” He paused.
    There was something different about J ulienne. “Why weren’t her hands cut off?” I asked.
    Matthison turned Julienne’s hand over with as much care as if she could still feel him touching her.
    “Not cut off, but cut deep enough to be useless. See it all the time with attempted suicides.”
    “Why?” I wondered out loud.
    “They don’t mean to, they just cut too deep. So-”
    “No. Why did they take their time with her and not with the other victim?”
    “That’s a question for Mahalia, but if I had to guess then I’d say that there’s a difference for the killer between half-blooded and full-blooded witches. It’s like they wanted it to last longer with her.” He turned to Mahalia.
    Mahalia went white as a ghost. Which isn’t really an accurate comparison in real life; I’ve seen ghosts and they’re a lot more lifelike than you’d think. Something had her scared and I’ve never seen her scared. I reached out and touched her arm. She jumped. It was small, but I felt it.
    Matthison noticed too, except he mistook it for shock. “My apologies, Mahalia. I don’t mean to be inconsiderate. This must be disturbing for you - seeing two of your coven members like this in a matter of hours. I can have one of the officers take you home if you like.”
    “Don’t let the grey hair and wrinkled body fool you, Captain. I am not that frail and I have seen far worse than this in all my years. Maurin simply caught me deep in thought,” Mahalia replied tartly.
    I started to say that it felt like more than deep thought to me, but decided not to interrupt her. What she said next made my jaw drop, however.
    “There is no difference in half-blood or full-blood to them, Captain. Any trace of witch blood is too much. I know who did this,” she said