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to do with the three Asian guys with auto weapons who got whacked outside the same deli your friend Gina Velasquez and her daughter were in?”
     
    “Asian guys?  Gina?  Are they alright?” I asked.  He just nodded, still watching my reactions, then turned and waved for us to follow him, marching swiftly over the green grass of the softball fields till he got to the bare dirt of the infield.  The majority of the police activity was here.  As we approached, the wall of cops parted and we could see behind them.
     
    Six forms, more or less, were splayed on the ground, the brown dirt stained bright red all around them.  In the center of the arc of bodies, a small round circle was spray-painted onto the dirt.  The circle was filled with the galactic black of night, like a puddle of ink, one that pressed on my aura with the weight of the damned.
     
    “All Hell broke loose here early this morning,” the commissioner said, waving us forward.
     

Chapter 5
     
     
    The bodies, or what was left of them, were in a loose arc around the edges of the circle.  They were all dressed in robes over street clothes with the exception of one woman who was naked, her dead eyes staring up at the sky.  She seemed intact, the sharp angle of her head and neck indicating the likely cause of death.  The others—well, the others were a mess.
     
    Two bodies had massive holes in their chests, open cavities empty of their hearts.  They looked shocked.  To the right of them was a body that seemed normal till you got to the head, which was grossly misshapen.  Elongated, smashed in, and curved to the left side, as if it folded around a blunt object that hit it with unimaginable force.  The next one had no head and no arms.  A glance around found the missing body parts on the other side of the circle, thrown casually on the ground.  The final body was a bloody mess, the entire chest and torso crushed in.
     
    “They look like the terrorist bodies in that school.  That’s why I was worried it was you.  Who else could do this?”
     
    “Lots of supernaturals could accomplish this, Commissioner,” Tanya said, looking it over with a professional eye.  I suddenly worried about all the blood and gore on the scene.  She hadn’t eaten in a while.
     
    Picking up on my thought, she turned to me with a grimace.  “Like if you walked into a trashed deli with rotted meat on the floor.  Not appetizing at all,” she said.  The commissioner looked puzzled at her comment but I saw Deckert’s sudden realization of the meaning flash across his face.  “Plus the whole sulfur and brimstone stench,” she added as an afterthought.
     
    I was wrestling with making a smartass comment or not when the vision hit.
     
    I glanced around at the cops and CSI types, but they were all using tablets of one flavor or another. 
     
    “Hey Doug, you got any writing gear in that go bag of yours?” I asked the ex-sniper.  He nodded and reached into the black gear bag slung on his side. 
     
    “Wow!  A sketch pad and colored pencils,” I said.  “Hey Deckert, can we keep him?”
     
    Deckert just shook his head.  “Nope, he’s mine.  But if you’re good, I’ll grant visitation rights.”
     
    Kneeling down, I used my folded knee for a desk, flipping to a clean page and choosing the black pencil to start.  My right hand started to move on its own, sketching nine boxes, comic-strip style.  The first box started to fill in with six figures in robes around a glowing blue circle.  Part of me wondered at the automatic use of the blue pencil.  The view was from slightly above and a little behind.
     
    The second box showed a naked female figure inside the circle, as well as the awestruck faces of three of the robe-wearing people.  Two men and a woman.  The men looked amazed and delighted, the woman surprised and scared.  The view was from behind the female in the circle; the only details were of a nicely toned, youthful female